Art Events Data Table

Internationally renowned artist Perry Hoberman brings his work to the UK for the first time, with the exhibition of a new commission, System Update, and an earlier work, Faraday’s Garden. Hoberman re-functionalises the everyday environment, combining high level new technology with familiar mundane materials, viewing the contemporary proliferation of consumer goods and gadgets with a mixture of affection, irreverent pranksterism and intelligent satire.

This outstanding and highly acclaimed video installation uses archive material and found footage to explore the history of airplane hijackings. More significantly, it reveals the media’s transformation of the ’60’s romantic revolutionary into the ’90’s anonymous bomb terrorist and our apparently insatiable appetite for the gruesome and the absurd.

Yin Xiu Zhen will be resident at the Chinese Arts Centre creating work in Manchester throughout August as part of DS98 festival.

As a British artist of Chinese origin, Tone Balone addresses issues of discrimination and xenophobia in his retroactive computer game Alien Invasion. Whether you choose to defend the motherland from invasion, or attack immigrants, with xenophobic abuse, ‘Alien Invasion’ is a powerful comment on the impact of computer play on the social dynamics of multicultural Europe.

Nedko Solakov, arguably Bulgaria’s most acclaimed living artist, presents The Right One, an interactive multimedia installation. It uses a structure of stories and games to deconstruct the idea of the museum arid the practice of artists themselves; themes that are common to Solakov’s recent work.

When does the perception of an individual element dissolve into the perception a larger whole? When does that whole become just another component in a greater form? Every particle or organism, any form defined as an individual element, also serves as a part of a larger element. The question of identity is revealed to be a matter of perspective: I am at once an individual human, a collection of differentiated cells, an incredible mass of atoms, an incomprehensible gathering of subatomic particles. I am also a part of a family, a community, a social class, a race, a gender, a species, a phylum. I am all these things simultaneously and the distinctions are only a matter of point of view. The simultaneous representation of the whole and the element is, among others, a principal intent of this work. The arrangement and representation of large structures is not a trivial task. There are no ready-made tools that design and arrange a simple social structure as in Diagram for the Apprehension of Simple Forces. So, the task is divided between myself and software I compose. The process becomes a hybrid of traditional art practice and software design. I design the architecture, figures and forms and write software to handle the minutiae of laying out a population of 2600 male figures in a social system. Though I designed the world in its entirety, I give up specific control to algorithms of my design.

The Grand Unification Theory reformats hours of narrative into the immediacy of the picture, while preserving the structure of whole and part. The panels exist as both abstract formal constructions at a distance and single frames of film upon closer inspection. Again, I designed the images by drawing and working with forms, but composed software for the purpose of analyzing and assembling the images. Although I am interested in many other issues (such as pop culture and broad aesthetic appeal), one of the principal aims of this work is to represent structures in microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives simultaneously. The difficulty in managing large numbers of items necessitates the invention of new tools to assist in the creation of these structures. That does not imply that the tools do all the work. Quite the opposite, as designer of the forms and designer of the tools, the author is completely responsible for the composition. In collaboration with the tools I create, I build worlds. The nature of the worlds depends on perspective.

It’s like this: you’re listening to a conversation in a Cafe. Ian, one of the characters in HyperCafe, is talking about car crashes and you’re listening in. Just as he says, “people get hit by cars every day,” at this moment, a separate video scene appears next to him. It’s a young woman with blond hair, and she’s speaking also, only in a different context, to a different person—there’s a moment of tension when both scenes are playing side-by-side, and the choice is yours. You move your focus over to the woman, and you hear her voice louder. She says,”You hit her, you mean with the car?’,’and you click as she’s saying this. Suddenly Ian stops speaking, only traces of his image stay around for a few moments before fading away, leaving the woman, Kelly. It’s another conversation, linked thematically to Ian’s previous discussion. You follow this thread, you see where it leads, and the story, as it were, is affected by your choices. The character lives, the character dies—it’s really up to you. As Michael Joyce, one of the pioneering hypertext fiction writers said, “There is no simple way to say this”. Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, a French film from the late fifties, had a great performance by Jeanne Moreau and a captivating soundtrack by Miles Davis. Malle’s slow visual aesthetic and easy movement throughout the narrative threads in the film provides a sensual aesthetic unmatched in new media today. In Robert Altman’s film Short Cuts, the narrative ebbs and flows with the tides of people’s lives through the constant camera movements in the scenes.

In HyperCafe, we tried to establish a similar voyeuristic aesthetic and narrative feeling, yet with a strange empowerment, not unlike hypertext—and by extension, hypervideo. HyperCafe places the user in a virtual cafe, composed primarily of digital video clips of actors involved in fictional conversations in the cafe; HyperCafe allows the user to follow different conversations, via temporal and textual opportunities that present alternative narratives. Hyper-textual elements are present in the form of explanatory text, contradictory subtitles, and intruding narratives. HyperCafe has been envisioned primarily as a cinematic experience of hyper-linked video scenes. A minimalist interface is employed by utilizing few explicit visual artifacts on the screen to provide the user with a greater immersion in the experience of conversations in the cafe. The Engine allows authors to specify the presentation of hypervideo narratives at a high level, using hypervideo scripting, rather than custom programming. An aesthetic design of navigation and structural representation permits a new form of videotext expression for authors, and interpretative experiences for readers.

The motivation for the piece exists because of my personal concern and fear for the planet’s disharmony and man’s discord. I am concerned about the current ecological circumstance and its relationship to the human species. I focus on the multiple characters of humans by projecting three different images of man and then use slow, low pitch computer generated sounds layered with human voices to represent their differences (race, ideology, economic standing, etc.).

I use holographic-like techniques to create a sense of the fantastical: a point at which the viewer is confronted by an object and a space that exists outside of the realm of the rational or the easily understood. I also use sound as a key element within the installation spaces to reference the durational nature of experience. I construct sites which focus the attention of the viewer on the point of contact: the moment at which the intellect and the intuition recognize content simultaneously. This installation piece consists of three LCD projectors, three VCR decks, two audio amplifiers, six metal stands and three spinning screens (sphere shape). I believe that contemporary environmental conditions will motivate peoples of all different races, religious ideologies, and ethnic backgrounds to accept peaceful coexistence in avoidance of environmental crisis.

The installation shows projections of faces, faces which vary in their expressions. The faces are layered images, to a certain degree distorted, which gives them an eeriness and mysteriousness. A mirror is suspended from the ceiling in front of each of the two slide projectors. Depending on the air circulation in the room the mirrors turn and with this the reflections of the images move along the walls around the room. The speed of the turning varies, speeds up, slows down or changes the direction. In this sense there is a very subtle interactivity between the viewer and the movement of the image. When the viewer moves in the space, the air moves and the mirrors turn. Since there are two projectors, two images revolve around the room in different speeds on the same level. Sometimes they come closer or further away from each other, sometimes one overtakes the other or slows down to overlap. There is a certain suspense in this process, when watching the formal relationships which suggest interpersonal relationships shift and spin around the room. It questions the relationships of the displayed people towards each other and the involvement of the viewer towards these people. The images change and their duration varies between two to ten minutes. In this installation, opposed to my previous installation One (see other proposal), the viewer influences the piece but cannot control it.

Telepresent Surveillance is an evolving artwork integrating fully automated tracking and navigation robot probes equipped with microwave AV transmitters with the internet. Real time audio and video output from the robot orientation, movement and perspective is received and displayed on rack surveillance monitors as a component of the installation. A miniature CCD camera and custom 2.4 GHz transmitter/receiver provide for display of perspective view, tracking motion and orientation. The transmitted images are digitally sampled and accessed by a remote host computer/web server located at the CADRE Institute in San Jose, California. Viewers accessing the web site at http://surveil.sjsu.edu are provided sequential image uploads from each robot probes interaction with the audience visiting the installation environment. The Web site includes descriptive and technical information as well as access to a historical archive of digital movie sequences automatically generated over the course of the exhibition. The conceptual strategy of Telepresent Surveillance is to prototype a system of companion machine agents for Telepresent viewing of public space.

At issue is the relationship between site, audience, interaction and the function of art as information strategy. Although, clearly a sculptural media installation, this work blurs the domain of the artist’s intentionality and machine intelligence. Each robot probe is a fully autonomous intelligent surveillance system programmed with interactive movement and tracking behaviors that uniquely characterize an individual personality. The programmed movement behaviors for each probe are activated by human presence within their defined and shared proximity. A custom engineered sonar-infrared tracking technology mounted on each robot is used to determine location and distance of warm bodies within a defined proximity and circumference. Once located, the robot determines an appropriate movement pattern to orient itself and move towards the target. (A target can be shared or partially shared by robots). At rest the robots continually scan the environment for warm body presence. Polaroid ultrasonic sensor pairs are utilized for collision detection and avoidance. Two on-board Basic Stamp computers process the real time tracking and collision data which determines the robots actual motion behaviors that range from timid to aggressive. Performing as companions the probes collectively interact with one another, the environment and viewing audience to perform as autonomous information gathering agents. The robots are predictable yet elusive as they appear to strategize, seek and respond to stimuli. The number, pattern and activity of viewers dramatically effects the behaviors.

Watchers could best be described as two biomorphic ambient light works that are concerned with the rhythmic nature of television light and how it is used to seduce here, as the medium is no doubt designed to infect rather than inform, and so the medium joins with vestiges of our perceptual being. The forms themselves incorporate disembodied TVs and are roughly based on the structure of the human eye. These TVs are encased in plaster forms which project the TV light onto white plaster parabolic lenses which accentuate the light while removing the images. The abstract eyeball form itself is outside the loop of seeing and houses the TV receivers and infrared sensing circuitry. This is clearly emblematic of Marshall McLuhan’s notion that the medium is the massage. The retina and brain are removed from the loop of seeing. It is not what we see but how we see that determines the power of any medium. Here the power of the medium is removed and distilled from its content to point to the medium’s ability to alter our body image non-consciously.

This group of works is a combination of conceptual meditation and digital experiment. We create culture based on various desires and needs, and in turn culture casts multicolors on us as well. They are always in a state of symbiosis. Culture is a sort of atmosphere, just like the air we breathe and the light by which we see and live. We are defined and described by numerous cultural facets: geographical, racial, social, ideological, historical, intellectual, moral, technological, etc. As a result, we are struggling to see through the many layers of cultural filters so as to get a better understanding of others, while keeping in mind not to be misled by the set pictures of different cultures. Modern societies are developing fast, emerging as sophisticated and excessively complex cultural systems. This is accompanied by ever emerging desires and the creation of new cultural sub-groups. This complexity can become fragile and may form a cultural vortex. My work is an attempt to express the concept that culture fragments the appearances of people. Two types of metaphor are involved-portraits and figures representing humanity; and signs characters and formal structures which symbolize culture. These two elements always disturb, contrast and interweave with each other in different ways.

Cirque is a digital print. The image reflects my original photography of natural phenomena, in this case a hot springs terrace. Cirque explores visible patterns from nature, and is modified with computer manipulation to express visually a conception of the circle of life. The work represents the interconnections of the human condi¬tion while extending concepts of the perceptual aspects of organic form. Technical information: original image 35mm Fujii Velvia transparency, scanned into digital form with a Nikon Coolscan, modified with Adobe Photoshop on a Macintosh 8600. The print from the digital file was produced on a Canon Color Laser Copier.

Two glass shelves, LCD monitor, VCR, helping hand, 2.5″ x 3.5″ (business format) cards with text, interactive phone service, circular leica spotlight.

“Fear is a staple of popular culture and politics”,                                                                                _Brian Massumi, The Politics of Everyday Fear.

The installation consists of 2 small glass shelves. One displays a color monitor depicting looped footage of a tornado, the other proffers cards (business format) with a text culled, and altered slightly, from a horoscope which uses weather as a metaphor for inner turmoil. The cards, which can be taken by viewers, offers an extended prediction by phone. When called, the listener can select from 3 menus, all of which refer critically yet playfully to various phone phenomena in our culture today. “Much like cultural industry, astrology tends to do away with the distinction of fact and fiction: its content is often over realistic while suggesting attitudes which are based on an entirely irrational source, such as the advise to forbear entering into business ventures on some particular day”. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth Hope, has taken on new proportions of currency in these hard economic times, where amidst other mass phenomena, we witness the popularity of psychic phone lines advertised in late night infomercials. The popular occult and capitalism have joined forces in what Adorno would describe as “authoritarian irrationalism”. The fictional and irrational dimensions of this psychological dependency within culture today are displayed in the economical realm of the business card.

As a result of our telematic tradition, we view the computer not in its instrumental role in the realization of projects within our various departments, but as a media questioned of the role it plays in artistic communications. We are very critical of a premature euphoria, seeing alone through the sheer possibilities of these new technologies a revision or reversal of mass-medial communication structures. Interesting to us are phenomena and projects which, within the infrastructure of the new informations-technology, thematicize and endeavor to create conversation around the social conditions for generative, transformational information systems. The idea of the interactive installation (whirlpool) is part of the development for electronic communication around the Baltic sea area in Europe. We notice extremely different people in this region: from Estonia to Sweden, from Germany to Russia. And: there is a need for a free cultural exchange space, for an open structure to meet each other. At a final state the”whirlpool of misunderstanding” connects up to 8 different places (countries) via an own network (ISDN, Satellite), based on the internet protocol. The shape of the “whirlpool” looks like a “tipi” (half sphere), consisting of 8 segments (bars). Each segment contains a movable camera-display unit connected to a specific segment of an other”whirlpool” (point to point). The camera-display units are motor driven and synchronized. If you push a unit, the connected unit performs the same movement: up/down/left/right/in/out. The displays show live-material (camera/audio) or prepared material (video/audio) from the server (x-change-space on a www-server/ 3-D navigation). Specific positions of the unit actuate specific events. The installation can be visited via the internet (spectators).

The shape of the “whirlpool” looks like a “tipi” (half sphere), consisting of 8 segments (bars). Each segment contains a movable camera-display unit connected to a specific segment of an other”whirlpool” (point to point). The camera-display units are motor driven and synchronized. If you push a unit, the connected unit performs the same movement: up/down/left/right/in/out.

This piece explores the delicate relationship between the human body and the emerging new breed of hybrid machines that incorporate biological elements or from those elements extract sensorial or metabolic functions. The piece creates a dialogical situation in which a human body and a robot — a biobot — have physical direct contact via an intravenous needle connected to clear tubing and feed one another in a mutually nourishing relationship. In A-positive, viewers see a human and a robot in the same space, close to one another. A phlebotomist proceeds to insert the needle in the donor’s right arm, and to start the blood flow from the donor to the biobotic arm. As enough blood reaches the biobot via a thin flexible tube, the biobot takes it in and responds by making a glucose-saline solution available to the donor and allowing gravity to start the flow of nutrients to the human body. The phlebotomist inserts the needle in the donor’s left arm to enable the donor to receive the solution. Once the blood flow becomes steady, the biobot extracts oxygen from the blood and uses it to support a very small and fragile flame.This delicate flame is meant as a vital symbol. When the blood flow is stopped — as a consequence of the transfusion having reached the recommended limit — the biobot stops and the small flame dissipates.The event is concluded. In A-positive, the human body provides the robot with life-sustaining nutrients by actually donating blood to it; the biobot in turn accepts the human tissue and from it extracts enough oxygen to support a delicate flame, an archetypical symbol of life. In exchange, the biobot donates nutrients needed by the human body, which accepts them intravenously. The conceptual model created by the work is far from conventional scenarios that portray robots as slaves that perform difficult, repetitive or humanly impossible tasks; instead, as the event unfolds the human being gives his own tissue to the biobot, creating with it a symbiotic exchange. This two-node network proposes that emerging forms of human/machine interface will penetrate the sacred boundaries of the flesh, with profound cultural and philosophical implications.The problem of artificial life has been explored so far mostly as a software-based issue. A-positive gives material expression to the artificial life concept, further blurring the lines that separate real (physical) and artificial (virtual) organisms. The increased presence of electronic and computational devices inside the human body and the accelerated investigation of biological directions for robotics and computer science suggests that the gaps are being slowly narrowed beyond what we might be willing to admit or perhaps accept. In this sense, one might speak of the ethics of robotics and reconsider many of our assumptions about the nature of art and machines in the biobotic frontier.

We all know that the earth is round and that anyone who ever thought otherwise was an idiot. At least, that is what we are told. In fact, we have no first-hand experience that tells us that this is true. We simply take the scientists’ word for it. To make being on a sphere palpable, this environment shrinks the world to a scale that can be circumnavigated very quickly. Participants stand in front of a large projection screen depicting a realistic three-dimensional terrain. The projection screen is a portal into that world. Participants are able to move through that terrain by pretending to fly exactly as a child would — by holding their hands out from their sides and leaning in the direction they want to go. In addition, they can control their altitude by raising or lowering their hands. The participants can skim along the surface of the ocean, dart through mountain ranges, and if they keep their hands raised, they will fly into orbit.

EQuinox ’97 is the 8th year of an annual project evolving within a large expanse of time, in various distant locations, with a diverse population of peoples, languages, and ages. EQuinox’90-2000 is a decade long International Arts/Communication Project. Participants receive a Call for Entries and are invited to send Messages to a site by all communication forms concerning what they wish, want, hope, fear, believe the future will be. This fin de millennium art work, receives and publishes what an international random group of people believe about their future during rapid societal change. A broad range of human beings send Messages as drawings, handwritings, faxes, poems, notes, and musical scores to this global conceptual time capsule.
EQuinox ’90-2000 speaks of time, duration, change, and communication. Events in which people come together to discuss and witness have occurred for thousands of years. EQuinox ’90-2000 is a unique arts/communication event exploring the speed and protocols of the current revolution in electronic technology and communication which has not existed before. As the immaterial, non-physical engages the perception, previous notions of ownership and authorship dissolve. Robert Stearns in Dialogue Magazine writes that are bringing together thousands of people around the world to count down the last few years to the future through EQuinox ’90-2000′. ‘That the work derives”some of its strategies from the schools of mail and correspondence art of the 1960’s, off-shoots of Fluxus that, in turn, drew its inspiration from the Dada and Surrealist artists of the early 20th century. Mail art consciously avoided preciousness by dodging the distribution hierarchy of the gallery and museum system”.
The natural branching inherent in electronic art lends itself to collaborations and networks. The computer interactive installations of EQuinox ’95 at the Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro in Spain and EQuinox ’94, at SPACES in Cleveland were collaborations involving artists Gerald Horn, Jamy Sheridan, and Dallas-Swann. EQuinox ’96 on the Web involves participation from Prague to Puerto Rico.

MindShipMind is an interactive multimedia web installation which was started in summer 1996 during an interdisciplinary 3 week seminar on”order, complexity, and beauty” in Copenhagen, Denmark.This seminar was organized by the Mindship Foundation and its purpose was to create collaborations between 30 artists and scientists from different fields, and a new way of discussion and interaction beyond the normal academic way. In order to capture the beautiful and also chaotically ordered mind of this event, Vibeke Sörensen and K@rlheinz Essl asked the participating artists and scientists (including biologists, mathematicians, physicists, composers, visual, installation and performance artists) to write statements describing their points of view on this theme. Combined with additional commentaries prepared by Sörensen, all these texts were algorithmically processed by a markov-chain based computer program in order to deconstruct and reconstruct them into new “meta-texts”. New texts are generated from these text particles using random operations which create strange and mind-challenging meanings, often revealing secret wisdom about the mysteries of order, complexity, and beauty This textual layer is further combined with images provided by the participants, including original artworks of Vibeke Sörensen and Joseph Jean Rolland Dube, and objets trouvees found on the World-Wide Web, such as famous philosophers and mathematicians, popular films, scientific computer animation, and morphing images of faces. As with the texts, these images form material from which elements are chosen according to probability and randomness, and merged into the text layer. Furthermore, the distortion and size of the pictures are determined algorithmically, as is the placement on the web pages. Finally, algorithmic music drawn from Karlheinz Essl’s Lexikon-Sonate (which is also composed in realtime) and computer-generated speech are included. All these elements are combined by a computer program written in Perl by Florian Cramer and Karlheinz Essl which always creates a new web page on the fly whenever it is loaded. The on-screen images, text, and music change each time the user interacts with the site. Random operations affect the appearance of the different components (text style, size and distortion of pictures, combination of sound structures, computer speech, hyperlinks, status bar messages, etc.)— all these components are not viewed as fixed entities, but rather as a flexible material molded by chance. Many of the emerging hyperlinks cause other programs to run at remote sites around the world: the user is then brought to sites on the network that are not pre-determined or predictable.The result is that of constantly shifting meanings arising from constantly shifting relationships between the site elements, the network, and the user. It is a way of navigating the web through an interface of real-time poetic serendipity, and a way of interfacing to the vast network of on-line computing. It is also a kind of collective consciousness of the MindShip and its participants, hence a MindShipMind.

MindShipMind is an interactive multimedia web installation which was started in summer 1996 during an interdisciplinary 3 week seminar on”order, complexity, and beauty” in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Projection is a 13-minute loop, a re-constructed nature video with a constant audio track and fleeting images of mundane urban landscapes, corporate icons and underwater footage. The voice over was recorded from an edited script, taken from several nature video programs on underwater sea life, and then digitally re-mixed. The voice over actor imitates the typical booming narration of the all-knowing male authority. While the nature video is the subject itself, the re-constructed voice over is limited to the underwater sea drama: specifically, death and sex. Like that of outer space, the sea is a space we cannot access without the mediation of technology. Similarly, it is a space steeped in great cultural and scientific mystery, and is subject to continual probing, in efforts to shed light upon our land based existence.

Nature video, as a genre, is a two way fiction: one must create a narrative to accommodate the film footage, but must then edit, as fiction, the footage according to the story. The existence of the nature video is sustained by our physical absence as viewers, hence upholding the traditional nature-as-separate schemata. If the audience were indeed part of this nature, we would not need such informative videos. In Projection, the re-constructed nature video is mostly black, requiring the viewers to create the continuance of the narrative structure, all the while constantly reminded of its own apparatus. Furthermore, it is bad-video practice (as still a media that cannot shake its relation to television) to allow for such spaces, for, as Baudrillard notes,…the screen must always be filled, the void is not permitted …”The re-created nature video combines industrialist urban footage with corporate icons as characters and elements within the narrative, occasionally layering them with more exotic underwater images.The video itself fluctuates between cynicism and humor: here a harlequin shrimp (the jowls of a business man) wrestles with the leather star (the Carls Jr. icon).The narrative episodes continue in a seemingly related fashion, though never achieve the closure of a story, as they remain in perpetual anticipation. While this script is indeed the projection of our own fears and desires, the urban footage is our natural landscape.The omnipresence of the corporate icons and cables serve as our feeding mechanism, both as television sponsors/structures and as the means of ownership.

Projection is a 13-minute loop, a re-constructed nature video with a constant audio track and fleeting images of mundane urban landscapes, corporate icons and underwater footage.

Our bodies are the “source” of information for developing technologies, and the fuel which sustains them. Organic materials, (flesh/bone) and processes, (breathing/perspiring), provide the territories and maps which guide our technological advances. Over time these technological constructions begin to lose any semblance to their organic origins, and become encased in institutionalized beliefs. We are interested in finding ways through the seemingly impermeable membrane enclosing technological assumptions. Through our collaboration we have developed an installation which expands upon these ideas. It is composed of two reciprocal systems; one located inside the other. The exterior thermodynamic system uses electromechanical forms to create an exchange while the interior system uses electromechanical reaction to create a form through exchange. The room will be lined ice, which serves as a medium to cool a sheet of glass upon which catches condensation from mechanical breathing devices. This is the thermodynamic exterior system. Fuel cells,(batteries) made of and powered by hair along with house hold current together power a crude bone grafting method based on electroplating technology. This is the electrochemical interior system. Upon entering the space, people will become aware of the cold atmosphere and hear the irregular sound of breathing coming from the mechanical devices. By their presence in the room they will add the heat of their bodies and the cadence of their breath to the work.

“It is called a point of view to the degree that it represents variation. This is the foundation of perspectivism. The subject is whatever reaches the point of view, or is more or less installed in the point of view. The point of view does not vary with the subject; it is the condition for which an eventual subject might grasp a variation (metamorphosis); or, something equals X (anamorphosis)… lt is not a variation of truth according to the subject, but the conditon for the truth of a variation to be presented to the subject. This is precisely the same idea as Baroque perspective”                                  —Gilles Deleuze, The Fold.

‘Something=X,’ perspectival-anamorphic video developed by Jamieson using Softlmage is informed by the Cybaroque, and references the spectacle and the materiality of the means of media expression via images of violence from the point of view of the victim.

Film by Richard Foley.
Hip Hop Music by Bob Dornberger

A screen book; a traditional book format that has been transferred to a televised screen format with limited interactivity and non-linearity. It is comprised of text, image and sound exploring notions of domesticity in and around the House. The book is displayed on a flat touch screen (via back-projection) attached to a false wall at standard eye height. There are several domestic elements that are incorporated into the work; photographic and video images of decor, helpful homely tips for the merry homemaker and acoustical reference to domestic activities and events (such as dinner parties, household appliances, etc.). It is through the interpretation of-and between each domestic element that meaning can be”determined” by the”reader” from the book. A lot can be understood about this so-called”reading” or deconstruction of domestic spaces and activities within the Home, readings that subtly affect how we understand and relate to others in and around the environment of the House. I am also interested in the shifting meaning and references of decor over time. I have attempted to shift my gaze to the insignificant, banal surfaces of the House, like wallpaper, carpet and the such. What can be understood from surfaces like these? Over time, the intended signification of the design can change. Indeed, if the occupants change (come from different social backgrounds), meaning and context shifts again.The collection of various fashions, decor and domestic activities within the artwork are an attempt to try to understand and visualize the bizarre relationship we have with our Place and its affect on us, on our social behavior. The relationship of images of decor, sounds of appliances and dinner parties, and helpful how-to tips attempt to answer the question “to what extent has social engineering through design, image and how-to-live-tips affected domestic life?”

Imagined space and real space create a special place. The project series Catalysis explores relationships between sound, space and imagination. Sound and space are considered as catalysts in a process of creative imagination in the mind of the listeners. Two versions, Catalysis for Dance, and quadraphonic version Catalysis for concert, have been created so far. In contrast with those versions, this multi-speaker sound installation takes place in a public space without the restriction of a time frame.The installation can be perceived as a sound garden where visitors can either observe or walk about and play with the sound objects whose sound is processed and returned to the loudspeakers. Although there is no beginning or ending for this installation, the sound element has a number of short- and a few long-term evolving structures which create different phases of the sonic environment, like day and night, or seasons. All the sound on the tape has more or less repetitive character with periods of 0.3 -15 seconds. The origin of most of the sounds is unrecognizable in real-world terms yet their spectromorphology has some associative character in terms of the material of a sounding body, or a gesture related to our experience. For those who are interested, I can reveal that the origins are crushed egg shells, metallic tins, various musical instruments, and a Japanese charm bell. I would like to thank Professor Hirokazu Negishi who is the inventor of the revolutionary polar directive Canon loudspeakers and Mr. Andrew Szeliga the ex-president of the Canon Audio for their support for this project.

The project series Catalysis explores relationships between sound, space and imagination. Sound and space are considered as catalysts in a process of creative imagination in the mind of the listeners.

Genderbender and the Virtual Personality: Scavenging the Trash Heap of the History of Psychological Testing Genderbender (Release 1.0) is loosely based on the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (1974) and Alan Turing’s test for Artificial Intelligence. Genderbender allows a user to self-administer a gender test in order to construct a personal gender profile of 20 masculine, feminine or neutral traits. The BSRI of 1974 is a self-administered 60-item questionnaire, containing a Masculinity scale and a Femininity Scale with 20 neutral items as filler. It is a kind of time capsule giving insight into how notions of gender are mutable. When personality traits become reduced to and locked in algorithmic descriptions those chosen traits almost inevitably reflect the biases and cliches of what is considered ‘normal.’The Morph-o-meter and the Tile-o-matic give instant feedback on whether masculine or feminine characteristics predominate in the user’s personality by morphing towards an identifiably male or female visual representation. The Tile-o-matic will reveal each user’s video image tile by tile for each yes response. Based on the user’s responses the “Computer Psychologist” will display the message “You are a man!” or “You are a woman!” or “You are androgynous!”. Future releases will introduce a two player internet version and the creation of an on-line avatar that reflects the gender profile that the user gives it. This avatar can act as a gendered knowbot that will visit chat groups, perform searches and report back to its master and perhaps provide links for actual meat and flesh encounters.

Genderbender allows a user to self-administer a gender test in order to construct a personal gender profile of 20 masculine, feminine or neutral traits.

Emigrating from Bolivia to the United States when I was three, was one of the most profound experiences of my life. Not only was I moving from the third world to the first world, from a rural town to one of the largest cities, I was also leaving an extended family, where I felt confident and safe. Emigrating to New York, I felt alien, lonely and helpless—despondent because few people in this new land understood my Spanish words. I felt I had lost my voice. I will never forget my fifth birthday. I swore someday I would find the “words” to tell my story. Multimedia is a powerful technology to tell stories—incorporating animation, sound, text and of course interactivity. On the Sangre Boliviana CD-ROM, by clicking on the word “WEB” from the main screen, the program connects to an accompanying internet site. The site poses questions referring to the content in the CD-ROM. Participants are encouraged to share their own experiences regarding issues of emigration, safety and loss. Their responses will then be available for others to read on the site. I never intended Sangre Boliviana to be strictly autobiographical. Rather it is a collage, where I have portrayed the information from my point of view. Creating Sangre Boliviana was an organic process. I would get an idea for a piece. It might be a story or dream, or maybe a festival or ritual. I would gather the information and images and let the piece dictate the interactive format.

With my CD-ROM entitled Sensing Discrepancies, my intentions were to create an interactive experience that is equally inviting to men and women. With its visuals, audio and interactivity I aim to point to the interconnectedness of imaging technologies and war, while drawing from my maternal family’s history. During the process of creation I was specifically concerned with the representation and experience of time as well as perceptions of power within the CD-ROM. While creating Sensing Discrepancies, I found that the format of the interactive CD-ROM allowed for a co-existence of seemingly contradictory concepts.

In Work in Progress, real-time virtual reality technology has been used to bring to life a series of drawings in order to examine the possibilities of a life beyond the frame. A still image leaves much to the interpretation of the viewer. Virtual reality technology, however, can place us inside the image where we can explore and interact with what we see. The work attempts to offer up new paradigms for virtual space as a fluid sketchbook/studio/exhibition space, where ideas and events can be dynamically realized, documented and presented. When we first enter the space we find ourselves in a room surrounded by the images which inspired the work. They portray either fictitious or real events. As we explore further, we discover that these events have been simulated in the virtual space. Even thought the work is obviously not an attempt at an exact simulation of the real world, it was important that the environment was ‘alive’ and looked ‘lived in’. So many virtual environments are un-naturally shiny, clean and empty. I wanted to include mess, mistakes, and some evidence of life, both artificial and actual. At the time the work was being produced I had an ant infestation in my home. This is documented in the first room and is re-enacted later on in another. If we are in the right place at the right time, we may see the ants falling through into the space from the loft hatch above us. The fact that we experience the work in real time, however, also allows to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and such events unfold without our knowledge. Virtual pets also reside in the space. Initially they may be heard before they are seen, as they sniff their way around the environment. This sniffing sound grows louder as we get closer to discovering them. Both the ants and pets are guided by scripts which propel them randomly around the space, making their journey unpredictable and therefore unique each time the work is activated. They could be described as having a kind of artificial un-intelligence. As a way of exploring the notion of virtual presence, we can relinquish our human viewpoint to become one of these creatures and see the world from their point of view. Pencils littered throughout the space suggest the possibility for the work to be dynamically updated or remixed, either by the artist or visitors to the space. As a shared multi user virtual environment, we could use them to draw our own avatars or use the space as a site for creative collaboration.

Between 1892 and 1894, the French Impressionist Claude Monet produced nearly 30 oil paintings of the main facade of the Rouen Cathedral in Normandy. Fascinated by the play of light and atmosphere over the Gothic church, Monet systematically painted the cathedral at different times of day, from slightly different angles, and in varied weather conditions. Each painting, quickly executed, offers a glimpse into a narrow slice of time and mood. We are interested in widening these slices, extending and connecting the dots occupied by Monet’s paintings in the multidimensional space of turn-of-the-century Rouen.

In Rouen Revisited, we present an interactive kiosk in which users are invited to explore the facade of the Rouen Cathedral, as Monet might have painted it, from any angle, time of day, and degree of atmospheric haze. Users can contrast these re-rendered paintings with similar views synthesized from century-old archival photographs, as well as from recent photographs that reveal the scars of a century of weathering and war. Rouen Revisited is our homage to the hundredth anniversary of Monet’s cathedral paintings. Like Monet’s series, our installation is a constellation of impressions, a document of moments and precepts played out over space and time. In our homage, we extend the scope of Monet’s study to where he could not go, bringing forth his object of fascination from a hundred feet in the air and across a hundred years of history. Supported by: Interval Research Corporation and University of California, Berkeley.

In Rouen Revisited, we present an interactive kiosk in which users are invited to explore the facade of the Rouen Cathedral, as Monet might have painted it, from any angle, time of day, and degree of atmospheric haze.

Particularly in this age of awareness of electronic art, it is important to remember that artists can still be concerned with process and engage in a creative form of interactive progression. In the spirit of remembering process and progress, the artist shares the digital images and studies in traditional book forms used to create this installation. It is an interactive installation exploring imagery inspired by the salt-beaten Veneto-Byzantine port city of Venice, Italy. A handmade picture book is the device through which the participant controls computer based still images and animations. In the dimly lit installation space, the participant can sit at a table and turn the pages of a candle-lit artist’s book. Custom electrical wiring allows communication between the book and the computer with each page of the book corresponding to complementary digital 2D image sequences and 3D animated sequences. The sequences appear on a monitor at the table. All of the imagery, both in the book and stored in the computer, consists of the artist’s original stills and animations. The juxtaposition of the book and the digital imagery serves to bring the book to life by adding motion. The environment is further enhanced by an original sound track inspired by chants and religious liturgy. The integration of image and sound creates a peaceful, sacred space conducive to reflection. While the installation is not specifically religious in nature, the experience could be likened to the very personal acts of meditation and prayer. Much as a prayer book, the handmade book acts as a point of departure for these acts. The book structure is the vehicle through which the participant communicates, controlling the pace of the interaction and thus customizing and personalizing the experience. Books have a place in our cultural history and development that cannot be denied. Currently, we are witnessing the transformation of the book from an analog to digital form. While the advantages of the digital book are many, there remain aspects of the physical book form that have not been replicated digitally. Specifically, their organic nature has not been preserved. Without A Special Object of Worship preserves the tactile, spatial qualities of the book form while simultaneously taking advantage of technological innovation in digital forms. With this piece, a bridge has been established for continued research and development in the marriage of traditional analog interactive models with their digital counterparts, specifically in the study of book forms.

Custom electrical wiring allows communication between the book and the computer with each page of the book corresponding to complementary digital 2D image sequences and 3D animated sequences. The sequences appear on a monitor at the table. All of the imagery, both in the book and stored in the computer, consists of the artist’s original stills and animations.

Using a network connection, participants play a game to generate patterns that appear as geometric tiles, but which can also be interpreted as material for music. They are asked to digitize their image and record their voice speaking their name and send these files as attachments over the network. Patterns, images, and voices become part of a computer database. Depending on the available technology, the patterns, voices, and images can also be collected directly by a computer in the gallery space. Within the exhibition space, the gallery floor is covered with modular elements that recreate one of the geometric tile patterns. Earthenware bowls of water spaced over the tiles reiterate the symbols used in the networked pattern-making game. At one end of the gallery a bird’s nest sits on a table. Computer video projection onto an angled screen placed to reflect off of the floor installation plays back the patterns, images, and voices in the database. Playback of sounds and images follows rules based on the patterns, changing tempo, pitch, transparency, etc. Visitors to the gallery can trigger and control the playback by waving their hands over the bird’s nest or by leaning gently on the table. Material collected in each iteration of this installation is used for the next one, transporting names, faces, and patterns generated by one group of people into a space viewed by a distinct group. The patterns used can be changed for others that use the same parameter space, mapping their parameters onto a completely different set of imagery and musical operations. Pond attempts to span a sequence of spaces and suggest different levels of technology, ranging from the bird’s nest to the earthenware bowls to the computer network. All of these are linked through a series of visual codes—nest to bowls, bowls to game, etc.—that incorporate the “universal” human iconographies of faces and personal names. At once an aesthetic divertimento and a philosophical inquiry into the content and purpose of technology, it suggests by its title the world is shrunk to a pond, one where new communities come into being through technology and yet largely remain hid-den. As in a pond in the woods, our intrusive presence may startle the inhabitants into revealing themselves.

Live Space & Simulation — Inside The Surface brings together settlements and CAs (Cellular Automatas) which developed forms reminding of aerial photographs of settlements. Creating CA pieces for several years made me appreciate the complex form and behavior of real nature again (something we’ve come to take for granted). CAs can bring results close to the beauty of nature, but still remain an artificial, human made something. It is the combination of a mind made structure and its breakdown through generative process that makes results different from purely human skilled design on one hand and biological nature on the other. I’ve made CAs that makes one think of aerial photographs of ancient remains, or of modern city shapes. Wouldn’t it be a challenge, to construct human settlements or buildings after (As, or taking in consideration using parts of them? The series Live Space and Simulation reflects on this idea. It is a journey into landscapes of the digitally polluted mind on the background of physical nature. To make this not only a theoretical subject, I put myself in the situation of living both extremes at once: Moving from the city to the”wilderness” of a National Park: Digital equipment surrounded by trees, hills, meadows, horses, sheep and a river.

The urban landscape is changing continually. In this environment, there is a build up and breakdown that occurs over time. Artificial systems act as extensions of natural systems, mimicking the needs of the organisms from which they were created. These artificial and natural systems produce information that becomes layered into a complex matrix of instructions. Ultimately, an interdependent network is created between the artificial and the natural systems. Light Structures is an event characterized by continual change.

Change takes place in the structural motion that consequently alters the light within the room. Each of the 5 individual structures light up in response to motion nearby projecting light patterns onto the ceiling. The light levels are modulated through an exterior wire skin on each structure. Different combinations of patterns are created as light from each structure overlaps it’s neighbor’s light. The light level information on the ceiling is then read by all five structures below, causing them to rise or fall. Each structure will respond to various alterations in the lit environment, this includes the natural sunlight coming through the windows. As the intensity of the sun changes throughout the day so will the activity level of the piece. The structural machine elements are characterized by a vertical linear motion contrasting the plant life hung just below eye level. The plants create a sprawling horizontal ground plane that wraps around the cluster of structures. Plants are structural organisms that depend on light for nourishment and growth. In the absence of light plants would recede and perish. Dependence on light for growth intertwines the organic and inorganic in this work. That this event is not confined to one simple structural or living element complicates the way simple systems behave in this work. Light Structures is a continuous running piece, yet it cycles itself with the changing of each day.

Change takes place in the structural motion that consequently alters the light within the room. Each of the 5 individual structures light up in response to motion nearby projecting light patterns onto the ceiling. The light levels are modulated through an exterior wire skin on each structure.

Masturbatory Interactant is a computer interactive electromechanical installation which is the ultimate realization of three years of conceptualization and creative interest in critically examining the human/machine interface. The installation was directly influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s seminal work of mechanized eroticism The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23. Duchamp’s bride has become an inflatable female party doll, painted white and continuously suspended inside a transparent enclosure by the air flow of three 20ο/οο cooling fans. The floating female form acts as the projection surface for randomly selected computer based visual information—essentially a hyperkinetic image stream. The images primarily consist of a combination of short, provocative quick time video segments of digitized close-ups of a nude male figure conducting self erotic actions, selected three dimensional computer animations, background images, texts and audio. The imagery is randomly selected through an automated, machine kinetic interactive process. The Chocolate Grinder from Duchamp’s piece has been recreated to scale as a kinetic sculpture – the tapered drums are covered with bar codes, slowly rotating around the central axis. All the while the laser bar code scanner, a pen-like device, which is mounted on an extending and retracting armature, randomly scans the bar codes. The selected bar codes send a predefined command to the Macintosh computer mounted above the grinder, choosing image segments from the Director based multimedia program.The selected images are then projected onto the floating body by an LCD video projector which sits atop the CPU, above the Chocolate Grinder mechanism. The piece is designed for continuous kinetic movement. After several weeks of operation, the repetitive scanning process begins to scratch away at the surface quality of the bar code — creating a general deterioration of the interactive process, ultimately frustrating the devices intended machine/sexual performance. As a result of this gradual process of entropy, looped segments of images and sounds, once rapidly changing and intermingling with others, begin to continuously repeat until the machine eventually again selects a still functioning bar code. In this installation the computer and the electronics are pivotal sculptural objects which coexist and meld with the constructed kinetic pieces. The piece critically investigates male sexuality, technological hegemony, and multi-media hyperbole through the use of humor, high tech absurdity and non-participatory computer interaction. In totality, the intent was to create a contemplative incident for the consideration of machine-based erotica, male sexuality and high tech absurdity.

Masturbatory Interactant is a computer interactive electromechanical installation which is the ultimate realization of three years of conceptualization and creative interest in critically examining the human/machine interface.

19″ video monitors were placed behind 2 pre-existing utility closets, separated by a 4-door glass entrance. Beginning behind the left closet door (monitor), a female body seemingly trapped in an enclosed container under water appears on the video screen. Struggling in search for an escape, she suddenly reappeared behind the right closet door (monitor) — giving the illusion she has traveled throughout the open space of the glass-pane doors. As she continues traveling back and forth, passersby enter the lobby. The frantic figure captures their peripheral consciousness—temporarily interrupting their mundane routine.

19″ video monitors were placed behind 2 pre-existing utility closets, separated by a 4-door glass entrance. Beginning behind the left closet door (monitor), a female body seemingly trapped in an enclosed container under water appears on the video screen. Struggling in search for an escape, she suddenly reappeared behind the right closet door (monitor) — giving the illusion she has traveled throughout the open space of the glass-pane doors. As she continues traveling back and forth, passersby enter the lobby.

The Memory Grid is a collection of mostly anonymous faces recreated using photographic computer imaging tools and techniques. The individual faces are extracted, broken down, and rebuilt from digitized media imagery, advertising pictures, and family snapshots to investigate the nature of photographic, as well as ocular vision. Combining the personal with the political is an attempt to understand and convey the elusive nature of photographic representation. Just what can a photograph tell us about the past and the present? What information is relevant? What part of the photographic process is a construction of the maker, and what part the subject’s? What visual information is required for a viewer to make a positive ID, to trigger a memory, to spark a connection? Memory, identity, and visuality are the driving forces within the Memory Grid project. I look at photographs from the world, my past, pictures derived from a present tense reality, and wonder: Is this from a dream? Do these places and people exist? How can I be sure? I could revisit the places, but the photographs do not reside there; the photographs are “has-beens.” Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida states:

“The name of Photography’s noeme will therefore be: ‘That-has-been,’… what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject (operator or spectator); it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, refutably present, and yet already deferred”. (pg. 77)

This deferment is of interest to me; this separation from the event and its representation. To an extent, the Memory Grid is an interpretation, an impression of photographic representation as it exists in the world. It is, itself, also a representation from me, my investigation and comment on photography. Our ever-expanding grand image-bank of photographs constantly feeds a kind of collective historical memory. The event, person, and place is “there” for our re-collection of the experience. If we recognize it, we remember it. We use the photograph as a visual aid, a visual cue to something or someone else. The Memory Grid acts against this tendency to place, categorize, and label. The grid attempts to equalize faces and events, to re-categorize, re-label, and ultimately to re-place the original image.

The Memory Grid is a collection of mostly anonymous faces recreated using photographic computer imaging tools and techniques. The individual faces are extracted, broken down, and rebuilt from digitized media imagery, advertising pictures, and family snapshots to investigate the nature of photographic, as well as ocular vision.

La Cour des Miracles is a universe of faked realities loaded with “pain” and “groan”. The aim of this project is to induce empathy of the viewer towards these “characters” which are solely articulated metallic structures. Therefore, we want to underline the strength of the simulacra by perverting the perception of these animates, which are neither animals nor humans, carried through the inevitable instinct of anthropomorphism and projection of internal sensations, a reflex triggered by any manifestation that challenges our senses. The viewers must travel a long and narrow”sordid” space located in a building basement or in an industrial-looking site. The machines are distributed along this confined corridor, crawling on the floor or hiding in dark corners. The close proximity of the machines challenges the viewer’s comfort and impressions of one’s physical safety. The soundtrack is an important element of the installation. Whispers, lamentations, howlings and cries are suggested by different processed sounds generated by the surrounding speakers. In addition to its own mechanical sounds (valves, relays, squeaks), each robot has a speaker and a specific sound source controlled by the computer. If a robot detects someone in its proximity, it will generate sounds that will reinforce the illusion of its natural behavior. Six different kind of characters populate the installation:

1. The Harassing Machine calls upon the passing viewer by shaking its articulated arms towards them. At the extremity of these members, small tentacles (agitated by compressed air) tease the intruders with importunate touches.
2. The Begging Machine is rocking its trunk back and forth on its base and raises its mechanical arm towards the viewers walking by. In order to emphasize the solicitation behavior, the beggar has a suction device fixed at the end of its articulated arm.
3. The Limping Machine walks painfully towards the viewer while stumbling awkwardly because of a different or distorted member of its body.
4. The Heretic Machine is locked up in a cage. When viewers come by, it rushes violently towards them, grabs the metal grid and furiously shakes its cage.
5. The Crawling Machine is creeping laboriously on the floor. Slow and vulnerable, it tries to run desperately away from the approaching viewers.
6. The Convulsive Machine is a thin metallic structure shaking with frequent but yet irregular spasms, especially when the viewers approach.

Although we are converging on a ubiquity of computation at a large global scale, we still face unanswered questions of what it means to “be digital”. Through the globalization of both the Internet and computation we are constantly interacting within a community, contributing to the collective digital body. Human interactions are part of patterns that manifest themselves at a larger societal scale. We all tend to lead similar and overlapping lives, leading to a collective group identity that is emergent through these behaviors. Although, at first glance, these group patterns appear to be chaotic, the individual remains locked within their own identity. But if one gets removed enough from the localized context, it becomes clear that we have little control over what emerges as a collective whole. We all lead a life between two poles: the world of motion and the world of stillness. The dialectic between them creates a tension as there are two distinct representative aesthetics at work. The world of motion is one of self-possession, short-term goals, achievement, and drive. The person that is stuck in the world of motion is unable to view themselves in the large group identity, trapped in a merciless temporal now that urges them forward. Likewise, the world of stillness is made out of passivity, narcissism, indecision, uncertainty, and fear. The person in this realm is trapped in an endless self-reflection. The former is a quality of transience, the latter is a quality of permanence. It is between these two extremes that we exist. This work explores these possibilities by visualizing the world of motion and stillness as a metaphor for the struggle between individual and group identities.

An array of surveillance technologies is used to capture live video from people’s everyday life. These images are deconstructed into motion characteristics that describe, over time, how large masses of people are moving through an architectural space. This motion analysis is then used to provide virtual “winds” that blow image particles over the computer screens and data network, forming abstract kinetic visual sculptures that are carved out of the patterns that summarize our motions as a collective societal whole. The more defined and patterned we act as a group, the more smooth and continuous the corresponding particle flow will be. However, should a participant hold very still for a few seconds, this gesture of permanence will be sensed by the surveillance system. The image of the narcissistic viewer is integrated into the virtual particle system for as long as that pose is held frozen. As soon as the viewer moves in any significant manner, his/her image is blown apart by all of the torrential currents of the motions that have come before in time. In a manner, they have achieved a dubious permanence as all of the pixels that form his/her image are retained in the system. Here there is a comforting Newtonian conservation of mass and energy, where traces of our existence persist eternally in the digital environment.

An array of surveillance technologies is used to capture live video from people’s everyday life. These images are deconstructed into motion characteristics that describe, over time, how large masses of people are moving through an architectural space.

The Metabody assemblage is an animated mapping of the territory of the human-machine interface: the avatar/golem; the robot or automaton (recently cyborg, now symborg) through the ages; and the body as performance installation site connected to other bodies and sites around the world. It encompasses the body as alternative interface using a vocabulary of gestural and performative twitches needed to establish a bodily dialogue with a representation in symbolic space. The ROM comprises three main sections: the Stelarc archive; the human-machine historical section; and various simulations (hypercells) of ideas explicated elsewhere. The components exist as a colony or loose assemblage of cells, some of which will integrate into a larger multicellular whole at a later date; some which extend the cyborg’s organomechanic role by virtue of digital appendages or layers (pro)creating the symbiological organism — the symborg; or react in a connective soup of humans across time and space; or linger in an unresolved phase state, as submerged ideas of an emergent humanity and humaneutics. A technology-induced symbiological body plays tangent to various prosthetic or bodily add-on potentialities and strategies and tends toward inclusion in a growing set of options: the melding of some aspects of organic, web and internet sensorial spaces; interactive anthropomorphic digital symbols; software simulations; attachable hardware augmentations and other interconnected humans via local and remotely distributed computer systems.

The purpose of Computer Cubicle is to undermine utopian myths of high tech employment.

The interactive (ultrasonic) light control system for the hologram is conceived so that spectators are obliged to establish a human contact (discussion and presence), at least between two of them. Each motion sensor is in one sculpture supporting one hologram. But each sensor is connected to another sculpture (hologram). So, when one viewer is in front of one sculpture, hopping to see its specific holographic image, he is indeed triggering the light of one or the other sculpture. But as there holographic image will be out of their view (because of the restrictive holographic angle of view), he will need the presence of another viewer who will stand at the appropriate place to trigger the light for the hologram he (she) wants to look at. Each motion sensor will only have a 10 degree angle and 6 feet depth of detection field. Holograms are displaying images dark images (shadowgrams) of man and woman profiles (head and shoulders), which are surrounded with coloured air currents induced by the body heat. The third hologram is displayed letters dealing with human and virtual communication: the “@” symbol, and the words (in french) “I” and “you”.

The interactive (ultrasonic) light control system for the hologram is conceived so that spectators are obliged to establish a human contact (discussion and presence), at least between two of them. Each motion sensor is in one sculpture supporting one hologram. But each sensor is connected to another sculpture (hologram).

1/human (inverse human) is a robotic device that can be attached to the upper body. By operating the controller on the left hand a user can ‘teach’ the robotic exoskeleton covering the right arm various movements.
In the teaching program muscular autonomy is conceded to mechanical autonomy: the arm moves the machine until the machine moves the arm.Th e robot’s microprocessor monitors arm movements, and learns common patterns that are executed by the arm. After a time the robots artificial intelligence algorithms create new patterns based on the separate movements. At this time the processor begins to manage the movements of the arm, forcing its artificially intelligent processes upon the wearer. This configuration traces the role of technology, where technology is the imposition of human thought and will upon non-human matter. Mechanisms, electronics, and computers replicate human processes and thoughts in such a way that non-human “thoughts” and “will” are possible. Though on one level this meta-human mechanic thought gains patterns from the human, these non-human thoughts also re define what it means to be a human, especially within industrialized societies. 1/Human achieves this by surrounding the body, intersecting it by projecting mechanic will within the human; at the same time allowing human will to project into the robot using artificial computer learning. Artificial learning maps human will into binary code, the translatable, transferable, and universal language of machine will. Machine will then redefines the human encased by 1/human as the mechanism begins to dominate the human’s activity. In the end, the human is a prosthetic for larger incomprehensible structures-structures that result from an on going dialectic between technology and human will over the course of history.

1/human (inverse human) is a robotic device that can be attached to the upper body. By operating the controller on the left hand a user can ‘teach’ the robotic exoskeleton covering the right arm various movements.

The Northern Garden is an experiential construct far removed from our seasonless electronic existence. The physicality of gardening stands in stark contrast to the sleek containment of on-line navigation. In this series, The Twice Constructed Garden, human intercession determines the intersection of the natural and the technological. The insertion of personal intention through the reordering of experience occurs in both physical and digital space. Through use of a decidedly low-tech pinhole camera, image sources are registered from these places which are human ordered, nature produced. Once acquired, these fragments are reconvened and mediated through digital intervention. Each image serves as a channel for the exploration of expectation and recognition. The images in this series have their sources in photographs made with a pinhole camera. Those sources then have been digitally selected and manipulated on computer and published via a dye-sublimation printer.

In this series, The Twice Constructed Garden, human intercession determines the intersection of the natural and the technological. The insertion of personal intention through the reordering of experience occurs in both physical and digital space. Through use of a decidedly low-tech pinhole camera, image sources are registered from these places which are human ordered, nature produced. Once acquired, these fragments are reconvened and mediated through digital intervention.

Alchymeia is a genetically engineered ice crystal project where human hormones (steroids) provide nucleating agents to guide crystal growth, reflecting our presence in the crystals atomic architecture. It is an installation that instead of constructing a simulated model of reality, creates a transmuted copy of that reality: art grown from a preordained genetic blueprint. The individuality of the ice crystals in the installation is created using a similar principle of atomic recording utilized by snowflakes, but have a microscopic sample of human hormone introduced into ultra-pure / ultra-cold water as an atomic building site (an emmersive nucleating seed). Because all impurities in the water have been removed, the human material provides the only structure to build (freeze) from.When the highly ordered crystal nature of ice uses the discreet human sample to initiate the freezing process, it forces its natural crystal arrangement to elastically deform, mimicking the rhythm of the original atomic lattice from the donor sample. The tiny crystals (ice embryos) nucleated by this process, act as molecular stories,”content seeds” in which the larger ice crystals in the exhibition clones itself from. The crystals in this exhibition act as amplified recordings of ones physical presence expressed at a level of telematic so removed from operational awareness, it becomes a virtual space. Because of the explicit loyalty to the original atomic lattice of the nucleating agent, the crystals are confined by the laws of physics to reflect our unique presence in both their microscopic and macroscopic organization. Alchymeia is more than a technological proxy portrait, or a sustainable illusion of the artist; it “is” the artist, a re-embodied / re-mapped “clone” of the author; an environment where we quite literally become the architect and architecture at all scales. Brilliant colors produced by the crystals are generated by the decreased speed of polarized light in ice specific to the elastic stress in the crystal lattice. Each wavelength of light (color) slows to a different speed, signaling the amount of atomic energy expended by the ice in aligning its structure to match the human provided nuclei. As both art object and art moment, Alchymeia is not made through a traditional reductive or additive process, but instead taught how to build itself, encoded with a type of telematic goal of its own. The viewer understands that  “we” become the catalyst for igniting this chain reaction of events, thus dissolving the boundaries between experiment and theater, and between art object and artist. As an expressive new form of ubiquitous/organic computing, the Alchymeia project attempts to present an important evolutionary transformation in digital media by pioneering the basic fabric of space time as a hybrid strategy for future computing. Alchymeia is being presented as a prototype experimental ice sculpture for the 1998 Winter Olympics, in Nagano Japan.

It is an installation that instead of constructing a simulated model of reality, creates a transmuted copy of that reality: art grown from a preordained genetic blueprint. The individuality of the ice crystals in the installation is created using a similar principle of atomic recording utilized by snowflakes, but have a microscopic sample of human hormone introduced into ultra-pure / ultra-cold water as an atomic building site (an emmersive nucleating seed).

In a darkened room, a projected text appears to be typed onto a wall, one letter at a time. The text is a log kept by a death row prison guard of the activities of three prisoners for four day leading up to their triple execution in Arkansas in January 1997. The guard, who watches day and night, describes the prisoners’ most intimate activities, from what they are eating to when they go to the toilet, to whom they are speaking to and what they are saying. A viewer enters the room and sit at a table with a computer and monitor, facing the projection. A bare light bulb dangles down near the table, creating a harsh but dimly lit glow around the monitor. As if entering a visiting room in a prison, the seated viewer is now face to face with one of the prisoners whose image stares out from the monitor. The user may select the face of each of the three prisoners and may then pan each of the faces, slowly scanning over nose, mouth, ears, etc. As the user scans, the computer responds with constant and precise feedback about the user’s movements and selections: where she has scanned, the amount of time she has been doing so, what her movements across the screen have been, which part of the face she is currently touching, who she is touching, etc… Meanwhile, the computer stores all of the user’s mouse movements and upon a mouse click replays them as a motion study in the form of an abstract animated line drawing. Thus the viewer takes on the position of the prison guard, maintaining visual control over the prisoners’ bodies and their movements. At the same time, she is placed in the position of the prisoner, as her own movements and actions on the computer are constantly monitored, displayed and recorded. Through her interaction, she becomes a player on both sides of the narrative that she has merely witnessed in the projection. The physical layout of the installation contrasts two forms of spectatorship: a public projection and a private encounter with a monitor; in the publicly viewed projection the viewer remains outside looking in on an acute example of regulated time and state control of life and death. In contrast, on the computer monitor, the user is face to face (interfacing) with a — now dead — individual, and is no longer a passive viewer, but now, in fact, a “user” implicated in the narrative. The work also reflects on the ability of the computer to survey and record all choices and movements of any user at any time and parallels this distinctive quality to the model of the prisoner/prison guard.

The user may select the face of each of the three prisoners and may then pan each of the faces, slowly scanning over nose, mouth, ears, etc. As the user scans, the computer responds with constant and precise feedback about the user’s movements and selections: where she has scanned, the amount of time she has been doing so, what her movements across the screen have been, which part of the face she is currently touching, who she is touching, etc… Meanwhile, the computer stores all of the user’s mouse movements and upon a mouse click replays them as a motion study in the form of an abstract animated line drawing. Thus the viewer takes on the position of the prison guard, maintaining visual control over the prisoners’ bodies and their movements. At the same time, she is placed in the position of the prisoner, as her own movements and actions on the computer are constantly monitored, displayed and recorded. Through her interaction, she becomes a player on both sides of the narrative that she has merely witnessed in the projection. The physical layout of the installation contrasts two forms of spectatorship: a public projection and a private encounter with a monitor; in the publicly viewed projection the viewer remains outside looking in on an acute example of regulated time and state control of life and death.

“Although the senses occasionally mislead us respecting minute objects, such as are so far removed from us as to be beyond the reach of close observation, there are yet many other of their informations, the truth of which it is manifestly impossible to doubt; as for example, that I am in this place, seated by the fire, clothed in a winter dressing gown, and that I hold in my hands this piece of paper…”     —Descartes, Meditations

A 1/1 millionth scale version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, invisible to the naked eye. This project considers the distance between the viewer and what is being viewed. How does technology alter our perceptions of distance, scale, and structure? Technologies for viewing continue to evolve, from the camera obscura to the telescope to the atomic force microscope; each new technology raises questions about what is real versus what is an artifact of the viewing process. For example, how does the framed vision of the microscope differ from the framing induced by the World Wide Web? Discontinuities induced by these media can undermine what Husserl calls the “inner” and “outer” horizons of experience. These horizons are vital to architecture and to what we might call “telepistemology”: the study of how distance influences belief, truth, and perception. Why Fallingwater? In 1991, a poll of architects taken by Architectural Record found Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater (1936) to be the single most important building of the last 100 years. To reflect features on the site, Wright employed the cantilever: “a horizontal structure for distributing force, the true earth-line of human life” (Wright). Cantilevers are also used to measure forces in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS): miniature devices etched from silicon. Examples of current research can be found at many labs including UC Berkeley, Cornell, and UCLA. For example, many automotive air bags measure the deflection of a MEMS cantilever to detect collisions.

Beyond operates in a playful spirit of philosophical inquiry exploring the paradoxes of technology, desire and the paranormal posed since the birth of mechanical reproduction. One might call it an investigation of the dream life of technology, from around 1850 to 1940. There was an almost magical element in the way people saw these developments, an issue I feel important to bring to light as we enter the digital realm. Beyond is an interactive work (programmed with QuickTime Video and QuickTime VR) which allows the viewer to explore a new kind of mental geography, in which they find themselves traveling through time and space encountering my virtual alter-ego who, as a medium, that interface between the living and the dead, transmits movies that record her impressions. The location is a real abandoned asylum dating back to the nineteenth century. It stands in for many places both real and fictional, from Charcot’s clinic at the Salpetriere, to Raymond Roussel’s fictional world of Locus Solus, to the destroyed buildings of the two World Wars, to the Paris Arcades of the Second Empire, to Edison’s’ laboratory at Menlo Park. In the 19th century it seems as if progress appeared so dazzling that the boundaries between the real (or conventionally scientifically provable) and the fantastic was far more permeable than we can imagine today. There was a certain obsession with the question of whether a machine itself could possess a soul. (just as people today speculate as to whether a computer could be have consciousness). My thesis is that if something which we now take for granted like photography was experienced as an uncanny phenomena which seems to undermine the unique identity of objects, creating a parallel world of phantasmal doubles, then the possibility of the production of say Spirit Photographs was not nearly as implausible as it might seem today. Similarly sound recording was thought of as a strange phenomena, for the first time severing speech from the body and allowing us to playback the voices of the dead.

Fixtures consists of a series of 6 Plexiglas display stands, either wall-mounted or freestanding, the shape of the stand suggesting a missing object or artifact. Each stand has a small electronic device attached, which generates light, sound or movement. The devices are small and self-contained, yet announce themselves discreetly with subtle, absurd actions. The display stands included in Fixtures are designed to refer to specific objects from my collection of Asian “tourist” art and artifacts, including puppets, masks, books and clothing. The fixtures are based on examples found in the Art Institute of Chicago. Such fixtures are typically used to support fragile art and artifacts in a museum display. Of particular interest are those which are custom built to accommodate a specific piece. Generally fabricated from Plexiglas, wood or metal, they are designed to be virtually invisible to the museum visitor.
The concept of invisibility is central to this work, illustrated by bringing peripheral structures to the center. The formal relationship between the fixture and its electronic apparatus is challenging, as the fixture does not function as a display structure for this device. Rather, the device appears to have irrelevantly attached itself. This dialogue is further developed through an implied relationship between the electronic event and the”missing” museum artifact.

Submarine is an interactive installation which simulates circumstances similar to a navigating submarine operating under water. The installation questions how much human perception and psychology is altered within a controlled sensory-stimulated technological environment. This piece is designed for three participants who must work cooperatively within an enclosed, capsule-like room. Each person is isolated to a specific work station. One person is reliant on information he/she views through a periscope. This person becomes the navigating eyes of the submarine. The periscope can be maneuvered within the aquatic environment with a joystick controller. The second person receives only audio information coming from the aquatic environment. The periscope is equipped with a microphone that picks up various sound-emitting objects within the water. The third person is stationed in front of a grid, which gives a satellite view of both the submarine’s location and some of the unknown objects within the aquatic environment while they decipher exactly what they are perceiving. Each participant is intimately dependent on the others’ specialized sensory information. The goal for these participants is to reach their final destination with good judgment, as they will be faced with both threatening and nonthreatening obstacles that they must decide to destroy or plan to avoid.

The Character Input fiction is a neural network which can read aspects of a person’s character from an image of their face. The phrenological tool was developed by an Estonian scientist who continued to work with perceptrons and neural networks through the 60s and 70s, when they had fallen out of popularity in the west. His initial research into the reading of gender from photographs of subjects eventually led to an amazing network which could read the most personal and specific aspects of the subject’s personality.

The piece alludes the cultural agenda around measuring human attributes: from IQ tests to the Human genome project. Contemporary cognitive scientists are actually using neural networks to read facial emotion; this and related technologies seem to owe a strong debt to phrenology and cranioscopy. The Character input installation consists of a large image bank of faces, a variety of old communist-block computers and interfaces, and an interactive section which allows the viewer to be scanned by the neural network, which then reveals aspects of their personality. In addition, a Soviet-style slide-show documentary describes the work of the scientist, interleaved with relevant events (workers celebrate 3rd year of 5 year plan, etc.).

Alembic represents a synthesis of art, science and mysticism—it is an encapsulation of my multi-disciplinary history — including computing, electronics, chemistry, time-based kinetic and organic sculptures and interactive installations. My work reflects an interest in the concepts of time, space and energy and relates to the 20th century idea of a Fourth Dimension, an idea which inspired Duchamp and a number of Cubists. The Cubists broke the traditional role of perspective and pictorial representation within painting; in a similar manner I wish to challenge the virtual reality paradigm of simulating a perceived reality and use the medium for creating work that is nonrepresentational, participatory and evocative.A key concept within Alembic is the notion of Dynamic Form (a term first used by the Italian Futurist Boccioni in 1913). For me, dynamic form conjures up the idea of shadows from a fourth dimension, 3D forms that do not obey the rules of”normal reality”— they are permeable and responsive to the perceiver, changing form and motion within the dimensions of time, space and energy. The content of Alembic responds to interactions made via the four sensing aerials which relate to the alchemical states of matter: fire, earth air and water. Alembic sets out to evoke a contemplative and immersive state of mind, where the viewer is an active participant, controlling and shaping that which they perceive. I programmed Alembic using ‘C’ and the World toolkit library from Sense 8. It runs on an Intergraph Pentium Pro computer with graphics acceleration. Movement and position sensing is via the MIT Electronic Fish, a device which works on a similar principle to the Theremin. A participant walking on the square mat area acts as a radio transmitter. That signal is picked up by the four sensing aerials and enables the calculation of location, proximity and movement. A Sanyo PLC5500 SVGA LCD projector delivers the imagery which is projected onto white silica sand.

People say that in primitive societies wall paintings were works by shamans, whose altered states of consciousness would confer them powers to communicate with the beyond and to intervene in the real world because they would dialogue with spirits. In this installation I simulate an electronic ritual, where “virtual hallucinations” provide us with shamanic powers through digital technologies. The body connected with interfaces in a sensorized environment experience an immersive environment where entire body dialogues with computer electronic memories determining the life of the environment. Three different and simultaneous situations are generated by the action of bodies in real-time. The images change, a red liquid moves within a bowl as an offering to life and the sound of the heartbeats alters. In the back of the room, a big rounded lighted wall shows metamorphoses from North Brazil’s Inga Stone’s pre-historical inscriptions. Simulating three different levels of the shamanic TRANS-E digital images, synthetic images in anamorphic, colored, bright, scintillating mutations are managed by neural networks. The sets of images are resultant of the visitors’ behaviors captured by the sensitivity of the sensors and transmitted to the machines. Neural networks inspired in our biological neurological system learn some patterns of behavior and manipulate this data, provoking “visions” in the room in an enigmatic experience of TRANS-E. As an artist, in my recent work, I am offering interactive installations for people to experience consciousness propagation in an organic/inorganic life. Electronic interfaces and neural networks provide intelligent behaviors, managing signals of the human body in sensorized environments. Technologies embody now traces of biological systems, translate them into computerized paradigms, offering emotional experiences and expanding our consciousness. My intention is to check organic laws and proclaim machines’ powers of controlling and expanding natural life in this post-biological era.

Projecting at real time her world of lines, lights and colors on the dancers’ bodies, the artist re-ties immediateness with performance liveliness. Beautifully breathtaking fluidity and light effects.

Artist associated to the Atlantique-Regine Chopinot Ballet, Sophie Lessard makes up the genealogy of the danced act from dancers’ and non-dancers’ testimonies recorded, remixed and broadcast on stage. Whispered and mixed voices provide the basis for dancers to create and play with dance.

Mysterious correspondence between two beings in a world where poetry is linked to new technologies, Periple (Journey) takes us between butoh dance and video, abstraction and narration, painted images projected, digital treatment and infra-red camera. Apparitions, disappearances and transformations of the dancing bodies between shadows and lights in an intense and poetic trip.

Jean-Marc Matos has chosen a little international panorama of dance at Internet that you will discover from the terminals at the studio hall.

This proposition will be completed by an interactive installation by Lin Yuan Shang and Frederic Blin.

Australian artist, Stelarc defines himself as a performer, exploring farther than a specific style or genre, some of the limits of corporeality. He will focus on his artistic path, discussing particularly his main preoccupations in his work: presence and telepresence, states of the body, the process of elaboration of the gesture, relationships between body and technologies, and crossovers between bodies and machines.

This encounter will be introduced by Armando Menicacci and Emanuele Quinz (Anomos association).

Organized by the Department for the Development of Dance Culture of the CND, in collaboration with the Anomos association.

A week of encounters, performances, shows and installations…

As much as you love me is an interactive poetry project that consists of a Force Feedback mouse and an interactive poem. The project deals with guilt and tries to convey its message using the special properties of the physical and graphic interface. In order to hear the text, the user must collect objects on the screen. Each object collected sounds a non-apology which starts with the words don’t forgive me for…, and augments the physical difficulty of moving the mouse. The combination of the graphic representation and the growing physical effort required to move the mouse reinforces the attempt of the speaker to relieve herself from guilt.

‘If art wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t play with it‘

Since 1980, Le Plein de Plumes (Full of Feathers) has been exhibited at the most diverse places and events in numerous countries as a counterpoint to the kaleidoscope of images that trouble our societies. Le Plein de Plumes is an act that humorously twists the function of the technology of a television set. The four sets and their electronic innards become transparent as a simple, light feather goes down through them one after the other, with just the law of gravity as a scenographer, and the persistence of white on black to give emphasis to the time that is passing. Le Plein de Plumes is shown in the form of a black monolith that is filled with feathers dropped by an enigmatic character. When the four sets are full of feathers, they are emptied. Then a new feather goes down through the screens and the feathers fill up the screens once again.

Sound : Leigh Landy

Production : Alain Bray

• Panoramic crossroad New-York
• Same crossroad by night with a video of John Coltrane
• Poem of Victor Hugo
• Generated Route

Son des sens (Sound of the senses) is an artistic exercise of sound creation and music composition. An invitation to experience sound-scapes in which the user moves around, by means of advanced 3-D sound techniques, using a spheroid-shaped navigation tool. After sound exploration, the user gets to the core of musical creation itself. Music is generated by processing all parameters of the journey (position, duration, speed.) Having memorized them, the computer transforms them into music by association with sampled sounds.

The sound is both the cause and the result of this interactive work. It acts by guiding the navigator in a visual environment, and is re-composed by a generator analyzing the journey’s parameters.

Installation/Documentary Program

This program invites you to go on a journey to discover the Silk Route. Amidst a landscape stretching from Italy to China, the viewer can come across 55 documents (texts and images) dealing with the history of the Silk Route, and more generally, cultural and scientific intermingling as a factor of civilizations’s evolution.
This program is staked on the way it has chosen to present the documents. They are either sedentary, gathered around the stopping places (Venice, Constantinople, Samarkand and Changan), or travelers journeying in caravans or alone. Whenever the viewer wants to consult one of them, as to come into «real» contact with them, he or she approaches them «face to face». This is then interpreted as a desire to consult the document, which is instantaneously displayed on the screen to be read. It remains on the screen until the viewer decides to continue his or her route.

Developped in the context of a residency at l’Espace Culture Multimedia du Centre culturel Saint-Exupery de Reims. Support: Ville de Reims, Banque SNVB.

• Florent Aziosmanoff: Concept
• Xavier Boissarie: Production
• Veronique Caraux: Graphics
• Roland Cahen: Music
• Jean-Joseph Dardennes, Pascale Argod & Agnes Duguy: Content

Urban Framework has two goals: to study the way online collective working practices are represented and to explore playful and artistic way, the theme of the City as a network.
The installation includes two work-stations allowing users to explore the site and to ‘chat’. In order to get to the animations, all one has to do is travel along the radio dial at the top of the screen and click when an icon appears. An interactive animation will then load up in the center of the window, and disappear as soon as the user returns to the radio dial above.

Performance on the theme of memory through numerical media, 2000, France.

Direction: Kirsten Dehlholm. Text: Morten Søndergaard. Sound: Tal Hadad. Image: Eva Lange, Guil Hadad, Dorothee Marot, Laurent Simonini & Kirsten Dehlholm. Performer: Morten Nielsen

Interactive video installation with ceiling projection.

Websites, France

An artistic proposition on the net, Revenances, to consider the web as one of its media, that is as a space of communication between the living and the dead people. The project invites the visitor to encounter ghosts, to give hand to these captive presences of the other world and to join them.

Students sites shown at the Galerie Gauche, during the Numer Colloque:

• Reynald Drouhin – Rhizomes
• Gregory Chatonsky – Nervures
• Julie Morel – Li(n)king

The piece focuses on the capacity to perceive time as a whole. The work explores literally the question of the deepness of video images temporal dimension. The installation present some video-construction and video-composition, made from sequences and animated images related to their temporal sections. The images have been shot in 3 cities: Saigon, Cairo and La Paz.

Software : Roberto Torro
2000, Colombia

Interactive Sound Installation

How to reach by voice a human person behind a statistical bombing and to succeed to hear him or her? This installation implies the visitor who must by adjusting the volume of his voice find the right sound level to be able to reach and hear the other.

A condensate mixture of images and sounds, of fictional violence scenes, similar to the ones we see everyday on television, displaced in space and time.

Installation based on texts about virtuality which are transformed by an orthographic correction program, Great-Britain.

Prototype of an Interactive Installation 

An interactive installation, prototype of an installation to be presented in 2001 at the Galerie des enfants of the Centre Pompidou based on the integration of advanced computer methodologies such as cartographic algorithms (Self-Organizing Map, SOM) in order to explore the contribution of the audience to the museum situation. The audience creates the content of an archive by bringing familiar objects that are scanned. Once the data available, a dynamic cartography algorithm organize them on a bidimensional map according to descriptions proposed by their owners.

With the collaboration of Dr. Timo Honkela, the Media-Lab of the University of Art and Design of Helsinki, and of C3, Center for Culture and Communication of Budapest and the help of the Fondation Langlois for the arts, medias and technology in Montreal. Thanks to the Galerie des enfants, Pompidou centre.

Audio-visual installation.

A visual and musical installation based on a motorized device putting in motion optical fibers defining geometrical forms by effect of the retinian persistence. This new realization of the device imagined by artists Francoise Henry and Laurent Bolognini is controllable directly by computer, and is the instrument of a creation by Andre Serre-Milan who has conceived parallel the visual and the music, ‘Toiles Filantes’, in real time. Thierry Coduys, Gilles Dubost, F. Benvenuti, and Sandrine Adass (La Kitchen) made the new version of the device.

Interactive musical sculpture based on a sculpture by Arman. 

An installation including a bronze statue, carried out by Arman, a musical composition of Jacopo Baboni Schilingi and a text read and recorded, written by Tita Reut. A system of hinges gives to the public the opportunity to modify the statue’s shape. These movements disturb, thanks to a system of sensors, the music diffused as well as the recorded text. The disturbance of the sounds is thus proportional to the amplitude of the variation imposed on the sculpture, and the linearity of the text, just like the various parameters of the recorded voice, could be also called in question by the intervention of the public. Realization from La Kitchen.

Andrea Zapp’s Last Entry: Bombay, 1st of July is a collaborative documentary inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. Reading like a visionary metaphor about the internet, it is a biography of a figure – identity and gender unknown – travelling through time and space, centuries and cultures.

Charting the artist’s rise to international media stardom as a result of deliberately adding 25 kgs to her bodyweight, Phat Media Blast continues Volkmann’s use of her body as a site for art production, both as medium and art object.

This work has been realised during the artist’s residency at Cumbria College of Art & Design, made possible by financial support from Northern Arts. It will be shown at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle from 14 November 1998 to 31 January 1999 as part of ‘CorpoREAL’.

In July 1997, a 251b, six-wheeled robot called Sojourner Truth trundled out onto the surface of Mars. The fact that an object at the extreme cutting edge of human technology was named after a black ex-slave is the starting point for Keith Piper’s exploration of the metaphorical relationship between the image of the robot and black people in science fiction and popular culture.

Rita Myers presents her new interactive robotic installation ‘Transient Species’. Using small robots located in a specially constructed sonic environment, the work evokes the vanishing limits of the human self whether manifested in the angels and demons of the past or the technologically-mediated, transgendered bodies of the present.

Curator Statement

The Hotel has been chosen as a loaded site, heavy with references to luxury, anonymity, loneliness, romance, secrecy, brief sexual encounters etc… on a sliding scale from opulence to seediness. The project involves the use of video and other digital media including stills, digitally manipulated photographs, installation and performance, and utilises the existing technology in the hotel – the CCTV system, monitors in rooms, interactive video wall, voice mail and the hotel’s web site.

Mirror, Mirror is a description of Gail’s interactive digital installation, a storytelling device which uses the computer as sculpture. Gail exhibited this work for her masters degree at the Royal College of Art. She describes how she recreated a small corner of the bedroom and used a dressing table within that space as an icon of femininity to subvert the dominant associations of specific gender identity in order to explore aspects of violence and technology and to create possible alternatives. Mirror, Mirror used the computer to make an environment that held hidden surprises. The objects on the dressing table and the images that arose from the interaction were about violence and what provokes it. The violence was directed by a virtual man projected onto the screen/mirror towards the user. There were a number of choices the used could make in response, some reciprocally violent, some not.

Some twenty student pieces, including “Switch at Birth” (Coordinator Stewart Cook) – a performance about a sentient computer operating system. Questioning sentience, the plot, images, and music were all written partly by students and partly by computers. It was shown as three large video projections in the Holden Gallery.

The installation Stroke, by the Manchester artists Maf’j Alvarez and Tanya Meditzky (UK), got the viewer involved on a more subliminal level. After wandering in small cloth-lined spaces, I sat on a low stool to look at a screen through a hole in the wall. I put my hand in the lefthanded rubber glove and after a while realised that I was meant to manoeuvre a mouse: a pointer on the screen that moved in the opposite direction to the movements made by my hand. It wasn’t clear what I had to do, and the room around me was filling with people who started yelling at me. I had to do ‘something’ on the screen correctly before the locks on the doors would open to let everyone out. A voice from behind the screen asked if I wanted help and then informed me that I had to move the letters on the screen. I had to co-ordinate my movements in opposite directions and my mouse kept getting stuck. I felt stupid, but I kept on trying. Finally I succeeded and was rewarded with the message “I love you!” written back to front. Walking out, I found the screen, now the right way round, with a microphone on a wall near the entrance. It was neat and weird. I’d assumed someone had been watching me from behind the screen but, instead, the screen was elsewhere and the instructions had come from someone watching the screen in what seemed to be a public space. Realising, then, that this piece was about the illness, ‘stroke’, tied the frustrations I’d experienced to a world many elderly share: a world beyond the artists and academics attending this symposium to a world of barriers and of fighting to overcome them – not a world of terror.

Curator Statement

In the Department of Fine Arts

1. Luchezar Boyadjiev
2. Roman Verostko

Also showing as hosts:

1. John Hyatt – nets
2. Franz Otto Novotny – The Terror of Cyclic Existence
3. Karl Harris, Tracey Sanders-Wood & Patrick Fitzgerald –
FOLLOWING 1848…APPENDECTOMY

This exhibition shows the results of the largest ever programme for artists and designers using the new technology of layer manufacture. The aim of the project was to arrange access to layer manufacture facilities for sculptors and designers working in higher education 23 institutions in the UK. The works on exhibition were selected from an application of thirty-five proposals. The selection was made by engineers, who were involved with the CALM project, according to criteria which was aimed at “the extent to which the proposed objects exploited the unique features of rapid prototyping” rather than “artistic merit” in any sense. Layer manufacture is a new engineering technique, also known as rapid prototyping, that can be used to make a real object directly from a 3D computer model. The computer model is “sliced” by special software into very thin layers, and the object is made by constructing the individual layers on a computer controlled machine. Each later is built on top of the preceding layer, and the stack of layers forms the final solid object. The CALM project was set up by Professor Ted Smith at the University of Central Lancashire, and is funded by the HEFCs through their Joint Technology Applications Program (JTAP), as part of an initiative intended to increase the use of IT by arts students. The project runs for two years, from January 1997.

“A New Life” is a digitally produced videotape loosely based around Dante’s first novel “The New Life”. In addition it draws upon a number of works by the early Renaissance Italian Painter Mantegna.

This work is a visual evocation of the original story but with a twist, functioning as a metaphor for the hermetics of genetic engineering.

Although involving advanced technology in the creation of “A New Life”, the production techniques are not dissimilar to much traditional animation. The work may be regarded as one more of the following: video art, animation, computer graphics or simply a pictorial narrative. Using cut and paste, 3-D graphics and editing facilities that are now available with computer technology, the works of Mantegna are recomposed and montaged, elements from one painting naturally reappearing in another, creating new “Mantegna’s” which are then integrated with entirely synthetic imagery.

Digital video, colour, stereo.

Produced using a Spaceward Supernova computer graphics system and high-band digital editing. The music was composed during production by Jon Rose (Amsterdam) using digital synthesis and sampling techniques.

“Dirty Power” is a work of personal expression which is in reaction to living in the age of the fatal disease AIDS. The work has obvious and ambiguous meanings which respond to events in my private and public life caused by our sexual-social crises. This piece was also inspired by my exploration of the often seductive sexy nature of three dimensional computer graphics media and its almost “‘magical” abilities. Previously I have worked with pencil drawing, photography and film, but having been seduced by three dimensional computer graphics, I have decided to use is as my medium of choice for this project. My personal approach to using the computer as a fine arts medium is the same as if I were using traditional media; the creative spirit comes from the same place no matter what I am creating or how I am creating it. However I am acutely aware of the unique capabilities of computers and try to make the best use of them as multi-media interactive environments/tools. I recognize every software package as an art medium. I am interested in working with programs written by others as well as writing my own. I have been fortunate to participate in transcontinental and intercontinental exchanges of images and text with fellow artists who create on the computer via BITNET and TELNET. We participate in critiquing each others animations, still imagery, software and literature. Thus, a big part of my approach to using computer as a fine arts medium is to use them to communicate with other artists as well as to use them to create art works that communicate with audiences.
Dirty Power begins with off screen sounds of lovers in the night and a television news broadcast. The sounds of the lovers brings to live the electrical cords and their plugs. The two cords unplug themselves engaging in a seductive gestural dance during which the viewer begins to suspect the motivation of each of the snake-like characters. It becomes clear that the unseen end of each of these cords is a television and a lamp. As the cords plug themselves in and out of the wall in love frenzy, the lamp and the television that they are connected to turn on and off. This cause and effect changes the lights and the sounds of the scene to the rhythm of the cord’s intercourse. Meanwhile, the sounds of the lovers in the other room becomes increasingly more intense and mixed with progressively more ambiguous television babble. After the ritual comes to a climax the camera reveals the television and the lamp resting quietly on a living room table. The meanings attached to the interplay of the electrical cords are colored by the sound track. I am attempting to bring the feeling of life to inanimate objects while experimenting with cineast language to intrigue, entertain, confuse and hopefully make people think.

This project served in part as a joint interpolation experiment with forward kinematics; an Evans & Sutherland PS300 and Twixt animation software written by Julian Gomez were employed. Articulated joints with a parent-child hierarchy were animated to command control-points for outputting three dimensional paths that were then referenced to generate three-dimensional tubular geometric models for each frame of motion. These tube models thus became the cord characters in the movie. All geometric models were generated using in-house software developed at Ohio-State University. The project also served as a platform for experimentation for the research and development of TROUT rendering software written by Scott Dyer of the Ohio Supercomputer Graphics Project. Further software support was provided by John Fujii, Susan Amkraut, John Donkin and Jeff Light.

Music and Graphics by Brian Evans.
Post production: Bob Patterson, Cordelia Baron & Vincent Jurgens.
Created at the National Center for Super Computing Applications, USA.

Michael Sciulli, Melissa White & James Reynolds of Apollo Computer formed the ‘Midnight Movie Group’ and produced some remarkable computer animations, demonstrating Apollo’s qualities.

Composed by Tod Machover (1989), computer graphics by Yoichiro Kawaguchi. Music based on the voice of Karol Bennett.

©1986 Pixar All Rights Reserved. Luxo is a trademark of Jac. Jacobson Industries.
John Lasseter – direction, animations, models
Bill Reeves – technical direction, models, rendering
Sam Leffler – rendering
Don Conway – laser output scanning
Music provided by Forrest Patten, Kaleidosound
Luxo Jr. is an animated desk lamp, his son, and a ball. Animation was described by a keyframe animation system with procedural animation assistance. Piece demonstrates full self-shadowing with multiple light sources and procedural texturing.

Facial animation software: Yair Winkler.
Environment software: Michael Girard, Susan Amkraut & Hans Rijpkema
Music: Harry Kappen
Technical support: Martin Bartels
Thanks to: Hans Rijpkema, Jon Gabilando, Daan Tweehuysen, Albert Alberts & Eldad Golan

.For this OOGTV production, Wim van der Plas was interviewed by Emmy Okkerse, head of the communication office of the Groningen Polytechnic. Wim introduced several of the highlights of the SISEA Electronic Theatre and the Concert & Performance Programme, illustrated by video clips. Among others, work by Girard & Amkraut and Stelarc was shown. The documentary was shown looped all day on the Sunday preceding SISEA.

-The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989)
-Willow (Ron Howard, 1988)
-The Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
-several commercials (‘Life Savers’ -sweets- and others)

These animations were first shown at the SIGGRAPH Film & Video Show of 1990 and then entered for SISEA. The animations illustrate several newly developed techniques, like flexible body simulation and others. The following animations are on the reel:

Jack Palevich, Galyn Susman, Nancy Tague (animation) & John Lasster (coach) — Pencil Test
Pete Litwinowicz & Lance Williams — Tempest
Gavin Miller & Michael Kass — Her Majesty’s Serpent
Pete Litwinowicz & Libby Patterson — Pigment Promenade
Gavin Miller — The Audition
Michael Kass, Gavin Miller & Ned Greene — Splash Dance

This tape is a collaboration with choreographer/dancer Jo Andres. The series of dances and video-interplays is based on the hypothesis of time as a subjective and fluctuant perception – and the measuring of time being but a psychologically reassuring aid. The manipulable time epitomizes the electronic age as much as the manipulable hand/foot symbolizes the machine age. The formal structure of the project reflects its digital environment: mathematical equations and digital headings are associatively combined with the topic of each selection.

Panspermenia: The theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores.

This piece depicts a single life cycle of an inter-galactic life form. Evolutionary mechanics of random variation and artificial selection were used for procedural generation of complex organic structures. Physical simulations, procedural plant growth, and 3D rendering were performed in parallel on Connection Machine Computers.

Computer Hardware:
Connection Machine System CM-2

Software and Animation:
Karl Sims

Sound:
David Atherthon, David Grimes, Steve Blake, Target Productions

Computer Hardware:
Connection Machine System CM-2

Software and Animation
Karl Sims / Optymistic

Sound:
Robert Moore, BLC Sound

The film shows the continual metamorphosis of a complex 3D form. A 3D form metamorphoses from a swirling random cloud of eggs and into starfish structure and then changes shape into a webbed plant form.

The film was produced using the WINSOM Solid Modeling Program and “Form Growing” programs written in the ESME language. The film is of particular interest in that the key frames for the animation were created using a new “Evolutionary” Interface, which uses a combination of random mutation and artistic selection. The moving forms are made to appear realistic by using 3D texturing, Ray Casting and multiple light sources.

The work is a result of creative collaboration between the artist William Latham and Scientists Stephen Todd and Peter Quarendon. Animation software by Mark Owen.

This film won first prize in the Research Category at ‘The Imagina Computer Graphics Conference 1990″ in Monte Carlo.The film opened the Film Theatre Show at `SIGGRAPH 1990″ in Dallas U.S.A.

Hardware: IBM 3090, IBM 5080 Display
Software: WINSOM, ESME

Artist: William Latham
Graphics Software: Stephen Todd
Animation Software: Mark Owen and Richard Wilks
WINSOM software: Peter Quarendon

Produced at the Ohio State University Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design

Rendering Software: Scott Dyer
Animation software: John Donkin
Image Processing Software: Jeff Light

Sity Savvy presents a young prepubescent punk, Bragger T.Bones, expressing his violent distaste for the right wing mentality and the absurd proposition of censoring art. This film demonstrates the critter character animation research, which adopts a layered approach for creating motion with personality, and the film attempts to carry this layered approach through the expression of the piece as well.

“ENS” is a computer generated animation exploring the abstract notion of an entity via the virtual space of computer animation. The film follows the journey of three cloud like balls as they travel through digital landscapes, inspired by dreams. We discover huge mechanical pillars, metaphors for both individual thought and life in cities. We journey through the door linking mind and dream. Finally, the balls reach their goal – and release the individual pillar ( and the individual) from its mechanical labour. “ENS” is an exploration of the aesthetics of pure geometry, an expression of the coldness and abstraction of similarity, groups and cities and the parallel between the three-dimensional virtual space of the computer and of one’s own unconscious mind.

Direction, animation, sound and editing: Jon McCormack
Software: Jon McCormack & Wavefront Technologies
Thanks to: John Flemming, Julie Ockenden, Noel Richards, Steve Smith
Live action component filmed at Yuragir National Park, NSW, Australia
Computed on Silicon Graphics Workstations
Produced at the Video Paint Brush Company
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission

Initiation is the first of four movements in the Continuum set created by Maureen Nappi and Dean Winkler. The underlying theme of Initiation is to elicit a state of suspension in a physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual manner on the part of the viewer. With music by Philip Glass performed by the Kronos String Quartet, the four-part work-in-progress allegorically illustrates our life cycles utilizing a range of electronic imagery.

Hardware:
Silicon Graphics 3130 work stations
Celerity 1260 rendering engines
Sillicon Graphics CS-12 rendering engine
Raster Tech one/80 frame buffer
Quantel Paintbox and Harry with Rainbow
Grass Valley Group Kaleidoscope digital video image processors
Grass Vally Group GVG-300 switcher
Abekas A-62 digital disk recorder
CMX-3600 editing controller
Sony DVR-1000 digital videotape recorders
Sony DVR-10 digital videotape recorders

Software:
Wavefront 3D animation software (Model, Preview and Image)
Post Perfect object generation/interpolation software
Quantel Ver. 4.16 operating system
Kaleidoscope Ver. 4 Ob

The leader of the children’s programme “Oren van je kop” was made without RenderMan, on a Dynagraphics DP 4:2:2 and was commissioned by KRO television. Music is by Rens Machielse.

In 1969–70, Whitney  experimented with motion graphics computer programming at California Institute of Technology. By the 1970s, he had abandoned his analog computer in favor of faster, digital processes. He taught the first computer graphics class at UCLA in 1972. The pinnacle of his digital films is his 1975 work Arabesque, characterized by psychedelic, blooming color-forms.  

Artist/Animator Peter Sweenen directed the production of the SISEA Animated Intro. We see a praxinoscope with images, relevant for the electronic arts. Concept, animation and design by ‘post-academic’ students Computer Animation of SCAN (National Institute for Computer Animation, Minerva Art School):

The sound track is based on a local folkloristic song (‘Uncle Loek’s Horse’).

For fifty SISEA participants a special arrangement was made for the lunch on Friday, the final symposium day.

ECO, the department for electronic composition of the Music Conservatory (Groningen Polytechnic), will give a lunch concert in the concert hall of the Department of Music.

FREE tickets for this unique experience could be obtained for symposium delegates at the SISEA registration desk.

Music for live speaker/actor and tape. Combination 11 is a poem by Helmut Heissenbuttel  (1956). All of the sound material for the piece (with the exception of the pedal tone heard throughout), is derived from the recorded voices of two people, speaking the text of the poem with very different German accents. These sounds are processed and mixed in the style of ‘musique concrete’ collages. The musical form is that of a rondo. An analog recording was sampled onto a NeXT workstation, using an Ariel analog-to-digital convertor. The voice sounds were processed and mixed using a software phase vocoder and the cmusic sound compiler program.

Text of Kombination XI / Combination 11

Helmut Heissenbuttel, Hamburg/Stuttgart, 1956
translation by Stephen Travis Pope, Vienna, 1978

(1)
Die Nacht ist ein Muster aus Bogenlampen und Autoracklichtern.
The night is a pattern of arc lamps and auto taillights.
Auf der reglosen Fläche der Alster stehen die weissen Fahnen der Nacht.
On the calm surface of the Alster (river) stand the white flags of night.
Unter den Baumen gehen die Schatten.
Under the trees walk the shadows.
Ich bin’s.
It’s me.

(2)
Dunkelkammergesprache
Dark-room-discussions
Dunkelkammergedachtnis
Dark-room-memory
Schattengitter fiber dem schmelzenden Eis
Shadow-grids over the melting ice
Auf Spiegelstelzen stehen die Lichter am Ufer.
On mirror-stands stand the lights along the bank.
Die unbelichteten Stellen verblühen.
The unlight places wither.

(3)
All diese Satze
All these sentences
Das Inventar der Gelegenheiten
The inventory of the possibilities
Vergiss nicht
Don’t forget
Gerede von Schallplatten
Talking on records
Das Gedachtnis von Tonfilmstreifen die abgespielt sind
The memory of sound-film-strips that are played out

(4)
Und die Fragen sind die Satze die ich nicht aussprechen kann.
And the questions are the sentences that I cannot pronounce.
Und die Gedanken sind die Vogel die wegfliegen und nicht wiederkommen.
And the thoughts are the birds that fly away and do not return.

Poem text copyright 1956, Bechtle-Verlag. Used by permission.

This is an electro-acoustic concert as solo piece for clarinet (and bass clarinet) in which the computer coordinates both the electronic accompaniment as well as the timbral extensions (signal processing) of the instrument, whose audio signal is analyzed live, thus allowing for very fine control over the electronics. At times, the sounds of the clarinet are both transformed by signal processors, and mixed with very similar electronic counterparts which are controlled by the player as a function of his/her playing. The attempt of this piece is to extend the range of the “solo piece”, while preserving the role of the soloist.

Clarinet by Pierre Lafay.

The final version will include imagery by Gayle Curtis. Galilei will then be an ‘Image Opera’. The concert at SISEA consists of the audio part only. Michael McNabb has worked at CCRMA for many years and is currently (1990) a consultant for NeXT Computer. The NeXT computer will be used in the concert. Michael McNabb latest record/CD is ‘Invisible Cities’ (Vertigo).

PHILOSOPHY
By the growing possibilities of MIDI to automatize the performance of computer-music, more and more a concert-practice comes into being, where players are hardly really playing on the concert-platform and/or where players have a very reduced influence on the performance. This concert-practice is not very attractive for the public, which the composers/performers often try to compensate by adding visual elements such as video-images or light-effects. Because this does not seem a good solution to me, I began to develope a new, for public and players more attractive performance-practice for autonomous electronic music. The idea was to let many players play together in a very direct way (without keyboard) on computers with sound-modules.

THE PERFORMANCE
The performance exists of a concert with a computer-orchestra existing of 16 Atari-ST-computers. The computers are connected (MIDI) with 16 sampling-modules. 16 players are directly controlling the computers (without keyboard) with the help of for this purpose specially developed computer-programs.

THE SOFTWARE
The function of the software is to control many MIDI-parameters of the modules with the mouse of the computer. You can freely choose 2 midi-parameters (notes, velocity, pichbend, modulation etc.) for the co-ordinates (x and y) of the mouse. These parameters are translated in midi-information. There is also information about start, length, repeat and stop from the timing-module. This module is controlled by the button of the mouse and the cursor-keys of the computer.

A system for interactive composition and conducting was created by the composers at the Computer Music Studio at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden during 1989-90. The first performance took place at STEIM, Amsterdam in February 1990.

The main idea of the project is to create an environment where the performer on stage could act both as composer and conductor, without being attached to wires or strange contraptions. The system consists of a spatial structure with infrared transmitters/detectors scanning the performer’ s position and velocity of movements. The data are analyzed and transformed by a custom designed sequencing program. The instrument provides the performer with real time control over parameters such as dynamics, tempo and articulation as well as the creation of the formal structure.

The performance has three components. Live action to a prerecorded soundtrack synced to 4 slide projectors. The piece “Glitsch”  utilizes an original digitally produced soundtrack, synchronized through state-of-the-art Dataton control equipment to the 4 slide projectors.

In the performance “Clouds”, I have used a DataGlove to control audiovisual events that were previously made with my software AV, running on a Macintosh II. In this performance, the performer, wearing a DataGlove, navigates with his hand in an audiovisual hyperspace, passing through many different audiovisual cells, and creates a sort of interactive abstract film. This performance was cancelled however due to customs problems (the data glove was deemed suspicious).

In the quest for audiovisual art that has been lead in the recent years, the need for a device that handles both audio and video events has become clear. The DataGlove, developed by VPL Research Inc., can be considered a very flexible tool of interaction, an ideal instrument to control audiovisual events. In fact, the DataGlove is neither a musical instrument, like a keyboard, nor a pictorial tool like a tablet. It is a neutral device.

The hyperspace can be imagined as a 2 meter wide cube, located in the real world, and Made of little cells. Each cell, located along the 3 axes x y z, “contains” a micro sequence (0.5 to 4 seconds.) of audiovisual events: animations and synthetic sounds. Adjacent cells are related to one another. The last concept is absolutely fundamental. Without spatial coherence among cells, the navigation would be in fact totally meaningless.

Body processes amplified include brainwaves (EEG), muscles (EMG), heartbeat (ECG), pulse (Plethysmogram) and bloodflow (Doppler Flow Meter). Other transducers and sensors monitor limb motion and indicate body posture. The sound field is configured by buzzing, warbling, clicking, thumping, beeping and whooshing sounds – of triggered, random, repetitive and rhythmic sounds.

The artificial hand, attached to the right arm as an addition rather than a prosthetic replacement, is capable of independent motion, being activated by the EMG signals of the abdominal and leg muscles. It has a pinch-release, grasp-release, 290? wrist rotation (C.W. and C.C.W.) and a tactile feedback system for a rudimentary “sense of touch.”

Whilst the body activates its extra manipulator, the real left arm is remote controlled-jerked into action by 2 muscle stimulaters. Electrodes positioned on the flexor muscles and biceps curl the fingers inwards, bend the wrist and thrust the arm upwards. The triggering of the arm motions pace the performance and the stimulater signals are used as sound sources as are the motor sounds of the Third Hand mechanism.

Sounds: A. Body signals amplified

1. EEG (brainwaves, frontal lobe)
2. EMG (muscles, right leg)
3. EMG (muscles, left leg)
4. ECG (heartbeat)
5. Doppler Flow Meter (blood flow, radial artery)

B. Body Sensors
1. Mercury Switch on left-arm (white noise when arm is raised)
2. Mercury Switch on right leg (bending generates thumping sound)
3. Mercury Switch on head (tilting head triggers EEG)

C. Third Hand
Contact microphone monitoring motor motion

Lighting:

1. Strobe – single flash per minute
2. Floor Spots – random sequences activated by ECG
3. Light Globe Grid – random sequences activated by arm ECG
4. Head Light Array – 4 channels sequenced by leg EMG
5. Laser Eyes – beams transmitted via optic fibre cable and collimating lenses

Motion:

A. Third Hand – grasp/pinch/290 degree wrist motion activated by abdominal and lesg muscles
B. Left Arm – remote controlled by two muscle stimulators (involuntary motion predetermined by electrode placement)

The annual festival for electronic art “Ars Electronica” in Linz, Austria, is represented by a collection of work by recent prize winners in the computer graphics and computer animation categories. The festival has been organized since 1979, and has, in the course of the years, developed into one of the most important forums for electronic – and computer art.

Also on show is a special selection of students work of the French ‘Institut National de l’Audiovisuel’ (INA). Above that, during the Film & Video Show, a retrospective will be shown of prize winners of the annual “Imagina” festival, that is organized by INA.

SCAN, the national institute for computer animation in Groningen, has enabled me to work with the Aesthetes graphics computer. In my work the process and experimentation (within certain pre-established limitations) are central, not a carefully planned final result.

Color-patches, photographs, objects, etc are, after they have been digitized with a camera, the basic visual material that I then combine and manipulate with the paint capabilities of the computer. The resulting images carry a contrast between organic structures and an organic pixels.

Another point of departure is typography. I use forms of characters because of their meaning and content. For most people characters belong to the world of graphic design and have nothing to do with fine arts. I would like to oppose that idea by creating “fine art” that consists of nothing else then characters. This form of art is for me not only a play of forms, but also contains an intrinsic content that results from the form of the chosen characters and their combinations.

Region consists of a body of researched text accompanied by video imagery. The central ideas is:- the changing nature of subjectivity and identity in Australia, as seen through the screen of both technological advances and a will (economic, political, social and I believe spiritual) towards regionalism, i.e. AustralASIA.

My electronic sculptures and reliefs react to the spectator by means of photocells or microphones. The observer with his gesture or movement can throw shadows upon the light sensitive cells or can talk to them, the object then reacts within the bounds of its possibilities which are sound, movement or light. The subject of my work is the presentation of time structures which includes interactive and musical structures. The logic electronic function of these sculptures is determined, but the reactions sometimes seem random because of the sensitive dependence upon the time pattern of the input (the activities of the spectator).

I convey the natural order and regularity of forms in a landscape. In my computer generated plots the non-verbal signs: balance of line, color relationships and light can conceivably serve as an enlargement of the natural rhythms, patterns and repetitions that make the very essence of our aesthetic experience, as we contemplate the landscape.

I feel the regularity of shapes and events in nature can make a strong aesthetic stimulus for a viewer, which evokes an emotional response, because the viewer has the experience of correctness of the natural order. I feel that similar correctness of order causes an aesthetic experience while creating or contemplating abstract art: where the mode of the work be abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction, or computer art graphics.

A wild fantasy about the French Revolution

Popureve is a revolving crystal whose time facets reflect visions of past en present French history.

My Art Recipe:

hybridation of symbols
rhythmic variations of intensity (light-colour-texture)
joint composition with music
enjoyment to work in the modern medium of myth

Most of my computer pictures are related to long-running, on-going, art work I call “Portrait of An Atom”. Because I am interested in the nature of structure, especially when I build large outdoor sculptures, I am also interested in nature’s ultimate structure:the atom with its surrounding system of electrons. In my pictures of atoms, each electron is represented by its complete orbit, that is, its wave-like pathway, a ring which fills space as if it were solid matter. Finally, even though I believe that the atom ought to be thought of as a genuine structure, no doubt just as logical in its workings as a microchip, my computer images are fantasy landscapes of worlds which might exist, but probably don’t, certainly not in color.

I am very excited about using computers as a primary tool in my design and image-making. I have developed a unique approach with my work few other designers are able to do or emulate. My work is produced by PostScript programming, video capture, scanning and some interactive drawing software. I presently have a growing body of PostScript-produced images that demonstrate this. These finished images attain solutions by means of faster investigation, greater choice, and new creative possibilities. With them, I hope to create a new modern visual language that can only be achieved with the aid of a computer, but retain the magic about them that transcends their technical origins.

I have been all my artistic life a painter using traditional media like oil, acrylic or watercolors. But when around 7 years ago I learned the possibilities to use computer in the image making, I thought I found a new way to visualize my ideas in a quite different manner. My interest in the potential of the computer is not to make another version of my painting, but rather to find out the possibilities to make an image which I could not make in any other way. Regardless of the complexity of a given system I may be using, my concern is not with the mimetic aspect of image making neither in the degree of sophistication of the system. We know that computer art is still in its infancy. The future of this art does not rest in replacing one medium for another, but to create a new genre with its own structure and aesthetic principles which are not subject to the traditional art.

The work in this group is based on compositions found in two genres of medieval Hebrew manuscripts. The Marseille Carpet pages are based on motifs from the Marseille Bible, completed in Toledo, Spain, in 1260, and housed in the bibliotheque municipale in Marseille, France. The other works are loosely based on the structures of  manuscripts from Germany and neighboring countries, which rely on architectural forms to contain diverse image fragments and text. As the play among the various components of images and text can be extremely complex, the architecture provides a unifying structure. Unlike Christian manuscripts, a single letter or any element which does not have meaning in and of itself is never isolated in Hebrew manuscripts.

The installation is arranged so that three low resolution video cameras positioned at the vertices of a triangle, relay information about what is happening within their field of vision to a control system which includes a custom-made fast processor, sound synthesizer and specially designed software. The computer processor receives information from the cameras and translates this information into sound. The software is designed to detect the location of people, how much of their body is in motion, the relative intensity, suddenness or continuity of their movements and the locations of the greatest activity. The volume and instrumentation of the sounds which are produced are directly related to how the subject within the sculpture moves. Simultaneous feedback, made possible by microelectronics, creates an atmosphere in which sound and motion conspire to create a cybernetic circle.

• A ritual based upon the dualistic juxtaposition of opposed elements: cold/hot (computer generated images and body images); image/gesture; technology/tribalism; alienation/inner journey.
• A ritual which erupts abruptly out of the ordinary, like a streak of madness; it unrolls and exhausts itself, going back into normality.
• The search of a magic dimension of an archetypical and meaningful gesture drowned in past memories; a ritual game that becomes also alchemy of the being.
• Spirals as the symbols of ever-growing and ever-changing energy, become the track that must be followed to loose appearances – the superfluous – and to gain being – the essential.
• Synthetic spirals and movement spirals, in circular gestures, of words (almost magic formulas) not as mere imitation but as a search of a distilled state of being.

The video projection takes place from a totem-box whose operator, an entity who controls and lets the rite happen, creates images on a computer, i.e. the images are not recorded on video-tape but are being constructed in real time, interacting with the performance itself.

This documentation of the installation ‘Ceci n’est pas un oiseau’ was shown on a monitor at the SISEA exhibition site.

Ceci n’est pas un oiseau is a projection installation comprising a specially built animation projector and a system of four automated semi-transparent screens. The projector projects a looped series of images of a cockatoo in flight made by Edward Muybridge onto the four screens. The screens are moved by the action of  six programmed, suspended fans.

The central concerns of the work are with:
-Human pattern recognition,
-The seduction of the cinema, behind which is a rigorous mechanics of sequenced still frames,
-The location of the sign in a chain of electro-mechanically reproduced signifiers,
-The rendering ‘scientific’ (thus ‘knowable’) of natural phenomena by the use of Cartesian, Empirical taxonomic systems.

Muybridge’s grand project was to quantify animal and human locomotion by the superimposition of it upon a planar grid and then to ‘grid’ time through the sequencing of  the cameras. This procedure is a case study in the method of the ‘old science’ which traces its lineage through Euclid, Descartes and Newton, of a world resolvable to simplified relationships and excluded variables, where time and space are absolutes. The project is conceptually contemporary with Mendeleyevs’ periodic table of elements and Mendel’s genetics.

This installation is a multiple monitor video installation in which computer-controlled imagery is juxtaposed to reveal the diverse roles which women occupy within our high-tech culture. The chrome helmets of the three women’s hairstyling chairs are fitted with 11 inch color monitors. The imagery shown is taken from a variety of sources including broadcast television and original footage. Imagery is divided into three thematic areas: women and domestic technology – for housework, beauty and fashion; women and technology in the workplace; and the role of women in scientific research and technological development. Depending on the particular interval pattern selected by the computer, imagery may appear different (or the same) on all 3 monitors, or in various combinations of two the same and one different.  Juxtaposition of imagery demonstrates myth and ideology stretched to reveal the irony of women’s expectations of technological developments. Hair Salon TV counters the optimism and passive acceptance which women are expected to feel towards technology with the real impact is has had on their lives.

I have always thought about Photography not as a tool for documenting reality, but rather as a medium through which I could creatively express my ideas and feelings. Computer graphics gave me a fascinating new realm of possibilities for creating images. I think it is a privilege to witness and take part in the early stages of Electronic Imaging.

I have been involved in the use of computers in fine art for about six years, and write software for my own and other artists’ use, and run classes in the subject (at the City of London Polytechnic). I have explored many aspects of the medium, concentrating on static images for the time being. I think that the visual possibilities of the new medium are only beginning to be realized, and I am convinced that computers will have in the long term a significant impact both on the way that artists work, and in the visual language they employ.

In my latest series I have been exploring some of the problems of producing expressive imagery with 3-D software: many systems that artists use originate from engineering applications and can limit expressiveness. By building my own more organic-based modeler and placing the rendered 3-D images in specially-generated backgrounds I can begin to make a more personal statement, and am able to explore abstract meanings within the language of 3-D volume, weight and juxtaposition. I have always been interested in the effect on one of the presence and distribution of large volumes such as building, trees and mountains. For example, when a building or tree disappears in a familiar place, such as the street one lives in, one feels its absence in a curious way that is not just to do with spatial perception: it is an emotional thing, though a rather abstract

a few drawings,
mere restes d’encre’,

each, a single
line on a sheet of paper,

each, countless
& invisible
lines of code in a computer.

The commercial Electronic Bulletin Board on a roof top at the city centre’s central market square (Grote Markt) was made available for SISEA computer graphic artists, under the denominator ‘Two Bit Art’. The name was a wink at the limited number of colors available. Results were shown alternating with the SISEA logo.

The idea for the Two Bit Art event came from Susan Amkraut, and was coordinated by Cindy Vermeulen.

Preceding SISEA, Groningen city invited a number of international most renouned architects to design and build so-called Video Pavilions: Mini musea appeared (approximately the seize of a cargo container), spread over the city centre, in which music videos were to be shown. Architects included Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman and Coop-Himmelblau.

For the occasion of SISEA the tilted glass pavilion by Bernard Tschumi was the location of a video program compiled by SISEA and a try-out performance by Stelarc, some days before his ‘official’ performance at the SISEA night of Concerts & Performances.