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

Maresa Lippolis Geert Lovink: Free Cooperations In P2p Networks ...... 3

Giulia Simi Carlo Zanni: Information Is The New Color ...... 9

Bertram Niessen Trok!: Free Music, In Free Spaces ...... 13

Antonio Caronia Who Is Afraid Of Janez JanŠa? ...... 20

Fabio Franchino Generator X 2.0, Objects That Don’t Exist (yet) ...... 26

Cristiano Poian An Heideggerian Lecture Of Software Culture ...... 29

Alessio Galbiati Ken Jacobs: The Demiurgo Of The Moving Image ...... 34

Giuseppe Cordaro Taylor Deupree: The Beauty Of Minimalism ...... 45

Marco Mancuso Sonic Acts Xii: A Cinematic Report ...... 53

Silvia Bianchi Dafne Boggeri: Zigzagging Between Images And Sound ...... 60

Luigi Pagliarini The Darwinian Composer ...... 64 Gigi Ghezzi The Hidden Road To The City Of The Future ...... 69

Marco Mancuso Aether Architecture: Real Spaces, Virtual Spaces ...... 72

Massimo Schiavoni The Eye Of Women ...... 81

Massimo Schiavoni Babilonia Teatri, Society Of Spectacle ...... 85

Luca Barbeni Share Festival 2008: Manufacturing ...... 91

Monica Ponzini Christina Ray: Open Source Territories ...... 98 Geert Lovink: Free Cooperations In P2p Networks

Maresa Lippolis

was often at the margins of the conference, and sometimes it emerged and got someone intrigued. I was one of those, and I decided to interview Geert Lovink, curator of the event and author of Zero Comments, published in Italy by Mondadori, in order to give more space to the topic of P2P networks’ production and organization. For years now Geert Lovink has been one of the major During the latest Video Vortex analysts of that arena where Internet meeting organized by the Institute for meets the economy, politics, social Network Culture in Amsterdam at action, art. His prolific activity as a Club 11, the large networker’s writer and as organizer of community met to analyze how video international meetings had made him and other materials are shared one of the main promoters of through the net. In substance the innovative net culture and of net.art. questions that were addressed were Already in 1995 he created how video and audiovisual www.nettime.org mailing list, which information is used and shared is now recognized as one of the main through the net, how platforms like discussion forums of the net and of its Vlog and podcast are developing and capabilities. Co-founder of Adilkno what tomorrow’s television will look [Foundation for the Advancement of like in terms of clustering of Illegal Knowledge], editor of information and free construction of Mediamatic magazine between 1989 programs with independent content. and 1994, organizer and soul of Digital City of Amsterdam project, founder of Participation, sustainability and new the Institute for Network Cultures, interaction strategies between artists, Geert Lovnik is hard to pin down as a produces and public have been classic intellectual figure, as he central topics of discussion. Piracy effortlessly moves between academia

3 and the countercultural scene: he’s on Maresa Lippolis: You’ve been studying the borders of both, but certainly not networks and how people collaborate on the margins of either. into networks, how do you describe, in your analysis, p2p, their He is author of seminal texts such as communities, and the new production Dark Fiber (2002), Uncanny Networks of sense they are developing? (2002), My First Recession (2003) e The Principle of Notworking (2005). Geert Lovink: We need to make a Lately Lovnik’s activity has focused on distinction between the official P2P creative practices and on sharing ideology, in which I also participate, patterns on the net and through the and the dirty reality. There is a net. On the one hand he has thus multitude of reasons why people published texts and articles that deal participate in P2P networks. Also with new creative practices, which politically there is a interesting range were born and developed through of people involved in P2P, from the Internet with low costs and high post-modern poor, driven by a lack of visibility, on the other hand the Dutch cash to techno-anarchists to capitalist intellectual has focused on the pro-market libertarians. In that sense phenomenon of Web 2.0, on practices P2P is deeply human. It’s like sex. of content sharing and their There is so many ways of doing it, and organization on the net, on the ever the reasons and intensions are so increasing creative and professional different, each time, even within one networking activities. We met Geert person. I am not saying the situation is Lovnik at the Dutch Video Vortex complex. I do not mind to explain, and meeting, and we jumped on the defend, the idealistic version of opportunity to have a chat with him. exchange, anti-copyright, sharing and so on. The fuzzy everyday use of P2P exchange networks is largely happening outside of any discourse. I see P2P networks as a temporary autonomous zones, as described by Hakim Bey, as they are bound to disappear (in order to reappear elsewhere). I do not think it is useful to argue that they should be legalized.

Maybe this is because I am from . Amsterdam where we have made a lot of interesting experiments with

4 phenomena that happen in the grey empower people and develop new zone between legality and illegal channels to distribute sense? practices. We have often seen that half-way tolerating illegal activities is Geert Lovink: You are right that we generating interesting situations. Elias witness an unprecedented Canetti’s descriptions of how crowds ‘massification’ of web platforms with gather and fall apart might help in this up to 100 million users of a single context. Complete legalization often website. Average social networking kills the activity and neutralizes the sites have somewhere between 1-5 problematic field up to the point of million users. However, they are not disappearance. Legalization of online all the time. At any given exchange of copyrighted material is moment in time there are around not the way to go. What we instead 40.000 people inside Second Life. need is an alternative economy, one in These numbers might grow and look which artists and creative producers different at peak times. are financially rewarded directly, Still, they are not grouped together. I without ‘middle men’, for instance believe that we have left behind the through micro-payments. television age where we sit around the fire together, as Marshall McLuhan once described it. With the exception of moments like the Olympic Games the Long Tail is bound to get longer. We will have to get used to this and reconfigure our understanding of what power consists of in the distributed age. Power as such does not disappear, neither does propaganda. What diminishes is the

. spectacular, celebratory aspect of it. The trend of indirect, invisible Maresa Lippolis: In your essay The ideology further continues. It will Principle of Notworking (2005) you become really difficult to detect say that propaganda is not as present forms of subliminal effective in networks than in other indoctrination. media. Do you still think that’s true, even considering the extend web 2.0 There is a still a great desire for is growing? Is it possible that p2p consumer capitalism, in particular could be a good instrument to when it is glamorous and wild. P2P

5 networks are not a serious counter would see that Michel Bauwens, Franz force in this game. The fact that one Nahrada and Adam Arvidsson have a collaborates and exchanges doesn’t lot of interesting insights. Five years make you a Gutmensch, let alone a ago it was a German list community revolutionary. For me it is not enough called Oeknonux that discussed these to ask the question of empowerment. issues. Oekonux as a project got really For what? It’s the same with this far into the debate but then stalled abstract (but appealing) demand for because the founder and moderator, ‘change’? Change in what direction? Stefan Merten, wasn’t able to let go of the project and so the context dried up. I can only make some meta observations.

Ever since Baudrillard and others of the 1960s generation we have seen a further acceleration of the whirlpool of concepts that were once developed in the time of Smith, Ricardo and Marx. The political economy during the late 20th century . has not developed a convincing critical vocabulary of its own, so we’re Maresa Lippolis: During Video Vortex still in the midst of the debates 2 in Amsterdam Florian Schneider around the different definitions of focused his speech on the idea of value, use value, exchange value, imaginary property. He said that in the surplus value, price, wealth, and so. If digital age property shifts from the we discuss the economy of free Marxist concept of fetishism towards software/open source and peer2peer the idea of social relations. To own an networks it makes more sense, as image or a medium means to define Arvidsson and others suggest, to social relations and a network. Do you investigate ‘accumulated affect’ and think this can also be applied to P2P ‘sociality’ that result in an economy communities? How could use value based on ‘ethical value’ (driven by and exchange value being rediscussed brands). I can see this point and do in this case? believe that it contributes to a more Geert Lovink: I am not on top of the equal and sustainable society. It will P2P debate about value. If you follow also mean more media madness, not interesting forums like iDC on this you less.

6 What I would contribute to the debate and sharing illegal material. I wonder (I am not an economist) is the ‘free if Slavoj Zizek has already written cooperation’ concept from Christoph about this. And b. the amateur should Spehr. This brilliant essay just came at least be given the option of out in an English translation. For me participating in the money economy. the sociality of the net has to be free If the amateur, who earn money with in that there has to be a way to opt- some other job profession in the day out. There should not be a compulsory time, feels that he or she want to element. Contributing for no money contribute and share for free, then has to become a free choice, not the that’s fine. default setting. At the moment the amateurs are blocking the careers of entire generations of young professionals. With this the rich knowledge of professions is threatened to disappear (for instance those doing investigative journalism). We have to stop this talent drain and not create economies that have to live off charity. Free networks should take themselves more serious. The first step to get . there should be to critically investigate the ‘ideology of the free’. Maresa Lippolis: You address a sharp New forms of production, as you call critique to Lessig’s creative commons it, cost money. We need to circulate production model. How can money so that it can flow into those collaborative free networks bring circles that have taken up the task to about new forms of production? seriously construct tomorrow’s tools. Geert Lovink: I can see the point of Lessig and his creative commons model. Realistically, it’s something www.networkcultures.org/videovorte content producers like me can work x/ with. What I do not agree with is the emphasis in the cc rhetoric on the www.networkcultures.org/geert/ innocent amateur. In my view the amateur is a. not innocent but guilty. www.hva.nl/lectoraten/documenten There is a pleasure in downloading /ol09-050224-lovink.pdf

7 www.oekonux.org/

8 Carlo Zanni: Information Is The New Color

Giulia Simi

and then rearranging media grammar. In the latest years he has started exploring new ways of telling a story and openly turned to cinema, which has widened and dilated its close shape with the introduction of new technologies.

I interviewed Carlo Zanni and asked him 4 questions about some of the main points of his work. Carlo Zanni, who was born in La Spezia in 1975, is an international artist whose works have been shown in many galleries and museums, from Rome to New York . In 2005 the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him and published the book “Vitalogy”. In his latest works he collaborated with special musicians and composers, such as Gabriel Yared – who won the Oscar for “The English . Patient” – and Gotan Project Giulia Simi: “The idea becomes the Zanni ‘s work is bright and sensitive to code that renders the art” is your current sociological and cultural interpretation of the famous sentence dynamics and mixes different media by Sol LeWitt “The idea becomes a and languages creating a continuous machine that makes the art”. Can we dialogue between the arts. Painting, consider it a sort of new definition of installations, videogames, cinema, net art through the use of digital media? art: his work well represents that And according to that, what do you “mixing culture ” which is able to mean by code in the creation of a create new visions by disarranging work of art?

9 Carlo Zanni: It is rather a keyword to narration? understand my point of view. I do not mean it to be a manifesto for other Carlo Zanni: They certainly do, people.Today every kind of manifesto because they are the perfect link is definitely obsolete. As Christian between life and performance. They Bale says in Batman Begins: “It’s not are averagely available to everyone what you are underneath but what and reduce spatial distance to zero. I you do that defines you” . “The idea nformation is the new colour. becomes the code that renders the art” focuses on the role of the hidden processes of the work, a remote server in a farm in Arizona for example. The code is the DNA of the work itself, it is characterized by rule patterns which, once included into the feedbacks taken from the net, let the origin of an event possible. It is just performance .

Giulia Simi: “Data Cinema”. That’s how . you define the artistic research that characterizes your latest works, Giulia Simi: In your works you often particularly “The Possibile Ties move away from those languages and Between Illness And Success” and “My graphic models which are typical of Temporary Visiting Position From The web commercials and turn them into Sunset Terrace Bar”, where the something different. I mean for microelements of film narration are example Google Analytics user continuously changed by data flows mapping and how you reinterpreted it from the net. The result is a number of as a disease manifestation in “The open systems of temporary and Possibile Ties Between Illness And multiple visions, “variations on a Success” or E-Bay commercial theme” that mix the automatism of graphics which you turned into hill the code with the eventualities of life landscapes in “E-Bay Landscapes”. Is and human existence. Do you think that statistic representation digital media and the Internet in easthetics or ironic criticism to the particular, emphasize a relationship Web commercialization? between what is predictable and what is not and can thus disclose new ways Carlo Zanni: In almost all my works for visual, textual and sound the presence of data is not

10 immediately visible. It is particularly concealed in TPT (“The Possibile Ties . Between Illness And Success”, ndr) , Giulia Simi: Your latest work, “My as well as in “Sunset Terrace” . Temporary Visiting Position From The Moreover, once the dynamic Sunset Terrace Bar”, is also a careful elements are spotted, then it is consideration on migrations and difficult to associate them to nomadism, on how people relocate in numerical values. I mean, if you try a new areas (in that sense the poster reverse engineering process on a and Internet site are an integral part work of art, you will never get the of the work, as you’ve underlined, data you had when you started. That essential for its understanding and is why it is difficult to associate works interpretation).Do you believe art can with data visualization forms. More influence the creation of individual specifically, TPT uses pure data taken and collective identity ? If so, do you from Analytics, which means it does think a work of art can have a political not start from the graphic element of value, or, rather, artistic creation is a the world map; on the contrary, in E- political act in itself? Bay mountains are not created thanks to numerical data but to a preexisting Carlo Zanni: I think it is worth graph which has been cleaned from explaining what the words mean. not necessary numbers and grids by a Politics is theory and very serious software. That is what stockbrokers practice together and should be the call “fools” , in order to emphasize highest activity of humankind, since it their intrinsic deceitful nature. As a deals with it. I don’t think the artistic matter of fact, it is sufficient to act in itself is political, though art is slightly change the figures of x or y- the perfect chance to transmit axis to increase or decrease the graph discussions and face topics which are curves and thus to alter buyers or crucial for our society. That’s a basic sellers’ intentions. prerogative for me. But if you mean that getting up every morning is a political act, then everything is different. To end where we started, words always cheat, facts never lie.

www.zanni.org

www.fromthesunsetterrace.com/

11 www.thepossibleties.com/

12 Trok!: Free Music, In Free Spaces

Bertram Niessen

By the way, something is moving under the ground. Rome, Milan, Naples, Bologna, Turin. Every metropolis developed different experimental scenes whose dynamics are difficult to map. I do know that during the last four years I had the biggest feed of non-orthodox life music. And that the principle table where I eat was TroK!, Cascina Torchiera Senz’acqua, Milan . It’s born In Italy , more than anywhere else, the in September 2004. cultural life of experimentation is related to political underground This appointment of “free music in through a system that developed free spaces” has been the spot for KK from the 60′s. Social Centers and Null, Steve McKay, Usa is a Monster, Squat have been locations of the Pak, Vialka, Bron y Aur, Cul de Sac, (electronic and not) experimentation Andre Duracell, Fuzz Orchestra, of the 90′s, with alternate fortune. R.U.N.I., Uochi Toki, Caroliner Rainbow, The Hospitals, Zoambo Zoet Anyway, Italy is living one of the Workestrao, OvO, Jealousy Party, I/O, strangest moments of the relation Xabier Iriondo, Uncode Duello, between experimentation, public and Almandino Quite Deluxe, Red Worms’ activism. Political realities slowly Farm, Bachi da Pietra, Neo, Squartet, entered in a phase of flow after the Raxinasky, Fat Worm of Error, Eugenio repression of Genoa 2001, without Sanna, Edoardo Ricci, Gianni Mimmo, precedents. There’s a return to the Nisennenmondai, Polvere, Jacopo private and uncritical dimension of Andreini, Sinistri, Claudio Rocchetti, the leisure; new generations aren’t Tasaday, Ronin, Chris Corsano, 1 Kilo interested in taking over their elder of Black Bondage, Rosolina Mar, The sisters/brothers in managing places. Wives, Sedia.

13 about the “political” sense of its existence.

2 – Diffusion of alternative music to demythologize and eliminate their status of difficult and tough subject.

3 – Valorize the reality of the independent Italian music.

After TroK! experience, JointSventure . developed its activity, who toured This whole was to pursue the goals to around free spaces: the ARCI Blob of (from their manifesto): Arcore, the CSA Baraonda of Segrate, the CSOA Garibaldi, the Dauntaun 1 – Contamination between the Space at CS Leonkavallo, the ARCI activities of an occupied social center Scighera, the Scalo 10 and the and the development modalities of a Soundmetak in Milan . So, after this musical scene that doesn’t mind entire prologue, I’ll share my little chat with cauz. on Trok! history.

14 outdoor festival, I met Bron y Aur, free rock group that I deeply appreciated, who was proposing for a similar idea, who also gave me all their contacts collected during years of concerts all around Italy . The first festival was held in September and called “TroK! – torchiera rock showcase“, but was suddenly modified in “exhibition of free rock” as groups of strong . experimental area immediately took part to the festival (OVO, X.Iriondo e Bertram Niessen: Can you tell us P.Cantu’, Jealousy Party…). The something about how, when, where excellent results obtained by the and why TroK! was born? festival, big public and strong Cauz.: It was born in 2004. I’ve already satisfaction for all the subjects been “in Torchiera” since 6-7 years and involved, first of all for the groups, during the last months of stagnancy have been the final stimulation to inside, not only Torchiera, but also the start with a fix program, who lines up entire city of Milan, I decided to try a concert (or two) per months and a again with live music in Torchiera. I two-days festival in September every was convinced it was the right choice, year. because of the beautiful space (most of all the open one), because of the musical scene in Milan , rich in sounds but poor in spaces. During the autumn/winter we started an activity of live concerts in collaboration with some post-rock and free groups the test was loved by the public, although my desire was to create a better coordination, a project that involved organizers, guests and groups . following a common idea. Bertram Niessen: Which is the relation The start-up arrived at the beginning with Torchiera? of summer. While I was trying to involve more groups from Milan for an Cauz.: The relation is for sure a close

15 one. TroK! was born in Torchiera and TroK! stages, even if near in spirit. lives thanks to a choice of total auto- Often, Soundmetak musicians play managing able to involve not only the the same night at TroK!, with different organizers, but also all the subjects sets. who sustained the project. It’s not so strange to see musicians building the The common data is surely the vitality entire stage of the TroK!. Activists, of the “underground scene” in Italy men and (most of all) women, of the that I specifically keep on putting Torchiera represent the most between double quotes because the important part of the festival, as they term is vague and may be presume a contributed to welcome the guests, strength that it does not have yet. It cooking incomparable dinners and doesn’t mean anyway that preparing and managing the space productions are not high leveled, even during the shows. . if they do not have any kind of response by the mainstream labels. Bertram Niessen: Italy has an extremely articulated scene of musical experimentations: Soundmetak, Scatole Sonore, Tagofest and many others. Could you draw a map? How does “TroK!” enter this?

Cauz.: Well, part of the experiences you told about happen in different Italian situations, and I do not know them enough to talk about their . characters. There surely is a common Bertram Niessen: “Free music in free point to all these different settings, places”. Which is the relation between even if in the end they are deeply experimentation and activism? dissimilar. For example Soundmetak, that you mentioned, is an instruments Cauz.: As I state before, TroK! couldn’t shop, who consolidated a festival of exist in a different space, in the sense experimental sets in the middle of the of “free space” and Torchiera as well. “Milan happy hour” thanks to its Torchiera have always distinguished owner (X.Irionido), with lots of itself for its attitude to spectators attracted by full bars and experimentation. Social centers and high decibels. Basically, a different associationism worlds are living a proposal by the standard concert on strong refluence; a long wave that

16 started with the Genoa G8 and that is surfacing not only in political-social . ambits, but also in the cultural ones. Bertram Niessen: Generally Notwithstanding it keeps on being an underground Italian environments are ambience that better come close to a little bit tired, due to repression, artistic experimentation (most of all in historical joints and lack of Milan ) and where unusual proposals generational change. Do you feel still find an open microphone at their you’re tired too? disposal. Cauz.: I think I already answered The economical aspect seems not to before, but I make use of this lines to be worthy, but it has a strong tell about the “missing part” of this influence. Social spaces have costs history, that is the JointSventure. and that kind of realities doesn’t have There truly is a crisis, for us as well. lot of money; they often try to lower Torchiera has always had a the expenses. It has habitually been generational change from time to an obstacle in proposing less time, but it’s clear every year we conventional artistic offers. changed less and less, because of the We periodically face this problem difficulties you talked about, but also (choosing to keep low prices), but we because social centers are no more luckily always solved it. We have a the places of strong political and consolidate public and a net of cultural production they were a relation that includes aficionados decade ago. disposed to cut their cachet when JointSventure is an attempt to answer playing in Torchiera. Till the point of this exhaustion, that didn’t totally the TroK!party (“the fair of the bloody achieve its goal. The idea was to ear”), events organized to fund coordinate Torchiera and some other Torchiera, where groups play free of similar places inside the metropolis charge. The first one was coordinated that follow the same musical two years ago and probably the next situation, trying to accept all the dates one will be in June . requested by a huge number of bands. So we said: “let’s stop struggle each other over shows and let’s try to share all the requests, in the sense that, when a space is not available, some other could be”. The project quickly evolved in a common program

17 that involved 6-7 spaces for a couple office hours. Otherwise I should waste of years, social centers, associations my spare time to pay attention to all and even shops, as in the case of the the requests we receive every day. already mentioned Soundmetak. 20/30 groups per month contact us, Obviously this experience dealt with while we monthly have the possibility general criticalness of underground to host 3/4 groups. Some of the mails and there have been economical and are sent to some other interested managing problems that stopped or spaces, but the majority has no dilated the programs in some of those chance. spaces. We now still have 2 or 3 situations. However, it doesn’t mean Therefore, we were free to invite JointSventure didn’t bring new life to groups only during the first months. those spaces in crisis. This experience TroK! is now an appointment that saw “non-political people” (I’m sorry walks with its own legs and lots of for the double quotes again) open and people see it as an opportunity to close centers, sell tickets for or drinks exhibit. It is what I mostly appreciate, during the concerts they contributed I’d say. We choose groups following to organize. It is not a way to our taste; because of all the requests overcome the crisis, but surely an idea we decided to satisfy ourselves to keep going on. inviting groups we enjoy the most, paying particular attention in not being repetitive and trying to give space to those who do not have space anywhere else.

September festival is a different case. We do invite our choices because of a bigger program, calling people we want to play during our festival. The festival or TroK!party are situations where we overcome the “simple”

. concert, inserting some installations, performances or even dance shows in Bertram Niessen: Have you got a the program, as in the 2006 edition. “managing line”? How do you choose Global contamination; that is the main who you invite? ingredient of TroK! receipe.

Cauz.: I luckily have a work that allows me to listen to lots of music during

18 www.trok.it/ http://torchiera.noblogs.org/

www.flickr.com/photos/afeman/

19 Who Is Afraid Of Janez JanŠa?

Antonio Caronia

Murdered Jews of Europe . It’s one past midnight. Three people wearing white windbreakers and carrying backpacks with GPS devices and a webcam turned towards their own faces, stop for a second, in silence.

Then, each starting from a different point of the trapezium’s perimeter, they begin to move following a precise chart among Denkmal’s pilasters built to celebrate Shoah’s memory. Walking steadily in the cold night of Berlin, each of them starts repeating obsessively their name, as a mantra : “Jaz sem Janez Janša, Jaz sem Janez Janša, Jaz sem Janez Janša ” (“My name is Janez Janša ”).Their faces appear in three boxes on the left of the screen when you log on to the site www.aksioma.org/sec . On the big WHO IS AFRAID OF JANEZ JANŠA? satellite image of the Berlin memorial Txt: Antonio Caronia three green lines start to be drawn according to the path the three Slovenian artists are walking. Thanks to the GPS, their signal is received and transmitted to the site and the green lines start shaping some letters. At the end of the performance, the lines have shaped a name on the computer screen: JANEZ JANŠA . The three Berlin, 28th artists leave the memorial: nothing January 2008, Memorial to the

20 has been actually modified, yet their Janez Janša? It is hard to understand walking has outlined a signature the meaning of that performance for which crept among Denkmal’s those who do not know (and hardly columns. anyone knows that outside Slovenia) that Janez Janša is the name of the SDS’s leader (Slovenian Democratic Signature Event Context ‘s Party), who is also the country’s Prime performance took place during the Minister : a right-center politician (or , exhibition CONSPIRE which was part more honestly, a right-wing of transmediale.08 , the historical politician), famous for his Berlin festival of digital arts. The aggressiveness and contentiousness performance was first planned and with the opposition and anyone who announced in the exhibition’s dares to criticize him. Well, in August catalogue and then canceled less than 2007, three Slovenian artists (one of ten days before the opening of the them actually Italian and another exhibition because of “ethical beliefs” Croatian, yet living in Slovenia for of the curator Nataša Petrešin many years), singularly, privately and Bachelez , who is Slovenian too. The without any seemingly connection festival’s director Stephen Kovats first between them, legally changed their agreed with the curator’s worries, but name into the political leader’s. Yet it then changed his mind and restored caused commotion every now and the performance in the festival’s then, as at one of the three artists’ programme (please note the wedding, where both the groom’s and performance had already taken place). his best men’s name was Janez Janša and apparently the town hall officer could not prevent himself from laughing It has been clear from the very beginning that the choice was actually public and it took watchfulness as well as courage to be made. If we analize the artists’ life, none of the three has slightly ever fancy right-wing ideas. And it is frankly unlikely that all of them have By the way, who are those three ever experienced a sudden Slovenian artists whose actions conversion. always cause such a commotion? Why do they have the same name? Who is It is clear that theirs has been an artistic and, broadly speaking, a

21 political action, which has crossed the at Noema’s Gallery on Second Life at borders between conceptual art, the same time in the following “artivism” (artistic activism), media October ( and technology use. In next to no time http://www.reakt.org/triglav/index.h Emil Hrvatin, Davide Grassi e Žiga Kariž tml ). The work was inspired by a disappeared from the scene and all historical performance which took their previous works, as well as their place in 1968 and somehow was the activities on the Web have become starting point for a generation of Janez Janša’s . As far as Hrvatin’s name artistic “new avant-garde” connected is concerned, the same happened in to the fights and revolts of that time the performative art magazine Maska, in Slovenia. On 30th December 1968 in the NGOs he joined, the First World the three members of OHO group Camp and many other performances. were photographed in Ljubljana Park Online and offline projects such as Zvezda beneath a big black mantle Problemarket – The Problem Stock that covered the three of them ; just Exchange, Demokino – Political and their hippie mops of hair were visible. virtual Agora and Brainloop (v. The title of the performance, Mount Digimag 22, March 2007) created by Triglav , referred to the three-peak Davide Grassi , are now signed by shape of the mountain, which is in a Janez Janša too, as well as Žiga Kariž’s certain sense the symbol of Slovenia. works and actions. In 2004 the performance were repeated, as a post-modern ironic quotation, by the group Irwin, that was connected to the Neue Slovenische Kunst movement (New Slovenian Art, NSK) . By reproducing the historical picture of the OHO group in a political and social situation which had deeply changed from 1968 (the ex Yugoslavia had disintegrated and Slovenia became an independent The conscious tie with Slovenian (as country among European capitalist well as international) conceptual art countries), the Irwin group wanted to tradition is very clear in the three underline the “fetish” character of artists’ first performance, Mount their reproduction, thus expressing Triglav on Mount Triglav , set up on their disillusion and distance from 6th August 2007 and exhibited at current political and social changes. Ljubljana Museum of Modern Art and

22 The third time the work was performed by Janez Janša, Janez Yet, it would be wrong to believe Janša and Janez Janša , the Janezes Janša’s work is just an interpretation was completely accusation of how the actions on the different. The artists wanted to Web are not “authentic”. Their ironically criticize current politics thought is subtler. For example, in the (mainly through their name), thus action Signature Event Context , the distancing from the 68 avant-garde situation is overturned. It is only the enthusiasm, as well as from the “interpretation” on the Web that “cynical” fetishism of the Irwins. The makes the signature visible on the three Janezes Janša (unlike their memorial. per esempio, la situazione è predecessors), actually went to Mount ribaltata. È solo la “interpretazione” via Triglav, and that is how they are rete che rende visibile la firma sul showed in the pictures. Yet, that time monumento. While a viewer of the the black mantle was wholly digital, a performance would not be able to trick created by a computer decipher the meaning of the programme; beside, the exhibit took performes’ movements live, those place in a gallery and in the media movements become evident when capital of contemporary virtuality, seen on a computer connected to the Second Life, at same time. Moreover, Web, thanks to the GPS data on the the manipulatory and fake character memorial’s satellite image. In that of new digital technologies may lead case, it is technology which has a us to doubt that the three artists semiotic function. It is thus clear that actually went to Mount Triglav and so the way the three Janšas argue about to believe that the pictures which the concept and realization of identity show them in that setting are just is closely connected with the media usually (and even too simple) digital and technology virtual world. Their deception. actions, which some critics defined ” subversive assertion” and others, according to the ideas of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, “over-identification”, do not simply aim at questioning the identity of the original Janez Janša (the Slovenian prime minister) or to mock his statements. That is just a part of the job, as for example during one of the Janša’s wedding party, when he quoted one of the leader’s favourite

23 statements: “The more we are, the mysterious originality of every flourish quicker we achieve our goals”. In the beneath a signature. In order to wedding context the original meaning connect to the reference, it is was completely overturned and we necessary to keep the complete might interpret that as “The more singularity of the event of the Janez Janšas are, the more evident the signature and of its shape: the pure demagogic and populist character of reproduction of a pure event.” his action is”.

However, the “artistic activism” dimension is not the one and only meaning of the work. Through the provocative and ironic use of a political leader’s name, Janez Janša places in doubt the basis of everyone’s social and individual identity and wants to deeply investigate on the social conventions It has been on that idea that the that constitute and decode it, aiming project Re:act has developed( at unearthing those processes which www.reakt.org ): the re-enactment , lie on the border between mind and the repeat of artistic performances or society. That is the right context for historical events of the past century. A the quotation of Jacques Derrida project conceived by Janez Jansa, which the three artists uses to explain once known as Davide Grassi, their performance Signature Event produced by Aksioma , which includes Context : “By definition a written actions by Jansa alone and the three signature implies the effective or Janezes Jansa together (for example empirical absence of who signed. The Mount Triglav on Mount Triglav ), Nevertheless, it marks and keeps its as well as collaborations with other present state in a present past, which artists (such as Eva and Franco will stay present in the future as well. Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Thus, a present in general, in the who repeated on Second Life Chris transcendental form of a “quality of Burden’s and Joseph Bueys’ the present” (preservation). This performances). Re:act does not mean general preservation is somehow to highlight, by re-writing and re- linked to the present punctuality, enacting, an assumed character of always evident and unique, in the expressive universality; rather it shape of a signature. That is the asserts the historical and persistent

24 character of the experience and the hard task of finding a “sense” in it: because it is by repeating , as Deleuze www.aksioma.org/sec/ said, that the difference is created and www.aksioma.org/ it is that difference only that let us live and experiment. www.reakt.org

25 Generator X 2.0, Objects That Don’t Exist (yet)

Fabio Franchino

undoubtedly been a success.

The GeneratorX 2.0 workshop and the following exhibition, during which the objects produced during the workshop were displayed, are worth going deeper into, as rather than a traditional course they have been an occasion to set the starting point of a new era of creation. The participants confirmed this theory, if we take into During the presentation of GeneratorX account their different backgrounds 2.0, which took place in Berlin’s DAM and level of experience. Architects, in collaboration with Club designers, artists, researchers and Transmediale 2008 and Hyperwerk, students formed the “class”. Far from Marius Watz, the one who organized being a teacher, Marius Watz acted as and curated the event, concluded his the moderator of the series of introductory speech inviting the intuitions, ideas and reflections which audience to go and visit the came up during the first days of work. generatorX exhibition, soon to open its doors. An exhibition of objects which are yet to exist.

GeneratorX 2.0 Beyond the screen was the second edition of the most important event in the field of generative methods applied to art and design, with the aim of investigating new possibilities of creation through the usage of code and custom-made software. Divided into three different . moments, that is a workshop, a series of conferences/performances and a It has been extremely interesting to final exhibition, the festival has witness in first person the different

26 approach every participant developed Sugihara). in such a new and unexplored creative challenge. In spite of possibilities TODO and Susanne Stauch took being wide and undefined and time different directions, turning to being short, all results were excellent. decoration (the first) or to product- The research on new forms of design (the latter). The exhibition was sculpture and architecture was the completed by some works not related leading trend, represented by the with the workshop, by Jared Tarbell, works of Andreas Nicolas Fischer, a Marius Watz and Commonwealth. All project of data-sculpture or by the L- this was made possible by machinery System visualization created by David which allows the quick creation of Dessens, coming along with more prototypes, such as laser cutting traditional works (Leander Herzog, machines and numerical-control Dennis Paul, Nick Bruscia) and others milling cutters, as well as by the more strictly linked to architecture recent reduction in the prices of such (Eno Henze e Tim Schork, Satoru equipment, which made it peculiarly attractive for artists and designers.

27 GeneratorX 2.0 can be seen as the basis for a new way of creating and producing structures and objects, in which generative techniques, evolutionary and adaptive systems, the analysis and the usage of databases can somehow lead to a new aesthetics, besides making easier solving complex problems in the projecting field and allowing a . considerable opening towards the chances of mass-customization. We are witnessing a new step of the digital revolution, where bits are turned into atoms, somehow closing a logical and conceptual circle. www.generatorx.no/

28 An Heideggerian Lecture Of Software Culture

Cristiano Poian

defines as the artistic industry. Heidegger thought on art truth gives nowadays a fresh reading key to interpret both the actual contraposition between the concept of software as tool (present in all the artistic ambits) and work (artwork), and the strongly political contraposition, inside the software culture, between traditional art market and software art. Art does not exist because of artworks, on the contrary because of In his research on origin and essence art there’s need of art works. Only the of artwork (therefore the art itself), necessity of artwork is the fundament the German philosopher rejected an of possibility for the artist – M. aesthetic reading of the work Heidegger, “The origin of the Work of concept, negating the allegorical Art” (saying something else about the artwork) and symbolical (work as During the 30′s, Martin Heidegger representation) function classically dedicated a series of conferences to attributed by the occidental artwork that would have led on to philosophy, renouncing to consider as writing of the essay “The origin of the Work of Art “, published in 1950. traditional the dichotomies shape- matter and shape-content. Heidegger Seventy years later, Heidegger says art is not about aesthetic reflection on art and its essence concept of beauty and not even about becomes fundamental again to the problem of human experience understand modalities that turn (Erlebnis). The way art is lived by men software used to produce art into an defines its essence. The experience is artwork itself, opposing its autarkical an original criterion not only of the vocation towards digital code, the artistic movement, but also of the do-it-yourself tendency, the logic of work production. Everything is lived free software to what Heidegger experience. But lived experience may

29 also be the element that is killing art. Heidegger distinguishes mere things This murder is slow at the point that it (a granite block), middles and works. If needs some centuries to be carried the occidental thought doesn’t out. understand the essence of each element, it is art that reveal the nature of the entities, the thingliness of things and the equipmental being of equipment. Heidegger uses the well- known Van Gogh painting of peasant shoes to explain how does the artwork leads to understand the nature of that object, emptied by its functionality. The painting reveals the equipmental being of the equipment during its non-employment. It reveals . its Verlässigkeit (reliability), by virtue Far from being an imitation, of which “the farmer entrust, through representation or symbol of the equipment, in the silent appeal of transcendent meanings, Heidegger the land; by virtue of equipment artwork is most of all matter. It is the reliability he is sure of his world”. materiality of the matter. The n the work, there’s a sort of unveiling association of a form to a matter of what the equipment (shoes) are. (better say, of a matter to a shape, as Revealing the thingness of things, art particular outlines need particular highlights the relationship between matters to be realized) is part of the World (being close, the block of universe Heidegger defines as middle, things, the non functional) and Earth things created with a goal, a precise (being open, where things are function, things that must have a harmoniously in a functional relation). precise usability. The type of form and The Heidegger concept of Earth the choice of the right matter implicitly alludes to the tradition of converge in this ease of use as well as human-nature relationship, to an the predominance of the matter and archaic order, to a system that hides shape connection. The entity under it itself from human rationality, to the is the product of a direct fabrication technical progress. Vice versa, Earth always intended as a middle-fo- recalls the instrumental organization -something. As determinations of the of things; the order gave to actions entity, matter and form link to the and deeds of human being, the middle being. complexity of equipments, the use of

30 technology and technique on nature. intellect. It is not opposed to falsity Artworks are the location of fights because it is the reality of a conflict. between World and World, but they Art is truth because understands and decree also their equilibrium: Where starts that conflict. In this sense, it is the work hides and what, in this important not to confuse the concept hiding, the work emphasizes is called of World with the matter to mould Earth. It is the self-secluding. Earth is one. the assiduous-indefatigable-not forced. On it and in it, the historical Heidegger says: during the realization man builds its living in the world. of the artwork, the fight as shape Exposing a world, the artwork puts- must be given back to Earth. Earth here the World. The put-here is must be extracted and used as auto- assumed in its deepest meaning. The closing. This employ doesn’t use Earth artwork brings and keeps the World in as a matter, but puts it into a state of an open world. The artwork leaves freedom for itself. This use of Earth is World to be a World. an operation with itself and seems a manipulation with the matter. That’s the reason why the realization of the artwork gives the illusion of being a craftsman activity. But it’s never. It’s only the use of the earth in the fixation of reality in the form.

The German philosopher thinks that in the artwork there’s the historicization of the reality, its fixation. Inside art, there’s the “producing safeguard

. reality in the artwork”. Its essence reveals reality. The extraordinary here Art demonstrates truth, being place of is the absolute impossibility by the fights and reciprocal elevation of artwork to influence the normal World and Earth (therefore, as last essence through a random action. The analysis, of its irrevocable unity, for efficiency of the artwork does not only inside opposition the terms consist in producing effects. It reveal their essence), “the reciprocal consists in that mutation of not- antagonism of illumination and being-hidden that is connected to the hiding”, things in their obviousness. artwork: that is a mutation of the Truth is no more synonym of essence. correspondence between thing and

31 This concept creates a new idea of First of all, the renouncement to every beauty, not related to the aesthetic traditional aesthetic conception and pleasure of the contemplation or use, the reorganization of the role of the as the showing of truth inside the experience defining the essence of artwork. The artwork is not a shape the artwork. The software art is the that moulds the matter, rather the place for the proliferation of a series matter itself that emerges, the World of unedited aesthetics that overcome that closes into it and is hedged in, traditional conceptions of beauty and the Earth that is opened and exposed. value of the artistic object. Art is no more the true and false Representation, allegory, symbolism concept, it doesn’t represent, it are terms often unknown to the doesn’t show, but it constitutes the practices of the programming with research of an opening, a momentary artistic aim. The work is a tangible and fixation of the Earth on a World. concrete product, more than an output; something that constantly recall its own act.

The software art, in a Heidegger vision, is the part of the software culture that reveals the essence of the digital code, in the moment where it negates the mere functionality and practicality. The software art does not use a code as instrument to realize something else, but reveals it in its . thingness. The software art reveals the truth of the conflict between a Heidegger‘s essay asks questions that World as computational universe overcome this treatise and it must be inside a machine, as group of data, as related to the entire Heidegger code like matter that cannot be thought to be completely understood. understood and an Earth made of Anyway, some ideas from the “origin significant surfaces where the code of the work of art” can be useful to creates instruments and tools that understand the role of the art made men can use in the area of the by software in the contest of contemporary software culture. contemporary art and in the actual market of art.

32 concern the machinery space) – Earth (the space of the function, of the usage, of the user interface). It’s the only space where the conflict emerges as digital art.

oftware art opposes the art industry that, when using the digital, use it as mere instrument. Sold and exchanged art, shown in museums and galleries is

. now unable to unlock worlds and compare with reality and its The program that renounce to serve historicization. Art aims, but not the men exalt and problematise the always arrives, to be pure experience, truth of the conflict World (code as absolute Erlebnis, and it is often not intelligible essence, group of impotent against reality. processes and translations that

33 Ken Jacobs: The Demiurgo Of The Moving Image

Alessio Galbiati

of the actual condition of the moving (or cinematic) image, real lessons of priceless value that we decided to tell through a series of interviews to the speakers. Let’s start with Ken Jacobs, as we’re not worried by any complex feat.

Ken Jacobs is an artist – but the term is absolutely reductive – not so famous in Italy (the first edition of the Turin While I’m writing this article, the 12th Film Festival, last November, edition of the Sonic Acts is coming to proposed – inside the ” La Zona ” an end. As every event that is going to section – three movies of his own in an finish, it leaves in those who were almost empty movie theatre): present and those who weren’t the intellectual and experimenter, sensation of an enormous anxiety for visionary and avant-gardist, unique. the loss of a moment that would be Jacobs has been one of the most better if everlasting. It is though an important artist of the last Sonic Acts intuition, an instant, a one-time glow edition and probably one of the most that will never come back. “exploited” by the organizers. He held a conference (“The Image , Finger During its four days, the Sonic Acts Raised to Lips , Beckons. Disorderly proposed infinity of different ideas, a thoughts on synaesthesia and other thick flow of information, projections mysteries of the human sensorium”), and exhibition, remarkable and he performed in a live-set interesting. I particularly appreciated (“Reverberant Silence: Nervous Magic the twelve conferences, unforgettable Lantern Performance”) and he was the moments in a heterogeneous series of object of a focus with his recent personalities from all over the world. works (“Nymph”, “Capatalism: Child They illustrated some of the most Labor”, “Capitalism: Slavery”, “Razzle interesting and not so known aspects Dazzle: The Lost World” e “Hanky

34 January”). reflects the complexity of the character we’ve been describing, but it also an enlightening explanation of the disturbing stylistic and poetic coherence above mentioned. The focal point of this philosophical disquisition on the ontological statute of the image is about the concept of the autonomy of the image in reference of its synaesthesia potential, that is the possibility that the mute image has to evoke sounds . inside the spectator mind. An He is, without any doubts, one of the absolutely central concept in his pioneers of the American entire (non) cinema, avant-gardist and cinematographic avant-garde that experimental, that poses him in direct founded the grammar of the moving relation with all the convinced image since the 60′s, revolutionizing promoters of the mute nature of the the form and the substance in moving image, with all those contraposition to the traditional theoreticians that exalted the inside practices, one of the central figures of potential of the moving images able the second half of the 20 th century. to activate/recall other senses, Since his first works, from the middle leaving the spectator free to decide, 50′s (his first non-film, Orchard Street, without deviating its perception and is dated 1955), passing through the comprehension in a unique or video experimentation of the 80′s, pavlovian manner. Jacobs talks about during last decade (and more) its audio-aura, mutating the concept that artistic career faced digital technology Walter Benjamin applied to the and live performance, demonstrating evocative power of the image in the the endless artistic and human synaesthesia ambit of images that research pursued by his production, generate “sounds”. The text of this that during the last fifty years kept on conference is thick and complex, rich unstoppable, with a stylistic and of worthy point, but also related to poetic coherence, somehow the oral dimension of an illustration disturbing. implemented through the auxiliary of films, tracks extracted by filmic texts We’ve been authorized publishing the of a personal collection. I postpone to integral text of Jacobs’ conference. It the integral text of the conference for

35 a deeper comprehension. alone. It’s no small responsibility an artist takes on to disrupt, transform, Let’s go to the interview, to the demolish or possibly enlarge that answers that Jacobs gave with experience with a compounding of generosity, without saving himself, as sense data. Like adding music to a his language reflects his avant-gardist painting. It’s a cultural calamity that attitude, and the fact that he most people only meet with no- answered traveling from US to longer-silent cinema. I probably went Amsterdam confirms that he is a over the deep end but I was careful to person that is over all, and that this include fairly obvious misinformation interview somehow fall from the sky . to keep my audience on their toes.

Alessio Galbiati: In the same context of Sonic Acts (where you’ll also show some of your latest “movies”), on February 23 rd you are introducing a live performance titled “Reverberant Silence : Nervous Magic Lantern”. This work is part of the live project you’re bringing around the world since 2000, called “The Nervous Magic Lantern”. Can you explain me what is and . specifically what will be this Alessio Galbiati: Can you please “Reverberant Silence” that I guess will introduce me the subject of the find in Sonic Acts its first preview? conference you’ll hold at Sonic Acts in Ken Jacobs: Nervous Magic Lantern Amsterdam, maybe starting from the performances have until now been title itself: ” The Image , Finger Raised collaborations with terrific musicians, to Lips , Beckons. Disorderly thoughts John Zorn and Ikue Mori, Eric La Casa, on synesthesia and other mysteries of Rick Reed, Aki Onda, and there’ll be the human sensorium”? others. I enjoy seeing and hearing Ken Jacobs: Irresistible, at a sound- what comes of each combination. But cinema conference, to show how I also like silence, generally work in complete an experience the image silence at home, and this seemed the alone can offer, as much as sound time to go public with it.

36 The image was in constant motion, different movements simultaneously. A spinning exterior shutter in front of and between the machines, alternating and melding the two close images, created the action. I’ve been replicating the effect with the computer. Tzadik has a DVD out that’s an adaptation of NEW YORK GHETTO FISHMARKET 1903, music by . Catherine Jaiunaux and Tom Cora.

Alessio Galbiati: What are the main The Nervous Magic Lantern evolved differences between “The Nervous from The Nervous System but it’s System” and “The Nervous Magic much simpler technically and as I’ve Lantern”, these two projection said could’ve been done in magic systems developed during the years? lantern time, before there was film, Can we consider the second system and perhaps it was done but rejected an evolution of the first one? as too crazy making. A lamp, lens, spinning shutter, and active Ken Jacobs: The Nervous System projectionist toying with things , utilized film, two prints of the same takes the viewer through immense film, pausing at every frame illusionary spaces; depth, again combination as seen through two without spectacles. stop-motion projectors very slightly Familiar/unfamiliar land and aerial- out of sync. I often stopped on a pair scapes in constant transformation, of frames for minutes at a time, even seen from every angle. It was a many minutes, manipulating the cinema I dreamt about, and -picking machines to create a variety of up on subconscious promptings- effects. One saw 3-D, without eventually saw before me. I don’t spectacles, available to even the expect anyone to believe this, single-eyed viewer. Only sometimes especially anyone knowing the was this 3-D like anything in life; it technical complications of 3-D. could be funny or/and scary but CELESTIAL SUBWAY LINES / always something else . I got pretty SALVAGING NOISE is a Nervous Magic good at it and after a while could Lantern collaboration with John Zorn, make all kinds of things happen but Ikue Mori assisting, also on a Tzadik always in relation to possibilities DVD. inherent in a particular pair of frames.

37 Alessio Galbiati: “This film is not for Alessio Galbiati: In your latest works, those suffering from epilepsy”. This I’m thinking about titles as “Razzle commentary opens your “Razzle Dazzle – The Lost Worl” (2007) and Dazzle -The Lost World” (2007), as it “Capitalism: Slavery” (2006), we can were there to warn the audience from find the same experiential-didactical the sensorial assault that he’ll find approach to pre-existing image as in himself in for 92 minutes. This “Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son” (1969) but persistent sensorial tension is one of the difference lays in the use of digital all your work features. Could you technology. I’d like to know if either explain me the reason of such an this change implies an aesthetic aesthetic choice, so disturbing and choice or it should be considered recurrent? instrumental, due to an economic convenience or, moreover, imposed Ken Jacobs: Mmm, “disturbing”, by industrial and market dynamics “assault”. Not my aim and not what’s which make every day harder finding important about the work to my the “classic” celluloid film. thinking. One adapts to the vigorous image (as I see it) in any case. Wife Flo Ken Jacobs: I’ve been caught up in would crumble after a few minutes of existing cinema images, in slowing beating light but now misses the down and looking at them frame by excitement when watching a proper frame since before I shot anything, movie. It can trigger an attack in and so became a natural collagist of people afflicted with epilepsy and the sorts. TOM TOM doesn’t attempt the same warning begins Tony Conrad’s things that happen with the double- “Flicker”. I lost a student one day; she image but I can understand you left a class and never returned, when I saying that because the presence of forgot to give adequate warning. the projector shutter holding back and releasing light (in the form of an image) is perhaps the real star of that movie. I was as interested in light- energy as I was taken with that 1905 movie. The move from beloved film to digital video is economical and I appreciate the speed of the medium, similar to projecting live, but then one has a product that keeps! The world wasn’t so hungry for my performance work; the show rarely came to town . and people had no time to acclimate

38 to it; for most viewers it was just fetishists and Limburger cheese freaky. That frustrated me almost as lovers, and went far afield from much as the transience of the works, recognized values. Now we’re getting which were not improvisations but personal, Alessio. I have a great very shaped, rehearsed entities. I’m interest in early cartoons, early Betty salvaging what I can but of course the Boop and Popeye for instance, before computer wants its own say in this the Catholic Church determined what and the works go off in wondrous Americans could be amused by (just ways but, still, are close relatives of when I was born, 1933) and a similar the originals, or so I maintain. The interest in the Nineteen Thirties videos then go out on cheap DVDs poverty-budget films of black and people can see them more than filmmakers Oscar Micheaux and once and go beyond the freakiness. Spencer Williams. Pre-code American Hooray! films enthrall me generally. We go to sleep, Flo and I, marveling at James Alessio Galbiati: Before starting Cagney and Joan Blondell; the wit of producing images, making cinema, or Warren Wlliam. Fred Astaire! Wide better making cinema explode, what awake, however, zippered into my was your approach to it? I mean, as a artist persona, I thrill to great formal member of the audience, what have cinema, my own territory of the been the works that represented your avant-garde; pushing on, pushing on, first approach to the seventh art? like there just might be a tomorrow.

Ken Jacobs: I was just like any weird kid with an interest in art that got a pass from his Brooklyn high school to the Museum Of Modern Art where he/she could discover American silent film and French avant-garde and the early Soviet masters. After WW2, there were the Italian neo-realist films so remarkable they were shown in neighborhood theaters. Some smart

British films came over and before the . McCarthy-led fascists intimidated studio heads, the noir-films along Alessio Galbiati: Painting has been a with others stirred interest in cinema source of inspiration of your art for as art. After a time I became a sure, as on the books talking about connoisseur of stinkers, like foot- you there’s always a reference to the

39 two years you spent with Hans retrospective of my Nervous System Hoffman, period of time that also work. After TOM TOM (a study of the coincides with the first element of cine-existentialism of human bodies your filmography (” Orchard Street” at play in an old and threadbare 2-D 1955). In which ways this experience film), the appeal of working with influenced your artistic production? illusionary depths, contradictory depths, became irresistible. I’d Ken Jacobs: Hans Hofmann made one discovered that 3-D illusion was far depth-conscious, while always more malleable than the dopy 3-D affirming the flatness of the canvas. movies had suggested. Hofmann Vigorous spatial contradiction was the named his book SEARCH FOR THE essence of art, so I understood him. REAL. I think I was answering that the Cézanne, Kandinsky, Mondrian, real is ever-elusive, that the search Picasso, Tintoretto. The Abstract will have to do. Expressionists, those embarrassing neighborhood drunks, were knocking Alessio Galbiati: I’d like to title this me for a loop. I had some spacy ideas inteview “Ken Jacobs: the demiurge for film (I was straddling the mediums of the image in movement”, where then, and still do) but thought I should ‘demiurge’ must be considered a term begin with something 1) I cared about, to express the free worker – as at the 2) within my budget and ability, 3) time of the ancient Greece – that is the that might have some general interest opposite of the slave; do you think it and lift me out of poverty, that might could be a suitable definition? sell . But ORCHARD STREET didn’t sell, my girl friend left me, and I’d had it Ken Jacobs: I appreciate that. Thank with reasonable options. What the you. hell, government-by-corporations -in its fear of the appeal of a super- corporate state- was dooming us to nuclear war. I proceeded to film STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH, got right to it. That film does show, in my filming, the 2-D/3-D depth-consciousness Hofmann had alerted me to, and then it went on from there. What happened was a turn from the reading of depth to its accursed illusion, its seeming . actuality. WRONG TURN INTO ADVENTURE is what I named a Alessio Galbiati: As to suitable

40 definitions: ‘modernist’, ‘avant- the big bang? Humanity is merely gardist’, ‘experimentator’ there is a accelerating the process (though plenty of adjectives used to define imagine what another million years of you. If you would been asked to sane invention could bring). I can’t be define your work, your Work, which serious since I don’t expect serious term would you use? change; call me dilettante.

Ken Jacobs: I suppose avant-gardist. Alessio Galbiati: You are, among other Many filmmakers experiment in their occupations, a university professor way on mainline films so too, a cinema professor. I’d ask you to experimentist may apply too broadly. satisfy my personal curiosity by telling I think I’m driven to radical root- me what you exactly teach during reformations, though, and that’s your lessons? What are the recurrent something else. A radical departure subjects of the courses held during at was expected of an artist from when I least forty years? come from. They’d almost all been political radicals in the Pre-WW2 Ken Jacobs: I retired late 2002 after years, desiring revolutionary change more than 30 years of teaching. I of the economy, of the imbecile taught seeing and hearing and advertising culture so further ripened thinking and the relating of cinema now, and their art was in part a model (and art generally) to history. I didn’t for such change. But the fascist promote good taste (didn’t stick with resurgence following WW2 in USA left the classics) but the ability to taste them beached, and then came the anything. I figure if a person’s own artmarket to make a total fiasco of Best Ten list doesn’t include at least their lives and some of the best, Franz two movies hardly anyone else knows Kline for one, then drank themselves of, a failure of individuation has to death. Many of us are disappointed; occurred. One movie. It was great the big radical socialist experiments seeing personalities emerge. (Picasso have been horrors. Global Capitalism said, “Genius is a little talent and a lot (also known as Modern Doom) is the of personality”.) A class mantra was winning horror, and like the artists I Get lost, and get lost again. I wasn’t so admired I’m now also resigned, allowing as to tolerate college humor, beaten; not drinking but concerning proud-to-be-dumb movies about myself every minute that I can with getting high, flesh-eating zombie work. Look, I only see America; trash. Students saw things from day perhaps things appear differently to one that put their ideas of cinema in Europeans. Weren’t we doomed question: Kubelka’s ARNULF RAINER anyway? riding some little tail-end of and Conrad’s FLICKER (less its titles

41 and sound) often began a semester. misjudgment was hiring Nick Ray. A Brakhage’s WINDOW WATER BABY hero to many people still, even to MOVING soon followed. Abstract some of our intelligent students thaumatropes and flipbooks were directly fucked up by him, but what repeatedly assigned; there was much loathing I have even for his dead self. scratching and painting directly on It was a new chance-taking film. There was never enough analysis department, one of the only of painting slides for me. And then of departments in the country entirely course analytical projection of film, a devoted to cinema, and he left us near single film sometimes for weeks. The demolished with his cocaine and analytical (or stop-motion) projector alcohol habits. Larry Gottheim and I was a special piece of equipment but could see the mess he was from the now with video the cheapest DVD start but hoped that in a supportive player is a superior, more versatile environment the artist who made analytical tool. The extras on DVD THEY LIVE BY NIGHT would surface. I movies are extraordinary lessons in had the dumb idea that he would filmmaking. TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S balance the little department, SON exemplifies my teaching. A film teaching from his is shown usually without any narrative/Hollywood experience but introduction. Instead of he was self-aggrandizing BS promiscuously going on to the next, throughout, with tantalizing glimpses we work at it. Finally it’s shown again of a former self. To Nick the avant- straight; there’s now a wild rush of garde artists were “masturbators”; newly familiar subtleties. Students said to students, not to our faces. He learn what it is to know a film. prided himself for making movies that got to people and apparently I wasn’t the ideal teacher but I was inseminating them. When I phoned the ultimate Ken Jacobs. I could’ve Brakhage at some moment of crisis, been a lot less moody. I’m affected by Stan said, “Hollywood does things to what I learn of what my fellow beings these people. I’ve met with a lot of do and I couldn’t help but bring those them and twelve years is the most responses into the classroom. Young they last. They’re no good for anything people would feel the vibes and tense after that.” up. Eventually they understood what would be upsetting me but it often I retired 2002, Distinguished Professor made for a volatile atmosphere. Too Of Cinema, Emeritus. I keep in touch often I dragged the world into the with many former students but my classroom, seriously, bullying people mind shifted, immediately and with my moods. One super- entirely, to my own art making. At the

42 end, I couldn’t take the new a- heiresses of your style, is there any historical mind-sets. It wasn’t difficult young artist that seems to be bringing understanding how it had happened over your artistic discourse? but so what? More hopelessness I didn’t need. Example: I show Ettore Ken Jacobs: We’ll soon be landing in Scola’s WE ALL LOVED EACH OTHER Amsterdam. This has been fun. Your SO MUCH. Later, a student refers to it last question: I don’t know and don’t but can’t recall the title: “You know, want to know. It spooks me that the movie that begins in World War someone could be following closely. One or Two, whatever.” Brakhage was generous to his many followers, the people that couldn’t help but feel that what Stan was doing was cinema. Entirely sincere, they wished to attach themselves to it as if to a cause, which it was, a great bravely defiant cause: the honest report. He always saw and emphasized where they differed from him but I feel crowded. Listen, everyone follows! There might’ve been a genius that looked at a scratch . on a rock or bone and thought, Wow! this has possibilities. Maybe that Alessio Galbiati: What’s your position fellow was no follower but that was a on the practise of vjing? Do you feel long time ago. Originality for like a father of this artistic expression latecomers is riding herd on one’s base on sampling and live mixing, a influences until some rough balance kind of ante-litteram precursor? and direction emerges. Ken Jacobs: Father of VJing? I didn’t do it. Playing with cinema as an instrument became common in the www.sonicacts.com Sixties but what I saw was mostly formless improvisation. I was tight www.starspangledtodeath.com/ with the “expanded cinema” I did, rehearsing-ever-rehearsing; www.tzadik.com/ authoritarian with my performers, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/peo precise. ple/Jacobs/jacobs-con0.html Alessio Galbiati: Do you see any

43 44 Taylor Deupree: The Beauty Of Minimalism

Giuseppe Cordaro

sperimentale. Molti e importanti gli artisti all’interno dell’etichetta, a cavallo tra ambient sperimentale, techno e minimalismo: da Frank Bretschneider agli Skoltz Kolgen, dall’amico Richard Chartier a Sebastien Roux, da Kenneth Kirschner a Steinbruckel e molti altri ancora.

Infinite al contempo le collaborazioni a livello internzionale, al punto da Nel mondo della musica intessere una vera e propria rete di contemporanea e dell’arte digitale musicisti e artisti visuali, sul confine Taylor Deupree è considerato uno dei tra minimalismo e contemporaneità migliori interpreti della rivoluzione artistica. Si colloca in questo discorso digitale a cui abbiamo assistito in il rapporto costante con la label questi ultimi anni. Raster-Noton, con musicisti come Sound artist, fotografo, grafico, il Kenneth Kirschner ma anche tutta poliedrico artista americano ha l’attività della sub-label Line (gestita iniziato la propria carriera alla fine proprio da Richard Chartier) che vanta degli anni 80 incidendo musica al suo interno molti artisti di punta di techno, per l’etichetta americana questa scena, dallo stesso Alva Noto a Istinct Records. In seguito a quelle William Basinski, da Asmus Tietchens prime esperienze discografiche, e alle a Nibo, dai Matmos a Ivan Pavlov. Un promesse non mantenute da parte musicista, Taylor Dupree, in grado di dell’etichetta Silent che doveva prestare la sua arte anche ad arte pubblicare un suo disco, nel 97 decide discipline che lavorano a contatto con di fondarne una tutta sue e orientata il suono o con l’ambiente sonora in al minimalismo musicale, la 12k. A senso ampio: a imperitura memoria dieci anni dall’uscita del primo disco, rimarrà quindi la sua collaborazione la 12k è cresciuta tantissimo per la seminale Tower of Winds, diventando un punto di riferimento installazione interattiva ambientale. per tutta la scena minimal ambient- progettata dall’architetto nipponico

45 Toyo Ito per la città di Yokohama taking photos, but even the last 3 or 4 nell’ormai lontano 1998. years i have become even more interested in it, put up the website Abbiamo chiesto a Taylor un punto di (taylordeupree.com) and become vista sulla scena musicale much more active as a photographer. contemporanea, di parlarci del suo i tend to stay away from things in life lavoro, dei suoi progetti e that i’m not totally passionate about dell’importanza che ha acquisito and make time for the things i am. i nell’attuale scena musicale. live and breathe my music and my brain is always going, constantly thinking of new projects and how to complete what i have to do. i read a lot. i read photography magazines and music studio magazines, always learning and exploring tools. i am never bored. i forgot what that feels like… and i’m very happy about that!

Giuseppe Cordaro: How do you experience creative relationships in a . world which is constantly more Giuseppe Cordaro: You’re looked at as “digitalized” and where stimulations one of the best artists of the digital are always growing in number? era we live in: sound artist, graphic, Taylor Deupree: Minimalism. simplify. photographer, who exactly is Taylor those are my reactions to the over- Deupree? stimulating world. i think it’s a very Taylor Deupree: I’m very (very) busy. healthy way to live, to learn how to that’s the bottom line. i love what i do get through all of the crap that we are so i never stop working. the music, bombarded with every day, and to the labels, the design, the focus on the important things and the photography.. the family.. the only beautiful things. i apply these thing i lose out on is sleep. For me it’s philosophies to my every day life. very important to love what i do, it’s travelling around the world and what drives me and makes me able to meeting people, seeing other do everything that i set out to do. i’m countries and places and very passionate about 12k and about understanding the way other cultures my music. i studied photography at live. the world gets smaller and more university and have always been homogenized every year so it has

46 become ever more important to find manipulate sound. i’m really identities as cultures and individuals. fascinated by the random subtleties of acoustic sounds. there is a lot hidden in one simple pluck of an acoustic guitar or the ringing of a bell. also, a few short years ago computers and audio processing got powerful enough to start effecting sounds, in complex ways, in real time. i had obtained a sound design system a few years back called Kyma, which really excels at the processing of live inputs so i began exploring with that. natural . and warm sounds create a nice Giuseppe Cordaro: When did you balance against the electronics. my realize your career/life would have music lately has been about achieving been being a musician? a sense of peacefullness, but melancholy at the same time. i find Taylor Deupree: About 6 months after warmer, softer sounds a good way to I turned 15 years old, I got my first get there. synthesizer and from that moment on i knew i wanted to create electronic music. although i was totally naive about the technology and business i could sense the possibilities and knew it would be an endless source of inspiration for me.

Giuseppe Cordaro: In your latest works we can feel an evolution towards more solid and warmer sounds, also achieved by using . acoustic instruments. Could you tell Giuseppe Cordaro: I know you us more about it? recently moved to the countryside Taylor Deupree: It’s basically just a from Brooklyn. Has this had an effect natural evolution into exploring more (or will it) on your creative process? ways to express myself and my Taylor Deupree: I think the nature that surroundings and play with an

47 surrounds my studio has had a clear sort of a model for the “feel” of the effect on my music. it’s quiet here, label and my interest in minimalist art and i think the randomness of nature and architecture the “real” 12k was has made me more interested in born around 1999 with a very exploring natural sounds. when i lived calculated and specific style. i had in Brooklyn i was creating soft, realized over all of my years minimal music to escape the busy city producing music that in a world of and i thought maybe if i moved to the music that changes so much, where country i would create loud, busy new genres are born every week and music to escape the country! always listeners have no attention span, that keeping a balance. however, that was it was my goal to really focus on one not the case, i find the nature brings particular aesthetic and fight the out even more of the natural in what i relentless buildup and oversaturation do. of media. so in 1999 12k became the “minimalist” “ambient” “experimental” Giuseppe Cprdaro: Let’s talk about label it is now and i still stick to my your record label, 12k. It has been alive original goals while allowing the for more than 10 years now; could you releases to slowly evolve and explore sum up its activity for us? new sonic territory.

Taylor Deupree: I started it in 1997 I am comfortable now how the label after i realized there was no reliable is. i don’t need it to be huge, i don’t source for experimental music in need to be the biggest electronic america. i had been working at a music label. i don’t want to be Warp or record label a few years building up to anything like that. i want 12k to remain that and learned, more or less, how to small and focused on a certain quality run a label myself. i also learned how of listening. as the label continues to NOT to run a label so i really wanted grow i will put the money not into to make sure that 12k was an artist- MORE releases or MORE advertising run label and that i would always or MORE promotion, but into things related to my artists on an equal level. like packaging and special editions. i it started out without any real plan.. will continue my original mission just to release my own music and statement which was to let listeners music from my immediate friends in discover 12k, to not promote too new york. but after a few releases heavily or be in-your-face about things were going succesfully enough things. i think that people have a more and i wanted to really get an positive and lasting relationship with established aesthetic both visually something they have uncovered and audibly. using Factory Records as themselves, something they have

48 sought out out of their own interest. sections. Now with the death of the cd looming large i will have big decisions as to Taylor Deupree: LINE is a label that how to change the label and in what Richard Chartier A&Rs, and 12k does directions i go. it’s a very unsettling the manufacturing and distribution. time for the music industry, but also It’s basically Richard’s label, creatively, an exciting time. we have to adapt to and 12k handles the business stuff. new technologies, no matter where Richard tends to concentrate on they push us and whether we agree music that has been used for with them or not and to not only installations, or multi-media projects.. make the best of them but to mold not always, but it’s been one of the them in our own ways to create focuses. LINE releases tend to be a something unique that will challenge more quiet and linear counterpart to people to think and listen. 12k’s melodic and often granular sounds. LINE has a solid roster of artists such as Richard himself, Asmus Tietchens, Steinbrüchel, Mark Fell… Line was started in 1999, so it’s almost been 10 years. Happy is a label i started a few years ago to concentrate on alternative Japanese pop. There have been 3 successful releases, however, i think i’m going to stop the label because it did not work to my original plan. The idea was to . make Happy not very electronic, to release music by more alternative and Giuseppe Cordaro: When and how did indie-rock bands, however, it didn’t you decide to start producing music work out that way and the sound i feel with 12k? can work very well on 12k now… so, Taylor Deupree: As i said above…. in with the release of the Moskitoo cd on 1997 12k started.. and my own music 12k last year, which had a lot of was the first few releases. elements of the Happy sound, i decided i can release that sort of Giuseppe Cordaro: Tell us something music on 12k so i think there is no more about the “Happy” and “L-ne” need for Happy anymore. I’d rather concentrate on one label anyway.

49 or stolen means less time that great artists and labels will be around. it is a fact of life that people need to make money to survive. if you spend all of your time doing something else besides music to make your money you are left with very little time for music, and if you have very little time for music you produce music of lesser quality. artists need to spend time on . their craft, whether it is music or photography or painting… and time Giuseppe Cordaro: As far as mp3s are means money, artists need money to concerned, what do you think of net- sustain an evolving and interesting labels and all that gravitates around career. free art, free music CC? undermines this. a few years ago i Taylor Deupree: We’ve recently made a very conscious decision to started a discussion about this on the never steal or copy music for free and 12k forum. i believe that free music is to never used cracked or unlicensed really damaging artists and the music software. it is good for me, good for community. net labels are OK, but i the people who create the tools. don’t think it’s ok to give away too As for MP3s, i think they are a very much free music (some is ok, for convenient, but inferior way of promotion!). and it is making me listening to music. i love having my rethink the reasons for 12k’s own MP3 entire music library at my fingertips, it series, TERM. younger people today has changed the way i explore and really think music is a cheap listen to music, for the better. commodity and how are musicians however, i hope people understand supposed to compete with that? it how inferior it is to higher quality costs money to make music, if you audio. it is my hope that as want to take it seriously, to take it bandwidths and download speeds beyond a hobby, and to support the increase we will see more high instrument and software developers resolutions formats being offered who make our tools. a LOT of hard online. i am not happy about the lack work and passion goes into making of artwork and liner notes involved music, producing it, manufacturing with MP3′d music. there has been no cds, running a label, printing… the successful way to connect those two more music that is given away for free worlds that i’ve seen yet.

50 sound. i like 12k to have a consistent sound, but it is also always changing, it’s easy to see how it evolves by just looking (listening) to all of the releases in order. But it’s also very important to throw in an odd and challenging release on a regular basis to remind listeners that things will not always be the same. the artists i’d like to see on 12k are not really “12k” artists. i’m . doing some collaborations coming up with some interesting non-electronic Giuseppe Cordaro: What are the artists, more in the indie-rock or artists you’d like to see on 12k? atmospheric rock vein, maybe some Taylor Deupree: All the ones that are of those will end up on 12k there now! and ones i can’t imagine. Giuseppe Cordaro: Among the obviously with 12k i like to have a releases scheduled for 2008 there’s a consistent but constantly evolving live together with Solo Andata and sound. every year or two i like to Seaworthy; I’d like to know more release something that’s really about the way the collaboration with different and often it leads to a bit Solo Andata started out. change in the label. believe it or not, when the first Shuttle358 cd Taylor Deupree: I was unaware of Solo “optimal.lp” came out it was a radical Andata until i met Kane (half of the departure for 12k although it seems to band) in Melbourne during my natural now. 12k was very synthetic Australian tour. He was playing with and rhythmic at the time and then Cameron (Seaworthy) and i and i SHuttle358 comes along with a very didn’t know his music at the time. He warm and melodic album. also was a very cool and friendly guy and Christopher Willits’ “Folding, and the very young. Once he started playing i Tea” was completely different at the realized there was something very time… it was the first 12k cd with special here because his set was GUITAR, with a strong focus on amazing and he is so young he’s got a acoustic instruments. both of these massively important career in front of cds really changed the direction of the him. He gave me a copy of his cd label. likewise, the recent releases by “Fyris Swan” (Hefty) and it blew me Moskitto and my cd with Savvas Ysatis away. definitely the best electronic really point at a more “pop” kind of music album i heard last year. I knew i

51 wanted to work with him more so we 12k’s 12th birthday. Shall we expect all agreed and organized this something special? spontaneous live release and i hope to release some new Solo Andata music Taylor Deupree: Yes… i was going to in the future… whenever they want. do something special for the 10-year anniversary but ran out of time and then realized the 12-year anniversary would be a bit more of a fitting time. i’m not sure yet, but something will definitely happen, something that combines music, visuals… maybe some sort of performance. we shall see. it will also be LINE’s 10th birthday so we will likely do a big project that combines both of those things.

.

Giuseppe Cordaro: Next year will be http://www.12k.com/

52 Sonic Acts Xii: A Cinematic Report

Marco Mancuso

around the digital art world in Italy and Europe know that my sentence is not banal. Once again in 2008, Sonic Acts, just like in the previous editions in 2006, 2004 and 2002 which had different topics, became an important moment of reflection, whilst still remaining very connected to a strong experiential approach to new media and to a historical-artistic reflection

Sonic Acts took place in Amsterdam on them. It managed to do this on the last weekend of February. Its without hysterical ‘big event’ derives focus was the “Cinematic Experience”, and most importantly without falling and I believe it to be one of the best into institutional directions that would festivals that I have attended of late. It have distorted its approach and managed to strike a stimulating dynamism. That is all. balance between conferences, Sonic Acts XII – The Cinematic projections, performance and Experience, an important exhibitions. appointment for all those who work The main topic represented not so and study in the arena of audiovisual much a conceptual hat to the festival art, has represented an unique (a rather myopic and tired formula, as moment of encounter with some of many recent festivals have shown) but the ‘sacred gurus’ of the noble art, and rather it acted as a guideline along a moment of reflection on the which it was possible to embark on a immersive, synesthetic, experimental, journey paved with references that neuronal and aesthetic practices in swung between contemporary digital the sound-image relationship. The culture and its organizers of Sonic Art have been able analogical/mechanical/electronic to insert audiovisual art into the larger historical reference. Those who have domain of contemporary art, through experiences of festival, meetings, performances, projections and conferences and exhibitions based especially through lectures. T

53 They have managed to do this thanks structured. In the small De Balie to continuous references to the theatre (centre of the festival and experiences of the first experimental welcoming meeting point for artists, cinema, of the rekombinant practices speakers and the general public) of materials and instruments, of the international experts in the fields of synesthetic dialogue between music visual arts, music, science, literature and visual arts, of the relationship and art took turns in describing the between perception and science. All audiovisual art of the past, present this was done rationally, without and future. intellectualisms, thanks ‘simply’ to an extreme competence and a will to Personally I had the most intense explore the essence of the chosen experiences at Erkki Huhtamo‘s topic. Maybe a deeper thought on lecture, which was centered around aesthetic practices would have been the history of the diorama and on necessary (personally I cannot their historical and cultural disregard this aspect) and on the significance in relation to the evolution that the first experiences of development of contemporary media the last century have undergone. The culture, and at the lecture of the feeling is that it was a choice to director and reference figure of the concentrate on one side on practices first experiments with the audiovisual and methods and the other side on medium, Ken Jacobs (interviewed in perceptive and scientific effects. this month’s DigiMag), who then performed his Nervous Magic Lantern at Paradise on Saturday night.

The meetings with Kurt Hentschlager and Tez, with Jeffrey Shaw and Marnix de Nijs, with Ulf Langheinrich and lastly with Timothy Druckery focused more on the dialogue between science and art, on the neuronal relationship between sounds and images, and on the concepts of

. special immersion and perception of the audiovisual stimulus. Kurt Notwithstanding this very personal Hentschlager and Tez focused their thought, the extremely high standard lecture on flickering and on the meetings were certainly the central receptive impulse of the retina and of nucleus around with Sonic Acts was the human brain under the constant

54 stimulus of light and video: this is al Paradiso) siano focalizzati maybe a slightly reductive approach principalmente sulla sintesi granulare for Kurt’s Feed project (which we have del suono e delle immagini allo scopo spoken about in DigiMag before) but di innescare una percezione corticale nonetheless useful for Maurizio delle informazioni audiovisive, il Martinucci’s PV868 project. The artist docente americano Timothy Druckery performed live Saturday night at ha incentrato il suo intervento su una Paradise . serie di video storici che documentano la relazione tra le prime macchine computazionali e i primi studi sulle forme di intelligenza artificiale.

La terza giornata di incontri si è invece inserita invece all’interno del programma dei video screening: se quindi gli artisti Mika Taanila e Rose Lowder hanno presentato alcuni dei loro lavori video, molto interessanti . sono risultati gli incontri Absolute Sound e Future Cinema dove sono L’incontro di Jeffrey Shaw e stati proposti due modi alternativi di dell’artista olandese Marnix de Nijs si è lavorare con l’esperienza cinematica. Il invece maggiormente concentrato primo incentrato sul suono e in sulla tematica dell’interattività. assenza di immagini (bellissimo il Stupefacente l’intervento dell’artista e soundscape Weekend di Walter ricercatore australiano che ha Ruttmann del 1928) e il secondo strabiliato tutto mostrando i lavori focalizzato su alcuni artisti che non sull’interattività di sistemi audiovisivi possono essere definiti registi per immersivi che sta seguendo da anni definizione (anche qui, molto bello il presso l’iCinema Research Institute di lavoro Study #40 dell’artista austriaca Sydney. Tecnologie per il cinema di Lia del 2007). Rassegna di video che, domani, che richiedono sicuramente nell’arco dei tre giorni di Sonic Acts, contenuti artistici all’altezza ma che ha regalato molti momenti illustrano uno scenario sui possibili spettacolari. Su tutti la collection teatri e cinema di domani. Se infine Absolute Time (commoventi tra gli Ulf Langheinrich si è impegnato a altri The Flickr di Tony Conrad del illustrare come i suoi lavori (tra cui il 1966, Instructions for a light and a live Drift performato la sera di sabato sound machine di Tscherkassky del

55 2006, Noisefields dei Vasulka del 1974 panels Absolute Sound and Future e Around Perception di Pierre Hebert Cinema where two alternative ways of del 1968) e Absolute Frame I e II working with the cinematic (forme visuali, ritmi, colori, percezioni experience were proposed. The first audiovisive) one was centered on sound and on the absence of images (the Jeffrey Shaw’s and Dutch artist Marnix soundscape Weekend by Walter de Nijs’s meeting focused mainly on Ruttmann from 1928 was beautiful). interactivity. The incredible The second focused on some artist intervention of the Australian artist that cannot be defined as directors and researcher stupefied everyone as per se (again, very beautiful was the he showed the pieces on interactivity work Study #40 by the Austrian artist of immersive audiovisual systems that Lia, 2007). Over the three days the he has been following for years at the video program gave us some iCinema Research Institute in Sydney . spectacular moments. Top ranks the They are technologies fit for the collection Absolute Time (amongst cinema of the future, that require a others The Flicker by Tony Conrad, high standard artistic content but that 1966, Instructions for a light and sound nonetheless illustrate a scene of the machine by Tscherkassky, 2006, possible theatres and cinemas of the Noisefields by Vasulka, 1974 and future. Ulf Landheinrich illustrated Around Perception by Pierre Herbert, how his pieces (amongst them live 1968, were very moving), and Absolute Drift that he performed Saturday Frame I and II (visual forms, rhythms, night at Paradise ) focus mainly on the colors, audiovisual perceptions). granular synthesis of sound and of images, in order to provoke a cortical perception of the audiovisual information. American professor Timothy Druckery focused on a series of historical videos that document the relation between the first computing machines and the early studies on artificial intelligence.

The third day of the festival was dedicated to the video-screening . program: artists like Mika Taanila and Rose Lowder presented some of their The exhibition organized in the pieces. Of extreme interest were the Montevideo rooms was equally

56 interesting: the artists involved were reflexivity, and it follows the abstract Ulf Langheinrich, Kurt Hentschlager, evolution process of a black and white Julien Marie and Boris Debackere. The tree branch that resembles more a pieces on exhibition were very varied, Zen drawing rather than a natural with the intent to cover the different object. technical and aesthetic approaches of the audiovisual cinematic experience. Boris Cebackere’s pieces, “Probe”, Personally I found the work by French have a very different technical artist Julien Marie wonderful. He has approach and audiovisual impact. been working for years in the “Probe” is an immersive interactive audiovisual terrain with a mixed installation that plays with the analogical and digital approach, and spectator’s movement and invites her he reflects critically on the use of to perceptively immerse herself in a digital technology when it impedes magnetic flux of sounds and images, the re-discovery and the materiality of in relation to her distance to the the artistic creation through sounds projection screen and to Ulf and images. “Low resolution Cinema”, Langheinrich. The artist is present at as the name suggests, is a low-tech the exhibition with two pieces: “OSC” projection that abstractly reproduces and “Soil”. The first piece engages the geopolitical space of Berlin . The with many topics that are covered by image is obtained through a special the festival and it goes further projector that uses two Liquid Cristal towards an type of work that Granular Displays (LCD) in rotation. And there is Synthesis have been experimenting more: the famous installation with for years, thanks to a process of “Exploding Cinema” transforms the audience immersion in front of an exhibition space in a real experimental installation that in essence plays with film studio, fantastic in its the flickering of the video image. The mechanicity, where the absurdity or second installation plays more with war is reproduced through the video abstraction, by presenting four progressive deconstruction of sounds screens arranged horizontally that and images. show a series of extremely elegant graphics in movement obtained Kurt Hentschlager’s video installation through a process of deconstruction “Scape” follows an invisible red thread of filmic images, as primary elements made out of sensibility and delicacy. It of a research in the structure of time is about perception of time, and on field creation, a concept that is phenomenological conscience, very dear to the Austrian artist.

57 of the obsessive digital flux that obviously characterized Sonic Acts. Bruce McClure’s performance “Illuminated Dislocations” was on the same wavelength. It brought on the stage long forgotten analog audiovisual technology (like Harold Egerton’s xenox flash from the 30s or other esoteric filmic technology) and it accompanied the obsessive . repetition on the screen of a flicker image with a hallucinatory and almost In conclusion the live performances mantra-like carpet of noise. There is took place in the splendid location of more: Otolab’s performance “Circo Paradiso. Cluster, Leafcutter John and Ipnotico”, presented by Digicult, Pomassl&Nikita Tsymbal were the surprised the audience with its formal most interesting pieces of the first and rigorous audio and video output, evening, while the three mentors of obtained through a fascinating and Raster-Noton and their Signal project unique use of digital software, was disappointing. Without wanting analogical machines, electronic to be blasphemous, their performance signals, human dexterity and live appeared too static and repetitive, improvisation. Ryoichi Kurokawa, Ulf based on audiovisual notions that Langheinrich, D-Fuse e Tez’s new have been too well known and project’s performances were always understood for many years now. The elegant and effective. Their pieces are formal rigor and the minimalism more explicitly digital examples of typical of Cartsen Nicolai, Frank what the contemporary cinematic live Bretschneider and Olaf Bender’s work experience can be: immersive, was present, but in the blending of all sinesthetic or narrative. three artistic personalities it became rather weak, beautiful but cold, and at times almost banal. What a shame.

As mentioned before, on the Saturday evening a tribute was paid to the artist Ken Jacobs and to his “Nervous Magic Lantern”: a ‘riverberated silence’ of rare magic and fascination, an analogic break moment in the middle

58 . Acousimonium by Parmigiani, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Michel Chiom, A unique ending closed the twelfth and by live performances respectively edition of Sonic Acts, which took by Christian Zanesi again, by place on the Sunday at Paradise : the composer Kasper Teopliz, by legend live presentation of the immersive Hans-Joachim Roedelius and in sonic efficacy of Acousimonium, conclusion by Christian Fennesz. historically one of the first examples of spatialisation of sound obtained We experienced a magical afternoon through the construction of a 80 and evening, where we understood speakers system of different sound’s physical mechanisms and the dimensions, positioned at different human response to sound stimuli with heights and distances between them. genuine emotion. A worthy closure The day was organized in for, and I repeat myself, one of the collaboration with the research centre most interesting and best curated GRM -Group de Recherches Musicales festivals that I have experienced in a of Paris – and was initially long time. Congratulations to Sonic characterized by a series of Acts!. performances by director Christian Zanesi, of compositions for www.sonicacts.com

59 Dafne Boggeri: Zigzagging Between Images And Sound

Silvia Bianchi

(2007) e videoREPORT ITALIA_2004/05, Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea in Monfalcone (2006).

For the live media sound You can wake up now, the universe has ended, based on images of a peculiar fiction/remake which was shot on Los Angeles hills and interpreted by the artist herself and inspired by the cult Dafne Boggeri is undoubtedly one of movie Rebel without a cause , Dafne the most interesting and many-sided Boggeri called Berliner female trio artistic personalities who have Rhythm King And Her Friends . emerged in Italy in the last years. In her approach to art she has dealt with Rhythm King And Her Friends (Kitty- photography, videos, installations and yo records) mixed and synthetized performances, developing a kind of with sophisticated queer intensity work where shape and meaning electronic sounds with pop melodies. continuously cross media borderlines. In their live performances samplers and drum machines play together Her work was presented in her with traditional guitar/bass personal exhibitions Relax, It’s Only guitar/drums and two voice lyrics in Me , in collaboration with Sonja English, French and Bulgarian. After Cvitkcovic, Los Angeles (2007), many concerts in Europe and America Hidden line on explicit surface n.01, together with Le Tigre, Electrelane, Centre Culturel Français de Milan Stereo Total, Lizzy on X,Cobra Killer, (2006), Espace Experimental, Le RK&HF have recently recorded the Plateau, Parigi (2004) and in many album Front of luxury, in which the collective exhibitions such as the energy of their dance and Italian-Belgian project Looking for the experimental beat atmospheres has Border , Mechelen, Strombeek, Milano been compared to that of Stereolab o

60 Luscious Jackson. I had the chance to subito nelle loro corde. interview Dafne Boggeri during Netmage 08, and here is what we ‘Evolution’ e ‘I Have Lost My…’ sono talked about. due video che avevo presentato durante Dispositif.01 e che successivamente le RK&HF hanno deciso di aggiungere al loro materiale. Quando si e’ trattato di definire la parte musicale per Netmage avevo in mente una rosa di nomi fra cui al centro loro… il risultato finale lo si è visto per la prima volta a Bologna, nessuna prova ufficiale ma un tentativo di incastrare i pezzi, come in

. un “blinde date”. ‘You can wake up now, the universe has ended’ e’ il Silvia Bianchi: How has your project titolo del progetto che abbiamo with the Rhythm King And Her Friends presentato: lo spunto per la traccia (Berlino, Kitty-Yo) started? I remeber video nasce da Rebel Withou a Cause. you had already shot a video for them Mi piace pensare a queste immagini some years ago…how has your come un andamento a zig zag rispetto collaboration developed? all’ellisse temporale della pellicola originale: si parte disorientati per Dafne Boggeri: Le RK&HF ed io ci ancorarsi ad alcuni punti fissi. Alla fine siamo incontrate nel 2004, il collante del film c’e’ solo il sospetto circondato e’ stata una zine sulla scena musicale da piccole ossessioni e da una danza elettronica femminile a cui stavo immaginaria. Le riprese sono state lavorando ‘SUPERSTAR* Like my fatte con diversi apparecchi shoes… ‘. Dopo qualche tempo le ho fotografici digitali e questa scioltezza riviste suonare a Parigi ed e’scattata la low-fi e’ un aspetto importante del collaborazione per il finissage della lavoro. mostra Dispositif.01 per L’Espace Expérimental du Plateau . L’impatto che creano durante i concerti e’ fortemente visivo, quasi tutte le loro canzoni sono accompagnate da filmati e questa attitudine al linguaggio ‘per immagini’ la si coglie

61 . lavori che stanno prendendo forma, come ad esempio quello per Silvia Bianchi: During the last years Netmage. you worked in Milan, Paris and Los Angeles. Will you tell us why you moved and how your work developed in those different realities?

Dafne Boggeri: Da Twin Peaks a Milano per staccare il cordone ombelicale, a Parigi per caso, a Los Angeles per disperazione. Milano e’ stata l’occasione per definire le prime collaborazioni e iniziare a giocare con situazioni ‘off’. A Parigi si e’ trattato di . una residenza per artisti in cui il tempo ha accelerato… con Yuri Go To Silvia Bianchi: During your career Space abbiamo iniziato ad organizzare you’ve dealt with very different art il microfestival Cortocircuito al expressions. I remember you started Politburo , un piccolo locale nel Marais as a writer. How much has writing e i party queer Italians Do It Better nel influenced your artistic development? club dyke Le Pulp. Poi c’e’ stato Dafne Boggeri: Si tratta di immagini, l’incontro con Fany Corral produttrice codici e feticci, che affiorano del collettivo Kill The Dj che mi ha naturalmente, che camminano con dato l’opportunita’ di mixare video me. Alla base resta l’idea del progetto, durante i dj set de Le Tigre, Chloè, in qualche modo un’approccio quasi Ivan Smagghe…e tutte queste architettonico, per niente free-style, esperienze in qualche modo sono in cui lo schizzo e il disegno sono il confluite nella mostra finale passo piu’ importante perche’ l’idea e Dispositif.01. la sua utopia (coscienza extrasensoriale) si materializzino: Los Angeles e’ stata una completa abracadabra… consiglioin questo scoperta, geografica ed emotiva. Per senso di leggervi ‘Style: Writing from la prima volta ho sentito il peso dello the Underground’ (Stampa spazio e la costante sensazione di Alternativa/IGTimes, 1996). ‘dipendenza’. I tre mesi che ho trascorso lì per la Mountain School Of Art hanno dato vita a tracce per molti www.surrenderwinona.com

62 www.kitty-yo.net/wp/artists/rhythm www.myspace.com/rhythmkingahf -king-and-her-friends

63 The Darwinian Composer

Luigi Pagliarini

especially grateful to Maurizio Masini for the brilliant discussions on the topic) had been noticing that the number of students handing in papers composed by Copying&Pasting was growing exponentially, and reaching almost 100%. The first reaction included a feeling of betrayal, but soon I started feeling rather optimistic about it. As time passed by I had noticed that, in spite of this new As my activity in the theoretical and method, the differences among academic field often involved individuals remained completely introductions to Polymorphic unaltered. Basically, not only it was Intelligence, I have been developing a still possible to distinguish and series of paradigms and examples to evaluate the abilities and cultural help the reader or the listener background of the single students but understand (if not feel) the deep link in some cases the paper actually between psyche and the cognitive seemed to gain intellectual value. styles of individuals on one side and the simple/advanced technological This, together with the subsequent functions of modern computer understanding that this method was science on the other. Among the spreading among colleagues and many models one of the most popular people of my same age and the – probably because it manages to certitude that in the future it will have approach the different kinds of involved basically every writer, lead to sensitiveness among the audience – is the idea of exposing this condition by what I call the Darwinian Composer. defining the Darwinian Writer, the one who uses texts found around the The idea and the intention of defining world – especially on the Internet – the Darwinian Composer first came as mixing the order of sentences and a necessity for academic teaching. concepts. Some of my colleagues and I (I’m

64 the rough edges of the descriptive logical process. In Darwinian writing, these are but the “mutations” as referred to by the evolutionary theory.

This process can be witnessed on two different levels (as remarked by Donatello Bianco – a long-time expert of applied computer science). The first is molecular, the point of reference

. being the single word (much more popular at the beginning of the The image attached explains in simple computer age). The second is terms the process of Darwinian macromolecular, it involves whole Writing. There is an infinite quantity of sentences or paragraphs. digital texts and sentences located in several places which can be accessed (CD, DVD, WWW, etc). The Darwinian In a way, it seems that the evolution Writer accesses these resources, of operative interfaces (editors) reads them and decides to re- affects the methods of the Darwinian compose a logical sequence to fit Writer. While in the past it was his/her own needs and narrative common to use a combination of the context, using the sentences as if they atomic elements of language, the were chromosomes making up a process has now switched to the genetic code, thus – just like in the “protein” level, changing the “Building evolution of the species – widening block”, moving from the chemistry to the chances of reproduction of this the biology of literary composition “literary chromosome”. Another and blending them together. contribution to this writing process comes from the notorious genetic Crossover, well represented in computer science by the Cut&Paste technique used by the Darwinian Writer to make some order in his text as far as the logical and chronological sequence of phrases is concerned. The Darwinian Writer also introduces original sentences – written by himself

– in order to tie together and smooth .

65 Anyway, once this products and multimedia definition/conviction was stated, its presentations, etc. truth from the intellectual point of view proven and both its intellectual This very consideration lead to the importance and its “popular truth” necessity of defining Darwinian were confirmed, I came to the Composition and therefore the conclusion (also thanks to the Darwinian Composer, (re)locating into stimulating conversations with one single paradigm a method with its Andrea Gabriele) that this process and own characteristics and peculiarities, its definition could be extended to applied to so many disciplines (and any domain of composition (or authors) that it just needed its own creativity, if you allow me the visibility and individuality, thus its expression) in the present and in the legitimation. future.

Beyond writing, this process finds ground for application in the field of musical composition (for instance, the so-called remixes, which exploded in 1999 with Bob Marley’s “Sun is Shining” version by [Funkstar De Luxe] and which constitute the core of most of the contemporary pop music production), video productions (all . video-remixes, made popular in Italy by Blob, a TV show aired since 1988, Some may object that the and which have reached global combination and the manipulation of proportions through YouTube), texts, music and other forms of graphics (both commercial and expression – even though “by hand” or artistic), shortly, all creative “by heart” – have always been a part compositions on digital supports. of the human approach to Basically all of them. Obviously, the composition. On the contrary, I think usage of this method grew peculiarly that the Cut&Paste method, besides strong in the forms of creation which being based on a different cognitive develop in the field of computer style and presenting unequalled science itself and that by nature immediacy (think of Drag&Drop) assume different new features. For offers a potential unknown and instance: slideshows, software unexplored in the past. Cut&Paste programming, creation of multimedia

66 seems to push forward the cloning . technique, giving it the strength and the “critical mass” necessary to turn A first attempt towards the creation quantity into quality. (not in terms of A.I. but as far as the impact on the media is concerned) of Others may doubt that this process Artificial Darwinian Writers is can lead to the exposition of some represented by a software developed (genetic) branch of human creativity. by marketing professor Philip M Besides being sure that this Parker, which allowed its creator to mechanism does not really reduce the publish about 85.000 titles in five number of the potential available years. combinations, I think that some peculiarly creative minds will be finally able to access syntactical and www.saul.unisi.it/disco/persona.php? semantic reserves (be it linguistic or in id=22 the sound field, etc.) they were previously prevented from, thus www.linkedin.com/in/donatellobianc managing to enrich the world of ideas o through original and innovative creations. www.funkstardeluxe.com/

I also think there’s a chance that this www.blob.rai.it/ process (also because of the potential and actual multimedia features) www.youtube.com/ triggers new forms of composition. A www.andreagabriele.it/ so-called avant-garde. There is a significant chance that this method, http://faculty.insead.edu/parker/resu not too difficult to encode and me/personal.htm decode, can be duplicated and applied in the field of A.I., which is www.repubblica.it/2008/02/sezioni/ already happening, thus giving life to scienza_e_tecnologia/macchina- real “Artificial Darwinian Composers”. libri/macchina-libri/macchin- -libri.html

67 68 The Hidden Road To The City Of The Future

Gigi Ghezzi

to beat. The mutations of cities don’t reflect only programmed combinations of town planners and builders, but also political parties, expressions of parallel societies, tensions and cultural dialectics, random manifestations of the demographic emergency. There are a lot of knots to undo and they often have an everyday recurrence.

The first February the German Sustainability and achievability, magazine for the “young research” creation of new political and cultural Sciencegarden opened a request for spaces, defusing conflictual zones, bids called “City in present, past and etc future” (Die Stadt in Gegenwart, Judging the publications of Vergangenheit und Zukunft). specialized reviews, it seems like 21 st The editorial staff proposes to select century cities are going through a and reward reportage, reports or crisis that seems more an occasion of interviews that have city as subject reflection and a turning point than a and that come from the most catastrophe. “City&Society” (n.2 of different disciplines (engineering, 2007) is completely dedicated to sociology, botanic). The conductor young cultures such as “architectonic theme is justified by the fact that elements” of the urban spaces, their cities, from Greek polis to modern practices of resistance and metropolis, are an unlimited source of participation to actual late-capitalism ways of reading social, political and economy, but most of all, with a technological relationships between strong comparing cut to human cultures. They’re, for example, “disempowerment” phenomena of maps of the augmented need of them (that includes USA with New mobility, energy, pollution, York, Africa with Dakar and China with occupation of territory and country Beijing), that is “defusing” their erosion. The dynamic of evolution is creative power or excluding the

69 discrimination economy. Last City physical space, but also members of number is even more interesting, enlarged communities, with analysis of urban trends, culture, boundaries delimited by their cultural theory, policy, action (n.3 – 2007), practices that overcome dedicated to the forms of advanced ethnographical or class connotations. marginality, who are common to Paris On the other side, sociological (banlieu) and Baghdad . knowledge studies, with “digital city” concept, underline the correspondence between the cognitive digital dimension of the knowledge centers and the urban physical space (see the review “Technological Forecasting & Social Change”, January 2007, “Building human-centered systems in the network society” by José L. Moutinho, of the Center for Innovation of the Lisbon University ). . Those interrelated centers of There’s an overlap between those “conscience production” do not live in studies and those of the “scenary”, a digital dimension, but are able to coming from the knowledge move people and cognitive energies, sociology, where disillusion in able to turn public administration and cognitive synthesis abilities of the Net market more efficient, but must be in relation to centripetal strengths of sustained by infrastructure and metropolization (a metaphor for suitable institutional frames. A new globalization) took place of a renew paradigm of city, able to answer to a attention for the forms of a physical larger complexity and heterogeneity proximity started from the digital of the actual societies in the urban media, to get to the recognition of a environment must be achieved. The urban “digital physicality” of the nets. city must support the creation and It is a complex discourse and could diffusion of the knowledge, it must bring us far away. On one side, the help the mobilization of people and of urban studies underline how human the information as well and it must being who live in cities nowadays aim promote the inclusive development of to become not only citizen of their the new cultural elements.

70 co-evolution of human and social contests on one side and of endogenous processes of the technological mutation on the other one, in a sort of “multiple futures” already present in the actual cities by the forms wrapped one into the others, as in Berenice of Calvino.

. www.sciencegarden.de We’re in front of a recurrent case of

71 Aether Architecture: Real Spaces, Virtual Spaces

Marco Mancuso

instruments to physically represent the new virtual spaces, the connections, the correlations, the nets, information flux in contemporary society.

In projects such as “Ping Genius Loci” or “Wifi Camera“, the digital is used as a real architectonic instrument, with the idea of promoting a structural approach that allows the visualization Aether Architecture is a design and of mediation spaces, between the real architecture studio based in and the virtual, between the local and Budapest, Hungary , that is known at the global in terms of connection an international level for its innovative between single individuals. For Adam and conceptual approach to media the urban and the virtual space architecture. represent a single unity in constant relation, an expanded environment After having represented Hungary ay that the architect has to necessarily the last Venice Architecture Biennale confront. in 2004, and after having taken part in a long list of festivals in the whole Since I have started to cover and world (that includes the participation analyze the relation between at the installation exhibition at the audiovisual multimedia, relation with Mixed Media festival in Milan in 2006, the space and visualization of the curated by Paolo Rigamonti and Silvio relation between real and new virtual Mondino, and coordinated by Tiziana spaces in DigiMag, Aether Gemin), Adam Somlai-Fisher and his Architecture probably represents a partners are nowadays one of the new chapter. The complexity of the most refined representatives of that theoretical and methodological discipline that uses digital (or new approach, the intellectualism, which is integrated technology in general) never self-serving, the attempt to find

72 a totally new and radical role in objects (circuits, machines, salvaged architecture, are all elements that objects) and to code writing make Adam Somlai-Fisher on of the (generative software and open protagonists of the new architecture source). It’s “do it yourself” philosophy international scene. applied to architecture and design, for a democratic vision of this project This is a discipline that does not study discipline. Have a look at projects like and research aesthetic form, but Reconfigurable House, or have a chat rather the architectonic complexity with people that took part in Low that can emerge from the common Tech Sensors and Acuators participation to a specific project and workshops: it comes across as a fresh from the possible social relations that and almost playful approach to the digital worlds make possible architecture: the discipline is (“Open Source Architecture“). It does understood as the reconfiguration of not forget the possibilities offered by open and interactive physical space, low cost technologies and by an which is never rigid and closed in almost hacking approach to analog itself.

73 terms of use of technology as an instrument for a new type of architecture.

Adam Somlai-Fischer: I was quite lucky to be able to find something that personally motivated me for my thesis. I know this is a little silly point of departure, but spending too much time in front of computers i

. developed the instincts of using computer actions outside in reality. In parallel, for Adam and his partners Having the notion to try to press undo in Aether Architecture, ‘the digital’ is after spilling water on my desk, trying used as a real material. Of course this to save before a difficult move. This is difficult to grasp if one has a happens to many, but as an architect, traditional vision of architecture and as a designer of spaces for the design. Nonetheless in the project contemporary life I felt I should look series Induction House (Fishtak, into these symptoms a little. After Fishing Kit and Distributed Projection some research I found that there are Structure), the iper-conceptual and many very interesting new qualities in multidisciplinary approach allows this the networked society which were kind of abstractions where the code not properly dealt with within and its final output are material that architecture. can be changed, that can be worked on, they are malleable and flexible like I went on to build a set of interactive almost nothing that is found in nature systems and installations, trying to or created in a laboratory. explore some of these issues. Six years later, I am still doing the same. Marco Mancuso: I would like to start (And I was very lucky to learn a lot from when you began your activity about cross-disciplinary teamwork and your career. In 2002 with the while doing this. Today, all projects project “Mediated Spaces” your aim we talk about here have been done in was to explore mediation spaces of collaboration with others). Frankly the different scales. Between the human, jury didn’t like it at all, they where the physical and the virtual, between asking for the building. I argued that the local environment and ubiquitous while all the other students where digital media. In essence it feels like a making drawings, not buildings, i was manifesto of your designer work, in actually building prototypes of new

74 spaces, not merely drawing them. In Adam Somlai-Fischer: They are architecture if something is really actually the same concept built in new, you can’t draw it. There is simply different forms; We (with Anita Pozna, no reference for the viewer for the Peter Hudini and Bengt Sjölén) were experience. To my great relief trying to construct new materiality, designboom.it has published my malleable matter. For us, the beauty diploma, so I got assured that I was on of digital media wasn’t the use of an interesting track. drawing complex but static forms, rather that it can change and adopt, and can be scripted and can respond to its environment.

To try to create a very basic element for an architecture which embraces this phenomenon, we decided to built a physical and structural object/space (from steel, paper, plastic, textiles), give it a procedural form (something that can be described with an . algorithm), and animate it in its depth with projections; what we really Marco Mancuso: In the meantime, ended up building where structures with the project series Inductions for 3D projections. These experiments House (Fishtak, Fishing Kit and partly felt like media, mostly the Distributed Projection Structure), your smoothness and speed of how they aim was the creation of prototypes, changed over time, but they where which would search a way of working also very present, tangible, not with digital media understood as abstract like computer screens. I think physical material that one is able to this was the most successful version: shape. Do you think that this is one of http://www.aether.hu/induction-hou the next challenges for architecture? I se-distributed-projection-structure . mean, not using digital media as an instrument to model new forms and figures, but using architectural structures to manipulate them, to treat them as real objects. In these terms, what are the differences between these projects?

75 . disciplines that that will provide new ways of interacting with digital Marco Mancuso: What is your technologies, of living the urban methodological approach to space in a different, more immersive architecture and design? What I mean way, of visualizing the information is, in your pieces do you start from flux that will increasingly be spread at classical design and architecture different levels in our cities? studies and then in the process you integrate technological media, or do Adam Somlai-Fischer: I would rather you attempt to directly extract the say its the openness of new media potential and the possible social and that i find most interesting. Let me try urbanistic impact of the digital media to explain this with the help of looking through architecture and design? at the evolution of ‘publishing’. From the stone obelisk to hand written Adam Somlai-Fischer: I have to admit bibles, movable type, press for the a great source has been discussions daily news and today the blogs, the with collaborators. Luckily I ended up effort, the energy needed to make living a life where I work a lot with yourself heard and so shape our people from other disciplines: social culture has vastly decreased. You can scientists, computer scientist, media draw a graph for the inertia of media researchers, artists and so on. Even technologies, how they decline. I t when working with my peers, we talk takes very little effort for me the write about various influences from outside these lines. architecture. The other source is empirical, we all live networked lives Writing is a very direct means of today, it is not so hard to experience expression for us today, but for real things like peer production. architecture and the built Than we do lots if experiments, environment has been always a very brainstorming, sketches, drafts of strong embodiment of our identities. technologies. This is not a follow up Historically trough single authors with from discussions, rather a method of cultural feedback (and control) from research on its own right. the society. Architect’s can only build things which are convincing enough Marco Mancuso: For the last editions for others to spend all those resources of the mag I interviewd Limiteazero, needed. And this is good, this results Lab [Au], Lozano-Hemmer and dNA, the extensive cultural richness to and I always ask the same question. architecture, the many iterations Do you think that architecture and between authors and their readers. action design will in the future be the (which makes the readers become

76 authors really) However, with the designing immaterial spaces with evolution described above, this architectural tools can redefine our process can become more direct, perception of the relation between more visible. physical and virtual spaces, which can become utopian spaces where And it is this very possibility of designers can construct social collaboration and openness in new relations through avatars and virtual media that makes it valuable for an citiziens? architecture that wishes to respond to the identities of today’s individuals Adam Somlai-Fischer: Relating to the and communities. We are less and less above, its not so much about the interested in trusting old constitutions virtual, rather the actual space, and such as privilege of crafts deciding not so much about the relations of the over our head (master planners) and designer, rather the role of the are rather more into learning more designer, or even the existence of a and deciding collaboratively. person fully dedicated to be the designer. Maybe it’s about diffusing these skills and allowing many to be part time designers. Before you ask about quality, of course a lifetime of dedication to a skill does have its values, but I am not talking about weekend designers here. The main difference is that if many chose to collaborate on something and they get instant feedback on their decisions, the system they build will . be of very high quality. There is a very Marco Mancuso: Let’s talk about the convincing example, an experiment concept of Open Source Architecture. by Loren Carpenter, about how a You state that the quality of virtual 5000-strong audience can decide spaces is constructing social together real time. I think we don’t conditions that architecture should need to quote it all, it’s available respond to. At the same time our online here: perception of space and of http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2 architecture is undergoing radical -b.html transformations because we inhabit Marco Mancuso: You work as virtual spaces. Do you believe that interaction designer, and you develop

77 objects and instruments that allow a systems stay open, ‘readable’ as well. stronger relation between the human This way others won’t think of it as and the technological. What surprised closed magic but more a draft to me is your ‘hacking attitude’, which I continue from. Which we really prefer. was not familiar with. You follow ‘do it yourself’ and low-fi principles, and this is quite unusual for an internationally renowned designer. It almost seems that you are not too interested in the aesthetic look of the finished object but rather in its functionality. You have worked in this direction in projects like Reconfigurable House, or during workshops like Low Tech Sensors e Acuators. . Adam Somlai-Fischer: It is interesting Marco Mancuso: Your idea of that you say this. Aesthetics for me is architecture and design is so subtle not solely about form. Maybe this is and intelligent that it seems that you partly a side effect of working too want to promote a new media much with 3D software as an architecture concept, where it is a architecture student, you learn how to tool used to visualize the spaces we do forms, any forms, experiment with inhabit in everyday life. You work in generating form, etc, but somehow I this direction with projects like Ping lost interest in the idea that form is so Genius Loci (the space is visualized meaningful. I even gave a lecture through the construction of a network recently entitled form no more . And I inside the poetic of the soace) of Wifi don’t mean at all that visual culture is Camera (the space is visualized not important, our culture IS visual, through a series of photographs if the just that the attention given to form electromagnetic space that surrounds has been keeping us away from other wireless objects). Hoe important is in interesting characteristics such as for your work to give shape to the behavior, openness/readability, immaterial space? language of interaction, etc. Adam Somlai-Fischer: Yes I find this At the same time, when using really interesting, but mainly because technology in our projects we try to all these phenomena are not at all keep to the idea of openness immaterial; they are not visible or described above, so our technological

78 directly perceivable, but they are very software, code, concept? present. Invisible networks are shaping our daily lives, just we don’t Adam Somlai-Fischer: I love see them so its hard to understand processing, and have been using it them. more mostly for simulation of behavior and interaction. Its great to While working on Wifi Camera (with simulate projects where there are Usman Haque and Bengt Sjölén) we many parts, and they all interact, had a truly exciting experience of communicate, etc. So for me it was finding out how Wifi space looks like. like what CAD is for form-design, Wifi has always been very present, many iterations could be while sitting at cafés trying to catch programmed of various forms AND that tiny signal with your laptop, behaviors. We also use it to conduct turning a little to get better reception, the interaction, control our systems, its all very frustrating since you have and even sometimes write interfaces no idea what you are trying to catch. for visitors to interact with out Seeing is the first step to systems. And as code performs best understanding, so we built a device to when we design by numbers, take pictures, scan the view of Wifi generative approaches have been space (in a good 2 hours per view). present all along, just not as a main What we found has really surprised us: goal rather than a trusted tool how Wifi comes in trough the alongside 3D modeling and hardware windows, how it creates large fluffy hacking. interference patterns, which stay there over months, how it ‘illuminates’ the spaces we live in. We are working on a real time version now, where we will be able to see Wifi space in its dynamics as well.

Marco Mancuso: I saw that some of your projects (like Ping Genius Loci or Reconfigurable House) are linked and connected to the Processing web site and exhibition. Can you explain how . you include generative tools and Marco Mancuso: To conclude, would software in your work structure? Or you like to tell me anout a project that better, how is your work flux you have loved but that have not had structured in terms of design,

79 a chance to develop? I am referring to in close proximity to each other in the right column on your web site, traffic jams? If they could only relax that refers exactly to those projects and interact instead of sitting on the which your were unable to develop in horn. An old classmate (Timo Keller) the past. pointed out to me that there is something very social about ferries Adam Somlai-Fischer: Avenue of Cars. versus bridges. You stop the engines, This is rather Utopian but i would love get out, talk, etc. What we propose is to work on this for real in the future, not faster then the traffic jam, but its creating a giant conveyor belt around much more human. Any city with a the Danube in Budapest (powered by river could use this. the river) which would move around the cars, so drivers can get out while waiting to get to their exit, creating a social space instead of the semi-social http://www.aether.hu/avenue-of-car space of traffic jams. Did you ever s notice how much time people spend www.aether.hu/

80 The Eye Of Women

Massimo Schiavoni

highlights on “La chambre claire” how photography is no more than an object of three practices where Operator is the photographer, Spectator is everybody and the last one is Spectrum, as this word keeps a certain relation with “show”.

The Spectrum of our contemporary society and particularly in art, is taking more and more the connotations of an interior world related to the artist, a personal micro-cosmos where sensibilities, fears and desires are imprisoned by a photo-machine that now with the digital has short execution time in favor of an immediate snapshot that can be real or modified. Well, photography from 60′s had the faculty and the ability to “record” artistic events, which is art on art, remembering snapshots of THE EYE OF WOMEN Kaprow or Morris and Txt: Massimo Schiavoni / Eng: Ornella documentations of happenings and Pesenti parties of post-conceptual artists. The analogical image century – as Pierre Sorlin says – was signed by a full faith in the truth of the analogical representation and its attitude in describing objectively things. [ ] The analogical image triumphed not because near to the real human, but because public emphasized its Roland Barthes

81 revealing power and waited for it to of a daily routine related to the body reinforce the authority of the man in as well as to the interpersonal the world”. relationships. “The artistic contemporary production – the Nowadays the public is used to curator writes – most of all revelation of photography thanks to photography, video and performance – television and cinema; it can has seen in the last decades women emphasize the power of the digital point of view as the diamond tip for a image as well, where representation is research that investigates territories something built or imagined, and the never explored before, which reveal elaboration and metamorphosis rules the absolute originality about the and conditions our relation with comprehension of behaviors and visual. relational dynamics in different social environments. The body turns into the symbol of the interrelations that link the human being to the cosmos, following a vision that looks to the public and private space through a bright and deep research that brings the personal experience as motivation and strength to build a own poetic”.

Marina Abramovich, Vanessa Beecroft, Isabella Bona, Giulia Caira, Padova will host until 22 nd March Silvia Camporesi, Tea Giobbio, Nan these realities, these transversal Goldin, Mona Hatoum, Barbara La analogical-digital phenomena and Ragione , Mara Mayer, Shirin Neshat, these new and own identities at the Pipilotti Rist and Cindy Sherman have Sottopasso Gallery of the Stua, thanks different educations and cultures. to Sguardi Interiori, exhibition They move and interpret the world promoted by the local authority of the around them with deep sensitivity and Cultural and Spectacle Politics – attentive but also ambiguous, social National Center of Photography and anthropological themes. The managed by Enrico Gusella. images show a privileged protagonist This event is inserted into the series feminine figure. Artists try to grab, “Stories of women” and presents the investigate and give back their works of a group of women artists relation with that figure through an that investigates dynamics and events approach and an aesthetic extremely personal and strong.

82 of 2006 or Shirin Neshat with “Birthmarks” of 1995. Some other artists, such as Isabella Bona with “Metamorfosi” or Silvia Camporesi with “Il latte e la carne 1 e 2″ , upset time and space concept, unhinging the laws of “here now”, bringing the existing to a condition of otherness and generating possible worlds. It is frequent, between the artworks in the Abramovich put on view her exhibition, the camouflage, as Cindy performance “Rithym 0″ , shown in Sherman does with “Untitled 124a”. Naples for the first time, in an She uses her body as screen to project analogical image. The artist, who the roles women are driven to assume explores her territory problems, her in their life. Anyway it is evident and affective memories and her love constant the extraordinary generative relations, feels this work. The ability of the images. theatrical dimension resides also into the works of Vanessa Breecroft, in VB Annamaria Sandonà writes: 25.074 of 1996, and also into Pipilotti “Photography became a necessary Rist works, who exhibits Untitled of middle to demonstrate in first person 1994. The first one faces themes such thoughts and contradictions of as the identity, the body and the women world, in a show of problems sexuality, investing her models of that are part of a social dimension of insignificance without seduction, but the human behaviors. [ ] The always able to represent their social boundaries of what is real and what is role and exert it on others. The second false fall down. Better, the one builds video with tons of special photographic sets become a theatre effects that paint a feminine identity scene where the artist imaginary can able to face also unexpected create situations where the identity situations, founded on pleasure and doubts prevail”. This scene becomes creativity. everyday life for Nan Goldin, where in “Nan Goldin at the bat, Toon, C and There’s also who, insisting on portrait, So” of 1992 she talks about her and her uses the camera as instrument of friends that can be gay or trans, but penetration of people and their they are represented without comprehension. As Giulia Caira, for censorship, showing their real and example, with “Untitled” of 1999 or Tea whole person. Gobbio with “Un Viaggio: autoritratti”

83 personal themes.

f photography is a way to imprison or immobilize reality, as Susan Sontag says, this possession depersonalizes our relation with the world, allowing a participation and alienation of our lives at the moment when we look at Goldin, Breecroft, Giobbio or Caira’s artworks. New Nadar daughters, Photography became art through through portraits, elaborations, visions Theatre. As Nadar allowed us to enter and emotions have unhinged the a infra-knowledge of reality, clichés of ritual representation, deepening the ethnographic inventing new points of view and new characteristics throughout a immediate and humanized collection of “partial” objects, in the perceptions, offering the History as same way but with different Barthes intend it, substantially our modalities we had the opportunity to exclusion, and reality as immersion enter this world through all these and share contemporary shoots. In this case, the feminine world makes aware more . than the masculine one, which often talks about too many egoistic and

84 Babilonia Teatri, Society Of Spectacle

Massimo Schiavoni

Castellani, the group’s founders, directors and performers. Already at that point they manage to get straight into the hearts of teenagers through the result of the work they conducted in the Montorio prison of Verona , by confronting them without hypocrisy with harsh socially engaged topics.

“An actor welcomes the audience: he is a seductive, fascinating and Debord writes in 1967 in his provocative character. The music is masterpiece “La Société du deafening, violent techno, the lights Spectacle“: “le avanguardie hanno un are psychedelic and disorientating. unico tempo e la fortuna più grande The teenagers are asked to put che possono avere è, nel senso pieno themselves around a multi storey del termine, quella di fare il loro tower-structure which is the centre of tempo.” Babilonia Teatri, winners of the performance. The actor is the the Premio Scenario 2007 with their guardian of the tower. He shows latest theatre performance “Made in himself and reassures the audience. [ ] Italy”, enter the Italian performance The audience sits at his feet, it is scene from the northeast and under control. Three platform-cells, rightfully occupy the post-vanguard located at the three angles of the scene. This young group from Verona triangle inscribed in the circle formed emerges from a concept of by the audience are under control. performance that speaks about the The actor dances. Sings. He provokes war in Iraq , and it conceives of a the public. The tower is not only a different type of theatre that looks at the contemporary. club-cell: it is the centre of the Panopticon, the circular prison In 2006 they get into the finals of the devised by Bentham. [ ] Another cell: Premio Scenario Infanzia with the real story of Beauty, an ex inmate Panopticon Frankenstein, devised by we have worked with for two years, Valeria Raimondi and Enrico who run away from a land where she

85 grew up like a servant and found side, opposed, a bare but incisive herself in a land where she has acting, that sees the actors standing encountered first the street and then on the stage with their eyes fixed on the prison. Another cell: Badre’s story, one spot, while they recite minimal of his 21 years and his 5 birthdays but direct sentences: “we are broke ( celebrated in prison: another inmate’s green )/green hope/green voice and actor’s body. [ ] The man of rage/green mould/white red and dark the tower, with a video camera in his green’. It’s poetry without rhymes, hand, starts filming the audience that paradoxical but truthful situation, is projected in the cells. On the tower dramatic irony and modern and everywhere. Alternations of quick impotence. So off it goes, it begins pans and narrow zooms. Deafening with the three actors standing like music. Hysterical lights.” (from Premio robot-soldiers of an army that repeat Scenario Infanzia 2006). a litany, almost in an attempt to convince themselves to convince us. The synchronicity is perfect, just like the physical and psychic seriousness. There are a series of sentences in which the words “work”, “under”, or “discharge” have an enormous social significance, just like “parasite” or “plague”. Fortunately the music provides some levity, together with the ballet that takes us to the tubs of wellbeing. Baths in the water and . sweet sensations. Next comes a performance that The three actors celebrate with photographs the ambiguous and Champagne and glasses, and they insidious situation of work precarity, swing between exhausted soldier and Underwork, where the scene develops exasperated holiday modes. Frenetic on two parallel tracks. The first one is rhythm. Great intelligent mix of the dimension of ‘lazing around’, double entendres and of historical- symbolized by bathtubs, and the ironical phrases said without thinking second is an incisive recitative that is about it twice like ” ’68 – boiled almost filled with rage, it is direct, donkey” or “full streets – full balls”. This hopeless. On one side thus we have everyday that hypnotizes us and that the music of Liza Minelli singing the enrages us to the point of ridiculing us famous duo ‘Money’, and on the other is a cruel and wicked discourse, both

86 at home or on stage. They scream the and again the problem of the yellows truth, out everyday condition, and the that is interrupted by a “we can give laws in the tubs seem to ridicule us more ” We get to the phone and it’s all even more. Can we minimize? No, a coming and going, a web, running miserable and facetious, sarcastically and speaking on the phone, between enraged. Suddenly coins fall from the water’s socks and tubs, up to the above, almost to rescue us, there is a scene where Father Christmas (the rush to pick them up,the song Money fourth actor) enters with the notes of sets the pace for the entertaining two flutes to fulfill improbable wishes. choreography, whilst in the Enter chickens, they leave again, and background a strange watering takes from the tubs, like zombies, the three place. End of scene. We start again performers emerge completely wet to with another monologue, this time scream again, this time with no with the Cinese, the study, the CV, interruption. A pumpkin falls, it breaks and “we’ll let you know”: the degree and they start eating with napkins and and ingredients for a bomb-cocktail, forks. Applause.

87 unforgiving description of “holy” football fanaticism and of emphatic and patriotic play-by-play, that are normally rendered imperceptible by our general addiciton to them. It is a piece where taboos and restrictions are confronted with intelligence and lightness, and that produces a theatre that goes beyond ordinary schemata and conformism. . “Made in Italy” does not tell a story. The next performance is “Made in With irony, sacrilege and caustic Italy”, that will be performed in humor it deals with the contradictions Bologna – Teatri di Vita – 6 th /7 th of our times. The performance March and in San Lazzaro of Savena - proceeds through accumulation. It Teatro ITC- 8 th March, Pescara – photographs, condenses and engulfs Florian Teatro – 1th March, Pesaro – all that surrounds it. The continuous Teatro Rossigni – 15 th March, Udine – messages that reach us, the need to CSS Teatro Palamostre – 20 th and 22 catalogue, file, put everything in nd March in Teatro della Tosse, order. It works through combinations , Genova. The tour will continue unitil intersections, shifting of meanings. May . The scenes do not start and they do not finish, they are constantly This performance won the Premio interrupted. They are bitten apart. The Scenario 2007 with this explanation of images and the words are born and the jury chaired by the director constantly die. The actors do not act. Roberta Torre: “The Italian North East The music is always present and it depicted as the factory of injustice, dictates the logic with which events vulgarity and hypocrisy: extraordinary happen. Like in a video-clip. Made in producer of stereotypes recited like Italy is a mess of words. It’s a mess of litanies, and of family models inspired luminescent tubes. It’s a mess of by the holy family but filled with icons. For a pop theatre. For a rock media idols, intolerance, fanaticism. [ ] theatre. For a punk theatre. It’s a Simple but effective verbal strategies theatre that is full of inputs and that make one laugh and a perception images: it is overflowing with of non sense, in a work that wisely suggestions, but empty of solutions. conjugates interpretative stylization (from Made in Italy , Babilonia Teatri, and gesture paroxysm. With an 2007).

88 have the universally used sacrilege, from Croat to Russian, when they speak ‘their’ Nordic dialect to disparage migrants, when they go to get a pizza, when they become intolerance and racism Fucking Arab or Dio Can. New scene. Staging of a nativity scene, baby Jesus and the comet. Pop music and bodies that dance, lick, touch themselves and . their genitals, and here Enrico gives everything mask without a costume, This is the new Italian Theatre, more modern juggler, gentleman dramatist. alive than ever, more evolved than Again the two of them in front of an ever, and it comes from the provinces, execution, light in the face, name and in this case from Isola Rizza, Verona . I surname, seeking A.A.A., Italian or could give thousands of examples of from Padania, virtual sex, peasants or “new wave” revolution-performance southerners, let me sing a song, soft, groups that are born in small towns, in good morning Italy, good morning abandoned churches, in utility rooms Maria. In front of the luminescent or in village theatres from where, Italian perimeter pieces of white, red between passion and competence, and green paper fall, Champions of they go to the conquest not of Italy the world, and Enrico exults, but of the world. We are Italians, ropewalker on the stage, exhausted adaptation is our strength, to amaze is performer who lays down whilst our way of being. The Babilonia are Valeria sweeps the floor. not afraid, they are not reticent, they leave know territory and they re-mix, they are horizon and reflection, rupture ad provocation, conference and tract, maybe ‘preaching’ and presumption. Nonetheless everything has a logic, from the position of the bodies on stage to the rhythm of the spoken word, from the scene to Valeria and Enrico’s palpitation.

Everything flows when the two blurt . out that we have a Pope but we also

89 Babilonia Teatri are an integral part of this ‘new wave’ or scenic post- www.babiloniateatri.it vanguard, and their work is a mirror and soul of people, of life. It is the self-portrait of power and ideology par excellence . It is the generalized abstraction of contemporary society where the spectacle is: “image that becomes accumulation and domination”, it becomes representation, imperialism and capital laid bare in “Underwork” and in “Made in Italy” : “L’intera vita delle società, in cui dominano le moderne condizioni di produzione, si annuncia come un immenso accumulo di spettacoli. Tutto ciò che era direttamente vissuto si è allontanato in una rappresentazione. Lo spettacolo si presenta nello stesso tempo come la società stessa, come parte della società, e come strumento di unificazione. In quanto parte della società, esso è espressamente il settore più tipico che concentra ogni sguardo e ogni coscienza.[ ] Ma lo spettacolo non è identificabile con il semplice sguardo, anche se combinato con l’ascolto. Esso è ciò che sfugge all’attività degli uomini, alla riconsiderazione e alla correzione della loro opera. E’ il contrario del dialogo. Dovunque c’è una rappresentazione indipendente, là lo spettacolo si ricostituisce.” (Guy- Ernest Debord , La Société du Spectacle, 1967)

90 Share Festival 2008: Manufacturing

Luca Barbeni

digitale che sta diventando sempre più “personal”. Non meno importante è il fatto che Torino è World Design Capital 2008. Ma Torino è anche un grande centro manifatturiero, le cui specificità Share Festival ha scelto di enfatizzare. Nell’ottica di un festival che, per contenuti e pubblico, ha una vocazione fortemente internazionale, si è voluto sottolineare con il tema

“Questo libro non intende presentarsi Manufacturing un aspetto locale. come una ricerca formale, ma nasce Da qualche tempo si parla di “digifab”, da un’idea precisa, cioè quella di letteralmente fabbricazione digitale, e studiare la produzione “casalinga” di riguarda quelle pratiche del design e oggetti funzionali di uso quotidiano.” della produzione artistica che Così inizia il testo introduttivo di contemplano la progettazione digitale Vladimir Archpov, che ha e la prototipazione rapida. pazientemente raccolto 220 Cinquant’anni fa i computer erano invenzioni nate dall’estro di una grossi come un frigorifero e gestiti da popolazione russa colpita dalle tecnici specializzati, oggi le tecnologie ristrettezze economiche generate per la protipazione rapida come i dalla fine dell’impero sovietico. Tra gli sistemi CNC e la Stereolitografia sono oggetti la ” gabbia antivandali per in possesso di grandi aziende come lampione “, una ” stufetta con Provel, ma è inevitabile che quelle lampada al quarzo ” e un ” distillatore stesse macchine, ma di dimensioni casalingo “: cosa centra tutto ciò con inferiori, oggi possono trovarsi sulle Share Festival? Manufacturing, tema nostre scrivanie: sono i personal della quarta edizione del festival, che fabricator. Tanto che un network di si tiene a Torino dall’ 11 al 16 marzo artisti che si raduna intorno al Generator.X 2008, è stato scelto per due ragioni. progetto di Marius Watz , Per prima cosa, si vogliono presentare presenta a Share Festival una serie di le potenzialità della fabbricazione oggetti creati tramite fabbricazione

91 digitale, che vanno oltre i limiti della dal cyberspazio nella nostra vecchia e tradizionale industria. Queste cara realtà atomica. Ma questo fatto macchine permettono un passaggio invitabile solleva delle criticità, genera immediato e veloce dal modello delle frizioni, epistemologiche e all’oggetto, permettendo la materiali. E’ in corso l’orogenesi tra i realizzazione di tutta una serie di bits a gli atomi. oggetti di una complessità impensabile. Come suggerisce con Nell’epistemologia il termine arguzia Marius Watz stesso, “in un “fabbricazione-digitale” è un ironico rovesciamento, lo spazio fisico ossimoro, che si trova nella stessa è diventato l’ultima frontiera della zona linguistica di termini come manipolazione digitale”. Come per gli “renderizzazione-atomica”, o per oggetti nati da bisogni individuali di guardare all’ambito industriale come Vladimir Archpov così questi artisti “personalizzazione di massa”, mentre presentano oggetti che ” sono difficili in architettura si parla di “architetture da classificare, perchè non esiste nulla liquide”. L’ossimoro porta all’ibrido, di simile “. che non è più una categoria di pensiero rivolta verso il mondo naturale: oggi si sta ibridando la realtà degli atomi, che sta entrando in contatto con questa sovrastruttura, pelle, interfaccia, che è il digitale. L’utilizzo di ossimori è significativo di una situazione conflittuale, dove due realtà ontologicamente differenti vengono in contatto, generando un ibrido non definibile secondo le categorie linguistiche della . precedente epoca.

Di recente è stato detto che “il cyber- La nostra realtà digitale si sta spazio sta uscendo da se stesso” e che evolvendo verso un paradigma “il virtuale sta diventando reale“. polisensoriale, dove le dita digitano L’innovazione tecnologica è sempre meno e toccano, manipolano incessante e sembra che dopo essersi sempre di più i bits: come ricorda focalizzata sull’immateriale, il digitale Bruce Sterling nel suo libro “La forma si stia integrando sempre di più nella del futuro”, l’ultimo passo per una vera nostra realtà, è un dato di fatto. Il rivoluzione nella progettazione vettore dell’innovazione sta tornando digitale sarà possibile nel momento in

92 cui le interfacce stesse da digitali non ha affatto portato un processo di diventeranno immersive, quando smaterializzazione della realtà e dei invece che manipolare un modello rapporti sociali, pur avendo ipotizzato CAD, potrò, attraverso sistemi che nel futuro ognuno se ne stesse completamente differenti, lavorare tranquillamente a casa sua dove direttamente con le mani sul modello poteva essere in contatto con il dell’oggetto. Lungo questa linea di mondo. Invece abbiamo solo iniziato a ricerca di nuove interfacce per la spostarci di più, ci hanno detto che la manipolazione di dati digitali, si situa il carta sarebbe sparita a favore dello progetto Reactable realizzato da un schermo digitale e invece grazie a team (“interactive sonic systems internet stiamo stampando su team”) diretto da Sergi Jordà presso cellulosa ancora di più: la tecnologia l’Università Pompeu Fabra di digitale non è sostitutiva ma Barcellona; è questo uno strumento integrativa, non è competitiva quanto musicale elettronico “collaborativo” parassitaria. Inoltre vi sono criticità che consente a più esecutori di materiali anche per quanto riguarda il muovere e ruotare oggetti solidi su un diritto d’autore, dove in un regime di tavolo luminoso interattivo. E il suo creazione e scambio di modelli di punto di forza risiede oggetti fisici può risultare ancora più nell’immediatezza e fisicità interessante la proposta pragmatica di dell’interfaccia, come direbbe Donald Dmytri Kleiner, che nell’articolo Norman è uno strumento con “Copyfarleft and Copyjustright“, affordance visive e precepibili chiare, alternativamente ai regimi copyright e dove “si sa esplicitamente dove copyleft, propone il diritto copyfarleft, andare”. dove i prodotti possono essere utilizzati anche a fini commerciali solo da quanti non si avvalgono di lavoro salariato, come altri lavoratori e piccole cooperative.

Accanto a questa miniuturizzazione e personalizzazione degli strumenti per la fabbricazione digitale, Bruce Sterling prospetta un’ulteriore evoluzione di ciò che oggi chiamiamo web 2.0. Fenomeni come il social- . networking e la Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) stanno dando Criticità materiali, perchè il digitale vita a una nuova internet delle cose,

93 che qualcuno ha già battezzato come Da un lato i designer che possono web 3.0. Una visione che parla di una uploadare sulla piattaforma i loro cambiamento epocale del design: dal progetti e dall’altro i clienti che gingillo tecnologico all’oggetto-SPIME sfogliano il catalogo dell’azienda (neologismo di Sterling che unisce decidono quale prodotto comprare, SPACE + TIME) e parallelamente dal manufacturing on demand, quel destinatario-utente all’intermediario singolo prodotto verrà realizzato dai (wrangler): l’oggetto partecipato e fornitori di Ponoko che spedirà quindi l’oggetto che partecipa. Cioè i l’oggetto al proprietario. blogjects, gli spime, gli arphids, i nomi degli oggetti del presente e del prossimo futuro. Questo nuovo tipo di manifattura del XXI secolo riguarda quindi, da un lato un’innovazione negli strumenti, grazie alla personalizzazione delle stampanti 3D, e dall’altro un’innovazione nel processo. Al di là del fisiologico processo di potenziamento e miniaturizzazione delle tecnologie, la . personalizzazione nella fabbricazione digitale trova i suoi stimoli maggiori Archipov, prosegue nel suo libro nella concezione della Rete come dicendo “quasi sempre, il mio piattaforma piuttosto che semplice interesse per un oggetto, faceva canale comunicativo. nascere nell’autore il desiderio spontaneo di raccontarmi perchè e Ponoko, azienda neozelandese, ha come lo aveva realizzato”: l’autore del applicato le dinamiche dei network libro ha quindi raccolto la “storia” di sociali al product design. Questa ognuno di questi oggetti, e l’ha azienda nasce dall’idea di David ten riportata fedelmente sotto alla foto di Have che ispirandosi agli spime object ogni oggetto, dandogli un’ulteriore di Bruce Sterling, ha creato una valenza descrittiva. Con gli spime o i piattaforma per la promozione, blogject, ogni oggetto potrà renderci produzione e distribuzione di prodotti partecipi della sua storia e delle sue di design. Ponoko non sono dei analisi in prima “persona”. Progressiva designer e neanche dei fabbricatori, estensione e integrazione degli quanto degli intermediari, posti tra il ambiti, l’ibrido, l’ossimoro come designer e il cliente, che si assicurano paradigma di questa nostra realtà che tutto il processo vada a buon fine.

94 convergente, su tutti i fronti: prodotti al suo interno, analizzare le convergono vita, materia, mie preferenze culinarie e riportarmi fabbricazione, digitale. Forse, come quotidianamente analisi riguardo alla per la scrittura, la tecnologia digitale mia situazione dietetica, quell’oggetto pervaderà la nostra realtà proprio in smette di essere uno scatolone quanto tecnologia inerentemente, elettrico freddo, per diventare un non competitiva con le altre piccolo attore specializzato della mia tecnologie, ma vita sociale. cooperativa/parassitaria. Questo paradigma sta coinvolgendo tutti gli Ma nel momento in cui dialogo con un ambiti della nostra realtà, e per frigorifero, o mi affido a un sistema di vederlo basta notare come individui guida sopportato dal computer, dove con obiettivi e professioni differenti finisce la mia abilità e dove inizia come un ingegnere elettronico, un quella della macchina artista e una filosofa-biologa, computazionale? In realtà forse la utilizzando differenti terminologie e questione è mal posta, e la risolve ambiti di studio, presentino idee Donald Norman che non considera più complementari, accomunate le due realtà come separate, uomo- dall’assunto della progressiva macchina, ma come sistema integrazione di ambiti simbiotico: automobile+uomo= precendentemente separati, sistema per lo spostamento, dove, intelligenza naturale/artificiale, vita riprendendo le teorie del cervello naturale/artificiale: è così che “triuno” di Paul McLean, diviso in nascono memi come blogject, processo viscerale, riflessivo e intelligenza diffusa e biofatti. comportamentale, l’automobile assolve al primo, l’uomo al secondo e Julian Bleeckeer, autore del Manifesto sinergicamente stabiliscono quello for Networked Objects, ha coniato un comportamentale. nuovo termine per definire questa nuova tipologia di oggetti, chiamandoli blogject, oggetti che bloggano, mettendo in evidenza come anche gli oggetti “debbano essere considerati nel momento in cui assumono il ruolo di rilevanti attori sociali e riconfigurano il nostro sistema di vivere e di relazionarci con lo spazio”: dal momento in cui il mio frigorifero è in grado di rilevare i

95 . biologica è molto più lenta di quella tecnologica, la carne non può essere I confini si infrangono tra tutti gli riconfigurata alla velocità di un ambiti, le categorie collassano, gli software, ripensata alla velocità del ibridi e gli ossimori trionfano. Luigi linguaggio” Anche Matteo Pasquinelli Pagliarini, artista, psicologo e esperto analizzando i processi di scambio di di robotica postula “una nuova energia tra macchine e uomini caratterizzazione dell’idea di mente dichiara che ” qualcosa di nuovo che abbandoni definitivamente il accade quando i network digitali pregiudizio per cui l’intelligenza entrano nella biosfera.[...]Le macchine costruttiva – e, simmetricamente, digitali sono una chiara biforcazione distruttiva – sia una prerogativa unica del phylum macchinico: i domini ed esclusiva dell’uomo, o più in semiotico e biologico rappresentano generale del biologico, riconoscendo due strati differenti. L’energia dei agli artefatti la capacità di creare, di flussi semiotici non è l’energia dei esprimere una reale forza flussi materiali e economici. I due collaborativa e competitiva e, strati interagiscono ma non in modo comunque sia, di produrre ideazioni simmetrico e speculare come ed ispirazioni che contribuiscono al vorrebbe una diffusa ideologia del patrimonio di idee che andranno a far digitale. “ parte del nostro mondo e delle nostre future esistenze “: l’intelligenza diffusa varca i confini della vita per appropriarsi dell’inanimato.

Cosa è l’intelligenza? Dove inizia e finisce la vita naturale e quella artificiale? Ha senso distinguirle in questo continuum percettivo? Come si riconfigura l’intelligenza in una realtà dove gli oggetti grazie alle loro proprietà digitali iniziano a pensare e . dialogare con noi? Come dice Franco Torriani “esaurito il rapporto frontale Anche la dottoressa Nicole Karafyllis umani/macchine, la loro integrazione vede una biforcazione nel phylum produce “nuovi sintomi di macchinico, che porta ad una intelligenza”, ma rimane il problema di triforcazione nella una asimettria tra il mondo naturale e consuetadistinzione della realtà tra quello artificiale: l’evoluzione natura e tecnologia, ponendo tra loro

96 il concetto di Biofatti: entità fisiche . costruite biologicamente, il terzo invisibile tra natura e tecologia. Una Nella teoria della tettonica a zolle realtà che comunque non è tripartita l’orogenesi indica i processi coinvolti settorialmente quanto piuttosto nella formazione dei rilievi, dove costituita da “un ampio spettro fra masse rocciose distinte si fondono due poli: le entità viventi naturali e gli creando una nuova massa rocciosa; artefatti tecnici “. Luois Bec, bio- così il digitale è in una fase di artista francese, ha intrapreso una incontro/scontro con la realtà ricerca che vuole andare oltre una atomica, da cui sta emergendo una “biologia parrocchiale” come nuova forma di realtà integrata. “...termine impiegato dai ricercatori di vita artificiale per indicare i limiti dello studio delle forme viventi sulla www.toshare.it Terra…“, per creare cioè una biologia parallela

97 Christina Ray: Open Source Territories

Monica Ponzini

hammering of commercials and messages from the powers that be. In this way, the same building can host layers of graffiti on one side and the sterile sign of a restaurant on the other, a street sign can hide a peace message, on the walls there are indications for the “sailors” and window displays include affectionate homages to New York. All this in an

Christina Ray lives in Brooklyn, New area of just a few blocks…These single York. She’s an artist and a curator interventions become a collective and focusing her efforts on coordinated action during the Conflux psychogeography, the creative Festival, welcoming every kind of investigation of physical and artistic expression which may psychological spaces inside the cities, contribute to the active exploration of she founded Glowlab, an initiative urban spaces – from maps to digital which produces art linked to the technology. fruition and interpretation of urban We interviewed Christina inside spaces, as well as the Conflux Festival. Glowlab’s operative space – a mixture A walk with her turns into a parallel of house, studio and gallery – in journey to discover the city which lays occasion of the opening of a personal before our eyes every single day, but exhibition by Steve Lambert, a to which we never really pay multimedia artist from San Francisco attention. A city artists are free to use now living in Brooklyn. Steve is the and transform, before offering it back founder of Anti-Advertising Agency, – for free and without making any co-founder of Budget Gallery and money on it. Through their collaborator of Eyebeam’s Openlab, a intervention, the environment which cultural centre dedicated to digital surrounds us becomes something arts. His works range from familiar and unusual at the same time, performance to videos, from public an active response to the visual art to Net art, also including more

98 traditional media such as drawings Christina Ray: Psychogeography and prints. In his latest project, started in the late 1950s among commissioned by the San Francisco groups of intellectuals and writers. It Art Commission and produced in didn’t really start out as an art collaboration with another artist, movement, but involved looking at Packard Jennings, private citizens as the city, looking at how we explore it, well as well-known personalities have what we enjoy about it, what we don’t told the two artists how they pictured enjoy about it, what we might want to San Francisco if all barriers, change, but also really valuing the constrictions and rules (from the laws unique moments that you find in of physics to those of politics or cities that involve chance and economics) were to be abolished. The randomness, accidents, those kind of artists then produced drawings and things, and really becoming more poster of this ideal San Francisco – aware of cities and how we live in from cableway-streetcars to floating them. Since the late 1950s when it buildings – and presented them to the started, there have been many things citizens. An example of how art can that have followed that are falling in a contribute in changing the urban similar category. Artists like Vito landscape in a psychogeographic Acconci, Sophie Calle, other sense… performance artists have used public space to do experimental artwork and performance projects. Today there are artists that are using similar techniques, a lot of time we have artists using more technology involved in their project – a sort of a new development- , but still the idea is to look at cities – what do they mean, how do we want them to be and how do we fix the things that we perceive as problematic in cities . . Monica Ponzini: New York and other Monica Ponzini: Christina, your main cities around the world: can you talk expertise is psychogeography and its about their differences, from a relation to contemporary arts: can you psychogeographical point of view? explain this term and its applications to our cities? Christina Ray: I was recently in Rome and one thing that struck me there

99 was the scale of the city – that was my first trip and I found myself just . looking at things at a more “eye level”. Monica Ponzini: What influence have Even a simple thing like “where do new technologies over your eyes go when you’re looking psychogeography and its applications around” was more of a simple scale, to art? fewer advertisements – we have lots of signage and billboard all over our Christina Ray: I run an event called the cities in the US I also have lived in Conflux Festival, which is a 4-day Japan , and there it’s even more event, that takes place every year in pronounced the amount of signage New York , and we have a lot of and visual clutter and advertising that projects that deal with you have But some artists like to use psychogeography in new ways. that as a jumping off point for their People experimenting and asking work. A lot of artist would respond to what psychogeography really means that There are these differences in today, and a lot of these artists are every city, sometimes is a question of using new tools. We have people density – what is the density of the doing podcast and mobile video, visual environment, what you’re projecting video, but also using video seeing around you, density of people as a tool of exploring, we have I live in Brooklyn for example and it’s cellphone applications – lots of much less crowded than just a quick different projects that are taking the trip across the river to Manhattan . I tools of technology and applying think all these things can serve as them to experimental artwork on the starting points for looking at creating streets. new artwork, and we have a lot of artists that do that, looking at the Monica Ponzini: Glowlab and the patterns of traffic, people, signage, Conflux Festival are the two main those kind of things to really get their projects that you developed. Can you ideas going for how to make artwork. talk about them?

Christina Ray: Glowlab is the project that I started about 5 years ago, really to act as an umbrella for other projects. It contains a lot of smaller projects, mostly collaborative work that I do with other artists. It involves art projects, but also bigger events like exhibitions and curated events

100 that happened on the streets Those Christina Ray: We have an exhibition turned into a Festival, basically. In and an art fair coming up, both in 2003 with some other artists and March. The first is an exhibition of friends we asked some people, Glowlab artists, at the Leo Kesting through online channels: “would you Gallery in Manhattan, and opens on like to come to New York and have a March 20th . The following week weekend where we all can make this we’re doing an art fair that I help work together, and see what produce – it’s called the Fountain Art happens?” They said yes and we had Fair and it coincides with the Armory our first event on the Lower East Side show. It includes mostly Brooklyn- of New York in 2003, where we had based galleries, it’s more artist- about 30 or 40 artists come and do oriented, more like a group show than these kind of explorations throughout an art fair, and we have a lot of the weekend, and since then, that’s performances and special events. We grown and that’s actually now my then have other events, but our bigger biggest project. Glowlab still does event is the Conflux Festival in exhibitions and we’re working with a September, throughout New York lot of artists that have come out from City. the Conflux Festival. So artists who have performance projects may also Monica Ponzini: Our concept of make drawings or paintings and we’re “space” has dramatically changed in kind of keeping it all together in a way recent years – we live not only in a that includes both street-based works physical space, but also in a virtual but also work that can go in galleries one. How do virtual space (and the as well. Internet) affects our way of living and interpreting the space that surrounds us?

Christina Ray: Just from the point of view of the artwork that has been produced these days, the only reason that the Conflux Festival was able to start, was because the people who came to it, found out what everybody else was doing through mailing lists, forums – through the Internet

. basically. I knew artists in the Netherland and in London and in Monica Ponzini: Your next projects? other countries, that I thought were

101 doing very interesting work, we differences between the US and weren’t really connected in physical Europe or Asia ? space, but we were online. So it was through these online media that we Christina Ray: I think I can speak were able to say: “Hey, let’s get mostly for what I see happening at together in real space!”. It’s a good the Conflux Festival, because that’s a bridge and it helps bring the people time when people are coming together. Also, there are sort of similar together. I found that the atmosphere concepts – I think a lot of artists that is very collaborative and open and we are using the streets are using them have artists that are really interested as an open platform, in a sense – this in sharing – sharing their techniques, is a place where you can experiment, sharing their projects, but also they explore, try new things, make ask each other for help, and it’s a very changes, just as people are doing with open environment when we actually net art or other types of online media. get together. And I think that goes Digital media are very flexible and along with people interested in using allow you to get your work out open source tools for digital projects – through different channels, where the there’s a lot of sharing going on, there general public can see it. is sort of a vibe at Conflux , it’s not really so much about the individual artist, it’s really about “What’s the best way to communicate with the community and with the people in the city”. So it’s often the case that you need more people to make those things happen, just as if you’re building a new software and you need the help of a developer community – I think there’s that open kind of sharing sensibility . .

Monica Ponzini: As you said, open fruition of public spaces can be http://glowlab.com compared to open source technologies: in your opinion, what’s http://confluxfestival.org the situation of these two aspects www.stategrezzi.com/stategrezzi_2. nowadays? Do you see any 0/video/glowlab_2008.mov

102 103 Link index

Geert Lovink: Free Cooperations In P2p Networks http://www.nettime.org/ http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex/ http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/ http://www.hva.nl/lectoraten/documenten/ol09-050224-lovink.pdf http://www.oekonux.org/

Carlo Zanni: Information Is The New Color http://www.zanni.org http://www.fromthesunsetterrace.com/ http://www.thepossibleties.com/

Trok!: Free Music, In Free Spaces http://www.trok.it/ http://torchiera.noblogs.org/ http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=torchiera&w=72555308%40N00

Who Is Afraid Of Janez JanŠa? http://www.aksioma.org/sec http://www.reakt.org/triglav/index.html http://www.reakt.org http://www.aksioma.org/sec/ http://www.aksioma.org/ http://www.reakt.org/

104 Generator X 2.0, Objects That Don’t Exist (yet) http://www.generatorx.no/

An Heideggerian Lecture Of Software Culture Ken Jacobs: The Demiurgo Of The Moving Image http://www.sonicacts.com http://www.starspangledtodeath.com/%20 http://www.tzadik.com/%20 http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Jacobs/jacobs-con0.html

Taylor Deupree: The Beauty Of Minimalism http://www.12k.com/

Sonic Acts Xii: A Cinematic Report http://www.sonicacts.com

Dafne Boggeri: Zigzagging Between Images And Sound http://www.myspace.com/rhythmkingahf http://www.kitty-yo.net/wp/artists/rhythm-king-and-her-friends http://www.myspace.com/rhythmkingahf

The Darwinian Composer http://www.saul.unisi.it/disco/persona.php?id=22 http://www.linkedin.com/in/donatellobianco http://www.funkstardeluxe.com/ http://www.blob.rai.it/ http://www.youtube.com/ http://www.andreagabriele.it/

105 http://faculty.insead.edu/parker/resume/personal.htm http://www.repubblica.it/2008/02/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/macchina-l ibri/macchina-libri/macchina-libri.html

The Hidden Road To The City Of The Future http://www.sciencegarden.de/

Aether Architecture: Real Spaces, Virtual Spaces http://www.aether.hu/induction-house-distributed-projection-structure http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html http://www.aether.hu/avenue-of-cars http://www.aether.hu/

The Eye Of Women Babilonia Teatri, Society Of Spectacle

HTTP://www.babiloniateatri.it

Share Festival 2008: Manufacturing http://www.toshare.it

Christina Ray: Open Source Territories http://glowlab.com http://confluxfestival.org http://www.stategrezzi.com/stategrezzi_2.0/video/glowlab_2008.mov

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