re-active platform presents:

“measuring, locating, surveilling, detecting, transferring and some communication exercises”

at School of Intermedia Art, Hangzhou
april 7th - 12th 2011

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methodologies

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measurement

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Measurement is the process or the result of determining the magnitude of a quantity, such as length or mass, relative to a unit of measurement, such as a meter or a kilogram (Wikipedia).

measurement # 1

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Florian Egermann Moses, Cologne 2009

Franziska Windisch 5 minutes, Jerusalem 2009

Both Florian Egermann and Franziska Windisch have finished their studies at KHM Cologne 2010.

 

objects of the real

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Cildo Meireles / Disappearing Element / Disappeard Element (Imminent Past), 2002; at Documenta 11, Kassel, germany

The action titled Disappiring Element / Disappeard Element was Cildo Mereiles' contribution to documenta 11; it evidently refers to the global matter of scarcity of water–so far as operators of the exhibition were distributing water on steal; visitors payed 1 Euro for one Disappearing Element; the work connected to the artist's attitude to visualize exchange value through his so-called "conceptual artifacts".

source

Waffel, 2007, from the series "real" by susanna schoenberg

There are things marked with a due-date; in some way the due-date is combining the package with the content–the real thing–; what if not used–not eaten–so that the due-date will be passed? Repeating the same scanning procedure, one scan every 5 years. The next Waffel will be 2012. The Waffel's due-date was 2002.

methodologies # 1 / observation and representational strategies

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Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, USA, 1975, Video, black & white, 6:09 min.

Semiotics of the Kitchen online on youtube

measurement # 2 The long-distance heating tunnel

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re-active class visited the long-distance heating tunnel under the river Rhine in Cologne going from East to West. 2007-11-27 from 1:30 to 3:30 pm.

Florian Egermann trying a dowsing rod

Allan Gretzki, How many bodies-walk

measurement # 3 / SAFE MEASURE IN PUBLIC SPACE by Jiangqian and Yaochan

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Through the study of public space, Jiangqian_Yaochan put the safe measure of public space as research subject and the subway as research environment . They measured heartbeat by pulse, got the safe distance between people and the edge of platform. Through the stages of different groups of people measurement, they derived data, and finally edited a chart.

PLAYER: approach and observation

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Vito Acconci, Proximity Piece, 1970
During the 1970 Software exhibition at the Jewish Museum, Acconci, as the wall text denoted, followed visitors around the gallery. He stood close to them. Then, at some moment in the surreptitious performance, he stood too close. The act ended when the visitor intentionally moved away from Acconci and left the museum (Kris Paulsen 2005). As a documentation of the performance 12 photographs were taken.

Vito Acconci, Security Zone, 1971
A person is chosen as my guard and opposition party. He is specifically chosen; someone about whom my feelings are ambiguous, someone I don't fully trust. We are alone together at the far end of the pier. I'm blindfolded, my ears are plugged, my hands are tied behind my back.
I walk around the pier; I attempt to gain assurance in walking around the pier (putting myself in the other person's control, testing whether I can trust in that control). The other person decides how he wants to use that trust I am forced to have in him.
The piece is designed for our particular relationship; it tests that relationship, works on it, can possibly improve it." (V.A.)

methodologies # 2 / sensorial substitution

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re-active seminar variating Proximity Piece

Franziska Windisch navigating through the Museum Ludwig for Contemporary Art in Cologne; documentation stremed on livestream for VIRTUAL GROUP 2011.

Theresa Krause introducing I Felt Silly on livestream for VIRTUAL GROUP 2011.

methods around the body

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listening to oneself through a stethoscope during a workshop with Echo Ho and coreographer Yoshie Shibahara 2010-11-16 room2 @ glasmoog KHM cologne

measurement # 4 / adding sensors

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ADDED SENSORS UNIT : ULTRASONIC SENSORS (set of reverse parking sensors)
TLC235 LIGHT SENSOR
sensor object temperature and ambient temperature
PRESSURE SENSOR

all sensor plugged on arduino board

methodologies # 3 / re-activity

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Referring to re-active platform as a collaborative media art production
/ about circuits, phenomena, data observers & more

Notes about the exhibition package, april 2010.
Package / credits
The current package of production involved the artists Ralf Baecker, Artur Holling, Karin Lingnau, Ji Hyun Park, Luis Negrón van Grieken and Susanna Schoenberg.
To the pool of production partecipated also technicians of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, in particular Heinz Nink [for analog material] and Urs Fries [for digital processing]. The basic programming of the laser was contributed by Thomas Kulessa.

Package / concept
The main task consists in reflecting the idea of re-activity on a very abstract level, not referring to much to individual preferences of the artists for their usual shapes of production.
The first entities discussed as metaphors were circuits and data-streamings as accessible phenomena.
The results is a collaborative produced ensemble of artefacts not produced for being unique, but for being part of a [variable] discourse.

Statement #1
To apply re-activity means to divide space into two [or more] spaces. One of the tasks of the platform was to monitore a space [an accessible walkable platform] and connect it through representation to an other [a displaced display].

Statement #2 The de-construction of a system into its elements produces aesthetic value.

Statement #3 Monitoring phenomena for their translation into reprensentative phenomena [artefacts] can be shifted into supposing phenomena to exist behind detectable congruences [like patterns, scores and numbers..].

 

detection # 1 / wireless video systems

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Hans Diernberger, IMBISS INTERVENTION, Cologne 2008

methodologies # 4 / experimental set-up

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Es gibt phänomene, die sich normal verteilen. Wie z.B. die Vermessung von wiederholten experimentellen Verfahren. Der "emergente", tatsächliche Wert liegt in der Mitte einer "Strecke" von Werten, deren Wahrscheinlichkeit sich "normal" um einen "wahren" Wert verteilt.

Malgorzata Calusinska, NORMALVERTEILUNG, 2010

Kulturbunker Köln, 2010-08-17

 

Ji Hyun Park Anordnung 2010

Both Malgorzata Calusinska and JiHyun Park have finished their studies at KHM Cologne 2010.

 

methodologies # 5 / limits of the media

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Dieter Kiessling Two Cameras

 

http://www.dieter-kiessling.de/2-cameras.htm

Peter Weibel - Endless Sandwich, Closed-Circuit Video 1969

youtube

 

 

ADAPTIVE INTERVENTIONAL ART

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Interventional strategy: ADAPTIVE, more than SITE-SPECIFIC.

The difference between ACCIDENTAL and CONTINGENT after Ernesto Lacau and Chantal Mouffe.
An usual element of a formal structure (like a situation defined by media) is ACCIDENTAL. But there is always an element which embodies the formal structure itself - it is not necessary, but it is in its contigency the constitutional condition for the establishment of a structural necessity.

Think on an artistic intervention which is functioning in the sense of coping with every-day life. PERFORMING ADAPTION.

0
VALIE EXPORT Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations) are demonstrations of postures as an externalization of inner conditions. They are embedded within architecture as well as nature as adaption, acclimatization, integration. The body as paralyzed within the world surrounding it. Körperkonfigurationen are bodily movements within space; as such, they are a mapping of the environmental body on the one hand and the solidification of the body within space on the other hand designed to render visible the contrary correlation between the body and its surrounding and constitutive space-city-nature, the body as a part of a complete sculpture.
(1) Extract taken from: VALIE EXPORT: Körperkonfigurationen, Archive VALIE EXPORT Bio: Kurt Kladler, Nov. 2006

VALIE EXPORT Zuhockung II 1972 (source: http://www.valieexport.at)

possible strategies of ADAPTATION:

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appropriation
variations
negations
inversion
repetition

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exercise : find an appropriate location for.. (practice appropriation, produce variations, negations, using inversion, repetition).

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„Interception” 2007 by Roch Forowicz
A surveillance camera being used to monitor public space was hijacked and reinstalled in a subway station. The camera was used intentionally to broaden consciousness concerning the problem of increasing lack of privacy. People entering and exiting the station were tracked by the camera, and their “capture” was projected on a station wall.
The action was illegal.

Through his artistic activity, Roch Forowicz refers to the ‘city surveillance’ culture – constant supervision by means of CCTV and data processing and filing software and devices.His activity is radical, often characterised by illegal ‘hacktivist’ interventions, consisting in intercepting and using technological devices against their creators’ will. (source: http://www.environment.pl/interception)

2
translation
concept
the unconscious
monitoring
cognitive exercises

2
exercise : cite an example for a (translation, .. monitoring, cognitive) exercise.

2 Constraint City - the pain of everyday life by Gordan Savicic
“the pain of everyday life”: je nach Verschlüsselung und Signalstärke von gesperrten WLANFunknetzwerken verengt sich eine am Brustkorb befestigte Korsage. Somit wird in der Arbeit auch der Körper als „Kontingenzbewältiger, Realitätsanker und Garant des Konkreten“ thematisiert. source: http://pain.yugo.at/

2
Road Music (Autosync) by Peter Sinclair
Road music plays music generated by the car itself: Vibrations of the car on the road, recognizable movements (accelerations, gear changes, bends etc.) and the passing landscape.
Road music remodels the relationship between audio, visual and tactile particular to driving while listening to music. We have come to accept this as inherently artificiel, since it is practically impossible to hear the sound of the landscape through which we are travelling and since great efforts are made to reduce sounds produced by the machine itself, generally considered as being unpleasant. Road music re-creates a relationship between the situation of driving and what we listen to, while maintaining the notion of composition and at the same time reinforcing our links betwen imagination and the passing landscape.
Autosync: The program runs on a small onboard mini PC which is plugged into the aux jack of the car hifi. Information about the drive is captured by accelerometers and a camera fixed with a suction cup inside the windshield, which continuously sends data concerning the xyz movements of the car. The camera detects position and size of any luminous objects (headlamps or tail lights of other cars, areas of sunlight or shade etc).

source: http://nujus.net/~petesinc/roadmusic_autosync/

3
recycling
research
discourse
surveillance
alternative representation
alternative reification

3
exercise : identify the gestures related to.. (the portant formal structure you are empirically referring to).

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Graffiti Research Lab Night Writer http://graffitiresearchlab.com/projects/night-writer L.A.S.E.R. Tag http://graffitiresearchlab.com/projects/laser-tag/

4
RETURN : data for interventions
The data are produced by monitoring&observation of patterns of behavior in public or semi-public space (maybe in a kind of >original< private space as well);
to produce data means in this case to define a framework in a space you can access easly and to label it
(classifying situations given by a kind of architectural structure, like being in a queue at the drugstore, doing sport in a public park,
moving from track A to track B of the s-bahn, being in a queue outside of a touristic site..)

 

counting and statistics

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arte-e-parte / Dummy Variables 2008

AUTOPOIESIS

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Quoting wikipedia: Autopoiesis (from Greek αυτ? (auto), meaning "self", and πο?ησις (poiesis), meaning "creation, production") literally means "self-creation", and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function. The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela:

Quoting from Maturana, Humberto & Varela, Francisco ([1st edition 1973] 1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living:
An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.

[...] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection.

Autopoiesis was originally presented as a system description that was said to define and explain the nature of living systems. A canonical example of an autopoietic system is the biological cell.

Autopoiesis was adapted into a sociological systemic theory by Niklas Luhmann, who argues that social systems are made out of pure communication–and not out of players or similars–and that they function as autopoietic entities. Luhmann observes that communication in social systems operates in the same way as self-reproduction of living organisms. As living organisms are used to collect from their environment just substances relevant for their self-reproduction, so communication systems are used to detect in their environment just that what "fits to the topic"–what can be connected to the sense of the past communication. The "sense" is after Luhmann a mechanism for reducing complexity.

Autopoietic basic operation is always the same: systems operate as long as they exist–because without operating they would not exist–anticipating future operations and the repetition of "connectable" operations–like mass media do, broadcasting or reporting being confident into the fact that there will be a broadcast or a report the next time connected to now–.

In order to guarantee continuity, autopoietic systems do check theis results: they are capable of self-reflection. It means, they do have a kind of memory, which records the before and the after.

 

TELECOMMUNICATION #1

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DAN GRAHAM, Opposing mirrors and video monitors on time delay, 1974 + Two viewing rooms, 1975, in: werke 1965-2000, kunsthalle düsseldorf 2003, s. video der Generali Foundation: D.G. Video/Architecture/Performance, 1995 ]

DAN GRAHAM, Time Delay Room, 1974 + Present Continuous Past(s), 1974 ]

«Time Delay Room 1»

Dan Graham's description: «On monitor l a spectator from audience A can see himself only after an 8 second delay. While he views audience B (in the other room) on monitor 2, this audience sees him live on the monitor whose image can also be seen by audience A. The same Situation is true for audience B. A spectator may choose to pass from one room and audience to the other. To walk the passage-way takes about 8 seconds. A member of audience A entering audience B's room would now see the view of audience B that he had just seen 8 seconds previous when leaving the other room: but he is now part of that audience 8 seconds later. As 8 sec-onds have passed, the composition of the continuum which makes up audience B, has shifted äs a function of time - he has joined it while other present members have arranged their relative positions within it or left and joined the other room.»

TELECOMMUNICATION II: Identity on Second Life

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Shared Galaxy - The Open Avatar Project - by Theresa Krause, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne

Identity on Second Life
Where Facebook and Myspace for instance only provide a 2 dimensional platform for people to chat and present themselves by showing pictures, video and audio data, Second Life goes one step further and lets us create our own virtual world in 3D. This world can be used as a gaming platform for role-play, as a kind of 3D chat or just as a creative tool for machinima or architecture models. I am personally interested in the issues of identity on SL. What does it mean being able to create a"second you"? After reading some theory i decided to simply start my own survey inworld. The outcome was that most people told me that they are on SL "what they want to be can't be in their real lives" and that they "don't have the feeling they have to fulfill a role that someone expects them to be like". They would feel more "free" and some even admitted to be more honest than in real life because of the anonymity in cyberspace.
Identity and the surface we show of ourselves clearly is connected to the social groups/communities we want to be part of. Clothing for instance is a certain language, people communicate over their styles - in real life and on Second Life as well. But on Second Life additionally everyone always sees the mirror of their avatars/themselves on their own screen, which is something that makes people reflect on their own identity with every step they do - knowingly or not - this is what seems very interesting to me. (Theresa Krause 2010) -> project description

references :

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online references :

susanna schoenberg and arte-e-parte www.susanna-schoenberg.net

re-active platform @ KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne www.khm.de/export/re-active

SA VIRTUAL Group / http://www.livestream.com/virtual_group

NEW SCIENCE OF PROTECTION designing safe living http://safeliving.wordpress.com/

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bibliographic references :

Manfred Fassler / Displayed Worlds /

Heidi Grundmann / ART Telecommunication / 1984

Margaret Morse / Virtualities. Television, media art, and cyberculture / 1998

Mark Nunes (edited by) Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures / October 2010

Damian Sutton et alii (ed.) / The State of the Real / Aesthetics in the Digital Age / 2007

 

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artists' references :

arte-e-parte Dummy Variables 2008

Vito Acconci, Proximity Piece, 1970

Malgorzata Calusinska, NORMALVERTEILUNG, 2010 (KHM)

Hans Diernberger, Imbiss Intervention, 2008

Florian Egermann, Moses (KHM)

VALIE EXPORT, Körperkonfigurationen

Roch Forowicz, Interception, 2007

Galloway + Rabinowitz / »Hole in Space« / 1980

Dan Graham, Time Delay Room (1974)

Allan Gretzki (KHM re-active action 2007)

Jiangqian_Yaochan (CAFA returnable workshop 2009)

Dieter Kiessling Two Cameras

Theresa Krause / Shared Galaxy / since 2009 (KHM)

Theresa Krause / I felt silly / 2010 (KHM)

Cildo Meireles / Disappearing Element / Disappeard Element (Imminent Past), 2002

Ji Hyun Park, Tensor, 2010 (KHM)

re-active platform (opus #1) / 2010

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975

Gordan Savicic, Constraint City

Susanna Schoenberg, Waffel, 2002

Peter Sinclair, Road Music

Peter Weibel - Endless Sandwich, Closed-Circuit Video 1969

Franziska Windisch, 5 minutes, 2008 (KHM)

 

 

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@schoenberg

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uploaded by arte-e-parte / last update april 2011