Abstracts
Abstracts for the summit conference are organized alphabetically by
surname. Jump to a name:
A-B | C-D | E-F | G-H | I-J | K-L | M-N | O-P | Q-R | S-T | U-V | W-Z
Peter Anders, Ph.D
Designing Mixed Reality: Cybrid Principles, Practice
and Projects
Mixed Reality is an increasingly prevalent technology that merges digital
simulations with physical objects or environments. This paper presents
principles for the design of mixed reality compositions called cybrids.
The principles are illustrated by projects and experiments by the author
involving architecture and robotics.
Since completing his dissertation at the University of Plymouth the author has experimented with various technologies to test his hypotheses. The dissertation tried to answer a question arising from present technologies. If, as research suggests, simulations could compete with – or even supplant– their physical counterparts, what might their effect be on architecture and design? The thesis proposed that these effects would apply to nearly any design field – namely, any that used representation (i.e. drawings, models, specifications) in generating a physical product.
The effects, however, would not lead to complete virtualization for, while an architecture of cyberspace may be possible, it can only be realized through the physical systems that sustain it. The virtual needs the material for its realization – even imaginary architecture requires the brain and body of the imaginer. Since spatial imagination is a product and tool for cognition the author has proposed that, empirically, the virtual and physical are interdependent and possibly inextricable.
This paper articulates seven principles that apply to the creation of cybrids, artifacts that integrate physical and virtual elements. These principles, originally introduced in the dissertation, are illustrated by projects done by the author over the past two years. These projects are not conclusive – each is still in development – however even at their present stage they show the cybrid principles in action.
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Roy Ascott
Technoetic Art and the Syncretic Reality
In the late 20th century, the formative issues in digital art were about connectivity and interaction. Now at the start of the 3rd millennium, our post-digital objectives will increasingly be technoetic and syncretic. During the previous two centuries there was much ado about e pluribus unum: out of many, one: a unified culture, unified self, unified mind, unity of time and space. Now at the start of this century, the reverse applies. E unum pluribus, out of one, many: many selves, many presences, many locations, many levels of consciousness. A mobile paradigm is forming of on-body/in-body, locative/delocative, intensive syncretic interconnectivity. The many realities we inhabit; material, virtual, and spiritual, for example, are accompanied by our sense of being present simultaneously in many worlds: physical presence in ecospace, apparitional presence in spiritual space, telepresence in cyberspace, and vibrational presence in nanospace. As artists we deal with the complexities of media that are at once immaterial and moist, numinous and grounded; and the complexity of the technoetic mind that both inhabits the body and is distributed across time and space. Where all these differences could be at odds with each other, we are in fact developing a capacity, mostly unconsciously, to syncretise. That is, to analogise and reconcile contradictions, while melding differences, such that art and reality are becoming syncretic. This is emerging partly through the cultural coherence that intensive interconnectivity elicits, partly through the quantum coherence at the base of our world-building, and perhaps most especially through the spiritual coherence that informs the field of our multi-layered consciousness.
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Elif Ayiter
Deconstructing the Palace
This paper investigates the design and application of virtual, three
dimensional spaces within the specific concept of environments of education
in general and as structures of alternative methodologies of art education
as a specific area of application.
Whilst the virtual realm has been used extensively for online/education endeavours, the current implementations generally lean towards a replication of real-life educational methodologies; often resulting in little more than downloadable reading material in lieu of textbooks and web-streamed video lectures in lieu of classroom learning. Facets of the virtual realm, such as emergence, generative capabilities, dimensionality, immersability, user participation/intervention are usually overlooked since these would require a fresh, experimenal approach to the whole concept of education, be it virtual or real life based. This in turn would lend itself, indeed require, the utilisation of environments/tools that go far beyond, indeed are anathema to, current educatioanl practices embodied in the virtual realm as downloadable pdf's and video lectures.
The Ealing-Toronto educational system, developed and practiced by Roy Ascott in the early 1960's is one such ground-breaking method, used in the education of university level art and design students, that can provide valid content and methodology to the design and implementation of thoroughly innovative electronic education and the ensuing design/structuring problematics that will indeed require and utilise the inherent characterisitcs of the virtual realm listed above: The Ealing-Toronto system incorporated a total questioning and close scrutiny of artistic attitudes and practices by confronting the student with unexpectedly confusing, disorienting content and problem solving, from basic drawing and modelling to behavioral observations and re-interpretations of observed material, utilising the input of a wide ranging staff comprised of artists, designers as well as scientists.
A series of emergent, evolutionary, generative virtual environments, which are nonetheless firmly grounded in an investigation of a real life evolutionary architecture, i.e. The Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; that are embedded with the characteristics that would lend them to be appropriate receptacles of the educational methodology of the Ealing-Toronto educational system, such as cybernetic structuring, deconstructive capabilty, changeability, generative capability, emergence, evolution, transience, user intervention, are currently being designed/investigated and the analysis of the resultant design conglomerate is at the heart of concern.
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Brandon Ballengée
Visualizing Biological Abstraction in Nature: Exploring the Occurrence of Deformed Amphibians
Amphibians are the environmental canaries in the coalmine. Of the over 5,000 species of known amphibians, about one-third of them are threatened, critically endangered or already extinct. Amphibian deformities have been found on six continents and also appear to be increasing. At some sites in North America 80% of sampled frogs, toads, and salamanders exhibited some kind of abnormality. It has also been suggested that the occurrence of malformation may affect already declining species. No one knows for certain what is causing increased levels of deformed amphibians. Currently there are a number of hypotheses being investigated: Parasitic trematodes (Riberoria ondatrae); increased ultra-violet radiation from ozone thinning; chemical pollution from pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, or fertilizers; attempted predation or cannibalistic activity; or a synergistic combination of culprits.
For almost a decade, I have worked with numerous scientists, students, and the public to conduct laboratory procedures and field surveys. My actions as an Eco-artist participating in the realm of primary biological research is an extension of artistic investigation and challenges traditional boundaries between disciplines. Through hands-on field trips and workshops, "Eco-actions", I attempt to bridge local participants to specific ecosystems. Through this performative practice, this dual art and science research becomes a transformative catalyst towards environmental and social change.
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Laura Beloff
Overview on Wearables
The development of wearable computers is closely linked to the development
of augmented reality, both of which have been motivated by two primary
goals; the need for people to access information while being on the move
and the need for people to better manage information according to Barfield & Caudell. We
have invented glasses, microscopes, etc. to augment our vision and wristwatches
to better manage our time. Recently we have developed mobile phones to
better manage our lives and our social networks. These tools provide
us with necessary information wherever we are.
"Wearable media" refers to devices, which are described as attached to the body, in contrast to portability. In addition to that, the category of "wearable computers" requires computing abilities and other desirable characteristics – for example hands-free features – to be accepted as a wearable computer. Wearable computers and computing is a technological research field, which is developing various applications and solutions for personal technologies in various ways. The term "wearable media" seems to have appeared from the practice of media-archeology, which is approaching the field of wearables with cultural perspective.
There are also an increasing amount of artistic works and experiments, which are generally talked about as "wearables". These works are constructed to be wearable and mobile, but do not otherwise follow the research directions typical for wearable computers, but appear more artistic and conceptual. There is still very little existing literature on the artistic side of wearables, although wearable computers as a research field are otherwise fairly well covered in literature.
This paper starts with a brief overview of the history of augmented/mediated reality, and continues to survey a few writers and themes in the wearable field and its history with a focus on more historical or theoretical approaches, and less on the practical and technical. It is a general overview into the field of wearables from experiments with perpetual transformations to augmentation, and to wearable media with historical hidden cameras, and finally to artistic examples and approaches relating to the wearable field.
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Valerie Bugmann
In-gesture
In-gesture: 1. (something being done – in gesture, like a mode, a verb)
the act of the Act of ingesting or taking a gesture into the body for
digestion or absorption. 2. Refers to the gestation of gesture: the conception
and development of the gesture in the body and the sense of the gesture
in the mind.
The term in-gesture came up when considering the different meanings gesture acquired in the research The Drama of Digital Communication with a Human Touch, concerned with the augmentation of touch through the development of a personal wireless communication network. The analogies present between this communication technology that uses the body's conductivity for electrical transmission of information, and the definitions that relate to the latin word gerere, which means to carry (i.e. gesture as the manner of carrying the body), brought the term in-gesture into existence in my artwork as something that is in constant flux and that is determined by our interactions with the world.
The analogies and similarities present between the term in-gesture and notions of morpho-functionality and embodiment, used in new AI research, acquire relevance in the study of these invisible morphologies provided by technological interfaces which tend to disappear into the everyday life generating new perceptions and meanings of the world. This becomes a fascinating subject for artistic practices such as theater and performance in which this new morphologies can be experienced and exploited in unique ways.back to schedule || more abstracts
Simona Caraceni
MUSEUM 2.0: Planetary Collegium Second Life Virtual
Museum
In the last few years there have been several attempts to build museums
on a technological platform. Few of these efforts were successful, for
several reasons. At first, the lack of a usable, shared and simple interface.
Secondly, even if the platform worked, the decisions on museological
criteria and curatorial activity – made by persons involved in
new media, not in museums – made the efforts fail. Museum 2.0 comes
from my Ph.D. research focus on both museums and technology, both museological
science and science-centric theory, either representation issues and
media-content hybridization forms. Discovering the game Second-Life I
found a usable platform based on intuition modalities, made in 3D for
3D interactive contents, strongly interactive, and conceivably "the" platform
for creating real 3D environment for researchers, learners and communities.
A game that doesn't seem a game, that interests institutions, investors,
youth and IT.
My project, MUSEUM 2.0, attempts to translate the syntax of the museum as a liturgical, symbolic and virtual place (in sense of the latin etymology of the term: "virtus", "virtualis", what is in potency, the place of possibilities) into the 3D, shared, usable and simple envirorment that Second Life is. As a parallel aim, my project centers on the realization of the Planetary Collegium technological museum into Second Life.
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Teresa Chen
Fusion or Confusion: Cultural Hybridity and Visual
Art Practice
Hybridity has become a popular concept in discussions about new media
and art.
We live in a world where nothing is fixed, where boundaries are being constantly shifted. Historical perceptions of origin and identity are being challenged by migration and globalization. People, goods, and ideas constantly move between places and cultures.
Increased mobility and communication have made it easier for people to move for living, for working, for travelling. A consequence of this movement is that cultural differences and cultural identities merge and mutate. Post-colonial theorists argue that cultural hybridity subverts essentialist ideas of culture. No culture is genuinely pure, but develops itself through interactions with other cultures.
Most contemporary artists move between and among cultures, and often their work also relates to intercultural issues. In some areas, for example North America, this movement between cultures is common and even expected. In other places like Europe, which do not understand themselves as immigrant societies, questions of identity are inevitably still connected to one's ancestry.
This presentation will look at contemporary visual art examples exploring this in-between state. Jun Yang (1975), whose parents moved from China to Austria when he was four years old, investigates the influence of mental and media images of China on his identity. Ruby Sircar (1975), half-Indian and half-German and growing up in Germany, examines the music productions of south Asian women of the second generation in German-speaking European countries and the effect on their ethnic identity. Zineb Sedira (1963), of Algerian heritage and living in France and London, questions how to negotiate between these different worlds. Based on these and other examples, the author will investigate what culturally hybrid art practices could be.
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Isabelle Choinière
Looking for a Choreographic Model Adapted to Our Time
How can the infiltration of the technological touch in actual dance bring
the development of new choreographic models?
This model I am actually developing will generate many questions, but mostly it will introduce notions such as collective body, relative space as a space to structure the relation between dancers, to imagine another space of scenic representation and the idea of tridimensionality to construct another kind of gestural study and choreographic structure. Also the notion of interactivity that should be regarded as part of contemporary art's natural development toward immateriality. This will also influence the research process and create within it variable "transformation zones". This research process is representative of the theory of the complexity of Edgar Morin and is the witness of another way to create hydrid language for scenic art.
If we consider dance, or any other kind of art, partially as a reflection of social, cultural, historical processes that frame our view of the world, I think it is necessary to consider not just one concept of energy but the variations of this concept in time and according to different cosmologies. If we do that, we are better suited to understand different manifestations of art processes in any place and at any time, and its impact on the body vision and the dance practice.
On the other hand, the changes in the paradigm in relation to energy link our contemporary scientific concepts about energy to the traditional concepts of energy that have been present for ages in ancient and non-western cultures. If we consider that different types of dance emerge from different pardigms, we should see how new forms of dance are emerging form this new paradigm about energy, because energy plays a fundamental role in the creative and pedagogic process in dance. This energy appears in different forms of dance according to the concept of energy implied and new knowledge and a new choreographic model should emerge form this dynamic.
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Louis-Philippe Demers
Multiple Ontologies Disorder
Stuck between the real and the artificial, the flesh and the metal, the
sign and the signified robotic characters often suffer from this syndrome.
By pursuing theoretical research and artwork on robots as a form of "expressive
media", this paper will further investigate the viewer's perception
of these agents. It will explore the theories of audience identification,
performance and spectacle and it will reformulate those for actors as
generative and synthetic metallic entities. By using examples from the
history of automata and machines, I will trace the fascination for the
mechanical representation of the intangible phenomena by the empowering
of theatrical strategies.
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Margaret Dolinsky
Transformative Navigation: Energizing Imagery for Perceptual
Shifts
This paper will discuss how virtual environments using projection with
artistic imagery energizes experiential circumstances, promotes navigational
movements and instigates perceptual shifts. A visitor's attempts
towards immersive experience in the digital arts projection accumulate
over time. An understanding of space and sense of place within
the visual field enhances the sense of immersion. An explorative
movement within the virtual environment garners understanding, facilitates
decision-making and intensifies navigation. In an effort to defy
photorealism through the projection screen, one would need to subvert
and exploit imagery and in this manner illuminate the imagination. In
the act of painting, the brush conspires with the canvas to obstruct
color from its path, deprive it of any further voyage and suspend it
in time and space. Maturing with the culmination of the forces
from multiple lashings, the painting acquires integrity as an entity. Those
forces persist in adherence to the canvas surface, mixing color and light,
maintaining a shape and decorum, ultimately evoking narratives.In interactive
media, the joystick navigates through a virtual environment as if painting
the imagery of a place coincidently with its discovery. This self-referential
journey shatters the sense of the fixed picture plane with a stable point
of view established in traditional aesthetic engagement. The projection
wall initially appears as a boundary for vision but acts, in essence,
as a psychological screen for emergent experience.
The projection lights determine photonic space, provide color and form and establish the panorama. Inside projection walls, using bodily movement and reaching out with the navigation wand transforms and regenerates the atmosphere. Each physical fluctuation influences the projection and alters the lights and colors feeding the mutation and transmission. The resultant fields act as forces upon perception and assimilate in consciousness to activate a world shifting here and there in. The energy to navigate is energy to create, situate and establish a self-causal nexus. What once was a reflexive approach to a painting on canvas can now be a proactive event with a projection wall. Each physical movement and unsullied perceptual moment contains a progression towards realizing a personal visual narrative. Be it through light projection or paint daub, properties such as color, light and space fuse imagery and ideas in symbolic construction with corporeal space. By juxtaposing image planes in time there exists the possibility to illustrate, mirror and demonstrate the thought provoking dynamics that day-to-day journeying employs.
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Maia Engeli
Metaphors for Creative Collaboration
In my studies of telematic systems that enable creative collaboration
I started to notice of a variety of metaphors introduced to help envision,
conceptualize, explain, map and orchestrate processes of creative collaboration.
The role of these metaphors can be seen as a means to "make the
complex clear" by neither over-simplifying nor over-determining
the process, thereby leaving space for interpretation while, at the same
time, providing guidance. While the core aspect that needs to be enabled
by systems for creative collaboration is the flow of ideas among the
collaborators, the employed metaphors show conceptual approaches to facilitate
the flow based on means to promote a shared awareness.
The paper takes a taxonomic approach towards the presentation of some of the identified metaphors. Currently there are five categories. 1) Grids and other schemes will be introduced as examples of visual, schematic metaphors. 2) Bachelard's proposal of material metaphors and his example of ‘water and earth' will be expanded upon. 3) Spatial metaphors will be illustrated with Rosenberg's Reservoir, Memory Palaces and an own example using the sculptural space of Vantongerloo's "rapport des volumes". 4) Procedural metaphors will include Fischer et al's idea of seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding, Dawkins' memetics (a metaphor in itself), flow (in the sense of liquid motion, not Csikszentmihalyi's flow as a state of focus) or Schechner's braided processes. 5) And, last but not least, neologisms, like crowd sourcing, swarm intelligence, smart mobs will be addressed regarding their metaphoric qualities and the Web2.0 phenomena they reference.
The focus on metaphors that are used to describe and design processes of creative collaboration is helpful to identify the subtleties of such processes. The metaphors originate from different disciplines, like psychology, design research, management, education or theater. Their discussion within a taxonomic approach allows shaping the discourse and building up a vocabulary of design approaches for systems that support creative collaboration.
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Jurgen Faust
Towards a Comprehensive and Universal Design Theory
–Designing methods–
A rapidly changing and increasingly complex world demands a science of design and a comprehensive and universal design theory. As a trans-disciplinary platform, design needs to develop clear terms and concepts, as well as an applied methodology. For a long time, design has been thought of as an applied art; but, currently, it is also understood as a basic modus of human actions, like a language or other media, and as a discipline that creates objects of identification and communication in social systems. If we take the radical stand of Herbert A. Simon as he proposed in 'The Sciences of the Artificial', design is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. He states: 'Everyone designs who is devising courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones'. That means design is the basic for all creations: physical, technical objects, virtual objects, theories, dialogues etc. Whenever we theorize, we construct, we design, whenever we make distinctions we design, since all distinctions are based on human decisions. Whenever we theorize, whenever we use metaphors to describe something, we design. Therefore a method, a means or manner of procedure, needs to be studied, designed, constructed, before we can say 'it is'.
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Wolfgang Fiel
Empty Space – Symbolic Refuge
Is urban architecture in the process of becoming a technology just
as outdated as extensive farming? Will architectonics become nothing
more than a decadent form of dominating the earth, with consequences
analogous to the unbridled exploitation of raw materials? Hasn‘t the
decline in the number of cities also become the symbol of industrial
decline and forced unemployment, the symbol of scientific materialism‘s
failure? (...) The crisis of modernity‘s grand narratives, about which
Lyotard speaks, betrays the presence of new technology, with the emphasis
being placed, from now on, on the "means " and not on the "ends
–Virilio 1999
Following up to the statement from Paul Virilio, the claim is set out, that the profession of the architect currently undergoes a significant change. With the immersion of digital media and electronic apparatus the definition of physical space and its perception has to be fundamentally revised. Whilst the psychological imprint of the modernistic dimension of space was specified by significant "time distances" in relation to physical obstacles, represented by the rules of perspective, the rhizomatic nature of electronic networks - accessable via the interfaces of globally distributed userterminals - has subsequently led to the loss of spatial depth in exchange for the cinematic dept of time. The believe in the enduring objectives of dualistic determinism has been succeeded by an aesthetic of the accelerated disappearance of transient images. The exhaustion of temporal distance creates a telescoping of any localization, at any position and any time, for it simultaneity is measured in elastic time-intervalls equivalent to the retinal persistance - the after image. Likewise we face a paradigmatic change from the era of representation to one of interpretation which is closely bound to the notion of creating operable interfaces. In the light of this turn from the "ends " to the "means" as aforementioned, a process-oriented culture of events would cause an improvisational turn towards a sphere of pure gestures (Agamben 2001).
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Kenneth Fields, Ph.D.
Ontotyping: Designing in the World
A good game engine foregrounds the phenomenon of immersion and presence.
Reality, ironically, is so seamless that we never even think of immersion
or presence - outside of altered states. Virtuality or second nature,
the technological extension of play or imagination, could be thought
of as a reminder that we are present and inside the world.
Essentially, our project explores an immersive process of ontotyping
(onto-tagging), through the methodology of designing-in-the-real-world.
The issue of designing-in-the-world was recently discussed in a paper
by Ron Wakkery regarding interactive cognition as informing the problem
of interactive design. His discussion was about how the "genuine
practice of designers combines cognitive activities and events in the
world in order to act and reflect 'in the world'" (Wakkery). He
contrasts a design practice whose principles are of sequence and rational
order (iteration) with a design process whose "components cannot
be separated and have no ordering principle." To expand on this
notion, from the most primitive level of the design process, the primary
distinction that we can speak of is that between the designer (observer)
and the object/problem (observed), otherwise referred to as the epistemic
cut. The epistemic cut is that which separates "knowledge of reality
from reality itself" (Pattee in Way). A second imposing component
of this model is representation (reproduction, reencoding, second nature),
which engenders further distinction/cutting and rational ordering.
Integrating design components hinges on the concept of artificiality. I define artificiality in terms of the degree of separation between a third important distinction in the design process: the designer (observer agent) and its agency, designing. Commitment/immersion is the necessary condition for the collapsing of artificiality. In other words, immersion in a representation or immanence in the semiotic process infers a condition of commitment without which there is artificiality. This condition is necessarily simultaneous with the agency/action (designing) of the design process, acting upon a current memory state (encoded physical system/text). Our current field of practice is in Beijing where we construct through folksonomic (user centric, not expert) methodologies (Gruber, Weinberger), a semantic model of an art community known as Dashanzi. By using a 'semantic tagging' system afforded by a mobile device we can virtually situate ontology tags in the real environment for optimal analysis and design. A further opportunity arises to diminish distance between representation and represented; this is afforded by an augmented visual display for ontotags; this, in effect situates the knowledge map in the territory. After extended community usage, a unique and organic community profile emerges as a result of inhabiting the environment of our 'reality markup' process.
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Karmen Franinovic
Participation in Urban Life: Democracy or Spectacle?
Our participation in urban life is being shaped by new technologies that
have heretofore been directed mainly by private, political and market
aims. Artists working in and with the urban fabric have new opportunities
to create situations that may enable passers-by themselves to address
and criticize values emerging from habitual consumptive practices. The
latter practices by nature function to produce an urban space composed
of commerce and spectacle, a space of strictly reactive political statements,
whether those of demonstration or of election. As an alternative, artists
may strive to transform public urban areas into lived dynamic systems
of people, artefacts and spaces undergoing a collective transformation
of roles, identities and powers.
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Carol Gigliotti,
Ph.D.
Wildness and Technology
So much of our collective imagination in the last forty years has been
engaged with technology. At the same time, however, a growing awareness
of environmental devastation has demanded a challenging of Western thought
to include an ecological consciousness. This presentation will outline
the goals and central arguments of a book, Wildness and Technology, on
which the author is working. The goal and method of this book project
is to read examples of contemporary cultural, political and social engagements
with technology and contemporary environmental ethics in relation to
each other, searching not only for correlation but for ways in which
they might test each other's assumptions about these two trends. This
goal supports the central argument of Wildness and Technology: no imaginative
rethinking of our relationship with actual wilderness is likely to emerge
without an awareness of the ideological limits on the concept of wildness
emerging from an increasingly technological culture. The significance
of this project for art and cultural theory is to gain a clear understanding
of co-existing and competing ideas in art and philosophy surrounding
notions of wildness and technology. Further, these insights may help
in re-imagining a world in which wildness and the creative impetus behind
technological change may coexist.
The importance of this investigation for the future of our involvement with technological media lies within the our ability to recognize what is being lost by the suppression and destruction of natural creativity- organic, ecological, and biological - and the corrosive effects of that destruction on sustained human creativity in the technological realm.
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James Gimzewski,
Ph.D.
Nano: The Role of Technology in the Future
There are technological innovations that have been sufficiently great
to completely transform our world. Tesla stands out as an inventor and
engineer who foresaw and transformed the use of electrical energy essential
to practically every aspect of human society. He also saw further than
we could imagine: "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole
earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things
being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able
to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not
only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear
one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening
distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we
shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present
telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket".
Colliers, January 30, 1926. The metric of smallness is exemplified in
the dreams and science of nanotechnology where small is granular, atomic,
molecular. Its resemblance to life itself a nanotechnology of nature
and of scale in the quantum regime render the concepts of objects and
connection as distinct obsolete. The connections are the system. The
arrangement of atoms less about form but more about property such as
color or functionality. In this talk I will discuss the possible scenarios
based on a planet that will be connected in a way that may even surpass
the impact of the transmission both wired and wireless of electromagnetic
radiation and electrons. The inspiration of this talk is a direct result
of my scientific and technological training combined with conversations
and experiences with Roy Ascot, Victoria Vesna and other artists that
I had the pleasure to interact with over the last 5 years.
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Diane Gromala
Re-enervating Flesh: Visceral Sensations of Interactive
Art
The term visceral register is a phenomenological proposition for both
experiencing and understanding particular forms of interactive art and
bioart. It insists on accounting for specificities of embodied experience,
from varying levels of awareness to the dominance and interplays of extero-
(from the outside) and interoceptive (arising from inside the body) senses.
• Do-it-yourself (DIY) DNA testing in your own kitchen.
• Engineering, "culturing," and growing biological tissue,
from "victimless" hamburger to Stelarc's third ear.
• A writing system that changes the visual character of the text according
to your real-time, physiological states.
• A wearable that tickles your thighs and blows air up your skirt according
to another's respiration.
• A book, made of meat, quivers as a user comes near. As its pages are
turned, the book recoils, emanating feral sounds and indistinct odours.
Rather than opportunities for reflection after the fact, artworks such as these provoke and enable participants to experience, perform, and manifest the corporeal with and through their own flesh, in some cases in real time. Consciousness, remember, comes after the perception by a split second. Some forms of perception, such as the visceral response, however, occur either much faster or in real-time.
The focus of this paper is on the heretofore under-examined phenomena, that which I term the visceral register. It is a phenomenological proposition for understanding new methods for collaborative experience and purportedly new ways of identification of self and other that particular forms of interactive art and bioart offer. The visceral register insists upon taking into account the varying levels of awareness and intensity of bodily forms of knowledge. While many theorists focus on issues of media or computational form, cultural and critical meaning, and ideology, it is the contention of this author that the embodied aspects of interactive art and bioart necessitate examination beyond mere "body as text" or metaphor, since these forms of art intimately engage the human body in active and volitional ways. For the most part, some of these artworks enable users access to awareness and control that has otherwise been relegated to trained dancers, athletes, yogis, those who meditate, and patients who suffer from chronic pain.
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Honor Harger
Broadcasting the Music of the Spheres
By understanding astronomy through audification this paper aims to combine
traditional and practice-based research methods to create a sonic poetic
understand of space. This will be compared with case studies in Radio
Astronomy, a process that takes live sounds from radio telescopes and
broadcasts this audio over the Internet and on FM radio.
r a d i o q u a l i a: www.radioqualia.net
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Norbert Herber
On the Sound of Becoming: Musical Perturbations
Emergence is a fundamental aspect of contemporary digital art works,
and can arise from a variety of sources, "ordering itself from a
multiplicity of chaotic interactions." (Ascott, 1993) It is also
essential to various forms and modes in musical praxis. Experimental,
Improvisatory, and Generative music exhibit in their emergence a becoming.
In each genre, the simple rules or relationships that form a composition
act together and lead to unexpected, unpredictable, and novel results.
Musical gestures show a ripple of cohesion, take ephemeral form, and
then dissolve.
Often the experience of this process requires a great investment of attention and time on the part of the listener. Time is especially significant in Generative music, where the intentions are not to produce an immediate effect or shock of perception, but a gradual transformation, as sounds are heard in the ebb and flow of a generative process. This transformation—or becoming—is resonant with the emergence experienced in a telematic environment, or with interactive art or media.
This paper investigates environments of music and digital interaction, and discusses how the tension between interactive control and generative autonomy can redefine an interaction as a perturbation. In this context a perturbation does not assume the clear cause-effect nature of a musical instrument (press a key to hear a note, for example). Instead, it allows interactions to manifest as sound, gradually following the course of a composition's generative process. Perturbations introduce new sounds into a composition's aural palette and can subtly reshape the musical character of a work. User choices are acknowledged within a system, but are subject to the dynamics of that system before they can become manifest.
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Tiffany Holmes
Eco-visualization: Combining Art and Technology to
Promote Sustainability
New public art projects that incorporate technology offer a new way to
dynamically visualize hidden environmental information such as power
usage or pollution data. The overall goal of such projects is to
promote sustainable modes of living and good environmental stewardship. The
purpose of this paper is to discuss to potential and limitation of art
and technology to raise awareness about various ecological issues. The
relative success of new eco-visualization projects will be discussed
and analyzed. Eco-visualizations are custom software applications
that create visual and auditory patterns from concealed environmental
information, such as electricity consumption rates in buildings or carbon
monoxide levels in urban parks.
Resource management is possibly the greatest challenge of our collective future due to the negative effects of global warming on industrial and agricultural production. Environmental analyst Lester Brown explains: "Modern civilization is in trouble. We have created a bubble economy, one whose output is artificially inflated by over consuming the earth's natural capital." Ready supplies of electricity and clean drinking water are rapidly diminishing all over the world, perhaps most alarmingly in the Middle East. Yet nearly every known manufacturing process utilizes water and electricity. In other words, water and electricity are inextricably linked to habits of human consumption. Worse, the production of clean drinking water requires enormous amounts of electricity.
There are no easy solutions and no clear paths toward collaboratively addressing the complicated issues of resource conservation. That said, the question becomes: what are artists doing to promote a green agenda using innovative application of existing technology? Media art projects in public space have the capacity raise environmental awareness but there are few proven results in this arena. The goal of this paper is to introduce the concept of eco-visualization as an emerging art form that offers a new way to galvanize public interest in resource conservation and the philosophy of sustainability.back to schedule || more abstracts
Pamela Jennings,
Ph.D.
Interactive Technologies for the Public Sphere: Towards
a Theory of Critical Creative Technology
In our increasingly mediated environment, marked by pervasive and ubiquitous
computing and wireless devices, practices in digital media culture are
no longer limited to screen-based, audiovisual and interactive media
content. These practices address the wider social, urban and global context
of the information environment, through new types of process-based, networked
projects and genres.Approaching the development of a theory, model and
framework for creative critical technology from a hybrid arts / human
computer interaction perspectives permitted me to employ the process
of making as part of the process of theorizing. In other words, the arts
perspective permits the researcher to explore and develop before settling
on generalized principles to form a framework for practice. Whereas a
more traditional approach to research, narrows the field of inquiry so
that general principles can be identified. This process requires the
elimination of confounding variables. However, that noise in the data,
those confounding variables provide the rich context, media, and processes
by which creative practices thrive. As research in the arts gains recognition
for its contributions of new knowledge, the traditional reductive practice
in search of generalized principles will be respectfully joined by methodologies
for defining "living" principles. These "living" principles
celebrate and build from the confounding variables, the data noise, through
the lenses of serendipitous discoveries, playful encounters and revealing
ambiguities. (Gaver, 2003; Sengers et al., 2005; McCarthy & Wright,
2004)
The theory of critical creative technology examines the relationships between critical theories of technology, society and aesthetics, information technologies and contemporary practices in interaction design and creative digital media. The theory of critical creative technology is aligned with theories and practices in social navigation and community-based interactive systems in the development of "smart" appliances and network systems that support people in engaging in social activities, promoting communication and enhancing the potential for learning in a community-based environment. The theory of critical creative technology amends these community-based and collaborative design theories by emphasizing methods to augment and enhance face-to-face dialogical contact when the exchange of ideas, observations, dreams, concerns, and celebrations may be silenced by societal norms about how to engage of others in public spaces. This comparative theoretical study informs the design of technology-based projects, in the spirit of critical creative technologies, as forms of research-in-practice that incorporates the digital media arts, interaction design, critical theory, human computer interaction and engineering.
The Constructed Narratives project is an experiment in the design of a critical creative technology that emphasizes problem solving, negotiation and construction of new knowledge through computer-supported collaborative play (CSCP). To construct is to creatively invent one's world by engaging in creative decision-making and problem solving activities. The act and metaphor of construction is used to demonstrate how a simple artifact - a building block - can provide an interactive platform to support discourse between collaborating participants. The technical goal for this project was the development of a platform for the design of critical creative technology applications that can process a dynamic flow of logistical and profile data from multiple system users that facilitates communication among its users in a real-time interactive experience.
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Kirsten Johannsen
Recreation and Leisure in Outer Space: Designing Art
for Microgravity Environments
The paper will focus on physiological and psychological transformations
that spacefarers experience during extended space missions into the extreme
environment of the universe. It will evaluate the complexity of the nature
of space: the opposition of the void and the plenum represented in the
universe and the planet earth. The paper will explore the potential metaphors,
which artists can use to create dialogue about these issues.
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Jennifer Kanary
roomforthoughts: Suicide Pigeon – A Clear Thought in
a Psychotic Mind
The art practice of roomforthoughts tries to formulate an answer to the
question of what a thought is. Its artistic research aims to investigate
its own role and position of knowledge within a philosophical and scientific
context. On a theoretical level "roomforthoughts" aspires to
fulfill a synaptic function in case study art projects within the field
of the scientific and philosophical problems of consciousness. Creating
a two-way stream of knowledge roomforthoughts hopes to discover possibilities
to employ its art as a tool of knowledge making room for a new way of
commissioning art in scientific research.
Roomforthoughts will talk about the artwork ‘Suicide Pigeon…a clear thought in a psychotic mind…' as its first case study of its artistic research within M-Node. It will talk about its epistemological function within the scientific study of psychoses and schizophrenia inspired by the idea of schizophrenics having consciousness disorders. (José M. Villagrán, 2003 ). It will exanimate if and how scientific, philosophical and social information on psychosis is embedded within the artwork involving invited target group viewers such as psychologists, people who have experienced a psychosis together with their family members. Its focus is on the relation between the intent of the artist and the perception of the viewer in understanding what it is like to be psychotic. The project will take place at Lokaal 01, Breda, the Netherlands and opens on September 29th 2006. The artwork is based on personal experience with a family member that recently committed suicide.
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Hung Keung
Interactivity and Continuity: Methodology and Belief
Behind Time and Space of Chinese Painting
This research paper aims to explain how the concept of space and time
is applied in Chinese painting and analyzes the effects of this practice
and beliefs by illustrating the background and the philosophy with the
significant examples. Furthermore, this paper will go on to discuss the
possibilities of transformation and representation of time and space
from Chinese art into a reinvented, interactive environment-space.
The research will initially study the development of Chi-nese painting from Han Dynasty to Sung Dynasty. And then go to discuss the author's art works in relation to their concept of the space and time. The further discussion will demonstrate how the philosophy of Chinese painting applies to interactivity.
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Lali Krotoszynski
Choreographing Moving Image: Shared Creative Processes
Between Artist, Users and Computer
Since very early in cinema history, until the present, the 24 pictures
per second proportion in capturing and reproducing motion has been the
mainly used technique. The idea of reproducing movement in a way that
it could be perceived as closely to how we see it happening in reality
has ruled the production of a consistent repertoire in film and video
in our culture. This has taught us to see and read image in movement
in such a way that what turns out to be evident is the narrative structure
underlined by a script, and not the constitutional elements that create
the moving image itself.
As a choreographer, I am interested in building movement from stillness, and want to develop moving and sounding images that present their own aesthetical proposal.
Many of the intrinsic properties of a system consisted in an irregular succession of projected images, sound samples and our own cognitive system create its own coherence relations and extend our perception further from our established set of ways of experiencing composition in time and space?
I will present three works that I have developed motivated by the question above: Dance Juke Box, ENTRE, and Bodyweave 1.0 and 2.0.
The idea of Self-organization, the I-Ching, the Hai-Kai and Eisenstein's and Vertov´s movie theories are the major references in the structure of these computer interface works; while the interaction with them result in experiences close to the VJ and the DJ universes.back to schedule || more abstracts
Daniela Kutschat
Hanns, Ph.D.
Interactive Environments: Towards an Epistemology –
Models and Methodologies for Interactive Design
Interactive environments are living systems, in which response, behavior
and adaptability potentials, materiality, appearance, and learning abilities
are as important as energy exchange and empathy; i. e. sensorial and
affective effects on two or more different systems (human-computer-city-architecture
etc.).
The development of interactive environments demands an interdisciplinary approach between artists, designers, computer scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, architects and engineers able to promote new development methodologies. This papers investigates:
a) the cultural and cognitive impacts of interface technology in contemporary interactive environment paradigms in São Paulo, Brazil;
b) the epistemology of interaction and interface design in singular interactive environments, considering different approaches.
It brings the result of the research developed at the IERL – SENAC, São Paulo, Brazil.
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Pierre Lévy, Ph.D.
An 'Artificial Life' Model of Collective Intelligence
in an Infinite Mathematically Addressed Semantic Space
The proposed communication introduces a computable model for the observation
and simulation of collective intelligence in cyberspace. It presents
also the first test of a « semantic engine » implementing
this model on real data.
I assume the existence of an infinite abstract semantic space, that can welcome all concepts and relations between concepts, whatever the cultural environments where they are created and transformed. The semantic space is addressed by a formal metalanguage, called IEML (Information Economy MetaLanguage). IEML can be considered as the coordinate system of the semantic space. It is designed in such a way that (a) each distinct concept has a unique address, (b) semantic distances can be mathematically computed between concepts, (c) a group of mathematically defined semantic operations (synthesis, analysis, ranking, substitution, inversion, rotation, projection) on concepts preserve some invariancies. A semantic function, or semantic gene, is a sequence of semantic operations.The metalanguage is based on five semantic primitives (virtual, actual, sign, being, thing) that can be considered as the elements of the semantic space. A first level of complexity is defined as the set of possible information flows between pairs of elements. Any of these 25 information flows becomes in turn the possible source, destination or mediator for a higher level of complexity, and so on, up to the fifth level of complexity, defining the « phrases » (1023 possibles phrases) - or semantic atoms - of the metalangage. The phrases can be recognized and processed by a finite state machine.
Oriented graphs of phrases constitute semantic molecules. They describe circuits of information flows between semantic atoms. These graphs can be used for the indexation, or tagging, of digital documents, and for the description of any network and process. At a higher level of complexity, an IEML ontology is defined as a group of semantic functions able to produce, transform, interpret and organize a set of semantic molecules. Organized by an IEML ontology, a set of semantic molecules constitute an IEML corpus, or semantic organism. A corpus is the output of an ontology re-entered as its input in an autopoietic loop. It is therefore an autopoietic and self-referential machine, the ontology working as a semantic code. The metalanguage allows to copora organized by different ontologies to communicate by cross-interpretation and exchange of semantic graphs (« molecules ») and semantic functions (« genes »). Societies of semantic organisms compose conceptual ecosystems, that can represent the functionning of collective intelligences, or complex heterogeneous cultural ecosystems in evolution.As an indexation tool, IEML can be used to solve the so-called « semantic interoperability problem » that is currently slowing down the development of the semantic web. It has also the ability to transform the cyberspace into a reflexive observatory of human collective intelligence at various scales. The initial IEML vocabulary has more than 2000 terms translated in natural languages. A wiki is currently under construction to allow diverse communities to translate their terminologies into IEML. A semantic search engine based on IEML is also under construction by an international research network. This semantic engine will be tested on several multilingual databases indexed in IEML, in the fields of public health, food industry, e-commerce and more in the coming years.
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Katia Maciel
Transcinema
The history of cinema is experimental: to experiment possible supports
for the image, formats for projection and sound. The research on film
production and exhibition mechanisms is ongoing in the cinema experience.
The research of ways to tell and assemble film narratives by means of
linear or non-linear temporal structures also built the history of cinema.m
In the 21st century, with the acceleration produced by new image technologies,
what goes on is only the potentialisation of these researches. Contemporary
cinema is part of this complex network of transformations, due to new
technological possibilities. New links between distinct techniques turned
the cinema into a hybrid between past and future images intermingled
in experimental narratives. Transcinema is cinema as interface,
i.e. as a surface which we can cross. Nowadays a group of cinematographic
installations allows the spectator to go into the space of the canvas
and often through it, not only mentally or visually, but with his whole
body. He goes through sensorial experiences of spatial images, from multiple
perspectives, altering and editing the narrative in which he is immersed.
These new images forego classic literary and linear forms, and produce
new visibility circumstances when they further original access paths
to the spectator, a spectator transformed into "participant" .
The "participant" is the subject immersed in the experience
of the images, not before them, as the renaissance subject, but within
them, as in virtual reality systems. In that case the "participant" integrates
the proposed experience, no longer one who watches what goes on, but
an interactive subject who chooses and surfs the movie in its hypertextual
composition; its multi-temporal, multi-spatial and off-centred dimensions;
connecting a network of image and sound fragments and multiplying narrative
senses.
We would like to present a few experiences of what we envisage as transcinema, that is, an image formed to generate or create a new construction of cinema space-time in which the presence of the participant activates the developing plot. An image under metamorphosis that can be updated by multiple projections, in blocks of image and sound, in interactive and immersive environments - transcinema as a hybrid between the experience of visual art and cinema to create a space for the spectator's sensorial involvement.
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Roger Malina, Ph.D.
Ask Not What the Sciences Can Do for the Arts
The Leonardo Organisations are celebrating their fortieth anniversary
in 2008. Over this period Leonardo Journals and Books have published
a the work of over 4000 artists and researchers. There is now a substantial
community of practive that appropriates relevant aspects of science and
technology into art making. As recently emphasised by Roy Ascott, we
can now begin to ask whether the reverse process, influence of the arts
on science and technology, is taking place. One mechanism of interest
is the growingnumber of programs that place artists as researchers within
science laboratories and industry R & D departments. In a few cases
programs for scientists in residence in art contexts are being developed.
It can be argued that these questions are important to the societal changes
that must occur if our technoscientific society is to develop sustainable
responses to climate change and other limits to growth on our planet.
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David McConville
Cosmological Cinema:
Pedagogy, Propaganda, and Perturbation in Early Dome Theaters
Cultures from around the world have long turned to the dome of the heavens
to better understand the cosmos. This perceived curvature has manifested
architecturally throughout the world, and domes have been used to enclose
the most sacred environments of many cultures. In the 20th century, it
became possible for the first time to radially extend mental images onto the
dome screen using projections of light. The ability to completely immerse
the visual field of audiences in a mediated environment, made possible by
advancements in engineering, mechanics, and electronics, was seized upon by
numerous pioneers across a wide range of contexts. Like their historic
predecessors, these modern multi-sensory sanctuaries continued to reflect
the cosmologies and motivations of their creators, subtly affecting the
evolutionary trajectory of the cultures from which they emerged. This paper
is an attempt to shed light on the largely forgotten history, context, and
motivations behind these early dome theaters.
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Cristina Miranda
de Almeida, Ph.D.
The Silence of the Artistic I Listening for Bringing
the Nanoscale to Human Consciousness
Eastern and Western philosophies and practices like Buddhism, Taoism,
Sufism, Jewish Tradition and Consciousness Studies suggest that the silencing
of the ego, self, or I, is an essential basis for reaching wider and
deeper levels of consciousness. In art the silence of the I takes the
form of the silence of the artistic I. This concept can be un-derstood
as the giving up of the artistic personality by an artist in order to
expand her/his consciousness to co-create with different forms of alterity
that can be inscribed in other dimensions of reality.
The physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual and electronic dimensions of reality display specific qualities in relation to time, space and matter. The artist listens to the different characteristics of each of these dimensions and brings them forth to our threshold of experience and perception. This produces an expanded awareness and consciousness of these realms and introduces them in the flux of our conscious memory, imaginary and imagination.
The central objectives of this paper are of two kinds. The first kind is focused on the concept of silence of the artistic I as an essential element in the search for deeper levels of consciousness and perception. The second kind of objectives addresses how art contributes to the increase of consciousness and perception by materializing, and making manifest, the features of some dimensions of reality that, although scientifically recognized, are barely perceived. In this sense, I will re-fer to art experiences linked to the nanodomain and nanotechnology.
Firstly, I will start with a quick overview of the theories of the self/Self, in ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western thought (1) to show how the concept of silence of the I is a focal point of the convergence of the inquiry in different fields of thought and experience; a point where consciousness, technology and art meet, and (2) to study how the silence of the artistic I is also present, to some de-gree, in these contemporary artistic experiences linked to the nanodomain. Secondly, I will synthesize some of the characteristics of matter, time, space, and the quality of experience, that configure the nanodomain, to show some of the features and principles that constitute this dimension of reality that artists explore. Thirdly, I will present some examples of contemporary artists working with principles and features of the nanoscale realm, identifying the qualities of the experiences addressed by these artists and, finally, I will highlight the specific nature of the contributions of the new forms of silence of the artistic I that spring from art works in the nanodomain.
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Francesco Monico
Technopoetry Ars
Poetry, from Greek Π______ poesis, literally "creating" is
a form of Art in which a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds,
gestures or written symbols (language) which communicate thoughts or
feelings. Spoken and written languages can be described as a system of
symbols and the rules by which the symbols are manipulated.
Poetry is used for its artistic qualities, in addition to, or instead of, its ostensible meaning, its 'poieutic' qualities. Early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the various uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.
Intellectual disputes over the definition of poetry and its distinction from other genres of literature were inextricably intertwined with the debate over the role of poetic form. The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first half of the twentieth century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry.
Poïesis means "to make" in ancient Greek (creation, from poiein, to make) This word was first a verb, an action that transforms and continues the world. Neither technical production nor creation in the romantic sense, poïetic work reconciles thought with matter and time, and man with the world. It is often used as a suffix as in the biology terms hematopoiesis and erythropoiesis. Martin Heidegger refers to it as a 'bringing-forth'. He explained poiesis as the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a cocoon, the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt.
Retrieving is original meaning "creating" poetry can be used as an euristic tool for probing the relationship between man and technology.
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Juergen Moritz
Sociable Technologies: Relational Artifacts and Empathetic
Devices
"Replacing human contact [with a machine] is an awful idea.
But some people have no contact [with caregivers] at all. If the choice
is going to a nursing home or staying at home with a robot, we think
people will choose the robot."
–Sebastian Thrun
Beyond catalyzing changes in what we do, technology profoundly affects how we think and feel. It may even affect people's self-awareness and redefine their relationships with the world. Recently, however, the effects of technology on our identity have increased. This paper focuses on the notion of "socio-tech", that is on computational devices that may engage the user in quasi-human interactions. By the term "quasi-human" I mean interactive devices, which mimic human emotional states and stimulate strong empathetic reactions. This new generation of empathetic devices will not only pose new challenges for their future technological development and the emerging sciences involved such as neuro science, cognitive science and nano science. These devices not only pose an ontological challenge for us as human beings, they affect the way we conceive and construct new levels of ontology. Recently, a new models of computation: technologies offer new forms of social relationships one can call "relational" Using examples of machines that do tasks in factories and hospitals (NTT's Paro), life-like toys (Furbies, Sony's Aibo or Qrio), and other digital images on the screen (artificial-live.com's virtual partners).
This paper traces the challenges for the emerging sciences involved
such as neuro-science, cognitive-science and nano-science. It also posits
guidelines for novel ontological challenges about how people think and
learn, develop and relate in the future. If we can gain a deeper understanding
about the
nature and implications of this sort of relationship in the future, will
it help us to redefine the scope and shape of the playing field for new
social relationships between humans and machines?
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Joseph Nechvatal
Methods of Viractuality
In this paper-presentation I will address the specificity of digital
technology and viral a-life techniques as they are used to revolutionize
our habits of artistic thinking in exhilarating ways. I will demonstrate
and explore here how digital technology facilitates changes in cultural
consciousness by primarily allowing artists to operate differently through
what I have come to call methods of viractuality.
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Carlos Moreira da Nóbrega
Leaves System: Art Experiment in Plant Communication
and Primary Perception
In the realm of techno-art, the physical space, cyberspace and imaginary
space are entangled. The flux of informational networks may be thought
of as structural lines of an invisible field interconnecting elementary
parts. Sensors, interfaces, organic and artificial bodies are physical
and virtual nodes resonating in response to the system's dynamics. New
digital technologies are shedding light on the space of interconnection
between living systems and, in turn, between themselves and machines.
Interactive art displaces our perception from the object to this inter-relational
field.
Leaves System is an art project that attempts to address the above ideas exploring possibilities of symbiosis and communication bet-ween natural and artificial organisms. This paper aims to report the concepts and development of this project.
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André Parente
The Excitables or "The Art of Taming"
The Excitables are, first of all, picture-devices of a very particular
kind. More than abstract paintings, they are electrostatic machines.
These are objects sensitive to the electrostatic energy that emanates
from the viewer and from the atmospheric conditions, producing visual
and sensorial kinetic effects. The Excitables have two basic components:
a box made of cardboard or wood, equipped with a transparent plastic
cover (usually Plexiglass) and a set of small, mobile and light elements
displayed inside the box. The elements get excited by the action of static
electricity produced by the interaction (friction) between the viewer
and the surface. By rubbing the plastic surface with the back of the
hand one brings up electrical loads that, by induction, create charges
of opposite signs on the elements contained in the box. These elements
are then as much attracted by the plastic as rejected towards the bottom
of the box. The static energy is a subtle and mysterious kind of energy,
although the phenomenon of static electricity is very common in cold
and dry environments. The energy goes from the surfaces under attrition
to our bodies, until they flow through our hands to the objects that
we hold, provoking shocks. Although they are apparently very simple,
in fact the Excitables are interactive-complex-electrostatic objects
that engage not only the viewer - who is only one element of the work,
among others, but the environment as a whole. In between the painting
and the object, the object and the viewer, and the viewer and the environment,
the Excitables are strange magnetic objects that attract and transform
our energies. The Excitables fit into the seminal concept of Jean-Francois
Lyotard of "painting as a pulsional object" - a painting that
cannot be seen as a representation of anything, because it is presented
as a transformer of energy which provokes effects and dispositions on
the viewers. The viewers stop being passive and become a catalyst for
a sensorial and affective update of the work. What is surprising
about the Excitables is how an electrostatic device of interaction between
the painting and the viewer can become a pulsional object which, the
more it gets excited, the more it is exciting. It is almost impossible
to stand next to an Excitable without being tamed by its undirected energy
flow, like what one can experience in front of a dog wagging his tail.
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Kjell Petersen
Emergent Narratives of Telematics
I will present my latest research into performance composition, a large-scale
telematic performance in October 2006, running in Copenhagen. Specific
focus will be on the emergent narrative condition due to the impact of
telematics. I will show how it re-arranges the metaphoric processes of
the language of the stage, and how this can be answered to by dramaturgical
strategies in the creation process. These alterations involve a re-structuring
on modes of presence, new possibilities for constructing the narrative
context, and subsequently lead to a radical new form of directing poiesis
for the performance director.
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Michael Phillips
The View from Here!
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that
is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember
my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.
You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable.
"Criswell Predicts..." Plan 9 From Outer Space, 1958
"The View From Here" is perspective on the world which questions several assumptions about; A) where here is, B) what the view is of, C) through what are we looking at it with. The fragmented mediated realities through which we swim continue to undermine these assumptions and former certainties. An increasing reliance on data to validate and manipulate the view through our eyes provides the substrate for our understanding of the world. This place, the future, where we are going to spend the rest of our lives grows increasingly tenuous, as its roots in the insubstantial present find less and less certainty to feed on.
‘The View From Here' explores critical issues surrounding the shift from the hegemony of the eye to the reliance on autonomous systems to do our seeing for us. Vision dominates our culture and lies at the heart of scientific and artistic endeavour for truth and knowledge. Increasingly the dominance of the human eye is being challenged by a new generation of technologies that do our seeing for us, or at least relieve us of having to take responsibility for what we are looking at. These technologies raise critical questions about the nature of the truth and knowledge they elicit, and the way in which we interpret them. ‘The View From Here' attempts to engage with our understanding of the 'real world' through our senses, whether real or artificially enhanced.
Drawing on several of the authors, past and present, practice based research projects, such as the S.T.I. (The Search for Terrestrial Intelligence) Consortium, Arch-OS, the i-500 and various endeavours of the LiquidPress, this paper explores the evolution of the dissolution of the ‘here' and the dislocation of the ‘view'. In doing so it presents some alternative perspectives on the geocentric positioning systems that traditionally frame our view of the here and now.
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Andrea Polli
Eco-media: Art Informed by Developments in Ecology,
Media Technology and Science
In the 21st century, there has been a resurgence of ecologically conscious
art among artists using new technologies. Like Eco-art, this recent movement,
which might be called Eco-media, is interdisciplinary. Eco-media
is heavily influenced by developments in environmental science, in particular
developments in remote imaging and other kinds of remote Earth sensing
(for example, the widespread use of satellite imaging and GPS) and developments
in computer modeling (for example, detailed global models of climate
that not only model the physics of the Earth and solar system, but also
explore the chemistry and biology of the Earth).
The author will present developments in media art related to the computerized interpretation of complex data sets describing and modeling the natural world. She will make connections between this work and movements in science and art history and will discuss the political dimension of this work as advocating for the preservation of the natural world.
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Michael Punt, Ph.D.
Contingent Realities: The Role of the Creative Arts
Between 1992 and 1995 I led a small group of academics, artists and designers
who surveyed the developments in the emerging digital industry and evaluated
the products. Although the public rhetoric suggested that we were engaged
in the progressive sophistication of interactive design and the convergence
of analogue media in a digital culture, in fact we noticed almost the
reverse. For example it was suggested that reading habits may be utterly
transformed and libraries would become immaterial as books were replaced
by workstations. In fact we noticed that whilst it was true that books
disappeared from libraries and some terminals took their place. In most
cases it was VHS video tape, music CDs and above all coffee bars that
seemed to colonise the vacant shelf space. Similarly it was predicted
that the paper training manual was a thing of the past, some researchers
noticed that digitsation had the reverse effect. Whereas previously one
manual had circulated the office to be used as required, now digital
manuals were printed out individually by everyone and endless copies
of redundant data was stuffed in desk drawers. Above all we noticed that
designers working with CD Rom produced information products that were
almost without exception sinks for man hours as data was stored on the
disc that most users never needed or never found, and that invariably
the interface was over specified for the average machine causing it to
freeze or crash. These tendencies are to a large extent recirculated
today in most corporate webdesign, and for that matter much CD
(and DVD) junkware that comes in the post.
In 1995, after an examination of the discourses that converged on CD Rom and digital media I argued that the cause of its spectacular failure to deliver its promise was the rhetoric_the vapour ware_ that surrounded digital storage and distribution media. Information and product designers were misled by a critical discourse that, with few exceptions, was characterised by four oversights: (i) the idea that technology has agency is a substantial claim that for the better part of three decades has been largely refuted in the Humanities, (ii) the relationship between technology and culture is a complex interaction that (as artists and scholars) we reduce at our peril, (iii) those people who use the inventions of scientists and technologists seldom, if ever, interpret the products in ways that the inventors anticipated . Finally, and this was perhaps a more generalised oversight in all interaction design, that the meaning of any reality is contingent upon the convergence of local and universal forces in a moment of consciousness.
Whatever position one eventually takes in the spectrum of the technology and culture argument will invariably be the consequence of the texture and resolution of the evidence. In our research a decade ago we found that reductive approaches to the question of technology and history began to account for the way that designers failed to understand CD Rom. Moreover, we noticed that a refusal to distinguish between technology and technological systems in much writing collapsed pubic attitudes to technology-as-a-concept into a melange of confusions. A less reductive approach suggested that the lay interpretation of technology was better accounted for as a stable coalition of discrete contradictions, and following this we were more fully able to understand the relationship between technology and its users as a interpretative response to malleable hardware. From this conclusion we made a number of claims including the identification of a specific function for creativity and the interpretation and uses of technology.
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Barbara Rauch
Mapping Virtual Emotions
My research into the neuroscientific model of the unconscious brain and
the non-linearity apparent within dreaming narratives was instigated
during my residency at CAiiA in 1996 – 1997. The dreaming brain offered
a unique model of altered states of consciousness. Throughout the years
I have created a set of works exploring this area of research in comparison
to Virtual Reality models in the WorldWideWeb. This practice-based research
culminated in my PhD thesis: ‘Natural and Digital Virtual Realities'.
The research into the dreaming brain led to my current interest in issues
concerning emotions.
At the moment I am exploring facial expressions in humans and animals. The summit meeting would be an opportunity to present this current AHRC-funded project (Mapping Virtual Emotions: 3D-surface capturing of animated facial expressions in animals and humans) where I use a 3D high-resolution laser scanner to capture animal faces (in association with the Natural History Museum, Horniman Museum and UCL, Dental Institute) and using the data of these faces, animate and then combine them with human emotional facial expressions. In doing so it is hoped to visualize through critical experimentation what evolution has selected and accommodated. While it is often through new technologies that we aim to expand our current understanding of the world, I would question whether it is possible to imagine beyond this in terms of the human perception in the way we analyze and rationalize taking into account the emotional responses we usually house as human beings. I propose with this practice-based research project to question typical assumptions that we usually project onto other forms of existence. The way we think about reality, the world, the surrounding natural environment, including our own creations with new digital technologies are limited by our imaginations. I want to explore how digital technology can alter the way we usually impose our human understanding of the world onto other systems.
My presentation will include a visual diary-like documentation of the practical models produced in the recent years. Furthermore it is hoped that the presentation will portray a personal journey of my 10 years attachment with CAiiA and the issue of the reframing of consciousness.
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Nicolas Reeves
The Cloud Harp Project
The Cloud Harps are meteo-electronic installations that convert the geometry
of passing clouds into sounds and musical sequences, in real time, thanks
to an infra-red laser beam and a telescope sharing the same optics. The
melodies and sounds are determined by data such as cloud height, density,
structure, luminosity, weather conditions…; each cloudscape produces
a particular kind of sequence. They can sing on many different voices
simultaneously, each one being mapped on a specific altitude range. They
can sing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by any weather. When the sky
is blue, they remain silent. They are housed in small architectonic structures
(the "buffets"), whose morphology is also based on cloud structures.
Though the two controlling softwares, Datalidar and Midilidar, have an
algorithmic component, and though the Harp itself is a particular kind
of automaton, the sequences produced by the Cloud Harps do not belong
to the category of automated music : the basic structure of the sequences
is not algorithmically defined, but tries to reflect as closely as possible
the features of the cloud being probed.
The Cloud Harps were born from the exploration of the unexpected notion of « cloud geometry » that appeared in the early 70's. Though rather austere in appearance, this notion is actually loaded with artistic and poetic potentialities. Up to then, clouds were mainly seen as random objects, essentially homogeneous, impossible to reduce to any numerical description : even representing a cloud in a perspective projection was seen as an impossible task. Thanks to the emergence of the theories of complexity, they came to join the category of ordered and organized systems, but by doing so, they completely transformed what was meant by « order » and « organization ». The importance of this change of paradigm cannot be overestimated. It is analogous to the discovery by Kepler that planetary motions could be mathematically described and predicted, and were not random, nor controlled by the will of gods. After the clouds, many other natural phenomena became accessible to such formal description, and the new families of order thus revealed opened huge territories of research for artists, architects and designers. In this lecture, I will describe how the Cloud Harp project tries to explore a tiny part of these territories, through its roots, evolution and current state. I will also raise some of the fundamental questions it asks at the level of musical composition, and present some of its connections with related contemporary researches.
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Semi Ryu
Virtual Puppet and Storytelling: From KOKTOO GAKSI
to CoPuppet
Puppetry is one of the most ancient forms of performance in the world.
Even though it was universally popular form in the past, most of traditional
puppet theatres have lost their popularity today. People seem to live
far away from the magic of puppetry these days. In Korea, puppet was
often worshipped as images of gods by ancient people . A shaman evokes
the puppet's spirit through the ritual, in this inherent mysticism of
the puppet. Puppetry is in the absolute paradox where human/object, real/unreal
and life/dead meet together.
Korean puppet drama was also a folk art form preserved only by oral tradition. Most of the cases, puppeteer was not literate. All the narrative in puppet theatre was descended from mouth to mouth, for a long period of time. Nomadic tradition of puppet theatre also reinforced the natural organization of oral descending story line. The storytelling of puppetry establishes a myth and legend, reflecting culture, religion and critics of time. Puppeteers all belongs to the lowest social class who were oppressed mistreated or even persecuted. Puppet plays were vehicles for their satire and criticism in society.
In this talk, Semi Ryu will discuss about interesting aspects of puppetry, related with her art works; 3D animation, "KOKTOO GAKSI", and "HUNGBOGA", and Virtual puppet performance, "YONG-SHIN-GUD" and "CoPuppet". CoPuppet is her recent collaboration with Multimedia lab, University of Rome, Italy, which is a collaborative virtual puppet performance between multiple puppeteers. The possibility of virtual puppetry will be discussed, based on the lessons of ancient puppetry.back to schedule || more abstracts
Andreas Schiffler
Physics/Learning/Gaming
This paper involves the analysis and linkage between computer games and
physics (i.e. game physics) - in particular I will try to trace and describe
how good (or bad) game physics can be sometimes and study the impact
this can have on players and the general view of physics (for example
in education). Examples from media-art and philosophy will be compared
with the engineering and computer-science of game physics.
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Jill Scott, Ph.D.
The Novel Approach: Art as Catalyst – From Global Warming
to Public Debate
Can artistic interpretation be a catalyst to bring the pertinent issues
of Global warming to the general public? Using examples from the history
of projects, which have been developed about this issue, this paper posits
a critical position about the representation of this major problem. In
our program: Artists-in-labs, Switzerland long-term residencies immerse
artist in scientific research labs so that they can stand in the middle
of an informed debate and be prepared for more scientifically robust
interpretation and information.
Currently, we are developing collaboration with the Planetarium in Lucerne and the Environmental Science Group at the Geobotanic Institute,which will focus on specific issues, ones that directly affect local glacial formation, agriculture and energy consumption. Our methodology in this collaboration is novel because we have created a contextual space where the discourse between the artists and the scientists will inform the educational approach. Inspired by Loyd Anderson, director of science at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Art (NESTA) in the UK, collaborative thematic spaces and field trips or thematic expeditions are processes or 'agoras'. By 'agoras' he means a substantial creation of time and space in which ethical discussions can take place and ideas can flow. By using an interesting ecological metaphor, he likens the creation of these contextual spaces to the creation of 'green corridors' in biology. In biology, these corridors are not isolated biotopes, but holistic fields and communities, which can promote diversity exchange.
We believe that the artists one should invite for such a journey should be carefully chosen, with some prior background in the Life Sciences. In another project funded by Greenpeace, entitled Cape Farewell, David Buckland sailed to Antarctica with a group of scientists, artists, journalists, musicians, TV camera persons and high school teachers. Inspired by a book entitled "The Future of Ice" by Gretel Ehrlich, the aim was to make creative works about global warming alongside the collection of empirical measurements about the effects of global warming on the ice. Although it is a great strategy to visit a place where the effects of climate changes are obvious, unfortunately the group of artists and writers who accompanied the scientists tended to romanticize ice as a beautiful sculptural material instead of constructing artworks, which engage the public in the actual ethical debate at hand.
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Bill Seaman, Ph.D.
Neosentience: A New Branch of Scientific and Poetic
Inquiry Related to Artificial Intelligence
Neosentience, a potentially new branch of scientific inquiry related
to artificial intelligence, was first suggested in a paper by Bill Seaman
as part of a new embodied robotic paradigm, arising out of ongoing theoretical
research with Otto E. Rossler. Rossler, theoretical biologist and physicist,
and Seaman, artist-researcher, have been examining the potential
of generating an intelligent, embodied, multi-modal sensing, and computational
robotic system. Although related to artificial intelligence the goal
of this system is the creation of an entity exhibiting a new form of
sentience. Its unique qualities will be discussed. "Sen-tience" is
not yet used in the formal languages of either Cogni-tive Science or
Artificial Intelligence. Two related approaches are: 1) The generation
of artificial minds via parallel processing, in a robotic system. 2)
An alternate approach is the generation of an Electro-chemical Comp-uter
as a robotic system. Biomem-etics, along with state of the art computer
visualization is emp-loyed. The Electrochemical paradigm has a complexity
that exceeds standard computational means. The scientific and the
poetic elements of the project are motivated by human sentience. The
sentient entity is initially modeled on our functional definition of
human sentience. The system involves synthetic "drives" as
a new element. We seek to articulate the differences to living brains.
This transdisciplinary approach necessitates different forms of inquiry
are informing this project; Cognitive Science including psychology, education/learning,
neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, biology and the
arts. We believe this research to be of importance.
This paper was co-written with Otto Rossler.
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Edward Shanken
Beyond Beyond Modern Sculpture: Historiography, Methodology,
Teleology
This paper examines the historiographical and methodological underpinnings
and contributions of Jack Burnham's influential magnum opus on the history
of art and technology, Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968). This research
enables a clearer understanding of the foundations of current thinking
about the writing of entwined histories of art, science and technology,
particularly with respect to contemporary practice and literature. Burnham's
rejection of the art and technology in his 1980 essay, "Art and
Technology: the Panacea that Failed" is reconsidered in light of
his commitments to structuralist theory and my conclusion discusses the
ways in which Burnham's writings from the late 1960s continue to offer
valuable insight into contemporary theory and practice.
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Yacov Sharir & Barbara
Layne
Twining: A Demonstration in Wearable Computing
Barbara Layne and Yacov Sharir will introduce their first collaborative
project, Twining. The presentation will discuss wearable computing
devices and the intersection of their individual research in dance/choreography
and the textile arts. A demonstration of their new wearable interactive
system will show how this device can affect onstage interaction and offer
new communication possibilities with the audience.
Wearable Computing and Dance
Dancer and choreographer Yacov Sharir seeks to discover how electronic
and sensory devices affect the way we communicate. He demonstrates
how wearable systems are more than just wristwatches, jewelry devices
or motion tracking devices. They can posses the full functionality
of computers, wireless communication systems, and be completely interactive. By
augmenting sensory devices and attributes, they can fully function
as a medium for inscription. They accept/detect human moves,
morphing, scaling, making color changes and adding new dimensions of
expression and meaning to performance.
Innovative Textile Structures
Textile artist, Barbara Layne, has been conducting material research
in the Textiles Lab of Hexagram, the Institute for Research and Creation
in Media Arts and Technology. Dynamic textiles are constructed by integrating
Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and electronic circuitry into the structure
of hand woven fabrics. The array of LEDs present changing patterns
and scrolling texts, much like an electronic message board.
Twining
The Twining project brings together complementary creative approaches
in wearable computing by Layne and Sharir. The collaboration
has provided an opportunity for Sharir to further his research in wearable
devices through the inclusion of a dynamic display in the costume,
adding another level of meaning. Layne's interest in expressive
textiles is extended through the performative context. Issues
of temporality and transformation are compounded as the performance
alters the surface of the costume. Choreo-graphed movement will be
generated from gestures and actions employed in the labor of cloth
production. Wearable devices that incorporate remote communications
will enable a real-time interaction, creating an improvisational space
in which "textile" is experienced as action.
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Diana Reed Slattery
Speaking with the Other: Knowledge Acquisition in the
Psychedelic Sphere
This paper focuses on an aspect of my research into—and in—altered
states of consciousness. There can be many reasons, some as old
as human culture, for using botanicals and synthetics to alter consciousness: creation
and performance enhancement; entheogenic invocation; recreation; meditation;
physical and psychological healing; divination; and as a noetic or knowledge-centered
practice. To be sure, these aspects can be intertwingled in any
given experience, and several of these categories could be subsumed under
the noetic rubric. It is this aspect of psychedelic experience
that has captured my interest—not only the content of such experience
but how the experience of knowing in non-ordinary realities compares
with knowing in ordinar, baseline reality.
How to get from Kansas to not-Kansas and back with something to show
for it, more than postcards, and fragmentary reports trailing off into "you
had to have been there," is part of the problematic of psychedelic
knowledge acquisition. Ineffability—the limitations of natural language—is
often, as in mystical experience, cited as an obstacle to knowledge transfer. But
recent reports of important scientific findings and technological developments
enabled by chemically altered states (the DNA double helix by Francis
Crick and the PCR chain reaction by Kary Mullis, both Nobel Prize achievements
foundational to molecular biology and genomic research) point to practical
uses for such knowledge.
My method, evolved over an eight year period of research, involves field
recordings: writings and drawings done while on the journey, from
liftoff to re-entry. Most recently, this writing has been done with the
visual language, Glide, a set of 27 glyphs whose forms move and morph. When
the forms leave the conventional two-dimensional writing surface and
navigate in spiral waves through three-space, their traces are called
LiveGlide. I (a designation by pronoun which it/self transmogrifies
during the process) write, draw, or algorithmically inscribe using Live
Glide, whose self-instruction manual includes a myth of origin in a psychedelic
state, and whose purpose, as a symbolic system, is to facilitate the
languaging of the complex, multidimensional perceptions in altered states.
I will touch on the connection between knowledge acquisition and the encounter with the Other or Others, a common experience in the diversely populated psychedelic sphere. It is in dialogue and encounters, from the numinous to the hilarious, with these Others that knowledge is often transmitted.
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Chris Speed, Ph.D.
Ecological Footprints in the Snow
The consequences of various world plans could be computed and projected.
All world data would be dynamically viewable and picturable and relayable
by radio to all the world, so that common consideration in a most educated
manner of all world problems by all world people would become a practical
event.
This paper offers an insight into the affects of Social Computing technologies upon our understanding of our local and global environment. Through GPS technologies it is possible to receive a complimentary interpretation of the space that we inhabit. As these ocular and aural visions become co-licensed with other forms of live data new augmented landscapes will unfold before our eyes.
Defined to date by what is available through global mapping api's and data that is in the public domain, we can begin to predict the type of augmented knowledge spaces that we will live in, for example how our driving experience will change as your TomTom combines GPS data with www.mapsexoffenders.com.
This paper speculates on the potential for social data to begin modifying these knowledge spaces when combined with live ecological data. Social Navigation research has established technologies for affecting user navigation in online and actual spaces (Hook) and ecological monitoring systems have demonstrated their effectiveness in modifying personal energy usage (Orr). As these systems are integrated we can anticipate a live model of consequence as we consume and produce space through versions of Fullers Geoscope on our mobile phones.
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Neil Spiller
Catching Nature's Breath in the Genetic Gazebo
Strong Artificial Intelligence is predicated on the notion that it is
possible to create intelligences (whether organic, viral or digital)
that by their advanced learning and sensing capacities, could far exceed
humanity's limited intelligence. Strong AI's will not mimic human biological
or epistemological tropes. Such mimicry and epistemological cowtowing
is the domain of Weak AI's which can never pass humanities blinkered
point of view.
To achieve Strong AI, Intelligences need to have the ability to ‘emerge' epistemologies, to observe and sense the world and feedback with that world as an ongoing ‘conversation' of observation and observing of observing. They need the ability to in some sense change and vary. In fact this is the way we work and gain our know-ledge and characterisation of the world complete with its epistemological variety and blatant errors. This part of the ‘Com-municating Vessels' project (a drawn and written architectural project) is a speculation on Strong AI, machine evolution, memory, technologic disappearance, viroid life and demiurgent omnipresence. Its focus is a strange gazebo housing an even stranger architecture machine.
In the late Sixties Nicholas Negroponte, at MIT, was developing research into the construction of what he called an ‘Architecture Machine'. In 1970 Negroponte published the team's research to date. ‘The Architecture Machine' was of course an aspiration that has still to be fully realised. Negroponte's book is much better at specifying the problem inherent in designing a designing machine than delivering a solution. In the book Negroponte goes on to speculate on the internal workings of the Machine, ‘Surely some constraint and consideration is necessary if components are to converge on solutions in "reasonable" time. Components must assume some original commitment, five particular sub assemblies should be part of an architecture machine: (1) a heuristic mechanism, (2) a rote apparatus, (3) a conditioning device, (4) a reward selector, and (5) a forgetting convenience. These five items are only pieces of an architecture machine; the entire body will be an ever-changing group of mechanisms that will undergo structural mutations, bear offspring, and evolve, all under the direction of a cybernetic device.'
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René Stettler
Reframing Semiotic Telematic Knowledge Spaces and the
Anthropological Challenge to Design Interhuman Relations
Drawing on Vilém Flusser's view of the relationship between humans
and the computer, I will attempt to explore a new ontological framework
for our being-in-the-world. Initially, I will start by raising critical
questions regarding our endeavours and efforts to create endlessly expanding
semiotic knowledge spaces based on technological innovation (e.g. Wikipedia
or the Universal Library) in order to reflect on this development from
a Flusserian perspective, i.e. as an anthropological challenge to design
interhuman relations. By searching after new ontological conditions for
humans, technology, and knowledge, I will probe into responses and new
perspectives/models of knowledge sharing. How would we have to rethink
the relation between semiotic telematic knowledge spaces and their structure/architecture,
and the «concrete given» (our relationships, intersubjectivity,
etc.)? What are the consequences of these findings for the macrosocial
structures of encounter where knowledge exchange is a key element? Which
are the epistemic models most suited to articulate a productive interdisciplinary
knowledge exchange?
My approach intends to weave knowledge and space, memory, technology, and lived experience into an ontological fabric, and in so doing, place humans and their communicative needs in the center of my considerations.
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Nicholas Tresilian
The Ideom of Event-Structure
During the 500 years that Western art was unambiguously oriented to the
production and contemplation of objects-in-space, artists developed a
profound understanding of the idiom of 3-dimensional visual space, with
its essential categories of hue, tonality, texture, outline and volume
and the three pillars of object-based art as classically defined: noiseless
(ie `timeless') aesthetic complexity, perceptual compactness and topological
closure. The pedagogy evolved to propagate these values is still predominant
– albeit in modified forms - in the teaching of art today. There is not
yet the same consensus of professional opinion – nor an equivalent pedagogy
– for the idiom of the event-in-time, though Western art as practiced
by professionals is plainly now undergoing a massive evolutionary migration
from the art-object to the art-event and from contemplative to interactive
imagery. The proposed presentation will apply contemporary electronic
technology to a complex pattern of events – the dynamics of a waterfall
in Wales – with a view to exploring salient aspects of the idiom of the
event-in-time, both its natural measures of frequency, amplitude, velocity,
orientation, momentum, and its characteristic event-structures: phase-transitions,
wave-forms, patterns of mutual interference, jumps between energy-levels,
mergings, mixings, vanishings, flows from order to chaos/chaos to order,
mutual equilibria, basins of attraction etc. – features of the event-universe
which a new pedagogy of the art-event-in-time must eventually address.
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Lenara Verle
MIND VJ: An Interface to Manipulate Moving Images in
Real-time Using Brain Waves
The role of the VJ is to create a visual performance in real time, inspired
by the rhythm and flow of the DJ's music performance. In MIND VJ, the
idea is to use the rhythm of our own brain waves as the conducting element
for the performance. In this manner, we can tap into a normally "hidden" area
of our body (brain function and its electrical activity) and make it "visible" in
the form of projected images.
In this case, the images projected are not wave graphs, like the ones usually plotted by medical EEG machines, but artistic images, undergoing real-time changes and manipulations controlled by the current brain wave output of the subject.The MIND VJ system is built using the following