By
Alice Pfeiffer on
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at
10:00 am
Viewers Lounging at Exhibit "En Maillot de Bain (In A Bathing Suit)"
A new gallery for video art, Vidéoclubparis offers a single, hybrid space with two parallel modes of screening. The first is a monthly, online exhibition of a dozen young artists, centered around a variety of themes (from ‘soundtrack’ to ‘bathing suit’, among many others); presented with basic information about the pieces and their creators. The second part is a live screening-event organized for each opening, in unlikely, semi-private places ranging from a sauna to a Bollywood video store. By seeking out unique locations for screenings, the event challenges the idea of the formal white cube – an aspect that is emphasized by the parallel screenings on the web. “The aim is to create bipolar screenings, we’re trying to do the high jump between watching videos online and taking people to a place completely unexpected,” said Stéphanie Cottin, co-founder of the organization, “the two work well together, because the extravagance of the events balances out the conventionalism of the online curation.”
Vidéoclubparis emerged out of Cottin and partner Bernard Guégan’s fascination for video rental machines placed outside video stores all over the capital – holes in the wall, which have been increasingly unpopular since the arrival of the Internet. “We like the idea of a cinema at home, and today, the closest thing is YouTube,” said Guégan, “so we wanted to keep the idea of diffusion of both the stores and the Internet.”
By
John Michael Boling on
Friday, June 4th, 2010 at
1:00 pm
The installation "capacitive body" is a modular light system that reacts to the sound of its environment. Each custom built module consists of an electroluminescent light wire linked to a piezoelectric sensor and a microcontroller. Through its modular setup it can easily be adapted to various urban spaces.
The received notion of the public sphere in fact melds an array of narrative and structural elements into a domain of expressive possibility whose center of attention serves both aesthetic and intersubjective concerns. This commingling entails two dynamic affordances that have been especially open to manipulation through new media art: the presence of architecture as sculptural object, and the use of projective strategies for pluralistic communication. The latter works as a new branch of street performance, not for actors, but for media. The sense of novelty here is more than mechanical; it compacts the distance between human and machine, the latter increasingly assuming roles played by the former, but organizes both in a new coordinate space that is neither entirely physical/real nor virtual/technological.
By
Ceci Moss on
Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at
12:30 pm
Takeshi Murata's Melter 2 at Gosen Skole from "Keep On Moving, Don't Stop"
I tracked down curator Hanne Mugaas, one of the organizers behind New York's Art Since the Summer of '69, for a 1 question interview, à la Rafaël Rozendaal's One Question Interview blog. Mugaas is the first to curate a new public video art initiative in Stavanger, Norway called Public Screens. In the spirit of Boston's Lumen Eclipse or Creative Time's At 44 1/2, Public Screens presents video art around the city on large public screens. Mugaas's exhibition for this new project "Keep On Moving, Don’t Stop" brings together animations by a young generation of artists who grew up under the specter of the internet, television and video games. Artists include Michael Bell-Smith, Vidya Gastaldon, Ezra Johnson, Yui Kugimiya, Takeshi Murata, Adam Shecter, and Espen Friberg. (More shots of the exhibit after the jump.) Given the topic of the show, I thought it would be fitting to ask Hanne about her childhood exposure to animation.
What was your favorite animated television show as a child and why?
My favorite animation as a kid was Flåklypa Grand Prix (Pinchcliffe
Grand Prix) from 1975. It was made by the legendary Norwegian animator
Ivo Caprino. It's about the inventor Reodor Felgen who's living with
his animal friends Ludvig, a nervous, pessimistic and melancholic
hedgehog, and Solan, a cheerful and optimistic magpie. One day, the
trio discover that one of Reodor's former assistants, Rudolf
Blodstrupmoen, has stolen his design for a race car engine and has
become a world champion Formula One driver. Solan secures funding from
an Arab oil sheik who happens to be vacationing in Flåklypa, and to
enter the race, the trio builds a gigantic racing car: Il Tempo
Gigante—a fabulous construction with two extremely big engines.
My dad used to show me this and another film by Caprino, Karius and
Baktus (Caries and Bacterium), about two little trolls living in and
destroying your teeth, on a film projector and projection screen in
our living room.
Here is a clip of Flåklypa Grand Prix (Pinchcliffe Grand Prix):
By
Ceci Moss on
Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at
11:00 am
The spectacular view of the starry sky has long been a source of delight and curiosity, but the abundance of artificial light in urban areas produces a glow that covers the stars in the firmament. The largest mirror ball ever made was suspended from a construction crane 50 meters above the ground to render the starry sky to the citizens of Paris for one night in the Jardin du Luxembourg during the Nuit Blanche event. (photo Émilien Châtelain)
By
Patrick Ellis on
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at
12:30 pm
Ahmet Öğüt, Exploded City, 2009 (Installation detail from Pavilion of Turkey, The 53rd Venice Biennale. Image Courtesy of the Berkeley Art Museum)
Children love Ahmet Öğüt’s Exploded City. Its miniature edifices are suited to the kid’s-eye-view; youthful height allows the same unobstructed vistas into the cityscape as one of its citizens might have. A further draw for children: there’s a model train underfoot (directly; museum security was busy), albeit stationary. And certain of the city's scaled buildings do resemble dollhouses, although there are no dolls here. Nobody lives in the Exploded City; there are no figurines amidst its reproductions. This vacancy is probably for the best, since Öğüt’s piece—on view at the Berkeley Art
Museum until April 11, 2010—is composed entirely of models of buildings that have been damaged or destroyed by terrorist strikes since the 1990s. The structures may be in their inviolate form, but nevertheless, human models placed throughout the doomed buildings would impart a macabre note to the city.
But the Exploded City is surprisingly not tragic, and while it could not be called vital, neither is it sepulchral. Compare, for instance, another recent miniature city: Seth’s (the mononym Gregory Gallant’s nom de plume) Dominion City, which was shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2005 and has been touring Canada since. It’s meant to represent a typical if idealized Canadian municipality of the 1950s or 60s. (To put it in the American context: a pre-Rust Belt Buffalo, New York.) Dominion City verges on the maudlin, mourning its subject while placing it upon a pedestal; Exploded City, meanwhile, strives to place its metropolis in the mythic context—it is a utopian city, in the original, “no-place” sense of the word.
N Building is a commercial structure located near Tachikawa station amidst a shopping district. Being a commercial building signs or billboards are typically attached to its facade which we feel undermines the structures' identity. As a solution we thought to use a QR Code as the facade itself. By reading the QR Code with your mobile device you will be taken to a site which includes up to date shop information. In this manner we envision a cityscape unhindered by ubiquitous signage and also an improvement to the quality and accuracy of the information itself.
By
Ceci Moss on
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at
12:00 pm
synchronized 3-6 single channel video sound installation. dimensions variable. duration: 12:00 minutes/endless loop
Tender Prey is a modular, synchronized 3 to 6 channel video and sound installation expansion of an earlier work "Organic
Urbanic" from 2002. Inspired by satellite images, urban plans, kaleidoscopic examinations and signal interceptions. It is a cortex
of an imagined city. Aerial videos are joined into science fiction panoramas, in-versed fields of digitalia and disquiet, scenarios of
urban out foldings forming metallic robotic ornamentations. Tel Aviv is the dirty digital city behind "Tender Prey". It is featured in ultrasonic transparency, amplified, duplicated and warped.
By
Ceci Moss on
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at
11:00 am
Still of Airshaft (to Piranesi)
Ana Maria Tavares is known for installations employing materials such as steel, glass and mirrors. Resembling architectural structures, her installations call to mind the artificial, emotionally vacuous atmosphere of airports, office buildings, and other forms of urban architecture. Through her re-deployment of industrial architectural materials, such materials lose their function, and viewers are subtly thrown off balance in their physical experience and sense of time. Recently, Tavares has been creating films in which steel columns connect with stairways running in all directions. By introducing reflections she renders the space in the films all the more complex. Airshaft (to Piranesi) (2008) examines the realities of human circulation through anonymous urban spaces as found all over the world. The video depicts a modern architectural space in the manner of the complex, labyrinthine expanses depicted by the 18th century Italian artist Piranesi, but wavering fluidly like a mirage. The chaos of Brazil’s enormous urban spaces is reflected here. Tavares’s videos produce an encounter with “somewhere” that is not quite “here” and make us aware of how unreal our reality can be.
By
Jenny Jaskey on
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at
2:00 pm
TXTual Healing was created in the early days of 2006 by Paul Notzold and has become a collection of interactive public projections and performance formats that encourage creation of dialog through text messaging from mobile phones. Whether interacting with custom digital signage, or live performers TXTual Healing builds community through public story telling via the mobile phone.
By
John Michael Boling on
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at
10:00 am
"Life-size posters of Google Street View images removed from the internet and pasted in same location in the physical world. Monuments to spaces and moments that no longer exist."
By
Jenny Jaskey on
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at
2:00 pm
Archisuit consists of an edition of four leisure jogging suits made for specific architectural structures in Los Angeles. The suits include the negative space of the structures and allow a wearer to fit into, or onto, structures designed to deny them.
By
Jenny Jaskey on
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at
12:00 pm
Suited for Subversion is a project to create a suit that protects the wearer at large-scale street protests. The suit also monitors the wearer's pulse and projects an amplified heartbeat out of a speaker in the chest of the suit.
I designed and fabricated the first prototype of the suit as part of my Masters Degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. The project draws on my work as an activist involved in street demonstrations in New York, and is influenced by the work of other activists and demonstrators who wear protective clothing and make creative use of tools and technologies for protest.
Of particular influence are the 'white' or ‘white overall’ tactics of the Ya Basta, WOMBLES, or the Tutti bianche, who wear white protective-wear to protests. Like the Pret a revolter clothing line produced by my friends Las Agencias, and pictured below, centre, my suit fuses white tactics with more playful, carnivalesque, or 'pink' tactics. As much as my suit is armour, it is also disarming; as much provocation as protection.
By
Ceci Moss on
Friday, January 8th, 2010 at
10:16 am
F.A.T. Labs have declared this week "Graffiti Markup Language Week" on their blog - and each day they've posted GML-related updates. What exactly is Graffiti Markup Language? It's an XML file type developed by F.A.T. Labs that stores the motion data created by tagging -- allowing graffiti writers to share, study, and catalog their tags. Check the below for a brief overview:
► Graffiti Analysis 2.0 - the new and improved Graffiti Analysis includes the aforementioned iPhone App DustTag v1.0, along with updates to the tracking, playback, controls and graphics, as well as previously unreleased source code and downloads to Windows, Mac and Linux versions of the playback and capture applications.
By
John Michael Boling on
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at
10:00 am
TextBild MMIX curated by Agnes Altziebler, Werner Fenz, Evelyn Kraus & Birgit Kulterer.
Text plays a special role in the complex make-up of the public space – even if it is often barely perceptible in all the densely packed visual overlaps. The “TextBild MMIX” project liberates it from different contexts, isolating it and thus helping it achieve its own effect: A sentence appears in the form of neon writing on a single day in a single place in Styria – then the van, vehicle of this unfamiliar, foreign text, which is a synonym for strangeness as a social source of irritation, vanishes again. In this way, Styrian artists and writers inscribe their own specific texts into the various places, thus seeking to achieve a radical concentration. The subject is strictly the present: MMIX are the Roman numerals for the year 2009.
By
Ceci Moss on
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at
2:00 pm
Never mind that the decade really ends in a little over a year, it's time to take stock of it. Today's post looks back at the decade just past while tomorrow's will look at the decade to come.
As I observed before, this decade is marked by atemporality. The greatest symptom of this is our inability to name the decade and, although commentators have tried to dub it the naughties, the aughts, and the 00s (is that pronounced the ooze?), the decade remains, as Paul Krugman suggests, a Big Zero, and we are unable to periodize it. This is not just a matter of linguistic discomfort, its a reflection of the atemporality of network culture. Jean Baudrillard is proved right. History, it seems, came to an end with the millennium, which was a countdown not only to the end of a millennium but also to the end of meaning itself. Perhaps, the Daily Miltonian suggested, we didn't have a name for the decade because it was so bad.
It's time for my promised set of predictions for the coming decade. It has been a transgression of disciplinary norms for historians to predict the future, but its also quite common among bloggers. So let's treat this as a blogosphere game, nothing more. It'll be interesting to see just how wildly wrong I am a decade from now.
In many respects, the next decade is likely to seem like a hangover after the party of the 2000s (yes, I said party). The good times of the boom were little more than a lie perpetrated by finance, utterly ungrounded in any economy reality, and were not based on any sustainable economic thought. Honestly, it's unclear to me how much players like Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Larry Summers were duplicitous and how much they were just duped. Perhaps they thought they would get out in time or drop dead before the bubbly stopped flowing. Or maybe they were just stupid. Either way, we start a decade with national and global economies in ruins. A generation that grew up believing that the world was their oyster is now faced with the same reality that my generation knew growing up: that we would likely be worse off than our parents. I see little to correct this condition and much to be worried about.
By
Mitchell Whitelaw on
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at
12:00 pm
HC Gilje, Blink, 2009
This essay was originally commissioned by Hordaland Kunstsenter (Hordaland Art Centre) in Bergen, Norway, to coincide with HC Gilje's solo exhibition blink. Thank you to Mitchell Whitelaw, HC Gilje and Hordaland Kunstsenter for allowing us to republish it to Rhizome News.
The digital network, where we all spend ever more of our time, is a vast infrastructure of generality. It deploys a system which is standardised, formally defined, highly structured, and internally consistent. If I send you an email, I do it trusting that the interlinked systems of hard- and software, the protocols for data encoding and transmission, the network switches and servers, will all hold together so that the email you receive is the same as the one I sent. Perhaps I'm in Australia, and you are in Norway: we could say that the network generalises our two points in space - for the network, they are the same. As I draft my email it exists as a pattern of voltages and magnetic flux inside my computer. To transmit that pattern effectively, the digital network must erase or resist any local errors or inconsistencies that it might encounter along the way, so that it does not matter if the pattern travels by optical fibre or copper, or in radio waves, or if a boat anchor cut through a cable near Indonesia. It does not matter that your computer is made of different atoms to mine. Those are specificities - local, material events and instances. Digital culture, and networked space, absorbs specificities, compensates for them, rectifies them into generality. Wireless broadband and mobile computing make us into human nodes, bathing in shared connective protocols.
The aesthetics of digital media flow from a related generality, where sound and image are encoded as fields of data. If a pixel is a number, an image is a grid of pixels, video a stream of images, and each of these numbers can take any value at all, then formally, an aesthetics of digital video is only a matter of finding the right values - fishing around in a space containing all possible digital video. If digital media creates this generalised space, anything at all, the media arts are faced with unavoidable questions: not only what to make - which values to choose, but how to choose them, and why?
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