ESC - Enter Spanish Creativity, edited by CLA-SE (Amazon USA UK).

Been lazy with the book reviews this month so i'm slowing going back to business with an easy one.

Publishers Actar says: Every system needs an escape valve, a decompression mechanism. In professional graphic design, this escape device is more than the 'escape' (esc) on a keyboard; it is the visual seduction by new and experimental formulas. This is the defining concept of emergent Spanish design today. Spain has become an international laboratory where creators from all over the planet retro-nourish and influence one another.

Works by Basedesign, Ipsum Planet, Enric Jardí, Paco Bascuñán, among many others.

I love Spain. They make my favourite food (tortilla de patatas), the most wonderful landscapes, some of my favourite activists (list is too long) and architects (or both as in the case of Santiago Cirugeda), some of the smartest blogs in my rss readers (again, way too long but you can try this one), etc. As my Italian (and slightly annoyed) boyfriend would tell you i could go on for hours.

Design from the latest collection of José Miró (Pasarela Cibeles)

Maybe the most appealing characteristic of Spain is that while visiting it you keep on switching from the utterly ridiculold-fashioned to the very edgy. ESC has a lot of the latter and nothing of the former.

The design studios selected in ESC are ordered alphabetically. Each designer showcases up to 4 works and has a little bubble space to explain what the work is about and leave their website url for more if affinities. Easy, fuss-free, fast and delightful. Most of the designers are based in Barcelona though, does that catalano-centrism really reflect the state of graphic design in Spain?

Here's my pick:

max-o-matic. I have spent what? 40? 60 minutes? on his website, going from one image to the other and doing it a second time just for the pleasure.

Ping-Pong Remix

Un mundo feliz for the 5th anniversary of Guantanamo detention camp (almost as great as those Agent Provocateur Fair Trial My Arse pants):

Spy. For their "Interventions" and re-use of street furniture.

Street Wars

Gregori Saavedra. I still have to master the art of navigating his b&w website but whatever...

Pop-up wedding invitations hand-made by Fundición Gráfica:

Oh! Look! i made a little trailer for you:

A last one that made me happy. Twopoints (who designed the very swanky book Super Holland Design) made a poster explaining how to cook a real "Tortilla de patata".

While in Barcelona i visited BAC!, the contemporary art festival located mainly at the CCCB center.

Poster of the festival featuring a photo from Michael Wolf's series “Arquitecture of Density�

This year the theme "Babylon" aims to draw parallels between today's city and the ancient Babylon, which used to be the largest city in the world from ca. 1770 to 1670 BC, and again between ca. 612 and 320 BC.

This year BAC! Festival attempts a radiography of modern Babylon, where multiculturalism, grand offers and good restaurants coexist harmoniously alongside social inequality, poorness, ghettos, marginalization, housing and mortgage problems. A handful of installations, plenty of photographic works and video art pieces.

My selection is below but if you want to read more about the exhibition, BAC! generously put the whole catalog online for you to download, browse and read. It's in castellano and catalan, with english translation at the end of the PDF booklet.

Photo Julio Soto Gurpide

I was fascinated by Julio Soto Gurpide's photo series On Common Grounds which portrays places that symbolize fallen modern utopias.
India: The city of Chandigarh, designed by Le Corbusier as the political and administrative centre of the new India, is today the playground of ragged children.
Former-Yugoslavia: Thousands of neighbours share the walls of an imperfect communist dream in Mamutica (Mammoth, sometimes known as Mamut), the largest building (by volume) in Zagreb and Croatia, as well as one of the largest apartment blocks in Europe. This apartment complex was built in 1974 in Novi Zagreb.

Photo by Julio Soto Gurpide

Brazil: Despite their promise to bring prosperity to the jungle zone, the petrolific landscapes of Cubatao have resulted into a contaminated area where it is impossible to breathe.

Continue reading...

Living in Babylon (BAC! part 1)

One of the most striking and enchanting pieces i saw at BAC!, the contemporary art festival in Barcelona, is Yamila Fontán's Nocturna. The audiovisual installation uses several artistic disciplines to tell a very intimate story in a very intimate way. Nini is a cabaret performer and Ema is selling the tickets at the entrance. They are friends and lovers.

One night Ema wakes up and Nini is gone. She'll dreamingly go through the city looking for her friend.

It was the first time i saw a work based on stereoscopic images that was in no way cheesy and is actually very sexy and elegant. It reminded me of the view master toy.

Ouside and inside the Nocturna cabin

You enter a booth, the size of the ones you'd find in train stations to make passport photos. Or is it the kind of booth they have in peep shows? Nothing tells you what might happen in there, only your own curiosity will have you take the following actions:

You enter, sit down, the curtains are red, the armchair is red and comfortable. Adjust your seat, lean on and place your eyes in front of the binocular-like apparatus. The story unveils in 3D images which change when you press a button, just like the View Master. There's also a sound track which changes and brings a new atmosphere each time the protagonist visits a new location. You can't choose your role, you have them all: you're a voyeur, a curious child, the reader of a fotonovela and an art lover.

Each stereoscopic image is made of 2 photographies which were taken with a 35mm camera featuring a double objective lens. What the spectator sees is in fact two diapositives displayed at the same moment.

The 34 images of the story are mounted on a cylinder and at its center is the screening light. The cylinder moves the photos and is activated by a motor which in turn is controlled by a PIC microchip which adjusts the sound track and the intensity of the light as well.

I really felt sucked into another world, the images were exquisite, the women made me question my heterosexuality, the soundtrack mysterious, the story... Well, you get it, right? I loved that work.

All images courtesy of Yamila Fontán.

As part of the exhibition on Apartheid, the courtyard of CCCB in Barcelona is occupied by a thought-provoking installation by Johannesburg artist Jane Alexander. "Control of Arrivals" is an area closed off by high tanks, razor wire and surveilled by with watch towers. Inside are pale, long creatures who look half-human, half-animal.

The installation is based on Melilla's border fence, a barrier between Morocco and the Spanish city of Melilla.

Constructed by Spain, its stated purpose is to rein in the influx of immigrants to the Spanish enclave and, therefore, to the European Union. There is considerable pressure by African refugees to enter Melilla, a part of the European Union. Although the border fence is a six-meter-tall double fence with watch towers, refugees frequently manage to cross it illegally, avoiding the attempts by Spanish police to take them back to their home countries. Detection wires, tear gas dispensers, radar, and day/night vision cameras are planned to increase security and prevent illegal immigration.

Beyond this reference, the installation can also be seen as a comment on the ever more rigid mechanisms of separation, discrimination and control extensively set in place by politically and economically dominant countries over the majority of the world. "Europe uses tanks to stop those coming from the South reaching the continent, while building motorways for those who come from the North", wrote Josep Ramoneda in the exhibition catalog.

Jane Alexander has created a fascinating body of works, the most famous of them being The Butcher Boys (1985/86), three lifesize humanoid-like beasts whose figures seem to be devoid of their outside senses - their ears are nothing more than holes in their heads and their mouths appears to be covered with thick roughened skin.

I took some pictures fo the installation and there are some images from the show on here and on the cccb website. Picture of border fence from 20 minutos.

Previously: Winners of the VIDA awards announced.

Here is a list of the Honorary Mentions of VIDA, the international competition on art & artificial life.

Human beings, animals and even machines are affected by overlooked aspects of machines: sound, movements, vibration, heat, electromagnetic waves, etc. While similar to "carebots" and companion robots, Omo draws on Kelly Dobson's ongoing Machine Therapy work revealing the psychological, social, and political dynamics between people and machines.

In their scenario, most of the time these robots are predominantly focuses on conscious behaviour. Omo is an alternative relational object which interacts with the subconscious.

OMO, Kelly Dobson

Omo's role is empathic and sometimes unexpected rather than normative. It is not a perfectly behaving companion, it does not always privilege soothing but it is neurothic and surprising. Omo isn't cute, it just looks like a big green egg, it breathes and senses the breathing of anyone interacting closely with it, matching--or seeking to lead--patterns of breathing.

Sensors can pick up tiny vibrations when placed against the torso and over time the robot can develop an informed interaction.

Placed on a machine which vibrates and works in cycles (such as a washing machines), Omo will pick up the vibration and attempt to communicate with the washing machine. There is no market for machines that counsel other machines. Not yet...

Julius Popp's bit.flow. Red and transparent liquids travel through a long flexible tube. The aim of the machine is trying to understand what it is doing, developing an understanding or some sort of consciousness. By releasing the red liquid and following the flow of the information, it somehow builds up a code which is injected in the tubes and sometimes builds a pattern which it will recognize.

Once the machine is able to reproduce patterns then it has gained some kind of consciousness. It knows what will happen if it takes this or this action, which action will follow a particular decision. Once it has recognized a pattern, it sends it to a "twin machine" and asks "Can you reproduce this pattern?" However to do so the machines, though identical, have to agree on a similar language, so a back and forth negotiation has to take place to build up a common vocabulary.

Here's a video of a previous prototype:

Hibernator: Prince of the Petrified Forrest by London Fieldworks. Jo Joelson and Bruce Gilchrist created a working animation studio in Beaconsfield's upper gallery to explore and link themes of natural animal hibernation, the cryonics movement and the myth surrounding the death of Walt Disney. The project utilised a range of video animation techniques, soundtrack, narrative, prosthetics and solar activated animatronics. The artists worked in the upper gallery to produce an animated film - Prince Of The Petrified Forest - part inspired by the seminal eco novel, Bambi by Felix Salten and Robert Ettinger's Prospect of Immortality. The 30 minute long animation was presented as a series of weekly episodes in Beaconsfield's arch space as it developed over a 7 week period. While the Disney industry was about manipulating our perception of the world, with their project, the artists invited people to come to the studio and see the making of an alternate reality.

Hibernator, London Fieldworks

Jed Berk's ALAVs are Autonomous Light Air Vessels which communicate the concept of connectivity among people, objects, and the environment. People can use their phones to influence the behavior of the ALAVs by starting conversations and building closer relationships with them.

ALAVS, Jed Berk

The Interactive Voice Recognition system allows mobile phone users to engage in a conversation with the blimps -either the entire group or an individual, affecting both their own and the blimps' behavior.

The ALAVs have the following predefined behaviors: flocking, feeding, bread crumbs, sour milk, hide, scatter, courtship, guardian, bump, call back and the "happiness factor."

Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand's installation Camera Lucida (Light Chamber). The "sonic observatory" converts sound waves into light by means of a phenomenon called sonoluminescence.

Camera Lucida, E.Domnitch and D.Gelfand

The continually evolving light sculpture allows one to see sound moving through space - at the meeting point of acoustics and optics. Using sonoluminescence, sound waves are directly converted into light inside a glass chamber filled with gas-infused liquid. After adapting to the darkness surrounding the installation, one can gradually perceive the highly detailed shapes and movements of multiple sound sources.

Delicate Boundaries, by Christine Sugrue, is an interactive installation where human touch can dissolve the barrier of the computer screen.

David Rokeby, Cloud. The kinetic installation is suspended in the Great Hall at the Ontario Science Centre. 100 elements, arranged in ten by ten grid, are rotated at slightly differing speeds by computer-controlled motors. The elements slowly shift in and out of synchronization. When the motors are just out of sync, huge waves ripple across the space. When completely in sync, the work appears almost solid then suddenly almost invisible. When far out of sync, the sculptural elements float in apparent chaos.

Cloud, David Rokeby

All images courtesy of Fundación Telefónica.

The winners of the VIDA awards have been made public this morning in Barcelona.

The international competition on art & artificial life, a project set up 10 years ago by Fundación Telefónica, rewards works of art produced with and commenting on artificial life technologies.

The many projects which have received an award over the past ten years form an inestimable and unique collection documenting the evolution of electronic art in one of its most significant aspects. Previous winners include a robot that sweats, a walking table, robotic dogs suffering from the mad cow disease, solar-powered devices which modify their own instruction code in response to environmental changes, autonomous non-violent protest agents, a Universal Whistling Machine, etc.

The Head of Fundación Telefónica, Francisco Serrano, came with some good news at the press conference:

- next year they will double the amount of money granted to the artists,
- they will also create an award for a career,
- finally, FT will create a Virtual Gallery which will collect and exhibit the winning works of past and future editions.

The winning projects will be exhibited at the Fundación Telefónica stand in ARCO which takes place on February 13-18 in Madrid. Coinciding with the Madrid Contemporary Art Fair, a exhibition celebrating the tenth anniversary of VIDA will present a selection of the past award-winning works and an International Forum will gather experts from all over the world to discuss artificial life art.

Mission Eternity Sparcophagus

There was a presentation of the three winners this morning but a very brief mention of the honorary mentions. So i'll just dive into the DVDs and paper documentation i got this morning and get back with more details on the honorary mentions later. In the meantime, here are a few words about the 3 winners.

First prize (10.000 euros) went to Mission Eternity Sarcophagus by etoy.CORPORATION (Switzerland), a mobile cemetery tank which allows for simple re-location of the "massive body of information" remains of up to 1000 M∞ PILOTS. The interior of the SARCOPHAGUS is covered with a LED screen which displays the ARCANUM CAPSULE content and functions as a public installation wherever the TANK travels. Visitors of the SARCOPHAGUS access and interact with ARCANUM CAPSULES via their mobile phones or a web browser. The VIDA jury liked the project for the way it expresses eternal human fears in an innovative way and for the fact that death and the technologically-mediated memory of a person are intricately linked to life itself, be it artificial or not.

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Noark

Second Prize (7.000 euros) went to NoArk (a work mentioned a few weeks ago), by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (Australia).

NoArk is an experimental vessel designed to maintain and grow "neo-life", a mass of living cells and tissues that originated from different organisms. This vessel serves as a surrogate body for a collection of living fragments which are presented alongside technologically preserved specimens of organisms. The work questions the validity of taxonomical systems. These new organisms, instead of being part of a cabinet of curiosities like it would have been the case in the 19th century, are now collected inside hospitals, research centers, labs of the biotech industry, etc. Today we get to know life by tweaking it, not by just observing it. How can we define these new categories of life?

The artistic director of the Vida awards, Daniel Canogar, explained that the work met with much discussion inside the jury. For the first time VIDA didn't give an award to a work based on electronics but on biotechnology. Yet it is still dealing with the concept of life, but in a broader sense.

Propagaciones

The third prize (3000 euros) went to Propagaciones, a work by Leandro Núñez (Argentina) which brings John Conway's cellular automaton The Game of Life (1970) to reality. The installation counts 50 small robots placed on top of a pole and made with low-tech elements. They have similar circuits and components but they all look different. They form a kind of ballet, interacting both with visitors and between themselves by turning on their lights or spinning around. Besides, the robots are divided in 10 nodes. Each robot interact with the other robots around but their behaviour inside a given node also depends on the one shown by the other nodes.

All images courtesy of Fundación Telefónica.

More in Honorary Mentions of the VIDA competition.