Leonardo
Andres Burbano
revista, esta muy buena):
- It is very important for me, check it out¡ )
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Leonardo Electronic Almanac Volume 14, Number 1, 2006
http://lea.mit.edu
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ISSN #1071-4391
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| CONTENTS |
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INTRODUCTION
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THE LEONARDO GLOBAL CROSSINGS AWARD
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< Artist Statement > by Abdel Ghany and Amal Kenawy
< Artist Statement > by Andrés Burbano
< Liquid paper 1. - Making Light of Gravity – embodiment in intelligent
camera-based technology systems > by Hellen Sky
(About) Kibook Ltd
< Artist Statement > by Kim Machan
< Artist Statement > by Nalini Malani
< Be Alive Today > by Regina Célia Pinto
< Artist Statement > by Shilpa Gupta
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GLOBAL CROSSINGS
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< Global Crossings > by Dennis Summers and Choy Kok Kee
< Capture Site > by Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers
< Floating Point > by Tiffany Holmes
< Home and Away: Growing Up As British Asians In London > by Samina Mishra
< Intermundos Site > by Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro)
< The Nike Blanket Petitions > by Cat Mazza
< Radio Map > by Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber
< Surveillance > by Alison Chung-Yan
< The Face of Tomorrow > by Mike Mike
< World Hug Day > by Gao Brothers
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INTRODUCTION
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Be prepared for a double dose of gastronomic global offerings in this
issue, which features the Leonardo Global Crossings Special Project.
We first celebrate the inaugural winners of the 2005 Leonardo Global
Crossings Award – the brother-sister team of Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal
Kenawy from Cairo, Egypt, who have been collaborating on large-scale
installations since 1997.
Accolades also go to the three runners-up - Regina Célia Pinto (Brazil -
web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim Machan (Australia - curator, arts
producer and consultant) and Shilpa Gupta (India - Internet, video and
installation works) and all other nominees: Andres Burbano (Colombia),
Kibook (collaborative team of Visieu Lac [Vietnamese Australian], Mark
Wu [British-born Chinese] and Stefan Woelwer [Germany], Nalini Malani
(India) and Hellen Sky (Australia).
This award recognizes the contribution of artists and scholars from
culturally diverse communities worldwide who work within the emerging
art-science-technology field, and was juried by an international panel
of experts. The award is part of the Leonardo Global Crossings Special
Project, supported by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation. Visit the gallery:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards
Following that, the Global Crossings Gallery, as curated by Dennis
Summers and Choy Kok Kee, showcases a veritable feast of concepts that
explores what it means to be a global citizen. Indulge in this "quality
cross-section of the technical and aesthetic range of globally-related
artwork" – with themes that touch on the socio-political to
technological/(pseudo)scientific to multi-cultural communications.
The range of ideas bounced around is astounding: From creating a global
community dedicated to raising issues of the sweatshop treatment of
women throughout the world, particularly in relation to Nike (Cat
Mazza's *Nike Blanket Petition*) to the darker side of global control
(Alison Chung-Yan's *Surveillance*) to Mike Mike's more positive
approach to *The Face of Tomorrow*.
Then there is Samina Mishra's take on the children of immigrants from
India and other East Asian countries and Tiffany Holmes's serious and
scientific approach to global water pollution, *Floating Point*.
Add to that Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber's *Radiomap*, which places
participants on a physical representation of the globe projected onto
the floor, and allow them to hear different radio stations based on
their "global location", Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers' *Capture
Site*, which sees two artists suspended above ground surrounded with
sensors that communicate local environmental information throughout the
world, Vanessa Gocksch's *Intermundos*, a representation of Colombian
youth culture and its connection to other youth cultures worldwide and
the physically uplifting *World Hug Day* project by the Gao Brothers for
a sizzling stew of wondrous global delights. Visit the gallery:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx
________________________________________________________________
Leonardo Global Crossings Award
________________________________________________________________
Leonardo Global Crossings Award
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards
Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce that the first Leonardo Global
Crossings Award has been awarded to Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal Kenawy,
of Cairo, Egypt, a brother-sister team who have been collaborating on
large-scale installations since 1997. These works, whether tower-like
structures containing glass balls rising up towards the ceiling or
tunnels leading to a block of frozen ice in a room surrounded by
chiffon, demonstrate that there is no "natural" barrier between the
worlds of art and science.
The Kenawys' unique collaboration is built partially upon Abdel Ghany's
background in the physical sciences and Amal's background in filmmaking,
yet their individual efforts cannot be so neatly defined as singularly
"scientific" or "artistic". Committed to their creative processes, they
work very closely together on every aspect of their projects from
conceptualization and structural design to production and execution in
their workshop.
Characteristic of all their projects is the power of texture and image,
and sensorial play with surfaces between spaces (loosening up the
inside/outside polarity) - whether it is a "textured" video, the texture
of light projected on a triple screen of chiffon, the texture of human
hair bows on a pair of wax legs in a display case, or the textures
(acoustic and visual) of a beating heart on which a pair of lace gloved
hands is sewing a white rose appliqué. For examples of their work see
http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/html/artists/amal_abdelghany_kenawy.htm.
The three runners-up for the 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award are
Regina Célia Pinto (Brazil - web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim Machan
(Australia - curator, arts producer and consultant) and Shilpa Gupta
(India - Internet, video and installation works).
Other nominees for the 2005 award included: Andres Burbano (Colombia),
Kibook (collaborative team of Visieu Lac [Vietnamese Australian], Mark
Wu [British-born Chinese] and Stefan Woelwer [Germany], Nalini Malani
(India) and Hellen Sky (Australia).
The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award, funded in part by the
Rockefeller Foundation, was juried by an international panel of experts
co-chaired by Nisar Keshvani and Rejane Spitz. The 2005 jury consisted
of Samirah Al-Kasim (filmmaker, Egypt), Julio Bermudez (educator,
U.S.A.-Argentina), Choy Kok Kee (artist, Singapore), Maria Fernandez
(researcher, U.S.A.-Nicaragua), Pamela Grant-Ryan (editor, U.S.A.),
Nisar Keshvani (editor-consultant, Singapore), Jayachandran Palazhy
(choreographer-artistic director, India), Sundar Sarukkai (researcher,
India), Yacov Sharir (educator, U.S.A.) and Rejane Spitz (educator,
Brazil). The award recognizes the contribution of artists and scholars
from culturally diverse communities worldwide within the emerging
art-science-technology field. The award is part of the Leonardo Global
Crossings Special Project, supported by the Ford Foundation and the
Rockefeller Foundation.
_____________________________
Abdel and Amal Kenawy - Global Crossings Award Winners
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/lea/gallery/gxawards/kenawy.htm
Abdel and Amal Kenawy
4 Omer Ibn 'Abdel Aziz street,
El Haram Street,
Giza-Egypt
Tel: +2 010 306 6755
amalkenawy [@] hotmail [dot] com
http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/html/artists/amal_abdelghany_kenawy.htm
Artist Statement
The Room, 2003
Video performance
PAL system; 10 minutes
Dimensions variable
Amal Kenawy's work spans a breadth of mediums, creating a space in which
she negotiates her own identities vis-à-vis the world around her. In a
recent work she entitled *The Room*, her brother, partner, and mentor
Abdel Ghany Kenawy helped her put together ribbons, ties, and straps. An
identity is slowly diluted into oblivion as Kenawy explores the
dream-world of illusion against the memory of reality. She brings the
unseen into a visual space by sensing a metaphorical world that hides
behind the physicality.
It is a room that reflects the much bigger world where the social being
is a product and reflection of its surroundings, customs and conditions.
Alone on stage, the visual artist embroiders adornments directly onto
her flesh. White cold tiles surround her, furnishing a grid, fixing the
profile of the artist and the white wedding dress next to which she sits
slowly, mechanically sewing her palpitating heart onto the white cloth
of a sleeve. Her two hands remain encased in white lace gloves. The
absence of the body from which the heart has been removed and to which
the plastic legs of dolls have been attached, the presence of the artist
on stage, de-atomizing herself, underlines the renunciation of
physicality at large.
Personal Statement
While working on *The Room*, it had no artistic preference but it was
rather a project that drove me towards a style of self-expression. I
found myself thinking about the strange relationship between man and his
society. This is when I found myself inside a room. The internal room
surrounds my body, while the outside was represented by society.
The internal self is a representation of the imagination, the
controversial and the non-realistic. It is always an invisible and
private sphere of thought, a true production of social truth. Thus *The
Room* is not simply a location of space but a relationship between place
and time. It is a realistic presence of time with an illusion of dreams
and memories of the human self that do not cease to exist.
I never imagined that I could do my work while absorbing every detail
around me. I also knew I could not revert to an actor to play my role
inside *The Room*. It would not have been real no matter how talented
and experienced the actor could have been. Every detail imagined, every
image edited was planned and I abided by my storyboard. The music
appeared in my mind and was transferred as I imagined it flowing through
the air as moving streaks of light.
Citation
For the GX award, I am nominating the brother-sister team of Abdel Ghany
and Amal Kenawy from Cairo. They have been collaborating on large-scale
installations since 1997, and these works demonstrate that there is no
"natural" barrier between the worlds of art and science, whether they
are tower-like structures containing glass balls rising up towards the
ceiling, or tunnels leading to a block of frozen ice in a room
surrounded by chiffon. Abdel Ghany brings to the works his skills and
knowledge in the physical sciences and Amal brings to the works her
background in visual art (performance, video). They work very closely
together in the conceptualization and execution of each project but
Abdel Ghany is largely responsible for the problem solving of structural
and scientific concerns, and Amal co-articulates the vision and
experimentation of form, time and space.
Abdel Ghany's statement about his relationship to science and art
perhaps best articulates the approach that appears in their works:
"Scientific knowledge is a means of understanding reality, and its
various guises and manifestations. In the realm of art, scientific
knowledge can be used to examine the relationships, dynamics and
structure of things and beings, culminating in a more thorough
understanding of their nature.
I use functionalist notions of causality to gain a better understanding
of the potential meaning inherent in the materials that I use and their
consequences. The relationship between form and concept, material and
energy is the basis of my work, rendering the process of creation more
organic and less contrived. I borrow from the laws of nature, biology
and physics. This knowledge has been integral to my work, which
integrates elements of nature, with the force of the human condition
replete with emotions and memories to articulate an artistic discourse
that transcends time and place."
Amal is also a performance-artist in her own right, and Abdel Ghany
contributes to most of her solo pieces, further enforcing their unique
ability, as siblings, to collaborate artistically. When observing the
materials, you will notice the CV title is only for Amal Kenawy but all
their projects are listed.
Biography
Abdel Ghany Kenawy
- 1969: Born in Cairo, Egypt
- Lives and works in Cairo
- 1989: Studied sculpture in Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, Egypt.
Amal Kenawy
- 1974: Born in Cairo, Egypt
- Lives and works in Cairo
- 1997/98: Studied in the Academy of Arts, Cinema institute
- 1999: BA in Painting & graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan
University, Cairo, Egypt
- 1997/1999: Studied Fashion Design, Cinema Institute.
Born in Cairo in 1974, Amal Kenawy studied painting and sculpture at the
Faculty of Fine Arts of Helwan University and film at the Cairo Film
Academy. In 1996, Kenawy received the first prize in sculpture at
Egypt's annual Salon of Youth exhibition. At the 1998 Cairo Biennale,
Kenawy and her brother Abdel Ghany Kenawy's collaborative work secured
them the UNESCO grand prize. Her mixed medium, installation, sculptural
and video works have been shown in countless exhibitions in Cairo,
Beirut, Paris, Dakar and Bethlehem among other locales. Kenawy most
recently showed her work as part of the Afrika Remix exhibition touring
from 2004 - 2006; the Kunst Palast Museum (Düsseldorf), the Hayward
Gallery (London), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and the Mori Art
Museum (Tokyo). In December 2004 she completed a three-month residency
in Aarau, Switzerland.
"My brother Abdel Ghany Kenawy and I started doing collaborative
projects in 1997. So far we have jointly produced 11 art projects
covering the full range of sculptures, installations, video
installations, and performances. We use various mediums to accommodate
the concepts inherent in each project. The bulk of our work is dedicated
to the understanding and use of scientific laws, to link between the
scientific and the human, and to establishing the unity within the
absolute and general laws of nature."
_____________________________
Andres Burbano
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/burbano.htm
Andrés Burbano
Assistant Professor
Los Andes University
Bogotá, Colombia
South America
Tel: +57-1- 3394949 ext 3056
burbano [@] alleati [dot] com / burbano [@] gmail [dot] com
Keywords
Net art Latin America, technology and society, art science, art
technology, experimental documentary, digital narratives
Artist Statement
*Ways of Neuron*, an online scientific and experimental documentary
an open project initiated by Andrés Burbano
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/burbano/neurona
Hermeneutics * basic sciences = interface. This is the main element of
the project in terms of interface conceptualization. For Hans Diebner,
physicist, the interface is a concrete space of relation between two
spheres of scientific knowledge: on one hand are hermeneutics or
sciences of language and on the other are physics within the context of
exact sciences. This space of relation is the interface, "interface"
meaning the cultural, technological and artistic "place" where
interpretation systems and phenomena themselves are connected.
This powerful and complex concept of "interface" is the most important
reason to develop a scientific documentary with interactive profile that
aims to understand and give structure to the notion of interface
according to the nature of its content, being always aware of the role
of this project in the cultural, artistic, scientific and technological
scenes.
*Ways of Neuron* is an online scientific and experimental documentary
about the impact of neuroscience research and its relationship with the
nature of the mind.
A critical aspect of the documentary is, from an aesthetic point of
view, the coherent relationship between data processing and content access.
The documentary has a navigational interface whose design is guided by
conceptual principles rather than traditional principles of visual or
interactive design. So, the notions of neural networks and semantic
networks are fundamental elements to the design and programming process
of the interface and to the development of the way of communication
between two web servers, one for databases and another for streaming media.
It is important to understand that scientists have represented the
neuron, neural networks and the brain in different visual ways since the
birth of neuroscience. Throughout his investigative process, S. Ramon y
Cajal made hundreds of drawings. The visual results exceeded at a
certain moment the purely graphical aspect passing to more complex
techniques of representation very unusual in his time, like photography,
color photography, microphotography, etc.
The *Ways of Neuron* project is constructed based on the idea of
creating non-conventional forms to explore databases, crossing different
spaces of knowledge and creation to contribute to a contemporary way to
represent neuroscience concepts.
Neuroscience has been developed in such a way that it is important for
the community to understand its repercussions, complexities and
possibilities. Research neuroscience opens a new set of questions
regarding the human condition.
The documentary is informative while using professional and respectful
sources of research and information in order to provide the necessary
depth of content bound to these scientific fields; it is based on three
types of materials: interviews with specialists, interactive experiences
and audiovisual material. The project will cover 12 general conceptual axes:
Brain, Cognition, Consciousness, Emotion, Evolution, Imaging, Language,
Memory, Mind, Neural Networks, Neuron, Perception.
Maintaining coherence with its nature, the project tries to involve
people in different places and from different disciplines in order to
contribute concepts, ideas, technical information, interviews, etc. The
project has the special collaborative support of the Basic Research
Laboratory of the ZKM.
Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Institut für Grundlagenforschung
http://basic-research.zkm.de:8080/basic_research/
http://www.zkm.de
Citation
Burbano explores the interactions of science, art and technology in
various capacities: as a researcher, as an individual artist and in
collaborations with other artists and designers. Burbano's work ranges
from documentary video (in both science and art), sound and
telecommunication art to the exploration of algorithmic cinematic
narratives. The broad spectrum of his work illustrates the importance -
indeed, the prevalence - of interdisciplinary collaborative work in the
field of digital art.
*Hipercububo/ok*, an anthology on digital art of Latin America that
Burbano edited in collaboration with Hernando Barragan, was published in
2002. A website for this project is now under construction
<http://hipercubo.uniandes.edu.co>
*Typovideo*, also in collaboration with Hernando Barragan, is a system
of video streaming ASCII text that explores the interaction of new and
old technologies, the relation of image and text, server technologies,
compression processes and tactical media. The project can be viewed at
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/~aburbano/_html/content/typovid.html
Hernando Barragan is a Colombian architect and designer, who
participated in the 2004 Milan Triennial. His project for that event can
be seen at http://people.interaction-ivrea.it/h.barragan/
*The Quiasma Project* created by Burbano in collaboration with media
artists Clemencia Echeverry and Barbara Santos, re-imagines geography
from the condition of isolation that Colombians increasingly experience
on account of the War on Drugs. That the war is linked to broader
international political and economic issues needs little elaboration.
Burbano's independent videos, *Medios*, II and III address specific
political events in Colombia, which are nonetheless linked to global
conditions. Economic and political stability become more urgent in the
countries south of the US border as struggles for the control of the
world intensify. This work can be viewed at:
http://www.freewaves.org/festival_2002/events/latin/colombia_faguet.html
Burbano's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, to working with
new and old technologies and to exploring relations among aesthetics,
technology, society and the sciences is rare in the field of Latin
American digital art. I recommend that he be considered for this award.
Biography
Andres Burbano explores the interactions of science, art and technology
in various capacities: as a researcher, as an individual artist and in
collaborations with other artists and designers. Burbano's work ranges
from documentary video (in both science and art), sound and
telecommunication art to the exploration of algorithmic cinematic
narratives. The broad spectrum of his work illustrates the importance
and prevalence of interdisciplinary collaborative work in the field of
digital art.
His works include *Typovideo*, created in collaboration with Hernando
Barragan, a system of video streaming ASCII text that explores the
interaction of new and old technologies, the relation of image and text,
server technologies, compression processes and tactical media (the
project can be viewed at
http://atari.uniandes.edu.co/~aburbano/_html/content/typovid.html); and
*The Quiasma Project*, created in collaboration with media artists
Clemencia Echeverry, Santiago Ortiz and Barbara Santos, which
re-imagines geography from the condition of isolation that Colombians
increasingly experience as a result of the conflict.
Andres Burbano – Pasto, Colombia, 1973 - is a film and TV maker from
Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Masters in interactive media from
Mecad, Barcelona, Spain; researcher of Basic Research Institute at ZKM,
Karlsruhe, Germany. Burbano is assistant professor in the art department
at Los Andes University, Bogotá Colombia.
_____________________________
Hellen Sky
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/sky.htm
Hellen Sky
Co Artistic Director
Company in space
P O Box 1495
St Kilda
VIC Australia 3182
Tel: +613 9534 6676
hellen [@] companyinspace [dot] com
http://www.companyinspace.com
Artist Statement
Liquid paper 1. - Making Light of Gravity – embodiment in intelligent
camera-based technology systems.
I start with myself, the universe of my body, and all that reaches
between the cells of my brain and the cells of my skin, the neural
networks synapsing chemical transmissions proprioceptor to receiver,
triggering connections between memory banks, tastes of sensations,
perceptions, consciousness, a knowing and being. An embodied experience
of the space I fill and the spaces through which I move.
Technology is often described as utilitarian, like an object, which has
a particular function. However I think it's more like DNA, its already
part of our subcellular structure. We are processing each other in
constant exchanges; we are in effect of each other in a fluid osmotic
architecture navigating new pathways. Images, and thoughts, sounds and
movement co-exist and become dispersed over smaller and larger grids.
Our perceptions begin to reconfigure and we begin to consider these as
larger choreographies, as evolutions of corporeal interconnectivity that
move beyond the fixity of stages of the 20th century.
Located within multiple architecturally projected environments - liquid
walls, the speaking, moving, and the images, shifts between perspectives
on past, present and future work. In a non-linear poetic, the voice
traverses a range of mindsets and localities, making metaphoric
connections between journals of daily life, complex philosophical and
scientific thinking, from astronomy, neuroscience, intelligence,
consciousness, and concepts of home, land, gravity, security systems,
and the spectrum of networked states of perception.
This Liquid paper presents an artist's ideas interwoven with complex
philosophical and scientific thinking in a manner which allows the art,
and the qualities of the performance itself, to speak with as strong a
voice as the words that are spoken. It integrates a multiplicity of
systems of communications, including live and recorded sound/real-time
video feeds/pre-recorded and archival video footage to consider new
concepts of bodies, technology and choreographic form. It is a fluid
form, allowing new writing, movement and media systems to enter the work
in response to the environment and context of presentation.
There are 100 trillion stars in our universe
There are 100 trillion IP address on the Internet
100 trillion neurons in my brain
There are a hundred trillion cells in the universe of my body,
But only 10 trillion of these cells are human,
Each living cell is an intelligent system.
Each cell is a sub molecular machine
A transcribers of genes
Codes of intelligence
Their antenna listens for signals
In each one of my 10 trillion cells there is 1.8 metres of DNA
If you could find my source code
Get behind my firewall. You might be able to crack me open.
Unwind me. My body would be 108 trillion metres long
I'll give you a clue.
The key to my code is in my Skin, is in my Blood, and is in my Brain.
I can seek you out. I can draw you in.
My body is a bridge… it spans time.
New Work in Development: *The Darker Edge of Night* - 2005 – 07
Technology and Time within a blinking of the eye, begins from an
imagined point of view beyond the horizon of mid 21st century
integrating many media, including a poetic synthesis of cosmological
data visualizations, and interpretation of audio visual media engaged
with via a real time haptic motion capture network system outcomes of
the research between CIS's collaboration with The Centre for
Astrophysics and Supercomputing & Sensory Neuroscience Laboratory,
Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia, supported through Arts
Innovation Program - *The Darker Edge of Night* begins where *The Light
Room* diminishes.
*Making Light of Gravity* - Liquid paper 1 - was first presented in Utah
Art and Technology Symposium – Arts of the Virtual: Poetic Enquiries in
Time, Space, Motion Oct 2004, and will be published in Extensions: The
online journal for embodied technologies. Volume 2: Mediated Bodies:
Locating corporeality in a Pixelated World – UCLA Department of World
Art and Cultures. Liquid paper 1 was further developed during a
three-week residency at Waag society for old and new media, Amsterdam in
Jan 05 - Connected Program, supported through ANAT (Australian network
for art and technology) working in collaboration with media artist
Michelle Teran, exploring keyworx software to facilitate a real time
interface between voice and image. Most recently presented in Melbourne
at Malthouse Theatre in April 2005.
Thoughts, memory, past, present, our spatial perspectives and our
perceptions begin to reconfigure and we begin to consider these as
larger choreographies, as evolutions of corporeality interconnectivity
that move beyond the fixity of stages of the 20th century 'theatre' the
physical site, no longer the only infrastructures that will connect
theatres of artists evolving work because and through the technology
which is transforming how we as social beings inhabit this world.
These ephemeral networks. These global tides, become part of our
sensing, needing processing, modulated surges of power, cascading
effects across electronic grids, distributed over networks – blackouts -
to frame a single point of view in this global arena.
These Virtual Colosseums
who is the gladiator who are the slaves,
A big brother command SMS your message
Evict that neighbour.
Citation
Hellen Sky is the creative director of Company in Space (CIS). Her
practice has evolved through performance and image making extended
through new technologies. In CIS projects she collaborates with others
to develop scores, and systems for integrating multiple media and
technologies into a total choreography for performative events, linking
virtual physical terrains to the general public. Previous work such as
*Escape Velocity* (live and telematic movement driven performance),
*Data Dancing* (London), *Downloading Downunder* (Amsterdam), *SIGGRAPH*
(Florida), *MDDF2* (Monaco), *Digital Now* (Hong Kong), posed the
question: Where do flesh, fragile bone, senses and perceptions fit into
the new geographies of the late 20th century? More recent work such as
*CO 3*, performed in Interact Asia Pacific Multi Media Festival
(Melbourne), *Future Physical ICA* (London), and *Arnolfini* (Bristol),
explored concepts of presence, and identity within virtual reality. *The
Light Room* new media movement opera, premiered at MIFA 01 & 02
(Melbourne Museum), engaged with physical and virtual architectural
worlds as metaphor for life bridging the cusp of 20th/21st centuries.
New work in development for 2004/5 *The Darker Edge of Night* again asks
questions of time and origin, perceived from the emergent new horizons
of the mid-21st century. The work integrates many media, including a
poetic synthesis of astrological data sets and outcomes of research from
CIS' collaboration with The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
at Swinburne University.
I should add that Hellen Sky is Australian. She is very active worldwide
and has a visible global influence (in Oceania, Europe and Asia more
than in the U.S.A.). Her work combines the latest tele-media
technologies, strong theoretical and choreographic craftsmanship, and
stunningly beautiful performances.
Biography
Hellen Sky is co-director of Company in Space. She is both a Fellow of
the Australia Council Dance Fund, 2004 – 2006, and nominee of the
inaugural 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award. Hellen was a Visiting
Fellow at SIAL for the Skins of Intimate Distance: Liveness and Affect
week held in August 2003 and a guest artist at Waag Society for Old and
New Media (connected program Amsterdam 05).
Her choreography performance and image-making has been extended through
new technologies. She collaborates with composers, performers,
scientists, academics, designers, writers, architects, interface
programmers to develop scores and systems, which consider movement to
effect and alter the relationship between multiple media into total
choreographies for performative events linking virtual and
physical terrains to the general public.
_____________________________
Kibook - Visieu Lac, Mark Wu and Stefan Woelwer
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/kibook.htm
Kibook Ltd
38 Kingsland Road
4 Perseverance Works
London E2 8DD
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7739 9233
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7739 5266
info [@] kibook [dot] com
http://www.kibook.com
Kibook is an interactive design company formed by Visieu Lac, a
Vietnamese-Australian with a degree in nuclear physics; Mark Wu, a
Briton of Chinese descent; and Stefan Woelwer, a German. Kibook pursues
interdisciplinary projects that draw on science and lend themselves to
artistic applications.
Citation
I am nominating a group of three, one Vietnamese Australian - Visieu
Lac, a British born Chinese - Mark Wu and a German - Stefan Woelwer,
because of their constant efforts in creating innovative and
revolutionalized works. The group being a mixture of different
nationalities, cultural backgrounds and diversity represent the global
crossing initiative. They are called Kibook and have created
revolutionary experimental and borderless interactive works, which can
be applied to many disciplines.
The nominated team has different backgrounds and work in different
circumstances. What these diverse combinations of creative individuals
have in common is that they all work within the relatively new field of
interactive design or art, and their work is in some way experimental,
that they have each, to a greater or lesser degree found a new way of
using interactive media, and thereby extended the language of
interactivity across boundaries. Interaction art and design is an
emerging practice, and the language of interactivity is still forming.
In this context, adopting an experimental approach to the design process
is not so much an indulgence as a necessity. There is an enormous space
out there and much of it has not been explored yet. At a very basic
level, dealing with this new medium, practitioners - artists, designers,
specialists still have to work it out themselves, and that means
experimenting with the medium and the audience. This process was a
combination of inventing and discovering - inventing in the sense of
coming up with new way of communicating with the medium, discovering in
the sense that there are still much to explore. In this process – one of
real discovery and real invention, it is still the conditions in which
much interaction art and design take place today.
Biography
Kibook is a firm of specialist digital design consultants, evolving,
developing and delivering the best creative interactive media solutions
to our clients. The directors of Kibook, Stefan Woelwer and Mark Wu,
share extensive experience in the digital media and education industry
with a portfolio of varied work and a range of clients. International
clients result in projects developed for world class brands such as BAR
Honda F1, SAP, Canon, Sun, Hitachi and L'Oreal. Kibook have also created
work for personalities such as the talented Japanese
singer/artist/performer Kazuko Hohki, Yellow Earth Theatre and the
Designer of the Year 2004 nominee Sam Buxton, for whom they have
developed the brand and online experience for his successful MIKRO
series of products.
As well as providing design and technical solutions for an international
client base, Kibook has also developed educational material and have
been commissioned to organize and deliver seminars and workshops for
various universities and colleges. Kibook was chosen by the ICA to go to
Berlin to showcase its work alongside other high profile companies from
the UK.
_____________________________
Kim Machan - Global Crossings Award Runner-UP
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/kim.htm
Kim Machan
GPO Box 2505
Brisbane QLD 4001
Australia
Tel: +61 7 33487403
Fax: +61 7 33484109
kim [@] maap [dot] org [dot] au
http://www.maap.org.au
Keywords
Asia Pacific New Media Art, MAAP – Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, New
Media Art Festival
Artist Statement
"Global Crossings" as a concept is one that I feel a very close affinity
to. When I was eight years old I have a hyper vivid memory of feeling
very cold from swimming and then crawling and rolling in the warm sand
where I grew up in Booker Bay. I crawled, and I pondered, why do white
people live in Australia? I did know the history of white settlement in
Australia, and as a side thought, that my mother was born in Indonesia,
but it was a deeper question. I thought about all the people in the
world being born somewhere, not by choice, just that we are all born
somewhere. My concept at that very moment was one of billions of people
everywhere, thinking and doing something. Quite an innocent revelation
but perhaps this is a moment that is always with me, one that I still
reflect on and has consequentially been a conscious and sub conscious
motivating force.
Australia as a land is so far from the European traditions and culture
that permeates our life. Asia is our closest region and essentially I
feel that we need more understanding and exchange culturally to make
sense of 'where we all are'.
Serial contemporary art projects as curator and cultural producer with
gallery and television projects placed me in the 'eye of the storm' when
the digital technological revolution was seeking content for new
delivery systems. In the mid nineties, all sectors (government,
corporate and education) had a great interest in Asia and were eager to
engage with the Asian Tiger Economy that enabled support for the birth
of MAAP - Multimedia Art Asia Pacific. MAAP is an organization and
festival that explores New Media Art across a range of art forms and
practices emphasizing interactive multimedia, broadband content,
Internet, digital media, animation and varied projects integrating new
media.
MAAP was established to bring focus to the 'unmapped' cultural new media
content emerging from the Asia Pacific/ Australia regions and is now an
Asia Pacific touring New Media Arts Festival and website resource. MAAP
partners with key organizations in our region creating new networks,
creating exhibition opportunities, introducing the artists and their
work to audiences, and increasing cultural contact and understanding
through the experience of New Media Arts to a broader community.
MAAP's inaugural annual festival in 1998 was based in Brisbane and
online and continued annually till 2001 when commitment to regional
partnerships had significantly matured to progress further engagement.
MAAP stepped offshore to the China Millennium Monument Art Museum,
Beijing in 2002, partnering to achieve major milestones for all
involved. After the success of 'MAAP in Beijing' our next major festival
followed. 'MAAP in Singapore' 2004, involving seven galleries (including
the Singapore Art Museum) with curators invited from our region, public
artworks, live broadband events linked to Brisbane and a refereed
conference hosted by Nanyang Technological University.
As a founding board member and Asia enthusiast, I stayed committed to
the project - through the Asia financial crisis, SARS, the Iraq war,
terrorism and Asian bird flu. My work as a facilitator to bring together
the enormous creative talents of our region is one that is constantly
challenging and always a most satisfying honor to work with such diverse
and gifted people.
Citation
Instead of nominating an artist - an individual who work has overcome
trans-cultural boundaries. I would like to nominate an individual whose
work has facilitated numerous artists overcoming trans-cultural
boundaries. My nominee is Kim Machan, Festival Director of the
Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Festival (MAAP).
Though an artist, Kim of late, has performed more of a
curatorial/festival director role in the Asia Pacific region. She has
played a tremendous role in moving the art and technology scene forward
in this region. Based in Brisbane, Australia, the annual MAAP festival
humbly began in 1997. From its earliest days, the festival strived to
identify and showcase young, emerging artists from the Asia Pacific. The
festival featured a range of work from students to stalwarts like
Stelarc, providing a diverse range of work - which would not normally be
seen.
In 2000-2002, the festival was adopted by the Brisbane Powerhouse -
Centre for Live Arts, where the festival demonstrated its coming of age
- with a single dedicated venue with the equipment and facilities it
needed. About then, the festival (Kim) realised that it had reached its
peak and decided to turn into a touring festival to:
- Reach out and expand to new audiences
- Overcome regional boundaries, reach out and identify new artists who
do not always have access to technology
- Provide countries with an opportunity to showcase local artists in the
same platform as international artists (a common problem in the Asia
Pacific)
Since then, the MAAP Festival has been housed in Beijing, China and then
in Singapore this year. There are plans to tour to Seoul and other
venues. I strongly recommend Kim as a candidate for the Global Crossings
award as her work fits the Global Crossings initiative perfectly.
Through the festival, young new artists were seen, some of whom have
gone on to international fame - Shilpa Gupta, Candy Factory (Japan),
Gong Xi (China). It has overcome natural geographical barriers that
prevent trans-cultural collaboration to give artists an opportunity to
work together and see new works.
On a personal note, Kim has boundless energy and almost always
single-handedly manoeuvres often trying situations - developing and
working with high level corporate and government bodies. In sum, she is
an individual who has devoted the last 18 years and contributed to the
progress of the Asia Pacific new media ethos and significantly assisted
in helping artists have their work recognized and introduced to new
audiences by successfully overcoming traditional geographical boundaries.
Biography
Kim Machan has been Director of MAAP-Multimedia Art Asia Pacific since
1998 and involved in contemporary art for some 20 years. Working as an
independent curator and producer, she initiated projects such as ABC
broadcasts *Art Rage: Art Works for Television* involving 70
contemporary artists over four series (1996-2000) and other arts media
productions. She has made several New Media Art research tours through
Asia and developed collaborative partnerships with arts organizations
and governments through the region. In 2002 she was contributing curator
for Media City Seoul, Co-Chief Curator for 'MAAP in Beijing' and Chief
Curator for many MAAP programs including annual Net Art and screening
programs since 1998.
She has served on several panels and advisory boards including Sound
Mill Arts Qld, on the World Wide Web Consortium Program Committee and as
paper reviewer (2000-2004), Griffith Artworks Acquisitions Board and
currently, The Institute of Modern Art Board. Presently Kim is
researching the next major project for MAAP 2006 that will focus on
artists in Asia using the internet. Kim is a Ph.D. candidate at
Queensland University of Technology in Creative Industries in the area
of New Media Art in Asia.
_____________________________
Nalini Malani
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/malani.htm
Nalini Malani
3\42 Nanik Nivas,
91 Bhulabhai Desai Road,
Bombay 400026, India
Phone: + 91 20 26140832
nalinim [@] bom5 [dot] vsnl [dot] net [dot] in
http://www.naliniMalani.com
Artist Statement
The Indian artist Nalini Malani who was born in 1946 in Karachi, saw the
gradual erosion of the earlier nationalistic, Nehruvian socialist
ideologies giving way to the subtle economic strangulation of the Indian
economy by the West. While Indian art for decades was mostly focused on
new interpretations of its traditions, Malani's framework has always
reached farther than the boundaries of India. The Greek tragedies,
politically engaged theatre from the 20th century such as Heiner Mueller
and Bertolt Brecht, film noir, and existentialism became source material
for many of her large projects.
Malani's works have had an engaged social commitment throughout. Her
innovative productions in theatre and video from the nineties onwards
have dealt with the axis of globalism and parochialism and the ensuing
aggression in the form of sectarian violence, manipulation of history
and threat of nuclear war.
Just after the riots of Bombay in 1992-1993 that put Indian secular
society out of joint, she was one of the first artists to pick up the
video camera as an alternative medium for making art. In the nineties
she traversed a labyrinth of different media practices with video,
theatre, neon, painting, drawing, installations, combined and montaged
them, let them collide. She is an artist 'pur sang' and although her
latest major works are video installations, she does not call herself a
video artist but a painter. Her artworks do not become just a didactic,
audiovisual pedagogy, but rather a challenging aesthetic conception of
her subjects. The video installation form that she uses for this takes
on an aesthetic that seduces the spectator in the first register.
In Hamletmachine, 1999/2000, she portrays fascist leaders bleeding over
a body creating a throbbing visual cadence that reaches a cathartic high
point from which emerges a large deformed face of a woman howling for
her lost world as the Muslim slum of Behrampada burns to ashes. In
*Transgressions, 2001*, she combines the video element with reverse
paintings and shadows. On the video projections of white European skin
appears the Western clichéd experience of the Orient, combined with
shadows of her Kalighat paintings. The narrative proceeds to give
critical interpretations on genetic engineering and global marketing
strategies, followed by a moronic child's voice pleading to learn
English while languages from India pour down like monsoon rain lost into
the earth forever. Like tattoos, these images adorn the fair skin for
eternity, in a process of cultural destruction (rather than of cultural
creation) that has never come to an end. In works like these, Malani has
found a hybrid form combining her painting style with video and
performance to construct unique ways of contemporary storytelling.
For Nalini Malani, art is a search for the working of the mind,
convincingly crystallizing questions regarding human behavior. As she
says, "I do believe in a more progressive society, and I do not refer
here to technological progress. It has to do with human beings and
tolerance and understanding."
Citation
Malani is one of the pioneers of contemporary Indian art. Although
primarily a visual artist, she has over the last decade or two moved
into installation and media art. Her influence on other younger artists
to experiment with different media is often acknowledged by the art
community in India. As far as work with technology goes, mention must be
made of *Remembering Toba Tek Singh*, a 20-minute video installation.
Among other props, this piece used 17 VCDs, four data projections and 12
television monitors (for more on this piece, see
(http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Nalini_Malani).
Her *Sacred and the Profane* uses a 'primitive' technology of the cinema
in conjunction with popular art. An experiment of this kind brings forth
the fascination with technology not only to the artist but also to the
viewer and the larger public. It does so not by presenting technology
per se but by re-presenting common art forms and images.
This re-presentation captures the similarities as well as the
differences with the original, popular images. In so doing, technology
establishes a common space with artistic expression and thereby gets
assimilated within the universe of art. So, although Malani's work does
not deal with 'high' technology, her works sublimely capture the spirit
of technology – that is, technology that is used does not intrude on the
artwork, allows the artwork to retain its autonomy as a piece of art and
yet makes it clear that this work has been radically altered by the use
of something other than art, in this case some technological intervention.
Her work also satisfies the criterion of global connectedness.
*Remembering Toba Tek Singh* is based on a short story by the well known
writer Manto dealing with the events during the partition of the Indian
sub-continent into India and Pakistan, reflecting artistically on
inhuman and irrational violence. As many commentators have noted, her
art often reflects on marginalized voices and is committed to protest,
whether it is a response to sexual exploitation (as in her
*Medeaprojekt*) or religious/national fanaticism (as in *Hamletmachine*).
Biography
Malani has worked with video since 1991. She started by recording her
ephemeral, continuous drawing *City of Desires*, on the walls of Gallery
Chemould, Bombay, made in protest against the rise of Hindu
fundamentalism. Her video works have been an expansion of her practices
in drawing and painting. In her multimedia installations she often makes
single cell animated drawings that bleed and stain. Foregrounding the
dispossessed of the earth, she has worked in theatre collaborations
using texts by the German playwrights Heiner Mueller, Bertolt Brecht and
the Pakistani writer Sa'adat Hussain Manto which reflect on violence,
pain and suffering in the name of nationalism and religion.
She has shown her large scale works in solo exhibitions at Prince of
Wales Museum Bombay, 1999, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
2002, Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi, 2002; and Bose Pacia Modern, New
York 2004.
A selection of the venues where her presentations have been shown are:
The World Wide Video Festivals, Amsterdam 1998, 2000, 2002; Century City
at the Tate Modern in London, 2001; Unpacking Europe, Museum Boymans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2002; the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, 2002;
Kalaghoda Festival, Bombay, 2003; Multi-Media Art Asia Pacific,
Millennium Monument Beijing, 2003; Poetic Justice, Istanbul Biennale,
2003; House of World Culture, Berlin 2003,Zoom, Museo Temporario Lisbon,
2004; Minority Report, Aarhus Art Festival, Aarhus, 2004; La Nuit
Blanche, Paris, 2004; "Homo Ludens" Media_City Seoul, 2004; Crossing
Currents, New Delhi, 2004; Edge of Desire, Queens Museum, 2005; Sharjah
Biennale 2005; and Venice Biennale 2005.
_____________________________
Regina Célia Pinto - Global Crossings Award Runner-Up
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/pinto.htm
Regina Célia Pinto
Rua Conde de Bernadotte,
26, bloco: 02, apto: 502,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
reginapinto [@] arteonline [dot] arq [dot] br
http://arteonline.arq.br
http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm
Keywords
Net.Art, globalization, Milky Way, giant pixel painting, genre.
Artist Statement
Be Alive Today
by Regina Célia Pinto
After starting out in the world of the arts, I have been working with
art and computers since 1993. In 1997, I became a Net.Artist. I have
never regretted that move. The "Net Art" category is being
simultaneously conceived and built by many artists from several
terrestrial coordinates. Although globalization and exclusion are
completely interlinked terms, I still believe that one of the good
qualities of the former is the fact that it permits the exchange of
artistic experiences in the national and international spheres. That
delights me! All of my work is focused in that direction.
My interest is clearly expressed in *The Museum of the Essential* and
Beyond That* (http://arteonline.arq.br), my best-known work. The museum
has no institutional links and receives no financial aid or sponsorship
of any kind. It is developed on a home computer in the city of Rio de
Janeiro, but it has a dynamic digital model, in a permanent state of
"coming into being" and, for that very reason, receives contributions
from different latitudes and longitudes of this geography without
borders created by information technology. In addition to being its
curator, I am also an artist – the museum encompasses all of my own
work, including the *Library of Marvels*, my collection of "artist
books" on the Web.
These books are electronic narratives that use several kinds of media
and processes: image, sound, words, movement, games, simulation,
programming, and interactivity or the simulation thereof
(http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm). In addition to examining the
cultural impact and possibilities created by computers as machines that
can produce books and libraries, the *Library of Marvels*, in a way, is
also part of the same positive quality of globalization because it seeks
to disseminate the writings of important authors from all continents.
Today, this may be because:
"The image-world is the surface of globalization…. The task is not to
get behind the image surface but to stretch it, enrich it, give it
definition, give it time. A new culture opens here upon the line."
(Susan Buck-Morss, "Visual Studies and Global Imagination").
Perhaps because I have returned to my roots somewhat, I have been
devoting myself to "giant paintings" (pixels on screen) such as the
Milky Way (http://arteonline.arq.br/via_lactea), which began as
reflections on pain, beauty and a photograph that personified the Beslan
tragedy (2004). In this "painting" I touch on another focus of my early
studies: the female gender. The Milky Way is like a mosaic. Different
images with a strong impact, screen sirens, ordinary women, women who
have been victims of violence and women from the third world, side by
side, all have a right to their 15 seconds of fame – "Star Time." The
aim is not to compare them; what matters is the "Whole." The role of
women, ensuring the survival of the species with their milk in this
Milky Way.
I am fascinated by the thought that with my work as a (Brazilian!) woman
I am doing something to light up this Milky Way. It's good to be alive
TODAY! And to participate actively and creatively in this great web of
information.
Citation
It is my pleasure to recommend Regina Célia Pinto for the Leonardo
Global Crossings Prize. Pinto is a Brazilian artist whose work focuses
on web-based and CD-ROM art. Pinto's utilization of technology is
permeated with a poetic and playful sensibility, which has the effects
of both challenging and delighting the user. Global awareness and desire
to make connections characterize most of her work.
Pinto's most extensive project is *The Museum of the Essential*, and
*Beyond That*, previously the on-line publication *Arte on Line*
<http://arteonline.arq.br/> which she initiated and ran from a home
computer. The ability to cross borders has always been important to
Pinto both practically and metaphorically. This virtual museum exhibits
the work of international artists, with special emphasis on South
American digital art. The plan of the building attests to the global
ambitions of the project. It includes areas dedicated to topics such as
Cartographies of Globalization, Cloning and the Web, Esthetic of
Tragedy, Borders of net.art and Web Art Today, The Concept of Borders
Today, Electronic Poetry, Electronic Artist's Books, Anthropological and
Sociological [issues], a video room and a game room.
Pinto's own artwork, consisting of multiple interactive books and game
books is featured in various parts of the web site, especially in the
room labeled "Library of Marvels". I specially recommend *The Book of
Sand*, a game book designed to encourage the participant to reflect on
the relation of aesthetics, ethics, and global events. The game consists
of a virtual set of dominos that allows the user to reconstruct the Twin
Towers. Each piece of the game is linked to images and texts. The
visitor is instructed to think of ethics and aesthetics while playing
the game.
While several internationally renowned Latin American artists use
sophisticated technologies, much of the digital artwork (specially web
art) emulates earlier static, two-dimensional media, such as painting,
drawing, and photography. Pinto models her works on books, yet she
allows the viewer to create individual pathways and to experience the
works in unique, non-linear ways. The inclusion of games within the
books greatly contributes to this effect. Pinto's work invokes the joint
powers of art and technology to seduce, to entertain, to connect, to
challenge, to inspire and to destroy. Hardly more could be expected of
an artist. She deserves your consideration for this award.
Biography
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Regina Célia Pinto is a researcher, visual
artist and teacher.
She earned a teaching certificate in Drawing and Art at the Escola de
Belas Artes of the Universidade Federal in Rio de Janeiro, 1974 - 1977.
She has a Master's degree in Art History, specializing in the
Anthropology of Art / EBA, UFRJ, 1994. Her Master's thesis is titled:
"Four views in search of a reader, important women, art and identity,"
1994, EBA, UFRJ.
She has written a variety of academic works, including published
scientific essays. As a visual artist, she has participated in several
exhibitions and curated several.
_____________________________
Shilpa Gupta - Global Crossings Award Runner-Up
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gxawards/gupta.htm
Shilpa Gupta
2nd Floor, Premesh
6 B Turner Road
Bandra West
Mumbai 400 050
India
Tel: 91 22 26427721
shilpagupta [@] hotmail [dot] com
Keywords
Interactive, public, accessible, mass reproduced, democratic, politics
in everyday life, installation, video, Internet, Bombay/Mumbai.
Artist Statement
Untitled, 2004
Interactive Projection,
Projector and Computer
8 meters wide
In this wall projection are seven figures, all dressed up in camouflage
– which has become increasingly fashionable after the War on Terror
Campaign. First in the West, and more recently, spilling East onto the
streets outside my home. Now I can walk into shops two blocks from where
I live and buy camouflage gear. Camouflage makes you feel Cool and
masquerades Terror. Terror is quite Cool.
Click on the figures and they move, they copy, they imitate. Click one,
click two, choose a leader, become a leader and the rest follow. If they
stop, click them up and they join.
Exercise 1 – 2 – 3 – 4. One Bend, Two Bend, Three Bend, Stay.
Look Straight – Don't See – STAY
I have a bag, I have a phone, my neighbour has a phone, my phone, I
don't have a phone, I don't have a shopping bag, but I need to JOG for
it. Jog Jog Jog Stay on the Spot. Jog Jog Stay Stay
March Free Speech Free Press Free Market March Market Market March Free
Speech No Speech No Press Market Market Market march March
Shut and Be. Shut and Eat. Don't Interrupt. PRAY.
Fun Merry Merry Merry Fun Fun. DO or OUT. Aim 1234 Right Kill 1234 Left
Aim 1234 Shoot Shoot Aim Shoot 1234 1234 1234 4,4
Dumbed in a capitalist society, we enjoy being programmed. We find
instant satiation and loss of memory in turning ourselves into puppets.
We allow media, electronic extensions of ourselves now in the hands of a
corporate often with state support nexus to think for us and amputate
individual reasoning (McLuhan). Mental and physical activity slips from
the mechanical to the mindless, deteriorating into fear, chaos and
violence against an enemy that does not exist in a world where global
consent is hijacked to fight a war in search of weapons which were never
there. Everybody Bend; Don't Talk, Don't See, Don't Hear. Gandhi said so.
The project recalls a psychology where a combination of healthy physical
exercises can help in slow and intense indoctrination of the mind by
intense state military drills, local Hindu right wing RSS cadre
exercises or new age courses to make you fighting fit.
The interactive loop keeps slipping into mindless violence. Violence –
which is no longer just a fashion but is being internalized, morphing
the emptied vulnerable self to become a source to project it towards the
state, which is no longer the sole entity that has monopoly over the
legitimate use of violence.
Citation
Gupta has shown a remarkable flexibility in her approach to creating
works of art moving away from conventional notion of what constitutes
art and art practice. Her work is often about interactivity and it
exists mostly in that moment, an aspect which distinguishes her from
conventional visual artists. She has managed to bring to life practices,
experiences, beliefs, memory and imagination of people, particularly
from India, into the realm of new types of art practices. In doing so
she has reached out to a wider section of society and has changed the
idea of how we experience or even imagine art. She has also managed to
move away from a Eurocentric art history based art practice. Her work
stands outside the definitions created by such institutions and offer a
fresh approach to creating art in Indian context.
Among her well-known works are *Blessed-bandwidth.net*,
*Sentiment-Express.com* and *Diamonds and You.com*. Describing
*Blessed-bandwidth.net*, a piece commissioned by Tate Online, Jemima
Rellie says, "Shilpa Gupta's new work *Blessed-bandwidth.net* invites
visitors to log on, choose a religion and get blessed. Set against a
world divided by faith, the work explores religion, globalization and
the complex cultural and political dynamics of the Internet … it
juxtaposes the real and virtual worlds and encourages visitors to
consider how these spaces overlap and merge." In writing about her work,
Johan Pijnappel has this to say: "She creates fake worlds that simulate
the culture of her environment, while simultaneously standing this
culture on its head. In a conversation we once had, she suggested to me
her reasons for bringing net art into her practice: 'It is about default
properties, default politics. Net.art is non-consumable. It is familiar,
interactive, friendly and time based. It can't match your curtains, and
comes built in with a challenge to the lopsided hierarchical
relationship between the artist and the patron'."
While Shilpa Gupta's works are visibly technological, the use of
technology is not to throw light on technology but on ordinary
experiences. In the process, technology becomes an essential part of her
work, again not because she is using the net as a medium but because she
is saying something essential about the net - that the net impregnates
our experiences so seamlessly that we are always in danger of forgetting
that it is technology that is mediating between us and the world. It
seems to be the case that the most important insights into technology
which her work develops are the ways by which technology becomes
'natural', something which we take for granted in the same way as the
natural world around us.
Biography
Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976) lives and works in Mumbai where she has
participated in shows at Saakshi Gallery, Gallery Chemould, National
Gallery of Modern Art and at Lakeeren Art Gallery.
Recent works include *Your Kidney Supermarket*, an interactive
installation and video on illegal human organ trade which was shown in a
bookshop window in Mumbai and later at the Transmediale, Berlin where it
received the Interaction award 2004.
She also works in Internet art, for example, *Blessed-Bandwidth.net*
which was commissioned by the Tate, London (2003) and *Sentiment -
Expess.com*, which was shown at Century Cities (2001) curated by Geeta
Kapur at the Tate Modern.
In 2006, she will show at Biennial of Sydney, Solo Show - The Blackbox @
ARCO, Madrid, 9th Havana Biennial and Liverpool Biennale. She has
participated in Media City Seoul Biennale and Fukuoka Asian Art
Triennial and over the past 10 years she has participated in shows in
Berlin, Brisbane, New York, Beijing, Hoorn, Amsterdam, Auckland,
Singapore, Jakarta, Manchester, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Melbourne, Toronto,
Glasgow, Seoul, Tallinn and Ljubljana.
She has initiated the Aar Paar - a public art exchange project between
India and Pakistan and the Video Art Road Show, screenings of video art
on streets in Mumbai and Delhi. In 2005 she co-facilitated a visual art
exhibition on borders for the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
________________________________________________________________
Global Crossings
________________________________________________________________
Global Crossings
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/
by Dennis Summers
3927 Parkview Drive
Royal Oak, MI 48073
U.S.A.
Tel: +248-549-2322
Dennis [@] quantumdanceworks [dot] com
http://www.quantumdanceworks.com
and Choy Kok Kee
School of Film and Media Studies
Ngee Ann Polytechnic
535 Clementi Road
Blk 53 #07-01
Singapore 599489.
Tel: +65 6460 8251
kokkee [@] np [dot] edu [dot] sg / kokkee [@] artlover [dot] com
"We are looking for work that considers the global earth in some fashion
or another. It can be work that addresses global social, political
economic, spiritual, etc. issues. It can be work that physically or
metaphorically lies in multiple locations on the planet, it can be work
that may have personal relationships to multiple locations on the
planet. Or anything else that loosely falls along the concept of being
"global" in nature." – LEA call for entries.
Introduction
The idea for this show came out of an email exchange between myself and
Nisar Keshvani, LEA's editor-in-chief. The *Leonardo* journal had
recently published an article on my ongoing global memorial artwork
called *The Crying Post Project*.
In the time between writing it and publication I had put up some more
posts and had thought that *LEA* would be a good venue to update the
article. Nisar suggested putting together an Internet exhibit of other
artworks that were somehow global in design or content. Nisar also
brought in Kok Kee Choy as a co-curator to participate with the review
process.
I have to say that this exhibit turned out to be much trickier, and to
take much longer than I initially expected. First of all, our original
call for entries brought in almost no appropriate work at all. And
although our second call was much more productive, I have the feeling
that there are many more artists doing exciting, challenging global
artwork. I know that at least a couple of artists that we personally
approached had not seen the call for entries at all.
As powerful a communications medium as the Internet is, the reality is
that even well networked people are buried under too many information
resources, and it can be quite easy to miss opportunities. Furthermore,
our goal was to try to increase the representation of artists around the
globe who tend to be under-represented in the Euro-American art axis.
This too was difficult, in that many of them may not even have Internet
access.
Additionally, there were some artists with interesting work, who
unfortunately were unable to resolve technical details in getting the
work presentable for the Internet. In spite of all these concerns, I
believe that the artists we have collected here represent a quality
cross-section of the technical and aesthetic range of globally related
artwork. However, if you are reading this and believe your work to be
appropriate, please do not hesitate to contact *LEA* at lea [@] mitpress
[dot] mit [dot] edu.
Before considering the artists that have been included in this exhibit,
I'd like to consider a number of artists we were unable to include, and
the implications of their artwork to a new networked global art and economy.
One artist wrote:
"Hello there,
My name is Scott Wesly am a local artist from austria
i will like you to do me a favour. the favour is that my agent is to pay
me some money for the art award which i won from mr erick benjamin in
usa for the jobs i model for him, Now he is owing me some money and he
has decided to pay me with USPS Money Order and i cannot cash the money
over here because it is USPS Money Order or CANADA money order. so now
am looking for any US or Canada CITIZEN that i can trust in helping me
to cash the Money Order and i don't mind in paying the person 10% of the
money because this has been a problem for me so i want you to help me
out of the problem.
I will be very greatfull if you can help me out in cashing this money
order. I will be waiting for your urgent response ASAP today. Here is
the full name and address of the agent owing me if you will like to
contact him for confirmation
MR ERICK BENJAMIN
206-338-5690"
The global component here should be apparent: Austria, the USA, and
perhaps Canada. Additionally there is a provocative subtext – global
monetary practices; perhaps the abuse suffered by people on the wrong
end of the new global economy. Unfortunately the artist failed to supply
us with the necessary website or attached information.
Mr Wesly was by no means the only artist dealing with global monetary
practices, and their aesthetic implications. Several artists including
Mr Aroh Edy (Nigeria), Mr Serge Mitev (Russia), Dr Debbie jerry [sic]
(also Nigeria), Mr Wong Du (China), Mr John Savimbi (Angola), and Mrs
Luisa Loi Ejercito Estrada (Philippines), all submitted interesting
collaborative project ideas. In general, each project consisted of a
request to a collaborator to supply banking information and/or money in
order to transfer larger sums out of their respective countries.
There was some variation in the socio-political subtexts. In some cases
they dealt with different funereal practices, i.e. the relationship
between money and the dead (Edy, Du, and Savimbi); in others they dealt
with power relationships and the significance of protected resources
(Mitev, jerry, and Estrada). I was intrigued to see that this common
aesthetic was shared by artists from what we would generally consider to
be wildly differing cultural traditions. It may be true, as some have
suggested, that the global economy is leading to a shared global culture.
Nonetheless, this seems to me to be an important new aesthetic
development, which goes under-reported by the traditional art press.
Perhaps owing to the nature of the *Leonardo Electronic Almanac*,
artists that would normally go unrecognized felt comfortable enough to
respond to our call for entries. Unfortunately, it was difficult to get
the full details of these projects from either the artists or their
global collaborators.
The Works
- Capture Site by Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers
- Floating Point by Tiffany Holmes
- Home and Away by Samina Mishra
- Intermundos by Vanessa Gocksch
- Nike Blanket Petition by Cat Mazza
- Radiomap by Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber
- Surveillance by Alison Chung-Yan
- The Face Of Tomorrow by Mike Mike
- World Hug Day by Gao Brothers
The artists in this show have addressed the global concept with variety.
It should come as no surprise that several took a socio-political
approach (Mike, Chung-Yan, Mishra, Mazza). Three might be considered
more of a technological/(pseudo)scientific approach (Holmes, Hohl/Huber,
and Doyon/Demers), and two a multicultural communications approach
(Gocksch and the Gao Brothers).
Mike, Chung-Yan, Mishra, and Mazza all consider what it means to be a
global citizen. Mazza and *microRevolt* have created a global community
dedicated to raising issues of the sweatshop treatment of women
throughout the world, particularly as it relates to Nike. Much like the
AIDS quilt and certainly just as serious, small squares are knitted by
people all over the world and are being collected for use as a blanket
to present to Phil Knight, the Chairman of Nike. In this project the
Internet is the format for publicity, but not the actual artwork.
Chung-Yan also looks at the darker side of global control with her
*Surveillance* project, in a piece that could only be created and
displayed via the Internet. In her case, she points out how much of the
world is now both public and easily accessible, raising the usual
questions of just how far the information revolution will go, and how
little control we have over it. I personally would like to see this
raised to a higher level of engagement than a "things as they are"
presentation. Perhaps into an artwork that allows for some form of
public engagement as does the Nike Blanket Petition.
Mike takes a more positive - some might even say utopian - approach with
*The Face Of Tomorrow*. Here Mike creates composite images of men and
women created by combining multiple pictures of the populations of
cosmopolitan cities throughout the world. What is interesting is how
similar these composites appear even from wildly differing locales.
There are however, some structural issues that ought to be considered.
For example, Mike does point out the difficulty in getting photos of
women in Muslim countries, but this leaves a noticeable and questionable
gap in his presentation. Additional issues include the fact that the
photos are overwhelmingly of young people, which certainly skews the
composites. I also would have been intrigued to see this carried even
further into gender-neutral composites. Finally, the Google ads for
smiley faces and other products and services may have been an economic
necessity, but it distracts from the presentation.
Mishra looks at the children of immigrants from India and other Asian
countries, and displays their often poignant and wise comments on living
in Great Britain. Although I appreciate the range, depth and subtlety of
her photos and quotes, I think that the piece overall would benefit from
a more technically savvy and aesthetically sophisticated presentation.
Such an interface design could enhance the content, and be an even
richer experience for the participant.
Holmes takes a serious and scientific approach to global water pollution
in *Floating Point*. In this piece she creates multiple methods of
visually representing data pertinent to specific water components at
specific locations. Although it might be dismissed as "simply"
information design, there are both aesthetic and interactive components
to many of the locations, which are quite interesting independently of
its informational value.
Hohl and Huber have crafted a project, which in addition to its
informational value, seems to be just plain fun. In *Radiomap*
participants (and ultimately collaborators) walk on a physical
representation of the globe projected onto the floor, and based on their
"global location" different radio stations can be heard. Each station is
taken from the "real" location. This is a complex piece, which in
addition to bringing people into "contact" with other parts of the
world, also can allow for a variety of collaborative and other experiences.
*Capture Site* by Doyon and Demers is a piece which in some ways is the
inverse of *Radiomap*. Here, the two artists are suspended above ground
in a large net, with all sorts of sensors in place that communicate
local environmental information throughout the world.
Additionally, the two performers engage in a performance/conversation
that is also streamed throughout the internet.
*Intermundos*, created in Colombia by Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro),
has as its goal the representation of local youth culture, and its
connection to youth cultures worldwide. It has a range of funky elements
and does a good job of capturing both visual and conceptual aspects of
their cultural environment. At this point it is still mainly focused on
Colombia, but there are enough segments that look elsewhere, that I have
hope for the growth of what is described as an ongoing project.
Some may discount the *World Hug Day* project by the Gao Brothers as
both simple, naïve and aesthetically uninteresting. And to tell you the
truth, I would have a hard time discounting that critique. However,
perhaps because of my "flower power sixties" imprinting, I see it as
both a powerful statement and a social sculpture not dissimilar to that
of Christo and Jean Claude, or Fluxus artists such as Yoko Ono. The
image of thousands of people throughout the world in a simultaneous hug
is quite striking.
So if you're not out there hugging, please stop reading this and start
exploring the world.
BIOGRAPHIES
The multimedia installations, bookworks, digital animations, performance
and conceptual works of Dennis Summers have been inspired by his
readings in quantum physics, philosophy of science, anthropology,
linguistics and information theory. He has worked and exhibited artwork
internationally for the past 20 years. More recently his interest in
environmental issues, current theories on mapping, and language
extinction has led to a variety of artworks including his ongoing global
conceptual artwork *The Crying Post Project*, begun in 2001. In addition
to the physical posts placed around the world as part of *The Crying
Post Project*, other components include a series of digital prints and
an interactive 3D website. In contrast to this sort of work, a recent
series of abstract digital "color field" videos have been described as
mesmerizing, beautiful and complex. His artist's books and videos are in
the collections of several major museums.
Choy Kok Kee holds a Master of Art degree in Design for Interactive
Media from the Centre of Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, London,
UK. Prior to that, he was trained in advertising art/applied art and
fine art. He has worked in the creative industry for more than two
decades as an art director and creative consultant. Kok Kee is also an
academic and advisor to tertiary institutions and art colleges. As an
artist, Kok Kee first exhibited his works at a tender age of 11 in the
late 1970s after being spotted as an art prodigy. Since then, Kok Kee
has exhibited and won numerous art awards both abroad and locally. His
works are acquired and collected by both foreign and local commercial
institutions, government bodies and educational establishments. He is
also a member and chairperson of governmental, educational, art and
design advisory committee and professional bodies in areas concerning
political matters, media, education, creative design and arts
development. Kok Kee is also a noted pioneer digital media artist in
Singapore and an ex-Mensa international member. He is also the founder
and mastermind behind the brand Cult Of Creatives.
_____________________________
Capture Site
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/capture/index.htm
by Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers
Doyon/Demers
746, rue Saint-Olivier
Québec (Québec)
G1R 1H5
Canada
Tel: +(418) 524-6337
Petitsrectis [@] doyondemers [dot] org
http://www.doyondemers.org/situation/index_sc.html
In the context of the Festival Art Action Actuel (FA3), Doyon/Demers
presented the third version of *Capture Site*, located 5.25 meters above
a rooftop visible from the windows of Artexte. The installation,
composed of sensors fixed to a suspended gridwork, gathered data
corresponding to changes in the environment, detecting variations in
luminosity, temperature and wind velocity, as well as the movements and
pressure exerted by the performers. The conversation d'amour,
d'anecdotes et de théories between Doyon and Demers, as they stood on
the aerial grid each day between 12:00 and 5:00 PM, were transmitted in
real-time audio and video to the interior of Artexte's space.
St Raymond - The Capture Site
For the duration of this performative event, the environmental data were
translated into information taken from Artexte's bibliographical
database. Five streams of data were produced from the random pairing of
the environmental elements with different categories from the database.
For example, measures of light intensity were matched with documents
from the "Subject" category of Artexte's database, temperature changes
found their equivalence from the "Geographic Code" category, wind speed
was matched with "Artists", etc. These constantly changing data streams,
produced by applying environmental variables to information concerned
primarily with Canada's visual arts community, were accessible on-line,
in real time.
Finally, an email message containing selected information from the
climatic reading and the movements of Doyon/Demers at that precise
moment, was automatically sent, every 20 seconds, to one of the five
continents.
Biography
Helene Doyon and Jean-Pierre Demers have been working together since
1987. Active in performance art, but keeping free of all labels,
Doyon/Demers identify themselves as "undisciplinarians". These
"Socioaestheticians" have produced many events incorporating rural and
urban environments, in which often voluntary citizens become both the
material for the work and its dispersed authors. Their works have been
presented in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, France, Spain, Hungary, the
Netherlands and Japan. Doyon/Demers are currently completing their
Doctorat en Etudes et pratiques des arts at the Universite du Quebec a
Montreal (UQAM), Canada. In 2003, Helene Doyon was appointed professor
in New Media Arts at the Ecole des arts visuels of Laval University in
Quebec City. Jean-Pierre Demers also teaches at UQAM.
_____________________________
Floating Point
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/floatingpt/index.htm
by Tiffany Holmes
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Technology
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago IL 60603
U.S.A.
Tel: +312-345-3760
Fax: +312-345-3565
tholme [@] artic [dot] edu
http://www.enviroart.org/HolmesColab/docs/
In her project *Floating Point*, the artist proposes to study
trans-disciplinary methods of information analysis in the context of
making pollution data accessible and informative to the general public —
through art and performance. The broader goal of the proposed research
is to creatively design art that promotes sustainable and ecologically
responsible modes of living and a general awareness of both local and
global water quality issues.
In Zurich, the artist creates a two channel video installation that
displays a comparison of the dissolved oxygen levels in both Lake Zurich
and the Limnat River. To begin this project, she will develop a piece of
hardware from a dissolved oxygen sensor. This hardware will be fashioned
to float off a lifejacket or body buoyancy aid. The device will be
connected to a laptop that can read the data transmitted in real time
and provide an instant visualization of the amount of oxygen available.
Currently, the artist is testing content ideas for use in the real-time
visualization. The link above connects to the animation studies for the
project, which document the process of how the artist conceptualized
different ways to image water quality.
Biography
Tiffany Holmes is a multimedia artist whose practice blends traditional
materials and new media in large-scale interactive installations. Her
work explores the relationship between digital technology and culture
with an emphasis on technologies of seeing. Her recent work explores the
movement of both human and animal bodies and the visual languages from
different disciplines used to capture that movement. She exhibits widely
in international and national venues, including the J. Paul Getty Museum
in Los Angeles, the Interaction '01 biennial in Japan, ISEA, SIGGRAPH
2000, World@rt in Denmark, Digital Salon '99 in New York and Madrid, and
the Viper media festival in Switzerland. She writes about her work and
research and lectures in venues as diverse as the International
Symposium on the History of Neuroscience in Zurich, SIGGRAPH '99, Next
1.0 in Sweden, and the Computer Games, Digital Culture conference in
Finland.
With a diverse academic background in painting, animation, and biology,
Holmes situates her work at the intersection between artistic,
biomedical, and linguistic modes of bodily representation. With a
Bachelor's degree in art history from Williams College, Holmes received
a Masters in fine arts in painting from the Maryland Institute College
of Art and a Masters in fine arts in digital arts from the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County. To promote her interdisciplinary artistic
practice, the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan awarded
Holmes a prestigious three-year fellowship. Holmes recently earned an
Illinois Arts Council individual grant and an Artists In Labs residency
in Switzerland. She is currently an assistant professor of art and
technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she
teaches courses in interactivity and the history and theory of
electronic media.
_____________________________
Home and Away - Growing up as British Asians in London
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/floatingpt/index.htm
by Samina Mishra
264/1 Gulmohar Avenue
Jamia Nagar
New Delhi 110025
India
Tel: +00 91 98116251888
samina [@] vsnl [dot] com
http://www.sarai.net/compositions/multimedia/samina/samina/index.htm
*Home and Away* is a multi-layered, multimedia work that explores the
dynamics of defining one's identity. The children in *Home and Away* are
second and third generation British Asian and belong to families that
traveled to Britain from across the Indian Subcontinent India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh. An unfamiliar land was filled slowly with the familiar
objects, sounds and smells.
And so, for the first generation, it may have been easy to identify
themselves as the Indian Diaspora, with a comfortable division between a
home left behind and a new home, between a nostalgic past and a
pragmatic present. But for these children, this is the only home they
have ever known - a unique combination of London's physical space and
the Subcontinent's "culture". They grow up in predominantly Asian
neighborhoods, speak English with an accent that is far from Asian, eat
roti sabzi at home and learn hardly any Asian history at school. So, if
London is Home, then it is still, in some senses, distant and away. And
if the Subcontinent is Away, it is still home to many things that make
up their identity.
The *Home and Away* exhibition is made up of digitally produced panels.
The panels integrate large single images as well as selected strips from
the contact sheets with text that excerpts interviews and an author's
narrative. The photographs consist of portraits of the children and
their families as well as street images and signage. These speak of a
very strong Asian presence, both in everyday spaces as well as the
exceptional, for example, the annual Baisakhi celebration in Southall,
which coincided in 2003 with the opening of a new Gurdwara, the largest
anywhere outside of India.
The exhibit is bound together by an edited soundtrack using voice, music
and effect sounds. In one corner, there is a computer displaying an html
presentation which combines all the elements of the exhibition but is a
stand alone work that allows the viewer interactive freedom.
Biography
Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker and media practitioner based in
New Delhi. She has recently finished *The House on Gulmohar Avenue*, a
documentary film about home and belonging, tracing the filmmaker's
personal journey to understand what it can mean to be a Muslim in India
today. *Home and Away*, a multimedia exhibition on British Asian
children in London, appeared in ISEA 2004.
Her work includes *Stories of Girlhood*, a series of three films on the
Girl Child in India, produced for Unicef, India and *Adha Asman*, a
video about differential access to healthcare, produced for the British
Council as part of the Gender Planning Training Project. She has also
written *Hina in the Old City*, a non-fiction book with photographs on
the Walled City of Delhi for children. She was the location sound
recordist for the documentary film *Words on Water*. She has translated
six children's stories from Urdu into English for The Magic Key,
published by Young Zubaan, New Delhi.
_____________________________
Intermundos Site
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/intermundos/index.htm
by Vanessa Gocksch (Pata de Perro)
Hotel Bellavista
4650 Avenida Santander
Marbella, Cartagena de Indias
Colombia
Tel: +57 5 664 6411
patadeperro [@] intermundos [dot] org
http://www.intermundos.org
*Intermundos* is an independent organization based in Colombia. Through
events, exchange and the media arts we work to network marginalized
Colombian communities together with different cultural youth movements
from the "north".
The project started by working with the Colombian hiphop movement, and
it is in this area that it has grown the most. We have an office in
Bogotá that serves as an information center where youths can find
videos, books, magazines and music related to artistic movements from
the north, as well as information related to their cultural heritage.
Local events and workshops are organized relating to the hiphop
movement; we host a weekly hiphop radio program, have published
documentaries and have collaborated with other independent entities by
participating in events and exchanges on a local and global scale. We
have recently initiated a collaborative initiative with the PixelACHE
festival group from Finland whereby exchanges are being generated
between the "electronic subcultures" of our two countries and beyond.
In all of our projects we work to strengthen the sense of local identity
by highlighting the immense intellectual and cultural wealth of the
different regions of Colombia. We, like many others in Colombia, feel
that it is only through this heightened sense of identity (and greater
access to information) that we can construct movements (or a society)
that can move beyond following cultural trends towards proposing them.
Today, what is perhaps the most important intellectual legacy existent
in Colombia - indigenous knowledge - is fast disappearing. The western
world has not yet validated "pre"–literate forms of knowledge
acquisition as a valuable asset towards the "development" of human
culture. This disdain on the part of the dominant, technology-based
culture causes as consequence the continuous extermination of aborigine
cultures and disappearance of their intellectual legacy. *Intermundos*
is developing ways of reaffirming the values of these cultures through
different projects and exchanges. Most of these are still in their
initial phase.
The website Intermundos.org is to serve firstly as our window to the
world, and secondly as a multimedia experiment that serves to find new
ways to communicate ideas through an organic format that does not follow
a specific logic (that arises from linear thought) but rather invites
the user to lose themselves in a chaotic framework much more true to
life itself (multidimensional). We still consider the website to be a
pilot, we are currently seeking funding in order to make it into the
cultural portal we wish it to become.
Biography
Vanessa Gocksch is an artist who was born in the north but opted for the
south. Travelling from Brussels to Miami, then Mexico, she is now based
in Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. She studied
visual arts with an emphasis in sculpture in Florida International
University, La Cambre and Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. She has worked
with many different media, including sculpture, etching, photography,
installation, performance, video and documentary. Her work has been
exhibited in galleries and festivals in Mexico, Colombia, Brooklyn,
Miami, Helsinki and London. As of the year 2000 she started venturing
into the digital realm, teaching herself the tools necessary to
communicate and create in what she calls an indispensable medium when
located in a "remote" region of the planet. She is presently performing
as a video jockey under the name of Pata de Perro, as well as producing
a documentary and developing the communication project *Intermundos* and
its website.
_____________________________
The Nike Blanket Petition
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/nike/index.htm
by Cat Mazza
microRevolt
P.O. Box 1659
Troy, NY 12180
U.S.A.
Tel: +518 253 5830
inquiry [@] microrevolt [dot] org
http://www.microrevolt.org/petition_overview.htm
The Nike Blanket Petition is an initiative of *microRevolt*, a
collective of fiber hobbyists and cyber-activists founded by artist Cat
Mazza. The mission of *microRevolt*is to organize new media projects
that promote sweatshop awareness and investigate the current crisis of
global expansion and the feminization of labor.
The *Nike Blanket Petition* is a 14-foot wide blanket made up of knitted
together squares. Each square becomes a pixel that makes up a bitmap of
the Nike swoosh logo, and each square acts as a hand made petition for
fair labor policies for Nike apparel workers. Participants from the
United States and abroad have come together to knit or crochet a
petition or virtually sign a square through the microRevolt.org website.
The project combines Internet technology with traditional craft as a way
of engaging social networks, whether in face-to-face knitting circles or
an on-line community in dialog about the labor process of garment
production.
The Nike Blanket Petition has toured various knitting circles including
ones held in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Los Angeles,
and has received on-line signatures from over 20 countries. Once the
blanket is complete with a border, it will be presented to the Chairman
of the Board of Nike Corporation, Phil Knight, as a gesture of hope for
abolition of the sweatshop conditions for Nike apparel workers.
Biography
Cat Mazza founded *microRevolt* in 2003 to combine her interests in
media activism, women's labor issues, and art. From 1999-2003 she worked
at Eyebeam, a non-profit new media art center in New York City where she
developed education, curatorial and technology programs. She is
currently teaching electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
where she received her Masters in fine arts. 2005 exhibitions include:
Prix Ars Electronica, where she won a Digital Communities award; SESI
gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil; *Fuzzy Logic* at Bridgewater Hall in
Manchester, UK, and the *Upgrade International* at Eyebeam in New York City.
_____________________________
Radio Map
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/radiomap/index.htm
by Michael Hohl and Stephan Huber
Sheffield Hallam University
School of Cultural Studies
Art & Design Research Centre
Psalter Lane Campus
Sheffield, S11 8UZ
United Kingdom
info [@] hohlwelt [dot] com
stephan [@] digitalmind [dot] de
http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/interact/practice/radiomap.html
*Radiomap* is an unencumbered interactive environment that enables one
or more participants to walk about a large photorealistic map of the
world and listen to live radio programs from those locations they are
walking about. The location in focus is indicated by a "point of
interest", a visual ring element.
If more then one participant is present on the map this single "point of
interest" is shared among them. Now they have to negotiate their
movements to accurately tune into stations as they have an equal amount
of control over it. The overall interaction is simple and intuitive and
encourages collaboration.
The radio programs in the database have been selected for their strong
local color and program format. Where possible, stations that solely
broadcast music of a certain genre have been avoided, as they would not
support the concept behind the work.
Part of this concept is the effect of disorientation as this large-scale
map is not experienced from a (safe) distance but participants are
placed upon it. Continents appear from a different perspective, and
geography and the relationships among continents seem distorted.
Another part lies beyond the mundane quality of the radio broadcasts as
attentive participants realize different time zones and seasons in the
different hemispheres besides the multitude of languages and dialects.
These broadcasts together with the unusual, disorientating viewpoint
create Gestalt effects that enable people to perceive the earth and
other cultures from a different perspective. It is a collective and
holistic experience of exploration, surprise, longing and belonging,
mediating between the individuals (in the installation) and the cultures
of the broadcasting places, creating an intense, presence that is
expected to last beyond the active participation itself.
*Radiomap* is the practice-based part of a research project Hohl is
undertaking at the Art & Design Research Centre of Sheffield Hallam
University. This exploration is about the Experiential Qualities of
Interactive Environments.
Biographies
Michael Hohl graduated in 2000 with a Masters in Digital Media Design
from the University of the Arts, Berlin and also spent some time at the
Köln international School of Design (KISD) in Cologne. He worked as a
conceptionist in digital media from 1994 in different digital media
companies in Berlin (PIxelpark, ArtCom, cityscope, imstall). In 2002,
after the bubble burst he relocated to the UK (after having lived for
almost 10 years in Berlin). He is currently researching "Experiential
Qualities of Interactive Environments" at the Art & Design Research
Centre at Sheffield Hallam University.
Stephan Huber is a freelance designer, artist and programmer based in
Hamburg, Germany. He started with an apprenticeship in typesetting and
graduated in 2003 with a Masters in Digital Media Design from the
University of the Arts, Berlin. Stephan is interested in wicked
technical challenges such as the visualization of databases. He also
tries to explore the sources of right-wing extremism in his Masters in
his installation *A world of truths*.
_____________________________
Surveillance
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/surveillance/index.htm
by Alison Chung-Yan
Lecturer
Faculty of Music (Sonic Design)
Carleton University
School for Studies in Art & Culture
20 Haslemere Avenue
Ottawa, ON
Canada K2W 1E3
Tel: +(613) 599-8731
alison [@] sonicscape [dot] biz
http://artengine.ca/chungyan/surv/index.htm
*Surveillance* (2004) is a net art installation which explores the
phenomenon of webcam surveillance on the Internet and its capacity to
conjoin spaces near and far – physical and virtual – public and private.
Housed within a single webpage, 15 smaller windows are gradually
assembled security-camera style into a 5x3 matrix offering a near
real-time glimpse of webcams situated around the world.
As a woman in the Netherlands searches her fridge, an elephant drinks
from a watering hole in Africa. Students mill about a campus in southern
California while traffic hums along in Toronto. The night sky is lit up
in Shanghai as an office worker in Houston toils away in a cubicle. In
Japan, a Zen garden is a picture of complete stillness while the
Internet Traffic monitor registers a spike in activity.
Satellite cloud patterns over Costa Rica allude to the possibility of a
storm, as people wait in line at a cafeteria in Alaska and a guinea pig
somewhere in Pennsylvania stirs in its cage. As a solar flare is picked
up by satellite, someone crosses a bridge in Bali and a BBC radio
broadcaster reaches for his cup of coffee.
Unlike the fast-paced abbreviated snapshot of the world as often
depicted and superimposed by television news media, *Surveillance*
attempts to show the world unfolding and moving to its own rhythm. It
offers the chance to observe with the attendant possibility for things
to happen – or simply be.
The exhibit uses Flash and Javascript and is optimized for 800 x 600
screen size resolution, Internet Explorer 5+ browser on PC, and dial-up
Internet access speeds.
Biography
Alison Chung-Yan (b. 1971, Trinidad) is a media artist and composer
based in Ottawa, Canada.
Her works have been exhibited at the Images Festival (Toronto), National
Arts Centre (Ottawa), Oscar Peterson Hall (Montreal), Java Museum for
Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art (Germany), La Casa Encendida
(Spain), Island Art Film and Video Festival (UK), and the 2004 Biennale
of Electronic Art (Australia).
Alison is currently focused on the creation of interactive sound and
video installations with funding support awarded by the Canada Council
for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Corel Endowment Fund for the
Arts in Ottawa.
Classically trained in piano performance under the Western Ontario
Conservatory of Music, Alison also holds a B.A.Sc.(Honours) Degree in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, a Diploma in
Sonic Design from Carleton University, and is an alumnus of the Canadian
Screen Training Centre's Summer Institute for Film, Television & New
Media. She is currently a lecturer on the Faculty of Music at Carleton
University where she instructs courses in computer music.
_____________________________
The Face Of Tomorrow
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/face/index.htm
by Mike Mike
Kadirler 9 - D4
Firuzaga, Beyoglu
Istanbul
Turkey
Tel: +90 537 938 1876
mike [@] faceoftomorrow [dot] com
http://www.faceoftomorrow.com
*The Face of Tomorrow* is an open-source web-based exploration of human
identity as affected by the forces of globalization. It makes full use
of all the tools of the modern economy - distributed work across several
time zones, outsourcing to take advantages of cost disparities, an open
source model that allows input from contributors, and of course the
Internet itself as a medium of display and exchange.
On one level the project answers questions such as "What does a New
Yorker, a Londoner look like?" On a deeper level the work deals with
issues arising out of the mechanics of globalization such as inclusion,
access and democracy.
The source code, which documents the photo shoot, selection and morphing
process is open for inspection and change by all involved. As a result
the project has now taken on a life of its own, like a computer code or
virus, and at present there are people in Colombia, Japan, Israel and
Mexico working on the project independently of Mike.
Biography
Mike Mike, born in 1964 in Cape Town, South Africa, studied at
Goldsmiths College, London and lives and works Istanbul
_____________________________
World Hug Day
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/gx/hug/index.htm
by Gao Brothers
Beijing New Art Projects
4 Jiuxianqiao Road,
The Factory 798 Art District, Beijing
P.O. Box 8503
Beijing 100015
China
Tel: +86 10 84566660
Fax: +86 10 84566660
gaobrothers [@] gmail [dot] com
http://www.world-hug-day.net
Here, we propose the *World Hug Day* project. We started it in Shangdong
Province, China, together with a worldwide Internet project, an
interactive international campaign via the Internet, and have got
enormous feedback and support.
We carried out the first such performance, *The Utopia Of Hugging For
Twenty Minutes*, on 10 September 2000. We invited some 150 volunteers,
who were previously strangers to each other, to participate. We asked
the participants to choose a person at random for a hug at the same
time, and then cluster into group hugs. Since then, we have hugged
hundreds of strangers, and organized group hugs for strangers in
different public locations in different ways many times.
In order to develop the *World Hug Day* project worldwide, we are
planning to go global to hug hundreds of strangers, with permission, of
course, and organize group hugs for strangers, and hold a travel
exhibition of these photos of the hug-performance worldwide.
Biography
Gao Zhen (b. 1956) and Gao Qiang (b. 1962) were both born in Jinan, China.
The Gao brothers are a pair of artists based in Beijing. They are
authors of several published works, including *How Far Can You Walk in
One Day in Beijing*, *The Current State Of Chinese Avant-Garde Art* and
*The Report Of Art Environment*, who have been collaborating on
installation, performance, photography works and writing since the
mid-1980s. Some of their works were published in *A History Of China
Modern Art*, *China Avant-garde Photography*, *The Best Photography Of
China*, etc. and collected by Chinese and foreign people and museums.
___________________
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| CREDITS |
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Nisar Keshvani: LEA Editor-in-Chief
Natra Haniff: LEA Editor
Nicholas Cronbach: LEA Editor
Kathleen Quillian: LEA e-digest Coordinator
Michael Punt: LR Editor-in-Chief
Andre Ho: Web Concept and Design Consultant
Roger Malina: Leonardo Executive Editor
Stephen Wilson: Chair, Leonardo/ISAST Web Committee
Craig Harris: Founding Editor
Editorial Advisory Board:
Irina Aristarkhova, Roy Ascott, Craig Harris, Fatima Lasay,
Michael Naimark, Julianne Pierce
Gallery Advisory Board:
Mark Amerika, Paul Brown, Choy Kok Kee, Steve Dietz, Kim Machan
fAf-LEA Corresponding Editors:
Lee Weng Choy, Ricardo Dal Farra, Elga Ferreira, Young Hae-
Chang, Fatima Lasay, Jose-Carlos Mariategui, Marcus Neustetter,
Elaine Ng, Marc Voge
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