the full frame festival is a small but powerful festival in vienna. the motivation of the founders was to bring art films (who are normally screened in exhibitions on video monitors) cinemas screens. astonishingly also that size was too little for the organisers so the last full frame festival took place in the vienna planetarium. in a cupola projection. wow! how titanic!
after the presentation we had the pleasure to stroll with felix kubin thou the prater. under a umbrella…how kubi(n)stic!
Yearly Archive for 2008
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I made a playlist of videos i found on youtube from this years ARS Electronica Festival. Most of them from the FH St. Pölten.
This years theme of the ARS Electronica Festival “a new cultural economy” has been a big challenge for Gerfried Stocker, Christine Schöpf and their team. Maybe my expectations are far to high in concerns of this topic because if i look back to the festival i can´t find a dispute with or a deep investigation into this theme. We are allready familiar with the advantages of web 2.0 and open source at least for us users, but what about the dark side of the holy participation movement ? I think this comes down to a very basic question about ARS Electronica and their positioning. Their idea is a common consideration of art, technology and society far from technical and industrial interests as they write in their pressmap. At least it´s their idea. My reception was kind of different, but i didn´t attend all conferences and lectures to be honest. To present the “University of Tokyo” as a kind of figurehead is at least straightforward in our new cultural economy which heads towards creative industries. Alright, enough complaints. Like every year you find some interesting works out of this huge range of works, and some i even managed to document. funny that two of this works are out of tokyo university. even though the most of the works there were kind of unsubstantial i found some funny ideas and charming realisation like in the installation “ephemeral melody”. but check out the videos…
check out also the official ARS project we guide you where visitors where invited to participate and document the festival.
HEHE are Helen Evans (FR/UK) and Heiko Hansen (FR/DE). Both completed an MA inc omputer related design at the RCA in 1999 and are now living in Paris. Their project “Nuage Vert” won the Golden Nica in the Category Hybrid Art, it is part of Pollstream – a collection of ideas, forms and images that explore man-made clouds.
Because of it’s performative nature, only the documentation of the project was exhibited in the O.K. – therefore another project of Pollstream was shown – apparently for the first time in a public space. Smoking Lamp (2006) requires a smoking audience – on most places on earth this is a vital problem, but not in Linz. Simple but very nice installation:
The winning Project of this years Prix Ars is the Image Fulgurator by Julius von Bismarck (DE) – with good reason. The project is based on technology that’s been out there for the last 40 years. All it does ist to invert the concept of an analog SLR camera and turns it into a projector.
A flash is mounted on the back of a SLR camera and connected to a flash sensor. As soon as a flash from another camera is recognized, the flash goes of, shines through the the dia thats inserted in the camera and projects the image for a few milliseconds – just long enough to be recognized by other camera that triggered the flash initially.
A detailed description can be found on his homepage.
According to Students for a free Tibet (SFT) and a Facebook Group, the “Beijing6” – James Powderly GRL, Brian Conley Alive In Baghdad, Jeffrey Rae, Jeff Rae, Michael Liss, Tom Grant) are free and on their way home.
This happened after the AFP reported on Friday, that “Beijing police said Thursday it had handed out 10-day detention terms to six foreigners believed by an overseas activist group to be pro-Tibet campaigners involved in Olympic protests this week.”
The IHT wrote yesterday, that Washington’s top diplomat in China pressed the government to immediately free foreign activists jailed for protesting at the Olympics and criticized Beijing on Sunday for failing to use the games to show “greater tolerance and openness.”
My guess is: They just don’t care anymore since the games are over and want to get rid of them – asap. We’re waiting for a Statement of the persons concerned and will publish it here – asap.
Internationally known artist, technologist and co-founder of the Graffiti Research Lab, James Powderly, was detained in Beijing on tuesday early morning while preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. According to a “twitter” message received today by Students for a Free Tibet at approximately 5 pm Beijing Standard Time, Powderly had been detained by Chinese authorities at 3 am. His current whereabouts remain unknown.
The work, “The Green Chinese Lantern,” uses a 400 milliwatt handheld green laser with micro-stencils to beam simple messages and images up to three stories high on surfaces such as billboards, buildings, and bridges. The Laser Stencil technology was developed in conjunction with Students for a Free Tibet.
Before that, Powderly and other members of the Graffiti Research Lab were dis-invited from Synthetic Times, a new media art exhibition at Beijing’s National Media Art Museum of China, due to their uncompromising stance on freedom of expression.
James is proud to have been kicked out of the Synthetic Times new media art exhibition in Beijing because he wouldn’t censor his little art project. James wonders why organizations like the MoMA, Parsons, Eyebeam, Ars Electronica and many other arts and cultural institutions around the world who claim to support free speech and expression would participate in a show like this. But they did! It was after being kicked to the curb by the show’s curator that James connected with Students for a Free Tibet and decided he would go to China anyway and do what he though was right in support of Tibet, Taiwan, free speech and the people of China. James lives, if indeed he is alive, in the County of Kings, Brooklyn, and teaches at the Communication Design and Technology program at Parsons the New School for Design. I am James Powderly and I approve of this message.
From freetibet2008.org, Photos on Flickr
Beijing: Activists detained after lighting up “Free Tibet” LED Throwies banner near Olympics site from Students for a Free Tibet on Vimeo.
Also yesterday, five activists with Students for a Free Tibet were detained after displaying a banner that spelled out “Free Tibet” in LED Throwies, the open source technology pioneered by the Grafitti Research Lab and popularized online and worldwide. This brings the number of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) protestors detained in Beijing to 42.
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