“Media is the nervous system of a democracy.
If it’s not functioning well, the democracy can’t function.”
(Jeff Cohen, Director of the Park Center for Independent Media)

Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev have created Newstweek as a device for manipulating the news
read by other people on wireless hotspots. Built into a small, innocuous wall plug, the Newstweek device appears as part of the local infrastructure. This allows agents to remotely
edit news read on laptops, phones and tablets without the user being aware of this news alteration. Newstweek emerges as a symptom of our increasingly corporatized and mediated democratic reality. While news is increasingly read digitally, it still follows a traditional, top-down distribution model and thus often falls victim to the same political and corporate interests that have always sought to manipulate public opinion. Newstweek intervenes in this model, providing an opportunity for citizens to have their turn at manipulating the media, “fixing facts” as they pass across a wireless network. In this way, Newstweek can be seen as a tactical device for altering public reality on a per-network basis. Hotspots manipulable by Newstweek include cafes, libraries, hotels, universities and city-wide wireless networks.

Newstweek also signals a word of caution, that a strictly media-defined reality
is always a vulnerable reality. Today, as devices and their networks become ubiquitous,
ignorance as to how they function increases, offering an opportunity for the manipulation
of facts on their journey from source to destination (from server to screen).

Over at Imperica, you can read a little more about the project
as well as see a more in-depth video example of how the hardware works.
The photo above makes them appear mean, but it was the best of what I had taken.
I can assure you that they are very friendly and interesting guys who have done some
great, creative work. Below is their official video followed by their Forum presentation
where they spoke about the development of this project – a project that won them
a well-deserved Golden Nica in the Interactive Art category.

 

(thanks to Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev, & Ars Electronica)

Winfried Ritsch has placed seven pianos in a circle of 20 meters diameter forming a heptagram. Eighty-eight robotic “fingers” on each of the seven pianos creates the possibility of a mass of 616 parallel notes which can be controlled via Ethernet from a central mixing location. The work, Heptapiano, becomes an organic formation of sound transformed out of more or less chaotic behavior of these robotic pianos where waves of phrases are synchronized and mutated using various algorithms. The first video, by Peter Venus, is of the setup process. The second, from Marian Weger, is a better slow-walk version that what I had filmed, so I’m grateful. The third is only the final section of one of the ones that I made because the beginning moments are so dizzying that I didn’t want you to watch it just in case you had just eaten lunch. Location: entrance to the Lentos Museum.

(thanks to Peter Venus)

(thanks to Marian Weger)

Potential questions for the sound artist who captures field recordings: do you already have an idea of what something sounds like before possibly making a great effort to get to the sound in order to record it? If you don’t know what it sounds like, is there some deeper reason to go hunting for such sounds? If you do have a general idea of what the specific sound is like, will an already existing online archive of that particular sound serve your purpose? Once you’ve reached the origin of the sound that you’ve imagined, what happens if it doesn’t exhibit the sound quality that you envisaged? Was your trip a wasted effort? These questions seem reasonable when it comes to trying to understand the motivation of someone willing to, for example, stand on dangerously shifting and melting ice slabs in order to get the sound of 10,000-year-old melting ice.

Jana Winderen‘s background is in chemistry, mathematics and fish ecology. This could provide a peek into her interests in finding sound in the audio topography of the ocean – searching deep into hidden sources in order to present to us the fragility of complex marine ecosystems. Once gathered, sounds of the icy landscape, crustaceans, various fish, as well as sounds of the crackling ice itself are then moulded into descriptive soundscapes that create a fascinating audio snapshot of a frigid world that very few of us will ever experience. Her CD is available thru Touch.

 (thanks to Ars Electronica)

While sitting here drinking a “handcrafted soda” made by the Thomas Kemper Soda Co.
called “Bumble Berry,” I find myself re-listening to, appropriately, the electroacoustic work, Bee,
by Apostolos Loufopoulos. A work which was inspired by the microcosmos of the kind of insects
which share an intensely energetic flying behavior. Most of the audio material comes from our natural environment filled with summer insects, sea-related sounds, and forest soundscapes, but transformed according to their individual morphologies at multiple levels. An acousmatic work that seems to place the listener right on the back of a bee as it quickly zigzags thru its flowery environment.
The work can be heard in its entirety below the video of Loufopoulos explaining its creation.

 (thanks to Ars Electronica)

Audio MP3

 (thanks to Apostolos Loufopoulos)

Philip Jeck‘s Suite is a vinyl release which is comprised of various edits and mixes captured from recordings of various live concerts of his. This method of composition is also how he compiles his CDs – reworking and adding new elements where he thinks they should fit. With a mixture of vinyl crackle, old recordings of melodramatic strings, and a panoply of noisy textures all filtered through electronic flecks of grainy quadruplications, you’re transported to some fractionalized cosmic radio broadcast that still retains a near seamless coherence of a logical compositional strategy. Philip Jeck speaks about his work followed by a question and answer session. Also, I’m including an audio recording of his performance in Linz done on the following evening. The LP, Suite: Live in Liverpool, is available from Touch.

 (thanks to Ars Electronica)

Audio MP3

 (thanks to Touch)

What better way to celebrate a hundred posts than to put up a great fireworks display presented in Linz, over the Donau (Danube) on the 3rd of September. 2011 – Feuerwelt. Eine Science-Fiction, plays with a fascinating idea: an extraterrestrial intelligence that wants only the best for humankind watches over the Earth and protects it. “Feuerwelt” (World of Fire) shows humankind’s search for this intelligence and depicts those moments in which the “aliens” have intervened in human history. This narrative is interwoven with human attempts to explain what cannot be grasped – by means of transcendence, mysticism and religion, as well as with the help of science. The work was inspired by the novel “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke. The concept was by Beda Percht, the pyrotechnic visualization by Christian Czech and music by Thierry Zaboitzeff whom you may know from the group Art Zoyd. The video contains an edited 47 minutes. Sit back, in darkness, and enjoy.

 

 

(thanks to Manuel Lucca [treparus])

By breaking the constraints and ridiculous social rules put upon Facebook members while cleverly critiquing the invasive data mining that those of us who aren’t members abhor, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico have created Face to Facebook – the third in their Hacking Monopolism Trilogy. What started as an art-site statement based on a social experiment – retrieving a million “personal” profiles, filtering them using face-recogniton software and then posting them as members of a dating website – soon became a performance activity of just a few days in length. The flood of reactions from unwitting (debatable to some extent) accomplices coupled with over a thousand instances of media coverage suddenly thrust the two of them into a legal fight in which they decided to remove the Lovely Faces dating website, but still keep the F to F site. Following some basic photos I took of the installation and at the Forum, you can watch a video of just one media-based reaction followed by a presentation and an excerpt from the Interactive Art panel discussion that they gave on their award-winning project. Also, check out Alessandro’s publication Neural for a great read.

 

 

(thanks to Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico and Ars Electronica)

 

A miniature recreation of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster that happened in April of last year as performance. It consists of a realistic model of an oil rig placed, in this instance, in a makeshift swimming pool (with a strong smell of chlorine this particular time) followed by a series of explosions erupting on the small rig complete with plumes of black smoke. A small tugboat arrives to film the explosion with the visuals relayed to a projection screen nearby.

Through this recreation, HeHe‘s work, is there a horizon in the deep water?, examines the transmutation of real-life tragedy into an entertainment spectacle while asking us to suspend our disbelief and contemplate the reality of such a catastrophe – touched with a sense of comic relief.
Of course, there’s always the beauty of water reflections.

(thanks to Fabian Mohr)

(thanks to Invisible Dust)

It was easy to spend a lot of time with this installation. Basically, a supercut generator using words or phrases that you enter at the provided keyboard. The database is the personal film/video collection of Julian Palacz who created this work. His video presentation is self-explanatory. It could also make it easier to create your own video short using changing words such as you’ll see in the second video.

(thanks to Julian Palacz)

(thanks to MattatjeOorlog)

Motoi Ishibashi & Daito Manabe have created an illumination installation called Particles which initially appears to be mysterious floating lights that create fantastic afterimages. This work centers around an organically spiral-shaped rail construction on which a number of balls with built-in LEDs are rolling while blinking in different time intervals, resulting in spatial drawings of light particles in all kinds of shapes. The illumination’s three-dimensional design, achieved through a fusion of the rail construction’s characteristic features and communication control technology, takes on various appearances depending on the viewer’s position. The viewer can select from several pattern-movements through a nearby display interface. Sound is generated from a combination of
LED flash pattern and ball position while played through an eight-channel setup.
Three videos follow – the last two were shot from my handheld camera.

(thanks to Motoi Ishibashi & Daito Manabe) 

 

 

 

 

So this year’s festival starts off with a couple of huge Tesla coils parked back on the Maindeck of the Ars Electronica Quarter. Witnessing 26 kilowatts of power being converted into giant 4-meter long bolts of artificial lightning with almost a million volts of electricity modulated at audio frequencies to produce music is impressive enough, but then you have a masked fellow walk out wearing a 20-kilogram metal suit who starts dancing and interacting (conducting? eh, hem…) with the bolts and you’ve really got a show! This was The Tesla Orchestra. Maybe it was really Elvis…or maybe just a smart ape…’cause everything began with the Strauss tune that we’ve become so familiar with (and I’m not talking about Johann’s “…Danube” – tho we were right there) and just a few seconds into the performance there was a fireball that the performer swiftly and deftly maneuvered his way out of. On closer inspection of the video, it appears that the two fireballs were apparently intentional. A bit of a relief really.  A couple of shaky videos of mine followed by a more professional one from Fabian Mohr:

(thanks to Fabian Mohr)

  

  

  

If you’ve visited here more than a few times before, you’ve probably noticed that I’m moved by movement: kinetic art movement especially. Since an early 70’s introduction through books by Guy Brett, John Tovey, and others as well as the wonderful, greatly-missed Arts Magazine, I bought and created, often deceptively (in both opposing senses) simple, kinetic pieces that most often used light as the focal point of the work. Interests naturally expanded into the area of Lumino (retroactively) and later, video art and the creation of video sculpture-based situation-events, so there’s been a continuing and growing attraction for me to this kind of work. I’m mentioning this to point to some of the past posts you may have seen here, but also, to introduce The Particle.

The Particle is a kinetic sculpture that uses a continuous rotation whereby light and speed create “persistence of vision” effects that define the structure of a particular object. It’s as if you are watching an ever-changing but defining pellucid layer that form vacillating inner and outer structures. The sculpture forms and reacts by generating events that modulate the sound and surrounding space which, in turn, changes both the immediate atmosphere as well as one’s perception of the sculpture-event. Because of this formation and reaction of generating events based on continually changing sensory information, the vibrations of color, sound and visual patterns are in flux at one moment or as an encapsulated order during another.

The first video is Alex Posada‘s own explanation of how The Particle was created. The second is a video I made while observing the work. The act of recording video reminded me of how differently one’s eyes react to seeing something wildly kinetic and full of constant color changes. There were clear differences between the color nuance that your brain could interpret and what a camera would catch in a simple recording, but even tho they were different, there’s still a world of visual thrill that you’ll be able to see here. Above are 9 randomly chosen frame shots from the recorded video.

(thanks to Alex Posada)

 

  

The University of Tsukuba lies 60 km northeast of Tokyo in Tsukuba Science City which represents one of the world’s largest coordinated attempts to accelerate the rate of and improve the quality of scientific discovery. Some of the graduates and/or faculty have been covered here in an earlier post as producing device art projects such as Sachiko Kodama’s Morpho Tower, Ryota Kuwakubo’s LoopScape and Nicodama and Hiroo Iwata’s Media Vehicle. In this second part, I’ll highlight a couple of other creative artists who have been associated with the U. of Tsukuba’s R & D. We can only hope for an interest in device art to blossom in the U.S., but it appears that most American designers see it as too risky an undertaking while the general public seems ready for something new and refreshing in the area of artistic popular culture.

• Let’s introduce another work by Hiroo Awata. Although traveling on foot is the most intuitive style of locomotion, proprioceptive feedback from walking is not provided in most applications of virtual environments. With the Torus Treadmill, a virtual infinite surface is created inside a compact area with twelve sets of treadmills connected and driven in perpendicular directions. One can walk in any virtual direction while your real-world position is fixed. It’s a bit disorientating as you’ll see in these short video snippets. I kept feeling as if I needed to force the mechanism (leaning into it) instead of just relaxing with a nice virtual stroll.

• Here we have the work of Jun Mitani who creates Spherical Origami. The origami aspect is kept – folding a single sheet of paper into an artwork – but there is the added element of the possibility of curved surfaces. Using precise computer aided calculations, each paper surface shows the generated fold lines that are to be used in the process of paper manipulation.

• Twilight was one of those works that I could’ve watched for an hour. As the tree branches shake, the fluorescent lights attached to the tops would flicker in erratic patterns. You’ll notice the bottom tips moving along the steel plates motivated by a vibrating motor which creates the on-off irregularity of the light sources. Junya Kataoka [unable to find a website] has provided us with a work that emphasizes contrasts: darkness and light, natural and artificial, as well as the biotic and inorganic.

(thanks to Interactive Design)

(thanks to Paolo Tonon)

ξ  for computer-controlled piano and screened text  ξ

This installation explores a connecting link where language and music intersect. The brain converts what are initially abstract musical structures into a series of words in a human language – in this case the 2009 Declaration of the International Environmental Criminal Court. Peter Ablinger, along with Winifred Ritsch and Thomas Musil, use software that reconstructs the spectrum of frequencies inherent in speech thru the computer-control of a piano’s gamut of repeating half-tones and variable velocities using eighty-eight “fingers” capable of up to 16 keystrokes per second. Four photos follow showing various angles and close-ups with a short video excerpt of mine followed by the complete video (better sound without extreme extraneous room ambience) provided by Peter Ablinger himself.

(thanks to Peter Ablinger)

When a sequence of images moves slower than 16 frames per second, the human brain can perceive each one separately. If it’s faster than 16 fps, it’ll appear as continuous motion. This effect is what Hans Polterauer takes advantage of in this work of art that becomes an example of hyperkineticism. He positions objects on a spinning disc that are illuminated with a rapidly blinking source of light. This results in a series of images that overtaxes the capacity of the brain relaying an impression that the objects themselves are moving rather than the disc on which they are attached.

 

(thanks to Hans Polterauer)

Machines with gears and cranks are manipulated to produce a sound construction where acoustics and electronics meet. Submerged in surround sound, the audience discovers the interaction between mechanical and synthetic sound. With specifically tailored programming, digital processing enlarges the sound palette of the machines. La chambre des machines, by Nicolas Bernier & Martin Messier, stems from a desire to return to the physical world from an environment of digital creation. This project also refers back to the intonarumoris – the sound machines created by the Italian Futurists at the beginning of the 20th century. These machines contained mystifying mechanisms much in the same way that we may approach computers today as having their own perplexing components.

 

 (thanks to Nicolas Bernier & Martin Messier)

In a conventional motion picture we have a series of images that move past a stationary light source, but in another work of Hans Polterauer that is featured here, we have somewhat of a reversal of that situation where we have an object that remains fixed while the light source is in motion. Under the illumination of an LED lamp, wire spirals cast beautifully poetic shadows onto the walls of the installation space. The subsequent movements of the light source change the shape of the shadows, breathing life into them. An exploration of the interrelationship of motion, spatial sculpture and filmic identity that adds the extra 4th dimension of time.

 

(thanks to Hans Polterauer)

Another work from Hans Polterauer. What initially appears to be a swarm of insects darting and looping about without ever alighting on one spot turns out, upon closer inspection, to be an array of wires responding to the attractive force of a circling magnet. A uniformly moving magnet produces seemingly chaotic fluctuations: amidst the disarray, order prevails with the wires describing a circle.

 

(thanks to Hans Polterauer)

So, here we are. Searching. Our physical origins leaving traces that are fragmented until coalesced into stored evidence using sensors that not only see what we cannot, but also translates what it sees into something comprehensible. The DoppelLab is a virtual environment created by the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab for the investigation of systems activities and their complex relationship inside a sensor-rich environment. Users can walk through and interact with animated sensor data visualizations within a building or visualize from outside the structure of the many layers of activity and information as a whole. The first video is an excerpt that features Gershon Dublon speaking about some of the advantages of using this virtual environment setup. It highlights too, the wonderful Deep Space hi-def 16 by 9 meter projection videowall (another project example can be seen here). This is followed by a more official video of the DoppelLab experience.

 

(thanks to the Responsive Environments Group)

With Continuization Loop, a single 35mm film loop is pulled up and down over more than 150 guide wheels creating a wall of film. The frames of this piece of film are either black or transparent.
When the loop travels through the mechanism, the image of video static appears.

While film as a medium normally makes images appear through projection in combination with
the transport of celluloid through a projector, this Wim Janssen work omits the projection and
makes the image appear by means of transport alone.

The installation combines and imitates visual elements from three generations of visual media:
the material aspect of film, the empty signal of video and the binary logic of digital.
At the same time, the most important attributes of these media are absent:
there is no construction of an illusory film-space, there is no real video image and
there are no computers involved. The first video is from the artist.
The second is from me. Both are silent.

(thanks to Wim Janssen)

Davide Tidoni‘s itinerate project, A Balloon for… brings to life the sound responses of specific spaces. By bursting balloons, the project discovers unique acoustic sites and invites people to explore space through listening. The video below is a version of A Balloon for Linz.

(thanks to Davide Tidoni)

When you’re inside the Fablab of the Ars Electronica Center, you can see, through a glass wall, the Biolab next door where gene technology is demonstrated using synthetically cloned plants. A 3D printer that is used to produce replications through digital fabrication sits conveniently located nearby. Laterally connecting these two areas, we have the folding of proteins in nature meeting the folding of paper and synthetic fabrics in a field of research known as Oribotics. Working in the Futurelab, Matthew Gardiner has furthered his interest in an area where robotics, nature and origami intersect by creating interactive cyber-flowers called “oribots” that are made of a polyester fabric and contain proximity sensors that not only respond to, say, the presence of your hand, but are also networked to each other causing even small interactions to spread sympathetically amongst the other oribots. A blossom opens, causing 1,050 folds to actuate while electro-reflexes do the same to over 50,000 folds across the installation.

 

 (thanks to Matthew Gardiner)

 

For the installation Earth 2010, Finnbogi Pétursson creates an interference wave measuring 7.8Hz in a pool of water. The tone, which can be heard and physically detected, is visible on the surface of the water in the form of waves. The frequency of 7.8 hertz corresponds to the physical phenomenon known as the Schumann Resonance, which is the frequency of the Earth’s electromagnetic field. For Pétursson, this frequency represents the primal pulse of our planet. The first video is Pétursson’s own professional video. The second is my fuzzy hand-held that zooms in on the reflected wave patterns.

(thanks to Finnbogi Pétursson)

Ocean of Light: Surface is a responsive virtual eco-system from Squidsoup that occupies a physical space. It uses a room-sized 3D grid of individually addressable points of light to simulate movement in this physical space. The space is dominated by a surface which is a boundary between two fluid virtual materials. The materials are affected by sound. Nearby noises create waves that ripple across the surface. The surface is unstable. The turbulence caused by noise also triggers luminous blasts.
Two videos follow. The second one I decided to shoot from underneath the installation.

Computer software analyzes the 12 heartbeats of the members of The Heart Chamber Orchestra in real time with various algorithms turning the data into a living musical score. While the musicians are playing, their heartbeats influence and change the composition and vice versa. Computer graphics are also generated from the same heart data that add a narrative and visual layer to the performance, providing the audience with a multi-layered lateral experience. The heartbeats of the musicians and their relation to each other become audible and visible in a transformative way.

(thanks to The Heart Chamber Orchestra)

If you’re indoors, even in a tight little apartment, and you have some natural light streaming through your windows, you can grow your own tasty, healthy food by setting up what Britta Riley calls “windowfarms” – vertically growing hydroponic farms that will grow right in your window and won’t use soil that might take up precious living space. It’s a wonderfully compact system that produces healthy food without making a major carbon footprint.

(thanks to Britta Riley)

Zimoun‘s sound sculptures and installations are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry with a structural simplicity that reveals a complex and intricate series of relationships. Clean and elegant, this work delicately combines visual, sonic, and spatial elements in a wonderful balanced way. The shimmering filaments brings to mind crackling fire or pattering rain. The first video is from Linz where he won an Honorary Mention in Digital Musics & Sound Art this year. I’m more enamored of the white room version that’s presented in Zimoun‘s personal video. His work is so incredibly beautiful in its simplicity and humor that you will want to see the video compilation he has put together.

 (thanks to Zimoun)

Ryoichi Kurokawa‘s audiovisual installation is composed of five flat-panel displays,
vertically positioned, with five-channel sound – each mono channel paired to a display.
The spatial cognition of the sound is enhanced by being wedded to the movement of each image. The behavior of the image indicates the position of the sound source,
it’s sonic direction and drive. It was the winner of this year’s Golden Nica.

 

 

 

(thanks to Ryoichi Kurokawa)

Allison Kudla has created a system that uses a custom-built computer-controlled table to “print” bio-architectural constructions out of moss and seeds. Suspended in a clear gel growth medium, the moss begins to grow and the seeds sprout. My understanding is that the patterns that are created are algorithmically generated and are to be seen as representing not only cellular growth, but illustrative of urban growth or “sprawl” thereby connecting the subjects of city and organism. Watching this process takes days – you return to it intermittently and notice that it resembles a surface fractal (similar to the Eden growth model) that spreads in the same way that a city expands fractally.

 

 

(thanks to Allison Kudla)

One of the delights of the Ars Electronica Festival is attending the various forums where the winners talk about their inspirations for works past, present and future. Here, you’ll get to see what goes on during one of these forums. This year was the first to include the category of “sound art” – a category which joins up with “digital musics” – in order to encourage those that work in this area to submit works for consideration.The forum for this year’s winners was moderated by the excellent sound artist Christina Kubisch who gave a short introduction – speaking a little about the jury process – then introduced this year’s winners, Michel & André Décosterd, Ryoichi Kurokawa, and Martin Bédard, followed by a closing statement. Our first-time meeting was the day before during one of her “electrical walk” tours (of which I’ll speak more of in a later posting) in which we chatted about the influence of Alvin Lucier. It seemed like the perfect setting for me to remind her of John Cage’s 98th birthday that day as well. A longer than usual video for this website, but you’ll be able to not only hear the artists talk about influences and ways of working, but you’ll be introduced to some of their other works that have been featured in other exhibitions.

 

Ocular Revision is a way of getting back to the ocular-based representation of information that thrived in the age of biologically-based investigations. It could be said that starting in the late 20th century, screen-based depictions, e.g., visual databases, Cartesian coordinates, x/y loci, became the new feature of the post-biological age when DNA depiction became increasingly understood as code rather than as a material substance. Paul Vanouse has created an alternate way of viewing and analyzing DNA – not as a squared-off chamber or bar-chart, but as a return to the rounded depictment that is more “alive” without being so easily and strictly quantifiable.

 

(thanks to Paul Vanouse)

At times, you’ll hear someone moaning on about the good ol’ days as if it were some kind of easier pre-industrialized romantic time. Thomas Thwaites chronicles his attempt at making that time-tested convenience-reference, the toaster, from scratch. Created literally from the ground up, he began digging up the raw materials from abandoned mines around the UK; attempting to process them himself at home and finally forming them into a product that can be bought for just under £10.00. After nine months of work and using just five materials – iron, copper, mica, nickel and plastic – instead of the 100 or so used in a shop-bought version, the final cost to him was £1187.54. The laboriousness of producing even the most basic material from the ground up exposes the fallacy of that “olden days” romance mentioned earlier. It’s an electrical appliance that disavows the infrastructure on which it relies. A convenient item that rejects the convenience of consumerism. Thwaites says, “At a moment in time when the effects of industry are no longer trivial in relation to the wider environment, the throwaway toasters of today seem unreasonable. The provenance and the fate of the things we buy is too important to ignore.”

Here are some pictures of Antye Greie‘s performance in Linz at the Klangraum. I’ve enjoyed her work for a number of years now and was excited to have the chance to see her perform. We spoke afterwards – hovering over a collection of electronics and speaking specifically about her “ancient” Kaoss Pad that she was using that evening. There wasn’t enough light even for a well-regarded 12-megapixel camera and I thought it would be rude to use flash in the middle of her performance, so we’ll have to deal with these noisy pictures – one of which I have in green fluorescence because it looked like she was on water. I even created a variation with fluid waves surrounding her and her platform – not good enough to show here, but you can use your imagination. The video isn’t going up either – it doesn’t do justice to seeing her live. She works under aliases.
I’ve thought that since the “F” in AGF is out of the picture that she should become
“The (mysterious) Grey Ant.”

Decknamen:

AGF (solo)

AGF/DELAY (with Vladislav Delay)

Zavoloka

The Dolls (with Vladislav Delay and Craig Armstrong)

Laub (with Jotka)

The Lappetites (with Elaine Radigue, Kaffe Matthews and Ryoko Kuwajima)

The lawine torrèn artist network seemed to spare nothing in their ode to a supersonic magnetic train called Baby Jet. The centerpiece of the Linzer Klangwolke was an espionage-type thriller revolving around the development of this train and those who would want to stop it from becoming a reality.

The thriller is fictional, but the development is quite real with the ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways), the Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Linz Center of Mechatronics all working together to make this become a reality. Baby Jet is to be an underground magnet (maglev) train that could exceed Mach 1 while traveling through a vacuum tunnel. A network of tubes with a diameter of less than three meters would link Europe’s cities like a subway system connects a city’s neighborhoods. Each tiny train (called a nacelle) would resemble a bullet and would need no engineer to drive it. It would shoot through a vacuumized tube at speeds of 1200 km/h with practically no friction or wind resistance. Trains would run every two minutes with a revolver system at downtown terminals feeding each nacelle into the system. Linz to Wien would take 9 minutes. München to Berlin: 26 minutes.

Here are a couple of video excerpts – better than what I recorded from this hour-long event. Aside from the general overwhelming spectacle of it, I really was impressed by the helicopter pilots and their ability to manoeuvre while gently placing a person on the end of a long rope safely on a flat surface – oh! and the fireworks shooting out of the copters as well! The fast figure-eights of the illuminated jet skis were pretty incredible too. All of these spectacular events would take your mind off the truly awful 80’s-style arena rock/sensitive faux-opera that was coming from the speakers. It makes you wonder why the music wasn’t at least 21st Century. There’s no sound on either video.

(thanks to aquauit)

(thanks to supermum1001)

A cluster of empty porcelain dinnerware of differing shapes and sizes scattered around a table emit quiet sounds through a small hole in the middle. Picking up a bowl, and pressing it to one’s ear, one hears small story fragments from different cultures that relate to eating and the various dining rituals. The tableware are equipped with customized electronics that sense the arrangement of the plates, revealing different stories according to their self- proximity. The Whispering Table, by TheGreenEyl, presents to us the similarities and peculiarities of food ceremonies in a playful and entertaining way.

(thanks to TheGreenEyl)

When you think of the Swiss, sometimes precision and fine craftsmanship comes to mind.
When you watch this extraordinary kinetic work of Michel & André Décosterd you are reminded of not only these qualities but you’re captivated by the hypnotic interplay of it’s sound and movement.
Metal tubes, equipped with loudspeakers that, as a group, rotate on it’s own axis and that,
at indeterminate times, seems to want to fling itself off this centre-point by thrusting forward and back; all with a beautiful organic-looking movement accompanied by sound-speed synchronization.
Three videos follow: the second of which I tried to follow the movement so that there was less chance of the tubes leaving the video frame. The third one is from the brothers themselves.

 

 

 

(thanks to Michel & André Décosterd)

A nice, short video compilation from Michael Hierner.
I plan on giving you more photos, video and text on many of these projects.

At first you walk by and you think, “Oh look! There’s a Hokusai,” –
it looks a bit out of place at the entrance to the Tabakfabrik
or probably at any of the exhibitions here in Linz.
…but then, you get right up on it and look deep down into it and you see…TRASH –
plastic, to be precise – and now you understand completely because this is a picture of mass culture.
You begin to realize that you almost walked right by this in the same way that
you might walk past a discarded plastic bottle that once held “spring” water.
It’s a zooming in from the collective mass to the individual modern icon from yestermorning.
This work, Gyre, from Chris Jordan, depicts 2.4 million pieces of plastic,
equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world’s oceans every hour.
All of the plastic in this image was collected from the Pacific Ocean.
It’s part of the second in a series known as Running the Numbers.

In 2006, the Council of Europe released a report concerning human rights in Denmark. The report was highly critical of parts of the Danish legislation relating to foreigners and of the tone of the Danish debate on immigration. The Danish government began damage control measures a full month before the report was ever released to the public. Mogens Jacobsen takes the final chapter of this report as the point of departure for this work.

At the beginning of the installation, we see a computer submerged in vegetable oil coupled to a galvanic battery that consists of hundreds of potatoes (which happens to be the Danish national food). The electrical power from the network of potatoes drives a software system that suppresses most of the words in that final chapter of the ECRI report which can be seen at an online location. As the potatoes begin to dry out, rot or begin to sprout, the biological battery begins to become less effective at hiding the suppressed text because of it’s reduced power. Gradually we see a slowly uncovered controversial text – an unveiling of a report and it’s conclusions that originally were meant to be quelled.

I could see the humorous frustration in Jens Hauser’s face when the Men In Grey (Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev) came to the stage to “talk” about their project which was a prize winner in the Hybrid Art category. Two fellows, straitlaced and quite automaton-like, showing up at the podium; über-briefcases in hand, then on the floor, doing all of the speaking for them.

Living in an era of government wiretaps and feeling the ever increasing pressure of the jack-booted heel of para-corporations, we nevertheless feel mostly secure and trusting while we network online. The Men In Grey are here to present a type of situationist activity that dissects wireless network traffic, then presents it back to us as if we were looking at ourselves in a fun-house mirror – comical, yet unsettling. The video that they’ve put together is fairly self-explanatory, but I want to mention the basic tactics that may appear during an MIG situational-event:

• The Glance: Any image downloaded by a user of the network may appear on a screen on the side of their hardware and software filled briefcases.

• The Utterance: Facebook, AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN Messenger chat, Yahoo, a.o. may also appear on the briefcase with built-in audio speaker recitation using text-to-speech synthesis.

• The Mirror: Full webpages browsed by a user on the network may appear on the briefcase display.

• The Forgotten: Earlier browsing sessions may be “replayed” to the user on their computer with each successive click.

• The Lost Identity: Webpages may be manipulated, URLs redirected, chat text altered, and images seen on one laptop could replace those in webpages of another.

• The Trace: Detailed network topology, system fingerprints, routing tables and host-names may be displayed on the side of the briefcase.

Importantly, the Men In Grey never view the output of the briefcases; nor do they store any data. All logs are destroyed by crushing the storage device – a small SD card – under foot at the point of departure. This act doubles as their calling card.

(thanks to Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev)

At first, it could have been called “Extra Ear on Head,” but it was discovered to not be a very safe location and no doctors were willing to surgically assist with its realization. Then, Stelarc‘s “Extra Ear: ¼ Scale” was created, but a life-size model wasn’t possible using the desired biodegradable material. Later, the forearm was chosen for the ear’s location because it was smooth and thin making it easier to work with and providing a more plausible location ergonomically. Setbacks occurred after the surgical procedures over the years, but the structure of the ear was finally created using a Medpor scaffold and a suctioning of the surrounding skin as a cover that would determine it’s final ear shape. During a following procedure, a tiny microphone was inserted in the new “ear” and tested quite successfully as a wireless transmitter, but unfortunately, a few weeks later, it had to be removed because a very serious infection developed. Currently, the microphone has yet to be planted, but further surgeries are intended to bring this about so as to make it “Internet-enabled” as an extended operational system.

For “Ear On Arm,” a bodily structure has been replicated, relocated and soon, rewired for alternate capabilities. Stelarc was unable to appear to accept his Golden Nica for Hybrid Art because he had injured his non-ear arm (seems very strange saying this) in a “sporting accident,” so communication and award acceptance was presented through his “Second Life” avatar. The first two short videos are showing just a part of his discussion through “Second Life.” The third short shows parts of the surgery and successful demonstration of the inserted microphone. The Man With Three Ears is a longer video (ca. 14 min.) showing Stelarc preparing for a retrospective of his work at the Centre des Arts in Paris.

(thanks to Stelarc and motherboard.tv)

I wonder how many different shapes can be created that could be painted black, placed in just the right environment and exude a kind of ominous foreboding. This sci-fi geometric object has the extra addition of lights and sound that, on its own, rotates through a simple pattern undisturbed. When it’s approached though, the video and audio patterns eerily change – a representation of how we may interact with a strange artificial intelligence. I discovered that more than one person could approach this object, put their hands over the sensors and cause all of the lights to shine simultaneously – meaning that we had more control over this “alien” than we might otherwise have in a future encounter with such an object. I thought of posting a fuzzy video that zaps the mystery out of the experience by showing this moment, but decided instead to use three others provided by the artist himself, Félix Luque Sánchez.

(thanks to Félix Luque Sánchez)