Author Archive for muk

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destroy athens

by muk

After this unusual hot summer in greece – in some areas it had beyond 1000°C – nothing is like before, except the government. A wide area of the countryside is burned, so three curators (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio und Augustine Zenakos) decided to finaly destroy athens too and organized athens first biennial “destroy athens“. They choosed the best place for such an event – the Technopolis, in gazi. the place used to be a old factory, a gaswork and has very special athmosphere… not only because i love old factories. It doesn´t have this very nice fucked up style like arsenale in venice anymore, but for the biennial they importet italian style – the area has been transfigured by the italian architect group called Gruppo A 12.

lets start with the entrance !!! ahhh, poli orea !

the venue is seperated in 6 parts/buildings – called days – two german artists start day 1 with destruction ! On seven screens you can see the videoinstallation “Detonation Deutschland” – blasting buildings after 2nd world war in germany. whatelse happens on day 1 – ahh, chaos of course – that´s at least the propagated common sense about graffiti sprayers and left wing groups… sorry, we mixed something up, wasn´t that all before day 1 ?! anyway, it´s not about building something – maybe they wana destroy athens in 6 days ! that´s also why there is no day 7 !? or what happens if u leave the exhibition ?! Ok, so in day 1 there was a chaotic room installation with loads of pictures on 3 screens – 6 hours loop, and psytrance and other partyflyers on the wall – Total Freedom !! is what they want. void network

Outside marc bijl (NL) claims “back to the fundamentals of power vs force” while the sun is still shinning.

On day 2 you find a lot about greek culture. artists and philosophers reflections…. democracy – demos kai kratia – people and power !? aja, what i said in beginning – the government is still the same and even the king is back ! thank god only in an installation of edward lipski (UK), called “the king” The most impressed i was by Stelios Faitakis, a young greek artist, who is master of painting contemporary orthodox icon

check them out together with some more pictures & impressions…

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se mi sei vicino

by muk

The interactive installation by sonia cillari “se mi sei vicino” is a masterpiece of implementing human-body-interface. “se mi sei vicino” means “If you are close to me”. A human body is standing on a platform which functions also as a big electromagnetic-field-sensor. Projections on the walls are like digital shadows with the viewpoint of a classical architectual principle (front- and side-view). These shadows consists of a physical modelling structure as an equivalent of the human body. so the image and the sound are reacting on the emf of the body, who reacts like an antenna… if somebody is getting closer the sensors recognizes the interference in the emf and affect image and sound of the installation. it´s a combination of performance and interaction.. dive into the performance as the actor not only passive spectator…

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in ars electronica 2007, artists, english, performance, text and video 0 Comments

intriguee

by muk

ok, you are walking through marienstrasse and suddenly somebody wants to hug u ? this somebody even try to kiss u out of nothing ? what are u doing ? start screaming and running away ? ok, either you met a person with mental disorder or you are in the middle of a performance ? alright, it´s ARS Electronica, so it has to be a performance ! so, where is the camera ? ah, no camera, just a guy with a mobile laughing about your reaction. and the person just kissed you turns around and keep on walking like a robot…. it´s Intriguee, a project by silver & hanne rivrud, it questions the role of simulation in our everyday lives, and tries to reverse the simulation back into reality…. who is the avatar actually ?

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Amagatana

by muk

amagatana means “rainy sword” in japanese. it´s an umbrella with bluetooth connection making sounds when being moved. it has been developed by yuichiro katsumoto at the keio university inakage lab in japan.

watch the performance @ marienstrasse @ ars electronica 2007.

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fight club @ donaufestival

by muk

realtekken ! the people from god´s entertainment know how to cross the borders between reality and game. it really made me happy to see this manic performance, especially because the music-program this evening was kind of chippy. the performance took place in a backdoor-room of the stadtsaal and there were only limited tickets. while people were gathering inside you could feel the atmosphere of somethings going to happen and you already could smell perspiration and violence. it was mesmerising to feel the tuning of the common mood when the first fighters were beating each other. i am not fascinated in fights and even don’t play computer-games, but you couldn’t escape this ecstatic atmosphere. i was even playing in the final round. ok, i (we) lost, but it was a crazy feeling to move a real body by pushing buttons.

it works like this – there are 2 players with controllers & 2 real fighters connected through light-signals on the floor. the player pushes the controller and the fighter sees the light-signal and moves the corresponding limb. very interesting was that two players declared a strike and didn’t want to push the buttons. “ok, if we don’t play – u don’t have to fight” – a pretty ineffective effort of political correctness, because they were immediately mocked. but actually a wise statement ;-)

the rules were clear and everyone intended to play – even the fighters, so no one was forced. but the fighters definitely felt the pain of the hits caused by the players.

real pain !! not just subtracted points !!!

one difference to computer-games was also that the fighters were the real heroes and not the players, and of course they really deserved it !!

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lounge @ donaufestival

by muk

Krems, known as a kind of conservative city in lower austria is the mainspot of the annual contemporary music & art festival “donaufestival“. Tomas Zierhofer-Kin and his team are bringing international high quality program to krems. read his statement. Apart from international contemporary musicprogram, which is the mainpart of the festival, it shows new pulsing mediaart and performances. This years theme was “unprotected games” and a not to be missed work in this context is of course the painstation

another immersive installation in the lounge was “pause” from

Lynn Pook & Julien Clauss

u lay down in a hammok, get earplugs, get connected with contactspeakers, close your eyes & disconnect normal perception.
relax & go deeply inside. its like lying in a samadhi-tank.
you can hear your heart beat … poch poch ! but is it really your heart beating ?
… your bones making sounds – or just your mind experiencing inner visions ?
noise & resonance…in your bones and in your body !

the sound u experience is a composed piece of 18 min.

also they found H.A.P.P.Y – the infomonster in the danube. a huge fluffy something is sitting in the lounge, next to a terminal, where u could ask this monster – and it had an answer for any question.

why didn´t u stay in danube ?

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knife.hand.chop.bot @ deaf07

by muk

a new breathtaking, freaky work at las palmas is the knife.hand.chop.bot by 5VOLTCORE

5VOLTCORE… the guys with the nasty robots… their work shockbot “corejulio” won at transmediale05 and since that travels all the relevant media art festivals and exhibitions. The knife.hand.chop.bot is their new work, first time presented at DEAF07.

Do you have the guts to put your hand inside a robot, who does the knife hand game ? interact and die ? or just cry ?

adrenaline guaranteed !

description by 5voltcore :

5VOLTCORE is about to build a self-fulfilling cybernetic system, that plays with the senses and perceptions of the User and the sensors and the processes of the Machine.

The Robot is equipped with a knife that the Machine uses to s(t)imulate the test of courage – a kind of game known as “Mumblety-Peg”. The User puts his/her hand into the Machine and starts the knife game at the push of a button. The knife starts to hit the space between the fingers, first slowly then continually getting faster. The Machine knows where to chop by receiving signals of a sensor that guides the knife to the place between the fingers.

Electric contacts are mounted on the support block of the Machine, where the hand is situated. These contacts are activated as soon as the first “nervous sweat” appears that turns the skin into a conductor. Subsequently the computer becomes disturbed by the electric current that is now transmitted via the skin.

This has two effects: on the one hand, sounds are generated by the closure of the contacts (circuit bending) that can either be interpreted as warning or act as an additional source of stress. On the other hand, they can have an effect on the position of the knife which is controlled by the computer and thereby hurt the potential perpetrator of the disturbance.

Essential to the set-up is the the feedback loop i.e. the circularity between computer, robot and User. It instantiates the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy:
The human is right by assuming that the Machine can fail. The Machine can fail because the human assumes.

This puts the courage or mettle of the User to the test. In case the User can’t keep their trust in the Machine and start to sweat, this “embodied rationality” causes fear and sweat that pertubates the function of Machine.

The work is about the a fascinating paradox that results from this close relationship between humans and artifacts. A fascination that tries to run a risk and avoid it at the same time.
Therefore we like games that, by playing them, put their rules to the test.

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seminar interrupting realities @ deaf07

by muk

The Seminar interrupting realities was about artistic approaches to mixed reality. About possibilities, visions and the borders between virtual and real, 2nd life and 1st life.

A very interesting project in the virtual world of art is common grounds from workspace unlimited (founded by Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke) Startet in Belgium it has 3 terminals (Ghent, Montreal and Rotterdam) This Terminals are in the physical environment of the virtual space you can explore. So you walk virtualy through the building you are in – you are doublepresent, physical and virtual. Your virtual representation is not only your avatar walking around, it´s also your image is transported into the world of workspace unlimited. In different rooms you have different possibilities of interaction. e.g. in a conferenceroom, you can comunicate with other users – their webcamimages are projected virtualy on the walls of the conferenceroom.

EI 4 (Exercise in Immersion 4) from Marnix de Nijs also connects physical with simulated world, a game starting on the border to reality. Wearing a special designed crashsuit with camera and HMD you start in the electronic reproduction of your surrounding physical world. But starting to move around – an unknown virtual environment is taking over. You should be familiar with his work Run Motherfucker Run.

Another very interesting speaker was Armando Menicacci (F), director of Laboratoire Médiadanse, Anomos He talked about the complexity of movement and gestures of a body, problems of tracking and analysing the data… It´s like dancing and sports, while sports has objective measureable datas, dance is based on subjective expression. Out of a tracked movement you will not get an expression or meaning of the movement, just datas like direction, position & duration. to get an idea of what he was talking about you can check the video of the tracking workshop, which he hold together with Christian Delecluse, Cyrille Henry (pmpd-library), Sher Doruff (Waag Society, Amsterdam), Stan Wijnans Cliff Randell from the University of Bristol, UK

After a livechat in 2nd life the seminar closed with a realtimeperformance in 2nd life from David “DC” Spensley (US), a.k.a. DanCoyote Antonelli (Second Life), cultural producer and artist.

2nd life – either u like it or not. more boring than 1st life ? or is it getting your real life allready ? as a somehow copy of existing physical world it´s not a 2nd life i am interested in. why does it need gravity ? even the architecture looks like in our known physical world, and the avatars have human bodies. i better stay in 1st life ! where i don´t need a mouse to move around ! and just integrate my virtual presence in 1st life, but not in realtime !

but have a look at the performance from David “DC” Spensley – skydancer. at least he disconnects gravity

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evening of ludic society @ deaf07

by muk

Marguerite Charmante in collusion with Fleshgordo created the Ludic Society in Bilbao Spain in 2005 as an international association of game practitioners and thinkers who seek to provoke the new artistic research discipline of ludics or indulgent play. Usually for members only, on this night anyone could gamble for membership.

realplay ! the evening started with a play taking 5 people out of the audience with the mission to bring and rfid-tagged flower to their instructed destination. with googleearth overlay you could follow the game. rfid-tags. in your body – in your city. tag your environment, tag your life, tag or die !! play life ! go ape ! the ludics have very good ideas about plays. they extend the field and connect virtual with physical world, move your bones – not the mouse. they sell play ! no games !


in artists, DEAF07, english, lectures, performance, text and video 2 Comments

more videos from exhibtion @ deaf07

by muk

SE/30 (Code31) is an installation of 20, almost 20 year old Macintosh SE-computers. The installation is based on the principle of cellular automata, every SE/30 is a cel that adapts to its environment and forms collaborative patterns. The sound is modulated and the images are plotted by the status of each computer that generates the sound and images. In the realm of General Midi and Quicktime Musical Instruments the aesthetics of failure are a necesity. Digital artefacts distort mobile phone-like timbres to abstract structures…

experiments in galvanism (by Garnet Hertz) A miniature webserver is implanted in the body of a frog specimen, which is suspended in a clear glass container. Through an ethernet cable connected to the embedded webserver, remote viewers can trigger movement in either the right or left leg of the frog, thereby updating Luigi Galvani’s original 1786 experiment causing the legs of a dead frog to twitch simply by touching muscles and nerves with metal.

Surrounded (Yang Zhenzhong) is a circular installation of 8 synchronized videos. It explores the contemporary preoccupation with questions of identity and perception, and the ability of images to turn apathy into anticipation, and ordinariness into desirability.

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