I just stumbled across Untitled (Singing Tree) by Peter Coffin in Vitamin 3-D; New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation. I’ve been thinking about the potential to connect trees to their environment (or perhaps each other) recently, not sure how this will take form i.e. primarily visual or an actual site specific work.

Descriptions I’ve found of Untitled (Singing Tree) are a bit thin (can’t locate video or audio anywhere which is a shame), Vitamin 3-D describes the work as using:

scientific instruments to give a tree a singing voice, encouraging audiences to consider the tree’s conscious potential and capacity to communicate - as well as its musical ability.

While online I just seem to find technical descriptions:

Pin electrodes (sensors), signal amplifier, computer with custom software, amplifier, horn speakers. (with David Robert)

Not networked art but related to the last post, Urban Cursor, is the WindFire Cursor Kite. Why am I posted this? Well it’s not an obsession with kites but the implication of a giant cursor hovering in the sky of a world within / below a world. If your a sci-fi fan like me think The Thirteenth Floor, if your religious God’s OS?

Urban Cursor (image above) by Sebastian Campion is a GPS enabled Apple cursor as public furniture designed to facilitate social interaction and play in public space. The work was first shown at the Festival Ingràvid Figueres, Catalunya/Spain in September 2009.

The object…was placed on a square in Figueres…Here, people could touch it, move it around and sit on it as an alternative to the benches. Despite being removed from its normal screen based environment, the cursor was still in touch with the digital world. Via an embedded GPS device, the cursor transmitted its geographic coordinates to a website. At the website, the coordinates were mapped in Google Maps thereby documenting the cursor’s movements in the physical world and making it possible for participants to see how they collectively helped move the object around. During the festival participants could also upload photos of the cursor at the website. The photos were automatically placed on the map by matching the photos’ digital time stamp with the GPS coordinates.

The image below shows the movements of the Urban Cursor on the 23rd of September.

Igor Stromajer, known for his guerrilla performance work with Brane Zorman as the Ballettikka Internettikka, Internet Ballet (image above), will present his work next Thursday (18/02/2010) at the Thursday Club, Goldsmiths. Ballettikka Internettikka is:

is a series of tactical art projects which began in 2001 with the exploration of Internet ballet. It explores wireless Internet ballet performances combined with guerrilla tactics and mobile live Internet broadcasting strategies.

Since 2001 twenty different Ballettikka Internettikka actions have been performed at various locations across the world, all broadcast online.

Ballettikka Internettikka uses impossible connections to develop the possible strategies of resistance and disobedience. The project participates in the already existing protocols of communication, yet without being servile to these protocols, it opens up links between emotionality and technology, production and ethics, desire and organization, imagination and institution. The distribution of politics and intimacy without any reason and purpose, with the use of limited, defined, and controlled protocols is a dystopia and an unsubmissive revolt to the world of capital, which can be disarmed only by the use of its own tactics.

Above is the latest performance by Ballettikka Internettikka in 2009, Nipponnikka, on the Japanese island Minami Torishima, 23 November 2009.

The event is being held at the Ben Pimlott lecture theatre, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, London. Location details can be found here.

Originally seen on the Sonic Arts Network (Sanlist) Mailing List.

Aristotles Office (image above, video below) by Tom Keene and Kypros Kyprianou is a set of networked / connected office objects including an answer machine, bin, fan, filing cabinets, lamp, plant, telephone and watercooler ready for the internet of things. The works aim is:

to investigate potential relationships between everyday objects using simple universal rules. How will the office plant respond to the advances of the fan? Will the water-cooler shy away from the flashing office light? Throughout an increasingly wired and wireless world, objects are being embedded with communicating technologies, and are increasingly drawn into networked behavior where previously they were independent. Objects are no longer passive receivers of one-sided instruction. The machines talk amongst themselves but who knows what they are saying and how our relationships with them evolve as they slowly begin to talk.