I first came across the name of this extraordinary place in one of the BBC's Imagine-documentaries about German director Werner Herzog, who asked to be met in what he called one of his favorite places in Los Angeles, The Museum of Jurassic Technology. After locating it in Culver City, BBC's Alan Yentob remarks: "I begin to understand why Herzog likes it here. The exhibits in the museum cross the line between fact and fiction, between reality and imagination."

Front of the museum in Culver City, Los Angeles

The collections of the museum, which was founded in 1989 and is being curated by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Wilson, span over three little buildings and consist of pieces from about a dozen sub-collections which are often centered around a certain subject such as belief and knowledge or personalities like Athanasius Kircher and their work. But, unlike what one might expect of a technology museum, throughout all of the exhibits, the boundaries between history and fiction, magic and reason, narrative and scientific method are in fact completely fluid (and the curators pleasurably make no effort to make things more clear, even indulge in elaborate descriptions and allusions that make it even more mysterious).

Many of the pieces consist of wonderfully crafted models and often amazing analog visual tricks for superimposing images. As a result, the whole space turns into a magical wunderkammer like I've rarely seen it, and probably one of the most astonishing approaches to the culture of art and technology on the planet. A few examples from the collections:

Duck's Breath

Tell the Bees...Belief, Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition, is one of the newest additions and reflects on the relationship between ancient beliefs and recipes and how some of them still bear importance today. Yet, the application of lithium for neurological illnesses sits right next to the practice of letting children breathe in the cold breath of a duck or goose.

An especially intriguing practice refers to bees, which were understood to be related to and a manifestation of the muse from which comes the bees alter identity of the muse's bird. And, the practice of telling of the bees of important events in the lives of the family has been for hundreds of years a widely observed practice and, although it varies somewhat among peoples, it is invariably a most elaborate ceremonial. The procedure is that as soon as a member of the family has breathed his or her last a younger member of the household, often a child, is told to visit the hives. and rattling a chain of small keys taps on the hive and whispers three times: "Little Brownies, little brownies, your mistress is dead."

The Conversion of St. Eustace at Mentorella

Another collection, titled The World is Bound with Secret Knots, is devoted to the life and work of 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, who dedicated himself to his parallel obsessions with magnetism, musicology, astronomy, archaeology, and linguistics, Kircher researched and compiled enormous amounts of data, invented innumerable optical, magnetic, and acoustic devices, composed music, poetry, and imaginative fiction. Created with the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum in Hagen, Germany, the exhibit consist of many gorgeous pepper's ghost-style dioramas which illustrate Kircher's range of fascinations and inventions, especially in relation to his theory of magnetism being the invisible force that binds all the universe together.

Garden of Eden on Wheels

One part of the permanent exhibition focusses on Geoffrey Sonnabend, who in his three volume work Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter, departed from all previous memory research with the premise that memory is an illusion. Forgetting, he believed, not remembering is the inevitable outcome of all experience. Sonnabend believed that long term or "distant" memory was illusion, but similarly he questioned short term or "immediate" memory. On a number of occasions Sonnabend wrote that there is only experience and its decay, by which he meant to suggest that what we typically call short term memory is, in fact, our experiencing the decay of an experience.

The Sonnabend Model of Obliscience

Sonnabend believed that this phenomenon of true memory was our only connection to the past, if only the immediate past, and, as a result, he became obsessed with understanding the mechanisms of true memory by which experience decays. In an effort to illustrate his understanding of this process, Sonnabend, over the next several years, constructed an elaborate Model of Obliscence (or model of forgetting) which, in its simplest form, can be seen as the intersection of a plane and cone.

As with many pieces in this exhibition, it's practically impossible to find out whether Geoffrey Sonnabend even ever existed, but then again that's part of it all. As Herzog puts it: "Inventions [in every sense of the word] have a deeper reach, a deeper stratum of truth quite often than we'd like to admit. And that's the beauty of the museum here."

Many more photos here, and an interview with David Wilson.

Two nights ago, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky was speaking at the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, proposing a 10.000-year gallery to go along with the Clock of the Long Now, as part of their Seminars About Long term Thinking.

C. N. Track No. 1

For those not familiar with the project, among many other endeavors, the foundation is planning to build a mechanical clock in a remote mountain site, designed by Danny Hillis, which will run for ten-thousand years along with a library. Practically all the foundation's projects aim to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. The foundation's work is very intriguing in the way that they undertake seemingly vast projects which in turn force their creators to radically re-think many of the notions of today's processes as we are not used to long term thinking, which, as it becomes increasingly clear that our survival might depend on just that.

Burtynsky says the clock (which will most likely live at Mount Washington) reminds him of land-art projects like James Turrell's Roden Crater or Walter De Maria's Lightning field, in the way that it might almost become a site of pilgrimage once it will be finished. In order to give the future pilgrims an additional benefit, and also a sort of cultural context out of which the clock was coming from, he thus proposes a gallery of contemporary photography to go along with it, a Long Gallery. As he pointed out, most cave paintings and other archaeological findings like the pornography in Pompeii was simply a testament to that period's system of thinking, and-being a photographer himself-he proposes that we do the same. So what's the case for photography over contemporary art like painting? He says that photography essentially is an outcome of an industrial process, which has been shaped by us, but by which we're also shaped as well. We have personal memories, but often enough they refer to photos that have been taken of us on our way through time, and the very same applies-thinking of iconic historical photos- to humanity as a whole.

Mines 22

Finding a technology for creating ultra-durable photographic prints proved to be quite a challenge. Initially looking at inkjet-prints which might employ the same pigments as highly durable paints used in cars, he ended up with a process which was developed in 1855: the carbon transfer print. This time and money intensive process produces the most durable prints we know, but is somewhat of a dying technology which only a handful of companies in the world still employ. With this project, they also help to revive it a bit. The prints would be applied on special paper, which as opposed to the alternative porcelain, is unbreakable and less sensitive to fluctuations in atmospheric temperature and moisture. However, there's still hope for a much less expensive yet equally durable inkjet-technology to appear before the launch of the gallery in 5-10 years time.

So what to show? Burtynsky proposes a range of different exhibitions to be stored with the clock, each curated by another photographer and consisting of approximately 20+ images. He as gathered three proposals so far which are somewhat different approaches to representing the contemporary world:

Manufacturing #2

Canadian photographer Vid Ingelevics proposes a Museum of the Mundane, which would working with the elements of the banal, "stuff that we already feel archival about", as Stewart Brand later put it. The show would consist of images on two sides-side one shows photos of everyday objects taken from two big Canadian archives, one of which belongs to a major department store, mostly items from the past. Side two shows photos of items that will be bought in contemporary dollar-store, representing a more present and probably also more readily disposable world of things. It would be an unofficial poll of the the "true necessities of life", and as such anticipating a future archaeological dig, in most of which usually the mundane is discovered and often most intriguing (see Pompeii pornography) because it shows that people's needs and desires often change very little.

The second proposal is curated by Marcus Schubert and would be titled Observations from a Blue Planet. His approach is to collect images from the web, in a found-footage manner and present similarities and differences in the form of diptychs. For Schubert, planet Earth is an "experiment in diversification and consumption" and the juxtapositions (for instance well-fed American families from the sixties and starving families from East Africa, Manhattan and slums and the likes) serve to show us the range of lives that exist within the same environment.

Oil Fields No. 25

Finally, the third exhibition would be curated by Burtynsky himself, mostly talking photos from his series In the Wake of Progress which he has been working on for 25 years. Most of his work focuses on the notion of industrialization which was created in Europe and in the last centuries has changed our relationship to what we regard as nature as profoundly as probably nothing before. In the process, internal combustion engines have boosted human expansion to the point where in Burtynsky's lifetime, human population has so far more than tripled. His work, mostly landscapes which show how "the surface of the Earth is a skin and [how] we shape it in a certain way", are meant to be reflexions of these relationships.

For him, mines are especially iconic, since it has been natural resources like metals and especially oil (driving the engines) for which the Earth is being reshaped in many places. Burtynsky has taken many photos of mines, for instance the largest copper mine in the World in British Columbia, or more recently the oil sands of Northern Alberta where oil-soaked bitumen is being converted into oil in what is currently the largest surface-engineering project on the planet, and they've only touched 1% of the area. The forest that is standing on top (sometimes called "The right lung of the Earth") of the sand is being cleared and this and other reasons cause the oil to have a four times larger carbon footprint than even regular oil. For this reason, the state of California is refusing to import oil from this source.

Oxford Tire Pile No. 8

Other impressive examples include 40 million tires that had been dumped outside of Modesto, California in a field so massive that a power plant was built to turn the tires into energy, halfway through which the field caught fire and the project had to be abandoned. Or spaces in granite-mines in Vermont and the famous marble-quarries in Carrara, Italy, where the removal of giant cubes of stone has created an "inverted architecture" of sorts, just as copper and ore-mines often create inverted pyramids into the ground.

Carrara Marble Quarries

More recently, Burtynsky has focused on the notion of globalization and received a lot of acclaim for his large-scale images of Chinese factories (with a mobile workforce currently in the range of 100 million people) and Bangladeshi ship-breaking yards. This he argues, "is the export of ideas from the west, unbolted and transported to China" to become the world's factory. Which is consistent with the notion that his images are trying to connect us to the earlier ages of our industrial society-a world that still exists, but has been moved out of sight for many Westerners, which is why these photos today serve a particular role.

UPDATE: Long Now have just published the talk as an MP3 and you should also be able to subscribe to the podcast (which you should do anyway) and get it.

Related: Chinese industrialization

Was taken last week at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California which Kati London and I visited courtesy of Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass. The institute was built by architect Louis Kahn as two symmetric concrete buildings with a thin stream of water flowing in the middle of a courtyard that separates the two. Too bad my images don't do justice to this amazing building.

I find it hard to believe that no one has ever shot a movie there. Elio Petri would have done something amazing with this set.

Anyway, any solemn thought and sense of beauty we might have been filled with vanished half an hour after when we met with Mary Flanagan's Giant Joystick which is on view until March 17 in the art gallery in the Calit2 building at UCSD.

Extremely fun and physically exhausting.

Marie Sester is a French media artist based in Los Angeles. She began her career as an architect, having earned her master's degree from the Ecole d'Architecture in Strasbourg. Her interest, however, shifted from how to build living structures to how architecture and ideology affect our understanding of the world. Her work investigates the way a civilization originates and creates its forms. These forms are both tangible -such as signals, buildings, and cities- and intangible, such as the aspects of values, laws and culture.

Quoting a profile of Sester written by Holly Willis: "What do these signs, these forms, these things that surround us mean?�? asks the artist. "What do they say about ideology? About capitalism? I realized after I finished my degree that I was interested in architectural forms on all levels, from the concrete elements such as city streets to ideological values, and how they evolve together.�? Marie Sester has received grants and residencies from the IAMAS, in Japan, Creative Capital Foundation, New York, Eyebeam, New York and many others. She has taught in France, Japan, and the United States and has exhibited internationally at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica (in the 2003 edition of the festival ACCESS received an Honorary Mention in Interactive Art), La Vilette, etc.

A few months ago, i was visiting the ZKM and i knew her work ACCESS was exhibited there. I had read what the work was about and was expecting to find it in the entrance lobby but i never suspected i'd be so startled and disturbed by it. ACCESS is a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system that tracks individuals in public places. The beam is either activated as people move through the space under surveillance, or it is piloted remotely using a Web interface. While a friend of mine found the installation quite fun, I felt surprisingly guilty and isolated under that spotlight, exactly what i'd feel if i remembered that i'm under the gaze of surveillance cameras much about everytime i step out of my house. The experience taught me that i should never judge any interactive installation before having tested it myself.

BE[AM]

You have a background in architecture, yet you're working on interactive installations. How and when did you decide to focus on art installations?

I was trained in France in a six-year program, and although I was thinking of practicing, I quickly understood that I would not become a practicing architect. At that time, the school was a place where you could study within a broad range of possibilities, which was rare in France, because in France, you know exactly what you will get and there is no chance to change direction; you have to go through the plan described for you. But the school I attended was very open, and it was more about building an approach, a way of thinking, a mindset; it was about acquiring a state of mind.

My projects in school used data taken from the artworld, and were often rendered as paintings or engravings, and only the required technical drafts were architectural in the traditional sense. I remember with one presentation, when I finished, the members of the jury asked if they could get this piece or that piece from the project - I left the room with only my technical sheets under my arms!

Gradually I realized that I was more interested in the political and cultural ideology that underlies architecture, rather than in dealing with real clients and tons of steel and concrete. This, combined with my interest in art, led me to installation, which allowed me to be closer to my subject: to examine the way that a civilization originates and creates its forms, both tangible and intangible, and the way that political and ideological ideas become physical. Why are we surrounded by what we are surrounded with? And architecture is something our bodies and minds are changed by - in Japan, in a traditional house or temple, I feel differently, I breathe differently. It's clear. And that is just one example. So these built spaces affect us enormously, and installation allows me to explore that.

Threatbox.us Preview at CalArts

Your work comments upon political transparency and invisibility, access, and surveillance. How much do you think the work of an artist can influence people's views on these topics?

Instead of influence, art's impact can rather disrupt, disturb, subvert, provoke, stimulate... Guy Debord uses the word "detournement,�? which I would freely translate to designate ways of destabilizing the predominant value-system. Art is more about asking questions than giving answers. My project Threatbox.us offers an example: The piece is meant to be installed in a public space, such as a train station, where there is a long wall and there are passersby. There is a projection of clips taken from a database of films, newscasts, computer games and so on, on the wall. The projection is slightly moving up, down, to the right, to the left, and people might think, "What is that? Why is it here? At a certain point however, the projector suddenly transforms into a spotlight which "attacks�? the body of one person, with a very loud, frightening noise. And for a moment, the person is under attack; the piece is very aggressive!

While it may not be immediately clear, the piece reflects on the way that our media has turned us into victims of propaganda, and it shows just how targeted we are, from radio to the Internet to the news to movies to games, everything! It's non-stop and it's very violent. It is something that I wanted to understand, and my piece is a way of provoking, of asking questions about the relationship between these images, violence and their impact on all of us.

We are driven by advertising, entertainment, gaming, fashion and war. War is now at the point to gain status of political correctness as a source of pride and consumption.

Culture is now a sub-product of politics. This isn't really new - the difference with various past situations is that we are narrowing the span of infinite wonder of the universe and of our lives. The magic has disappeared from the world. Erased. For sure, magic is not transparent! Neither are the notions of instinct or intuition. Nevertheless, when something blows your mind, it can change the way you look at the world, and open it up to meditation and contemplation, and finally to being more aware. This is what an artwork can do; it creates a distance between the common place and the inner space, and lets people think by themselves. One might call this self-awareness.

So, my method is really to introduce subversive elements into the system, with grace and humor. And always to push further the questions and the proposals.

Many political activists and artists believe that instead of creating a feeling of security, surveillance systems make us feel like suspects. A friend of mine told me about an interaction designer who had devised a way for people living in a London to avoid the gaze of the CCTV network. But it turned out that people were not happy with the idea, they actually liked to be on surveillance camera. What's your take on this?

Cameras are only the most visible means of surveillance. At first view, most people have nothing to hide. So there is no problem being under surveillance. Also, television, soap operas and reality shows present surveillance as desirable, and I know there are people - like with JennyCam and other webcam projects - who like the performing and being watched. I don't really understand this. If we're all performing, or playing, then - and please excuse this expression - we don't give a shit.

I think it's more serious. It has to do with our autonomy, our lives, our commitment. We are so manipulated that we cannot make a commitment, and that affects our being part of the universe.

We all know that surveillance is a control tool. And it's best done when it is invisible. It's quite fascinating how far the military and other government agencies go in this domain. It becomes seriously scary, whatever way you look at it.

ACCESS

ACCESS has been showed in several countries. Did you have the chance to cross-reference the various reactions that emerged in each location? How do people behave under the ACCESS beam? And can you imagine ACCESS being installed in a public place, not a museum nor an art gallery?

With ACCESS, some people run away in fear, and other people really enjoy it and want to stay in the spotlight and play. And I would love for ACCESS to be shown outside a museum or gallery. It is a permanent installation at ZKM [Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie] in Karlsruhe, Germany. So, it is the first contact you have with this museum, before you even reach the information desk. But it's still inside the museum where you are prepared for an art experience. What would happen in a public space without that set up? The first public test was done in Japan, in a corporate lobby, and the reactions of the unsuspecting public was significantly different. That's what I would really like, to put ACCESS in places like that. It was the very concept of ACCESS.

What is the impetus behind the Threatbox.us project?

Exasperation with all the noise and hype, plus the cruelty, and the violent and destructive politics of the current (and not so new) state strategy: "the industrial - entertainment - military complex.�? They are non-sense noises, if not crimes against the universe. And even fantasy worlds look dark. It seems that light (and lightness) has all but been erased.

But here is how the project took shape: When I was younger, I watched a lot of movies by great filmmakers. This was in the '70s and '80s, and included filmmakers like Pasolini, Fellini, Godard of course, great filmmakers. But at a certain point, I realized I couldn't watch any more movies, especially American movies. I found them invasive, mind-invasive. So I stopped, for 25 years! And then, recently I realized that we were living in a world increasingly filled with aggression, and I wanted to understand it, and why this aggression is so prevalent. So I talked with several people, including my friend McKenzie Wark (who wrote The Hacker Manifesto) and then started watching movies again, asking, "What's going on here?�? I watched them on my computer, as DVDs, so I could stop when I needed to, so that I could really study the films. I collected a database of clips, and at a certain point I realized I could go in two directions with the material.

One direction was to think about all the aggression, and another was to think about how to deal with these ideas. This second direction became BE[AM], which uses this database of American pop culture, but we see it through these three guys who are the opposite of what we are led to believe is the strong male, the warriors and killers, violent and destructive. These three guys - Charlie Chaplin, Wile E. Coyote and Super Mario - are struggling like us, with the world, and the idea that at any moment you can get into trouble, but we have to just go through it. These guys are always in trouble, but they always come back, they find ways, and they start from scratch again and again and again. So BE[AM] looks at these images, and lets you enter them in a game that, also, is not typical; rather than trying to win or achieve a goal, there is nothing to win!

The other direction, of course, is Threatbox.us, which also uses a database of images, but is much more aggressive and violent, with the attack of the robotic projector beam and the sense that you have been targeted. So this begins to question the merging of vision and destruction, of the aggression of entertainment industry and of the military...

L'Architecture Du Paradis

You are French but live in California. Are the States a more fertile territory for new media art works? How do you find the new media artscene there? How much has your life there influenced your work?

In Paris I was very busy, with many shows and I had a very strong practice for years and years. When I came to the US, I did not find the same support, but I found other kinds of networks. During my 2 years in New York I was lucky having the support of Creative Capital Foundation, a residency at Eyebeam, and grants from Franklin Furnace Fund, NYSCA, and LEF. And Los Angeles? The first two days I was here, I was ready to buy a ticket back to New York! But after a few days, I adjusted. LA has great weather, flowers, birds, landscapes. Living here is a real pleasure. Nevertheless, I miss New York in the sense that there, direct encounters and confrontations are easy and energizing. I was happy collaborating with McKenzie Wark, for example, and I enjoyed working closely with other people, having long discussions, particularly with the NYU ITP community. I don't find that here. Maybe I am not looking, but it is very hard to stay connected. I can stay very connected online, but not with people. In New York, you see people everywhere; it is not true here. Where are the artists I like? Are we all isolated?

For me, LA is interesting on another level, and it's big: the city obliges you to reinvent yourself. The New Yorker or European logic doesn't work here....

Any designers, artists or architects whose work you find particularly meaningful?

The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum) for sure!

What are the projects you are working on now?

ACCESS will appear next in Luxembourg, then at the Whitney in NY. I am continuing to work on BE[AM] and Threatbox.us for final tests. I have also started a smaller size project to become a multiple in the spirit of my larger scale installations.

Thanks Marie.

With special thanks from Marie Sester to Holly Willis for editorial assistance; to McKenzie Wark for his generous collaboration, helping to constitute the American pop culture media data base, with advisory by Carl Goodman, Director of programs at the Museum of the Moving Image, NY.

Portrait of Marie Sester photo-composited by Michael Naimark, 2006.

Alexis Rochas and his students at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles have developed two inflatable prototypes that consider the idea of a malleable home that can be deflated and fit into a suitcase, then travel to a new location with its owner.

Aeromads

The Aeromads prototype can be flipped around to fit the space it's resting on. Inflated seating areas are built in. Once filled with air, the 60-foot-long covered pavilion can be customized to fit a specific purpose: a temporary emergency housing or "a museum or art pavilion that pops up for a day," says Rochas. The model uses air pressure as a building material to exist as its own, independent structure, and is unplugged and detached from electrical outlets.

The exterior is sheathed in nylon rib-coated with aluminized Mylar to reflect light and provide thermal insulation. For energy needs, the Aeromads has embedded photovoltaic, flexible batteries and solar water heating.

FAB Inflatable Pavilion

The other structure, the FAB Inflatable Pavilion, was designed by Rochas last year as an art exhibition space.

In three minutes, pumped-in air transforms that 18-inch cube into a pavilion. "These structures are not meant to be some place forever but for a short-time experience," precises Rochas.

Scaled-down version of the prototypes are on exhibit at the Southern California Home & Garden Show, which opens today at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Via archinect < LA Times and archnewsnow.

More inflatable space anyone?

CICCIO - Curiously Inflatable Computer Controlled Interactive Object

paraSITE shelters; Pneumatic Parliament; Fabulous Floating Inflatable Villa; Kiss the Frog; Instant dwelling; CICCIO (Curiously Inflatable Computer Controlled Interactive Object); Inflatable canopy; Web House project; The Emancipator Bubble.

Finland- and UK-based artist-researchers Loca were running their project in downtown San Jose. They had molded hollow concrete objects which they attached to various lamps, traffic lights and signposts. Being made of gray concrete makes them effectively invisible which is important because they contain sneaky cargo: inside, there's a mobile phone and a power source which lasts around a week. Using a custom software, the phone will continuously scan for devices that have bluetooth enabled and set to discoverable. Every occasion of a tracked device will be sent to the central database and archived there. At their booth they would print out a receipt-style list of the places you've been to which in my case was approximately 2 meters long, others were gigantic. Now here comes the fun part: Loca not only collects your data but also tries to combine it with the context of the "urban semantics" it is operating in and tries to draw conclusions from that. Having checked out a few shops and the park for instance, you would suddenly get the message: "You were in a flower shop and spent 30 minutes in the park; are you in love?�?.

Another thing that Loca do is the tagging of photos according to the electromagnetic context of the device at the time they were taken, i.e. the identities of the nearby bluetooth devices. The pictures they have been uploading to Flickr for some time now contain information about the presence of other's cameras, which already represents quite a history of social encounters, opening a wide field of possibilities for mining and combining the data. There was another work called BlueStates which apparently works in the same direction.

IN[ ]EX is a project by a Canadian art group which acts as a nice low-tech approach to the spread of digital information. Their piece consist of a shipping container with (initially) 3000 wooden blocks of various sizes attached to it with tiny magnets. There are also a few bigger ones that actually contain sensors for the smaller blocks. The setup has two functions: a sound installation inside the container which is being generated and influenced through the way that the small blocks are attached to the wall of the container and around the bigger, sensitive blocks. The other part is actually participatory since the artists ask visitors to pick a block and take it with them. Ideally, they should attach it to another metal surface in the city, spreading the installation all over the place. IN[ ]EX is meant to "explore the migration of capital, goods, and people through the ports and public spaces of Vancouver and San Jose", and the Canadian wood did migrate quite a lot. By the time this photo was taken, almost 1000 pieces were already gone and you would see them in the most absurd places, some people get really ambitious with these things.

The exhibition-space at South Hall in San Jose, being a giant temporary tent-like structure, was a bit remindful of the Cargolifter hangar close to Berlin, blimp and blimpsters included!