new updates at Åke Sjöberg´s blogg

Field: Open source digital art environment……

The technical frontier of digital art is no longer what computers can do, but how we get them to do it.

Field is a development environment for experimental code and digital art in the broadest of possible senses. While there are a great many development environments and digital art tools out there today, this one has been constructed with two key principles in mind:

• Embrace and extend — rather than make a personal, private and pristine code utopia, Field tries to bridge to as many libraries, programming languages, and ways of doing things as possible. The world doesn’t necessarily need another programming language or serial port library, nor do we have to pick and choose between data-flow systems, graphical user interfaces or purely textual programming — we can have it all in the right environment and we can both leverage the work of others and take control of our own tools and methods.

• Live code makes anything possible — Field tries to replace as many “features” with editable code as it can. Its programming language of choice is Python — a world class, highly respected and incredibly flexible language. As such, Field is intensely customizable, with the glue between interface objects and data modifiable inside Field itself. Field takes seriously the idea that its user — you — are a programmer / artist doing serious work and that you should be able to reconfigure your tools to suit your domain and style as closely as possible.

http://openendedgroup.com/field/wiki/OverviewBanners2

/Mattias

What is Art?

See Lars Vikks’ answer to the question in five parts on Youtube:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sUE68stj6g
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3ZjpDwY8BQ
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agn9PngjmI8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Xw0alXkU0
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HgZSFoNENo

NB: Recommended for discursive purposes! What do YOU think?

Farhad Kalantary „Trails of Water Behind an Passing Boat“ at Stiftfelsen 3.17 gallery //// Review

Three works are shown in the Exhibition „Trails of Water behind a Passing Boat“ by the Azerbaijani Iranian-American artist Farhad Kalantary, who is based in Oslo.

The classical description which fits the Presentation of the works is video installation. Even if it is perhaps intended to experience the three parts as a kind of oneness, the piece “Migrations”gets out of the line. But to understand this I have to introduce the other two works, which are called “Massive Waves of Independence” and “The Day of Removal”. The latter is the first work the visitor of the exhibition gets to see. It´s a LCD-monitor laid on the ground of the staircase of the gallery. The screen shows scenes of workers on an building site from the bird´s eye view. The video is edited in a kind of cut-up technique. Loops of short movements are often repeated, reversed, slowed down or speeded up. Thereby the video gets a rhythmical character which is supported by the sound which is also cutted up. By using this technique the video reminds a bit of a music video clip. This held me off to search for a deeper sense in the video and I stopped at the point of consuming a rhythmical pattern arrangement. As that it worked quite well, for example in the seconds where a worker digging with a spate enters a kind of dialog with a dredger. The most confusing part of the video was the digitally created picture frame in the style of the 19^th century or older, which framed the video. On this virtual frame also the title of the work is written and could be read by the visitor.

This Frame is one of a lot of things the second work, with the name “Massive Waves of Independence”, has formally in common with the first one. The difference is that the title of this piece is unreadable because of the bad resolution of the video. I don´t think that this is a problem what was impossible to solve. It´s a pity that this wasn´t done. The screen is also laid down on the floor, which underlined the bird´s eye view, which is used in this videowork too. The video works with smoother movements which are edited more floating compared to “The Day of Removal” . A cutout of a kind of pavement or pedestrian zone is shown. Groups of people are entering and leaving the picture all the time. They are moving forward but often they are pushed back by reversing the video picture. The cutout the camera makes is too small to get a feeling of great masses of people but it´s possible to abstract group building and splitting. It´s an often seen picture used when it get´s to deal with the individual and the crowd. Added with the title(if you are able to decipher it) and the more or less to the picture synchronized sound of natural waves in the water coming out of some speakers, the work becomes just an illustration. An illustration seen many times before.

Now we are at the third work. As announced in the beginning, it also deals with movements and yes it also uses the bird´s eye view but there are differences. Just the size of room, the four projections claim on the wall, makes this video installation dominating the exhibition mere physical. Contrary to the former two works the four video pictures are projected on the wall, although of the use of the perspective from above. The video picture shows vehicles of different kinds, moving from right to left. So the vehicle comes into the picture on the right side of the right projection passes the two projections in the middle and leaves through the left side of the left projection. This makes the four single projections becoming one picture, like a great screen in the cinema just interrupted by three slender columns standing in front of the screen. The vehicles are changing. Sometimes they are cars on a road and sometimes ships on the sea but the movement and direction seems to be always the same. These movements blown up in these huge projections are attracting the eye quite well and by watching a bit something seems curious an you are trying to get behind the technical way this all is realized. The problem is that you will get behind this very fast. And when you got it the work is abruptly quite uninteresting. Not because it would not be made well in an aesthetic and formal way but because of the fact that the whole work is based on a technical effect. So after first being impressed and then getting the technical secret of the work, it has nothing important to say.

At the end there are three videoworks dealing with movement, speed and rhythm, optically as well as acoustically. But for me they don´t become more than researches in abstract movements and the concrete scenes and motives, like workers, crowds,vehicles and the streets, places and seas, stay without a voice in these works. And this is a pity because if you read the handout, which gives you some information about the artist, his background and the background of the shown works it is clear that he has something to say. But the works have to speak not the handouts.

The exhibition is opened till 27. 02. 2009. So visit it in Stiftfelsn 3.14 gallery in Bergen to get your own impression.

Acoustics of art museums

some keywords:

John Kannenberg

Art museums

Acoustics

And a link:

http://www.stasisfield.com/releases/year06/sf-6001.html

 

 

/mattias

Max/MSP/Jitter workshop in Oslo

Interested?

The Workshop will be held by Haraldur Karlsson
Monday 23 February – Friday 27th February 2009

At Atelier Nord, Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo (Kunstnernes Hus)

Introduction to Max/MSP/Jitter
An interactive graphical programming environment for music, audio, and media.

Description
Max/MSP/Jitter is three things:
Max, a graphical programming environment that provides user interface, timing, communications, and MIDI support MSP, for real-time audio synthesis and DSP
Jitter, for video and matrix data processing.

The course provides insight into various possibilities with Max/MSP/Jitter.
We will look into examples on how it is been used in art, -  and find out how it is done. We will also look at some fundamental programing objects, – and  make our own patches. The goal is to become more familiar with the Max/MSP/Jitter programing environment.

Practical information
Workshop hours: 11:00 – 15:00 every day
Workshop fee: 500 NOK
What to bring: Your own computer
Workshop language: English
Deadline for signing up: Thursday 19th February

If you are interested in participating, please send a short CV and motivation to office@anart.no

Further information;
http://cycling74.com/
http://cycling74.com/section/interviews

Alternative;
http://puredata.info/

Instructor Haraldur Karlsson
http://www.haraldur.org/
http://halli.lhi.is/AutoIndex1/

Report from PNEK’s seminar on HD video

For those of you who intend to work in HD video format, this report from the PNEK seminar on HD video art is a resource not to be missed.

http://www.pnek.org/projects/referat-fra-hd-seminar

BA3 model

Here’s some photos of BA exhibition space model taking form.

Thank you, Marcus

Thank you Marcus, for contributing these photos to my antenna aesthetics collection. Lovely!

Any other examples of towers, needles, camouflaged, discreet, parabola senders and receivers are received with gratefulness.

Group Meeting

Date: Tuesday 10th February
Place: Galleri 3,14
Time: 11.00

- and we’ll take a look at Farhad Kalantary’s ”Trails of Water Behind a Passing Boat” together.

Then we’ll go to Karen’s office to discuss the exhibition, and have a short round-up session.

If you are attending a workshop or seminar you are excused