April 25, 2006
Garage galore
09:52 PM architectureBranislav Kropilak's photographic view on garages:
Today, shopping and visiting huge malls became for a majority of people the best way to spend time or entertain oneself. This fact is even more disturbing, when you realize, the parking lots of these malls are full almost constantly all year long, regardless of the season, weather or even holidays. Garages is a series that focuses on the esthetic side of these, for many uninteresting, places and simultaneously displays the rather utopian image, how they would look like, if that same majority adopted a different life style.
Check also Teresa Sapey's garage for Hotel Puerta Merica in Madrid.
Via regarde.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedAlternative Living Strategies
04:27 PM other reportsOn Sunday i went for the second time (first time they confiscated my camera phone too early) to see LESS, Alternative Living Strategies at the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan. Among the new forms of living proposed by 18 artists i found many works blogged here and there: Dré Wapenaar's Treetents were much bigger than what i had imagined, Andrea Zittel's living units ("People in Japan are already living in stuff like that," commented a visior!), Marjetica Potrc's Hippo Water Roller and favelas-inspired Hybrid Houses, one of Krzysztof Wodiczko's Critical Vehicles for the homeless, Lucy Orta's wearable architecture, N55's Snail Shell System, Michael Rakowitz's inflatable paraSITE sucked air at the entrance of the museum, etc.
Jimmie Durham, Nature Morte with Stone on Metal and the Adjustable Wall Bra
The most striking pieces for me are by Atelier Van Lieshout and Vito Acconci (but i've always had a soft spot for their work.)
Acconci's gigantesque Adjustable Wall Bra (1990-91) is a double chair where each cup provides seating, with surrounding music and the sounds of breathing (image top right).
Looking for more information about the piece, i stumbled upon one Acconci's old projects: 3 masks based on conventional fencing masks. The Virtual Pleasure Mask "has a penis for nose, a vagina for mouth, and two televisions sets facing in for the eyes. On the other side of the vagina is a pacifier. So when you're wearing the mask, someone can be fucking you on the outside, and you can be watching television on the inside, sucking on a pacifier in a world of your own."
"The Virtual Relations Mask has a penis for nose, vagina for mouth, one television facing in at the eyes, and a surveillance camera on the top of the mask that mechanically rotates, up and down. So if you're wearing the mask and someone is fucking you from the outside, you can see who's fucking you by means of the camera, and if you don't like who's fucking you, there's a whistle on the inside you can blow. The Virtual Intelligence Mask has 3 televisions: one larger television facing out, and 2 miniature TVs facing in. The miniature televisions cover the eyes of the person wearing the mask, he/she seems blindfolded by the TVs. At one side of the mask is a small radio, positioned at the ear of the person wearing the mask; the radio's speaker is directed out. On top of the mask are two surveillance cameras, one on top of the other, one directed toward the front and the other toward the rear. They rotate mechanically, side to side. The person wearing the mask can see his/her environment on the screens in front of his/her eyes. In the meantime, passers-by may switch the TV channels outside the mask, or change from one radio station to another. A passer-by can literally «dial» the person wearing the mask; a passer-by can literally «turn the person on.»" (excerpt from one of Acconci's talks)
Back to the show. Atelier Van Lieshout were showing a tiny mustard Capsule and the majestuous Maxi Capsule Luxus which Joep Van Leshout descibes as "like a farm for people. It looks like a chicken coop, but the units basically offer a simple solution for storing people." Complete with a big bed, a TV set, a mini-bar, heating and other amenities, there isn't much more to do inside the capsule than sleep and watch TV.
Also by Atelier Van Lieshout: The Disciplinator and The Call Centre. More on AVL in Icon magazine.
Virgilio has an image gallery of the show. My pics on flickr. Acconci images: world image, Mediakunstnetz.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedCamping on the parking space
03:58 PM activism + art + street(P) LOT, an ongoing project by Michael Rakowitz (of the notorious paraSITE), questions the occupation of public space and encourages reconsiderations of "legitimate" participation in city life.
Instead of using municipal parking spaces to store vehicles, P (LOT) proposes to rent them for alternative purposes. The acquisition of municipal permits and simple payment of parking meters could enable citizens to, for example, establish temporary encampments or use the leased ground for different kinds of activities. A first initiative turns ordinary car covers into portable tents, available for loan at the MUMOK, the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. Interested citizens have the choice to use one of five covers ranging from a common Sedan to a luxurious Porsche or motorcycle.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedApril 24, 2006
Hanging haven in the city
10:14 PM architectureThe Architecture Programme at the Royal Academy of Arts and World Architecture News have announced the winners of the Urban Eyrie: a Haven in the City competition. The brief was imagine a place where people can find personal space but still engage with the energy of the city around them.
Ricky Lee won the first prize for his ingenious solution integrated into the vertical neon advertising that flanks the classic Chinese street. People would be able to climb upon neon signs and relax into their own haven. There, they would be able to have a look at what's going on in the street while remaining hidden behind the structure of the signs.
List of winning proposals.
The Urban Eyrie display of finalists is at the Royal Academy of Arts - Architecture on the Ramp, London until 22nd May.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedMixedMedia festival
07:16 PM eventsWhen Silvio and Paolo from Limiteazero told me a year ago they were planning to organise an event about new media art, architecture and performances in Milan, i promised myself i wouldn't miss it. Well... i will. Instead i will frolic in Berlin, give a talk in Maribor and watch my favourite trashy soap opera on a laptop.
Check the amazing line up (in english soon): new media art, architecture, sound&audioVideo; (sic!) and book your ticket to Milan.
MixedMedia festival will take place at the Hangar Bicocca, Milan, May 25-28.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedCCTV to spot individuals carrying concealed firearms
06:51 PM security + softwareSurveillance cameras are not only said to make people feel better, they might one day be able to spot individuals carrying concealed firearms.
For Loughborough University's multi-environment deployable universal software application (Medusa, see PDF) project, CCTV footage of people carrying concealed firearms will be analyzed to identify characteristics associated with the behaviour of criminals (body stance, gait, movement and eye contact with cameras) before they commit a gun-related crime. This information will be used to develop a machine-learning system for behavioural interpretation. Armed with this data, the CCTV cameras will scan footage and match behavioural characteristics that indicate if an individual might be carrying a gun.
The system might be developed to study knives as well.
Via The Engineer. Image from Lonely Radio photostream.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedDolls of the day
03:39 PM sexMarta has a great roundup of links related to love dolls.
One of them sends to an article about the Real Doll Doctor, a man who's job is to repair the world’s most lifelike love dolls, manufactured by Abyss Creations (who has also received requests for a Real Dog and Real Children, but the company firmly turns those customers away.)
Besides, the man not only buys and sells used dolls, he also welcomes the dolls the factory won’t sell: those that came out of the mold damaged or disfigured. With a little time and silicone, the doctor can fix almost anything. But a broken doll isn’t a problem. Plenty of people, the Doll Doctor says, just want a doll’s torso.
To Marta's links i'll add: Inflatable dolls rafting tournament, Tokyo love-doll call-girl service, Still-Lovers series by Elena Dorfman, and the super-weird Japanese pro-wrestling love dolls. Image from Bob Carlos Clarke's (RIP) love dolls.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedNeural 24 is out
09:17 AM activism + art + installation + life online + trendsThe 24th issue of Neural is available in english.
The cult magazine for new media art and emusic lovers contains interviews of Shu Lea Cheang, Cory Arcangel, Natalie Jeremijenko, Barbara Lattanzi, People Like Us, Igor Stromajer and Kaffe Matthews.
There's also an essay by Valentina Culatti about sonic weapons and Alessandro Ludovico's text on Spam, the economy of desire which he wrote for read me and presented also at Transmediale.
Plus stories about surreal socialism, a verified file deletion, a Miscalculator, some Flying Spy Potatoes, the PDradio, television gadflies, Hack the Google self.referentialism, etc.
The 30 first subscribers will get a catalogue of "Satellite of Love", an event about TV and art. Neural got an honorary mention at Ars Electronica in 2004.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedFantastically Immersed in the Darkness
07:58 AM art from japanMyriads of glowing dots wavering in the darkness -- one might feel as if she could visually sense the air moving, or as if she was immersed in the endless conversation with a formless matter whose meanings constantly emerge and disappear. Yasuaki Onishi, a young artist in Osaka, has explored the fascinating interplay of darkness, fluorescence, and shapes through his works using lo-tech materials: fluorescent paint, paper, knitting wool, plastic bags, fans, black light, etc.
[restriction sight 3 by yasuaki onishi]
What Onishi intends to create is "something that restricts visitors' visual perception and thereby stimulate their imagination." When he was making an iron sculpture in college, he took artistic photographs of sparks made by a grinder. Then, he went on to explore the potential of light in flat surfaces and 3D spaces.
[restriction sight - drawing rain- by yasuaki onishi]
It was a couple of years ago when he first made animated 3D forms using black light and fluorescent paint. Actually, one may not call them 3D forms: they occupy 3D spaces, however, don't have clearly perceptible shapes.
His works were featured at several exhibitions in Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo last year, including "Art Exhibition Daft Punkism" where three people showed different art works inspired by Daft Punk album "Robot Rock."
Related website:
Digital Stadium
INAX Culture
Sfera exhibition
thanks, regine!
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedTom Sachs in Milan
07:28 AM art + other reportsPrada probably decided that Tom Sachs was a wonderful PR after having seen his Prada Death Camp, the model of a concentration camp, made from a Prada hat box. They even offered the artist an unlimited supply of shoeboxes for the Prada Toilet. Sachs now has a show at the Prada Foundation in Milan.
Balaenoptera Musculus and The Island were conceived especially for the 1,500 sqm of the Fondazione space.
The Island is a reconstruction of the command area on the bridge of an aircraft carrier, inspired by Enterprise CVN 65, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (Sachs has dealt with nuclear before, see Sony Outsider (Gajin), a true-to-scale replica of the Fat Man, the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945). The Island is equipped with working radar, monitor, cameras and radio devices. Inside the cabin are everyday necessities, including cigarettes, alcohol and a toilet.
The other new work is the Balaenoptera Musculus, a reconstruction of an 18-metre long blue whale. Sachs took his inspiration from the whale model hanging at the American Museum of Natural Histoy in NYc.
There's also a Delinquency Chamber, endowed with every comfort: huge fridge full of beers, ashtray and extractor of smoke, stereosystem, waste bin and the videogame GTA to play with.
Other works on display: rifles which do not look much as they were made with recycled materials but they are fully functionning, a moon rocket, a collection of modified knives and more fire weapons.
The show runs until June 15, at the Fondazione Prada, Via Antonio Fogazzaro 36 - Milano.
More images of Tom Sachs work (some are mine and the beuatiful ones, taken by Attilio Maranzano, are from the Press Kit i requested when they told me "No picture, no picture!") and of the opening of the show in Milan.
More about the artist in an interview and on Kultureflash.
April 23, 2006
Wagon
06:16 PM art
Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski has created an impressive installation for the Maurizio Cattelan-curated Berlin biennal. The piece titled Wagon is a full-scale freight car and my makeshift panoramic-shot does little justice to its monolithic appearance. While looking completely authentic, the whole thing is a mock-up and made from materials such as styrofoam.
Kusmirowski is said to have started to make deliberate mock-ups as a boy, building toys he couldn't get in socialist Poland. Meanwhile he has pretty much made his skills perfect, reproducing everything from money, baroque tombstones to entire apartments as in Double V from 2003. Most of his work has strong political undertones with Wagon making no exception: this part of the biennal is actually located in a former Jewish elementary school for girls. Filling up one of the empty rooms with a faithful reproduction of the vehicles that countless amounts of people have been deported with is quite a statement. Surprisingly, he has yet been spared of the publicity that Santiago Serra got.
Consider this a teaser, for Régine is going to cover the Berlin biennal in greater depth soon. A few more pictures.
Related: Cattelan's Kids
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedApril 22, 2006
Arphid sound performances in the metro
08:50 PM rfid + soundArphield Recordings documents impromptu arphid sound performances produced by people scanning their Oysters cards as they access London tube stations. In the project, the field recordings are focused on the sampling of sounds produced by the use of arphid (rfid) technology (cards and readers) complemented by digital processing involving sampling and synthesis from the source, speculating on the ad infinitum convergence of arphid tags and readers into an endless symphony of sound surveillance and compliance.
Contribute to the project by downloading the arphield recordings and visiting the station gates with the sounds on a portable music player to experience a mix of live and prerecorded oyster beeps.
Another way of participating is by contributing arphield recordings from a tube station access control gate. You can do this by opening an odeo.com account and uploading your recordings, tagging them as arphieldRecording followed by the number unique to your oyster card (as in arphieldRecordings-0503266130-03)
The next arphid mob will happen at the Stockwell tube station, South London, on June 10 at 2 pm. Download the arphield Recordings podcast and bring the sounds on a music player.
Created by Paula Roush, MSDM mobile strategies of display & mediation.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedMonty Python's Flying Circus - Spam
06:10 PM life onlineSomething Alessandro knows by heart!
In Spam, the popular Monty Python sketch broadcast in 1970, two customers are trying to order a breakfast from a menu that includes the SPAM processed meat product in almost every item. The term spam (in electronic communication) is derived from this sketch.
In only three and a half minutes, the word "Spam" is mentioned more than 130 times.
See it on Video Google and on You Tube: here or here.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedImage of the day
10:34 AM small talks
An Akihabara maid and her admirers, by Alex Flannery.
Via Metropolis.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedVirtual lives
10:27 AM games + life onlineGood news if you're interested in videogames and plan to be in or around Milan on May 3. IULM Humanities Lab, in collaboration with Standford University, is organizing Games @ IULM, a conference about videogames and their role in education, art, politics. Website's in italian but i'll write a report of it after the event.
Via videoludica.
Business Week (via Terranova) has a podcast, two slideshows and a story about Second Life and other MMORLG, money and advertising. Good wrap-up if you're interested in the topic but don't have the time to follow it closely (check also The Future of Credit Cards - Earning virtual currency for spending in the real world & other world bridging, by Phillip Torrone.)
Anshe Chung - the "virtual Trump" - even gets the cover of the mag. The land development business, which the avatar has built from nothing two years ago, has turned into an operation of 17 people. Second Life participants pay Linden dollars, the game's currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. They can then convert the play money into dollars by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. To handle rampant growth, Chung opened a 10-person studio and office in Wuhan, China. Says Chung's owner: "This virtual role-playing economy is so strong that it now has to import skill and services from the real-world economy."
Unlike in other virtual worlds, SL's technology lets people build anything they can imagine. In 2003, Linden Lab allowed SL residents to retain full ownership of their creations. The inception of property rights in the virtual world made for a thriving market economy. Tringo, a game played by avatars inside SL, is so popular it was licensed to a publisher, who'll release it on video game players and cell phones. Some suggest Second Life could even challenge Microsoft Windows operating system as a way to create entertainment and business software and services.
Other real-world businesses are paying attention as virtual worlds could provide them with a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design and marketing. For example, Rivers Run Red is working with real-world fashion firms and media companies inside Second Life, where they're creating designs that can be viewed in 3D by colleagues anywhere in the world.
Players are estimated to have spent about $1 billion in real money last year on virtual goods and services at all these games combined. A player in Project Entropia last fall paid $100,000 in real money for a virtual space station, from which he hopes to earn money charging other players rent and taxes.
Some SL 3,100 residents each earn a net profit on an average of real $20,000 in annual revenues. Take Chris Mead who creates animations for couples: When two avatars click on a little ball, they dance or cuddle together. They take up to a month to create but every day he sells more than 300 copies of them at $1 or less apiece.
Second Life's economy has also begun to attract financial businesses. One character has set up the Metaverse Stock Exchange inside Second Life, hoping it will serve as a place where residents can invest in developers of big projects like virtual golf courses.
Such efforts are raising questions. Virtual worlds may be games at their core, but what happens when they get linked with real money? Ultimately, who regulates their financial activities? And doesn't this all look like a great way for crooks or terrorists to launder money?
Residents spend a quarter of the time they're logged in creating things that are available to everyone else. Linden Lab charges customers anywhere from $6 to thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of doing most of the work.
Now companies are thinking about using gaming's psychology, incentive systems, and social appeal to get real jobs done better and faster. "People are willing to do tedious, complex tasks within games," notes Nick Yee. "What if we could tap into that brainpower?"
A Palo Alto startup, Seriosity is exploring whether routine real-world responsibilities might be assigned to a custom online game. "We want to use the power of these games to transform information work," says Seriosity CEO Byron B. Reeves.
Email this | + digg | + del.icio.us | View CC license | Subscribe to this feedApril 21, 2006
How to practice Islam in space?
10:27 AM spaceMalaysia's National Space Agency is holding a conference to consider Muslim astronauts pray in space as the country prepares to send its first citizen into orbit.
Three of the four astronaut candidates selected so far are Muslims. Two will eventually be trained and sent into space by Russia.
Performing ablutions for Muslim prayers with water rationing in space and preparing food according to Islamic standards will be among issues discussed.
The astronaut will also visit the International Space Station, which circles the earth 16 times in 24 hours, so another thorny question is how to pray five times a day as required by Islam. Muslims also have to turn towards Mecca to pray and working out which direction that will be while hovering above the earth might be challenging.
Related: Prayer rug that indicates the direction it should be turned, and some London jail toilets face away from Mecca.
Via Off Center < Space Travel.
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