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Last year at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Philippe Rahm's installation Diurnisme was introducing the night during the day as a perverted answer to the perpetual daytime created by the modern lightening, internet and globalization. The room was bathed in a very bright orange/yellow light that triggered the production of melatonin which regulates our perception of day and night, fooling the body into thinking that it is nighttime. Rahm is an architect of the invisible and physiological aspects of space. One of his earlier projects, Hormonorium, featured an alpine-like climate, complete with the brighter light and shorter supply of oxygen you get at high altitudes. Made of 528 fluorescent tubes, the floor emitted a white light that reproduces the solar spectrum. The very bright light stimulates the retina, which transmits information to the pineal gland that causes a decrease in melatonin secretion. Visitors were thus supposed to experience a decrease in fatigue, a probable increase in sexual desire, and regulation of moods. Besides, the oxygen-rarefied space caused a slight euphoria due to endorphin production. Rahm is showing two new projects at Manifesta 7, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art currrently taking place in Northern Italy. Both installations engage with architecture's contingent relationship with climate, this time with a higher emphasis on the state of our planet:
The first project was exhibited in the Scenarios exhibition at Fortezza, near Bolzano. That's actually the only show i didn't visit (but if you read italian, i'll recommend you the report that SounDesign wrote of the show). Fortezza was built in the 1830s by the Habsburgian Empire in order to defend the north/south passage through the Dolomite mountain region from two sides. For the biennale, the fortress is hosting projects which are mostly immaterial: voice recordings, text, light and landscape. Rahm placed black-backed lightboxes over the outside of some of the fortress windows. This light installation, named Climate Uchronia, refers to how our perception of natural and artificial ambient conditions are subtly influenced by factors such as climate change. Rahm's purpose is to re-create, inside a room, the climate and exact daylight that the city of Bolzano would experience in the absence of global warming. The installation demonstrates how today, you can still obtain a 'natural' climate but only through artificial means.
The concept is not as 'crazy-arty' as some might believe. In the UK, the Royal Society is about to launch a study aimed at reviewing the possibility of saving the planet by "geoengineering" the climate on the grandest scales imaginable. Based on an Atmospheric Chemistry Model that sets out to remove the effects of greenhouse gases since 1850, a computer generates the uchronian climate of Rahm's installation for each minute of the duration of the biennale. The software calculates the variation of light intensity depending of the variation of the relative humidity in the air. With Climate Uchronia, the architect offers visitors the possibility to inhabit for just a moment a world that we will never know. The second work, Météorologie d'intérieur / Interior Weather, 2007, was exhibited in Rovereto, once again in a post-industrial sites (the Ex-Peterlini cocoa factory). I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the exhibition space as i was too busy admiring the glorious Uterus Flags that graced the street right in front of the Ex-Peterlini.
Interior Weather is conceived as two spaces, one white gallery whre an abstract "interior weather" condition is produced, and the other black space, where the resultant data is interpreted.
In a brightly lit and enclosed room, sensors measure variations in light, humidity and temperature; the space is analyzed as a micro-geography in constant flux. The results of these measurements are sent to the adjacent gallery where they are visualized as images and stories. Unlike what happened in the first gallery, stern sensors are not guiding the communication of the data. Instead, the information is freely reinterpreted in "fictional scenarios" written by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet and visualized with a projection in the black room.
The installation suggests how the infinite combination of light, humidity and temperature parameters have the potential to generate new spatial practices and social behaviours, and in turn, new architectural forms. In opposition to previous architectural theories (namely the Form follows function position vs the Function follows form one), function and form emerge here as a spontaneous response to climate. The possible use of space is dictated only by the chance confluence of climatic parameters, suggesting new spatial practices, new forms of social behavior and new urban and architectural forms. |
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The REACTIVATE!! exhibition at the at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló, near Valencia (Spain), being an almost endless source of wonders i tried to cover last week (see REACTIVATE!! Part 1, Urban reanimations and the minimal intervention and REACTIVATE!! Part 2, Instant urbanism), i still have a last story in my magic bag to share with you: Some of the projects presented in Castellon were commissioned by the contemporary art center to engage in a site-specific fashion with the theme of 'remodeled spaces and minimal interventions.'
The most poetical installation was created by ex.studio, two Barcelona-based Mexican architects Patricia Meneses and Iván Juárez with an impressive portfolio chock-full of projects that investigate and experiment with new ways of relating space with society. Designed as minimal spaces for auto-reflexion, the Refugios Urbanos are 6 suspended semi-transparent pods that temporarily invade the building of the EACC and its public space. Looking like chrysalids, the flexible structure can only contain one person. Its very delicate walls allow the inhabitant to enjoy privacy as well as a softly blurred view of the surrounding world.
Refugios Urbanos proposes new ways to inhabit and imagine space where people are both part and parcel of the city and isolated from it in order to better contemplate it. A second project worth its weight in blog ink is María Navascues, Ramón Francos and Celia García's Atomish Garden It all starts with the Pet Garden! At the opening of the Reactivate!! exhibition, visitors were invited to adopt a piece of garden. Each of them would take home a plant or plot of land to take care of it. Like real pets, owners can take them along for a walk in the street. They also require a lot of care and attention. The flower pot comes with a code giving pet owners access to the Petgarden website that gives them all the necessary instruction to pamper their botanical pet. Besides, they can share with other woners the story, health news and adventure of the plant on a blog. Current technologies enable thus the various parts of this 'atomized garden' to form a community able to stay in virtual but close proximity. All images courtesy of Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló. For info, the third project commissioned by EACC for Reactivate!! was POTLATCHNIÑO by Rafael Sánchez-Mateos Paniagua + Susana Velasco + Jordi Carmona Hurtado from Ludotek. |
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Born 20 years ago, ISEA, the International Symposium on Electronic Art has the objective of discussing and showcasing creative productions that apply new technologies in interactive and digital media. While i'm spending my last hours in quiet and sweaty Turin, Brisbane-based artist Priscilla Bracks is in Singapore because that's where ISEA takes place this year. She kindly wrote this report from the main exhibition, AIR (Artists In Residence): The juried show features 16 works arising out of a 3 month residency each selected artist undertook in Singapore, working collaboratively with local organizations.
Finally, We Hear One Another is a work by Kelly Jaclynn Andres that enables people to experience each other's soundscapes. Collaborating with the Mixed Reality Lab, Kelly made bonnet's fitted with a speaker and an extra 'ear' - a cone at the back of the bonnet that funnels sound to a microphone embedded in the fabric. Signals are transmitted to a speaker in the bonnet of a partner user, via mobile telephone blue tooth. This is a really cute idea that could - for a moment - draw users out of our regular ocular-centric approach to the world (though I would really have like the volume on my speaker to be louder as it was difficult to hear the sounds over the input of my own sonic environment. We can often readily remember things that we see, events that happen, or even the tastes of food, but how often can we recall sounds that we experience, beyond those deliberately injected into the soundscape such as music or words?
Run Silent; Run Deep by Nigel Helyer (UK/Australia) & Daniel Woo (Australia) collaborating with the Marine Mammal Research Laboratory, provides an 'audio portrait' of Singapore - in particular the area around the harbour. The interface of this work enables you to move through a stylized 'map' of the city, listening to sound recordings made using hydrophones in areas corresponding to coloured circles on the map. Surround sound in the installation space, gives the sense of a 3 dimensional map, and hand drawn images laid over the map gives it cartographic feel.
To create DIY GORI: seed_1216976400, Jee Hyun Oh (South Korea) collaborated with the Laboratory of Control and Mechatronics. The work focuses on the open source culture of the internet, and experiments with the idea that 'objects exist as evolving pieces of digital data in cyberspace where they are continually remixed by users.' To create the work, the artist selected the word 'Gori' - which in Koean means 'open hook' or the fastening and loosening of human relationships - and planted it as a 'seed' on the internet by posting the word and details of the project on a wiki. The word was then propagated on various sites. The many instances of its use on web pages was then printed on rolled corrugated for display in the gallery. The visual effect of the card is reminiscent of rolls of paper, and more conventional means of storing information.
Quartet by Tad Ermintano collaborating with HOMEVR at the Institute for Infocomm Research is an interactive quartet of instruments which are played by the audience acting as orchestral conductors. 4 video screens and photo-sensors are mounted above beautifully crafted traditional instruments. An audience member standing in front of the work is seen by photo sensors that trigger the conversion of their movements into sound.
Aurora Consergens (2008) is a collaboration between Hora Cosmin Samoila, Marie Christine Driesen and the Mixed Reality Lab. Gorgeous patterns are created on a video screen from visualizations of electro-magnetic energy given off by audience members wearing head sensing gear. I spent a long time playing with this artwork and found that the patterns do actually change radically, as I thought of different things. I was told that it works better with two people, so I sat with artist Clea Waites and we tried to think of similar things at the same time. The finer patterns apparently come from detecting the brain's alpha waves, and funnily enough thoughts about the beauty of the patterns, and other beautiful things like trees and sex, seemed to generate clear, defined, unusual patterns, which the attendant remarked he had not yet seen generated by other users of the work. At other times patterns ranged from noise to bigger less defined patterns. There were a couple of works in the show dealing with water as their subject matter. One might be forgiven for thinking that has something to do with the fact that it rains all the time here, and the assumption is that water must therefore, be plentiful. But in truth water is as scarce here in Singapore as it is an many more arid parts of the world. A huge percentage of the water used is recycled back into drinking water, but much of the new water released into the drinking supply, is imported from Malaysia. Whilst there are a few storage reservoirs, Singapore simply does not have enough room for a centralized water catchment area, and tanks are built into apartments (though I have seen it done in Brisbane where I usually live).
The Sourcing Water project by Shiho Fukurara, Georg Tremmel and Yousuke Nagao in collaboration with the Singapore-Delft Water Alliance looks at the ancient practice of dowsing to find water across the island. Dowsing is a practice of using a forked rod (usually wooden) to find underground water. A dowser walks around with the rod which responds by tilting up or down if water is present (in response to magnetic energy). In this work the dowsing rods were enhanced with GPS and motion sensors, with a view to collecting data and creating a map of potential water sources. This map, and other interesting visualizations of data relating to Singapore were presented as a video projected map laid over a three dimensional plinth in the shape of Singapore island. However, the artists were not able to make any findings about the scientific validity of dowsing as they discovered that all maps of Singapore's ground water are 'classified' documents which authorities weren't able to release.
Clea White's The Water Book: An encyclopedia of water, looks at all water's properties both creative and destructive. The artwork is an interactive film installation where words relating to water are projected through a tank of water. This projection changes as people touch the water's surface. The effect is visually beautiful as the light streams through the water and up onto the darkened ceiling above the tank. Even the ripples on the water surface caused by touching can be seen in these reflections, and on a screen projection also in the gallery space. This clever use of light transforms a tank of water - a substance often taken for granted and rarely considered in an aesthetic sense - into a precious object of beauty.
The Eastwood - Real Time Strategy Group (Vladan Joler and Kristian Lukuc) have created another modification of the commercial version of the game Civilization. In this work, Civilization V, game play centres around the contemporary dream story of building a technology company empire. Players choose their company and instead of warriors and generals, employ CEOs and lawyers to build an army to win the war for market-share dominance. The work critiques the use of affective labour by gaming companies and social networking sites, to produce profit for shareholders without any real benefit to the creator/user. These concepts are brought to the fore in the games various interface options such as Advisors where you can build your company's proficiency in Folksonomy (the art of classifying people into demographics), Viral Marketing, and Love Bombing (heaping love onto new members of a social group ( a technique most often associated with religious cults that is now used increasingly in social networking web forums.
The underlying code and logic of this game is the same as the original commercial version so the underlying strategy remains essentially the same: find the resources in the economy that make you successful. However unlike the original game these resources go beyond the obvious to include resources of the new economy such as loneliness, depression and boredom, which are a key to the popularity of social networking sites. This version was completed just 11 days ago so it's not yet available for download, but I'm told that it will be available from www.eastwood-gropu.com within a week or so.
Another great work in the show is Gendered Strategies for Loitering by Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan. This work features dual video screen images, a game and a sound recording of the artists discussing the differences between women's freedom to loiter in Singapore and Mumbai. I felt the sound recording was actually the best part of this work as the artist's discussion prompted me see a gendered approach to being in public space I had never thought about before. Their basic premise was that in Mumbai whilst men regularly loitered in café's, on the street etc, smoking, chatting and enjoying the act of doing nothing, women were generally denied this pleasure because a woman seen to be doing nothing in public was viewed suspiciously, or worse, as a prostitute. This attitude I think speaks volumes of the objectification of women when a women cannot simply 'hang out' without casting doubt upon her respectability. To be in public, women must be seen to be moving with a purpose. Ie she should have some reason for being there. So if a woman is waiting for a friend on the street, she would stand at a bus stop and not on the street corner, to clearly demonstrate she is waiting for something. The artists contrast this with loitering behaviour in Singapore which is apparently gender neutral. The difference in Singapore they say, is that no-one loiters. Everyone must have a purpose and move about the city in a very defined, well regulated way. Extra cold air pours out of ducts above the entrances to railway stations to discourage loitering at the doors. Little footprints painted on paths direct on which side one should walk. Even foreigners living in the city who have a culture of loitering, do so in regulated way - the Indonesians gathering in City Plaza on a Sunday, the Indian and Tamil constructions workers in Little India on a Sunday. I actually experienced this work on a Sunday and went out to Little India to test the theory. Though the streets were a sea of humanity, I was one of only 4 women I saw walking around Little India that evening - an uncomfortable, but revealing experience. Thanks Priscilla! AIR (Artists In Residence) runs at the National Museum of Singapore, through 3 August, 2008. |
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Another project from the RCA Design Interactions show. This one made me laugh so much: In wealthier neighbourhoods, the size of the house and how well maintained the garden is, often represents status. The Grass Scanner is a device designed by Alice Wang to measure how green the grass is. Using 3 Pantone Color Cue devices, it takes reading from 3 random patches of the grass and outputs a Pantone colour code for one to compare. With the codes, one can refer to the PARKTONE cards which contains average grass colours of Royal Parks and other green areas in the UK for people to match up with their own garden.
As grass condition in different areas of a given park may vary, each area was measured several times before an average of the data was used to create the PARKTONE card. Relate: Mugs for a perfect tea. |
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Back in July, while i was visiting Documenta 12 in Kassel, i saw a 16-metre-long flower-bed raised above the ground, with 70 packets of seeds sprouting from the grass, each of them carrying worrying labels that documented the latest form of Colonialism: biopiracy.
Biopiracy describes a new form of "colonial pillaging" in which western corporations reap profits by taking out patents on indigenous plants, food, local knowledge, human tissues and drugs from developing countries and turning them into lucrative products. Only in few cases are the benefits shared with the country of origin.
Biopiracy targets particularly countries known for their exceptionally high level of cultural and biological variety: Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Australia. This process is also referred to as "internal conquest" in analogy to the "external conquest" of colonialism. In her Siegesgärten (Victory gardens, 2007) installation, Vienna artist Ines Doujak criticized the bio-politics of EU and the USA which turn a blind eye on the ruthless economization of nature and of life. The seed packets sprouting from the flower-bed informed visitors about global exploitation, genetic engineering and monoculture. On the front of the packets are photo-collages showing drag queens and kings and fetish secual practices set in exotic natural settings. On the back, the conditions and consequences of biopiracy are described and illustrated using real examples of the practice.
"We fear an increasing dependency on large corporations that seek to control global food production and agriculture by means of patents, from milk to bread and from baking grains to energy plants", explained patent expert Christoph Then (via no patents on seeds.)
This is an eye-opening book (at least for me). I don't think i'll ever shop the same way again. Except that it's not going to be easy. I can boycott a few cosmetics but how could i live without the giant which has been accused of being the "biggest threat to genetic privacy" for its alleged plan to create a searchable database of genetic information: Google? In her book, Doujak retraces many cases of biopiracy, while giving a context for the practice. In 1980, Ananda Chakrabarty became the first person to receive a patent for a transgenic organism, a bacterium he had engineered to digest oil. Previously, life forms had been excluded from patent laws. The landmark patent has since paved the way for many others on genetically modified micro-organisms and other life forms. 5 years later, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allowed GM plants, seeds and plant tissues to be patented. And by 1987 animal patenting followed. Today even human gene sequences, cell lines and stem cells are permitted. Corporate interests can thus corner life forms for the lifetime of a patent and have a monopoly on their exploitation. With the advent of nanotechnology comes the rise of what the Captain Hook Awards call the nanopirates, those who claim ownership of the molecules and even the elements that everything is made from.
As Ines Doujak writes in the book: There is a clear distinction between research of public resources in the interest of all and corporate theft and privatization of the same resources.
The stories collected by the artists are fearsome, here's just a couple of them: - Genetic material from members of some indigenous communities in Brazil and Venezuela can be purchased for 85 dollars through the Internet. It is unclear whether the samples were obtained with the full and informed consent of the individuals and of the Brazilian government. Another issue is whether there are guarantees in place to ensure equitable distribution of the knowledge and profits generated from the samples.
Some of the cases described in the book are comforting, they show how organized action can reverse unfair processes. That's what happened with quinoa, a plant cultivated in the Andes for 6000 years. In 1994, scientists from Colorado University were granted a patent to a Bolivian species. This means they could also control the rights to any hybrids created using the Apelawa variety, including many traditional varieties grown by peasant farmers in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile as well as varieties important in Bolivia's quinoa export market. As the president of the Bolivian National Association of Quinoa Producers said at the time: "Our intellectual integrity has been violated by this patent," he said, "Quinoa has been developed by the Andean agriculturists for millennia, it wasn't 'invented' by researchers in North America." Protests proved successful: the patent was dropped in 1998. A second case with annulment of a questionable patent concerns the Hagahai people (Papua New Guinea). Their first contact with the outside world was in 1984. Viruses and illnesses resulted in this contact decimated the Hagahai to such extent that they were under threat of extinction. Foreign researchers administered the vaccination needed but also took some DNA samples (without their knowledge). They discovered that the people is immune to leukaemia and degenerative neurological illnesses. The genetic qualities of the Hagahai were patented in the United States. Worldwide protests led to the annulment of the patent. More images |
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According to the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959, the continent's territory is a protected ecosystem and as such cannot be used neither for military purposes nor commercial exploitation. The Antarctic contains 70% of the planet's fresh water reserves in the form of ice and, today, its name evokes the slow melting of the ice caused by global warming. In 2007 Lucy + Jorge Orta went to the inhospitable land on an artistic and social research expedition.
The tents, survival kits, videos and mobile aid units created by the artists as a result of their expedition to the edge of the world are having their first public showing at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan. Hangar Bicocca is real big. Before being a space dedicated to contemporary art, it was a vast industrial factory that manufactured bobbins for electric train motors. The star of the exhibition is Antarctic Village. Made of 50 dwellings that bring out the images of refugee camps broadcast on tv, the installation is a symbol of the plight of those struggling to cross borders and to gain the freedom of movement necessary to escape political and social conflict. The temporary encampment was envisioned as a free, neutral territory in a place where living conditions are so extreme that it imposes a situation of mutual aid and solidarity, no matter your nationality.
The tents are hand stitched with sections of flags from around the world, along with clothes and gloves, symbolising the multiplicity and diversity of people. A recent UN source states that 2.2 million migrants, mainly from the African and Asian continents, will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050. The artists go beyond their comment on the free circulation of individuals across the whole planet by proposing an amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Right that would include the right to free circulation, on par with merchandise, economic flows and pollution.
The Antarctica exhibition is also an occasion for presenting other works created by the couple over the last five years, addressing social, environmental and humanitarian issues: mobility, migration, climate and environmental crises, and human rights: - Orta Water, everyday objects and mobile prototypes which allow for water gathering, purification and distribution. They were designed for the part of the world population whose access to food and water is put at risk by the consequences of environmental crisis and free market privatization.
- Urban Life Guard, the famous series of survival figures created by the artists for their urban performances. The structure is made of stretchers, camp beds, resistant garments and modular devices, which, in case of situation of crisis or danger, can be assembled and used as sleeping bags or shelters.
- some M.I.U. (Mobile Intervention Unit): industrial, ex-army vehicles or ambulances converted into first aid units for civilian populations. They are outfitted with an array of emergency equipment that range from water filtering systems to temporary dormitories. On the exterior, quotations, sentences or images recall the fate of those who are forced to immigrate for survival. Stationed at hangar Bicocca was Nomad Hotel, a reconditioned military four-wheel truck with micro living quarters and a transformed Red Cross ambulance, from which visitors can claim their Antarctic World Passport, created by the artists to offer a symbolic access to all the countries in the world.
Among the new works which have been commissioned for the Milan exhibition is a fascinating and poetic wall installation of life jackets Life Line.
My flickr set. Lucy + Jorge Orta's Antarctica expedition is on view at Hangar Bicocca in Milan until June 8, 2008.
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