Archive for the ‘english’ Category

Page 20 of 24

one day of off offf

by Ella Esque

barcelona
is famous for a lot of things, for the lovely beaches, palmtree avenues, interior design shops on every corner, parties, pakistanis selling beer and samosas on every plaza all night long, its modernistic and contemporary architecture, its fashion victims and their bad taste for glasses, all those fucking “guiris” and last but no t least the great number of festivals (i daresay each weekend one)
one of them is the OFFF festival that features current movements in multimedia design. it takes place at the CCCB (curios all thes triple letter words for festivals and museums here).
but it seems to be a quite barcelonian problem that for locals its hard to manage to buy tickets on time because of the maniac number of foreigners who want to connect with all the lovely advantages that this city has to offer.
so it results that the tickets were sold out one whole month before the fesival actually took place. even our guest (erasmus paid holiday) university BAU didn’t manage to get tickets for their studens (us).
so the only thing that we ended up being able to do is stroll around the festival chillout area, which was outside, and find out when and how the people got their tickets and if there were any freebies.
how you might have figured out already this article not really treats the art that took place at the festival, no, its about the art of getting a ticket.
so find out for yourself how the people did it:

actually it was quite interesting to talk to all those people visiting the festival because we found out a few interesting things: first of all few people paid the tickets themselves. lesser people really are from barcelona [!?$], you better get up earlier to buy your tickets (or get your fabulous press acreditation), this is the best way to get in touch with the creative lot, and the feeling in this city is like a “piefkesaga” in disneyland with people who talk catalan instead of tyrolean.
in the end we felt like outcasts because we were the only ones without those shiny glowing neon unreachable bracelets.
the issue

we didnt catch OFFF here in barcelona but we just might make it half way round the globe to OFFF in mexico…

if you like to know more about offf, read some résumés:
*h2omagazine (spanisch)
*ntmy (english)

and some slasher:
*otro blog más (spanisch)
*tink (english)

Tags: , , , , , .
in english, offf, pictures, text and video 1 Comment

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 !!

Tags: , , , , , , , , .
in Donaufestival 07, english, performance, text and video 1 Comment

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 ?

Tags: , , , , , , .
in Donaufestival 07, english, exhibition and video 0 Comments

Interview with Peter Horvath

by luca barbeni

Peter Horvath

Today we talk with Peter Horvath, who has recently inaugurated a retrospective exhibition at the ACA Gallery of the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Atlanta.

Horvath presents a new DVD-installation, called Boulevard, together with other cinematic DVD’s and Internet-based video. He’s a pioneer of the genre, realizing a bridge between the nouvelle vague, the experimental cinema of the 70′s and the new possibilities of the browser-based cinema, the so-called webcinema.

Peter Horvath


LUCA: In this solo exhibition, you will present your new piece “Boulevard”, what is it about?
HORVATH: Boulevard is a 3 channel video installation. It follows two enigmatic, nameless people through their nighttime rendezvous, their drives through California canyons, their secrets, their confessions. I wanted to create a kind of intimate theatre, accessible from the web browser, a dreamlike odyssey that examines multiple states of consciousness within a shadow of family histories.

Filmed in Los Angeles, mostly at night and in the Laurel Canyon/Hollywood Blvd area close to Mullholland Drive, it’s the first work I’ve done that is made for both the web and an installation situation, constructed so that once finished for the web it could be re-constructed into 3 separate DVD’s that are projected simultaneously.

LUCA: What are the influences of the web to cinema, and how has cinema mutated migrating on a network?
HORVATH: I’ve always been interested in fragmenting my narratives, and I’ve done so in past work by having multiple windows open and close within the web-browser environment, playing out various parts of the story. Boulevard is slightly different from past work in that there are no pop-up windows, and instead I’ve divided the screenspace into 3 panels of video. In the web version there are randomly placed texts that appear below the videos that tell a different part of the narrative, fragmenting things further.

Peter Horvath

LUCA: I think webcinema, particularly, is an individual experience, like cinema; how did you manage to install your webcinema pieces in an open space?

HORVATH: I try to create intimate spaces to project the works large scale, but of course the intimacy is different compared to the one on one we have when interacting with the computer. With the ACA show, we constructed 4 rooms, 1 for each work.

LUCA: Talking about cinema, who are your favourite contemporary authors?
HORVATH: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Scorsese, Truffault (can he be considered contemporary?) but my influences lean more toward artists than filmmakers; Bill Viola, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Francis Bacon and the Dadaist Hannah Hoch to name a few.

Tags: , , , .
in english, lectures, pictures and text 0 Comments

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.

Tags: , , , , , .
in DEAF07, english, exhibition, performance and video 0 Comments

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

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
in DEAF07, english, lectures, text and video 0 Comments

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.

Tags: , , , , , , .
in DEAF07, english, exhibition and video 0 Comments

amazon noir @ deaf07

by muk

Ubermorgen.com in cooperation with Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico are digitaly stealing books from amazon.

Tags: , , , , .
in DEAF07, english, exhibition and video 0 Comments

las palmas exhibition @ deaf07

by muk

las palmas… sounds like sea, beach and cocktails ! but it´s the name of a recently upgraded building on a small old-harbour-like corner on the other side of erasmusbridge. it used to be a small piece of freedom there, before they build the bridge. people living on boats, squatter in the brick building, which is now adapted and called Las Palmas. surrounded by towers of business. things are changing, when cities are growing and bridges are built.

the exhibtion is in the basement of the building, in a dark hall with big cement-columns, which has very special atmosphere for the works shown. it somehow starts to suck u inside…. into the black hole – full of strange freaky interacting media art. a real good selection and overview of worldwide contemporary electronic art.

Before entering the mainhall you pass by a ladder consisting of 24 TV screens stacked up to a vertical column. Go Up! Go Up! (by Hu Jie Ming) On the screens you see someone climbing up. The audience intervenes the climbing scene by either shouting at them or making noises, the climbers fall down hopelessly, and start to climb once again.

Tags: , , , , , , .
in artists, DEAF07, english, exhibition, text and video 0 Comments

Recent Tweets

Authors

Coverage

Creative Commons License