ERASED VISION – DAVID HANES : AWARE

These works by David Hanes seem like they are out of focus and make your eyes constantly re-focus.  They are in focus however they possess a blurred aura, a sense that something is not quite right or there.  I enjoy what these images do for my brain, it has to re-interpret what it is seeing relying on fragments of understanding that allow it to calm down.  I also like the fact that the images are of art that were taken from the internet however the way I have seen and experienced these is also through the same medium to which they were first found.  Please read this article from Tourist Magazine which outlines Hanes process and perspective on these works.

WHAT IS THE PROCESS INVOLVED LEADING TO THE FINISHED EFFECT OF THESE IMAGES?
Process is quite simple but is fairly time consuming as an aggregate. Basically I see myself functioning as a kind of human-algorithm, surfing the net for images of art that I think are either interesting or will work best with the project. Once images are compiled I systematically go through them and reshape the images using the content aware function in Photoshop. Some of the images I pass through quite quickly, while others (if they seem to be going somewhere) I spend time with, re-configuring them and sculpting them in a way. If I find myself stuck with an image, I am using other touch-up functions in Photoshop and not just the Content Aware function.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF SAID EFFECT?
I find it hard to talk about what I am doing with the AWARE project, sometimes it feels like pro-surfing user thing and other times it feels like a representation of process and a way of seeing. I believe the work is ambiguous enough to not hold one specific meaning and that the work is diverse enough for everyone to approach it and take from it what they will. For me it really began as this way of working out a frustration with art, arts distribution on the internet, access to art and its elite aesthetics, and arts place in the dialoge of images. But now it seems to be more of this place to work out new ways of looking at art and creating something post-physical and untouchable.

ARE THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS YOUR OWN OR IS IT A DE-CONSTRUCTION / REMOVAL OF OTHERS WORKS IN GALLERY SPACES?
None of the above images are original. I am still on the fence about whether or not the images should be made from originals or not… maybe making them originals seems a bit futile and irrelevant. I think it’s the dialoge and narrative of art and interpretation that feels the most interesting to me.

DO YOU FIND THE ART IN THESE IMAGES SUPERFLUOUS AND LOOK SIMPLY TO THE SETTING THAT THEY SIT WITHIN? OR DOES THE ORIGINAL ART WORK MATTER TO THE PROCESS EVEN THOUGH YOU ESSENTIALLY ERASE IT FROM IT’S CURATED SETTING?
No, i don’t think that the art in each image is suggestively unnecessary… in fact I feel the oposite. Maybe I’m a bit superficial about my selections, as I think most people associate their relationship to art on the Internet. The original artwork is the original artwork, my process reshapes the image of that artwork to create a new way of looking at that image of that artwork. The art is a way of looking… the digital recontextualisation of images of art.

HTTP://WWW.DAVIDFMHANES.CO.NR

 

La Vitesse Et La Pierre – Igor Zimmermann

La Vitesse Et La Pierre An epic 12-minute short film made of stills, shot in Western Sahara and Norway. Play a short extract here above.Stills:                                             DIRECTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY: Igor Zimmermann, Frode & Marcus SCRIPT & EDITING Igor Zimmermann MUSIC WRITTEN & PRODUCED BY: Yourhighness SOUND DESIGN: Mattias Eklund SET DESIGN Malin Gabriella Nordin       BACK

 

Science Fiction: New Death

Re post form: We Make Money Not Art

Science Fiction: New Death seeks to provoke the question – have the Sci Fi visions we once imagined of the future since become a reality? I guess we all know the answer to that one.

Dario Solman, Target Orbit

Jon Rafman, Hope Springs Eternal/Still Life (BetaMale)

Because i write mostly about art and science/technology, i’ve seen my fair share of exhibitions that reference scifi. However, FACT‘s latest show is the first one i’ve visited that is entirely dedicated to science-fiction and visual arts. And in this instance, science fiction isn’t explored as the ultimate future forecaster, it is rather the starting point of a reflection on our current condition, an invitation to explore how our relationship with technology has made our everyday lives increasingly look like it is set against the backdrop of a science fiction novel.

Inspired by the work of J.G. Ballard, our story looks to the bleak, man-made landscapes of the future and asks: What happens when virtual environments become indistinguishable from reality? Will our global culture allow us to choose where to live, and who will stop us? What will we do with knowledge that becomes freely available to all? With social platforms acting as camera, how will ‘selfies’ develop and what new forms of narcissism will thrive? What is it that we need to preserve, and what do we need to change? These questions are explored through intense visualisations of electronic communication, dystopian domestic interiors, and re-enactments of historical revolutionary moments.

New Death, a title which comes from a text that fantasy writer China Miéville wrote for the exhibition, is ominous but so are the glimpses that the participating artists give into the techno-mediated we’ve built ourselves: conditions of intensified surveillance and repression, border control, loss of citizenship, etc. Not everything is bleak and joyless in the show though. You can bounce off a trampoline and pretend you’re an astronaut, meet intelligent robots that attempt to avoid boredom at all costs, you can even participate to the exhibition by writing a story describing a dystopian near future. I don’t know what a sci-fi fan would make of the exhibition but i found it smart, provocative and thought-provoking.

Quick overview of the show:

Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Accomplice. Installation at FACT Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Accomplice. Installation at FACT-Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Accomplice. Installation at FACT-Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, Accomplice. Installation at FACT-Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Accomplice is a small clique of social autonomous robots hidden behind one of FACT’s gallery walls. Because these machines are curious, they attempt to discover their environment and the first step to live new adventures is to break down the wall. Their mechanical arm relentlessly punches against the wall. In the process, they not only make holes, they are also acquiring knowledge: how the wall react to their poking, how to best expand their horizon and what it is like out there, on the other side of the wall.

As the wall disappears, the robots discover other creatures: the gallery visitors. The more they can see and hear, the more excited and active these robots are getting. Their behaviour, however, isn’t predictable and linear. As soon as the movements and noises made by the visitors or the colours and patterns they are wearing have become too familiar, the robots become bored. In a sense, the roles usually taken by the audience and the robots or the artefacts and the visitors are reversed: the robots are the spectators and the gallery goers perform for them.

I had a chance to talk with Rob Saunders at the press view. I scribbled our conversation on a bit of paper, lost it so i’m going to point you to this Robots Podcast: Curious & creative in which he talks about being inspired by Gordon Pask’sconversation theory, designing curious systems, the laws of novelty and the social structure that might evolve from them.

The Kazimier

The bits and pieces of walls laying unceremoniously on the floor and the unpredictable attitude of the Accomplice robots echo the exhibition experience that Venya Krutikov & Michael Lill of The Kazimier have designed for Science Fiction: New Death. They turned the FACT building into a disordered, stern and slightly disquieting space to navigate. Your movements inside the gallery might or might not be filmed. That poorly-lit corridor might be off limit. That door over there might open on another artworks or maybe it’s a dead end.

Sascha Pohflepp, Camera Futura

Sascha Pohflepp, Camera Futura

Sascha Pohflepp, Camera Futura

Before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon in 1969, the NASA elaborated various exercises to understand how man would move in microgravity. The experiments were not just simulations but “pre-enactments” of a new set of rules that we were about to enter, providing a window into the future through which NASA researchers collected not only data but also visual impressions. One suchexperiment was conducted at Stanford University in the mid-1960s by Thomas R. Kane. The applied mechanics professor had studied the ability of cats to spin their body mid-air so that they could securely land on their four paws. Kane would film a cat bouncing on a trampoline, study its movements, and then a gymnast in a spacesuit would try to reproduce the cat’s movements on the trampoline.

Sascha Pohflepp’s Camera Futura enables visitors to replicate the experiment. You are invited to wear a light space suit and jump on the trampoline while a camera captures your moves.

The energy stored in the trampoline’s springs amplifies the power of our muscles, so that we can briefly launch ourselves and experience an instant of relative weightlessness when falling back to Earth. Camera Futura captures images from that very instant. These photos allow for a glimpse of our brief moment in a post-gravity world. In a sense, they are impressions of ourselves from one of many futures.

Jae Rhim Lee, Infinity Burial Project Installation at FACT Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Jae Rhim Lee, Mushroom Death Suit #2

The Infinity Burial Project is an art project with an aim to help us accept the reality of our own death. It is also a very bold and practical alternative to current burial system. Once buried or cremated, our bodies do not just decompose and vanish, they also contribute to the deterioration of the environment by releasing the toxic pollutants that our bodies have accumulated over the course of the years: pesticides, preservatives and heavy metals such as lead and mercury.

Mushrooms, on the other hand, can detoxify soils.

Jae Rhim Lee has thus developed the Mushroom Death Suit, a burial suit infused with mushroom spores to assist the decomposition of human corpses. The outfit comes with capsules that contain infinity mushroom spores and other elements that speed decomposition and toxin remediation. Besides, an open source burial container, and a membership society devoted to the promotion of death awareness and acceptance and the practice of decompiculture (the cultivation of decomposing organisms).

Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite

 

Facial Weaponization Suite is a playful but also dark critique of the silent and gradual rise of the use of biometric facial recognition software by governments to monitor citizens.
During a series of workshops, Zach Blas worked with members of specific minority communities (queers, black people, etc.) to create masks that are modeled from the aggregated facial data of participants. The amorphous and slightly sinister masks are then worn in public performances.

Masks remain an effective tool to prevent identification technologies from capturing, analyzing, archiving and identifying our face. The use of mask also refers to social movements that use masks as a sign of protests. From the Zapatista rebels, to Pussy Riot, Anonymous, etc.

Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, Deep State Installation at FACT Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, Deep State. Installation at FACT Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, Deep State. Installation at FACT Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death (photo FACT)

Brad Butler and Karen Mirza are presenting Deep State, a film scripted by science fiction author China Miéville. The film takes its title from the Turkish term “Derin Devlet,” meaning “state within the state,” and tells a story about the representation of political struggle, moments of crisis, solidarity, schisms and oppression.

The whole film, which overlays archive protest footage and performed interludes, is online:

At first, i wasn’t sure what to make of it but, as the images rolled on, i started connecting them to what was going on in Ukraine at the time of the press view of the show and i realized that at this very moment, maybe we still have a choice: we can be the people who raise their heads, protest and attempt to take some control back or we can be the people who are blindly herded into a society of control.

James Bridle, Homo Sacer, 2014. Installation at FACT-Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

Close and Remote, Zone

Laurence Payot, 1 in a Million You

Mark Leckey, Pearl Vision. Installation at FACT-Liverpool as part of Science Fiction: New Death

 

LIVING A REFLECTION – MIRRORED FOLLY BY STPMJ Architects

Seung Teak Lee and Mi Jung from STPMJ architects have designed this invisible barn, situated within Socrates Sculpture Park.  The barn or folly mirrors its surroundings, becoming one with the tress and seasons around it.  The building tricks the eye and operates as a glitch in the landscape.  The presence of it amongst the trees is subtle and its actual foot print being minimal also allows it to hide and camouflage itself, it allows those that experience it to engage not just with it but also with the landscape that encapsulates it.  Its walls seem to be the very nature that surrounds it.  

This project was awarded a notable entry for the ‘folly 2014′ – a competition led by the architectural league and socrates sculpture park.

SUGGESTIONS OF OTHERNESS – Photography of Sam Irons.

The photography work of Sam Irons presents photographs of everyday situations and vistas but with twist.  The way the scenes are framed and composed subtract them from the world we maybe familiar with and suggest somewhere else an otherness.  These heterotopic visuals leave us to rebuild the story and context to comprehend them.  They allow us to engage with spaces that otherswise we would just digest without a second thought.  For more work please check his website here.  

OPTICAL INSTALLATIONS – Igor Eškinja

The portfolio of Croatian artist Igor Eškinja has been one that I have become drawn to.  The simple yet clever use of recognisable objects are altered or presented in a new perspective.  The simple forms are striking and make the eyes and brain engage to read the works and what they are trying to convey.  Click here to see more of Eškinjas’ work.

This work by Igor Eskinja can be interpreted as a challenging disengagementent from his former research practice directed towards problematizing of visualità in contemporary visual expression. A concept tied to ironizing of the basic visual elements like space, perspective, interaction and dictate of consummation of the presented work is been supplemented by problematization of questionable ownership over natural resources and a right to freedom of their distribution.

Nemanja Cvijanovic

 

NOISE: ERROR IN THE VOID_ScanLAB Projects

 

SURFACE_GALLERY

21st March – 15th May 2014

Access by appointment only

We present two films NOISE//01 and NOISE//02.

Each film take us on a series of orbits around a single, unedited, scan captured in Berlin in November 2013. The camera journeys through the droning spheres of error and cataclysmic arrays of inaccurate points.

A single edition of each film is available for purchase.

 

 

ScanLAB Projects exhibition at Surface Gallery delivers an insight to the process of Matthew Shaw and William Trossell.  Their work which they produce under their name ScanLAB Projects.  I saw their work from a recent post on BLDGBLOG, here is what is said about these images.

Last week, Shaw and Trossell premiered a new project at London’s Surface Gallery, exploring where laser scanners glitch, skip, artifact, and scatter. Called Noise: Error in the Void, the show utilizes scanning data taken from two locations in Berlin, but—as the show’s title implies—it actually foregrounds all the errors, where the equipment went wrong: a world of “mistaken measurements, confused surfaces and misplaced three-dimensional reflections.”

The tics and hiccups of a scanner gone off the mark thus result in these oddly beautiful, almost Romantic depictions of the world, like some lunatic, lo-fi cosmology filtered through machines.

Frozen datascapes appear like digital mist settling down over empty fields—or perhaps they’re parking lots—a virtual Antarctica appearing in the middle of the city.

ART ATHINA – 15/18th May Athens, Greece

 

As one of the past artist in residents at SNEHTA I will be exhibiting at the upcoming Art-Athina.  This SNEHTA show will be co-curated by  Augustus Veinoglou, Becky Campbell and Irini Bachlitzinaki.  Six past artists have been invited to exhibit at this art fair who have spent time on the artist in residence program run by SNEHTA.  Art-Athina hosts Greek and International galleries and alongside these established galleries they also run a Parallel Programme which is what SNEHTA will be part of.  Over the next few weeks the work will be finalised and more information about this art fair will be released.  It is an exciting opportunity and I look forward to seeing what the curators and artists bring to the table create for this event.  

Launched in 1993 by the Hellenic Art Galleries Association, Art-Athina stands today as one of the longest lasting contemporary art fairs in Europe and as the largest annual visual arts event in Greece. A meeting point for international artistic creation, Art-Athina brings together significant Greek and foreign art galleries, cultural institutions, curators, collectors, art critics and art lovers.

Last year’s Art-Athina was held with great success from 16 to 19 May 2013 at Faliron Pavilion (TaeKwonDo Stadium) and was enthusiastically received by some 30,000 visitors!

Important art galleries from Greece and abroad were joined in harmony by cultural institutions, art publishers and media to present a full picture of the contemporary art scene. A number of important parallel activities reinforced the international character of the event with the participation of a large number of artists with a marked predominance of the younger generation. Concurrently, educational activities and historical retrospectives underlined the social role of Art-Athina.

For more information please follow these links:

http://www.art-athina.gr/parallel-programme/

http://www.snehtaresidency.org/

PATATAP,PATATAP,PATATAP repeat…

Patatap is a portable animation and sound kit. With the touch of a finger create melodies charged with moving shapes. While easy to pick up there is a wide range of possibilities. Switch between multiple color palettes and matching soundscapes on the fly. Whether its on your laptop, desktop, mobile phone, or tablet Patatap invites creators of all ages to engage the mind and senses in a different type of creation process.The motivation behind Patatap is to introduce the medium of Visual Music to a broad audience. Artists working in this field vary in discipline but many aim to express the broader condition of Synesthesia, in which stimulation of one sensory input leads to automatic experiences in another. Hearing smells or seeing sounds are examples of possible synesthesia. In the case of Patatap, sounds trigger colorful visual animations.The history behind the aesthetic expression of synesthesia arose from the paintings of Piet Mondrianand Wassily Kandinsky and the early videos of Viking Eggeling and Norman McLaren, to the contemporary animations of Oskar Fischinger and softwares of C.E.B. Reas. Patatap takes elements from all these visionaries and aims to present this concept in a direct way.

 COLLABORATION

In order to create Patatap I worked with music composers Lullatone, the melody design unit of Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Seymour. Based in Nagoya, Japan, the duo have released more than 10 albums and frequently soundtrack films, commercials and more. With each sound they try to bring out the everyday wonder of overlooked moments and make the mundane seem magical.They created compelling sounds to accompany the animations. Each color palette has a unique corpus of sounds. Each set comprises sounds that enable a full-bodied composition both in terms of sound and visuals. These sounds are geared toward making tapping as melodic as possible, similar to a keyboard of drum pads. The result is a visceral and rewarding experience.

 

 

PRESENCE

Because Patatap is a website its relatively smooth to install and reconfigure the application. As a result, Patatap has had physical presence in the form of performances and installations. If you’re interested in having Patatap at your next event or exhibition please contact inquiries@patatap.com. Notable appearances are as follows:2014 The Tech Museum San Jose, US. Super Flying Tokyo Tokyo, JP. Punto y Raya Festival Reykjavík, IS.2013 CreativeCode.io San Francisco, US. 2012 MonarchSan Francisco, US.

http://www.patatap.com/

 

Interrupted Projections – Matt Calderwood

Matt Calderwood – Interrupted Projections sees 3D and 2D meet with direct prints taken from 3D and presented in 2D.  A simple yet effective translation which creates a dialogue between the two dimensions.  It is however the decisions and errors in this translation that intrigue me, like with a lot of visual attraction its the flaws that have the detail and interest.  This exhibition for me portrays this in a straight up fashion, with such simplicity leading to so much more.  The 2D prints deliver new narratives and readings of what came before.

Matt Calderwood
Interrupted Projections

opening Saturday 1 March 2014, 6–9 pm
exhibition 2 March – 12 April 2014
Wednesday–Saturday 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment

Sommer & Kohl are pleased to present the first solo exhibition of new works by British artist Matt Calderwood (*1975 Northern Ireland).

The title of the exhibition Interrupted Projections refers to mapmaking processes which translate the curved, three-dimensional terrestrial surface onto a flat, two-dimensional plane. No map projection can preserve shape and size simultaneously, and the larger the mapped area, the more pronounced the total distortion. Interrupted maps were developed in order to represent specific map characteristics more accurately or to achieve the best possible compromise for certain sections of a map.

Calderwood is interested in the fact that compromises are necessary when transferring a three-dimensional surface onto a two-dimensional plane. Where does the space between a sculpture and its flat representation get lost? Recently the artist has been producing printed images from a range of rubber and plywood sculptures using printers ink and household gloss paint on large sheets of paper. These works have always recorded one side of the sculpture resulting in something like a drawing of the object.

For Interrupted Projections, Matt Calderwood deals with the object’s entire surface. His central theme, how to follow the logic of objects with an economy of means, is always present in the background. For the exhibition, the raw plywood form is painted on all sides with gloss paint, placed onto a tyvek sheet and wrapped on all sides with the material. After a few moments the now gloss printed wrapping is removed and both it and the sculpture are left to dry. This process is repeated several times. The sculpture hereby becomes subject, tool and object for the image production.  At the same time the images resulting from this process are like a set of maps for the sculpture. Like a cartographer’s interrupted projection where there are cuts in the image to allow the flattening of the globe’s surface with minimal distortion, the necessary folds in the fabric as it negotiates the three-dimensional surface create similar interruptions and compromises within the prints.

Matt Calderwood lives and works in London. 2013 he had solo exhibitions at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill On Sea (UK) and at Baltic 39 in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK).

For further information and/or images please contact Sommer & Kohl.