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A B ST R A K T E W E LT E N RE ALISIEREN
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For LEAP Abstrakte Welten Realisieren constitutes the nature of the experiment in its most rudimentary form. The installations very much resemble a laboratory experiment, still their focus is not just upon mere simulation, but upon illustrating the dialogue between model and reality in its very process of development. Viewers can thus not only observe the isolation of an object from its original environment, but also experience its recalculation and abstraction into data. In focusing on the physical perception of the digital and the media representation of data, the installations do not address only one sense; within this scientific and artistic approach, we ask how does data taste, smell, sound or feel. In reference to VilĂŠm Flusser, Abstrakte Welten Realisieren is about works, which simulate other spaces without being screen-based. In other words they are “technical imagesâ€? without a surface (Flusser: Into the Universe of Technical Images). A significant model-reality deviation is being illustrated on the subjects, such as the daily weather forecast or natural phenomena. Although in the context of an object-simulation, the installations move away from the digital and instead focus on synthesizing sensations.
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E They use two-dimensional methods of representing visual data in a numerical form and in doing so open and expand the dimension of perception of digital and virtual content. The screen transforms into a mere output medium, into a one-dimensional representation of space. In illustrating model-structures between representations of the world and its actual form or state, the works focus on a complex as wells as reductionistic information-synthesis, which produce a single “slice reality”, such as a scale-number representing temperature in Yesterday’s Today. The stress field around the modeland-reality subject thus means an openend-experiment in a scientific context and at the same time an experiment space in an artistic sense. The artists ask: What happens when model and reality constantly adapt each other? How do they converge until they become infinitely similar? The technical means also allow the splitting of this continuity. By using collected data and exporting it into different forms, the endless equaling of objects is being interrupted, held into frames and actively mapped. Such “stills” do not however represent results, but extensions; stages, which only deconstructing continuity can make visible. Text: Sandra Moskova
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ALOOP Aloop transforms the site-specific radiation of the exhibition space to a composition of light and movement. The observer is involved as an indirect interactive in the space; and perceives the implicit process of radioactive decay. Noises resonate; rotating LED’s draw bright ephemeral threads behind a ring of light-conducting tissue. While the installation is enveloped in silence and darkness, the streams of light overlap on the retina to form an image that constantly reshapes and fades away. Does the diffused image last until the next radioactive fission triggers a new light wave to mingle with the previous one? According to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay. However, the probability of collapse is constant over time. The gap, the pause between events symbolises the rare experiential principle of chance and generates in the
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Markus Hoffmann
negative-process a superstructure of contemplation. How would this experiment look in a hundred or five hundred years - will endless light strings illuminate the room, an everlasting sound infuse with the installation? The human impact on the installation is based for one thing on the fact that radioactive processes occur naturally in the human body that our species play a major part, whether it be intentionally or through lack of awareness, in contributing to the radioactive potential of the Earth’s system. With Aloop Markus Hoffmann and Lucas Buschfeld comment on these complex issues with ease and elegance. The installation choreographes a fragile play of lights, addresses questions of perception and reception to simultaneously opening the space for their own projections. Text: Kordula Fritze-Srbic
Lucas Buschfeld
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David Bowen This installation consists of a series of 42 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside. For the installation a sensor is installed in an outdoor location adjacent to the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab at the University of Minnesota. Thus the individual components of the installation in Berlin
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move in unison as they mimic the direction and intensity of the wind halfway around the world. As it monitors and collects real-time data from this remote and distant location, the system relays a physical representation of the dynamic and fluid environmental conditions.
TELE-PRESENT WIND
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TRANSDUCERS TRANSDUCERS is an installation composed of several tubular glass devices hanging at eye-levelthrough the space. Each of the see-through machineries contains a unique element: A single human hair – merely physical debris on the one hand, potential information carrier on the other. In the course of preparation, hair samples were collected from different individuals and transplanted into the custom-made laboratory glass tubes. The object under investigation – the human hair – is triggered by the machinery and is stimulated to react. This reaction is registered, amplified and transduced into an audible output that implicitly encodes the hair samples’ physiological constitution. Each of the devices generates a unique sound based on each donors’ individual specimen. Every audible result provides a
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technological representation of identity based on the inserted human material – freely oscillating between life and laboratory, between individuality and classification, between biology and its technoscientifical appropriation.
Verena Friedrich
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Sascha Pohflepp
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
The Supertask is a paradoxical goal that we have set ourselves: creating a model of the whole world. Named after British philosopher James F. Thomson’s term for a quantifiably impossible endeavor, our work is as an artistic exploration of the nature of models, and their role in a contemporary view of the world within both science and society.
Here at LEAP, the visitor experiences any fluctuation between ‘yesterday’s today’ - yesterday’s forecast, an artificial alternate present - and today’s reality. Constantly monitored, the temperature of the air in the isolation chamber at times diverges from the gallery temperature, embodying the dynamic space between the model and reality.
As part of our ongoing effort, Yesterday’s Today focuses on one of the most common examples of modelling: the weather forecast. Complex computational models result in a reductionist slice of reality; a number that represents the world on the scale of degrees Celsius.
With thanks to Professor George Attard, Dr Ali Tavassoli and Complexity Science at the University of Southampton
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YESTERDAYS TODAY (The Supertask)
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A B ST R A K T E W E LT E N RE ALISIEREN a Tr ns P
03.02.2013
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27.01.2013
Exhibition
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13
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re 20
Opening
8 pm
26.01.2013
r Vo sp ie l Organised by Daniel Franke (LEAP) Kai Kreuzmüller (LEAP) John McKiernan (LEAP) Sandra Moskova (Text) Florian Lamm (Grafikdesign) Julian Sharifi (LEAP Intern)
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
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Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 13 10178 Berlin www.leapknecht.de
info@leapknecht.de
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