The Portrait in a Mirror was a work I spotted yesterday when I posted about Taiwa-Hensokuki by Yuko Mohri. Both formed part of an exhibited entitled Extended Senses at ICC in Tokyo last year. Created by Kim Dongho, Yim Sungyul and Kang Kyung-Kyu, the installation changes the appearance of the approaching user.
Through analysis by a video camera and image sensor, the image of the visitor is displayed on a mirror-type LCD monitor. The style of the image that appears is determined by the distance between the work and the visitor. As the visitor approaches, his image changes from an ordinary mirror image to something like a painting. This work explores a new approach to portraiture in the digital age.
Not overly awed with this particular work I do have an interest in how mirrors and new media can be used to distort connections / relationships between the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ - essentially blur distinctions between representations and simulations. Some similar work includes M_M_, Miroir Aux Silhouettes, a_mirror, MirrorSpace, Reface [Portrait Sequencer] and MotionMirror.
an audio and visual installation that uses Internet as an imaginary space where sound echoes, reverberates throughout the Web. Based on transmission errors, the sound material is shaped by the virtual acoustic space of the network. Sound streams broadcasted within the installation structure gradually echoes the activity of the Web in various locations of the globe. Its analysis in these various points is used to progressively draw the contours of an imaginary landscape inside the installation.
The installation is currently on show as part of Cimatics at IMAL in Brussels but I’ve not had any luck finding info on the IMAL website.
is an urban intervention designed to engage people in actively marking up public space.
Created using the labs own NextText Java library (which is also available for Processing):
The project reconfigures private communication technologies into private-to public (p2P) tools. Our motivation for providing a public outlet for privately-produced messages is driven by an interest in addressing the ongoing media reconfiguration of shared urban spaces which favors commercial global consuming culture over personal or local points of view. Our targets are the large-scale LED screens that are increasingly found in Western urban cores. Cityspeak provides a means for urban inhabitants to talk back to these giant screens.
Users can send messages to the public displays from mobile devices or desktop computers (see diagram above) effectively reappropriating the city for every day users through a number of individual broadcast strategies.
A few months ago I posted about the art work of Gordon Pask and then about Levelhead, Reactable and the kids toy by Bandai, Cube World. The form of a cube, it’s tactile qualities, the use of sides as navigable elements but most particularly the idea of connecting the sides seemed to be a shared theme. Levelhead and Cube World in particular use this aspect of connecting sides as a means of extending and navigating the ‘virtual’ space of the games involved.
Bandai have released another almost cube like game, Tuttuki Bako (image above and videos below), which while this time has nothing to do with connecting cubes to extend the ‘virtual’ space has the possibility instead for the user to physically intervene within the space of the game. There’s something very obscene about this augmented reality game, knowledge of the Japanese language is not required to understand that in the first of the two videos below however it is an interesting attempt to make a low end haptic game.
Two works pointed out to me in a comment which are similar to Blogbot and Blog Bot Platform are Twittgenerator (images above of the generator and resulting Twitter account) which is granted very recent and Net.art.box (images below) which is now an amazing eight years old.
Both works are by Yann Le Guennec (Net.art.box is in collaboration with Grégoire Cliquet) and seem to fit nicely into the artists collection of network programming art intended to automate art or the role of the artist (see also). Yann also is one of surprisingly few artists who are using the longer running open source tools/environments making much of his work with php, mysql and associated libraries such as gd.
Net.art.box was a temporary installation which consisted of an open IRC channel to:
receive definitions of net.art. The IRC log is printed in real time and a webcam film [sic] this printed log and shows it on the net. The device is a feedback loop between real and virtual spaces.
As it says the installation was a feedback loop to the internet where text comments passed from the ‘virtual’ to be printed in the ‘real’ and were then streamed back to the virtual as an image in effect rendering users thought as visual art. This is not just a technical loop but also an artistic one of perception, interpretation and reaction (see Interactivity and MultiMedia Interfaces for notes on interactive feedback loops).
Twittgenerator, when entered by a user recovers users text searches from search.live.com. These are then rendered as potential twits by an imagined user, most probably the artist, which can then be logged on twitter or not.
Whats interesting about both of these works (and Blogbot) is that while automated to an extent they all need to be triggered by a user who may or may not be conscious of what is happening when they simply go to the works webpage. Blogbot Platform is the exception of the four in that it’s user, most probably a plant or animal, is not your typical network user and most definitely not conscious of the result of their ‘actions’.
