Wednesday, October 19. 2016Le médium spirite ou la magie d’un corps hypermédiatique à l’ère de la modernité | #spirit #media #technology
Note: following the previous post that mentioned the idea of spiritism in relation to personal data, or forgotten personal data, but also in relation to "beliefs" linked to contemporary technologies, here comes an interesting symposium (Machines, magie, médias) and post on France Culture. The following post and linked talk from researcher Mireille Berton (nearby University of Lausanne, Dpt of Film History and Aesthetics) are in French.
Via France Culture -----
Cerisy : Machines, magie, médias (du 20 au 28 août 2016)
Les magiciens — de Robert-Houdin et Georges Méliès à Harry Houdini et Howard Thurston suivis par Abdul Alafrez, David Copperfield, Jim Steinmeyer, Marco Tempest et bien d’autres — ont questionné les processus de production de l’illusion au rythme des innovations en matière d’optique, d’acoustique, d’électricité et plus récemment d’informatique et de numérique. Or, toute technologie qui se joue de nos sens, tant qu’elle ne dévoile pas tous ses secrets, tant que les techniques qu'elle recèle ne sont pas maîtrisées, tant qu’elle n’est pas récupérée et formalisée par un média, reste à un stade que l’on peut définir comme un moment magique. Machines et Magie partagent, en effet, le secret, la métamorphose, le double, la participation, la médiation. Ce parti pris se fonde sur l’hypothèse avancée par Arthur C. Clarke : "Toute technologie suffisamment avancée est indiscernable de la magie" (1984, p. 36). L’émergence même des médias peut être analysée en termes d’incarnation de la pensée magique, "patron-modèle" (Edgar Morin, 1956) de la forme première de l’entendement individuel (Marcel Mauss, 1950). De facto, depuis les fantasmagories du XVIIIe siècle jusqu’aux arts numériques les plus actuels, en passant par le théâtre, la lanterne magique, la photographie, le Théâtrophone, le phonographe, la radio, la télévision et le cinéma, l’histoire des machineries spectaculaires croise celle de la magie et les expérimentations de ses praticiens, à l’affût de toute nouveauté permettant de réactualiser les effets magiques par la mécanisation des performances. C’est par l’étude des techniques d’illusion propres à chaque média, dont les principes récurrents ont été mis au jour par les études intermédiales et l’archéologie des médias, que la rencontre avec l’art magique s’est imposée. Ce colloque propose d’en analyser leur cycle technologique : le moment magique (croyance et émerveillement), le mode magique (rhétorique), la sécularisation (banalisation de la dimension magique). Ce cycle est analysé dans sa transversalité afin d’en souligner les dimensions intermédiales. Les communications sont ainsi regroupées en sept sections : L’art magique ; Magie et esthétiques de l’étonnement ; Magie, télévision et vidéo ; Les merveilles de la science ; Magie de l’image, l’image et la magie ; Magie du son, son et magie ; Du tableau vivant au mimétisme numérique. La première met en dialogue historiens et praticiens de la magie et présente un état des archives sur le sujet. Les six sections suivantes font état des corrélations: magie/médias et médias/magie.
Docteure ès Lettres, Mireille Berton est maître d’enseignement et de recherche à la Section d’Histoire et esthétique du cinéma de l'Université de Lausanne (UNIL). Ses travaux portent principalement sur les rapports entre cinéma et sciences du psychisme (psychologie, psychanalyse, psychiatrie, parapsychologie), avec un intérêt particulier pour une approche croisant histoire culturelle, épistémologie des médias et Gender Studies. Outre de nombreuses études, elle a publié un livre tiré de sa thèse de doctorat intitulé Le Corps nerveux des spectateurs. Cinéma et sciences du psychisme autour de 1900 (L’Âge d’Homme, 2015), et elle a co-dirigé avec Anne-Katrin Weber un ouvrage collectif consacré à l’histoire des dispositifs télévisuels saisie au travers de discours, pratiques, objets et représentations (La Télévision du Téléphonoscope à YouTube. Pour une archéologie de l'audiovision, Antipodes, 2009). Elle travaille actuellement sur un manuscrit consacré aux représentations du médium spirite dans les films et séries télévisées contemporains (à paraître chez Georg en 2017).
Résumé de la communication: L'intervention propose de revenir sur une question souvent traitée dans l’histoire des sciences et de l’occultisme, à savoir le rôle joué par les instruments de mesure et de capture dans l’appréhension des faits paranormaux. Une analyse de sources spirites parues durant les premières décennies du XXe siècle permet de mettre au jour les tensions provoquées par les dispositifs optiques et électriques qui viennent défier le corps tout-puissant du médium spirite sur son propre territoire. La rencontre entre occultisme et modernité donne alors naissance à la figure (discursive et fantasmatique) du médium "hypermédiatique", celui-ci surpassant toutes les possibilités offertes par les découvertes scientifiques.
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology
at
11:14
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, culture & society, display, history, illusion, interface, perception, science & technology, thinking
Monday, February 22. 2016A computer trying to order a pizza (and having a hard time), back in 1974 | #computing #txt2speech #history
Note: can a computer "fake" a human? (hmmm, sounds a bit like Mr. Turing test isn't it?) Or at least be credible enough --because it sounds pretty clear in this video, at that time, that it cannot fake a human and that it is m ore about voice than "intelligence"-- so that the person on the other side of the phone doesn't hang up? This is a funny/uncanny experiment involving D. Sherman at Michigan State University, dating back 1974 and certainly one of the first public trial (or rather social experiment) of a text to speech/voice synthesizer. Beyond the technical performance, it is the social experiment that is probably even more interesting. It's intertwined and odd nature. You can feel in the voice of the person on the other side of the phone (at the pizza factory --Domino's pizza--) that he really doesn't know how to take it and that the voice sounds like something not heard before. A few trials were necessary before somebody took it "seriously".
Via @toxi ----- By John Eulenberg (publication on Youtube)
Every year, the researchers, students, and technology users who make up the community of the Michigan State University Artificial Language Laboratory celebrate the anniversary of the first use of a speech prosthesis in history: the use by a man with a communication disorder to order a pizza over the telephone using a voice synthesizer. This high-tech sociolinguistic experiment was conducted at the Lab on the evening of December 4, 1974. Donald Sherman, who has Moebius Syndrome and had never ordered a pizza over the phone before, used a system designed by John Eulenberg and J. J. Jackson incorporating a Votrax voice synthesizer, a product of the Federal Screw Works Co. of Troy, Michigan. The inventor of the Votrax voice synthesizer was Richard Gagnon from Birmingham, MI.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology
at
09:56
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, communication, computing, culture & society, history, interferences, presence, science & technology, voice
Friday, January 15. 2016Designers & Books | #readings
Note: it is not too late to wish everybody a happy '16, so, here I do! ... even so the year started in such a sad way with the disappearance of this shiny artist called David Bowie. Maybe is it then already the right time to bring back our good old '16 resolutions, so to conjure these bad vibes? For my part, some of them were about reading... like always (or adding books on my already too big pile I can guess) and while I was wandering here and there on the Net late last December, I stumble upon this interesting initiative of curated lists of books related to design and art. Curators of books include readers such as Peter Eisenman, Tonny Dunne, Sou Fujimoto, Massimo Vignelli, John Maeda and many others (177 designers to date, 34 commentators, 73 guests, etc.). Well... interesting line up I must say! Have a good '16 reading ...
----- " Designers & Books is an advocate for books as an important source of inspiration for creativity, innovation, and invention. The main way we do this is by publishing lists of books that esteemed members of the international design community identify as important, meaningful, and formative—books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design. This provides the direction for our focus on books about architecture, fashion, graphic design, interactive design, interior design, landscape architecture, product and industrial design, and urban design. "
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art, Design
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14:46
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, books, design, history, monography, text, theory, thinking, writing
Wednesday, December 30. 2015Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 | #exhibition #radicalpedagogies #book
Note: could a perfect ending for this year be this post about (yet another) new exhibition (in Boston)? It is about the fantastic, the radical and the utopian Black Mountain College in North Carolina that became an important school for a large part of the post-war avant-garde in the United States/East coast. It was an "adventure in progressive education" which points again how schools, when they remain "wild" enough, can become important structures to crystalize creative energies and momentum (and that is therefore also logically listed in Beatriz Colomina's research project about historical "Radical Pedagogies" in architecture).
Via MIT Press ----- "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957," an exhibition currently showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, focuses on how Black Mountain College (BMC) became a seminal meeting place for many of the artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who would become the principal practitioners in their fields of the postwar period. "Leap Before You Look," the first exhibition in the US to examine BMC as a hotbed for the American avant garde, opened on October 10, 2015 and will show through January 24, 2016. Senior Production Coordinator Christine Savage recently checked it out and shares the following insights: The story of Black Mountain College (BMC) serves as an excellent reminder of how brilliant, prolific, and innovative people can be. The school was an idyll, an embodiment of a progressive, collaborative, utopian future. The college was also an absolute anomaly, and serves possibly as an even better reminder of how rarely we come together to achieve such promise. If only it hadn’t gone broke and closed after only 24 years.
“Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957” is a remarkable exhibit that does a wonderful job of illustrating BMC’s proud stature among the great artistic moments in the last century. The collection features music and dance performances, as well as over 200 pieces of artwork created at the college. A history of the school and the art created there can be found in the MIT Press book, Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art edited by Vincent Katz, which documents the brief—but influential—existence of the school, and offers a fascinating glimpse of campus life. BMC was a tiny school with a disproportionate influence on art and culture in the 20th century. (A partial—yet still absurdly impressive—list of artists who taught and studied there includes Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Ruth Asawa, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Vera B. Williams, Franz Kline, Buckminster Fuller, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne, and Walter Gropius.) Founded in 1933 at a former summer camp with 22 students in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, BMC was an adventure in progressive education. Less an art school than a perpetually broke experimental liberal arts college, the program’s philosophy centered around the belief that artistic experience was instrumental to all aspects of learning and grew students into better—and more curious—democratic citizens. Fortunately for art lovers the world around, BMC’s college life and curriculum revolved around the artistic process at a critical moment when American Progressivism combined with European Modernism. Photographs at the start of the exhibit show the communal, egalitarian style of living and working at the school. The faculty owned and operated the college, and governed it together with students. In the early 1930s, sweat equity was more useful than tuition—they grew their own food, cooked their own meals, and built their own classrooms. The founders of BMC kicked off their utopian educational experiment by hiring Bauhaus artists Josef and Anni Albers, who brought with them a healthy dose of enthusiasm for communal idealism and experimentation. These values remain evident in the profoundly interdisciplinary art created at the college during its brief existence, spanning painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, poetry, dance, music, and theater. The exhibit begins with the colorful geometric paintings and prints of Josef, and the striking, modernist weavings and jewelry of Anni. In nearby rooms, photographs and models showing Buckminster Fuller’s experimental architecture—and the oftentimes unsuccessful attempts at constructing it—sit in conversation with the geometric and organic drawings and sculptures of Ruth Asawa, as well as the vibrant, expressionistic paintings of Elaine and Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Later in the exhibit, the artistic creations of Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg showcase the collaborative, bodily nature of the work at BMC. Displays and performances using their choreography, music, and set decorations—schedules of which are available on the ICA website—allow museum visitors to share in an experience that, well, grew from shared experience. As one might expect from the school’s summer camp beginnings, it was a perfect storm of intense closeness, idealism, freedom, and collaboration. Throughout the ICA’s galleries, the works of art from BMC seem to speak to each other, and to be in their presence is to get a glimpse of how their creators exemplified the school’s motto of “learning through doing.” It’s an education in the importance of experimentation and exposure to difference, and a chance for (oft-maligned) utopian idealism—however short-lived—to get a little vindication.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art, Design
at
13:41
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, books, design, exhibitions, experience, experimentation, history, research, teaching
Wednesday, December 23. 2015Kazuko Miyamoto exhibition at Circuit | #exhibition #rules
Note: ... and while I'm talking about the gallery Circuit in Lausanne, don't forget that there is still Kazuko Miyamoto's exhibition going on for a few more weeks. For the record, Ms Miyamoto was one of the first assistant of Sol Lewitt and was involved on his early wall drawings. Their collaboration lasted for almost three decades. She was also founder of the A.I.R. Gallery in NYC. Her works are undoubtedly related to the ones of Lewitt as one can feel the rules behind them. Yet they are probably more fragile and aerial. Literally for many of them, as they are made out of yarn strings...
Via Circuit -----
Kazuko Miyamoto
Related Links: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
at
09:51
Defined tags for this entry: art, artists, digital, exhibitions, experimentation, history, interaction design, science & technology
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
at
15:14
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artists, community, culture & society, design, designers, exhibitions, history, participative, search, speculation, sustainability, theory
Friday, August 14. 2015Commune Revisited | #commune #ideals #magazine
Note: While being interested in the idea of the commune for some time now --I've been digging into old stories, like the ones of the well named Haight-Ashbury's Diggers, or the Droppers, in connection to system theory, cybernetics and information theory and then of course, to THE Personal Computer as "small scale technology" , so as to "the biggest commune of all: the internet" (F. Turner)--. The idealistic social flatness of the communes, anarchic yet with inevitable emerging order, its "counter" approach to western social organization but also the fact that in the end, the 60ies initiatives seemed to have "failed" for different reasons, interests me for further works. These "diggings" are also somehow connected to a ongoing project and tool we recently published online, a "data commune": Datadroppers (even so it is just a shared tool). Following this interest, I came accross this latest online publication by uncube (Issue #34) about the Commune Revisited, which both have an historic approach to old experiments (like the one of Drop City), and to more recent ones, up to the "gated community" ... The idea of the editors being to investigate the diversity of the concepts. It brings an interesting contemporary twist and understanding to the general idea... In a time when we are totally fed up with neo liberalism.
Via Uncube -----
"One year after our Urban Commons issue, we're returning to the idea of the communal, this time investigating just how diversly the concept of "commune" can be interpreted - and not always with entirely benevolent intentions or successful results. Wether trying to escape a broken economy or an oppressive system via new forms of existence or looking to break the system itself via anarchic methodologies, forming a commune traditionnaly involves segregation or stepping "outside" society. But no matter how off-grid and back-to-nature the contemporary communities that we investigate here are, it turns out they are far more connected than we think. Turn on, tune out, drop in. The editors"
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Sustainability
at
09:40
Defined tags for this entry: community, culture & society, history, magazines, social, speculation, sustainability, theory, thinking
Thursday, August 06. 2015Ken Isaacs' Living structures | #livable #structure #infrastructure
Note: we remain in history for a little more time... It's now Ken Isaacs' turn to be praised for his work around micro inhabitable spaces and living structures! I post this with the iodea in mind that his work could serve as reference for a future workshop next November at ECAL, probably with rAndom International as guests and when we'll continue to work around "cloud computing" and its infrastructure (datacenter), looking for counter-proposals or rather "counter-designs".
Via Object Guerilla ----- This week at work I picked up an old book, How to Build Your Own Living Structures, by Ken Isaacs, to read at lunch. I didn't finish it, so I brought it home. A little internet-ing revealed this book was out-of-print, rare, and selling for a good bit at various outlets. However, I think the copyright has lapsed, because it is available online as a PDF. Isaacs was born in 1927 in Peoria, Illinois, and served in the military as a young man. After Korea, he studied architecture, and then began to craft a career as a designer, architect, and educator. In the late fifties, he became Head of Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Arts, birthplace of much notable mid-century modernism, including Eliel and Eero Saarinen Charles and Ray Eames, and Harry Weese. He also spent some time teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology, founded by Mies van der Rohe as a sort of Bauhaus West. Cover, via Pop-Up City.
Matrix-based "super chair." Nowadays, most of that stuff can be replaced with an iPad... The next iterative leap in the Matrix was to do away with the framing altogether. Isaacs developed rigid stress-skin structures, using plywood and "L" brackets to make cubes. The cubes were built in modules: 16", 24", and eventually, 48". Smaller units were used for storage; mid-size ones could serve as desks and chairs; and the large units became the first Micro-Houses.
The Micro-House, circa late 60s, via Pop-Up City. Isaacs had the same idea, but he designed a modular, flat-pack, lightweight, re-configurable system. Combining the original beam-based Matrix and the stud-less panel structures, he built 8-foot modules out of 1" steel pipe and inserted plywood volumes into the matrix. Taking the classic modernist approach -- divorcing structure and skin -- he came up with a cheap, versatile house. The First Microhouse, built with a Graham Foundation grant in Groveland, Illinois, (near Carbondale, home of fellow light structure pioneer Buckminster Fuller), looks dated in the photos, but also startlingly fresh. I love the raw, stark geometry of it, everything stripped down to the margins.
Another variation on the Microhouse -- it is infinitely reconfigurable. His 8' Microhouse is very of its era, but has nonetheless managed to inspire at least one modern imitator, in Glasgow. It creates an 8' volume based on a matrix of eight 4' volumes bolted together. The canted sides, tetrahedral feet, and hatch doors give it a real Apollo feel, minus the silvery skin.
The plywood stress-skin Microhouse. Throughout, wrapped in some seventies slang and general architectural hooliganism, Isaacs stresses pre-fabrication, modularity, simplicity, and off-the-shelf parts. None of the projects are particularly difficult to make with simple tools(a little time-consuming, perhaps). The book itself is a bit shambling, combining personal narrative, philosophical inquiry, and DIY instructions. In many ways, it seems like a blog, written with no caps and little editing. Some of the book sale listings I found online show the original as spiral-bound, in keeping with its guerilla nature.
They were eventually able to replace the department-store albatross with this number.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Design, Territory
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Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, design, design (environments), designers, history, installations, territory
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.
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Read more about it HERE.
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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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