Tuesday, December 08. 2015Electronic Superhighway (2016 – 1966) | #exhibition #art #media #electronic
Note: We've been pointing out several exhibitions on fabric | rblg recently. Here comes a new one, early next year in London (Whitechapel Gallery), that will undoubtedly become one not to be missed, at least for the media/electronic art community interested in its own art history, but certainly for the art community in general (at a time when the intertwinings between arts and sciences become hot again and as there have note been many such initiatives -- not one that broad in fact, to my knowledge). We will have the pleasure to see again works from E.A.T. exhibited (after the exhibition in Salzburg early this year), so as by N.J. Paik that become a bit hard to see recently (is this due to lawsuits between its inheritor and apparently not too sympathetic gallerist?) Interestingly, as many of these artists are part of a theory/history course I give to ECAL students, it will become very interesting teaching material for me as well! Great that this will exist, so as the catalogue that I''ll be very curious to read. Looking forward to meet friends and ghosts in London early next year then!
----- 29 January – 15 May 2016 Media view: Thursday 28 January, 10:00-12:00
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) - E.A.T. News. Volume 1 (B. Klüver, R. Rauschenberg).
In January 2016 the Whitechapel Gallery presents Electronic Superhighway, a landmark exhibition that brings together over 100 artworks to show the impact of computer and Internet technologies on artists from the mid-1960s to the present day. New and rarely seen multimedia works, together with film, painting, sculpture, photography and drawing by over 70 artists feature, including works by Cory Arcangel, Roy Ascott, Jeremy Bailey, Judith Barry, James Bridle, Douglas Coupland, Constant Dullaart, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Vera Molnar, Albert Oehlen, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman and Ulla Wiggen. The exhibition title Electronic Superhighway is taken from a term coined in 1974 by South Korean video art pioneer Nam June Paik, who foresaw the potential of global connections through technology. Arranged in reverse chronological order, Electronic Superhighway begins with works made between 2000 – 2016, and ends with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), an iconic, artistic moment that took place in 1966. Spanning 50 years, from 2016 to 1966, key moments in the history of art and the Internet emerge as the exhibition travels back in time. As the exhibition illustrates, the Internet has provided material for different generations of artists. Oliver Laric’s painting series Versions (Missile Variations) (2010) reflects on issues surrounding digital image manipulation, production, authenticity and circulation. Further highlights include a series of photographs from conceptual artist Amalia Ulman’s four-month Instagram project Excellences & Perfections (2014-2015), which examines the influence of social media on attitudes towards the female body. Miniature paintings by Celia Hempton painted live in chatrooms go on display alongside a large scale digital painting by Albert Oehlen and manipulated camera-less photography by Thomas Ruff. The dot-com boom, from the late 1990s to early millennium, is examined through work from international artists and collectives such as The Yes Men who combined art and online activism in response to the rapid commercialisation of the web. Works by Nam June Paik in the exhibition include Internet Dreams (1994), a video-wall of 52 monitors displaying electronically-processed abstract images, and Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984). On New Year’s Day 1984 Paik broadcast live and pre-recorded material from artists including John Cage and The Thompson Twins from a series of satellite-linked television studios in New York, West Germany, South Korea and Paris’ Pompidou Centre to an estimated audience of 25 million viewers worldwide. Paik saw the event as a counter response to George Orwell’s’s dystopian vision of 1984. The birth of the World Wide Web in 1989 provided a breeding ground for early user-based net art, with innovators such as Moscow-born Olia Lialina adopting the Internet as a medium, following earlier practices in performance and video. In My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996) the artist presents a love story enacted via an interactive black and white browser screen. The emergence of net art is explored through a curated selection of interactive browser-based works from the Rhizome archive, a leading digital arts organisation founded online in 1996 by artist Mark Tribe, and affiliated with the New Museum in New York since 2003. In 1999, Rhizome created a collection of born-digital artworks which has grown to include over 2000 and in recent years, it has developed a preservation programme around this archive. One of the first ever major interactive art installations, Lorna (1979-1982) by Lynn Hershman Leeson presents a fictional female character who stays indoors all day watching TV and anticipated virtual avatars. Also on show is Judith Barry’s video installation Speed flesh (1998), which lures viewers into an interactive computer-generated world. A proliferation of experiments from the 1960s – 70s pushed the boundaries of technology. Artists such as Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake and Stan VanDerBeek adopted computer programmes to create abstract and geometrical works while Roy Ascott, Allan Kaprow, Gary Hill and Nam June Paik used various new media to connect across multiple sites globally. The exhibition concludes with artefacts from the formation of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) in New York in 1966 which saw performances over nine evenings from artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Yvonne Rainer working together with engineers from American engineering company Bell Laboratories in one of the first major collaborations between the industrial technology sector and the arts.
To coincide with Electronic Superhighway a series of related special projects/displays, commissions and special events include: Harun Farocki – Parallel I–IV (2012–4) Luke Fowler and Mark Fell: Computers and Cooperative Music-Making Heather Phillipson Artists’ Film International: Rachel Maclean For more information on events and displays visit whitechapelgallery.org
Notes for Editors For over a century the Whitechapel Gallery has premiered world class artists from modern masters such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frida Kahlo to contemporaries such as Sophie Calle, Lucian Freud, Gilbert & George and Mark Wallinger. With beautiful galleries, exhibitions, artist commissions, collection displays, historic archives, education resources, inspiring art courses, dining room and bookshop, the Gallery is open all year round, so there is always something free to see. It is a touchstone for contemporary art internationally, plays a central role in London’s cultural landscape and is pivotal to the continued growth of the world’s most vibrant contemporary art quarter. The exhibition is curated by Omar Kholeif, Curator, Whitechapel Gallery with Séamus McCormack, Assistant Curator, Whitechapel Gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Omar Kholeif which includes contributions by Iwona Blazwick, Omar Kholeif, Ed Halter, Erika Balsom, Sarah Perks, Judith Barry, Nam June Paik, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Séamus McCormack, Jonas Lund and Ulla Wiggen. Price £29.99. The exhibition’s development has been supported by a curatorial advisory committee which includes, Erika Balsom, Lecturer, Film and Liberal Arts, King’s College London; Heather Corcoran, Former Executive Director, Rhizome; Ed Halter, Co-Director Light Industry, Assistant Professor, Bard College; and Sarah Perks, Artistic Director, Cornerhouse and HOME, and Professor at Manchester School of Art. The full list of artists included in Electronic Superhighway are: Jacob Appelbaum; Cory Arcangel; Roy Ascott; Jeremy Bailey; Judith Barry; Wafaa Bilal; Zach Blas; Olaf Breuning; James Bridle; Heath Bunting;Bureau of Inverse ;Technology (B.I.T.);Antoine Catala; Aristarkh Chernyshev; Petra Cortright; Vuk Ćosić; Douglas Coupland; CTG (Computer Technique Group); Cybernetic Serendipity ;Aleksandra Domanović; Constant Dullaart; Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.); Harun Farocki; Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige; Celia Hempton; Camille Henrot; Gary Hill; Ann Hirsch; Nancy Holt and Richard Serra ; JODI; Eduardo Kac; Allan Kaprow; Hiroshi Kawano; Mahmoud Khaled; Oliver Laric; Jan Robert Leegte; Lynn Hershman Leeson; Olia Lialina; Tony Longson; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; Jonas Lund; Jill Magid; Eva and Franco Mattes; Model Court; Vera Molnar ; Mouchette (Martine Neddam); Manfred Mohr; Jayson Musson; Frieder Nake; Joshua Nathanson; Katja Novitskova; Mendi + Keith Obadike; Albert Oehlen; Trevor Paglen; Nam June Paik; Jon Rafman; Evan Roth; Thomas Ruff; Alex Ruthner; Jacolby Satterwhite; Lillian F. Schwartz; Peter Sedgley; Taryn Simon; Frances Stark; Hito Steyerl; Sturtevant; Martine Syms; Thomson and Craighead; Ryan Trecartin; Amalia Ulman; Stan VanDerBeek; Steina and Woody Vasulka; Addie Wagenknecht; Lawrence Weiner; Ulla Wiggen; The Yes Men; YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
Visitor Information Admission £13.50 (including Gift Aid donation) £11.95 (without Gift Aid). Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Nearest London Underground Station: Aldgate East, Liverpool Street, Tower Gateway DLR. T + 44 (0) 20 7522 7888, info@whitechapelgallery.org, whitechapelgallery.org
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Art, Interaction design, Science & technology
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09:51
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Wednesday, August 26. 2015Hippie Modernism exhibition at the Walker Art Center to celebrate design's trippy side | #radical #experiments #counterculture
Note: In parallel with the exhibition about the work of E.A.T at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, another exhibition: Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia that will certainly be worth a detour at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis later this autumn.
Via Dezeen -----
The architecture and design of the counterculture era has been overlooked, according to the curator of an upcoming exhibition dedicated to "Hippie Modernism".
Yellow submarine by Corita Kent, 1967. Photograph by Joshua White
The radical output of the 1960s and 1970s has had a profound influence on contemporary life but has been "largely ignored in official histories of art, architecture and design," said Andrew Blauvelt, curator of the exhibition that opens at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis this autumn.
"It's difficult to identify another period of history that has exerted more influence on contemporary culture and politics," he said.
Superchair by Ken Isaacs, 1967 Women in Design: The Next Decade by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, 1975. Courtesy of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
While not representative of a formal movement, the works in Hippie Modernism challenged the establishment and high Modernism, which had become fully assimilated as a corporate style, both in Europe and North America by the 1960s. The exhibition, entitled Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia will centre on three themes taken from taken from American psychologist and psychedelic drug advocate Timothy Leary's era-defining mantra: Turn on, tune in, drop out. Organised with the participation of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, it will cover a diverse range of cultural objects including films, music posters, furniture, installations, conceptual architectural projects and environments.
Hendrixwar/Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress, 1973. Courtesy of the Walker Art Center collection, Minneapolis Jimi Hendrix, Ira Cohen, 1968. Photograph from the Mylar Chamber, courtesy of the Ira Cohen Archive
The Turn On section of the show will focus on altered perception and expanded individual awareness. It will include conceptual works by British avant-garde architectural group Archigram, American architecture collective Ant Farm, and a predecessor to the music video by American artist Bruce Conner – known for pioneering works in assemblage and video art. Tune In will look at media as a device for raising collective consciousness and social awareness around issues of the time, many of which resonate today, like the powerful graphics of the US-based black nationalist party Black Panther Movement.
Untitled [the Cockettes] by Clay Geerdes, 1972. Courtesy of the estate of Clay Geerdes
Drop Out includes alternative structures that allowed or proposed ways for individuals and groups to challenge norms or remove themselves from conventional society, with works like the Drop City collective's recreation dome – a hippie version of a Buckminster Fuller dome – and Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison's Portable Orchard, a commentary on the loss of agricultural lands to the spread of suburban sprawl.
Environment Transformer/Flyhead Helmet by Haus-Rucker-Co, 1968. Photograph courtesy of Haus-Rucker-Co and Gerald Zugmann
The issues raised by the projects in Hippie Modernism – racial justice, women's and LGBT rights, environmentalism, and localism among many other – continue to shape culture and politics today. Blauvelt sees the period's ongoing impact in current practices of public-interest design and social-impact design, where the authorship of the building or object is less important than the need that it serves.
Payne's Gray by Judith Williams, circa 1966. Photograph courtesy of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia Superonda Sofa by Archizoom Associati, 1966. Photograph courtesy of Dario Bartolini, Archizoom Associati
Many of the exhibited artists, designers, and architects created immersive environments that challenged notions of domesticity, inside/outside, and traditional limitations on the body, like the Italian avant-garde design group Superstudio's Superonda: conceptual furniture which together creates an architectural landscape that suggests new ways of living and socialising.
Hello Dali by Isaac Abrams, 1965
Blauvelt sees the period's utopian project ending with the OPEC oil crisis of the mid 1970s, which helped initiate the more conservative consumer culture of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Organised in collaboration with the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive, Hippie Modernism will run from 24 October 2015 to 28 February 2016 at the Walker Art Center.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art, Culture & society, Design
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15:14
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Wednesday, July 29. 2015Creating Radical Software: A Personal Account | #magazine #history #media
Note: after the recent post about E.A.T. and while we are into history, here is also an intersting article by Phyllis (Gershuny) Segura, one of the founders of the 1970's journal Radical Software, where she explains the birth and motivatiosn behind the magazine. It was a journal about the then very young video art, but exceeded this thematic by far, including avant-garde thematics such as cybernetic, information theory or networks.
Via Rhizome ----- Creating Radical Software: A Personal Account By Phyllis (Gershuny) Segura
What can be analyzed in my work, or criticized, are the questions that I ask…my composition arises out of asking questions. — John Cage
Radical Software Volume I, Number 1: the Alternate Television Movement (Spring 1970)
Radical Software Volume I, Number 2: the Electromagnetic Spectrum (Autumn 1970).
As rare as it is for something to be an instant success, this is what happened with Radical Software, a journal started in 1970 to bring a fresh direction to communication via personal and portable video equipment and other cybernetic explorations. Its intention was to foster an alternative to broadcast media and lessen the impact of its control. I was the co-founder. When I began conceiving of the journal, no one really knew precisely what I was getting at because my ideas about it were at an inchoate stage of development, making for loose coherency. The idea was for individuals to be able to communicate interactively without the filters of broadcast media. Even at a more formalized stage the process superseded any formulaic views. Perhaps asking non-hierarchical questions could materialize the structures leading to a two-way network for communicative exchange. Our choices were no longer determined by traditions and customs. I don't often look, but when I do, I notice so much misinformation, both printed and online, about the origins of Radical Software. I‘d like to clarify what my role was then and what my inspiration was in conceiving of it. It is important to set the background and tone of events. In order to accurately tell the tale I will weave in some personal life anecdotes from the time. It's all one story to me, as the vicissitudes of life often direct our fates.
(...)
Read more about it HERE.
Related Links:Monday, July 27. 2015E.A.T. at The Museum der Moderne Salzburg | #art #technology
Note: nice to discover that a museum has decided to mount a retrospective ("first-ever") about the activities of Expriments in Art and Technologies (E.A.T.), a group composed of avant-garde artists and scientists (R. Rauschenberg, R. Whitman, D. Tudor, B. Klüver, F. Waldhauer) that were behind milestones events such as "Event scores, 9 evening" in New York (mainly scored by R. Roschenberg, but with fellow artists and "scorists" like J. Cage, D. Tudor, R. Whitman, L. Childs, etc.) or later the Pepsi Pavilion in Osaka, with Fujiko Nakaya (fog sculptures). This association helped anchor the association of visionary people and scientific labs (Bell Labs in this case, where people like Frank Malina was also working at the time, or A. Michael Noll too... to name a few). Later influential labs (Menlo Park, Xerox, Media Lab) and of course many recent Swiss initiatives (i.e. Artists in labs or Collide@CERN) are inheritors of this early collaboration. BTW, we should suggest to Pro Helvetia that they could also run an "architects in labs" so as a "designers in lab", that would be a great initiative! The exhibition opened last Saturday and will last until November 1, 2015.
Via Domus (thank you David Colombini for the link!) -----
E.A.T. The Museum der Moderne Salzburg presents a comprehensive survey of the projects of the evolving association of artists and technologists E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology.
The Museum der Moderne Salzburg mounts the first-ever comprehensive retrospective of the activities of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a unique association of engineers and artists who wrote history in the 1960s and 1970s. Artists like Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) and Robert Whitman (b.1935) teamed up with Billy Kluver (1927–2004), a visionary technologist at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his colleague Fred Waldhauer (1927–1993) to launch a groundbreaking initiative that would realize works of art in an unprecedented collaborative effort.
Top and above: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), Pepsi Pavilion, exterior with fog installation by Fujiko Nakaya and Floats by Robert Breer © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20). Photo: Shunk-Kender
Around two hundred works of art and projects ranging from kinetic objects, installations, and performances to films, videos, and photographs as well as drawings and prints exemplify the most important stages of E.A.T.’s evolution. In light of the rapid technological developments of the period, the group aimed to put an art into practice that would employ cutting-edge technology. Starting in the early 1960s, Kluver collaborated with artists including Jean Tinguely, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Yvonne Rainer on an individual basis. Like some artists of the time, he was interested in the social implications of novel technologies and believed that the marriage of art and science had to take place on a practical and physical level. Members of E.A.T. hoped that the meeting between artists and engineers would allow for the production of works that would not have been possible without the special expertise of trained technologists. The engineers would conversely be inspired to think in new directions and help shape the future evolution of technology.
Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960. Kinetic sculpture (mixed media) and performance. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, US, Sculpture Garden, March 17, 1960 © Estate of David Gahr. Photo: David Gahr. Right: Jean Dupuy, Heart Beats Dust, 1968. Engineer: Ralph Martel Lithol rubine pigment, wood, glass, light, stethoscope, amplifier. Collection FRAC Bourgogne © ADAGP, Paris/Courtesy Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris. Photo: Terry Stevenson
----- July 25 – November 1, 2015
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art, Science & technology
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13:06
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Tuesday, September 23. 2014Someone finally made a truly 3D movie | #messingwith3d
Note: Viva Jean-Luc!
Via The Verge -----
Jean-Luc Godard messes with 3D to wonderful results.
You’re probably at least a bit of a film nerd if you’re familiar with Jean-Luc Godard, the biggest name of the ’60s French New Wave movement. Even if you don’t know him, you've definitely seen a lot of film techniques that he pioneered. He's credited with turning the jump cut from an editing accident into a legitimate tool. And you know Wes Anderson's playful use of on-screen text and standout bright colors? Godard was doing that 30 years earlier. He’s been incredibly influential when it comes to what modern films look like, so when he decides to play with something new, it's worth paying close attention.
Godard's latest picture, Goodbye to Language, is his first feature shot in 3D. It's an impressionistic film about an affair, and for Godard it's as unapproachable as ever, with little semblance of narrative, strange interactions, and characters that basically just make heady declarative statements like, "A woman can do no harm. She can annoy. She can kill. No more." But whether you're interested in his avant-garde musings or not, there's one big reason to see this film: it may be the first one that really uses 3D to do something new. A lot of great directors have tried their hand at 3D, including Ridley Scott and Martin Scorsese. Notably, Werner Herzog earned plenty of accolade for his use of 3D to portray cave paintings. For the most part, though, 3D films haven't done much more than look like a cinematic pop-up book — a poor excuse to ask for 10 more dollars at the box office. It's fortunate then that Godard has tried his hand at one and come up with some truly interesting uses for it. Here are three big ways that Godard makes it work.
He actually makes 3D look good Most 3D films either look almost indistinguishable from 2D, or they don't do much more than apply a basic layering effect between the foreground and the background. Godard, on the other hand, manages to film the world in 3D very much as we see it, using a long depth of field that makes the film’s world extend far into the distance. On top of that, many of the scenes are deeply layered, making the 3D effect more prominent than usual. In one scene, there's a good seven layers from front to back (not counting the actors): a potted plant, a chair, a bike, a barrier, a house, another house, and finally some trees. It’s one of the first times in a 3D film that the image truly looks like it has depth. Another key aspect is that the film is often rolling at a higher-than-usual framerate. That does give Goodbye to Language something close to the much-dreaded "home video" look, but it's stylized enough with bright colors or contrasting highlights and shadows to not matter so much. The result is some gorgeous imagery that makes me really want to see a nature documentary in 3D.
He mixes 2D and 3D This may not sound like succeeding at 3D, but it actually leads to a couple of interesting results. For one, it's kind of funny: one of the very first things that you see in the movie is the term "2D" printed in 2D with the term "3D" hovering over it in 3D. It's a little inexplicable, but it's sort of a necessary joke to get you in the mindset for this film. The more interesting use of 2D, though, is when archival footage (or, at least, what looks to be archival footage) is interspersed with the newly shot 3D footage in the film. In many ways, this is a modernized equivalent to cutting back to a black-and-white flashback. The fact that it's 2D lets us know that it's out of the modern narrative.
He totally messes with your vision Sometimes the 3D in Goodbye to Language looks crisp, clean, and downright gorgeous. Other times, it'll drive you cross-eyed — and that's exactly what Godard wants to do. In what's easily the coolest use of 3D in this film, Godard actually splits the image in two. 3D movies are normally shot with two cameras that remain perfectly side-by-side, one capturing an image for your left eye, the other capturing an image for your right eye. But in two scenes of Goodbye to Language, Godard has the left camera remain stationary, pointed at an unmoving character, while the right camera pans to the side to follow another person's movements. At first, you have no idea what's going on — your eyes twist in pain, you lift your 3D glasses up in confusion. Then, suddenly, you see it: close one eye, and you see 2D action of the character on the left; close the other eye, and you see 2D action of the character on the right; leave both eyes open, and the images play on top of one another, fighting for your attention and only letting you ever really see their essence. Ultimately, Godard has the two cameras rejoin again, completing the picture and relieving you of discomfort.
That type of discomfort is used throughout the film in other ways as well. In many situations, the two cameras will be positioned slightly too far apart, once again turning your vision cross-eyed. Alternatively, it means that you can shut one eye and see farther around a corner than you might otherwise have seen. (In a maddening twist, this distortion effect even stretches over to the film's English subtitles on occasion.) One of the more clever uses is when this distortion occurs between two characters on either side of the screen, essentially creating a schism between them that twists your eyesight when you try to look. It makes for a very evocative separation between the two characters — a separation that’s so tangible you can quite literally feel it. These are obviously not all techniques that should be used by most (if any) mainstream films, but they turn 3D into much more of a marvel than it currently is. If all movies are going to be 3D one day, it'd be pretty disappointing if directors never figure out novel ways for using it to tell a story — and Godard is, unsurprisingly, quick to search for something new. This film is called Goodbye to Language, and you have to wonder: perhaps this is an ode to the end of one cinematic language, and the greeting of another. - Goodbye to Language is currently screening at the New York Film Festival. It opens in theaters on October 29th.
Wednesday, February 19. 2014Back: Jesse Sugarmann | #gpsVia Frieze ----- Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland
In his video California Bloodlines (GPS Dozen) (all works 2013), California artist Jesse Sugarmann drives through a bright desert expanse in search of somewhere elusive. The camera is trained on the car’s dashboard and windshield, which are festooned with 12 GPS devices that relegate the dramatic landscape of sand and scrub, distant mountains and azure sky to a removed presence. As he drives, a chorus of robotic voices talk over one another, blurting out contradictory directions (‘Turn left!’, ‘Turn right!’, ‘Re-calculating!’). Sugarmann’s intended destination is California City, from which the artist’s exhibition at Fourteen30 Contemporary took its name: a place real enough to have assigned geo-positioning coordinates, yet not real enough for the dozen devices to reach consensus. Geographically, California City is the third-largest city in the Golden State. Its 40- square-mile grid in the Mojave Desert was developed in the 1960s in tandem with the California Aqueduct, which would transform the arid terrain into a lush, cosmopolitan oasis, a two-hour drive north of Los Angeles. But when the aqueduct was rerouted to the west, development was abandoned. In the ensuing half-century, a population of 15,000 made California City home, leaving the unfinished infrastructure of sidewalks and roads to be slowly reclaimed by the desert. Today, the outskirts of this unrealized city play host to Air Force weapons testing and off-road motor sports. Symbolically, the site evidences a kind of regional amnesia, in which the glitz and glamour of Southern California’s main cultural centre allows this also-ran destination to fade from collective memory. But Sugarmann leverages its metaphoric impact for more personal ends, using California City as a stage to contemplate his mother’s worsening Alzheimer’s. This place, which bears the fundamental shape of a city but conspicuously lacks the city itself, becomes an analogue for his mother’s frustrated attempts to recall and organize a past she knows exists, but can’t seem to access. In a second video, California Bloodlines (Parts 1 and 2), the artist has arrived in California City, or at least one of its desolate cul-de-sacs. Joined by an assistant, Sugarmann performs a series of actions addressing the site’s past, present and the irreconcilable divide between them. Initially, they appear as stewards, attempting to restore the road to working condition. They patch a makeshift bonfire pit left by an off-road after-party, sweep sand off the weather-beaten pavement (as desert winds violently undo their efforts), and spread a new layer of asphalt. But with the appearance of a sand dragster, a vehicle equally at home on sand or tarmac, the site’s present-day activities creep in, creating a confused connection to its past: the duo spreads asphalt on the exterior of the dragster and sets it ablaze. In California Bloodlines (Parts 1 and 2), Sugarmann interpolates scenes of his own ‘weapons testing’ in California City, drawing square-mile development tracts onto Perspex in liquid napalm and burning them into the surface. These works were displayed in the gallery like production stills or outtakes from the film, each image executed in thick black burn marks and feathery yellow flickers. It’s not hard to connect the geometric patterns of the tract with the mapping of the human brain in neuro-imaging techniques. Sugarmann’s previous body of work focused almost exclusively on cars – as figurative bodies, ‘vehicles’ for projecting human desire and as ubiquitous monuments to the fact of obsolescence and mortality. With the California City videos, this connection between subjects and their automotive stand-ins is made more powerful by the artist’s equation of the landscape with memory. Here, the internal stage of mental function – or in the case of his mother, dysfunction – is depicted in physical, spatial terms. And, tragically, in the enacted folly of restoring unused roads, he illustrates how that which is forgotten can never be recovered. John Motley
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Posted by Patrick Keller
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09:21
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Wednesday, February 12. 2014Fujiko Nakaya & E.A.T. for the Expo '70 (Osaka) | #artificial #environment
And what about this prequel to Blur by architects Diller & Scofidio (during Swiss National Exhibition in 2002), the Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70" in Osaka, japan, by Fujiko Nakaya and E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology: Robert Breer, Billy Klüver, Frosty Myers, Robert Whitman and David Tudor)!
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Posted by Patrick Keller
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09:26
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Fujiko Nakaya & Shiro Takatani's Cloud Forest | #installation #fog
While browsing around on the Internet, I found the remnants of this exhibition that took place in Yamaguchi Center for the Arts and Media in Tokyo back in 2010. To my big ignorance, I didn't know the work of Fujiko Nakaya dating back from the 1970ies. Now I do and I can see how far Blur, Diller & Scofidio's famous building (during Expo.01 in Switzerland back in 2001), was pushing Nakaya's ideas one step further/bigger.
Via Yamaguchi Center for the Arts & Media -----
Artistic environmental spheres formed by fog, light and sound Large-scale project unveiled simultaneously in three public spaces in and around YCAM The upcoming CLOUD FOREST exhibition at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] presents examples of newly discovered environmental creation, realized with an "artistic environments" themed fusion of artistic expression and information technology. Currently on show in three different public spaces in and around YCAM will be a large-scale collaborative project featuring "fog sculptures" by Fujiko Nakaya, an artist whose works have gained much attention at various occasions in Japan and overseas, along with the original light and sound art of Shiro Takatani.
Fujiko Nakaya "Fog Sculpture #47773" Pepsi Pavilion Commissioned by Experiments in Art and Technology (EXPO' 70, Osaka, Japan 1970). Photo: ©Takeyoshi Tanuma
Environment as an art form
"Island Eye Island Ear" Project by Experiments in Art & Technology (Knavelskar Island, Sweden 1974). Photo: Fujiko Nakaya
Environments emerging out of human perception and networking technology
Fujiko Nakaya "GREENLAND GLACIAL MORAINE GARDEN" (Nakaya Ukichiro Museum of Snow and Ice,Kaga City, Japan 1994). Photo: Rokuro Yoshida
Cloud Forest
Environmental spheres in three installations
"Cloud Forest" [Patio] (YCAM 2010)
"Cloud Forest" [Central Park] (YCAM 2010)
Posted by Patrick Keller
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09:21
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Thursday, December 12. 2013Automated Google Street View compositions | #algorithms
Note: some sorts of generated "interfered" spaces, "spatial moirés".
Via #algopop -----
Geo-Fragments by Daniel Schwarz Automated Google Street View compositions of the artist’s daily movements, auto-posted to a tumblr. The location data is tracked with openpath.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Art, Interaction design, Territory
at
10:34
Defined tags for this entry: art, artificial reality, artists, code, interaction design, interferences, photography, territory
Thursday, November 07. 2013Seven Minutes | #scripting #architecture
----- By Beatrice Galilee
Seven Minutes by Alex Schweder, curated by Beatrice Galilee
Thursday 7th November, 7pm
In 2007, The New York Times published an article entitled ‘For The Brain Remembering Is Like Reli We know from our daily lives that there is a mental capacity to relive spaces, experiences and conversations without the dissonance of representation. In psychology, psychoanalysis and neurology, the memories of spaces and activities in our past dictate our actions in the present. The field of psychogeography is founded on the spatial effects of places and movements through space and psychoanalysis is based on the premise that the suppression of feelings from the past can emerge unconsciously in the reconstruction of the past, through writing or discussion.
The site of the exhibition, the traditional site of display and representation is the field of operation for artist and architect Alex Schweder. Schweder’s work deals precisely with possibility that spaces are scripted and informed by bodies and occupation. That the boundaries between them are permeable and behavioural patterns can be manipulated with careful intervention.
In this one-off unique work held in the Opus gallery for four days, the artist will be working with the architecture of the space – using the architecture of walls, doors, memories, history and conversation to script the space and through strategic means, transform the reading and semiotics of space for the visitor.
In seven minutes the intention of the artist will become clear.
This project is generously supported by The Graham Foundation The exhibition will be open Saturdays 9th, 16th and 23rd Nov, 12-5pm
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Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art
at
08:58
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artists, code, exhibitions, neurosciences, physiological, psychological, space
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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