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The story started last week: Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art and Playlist, it's not (just) about nostalgia. Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art, an exhibition curated by Domenico Quaranta for Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, explores the role played by music in the adoption and manipulation of obsolete technologies: vinyls, old computers, game platforms, etc. The format of Mediateca Expandida goes beyond the traditional exhibition format, allowing visitors to touch and play with the same instruments that the artists have developed and sometimes use in their performances, offering a lounge to listen to dozens of 8-bit music tunes, a programme of concerts, etc. Music take center stage in the exhibition but Playlist has also a very physical dimension that deals with the pleasure of manipulating and tweaking the devices and the aesthetic delectation in the vintage look of arcades and handheld consoles, breathing new life into devices which would otherwise have been given a one way ticket to the e-waste inferno after only a couple of years of existence.
Pong is an analogue recreation of the 1970s Atari arcade videogame. Released in 1972, Pong was the first videogame to achieve widespread popularity in both arcade and home console. André Gonçalves gave Pong a new twist by excluding the physics behind its programming algorithms. Instead his installation relies a physical process: it's the air blown by small fans that controls a real ping-pong ball. The machine is made of two pieces connected through a cable and located in different rooms. The first part is a coin-operated arcade wooden box (picture above) with analog joysticks, buttons and 2 tv screens, one showing the graphics and another displaying the game view.
The main part of the installation awaits you in a dark room. It is a wooden structure where all the physical action of the game occurs, filmed by a video camera. Check out this video of the installation: Because early Game Boy models had the shape and almost the weight of a brick, Game Boy musicians sometimes call them "bricks". Gijs Gieskes took the idea literally by crafting and baking a Gameboy Bricks. He then then erected a wall of Gameboy Bricks, and left ivy grew over it for archeologists to maybe uncover them one day, when all the original plastic Gameboy will have disappeared.
Joey Mariano's Juvenile Amplifier embraces the cult for chiptune with gusto. As a kid, the artist took delight in listening to the sound coming from the single mono speaker of his gameboy, but he wanted the sound to be louder. His Juvenile Amplifier beefs up the sound without the use of headphones or a large PA system.
The Hupel Pupel, by Dragan Espenschied, is a quirky little magazine of lo-tech comics created using a Game Boy camera with the built-in paint/stamp tools and a Palm running TealPaint 4.4.
With Protopixel HARDcade, by VjVISUALOOP embedded a software into a vintage videogame arcade cabinet. Visitors can create live visuals using the original joystick and buttons. The visuals are generated by the software and displayed through the monitor of the cabinet and two video projectors. The monitor displays the images at a rather blurred and slow refresh rates (15Khz), in a similar way to the '80s arcade games. The images projected on the walls are more crisp. The moving images are low resolution, have limited frame rate and set of colours, as well as loops and "old school" effects such as colour cycling and '80s style patterns. The software also includes electronic 8-bit glitch sound, related to the images displayed on the screens.
The opening of the exhibition was quite a success. Great performance by VjVISUALOOP and Jeff Donaldson/noteNdo, lovely food (as always in Asturias) and a big crowd of people who seemed to be genuinely interested. However, the number of young people was disappointingly low. Which makes me want to end with the conclusion of Kevin Driscoll and Joshua Diaz' essay for the Playlist catalog: "The artists of the Game Boy generation may be the last for whom chiptunes can hold a nostalgic appeal. Will their fans simply age with them, or will the chirping arpeggios, square waves, and creative spirirt of chiptune music similarly captivate a younger audience reared on PlayStation and the Xbox?"
Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art, the second exhibition of Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, is open until May 17, 2010 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain. Image on the homepage: Antonio Cavadini / Tonylight who just had a solo show at the Fabio Paris Art Gallery in Brescia, Italy. |
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Previously: Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art.
Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art, an exhibition curated by Domenico Quaranta for Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, explores the role played by music in the adoption and manipulation of obsolete technologies: vinyls, old computers, game platforms, etc. Playlist follows a long long trails of game-related exhibitions at Laboral (see for example Homo Ludens Ludens) and just when i thought "oh nooo! Not another one!", they managed to bring an exciting new perspective on the world of game art.
Despite its geeky, garage, masculine aura, Chiptune music is less anecdotal a theme as one might think. It didn't exactly become the new "folk music for the digital age" nor the "next step in the evolution of rock and roll" that Malcolm McLaren, the legendary ex-manager of the Sex Pistols, had forecast but that's probably part of its charm. If chiptune music had found its way towards mass culture after roughly two decades of existence, you'd see this exhibition at MOMA or the Fondation Cartier, not at a more adventurous space like Laboral. This doesn't mean that chip tune music 'failed' to reach the music charts. It's just that it would probably lose its soul if it were assimilated by corporations and turned into mainstream candy.
Chip music is low-key. Its scene is relatively small, its sound is raw and lo-fi, but more importantly, its tools are outmoded goods of mass consumption. This obsolescence of the media was at the heart of curator Quaranta's reflections. The very essence of chip music is indeed at odds with the so-called 'planned obsolescence' model that has come to be part and parcel of the industrial stream of electronic goods since the early decades of the 20th century. By 'upcycling' vintage computer and video game systems, hacking, tweaking and bringing to light their untapped potential or turning their very shortcomings into musical or visual features, the artists and computer hobbyists not only defy any assumption that their passion is only driven by nostalgia, they also go against this almost universally endorsed model of planned obsolescence. In the florid essay he wrote for the Playlist catalog, Matteo Bittanti reminds us what a great purveyor of quotes McLuhan was. He believed that "obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning." Here's the first part of my report about the exhibition.
Jeff Donaldson/noteNdo's RESET v2.0 embodies perfectly the way the 8-bit community makes the most of the defects and limitations that come with old game consoles. Each NES console has been prepared to instigate generative system crashes/malfunctions which are triggered by laser light. As the participant walks through the installation space/laser field, different audio-visual effects are produced when different beams are obstructed. The work is inspired by system glitches, or imperfections, which are unique to the 8-bit NES hardware. In provoking these errors, abstract and colourful effects, unintended by the commercial systems designers, are produced. Eat Shit, by Jeremiah Johnson/Nullsleep and Don Miller/NO CARRIER, demonstrates again artists' interest for glitches and data corruption. The interactive installation explores controlled data corruption on the Nintendo Entertainment System, based around Johann Sebastian Bach's piano piece Minuet in G.
They might be using outdated instruments but the close-knit chiptune community has its feet firmly planted in today's sharing culture. Gino Esposito wrapped all the knowledge and the years of work of micromusic.net - the first 8-bit and low-tech music Internet community platform - into microbuilder. The "community construction kit" package offers amateurs all they need to create a successful internet community. The software can be installed easily, you learn quickly how to operate the system and the package is simple to adapt and extend. In the book you can browse through the history of Internet communities, the process of building up micromusic.net and other online projects. Illustrations and graphic art work from micromusic.net artists will give you a lasting visual impression and the installation guide makes the software installation process as quick-and-easy as possible. And of course you can listen to the included audio CD.
Homage to DIY/"pirate" multicarts often found in Hong Kong markets which take multiple games and illegally cram them all on one cartridge, Paul B. Davis's aptly called 5 in 1 crams multiple artworks from the Beige catalogue. There are stylistic nods to multicart culture in the somewhat awkward main selection screen, the misspelling of the component names (this is also a reference to bootleg hip-hop records), the lack of navigation instructions, and a slightly buggy feel. However, its authentic/illegal "pirate" nature is tempered by the fact that the source codes for most Beige artworks are freely available from their website. Anyone could download and make their own edition of the original pieces if they learned the technique and could be bothered. This is the paradox of "open source" software when manifested in an art object: the object is reduced to the application of a technical skill because the code/ concepts already exist in the public domain (except, of course, for Davis' code that runs this multicart). My pictures of the shows are not as good as Domenico's but that's ok i got used to be such a lame photographer a while ago. Photo on the homepage: Don Miller/NO CARRIER, glitchNES, 2009. Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art, the second exhibition of Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, is open until May 17, 2010 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain. To be continued.... |
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First the usual warning: i don't do announcements and i don't copy/paste PR material but i also like to find exceptions to the rule. Ulla Taipale who runs Capsula, a unique programme about the intersection of art, science and nature, has set up a fantastic series of talks, workshops and field trips called Herbologies/Foraging Networks together with Andrew Gryf Paterson and Signe Pucena. The sessions are kicking out next month during the Pixelache festival (btw, check out their ongoing call for applications.) Now comes the copy-paste party!
The Herbologies/Foraging Networks programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies. The traditions of finding and knowing about wild food in the local Nordic environment are slipping away from the current generation. How can one attract their attention? With books, online maps, workshops, mobile-guided tours, open-source information or DNA code? Or learn how to grow them yourself, over the dark winter months?
The Pixelache Festival events introduce the different meeting points between the three collaborating partners, including seminar presentations by international artists and Finnish botanical experts; workshops sharing that knowledge with the public; a round-table discussion about foraging in the urban context; and a localised manifestation of the Windowfarms Project (US).
Following, in a pre-midsummer expedition to rural Rucava in Kurzeme, Western Latvia, SERDE Interdisciplinary Art Group will lead fieldwork to learn about the cultural heritage of Balts using wild plants, and create documents for the younger 'digital native' generation. Initiators and organisers: Andrew Paterson (SCO/FI), Ulla Taipale / Capsula (FI/ES) and Signe Pucena / SERDE (LV) PIXELACHE PROGRAMME OF EVENTS As part of Pixelversity. Saturday-Sunday 20-21.2.2010, Kiasma 'taka-ikkuna', 12.00-18.00. Participate in Windowfarms Finland Participatory workshop open for people to attend (as part of Pixelversity). Construction led by Mikko Laajola (FI), Niko Punin (FI), Andrew Gryf Paterson (SCO/FI), Ulla Taipale (FI) + other enthusiasts. As part of Pixelache Helsinki Festival. Friday 26.3.2010, Kerava Art Museum (Camp Pixelache), time to be confirmed. Contribution to DIY/Bio-tech/Open-source Hardware themes with short presentation by Niko Punin (FI) of 'LetsGrowIt' and remote/recorded presentation by Britta Riley (US) about the Windowfarms Project. Saturday 27.3.2010, Kiasma Seminar Room, 13.00-16.45. Herbologies/Foraging Networks Seminar Introduction to full Herbologies/Foraging Networks programme (10mins) *Cultural Heritage* (50mins)
*Urban Space* (1hr 15 mins) *Information & Sharing* (1hr 30 mins) Saturday 27.3.2010, Kiasma Seminar Room, 17.30-18.30.
VivoArts Workshop with Adam Zaretsky (US) American bio-artist Adam Zaretsky will lead a performative workshop inviting to get involved with plant DNA using DIY methods and household implements. Sunday 28.3.2010, Botanical Garden Kaisaniemi (Linkola & Elfving Rooms), 11.00-14.00. Herbologies Workshops Wild plant expert Ossi Kakko (FI) and artist-producer Signe Pucena (LV) will share traditional methods for processing herbs through fermentation (villivihannesten hapatuskurssi) and vodka tincture-making respectively. Sunday 28.3.2010, Kiasma 'taka-ikkuna', 18.00-19.00. Windowfarms Project Closing Dismantling event with music. MIDSUMMER EXPEDITION TO KURZEME, LATVIA In collaboration with Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts SERDE (LV), Expedition to Rucava, June 20-25, 2010. An expedition of fieldwork will take place in Rucava, Kurzeme region, building upon SERDE's experience of engaging cultural heritage subjects as an arts organisation. Here the Herbologies/Foraging Networks project aims to preserve and document traditional cultural values related to herb-gathering in Latvia, promoting and developing a more diverse society than the traditional understanding of the cultural manifestations of the past and today, the identification and assignment needs. Several persons from the assembled network: Kultivator (SE), Klaipeda Cultural Communication Centre (LT), Ossi Kakko (FI) as well as coordinators Andrew Gryf Paterson (SCO/FI) and Ulla Taipale (FI), are invited to Latvia from Sweden, Finland and Lithuania, along with Latvian experts, cultural workers and other documenters. 'Documentation Sprint', SERDE Art Residency Centre, Aizpute, June 26-30 2010. Using a method from extreme software development and project management, 'Sprints' produce collectively-made artefacts (software, manuals, etc.) quickly over a set period of time. In this case, several of the key invited collaborators will be invited to stay longer, to write up the fieldwork in the form of stories, charts, manuals, recipies, reports, diagrams, and process media or data. Several information and media experts will be invited from Riga to help with the process, as well as nomination of persons who would translate as much textual content as possible into the different regional languages (Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, English). The ambition of the sprint will be to make a proof layout of a new 'Traditional Booklet', published by SERDE, and online documentation, to be ready in September 2010. Expressions of interest to join the expedition should be sent to herbologies [-at-] pixelache.ac by 30th April 2010.
The programme is supported by an Art and Culture Production grant from Kultur Kontakt Nord, AVEK (The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture) and the Austrian Embassy in Helsinki. Previously: Interview with Ulla Taipale from Capsula, Day 1 at the VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics: Seed broadcasting workshop. Photo on the homepage: Big Window Farm at Eyebeam. |
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Publisher Princeton Architectural Press says: Interactive Architecture is a processes-oriented guide to creating dynamic spaces and objects capable of performing a range of pragmatic and humanistic functions. These complex physical interactions are made possible by the creative fusion of embedded computation (intelligence) with a physical, tangible counterpart (kinetics). A uniquely twenty-first century toolbox and skill set--virtual and physical modeling, sensor technology, CNC fabrication, prototyping, and robotics--necessitates collaboration across many diverse scientific and art-based communities. Interactive Architecture includes contributions from the worlds of architecture, industrial design, computer programming, engineering, and physical computing. These remarkable projects run the gamut in size and complexity. Full-scale built examples include a house in Colorado that programs itself by observing the lifestyle of the inhabitants, and then learns to anticipate and accommodate their needs. Interactive Architecture examines this vanguard movement from all sides, including its sociological and psychological implications as well as its potentially beneficial environmental impact.
To be honest, i wasn't expecting to be so impressed with the book. I've read and even reviewed e few books on similar topics. They are sexy, glossy, intelligent, packed with jaw-dropping examples of interactive architecture, they have the right amount of geekiness (it feels serious but not to the point of putting off a dilettante like me), their excitement is contagious. This book goes further though. Interactive Architecture explores the trends, promises, means and ways of IA as well as its sociological and psychological implications. Kemp and Fox embrace innovation and cutting edge developments but they are also wary of being over-enthusiastic. Throughout the book they tackle issues that are essential to but also challenging for the field of IA: its economical feasibility, the need for a new pedagogical approach, the necessity of a cross-discipline communication, the questions raised by privacy, ethics, environmental impact or convenience. The book doesn't waste time on the fairground aspects of everything interactive. Right from the start, the authors question the way interactivity is conceived today by refering to the pioneering works and reflections done by the cyberneticians of the early '60s. Their idea of interactivity was a two-way street, a 'conversation' between the human and the machine, no a mere reactive approach. Their work and ideas are coming back in favour today thanks to the likes of Usman Haque and Ruairi Glynn. The works that illustrate the book keep you on a roller-coaster: you might read about the way interactive architecture can help care for the elderly but a few pages later you enter sexier waters with Daan Roosegaarde's 4D-Pixel installation or with Servo + Smart Studio's Lattice Archipelogics. Interactive Architecture is a very approachable -but intense- crash course for anyone who look for an in-depth study of the IA field. It is also a book to put into the hands of the most devoted expert. Some of the projects and directions discussed by the book:
Image on the homepage by Rob Kassabian. |
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Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art, an exhibition curated by Domenico Quaranta for Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, explores the role played by music in the adoption and manipulation of obsolete technologies: vinyls, old computers, game platforms, etc. I'm going to be the usual procrastinator and promise that i'll come back with a report later on this week. I might be a vile idler but at least i'm a fairly generous one. First, here's a link to the kick-ass catalog of the exhibition with essays by the curator and other experts, a brief description of the dozens of artworks selected and a list of the concerts that accompany the show.
Another link, this time to a series of videos by Raquel Meyers. I didn't know her name before visiting Playlist. Shame on me! She's one of the most famous and active VJs and video makers of the chiptune music community. More importantly, she is extremely talented.
Playlist - Playing Games, Music, Art is the second exhibition of Laboral's new Mediateca Expandida, a multidisciplinary space dedicated to cultural projects hovering at the border between mainstream culture and experimental research. You can visit it until May 17, 2010 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain. Photo on the homepage: Raquelmeyers. Photo by Florence Bourgade. |
