SanArt

Reviewed by Susan Ballard.

Curated by Carolyn Kane for Rhizome.org September, 2009.

The HTML Color Codes exhibition features a selection of internet based artwork that address the topic of digital color. The central question that the exhibition poses is whether or not artists working with the internet are in fact limited to a “ready-made” color palette, a premise that many artists working with film, photography, and mass produced, standardized paint sets have assumed. The rationale for this question stems from theories of perception that argue that color is a not ready-made object found in a paint set or machine, but rather it is an experience that results from a complex process of light interacting with the retina and human nervous system.

Dr. Susan Ballard is a writer, curator, musician and artist who spends her time writing, thinking and teaching about contemporary digital and time-based installation art, sound and noise. Her current research investigates the contribution of artists to contemporary notions of utopia and the political and cultural implications of a materialist reading of media cultures in antipodean environments. Su is the Principal Lecturer in Electronic Arts at the Dunedin School of Art, in New Zealand. Her book The Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader was published in 2008. She is a founding trustee of ADA (http://www.aotearoadigitalarts.org) New Zealand’s digital artists network. She tends to blog here: http://housesparrow.blogspot.com

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The internet may be taking over from the printing press, just as Dürer’s timeless engraving Melencolia I spelled the end for medieval scriptoria, but let us remember that print is beautiful

In the exhibition Michelangelo’s Dream, currently at the Courtauld Gallery in London, the beauty of print is exemplified by Albrecht Dürer’s timeless engraving Melencolia I. The curator was not content to use just any copy of this great print: that selected is one of the finest that exist, and in its microscopically refined use of black ink you can see how majestically artists were able to exploit what was still a new invention in the early-1500s to create beautiful objects.

A book, too, is a beautiful object – and I write with my own just back from the printers. For just as artists were quick to discover the aesthetic possibilities of printing, so were the makers of books. Some might say the advent of the printed book brought a devastating loss of beauty in the culture of the word: for centuries, medieval monasteries had created the spectacular visual treasures that are illuminated books. And yet, the printed book rapidly found its own standards of elegance and authority through the labours of great publishers such as the Aldine Press in Venice and Frobenius in Basel.

Printing was as revolutionary as the internet is now when Dürer created his Melencolia I, and it too had victims. Those medieval scriptoria were doomed, and those who clung to the handwrittern and painted word would be eclipsed. Critics of today’s new communications see the aggression of bloggers as a vice of the digital age, but what about the aggression unleashed by the printing press? The resources of new technology that let Dürer create Melencolia I were soon being exploited to create vicious religious prints portraying the Pope as antichrist.

The printing press democratised knowledge, and with democracy came spite, libel, destruction and violence. But it also brought a new beauty into the world, and every book that has ever been published, every sheet of a newspaper blown along the street, is part of that beauty.

Earlier this year Ronzo created some incredibly detailed replicas of the dragons that mark the entrances into the City of London – albeit with the exception that they had been re-formed to be sculptures of Ronzo’s making rather than the emblem of one of the world’s leading financial districts. He called the silver painted figures clutching coins ‘Crunchy’ and explained at the time that they marked the point where we should be celebrating the end of the recession (the economy had reportedly just grown by an altogether not too convincing 0.1% just as the bolts were being driven in to the pavement to secure the pieces). I managed to track down a couple of survivors (and found the remnants of one that had been lost) a couple of days later. Sadly none now remain but Ronzo has now released a three part video showing their installation. Interesting viewing – especially as this area is one of the most closely monitored square miles in the world. Pictures of the Crunchy’s appear under the video link below.

Ronzo’s Pity of London part one, part two and part three

Old Street

Aldgate

Aldgate

“Above are some images of a new installation I have done for the ‘Skullduggerous‘ group show that opened here in London the other night (4th Feb). The show is in aid of the Bhopal Medical Appeal which aims to raise awareness and provide medical care for people still suffering the after-effects of the calamitous toxic gas leak that blighted the Indian city of Bhopal in 1984 – even today kids are still being born with birth defects and the environment is still affected. My installation is titled ‘Chicken Tikka Disasta’ – and is pretty much the closest most people in England to India and it’s people :) The show is being held at The Pure Evil Gallery, Leonard Street, London, from 4th-13th March and other artists involved include Pure Evil, Swoon and The krah”… slinkachu

"Yummy Smurf Cake." Source: bluebuddies.com

I don’t know about you but I can’t get enough. I promise not too play with my food too much (maybe) but I can guarantee I will be asking for seconds. It’s one of the busiest weeks in the Art World and a lot of it is happening in New York City. Although I have been on the verge of art overload, with my eyes literally buzzing the other night from over-stimulation, I won’t be shouting mayday because I have the optimism that I will experience something intriguing the very next moment just by default. My favorite so far is the muli-layered curatorial contrast between the more traditional yet uber-commercial Armory Show and the INDEPENDENT.

Meanwhile, I bet you all are still hungry as well – so here you go!

• It’s Pure Beauty! Otherwise known as an exhibition of that very name, featuring John Baldessari, which opens in Spain; the Whitney Biennial in NYC; Shrewd & Sassy Survey of American Arists opened in Nebraska; Collier Schorr’s German Faces at the Modern Art Gallery in London…Nicole Caruth Rounds Them Up here. At 19 additional bits and bites, this week’s most recent roundup is a whopper!
• EDUCATION | Teaching with Contemporary Art. How do you hold an art exhibition in your hand? Read Part One of this  interview with Tod Lippy, founder and editor of ESOPUS magazine, by Joe Fusaro, for some insight into how Lippy has materialized his curatorial vision in a plethora of pages released on two very anticipated dates per year. In Part Two, Lippy talks about the periodical as useful a resource for educators.
• What are you thinking, I mean eating? Don’t know? Try charting it out. You might get some  some unexpected answers. In Gastro-Vision: Stomache, Nicole Caruth gives us the scoop on artist Christina Mazzalupo’s very colorful food diaries. It’s true that what you eat can’t only be measured as a numeric caloric intake.
• How does the Internet see you? Here’s a new way to ask this androgynous digital connector, in the form of an initial question posed by Aaron Zinman of MIT.  Meanwhile, be sure to read on here as there are many other connections made.
• Have you every chosen not to be, well, the most polite that you could be? What was the outcome? Here’s a glimpse into Paul McCarthy’s studio, a workshop that often dares to be irreverent. In this video, Paul McCarthy | Lifecasting, the artist is surrounded by various figurative sculptures, including an oversized bust of President George W. Bush. McCarthy discusses the process of casting from life and the resulting perfections and imperfections. Be sure to also watch Jessica Stockholder | Form. Stockholder discusses the strength of form and the difficulty in articulating the meaning behind abstract shapes from her home in New Haven, Connecticut.
• Inside the Artist’s Studio | Christa Holka. Vanity, queerness, friends, and family. Sometimes the seemingly superficial is actually quite intimate. Holka talks about her photography, past travels, lifestyles, and hopes for the future.
• Welcome Kevin McGarry, our new guest blogger! Kevin is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. His journalism has recently appeared on Rhizome, T Magazine Blog, and the online editions of Art in America, Artforum and Interview. Read about his first impressions of Skin Fruit, the exhibition curated by Jeff Koons at the New Museum.
• Flash Points: Must Art Be Ethical? What would happen if you took a stray animal off the street and put it in a gallery as a work of art? According to  David Yanez, perhaps no other exhibition has caused as much controversy over the ethical use of live animals in art as Exposición No.1., a show by Guillermo Vargas, a Costa Rican artist also known as “Habacuc.” IT took place on August 16, 2007 at Galería Códice in Managua, Nicaragua. YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ.
• The Oscars, aka prom night for Hollywood, are just around the corner! Who does the Academy love more: the noble savage, the noble soldier, or the noble soldier-turned-savage? Are you on the edge of your seat or what? If you answered “or what” to that question, you might prefer to spend this Sunday at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, whose current exhibitions offer an excellent antidote to “movie magic.”
• Building relationships can be hard for some and quite natural for others. What about that space in-between? How does photographer Alec Soth work at his relationships with his subjects? Read The Process Behind the Portrait, an interview with Soth by Rachel Craft.

Maybe a bit more subtle in approach than this effort but David Cameron’s rather smooth face is still attracting the attention of London’s billboard hi-jackers. This one in Dalston is the work of Dr D (where you can find a lot more of this kind of work).

Dr D ‘Suck My Goldman Sachs’. I’m not really that tall – this was taken from the number 76 bus.

A few weeks ago, and against my better judgment, i stopped by Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the Victoria and Albert in London. The exhibition showcases recent developments in digital and interactive design through three themes: Code, Interactivity and Network.

I have nothing particularly flattering to write about the exhibition. I wish i had done like Furtherfield and visited the Digital Pioneers exhibition instead. The exhibition takes place at the V&A as well but doesn’t benefit from as much advertising as Decode.

In theory, Decode looks like a very glam affair. In reality, it has a bit of a fancy thrift shop feeling with all the works crammed in a confined and confused space. I was left in shock when i saw how little space each work had to breathe while all around me a group of school girls were laughing their way from one work to another, frantically waving their arms/head/some bathroom appliances in all directions in order to trigger some kind of reaction… sorry “interaction” from the works. The code section of the show wasn’t a much more pleasant experience. I had to fight my way through a narrow corridor jam packed with people taking pictures or videos of the strikingly beautiful works on screen. I’m glad the exhibition is such a success. I’d even go as far as confessing that i’m perversely happy that interaction and digital design are being thrown in the direction of the broad public in such an informal way.

Damn! it’s not like me to bad-blog an exhibition like that. Maybe i was not the right audience for that kind of exhibition but then maybe i am because some artists whose work i admire are participating to the show. Stanza is one of them.

As his bio says, Stanza is an expert in arts technology, CCTV, online networks, touch screens, environmental sensors, and interactive artworks. Recurring themes throughout his career include, the urban landscape, surveillance culture and alienation in the city.

Sensity on a round globe display tested at County Hall London (Live data on globe 2006). Image copyright stanza

His artworks have won prestigious awards and have been exhibited all over the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Tate Britain, from the State Museum in Novorsibirsk to the Biennale of Sydney. I blogged so often about his work, it’s quite embarrassing. Stanza is exhibiting Sensity at Decode. Some 20 custom made environmental sensors units are distributed in the V & A Porter gallery and around the city of London. They measure, light, noise, sound, humidity, and temperature. The data is turned into a online real time visualisation of the space for everyone, whether they are gallery visitors or city planners, to see and ponder on. Sensity V & A opens up a discourse about networks and surveillance technologies and questioning the social political fabric of the landscape around us (more details and pictures about the V&A version.)

The Decode exhibition wasn’t that bad. After all, it gave me an excuse as good as any other to blog this little interview with Stanza about his work.

How visible are the sensors in the city?

Actually I don’t advertise where they are exactly, they are too expensive to loose. The visability is virtual and presented via its GPS location. All the data is presented online via XML feeds that are open source.

Do you have to keep them hidden lest they get stolen or damaged? How do you select the location of the sensors?

The location is based on the network and the distance apart one can place them so that they still transmit and send data. But you’re right, having them stolen is a big issue since I cannot afford replacement

Image copyright stanza

Do you need a special authorization to place the sensors and collect the data?

In theory yes, in practice, I don’t. There are more complex issues about security of space and surveillance. In fact because of the potential of this project for larger scale urban monitoring, noise and pollution monitoring in real time I am surprised I haven’t been approached to develop this on a larger scale.

By measuring all sorts of physical data the sensors reveal also some social aspects and variables of the environment. The text that presents Sensity states that “The output from the sensors display the “emotional” state of the city”.
So what is the emotional state of the city?

The condition of change of time represents the emotional state as measured by the varying sensors.

Image copyright stanza

Do you perceive patterns according to the time of the day for example?

The patterns and shapes in the visualisation are what is being affected by the real time environmental conditions.

Well the time of day affects the patterns that are relayed to the screen.

The sensors have time stamp, light, temperature, humidity, GPS, noise and sounder

What can the ‘general public learn from Sensity?

I want the public to explore new ways of thinking about interaction within public space and how this affects the socialization of space. The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences experiences of the event and space and gather data inside the space.

The project also focuses on the micro-incidents of change, the vibrations and sounds of the using these wireless sensor based technologies.

Imagine walking out the door, and knowing every single action, movement, sound, micro movement, pulse, and thread of information is being tracked, monitored, stored, analyzed, interpreted, and logged. The world we will live in seems to be a much bigger brother than the Orwellian vision, its the mother of big brother.

The data is also used to create visualizations in an open source environment. Other online users can also re- interpret the data and interrogate the various sensors in the network as this is open sourced as well (xml streams).

How about you?

What I have learnt from mixing the cities and creating mash-ups online with the data from various city set is that there is a new space, a 4^th space, a new world of possibilities.

These works are focused on the wider picture of city experiences which are being played out in real time. This sort of experience of multi nodes and multi threaded spaces, demands a refined gathering of data, a sensitive accumulation which can then lead to some kind of modeling and visualization. [audible and visual (mils)-representation] of the social network as it exists and is impacted upon.

Image copyright stanza

Do you navigate cities differently after you have submitted them to Sensity?

Within this project no…..and it’s a good question. However within a project like soundcities.com the experience and the relationship to place is different. Soundcities is my online open source database of city sounds from around the world, that can be listened to, used in performances on laptops, or played on mobiles via wireless networks.

The project soundcities is completely made up of found sounds and soundscapes from the thousands of samples I collected.

The sounds of cities also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. Cities all have specific identities, and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses in a musical way. Within soundcities the aim is to create an online aural experience that evokes place, both as literal description but also developed musical composition. The sounds of cities evoke memories. So this idea of assent gathering of sounds creates a different feeling that the gathering of data.

With sensity although we are the body in the data space; we again control it but because its on a micro scale it’s harder to relate to. That’s why a project like Sensity is so important.

You’ve installed Sensity in many cities around the world. How is the V&A one different?/

The way Sensity is exhibited can be scaled up and this depends really on the commitment of the host organization.

I now have several version of this artwork.

A local version can be made and then projected and also shown online. I have already made versions for several cities. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation.

Making it real time so sensor data isn’t recorded but real time. This involves set up of technology, adding some code to router, using my sensors, using my computers, set up of the sensors in the correct location, programming them, replacing batteries and care for the duration of the show and insurance. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation and leave the sensors and the computers running all the time.

How it looks in the gallery or the actual displays ie, what it is seen by the audience. It can be experienced on plasma screens, projected or shown on 3d globes. Once the visualisation is made there are a numbers of ways to present it.

The Decode show is a much longer term real time colloborative deployment of my two networks in the gallery and across the city. I can monitor all the sensors remotely tell the gallery to change batteries, etc. The issue is that the V & A and their technical team has to be able to support the technical needs of the work.

What becomes of the data once the show is over?

None of the data as the system is set up is archived…. it’s all real time. I do plan to allow the database to have a history but this now requires further funding and development.

Thanks Stanza!

All text copyright stanza.

Pictures i took in the Decode exhibition.

Decode: Digital Design Sensations continues until the 11 April 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Independent is a new addition to the bunch of art fairs running concurrently to The Armory Show. It’s characterized by the organizers as part consortium, part collective, a contemporary art fair that lies somewhere between a collective exhibition and a reexamination of the art fair model, “reflecting the changing attitudes and growing challenges for artists, galleries, curators and collectors.”

The gallery list includes Ancient & Modern (London), Isabella Bortolozzi (Berlin), Rodeo (Istanbul) Boltelang (Zürich), Winkleman Gallery (New York), Zero (Milan), to name a few. There are no art fair typical booths, but custom spaces that are curated in relation to one another. Apart from the galleries’ presentations there are artist projects by The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Aaron Young, and others, and public programs such as a book signing with Ida Applebroog, performances and discussions.

Independent New York, Opening, March 4, 2010.

> Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.
> Click this link to watch Quicktime video in new movie window.

Furtherfield’s first programme on Resonance FM is a live, jam-packed, hour-long review of contemporary media arts culture. This week, Marc Garrett and Charlotte Frost will interview Douglas Dodds, Senior Curator at the V&A and Mztek founders, Sophie Macdonald & Sally Northmore. Other features include interviews with artists and curators recorded during the Crumb symposium, as part of this week’s AV Festival, in Newcastle. Noise-collages, soundscapes and exploratory music, will also be featured.

More information about featured guests:

Douglas Dodds is co-curator of the exhibition ‘Digital Pioneers’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). This is part of the Computer Art & Technocultures project, an Arts and Humanities Research project studying the history of computer-generated art. The project is based jointly at Birkbeck and the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is exhibited in parallel with Decode: Digital Design Sensations
http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/Digital%20Pioneers/index.html

Sophie Macdonald and Sally Northmore are co-founders of Mztek. A non- profit collective with the aim of encouraging women artists to pick up technical skills in the fields of new media, computer arts, and technology. Based in London and supported by Hackney arts institution , hosting a range of women only workshops, talks, and self-initiated tinker sessions. http://www.mztek.org

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About Furtherfield.org
Furtherfield.org believes that through creative and critical engagement with practices in art and technology people are inspired and enabled to become active co-creators of their cultures and societies. Furtherfield.org provides platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. Furtherfield.org also runs HTTP Gallery in North London.

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Johansson Projects presents The Velveteen Order, where powder and paint mask flesh in favor of fiction, serving up Rococo thrills yummier than brioche.

Christina Corfield crafts moving dioramas which flaunt the brush of a gaze and the stroke of a sword. Her videos hyperbolize the Old Regime’s pretend-sion, ignoring distinctions between historical documentation and fairy tale musings. Redundancy and stripped down actions append significance to the subtlest minutiae. Keer Tanchak’s aluminum glamscapes, which mix 1800’s lackadaisical malaise with the 2000’s self-awareness, quietly invite circumspection of modern wealth and frivolity. Tanchak’s exploitation of Old France’s artificial flavoring sweetens the modern epidemic dubbed “bourgeois ennui.” With seductive visuals and witty commentary, absolutism was never so liberating.

A 2003 MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tanchak completed her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal in 2000. She has exhibited extensively in Canada and the USA as well as London, Kuwait, Puerto Rico and Mexico City. Tanchak has received recognition and acclaim from publications such as UR Chicago, Montreal Mirror, and Vie Des Arts. Christina Corfield received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute along with a BA from the Glasgow School of art in 2003. She has exhibited in London, Glasgow, San Francisco, Berlin, and Chicago and her work has been written about in The Sunday Times and The Glasgow Herald.

Show Runs April 2 – May 15, 2010
Reception on April 2, 5-8pm