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

Licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs - Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY- NC-ND 2.5)

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E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli

Cover design: Eva Scaini

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

Claudia D'Alonzo Fluid Rules Of Audiovideo Geometry. An Interview With Scott Arford ...... 3

Lucrezia Cippitelli Almost Cinema 2009. Looking For The Kinematic Effect ...... 12

Barbara Sansone Happy Birthday Artfutura ...... 16

Elena Gianni New Educational Models: The Amazing Ciid Institute ...... 22

Giulia Baldi Joy Ito: On Freedom Of Choice, Namely Creative Commons ...... 27

Marco Mancuso The Recycled Sound Of Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco ...... 31

Alex Foti Climattivista! The Wind Of Climate Justice Arrives In Italy ...... 41

Salvatore Iaconesi Reff/rewf. Short Chronicle Of A Contagion ...... 44

Serena Cangiano Stelarc’s Extrabody: The Technologic Chimera ...... 50

Teresa De Feo In The Beginning Was Cybernetics. Relation Between Science & Artists ...... 57

Giulia Simi Plots In The Net: Boone Oakley And Web Storytellers ...... 63 Micha Cardenas I Have Nothing To Say. Emergency – Emergent Agency ...... 66

Lucrezia Cippitelli Future Places Festival. Between Digital And Local Cultures ...... 79

Stefano Raimondi From Frieze To Ed Rusha. October In London With Eyes Of An Art Critic ...... 83

Annamaria Monteverdi Cinematography Of The Stone Age: Woyzeck By William Kentridge ...... 87

Marco Riciputi Cam Girls And Sex On Second Life: A Report ...... 94

Marco Mancuso Sosolimited: Deconstruction Time Again ...... 97

Alessandra Migani A Guide To Listening. Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention ...... 106

Francesco Bertocco Kenneth Anger And The New American Cinema ...... 110 Fluid Rules Of Audiovideo Geometry. An Interview With Scott Arford

Claudia D'Alonzo

Since 1996 he has7hz worked as a creator, a promoter and a cultural catalyst. In fact he founded a multifunctional space open to everyone and mainly to all artists in San Francisco. Arford’s activity is varied but coherent. A common point charecterizes his production, and that is the focus of a research based on the nature of space as a medium of ineraction between For more than a decade Scott Arford two forces, that is the fusion of light has been one of the reference names and the physical power of sound, to for art and music in relation to the build a space of experience and new media in the Bay Area of San human perceptions. Francisco, and was awarded a Honorable Mention for Digital Music in Scott Aford’s rules of audiovisual the Prix Ars Electronica 2005. buildings are flexible and fluid, as well as sound and light have a fluid Scott Arford is an architect, he is a substance. Arford learned this lecturer and he creates sound and attention to the space from video installations, exhibitions, live architecture. But, thanks to the fusion media sets, recordings in studios. A between sound and image, he variety of media, experiences and redraws the rules of the architectural outcomes related to a deep space to zero, and goes beyond the theoretical thought. And this is surface, over and above the extreme outlined through the works and limit of it. projects he carries on with other artists, including for example Scott

Jenerik, Kit Clayton, Francisco Lopez e John Duncan.

3 has always been a statement about of the power of sound.

Claudia D’Alonzo: Can you talk about Still Life (almost), Another Day in Three Acts? and in particular, what is its relation with your previous video works? How did you choose to create a work namely connected to the idea of cinema as a mass audiovisual language? Claudia D’Alonzo: We would like to start talking about your project 7hz. Scott Arford: Still Life is a personal How was it born, how has it meditation on what I saw to be the developed in the last years and what world around me at the time of its could be its future developments and making. It is about depression, fear, its potentialities? greed, lost love, war… the world coming to a stand still (a heavy mood Scott Arford: 7hz is a warehouse for sure!). It borrows all of its imagery space in San Francisco where artists from a great zombie film – Let and musicians live and work. It is also Sleeping Corpses Lie (english title). I the space and name of the studio in am a big fan of zombie films, which I have produced nearly all of my particularly the surreal, dreamy, own work and is sometimes available beautiful ones. The ones where style, for others to record in as well. For atmosphere, and imagery drive the many years it was a performance story. This is pure cinema for me. So in space for noise and experimental that sense, the idea of pure imagery music and an occasional cinema for which moves toward abstraction, Still experimental video. It has been the Life shares with a lot of my other, label for self released videos and c. It non-figural works. In terms of mood, is the name of my website. 7hz has speed, and atmosphere, it is not acted as a sort of a brand name or unlike 7 Illinois Street or the Airport public face for numerous sound, videos. There is a somewhat sinister video, production projects that I have sense of dreadful emptiness that been involved with, often in permeate all of these. collaboration with others. So 7hz is/has been a lot of things but always From a perspective of technique Still focused on experimental media. Most Life is related to a cable access importantly, since its inception 7hz television show that Michael Nine and

4 I produced in 1998 called Fuck TV. trying to express on a metaphoric Each episode had a topic which we level – the desperation and loss, etc. would explore by gathering as much that I mentioned before. The Zombie footage as possible, riots or is an unstoppable virus that spreads executions for instance, resample it to everything it touches. It is a from various monitors and displays. manifestation of the western idea of This process would drastically change apocalypse and it infects/affects both its look and meaning and we would the individual and the society. re-edit it into something new. In both cases the soundtracks are original. As Sampling is an important element in with most of my projects, the this story. The Zombie survives on motivation comes from an replication and multiplication ad overwhelming desire to do it. I don’t infinitum: it is a cancer. Like the usually try to explain or rationalize it cancer cell, the zombie is not an at the time. original, it is a reduced facsimile with a program to replicate. Sampling too can be seen as a kind of cancer, a process of zombification. There is one step removed of originality. And the sample spreads to mass culture, it becomes a meme and infects others. An example of this can be seen in the history of American prime-time animated TV shows from the Flintstones to Family Guy and beyond. Here, not only is the nuclear family theme consistently sampled, resampled and replayed, a great deal Claudia D’Alonzo: Why did you choose of the humor in these shows depends to make the found footage of images on sampling other TV shows and Pop from the TV screen? With this kind of Culture icons. This is true of countless “sampling” not only the original flim TV shows and movies. In fact, to a comes into the work but also its viewer without pop culture literacy, possible medium. these shows would hardly be funny and probably not make any sense! Scott Arford: Still Life is a kind of And now even the Zombie is eating detoured zombie film. The itself. Current zombie films can now connotation of Zombie was dispense entirely with the exposition appropriate for the kind of ideas I was and explanation of what a zombie is,

5 how it came to be, how to kill it, etc. perhaps not always so critically! because the virus of “Zombie Film” is so widespread. We all know what has happened, the take-over by zombies is already a given condition! This is a descending spiral of stillness which occurs the expense of originality, and creativity, and enlightenment.

In Still Life, it was important to sample not only the Zombie, but to sample it from a screen to implicate the medium – the TV – as the tool for spreading the virus. I wanted to bring forward the process of decay that Marco Mancuso: Let’s talk about your zombification entails. When one activity as a musician; your last becomes a Zombie, there is a rotting – production Solid State Flesh / Solid of the flesh, of the potential for State Sex, was created in individual thought, and ultimately of collaboration with Francisco Lopez, civilization itself. In re-shooting the and you also worked with Randy Yau e screen, the image/original becomes Michael Nine in the past. How much undead. We are witness to the important was working with Francisco struggle as the original film and the TV Lopez, who is namely against all visual screen itself fight for dominance of representation of sound? And how did the image. The phasing effect of the visual tension affect your music style? scan lines, zooming into the image, And more generally, what are your pixelation, and over-saturation of the main influences in sound, in music color, all infect and deteriorate the and in visual arts? image. Scott Arford: It was a great pleasure One last thing, regarding sampling. I to work with Francisco Lopez. He is a would like to qualify some of these friend and I have admired his music statements, because I don’t believe for a long time. I really appreciate his that sampling is inherently concept of absolute music because it problematic, cancerous, or that it focuses the listener on what is causes zombies to manifest. It is clear important about the music – what it that sampling can produce incredible, sounds like. When I do studio work, original, and inspiring works. And, as this is also my goal. I think the Solid you point out, i have used it often and State collaboration, more than

6 anything, is an intellectual influence on my aesthetic sensibilities collaboration. lt was created with the was the landscape of western Kansas same ideas and the same goals – as where I grew up (which is not flat, but something to be heard, a listening rather low frequency rolling hills with experience. some minimal punctuation provided by occasional trees, buildings and My main artistic influences have sheltered under the canopy of the always been those artists and friends awesome and massive skies), the that I have been closest to. drone of driving a tractor for hours on Particularly when I was starting out end, the way of cats, and the smell of making noise and experimental music, Lilac trees. the techniques, technologies, and process really trumped any sense of style and there were fewer precedents to follow. Which is not to say there weren’t plenty of them, but i wasn’t really that aware of the history of experimental music. So I would spend hours with friends playing around with old gear, trying new ways to make sound, going to flea markets, mixing tracks, and generally laughing about music. This was, and still is, a huge influence for me. Marco Mancuso: As a musician and as There are of course lots of other a visual artist you are clearly things which have inspired me: influenced by your background. In Fortean phenomena particularly UFO some of your audiovisual works, such and ghost stories, the collages of as 7 Illinois Street, industrial ports, Robert Rauschenberg and Kurt landscapes, night industrial settings, Schwitters, books by Philip K. Dick, or bird’s eye views, are used as direct Stanislaw Lem and William S. visual staff. In other works such as Burroughs, films of David Cronenberg, Static Room you concentrate on the David Lynch, and John Carpenter. architecture of your visual settings to Some musical influences have been create a more immersive space, as it ELO, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of also happens in your Recombinant War of the Worlds, David Bowie, Media Lab or Bmw Pavillion Skinny Puppy, and the brilliant experience. And at last in others, such Anckarström recordings. A huge

7 as Untitled for television, your work So as an artist, I can work more freely reduces the audiovisual system to the with space. In 7 Illinois Street, the most essential and rudimentary, with architectural/spatial thought begins a reference to Bauhaus, to minimalist with content of the work (buildings theories and to the idea-shape-colour and industrial landscapes), the study. You declare that “architecture spatialization of the sound, and the provides an exact counterpoint to creation of new fictional spaces from media art”; that’s why I would like to real ones. In Static Room there is also ask you what are the similarities and the creation of new, albeit more the main differences in the three abstract, visual spaces. One of the works you named, or better which is representative images of Static Room the border between the two is of a tape glitch which really looks disciplines? like it could be a building, an electro- castle. So as visual compositions, Scott Arford: At a very base level my there is the use of space in the the approach to all creative endeavors is mode of classical visual design and spatial in nature. It is an intuitive film theory. Images, abstractions, organizational process, that somehow objects all exist within the frame, they comes naturally. In architecture this overlap or occlude each other. relationship is very direct. Ideally, Weather real or imagined, concrete or Architecture it is about creating abstract, spaces are created by the tangible, physical spaces. With Sound formal interactions of these patterns and Video, the realization of space is of flickering light. This is the space maybe more abstract, but the thought within the screen. process is the same. I would argue that I am much more free to explore Perhaps more interesting is the space space in sound and video works than the screen can create outside of itself. in Architecture. Architects are 7 Illinois Street was originally required to reconcile spatial concerns designed as a 10 channel surround through a very difficult reality of installation. So the space enclosed by building codes, budgets, utilities, the screens suddenly becomes a functionality, ownership, and the tranquil field surrounded by these entire institution of building and surreal landscapes. The soundtrack construction. The kinds of geometries furthers the illusion that there are no that give form to buildings are more walls, only the industrial landscapes. often legal, political, and financial in Now we are talking about creating nature than they are spatial or space! creative. Static room and Untitled for

8 Televisions take this idea further. In Marco Mancuso: The relationship part because the images are not between sound, sight and space is representational and in part because something physical, permanent, or it of their intense visual vibrations. regards space itself in all your These strobing and flickering patterns audiovisual work. Espacially when you completely change (charge!) the room work with sound this becomes a and turn the idea of watching an physical signal such as it happens in encapsulated screen image inside out. Infrasound o Tv-Iv, and it turns into a Viewing becomes experiencing, the video signal as in last century’s image is no longer the introspective Vasulka experiences. This sound inwardly sucking pull of a represented generates a psycho-physical space displayed on a 2-dimensional connection with the audience, it flat screen. Image becomes mirror moves through a tridimensional and reflects back on the viewer and space, and it creates sound the physical experience. The video- architectures and landscapes. In this generated audio signal pulses with concept as well there is a strong the viewers retina which expands and connection with an important contracts to the strobing visuals. The architectural topic: so how do you room itself changes shape as shadows work with sound, with its shift and move about. The screen spatialisation, its physical nature, and becomes a spotlight, searching, what are the main differences with reaching out from its flat world to your works on sound used in your touch and caress the new dimensions albums, in your studios, as a pure around it. This is the architecture of musician? sound and light! Scott Arford: Sound is a physical force, images too can be physical. But in order to establish that relationship for a viewer, and play with and manipulate it as an artist, certain technical and physical requirements must be met. What I mean is that a PA system must be powerful and correctly placed in a space, images must be bright, and well located, etc. Every nightclub, squat, gallery, warehouse, etc has a different PA, materiality, size, etc. – every space is different and performing is always a

9 site specific act. As a live performer, whatever technology is available to you have much greater control over you”. I went home, plugged the radio these factors. You have no control, into the reverb into the 4-track, and however, over how an individual is started recording! And it was going to listen or view a CD or DVD. amazing, the overdriven reverb So works created for this should be modulated the radio reception in the different. Low frequency effects, and most incredible way and the two other site-specific considerations do devices created new sounds together. not make sense. Composition, The first cassette Interference : attentiveness, direction, stereo effect Pattern came from that. and sound quality, timing, pacing, etc. These elements (which are often forgiven in a live setting) become much more critical to the success of a work! I personally enjoy studio mixing and creating dense and intense stereo spaces and I hope this focus is apparent in my recorded works.

Claudia D’Alonzo: A great part of your research concentrates on the ways people can experience their body when stimulated by the sound-image and the space of a work. How did this I have since expanded my my studio, research develop over the years, and but the idea remains. I love to use above all in relation to the primitive means to achieve direct technological devices you used in results – raw signals, control tracks, different works? data, etc. I believe it is essential to try things without a preconceived idea of Scott Arford: I once received a fortune what it should look or sound like. cookie which changed my life. I like to Anything can be beautiful if you pay come back to it when begin to over attention to it and coax out its fetishize new gear. It happened at a essential nature. I like to do things time when I was just starting to make “wrong” and see what happens. A lot music, in fact I was dying to make, art, projects have started with this – plug music, something! I had no money the video into the audio or plug the and almost no equipment – only an audio into the video. This simple swap old radio, 4-track recorder, and a has led toward numerous projects and cheap reverb. This fortune read “Use has allowed me to merge sound and

10 video into some very intense artistic value until they have become experiential sound/video works. nearly obsolete. There will continue to be great potential and inspiration to Of course computers and other be found in combining new and old to technologies have given a new level make something entirely different. of control over these processes. I really embrace both old and new. Sometimes technologies don’t gain http://www.7hz.org

11 Almost Cinema 2009. Looking For The Kinematic Effect

Lucrezia Cippitelli

and move them outside the screen. Environment, immersion, movement, sound, lights, images are the core principles of cinematographic illusion. Is it possible to traspose each of these elements into an installation which produces a kinematic effect on the public?

It seems the bet has been won this Almost Cinema celebrate this year its year too! It is quite essential and fourth birthday and also this year he based on a project which is not so accompanied the Film Festival of easy to full with the right works of art. Gent, an exhibition organized by Eva Anyway it functioned! The meditation de Groote, curator of the media area on the expansion of the concept of at the Center for Art and Culture cinema and on the trasposition of the Vooruit. As for the last editions (I kinematic experience into an esthetic visited and described it in a critical idea which escapes the narrativity of text published exactly one year ago film language is a kind of research on that has been developing for some http://www.digicult.it/digimag/articl years. In the last years, this concept e.asp?id=1324) the exhibition is hosted has become more organic and aware, in the wonderful art Nouveau rooms thank to the work of some artists of the Vooruit center itself. coming from different educational experiences and approaches (from Once again the “Festival in the live cinema to design). The transition festival” proved to be a project which from theory to practice and into a was worth a visit from Bruxelles. A convincing work which is able to difficult bet for an editorial project express a kinematic experience is in aiming at collecting works which play no way easy. with the cinema and the ability to isolate some of its specific features

12 installed in the different Art deco rooms of the building. Hans Op De Beeck’s Celebration is certainly the work which attracted the most. The author was born in Belgium and has more an international than mainstream career, dotted with personal exhibitions at the main Belgian institutions (the country Img: courtesy by Bas van Koolwijk where he was born and lives). Op de Beeck has a classical education of Fine Arts: he studied at the Academy Almost Cinema took place – like in the of Brussels, he was researcher at the past editions – in the form of an Rijskacademie in Amsterdam and exhibition and series of presentations. residency at MoMA. The theoric/performatic event presented in its most important In the years, he exposed his works evening a work of art by Baltan Lab (objects, photos, videos, installations) (the new medialab funded by the at Argos in Brussels, at Mukha in Dutch Government and organized by Anversa, in different fairs and the crew of Sonic Acts in the former international galleries as well as à la research laboratory of Philips). In this page. Right in one of these galleries, occasion Edwin van der Heide‘s live the Galleria Continua of San Giminiano performances Lsp, Bas van Koolwijk’ and Pechino, he produced Celebration and Gert Jan Prins‘ Synchronator and in 2008. It is a tableau vivant TeZ‘s PV868 followed oneanother projected in the dark environment of during a whole afternoon and were the black box. It shows a huge presented by the artists themselves. banquet full of food and various The main focus was the possibility to decorations which is waiting immobile operate in a real space, live, using in the arid landscape of a mountain selfmade technologies and softwares. desert. Observing the projection, we realized that it is not a still but a The exhibition spaces were organized sequence in which the subject is fixed in a path among seven artists: Hans and immobile. Only the sound and the Op de Beeck, Felix Hess, Aernoudt slight movement of the table-cloth Jacobs, Bram Verven, Pablo Valbuena, moved by the wind and the Juliana Borinski, Kurt D’Haeseleer & characters populating the scene, Bérengère Bodin, Jean-Noel reveal that it is a video. All the waiters, Montagné. Their works of art were the prepared table, the cooks are

13 waiting in silence and watch the research spaces or medialab all over public. This waiting creates a the country. relationship with the watchers, who seem to take part in this situation Hess was well-known for his sound created by the artist. machines (Moving Sound Creatures and How light is changed into music are his famous works in this sense). After a long courting by the editor, he accepted to bring to the exhibition his installation, called In the Air, of 1995. The main feature of this installation is its desarming simplicity: scorse of little flags made of paper and wood are fixed on the floor. The sole presence and movement of the visitors make these flags moving and the whole floor seems fluctuating. The Img: courtesy by Almost Cinema 2009 interactivity of this work is primitive and basic: the waves created by the Another interactive work is Felix Hess‘ visitors’ movement produce invisible one, which however was created in a changes of pressure that make the completely different form. Hess’ story work of art moving. These changes of is different from De Beeck’s one. Hess pressure are “in the air”, and therefore is a scientist, he was born in the ’40s this is right the title of this work. The in The Hague and became sound artist kinematic experience in this after getting a master’s degree in installation is “kinetic” in the very deep nuclear physics. A typical Dutch sense of the word: from Calder’s personality (and I think in this case to kinetism in Mobiles on. another great researcher of arts, Another work of art which is worth a science and technology who was born discussion is Pablo Valbuena’s and lived at The Hague and who was installation. HE is a Spanish architect the protagonist of one of our Digimag and artist who works at the past editions: Dick Raaimakers – construction of spaces through http://www.digicult.it/digimag/articl perceptive illusion. At V2_ in e.asp?id=1396). The scientific research Rotterdam, he became famous thank turned into artistic research of this to the research on augmented reality. kind of people certainly affected the Valbuena studies the watchers’ creation of institutions such as perception and his physical

14 envolvement within spaces that are generated through projected contents (or contents added by the artist).

The installation thought for Almost Cinema is part of his Extension series: his desarming simplicity together with the fact that the work of art completely and totally functions – showing to the public forms and 3D images which in reality don’t exist – make this work one of the most Also Jean Noel Montagné’s and successful of this festival edition. A Aernoudt Jacobs’ works are dark room is lightened in a corner by a praiseworthy. The first is an shaft of white light coming from a installation made of mirrors and lights video projector. This shaft of light is (after the old manner of kinetic and moving and it creates a game of lights programmed art) which react to the and shadows which give or take away watcher’s behaviour. The title of this light to a simple, thin angled structure work is Je te parlerai dans un reflet de made of white polystyrene, and make lumière (I will speak under a reflection the visitors see geometrical forms of light). The second work of art, that exist only in their mind called Permafrost is an installation made of melting ice whose noise produces a minimal soundscape, where the public can dive.

http://vooruit.be/nl/serie/50

http://www.filmfestival.be/

Img: courtesy by Jean Noel Montagné

15 Happy Birthday Artfutura

Barbara Sansone

numerous, never-ending sound and video technical problems and the incoherence of the lighting system. These things should work more than well on the occasion of a festival about future technologies.

Apart from that, ArtFutura, as always, gave ample space to spokesmen from various fields of technological culture, Artfutura has just turned 20 (a really various fields which actually are very venerable age for a festival on such a different from one-another. It gave it topic). It celebrated its birthday at the to pop culture and the more cultured IMAGINA building in Barcelona.For one; to the one which is more people thinking they were going to influenced by science and to the more miss the traditional Mercat de le Flors artistic one; to the commercial one (in fact this would have surely been a and to the more conceptual one; to more adequate location for it) it has in the more collective one and to the fact turned out to be amusing to more individualistic one; to the more attend this festival in the famous practical one as well as to the more catch@22, the district of innovation realistic one, the more utopian one which has been the subject of a series and the more creative one. of debates, an area still gutted due to never-ending work-in-progress but As has always been so for the last 20 already with a futuristic stamp. years, it is continuously trying to overcome dichotomy, to investigate Too bad about the constant the spaces lying between opposites broadcasting of football matches by which is where the seeds of golTV on the maxiscreen located at innovation swarm or, to use Stelarc’s the entrance which did not create the own words, “where intelligence proper atmosphere for a cultural resides”. event. And too bad as well, about the

16 will last until the 15th November … it is warmly recommended to those passing through Barcelona. What’s more, it’s free.

Also the first day of conferences was free. Because of the seating capacity, booking was made compulsory but the hall remained half empty even Img: courtesy by Imrove Everywhere though every seat had already been booked some days before the True to pattern, the festival was made opening day; thanks to the behaviour up of conferences, exhibitions, of many people, this free-entry is audiovisual projections, contests something which will probably not (Siggraph, Vida, 3D ArsFutura), happen again. ceremonies and parallel events, but this time some of them were held at It seems that, even when talking the IMAGINA building, and others at about art, people seem to prefer the Santa Monica Centre of Arts. The giving more value to something they event opened with a FlashMob by need to pay for and they do not care Improv Everywhere, which was at all about others who want to coordinated by an mp3 file participate but are prevented from downloaded from the WEB and which doing so because all the seats are was broadcast simultaneously in four already booked. The three days Spanish cities: Barcelona, Madrid, dedicated to conferences, widely Murcia and Vigo. In total around 1800 documented on the web-site of the people participated, dancing in the festival together with the ones of the freezing cold while performing speakers, welcomed three particularly collectively in the middle of the more interesting and inspiring meetings. crowded streets for 45 minutes. The first one, light-hearted and Then, the opening of the garden of amusing but also conceptually deep- sculptures by Sachiko Kodama was rooted, was the one with the breezy celebrated at the Santa Monica Multitouch Barcelona, already seen at Centre of Arts. We had already seen OFFF, and the pupils of its director her at Maquìnas & Almas, but we Hèctor Hayuso. They were never grow tired of her works of art, interviewed by Marvin Milanese. The kinetic sculptures animated by the interview can be read on Digimag 46 magic of ferro-fluid. The exhibition July-August Issue

17 (http://www.digicult.it/digimag/artic embrace? They don’t think so at all. le.asp?id=1519). Their work is totally focused on the humanization of In order to highlight their view, after technologies. They don’t like saying their enjoyable presentation, they “user”, they prefer the word “people”. gave the audience of ArsFutura an They don’t like saying “interface”, they experience of their artwork. They prefer the word “experience”. What handed out some of the 1000 balls left they are trying to do is not to allow from an experiment held in Lisbon, technology to cool people off; on the which had failed. Dani, (an expert in contrary, they try to make people design and multimedia, but also a warm up to technology by filling it up great actor), disguised himself as a with sensations and emotions, by Space Invader and let the audience invoking the senses and physical “kill” him by throwing those rubber participation. balls at him . An excellent demonstration of how something relevant can be realised with so little, by offering an interactive experience which was human at the same time.

The first day dedicated to conferences ended charmingly with the intervention of Enric Ruìz Geli from Cloud9, a sensitive and well-prepared architect. His presentation was, Img: courtesy by Multitouch somehow, very close to a Barcelona performance when he accompanied the video contributions, whose music had been carefully selected, with That’s the reason behind their human comments similar to sound-poetry,. interface (Hi, am a real human Pictures from a digital camera interface), their touch-screens where sculpting a marble block became participants have to interact with thrilling too and we must not forget to one-another in order to instigate mention his research on bubbles, human relationships, whereas, on the assisted by the artist Pep Bou. other hand social networks create virtual links not comparable to real Enric wants the products of ones and which, most of the time, architecture to be like soap bubbles: don’t end up coming true: is an ephemeral, so as not to waste future embrace sent via Facebook a real generations of architects, not to stand

18 still under the weight of history, as In the wake of Gaudì, the main happens in Italy. This is, nowadays, a objectives of Cloud9 are a respect for controversial subject which is nature and biomass, ecology, particularly significant for those who sustainability, self-sufficiency and the love and respect history and attempt to achieve 20% of total archaeology but, at the same time, do energy consumption coming from not want to prevent the evolution of clean resources by 2020, as envisaged time and the advancement of by European law, otherwise the technology. The co-existence of both penalty would be the ridiculous these dimensions in human culture sanction of buying CO2 emissions can be difficult and it requires from Africa. considerable sacrifice. And, last but not least, the festival allows its audience to admire the works of Boolab, commented by Coke Ferreiro and Lucas Elliot. This production agency, strongly contaminated (in the more positive sense of this term) and born in 2004 as a branch of Booker is evidence of how important it is, nowadays for companies to invest in research and Img: courtesy by Enric Ruìz Geli development. In a short period of time the son overtook the father, and the agency became an award winning The artworks by Enric are created production studio which was much using light-weight, intelligent, and more in demand and is now autonomous materials; materials recognised on an international level which are able to generate energy, to and cited as one of the 20 best ones capture and give back light and worldwide. Great names of the calibre warmth, to create regenerating of Joshua Davis and the Dutch landscapes. Like, for example, the SED animation studio One Size have been salt pavilion presented at the incorporated into the studio recently. Saragozza Expo, the only one without air conditioning or the MediaTIC in The original field of action of the guys Barcelona, still under construction, from Boolab was advertising and they covered with cushions which change move freely from craftwork to hyper- their shape automatically to maintain technological stuff. They immediately the micro-climate. stood out thanks to their ability in the

19 field of emotional manipulation, for It is an extremely avant-guard their elegance and their aesthetic location where a lot more attention is sensitivity. Their adverts are original, paid to aesthetics than to dynamic, beautiful, and permeated by communication because this is what art and culture (they wink at Escher, the customer has asked for. Here, Hitchcock, Warhol, Cervantes…). Even water is the absolute protagonist. though they always involve different People can experience rain, intense kinds of professional people cold and bathing rituals to be (animators, directors, editors… always discovered by getting closer to maxi- the best ones available in this field), screens misted over by the they always make their own vapour.The catalogue may be distinctive personal mark. consulted using an ultra-modern touchless interface; products are Boolab is now leaving the field of shown as if they were sculptures. For mere advertising because they want those who still aren’t sure about what to extrapolate the audiovisual an “experience” is…it is well worth a dimension from the screen. This is visit. possible today thanks to technologies which are more and more interactive. They allow the active participation of the audience. So besides http://www.artfutura.org experimenting in the field of TV, in the http://improveverywhere.com/ music and cinema industries and in the world of fashion and culture, they http://www.multitouch-barcelona.co are also the authors , for example, of m/ the incredible Roca show-room (a well-known brand of bathroom http://www.ruiz-geli.com/ fixtures and furnishings) in Barcelona. http://www.themakingofcloud9proje cts.com/

http://www.boolab.tv

Img: courtesy by Boolab

20 21 New Educational Models: The Amazing Ciid Institute

Elena Gianni

companies. The program has links with various companies which cooperate with the students and provide research briefs based on the reality of the market.

The educational program is something which simply sucks you in. I spend an average of 10 hours a day at school, like my colleagues. CIID is I have been in Copenhagen for two exactly where I want to be. What I months and I haven’t seen anything study is exactly what I really am yet: no museums nor exhibitions. It’s interested in. And the passion is not that Copenhagen is that big, nor tangible, enthusiasm is self-evident that public transport is inefficient, we for me, for the other students and for are talking about the extremely well- the staff as well. run capital of Denmark; the reason What CIID offers can’t be defined as why is that I spend all my time at academic education. The three core school. elements of this school, research, The Copenhagen Institute of consultancy and the Master program, Interaction Design (CIID) is a project converge into the creation of a unique recently set up by Simona Maschi and philosophy and approach. We live in a Heather Martin. In collaboration with world which is a complex system. the Danish Design school (DKDS), the Different and far-away economies CIID offers a year long, intensive and societies co-exist in relationships master in Interaction Design to a very made up of inter-dependence. Design limited number of students. The evolves acquiring new perspectives, educational activity is now in its the ones which are needed in order to second year and it is supported by a understand this new complexity: the research laboratory and a consultancy ones which move from macro to which has contacts with private micro, from economic systems to

22 nanotechnologies. Different kinds of side by side with people from knowledge in various fields are different backgrounds and coming fundamental to the creation of new from different places is a great products, new services and adequate opportunity and, moreover, is software. becoming a necessity.

Let’s make a practical example: take your new washing machine. It is eco- friendly, it has some sensors and some integrated chips connected to a remote server. This server collects data organising them so that your mobile phone can visualise the amount of energy consumption thanks to an application installed in it. Suppose this application could also

give you some suggestions on how it Technology has penetrated very is possible to save energy and so deeply not only into everyday life but money. And suppose you live in India. also into the social relationships of In order to design such a product a objects and systems. Objects are wide range of knowledge is required. connected to one-another: integrated It is certainly necessary to understand hardware and software, mobile what kind of technologies you need to devices and fast connections allow use and/or implement for the the internet of things to emerge. washing machine (mechanical and electronic), for the sensors What kind of approach should a (electronic), for the software designer take in this new scenario? (computer science); it is fundamental How should the educational offer be to design the washing machine drawn up as a result? Our aim, says (industrial design) as well as to Simona Maschi, is to give life to a develop an interface which allows an multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary intuitive interaction for both the environment where students, application and the washing machine. teachers and the staff in general can (interface design, usability and work together in order to co-operate psychology). It is fundamental to in the creation of a new kind of understand how to save energy and education which is relevant to both so money, how to link the different the academic world and the industrial elements of the system. Briefly, it is one. Being able to work and study fundamental to understand the

23 elements which are connected to one-another from an economic point of view and in terms of the Francoise Jegou is a French designer environment. It’s not just the design who has been working in the field of of a washing machine but also a innovation for 20 years. He has complete analysis of the underlying cooperated with the European Union system from an economic point of on several projects related to view and in terms of the environment sustainability. He is a teacher in and marketing: it means designing various Universities, among which the something more like a service. Politecnico in Milan. He gave one of In order to do this, cooperation is the lectures organised weekly by the necessary. It is impossible to think you CIID. In Jegou’s mind, the designer is can know everything about the entire somebody who makes processes system; the advice of experts from already in progress easier. It is the various fields involved will probably users who, through the exhaustive be needed. Once again, it is necessary expression of their needs, help the to move from micro to macro, the designer to understand the right way psychology of the environment has to to proceed when designing a product be investigated analysing or a service, People are wiser than technologies and then to project you expect. They often solve ourselves into future scenarios. problems in their everyday life in a Everything is based on innovation, really creative way, making up their intended as the product of the own solutions. This is where the work analysis of the unsatisfied needs of of a designer can start from, users. It is the user who is the main recognising the interesting hints and character in this process. The user has using them in order to create ideas to be involved in the design process which are deep-rooted in reality and (user-centred design). really useful in the wider sense of the term.

The approach of a designer has to be quite open-minded in order to be able to recognise the suitable hints and quite experienced so that he can transform them into products and services. The CIID takes these assumptions as a basis and teaches students how to apply technology to

24 everyday life: “We do believe in a the ideas generated, to acquire practical and user-centred approach” feedback from the users and to present the designs. The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) promotes this kind of approach through the cooperation of experts in different fields. The teachers involved are renowned experts. Bill Moggridge, Bill Verplank, Ezio Manzini, Massimo Banzi, Dennis Paul and Patrickk Kochlik from The Product (http://www.the-product.org/) are only some of them. Besides using a

“vertical” teaching method, peer-t- -peer learning, in which every single The second section is dedicated to student shares his own knowledge more complex investigation: Graphic with the group, is also strongly User Interface, Tangible User Interface fostered. and Service Design are the subjects studied. The last period of the year, Classes are very fast and require a the one which includes the summer, is constant commitment from us. Every dedicated to the thesis, designs which week there is a new project to be will afterwards be exhibited at the developed, new ideas, a new piece of Danish Design Museum. During this work. Every week a professor or a period which is dedicated to the visiting expert passing through windy thesis, some weeks are spent working Copenhagen gives a lecture. on projects developed together with The year’s programme is divided into companies like Nokia and Intel. Work three sections: Computational Design, is organised on a weekly basis and prototyping and physical computing exhibitions of the designs realised by are studied during the first period in students are held all year round. workshops lasting one or two weeks. All the above-mentioned, the working Programming with Processing, Flash environment, the structure and the and Arduino, as video, are organisation of the Masters converge investigated as sketching tools: the in the generation of creative energy. main factor is to be able to generate We are 21 students coming from 10 partially working prototypes which different countries: our different allow us to make a comparison with points of view come together to

25 produce ideas. What we can learn from each other is so much, what we http://ciid.dk/ can create and design together has no limit. I am and shall stay here happily http://dkds.ciid.dk/ confined and decidedly over-excited.

26 Joy Ito: On Freedom Of Choice, Namely Creative Commons

Giulia Baldi

and Last fm).

The meeting was the hundredth in a series of OpenMusicMedia – http://openmusicmedia.wordpress.c om/ (open door events on digital music for discussions and networking) and, like the others, it turned out to be every bit as informal (a nice pub and many pints) as interesting It is the talk of the moment. At (besides Ito, there were experts, meetings on the future of music (but corporate heads and indies, artists, also of publishing, cinema, television amateurs, journalists… all equally and visual arts) there is a prevailing interested in mutual understanding topic: the search for new business and in developing cooperation models for creativity in the age of the strategies). digital dematerialization and world wide net; hence the meditation on the For geeks Joi Ito is a legend, but he is necessary changes both in the by now an important business theoretical and practical approach to personality for common people too. copyrights and reproduction. He is staying in London for a few days and everybody is after him. That’s precisely why, some weeks ago, Institutions want to meet him, the Jonas Woost di Last fm and Dave Guardian interviews him. Haynes at SoundCloud invited Joi Ito http://www.guardian.co.uk/technolo ( gy/blog/2009/sep/23/joi-it- http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ -interview-creative-commons. He, joi-ito), CEO at Creative Commons nevertheless, between one thing and and, before that, pioneer of web 2.0 the other, keeps attending meetings and investor for some of the most in pubs. interesting and innovative enterprises (such as Flickr, Rupture, Dopplr, Fon,

27 have become a fundamental element of their identity and sharing a fundamental practice for their social life.

If in the analogical world – which copyright was created for – most consumers were not interested in making a copy of what they bought, in the digital world the very action of acquisition implies a copy. A word by Apparently CC is the present and, word interpretation of the laws in this apparently, this is the right time for a framework would therefore result change: after ten years of denial, limiting. creative industries have accepted the reality of facts, namely that a r- That‘s why Ito never tires of pointing evolution is under way and it is out that “if in the past merely irreversible and, possibly, it has to be criminals committed illegal deeds, conceived as an opportunity, rather nowadays everyone of us commits a than as a hazard. Yet, it remain to be little crime every day, for instance understood how they should proceed when we publish in our profile in a from here. Social Network a song, a sequence or an image. CC is trying to avoid this by For a long time the chances for supplying a licence that allows reuse, production, distribution and access to with no need for legal advice or a creative contents were limited and special permission to do so”. expensive on accounts of a comparative technical reproducibility. He then adds: “Artists are increasingly The XXI century has brought about a interested in the attribution of their dematerialization of contents and the work and in the chance to grant rights convergence of all channels/media for the commercial use. Sometimes, onto a single, low-cost and easily on the contrary, it is a priority to accessible worldwide net, plus the safeguard the original work, or at least spread of social media, which has having a chance to approve, or resulted in the practice of sharing. disapprove, the re-elaborations done People can choose what, how and by others. This is the age of free when they want to enjoy culture and economy, of remix and mashup, entertainment, in big quantities and at nevertheless, in most cases creative a low price. Thereby their choices initiatives and cooperation are not

28 possible yet, and not on technical, but sustainable development, bearing in on legal and economic grounds”. mind the target, that is contributing both to the cultural biodiversity and to the professionalism of the artist. “The promotion of a sensible legality is the most efficacious way to fight illegality”, states Joi Ito.

“CC is working with the institutions, that have always dealt with copyrights, registering success and cooperation in some areas Img courtesy by Meet the Media Guru (Scandinavian countries), coming / Milan across endless hitches and hindrances in others (USA, UK, Germany). But CC is not a lobby, it is a charity, whose At CC they know very well that, only end is to supply legal alternatives although supports (disks, DVDs, to illegal practices”, he goes on. books, magazines…) are no longer necessary and copies are inevitable, “I don’t want to push anybody, that authors still have the right to have would be a waste of time, but I am their creativity acknowledged and pretty sure that the time has come. often the economic need of being The music industry has to reinvent rewarded for their work. “CC is not itself and artists will have to take up a against the laws regulating central role again. And since artists copyrights, it supports an updating of are not merely interesting in the such laws” – so Ito- “and at the basis commercial aspect, but also in the of laws there should lie freedom of spread of their works and the choice for producers and users alike, audience is more interested in and the awareness that the discovery than possession, this communication and media system relationship can evolve to great has been transformed”. advantage for both”

In this new ecosystem, the crux is not denying the need for rules, whereas finding acceptable ones, that can be shared by everyone; to allow a democratization of the processes for creation and use, an economically

29 Famous artists who have CC at the go, Joi Ito is a prepared and resolute basis of their new way of doing man, with elegant and diplomatic marketing – that is a path, along manners. The world of independent which they forge new relationships music trusts him and CC, plus he with their fans – are Radiohead and knows that the time has come for a Nine Inch Nails, and also those who change. Hopefully the world of appear in SoundCloud, the new and corporate music and of the beloved music platform… institutions can understand that too. Hopefully now. Although we still have a long way to

30 The Recycled Sound Of Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco

Marco Mancuso

the presence of the Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco created a buzz, as a performer but also as a workshop, a workshop about sound and studying the object. A workshop that will be repeated and broadened in Rimini, at the Velvet Club during the DalVivo event that I curated with Roberto Paci Dalò and Ambra Galassi from Giardini Pensili, where the attention will be focused Signal is an international avant-garde on the expressive possibilities of the electronic and experimental music object, the creation of a drummestic- festival, which will take place from the machine beginning with anything that 6th ’til the 14th of November in its has a electric motor, the self-building third edition in Cagliari; the idea was of a contact microphone, the empiric produced by TiConZero, an cultural manipulation of video signals and the association that for years has been creation of a/v scores. Live analogical dealing with research in the music, video, loops, sound TV’s, video theatrical and artistic fields. The feedbacks and trolgo drum machines; artists involved represent the but also politics for re-use and emerging levers in research on the experimentation at low costs, border between sound and visual aesthetical subversions and high dimensions. The combination of volume observations. music and video art in an inspired choice made by the frequent Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco appeared to connections between various artistic me (quite late, I have to admit, languages, especially for those that considering their presence at Flora regard avant-garde and research Live Media Lab in Florence, and more productions, which Signal dedicates recently RoBOt02 in Bologna, Deus ex its interest to. Machina 01 in Rome, the Mapping Festival 09 of Geneva, the Vison’r Among the artists present at Signal, Festival 09 in Paris, Dorkbot in Milan)

31 during the Hackmeeting days in Milan, objects put in the scene as actors of a more specifically on the first evening contemporary audiovisual drama. For of the two at the Fornace in Rho. Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco the performer is an instrument and What struck me immediately, was the activator of the mechanical mise-e- originality of the project, its mise-e- -scène, aware of its presence but at -scène, it stylistic coherence and its the same time an invisible element on expressive power: I found all of these stage, capable of working with elements, perhaps a little amplified, in electric and electronic circuits, the thoughts, the ideas, in the artistic coherent in its profound ecological planning that emerges from this imprint connected to the re-use of interview that I conducted with materials and technologies that Emanuele and Massimiliano. appear to be naive but that are blatantly important in an era of growing digital automation.

Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco has deep and clear connections to kinetic, cybernetic and robotic avant-garde of the past century: a detournement of objects of daily use, re-elaborated, revisited, valued in their object and archetypical form, used in their

. multifunctional potential. Every object, every mechanism, is used at Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco shows an the same time be it as a producer of artistic reality in the national sound as a video collector, with a panorama, which is even difficult for constant operation of feedback that the professionals of the field to recalls Vasulka experimentations and understand and accept, be they from kinetic mechanisms by Pierre Bastien. live media environments or A delicate capacity for working with experimental theatre backgrounds. audiovisual elements distributed on Yes because Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco different levels: those that are mostly follows very deep theatrical drama theatrical and scenic, sculptural or that requires a certain capacity form steampunk, like the live project seen the audience to absent themselves at the Hackmeeting, and those that passively from the reality of the are more connected to the languages present moment, made up of of traditional live media (DC12V that mechanical elements and recycled will be presented at Signal at the

32 Velvet Club) where the object and its studies in the theatrical field, I am internal micromechanics will be particularly interested in problems framed, dissected by the camera, and limit relative to the work of the exploded onto a multiscreen actor and I sincerely appreciate scenic projection. solutions that do not count on the presence of people. I studied music Marco Mancuso: First of all I would by playing two string instruments and like to know something more about working as a sound technician. Lately I you. Not everyone knows who you have been deepening by knowledge are, so talk to me about yourselves as on issues regarding audiovisual individuals, your background, your synaesthesia with an uncontrollable interests in the artistic field and how passion for cathode tubes for live you met and how you made the recordings, for visuals and sound. Our project take off for Teatrino Elettrico artistic collaboration began during a residence in Groznian, in Croatia, in Massimiliano: My path began with 2008, during which we prepared and music and despite me creating video created our first audio-video as well as installation and performance together. There we performance projects, the sound worked for 10 days toward a live event experience has always had a central developed using the various functions position in my work. My practice in of found objects or recuperated the visual field consists of building a objects on site, mixed with other new meaning by operating on objects, microphones and effects that additions or juxtapositions between we had brought. For example, we elements that already have a created an electric traction buggy, significant meaning per se, because combining it with a cutter that made they are common a re recognisable. I the wheels turn: we out an amplifier play around with assembling on top and we made it go into mechanisms, using parts or feedback as it turned on itself. We incomplete functions of other microphoned some printers and an mechanisms. The purpose is usually orange juicer. During the performance that of getting to an assembly that in we would manoeuvre the audio inputs some way has the strength of the that came out of the objects, and the stories and the energies of every whole thing was recorded by a element but that groups them in a camera and projected onto a wall in mound that has a new function, an the gallery. From there we decided to internal logic, a complete motivation go ahead with that kind of show and Emanuele: I come from research and we chose the name Little Electric

33 Theatre because it gave the idea of music, aware that we do not belong the intimacy that was created during to a particular discipline. We have the performance, but also the played, in a certain sense, in very scratchy noise that came out of it. diverse places that go from galleries, to clubhouses, to audio-visual festivals, to social centres. In 2009 we moved toward the theatrical space. Despite us both having had other experiences in the theatre with other companies, bringing Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco to it was a very rich experience. We really appreciated the sacredness of the location, the intimacy, the level of attention that is created there. Wit our volumes and Marco Mancuso: Talk to me about the the audience trapped in the grid of ideas you’re working on: I’m referring the stalls. to the live project I saw at the last The project that you saw at the Hackmeeting in Rho and the DC12V Hackmeeting in Rho is part of this project. Although they have elements attitude of Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco in common, they are at the same time to push itself towards a theatrical two very different projects: one is space. Working with the production of more of an installation, almost a sounds and images in real time sculpture, obtained via the use of through machines and assembled recuperated electronic elements, household appliances, it was natural where the audiovisual component is to widen the set by adding matter obtained focusing the attention on onto matter, creating a space the kinetic object; the other is more automatically. The fact of working performative, with more of a live set with objects hung up on ropes structure, where the dynamic object is facilitated the creation of dense and filtered visually by a more traditional chaotic environments, even if our triple projection aesthetical ramshackle betrays a Teatrino Elettrico: AsTeatrino Elettrico certain attention to shape. Inside this Pigreco we have created space, the spectator and the objects performances in different formats. We perform actions from the multiplied move around from installation, to audiovisual consequences. The use of live-media, to theatre, to video and physical movement, be it as a producer of sound or something

34 visual per se, is paramount over the use of the video recording, which is Marco Mancuso: One of the aspects something that DC12V does not have. that surprises someone about your The space factor is the first difference projects is the complexity of the self- compared to DC12V, which is a built mechanical structures, which are specific project thought of for live functional toward an audiovisual audio-video. narrative, to a precise mechanical drama. Nothing seems to be by Despite this we thought of making it chance and every component is in real time, making things happen on functional to the purpose. I ask the desk that would be seen on the myself, where have you acquired the screen and heard from the speakers. necessary competence and most of all Before that was had created other how to you associate the dynamics of table sets, using whole household the components in relation to a appliances. But then using 12volts we determined sound score? had the possibility of using smaller objects and getting inside objects to Teatrino Elettrico: Sometimes people explore parts of them, motors, fans, talk about the fertility of limits. If not thus celebrating the minuscule via even of limits as a real motor for a gigantic projections. On the one hand certain creativity. A limit that until we are faced with exclusive visuals now we have always wanted to imposed by projections that generate impose onto ourselves is the foreign sceneries for those watching, production of sound and images on the other we are faced with a exclusively in real time. This simple group of simultaneous events where fact has created a direct consequence the gaze cannot wander, between in many of the decisions that we have repetition and comments of the TV take over time. Exactly as you say, screens. nothing is by chance, but instead has a precise function. And all of these have a complete function. In truth we are satisfied when an element has more than one function. This is the case, for example, of TV screens, which are used by the signal of the camera in real time, and as light, as feedback generators, as producers of sound, or for visualising sound waves.

The dogma of multi-functionality and

35 synchronicity is sued in the goes back to silence. management of signals. An audio signal can be amplified and sent to For the preparation, the score is the speakers. The video signals are dictated by an almost alchemic modulated with audio effects. The empiricalism. We have a lot of faith in sound scores can derive from the experiment, in the sense that we dramatic motivations, in the less don’t give too much credit to an idea narrative sense of the term, and until we see how it works once it is technical needs, for visual coherence ready. The dramatic structure is often with elements used before and after. decided later on, once the Essentially we tend to use a narrative familiarisation with a device that is path that goes from a moment of thought to be functional helps us to calm, a more introspective moment, put it in a given moment and a given for relaxation and synchronisation, space. In our live sets we live space which slowly heats up, then for improvisation and we move in the overheats, until it gets to a maximum structure that we have created during point of tension that explodes and rehearsals.

36 to kinetic sculptures, the Little Electric Theatre seems to give shape to a clear path that audiovisual art has taken in the past few years: that of abandoning the divisions of genres, often connected to the traditions of video art, to find a new more aesthetical, rich and dynamic territory for dialogue, connected to the fascination of digital technology bound to the production of real-time Marco Mancuso: In Rimini, at the Dal software that are evermore powerful Vivo event, I invited you t give a but increasingly levelled. What are workshop that, as you suggest, deals your thoughts on this? with the self-construction of contact microphones, giving sound to objects, Teatrino Elettrico: When we have the self-construction of drummestic- taken Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco machines, etc. What happens in your around in different places we have workshop and what kind of audience had the sensation of coming from is it for? another place: we have played in the most diverse places, and in every Teatrino Elettrico: The workshop context we have felt out of focus. The consists in the expressive possibilities broadness of the project is in the use of the object: showing the of materials of the various arts, that dismembered Little Theatre we could although they have been orchestrated expose our practices in an audiovisual remain independent, a experimental environment. We will superimposition of techniques that show how to self-build a drum we force with presumption and take machine by using a household to their explosion. The most decisive appliance, how to make a TV sing. We critique that was made was after one invite all the people interested to of our theatrical incursions and dealt participate by taking part in the with the vanity of the gaze of the sharing of politics of re-use and low spectator, trapped in a seat and cost experimentation suffering, without being able to Marco Mancuso: Even if some contemplate or interpret. The net reference scan seem obvious to refusal of the use of middle tones in certain artistic and theoretic fields, what we expose comes out as a from Futurist mechanical orchestras formal imposition, we are faced with a triggered event that connects the

37 various components and is started by archetype of an era that is irreversibly being given the necessary force: the coming to an end under the rest is just a chain of events and immaterial weight of digital channelled accidents. technology, there is knowledge that we are losing, needs that are What we propose to the various arts is necessary to understand and control not a dialogue, but more a kind of ring the intimate functioning of the where they can be expressed freely; instrument…. what comes out of this is an instable equilibrium, an animated discussion. Teatrino Elettrico: Every object for The refusal of the use of digital daily use that is thought up for other technologies is none other than the purposes and re-used can be thought possibility of immerging oneself in an of as a radio-active material that can experience dealing with matter that is be very effective. When the use and increasingly precious for the era in purpose are modified it becomes an which we live. The approach is extraordinary symbol of evocative typically craft-like, the secret is in the potential, and takes on the shape of repetition of the gesture, exactly what an ideogram of something, a sign that our devices do; it would be more is interpreted in the mesh of its layers difficult to think about keeping up and meanings that are subjective and with the calculations of a processor. objective, and represent it category and becomes elements for discussion. As an object it remains essentially unknown, as does the fascination for its lack of personality. The movement, added to the sound that it produces, is what gives it life. For this reason we always try to mask our presence during the live sets, standing aside or in shadow or hidden completely. We want the protagonist to be the object, so that it ca be autonomous aside Marco Mancuso: Where is the from our presence as stagehands. fascination of an object, of a Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco almost mechanism and its kinetic function, exclusively uses recycled objects and for you? In the live at the this is for many reasons. First of all, an Hackmeeting, and more so in DC12V, old object carries the signs of its the single mechanism became an prolonged contact with the world,

38 scratches, rust etc. We find that this is shop window, which we do not a correct correspondence to our consider to be a place where real life practice in real time. These signs are takes place. As well as this we find the proof that that object has gone that our aesthetic is in tune with the through time and with this situations, kind of sound we produce. But there’s actions that have happened around it. another motive: the recycled object As a consequence it is the proof that has a low economic value and this that vacuum cleaner is not just any allows for a kind of playful behaviour. vacuum cleaner, but it is precisely that An object that had perhaps been one and not another. Every object bought, maybe through sacrifice, carries on its history and by showing becomes a big toy where the worst itself it ads its story to the rustle of the risk is that it goes back to the dump other stories. where it was destined to go. This mechanism recalls the detournement If thought of in digital terms this of its function that happens as soon as would not make sense and maybe it abandons its usual operation to everything would look more like a become a producer of sound.

39 mind that could seem distant to our Little Electric Theatre but that we admire greatly and believe t be a source for our work. We think first and foremost of certain sounds of Einstürzende Neubauten but also scenic installations of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, to the semi-mobile sculptures of Tinguely, to the noise of Olivetty and the techno music of Raumschmiere. Marco Mancuso: Who are the artists and what projects that inspire you nationally or internationally?

Teatrino Elettrico: From the point of view of inspiration or certain http://www.myspace.com/teatrinoel derivations, some names spring to ettrico

40 Climattivista! The Wind Of Climate Justice Arrives In Italy

Alex Foti

So the information campaign and mobilization for the climate summit in Copenhagen (11-16 December, the Day of Action Movement) came alive in the weekend of Halloween, with a three-day Milan-Turin (versuscop15.noblogs.org) will soon reach even the Roman-Bolognese. The occasion was the arrival in Italy David Rønbach activist collective Within a week the ferment of KlimaX of Copenhagen and a member mobilization on climate ahead of the of CJA that for a year, patiently, builds conference COP15 in Copenhagen for political, media and logistics for the a year that stirred Europe, has large mass action on 13 December infected Milan and Turin, and soon, (blocking the port of Copenhagen) Bologna and Rome. E ‘was even and 16 December (siege of the COP15 coined a new word for the language climate justice with assembly of the of Dante and Mike Bongiorno: people with Climate Justice Now!). climattivista! CJA is a federation of ecological The first mobilizations have taken movements of the whole earth: there place on October 24 action day are anarcoautonomi Northern proclaimed by global climate Europeans as Via Campesina and www.350.org, which saw a special Friends of the Earth, passing through edition of Critical Mass in Milan and the movement of the climate camp the presentation of the Climate UK networks and for many rural and Justice Action (CJA, urban environmental justice in the www.climate-justice-action.org) at global south like that of indigenous Scighera, the libertarian circles peoples to defend their natural located in the former factory worker resources. Bovisa in Milan.

41 and a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Turin and Critical Mass. The first of all fill of vegan soup with seitan and unleashed a dance like zombies bloodthirsty capitalist social center in the most mestizo Piedmont.

Moving on to things much less fun, both Gabrio both Torchiera are now being targeted by mayors and deputy sheriffs, and fascist Northern League matched. Torchiera was auctioned by On 29 October at the Social Center the deputy mayor of Milan, Riccardo Cantiere in Milan, there was the first decorated with Conchetta Ghisolfa presentation of the calendar of and to “compensate the lack of protest from 11 to 16 December dividends the company A2A” while ( Gabrio and the White House, occupied http://www.climate-justice-action.org by a collective of Ethiopian /mobilization/action-calendar). So immigrants, they are seriously the next day Torchiera climattivista threatened by the mayor of Turin and hosted an evening of entertainment the Minister of Interior Giuseppe with really brilliant ecoquiz (difficult, Chiamparino Roberto Maroni. but the public has demonstrated the preparation) and Greenwash Awards (the Oscars of movement in Italy to the company that it has the face like the ass on environmental issues http://versuscop15.noblogs.org/static /gwa).

The peak was reached at the social center Gabrio of Turin, with the organization of the Climate Horror Halloween Party (http://nomorecop.noblogs.org). The anti-globalization movement has Where mobilizations in Copenhagen passed the baton to the movement of have been discussed over the climate justice. Like its predecessor a political, strategic and tactical decade ago, is intended to disrupt the attentively to an audience with David world. We defend the spaces in Italy

42 have made possible both.

43 Reff/rewf. Short Chronicle Of A Contagion

Salvatore Iaconesi

has managed to get cross-party consensus from the world of activism, new media art and even politics? To understand this, we look for in motivation. Initially the Web Factory provided inside clauses bizarre as the prohibition of using techniques such as the remix and the mashup or ask participants the unilateral transfer of rights to works submitted, including “After two centuries of revolution and for commercial purposes, or to quasi-revolution, a historical lesson is reserve to the promoters of the clear: you can not destroy the competition the opportunity to remix authoritarian structure, it can only the same works as desired. resist” – Critical Art Ensemble: Electronic Civil Disobedience Acquired the domain (Castelvecchi, 1998) www.romaeuropa.org, leaved by the Foundation (www.romaeuropa.net),

REFF esists with his fake identity and For loyal readers of this magazine, soul of the very real squatters: in a REFF is not new: this symbol perhaps few days the turned version of the resonates in their ears like an echo competition (all dedicated to remixes family and it is plausible that they may and in Creative Commons) will be know some or all the story behind it. online, collecting a record time for the Me ripercorriamola together in his accession of eighty partners from milestones (1). REFF going to around the world. RomaeuropaFakeFactory. REFF is the fake version of (almost) namesake Romaeuropa Web Factory, a competition launched in January 2009 by Telecom Romaeuropa Foundation to support digital creativity.

Why make it a fake? And why this fake

44 the site of a communication addressed to the participants: the rights to the works will henceforth be limited to only non-commercial use and for initiatives to promote competition. Is only the beginning of a process of contamination surprising, that will bring the original to be almost indistinguishable from its fake.

Early symptoms Metamorphosis

In the realm of media, the reactions But we come to the chronicle of were not slow in coming, from the recent events. On 16 September 2009 web coma from the national press in Rome, at the Opificio Telecom (new who were immediately interested in home of the Foundation) are the story. The case is in the news and launching the new edition of the in March for the first event to present Romaeuropa Web Factory. Here’s the full REFF – an amazing college what we find: performers, lawyers, academics, music critics and curators, - logo: Unlike last year, the contractors, vj, architects, artists, competition adopts the symbol activists and the world of copyright REWF, first used in full; queer – invades Senate organizing the - Licenses: Unlike last year, the International Conference: Freedom to contest leaves the owners choosing Remix. Cultural policies and manage the Creative Commons licenses; intellectual property in the contemporary era. Former hotel room - remix: Unlike last year, remixes and in Bologna, near the Pantheon, mashups are prohibited by regulation crammed with visitors who came even explicitly promoted. from all over Italy and various parts of Europe, there is also the foundation An inner sense of relief and Romaeuropa represented by a large satisfaction, we’ll be taking over the delegation that observed the soul of every reader who has been phenomenon with astonishment and beaten in time for the free attend a welcome surprise most dissemination of knowledge, time to festive of fake inviting them to attend shake up the legal quagmire that and take part in the debate. Result. A drowned the copyright (and with it few days later WebFactory appears on the authors themselves and their

45 works): For once, the battle seems to least three fronts. On one level, they win on all fronts, while the are recognized the legitimacy and contamination complete. value of forms of free movement of knowledge. On a second level, the But still you are missing two discrimination from the competition important elements. The first, which on forms of art like the remix or seems generated by an ambiguous mashup, central to the work of many feeling of fascination / identification artists from Warhol to Burroughs, a of the original to the false (in itself Fluxus (but also dj, vj, and just perfectly explicable in terms of ordinary people who download, mix psychoanalysis and opportunity) is dismantle and reassemble each day) is that Beatpick, promoter of REFF and not. Foundation and Telecom its main partner for the music section Romaeuropa themselves during the and video art, this year carries the press conference on September 16, exact same role for the WebFactory: can not help but remember three false enters the body through its times the fundamental contribution organic component of the original that the REFF had second thoughts in “live” transactions, in order to remain the competition. At third level, the in the biological metaphor, a real Plagaro, pace of fake and original, graft. Finally, as Mark says Scialdone – says joyfully its sovereignty over the Journal of REFF lawyer and author of kingdoms of truth and verisimilitude. the first known work of LawArt, reading the new legal disclaimer: “It is But there is an element that still has the same as I did.” not been taken into account. The dynamic is also briefly described (and especially) the paradigm of the relationship between reality corporate / institutional, cultural production / art from below, artivism, hacking: those contingencies that arise from the “bug” the system (or more crudely by the narrowness and environmental conditions unfavorable) and from there (often against their will) create Controversial Outcomes value. If the creative field – originally more than the original, even when What then happened? Delighting the presented as a fake (author) – was hearts of all, you can agree that a born in-it-through those interstitial cultural battle was actually won at magmatic zone, it is also true that a

46 virus by its very nature tends to be complemented by ‘body.

After all, REFF also tells the story of a uniquely contemporary conflict. Ambiguous, paradoxical, multi- directional, not solvable in the traditional way in a pattern of dialogic confrontation, played on a territory of codes and languages become New signs increasingly indistinguishable. Like the original from its fake. As a libertarian, Actually things are moving already. the languages and practices (products Lot and i totally unexpected in and out of network) have long been directions. While Italy in Wired in a thriving area of conquest for the October appears an article signed by corporate (massive use of Francesco Monico demonstrate the SocialNetwork, fake-made, success of the project site, which in unconventional marketing, adoption August suffered a hacker attack (an of free software licenses on software action a bit ‘out of context given the as the content , sharing, innovation, intent and the promoters of the creativity, participatory models, initiative, but luckily realized with the ideology dell’openess brought to aim of denouncing the massacres of climax). Gaza), is online again with a new logo and platform. Meanwhile, if the REFF winks and peculiar mutation being welcoming, But the news is not unique to the we wonder what the next steps and in form. On October 7, the initiative is what way the relationship between invited to attend the IGF Italy (2) this highly successful and his original (preparatory meeting under the UN fake: Foundation and, ahead of all , Internet Governance Forum in Sharm the giant Telecom Italy. el Sheik at the central axis 18 November (3)), to recount his experiences at the turn of art, innovation and digital rights. That’s the chance it is announced the opening of a new section of the competition in support of the international campaign on net neutrality: Creatives for Net Neutrality

47 (4) (signed C4NN). network with no restrictions on content, sites and platforms, from The project, created and promoted discrimination voluntary through collaboration with the Ethical communication flows antagonists, the Movement Exchange (5), welcome devices connected and the manner in comic books, video, advertisements, which they operate. ” An active little flyers, posters, music that ironically questionable, yet just a few days ago can communicate the paradoxes in conciliation, the amendment 138 to contained in the famous “Telecoms the package and only factor in favor Package” (6). For those not informed of neutrality define access to the about the legislative upheavals of Internet as a fundamental right and Brussels, the package, formally forbids the limitation or prohibition in presented in 2007, is a reform plan the absence the ruling of the ordinary submitted to Parliament for courts, with a coup and unexpectedly amendment of the 2002 European erased. directive on telecommunications in all 27 EU member states. The The package will be finally approved introductory text of gannets C4NN in December and there is to say that sheds light on the motivations of in this case there is no doubt that a hundreds of associations alert and new infection libertarian would have activists across Europe, “These rules no contraindication even if the allow you to filter and / or degrade organism contaminates this time content and applications, to give would have a European dimension. preferential access to certain features blocking others, and denying ‘ access to certain sites at the sole opinion of Provider. This allows to control the information and lobby the governments to decide how and what should be the network of the future with the risk of turning into a mere means to make money and keep the monopoly on information. ”

Net neutrality is instead the principle, Notes as applied to operators providing broadband, telephone and television An abridged version first in paper broadcasts, and more generally to the form of this article was published in internet, that “is considered a neutral No. 187 of Hacker Journal (magazine

48 released under CC) (4) http://www.romaeuropa.org

(5) http://www.scambioetico.org

(1) For a detailed reconstruction of the (6) To get full information about the development stages of REFF see this campaign you can follow these stories link on the site “La Quadrature du Net”, French non-profit which coordinates (2) http://www.igf-italia.it/ the work of many European (3) organizations: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/ http://www.laquadrature.net

49 Stelarc’s Extrabody: The Technologic Chimera

Serena Cangiano

fully and predictably an evergreen reflection on man’s evolutionary process, even if it is limited in the environmental complexity, through his extension with technological prostheses.

Stelarc is an Australian artist, he’s now sixty-three, and he’s responsible for the performing arts at the Brunel Art concepts and techniques should University West London, and he was always be avant-garde, and serve as appointed full professo of Art and an approach to men’s comprehension robotics at the prestige Carnegie as well as an anticipation of what they Mellon University in America. He will be and how they will behave. started his career in the 70s with a series of performances based on In light of that assumption, Stelarc, suspension, where he exhibited with who is a pioneer of extreme his naked body hanging from braces performances and of performances with a number of hooks knocked into helped by interactive robotic systems his skin. His research on the body, and virtual reality, represents without which had been oriented to the a doubt an important reference point demonstration of its obsolescence for all those who want to deal with an and emptiness, turned to the use of artistic project which uses technology prostheses, of robotics, of the as a means of expression. internet, of virtual reality, of And for the digital native artists he is a intelligence and biotechnology to role model not only because of his state the extension of the body coherence when he carries out through technology as a requisite for researches on the body using all the its evolution. means of post-modern age, but also because he has managed to leave

50 and environmental sustainability. In the context of this new project, a large group of young artists interested on the study of the connection between art and technology could exchange views with Stelarc’s body in towns where you could never expect to have the opportunity to listen live to a pioneer of the interactive art, and these cities are Lugano and Gallarate. Stelarc has investigated the idea of In the first event , Extrabodies: beauty the body with some projects: The remixed , held at Palazzo dei third hand, the third robotic arm, Ping congressi in Lugano, Stelarc body, a performance in which the exchanged his views in a great stimuli generated an arm determine meeting with another artist of the involuntary movement of the mechatronics performance, as well as body, Exoskeleton, a robotic system founder of Fura Dels Baus, Marcel-lí with six limbs controlled by the body Antúnez Roca. In the second, of the artist, The stomach sculpture, a Redesigning the body / Obsolete 15mmX50mm capsule inserted into bodies Stelarc offered his physical the stomach of the artist, Blender, an presence for a workshop at the GAM installation regenerating Stelarc and in Gallarate and the virtual presence Nina Sellars’s organic matter, The ear for Avatars have no organs, a on arm the prosthesis of a ear performance of about 15 minutes permanently placed in Stelarc’s arm exhibited in the gallery The Virtual and connected to a system of Stelarc initiatives in Second Life, show bluetooth transmitter. the versatility of his research in From 23th to 26th October, Stelarc relation to the technological media. was a guest in two events Tec Art Eco, We decided not to write a classical a three years project sponsored by the article on Stelarc, and as well retrace associations Ariella Vidach – AiEP with him all his rich artistic path: (Milan) and Avventure in Elicottero Stelarc is a such well-known artist Prodotti (Lugano), which proposes a that many of his interviews and series of interdisciplinary festivals, reflections on the relationship productive laboratories, workshops between art and sciance can be found and meetings with international on the web. We wanted to know the artists on topics as art, technology man behind the artist, think about the

51 topicality of his art and of his body. As soon as the body has research, and for this reason we become empty and obsolete, it wanted to report Stelarc’s answers to became the better host for all that the questions that some young artists, technology that we aim to insert scholars who were invited and who inside the body. The manifestation of took part to the event Tec Art Eco the body as an obsolete body, empty (Marco Mancuso, Pierluigi Capucci, and involuntary, allowed to make the Mariagrazia Mattei among others) and body a good host for the interfaces I made. and the interactions with technology in order to develop augmented and amplified operations

Serena Cangiano: How do you deal with the aesthetics in your work?

Stelarc: Undeniably if you look at the objects The third hand or The extended arm in a sense we shared a similar aesthetics with technology we wanted to use. We used the same materials and we didn’t want to hide the technology. There is a kind of aesthetics but this aesthetics comes Serena Cangiano: If we analize your from the performance and the artistic career, the first curious thing construction of the technology rather that comes on our mind is the than begin with a certain aesthetics passage from the suspension that pushes you to try to fit performances to the high stylistically everything into that. So, technological ones. What drove you to for example, the aesthetics of the point your research and experiences suspension performances were from the naked body exposed to generated from the action of doing natural forces to the experience with the suspension. Sometimes, the complex technological systems? aesthetics were just a framing of the Stelarc: When i start a project, usually, image like the rock suspension with i start from a physical action, one image you could capture the all introducing later the technology. The performance. suspensions allowed me to But, for example, in the remote investigate and then show the controlled suspension, where the obsolescence and emptiness of the

52 body is moving, it’s more this are very different both in strategies choreography of the body that is the and in outcomes. I think art is more documentation of the body becomes about asking questions rather than the aesthetics. Of course, the the scientific approach that tries to stretched skin is part of the answers questions. So i think art is suspension aesthetics of a body not in interesting when generates more zero gravity but of a body with a questions than it answers. Art should weight. So, in a sense, the aesthetics be an unstable interpretation of the are not pre-determined but rather are world that opens to further generated through the new appropriations and further unfolding combination of the mixed reality the into unexpected directions. This is not body perform with. the agenda of science which tends to be somehow more utilitarian and much more methodic in its research approach. There are of course areas like quantum mechanics where theories depend so much on imaginative evaluations and almost sci-fi speculations about the possibilities of the structure of the universe. But, generally speaking, i think we do not want artists to be doing bad researches and we do not scientists to become bad artists. It’s better if they will stay away from each Serena Cangiano: In your artistic other. What connect artists and research you touched on various scientist is just technology. But they topics as for example the medical or use technology in different ways. biological scientific research, and the one more specifically technological of I have to say…when the third hand robotics and of immersive virtual was first constructed in 1980, I was reality. In the development of your invited at the Jet Propulsion lab in projects how much important is the Pasadena and at the Johnson Space interaction with these discipines? And Center in Houston to do presentations what do you think about the to the Extra Vehicular Activity Group relationship between art, science and because there was an interest in the technology in your work? third hand from a kind of technological sense, but of course my Stelarc: The roles of science and arts hand was designed as a third hand, so

53 ultimately there were no connection interesting scenarios about the future points because it was a work of art of the body, most of them generating and there won’t have been any contestable futures. So, I’m not practical and economical results. suggesting some kind of utopian sci-fi futures for the human body, but the For what concerns the collaborative human body, for example, aspect of my projects with scientist, i unexpectedly has recently become think is important as I’m a media the host for its machines. Increasingly artist, but that collaboration is the technology has become giving of the expertise or the sharing microminiaturized and it is now being of expertise to construct a large safely inserted inside the body. At a project that has not a determined nanotechnology scale, the technology outcome. will be able to re-colonize the human body. So, now we are colonized by

bacteria and viruses: in the future will be re-colonized by machines, sensors and nanorobots. And this is a quite a plausible scenario. Instead of the Japanese manga, sci-fi external extensions of the body through exoskeletons – that I have done – perhaps the future of the body will be a future with the body itself becomes the host for its machines and all technology of the future will be invisible because will be inside of the Pierluigi Capucci: In your research you body. This is a possible scenario, but managed to give a forward-looking there are many others. thought on the body of the future, what is now the body of the present, Marco Mancuso: Contemporary man’s increased with communicative relationship with the new prostheses of ambient intelligence technologies are moving in the systems, of mobile telephone opposite direction, step by step, and systems, of telepresence. Regarding are becoming more and more the technological progress of our intimate, emotional, viral, connective present how do you see the body of and invasive. Beyond the aesthetic the next future? and scientific appeal, the importance of the historic passage from the Stelarc: I think there are some imaginary cyberpunk to the modern

54 bio art, beyond the natural research and expressive path of an artist, how What is important is not what is inside do you consider the ethic and thinking me, but rather what happens value of your work in relation with our between us in the medium of conjugation with technologies from languages we communicate with, in the last decade to the reality of the social institutions we function modern man? within, in the culture we have been Stelarc: I guess I’m not so interested conditioned. To me, what technology in mere technicity of operations but does is expose and empty the body rather how this technical instruments but this empty and obsolete body and augmentations altered the body becomes a better host for alternate operational possibilities. In fact, the and anatomical architectures that are more and more performances i do, a combination the human the the less and less I think I have a mind machine and the virtual system. of my own, no any mind at all in a I think is not a matter of thinking of traditional metaphysical sense. In the body as a normal body in its other word, this body that you see is biological kind of presence and an obsolete body that is empty and proximity and intimacy as opposed to perform largely involuntarily, but this a kind of the technological systems emptiness is not an emptiness that we perform with because these through a lack but rather an technological systems we are all using emptiness through an extension and them. We perform, maybe, on the extrusion of the self through stage amplifying and extending these technology electronic media and interactive systems but we all have internet. So there is nothing inside in computers, cell phones, we all this body, no images, no ideas, function within a technologically nothing. warm and information rich environment. I think technology is not a kind of alien other but rather what construct a human civilization, what means to be human, what enable us but simultaneously expose us as an unstable operative systems.

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au

55 http://www.tecarteco.net

56 In The Beginning Was Cybernetics. Relation Between Science & Artists

Teresa De Feo

defined as an “authentic genius”. At 18 months he learnt the alphabet, at 3 years old he learnt to read, at 5 he had fun making declarations in Greek and Latin. At 15 he got a degree in mathematics at the University of Tufts and at 19 he was the youngest student at the University of Harvard to gain a Doctorate in Philosophy.

What relationship is there between During his post-graduate he digital art and cybernetic science? frequented big names in the maths Surely more than one can imagine. and logic fields: Bertrand Russel, The concept of the system, the David Hilbert, Godfrey Harold Hardy, research of process patterns, the among the protagonists of that great importance of interconnections and underground movement that in little the relationship between system and time would make the foundations of environment (be it a machine or living maths and all the correlated sciences organism), the centrality of tremble. information, the phenomenon of retroaction and self-management, the We’re talking about those first 30 importance of code, are the terms of years of the past century where cybernetic research, but it could also everything happened at once, in a few be said that this is true for the years, through figures such as research of any artist who works with Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Gödel, and new technologies. we would find ourselves faced with a situation of this kind: a space-time But let’s proceed in order, beginning continuum like that of the 4th with the scientist. In the beginning dimension (Einstein), an ambiguous there was Norbert Wiener: that figure and unsolvable duality of matter of a man that, whoever reads his (Bohr), an incurable uncertainty of the biography would agree, can only be observed object (Heisenberg) and the

57 impossibility of showing the participation of scientists from coherence of any axiomatic apparel different backgrounds. (Gödel). In other words in the eyes of a young Wiener, who is known to have The cybernetic project wanted to not had good eyesight, but this is retrace the mechanisms for irrelevant, presented a frame of the communication and common control state of science in terms of new of machines and animals, through an research, theories, difficulties, interdisciplinary approach that conflicts, paradoxes and anything else involved maths as well as biology, that is complex. And what began to engineering, and social sciences. The be heard, as well as the telluric noise title of the first meeting, just to have that would bring on the “fundamental an immediate understanding of the crisis”, was the need for a real themes of the cybernetic debate, was knowledge restoration, just like the officially: Feedback Mechanisms and research for new methods and new Circular Causal Systems in Biological instruments. and Social Systems

At that first conference the neurophysiologist Warren Mc Culloch was present, as well an anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Maed, psychologists Kurt Lewin and Paul Lazarsfeld, the communications engineer Julian Bigelow and mathematicians Norbert Wiener and John von Naumann.

Wiener would be among the first The interdisciplinary practice, scientists to take the challenge that imposed as a plan and premise in accompanied the new science: cybernetic research, was one of the Cybernetics. To call it science, using first examples of a horizontal the singular term, is not so exact, as approach that we know was very we are faced with a research project successful. As was the objective that that at the time was usually these scientists proposed: the interdisciplinary: the birth of conviction of the existence of a cybernetics is around 1947, the year in “process pattern” that was common which the fortuitous encounters held to living organisms and machines, at the Macy foundation began: the retraced through uniform research Macy conferences, that saw the guaranteed by the use of a “synthetic”

58 and “compartmental” method. and binary logics; the interdisciplinary dialogue. The possibility of reuniting the “philosophical mechanisms” as well as the criteria for the functioning of “complex autonomies” in a new theory was practiced thanks to the identification of a common phenomenon: the “phenomenon of retroaction” (feedback) and “circular causality”.

The novelty in this sense, from the Photo courtesy by The Centre of point of view of a general movement Attention in facing determined problems scientifically, was overwhelming: a The amalgamation of these interests fundamental mutation of the way of and the specificity of their methods, considering the “machine”, no longer the use of machines, the relationship seen in a Cartesian way like a mound made between machines and living of wheels and pistons, but like an organisms, the research that brought “open system”, available for on the invention of the first communication with its external information elaborator will be the environment; the practice of a new strength of that which is, or will, by systematic approach centred first of cybernetics. A discipline that all on the concept of “system”, which Heidegger, after the announcement found its consolidation and its success of the undisputed centrality of the through the General Theory of “technique”, would define as a science Systems by Bertalanffy published in capable of taking the place of 1968; the attention for the concept of philosophy. This is because of the information and communication capacity for cybernetic science to processes, intended as essential take on the task of joining and elements to understand the unifying the different scientific “behaviour” of the system, its environments, the organic fields and relationships with the environment, the inorganic fields. As opposed to the relationship between the system philosophy, as Heidegger said, the and its parts, independently from the unity of these thematic fields of nature of the system, be it artificial or knowledge, when having reached biological; the concept of the Net; the cybernetics, will no longer be a unity relationship between neural networks of fundamentals but a rigorously

59 technical unity. consideration of realities such as “structure”, “process patterns”, Norbert Wiener will complete the “strength systems”, are expressions meaning, the objectives, the research that we can find in the abstract on new science, in his essay experiences of Bauhaus and “Cybernetics: or Control and Constructivism. Communication in the Animal and the Machine” in 1948. The fascination and More than others, and an example in the direct influence of cybernetic this sense, is the experience of Naum science on artists and the artistic Gabo who believes that the “line is movements that developed mostly valid as a direction of static forces and during the 50’s and 60’s will be very their rhythms in objects”, the artist strong, passing through kinetic and does not see the “things” but the programmed art, resulting in the relationship between the parts and determination of digital art. The the witnesses of this are his complex influence of technique was not and thin sculptures, that do not weaker, just like that of industrial represent objects but directions of robotization, but also new scientific forces, rhythms of relationships, a real discoveries, on avant-guard art, but submissive structure. this is a well-known fact.

The connections between art and cybernetics are not debated about, because the deep investigation of certain cybernetic assumptions, its research, its intersections with other fields and disciplines, can result in being indispensable in order to understand the meaning, the Simian Mobile Disco – Audacity of specificity, the state of digital art and Huge feat. Chris Keating of Yeasayer the connection that is increasingly (Naum Gabo Remix) strong between artistic and scientific practice as well as the shared As well as Gabo, and following on with exploration of new technologies. The this discussion, Itten’s experience will centrality of reflection on technique, be important for the affirmation of the the intersection of knowledge and importance of interdisciplinary genres, the abandonment of the practices, such as Tower of Fire (1919), duality between subject-object and to make an example, like he himself the mimesis that favours the said would have represented the

60 synthesis of “new constructions of the art and CYSP 1 (1956) was the first future, which will be all in one form: cybernetic work in the history of art. architecture, sculpture and painting”. CYSP 1 (1956) is a sculpture, in line Beautiful, futuristic, feminine, we like with Schöffer’s interests, and to remember the photomontages of connects light, sound and movement. the Bauhaus artist Irene Hoffman that The work is even bestowed with an preannounce the melting pot, social electronic brain and a “proto relationships, the interactions software”, developed by Philips, and is between current affairs and history in presented as a dynamic sculpture in the complex world of information. constant mutation thanks to an And certainly talking about engine that animates the structural intersections we cannot forget the parts, the electric photocells and experience of Hungarian Moholy- microphones that modify its state bit Nagy. But the more direct by bit through different lights and connections between cybernetics and artistic practice, as is easily sounds, selected through external imaginable, are determined inside the environmental surveys. research of those artists, who were CYSP 1 , being in line with cybernetic revolutionary and ahead of their time, ideas, is an open system, capable of and worked with “new technologies”, detecting information from the opening the way toward digital and interactive art. environment and mutating, as it is capable of modifying the external A unique case at the time, and environment through a synaesthetic absolutely ahead of its time compared response (lights and sounds) of new to converging research between art information that had been detected, and technology, was Nicolas Schöffer, following a cybernetic mechanism of who declared to be referencing the circular causality of retroactive rings. cybernetic theories of Norbert Wiener when planning his work. In particular, the cybernetic concepts of systems and retroaction suggested the idea of an artistic process to Schöffer in terms of an organised system based on phenomena of circular causality and retroactive rings. It was not a coincidence that Schöffer was © Tour Lumière Cybernétique, de considered the father of cybernetic Nicolas Schöffer

61 Even more complex is the work that and was produced by Philips, a Schöffer made in 1955 for the for the company that often sponsored Public Work Fair at the Saint Cloud Schöffer’s work), recording a sound Park, along the river Seine: composition obtained through hitting Spatiodynamique et Cybernétique et metal plates of the tower together in Sonore. The dynamic-cybernetic and 12 sound cycles that through the sound space of 1955, with very detection moved differently, sophisticated devices for the time combining differently and obtaining (Homostat, sensors, tape recorder, different melodies each time. The electric motors), and looks like a 50m sculpture was sensitive to the external iron tower, similar to telephone environment (light, humidity, sounds, receivers, made up of different levels people’s voices) and so gained an and coloured rectangular plaques. interactive soul, capable of receiving Thanks to environmental detection and giving information and mutating devices (capable of detecting wind, itself and the environment in relation humidity, light, sound, voices), the structure is capable of mutating with to the data that had been detected the environment and selecting the and acquired. emission of cycles of different sounds, It was the first installation capable of which were created for this occasion generating sounds in real time and by Pierre Henry, a concrete music the first to have sensors, devices for composer. distance interaction. And Schöffer Henry recorded on a multi-track tape was one of the first cybernetic artists. recorder (one of the first that existed It was only 1955.

62 Plots In The Net: Boone Oakley And Web Storytellers

Giulia Simi

and be listened better in a little theatre already filled with people, rahter than in a huge but desert square.

That someone is called Boone Oakley, a US advertising agency that made a revolution on the net some months ago. In fact they transformed YouTube, one of the most famous and Once upon a time there was an populated sites in the world, into a internet site, an amount of web pages real medium. From space to medium, linked one another and housed in a from forum to creative grammar: the clearly identifiable space which could well-known platform UGC gave life to be reached by a precise address. Once the agency’s website, giving also the upon a time there was also the html – possibility to substitute the web which later changed into xhtml – the pages with vdeos linked with one language behind the hypertext another to reproduce a traditional system that can organize and make surfing experience. information intelligible, mainly in pictures and texts, of which web Thehyper-video story of this website, some kind pages are composed. Yes, once upon of mainly created with a time. the comments function on YouTube, has already gone around our Then came video. And then came planet. Bill Allen, Interactive Director YouTube, a giant website acquired by of the agency, reports it from his point another even more gigantic website. of view, by answering to four And there was someone who thought questions about the Internet and that a website can also be only a little surroundings. story to be told after all, and that this story could give up with web pages

63 Giulia Simi: Telling a story. It looks like it was your early driving force. Maybe because there’s no more communication without narration? And why did you priviledge YouTube to tell your story?

Boone Oakley: Narrative is what we do, it’s what a lot of great advertising has grown out of, telling a story, creating connections and relevancy. I think a lot of ad agencies struggle Giulia Simi: Would you like to tell us with interactive because they try to how the project was born? create widgets and gadgets and Boone Oakley: Initially we were there’s a steep learning curve to working on some ideas for upgrading creating those types of experiences. our site. It was going to be a pretty Start with what you know and grow creative (yet typical) agency site. We from there. Narrative is a good got an excited email from one of our entryway to the interactive realm. junior creative teams that they had an YouTube is full of stories and idea and wanted to talk about it creativity. It seemed like a natural ASAP. The idea was initially to put place to be. everything in one video and use the Giulia Simi: Your work has expanded scrubber to navigate. That quickly the boundaries of YouTube, and has evolved into breaking the video up transformed it into something more into many small videos and using the than a platform where it is possible to annotations feature in YouTube for upload and watch videos. Do you navigation as well as including some think that YouTube has become a real guide in the scrubber. We had the medium? And what do you think of story of Billy pretty much figured out other very popular sites, as Twitter or from the start, we just tweaked that Facebook? Can it be that the Internet part a little and added other parts to has generated some products that the rest of the site. The story and the have later developed some technology turned out to be good autonomous languages and have amplifiers of each other. The someway become the new media? annotations added some novelty and buzz but the story itself was what Boone Oakley: YouTube is doing a most people ultimately responded to. good job of adding features to make it

64 more relevant and dynamic. The Giulia Simi: It happens that more and annotations, timeline linking, and more often ideas which can subvert analytics they’ve added are really the visual and conceptual codes come superb tools, albeit simple but very, from advertising rather than from art. very useful. I like that a lot of the sites Could we think that this is an effect of in the social network space are finding our mixing culture that makes every ways to work with each other rather label obsolete? However, according to than trying to set up walls where you you, is it really possible to make art can’t move between them. The ones with advertising? that try and set up closed ecosystems are probably the ones who will have Boone Oakley:I was one of those trouble surviving. Per usual some of types that migrated from the FINE art the best uses of these spaces are realm into the world of advertising so pioneered by amateurs with amazing I have a lot of thoughts about that. amounts of creativity and time on But simply put, I think they are their hands. The MadMen fan based growths off the same family tree of twitter accounts are a perfect creativity. Yes, a lot of what we do is example. dictated by a client, but we’re also hired by clients because they want that unique creative vision. Not terribly different from the old artist / patron model. The independent fine artist in museums are afforded the luxury of being more obscure with their meanings but they are trying to make something compelling just the same as we are.

http://www.booneoakley.com/

65 I Have Nothing To Say. Emergency – Emergent Agency

Micha Cardenas

Is it possible to create a discursive democracy, in the manner theorized by Jürgen Habermas, under the state of exception that Giorgio Agamben claims is the contemporary form of governance? Our project, Emergencia aimed to investigate this question, which was posed by the organizers of PCDI, by focusing on the possibility of communication among agents left How do we deal with broken outside the infrastructure of promises? How can artists work to communication, mediatic (private) enhance agency among participant and cultural ( public institutional), audiences who are anonymous, specifically, unrepresented youth on migratory and in transition? Can the both sides of the border. The question museum become a space for of misrepresentation was central to Habermasian democratic dialogue this initiative; since the PCDI program under a state of exception? These are was an excuse to exercise dialogue some of the questions that guided the among citizens, or an invitation for project Emergencia – Agencia citizens to exercise their right for Emergente // Emergency – Emergent public dialogue and representation. Agency by the Lui Velazquez collective, which was part of the For decades, the goal of projects such Proyecto Cívico: Diálogos e as Paper Tiger Television Interrogantes (PCDI) public (http://papertiger.org/) and programming developed by Bill Kelly Indymedia has been to realize the Jr. as part of the Proyecto Civico show democratic promise of mass media by curated by Lucia Sanroman and Ruth allowing disenfranchised groups to Estevez, at the Centro Cultural de have access to the airwaves. Bulbo TV Tijuana (CECUT) in the fall of 2008. is a Tijuana based media collective whose mission uses a different The Proposition approach, fostering communication

66 and liaison between social/cultural Mexico has undergone groups alienated by their ways of unprecedented levels of privatization. living in order to gain a deeper An example of this was the Televisa understanding of their social realities. Law, the unofficial name that a series Bulbo was another of the groups who of amendments to the Federal participated in PCDI. They are not Telecommunications Law (LFT) specifically making claims at Federal Law of Radio and Television democratization such as PTTV, but (LFRT) of Mexico, published in the similarly targeting various social Official Gazette on April 11, 2006. This groups and attempting to create controversial law was approved in better understanding between them. March 2006 by the whole House of Yet in many ways the promises of Representatives and in a span of 7 media activism have failed to minutes, without the prior reading, materialize. While today more people the text was voted unanimously, have access to publishing than ever something unusual in the history of thanks to blogs, social networking Mexico. The law was upheld by the sites, photo and video sharing sites, Senate, “without changing a comma”, there is still little improvement in during the last year of the presidency political conditions thanks to this of Vicente Fox and shortly before the increased media production. Most general elections of 2006 [1]. Vicente media produced is personal, private Fox could have banned the law for the and for entertainment purposes. statements made by the Ministry of Communications and Transport against it but decided to publicize it, and in fact, entered into forceful arguing that for democracy to prevail in the chambers, approval was necessary.

The controversy is that, in view of its critics, the law enshrines deregulation of spectrum for digital duopoly formed by Mexican media group Televisa and TV Azteca. Senators who Img: courtesy by Paper Tiger were in fact members of the LIX Television Legislature before the Supreme Court of the unconstitutionality of a Nation, argued that the so-called “Televisa For the last three years, mass media in Law” inhibits competition and

67 promotes the power of the television between the state and society, but is duopoly. now a site of direct struggle between the state and different organizations According to this law the digital representing the private interests of frequency spectrum is given to organized groups of individuals.” private TV stations use, free of charge, a public good that belonged to the Mexican state. Opponents of this legislation agreed that this law would increase the control of television on the market blocking free frequencies for radio or television for educational or community purposes.

While the mass media around the world grows increasingly privatized, it supports the state of exception whereby the population is Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: disenfranchised and alienated from Diálogos e Interrogantes the political process, steadily eroding any sense of citizenship or social For PCDI, our project Emergencia responsibility. Yet the situation is focused on the transmission of more complicated than simply a mass messages, as a most basic form of media in service of pure communication, as a means of totalitarianism. In her 2004 book, facilitating engagement between Network Culture: Politics for the various social groupings and the mass Information Age, Tiziana Terranova media. Emergencia can be seen as an looks at the politics of information entry into this network of conflict, a theory, communication and noise. In it modulation of the flows of messages, she states: “the public sphere of the not with the goal of creating welfare state and mass democracy is communication or understanding described by Habermas in terms that between groups, but with the goal of are markedly different from those of allowing the messages to find a the bourgeois public sphere The broader audience, opening the current public sphere is not a sphere possibility that they might find their of mediation between state and civil intended recipient. While we did not society, but the site of a permanent seek to create pure communication, conflict Communication is not a we did seek to engage the passions of space of reason that mediates those involved by offering them a

68 mass media platform for their voices. should be serving. We also sought to impact the viewer on an affective level, in a way For the Habermasian space of demonstrating the non-transparency discursive democracy to exist, there of communication. needs to be a space of pure communication. The mass media, We planned to solicit various groups much like the art museum, always for short messages they wanted to already precludes such a space of have broadcast, and then encode as pure communication, because such a many as possible into a short 20 space would have to exist without second segment that we had privilege or hierarchy, among equal negotiated with a spanish language speaking partners. In the mass media, television station in the San Diego[2]. just as in the system of the museum, We first engaged with a group of there is always a gatekeeper, be it a homeless youth, through an director or curator, who not only expressive arts facilitator. Some of chooses what messages are to be these youth are undocumented, included in the communication, but sexually exploited, queer, transgender who sets the very terms, questions or do not fit any of these categories, and focus of the dialog from the but they must all remain anonymous, outset. Given the years of work that for their own safety. In this way, we are required to become a television hoped to offer these youth a space of network producer or a museum reflection on what they might want to curator, there is no pure communicate through the mass communication here, because the media. participants are not equals, and are subject to pleasing the hierarchy. Our contact at the station told us that they receive messages such as lost dog information nearly everyday, and they discard these. This was one of our initial inspirations. It is an example of how the mass media can maintain the state of exception, by choosing who’s emergency is worthy of broadcast, and who’s is worthy of broadcast a hundred times a day. By broadcasting these messages, we open the question of the mass media as a public service and who they .

69 Our project critiques this idea of destination.” If this were true, it would discursive democracy by providing a seem that our task for our project, of service to the groups we engage, broadcasting anonymous messages, without attempting to reproduce the would be unnecessary. How is one to rhetoric of democracy that only understand this concept? In the same reproduces the state of exception. In seminar, just before, Lacan says that his book Protocol, published in 2004, “the sender receives from the Alexander Galloway examines the receiver his own message in an politics of information infrastructure, inverted form.” If this is so, if one only asking “how control exists after hears the inverse of what one says, decentralization” and proposing perhaps communication is not protocol as the answer. He proposes possible. Perhaps the public at the that the way control societies operate root of the notion of the public sphere is through a decentralized “protocol doesn’t exist, but in its place can be [which] not only installs control into a found a network of immeasurable terrain that on its surface appears complexity, such that one can only actively to resist it, but in fact goes add more messages to send off into further to create the most highly space, not knowing if they will be controlled mass media hitherto received known.” (emphasis in original) Not only does the mass media serve to The Project maintain the lack of democracy, it The Lui Velazquez collective was does so by presenting itself as a invited to participate in PCDI and constituent part of democracy. asked to find a group of people As we are concerning ourselves with outside of our own collective with messages, missives or letters which whom we should facilitate a dialog. have been discarded or disregarded, it From the beginning, we had a seems appropriate to visit the concern about tokenizing a group of Seminar on The Purloined Letter of people by choosing a particular group Jacques Lacan, which deals with the and trying to offer them a service question of the possibility of through our project. communication that is at the basis for We were aware of the problematic Habermas’ discursive democracy. nature of project, specifically under Lacan also found television to be an the critical arguments developed by interesting site of intervention, as theorist since the mid nineties. Miwon some of his seminars were broadcast Kwon recapitulates this discussion in there. In the seminar, Lacan claims her book, One Place After Another: that “a letter always arrives at its

70 Site-Specific Art and Locational youth, through the medium of an Identity and brings up the controversy expressive arts therapy facilitator, in the collaborative interaction Jennifer Stanley. The youth all between artist and local community homeless for various reasons but had groups. Kwon points to Grant Kester‘s to remain anonymous for their safety argument [3]. that cultural and because of the restrictions of the mobilization of social “usefulness” of institution at which she interacted art (foundational to community-based with them. Around the time of our art) and the rhetoric that accompanies offer to participate in PCDI, the it need to be understood within what collective was also in conversation he calls the “moral economy of with a television station about capitalism” and the history of liberal producing a short series of urban reform. “This outpouring of informational television segments, compassion and concern over based on a performance of one “community”-imagined by many collective member, Felipe Zuniga, critical practitioners as a means to which the station had broadcast greater social justice and inclusive previously. political and cultural processes-”must be understood in relation to the The group with whom the collective successful assimilation in the US of worked represented a challenge: conservative arguments about youth living on the streets. This underlying causes of poverty, social population can be seen as a parallel to and cultural inequity, and the situation of immigrants: the disenfranchisement”. condition of bare life, under which the individual is stripped of universal human rights and turned into a subject totally under state power. Homeless youth have a very problematic condition especially when we look at the restriction of their freedom. In the first place, because of their lack a of legal guardian, the state prevents the possibilities of the teens to have visibility before the law. To prevent . exploitative practices employed by As a result, we decided to work media, the teens are prevented from initially with a group of anonymous being portrayed by media. This restriction of the use of the image and

71 speech generates a very harmful Hi I’m X X. I would like to encourage to effect: the disappearance of the play football. individual. So here legal protection applies as a restriction that produces I love my lil brothers erasure. The individuals lose the opportunity of factual presence and are pushed into an anonymous condition that increases their fragility and invisibility [4].

Combining our former approaches of radio transmission and broadcast performance, we planned to offer the youth the opportunity to broadcast a short message on television. The facilitator held a workshop with the Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: youth about media privatization and Diálogos e Interrogantes institutional racism in the mass media and told them that they could write short messages, one sentence only, Our collective then made it our task to which may be selected by an artist try various means of broadcasting group for broadcasting on television. these messages to a broader public, She further told them that they could to try to create resonance with write anything they liked, such as an anyone who may be receptive. We announcement for something lost, a used three platforms, video, radio and commentary or simply a shout out. t-shirts a public art fair. The youth wrote varied messages, To try to begin to create a dialog, we including… facilitated a video production I have nothing to say workshop in professor Claudia Algara’s new genres class at the Ethnicity? Human. Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC). We explained the Felizidades! Acabas de Ignora otra project and gave the students the hora de hambre en Africa. original messages from the original group of youth and asked them to The government f***** (fucking) sucks create responses to the messages I would like to give a shoutout to my using video. We explained that the brother michael. original group had to remain

72 anonymous, and so they should also broadcast. The edited versions of the try to make their videos under the videos the students produced were same restriction, without showing posted on Youtube.com at the end of their faces or voices . The students the workshop, broadcasting them made a series of videos during the online and allowing the students to workshop, around school and with share the videos with friends available materials. The students were also informed that the videos would hopefully become the content of the Univision broadcast.

These videos are available on: http://www.youtube.com/user/luivel azquezart

A second part of the workshop took place at the Lui Velazquez space in Colonia Federal, where interested students were able to continue Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: editing their videos, learn more Diálogos e Interrogantes editing techniques and participate in the radio workshop. At these Our next attempt to distribute the workshops, a radio broadcast was also original messages of the youth took used to disseminate the original place at Entijuanarte, an annual art fair messages. In collaboration with held in the courtyard of CECUT. We Neighborhood Public Radio were invited to participate by ( organizing a booth as part of our role http://www.neighborhoodpublicradio in PCDI. At our booth, we played the .org/), discussions on visual arts videos produced by the UABC production and politics, mass media students and allowed visitors to make privatization and the state of t-shirts in response to the original exception took place at the messages of the youth. We supplied workshops at Lui Velazquez, led by blank t-shirts with the Lui Velazquez Michael Trigilio and Ricardo name on the back as well as the name Dominguez, both working artists and of the project, fabric markers and a professors in the Visual Art bowl with small slips containing the department at UCSD. Students who original messages. We encouraged attended the workshops were able to youth attending the art fair to read see how to produce a low power FM the messages, think of a response and

73 make a t-shirt of their response. In messages. this way we attempted to engage youth to consider participating in the dialog and to engage the public at the art fair to become an audience for the dialog as well.

With the edited videos, we went back to the television station. Yet, the producer was not happy with the content of the videos. In particular, one video was made in response to a youth who said “I HAVE NOTHING TO Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: SAY.” The video depicted two young Diálogos e Interrogantes women, students in the media art class at UABC, wearing black plastic bags over their heads, breathing Conclusions silently. In an attempt to deepen the dialog, Given the context of violence in we wanted to go back to the original Tijuana and the daily stories of victims group of youth who wrote the found dead with bags over their messages and let them know how heads, the Univision producer found people had seen the messages. Yet the videos objectionable. Ultimately, when we asked the expressive art we were unable to broadcast any of therapy facilitator, we found out that the videos or the messages on all of the youth had left the institution Univision. In a way, this could be seen at which she met them. This led us to as breaking our original promise to consider the success of our project the youths who wrote the original and the ways in which it may have messages. Yet we tried as best we been effective or not. could to disseminate the messages in many other ways. When considering the question of how artists can enhance agency for Our last act of transmission (before political actors who may be this article!) was at the presentation of anonymous, transitory or in transition projects for PCDI at CECUT. We or becoming, perhaps one answer is discussed the project in the museum, the notion of scaffolding. For our in front of a public audience, and project, given our limited resources displayed many of the original and limited time to accomplish the

74 project, we did not create a long art such as the Whitney Biennial can lasting infrastructure for political provide legitimacy and possibly allow engagement. Yet what we did was to them to operate more freely than a create a light scaffolding, a temporary broadcaster without such institutional infrastructure, a prototype for testing support. Yet the extent to which the out a form of communication or Whitney understands and supports engagement. Perhaps given the the actions of NPR as opposed to NPR rapidly shifting social conditions of benefiting from the relationship more, the state of exception and disaster is unclear. Similarly, Lui Velazquez was capitalism, building light scaffolding invited by CECUT to participate in makes more sense than dedicating their public programming, and thanks years to an infrastructure of political in part to the legitimacy provided by action. When not only the conditions the museum, was able to expand a are changing but also the subjects of number of existing relationships and political action are, a light structure invite new collaborations from groups can be more flexible, allowing rapid we sought to work with, and provide changes to a plan of action. In our agency for, through the museum case, the scaffolding was the project Emergencia, facilitated by our collective. Within this scaffolding, various groups of youth were invited to engage in a consideration of politics, media and communication.

Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR) itself can be seen as an example of this kind of scaffolding, in that they use small, mobile, temporary broadcasts for each of their projects Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: and as such have evaded the large Diálogos e Interrogantes fines that the FCC has levied on many other unlicensed broadcasters. The possibility for political Yet with NPR and Lui Velazquez, one engagement becomes a question of can see an infiltration and a parasiting scale. Along the lines of thought of of larger institutions which allows for micropolitics or molecular revolution a more flexible approach to political from Deleuze and Guattari, daily acts engagement. In the case of NPR, their begin to take precedence here over participation in larger institutions of moments of massive social upheaval

75 or long term social movements. When in politics in the space of the asking how we can empower political museum, another kind of agents whose identities are in flux, the communication outside of pure notion of relying on laws or universal democratic dialog is necessary. Other human rights begins to break down. forms of communication such as With groups of people who do not affective communication, or have fixed identities, the kind of communication allowing for linguistic fixity and specificity required uncertainty and ambiguity, may be by laws and declarations of rights is useful ways of engaging publics in incompatible. As such, movements for political action through museums. legislative gains are incompatible with a will to improve the conditions of In the place of discursive processes communities without names, leading to a liberatory democratic communities without definition, situation, we offer an emergent under the state of exception. agency, based on the multiplication of pathways, codes, messages, In the second day of media identifications and groupings. workshops at Lui Velazquez with the Guattari claims in Chaosmosis that the students from UABC, Ricardo mass media is a technology of Dominguez elaborated on the subjectivation. He offers a strategy of relationship between communication using complex interactions to offer and democracy. Speaking of the new possibilities, saying, “the origins of democracy in Greece, important thing here is not only the Dominguez elaborated a genealogy of confrontation with a new material of democracy stemming from theater expression, but the constitution of and tragedy. complexes of subjectivation: multiple exchanges between individual-group- Yet, he offered another possibility, machine Grafts of transference saying that if tragedy can be seen as operate in this way, not issuing from the origin of democracy and the will ready-made dimensions of to pure communication, perhaps subjectivity crystallized into structural comedy can be seen as another form complexes, but from a creation which of communication. What is important itself indicates a kind of aesthetic here, beyond comedy specifically, is paradigm an ethico-aesthetic the notion of another kind of engagement” communication. Perhaps when artists and curators consider how to engage

76 engagement

Notes:

[1] 47 senators of the LIX Legislature, brought on May 4, 2006 a constitutional dispute with the Supreme Court against the Nation’s Laws Radio-Television and Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: Telecommunications, in order to be Diálogos e Interrogantes declared unconstitutional, in whole or in part, arguing that they were in As such, we propose that the value of violation of Articles 1, 25, 27 and 28 of dialogic processes of engagement the Constitution of the United States with communications media do not of Mexico.The Supreme Court arise from working towards a declared unconstitutional articles 6, common reasonable agreement, but paragraphs 16 and parts of the texts of from the exercise of expressive and the law, and it was credited legislative creative faculties and the fashioning omissions. The auction process for of new collective subjectivities. Our concessions and the automatic project attempted to serve as a kind endorsement of them were removed of “Emergency Broadcast System”, from the law. interrupting the normal flow of mass [2] Our contact at the station ask that media broadcasts to introduce these we not use the station’s name, as we anonymous messages. The never had a formal contract with interrupting of the patterns of flow them, only an informal, verbal can be important, as Guattari states statement of interest “these complexes actually offer [3] Aesthetic Evangelists:Conversion people diverse possibilities for and Epowerment in Contemporary recomposing their existential Community Arts” Afterimage (Gennaio corporeality, to get out of their 1995): 5-11 repetitive impasses and, in a certain [4] This interest can be traced back in way, to resingularise themselves.” a previous effort were the collective Perhaps instead of working out tried to establish another temporal agreements over differences among dialogic platform in the US developed already constituted groups, poetic at the residencia at LACE, Street subversive acts like ours can offer address series, La Radio Cubo, which paths towards new groupings and consisted in the production of one new ways of reimagining social day workshop and radio transmission

77 with homeless youth in Los Angeles evisa under the umbrella of the infrastructure of a shelter. The project Becerril, Andrea, “La ley Televisa, una had the aim to offer air time on the imposición previa a las elecciones de web as well as in radio frequency. 2006, según Creel”, La Jornada, 5 maggio 2007. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/ 05/05/index.php?section=politica&art icle=005n1pol

Becerril, Andrea, “Nada justifica los privilegios en la ley Televisa: Aguirre Anguiano”La Jornada, 5 maggio 2007, Messico. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/ 05/05/index.php?section=politica&art icle=003n1pol Img: courtesy by Proyecto Cívico: Diálogos e Interrogantes Anulan corazón de “Ley Televisa”, BBCmundo.com 6 giugno2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/lat References: in_america/newsid_6726000/672633 5.stm http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Tel

78 Future Places Festival. Between Digital And Local Cultures

Lucrezia Cippitelli

question in mind: if digital media can do so much for the development of global communication, knowledge and creativity, what can it do to help the development of local cultures?

As we all know, festivals and biennials were created in order to build up expectations and in order to give voice and international visibility to Future Places – Digital media and local areas and cities considered to be cultures was held in Porto from the “marginal” or “up and coming”. An 13th to the 17th October. It is a festival, example of this is Documenta by a meeting made up of a series of Cassel, an exhibition born in Germany lectures and concerts, an exhibition, a in the years after the Second World place in which people congregate in War to provide a clear sign of the order to discuss technology and rebirth of the German nation (after its creativity. It had two official sponsors: defeat and the post-Nazi The University of Porto and the devastation). starting from its culture. University of Austin, Texas. The same can be said about all the other biennials already established The subtitle chosen for this festival and still to be created worldwide in refers to local cultures. This is what the future: just consider the Dakar melting pot, attracts this Lusitanian biennial, a well-known event about conceived by Heitor Alvelos, curator African contemporary art which is and professor at the Fine Arts clearly described by the president of Academy of the University of Porto the nation as “a tool useful for together with Karen Gustafson, the attracting tourists”. The same can also correspondent from the University of be said about art, poetry, literature, Austin, Texas. According to its philosophy, maths and science definition, Future Places should be a festivals which have become more “meeting between people who have a and more widespread over recent

79 years. After the fall of the Wall, the Transmediale, Mutek or Sonar, to be new Berlin owes a lot to clear). On the contrary Future Places Transmediale, a video festival born in bases its programme on the the early 90′s which helped in the participation of local entities which, creation of the image of a city of for a few days, open their doors to culture , a young city as well as a new give voice to presentations made by European capital. artists who come from all over the world but, at the same time, are closely linked to the territory.

The most glamorous guest was Golan Levin, who presented his work in a panel entitled Aspects and strategies of contemporary media and its impact on locality during the conference organised and held in the ancient Rectory Building in Porto(which is still being renovated).This conference was actually the final phase of a workshop Future Places follows this line of which lasted for a few days and was thought: with its over 200 thousands organised for the students of Porto. inhabitants Porto is one of those More interesting, at this conference, “marginal” areas mentioned above was the presentation of some local (and, what is more, located in a projects like Wikimap Galizia Culture marginal country, Portugal, the “finis by Silvia Garcia or D/Y digital terrae” of the Old Continent). As a creativity by Luis Saramento. mater of fact, Alvelos, the skilled art Although the audience was there to director of the festival, has been able listen to Levin (who presented a to transform this condition into a conference very similar to the one I statement now considered one of the had already listened to some months most brilliant elements of the event. ago in Modena at Direct Digital), they Future Places did not want to repeat then found some other presentations the experience of the other well- and debates coming from their own known new media festivals which are local region rather more interesting based on the presence of the usual and up-to-date. famous names who are constant As pointed out by Heitor Alvelos, the guests at international new media presence of representatives of 15 Fine festivals (Isea or the above-mentioned Arts Academies coming from all over

80 the world (one was me who arrived in atmosphere of the Maus Habitos café Porto as a representative of the provided a frame for the presentation Academy of L’Aquila) helped to create of some worksOporto-Dumbo which I was Bridge pleased to a network of contacts between discover. is the experts interested in the same successful result of research carried subjects and methods whose aim is to out by two artists from New York, try and form a European network Naomi Kaly and Alyssa Casey. It is an which could lead to the creation of installation in the shape of a bridge. some collective and participated The inspiration comes from the fact educational models based on the that both Porto and Manhattan have exchange of professors between their own river (Douro and Hudson) different institutions. The justification which divides the city centre of both for the design of such a project was from areas which differ from them in the participation of Transmedia, one terms of social composition and of the first European post-graduate historic culture. The Brooklyn bridge Masters which works on the idea of divides Manhattan from Brooklyn; the training artists to start from a concept Dom Luis I bridge divides the centre rather than techniques or media. of Porto from Vila Nova, the wine city/industry where the famous wine with the same name is bottled. Oport-Dumbo Bridge is an installation in the shape of a bridge which gathers the voices of the inhabitants of the four different cities divided by the two bridges. Pulling the two rods which link the bottom lines of the installation the spectator can listen to these voices. Pulling them from right The principal events of the festival to left the voices of people from the were two concerts held at the House USA can be heard; doing it in the of Music and an exhibition held at opposite direction you can listen to Maus Habitos, a social club on the top ideas and comments by the floor of a modernist building located inhabitants of Porto and Vila Nova. in the centre of Porto. The squat aesthetics of many of the installations and the old school community centre http://www.futureplaces.org

81 82 From Frieze To Ed Rusha. October In London With Eyes Of An Art Critic

Stefano Raimondi

Hirst.

Out in the can-can culture and a thermometer in free fall, London’s not forget some to be the “City” of the big banks and big business, big speculation in the past, past and future. Then, the event shouted to the four media, television, radio, newspapers, the Internet can only be Frieze, the fair every year Regent’s They are the first days of October, and Park transforms into a park for the wearing the shirt with short sleeves noble race of contemporary art. and summer still clinging to his back, when you book, as an annual ritual, a short trip, destination, London, to see everything an art lover would ever see.

Shows like rain: Miroslaw Balka, and the pure beauty of John Baldessari shine at the Tate Modern, a short distance Kusmirowski transforms the Ugo Rondinone, A Day Like This Made Barbican in a claustrophobic bunker Of Nothing And Nothing Else where to look with imagination, old lamps, and remnants of war are ideal home for giant rats grown up on the banks of the Thames and the waste of The tyranny of time is felt, and it is nearby Mc. Donald. All this while the impossible to exhaust the retrospective of Ed Rusha is about to innumerable proposals. Start with the get laughs of the show in oil on big hat of the fair. This year’s event canvas of the skeletons of Damien was watched by many as a kind of

83 crossroads or, alternatively, to the the artist emphasized Elmgreen the cross, to mark distances or highlight stands of the fair was full of works the strength of the economic crisis. that invoked “buy me, buy me, buy me.” This is the message that we Fears of a Freeze Art was evident, and would read a little ‘everywhere evidently had an influence, with rare wearing the special glasses used by exceptions, even the choices of over the protagonist of the film They Live 150 participating galleries. Change and (1988) by Carpenter. This can not and conservation. is not intended as a criticism of Frieze, which is born and remains a fair For those who have always seen as market, but rather underlines the risk the area of the Frieze Films Between of going to cross paths and rails one step, one foot firmly on the already beaten already seen. ground and another flight to relax on, in short, for those who seek and find proposals sometimes risky but never granted, certainly more presenting future, this year there must have been a moment of disorientation, repaired the security that between Regent’s Park in London and in Basel Messeplatz run several hundred kilometers. John Baldessari, Beethovens Trumpet Frieze on the other hand has a large (with ear) Opus 127 and successful so quickly because he has managed to avoid a confrontation on the same playing field of the other great Kermesse Europe that is Art How do you translate in practice this Basel. The diversity of perspective is “conservative” is easy to say: video the same that passes, so to speak, works to life imprisonment, probation between the Golden Bear in Berlin and photography, release for painting, and the Oscars in Hollywood. Maybe praise for the facilities and, above all, the same producers are taking part rely on the star system, with “artistars but the proposals are quite different. “names” safe “, always. These considerations are taken to “bird” Here the caution that this year or in without going into details or stores other words, the desire to “raise cash”, often rich and meaningful, hiding the tunnel had the best. How well has works of absolute value, small

84 epiphanies, alternative roads. periods of artificial light. Lamps outputs already rusted and dusty, That this trend is temporary or Soviet factories. Spare parts to be otherwise linked to the current global covered without a thousand and one economic condition is reflected in the nights, mold, termites, food dropper. new session Frame reserved for Rooms reordered – reordered again – galleries open for less than six years after a bomb at a short distance has and were requested to submit a one- poured everything once again and man show. Excellent idea, good who knows until when. Broken glass, success. Fresh air, air-old, also stand mirrors, destroyed or thrown violently to breathe the tunnel Zero. In the to the ground by a man who no longer midst of this grid ordered, almost recognizes. What does that barrel- New Yorker, in search of tunnels skittle fell from the stack and lying on skyscraper-selling secure greater the floor? What more black and dark height, the echo resounds strong despair which leads to the monorail vertical space was left intentionally internal communication? The bunker blank – except for a small painting by is a question fraught with questions, Victor Man – from the gallery in Milan as a position suspended between two that , with a sleight of hand worthy of imbalances, immersed in an artificial Le Corbusier, rotate the model and time, punctuated by radio, by the offers a new perspective. Who said hands, from aircraft, but never in Colt? To see many faces, puzzled or direct, always trust, never verified. disinterested it seems a small fraction Everything that is outside the bunker of the audience, certainly felt it in all becomes minimum projection and its sharpness ear prosthesis John synthesis of information. Must be Baldessari. Revolution is the concise, quick and precise. The maps conviction. Never mind if he won this of rural areas become the man fucile.L year’s Titanic. ‘cross only note of this monumental work was the vast and capibile From the calm with which working presence of security staff, which at through the sculptures of Regent’s times broke the rhythmBunker and break the Park to life from underground war of apnea. the Barbican Center. Robert Kusmirowski turns it into a bunker After seeing the , my over- from World War II Polish. Darkness shared room hostel seemed a canopy everywhere, interrupted only by of century dream.

85 tangle of liquid water (at least here the stagnant waters of the market that trouble Gagosian are far away).

Glenn Brown’s subjects are first of all appearances, the sacred lamb, still smoking, appears to be the chosen one, with that sad face, for Easter dinner, Christina of Denmark we do Rober Kusmirowski, Bunker, 2009 not glimpseFity yearsthe night of painting on the way back. The liquid substance of the paintings of Glenn Brown may well have a high alcohol content, colors The next day a giant muffin reload the and forms multiply and overlap, reality last day. I satisfy my vices of painting loses definition, but gains in mystery, (which today is the eighth of the we would expect to see the painting deadly sins) and I go where sent by moving, complicated even more Gagosian is home to a staff of forty slipping away from all boundaries of British artist Glenn Brown. The form. subjects of the paintings are ghosts of history and of ‘art. Innocent X portrait Finally, the great exhibition of in the style of Velazquez, Velazquez in paintings by Ed Rusha, at Hayward the manner of Baselitz, Georg Baselitz Gallery. , from in the manner of Glenn Brown, which the late ’50s to today. Rather than tell, cut off the head, guillotined by the to be seen. Until 14 January 2010. frame with a painting that looks like a

86 Cinematography Of The Stone Age: Woyzeck By William Kentridge

Annamaria Monteverdi

actor and director of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company and the Handspring Puppet Company in Johannesburg and he put on shows by writers Tom Stoppard and Alfred Jarry; he later became the director of short animation films shot on 16mm as well as an author of drawings and incisions: in their anxious-ridden black comedy where there is a harsh social The South African artist William critique of the South African Kentridge is one of the most government before the democratic renowned contemporary visual artists elections of 1994 in South Africa and and proposes a poetic view on ancient before the creation of the Nelson taste where art and technique come Mandela’s African National Congress, together in the original value and and his pictorial allusions to Goya, techné significance of : the shows are Bacon, Grosz and Weimar artists that based on his original filmed coexist with the atmospheres of the animations and recalls those theatres theatre of the Gran Guignol and from the beginning of the century Beckett-like dramas. that experimented with the rudimental techniques of luminous He worked for Ubu tells the truth animation (drawings on pieces of (1996-1997), doing drawings and mobile glass, projected thanks to a graphics that make up the visual Magic Lantern), promoting a primitive corpus of the successive filmed form of optical art. animations created for the show that went on stage with puppets entitled William Kentridge’s biography is rich Ubu and the Commission of the Truth; with events and experiences he then worked on the drawings for connected to the theatre: he the show Faustus in Africa (1995), on frequented the Ecole Jacques Lecoq the scenes for Confessions of Zeno in Paris, he became a set designer, (2002), on the musical opera The

87 return of Ulysses (1998) from an action that goes back to the origins Monteverdi; Preparing the flute on the of cinema, the first photographic other hand is a little theatrical model studies of the Marey and Muybridge with two animated films in 35mm movement. where Kentridge reinvents his work for the sets of the Magic Flute by The coffee maker becomes a mine Mozart. through animation, the stethoscope a telephone: the outside landscape absorbs the dramatic memories and social happenings that it went through; the automation of the medium used by Kentridge counter opposes, according to Rosalind Krauss, the “luck” and free interpretation of the technique that modifies and at times contradicts the conditions and nature of the support: from the flow of images of film to the immobility of drawings.

As Carolyn Christov-Bakargiey recalls, The Drawings for Projections make up Kentridge has deep interest in the heart of Kentridge’s artistic different techniques, but does not elaborations and is extended to the appreciate the “innovative practices theatrical sets: these are animated per se, nor the historical evolutions of films and mute films created from art, style and technique and prefers carbon drawings and inaugurated at obsolesce”, and underlines the deep the end of the 80’s with masterpieces meaning of this open modality, such as Monument (1990) based on expanded and processed through the Beckett’s Catastrophe. His work recording of the drawing for its behind the Boles 16mm is difficult and projection, which contains the particular, where he creates animated imperfections but also the layers of sequences, without a script or memory, against the “dulling” of storyboard: the sequence is society: “In his art an erasure – counter composed of minimal variations and opposed to the distinct lines – is also a erasures of a few carbon and healthy metaphor for the protest monochrome pastel drawings on against certainty and preconceptions paper, which conserve the evident at the base of human and social traces of their own metamorphosis, relationships in the world that only

88 appears to be more interactive and that records the phases of drawing, democratic than the digital era. The “does not pursue the cinema as such erasure puts into questions any but instead builds a new medium on definitive affirmation that is possible”. the technical support of a common cinematic practice of mass culture”. In Kentridge talks about a pre- other words, according to Krauss, cinematographic technique or rather, Kentridge’s animations would be a “cinematography of the stone age”, more similar to a flicker book, to a and the critic Rosalind Krauss rotating cylinder of a underlines the “reinvention of the Phenakistoscope, the taumatrope, in cinematographic medium” through other words those instruments that the re-writing of a new linguistic code are obsolete today and that and the recuperation of a craft-like primitively and rudimentally practice that was lost forever in the anticipated the recording of images in era of computerized programming: motion Kentridge, although he uses the technique of stop-motion animation

89 drawings per film instead of the thousands that you would expect. It’s a similar procedure to doing a drawing, more than to doing a film. Once the film has been elaborated by the camera, the completion, the editing, is the addition of sound, music and the rest works as for any other film”.

The graphic and film works of William Kentridge cannot be separated from This is Kentridge’s direct testimony: the recent political struggles of South “the technique that I take on to make Africa, the theme of the Apartheid these films is primitive. Traditional which he dedicates a long saga to, animation takes thousands of Soho Eckstein, the story of a greedy different drawings that are recorded and cynical capitalist who is a symbol in sequence to make a film. This of the corruption and depravation of generally implies the work of a team Johannesburg that is under pressure of animators and consequently the from constant racial injustice and the fact that the whole film must be exploitation of workers in mines. A projected beforehand. The images are character that is opposed to Soho drawn by the main animator and the Eckstein is the solitary and sad Felix intermediate phases are completed Teitlebaum. History of the Main by the assistant animators, whereas Complaint was created in 1995, Felix in the others work on going over lines Exile, in 1994, the year of the first and colouring. The technique I use democratic elections in South Africa. consists of a sheet of paper stuck to a wall in a studio, I put in the camera in When Kentridge is asked to the middle of the room, usually an old collaborate in the form of a exhibition Bolex. I sketch a drawing on a sheet of on his incisions made for the graphical paper and then I go to the camera, I series Ubu tells the truth he adds a take one or two frames, I (marginally) naked human figure as a narrative modify the drawing, I go back to the element placed inside the white camera then to the drawing, then to profile of a shapeless mass of King the camera and so on. In this way Ubu who takes all the forms of power, every sequence, compared to every with his pointed head and his spiral frame of the film, is one unique stomach on the black-slate drawing. In all there will be about 20 background of a blackboard. Ubu, the

90 emblem of institutionalised cruelty the horrors, the abuse and violations becomes the “grey area” inside us and of human rights. the system (“The structure” as Julian Beck would have said…) which we are responsible for. These drawings and these incisions have become the central nucleus of animation for the show Ubu and the commission of the truth in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company (1995); it is a violent protest against the events and racial conflicts of South Africa before the elections.

The animation technique in this case, Woyzeck on the Highveld at Roma compared to the experimental mode Europa of the other drawing for projection on Soho Eckstein, is different as it Even William Kentridge works on enriches the rudimental cut outs of Woyzeck as Robert Wilson had done newspapers, the processions of dark in the Theatre (with music by Tom silhouettes like glued-on shadows and Waits) and William Herzog in the metallic parts onto paper, white chalk cinema with Klaus Kinski in 1979; the drawings on dark paper and films of drama is written by Buchner in 1837 other archive material that are a and was incomplete because of the testimony to the violence and death of the author, and so is a repression, as well as that of the fragmented text, as it has been police armed with whips that attacks defined, in “stations”. It talks of the the crowd in Cato Manor in 1960 or unhappy story of the soldier Franz attacks a group of students at Witz Woyzeck, who dies humble jobs to University during a state of support his companion Marie and emergency in 1980 and that of the their son who has not yet been revolt in Soweto in 1976. The theatrical baptised. To make more money he viewpoint began from the disturbing does everything for the captain and is revelations that came out of the a human guinea pig for a doctor for courts of the Commissions for the some experiments; Marie betrays him. enquiry into the truth and Woyzeck finds Marie had his rival at a reconciliation of South Africa. The dance in a tavern, and madness and Commission was created with the hallucinations bring him to kill the purpose of recording the witnesses of woman.

91 Kentridge had put on Buchner’s awaken an ancient curiosity, and the Woyzeck in 1992; in the program notes able animated work of Kentridge. of the show Kentridge wrote that he was close to this drama as he had seen it as an emblem of conflict (social, political and emotional) after a show in the 70’s and since then he tired to imagine a different context from that of Prussia of the 19th century.

The new context could be none other than the South Africa of today. The second aspect that pushed him to the representation was the desire to work with the company Handspring Puppet Company in a mixed performance This takes us, without words, into where the drawing could be united Woyzeck’s head, exploited, with the general frame of the overwhelmed, offended, persecuted representation where the actors were by the powerful and betrayed, he who taken away and replaced by puppets thinks differently, who is the emblem where other ways to transmit the of the persecuted and the humble ill- emotional depth where not guided by treated man who at the end the face of the actor. The third reason succumbs to his own nightmares, was the desire to put an animated goes mad and kills the woman he film onto the stage that would have a loves as a definitive act of self dynamic rapport with the movement annihilation and rebellion. Woyzeck’s of the puppets on stage and that mind races between objects, would update the ancient culture of processions of shadows and desires the theatre of figures and the shadow that are not expressed, dreams, theatre. psychological disturbances, and enchanting wonders. The sky is a Today’s work seen at the Eliseo forest of stars and is the only ray of Theatre during the Romaeuropa light in an impossible happiness. The festival kept an extraordinary force technique Kentridge uses is thanks to the presence of the wooden extraordinary as is that of the puppets of human proportions that stagehands of the puppets: in both were guided efficiently by stagehands cases the hand that gives the soul tot that were not wearing hoods that eh object. The spectator can be

92 considered the sum of the artistic Apartheid as its foundation. work of William Kentridge, also because of the theme that is dealt with, that has the South African http://www.romaeuropa.net/

93 Cam Girls And Sex On Second Life: A Report

Marco Riciputi

The Red Light District

Is at Amstedam and is always incredibly crowded. In truth there are several Amsterdam each with its red light district, canals and local posts of the lap dance. The city is made up mostly of empty tenements, often without access to a dramatic background. Deserted streets, the air Rocco Siffredi sounded the alarm: displaced people running away and “You Porn is killing the porn industry.” very few prostitutes behind windows. A cry of starlets like Eve Laurence withdraws from the business main stream to provide its community of fans tailored services, without passing by production houses, in perfect style “participatory pornography.”

The magazine Focus goes on sale with a dossier on MP3 players that are vibrators to the music, equipment wii remote to masturbate with your partner and kiss-phone prototype that The red light district on the contrary is simulates the kisses. The Orgasmatron always full of people. Designed as in Woody Allen’s comparison of all this may exist in the mind of every tourist, affection. While waiting to be able to in Second Life can be found at Yaupon have fun with the wii with my favorite Plain 158, 168, 601. cam girl who sends me in 3D, take the Leaving the metro station a short walk technological revolution of sex very from a fountain always crowded, you seriously and I do a tour in the Red will be in a closed rectangular square Light District in Second Life. on four sides by collecting information

94 points where the business cards of the Escort and see if they are online. Do sex, is better. You can be cheated In some places like the Sex Shop with webcam ” warns Eise Wiesel. Sintimacy and find what you need for Diamond shirt, pony tail, white pants, your avatar, like a new skin or other you brush your hair on board fountain. gadgets. Gives me fifteen minutes of sex between avatars for 350 Linden. I say There are those who despairs that I feel honest. Within the heart, cheated… and I know not to be equipped: I miss the shit. Eise says there is no problem. Much of the buildings of the District Can you give me a “cock horse” for the are by Allcot Floyd, Jaabe Reinsch and duration of the benefit, then I make. Sonia Dwi. The central fountain is the Or he can sell me a set of nine penises navel of the square. All around is a for 13 Linden. bazaar of sex with continuous trading. The balloon over the heads of the … and who buy clothes with the avatars leave no doubt. Mariella Jet money of performance City is offered as webcam escort. 4000 Linden Dollars for 10 minutes. “Das ist schön!” Gamble because the About 16 euros. profile is in Vienna. Eise tells me that the money and used to buy clothes The screen is full of messages, can not for their avatar in SL. Saw a track that read them all. Del Hotaling is near the you like, with striped stockings. He fountain is its avatar is in despair and also uses the webcam but not today put her hands to her eyes. Has been because it’s his home and is in conned by a cam escort. 3500 Linden residence. has paid for a show of a few seconds. Then he has paid more in 2500 hoping He hopes to return soon, with photos to resume transmission. None. Now and escort services to be earning cries and curses Nienke Collins asked little. The dormitory of the university everyone not to go with her. is more liberal and not ashamed even to meet his roommate. Indeed, he adds, for an additional charge also involves her friend. In two, even with voice-cam, for 15 minutes, calls 18000th Linden. ‘I am young and not fat, you have fun … lol’. Fun for more than 60 euros.

Understand immediately that I have

95 no money to spend and complains: “I know it’s hard work … and getting harder and harder.” Too many prostitutes to the streets in her I ask her to show me his outfit with opinion. Ask what you earn? “Maybe striped stockings. I added to the list of 3-400 if you stand here 18 hours and friends, disappears and gives me a talk nice to men”. She tells me that teleport to Vamp Berlin Kaufhaus. Is a the Lindens can be converted in U.S. large room with many people without dollars: “U need to exchange 250 images on the walls of different. All dollars back to real money, is about very sexy, nothing to first communion: 800,000 Lindens” – but Eise is about “Is Linden close to the machine”. Then 145,000. Why they invest. In seductive he disappears and goes back to work. clothes. Also has specialized in He gives me a glass of champagne. sadomasochism. Has a collection of Grasped immediately, admits that for poses for sex, shackles and strap on, a certain tone, and do a tour of the suggesting that its customers like to Kaufhaus leaving behind the Red get caught behind. Light Discrict.

96 Sosolimited: Deconstruction Time Again

Marco Mancuso

around the world were deeply stirred by the presence of a black Senator with the Muslim name of Barack Obama. Add then the idea of a live performance, that through a free software could deconstruct the audiovisulal information flow of the broadcast to re-arrange a multimedia event, in which the debate’s linguistic Eric Gunther, John Rothenberg e pattern, the body language, the Justin Manor are 3 ironic, smart guys gestures and tones of voice, more of 30, protagonist of the Sosolimited than the expressed political concepts, project, an art and design consultancy are the main narrative and aesthetic formed in 2003. The group specializes element. in interactive installation, audiovisual Imagine then the presence of 3 performance, live remix and performers sitting at their laptops, immersive environment, all strictly wearing elegant black suits and black based on self-programmed softwares sunglasses. They appear like and technologies and on a high, very Kraftwerks, omniscient news anchors, high technical/ realization level. MIT or FBI agents, in front of their curious grads, with a solid background in viewers, always a little naïve when physics, computer science, whatching a pure code exercise. Don’t architecture and music, they have hit ever fail to consider the ability, which the headline and become worldwide is not Italian at all, of transforming an famous artists, in a way that only a idea into a long-range cultural and Country like USA makes it real and effective. artistic event (the tour Re- Construction 2008, performed by the Consider for example an important Sosolimited in art galleries and other global political event with a cool venues in Boston, New York and remarkable interest from world media Washington, has reached an audience like 2008 USA TV Presidential of over 1500 people and has risen the debates. Remember that people all attention of the most important

97 American newspapers and reviews). In the same way, it has been already a At last, consider the important help few years since Eric, John and Justin given by the “character” Obama, who have been working as audiovisual has been recently awarded the Peace artists with live performances, both in Nobel Prize, and you will see that the Boston and surroundings and in 3 good Sosolimited will take home the international clubs and events, in 2010 Transmadiale Prize (in fact they which they slice and dice data and have already been nominated from information from the TV flow and Berlin; there was not a shadow of rearrange it in real time with taste and doubt). And to think that our Fabio improvisation (the performances Franchino performed something very Evening News Remix in Boston and similar in 2004 with his Toogle the Nomadic Nights in Paris are some project( examples of this kind of http://www.abusedmedia.it/toogle2 performances), or in which they remix /)… in real time films and film-clips following the rules of an extremely advanced “cut&paste” with regard to the possible sound and image effects (like in the Steal a Million or the Grindhouse projects), developing specific film concepts and narrative themes (like Sosoconception or Sosonoir).

But the technical ability, capacity planning and ingenuity of the undisputed Sosolimited, better not to To tell the truth, the idea of instant join in live performance, especially in software analysis of audiovisual data the work of interaction design. With for the re-construction of individual specific skills (Eric more performances and immersive interested in the relationship between environments is not new to the body, sound and technology, John Sosolimited. In fact, during the 2004 more closely to software and codes of Presidential debates between John architectural models, John moved to Kerry and George Bush, they had the side perhaps more creative and already come up with the idea of the design), the Sosolimited exist as part Reconstitution project, using a lighter of the day Small Design Firm, and less powerful version of the same consultancy and design, which has software now in use. signed several important projects to

98 date (in a context is always relevant “dynamic typography” (The Loops and interesting as the museum, where Project) and the “cartographic maps” there is a strong need for a large car in (02139 Downsapled) are a an interactive way flow of information fundamental part of your research to the public visit the museum itself) and analysis. I assume you use self- as the Museum of Sex, the Churchill developed softwares and, if so, how Lifeline, the ICA Digital Signage, the do you think your MIT studies and Nobel Peace Center, the Boisterous previous experiences in the field of Sea, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial physics, information technologies and Museum Pledge Wall. architecture have been essential to you? Without forgetting basically artistic works, like The Loops Project (a Sosolimited: In most of our work, we typographic representation of the write our own software from scratch. dance work movements of the grat Our backgrounds in science and Mercy Cunningham, recently gone), engineering are instrumental in They’re Live (a 2 week installation problem solving. MIT places a big based oa real time TV remix), Liberal emphasis on abstraction, on being Form (public installation using able to deconstruct a problem-n any architectural sound properties at a domain-nto smaller solvable technological level to create problems and then work your way participatory public spaces), back up to a solution. This kind of Octophonic (multichannel audiovisive thinking is enormously helpful in performance). going from idea to paper to code. I was always surprised at how similar a discipline like typography looked to that of engineering; different goals and different materials, but often similar routes from question to answer. This kind of cross-domain thinking is also what inspires many of our projects, which often involve playful mappings from one realm of information to another. I’d say many of our earlier projects-s is common Marco Mancuso: In some of your with technical people who get into artistic works, you manage data and art-making-ere seeded by information flows. Concepts like technological ideas that grew into larger artworks.

99 Marco Mancuso: In other works of content. This is partly a matter of yours, the sound is conceived as a designing audio that gives the material, as a sculptural presence in underlying content space to breath. the space (Octophonic), as a source of This issue was addressed in the early data and architectural expressive part of the twentieth century by material. Among you, who is the one, modern dance with regard to who is working with sound and what movement. Music was viewed more is the difference between using as part of the stage rather than the physical instruments, which allow a driving pulse of the dance. We are real contact with people, and using now asking ourselves: in the immaterial data, sofywares, codes and transformation of live content, what videos? kinds of things can we do to preserve and build off the affective nature of Sosolimited: Eric does most of the the original material? Alternatively, sound work, although our approach to what can we do with sound to remove and integration of sound is emotional from the underlying audio, collaborative. In our current live- to turn it on its head and manipulate remixing work, we are looking for new it? ways to work from the sound of the

100 television and the internet is on what’s happening “NOW, RIGHT NOW! Forget what I said five minutes ago, what I really mean is…” If we can start adding some layers of history and logical rules as to how the signal was transformed we hope that our audience sees new meaning that was previously hidden. To elaborate more on our software, we program our own tools in C++. We use many different Marco Mancuso: The concept of live libraries already out there, both open remix represents another important source and commercial, in addition to key-concept of your work. Why do creating our own when they do not you give so much importance to the already exist. instant transformation of media events, both trough installations (as in Marco Mancuso: The way you play They are live) and live performances your audiovisual live performances (Reconstitution 2008, Evening News could be interpreted as a playful, not Remix, Reconstitutions)? And again, too much sperimental technique, speaking of self-created softwares, above all by those working in the field also in this case you operate with of live cinema research, of live media open source libraries, in which you and of immersive audiovisual intervene directly, don’t you? concerts. You aim not to obtain a strict aesthetic graphic, nor to work at Sosolimited: It was very important for new narrative forms, or to develop a us, when we were starting to work study on machineries, instruments or together as Sosolimited, to be able to even the physical reaction of the transform realtime broadcast media audience. Your approach to live and use the underlying data in an performances seems that of a web aesthetic way. We felt this was developer, not that of a musician or a important because as far as we could visual artist: it is not a hazard that your tell no one else was doing this for live performances are not real concerts performance. David Rokeby and a few but they are rather performances. others had done some things with live What do you think about it and which TV for installations, but we were very kind of experience have you had with interested in introducing memory and “Steal a Million” or “Grindhouse”, in meaningful analysis into the signal. which you put your ability to the test The focus of a large portion of with the creation of a new narrative,

101 the remix of video contents and the Ken Jacobs, then maybe not so much. testing of ideas of vjing and sound The first wave of video artists covered footage. so much ground in criticizing and deconstructing television-ne of the Sosolimited: We see much of the differences is now we can do it live, as “liveness” of our performances people are watching. We are originating in the immediacy of the preparing for a live remix performance source material. It is a kind of real- in Berlin in February that will afford us time appropriation, where we cannot far greater artistic license with the know the details of the material material, which is an extended because it does not exist until the twelve-hour series of lectures. moment of the performance. Our can be seen as an intervention into a common experience-hat of watching a movie or television-n situ, as it is happening. Reconstitution was a big factor in this design-centered approach to a performance. We started out doing visuals in a club setting, so this was a serious exercise in restraint for us. Due to the vital role of the debates in informing voters, we imposed strict rules about preserving Marco Mancuso: Can you explain me legibility. Each of our your idea of computational transformations set out to modulate interaction? How do you work with the consumption of this information softwares, codes, and how they in a specific way. become a part of your programming It was a challenging space to work in, process? How do you share then the often taking into account the different tasks among you? Do you distraction-factor of our design work together on a project or does decisions. At times we chose to each one of you work on a specific remove emotion from the broadcast, part? Which installations have been to expose the kinds of biases with more stimulating for you? which people consume televised Sosolimited: Computation has information. If you start with info- become a completely integrated part graphics in televised sporting events, of our design and implementation then our performance might appear process. Most importantly, we more experimental. If you start with

102 approach design problems as Justin Manor: Up until September programmers. It really is a way of 2009, Eric, John, and I all worked at thinking and managing large, complex Small Design Firm as art directors, problems. Karl Gerstner and Josef engineers, and producers. During that Muller-Brockman we great graphic time, at night we would perform and designers who understood this and create artworks as Sosolimited. So developed systems and architectures there was no ‘collaboration’ in a literal for their visual solutions. Almost all sense between the two entities the work we deliver to clients or because SDF was the ‘day job’ and display in museums are software Sosolimited was the ‘night job’. Now applications that run live, around the that the three of us have left Small clock. We initially wrote everything in Design Firm and made Sosolimited our own C++ OpenGL graphics our full time employment, we have libraries, but now we are using started collaborating with SDF as OpenFrameworks and Processing and peers, rather than as employees. And are hoping to contribute much more we plan on working with Small Design to the open source community. The Firm on projects well into the future. most challenging part of any project is As for other artists and designers, I finishing it. Debugging all of your think they need to each individually code, accounting for all kinds of weird find their own balance of self- conditions, and installing the software expression and paid work. For those on a foreign machine takes an lucky enough to have outside/family enormous amount of time. financial support in their early creative years, maybe the best thing for them Marco Mancuso: Justin, as you state in is to focus exclusively on their art. But your website, you are the first most people have to use their skills to employee of the Small Design Firm, do work for other people. If someone and also Eric and John had been isn’t happy with the balance in their working there from 2001 to 2009. lives, change it up! Your last project, The Pledge Wall, is a collaboration between Small Design Firm and Sosolimited. How important is to you melting professional activity with artistic activity? Do you think there will be other collaborations in the future? And how important is for designers and contemporary artists working at the edge between the two worlds and the two disciplines?

103 Marco Mancuso: Eric, in your artistic to the body-space of the audience. activity recurrs the concept of body. In Affected Structures for example, Marco Mancuso: John, you have you work with body in dance experience in architecture and performances, using anatomic computational programming. I had a elements for movement. Moreover, look at your website and I have found body represents an essential concept out the WetSpace project. You call it a of your studies on vibrotactile “gestural physics modeling” project: surfaces, tactile sound and body maps can you explain us better how does of sound. Was all this a part of your the code work and how have you research programme at MIT? And how developed the inteface and the IMU can you match this experience with device? And also, how important has your activity as Sosolimited, in been your attitude to work trough particular considering the new interaction in order to develpo the possible interactions forms, bodily gesture based software? and emotional, between computers John Rothenberg: My original role at and human beings? Small Design Firm was as a hardware Eric Gunther: The vibration work developer and although my Maters’s started as my Masters thesis at the degree at MIT was through the MIT Media Lab. It began as the simple Computation group of Department of question: Can we create an aesthetic Architecture, but I had a desk in the language of composition for the Media Lab and spent time developing body? I am most interested in the sensor and microcontroller projects. palpable aesthetic artifacts of this Wetspace was an architectural process-omputers happen to modeling program developed by currently be the best way to produce Jimmy Shen and Kaustuv DeBiswas. these artifacts. There is a growing The best description of the IMU is body of literature on the haptic nature from my site: ” The IMU is a wireless of visual perception in the arts, but interface device that registers there is still a bias against manifesting acceleration in three directions (x,y,z) the haptic on the body for real! All of and rotational velocity about two axes these artistic activities-hree (x,y). A custom circuit has been dimensional visualizations, musical designed that conditions the analog and body composition-ook more and signal from accelerometers and more like choreography to me as I gyroscopes and streams the digital continue to learn about dance. Their data over a bluetooth network. Within prominent use of three dimensional the software, this data is parsed into space all seems to eventually return useful values, such as the absolute

104 rotation of the device, as well as surface and transform them. translational ‘notes’ in each direction”. I always envisioned using the IMU as a performance tool, a physical controller that would help get us up from behind our screens. This is a project I’d like to return to, although at this point it would be much easier to use Wii controllers. I designed the IMU before the Wii launched, but now accelerometers are everywhere.

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Wetspace used the IMU as a drawing tool in a physics-based simulation. http://www.sosolimited.com/ The designer’s role was to program a http://www.davidsmall.com/ series of forces and then draw edges that would float through the forces http://www.ericgunther.info/ and create surfaces. The IMU provided http://www.justinmanor.com/ a second layer of interaction, allowing the designer to select regions of the http://www.johnrothenberg.com/

105 A Guide To Listening. Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention

Alessandra Migani

Esmonde managed in time to win Trimpin’s trust, since he is backward in being filmed and had lived quite unpleasant experiences with other productions, that wanted to focus more on his foolishness and extravagance than on his person, aiming almost at making a mockery of him.

In 1956 Francoise Truffaut wrote how The film did in no way follow an “the film of tomorrow will be more inflexible script or prefixed shooting personal than a novel and dates. This could have undoubtely autobiographical like a confession or a been a riskier method, but in this case secret diary (…). The cinema of the it gave breath to the relationship future will be an act of love”. Trimpin: developed between director and The Sound of Invention is exactly this: artist, respecting the creation and a pure act of love. playing times of some projects, such as, for example, the cooperation with The film – I had the pleasure to watch the Kronos Quartet. it during the just ended 53rd edition of the London Film Festival – is in fact a I should recognize that this film homage by the director Peter introduced me a work and an artist, I Esmonde to the creative genius, artist, had never heard about, but I became inventor and musician Trimpin. The interested in just a few minutes after film has been shot with an approach the beginning of the projection. In to cinéma-verité and it is the result of fact, how could it be possible not to two years shooting, with many travels love a person who says to have left by the director to Seattle (where Europe to scout around for junk and in Trimpin has been living and working one of the first sentences of his film since 1979) and a travel to Germany, states: “America has a lot of junk!” i.e. the artist’s place of origin.

106 to sounds in a new way and managed to hear sounds he had never heard before.

Together with this special ability to hear, since his childhood he also has been showing an incredibile curiosity and inventive ability. The interest raised in him thank to a book discovered in his grandfather’s library – Elektrotechnisches Bastelbuch (a Trimpin was born in Istein, Efringen- children’s book to build electronic Kirchen, a little village in Germay near elements) that explained in one the borders of France and Switzerland chapter how to build an electric and emigrated to the United States in trumpet, joining together elements of 1979. He tells about how during one of different musical instruments and his travels to America – he used to other tools. This brought Trimpin on a spend his summers hitch-hiking in the way, which would have been a country – he has been victim of a constant in his life and would have robbery in which he was robbed his changed step by step in his work. backpack, wallet and passport. The police who hold him on remand In that first phase of his creative brought him to one of the Salvation developing process, the artist of Army shops to give him a change of German origin learnt how electricity clothes. Right in that moment the works and how it can be used on artist, astonished and motivated by instruments. His grandfather also built the huge quantity of odds and ends elementary transistors which gave out available in America, decided to go electronic sounds and Trimpin found and live there. them in a drawer. This was his first experience of electronic music and Trimpin’s initiation – if we can use this engeneering. For a certain period, word – to a different approach Trimpin played brass instruments, towards sound happened when he until a strong allergy to metals stroke was still a young boy. In his film, he his mouth and throat and bound him remembers of how, at the age of to give up playing. However this did eight or nine, his father (an ebonist not discourage the artist and inventor and music teacher) brought him early from finding alternative ways; the in the morning in the Black Forest. In child promised to himself to carry on that occasion, Trimpin began to listen in his life experimenting and fulfilling

107 the same dreams and interests he had music of the American musician in his childhood. Conlon Nancarrow; moreover he cooperated with artists such as the legendary coreographer Merce Cunningham or, as said, the Kronos Quartet. His graphical scores are themselves wonderful works of art, that probably only the author itself can read.

Among his works of art, I would like to remember Sheng High, i.e. an installation created in 2009 for the Ojai Music Festival, in which the The artist/inventor still loves to spend author make use of a principle typical his time in his office, looking for new of the Chinese world of thousands of methods and ideas to combine years ago. It is a sound sculpture that instruments and other objects or interacts with a natural element, in trying to create new sound machines. this case water, and whose main Therefore in the film we often see him character is a sophisticated system of intent on creating – in an office packed shaking bamboo woods. Another with objects and drawings full of project titled Klompen, developed for electronic pieces and folders with The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of graphical scores. The beginning of his Art, is made of 96 Dutch clogs with a research has always been the sound little hammer inside hanging in the air produced by a traditional instrument. through a thread and which diffuse a From there on, he began to explore rhytmical symphony controlled form a how sound spreads in time and space. PC. Peter Esmonde stated that entering his studio is like having access to his Trimpin creatively investigates acustic brain. Trimpin is a vulcan of ideas. music in relationship with space. For example, he tried to move the In the years, the artists created many listening process form a horizontal installations and projects, showed in situation (see the orchestra which is museums all over the world. He always placed in front of the public) to received the MacArthur ‘Genius’ a vertical listening. Everything can be Award and a Fellowship Award at a new invention for him. In the film, Guggenheim. Using the advanced we can see how Trimpin stored on Midi method, he managed to save the many shelves different slide

108 projectors: he explained that he found myself trying to discover the wanted people to live his same many sounds of the city while waiting experience and to feel – and not only the bus on Waterloo. It has been a watch – the slides, as he does. new experience and for the first time the screech of the bus brakes at the bus stop turned into a new sound for my ears. The same happened with the sound of a door that was opened at my entrance. Everything surrounding me was like a newly written symphony. I left London South bank with a smile on my face and an orchestra of sound I had never heard before

Notes: Entering Trimpin’s world is like entering a real magic laboratry, where [1] ‘Le film de demain m’apparaît donc experiments end with a new acustic plus personnel encore qu’un roman, creation. We can enter it thank to individuel et autobiographique Esmonde’s work. Then it is up to the comme une confession ou comme un public lapsing into fantasy. I am very journal intime ( ). Le film de domain fascinated by the author’s infantile, sera un acte d’amour’ – François but at the same time serious and Truffaut, published in the journal Arts, professional approach. In my mind, I May 1957. make an immediate association with Michel Gondry in the cinematographic world. Both are extremely creative, with a brain full of ideas and imagination running rentless, exactly http://www.trimpinmovie.com/ like children’s brains. http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/519 The film has therefore been so http://trimpin.blogspot.com/ stimulating, that after leaving BFI I

109 Kenneth Anger And The New American Cinema

Francesco Bertocco

movement. There were no manifestos and the only real condensing element was the desire to free moving images from the boundary of the most compromised productions. Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving or Micheal Snow’s La Règion centrale express an artistic revolution which appropriates again the cinema, both in terms of exploitation and The New American Cinema – NAC, execution. The two productions have represents one of the most opposite visions: one expresses the meaningful artistic experience within spatiality within the unstable violence the indipendent cinematography of of time; the other one expresses the the ’60s, free from Hollywoodian time within the eternity of space. empires and a mythopoetic all- engaging Star System. A group of Kenneth Anger is maybe the highest directors – whose patroness and expression of the NAC school. Coming inspirer was Maya Deren – which from an artistic family, he got in included i.a. Jonas Mekas, Stan contact with cinemaA Midsummer since his Night’s Brakhage and Michael Snow – began childhoodDream (he played the role of the to meet at the margins of the official young prince in cinematography, deteriorating the in 1935). He directed his first visual monopoly of great producers. film at the age of twelve (Ferdinand Through poor means which seemed the Bull, 1937). From that time on, at a to be a stylistic manifesto, they really foward age, he realized a series created a series of experimental films of films, which would have been a on the wave of the first vanguards, by milestone for the new then still half-asleep in the story of cinematography. Fireworks (1947), as the audiovisual world. part of the cycle Magick Lantern, won Jean Cocteau’s attention, who invited The NAC was something more than a him to Paris.

110 pieces, substituting them. Everything is played without sounds, noises or voices. The only music is the one coming from the epoque of Rebel Without a Cause, i.e. the youth of the American economic boom, between the end of the ’40s and the beginning of the ’50s, when pop music was linked to a series of images apparently consistent, but bound with a forthcoming, obscure omen. Anger’s inspiration goes from the cinema of the first vanguards – in The paramountcy of red is quite particular Cocteau’s and the violent and has its root in a back- surrealism’s ones – to ancient myths lighting, almost inaccessible reality. and occult influences (his friendship The more you get into the film, the with the English magician Alister more the space aiming to the Crowley is well-known) and the pagan consistent and linear vision fades rituals with references to the most away. It is substituted by a symbolic ancient human civilizations. Scorpio dimension, whose godfather is the Rising (1963) has to be considered attraction cinema, rather than the Anger’s most famous work of art. The false hollywoodian mimesis, put by obsession towards his own sexuality, Angar on the film surface. Anger tries the growing myth of the bikers called to hint at a genre cinema – the horror Hell Angels, their pro-nazi habitus, the genre – as phantom of a deformed and power of the lether culture and the convulsed vision of the world. Actually pop music of the ’50s, are the pillars the masks of his films are more of the visual experience concentrated anomalous forms than depravations in Scorpio Rising. or grotesque imitations.

The film begins with the image of a Maybe this expression, together with motorbike freed from the sheet Kustom Kar Kommandos‘ are the covering it. Then the actor enters in endemic manifestations of the the stereotyped world of the hollywoodian reflex which Anger hollywoodian gods, the myths of belonged to. His book Hollywood consumption which are presented Babilonia (1958), in which he told little by little in the story. Some rentless about the obscure face of seconds later the same boy begins to Star System, gives further evidence of repair his motorbike. He changes the it.

111 cinema and the surfaces of ocult, mysterious and latent forces and the attraction towards the shadows of culture converge.

Kenneth Anger was described by a great master of cinema, Martin Scorsese, as the most important person in his life. After him, a whole generation of brave experimenters and cinematographers at the edges of The explicit manifestation of his ocult great productions found in these and pro-pagan interests in visual experiences some of their Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome highest inspirations. (1954) and Invocation of My Demon His films collect a dying heritage, i.e. Brother (1969) within the cycle Magik the heritage of the first vanguards, Lantern, is maybe Anger’s most into the world of Hollywood. He is the famous heritage of a certain style. alternative replacement which Images overlap and model one implodes in the burlesque of the stars’ another. Anger creates a coherent masked faces, and moving objects system of symbols and audiovisual sprinkles over the head of cinema, in sub-texts. The magic lantern is the order to re-directing its trajectory, the rapresentation of an assembly in trajectory of a holy monster which has which all the lightest substances of never been scared in the course of time.

112 Link index

Fluid Rules Of Audiovideo Geometry. An Interview With Scott Arford http://www.7hz.org

Almost Cinema 2009. Looking For The Kinematic Effect http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1324 http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1396 http://vooruit.be/nl/serie/50 http://www.filmfestival.be/

Happy Birthday Artfutura http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1519 http://www.artfutura.org http://improveverywhere.com/ http://www.multitouch-barcelona.com/ http://www.ruiz-geli.com/ http://www.themakingofcloud9projects.com/ http://www.boolab.tv

New Educational Models: The Amazing Ciid Institute http://www.the-product.org/ http://ciid.dk/ http://dkds.ciid.dk/

Joy Ito: On Freedom Of Choice, Namely Creative Commons http://www.crunchbase.com/person/joi-ito

113 http://openmusicmedia.wordpress.com/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/sep/23/joi-ito-interview- creative-commons

The Recycled Sound Of Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco http://www.myspace.com/teatrinoelettrico

Climattivista! The Wind Of Climate Justice Arrives In Italy http://www.350.org http://www.climate-justice-action.org http://www.climate-justice-action.org/mobilization/action-calendar http://versuscop15.noblogs.org/static/gwa http://nomorecop.noblogs.org

Reff/rewf. Short Chronicle Of A Contagion http://www.romaeuropa.org/ http://www.romaeuropa.net/ http://www.igf-italia.it/ http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/ http://www.romaeuropa.org/ http://www.scambioetico.org/ http://www.laquadrature.net/

Stelarc’s Extrabody: The Technologic Chimera http://www.tecarteco.net/2009/10/09/la-bellezza-remixata-ottobre-2009/ http://www.tecarteco.net/2009/10/09/ridisegnare-il-corpo-corpi-obsoleti/ http://www.stelarc.va.com.au

114 http://www.tecarteco.net/

In The Beginning Was Cybernetics. Relation Between Science & Artists Plots In The Net: Boone Oakley And Web Storytellers http://www.booneoakley.com/

I Have Nothing To Say. Emergency – Emergent Agency http://papertiger.org/ http://www.youtube.com/user/luivelazquezart http://www.neighborhoodpublicradio.org/ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Televisa http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/05/05/index.php?section=politica&articl e=005n1pol http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/05/05/index.php?section=politica&articl e=003n1pol http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_6726000/6726335.s tm

Future Places Festival. Between Digital And Local Cultures http://www.futureplaces.org

From Frieze To Ed Rusha. October In London With Eyes Of An Art Critic Cinematography Of The Stone Age: Woyzeck By William Kentridge http://www.romaeuropa.net/

Cam Girls And Sex On Second Life: A Report Sosolimited: Deconstruction Time Again http://www.abusedmedia.it/toogle2/ http://www.sosolimited.com/ http://www.davidsmall.com/

115 http://www.ericgunther.info/ http://www.justinmanor.com/ http://www.johnrothenberg.com/

A Guide To Listening. Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention http://www.trimpinmovie.com/ http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/519 http://trimpin.blogspot.com/

Kenneth Anger And The New American Cinema http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kustom_Kar_Kommandos&action= edit&redlink=1 http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inauguration_of_the_Pleasure_Do me&action=edit&redlink=1 http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Invocation_of_My_Demon_Brother &action=edit&redlink=1

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