| Pressinformation
Once again this year, the OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich produces one of the essential highlights of the Ars Electronica Festival, the CYBERARTS 2008 - Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition. As a center for contemporary art, whose primary task is to discover currents and trends in art, the OK is predestined to house and discuss the most innovative projects in the field of digital art. The CyberArts Exhibition at the OK provides an exciting look at the latest trends in the field of digital media art. The focus is on works in the categories Interactive Art, Digital Musics, Hybrid Art und Digital Communities – presented as space and sound installations that encourage visitor interaction. The Ars Electronica Animation Festival, which drew an enthusiastic audience in the last years, is also part of the program at the OK again this year. The OK Night on September 6 th starts at 8:00 p.m. with the Electronic Theatre in the open air Cinema outside the OK. The film screening features the best computer animations from this year’s Prix Ars Electronica. Next up is a machine performance by solvenian artist Paul Granjon followed by the „local heroes“ WASHER und DJ Klub on the OK deck. During Ars Electronica, the opening hours of the OK will be extended: daily from 10:00 a.m. to midnight. Press information and photos in print quaility of all CyberArts 2008 installations www.ok-centrum.at/press A guided press tour through the CyberArts 2008 is offered daily at 2 p.m.
Mark Formanek/DE realized
by Datenstudel/DE Time is under construction. With as much precision as possible, over two dozen workers work around the clock on building a four-by-twelve meter numeric display made of wood, metal, screws and nails. In sync with real time, in other words with UTC
(Coordinated Universal Time), international standard time, the numbers
for the hours and minutes are manually assembled and disassembled.
The minutes change at intervals of a minute; the hours, at intervals
of an hour. This means that for the first digits the work team has
twelve hours at its disposal. Ideally, the last two digits, which
show the minutes, are always completed within a minute. Mark Formanek lives in Germany
and is concerned with phenomena related to time. Jörn Hintzer und Jakob
Hüfner are „Datenstrudel“. They used to
develop scripts an d concepts for TV series, that is, until they initiated
the online broadcaster Datenstrudel with a dozen like minded artists
in 2000. With it, they stream interactive web shows each month.
Julian Oliver/NZ/ES levelHead a spatial memory game using
a hand-held solid plastic cube as its only interface. There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of which are connected by a single door. Players aim to move the character from room to room, cube to cube, in an attempt to find the final exit door from all three cubes. If this door is found, the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish. The game then begins again. Julian Oliver, (NZ/ES) is a free-software developer, educator and writer based in Madrid, Spain. He has presented papers and artworks at many international electronic-art events, museums and conferences since beginning his career in 1996. He has been commissioned by several museums and galleries in the creation of electronic artwork.
Norimichi Hirakawa/JP a plaything for the great observers at rest
opens up to the observer a variety of different perspectives on our
solar system, and it does so without the observer changing his/her
location. Just like moving our eyeballs, it’s possible to switch
between a geocentric and a heliocentric point of view. The audience
can control the viewpoint and switch between a geocentric model and
a heliocentric model by operating the device, a conceptual model of
the sun and the earth. Norimichi Hirakawa (JP), born in 1982, graduated from Tama Art University (information design department) in 2007. He reconstructs universal and underlying phenomena at the sensory level of the audience and releases them as installations. His work centers around not only device design or algorithm design that enables analog input for digital systems, but also includes AV programming and spatial design. He is responsible for the total implementation of the artworks.
Satoshi Morita/JP Klangkapse l Sound Capsule deals with the issue of how auditory perception could be integrated with other perceptions, such as visual and tactile perception. In order to create a platform for a multisensory listening condition, Satochi Morita developed a “sound capsule” with integrated loudspeaker and transducers. In listening to a sound collage, which is based
on a physical action-related eight-channel field recording, the recipient
experiences a very intimate soundscape in the capsule. When you lie
down in the capsule, you are physically covered and in a relaxed position. Satoshi Morita (DE/JP), born
in 1974, received a BA in sculpture, with distinction, at Zokei
1st floor
Salat Johannes Gees/CH In Johannes Gees’s straightforward provocation
Salat, automated “sound bombs” broadcasting the Muslim
call for prayer were clandestinely installed, as a mirror for the
intended referendum to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland. Automated sound boxes broadcasting the Moslem “call for prayer/muezzin” were installed clandestinely by the artist on five important church towers in Switzerland: Grossmünster (Zürich), Münster (Bern), St. Leonhardskirche (St. Gallen), Wildkirchli (Appenzell), and Kloster Einsiedeln. On July 10, 2007, the boxes, which had been programmed, started to sound the call for prayer from the church towers, stopping pedestrians and disturbing the busy city life. The media picked up the story and initiated a heated debate on who was responsible for the action. After 24 hours, the artist came forward with a statement. All the boxes were seized by the police. The artist was charged with disturbing “religious peace” under Article 265 of Swiss law. On a documentation wall, along with the “making of” and the execution of the action “Salat” there is also a facsimile of the ruling from the Cantonal High Court of Zürich: charge of disturbing religious please and cultural freedom. Johannes Gees (DE) studied ethnology and history at the University of Zurich. He discovered new media as an artistic means of expression in the mid-1990s. His most celebrated works include communimage (1999), hellomrpresident (2001) and helloworld project (2003). His projects involve interactive and collaborative laser projections, photography, video and interactive LED installations.
Richard The, Gunnar Green,
Willy Sengewald/DE, Frédéric Eyl/FR Appeel is a virus spreading through interacting
individuals. Surfaces are covered by thousands of colored stickers
laid out in a grid. Peeling a sticker off leaves a white spot in the
grid, hence people start individually and collectively changing its
appearance. Appeel presents itself in a sense as an
analog form of pixel art represented by the basic elements of paper,
glue and wall. It stimulates thinking about the relationship between
screen-based media art and broader interactive practices. TheGreenEyl – Richard The, Gunnar Green, Frédéric Eyl and Willy Sengewald are products of the class of digital media at the University of Arts, Berlin, and have been working collectively since 2003. They aim to explore the dynamics of unconventional interaction between people, their environment and technology.
Julius von Bismarck/DE The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected onto an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. Hence visual information can be smuggled unnoticed into the images of others. Technically, the Fulgurator (Lat.: emitter of flashes of light) functions like a normal camera—but in reverse. Julius von Bismarck has installed a flash at the back of an analogue reflex camera, which he then loads with previously exposed film that contains specific images. If the flash on his camera is triggered, an image from the pre-exposed film is projected—indiscernible to the human eye—through the lens and onto the targeted object. A standard commercial flash sensor (slave), like those used in studio photography, has been mounted on the camera. Hence the Fulgurator is triggered automatically by any flash going off in its immediate vicinity. The motivation for developing the Image Fulgurator
was people’s great trust in their photographic reproductions
of reality. A camera can be used as a personal memory tool, since
people do not doubt the veracity of their own photographs. Julius von Bismarck (DE), born in 1983. After growing up in Saudi-Arabia and Germany, he studied and worked in Berlin and New York. Since 2005, he has been a student of Experimental Media Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. His works operate between the fields of art, science and technology, whereby his thematic priorities are perception, documentation and the manipulation of urban space. Apart from developing and designing interactive objects and processes, he works as a cameraman.
Yan Kit Keith Lam/CN Over the years, the development of video games
has been trying its best to produce a virtual reality experience getting
ever closer to reality. By changing the interface, from Atari’s
joystick to the analog vibration of the PS2 joystick, then a gun-shaped
controller for a shooting game and Dance Mania’s floor controller
for the Wii wiimote, video-game design is creating a more and more
“physical experience” for the players. Players can now
actually smash and swing to play the game, but we are still playing
the games in a 2D virtual environment: manipulating the character
in an unlimited virtual space in a fixed, static, limited real world.
Moving Mario is definitely not reproducing Super Mario Bros in another
way. By grabbing a partial concept and some of the key elements behind
the TV game development, Moving Mario is trying to challenge some
of the traditional game elements. Throughout the gaming process, players
can rethink the relationship between the player and the game. Yan Kit Keith Lam (a.k.a. the Demos, CN) is an intermedia player and a new media artist. He is currently an instructor at the School of Creative Media. He is also the Technical Director of Microwave International New Media Arts Festival and venue consultant of ACM Siggraph First Asia Show. He has taken part in numerous festivals, for example, Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Wikimania 2007, Eslite Digital Calligraphy Exhibition and the Hong Kong Arts Biennale, etc. In addition, he is an electronic musician interested in combining music with new media. Lam is active in the new-media arts education and one of the founders of GuLLDY, a new-media arts group, and of init-Lab, a laboratory established to produce and develop works of interactive environment
Du Zhenjun/CN A ball-shaped theatre is made of a transparent
membrane with 12 burning-point inductors in it. Spectators in the
theatre can light the fire ports to trigger a jet of flame. The projected
flames change from weak to strong until they touch the dome and last
for five minutes before turning into the projection of thick smoke.
Then the flame can be re-ignited. The more spectators participate,
the stronger the flame and the longer it will last until it touches
the sky dome and the Globe Fire becomes a real fireball.
Du Zhenjun, born 1961, graduated from the University of Shanghai School of Fine Arts in 1986. In 1998 he graduated from Rennes Regional School of Fine Art, France, and currently lives in France.
Zach Lieberman/US Statement of the Jury: Zachary Lieberman (US) uses
technology in a playful and enigmatic way to explore the nature of
communication and the delicate boundary between the visible and the
invisible. He creates performances, installations, and online works
that investigate gestural input, augmentation of the body, and kinetic
response.
Yann Marussich/CH Yann Marussich’s Bleu Remix is a
live performance created in cooperation with physicians and chemists.
For one hour, the artist remains motionless in a seated position while
a blue fluid oozes from his mouth, his nose and the pores of his skin.
The video documentation presented in the Cyberarts exhibition shows Marussich’s performance at Dampfzentrale Bern /CH in 2007. The Live performance in Linz is on Sat 6th 7 pm at Lentos. Yann Marussich (CH), born in 1966, is a unique character in contemporary dance. Since 1989, he has written a score of performances and choreographies. In 2001 he choreographed Bleu Provisoire, his first completely immobile piece. Since then he has been developing his work in the introspection and the control of immobility, at the same time confronting his body with various challenges or even aggressions.
Jun Fujiki/JP Extended Cognitive Tools is the general name for software that has expressions for extending human recognition and includes “Incompatible BLOCK”, “OLE Coordinate System”, and “Constellation”. Incompatible BLOCK is a block-based 3D
modelling software with a fascinating interface. While the user edits
blocks by dragging them across the screen, based on 2D interpretation
rather than 3D construction, the system places the block and forms
optically distorted constructs. Jun Fujiki, born in 1978, is currently an adjunct researcher at Kyushu University. He is involved in interface, interaction and experience design research. Taking as his inspiration “expressions that are impossible in reality, but possible in the human mind”, he is searching for an interface interaction that is capable of enriching people’s minds.
Ahmad Sherif/EG The Ahmad Sherif Project was started by
an unknown media art student on 19 January 2007 in a country unflatteringly
described internationally as a police state, which censors, intimidates
and brutally punishes the authors of all forms of expression that
it deems “defamatory”. Ahmad Sherif is an invented fictive
figure, virtual and invisible in order to survive in a hostile environment
like the one described above. This figure has the power to speak the
unspeakable and reach the unreachable – the rulers as well as
the ruled. Ahmad Sherif is a fictive figure. The author of the Ahmad Sherif Project is a media art student working in a broad range of different fields: writing and publishing (essays on the impacts of new media on society, economy, knowledge, politics, cities, etc.), pop and experimental music (live performances and radio), video art (installations, projections in urban space), media architectures with mixed genres, social networks, viral media (email, mobile phones, …), and events in the real world.
Markus Kison/DE touched echo is a minimalist intervention
in public space. Markus Kison (DE) was an apprentice at the Vocational School for Graphic Design before working as a cutter and graphic designer. He subsequently studied physics at the University of Ulm and, beginning in September 2003, visual communication at the Academy of Art in Berlin in the classes for digital media with Prof. Joachim Sauter.
Tsutomu Mutoh/JP In daily life, human beings see the world in the given visual environment. The interaction between human beings and the visual environment is the fundamental principle for visual communication and the expression of forms. The interaction between light and human recognition and perception of colors in the visual environment is of particular interest for many artists. Today, the light source such as RGB (red, green, blue) monitors or full-color LED devices controlled by the additive-mixture color method is becoming common in daily life. But RGB light emission is hard to adjust to human color perception in a straightforward way. The work is a small forest of anchored post topped
with light-emitting spheres that move through tone, hue and intensity
as the objects are swung and rotated by the audience. With each move
the color balance of the space is altered, expressed as a dialogue
between the ephemerality of the spheres among themselves and with
the fixed coloring of the walls. Tsutomu Mutoh (JP) graduated from Musashino Art University, Visual Communication Design Department (2000) and is a researcher at the International Media Research Foundation and temporary researcher subsidized by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. His current research interest is in dynamic form and vision on computer and in the electronic media.
Sergi Jordà , Marcos
Alonso/ES, Günter Geiger, Martin Kaltenbrunner/AT The reactable has a tangible, visually compelling and intuitive user interface, which makes music visible and almost graspable. The instrument is also intended to support collaboration among various players. It is based on a luminous round table and can be played simultaneously by several performers, who can move, rotate and relate glowing acrylic objects that represent the building blocks of electronic music combined with a tangible, flow-controlled programming language. A camera situated beneath the table continuously
analyzes the surface, tracking the player's finger tips and the nature,
position and orientation of physical objects that are distributed
on its surface. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws
dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of
the activity. reactable has a great appeal due to its complex sonic
potential. It is a true instrument that offers even professionals
deeper and more complex artistic possibilities. Sergi Jordà (ES) holds
a PhD in Computer Science and Digital Communication from the Pompeu
Fabra University of Barcelona. He is the coordinator of the Interactive
Systems area inside the Music Technology Group of the Audiovisual
Institute, and associate professor at the university.
Gordan Savicic/AT/NL Constraint City / the pain of everyday life is a critical performance in urban environments, addressing public and private space within the realm of everyday constraints. It resembles an interface for an invisible city; an architecture that is subconsciously perceived. A chest strap (corset) with high-torque servo motors and a WIFI-enabled game-console are worn as a fetish object. The motors tighten the straps when an enclosed wireless network is detected: the better the WIFI signal is, the tighter the jacket becomes. Closed network points improve the pleasurable play of tight lacing the performer‘s bustier. The ether is thus constituted as a space of possible pregnancy, filled with potential access-points to networks of communication. By wearing the straitjacket, the artist not only writes the city code, but is also able to read it at the same time. Hence, the outcome of his walk provokes the emergence of a city-shaped body formed by surrounding electromagnetic waves. Gordan Savicic is a performing artist and an independent electronic practitioner based in Vienna and Rotterdam. His artistic work involves weird machines, game cultures and digital performances. His installations and participation in collaborative projects have been shown and performed in Paris, Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, among others.
Jörg Niehage Randomly selected, acoustically usable finds (electronic junk, relays, plastic toys, compressed air valves, pneumatically operated components, etc.) are combined with cables and tubes. Via an interface controlled by computer, they are turned into interactive instruments. A macroscopic ensemble evolves, from which—per mouse over and mouse click—short miniature compositions of dense rhythmic clicks, hisses, whirs, hums and crackles can be elicited. A tapestry of sound bursts forth from the floral-like web of cables and tubes. (Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, December 2006, Frankfurt on the Main) The user has access to the installation by the simple use of the computer-mouse. By projecting the computers display on the installation, the installation itself turns into an interactive interface. It can be used by the projected mouse-cursor: rolling over the improvised instruments causes small sound events. Activating the installation by rolling over its parts enables the user to play spontaneous improvisations. Clicking these objects starts short programs of loop-like compositions. Small "techno-compositions en miniature", rhythmic patterns of non-digital (or "real") sounds – a low-tech simulation of electronic music, perhaps an ironic comment on interactivity. Jörg Niehage (DE), born
in 1967, studied communications design at the University of Applied
Sciences in Darmstadt. His work operates between the fields of graphic
design, interactive design, installation and sound art. He has participated
in many shows and festivals, including the transmediale Berlin, Schirn
Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt. 2nd floor
Pablo Valbuena/ES Augmented Sculpture Series focused on
the temporary quality of space, investigating space-time not only
as a three dimensional environment, but as space in transformation. The second level is a virtual, projected layer that makes it possible to control the transformation and sequentiality of space-time. The blending of both levels gives the impression of a physical geometry able to be transformed. The overlapping produces a 3D space augmented by
a transformable layer that can be controlled, resulting in the capacity
to alter multiple dimensions of space-time through the installation.
These ideas come to life in an abstract and geometric envelope, enhanced
with synesthetic audio elements and establishing a dialogue with the
observer. Pablo Valbuena, born in 1978, studied architecture at Politecnica University in Madrid. He is currently focusing on developing personal projects and artistic research about space, time and perception.
Yoko Ishii, Hiroshi Homura, NTT Cyber Solution Laboratories/JP In this work a set of images is projected onto the user’s outstreched palms: a scrolling tanka poem and a single Chinese character representing each tanka. Tanka, meaning “short song”, is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. It is a short verse of 31 syllables, containing five syllabic units (5-7-5-7-7 syllables). Tanka is written down as a sequence of letters, ordinarily presented on paper to be read. The impression of a tanka depends more or less on how the reader perceives and interprets it. Thus it can be said that a tanka is finalized as a literary work by the reader. Reflecting this idea, we created a new method of reading that can enhance the reader’s imagination. If one of the Chinese characters runs from a user`s palm unto the table surface it changes into a moving animation. The character for fire starts to burn, the character for beauty changes to the form of an insect and moves away quickly. Unlike a flat surface such as paper, a person’s
palm has volume and texture. When a scrolling tanka is projected onto
the bumpy surface of the palm, a tactile sensation is evoked, giving
a tangible presence to the image, which in reality has no material
substantiality. Yoko Ishii, born in 1979, completed an MA at the Graduate School of Information Systems, University of Electro-Communications and subsequently joined NT
HEHE (Heiko Hansen &
Helen Evans) / DE / FR Pollstream is a collection of ideas, forms
and images that explore man-made clouds. HEHE´s fascination
with these clouds stems from their physical properties: their perpetual
movement and their undefined form, but also for their potential as
a carrier of political ideas. Across a number of projects (both realized
and unrealized), clouds are used as a visual metaphor to aestheticize
emissions and chemical toxins. From 2002 to 2008, Pollstream has been
developed in collaboration with a multitude of partners from the fields
of laser physics, computer science, electronic engineering, an air-quality
monitoring organization, environmental activists, etc. Nuage Vert, 2008 is an environmental
artwork realized in Helsinki, which illuminates the vapor emitted
by an energy power plant and responds to local energy consumption. Helen Evans (UK) and Heiko
Hansen (DE) trained in industrial design, theater design
and mechanical engineering, both completed an MA in computer related
design at the Royal College of Art in 1999.
tEnt (Hiroya Tanaka and Macoto
Cuhara /JP Call<->Response is a cross-species experiment, in which birds and computer teach one another a "vocal" language. It is intended to be a contribution to the development of Artificial Intelligence. A variety of different chirping sounds of birds
(theoretically possible types of birds in general, including extinct
ones and those that have never existed) are simulated using a syrinx
program that was developed with physical-modelling software. A variation of the further development of communication between the computers is shown in OK along with a documentation of the initial encounter between birds and computer. The artists’ unit tEnt (JP) was started in 2003 by Hiroya Tanaka and Macoto Cuhara. Tanaka is mainly involved in software development, Cuhara mainly in hardware development. Through trial-and-error, they create unique environmental devices spanning the “digital and physical” worlds. They believe in an “arts and crafts” style for the 21st century. They also cover public art, robotics and mechanics, furniture and interiors. They are now supported by the International Media Research Foundation, Japan.
Ross Philips/SHOWstudio/UK The Replenishing Body consists of a grid of squares (5x5) which can each record a one-second loop of film. Participants can create and orchestrate a giant composite moving creature, or simply a collage of moving snapshots by recording a close-up section of their body part. The grid starts empty at the beginning of the installation and becomes a constantly changing col-laborative artwork. Grids were periodically uploaded to a gallery, which can be viewed on http://www.showstudio.com/project/thereplenishingbody. At the close of the project, these final artworks were judged by Nick Knight, who selected the three best video portraits from the whole Replenishing Body project. We also invited various fashion celebrities to come to the studio and create more considered portraits. Ross Phillips (UK) completed a BA in time-based media at UWE Bristol. Since joining SHOWstudio in 2003, Phillips has been working on online and location-based installations. Forthcoming work includes two projects in the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale and an exhibition opening at the Science Museum in spring 2007.
Alexander Ponomarev/RU Wave is a 12-meter tunnel filled with
water; its wave-like movements are caused by the artist ironically
breathing heavily on a big screen. Tibetan prayer flags in the background
work as exotic amplifiers of the agitated space. Alexander Ponomarev (RU), born in 1957, graduated from art school in 1973 and from the Nautical Engineering College in 1979. He lives and works in Moscow. |
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