Opens 10th of November at 20:00, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter
Open: Monday: closed; Tuesday-Thursday: 11-19; Friday-Sunday: 11-17.
Exhibition closes November 19th. (How to get there)
The Aphrodite Project: Platforms
by Norene Leddy with technical lead Andrew Milmoe
Platforms, the latest series of work in the ongoing Aphrodite Project, is an interactive, wearable device that is both a conceptual homage to the cult of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, as well as a practical object for the contemporary sex worker. An integrated system of shoes and online services, Platforms uses the latest technology to improve the working conditions of sex workers. Implicit in this gesture is an acknowledgement of sex work as comparable to those socially and culturally esteemed public professions that likewise engage risk in order to serve a particular community’s needs.
Photo by Elizabeth McCrocklin
See also The Aphrodite Project: Platforms
Earth-Core Laboratory and Elf-Scan
With her institute Research Raft for Subterranean Reefology, Agnes Meyer-Brandis is making a contribution to contemporary myth-building by searching for and researching possible worlds.
In the Core Laboratory of the Research Raft earth core samples are studied with a specially developed core-sample-scanner in the search for elves and other micro biotope life invisible to the naked eye. Not to frighten the sensitive creatures the tool is kept very small and fits on the tip of your finger and works non-contact. The scientific arrangement enables researchers to study the working and leasure live of elves in their natural habitat.
See also Earth-Core Laboratory and Elf-Scan
AbA Logic
by Art by Accident/Kalle Grude, Jan Løchstøer
Six Muses of Randomness
Six white mice reside among books on logic subjects inside a laboratory cabinet. What are they doing there? Well, obviously they are nibbling on the books. Apparently they are nesting, as in quiet moments they cuddle up in a ball beneath snippets of logic.
As they wander among the books they trigger a databank of words connected to electronic boards. The boards make up two sentences of three words each (so-called AbA-logic statements). Each time a mouse triggers a sensor, a new statement appears. The words (adjectives, adverbs and nouns) are common in logic terminology. The statement that appear are less common. This is why they are of interest to us.
In order to materialize this constant stream of statements they are printed as they appear. On AbA’s desk piles of sketches and notes from the process accumulates.
In addition to participate in a digital process, the mice -through their nibbling- are creating sculptural rephrasing of the books, and produce new combinations of the texts and illustrations from the pages of the books.
Superconsumer
by Franz Alken and Karl Rueskaefer
What happens when a computer programme starts buying and selling stuff on Internet auctions like ebay autonomously? That is the key question of superconsumers. The stuff the Bot has bought is exhibited for a short time. Thus digital values are translated into tangible goods. And vice versa, since the Bot sells them again after a while to buy new ones. In this way, commonplace products are temporarily translated into works of art.
The basic principle of superconsumers is to make an amount of money available to a software (a so called “bot”). The software uses this money to buy goods autonomously at the online-auction-platform ebay, transfers this goods to an art-space, exhibits them and sells them again via ebay.
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| Superconsumer pictures by Ulrich Thaler. | ||
The exhibition-module consists of a computer-interface displaying the softwares actions at ebay, 7 pedestals that show the current goods and a watchmann who executes the softwares instructions and arranges the goods on the pedestals.
There are mainly 4 points that form a fascintation for this project:
The relationship between humans and machines - the bot replaces exemplarily the role of humans in the ebay environment.
The ready-made principle: While transfering ordinary objects from the mass-market to an art space, the bot enhances the objects to pieces of art. This enhancement is temporarily, the bot takes away the “art aura” by selling this pieces again via ebay.
The installation gives an constantly updated overwiev on the mass-market. The programming of the process makes the items the bot will buy unpredictable - a search on the topic “football” can respond items like fan-articles, computer games, books or sportswear.
Interaction is an important point on art-projects dealing with the internet. The interaction at superconsumers is quite hidden: Everyone dealing with the bot at ebay is arranging the exhibition without knowing it.
See also Superconsumer
Trolley Singers
by Silver
A transit airport area can be pretty boring space if one waits for a delayed flight. There are some services to entertain passengers - shops, bars, one can even buy a magazine. But that’s all. The Trolley Singers project is addressing this issue trying to develop an experimental interface on the border among art, technology and sociology. This projects plays with an idea how to make the transit area more playful and establish some communication among bored passengers.
The small airport cabin luggage trolleys in the transit area will be equipped with a small device in effort to recognize each other and communicate via voice - singing. When the trolleys meet within range approximately 5 meters, they start to talk. They exchange information about their mood, energy value, temperament, then update their own status according to the received data and start singing a song together when they fall in love.
The trolleys act like artificial pets attached to their owners. They fulfill the space by constantly evolving spatial sound structure.
The basic simulation at http://silver.avu.cz/trolley_singers/simulation.html shows possible behavior in an exhibition space.
The communication is based on special sounds - an unique frequency mixture (like birds or DMTF tones) to avoid sensitivity to surrounding noise. Each unit is al-so capable to recognize and interpret these sounds - and separate them from the background.
Communication example
> Beeping and searching for a communication partner
> Another beeping recognized
> Communication request
> Communication setup
> ID number exchange
> Communication lock to certain partner
> Mood information exchange
> Mood update
> Energy information exchange
> Temperament information exchange
> Love information exchange
> Communication end
> Communication unlock
> Beeping and searching for a communication partner
The Trolley Singers is an experimental art project based on the cutting-edge commercially available technology. It focuses on flocking computing and the social aspect of mobile computing. Although the concept is simple, the entire setup including many units, possible programming bugs, hardware caused delays and unpredictable audience participation can create relatively complex system, which can hopefully generate some unexpected,aesthetically interest-ing sound structures. The research in this area can lead also to interesting ap-plications in the field of mobile computer games, communication etc…
Trolley Singers realization team: Hai Nguyen Dinh, Henrik Sundt, Petr Svarovsky
See also Trolley Singers
Intimidad
Intimidad is a digital image work representing the entire folder tree of Leonardo Solaas’s computer hard drive, as it was the night of April 15th, 2005. It was registered in 198 screen captures which, at the standard PC monitor resolution of 96 dots per inch, represent a tree 32 meters high.
This is his personal tree in a global forest of information. His daily activity feeds it even when he don’t notice it, and it has probably grown much taller since he made this full shot of a moment in its usually hidden life.
The title, ‘Intimidad’ (’Privacy’), makes reference to the exhibitionist act of showing everyone, not every content in his computer, but every folder it is organized on. It is, therefore, a schema of a relevant part of Leonardo Solaas’ life and work. For people who, like him, live in a symbiotic relationship with a computer, this means exposing a part of one’s soul or one’s mind to the scrutiny of every passer-by.
The Flow of Things
by Marius Watz
The Flow of Things attempts to show the social and spacial aspects of the Internet in a novel fashion, by visualising the information ecology created by blogs and social networking services as Flickr and del.icio.us. This user-driven grassroot production of information comprise a vast amount of data, which can be traced as it floats organically around the world wide web. The Flow of Things will catalogue many of these streams of information as RSS feeds, and give a poetic visualisation of these streams, both as a physical installation , as well as on the web.
Visitors to the installation will find a catalogue of published information in nearly-realtime, with optional details of each feed and information unit wich is being indexed. Visitors to the project’s web-pages will be able to view a simplified version of the same information, but they will also be able to add new streams for indexing.