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Simulant Waves
Given my penchant for art installations that spatially actuate remote geographic data in (near) real-time—such as torch fountains that broadcast antipodean sunlight, plazas that quiver earthquakes half a continent away, and quaint water features on city centers that mimic the fluctuating water levels of peripheral reservoirs—I couldn't help but quickly add David Bowen's Tele-Present Water to the archives.
In that new piece, seen in the video above installed at The National Museum in Wroclaw, Poland, a mechanical grid structure is turned into a facsimile of a tiny patch of the Pacific Ocean, specifically the area around NOAA's data buoy Station 46246 at 49°59’7″ N 145°5’20″ W. As goes the patch, so goes the grid. It's a mixing of here and there that I can't resist likening to the instantaneous detection and conversion of catastrophic natural disasters, from tsunamis to volcanic eruptions to floods, into globally televised events.
In any case, why not also reverse the scenario? As museum visitors play around with the grid, the distant buoy simultaneously warps and heaves the surrounding water accordingly, for an audience of about zero.
Given my penchant for art installations that spatially actuate remote geographic data in (near) real-time—such as torch fountains that broadcast antipodean sunlight, plazas that quiver earthquakes half a continent away, and quaint water features on city centers that mimic the fluctuating water levels of peripheral reservoirs—I couldn't help but quickly add David Bowen's Tele-Present Water to the archives.
In that new piece, seen in the video above installed at The National Museum in Wroclaw, Poland, a mechanical grid structure is turned into a facsimile of a tiny patch of the Pacific Ocean, specifically the area around NOAA's data buoy Station 46246 at 49°59’7″ N 145°5’20″ W. As goes the patch, so goes the grid. It's a mixing of here and there that I can't resist likening to the instantaneous detection and conversion of catastrophic natural disasters, from tsunamis to volcanic eruptions to floods, into globally televised events.
In any case, why not also reverse the scenario? As museum visitors play around with the grid, the distant buoy simultaneously warps and heaves the surrounding water accordingly, for an audience of about zero.
The Yogyakarta in which bikers wear special designed helmets, weighty and beautiful, stuffed with soil and planted with a tree
For Treebute to Yogya, Sara Nuytemans and Arya Pandjalu sent a gang of motorbikers through the streets of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wearing helmets doubling as plant containers. “The performance is meant as a hommage to this very green city and also a wink to the idea for direct carbon dioxide compensation,” says a statement on the Szpilman Award website.
Cue parallel world.
The young men start gathering just before noon, on alleyways, back lanes and courtyards around Yogyakarta. Some attend to their motorbikes, making sure there's enough petrol in the tank, washing the dirt off the tires and polishing the chrome. Others water and prune their saplings on their helmet.
Then, when the last of their bike gang has arrived, they spill out into the city amid a sonic cloud of revving engines and rustling leaves. At designated strips, they meet up with other gangs whereupon one biker from each gang race one another. Weaving through the narrow, vacillating spaces in the traffic, they cock up their preening canopies, generating enough wind to show off their lushness. Along the route, other bikers sound their horns in appreciation. It's not who crosses the finish line first that decides the outcome but rather how one presents their organic coiffures to the city. Drag racing meets flower and garden show.
When these competitions began, just your garden variety houseplants were used. But as with all young men in other parts of the world, they sought out ever increasing thrills, a bigger adrenaline rush than their last race. So they started using larger and larger plants, making the races even more dangerous. And deadly. It seems like everyday you hear of a racer snapping his neck and killing motorists and spectators in the resulting crash.
However deadly these races may have become, the young men are still drawn to them. In a city blanketed by smoke produced by slash-and-burn agriculture, a permanent haze that traps them in mind-numbing indoor lifestyles, these reckless botanical races are their collective scream of environmental frustration, an outlet for green activism amid the suffocating smog.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many will become eco-terrorists, transforming their restless behaviors on the streets of Yogyakarta into acts of sabotage carried out on the palm oil plantations of Borneo. They will polish their guerilla skills in jungle hideouts, and when they've turned Borneo into the Afghanistan of green militancy, they will import their eco-jihadism to the rest of the world.
For Treebute to Yogya, Sara Nuytemans and Arya Pandjalu sent a gang of motorbikers through the streets of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wearing helmets doubling as plant containers. “The performance is meant as a hommage to this very green city and also a wink to the idea for direct carbon dioxide compensation,” says a statement on the Szpilman Award website.
Cue parallel world.
The young men start gathering just before noon, on alleyways, back lanes and courtyards around Yogyakarta. Some attend to their motorbikes, making sure there's enough petrol in the tank, washing the dirt off the tires and polishing the chrome. Others water and prune their saplings on their helmet.
Then, when the last of their bike gang has arrived, they spill out into the city amid a sonic cloud of revving engines and rustling leaves. At designated strips, they meet up with other gangs whereupon one biker from each gang race one another. Weaving through the narrow, vacillating spaces in the traffic, they cock up their preening canopies, generating enough wind to show off their lushness. Along the route, other bikers sound their horns in appreciation. It's not who crosses the finish line first that decides the outcome but rather how one presents their organic coiffures to the city. Drag racing meets flower and garden show.
When these competitions began, just your garden variety houseplants were used. But as with all young men in other parts of the world, they sought out ever increasing thrills, a bigger adrenaline rush than their last race. So they started using larger and larger plants, making the races even more dangerous. And deadly. It seems like everyday you hear of a racer snapping his neck and killing motorists and spectators in the resulting crash.
However deadly these races may have become, the young men are still drawn to them. In a city blanketed by smoke produced by slash-and-burn agriculture, a permanent haze that traps them in mind-numbing indoor lifestyles, these reckless botanical races are their collective scream of environmental frustration, an outlet for green activism amid the suffocating smog.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many will become eco-terrorists, transforming their restless behaviors on the streets of Yogyakarta into acts of sabotage carried out on the palm oil plantations of Borneo. They will polish their guerilla skills in jungle hideouts, and when they've turned Borneo into the Afghanistan of green militancy, they will import their eco-jihadism to the rest of the world.
REPOST: Deep Space Public Lighting, Chilean Copper-Gold Mines, Rare Earths Geopolitics, and iPhones as Portable Artificial Suns
[First posted November 4, 2010. In the latest mining disaster in China, about 50 miners are said to be trapped in a 760-metre-deep shaft.]
For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available.
At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.”
To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet.
By coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue.
Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference:
It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel.
A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.”
Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch.
Or from an i-weatherized iPhone.
And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion.
Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters.
Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle of natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available.
At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.”
To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet.
By coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue.
Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference:
One of the things that's being recommended is that there be one place, a community area, which is always lighted. And then you have a second area which is always dark for sleep, and then you have a third area which is work, doing the mining, and the shifts can migrate through these geographic locations within the mine and, in that way, regulate the daylight cycle of the shift.
It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel.
A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.”
Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch.
Or from an i-weatherized iPhone.
And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion.
Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters.
Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle of natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
Double Positive
We have not come here for a rendezvous.
We have come here simply to rest.
We are refugees, en route to less troubled terrains with only a thin film protecting our caravel from the fallout. Thinking this ancient swimming pool a safe harbor, we berthed our diaphanous spaceships within its partitioned terminal.
Our stay will be brief, but the vaseline landscape might just convince us to strike our Utopia here.
We have not come here for a rendezvous.
We have come here simply to rest.
We are refugees, en route to less troubled terrains with only a thin film protecting our caravel from the fallout. Thinking this ancient swimming pool a safe harbor, we berthed our diaphanous spaceships within its partitioned terminal.
Our stay will be brief, but the vaseline landscape might just convince us to strike our Utopia here.
Natural Car Alarms
A comment left on our post on Australia's lyrebirds pointed us to the work of Nina Katchadourian, specifically Natural Car Alarms, a piece which was installed in 2002 at several locations around New York.
For the exhibit, the Brooklyn-based artist hacked the alarms of three cars to emit not the natural soundtrack of the city but the sonic pattern of real birds. This urban automotive flock, in other words, was “re-edited” into counter-lyrebirds.
Katchadourian writes: “Almost as important as matching the sounds was finding a patterning that mimicked the swooping cries and punctuated honks of the familiar six-tone siren. They also needed to be as loud, intrusive, obnoxious and surprising as the real thing. Ideally, I wanted to replicate some of the ambiguity I had experienced in the forest, where the urban and the natural were suddenly very continuous. Car alarms were after all a completely natural part of the Long Island City landscape where the piece would be shown.”
It's worth pointing out that one of the mimicked birds is actually a Superb Lyrebird. This copying of a copier could have set out the marvelous scenario, in which a lyrebird, upon hearing its own song converted into a car alarm, proceeded to mimic its reprocessed mating call. And then Katchadourian comes along again intent on making another remix.
A comment left on our post on Australia's lyrebirds pointed us to the work of Nina Katchadourian, specifically Natural Car Alarms, a piece which was installed in 2002 at several locations around New York.
For the exhibit, the Brooklyn-based artist hacked the alarms of three cars to emit not the natural soundtrack of the city but the sonic pattern of real birds. This urban automotive flock, in other words, was “re-edited” into counter-lyrebirds.
Katchadourian writes: “Almost as important as matching the sounds was finding a patterning that mimicked the swooping cries and punctuated honks of the familiar six-tone siren. They also needed to be as loud, intrusive, obnoxious and surprising as the real thing. Ideally, I wanted to replicate some of the ambiguity I had experienced in the forest, where the urban and the natural were suddenly very continuous. Car alarms were after all a completely natural part of the Long Island City landscape where the piece would be shown.”
It's worth pointing out that one of the mimicked birds is actually a Superb Lyrebird. This copying of a copier could have set out the marvelous scenario, in which a lyrebird, upon hearing its own song converted into a car alarm, proceeded to mimic its reprocessed mating call. And then Katchadourian comes along again intent on making another remix.
Liverpool Tornado
As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, artist Anthony McCall will be spinning an artificial, mile high tornado in Liverpool. Called Column, this swirling micro-climate will be created “by gently rotating the water on the surface of the [River] Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil.”
Outside with the “[in]coherent convection” of the elements and without the controlled environment of some cavernous atriums, no doubt McCall and his engineering team will encounter some complications. But we're hoping the final piece will look as legible as the image, or at least on favorable days.
As part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, artist Anthony McCall will be spinning an artificial, mile high tornado in Liverpool. Called Column, this swirling micro-climate will be created “by gently rotating the water on the surface of the [River] Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil.”
Outside with the “[in]coherent convection” of the elements and without the controlled environment of some cavernous atriums, no doubt McCall and his engineering team will encounter some complications. But we're hoping the final piece will look as legible as the image, or at least on favorable days.
Deep Space Public Lighting, Chilean Copper-Gold Mines, Rare Earths Geopolitics, and iPhones as Portable Artificial Suns
For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available.
At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.”
To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet.
By coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue.
Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference:
It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel.
A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.”
Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch.
Or from an i-weatherized iPhone.
And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion.
Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters.
Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle of natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available.
At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.”
To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet.
By coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue.
Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference:
One of the things that's being recommended is that there be one place, a community area, which is always lighted. And then you have a second area which is always dark for sleep, and then you have a third area which is work, doing the mining, and the shifts can migrate through these geographic locations within the mine and, in that way, regulate the daylight cycle of the shift.
It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel.
A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.”
Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch.
Or from an i-weatherized iPhone.
And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion.
Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters.
Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle of natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
To Io
Thanks to Iceland's volcanic ash cloud, we're again obsessed with vapor — clouds, mists, fogs, steam, chemical gas warfare, the miasma theory of disease — in fact, with just about any aerosolized matter like sandstorms, carcinogenic dust clouds of asbestos, crowd control tear gas, climate change smog and forests atomized through slash and burning. One could devote an entire blog just on this topic alone without running out of material, as anything could probably be vaporized, given a couple of thermonuclear bombs or a supernova or some apparition lessons at Hogwarts.
If one were indeed to start such a blog (perhaps called Pathological Aerology in imitation of the awesome Pathological Geomorphology), there definitely should be an entry on Juliet Haysom's Spring.
The proposal of which having won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2007, Spring was permanently installed the following year at Ragley Hall, a stately country house near Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
Quoting Haysom:
In other words, when early morning sunlight begins hitting the nearby solar panels that power the water pumps, the mist will slowly start to appear. At midday, the cloud will have expanded. When it's sunny, it will create a tower of mist, a sort of shimmering tree. If it's overcast or windy, however, its form will become tenuous, more spectral. If there's a rainstorm, then it will dissolve into the pouring rain.
As evening approaches and the light dims, Spring will dull down until vanishing completely for the night.
Quoting Haysom again:
One of the towering figures of landscape architecture thus invoked, and along with him the monumentally rich history and traditions of garden design, it wouldn't be far off the mark to think Spring as a sort of avant-garde folly, a Greek temple vaporized and aerosolized against a sylvan backdrop to evoke the story of Jupiter and Io or the vaporous origins of the Centaurs.
On fountains
Thanks to Iceland's volcanic ash cloud, we're again obsessed with vapor — clouds, mists, fogs, steam, chemical gas warfare, the miasma theory of disease — in fact, with just about any aerosolized matter like sandstorms, carcinogenic dust clouds of asbestos, crowd control tear gas, climate change smog and forests atomized through slash and burning. One could devote an entire blog just on this topic alone without running out of material, as anything could probably be vaporized, given a couple of thermonuclear bombs or a supernova or some apparition lessons at Hogwarts.
If one were indeed to start such a blog (perhaps called Pathological Aerology in imitation of the awesome Pathological Geomorphology), there definitely should be an entry on Juliet Haysom's Spring.
The proposal of which having won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2007, Spring was permanently installed the following year at Ragley Hall, a stately country house near Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
Quoting Haysom:
Researching my proposal for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize brief, I realized that Ragley Hall is situated above one of England's most significant aquifers. About 40 percent of Severn and Trent Water's supply comes from this vast subterranean water resource, as do the celebrated springs at nearby Malvern, Leamington Spa and Burton on Trent.
Rather than construct and import something into the park, my proposal involved drilling a borehole into the aquifer below the site. Water from the borehole would be then pumped to the surface where it would appear as a cloud of fine mist. Spring's external form and appearance will vary significantly depending on weather and light conditions.
In other words, when early morning sunlight begins hitting the nearby solar panels that power the water pumps, the mist will slowly start to appear. At midday, the cloud will have expanded. When it's sunny, it will create a tower of mist, a sort of shimmering tree. If it's overcast or windy, however, its form will become tenuous, more spectral. If there's a rainstorm, then it will dissolve into the pouring rain.
As evening approaches and the light dims, Spring will dull down until vanishing completely for the night.
Quoting Haysom again:
While at first glance Spring might look like a natural phenomenon, on close inspection the form of its jets and the presence of nearby solar panels will reveal the fact that it is a man-made intervention into the landscape. The parkland at Ragley Hall is similarly deceptive; its rolling hills, informal stands of trees and picturesque lake were, in fact, designed by Capability Brown.
One of the towering figures of landscape architecture thus invoked, and along with him the monumentally rich history and traditions of garden design, it wouldn't be far off the mark to think Spring as a sort of avant-garde folly, a Greek temple vaporized and aerosolized against a sylvan backdrop to evoke the story of Jupiter and Io or the vaporous origins of the Centaurs.
On fountains
Site Specific
UK landscape artist Kane Cunningham is planning to rig his new home with cameras not to film the stunning views of the North Yorkshire coast but to document its imminent destruction. Sitting precipitously close to the edge of a cliff, the house could fall off at any moment. Coastal erosion has already eaten away most of the garden.
Some nearby houses were similarly threatened but were condemned and demolished in advance of the migrating cliff edge. Cunningham, however, wants the climate-changed sea itself to devour his bungalow.
Interestingly, Cunningham bought the house, worth £150,000 two years ago, for just £3,000 on his credit card, “a deliberate financial transaction suggesting the link to credit, subprime mortgages, property ownership, debt, loans, the financial markets, property speculation, boom and bust.”
“It’s global recession and global warming encapsulated,” adds the artist.
POSTSCRIPT #1: In March, the BBC reported that Kane Cunningham had changed his plans. He'll demolish the house rather than let it fall off the cliff.
Operation Beachhead
Climate Ghettos
Sand Wars
The Retreating Village
UK landscape artist Kane Cunningham is planning to rig his new home with cameras not to film the stunning views of the North Yorkshire coast but to document its imminent destruction. Sitting precipitously close to the edge of a cliff, the house could fall off at any moment. Coastal erosion has already eaten away most of the garden.
Some nearby houses were similarly threatened but were condemned and demolished in advance of the migrating cliff edge. Cunningham, however, wants the climate-changed sea itself to devour his bungalow.
Interestingly, Cunningham bought the house, worth £150,000 two years ago, for just £3,000 on his credit card, “a deliberate financial transaction suggesting the link to credit, subprime mortgages, property ownership, debt, loans, the financial markets, property speculation, boom and bust.”
“It’s global recession and global warming encapsulated,” adds the artist.
POSTSCRIPT #1: In March, the BBC reported that Kane Cunningham had changed his plans. He'll demolish the house rather than let it fall off the cliff.
Operation Beachhead
Climate Ghettos
Sand Wars
The Retreating Village
“This is Botanydome. Death is listening, and will take the first plant that screams.”
Natural Selection by Tim Simpson, now of Studio Lithero, is “an instrument that competes plants against each other. The device empowers plants to control the fate of others using sensors and mechanised shears in a Darwinian race for survival. The sensors set above the plants detect the first to grow to a specified height, at which point it is saved, and the others fatally chopped.”
One wishes this was marketed for the home decorating market, perhaps through a partnership with Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia or Home Depot; a mass produced kinetic sculpture that approximates the violence and savagery of nature, the brutal facts from which indoor plants seem happily divorced, that is, if they're lucky enough to have attentive owners.
You can take bets from your houseguests on which one will win the race, and everyone can check the status of the race on Twitter. The victor will tweet, “I RULEZ!” The losers, “PWNED.”
In any case, be sure to watch this video of an actual race.
Natural Selection by Tim Simpson, now of Studio Lithero, is “an instrument that competes plants against each other. The device empowers plants to control the fate of others using sensors and mechanised shears in a Darwinian race for survival. The sensors set above the plants detect the first to grow to a specified height, at which point it is saved, and the others fatally chopped.”
One wishes this was marketed for the home decorating market, perhaps through a partnership with Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia or Home Depot; a mass produced kinetic sculpture that approximates the violence and savagery of nature, the brutal facts from which indoor plants seem happily divorced, that is, if they're lucky enough to have attentive owners.
You can take bets from your houseguests on which one will win the race, and everyone can check the status of the race on Twitter. The victor will tweet, “I RULEZ!” The losers, “PWNED.”
In any case, be sure to watch this video of an actual race.
Vectorial Vancouver
For the month of February, including the two weeks when the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will be staged, you can participate in the fifth and latest installation of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Vectorial Elevation in Vancouver.
Twenty robotic searchlights have been spread out along the English Bay, and via a three-dimensional interface on the installation's website, their positions can be reconfigured by anyone. From anywhere in the world, you can redesign the skyline of Vancouver.
You can render the intricate vaulting system of a Gothic cathedral or the geometric tessellation of a Persian mosque; inscribe cryptic constellations onto passing clouds; or cultivate a photonic bouquet for Valentine's Day.
Perhaps someone might want to recreate a childhood memory of searchlights that once beckoned them to a glamorous Hollywood movie premier while another might one to evoke the torched nighttime skies of London during the Blitz. Indeed, searchlights add spectacle and a sense of excitement to any event, thus making them perfect additions to the festive environment of the Olympics. But they are also harbingers of violence and destruction, and of course, the Olympics have a long urbicidal track record.
In any case, all designs will be placed on queue, then projected for everyone to see on site or on webcams, and finally given their own webpage with photographs as documentation of your participation.
Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest
For the month of February, including the two weeks when the 2010 Winter Olympic Games will be staged, you can participate in the fifth and latest installation of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Vectorial Elevation in Vancouver.
Twenty robotic searchlights have been spread out along the English Bay, and via a three-dimensional interface on the installation's website, their positions can be reconfigured by anyone. From anywhere in the world, you can redesign the skyline of Vancouver.
You can render the intricate vaulting system of a Gothic cathedral or the geometric tessellation of a Persian mosque; inscribe cryptic constellations onto passing clouds; or cultivate a photonic bouquet for Valentine's Day.
Perhaps someone might want to recreate a childhood memory of searchlights that once beckoned them to a glamorous Hollywood movie premier while another might one to evoke the torched nighttime skies of London during the Blitz. Indeed, searchlights add spectacle and a sense of excitement to any event, thus making them perfect additions to the festive environment of the Olympics. But they are also harbingers of violence and destruction, and of course, the Olympics have a long urbicidal track record.
In any case, all designs will be placed on queue, then projected for everyone to see on site or on webcams, and finally given their own webpage with photographs as documentation of your participation.
Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest
Great Street Games
Speaking of augmented game spaces, here is an interesting interactive installation set to come online at the end of the month in three UK cities. Created by KMA,Great Street Games [dead link] will be a “huge, participatory, high-tech athletics tournament” in which participants in Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough compete against each other virtually in real-time using the city as platform.
The parameters of this urban sport are described thus:
It reminds one of the telepresent urban spaces of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
You're walking home alone one night through pedestrian unfriendly, darkly lit corridors. All of a sudden, you trigger a sensor and projectors spray the pavement with technicolor lights. Ebullient geometries seemingly float above the asphalt.
“Wanna play,” a disembodied voice rings out from a speaker.
“Umm, sure,” you instinctively respond, even if you don't how to play what is to be played. “I'll learn along the way,” you say to yourself.
And then it's hours later; the sun is about to rise and wash out the lights. The two of you promise to return the following night (tonight, actually) to continue the game, with friends to make it a team competition. It'll be Chicago vs. Manchester.
“Is this some sort of a next generation MMORPG game?” you wonder.
A week or two later, you find out on Twitter that there are other similar game spaces installed throughout the city, but their locations are a secret. There's no iPhone app for it yet. So you set on a walkabout, hoping that you might again trigger a sensor.
Speaking of augmented game spaces, here is an interesting interactive installation set to come online at the end of the month in three UK cities. Created by KMA,
KMA will use projected light and thermal-imaging technology to create interactive 'courts' in which human movement triggers light effects. The physical movements of players determine the outcome the games, which will run on ten-minute cycles. Participants develop their game-playing skills as they progress through a number of levels to help their area to victory or to simply have fun.
The parameters of this urban sport are described thus:
The ‘courts’ created by projected light; each court comprising a central playing area and two zones representing the other two locations. Balls of light appear from the centre of each court – these projected images can be moved by players physically ‘touching’ them. The aim of the first game is for each location to gain points by moving as many balls as possible to the other locations. Games last 90 seconds and 5 games make a series – through which the games increase in complexity as players become more familiar with the rules. The town or city with the most points at the end wins.
It reminds one of the telepresent urban spaces of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
You're walking home alone one night through pedestrian unfriendly, darkly lit corridors. All of a sudden, you trigger a sensor and projectors spray the pavement with technicolor lights. Ebullient geometries seemingly float above the asphalt.
“Wanna play,” a disembodied voice rings out from a speaker.
“Umm, sure,” you instinctively respond, even if you don't how to play what is to be played. “I'll learn along the way,” you say to yourself.
And then it's hours later; the sun is about to rise and wash out the lights. The two of you promise to return the following night (tonight, actually) to continue the game, with friends to make it a team competition. It'll be Chicago vs. Manchester.
“Is this some sort of a next generation MMORPG game?” you wonder.
A week or two later, you find out on Twitter that there are other similar game spaces installed throughout the city, but their locations are a secret. There's no iPhone app for it yet. So you set on a walkabout, hoping that you might again trigger a sensor.
Public Water Purification Island
Here's an art installation from Synchronicity, an architecture/arts festival in Warsaw, Poland. Conceived by Jakub Szczęsny as a member of the design collective Centrala, it consists of a floating island fitted with exercise machines. When the machines are being used, water gets pumped from the polluted Vistula River to a filtration device located overhead at the center of the platform. The water is intended to be potable at the end of its purification cycle, ready for use by thirsty festivalgoers.
According to Szczęsny: “The whole installation is supposed to perform a role of a propaganda tool changing the consciousness of Warsawers by showing the efficiency of human action in the process of purifying the waters of their river. What’s meaningful is the fact that many Poles, even after twenty years of liberalization, still don’t believe in their own potential as individuals or members of communities, in positively changing their environment.”
Could Szczęsny also be presenting us an alternative to the much maligned bottled water? One could set up a stringed necklace of these water islands on a river, say, the Thames, or along a waterfront, say, Chicago's Lakefront, besides trails frequented by joggers, bikers and marathoners in training who, as a communal activity (a civic responsibility, in fact), keep the tanks full for use by themselves and the marginally active.
The Hydrological Playground
Here's an art installation from Synchronicity, an architecture/arts festival in Warsaw, Poland. Conceived by Jakub Szczęsny as a member of the design collective Centrala, it consists of a floating island fitted with exercise machines. When the machines are being used, water gets pumped from the polluted Vistula River to a filtration device located overhead at the center of the platform. The water is intended to be potable at the end of its purification cycle, ready for use by thirsty festivalgoers.
According to Szczęsny: “The whole installation is supposed to perform a role of a propaganda tool changing the consciousness of Warsawers by showing the efficiency of human action in the process of purifying the waters of their river. What’s meaningful is the fact that many Poles, even after twenty years of liberalization, still don’t believe in their own potential as individuals or members of communities, in positively changing their environment.”
Could Szczęsny also be presenting us an alternative to the much maligned bottled water? One could set up a stringed necklace of these water islands on a river, say, the Thames, or along a waterfront, say, Chicago's Lakefront, besides trails frequented by joggers, bikers and marathoners in training who, as a communal activity (a civic responsibility, in fact), keep the tanks full for use by themselves and the marginally active.
The Hydrological Playground
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