During this years Ars Electronica festival the Lentos Museum in Linz exhibited Ecology of Techno Mind, a retrospective from the Kapelica gallery in Ljublijana, Slovenia.

The Kapelica gallery dedicate “special attention to projects that topicalize the reverse engineering of nature with their direct application of technologies and biotechnology on the human body”. I’m not a body art connoisseur or practitioner. I am however very interested in the reverse engineering of nature. And whether or not I like body art I admire the galleries idealism. According to the galleries curator, Jurij Krpan, the role of the gallery is to unite people who have something to say and, though it may sound a bit 80’s, enter debate and change society. Over the years Kapelica have had over 150 exhibitions. I got a sense that they at the very least has succeeded in creating debate in Slovenia. Here are three of my favorite pieces from the exhibition…

Junior’s Return

I find Philip Ross’s work very inspiring and interesting. In particular Junior’s Return since it connects to my current work and research on living systems. In Junior’s Return plants are grown in networked hydroponic systems. “The system keeps its enclosed plant in a dwarf state by supplying only enough resources to survive but not thrive. I kept a broccoli seedling alive for almost three years using this technique” says Ross. Junior’s Return shows that crops can be sustained in artificial environments. “However, they have long since ceased being the subject of farming or gardening. They are increasingly becoming the subject of science and technology.”

Robot Rabbit

Robot Rabbit by Paul Granjon says “robot, rabit” with a rate of one word every second. A counter is incremented with each word and the (real) grass is automatically watered by a pump when the soil dries. The installation “questions and comments on the effects of exposure to an exponentially growing and more capable technological environment. Robot Rabbit is an automatic installation that opposes the inflexible rhythm of the machine to the biological growth of the live grass”. Admittedly I didn’t get this deeper meaning at first. Until I read about the piece I thought the point was that the rabbit sounded like a frog. Anyway, I love Granjons humor and can really recommend his book Hand-made Machines.

Eat a Bit

Eat a Bit introduces the first utensils of Digital Kitchen. Digital Kitchen will allow processing of “eat a bit” recipes and using open source software and 2D/3D printing technology it will allow production of edible objects. The actual printing equipment didn’t make it to Ars. I haven’t been able to find anything about the project on the web so I’m not sure if it even exists, but the concept intrigues me…

Parasitic Video Network is an installation, intervention and participatory event developed by Michelle Teran at the Interactive Institutes Art and Technology Program during Spring 2008.

The project includes a portable device that captures and records live feeds from surveillance cameras and augments them with a sound scape that is generated by the visitors movement through the architectural space. Me and Yoshi Akai worked together with Michelle on the construction of this instrument; engineering an Arduino based audio player, analyzer and mixer and integrating it with a digital video recorder and wireless receiver in a beautifully crafted leather case.

“Every place tells a story whose sum is composed of its parts. Like a game board, every piece stands on its own, but is part of an intricate jigsaw puzzle. ‘Parasitic Video Network’ is a live wireless video network, part intervention, part installation, part participatory event transforming the architectural space into a media space, somewhere between a live film set and gaming environment. Like pieces of a puzzle, each camera focuses on different areas of the building, capturing the different boundaries, thresholds, circulation points as well as the strange objects that populate the building. These different views, which are transmitting wirelessly, are intercepted and monitored by the visitor by carrying a special device that capture and record these live feeds. The culmination of these different views forms a narrative of the building and how we move through it”. - Michelle Teran

Parasitic Video Network was recently shown at Escalators / Theater der Welt (June/July 2008, Germany) and is currently scheduled to be presented at Mois Multi 9 (September 2008, Canada) and Centre Art Girona (October 2008, Spain).

PHOTO: MIKAEL OLSSON

“The first solo UK show by the Swedish artist Peter Geschwind will fully utilize the scale and industrial aesthetic of The Exchange.

Automatic was originally presented at Fargfabriken, Stockholm in 2006, but has been dramatically reworked for Penzance.” - from Newlyn Art Gallery.

I hooked up some motion sensors to automate a shadow-play for the exhibition at the Newlyn Art Gallery, a small task, but it was never the less a fun little project. I really like Peter Geschwinds work and I got to try out some new stuff with POCO C++ which is now part of cppGlue.

The exhibition opens on April 19th an will be on display until June 28th.

Space Camping by Ebba Matz, Physical Interaction Lab and Philippe Boix-Vives is a geodesic dome whose inside surface alternates between kaleidoscopic reflections and back-projected animations. The dome is partially inspired by the Pepsi Pavilion created by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) for the Expo ‘70 in Osaka, and Buckmister Füller who developed the geodesic dome. E.A.T and Buckminister Füller are two great sources of inspiration to me and I find it beautiful how much from them that can be related to in this work and the context it was created in.

Geodesic domes are the only man made structures that become stronger the larger they are, in fact it is theoretically possible to construct geodesic domes large enough to cover cities, planets and stars. This is achieved by tensegrity, “when push and pull have a win-win relationship with each other”. Tensegrity is not only an interesting concept, it is also an interesting example of how the pursuit of art can create synergy effects* that contribute to the sciences. The term was coined by Buckmister Füller for artist Kennet Snelson who successfully explored and demonstrated the concept in his sculptures. Füller later used tensegrity to develop the geodesic dome and today tensegrity has found applications in a wide variety of ares from architecture to robotics.

I was not involved much in the construction of the dome but I participated in the brainstorming sessions around Man Machine 2, the exhibition which it was created for. A lot of ideas that were discussed didn’t make it into the finished pieces, which isn’t strange considering that the exhibition was conceived and constructed in two and a half months. One such idea was to create an open interface for the dome and let visitors program it with their own content. Interestingly I just discovered that Billy Klüver, co-founder of E.A.T, had similar ideas for the Pepsi Pavilion. Some 27 years earlier he wanted the pavilion to be a “laboratory environment, encouraging ‹live programming› that offered opportunity for experimentation, rather than resort to fixed or ‹dead programming›” (Media Art Net).

Space Camping is part of the Man Machine 2 exhibition which is on display at The National Museum of Science & Technology in Stockholm, Sweden from December 8th 2007 to April 27th 2008.

* Synergy is another term popularized by Bückmister Fuller.

PHOTO: HARTMUT STOCKTER

Last weekend I went to the Super Market art fair and discovered the wonderful and witty inventions of Hartmut Stockter.

Hartmut Stockter is among other things the inventor of The Sloth-machine, a convenient vehicle for moving through dense European primeval forests, The Eavesdrop-leaves-machine which “raises the question whether listening to the wind in the trees is perhaps most conveniently done outside” and The Beehive-Hat which “invites to rest in the grass, in the shadow of its broad rim, and to listen to the humming of the bees”.

Stockters project documentary can be updated or printed in its entirety from his website, there are even instructions on how to bind it properly. Those who are too lazy to bind it themselves will be able to buy it at his upcoming solo show at DUNK! in Copenhagen, March 13th - April 24th 2008.

I like to imagine that one day there will be an artifact that is so perfect in form and function that there never will be a need to redesign it. However unlikely it is that that will happen it definitely will not unless we keep challenging and redefining the everyday objects that surrounds us.

This is precisely what Marc Ligos has done with Recipro-creacions, Objectes, subjectes i accions at the Escola Massana: Pulsions exhibition (La Capella / Institut de Cultura de Barcelona).

Copa (wine glass with hole)

Cadira (two legged chair)

Lampada (lamp with pillow switch)

I’m back from a two week trip to Barcelona and Morocco. A camera and mobile phone poorer but quite a few experiences and a lot of sunshine richer. Here is a summary of my gallery visits in Barcelona.

Centre d’Art Santa Mònica

“Art is for everyone, but only the elite knows it” is fittingly written on the wall to CASM. Though the exhibition space is located right on the busy Rambla and the entrance is free there was not a soul there. The exhibition on display was Hamsterweel, a group exhibition which I liked but didn’t really get.

“Hamsterwheel. The Hamsterwheel. The movement that does not go anywhere, but which does not intend to, either. Moving just for the sake of moving. Moving due to the need to do so. Link in the running machines in the gymnasiums, we also include televisions to entertain ourselves”.

I guess that it is ok not to get it.

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona

The Joan Jonas retrospective at MACBA made me want to go to Island even more than I already wanted.

Centre De Cultura Contemporanea De Barcelona

Jane Alexanders installation Security with traffic (influx control) at CCCB is a comment on the border fence between Morocco and the spanish town Melilla. According to the Lonely Planet guide to Morocco the two cities of Ceuta and Melilla has recently been equipped with razor-wire barriers at a cost of about 295 million and 33 million euro respectively, Spanish and Moroccan authorities have been accused of firing on unarmed migrants and dumping deportees in the desert and it is estimated that over the last five years up to 4000 African migrants have died in attempts to cross the waters to Spain.

Man Machine 2, the exhibition I have been working on this autumn / winter is opening tomorrow.

15:00-17:00 at Tekniska Museet, Stockholm.

I though I’d take the opportunity to spread the word about Lindsays Seers exhibition Swallowing Black Maria at the Smart Project Space in Amsterdam before it closes on the 18th.

Swallowing Black Maria (a title which refers to Thomas Edisons revolving film studio) is the kind of exhibition that shines if you take the time to read the exhibition brochure. In retrospective I wish that I had read through this one before I quickly rummaged through the exhibition stopping only too look at a pair of dolls who managed catch my attention. Luckily I picked up a copy on the way out…

According to the brochure Seers was born with eidetic recall, “the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme accuracy and in seemingly abundant volume.” (Wikipedia) Her memory was so perfected that she couldn’t see a difference between her inner world and the “real” world. As a consequence of this she lacked the ability to speak. When she at the age of seven for the first time saw a photograph of herself something happened and she gained the ability to speak but lost her eidetic memory.

To compensate for her loss of memory Seers started to photograph obsessively. Eventually turning herself into a camera, taking pictures by mounting a piece of film at the back of her throat, exposing the film through her teeth using the mouth as a shutter.

Upon discovering that another artist (in Dublin, I wonder who?) also took photographs with her mouth Seers turned to projecting her old identity as a human camera onto dolls such as the twin sailors on the picture above. The dolls, who act as Seers alter egos, are triggered by movement, rolling their eyes and opening their mouths to take photographs as you approach them.

But Seers story doesn’t end with the dolls, the next step for her was (of course) to transform into a human projector by attaching a pretty huge projector to her head. This is where I wish that I had taken the time to sit down and watch the videos that also were part of the exhibition…

Smart Project Space was overall a pretty cool place, we met a really friendly guy called Mauricio in the lobby and apart from exhibitions they have an artist in residence program and in a small building outside they have a free unmanned cinema with shows around the clock (all you have to do is to ask for the door code)…

Some art stands on its own while other require a frame of reference to be intriguing. The first kind is unfortunately quite rare and the other kind requires you to read a (usually) dull A4 or talk to the artist. Hidi Slimane is one of those artist whose work doesn’t need an explanation. Both Sweet Bird of Youth, a group exhibition compiled by Slimane for the Arndt and Partner gallery in Berlin, and Young American, a solo exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam, exuberate velvet undergroundesque avant-garde rock. Some people work very hard but they still don’t get it right, well I’m beginning to see the light…

This week I’ve been helping my friend Mia (www.mariaandersson.net) with an installation that will display log entries on a wall-mounted screen as they are beeing written down at a remote location.

March 13th - March 18th

Vita havet
Konstfack
LM Ericssons väg 14
T-bana: Telefonplan

I had intended to go and listen to Sally Mann this Saturday, but unfortunately when I got there it was already sold out. I ended up listening to Kentridge at Moderna Museet instead.

Kentridge mostly talked about Black Box / Chambre Noir, a mechanized theather and video installation which is currently exhibited at Moderna Museet. After his speech there was a short Q&A where Kentridge among other things was asked how he became an artist. Apparently this was not an active decision by Kentridge. He simply worked by exclusion and ended up being an artist because he failed with most other things that he tried.

In a similar manner his works are the results of experimentation rather than determination. Though Black Box / Chambre Noir is a political piece with a lot of historical references its message does not seem to have been clear to Kentridge when he started to work on it. Instead it is the result of creative experimentation with different media and techniques.

After the artist talk I spoke briefly to one of the theatre technicians who have designed the mechanics and the computer control system for Black Box / Chambre Noir. One subject that arose was how installations such as Black Box / Chambre Noir that are subject to wear and tear should be preserved for future generations. In Thruth, Beauty, Freedom and Money Michael Naimark notes that “Collectible tech-based art needs to be extraordinarily robust and archival” and that “Curators are caught in a dilemma, since one role of the museum is to build a collection of artifacts worthy of preservation in perpetuity, while another role is to present the fashion of the times.” The solution in the case of Black Box / Chambre Noir was, after some debate, to allow the installation to change appearance slightly over time as parts are worn out and replaced rather than to minimize its running time in order to preserve it in its original state.