For the record:

I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a purpose and reason to pursue this blog and come to the conclusion that, in any case, it doesn’t make sense for me to continue it without changes, so I’ve decided to redesign it and give it another try with some clearer ground rules. If something will come out of it and if it will make sense for anyone else but me remains to be seen…

Anyhow, until I reevaluate the blog again I will approach it as an ongoing exercise and experiment, and as such it only makes sense if it’s honest, eclectic, in flux, and at times a failure. I will share inspiration and not information and I will try to publish faster (but not necessarily more often) by focusing less on my own work and research and instead publish texts and images found in the periphery of it among with unprocessed thoughts and inspirations that may or may not have any relevance, validity or coherence in the long run.

But first VACATION / RETREAT.

PHOTO: MICHEL BUSSIEN

Growing Chair by Michel Bussien is an attempt to make trees and plants grow up into chairs that can be harvested and brought straight from “the field” into the living room. Fast growing Willow trees are planted together with a Russian vine in a chair shaped miniature greenhouse. The Willow trees form the chairs supporting structure and the vine keeps it all together. Once the chair has grown strong enough the greenhouse is snapped open and removed and the chair is cut loose at it’s ankles just above the soil.

Bactopia is a plotter that prints three dimensional structures using a mix of Agar (nutrient solution) and bacteria. The plotter is constructed similar to a regular 3D printer but instead of printing with plastic or some other dead matter it prints with living bacteria. The bacteria are spread out in layers of Agar that are stacked on top of each other in order to form three dimensional structures. Once the bacteria have been released the printer maintains the appropriate conditions for the bacteria to thrive and grow into new living structures.

Michel eventually hopes to use bacteria that can feed on a mixture of nutrients and raw material, like Calcium, and produce solid structures that remain when the bacteria itself dies. The printer would in this case set the frames for the bacteria to operate within, but the bacteria would do the actual work of producing a solid.

In both of Michel’s pieces living organisms are used as the raw material and technology. In doing so they make tangible an idea that Michel has summarized in The Nature Manifesto that accompany the works:

Having evolved from nature, we have gradually differentiated ourselves from it. Modern society has come to build itself on the perception that nature and man are separated. This differentiation has come to inhibit us and our way of creating. We have now reached the point when the way forward is going back.

It is time for man and nature to reunite.

Panoramic Wifi Camera is an ongoing research project initiated by Bengt Sjölén and Adam Somlai Fischer with Usman Haque.

“The Panoramic Wifi Camera creates a live panoramic image of a space seen through Wifi radio and other 2.4 GHz radio signals – how they bounce back form the architecture, composing an image, just as light would do. However, the ‘light sources’ in this case are laptops, wifi hoptpots, iPhones, and even microwave ovens”.

Politics of Change from so-on is a project driven by grassroots activism, eco-technology and networks of women that wants to research and build integrated and sustainable relationships between people, their environment and technology. Their current focus is on collaboration with the Barefoot Solar Engineers, a growing network of women engineers in Asia and Africa.

Another fine project from so-on is DaaD (Do and act Differently): “a bottom up approach for designing human environments that have the stability and diversity of natural ecosystems. Integration of renewable energy systems, energy efficiency, food/gardening systems, natural building, rainwater harvesting and urban planning along with the economic, political and social policies that make sustainable living possible and practical.”

Interact or Die! is a collection of essays and interviews that won last years Media.Art.Research award at Prix Ars Electronica. In his Ars Electronica seminar Arjen Mulder (coeditor with Joke Brouwer) elaborated on how historical and contemporary theories from the biological sciences (such as vitalism, intelligent design and evo-devo) have been influential on the arts. He also presented the idea that interaction is a defining characteristic of every living being, that only what we interact with exists, that everything that doesn’t interact eventually dies and that how all of this applies to interactive art is another interesting theory.

A bit disappointingly Interact or Die! is less concerned with art and biology analogies and more concerned with art and interaction. Luckily it is not only an attempt to define and promote interactive art by showcasing various installations, there is a critical discussion on interactive art in it there too.

Lars Spuybroek, for example, is of the opinion that a lot of interactive art lacks a sense of art history, that interactive art “replaces an obsession with form, which is memory, with an obsession with event, which is the present”, and Brian Massumi comments on the lack of form and aestethics, suggesting that this could be a result of trying to brake out of old patterns, that “there is a widespread attitude that aestethic categories belong to the past [...] that form is dead.”

I’m not convinced that the the reason why a lot of interactive art lack form and aesthetics is a deliberate brake out of old patterns, and I wouldn’t want to say that this lack necessarily is bad, but it is perhaps a bit problematic when art movements become conforming, independent of the reasons to it. Modern technology is the foundation of interactive art and maybe the real reason is that the skills to create form and aestethics out of todays technology are missing, that mastering the latest technology and keeping up with its development takes so much effort that it is hard to find time to reflect upon the past…