Next week, I’ll present the IDP at Scopitone in Nantes. Check out the very good program of this festival. It will be fun. And I’m already happy to hear (and see!) Dannys very impressive TVestroy again and to meet some friends like Alain Thibault.
TVestroy of Thomas Ouellet Fredericks and Danny Perreault
Currently, I’m presenting the WIA < > WIA project at Ars Electronica. It is a custom tailored media art installation for Ars Electronica’s 80+1 exhibition, which was a bit too good to be true. Soon, I’ll publish a documentary about the project. But for the moment, here are some photos:
The presentation setup in the Brucknerhaus foyer
The toilet in the 80+1 basecamp
Next week, I’ll present my latest project at the Ars Electronica. It is the exhibition of a toilet, that I didn’t even build myself. Another clou of the project is, that I entered the exhibition under an invented name.
While the toilet is exhibited in the 80+1 basecamp at the Hauptplatz, I’ll also show a presentation of the project’s backgrounds at the Brucknerhaus. In two talks at the basecamp I’ll speak about the project and discuss it with the audience.
Find out more about the project here: www.wiawia.org
This work was commissioned by the Ars Electronica.
Ok, I’m a bit late with this post. The book, I’m writing about, was released already more than a month ago. But this shows that the internet is not always fast, because people which put stuff in the internet are not always fast. And I like that.
However, Dominik Landwehr has published this very nice diy electronics book, which features simple electronic artworks by many different artists. And I received a copy, because there’s also an instruction for my 1PXDIGICAM in it. It is really a nice book. Very enjoyable. But I have to say that I liked the essays at the beginning of the book most. I’ll copy the one of Nicolas Collins from Chicago, as I can 100% agree to what he writes:
Socioligist Richard Sennet observed that after computers became ubiquitous in the 1980s “we tend to forget the importance of physical senses.” A lot of people get lost in the world of computer simulation. But you can’t simulate everything: there’s a world before and beyond simulation, and that material world is now making a comeback. A new wave of hackers moves with grace from hardware to software [sic], from soldering to sawing, from adaptive re-use to spontaneaous creation, from happenstance to intent, from idiocy to genius – but their unifying trait is the desire to disrupt technology’s seemingly perfect inviolability, to master the material world by penetrating it.
You can order the book directly at the publisher or at amazon
Last week, I gave a workshop at the Art School Kassel, where the goal was to build mobile art galleries, that could be carried by hand and placed in the public space.
It was completely up to the students which kind of content they want to present in the galleries and I was very delighted about the result. They decided to turn the rooms into a strange 2001-like appartement in which you can play a real world hack ‘n’ slay videogame.
This video was entirely filmed by Olaf Val with his cellphone.
A more detailed video about the final performance will follow soon. For the moment, you can also check the workshop blog where you can find a detailed description of the performance [German only] and tons of nice photos.
The performance will be repeated several times in July during the Spaziergang Kassel.
By the beginning of the year, Geschichte für Alle, an association from Nurmeberg asked me if I could produce mechatronic theatre decorations for their walk through the medieval cellar networks in Nuremberg.
All decorations are related either to the history of the cellar or to the history of Nuremberg.
The video below shows an example that picks out the fact that the Nuremberg citizen Martin Behaim inspired the invention of the first terrestrial globe.
The premiere of the theatre play is this Friday. You can contact Geschichte für Alle to get tickets for the show.
There are more videos online on my vimeo profile.
In May (8th-10th), the IDP will automatically rock the 30th birthday of the Netherlands Institute for Media Art
And for those who can’t celebrate with me in Amsterdam – there’s a second chance:
In September (25th+26th) the IDP will tune up the Todays Art Festival in The Hague.
Here is a documentation of the workshop at Club Transmediale 2009. We were building little electromechanic synthesizers. An old strowger switch from a telephone distribution unit was used as step sequencer to let the mini machines play a rhythmic pattern.
Finally, the International Dance Party, a machine that I’ve built in 2007 in Canada together with Adad Hannah will make it to Europe.
It will be shown first in Berlin at the Club Transmediale Exhibition in the Kunstraum Kreuzberg (from 24.1. – 1.3.) and then it will travel to Amsterdam, the Hague and Zurich.
Club Transmediale also invited me to give a workshop as you can read in the entry below.
I finally found the time to edit a little video with the workshop results from the LAB30 Festival in Augsburg. Here it is. And I also want to use this occasion to invite you to my next workshop, which will be part of this year’s Club Transmediale program .
The title is “Mechanic Sound Workout” and we’ll built a programmable modular mechanic synthesizer on the 29.1. and 30.1. Here’s a link: Mechanic Sound Workout
At a residency at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania, Austrian artist Timm-Oliver Wilks and me have built a remote controlled racing pissoir.
The piece obviously refers to Marcel Duchamps “La Fountaine”. In fact it is a one to one replica of his static work, it just offers additional visitors interaction, extreme speed, incredible acceleration and amazing agility. In the manner of car bumper stickers, our pissoir points out its superior performance with the sentence “Eat shit, Duchamp!”, written on its back.
You can play with our RC pissoir on the evening of October, 30th at the exhibition opening of another BHC-Kollektiv show in Berlin, at Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 9.
When I redesigned my webpage, I also thought it is time to upload some more content that I have in stock anyway. So here’s a shortfilm, that I’ve made ten years ago:
Enjoy this dark fantastic shortfilm about media gone mad. The film plays an February, 29th in 1951 – which explains the obscure behaviour of time and space within the movie.
Although the telecine that I have is not subtitled in English, I’m pretty sure that you’ll understand the story, since the dialogues are rare and don’t matter too much.
LAB30 also asked me to give a workshop – and I’ll do. On Staurday, November the 15th we will build some real life arcade classics out of simple materials! You should subscribe to their workshop as soon as possible, because space is limited. It’s going to be fun and I can’t wait to see some cool d.i.y. games!
The Augsburg media art festival LAB30 will show Pongmechanik at their upcoming festival. It all happens from Nov. 13th till Nov. 15th.
So If you are in south Germany during that time, I’d be happy to meet you there!
The photo above was actually taken some years ago at the setup of pong.mythos. On the right side of the picture, you can see Painstation – Volkers hands.
Here are two more exhibitions to see: If you are in Karlsruhe, you might want to see the show Vertrautes Terrain (until Oct. 10th). The IDP is part of it. Unfortunately just as a video, because at the same time, the real thing is shown in Montreal at OBORO in their exhibition “Amplified Intimacies” (until Oct. 18th).
