Sad Sad Planet. Madrice Imbujo

An Sms, a phone call & an e-mail. Madrice Imbujo lost his life in the killing fields of Kinshasa: traffic.

Articles in Congolese media:
- L’Institut national des arts pleure Madrice Imbujo
- Hommage à Madrice Imbujo, chorégraphe inlassable

Physical computing

This x-med-k workshop took place from nov 01 till nov 04 at okno, Brussels. It was given by Johannes Taelman who focussed at the artistic exploration of the possibilities of physical computing, of connecting the physical world to the realm of the computer in order to create artworks.

By using sensors and the Arduino interface board (15-20€), we created individually a sound device consisting of different sensors responding to touch and gesture. In fact we made a flat variable resistor made with some wood, plastic, tape and coppertape, connected it to the arduino board wich transformed the analog signals into digital ones which where communicated to PureData or Max/Msp via a USB-cable.

Wiz'n wise Wendy Van Wynsberghe explains how to make the resistor here

The Arduino software is an open-source environment which makes it easy to write code and upload it to the i/o board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing.

Although both workshops got into the unavoidable universe of electricity and electronics, the approach was quite different in the atelier given by Emmanuel Lestienne at iMAL's 'Ateliers Numériques' last summer. The focus here was rather on programming in Arduino and Processing for control of all kinds of devices such as leds and stepper motors. http://www.imal.org/AteliersArtNum/#st06

As in most of the workshops where you have to cut and solder wires and try to predict future behaviour of the tiny bits inside of them, it's good to have such a faithfull companion as the manual Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims hanging around your neck. In no time it gets extremely popular amongst the colleagues and it transforms you into a civil servant from the local public library.

As a direct consequence of the workshop I put my teeth in The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing by Steven W. Smith in order to find out more about what really goes on in the digibrain. It's a recover operation of knowledge of math and stats, lost a long time ago. You can find the PDF-book here.

Info .X-Med-K. --> www.xmedk.be

Leaving Kigali (and the weaver birds)

The Jungled Urban Sprawl aka Kinshasa

After almost 3 months still in this kaleidoscopic town of extremes Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A lot of intersections of which one led to a collaboration with Thérèse Muyumba Odito, sculptress, for an installation created for "Maturité", a contemporary dance piece of choreographer Madrice Imbujo. It was presented at the "Centre Wallonie Bruxelles" in Kinshasa on the 25/04. The work consisted of knotted/overtorsed cords mixed with clay and other components hung in the entrance hall (see pictures) + 2 video projections in the theatre (no picts and video footage (as they are lost)).

Also, I've been busy with the organisation ('mise en scène' and co-ordination) of a photo exhibition for Doctors Without Borders & photo agency VII (NYC).


www.flickr.com/photos/msfvii_expo_photos_kinshasa/
www.viiphoto.com/exhibitions.html

okno public01 - May 24-26

event:

okno public01 - May 24-26

24/5: Experimental media art in belgium: a focus on the media arts in belgium
With: Guy van Belle (Society of Algorithm, mxHz.org), Auriea Harvey (Tale of Tales), Lawrence Malstaf and Bartaku.
Moderators: Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM) and Michael Samyn (Tale of Tales)

Beauty in the age of digital art
Let's talk about aesthetics - a term that became a taboo in many contemporary arts circles for nearly a decade. Swept away as the frilly fluff that adorns much of the mainstream entertainment, in the 'media arts', beauty became subordinate to elaborate concepts, social context, critical theory and technological functionality. However, we are quite sure that even the most rigorous of media artists like to see, hear, touch, wear and immerse themselves in an atmosphere which resonates with their aesthetic sensibilities. We would like to know what are these sensibilities and how people incorporate them in their artistic adventures. How does aesthetics relate to the technologies we use and develop? Is it dictated by the tools, or can we bend the tools to make something we consider beautiful? When we work on collaborative projects, do people make compromises, or do they give each other a 'carte-blanche'? Is there such a thing as 'democratic aesthetics'? Can different people's aesthetics connect or disconnect a piece together in distributed, networked, realtime performances? And finally, how do we talk about it, without offending anyone's most intimate sensibilities?

wednesday may 24, 2006 3pm
matrix art project, brussels