Etoy.corporation launched the Mission Eternity Project in 2005, foregrounding on the one hand respect for the human longing to survive in some way after death, and on the other a sense of irony about dated sci-fi fantasies we contrive to satisfy that desire. The Sarcophagus is one materialization of this project. It is a mobile sepulchre that holds and displays portraits of those who wish to have their informational remains cross over into a digital afterlife. The size of a standard cargo container that can travel to any location in the world, the Sarcophagus has an immersive LED screen covering its walls, ceiling and floor. There, interactive digital portraits can be summoned via mobile phone or web browser from virtual capsules that are stored in the shared memory of thousands of networked electronic devices of Mission Eternity Angels (people who contribute a small part of their personal storage capacity to the mission, currently 765 of them; to date, 2 volunteers have been accepted for encapsulation).
The data spectres that populate this tenuous memorial space are composed of details of lives lived, in visual, audio and text fragments. But when they are summoned in lo-res pixellated form in the Sarcophagus, they resemble one merged personality. The massing of details that we find in archives and records that keep the dead with us has a similar compositing effect, yet the Sarcophagus is also very unlike those. It gives us access to a novel social world generated among networked computer users who have a common goal of keeping something alive, which can invoke intense feelings such as care and wonder.
ALAVS 2.0
Jed Berks’ Autonomous Light Air Vehicles combine many of the themes of artificial life and multi-agent robotics research in an accessible and elegant public presentation. These include capable powered navigation and obstacle avoidance, organized multi-agent behaviour (such as flocking), discernable (quasi) intelligent individual behaviour, and interaction with other (quasi) intelligent agents, i.e., people. Connecting these agendas with more contemporary interest in mobile and locative technologies, Berk has implemented human-ALAV communication via mobile phone technology. The rigors of such a project must not be elided.
While robots in research-lab contexts often exhibit remarkable capabilities, they are just as often delicate, unreliable and require the constant attention of one or several highly trained staff. A project like ALAVs must exhibit its qualities in the general public, must inform and entertain, and at the same time be robust and resilient to the unpredictabilities of unusual architectures and architectural materials, weather, children and crowds (and sometimes, animals) - influences which are almost always filtered out in the controlled environment of the lab.
The ALAVs achieve all this, while remaining lighter than air, an achievement in itself given the weight of batteries and other components. The ALAVs are beguilingly delicate translucent agents which drift and float in a most un-robotic way. Videos
The Poème électronique was a unique experience, originated from the request made by Philips to Le Corbusier for the design of the company’s pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. The whole project was initiated and directed by Le Corbusier, who also created and/or selected the images for the audiovisual show, with the organized sound composed by Edgar Varèse, and the stunning surfaces of the building designed by Iannis Xenakis. The result was a ground breaking immersive environment, since the space of the Pavilion hosted the audio and the visual materials as integral parts of the architectural design.
Unluckily, such a visionary synthesis of innovative ideas could not stand with its times, and the paradigm was never repeated, or even attempted, again: the Pavilion, notwithstanding the incredible number of spectators (2 millions), was turned down a few months after its inauguration, at the end of the Exposition. The disappearance of the Pavilion makes the Poème électronique a destroyed masterpiece.
What we stl have today are only fragments of the various components (i.e. photos and drafts of the architecture, the projected video in videotape from the Philips archives, a stereo reduction of Varèse’s and Xenakis’ musical pieces).
Virtual Electronic Poem (VEP) is a project realized as a virtual reality (VR) environment that reproduces the experience of the dismantled masterpiece through an accurate philological reconstruction of the original installation. The website looks a bit out of date but the first of two films in this post shows the results of the work. The second shows the Poème électronique as a film rather than in its architectural context. Perhaps someone out there would be good enough to bring the building into a public setting on Second Life?
A simple concept but i think quite engaging, “Glow Positioning System“, an installation by Ashok Sukumaran, installed in Bombay in 2005 enables the occupants of the central space of the site to use a hand-crank to “scroll” the surrounding architecture using light. “Lights patterns travel between buildings, across roads and onto trees and lamp posts, forming an image-scape that is starkly visible at night.”
“It allows the physical length of the view to become a chronological one- to be viewed at a speed determined by the user. The ring responds to panoramic desire, the age-old search for an image to immerse our selves in. From Cycloramas to VR (via panoramic traditions in painting and photography), the “surround view ” is a familiar presence in both urban and cinematic manifestoes. Of course, here the city surrounds us already. We just connect some dots, and look again.”
Exploded Axonometric of his most recent electro-acoustic system
Architect Richard Roberts electro-acoustic systems have been developed to explore the sonic properties of environments, and reveal the way in which sound and space co-habit one another. The system uses speakers and panels of resonating metal and gains its input and mode of operation through the cyclical feedback of sound waves from the environment in which it is placed. It is extremely reactive and capable of changing in real-time to anything that alters the acoustic properties of the environment that it exists within.
Richard using one of his electro-acoustic systems to explore the sonic properties of Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth
Through this work Richard describes how he “discovered that sound is an effective method with which one can explore first and second order cybernetic principles, and that any observer is an integral and inescapable part of their own acoustic space.” Richard explorative works are refined through iterative processes involving prototypes, experimental models, digital animations and drawings. His work is currently being presented at the Pask Present exhibition being held in Vienna from 26th March to 4th April 2008.
I’m currently over in Vienna settng up my work for the upcoming Pask Present Exhibition which opens tomorrow. If your in the area feel free to join us for the opening night tomorrow (25th March). One of the artists exhibiting is Richard Brown, so I thought I’d show a taste of his work. Richard Brown has a BSc in Computers & Cybernetics and an MA in Fine Art and works as a hybrid artist, inventor and entrepreneur creating interactive and mimetic experiences using a wide variety of media, including the digital, the analogue and the chemical. His works explores the perception of space, time and energy encompassing ideas from cybernetics, artificial life, interaction design, emergence, complexity and alchemy.
Static Machine
Between 1995 and 2001 Richard was a Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art where he created and exhibited three major interactive works Alembic (ICA 1998), Biotica (Siggraph 2000) and the Neural Net Starfish (Millennium Dome 2000). Whist at the RCA Richard also published the book “Biotica: Art, Emergence and Artificial- Life“. He has been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Victorian College of Art, Melbourne University, and artist-in-residence at CEMA (Centre for Electronic Media Arts), Monash University.In 2006 Richard was invited by Edinburgh Informatics to be their first Research Artist in Residence. In this role, he has developed projects combining art, informatics and communications research.
Here are a selection of projects of his but you can see many more at the Pask Present Exhibition.
Electromagnetic Time Machine 1983
An electromagnetic kinetic sculpture using the cybernetic principle of regulatory feedback to generate complex oscillatory behaviour. Each electromagnetic relay is physically coupled to a vertical pendulum and electrically influenced by its immediate neighbour. When a relay closes it causes the relay in front to close only if the relay behind is open, thus creating a regulatory feedback loop with unstable oscillations due to the differing physical weightings of the vertical pendulums. A simple PIR sensor activates the work, the pulsing lights indicating the closing and opening of each relay.
Cybernetics concerns itself with any type of system that involves sensing and feedback, biological, ecological, mechanical and chemical. Gordon Pask created cybernetic feedback mechanisms using electromechanical and analogue components in his works, such as “Colloquy of mobiles” in the same vein, Time Machine represents an alternative paradigm to the digital.
Dendritics I, II and III
The Electrochemical System is inspired by Gordon Pask’s early experiments with electrochemistry. The central negatively charged copper electrode of each glass is surrounded by four positively charged copper electrodes. Copper dendrites grow from the central electrode reaching out to the outer electrodes. The plates are connected so that each glass is in competition with the other, more charge being consumed by the fastest growing dendrite. Each outer electrode is connected via an LED whose brightness indicates the voltage difference.
This work represents an experiment in using dendritic growth as self regulating switching mechanisms, as a dendrite grows, it consumes more potential in competition with other dendrites trying to grow from the same power source. Pask describes the possibilities of chemical computing, the energy systems involved and illustrates a number of circuit possibilities for dendritic circuits on pp 105–108 in his book “An approach to Cybernetics”, Pask 1961.
SCI-Arc presents, Quasar, a new site-specific installation by the LA/NY-based design/media firm slap!, founded by architect Jean-Michel Crettaz, and produced in collaboration with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and Stanford’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “Quasar is an immersive light and sound space made from prototype membranes realized as an interactive light/sound object and comprised of a dense array of interlinked elements describing an intricate three-dimensional structure.”
The exhibition draws on slap!’s continued interest in developing an awareness of the interconnectedness of space and material, with a goal of extending established notions of volume and scale. The gallery is fitted with sensors that draw real-time data from the installation and the people within the exhibition, which is then synchronized with streamed real-time data of solar activity and nuclear processes provided by SLAC and NASA. This information is then fed back into the object through layers of LED strands, re-visualizing the space in order to create an dynamic spatial experience.
The word “quasar” is a contraction of the term quasi-stellar-radio-source, used historically by astronomers to describe entirely unknown cosmological objects. Today, it is believed that quasars are the most distant, and yet still detectable, objects in the universe. Giving off enormous amounts of energy produced from massive black holes in the center of their own galaxies, quasars are intensely bright; their emitted light drowning out all other stars in the same galaxy.
“Quasar is an artificial counterpart hovering in response to the currents and activities of the visitors, and in doing so, stretches and collapses the horizons of the known. The possibilities of interrelated synthetic and natural processes begin to define new emergent ecologies. quasar questions the boundaries of scale and the psyche, offering immersion into a vastly expanded space which renders perception permeable, and in the end, disperses identity.”
