This performance was one of the reasons why i was really happy to be at the ars.
it started quite slow – including my nervous soul getting bored – but as soon as a few of the pieces were turned on and rotating, a really great sound collage emerged which i fear is impossible to document: you just have to stand between this swarm of speakers in order to experience this installation. here is a short movie anyway to give you an impression:
the more unhappy you are, the more ice cream you need – thats the simple principle of this machine.
the concept says that i the machine uses a voice stress analysis in order to figure out how much ice cream you need – but see yourself:
thank you james for beeing the best proband ever!
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.
It’s never an easy job to establish a new theme – especially not when you are the very first one…
this is exactly what the guy’s from the Streamfest are doing: organizing a media art festival in a wonderful area – that has never heard about media art before.
In the region of Salento – at the very bottom of italy – the Streamfest happened from 26th to 28th of july. the location suited the kind of event very well – a 60ies style concrete building industrial building, now used as a cultural center.
We had a very warm welcome and i have to admit that the italien way of celebrating a festival limited my abilities of covering the festival, so i decided to show a nice little collection of works that were presented there.
my resume: the lack of visitors was a problem caused by the fact that the theme of the festival is new to the region, the event itself was well done with great efforts in details like DJ sets and artist support.
by ka and axolotl
even though sonar is mostly known for the electronic music part we are arty eneugh to almost skip the music part and go straight on to the multimedia section. clearly for our coverage we will focus on that “mostly” secret part of the festival!
the multimedia section was split into: sonarmatica, sonarama, sonarcinema, sonarextra and sonar a la carte.( wow what fantastic creativity of name creations) sonarmatica the multimedia exhibition features the topic magic. sonarama takes place in the casm (centro de arte santa monica) and shows high level multimedia live performances. sonarcinema: the name stands for itselfs and finally sonarextra presents external exhibitions.
now with the experience of all the different components of the festival, its quite clear that the day part is the much more sophisticated one. of course the nightly sessions have amazing names to offer, but the huge number of people and the humongous size of the stages (four) provokes nightmare-like impressions. you feel quite anonymous, lost and like a walking wallet. furthermore, to top the size of the halls they put an autodrom into the fetival area! no joke!
but suprisingly the day program is challenging, acts like khan of finland, planningtorock, fm3 featuring blixa bargeld (video) and even the buddha machine startled us. their unusual performances were presenting more than performing only music but going into various levels of performance art.
in the following articels we will present some single artworks to give you an overview of what the festival had to present.
first step :-|
by axolotl and ka
it was quite easy to be reminded to organize everything in time because of huge smiley posters all over town.
the smiley symbol seems to be the main merchandising source this year. we have a number of different theories about the use of this icon. for one it is a trademark and we were wondering if there is a connection involving loads of money. also it was widely used as a symbol for the 80ies acid house movement. an this brings us directly to the last reason: (as you might remember) there were a huge amount of xtc pills that had exactly this symbol engraved 8-)
also we had to discover that now this festival is as far from underground as vienna is from the sea.
not that it is only the fault of sonar, as we had a big phantasy of this cool festival that it can surely not fit. and partly because, well, only one phrase: SELL OUT! :(
almost immediately after the “your payment was recieved” mail the follow-up message told us about the wonderful world of SONAR merchandising this year. the flagship item is the somewhat boboesque adidas-SONAR-vinyl bag “free” for acreditation holders (of which finally we are proud owners) yupiiieeee.
and in good old bobo attitude the guy next to us (of course he was viennese) stated that the vinyl bag really is quite small (we estimate a maximum of 8 discs fit into the bag – good for minimal techno or style but bad for turntabelists)
we found out that the sum of 3500€ buys you a place in the bag for your own commercial insert. the bag exists in a limited edition of 4000 pieces. that’s nearly 1 euro per bag, man *:D
as you can see from the picture, they could’ve spent more thoughts or money on the design.
for the notes, check out the flickr site
after our first contact with the festival (so far we only picked up our bags) we as tagr.tv members officially tag the smiley logo as “not be used again in the next ten years”. we are quite pessimistic concerning the future of our sms conversations.
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
as an endless number of smileys pass by, the capitalist character of the festival becomes more and more evident.
with the price of almost 50€ per night for entering (if you buy single tickets), we were wondering how expensive drinks will be on the inside. so we are already making plans how to smuggle in huge amounts of beer, but no worry, we have our super special SONAR bags and are allowed using the super special “accreditations only” entrance. :)
%*[] (as you might not know this particular one stands for “super toasted”)
these are our first impressions. more when we report from the inside tomorrow when the festival actually begins.
sorrowful we had to accept that we could not make it to the makeart festival, but we could still do our web 2.0 job and asked some people on flickr to join the makeart07 flickr group. it looks like there were not too many photographers at the festival who uploaded their stuff to flickr – but the ones who did are great. please enjoy some great pictures from portier, thanks to manuel braun (www.decept.org) and flickr user yesyesnono for sharing their photos!
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 !!
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.
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 !
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