Blog archive for March 2004

The art of walking on water (2004)

Interactive sound installation by Jana Winderen, Jørgen Træen and Trond Lossius.

Touring exhibition presented at schools in the Hedmark region.

Verdensteatret: Concert for Greenland (2004-05)

CONCERT FOR GREENLAND is an audio-visual composition where rusty machinery meets new technology on the backside of a “video-shadow-theatre” in Greenland, a performance/installation where visual art, sound, video, installation, text and theatre unite.

Verdensteatret received 2005-2006 New York Dance and Performance Awards (A.K.A. The Bessies), Installation & New Media category for “Concert for Greenland” at P.S. 122.

Freezing

Jana has a hard time with the installation at Hamar. Every now and then the
Mac/MaxMSP freezes. I’ve never experienced this while develloping and I don’t
know what the reason might be. I was using slightly different equipment from
Jana a MOTU828 and a MISISport USB 4×4 MIDI interface instead of her Hammerfall
DSP serving as both audio and MIDI interface. I’ve been looking into the patch
but it’s pretty clean and simple tecnically speaking and unless it gets problem
with to much MIDI traffic I can’t find any problems.

I’ve been searching the Max mailing list archieve and seems like others have had a lot of problems with using Hammerfall DSP as a MIDI interface alongside audio and it might be that we’re into the same kind of problems. I’ve suggested that she
should get another MIDI interface so that the Hammerfall can be used for audio
only.

Kristiansand

We got to Kristiansand by lunch time yesterday. The equipment shipped last
Friday had arrived already in good condition. The gallery space is a long and
narrow room approx. 65 × 10 meters with lots of windows. Carpets make the
acoustics a lot better than I feared. I’ve got 12 loudspeakers altogether and
I’m planning on making 3-4 “stations” in the room. The main one will
be at one of the ends with a total of 7 loudspeakers. They are already set
up encircling this part of the space. This is also were most of Jeremy’s videos
will be presented. Do the 7 loudspeakers create a room in the room? If so
is it decired or not?

Jon Arne Mogstad arrived in the evening with about 50 paintings. I’m looking
forward to see them today.

The poster for the installation states that this is to be an installation of
video paintings and digital images by Jeremy Welsh and Jon Arne Mogstad. I’m
not mentioned at all. Jeremy was surprised when he saw the poster and said
that they hadn’t included all of the text he sent for them. A few years ago
I would proberbly be a bit pissed of but I’ve seen this happening to many times
now to be bothered. Posters spam mails etc. are usual made in a hurry and
most people in particular organizers aren’t to concerned or worried about
getting all credits right. to them it’s more important to get an audience. Anyway
there’s no doubt that Jeremy and jon Arne has been contributing far more than
me to the total of the installation. This has been the one major project Jeremy
has been working on for the past 6 months.

®®[F]

BEK – Bergen Center for Electronic Arts is participating in®®[F]-
global networking project by Agricola de Cologne with two
audio streams with sound artists working out of Bergen Norway. The event will
kick off March 5th 2004 at The National Museum
of Contemporary Art Bucaresti/Romania.

To listen go to
http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/

BEK_dns
A selection of sound arts and electronic composers.
Participating artists in BEK_dns are:

Antti Sakari Saario
ARM with John Hegre
Continental Fruit
Cosmic Jinx
Gijs Gieskes
Christian Bøen
Frode Thorsen Trond Lossius Gitte Bastiansen

BEK_dns_audio_combat
A group of electronic musicians working with LSDJ a GameBoy emulator. An 8-bit
collective orchestra playing at BEK.
Participating artists in BEK-dns_audio combat are:

Torgeir Nes
Tom Mæland
Stefan Mitterer
Terje Urnes
Peki Sinikoski
Rune Storetved
Marieke Verbiesen
Gijs Geiskes

Curated by Eva Sjuve Director of Sound Arts BEK

Not freezing anymore

It seems that we’ve managed to solve the problems
Jana had a few days ago. Several users at the Max/MSP mailing list have confirmed that there’s still problems
using the Hammerfall DSP as audio and MIDI interface. Two days ago Jana
got her self a MIDISport 2×2 MIDI interface and the last two days have been
smooth sailing. Knock on wood.

LMW – Dialogue/Transition (2004)

Paintings, digital stills, video, sound
LMW: Trond Lossius – Jon Arne Mogstad – Jeremy Welsh

Christiansands kunstforening

Sven Påhlsson triology

In the evening yesterday we went to Sørlandets
Kunstmuseum for the official opening of a new exhibition room Sal1. Sal1
is a huge white cube no windows and proberbly at least 5 meters to the roof.
The opening exhibition was the triology Consuming Pleasures by Sven
På hlsson. The triology consists of three videos Crash Course
(2001) Sprawlville (2002) og Consuming Pleasures (2004) mainly
created using 3D animation. I found it very interesting. Erik Wøllos
music was working well but they would have benefited tremendously from getting
a better PA system and a graphical EQ. It’s proberbly not a good idea to emphasize
the low mid range to much in sound for gallery spaces those frequencies are
to sensitive to the aqoustics of the room and it’s a risk that it might sound
unintentionally muddy.

I’m not sure that I agree with the recent review
at Kunstkritikk.no. What would the
impression be if these videos was presented at MTV instead of a gallery?

&lt br&gt

The end of last week was crazy. I managed to finish of the sound
for the installation in Kristiansand in time but I was working to 3 o’clock
in the morning the last day before the opening. I’m pretty happy about the end
result. While developing it is easy to get narrow minded focusing on technical
and formal problems compositional material etc. Sunday I was hanging around
the gallery space for a few hours and got a feeling that I had also managed
to add something of a more personal quality to the soundscape. It’s very hard
to tell where it comes from and sort of reminds me of the John Lennon quote
" Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans".

Later in the day I traveled to Oslo to get to see the last
performance of Verdensteatret at
Black Box. The title of the piece is Konsert
for Grønland (Concert for Greenland) and the title was
decided in the evening the day before the opening. The performance came together
very much as I expected it to do the last time I was in Oslo 2 weeks before
the premiere. Still I was pleasantly surprised. There were more energy confidence
routine and maturity in the performance than I would have though possible for
a first performance.

We were hanging around at Black Box after the show taking a few beers and I also got to say hello to several friends. I met fellow kunststipendiat Per Roar Thorsnes and Asbjørn Flø. Asbjørn told me that he’d been doing a mix of Norge – et lydrike that is going to be broadcasted by at least 14 radio channels around Europe. Afterwards the Verdensteatret crew went dining at an Indian restaurant and
partied into the night.

Monday I woke up feeling completely exhausted. I got myself onto
a plane back home and Tuesday was spent doing as little as possible. Today
I was in at the Academy again attempting to work but my brain is completely
dead at the moment. I met Morten Eide Pedersen one of my supervisors but apart
from that I was unable to do anything productive and instead took an early
bus home and went to sleep.

By the coming Monday I need to write a revised project description
for the Kunststipendiat committee.
If I didn’t have to do that I’d probably take this week of.

&lt br&gt

&lt br&gt
&lt br&gt
&lt br&gt
I need a break.&lt br&gt

theoretican

n. a student or user of the theory rather than the practical aspects of a subject.

The New Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus 1987

Revised project description

This week I have to revise the project description for the Fellowship
program. Deadline for delivery is Monday 15th of March. In October last year
the committee and the 6 candidates accepted for the Fellowship program had a
two day meeting mainly spent by us presenting our projects. Progress is to
be evaluated after 6 months and if unsatisfying we might get kicked out. A
few weeks after the gathering we got a mail raising certain questions they would
like to see discussed in the revised project description. The full letter is
below but here’s a rough translation of the questions:

• What is the end product? What quality criteria should be used for the evaluation
  of it?
• Conceptualizing the project. What discourses and discussions are relevant
  to the work? This could be strict art-related discussions or or discussions
  of more general relevance on how human experience history and thoughts can
  be mediated thru art works. be as precise as possible.
• What is done already? Is there any exist relevant literature or theoretical
  reflection on the topic? What has been done by other artists? What theoreticians
  artists and works are relevant for comparison?
• How do the candidate want to contribute towards discussions. Do the work
  contribute towards new perspectives or insights?
• How are the candidate going to document and comment on new perspectives
  insights or artistic solutions during the process.

Here’s the full letter cited in Norwegian:

* * * * * * * * * * *

Til stipendiater og veiledere i stipendprogrammet
for
kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid

03/667/JAH/TLO

29.10.03

REVIDERT PROSJEKTBESKRIVELSE OG VEILEDERRAPPORT

Takk for hyggelig og faglig givende møte på Sundvolden.
Programstyret vil klargjøre forventningene til veilederrapporten og stipendiatenes
reviderte prosjektbeskrivelse gjennom noen presiseringer.

Ifølge reglementet for Stipendprogram for kunstnerisk
utviklingsarbeid er de første seks må nedene å anse som
en prøvetid. I løpet av disse seks må nedene skal kandidaten
avgrense og bearbeide prosjektbeskrivelsen. Før slutten av perioden skal
veilederne gi en skriftlig rapport om fremdriften og gi en vurdering av kandidatens
muligheter for å fullføre prosjektet som planlagt.

Må let med det kunstneriske utviklingsarbeidet er et selvstendig
arbeid på et høyt internasjonalt nivå nå r det gjelder
problemstilinger metoder dokumentasjon formidlingsform og resultat. Arbeidet
skal bidra til å utvikle ny innsikt kunnskap og/eller erfaring. I tillegg
til det kunstneriske resultatet av arbeidet må kandidaten framlegge dokumentasjon/presentasjon
av sin arbeidsprosess og kommentere prosessen og resultatet sett i forhold
til det kunstneriske prosjekt de problemstillinger som er beskrevet i prosjektbeskrivelsen
og relevant faglig diskurs.

I kandidatens arbeid med å revidere prosjektbeskrivelsen
og veiledernes arbeid med rapporten om fremdriften kan det være hensiktsmessig
å reflektere over disse momentene:

• Hva er sluttproduktet? Hvilke kvalitetskriterier
  vil det være naturlig å bedømme det ut fra?
  
• Kontekstualisering av prosjektet: Hvilke faglige
  diskurser og diskusjoner er relevante i forhold til arbeidet? Dette kan
  være alt fra strengt kunstfaglige diskurser og diskusjoner til mer
  allmenne diskurser og debatter om hvordan menneskelige erfaringer/historier/refleksjoner
  kan representeres/gis form i et kunstnerisk medium/materiale. Her gjelder
  det å være så presis som mulig.
  
• Hva er gjort før? Hva finnes det av litteratur/teoretisk
  refleksjon på områ det? Hva har andre kunstnere gjort? Hvilke
  teoretikere kunstnere og verk vil det være naturlig å sammenligne
  kandidatens arbeid med?
  
• På hvilken må te ønsker kandidaten
  å bidra til diskusjonene og de kunstfaglige diskursene gjennom sitt
  arbeid? Bringes det inn nye perspektiver eller innsikter?
  
• Hvordan skal kandidaten dokumentere og kommentere
  de perspektivene innsiktene eller kunstfaglige grepene som fremkommer gjennom
  arbeidsprosessen?

Veilederne skal hver for seg jf. Reglementet
for stipendprogrammet punkt 5.100 gi en skriftlig rapport om fremdriften
herunder en vurdering av kandidatens muligheter for å fullføre
prosjektet som planlagt. Rapporten sendes parallelt til Stipendprogrammet
og til institusjonen med kopi til stipendiaten. I rapporten skal veilederne
gi en vurdering av om kandidaten på en tilstrekkelig må te har avgrenset
og klarlagt prosjektet og om spørsmå lene 1 til 5 ovenfor er relevant
bearbeidet i den reviderte prosjektbeskrivelsen.

Den reviderte prosjektbeskrivelsen skal være avlevert til
veilederne programoperatøren og institusjonene senest 15.000 mars 2004.000
Rapportene fra veilederne skal være avlevert til programoperatøren
institusjonene og stipendiatene senest 25.000 mars 2004.000

Vi minner også om neste samling for stipendiater og veiledere
29.- 30.000 mars 2004.

Vennlig hilsen

Siri Meyer (s.)
leder

Johan A. Haarberg
operatør

Images of Sound

Lydtegn/Images of sound by Kristin Torp is displayed at Oslo S the central railway station in Oslo 12-29 of March. It’s an exhibition of computer visualizations of sound printed on plexi glass.

IT-utvalg

I’m now a lucky(?) member of the IT committee at KHIB.The
committee has an online discussion
forum that will be open for general access.

We had a meeting yesterday discussing general strategy for the period 2004-2008.
This reminded me of last year when I was writing a general strategy for BEK.
The disposition we based that plan on was suggested by my father who’s been
working in business management. It raised several questions that
was well worth considering:

• Vision statement
• Collaborating partners
• Today’s Situation
  
  
  
  • Strong points
  • Weak points
• Long term goals and objectives
• Strategy
• Identification of action items
  (this doesn’t necessarily have to be part of the strategic plan itself)

Theater and visual art

In an interview with the newspaper Klassekampen artistic director at Black Box Kristian Seltun explains the difference between Black Box and institutional theatre. According to him the kind of theatre shown at Black Box resembles visual art in the sense that it’s depending on art theory and discurses:

- Hva er hovedforskjellen på Black Box og tradisjonelle institusjonsteatre?

- Vi slekter mer på billedkunsten i den betydning at mye av det som vises her er mer teoriavhengig enn tradisjonelt norsk teater. Du kan si at det kuratoren er for billedkunsten er programmatøren for teatret. Vi forholder oss i stor grad til samtidige tendenser i kunst og musikk. På Black Box jobber folk på tvers av kunstgrenene. Slik klarer vi i motsetning til det tradisjonelle teatret å skape tverrfaglige konseptuelle praksiser.

Verdensteatret Review

Kunstkritikk.no has published
a review
of “Konsert for Grønland” (in Norwegian only). Dagsavisen
also did a review but I’ve not been able to find it online.

 

Oblique Strategies as AppleScript Application

Sign up for the More
dark than shark Yahoo group and you get a zip archive of Eno interviews
and Oblique Strategies
as an AppleScript application. It’s OS9 but easy to recompile for OSX.

Maia’s new web site

is up. She’s included the text for the lecture during the Ultima workshop on sound installations last year.

The Borealis contemporary music festival has got a web site as well. The festival is starting the coming Saturday.

New software. Upgrades

• AntiLoop
  is “another strike at pointless repetetive music” by Matthew Aidekman.
  OSX application built on Max.
• Tim Place has released Jade
  2.000
  
• Audacity 1.2.0 is released.
• Melodyne "is a multitrack
  audio recording and editing application that lets you process and manipulate
  audio files in a revolutionary but musically intuitive way. Melodyne detects
  the individual notes of a recorded melody and lets you manipulate them “regardless of whether the source audio comprises vocals solo instruments or percussion” as easily as if they were MIDI. Melodyne lets you arrange
  and combine existing audio files and refashion sounds using functions that
  are powerful and precise without ever losing sight of their musical purpose."
• Tom Erbe has been making some interesting VST
  plug-ins.

Musicircus – REMIX

• Mac laptop
• Mozilla Firefox installed
• broadband connection

Load http://www.experimentalintermedia.org/
Quickly load all MP3s in seperate tabs so that they all play at the same time.

(Temporary project as the web site content is likely to change at any time)

More info on Musicircus by John Cage.

International Art and Technology History Conference

While trying to come to terms with old e-mails I found this announcement:

This is a preliminary announcement for the first international art history
conference covering art and new media art and technology art-science
interaction and the history of media as pertinent to contemporary art.

The conference will be held Sept 28-Oct 2 2005 at the Banff Centre Canada.

There will be a three day conference followed by a two day follow-up
speakers’ and organizers retreat in order to plan follow-up.

The event is co-sponsored by Leonardo/ISAST Leonardo/OLATS UNESCO
DIGIARTS Database for Virtual Art and the Banff New Media Institute. An
International Advisory Board chaired by Oliver Grau of Humboldt University
is currently designing the program.

A description of the program will be available this summer and the formal
call for papers will be announced in the fall.

Scholars and researchers interested in participating in the conference may
send an email of intent to:

banffleoarthistconfinfo-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Panels and workshops in the disciplines above will have invited speakers
chosen by the Advisory Board and speakers chosen by peer review. We
encourage graduate students currently carrying out theses in the field to
participate in the conference.

Project presentation

I’m going to give a presentation of my fellowship project for the board at KHIB later today. I’ve prepared some preliminary documentation from the Dialog/Overgang project and expect to have some info including sound examples up at my web site sometime next week.

Lydmur (Wall of Sound)

The installation Lydmur (Wall of Sound) by Maia Urstad is opening tomorrow at 16:00 as part of the Borealis Contemporary Music Festival in Bergen. Below is the press announcement (in Norwegian only):

EN MUR AV LYD

Maia Urstads lydinstallasjon LYDMUR åpner lørdag 20.000 mars kl 16.000 – 19.00. Installasjonen innvies med duoen Bjørnar Habbestad (fløyte / elektronikk) og Maia Urstad (CDspillere / elektronikk) ca 16:15.

Sted: Strandgaten 218 på Nordnes Bergen.

Er 1980-tallet våre dagers Egypt? I Maia Urstads installasjon LYDMUR
utforskes forholdet mellom nær og fjern fortid og mellom teknologi og
historie. Lydmuren er satt sammen av store mengder sorte og sølvfargede
kassettradioer som spiller bearbeidede opptak fra radio. I
utstillingslokalet i Strandgaten møter tilskueren en åtte meter lang
vegg formet av lyd og lydkilde på samme tid en ruin der byggesteinene
ikke er antikke steinblokker men gårsdagens tekniske vidundere.

Akkurat som støyen som omgir oss er murer noe vi alltid er omsluttet av
men sjelden stanser opp for å betrakte. Først når muren blir et
historisk monument blir den interessant å se på. I LYDMUR er det vår
nære fortid som stilles opp foran oss og blir gjenstand for betraktning.
Installasjonen skyver den inn i historien og minner oss om det flyktige
ved det aller nyeste. Lydene vi hører er brokker av nyhetssendinger
interferens og sus bakgrunnsstøyen fra eteren som vanligvis forsvinner
i samme øyeblikk som den oppstår men som her fryses og plasseres i
forgrunnen. Dermed problematiseres forestillingen om historisk utvikling
og grensen mellom nytt og gammelt viskes ut. For er ikke kassettradioen
ett av de mest slående symboler på 80-tallets glorete jappeestetikk og
absurde fremskrittsoptimisme noe av det mest utdaterte vi har i dag?
Teknikken er fullt brukbar men apparatene er likevel henvist til
skraphauger og brukthandler utsatt for en altfor tidlig alderdom.
Installasjonen LYDMUR studerer forbindelseslinjer fabulerer rundt
sammenstillingen og stiller bl.a. spørsmålet – hvordan blir ruinene
etter oss?

LYDMUR bygger videre på tidligere arbeid som STASJONER en
lydinstallasjon der visuell inspirasjon er hentet fra den romanske bue
og KLEOPATRAS NÅ LER et musikkdramatisk verk inspirert av egyptiske
byggverk fra faraoisk tid.

LYDMUR er en del av Borealisfestivalen i Bergen. Den vises i Strandgaten
218
mars kl 16.00

Utstillingen er åpen alle dager i perioden 21.- 28.000 mars kl 13.00-
18.00.

MAIA URSTAD – www.maia.no

Maia Urstad er lydkunstner og arbeider i krysningsfeltet mellom auditiv
og visuell kunst. Hun har i mange år samarbeidet med andre kunstnere om
konsertfremføringer og audiovisuelle uttrykk i ulike offentlige rom. Utdannet ved Høyskolen for Kunsthåndtverk og Design Bergen. Arbeidet i
flere
år med visuelle uttrykk og har de siste 15 årene jobbet med lyd i
diverse
tverrkunstneriske prosjekter installasjoner teaterforestillinger
film performance etc. Siste års arbeider har i hovedsak dreiet seg om lydinstallasjoner
utendørs og innendørs med CD/kassettradioer som auditivt og visuelt
objekt og konstruksjonsmateriale i prosjektene. Maia Urstad driver også Maur Prosjekter som initierer og gjennomfører
lydrelaterte tverrkunstneriske samarbeidsprosjekt.

Utstillingen er støttet av Bergen kommune Norsk kulturråd og BEK.

Lester Bang on Eno

This is a lenghty article on Eno by the late Lester Bang once planned to be part of a book that never made it. Here’s a few quotes:

- I’ve always abandoned pieces which succeeded theoretically but not sensually.

- I’m interested in static music but on a human level. I’m not interested in sequences but the idea of using human beings as sequencers because of all the little errors they put in.

- I really like the behind the scenes role a lot because all my freedom is there.

PixelACHE 2004

PixelACHE 2004 an annual festival of electronic art design and technology is about to start. The theme for this year is Audiovisual architecture experimenting with the border between the digital domain and the physical world. PixelACHE Festival 2004 goes on for 10 days starting in Stockholm and continuing in Helsinki. There are several interesting projects in the festival:

The Moment of Long Now is an alternative news tv channel. The channel is showing short snippets of news footage with a pace that is a hundred times slower than what we are used to. The project by Juha Huuskonen and Tuomas Toivonen is inspired by The Long Now Foundation.

Singing bridges is a sonic sculpture playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments. Australian sound artist Jodi Rose travels the world listening to the sound of bridge cables hearing in them an echo of the silent longings missed connections and forgotten dreams that slip away from our everyday lives.

Revised Project Description

The revised project description has been uploaded to a new section of my web site logging projects presentations collaborating artists etc. during the period of the Fellowship. There’s proberbly still a lot of information missing but at least it’s a start.

Verdensteatret Review Translated

An English translation of the Kunstkritikk.no review of Konsert for Grønland is available at the Verdensteatret web site.

Mental walkabout

Today I’ve been doing a mental walkabout. The first part of the day was spent reading Jills blog and the blog of her HUIN105 course. Right now her students has to write a review of a blog as an obligatory assignment. From there I was sliding on to earlier weblog reviews that Jill was reffering to. This was a class assignment at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. I realised that at the moment I don’t have a very concious attitude towards several of the questions raised. E.g. the layout used at the moment is the custom one that CoreBlog is providing. It’s corporate and a bit boring but I haven’t had the time to look into how to customize the design. What annoy me the most is that there’s not enough silence in this blog. And as for target audience I guess I’m writing more to myself than anybody else at the moment. I feel that the whole process of blogging still have to mature and develop and I don’t want to rush it. For that reason I haven’t done much to announce the blog to others so far.

Apart from that it strikes me that blogs and mailing lists aren’t linked to each others. You can reply to mails and you can do blog trackbacks but you can’t do blog replies or mail trackbacks. That’s strange as there’s so many similarities between bloging and being active on mailing lists. Also it seems to me that the obvious similarities in socializing on mailing lists and blogs are never mentioned when Jill &amp co are theorising on the subject.

I had lunch with Willem Sanders and a friend of him Erik (I can’t remember the last name) today. Willem was an Artist in Recidence at USF in Bergen last summer and now he’s back for a brief trip. First we went over to say hello to Maia and have another look/listening to Lydmur. Great work!

During lunch we were talking about all kind of things current art projects a short movie Erik is working on past projects Erik’s been doing (one of them involved polaroid photos and ended up as a E.P. with a wonderful cover) Willems Fijnkost project that is to be launched later this year (Willem wants me to join in and I have some ideas of what to contribute) blogging (in fact Willem was asking why I’m using such a lame layout at this blog) art life in Bergen vs. Amsterdam the meaning of life etc.

Willem also provided several interesting URLs for me. Fucking Good Art below is thanks to Erik and another very interesnting one is ubuweb. That turned out to be a really great resource for info on sound artists with lots of MP3s.

Then Laila my wife called me and asked if I would like a new cell phone for my upcoming birthday (on April 5th). Sure! It’s a Sony Ericson model and looks real nice. I’ll have to stay with NetCom for another year. That’s fine with me they have a much friendlier way of reminding me to pay my bills than Telenor.

In the afternoon I’ve been making a note on how to improve the sound studio at the Art Academy and spent some time downloading and reinstalling XFree86 and Fink. GIMP stopped working when I upgraded to OS 10.300 and I want to get that working again.

And I guess what I’ve really have been working on while doing all of this is unconcioussly planning the presentation for the stipendiatsamling at the comming Monday. And generally I’ve been enyoing fiddling around without having to produce something to be finished in the next few days. It’s the first time in a very long while and moments like this often ends up being the place were something new is born.

I’ve never been doing New Years resloutions apart from 2003.000 Back then I had a lot of pressure on me so my resolution was not to smoke more than 10 cigs a day. I’m a non-smoker so that was fairly easy to accomplish.

For next year I’m planning the resolutions to be:
- spend more time listening to music
- spend more time looking at the sky
- drink more red wine

Fucking Good Art!

Really! Pitty that almost all of it is in Deutch though.

The Duchamp vs. Warhol Remix

Virgin Atlantic was planning to use urinals like this in its new clubhouse at New York’s JFK Airport. Unfortunately they are dropping it.

IMO it’s a brilliant idea.

(via Jill)

Something strange going on

The Spanish Net-Zine El Batiscafo at Santillada Universitad have a feature article on ®®[F]2004—→XP.

Art Critics and Integrety

At Kunstkritikk.no there’s currently a length discussion on art critics and integrety. Dag Solhjell is raising quesions about the integrity of artists also working as art critics. I definitively see his point.

For the upcoming stipendiatsamling the main topic is:

“Do aesthetic practices produce knowledge of any kind? If so what kind of knowledge is imbedded in a work of art? What kind of discourses do we need to represent and reflect on artistic practices? These issues are of vital importance to the Programme for Research Fellowships in the Arts which is a doctoral programme without aiming at a doctoral thesis. In our programme art is both the means and the aim. The fellows are supposed to produce a work of art of some excellence and to reflect on the processes of bringing it forth. These reflections are meant to be presented to a public audience.”

As part of the schedule each candidate is supposed to “present their artistic projects and discuss with his/her supervisor which discourse(s) are best adapted to represent and reflect on the knowledge imbedded in the work of art in question.”

To me this is slightly problematic. The program for this gathering seems to imply the idea that it’s possible for us the candidates to create some sort of general knowledge as part of the artistic practice during the course of the fellowship period. Furthermore I get a nagging feeling that this knowledge to some might be a more important product of the research fellowship in the arts program than the actual art works and the artistic processes themselves. Artistic practice is a subjective task and whatever experience reflections and knowledge we gain have to be understood as being highly personal and subjective. The objective value can and should be questioned and it is not to us to judge on that question. From a scientific point of view we would completely lack credibility if we pretend to claim objective insights and knowledge produced by our artistic practises. From an artistic point of view that would be an unfruitful way of approaching our own work art history contemporary tendencies etc. My reading of the history of art and music is of course to a strong degree relating to my own artistic project and to a large degree determined of how I can interact with it and use it for my own further artistic development.

I’ve always been surprised that Schöenberg has been getting away with presenting his reading of the history of music as Universal Truth. You ought to be very suspicious when someone claim that their compositional practice is the logical conclusion of the history of music so far and furthermore claims to have invented a system that will form the basis of compositional practise for the next 200 years.

CoreBlog Mailing List

Klaus-San has set up a mailing list in English for CoreBlog.

®®[F] NetZine Article

The Spanish Net-Zine El Batiscafo at Santillada Universitad have a feature article on ®®[F]2004—-&gt XP.

Using CoreBlog as mailing list archive

Luistxo has found a way to use the moblog feature of CoreBlog to archive mailing lists.

That’s sort of a partial solution to my recent obeservation that it would be useful to be able to create tighter connections between blogs mails and mailing lists. Luistxo seems to be on a similar path as he’s stating that his personal purposes for bloging are:

• publish and collect in a single place things I post for several lists and websites in different languages.




• experiment with mailing-list and blogging integration. There’s a veteran Basque mailing list that I love Eibartarrak and I feel like it needs to evolve towards blogging and XML Feeds and maybe the semantic web of the future…

NoTAM forum

Asbjørn Flø and Ståle/Stahl Stensli are doing a presentation at NoTAM in the evening today. stating at 19:00. They will be talking about the installations Erotogod The Leap and future projects. Ståle Stensli will also be talking about the currently touring exhibition DETOX.

New media art and national strategy of culture towards 2014

The Family Administration and Cultural Comitee of the Norwegian Parliament has presented their proposal for a strategy for cultural politics towards 2014.

New media art (or electronic arts as it is usually called in Norway) is recognised as an important new and emerging field. The comitee is very positivie towards current development and thoroughly discuss how to support future development. In particular the importance of Production Network for Electronic Arts and the four media labs
Here’s a number of quotes (in Norwegian):

Elektronisk baserte kunstuttrykk reiser eit sett av nye utfordringar. Tiltak for dokumentasjon bevaring og formidling må vurderast særskilt.

Det er utarbeidd ein rapport over det elektroniske kunstfeltet i Noreg innanfor rammene av eit nordisk samarbeidsprosjekt. Departementet vil i samarbeid med dei aktuelle aktørane sjå nærare på korleis forslaga i rapporten kan følgjast opp på ein tenleg måte.

Kultur- og kyrkjedepartementet vil på bakgrunn av eit prosjekt kunna vurdera tiltak for bevaring og formidling på dette feltet. I denne samanhengen kan det vera aktuelt å oppretta ein database og/eller ein nettstad i regi av ein aktuell institusjon eventuelt i samarbeid med Nasjonalmuseet for kunst Nasjonalbiblioteket eller andre.

(…)

Komiteen vil imidlertid peke på at nye uttrykk eksempelvis elektronisk kunst og mer installasjonspregede uttrykk byr på nye utfordringer i formidlingen. Det er i denne sammenheng viktig å ha øye for utviklingen av nye arenaer der kunst kan finne sted.

Komiteen vil også peke på den store kultursatsingen som skal gjøres gjennom den kulturelle skolesekken. Komiteen vil peke på viktigheten av at kunstfeltet også finner sin plass innenfor denne og forutsetter at fylkeskommunene knytter seg opp til kompetente kunstformidlere i arbeidet med ordningen.

(…)

Komiteen mener det er viktig å bidra til at den elektroniske kunsten får et godt grunnlag for stabil utvikling. Komiteen vil peke på at dette feltet på en unik måte kobler kunst forskning teknologi og samfunn sammen. Komiteen mener nettverksmodellen er en fremtidsrettet arbeidsform det bør bygges videre på. Komiteen viser til at det likevel er behov for noen godt funderte brohoder rundt om i landet som kan sikre kontinuiteten og bærekraften i nettverkene. Komiteen understreker at vi her står overfor en ny kunstart og et nytt fagmiljø og at det i årene som kommer må være viktig å følge utviklingen med stor åpenhet i forhold til nye initiativer.

Komiteen viser til at Produskjonsnettverket for elektronisk kunst som består av Norsk nettverk for elektronisk kunst (NOTAM) i Oslo Atelier Nord i Oslo Bergen Senter for Elektronisk kunst (BEK) og Trondheim Elektroniske Kunstsenter (TEKS) er svært viktige i dette arbeidet.