pixelkraut.blog

Brightblack Morning Light at Cargo

2007-05-18T22:25:00.000Z

Last Monday I got the chance to see one of my favourite new bands from 2006, Brightblack Morning Light. I usually describe them to people who don't know their music as: "Think of it as an acoustical version of early Black Sabbath half the speed but double the echo." As you might imagine, this is proper laid-back irie sound but with enough irony that there's no unintended campness in their performance.
Some pictures below:

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Old School, John Maeda

2007-05-18T20:39:00.000Z

Last Saturday I went to town again to see some more art. Hauser & Wirth Gallery on Old Bond St. is currently showing an exhibition called "Old School". The idea is to show classical as well as contemporary paintings in one show and to examine the correlations between them. I have to say that although I was a bit hesitant in the beginning as to whether this might work or not, I can now say that I really enjoyed the show as I was pleased to find that some works of my all-time favourites Gerhard Richter and Jeff Wall as well as other contemporaries of the likes of Luc Tuymans are doing rather well in the company of old masters like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Carlo Dolci. Find some pictures below:

After that, I got myself immersed into a completely different aesthetic context by visiting John Maeda's exhibition "My Space" at Riflemaker Gallery. Maeda being one of MIT's finest in terms of new media art for years and it came both as a shock and a shame to me that I discovered him so late. I particularly liked the pieces he did with the iPods, be it to reprogram them as a display for a Mac II or as a form of collage. But the one piece that left me rather stunned was the sugarcube-print.

In the case of the Cibachrome photograph representing sugar granules, Maeda wanted to find some way to use every little crystal of sugar in one image. Influenced by the idea of nanotechnology — essentially the ability to paint with atoms — and by his conviction that computer graphics has become overused and overdeveloped, John Maeda thought it would be interesting to individually place together each crystal of sugar to obtain an image. The reality of all of the sugar in a sugar packet and the synthetic nature of three-dimensional computer graphics have come together in a series of highly saturated, visually captivating photographs.

The content of a single sugar packet was placed onto a scanner bed, and scanned in several passes. Maeda then created a computer program that was able to extract single images of the sugar crystals from the scan. To his surprise, Maeda found that in a single crystal packet there are more than 70,000 individual crystals. A computer graphic scene was then specially rendered by another piece of software he wrote. Finally another computer program he wrote processed the data such that each ‘pixel’ could be replaced with a corresponding sugar crystal cluster. This general process of using a conventional image scanner as a kind of camera, and the computer programs written by Maeda as a kind of chemistry for developing the film,repurposes digital photography to illuminate the relationships between image, artificial image, and reality. (link)

Highly recommended:

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

EEG Game Controller

2007-04-16T17:01:00.000Z

Initially treated by NASA as a mere spin-off of their pilot monitoring technology, this method has been tested in recent years for a variety of purposes. One approach was to reduce the use of Ritalin by kids diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but now it found its way into the games sector as a brainwave interface controller. That basically means that players will be able to control in-game actions with their thoughts alone.
I first came in contact with this technology at Synworld in Vienna in 1999, but at that time, it was far from advanced in terms of actually controlling actions in a virtual environment. But it was nevertheless impressive to see what a mere readout of brain activity could trigger on different computers. To my knowledge, the application towards treating ADD began around 2002 and seems to have reached its commercial implementation as well. It is exciting however to see that the interface is not only getting more comfortable to wear but also cheaper. It will be interesting to see how this technology will be picked up by gamers and media artists alike.

DJ night at Live Bar in Deptford, Sunday 8th

2007-04-05T10:27:00.000Z

Coming Sunday, a few fellow electronic music afficionados and me will host yet another one of our weekly nights at the Live Bar in Deptford, South London. This one is special in terms that we not only will have a long weekend to begin with, Monday is also still a bank holiday so I am looking forward to play some nice tunes and get a good party running on Sunday. I would be happy if everybody who's interested could make their way to Deptford that night in order to celebrate with us! See you there!

______________________________________________
Weekly at The Live Bar in Deptford; 41-42 Deptford Broadway, SE8, London

Starts Sunday 8th April

Nearest Tube: Deptford Bridge, T:020 8469 2121, www.thelivebar.co.uk

Electronica/ Techno/ Electro

With Lipsis, DJ Choccybiccy, Атомск, Crewdson, and guests

FREE ENTRY
______________________________________________

Andreas Gursky at White Cube

2007-04-03T12:35:00.000Z

Those among you who know Andreas Gursky know what to expect from him but it's comforting to see that he can still surprise you even if you have grown accustomed to his style.

The new exhibition at White Cube Gallery Mason's Yard features new works from North Korea, Japan and a location seemingly unknown (for the F1 Boxenstopp series).

What's really stunning about his pictures is his masterful combination of both grandeur and detail, overlapped and intertwined by notions of seriality, repetition and uniformity. He's interested in the bigger picture (in a very literal way) of things yet manages to depict bigger relations which we would describe as artificial or uniform with a respect to detail that always hints towards some form of transgression of these serial structures. A civil parade in North Korea with thousands of participants might aesthetically appear almost as a military parade of the good old Cold War days (which North Korea is not really willing to get out of anyway right now) but it also reveals the transgression of this very grid-like and mostly symmetrical form. People not waving their banners at the right time, individuals sleeping or simply not paying attention. These are the details that differentiate a civil from a military parade as it allows for these things to happen.

F1 Boxenstopp is slightly different as it depicts racing cars getting checked up by the team of engineers during a race. Although they -in principle- all perform the same actions and have to act as a greater whole on the car and the pilot, given their tight time restrictions, you are still able to see the differences in movement from team to team, even if it is a similar engineer performing a similar task. This leaves us with the impression that although complying to standards and protocol is of the utmost importance here, the individual capacity to handle the form of self-organisation by the particular team as a whole is equally important. It only becomes clear by the leaflet that these pictures are in fact digitally constructed and so Gursky manages to challenge our whole perception of what his work is about once more.

White Cube Mason’s Yard is pleased to present the work of Andreas Gursky in his first major solo exhibition with the gallery. Renowned for his large-format colour photographs charting themes of globalised society at work and play, Gursky’s new production employs the latest digital technology to capture and refine an astounding compilation of detail on an epic scale.

The perspective in many of Gursky’s photographs is drawn from an elevated vantage point. This position enables the viewer to encounter scenes, encompassing both centre and periphery, which are ordinarily beyond reach. For the Pyongyang series (2007), Gursky travelled to the Arirang Festival, held annually in North Korea in honour of the late Communist leader Kim Il Sung. The festival’s mass games include more than 50,000 participants performing tightly choreographed acrobatics, against a backdrop of 30,000 schoolchildren holding coloured flip-cards that produce an ever-changing mosaic of patterns and images. Gursky’s photographs describe, in panoramic dimensions, the incongruity of the brilliant colours and smiling faces of the performers within the controlled, totalitarian nature of the event.
(...)
F1 Boxenstopp (2007) focuses on the frenetic activity around Formula One cars stationed in their pits during a race. Dozens of mechanics and technicians in bright team colours surround two vehicles, hurriedly refuelling and repairing, all but obscuring the cars and drivers from view. Above this scene, members of the audience look down from the darkened interior of the hospitality suite. Shot at various Grand Prix races around the world – Shanghai, Monte Carlo, Istanbul, São Paulo – the figures appear captured in a moment of authenticity, yet in reality, such simultaneous action would not be possible; these images are in fact a carefully composed digital construct.
(...)
Andreas Gursky was born in Leipzig and lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Since the 1980s he has exhibited extensively, including major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, MCA Chicago and SF MOMA, San Francisco. His most recent museum exhibition opened in February 2007 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and will tour to Istanbul and Sharjah.

Andreas Gursky at White Cube Mason’s Yard coincides with a presentation of new work at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London, 7a Grafton Street, London W1S 4EJ from 22 March to 12 May 2007.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Christoph Büchel, Häuser & Wirth Coppermill

2007-03-26T15:18:00.000Z

A little more than a week ago, I attended the last chance to see Christoph Büchel's installation "Simply Botiful" at Häuser & Wirth Coppermill. Not at all clearly recognizable as an art space, the building located in Bethnal Green looks like a dingy hotel from the outside. The only hint I had that I was at the right place was the rather large cue of (mostly) fashionably dressed people in their 20s and 30s outside the venue. I can now say in retrospect that the wait was sure worth it because what I was about to witness inside surpassed my wildest imaginations. It actually took me a while to realize that the whole place served as an installation as opposed to the common spatial convention that you have a.) an artspace and b.) the piece hosted inside. But the inversion of these notions and conventions didn't really stop there. The whole place looked as if it had been occupied and abandoned shortly before the audience's arrival. Everything looked as if it was occupied literally hours ago and therefore creating a kind of haunting presence.

I overheard a conversation between a couple right behind me in the queue that they would have liked it better if there were also actors impersonating the occupants of the place we were about to witness. But I personally think that would have worked against the whole concept. A space crowded with used artifacts but void of individuals who might use them bears a better and more approachable possibility of reflection for the audience. Another comment I could overhear in the queue was that all these places looked strangely familiar and I can totally agree with that. It had this eerie attraction of the junkyard you're not allowed to trespass as a kid because it's dangerous but as one knows, kids of a certain age will go there anyway. The installation contained all these sensations of trespassing, looming danger and voyeurism.
The latter probably being the most powerful and emblematic of the whole piece because not only did the visitor seemingly trespass into a completely different set of lifestyles and locations, the references to sex, pornography and exhibitionism of the most intimate moments of private life were following you everywhere you went.
The most intense experience for me was to go down the dug hole and crawling through a tiny hand-dug tunnel on all fours. If one ever wonders what coming into a country without a valid passport or visa might feel like, I'd recommend the above experience. It was all very dark, narrow, dirty and cheap but once you come out of the whole installation and you feel the streets of London underneath your feet again, it changes the way you look and think about things.

From the press release:

A major exhibition by Swiss artist Christoph Büchel will be the second exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Coppermill in London's East End. Büchel works in a variety of media, including film, printed materials, sculpture and textiles, though he is perhaps best known for his conceptual projects and large-scale installation pieces. Büchel often appropriates mass media sources such as the Internet, printed political pamphlets and everyday household objects. His work is informed by an explicit political awareness, often telling of new forms of propaganda in an era of mediated war.

Büchel's complex installations force his audience to participate in scenarios that are physically demanding and psychologically unsettling. Cramped tunnels, claustrophobic chambers and frequent dead-ends induce feelings of panic and paranoia. He explores the unstable relationship between security and internment, placing visitors in the brutally contradictory roles of victim and voyeur. Gallery visitors to Büchel's 2005 installation 'Hole' at the Kunsthalle Basel were forced through small rooms connected by constricted passageways and steep ladders. Inside these fraught spaces, the chilling sight of a suicide caught on surveillance camera was juxtaposed with a psychotherapist's consulting room and the remnants of a bombed out Swiss bus. The frozen rooms that form the basis of such works as 'The House of Friction (Pumpwork Heimat)' (2002) offer spaces of oppressive cold, where preservation borders on the brink of obsolescence. Experiencing such charged spaces is usually a solitary task, though this private experience becomes the means by which collective tensions and traumas might be unearthed.

From kultureflash:

The gargantuan warehouse space has been transformed into a sweatshop seemingly housing and exploiting desperate asylum seekers. The operation room (filled with hundred of fridges, piles of computer innards, and mountains of junk-yard tat ripe for "revitalisation") lurks behind a scuzzy city hotel (the exhibition entrance) and a grimy cut-price shop selling row upon row of fixed-up fridges and VCRs. In the hotel, endless put-up beds are squashed into every conceivable spare inch of space -- corridors, bathrooms, the lorry out the back. There's a post-raid feel -- everywhere are half-eaten plates of food, work stations hastily abandoned, and ashtrays filled with cigarette stubs. But it's the secret room accessed by crawling through a hole in a wardrobe, the concrete bunker located beneath the freight lorry, and the subterranean tunnels with a disused deep freeze entrance portal that generate the most acute claustrophobia and bewildering paranoia. It's an unnerving meditation on the hidden hellholes lurking behind non-descript urban facades.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Vitascope, Ultre, Reactable, Rechenzentrum at Optronica

2007-03-21T15:21:00.000Z

Since I have never been to the NFT or the BFI before, avid cineaste that I am, I thought I might prove to be a good idea to catch two birds with one stone and check out the Optronica festival at the NFT.

The overall programme seemed to be targeted at a wide (as in: mainstream) audience but there was a small pocket in the little cinema on Friday night called Optronica Lab at which the organizers were trying out the more experimental stuff in audiovisual performance.

First up was Vitascope, unknown to me prior to the event but interesting nevertheless. I only found out later that he is actually a VJ by trade and that he was editing sound as "added value" of his performance. Oddly enough, I personally liked the sound more than the images, which shouldn't mean that any of it was bad, but sometimes, the images were flickering a tad too much and were tiring to the eye...

Vitascope's new Optronica performance will be "expanded" VJing, where he improvises both sound and vision simultaneously; mixing four audio/visual sources in real-time with an AV mixer, using each source as a building block for an immersive sound-space. Dynamically welding the ambient sounds of Hannas Barber with the heightened abstract movements of film and audiovisual Flash loops, Vitascope builds an hypnotic, ambient and unique audiovisual performance.

Next up were Ultre and Flat-E. Having only known Ultre from recommendations via last.fm, I was intrigued whether the style of his I had previously listened to would be reflected in his live performance and I can say that I wasn't disappointed. I also really enjoyed Flat-E's visuals since they were solely based on "analogue" or organic material but had a rather cinematic quality to it at the same time.

Ultre (Finn) plays a stringed instrument that he's custom built himself to trigger not only sound, but also video loops (he describes it as "a little like a one-stringed electric cello") whilst Flat-e (Robin) overlays visuals specially prepared in High-Definition.

The third act for the night was the "interactive sonic systems team" hailing from Barcelona with their interactive sound-piece called "reactable". This was by far the coolest new media project I have seen in a while. Simple in its basic interface components, yet able to be set up to complex structures and at the same time very slick and pretty and also rather intuitive to use. I could probably go on and on of how great it was but I let you judge for yourselves. You can also find videos of various performances on their website as well as my personal video I took.

The reactable is a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

(...)

The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects). These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.

Headliners for the night were Rechenzentrum. Since I have never seen them live I was anticipating their show and although they had sort of a rough stand to perform right after so much audiovisual and tangible bliss by the reactable group, the nevertheless managed to do it very well. Some impressions below.

Love of Diagrams, Holy Hail

2007-03-13T14:21:00.000Z

As it so happens, good things come when you least expect them. Aimlessly wandering around the internet on a Sunday night, I discovered that one of my recent favourite bands were about to play in London in less than 24 hours. Since they are from Australia, I thought that this might be well worth a visit.

The venue was the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, a place I usually don't visit too often, but I always enjoy being there. The spacious, slick concrete basement also has a concert venue and that's where it was supposed to go down.

Holy Hail were opening up and although I didn't know them prior to that day, I kinda liked them. They were quite original (as original as you can get in the midst of a 80s revival) and I recognized some musical references from bands I really like: Talking Heads, Suicide, The Slits, etc. Clever vocal lines and a drummer who, although he mainly played a four-on-four staccato beat that you hear ever so often these days, somehow struck me as having a strong punk-drumming background. I might be completely wrong, but amidst the rather mechanic beat patterns he played I noticed kind of a strong willingness to break out of it and turn it into something more tense and aggressive.

Love of Diagrams unfortunately had some technical difficulties and their set was only 40 minutes long. I nevertheless enjoyed it and appreciated that somebody actually still cares about the more top-heavy and divergent sides of indie-rock rather than trying to be upfront and straight in songwriting which only really works when you're truly good at it. Most of the time it's really boring but in most cases nevertheless makes great chart material.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Victoria Miro, Parasol Unit, White Cube

2007-03-13T12:18:00.000Z

Last weekend I took the time again to check on some of my favourite galleries.
Since Parasol Unit and Victoria Miro gallery are so close together, it always makes sense to visit them both in one go.

Parasol had a group show consisting of different kinds of video art. From animated short films with an actual narrative, some of them funny, some serious, to pieces without a narrative but focus on visual impact instead.

MOMENTARY MOMENTUM: an exhibition devoted to animated drawings, comprising a dozen installations and a film loop with the participation of Francis Alÿs, Robert Breer, Paul Bush / Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green, Takashi Ishida, Susanne Jirkuff, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Jochen Kuhn, Zilla Leutenegger, Arthur de Pins, Qubo Gas, Christine Rebet, Robin Rhode, Georges Schwizgebel, David Shrigley, Tabaimo, Naoyuki Tsuji & Kara Walker

Some impressions:

At Victoria Miro, there was another group show, this time, the focus was more on painting, installations and sculptures.

Absent Without Leave examines the ways in which contemporary artists might use elements of performance as a material in the production (or reception) of their work. The diverse practices on display here re-imagine performance and filter it into something 'performative' - expanding gestures, actions, characters, and roles into works which incorporate performance as process.

Conceptual and performance artist Vito Acconci has discussed how, at a certain point in his career in the early seventies, he decided to appear less in his work, so that his presence was more of an absence. Absent Without Leave borrows the spirit of Acconci's decision and uses it to platform an investigation of the idea of the 'absentee performer' - an idea in which the 'performer' (the artist ) is relocated from a visible presence, to a presence which is recorded in the conceptual fabric of the art works themselves.

The exhibition features works in which: there is potential within an art object for action to happen, which may or may not necessarily occur; there is a live event without a performer; there is a physical trace of an event which in fact never occurred; or there is a possibility to read the environment as something staged, or as a set awaiting a narrative.

My last stop for the day was White Cube gallery at Mason's Yard. I have to say that even after all this time in the city, some places are really hard to find. I spend some time circling around the area with increasing precision and with the help from local police, Transport for London staff and different versions of these handy area maps they distribute on the tube stations. Trouble was that the new editions of these maps don't contain the narrow streets and small open places anymore. Budgeting? Maybe, but surely not for the better. Anselm Kiefer currently has a few works on display at the West End outlet of White Cube. I was only able to take one picture before I was kindly asked not to take any more. In case you like what you see, I'd suggest that you check out the huge paintings of Kiefer in the basement for yourselves.

The title of the exhibition, Aperiatur terra, is a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, which translates as ‘let the earth be opened’ and continues ‘and bud forth a saviour and let justice spring up at the same time’. These contrasting themes of destruction and re-creation, violent upheaval and spiritual renewal underpin much of Kiefer’s work.

The focal point of the exhibition is Palmsonntag, an installation in the ground floor gallery comprised of eighteen paintings, hung as a single entity on one wall, with a thirteen-metre palm tree laid on the gallery floor. As its title suggests, the work evokes the beginning of Christ’s journey into Jerusalem prior to his arrest, Passion, death and resurrection. The paintings read almost as the pages of a book opened to reveal multiple layers and narratives. As is common in Kiefer’s practice, organic materials form the palette through which landscapes are created. These are then overlaid with texts which do not point to one single interpretation but rather suggest a rich, philosophically charged and resonant multiplicity of meaning and experience.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
All text in block quote is property of Parasol Unit, Victoria Miro Gallery and White Cube Gallery respectively.

Biological Nano-Wire

2007-03-06T11:39:00.000Z

Nanotechnology is in its full bloom since a few years and the designs and practical applications get increasingly clever. Scientists working for the US Department of Energy now discovered a way to transmit electrical current via bacteria.

image appears courtesy of New Scientist

Bacteria can be fooled into producing conductive nano-fibres that may then be used as tiny electronic connectors.
(...)
Tiny hair-like surface appendages, known as "pili", are used by bacteria to connect to host tissue and reproduce with other bacteria of the same species. Pili are made of protein and are usually non-conductive.

But the patented idea is to grow a bug strain called Geobacter sulfurreducens using a nutrient that contains particles of insoluble ferric oxide. The resulting bacteria should sprout pili that are highly conductive. So growing the bacteria in lines over an absorptive substrate would create a circuit of biological nano-wires.

Alternatively, the bacteria could be deposited on top of a chip surface and the pili detached and then manoeuvred into position between nano-components. The inventors also hope to genetically modify bacteria to create pili with specific electrical characteristics.

Full patent here.

Quantum Computer presentation

2007-02-22T14:54:00.000Z

It was announced as nothing short of a breakthrough in computing and although the developers at D-Wave Systems still need to fix some prototype issues, their version of a quantum computer that not only functions on paper is the closest I have seen so far.

Being intrigued by that topic ever since I came across the philosophical implications of quantum physics by the likes of Heisenberg and Bell, I was thrilled to find out a few years ago that you can use quantum entanglement as a method of key distribution of cryptographic systems by exploiting the phenomenon of perturbation by just observing (or, in that case, eavesdropping) a quantum system.

The quantum computer, however, is a whole different ballgame since its idea is centered around the phenomenon of superposition, most commonly known as the story of Schrödinger's cat. In a nutshell, a quantum computer yields its true power from the fact that it can calculate multiple operations simultaneously whereas any other computer based on the Von Neumann architecture (which we still use today) is based on linear calculation. This obviously means that in case the quantum computer will reach its commercial introduction, we would be able to calculate a lot of highly complex procedures a lot more efficiently and it would greatly benefit the sciences' quest for understanding the complexities of our everyday lives, such as genetic predisposition and -believe it or not- weather among thousands of other things (Do I sound too excited? Well, I am!).

Today's computers, like a Turing machine, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers aren't limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits. A qubit can be a 1 or a 0, or it can exist in a superposition that is simultaneously both 1 and 0 or somewhere in between. Qubits represent atoms that are working together to act as computer memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.

This superposition of qubits is what gives quantum computers their inherent parallelism. According to physicist David Deutsch, this parallelism allows a quantum computer to work on a million computations at once, while your desktop PC works on one. A 30-qubit quantum computer would equal the processing power of a conventional computer that could run at 10 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second). Today's typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second).

Find the rest of this article here.

Kittler at transmediale 07

2007-02-21T14:13:00.000Z

Bad enough that I didn't have the opportunity to attend transmediale in Berlin for two years in a row now, but thanks to the avid documentation-frenzy of some of the attendees, the ones who weren't there and are whining about it in the same fashion as I do have the chance to get at least Friedrich Kittler's keynote speech on the last day of the conference online. Kudos to Rainer Kohlberger. Direct link to the video here. (German only, sorry...)

In his lecture, he [Kittler] presents his current research concerning theories of machine, media and music and asks for the meaning of reversibility and infinite loop-d-loop which is being re-processed, after its execution as long as this is not prevented by external influences. What power lies in the knowledge that is hidden in computers and their algorithms?

Christian Marclay at White Cube

2007-02-06T13:34:00.000Z

Okay, I have to confess, I've never been to the White Cube gallery before and, what's even worse, I can't really explain why. I just guess it never happened that I was at Hoxton Square when it was open. Maybe also because there wasn't anything which interested me enough to go. Well, until now that is.

Having seen Christian Marclay's exhibition at the Barbican last year, I was intrigued by his wide range of working materials and his cunning wit and humor with which he puts his concepts into practice.

During the time when he showed at Barbican, I could see his piece Video Quartet (2002) and some time later again at Tate Modern.

Crossfire (2007) is his most recent video-piece and kind of a different interpretation of Video Quartet. Rather than having four screens in one row which seem to interact with each other, you now have 4 screens facing opposite to each other and the audience is virtually caught in the crossfire itself. On the screen you can see various clip samples from action movies, some of them famous, some of them not which all entail some sort of shooting. The piece itself is well orchestrated, as is everything else by Marclay, really, and goes from silent preparation to an ever intensifying gun-battle which, after its climax, slowly comes to rest.
The first analogy that comes to mind is that of sexual intercourse, at least by the intensity curve described above. And since sex and violence intermingle with each other psychologically in various forms of desire and the cinematic silver screen is one symbolic embodiment of that desire, it all kinda made sense to me in the end.
After all, what I like best about Marclay's pieces is that you can think about them for hours or not at all, but you will understand them immediately. So I might just leave it at that for now. Enjoy.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Kinetica once more

2007-02-06T11:52:00.000Z

Kinetica put on a new show since I last was there. This time, it's about "Visionaries & Luminaries", so all the works exhibited have something to do with light or its absence.

One of the works that struck me both with its simplicity and effect was Jim Campbell's picture of moving shadows.

As you can see, the method is achieved via an LED panel superimposed on a photograph, but the effect is stunning since the matrix of the panel can be addressed dynamically. The shadows look very convincing and vary in size, shape and movement.

There were also some pieces experimenting with fluorescent surfaces like this "lamp-shade" here:

The picture below is of a camera-obscura-style piece which works with strobe light. It's hard to document it with a single frame, so in case you like it, make sure to check it out for yourself.

Some more images below...

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

RCA Interaction Design Interim Show

2007-02-03T21:53:00.000Z

Last weekend I went to the RCA Interactive Design show which displayed several works in progress. Having attended the last two consecutive graduate shows which were held annually, I was curious to get a glimpse on future gadgets and conceptual ideas.

Among the works which really interested me was "Flat Future" by Miquel Mora which showed practical applications for super-thin microprocessors applied on tape to suit various everyday purposes. Whether it's labeling fruit, attaching speakers to a book you read at the moment or taking exact measurement via "smart tape", the possibilities are endless.

I was aware that Siemens are currently doing active research in the field of super-thin displays. The above project seems like the logical progression. While I would suspect that a lot of marketing experts would only deem these displays to have advertising on them all the time, Flat Future shows luckily enough that it doesn't at all end there.

The guys over at we make money not art also have a post about the whole show, for those among you who would like to check it out....

Next up was an Origami remote control. Nice one. Although I loved to play with the folded object which served as a model for the remote control, I wasn't able to fold one myself back in the day when I was a kid, as I focused more towards the perfection of the paper plane per se.

However, it is yet another example that new and exciting innovation with electronic media does not need to stem from more powerful hardware, as more hardware usually means that more things can break, lag or freeze, it is also more complicated. In the wake of Nintendo being the rejoicing third party while Sony and M$ are engaging in a console (and DRM) arms-race, this remote control not only shows that simple and effective is the right way to begin with, it might even have commercial success one day...

I also liked the emotoscope which gives you a vintage super-8 feeling while looking through it, along with the flickering and the sound.

Some more images of other projects below.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Spire Live in York Minster

2007-01-25T10:28:00.000Z

Last weekend, I was visiting a friend up in the cold North. Actually, it wasn't really that cold and the sun was shining as well. I also have to say that York is a rather pretty place indeed.
We went to the Spire Live Event at the famous York Minster to see Charles Matthews (organ), Marcus Davidson (organ and piano), Christian Fennesz (electronics), Phil Jeck (turntables), BJNilsen (electronics), Robert Millner, John Beaumont and Amy Moore (voices) as well as the Minster bell ringers and Leif Inge (installation).
Spire is running in its fourth consecutive year now with the same concept applied to a variety of European churches, among them Geneva, Linz, Amsterdam, Gøteborg and Brussels. Some of the live recodrings of theses events were later published by Touch.
As one might imgaine, the acoustics were rather amazing and it was really nice to experience Fennesz' ambience sound carpets in a setting like this.

Some pictures below.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Richard Wilson at the Barbican

2007-01-24T11:59:00.000Z

Sorry for not posting in a while. The last few weeks were unexpectedly busy.
Anyway, I had the pleasure to attend the last weekend of the Richard Wilson exhibition at the Barbican two weeks ago.

The show was free of charge and displayed three larger works along with two video pieces. First off was the gutted cab. Giving a somewhat dwarfing and bizarre impression already while being mounted on a structure and displaying its insides like an Emmental cheese, what was even more impressive is that all the alterations done to the cabs in- and outside happened in the shortest time possible. A video installation in the front showed the artist slowly but steadily piercing his way through the vehicle, starting at the engine and coming out at the trunk. From what I could tell, he used the same or similar tools which would be employed in professional rescue operations. Something which makes perfect sense in the light of the task ahead.

I found it interesting to witness how Wilson manages to capture the inherit and underlying force and violence of the machine and manages to throw it right back at its -or to be more precise, our- face(s). All the physical forces that a machine deploys and sets free seem to be captured in the aesthetic act of the performance, although its important alteration seems to entail a certain human element. It's still violent what Wilson did, fair enough, but it's not as cold and precise in its mode of operation like the mechanism he takes apart. The sweat, his problems breathing and getting the right angle with a tool to move on to the next step let the whole performance appear to be almost archaic. The humidity and elasticity of the human body against the solid and repetitive action of the machine.

Next up was a structure which resembled a squashed version of a chip shop trailer. Although the structure seemed chaotic at first, you realized that all the creases in the structure were done with mathematical precision. It served as a well-balanced contrast towards the concept of the first piece. Rather than struggling as human wetware against the mechanism, this tension is reversed and re-appropriated in this piece as a sort of artistic intervention into the shapes of chaos and complexity. Knowing that the creases on the structure would never exist like that in the event of its actual squashing, Wilson manages to liberate the common object from its sole teleology and transfers it to a new perceptive plane.

The last piece was a caravan mounted on a rotating frame and having one of the walls removed so that the audience could take a peek into it. It was interesting to see the caravan from all possible angles and in all detail, what was even more interesting was to see the inside move around, depending on what current angle the caravan was spinning. At the very end of the exhibition, you could find a video screen which displayed an inside-view of the caravan. The camera was mounted on the spinning part of the structure, so the only clue of movement which the audience had was the movement of the inside parts, since the camera itself was in perfect sync with the spinning object and therefore presented the illusion of a static view.

My impression of that piece was one of suspension. Firstly, a suspension from the obvious use of the caravan, to transform its usually horizontal movement into a rotation which didn't allow for an actual moving onward, but more of a perpetual movement. Secondly, the suspension of the observing eye via the static view of the camera. There was no movement to speak of judging from a quick glance at the video. It was only after a while that the eye recognizes cupboards being opened, cushions moving around in weird angles and doors being flipped open. It seemed very much like a recording of zero gravity, something one might be familiar with from movies like Kubrick's 2001.

All in all, a very good show and a very good concept explored in a lot of interesting and fresh varieties!

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Semantic Multi-Dimensional Data Graph

2007-01-04T16:52:00.000Z

Every now and then, the magazine issues of renowned newspapers write about something you wouldn't expect them to report. The last incident of that sort occurred to me when I found out that the New York Times Magazine published an article about data visualisation.

image is property of James N. Sears

A project by James N. Sears, a programmer and computer artist, and Lisa Strausfeld of Pentagram Publishers is attempting to visualize semantic relations of specific words or names. The project was done with a cross-platform and open source software called processing, resulting in an interactive piece of data visualisation. Not only that it looks damn cool and is fun to play around with, the authors claim that one of its practical applications might be cross-referencing and data analysis of intelligence data, making the information at hand more accessible to analysts.

The illustrations I did for the New York Times in collaboration with Lisa Strausfeld of Pentagram were published in today's edition of the New York Times magazine. The illustrations, created in Processing, are the result of a physics-based model of keywords connected by springs. The strength of the virtual spring connecting a pair of keywords together is dependent upon their rate of cooccurrence on the Internet, a measure of their degree of relationship to each other. In addition to the three tiles shown above which are featured in the online version of the article, the cover of the magazine and the following pages of the print article all feature different views of the model.

Similar views, populated with data collected from internal networks, could be used by intelligence agencies in their efforts to determine terms that are interconnected and being discussed by diverse and disconnected agents.

UK report on robot rights

2006-12-20T13:02:00.000Z

The Financial Times published an article today about a UK-based study which speaks out for the prospective rights of AI and robots in particular. It is striking that in this day and age, when certain 'hostile individuals' are stripped of their rights and are being deported to prison camps out of the regular jurdicial range, studies are funded which explore the possibility of the integration of highly developed AI into society.

Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, was already under criticism for endorsing the reliance of the UK on nuclear power, since it would conflict with his views on global warming I consciously refrain from using the word climate change, which is the intellectual property of Mr. Frank Luntz, a pollster who ran focus groups for several Republican races and also a poll for the Tories in 2005.

It is probably one of the human traits to rather engage in future desire than to focus on current problems at hand. However, it is interesting to read excerpts of the report and to imagine how exactly your tincan companion will have the right to vote, pay taxes and receive special healthcare.

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive look into the future.

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori, the opinion research organisation.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

(...)

Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.

It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens’ duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service.

(...)

“There will be people who can’t distinguish that so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable.”

Last gigs for the year

2006-12-12T14:51:00.000Z

As the year draws nearer to its end, you nevertheless might get the impression that Christmas is early this year. Wolf Eyes and entourage (consisting of Sudden Infant, Damion Romero and ex-member Aaron Dilloway) were at Bardens Boudoir yet again. I saw them last year in June at the same venue along with Duracell and Sudden Infant. It was the very first time I was exposed to the sounds of Duracell and that's why this gig is rather present in my memory. But this should by no means discredit the hellish endeavour of Michigan's finest. Yeah!

And yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend a very special gig of the Books. I've never seen them live before and so I was thrilled to find out that they're not only playing in a seated venue with a fine pa than can accommodate pretty much anything from classical music, theatre and electronic eclectica, but they also managed to get
Kim Hiorthøy as support. Two birds with one stone for me!
The venue was really nice and Kim rocked the house, thereby totally giving credit to his initial warning that he'll play some "slightly inappropriate music". The set ended with a real club vibe, portable strobe-light included. If he shall ever decide to come down to London once more and play in a club, I'll be in the front row, since his music is bound to be moving your feet.

The Books performed a really beautiful set along with a video-performance accompanying each song. The atmosphere was light-hearted, yet not superficial, and both witty and deeply philosophical at times. Stunning. I am not completely sure whether I should be glad or disappointed that not more people are aware of this formidable act. Then again, playing Queen Elizabeth Hall is pretty close to stardom and I just hope that both guys will stay as intelligent and down-to-earth in their future performances and output as they are now. They have my utter appreciation and support! Make sure you check out their beautifully made website!

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Overkill IV, Corsica Studios

2006-12-05T11:42:00.000Z

What can I say? LittleBig and Wrong Music did it again! Just coming home from their European Overkill Tour (and kudos to them for actually touring Eastern Europe intensively!), the finishing gig went down last Saturday at Corsica Studios yet again. I probably should consider myself lucky that I live close by.
The different acts and bands are too much to list and describe (better have a look at the links instead), so I will just sum up what I learned on that night:

Saxophones can actually sound like distorted guitars and every doom/drone band should have at least one saxophone player in their ranks.

A Casio keyboard can be an essential asset for a grind core outfit, up to the point that you don't even need a guitarist anymore.

Joysticks can be taken literally if used as a strap-on sound modulator and all of a sudden, what looks like masturbation is actually a creative process and stage performance. And a funny one as well!

Jungle isn't dead, it only smells that way, (I personally got rid of my dreadlocks several years ago, still love the sound, though...) and the 94/95 period was indeed the most creative.

You can actually operate a sound system and a laptop while climbing up the wall that's behind you and try to stagedive at the same time.

Victorian dandy outfits go very well with gabba beats and aural mayhem. It's just one of these strange inventions, you know. Time machines and steam-powered airships belong to this category as well, actually...

Gaybashing still isn't a real crowdpleaser here in Europe even when you pitch down the tone of your voice to a frightening 16rpm and wear geek glasses. You're still as unfunny as Eminem (sorry, Otto!).

Some impressions from the event:

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Pollutant absorbing buildings

2006-11-29T17:53:00.000Z

The International Herald Tribune posted an article online last Wednesday that sounds too futuristic to be true, but it apparently is.
Architects in Italy are using a new type of concrete which is not only able to clean itself, it also can reduce pollutants in the air by a considerable amount in close range around the material.

image is property of International Herald Tribune

Extensive testing, sponsored in part by a European Union research project into "smart" antipollution materials, has since determined that construction products containing titanium dioxide help to destroy air pollutants found in car exhaust and heating emissions, scientists say.
Several companies are now developing "smog-eating" products that can be used not just for the facades of buildings, but also in paint, plaster, and paving materials for roads. The new environment- friendly substances are quietly being tried out in buildings, squares and highways in Europe as well as Japan.
(...)
Titanium dioxide had been used in self-cleaning coatings before because of its photocatalytic properties: sunlight touching the compound triggers a chemical reaction that accelerates natural oxidation.

Upon testing its new cement, however, Italcementi realized that the material also had the ability to break down nitrogen oxides emitted in the burning of fossil fuels.
(...)
The reduction of pollutants is greatest within 2.5 meters, or 8.2 feet, of a surface that has been treated, the company said. This means that a pedestrian walking down a street with traffic would inhale fewer pollutants while walking past buildings treated with the substance.

In one test, paving material using photocatalytic cement was used to cover the asphalt surface of a 230-meter- long stretch of road outside Milan with an average traffic flow of 1,000 vehicles per hour. Tests showed a reduction in nitrogen oxides at street level of about 60 percent, according to Italcementi.

Acid Mother's Temple / Duracell at Corsica Studios

2006-11-21T18:07:00.000Z

Just wanted to share some pictures of the Acid Mother's Temple and Duracell gig last Sunday at Corsica Studios at Elephant and Castle.
Since some of you might know AMT, Duracell is probably known less although I think he deserves almost equal credit for his efforts. Hooking up a Nord Modular to his drumkit, he covers tunes from oldskool videogames as a one-man-band and does one hell of a job. Find a low-res video I shot here. (nb that the video takes a while to load (9 MB), so for the impatient ones among you I suggest that you do a "save target as...")

Some pictures of the show:

It was so packed when AMT played that I only managed to take one halfway decent picture. Enjoy anyway!

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Scotch Egg Band, Bardens Boudoir, Fri / Nov 10th

2006-11-09T11:06:00.000Z

I was more than delighted to find out that the lovely nutters from Adaadat Records are putting together yet another stunning performance with lots of people for insanely good ticket value.

Coming up this Friday, the gabba-kids, gameboy mutilators, breakcore-heads and anybody else who is interested in silly, hands-on indie-electronica cum gabba-that-sounds-like-broken-toys-mayhem will all find their way to Bardens Boudoir in Dalston, London. The ticket features infamous DJ Scotch Egg (yes, that's right) and his band with three drummers (sic!). Um, well not that he needs them since his usual outfit consisting of a gameboy orchestra ensemble and a megaphone is usually enough aural abrasion already, this bill sure is a treat!

THE SCOTCH EGG BAND
For the first time ever, Shigeru Ishihara, aka DJ SCOTCH EGG (Adaadat / Wrong Music), the chiptune genius and KFC core maestro forms the screaming nucleus of a band with three drummers. Featured percussionists include members of grind merchants Trencher, Brighton indie-math-rock legends I'm Being Good and some other guy, not quite sure who, think it might be one of the guys from the Boredoms. Anyway, expect noisy gameboy gabba beats and maybe a bit of projectile scotch egg abuse. Should be proper wicked.

The band consists of ATOM TRUCK (Adaadat), LOZ KOLESZKO (One Man Army),THE STRANGE LIGHTS COLLECTIVE (feat. UM, ASCOLTARE & MAN FROM URANUS)

DOORS: 8.30pm - 2am
PRICE: £5
Order here.

ATOM TRUCK (Adaadat)
Adaadat Records co-founder, musical genius, Scottish gentleman, part-time chef and electronic musician. A rare gig, Truck has neglected his laptop of late - but he now returns to support Scotch Egg brandishing songs called things like "ShitStick."

LOZ KOLESZKO (One Man Army)
Another rare London outing from One Man Army's finest, expect some exceptionally executed Aphex-esque acid techno mixed with some dark ambience.

THE STRANGE LIGHTS COLLECTIVE
featuring...

UM
Experimental musician / performer from Cambridge. Part Bowie, part Baby Bird, part 23rd century court jester on a George Formby trip. The future of DIY singer-songwriter electronica is here among us.

ASCOLTARE
Fits somewhere besides Aphex Twin's crash of listless melody and spasmodic collages of rhythm, yet also flirts with intrusions into abstract sound-art. Whatever that means. I've heard him and he's good.

MAN FROM URANUS
Lists artists that have had the most impact on him as Iron Butterfly, The Moody Blues, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Monkees and Grand Funk Railway. Probably pretty weird then. Check him out for yourself. Recently worked with Agaskodo Telivirek (feat Miklos The Accountant) on their latest Adaadat release.

Images in this post are property of Adaadat.

Foldable Smart Gadgets

2006-11-07T12:19:00.000Z

This patent by Sony came to my attention the other day. The engineers are attempting to design components of handheld devices which can be folded when they're not used. As of now, this is done via rather crude mechanical principles and the smaller you are supposed to fold a device, the more joints and angles you need. The idea below could sort this problem out:

"The boffins at Sony’s Tokyo labs are working on a clever way to get bulky electronic devices into small pockets. Their plan is to create handheld computers, phones and portable games consoles that fold up for carrying and then become rigid for use.

The body and screen of folding gadgets would be made from a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil.

When a current is passed through the struts, the particles clump together and harden the gel, making the gadget solid enough to use. Sony has found that it would take very little power to make such a folding device harden, so the drain on its battery should be low. The company's patent adds that the transition from soft to hard takes just milliseconds. It suggests that the same technique could even be used in a video game controller to make it jolt or change shape in response to on-screen action.

Read the full patent here."