Friday, November 05. 2010A Bigger Fresh: News From David HockneyVia Art Press ----- I just read these following lines from David Hockney (73 this year, and for which technologies always had an influence in his paintings --photography, photocopy, fax--), in Art Press n° 372: "(...). You can understand what's happening today much better if you see history the way I do. For 500 years the Church controlled society by reigning over images. With the advent of the mass media, it gradually lost its power, and media magnates circulated whatever images they want, and Hollywood has extended its empire around the world. Now images are undergoing another upheaval, marking the decline of newspaper and television. People have moved onto this [gesturing at his iPad]. The monopoly on the distribution of images has been shattered. Now I can circulate whatever I want for free. This new era also signals the changing nature of photography." "In my book Secret Knowledge, I demonstrated that photography existed long before chemical development on paper. Art historians may dispute it but I don't mind: this is the result of observation by a painter, an insider's view. Why did Caravaggio invent Hollywood lighting? Because he used a whole system of lenses, concave mirror and a camera obscura to project faces and real objects onto the canvas. Vermeer, Van Eyck, Canaletto, Chardin and Ingres used these methods. The invention of the camera in 1837 was just a way to fix the projection on paper. That lasted 160 years and now it's over. Now it's the era of digital photography, manipulating images, and the come back of manual dexterity. The idea that photography is the most striking illustration of reality is outdated. In this country, possessing or looking at certain kind of photos will land you in jail. I ask you: how can anyone tell whether or not these photos have anything to do with reality? Has this point been discussed? No. Has it been talked about in the art world? No. People think the world is like photography, but the camera gives us an optical projection of the world. It sees the world in a spectacular way, whereas we perceive it psychologically. No matter how good a photo may be, it doesn't haunt you the way a painting can. A good painting embraces ambiguities that can never be untangled; that's why it's so fascinating. (...) Painting will always be superior to photography in one respect: time, that juxtaposition of moments which is what makes a great painting so deep, rich and ambiguous. It has been said that the surface is all that matters. But that is to cancel what can be called the magic of art. The magic is the indeterminate part. I think the only way to renew art is to go back to nature. Nature is unlimited; it's foolish to say that we've seen it all."
Related Links:Personal comment:
Can we still speak about "nature" (I mean, a place where there's no wifi, no telecom networks and no communication --probably in the deep oceans, in foreign and/or inaccessible landscapes or high in the moutains --but even the Himalayas got wifi recently, Swiss mountains are all covered by Swisscom networks...--; do we have to speak about "manual dexterity" or "sotware dexterity"? Deep Space Public Lighting, Chilean Copper-Gold Mines, Rare Earths Geopolitics, and iPhones as Portable Artificial Suns(Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available. At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.” To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet. (Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) (Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) By happy coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue. (Graphics and research by C. Argandoña, I. Muñoz, C. Araya, J.Cortés/LA TERCERA, via The Washington Post. Source) Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference: One of the things that's being recommended is that there be one place, a community area, which is always lighted. And then you have a second area which is always dark for sleep, and then you have a third area which is work, doing the mining, and the shifts can migrate through these geographic locations within the mine and, in that way, regulate the daylight cycle of the shift. It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel. A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.“ (Trapped miners at the Copiapó mine on video. Image via Reuters/Chilean Government. Source.) Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch. Or from an i-weatherized iPhone. (There's an app for that.) And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion. Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters. Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art
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Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, digital, fabric | ch, lighting, physiological, publications, publications-fbrc, weather
Wednesday, November 03. 2010Time/Store - Grand OpeningVia art agenda -----
Time/Bank and e-flux are pleased to announce the grand opening of the Time/Store at 41 Essex Street, New York City.
Personal comment: This is a strange coincident event whith an exhibition by french artists Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Péjus that takes its inspiration in the same subjet (Time Store project by anarchist Josiah Warren), here in Lausanne at the gallery Circuit. A way to say that it's worth to visit it! Tuesday, November 02. 2010Where is Architecture? Seven Installations by Japanese ArchitectsVia Momat --- This exhibition of architecture consists entirely of new installations by seven groups of Japanese architects, representing a variety of ages and styles. «Cornfield / Nakamura Riyuji"
Hideyuki Nakayama About artists:
ITO Toyo (b. 1941- )
The spatial structure that Ito Toyo proposed for the New Deichmann Main Library Competition in Oslo, Norway in 2009 is a dynamic work that makes use of three types of polyhedrons to fill and develop the entire space. Ito's installation in this exhibition will make use of this system. And with a "wandering" display of the architect's recent projects, such as Za-Koenji, the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the act of viewing is sure to take on a whole new air. Installation view
inside in, 2010
NAITO Hiroshi (1950- )
Naito's work in this exhibition will consist of approximately 200 red lasers. Though immaterial, when someone enters the "space," it will take on a realistic aspect in this promisingly fantastic work. Moreover, taking inspiration from the work, JunJun SCIENCE and Umeda Hiroaki are scheduled to dance several times inside the installation during the exhibition period. Installation view
Red Stripes, 2010 Atelier Bow-Wow (TSUKAMOTO Yoshiharu, b.1965 and KAIJIMA Momoyo, b. 1969)
Atelier Bow-Wow has participated in exhibitions all over the world. All of these works were created according to the "micro public space" concept. For this exhibition, the architects will produce an installation for the museum's front lawn titled "Rendez-vous." The work will make use of an animal motif, bamboo as a material, and will function as a summer house. Though the space in front of the museum has always been confusing — Is it an outdoor display of sculpture? Is it okay to go inside it? —, as the entire area will be redesigned through this installation, a variety of spontaneous acts are anticipated. Installation view
Rendez-vous, 2010
NAKAMURA Ryuji (1972- )
After stacking up some corrugated panels, creating a beehive-like form, and boring holes in the resultant truss-like structure, an exterior will be added to the entire work, which will allow the viewer to verify how they "see." Then, by applying the "hechima" concept, Nakamura plans to create a huge "structure-like object," which though hollow and fragile, will be huge. How will the object make us feel? Not only will the structure be interesting, but the fact that our senses will be affected by the work is sure to be interesting. Installation view
cornfield, 2010 NAKAYAMA Hideyuki (1972- )
Nakayama's installation will be based on "Door on the Prairie," a proposal the architect submitted for the "Tea House Competition. " How would a "large door" look if it was reduced to a third of its original size? And what sort of sensation will we have when we look at it? The viewer will experience the gentle rewriting of the relationship between space and body. Installation view
Door on the Prairie, 2010
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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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