::: rhizome artwork

colorfalling

“A Parallel Image” is an electronic camera obscura. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the currently still valid principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered. The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using about 2,500 cables. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, “A Parallel Image” is technologically completely transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.

'Dust Serenade' is a reenactment of an acoustic experiment done by German physicist August Kundt. Inspired by the Chladni's famous sand figures visualizing sound waves in solid materials, Kundt devised an experiment for visualizing longitudinal sound waves through fine lycopodium dust; a setup that would allow him to measure the speed of sound in different gases. Kundt was a strong believer in experimental methods over purely theoretical inquiry in a time when the disciplines of theoretical and experimental physics started to diverge. 'Dust Serenade' intends to remind us the materiality of sound. Tubes filled with scraps of words and letters--cut-up theory--interact with sound waves and turn into figures of dust. Here, visitors can modulate the frequency of the sound emitted by moving a rod and create different harmonic sound effects. As sound waves figure, refigure, and disfigure the text, we invite visitors to rethink about the tension between their theorical knowlegde and the sensory experience. Dust Serenade is part of a series of interactive sound projects that enable visitors to experience the physical aspects of sound, presence, and atmosphere. Works in the series have been shown at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Zagreb, Istanbul and São Paulo.

In "No Fun" Franco Mattes simulated his suicide in a public webcam-based chat room. Thousands of random people watched while he was hanging from the ceiling, swinging slowly, for hours. The video documentation of the performance is an unbelievable, at times very disturbing, sequence of reactions: some laugh, some are completely unmoved, some insult the supposed corpse, some take pictures with their mobiles. Notably, out of several thousand people, only one called the police.

kalh orexh

Green explores processes found in nature and in other large and complex systems, and the potential of computer programs to model or simulate such systems within time-based artworks. Within my most recent interactive installations and performances, patterns of behavior are fixed and defined only by the algorithmic process specified within the computer program embedded within the micro-controller which is part of each work. These algorithmic processes are designed to simulate the manner of operation of physical and natural systems. In particular, Green isolates the elements of rhythm and spatial orientation, using many small speakers as sound sources, with only the most basic of sounds (small clicks and pulses) to create a spatially and rhythmic studies that are based on the natural soundscapes of insects and other organisms found in meadows and fields. Green, like much of my recent sound-based installation work, makes use of mechanical and other “direct” sound production techniques that may be controlled by a computer program. These techniques in the past have included the use of small motors to strike metal objects, piano wires, etc. and are often kinetic in nature. In Green, I use small loudspeakers, not in the normal sense to reproduce sound waves, but rather as small kinetic machines, which I send pulses (on/off voltages only) which “twitch” and “tap” the loudspeaker – treating it like a simple mechanical noise-maker. Green uses home-made and custom programmed microcontrollers - single chip computers - to generate all sound that is heard. The piece is driven by algorithms coded into each board, with all sounds being produced by these algorithms. Each loudspeaker is powered by a microcontroller, and can make only simple and quiet sounds (by literally turning the speaker on and off only – so, small clicks, buzzes, etc. are all that is possible). The piece gains volume and complexity through the multiplicity of speakers (32) and through their synchronization (provided by the algorithms within the microcontrollers).

The art space stripped bare faces its observers freed from the essential prerequisites of a modern exhibition space, such as artificial lighting, neutral hanging surfaces and an electricity supply. The electric cables are laid bare, jutting out like arteries from a dissected body. All of the internal routes for audio, video and the Internet are combined in a closed system forcing, as it were, all the processes involving data into one circuit within the space-machine. Only now, rid of its supporting functionality, is the suppressed identity of the space, the self, visible. Judith Fegerl shows the art space as an architectural and energy-providing shell for art objects, as a body without organs — like her human-machine units. The Kunstraum is hollowed out and opened at several places. The electric cables jut from the ceiling, walls and floor, rendering the inner life of the machine visible, and looking like the arteries of a dissected body. With SELF Judith Fegerl reveals a machine that normally leads a discrete existence in the background, and allows us to gaze deep into this body. She has undressed the Kunstraum and allowed it to show its self.

Sunset Solitaire is a performance/video/game. I wrote a program and built custom hardware that let me mix the sunset, live. I then projected with a video projector, from my computer onto a garage in a field behind my studio. As the sun set behind the building I attempted to match the color of the sunset with the projector. I did this for several days (you only get one attempt per evening of course). Each time I would go back to the studio and fined tuned the software, and each time my skills got a little better.