DIGICULT

Digital Art, Design & Culture

Founder & Editor-in-chief: Marco Mancuso

Advisory Board: Marco Mancuso, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo

Publisher: Associazione Culturale Digicult Largo Murani 4, 20133 Milan (Italy) http://www.digicult.it Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256

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Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lucrezia Cippitelli Cimatics 2009: Festival and City ...... 3

Silvia Scaravaggi Joost Rekveld’s Study And Research Lines ...... 9

Carla Langella Fluctuating Intelligences ...... 14

Donata Marletta Jonah Brucker-cohen: New Media, From Web 2.0 To Web 4.0 ...... 20

Matteo Milani Christian Zanesi, The Act Of Listening ...... 26

Clemente Pestelli Less Talk, More Action. An Interview To The Yes Men ...... 33

Zoe Romano The Activist East: Among Guitars And Gentrification ...... 37

Teresa De Feo Monsieur Morin: For A Complex Thought Ethic ...... 42

Giulia Baldi Distributed Creativity Models: The Crowdsourcing ...... 47

Giulia Tiddens Mediamatic Travel: Online Cultural Turism ...... 52

Gigi Ghezzi Babel Of Innovation ...... 57 Annamaria Monteverdi The Screen And The City.continuous City Di Marianne Weems ...... 61

Massimo Schiavoni Francesca Proia: The Breath Of The Subtle Body ...... 65

Pasquale Napolitano Aesthetics And Computation: The Origins Of Generative Art ...... 77

Francesco Bertocco Video Letter: When The Video Becomes Conscience ...... 81

Simona Fiore The Future Of Journalism: Comparing Models ...... 85 Cimatics 2009: Festival and City

Lucrezia Cippitelli

by LAB[au]), the social centre Recyclart, the most famous city club Fuse and even the Atomium, the building which more than any other represents Brussels landscape.

The choise to base the 2009 edition right on the interaction between different production and research entities of the city became a This festival has been created as an fundamental of the Festival, led by event focussed on vjing as well as Bram Crevits e Nicolas Wierinck. The audiovisual and electronical culture. Festival subtitle has therefore been Nowadays it seems focussed on the strategically changed into “Citywide “widespreaded event” model (as it international festival for advanced happened for the last edition. See our creativity”. The vjing fades away as report on Digimag 40 in December well as the live audio videos and the 2008-January 2009 titled “Cimatics public is captured by the desire to 2008, not only vjing” – shoot a snapshot on the most http://www.digicult.it/digimag/articl experimental researches of e.asp?id=1325), which involved most contemporary time. realities of Brussels acting in the field of the new media.

From 20th to 29th November, a series of screenings, performances, conferences, meetings, workshops and live music evenings animated the Museum of Bozar Modern Art, the Beursschouwburg (which hosted the 2007 edition), as well as the Imal centre, the concerts and Beursschouwburg Art Center – Flu Power Flu installation by Stefano performances venue Les Brigittines, Cagol the medialab MediaRuimte (managed

3 This is so true, that next edition – and this new planning quality. The this was confirmed by Bram Crevits installation titled Vector and signed by too – will have in its subtitle right this Boris and Bresch Debackere – word “contemporaneity”. In my internationally known for their opinion this is a very interesting sign previous performance of live cinema about the fact that focussing on the Rotor – was previewed in its creation new media in 2009 maybe nowadays phase at the Festival opening. do not have so much sense. It is Kurokawa’s last audiovisual concert enlightening therefore to remember Rheo was instead previewed at Bozar, that right at the end of Cimatics – from during an event featuring also Ulf 1st to 3rd December – the community Langheinrich and his last work Land, met in Eindhoven in the newly-born an audiovisual 3D performance. Baltan Lab and discussed about the future of Media Lab. It means that the The performances followed eachother instances of jocose research, during the same evening and had as experimentation and self-assertion of common denominator the re- these realities have reached a point production of wide more or less where they must stop and ask natural landscapes. For the Japanese themselves what is their sense, aim, artist (living for one year in Brussels as relationship with art today and what student attending the post-master economic strategies they have to use course Transmedia), the meeting with to survive and find forms of research this landscape (natural and cooperation and condivision in order metropolitan) is purely esthetic: a set to avoid the risk of closure and up of three screens placed vertically involution. shows audiovisual sequences in which the elements emerge slowly from a During the years, Cimatics has rendering which made them abstract. evolved into an organization which Rheo is a very endearing work and the not only organizes and manages word you can hear the most after the festivals, but also acts as producer. performance (very appreciated by a Cimatics has therefore become a specialist but also lay public) is platform to collect and display works “wonderful”. And really the sequence of art linked to audiovisual of waterfalls, mountain chains, deep experimentation, but above all to seas, vertical and overbuilt urban follow its production phases (from spaces are a wonderful spectacle. financing to sponsoring). However the doubt remains that there is not so much liveness in this work, Ryoichi Kurokawa’s and Debackere which seems to have been organized brothers’ last projects are included in as a projection of three previously

4 arranged and rendered videos, (the animators of the Sonic Acts accompanied by a sound on which festival in Amsterdam and of the the artist operates live. above mentioned Baltan Medialab in Eindhoven) presented Mortal Electric, which had already been shown this year in Berlin during Transmediale. It is a dense performance, which brings the public in the innards of a machine to experience its functioning. The sound is maybe the most intense element of this work: it makes the space tangible, the air almost full of Ulf Langheinrich – Land sound waves make the public vibrate and attack the aural organs. The The same can be said for Ulf question about this work is not Langheinrich: where is the live whether you are watching a video element of the performance? The play or a generative performance: it is show Land is anyway a wonderful a pure physical experience. spectacle (maybe too long), in which The so long waited video by Herman nature appears in front of us as an Kolgen (who dedicates to advertising obscure and threatening world, which and HD videos after almost 10 years of selfgenerates in many different ways – activity with his partner Skolz Kolgen), form a deep ocean to a Star Trek sky – Inject, co-produced by Arcadi (the which suddendly extends over the same producers of the Nemo festival public thank to the power of 3D. An in Paris and the Canada Arts Council) audiovisual trip spiced up with was made up of too many videoclips, stroboscopic lights and deep basses. was too long, too HD and too The audiovisual performances have pretentious. The almost three- been Cimatics 09 strenght. In the dimensionality of high-resolution deconsecrated Church of Brigittines – images (see the realistic bubbles today renewed as multi-cultural coming out the respiratory organs of a centre – two successive evenings vaguely oriental man, thrown to linked to the audiovisual world drown in a container full of water: this presented all the other works of art: is a visual trick that have become a from Telcosystems, to Herman Kolgen standard practice in advertising and Ogino Knauss. The Dutch trio videos after Bill Viola – see the Barilla Telecosystems – Lucas van der pasta one) did not add anithing to this Velden, Gideon Kiers and David Kiers – work, during which I constantly asked

5 me when it was about to finish and the same time running-down. The tried to find any possible track of performance is wholly based on the liveness. collective building and on a genuine live audiovisual experience in which people are sucked into the buildings to discover their rooms which are being knocked down and of which at the beginning you see only the shiny and chromated surfaces. Thousands of images gathered during the residency are organized in a sequence and assimilated to live sound, while a Herman Kolgen – Inject voice tells about expectancy, running-down spaces, city identity. The Italian Ogino Knauss’ work was Besides the audiovisual performances, very strong. They have also been Cimatics also organized in a invited by Cimatics to work in networking the theorical events of the residency in Brussels in order to reveal festival week. The two days Video and narrate the signs of a changing Vortex – created by Geert Lovink who city using an audiovisual sinphony. brought from Amsterdam his students The geographer. Cité administrative is to hear a goodly number of specialists the result of this work of flaneurs and of video and networking – opened the collectors of hidden signs, perfectly festival at the Atomium (the most tuning with the research carried out extraodinary but underestimated by the threesome for more than a work of urban design of our time). A decade. conference titled The city of sounds Trains and stations, signs on scraped (featuring among the others Lorenzo walls, geometrical and almost Tripodi, member of Ogino Knauss and abstract pattern on hypermodern the musician and curator Carl Michael government buildings in a state of Van Hauswolff) made the already dereliction are the first output of mentioned Transmedia interact with Ogino Knauss’ research on the urban the center of art Imal. field in the European capital: the city Imal itself grabbed the chanse of in perpetual transformation, whose Cimatics to present Chapter 1 – The administrative centre (which includes Discovery, a work of art by the also the luxuriant and futuristic Spanish artist Felix Luque Sánchez, buildings of EU institutions) is slowly produced by medialab LABoral Centro devouring the residential areas and at

6 de Arte y Creación Industrial of Gijon, Vainio – one of the two members of which will also take part to the next the almost-former PanSonic (at the Transmediale. The installation is a end of 2009 they are performing their tribute to the classic science-fiction: a “goodbye-tour”), at MediaRuimte black polyhedron with lightening and contributed to the work creation as sounding edges, similar to a physique producer. alien to the Earth which landed here from another galaxy and which is The idea to invite Vainio to produce waiting to comunicate with all human and exhibit his work is linked to the beings coming across it. According to absence of documents about the his the author’s intent, Chapter 1 – The artistic production. He has created in Discovery should be an interactive the years tens of installations work, which reacts to the presence although without saving their and movements of people memories. 2 * 540 kHz was presented approaching it. Actually interaction is at the MediaRuimte together with a quite confused and does not really monographic book on the artist manage to reveal itself: in order to try edited by the German label Raster- it, the public needs to carefully read Noton and co-produced by the same the presentation brochure, given at LAB[au]. the entrance of the black box hosting The book (texts by Carl Michael Van this work. Hauswolff and Daniela Cascella), titled Time Examined, has been installed as a microfilm inside the gallery, in order to be explored by the public. The choise to make the visual extracts of the book usable derives from the desire to consistently accompany the installation, which presents itself as a concert for ancient radios cleverly installed in the gallery: the retro style Mika Vaino Exhibition – MediaRuimte of the microfilm goes well with the purely analogic character of the The laboratory and exhibition space ancient radios and their warm, MediaRuimte led by the group imperfect and low definition sound LAB[au] took part to the festival with quality. 2 * 540 kHz reproduces and the installation 2 * 540 kHz created by enlarges a former project by Vainio, the Finnish musician Mika Vainio. This operating on a radio tuner: the two work is the result of the residency in compositions on different

7 wavelenghts are played loop by two therefore ask ourselves how will sections of radio. things in Brussels develop in the meantime. The grey Eurpoean capital Each composition is broadcasted by is nowadays totally underestimated in two little transmitters placed in the comparison with London or Paris for middle of the installation: each the art market, or Berlin, Amsterdam transmitter is set on a different and Rotterdam for the avant-guarde frequency and works as an art, or Madrid and Barcelona for life indipendent radio. The two series of quality and investment in the cultural radios installed as two wings on the sector. However it seems that left and on the right of the Brussels is becoming a gathering transmitters are set on the two point for artists and producers, who frequencies: the composition is are attracted there by the many therefore widespreaded in the room organizations and cultural events that by the radios. the city proposes.

A good companion in this evolution is a welfare state which carries out a sound policy of local cultural development. Thank to this situation, realities like MediaRuimte and Imal, Recyclart and Okno (but also festivals like Cimatics) can survive and gain in the years a more and more international dimension.

According to what the organizators said in official releases, Cimatics 2010 http://www.cimatics.com/festival20 won’t take place. The plattoform will 09/ take two years off. We should

8 Joost Rekveld’s Study And Research Lines

Silvia Scaravaggi

experimental cinema and audiovisual world acquired thank to many cooperations as editor inter alia with the Impakt Festival of Utrecht, De Balie, the ancient cinema in Amsterdam, the DEAF Festival in Rotterdam, the Belgian Filmmseum in Brussels, the Independent Film Show in Naples.

At the beginning of 2009 for the first Rekveld’s first experimental films date time the exceptional screens of IFFF – back to the early 90s and they all International Film Festival Rotterdam (with only some exceptions) have a presented the film #37, the new title linked to a numerical succession. experimental creation of the Dutch Already from the name of this work author Joost Rekveld (1970, the reference to maths, algorithm and Terneuzen, Netherlands), which science is clear. From the 16mm IFS- achived a great success both from the film, produced between 1991 and 1994, public and the critics point of view Rekveld has developed a thank to his poetic intensity and visual computerbased project, which beauty. examines through the This work of art is not only a simple experimentation of pixel disturbance short for the visual and perceptive forms the animation world which pleasure, but an experimental and looks for pure geometrical forms, research production which derives concealing the originary nature. #3 is from a scientific and philosophical another 16 mm film dated 1994. It approach to nature and technology. anticipates the developement that Joost Rekveld’s great experience Rekveld’s works would have had in comes from its endless personal the years till the nowadays research – the fundament of all his productions. It is a film of pure light, productions, from experimental films where images come from the to light installations – as well as from recording of the movement of a the high knowledge of the slimline long exposition light that

9 allows tracks to be left on the Silvia Scaravaggi: Visual music for the emulsion. In Rekveld’s work of art, eye. What does this definition mean science meets visual poetry and music in your work? When did you start and reaches a sublime realization. The how has your research as artist 36mm film dated 1999 and titled #11, developed in time? Marey Moiré, is a wonderful awoval of love by the author to the discontinuity Joost Rekveld: I started making films of the medium cinematic world. In after I saw a couple of experimental 2000, through this work of art made films that made a big impression on of total colours and movements, me. At the time I had been reading Rekvled won the Grand Prix for not about experimental film and colour narrative animation at the Holland music, and I found out that the only Animation Festival in Utrecht. The way to get to see these works was to same year he won a price at the start organizing screenings. For a Sundance Festival, maybe as best couple of years I was one of the Dutch film to be projected. curators of the Impakt-festival in Utrecht (which still exists), and for the first festival I helped organize in 1990, I invited Elfriede Fischinger and Bill Moritz to come and show an overview of the history of abstract film.

The films that really impressed me were especially those made by James Whitney. He started making films with his brother John, and those early films Making of #11 – Photo by Hein van are very much inspired by the Liempd principles behind serial music. But his later films go beyond that direct From 2008 Joost Rekveld works as inspiration and his work becomes director of the ArtScience Interfaculty something else. When I started to of the Royal Conservatory and Royal make films I was studying electronic Academy in The Hague. Rekvel’s music and computer music, so I also research is the subject of the started composing my films in ways following interview. It goes towards which are very similar to how a study lines in the field of optic, composer would compose a piece of mechanic and robotic in order to electronic music. But over the years reach an atheist esthetic, free from I’ve moved on to something else too; spectacularity and seizure attempts. i’ve become much more interested in

10 our relationship with machines, and in ideas that relate to light. I still call my Because of that I also started to think work visual music because it’s a about the principles behind this tradition I feel close to, but i’m not technology, for instance the idea that anymore spending my days thinking we can only have power over things about how to translate music in by chopping them into little bits; first images or those kinds of things. movement was captured in a series of still frames, later in a series of scan- Silvia Scaravaggi: I would also like to lines, and now we have pixels or bits. tackle the subject of space: could you please tell us something about the Negli ultimi film ho iniziato ad spacial aspects of light and how do interessarmi alla storia della you to relate to them in your prospettiva e dell’ottica, in particolar experimental films and light modo alle idee rinascimentali e installations? medievali sulla propagazione della luce ed in che modo esse siano Joost Rekveld: When I started making correlate ai concetti di spazio. Spesso films I realized that it was interesting questi lavori sono ispirati da tecniche to stay close to the machines I was ed esperimenti antiquati. using. I’ll have to explain that. I was thinking about how I could start For later films I started to become making abstract images in my own interested in the history of way and I did not have money for perspective and optics, especially fancy tools. It was an important renaissance and medieval ideas about discovery for me that taking film the propagation of light and how that camera’s apart and modifying them, relates to concepts of space. And or starting to program computers on a often these works were inspired by machine level actually gave all kinds old techniques or experiments. For of interesting results that were both instance I made one film (#23.2, Book efficient and elegant uses of of Mirrors), in which all images are technology. produced by the interference waves of the light directly on the emulsion of the film. That was inspired by the work Francesco Grimaldi, a scientist from the 17th century who discovered the diffraction of light. For that film I did not use traditional optics, but I made my own machine in which light

#37 – diffracts and percolates through small Photo courtesy by J. Rekveld

11 slits and holes. being shown at various festival and venues all over Europe and the VS. In When I was thinking like that about some ways ity is a continuation of my light propagating through space, it research into what happens when became logical to make light light passes through matter, but this installations in which the audience time that idea was an inspiration for can be in the light. Also I collaborated developing my own software. At on a number of theatre productions, some point I saw images made by for which I design the theatre lights, crystallographers, who were projections, or sometimes light simulating what happens when x-ray installation. A dream I have is to make waves shine through a crystal. You get a small colony of luminous, these very beautiful interference autonomous robots, and for these patterns, and I became interested in theatreprojects I can sometimes work them when I found out about towards that idea. The next project quasicrystals. These are certain type will be for dance company Emio of crystals that have symmetries Greco | PC, for which I will make a which are not regular when you look kind of robotic light architecture. in detail, but seem regular when you look at the whole image.

To make the film I made a kind of computer simulation of molecules trying to form a crystal together, but I keep changing the laws of physics in their universe. The film for me is about these kinds of ideas of self- organization, and the idea that #5 – Photo courtesy by J. Rekveld crystalline structures are somehow in between the mineral and the organic. Silvia Scaravaggi: Could you please That is a very old idea: some greek tell us something about your last film thinkers thought that stones were #37. How is it built and what are the sexually reproducing themselves, concepts at its fundaments? Where people have always noticed that will it be projected in the next crystals look as if they have grown, months? because they have veins. Now this idea gets a new kind of relevance if Joost Rekveld: #37 had its premiere you think about articial life or last february at the International Film nanotechnology. Festival Rotterdam, and it is now

12 Silvia Scaravaggi: Simmetry, beauty, Silvia Scaravaggi: You are now sensual experience: what importance working at your next film, #47; how is do these concepts have in your job, if it developing? they do, and why? Joost Rekveld: It is slow, I am trying out a lot of things having to do with Joost Rekveld: I think I am networks of pixels that can evolve. I’m oldfashioned because I want to make still exploring, reading a lot and beautiful films, but I also think that figuring out what it is I want to do. I beauty is not something static. I want want to try and make a film or to find the beauty, or humanity is installation in which moving images perhaps a better word, in the are the result of some kind of technical principles that are part of simulated evolution. I’m certainly not our culture and with which we the first to do that, since there are surround ourselves. Beauty is already many artists working on that. I traditionally associated with don’t want to use evolution just as symmetry, and sensual experience is one of the possible ways to generate often associated with repetition and complex images. Also I don’t want to trance, but I’m not interested in those make a work that tries to show how things. I don’t want people to lose evolution can generate all these themselves in some kind of ‘higher’ incredible things. I want to make a experience. I’m a radical atheist and I program that makes beautiful films in think that goes together with a which you can follow a process of preference for asymmetry and non- growth. I want to show how a world repetitiveness. can grow out of the constraints of a system. I’m sorry it is still so vague..

http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld/wp/in dex.php

#3 – Photo courtesy by J. Rekveld

13 Fluctuating Intelligences

Carla Langella

Fashionistas of the future will be new nomads, often travelling, who will have less time on their hands to take care of their look and change their image in relation to the different environments where they find themselves. Even clothing will have to adapt to an increasingly changeable image that alters with altering roles and functions. In the “liquid society”, as Zygmunt Bauman defines it in: “Modus Vivendi. To answer to the needs dictated by Hell and Utopia of the Liquid World”, this panorama, companies and the structures that create the designers are increasingly working boundaries of space of behaviour, with project experimentation that habits and social and individual forms, prefigures dynamic clothing capable are dissolved, creating a chaotic and of responding to the variations of dynamic context in continuous needs and changing in function to transformation where contemporary moods and external conditions rapidly men and women find themselves and practically. having to continuously and frenetically pass from social one role to another. Family, work, social life, are alternated until they overlap, despite having different needs and necessities that are often distant from each other.

Every one of these roles requires a different image, and therefore different clothing, suitable to the Colour-tuneable photonic textiles using Photonic Crystal Fibres needs and functions that emerge developed Maksim Skorobogatiydella constantly over the course of the day Ecole Polytechnique of Montrèal. and the week.

14 In these experiments smart materials weaves made up of unusual materials are used that change their such as fabrics made up of metals, characteristics in function to external sensors and actuators, dyes and stimuli. For example, they can change polymeric conductor materials, colour with variations of body heat or nanofibres, optical fibres and external light, they can deform, piezoelectric fibres. change from transparent to opaque, emit light signals, sounds, and images With the word smart different types when needed. Clothing, therefore, is of textiles are described as they are not just for covering up and appearing capable of interacting with the but, thanks to the miniaturisation of environment and with the user: from technologies, can encompass thermo-regulating textiles, to fabrics technological systems that were once with varying permeability, to textiles cumbersome and macroscopic, giving that emit active ingredients, scents way to “transformative” clothing. and sounds, to fabrics that encompass electronic and interactive The Turkish-Cypriot designer Hussein technologies. Chalayan, for example, took technological innovation to The progress obtained from international catwalks through the use technological innovation particularly of smart clothing in high fashion that in the nanotechnology, biotechnology changed shape and aesthetical and aerospace research sectors has characteristics. taken the textile sector by storm, promoting the creation of a large Clothing has always had the function quantity of new fabrics with highly of covering the human body, first of technological properties. all to protect it, but also for aesthetical and social reasons. With the evolution of textile technologies and lifestyles the necessities were multiplied and the function of clothes has become increasingly complex, including new types of functions connected to communication, interactivity, cosmetics, comfort and even the possibility of encompassing Sensitive fabric created with pharmaceuticals and phytotherapy functionalised fibres developed by the elements in fabrics. These functions research group coordinated by Yoel Fink from the Massachusetts Institute are obtained through the use of of Technology

15 Among these are the so-called Technology and commissioned by the “functionalised” fabrics, meaning that American Marines for military use, they are created in a way that which was then sold as a license and generates particular properties that trademarked by Sensatex to create makes them capable of carrying out different types of uses of this certain functions. Fabrics capable of technology destined to a wider perceiving and reacting to external market. SmartShirt is the name that inputs, mutating to the changes in was given by journalists at the end of external or internal conditions to then 1990 to describe the Wearable going back to their original state. Motherboard.

E-textiles, for example, are made up The producers of e-textiles can unite of conductive fibres weaved with sensors, processors and other yarns through standard communication devices with naturally production techniques that can make made fabrics or mixed fabrics. The t-shirts, coats, jumpers and even rugs clothing is treated with conductive or wall-paper smart, making them polymers and metallic fibres for the encompass electronic devices. These transportation of data and for energy. fibres carry energy to sensors, The look and feel remain the same actuators and microcontrollers, which when compared to normal clothing, function thanks to software that and if they are deactivated and their control communication and can send devices removed, they can be washed radio signals using Bluetooth in the washing machine. With clothing technology and other innovative that has been created with these wireless communication technologies fabrics it’s possible to monitor the capable of reaching cellular phones, physiological conditions of the person organisers, Internet networks or other wearing them, thanks to terminals. The possible applications encompassed sensors that the user are innumerable, be they in the can position in relation to the function clothing sector or in furnishings. that needs monitoring.

Many of the first experiments came from the military sector, one of the fields characterised by more opportunities for investment in research. One of the first and more renowned examples of smart fabrics ;Prototype being used is the SmartShirt system, of a jacket created with Lumalive, a smart fabric created by the Georgia Institute of that encompasses coloured LED lights, developed by Philips. Credit: Royal Philips Electronics

16 Smart textiles can be used by athletes three fundamental colours and to monitor their vital stats, and inserting the laminate, after therefore their health, during their connecting it to a electric system sports activities and can also have control, inside different types of fabric medical uses destined, for example, for clothing. The LED panel is covered to heart patients, people with by some layers of translucent fabric so respiratory problems, and all those that the diffused light can give way to people who need continuous homogenous images that aren’t monitoring of their physical condition. “pixelled” but also to confer to the The clothing communicates vital signs softness of the fabric. in real time directly to a medical practice, hospital, or other places In this way new sceneries are created depending on necessities, and at any in the world of fashion design that time it’s possible to verify the health serve new opportunities for status of the person wearing the expression that are offered by clothing and therefore to monitor mutative clothing that allows the them and, if the case should arise, person who wears it to communicate intervene, reducing any risk for the messages, emotion, and expressions patient with an immediate response. instantly and dynamically, through multiple combinations of colour, light, In the use of professional uniforms, images and textures the sensors can be connected to a central unit that communicates when their work conditions are dangerous, for example when there is smoke, emissions of dangerous substances or temperatures reach intolerable levels.

In the Dutch section of Philips Research a technology called Lumalive has been created in T-shirt created using Lumalive, a collaboration with the Photonic smart fabric that encompasses textiles group, capable of emitting coloured LED lights, developed by luminous images in the fabrics of Philips. Credit: Royal Philips Electronics clothing in a dynamic, variable and manoeuvrable way, by the user. The Among these intelligent textiles there technology consists of laminating are fabrics that gradually release some LED lights inside a flexible substances and active ingredients polymeric support that emit light in

17 such as pharmaceuticals or cosmetics Among the products that can be that can be absorbed through the released, as well as pharmaceutical skin. With these fabrics it’s possible to and therapeutic active ingredients, create garments for specific perfumed essences for cosmesis or applications in the pharmaceutical for aromatherapy can be released, field such as localised therapeutic that can have a relaxing effect for treatments and the administering of nightwear, or with anti-bacterial or painkillers or antiphlogistic medicine. insect repellent substances.

This kind of solution, as well as unifying two functions in one unique material support, for example the protection of the garment and the curative action of the medicine, allow for a more correct assumption of these substances through gradual administration according to a particular need, and assure a fast and T-shirt created using Lumalive, a easy assumption with less impact on a smart fabric that encompasses psychological level as well. The coloured LED lights, developed by administration of the active Philips. Credit: Royal Philips Electronics ingredients is encompassed in the act of wearing the clothing that, on an The active ingredients can be from aesthetic level, is not indicative of any different resources, such as therapeutic use whatsoever. vegetables, sea-life, minerals or a These kinds of fabrics are also apt for synthesis of these. Additives are being used in the sports field so that added to these to activate the action the athletes’ performance and training of the active ingredients, such as can offer better results. This is water, oils, emulsions, preservatives possible, for instance, by and anti-oxidants. differentiating the materials in sports In the application of innovations such gear so as to associate different as those described, design, thanks to muscles or anatomical areas that it transversal “humanistic- need specific kinds of stimuli, with technological” formation, is capable of fabrics that release active ingredients conjoining aspects connected to with localised and targeted action as different categories such as comfort, needed, which can be anti- social requisites, ethics, aesthetics inflammatory, relaxing or stimulating.

18 and economical needs, and putting At the same time disciplines such as them into the development of a material engineering, chemistry and product, thus being able to pass with computer engineering are important ease from the scale of environmental and precious in applying the and social sustainability of the processes of technological transfers in product system, to the scale of conjoining the translation of the microstructural strategy of the concept and innovative projects for materials. products created on an industrial scale.

19 Jonah Brucker-cohen: New Media, From Web 2.0 To Web 4.0

Donata Marletta

(in Wired Magazine, Digicult, Neural, Rhizome, Gizmodo among others); his artistic projects have been presented at some of the most well-known International events like DEAF, Art Futura, SIGGRAPH, Transmediale, ISEA and Ars Electronica as well as at museums like the ICA in London, the MOMA and the Whitney Museum in New York City. His doctorate thesis, “Deconstructing Networks” is based on the theme of I first met Jonah during the 2008 the deconstruction of networks. It edition of Ars Electronica. From that includes projects which attempt to moment I often read his reports on challenge and, from a critical point of festivals of new media arts and his view, to subvert the well-established interviews. What I find really perceptions regarding interaction and interesting is his 360° vision which is the level of involvement within the probably due to his double role of an networks. artist and a researcher and which allows him to have a more fluid and Jonah is also assistant professor of open-minded critical and conceptual communication on the Interactive approach. Telecommunication Program (ITP) and the department of Media, Culture and Last September I got in touch with Communication at the Steinhardt him in order to interview him for my School of Education and Human Phd which is based on the Development of the New York investigation of the role acquired by University. He is involved in several new media art festivals as social projects and he is also a co-founder of connectors. the Dublin Art and Technology Starting from this we virtually Association (DATA Group). His articles discussed (via e-mails) something I have been published internationally would like to share with Digimag

20 readers. I think it is really interesting and culture as a whole. because it offers an ultra- contemporary vision of the artistic Donata Marletta: I am really scenario both offline and online. interested in the increasing phenomenon of new media art festivals and their role as social connectors. What do you think about these events within the global artistic context in relation to your own Photo courtesy by http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/2832979538/in/set-72157607102210565/ experience? Do they still represent a point of departure for artists willing to Donata Marletta: I would like you to present some new projects? Is it still talk about your first experiences in the necessary to have a place in which new media art scenario, about your people can meet? interests and how involved you are in this field. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: New media art festivals play a large role in creating Jonah Brucker-Cohen: I began both a community of artists and learning about media art while I was enriching the field in general. Within in graduate school at the Interactive the global art context they help to Telecommunications Program at New create connections between artists York University’s Tisch School of the living around the world who are Arts. I was in school there (last 1990s) engaging with the same medium, but during the “net.art” boom, when the on other continents. Although digital web was at it infancy and many artists media and the Internet has the were moving to this medium because potential of erasing the need for face- of it’s free distribution of their artwork to-face contact between people and the lure of technology in popular (especially how many artists often culture and media. Before this, I had have made online connections with been making art since I was a child, other artists and curators), there is raised in a family of artists (mother, really no substitute for face-to-face grandmother, sister) and being communication between artists exposed to a lot of famous free art working in similar fields in order to where I grew up, Washington, DC. advance and enrich the current Since I had been interested in practice. Festivals play a large role in computers as a child, it was a natural facilitating these meetings which progression for me to integrate often lead to further collaborations computers into my art practice, and between different cultures and modes work within the field of digital media of practice. The festivals provide both

21 a stage and platforms for these strong and accepted form of artistic meetings to occur and often, through output and is gaining a much wider workshops, facilitate art creations audience than it previously held in the itself early years of its inception.

The festivals have changed to incorporate this era of mainstream digital acceptance, and are perhaps now becoming more of an “entertainment” vehicle than one that critical engages with technology. Thus instead of questioning technology, these festivals often merely “celebrate” it by accepting many Photo courtesy by Jonah Brucker- Cohen projects that have no critical focus or drive. I would like to see festivals Donata Marletta: Can we say that investigate projects that question these kinds of festivals do have a technology’s influence on mainstream critical impact on the artistic scenario, culture and how it’s use has pervaded or do they only have to be considered and changed our lives for the better entertainment events ? and worse.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen: I think there Donata Marletta: You are an artist and are several media art festivals that also a researcher and you also work remain critical in their curation and on social networks. Can you talk to approach, but many are losing touch me about your own experiences with the critical nature that brought within these virtual environments? them into existence in the first place. How do you use these “social tools”? If you look at the early history of Ars Jonah Brucker-Cohen: I see social Electronica, for instance, those early media as something that is becoming works verged on the hyper-critical, a key element in people’s everyday where artforms often called lives. I teach a class at New York themselves into question as well as University where one of the their audience. They were considered assignments for the students is to “fringe arts” and no integrated into the spend a week without accessing mainstream commercial art world. FaceBook or Google, two of the most Currently, as computers and digital prolific online brands of their media become more evident in generation. This type of challenge was popular culture, media art is both a

22 very difficult for the students as they my “Alerting Infrastructure!” project is realized how important social media a physical hit counter that translates had become integrated into their daily virtual “hits” to a website into physical lives, to the point where their missing destruction of the location that the the use of these tools did not allow website represents. For instance, the them to function properly within their project has been installed in over nine social circles. Since they are such an countries in venues ranging from integral part of people’s lives, I use national museums to local art spaces these social media tools and in an attempt to amplify how physical communities as the inspiration and as spaces are losing their importance to test beds for projects and their online equivalents. In another experiments in order to see how they project, “LiveWindow”, I connected a function and subvert or challenge this browser window to a physical location function. so that when that location detected movement or vibration, the browser window would shake, and its text would fall off the page. By viewing “LiveWindow” on the web, a visitor can see a visual representation of the state of the physical space at anytime. These connections are rarely seen on the web, except for webcams or streaming video of live locations, Photo courtesy by Jonah Brucker- however I would classify these as Cohen – Alerting Infostructure! merely a digital version of the analog “surveillance camera”, thus making Donata Marletta: Do you think a kind them different from my projects in of interaction between online and many respects. offline worlds exists? Do you think they are connected to one another? Donata Marletta: Do you think 3g Do they complete each other? mobile technology is introducing a new revolution in the way people Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Yes, there is communicate, exchange files, ideas definitely a connection between etc.? online and offline worlds. Many of my projects looks at the connection Jonah Brucker-Cohen: 3G mobile between these spaces and how they technology gives you an “always-on” relate to each other and translate connection to the Internet from your specific characteristics. For instance, mobile device at all times, in almost

23 all locations. The ability to have systems online. This trend is evident in internet access, coupled with GPS the “THWONK” project that I am data, gives the authors of “apps” or undertaking with Mike Bennett where mobile applications the ability to we have created a system that allows customize an experience for the user users to design their own email lists is ways they were unable to prior to with specified rules of engagement. the existence of these devices and networks. I would consider this a “revolution” since it allows for more connectivity between people and data, and allows applications to tailor their content for any context the user may find themselves in, etc…

Donata Marletta: What are you interested in at the moment, both as an artist and as a researcher? Donata Marletta: What is the next Jonah Brucker-Cohen: My main festival you think you will go and visit interests now are examining the and where would you like to present emergence of what I call “user- your works? defined social systems.” Web 2.0 was Jonah Brucker-Cohen: The next event about the creation of content creation I am speaking at is “The Internet as systems that enabled the creation of Playground and Factory: A many forms of media by users such as Conference on Digital Labor” event to online videos with YouTube, be held on November 12-14th, 2009 at photography with Flickr, blog content the Eugene Lang College at the New with Blogger, etc… My interest now in School University, NY, NY. My focus my art practice is how to design what for this event will be on explaining we call “Web 4.0″ or “user-designed how artists are creating systems for social systems” and the rule sets that digital labor to enable users to create go along with those systems. This idea their own social systems online. This is a departure from web 2.0 because relates back to the THWONK project instead of merely creating the content that I mentioned in the previous that is displayed on the web, the users question. This event will bring create the underlying system of together a wide range of speakers and communication for this media to be provides an ambitious challenge to delivered to others and how they use pinpoint how labor has moved from and proliferate the use of these

24 the offline to online worlds and how the public should be responsible for http://coin-operated.com/ crafting the future rules and design of networks, not only the content that is http://www.data.ie/wordpress/ displayed on these networks. We call “THWONK”, web 4.0 since it takes a http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/ leap beyond the creation of media for http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/ these sites, and actually manipulates the structures of these systems http://www.bumplist.net/ themselves.

25 Christian Zanesi, The Act Of Listening

Matteo Milani

GMR was and still is a unique place for the production and research in the field of electroacoustic music. The theorization of his founder Pierre Schaeffer is included in the reference book “Treaty of Musical Object – Traité des Objects Musicaux”, published in 1966, in which Schaeffer develops his personal and innovative musical thought on the Sound Object and on Christian Zanesi is a French composer the concrete music ( a volume of 7 and the person responsible for the hundred pages n.d.r.). I also production of radio programs for recommend to read the essay by France Musique and French Culture at Michel Chion “Guide To Sound Objects the GRM (Groupe de Recherches (now in English as well) a valid Musicales) in Paris, an institution that introduction to this voluminous work. last year celebrated the 50th anniversary and that is throughly In the Scaefferian theory, the reduced integrated in the much bigger INA ( hearing is the attitude which consists Institut National de l’Audiovisuel). in listening a sound detaching oneself completely from its origin and from Follower of Pierre Schaeffer, Zanesi any preconceptions, so that it is has been recently awarded the possible to become aware of the Special Quartz at the 5th Quartz musical material, referring only to Electronic Music Awards edition. We what one can hear. interviewed him during the Présences Electronique 09, of which he is the During the listening experience, each artistic director, an event that sound must have a shape, and each explores the link between the shape must have a sound content. Musique Concrète by Schaeffer and Let’s now discover together with the new sound experiments (a co- Zanesi the musical potential of production with Radio France) sounds.

26 be ambiguity, and this is also part of a rethoric, or of an ancient model, and it is possible that this provokes a kind of curiosity, and at the same time gets mixed into the expression. Composers are very strange

Matteo Milani: In the first 50 years of electronic music, has the absence of Photo by Serge Lido – Pierre Schaffer visual elements during performances limited or enhanced the listening Matteo Milani: You often mention that experience? sound is the prime matter. How can we “orient” and recognize sounds Christian Zanési: Well, naturally us, at we’ve already heard, without the our festival Presences Electroniques, cause-effect relationship? prefer to bring attention on the sound, sometimes there are some Christian Zanési: The sound has to be audiovisual experiences, but the considered in a musical context, it is nature, the physiology of it, makes the not about recognizing the sound, it is image a priority on the sound. So we, an expressive matter, and every since we developed a projection composer, every musician has some system very very sophisticated, prefer kind of personal sound, a signature that kind of listening experience, it is sound, so when he transcribes it into more complete, we don’t need his work, into an artistic project, the anything else, it is an orientation, it is idea is not to try and play a guessing one of the strengths of our festival; game, this is this sound, or this is that that is, to offer artists the best sound, there is a higher level that possible sound projection system, the belongs to it, and this level is that of best definition, and we think that is the musical relations, expressive complete. We are very music- relations. When you listen to a oriented, and I’ve often been there concert, for example for cello and and I’ve seen musicians doing an orchestra, you are not pointing out audio-video performance, and I’ve each instant “this is a cello sound”, you been rarely convinced, sometimes listen to music. And it is the same with yes, but it becomes something else, sound. So, there is a second level we go down to another level, and we which is a little more complex, it is want to explore the purely musical true that some sounds reveal an universe, sound and its programming. image, from time to time there could

27 more or less thick, and in that moment he imagined that we could listen inside the recorded sound, which means we could verify, validate, objectivize the phenomenon by hearing the peculiar characteristics of the sound, how it starts and how it ends, in which tessitura it is, if it is light or if it is dark, it is loud, it is close Courtesy by Wikipedia – Christian Zanesi or far. This is to objectivize the listen, this is “L’ecoute reduit”. Matteo Milani: Can you give us a more Matteo Milani: Can you discuss your in-depth definition of the concept of vision of the sound organization “l’ecoute reduit” (reduced listening) by principles? Definition of the sound Pierre Shaeffer? object, objective and subjective Christian Zanési: The first time that… aspects, articulation, iteration, quality well in a few words it is difficult… of the information, musical language. when we recorded on vinyls, there Christian Zanési: In classical music, were no tape recorders in the 1950s, the constituent elements of an opera when we reached the end of a disk, function organically, that is there are the last groove was repeated consequences; when you put a sound indefinitely, and it was a full together with another, this creates an modulation. In all vinyls today, there is harmony, for example a chord, and if a closed groove with a silence, to you add another sound the chord avoid that the stylus exits the completely changes in timbre, this is turntable. All the disks at that time – an organic principle. We can do the all that were recorded in the 1950 – same with the sound the composer the disc, equivalent of today’s vinyls, chooses, so to imagine music ended on a closed groove, and sometimes as a vertical relation, or as Schaeffer listened to this an horizontal relation; this is an phenomenon, everybody could hear organic system, and the organic it, there was not a silence. The fact system is a biological system, in some that the sound repeats itself, made way copied from the living, and since him understand that finally we were we function following the living listening to the sound itself, we principles, we are particularly able and wouldn’t say “this sound is close or specialized to recognize an organic not, it starts this way, it is more or less system, and in that moment acute, it is more or less brilliant, it is

28 something starts in our brains and dead. So hearing is a prolongation of there is some kind of a communion; touch, it allows you to foresee the this is what happens, how to organize arrival of a predator. the sound, why put this with that, and why after this, add that, they are There are various hearings – one organic relations. which detects aesthetic information, one that detects information on the behavior of others, so when you work with sound you alternatively activate many “ears”. When you begin a piece of music by having a sound turn around you, you awaken the ancient, the primitive “ear”, the danger hearing, since in nature, something that turns around you it is something that tries to catch you, and a composer in some way is conscious of Matteo Milani: What do you think of this mechanism and plays with it. It is hidden causality (between what the very difficult to answer this question audience sees and hears)? because the ear is very complex, and Christian Zanési: The ability to listen is the reality around us is very complex. a very complex phenomenon, so But we are all naturally gifted at when a composer works, it is difficult hearing, since without it we could not to be conscious about everything, an cross the street, we could not hear artist works very much in an intuitive something behind us, we could not manner, intuition is a super-computer see around us through sound. which gives us the answer Matteo Milani: Did mass-culture and immediately. But if we talk about the consumerism create a lack of genesis, about why we made some “listening attention”? choices, it takes an eternity. So, the relations, the sound is not inside a Christian Zanési: I think the ear is single “ear”, there is a very ancient ear, intact, it is the demand that has to be for example, that is the ear we use to discovered and awaken. Even if there cross the street, it is the hearing of is a mass culture, to establish there is danger. Hearing is a prolongation of a dominant thought in hearing. But the sense of touch, imagine to be in the border is very narrow, between the forest, when a predator hunts, if it the dominant thought and the touches you it is too late, you are adventure, we can cross this border

29 very quickly, we only have to open Christian Zanési: In the 1950s, when ourselves and to create bridges. Also Schaeffer invents this music, musique here there are very serious issues, for concrète with his collaborators, they example the dominant idea of rock – suddenly asked themselves how to let let’s take this example – has built a everybody listen to this music in a peculiar “ear” and we can recuperate public space, in a concert hall. this ear by using experimental musics. Schaeffer said, if we have to go to the So the world is not made of cases Carnegie Hall, how do we do, we separated by inviolable borders, on cannot use a single loudspeaker on the contrary, there is no interruption the scene, this was a little ridiculous, of continuity between sounds; I am and finally the dimension of the very attentive about popular music, concert, the dimension of how to because I know that there are cases of present this music to the public was recycling, of experimentation, and created, little by little; there is also the also a genre which can be cinema industry which plays an experimented. We have to be extremely important role, since in the attentive, we have above all to avoid 1960s the Dolby firm had already being dogmatic, fundamentalist or imagined the surround, due to the categorical. On the contrary, we have invention of the Cinemascope, and to observe what happens, try to were forced to position many detect in every practice, in every thing loudspeakers to occupy the screen, something different from the variable and many more surround design of music, the variable design of loudspeakers all around. So, we have humans and see how this can be at the same time the desire of people transcended. to experience sound in a bigger dimension, and the technology which built that ear. Today, we follow this process, and people is happy to come to a concert, because we think that a concert is going to be a particular and privileged moment, maybe a show, and that there is a difference between experiencing music in a concert hall and at home, that there is something really spectacular in that moment Matteo Milani: What has been the role which justifies the concert. So there of physical space in the sound are many ways to face the problem, projection practice in GRM history? we chose one, but there are others.

30 Matteo Milani: Can you describe your the studio? compositional process? How do you Christian Zanési: I mainly work in go from the idea to the sound, to the stereo, because my studio is not elaboration, to the structure, to the multiphonic, but I have a lot of shape? experience with sound projection in the auditoriums, with a stereo source Christian Zanési: This is a personal you can give the illusion of a question, if you ask this same multiphonic work; I both do live question to another composer, the concerts and acousmatic works. answers are different. Me, I don’t go Finally you don’t know what system from idea to sound, but the opposite, I we have, where it is, the space, and go from sound to idea; that is I need also the kind of concert we have been to find the sound that touches me for requested, but what we experience different reasons – if I had the time I nowadays is that live practices and would explain these reasons and give acousmatic practices are coexisting examples, but I don’t – and inside this pacifically, and they enhance each sound there is a potential, and the other depending on the place, time, idea born from the sound is not a and project. The concrete music was sound subjected to an idea, it is the born in 1950s, and it is about, after all opposite. We can consider the sound these years, to create a new branch like some kind of fugue, which means which will be the performance that there is potential for version, and the live version of this development, and to work I need to music. This evolution started in the find a sound which will be at the base year 2000, since today’s systems because there is an emotive shock, (computers) are much faster than 20 there is really something imposing, years ago, and the tools for sound which will be the source of my work, processing allow it. But these have and at that moment we can listen to developed because there was a the sound in depth, not for what it is, strong desire to develop them. There but for what it can become; we hear are no technologies which arrive the sound as a promising element of a spontaneously, we look back into musical structure. But this is a history, we observe, and what personal answer. happens sometimes with dreams, there are dreams and conjunctions Matteo Milani: Do you work with which make things possible. That’s stereophonic material and perform what it is going to happen in about 10 live spazialization or do you prefer to years. design spatial trajectories/position in

31 a verticality, and harmony; we have the mastery of time, thus on counterpoint and polyphonie, we could increase or decrease the volume; we need to check that there are the minimal conditions for the program to be exploitable, and finally, checking on today’s programs; we have continuity. With the program, Photo by Guy Vivien – GRM 1959 whatever that is, we can do anything – montage, superposition, regulate the Matteo Milani: What are your working volume, regulate the space and finally tools for non-linear editing and sound you do the same as it were a tape signal processing? recorder. These are fundamental Christian Zanési: At the GRM there are operations for the music’s world. more or less all programs – Pro Tools, Digital Performer – but there is a kind of consent on the tools to use, very http://www.ina.fr/grm quickly we can comment that today’s programs are actually a direct-line en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique consequence of the techniques from concrète the 1950s, because with a tape or a disk we could go from a sound to fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival another, create discontinuity, being Présences électronique able to superpose sounds, and create grmtools.org

32 Less Talk, More Action. An Interview To The Yes Men

Clemente Pestelli

and over the last year have been focusing their deeds on theme connected to the climate change. Without entering in the details of the single deeds carried out by Yes Men, I find it more interesting to stop and consider that sign of pragmatism expressed by the formula “Beyond Talk”. Indeed if we have a look to what is happening overseas far from the Over the last months, in the middle of Old Europe, the culture jamming of the turmoil for the mobilizations in the Yes Men makes a deep impression view of the Copenaghen COP15, an not only because of the vast mediatic interesting coordination platform has echo and his communicative been online for the movements that incisiveness, but above all especially takes the name of Beyond Talk. for his approach that privileges The platform, that in the homepage is practice and results in spite of any named like this: “Tired of just hearing other abstractly theoretic issue. This about climate change? Then do seems to me one of the main something. Now” is a simple data elements of distinction at the base for the promotion of civil moment between a European art- disobedience statements. The authors activism and an overseas art-activism: of beyondtalk.net are Andy Bilchbaun if in Europe it is the conceptual- and Mike Bonanno, the members of political system in particular that the famous culture jamming group affects the possibilities to put it into The Yes Men that for 10 yeas have practice, In USA it’s the final result and been raging on the scene with its efficiency that seems to be taken mediatic ambushes and ambuscades more in consideration.

33 identity corrections. It seems you want to exploit the media in order to spread stories about hope. How do you expect people to react to these stories? And how did people actually react?

Mike Bonanno: People generally have a chuckle at these stories… with the NY times people visibly reacted with So, as I recently found myself actively great joy. You can see it in our film! cooperating with some of the last With the NY Post and the Chamber deeds of the Yes Men, and pushed by action we got lots of virtual high-5′s. curiosity to better understand some We also, of course got the Chambers of their dynamics, I felt the urge to ask Reaction: they slammed us with a them some questions. Simple lawsuit and are threatening our free questions, but that out of awe, I speech. Silly bullies. wanted to polish a bit more, in order to find the right shades of Clemente Pestelli: Behind the Yes significance. After less than 24 hours Men there is a large network of from the delivery of the questions I activist, artist and culture jammers. received their answers that-with a bit What is the role of this network in of disappointment, I must say –, as your actions? you will see, don’t leave space to any Mike Bonanno: We rely on our friends particular reflections, or theoretic – the unseen Yes Men – for everything digressions. and anything! Each project is different Beyond the usual talks, the Yes Men – but anyone can sign up to replied with few words, simple but www.theyesmen.org/join and brief. Beyond Talk, that’s it. In other volunteer. We might just get in touch words, another lesson of Anglo-Saxon for future action. pragmatism.

Clemente Pestelli: Differently from other past identity corrections, It seems that actions like NY Times Special Editions,the above mentioned NY Post and the last spoof to the Chamber of Commerce, are not just

34 Clemente Pestelli: I think the history phones, fliering, printing newspapers, of The Yes Men is strictly connected etc. to the history and the practices on the world wide web at the beginning of Clemente Pestelli: I’m a bit curios 2000. How do you evaluate the about the economic sustenaibility of situation of the Internet today? Is still your projects. Who supports your the net utopia of the early ’90s and actions? I mean, is it “just” pure ’00s alive? What is different? grassroots networking or does any organisation support those kind of Mike Bonanno: The net utopia never project? existed, like all utopias it was an imaginary space. Aspects of that Mike Bonanno: We have gotten some imaginary are holding steady and money from arts grants, and to make growing, others are shut down. Laws the films we have gotten some TV like the DMCA have made it easier for money (not enough to cover costs). companies to clamp down on free But overall its the people on our speech, but the proliferation of mailing list that support these things – connectivity has made it easier to and they dont cost that much. speak to more people. So, its different – the changes are too vast to count, the important thing is to try to prevent capitalism from turning all the connectivity into nothing but wealth extraction.

Clemente Pestelli: Talking about internet, beyond the mediatic echo of your actions, you’ve always worked with net-based alternative platform – Clemente Pestelli: In june 2009, on like the former RTMark experience or the spoofed International Tribune the above mentioned beyondtalk.net, (http://iht.greenpeace.org) we could and the recent net game Fix World read about “A TURNING POINT FOR Challenge. Can you elaborate more on THE PLANET” at the Copenhagen this interest for net based media? Climate Summit. According to latest news nothing of this is going to Mike Bonanno: The interest is pretty happen. After more than ten years of straightforward: cheap ways to Yes Men activities, shall we continue connect people. If we were back in to hope that it is possible to change the 70′s we would probably be using the world with a prank?

35 Mike Bonanno: We dont change the to www.beyondtalk.net and mark the world with pranks, we do it with date: Nov. 30th movements. And everything that goes into a movement- street protest, law changing, neighborhood organizing – http:://www.beyondtalk.net needs to happen. That is why we need to be out on the streets now. Sign up http://theyesmen.org/

36 The Activist East: Among Guitars And Gentrification

Zoe Romano

Saturday in different points of the city.

We discovered that the mobilization was aided by our friends (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeter – http://freeter-union.org/ ) Freeters, the Japanese precarious workers union, who were there with us. As we were complete strangers to the South We had been staying in Japan for Korean activism, we tried to catch more than 10 days, as we had been more information at first hand, invited to present the project by between a starred bottle and the next. Serpica Naro in the Cream Festival (http://ifamy.jp/en/ ), even if Cort, Ibanez, Fender, Parkood… if you our main purpose was to meet at last are guitarist you would know these all the artists, militants, agitators and names for sure. They are some among promoters of the Maydays with whom more than 600.000 guitar brands we only have virtual contacts. made by Cort (http://www.cortguitar.com) one of Among many other things, one night the greatest companies in the world, we ran into the protest of some South which is located in Icheabon, South Korean workers who came in the little Korea. Most of the production coffee-bar Cafe Lavanderia of the satisfies the overseas demands; in Shinjuku borough where we were fact, the Cort works in fixed term having a beer; they came in full of contracts with various companies that enthusiasm, holding pins and leaflets, exploit the Asian low cost workforce, and they immediately invaded the so that its owner room. They grabbed hold the micro of ( the sound system and invited us to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R take part in the action day, which 0lGFdfp8Zs) Park Young-Ho can enjoy would take place on the following about 78 million dollars, and be one of

37 the richest businessmen in Korea. increasingly aggressive as time went by. At last, he had to declare his bankruptcy in 2008 and closed the factory of Incheon, that is Cort’s motherland.

While people are singing love songs somewhere in the world accompanied by one of the guitars produced by Cort, South Korean workers have been protesting for more than 700 days, they have occupied the head Yet in spite of a positive income, office in Seul, they have been arrested during the last years he changed the and punished, then they have company’s marketing strategy, strengthened their communicative doubling the production and reducing potentials asking for the help of artists the product quality, mainly to satisfy and musicians around the world and the great foreign trade demands they have taken part to various music which occupies the 30% of the profits. fairs all around the world In 2006 his decisions caused a ( reaction as soon. After so many years http://www.frankfurter-info.org/Nach of extremely bad work conditions, richten/proteste-de- Cort workers -sudkoreanischen-arbeiterinnen-be, ( helped by local activists. And thanks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9 through this traversal alliance they are LpB1E4EE7k) could institute a trade managing to catch the attention of a union within the company and could wider audience which often takes implement their salaries as they had little care of where and how the never done in the last 12 years. Yet, instruments they use are produced: this implementation was to bring that is guitars. them just the Korean minimum wage. Following the Japanese events, a visit Meanwhile, Young Ho Park’s in Yokohama in the morning was in reorganization went on. In fact, he the planning (the country’s second shifted the production in China and most populated town and practically Indonesia and in April 2007 he fired united to Tokyo), to enliven a little the more than 100 Korean workers. He great music fair that takes place every persisted on the realization of his two years in the Japan plan, gradually at first but becoming (http://musicfair.jp/). And during the

38 afternoon they would go to Tokyo Japan and also financed by Mori where we could go and give our help. Building (http://www.mori.co.jp/en/).

Omotesando Hills ( http://www.omotesandohills.com/en glish/index.html) was born after the demolition of the flats complex Dōjunkai Aoyama Apartment, Bauhaus styling 1927, with which for the first time reinforced architectures were experienced to resist against Omotesando Hills earthquakes and that would become an example for the design of housing The target to reach in the capital is projects. The refined architects who Kawai, the music instruments store in had designed them had imagined Omotesando Avenue – Harajuku, the they were being inhabited by the first shopping district which has been generation of white-collars going through a gentrification during experiencing a kind of collective life the last two years. We had to meet at (we could say it was the first example 16.00 on the bridge next to the of co-housing). A part of those flats underground station. The huge had been designed with some areas shopping centre Omotesando Hills for common use. dominates the street, it takes up to 250 metres of footpath with a glass In spite of the protests by the citizens and metal structure, 130 stores (many and the borough associations, who of them are international fashion defended the respect for historical brands) and 38 flats. memory and the cultural value of those houses, the bulldozers set to It was built by one of the most work and in February 2006 the 6 powerful tycoon in Japan, Minoru floors of the shopping centre were Mori ( opened http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru), ( the famous artist (at least she’s well- http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/02/1 known in Italy) Mariko Mori’s 5/travel/15tokyo.html?8dpc) causing grandfather, together with another a great stir through the newspapers gentrifying company, Roppongi Hills, all around the world. one of the biggest housing estate in

39 Cort guitars and talk about the campaign No Cort ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7 pbKvES) to an unaware audience.

After a number of songs, slogans, music improvisation, the managers of the store looked out and tried to understand what was going on. They were three men in suit of about sixty; The action with a serious look they scanned that On the opposite side off the street, a shapeless and noisy mass that few metres far from the luxury disturbed the quiet Muzak of a shopping centre, was the target point Saturday evening which should be where the Cort workers wanted to ordinary. A police van stood a few take action. It was Saturday, about 5 metres far from the footpath and pm, and the shopping rustling was at watched that the situation wouldn’t the top. A group composed by about grow inflamed. But the shopping fifty militants was standing in front of didn’t stop, so they looked serene. the Kawai shop-window, where a A delegation of workers went into the piano in bright plexiglas suddenly shop and began the negotiations. The captured our look. No need to wait for purpose of this negotiation was to long to see every kind of instrument convince the manager to talk to the and banners and coloured posters. owner of the Kawai, referring the Drums, accordions, violins, trumpets workers’ requests and putting began to animate to tell the passers- pressure directly on the Cort head by the reasons for the protest. office, which sold the guitars. Beside them and the Korean Metal They looked seriously at each other, Workers Union, there are the Freeters we couldn’t follow the conversation from Tokyo and various cultural but for sure the workers were telling activists from New York, and we are of how the superior court of South there to represent the Euromayday Korea decided on August to consider Network; not to mention the virtual the mass dismissals made by Cort support from hundreds of musicians were illegal: because after ten years of that during their concerts and earnings, just a year crisis didn’t justify performances in tour around the this kind of behaviour. But in spite of world, give their aid boycotting the

40 the sentence reinstating workers, the group photos to remember the event. company didn’t agree. After about A freeter acknowledged that that day twenty minutes in an almost empty was more involving than other shop, they seemed to have reached ordinary actions, because among the an agreement. The delegation went participants there weren’t only union out starting the dances with members and workers but also artists, leafleting. musicians and performers whose music and colours made our determination easier and made us forget our tiredness.

The message certainly started its way to the rich owner of the Cort, while the unstoppable stream of fashion victims on a Saturday evening didn’t stop because of the coloured and noisy protest. Although that seems to be the destiny of whatever happens in The action ended a few minutes after Tokyo, la megalopolis that swallows seven pm. The trade unionists everything and whose activity seems swapped their banners and shot to keep unaffected by anything.

41 Monsieur Morin: For A Complex Thought Ethic

Teresa De Feo

On the 11th of November Edgar Morin sat in front of an audience of over 2.500 people, held in the Teatro Dal Verme, for the conclusive meeting of the Meet Media Guru 2009 event, directed by Maria Grazia Mattei. The event created much interest and was a unique occasion to get to know themes of a great adventure about knowledge directly from the horse’s To meet Monsieur Morin is not mouth, that of complex epistemology. something to be taken lightly. Even ( those who do not know him could not http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/i but be fascinated by his old ndex.php/11/edgar-morin-evento- Frenchman-like elegant ways and his 11-novembre-video-dellevento/) ringed fingers. And I believe in his success. The husky voice with which Edgar Morin, now an 88 year old, is the Monsieur expresses himself, never certainly one of the most interesting as an intellectual but more like the intellectuals of the last 100 years. chief of a tribe who tells myths and Director of the Cnrs (Centre national stories, immediately creates empathy de la recherche scientifique), and takes you into an intellectual president of the agency for the dimension with layered dimensions: Culture of Unesco and an honorary that of complex thought. And it is academic in more than 15 Universities immediately clear that complex worldwide, his has dealt with thought, in the presence of the old sociology, ethnology, anthropology, philosopher, is not just a mix of cinema, TV, old and new cybernetics, methods, an intellectual practice, but system theories, pedagogy, the the exercising of an existential research of the method capable of operation, a human opening that has taking apart the various disciplines this objective: to give itself a new and reaping the challenge of founding ethic, the ethic that a complexity. An anomalous intellectual planetary consciousness needs. that is difficult to categorise and is

42 politically engaged, Morin has earned with the cybernetic consideration of himself the nickname “Undisciplined”, machine as a system capable of self- also the title of his biography, a management, sent him on the path to collection of his adventures, which a definition of the living constructed was released in France this year and through multidimensional thought signed by Emmanuel Lemieux. capable of involving the humanist and scientific sphere. So in Morin’s discussion biological complexity of the human mind becomes inseparable from cultural complexity, so that culture itself is an indispensable part of biological evolution. Morin became the “full” theoretician of l‘unité de l’homme as well as the unification of all disciplines.

The French philosopher’s discussion, The French philosopher and which can be interpreted as a method sociologist began his trip in of complexity, calibrates some if the “complexity” after staying at the Salk ideas that we could describe as his Institute in La Jolla, California, in 1969, fundamental theories that we will where he elaborated his own keep finding on more levels of his particular epistemological vision interpretations: the principle of the through his studies, that is based on hologram, the recursive principle, the certain fundamental media dialogic principle as well as the assumptions combining general consideration of a multidimensional theory of systems, cybernetics, theory subject that has never been disjointed of information and neurophysiology of from its context and has been autopoiesis of the living (second integrated into the explanation of the cybernetic), integrated piece by piece phenomenon. Today the through their combinations with phenomenon will not, according to various disciplines of knowledge. Morin, be purified of its disruptive A few cybernetic theories in particular elements like disorder, uncertainty, (see the previous article), as Morin and risk. Integration and the often reminds us, gave the relationship between antagonistic philosopher the key to gain access to concepts will consequently be complexity: among these, first of all, essential, one of which is the most was the concept of retroaction, that dear to Morin and is autonomy- dependence. In other words, a slap in

43 the face to reductionism, expression of his intrinsic wisdom determinism, and tradition. capable of directing people toward solidarity, the communion of living beings, united in a circular chain of life and death.

What is the Hologram principle? It’s is merely the overstepping of the illusion of retaining ourselves disconnected to the chain of life; the overstepping of the illusion that we are dominators of objects, of a res Photo by Gianfranco Chicco (www.flickr.com/gchicco) extensa outside the investigating subject. Exactly like in a hologram, But let’s come back to the present, to where every single part experiences Monsieur Morin’s conference at the the totality of being together, man Dal Verme, which will help us to must never lose sight of the understand some passages of his awareness of carrying the history of thought processes that we presented the entire universe within himself, and in a brief summary. must never stop knowing that every I carries a WE inside it. Edgar Morin is currently directing his attention to the ecology and the According to Morin the passage of life promotion of a new ethic, proposing a is circular and recursive. Just as political ecolo-sophy in his latest human beings live the same circle of books and in the public debate that divine trinity, every man is an should be adopted in order to create a individual, part of a society and part of planetary transformation. His a species, but not in the sense of a intervention in Milan was targeted at hierarchy, but more like the the presentation of his “complex” consideration that every single part of ethic that has the Hologram principle the process is the cause and is also at its base, as well as the recursive the successive effect, and the cycle of “human trinity” and the preceding effect. Within the species, cohabitation of antagonistic man is the product and the producer, principles. Getting out of like every man is a father but also a individualism and ego-centrism, is son and so on. It’s indispensable to possible by following these three find a sense of totality, but also to find paths, which not only represent the an importance in specificity, which is interpretative keys but also the the expression of totality on a small

44 scale, just like an embrace that of one of our most recent extensions: integrates contradictions, Internet. The web, through its cerebral disturbances and antagonistic network complexity, its connective aspects. And Monsieur says it clearly: intelligence and cultural skin cannot “an ecological thought is necessary but be the possibility of favouring the but can never be sane if it does not growth of a planetary consciousness, accept its own insanity”, so homo which is the consciousness of being a sapiens is also demens, and homo part of one homeland, which the faber is also homo mitologicus, homo philosopher states is the only way to oeconomicus must also be homo face vital problems of our times. ludens. Going back to the first statements of To think in a complex way means to this article, meeting Monsieur Morin is feel part of a unique and great not just an opportunity to meet the community, inside a great recursive theories of a new epistemology, but is cycle of life. It means being planetary the possibility to understand that citizens and using all of this as a every new epistemology inevitably possibility. opens up to a new ethic, and this is the responsibility that every scholar and every citizen who decides to follow these paths indicated by a new or old theory of knowledge, must feel.

Personally I like this ethic, just as I like the last words of Mr. Morin with which I will conclude my piece: “love is the only authentic religion of hyper- complexity” (Edgar Morin) Photo by Gianfranco Chicco (www.flickr.com/gchicco)

Now we have come to generate, on a http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/i technical basis, the most efficient ndex.php/category/edgar-morin/ metaphors of the living, like the metaphor of interconnection, and this http://lavoixdunet.eu/ has happened through the production

45 46 Distributed Creativity Models: The Crowdsourcing

Giulia Baldi

article that dates back to 2006. There, he describes the shift that creatives (mostly copywriters, designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, videomakers, directors… or wannabe so) are taking in the networked society.

With the development of web technologies and communities, in It was maybe predictable and it is fact, the global creative workforce is definitely significant: Creative finally connected, and can finally be Review‘s has included crowd-sourcing active online. Thus, it can decide to among the topics covered in their move from being represented by ‘Year in Review’ December issue. offline exclusive and expensive agencies to online accessible and I haven’t checked the magazine yet, inexpensive platforms but I am researching on digital creative crowd-sourcing models since a while and I think they represent such an interesting opportunity for creatives that we should celebrate here.

Known in academic terms as a “distributed problem-solving and content-production model”, and in marketing ones as “the outsourcing of functions normally performed by a It has all started with websites like supplier or contractor to a crowd of Istockphotos.com, a marketplace people or a community”, crowd- developed for non-professional sourcing is a neologism first used by photographers that allows anyone to Jeff Howe, editor of Wired US, in an upload his/her own works and to sell

47 them directly to clients, at a fraction global competitions, based on real of the usual costs. This way, talented brands’ briefs… and to participate emerging artists are now competing easily and remotely, i.e. wherever they with the privileged establishment, and live and whatever else they are doing, cutting all middlemen and their top without any agency to represent, and rewards. As content producers, they exploit, them. are earning more and they are allowing their clients to spend less Furthermore, some of these platforms than before (for products which are as even delegate to the community the good as the average professional selection of the best entries. Because, ones). again, in the web 2.0 ethos, we are better than me. So far, so good. These new adventures are just confirming the crowd-sourcing principle that a creative collective can produce better (and cheaper) results than an individual, and making it real. As many other times in the past, technology is slowly but steadily disrupting the status quo of an old industry and creating a new one. But then, even more disruptive stories follows. Everyone happy? Not yet. There is a problem, in fact… Maybe even two or With 99desing (AU), BootB (IT), three. CrowdSpring (US), IdeaBounty (SA/UK), RadarMusic (UK) and Zooppa 1) - With these platforms, all (IT/US/BR), a new crowd-sourcing participants need to do their bit as model for creativity has emerged. On speculative job and have very limited one side, these new online chance to win. In the offline marketplaces/communities engage advertisement industry the pitch-t- with brands offering them the chance -brief system has always been the to launch contests on specific briefs custom; online this process has and get bespoke creative proposals… reached another level: in the average, for smaller fees than those of the there are loads of contestants for traditional agencies. On the other, every project and just little reward for they engage deeper with professional the winning ones. and non-professional creatives allowing them to participate to real So much so that a proper professional

48 movement called ‘no-spec job’ has instead sending now their ideas and recently made a lot of noise against projects through these platforms, and this practice, based on the hundreds are gaining valuable assumption that open and cheap visibility and good money (that would competitions are unprofessional and have not obtained otherwise). unfair. At the same time, the brands, platforms and users that instead have 2) - the average quality of the outputs embraced this model, reclaim the isn’t that bad, but isn’t even that freedom of choice: once that the good; process is clearly presented, everyone 3) - brands can rarely build a should be free of participating, meaningful relationship with creatives considering pros and cons from a and long lasting strategies virtually; personal perspective. And in fact, while some have probably kept doing 4) - when the selection is not up to things the old way (they maybe live in the community, it can be definitely big metropolis and have loads of too time-consuming for anyone in the useful contacts), thousands are industry…

49 GRSelect and other crowdsourcing sites (including GeniusRocket.com) is that artists will be required to apply in order to participate in each project. First, applicants will be vetted based upon their past work and their submitted proposal. Second, GRSelect projects will work across iterative rounds allowing the artists to receive feedback directly from the All in all, maybe a new breed of online client prior to production or final platforms/agencies is needed, one submission. Finally, while not that will maintain traditional agency everyone will be accepted to project management and campaigns participate in a project, everyone that creative curatorship while introducing does make into a project will earn new remote collaborative practices. awards based upon their efforts.’ And, in fact, a revised model, based on both top down and bottom up Now, this sounds really good. And this principles, has recently been adopted is even becoming a trend: in the last by one of the ‘old’ platfroms, few weeks, a new platform based on GeniusRocket (US), and more will the same mixed approach has been probably follow. launched, and it is called… Victors and Spoils (US). While another one will be In their words, ‘We have always launched soon, with the name Guided understood that crowdsourcing is a By Voices (UK). process of evolution. From that, we believe that there is still plenty of room to improve upon creative crowd-sourcing. We plan to address the three biggest requests of the creative community; higher awards, more feedback, and less risk, while addressing the request of the client; more polished, selected, creative content.’

How are they planning to achieve it? ‘ Creatives out there, no more excuses! Launching GRSelect. ‘The three most Now you can submit your portfolios, important differences between be selected, participate to contests,

50 and win your 15 mins of glory and risking to waste too much of your even some pocket money (that now time. And, yes… Next year you could can reach peaks of 10K$), without be on Creative Review.

51 Mediamatic Travel: Online Cultural Turism

Giulia Tiddens

different points of view. Furthermore this project also includes an exhibition, on which I particularly wish to focus my attention on this issue.

From October the 16th to January the 3rd in the cultural institute Mediamatic Bank it was indeed possible to visit The Amsterdam Biennale 2009, an exhibition in which The Mediamatic travel project, carried different countries from all over the out by Mediamatic Bank, one of the world participated under the leading most important cultural centers in of, more or less, 30 international Amsterdam and in Europe, is ready to curators. Each of them was given the turn the world of cultural tourism responsibility of managing a pavilion upside down. If you connect to the and of choosing the artists following representing a specific city. Each websitehttp://travel.mediamatic.net/ week new pavilions were opened to , you can find an endless list of cities, the public and followed , of course, by spread all over the world, with which a related night party, full of surprises. it is possible to interact following definitely innovative approaches.

For a small outlay you will be able to go to your chosen city and to get in touch with the contemporary artistic scene thanks to a local guide on that specific field, or you can simply get some information about certain places which escape the standard logic of pocket travel guides. Trails Image courtesy by Mediamatic Travel expressly created for artists or people dealing with art who will be able to As soon as you got inside the explore cities following completely exhibition space, you could find

52 yourself walking in between narrow contact the person whose memento paths, through cubes and squared they have taken. spaces, each of them dedicated to a different city. The place now and then An alternative way to build a positive gave the impression of being almost sense of belonging to their own claustrophobic and sometimes nation. A wall rich with history too, unfortunately it was hard to spot but a history shaped by people’s own some of the art works because of the memories. The identity of a nation lack of space. The main theme was expressed without any kind of definitely the political one and that is imposition, without being subject to why I decided to focus on this subject. any political pressure.

The Munich Pavilion for The Istanbul pavilion example( ( http://www.eindeutscherpavillon.de/ http://www.mediamatic.net/page/12 ) , taken care of by Sasha Glasl has 4558/en) , with Suat Ögüt as curator been inspired by the recent together with the artists Firat Bingol celebration of the 20th anniversary of and Mehmet ?güt , has exhibited four the fall of the Berlin War, he has works dealing with problems related thought of build a wall as well made with the cultural policy of their up of transparent boxes. These boxes country. are delivered only to those Germans that are interested in the project, and who will be asked to fill them with mementos of their country. It’s a traveling wall as well, this means that, from month to month, the wall will move around going in Europe, from a country to another, picking up the scattered mementos at each step till it will end its route right in Germany Image taken by Firat Bangol video where it will reach its maximum expansion. But this is just the end of In Firat Bangol‘s video, a Kurd is in fact the first phase because then the wall busy explaining his personal story, but will be sent to China to undergo an every time he tries to talk about it, a opposite process. In this case indeed vacuum cleaner is pointed to his head, the visitors will be allowed to as a gun, with the clear intention of dismantle the wall bringing home one sucking away his identity leaving him of the boxes and deciding then if to without words. Every time the

53 “instrument of torture” disappears, the somehow, to the social control and in man begins talking again but each this way reinventing, the spaces that time the tone of his voice increases are used for other purposes. The and becomes more and more second is instead a sort of audio- exasperated. So as a matter of fact, guide which accompanies us along a the repression which he is exposed to, street through the tales of the small is fueling his resistance and the sense traders, showing us both their of belonging to his people. creative and dark side. The voice talks and tells us where to look to find our Mehmet Ogutcontributed with a way through the puzzle of Istanbul video belonging to his Black Cube pictures just in front of us. A new series, with the aim to make us think manner to explore a city, in some over the existing relationship between ways, I would say even funny, getting the people who own the power and to know it through people living there those who are subjected to it. in a period of change where the old is facing the new and where often On a small screen we can clearly see a paranoia is the only one to speak. policeman in the act of beating a civilian with a baton: the scene takes a few seconds because almost immediately the two characters start to undress remaining both in underwear for a few instants under the same conditions. An exchange of clothes take place between them and consequents an exchange of roles as well, showing us how the former- civilian, after having worn the Protestposter against the war uniform, will not exempt himself from Another very interesting pavilion is being violent. surely the Kabul one. This pavilion The Pavilion curator Suat Ögüt tested tells us about a city that after the himself with two works: Consumption falling of the Taliban regime in 2001, Practices and Safety Guide. The first is has filled itself with foreigners coming a video that shows alternative ways to from non-governmental experience homologated spaces, as organizations, from UN, or from restaurants and clothes shops, embassies for security reasons have introducing unexpected deeds that been separated from the population result in entertainment, to escape, and have started, living their life in the

54 “green zone” that, step by step, has is the censorship to which artists are spread out absorbing a good deal of subjected, so it is a harsh criticism the city center raising up protection against the political class of the walls. The relationship between these country and the education system. people and the Afghans is reduced to the minimum , if not entirely avoided. The Beirut pavilion is impenetrable except for some holes and To symbolize this division the curator “excoriations” through which it’s Robert Kluijver (who lived 6 years in possible to catch a glimp of pictures Afghanistan) has put two arrows at portraying the daily life of the city. A the rear of the Pavilion to point out way to tell us that we must leave the the existence of two different memory of the city destroyed by the entrances, one reserved to the war behind us and move on to the foreigners, the other one to the present one that will only know when Afghans. When you enter the Pavilion we visit it. this separation continues because we find two maps of Kabul city, placed The Brooklyn pavilion is only one opposite the other. On one map composed of two“Art benches work: a betweennational you can see the off limits areas to the whichconversation 3 take awayabout piles art labor of and Afghans and on the other one the off newspaperseconomics. Take arranged. a copy. On Make the cover an limits areas to the foreigners. The pageexhibition. is written Host a discussion in your contrast then is even more stressed town” by the presence of some pictures “Art around the maps with related workers won’t kiss ass” explanatory notes showing all the . places or the activities carried out by Whereas on the back is written the two different sides. At any rate, (you can after the fall of the regime, the city of download a copy from Kabul has been active in new fields http://www.mediamatic.net/page/12 such as art, poetry, design: everything 6816/en). So once you have has been possible thanks to the new downloaded the contents you’ll be freedom of expression, to the free to decide if to spread their piece influence of other countries and to the of art talking about the arguments access to new cultures. they had to face by organizing an In the Lima pavilion the main subject exhibition or starting a debate.

55 Cimmino who participated with an analogical picture, shot on some Naples roofs, of extreme beauty. Besides showing the details of part of its typical fabric of the city, this Image provided by Youmna Habbouche picture conveys a strong feeling of restlessness, due to the sharp contrast The Naples pavilion, has been entitled of light, of the soft colors of the by the curator Diana Marrone as “the houses with their impenetrable kingdom of intallio” . Intallio is a word windows expressly recasted in black. in the dialect from Naples that A vision of a city and of its inhabitants explains the behavior of its that have to face a sort of blind alley. inhabitants trying to get as much as Maybe a hint to the news that are possible from life, experiencing it with often bundled up in newspapers when the right balance without being ruled dealing with Naples. by anxiety. Nest, a project related to the city of Naples and its suburbs, dealing with Only the artists able to look into the art, public spaces and urban depth of the city have been chosen, transformations, takes also part to the each of them using a different mean Naples pavilion and I strongly (video, performances, photos). recommend to visit the website. Despite the fact that the theme was studied in details the pavilion instead shows a clear lack in organization, conveying a quite confused idea of its http://www.napoliest.it/ contents. http://www.mediamatic.net/page/10 The work that most of all stands out is 1520/en definitely the one by Alessandro

56 Babel Of Innovation

Gigi Ghezzi

Innovation, which appeared in the influential text “The Innovation’s Dilemma”, and also covering the innovation of the resources, of the processes, of the value chain, as well as the school of experience and the emerging theories on motivational ability.

If by innovation one means the ability “A new innovation in medical to improve a system through the software”, “Innovation is the hearth of introduction of an improving element, everything we do”, “The House of enterprises start wondering about the Innovation”, “Our innovation is back”, magic recipe to become an innovator, these are the slogans that some and above all, about how make the multinational companies chose to make most of it on the market in draw attention to a key element in order to gain the much sought -after contemporary society: innovation. “competitive edge”. Howard Holds (Chief Technology Officer at Umair Haque, director at Havas Media Computer Sciences Corporation), in Lab, states that the word “innovation”, his essay What Innovation Is.. How if not supported through economic Companies develop Operating sustainability practices, “feels like a Systems for Innovation asserts that relic of the industrial era”, whereas the innovator is an “obsessive Clayton Christensen (professor at problem solver” and that very often, Harvard Business School and founder innovation is the result of a deliberate of the consulting agency Innosight) in recombination of ideas, people and his latest text Seeing What’s Next – objects of the past that light up like a Using The Theories Of Innovation To spark and produce new technological Predict Industry Change offers a solutions, after having sought convincing synthesis of the main effective concepts and business innovative theories, obviously starting models. from his own theory of Disruptive

57 innovation is thriving and rich, but it often turns out to be misleading, rather than clarifying, because it is rife with contradictions, repetitions and concepts that have been strategically developed in the framework of corporate communication. Jonathan and Linton have developed a model with a higher heuristic content, which sheds light on innovating experiences Holds states that the time has come and better illustrates the features of a to abandon the language of successful and unsuccessful discontinuity that accompanies innovation. innovation (innovation as “revolution”, as a “break with the past”) and go In order to achieve this it is necessary back to the concept of “incremental to take into consideration the innovation”. Innovation is neither temporal perspective of such constant nor fluctuating; it is rather an experiences, by collocating them on endless sequence of problems to two axes: the technological impact as solve, either alone or in a team. independent variable on the x axis “Innovation is a systematic and and the social one as subordinate systemic search, supported by variable on the y axis; the analysis predictable and scientific methods, to units are the inputs (the requests for reach solutions beyond the current innovation) and outputs state-of-the-art. Along the way, the (comprehension and the receptivity) achieved solutions or inventions are of such innovative framework. The the activities that generate value for model is similar to the one suggested customers.” so Holds in a topic by Abernathy & Clark in 1985 in the passage of the text. contribution published on “Research Policy” (Issue 1, 1985), under the title An interesting scientific contribution Innovation-mapping the winds of is supplied by J.D. Jonathan and D. creative destruction, Research Policy. Linton from the Telfer School of Management of the university of Ottawa. In an essay that appeared in “Technovation” (Issue 11, November 2009) under the title De-babelizing the language of innovation, the two authors point out that the language of

58 The two axes aim to supply a innovative elements. It may indeed structure to the language of occur that an organizational structure innovation, which features different welcomes the change deriving from languages and lexica. While in the an innovation, because the perceived technological innovation the players benefits exceed the adaptation are mainly companies and efforts, whereas, for another company economists, therefore the language innovation may turn out to be insists on the concepts of process, unfavourable, because it requires a products, optimization and clients, radical reorganization. the sociological innovation is the language of politics, of sociologists and geographers and it is more concerned with cities, regions, nations, peoples. The linguistic and conceptual difference also entails different perspectives and methods of analysis. If innovation is placed close to the origin of the axes, it will have little chances of success, both in terms of technological and social It is therefore necessary to rethink the impact. If, on the contrary, it is placed parameters used to evaluate at a higher x and y value, it may enjoy innovation: in the corporate language remarkable success. the performance potential is often the yardstick, but this may result in a In some cases, though, a failure of the whole innovation chain. technological solution can be socially Not only is it necessary to take into perceived as innovative, but it may be consideration the entry requirements received coldly by the technological for a given innovation, that is the world and vice-versa (for instance the requests for improvement, but also innovation in the framework of the output factors and the welfare to the detriment of the uncertainties that such innovation economic policies of rationalization). may imply, an important element that Innovation implies adaptation in is often neglected in the processes of terms of competences and practices, reception of innovation. Hence the which can be received positively or paramount role played by negatively on one of the two axes communication in the innovation according to the efforts that have to process. Success and failure scenarios be done in order to adopt such have to be as clear and widespread as

59 possible, so that the benefits and threats that an innovation may entail for a system can be evaluated a priori.

60 The Screen And The City.continuous City Di Marianne Weems

Annamaria Monteverdi

become transparent, “data body” in a “data space”, are subject to an alienating control in a “port private” society where the means of surveillance have become increasingly invisible and have penetrated into the meanders of the net.

In her most recent show Continuous city, Weems talks about an Marianne Weems, a theatre director “interrupted city”, in other words the of the multidisciplinary company The great worldwide web that allows for Builders Association continues with the passage through barriers, political extraordinary coherence and strength frontiers and sovereign states and through her acute examination of which has radically changed the face technology and communication via of the landscape and the experience computers, in reference to their of living in a city or in a global village, influence in society and their effects just as it has broadened the horizon of on social interactions. our human relations: the contemporary living landscape has Jet Lag In she criticised the media become a mediascape, a place of system and the “construction of “nomadic passage”, de-materialised Alladeen information”; in she criticised as Castells says, into a “space of the effects of the globalised economy, fluxes”, communicational fluxes. The with the workers of an Indian call city in the three stories that are told, is centre who were instructed to erase seen through different screens of their identity and their language and different sizes (smart mob, pc’s and take on the American accent and always-on) that compose a luminous Supervision culture. In Weems intermittent set, a coloured brought the nightmare of surveillance kaleidoscope: they are fragments of a to the theatre, after September 11th: city that are presented as a puzzle the citizens whose bodies have (which definitely recalls Intolerance

61 60 by Svoboda) that releases residues contemporary. Today the projections of animated and noisy environments in video pixels on “hyper-surfaces”, hung on the line of a connection. The great screens on the walls of buildings father who works far away and talks (urban screens) used as live backdrops to his daughter via Skype who is for concerts (like the Christian always connected to the Internet, Fennesz concert and the visuals of telling her things through images, the Giuseppe La Spada: the artists in this characteristics of the city and he’s case used an LED maxi-screen placed visiting, and she updates her blog on a on the facade of the Palazzo daily basis where she talks about her dell’Arengario in the Piazza Duomo in views on the city. Emotions that are Milano), the digital signs in a great shared at a distance, the net as an format (digital signage) are a part of “agile connective environment” (De the urban landscape and reach Kerchove), bodies taken to a enormous sizes (like the commercial dimension without physical or maxi-screen of 24 metres put onto a geographical frontiers, in another blimp, visible from 4 kilometres away). place ploughed through by the web The experiential size of public space, where feedback between of the piazza through transmission and reception is multidimensional screens, according instantaneous. to Simone Orcagni (“Il Sole 24 Ore online” 11-3-2009) connects to a more intimate experience, more individual, for like TV: “Media, urban planning, performance concur to create a new spectacular experience, which is also partly cinematic”.

What is interesting in Marianne Weems’s shows is the extraordinary capacity to dramatise some concepts Photo courtesy by Marianne Weems – Continuous City (2007) that until now have been dealt with in essays on sociology of the media or The potential co-presence of bodies, cinema: the new public space, the messages, and images on the same panoptic, the new connective communicative platform inaugurates subjectivity, the culture of “real a network of new relationships, a new virtuality” (De Kerchove), the new social web that they in turn transform electronic sociability. Key concepts into an “ideal city” and a new “screen” like that of dislocation and dimension of living and inhabiting the deterritorialisation, just like those of

62 presence and ubiquity, take the shape track of actions and movements of of a “mediaturgy” that places the the characters; persecuted by an protagonists like “vectors” of a invisible satellite eye that doubles content that is none other than, in them, prisoners between mirrors and synthesis, the big worldwide web. transparent walls, in a proliferation of bodies that contrasts their solitude, Michael Klier in the film-video Der the characters incarnate the psychotic riese (1983), told a story of a city nightmare of video-surveillance. through images coming from surveillance cameras on buildings This is what Weems has to say: “We close to banks and airports to “grasp, are surrounded by subtle and unseen undress and petrify pieces of space”, forms of surveillance of the data we identifying, as Anna Lagorio says in create as we move through our daily her analysis of the video, “the generic lives, and at the same time our city, de-personalised and identities seem increasingly to be anonymous”. In Supervision Weems constituted of data. What is the comes to similar conclusions that relationship between who we are and come from the definitive the cloud of data which surrounds subsumption of man inside a perverse each one of us? In post-9/11 daily life, mechanism of capillary control of his we have come to accept, allow, and life that deprived him of his own even encourage this new post-visual identity. form of surveillance and its constant incursions into the realm of our “selves.“ What will the results of it be?”

If in Supervision Weems seemed to be bound to Paul Virilio’s philosophy and his “catastrophic but non- catastrophist” vision of technological modernity, in Continuous city there seems to be a pars costruens, an idea of shaped technology, domesticated Photo courtesy by Marianne Weems – Supervision (2005-2006) and conformed to new communication needs and The media nightmare described in connectivity of society, accepting the Orwell’s 1984 materialises in a giant renowned theses by Derrick De disconcerting screen which holds, like Kerchove: “The body, aided by the an identification badge from which computer, comes out of its traditional the set takes it shape, an electronic limits, articulated around the skin.

63 Therefore a body that is up to Thereforeexperiences, there of gamesare no andmore symbolism of Virilio’s standard with the new potential of “bigto that optics”, of the that architecture which unnaturally of our mind is needed, so that it can also subvertsliving our experience of physical enjoy instant access to any part of the distance and vastness of natural space world, assisted by a computer. Our ( new skin is terrestrial atmosphere made sensitive by satellites”, and, “connective intelligence implies the possibility to share thought, intention emotion and projects expressed by ), but a others without crystallising them in mediation of the world that produces the abstract fetishof a collective an “ experience, or preserving them in the privacy of an individual”.

”(De Kerchove) as an effect.

http://www.thebuildersassociation.or g/about_staff_MarianneWeems.html

Photo courtesy by Marianne Weems – Alladeen (1999-2007)

“the progressive derealisation of the terrestrial horizon,…resulting in an impending primacy of real time perspective of undulation optics over real space of the linear geometrical optics of the Quattrocento”

extension of space of imagination, of pulsations of dream-like

64 Francesca Proia: The Breath Of The Subtle Body

Massimo Schiavoni

perception. She danced in three episodes of Tragedy Endogonidia under the direction of Romeo Castellucci who said the following words about Francis’s art: “… what strikes you in her work is a striking discipline and the search for a form purified of any attempt at illustration. His choreography is first of all a movement of mind that goes “My job is to find a suitable energy in through the design of time and order to create a precise composition gestures through a dynamic made of . The philosophy of yoga comes across detained and suspended lines … ” my project of creation as a philosophy that deals with the creation of time.” Her early work, Dark Light Dark and These are Francesca Proia‘s paths, a Something for the Hall received both young choreographer and dancer in a special mention at the Iceberg Ravenna that has made the yoga a Festival and the Scenery Prize and a philosophy of life, making its mark in number of selections abroad. Then the theatrical solos danced in detail, came her Il non fare e Uno of 2007 where the subtle body imprisons and submitted, among others, the Festival ponders a unique balance of energy of Santarcangelo and the Fabbrica and empathy contemporary dance. Europa and Nothing female is alien to me of 2008. The latest work is The Cat After studying dance for years, Inside, the first study, produced with Francesca graduated at the European Homunculus Festival and which was Federation of Oriental Arts becoming finalist for the Rome Prize Balance a teacher of yoga, then she started in Dance. 2003 an artistic collaboration with the director and actor Danilo Conti, In her dance generated by time, the focusing the work on the body in protagonist is the white space, a relation to objects, space and prerequisite for the genesis of figures

65 perceived as meditation and as “expanded” as we go through a risky masks, where the rhythm and the context, knowing that sooner or later, solos are investigating the inner this danger will be swallowed and forces, releasing perfect fragments, detonated; it’s a question of vital and aesthetically harmonious. perception, a question of “ontological Her work is a layer of the essential sensibility for man’s soul.” We return being, based on individual and worldly to rethink or explore the idea of the issues, as an energetic preparation for body in the theatre, a body in space life events of each being, as a vital and that is silent but not silent, absent / intuitive energy. It is a dance of the present, a gesture cut down to the being and giving more than a matter bone because it has already exploded of art, it is an inner figure crystallized inside. in the outside; the everyday without seduction, the embodiment of Here is the body as real power in spite functional thinking in absolute of a twilight Heiddegger and a simplicity. Performing actions psycho-hybridism, here’s the space- sensitive to the least variations where inner body cosmetics, the face of the viewer is led by the hand through blood and flesh, the body that has a the empathy that the scene is giving, thousand daily tentacles whose where he changes and rises from time length goes from a few millimetres to to time even if it has a minimal rigor. the other hemisphere, anf which unites the microcosm to the global level, as in Morin’s words. Therefore, no hyperbody, handled or commodified, eroticized, or glorious, iconified or slain, but the mental body, the one of representation and the possibility that the artist proposes and seeks, as well as he investigates and faces. The scene and the body of Francesca, at last, match with (but they also are) those of her Landscape A succession of slow mental with a capital L, of her existence, structures, of layered philosophical those of her huts and her everyday buildings to make possible Frances’s concerns, nostalgia and openness to miracle. The movement that starts the new, even though unknown. from the mind is not to determine our The scene and the body of thought responsibilities, not to be understood come from afar but embrace and and thought out, but noted, and permeate all of her life as well as her

66 art. Massimo Schiavoni: Where did you train from the cultural and artistic In it, there is all her is life and her points of view? individuality, her philosophy coming from far, but that is one and only from Francesca Proia: I had a professional Beijing to Los Angeles from Tokyo to training in classical ballet and yoga. I Ravenna. And her creativity is nothing have a degree in history of the movie ( but simplicity and ethics, beauty and “surreal elements in the films of Jan soul happy for a physical and Svankmajer”). Three realities had psychological state. And I thank greater importance for me, Francesca Proia again for the long experientially: the first is the Japanese interview she allowed me recently, culture, one that is also expressed and who has shown herself as a daily in poetry. It is expressed in normal girl but confident, eager and specific art forms, literature, film and, willing to show her art and her self, as regards the philosophy of body, who she is and what she can do. dance and butoh Seitai therapy. The first is an understanding of dance as combustion, a way to “extract the pure life that sleeps in the body” (Masaki Iwana). Seitai therapy instead uses a kind of ‘involuntary exercise, it helps the body to train the system of natural reactions, just like cough, fever, yawning and so on, through the induction of a movement that starts as a natural vibration, the farthest Massimo Schiavoni: Who was away from a performed act. The Francesca Proia? Who is she now? second reality is the puppet theatre and the theatre and cinema for Francesca Proia: I think that Frances children. The third one has not been completed yet, but she is yoga. is a work in progress, of whom you can see feet, legs, no more … or I am still a study: there are all the parts of her body but they are sketchy, ill- defined, coarse. The whole idea of the work (that is, once it is complete) might be a living feminine expression, living breathing through her legs…

67 Massimo Schiavoni: What do you techniques, which reflect a great mean by discipline and yoga therapy, master in micro- and macro-cosmic and what is its role in your life? interpenetration.

Francesca Proia: By involving the They range from more technical whole being into a stream that materials, such as cutting the constantly regenerates, yoga helps to sublingual frenulum to insert the leave, every day, all that is not really language better in the cavities of the necessary. Negative experiences skull, so as to stimulate certain therefore remain as a process of physiological and energetic points, up growth, but no longer exist as to the finer techniques of integration suffering. So every day begins with a of individual thought with the flow of new energy, dedicated. In fact, the cosmic consciousness. These feeling is just that you are connected techniques are very necessary in the to an inexhaustible source of West, where there is a philosophy strength. Beyond this, it makes sense proposing, in a systematic way, for me to practice yoga primarily as a capillary action of specific physical form of research. It is true that it has and subtle techniques, to investigate come into our culture, but it is also their deep nature. Yoga takes the true that yoga belongs to India, where body and makes it the subject of a it is an orthodoxy, and therefore has search at 360 degrees. a connection, and some rituals, a truth that cannot be worn as a dress, as Then it does the same thing with the well as we have Western roots. breath. Then with the thought. So create subtle connections between On the other hand, a really interesting body, breath, thought, opening the thing, on account of the many reality to unusual spaces. The thing to questions it raises, is literally entering understand though, and which makes into the body of yoga, not just things even more complicated, is the observing and studying it. It’s a really fact that if these techniques exist it hard uncertain undertaking. So, is it does not mean that yoga is an possible for a Westerner to be instrument of comfort, tranquillity, completely yogi? Well, it is attractive relaxation and so on. Yoga is like a to think we can find a way to mountain or an ocean: they are there, harmonize magically the two no one knows how, and it is fantastic aspects. Meanwhile it is interesting to that we are, but cannot be, assessed consider that the yogic path is an solely in terms of practical value. Yoga extremely practical solution: it is involves a logic of abandonment, re- based on an immense corpus of creation by symbols.

68 given in the West to the philosophy of knowledge, making rationalism triumph, puts an end to the fluid and invisible aspects of pre-rational data. It establishes an opposition between man, the subject of knowledge, and the world, the object of knowledge. The world exists independently from man. The latter stops to look through its breath … ” Massimo Schiavoni: After having studied dance Francesca, what made The puppet theatre because because you closer to Japanese culture and the objects are mainly made of the puppetry? Explain then the initial breath of who gives birth to them, connection and the meeting between almost in a shamanistic the yogic path and your artistic work. sense. Similarly, yoga breathing is a major access route to the thin Francesca Proia: There is a link dimension of man. Compared to the between all these aspects, and it is second question, I can say that my the breath. For the Japanese the spirit artistic production, assuming in each of nature is something with which to case specific concepts and sometimes create relations and marginally to Yoga philosophy, has connections. Itsuo Tsuda Japanese gone to focus on the nature of the philosopher writes: “When I use the subtle body in relation to objects, word breathing, not talking about a space and perception. They are also a simple combination of biochemical number of concepts that have formed oxygen-hemoglobin. Breathing is all a research centre: Kundalini, the lotus vitality, action, love, spirit of posture, the subtle body, kechari communion, intuition, premonition, mudra, Prakriti. As regards the movement. The East still preserves process of work, in a first stage, these aspects under the name of dance, which usually develops prana or ki. Although the West seems insights through a mode of everyday to have met them: they are witnesses research, is each time a core of raw to the word psyche, soul-breath, or material, extracted from an original soul, from which words like soul, language history of the body. This animation, animals, animus, or spirit, language until now has naturally derive; and from which we took words placed and highlighted some issues like spirit, inspiration, about yoga, that the subsequent aspiration, breathing. The importance phase of choreographic montage was

69 literally swallowed, so it that could be to adhere sincerely to their planning, I a spectator trying to find some crack chose to try to make myself a flexible in which to penetrate in a purely power, that could be sensitive to the Western surface. I say until now overall vision that lay on me, growing because I’m slowly turning into a consciously, without saving, an energy different approach, of course, end unto itself, so strong that they planning the long time period, which can literally have to change the for now is still pure research, without perception of the density of the form or deadline. I do not rule and are body. This was the most interesting open to a change in the world of aspect of the job.After experience reference, project structure … Yoga with the Raffaello Sanzio I retained has never, however, a matter to be absolutely nothing, in line with my exposed as such, sometimes it was application choices, to privilege the necessary to take a longer distance waste rather than the accumulation. I than the iconographic identifier, so say this not in the negative, so often that the data do not prove conceptual thought of having to enrich, to abstract representation, but rather acquire qualifications, perceive hyperreal, so as to become themselves as different images each unrecognizable, but intact in its time based on the experiences we nature. live, but everything is in fact already acquired, there’s nothing else to do but stay in their own nature.

Massimo Schiavoni: Your first personal artistic creation was the staging of the show “Dark Light Dark. Tell me about the happy union with Danilo Conti and the solo you danced where you’ve scoured consciousness and physicality of an adolescence increasingly dark and intimate. Massimo Schiavoni: Tell me about your meeting with Romeo Francesca Proia: All my projects, Castellucci. How do you define your starting from their Buio luce buio, work in those years? And what have were realised as a performance you taken from the experience with together with Danilo Conti, writer and the Societas. director, especially related to the field of puppetry, theatre of objects and Francesca Proia: While seeking a way theatre for children. Continuous work

70 with Danilo gave me the opportunity Kundalini is, through the image of the to understand his idea of creation as female snake which goes up in the the assembly of a gradual adjustment vertebral axis form the inside, a climb of a breathing surreal being that just to the world of the unconscious. To begins to exist, while respecting its the west you go unconscious, just as profound nature. Danilo’s vast you descend into a cave, and here you experience in the puppet theatre and climb. In the world of Kundalini Yoga, in the theatre for children has then, everything is upside down. So revealed over time, a native sensibility what starts up, physically and to the memories contained in consciously, with the ascent of everyday objects, which results in the Kundalini, is not a personal ability to make them live all at once. In development, but rather has to do this way objects are freed from their with a process of gradual drift from its utilitarian function and return to their conception of the sense of identity as original sense: magic. The result is a opposed to all which is non-self. At relationship full of meaning, because the end of the week, Valeria is not based on dialogue rather than on necessarily an adult, but someone consumption.At the beginning of who has been touched, perhaps 2004, Danilo and I started working on accidentally, by a contact with its this first solo, based on the tale Valeria deep part. This was no longer possible e una settimana di meraviglie. This is a to walk backwards, back to seeing the story written in 1935 by one of the reality as before. Something along major theoretical and surrealist poets these lines has been burned. The in Prague, Viteszlav Nezval. It deals manifestation of her unconscious with the the protagonist’s passage means for her a path to a detachment from adolescence to adulthood, from her emotions, in a progressive through the onset of first sense of the body as a cosmic space menstruation, and with a week of in miniature. dreams and visions, related to the body of the protagonist and her feelings and people that are around her. This was the suggestion that initially led to the creation of what was and is just fundamentally a work of pure dance, pure presence in space. Parallel to the work a survey is running, theoretical and especially physics, the concept of Kundalini.

71 Massimo Schiavoni: In 2005 you Massimo Schiavoni: Then comes the received the alert and the Scenario work Il non fare e uno, where in the Mention Prize at the Iceberg Prize first one the body comes alive with with the second solo danced the space slowly assuming its Something for the , inter alia invited to characteristics and the second Tokyo at the Session House in the involves with empathy the viewer project Italo-Japanese Bodies / attracting the eye. In these latest Others. Here, where the body has no solos which were the yogic face, what communicates the music techniques you took and which of composer Oskar Sala and sensitive cosmos did you search for with Danilo issues and relationships that begin to Conti? Don’t you think your work emerge in this next study? should be increasingly emerging as a sort of “non-dance” choreography Francesca Proia: In a body which can drawn from philosophical and not hold tension, the breath is free to anthropological dimensions? propagate freely to the tip of the hair. Similarly in “Something for the Francesca Proia: Through the breath, Hall” is a substance the body sensitive the body can change its basic energy to vibrations of Oskar Sala’s patterns. Can thus become an entity trautonium. What struck me about his ductile, malleable, capable, lowering music is that it seems designed to his voice, to slip in each hole, to pass create concentration on an empty under the door or, conversely, to place, which ends up identifying with become more noticeable, larger?. It is the body itself, which becomes true, I speak of the subtle body and nothing but a shell. Another image not a physical body, but in the end the that the music inspired me was that of difference is minimal. It simply has to the public in meditation in front of the move the perception and self- navel of a huge black space. How to consciousness between them. So make the body a navel? Some yoga “doing nothing” as you said, trying to positions suggested the idea of the identify with the space, defined as air node, so that the body, in a tight in one place. “One” tries his posture, let out for themselves the suspension from the perception of vital prana. Or positions that make the time, through the kechari mudra, the body like a clenched fist. So it was a mudra that brings language press in process of the body as a hole to the inner cavities within the skull. And access the music. The body on stage in this process, it seeks to bring the has no face, or rather it has different audience, calling for empathy, faces because they are immersed in a through a continuous movement of pre-conceived space. rotation, the perceptual awareness of

72 a circuit in the form of an eight that is physical act of appropriation. So my in the bust, complementary to the job requires absolutely no knowledge, same mudra. If you try to suspend the but just curiosity to contact a path breath for a moment, without tension, that goes in the direction of an you realize that at that moment you exploration of the subtle body. Even cannot have desires. You are in when I teach yoga, the thing that another world. I am interested in worries me most is the possibility of philosophies that can have immediate having a clear technical language to repercussions on the physical and real convey as accurately as possible, even things. to those who have no previous knowledge of yoga, even to a child. However there is always an effort to cater to those who come to you, even in the shows it is like that: my attitude (and slim body, not emotional) changes, imperceptibly, according to the perception I have of the public.

Massimo Schiavoni: In the circuit Francesca Proia contemporary Massimo Schiavoni: And what role did theatrical dance of the being- ie, the spectators have in all this? Do they interior figure, the survival perceive or are they estranged even choreography – where is set in the including the state of things, do they critical, semiotic and identify or do they have to feel and phenomenological universe of a more have a philosophical and virtuous generation, technology, psychological baggage not indifferent drama and especially in these recent to your artistic career? years multiplying up beyond belief? Francesca Proia: In my work, the Francesca Proia: The most important media remains the main body, which thing is the strength and inspiration to is a reality that we all experience, of pursue a line of research that has which all have a perception, a history internal motivations and roots, and and a vision. Empathy, even if it is that there are therefore no restrictions subtle, through the body is therefore on time or space. But also the ability the first point of contact with the to detach themselves from time to viewer, an elementary process that time. It is always Tsuda who writes: can trigger a process of vision as a “We know that there are times when

73 everything works perfectly, and degree of individual tolerance to resist others in which everything goes compression etc.. At first, we must wrong. And because in humans there work actively during the up cycles and are alternative periodic moments rest during low cycles. Efforts during where the tendency to contraction is the cycles are not profitable and low accelerating, and times when, instead, tend to commit excesses during high it is an increased tendency to cycles. The image of man, according linger. Call the first cycles high and to this view, is quite different from low cycles the second ones. A failure that imposed on us by society that happening during a low cycle is man (and therefore also the artist) is a discouraging us, while the same machine. (…) The yield of man is failure can be overcome, if suffered neither uniform nor controllable. I’m during a high cycle. During high developing the philosophy that holds cycles, the process of compression that man is a man before anything and discharge of energy takes place else, and should not be a slave of his easily. If, in a high sky one wants to do creation. ” something but he hesitates and looks when it comes down cycle even the wish disappears. There are broadly three types of cycles, depending on the length of their duration: the great cycle lasts three and a half years or seven years, the average cycle lasts eighty weeks, the small cycle lasts four to eight weeks. There are cycles that are shorter during the day or during the week. Ovulation in women Massimo Schiavoni: “Nothing female also suffer the influence of cycles, so is alien to me” is 2008. How did the that it accentuates or weakens, show and how you show here the lengthens or shortens every two or body and unconscious effects, three times. The classification (of regenerating or energy? mankind) in 12 basic types then shows the direction (body) to which you walk Francesca Proia: The show is inspired along the energy compressed in order by the novel Jeskyně Baradla (cave to download, but not enough to Baradla), author and painter Eva understand the individual. We also see Svankmajerova. Baradla is a living the duration of individual cycles, the organism, both a woman and a way in which it is discharged, the place. Yoga philosophy called Prakriti

74 possible by the infinite, to manifest as Massimo Schiavoni: This year the the body due to an energy studio The cat Inside was a finalist for imbalance. Immense body, which the Rome Prize Balance Dance. Where contains the elements of nature, its to put this solo and especially quality is female. Nothing from a Francesca Proia as an artist and as a female combination, hazardous, woman toward that direction is between these two figures, belonging going? What would you like to see to two very different contexts, happen or who change to the world of geographical and historical. Prakriti is contemporary dance and performing a process that takes on, through the art and shelters where you find figure of Baradla, a personality, a yourself in the dreams and heart, a vulnerability through which disappointments that you made and knowing, loving, and loving as that you still want to achieve? which surrounds us and what we in our turn we are. Prakriti can then Francesca Proia: The cat inside is become a kind of rare hermit female, certainly a new beginning than all yogini, a dark body, slowly crossing previous work, but I can not even the Eastern world and Western place it, limit it in my idea, and give, world. In structure, female Nothing is with the words, a form that I would alien to me is developed around the rather take on course. So I can say the idea of progressive construction of a same thing for me, because one thing den animal, composed of different that I find very important to me right objects, whose inhabitants, and the now is not inadvertently put myself in rite itself, imagination, preparation of the words of the limits defined in the site capable of receiving the some way or another. Instead I want darkness, and a singing. Baradla- to be protean, leaving room to not Prakriti, therefore, elusive, is built like know what they are. Compared to the a sculpture made of waste stored dance in Italy, I would just bring back, objects and scraps, but whose spirit in fact, the recent experience of may be felt, for lightning, only during Balance Award for making a general the dynamic structure. At the end of observation: I think it’s a good thing to the process, when all is ready, what have the opportunity to showcase remains is a pile of crumpled their work simply, at a stage still remnants. Than the space of narrative, embryonic, to have the opportunity to the stage is designed as a place of obtain cooperation and resources also biological transformation, in which a important assets, continuing in their body-mouth created by exhalation, projects. It is not so obvious that and destroys through cycles of greed. certain “institutions” is at stake for the dance of independent research,

75 especially as the large structures can initiative, for me it was an occasion of provide an important place of vision very fruitful meeting with organizers (here was the Auditorium of Rome), a and directors of theaters good number of professionals abroad. Furthermore, not only the and enough for a prize winner (here evening, but the festival has seen a 20.000) to lay the foundations for tremendous number of public, a sign their work. that at times are the same programming to ghettoise the dance of the Italian research, even in preference, for economic reasons or for lack of desire to deepening of the subject, the “packets” ready, rather than opt for a genuine policy of cooperation and support in reality for what it feels real interest. Where I hide? Rather, where I can regenerate …. In myself and in my affections. Another company has received good cooperation with a foreign http://www.myspace.com/francesca structure. Without mythologizing the proia

76 Aesthetics And Computation: The Origins Of Generative Art

Pasquale Napolitano

which is being run by formal systems of rules implemented by different programming languages and technological platforms.

In many generative works, that were produced during the last five years, the form is the result of a structuring process whose developments the designer knows only in part, because After some years of a qualified and he simply produces a kind of creative activity, it is now known to “configurative hypothesis” and then most people that the images lets the process develop its own produced with a generative technique computation and visualization. Every are more adjustable, as they are the image, in its very details is a process: result of the information flow being it is an image-processing, an image seized in a split second; then the that is articulated as a process, not a information is adjusted through the process we see through images. interface, that is some kind of “design process” that gives life to real metadata rather than to images, videos or sounds. We’re dealing with pictures, videos and sounds not yet real.

These images seem to arise from some recent process which is the direct result of the development of digital technology and production Sol Lewitt – Moma Exhibition in New York computational logics. In generative design, visual forms are images that From handling and configuration of come from a process of computation visual form, the designer then shifts

77 his attention from the mechanisms dynamics, and those processes which underlying to the modes of display. can be activated by the logic of the These forms are free to show their medium, which does not have a features in the electronic screen. But tangible visual form. if the creation of systems and their implementation become the focus of In order to motivate the general the generated project, and give the comments on art data mapping, we picture the role of “result” in the have to explain some outstanding educational process underlying the projects [3]. For example, John Simon system, the visual plan is not deserves showing connections in his downgraded and seen as a common works between new media and material display of an nonmaterial modern art movements and figures, process: indeed, it is the precise such as Mondrian, Klee, and Sol Le articulation of the system building Witt . Moreover, while the field of the plan with the management of certain new media is rapidly and excessively visual effects that determines the growing, and while artists in all field, in which what we define disciplines are getting used to generative visual design works. computers tools in their work, there are still a few artists who focus on one For, if generative designers are of the most fundamental and intrinsic furthermore interested in products concepts associated with digital and solutions for the scientific computers: computation. (industrial and technological) research [2], in their projects they always tend to filter all with a specific attention to the visual output and its perceptual qualities.

In terms of the image, the scene presented by the generative design expresses itself today in the ability to collimate heterogeneous levels: the John F. Simon Jr – Every_Icon specific media and techniques of computer and digital image, a set of Simon searches for aesthetic aims cultural influences from contemporary systematically and in real-time science, and a drive to “put into computation. In fact, in his first job on shape” and give sensitive consistency line Every Icon (1998) Simon used real to processes developed using time computation to create works computational systems. All those that have a starting point in time, but

78 with no interruption. However, you to the notions of purpose and matter can find real examples of these works in general. The information itself in modern art (for example in Kinetic seems to have lost its body, and has and Programming Art of Group T and become an abstract quality that can Group N in Italy [4]), Simon pursues its create a smooth transition between own unique strategy: he uses artificial different states of the matter “(Paul, life, cell automation and other 2003). computer techniques to create complex images [5]. The process is Paul’s analysis is deals with on the loss controlled by a set of parameters that of the body and is often promoted as constitute the “genome” of the a benefit for the technology. The form. These parameters consist of artistic and aesthetic focus on the rules that govern the cell process. body is evidently in contrast with the scientific and engineering practices, If Simon’s images are the result of a that have dematerialized the same real time computation in a work, Lisa body as far as contemporary Jevbratt’s were often driven by technological information were Internet data. In a project of 2001, invented and developped. In Robert Mapping the Web Infome Lisa Diodato‘s words [7]: “The digital image Jevbratt had developed a special is not, one might say, strictly” image “, software that allows the easy creation but body-image, since they have an of web crawlers on the web [6] and ordered sequence of binary units, or visualization of collected data. Then otherwise strings of characters that he invited many artists to use this evolve in different levels of a syntax software and create their own that builds the coincidence between crawlers, and also to display in these strings and sensitive different ways the data collected. This appearances.” project embodied a new work by an artist who appeared as a designer of These projects stress the peculiar software environments, which were nature of the digital image, especially then available to others. with what Couchot [8] had established as full control of the When Christiane Paul wrote about image point by point. Here, each database, visualization and data element in the flow-image has been mapping, she made the following in fact programmed and equipped comments on the materialization of with a behaviour. The pixels are not ‘digital age: “In the digital age, the only a “medium” to show the visual concept of embodiment is applicable trace of an agent but become an not only to our physical body but also entity through the use of which is an

79 new visual process occurs. [4] “Per tutti questi gruppi valeva l’esigenza costitutiva e fondante di un’interpersonalità nell’attività di ricerca che fosse il primo passo verso un’oggettivazione della produzione artistica stessa” (Giovanni Anceschi, , in Max Bense, Estetica, 1965, p. 8) [5] Ambizione ed aspirazione condivisa da un filone estremamente Mapping the Web Infome vitale, quale ”L’Arte Biologica”, una costola dell’arte generativa che pone l’accento sul governo e la programmazione di processi organici, di cui un valido rappresentante nel panorama italiano è Nicola Toffolini. Estetica del [6]Virtuale Un crawler è un programma Notes: informatico che automaticamente si sposta da un sito Web ad un altro che [1] Giovanni Anceschi, L’oggetto della Image. De acquisisce una copia testuale di tutti i Raffigurazione, Etas, Milano, 2002 l’optique au numérique documenti visitati e li inserisce in un [2] In particolare teorie dei sistemi di indice. comunicazione, della vita artificiale e [7] Roberto Diodato, della complessità. , Bruno Mondatori, Milano, [3] Warren Sack, Aesthetics of 2005, p.20 Information Visualization, pdf [8] Edmond Couchot, disponibile all’url: , Hermès, http://people.ucsc.edu/wsack Paris, 1988, p. 132

Sull’estetica di Bense

80 Video Letter: When The Video Becomes Conscience

Francesco Bertocco

pictures (Polaroid photos and snapshots), both of them as sender and receiver at different times. There are no dramaturgical rules in this exchange. Their video-letters are part of their daily life like everyday gestures; these video-letters are extracted from their conscience; they are fragments of images and realities which, once joined together, form a There is a story which is divided into pyramid of identities at whose peak is two parts like two consciences which the fleeting, sovereign video. interlace with each other, fading into each other and embracing each other. The conclusion of this exchange Shuji Terayana, a person with close coincides with Terayana’s death. From connections to the theatre, a poet and that moment onwards, Tanikawa a person involved in the avant-garde started correcting the editing of these film industry on the one hand; “letters”. He made some changes to Shuntaro Tanikawa, a poet on the the sound track and closed the circle other. which had begun with the sending of the very first video. Video Letter is a story about an exchange, about a passage between When Video Letter was being created, identity and image, between screen video itself was in the middle of its (the video caption in the title own experimentation. American and highlights it) and biography. Between European artists were transforming 1982 and 1983 Tanikawa and Terayana their actions into analogical decided to exchange some visual sequences, into repeatable and letters. They recorded some private diffusible instances. Diffusion and video-tapes in which they compiled reproduction, in fact, are two of the personal images, memories, words, passages which manage the newspaper cuttings, notes and small interchange of information and they

81 are channels within which voice. communication is realised and can be developed. What Tanikawa and Baron Gysing and William Borroughts Terayana did, which seems to be wrote together Third Man, a book something modestly narcissist, was to realised by the two of them, which let art enter the interstice which goes beyond the authority of the precedes the intimate meeting of two authorship of it. It generates people. The late French critic something which goes beyond the Raymond Bellour’s words left us the strict meaning of the words in it. In greatest exegesis (critical their minds, the reunion of two people interpretation) of Terayana and can generate something different, Tanikawa’s work. something which goes beyond the origin of words. A third mind coming from the other two on a level through which neither of them can pass.

Probably Bellour was thinking about this book (published in 1977 in French, ten years before the article) when he wrote about Video Letter. What is more surprising is that the collective effort realises itself so clearly in a Shuji Terayama video whose objectivity is so explicit. The collage by Tanikawa and Terayana Raymond Bellour said that Video is able to sidestep the specificity of Letter has four qualities. The first of the medium and face a generative them is based on the question “who is process. speaking?” Who is it, Tanikawa or Terayana? “ In spite of the simple interchange sender/receiver which is always observed in all the 16 Video Letters, the perception of the difference between the two identities fades.

There are parts of the video letters in which the image, the fragment of life, a picture, a newspaper cutting does Shuji Terayama not allow you to understand who is recording that object, that word, that The second quality of Video Letters

82 refers to the identity and the signs Video Letter is that it effects a fusion which we see as a sole trace. “Am I an between the expressive media which invisible man?” Terayana asks himself is the same kind of fusion (and What can be seen of our identity from confusion) of the one which takes those objects, those pictures and place between the methods of image those images which appear and and he who enunciates them. The disappear on the screen, through it? media of Video Letter are We identify ourselves in those two Photography first of all conceived as agents on the basis of their the way through which memory experiences, (we do not know reveals itself and, above all, as the anything about them but we are free pre-eminent object of to interpret them, to stick to our “first” communication. Photography impressions) of their memories which reminds us of who we were; that become signs on the screen, or better, sometimes words are far from the “signs scattered like sand , which float images they refer to, that we need to between pure contingency and some see things in order to be reminded of stopovers” (Bellour) them, in order to let old times come to the surface and moments become The third quality moves in the territory blurred because lost in time. of semiotics. Where do Terayana and Tanikawa come from? In particular, Terayana shows some pictures of his where did they met? The territory mother, young and beautiful. He where they meet each others seems shows her as every child would do, to be that body of image which they remembering his mother. Right after have composed together. In the video he shows the same lady old and words spread out; they investigate dying. So, memories become their own sense (which is random). evidence of something which passed First comes the sound, then the maybe too fast (like turning over the object. Finally the sense, which is pages of a picture book of memories, crucial. All these can exist in a sole a gesture so lacerating and full of body, tied to 2 minds which dignity). materialise their communication in a unique territory, a space between two opposite poles which are intimately fading into one another.

Bellour put the element which is missing, the substance, at the end of his criticism. “The 4th great quality of Shuji Terayana-Shuntaro Tanikawa – Video Letters

83 Bellour suggests that we should look language and image, where at photography as one object in a everything seems to be hybrid, vague, world made of objects, as one sign of somehow uncatchable but which is a world made of signs. We do not born again in this uncertainty which, have to stick to its ontology, but to in a mysterious way, makes look for its participation in this everything more real. universe made up of signs. The greatness of Video Letter is inside this crossing of “bridges” (a last loan from http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama Raymond Bellour),. It lies between _video-letter.html

84 The Future Of Journalism: Comparing Models

Simona Fiore

journalism and publishing lies in the search of some new models which are able to satisfy on the one hand, the needs of the “new” consumers who are demanding and fickle, and on the other, the needs of the sector operators, journalists in particular, who are facing a stagnant condition. Internet, once again, plays a fundamental role. No longer a rival to Are journalism and publishers dying? the traditional media, as it was Are we watching their decline? Even if considered to be initially, it could these assessments seem true today, become the solver of the present they are so only in part. Journalism crisis. Some probable alternatives are and publishers are facing a serious arriving from the USA and exploit the period of crisis. The responsibility for dynamics of participation open to this condition is probably to be everyone and sharing, both of which attributed to an inadequate business are typical of the web. model which paid little attention to the changes which have affected The new emerging models like society and consumers in recent hyper-localism, no-profit or crowd- years. The Internet has surely played a funding seem to be possible paths for significant role in this situation, having the future of journalism. proposed a “long tail” offer able to satisfy more sectorial and niche demands.

We have seen the birth of “multitasking” users who do not use one medium rather than another but prefer to use them simultaneously in order to better satisfy their needs.

The solution to the decline of

85 Spot.us is one of the projects which the inquiry into the “garbage has been the most successful. This whirlpool of the Pacific Ocean” web platform was created in realised by the free-lance journalist California by David Cohn thanks to a Lindsey Hoshaw for the New York loan of 340.000 USD from the Knight Times. She managed to complete this Foundation, an American institution inquiry thanks to the around 100 working with one precise aim: “Our donators of Spot.us who financed it. mission is to support investigative and Among them, there also was the local journalism…One of our guideline founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. philosophies is that journalism is a process not a product(…)The other Crowd-funding Journalism is guideline is that journalism should be spreading also in Europe, where participatory”. people look at the Americans in order to learn some alternative path to Spot.us is based on three elements: reproduce them contextually participative journalism, crowd- following the paradigm which says funding and local journalism. think global and act local. Participative journalism and crowd- funding combine together in this project through the democratic process of sharing: users can debate and decide on the subject to be assigned to a free-lance journalist; they estimate the expenses for the inquiry and they finance it through some micro-payments of 20 USD (on average) not exceeding 20%of the cost of every single article; this helps Last month Antonio Rossano in avoiding any kind of pressure from presented Pulitzer at the Working external groups. The other element on Capital in Naples. Pulitzer is a project which the project is based is local based on crowd-funded reporting and journalism: only this year Spot.us on the general crowd-funding. collected 45 thousand dollars in the S. Pulitzer differs from Spot.us because Francisco area, leading to the it is not a no-profit project. It presents realisation of 40 inquiries related to itself as a service structure. For this the territory. reason its aim is to produce a revenue. This revenue comes from an quota An index of the success of this which is applied to the funds alternative method of journalism was

86 collected. This helps in paying Pulitzer and Spot.us present management costs and always themselves as a possible alternative guaranteeing the achievement of its path for the journalism of the future. It objectives and those of the subjects is difficult to define which models will which are financed through the be the most effective ones in the platform. Pulitzer was born with a future: what seems to be quite clear is very precise scope, Antonio Rossano the time of change this field is facing: explains: “..to become a platform able it is an innovative change, a symptom to sustain young journalists who, since of a change in the perception of this they are not yet well-known and for job, which is seen to be more this reason unable to “sell” themselves democratic and participatory and not on the information market, need as elitist as it once used to be. something to finance their journalistic activities.

http://www.spot.us/

87 Link index

Cimatics 2009: Festival and City http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1325 http://www.cimatics.com/festival2009/

Joost Rekveld’s Study And Research Lines http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld/wp/index.php

Fluctuating Intelligences Jonah Brucker-cohen: New Media, From Web 2.0 To Web 4.0 http://coin-operated.com/ http://www.data.ie/wordpress/ http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/ http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/ http://www.bumplist.net/

Christian Zanesi, The Act Of Listening http://www.ina.fr/grm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique concrète http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival Présences électronique http://www.grmtools.org

Less Talk, More Action. An Interview To The Yes Men

HTTP://WWW.beyondtalk.net http://www.theyesmen.org/join http://iht.greenpeace.org

HTTP://WWW.beyondtalk.net

88 http://theyesmen.org/

The Activist East: Among Guitars And Gentrification http://ifamy.jp/en/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LpB1E4EE7k http://freeter-union.org/ http://www.cortguitar.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0lGFdfp8Zs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LpB1E4EE7k http://www.frankfurter-info.org/Nachrichten/proteste-der-sudkoreanischen- arbeiterinnen-bei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mori http://www.mori.co.jp/en/ http://www.omotesandohills.com/english/index.html http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/travel/15tokyo.html?8dpc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pbKvESThn0&NR=1

Monsieur Morin: For A Complex Thought Ethic http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/index.php/11/edgar-morin-evento-11-nov embre-video-dellevento/ http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/index.php/category/edgar-morin/ http://lavoixdunet.eu/

Distributed Creativity Models: The Crowdsourcing Mediamatic Travel: Online Cultural Turism http://travel.mediamatic.net/

89 http://www.eindeutscherpavillon.de/ http://www.mediamatic.net/page/124558/en http://www.mediamatic.net/page/126816/en http://www.napoliest.it/ http://www.mediamatic.net/page/101520/en

Babel Of Innovation The Screen And The City.continuous City Di Marianne Weems http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/ http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/about_staff_MarianneWeems.html

Francesca Proia: The Breath Of The Subtle Body http://thaisoul.ru http://www.myspace.com/francescaproia

Aesthetics And Computation: The Origins Of Generative Art Video Letter: When The Video Becomes Conscience http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama_video-letter.html

The Future Of Journalism: Comparing Models http://www.spot.us/

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