TORUS: conceptualizing my installation for Burning Man 2010

March 24th, 2010 germinating ideasTags: ambiance, architexture, body, city, espace heureux, experimental circus, kinetic, maze, noise, play, utopia

Torus is a bouncing castle, an inflatable tunnel, a crawl space to rest and socialize, and a novel. After enjoying the buoyant properties of the platform at the center of the structure, revelers enter the darkly glowing, semi-translucent tunnel that circles the ring. Comfortably wide, and yet not large enough to allow you to stand up straight, the tunnel is a tautological maze that amusingly, gently disorients. Its elastic, squeaky walls have the consistency of a balloon and make for interesting reclining, lounging, splaying and contortion of limbs. Strangers meet as they crawl or wiggle through the tunnel: talk, experimentally intertwine, explore the space together. A system of fans keeps the air of the labyrinth adequately fresh and oxygenated.

The secret of Torus is in the speakers embedded in its walls: the tunnel is divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant broadcasts a section of a short novel narrated by the novel’s protagonist. Like in one of Borges’ fantastical stories, the novel has neither beginning nor end – it is literally a circle!

The torus itself is a geometrical object with fascinating psychological properties…sound travels elliptically through it, allowing visitors to experience the ambiance rather than the letter of the novel.

Inflatacookbook: 1970s alternative media/architecture collective Ant Farm’s instruction manual on how to create weirdly inhabitable inflatable structures

March 23rd, 2010 germinating ideasTags: body, city, espace heureux, experimental circus, immersion, play, space, utopia, visceral

In the late 60′s and 70′s, the San Francisco hippie art and architecture collective known as Ant Farm were creating buildings out of giant inflatable plastic bags. Their 1969 work, 50×50′ Pillow for the Whole Earth Catalog led to the commission to build the medical tent–or as Ant Farmer Chip Lord called it, “the Bad Trip Pavilion”–at Altamont.

Ant Farm also created uncannily prescient work about things like the all-consuming, TV-driven, pop media culture and the American fetishization of cars. [They're the ones who buried that row of Cadillacs nosefirst in the Texas desert.]

from Make Magazine:

“I had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with Ant Farm co-founder Doug Michels in the early ’90s. He was as delightfully crazy as ever, drawing up designs for spheres of water floating through space filled with dolphins, a Japanese sex theme park, a giant couch, called the National Sofa, in the park across from the White House, where people could come and interact with the First Family via the National TV set. This was definitely not a guy who liked to paint inside the lines. Sadly, Doug died in a freak climbing accident in 2003.”

Ant Farm’s “Inflatacookbook”

Dream World I: unusual feasts

March 1st, 2010 germinating ideasTags: dream, espace heureux

I’ve decided to sprinkle this blog with recollections from my dreams: you never know when an idea might felicitously insert itself. After a few memorable dreams featuring labyrinthine space stations, magical cats, rapid aging, giant cattle with no skin, day-glow animals, a never ending forest etc…it seems a shame to let these things slip by without a word. Last night was pretty epic: I was invited to a party given by members of a special mafia that trafficked in human urine. How this had made them rich was mysterious, but the thing that struck me when I entered the restaurant was that a room with a long low table and heavy red drapes had been set aside for the offspring. And all these children were little girls, very be-ribbonned and cream-puff, velvet and taffeta dresses, their yummy hair giving off a soft burnished glow. In front of each one was a fluted cup of multicolored blown glass, heaped with melting fruit and gelatin. Despite the splendor they looked uncomfortable.

I surprised myself by making this video this afternoon but maybe it wasn’t a non-sequiture after all: it describes exactly what that particular dream sequence felt like.

Floating Donuts and Pink Pipe Joints: preliminary models for my project to hybridize the novel and the playground

February 25th, 2010 germinating ideasTags: ambiance, ambient narrative, architexture, body, Deleuze, experimental circus, haptic, haunted space, maze, noise, novel, play, rhizome, space

These sketches are first steps towards a visualization of my concept of “ambient narrative”. In this case, the book being read is inscribed in the walls of a warren of floating inflatable tunnels (suspended like a octopus-shaped air mattress from a ceiling), in the form of pressure sensors that, depending on the visitor’s ensconcement in a particular branch of the structure, trigger audio recordings of a story. Each chapter of the book can be accessed in a recombinant rhizomatic way – literally the visitor travels through the story, using her body, its movements and its rubbing against the plush fabric of the tunnels, as the decoding instrument that allows her to gather fragments of the hidden text. The story itself, called “In the Dark: The Story of a Disapearance” is an existential mystery or detective novel that is pieced together by the non-linear meanderings of the reader.

FUN FAIRS AS MEGALOMANIAC SCULPTURE GARDENS

February 9th, 2010 germinating ideas, researchTags: architexture, city, detournement, experimental circus, interactive, kinetic, play, space

Think of these rides as INTERACTIVE SCULPTURES : again, breaking down the false-ontological barriers between the cultural practices of high art and “low” entertainment. pop culture is the avant-garde !

Fluorescence and the Taxonomy of Material Affects

January 2nd, 2010 germinating ideasTags: circus, experimental circus, inanimata, material, photopia, play

on the playful properties of fluorescent materials: thinking back on Avatar‘s blindingly exciting fluorescent rainforest flora, I’m just wondering on what makes day-glo, phosphorescent and blacklight hues and brilliance so childishly appealing…the spiritual alchemy of electric and organic? Other cinematic delights that rely on fluorescence: Wong Kar Wai’s Fallen Angels – Hong Kong is a nightmare veined with neon.  neon sheds color + texture (is that what GLOW means: photo-texture ? ), that radiates with angelic and consummerist vibes…

USE FLUORESCENT PAINT

as part of creating a taxonomy

of material effects/affects

to organize artistic practice.

“Fais Ce Que Voudras” – from Rabelais to the Neverending Story

December 4th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: photopia, utopia

“Do as you wish”: the message on the back of Auryn, the amulet of the Childlike Empress is also the motto of Rabelais’ 16th century utopia,l’Abbaye de Thélème…

Cinema in a Cabinet

October 26th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: architexture, haunted space, immersion, photopia, screen, visceral

a solution to the screen vs. physical space dichotomy: merging two different ontologies of immersive space. You need to enter a secret space within the larger installation to look at the screen: watch a movie in a closet, a cabinet, then crawl out/emerge.

The Most A-Maze-ing Hypertext is not Electronic: House of Leaves, Dictionary of the Khazars, Derrida’s Glas

October 7th, 2009 germinating ideas, referencesTags: archive, database, espace heureux, mapping, maze, play, utopia

First Passage: The Religion of Flowers. In Phenomenology of the Spirit…. “And then the nightmares begin”. Exploration Z…”Even the hallways you’ve walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadow at all, will seem deeper, much deeper”. They could read other people’s dreams, live and make themselves at home in them, and through the dreams hunt the game that was their prey – a human, an object or an animal.

Architextures4: Bouncing Blind, Feeling Sound in Your Bones

August 28th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: architexture, body, database, experimental circus, haptic, haunted space, inanimata, kinetic, maze, music, play, trap

Chris Donham sparked this thought:

embed pressure sensors in walls and floors of the bouncing castle. A DATABASE of SOUND (music, sound effects, words) is released. The player bounces her way through an audio narrative/journey. IMMERSE CASTLE IN DARKNESS. you have to FEEL your way THROUGH and OUT/IN.

The castle is a MAZE populated by crawl spaces and up and down passages.

Inanimata : Flesh & Goo

July 27th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: architexture, body, experimental circus, haptic, haunted space, inanimata, interactive, material, visceral

Roxy Paine, S2-P2-P6, 2005

talking about mimesis: human feels as object feels to human - double-dealing
in feeling and feeling. subject is as object does! follow the trail of inanimata...

Interactive Recombinant Editing: SPECTER OF SENSE

July 13th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: ambiance, archive, contingency, database, derive, detournement, haunted space, kinetic, mapping, maze, noise, photopia, play, punctum, screen, uncanny

still in the room. player squeezes a knob when he hears a prompted word (s) a voice speechifies on possibilities

determines which set of footage from the database will be edited into another set of footage (not completely haphazard) or running simultaneously on different screens??

editing algorithm, blackout, obeys a subterranean rhythm, cuts words in midstence, faces in mid-expression

cutting between this, this, and this ? CLOUD OR SHAPE, SPECTER OF SENSE – sampling of the cultural whirl – not quite arbitrary drops (it’s all water)

Peter Greenaway – Prospero’s Books ; David Bowie ; Jem Cohen: sea change, becoming, wishing, wish fulfillment, riffling through, collecting books, collecting memories, collecting personalities. databases all.

INANIMATA as interactive devices: THINGS THAT BECKON

July 8th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: ambiance, architexture, body, database, derive, espace heureux, experimental circus, haptic, inanimata, interactive, machine, material, play, uncanny, visceral

pull that rope if you see liquid in a pan, tilt that pan if it’s labelled “SQUEEZE ME”, squeeze it if you want to touch, TOUCH and the SCREEN comes to life, the ROOM lights up with MUSIC, WHISPERS, INVECTIVES establishing a physiological sentier (un sentier pour SENTIR), path to the eyes and the ears _ plugging into a mind, minds into the DATABASE OF IMAGES…It’s not work, it has nothing to do with freedom of choice, it’s VISCERAL, COMPULSIVE PLAY

YOU JUST CAN’T HELP YOURSELF SO WHY RESIST?

eatmeeatmeeat me eat me eat me eat me eat me eat me eat me there is much to be said about a form of aesthetic engagement that like famously cinema engulfs you, seduces you, gives you no choice in the matter and yet requires much much deliberate action on your part it tricks you into PUTTING A WHOLE FLOATING MECHANISM IN MOTION, SENSORIAL FRUIT HANGING FROM THE DATABASE!

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS IN “VISCERAL” ART

June 12th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: body, detournement, experimental circus, haptic, immersion, inanimata, incision, interactive, material, music, play, shock, visceral

concept for a short live action animation piece_

“ALMOST EVERYTHING CAN AND SHALL BE CUT”

an examination of the friction between texture and violence to bring us closer to the felt idea of flesh

presentation of different types of incisions using sharp and blunt metal instruments into a large array of materials:

raw meat, fish (carving knife, tweezers, paper cutter) ice / ice cube (inefficiently sawing off the edge with a blunt butter knife)

jello or flan (into little cubes using a razor blade) foam core (guitar pick – study in morcellation)

velvet, thick cloth (nail-cutting scissors) light (shadow of a knife or a needle)

wooden floor, wooden surface (repetitive gouging) computer motherboard, electronic circuit (large scissors, carving knife, snipping off transistors)

play dough (axe with blade held in hand, clumsily approaching tiny bits)

INCISION followed by MORCELLATION, FRAGMENTATION OF MATERIAL INTO ITS CONSTITUENT FORMS (filaments, bits, crumbs, slivers)

the act of cutting can be smooth, swift : sensation of liberation, closure mixed with disquiet of violent end

the act of cutting can be difficult, messy, awkward: sensation of squeamish frustration

Progression: liquid starts to OOZE out of harmed materials (old blood, water, viscous stuff – MULTICOLORED, DYED)

INTERACTIVE TEXTURES: KNOB to raise the volume on the sound effects

KNOB to slow down the act of cutting

KNOB to skip frames, so that the cutting becomes schematic vs. visceral

KNOB to introduce lyrical music

KNOB to introduce ominous music

BUTTON to produce WHISPERED WORDS OF ASSOCIATION (push and random word/phrase emerges): i think you enjoy it, fungus, why are you doing it, it will all decay quite soon, soft, squishy, wet, very dry, too dry, i wonder what this is, it looks better when its in tiny little bits, i didn’t think i could do that, this doesn’t seem so impossible, someone told me not to but i’ll do it anyway, nothing seems too bright, nothing appears less important, a good thing its irreversible or it might come back to haunt me, i could eat that, i could drink that, i don’t want to, forage, push.

the knobs frame the screen, unlabeled except for the button (“VOICES OF INSTRUCTION”). tiny switch next to button – makes a word repeat every 5 seconds.

nothing can stop the violence: metal keeps cutting, stuff keeps oozing, more and more stuff oozes out, everything is increasingly MORECELLATED and finally, LIQUEFIED.

LOOPS.

Dissertation Project_ITERATION#3

March 8th, 2009 germinating ideas, researchTags: augmented reality, body, database, immersion, material, play, screen, space, virtual

REDEFINING IMMERSION:

abstract vs. physical metaphors for virtual space?

Most discussions of “immersion” or the extent to which a media experience can sensorially and psychologically engulf the viewer, presumably bringing them closer to a ‘real life’ experience, revolve around kidnapping the viewer/player more decisively into the realm of the virtual – wherefore larger screens and stereoscopy, even VR.

Another route towards immersion involves the notion of “augmented reality” or embedding the virtual in physical space in order to create the experience of a (ideally) seamlessly merged virtuality/reality.

Is there a way to rehabilitate the screen, historically a hallmark of the 1rst type of immersion, for purposes of augmenting reality? Typically the screen is the well-known boundary between the physical and virtual, the thing that extrudes from normal, material space to shed simulacra down on us.

Returning to the idea of creating a “burrow” or an immersion “box”, the idea of physical space or geography serving as the interactive device for a database narrative – cannot the screens or “displays” themselves become part and parcel of real space, so that rather than running into a simulacra-projector, one is thrown in/sucked into the hidden, temporary space of a media-fragment?

Even more urgently – to complete the dream of seamlessness between material and virtual, can we be satisfied with an analogy between architecture i.e. the space of a gallery/rooms/hallways, and database structure? The textures of narrative and information, relayed across different media technologies are too viscerally pervasive and “real”, urgently present to us, to find adequate expression in the cool, ascetic, representational spaces offered to the typical art installation.

Must we not go deeper, more intimately into our project to map the virtual onto the physical? Perhaps it is important to start considering the sensorial/sensual rather than abstract properties of real space. To think of the body rather than architecture as a proper metaphor for our collective apprehension of virtuality.

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome as the faithfully visceral rendering of our felt relationship with media technology…

Dissertation Project_ITERATION #2

February 20th, 2009 germinating ideasTags: body, immersion, maze, rhizome, screen, trap

(these are broken notes!)

TO BE MOCKED UP IN ‘SECOND LIFE’ – SUMMER 2009

Stuff that you have to put your eyes to, ‘put your head in’ the image to perceive? Mixture of this and a large screen? A large screen enveloping a small screen. PORTABLE OR INSTALLATION ? SCREENS MOVING ON A GRID LIKE PUZZLE PIECES? DIFFERENT SOUNDS COMING FROM DIFFERENT CORNERS OF THE ROOM?

IMMERSION BOX (SMALL PLACE WHERE YOU HAVE TO SIT DOWN CROSS-LEGGED) WHERE YOU ARE BOMBARED BY STIMULI?

Mapping of database space onto real space? System of tunnels and burrows??? In the space of abandoned factory or industrial complex? Turn it into a medium for uploading different work rather than just a one-time thing?? Kafka’s The Mole, real-space rhizome??

You hear sound in one area of the burrow, or perhaps a dim light and you

go to investigate??

A GIANT BLACK BOX RIDDLED WITH TUNNELS,

(Franz Kakfa's story "The Burrow" deals with our paranoid compulsion to map, codify, and control space)

A MAZE, ONE ENTRANCE AND ONE EXIT –

operated like a funhouse ride

(a person in costume pushes on a lever to start the experience).

“The Burrow”, “The Box”.

Relationship between physical movement and body sensations and light/sound??

See movie: CUBE. Create an ecstatic and terrifying/sublime experience

Movement of the body (what you step on, lean against, press on in space) is the interactive device. But the logic must be clear/ must we have a cathartic movement/moment, an end-point?

Work with sensory deprivation too: the whole cube goes dark and you just hear sublime music coming from different directions, or different discourses –

Signals, flashing icons help you on your way