Opera Calling

 
 
         Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss
             Telephone Call - Sunday, 25th of March 2007, 16:28:52

«OPERA CALLING» is an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of a audio-bug placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person in Zurich individually.
«OPERA CALLING» is the first of three parts of a six-month-long exhibition at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich called «appropriate – manipulate – feed back!». It stands for the «appropriate»-part so to speak. It’s main aim is to explore the usefulness of  as an artistic strategy of redirection and criticism.
«Opera Calling» is a project by !MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK and SVEN KÖNIG

I absolutely LOVE this. More information - http://www.opera-calling.com/about

Seen on a sunny Saturday afternoon in May

I was supposed to be making the bed...

nostalgia

Harnessing wind energy

Flash Anzan

I found out about this after seeing at talk at the RSA called Adventures in Numberland by author and journalist Alex Bellos.

Similar to the 'spelling bee' in America, in Japan kids learn to add numbers really quickly using the anzan method. They do this not by actually adding the numbers but by visualising an abacus in their head and then mentally adjusting it as the numbers are flashed in front of them. This method allows them to add up visually and to give the answer imediately without even really having to take in the actual digits.

Crazy!

EVOL urban interventions

EVOL is a berlin based street artist that transforms banal urban surfaces, into miniature architectural surfaces through pasting. using pasted paper, EVOL transforms electric boxes, small planters and other geometric city forms, into miniature apartment buildings and other structures. each piece of paper is printed with a repetitive pattern of flat gray walls dotted with plain window frames. once applied to a surface, the paper transforms the form into small building that EVOL often adorns with small characters. EVOL performs this process within different cities and has even been commissioned to do installations in galleries, where he was created entire blocks of miniature buildings.

http://www.evoltaste.com

from DesignBoom

Visited: Tim Lewis @ Flowers Gallery, Cork Street

My friend took me to see a retrospective of Tim Lewis' work at a small exhibition space called the Flowers Gallery in Piccadilly.

Tim Lewis makes really cool (mostly) kinetic art / sculptures. Made from a number of different mediums including metal, wood, found objects, paper. Some were controlled by hand others were activated by movement sensors. I really liked his pieces which, when moved, caused something to be drawn or written. They obviously took a long time and a lot of accuracy to work out the shape of the cam that would cause that particular gesture to be made.

I also really liked his sketches (see below).

No more carrots and sticks

The guy talking is a bit annoying at times but it's quite an interesting talk about motivation and how pay based incentives can actually have a negative affect on performance when used in the wrong situation, especially when people are required to think creatively. He talks about how self directed work, rather than have employees tied down to particular tasks can produce far more innovative and exciting outcomes.

Quote - The owner of Skype says 'Our job is to be disruptive but in the cause of making the world a better place'.

Seen on Commercial Road

Commercial road is generally quite grey, dull and run down so it was a nice surprise when I discovered these newly installed planters that double as somewhere to lock up your bicycle. And just around the corner from my house!

HA!

Seen at Wimbledon Station

Poster says "Don't be bored on your train journey again! NEW WIMBLEDON STATION BOOK-SWAP. Borrow a book for free from the waiting room on platform 5. Return it when you're done or leave your old books with us."

Excellent idea.

Felix's Machines

I'm considering getting rid of all the furniture in my bedroom so I can fit one of these in!

Tadao Ando

Listening to:

Virtual Choir

The video isn't that great but it's an interesting concept.

Self-Auctioning Artwork

Item:A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009) - Caleb Larsen

A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black, acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transportation, says the creator.

Title:	A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter
Year:	2009
Artist:	Caleb Larsen
Dimensions:	8"x8"x8"
Medium:	Acrylic, custom electronics, programming, internet connection, online auction.
Description:	This object perpetually attempts to sell itself on eBay.
NB: Before bidding you must agree to the below terms.
This purchase agreement was drafted with the aid of Marsha G. Ajhar of Hartman & Craven LLP, NYC.

Current Ebay listing here

Read more here.

Cloaca No. 5

Cloaca No. 5, designed by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is a giant machine that replicates the human digestive system.

NEWS - Working with KIN (Massive Origami!)

During February and March I spent some time working at KIN Design. While I was there I helped out on a project, for London College of Fashion, to design, construct and install an exhibition for the fashion designer Helen Storey who was recently awarded an MBE.

We spent hours folding massive origami panels, from tracing paper, that then fitted together to form a 3D structure that grew out from the walls of the space where the exhibition was held at King's Place in King's Cross. We then put LED lighting behind the panels that filled the space between four plasma screen TV's that played videos about Helen's work. See video and photos below.

I really enjoyed my time at KIN, it was great to have the opportunity to work on an installation project and create it ourselves by hand.

Helen Storey MBE – from fashion to science from kin on Vimeo.

I should be writing emails

Game of Death

The Power of Television...?

Game of Death: Fake French TV Game Show has Contestant 'Tortured' by Participants

'A documentary called Le Jeu de la Mort (Game of Death) focuses on a game show called X-treme Zone, which features a contestant trying to answer trivia questions. However, for each question he got wrong, he'd get electrocuted by participants, who are urged to crank up the voltage by the studio audience and the show's hostess.

The show was fake- part of a psychological study on people's willingness to follow orders.

Out of 80 volunteers, 64 were willing to crank the voltage up to lethal levels. Of course, nobody was actually electrocuted during the experiment, but the exercise exposed a strange willingness of individuals to surrender responsibility for their actions to a third party.

The experiments showed a troubling willingness to obey requests, even if those requests had an obviously harmful effect on someone else. The general consensus of the participants was "the producers would never willingly let someone get hurt, right?"

The "contestants" were offered no financial incentives, only the opportunity to play the game.

Game of Death was based on a Yale University experiment from 1961, which examined the mindset behind the "just following orders" defense for Nazi war crimes, and why the Third Reich's victims went along with their persecutors during the early stages of genocide.'

Read More

Visited: 'Packed Lunch' Optimism talk @ Wellcome Collection

I went to another brilliant, free talk at the Wellcome Collection. This time with neuroscientist Tali Sharot on the subject of optimism.

It is estimated that 80% of the population are optimists and are in fact optimistically biased. Tali Sharot talked about the effect of this on our lives, particularly on how we see our lives in the future and future events. She also talked about how people maintain an optimist bias in the face of reality.

For example, it is a known fact that almost 50% of marriages end in divorce. However, when optimists are asked how likely they think their own marriage will end in divorce they answer much lower than the average. Further to this, people believe they will live much longer, healthier lives than that of the average person. It has been found that people will consistently answer questions about their own lives more positively and optimistically than that of reality, despite being fully aware of the statistics. They also don't correct themselves, to become more realistic, as events unfold in their lives and their optimism has been shown to be wrong. Also when asked to predict when a bad event, e.g. loosing their job, will happen in their lives, they predict it to be way into the future, whereas they predict happier events to occur sooner.

I also found it really interesting that, research shows, when people are asked to talk about someone else, or society generally, rather than themselves or immediate family and friends, they suddenly answered questions more realistically and closer to the national average!

It has been found that optimists, compared to pessimists, to live much longer, happier, healthier, more successful lives.

You can listen to the talk here.

This post is specially dedicated to my ever optimistic friend Nicole.

Visited: Brit Insurance Design Awards @ Design Museum

Me and my housemate Jamie went down to visit the Design Museum at Shad Thames, the other weekend, to see the Brit Insurance Design Awards. Not been to the Design Museum in ages and thought I should check it out.

I really liked YCN's Library concept -

'The Young Creative Network installed a lending library into their new headquarters at 72 Rivington Street to spark interaction with the local community. Members sign up in person before receiving their membership card in the post. They are then free to borrow any title from the collection, which is also delivered online. Details of which publications are on loan to other members can also be viewed. Regular guest reading lists are presented in person in the space and also online, keeping the collection fresh – and the members inspired. Guest reading lists have so far been contributed by Sir Paul Smith, Sir John Hegarty and Simon Waterfall.'

YCN Website

I liked this idea because, like many design consultancies, YCN probably have quite an extensive collection of art and design books, they are likely to be sent them free by the publishers and previously they would only be available for their employees to read. However, now they are sharing their resources, making more use of them, giving other people the chance to read these books and also creating interaction with the commuinty that surrounds their place of work. Also, it's a bit like Book Crossing because, unlike your average libabry, this concept was created with the intention to facilitate interaction and also has a digital extension.

This lead me on to think about how maybe other businesses should be doing more to become more involved and integrated with their local communities. Have more of a positive impact on the people that live arround the area they work, rather than acting compleatly independently from them. Medium and large companies have a lot of assets which are very rarely used at 100% efficency. Prehaps companies resources could be shared and utilised by local people for community projects or even used to support smaller or new businesses.

I'm not normally a big fan of car design but I really enjoyed seeing the BMW Gina concept car in real life, having previously only seen it on the internet. Despite there being many signs saying 'DO NOT TOUCH' I couldn't help myself and prodded it quickly when no one was looking! It's made of fabric - such an amazing car! See video.

Some Assembly Required

By Michael Johansson

I didn't realise, until I looked at his website, but he is the guy who made these really nice sculptures of household objects that all fit neatly together which I have previously seen.

Visited: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot Installation @ Barbican

An installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot commissioned for the Barbican. Went to see it yesterday. Amazing! Absolutely loved it!

Visited: Kinetica Art Fair @ p3

This was quite a while ago now but I went to the Kinetica Art Fair.

'Kinetica Art Fair is produced by Kinetica Museum and is the first of its kind in the UK. It provides collectors, curators and the public with a unique opportunity to view and purchase artworks from leading contemporary arts organisations and artists specialising in kinetic, electronic, robotic, light, sound, time-based and interdisciplinary new media art.'

Link here.

My favourite piece of work (shown above) was this robot that drew people's faces. First a camera took a picture of the person's face and then the mechanical arm holding a pen jerked across the piece of paper to reveal a line drawing of the face. It seemed to draw an outline of the face and then fill in the detail later on. I found it quite weird that the robot seemed to have its own style of drawing, but of course it had been programmed to construct the image in a certain way.

I also quite liked this mechanical drawing machine. People's heads had been cast in plaster, then as a head rotates a marker follows the 3D form of the head, spiraling down, which are then converted into a contour drawing of the head from above.

Some of the pieces were quite exciting but you could tell most of the work was created by artists and their main focus was for aesthetics or effect. It was interesting for me to see the work produced but imagine alternative applications for the technology and programming they had used.

I should have been working.

But I was reading this article in New Scientist last week about Extreme Empaths -

'HORROR films are simply a disconcerting watch for the majority of us, but for Jane Barrett they are literally torturous. She writhes in agony whenever the actors on the screen feel pain. "When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction," she says. "I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply."

She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to "extreme empathy". Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings - whether it's the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can't help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations...'

Read the full article

Mind Controlled Pinball

From DesignBoom - the Berlin brain-computer interface group is currently presenting a live demonstration of their brain-controlled pinball machine at the CeBit exhibit in hannover, Germany. the project features a user wearing a specially designed cap with eeg technology embedded within it to measure brainwaves. the user first undergoes a training program to calibrate the machine to their brainwaves. 'while the player imagines left and right hand movements, algorithms decode his brain activity signals in realtime into control signals for the pinball machine'. once they have mastered the training regime, they are hooked directly to the pinball machine. there, their brainwaves are linked to the left and right paddles so they can play the game without using their hands at all.

http://www.bbci.de

Hoberman's Dome

Touched Echo

I read about this project while working on my final major project at university and just found it again. I really like it. Digital media artist, Markus Kison, uses bone conduction technology to tell the story of a terrible air raid on the Bruhl Terrace, Dresden, Germany, on the 13th February 1945.

More information - http://www.markuskison.de/touched_echo/index.html

NEWS - Twitter

I got a Twitter account. I'm not sure how much I'll use it yet....

Follow me if you wish.