Tag Archive for ‘rotterdam’

OutOfContext – Interview between Rotterdam and Amsterdam

Don Satijn is a Dutch visual artist and educator. Tagr.tv helped M. Eugenia Demeglio realising the project of interviewing him.

The interview took place between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the 6th and 7th of June 2013. It featured: a walk in Rotterdam, a drive to Amsterdam and a visit to the artist’s exhibition in Gallery Nine in Amsterdam.

knife.hand.chop.bot @ deaf07

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.

las palmas exhibition @ deaf07

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.

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