View Re View (report 13): Tuesday 15/07/08. London N5
Report 12: Saturday 12/07/08. Eyebeam
“The cult of art presupposes a revalorization of the abilities attached to the very idea of work. However, this idea is less the discovery of the essence of human activity than a recomposition of the landscape of the visible, a recomposition of the relationship between doing, making, being, seeing, and saying”. Jacques Rancière, 2006
From 4pm people gather at the entrance of Eyebeam. The hot air of another summer day here in New York is left outside. Not only the heat. Darkened space you enter. Screens, there are several, are enlightened by images. moving. flattened out. Representational screen — flat screen/image flicker nervously. The press review of Double Take, the exhibition that presents the outcome of the workshop from the past two weeks, attracts - followed by the private view at 6pm.
Just arrived from an interview I initiated for 2pm this afternoon. Time schedules. to be kept. tight. Tomorrow, Sunday, on my way back to London. Later.
Curiously I make my way through the installations, mainly large screen works. besides a wind chime project (small devices) and a sound installation (a number of various devices, apparata) arranged to trigger noise through tactile/manual intervention by the audience. 1. Blending myself into the outline of an actor/figure in Justin Downs’ screen based work Watch What You Are, I blend myself into a cartoon animation (not sure about the exact title of the film). Not able to match the shape though precisely enough in order for the movie to proceed. The film came to a halt by my inability to re-create a similar shape as the figure, character, actor. There is a degree of difficulty, as in a game. I have probably chosen a high degree of difficulty. Justin plays another sequence, this time a Kung Fufilm. I manage. Film proceeds.
Post-it notes are the key things to interact with Tine Papendick’s figures in Digital Puppetry. Large screen. Camera projects your image by entering the ‘frame’. Drawn object floats at the top of the screen/canvas. The post-it notes connect to the objects: tie, skull, beard, and several more. Performance allows to mix up with a ‘drawn reality’. Interesting to watch participants performing.
Passing with short interventions: Dinner Party by Hye Yeon Nam whose table/meal arrangement simulate - or better fake (for the sake of the theme of interacivos? in New York) - relation with the other, social relations initiated by certain gatherings. for example sharing meals. Digitallyfit by Andrew Mahon: watch the link and imagine what you can become.
Forgetting. { }
I am writing from London.
already.
three days after Double Take has opened.
But next: time tunnel project Through Time Tunnel by Miseong Lee. Fascinating to see ‘duration’ framed, in a way. to perform layers of time to be compressed in a single screen-image. Soundmetal by Dan Wilcox has the potential to re-enact early performative work - I think. Reminds me of experimental noise stuff in the 1960ies. And, although without using screen (maybe comes later), could relate to Nam June Paik + Charlotte Moorman’s subversion of instruments. Although Dan’s project rationale different. memories you carry. earlier work in your mind that is triggered by work done HERE. I return -in my mind- to John Cage also. silence. minutes. Unrealityvrc by Alex Kurina uses tactics of cut, paste, draw, tactically intervene to create TV collages. Am enjoying the gap between the screen on which you draw and the projected image that is distant to you. There is a certain time delay involved and a change in scale that induces a change in the nature of the screen as well. else. I Believe In… by Ai-Chen Lin projects an animation in public space. or semi-public space. Using your belief in moments that are unpredicatable, unforeseen. perhaps stimulated by what? is there a trick beforehand, or magic? am dreaming. On my way to I believe In… installed at the entrance of Eyebeam I passed Artemis Papageorgiou’s Wii/nd Chime. The sound and noise created follows me physically and territorially. mentally I am already at the sea.
Sunday mornign, before travelling. the two hours in Red Hook will remain in my memories. lying on the pier at the sea. the fishermen. jelly fish. not much else. air is hot and windy. still. early. morn.i.n.g.. . JFK.
Animation Of Space
In Anticipation Of
Dawn. The day/evening before the opening night of interactivos?.
The state of Eyebeam: a more or less well functioning system among every ‘worker’ here; unexpected occurrences; hasty meals; speed and occasional slowness; kilometers of leads dis-ordered, arranged and re-arranged; messages send over to collaborators. rare phone calls; too absorbed in activities; how to catch moments of anticipation. expectation. potential failure if there is any. question of momentum.
selected films including aspects of this state of affairs:
A Night at the Opera (1935) Marx Brothers
Bananas (1971) Woody Allen & Mickey Rose
Dreams (1990) Akira Kurosawa
Class Relations (1984) Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet
Turbu
Report 11: Thursday 10/07/08. Eyebeam
Summer School evening with Beryl Graham on interaction. Although the workshop-deadline affects participant’s free time people gather in the Eyebeam education lab for a talk and discussion.
Works Beryl mentions - notes taken: project “Learning to love you more”; 2 projects from Serious Games: Char Davies “Osmosis”; Ritsuko Taho “Zeromophosis: Swans & Pigeons”; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer “Pulse Room”; 1977 Cornock and Edmonds and their distinction between Static and Dynamic Art Systems; La Fiambrera (use public political action in relation to gentrification; David Rokeby (…. we know…..); Ashok Sukumaran “Glow Positioning System” (2005); and :::::::: on Robert Morris’ Retrospective at the Tate in 1971, where the ‘interactive’, participatory show was taken down after 5 days due to health and security risks. It was replaced by a series of static minimal objects that were for ‘viewing only’.
The discussion is lively. hot topics are: the text in relation to interactive art; modes of generating the impulse to interact; do instructions work? can strategies used in games be applied to interactive artworks in a traditional gallery setting? Friedrich thinks that might be a workable option. Sarah Cook talks about the ’stable form’ of interactive work, which would be a point of measurement to work with.
There is the spatial problematic of for example crowded and heterogeneous exhibitions, that include both interactive and non-interactive art. the potential confusion between the artwork and the documentation video of the show, or the info ABOUT the work (ref. exhibition 010101 @ SfMOMA). There is also the time of the artwork (duration) and the time of the audience. And there are works that play precisely with the limits of interaction (jodi did a lot of that stuff a number of years ago). Think about early video works of the 60ies and 70ies where the viewer was provoked precisely through an exploitation of the work’s duration. artists played with creating boredom, creating work that became unbearable to watch - how does the audience enter such piece, access it? experience it full-length? Andy Warhol’s “Sleep” (1963) . - - - — - And then flicker works that irritate the viewer on a sensual level, making it impossible to continue looking at the screen. In my research on digital animation i also explored Thomson & Craighead’s piece “Trigger Happy”, an interactive text work where the user is invited to delete a quote by Michel Foucault on ‘the author’.. . And the hot topic of health and safety issues that occur with interactive work. . some laughter.
Flat Time Still
Flat Time Continues
Eyebeam afternoon (early mid late) or evening (early late). Loosing track of the time. Most of the time dark outside when I leave THE PLACE. The Kitchen visit two days ago -forgot. Returning to now. The exhibition title ‘The Future as Disruption’ takes on board issues of politics, ecologies, today’s threatened environment. The claim of relating to science fiction, too me, seems weak. Fictional elements are apparent but the -scapes (landscapes, paint-scapes, video-scapes) created remain outside, external to science as such. think. 
Uhura from Star Trek again? again . — . Around two corners I re-enter the interactivos? workshop. a fictional element here seems to be contained perhaps in a more interesting way, The imaginary dimension of stories emerge in a complex convergence of ‘everyday science’, technologies, thoughts and a certain visualisation without focusing on visualisation: a turning away from the visual. 
The Event is another dimension or aspect. somehow contained in the mode of production that takes place during the two weeks of the workshop. need to talk. discuss. approach the theme of event again more accurately.
Short Hommage to British artist John Latham and Flat Time. (borrowing from http://www.theleastevent.com/ . .) - The home and studio of Latham was named Flat Time Ho. It was a site of creative activities and understood as a living sculpture. Flat Time Theory. no thinking space HERE to describe the networked practices Latham was carrying out throughout his life. lack of time. concentration. diary incompleteness and fear of theoretical stuff that takes over fluidity of accidental thoughts - and physical movement. diary - blog. writing notes. document. for whom, no one. again the e-flux event I mentioned earlier: Martha Rosler’s notion of a PHANTOM AUDIENCE. which is always there I suppose, but to what degree. can it be excluded, adn to what degree???
John Latham’s thinking around the event was linked to a ‘flattening’ of time/space structures that constitute the world. What substitutes ‘the spatial connected with objects’, are ‘events in time’, where what happens is solely related to an occurrence; when, Latham says, ’something occurs’. A plate is an event and a thought is an event. A lead is an event as well as the power stream that temporarily runs through it. This erasure of distinction between the abstract and the concrete (in simple terms) might be interesting in relation to Bergson’s concept of the image and virtual/actual dynamics. What realises itself is an image that virtually becomes something else, whenever it is actualised. becoming. . What would this mean in relation to open source and process-based structures?
Flat Time.
flat time (after John Latham). borrowing his term. [more text to follow http://www.ligatus.org.uk/fth/
Pics From July 4th
thanks newcastle! and for the shopping / cooking / dodgeball crew. set is here
