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Robert Kusmirowski does copies, simulacra, forgeries, mock-ups. Meticulously and masterfully. The result of his craft is an illusion. You believe you're in front of a relic from the past, complete with patina: a sepia photography, old newspapers, cigarette packs, but also a graveyard, the wagon of a '40s train or an entire train station. I never used to be fascinated by sculptures but the young artist put such a eerie, retro-innovative' spin to the genre that he won me over.
Information about the artist state that he started to make deliberate mock-ups as a child, building toys he couldn't get in socialist Poland. Elsewhere you will read that from an early age he painstakingly forged bus passes and postage stamps for his entire family.
The Polish artist currently has two works in Turin, one is UHER.C at Guida Costa Projects. The second one, DATAmatic 880, is on show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo as part of the Turin Triennale. Both use mechanics and electronics as symbols of a broader reflection on 20th century European history. They are suggestive, non-functional machines, they are nostalgic and absurd. They play with time and place. They evoke a period the artist is too young to have experienced. DATAmatic 880 is a 1960's computer lab that comes straight from the time machine. Its name recalls the DATAmatic 1000, a large-scale electronic data processing machine, launched by American company DATAmatic in the '50s. As you can guess, Kusmirowski's DATAmatic 880 never existed.
UHER.C is another non-relic from the '60s. Especially conceived for the Guido Costa Projects gallery, UHER.C is a recording studio. It is meant to be manipulated by rockers, not by neat scientists in white gowns. UHER.C is as cluttered, messy and dusty as DATAmatic 880 is glossy and hygienic. You can only observe UHER.C through a window panel. In turn, the recording studio lets you take a peak at the future that has been (or might have been) but which appears obsolete today.
UHER.C is a classical, archaic sculpture that has gone berserk: it is both the nightmarish and joyous side of machine. The press release says: UHER.C gets its name for phonetic, geographic and historical reasons (respectively Hertz; UHER a mountain region in the environs of Lubin; and Mr UHER.C, a researcher into the physics of sound). It is an extraordinary sculpture with a thousand souls, keyboard, oscillators, microphones, amplifiers, recording devices, cables, mysterious objects, pure inventions, sounds, voices and lights. It is a living sculpture that now and again unplugs one of its souls, caged in its circuits for decades, or it gives a voice to other souls born especially for the occasion. Slideshow of the exhibition: On view at Guida Costa Projects, Turin, until Saturday 28 February 2009. At the end of the exhibition a limited edition LP will be produced of music by Robert Kusmirowski. See also Vernissage TV coverage of the opening of DATAmatic 880 in Berlin. Previously: Wagon, a faithful reproduction of the vehicles that served to deport countless people. |
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LABoral, the art center we have come to associated with new media art, has recently opened an exhibition dedicated to new, audacious and thought-provoking forms of design. Curated by Roberto Feo and Rosario Hurtado (El Último Grito), Nowhere/Now/Here aims to challenge the perception of design by questioning our relationship with the environment. Taking the viewpoint that our environment has become part of us rather than us being part of it, as its point of departure, Nowhere/Now/ Here encourages us to see design as an integral component of the world-shaping process.
Nowhere/Now/Here features more than 60 works that challenge the conception we might have of design. Some by designers you may have met in these pages before (Dunne & Raby, Troika, Auger-Loizeau, Eelko Moorer, David Bowen, Pablo Valbuena, Marei Wollersberger, Yuri Suzuki, Noam Toran, etc. ) and in many other publications (Tord Boontje, Assa Ashuach, Paul Cocksedge, etc.) The design of the exhibition itself reflects the explorative approach of Nowhere/Now/Here. Conceived like a 'mental adventure' and relying on colourful graphics on the floor that guide visitors through the space, it was created by Patricia Urquiola studio and the graphic image and vision of Fernando Gutierrez.
The catalogue of the the exhibition Nowhere/Now/Here, Investigating New Lines of Enquiry in Contemporary Design is gorgeous and its cast is stellar: there are interview with Ron Arad, Javier Mariscal and other important figures of design, essays by Marti Guixe, Santiago Cirugeda, Matt Ward, Dunne & Raby, a description of all the participating projects, loads of photos and beautiful graphics. Almost 300 pages, in both spanish and english for a mere 35 euros. The online shop of LABoral seems to be a bit under the water these days, so until the situation is fixed, the easiest way to get your hands on the precious volume is to write LABoral and ask if they can send you a copy. The curators of the exhibition are Roberto Feo and Rosario Hurtado. Ever since they founded El Último Grito back in 1997, the designers have kept away from preconceived definitions and prescribed design paths. A perspective that didn't prevent them from teaching at the most prestigious colleges of design and working for renowned companies and institutions: Mathmos, Selfridges, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lavazza, Budweiser, Style, Metalarte, Hugo Boss, Southwark Council, Arturo Alvarez, the Lighthouse, etc. I caught up with the Berlin/London-based duo to discuss Nowhere/Now/Here:
How did El Último Grito land on the LABoral spaceship? How did two famous designers end up curating an exhibition 'that challenges the perception of design by questioning our relationship with the environment. Taking the viewpoint that our environment has become part of us rather than us being part of it, as its point of departure, Nowhere/Now/ Here encourages us to see design as an integral component of the world-shaping process' ? LABoral contacted us to curate and exhibition on 'experimental design' (what ever that means) so for us it was a question of trying to define what experimental meant to us. We explored different areas of work and try to define a strategic approach for each of them, which lead designers to challenging design's status quo. We identify three basic areas with their accompanying strategies Material_Intervention: projects that explore material innovation and new material applications, new production techniques, technology, genetic engineering, graffiti,... Cultural_Resistance: Projects and designers that position themselves in confrontation with the dominant culture, both in terms of the design outcomes, but also in terms of practice within the culture of design. Psychological_Exploration: projects that analyse the psychological and sensorial experience of the object or that act as triggers of emotions and sensations. And psychological objects that carry the essence of the psychological experience.
This worked for us as a starting point, which provided us a basic structure to classify the researched works. But for us it became apparent that were many other connections between the works, and that such a classification would not allow you to understand. When we started recombining the works in a more intuitive way, for us suggested conceptual connections between really different areas of work. We also felt that this allowed the viewer to find his or her own entry points into the exhibition. Our intent was to present a collection of objects that would allow you to understand the thinking process of the artists behind them. Presenting them as thinkers who can not only reshape their own particular worlds but that show the potential to transform, re-interpret and re-think industries, production processes, communication strategies, political systems, etc. Challenging our preconceptions of what design can do.
What did this curatorial experience teach you? It has been a very interesting experience. It has given us the chance (or luxury) to dedicate proper time to lo closely to the work of many other peoples, to understand their motivations and their intentions. And interpret them in relation to each other (including our own work). Creating a bigger pictured that talked about the fantastic potential and diversity of design approaches. That it's why we treated the exhibition as a project itself, rather of plain review of design today. So in a way is not so much an exhibition on experimental design as much as an experimental exhibition on design. We wanted to create a moment where different aspects of design would collide in a space and something would come up from this experiment. Which in a way has already happened among the participating artists and designers, in terms of friendships and collaborations. But above all, the most incredible feeling is one of 'togetherness' and true interest in each others work, which has become unusual in such competitive world. This is very uplifting and makes us believe that something major is happening within the design world.
TYPOLOGY / MUNDANE / ANECDOTE / FICTION / MYTH The works, texts and interviews have been grouped in order to create moments. Images and stories for the visitor/reader to find their own point of access to the ideas around the works. Very much following the idea of a 'trafalmadorian' book, from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V: "Billy couldn't read Trafalmadorian, of course, but he could al least see how the books were laid out- in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams. "Exactly", said the voice. "They are telegrams?" "There are no telegrams on Trafalmadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message-describing a situation, a scene. We Trafalmadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time." The catalogue is an assemblage of works, described by the designers and artists, essays from some of the participating artists, which although often linked to personal projects, are surprisingly useful to understand everyone else's work, and interviews to four of our all time heroes: Ron Arad, Javier Mariscal, Daniel Weil and Gaetano Pesce; which contextualise the work of this younger generation of designers.
You didn't seem to have selected any of your own works for the show. Why not? And if i asked you to point us to the work you developed that best reflects the theme of the exhibition, which one would it be? Well, for us the exhibition itself is a piece of work, a project that is the result of the collaboration with everybody involved, from the LABoral team, to all the artists, writers and advisors. There are two video projects that we feel worked well within the themes of NOWHERE/NOW/HERE.
One is 'LINE' which is a video consisting of a horizontal line where words appearing above and bellow. As the words change, your interpretation of what the line is also changes, and as you keep watching you find yourself adjusting your interpretation of the space and the way of seeing it. This is one of the three pieces, dealing with the idea of perception, which we have used as an introduction to the show. There other two are Grao by Pedrita, which reproduces a photographic image using traditional untreated ceramic tiles, to substitute the pixels of the image; and Marc Owens 'Avatar' film, which he reshot as a walkthrough the exhibition, the piece is fantastic as it is always playing with how you perceive reality.
The other video is 'NOWASTEEUR, a laborious poem'. This video is a new direction in terms of documenting our work. We started using video to try to document our installations, as we felt that just by keeping a photographic record of the event, did not reflect our ideas about the nature of the work that we call 'design performance, performing design'. But then we realised that the video itself could even had another narrative which would give it an identity of its own and not just being a document of the work. 'NOWASTEEUR, a laborious poem' was conceived as part of a public sitting commission during ARCO at IFEMA. The idea was to utilise all the packaging materials that are thrown away during the setting up of the fair. We came out with the idea of big bags in the shape of letters that would be filled up with all the waste materials. NOWASTEEUR are the ten letters that you need to write NO WASTE and RE-USE which was the main message that we wanted to put across. After that we elaborated a short poem using those letters (plus M which you get out of turning around the W), which you see forming in the video while all the action of the installation is being recorded: NO WASTE_RE USE_ANSWER ME_NOT US_USER WON'T_WEST_EAST_RAW WAR_NOTE RUSE_USE ART_STEM NEW_SOME ONE TO STEER_SURE MUST EASE TEARS_MEET TEAM NOW_USE _RE-USE_WASTE NOT.
'NOWASTEEUR, a laborious poem' is shown as part of the film program, which runs at the exhibition's design cinema (the cinema sitting is a commissioned piece by Nic Rysenbry)
David Bowen's Remote Sonar Drawing Device, and Pablo Valbuena's installation Augmented Sculpture Series, have been exhibited in the past in purely artistic contexts. What made you think that they fitted the exhibition's objective to 'encourages us to see design as an integral component of the world-shaping process'? Design is an integral component of the world-shaping process. Only because design takes many forms, sometimes we 'can't see the forest from the trees'. In NOWHERE/NOW/HERE we tried to investigate (like the sub title says) 'new lines of enquiry in contemporary design'. Showing a diversity of work, which presented the different ideas and directions that designers are exploring today. In the case of David Bowen, we find really interesting his work, where both technological research, and robotics collide with the questioning of the nature of drawing. His design translates movement into drawing. He has deliberately chosen make his machine draw 'marks' (like young children when they start drawing and are just interested in leaving their mark) by translating the movement recorded into impulses, which connect with the idea of representation, so central to the idea of drawing. So in fact, is that drawing purely a mark or is it a representation of the circulation of people? Is that drawing artistic or scientific? Is it both? But it not only raises questions in the nature of drawing as a human activity but in the nature of technological research and its applications. In the exhibition his piece is in conversation with by Javier Mariscal's hand made wooden drawing of a 'VESPA' (2007), one of the surprise little homage's to the 'maestros' object of the interviews in the catalogue.
With Pablo Valbuena, we saw his work at ARCO and we fell in love with it instantly. The way he uses light and video to transform the perception of space and the materiality of the build, it is simply fantastic. In his case, it is obvious that the content of his work comes directly from his training as an architect, and his research into the qualities of space. So his work is very much design, but its materialization and dissemination is through the art market.
These two pieces, like indeed many others within the exhibition are providing a different point of view on how thing are around us. This helps us understand that there is always more than one answer and that by no means we should accept what the market or the designer or the politician or religion or science tell us. There are always alternatives. Most things are not the way they are because of some force of nature that is beyond our control. Things are the way they are because someone decided at one moment that this or that was a good idea, or make them lots of money or be good for humanity or the environment or ... there are no ultimate truths, just proposals that became 'real' and these could and do change. In the catalogue we refer to Martin Scorsese's film The Departed quoting Frank Costello, the mob boss, who while describing his neighbourhood says 'I do not want to be a product of my environment, I wasn't my environment to be a product of me'. For us this has a resonance within design and acts as a reminder that it is possible to change the rules of the game.
On the other hand some of the works selected openly dialog with the art world (for example The Macguffin Library and cinema). Which are the characteristics that indicate that these works belong strictly to the field of design and not art? And is the difference always strict anyway? Or is there a conscious desire to keep the boundaries as porous as befits the purpose? We guess that the answer would be in how do you define each one of them. From our point of view everything is design. A few weeks ago we read a short interview with Vito Acconci where he was asked a similar question regarding the design/art argument and he was saying that a big part of the problem came from the fact that 'art' is the only discipline that is defined by a qualitative appreciation. We share that point of view and we think that the word art would have to be left for any kind of work that excels in whatever area of human activity. Who is to say that the work of Ferran Adria is less art than that of Jeff Koons? Or that a Frank Lloyd Wright building is less or art than an Andreas Gurski photograph? Or that Leonardo's flying machines is less art than his Monalisa?... What are the grounds for comparison and how or why would you do it? This is the eternal argument, from our point of view is easier as we see no boundaries. Maybe this interpretation of design might be confusing or unacceptable for some people who do have a very clear idea of the boundaries of between the two.
The 'McGuffin Library Collection' by Noam Toran and Onkar Kular obviously lives in the edges of what is traditionally accepted as design, and I guess it raise questions in both directions. As they explain, McGuffin is a term invented by Alfred Hitchcock to define an object within a film, which somehow acts as a devise to carry the narrative of the story. In terms of the story, the design of this object becomes, so its conception is a design exercise on its own. For Onkar and Noam this works perfectly well to explore further their ideas around the use of design as a medium that is central to their work. In this case they wrote 14 synopsis for imaginary films for which they designed an object. These objects are primarily talking about the role of objects as mediators in our understanding of the world (in this case of the story). In a second layer, they are talking about the world of technology, production and design. The objects are produced in rapid form directly from 3D computer models. The objects are not unique necessarily unique as they are printed very much like you would do with a computer document. Is that a banal use of technology, design and engineering just because thy are not pursuing 'the grater good' or the commercial enterprise? Would that make it art? For us what makes them good design and good art is exactly the same thing, they are able to broaden and challenge our preconceived ideas of what things are, while being moving and engaging.
Most of the works exhibited in Nowhere/now/here come from Europe. Is that a curatorial choice or is it merely because this way to engage with objects is still confined to our continent? It was not a particular curatorial choice. We tried to select people and works that we found interesting and that helped us illustrate the ideas behind NOWHERE/NOW/HERE. It is true though, that still Europe is the main centre for design in the world, with some of the most prestigious and influential design schools in the world (RCA, Eindhoven, Domus,...) so it is unavoidable that a lot of the designers (although not necessarily European themselves) who are doing interesting work would come from them. Like with any other project there are many reasons that contribute to the final decisions and results (most of them are usually quite mundane) For NOWHERE/NOW/HERE we tried to work with people with whom, despite working in very different areas, we found an affinity and a complicity in pushing the boundaries of what is accepted in design.
Why did you ask Patricia Urquiola to take care of the exhibition design? Why not do it yourself? Did you hand her a list of requirements or did you give her carte blanche? How much did you collaborate and how did her vision of the exhibition influence yours?
With Patricia Urquiola and Martino Berghinz we were very lucky that we could take advantage of their relationship with LABoral, and were very happy when they decided to participate in the project. We always had the idea that whoever did the exhibition design we would like it to be or feel like one more piece in the exhibition. So our brief was very open, we showed them the six groups of works which we had assembled and asked them to give us six permeable spaces where you could experience the groups as a one thing and at the same time you would be aware or attracted to the works of the other groups, so that the visitor could break away from the structure and find their own way to navigate the show. Their response was to create a laberynthic exhibition space that creates many small private moments. It broke our idea of being able to experience each group as a whole, but in the other hand, it work very well in the sense that allows you to find your own experience of the show. So we totally respected their proposal and change the concept and create smaller relationships within the pieces rather that the group encounter. For us was important not to step in and allow these and other inputs take their course
And how much do you feel that her intervention reflects the spirit of the exhibition, making it maybe another work in itself that does belong to the show? We think that their idea of dividing the space from the top by hanging fabrics its a very spatial (and material efficient) solution that multiplies the space by creating a very atmospheric cloud of mini spaces which are all inter-connected. You are both lecturers in London, Roberto teaches Design Product at the Royal College of Art and Rosario at the Design Department, Goldsmiths College. How much does your teaching practice reflect the concepts and ideas put forward in the exhibition? And more importantly which kind of career awaits students who might want to follow the paths of the designers you've invited to the exhibition? Will they end up working exclusively in the hope that their projects will be shown in art galleries and museums or does the industry realize there is a real need of such visions and will companies therefore welcome them with open arms? As you mentioned, we have been lecturers at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmith University for the last 10 years, and we are also Research Fellows at Kingston University. For us this experience is central to the development of our own ideas and to understand the concerns and ambitions of new generations of designers. We would like that the works in NW/N/H are viewed not as the object that you can see at the exhibition, but as the potential that these designers have to translate their knowledge and skill into different outcomes. How these objects are the products of inquisitive minds that give nothing for granted but are also responsible and very thorough in the development of their work. Many of the designers invited to the exhibition are very successful and work across industries, what they have in common is a non-conformist approach to their practices. These designers are changing the scope of the design practice, elaborating new industries and opening new areas of work. Some of the younger designers are still starting to navigate their way but surly in years to come they will be some of the leading figures in art or design or design-art or art-design or science or film...
At the end the question of where some work lives is purely economical. Today there are more possibilities for designers to find means of commercialisation and dissemination of their work through galleries and exhibitions rather than through the mass market. We have to be aware of the changes to the market and to the industry that we have experience in the last years. And industry is falling behind in attracting talent because it is hard for them to react to new ideas. We have always worked between the experimental and the commercial, the two running parallel and feeding from each other. This self-feeding process has always been part of our work and we think has enriched it (but we are 'old school' now) and the way we work (or even our drivers) are very different to how our students perceived design today or the kind of work they want to do. We hope that industry reacts (what ever industry) and tries to be again a leading force in research and creativity. At the end of the day what will determine which avenue designers will follow, or where their work will be show cased is a question of market opportunities and ultimately their cultural influence. At the Design Museum tomorrow, at the V&A in a couple of decade or at the British Museum in a few centuries.
Do you see design meccas like the Salone del Mobile in Milan open up to this kind of discourse? We do not see why not. There have been times where companies would champion new concepts and ideas. Seeing how markets are evolving industry will have to react and accept that cannot just be playing to an outdated lifestyle ideal. In Milan you can see lots of the things that are going on right now, but it is hard to see with more than 300 exhibitions in the 'fuori salone'. How would we even know that its even there? In any case, for good or bad, there are many new ways of disseminating design much more economical and accessible.
Is El Ultimo Grito already working on new projects? Could you share them with us? We are working in a book about our work, which we are looking to publish sometime in April. Apart of our usual combination of self initiated projects and commercial ones, some of which will be presented in Milan next April. A bit of everything, like always. Thanks Roberto and Rosario!
Nowhere/Now/Here runs until Mon, April 20 , 2009 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijon, Spain. Image on the homepage: Daniel Charny & Gabriel Klasmer. Sports Furniture.2008, based on a photo version from 2003 (photo Enrique G. Cardenas) Related stories: If you can't travel to Gijon (there are direct flights from London), i would encourage you to visit Wouldn't It be Nice at Somerset House where some of the designers are exhibiting their works until December 14, 2008. |
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Sorry for the long silence, i was a bit dazed by the 2 fantastic days i spent at the School of Architecture of Alicante. Thanks a lot to Paco Mejias, Jose Maria Torres Nadal and a virtual Edgar Gonzalez who have made my stay over there so memorable and fun.
So let's get back to blogging and to my belated report on Art Futura which took place last week in Barcelona. The director of the festival, Montxo Algora is also the curator, along with Jose Luis de Vicente, of Máquinas&Almas (Machines and Souls), a major exhibition of media art which opened last Summer at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. Máquinas&Almas ("Souls&Machines") explores the intersection of art and technology at the beginning of the 21st century through the work of a generation of creators -not only artists- who have defined the limits of the discourse of new media, taking them beyond their speculative beginnings and constructing their strategic and linguistic bases. I'm not sure the show has received the echo it deserved in the international press but it was certainly remarkable that a museum, famous around the world for its collection of paintings by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí was opening its doors to some 30 works -some of them made especially for the exhibition- created using digital technology.
The challenge taken by Reina Sofia paid off: Souls and Machines received more than 350,000 visitors, making it the most visited exhibition about art and technology in Spain. I can't actually imagine another country in Europe where such show could have taken place. Other countries are very open to media art but none of them -and i hope i'm wrong but i doubt it- has more genuine respect and a better taste than Spain for technology-based art. Still, the situation didn't make Montxo Algora, Vicente Matallana (responsible of the production of the exhibition), Irma Arribas and artist Evru took the stage last Saturday at Art Futura to give us the lowdown of this adventure which took 2 years in the making. The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.'
This quote by Albert Einstein was the leitmotiv of the exhibition and it was also the cue that guided the work of Irma Arribas whose design of the exhibition tried to generate a relationship based mystery and dialog between the artworks and the visitors. The artworks were not hermetically separated from each other. Instead, they were divided by semi-transparent curtains, which were both filtering the space and allowing the works to dialog between each other. The whole parcours that lead from one piece to the other was curvy in order to create surprises and a sense of expectation.
The most fascinating part of the panel was the presentation of Vicente Matallana whose company LaAgencia was in charge of the production of Máquinas&Almas. LaAgencia has been producing media art events for 10 years and Vicente is the one who best explained why Reina Sofia's decision to host the exhibition was audacious. The rooms the museum dedicated to M&A were inadequate (too luminous, technologically deficient), the team was remarkably open and cooperative but unprepared to deal with new issues which included: While the presentation of Montxo, Ima and Vicente was certainly instructive and fascinating, a close look at the content of the exhibition can give you further clues about how to set up your own exhibition about media art Rule number 1: show whatever artworks you like but include something by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Rule number 2, show some respect to the cliche that women don't understand technology and therefore don't mingle with media art. And because every rule has its exceptions, do include the work of one (maximum 2) women in your exhibition: UrbanSpaceStation, an installation that Natalie Jeremijenko developed together with Ángel Borrego.
This prototype of a parasite for urban buildings was designed to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions from buildings and return oxygen-enriched air in exchange. The "greenhouse-laboratory" for rooftops constitutes an intensive urban agriculture facility that reuses building waste streams to produce nutritional resources without burning fossil fuels. Video: Rule number 3: demonstrate that media art is mature enough not to take itself too seriously. Let an artist make that point clear for you. Because he defines himself as a (temporarily) retired net artist, Vuk Cosic is the perfect candidate for the role. And please, do add in your press material that Cosic coined the term "net art" in 1995. He'll be happy to tell the press once again that he never actually coined the term and you'll be left to wonder whether he's serious or messing around again.
His History of Art for the Intelligence Community is an homage to the masters of painting. The artist applied the Carnivore Project (a software developed by the Radical Software Group (RSG) and based on recreating data obtained through a FBI programme to intercept information online) to animate canonical artwork - Mantegna, Van Gogh, Malevich, Warhol or Cézanne - in images and subsequently alter them. In Cézanne's Cherries and Peaches, with Cosic's programme installed on a computer, the number of fruit pieces changes in real time as the owner sends and receives e-mails. Rule number 4. Invite a name that critiques of 'traditional' contemporary art will have heard of. This will get their attention and ensure that they will visit your show. And if that name is Pierre Huyghe, you'll get my undying gratitude (not that it should matter much.)
Together with Philippe Parreno, Huyghe created No Ghost Just a Shell, a multimedia project starring an animated character named AnnLee. In the video One Million Kingdoms, AnnLee moves through a futuristic landscape sketched by a series of graphic curves whose movement is synchronised with the artist's synthesised voice as it repeats the words spoken by Neil Armstrong on the first moon landing. Rule number 5. Include some artwork that even the most bored boyfriend dragged in the gallery by the media art buff will like. Make sure that she will appreciate the project as well.
Harun Farocki's Deep Play is a 12-channel video installation that shows different aspects - some of which are generally hidden - of a football game. The filmmaker chose the 2006 World Cup Final between France and Italy to dissect it into synchronised images, which are reproduced on each screen: the artist's own footage of the game, official FIFA footage, charts of player stats, real-time 2D and 3D animation sequences, and stadium surveillance. Maybe the best thing is could do is leave you with this video that ADN made of the show: |
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Then 19th edition of Art Futura, the Barcelona-based festival of Digital Culture and Creativity, closed on Sunday with the Prize Giving Ceremony. Awards were handed to the creators of best pieces in 3D and digital animation and of the best Spanish videogames. Not one single girl climbed on the podium to receive a prize (that's ok, ladies, i'm not into 3D either) but most of the awardees thanked either their girlfriend or their mum for their support. There was even one 'gracias a mi abuela/thanks to my granny'. How sweet! I'm back in my kitchen, so time has come to write a couple of posts and share with you what were for me the most interesting moments of the festival. First one is the presentation of a sculpture called Splash.
Mona Kim, Todd Palmer, Olga Subirós and Simon Taylor from Program Collective took the stage to share with us the whole process that lead to the spectacular sculpture they created for the Water for Life exhibition at the Expo Zaragoza 2008, a fair that focused on water and sustainable development. The challenge was to fill in two entire floors of the Water Tower, the Expo's signature edifice. Two floors might not seem much until you add to that a huge empty space of 40 m high that the designers had to occupy with a work which could somehow balance the architecture and get people to walk up the ramps that wrap around the tower's interior.
The result of that brief was a series of installations and a very photogenic hanging sculpture called Splash which freezes in solid form the kinetic properties of water hitting a surface, like the arrival of life on our planet. Video: As visitors climb to the top of the tower, they can enjoy a panoramic view of the city but also discover all the layers and facets of the sculpture. Besides, Splash's shiny surface reflects the environment around it, becoming a distorted mirror of the video images playing below, and of the people watching it from the ramps that circle around it. The designers had to break down the sculpture into its most basic elements, ending up with 84 giant pieces that had to be suspended from the tower's ceiling by a total of 140 cables, some of them as thin as 3 mm.
The forms of this 22.5 meters (74 ft) high installation were generated through digital animation technologies that modeled the deformation and energetic scattering of a drop of water being acted upon by various extreme planetary forces - including gravity, wind and heat. The dynamic simulation systems were carried out by Pere Gifre from IKONIC ARTS. Image on the homepage by Gallo Quirico. |
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The Estonian pavilion is on many 'must see' lists. I wouldn't bother to write that you 'must' see it. Truth is you just can't miss it. It's that lemon yellow section of a natural gas pipe that snakes down the Giardini from the German to the Russian pavilion. The sixty-three meters long of real scale elevated gas pipe draws attention to Nord Stream, the controversial Gazprom project to construct a direct pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipe would run along the Baltic seabed, which could have major political and ecological implications for neighboring countries.
Gaasitoru/Gas Pipe puts in broad day light the one of the most pressing factors that will determine how the architecture of the 21st century develops is not the quest for beauty but energy. In spite of the undeniable relevance of the project, getting the authorization to install the pipe in the garden of the Biennale was no easy task. 'When we introduced the project to the board of Biennale, the first reaction was a clear no - the Italians didn't want to see this project, uncomfortable in both essence and construction, on the Biennale,' commented Maarja Kask to Baltic Business News, 'Thanks to the support of the general curator of this Biennale, Aaron Betsky, we were allowed in the end to install the gas pipe if we get permission to from all the states whose pavilion the pipe will pass in front of.' Fortunately, they didn't get any veto from Germany, Canada, the UK, Czech, Slovakia, France, the Northern states, Japan, and Russia.
The Estonian team address in a bold and tangible way a series of political issues that should be put on the table more often when discussing architecture: the growing imprint of large-scale infrastructure on contemporary landscape, the architect's position and his or her potentially critical role in relation to power; the future of energy, etc.
Images of the pipeline. The Venice Biennale of Architecture continues until Nov. 23, 2008. |
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Aristote believed that laughter is what separates us from the beasts. Today, scientists argue that non-human species, such as primates and even rats, do giggle, guffaw and burst into laugher. So if animals laugh, how about technological devices, the species we like to surround ourselves with? That's what an Interactivos? two week workshop held last August at the Centro Multimedia - Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico D.F tried to understand.
The event, lead by Zachary Lieberman, Leslie García and Alejandro Tamayo asked participants to come up with ideas and prototypes that engage with a series of questions: What mechanisms lead to laughter? What are the social and political implications? What happens if we understand laughter as a possible form of communication between humans and machines? Can machines have a sense of humour? How can machines make us laugh? What is a machine or software programme's cultural milieu? How can a machine handle the unexpected? What kind of narratives/machines can be built to provoke various feelings related to laughter?
The 8 projects developed over the workshop use hardware and software tools to create prototypes that explore the relations between machines and humour/laughter.
Participants developed computers that tell each other silly jokes once you've turned your back, images that follow you as you walk, an absurdity tracker, a robot that replies to users with media sampled memories, a machine that likes to be tickled, etc. I asked Alejandro Tamayo to give us a few details about the workshop: One of the questions that the Interactivos? workshop wanted to explore in Mexico was ' Can machines have a sense of humour?' Did you find any answer to that demand? I don't think we found an answer for that, instead we came up with more questions and ideas for future projects to explore. For me it seems possible to create machines that understand human sense of humor, as humor follows certain rules it can be abstracted and implemented into some complex algorithms that machines can follow, but creating machines with their own sense of humor is another thing. If we design a machine with a sense of humor it seemed unavoidable that we will inject our humanity into it because it is the only reference about humor we have in hand. On the other hand, humor and true laughter bring lots of benefits in terms of health to us, i wonder how this can also be applied to machines. But any way, if we were to create machine humor, will we understand it? How would we define it as humorous?
In concrete the projects of Jenny Chowdhury (Catty CPU Cliques), Carla Capeto (Sensitive Water) and Leonor Torres (J.A.-J.A. Jockey Action-Jolly Answer) raised questions related to non-human approaches to humor and laughter.
For Jenny, the idea of machine humor was directly addressed because her office computers were to make fun of their users when they were left alone. At the end Jenny came up with funny jokes, for and about humans, being told by computers. The case of Carla was different, she proposed an aquarium that would laugh when being touched, so we were all confronted with the question of how water would laugh. There were many approaches to it and many of us suggested different options ranging from timid laughter to hysterical. As a matter of fact, we are starting to discover that we are not the only exclusive animals that laugh, apparently rats do it as well when they are tickled. Finally, the project of Leonor Torres investigated the idea of a strange piece of metal that responded to tickles. Leonor recorded her own voices and reactions to tickles, so when people touched a rusty piece of metal extracted from a de-mantled car they got the strange reaction of a female giggle.
Leo's project can also drive us to think about the opposite: can we be tickled by a piece of metal? In fact during the planning of Interactivos? we found some early experiments conducted by psychologists in this area: some kind of tickling machine was developed back in 1997, it worked more or less like The Turk: there was a hidden person in a room in charge of doing tickles to other psychology students with his arm and also with a robotic arm. Apparently "the machine" was as effective as a human tickler because the patients couldn't differentiate the robotic arm from that of a human (some kind of a Turing test but for ticklishness!) but there are still some doubts about the way the experiments were conducted because after all there was a human behind.
I followed the workshop from afar by looking at the flickr images of a few friends who happened to participate to the workshop. It seems that there's quite a high dose of sense of humour in Mexico. Can you tell us something about it? Oh i don't know, i think all starts with the metro safety guards. Images of the workshop on the Medialab set and on the ones made by Alejandro and Jenny. |
