Disturbed City #3

to follow the detailed working process visit the disturbedcityblog

Disturbed City #2

Documentation and city sample collection:

Disturbed City Proposal

Group: Mattia, Michael, Olga

Project Outline:

„For more than a century, the very centre of Brussels has been the concrete subject (and victim according to many) of radical architectural and urban speculation. Regardless of the success or failure of these grand projects, we cannot negate the concrete impact of a bold believe in modernity and progress in the city of Brussels. Among the many speculations and built ideas the 'Jonction Nord-Midi' can rightly be named the project of the century. The construction of the underground connection between the former northern and southern terminal railway stations through the historical pentagon is the project that best symbolizes the early ambitions of Belgium as a nation-state. The supposedly 'derelict' medieval quarters on the trajectory have been demolished to allow a dramatic modernization of the city centre.“ (from Brussels, A Manifesto – Towards the Capital of Europe)

Taking a closer look onto the 'Scar' dividing the upper from the lower city one finds besides the monumental building projects a series of 'urban leftovers'. Fragments of demolished houses on the edge of the erased strip forming 'odd lots' - lacking use and being the by-product of a greater plan; The train stations between Central - Nord (Congress) and Central – Midi (Chapel) with hardly any passenger frequencies and trains stopping (Congress and Chapel stations are served by a limited number of trains during weekday working hours only); Crossings of the rail-tracks managed by tunnels for cars and pedestrians as well as connections between the upper and the lower city in form of stairways bypassing the height-distinction generated through the rail-road tunnels. Several “walks” along the trajectory led to a documentation of typologies of those 2nd rate places and are presented in a catalogue featuring a series of potential “stages” for urban interventions.

The sometimes very odd spatial configurations, their surreality and interruption of the common image of the city structure serve as content and basis for our appropriations. City lightening in the common sense follows mainly commercial, touristic or safety reasons and stages architectural icons. The night and it`s natural darkness puts certain elements of the nocturnal city into oblivion, disappearing in our collective memory. A series of interventions along brussels 'scar' is approaching those second-rate places within the centre of our cities in a new light and treats them as “disturbed” architectural monuments telling us from their past and possible future. A mobile projection unit serves as portable instrument for staging public space. The documentation of the 'urban acts' will be presented as an audiovisual feature video with a soundtrack by element012 (stubenmusicstudio.com) alongside a project booklet with maps and photographs. A further development wants to replace the projection mobile with site specific light artefacts. Self sustaining and fixed on location switching themselves on at a certain time and producing an obscure lightening scenario within the everyday perception of the city-night.


"Destruction as Urban Spectacle", Brussels, 1938 (close to Kapellekerk)

Ambra,

We talked before about Berlin and I am still thinking on planning to study there for a while.Can you recommand me some ateliers and maybe places to stay?

I was thinking to go for 6months.Around november..

Hope to hear from you soon

CIMATICS\08AV\FESTIVAL: Call for Proposals

Hi everyone... I have something that might interest you! (and it would be wonderful if you could spread the news)...the:

CIMATICS\08AV\FESTIVAL:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The call for submissions is now open!
Cimatics - Brussels International Festival for Live Audiovisual Art & VJing - invites all artists, creatives and producers to send their submissions for the next Cimatics festival.

Cimatics\08AV\Festival takes place from 12th - 15th November 2008
at various locations in the centre of Brussels.

The 6th festival edition will again bring an extensive overview of what's currently taking place at the crossroads of media, art, music and technology. Extra attention will be paid to the central theme 'data visualisation'.

Deadline for submissions: July 31st 2008.

For all information or to submit your project online, go to: cimatics.com/entries

oeps 1tje teveel en zonder geluid

Pictures of an installation using the sound of crickets 

The work evolved from an idea ,more a wondering about the presents of sound in an image It is something I never payed a lot of attention on. And even if I did it always turned out in a dillema between using a composed or original sound.

The proces turned out in doiing the oposite by creating something based on a sound. Sow that the sound can form the image.  

ya, just nodiced u don't see some things on the video.. There's also a black line wich is continuously drawing horizons.. I'll try to git it fixed! bye

one last experiment.

just one more experiment I did.. Don't know what happened with the quality but I post it anyway. Me and Sarah will post more serious stuff in august en july.. Hope to still meet you all on the blog. Regards, kristof

16mm loops and loopboxes

hi!! gabriel asked about 16mm loops, so here's some info for all:

last summer i did an installation with 4 meter long 16mm loops

it's called "spinners" and you can see a short clip here: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/endlesswebsite

for longer loop projection there is something as a loopbox

it's just 2 custom made spinning discs that you put on top of your projector and let the film go through as a spiral. 

the end of the spiral comes from the exit of your projector and the midst of the spiral goes to the beginning of your projector. 

the longest one i did with it was about 6 minutes. but everything depends on how smooth the wheels of your loopbox turn (often these are wheels of an old 16mm editing table or projector)

at the bottom of this link there's 2 clips as an example of the loop boxes:

http://www.supersens.nl/index.html?/supersens/paginas/projektie.html@theanchor~sensmain

you can rent it in holland for 25 euro's per week:

http://www.super8.nl/frame_prijs_huursub.htm

also: check out the archives of the experimental film email list "frameworks".

http://www.hi-beam.net/fw.html

reflections...

Further development of the idea working with mirrored (half)spheres and producing a negotiation with light between screen and space incorporates a first application in a live performance setup, the development of modular "screen objects" and a modular software patch.



The improvised live performance took place in a patio (outdoors) with a serial pattern of 8 mirrored half-spheres mounted on a concrete wall. Sound samples of Wieland Samolaks "steady state music" where transformed according to the material the light patterns where facing.







The modular Panels consist out of a set of half spheres (3x3 or 3x1) and allow different setups according to a spatial environment. To achieve an satisfying result the environment should be as dark as possible and the projection distance adapted to the light-intensity of the projector(s)...

Quotes (Michael)

Pop(ular) Culture:
"Popular Culture works in the spaces in-between our controlled society - is by definition defensive, denies the control of social order - plays with it, but is always prepared for a guerilla action, for a play of tactical resistance, always aware for moments of weakness, to turn them to it`s own advantage." (John Fiske, "Reading the Popular", 1989)

Objects:
"Through objects every individual and group searches it`s or their place in a system" (Baudrillard, 1981)

Places:
"Memories tie us to that place... It`s personal, not interesting to anyone else, but after all that`s what give a place it`s character..." (A woman living in the Croix-Rousse quarter in Lyon, interview by Pierre Mayol)

"It is striking here that the places people live in are like the presences of diverse absences. What can be seen designates what is no longer there... Demonstratives indicate the invisible identities of the visible..." (Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everday Life, 1984)

“To start seeing you have to eliminate certain things.” (Carsten Nicolai)

Link to translation of Simondon book

Here

Ambra's Quotes

Umberto Eco

The beauty of cosmo is not only in the unity of variegation, but also into variegation of unity.

Andy Wharol

In the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes .

To say radical things in a conservative way is controculture.

Jean Baudrillard

The said things of artificial intelligence is that it's missing the artifice..so the intelligence

Quotes (Arnold)

Music
"Music is everything one listens to with the intention of listening to music."
-Luciano Berio

Technology
"The opposition established between the cultural and the technical and between man and machine is wrong and has no foundation. What underlies it is mere ignorance or resentment. It uses a mask of facile humanism to blind us to a reality that is full of human striving and rich in natural forces. This reality is the world of technical objects, the mediators between man and nature."
- Gilbert Simondon (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects 1958)

Affectivity
"Affectivity is more than simply a supplement to perception (as Deleuze maintains) and it is more than a correlate to perception (as Bergson holds). Not only it is a modality of experience in its own right, but it is that modality - in contrast to perception - through which we open ourselves to the experience of the new."
- Mark B. Hansen

quotes

-windkracht 4-

papier waait op, haar raakt verward, geen last van muggen meer

KMI (poëzie)

-windforce 4-

paper blows on, hair is getting confused ,no more bottering mosquitos-

royal institute for meteorological (poems)

-less is more-

Robert Browning

-Birds do not suddenly appear-

Further experiments for Flat Corner-Ambra's proposal

Dear Flat Corner 

here following the things I would like to try out next time within Cimatics  :

Technical experiments 

Projection on face profile

Projection on the person while she is smoking ( I'm curious to see which kind of meaning development and practical effects the projection  of a digital face on a real face can gives while the person is smoking)

I would like to edit a  long emotional or action sequence ( played with the face) in a very fast way and then projecting it to the real one (like this documentaries of flowers growing so fast etc...that you can see in National Geographic that try to show a whole flower's life in 2 min...)

Projection of different patterns on different body parts ( hairs growing, food...liquids...)

As we have done with the faces, I would like to try to project body parts of someone else on my body...( like old breast...or old hands..etc..)

Filip do you think you will be able to bring some animation stuff for the next time? Will be great!

Would also be nice to try with motion tracking again if possible,maybe with a full body images !

Then I would like to start to note all the interaction possibilities between the real performer and the digital projection.

With it I mean to write our practice in order to collect a theorethical material for our blog, which will be nice to make already in Brussels, I think it's time to have a Flat Corner communication platform, keeping it  linked to cimatics blog.

Performance experiments :

Concerning the dramaturgical part,I would like to work on some topics as Lotta said keeping the base simple.

As I was telling you last time I was working on this "secrets" practice.

Turning around the idea of giving a completely different point of view to what the audience is looking just changing the contents ( in this case it can be a series of texts ) related to the same scene..

So, I was thinking that we could write and record some text, even short sentences, able to tell a story or to give an imaginary and experimenting this thing with headphones( I think we can borrow them in Cimatics).

And I think is good because will allow Lotta to produce contents even if she will be not there...

I also want to say to Lotta that you can write us experimentations and curiosity you would like to do and that we will try out there!

Then about the performance and the dramaturgical practice I was wondering about the idea of a duo performance ( like when me and Lotta we were shifting our faces on each other)in order to have some material for St.Petesburg...

So,concerning an hypotethic duo, I would be curious to work on the idea of a conversation between two persons 

( in which we can play with recorded discussions...and in the real performance we can speak and suddenly shift to a weird playback...etc..).

I say discussion because I find good the starting physical position of a discussion for a duo ( sitting beside each other ).

And perhaps working onto discussion  can gives the opportunity to work on text ( played in the headphones- playing with different texts - points of view and contraddictions)and it can give a kind of dramaturgical structure ( like beginning---increasing the desagreement-agreement--etc...)

This hypoethical conversation could turns about some of the topics we were thinking to start to work on :  like sex-gender-age.

As the ideas flows in a discussion between two persons also the two bodys can have a metamorphosis during the discussion... exchanging sex---looking--style---age---identity

Anyway those are my buch of ideas at the moment,perhaps you get inspired by that for further changes and developments!

 I think I can stop now,I'm looking forward to hear your inspirations  to finally go for practice.

Love 

Ambra