Generative Art 2004, Milan (I)

RondHangen ReCords Recuerdas was presented at Generative Art 2004 , Milan, Politecnico di Milano University (Dec. 14-16).

It was impossible to exhibit the whole installation in the expo area of the Politecnico's Architecture Department, so we only mounted the cords and screens hereby creating a space reflecting the ground surface of the tent.
On the second day of the event we gave a detailed demonstration of the background and functioning of the installation.

THE GA 2004 PROGRAM
Records Recuerdas Abstract

Credits & Contact

GA IS ABOUT
Art & Science - Philosophy - Technology - Infinity & Identity - Image & Space -Music - Poetry - Visionary Scenarios - Architecture - Cities - Identity & Town - Design - Software - Art - Design - Artificial Intelligence - Artificial Life - Generative Robotics - Mechatronic - Intelligent Production.

Intertwained with a Thread Spider Web at Generative Art 2004, Milan

At Generative Art we connected with the Thread Spider Web of Brasilian artist Sylvia Titotto...

Spin Off

These pictures have been taken during the try out of a performance.
It is based on techniques that we applied during the production process of our threads.

Responsive Environment WShop (FoAM)

After the hardware hacking, I participated at the next workshop in the X-Med-K series: Responsive Environments: sensor data analysis and interpretation, perceptual modelling - 15 November - 21 November, FoAM.

Interesting theoretical stuff, by Maja Kuzmanovic (methodology) and Yon Vistell (sensor stuff) and time and space for practice, the developing of a concept for -and the making of- a responsive environment. We collectively decided about a 'theme', Tom's impressive earthly carrot came out, and then we were separated into two groups; A & B, as in hideous social/psychological experiments... The outcome was peacefull though, two (basic) responsive environments.

Our group (B) made a responsive sitting-bag covered with a 'mosquito net'- like flexible, transparent, tangible, textile structure. The movements of the person inside were captured by a small camera (placed on top) and a microphone inside the bag. The sensordata were processed by Max and via programming translated into abstract images and sounds. The images were projected on the textile surface, both visible for the person inside -who therefore could react on this feedback of his behaviour- as for the audience.

Group A came up with a similar concept, but they made a set up for three persons all having different kind of (let's say intimate) sensors. Their behaviour manipulated a projection and corresponding (accompanying) sounds, from very simple in the beginning to complex and back to basic again...

After the presentation the audience as well as makers were being interviewed in order to use this feedback for improvement/development of the installation.

Hardware Hacking at Nadine

This week Bartaku participated at the Hardware Hacking workshop at Nadine. The 5th of the X-Med-K Series, interesting workshops organised by the Brussels based arts organisations FoAM, nadine & looking glass.

The hacker sensei was Nicolas Collins who has the rare gift to combine profound knowledge with humour and wit. The mix consisted of some theory and heaps of practice. From the basics of soldering, generating sounds with the circuitry of a radio, easy-to-make and cheap but good microphones, the modulation of preprogrammed toy sounds, till the making of complex oscillators with fotocells etc... Very useful for the development and maintenance of ReCords.


Top view of the mess we made

Those unfortunate ones who could not enjoy the output, those mind cracking sound scapes (bursts), check the live streams (bottom page). Also, the screeping sounds coming out of the hacked toys were quite appreciated by crap(eye), theoumek & bartaku and they decide to form the RGB~Toysband. They will perform in some subway stations on February 18, Output Day of X-Med-K: 'a collaborative, networked project uniting artists, programmers, and hardware designers'.

See also responsive environments workshop at FoAM.

ReCords at Generative Art 2004

ReCords will be presented at Generative Art 2004, organized by the Department of Architecture of the Politecnico di Milano University (Milan, Italy, Dec. 14-16). This international event consists of a conference, exhibition and performance 'festival'.


Program

"GA2004, as the last 6 previous annual conferences, is a meeting place to exchange ideas, theorical approaches, operative and teaching experiences and to value the innovative field of intelligent industrial production and business that belongs to Generative approach. Following the experience of last years, people can show his innovative work in the concurrent GA Performance Festival that will be held in the same days of the conference. This will be an opportunity to show and enjoy the most advanced mix of generative entertainement media."

De-interactivity

After having placed our tent with the two most 'spiritual' cords (the white Salar and the black Return) in the garden of the former convent, we created the multimedia part of the installation in a transitory part of Gerkenberg's basement. Between a former meditation room and some ateliers for the more creative monks, we hung up in a straight line the all but two cords, mounted the screens and atached the speakers.

We decided to play around a bit with the sensors and simulate interactivity. This allowed us to let more people enter the space at the same time (this was needed due to the concentration of the visitors in a very short period.

As our control room was situated next to the media space we could hear the spontaneous reactions of the visitors - real time feedback. The reaction of the first basement visitors, 2 female aboriginals: "oooooooew, these threads just smell aaaaaawfull... "

sensor set up

Also, we discovered that some visitors don't respect conventions like... staying out of 'no entry' areas. Maybe the fact that they for once could touch the expo objects gave them a sense of absolute freedom. Yes, they got themselves in a real expo-hacker-mood. We recorded this with a webcam pointed at the door and moved by my heart beat.
Title of the resulting short film: 'Q No Entras'.

ReCuerdas at Expo in Bree

As sofiesaufage's placenta is buried there, the second place where RondHangen ReCords ReCuerdas has to show up, is the Northeastern border town Bree. Not exactly Tijuana, but the site itself, Gerkenberg has its charm being a former convent filled with some male (1) spirits. After Z33, the installation hereby ends up for the 2nd time in a place with a religeous past. the Beguinage in Hasselt was inhabited by creative women during centuries (history of the Begijnen -pdf in dutch-).

We adapted the installation to the site. As the tent only can 'breath' in big spaces, it became immediately clear that it had to be put in the beautiful, big garden. Inside we hung our two most important threads: the black one (Title: Return; Material: Baby Alpaca) and the white one (Title: Salar; Material: rice bag & 10kg salt) together with two accompanying light bulbs with a black and a white electrical wire. In the convent we found a perfect simple black & white wooden bench.



The rest of the threads, the images & sounds, are placed in a corridor in the immense cellar of Gerkenberg. This narrow space is situated between a former meditation room and former 'creative ateliers'. The spiritual room revealed (besides a big wooden cross and other rather peculiar artefacts) most interestingly some white woolen threads hanging down from the ceiling... As there were a lot of visitors expected for the expo, we also decided to step away from the one-to-one idea. We removed the sensors and placed them in the control room (the rehearsal room just next to the corridor) where we simulated interactivity by controlling the sensors ourselves but this rather interesting experiment failed; we tried to use a ventilator for keeping the sensors continuously triggered hence guaranteeing a continuous pc controlled image & sound display... Somebody knows a better solution?











Concerning the Gerkenberg site it stroke us that, besides some occasional one-shot events and the provinding of some local rock bands of a small rehearsal room, the former convent is being used for... nothing. It appears to be that the government preferred to buy this place for a serious amount of money (incl. monthly interest payment) instead of letting it being transformed into an (apparently impopular) asylum for refugees.

Anyway, the installation ended up in bartaku's and sofiesaufage's places of birth. And talking about placenta, get yourself an inverted periscope & access this nice Maya legend (Spanish; used in ReCuerdas).



Checking out the site:

Webcam image of the transition area between
the 'ritual room'- with strange parafernalia-
and the former priest's 'creative spaces'.
We immediately felt we had to hang our threads here...

ReCords: Who's who & Thanx

Creation, Co-ordination & Production: bartaku (bartaku(at)yahoo.co.uk) & sofiesaufage (sofiesaufage(at)hotmail.com)
With Financial Support of: Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds - http://www.vaf.be/
Co-production: Z33 - http://www.z33.be/
Threads created with the collaboration of: Sarah Gerats (saar7saar(at)hotmail.com) & Ellen Zoete (ellen_zoete(at)hotmail.com)
Electronics & ICT: Di2 - http://www.di2.be/
Random Generator: Mersenne Random Generator - www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/ewhat-is-mt.html
Production Content Space: DNA Buro, Antwerp
Tent Canvas: Jos Bancken, Bocholt
Opening Quote: Sir Richard Burton. Voice of Ben Moat
Thanks to: Wereldmediatheek vzw - http://www.wereldmediatheek.be/ & Flanders Media Valley - http://www.fmv.org/
Special Thanks to: Nilda Callañaupa (Centro de Textiles de Cusco); the Weaving Community of Chinchero (Cusco, Peru); Sarah Gerats & Ellen Zoete; Jan Boelen, Danny Bierset & Co (Z33); Marc Doms (Wereldmediatheek); Eddy Fontaine & Leopold Horrix (Audiovisual Studio of the Province of Limburg); Hilde Van Braeckel (Textile Expert); Carrie Brezine (Harvard University); Tom van Daele (Belgian Embassy Peru); Ben Moat; María Catalina Fernandez; Pieter Van Bogaert & Herman Asselberghs (Square vzw); Vicky; Tom; Raf; our families; everybody we might have forgotten here and above all the aimless wanderers who inspire(d) us on the road!!

Contact
bartaku(at)yahoo.co.uk
sofiesaufage(at)hotmail.com

Customized Compu

Software programming & hardware development in collaboration with di2.

Première at Z33, Hasselt (B)

RondHangen ReCords Recuerdas had it's première at Feel (Nr.6.03, Feel The Young), exhibiton of Tactile Media Art at Z33, Contemporary Art Centre in Hasselt, Belgium.



inside view content space










outside view content space

• Short project description

Redundant but nice: Feel The Young is the favorite expo of 2004 of Nicky Aerts, reporter of Neon, arts program on Belgian Radio1.

Code of ReCords

code extract

About RondHangen ReCords ReCuerdas

bartaku & sofiesaufage gathered atoms, digital & mental bits during and after 350 days of wandering through Latin America, from Ushuaia (the End of the World) till Mexico (hyper)City. ReCords is a multimedia installation that attempts to evoke this multi-sensory experience using a database of sounds, texts, images, memories and emotions 'controlled' by Pre-Colombian and 21st-century ICT, media & electronics.

The origins
The origins of ReCords can be found in the Southern Bolivian Andes where we came across the Khipu: a textile laptop consisting of a construction of coloured cords with knots. These knotted cords appeared to be a highly advanced information tool and a key component in the information system of the Inkas. These devices contain binary coded, quantitative (census data, crops,...) and qualitative information (sentences, songs, myths...), crucial for the Inka rulers.

Old & new ICT We decided to explore this tactile storage device & medium and explore if and how we could combine/integrate it with contemporary ICT & architecture, electronics and media.The underlying dynamic process that leads to the state of sharpened sense perception consists of the organic, intuition-based, emotional, spontaneous, free, non-linear, conscious on the one hand, and the structured, rational, linear, controlled, manipulated, unconscious on the other. At the same time, the concept of binarity -allegedly the key to Inka IT- is integrated in the structuring, encoding and presentation of the content. Tangible, audible, visible The installation integrates images and sound recordings. The former were mainly provided by Sofie, the latter by bartaku; they represent memories/emotions of both or either one of them. Moreover, these materials are classified geographically into 11 'geoclusters' (11 places in Latin America), each cluster containing two categories of information: non-specific and impulse-driven images / sounds / memories, on the one hand, and anecdotal materials retrieved on a more intentional basis, on the other. Encoded & randomized The images are presented on three screens and randomly generated by customized open source software (Mersenne Random Generator). The sound files are audible via 11 speakers integrated in 11 separate textile threads, generated by 11 Mp3 Players in random mode. They 'invite' people to touch the threads hereby getting acces to the encoded, 'made tangible', memories. Space for content The content space is a trapezium-shaped tent representing the trajectory travelled in Latin America. Entering the installation, every visitor becomes an active user to the extent that he/she will be able to weave his/her own story, to create his/her own path or camino, submerged in this non-linear presentation of symbolic and non-symbolic content. PRESS REVIEW http://recuerdas.blogspot.com/2005/04/records-at-mtissages-art-textile.html REFERENCES ANNUNZIATA, M.G. La Ciencia y Tecnologia Incaica. 2001, Gutemberg Editores y Impresores, S.L. 80p. ASCHER, Marcia and Robert. Mathematics of the Incas. Code of the Quipu. Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York. 166p. BAKKER, J.H. Toewijding. Over literatuur, mens en media. Uitg. Atlas, Amsterdam/Antwerpen. 368p. BEY, Hakim. Overcoming Tourism. Musée Lilim, Carcasonne. www.hermetic.com/bey/tourism.html CRANG, M., CRANG, P., MAY, J. Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space and Relations (Sussex Studies in Culture and Communications). Routledge London & New York. 322p. LANCHO, M.F. Escritura Incaica. 2001, Universidad Nacional F. Villareal, Lima. 112p. PLANT, Sadie. Zeros + Ones, Digital Women + The New Technoculture. 1997, Bantam Dell Pub Group, S.L., 305p. URTON, Gary. Sign of the Inka Khipu. Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records. 2003, University of Texas Press, Austin. 202p. The Khipu Database Project: http://khipukamayuq.fas.harvard.edu/KhipuConst.html

Finished Threads

Dry Tail

A subsidiary cord that refers to our dwellings throughout the Patagonian desert. One of the stories it contains, refers to a night in a tent near Baja Caracoles, a very tiny settlement - a total of 21 buildings, lost in the Patagonian pampa, literally in the middle of nowhere. Many wild horses and sofiesaufage's imagination on the loose...

(Spec.: Geocluster 2, Patagonia; Subsidiary Cord; Recto; S-plied; bartaku&sofiesaufage-code; Material: mixed fabric: natural: Alpacawool, ponytail hair, non-organic: parts of small bag used underway.)

More...

Content Space

These images show the development of the production of the content space.. It's design is based on the visual representation of the path that bartaku and sofiesaufage created whilst wandering throughout Latin America.

1st drawings


final technical drawing - metal structure; back, side and top view of the content space (tent)



content space

Work in progress Belgium

thread production at Z33











content space production at DNA, Antwerp

ReCuerdas Trajectory

This is the visual representation of the path that bartaku and sofiesaufage created whilst wandering throughout Latin America.

Upper left is the starting point: Santiago de Chile. Top right is Mexico City, the point of return to Belgium. The design of the content space (tent) has been based on this shape.

Pre-production in Chinchero, Peru

In order to prepare the creation of our textile medium, we went to Chinchero Peru. With the help of Nilda Callañaupa, director of The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco and the local weaving community we were able to produce 20 kilo of mainly natural dyed woolen threads of Alpaca, Lama and Sheep. Hereby we tried to stick as close as possible to our colour code, a result of encoding our mental images and stories...

The following pictures depict chronologically the thread making process with the weaving community of Chinchero, Cusco Peru.



defining colors



making cactus bug red



dying



more dying



showing of



cooking



color check



first delivery



red threads



coloring green



drying threads



coiling up threads




some balls of thread

Making textile threads with weaving community in Chinchero, Cusco, Peru