![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Top 2 images: Bedlam Telekinesis Bottom 3 images: Wind Array Cascade Machine |
We receive signals, they pass through and around us - some undetected, others indiscriminately assimilated or consciously ignored - informing and shaping our electronically mediated worldview. Technological advances in electronic communication networks enable one to enter the habitat of endangered species in Africa via webcams or witness presidential palaces destroyed by "smart bombs" in real time, CNN-itized with a slick 3D graphical interface. Far removed from decimated dictators and vanishing exotic species, how do we perceive these transmitted representations of remote events and behaviours? Is technology facilitating our world knowledge by removing spatial boundaries or does the promise of "real-time" experience only lead to more uncertainty when reality can be digitally augmented to suit global infotainment standards or personal agendas? With its geographic
immensity, relative remoteness, advanced telecommunications and artist-run
centre infrastructure, Canada has always been at the forefront of the
international tele-art movement. As early as the 1970's artists were using
telephones, faxes, radio, television, computers, and satellites to explore
and question our ambiguous relationship with machines and communication
networks. signal is an exhibition of two projects that electronically record and transmit behaviours and natural processes over network cabling in order to explore notions of time, space, representation, and transmutation. Wind Array Cascade Machine: Pod by Montreal based artist Steve Heimbecker is a digital landscape of the tactile and the ethereal. It consists of an array of sixty-four movement sensors on the roof of the Méduse Artists' Co-operative in Quebec City and sixty-four corresponding light sculptures at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto. As the wind blows across the roof in Quebec, the sensors gather real-time data and transmit it though the WWW to the light markers in the Toronto exhibition space. The lights illuminate according to the pressure waves of the wind, showing the audience a visual representation of the pattern related to the amplitude, direction, and wave motion of the wind at the remote location. Bedlam Telekinesis is a collaboration between Quebec artist Bill Vorn and Australian artist Simon Penny which explores the creation of mixed or augmented reality through the use of computation and telematics. It is a two-way telematic/telerobotic installation that joins two locations within the DECONism gallery space. An enclosed space in the back of the gallery contains four cameras which capture and record bodily gestures of the visitors. This data is used to determine the behaviour of a vaguely anthropomorphic robot installed in the semi-public space of the gallery window. A fifth camera records the robot and the responses of onlookers, which are then projected in the video, capture space at the back of the gallery. In this way, a highly mediated gestural communication loop is formed by Bedlam. As signals continue to occupy and affect our daily lives, the artists that prompt us to explore these technologies reveal how thought, emotion, and behavior are consciously and unconsciously adjusting to these mediated worlds. Michael Alstad and Camille Turner notes Bedlam Telekinesis Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, noon - 5pm curated by Michael
Alstad and Camille Turner Sponsored by DECONism,
Avatar, Méduse,
The McLuhan Programme in Art
and Technology
Bill Vorn His work has been presented in many international events, including Ars Electronica, ISEA, DEAF, Sonar, Art Futura, EMAF and Artec. He has been awarded the Life 2.0 award (1999, Madrid), the Leprecon Award for Interactivity (1998, New York), the Prix Ars Electronica Distinction award (1996, Linz) and the International Digital Media Award (1996, Toronto). His current projects include a telerobotic installation called "Bedlam", a collaborative project with Australian artist Simon Penny; "Evil/Live 3", an audiovisual cellular automaton; and a series of robotic installations entitled "Trilogie des Stèles". In collaboration with Martin Peach, he is also developing "LifeTools II", a MaxMSP control software toolbox based on Artificial Life algoritms and integrating OpenGL display. You'll find more information about his work at http://www.billvorn.com. Simon Penny He edited the anthology Critical Issues in Electronic Media (SUNY Press 1995) and is currently working on a book on embodied interaction and procedural aesthetics for MIT press. His essays have been translated into seven languages. He curated Machine Culture at SIGGRAPH '93 in Anaheim CA, arguably the first international survey of interactive installation. Recent awards include a grant from the Langlois Foundation (with Bill Vorn), first prize in the Cyberstar 98 awards (GMD/WDR, Germany) and a residency at the Institut fur Bildmedien, ZKM Karlsruhe, spring97. Penny is Professor of Arts and Engineering at University of California Irvine. He is architect and director of a new graduate program in Arts, Computation and Engineering. He is Layer Leader for the Arts in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, CAL(IT)2. Steve Heimbecker
Michael Alstad
is a Toronto based artist and curator working in installation and digital
media. He is a founding member of the Canadian artist collectives Year
Zero One and Symbiosis. Michael has co-ordinated several site-specific
projects in Toronto including The Clinic(95), The Bank of
Symbiosis(97), The Hoarding Project(98) and the Transmedia
video billboard exhibitions (00, 02). His web/video works were presented
at the Images Festival(Toronto 02), FILE(São Paulo01),
Graz Biennial on Media and Architecture(Graz, Austria 01), Global
Multimedia Interface(London 99) and the Pandæmonium Festival
of Moving Images(London 98). Michael’s most recent site responsive
project trans_plant consisted of a series of 'living sculptures'
in a former cable factory on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin-Oberschöneweide.
Camille Turner
is a curatorial resident at InterAccess
Electronic Media Arts gallery in Toronto and the co-founder of Year
Zero One, a new media art collective. Recent projects include an ongoing
journal on the theme Belonging and Home for Horizon Zero's latest issue:
FEEL, a collaborative project between Wayne Dunkley and The Banff New
Media Institute. She is an international collaborator on The Container
Project initiated and coordinated by Mervin Jarman of mongrel, a UK group
of artists/activists.The container is a mobile media lab used to teach
media arts to people in Jamaica who have been locked out of technology.
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