The
following
is
a
special
write
up
(in
French
and
English)
by
Isabel
Saij,
our
newest
contributor.
The
reviews,
even
though
similar
in
style
and
approach,
were
written
as
seperate
pieces,
and
therefore
should
not
be
considered
within
the
realm
of
translated
material.
Please
note:
non-English
material
appears
unedited.
un
endroit
oublié
?
idée
et
réalisation
:
à voir toute affaire cessante :
Banheiro/Bathroom
la dame médiévale aux oubliettes ... cette pauvre chère avait dû s'oublier dans les bras d'un autre que son preux mari parti pour de lointaines croisades...
Epoque baroque, le roi sort de ses lieux d'aisance étonnamment inspirants, habités par telle divine créature de Rubens... art de la contre réforme, triomphe de l'église catholique...
très privé lieu de recueillement du pape ?... [read more]
----------------------------
A delicious way of thinking about a forgotten place?
Idea and Realisation :
Please take the time to go to
Banheiro/Bathroom
and visit it !
A medieval lady falls on command in the oubliette... with a scream of anguish. Has this poor one committed a sin while her husband went on a crusade?...
[it is] baroque times, the king in his creative toilet meets a creature of Rubens...
and because the baroque means the art of the counter-reformation as well
and the triumph of the catholic church, it could [really] be the nice private room of
the pope!... [read more]
Originally
published
on
09/15/03Mailinglist Nettime-l splits its list. From now on, you can subscribe yourself to Nettime-l (the discussion list) and Nettime-Ann. The latter is a list for announcers of things like net-art works, events, festivals, etc. The announcers, which always came up (until now) in a digested form to Nettime-1 subscribers, will go to Nettime-Ann from now on. Let's just hope that this is not just another strategy by the moderators to get rid of all those "unwanted" announcers--the most important reason, for me, to keep subscribed to Nettime. Don't let us forget that Nettime, which once started as a list for artists and activists, has already done this split trick once before. That time, they split Nettime into moderated and unmoderated versions. The first split happened because of complaints that interesting mail were not making it to the list. Unfortunately, a short while after its introduction, the unmoderated version developed into a sort of email ghetto. It was killed off not so long ago by the Nettime team because of too much spam.
:: Peter Luining ::
Originally
published
on
09/13/033SSE (3D Spatial Sound Experience), created by Marcus Quarta, George Tang, Teng Chue Swee and Jaewook Shin, was an academic project that was featured in the Lab 3D exhibition that took place a few months back in Manchester, England. The exhibition was reviewed at the time but I feel the project deserves to be reviewed by itself.
3SSE uses the latest in Macromedias Director to create an interactive and navigable environment. 3D and controlled sound (simulated stereo; panning etc.) combine to create a sparse landscape, almost Tron-like in its simplicity, which is populated by bizarre pulsating creatures. "A sound is attached to each of the creatures, which is then looped and played in time with the other sounds. By moving through the sound-space, the user mixes the sounds together."
It should be noted that this is a demo; and while it is an adventurous project that does interesting things with 3D in Director (one of the few I've seen to date), it lacks the immersive-ness it strives to (and needs to) achieve. Hopefully, this is a student project that will develop further.
:: Garrett Lynch ::
Originally
published
09/11/03Body experience keeps being redefined by new technology. Collective Presence (which I have mentioned in the past) is an online project that combines reality TV aesthetics with performance art and is most closely related to Stelarc's pieces, which consist of machines directly affecting the human body according to Internet traffic. (See our backlogs of Sunday February 16, 2003 for the actual review.)
Issues of the body and technology are brought to our attention once again by WiFi-SM. Like the aforementioned pieces, this one also questions the role of technology in human experience. More directly connected to Stelarc's work, the WiFi-SM project claims to sell a patch which lets the user "feel pain" according to searches made on the Internet. In order to fulfill a personal guilt-trip, one can customize the words that will cause the pain, all for only $49.99.
The major difference between WiFi-SM and the previous projects is that while both Stelarc and Collective Presence actually perform the actions they profess, WiFi-SM is only a webpage, promoting a myth that is quickly dismantled. Some netizens might be disappointed by such reality but, in a way, the webpage functions as a well calculated commentary on how some people are always looking for ways to change or, dare I say, improve themselves via technology: if it is not losing weight with pills, or burning fat with special cremes, it is a patch that in other circumstances could help stop the smoking habit; but in this case, it creates a myth of self-improvement for global culture by proposing pain as a meaningless liberal conduit of humanitarianism. There might be a good possibility that this "patch idea" will actually be put into practice, not in relation to pain but simply for downloading information straight to the brain; it already sounds better than having a permanent microchip installed inside one's head.
:: Eduardo Navas::