Concept:

With space as a fundamental factor in our interactive video installation we recorded the action of laughing with the intention to use the videos in space and see how they work and in which way the context is changed.
Space can give different meanings to every video and can potentially make the viewer wonder what he is looking at…
In our previous presentation of the work, we chose to project the videos on windows facing a street near clubs and main tram stops. Video and sound were activated (starting to laugh) when someone passes in front of the window. The videos were projected in small scale so that they fit the windows and the sound was generated by piezzo electric elements attached on the windows, so the windows themselves were vibrating and acting as speakers.
The installation was working all day long and the projected figures were “laughing” at a wide range of people passing by, from people walking to their work or waiting for their tram, to people coming from the clubs next door to urinate, causing different kind of reactions.

Technical Description:

Each video is back projected on one window. The windows are painted with a thin layer of semitransparent white paint. The area in front of the windows is monitored by a surveillance camera and when people pass the motion detection is transferred through a micro controller to the computer. With the use of Max/Msp/Jitter software, the video and the sound is triggered. The sound from the computer is amplified and sent to the piezzo electric elements that are attached on the windows and vibrate them, making them act as speakers. When there is no motion detected the videos go back to a standby video loop position which is silent.

I am currently working together with Giorgos Chloros, on an installation based on the “breathing suitcase” created during a workshop we participated in last year. Our idea is to use the same object, the suitcase, and the same mechanism we used before, to create a series of these suitcases. The interior of these suitcases is made of cloth, sewed in a way that it creates shapes connected to memories in some way. The suitcases, when open, also have a sound part, connected to the shapes and the memories of each one.

The setup in the space, together with the sound produced by small speakers inside the suitcases and also by the working fans is a very important aspect while the installation is to be worked around memories and nostalgia.

Sketches, pictures and more specific details about this installation are going to be uploaded soon.

A short trip from the perspective of a “special” suitcase. You have the privilege to follow it, almost dragged around and maybe take a look on what’s inside…

This suitcase was created during the project based workshop “Dig Where You Stand” with Lars Brunström and is the first of a series of suitcases we are working on creating together with Giorgos Chloros.

The video participated in a video art screening event organized by Gallery Maskinen at Sagateatern’s Foajé, Umeå, Sweden on February 22, 2009.

Interactive Video Installation. A video projected at the end of a corridor is controlled by the distance between viewer and projection. Distance, time and space are main aspects in this installation where the viewer, disconnected from any other light and sound sources, is just given the time to think.

More details on how the installation works:
At the end of a 10 meters long and 1 meter wide corridor is projected a male figure. When a visitor comes in the corridor, wearing the headphones with IR LEDs attached on it, the visitor is tracked by a wii controller. If the visitor comes closer to the screen the projected figure will start getting undressed. If the viewer continues coming closer (passing a predefined spot close to the projection) then the man will continue undressing until he stands naked looking at the visitor. So the viewer comes in the position of being close to someone staring at him, naked, having nothing to hide. The man will stand there naked as long as the visitor stays there. When the visitor turns back the projection will turn on reverse mode, in normal speed and the man will appear dressing up again in an almost magic way.
In case the visitor coming in the corridor hesitates, stops or turns back before going close enough the undressing figure will stop undressing and turn on reverse mode just as described above, showing, in a way, to the visitor that he has to go closer.
The point of this installation is not other than getting the visitor closer to the projection so that disconnected from everything else, every other light or sound source he/she is going to enter in some kind of process of thinking.

For more information about the project you can also visit the process documentation page. It is a little confusing because it mainly consists of notes we’ve kept throughout the process but you can also find usefull links.

This was a collaboration with Giorgos Chloros. It is in our plans to later develop this idea further and replace the clothes with fabric sewed in a specific way, creating different kind of forms and maybe create a series of suitcases.

“Dig where you stand” : hands on basic electronic and mechanical art works

Dig where you stand is a quick and intensive course with the goal to use simple material to do complex electromechanical artworks, kinetic sculptures and installations.

As an artist one might get frustrated when it is difficult to get access to material to realize a project. A specific part might be too expensive, a piece of software might be hard to learn or one might just not know what to use to solve a problem. A practical problem can evolve into general frustration. In the worst case scenario the result is that ideas are being abandoned even before the process of realization has begun.

The course “dig where you stand” will be a week where the participants are making art from “off the shelf products” and material that can be found in you local or home environment. We will use stuff like electrical motors from the junkyard and rubber belts from Clas Ohlson. Your work might be really complex or plain and simple. The main goal is to experiment and get hands on experience and knowledge that can inspire and facilitate.

The relation between art and technology has a reputation of being complex and expensive. This course will prove this wrong and it will inspire you to try out new stuff on your own and give you the basic knowledge to be able to do so without being frustrated. As a bonus you will hopefully be able to focus more on the ideas instead of the problems in you creative work.

During the week there will also be an ongoing discussion on several topics concerning the artistic sides of working with electricity, mechanics and movement.

The course will be given by Lars Brunström an artist with long experience from working with kinetic sculptures, mechanical and model based art installations. Lars Brunström is frequently working with the “language of movement” and is interested in both human and animal movement translated into physical works and installations. Lars Brunström graduated form the Malmö Art Academy 2002 in 2006 he received the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Grant.

The course will start with a presentation of Lars Brunströms past and current works.

During the week a number of topics will be covered, like: “Things that are moving and why”, “Different kind of electrical motors”, “Basic safety working with electricity”, “What is what?” “Connect and test”, “Wheels and belts” etc. etc.

GEIGER (Gothenburg Electroacoustic Institute for Grants, Events and Research) festival 2008

“Gothenburg’s only annual festival of contemporary art music in all its exciting range, from chamber music to recorded ljudkonst, improvisation, free folk, electronica, noise. Two passionate party nights in Brew House packed with curious and experimental music.

Two days of experimental music and sounds. 10th and 11th of October. It was a really interesting event. what really caught my attention (except from all the people crating strange sounds on both the scenes) were Jorg Piringer, Ernst Reiter Maier from IFTAF (Institute For Trans-Acoustic Research). You can purchase their stuff from their web-shop. It has been a real challenge for me not to mess around with all of the things connected to each other on their table until they started their performance. If you take a look at my photos you will understand what I mean… Really nice! Will definitely attend the festival next year and I recomend it to everyone interested in experimental things.

]]> http://sentouki.gr/2008/11/11/geiger-festival-2008/feed/ 0 http://sentouki.gr/2008/10/21/steim-foundation-netherlands/ http://sentouki.gr/2008/10/21/steim-foundation-netherlands/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:09:43 +0000 Anastasia Melekou http://sentouki.gr/?p=68 Through a collaboration with Interaction Design at IT University of Gothenburg, Sweden, the C:Art:Media Master program students had access to a lecture/workshop with Taku Lippit. In this lecture Taku talked about STEIM foundation. He also showed his own work and an approach on designing instruments, that is some basic stuff about making and using interfaces and also about personalising controllers.

STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music) is the only independent live electronic music centre in the world that is exclusively dedicated to the performing arts. The foundation’s artistic and technical departments supports an international community of performers and musicians, and a growing group of visual artists, to develop unique instruments for their work. You will fid many useful information about the foundation at the STEIM website.

Take a closer look at all of the interesting things STEIM has to offer in their site. Their page is a little messy but it has lots of information for those interested. Here are some points I found very interesting and that I think are worth taking a closer look:

• Tools and instruments created, like the crackle box and crackle synth
• Software created for very specific uses which you can download, like JunXion utility and Lisa sampler
• Artists in Residency (for one or two weeks) at the foundation and how to apply
• Concert Series (one or two concerts per month)
• Sound Lectures
• Hardware and Software workshops (hacking and reusing) and introduction to STEIM tools

Electrohype 2008

2008/11/14 Electrohype Opening

The fifth biennial for computer based and technological art.

Malmö Konsthall November 15th 2008 – January 25th 2009, Opening Friday November 14th 2008.

The Electrohype biennial 2008 will give an updated view of the scene for contemporary electronic art and will introduce 14 artworks from 10 different artists, all presented in a 1200 squaremeter space at Malmö konsthall.

For more information visit the Electrohype 2008 website.

Visit the FSCONS website for more information.

FSCONS is the first of many Free Society conferences, bringing different cultural movements and activists together in the name of digital freedom.

As three of the biggest names in community organisations, Free Software Foundation Europe, Creative Commons and Wikimedia Sverige are joining forces under the banner of Free Society at this years FSCONS. With the help of many different organisations like Debian GNU/linux, KDE, Postgres, OpenStreetMap, Midgard, CCMixter, Magnatune and the Icelandic Fab Labs, FSCONS will be a truly unique experience.

The lectures and events at the conference will range from hardware hacking and embedded programming to citizen journalism and the future of the music industry. FSCONS will allow the participants to reach across the borders of their individual communities and by nourishing cross topic discussion stimulate the creation of joint projects.

More than a series of presentations, FSCONS will be a meeting place for the digital revolution, providing discussion areas, workshops and showrooms, as well as social events in the evenings. With a flexible schedule we hope to ensure that everyone will have the opportunity to engage in social activities without missing out on their favourite speakers.

Despite its setting in northern Europe, FSCONS is certainly not an event limited to this region. Bringing speakers and visitors from several corners of the world together, FSCONS is a chance to engage in shaping the movements of tomorrow in a city where tradition meets innovation and art meets technology.

The competition invited in 2008 all designers to set their imagination free and talk about their dreams, whether these are images and feelings the human mind creates while we sleep or their hopes and wishes. Therefore, the term “dream” can also be used metaphorically, it can be the “starting point” of an idea or be the main theme for the final piece.

The ten best entries were printed into banners with dimensions 2m x 60cm and were hung along Ithaca’s promenade for the entire summer of 2008. Winning posters were also exhibited at the municipal gallery of Ithaca and at Bios Center in Athens on 11, 12, 13 & 14 of September 2008. My “personal dream” won the second prize of the competition and is a digital photo collage.

Mavromichali is a small but central street of Athens with a lot of interesting old buildings and a modern center for Digital Culture, called “Fournos”. Fournos is the Greek word for a bakery shop and the center is named after that because it is now hosted on an old bakery shop.

As part of my studies at the University of Ioannina I had the opportunity to do my work placement at “Fournos” working together with Giorgos Chloros on a project idea assigned to us by Fournos Center. The project we worked on, mapping Mavromichali street, was one layer of the bigger project, “In Between”, which deals with the creation of virtual neighborhoods. We attempted to gather habitat experiences and give a smell of this very charming old neighborhood.

The In-Between project, coordinated by Multimedia Lab of the Athens School of Fine Arts with the participation of the Art and Technology of the Image Department of University of Paris 8 and the Department of Sculpture of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, started as a collaborative project for the creation of multicultural virtual neighborhoods on the web. The participants can insert an audiovisual description of their house, different audiovisual elements as well as other information, to the dynamic database and their house automatically becomes member of the endless neighborhood. The ultimate goal is that every web visitor may freely participate by enriching the virtual neighborhoods with his/her own house. In the In-Between space, which exists between the real and the virtual and amongst the different participant countries, one can navigate and become familiar with the houses, the lives, the fears and the beliefs of the different people that become the “real” citizens of a virtual world.

You can visit “Mavromichali street” uploaded on our server (unfortunately all interviews are in Greek) or you can visit the “In Between” project page, which is still under development, uploaded on the server of School of Fine Arts in Athens in order to see the whole project.

This project is about three suitcases I created, filled with things and gave to three different people. These suitcases have the unique purpose of changing hands but they have no owner. If you have one of the suitcases you can take and keep whatever you like from the things it contains, you can put in it whatever you like, but the only thing you can’t do is keep the suitcase. You will have to give it to someone else to do exactly the same thing you did.

A website was created so that anyone can track down the suitcases out there. The website is using WordPress as a platform, with a simple blog interface. In this way anyone can easily enter, read and post things related to the suitcases, from images and videos to maps, texts and anything else that can be used as a documentation of where the suitcases have been, stories around them etc.

First Portraits and format testings:

Final Portraits:

A short video of what could be identified as the irish of an eye. We are looking at it in the same way an irish scanner would identify a person. But who is identifying who in the end?

What interests me most in these images is the way the shapes continue from one to the next and how they can stand both as separate images but also as a new “whole”. It is also very interesting, when you look at the images, that you sometimes can’t recognize what was originally photographed and how that thing is transformed into something else when presenting them in this particular way. Another thing that is very strong in the collages is the grid created by the gaps between the photos. This gap is separating the images but in a way also connecting them.