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Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism (10 unread)

Motion-Extraction-Reanimation Series, a difference perspective on film classics

Posted: August 23rd, 2008, 9:33am GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

New York based artist Kurt Ralske is a master of visual image manipulation. With his project "Motion-Extraction-Reanimation Series", the artist reassembles material from various commercial movies such as Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville" (1965) and isolates, processes, and animates only the motion content. Ralske treats motion in the films as an "object or surface" where alternate perspectives of a scene are presented simultaneously to produce often ghostly-like images. In particular, the actor's motions while doing simple actions like drinking coffee are transformed into kinetic surfaces and volumes with dynamic architectural qualities. Although it might be difficult to actually make sense of the narrative progression in these clips, the effect produced is a hypnotic homage to the original filmmaker's vision.
Jonah Brucker Cohen
C. Doswald, K. Ottmann, B. Schroder - Carsten Nicolai, Static Fades

Posted: August 21st, 2008, 9:38pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

book - JRP Ringier - ISBN13: 9783905770636
Carsten Nicolai is a unique case in the sound art world. Somehow he's the prototypal of the ideal contemporary sound artists: not classifiable merely as a musician, nor as an artist, but perfectly in between. He excellently combines technical and scientific knowledge with a clear vision. Especially being fond in science principles and practical use, he reflects the simple and purest beauty of involved structures, embodying it in a personal view that translates into perfectly balanced design. The "minimal" adjective, so often used to categorize his work, tells only 1/10th of the story. His art is more generally about "building beautiful systems", whose rules are gently disrupting our acquired scientific knowledge. In this sense he can be easily considered a scientist, using art as inspiration for new methodologies. After the huge catalogue produced for his Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle personal exhibition, this book is its ideal companion, documenting in a similar style his works (Nicolai was an editor here as well), and their characteristics of space, scale, recurrence and generation. It's another tour of its evolution, tracking different milestones and making once more worth the visual and theoretical journey.
Cyberskin, radical revealing skin

Posted: August 11th, 2008, 5:05pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

Developing the most "natural" human-machine interface has always been one of the IT industry Holy Grails. The ancestral codes that oversee our instinctual behaviors are more often than not misguided by cultural signs and related meanings expressed in the software and hardware aesthetic. Playing with these ideas, Cyberskin by Joan Healy brilliantly conveys the idea of the body as an extension of a machine. The author's passion for the seventies performance scene is perfectly exploited in this piece. In the context of a parody of IT fairs, she hides herself inside a "machine", so that a rectangular portion of her back can be touched and used by visitors as a touchpad. She secretly "draws" with a real touchpad, her movements tracing the patterns she feels on her back. A monitor displays the marks she makes with the touchpad in front of the user. An accompanying dystopian video documents how workers are exploited in developing countries, manufacturing digital technology parts with endlessly repetitive tasks. The user's finger skimming over Joan's skin creates an organic meta-interface. And when visitors touch the most familiar material they ever touched, they invariably fail to recognize it in this completely decontextualized environment. Furthermore, the cause/effect sequence in the machine is also able to obfuscate the senses. This (human) mediation is then able to pollute the interface intimacy as we know it and redefines the respective roles of human and machine, invisibly inserting a (de)stabilizing element in the pre-programmed interaction. The underlying video is then hinting at the radical critique skillfully embodied by the author and her visionary gesture.
edited by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter - MyCreativity Reader

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:36pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

book - Institute of Network Cultures - ISBN13: 9780826418456
Printed as the conference proceedings of the homonymous two days conference, this reader take the "creative industries" concept by the UK Blair government in 1997 and much discussed in Richard Florida’s best-seller "The Creative Class" as starting point to dissect and mostly expose the huge contradiction in the promiscuity between creation and capital. The dot com (before unveiling as a bubble) induced some European capitals area to be all of a sudden gentrified, hosting the new online corporation headquarters, and so recognizing it a crucial role in the tertiary industry. Moreover the industry of culture massively recruited most of the Creative Generation, mesmerized by the mirage of a pleasurable form of immaterial labor. In the text there are different essays about the creative processes and their mythology as well as specific regional analysis (Ireland, UK, Austria, China, etc.) and also another masterly text by Brian Holmes deconstructing the U.S. based "Research Triangle". If the commodification of everything can be contrasted with innovative lines of thought (the "gift economy" for example), it's also important to "dismantle the buzz-machine", as it is well done here.
Fold Loud, origami and harmonic sound

Posted: July 10th, 2008, 8:31pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Its goal is to represent an object using only one piece of square paper, which is then folded and creased in intricate ways. American artist Joo Youn Paek has recently combined this traditional art form with contemporary digital sound mixing processes, via an interactive installation called Fold Loud. The installation consists of three square pieces of paper with opened circuits made out of conductive fabrics, which are stitched in place. The sheets are creased according to three origami bases: the balloon, the kite and the dog. When the papers are folded along the crease lines, a circuit is closed and a sound is emitted. Each fold is assigned to a different human vocal sound so that combinations of folds create harmonies. Users have to bend multiple Fold Loud sheets together to produce a chorus of voices. But in order to generate a harmonic sound, users need to carefully fold and repeat their gestures, focusing on a slow and patient process. Adding sound to the origami practise, Joo Youn Paek explores the potential of electronic music production outside of the machine dependency paradigm, taking it back to a more organic environment. As she says, "Fold Loud invites users to slow down and reflect on different physical senses by crafting paper into both geometric origami objects and harmonic music". There is a Taoist principle in which it is suggested that the differences among things are only apparent. Origami can be thought of in this way – the creative act both shapes the object and the idea. Similarly, both are subject to deterioration, as with everything in nature. It is thought that the act of reproducing the world through paper folding encourages comprehension and enlightenment – a notion associated with Zen illumination.
Valentina Culatti
Graphite Sequencer rocks the analog world

Posted: July 8th, 2008, 6:27pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

Caleb Coppock's "Graphite Sequencer" is an analog drum machine of sorts that works through simple electrical conductance. Two wires scrape along the surface of a spinning paper disk with graphite shapes scrawled across them (graphite is a conductive material) so that when they pass over the shapes, they generate tones. The resulting sound is then amplified and played back through the device's speaker system. Coppock has customized the device so that when the graphite line is thick, allowing more current to pass, the pitch of the resulting tone changes to a lower one. This is in contrast to a thinner line, which creates a very high-pitched tone on contact. Although the resulting sounds are anything but musically appealing, the ability to hand-draw your own beats is a nice and simple way of creating audible results from physical media. The video on the project's website illustrates how this works although the resulting sounds are a bit difficult to stomach.
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
links for 2008-07-05

Posted: July 5th, 2008, 9:31pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico
- Magazine photos fool age-verification cameras ::: Pink Tentacle With the full-scale rollout of Japan’s cigarette vending machine age-verification system just around the corner, a Sankei Sports news reporter has confirmed the existence of a minor flaw: magazine photos can be used to fool the age-verification cameras (tags: hacking hacktivism video)
Neural 30

Posted: July 1st, 2008, 4:36pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

The new Neural issue is out with 16 pages in colour and a brand new graphic layout! Subscribe now or buy it from the closest store. A back issues pack is available.

Issue 30, summer 2008

Free: centerfold 'Totemobile' by Chico Macmurtrie.

new media art
.Ludic Society/Margarete Jahrmann interview.
.Homo Ludens Ludens exhibition report.
.Play Cultures, the world of digital games in contemporary art and culture report.
.Be My Controller, opening the urban, button by button.
.news: Emotoscope, Modi 2.0, Rom Check Fail, Amalgus Cycle Process1, HAI.
.reviews:
..books/dvd/cd-rom: Delusive Spaces, Unit Operations, Art Machines Machines Art, Conspire, From Technological to Virtual Art.

emusic
.Paul Slocum interview.
.Modified Toy Orchestra interview.
.news: Skinstrument, Plink Jet, Street Radio, Tinnitus Tamer, BeatBox.
.reviews:
..books/dvd/cd+: Carsten Nicolai: Static Faders, Fundamentals of Sonic Arts and Sound Design, Background Noise, Sonic Acts XII, Rechenzentrum - Silence.
.cd reviews: Mahmoud Refat, Frank Rothkamm, Philip Jeck, Scorn, Felix Kubin und das Mineralorchester, Carter Tutti, Charlemagne Palestine, An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music vol. 5, Saralunden+Andrey Kiritchenko, Maja Ratkje, Fenin, Now Underscan, Nemeth, Yuta Segawa, Robert van Heumen, Favourite Places, Autistici, Schurer, Kapital Band 1, Josh Russel.

hacktivism
.Too close to the Screen, Reality and Unreality in wargames.
.The H-Gamer's Song of Dawn
.Golden Farmers / Ge Jin interview.
.news: 2.4Ghz, Intelluctual Property Donor, Fake is a Fake, P2P Art, Logo_Wiki.
.reviews:
..books/dvd/cd-rom: MyCreativity Reader, Art and Revolution, Access Denied, An Atlas of Radical Cartography, Digital Contagions.
Eco-clubbing: Sustainable Dance Club

Posted: June 30th, 2008, 10:44pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico

The Dutch agency Enviu, working in collaboration with architects from Dutch company Döll, has been working on a design for an Sustainable Dance Club. This technology, now in use, will enable dance clubs to run at a very low environmental impact and with reduced carbon emissions. This is all possible thanks to a new technology which enables the floor itself to generate electricity through absorbing the energy expressed by the dancing bodies. It works through a system of tiny accumulators, similar to pressure sensors, which are embedded in the floor. The physical energy of a dancer is captured by these sensors and utilized to run the facilities of the club, such as the lighting and speakers. This is just one example in a growing trend of technologies and products which seek to harvest and reuse the energy produced by the human body. Other examples include clothes which, through integrated devices, harness the movement of the human body and translate it into useable electricity. There is also the novel concept of a toilet flushed with human sweat. Increasingly, we will be witness to technologies which function in many ways analogous to parasitic or symbiotic organisms in finding new ways to use our own anatomy.
Tony Canonico
links for 2008-06-29

Posted: June 29th, 2008, 9:30pm GMT by Alessandro Ludovico
- CONTACT au congrès ECAP et au FRUC minimalistic telepresence (tags: art net)
- Fingerprints recovered from bullets after firing | Science | guardian.co.uk Advanced methods in the surveillance society (tags: hacking science)