Art Events Data Table

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.

Go Where No Logo Has Gone Before!

“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.

I take apart old books, and use their pages to superimpose other printmaking processes, combining old, original information from the book with new information of my own. I then rebind them, so that the look like “real” library books. These books become kind of a Trojan Horse of the art world; a viewer might pick one and begin to browse, not knowing that it was “art” until well in the sequence. I often use lithography, etching, relief printing, and typography; and combine these media with computer printing. Computer technology allows me a layering of imagery and marking, as well as a more transparent metaphor of time, visible through the “stacking” of technologies (new printing on old pages…). The computer “look” gives this layering of history a contemporary voice.

I have chosen to work in the format of books, because it affords a kind of interactivity and sequential building of imagery, yet retains a real “object” quality. The visual qualities of the layering of imagery and characteristic print technologies give the viewer a rich and compelling object to contemplate. The status between “found object” and “made object” becomes hazy, and the provenance of these books becomes a bit of a mystery. Science is alluded to, but the science seems exotic or outdated. I  encourage the participation of viewers with all my books: they are made to be seen sequentially, not just viewed as prints.

The inspiration for my graphics is often based on symbolic events in a historical background such as cult, myth or anecdote. I built up an imaginary world shown from an ironical point of view. The computer as a tool gives me the possibility to intervene in the creative process at any time I like, for example to choose or to change colors or go back to previous steps in building up an image.

I began this work at a time when I was attempting to reconcile being an artist with also being a mother of teenage daughters. It quickly became obvious to me that the computer was the perfect medium for dealing with the issues inherent in this reconciliation both conceptually and visually. The textures, repetition and layering of life are perfectly imitated by the computer. Reality is mirrored, at the same time it is altered, our assumptions questioned.

As I tested the limits of this new medium, I also tested the boundaries of bringing my relationship with my children to my art. While examining issues of parent/child. I have felt more and more the need to look in the other direction at my own history. I have extended my work to include family snapshots and other found images. The work now extends many years, covering four generations of family.

This work is created with a TARGA 16 computer graphics board using TPS software on an IBM compatible AT computer. I begin with various types of input, ranging from live video, to tape, to photographs, to found objects. As I gather visual, audio and other materials in life I store them away, knowing at some point they could end up as a part of my art. The computer is the perfect medium for this method of working, allowing for random input and integrated output. My final images are high resolution ink jet prints.

What’s most interesting about using a computer in painting ? …. The way it infects the creative process. I use computers to play around with visual ideas. I like the immediacy of colour control. I find when I return to ‘wet’ media my mind is still thinking with that flow, and visual freedom… there is no limit, it seems every image can be re-processed, re-collaged…everything is possible. Paint on the computer is simulation, and in that sense unreal, but painting proper is full of techniques that in comparison feel unnatural – you can’t change colour in real time, make fills, and so on… and the brush, palette, canvas arrangement is cumbersome. But resistance helps too. The physical inertia of painting. The way it absorbs time.

This work illustrates the relationship Man/Nature. Through human interventions (environmental pollution) nature is violated, it recedes if approached and, frightened, starts to shake. The use of electronic technology in this installation is inherent to the pollution. The pleasure derived from it by the viewer is therefore also a warning.

This work is about changing channels; creating new contexts for moving images. To impose an order upon the chaos of visual information we are subject to through the media and everyday living. The result being imagery that conveys a personal point of view from selective input. The images were initially taken from random videotape recordings of broadcast television and the intentional use of camcorder. The computer was used to “grab” individual frames of video which were then manipulated, photographed, and re-assembled. The complete images were incorporated into two distinct installations, “Changing Channels” and “Adam and Eve”.

I am currently working on an interactive installation incorporating electronic sculpture, text and images, a personal computer and office furniture. This peice shall complete my Masters of Fine Arts Degree at San Jose State University’s CADRE Institute.

Line Drawings constitute a universe of their own. To draw lines is a most natural thing for an artist. The “resistance of the material” is for a hand drawn line very low, for a line drawn with a computer much higher. To realize an idea one has to write a program which then becomes the instrument for the generation of the drawing. One of the fascinating aspects of computer generated line drawings is the possibility to work with sequences and produce variations on a theme very easily. The lines are generated by a parameter-driven algorithm which draws on random processes.

The images Vessel. Blooming and Leaf. Light, are part of an ongoing series entitled Interior Bodies, depicting subjective interior realities of organic phenomena. Vessel Blooming represents internal bodily processes of blossom and flesh: Leaf. light depicts the interior space of a leaf during the process of photosynthesis. Each image is a single ‘frame’ of a three-dimensional temporal world, and was created interactively with the 3D computer-animation software Softimage, on a Silicon Graphics workstation.

3D computer technology provides me as an artist with an expanded visual language encompassing aspects of painting, sculpture, filmmaking and set design. My interest in this technology as a painter and filmmaker was initially based on a desire to go beyond the picture plane and create within a three-dimensional space. The technology itself is very seductive, perhaps because it denies physical presence and allows the human mind to create in a virtual world where the body cannot enter…

Now that the human mind is becoming as transparent as the observable micro and macro levels of reality, and now that we have tools to explore more with less (all gamuts of technologies: from satellites to robots to symbolic system means), Art will be the medium of infinite dimensions of Unity:

– As an indicator of physical and metaphysical processes of esthetic problem solving.

– As a translator of universal generalized principles into concrete processes of the illumination of self and others. “As above, as below” or E=mc_ will be the code of tomorrow’s art.

– Art as an interface between universal achievements throughout space-time and personal/collective applications of those achievements at all levels of life quality and communication.

Inspired by the book of the same title by Gustave Flaubert. Here Anthony is every one of us, the temptation our capacity to change the world and reshape it, through technology, in our own image. A surreal and disturbing work. Computer animation produced by Simon Biggs, 1990

The video “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” by Simon Biggs, has been inspired by Gustav Flaubert’s verse-novel and Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, both of the same title. The video relates an allegorical scenario based on the story of the fourth century Egyptian desert-living hermit, battling his fears and desires with his faith in a deeper order – his greatest fear being that this order was the source of his problems. In “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” the world is a hybrid between the natural and the manufactured with deserts inhabited by creatures composed from human anatomy and machine parts, trees growing out of massive industrial fragments, laboratory equipment twisting itself into organic forms and volcano’s giving birth to and consuming mysterious devices of uncertain function. It is a universe of deranged inventions where it is impossible to differentiate between the natural and the unnatural, the living and the dead.

Logod is a treatise about the essential form of the Universe, God’s logotype. Logod = (logos + god). Supposing that Man will create a virtual (digital) copy of our Universe, with a high realism, and will program the interaction of the events, using random concepts. It is a metaphor about Human’s attempt to reproduce and dominate Nature.

This entire interactive installation is conceived as an enclosed symbolic space to enshrine or entomb an almost fable-like tale of a boy who falls into a well. The actual story gained international prominence when it was broadcast live all through the night on Italian television. The boy’s parents were joined by the president and the army in the futile attempt to save him. But all the king’s men and the efforts of the media appeared to have been in vain when the boy died in the well.

The installation explores a number of universal themes: myths of falling (Icarus) and of the underworld (Orpheus); stories of Mother Earth and emergence, re-birth and resurrection.

The mediation of the tale through television, and in this case the interactive videodisc installation is crucial to the re-telling of the story. The viewer is now a participant in the story, an interactor, able to intervene in the tale from different physical and metaphorical viewpoints. Contained in a closed kiva-like circular space are several mechanisms, including a peep hole and an interactive touch screen, which provide insights into the piece.

“The Peephole” contains an image of the Well and a reflexive eye gazing back at the viewer. The Renaissance space, of perspective and of the camera obscura has obvious references to Duchamp’s “Etant donnes”. But the image the viewer sees, from inside the closed gate, is from Piranesi’s garden at the “Knights of Malta”, in Rome which frames a view of Michelangelo’s dome of St. Peter’s in perfect one-point perspective. This garden like the scene in “Ettant donnes” is physically inaccessible and can only be viewed through a peephole. ‘The Peephole” segment serves as a commentary to question the notions of “interactivity” and “intervention” in the age of electronic transmission.

The raytraced scenes were processed by a home brew machine and original software. Bump mapping and texture mapping on the sliced parahyperboloid surfaces. The images have a resolution of 2048 * 1536 and 24 bit colors.

Computer images generated by mathematical process introduce us to the world we have never seen. The images are not reproductions of our real world, but actually exist in the world. As telescopes and microscopes extended our aural and vocal powers, computer graphics provides the perceptual breakthrough. For myself, computer is not a painting/drawing brush but the image generator. That is why I am using only math-based programs.

In this film, several abstract objects are related to each other, creating a dynamic counterpoint between the different parts. This film has been made by recording the animations that were produced in real-time by software AV, running on a Macintosh II. Real-time animation has permitted easy editing and immediate modifications before filming, allowing the author to try different solutions and therefore to reach more easily his goal.

Animation Adriano Abbado and Dagmar Trinks.

Software Adriano Abbado in THINK’s LightspeedC
Hardware Apple Macintosh II, Apple Color Card, Apple Color Monitor.

Composed by Cort Lippe, performed by Harry Sparnaay

Music for Bass Clarinet and Tape (1986) was commissioned for the 1986 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) by the Dutch Ministry of Culture. The piece was written for the bass clarinetist Harry Sparnaay, who premiered it at the ICMC in The Hague in October, 1986. The tape part was created at CEMAMu in Paris, using the graphics-oriented computer-music system UPIC designed by Iannis Xenakis. The digital mix of the final tape version was done at the Stichting Klankschap and the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.

Sound material for the tape was limited to approximate the confines one normally associates with individual acoustic instruments in order to create a relationship with parity between the tape and the bass clarinet. Although contrasts and similarities between the tape and the clarinet are evident, musically a kind of intimacy was sought – not unlike our present-day ‘sense’ of intimacy with machines in general.

There are five major sections in the work. The opening dialogue between tape and instruments is followed by a section in which the tape part dominates. This, in turn, gives way to a bass clarinet solo, while in the fourth section the tape part is dominated by the clarinet. In the final section the tape and instrument are again somewhat equal – reminiscent of the opening section. Music for Bass Clarinet and Tape was a prize-winning composition in the 1987 15th Annual Electronic Music Competition of Bourges, France.

A Multi-media Performance, composed by George Lewis, performed by Douglas Ewart, Joel Ryan, Ray Edgar, Steve Potts and Misha Mengelberg

The Empty Chair (1988) is an integrated composition for human and computer performers. One of the humans plays an acoustic musical instrument and is accompanied sonically by a computer controlled orchestra and visually by a computer controlled video system. A computer video instrument is making a real-time video portrait of a second human performer, who is sitting (as for a portrait) in a room well removed from the stage and concert hall activity, or for that matter, from any other activity or sounds.

Douglas Ewart woodwinds, saxophones
Joel Ryan sonic spacialization software
Ray Edgar Fairlight video systems software writer
Steve Potts performer
Misha Mengelberg [1935–2017] performer

This part of the program consisted of the premiere of two productions made for FISEA – the prize winners of the international ‘Omniversum-competition’. This was an idea of – and was initiated by Wim van der Plas and Wim Bijleveld. The international Omniversum-competition was juried by Rudi Fuchs, Wim Bijleveld and Willem Nagelkerke. The two prize winners were Ronald Nameth from Stockholm and the duo P. Walboom and M.Y Zult from the Hague. These artists received the opportunity to realize their concept with the Digistar Installation at the Omniversum in collaboration with its director, Wim Bijleveld. The Digistar installation is especially developed for projects concerning star constellations and complex simulations of astronomical phenomena on the spherical plane of projection (made by Omnimax theaters). The Digistar installation offered the artists many creative possibilities to project and animate images, accompanied by music. Despite the short preparation and limited experience, the results were stimulating! Furthermore, a selection of video and computer-animation submissions was also shown.

Winners:

• Ronald Nameth, Stockholm, SE
• P. Walboom & M.Y Zult, The Hague, NL

Jury

• Rudi Fuchs, director of the The Hague Municipal Museum, NL
• Wim Bijleveld, director of the Omniversum theater and planetarium, The Hague, NL
• Willem Nagelkerke, CEO of Van Rietschoten & Houwens industries and board member of the SCCA (Foundation for Creative Computer Applications), Rotterdam, NL

Initiator

• Wim van der Plas

My intention is to transform the TV picture beyond the ‘corpus’ of the TV-set, to take a step out of the given process in which the picture passes through the camera until it comes out as a representation in the TV-set. Both the camera and the TV-set are in a way ‘containers’ with a ‘glassed’ window towards the world. What I do is that I let the TV image pass through an additional ‘container’ of ‘glass’ in front of the TV-set. So the ‘glass-container’ is the primary object whether it’s shaped as a camera, TV or a glass object, while the picture as such, is secondary and variable.

The representations in my glass objects are exchangeable and can receive any signal broadcasted. This allows me to be a part of the audience, face to face with my own production.

The raytraced scenes were processed by a home brew machine and original software. Bump mapping and texture mapping on the sliced parahyperboloid surfaces. The images have a resolution of 2048 * 1536 and 24 bit colors.

Computer images generated by mathematical process introduce us to the world we have never seen. The images are not reproductions of our real world, but actually exist in the world. As telescopes and microscopes extended our aural and vocal powers, computer graphics provides the perceptual breakthrough. For myself, computer is not a painting/drawing brush but the image generator. That is why I am using only math-based programs.

This is a continuation of the “Toronto Cybercity” project I curated for the Aperto at the Venice Biennale in 1993. It utilizes a new artistic medium called a Cibercity which incorporated a miniature art gallery which housed model-sized installations created by various Toronto artists. The piece was linked to the Biennale via the McLuhan program’s videoconferencing in Toronto which allowed viewers in Italy a live video feed from within the installation.

Body Missing is Ms Frenkel’s first work conceived for computer network. Using the World Wide Web as platform, Body Missing is concerned with the open-ended process of reconstruction of missing art: here the art treasures stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. Like all of Frenkel’s works, Body Missing plays on the the rich ambiguity between fact and fiction, memory and invention to create a unique network. Zone Productions is co-producing Ms Frenkel’s work.

This is a museum installation about the cave of Lascaux (France), an interactive reconstruction of the ancient painted cave made with a new computer graphic technique called virtual reality. In one of the two rooms of the installation, a viewer seated in a chair dons wraparound 3D glasses, grabs a joystick and starts exploring the caves. Should he study the painting of an, animal for a period of time, it becomes a clip and then dissolves. In the other room, viewers see everything he sees except for the clip which is a private viewing experience. One at a time, the spectators can become 3D viewers/explorers for about ten minutes. Those willing to share a secret receive a message regarding the hidden history of humanity.

Simulation and network technologies present new challenges to the field of museology. Art collections can now be digitized and distributed through telecommunication and computer networks. Moreover, new artistic experiments question the validity and necessity of the institutional sanctions. ISEA 95 Montreal will host a high­speed televirtual telecommunication linking two exhibition sites. The Tunnel under the Atlantic will link Montreal and Paris, allowing both publics to meet and interact in a virtual environment.

In immersive virtual space, the subjectively-experienced body plays a central role, largely neglected due to cultural bias. In Osmose, a work-in-progress, Char Davies has developed an interactive aesthetic beyond conventional virtual reality whereby intuitive breathing and balance act as chiasmatic links between body and world, leading the “immersant” into a receptive state of being which profoundly affects experience of the work. The author will discuss the theory behind her approach, including insights from diving in deep oceanic space.

Cyber.3: is a fast, short statement about cyberspace — from the body in cyberspace.

The Angel Cycle (1985) has as its starting point a medical photograph of a hermaphrodite that we associate with the concept of the Angel. It includes more than twenty works at present: multimedia performances and installations, photo-sculptures, sound pieces, radio broadcasts, artist’s books, computer animations, video tapes. The present work relates the “Angel” photograph to archival footage from World War II. It is an anti-war manifesto, and an elegy. As a stranger, the “Angel” figure acquires the ambiguous status of observer, witness, victim and judge.

The work is a 3D surrealistic mythology of the digital era. It contains eight 3D interactive environments that represent aspects of that mythology. The eight levels are: Acme (the industry), Medialand, Memory Cave (the unconscious), Digigod (religion/worship), The Brainghosts (the duality), Labyrinth (the search), The Brain ( the creation), and Logod (the creator/god). The soundtrack of the video is one of the eight songs that were composed for the CD-ROM title.

I call my video work Video Music. As in Music Video, the pieces are non-narrative, and each piece is set to a single piece of music. There are, however, some very significant differences. I attempt to create unified pieces that combine imagery with music on an equal level, using musical methods including the development of a theme over time, the interaction of one theme with another, the development of variations on a theme, the resolution of a piece by returning to the original visual music. I intend to continue this work, and to create pieces that use musical structures such as poly-rhythms and counterpoint more explicitly in the video work.

This work uses computer technology to create a fine arts electronic scroll. It is a sequence of sacred, or universal imagery which explores visual counterpoint, chance and spatial depth. The principles of musical composition are used as a conceptual guide, not only to create the visceral type of music, but also to structure the video content. The work lies within the tradition of the works of visual music.

This work (The Museum at Dawn) offers a virtual visit to the heart of the relation between the individual and his perception of reality. The film, constructed from a group of visual references, imitates the scheme of a real museum with gallery visits and workshops. The excursion offers the revelation of the parallel space of time which lends a colour to all the decor discovered by the visitor. This mirror-visit underlines the secret of the connections we maintain with time. An obligatory yet denied intermediary of our relationship with existence, time defines emotion and the point of origin of each of our acts. It is the true curator of this little museum of an unknown soul.

This piece uses an animated human head to demonstrate the effect of water and tide upon a pebbled beach. The video becomes a rhythmic piece manipulating “real” time and sound to simulate the swirling movements of the sea.

From a live duet I generated an ensemble using multiple digital image processing and composite generations. Immanent to the chaos is a principle of order that leads to brief moments of harmony in rhythmic intervals. The metaphor of flying is a base of my work. The revolving quote from”Thus spoke Zarathustra” (Nietzsche) paraphrases the spirit of lightness that one does not fly into flying. It takes one to learn how to stand, walk, jump, …and dance before flying. To achieve a lightness of mind, freeing the thoughts from pragmatic truths. The simulation of reality fragments woven into a synthetic context offers this freedom by denying an absolute truth. (Choreography: Patrice Regnier/RUSH Dance; stochastic concept: Tom Brigham/NYIT).

The work (Recovered Affinities) is based on references to historical sites and artifacts from the Moroccan Jewish community, mixed with and showing the influence of the surrounding Islamic culture. For the artist, who is Jewish of Ashkenazi origin, this work constitutes the research of cultural ties which history has forgotten.

Agartha: Agartha, Kingdom of Infinity…a lost legend. For centuries we believed the earth to be flat and that the earth turned around the sun. I assure you today that the earth is hollow and that in the earth’s center shines the light of eternity. Men from MO and Atlantis have lived there for centuries. The enigma of Agartha belongs to each of us. We must find the answer to make the impossible possible and follow the path leading to infinity. When you are ready, the doors of intemporal space will open and the truth will burst forth.

This cell and model animation uses live action and is set around a pinball machine. When the ball hits a certain compartment, the animation inside begins. Each compartment symbolizes a negative or positive aspect of life.

Deep is a computer animation work that questions vision and how we learn to see. The skeletons all appear alike until we can see the skin that covers them. The body is made up of bones, muscles, skin and hair; certain elements are common to every species. We resemble each other much more closely than we would like to think.

The work is an imaginary visit to a national mental hospital guided by animated cartoons. The title implies enclosure, in this case the predominance of the medical-psychiatric discourse and the legal helplessness faced in the treatment of madness, and an artistic approach to psychiatry as torture.

Ten years after launching his famous short animation film Tony de Peltrie, the author unveils the trailer of his upcoming film entitled The Boxer. Surrounded by an impatient crowd, two boxers face off under the watchful eyes of their trainers, a referee and the ring announcer. Produced entirely in computer 3D, this work will feature top of the line animatics. This trailer is a production of TFX Animation and was completed at Studios Taarna. The Boxer will premiere sometime next year.

This is an animation-in-progress consisting of different technological eras, from prehistoric times to the 1950’s and on through to the 21st century and beyond. Astroturf tells the story of how humans are devolving through their interaction with new technology, by presenting a number of test cases throughout history. It attempts to show in comical terms just how humans have related to the machine.