Bumblephone: fantasy on echoes and voices

August 24th, 2010 project updatesTags: city, experimental circus, haunted space, machine

Bumblephone is a design for a large scale interactive installation. Collaborators: Lauren Fenton, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Veronica Paredes, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and Laila Sakr. It was originally proposed for IndieCade’s Temporary Installation 2010 in Culver City.

In Bumblephone participants speak to each other through giant phonograph-shaped flower pods, triggering a mischievous aural remix that blends their intimate interactions with the ghostly sounds of cinematic and videogame history. Composed of four fluted canopies that hang from a central stalk, the piece is designed to evoke experiences of intimacy, memory, and a playful rearrangement of history. Visitors can whisper to one another through tube-like apparatuses that resemble the reproductive organs of a flower.

When someone speaks into one of the tubes, the “organism” interjects by echoing back the participant’s words and mixing real-time communication between visitors with sound segments composed of memorable lines, refrains, sound effects, and dialogues culled from histories of cinema and video games. In massaging these soundtracks into a dialogue with its visitors, Bumblephone gives rise to delightful surprises, stimulating confusions, and uncanny presences. By designing these flower-shaped objects to be suggestive of multiple forms — a camera, a projector, a telephone, a phonograph-horn, and an interactive organism — we encourage visitors to think about the ways that various technologies tend to absorb and respond to one another.

We will assemble the frame of this evocative structure using aluminum tubing for the supportive structure and lighter PVC and wire for the sound flowers. A central pole will be secured by four tension cables, supporting a hollow aluminum platform, in which a laptop and a mixer will be housed. A hollow aluminum ring circles the platform, connecting the two curved aluminum tubes that serve both as support for the flowers and carriers of sound from flower to flower. Visitors speak into a microphone that amplifies the sound within the tubes and also records their speech, prompting the Voce speech recognition platform to decode participants’ utterances — looking for keyword matches within a library of lines from noteworthy films. A positive recognition will trigger a Processing program to playback sound from these particular filmic moments. In addition, sound recognition sensors will trigger the Processing program to translate the participants’ voices into sound effects from a library that includes classic video game sounds.

The sound flowers themselves will be assembled using thick copper wire sheather in clear colored PVC tubing, while their decorative buds/stems that link them to the aluminum structure will be composed of molded PVC. To make them sound proof, clear vinyl upholstery fabric will cover the flowers’ wireframe.

Almost Everything Can and Shall Be Cut: playtesting an installation

April 6th, 2010 project updatesTags: ambiance, architexture, experimental circus, haunted space, indexicality, material, photopia, visceral

shots from a playtest of my installation, Almost Everything Can And Shall Be Cut – a next iteration will involve layering the plastic sheeting to produce stereoscopic effects when the second channel video is projected. For the first video displayed on the monitor, I’m thinking of setting up the plastic tent in a stairwell.

Fischli and Weiss ” The Way Things Go”: inflatable and inflammable cause and effect

April 5th, 2010 researchTags: architexture, detournement, experimental circus, haptic, kinetic

The most hardcore of mouse-traps on a human scale, with various inflamable materials, ballons, liquid helium, fire, bubble, tires, mutilated furniture, using the principles of inertia, wheeling in symetrical patterns, explosion, aerodynamics, the centripedal and centrifugal forces and many others. More grungy, more dangerous, more punk rock than the famous recent “This Too Shall Pass” video by OK Go,  looking back at an experimental classic.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology: fantastical flutterings of real and distant space

March 29th, 2010 researchTags: contingency, experimental circus, machine, play, rhizome, space, time, uncanny, utopia

The obscure Renaissance scholar Athanasius Kircher’s fabulous system of magnetic divination: “The World is Tied with Secret Knots”

Hidden in sun-drenched Culver City, The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a hoax, an art installation of intimate and metaphysical magnitude, a labyrinth for the scholastic  imagination and anything else you can dream of or wish for. Founded by the enigmatic David Hildebrand Wilson in 1989, susbequent recipient of a Mac Arthur “Genius” Grant in 2001 for this puzzling and original endeavour, the Museum is a cabinet of curiosities that tantalizingly frames tidbits of historical minutiae in a fabulous context, very much in the spirit of Mark Z. Danielewski’s legendary House of Leaves, also an ironic mise en abime of scholarly critique folded into an impossible (alhough imaginary) geometric space. Minuscule steroscopic projections visible through copper-articulated glass plates, documentary films with convoluted mystical narratives, whimsically lit diaoramas and glowing orbs: such is that place of perfect delight and incomprehension, the Museum of Jurassic Technology

The micromosaics of Harald Henry Dalton, visible only through a microscope

from the exhibit Lives of Perfect Creatures: Dogs of the Soviet Space Program

from the exhibit Garden of Eden on Wheels: Collections from Los Angeles Areas Mobile Parks

from the exhibit Rotten Luck: The Decaying Dice of Ricky Jay

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”

A Photo Comic of my installation film: production stills from the shoot of Everything Can and Shall Be Cut

March 10th, 2010 project updatesTags: architexture, body, cyborg, experimental circus, haptic, inanimata, material, photopia, uncanny, visceral

Some stills from the shoot of one of the videos for my new installation “Almost Everything Can and Shall Be Cut”

1. a balloon animal in a helpless position

2. the balloon animal in distress

3. a wig is powerless to keep the scissors at bay

4. the fate of the wig: stuffed in a blender

5. wig, ravaged , posing with its instrument of death

6. the slow decomposition of jello

7. the ice-cubes are handpicked for oblivion

8. a cube of polystyrene foam is tortured with a needle

9. green goo oozes from polystyrene’s wounds

10. a steak is posthumously fed with intraveinous liquid

11. a circuit board fears for its transistors

12. circuit board yields its last colorful breath

13. a pillow besides its own stuffing

14. exposing pillow’s inner flesh

15. the pink heart of pillow’s insides

Almost Everything Can and Shall Be Cut III: interactive mind map of my installation

March 3rd, 2010 project updatesTags: body, experimental circus, inanimata, noise, play, uncanny, visceral

Conceptual Sketch

Almost Everything Can and Shall Be Cut II: jello’s screen test

March 1st, 2010 project updatesTags: experimental circus, haptic, inanimata, noise, uncanny, visceral

screen test for my upcoming installation project “Almost Everything Can and Shall Be Cut” featuring one of its stars: jello in all its wiggly, jellyfishy glory. Other materials will include foam core, computer circuitry, ice cubes, wigs, balloon animals, steak, and furry pillows.

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.

Sonic and Synesthesia: archaic utopia and toy emotion

February 18th, 2010 researchTags: body, cyborg, espace heureux, experimental circus, immersion, kinetic, maze, music, play, utopia

As a child, I spent hours with my Sega Genesis or (Sega Megadrive, as it was marketed in Europe) developing digital motor reflexes meant to ensure my survival in a colorful 8-bit world. Rolling up in a little ball to zoom through transparent tubes or accelerate and fall in not-quite-Earth-gravity parabolas became second nature. Sonic introduced me to the delights of a sacharine electronic soundtrack that made the hard primary colors of Sonic world’s shimmer and subliminally controlled my minute pushing and pulling of the tiny joystick. Sonic is a masterpiece in synesthetic design: visual, aural and kinetic mesh together to create a re-embodied experience, more akin to telepresence than manipulating an avatar.

Apparently, other fans who still have dreams of pinballing through Sonic levels and have developped an automatic  jump and bounce response to hearing repetitive synth melodies  have posted these walkthroughs of Sonic 1 and 2…a nostalgic flashback to an archaic utopia.

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 !

Architexture VIII: Nam June Paik and dreaming about electronic ecology of future urbanisms

February 9th, 2010 referencesTags: city, detournement, experimental circus, inanimata, photopia, screen

breaking down the ontological divide between the virtual and the material…another piece of interactive architexture to consider as flora and fauna for the electronic ecology of the future city.

Architexture VII: Peter Sarkisian and the spherical arcade

February 9th, 2010 referencesTags: architexture, experimental circus, haptic, kinetic, machine, noise, play, uncanny

Peter Sarkisian, Extruded Video Engine n°=1. the impersonation of the arcade mentality! a new techno-animal emerges from this fizzing bleeping volumetric toy…

Peter Sarkisian at Volta NY
Uploaded by C-Monster. – Independent web videos.

Architexture VI: trampolines and mesh slides

February 9th, 2010 referencesTags: architecture, architexture, body, city, experimental circus, play

I like the idea of using fabric to transform the geometry of a space: multiplying the possibilities for interaction yet flexible, mobile and eminently adaptable to other architectures

Architecture turned into enjoyment and participation.
instead of contemplating the void of the guggenheim museum‘s central space,
JDS architects have proposed an experience which sees a trampoline net spiraling down
the institution’s rotunda. this idea plays on frank lloyd wright’s original scenography
for the guggenheim in which he envisioned patrons visiting the exhibition from the top,
downwards.

I Heart Tony Oursler II: trapped dolls with little pathetic faces

January 28th, 2010 referencesTags: cyborg, experimental circus, haptic, haunted space, inanimata, trap, uncanny

note to self: when thinking about video art and projection techniques, think SMALL

I Heart Tony Oursler: haunting heads

January 28th, 2010 referencesTags: architexture, body, detournement, experimental circus, haunted space, inanimata, material, uncanny

using techniques pioneered by the imagineers for their Haunted Mansion ride? a real breakdown of the virtual/material barrier, we enter a liminal zone where the virtual animates objects, ensouling them…

Oursler began working with small LCD video projectors in 1991 in his installation “The Watching” presented at Documenta 9, featuring his first video doll and dummy. This work utilizes handmade soft cloth figures combined with expressive faces animated by video projection. Oursler then produced a series of installations that combined found objects and video projections. “Judy”, 1993, explored the relationship between multiple personality disorder and mass media. “Get Away II” features a passive/aggressive projected figure wedged under a mattress that confronts the viewer with blunt direct address. Oursler’s works seem like animate effigies in their own psychological space, often appearing to interact directly with the viewer’s sense of empathy. These installations are consistently disturbing and fascinating and lead to great popular and critical acclaim.

Signature works have been his talking lights, such as Streetlight (1997), his series of video sculptures of eyes with television screens reflected in the pupils, and ominous talking heads such as Composite Still Life (1999). An installation called Optics (1999) examines the polarity between dark and light in the history of the camera obscura. In his text “Time Stream”, Oursler proposed that architecture and moving image installation have been forever linked by the camera obscura noting that cave dwellers observed the world as projections via peep holes. Oursler’s interest in the ephemeral history of the virtual image lead to large scale public projects and permanent installations by 2000.

The Public Art Fund and Art Angel commissioned the “Influence Machine” in 2000. This installation marks the artist’s first major outdoor project and thematically traced the development of successive communication devices from the telegraph to the personal computer as a means of speaking with the dead. Oursler used smoke, trees and buildings as projection screens in Madison Park NYC and Soho Square London. He then completed a number of permanent public projects in Barcelona, New Zealand, Arizona including “Braincast” at the Seattle Public Library. He is scheduled to complete a commission at the Frank Sinatra High School in Astoria New York.

(source: Wikipedia)

The Playground as Art Practice: Kinesthetic Art II

January 28th, 2010 referencesTags: architexture, body, espace heureux, experimental circus, kinetic, play, space

note how the documentation is edited to techno! The correlation with dance culture is a phenomenological one.

Ceremony Around a Fire Hydrant

January 27th, 2010 project updatesTags: city, experimental circus, haunted space, music

my newest piece of low-tech music – enjoy!

Ceremony Around a Fire Hydrant from Lauren Fenton on Vimeo.

Architexture V / soundsuits by NICK CAVE: a fashion of impossible subjectivities

January 25th, 2010 referencesTags: architexture, body, detournement, experimental circus, inanimata, music, play

Fowler Museum presents ‘Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,’ Jan 10–May 30, 2010

Exhibition features 35 of artist’s ‘Soundsuits,’ wearable mixed-media sculptures

By Stacey Ravel Abarbanel October 23, 2009

“Whether Nick Cave’s efforts qualify as fashion, body art or sculpture … they fall squarely under the heading of Must Be Seen to Be Believed.” —Roberta Smith, New York Times

“Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,” on display at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from Jan. 10 through May 30, 2010, is the largest presentation of work by the Chicago-based artist, featuring 35 of his “Soundsuits” — multilayered, mixed-media sculptures named for the sounds made when the “suits” are performed.

Evocative of African, Caribbean and other ceremonial ensembles, as well as haute couture, Cave’s work explores issues of transformation, ritual, myth and identity through a layering of references and virtuosic construction, using materials as varied as yarn, beads, sequins, bottle caps, vintage toys, rusted iron sticks, twigs, leaves and hair.

Mad, humorous, visionary, glamorous and unexpected, the Soundsuits are created from scavenged, ordinary materials and objects from both nature and culture, which Cave recontextualizes into extraordinary works of art. The Fowler is the first Los Angeles–area museum to feature Cave’s work and the only Southern California venue for this traveling exhibition.

The Fowler presentation of this exhibition holds particular meaning for the artist and for Los Angeles because Cave’s first Soundsuit was sparked by the civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1992 following the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating.

The Soundsuits almost always cover the whole body, erasing the identity of the wearer. Thus, the Soundsuits can be understood as coats of armor, shielding Cave from the day-to-day prejudice he encounters as an African American man and facilitating a transformation into an invented realm of vibrant associations and meanings.

For this exhibition, Cave also employs animal imagery in ways as complex and multilayered as the human-based suits. While conjuring the spiritual strength and power of animal totems used in ancient rituals from around the world, Cave’s Soundsuits also become vessels of transformation and seek to connect us to the Earth and the animals around us. Using wit, humor and a fanciful sensibility, Cave’s Soundsuits beg us to pay attention and to dream of a different future.

Nick Cave received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982 and his M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1989. He studied fiber art but is committed to a broad spectrum of interests and disciplines. Cave is an associate professor and chairman of the fashion department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches in the fiber arts program. He has led such workshops as “Extending the Body: Experiments in Clothing” and has designed, manufactured and marketed his own line of men’s and women’s clothing. He has received numerous awards, including a United States Artists Fellowship (2006) and a Joyce Award (2006), and his work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions across the U.S. and Europe.