Staying with works of a largely textual nature for the moment Wandern im Wissen (Wandering in Knowledge) is an installation currently installed in the stairwell of the State and University library Bremen in Germany created by the University of the Arts Bremen.

The work is similar in several ways to LPDT2 (the last post), the most important being that it sources literary information for its content, in this instance not the online Gutenberg Project but the catalog of the library it is installed in. In a sense it is an interface, a screen, to the libraries content making it more visible and immediate to its users/visitors.

Searching and retrieving information are the main requests of the library’s visitors. An almost endless flow of information inquiries are obtained and fulfilled on daily basis. In this respect, the students of the University of the Arts Bremen granted an aesthetic and poetic expression to this invisible procedure…a sculpture of folded paper demonstrates the connection between the traditional storage medium and the digital information world. The permanent flow of information inquiries at the SuUB runs through on a vertical axis between four floors of the building. The random results of the inquiries release corresponding visuals of text and pictures which cause curiosity for the various activites in the library. The media sculpture highlights the abundance of the mental processes, which take place simultaneously in the library. The retrieval inquiries result in new collages of visuals of text and pictures, which form an aesthetic translation of the search procedure. The searched words, then, fill the pool of data at the ground of the stairway. Altogether the media installation poses questions about the function of the information in the age of the increasing communicational isolation. In regard to the title, the visitor literally passes through the world of knowledge.

Made with VVVV and Ruby, the work is a collaboration between Niruba Balsingam, Manuel Dreesmann, Freja Enholm, Linda Freybott, David Grünwald, Andreas Haller, Stefan Ihmig, Claudius Kirsch, Shushi Li, Henrik Lippke, Maha Mahmood, Isabel Micheel, Josef Rissling, Dawei Wu, Marek Mateusz Majewski, Silke Bussen, Prof. Roland Lambrette, Peter Gombac and Eno Henze.

There are numerous sites online documenting this work. A wordpress weblog, a Tumblr weblog and a Flickr set.

Work originally seen via Henrik Lippkes website.

Hallucinations (and the real) (image above, video below) by JD Walsh is audio-visual work which composes itself as a result of search engine query results based on key phrases from a text taken from Albert Hoffman’s recollections of early experiments with LSD. A database cinema of sorts.

The result is a dual-channel projection of the software’s output - the text on one screen and the image on the other. Sound is projected into the room. Because of the random elements in the software, the perception of the images are always changing. Each image seems to take on a new meaning depending on which text is next to it and which sound accompanies it.

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (image above) by Caleb Larsen is a work which perpetually auctions itself on eBay accumulating (or not) value as art markets and the perceived value of the artists work rises.

This sculpture exists in eternal transactional flux. It is a physical sculpture that is perptually attempting to auction itself on eBay. Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself. If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.

To view the current auction of the work (image above) visit its eBay page here.

The work will be showing at the Lighthouse in Brighton from the 28 August - 5 September 2010 as part of the digital design conference, dConstruct.

The following is the SymbioticA workshop which took place at the University of Latvia’s Faculty of Biology last Saturday (19/06/10) as part of the Transbiotics Festival in Riga.

The workshop was run by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr from SymbioticA and ran from 10am to 6pm. During the day we had an introduction to the history of tissue engineering, a lecture to give us context as to what tissue engineering is, what it does and currently where it is in it’s development and then the workshop proper started.

Before lunch Oron explained the different types of sterile environments, indicated by levels one, two and three (image above). Then groups of us built a series of DIY ’sterile’ hoods (image below) to perform the work tissue engineering work in, at least this was the intention. I don’t think we were terribly successful but this was largely a demonstration in practice as to the procedure that needs to be taken when working with biological samples.

We had liver and bone to extract samples from (image above), luckily there seemed to be no vegetarians present, which were then used to employ a number of basic tissue culturing techniques, passaging / subcloning etc. In the image below you can see what was essentially step two once the sample was extracted, adding nutrients to the sample and then, the image below that, a number of techniques such as separation, cleaning etc. (this time in a real sterile environment) to get the final sample of cells which were viewed under a microscope (last image).

All of this was new to me and while I’m never anxious about learning new things I’ve never had much of an interest in biology so that type of learning curve is all the more difficult. It’s interesting however when it’s framed within an art context it suddenly becomes quite interesting and potentially a ‘medium’ worth exploring.

The workshop has certainly fueled my interest but also underlined my ignorance in this area so for the moment I’m going to think about how / if I can take this forward in any way. Consideration of materials and equipment really needs to be priority number one for any artist to engage with this ‘medium’ as the equipment used in the workshop makes a DIY approach for any serious or sophisticated work all but impossible.

The following are the performances and video that were presented last night at RIXC media space as part of the Transbiotics Festival in Riga. Please note that due to the nature of the work and the lighting conditions my photos are not the best so do visit the links I point to for a better documentation of the work.

Planet A (image above) by Momoko Seto is an audio-visual composition (pre-composed and not live) which depicts a planet of salt crystals. The work, produced at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, simulates a science-fiction film set on a distant world, far away, beyond normal sight etc. yet is in fact a world seen not through a telescope but through a microscope.

Mucilaginous Omniverse (images above) by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand consisted of Evelina, creating visuals, dropping droplets of silicone oil onto sonicated silicone oil which was filmed and projected, while Dmitry worked on the audio part of the performance. This was scientific demonstration as performance visualising wave-particle behavior, a phenomenon usually only visible at the quantum scale. Video produced during the performance had an effect on the sound and in return sound initiated and maintained the reactive process.

Materia Obscura (images above) by Jurgen Reble and Thomas Koner was an audio-visual performance, part live and part pre-composed. The visual material, consisting of approximately 25,000 scans of 16mm ‘chemograms’, are stored on Jurgen’s computer, archived, and then assembled in real time during the performance. Meanwhile the audio, created by Thomas, compliments the visuals as they evolved. While visually and sonically interesting, what was disappointing for me in this performance was the low levelness of the correlation between image and sound i.e. they did not seem to be connected in any sophisticated way as they had been in Mucilaginous Omniverse.