© GINY VOS - 2008 site by fresh matters

The history of Fine Arts shows a permanent diversification since her beginnings when she was united with painting, sculpture and architecture. Conform with the rise of new technologies like printing, film and magnetic recording, new materials etc and new art-forms appeared. They were more than only extensions of disciplines, because also new themes and genres were born.
Media-art is one of the many sub-groups of  Fine Arts representing the increasing diversity of the modern societies by incorporating new technologies.

But the the function of arts has not changed: art  means to represent, to express and reflect reality.

In her book (Digital Art, 2003) Christiane Paul has given an indication of the specific themes in digital art:
“Artificial life. Artificial intelligence. Telepresence, telematics and telerobtics. Body and identity.
Databases, data visualization and mapping. Beyond the book: text and narrative environments.
Gaming. Tactical media, activism and activisms. Technologies of the future.”

Media- art has not only to deal with new subjects, but also with new ways of distribution and new behaver of the audience.
In this article I will review three artists and projects who deal with contemporary technologies and/or new audience in public space.

The artists are:

Giny Vos www.ginyvos.nl , Yolande Harris, www.yolandeharris.net ,  René van Engelenburg

TRAVELLING SAND
by Giny Vos, Apeldoorn 2008

Shifting sands, created by LEDs, play across a large glass wall in front of the railway station in Apeldoorn. This can lead to a surging sandstorm, or the sand can be still a while, or whip up gently, creating minimal changes in the patterns of the landscape. Now and again, a gentle breeze rises, lifting the sand and revealing an extremely fine layer of whirling sand above the bottom. The swirling sand can form marvellous, constantly changing, patterns. On a larger scale, the landscape changes as the sand hills slowly drift on. The sand may lie in dunes to one side, an impression reinforced by the basin-shaped square. In moments of calm, the patterns can also change with the movement of the sunlight that picks out or obscures the contours of the sand hills. The choreography of Travelling Sand is made in collaboration with 3D animator Bram Verhavert.

100 x 4 meter
Etched glass, 1.3 million LEDs and control system

© GINY VOS - 2008 site by fresh matters

© GINY VOS - 2008 ++ site by fresh matters ++

Yolande Harris

 “The physical, geographical” environment “is overlaid with the ‘virtual space’ of electronic communication-, information- and observation-networks of GSM, GPS, CCTV, UMTS, WIFI, RFID, ETC. At the same time, the domain of digital space is increasingly becoming physical, an “internet of things”

Twan Eikelenboom

Sun Run Sun charts a path between environmental engagement and technological development, using sound as the medium to enhance both. Signals from satellites in orbit, together with the performer’s coordinates on earth, generate live music in real time.

“I use sound because it is not an object, not something to hold or touch, not external to myself,” states Harris. “The experience of sound is internal, as a process that influences the relationship between the self and the environment. True navigation consists of a continuously coherent relationship between the two.”

During her thirty-minute performance, Yolande slowly revealed the patterns of orbiting satellites coming in and out of range and inconsistencies in how GPS technology locates the self in a longitude/latitude grid. Harris’s soundscape, in both the performance and the installation, questions what is inside and what is outside, what it means to be located and what it means to be lost.
Sun Run Sun delicately treads a path between technical data and actual experience, between the artificial and natural. It joins the disparate sonic worlds of electronic satellite signals and the songs of marshland amphibians. This hybrid form of knowing, techno-intuition, unites scientific and innate systems of environmental awareness.
Sun Run Sun was developed as Artist in Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Media Arts (Montevideo) in Amsterdam in collaboration with STEIM.
Sun Run Sun: Dead Reckoning (installation and walk) will be presented at:
Territorial Phantom, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam
28 March – 17 May 2008
links:

sunrunsun.nimk.nl, yolandeharris.net, dagindebranding.nl, steim.org

amphibian at <>TAG The Hague, NL

Blog Yolanda Harries

I used 2 of the Satellite Sounders (you can see one lying on the table, I'm bringing the other one in from outside) and managed to keep the live GPS signal during the performance, both sounders were mapped to different sounds...

   

The motherboard carrying the processor is the smallest 'gum'-sized board on top of the slightly larger expansion board which carries the GPS receiver, audio and connectors. The whole thing is secured tightly by waxed string. The next stage was covering in rubber shrink-wrap - material that shrinks when heated to protect electronics, which gives the final form of the satellite sounders.

The second prototype showing the wrapped gumstix and GPS antenna, without battery and headphones, gives an idea of the modular form of the final sounder.

Dropstuff.nl

by René van Engelenburg, Amsterdam, 2008

Dropstuff.nl is a mobile pavvilion that offers a communicationplatform for young people. The pavilion is functioning as an internetcafe and has a length of 15 meter, is 2,5 meter wide and about 5 meter high. It will travel  between the spring 2008 and summer 2009 allong 12 different cities in the Netherlands. In every location it will strike down on a central location. The most imposing part of the pavilion is a juge LED-screen of 12 x 5 meter. By means of the new digital communication-techniques the youth will be challanged to present their personal interests and opinions in public space. The big screen collects and zooms in as a museum-like hangout, posterwall or soundboard.

Text: R.v.E                                    

Pleinmuseum

An earlier project from René van Engelenburg,

Thousands of visitors for Pleinmuseum during Nuit Blanche Paris

On October 6, Pleinmuseum visited Paris, as part of the Nuit Blanche. In cooperation with the Institut Néerlandais, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and the city of Paris, the pavilion stroke down at Place de la Bastille. La Nuit Blanche is one of the biggest highlights in Paris' agenda of culture. Every year, around two million people straddle through Paris' citycenter and admire the many artpieces specially selected and put on streets and squares.

Foto: ©2007 Marc Verhille / Mairie de Paris

Pleinmuseum is a mobile exhibition pavilion that places itself at the hearts of public life, opens as a flower, takes on new appearances every day and travels on after a while. Every evening from sunset Pleinmuseum will present a variety of the 100% digital collection. In each location also new artists are invited to create a new contribution to Pleinmuseum. Till now Pleinmuseum was presented in ten cities.

From 7 till the 10th of June Pleinmuseum was presented at the 52nd Venice Biennale as part of the collateral program Pan European Encounters, organised by David A Bailey, Arts Council England and Mike Phillips, TATE Britain. During the symposium about 'Curatorial Awareness in times of globalisation' Pleinmuseum was presented as 'The Migrating Museum'.

Watch a short report of Pleinmuseum at the 52nd Venice Biennale at www.vernissage.tv (7 minutes).