Art

Friluftskino: Experiments in open-air surveillance cinema
Every day from 13th to 20th of September at 21h.
Throughout the city of Oslo. Rain or shine. Popcorn and seating provided.

An after effect of the consumer use of wireless surveillance technology is the production of images. These video images, incidental in nature, are easily intercepted while walking through the streets with a video scanner, creating an alternate journey into the non-places of the city created through surveillance use. Spatial boundary conventions of private and public, inside and outside are challenged by the reality of the radio transmission which moves beyond walls and onto the street. By accessing these images one is also offered a view into how the public depicts and represents itself through the use of these readily available technologies and a glimpse into the ways the city itself is redefined and restructured through migratory and economic flows and shifts.

For ‘Frilufts Kino‘, the city of Oslo will provide the source and the projection surface for an open-air cinema. Once a day, for a period of seven days, different places throughout the Oslo districts of Grønland and Grunerløkka will be used as locations for a ‘Frilufts Kino’. Using a powerful video beamer and video scanner, live surveillance intercepted from wireless CCTV cameras will be captured and then rebroadcasted upon the city walls.

The live transmission will ideally last as long as a feature length film. The extended time of the intervention is intended to allow one to contemplate the live image which, contrary to being titillating and action-filled, is actually empty and still, a place of non-action. They are spaces to be filled, through subtle shifts that take place within the observed scene, or through the viewer’s own physical or imagined intervention.

Michelle Teran (CA)
Born in Canada, Michelle Teran is a media artist currently living and working in Berlin. Within her practice she explores the interplay between social and media networks within urban environments and creates performances, installations and online works that are concerned with issues of communication, surveillance, psychogeography, presence, intimacy, social ritual, collaboration and public participation. She has talked, performed, exhibited at events and venues throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Asia such as Transmediale Festival, Ars Electronica, ISEA, BEAP, V2, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Impakt Festival, CCCB/MACBA, ARCO International Art Fair, Vooruit, HAU2, Nabi, Performance Space, Waag Society for Old and New Media and the World Wide Web. She has completed residencies and commissions with several cultural institutions including Tesla (Berlin), Waag Society for Old and New Media (Amsterdam), Mobile Digital Commons Network (Montreal) and will be artist-in-residence at both La Chambre Blanche (Quebec City) and Interactive Institute (Stockholm) in the fall and winter of 2007. She has lectured and led workshops on topics such as the relation of artist, performer and audience to networked space and the urban topologies of space, place and non-place at several educational institutions including Bauhaus Universität (Weimar), Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Dance Unlimited (Amsterdam) and Willem de Kooning Academie (Rotterdam).

She has received numerous grants and awards for her work. She was nominated for the Transmediale award and received Prix Ars Electronica honorary mention within the interactive art category for her ongoing performance work ‘Life: a user’s manual’. LiveForm:Telekinetics (LF:TK), a collaborative project with Jeff Mann that develops experimental connected social spaces using streamed media, sensor-based and kinetic objects, was commissioned by Waag Society for Old and New Media (Amsterdam) and was awarded 2nd prize in the Vida 8.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition, sponsored by Fundacion Telefonica (Madrid).

Personal comment:

Une approche qui rappelle celle de Dunne & Raby il y a plusieurs années (la cartographie de la ville électromagnétique) ou d'autres projects de "scanning" des émissions d'ondes privées (wifi, baby call, etc.), couplée à celle de la projection "pirate" en zone urbaine (à la façon Graphiti Research Lab de NY-Eyebeam). Bref, pas vraiment nouveau, mais mérite d'être signalé. A voir aussi, au niveau matériel, quels sont ces scanner vidéos.