Andreas Broeckmann on Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:20:34 +0100 |
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Syndicate: Machine Aesthetics, Rotterdam 27 June - 13 July |
Machine Aesthetics Exhibition, Wiretap, Workshop, Student Seminar V2_Organisation presents an exhibition and works-in-progress that reflect on the possibility of a new aesthetics of the machine. Does digital technology make it possible for the machine to develop aesthetic behaviour, to create art, and to become an autonomous agent? Date: 27 June - 13 July 1997 Place: V2_Organisation, Eendrachtsstr.10, 3012 XL Rotterdam Programme Friday 27 June 17.00 - 19.00 hrs Opening of the exhibition with works by Nicolas A. Baginsky (D), Jutta Kirchgeorg (US/D), Martin Schitter (A), and Gebhard SengmŸller (A). Performance by N. Baginsky with The Three Sirens (also on 28 and 29 June, 14.00 and 17.00 hrs). (Entrance free.) The exhibition will be open until 13 July, Tuesday - Sunday, 13.00-18.00 hrs. Entrance fl. 2,50. Saturday 28 June 14.00 - 18.00 hrs Artists workshop about the use of machines in art, and about a potential aesthetics of the machinic. With Knowbotic Research (D), Daniela Plewe (D), Pit Schultz (D), and the other participating artists. (Reservation required. Please call: tel.+31.10.4046427, v2@v2.nl) Sunday 29 June 14.00 - 17.00 hrs Wiretap 3.06 - public presentations by Eric Kluitenberg (on the history of machine art) and Nic Baginsky (on his machine ) ects), a commentary by Knowbotic Research (on the machinic), and performances by Baginsky's Three Sirens and Gebhard SengmŸller (about Vinyl Video). Entrance fl. 2,50. In English. Montag 30. Juni 11.00 - 16.00 hrs Seminar for students and others about the theory and practice of contemporary media art. Guided by Eric Kluitenberg (media-gn) and Andreas Broeckmann (V2) with presentations by Nic Baginsky and Seiko Mikami. Fee: fl. 20,-. Held in Dutch, presentations in English. (Reservation required. Please call: tel.+31.10.4046427, v2@v2.nl) Further Informationen: V2_Organisation, Eendrachtsstr.10, NL-3012 XL Rotterdam tel.+31-10-4046427, fax.+31-10-4128562, e-mail: v2@v2.nl Supported by: Goethe Institut, Rotterdam; Ambassade van Oostenrijk, Amsterdam; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Rotterdam Art Council Concept 'Machine Aesthetics' The machine is beginning to talk back. The machine can learn, act and create. Computers do meaningful things that we no longer understand, they communicate amongst each other without human interference, and they develop structures, objects and plans that no human would ever think up. Machines are no longer mere passive instruments of human will, they are becoming partners of our everyday existence. Artists are exploring the machine as an independent agent, they are questioning the relationship between the machine and the human body, its perceptions and actions, and they are developing models for new forms of interaction between humans and machines. Are we entering larger, machinic environments in which we cooperate with machines, rather than contolling them? And what will the social and cultural relations in such machinic environments be? How are we going to live in a world of intelligent machines? Hyperlinks Nicolas A. Baginsky - http://www.provi.de/~nab Eric Kluitenberg - http://www.media-gn.nl Knowbotic Research - http://www.khm.de/people/krcf Seiko Mikami - http://w3.cnds.canon.co.jp/cast/al5/home-j.html Daniela Plewe - http://domini.zkm.de/muser Pit Schultz - http://www.desk.nl/~nettime Exhibition Nicolas Anatol Baginsky Three Sirenes The Three Sirenes are partly robots, partly musical instuments. They teach themselves how to play. So called 'neural networks' (nerve cell sumulations) use self-organized and unsupervised learning to find out about improvisation and instrumental virtuosity. They first play at random, listen to their own sounds and to the other sirenes. In the course of the performance, they learn to control their motors and mechanic characteristics and develop rhythms, to invent melodies and to improvise. Through the human's user interface (electric guitar, microphone etc.) session-like experiences are made available to everyone. Saying "this machinery is creative as musicians are" feels like touching one of the very human abilities since music appears to be extremly related to emotional response. Nicolas Anatol Baginsky Narcissism Enterprise Narcissism Enterprise deals with the portrait of the visitor and his narcissistic love for his self-image. The face of the visitor is recorded by a small video camera which follows the movements of the head, and his sounds are picked up by a microphone. Sounds and images are processed by a self-learning computer system and replayed via a projection and speakers. Using artificial intelligence, the system recognises, extracts and recombines facial features (eyes, noses, mouths) from the video images. It 'remembers' sigificant, recurring traits and displays them as composite portraits which are the result of classifications that the system makes itself. The machine decides which images it will return to the visitors as their desired optical and accoustic mirror images. Jutta Kirchgeorg The Information Age Under the guise of a presentation on the history of electronic communications, "The Information Age" examines problematic issues in present computer mediated communication, such as the mystification of computers and the resulting frustration as well as the underlying structures of control and power. Wrapped as an educational CD-ROM product it stages a situation where the viewer experiences the computers deficiency as intelligent interface for human interaction and his gradually vanishing power of control over the machine. Martin Schitter [m] The light installation [m] is formed by a network of light sensors and guided spotlights positioned in a closed, dark space, all of which are connected through a computer interface. The spots are directed at the sensors, which through the computer's parameters in turn cause the lights to be dimmed. On the basis of the internal laws of the technical system and its cybernetic models, the light in the space is held in a continuous, unstable oscillation. [m] visualises and reflects on the relationship between architecture and computer, on cybernetic principles as artistic interfaces, and on the psycho-accoustic manipulation of space. Gebhard SengmŸller TV Poetry "TV Poetry" is a random poetry generator that uses the words that are shown in television programmes. The system is connected to a satellite dish and scans the incoming stream of fast changing TV broadcasts (commercials, news broadcasts, quiz shows, light entertainment) for images containing text passages, which it filters, processes and reads back out in an ongoing, real-time process as an endless text string. The phrasing is determined solely by the TV schedule and CPU programming. Wiretap Eric Kluitenberg The compulsive beauty of the Machine A fragmentary, yet illustrated, exploration of the compulsive nature of machine aesthetics. Reflections of the machinic in the arts are hardly ever unambiguous. A certain uneasiness qualifies most artistic ventures that treat the machine as a theme, as a medium, or as a process. On the one hand they reveal some intrinsic features of the technological apparatus they explore, but at the same time they also hint at sub-liminal anxieties that seem to relate more even to the machinic, than to technology as such. The subconscious delocation of primal fears of the machinic contributes strongly to the compulsive beauty of the aesthetic of the Machine. Gebhard SengmŸller Vinyl Video - low resolution trashpeg format "Record your favourite TV movies ... using plain longplay records." VinylVideo is a piece of fake media archaeology. It is based on a new form of compressing video data so that they can be stored on and replayed from traditional vinyl records. This technology would have been possible in the 40s and 50s, so that SengmŸller and his collaborators of Onlineloop are retrospectively filling a gap in media history. Workshop Knowbotic Research IO-DENCIES - Fragen an das Urbane The development of cities and urban processes are unpredictable. The project transposes urban questions from the real physical space into the virtual, experimental field of electronic data networks. A current urban construction project is transformed into electronic fields of development and action and is thus made available for collaborative activities in the virtual space. Architects, urban planners and local inhabitants can share their ideas and visions. The project is aimed at generating active connections between urban realities and the new connective data spaces. It strives for the construction of new forms of publics which realise widely distributed, creative local potentials. Seiko Mikami The Self Referentiality of Perception "the ear does not hear, the eye does not see" Mikami's new project uses a 3-dimensional eye and sound recognition program. Her projects have included works that use the visitor's pulse as a medium. The VR installation "Molecular Informatics" (1996) traces the movements of the user's eye and translates them into virtual moleculer structures which the user can see as they evolve. They are constructed via an input directed by the visitor's line of sight. The new, 1997 project uses the audience's heartand lung sound which are amplified and transformed within the space. These sounds create a gap between internal and external sounds. Mikami's works fragment the body into data, employing them as interfaces. She chooses to organize these works in such a way as to elaborate how the structure of "interface" exists within the body itself. The set-up externalises the body's mechanisms. "The ear is not a merely a thing that hears; the eye is not merely a thing that sees." Daniela Alina Plewe Ultima Ratio What happens when one tries to present literary contents in a machine-friendly format? What will come after the 'paradigm of the peaceful coexistence' of information in hypermedia? Will it be argumentation and intellimedia? Will hypertext be followed by networks of argumentation? Which price will one have to pay for the dynamic representation of knowledge (formalisation, removing ambiguity, etc.)? Does it make sense to use the criterion of autonomy in the context of computer arts? The work-in-progress Ultima Ratio is located at the borderline between artificial intelligence research and art. Using the computer's formalisations, it attempts to tackle logical problems like conflicts and contradictions. Analysing and reconstructing dramatic and narrative structures, the computer lets reasoning run wild, following all the cascades of doubt. Free from any obligations to act in the real world, the program investigates the realm of ambivalences and contradictions, those important conditions for aesthetic experiences. Pit Schultz money machines the concept of the machine within the critique of capitalism by deleuze and guattari got burried many times. it became itself appropriated by free market rhetorics like of Manual Delanda. the internet as a classical "desiring machine" produces money out of desire for what is called a "huge potential". the collective logic of such expected growth is normally bound to a narrative about a non-subjective quasi-natural entity identified with technique or a complex machinery which includes all known sectors of production under a program of inbuilt vital forces, an evolutionary finalism, and a pathetic vocabulary around a machinic-algorithmic auto-genesis as the "will of the machine". this decentered, non-personal will gets projected onto markets. or appears in descriptions of human society as cybernetic systems, described as having an immanent will which leaves the concept of the human will and subject behind. the neo-vitalist aesthetification of economy, art and technology under the metaphors of life leads to a complex problematic of "Bio-Power". technique is not at all only an anonmyous force of devine beauty driving modernity forward, but a social process based on mutual desicions, little fights and silly interests.