2007
international festival for art, science and new technologies
CENA / PRICE 290 Kč / € 11,–
2007
festival schedule 05/11/2007 – 07/01/2008
festival locations
Exhibitions
Performances
Conference
07. 11. 2007 – 07. 01. 2008
08. 11. 2007, 19.30 (20 min.)
08. – 10. 11. 2007, 9.00 – 18.00
Kampa Museum, Opening reception: 07. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 18.00 | 120 / 60 Kč (student)
1D_ENTITY [Identity] 1n0ut: Robert Praxmarer & Reinhold Bidner with Yasmine Hugonnet
MUTAMORPHOSIS
POINT-LINE UNIVERSE – Frank J. Malina (1912 – 1981)
05. – 09. 11. 2007
TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN LABS
Academy of Sciences, Opening reception 05. 11. 2007, 18.00 10.00 – 19.00 | Free entry 05. – 09. 11. 2007 WEB 2.0 GENERATION Academy of Sciences, Opening reception 05. 11. 2007, 18.00 10.00 – 19.00 | Free entry 08. – 27. 11. 2007
I, RESIDENT
French Institute, Opening reception: 08. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 20.00 (from 12. 11. MO–FR 10.00 – 19.00) 50 / 25 Kč (student)
French Institute
10. 11. 2007, 21.00 (31 min.)
SAFE DISTANCE REVISITED Joachim Montessuis French Institute 60 / 30 Kč (student)
09. – 11. 11. 2007, 18.00 (180 min.)
RECREATION OF BZ REACTION
Antony Hall Stone Bell House 80 / 40 Kč (student)
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Municipal Library 200 / 100 Kč (student) / per session
Panel
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06. 11. 2007, 17.00
PHILANTHROPY 2.0
United Nations office (nám. Kinských 6, Praha 5)
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Workshop
International festival for art, science and new technologies
08. 11. 2007, 16.00
Jára Cimrman on Google Map: How to Mash Your CV
08. 11. – 11. 11. 2007
(05. 11. 2007 – 07. 01. 2008)
Academy of Sciences
Prague, Czech Republic
08. – 11. 11. 2007
UNSAFE DISTANCE
Stone Bell House 10.00 – 21.00 | 80 / 40 Kč (student) 08 – 25. 11. 2007
BLUE MORPH – Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski
10. – 18. 11. 2007
09. 11. 2007, 19.00; 10. 11. 2007, 17.30; 11. 11. 2007, 19.00
Goethe Institute Opening reception: 10. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 18.00 | Free entry 28. 11. 2007 – 30. 12. 2007
ZOOSYSTEMATICIAN
CIANT Gallery 16.00 – 21.00 (WE–SU) | Free entry
Academy of Sciences (Národní 3, Praha 1) French Institute (Štěpánská 35, Praha 1)
French Institute 50 / 25 Kč (student) 09. – 11. 11. 2007, 17.00
ON VAMPYROTEUTHIS INFERNALIS
Locations
Screenings
CIANT Gallery 16.00 – 21.00 (WE–SU) | Free entry
Goethe Institute (Masarykovo nábřeží 32, Praha 1) Kampa Museum (U Sovových mlýnů 2, Praha 1) Stone Bell House (Staroměstské náměstí 13, Praha 1) CIANT Gallery (Křížkovského 18, Praha 3)
THE BEST OF PEPINIERES I, II, III
Info centre and conference venue Municipal Library (Mariánské náměstí 2, Praha 1)
DANGEROUS LIASONS
08. 11. – 10. 11. 2007 08.30 – 19.00
09. 11. 2007, 17.30; 11. 11. 2007, 17.30
MACHINIMA FILMS
Contact enter3@ciant.cz, http://enter3.org
09. 11. 2007, 21.00
SYNKEN
10. 11. 2007, 19.00
SOFT SCIENCE
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Tickets available at locations. The festival is part of the Week of Science and Technology, a project of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Passes available at Info centre.
i n te rn a t i o n a l fes t i v a l fo r a r t , s c i e n c e a n d n e w te c h n o l o g i es
4 | 5 EDITORIAL
For the third time we introduce ENTERmultimediale festival, however, this time with profound changes. Even a first glance suggests the difference: the title of the new media art festival reads as short as one word: ENTER. The keyboard element used most, to enter a new line of text, today symbolises more of an action, the beginning of a process, a becoming. However, this symbol is not necessarily positive all the way round. It can also denote destruction, both metaphorically and literally. When your Personal Computer (PC) asks: “Are you sure that you want to permanently delete the selected item(s)? “, you may double-check what you are about to delete. But sometimes, when in a hurry, you can press the button and lose all unsaved data. Your digital past can be is lost, the past which has been increasingly machine dependent ever since the `80s. And what about intercontinental ballistic missiles? Most likely they are shot via one press of the enter key on an army super-computer keyboard, with the disappearance of whole cities or even states/countries as consequence. The ENTER festival is now both more radical and universal at the same time. Besides keeping an eye on technological developments in art and their intersections with science, the festival has become more political, sharing
interest in social context as well as the history and future of humans. Still, a focus on the role of science in all these issues remains. What are the influences and their directions? Is art working for science, or science for art? ENTER3 on the one hand introduces/presents an emerging generation of artists who are entering science labs, working and living on computer networks daily, as well as explores scientific theories and theories of artistic “avant-gardes”. On the other hand, the festival introduces for the first time on the international level, a retrospective exhibition of Frank J. Malina, a renowned pioneer of light kinetic art, but also a rocket engineer and founder of Leonardo journal which has created one of the first communities of artists and scientists working together. CIANT joined Leonardo, Hexagram and Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes in order to organise an international conference MutaMorphosis which aims to challenge arts and sciences while focusing on extreme environments. It is a great pleasure today to see the ENTER festival evolving. It offers the audience a new kind of event which looks back in history and ahead to the future at the same moment, and which connects the artistic, research and scientific activities of more than 100 practitioners from all continents. Pavel Smetana, October 2007
DIRECTOR Pavel Smetana • CHIEF CURATORS Denisa Kera, Pavel Sedlák •CURATORS Louis Bec, Vít Havránek, Radka Peterová, Pavel Smetana, Petra Vargová, Mahir Mustafa Yavuz RESTAURATOR OF WORKS BY F.J.M ALINA Milan Guštar •PHOTOGRAPHER OF WORKS BY F.J.M ALINA Jiří Thýn • HEAD OF PRODUCTION Jan Šebek •PRODUCTION TEAM Veronika Bauerová, Aurélie Besson, Karolína Brosková, Ivor Diosi, Dan Houštek, Stéphane Kyles, Sylvie Milerová, Michal Máša, Marta Procházková, Pavel Sterec, Viliam Šimko • MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICER Eduard Piňos WWW
Michael Klánský, Bradahood•GRQAPHIC DESIGNERS Jakub Havránek, Dan Mayer –
& Matěj Syxra – ISBN / EAN 978-80-254-0690-8
2007
CONTENTS 4 | 5
contents Introduction
4
1. Point-Line-Universe
6 8 16
2. I, resident
28 30 31 32 33 34 35 35 36 37 37 38 39 40 40 41 42 43 43
Who was F. J. Malina? by Vít Havránek Life of Frank Joseph Malina by Fabrice Lapelletrie Teresa Almeida: Space Dress Beloff-Berger-Pichlmair: Seven Mile Boots Thomas Cimolaï / Giorgio Partesana: In The Inquiry Of The Frame Takumi Endo: Phonethica Antony Hall: Enki Štěpán Kleník: Internet Stéphane Kyles: Subway Layout Dardex & Mort2faim: The Camping Station & Breakage-Brik Joerg Piringer: Soundpoems URTICA: Dictionary Of Primal Behaviour & Social Engine 1n0ut: 1Dentity Joachim Montessuis: Safe Distance Revisited The Best Of Pépinières Machinima Films Adam Zaretsky: Dangerous Liasons Transforma & O.S.T.: Synken Soft Science Silver: Intrigue
3. Unsafe Distance
Paul Adderley & Michael Young: Ground Breaking Shawn Bailey & Jennifer Willet: BIOTEKNICA: Teratologies Boo Chapple: Rebreathe Martin Kermes: In the name of... SIC & RIXC Media Collective: Voodoo Planet Peter Cusack: Sounds from Dangerous Places
Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto: Pigeonblog Florian Grond & Claudia Robles: Intermittent L.-P. Demers, Garry Stewart, Australian Dance Theatre: Devolution Karen Ingham: Vanitas: Seed Head Antony Hall: Recreation of BZ reaction Louis-Philippe Demers: The Mechanized Eccentric Series Kuda.org: Safe Distance
44 46 47 47 48 48 49 49 50 50 51 51 52 52
Pavel Kopřiva: Red Light Insecurity Howard Boland & Laura Cinti (c-lab): Martian Rose Radim Labuda: The All Seeing Eye I.+II. Lukáš Machalický: Whatever You Say – Say Nothing! II. Gordana Novakovic: Fugue Rachel Mayeri: Primate Cinema Andrea Polli: The Queensbridge Wind Power Project Rob O’Neill: Dataface Stelarc: Ear on Arm project Paul Thomas / Kevin Raxworthy: Midas Pavel Sterec, Aleš Čermák, Jan Trejbal: Ears
53 53 54 54 55 55 56 56 57 58 59
4. CIANT Gallery
60 62 63
5. Web 2.0 Generation
64 66 66 67
6. Transgenesis: Artists in Science Labs Pavel Sterec & Vilém Novák: Expogenica Martin Kermes: Spiritus Animalis Lucie Svobodová: bio+bio- BIO+BIO- Petr Šourek: The Golden Dionysus Martin Pouzar: Cube In Cube Linda Čihařová: Streptomyces Pavel Kopřiva: Nanoface
Vladimir Todorovic´ & Andreas Schlegel: Pražská zemina (Prague Soil) Gabriela Jurkovičová & Viktor Soukal: The Weight Of Time Marta de Menezes: Nature / Decon / Proteic Portrait
70 72 72 72 73 73 74 74 75 75 76
7. On Vampyrotheutis Infernalis by Louis Bec
78
8. Mutamorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences
84 86 90 86 87 88
Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski: Blue Morph Louis Bec: Zoosystematician
Enter the WEB 2.0 universe Choose Your Network Novum Theatrum Mundi
Plenary Speakers Main Sessions CIANT: Interational Center For Art And New Technologies Organizers Special Thanks
2007
2007
7|7
point-line-universe A retrospective exhibition of Frank Frank J.J. Malina Malina
The foundations “The foundationsfor forMalina’s Malina’sdouble doublepersonality personalityasasscientist scientistand andartist artisthad hadalready alreadybeen beenlaid laid from childhood. His scientific personality can best be gathered gathered by by looking looking at at his his main main activities activities in the field of engineering and natural science: science: rocket rocket propulsion, propulsion, astronautics astronautics and andgeophysics. geophysics. As a matter of fact, it was he who designed and launched America’s first first successful successful high-altitude high-altitude rocket in 1945. His artistic personality personality can can be be characterized characterized not not only only by by his his constant constant introduction introduction of scientific observations and theories into his artistic artistic experiments, experiments, but but also also by by the the fact fact that that he he tried to grapple with problems and relationships relationships such such as as those those between between figurative figurative and and abstract abstract art, daylight and artificial light, light, virtual virtual and and real real movement, movement, geometrical, geometrical,surrealist surrealistor orrealist realistsubject-matter. subject-matter. His His artistic artistic venture venture is characterized is characterized by aby long a long period period of incubation of incubation and and struggling struggling for ideas for ideas culminating culminating about about 19531953 in ain breaking a breaking away away from from the the traditional traditional two-dimensional two-dimensional medium. medium. This was This followed was followed by a series by a series of experiments of experiments in tension, in tension, transparency, transparency, electric electric light light and movement and movement which were whichintroduced were introduced at certain at certain intervals intervals in his works. in his works.”
Museum Kampa
— Frank Popper, In: From Technological to Virtual Art (Frank Popper, In: From Technological to Virtual Art)
07. 11. 2007 – 07. 01. 2008 Curator: Vít Havránek Consultant: Fabrice Lapelletrie
http://www.olats.org/pionniers/malina/malina.php 2007
8 | 9 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE
Few notes to the future monograph of Frank J. Malina
Who was F. J. Malina? An artist, a scientist, an engineer?
T
Frank J. Malina and The WAC Corporal that reached an altitude of 235,000 feet 25 pounds payload, October 11 1945, White Sands Missile Range, USA.
2007
he technical talents and, above all, the brilliant scientific career of Frank Malina which appeared during the first half of his life to be dominant have so far created a strong paradigm for similarly viewing his artistic work. This view of Malina as a scientistartist, or if you like an artist-scientist, undoubtedly corresponds to the facts, but up until now this has to a certain degree predetermined the analysis and interpretation of Malina’s works. Malina’s work primarily finds itself in a causal relation with the technical world. There have been descriptions of its technical nature, and by following the chronology of his technological development itself an internally coherent story has been identified. This has then been compared with the technologies and stories of other kineticists. I believe however that Malina’s primary artistic credo was to directly affect the senses, while the technical construction of his work was not in itself intended to attract the attention of the observer. Here it appears essential to separate the scientific inspiration which Malina espoused and which runs in a thematic level throughout his work, the “scientific symbolism”, and the technical engineering systems which he constructed and used – Lumidyne, Polarydyne etc. The technical approaches of Malina’s creations were innovative (he patented certain systems),
but this did not make his work unique within the context of the kinetic movement. Technology was for Malina a natural instrument of creation, but it did not stand in the center of his thinking as a guiding theme, as was the case for certain other kinetic artists such as Nicolas Schöffer. Schöffer’s vision of the contemporary world was techno-rational. The scientific organization of human work, the explosion of mass media, the automation of manufacturing and its control, all were held to have inherent laws, which Schöffer elaborated and worked into a method of functional rationalism. He subsequently applied this functional rationalism in a utopian manner to future development and civilization as a whole, including politics and the organization of social structures. As is clear today, Schöffer’s linear techno-optimism also contained within itself a threat, which was perhaps most deftly described by George Orwell in his famous book 1984. The rational control of all social processes and functions may lead to the suppression of humanity and the disappearance of many natural attributes. In the context of this period technology was for Malina only an instrument. An instrument which enabled him to most freely express the
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 9 | 9
Frank J. Malina in his studio, 1969, Boulogne-Billancourt, France
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10 | 11 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE currents in his ontological view, in his opinion that the world surrounding individuals can be generally communicated, known and described. Like post-war constructivism, Malina shared a belief in communicable knowledge of the world and objectivity in descriptions of it. This point was the source of a firm division at the time between lyric abstraction coming from existential positions and lyric kineticism which on this matter, like the constructivists, appealed to science and technology as the main sources of mediating understanding of the origin and meaning of the world. Malina’s early water colors and drawings (see untitled drawings 1953) are journeys through an internal world of intuition, a world of internal transformation of the seen, and a world of understanding of cosmic and microcosmic processes. We find in them associations with visualizations of natural cosmic material and immaterial processes, and Malina himself very appropriately characterizes them as „scientific symbolism“. Interesting is a series of collages created by scotch tape (the cycle Miniatures from 1953-1954) in which the recurrent motif is the phenomenon of rhythm, rhythmic repetition and the Collage, 1953–1954, Scotch tape on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families
symbolist poetic vision inspired by the world of science, similar to the manner in which the microscope or telescope afford us views into the microscopic or macroscopic worlds. These technical inventions are an essential condition for such a view, while the meaning of scientific knowledge cannot be reduced purely to its technical applications. We are not suggesting one should emphasize Malina’s artistic sensibilities at the expense of his scientific rigor or distill his Leonardian synthesis, but rather discard the view of his preoccupation with engineering and technical functionality, because this conceals the purely sensuous and poetic-associative dimension of his work and the groundbreaking transformation of sensibility which it brought. In the context of the kinetic movement, in spite of his technical education and scientific background, Malina belonged to the current of “lyric kineticism” which connected to the organic roots of abstraction. Lyric kineticism, similar to lyric abstraction, the Paris school and informal painting shared a common starting point in reference to the organic and spiritual origins of abstract art (Malevič, Mondrian, Kupka). Despite this common starting point Malina fundamentally differed from lyric
2007
Collage, from the Miniatures, 1953–1954, Scotch tape on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 10 | 11 mentation brought him to the central problems of the construction of a picture as a truly three-dimensional hanging object. The polemics and early departure from the method of imitating three-dimensional space using perspective came about in Malina’s work quickly and authentically. Work with wire and the importance of the actual third dimension “behind the picture” as the focus of attention fostered Malina’s interest in the effect of movement on the retina of the observer when changing position in front of the picture. In pictures with the “moiré effect” Malina utilized two layers of linear structures (wires, strings, or rough fabrics). This basically involves the principle of passive movement known from Op-art. For Malina however, as opposed to the mathematically calculated Op-art effects, this interest was driven by a poetic-lyric vision of cosmic life and energy.
Collage, 1953–1954, Scotch tape on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families
associated motif of grids1. Malina’s early shift from working with brushes, chalk, or pencil to the limitations of sculpted tape show the necessity of the independent search for new, rather reductive means of expression. From his first exhibit in Galerii Henri Tronchein 1953, from the internal evolutive perspective the „string“ pictures appear to be key, where on the frame Malina winds strings and wires which he subsequently colors. The string pictures such as String Structure (1953) and Mesh Picture (1953) have fixed material backgrounds, in most cases abstractly colored, or even clean canvas. The picture Sans titre (probably 1954) is a purely linear composition created from metal wires, the background of which forms a wall on which the picture hangs. This simple and conceptually powerful picture is very close to Picabi’s work Danse de Saint-Guy (Tabac-Rat), 1919, cardboard, string, gilded wooden frame. It is of course hypothetical whether Malina knew Picabi’s picture or not, but what is remarkable is how soon after beginning his artistic journey Malina’s intuitive experi1
Rosalind Krauss, Grids , October, Vol. 9, Summer, 1979, pp. 50-64.
Geometry I, 1961, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 62 × 81 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
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12 | 13 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE
Cosmic Ray Showers, 1953, String structure, string, paint, wood, 78 × 49 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
Untitled, 1953, String structure, string, metal rings, Courtesy of Malina Families
Entirely by accident, which as shown by T.S. Kuhn2 is for science (and art) typical, Malina placed a light bulb behind two linear layers of wire grids (Jazz, 1955), resulting in his discovery of the principle of rear projection, which in the systems of Lumidyne and Reflectodyne best suited his need to incorporate the gradually developing aspects of light.
Reflectodyne, Lumidyne
So-called new artistic media are not important due to their newness, as modernism itself ascribes revolutionary significance. New artistic media are important provided that they bring a transformation in the psychology of perception and experience of art work and force a revision of its traditional definitions. As noted in the text for Malina’s catalog from the Prague exhibit in 1966 by František Šmejkal3 his Lumidyne system “acts directly on the sensibilities of the viewer” 4. Popper speaks of a “pure sensation”. Walter Benjamin 2 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Prague, 1997. 3 It is typical that the person who initiated and theoretically backed Malina’s Prague exhibit was the leading theorist of Czech informel, František Šmejkal, a Jungian influenced historian. 4 František Šmejkal, Frank J. Malina (kat.), Galerie na Karlově náměstí, Prague, 1966, nestr..
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Untitled, 1954, Wire, wood, Courtesy of Malina Families
in his famed essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction sees perception in connection with social development and claims that “Opposed to the concentration on internal matters which occurred during the period of bourgeois decline, a kind of school espousing an asocial stance appears as the new type of social posture of diversion5. In the case of the entire series of Malina’s crowning lumino-kinetic work (Brainwaves, 1964, Lumidyne system, Ladders to the Stars III, 1967, Lumidyne system, Nebula IV, Lumidyne system, 1974, etc.) we could characterize the aforementioned change in perception as diversion through pure perception. The slowness of luminary movement which is noticed by Frank Popper6, together with its fluidity evokes in the viewer a supra-human temporal dimension, non-human cosmic time, rather than the time in which electric technology functions. The sensual perception of the viewer must slow down and adapt to the decelerated time of the luminary action, while this altered temporality suggests a new type of perception. Human perception was tired of a natural view of the world. Therefore natural experience was replaced by technological experience, which reprograms 5 6
Walter Benjamin, Work and its Sources, Prague, 1979. Frank Popper, L´art Cinétique, Gauthier-Villars Editeur, Paris, 1970, pg. 161.
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 13 | 13
Illuminated wire mesh, 1955, Electric painting with moirĂŠ effect, Courtesy of Malina Families
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14 | 14 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE
list of works 1. Untitled, String, wood, mid 1950s, Courtesy of Malina Families 2. Vertical Structure, Wire-netting with moiré effect, electro-painting, 1955, 89 × 20 cm, inv.n. 813/55 Courtesy of Malina Families 3. Iluminated Wire Mesh, Electropainting, rear-lighted wire-netting with moiré effect, 1955, 44 × 53 cm, inv.n. 795/1955 Courtesy of Malina Families 4. Voyage III, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne painting, 1958, 81 × 62 cm, inv.n. 870/1958 Courtesy of Malina Families 5. Gemini, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1961, 25 × 25 cm, inv.n. 912/1961 Courtesy of Malina Families 6. Kinetic Column, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1960, 155 × 30 cm, inv.n. 925A/1960 Courtesy of Malina Families 7. Vortex and Three Molecules, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1965, 60 × 80 cm, inv.n. 974/1965 Courtesy of Malina Families 8. Nebula V, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1966, 37 × 27 cm, inv.n. 984/1966 Courtesy of Malina Families 9. Nebula VI, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1974, 100 × 200 cm, inv.n. 1112/1974 Courtesy of Malina Families
Vortex and Three Molecules, 1965, Lumidyne system, 60 × 80 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
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10. Mobile Mosaic I, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1959, 81 × 62 cm, inv.n. 881/1959 Courtesy of Malina Families
11. Interplanetary System, Kinetic painting, Reflectodyne system, 1967, 105 × 74 cm, inv.n. 1032/1967 Courtesy of Malina Families 12. Pax IV, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1971, 80 × 120 cm, inv.n. 1067/1971 Courtesy of Malina Families 13. Kinetic Op – Six Spinning Circles, Lumidyne system, 1972, 80 × 120 cm, inv.n. 1087/72 Courtesy of Malina Families 14.Geometry I, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1961, 62 × 81 cm, inv.n. 925/1961 Courtesy of Malina Families 15. Sink and Source, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1966, 60 × 80 cm, inv.n. 1030/1966 Courtesy of Malina Families 16.Points and geometry IV, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1969, 80 × 120 cm, inv.n. 1052/1969 Courtesy of Malina Families 17.Mitosis, Kinetic Op painting, Lumidyne system, 1974, 80 × 60 cm, inv.n. 1094/1974 Courtesy of Malina Families 18.Musical Cylinder, Reflectodyne system, Elige No. 2, 1963, inv.n. 936/1963 Courtesy of Malina Families 19.Flowers I, Reflectodyne system, 1964, inv.n. 947/64 Courtesy of Malina Families 20. Brain Waves, Lumidyne system, 1964, 80 × 120 cm, inv.n. 948/1964 Courtesy of Malina Families 21. Voyage II, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1957, 62 × 81 cm, inv.n. 856/1957 Courtesy of Malina Families
22. Away from the Earth, 1966, 203 × 103 × 15 cm, inv.n. 991/1966, Courtesy of Malina Families 23. PAX No. 3, 1970, 63 × 83 × 10 cm, inv.n. 1071/1970 Courtesy of Malina Families 24. Two Figures No. 5, 1960, 85 × 65 × 12 cm, inv.n. 894/1960 Courtesy of Malina Families 25. Deep Shadows, superposed wire-netting, 1954, 71 × 54 cm, inv.n. 708/1954 Collection : Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 26. Nebula IV, Kinetic painting, 1962, 100 × 200 cm, inv.n. 927/62 Collection Jean and Colette Cherqui 27. Ladders to the Stars III, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1965, 100 × 200 cm, inv.n. 962/1965 Collection : UNESCO, Paris, France 28. Earth, Life and Space, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1959, 80 × 120 cm. inv.n. 886/1959 Collection National Gallery in Prague 29. Collages, 1953–1954, Scotch tape on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families 30. Untitled, from the series Miniatures, 1954, watercolour on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families 31. Intermitent, String structure, 1953, wire structure, Courtesy of Malina Families 32. Mesh Picture, 1953, String, wood, Courtesy of Malina Families
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 15 | 15 perception to another mode. Movement without motive, light consonance and dissonance, the mixing of colored lights, the breakdown of light, fluidly changing forms. Vision is abstracted and Malina’s luminous kinetics accordingly presents several motives of this new vision into sheer perception. The Reflectodyne system used the slow movement of a disc rotor and was suitable for objects of a smaller dimension. The differing effect of both systems was concisely captured by František Šmejkal: “In comparison with the imaginative nature of Lumidyne the Reflectodynes are more abstract, they do not have a fixed composition but continually change in form and color of light, directly affecting the sensibility of the viewer, and also their relations to specific content are much more free. Malina therefore does not use them to express his scientifically inspired conceptions, but rather those which are more general and sometimes even metamorphic (Musical cylinder, Flowers, Harmonic concepts, etc.).” Malina’s luminous kineticism in the context of the kinetic movement is also an interesting mix of technology with “handmade” painting. For this reason Malina was considered by certain figures of the kinetic movements to be an eclecticist mixing the traditional and already surpassed medium of painting with the new luminous sensibility. This tension becomes more interesting over time. From today’s perspective we may follow two types of painting with which kineticism worked, painting with light as opposed to luminous painting, which would probably more accurately reflect Malina’s approach. One may say that Malina’s lumino-kinetic reliefs maintain even formally a close relationship with painting from the period of scientific symbolism. They were hanging works, the size of which corresponded to the common frame formats. The goal of the rear projection was not to model the actual space of the gallery through beams of light, the play of light occurred right on the surface, where it projected the illusory internal space generated in accordance with the perspective within the picture. These observations following the connections with painting offer us the chance in the future to look at Malina’s work in conjunction with the tendencies of Expanded Painting. It is clear that this essay, which accompanies Malina’s first larger retrospective in the Prague Kampa Museum aims to comprehensively survey Malina’s work, but there is also the intent to indicate some of the directions in which the upcoming monograph on the artist might lead to an expanded interpretation of his work. This interpretation should place an emphasis on the pure perceptual quality of his lumino-kineticism, on its general psychological associations and the mutual ties between Malina’s lumino-kineticism and Expanded Painting. Vít Havránek
Interplanetary Space, 1967, Kinetic painting, Reflectodyne system, 105 × 74 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
Nebula VI, 1974, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 100 × 200 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
Brain Waves, 1964, Lumidyne system, 80 × 120 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
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16 | 16 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE
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POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 16 | 17
A
ll his life, Frank Joseph Malina (1912–1981) divided his activities between important duties in the aeronautics sector and an international career as an artist. Reading Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon, which tells of an inhabited rocket voyage to the moon, at the age of twelve determined his orientation towards the last frontier still unconquered by man: outer space. His parents, Frank Malina and Caroline Marek, musicians, hoped to see their son turn towards an artistic career. However, after beginning his university studies at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University, he entered Caltech (California Institute of Technology), where he obtained a doctorate in aeronautics in 1940 under the direction of mathematician Theodore Von Karman. In the 1930s, there was not much work being done in rocket propulsion and the very word ‘rocket’ was more likely to evoke a science fiction novel than an engine capable of reaching outer space. The team Frank Malina belonged to was composed of Edward Forman, a gifted young mechanical engineer, and Jack Parsons, a self-taught chemist. The trio was joined by Amo Smith and Tsien Hsue-shen to form a group of experimenters quickly dubbed the ‘suicide squad’. Their research was carried out in the framework of the GALCIT (Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology) project, which was devoted to the study of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics and to the preparation of a high-altitude liquid-fuelled rocket. Frank Malina may be considered a pioneer of the conquest of space thanks to his work, which led him in 1945 to
conceive, supervise and launch the first American high-altitude rocket: the WAC corporal. In 1942, Malina and Von Karman – accompanied by their colleagues Martin Sommerfield, Jack Parsons and Edward Forman – joined forces to create the Aerojet General Corporation with the aim of commercialising their research into rockets. In 1944, they created the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a laboratory today with NASA and devoted to planetary exploration). In 1947, Frank Malina became part of UNESCO as an advisor to the assistant director of the Department of Natural Sciences, and subsequently as director of the Division of Scientific Research. He was charged with several missions, such as the formation of links between the scientists of the word or the development of arid zones. Meanwhile, in February 1953 he left the organisation because the funds necessary for satisfying his aims were lacking. He settled in Paris, where he took up an artistic career which made him a pioneer in the use of light in kinetic art and in closing the gap between art and science. In 1953, Frank Malina found himself at a crossroads. The renewal of his passport had been refused by the American embassy on the grounds that his activities were not contributing to the good image of the United States. The activities of Frank Malina were monitored – as were those of numerous scientists and intellectuals of the day – by the Senator McCarthy’s committee
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Sink and Source (with ◊ickers), Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system with three components, 1966, 60 × 80 × 11cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
Mitosis, Kinetic-Op painting, Lumidyne system with three components, 1974, 80 × 60 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
as part of his anti-communist witch hunt. Although Malina was never a supporter of the communist party, his abrupt turn towards an artistic career when he had a brilliant scientific career behind and ahead of him had attracted the attention of the McCarthy committee, which had decided to observe his activities. Thus obliged to remain in French territory, he decided to return to drawing, which he had already demonstrated aptitudes for as a child and had been doing until then in his spare time. He started by taking classes in oil painting with a painter named Reginald Weston and Vic Gray, a painter from the Académie Julian and a New Zealander. The subjects of his paintings and drawings are often borrowed from the fields of aeronautics, the sciences and traditional
themes, such as the portrait or the game of chess. Among dozens of abstract drawings, a not negligible number are related to the abstract lyricism in vogue in the fifties. He also developed an interest in the theme of light, as evident in several drawings depicting filament light bulbs or people deflecting rays of light with a prism. In parallel, Frank Malina visited many galleries to feel the pulse of the Parisian art scene and try to present his work in the hope of having it exhibited. He did not like this ‘art game’, as he called it, but he managed to show his work for the first time at the Henri Tronche Gallery in the autumn of 1953, even though he had launched his career only 8 months earlier. He exhibited pieces made using painted strings and threads stretched within a frame against a col-
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Kinetic-Op – Six Spinning Circles, Kinetic-Op painting, Lumidyne system with three components, 1972, 80 × 120 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
oured background. It was also an opportunity for him to look back on the development of his works in a text published after the exhibition. He was no longer happy with the successive backgrounds against which the figures stood out. He removed them and hung a cardboard cut-out of a knight from the game of chess in a frame. Then he removed the figure, contenting himself with painted threads strung across the frame: ‘The freedom he exhibits in the choice and use of substances and materials, the independence in space of his three-dimensional compositions, the aesthetic sensibility which oversees the choice of each element, the character of dynamic or cinematic tension which animates his work and the innovative audacity of his creations all merit particular attention.’1 It
was in these terms that the future orientation of his work towards the expression of movement that Georges Boudaille presented the exhibition, which was deemed, among other things, original and promising by critics. Malina explained that he had been influenced by his experience in technical design, with its straight lines and sensitivity to colour. Let us cite, for example, Cosmic Ray Shower, whose network of stretched strings recalls scientific photographs of cosmic rays captured in an artificially reproduced laboratory environment. This type of photo may be found in Gyorgy Kepes’ book The New Landscape in Art and Science, published in 1956. Let us note once again the theme of light in the piece titled Light Globe, which portrays a light bulb in painted string fixed to a
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20 | 21 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE grid composed geometrically and the motif of sinus waves used to represent electric current. In the meantime, due to the lack of malleability of thread, he switched to wire, which he could twist and shape as he pleased while remaining nonetheless dependant on the line. His investigations led him to place a metal mesh meant to serve as a matrix for a painting and a support for the wires, threads and other strings: ‘The meshwork suggested a twodimensional system capable of supporting the painting.’2 The texture of enamel paint made it possible to block the mesh, thus creating spaces through which a painted background can be perceived. Frank Malina introduced the notion of movement, already latent in the dynamic tension of the strings stretched within the frame, by forcing the eye to go back and forth between the two planes. The following phase was the creation of pictures consisting of a succession of painted and cut-out meshes. Based on these meshwork pictures, Malina became aware of the moiré effect – that is, the moving forms sensed when the eye moves over two superimposed grids or when light passes over them. Moving Fields of Lines, dated 1954, was his first work featuring the moiré pattern. In the spring of 1954, as part of his quest for motion, he sought to accentuate the moiré patterns by placing a 50W light bulb behind one of his mesh compositions, but a plume of smoke which appeared behind the piece put a temporary end to his hopes of improving the moiré visual effect. It was not until months later that, around Christmas 1954, while contemplating a string of Christmas lights, that he understood his error: ‘How stupid I had been not to have thought of installing lamps of low wattage in the picture!’3 This artistic ‘eureka’ led him to put a string of Christmas lights behind a composition of superimposed painted meshes; the whole was then inserted in a wooden case – this time provided with holes for ventilation. ‘Illuminated wire mesh moiré’ is the name of his first work using electric light. During the first half of 1955, Malina concentrated his work on what he called, from then on, electropaintings. In April, the major event in the history of kinetic art was ‘Le mouvement’ organised at the Denise René Gallery, where works by pioneers of kinetic art and such new, emerging artists as Soto, Bury and Vasarely were presented. At the same time, Malina made On and Off, his first work to introduce the suggestion of movement by means of thermal switches which made it possible to turn light bulbs on and off. In July of the same year, Frank Malina exhibited his electropaintings in three plac-
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es in Paris, taking care to present a representative selection of his studies covering the preceding six months. First, he had an exhibition at the Comparaisons Salon with Henri Valensi’s musical ensemble. Two titles made reference to music: Flourish and Fugue in White Overtones. These two wire mesh collages were made shortly before his first electropainting, which indicates his desire to show the evolution of his investigations based on pivotal works in the development of his investigations. Next, he showed two works at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles: Colour Bars in Transformation, the last work before his first electropainting, and One + Two Triangles, an electropainting with blinking lights. It should be noted that Malina was not alone in presenting pieces which used electric light at the salon. Eusebio Sempere, from Spain, and his Cuban companion Lolo Soldevilla, presented, respectively, Relieve con Iluminación
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 20 | 21 Pax IV, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system with three components, three disks, 1971, 80 × 120 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
Positivo-Negativa and Relief Lumineux no 1 et 2. We know only the piece by Sempere, which consisted of a wooden case whose back was perforated with four simple backlit geometric forms. A few years later, in 1951, Roger Desserprit made his geometric case sculptures containing a light bulb for accentuating the colours painted on a semi-transparent surface. Faced with the exorbitant costs of such works, Desserprit and Sempere very quickly stopped producing them. Only Sempere took up once again the construction of a few wooden sculptures consisting of a succession of biomorphic backlit strata in 1959 and 1961. But it was at the Allendy Gallery, as part of a personal exhibition from 6 to 9 July 1955, that Malina presented 19 electropaintings, two of which made use of the thermal switch system. In this way, he showed the public a panorama of his work which marked a turning point not only in his career, but in the history
of the use of light in kinetic art in Paris. In contrast the efforts of his contemporaries to introduce light into artworks, Frank Malina’s great credit is that he systematised, beginning in 1954, the use of light in his artwork and persistently sought to improve the visual effects of his work by gradually integrating real motion. One of his major pieces from this period is titled Jazz. Alongside the musical reference, this piece is composed of 11 lamps which turn on aleatorically. There are 2048 possible combinations. It is thus almost impossible for a human being to see any one composition repeated twice in immediate succession. Nevertheless, Frank Malina was not satisfied with the first effects he achieved; he wanted motion that was more complex and less quantifiable. A young student of electronics, Jean Villmer, who helped him in the conception of electric circuits, suggested that he use an electromechanical system consisting of a mobile part animated by an electric motor making possible a real continuous movement, and another, fixed part. Together, they developed the Lumidyne system, comprising a wooden backboard where light bulbs and the motor(s) is (are) fixed; a mobile component (a rotor), in painted Plexiglass connected to the motor by a rod; another fixed component also in painted Plexiglass (the stator); a diffusion screen, a diffusor; and, in his first Lumidyne pieces, one finds a mesh placed in front of the artworks. In the patent he filed in 1958, the system was described as a ‘picture whose appearance changes’. 4 The filing included a hand-drawn technical diagram dated 15 April 1956 showing a fragmented sketch of the succession of elements constituting the system. In the patent filing, Malina contented himself with a technical exposition and did not deal with the final framework the lumino-kinetic pictures were destined to and one thus gets the impression they might be used in a domestic context. Among his contemporaries, the engineer and artist Nicolas Schöffer had got ahead of Malina by several months, filing a patent for a system which projected beams of coloured light through spatio-dynamic sculptures which he had been making since the late forties. Schöffer’s devise was destined to be used exclusively collective and social ways, on very large surfaces: ‘These projections can be used in all sorts of spectacles as decoration, or may by themselves constitute a spectacle, in the cinema, in the application of architectural mural colouring, on interior or exterior surfaces, in all genres of adver-
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Untitled, from the Miniatures, 1954, Watercolour on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families
tising, in decoration, in sculpture, in the prolongation of the sight of a sculpture by its shadow projected in black, in grey or in colour, statically or in movement on all types of screens characterised in chapter 2 of the present descriptive record. These projections may also be conceived as part of mobile paintings of some sort.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;5 Frank J. Malina, like an engineer constantly trying to improve his inventions, continued his investigations with the aim of achieving new visual effects. Notably, he developed a variant of the Lumidyne system by reassembling the diffusor and the stator into a single element, thus reducing the system to only three components. In this type of work, the design is cut out directly in the stator-diffusor in order to form a
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slit through which beams of light may pass. The first piece to adopt this system was Orbits VI. In 1963, he created his first piece based on a new system, dubbed Reflectodyne. As its name suggests, the system makes use of light reflected on a screen. Placed in a wooden case, columns of mirrors or metal fixed to axles connected to motors reflect beams of light onto a screen made of Plexiglass or frosted glass. In the 1958 patent filing, he had already mentioned the possibility of using reflecting surfaces such as crystals, mirrors or prisms to augment the gamut of visual effects. The effects achieved were similar to those produced by the Clavilux of Thomas Wilfred, a pioneer in the history of lumino-kinetic machines, even though the first time Malina saw one of Wilfredâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works
POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 22 | 23 was at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1959. The luminous forms achieved were light, ethereal and more complex. The following year, he created the Polaridyne system, in which the light is polarised through birefringant materials. The beams of light are deviated so as to create well-defined geometric forms. During the first third of the 1960s, Frank Malina became so interested in the links between colour-light and sound that he commissioned two studies by Frank Popper and Claude Bergier on the aesthetic and psychological aspects of light and movement associated with sound, music or speech; and on instruments which produce both sounds and colour at once. Frank Malina established an account whose purpose was to
explore the possibility of the mass production of audio-kinetic devices in partnership with Electro-Lumidyne International6 and General Electric. These first investigations gave rise to two prototypes: ‘Chromie’ no 1 and no 2. In 1965, the first audio-kinetic work he completed, Entrechat I, was presented to the Furstenberg Gallery within the framework of a personal exhibition bringing together his artwork from the two previous years. Due to his Czech origins, Malina had many ties with the country and the personal exhibition that opened at the Karlovo Náměstí Gallery in Prague in 1966 reminds us of the importance of certain figures – such as Zdeněk Pešánek with his work Kinetismus, published in 1944 – from Eastern Europe in the field of kinetic art. The first contacts with the
Untitled, from the Miniatures, 1954, Watercolour on paper, Courtesy of Malina Families
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Voyage III, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1958, 81 × 62cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
exhibition’s curator, František Smejkal, were made in September 1964, when he visited Frank Malina at Boulogne-sur-Seine. F. Smejkal wanted to organise a retrospective exhibition including works from his kinetic period – that is, 1955–1966. In the end, the exhibition comprised 32 representative pieces spanning his entire career, including drawings dating to his official beginnings in the art world in 1953. Beginning in 1967, Frank Malina became more and more involved in the creation of the journal Leonardo. Although his artistic production decreased, his presence at the important exhibitions devoted to kinetic art increased. His lifelong interest in the influence of movement and light on the psyche drew him back to the study of the aesthetic effects of moiré patterns. As a result, he made more Lumidyne pieces using the moiré effect in the seventies. Colour projections coupled with the reproduction of music had already been used in the course of the 19th century to treat mental afflictions. It was thought that the fascination of movements and of music made it possible to capture the Mobile Mosaic I, 1961, Kinetical painting, Lumidyne system, 81 × 62 cm, Collection Roger Malina
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POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE 24 | 25 attention of patients and thus establish communication with them. This medical and psychological use was also proposed in one of the patents filed by Thomas Wilfred (under the pseudonym Richard Edgar Lovstrom), which Malina had a copy of which was dated 1925. He also learned of other examples of machines that produced moving coloured shapes when he patented his Lumidyne system in 1958. Some of the patents specified the positive psychological impact of motion on the psyche of people afflicted with mental or visual ailments. A few years later, in 1961, Malina visited the experimental psychologist Albert Michotte at the University of Louvain, where he was astonished to see that a machine based on the principle of the rotor and the stator used in the Lumidyne pieces was being used to study the reactions of subjects to different movements. The three-component works of art described above had a disquieting resemblance to Michotte’s disc machine. Whether coupled with sound or not, science – in the form of technology and research into psychophysiology – is omnipresent in the history of the conception of lumino-kinetic machines. Its importance in Malina’s oeuvre goes beyond the simple stylisation of subjects issuing from the world of science; his approach itself is that of a researcher. It is enough to read his texts on the relationships between art and science to be convinced of this. For him, science’s ties with art were broken when the progress of science accelerated abruptly after the Renaissance. With the advent of photography, new links appeared, because the production of realistic images which had theretofore been the exclusive preserve of artists was challenged by science, thanks to the technical mastery of the process through which the world was documented exactly as one saw it on the basis of light. This theft on the part of the sciences of functions previously reserved to artists provoked not only an explosion of forms, but also a revision of the concept of form itself. On the other hand, if we recall Samuel Coleridge’s idea to the effect that beauty is unity in variety, it affirms that science shares a common goal in the quest to explain nature based on common laws. From this idea, it follows that the work of art is a synthetic expression of the diversity of human experiences; the capacity for expressing them should make it possible to ‘widen and deepen emotional perception of selected portions of man’s environment’.7 Nonetheless, Frank Malina saw several differences which pertained to the scientific approach exclusively. A global view of his career shows us that these methods were not completely incompatible with artistic creation. Evoking his first attempts at introducing light into his work, he declared that,
Geometry I, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1961, 62 × 81 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families. Two interlaced photos show the image motion in time.
contrary to the dictates of reason, he imposed on himself a voluntary ignorance of the history of electricity in art, preferring an intuitive and personal approach – and yet taking stock of the results of past experience is the first stage prior to all research. At the beginning of 1968, he materialised this approach by launching Leonardo, a journal which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year, in 2007, and is present on the Internet in a version devoted to music (Leonardo Music). In its initial stages, Leonardo declared itself to be a forum open to changes in the fine arts, new materials and new technologies used by contemporary artists while remaining open
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26 | 27 POINT-LINE-UNIVERSE to the contributions of other disciplines such as architecture, psychology, aesthetics, philosophy and physics. Malina thought that artists should not leave the task of explaining their work not solely in the hands of critics and art historians; instead, they should write about their work themselves. Leonardo was supposed to enable artists to open up their field of reflection to emergent artistic phenomena connected with new technologies. Scientific research is generally carried out by work groups consisting of several researchers, as opposed to art, which is essentially an individual activity. Nonetheless, during his career, he surrounded himself with artists (Nino Calos, Vic Gray, Caloutsis…) and engineers (Jean Villmer, Didier Boucher, Dominique Bouffier…) to enlist their aid in constructing and perfecting his artworks. He preferred to surround himself with assistants rather than work in groups.8 Experimentation is doubtless the main characteristic generally associated with the sciences. Similarly, Frank Malina should be seen as an experimenter investigating the precise and effective aesthetic impacts evinced by the diversity of technological procedures he used and the richness of the effects produced by his kinetic paintings. Basing himself on a work by Golovin, Frank Malina
Flower, Reflectodyne System, (1964), Courtesy of Malina Families
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appropriated the idea that art and science fall within the province of a cybernetic model of the workings of the brain. In a fundamental way, the sciences organise nature on the basis of the laws humankind discovers and artists bring order to the chaotic vision which they have of their environment in a formal language which addresses itself to the senses. Golovin showed that scientists and artists reflect the functioning of their brains. The central nervous system is a memory-based self-regulating system which reacts to its environment in order to make sure it maintains its homeostasis. All the same, its biological limits oblige the organism to channel excessive information flows by regulating the data flow: ‚This model suggests that the basic human intellectual propensity to study and understand the environnent, and to reduce its complexity by correlations and natural laves, may be no more than the necessary physical result of the need for a biological system to regulate itself adequately in an environnent so complex that the inflow of new data greatly exceeds the information channel capacity of its central nervous system. On the bases of this model, we can view the non-scientific varieties of creative activity, for example, as being biologically justified by need for play with the environnent undertaken by the organism essentially involuntarily, to help maintain its regulatory and information-processing system in an optimum operating condition.‘9 Here, artistic activity is thus comparable to the sciences, whose legislative character makes it an instrument for modelling the world. In the end, so as to close the gap between art and science, Malina asked whether the function of aesthetics might not be to art what the search for universal laws is to science: ‘Is it possible to construct an aesthetic theory capable of predicting into the future the effect a work of art will have on people under anticipated conditions of life?’10 This is why, in the early days of Leonardo, aestheticians like Etienne Souriau and psychologists like Rudolph Arnheim and Richard L. Gregory were granted a place of such importance. His last Lumidyne paintings, dubbed ‘Kinetic-Op’ paintings, entailed a return to the moiré effect, thanks to the movements of superimposed screens that plunge the spectator into a state of contemplative fascination. The kinetic moiré-pattern pictures of his last period made it possible for Malina to imagine that one day a controllable system might be able to produce a programmed sensation. Fabrice Lapelletrie
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Notes 1
Boudaille, Georges, L’actualité artistique [Current Art], 24 October 1953.
2 Malina, Frank J., ‘a few personal remarks’, published in a booklet along with press extracts and a text by Robert Vrinat, np. 3 Malina, Frank J., ‘Electric Light as a Medium in the Visual Fine Arts : A Memoir’, Leonardo, vol. 8, no. 2, Oxford, Pergamon Press, summer 1975, p. 110. 4 Malina, Frank Joseph, ‘Picture Whose Appearance Changes’. Patent no. 1.200.489. Requested in Paris on 26 June 1958. Issued on 29 June 1959. – Published on 22 December 1959. 5 Schöffer, Nicolas ‘Optical Projection System and Device for Creating Mobile Projected Images’. Patent no. 1.168.155. Requested in Paris on 14 December 1956. Issued on 25 August 1958. – Published on 4 December 1958. 6 A Company created by Malina in 1959 for the mass production and sale of the Lumidyne system. 7 Malina, Frank J., ‘Some reflections on the differences between science and art’, Leonardo, vol. 1, no 4, Pergamon Press, october 1968, p. 450. (Text originally published in DATA (Direction in Art/Theory/Aesthetics) under the direction of Anthony Hill, London, Faber and Faber, 1965, p. 136). 8 At the time, several groups of artists were formed – notably, in France, the GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel [Visual Art Research Group]).
Nebula V, Kinetic painting, Lumidyne system, 1966, 37 × 27 cm, Courtesy of Malina Families
9 Malina, Frank J., ‘Some reflections on the differences between science and art’, Leonardo, vol. 1, no 4, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1968, p. 451. (Text originally published in DATA (Direction in Art/Theory/Aesthetics) under the direction of Anthony Hill, London, Faber and Faber, 1965, p.138). Also in Golovin, N.E., ‘The Creative Person in Science.’ Under the direction of Taylor, C. W., and Barron, F. Scientific Creativity: Its Recognition and Development, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1963, p.12. 10 Malina, Frank J., ‘Some reflections on the differences between science and art’, Leonardo, vol. 1, no 4, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1968, p. 454. (Text originally published in DATA (Direction in Art/Theory/Aesthetics) under the direction of Anthony Hill, London, Faber and Faber, 1965, p.143.)
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Laureates of PÉpiniÈres
1992 / 1993 – Laurent Mignonneau (FR) • 1999 / 2000 – Laura Beloff (FI) • 2002 – Joachim Montessuis (FR) • 2002 – Joerg Piringer (AT) • 2005/2006 – Reinhold Bidner (AT) • 2006 – Teresa Almeida (PG) • 2006 – Eduard Balaž – SRB • 2006 – Quentin Destieu, Romain Senatore (Dardex and Mort2faim) (FR) • 2006 – Antony Hall (UK) • 2006 – Yasmine Hugonnet (FR) • 2006 – Stéphane Kylés (FR) • 2006 – Michal Mariánek (CZ) • 2006 – Robert Praxmarer (AT) • 2007 – Thomas Cimolaē (FR) • 2007 – Takumi Endo (JP)
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resident i,L, resident Seven mile boots, inflatable dress, sound poems, phonetic cranks, interactive photographs and more creations with great sense of intimacy, playfulness and humour. These works emerged during artistic residencies organised by PépinieŹres européennes pour jeunes artistes, an international network which connects more than 100 artistic centres all over Europe and in Canada. The selection presented in Prague highlights interest of artists in the use of new technologies.
French Institute French Institute 08. 11. 2007 08.–11. 27.2007 11. 2007 – 27. 11. 2007 Curators: Curators:Pavel PavelSedlák, Sedlák,Pavel PavelSmetana Smetana
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Teresa Almeida
MODES FOR URBAN MOODS:
SPACE DRESS Modes for Urban Moods are a suite of wearable coping mechanisms which explore relationships in public spaces and materialize invisible social networks. They are tactile, spatial, sculptural expressions fashioned to the body. Space Dress is a dress that inflates, expands in size according to its user decision and in specific situations. It is designed to cope with stress, anxiety and claustrophobic situations – or simply for comfort. It was originally designed for rush hour in the MTA, New York City’s subway system. It negotiates social bounds, communicates beyond protection/defense and makes visible individuals/members of a community. Teresa Almeida, Portugal, 1974, is a new media artist, designer and educator. She is currently living and working in Malaysia where she is Lecturer in Design Research at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, Faculty of Design Innovation in Cyberjaya. She holds a Master’s Degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a BA in Theatre Design from the Theatre and Cinema College in Lisbon, Portugal. She was artist-in-residence at LJUDMILA-Ljubljana Digital Media Lab in Slovenia, under the European Pépinieres for Young Artists Programme in 2006.
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“Ever get too close to a person with no concept of personal space? With the Space Dress you can reclaim it. Inspired by those awful “packed like sardines” situations in the New York subway, the dress inflates to a size determined by the wearer to “cope with stress, moments of anxiety and claustrophobic situations -- or, simply, for comfort.” By hitting a switch on the dress, battery-operated fans blow air into the dress for inflation. But instead of looking like you’ve just put on a fake sumo wrestler suit, you look like you’ve put on a dress with a chic, exaggerated, bubble skirt.” In Hot tech: the fashion of the future, by Jacky Myint, asap ū http://www.banhomaria.net/modes.html
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Beloff-Berger-Pichlmair
SEVEN MILE BOOTS “Seven mile boots, the magical footwear known from folk tales, enables its owner to travel seven miles with one step. With little effort one can cross the countries, to be present wherever it seems suitable and to become a cosmopolitan flaneur with the world as the street.” The project SEVEN MILE BOOTS is a pair of interactive shoes with audio. One can wear the boots, walk around as a flaneur simultaneousy in the physical world and in the literal world of the internet. By walking in the physical world one
may suddenly encounter a group of people chatting in real time in the virtual world. The chats are heard as a spoken text coming from the boots. Wherever you are with the boots, the physical and the virtual worlds will merge together. Technology enables us to observe real people communicating in real time from several remote places simultaneously. The user/observer is not in control, s/he is dependent of the existent situation and appears into it as a passive observer. The user wearing the seven-mile-boots becomes
a kind of a super-voyeur, who is able to search in several places and observe various situations simultaneously in the net. When the user is wearing the seven-mile-boots and standing still s/he can listen several chat rooms simultaneously. S/he can observe the life in the net and listen to the on-going conversations between the people in chat rooms.
Laura Beloff, Finland (1964), Artist/Researcher, PhD-candidate at Planetary Collegium, Computing, Communications & Electronics, Faculty of technology, University of Plymouth. ūhttp://www.realitydisfunction.org/
Erich Berger, Erich Berger, Austria (1969), Artist/Researcher/Curator, Chief Curator, LABoral Center for Art and Industrial Creation. ūhttp://randomseed.org
Martin Pichlmair, Martin Pichlmair, Austria (1977), Artist/Researcher, Assistant professor, Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology, Department of Informatics, Vienna University of Technology. ūhttp://pi.attacksyour.net
Beloff’s interests deal with individuals in the global society adapting to highly complex technologically enhanced world. Her mobile, wearable objects are exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and major mediafestivals. She is frequently lecturing about her research and practice in universities and conferences. 1999: visiting Professor, Linz Art University, Austria. 2002-2006: Professor for media arts, Art Academy of Oslo, Norway. 2007-2011: 5-year Artist-grant by the Finnish state. 2007: lecturing at The University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland.
Berger focuses on information processes and feedback structures, which he investigates with installations, situations, performances and various interfaces. His work is shown internationally in media-festivals, exhibitions and galleries. He received a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for the project TELEZONE (2000), the Intermedium2 Award, Bawarian Broadcasting Station/ZKM for A SOPHISTICATED SOIREE (2002) and Honorary Mention from VIDA 5.0 Art and Artificial Life international Competition for the installation SPINNE (2002). Currently Berger is Chief Curator at LABoral Center for Art and Industrial Creation in Gijon/Spain.
ū http://randomseed.org/sevenmileboots/
Since receiving his doctoral degree in informatics, Pichlmair has worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Design and Assessment of Technology, Vienna University of Technology. His artistic works are shown at various media art festivals and exhibitions including Ars Electronica Festival, ISEA, Transmediale and Microwave International Festival. In his research and publications, he focuses on theory and practice of interactive art and design – from games and physical interfaces to open source models and community media.
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OF THE FRAME
Thimas Cimolaē, french, 1977. from 1996 to 1999, he studied photography, and electro-acoustic music in Beaux-arts school. since 2000 to 2003, he works in a Cultural Center like a Director of espace Culture Multimedia. He enters to multimedia workshop of ecole nationale Des arts Decoratifs de Paris in 2003, and enters to interactive research Laboratory of the same school in 2005. in his thesis, he studies ancients topics Mnemonics and editing of Chris Marker’s films. He created “the inquiry of the frame” in 2006, a device with video tracking and tVset. today, he continues with photographic and video works to explore interactivty in pictures and transmission’s devices. in parallel, he hass worked as a graphist specialised in information design.
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Takumi Endo
phonethica Phonethica is an interdisciplinary art project, which explores the world through the phonetics of language. Combining scientific technology with art Phonethica maps out the diversity and similarity of the worlds 6,000 existing languages. Phonethica aims at developing a practical strategy for vigorous survival in the post-modernized society, which has been openly enjoying chaos as a conclusion of its own fragmentation. Phonethica involves the research and development of a base computing system to find and map phonetic relationships between words. this Phonethica system acts in many respects like a combined world language dictionary, and multimedia encyclopedia. the Phonethica system can find words from among the world’s different languages that sound similar to a given word. for example, while Japanese and french are vastly different languages; the french expression “Ça va?” meaning, “How are you?” and the Japanese word for mackerel, “saba,” actually sound quite similar. ū http://www.phonethica.net
Takumi Endo, Japanese, 1971, www.inexhale.net, “seeks out a springboard for further evolution of human beings while combining scientific technology and art”. He studied at Kunitachi College of Music (tokyo) / Bachelor of Music [1995]. agency for Cultural affairs, Japan (Bunka-Cho): fellowship [2002]. the City of Paris and the Ministry of foreign affairs (france): fellowship [2003]. PoLa art foundation (Japan): fellowship [2004]. Berliner Kunstlerprogramm des DaaD (Germany): fellowship [2005]. unesCo-aschberg Bursaries for artists: fellowship [2006]. Mitoh – exploratory software Project/iPa, Japan: Grant - acknowledged as a “super Creater” [2006]. MapXXL-Pepinieres europeennes pour Jeunes artistes (european union) : fellowship [2007].
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Antony Hall
enki eNKI uses the bioelectric information from live Electric £sh to control an immersive sensory environment designed to alter states of consciousness, and produce potentially healing effects.
“ENKI allows electric fish and humans to commune on the same level - that of electrical fields and brain waves - avoiding the use of language as such; instead stimulating a shared empathy through and actual physical connection. Using the bioelectric communication signals from live Electric Fish to control an immersive sensory environment for humans - through which the human can communicate back to the fish. Electro-active fish are in a continual state of electro reception & have high intelligence, memory, and learning ability. Historically there is a deep connection with electric fish and medical ‘healing’ technologies. The project makes reference to the status of these electric fish and the ethics of their use as neurological research tools. As research specimens, they become sacrificial to the greater purpose of furthering human knowledge. The proj-
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ect more generally could be seen as a reference to the ‘babel-fish’ (Hitch Hikers Guide’) and through this to the Tower of Babel (thrust for knowledge, conflicts of language and interoperation). My deeper motivation for this project, relates to my long-term interest in aquariums both public and private. A typical tropical aquarium is a multi cultural space consisting of farmed and wild caught species. Aquariums are installed as calming objects, though on closer inspection the contained environment is one of aggressive conflict, tolerance, and submission. The skill of the aquarium keeper is to create harmony among fish - and through this; craft an impossible window into an otherwise wild world by creating a controlled illusion of it.” ū http://www.enkitechnology.info/
Antony Hall, UK, 1976, MA. Art as Environment, Manchester Met University 2002. ūhttp://www.antonyhall.net He is a founding member of the ‘Owl Project’ (with Simon Blackmore & Steve Symons). His research and education projects have been supported by Arts Catalyst London, Creative partnerships, CARA action research awards, and Arts Council England. Selected projects; Artist in residence, University Manchester Institute for Science and Technology – 20022003. Futuresonic Festival, Manchester 2006. ‘Rouge Wave’ Commission (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool 2006. International Cite des Arts, Paris, 2006. Artist in residence Manchester Natural History Museum, 2004-5. Biotech Art workshop Catalyst/Symbiotica, Kings College, London 2005. Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, V2 Rotterdam NL, and at Bios 4, CAAC, Seville 2007.
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Šte ˇpán Kleník
internet
Have you ever seen Internet this way? It is opium of humankind! Human imagination is rather limited. We have trouble calculating large amounts of data. Can you imagine 100 objects? Can you imagine 1000 objects? What about a million? The internet consists of milliards of pages, the number a brain cannot process. The intention of the project was to materialize the number
of internet pages. I started with a simple calculation: In order to fill 1 m3 with objects, 20 000 000 000 of objects is necessary if each of the objects is 0,36 mm3. As the pages also grow in time, I decide to search for seeds. And the poppy seed is approximately exactly of the volume I needed.
Štěpán Kleník, Czech, 1978, studied philosophy of art at Charles University in Prague, currently a student of New Media Department at the Fine Arts Academy in Prague. He works with video, animation, and web technologies. ūhttp://www.umakart.cz
Stéphane Kyles
subway layout Stéphane Kyles, French, 1979, graduated at Academy of Fine Arts in Aix en Provence. ūhttp://www.wj-s.org He is a digital manipulator working on interactive installations and performances. His interests are focused on mixing the multimedia content and online virtual environments. In 2006 he was artist-in-residence at CIANT Lab.
Work in progress interactive video installation project analysing, transforming and reproducing linear navigation in public spaces. The current version has been inspired by the navigation context of Prague subway underground architecture. The interactive installation generates continuous pictures
representing the parts of subway tracks, previously recorded from the start point to the terminus of the line. The rendered work gives raise to original images by pointing out architectonical details, textures or crowd travelling through the endless underground tunnels.
2007
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Dardex & Mort2faim (Stéphane Kyles, Quentin Destieu, Romain Senatore, Sylvain Huguet, Loïs Roussillon) The “Camping Station” is a minimal interface video techno/sound installation. It is a transportable table equipped with four pushbuttons, speakers and LCD screen. The spectators are invited to do one techno mix while composing together with their partners and becoming DJ/VJ virtuosos.
the camping station & breakage-brik “Breakage-brik” is an interactive installation which regains in a sculptural way the shape of the arcade’s game of the 1990`s. Combining simplicity and intelligence, as a matter of fact, Tetris is one of the most popular video puzzle games in the world. The Breakage-brik version is a diversion wheere each intervention of the player launches a hardcore sample of music, be it punk, metal or techno. The installation positions itself along Pong, Bomberman, Blasteroid to become part of the videogames history.
Dardex & Mort2faim collective gathers several graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts in Aix in Provence whose work is rooted in the urban arts. As activists and performers, Dardex & Mort2faim initially engaged in exploration of chaos aesthetics. Sensitive to the universe of «8-bits» old game consoles as well as the revolution of computers and networks, they express themselves through several media such as video, laser, web or sound in both perforamnces and installations ūhttp://dardex-mort2faim.blogspot.com ūhttp://www.mort2faim.com ūhttp://dardex.free.fr
2007
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Social Engine
Mouse says: click! and human says: eek!
great minds think alike
Joerg Piringer
soundpoems The Soundpoems are interactive phonetic poems, minimal abstract poetry, games for sampled voice. Joerg Piringer, Austrian, is a sound poet, currently living in Vienna. ūhttp://joerg.piringer.net/soundpoems He is a member of the Institute for Transacoustic Research, of the Vegetable Orchestra, he is a student at the Schule für Dichtung in Vienna. He received a master degree in computer science. He sets the not easy task of occupying a space already full of music bordering on that subtle division between electroacoustics and sheer technology applied to composition.
URTICA
dictionary of primal behaviour
Dictionary of Primal Behaviour is a multilingual database of Graphically and Phonetically Expressive Messages (GPEM), connected to primal human emotions and behaviour. GPEM results from a combination of verbal and non-verbal codes: Phonetically Expressive Word (PEW), Graphically Expressive Symbol (GES) and Facial Expression (FE). That kind of message is understandable to wide audience despite their cultural background, linguistic knowledge or stylistic features of a language. ū http://www.urtica.org/interjections
Social Engine explores how the socio-cultural patterns circulate and in which way they shape social landscape. Social Engine is produced as a web application, database of CBTI – cultural behaviourally transmissible information, that guide our every day behaviour. It is a stage on which a ‘battle’ under the flag of a certain idea is going on. Each CBTI, i.e., catch phrase and flag, that is selected and powered by user’s input, has a certain valence; depending on its prevalence the system (Social Engine) is being oriented as altruistic or self oriented. Social Engine, project in process, has been realised during 2004/07. Parts of the “Social Engine” has been produced within the framework of artist-in-residence programme at Künstlerhaus, Büchsenhausen Innsbruck, Austria (2004); and ArtsLink Fellowship at Rhode Island School of Design / Digital Media Department, Providence, USA (2004). External collaborator on the project: Vladimir Kostic´. ū http://www.urtica.org/socialengine
Urtica, art and media research group, founded in 1999, artistic group Urtica is specialised in the development of transdisciplinary projects that merge culture, technology, science, and education. Its work ranges from web-based artworks, media actions and short videos broadcast to the general public on television. Members of Urtica: Violeta Vojvodic´ (1971), Eduard Balaž (1972), Daniel Stevanovic´ (1980). ūhttp://urtica.org
2007
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event: performance 1n0ut: Robert Praxmarer & Reinhold Bidner with Yasmine Hugonnet
1d_entity [identity] is a live interactive dance performance which explores the paradigm of recordings and playback of a dancer. the work reflects methaphorical on topics of data mining (googleism), simulation and surveillance in the digital realm and counterphrases it with us as human beings. sampling of life will go beyond Dna analysis, so this work tries to focus on the aspects of sampling human patterns and
2007
emotions, and remix and deconstruct them. Can human behaviour be coded as a chain of granular recordings and synthesis of us, is there a microcosm of feelings which can be arranged like atoms in molecules? Did all start in one point and are we converging to this first dimension again? this is no answer but an experiment. ū http://www.1n0ut.com
1n0ut is an artist collective that works both collaboratively and individually on a variety of video and interactive art projects with a focus on generating synesthetic experiences. the artists mix analogue and digital processes in their work to achieve a perfect aesthetic blend which can be understood as a reflection upon all of our lives. Cross-disciplinary by nature, their approaches reach from a self programmed real-time video montage system based on Praxmarer’s ongoing PhD work to the charming photo stills and composed video works from Bidner. Both like to think in shades of grey – between black and white – which gives the audience an experience of fuzziness, fault and, despite algorithmic perfection, harmony.
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event: performance
Joachim Montessuis
safe distance revisited Joachim Montessuis lived in 15 towns since 72, including Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Marrakech, Abidjan, Besançon, Lille, Rotterdam and Cologne. He lives actually in Paris. He grew up surrounded by Buddhist monks, Gnawas musicians and oriental sacred texts that gave him the sense of ritual and trance in music. Since 1993 he has developed a transversal sonic poetry praxis focused on experimental voice processings and immersive concerts-installations. His noise and video events are devised and set in context as panic-poetic spaces in which social/sensorial disturbance and blurring occur, through some extreme crescendos going from silence to wall of sound. He has worked in major European electronic arts centers (CICV, Fresnoy, V2_Lab, KHM) and has presented live performances and installations around the world including places and festivals such as DEAF in Rotterdam, ISEA, ICA in London, Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, Sónar in Barcelona, Africa Center in South Africa, Rio de Janeiro, etc. He’s been editing ERRATUM (www. erratum.org) since 1997, a small CD+net label devoted to art, noise and experimental sound poetry, and he punctually organises experimental poetic events and exhibitions. He has collaborated with such artists as David Larcher, Faustin Linyekula, Serge Pey, Henri Chopin, Joel Hubaut, Jörg Piringer, Franck Ancel
Live audiovisual performance re-using Safe Distance video which was recorded and found in 1999 during the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia, and was post-produced by kuda. org. The video was recorded on board of one of the fighter planes, and shows the last moments before the plane crashed. The pilot’s display is the only connection he has with the outside world; he is isolated from the reality he produces on the ground below. Every object is part of this virtual display which the pilot is completely dependent upon. ū http://www.eternalnetwork.org/jm/
2007
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Selection of video works which explore artistic mobility mapXXL is a mobility and artistic diffusion programme open to young artists from 20 to 35 years old. It is produced by Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes. A promising generation of young artists throughout Europe who work with dedication and authenticity within the contemporary human, social and econom-
ic environments, is emerging. The mapXXL programme’s aim is to foster the diversity of artistic approaches, with as main theme the junction of different artistic forms and the opening to the other. It is set up with the participation of more than 105 partners and 26 countries (Austria, Belgium – French and Flemish community, Bulgaria, Canada-Quebec, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands). Furthering the movement of young artists and their work within Europe and multiplying the opportunities of encounters and exchanges with European citizens, are the main ambition of this mapXXL programme.
event: screening
machinima £lms Not heard about this new genre yet? Come and see how people shoot films in real-time 3D virtual environments. A brand new collection of the best of contemporary machinimas curated by one of the leading protagonists Friedrich Kirschner. How is it done? Cameras record the action going on. The time needed for the computer to transform the abstract data into a three dimensional visible representation is so little that you do not notice it. The whole calculation takes less than 1/10th of a second. Thus the term “real-time”. The actors aren’t human, but virtual Avatars or Objects, controlled by user input or scripting and act in a virtual world that is simulated using a computer game. Thus, machinima is a mix of three ways to produce moving images: machine – animation – cinema. The term machinima is constructed from these three words, like this: machine * animation * cinema, pronounced < mashinima >. Currator: Friedrich Kirschner Running Time: 60 minutes
URL: http://www.machinima.com URL: http://www.machinima.org
2007
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event: screening
Dangerous Liasons Leiden University Embryology Arts Honors Class
This is a documentary of a Transgenic Pheasant Embryology Art and Science Laboratory taught by Adam Zaretsky at the University of Leiden as a part of an Honors Corse called, Vivoarts, Art and Biology Studio. Held by the Arts and Genomics Centre, this hands-on perfomaance art wet-lab was documented in order to stimulate debate about the use of new biological methods for permanent alteration of genetic inheritance.
Date Completed: 2007 Running Time: 83 min Country of Production: The Netherlands Language: English and Dutch (with Subtitles) Producer: G-Netwerk Director: no director, a spontaneous registration Cinematographer: Zoot Derks, Jeanette Groenendaal Editor: Zoot Derks, Jeanette Groenendaal Distributor: Participating Students of Vivoarts 2007, The Arts and Genomics Centre, Leiden University Distributor Email: G-net@chello.nl, zootderks@hotmail.com, emu@emutagen.com
Adam Zaretsky is a Vivoartist working in Biology and Art Wet Lab Practice. This involves biological lab immersion as a process towards inspired artistic projects. His personal research interests revolve around life, living systems and interrogating varied cultural definitions that stratify life’s popular categorizations. He also focuses on legal, ethical and social implications of some of the newer biotechnological materials and methods: Molecular Biology, ART [Assisted Reproductive Technology] and Transgenic Protocols. Zaretsky also teaches Vivoarts: Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Live Art and Gastronomy. Focus is on artistic uses and the social implications of molecular biology, tissue culture, genomics and developmental biology.
2007
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Transforma & O.S.T.
event: screening
synken Berlin video artist collective Transforma (Luke Bennett, Baris Hasselbach, Simon Krahl) combine the momentum of VJ improvisation with the power of highly composed imagery and narrative. Transforma started producing experimental video art in 2001 and have been taking their imageworld and production processes to higher levels of absurdity ever since. They have worked on promos, concert video and live cinema approaches, in collaboration with Apparat and Funkstörung among others, and have VJed in clubs in Berlin and around Europe.
SYNKEN is a visual music film by the Berlin video artist collective Transforma and the electronic composer Chris Douglas aka O.S.T. With a mix of abstract images, graphic animation, digital image effects and complex film sequences, SYNKEN creates a fantastically spaced out, darkly romantic image-world. Forests filled with distorted organic forms are contrasted against an architectural abyss, as strange and fantastic characters try to make sense of their surroundings. A mysterious vagabond works as a medium between these parallel worlds, transporting artefacts that become recurring symbols in the dual system and means of communication between the creatures which inhabit them. Produced in parallel to the images, O.S.T.‘s arrhythmic crackling electronic 5.1 surround soundtrack
2007
bathes the images in an eerily hypnotic flow. As sound and image merge and fall apart again over time, they form a synergy that opens up subtle leads which can never be read only as linear. As plot fragments refract and reoccur, SYNKEN continuously confronts the viewer with a modular narrative that can be potentially combined to create any number of interpretations. Running Time: 51 min Country of Production: Germany Color system: PAL Aspect ratio: 4:3 Audio: 5.1 surround & stereo Created by: www.synken.com Presented by: XMAG (www.xmag.cz) & Shitkatapult (www.shitkatapult.com)
American electronic music maverick O.S.T. has been releasing and performing since 1992 as O.S.T., rook vallade, Dalglish, and other aliases. After more than 10 albums and numerous singles under his various monikers, Douglas remains well outside the established parameters of electronic music. His work is a malevolent mutation of techno into arrhythmic patterns, interwoven digital textures, and amorphous melodies. He is known, somewhat notoriously, as an artist who is unrelentingly true to what creativity, emotion, and passion are to music. In 2003 O.S.T. was invited by Autechre to play at their curated All Tomorrows Parties. After performing around Europe he decided to settle in Berlin where after a few years of coming down, he uses this project to start again.
special event event: screening
soft science Soft Science is a collection of video-curiosities created by artists and scientists. Behind laboratory doors are some of the most astonishing outsider art projects around. Autopoetic bacteria, tethered flies, ebullient nanogears – these data gems create wonder, beauty – not to mention knowledge. Artists have been mining science for years – in diverse experiments with icky substances, authority figures, and the ever-elusive idea of Reason. This unique program includes digital movies by biologists alongside contemporary video art. “Transgressive and smart, playful and introspective, Soft Science toys with the body as organism and simulacrum. Artists who become “objects of their own experiment” perversely story themselves and their other characters in an intersection of personal experience and “scientific” representation. In the process of passing through skin, psychoanalyzing clones, and swallowing a fantasy bee (among other activities), Soft Science succeeds in collapsing, for a moment, our assumptions about subject versus object, the virtual versus the real, organism versus machine, nature versus culture.” — Juliet Davis, University of Tampa Currator: Rachel Mayeri Running Time: 63 min URL: http://www.soft-science.org/
Silver & Hanne Rivrud
intrigue
What happens to the social games between people when one person is remotely controlled? The project questions the role of simulation in our everyday lives, and tries to reverse the simulation back into reality. Computer games are full of expected banality, and their main content is violence. It’s always the same; killing the enemy. The player is in a safe position, while the danger action is simulated. The player can by controlling the avatar* simulate violence, without himself getting hurt. By taking the idea from a computer game one step further, we change the avatar into real people who can represent the player in real life. Hidden in the crowd, the avatar is attending a social event. He is like anyone of us, but connected to him via mobile networks you can control his actions and influence the social game at the event. By using a mobile phone with the Intrigue application, the player can send different commands to the avatar. When the avatar hears these commands, he has to do them, but still act natural. Now a surreal and fun social game is about to begin. Technology: J2ME client software is running on the player’s mobile phone. This allows him to send basic commands through an Internet server to the avatar’s mobile phone, which is kept hidden. The avatar client software understands the commands and translates them to audio messages. They are played discretely via headset to avatar’s ear. Each player has limited time to enjoy the game. In collaboration with Martin Havnør, Johan Marius Sæther, Christian Tviberg
Silver is a brand, active in the grey area between art, science and technology since 1994. It’s works in recent years have been participatory, interactive, networked and mobile. They focuses on computer algorithms and their connection to human behavior. Silver has exhibited in various museums, galleries and media festivals in Europe and worldwide, recently at FILE festival 2005 in Sao Paolo, Venice Biennale 2007 and Ars Electronica 2007 in Linz. ūhttp://silver.avu.cz
Hanne Rivrud, artist, currently lives and works in Oslo. With a candid camera she observes people in different everyday life situations. Through a subjective observing eye on people’s behavior, their body language and facial expressions, she makes the foundation for what she later uses to create fiction. Her video works deal with existential issues like loneliness, identity, and the vulnerability of love. ūhttp://hannerivrud.com
2007
unsafe distance Showcase of artistic practices that explore issues of safety, environment, and human/non-human identity. Many of the exhibiting artists have worked closely with scientists. Most of them have integrated emerging technologies in order to examine phenomena that may have stayed undisclosed. The artworks exemplify how fragile the notion of distance is in our society. What types of distance do men and women experience in the times of advanced scientific instruments which pilot our both private and public lives? What are the sounds from dangerous places like? Who is afraid of new teratologies? Do we live on a voodoo planet?
Stone Bell House 08. 11. 2007 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 11. 11. 2007 Curator: Pavel SedlĂĄk
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Paul Adderley & Michael Young
ground breaking Experience Past Landscapes in Grains and Pixels In this installation, a computer explores and represents nearly 10,000 years of soil records, revealing them in different colours and perspectives. Landscapes reflect the lives and histories of the people who live in them. Scientific analysis of the soil can be used to examine how people lived in the past and provide lessons for future management of landscapes in extreme or fragile environments. We invite you to become part of the shifting scenes of the Sahel in image and sound and reflect upon its presence and history... Soils can store information recording the way people have affected the land over thousands of years. Microscopic fragments of different objects found in the soil can tell us about past landscapes. The colour, size and number of fragments offer further clues about the man-
agement of landscapes. The latest advances in visual and sonic technologies allow us to illuminate and make audible these ancient landscapes. Sounds of the Sahel, and sounds made afresh are recalled and shaped by the computer using scientific information taken from the soil itself. The Sahel in Africa is an area at the fringe of the Sahara desert. It is one of the world’s most marginal environments yet is home to over 50 million people. With a dry season lasting eight months of the year and unreliable rainfall, survival is hard for farming communities. Climate change is keenly felt in the Sahel. Understanding how people managed this landscape during past periods of climate change is essential in developing successful responses to future changes.
Paul Adderly, British, 1967, RCUK Academic Fellow. University of Stirling, UK, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences. ū http://www.sbes.stir.ac.uk/people/adderley.html @ w.p.adderley@stir.ac.uk
Michael Young, British, 1968, he is lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, Music Department. ū www.myoungmusic.com @ m.young@gold.ac.uk
Soil scientist with publications in geoarchaeology and environmental history specialising in longterm societal-climatic interactions including the sustainability of societies in extreme environments, land degradation and environmental risk.
2007
ū http://www.sbes.stir.ac.uk/groundbreaking/
Composer with interests in computer music, interactive performance systems and generative media. Recent works include Argrophylax (2005), Aur(or)a (2006) and Piano_Prosthesis (2007). Codirector of the Live Algorithms for Music network www.livealgorithms.org.
UNSAFE DISTANCE 46 | 47
Shawn Bailey & Jennifer Willet
BIOTEKNICA: Teratologies The installation charts graphically, sculpturally, and in video and digital installation the ‘evolution’ of the teratomatic body in BIOTEKNICA. BIOTEKNICA is a collaborative art/science project. Postulating a future/present where biotechnological protocols produce designer organisms based on consumer demand, Shawn Bailey and Jennifer Willet have produced a variety of virtual and laboratory based artworks focusing on irrational incarnations of the biotechnological body. Their work is focused on the Teratoma, a cancerous growth containing multiple tissues
like hair, skin, and vascular systems. Monstrous as this may seem, scientists today are interested in the Teratoma as an instance of spontaneous cloning, and a source of stem cells. BIOTEKNICA both embraces and critiques evolving biotechnologies, considering the deep contradictions and complexities that these technologies offer. BIOTEKNICA has produced several incarnations of the teratoma since 2000. Originally, their work resulted in the production of digital images of composite teratoma forms. Later, they developed a flash based interface where users are able
to generate teratomas online. More recently, they developed a series of meat sculptures (utilizing store bought animal products) to mimic the appearance of the teratoma. These objects were presented in installations and several performance pieces - public autopsies. ū http://www.bioteknica.org
Counterproductive Acts and Recipes for an Indiscrete Life: Boo Chapple
rebreathe
The project documents the research and production of a DIY breath recycling system. The title is used to draw together an ongoing series of exploratory works, actions, documents and texts around a central thematic concern for body politics and the poetics of material transformation. It is without doubt that the management of life and the transformation of our material environment is occuring at increasingly finer levels of detail. As a result there are new relationships revealed and proximities established between our bodies and our world. An indiscrete life is one which pulls apart the politics of these connections in order to better understand how, and for what, we are responsible. Counterproductive acts are designed to reconstruct relationships along a different logic to the prevailing mandate of global capitalism.
Boo Chapple, Australian, 1977, Artist in Residence, RMIT University, School of Architecture and Design, The Design Institute. ū http://corpuseclectica.net She is an artist and researcher whose work focuses on processes of transformation that operate at the boundary between life and non-life, bodies and culture. She holds a Masters of Design from RMIT University and has recently completed a year long residency at the SymbioticA art and science collaborative research laboratory, at the University of Western Australia. Her work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, the Beijing Biennale of Architecture, and at the San Francisco MoMA. Her essay ‘Journeys to the Other Side of the Navel’ has been published in a forthcoming book, ‘Art of the Biotech Era’.
2007
48 | 49 UNSAFE DISTANCE
Martin Kermes
In the name of... When I say now, you have to do it, right? Right NOW! Can you portrait me with the gun behind this glass, please? In few seconds you will see my memory on it. Martin Kermes, Czech, 1974, positive, “In future I trust”.
Spectral Investigations Collective (SIC) & RIXC Media Collective
voodoo planet SIC and RIXC present in the installation their research on the technical and geopolitical aspects of giant scale Anti Ballistic Missile radars but also on the effects such facilities can have on nature, animals and human bodies in their vicinity. Electromagnetic fields (EMF) created by human gadgets are biologically active. They affect our body, influence nature and extend beyond boundaries of our planet. Invisible and omnipresent, electromagnetic fields have become ghosts of the modern world... Recently the USA have revealed to the public the agreements signed with Poland and Czech Republic to deploy a new USA armour component in central Europe. Nuclear missiles are planed to be deployed in Poland, and Czech Republic should host Anti Ballistic Missiles (ABM) radar of the last generation. Those radars are huge facilities (usually around 100 m side) with a range of more than 5000 kms that can detect
2007
nuclear missiles. They have been historically distributed by USSR and USA, constituting the strategic armours of the Cold War and most of them are still active today. SIC (FR) and RIXC (LV) present in the installation their research on the technical and geopolitical aspects of ABM radar defense but also on the effects such facilities can have on nature, animals and human bodies in their vicinity. SIC and RIXC extensively investigate the issue by taking the case of the Skrunda station, a very strategic ABM site for USSR, situated in the west of Latvia (near Liepaja), that was dismantled in 1998. The SIC and RIXC intend to warn the concerned audience about an issue that goes from micro to macro scales. Feat: “The Signal of Skrunda” film by RIXC and “Voodoo Planet: investigation documents” by SIC. ū http://e-ngo.org, /www.rixc.lv
Ewen Chardronnet, French, 1971, media artist and independant author, Ellipse, http://semaphore. blogs.com, ewen@e-ngo.org. Ewen Chardronnet works and lives in Tours, France. Widely published, he has been collaborating in different initiatives such as Makrolab, MIR, Acoustic Space Lab, World-Information.Org, Spectral Investigations Collective, Ellipse The Laboratory Planet. He has published “Quitter la Gravité” (Leaving Gravity), an anthology on the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA, 2001, Quitter la Gravité. Paris, France: Editions de L’Eclat) and has received in 2003 the Leonardo New Horizons Award together with the Acoustic Space Lab network.
UNSAFE DISTANCE 48 | 49
Peter Cusack
Sounds from Dangerous Places
Beatriz da Costa with Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto
pigeonblog
Sounds from the Chernobyl exclusion zone The project asks the following questions: What elements of the soundscape of a dangerous place are effected, changed, created or destroyed as a result of its ‘dangerousness’? What insights can sound offer into the environmental, social and political contexts of a ‘dangerous place’? The project presents the field recordings as they are, in the belief that such recordings offer insights into the locations and issues that are different from, and complimentary to, those of visual images and texts. Supplementary questions are: What information about place can field recordings give that is special to sound? And, conversely, what information is given by the other media that sound cannot?
PigeonBlog enlists homing pigeons to participate in a grassroots scientific data gathering initiative designed to collect and distribute information about air quality conditions to the general public. Pigeons are equipped with custom-built miniature air pollution sensing devices enabled to send the collected localized information to an online server without delay. Pollution lev-
Peter Cusack, based in London, works as a sound artist, musician and environmental recordist with a special interest in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. Projects move from community arts to research into the contribution of sound to our senses of place to recordings that document areas of special sonic interest, e.g. Lake Baikal, Siberia, and injang, China’s most western province. He was involved in ‘Sound & the City’ the British Council sound art project in Beijing 2005. He initiated the ‘Your Favourite London Sound’ project that aims to discover what Londoners find positive in their city’s soundscape, an idea that has been repeated in other world cities including Beijing and Chicago. He produced ‘Vermilion Sounds’ a monthly environmental sound program on ResonanceFM radio, London, and lectures on ‘Sound Arts & Design’ at the London College of Communication.
Beatriz da Costa is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working at the intersection of contemporary art, life science, engineering and politics. Her work takes the form of public participatory interventions, locative media, conceptual tool building and critical writing. da Costa has also made frequent use of wetware in her projects and has recently become interested in the potential of interspecies co-production in promoting the responsible use of natural resources and environmental sustainability. Other issues addressed in her work include the use of emergent technologies to investigate context specific configurations of social injustice, the politics of transgenic organisms, and the social repercussions of ubiquitous surveillance technologies. Through her work da Costa examines the role of the artist as a political actor engaged in technoscientific discourses.
Beatriz da Costa, German (lives and works in the United States), 1974, Associate Professor of Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, USA. ū http://www.beatrizdacosta.net @ beatrizdacosta@earthlink.net
els are visualized and plotted in real-time over Google’s mapping environment, thus allowing immediate access to the collected information to anyone with connection to the Internet. By using homing pigeons as the “reporters” of current air pollution levels we are hoping to achieve two main goals: 1) to re-invoke urgency around a topic that has serious health, environmental and political consequences, but lacks public action and commitment to change; and 2) to broaden the notion of grassroots scientific data gathering while building bridges between scientific research agendas and activist oriented citizen concerns. Pigeonblog was inspired by a famous photograph of a pigeon carrying a camera around its neck taken at the turn of the last century. This technology, developed by German engineer Julius Neubronner for military applications, allowed photographs to be taken by pigeons during flight time. This early example of using living animals as participants in early surveillance technology systems made us pause. What would the 21st century version of this combination look like? What types of civilian and activist applications could it be used for?
2007
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Florian Grond & Claudia Robles
Louis-Philippe Demers, Garry Stewart, Australian Dance Theatre
INTERMITTENT is a generative audio-visual installation. The video and sound material is controlled by a dynamical system in the background and seeks to go beyond the classic video loop. The behavior of the background dynamics, or logistic map, is one of the simplest dynamical systems to exhibit complex motion: x[n+1] = a x[n] (1 – x[n]). By varying the parameter a the time evolution of this map exhibits a multiplicity of different motion patterns ranging from simple periodic oscillations to non-periodic behavior, which is also known as deterministic chaos. For INTERMITTENT, we have selected a phenomenon just at the border between chaos and order which is called intermittency. Intermittency is a motion pattern that alternates between ordered periodic oscillations and outbreaks into chaotic movements with
unpredictable lengths. In INTERMITTENT, neither the video nor the sound materials have narrative structures; the stream of melted slag seems to flow unchanged forever. The juxtaposition of the two elements of fire and water, representing continuity and change, is simultaneously present in the video image. Further the dynamical structure also contains these combined notions of steadiness and rupture. Since spectators feel encouraged to scover the hidden algorithmic rule behind the projection, this stream of melted iron does not know any predetermined direction or goal. Instead, this basic natural element appears to be autonomous and active, almost like an animated entity.
devolution
Claudia Robles, Colombian, 1967, she finished her Master in fine arts at the university in Bogotá in 1990. For her audiovisual composition Bewegung in Silber she received in 2004 the second prize at the competition Hoeren und Sehen, organized by the ZKM and the Institut for Neue Musik in Darmstandt. She has participated at exhibitions e.g. at the Bauhausarchiv Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin (2004), at the Goethe-Institute, Bogotá (1999), at Bauhaus Dessau (2002 and 2001), and recently at the International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen. Since 2004 she has worked as artist in residence at ZKM where she presented her work Seed/Tree as a solo exhibition in 2005.
Florian Grond, Austrian, 1975, studied Chemistry at the Karl Franzens Universty in Graz, at the De Montfort University in Leicester and at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. Since 2002 he works at ZKM in Karlsruhe. His main scientific focus is on nonlinear dynamical systems and scientific sonification. Since 2002 he published several articles in peer reviewed scientific journals, since 2004 he participated in media art exhibitions in Germany (Karlsruhe), Austria (Graz), Switzerland (Aarau), Denmark (Esbjerg), Italy (Genoa), Japan (Hakodate and Tokyo), US (SIGGRAPH San Diego), Canada (Montreal), Luxemburg (areas of conflu(x) ence) and Czech Republic (Prague). Currently he is working on his PhD project about the sonification of macromolecular structures at ZKM.
intermittent
2007
ū http://www.grond.at/
ū http://icemserv.folkwang-hochschule.de/~robles/
Devolution works with the dancers on exploring choreographic relationships that respond to ecosystem processes: territoriality, parasitism, predation, symbiosis, senescence, birth, death and growth. In Devolution the authors are acknowledging the robots as machines and in doing so they are also exploring the mechanical, machine-like function of the human body and also the zoomorphic potential of bodies. By distorting the body away from an upright pedestrian orientation and challenging the Cartesian view of the body, the authors have been trying to posit humans as animals, which of course we are. As performing entities, the robots are given equal status to the human bodies in the work, albeit with some major operational differences. “We haven’t tried to conceptually separate robots and humans as different ‘species’ but have been interested in the collision and confluence of the two. When we collide these operating systems it becomes an experiment in morphology and function.” Helpman Awards 2006: Best Lighting Design, Best New Show ūhfg-karlsruhe.de/~ldemers/devolution
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Karen Ingham
vanitas: seed head
◊oating within an x-ray of a bulb like skull, three genetically linked morphing faces metamorphose in a technological vacuum of eternal life.
Karen Ingham, 1960, Head of the Centre for Lens-Based Arts (theory & practice), Dynevor Centre for Art, Design and Media, Swansea Institute, Wales U.K. School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies. ū http://www.sihe.ac.uk/clasi @ karen.ingham@sihe.ac.uk She is artist, academic and writer on the anatomical theatre and the Vanitas memento mori. Her research focuses on creative and provocative dialogues between art, bioscience, philosophy and technology. Publications include Death’s Witness (2000) Anatomy Lessons (2004), Seeds of Memory: art, neuroscience and botany (2006) and the essays ‘A Dark Adapted Eye: Photography and the Vanitas Still Life’ in Stilled (2006) and ‘Palimpsest’ in Fumus Fugiens (2007).
Questions of genetic transmission, explorations of consciousness, and allegories of transience and mutability are explored through digital morphing techniques and video dissolves of anatomical x-rays of the skull. Originally screened as part of Ingham’s artist in residence installation at the Waag, Amsterdam (April 2005) Vanitas developed from discussion with neuroscientists and stem cell researchers during Ingham’s Fellowship with Cardiff ‘s Neuroscience Research Group in 2005/6. In his description of stem cell research Kevin Fox describes how: “All cells of the brain are formed from a single initial pluripotential cell...a ‘stem’ cell is a cell early in this hierarchy that retains the capacity to reproduce copies of itself…” Ingham’s response was to create a series of transitions between the faces of herself, her partner and their son, a replicating lineage. These were then overlaid with an x-ray of Ingham’s son’s skull and projected against the ‘coma blue’ of the medical teaching screen. The notion of the stem cell is transcribed to the Dutch floral Vanitas, alluding to an actual plant stem and bulb, referencing the notion of the seed continuing a genetic inheritance even as the parent/plant withers and dies. But as body, mind and self become increasingly fluid definitions, and emerging Promethean technologies promise to modify mind and matter, will the mutability of the vanitas cease to represent life, as we know it?
Antony Hall
recreation of bz reaction In 1951 the Russian scientist Boris P. Belousov discovered that if citric acid, acidified bromate and a ceric salt were mixed together the resulting solution oscillated periodically between yellow and clear. He had discovered a chemical oscillator. The scientific community was united in believing this to be impossible. Some years later another Russian biophysicist, Anatol M. Zhabotinsky refined the reaction, discovering that when a thin, homogenous layer of the solution is left undisturbed, fascinating geometric patterns such as concentric circles and Archemedian spirals propagate across the medium. The BelousovZhabotinsky reaction is a complex system involving bromate, bromide, malonic acid, sulfuric acid, ferroin indicator, and oxygen. The oscillations in this reaction start with the formation in a red solution of small blue dots that expand in everwidening concentric rings. Antony Hall recreates this fascinating spatio-temporal oscillator. Antony Hall, UK, 1976, MA. Art as Environment, Manchester Met University 2002. ūhttp://www.antonyhall.net For full biography see p. 34 of this catalogue.
2007
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kuda.org
safe distance Louis-Philippe Demers
The Mechanized Eccentric Series Stage is a metaphorical space, a fictitious environment which we wish to populate with machines and cybernetic organisms embodying evocative behaviours; it is a surrealistic immersive space where the public becomes at the same time the observer and the observated. The Mechanized Eccentric series refers to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy concept in which the centrality of the human body in traditional theater was ultimately subsumed in a mechanical rendering and abstract play of stage action and movement. In a more pronounced way than traditional theatre, mechanical theatre becomes a space for a collective consensus of the acceptation of simulacrum (even more surreal). The level of abstraction of the mechanical theatre enables a multiplicity of interpretation. It is an open ended work where each person sees a reflection of its own feelings. Being staged, machines are not set as silent scenery but elevated to the rank of performers. 2001-2005, Honourable Mention, Prix Ars 2007, Digital Musics
2007
The video was recorded during NATO air strikes against former Yugoslavia. Videotape shows electronic cockpit of the US AIR Force plane with basic graphical interface and voice communication between pilots before the airplane crashed. Videotape is a regular document of flight used by command structures to analyze its efficiency and success after the mission. Tape presents the last moments before plane crashed. Interface of this cockpit is completely reduced, cold, black & white. Cold electronic display is pixilated presentation of outside reality with basic position information (longitude & latitude). The first impression of video is that this is an excerpt from flight simulator, since we have learnet to regard similar graphical interfaces as something that is basically virtual representation. Comparing to contemporary popular simulation games the cockpit looks like an obsolete seventies style game. However, its graphical interface is the only connection pilot has with its surroundings;
Running Time: 21 minutes Format: Sony Video 8 VHS Production: US AIR Force Postproduction: kuda.org, New Media Center, Novi Sad Download video at: http://www.kuda.org
he is isolated from exterior, from reality that he produces below. Subject is immersed in virtual presentation and he is completely dependent on technological superstructure. After very impact he is calm and alone. The only thing that shows us his personal drama is his breathing. There were 4 airplanes flying from NATObase from Italy to destination in Yugoslavia. Mission objective was to bomb several targets in the area around city of Novi Sad. On the way back, after mission was completed, one plane was shot. Tape was found near crashed plane in Fruska Gora mountain in Srem region and postproduced by kuda.org.
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Pavel Koprˇiva
red light insecurity System of red light countdown displays . activated by visitors' movements Each of the displays is controlled by an optical sensor. Displays look nonactive till the visitor´s movement activates a so called count-down procedure. The count down can accidentaly stop at any time. Visitors are confronted with psychologicaly known reality linked to quickly changing numbers. Visuality of displays is similar to what terrorists use for radio controlled explosives. Displays are the last warning before a situation shifts into radical negativity or positivity. Red light displays represent an interface of insecurity or under certain conditions even fear. These conditions depend on where and when the displays are located. ū http://www.pavelkopriva.cz Pavel Kopřiva, Czech, 1968, Faculty of Art and Design, University J. E. Purkyně, Ústí nad Labem, Head of DIGITAL MEDIA studio (www.digitalove.eu). His long-term interests include surface reflection, military logistics, UFO, space adventures, nanotechnology, and, on general level, interesection of art and science. ū w ww.kopriva.wz.cz ū www.pavelkopriva.name
Howard Boland & Laura Cinti (c-lab)
martian rose
Exposing a Rose to Martian Environment Artistic investigation into boundary conditions of life beyond terrestrial settings. Mars is a cold place where temperatures plummet from -60°C to a chilling -130°C. Here, the atmospheric pressure is only a hundredth of Earth’s. The prevalent gas is carbon dioxide mostly trapped on the surface and UV light penetrates the unshielded atmosphere. The Martian Rose carries a romantic and destructive idea of giving a rose for Mars. Using a planetary simulation chamber, the exhibited rose has been exposed to Martian environment for six hours at the Mars Simulation Laboratory in Denmark. The lab works together with the European Space Agency and uses the cham-
ber to investigate biological responses to this environment. A specially designed steel chamber hosts the exposed rose placed in Martian soil (Fe2O3).
Laura Cinti, Laura Cinti, Italian, 1979, Artist/ Researcher, c-lab / UCL (Slade School of Fine Art), http://c-lab.co.uk, http://ucl.ac.uk, laura@c-lab.co.uk, she is practicing artist working within the intersections of art, biology and nanotechnology. Her current research looks at plant and interactivity. As well as exhibiting and speaking internationally her works have been featured in publications including New Scientist, USA Today, The Scotsman, Next (Michael Crichton), New York Times and Wired. She is cofounder of c-lab, an artistic platform that engages in critical and contemporary amalgamations of bio- and electronic art. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at UCL, working in an interdisciplinary capacity between the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and The Slade School of Fine Art.
Howard Bolland, Norwegian, 1975, Director of Artistic Engagement, c-lab, http://c-lab.co.uk, howard@c-lab.co.uk, he is practicing artist based in London working with new spaces for life. His research focuses on language and narrative processes within the contemporary intersection of art and science. Recent participation includes, Bios 4: Arte Biotecnológico y Ambiental and Biorama. He is a co-founder and artistic director of c-lab. Taught and worked extensively with award winning interactive productions for clients such as HSBC, Vodafone, Sony, V&A and Microsoft. Currently, he is Head of Interactive Technologies at RMG Connect. He has backgrounds in Mathematics, Software Systems for the Arts & Media and Digital Practices.
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Radim Labuda
Lukáš Machalický
The All Seeing Eye 1.+11.
whatever you say – say nothing! 11.
Earth from the God's perspective. Made by USA.
The installation videos are minimal formal re-working of the original military footage downloaded from the Internet. Video showing a landscape in night vision with a crosshair brings to mind many possible previous experiences: video games, images of Afghanistan and Iraq produced by specialised devices to “search and destroy”. The movement of the camera across the terrain is remapped to a static landscape – as if the viewfinder was revealing only small sections of the landscape at a time. Camera movement is remapped relative to the static objects in the fooatge. Radim Labuda, Slovak, 1976. ū http://radimradim.org Currently mostly working with video, he studied architecture (Faculty of Architecture, Slovak Technical University in Bratislava) and Fine Arts (Academy of Fine Arts in Prague).
2007
The image is stabilisted by motion-tracking technology which allows for compensation for much of the movements of the aircraft. The movement of the rectangular viewfinder is negative to the movement of the camera. The real and the virtual space juxtapose and the sniper on board of the aircraft can use the virtual reconstruction to “act upon the situations” both in the virtual space as in the real world. Then it’s all just a matter of pushing a button. Out of an idifferent space of a virtual reconstruction, just like from the real space the funcionary - operator / the sniper picks those parts that are asigned to him by his programme, which is searching and destroying targets. Vilém Flusser speaks of the apparatus, the operator and the program as one complex entity. It does not matter if it’s a photographer with a camera or a sniper his equipment. They both just push buttons. Installation of this material in the gallery space is conceived with emphasis on visceral interaction with the viewers, who find themselves physically confronted with the video. The original footge is downloaded from the Internet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC-130_Spectre]. The images are taken from AC-130 Spectre US gunship in Afghanistan (ASE II.) and from probably a helicopter in Iraq (ASE I.).
The video deals with deformation of spatial relations in the landscape. It uses military footage depicting aerial shots while allowing for perception of the environment as if a mere scheme of coordinates. The shifting of individual blocks, however, creates new visual units, sort of a “videourbanism”. Banal graphic changes may therefore have social impacts in the real space. The author uses a degree of irony when he explores these devastated landscapes. Lukáš Machalický, Czech, 1984, studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, he lives and works in Prague. ū http://www.ctrlartdel.net Selected solo exhibitions: 2007 – Map, Ciant Gallery, Prague, selected group exhibitions: 2007 – Intercity: Berlin-Praha 05 graphical works and drawings, Gallery Mánes, Prague; Open Space – Prague Biennial 3, Karlín Hall, Prague; 2006 – Trafačka Aréna Open, Trafačka Aréna, Prague; TransGenesis, C2C Gallery / Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague; Podhoubí, Gallery Montanelli, Prague
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Gordana Novakovic
fugue
Gordana Novakovic UK, 1950, artist-in-residence, University College London, Department of Computer Science. ū http://www.gordananovakovic.com @ gordana.novakovic@gmail.com Originally a painter, with 12 solo exhibitions to her credit, she has more than 20 years’ experience of developing and exhibiting large-scale time-based media projects, such as Infonoise. net and Fugue. A constant mark of her work throughout her experiments with new technologies has been her distinctive method of creating an effective cross-disciplinary framework for the emergence of synergy through collaboration. Alongside her artistic practice, Gordana is the founder and convener of the Tesla Art and Science Group at UCL.
Fugue is a scientifically informed art project based on the functioning of the human immune system. It is an interactive piece, and operates within the framework of an artificial immune system algorithm, developing in real-time, and expressed through vision and sound. The emergent, evolving nature of the Artificial Immune System algorithm, the use of repetition in the form of a succession of variations of ‘events’, and the complex structural and functional interrelationships between the individual elements and processes are strongly related to the musical form of counterpoint, which formed one of the inspirations for the artistic concept for Fugue. The sound, by the composer Rainer Linz, is presented as a ‘mental soundscape’, a resonance of the function of the immune system in the body. Fugue symbolises the inseparable interconnectedness between all particles and functions of a living body, which is shaped by its inner functions as much as by its interaction with the world. The core algorithm, developed by the computer scientist Peter Bentley in the context of artificial intelligence, has now become a form of artificial life, an open system that endlessly changes, creating emergent interactions at different levels in a state of constant becoming. The Artificial Immune System software creates the dynamics of the virtual immune system drama. It also constructs and implements the architecture of Fugue by providing the functional structure for the communication channels between the visuals and the sound.
Rachel Mayeri
Primate Cinema: Baboons as Friends A video experiment translating a primate social drama for a human audience. A splitscreen juxtaposes field footage of baboons with a reenactment by human actors, shot in film noir style. The story of sexual selection is presented across species, the dark genre of film noir re-mapping the savannah to the urban jungle. Primatologist Deborah Forster videotaped savannah baboons in Kenya and explains their behavior in a voiceover narration. The filmmaker directed actors in Hollywood to reenact the baboon footage. The project is intended to stimulate questions about what we share with animals, how we differ, and how cinema works to instill myths about nature. ū www.soft-science.org/primate.html Rachel Mayeri, USA, 1969, Assistant Professor of Media Studies / Digital Media, Harvey Mudd College, Humanities and Social Sciences Department. ū http://www.soft-science.org @ rachel.mayeri@gmail.com Los Angeles-based artist working at the intersection of science, art, and society. Her videos, installations, and writing projects explore scientific representation in topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. Her chapter on artists` experiments with science documentary is forthcoming in Tactical Biopolitcs: Theory & Practice@ life.science.art, Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip, eds. Shown at Los Angeles Filmforum, ZKM in Karlsruhe, and P.S.1/MoMA in New York, a Guest Curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
2007
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Rob O’Neill Andrea Polli
The Queensbridge Wind Power Project A vision of a future when meeting energy production needs can enhance the beauty of a city. Queens generates half of New York City’s energy, and the power plants in Queens are affecting the environment. This 7-minute movie investigates how clean, renewable wind power might be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge. This art project is designed to engage urban communities in a dialogue about the potential of wind and other alternative energies. Andrea Polli, USA, 1968, is Associate Professor and Director of the MFA Program, Integrated Media Arts, Hunter College/CUNY New York. ū http://andreapolli.com, ima.hunter.cuny.edu Polli’s work addresses global systems, the real time interconnectivity of these systems, and the effect of these systems on individuals. She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop works for understanding storm and climate information through sound (a process called sonification). Recent works include: a spatialized sonification of detailed storm models; a series of sonifications of actual and projected climate in Central Park; and a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic.
2007
dataface A database driven installation that reconstructs and evolves a large historic human craniometric collection. dataFace is an exploration of historic human craniometric data and a major component of the artist’s “Morphology Project”. The system recreates 2524 three-dimensional human crania based on 82 measurements collected by Harvard University anthropologist W.W. Howells. Built on top of Autodesk Maya, the software is a visualization device, an analysis tool, and an exploratory art installation based on this massive database of human measurements. The installation version of dataFace is composed of the projected output from the system running the software live in “evolution” mode. This mode extrapolates the data out over a large number of generations, taking into account notions of genetic mutation, adaptation, and emergence in a virtual evolutionary system. The resulting forms are a datadriven hypothesis depiction of the extreme, fantastical, future of the human face. Bringing life back to this data is a unique process and one that opens other artistic doors. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, craniometric data such as this was misap-
propriated and used for the purposes of social classification. This project mixes the same type of data as a sample of the global human population and attempts to artistically evolve it. ū morphometric.com/morphology/dataface
Rob O’Neill, USA, 1976, Research Associate, Pratt Institute, Digital Arts Research Laboratory. ū http://www.morphometric.com @ roneill@dal.pratt.edu Artist, programmer and researcher working at the intersection of art and science. He is on the faculty of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute and is a Research Associate in the Digital Arts Research Laboratory. He holds an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Brooklyn College (CUNY) where he focused on anatomy and biological anthropology. Rob holds an MFA from Parsons School of Design in Design and Technology with a focus on visualization. Previously: Cultural Resources Manager at American Museum of Natural History (Anthropology); Character Technical Director at PDI/Dreamworks; and Studio Technical Director at Eyebeam.
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STELARC
Extra Ear: Ear on Arm project An extra ear is presently being constructed on my arm. A left ear on a left arm. An ear that merely hears but also transmits. A facial feature has been replicated, relocated and rewired for alternate capabilities. Excess skin was created with an implanted skin expander in the forearm. By injecting saline solution into a subcutaneous port, the kidney shaped silicon implant stretched the skin, forming a pocket of excess skin that was used in surgically constructing the ear. A second surgery inserted a Medpor scaffold with the skin being suctioned over it. Skin cells grew into the porous scaffold, fixing in place. At present it is only a relief of an ear. The third surgical procedure will lift the helix of the ear, construct a soft ear lobe and inject stem cells for even better definition. The final procedure will implant a miniature microphone that connected with a bluetooth transmitter will enable a wireless connection to the internet, making the ear a remote listening device for people in other places.
Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including new music, dance festivals and experimental theatre. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a VIRTUAL BODY and a STOMACH SCULPTURE. He has acoustically and visually probed the body- having amplified brainwaves, blood-flow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon, approximately two metres of internal space. He has done twenty-five body SUSPENSIONS with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in private gallery spaces and in remote locations. In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board, The Australia Council and in 2004 was awarded a two year New Media Arts Fellowship. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He was Artist-In-Residence for Hamburg City in 1998. In 2000 he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. He has completed Visiting Artist positions in Art and Technology, at the Faculty of Art and Design at Ohio State University in Columbus in 2002, 2003 & 2004. He has been Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit and a Visiting Professor at The Nottingham Trent University, UK. He has recently been appointed as Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK and Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Lab at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.
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Paul Thomas / Kevin Raxworthy
midas A visual and sonic installation that amplifies certain aspects of experience at a nano level. The Midas project takes its name from the fabled Midas, King of Phrygia to whom Dionysus gave the power of turning all that he touched into gold. The metonymic work is based on research developed at SymbioticA and the Nano Research Institute at Curtin University of Technology. Midas uses data gathered from an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in contact and force spectroscopy mode which is t ranslated into images and sound files. By scanning a skin cell with both a gold-coated and uncoated cantilever tip, specific recorded data for each event can be comparatively examined. In this process the transition of atomic vibrations between a skin cell and gold is demonstrated. The recorded data of vibrating atoms
2007
is translated into sound files, presented in conjunction with a genetic algorithmic visualisation. The algorithm is written to contaminate the skin cellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image replicating a Drexlierian deterritorialising landscape for semi autonomous nano assemblers. The semi autonomous self-organizing nanobots affect the AFMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imaging of the skin cell transmuting it into gold. The experience of touch is represented in the process of the viewer making contact with a button constructed from an imaged skin cell. This action releases nanobots, seeded from the recorded data. Simultaneously, sub sonic speakers amplify the data of the atoms vibrations, making that which is infinitely small, both audible and palpable.
Paul Thomas, Australian, 1950, Senior Lecturer, Curtin University of Technology, Department of Art. ĹŤ http://www.visiblespace.com Coordinator of the Studio Electronic Arts (SEA) at Curtin University of Technology and is the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP). Paul Thomas has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space, which was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. His practice lead research is in collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute at Curtin University and the SymbioticA Lab at the University of Western Australia. He is currently collaborating on a public art commission for the Curtin Mineral and Chemistry Research Precinct in collaboration with Woods Bagot Architects. He recently completed his PhD researching the reconfiguration of space.
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Pavel Sterec ˇ ermák Aleš C Jan Trejbal
ears Pavel Sterec, Czech, 1985, after graduation on Jewish High School Or Chadas, a student of Brno University of Technology – Faculty of Fine Arts and Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. At the moment a student of the Academy of Fine Arts, Studio of Conceptual Tendencies led by Milos Sejn. Selected exhibitions: 4+4+4 Days in Movement (CZ), Anymous Festival (CZ), OUT PUT Gallery (CZ), Multiplace (SK), RadioRevolten (D) Agorafolly(BE) Cosmopolitics (RO), Generation 2.0 (AR). ū http://www.pavelsterec.info Aleš Cˇermák, Czech, 1984, lives and works in Prague, selected group exhibitions: TINAB (CZ), OUT PUT (CZ), Electric Sheep (CZ), Autonomous Zone (CZ), Europalia Europa – Agorafolly (BE). ū http://alescermak.info Jan Ludvík Trejbal, Czech, 1982, lives and works in Prague and South Bohemia, selected group exhibitions: Secrets of Women (CZ), Net (CZ).
The Ears Project installation is designed for public space. It is based on sound detection and monitoring devices which were developed in the 1920’s by military forces in European countries. Objects of unusual shape and size caused sound amplification of otherwise inaudible sound due to the elementary physical laws of sound dispersion. At the same time when these devices were being developed a radar research was launched as well. Almost immediately after the completion of their development, right after they were about to be used, they turned out to be obsolete because of radar’s more convenient features. The installation thus deals with the issues of purpose and the rapid shift form purposefulness towards purposelessness. The authors are trying to point out a specific strategy of “taking care” of the past via a shift of meaning and function of an object which was originally designed for military purposes.
2007
Blue Morph Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski 08. 11. 2007 – 25. 11. 2007
Zoosystematician Louis Bec 28. 11. 2007 – 30. 12. 2007
CIANT GALLERY is the first venue for technological art in the Czech Republic. Series of exhibitions include: Coordinates – emerging artists. Hic Sunt Leones – artists from non-European countries. Legends – artists we read about but have not seen. Lectures, artist talks, café scientifique, new works.
2007
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Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski
blue morph
2007
Blue Morph is a piece in progress that has been under development for the past two years. This project is a close collaboration of an artist and scientist interested in collective consciousness shifts in relation to sound, vibration and color. The piece is based on vibration measurements of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a Blue Morpho butterfly. The Blue Morpho butterfly in particular interested us for the nano-photonics involved in iridescent Yves Klein magical blue color that is not pigment at all but patterns and structure. This butterfly has intrigued scientists for generations with its optical engineering – the lamellate structure of their wing scales has been studied as a model in the development of fabrics, dye-free paints, and anti-counterfeit technology such as that used in currency. Today, its dazzling iridescent wings are
giving rise to a market to try to mimic its wonder and create a counterfeit proof currency and charge cards. Most important of all in relation to this project is the realization that sounds of metamorphosis are not gradual or even that pleasant as we would imagine it. Rather they happen in sudden (violent) surges that are broken up with stillness and silence. It is also interesting to note that there are the eight pumps or “hearts” that remain constant throughout the changes, pumping the rhythm in the background. This juxtaposed with the abstracted images of the wings on nanoscale is pretty powerful on its own, but we wanted to make this an interactive experience that would be inverse of what one would expect.
Victoria Vesna is a media artist, professor and chair of the department of Design | Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts. She is also director of the recently established UCLA Art|Sci center and the UC Digital Arts Research Network. Her work can be defined as experimental creative research that resides between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Victoria has exhibited her work in 18 solo exhibitions, over 70 group shows, published 20+ papers and gave 100+ invited talks in the last decade. She is recipient of many grants, commissions and awards, including the Oscar Signorini award for best net artwork in 1998 and the Cine Golden Eagle for best scientific documentary in 1986.
James Gimzewski, pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and molecules, light emission and molecular imaging using STM. His current interests are in the Nanoarchitectonics of molecular systems and cells with applications for nanomedicine. Recently, he has undertaken groundbreaking research in an entirely new field of biophysics, which he calls sonocytology of living cells. In 2005 he published the most downloaded paper in Nature on a pocket sized nuclear fusion device. Gimzewski received the 1997 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the 1997 The Discover Award for Emerging Fields, the 1998’ Wired 25’ Award from Wired magazine and the Institute of Physics “Duddell” 2001 prize and medal for his work in nanoscale science. He holds two IBM “Outstanding Innovation Awards”.
ū http://artsci.ucla.edu/BlueMorph/
CIANT GALLERY 62 | 63
Louis Bec
zoosystematician
“I became a zoosystematician in an abnormally natural manner. Quite early on, I knew I would be nothing more than an artefact tossed back and forth among the questions of art, science and technology. This floating state required that I forge a new terminology and a cohort of neologisms to establish the elements of a paranatural zoology and its taxonomy. I then had to draw up the attributes of the occupation and its rules and endorse its statutes. At present, I am the only officially qualified zoosystematician. As all systematicians do, I decided to engage my entire life – with that obstinacy proper to my profession – to mod-
elling artificial zoologies arising from chimerisations between explicatory scientific investigation and implicative artistic investigation. I thus elaborate and model zoosystems in which singular and arbitrary zoomorphs with curious parallel or aberrant biological organisms called Upokrinomenes evolve. I try to avoid the ridicule involved in the ‘maniac, heroic, romantic and depressive’ stance of the artist. For any self-respecting zoosystematician, the stance manifests distressing archaic symptoms – above all if one interests oneself in the capacity of life and the biomass in its globality to produce meaning over millions of years. A zoo-
systematician can be conceived as someone who moves about furtively, in a cunning, light way over the caesurae or the arbitrary limits of numerous fields. The zoosystematician’s thought, practices and artefacts are situated not in the psychosociological context of art, but in the framework of life’s production scheme, in the inventive proliferation of a cultural memory which puts questions to biological memory and vice-versa. Being a zoosystematician is violently refusing to choose between the plight of an efficient predator and the painful submission of its prey.” Louis Bec - A zoosystematician
2007
2007
web 2.0 generation Connecting innovation, business and art Creative industries, knowledge economy, innovative business models and the growing need for socially and environmentally aware technologies are changing the meaning of creativity and art. For some time now art is not limited to the galleries and it is not a work of one men but involves millions of users that upload, annotate and share different content via Internet. Increasingly, art is also a part of an ongoing dialogue between business and innovation. Web 2.0 is this territory where creativity meets innovation and where new technologies and entrepreneurship merge with culture and art. On line projects and installations present different aspects of this phenomena, from social networking to attempts to visualize the Web 2.0 universe, from business to philanthropy apps, from artistic parodies to explorations of new interfaces and to experiments with the so called mashups.
Academy of Sciences 05. 11. 2007 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 09. 11. 2007 Curators: Denisa Kera, Mahir Mustafa Yavuz, Radka PeterovĂĄ Consultants: Palo FabuĹĄ, Rudolf Kreibich, Josef Hnojil
2007
66 | 67 WEB 2.0 GENERATION
1.
beCoMe tHe Person of tHe year of tIMe MaGazIne: enter tHe web 2.0 unIVerse build A network of friends. ū www.Facebook.com
shAre, tAg And recycle pictures. ū www.Flickr.com leArn new wAys of creAtive And collAborAtive Archiving. ū Del.icio.us stArt your own tv stAtion. ū www.YouTube.com listen to whAt other people listen ū www.Last.FM filter All mediA ū www.Digg.com
microblog ū www.Jaiku.com
Join the first internet politicAl pArty ū www.Pirate-Party.us mAke money And hAve fun in second life Join the first Czecho-Slovak community in Bohemia. ū www.secondLlfe.cz
2007
2.
CHoose your network:
busIness 2.0
art 2.0
Join the club ū www.LinkedIn.com Extend your network of trusted contacts, discover inside connections to business partners.
foster new friendships bAsed on shAred dislikes, AnnoyAnces And disAppointments. ū www.Myfrienemies.com Angie Waller
creAte your first meecArd ū www.MeeCard.com Combine all your Web presences into one appealing little card – a snippet of youness – that you can easily share with others.
try del.icio.us poetry. ū www.artisopensource.net/hacks/ deliciouspoetry.php Salvatore Iaconesi
become elitist trAveler ū www.Dopplr.com Do you have an email address from an organization in the Dopplr 100 listed below? Then we’d like to send you an invitation you to join Dopplr straight away. cut out the bAnks, get A web loAn ū www.Zopa.com Social Lending is a smarter, fairer and more human way of doing money. creAte A nomAdic office ū www.Yuuguu.com Instantly share your screen and applications with anyone, anywhere.
Web 2.0 is „factory without walls “ Trebor Scholz
tAg your tAgs. Search your tagged tags. Connect up to other peoples tagged tags. Even tag your tagged tags. ū http://supr.c.ilio.us/ Eran Globen & Ryan King uncreAtive uncommons: Humor Link Back Don’t Repeat (0.1beta3) ū supr.c.ilio.us/un/hu-lb-dr/01/ bump off users in the community for the determined. ū www.BumpList.net Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Mike Bennett try theAter performAnce over lAst.fm in the lAst tAg show. ū www.lostpostservice.net/lts/ pash* sAve the web universe by killing some digg Articles: 2-D shooter game that implements the Digg API. ūkurtmargenau.com/DiggKiller Kurt Margenau
Special event
Philanthropy 2.0 Award-winning online social network for charitable giving. ū www.GiveMeaning.com Loans that change lives. A crowdfunded micro credit initiative. ū www.Kiva.org Electronic Loan Exchange Network. ū www.Microfinance.cz Cell phone as a magic wand which helps the world. ū www.DarcovskaSms.cz Examples of how to use web 2.0 philantHRopy. ū www.agentsofchange.ca Tell the world „I’ll do something, but only if other people will pledge to do the same thing“ ū www.PledgeBank.com Join the swarm and create a million pound movie. ū www.ASwarmofAngels.com Make music and money together. ū www.Sellaband.Com Crowdbuying a soccer team. ū www.MyFootballClub.co.uk I am part of the networks, and the networks are part of me. I show up in the directories. I am visible to Google. I link therefore I am. William Mitchell, Me ++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City
WEB 2.0 GENERATION 66 | 67
SYMPOSIUM Philanthropy 2.0: crowdfunding, p2p charities, web 2.0 microfinancing and open business models November 6. from 5 PM / United Nations CENTER, Kinských square 6, Prague 5 Every day millions of users pool their money together via the Internet to support efforts initiated by different people or organizations. These services occur for variety of purposes, from supporting small businesses in the developing countries to disaster relief, citizen journalism, political campaigns or even artists seeking support from fans. The bases of all these unique forms of philanthropy and innovative business models are collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network. Can new technologies help us bridge the digital divide or they are only enlarging it? Are microfinancing and microcredits efficient as an anti-poverty program and can they substitute non existing government welfare system in developing countries? How important are the web 2.0 tools for the new business and philanthropy models? Are they really helping the developing countries or they are simply using them to amplify the marketing potential of the web 2.0 phrase? What is the future of the so called online loan services, people to people lending and other creative forms of social ecommerces? Will they cut out the middleman and revolutionize the financial services or will they simply end up as another example of failing Internet start-ups? Political scientists, economists, engineers, entrepreneurs, different academics and representatives of the government and non-government organisations will take part in the symposium to discuss the innovative forms of fundraising and microfinancing connected to the web 2.0 paradigm. The main goal of the symposium is to create a platform for cooperation in the field of innovative forms of philanthropy using new mobile and internet technologies and to strengthen the general support of technological solutions for developing countries.
Keynote speakers: Tom Williams, CEO of GiveMeaning.com Shawn Smith, President of Agents of Change Invited speakers: Michal Broža, Information Officer, United Nations Information Center in Prague Linda Hanyková, Executive Director of MICROFINANCE, Electronic Loan Exchange Network (ELEN) Marek Hrubec, Director of the Centre for Global Studies, Prague. Pavel Kohout, Co-founder and Director of Partners Group, Prague. Roman Staněk, CEO of Gooddata.com. Jiří Donát, Associated Director of A.T. Kearney. Moderators: Daniela Richterová, Library Assistant, United Nations Information Center in Prague Denisa Kera, Research Associate, New Media Studies and Center for Global Studies in Prague. Special thanks: His Excellency Michael Calcott, Ambassador of Canada to the Czech Republic 2007
68 | 69 WEB 2.0 GENERATION
3. NOVUM THEATRUM MUNDI MASH MORE AND MORE DATA See in real-time what goes on in human heads all over the world. ū www.TwitterVision.com Twitter meets Google Maps. Become a flaneur and hunt for dialog fetishes. ū www.persistent.info/overplot Overheard in New York meets Google Maps.
JAN PFEIFFER: SHORT CUTS Google earth as a miraculous camera to the communist past which is sometimes still present.
Exploit yourworld through everyone`s eyes. ū Loc.alize.us – Flickr meets Google Maps. Connect Wikipedia articles with locations. ū www.Placeopedia.com Wikipedia meets Google Maps. Take action against the crisis in Darfur. ū www.ushmm.org/googleearth Witness the genocide on the regularly updated satellite images and from the eyewitness testimonies. Create greenprofiles, mark green events, find green food, build green community. ū www.sundancechannel.com/Ecommunity ECO-mmunity of map markers of green-minded persons, businesses, events, locations and attractions
Special event – WORKSHOP
Jára Cimrman CV on Google map 8. 11. 2007 4:00 PM, Academy of Sciences, room 108 How to mash your CV with Google map.
Lecturers: Rudolf Kreibich and Radka Peterová, students of Information Science, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Charles University.
2007
The installation presents an urban revolution driven by pedestrians and not by architects. By means of satellite images used by Google Earth the project maps the phenomenon of short cuts in the posttotalitarian states in Europe symbolizing the old and nonfunctional structures still present today. It compares them with examples of functional design and also experiments with the possibility of creating new short cuts in unexpected places or with the synchronic transfer of short cuts from one location to another. Jan Pfeiffer (1984), student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studio of Conceptual Tendencies.
Visualize and map the web 2.0 universe WikiMindMap ū www.wikimindmap.org WikiMindMap is a tool to browse easily and efficiently in Wiki content, inspired by the mindmap technique. Felix Nyffenegger Voyage ū rssvoyage.com Voyage is an experiment in aggregating RSS feeds and sorting them by time posted rather than by source. Andy Biggs (ū www.andybiggs.net) – Creative, Design and Development. Pete Hamblin (ū www.niceshapes.com) – Design. Revealicious ū www.ivy.fr/revealicious
Revealicious is a set of graphic visualisations for your del.icio.us account that allow you to browse, search and select tags, as well as viewing posts matching them. Concept, design, implementation: Sébastien Pierre, Additional Implementation: Olivier Zitvogel, Logistic support: Yann Klis We Feel Fine ū www.wefeelfine.org An exploration of human emotion on a global scale. Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar Fidg’t Visualizer http://www.fidgt.com/visualize By mashing together friends and tags from Flickr & Last.fm Fidg’t Visualizer creates an organic meta-tag space where you can create ‘TagMagnets’ and explore how groups flow between memes. Credits: Eduardo Sciammarella ū www.fidgt.com, Michael Chang ū www.ghost-hack.com Flickrvision ū flickrvision.com/ A real-time geographic visualization of picture posts to Flickr.com David Troy, 2007 Flickr API, Google Maps API, FreeEarth by Poly 9
WEB 2.0 GENERATION 68 | 69
Experiment with more and more interfaces
pileus: The Internet Umbrella
Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days fun. This umbrella is designed to bridge real world and cyber space. It is connected to the Internet and has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass to allow social photo-sharing and a 3D Map Navigation. The photo function is connected to the Flickr service and a user can take photo with a camera on the umbrella and uploaded it in two minutes with context tags. User can also enjoy watching pho-
netlag Pleix, Paris, since 2001, is a community of digital artists, graphic designers, 3d artists and musicians willing to mix their skills to gain greater freedom for various projects. The Pleix touch could be a common work on limits, contradictions and accidents that show the fragility of the digital world. Their inspiration source are coming from many different fields like cinema, art, TV, comic books, cartoons etc... and a world full of contradictions. ū http://www.pleix.net
2007
tostreams downloaded from Flickr with a simple operation of wrist snapping. 3D Map Navigation is powered by Google Earth and it shows a 3D bird view of user`s surrounding. User can walk-through a city comparing the 3D views and real sights while the map is updated by GPS and a digital compass. The project has started as an academic research of Human-Computer Interaction Design at Keio University Okude Lab in Spring 2006 and now Pileus LLC spined-off to develop its business. ū http://www.pileus.net/ Sho Hashimoto, (Pileus LLC, Co-Founder) Master’s student of Keio University Okude Lab. He is mainly building an architecture of the system and developing Pileus’ software and network. Takashi Matsumoto, (Pileus LLC, Co-Founder) Ph.D. candidate of Keio University Okude Lab. He has been working on UI design projects and he earned summa cum laude at his master’s and bachelor’s degree from Keio. Directing the production and developing Pileus’ hardware.
Bird’s-eye view of a world saturated by webcams, the millions of eyes of the global digital organism. Mash of feeds from 1609 outdoor live webcams all over the world placed on the physical map of the Earth. The image download software “PICSUCKER” was developed by Damien “Dee909” Coureau on TrollTech QT (Knoppix Linux) and for each cam one image was recorded every 10min for 24 hours. The rendering of the data was done by MGLR at MacGuffLigne (Paris) and the final film was produced by PLEIX. Music composed by Henrik José aka BLISS.
Thomas Gläser & Jens Franke
earthwalk Installation in which you can go round the world in one minute. Arduino Earthwalk represents an intuitive way to control Google Earth. The user navigates on the earth´s surface using five footpads. The arrows represent the cardinal points as heading directions. Activation of one of the pads simultaneously with the center pad speeds up the pace of navigation. Simultaneous activation of the pads marked with plus or minus results in zooming in and out. Time/space/physical navigation which uses the whole body. Thomas Gläser, Student of Communication Design, University of Applied Sciences & Design, Schwäbisch Gmünd. ū http://www.thomasglaeser.de Jens Franke, Student of Communication Design, University of Applied Sciences & Design, Schwäbisch Gmünd. ū http:// www.jensfranke.net
2007
transgenesis: artists in science labs Mixing the heterogeneous genes of artistic and scienti£c creativity
Works by Czech artists who took residencies in 2007 in science labs as part of a project supported by the Czech Ministry of Culture. The goal was to explore the territory and bridge the gap between gallery and laboratory, artistic representation and technical visualization, between the scientific emphasis on discovering the reality and the artistic insistence on re-creating and transforming it. The Czech artists in the exhibition are accompanied by their colleagues from Portugal and Singapore who took part and organize similar programs abroad. During the festival they will meet and discuss their experiences of art and science collaborations and also meet the Czech scientists to discuss future cooperation.
Academy of Sciences 05. 11. 2007 – 09. 11. 2007 Curators: Denisa Kera, Petra Vargová
Partner science institutions: Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Academy of Sciences (AS CR), Institute of Microbiology AS CR, Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals AS CR, Institute of Photonics and Electronics AS CR, Faculty of Textile Engineering at the Technical University of Liberec, Faculty of Science at Charles University. Special thanks: Veronika Kratochvílová, Communication Department, AS CR.
72 | 73 TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS
Pavel Sterec & Vilém Novák
Martin Kermes
Attention economy as the merciless evolution force morphing artworks in different generations of installations. The installation consists of six sculptures located inside exhibition cases which are equipped with heaters. The visitors are monitored by motion tracking system. In case the visitors don’t pay enough attention to the exhibited work, the sculpture is gradually destroyed. Three most “successful” works are afterwards transformed into hybrids via 3D scan and presented at the next exhibition. Based on the crossbreeding rules and the application of “natural selection” method, repeated exhibition and cultivation should lead to a creation of an ideal sculpture.
Neurobiological performance rewriting Descartes` Passions of the Soul. Dedicated to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. In 1674, Nicholas Malebranche wrote about the fluid beasts, animal spirits, which cause mental disorders: „Persons whose animal spirits are highly agitated by fasting, vigils, a high fever, or some violent passion have the internal fibres of their brain set in motion as forcefully as by external objects. Because of this, such people sense what they should only imagine, and they think they see objects before their eyes which are only in their imagination.“ The weightless and invisible entities flowing through the hollow nerves dominated the thinking about the nervous system for thou-
expogenica
spiritus animalis
Lucie Svobodová
bio+bio- BIO+BIO-
Pavel Sterec, see bio at page 48.
Vilém Novák, 1981, Audiovisual studies, Film and TV school of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
2007
When we lie, our every cell lies, when we speak the truth, every cell is true. – XIV. Dalai Lama Is it possible that our mind affects every cell in our body? Is it possible that our mind can affect cells in someone else’s` body? Is its possible that all of our cells are greeting the person that is good to us and react negatively to evil people? I am using my mental activity to influence different groups of human cells grown artificially in lab. I encourage and give love to one of the group and hate and resent
Martin Kermes, 1974, Graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts, studio of New Media led by Michal Bielicky. He also studied at the Czech Technical University, branch of biomedical engeneering. Numerous exhibitions in Czech Republic and abroad. Transmediale.03 media art award. Successful career in the creative industry: VJ, designer, director of Kermes Creative Lab, New Media Explorer for MARK/BBDO working on creative, marketing and design campaigns. ūhttp://www.kermes.cz
sand of years. Human body was perceived like a fountain with pipes which helps the animal spirits move around and animate it. How do we perceive the body today? Can we trace the animal spirits? What happens when we isolate a tissue from the body and excitate or irritate it under the microscope with different substances? Can we see the naked and isolated emotion reduced to a chemical event?
Lucie Svobodová, 1963, Accomplished Czech artist experimenting with different types of media – laser, 3D space, animations, different software and hardware, Internet, virtual reality, artificial live, digital picture and sound. She explores sound, word, static picture or movement, biofeedback, mental activity, psychotropic essences and new technologies and searches for hidden relations between new technologies and old traditions and archetypes. ūhttp://www.auropla.net
the other. The video documents the whole experiment and the photographs documents its outcome. How many cells died or where not created because I was evil to them? How many cells were born and survived because of my love?
TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS 72 | 73
Petr Šourek
the golden dionysus Science meets theater performance in experiments and contemporary theater meets science to be truly experimental. From the roof of his laboratory, professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann from the Royal Academy of Sciences in St.Petersburg, installed an unearthed wire sometime during 1753. On July 26. the Royal Academy was holding one of its meetings. Summer storm was approaching. Richmann left the meeting in a hurry to get back to his home. He asked the official copper engraver of the Academy to join him and make a record of a memorable experiment. The lightening really struck and the copper engraver portrayed the tragic death of this courageous scholar. The science world was in dismay and experiments with lightning were forbidden. In a small village near Znojmo lived a men who knew why the famous professor died. Our Golden Dionysus, Prokop Diviš, who constructed a special
Martin Pouzar
cube in cube Martin Pouzar, 1977, Graduated from the Arts and Crafts College, Jablonec nad Nisou, Department of applied art of metals, where he works now as a lecturer. Artist and professional designer of golden and silver jewelery, co-owner of the graphic studio and Internet gallery, Pentimenti. Numerous exhibitions in Czech Republic and abroad. ūhttp://www.martinpouzar.com
“whether machine” reliable as a lightning rod. His explanations sent to the academies in Berlin and St. Petersburg were never seriously read because they would start with quotations from Bible and explain the electric current as the original light created by God on the first day before the Sun, Moon and the stars. Such electro-theological explanations were not in fashion even if his applied knowledge was correct and useful. The hand minded descended of a peasant family was able to construct a very fine cabinet-like musical instruments or raise up a heavy construction of the lightning rod. His manual way of thinking was paired with a specific sense of humor often embodied in his machines. The musical instrument he constructed and named “Denisdor” (Denis d’or – Golden Diviš, Dionysus) would not only imitate the sounds of various musical instruments but also give a small electric shocks to the playing musician from time to time.
Martin Pouzar creates jewelery. With precision and sophistication he connects, divides, inverts and combines geometrical shapes. Primary it is not only a question of the possibilities of the material nor it is simply a matter of technique. The goal is to elevate the found artifact, pay tribute to different materials, create an object which will become a personal talisman, a toy you never lend. For the residency he decided to develop his playful and constructive thinking and create a sculpture which examines the limits of the new microwave technology and the material.
Petr Šourek, 1974, is a translator, art and theater critic and performer. He studied philosophy, classics and drama in Prague, Athens and Berlin. He regularly writes for Czech media and translates from both ancient and modern languages. He translated works of Abbot Suger, Gerald of Wales, Demosthenes, Petronius and others. His play Satyricon Inc. unLtd. was staged in 2006 and in 2007 he presented his new play Sartre Exit.
Directed by (and script): Petr Šourek/ Set, Wigs: Eva Holá/ Light design: Vladimír Burian/ Music: Jan Burian/ Costumes: Eva Brzáková/ Acting: Justin Svoboda/ Director of photography, Editor: Jan Látal.
74 | 75 TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS
ˇ iharˇová Linda C
streptomyces Science methodology meets artistic creation in „performative“ photography. What happens when you submit photography to the same treatment and procedures which scientists use on bacteria? „I decided to study the photographs of the Laboratory of Bioinformatics` environment by similar tools which scientist use there to study Streptomyces bacteria. Their research is based on analyzing, modeling, and simulating regulatory processes in the cell and they use bioinformatics approaches, tools and databases to interpret the data. In my work I perform similar processes on several photographs made in their laboratory and from this semi-artistic, semi-scientific and even pseudoscientific method, I hope to gain a different view of the photographs themselves and the limits of the medium.“
Linda Čihařová, 1982, Student of the Conceptual nad Intermedia Creation studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, led by Adéla Matasová and Jiří David. Residencies at the University of New Mexico, Academy Beeldene Kunste Maastrichtt. Part of the organization team of the annual international workshops „Dialog of science with Art“. Numerous exhibitions in Czech Republic and abroad. ūhttp://www.lindacihar.com
2007
Pavel Koprˇiva
nanoface A new chapter of portrait history in the age of nanotechnology. Video and photography document an artistic experiment with nanofibres used in modern medicine to create artificial tissues. On the scale of the cell, small fibers are formed and the resulting nanoarchitecture is used to filter harmful elements. In the artwork, the nanoarchitecture is used for creating „artistic“ scaffold by actively changing the organization of nanofibres. The complicated technique of using electrospinning and the difference between the conducting and non-conducting base is used as a new type of portrait technique. Pavel Kopřiva, see bio at page 53.
TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS 74 | 75
Vladimir todorovic & Andreas Schlegel
Pražská zemina (Prague Soil) We will install in Prague one of the autonomous sustainable data objects which will measure different parameters of the local soil. Autonomous sustainable data object is a physical object that archives moments and SYNTFARM is a collective which explores and preserves expressions and structures of dynamic (eco)systems on our planet. there are 4 spheres that SYNTFARM renders on informational and tactile basis: Atmosphere (A), Biosphere (B), Lithosphere (L), and Hydrosphere (H). SYNTFARM’s approach is to experience, showcase, and understand the life on the planet with its needs and rules. SYNTFARM’s home brewed means and methods, the actions are manifested in 3 layers ((NOA (performances), NODAA (autonomous objects in nature), SE (online systems). their tendency is to become a dynamic encyclopedia in time, nature, and online. ūhttp://www.syntfarm.org
facts in time. We will take 25 samples from different locations with their GPS coordinates and monitor the local soil over 20 parameters that talk about different data sets connected to ecology (erosion, moisture, PH, electrical conductivity etc.). These data from different locations will create visualizations in the installation space but also serve the performance in which we create a synthetic world driven by the data we gather in the location where the object is installed. Our synthetic ecosystem preserves such data in so called farm in and forms a digital ecosystem. All farms have a dynamic behavior in their dedicated environment and simulate potential mechanisms of future ecosystems. They map their inhabited phenomena into hot and cold characteristics by mimicking the processes and systems that were observe from physical space.
Gabriela Jurkovicˇová & Viktor Soukal
THE WEIGHT OF TIME Interactive installation which measures time by visitors weight. How Albert Einstein can help people with weight problems. New therapy for people obsessed with their BMI: think of Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity while measuring your weight. Get special scales created to convince you that getting fat could easily mean distortion of spacetime. Prescription balance is connected to two digital clocks and while the first one measures the proper time, the second one measures the slowing down of time related to the weight of the visitor. Experience your own private gravitational time dilation and imagine how time passes in different gravitational field. Ing. Viktor Soukal, 1978, Graduate of the Czech Technical University where he studied microelectronics. One of the creators of the award winning installation Ombea and the cyborg plant Symbiont. Currently lives in Manchester, UK. Gabriela Jurkovičová, 1981, Student of the Academy of Fine Arts, Studio of New Media led by Michal Bielicky and Studio of Conceptual Tendencies led by Miloš Šejn. Residency in the Studio of Intermedia Confrontations led by Jiří David at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. Numerous exhibitions and curatorial work. ūhttp://www.sakura-graphic.com
2007
76 | 77 TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS
Marta de Menezes
nature / decon / proteic portrait
Marta de Menezes, 1975, Portuguese artist with a degree in Fine Arts by the University in Lisbon, and a MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture by the University of Oxford. She has been exploring the intersection between Art and Biology, working in research laboratories demonstrating that new biological technologies can be used as new art medium. In 1999 de Menezes created her first biological artwork (Nature?) by modifying the wing patterns of live butterflies. Since then, she has used diverse biological techniques including functional MRI of the brain to create portraits where the mind can be visualised (Functional Portraits, 2002); fluorescent DNA probes to create micro-sculptures in human cell nuclei (nucleArt, 2001); sculptures made of proteins (Proteic Portrait, 2002), DNA (Innercloud, 2003) or incorporating live neurons (Tree of Knowledge, 2005). Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, articles and lectures. She is currently the artistic director of Ectopia an experimental art laboratory within a biological research institute. ūhttp://www.martademenezes.com
NATURE The artist created live butterflies where their wing patterns were modified for artistic purposes. Such changes were achieved by interfering with the normal development of the wing, inducing the development of a new pattern never seen before in nature. The butterfly wings remain exclusively made of normal cells, without artificial pigments or scars, but designed by an artist. These wings are an example of something simultaneously natural, but resulting from human intervention. The artistic intervention leaves the butterfly genes unchanged. Thus, the new patterns are not transmitted to the offspring of the modified butterflies. These artworks literally live and die. They are an example of art with a lifespan—the lifespan of a butterfly. They are an example of something that is simultaneously art and life. This project was developed at the laboratory of Professor Paul Brakefield, University of Leiden, Holland, with the scientists: A. Monteiro, M. Bax, K. Koops, R. Kooi and P. Brakefield. Since it was first developed in 1998 it has been exhibited in places like Ars Electronica in Austria, Kapelica Gallery in Slovenia, Touch me Festival in Croatia, two different venues in the Uk, The Centraal Museum Utrecht in Holland, Arco Madrid Arts Fair, and the MEIAC museum in Spain where it is now part of the collection. DECON: -struction, -tamination, -position. The Project Decon aims to explore biotechnology methods and materials as artmedia, in
order to create paintings that are literally alive and the deconstruct themselves while exhibited. Reproductions of Piet Mondrian’s geometric paintings were created on bacterial support medium. The colors from those paintings are then progressively degraded by bacteria from the Laboratory of Dr. Lígia Martins, in Oeiras, Portugal, where the project was developed. This laboratory conducts research on the use of harmless bacteria for the degradation of highly polluting textile dyes. During the development phase of the Project the artist worked alongside the scientists researching the conditions to adapt bacterial action to exhibition conditions at Art Galleries. The artwork is something alive, and as such something that dies and decomposes.
TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN SCIENCE LABS 76 | 77 Special event
Czech Artists in Science Labs 2007 8. 11. 2007, Academy of Sciences, room 108, Národní 3, Praha 1, 5.00 - 6.00 PM (in Czech) Panel between the artist and scientist who participated in the 2007 program of artists residencies in science labs.
Proteic Portrait Proteic Portrait is an art Project were the artist Marta de Menezes portraits herself through different media. Her artistic self portrait uses technological means and scientific knowledge from biology in its way to materialization. MARTAISAVELSWVRALRIVEIRDEMENESESDASILVAGRACA is the translation of her long name to a sequence of amino-acids that form the mArta protein. Her name includes her Christian names and family names (mother and father), and is added with her married name, this is already to some extent her own portrait, her own history from when she was born and options she made during her own life. Here it is the family name, a cultural convention, which establishes the interface with the biological microscopic scale. The description of a ew protein with her name, based on scientific convention, is the membrane that folds the structure of mArta protein and sets the various frames that make this portrait. This Project was made in Oxford University, the Structural Biology Department with the help of Dr. Radu Aricescu and Dr. Yvonne Jones. It has been developed with the help of Geneart, the biotechnology company responsible for the creation of the mArta gene in Germany, and the Museu Extrameno Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo in Spain which produced and acquired the work. Project Curator: Ines Moreira.
How artists perceive the perspectives of a world in which differences between codes and genes, technology and biology, natural resources and commodity dissolve? How are the processes of extraction, purification and creation by which we define natural resources expressed in art, science and technology? How artists work with the dynamic between what is renewable and non-renewable, sustainable and nonsustainable in art and science? How they understand the symbiosis between the organic and the inorganic world? What new forms of life, society and art are emerging today? How does the interaction between art, science and technology develop the intercultural dialog? What is the relation between the globalization, evolutionary and technological processes?
Special event – MUTAMORPHOSIS CONFERENCE
Artists in Science Labs 9. 11. 2007, Municipal library, debate room, Mariánské náměstí 1, Prague 1, 10.05 - 11.00 AM Discussion and presentation of different programs supporting art and science collaborations around the world. Participants: Marta de Menezes, Ectopia program, www.igc.gulbenkian.pt Adam Zaretsky, Art &Genomics Centre, University of Leiden, www.artsgenomics.org IrŹne Hediger, Swiss artists in labs program, Zürich University of the Arts, www.artistsinlabs.ch Denisa Kera, Transgenesis: Czech artists in Science Labs, Academy of Sciences, www.transgenesis.cz Jay David Bolter, Wesley Center for New Media Research and Education, Georgia Institute of Technology www.newmedia.gatech.edu and other participants of the Mutamorphosis conference.
MutaMorphosis:
Challenging Arts and Sciences MutaMorphosis is an international conference that brings together artists, interdisciplinary researchers, scientists and creative technologists, in order to focus on the growing interest within the worlds of arts and sciences in extreme and hostile environments. The topics of the conference include Limits of Organic Life, Extreme Bodies in Extreme Spaces, Art and Climate, Eco Sonifications, Perspectives on Nano Art, and many more. MutaMorphosis conference is part of the Leoanrdo 40th anniversary celebrations.
“We are obsessed with discovering and surveying unknown environments, with the vertigo produced by limitless expanses, willing to explore outer space and ready to set out and conquer infinitesimal nanometric worlds.” — Louis Bec, We Are Extremophiles “Industry animals, transgenic insects, semi-humans and genetically modified plants may be foreign species brought forth from technology but are they seductive enough for us to want to live with them for generations to come?” — Adam Zaretsky, On Mutaphobia
Municipal Libary 8. 11. 2007 - 10. 11. 2007
http://mutamorphosis.org
86 | 87 MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCES
The members of the Steering Committee — Alban Asselin, Louis Bec, Annick Bureaud, Don Foresta, Denisa Kera, Roger F. Malina (co-chair), Louise Poissant, Pavel Sedlák (co-chair), and Pavel Smetana — would like to thank all members of the Honorary Panel — Rudolf Arnheim, Herbert Franke, Ivan M. Havel, Vera Molnar, Frank Popper, Sonya Rapoport, Jasia Reichardt, Itsuo Sakane, Sonia Sheridan, Steina & Woody Vasulka — as well as the members of the Advisory Committee — Lorella Abenavoli, Marc Battier, Nina Czegledy, Ricardo Dal Farra, Alain Depocas, Hans Diebner, Michele Emmer, Machiko Kusahara, Lubica Lacinova, Michael Punt, and Nicolas Reeves — for all the efforts towards the success of the MutaMorphosis conference.
2007
P lena r y spea k e r s
Roy Ascott Terror Incognito: Steps toward an Extremity of Mind Roy Ascott is the Professor of Technoetic Arts, President of the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, and Visiting Professor, Design|Media Arts, UCLA. Formerly: Dean of San Francisco Art Institute; Professor for Communications Theory, University of Applied Arts, Vienna; President of Ontario College of Art. Exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica Linz, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and Electra Paris, Founding editor of Technoetic Arts. He has advised media art organisations in Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the USA, as well as the CEC and UNESCO. He convenes the annual Consciousness Reframed conferences. http://www.planetary-collegium.net
Albert-László Barabási The Architecture of Complexity Albert-László Barabási is the Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, and directs the Center for Complex Network Research. He is also a member of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University. Born in Transylvania, and educated in Bucharest and Budapest, he received a Ph.D. in Physics in 1994 from Boston University. His research has
MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCES 86 | 87 lead to the discovery and understanding of scale-free networks, capturing the structure of many complex networks in technology and nature, from the World Wide Web to the cell. His current research focuses on applying the concepts developed by his group for characterizing the topology of the www and the Internet to uncovering the structural and topological properties of complex metabolic and genetic networks. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of Academiae Europaeae. He is the recipient of the 2005 FEBS Annual Award for Systems Biology and the 2006 van Neuman Prize for Computer Science. His recent general audience book entitled Linked: The New Science of Networks (Perseus, 2002) is currently available in 11 languages. http://www.nd.edu/~alb.
Louis Bec We Are Extremophiles For several decades, Bec’s artistic work has revolved around the interlocking of art and science. He became known through his efforts related to extending biological evolution and simulating new life forms, emphasizing in particular how these could bring forth evolution. His search for new zoomorphic types and forms of communication between artificial and natural species led to his founding a fictitious institute named Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, with Louis Bec as its presiding director. He was first introduced to artistic research on artificial life through
his collaborating with the philosopher Vilém Flusser, who wrote about Bec’s “Vampyroteuthis infernalis” in his book of the same name.
Václav Cílek Climate as the Last Wilderness Senior geologist at the Institute of Geology, Czech Academy of Sciences, he studied at the Mining Institute and Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University. He became involved in a study of hydrothermal deposits, later he studied samples brought from Moon by Russian satellites, and then he has focused some twenty years ago on climate change and environmental issues. He combines the knowledge of humanities with natural sciences. He is the author of approx. 400 scientific topics and several books including the award winning “Inscapes and landscapes; Makom book of places”.
James Crutchfield & David Dunn Insects, Trees, and Climate: The Bioaocustic Ecology of Deforestation and Entomogenic Climate Change Jim Crutchfield is a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Davis. Until recently he was Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Before coming to SFI, he was a Research Physicist in the Physics Department at UC, Berkeley. Crutchfield has worked in the fields of nonlinear dynamics, solid-state physics, astrophysics, fluid mechanics, critical
2007
88 | 89 MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCE of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille CNRS. He currently serves on the Comite National of the French CNRS for astronomy and on the French National Commission on Cosmology. His current research interests are in observational cosmology and the SNAP Consortium project for a space observatory dedicated to elucidating the nature of dark energy and dark matter. He is Chairman of the Board of Leonardo/ International Society for the Arts/Sciences and Technology in San Francisco and President of the sister Association Leonardo in Paris. These organizations are dedicated to creating links between artists, scientists and engineers.
phenomena and phase transitions, chaos, and pattern formation. Current research interests center on computational mechanics, physics of complexity, statistical inference for nonlinear processes, genetic algorithms, evolutionary theory, machine learning, distributed intelligence, and quantum computation. He has published over 100 papers in these areas. http://cse.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/ Composer David Dunn has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. He is President and Program Director of the Art and Science Laboratory and President of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, both in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His compositions and wildlife sound recordings have appeared in hundreds of international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. Besides his multiple books, recordings and soundtracks, he has been anthologized in over 50 journals and books. Dunn was the recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award for Music in 2005. http://www.davidddunn.com/~david/
Stelarc Alternate Anatomical Architectures: Extruded, Empty and Absent Bodies
Roger F. Malina Limits of Cognition: Artists in the Dark Universe Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astro nomer, with a specialty in space instrumentation and optics. Previously he was Director of the NASA EUVE Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley, and more recently director
2007
Skin for Prosthetic Head Image: Barrett Fox
Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA- including new music, dance festivals and experimental theatre. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM,
MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCE 88 | 89 a VIRTUAL BODY and a STOMACH SCULPTURE. He has acoustically and visually probed the body- having amplified brainwaves, blood-flow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon, approximately two metres of internal space. He has done twenty-five body SUSPENSIONS with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in private gallery spaces and in remote locations. In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board, The Australia Council and in 2004 was awarded a two year New Media Arts Fellowship. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He was Artist-In-Residence for Hamburg City in 1998. In 2000 he was awarded an Honorary Degree of Laws by Monash University. He has completed Visiting Artist positions in Art and Technology, at the Faculty of Art and Design at Ohio State University in Columbus in 2002, 2003 & 2004. He has been Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit and a Visiting Professor at The Nottingham Trent University, UK. He has recently been appointed as Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK and Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Lab at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.
Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski Blue Morph: Surges of Nanocellular Transformations Victoria Vesna is a media artist, professor and chair of the department of Design | Media
Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts. She is also director of the recently established UCLA Art|Sci center and the UC Digital Arts Research Network. Her work can be defined as experimental creative research that resides between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Victoria has exhibited her work in 18 solo exhibitions, over 70 group shows, published 20+ papers and gave 100+ invited talks in the last decade. She is recipient of many grants, commissions and awards, including the Oscar Signorini award for best net artwork in 1998 and the Cine Golden Eagle for best scientific documentary in 1986. James Gimzewski pioneered research on electrical contact with single atoms and molecules, light emission and molecular imaging using STM. His current interests are in the Nanoarchitectonics of molecular systems and cells with applications for nanomedicine. Recently, he has undertaken groundbreaking research in an entirely new field of biophysics, which he calls sonocytology of living cells. In 2005 he published the most downloaded paper in Nature on a pocket sized nuclear fusion device. Gimzewski received the 1997 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the 1997 The Discover Award for Emerging Fields, the 1998’ Wired 25’ Award from Wired magazine and the Institute of Physics “Duddell” 2001 prize and medal for his work in nanoscale science. He holds two IBM “Outstanding Innovation Awards”. http://artsci.ucla.edu/BlueMorph/
2007
90 | 91 MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCE MAIN SESSIONS
Limits of Organic Life
Perspectives on Nano Art
Bakke, Monika: Zoe-philia and the Predicament of Anthropocentrism Rogers, Kathleen: Bacteria, Geology and Blood Smith, Brad: Ascribing Status to Life Forms Roosth, Sophia: Zeroing Out Biological Time: Standardization and Surprise in Synthetic Biology Seaman, Bill: Neo-sentience: Positive Techno-evolution or Extreme, Hostile Takeover Environment?
Punt, Michael: Between Thought and Matter: the Final Frontier Vennard, Linda: From Imaging to Imagining: What Is Man Communicating about Himself through Nano-Art? Thomas, Paul: Boundaryless Nanomorphologies Stein, Suzanne: Foresighting for Meaningful Innovation
Exo-Botany Xiao, Leon Yongliang: Extending Human Life with Digital Art Forms Kuzmanovic, Maja / Gaffney, Nik: groWorld Boland, Howard / Cinti, Laura: The Martian Rose
Inner & Outer Spaces Krueger, Ted: Mediated Perception Osaka, Takuro: Artistic Proposals on the Cultural Application of JEM 2009 ISS Art Experiment Program Triscott, Nicola: The Arts Catalyst Phillips, Mike: Normal to an Abnormal Degree Tetsuro, Fukuhara: Space Dance in the Tube, Experience and Expression
Mutations and Metamorphoses van Rijsingen, Miriam: Prolific Encounters: towards a Philosophy of Mutability Willet, Jennifer / Bailey, Shawn: BIOTEKNICA: A Mutation Model for Teratological Art Valdes Claudia X. / Thurtle, Phillip: From Spiderman to Alba: Transgenics in a Post-nuclear World Zaretsky, Adam: On Mutaphobia
Creative Autonomy Joyce, Michael: Poem as Written Word at Boundary Condition Grond, Florian: From Reality to a Line and Back, a Little Theory of Everything Brown, Paul: The DrawBots Goodman, Lizbeth / Duffy, Brian / Sudol, Jeremi / Price, Marc et al.: TRUST: Robotics and Haptics for Extreme Interaction and Universal Design Goto, Suguru: Virtual Musical Instrument and RoboticMusic
Extreme Bodies in Extreme Spaces Horรกkovรก, Jana: Performing Spaces for Cybernetics Organisms Beloff, Laura: Wunderkammer: Wearables as an Artistic Strategy Ryan, Susan Elizabeth: Dress for Stress: Wearable Technology and the Social Body
2007
Art & Climate Ferran, Bronac / Ratto, Matt: Artists and Scientists as Extremophiles: Extreme Environments and Ecology Santaella, Lucia / Garcia, Wagner: Cognitus: New Cognitive Tools to Assess Environmental Risks in Amazonas Chapple, Boo: Bodies of Water Da Costa, Beatriz: PigeonBlog: Interspecies Co-production in the Pursuit of Resistant Action
MUTAMORPHOSIS: CHALLENGING ARTS AND SCIENCE 90 | 91
Limits of Adaptation
Mind Reloaded
Fischer, Hervé: Law of Divergence and Mythoanalysis of Limits Schlacht, Irene: Art, Design and Human Metamorphosis in Extreme Environments Jorgensen, Jesper: Restricted Sensory Stimulation: A Challenge and a Risk for Humans in Extreme Environments? Chardronnet, Ewen: Dissemination and the Becoming-World of the Laboratory
Drayson, Hannah: Embarking upon the Colonization of Transcendental Space; Gestalt Biometrics Clark, Tim: Massive Multiplayer Online Games and Anthropic Bias: The Role Game Creators, Possible “Life” World Scenario’s, and the Doomsday Argument Doruff, Sher: Extreme Intervals and Sensory Fusions Ingham, Karen: The Inverted Eye: a Transdisciplinary Gaze into the Dysfunctional Mind Kliková, Alice: Limits of Biohermeneutics
Eco Sonifications Polli, Andrea: Sonic Interpretation and Experience of Extreme Events and Environments Harris, Yolande: Taking Soundings: a Sound-Artists Investigation into Technologies of Coastal Navigation Cusack, Peter: Sounds from Dangerous Places Young, Michael / Adderley, W. Paul: Here Is Now and There Is the Sound of the Land: Scientific and Sonic Perceptions of the African Sahel Diennet, Jacques / Calvet, David / Kronland, Richard / Voinier, Thierry / Vallée, Claude: The COSMOPHONE: Playing with PARTICLES, the COSMOS and SOUNDS
Bodies & Devices Kusahara, Machiko: Externalizing Our Body: Device Art and Its Experimental Nature Kriesche, Richard: Defragmentation Daubner, Ernestine: Art, (bio)technologies & (dis)abilities: Challenges of an Expanding Body/Mind Donegan, Mick / Goodman, Lizbeth / Kennedy, Helen / Palmer-Brown, Dominic / Zhang, Li: InterFACES: Affective Interactive Virtual Learning Environments for People with Cognitive & Physical Disabilities
Extending Memory, Expanding Life Visual Study of Culture, Nature & Universe Blassnigg, Martha: Imaging the Extreme Rossi, Michael Paul: Kitsch and the Meaning(s) of Life Mayeri, Rachel: Primate Cinema O’Neill, Rob: The Morphology Project: Art-Science Explorations of Biological Shape Analysis and Evolution Hessels, Scott: The Machines above us: an Overview of the ‘Celestial Mechanics’ New Media Artwork
Diebner, Hans H.: Cultural Evolution and the Internet – A Critical Approach Germen, Murat / Ayiter, Elif: Looking Aside: Collective Constructs, Autarchic Assemblage Endo, Takumi: Phonethica Sau Bin, Yap: Mapping Art Spaces: An Artist’s Quest to Chart History
Inside & Outside: from Perception to Immunity Lambert, Hervé-Pierre: Neuroesthetics, Neurological Disorders and Creativity Harrison, Dew / Rauch, Barbara: The Art of Creating Moments of Stillness in a Volatile World Novakovic, Gordana: Metropolis: an Extreme and Hostile Environment
2007
92 | 93 ENTER3
ciant
International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague Lab Collaboration - Experimentation - Creation
Residencies International mobility programme for artists and researchers
Gallery Exhibitions
Festival A platform for the interaction of arts, sciences and new technologies
Art Events Performances - Screenings
Relax, it is only the future. — The Prague Post
Training Workshops
Inventive use of new technology is capable to liberate us from a fear of technology. — BBC Czech
Theory Conferences - Lectures - Publications
Let the robots dance! — Respekt
Casting the iconoclasts — Liberation
2007
You can reach us best via info@ciant.cz. Postal address: Kubelíkova 27, 130 00 Prague, Czech Republic ūhttp://www.ciant.cz
ENTER3 92 | 93
organizers CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies | www.ciant.cz
over 6000 texts by artists who work with science and technology, as well as sci-
Since 1998 CIANT has supported interaction of arts, sciences and new technolo-
entists and scholars. The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technol-
gies. It is an independent organisation with non-profit and non-governmental
ogy was founded in 1982 to further the aims of Leonardo by providing avenues
status. Located in Prague, Czech Republic, the city of Golem, Čapek´s robot, Kino-
for art, science and technology collaboration. It serves the international art, sci-
automat and Laterna Magika, CIANT runs a gallery and an art laboratory with
ence, and technology communities through its Prize and Awards, through its
residency programme, organises cultural and educational events, the ENTER
publications with MIT Press including Leonardo Journal, Leonardo Music Journal;
festival and more… Operating locally and internationally CIANT is a platform for
the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Leonardo Reviews, the Leonardo Book Series,
interdisciplinary collaboration that fosters cultural diversity and innovation.
and the Leonardo On-Line web site. We have a sister organization in France, the Association Leonardo, which publishes the Observatoire Leonardo (OLATS) Web
C2C – Circle of Curators and Critics | www.c2c.cz
Site. We organise networks and working groups such as the Leonardo Education
The mission of C2C is to animate and mediate to the public an interdisciplinary
Forum, The Leonardo Space Arts Working Group, The Lovely Weather Art and Cli-
discussion in the domain of contemporary visual art and culture. Its focus is on
mate Group, and YASMIN, a Mediterranean region network of artists, scientists
exhibitions, lectures and projects of groups of artists, scientists, media theorists
and engineers.
and curators. It supports cooperation among curators, critics, artists as well as institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad and initiates cultural, educational,
PépiniŹres européennes pour jeunes artistes | www.art4eu.net
and research projects, including exhibitions and publications that foster critical
Over the last 16 years, we have propelled over 650 artists on to the international
interest in visual art and the discussion about its advancement.
artistic scene within the context of 12 mobility programmes / Awarded over 650 prizes for artistic creation / Produced or co-produced around a 100 performing art
HEXAGRAM – Institute for Rresearch/Creation in Media Arts
shows, over 300 exhibitions of visual art and around 10 short films and animated
and Technology | www.hexagram.org
films / Published 15 publications and co-produced some 200 brochures and art-
The contribution of the creator/researchers to innovation in the media arts, sci-
ists’ catalogues / Twoven a professional network reaching over 3000 people on
ence and technology is at the heart of Hexagram. Regrouping a network of 79
the international cultural scene / Increased collaborations with public, private
senior creator/researchers in four Canadian universities: Concordia University,
and media partners like Euronews and Arte / Facilitated the encounter with new
l’Université du Québec à Montréal, McGill University and l’Université de Mon-
European audiences thanks to the multiplicity of distribution methods.
tréal, Hexagram trains 350 Master, Doctorat and Post Doctorat students who collaborate on its research/creation projects in the following fields: Emerging
SCART | www.scart.cz
Cinema / Virtual Characters, Virtual Reality and Virtual Communities / Immer-
Society for Science and Art evolved in recent years from an informal gathering of
sive Environments / Interactive textiles and Wearable Computers / Interactive
artists, scientists and researchers from different disciplines (philosophy, classical
Performance and Sound / Interactive Television / Artificial Life and Robotic Arts /
languages, computer science, art history, mathematics, theoretical physics) to a
New forms of Narrative and Audio/Video practices / Gaming.
fast growing non-profit organization based in Prague. ScArt is envisioned as a network of humans, technologies, institutions and ideas that interact and test
LEONARDO | www.leonardo.info
the limits of cooperation. The main goal is to show new forms of convergences
Leonardo began in 1968, and has continued for 40 years with the goal of promot-
between men, society and inorganic entities and explore the future develop-
ing the interaction of the arts, sciences and technology. Leonardo has published
ment of our hybrid world.
2007
94 | 95 ENTER3
Under the auspices of: Pavel Bém, the Mayor of Prague, and of the United Nations Information Center in Prague | ORGANIZERS
| CO-ORGANIZERS
| COOPERATION
| SUPPORT
| ADDITIONAL SUPPORT
| MEDIA PARTNERS
2007
| SPECIAL THANKS
| THANKS
ENTER3 94 | 95
special thanks KlĂĄra AdamcovĂĄ
Arnaud Le Mappian
Jaroslav AndÄ&#x203A;l
Petr Marhoul
Alban Asselin
KoĂŻchiro Matsuura and UNESCO
Louis Bec
Meda MlĂĄdkovĂĄ
Soufiane Bensabra
National Gallery in Prague
Patrice BonnaffĂŠ
Stephan Nobbe
Annick Bureaud
JiĹ&#x2122;Ă Pleska
Michael Calcott
Olga Poivre dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Arvor
Pavel Ä&#x152;ejka
FrantiĹĄek PolĂĄk
Lucie Ä&#x152;ermĂĄkovĂĄ
RenĂŠ Rohan
Jan Ä&#x152;ernĂ˝
Daniela RichterovĂĄ
Jean and Collette Cherqui
Hana RudolfovĂĄ
Jan Fleischhans
TomĂĄĹĄ Ĺ&#x2DC;ehĂĄk
Juan Eduardo Fleming
Andrea Schrammel
Jitka HlavĂĄÄ?kovĂĄ
Hedvika Ĺ ebkovĂĄ
Fabrice Hergott and MusĂŠe dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Art
Jana Ĺ orfovĂĄ
Moderne de la ville de Paris
Michal Ĺ pitĂĄlnĂk
Karel JeĹžek
Alice TragerovĂĄ
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info@cinemax.cz
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members of the MutaMorphosis
Veronika KratochvĂlovĂĄ
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KateĹ&#x2122;ina KrtilovĂĄ
artists,
Fabrice Lapelletrie
supporters,
Gumboy Tournament NUMEN: Contest of Heroes
Roger F. Malina
and friends.
http://hry.cinemax.cz
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Ïñîl ìàéw ùäáñø ïñôçø¾ 8 NOVÝCH FILMŮ, KTERÉ ZVEDLY MEZINÁRODNÍ KRITIKU ZE ŽIDLE
OLOMOUC 26.–29. 11. Kino Metropol BRNO 3.–6. 12. Sál B. Bakaly PRAHA 6.–9. 12, Francouzský Institut
www.cinepurchoice.cz
2007
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festival schedule 05/11/2007 – 07/01/2008
festival locations
Exhibitions
Performances
Conference
07. 11. 2007 – 07. 01. 2008
08. 11. 2007, 19.30 (20 min.)
08. – 10. 11. 2007, 9.00 – 18.00
Kampa Museum, Opening reception: 07. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 18.00 | 120 / 60 Kč (student)
1D_ENTITY [Identity] 1n0ut: Robert Praxmarer & Reinhold Bidner with Yasmine Hugonnet
MUTAMORPHOSIS
POINT-LINE UNIVERSE – Frank J. Malina (1912 – 1981)
05. – 09. 11. 2007
TRANSGENESIS: ARTISTS IN LABS
Academy of Sciences, Opening reception 05. 11. 2007, 18.00 10.00 – 19.00 | Free entry 05. – 09. 11. 2007 WEB 2.0 GENERATION Academy of Sciences, Opening reception 05. 11. 2007, 18.00 10.00 – 19.00 | Free entry 08. – 27. 11. 2007
I, RESIDENT
French Institute, Opening reception: 08. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 20.00 (from 12. 11. MO–FR 10.00 – 19.00) 50 / 25 Kč (student)
French Institute
10. 11. 2007, 21.00 (31 min.)
SAFE DISTANCE REVISITED Joachim Montessuis French Institute 60 / 30 Kč (student)
09. – 11. 11. 2007, 18.00 (180 min.)
RECREATION OF BZ REACTION
Antony Hall Stone Bell House 80 / 40 Kč (student)
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Municipal Library 200 / 100 Kč (student) / per session
Panel
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06. 11. 2007, 17.00
PHILANTHROPY 2.0
United Nations office (nám. Kinských 6, Praha 5)
AWcfW Cki[kc
Workshop
International festival for art, science and new technologies
08. 11. 2007, 16.00
Jára Cimrman on Google Map: How to Mash Your CV
08. 11. – 11. 11. 2007
(05. 11. 2007 – 07. 01. 2008)
Academy of Sciences
Prague, Czech Republic
08. – 11. 11. 2007
UNSAFE DISTANCE
Stone Bell House 10.00 – 21.00 | 80 / 40 Kč (student) 08 – 25. 11. 2007
BLUE MORPH – Victoria Vesna & James Gimzewski
10. – 18. 11. 2007
09. 11. 2007, 19.00; 10. 11. 2007, 17.30; 11. 11. 2007, 19.00
Goethe Institute Opening reception: 10. 11. 2007, 19.00 10.00 – 18.00 | Free entry 28. 11. 2007 – 30. 12. 2007
ZOOSYSTEMATICIAN
CIANT Gallery 16.00 – 21.00 (WE–SU) | Free entry
Academy of Sciences (Národní 3, Praha 1) French Institute (Štěpánská 35, Praha 1)
French Institute 50 / 25 Kč (student) 09. – 11. 11. 2007, 17.00
ON VAMPYROTEUTHIS INFERNALIS
Locations
Screenings
CIANT Gallery 16.00 – 21.00 (WE–SU) | Free entry
Goethe Institute (Masarykovo nábřeží 32, Praha 1) Kampa Museum (U Sovových mlýnů 2, Praha 1) Stone Bell House (Staroměstské náměstí 13, Praha 1) CIANT Gallery (Křížkovského 18, Praha 3)
THE BEST OF PEPINIERES I, II, III
Info centre and conference venue Municipal Library (Mariánské náměstí 2, Praha 1)
DANGEROUS LIASONS
08. 11. – 10. 11. 2007 08.30 – 19.00
09. 11. 2007, 17.30; 11. 11. 2007, 17.30
MACHINIMA FILMS
Contact enter3@ciant.cz, http://enter3.org
09. 11. 2007, 21.00
SYNKEN
10. 11. 2007, 19.00
SOFT SCIENCE
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Tickets available at locations. The festival is part of the Week of Science and Technology, a project of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Passes available at Info centre.
2007
international festival for art, science and new technologies
CENA / PRICE 290 Kč / € 11,–
2007