Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest

bambam (2009) - Peter Luining

John Michael Boling — 2009-11-11T22:36:00+01:00

Nonmonumental

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-11T16:00:00+01:00

Wendeltrap by Miriam Ellen Ewers (from nonmonument.com)

Created by artist Peter Baldes's Electronic Strategies Class at Virginia Commonwealth University, nonmonument.com is a collection of 3D models tagged with geolocation data and viewed in Google Earth. The project uses Google Earth to introduce impossible and possible interventions and objects in that space, and it plays with the program's claim to represent reality. In a communication with me, Baldes stated that these nonmonuments be thought of "...as real, at their own resolution." He sees the works as a unique form of public art and/or graffiti that "exist in a different layer of our reality." His class has opened up the forum to submissions as well, and visitors are invited to submit their own nonmonument.

Growth Rendering Device (2007) - David Bowen

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-10T21:30:00+01:00

This system provides light and food in the form of hydroponic solution for the plant. The plant reacts to the device by growing. The device in-turn reacts to the plant by producing a rasterized inkjet drawing of the plant every twenty-four hours. After a new drawing is produced the system scrolls the roll of paper approximately four inches so a new drawing can be produced during the next cycle. This system is allowed to run indefinitely and the final outcome is not predetermined.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Printershake/Earthquake (2007/2008) - Joe Winter

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-10T18:45:00+01:00

Printershake/Earthquake (Concentric Circles), 2007/2008 (8.5" x 11", shown with detail. Image courtesy of the artist.)
Printershake/Earthquake (Performance Documentation), 2007/2008 (Image courtesy of the artist.)

For this project, artist Joe Winter aggressively shakes a computer printer during the process of printing. The movement creates the above colorful effect.

Plink Jet (2008) - Lesley Flanigan and Andrew Doro

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-10T17:30:00+01:00

Plink Jet is like an elaborate electric guitar made from the motors and mechanical components of inkjet printers. It can play itself independently or be played by a person.

Dot Matrix Synth (2003) - Paul Slocum

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-10T16:00:00+01:00

The user presses buttons on an attached control interface to play different notes. As the printer is played, it's also printing a set of images that are programmed into the printer's EPROM with the software.

The printer creates sound from the print head firing pins against the paper and the vibration of the stepper motor driving the print head back and forth. To generate different notes, the software adjusts the frequency of the printing process. Higher pitches tend to come from the firing of the pins against the paper, and lower pitches come from the rattle of driving the stepper motor.

The external eight-button interface plugs into the printer's font cartridge port. Each button has an assigned pitch, and pressing multiple buttons simultaneously activates the arpeggiator that quickly cycles through the notes you are holding down. The software also has the ability to run without the button interface, using the three buttons on the printer's front panel instead.

There is interaction between the images and music. The image dithering patterns fluctuate depending on what notes are played, and the music's volume and rhythmic patterns change depending on the pattern in the current horizontal section of the image. The printer can store about three pages of black and white images which print in order and then repeat.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S DESCRIPTION

SHIFT Electronic Arts Festival Basel 2009 on VernissageTV

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-09T20:30:00+01:00

For those who missed the recent SHIFT Electronic Arts Festival in Basel, VernissageTV put together a video compiling installation footage from the exhibition segment of the event, which included AIDS-3D, Craig Baldwin, Zoe Beloff, Lindsay Brown, Erik Bünger, Jim Campbell, Center for Tactical Magic, Susan Collins, Bill Domonkos, The Einstein's Brain Project, F18, Atelier Hauert/Reichmuth/Boehm, Christoph Keller, Julien Maire, Tatjana Marusic, Jane D. Marsching, Shusha Niederberger, Ruth Sergel, Harm van den Dorpel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Patrick Ward. The theme for this year was “Magic. Tech-Evocations and Assumptions of Paranormal Realities.” In the clip, keep an eye out for F18’s robotic installation Living Kitchen – Happy End of the 21st Century (2006) which transforms a suburban kitchen into a scene reminiscent of Poltergeist.

Required Reading: "An Interview with Artist Mark Wilson" by Julie Karabenick

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-09T19:55:00+01:00

Mark Wilson, csq3422, 2008 (archival ink jet on rag paper, 61 x 61 cm, 24 x 24 in)

Julie Karabenick: Early in your career you made paintings and drawings. Now for almost 30 years you've used computers in making your art.

Mark Wilson: When I started using computers in 1980, very few artists were using them. To me, these machines were totally cool and exciting. Back then, there was little software of interest to an artist like myself. To make art with computers, you had to invent new working procedures. I bought a personal computer and learned to write my own software. I was trying to find a unique way of using the computer and software to create geometric images.

After developing some programming skills, the methodology of writing software to create images became utterly natural.

-- EXCERPT FROM "AN INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MARK WILSON" BY JULIE KARABENICK ON GEOFORM

(Via Plog)

Text Rain (1999) - Cammille Utterback and Romy Achituv

John Michael Boling — 2009-11-09T18:30:00+01:00

"Text Rain is an interactive installation in which participants use the familiar instrument of their bodies, to do what seems magical—to lift and play with falling letters that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves in black and white, combined with a color animation of falling letters. Like rain or snow, the letters appears to land on participants' heads and arms. The letters respond to the participants' motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will 'land' on anything darker than a certain threshold, and 'fall' whenever that obstacle is removed. If a participant accumulates enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object, they can sometimes catch an entire word, or even a phrase. The falling letters are not random, but form lines of a poem about bodies and language. 'Reading' the phrases in the Text Rain installation becomes a physical as well as a cerebral endeavor."

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S DESCRIPTION

Pandoras Box (2008) - Michael Flückiger

John Michael Boling — 2009-11-09T16:00:00+01:00

Solo performance of Ellen Fullman presented by KRAAK, Gent, Belgium, 2005

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-06T18:30:00+01:00

In 1981 I began developing the “Long String Instrument,” in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, fifty or more feet in length and installed in a performance space. Listening to the instrument has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano.

The instrument is acoustic. Wooden box resonators are mounted on a wall and twenty to thirty strings terminate into each resonator soundboard. Performers walk between pathways of strings suspended at waist-height. The instrument is played by “bowing” with rosined fingertips while walking. A uniquely designed brass capo on each wire changes the vibrating string length much as a capo on a guitar. Tuned in just intonation, the pitch range is determined by length: A4 (440 Hz, open A string on the violin) requires eight meters in length. Every octave lower requires a doubling of length. These enormous lengths are required when strings are excited in the longitudinal mode, or played by “bowing” lengthwise.

My music explores natural tunings based on the physics of vibrating strings. Through observation, I have determined that there is an optimal “bowing” speed in which string speaks most clearly in the longitudinal mode, presumably based on a relationship to the speed of the wave moving through the material. In the late 1980s I conceived of a graphic notation system that still functions as the basis for scoring my work, where timing and coordination of parts are determined by distance walked. Numbers placed on the floor at metric intervals are used as reference points indicated in the score. Transitions can be coordinated based on the time it takes to arrive at predetermined locations, thereby “choreographing” repeatable events to occur at specific locations. Strings vibrate in mathematical subdivisions of the total string length. When passing over the harmonic nodes of each string, overtones associated with that location emerge. (For example, the perfect 5th interval can be heard at one third and two thirds of the total string length.) By taking into consideration these divisions or nodal points, (where pronounced overtones emerge) musical events can be aligned to coincide with specific overtone combinations.

-- FROM THE COMPOSER/MUSICIAN'S SITE

auf drei (2005) - Florian Tuercke

Jenny Jaskey — 2009-11-06T18:00:00+01:00

8 piano-strings, tuned in c-major, length: 26,25 ft, three resonance-bodies: pine, maple

Playing the Building (2008) - David Byrne

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-06T17:30:00+01:00

(Source for image and video: Creative Time)

Creative Time presents Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by renowned artist David Byrne. The artist transforms the interior of the landmark Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.” The project consists of a retrofitted antique organ, placed in the center of the building's cavernous second-floor gallery, that controls a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines vibrate, strike, and blow across the building’s elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds.

-- FROM THE DESCRIPTION FOR CREATIVE TIME'S PRESENTATION OF "PLAYING THE BUILDING" BY DAVID BYRNE

Note: Last year, Justin Downs wrote an article for Rhizome which outlined the design and fabrication of this project. Read it here.

A Small Migration (2004) - Shawn Decker

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-06T16:00:00+01:00

A Small Migration was a piece first presented as part of the show “Sonic Differences” which was a part of the Biennial of Electronic Art Perth, in 2004. This work is a direct extension of my previous “physical” installations, with this project extending both the scale and complexity of my previous installations, as well as the nature and complexity of my work with hybrid physical/computational systems.

A Small Migration consists of many piano wires strung roughly 8 or 9 feet above the ground across an open gallery or public space. The wires are fixed at the ends with tuning blocks, so that the walls of the gallery then act as a “sounding board” for the piece. Normally these would be attached to the Gallery Walls, but as the Moores Building in Freemantle, where the exhibition was held, is an historic building, the walls were off-limits, so instead, a scaffold-like structure was built supporting the tuning blocks from above.

Wires are stung in parallel, and roughly 3 inches apart, and as long as 30 or 40 feet (depending on the space available). Small motors tap each wire with a striker attached to the shaft of the motor, causing sound. Each motor is sent a series of short electrical pulses by the micro-controller, causing it to strike the wire, which creates a disturbance that generates sound and also visibly shakes the wire. The rhythmic patterns used are those found in nature, and are constantly accelerating and decelerating and are derived from indeterminate processes such as 1/f noise algorithms. The installation contains a great many wires and motors (variable given the space) —the number in this installation being 32 wires and motors.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

109 Lighting Books (2009) - Airan Kang

Ceci Moss — 2009-11-05T21:00:00+01:00

"109 Lighting Books" in the group exhibition "Textual Landscapes" at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
(Source: Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery)