Monday, November 08. 2010
Tele-presence, data sculpture, weird drawing machines, etc.
Friday, October 22. 2010
Via Art-Agenda
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Ludlow 38 is pleased to present the exhibition Maryanne Amacher: City-Links. Between 1967 and 1981 the pioneering sound artist produced 22 City-Links projects in total, connecting distant microphones to installations and performances using dedicated FM-quality analog phone lines. Areas of downtown Buffalo, MIT, Boston Harbor, the Mississippi River, the New York harbor, studios in various locations, and other sites in the USA and abroad were transported, sometimes integrating performers near the microphones (such as John Cage and George Lewis for City-Links #18 performed at The Kitchen in 1979). The exhibition at Ludlow 38 brings together a number of documents, images and sound samples selected and reproduced from the nascent Amacher Archive as a first look at this important series of early telematic art works about which little has been published.
Maryanne Amacher wrote about her City-Links series: In my first sound works I developed the idea of sonic telepresence, introducing the use of telecommunication in sound installations. In the telelink installations "CITY-LINKS" #1-22 (1967- ) the sounds from one or more remote environment (in a city, or in several cities) are transmitted "live" to the exhibition space, as an ongoing sonic environment. I produce the "CITY-LINKS" installations using real-time telelinks to transmit the sound from microphones I place in the selected environments, spatializing these works with many different sonic environments: harbors, steel mills, stone towers, flour mills, factories, silos, airports, rivers, open fields, utility companies, and with musicians "on location." The adventure is in receiving live sonic spaces from more than one location at the same time - the tower, the ocean, the abandoned mill. Remote sound environments enter our local spaces and become part of our rooms. Instal lations of "CITY-LINKS" include works created for solo and group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974); Walker Arts Center "Projected Images," Minneapolis (1974); Hayden Gallery MIT, "Interventions In Landscape," Cambridge, Mass (1975); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass. (1975); Corps de Garde, Groningen, Holland (1978); the Kitchen Center, NYC (1979); Radio France Musique (1976); Mills College (1980 & 1994).
Maryanne Amacher was born on February 25, 1938 in Kane, PA and died October 22, 2009 in Rhinebeck, NY. At Maryanne Amacher's urging The Amacher Archive was initiated by her friends Robert The and Micah Silver during her illness in the summer of 2009. For more information or to support the project: maryanneamacher.org
A tribute to Maryanne Amacher will be held on the first anniversary of her death, October 22, 2010 and is organized and hosted by the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology in Cambridge, MA.
Maryanne Amacher: City-Links has been curated by Tobi Maier, Micah Silver, Robert The and Axel Wieder.
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Maryanne Amacher
City-Links
October 21 – November 28, 2010
Opening:
Wednesday October 20, 6-8pm
Ludlow 38 Künstlerhaus Stuttgart Goethe-Institut New York
38 Ludlow Street
New York 10002
Tel. 212 228 6848
info@ludlow38.org
Gallery hours: Thursday – Sunday 1-6pm and
by appointment
www.ludlow38.org
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Personal comment:
Sound telepresence. Sounds "usual" today, but it must be underlined that Amacher's works, City-Links (this could be the title of one of our work today!), date back from the 70ies. And where one more time, we see the Name of John Cage pop up...
Tuesday, January 19. 2010
The world-wide mobility explosion is an enormous challenge for designers. How can we convince people that current forms of continuous mobility are no longer ecologically sustainable? Should mobility simply be made unaffordably expensive? Or can we design viable alternatives
As a prelude to the ElectroSmog festival De Balie in Amsterdam will present a showcase of design proposals, practical projects and design-ideas that should persuade us to start moving less.
With on-line and on-site contributions by among others:
John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception, the international conference and knowledge network which sets new agendas for design, will highlight design projects that try to tackle the question of mobility reduction.
www.doorsofperception.com
Stefan Agamanolis, director of Distance Lab, Dublin, will present the specific focus of his organisation on networking rural and remote area’s. The relevant question for the ElectroSmog festival is whether we can live in a sustainable way in the green and still connect to the rest of the world, culturally and economically?
www.distancelab.org
David van Gent is a managing consultant for IBM on Learning Strategy & Technology, Virtual Worlds, Serious Gaming & Web 2.0. He will talk about and demo the Virtual Offices project of IBM, using open SIM technology (similar to second life):
( See for instance this CNN item )
The Medialab Prado, Madrid will present their recent project “In the Air” (tbc); “a visualisation project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid´s air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc), to see how they perform, react and interact with the rest of the city.
(..) The project proposes a platform for individual and collective awareness and decision making, where the interpretation of results can be used for real time navigation through the city, opportunistic selection of locations according to their air conditions and a base for political action.”
www.intheair.es
Eric Kluitenberg, head of the media department of De Balie and initiator of the ElectroSnog festival, will present the concept behind the festival. Besides exploring the critique of mobility theoretically, ElectroSmog will also address the issue practically. All international presentations in the festival will be realised by means of tele-connections between the different international locations.
www.electrosmogfestival.net
This program will be streamed live on the internet – for details please refer to:
www.debalie.nl/live
datum | Thursday 21 January, 20.30 hrs.
language | Engels
entrance free entree
www.debalie.nl/media
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Via The Mobile City
Personal comment:
Shall we start to move less? This question will be asked (and answered?) during this coming event in Amsterdam. Some names to follow here (like John Thackara).
For my part I would rather say "move more sustainably", "move with purpose(s)" and somethimes "move in a mediated way", mix all those approaches, because I believe mobilty will increase in the future rather than the countrary.
Besides, mobility has brought a lot to the transformation of societes. In good and bad ways of course. Experimenting more with the ones that have some potential (like mixing of cultures while keeping differences or on the other side interbreeding, hybridations, some side of tourism --a tiny part--, creation of abstract and interferential environments and experiences --planes, trains, -- global spatial experiences --airports, branded hotels--, ...) would also be an interesting path to experiment while keeping a critical look to it.
One can hardly deny the fact that mobility has created new spaces (and paved the way for globalization, unsustainable at this stage) that have some potential (hybdrids, interferential, ex-dimensional, etc.). These environments add themsleves to the already existing "local spaces", that won't and shouldn't disappear. Mobility is in fact an old dream (even an old utopia from the 60ies) that is coming to reality in its own way. It's time probably to architecture this mobility and this global scale with sustainable and contemporary concepts that look further than just mere economics, profits or functionality!
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