Near Future Arts Lab

I visited the Near Future arts lab in Sapporo yesterday and we arranged a date for a new video work. Near Future are a group of performance artists and tech wizards who have created the robot Kinbi.

The robot makes friends with the audience by shaking their hand and speaking to them. It then displays the friend count data on its screen. The group perform in lab coats and welding masks. They do not speak to the audience directly but through the robot and keyboards. The have performed the Rising sun rock festival and many events in Sapporo.

In another work they cook 2 minute noodles inside hardening concrete. They then break open the cement to eat the noodles, Wacky geeks! They are working on there English text for world domination. Look out for them in your neighbourhood.

Here they are on TV performing with household objects to create a painting.

Synthetic Times exhibition; China & Henrik Menné

National Art Museum of China (NAMOC)
No. 1 Wusi Street Dongcheng District
Beijing 100010 P.R.China
Jun 10, 2008 -July 3, 2008

http://www.mediartchina.org

Henrik Menné, 56L, 2004, Denmark.

The dynamic sculptures by Henrik Menné are basically about process, (im)balance, and organizing matter by means of rigid systems on the one hand and chance on the other.

The majority of Menné’s production consists of machines or arrangements temporarily put to work when exhibited. The visible process is always silent, controlled, and structured by repetitive movements as the machines transform a single material – plastic, wax, metal or stone – into distinct objects. The objects are seldom treated as autonomous works of art. They are destroyed or the material recycled after the exhibition.

Although closed and often self-referring, the system of Menné’s processual sculptures both change the environment and is sensible to changes in the environment. The instability of the exhibition space is what causes the important marginal variations in the almost identical objects produced by a particular machine.

The process of 56L seems self-evident, and, like other works by Henrik Menné, 56L displays an immense effort and obsessive trait by putting forces such as gravity and the well-known qualities of a material into play.

56L (2004) consists of solid glue, a fan, iron, a heating element, and an engine. The dimensions of the work are variable (machine 180×150x150 cm).

56L produces a white web of glue. The machine heats up solid glue, which then flows down in thin threads in front of a fan that blows the strings in different directions. As a temporary result in which the history of the white structure is contained, the web takes the shape of the object or surface on which it settles.

The intriguing low-tech and analogue character of Henrik Menné’s works illustrates the principle behind the organization of the particular sculpture. Despite this rational transparency, works by Menné almost always appear logically impossible and tremendously beautiful.

Biography
Henrik Menné (born 1973) lives and works in Copenhagen (Denmark). He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2002 and is represented by Galleri Tom Christoffersen (Cph).

Website
http://www.tomchristoffersen.dk/artists/henrik_menne/henrik_menne.html

ULTRA FACTORY in KUAD

I am currently a artist in residence at S-AIR in sunny Sapporo, Hokkaido, and I am reminded of the great artist Kenji Yanobe. Looks like he has a new studio called UltraFactory

Lynn Hershman Leeson; Bitforms Gallery

Lynn Hershman, “Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman,”

Lynn Hershman Leeson returns to bitforms gallery in NY with the first showing of a new series, Found Objects, April 26 - May 31.

Including the premiere of the sex doll installation, “Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman,” a provocative and updated version of Edouard Manet’s notorious painting, “Olympia”.

http://www.bitforms.com

Kelly Dobson - Machine therapy - OMO

I particularly like Kelly Dobson’s entry for VIDA 10. i got to see her blender work at ISEA2004 but was not that into it, but this one has potential for sure, so subtle /sensual and emotive.

more info about kelly’s work here : http://web.media.mit.edu/~monster/

Omo is an artefact that shares empathic relationships with humans. The invasiveness of the machine dissolves in the direction of an organic allegory that enables new subconscious feelings. In that sense, Omo might also be seen as a friend or a companion. The creature expands and contracts, either matching the users’ breathing or by guiding it through sensing it. The physical sensing generates prosthetic emotions; for example, placing Omo on your stomach could be compared to the intimate sensations emanated by the turgid tummy of a pregnant women. Omo is one of several informed artefacts drawing from the emerging methodology of Machine Therapy that combines art, design, psychodynamics, and engineering making visible complex dynamics that may occur among human and machines. Machine Therapy tweaks technological artefacts in order to explore their sensitive and emotional side forging their role as relaxing and stimulating companions to humans. As humans are increasingly in contact with technological artefacts, works such as Omo awaken unexpected human emotions, evolving more profound, complex and expressive interrelationships with machines.

ken feingold

where I can see my house from here so we are, 1993-95.

copied from :

http://www.kenfeingold.com/catalog_html

What is there to say?
Does it make a difference if you are not seen, but rather a projection that sees and speaks and hears in your place?
Is the ‘I’ saying ‘Me’ to ‘It-You’ (or its reflection)?
Is it that the one who stands in your place is not free to go where they wish, or that even as you move them “freely” in their mirrored infinity theater that there are borders?
Is it that they can see their wires but know not where they lead?
Is it that in the space of the art exhibition there is also a meeting of those who see but are not seen and those who learn to play the game with their projections?

I learned in 1991 that the Mbone had been invented, making it possible to transmit “real-time” video and audio over the Internet. A networked metaphor would seem to offer a new genre of complexity - were it not for the fact that “here” and “there”, “I” and “you” and “mine” and “yours” have always been bones in the skeleton of our sense-selves and in our ideologies. I found myself thinking: “Maybe creating a telematic videoconference among three ventriloquist dolls would be enough to ask the guest ventriloquists if having a voice, having a ‘body’ in this tele-space, could create new ground for discovering the metaphors of long-distance impersonation? …”

In one exhibition there is a constructed labyrinth. The walls are mirrored. Inside of this space, there are three robot-puppet ventriloquist dolls. In three other locations are darkened spaces, each with a place to sit, a small table upon which sits a special controller-interface (an attaché case containing a joystick and a microphone), and upon the facing wall a large projected video image showing their robot’s vision, effectively, computer controlled “video-telephones.”

Each robot has a video camera for “sight”, microphones for “hearing”. Each robot is connected, remotely, to one of the other spaces (anywhere on the Internet Mbone). In these other locations, a viewer may see (via the video projection) and hear what the robot sees and hears, can maneuver it with a joystick, while the voice of the remote viewer is transmitted back to the robot, that speaks (like the doll of a ventriloquist) the words of that person. It is then possible for three people to communicate with each other in the hall-of- mirrors via their respectively controlled robots. Viewers in the public/gallery space with the robots can see over the walls, allowing them to talk with people at the connected distant locations via the robots.

Participants are inevitably pressed to regard these questions:
“Which one is me?” “Am I talking to you or to myself?” “Am I moving towards or away from the mirror?” “What are the limits of this space?” “Am I having any effect on what is happening?”
-kf 1995

Gregory’s Sun Suckers Nominated for award

Ken Gregory’s Sunsuckers, have been nominated for the 01SJ Prix Green for Environmental Art, which will be awarded at the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge (San Jose, CA, June 4 – 8, 2008). The $ 10,000 award is sponsored by Salas O’Brien Engineers and will be given to an outstanding work of art that creatively uses technology to support or reflect on environmentalism or sustainability.

more here; http://cheapmeat.net/SunSucker.html

Simon Yates

Simon is a Sydney artist and inventor sadly i was away when his multiple robot show was exhibited at Mori Gallery, luckily someone (kentocky) posted video documentation of it on you tube, enjoy. For more on Simon’s work see this link http://mechanickinetica.tripod.com/

Simon Yates; The robot who looked like me, 2007.

Nam June Paik «Robot K-456»

Nam June Paik here deploys his new ‘Robot K-456′, history’s first non-human action artist. About the robot, which he built in Japan, Paik wrote: ‘It was more difficult and more expensive than my Wuppertal show’, by which he meant ‘Exposition of Music – Electronic Television’, the exhibition likewise staged in the ‘Galerie Parnass’ in 1963. The robot was purpose-built for street actions, in which it was supposed to mingle – more or less inconspicuously – with bypassers, as Paik recounts: ‘I imagined it would meet people on the street and give them a split-second surprise. Like a sudden shower.’

more robot tagged works at Medien Kunst Netz

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/suche/?qt=robot

Sputnick#3

The current version of my robot; Sputnick#3. The update uses the original #1 configuration but is hyped up. i.e Sputnick#3 now uses an Arduino BT that i can send and receive data from within Max. Some more Ultrasonic rangers and a wireless camera. The next version will be internet controllable. A tele-present/semi autonomous robot. Then there are plans for a colony, stay tuned. If any one wants to help fund this project let me know