fabric | rblg

Note:

The exhibition Beneath the Skin, Between the Machines just opened at HOW Art Museum (Hao Art Gallery) and fabric | ch was keen to be invited to create a large installation for the show, also intented to be used during a symposium that will be entirely part of the exhibition (panels and talks as part of the installation therefore). The exhibition will be open between January 15 - April 24 2022 in Shanghai.

Along with a selection of chinese and international artists, curator Liaoliao Fu asked us to develop a proposal based on a former architectural device, Public Platform of Future-Past, which in itself was inspired by an older installation of ours... Heterochrony.

This new work, entitled Platform of Future-Past, deals with the temporal oddity that can be produced and induced by the recording, accumulation and storage of monitoring data, which contributes to leaving partial traces of "reality", functioning as spectres of the past.

We are proud to present this work along artists such as Hito Steyerl, Geumhyung Jeong, Lu Yang, Jon Rafman, Forensic Architecture, Lynn Hershman Leeson and Harun Farocki.

...

Last but not least and somehow a "sign of the times", this is the first exhibition in which we are participating and whose main financial backers are a blockchain and crypto-finance company, as well as a NFT platform. Both based in China.

More information about the symposium will be published.

Via Pro Helvetia

-----

-----

Curatorial Statement

By Fu Liaoliao and the curatorial team

"Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.” When Paul Valéry wrote this down, he might not foresee that human beings – a biological organism – would indeed be incorporated into machinery at such a profound level in a highly informationized and computerized time and space. In a sense, it is just as what Marx predicted: a conscious connection of machine^[1]. Today, machine is no longer confined to any material form; instead, it presents itself in the forms of data, coding and algorithm – virtually everything that is “operable”, “calculable” and “thinkable”. Ever since the idea of cyborg emerges, the man-machine relation has always been intertwined with our imagination, vision and fear of the past, present and future.

In a sense, machine represents a projection of human beings. We human beings transfer ideas of slavery and freedom to other beings, namely a machine that could replace human beings as technical entities or tools. Opposite (and similar, in a sense,) to the “embodiment” of machine, organic beings such as human beings are hurrying to move towards “disembodiment”. Everything pertinent to our body and behavior can be captured and calculated as data. In the meantime, the social system that human beings have created never stops absorbing new technologies. During the process of trial and error, the difference and fortuity accompanying the “new” are taken in and internalized by the system. “Every accident, every impulse, every error is productive (of the social system),”^[2] and hence is predictable and calculable. Within such a system, differences tend to be obfuscated and erased, but meanwhile due to highly professional complexities embedded in different disciplines/fields, genuine interdisciplinary communication is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

As a result, technologies today are highly centralized, homogenized, sophisticated and commonized. They penetrate deeply into our skin, but beyond knowing, sensing and thinking. On the one hand, the exhibition probes into the reconfiguration of man by technologies through what’s “beneath the skin”; and on the other, encourages people to rethink the position and situation we’re in under this context through what’s “between the machines”. As an art institute located at Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, one of the most important hi-tech parks in China, HOW Art Museum intends to carve out an open rather than enclosed field through the exhibition, inviting the public to immerse themselves and ponder upon the questions such as “How people touch machines?”, “What the machines think of us?” and “Where to position art and its practice in the face of the overwhelming presence of technology and the intricate technological reality?”

Departing from these issues, the exhibition presents a selection of recent works of Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Simon Denny, Harun Farocki, Nicolás Lamas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lu Yang, Lam Pok Yin, David OReilly, Pakui Hardware, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Shi Zheng and Geumhyung Jeong. In the meantime, it intends to set up a “panel installation”, specially created by fabric | ch for this exhibition, trying to offer a space and occasion for decentralized observation and participation in the above discussions. Conversations and actions are to be activated as well as captured, observed and archived at the same time.

^[1] Karl Marx, “Fragment on Machines”, Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy

^[2] Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems

-----

Schedule

Duration: January 15-April 24, 2022
Artists: Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Simon Denny, fabric | ch, Harun Farocki, Geumhyung Jeong, Nicolás Lamas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lu Yang, Lam Pok Yin, David OReilly, Pakui Hardware, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Shi Zheng
Curator: Fu Liaoliao
Organizer: HOW Art Museum, Shanghai
Lead Sponsor: APENFT Foundation
Swiss participation is supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council.
(Swiss speakers and performers appearing in the educational events will be updated soon.)

-----

Work by fabric | ch

HOW Art Museum has invited Lausanne-based artist group fabric | ch to set up a “panel installation” based on their former project “Public Platform of Future Past” and adapted to the museum space, fostering insightful communication among practitioners from different fields and the audiences.

“Platform of Future-Past” is a temporary environmental device that consists in a twenty meters long walkway, or rather an observation deck, almost archaeological: a platform that overlooks an exhibition space and that, paradoxically, directly links its entrance to its exit. It thus offers the possibility of crossing this space without really entering it and of becoming its observer, as from archaeological observation decks. The platform opens- up contrasting atmospheres and offers affordances or potential uses on the ground.

The peculiarity of the work consists thus in the fact that it generates a dual perception and a potential temporal disruption, which leads to the title of the work, Platform of Future-Past: if the present time of the exhibition space and its visitors is, in fact, the “archeology” to be observed from the platform, and hence a potential “past,” then the present time of the walkway could be understood as a possible “future” viewed from the ground…

“Platform of Future-Past” is equipped in three zones with environmental monitoring devices. The sensors record as much data as possible over time, generated by the continuously changing conditions, presences and uses in the exhibition space. The data is then stored on Platform Future-Past’s servers and replayed in a loop on its computers. It is a “recorded moment”, “frozen” on the data servers, that could potentially replay itself forever or is waiting for someone to reactivate it. A “data center” on the deck, with its set of interfaces and visualizations screens, lets the visitors-observers follow the ongoing process of recording.

The work could be seen as an architectural proposal built on the idea of massive data production from our environment. Every second, our world produces massive amounts of data, stored “forever” in remote data centers, like old gas bubbles trapped in millennial ice.

As such, the project is attempting to introduce doubt about its true nature: would it be possible, in fact, that what is observed from the platform is already a present recorded from the past? A phantom situation? A present regenerated from the data recorded during a scientific experiment that was left abandoned? Or perhaps replayed by the machine itself ? Could it already, in fact, be running on a loop for years?

Platform of Future-Past, Scaffolding, projection screens, sensors, data storage, data flows, plywood panels, textile partitions

-----

Platform of Future-Past (2022)

-----

Beneath the Skin, Between the Machines (exhibition, 01.22 - 04.22)

-----

Platform of Future-Past was realized with the support of Pro Helvetia.

Note: We had the chance at fabric | ch to initiate a new research / project last Spring, in collaboration with the Nam June Paik Art Center (warning: long loading time!) in South Korea and ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO).

In this context, we're having the opportunity to work with some of the amazing material of the museum's collection and archive. It contains some of Paik's major works (single & multi-channel video in particular), that have been difficult to see since the passing of the artist, and most of its archives.

The museum indeed has the largest collection Paik's video, as well as some important installations and a large primary and secondary material about the production of the artworks themselves. The research undertaken is looking to give access to this material in new ways and forms, out of the physical museum and through digital means. For this task, we're planning to further dig into the archives and look at works that were realized, or not, during the Fluxus period ("Symphony for 20 Rooms", "Exhibition of Music, Electronic Television").

The aim of this research is to work on automated curating and digital display (likely AR) of exhibitions at anybody's place (home, appartment, office, warehouse, "garage", etc.), resonating with the concept of "Viewing Rooms" and therefore the title of this first phase of the research: (Re-)Viewing Paik. We are seeking forms of personal exhibitions, for specific spatial configurations and in which the artworks organize their presence themselves, according to an objective understanding of the space.  

To achieve these research objectives, we'll work with fabric | ch's software and ongoing project that allows us to automate the creation of environments, based on sensors inputs: Atomized (*) Functioning (pdf), which is based on customizable/scriptable algorithmic and AI procedures. In the specific case of (Re-)Viewing Paik, it is used for curation and exhibition design purposes, therefore Atomized (curatorial) Functioning (pdf). Like we already did for this exhibition at HeK, in 2019.

-----

By fabric | ch

Below are early tests with a digital transposition/reconstruction of TV Buddha (literally), the zen media buddha in between a glitched and mirrored digital environment containing other artworks (video and photographies of the famous 1963 exhibition: Exposition of Music - Electronic Television).

This early phase of the work will see us work with the pieces selected by Nam June Paik Art Center curator and archivst Sans Ae Park. These pieces were selected mainly to test different artwork types and durations into their new display setup.

...

Note: an interview about the implications of AI in art and the work of fabric | ch in particular, between Nathalie Bachand (writer & independant curator), Christophe Guignard and myself (both fabric | ch). The exchange happened in the context of a publication in the art magazine Espace, it was fruitful and we had the opportunity to develop on recent projects, like the "Atomized" serie of architectural works that will continue to evolve, as well as our monographic exhibition at Kunshalle Éphémère, entitled Environmental Devices (1997 - 2017).

-----

By fabric | ch

Note: this publication was released at the occasion of the exhibition Entangled Realities - Living with Artificial Intelligence, curated by Sabine Himmelsbach & Boris Magrini at Haus der elektronischen Künste, in Basel.

The project Atomized (curatorial) Functioning (pdf), part of the Atomized (*) Functioning serie, was presented, used  and debatedi n this context.

-----

By Patrick Keller

Note: Patrick Keller (fabric | ch) was in discussion with curator Sabine Himmelsbach, from Haus der elektronischen Künste in Basel (CH), about their new acquisition for the collection of the Museum: Satellite Daylight 47°33'N.

The piece will be displayed permanently in the public space of the HeK. At least until breakdown... But interestingly, it is also part of a whole program of digital conservation at HeK that should prevent its technological collapse, for which we had to follow a tight protocol of documentation and provide the source code pf the work.

-----

fabric | ch, Satellite Daylight, 47°33‘N, 2020, Vue de l'installation durant «Shaping the Invisible World», 2021, HeK. Photo.: P. Keller.

Shooting set in preparation ...

Followed by our discussion with Sabine Himmelsbach ... (with a lot of reverb in the staircase!)

-----

Via Haus der elektronischen Künste (blog)

Patrick Keller of fabric | ch, a studio for architecture, interaction and research in Lausanne, provides thrilling insight about the new work installed in the staircase of HeK.

Patrick Keller of fabric | ch, a studio for architecture, interaction and research in Lausanne, provides information about the new work in an interview. The installation  Satellite Daylight, 47°33’N, commissioned for the HeK collection, simulates the light registered by an imaginary meteorological satellite orbiting the earth at the latitude of Basel at a speed of 7541m/s.

Note: A new work by fabric | ch has been commissionned and aquired by the Haus der elektronischen Künste (HeK) in Basel for the museum's collection, part of the Satellite Daylight serie of "environmental devices".

It is the second work of fabric | ch that enters the collection, after a serie of four videos related to Satellite Daylight and entitled Satellite Daylight Pavilion. We are glad to join artists in the collection like Jodi, mediengruppe!Bitnick, Etoy, ... and also former students or colleagues at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (Juerg Lehni, Gisin & Vanetti, FragmentIn)!

This new artwork is entitled Satellite Daylight 47°33'N, and circles in fictious and continous way around the 47°33'N latitude -- while acquiring live environmental data about daylight, light intensity, nebulosity and cloud cover that drive the luminous display. --

This continuous circonvolution, at the speed of a real Earth Satellite and that triggers 16 nights and days per regular day on Earth, produces a new combined daylight at the point of installation, both local and internationally mediated.

Satellite Daylight's is an open serie of unique artworks, each located on a different latitude.

Via fabric | ch

----- 

 (Photo.: P. Keller)

Note: an online talk with Patrick Keller, lead archivist and curator Sang Ae Park from Nam June Paik Art Center (NJPAC) in Seoul, and Christian Babski from fabric | ch.

The topic will be related to an ongoing design research into automated curating, jointly led between NJPAC, ECAL and fabric | ch.

-----

Via Nam June Paik Art Center

How would Augmented Reality change exhibition curating and design in the future? Join our June Science Club and learn how the ECAL and Nam June Paik Art Center are collaborating to develop a novel range of museums. This talk program is hosted by Swissnex and Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Korea. All talks shall be in English.

---

Note: during the first museum's lockdown in Russia (2020), The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art in Moscow invited curators to participate in the "media quanrantine" by reacting to the theme "100 Ways to Live a Minute".

Sabine Himmelsbach, director and curator from HeK picked fabric | ch's work Satellite Daylight 46°28N (2007). Below is her presentation.

-----

Via The Pushkin Museum

Note: open since last September and seen here and there, this exhibition at the Withney about the uses of rules and code in art. It follows a similar exhibition - and historical as well - this year at the MOMA, Thinking Machines. This certainly demonstrates an increasing desire and interest in the historization of six decades - five in the context of this show - of "art & technologies" (not yet "design & technologies", while "architecture and digital" was done at the CCA).

Those six decades remained almost under the radar for long and there will be obviously a lot of work to do to write this epic!

Interesting in the context of the Whitney exhibition are the many sub-topics developed: 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Ideas as Form / 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Generative Measures / 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Collapsing Instruction and Form /

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Image Resequenced / 

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Liberating the Signal /

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Realities Encoded /

- Augmented Reality: Tamiko Thiel

Via Whitney Museum of American Art

-----

Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 establishes connections between works of art based on instructions, spanning over fifty years of conceptual, video, and computational art. The pieces in the exhibition are all “programmed” using instructions, sets of rules, and code, but they also address the use of programming in their creation. The exhibition links two strands of artistic exploration: the first examines the program as instructions, rules, and algorithms with a focus on conceptual art practices and their emphasis on ideas as the driving force behind the art; the second strand engages with the use of instructions and algorithms to manipulate the TV program, its apparatus, and signals or image sequences. Featuring works drawn from the Whitney’s collection, Programmed looks back at predecessors of computational art and shows how the ideas addressed in those earlier works have evolved in contemporary artistic practices. At a time when our world is increasingly driven by automated systems, Programmed traces how rules and instructions in art have both responded to and been shaped by technologies, resulting in profound changes to our image culture.

The exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of Digital Art, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research, with Clémence White, curatorial assistant.

Note: following the exhibition Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 until last April at MOMA, images of the show appeared on the museum's website, with many references to projects. After Archeology of the Digital at CCA in Montreal between 2013-17, this is another good contribution to the history of the field and to the intricate relations between art, design, architecture and computing.

How cultural fields contributed to the shaping of this "mass stacked media" that is now built upon the combinations of computing machines, networks, interfaces, services, data, data centers, people, crowds, etc. is certainly largely underestimated.

Literature start to emerge, but it will take time to uncover what remained "out of the radars" for a very long period. They acted in fact as some sort of "avant-garde", not well estimated or identified enough, even by specialized institutions and at a time when the name "avant-garde" almost became a "s-word"... or was considered "dead".

Unfortunately, no publication seems to have been published in relation to the exhibition, on the contrary to the one at CCA, which is accompanied by two well documented books.

Via MOMA

-----

Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989

November 13, 2017–April 8, 2018 | The Museum of Modern Art