Last week, I headed to Montréal for the 11th incarnation of the Elektra International Digital Arts Festival in Montréal. The five day event attracted artists and industry professionals from as far away as Dakar, Seoul, Istanbul and Shanghai, as well as various countries across Europe and North America, to the cosmopolitan Québeqois city, which is quickly, as many of us already knew, establishing a name for itself as THE creative hotbed for electronic arts. There was much to take in each day, and while it can’t all be discussed here, this post represents a compendium of the most interesting, evocative and stimulating experiences from my time there.
The Conferences
For those presenting at the International Marketplace for Digital Arts, the future, in the (wink) words of Chip Douglas, is very much now. The “professional rendez-vous” as it was dubbed by Elektra’s organizers, was a two-day blitz of presentations, debates and dialogues, given by over 30 international artists, producers, agents, broadcasters, curators, institutional directors and event organizers. While the format of the conference itself could be described as both a massive speed dating session and networking boot camp, leaving not quite enough space for attendees to fully digest all that was being offered, the conceptual framework of the event – arranged as a space to foster collaborations and to develop new, cross-border distribution networks, was clearly taken advantage of by all observers and presenters alike.
Some of the most thought-provoking presentations were given by organizations such as W2 (Vancouver), FAN et Centre Irisson (Casablanca), Trias Culture (Dakar) and Nabi Center (Seoul) who are each working, in a variety of ways, to increase the availability of technology – both open source software and physical hardware, access to media outlets, and opportunities to create multi-media art. Inspiring presentations were given by the organizers of the Zero One San Jose Biennial, Performa, and the Shanghai eARTS Festival, who showcased highly creative approaches to curating performance and electronic arts on a massive scale, while individuals like Nina Czegledy provided the group with stimulating philosophical and conceptual frameworks from which to consider larger topics such as new curatorial models for a digital age, whether social media can function independently as a voice for marginalized voices, and how artists might be able to use technology to (re)activate urban space or upset the proliferation of invasive technologies within the public sphere.
Key to many of the most appealing presentations was a sensitivity towards new social interactions and rituals developing as a result of technology’s pervasiveness in our daily lives, as well as a concern for keeping the media arts an open (read: free) platform for creativity. While it was unfortunate that there was not as much time for debate or discussion built into the two-days of programming, and that it may have, in hind sight, been a more successful event if the presentations were spaced out over a longer period of time, the IMDA was nevertheless a thought-provoking, if not motivating, portion of Elektra.
[Cécile Babiole, Jean-Michel Dumas & Vincent Goudard / Donjon - still]
A/V performances
Of course, Elektra wouldn’t be Elektra without a massively spectacular display of immersive audio-visual performances by a selection of the world’s leading video, installation and electro-acoustic artists.
The kaleidoscopic, fully immersive Laser Sound Performance presented nightly at Usine C. by Edwin van der Heide was a true crowd pleaser, surrounding the packed crowd in pulses of pure prismatic colour set to waves of digital sound.
BEAT, a collaboration between Sylvain Pohu and Sixtrum was a surprising combination of rhythmic, intricate percussion composed to accompany a black and white video projection that contained a multitude of visual and text-based clips, surrounding the definition of the word “beat.” Switching continuously between the aural and social concepts of the word, with images ranging from those of instruments to factory workers to slaves, the performance at once called attention to its own physical construction while at the same time offering a form of cultural critique that was for the most part unique in comparison to many of the other A/V performances at the festival.
Treating the relationship between sound and light in a completely formal manner, ABCD-Light by Purform was a stunning series of geometric and linear visualizations of pulsating sounds – ultra-slick and impeccably-crafted without being arrogant; while both Herman Kolgen’s Inject V.02 and Dust demonstrated the incredibly detailed capabilities of high-definition video technology and, despite whether one may have found them clichéd in their narratives, were utterly gorgeous, overpoweringly sensual displays of eye-candy.
A favourite ultimately, had to be Cécile Babiole, Jean-Michel Dumas and Vincent Goudard’s quirky, playful and refreshingly humourous performance titled Donjon. Here, objects from everyday life – from domestic appliances to retro a/v equipment, racing cars to , were animated as very basic 3-D models, and as they bopped and bounced across the screen to the accompanying music, they were deconstructed, falling apart on themselves until they became no more than broken-down or flattened cross sections of their former selves. The minimalist, even old-school aesthetic of the video was paired with music reminiscent of arcade/video game soundtracks, giving the entire piece a wonderfully-nostalgic feel like only neon and break-beats can, all the while deconstructing the, as the artists call it, “glut” of consumer objects that surround us daily.
The Exhibitions
Many of the local artist-runs centres had partnered with Elektra to present digital, electronic or “new media”-based works.
While some, such as Ian Wojtowicz’s (US) The Betweeners– a series of portraits inspired by online profile pictures and digital visualization which attempted to map the virtual social connection of several Montréal strangers – or Ann Hirsch’s Scandalishious (both at Skol) took the digital world both as their media and subject matter, others, such as 216 prepared dc Motors by Zimoun at Galerie Push, and Pascal Dufaux’s Le cosmos dans lequel nous sommes, at Galerie Joyce Yahouda employed both simple and more complex electronic devices to create very different sculptural installations. Reminiscent of a futuristic tee-pee structure or the lunar-lander, Dufaux’s custom-made video-kinetic camera, used to take surveillance-inspired photographs while continuously rotating in hypocyclodoial motion around a series of mirrors, was almost more interesting than the images it had been built to capture, and like Zimoun’s sonic installation, presented the viewer with a truly hypnotic experience.
[Daan Roosegarde / Dune]
Further afield at Orobo, Kaffe Matthews presented a Québec incarnation of their Sonic Bed – a weighty wooden enclosure that houses speakers and a queen-sized mattress that is imbedded with subwoofers. Original digital tracks scored by Magali Babin, John Oswald and Georges Azzaria pulsed from the surround-sound system, while the subwoofers throbbed along to the beat, vibrating those who chose to lay in the bed into both meditative and rousing states.
Interactive in a completely different sense, Daan Roosegaarde’s Dune, installed on the upper level of Usine C, presented visitors to the festival’s main site with a field of luminous fibres that covered the concrete floor like a bed of tall grasses that flickered and blazed automatically, illuminating itself in response to noise and motion generated by people moving through the darkened hallway. Existing as a hybrid between the digital and natural world, Dune exemplified the poetic relationship that can exist between humans and technology, pointed most strikingly to the complexity, beauty and even fragility of this dialectic, and in a sense, perfectly encapsulated the spirit of Elektra .
On April 17th I participated in a gallery conversation at the opening of the Scandalishious/The Betweeners show at the Centre des Arts Actuels Skol in Montréal. This was the first time that SKOL hosted a conversation between artists, curators and visitors. The discussion that resulted was an interesting and thought provoking entry point into the themes of the exhibition, which juxtaposes works by two artists whose practices take very different approaches to social media as platform, Anne Hirsch's Scandalishious and Ian Wojtowicz's The Betweeners (pictured above). I was particularly captivated by The Betweeners as it touches on some of the issues that interest me about our changing relationship to data and the impacts that emergent data mining practices may have on our interactions in the world.
The title The Betweeners refers to the notion of 'betweeness-centrality' which comes from social network analysis. A node in a network has high betweeness-centrality when it bridges multiple sets of unconnected nodes, making it a high traffic connection point in the network. A high measure of betweeness-centrality does not necessarily indicate that these nodes have the highest number of connections, or that they are even particularly active in the network. However as Ian pointed out, if these nodes were removed, the structure of the network would change significantly. Using the MySpace API and an existing SNA algorithm he identified the people in Montréal who have the highest betweeness-centrality on MySpace. He met with a group of these people and produced a large-format photo-portrait work of the group which reproduces the poses in their individual MySpace profile pictures. The exhibition showcases this portrait, as well as the individual profile pictures and bios of participants. There are also projected visualizations of the MySpace Montréal network.
What interests me about this work is that it exemplifies a paradigmatic shift across all sectors of society related to our relationships to data. We now have access to exponentially increasing quantities of data, growing numbers of datasets and the means of analyzing them in different ways. But extrapolating meaning from this abundance of data is not always an obvious task. In the case of the data analysis behind The Betweeners, we are left asking ourselves 'what does it actually mean'? The people participating in the discussion at SKOL seemed to want to understand the significance of The Betweeners in a human context – to discover what the measurement of betweeness-centrality can tell us about these people or the online community they belong to. In fact, it cannot reliably tell us anything other than that these people have high viral potential. The significance of the data remains within the frame of reference of the network itself.
As we move into an era of pervasive data and computing, where we can algorhythymize our way through petabytes of data, what kinds of indicators will we use to determine meaning? And who will establish these indicators? Right now we have access to answers, but have yet to formulate the questions. There is certainly the possibility for this type of data to be used by predatory capitalist agents, as someone brought up during the discussion at SKOL. What fascinates me about this work is that it highlights some of the ambiguous and as yet undefined parameters of our relationships to data, both the data that we consume through various filters, and the data we produce through our activities in online networks. Data is not a static or inert blob of stuff to be used but something that requires interpretation along many fronts. I think we need to avoid passivity toward the interests that filter and create meaning for us from the layers of data we interact with on a daily basis. As The Betweeners demonstrates, to engage with this new information environment we need to learn how to ask the right questions.
This exhibition runs until May 22 at Skol, for more info see skol.ca/en
Crossposted to Artengine
The 2010 T-Stick Composition Workshops (2010TCW) bring together five composers (any nationality, all ages) to develop new live electroacoustic solos for the soprano t-stick digital musical instrument in collaboration with Canadian composer and digital instrumentalist, D. Andrew Stewart. Selected composers will work individually with D. A. Stewart, being introduced to the present-day modes of performance on the soprano t-stick. The workshops will focus on exploring musical and physical playing gestures and will also include the development of new playing techniques and sounds for the instrument. The outcome of the workshops will be five new solo works for the soprano t-stick. The works will be performed by D. Andrew Stewart in a series of Canadian concerts beginning in January, 2011.
2010TCW is looking for composers who have distinct proposals for the t-stick. Preference will be given to unique projects that, firstly, illustrate a wide-ranging use of the t-stick and secondly, seek to expand the performance modes of the instrument.
Composers who are both experienced with electroacoustic media and nonspecialists, as well as acoustic instrument composers, are invited to submit (1) their biography along with (2) a one-page project proposal. If possible, composers should send (3) one sample of their music that may illustrate a concept or musical idea they find applicable to the t-stick digital musical instrument.
Send biography and one-page proposal (txt, pdf, Word) by e-mail to 2010TCW@dandrewstewart.ca. For the music sample, please provide a URL or contact the aforementioned email address to make alternate arrangements.
Application deadline: 1 July, 2010
Workshop Timeline: September to December, 2010
Location: Montreal and Toronto, Canada, and the north eastern United States
Travel assistance, lodging (hotel) and subsistence (meals) are not provided by 2010TCW. Commissioning awards may be granted to the selected composers (to be confirmed).
More about the T-Stick and involved Artists:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/andrew.stewart/pages/tcw/2010TCW.html
http://www.idmil.org/projects/the_t-stick
http://www3.sympatico.ca/andrew.stewart
[Sarah Peebles, Dr. Laurence Packer & Rob King's Resonating Bodies]
It is once again time for the Annual Subtle Technologies festival here in Toronto. This year's edition of the event is dedicated to sustainability and features a workshop (which took place this past weekend), a two day symposium and an exhibition at InterAccess. Perusing the schedule for the symposium reveals presentations on water, sustainable building, visualization and DIY power generation – exactly the expected mix of multidisciplinary ventures that the festival has come to be known for.
The symposium takes place at Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto) on June 4th & 5th.
"Contingent Ecologies: Invesitgations at the Edge" (curated by Camille Turner & Michael Alstad) runs at InterAccess through June 12th.
More info is available at http://www.subtletechnologies.com/2010
[Sarah Peebles, Dr. Laurence Packer & Rob King's Resonating Bodies]
It is once again time for the Annual Subtle Technologies festival here in Toronto. This year's edition of the event is dedicated to sustainability and features a workshop (which took place this past weekend), a two day symposium and an exhibition at InterAccess. Perusing the schedule for the symposium reveals presentations on water, sustainable building, visualization and DIY power generation – exactly the expected mix of multidisciplinary ventures that the festival has come to be known for.
The symposium takes place at Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto) on June 4th & 5th.
"Contingent Ecologies: Invesitgations at the Edge" (curated by Camille Turner & Michael Alstad) runs at InterAccess through June 12th.
More info is available at http://www.subtletechnologies.com/2010
The 2010 T-Stick Composition Workshops (2010TCW) bring together five composers (any nationality, all ages) to develop new live electroacoustic solos for the soprano t-stick digital musical instrument in collaboration with Canadian composer and digital instrumentalist, D. Andrew Stewart. Selected composers will work individually with D. A. Stewart, being introduced to the present-day modes of performance on the soprano t-stick. The workshops will focus on exploring musical and physical playing gestures and will also include the development of new playing techniques and sounds for the instrument. The outcome of the workshops will be five new solo works for the soprano t-stick. The works will be performed by D. Andrew Stewart in a series of Canadian concerts beginning in January, 2011.
2010TCW is looking for composers who have distinct proposals for the t-stick. Preference will be given to unique projects that, firstly, illustrate a wide-ranging use of the t-stick and secondly, seek to expand the performance modes of the instrument.
Composers who are both experienced with electroacoustic media and nonspecialists, as well as acoustic instrument composers, are invited to submit (1) their biography along with (2) a one-page project proposal. If possible, composers should send (3) one sample of their music that may illustrate a concept or musical idea they find applicable to the t-stick digital musical instrument.
Send biography and one-page proposal (txt, pdf, Word) by e-mail to 2010TCW@dandrewstewart.ca. For the music sample, please provide a URL or contact the aforementioned email address to make alternate arrangements.
Application deadline: 1 July, 2010
Workshop Timeline: September to December, 2010
Location: Montreal and Toronto, Canada, and the north eastern United States
Travel assistance, lodging (hotel) and subsistence (meals) are not provided by 2010TCW. Commissioning awards may be granted to the selected composers (to be confirmed).
More about the T-Stick and involved Artists:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/andrew.stewart/pages/tcw/2010TCW.html
http://www.idmil.org/projects/the_t-stick
http://www3.sympatico.ca/andrew.stewart
On April 17th I participated in a gallery conversation at the opening of the Scandalishious/The Betweeners show at the Centre des Arts Actuels Skol in Montréal. This was the first time that SKOL hosted a conversation between artists, curators and visitors. The discussion that resulted was an interesting and thought provoking entry point into the themes of the exhibition, which juxtaposes works by two artists whose practices take very different approaches to social media as platform, Anne Hirsch's Scandalishious and Ian Wojtowicz's The Betweeners (pictured above). I was particularly captivated by The Betweeners as it touches on some of the issues that interest me about our changing relationship to data and the impacts that emergent data mining practices may have on our interactions in the world.
The title The Betweeners refers to the notion of 'betweeness-centrality' which comes from social network analysis. A node in a network has high betweeness-centrality when it bridges multiple sets of unconnected nodes, making it a high traffic connection point in the network. A high measure of betweeness-centrality does not necessarily indicate that these nodes have the highest number of connections, or that they are even particularly active in the network. However as Ian pointed out, if these nodes were removed, the structure of the network would change significantly. Using the MySpace API and an existing SNA algorithm he identified the people in Montréal who have the highest betweeness-centrality on MySpace. He met with a group of these people and produced a large-format photo-portrait work of the group which reproduces the poses in their individual MySpace profile pictures. The exhibition showcases this portrait, as well as the individual profile pictures and bios of participants. There are also projected visualizations of the MySpace Montréal network.
What interests me about this work is that it exemplifies a paradigmatic shift across all sectors of society related to our relationships to data. We now have access to exponentially increasing quantities of data, growing numbers of datasets and the means of analyzing them in different ways. But extrapolating meaning from this abundance of data is not always an obvious task. In the case of the data analysis behind The Betweeners, we are left asking ourselves 'what does it actually mean'? The people participating in the discussion at SKOL seemed to want to understand the significance of The Betweeners in a human context – to discover what the measurement of betweeness-centrality can tell us about these people or the online community they belong to. In fact, it cannot reliably tell us anything other than that these people have high viral potential. The significance of the data remains within the frame of reference of the network itself.
As we move into an era of pervasive data and computing, where we can algorhythymize our way through petabytes of data, what kinds of indicators will we use to determine meaning? And who will establish these indicators? Right now we have access to answers, but have yet to formulate the questions. There is certainly the possibility for this type of data to be used by predatory capitalist agents, as someone brought up during the discussion at SKOL. What fascinates me about this work is that it highlights some of the ambiguous and as yet undefined parameters of our relationships to data, both the data that we consume through various filters, and the data we produce through our activities in online networks. Data is not a static or inert blob of stuff to be used but something that requires interpretation along many fronts. I think we need to avoid passivity toward the interests that filter and create meaning for us from the layers of data we interact with on a daily basis. As The Betweeners demonstrates, to engage with this new information environment we need to learn how to ask the right questions.
This exhibition runs until May 22 at Skol, for more info see skol.ca/en
Crossposted to Artengine
A reminder for our Toronto readers that we'll be co-presenting an outdoor concert by William Basinski and VT's Neil Wiernik this Saturday at The Music Gallery. This event will take place in the courtyard of St. George the Martyr in Grange Park at dusk (8:30 pm) – consider joining us for what promises to be an inspired evening of music. See the Music Gallery event page to purchase tickets and learn more about our feature artists.
A reminder for our Toronto readers that we'll be co-presenting an outdoor concert by William Basinski and VT's Neil Wiernik this Saturday at The Music Gallery. This event will take place in the courtyard of St. George the Martyr in Grange Park at dusk (8:30 pm) – consider joining us for what promises to be an inspired evening of music. See the Music Gallery event page to purchase tickets and learn more about our feature artists.
Update: Neil has provided us with some material he's recently been working on in the studio.
[Openlab Night - Fave Dave Alex Live Coding / photo: Openlab Flickr Pool]
Openlab is a loose collective of artists centred around London, UK, who use and develop open source software and technology for music, art, noise, performances, and just about anything else they feel like doing with it. Openlab organizes performances, talks, workshops, events, and beer-y meetings across the UK for like-minded individuals to share and exchange ideas and let loose their creative inner daemons.
Marco Donnarumma: What is Openlab?
Evan Raskob: The beauty of Openlab is that people who are motivated and willing can come into it and "hijack" it for their own events and purposes, without some fear of pushing against the status quo. Of course, there are limits, and it needs to stay "open" to still be Openlab, but as I've discussed with other members, the emphasis on open source software is there but also includes open process and transparency of thought - it isn't constrained to a single medium such as code. There are plenty of organizations out there, such as MakeArt, that explicitly enter into the politics of open source, and that's great that they are there fighting a worthy fight for access to important tools and opportunity to learn and the shared culture of international software design, but Openlab has taken a more apolitical and anarchic stance or just doing what we do without worrying too much about it, more of a social club and meeting place for like minds than an organization with a political agenda.
Robert Munro: I think Openlab is more about community, anyone can join just by signing up to the mailing list. Openlab is more about enabling artists to use all these free resources, and using it to make stuff. Different people organize things and Openlab is just a good communication medium to collaborate and find others who are willing to join in.
[Openlab Workshop 8 - Make Some Noise / photo: Openlab Flickr Pool]
MD: Media-labs and artistic platforms play an essential role in the cultural development of the cities in which they are based, even though they are not always properly supported logistically or financially. What does Openlab aim to offer to London and what do you think the city is lacking? How does the city support Openlab's activities?
Evan Raskob: Certainly, things have sprung out of Openlab and yet maintained an association with it, which is great – personally, I'd love to see Openlab keep its role as anarchic incubator of open ideas, but I know that others feel differently and would even go so far as to explicitly disagree with that, which I also, in a strange intellectual-judo move enjoy them doing.
Openlab doesn't aim to offer London anything. Openlab simply exists, and sometimes wonders exactly what it is that London offers it. Often times, bits of Openlab decide that London doesn't really offer them anything (except the occasional squat party, and the soon-to-be-demolished pub and performance space The Foundry) and break off and leave for other pastures.
S. Jagannathan: I find London has many programmers (I would wager a lot more than many other cities in the world) that write free software that makes music especially and through Openlab I have been able to meet many of them and share and learn from them. From my perspective, the logistics appear fine but maybe paid gigs would benefit…a travel card + a meal + a drink would be a humble start.
Robert Munro: Venue support has been a challenge at times as we most want Openlab to remain free or low cost. In fact the place where Openlab's first event was, the foundry is under threat for a planning proposal (to be replaced with an "art" hotel). I think there is a bit of a lack of public space for groups of people to just get together and jam or hack.
MD: Nowadays we see an increasing number of cross-disciplinary artistic tools and works developed using free or open source frameworks which challenge our perception of art and technology, I think of Graffiti Markup Language (GML), ARToolkit (a library for augmented reality) or the latest monumental mapping project by Telenoika. How would you define the present distribution of open source technology? Do you think the demand of new artistic open source tools is expanding? Specifically I'd like to address FLOSS distribution as an independent process and possibly outline its characteristics.
S. Jagannathan: This question implies this is about free software vs proprietary technologies to make art or music and who is winning that battle. However, it is important to understand that there is no battle at all. Free software is a dark, dingy, leaking and long tunnel but many of us see light at the end of it. Proprietary software though is like the attractive trap of a carnivorous plant - death definitely awaits at the very end and when its too late to do anything about it.
Robert Munro: One of the biggest advantages of FLOSS it that it is very malleable, you can just roll your sleeves up and mash it together in lots of different ways. The good thing about having all these fragments of technology is that you can build something original and not just have something shoved down your throat. So it's not really about competition, or this being better than that … its about the philosophy of open source, the fact that people give it all away for free to enable others, and more and more will be built on open source going ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot of open source stuff in windows nowadays, though they would never admit it anyway. Pure Data, Supercollider and Processing are great applications but open source is about tinkering and playing around with stuff and I think as people get more computer literate, open-source just make more sense, which is pretty well why I like it ;).
Chris McCormick: For me, Free Software is evolution whilst proprietary software is intelligent design. Free Software is massively parallel, whilst proprietary software is serial. As you say, proprietary software leads to death (companies collapse, people die, source is lost) whilst Free Software at least has a chance at survival through change, maintenance, modification. I believe that evolution is sustainable and that intelligent design isn't (because it's too expensive), and that evolution can afford to make mistakes, whilst intelligent design can't. Free Software is moral, whilst proprietary software is immoral, because Free Software gives it's users freedom, whilst proprietary software takes that freedom away on purpose. That's why I release everything I can as Free Software.
Alias: I'd take issue with that statement - free software isn't moral or immoral, it's just software. Open source is amoral. From the original GPL licence:
'THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY. SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.'
Freedom is not by default good, it simply represents a lack of constraints. Some open source software is very, very bad, if viewed from certain moralistic perspectives - some is amazingly good. Some is created with the express intent of changing the world, some is created with the intention of establishing the developers as experts in their field. Like a lot of creative endeavours, a large proportion of open source software never gets finished.
In my experience, Openlab does not generally seem to concern itself with ongoing and largely simplistic, unwinnable "x versus y" arguments, as most of us are simply concerned with making art, exploring technology, and/or drinking beer.
Chris McCormick: Yeah, I definitely take your point. I think that the decision to license something as Free Software should be a moral decision though, not a technical one. I was convinced of this by this article "Taking a Principled Position on Software Freedom". This is tough for me personally as my day job often involves writing proprietary software for other people, which I now see as an immoral, but unfortunately necessary, act. I guess I am not the only person on this list in that position though. On the other hand, Mako argues "Most people won't demand evidence for someone's commitment to non-violence or an adherence to the Golden Rule" in that article, but I think it can still be useful to explore objective reasons for a subjective choice. For example, I believe that altruistic behaviour, quite apart from being morally "the right thing to do", can be objectively justified as an optimal way to behave in human culture for the benefit of everyone.
Andy Farnell: It's not just dynamics and parallelism, for me the lure is in diversity and difference. Openlab (its culture) and open source (freedom) software is about finding something different.
Dave Griffiths: I think this is a good time to have this discussion. When Chun and I started Openlab the intention was simply to promote the use of free software for artistic uses - at that time this was unusual, and people only thought free software was for running servers with. I remember some of the reactions at Openlab#1 were fairly incredulous at what we were trying to do.
Nowadays it seems very different - free software has gained a lot of ground, and although my view is completely biased, I don't really see much interesting going on with proprietary software now. All the energy seems to be surrounding free software.
I guess there is a problem now that free software is so pervasive that it's easy to forget where it came from and why its possible - i.e. all the hype about crippled apple hardware. But largely it seems that the role that Openlab has played over the last year or so is providing workshops - seeing as the free software 'stack' has found its way into so many academic institutions, but seem to lack people who actually use it to teach it.
Chun: Over the last year, it also occurred to me about free software is, or its primary benefit, the ability to change the relationship between technology users in a more positive way. and that, for me, is Openlab. I mean, because of its diversity and openness (technological), we as the users are encouraged to, well, make friends and work together (cultural), than otherwise. I have also experienced this when working with Openlab.taipei gangs. If this "change the relationships between people for the better" stuff has some truth in it, then I would like to think this could be the purpose (if there is any) for what we do in the grand scale of the society.
S. Jagannathan: Yes! This is indeed a deep but subtle point and has the potential to revolutionize the way society itself is organized. So far its been about inventing technology which is inevitably not shared and thus becomes a weapon to use against someone who hasn't invented it. The inventor makes money (a non-violent result on the surface) and that has become a self-obvious virtue. A quantifiable virtue – understandable to all. What free software brings back and that which money making displaces and that which I've experienced myself is a kind of "love" among the practitioners. Help your neighbour as he is your brother kind of love. Now, that word love might have sounded cheesy cos its not quantifiable. Its not objective. Its personal. When you are creating and you benefit from others creation you feel that love. I do almost every time I call a function in PortAudio or SDL or liblo :D
Dan Stowell: On this very topic see this thesis just published: Geeks and Global Justice: Another (Cyber)World is Possible [PDF link] From the abstract:
'I analyze how tech activists consciously design technology that embodies values of equality, freedom and justice. Their creation and appropriation of free software indicates a more general argument for open knowledge production as the basis for a new mode of work, and indeed, a new set of social relations. In reconstructing the Internet along a democratic model and through a democratic process, I argue, tech activists are creating a model of social organization that is radically transformative, refusing the reductive limits of the neoliberal world order, and enacting the possibility of a better world now.'
Martin Klang: In terms of the free software ethos providing a social model for the future, I can't help but feel some apprehension for a couple of reasons. The first is to do with the inherent elitism of the open source/free software 'movement', or whatever you want to call it. There's often an implicit assumption that meritocracy somehow equals democracy, and people tend to overlook how they came by their extraordinary skills in the first place. So there are actually two points here, or two questions: one is to determine exactly what model of democratic decision making is being proposed, the other is to do with recognizing what function, in a capitalist society, that technology specialists fill. Specialization and centralization tend to be inherently anti-democratic societal tendencies. The other main misgiving I have when I see writing such as Geeks and Global Justice is the following - though I have to admit I've so far not read much more than the abstract - when speaking as the author does of political engagement, it is clear that this involves a completely virtual sense of activism. Virtual as in something that happens on the web, and virtual as in not real. The author Kate Milberry states:
'I argue, tech activists are creating a model of social organization that is radically transformative, refusing the reductive limits of the neoliberal world order, and enacting the possibility of a better world now.'
A better internet, perhaps, though even that is stretching it a bit far if all we do is sit at our computers. The risk is that we retreat from the real world to the virtual, and take our battle with us. How then the neoliberal world order will be overthrown - with its wars, famines and injustice - is a mystery to me. But maybe these questions are answered later on in the text.
'Is anybody there?'
- posted two months ago in the comments on the Glitch Art flickr pool discussion page
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I first discovered glitch art while digging for new live video processing techniques on Create Digital Motion. An article by Peter Kirn introduced me to datamoshing, and with my appetite whetted I soon stumbled on the flickr Glitch Art pool.
Here's a little history about the pool. Flickr was launched in February of 2004. A few months later the Glitch Art pool was founded by LiminalMike. The pool's description / statement of purpose reads as follows:
'Glitch is a short-lived fault or malfunction in a system. Whenever camera lenses erroneously save the data of what they see to it's recording device or whenever the binary code of an image file gets corrupted (intentionally or accidentally), the final result is a faulty image, which we call Glitch. Please only post images that have had authentic digital glitching through computer or digi-cam error. This includes databent images (eg. inserting randomness with a hex editor). Please DO NOT post images that have only been manipulated in image editing software (unless it's the software that has failed and glitched the data) or abstract images made up of authentic light - these will be removed from the group.'
The content spans a broad range of styles and techniques. There are text / hex editor hacks, images processed with audio editing software, broken ROMs, screenshots of browser glitches, hardware circuit bends, and datamoshes. In addition to the intentional works of art there are also plenty of serendipitous, accidental glitches posted both by regular and one-off submitters.'
Members of Glitch Art and other similar flickr pools have had their art featured in Glitch: Designing Imperfection, and present their work at festivals and shows around the world. Dtemkin recently displayed his Sector series at the Bent Festival in NYC, and Rosa Menkman seems to always be busy with one or another public project.
The pool became an immediate source of inspiration for me. It introduced me to a wide range of techniques and artistic styles, and put me in contact with many artists that I would otherwise never have discovered. This potential for immediate one-to-one contact with other artists of various levels of ability was invaluable.
One particularly useful resource was longtime flickr user and Glitch Art pool member stallio, whose blog stAllio!'s way provides lots of great databending and glitch art related guides (highly recommended for aspiring glitch artists). Other users like Antonio Roberts, aka hellocatfood (and now myself) also host sites with instructional materials related to glitch art techniques and processes.
These connections, along with information presented in the image descriptions and comments of other users, got me started glitching jpegs using TextEdit and Audacity. I joined the pool and soon began uploading the results of my own experiments.
Despite the obvious interest shown by the thousands of members and posts that have accumulated over the last few years, some users have recently voiced concerns about the current and long-term health of the community. A few months back I was surprised to see the following post leading the pool's discussion page:
'Is anybody there?
Where has everybody gone…
there haven't been any new pix in ages…
tumbleweed'
Is activity in the flickr glitch community on the decline? What has kept some users involved for years, and what is gradually pushing others to alternative outlets?
I spoke with flickr users Dtemkin, Rosa Menkman, Stallio, Max Capacity, and Glitch-Irion regarding flickr and their artistic development. Here's some of what they had to say.
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Ben Baker-Smith: Do you see flickr as a community, or simply a platform on which to display your work? / What are the pros and cons of displaying work on flickr?
Max Capacity: At first flickr was just a platform to display my work, and for me to refer back to from blogs and such. But I started hooking up with other people who are interested in or doing the same things I am. And holy shit, people actually like my work on there. So the community aspect is absolutely one of the main contributing factors to how much time I spend making stuff. I live for the anonymous praise.
Dtemkin: Flickr has a wonderful community of glitch artists who are very approachable. For artists starting out with databending, it is a fantastic resource. [But] there's definitely an 'instant gratification' aspect to flickr. If you simply post an image and send it to a bunch of different groups, you can get positive responses, but not necessarily the thought-provoking or instructive comments that will help you move forward.
Rosa Menkman: I used to be more active on flickr, but because my personal work revolves around video, I think I moved a lot of my attention to platforms like Vimeo. There I started a similar (video) pool, which I called noise artifacts. I think the community on flickr used to be more active, there used to be a little bit more discussion on there. Now it seems to have become more of a dumping pool … or platform.
[Rosa Menkman / rom glitch 3.2]
B B-S: What display environments and mediums would you like to explore in the future?
stallio: I've been trying to move away from purely abstract glitch to introduce more traditional illustration aspects, for example doing illustrations and using glitches for textures/fills.
Dtemkin: Most of the databending software I've written has been geared toward producing a final still image or set of images. I'm experimenting with writing software where the program itself is the final piece, rather than a tool to create an effect It's a different sort of challenge, but an approach I'm excited to explore.
Rosa Menkman: In May I will be doing a live audiovisual television show in Denmark [ed. This show has now passed]. Therefore I am getting deeper into composing and sound generation. I am also hoping that during the summer I will find some more time to play around with videomixers and other hardware.
[Dtemkin / mario 39.2]
B B-S: How do you first develop and explore an idea/concept?
Max Capacity: I've always been drawn to the aesthetics of degradation and decay. And I love obsolete media. ... Pixels themselves in old video games had to represent something much more epic in scope. Today's video games don't need to be symbolic or representative, they look like what they're supposed to look like. So the video games become a fun medium or subject matter to degrade, as there's still a certain level of basic recognition after the fact.
Stallio: Glitch projects are usually about solving some kind of puzzle: how to bend a certain type of file, how to get the effect I want, how to get it to glitch in the right place, how to get the best colors, etc.
Detemkin: It's the hands-on approach that appeals to me about databending, so usually experimentation comes first, and concepts develop from the work. I began Sector, the series much of my early databent work belongs to, by looking at different file formats as raw materials with their own qualities, and asking what JPEGs want to look like, vs. say, BMP files.
[glitch-irion / 32 dezembro glitch 11 2008]
B B-S: What are some of your influences? Where do you find inspiration?
Max Capacity: I can't help but think about Warhol or Lichtenstein when I look at pixels. Pop art and punk art are big influences. I eat up anything by Yves Klein or Jim Phillips. I'm a huge William Gibson fan, and all his books give me tons of inspiration. Science fiction movies, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Miller, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, lots of anime. Looney Toons, I watch cartoons constantly. Kraftwerk and Atari Teenage Riot.
glitch-irion: Pop art, graphic design, flickr's glitch/databend galleries, urban snapshots, graffiti, abstract art, and classical art concepts such as form, composition balance, color composition, composition unity are very important for me.
Dtemkin: My Sector series was heavily inspired by Bauhaus-era work and Pop Art, both of which I see as natural companions for glitch art. Repetition of images is of course common in Warhol's work, and also occurs often in databent images. Iconic symbols work well with databending, since the images are still highly recognizable when bent. In this project, I used databending partly in response to Warhol's ideas of automation in art; it's what happens when the machine breaks.
Rosa Menkman: I think Goto80 has been a really big inspiration to me - his work has a lot of tension in it; it takes place within this vortex of randomness, brokenness and perfection, which keeps me interested. I am naturally a curious person so I ask a lot of questions and always search for these tensions in my own life and research. Besides music, I think my main influences and inspiration are in concerts and festivals, books and bad television. I think I find most inspiration between the cracks of whatever else I do in daily life.
[Max Capacity / Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back (1982) (Parker Bros)]
B B-S: What methods, mediums, and tools do you use?
stallio: I'll use any software I can figure out how to databend with. Mostly I use hex editors, wav editors, and notepad.
Max Capacity: My NES circuit bending is all hardware, so I actually have to go through the process of testing and bending the circuit to get desirable results. ... The rest of the glitches are perpetrated using emulators.
Rosa Menkman: I don't feel like I am stuck into using any particular hard or software, or within the distinction between analogue and digital or sound and image. I have my preferences, but my final choice of method really depends on the moment.
Dtemkin: Most of the software I write to glitch images begins with automating manual work I often do to the files, and then expands in complexity as I discover new effects. Some of it builds on bugs I've discovered accidentally when using various image editing software. Much of it comes from testing what would happen if I tried to process data of type A through system B and see how it is transformed.
[stallio / tvslib4]
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How the community will evolve is yet to be seen. But with the Glitch Art pool alone claiming 3,142 members and 4,914 images (by far the largest concentration of glitch artists and enthusiasts I have come across), it is certain that it has already played a part in nuturing the development of the glitch aesthetic, and will continue to do so for a some time into the future.
Members of the flickr glitch pools have certainly helped me to develop my own work. However, over a relatively short amount of time (a year) I have become considerably less active. Like Rosa, I attribute this in part to having to split time between video and still image hosting sites. A proper combined audio/image/video hosting site is seriously missing.
Dtemkin's comment about the "instant gratification" quality of viewer feedback also ring true to me, and partly as a result of this I increasingly view the pools primarily as virtual display galleries and artist profile listings rather than places to seek meaningful feedback and ideas.
I admire the stalwart, longtime contributers for their tenacity and commitment to flickr as both a platform and a community; I think it has the potential to be both. And I hope that fresh faces continue to bring new energy and fresh approaches. There is tons to be learned already from the body of images and information, and it is increasing daily.
Partway down the "Is anybody there?" thread, hellocatfood contributes a note of cautious optimism, "You're right, things have slowed down. I think the interest in glitch art has fallen a bit. But I'm sure it'll come back soon."
Like receding feedback waves on the screen of a broken analog television set, I too think that it has fallen only to begin another inevitable climb.
2011 marks the 10th anniversary of NAISA’s Deep Wireless and SOUNDplay festivals and so it is an opportunity for NAISA to both reflect on the past and look ahead to the future. With this in mind, New Adventures in Sound Art invites artists of all ages and nationalities to submit works on the theme ABOUT TIME for consideration in New Adventures in Sound Art’s 2011 programming for its annual Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, and SOUNDplay festivals presented in Toronto, Canada. Artists may submit works in one or all of the following four categories (Note: please send separate submissions for each entry).
Preference in programming will be given to works that respond in some way to the theme ABOUT TIME. Individual interpretations or variations on the theme are encouraged, but should be realized with sound as the primary component.
Artists may submit works in one or all of the following four categories
1) Radio Art (for Deep Wireless)
The Radio Art category is for works conceived for radio or that use radio and other wireless technology in their creation and that play with the medium. Special consideration will be given to 1 minute radio art pieces for broadcast as well as 1 page proposals for collaboration on translocal and network performances.
Pieces will be selected for broadcast within Canada and on several international radio stations in May 2011 as part of the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art.
Both Canadian and International radio art submissions will be considered for inclusion in the following:
-The Deep Wireless 8 radio art compilation CD
-The Radio Art Interventions (1 minute pieces played guerilla-style on radio stations during the Deep Wireless festival)
-The Radio Art Salon - a listening gallery of radio art works exhibited for the month of May.
2) Electroacoustic Music & Sound Art (for Sound Travels & SOUNDplay)
The Electroacoustic Music & Sound Art category is for multi-channel and stereo works conceived for concert performance or presentation in the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art and SOUNDplay festivals. Preferred formats for performance presentation include 5.1, octaphonic, 12 and 16-channel formats in both acousmatic (tape), live, and mixed formats. Please indicate in the notes the intended format of presentation and any required instrumentation or specialized equipment.
3) Videomusic (for SOUNDplay)
The Videomusic category is for works that explores non-narrative abstraction with equal emphasis on sound and image. Submitted works will be considered for video screenings with either stereo or multi-channel playback for screenings in either a performance venue or a small-size gallery alongside other works selected from this call for submissions.
4) Installation Art (for Deep Wireless, Sound Travels or SOUNDplay)
Installation proposals of previously realized works for site-specific and gallery installations will be considered for presentation as part of Deep Wireless, Sound Travels or SOUNDplay. Site-specific works can be for indoor or outdoor locations. Works can use multichannel or single channel playback and may incorporate any number of media, but must feature original sound as a primary element.
Preference will be given to small to medium scale interactive works that appeal to all ages. Please note that almost all of NAISA's exhibition locations are multi-use venues and often require works to be moved and re-positioned on non-exhibition days. Also attach a list of the necessary equipment required to mount the installation and which of these items can be supplied by the artist. Submissions should include audio, video or audio-video documentation of previously realized versions of the work.
Submission Guidelines
Please complete in full the online submission form by midnight on September 30, 2010 and submit your submission materials by post (postmarked September 30, 2010) to:
New Adventures in Sound Art
601 Christie Street #252,Toronto, ON, M6G 4C7, Canada.
The online submission can be found at https://www.naisa.ca/eshops/sub_call.php.
Neil Wiernik: According to the world's largest collaborative tool Wikipedia: "Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources." Most recently, collaboration has taken a turn where virtual spaces have become a focal point of people coming together to engage in a variety of collaborative processes. New services are popping up all over the place most notably in the world of audio or music making these on line collaboration tools have been around for some time now and obviously have their roots in the collaborations that came out of the on line worlds of IRC channels, BBSs, mailing lists, message boards and other early forms of social media before Web 2.0. These ideas or tools are not exclusive to music makers but can be found popping up in other places as well – virtual spaces for thinkers, coders/programmers, photographers, designers, video makers and others, spaces where the denizens of the digital world can practice their crafts and collaborate on projects.
So Corina, you and I worked together remotely you in Montreal and myself in Toronto to put this issue together, we used some collaborative tools to do so. Keeping in the spirit of the issue theme, what's your opinion? Do you like the idea of working collaboratively completely online, or do you prefer to be face-to-face? Do you think online collaboration eventually will replace in-the-flesh sessions for culture makers?
Corina MacDonald: ‘Social media’ has become a ubiquitous term to describe the platforms and tools that enable interaction through digital networks. Although the term is fairly recent and generally used to refer to recent technological developments, the internet has been a social space since the beginning as evidenced by many of the older tools you mentioned. Of course today we’re moving at an exponentially faster pace and the collaborative spaces available are much more sophisticated. I think I see collaboration on a spectrum across physical and virtual space and synchronous and asynchronous communication, depending on the constraints of a particular project. We used a range of tools in putting together this issue, including email, Google Wave and Skype. So although we were never physically in the same space we were able to communicate in various ways to suit our needs. I wouldn’t wager to guess that online collaboration will replace face time entirely in the near future; whether the face time is ‘real’ or ’virtual’ I think that real-time communication is always going to be an important aspect of collaborative creative work.
Likewise in this issue I think we have an interesting cross section of work that reflects this spectrum of possibility. Kate Carr’s project Listening to the Weather uses the web as a collaborative medium and space of interaction between visitors and artists. Max Tanguay’skollab project also uses the network as a means of sharing source materials and diffusing the results of the creative process. The Artivistic collective explains the collaborative processes they put in place to organize the 4th edition of their international transdisciplinary three-day gathering, TURN*ON and some of the difficulties they encountered in translating online collaboration into physical space.
Neil, how do you think online collaboration will evolve alongside face-to-face work – do you think that the technology is moving in a direction to eventually allow us to emulate our physical practices or do you think that the technology itself might change our ideas of what collaboration is?
NW: I think digital space has really only created at this point and time, what I like to refer to as secondary spaces for collaborations to take place in. I believe that face to face or the actual presence of two artists together in a space still needs to happen on some level. The virtual space allows for the practice of work between two artists in different physical locations to occur in a collaborative manner but it does not replace the physical space, rather it acts as a mediator between the two physical spaces that the work is occuring in. For the most part, collaboration in the virtual sense to this point and time appears to be a common means for artists to exchange material or ideas and the concept of true real time virtual space seems to be a future possibility as Software as a service (SaaS) technology becomes more of a reality. Sure, there are tools being used for real time collaborations between artists and often these tools were not intended for these kinds of uses – for instance musicians in different cities might use Skype to work on music together. However, a purely digital space that allows— example—photographers to share a tool and edit a photo together in real time is still a thought and not a reality. It is there that I come to see digital collaborative space as a space that mediates between two artists, a place to exchange a material or ideas to then go back into the non virtual world to work on that collaboration.
This is most evident in the work of Morgan Packard and Josh Ott: they created their generative A/V iPhone app thicket using a chat client to talk through the programming process and to exchange the files as they worked on them. Herman Kolgan and Kenneth Kirshner are also working in different cities and exchange files of sample sources and ideas but then both return to their perspective studios to work on these audio collaborations based on their mutual love of sounds from toy instruments. Dehashis Sinha and Robert Lippok whom live on two different continents exchange ideas via email but when it comes to creating their body of work Sinha travels to Berlin, Germany to record these musical ideas in person with Lippok. Hemiptera a laptop music duo who live together within the close quarters of a mobile home. Unlike Lippok and Sinha they use the same computer to work on their music, so here we are moving towards a concept of a united digital space where the creative process is connected on a single hard drive using one software space, but the process of that collaboration is face to face and in person. All of my examples of artists (save this final exception) use digital collaborative spaces as a tool through which to conceive and mediate the work but not to execute it. I/O Media has been able to do both: as a media collective they not only work face to face, where they create multilayered live A/V performances but they have also worked in a real time virtual space to produce: Soundreach, A live improvised audiovisual performance between China and Canada, featuring Chinese sound artist Zen Lu.
Using live feeds between the two performance spaces in Canada and China I/O Media and Zen Lu were able to create a collaborative space that is uniquely digital in nature. The A/V results of both artists existed only in the virtual space, where they performed together in real time interaction.
What I am trying to say with all this is that yes, it is possible for a digital space to become a space for the creation of an artistic work but is natural for us to work in that manner? Is it intuitive enough at this point that we are willing to completely abandon our physical spaces to create an undefined space which we will use for creating art, or is our way of processing information grounded in using digital space as a place to mediate our practices? I think and feel like that is what we are hoping to understand a little bit better with exploring the concept of collaborative spaces for digital artists – do they even exist at this point or is it a manufactured idea and are "collaborative virtual tools" just a more advanced form of meditation than a landline telephone or a hand written letter?
Corina, you have mentioned some of the artists you worked with for this issue, but what about the other participants – how do you feel they relate to what I am stating above? How do they use their digital spaces to collaborate?
CM: It is interesting that you bring up the idea of software itself as a digital space. While somehow this seems an obvious metaphor we are not used to thinking about our use of software in this way. It is generally considered simply another tool alongside physical instruments, but I would argue that these kinds of digital spaces have a significant influence on our artistic practices at a broader level, even in our physical practices. As an example we can consider how the use of audio editing software has changed our work with sound from a primarily aural experience to an aural/visual one.
Looking beyond software to digital networks, these have had a huge influence in flattening our access to ideas, images and sounds from around the world, thereby again changing our physical and real time creative practices. Matt Shadetek, who works both solo and within a family of collaborators through his blog/label/production crew Dutty Artz, has some interesting thoughts on local and the global sources of inspiration and the role of the network in musical exploration across multiple contexts. The duo of Freida Abtan and Shane Turner (FAST) work together both remotely and in proximity bridging physical and virtual spaces. Anne-Francoise Jacques and Nicolas Dion of Minibloc are more representative of the face to face end of the collaboration spectrum, experimenting with the sounds created by physical objects and devices that they create or find or manipulate. Their work deals with the physical properties of sound and in their live performances they work side by side to explore parallel or convergent sonic directions.
NW: It really feels like the idea of cloud computing (SaaS) has still not enveloped the world of creative practices yet, that the present day space for collaboration for artists still relies on electronic networking, communication and mediation tools, creating the means for mutual feedback to occur but not a collaboration in real time on a single piece of software. However that is not to say that the practice of collaboration is not accelerated and enhanced by digital technology, but the ways in which these networking and mediation/communication tools are used have not evolved beyond a rudimentary level. There is still much room for further exploration of these tools, and we can look forward to the emergence of new modes of working that truly embody the possibilities of digital collaborative space.
'Contemporary appeals to the aesthetic of experience, then, always need to be leveraged by own demands to experiment. We are responsible for our own performativity and for the politics we make of “emancipated” experience. Best to enter these ludic contracts as both knowers and dupes - only then we might really manage to do things with art' - Caroline Jones
The quote above comes from a brilliant article on, among other things, performativity in the work of Maria Abramovic, Tino Seghal, and Vito Acconci and I’m particularly curious about the possible meanings of the last line in that article. What could it mean to “do things with art”? The critical contemplation of art would become an activity of art, a utility even, and the aesthetics of that utility would become the communicative medium of the work, the “reading” would be “using”, the artwork in and of itself would be the action it engenders. It’s a curious development and if the art world at-large, whatever that may be, is wondering what a utilitarian aesthetic practice might look like (I hesitate to say “art practice” to avoid complication) then they might look at how interactive practices approach the marriage of utility and aesthetics. Were I feeling brave I might even call it “utilitarian aesthetics” because there is nothing separating the aesthetics and utility. One is not a crutch for the other, in fact they are almost indivisible; the expression of one directly because of the other. For instance, Eyewriter:
'The Eyewriter project is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people who are suffering from ALS with creative technologies.' - Eyewriter.org
If one wants to learn about the Eyewriter project, most likely they would begin at the website, and with the video, which situates the projects in its conditions: Tony Quan, a graffiti writer, publisher and activist, paralyzed by Lou Gehrigs Disease or ALS, is approached with a proposal to create a tool for him with which he can draw. The situation of the project is foregrounded, it isn’t incidental, nor is it circumstantial: it is why. This is where interactive practices, socially informed practices, and politically informed practices converge: explicit situationality, explicit definition by conditions. Any art historian can point to any number of institutional critiques, from Duchamp, to Andrea Fraser, WochenKlausur, The Yes Men, the list goes on, of artists who recognize explicitly the situation of their work, who incorporate that situationality into their working practices as contemplative element but it is a different proposition to begin from a situation and proceed towards a resolution, a solution. Indeed, one ends up looking at something that looks like “doing things with art”. It also looks very much like a design strategy. One wonders where they diverge.
Eyewriter is a tool for making art, an explicitly empowering object that is an art object as well: computer vision software, two small cameras, a stylish pair of glasses, and a series of projectors, dimensions indefinite. The medium of its art is both as an object and as the work that is created with it. This isn’t to say that there is a perfect balance between object and utility, that they are weighted with perfect equality. Utility wins out; nothing is added that doesn’t contribute directly to the use to which it is put, the design dictum “form follows function” is obeyed, and yet the purpose to which is it is put, it’s conditions, are explicitly art. I could just as easily make the argument that Eyewriter is simply what is called adaptive design, that is, design modified for the conditions of the impaired. The first sentence of this paragraph could read “Eyewriter is…a design object”, and it would still describe in the same way, save for the clumsy ambiguity of “design object”. Every instance of the word “art” could be replaced with “design” and the work, the conception of it, would lose none of its meaning, power, or beauty.
Aesthetic discourses are fundamentally one thing: a way of reading. The artist creates a way of reading an object and the viewer agrees to that way of reading and hence understands the intent of the artwork. The content of the object can be the reading itself or it can be another referent altogether, both are completely legible, but without the readability itself then an artwork doesn’t function as art, a sentence doesn’t function as a sentence, a faucet doesn’t function as a faucet. What happens then when the discourse of a discipline that requires a different sort of legibility intersects with an art practice, with one of the recognized artistic discourses? For instance, what happens when industrial design intersects with concerns that place them in discussion with artwork? We can see a curious functionality in the case of Natalie Jeremijenko for instance: her ideas are put to work. The Institute for Applied Autonomy presents a similar conceptual puzzle; their early motto stated simply: “our shit works”. It functioning is its legibility; the criticality, aestheticized content all are engendered by an the functioning of the object as it is intended, by it’s utilitarian legiblility. Contrast this with Donald Judds now-classic remarks on his furniture “I’m very touchy about it being considered art…I’m not sympathetic to in-between positions.” Eyewriter looks like nothing more than a cheerful bleeding over of design and engineering practices into artwork and an aesthetic discourse that takes as its content the activity, the action, the act; a functional, playful in-between position indeed. Inspired artwork, littoral practices, whatever we call it, for instance, adaptive design inspired artwork, engages our use of systems, our ability to recognize that as a content that can be read, that can have values attached to it. As with many interactive practices in the US and UK, the working practice seems to begin with problems, problematizing, and proceeds to a play with the notion of research, an aesthetics of experimentation. Perhaps it’s our shared history with the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy, Russell and Wittgenstein to Rorty and Nagel, or a consequence of working with code and hardware, practices which seem to engender an appreciation for elegant utilitarianism, or the backgrounds in design or film or architecture that so many practitioners share. Whatever causes one attributes, there is, a shared practice, a discourse of practices, in which this project participates and which lend legibility and coherence to it.
So, then, in Eyewriter, what do we read? When we look at it, how do we see it? At its core, as in so many digital practices, is a transform: the transform from an eye movement to a projected line. The aestheticized object is the transformed action, the opening of possibility through what might almost be called a computational trick: take this analog process out in the world, digitize, then statistically analyze, and present. And Eyewriter is art because that transform is aesthetic, in its conceptual condition, as an understanding of its process, in its mediums of documentation, photo and video, and as practice, not simply a single object, but a way of making, to build collaborations and communities around enabling creative practice:
'The long-term goal is to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.' - Eyewriter.org
A, if not the, goal of critical artistic practice is to engage the material of our lives, of our situations, in our engagement with art: vision, commonplace materials. What could be more commonplace than our computational interaction: our expectations of what computation is and can be? We can create narratives of aesthetic around our actions, our uses, our commonplace actions. This is no longer purely the critical art of our expectation of our reliance on systems and interfaces; this is an art of shaping narratives from our action and acting, our patterns of use, our desires for functionality, not simply to subvert them, but to enable them, to create art from them, act from them. Utility is narrativity and using is story-telling; as such, they are both a content and medium of emergent aesthetic practices and that is as rich, complex, and challenging a terrain as we can elect to engage.
Eyewriteris a project and initiative by members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks and the Graffiti Resarch Lab: Tony Quan, Evan Roth, Chris Sugrue, Zach Lieberman, Theo Watson and James Powderly. It is the winner of the 2010 Golden Nica award for Interactive Art from the Ars Electronica Foundation.
The Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), the only festival of its kind in North America, is a 10-day long public film festival that reaches over 1.3 million subway commuters daily.
TUFF is looking for the best one-minute silent films from across Canada and around the world.
The festival runs from September 10 - 19, 2010, at the same time as TIFF. Films are presented on the Onestop Network of 270 subway platform screens inside the TTC, and featured on the new TUFF website.
Films are selected by a guest jury, with top awards selected by guest judge Deepa Mehta. The TUFF 2010 Jury: Chris Gehman, Min Sook Lee, Jorge Lozano, Kathleen Mullen, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Haema Sivanesan, and Michael Zryd.
Filmmakers, animators and video artists are invited to submit one-minute silent films that speak to an urban audience. Programming themes this year are: Urban Encounters and Other Stories; Our Environment and Urban Growth; The Medium is the Message; Urban Ideas and Politics; Urban Journeys; The City is a Poem; After Night Falls.
Need some tips on the art of one-minute filmmaking? Check-out our TUFF Tips from past winners and jurors: http://www.torontourbanfilmfestival.com/tuff-tips
Submission Deadline: July 15th
LOADBANG
Saturday July 10 7-11pm
Butcher Gallery
234 1/2 Queen Street East, third floor
"A program (patch) runs (load) on a computer and files of moving numbers are (bang) randomly played from one to twenty seconds"
LOADBANG is a one-night blast of subversive, emergent video and web-based art explored through presentation of a mashup, video installation, net art and performance. Questioning net art and Internet video as distinctly web-based media, this exhibition looks at how transgressive and experimental desires in the form and content of online video are translated into an exhibition environment. How do time-wasting interactions such as web-cam performance, gaming, format shifts, avatars and porn affect our appreciation of art and life?
Addressing the instabilty of authorship in new media art production, an intensified presentation of video in a mashup asks us to contemplate variable ways of watching and curating online video.
What is your erotic? What do you want to see in art and what do you expect to see online? How are vulgar uses of technology and appropriated images rearticulated as visual fetish?
Showing randomized video by: Artur Augustynowicz, Adam Cruces, Andrea Hitchman, Ann Hirsch, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jessica Vallentin, Ian MacTilstra, Mark Pellegrino, Lucas Soi
Related non-objects, events and actions:
Curated by Jennifer Chan, this event was planned in response to an open call for “sexy, trashy video made for-or inspired by- the Internet”. Included videos and related artwork was selected in consultation with the gallery and a jury of new media artists/students/curators consisting of Jeremy Bailey, David Frankovich, Cheryl Sourkes, Kaitlin Till-Landry and Stephen Stanford.
This event would not be irl without generous assistance from Jeremy Bailey’s bangloading patchwriting and Mark Pellegrino’s technical consultation.
More information via http://butchergallery.com or contact@butchergallery.com
[Chop Shop / Thrust]
Among the complaints that discontents of the digital age have about the aesthetic shortcomings of its new media, one of the more valid ones is the claim that instantaneity (e.g. of digital photography and digital filming) has warped our perceptions of the organic life cycle. That is to say, images and recorded sounds strive much harder to produce the illusion of ‘emergence’ or ‘coming into being’ that came about via the deficiencies of pre-digital media. The gradual filling in of a Polaroid picture’s flat obsidian space, the unnerving crackle and sputter that indicated a vinyl album’s music program was about to get underway, the lead-in strip of a film reel marked with illegible technical instructions: all these things added a certain preliminary suspense or tension that was not an obstacle to the aesthetic experience, but part and parcel of it. The flip side to this lost organic ‘emergence’ has been, naturally, the way in which the wariness of 21st-century instantaneity has rejuvenated interest in the aesthetic of decay. Among Jean Baudrillard’s final published writings, he scorned digital imagery and/or CGI not only because “there is no negative any longer, no ‘time lapse’” within it, but also because
…nothing dies or disappears there. The image is merely itself the product of an instruction and a programme, aggravated by automatic dissemination from one medium to the other: computer, mobile phone, TV screen etc.'
Certainly, the design world’s acceptance of disappearance, fatigue, and the slow fade-out is not insignificant, although not without occasional insincerity and pandering towards those who fear peer group rejection for exhibiting too much techno-flash in the midst of a global economic nosedive. A few years back, I visited an eatery in Tokyo’s Ebisu district where the menu was printed onto corroded slabs of metal, one facet of a harsh post-industrial decorative scheme that clashed somewhat with the restaurant’s soundtrack of breezy downtempo electronica, and the impeccable grooming of the wait staff. And we’ve all likely seen the premature and rather insincere decay processes that can be found on “stressed” baseball caps, t-shirts and other fashion accoutrements meant as a way for people to exude casual ‘everyman’ bonhomie. Within the digital imaging realm itself, design squads have become increasingly adept at cultivating a special made-to-order decay that produces intense contrasts: bringing the ‘cleaner’ design elements of a given project into sharp relief. A randomly-picked back issue of the official Adobe magazine Layers (September / October 2009) provides an object lesson in this aesthetic via the goofy, overwrought Attention Deficit Design work of Linda Zacks, one-time design director for VH1.com as well as hired hand for Sony and (surprise) Adobe. In an unintentionally comical moment, the word “ORGANIC,” written in an insurrectionary spray-stenciled style as part of Zacks’ cover art, is partially obliterated by the magazine’s scannable barcode. There could be less cogent statements on the futility of such faux-organic aesthetics.
Though some kind of faux-organicism has always been in force in this writer’s lifetime, and has gone hand-in-hand with parallel design trends (such as expert ways of portraying non-expertise), the past decade or so has shown a marked intensification in the ‘push’ to make this the dominant design aesthetic. However, the conceits of this faux-organicism, especially when dealing with the decay stage of an artifact’s life cycle, are not difficult to identify. The metallic menus in that chic Ebisu restaurant were easily more expensive to produce than paper ones, and had nothing to do with a spartan “improvising from whatever materials were at hand” ethos. Likewise, pre-“stressed” clothing is usually more costly than items that don’t seek to add extra definition through these processes: the differences between the fabric wear injected in the manufacturing stage, and that which comes from real long-term use, remain painstakingly obvious and easy to articulate. Meanwhile, designers like Zacks are almost apologetic about their working methods, and in particular the fact that she admittedly “…use[s] the computer as a place to […] combine hand-done elements and weave them together, but never really as a place to originate pictures. I’m addicted to my scanner…I think it’s the best invention on earth.”
[Smoulder, cover art]
All this begs the question: what kind of art do we get when organic decay processes qua decay processes are allowed to speak for themselves? How do these raw materials look and sound when not being relegated to framing more synthetically ‘pure’ elements, or as a metaphor for a prevailing set of contemporary social conditions? A good example would be the art of Scott Konzelmann, whose recording alias ‘Chop Shop’ already suggests a modus operandi of salvaging disused scrap parts to be later welded together into some barely functioning but highly intriguing monstrosity. If nothing else, Chop Shop’s recorded magnum opus Oxide (23five, 2008), a full CD of strangely engrossing non-music re-constructed from moisture-damaged tapes, does its best to resurrect Baudrillard’s sadly-missed time lapse; the underwater streams of noisy sound artifacts on the disc seem as disinterested in human observers as any subject of time-lapse photography, and are equalized in such a way as to seem like they are literally decomposing and disintegrating upon contact with the listening environment. Also active in the world of the plastic arts, which he has hybridized with sound by way of his unique Speaker Constructions, Konzelmann has aimed to create a “music of decay” in which said organic process constitutes the “performance” itself. The sounds played back through Konzelmann’s specially-housed loudspeakers are then recorded and released on a variety of home audio formats, extending the reach of the Speaker Constructions even further.
His first Speaker Construction, Furnace Plate C1679, consisted of an iron plate taken from a furnace, featuring an 8" circular indentation, which –once drilled through by the artist – provided a convenient means of mounting a similarly sized speaker through which steady sonic frequencies traveled. As the sound hurtles through the speakers at a constant high-volume rate, damage to the speaker cones and other materials is likely to occur, but this is a possibility welcomed by the artist: it makes the physicality of the sound more apparent, and allows the otherwise unyielding hums, hisses and clatters to become further modulated with no outside intervention. Although his original artistic intention is stated as “giving sound a body,” his art also fits into a strong tradition of work that remains open to unintended consequences – consequences that are further accelerated by choosing “bodies” that are not in their prime.
Konzelmann’s home audio releases have occasionally come housed in seemingly impenetrable lead and copper sleeves (see his Smolder 3” cd released on V2 Archief), or his Steel Plate 10” double-vinyl set on RRRecords, whose particular packaging innovation you can probably deduce from the title. Rarely do album artworks manage to make the sound contained within them seem like a mise en abyme of that housing, but these specimens from Chop Shop come staggeringly close: the authoritative weight of the sleeves, their patterned discoloration from electro-chemical reactions, and the sound within provide incredibly complementary sensory effects. As to the subsequent emotional effects, critic Ken ‘Kenny G’ Goldsmith’s comes to a bold conclusion – of Smolder’s musical content he writes that
…there's something in its adamant refusal to engage on any emotional level that makes you respect it. For this reason alone, it's important. Although industrial, mechanical and noise music has been with us all century, there's generally some attempt to express something, despite its contradictory claims. Not this record. Smolder, in its hardcore modernist stance, achieves an expressive stasis that manages to deaden the emotional plane like the lead it's wrapped in.'
Fortunately, Konzelmann himself is free of ‘expressive stasis’ when communicating about his artwork (and I have to say that Goldsmith’s evaluation here was like a ‘throwing down of the gauntlet’ that partially inspired me to make personal contact with the man.) I fielded a number of questions to Scott throughout 2009-2010 and found him to have a natural enthusiasm for creation, coupled with a bare minimum of anxiety over ‘recognition’ and compensation. Since Scott was involved with another improvisational venture—the ‘cassette network’ of the 1980s—before he became involved with his Speaker Constructions and more elaborate multi-Construction installations, this seemed like a good place to begin…
Your first cassette work ("Primitive Power / Positive Force") came out in 1987, by which time this whole practice of homemade cassette releasing had been happening for about a decade. Was it easy for you to immediately integrate yourself into the culture of home-tapers, or were there some challenges to acceptance of your work at the outset?
Yes, I became active fairly late. I started listening and exchanging material with several people in 1984/85, so I had some idea of what was happening prior to my first release. "Primitive Power / Positive Force" was then my "official" introduction, sent out to people whose work I admired and felt some kinship with. I received very good response and support – but I also learned that it was important to somehow make the work really stand out; whether sonically, in the packaging, or conceptually, etc. That was the primary challenge I found for myself as a result of that cassette circulating.
[Chop Shop / Golden Throat]
Having said that, how much did things change from your first release to the 2nd cassette [“Scraps”] in 1989?
I spent time after the first release developing what came to be known as my Speaker Constructions to better convey and shape the sonic materials. These Speaker Constructions are sculptural assemblages of found and scavenged elements housing functional loudspeakers – each Speaker Construction is operated with a distinct sound program which reflects its' individual physical characteristics. Isolated, or in group settings, the Speaker Constructions charge the listening room to provide a unique listening experience. This area then became the major focus for my work, developing a distinct quality in both presentation and the recordings. So, with "Scraps" I was able to better direct the material. My contacts and distribution widened considerably after that release made its way around. Labels such as RRR and Banned Productions started to ask for further projects to appear through them, and festivals and galleries began offering to present installations and performances of my work.
I'm curious what some of the initial audience reactions were to the Speaker Constructions – did any one particular aspect of the presentation (either the sculptural aspect, or the audio output) seem to take precedence over the others, as people encountered them?
The primal seed of the Speaker Constructions: I found early on, when working in abstract sound, that people always looked at the loudspeaker as they listened – ear cocked – looking for information, some context, or reference. I thought of giving them something to really look at, something that further defined and actually gave a physical body/object to better convey what they were hearing. The focus of this work is to first capture, distill, and then present a particular sound experience as purely as possible. The presentation and focus of my work was more installation than performance – as my working process is to use and to record these objects in variable situations, on end—this made for a challenge—in particular, that the recorded releases convey the experience of an immersive, directed listening environment. Presenting images of the Speaker Constructions along with the sounds expanded the SCRAPS package and gave definition to the materials: intention and more information for the listener. "Physical sounds through visible sources" was the motto then, and remains so now.
Were these objects built with some previous knowledge of what they would sound like upon completion, or were the sonic results a surprise even to you?
Initially, yes: a surprise. A visual idea originally – but of course, I quickly found the playful aspect of "loose" or manipulated speaker elements in various housings (i.e. pipes/hoods/plates/etc.). The Speaker Constructions are developed in a dialog with the sound component – to modify or exploit the reproduction/role and functionality.
Did you ever feel there was any tension between the two 'worlds' of public art installations/exhibits, and that of the international 'tape network' which your early releases contributed to? Or did their respective energies feed off of/complement each other?
Very good question – and a point that remains sticky. I ended up in an odd crack between the two. The art world read "noise – what is that?”, and what do we do with that??" Never got a cold shoulder from the cassette network – who, perhaps, were also not fully sure of the intent or focus behind it. Whittled down the people I stayed in contact/trade with onwards. Earlier, it was easier – as both audiences / "worlds" were fairly open and curious. Originally, I was loath to call myself a "sound artist", but the gallery world then needed that terminology to somehow place it. At the same time I was equally loath to call myself a "noise artist" – as that did not describe the intent (or craft) of the focus behind the work. Both were pretentious. That was 1989. Now, in 2009 it's easier to bend either/or with the descriptions – as they both are more accepted as a more well-known vernacular, though I feel it remains vague. Chop Shop exists in an odd niche somewhat apart from much of the current contexts of both… I initially fed each side by the packaging of my releases—and further by primarily presenting my work as installation—or capture, rather than performances. I now do both, as the proper situation presents.
Another question about both the speaker constructions, and the 'art object' tapes you were making: was the 'industrial salvage' aesthetic associated with these objects meant to impart any particular message or commentary (be it ethical, political etc.)? Or was it just a matter of finding these 'scrap' materials visually attractive and evocative?
None. No message, no commentary. Not to be taken as political, or ethical – at all. Trying to present sound as a physical residue (mark).
Do you feel like despite the apparent awkwardness of your work 'falling between the cracks’ that this resistance to classification (both from yourself and from the 'art community') will end up giving your work a greater longevity?
The "crack" is not uncomfortable; I find it to be enough at this point. Could be wider if I chose to push it, but I strive to make my work as consistent as possible to my ear and sensibility – at my own pace. There has always been some stress (both internal and external) about remaining more current, as there is an expectation of a fairly constant stream of releases or shows as a barometer. I remain more known by previous history, and by audience support more than activity.
On that note, I must add this: I have met the most incredible people through my activity in the sound network. I count so many great friends – various and far-flung-that have become solid pals that I will know for the rest of my life. That goes back to just sending cassettes to people whose work I enjoyed and respected, and hearing back. So when you ask about longevity, there are internal (overlapping) circles that I am extremely grateful and pleased to have had their long-standing support of my work, to further push, foster– and spark. I continue to hear from great and interesting new people—the circle widens.
In your opinion, why is it easier today than in 1989 to work around these identifiers like "noise artist"? Are people really that much better informed today, or more willing to discover new things without worrying where it fits into the categorical puzzle?
In 1989, calling your work noise would not have found any wider audience that wasn't already listening. Calling your work ‘sound art’ then came off as pretentious to the audience that was already listening. The recent popularity of noise has allowed for very random shit to be considered sound art. There is now a much wider audience that hears in either terminology a "new" direction. After the onset of the digital format in the 1990s – with the laptoppers, DJ ambient noise—and further with the popularity of rock bands incorporating "noise"…that while the usage has become significantly more prevalent and accepted – much (if any) context remains vague. Academically, or commercially. Perhaps that is just fine. Some listeners sense and chase the thread, or history, and make their connections. It takes effort to decipher any clear categories from much of the work that came out of that period (mid 1980's to 2000+) – and hats off to those that try.
Throughout the month of July Little Dances Everywhere will be collecting footage for The Sternberg Project, an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of July in Sternberg Park (bound by Lorimer St, Leonard St, Boerum St and Montrose Av in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and its surrounding area.
We encourage you to help us build a video map of the park throughout the month of July by filming a short clip of the park. Videos can be from 10 seconds to 1 minute in length and made on anything from an HD camcorder to a camera phone. Capture/create anything from dances, conversations, home runs, images, narratives, stills, sounds, etc. and be sure to let us know where it was filmed! Below are some ideas to get you started:
All footage will be included in an interactive map of the park, accessible online. Selected footage will be featured in a dance film to be presented at a public screening on August 23rd by Moviehouse.
Ways to submit:
Email file to moviehousebk@gmail.com
Send via yousendit.com or another hosting site
Mail/drop off a copy to Moviehouse @ 3rd Ward: 195 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Submission Deadline: July 31st
Throughout the month of July Little Dances Everywhere will be collecting footage for The Sternberg Project, an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of July in Sternberg Park (bound by Lorimer St, Leonard St, Boerum St and Montrose Av in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and its surrounding area.
We encourage you to help us build a video map of the park throughout the month of July by filming a short clip of the park. Videos can be from 10 seconds to 1 minute in length and made on anything from an HD camcorder to a camera phone. Capture/create anything from dances, conversations, home runs, images, narratives, stills, sounds, etc. and be sure to let us know where it was filmed! Below are some ideas to get you started:
All footage will be included in an interactive map of the park, accessible online. Selected footage will be featured in a dance film to be presented at a public screening on August 23rd by Moviehouse.
Ways to submit:
Email file to moviehousebk@gmail.com
Send via yousendit.com or another hosting site
Mail/drop off a copy to Moviehouse @ 3rd Ward: 195 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Submission Deadline: July 31st
[Chop Shop / Thrust]
Among the complaints that discontents of the digital age have about the aesthetic shortcomings of its new media, one of the more valid ones is the claim that instantaneity (e.g. of digital photography and digital filming) has warped our perceptions of the organic life cycle. That is to say, images and recorded sounds strive much harder to produce the illusion of ‘emergence’ or ‘coming into being’ that came about via the deficiencies of pre-digital media. The gradual filling in of a Polaroid picture’s flat obsidian space, the unnerving crackle and sputter that indicated a vinyl album’s music program was about to get underway, the lead-in strip of a film reel marked with illegible technical instructions: all these things added a certain preliminary suspense or tension that was not an obstacle to the aesthetic experience, but part and parcel of it. The flip side to this lost organic ‘emergence’ has been, naturally, the way in which the wariness of 21st-century instantaneity has rejuvenated interest in the aesthetic of decay. Among Jean Baudrillard’s final published writings, he scorned digital imagery and/or CGI not only because “there is no negative any longer, no ‘time lapse’” within it, but also because
…nothing dies or disappears there. The image is merely itself the product of an instruction and a programme, aggravated by automatic dissemination from one medium to the other: computer, mobile phone, TV screen etc.'
Certainly, the design world’s acceptance of disappearance, fatigue, and the slow fade-out is not insignificant, although not without occasional insincerity and pandering towards those who fear peer group rejection for exhibiting too much techno-flash in the midst of a global economic nosedive. A few years back, I visited an eatery in Tokyo’s Ebisu district where the menu was printed onto corroded slabs of metal, one facet of a harsh post-industrial decorative scheme that clashed somewhat with the restaurant’s soundtrack of breezy downtempo electronica, and the impeccable grooming of the wait staff. And we’ve all likely seen the premature and rather insincere decay processes that can be found on “stressed” baseball caps, t-shirts and other fashion accoutrements meant as a way for people to exude casual ‘everyman’ bonhomie. Within the digital imaging realm itself, design squads have become increasingly adept at cultivating a special made-to-order decay that produces intense contrasts: bringing the ‘cleaner’ design elements of a given project into sharp relief. A randomly-picked back issue of the official Adobe magazine Layers (September / October 2009) provides an object lesson in this aesthetic via the goofy, overwrought Attention Deficit Design work of Linda Zacks, one-time design director for VH1.com as well as hired hand for Sony and (surprise) Adobe. In an unintentionally comical moment, the word “ORGANIC,” written in an insurrectionary spray-stenciled style as part of Zacks’ cover art, is partially obliterated by the magazine’s scannable barcode. There could be less cogent statements on the futility of such faux-organic aesthetics.
Though some kind of faux-organicism has always been in force in this writer’s lifetime, and has gone hand-in-hand with parallel design trends (such as expert ways of portraying non-expertise), the past decade or so has shown a marked intensification in the ‘push’ to make this the dominant design aesthetic. However, the conceits of this faux-organicism, especially when dealing with the decay stage of an artifact’s life cycle, are not difficult to identify. The metallic menus in that chic Ebisu restaurant were easily more expensive to produce than paper ones, and had nothing to do with a spartan “improvising from whatever materials were at hand” ethos. Likewise, pre-“stressed” clothing is usually more costly than items that don’t seek to add extra definition through these processes: the differences between the fabric wear injected in the manufacturing stage, and that which comes from real long-term use, remain painstakingly obvious and easy to articulate. Meanwhile, designers like Zacks are almost apologetic about their working methods, and in particular the fact that she admittedly “…use[s] the computer as a place to […] combine hand-done elements and weave them together, but never really as a place to originate pictures. I’m addicted to my scanner…I think it’s the best invention on earth.”
[Smoulder, cover art]
All this begs the question: what kind of art do we get when organic decay processes qua decay processes are allowed to speak for themselves? How do these raw materials look and sound when not being relegated to framing more synthetically ‘pure’ elements, or as a metaphor for a prevailing set of contemporary social conditions? A good example would be the art of Scott Konzelmann, whose recording alias ‘Chop Shop’ already suggests a modus operandi of salvaging disused scrap parts to be later welded together into some barely functioning but highly intriguing monstrosity. If nothing else, Chop Shop’s recorded magnum opus Oxide (23five, 2008), a full CD of strangely engrossing non-music re-constructed from moisture-damaged tapes, does its best to resurrect Baudrillard’s sadly-missed time lapse; the underwater streams of noisy sound artifacts on the disc seem as disinterested in human observers as any subject of time-lapse photography, and are equalized in such a way as to seem like they are literally decomposing and disintegrating upon contact with the listening environment. Also active in the world of the plastic arts, which he has hybridized with sound by way of his unique Speaker Constructions, Konzelmann has aimed to create a “music of decay” in which said organic process constitutes the “performance” itself. The sounds played back through Konzelmann’s specially-housed loudspeakers are then recorded and released on a variety of home audio formats, extending the reach of the Speaker Constructions even further.
His first Speaker Construction, Furnace Plate C1679, consisted of an iron plate taken from a furnace, featuring an 8" circular indentation, which –once drilled through by the artist – provided a convenient means of mounting a similarly sized speaker through which steady sonic frequencies traveled. As the sound hurtles through the speakers at a constant high-volume rate, damage to the speaker cones and other materials is likely to occur, but this is a possibility welcomed by the artist: it makes the physicality of the sound more apparent, and allows the otherwise unyielding hums, hisses and clatters to become further modulated with no outside intervention. Although his original artistic intention is stated as “giving sound a body,” his art also fits into a strong tradition of work that remains open to unintended consequences – consequences that are further accelerated by choosing “bodies” that are not in their prime.
Konzelmann’s home audio releases have occasionally come housed in seemingly impenetrable lead and copper sleeves (see his Smolder 3” cd released on V2 Archief), or his Steel Plate 10” double-vinyl set on RRRecords, whose particular packaging innovation you can probably deduce from the title. Rarely do album artworks manage to make the sound contained within them seem like a mise en abyme of that housing, but these specimens from Chop Shop come staggeringly close: the authoritative weight of the sleeves, their patterned discoloration from electro-chemical reactions, and the sound within provide incredibly complementary sensory effects. As to the subsequent emotional effects, critic Ken ‘Kenny G’ Goldsmith’s comes to a bold conclusion – of Smolder’s musical content he writes that
…there's something in its adamant refusal to engage on any emotional level that makes you respect it. For this reason alone, it's important. Although industrial, mechanical and noise music has been with us all century, there's generally some attempt to express something, despite its contradictory claims. Not this record. Smolder, in its hardcore modernist stance, achieves an expressive stasis that manages to deaden the emotional plane like the lead it's wrapped in.'
Fortunately, Konzelmann himself is free of ‘expressive stasis’ when communicating about his artwork (and I have to say that Goldsmith’s evaluation here was like a ‘throwing down of the gauntlet’ that partially inspired me to make personal contact with the man.) I fielded a number of questions to Scott throughout 2009-2010 and found him to have a natural enthusiasm for creation, coupled with a bare minimum of anxiety over ‘recognition’ and compensation. Since Scott was involved with another improvisational venture—the ‘cassette network’ of the 1980s—before he became involved with his Speaker Constructions and more elaborate multi-Construction installations, this seemed like a good place to begin…
Your first cassette work ("Primitive Power / Positive Force") came out in 1987, by which time this whole practice of homemade cassette releasing had been happening for about a decade. Was it easy for you to immediately integrate yourself into the culture of home-tapers, or were there some challenges to acceptance of your work at the outset?
Yes, I became active fairly late. I started listening and exchanging material with several people in 1984/85, so I had some idea of what was happening prior to my first release. "Primitive Power / Positive Force" was then my "official" introduction, sent out to people whose work I admired and felt some kinship with. I received very good response and support – but I also learned that it was important to somehow make the work really stand out; whether sonically, in the packaging, or conceptually, etc. That was the primary challenge I found for myself as a result of that cassette circulating.
[Chop Shop / Golden Throat]
Having said that, how much did things change from your first release to the 2nd cassette [“Scraps”] in 1989?
I spent time after the first release developing what came to be known as my Speaker Constructions to better convey and shape the sonic materials. These Speaker Constructions are sculptural assemblages of found and scavenged elements housing functional loudspeakers – each Speaker Construction is operated with a distinct sound program which reflects its' individual physical characteristics. Isolated, or in group settings, the Speaker Constructions charge the listening room to provide a unique listening experience. This area then became the major focus for my work, developing a distinct quality in both presentation and the recordings. So, with "Scraps" I was able to better direct the material. My contacts and distribution widened considerably after that release made its way around. Labels such as RRR and Banned Productions started to ask for further projects to appear through them, and festivals and galleries began offering to present installations and performances of my work.
I'm curious what some of the initial audience reactions were to the Speaker Constructions – did any one particular aspect of the presentation (either the sculptural aspect, or the audio output) seem to take precedence over the others, as people encountered them?
The primal seed of the Speaker Constructions: I found early on, when working in abstract sound, that people always looked at the loudspeaker as they listened – ear cocked – looking for information, some context, or reference. I thought of giving them something to really look at, something that further defined and actually gave a physical body/object to better convey what they were hearing. The focus of this work is to first capture, distill, and then present a particular sound experience as purely as possible. The presentation and focus of my work was more installation than performance – as my working process is to use and to record these objects in variable situations, on end—this made for a challenge—in particular, that the recorded releases convey the experience of an immersive, directed listening environment. Presenting images of the Speaker Constructions along with the sounds expanded the SCRAPS package and gave definition to the materials: intention and more information for the listener. "Physical sounds through visible sources" was the motto then, and remains so now.
Were these objects built with some previous knowledge of what they would sound like upon completion, or were the sonic results a surprise even to you?
Initially, yes: a surprise. A visual idea originally – but of course, I quickly found the playful aspect of "loose" or manipulated speaker elements in various housings (i.e. pipes/hoods/plates/etc.). The Speaker Constructions are developed in a dialog with the sound component – to modify or exploit the reproduction/role and functionality.
Did you ever feel there was any tension between the two 'worlds' of public art installations/exhibits, and that of the international 'tape network' which your early releases contributed to? Or did their respective energies feed off of/complement each other?
Very good question – and a point that remains sticky. I ended up in an odd crack between the two. The art world read "noise – what is that?”, and what do we do with that??" Never got a cold shoulder from the cassette network – who, perhaps, were also not fully sure of the intent or focus behind it. Whittled down the people I stayed in contact/trade with onwards. Earlier, it was easier – as both audiences / "worlds" were fairly open and curious. Originally, I was loath to call myself a "sound artist", but the gallery world then needed that terminology to somehow place it. At the same time I was equally loath to call myself a "noise artist" – as that did not describe the intent (or craft) of the focus behind the work. Both were pretentious. That was 1989. Now, in 2009 it's easier to bend either/or with the descriptions – as they both are more accepted as a more well-known vernacular, though I feel it remains vague. Chop Shop exists in an odd niche somewhat apart from much of the current contexts of both… I initially fed each side by the packaging of my releases—and further by primarily presenting my work as installation—or capture, rather than performances. I now do both, as the proper situation presents.
Another question about both the speaker constructions, and the 'art object' tapes you were making: was the 'industrial salvage' aesthetic associated with these objects meant to impart any particular message or commentary (be it ethical, political etc.)? Or was it just a matter of finding these 'scrap' materials visually attractive and evocative?
None. No message, no commentary. Not to be taken as political, or ethical – at all. Trying to present sound as a physical residue (mark).
Do you feel like despite the apparent awkwardness of your work 'falling between the cracks’ that this resistance to classification (both from yourself and from the 'art community') will end up giving your work a greater longevity?
The "crack" is not uncomfortable; I find it to be enough at this point. Could be wider if I chose to push it, but I strive to make my work as consistent as possible to my ear and sensibility – at my own pace. There has always been some stress (both internal and external) about remaining more current, as there is an expectation of a fairly constant stream of releases or shows as a barometer. I remain more known by previous history, and by audience support more than activity.
On that note, I must add this: I have met the most incredible people through my activity in the sound network. I count so many great friends – various and far-flung-that have become solid pals that I will know for the rest of my life. That goes back to just sending cassettes to people whose work I enjoyed and respected, and hearing back. So when you ask about longevity, there are internal (overlapping) circles that I am extremely grateful and pleased to have had their long-standing support of my work, to further push, foster– and spark. I continue to hear from great and interesting new people—the circle widens.
In your opinion, why is it easier today than in 1989 to work around these identifiers like "noise artist"? Are people really that much better informed today, or more willing to discover new things without worrying where it fits into the categorical puzzle?
In 1989, calling your work noise would not have found any wider audience that wasn't already listening. Calling your work ‘sound art’ then came off as pretentious to the audience that was already listening. The recent popularity of noise has allowed for very random shit to be considered sound art. There is now a much wider audience that hears in either terminology a "new" direction. After the onset of the digital format in the 1990s – with the laptoppers, DJ ambient noise—and further with the popularity of rock bands incorporating "noise"…that while the usage has become significantly more prevalent and accepted – much (if any) context remains vague. Academically, or commercially. Perhaps that is just fine. Some listeners sense and chase the thread, or history, and make their connections. It takes effort to decipher any clear categories from much of the work that came out of that period (mid 1980's to 2000+) – and hats off to those that try.