Gebhard Sengmüller's A Parallel Image

The Transmediale site writes this about Gebhard Sengmüller's sculpture:

A Parallel Image is an electronic camera obscura. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the contemporary principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered. The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using approximately 2,500 individual cables.

The work is an excellent example of the notion of atemporality, in its supposition of a parallel timeline, in which the technologies of today, don’t exist. In this parallel timeline, a technique of the past is required to create an effect which is oddly futuristic in its sensorial impact. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, A Parallel Image is technologically transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.

A Parallel Image was made in collaboration with Franz Büchinger, supported by Fels-Multiprint.

Chu Yun's "Constellation"

Constellation, 2006, Chu Yun

The animated gif is a slowed down version of one created by Ilia Ovechkin.

[via Rhizome & Rhizome]

Interventions with The Image Fulgurator

Julius von Bismarck's The Image Fulgurator is a reverse camera... instead of capturing images, it projects images. More specifically, it briefly projects an image when its light-detector senses the flash from another camera. The idea is that the artist can lurk around tourist sites and secretly overlay his own images onto the photographed subjects so that when the tourists look at their photos they'll find them manipulated.

From von Bismarck's site:

People's great trust in their photographic reproductions of reality was what motivated me to develop the image Fulgurator. A camera can be used as a personal memory tool, since people do not doubt the veracity of their own photographs. Hence, photos can reproduce the reality of an individual environment or public space. At sacred or popular locations, or those having a political connotation, an intervention with the Fulgurator can be particularly effective. Especially objects with a special aura or great symbolic power are good targets for this kind of manipulation. In other words, with the Fulgurator it is possible to have a lasting effect on those kinds of individual moments and events that become accessible to the masses only because they are preserved photographically.

This video below shows an intervention at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The manipulation is intended to make connections between the former East Germany/West Germany border and the US/Mexico border today.


A compelling & interesting project, but I wonder about the gun-fetish aesthetic. Not only does the camera have a pistol grip, but von Bismarck's video has him assembling the camera ala sniper-gun movie cliche. The pistol grip seems particularly notable since it is counter to the (presumed) desire to have the fulgurator be as innocuous as possible.

His logo (above) references the Red Army Faction's (below). I honestly wonder if he's really thinking through and taking responsibility for using this kind of imagery (or if it is just easy dramatics).



The Image Fulgurator won this year's ARS Electronica Prix's "Golden Nica" for Interactive Art.

[via Make]

Markus Copper at PS1

Markus Copper's Kursk (2004) is probably the creepiest piece of art I've ever come across. It's set up as a formation of old-fashion diver's suits hanging just off the floor in a unlit room in PS1's basement. When I first peeked into the room, I wasn't sure it was an exhibition space or if there was even anything in it... then I saw a jerking motion and heard a clanking. It was an uncomfortable feeling being in the room--it was barely larger than the installation itself, so there is no buffer space between the viewer and the the suits.

The suits occasionally make a spastic, unexpected motions. The sword-like tools in their hands might suddenly move, or a light inside a helmet might switch on or off. Even though I was alone in the room, there was the overwhelming sense of someone else being there, inside one of the suits.

It wasn't until the next day that I realized that the title refers to Russian submarine that sunk in 2000 with all hands lost. The installation certainly communicates the grimness of that event.

The images of the installation on Copper's website are fully lit. I wonder if this is how the installation was originally shown (or if it is just so that the photographs can capture all the detail). I'm glad I saw the the installation in the dark--I think a lot of its power came from the unsettling environment.

Kursk is part of a very interesting "Arctic Hysteria" exhibition of Finnish art that's at PS1 through September 15th. Also included in the show is a room that explores the work of Erkki Kurenniemi. I'll probably be blogging more about him later on.

PS1 Director Alanna Heiss made an interesting about contemporary Finnish art: "Finnish artists are independent from the contemporary mainstream, and open to new ideas and materials but not addicted to the new..."

Oblivious

Olivia Robinson's Oblivious is a naked man on a table who reacts to touch.

Robinson described the work:

A naked man is sleeping on this table. As you touch the soft surface of the table, the man reacts physically. He wiggles, leans or rolls over in response to your pokes, prods, caresses, tickles and slaps. In response to the intensity and frequency of your touch, as if shrinking from this unbidden intimacy, his image fades away. Oblivious touches on issues of power, vulnerability, potential for abuse or intimacy, as well as our level of comfort with a naked male body.

The image of the man fades in the areas that have been touched the most. Over time, as more and more people interact with him, those areas will become rubbed or "touched" away. His evolving body becomes a record of people's hands and where they have chosen to touch him. At the beginning of an exhibition he will be completely opaque, present and oblivious of your existence; over time he will change in accordance with the collective interaction.

Is it just me, or does that guy look a bit like a young Jean Tinguely?


Inbed (2008) is a similar (perhaps derivatively so) project by ITP student Drew Burrows.




Burrow's describes the project:

In the piece a person climbs into an empty bed with a projected woman sleeping on it. Though the bed is empty, the projection gives the feeling of having someone there beside them. As the person climbs into the bed the projected woman moves close to cuddle and reacts accordingly as the person moves around on the bed. I wanted to give both the sensations of being alone and having someone in the bed with the viewer at the same time.

The aim of the piece was to speak on the feelings of loneliness, affection, and intimacy.

I'm also reminded of You Are Now Becoming Who You Are To Be (2004), a non-interactive work by Holly Andres. That work consists of a video of a young woman projected upon a bed. She shifts around on the bed and her silk chemise slowly changes from white to red.

2 works by Olafur Eliasson & 1 by me

1m3 light is a box that's defined by light in a mist-filled room. Just as I was leaving the gallery, I realized that none of the 15 or so people who entered the room while I was there had walked through the work, even though it has no physical presence. I turned around and walked through the cube... it felt very transgressive.

I only see things when they move (2004) is a roomful of shifting colors created by a chandelier of slowly moving prisms. It strongly reminded of Sublime Zips (see below), which is part of my Frames installation.

Zips was created using a modified 16mm film projector. Film projectors work by constantly (and very speedily) pausing on a single frame of film, covering it with shutter, moving to the next frame, pausing, and uncovering the shutter. Despite the common impression, film does not move through the projector at a constant speed--instead it moves in a jerky, start/stop motion.

Zips has its shutter and intermittent device disabled, which causes the film to be projected in one continuous motion and eliminates viewers' persistence of vision. The projected image becomes a field of shifting colors.

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For a broader perspective of Eliasson's work, Rhizome has a nice write-up of his shows at MoMA and PS1. Also Tyler Green had an interesting series of posts (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) earlier in the year that compared Eliasson to other artists.

Sand painting

This comes via JangSoonNation.



The sand animation artist is Ferenc Cako

Reading clouds: Vihreä Pilvi

A some of my readers interpreted an earlier post as a general condemnation of data visualization art. It wasn't intended as such... my point was that data visualization art as an artistic practice needs to step up its game. It isn't enough to simply make a pretty graphic--if the goal is art, then there needs to be an intention beyond effective data communication.


Vihreä Pilvi is an interesting data visualization/manifestation artwork. It's a Finnish temporary art project that ran from February 22-29, 2008. Each night the Salmisaari power plant's vapor cloud was illuminated with a laser. The less power being consumed by Helsinki, the larger the cloud illumination, which seems counter-intuitive. I guess the idea was to reward conservation with a bigger light show, and perhaps the green color of the laser's light is considered to signify green in the environmental sense (though green is also the stereotypical color of toxic sludge in movies, comic books, etc.).

I love how Vihreä Pilvi combines aesthetics, an environmental agenda, and ostranenie. I do wish that it had equated higher energy consumption with a larger cloud, but maybe that is nitpicking.

Note, the videos below have a playback problem for first few seconds, but it quickly clears up:





[via Pall Thayer's post on Rhizome]


Not that it has anything to do with Vihreä Pilvi, but I highly recommend David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas: A Novel.

Homeless Lamp, the Juice Sucker

This comes by way of Greg Cook's excellent The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research blog. The description of the work from the Saatchi Gallery.

Echoing the minimalist works of Dan Flavin, Ivan Navarro's light sculptures subvert the cool detachment of florescent bulbs with their arrangement into recognisable objects. In Homeless Lamp, the Juice Sucker Navarro builds a grocery cart from electric tubing. Featured in a video of a 5 hour performance, Navarro has activated the sculpture on the streets of New York's Chelsea District. In the video, two men break into a municipal power outlet, hi-jacking city energy to feed the power-sucking shopping trolley. Edited to 4 minutes, the action is set to a Mexican revolutionary song from 1905 titled Juan The Landless. As an icon of both consumerism and vagrancy, Homeless Lamp, the Juice Sucker sets a stage where the dichotomies between wealth and poverty convene as a literal and allegorical emblem of power, waste, transience, and opportunistic survival. Basking in an artificial glow, Navarro's Homeless Lamp, the Juice Sucker exudes a religious aura based in consumption, corruption, and errancy.

In case you didn't know, George Foreman Grills connected to light post outlets can serve as makeshift cookers for homeless people. NPR had a piece on this a while back:

...many immigrants, homeless people and others of limited means living in single-room occupancies (SROs) have no kitchens, no legal or official place to cook. To get a hot meal, or eat traditional foods from the countries they've left behind, they have to sneak a kind of kitchen into their places. Crock pots, hot plates, microwaves and toaster ovens hidden under the bed. And now, the latest and safest appliance, the appliance that comes in so many colors it looks like a modern piece of furniture: the George Foreman Grill. It is, quite literally, a hidden kitchen...

...Jeffry learned to cook from his grandmother. He feels an urge to cook, especially for other people -- under the overpass on Chicago's Wacker Drive; on a George Foreman Grill plugged into a power pole; with a hot clothing iron to toast a grilled cheese sandwich.

I haven't seen Navarro’s video or the sculpture in-person, but I do like the idea of the cart being lit up in the city streets and passerbys unexpectedly coming upon it.