For an exhibition at the Caricatura Gallery in Kassel (January-March 2008), we created a series of playful and colourful miniature interactives:
loophole | funfaircapsule | the rush | jack in the box
Instead of developing capacious installations for months, we thought it must be nice to make up interactive artworks that fit in a casket. They are based on a simple punchline or a very accessible notion, imagery or format.
Caricatura is a Gallery for Comical Art, most often showcasing the work of illustrators, satirical drawings, animation and comic strips. On their invitation, the class of New Media Design at the Kassel School of Arts and Design presented a range of interactive and electronic artworks. Contributions comment on our everyday use of technology, reverse habitual expectations towards electronic devices and make computer dreams come true.
Find out more about the other participants at jahrmarktskunst.de (sorry, german only).
The german sculptor Ulrich Rückriem, well known for geometrically divided and rearranged blocks of stone, now shows a series of conceptual drawings in a small exhibit at Museum Ludwig in Cologne. The black and white wall drawing and prints are based on a grid of 7×7=49 crosspoints.
7 points are selected and connected by straight lines which touch each point only one time and then get back to their origin. This produces a variety of acute-angled geometrical drawings.
The aesthetic system is based on what is known as a standoff situation in checkers game: Eight pieces stand on positions on the game board from where none of them can beat one another, neither on horizontal or vertical lines nor on diagonals.
A sound installation by Keiichiro Shibuya and Takashi Ikegami at Podewils´sches Palais, Berlin, which many visitors of transmediale.08 unfortunately might have missed.
i wish we had such a sound setup for the orbiter!
Naqoyqatsi: Life as war is a documentary film released in 2002; it is the third and final film of the Qatsi trilogy by Godfrey Reggio. The film focuses on society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based industrial environment.
In the opening chapter, the first scene is a zoom in of the Tower of Babel as portrayed in the Bible, then, shots of an abandoned building from both interior and exterior are shown, followed by a black and white series of shots. One shot is one of a strong wave, followed by a mountain with an effect behind the mountains of stars falling like comets, then a natural scene, then a black and white animation of a mountain’s framework growing is shown, after that, inverted, black and white, layered people are seen walking. Many lines come above the scene, and then the title is revealed in big, red writing.
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation is the 1988 sequel to the experimental 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio. It is the second film in the Qatsi trilogy.
Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “parasitic way of life” or “life in transition”. While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization.
As with Koyaanisqatsi and the third and final part of the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, the film is strongly related to its soundtrack, written by Philip Glass. Here, human voices (especially children’s and mainly from South America and Africa) appear more than in Koyaanisqatsi, in harmony with the film’s message and images.
Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by minimalist composer Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke
The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
Marius Watz wrote an interesting article about Turux.org and the viennese Net.Art scene in the late 90s.
Amongst it were people like Dextro my all-time favorite abstract artist.
» Read the full article
awesome photography work by Elkie from Belgium, working in London. The narrative and sometimes bulky titles of her pictures seem to be as important as the image itself.
39 quasi-scientific paintings and drawings. Musing on the meaning of life, surrounding a twelve foot high black column filled with whirling computers. A hexagonal structure, The Thinker emits an electronic hum generated by the bank of computers inside. The computers are set to operate for 33,000 years with an LED display counting the seconds up to 76.5 years (the average human lifespan).
Tyson said it was his take on sculptor Rodin’s famous piece, The Thinker.
“The Thinker is a twelve foot high black column that houses a series of computers inside it, running an artificial life programme which has been programmed in such a way that it evolves. There is no physical manifestation of the fact that it is thinking, and I’m fascinated by the idea that when you come across it you have a thing that is thinking but which is impenetrable – that you can’t get within its skin. Once the thing sets off, I can predict that it’s thinking for about half an hour but after that I’ve got no idea – so I’m as much in the dark as everyone else as to what it’s actually thinking about.”
It is part of a series entitled “The Seven Wonders of the World”.
“That is a series of works that relate to things I find wonderous. I wanted to make works that were not illustrative of some scientific or philosophical theory but embodied it – were in fact the actual theory made manifest. The Thinker really thinks, and is thought. The fact that human beings have reached a stage where they can find a mathematical methodology for creating thought itself, and that we can comprehend our own existence, are some of the things I am trying to manifest in this work. It also relates to this idea that we can never actually prove what the internal dialogue of another human being actually is. It’s about the way in which everybody’s universe is impenetrable, and the way everyone who thinks has their own separate universe.”
Two works by chilenean artist Gonzalo Diaz seen at Documenta 12: Eclipsis, 2007 and Al calor del Pensiamente, 1999.
Eclipsis is a dark space crossed by a huge and very powerful floodlight. Only when standing in the beam you can read the back-lit verses: You came to the heart of Germany just to see the word Art in your own shadow.
Al calor del Pensiamente is a wall mounted typography structure made from boiler tubes. They glow up every few seconds, and waves of heat advance you. Might be translated with: We´re always searching the absolute but all we find is things.
I love these two in particular because I consider “haptics” just as important as “audio-visual” which we are focussed on when talking about interactives.
berlin07 @ transmediale
i really really dig this installation – just dont remember by whom?!
reminds me a bit of hito steierls work at the documenta (3 orange cinema displays)
The three will present DOT in the Audiovisual Performance program of the 24th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival which Marcus and me were proud to co-curate.
The 2007 program of the festival will be published soon – i´ll keep you posted.
.... finally, we started to take a look around at documenta, quite late regarding the fact that it´s happening in our hometown. We both loved the fiberglass sculptures by John McCracken. Documenta 12 also shows some of his paintings which have a completely different style.
I wonder how someone can be so famous but not have a website!
Here are some links to documenta pages and a list of galleries from the german artist index Kunstaspekte
This guy called BIGRIGJIG is a sculpture by a group of artists from sunny California who installed it for this year´s Burning Man
There´s also a 3D-Panaroma available, but i like this photograph even better – looks like it´s dancing!
found via centripetalnotion.com
The orbiter is an interactive sound environment by Vera-Maria Glahn and Marcus Wendt.
It invites you to reach for the stars and play their music!
Documentation
These videos can hardly represent the surround sound quality of the installation, but to get an impression please use headphones and/or a good audio setup!
The Orbiter takes possession of all senses. It is a place for visitors to lay down and relax, watching the firmament above them. With a small gesture, just pointing upwards, the visitor can insert new stars into orbit with unique visual and musical characteristics. The player is enveloped by the instrument; the music filling the ears, the body and space.
The dream of reaching for the stars is as old as mankind itself. The mathematics of planetary orbits, the perfection of natural geometrical forms fascinates scientists and artists alike. Even music principles as tonality or phase displacement are based upon computational ideas and find correspondency in the Orbiters structure.
The music is played on concentric circles, with higher tones on the outside, bass notes nearer the centre. The bigger you let a star grow before you pull back your hand to insert it into orbit, the louder it plays.
Like the stars orbit on the large ceiling screen above the player, the surround sound orbits in the room on 4 high-tone-channels, supported by a bass box and a solid bourne sound speaker underneath the player`s couch, making low basses physically sensable.
Each version of the Orbiter features various scenes with different graphics, sounds and behaviour. Some create an illusionary nightsky firmament, playing more melodic or ambient sounds. Others experiment with the possibilities of graphical abstraction and rough synths, allowing you to even play drum’n bass-like sounds.
The installation is based on custom-built software using latest gaming and computer vision technology, performing real-time analysis of a camera image of the player as well as generating 6-channel-audio and video signals. The video analysis is written in C++, instructing SuperCollider for the audio generation, Processing for the graphics.
“[...] 1. Mode ist die neue Indie-Musik geworden, weil man mit dem Droppen von kleineren hochqualitativen Designern im Handumdrehen Leute aus dem Gespräch ausgrenzen kann. [...]
2. Kunst ist die neue Popmusik, weil in Monopol, in Sleek oder beim wöchentlichen Atelierbesuch im halbneuen Zeitmagazin zum Beispiel über Künstler berichtet wird, wie im Feuilleton über Popmusik. Marke: Sollte man kennen, muss man haben.
3. Nur was ist Musik eigentlich noch? Außer schön natürlich und auf dem Ipod. [...]”
