Fischer & Maus: Reflection, Widrig & Booshan: Binaural

5 Days Off MEDIA: Frozen
Wed 2 through Sat 26 July 2008
Melkweg Mediaroom & Paradiso, Amsterdam

• Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus (DE)
• Leander Herzog (CH)
• Marius Watz
• Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK)
• Sound: Freiband / Frans de Waard (NL)
• Sound: Alexander Rishaug (NO)

Frozen (part of the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival) is an exhibition of experiments in the representation of sound in media beyond the auditory. It examines the sound signal as a virtual space, presenting possible mappings that visualize or interpret the structures contained within the soundwaves.

Frozen was proposed and commissioned by Jan Hiddink and the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival in Amsterdam, and consists exclusively of original work. It was conceived with Generator.x 2.0 as a conceptual reference (all four artists in the show were also involved in Generator.x 2.0), but with a clearly defined focus: The representation of sound as spatial structures, realized as physical objects through the use of digital fabrication technologies.

For more information, see the documentation in the Frozen Flickr set, Leander Herzog’s FFT set or the blog posts by Benjamin Maus and Andreas Nicolas Fischer.

Leander Herzog: Untitled / Marius Watz: Sound memory (Oslo Rain Manifesto)

Over the past years, there has been an enormous development in the field of live-presented audio-visual performance art. Owing to digital techniques, image and sound are connected in a way that was previously unthinkable. Frozen is headed in the opposite direction. Frozen pulls the plug and presents audio art, prints, and sculptures as independent, but interconnected works of art.

In the Mediaroom at the Melkweg multi-channel sound pieces can be experienced over an advanced speaker setup, accompanied by sound in a "frozen" form: Images and sculptural objects made using sound as input. These artworks use audio analysis and custom software processes to extract meaningful data from the sound signal, creating a mapping between audio and other media. Frozen will feature digital prints as well as four "sound sculptures" created using digital fabrication technology such as rapid prototyping, CNC and laser cutting, which allow for the direct translation of a digital model into physical form.

Frozen arose in collaboration with the Norwegian artist and curator Marius Watz, whose Generator.x project investigates the implications of generative systems and computational models of creation. The recent exhibition Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen brought together artists and architects to explore the potential of this new mode of creation.

‘Audio sculptures’ will be on display by Andreas Nicolas Fischer (DE) & Benjamin Maus (DE), Leander Herzog (CH), Marius Watz (NO) and Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK). These sculptures are based on audioworks by Freiband (Nl, Frans de Waard), and Alexander Rishaug (No).

Frozen is presented in the Melkweg Mediaroom and at Paradiso.

5 Days Off MEDIA is part of the 5 Days Off festival for electronic music from Wed 2 through July 6. 5 Days Off MEDIA presents three themes: Crosswire, Frozen and Roots. Locations: Melkweg, Paradiso, Dutch Institute for Media Art and Heineken Music Hall.

Generator.x 2.0: Disassembled / Theverymany: Aperiodic_Vertebrae

Saturday was the last day of the Generator.x 2.0 exhibition at [DAM]Berlin. The occasion was marked with an informal curator talk, followed by Q+A. The 1-month show has had a great reception, proving popular both with the Transmediale crowd and the general art viewing public. While it’s always nice to reach with a community of one’s peers, reaching “regular people” is extra satisfying.

A slightly less enjoyable task was the disassembly of the exhibition in preparation for shipping. It is always bittersweet moment to see an exhibition disassembled and stuck in the back of an old Toyota Corrolla. See the following image to get an impression of this anti-climactic view.

Thankfully, any sadness was alleviated by knowing that 24 hours after being packed into this car, the works arrived safely in Turin, Italy to be part of the SHARE Festival. Bruce Sterling is the guest curator of this year’s festival, the theme of which is “Manufacturing”. After Bruce attended to the opening of Generator.x 2.0 we started discussing the possibility of taking the show to SHARE, a plan that will come to fruition tomorrow when the exhibition re-opens in Turin.

Works from fabbing workshop at HyperWerk, Basel

A few of the pieces from Berlin won’t be on display in Turin, for instance Aperiodic_Vertebrae by Theverymany aka Marc Fornes and Skylar Tibbits. This ambitious installation turned out to be too complex for the show at [DAM]Berlin, and so we sadly had to display a creative deconstruction of the intricate polygon structure instead of the cantilever bridge-like form it was meant to be. But now there is the exciting news that Skylar and Marc are producing a reworked and more stable version for NODE08 in Frankfurt. We look forward to seeing documentation of it fully built.

A few pieces have been also been added, the results of a fabbing workshop at HyperWerk that followed on the heels of the Berlin workshop and featured some of the same people. Martin Fuchs has provided some intriguing polygon forms in paper and cardboard that he didn’t have time to finish in Berlin, and Leander Herzog has produced a selection of plastic branching structures that point towards an organic exploration of plastic as material.

As the project now finally winds down, we wish to express our gratitude to everybody who contributed to making Generator.x 2.0 such a great even, in particular the following:

• Club Transmediale, in particular the curators Jan Rohlf and Oliver Baurhenn who gave the project the green light and supported it wonderfully through its various phases.
• Anke Eckardt, for being an excellent producer both for the workshop and for the concert evening.
• [DAM]Berlin and Wolf Lieser, for providing the gallery space and much-needed help in turning a big mess into a presentable exhibition in the space of a single afternoon.
• The Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and its crew, for providing everything from technical support to much-needed coffee.
• Lasern and Martin Bauer, for making it possible to have a laser cutter on site, and for helping out with laser know-how.
• HyperWerk Institute for Postindustrial Design, for fabbing support and for contributing a quota of skilled students.
• The Office For Contemporary Art Norway for supporting the project financially.
• Bruce Sterling and Luca Barbeni of the SHARE Festival, for taking the show to Italy and showing it to a new audience.

Finally, we wish to thank all the participants for their enthusiasm and generous sharing of skills during the workshop. It was a pleasure to work with you. We can only hope that Generator.x 2.0 will result in new networks being formed, with interesting projects as a result.

Aram Bartholl / Tim Schork – Mesne

This evening will see the second part of the public presentations of Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen. While the focus is architecture, the speakers will come at the topic from very different angles, with more focus on virtual environments and parametric form than on housing units and retail space.

Presentations are 19:00-21:00 at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Naunynstrasse 27.

• Aram Bartholl [DE]
• Tim Schork – Mesne [DE / AUS]
• David Dessens [FR]
• Skylar Tibbits – Theverymany [US]

» Aram Bartholl [DE] trained as an architect, but has since turned his attention towards the intersection of physical and virtual space. Works such as Chat and WoW translate elements of computer culture into literal physical manifestations, enforcing their quality as cultural artifacts while challenging our acceptance of them.

» Tim Schork [DE / AUS] is an architect who explores digital tools within generative design processes, with an emphasis on fabrication and making. One half of experimental studio Mesne, Schork also lectures at RMIT University in Melbourne while pursuing PhD research that examines computational models in architecture.

David Dessens / Skylar Tibbits – Theverymany

» David Dessens [FR] has quickly become an inspiration within the VVVV community, known for his dynamic forms and strong graphic style. He will show his realtime performance systems at the Club Transmediale in concert with Fabian Lamar, as well as doing a VJ set.

» Skylar Tibbits [US] is one part of Theverymany, an architectural collective formed by Marc Fornes to explore “protocols of precise indetermination”. Together, they curated the recent Scriptedbypurpose exhibition, an important survey of the current trend of computational architecture. Theverymany is also taking part in the Generator.x 2.0 exhibition with Aperiodic_Vertebrae, a new installation composed of nearly 500 elements.

CTM.08: Unpredictable / Generator.x 2.0 workshop

The Generator.x 2.0 workshop is now well underway, with participants starting to get to grips with the laser cutter and CNC mill. To give an idea of what we’re working on we’ve set up a project blog as well a Flickr group specifically for the workshop. Expect to see some early results in the next few days.

The first evening of public presentations saw plenty of Berliners turning up in numbers to hear some very interesting talks. Boris Müller gave an introduction to thinking computationally about design issues, exemplified by his series of projects for Poetry on the Road. A high point was his response to criticism of the 2006 edition, which used poems as datasets to create intricate graphs:

“Creating beutiful [sic] images to impress people is relatively easy, while making visualizations to explore, enable profound insights, and see the invisible, is extremely harder and requires a lot more devotion than this.” – Enrico Bertini

Besides the questionable truthfulness of the notion that creating beautiful images is easy, this criticism misses the point. The intention of Boris’ piece was never to “enable profound insights”, but to provide a visual context for the poetry festival. While his beautiful graphs do in fact constitute decodable data, that fact is all but incidental to their real function: To be visual poetry.

Morphosis: Phare Tower / Eno Henze: The Human Factor

Satoru Sugihara presented his computational design work for Morphosis, in particular the Phare Tower in Paris. A 300 meter high skyscraper scheduled to be completed by 2012, Phare Tower will dwarf the nearby Arche de La Défense. Sugihara worked on optimizing the building’s window grid using physical models, taking both cost of construction and energy efficiency into account. The “skin” of the building includes metal plates placed at computed locations and angles, in order to reflect sunshine as well as produce a signature facade pattern.

Last presenter out was Eno Henze [DE], a generative artist whose ambivalence towards the use of computers only serves to give his work a greater depth. While his high-end interaction design for Meso is impressive, his work with spatialized computer drawings like Wirklichkeitsschaum and The Human Factor show a conceptual depth combined with a great attention to formal composition.

The second round of presentations tomorrow Monday should be a worthy followup, featuring Aram Bartholl, Tim Schork, David Dessens and Skylar Tibbits.

Boris Müller / Satoru Sugihara / Eno Henze

Generator.x 2.0 kicks off this Thursday with an evening of presentations open to the general public. This is the first of two such evenings, bringing the topics of the workshop to a larger audience and providing a discursive track to an otherwise hands-on event.

• Keynote: Marius Watz [NO]
• Boris Müller [DE]
• Satoru Sugihara – Morphosis [JP/US]
• Eno Henze [DE]

If you are in Berlin we hope to see you at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse!
 

» Marius Watz [NO] is an artist exploring visual abstraction through generative systems, and has recently started using rapid prototyping to translate his forms into physical space. He is the founder of Generator.x as well as a lecturer at the Oslo School of Architecture and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO).

» Boris Müller [DE] is Professor of Interaction Design at FH Potsdam. Educated at the Royal College of Art in London, he is a veteran of computational designer. His series of works for Poetry on the Road has received multiple awards.

» Satoru Sugihara [JP/US] is a computational designer at the renowned architecture studio Morphosis, having previously worked with Greg Lynn Form and DR_D (Dagmar Richter). Possessing Master degrees in both computer Sscience and architecture, he uses parametric systems to investigate adaptive solutions to spatial problems.

» Eno Henze [DE] explores the duality between computational and human processes, often combining manual labor with generative systems. Dissatisfied with the screen as interface, he is constantly experimenting with innovative modes of presentation.

Generator.x 2.0: Daniel Widrig (MRGD) / Nicholas Bruscia

Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the screen is now only a week away, and we’re busy planning the last details. The call for participants was a definitive success, allowing us the privilege of a strong group of candidates to choose from. Participants were selected for the quality of their work as well as for their diverse approaches to digital fabrication. The result is an interesting mix of artists, architects and designers, united by their use of code-based processes, but showing very different strategies and intentions in their work.

For now the Club Transmediale site has the most complete list of Generator.x 2.0 events. In addition to the workshop and exhibition, there will also be two evenings of public presentations. A precise schedule with more details will be published here in the coming days.

• Andreas Nicolas Fischer (DE)
• Martin Bauer - Lasern (US)
• Nicholas Bruscia (US)
• David Dessens aka Sanch (FR)
• Fabio Franchino - TODO.IT (IT)
• Martin Fuchs - HyperWerk (CH)
• Eno Henze (DE)
• Leander Herzog - HyperWerk (CH)
• Andreas Krach - HyperWerk (CH)
• Holger Lippmann (DE)
• Giorgio Olivero - TODO.IT (IT)
• Dennis Paul - Art+Com (DE)
• Tim Schork - Mesne (DE/AUS)
• Susanne Stauch (DE)
• Satoru Sugihara – Morphosis (JP/US)
• Alessandro Tellini - HyperWerk (CH)
• Philip Whitfield - HyperWerk (CH)
• Daniel Widrig – MRGD (DE/UK)

Kenji Hirata: Misaho (painting) / Fretless Bass Solo (CNC-milled object)

For the exhibition Project to Surface five artists were invited to translate their visual work into three-dimensional objects through digital fabrication. Collaborating with architects from SHoP and specialists from Associated Fabrication, the works were conceptualized in 2D and modelled in 3D for production using a 3-axis CNC milling machine. The result: Five unique visions of 2D becoming 3D.

David Diao, KAWS and Matzu-MTP all created objects using forms from their visual practice. Diao created a model of a streamlined vintage trailer, while KAWS’ piece is a school chair with a monster mouth and eyes. Matzu-MTP’s giant toy bird was made to look like it has been assembled from a plastic modelling kit.

Leah Raintree: Sketch on paper (detail) / Bloomfield (CNC-milled panel, detail)

Of the five artists, Kenji Hirata and Leah Raintree come closest to their normal 2D work. Hirata’s colorful 2D forms here become a layered bas-relief in stark black and white, reminiscent of forms from Art Deco. His work becomes strangely imposing in this 3D incarnation, an interesting contrast to the friendly dream-like quality of his paintings.

Raintree started out with sketches of intricate flower-like shapes, which were then sliced into 3D layers and extruded into a topological landscape that spreads over four panels. The CNC process was used to draw the lines of the sketch into the surface, recreating the graphic complexity of the sketches as surface detail.

Except for David Diao’s trailer, all the works in the show were produced in Corian, a so-called solid surface material. Corian is well-suited for CNC milling, and gives a solid feel to the objects while also providing a consistency of look and feel. Presumably, there was a conscious decision not to add graphic treatments to the objects after the CNC process. Such treatments could have served to bring the pieces closer in line with the artists’ other work, but in their absence the viewer is forced to consider the objects purely as 3D form.

Interestingly, the material qualities of Corian also reinforce the artificial nature of the works. Not quite plastic and not quite stone, the objects remain other and unapproachable, their smooth whiteness implying that they might be prototypes or scientific reproductions. Rather than making the work feel sterile, this quality adds tension and mystery. This is perhaps the greatest success of the project.

Named after a modelling function in the 3D software Rhinoceros, Project to Surface is the brainchild of architect Ben Krone and curator team Dream So Much. It is currently on display in a temporary gallery at m127, a new development by SHoP Architects.

See the Project to Surface web site for more details. See Flickr for more images.

Update: The erratica blog has another write-up of the show with more pictures.

Justin Marshall: Penrose Strapping 1 / Corby & Bailey: Cyclone.soc

A new exhibition in Lancaster, UK is highlighting creative uses of digital fabrication techniques. Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders features the work of artists, architects and designers using rapid-prototyping, generative design and other computational strategies for creating new types of objects. The exhibition is significant as practicioners working in this way tend to fall somewhere between art, design and research practices, and hence don’t always have a good venue for showing their projects.

Artist Justin Marshall has collaborated with a manufacturer of architectural ornamental plasterwork to produce a series called Coded Ornament. The series includes the installations Morse, with elements resembling dots and dashes, and Penrose Strapping 1, a plasterwork version of a classic tiling system. His use of decorative elements combined with digital pattern generation makes for beautiful, if unintentionally ironic, objects. More examples of his work combining traditional and digital practices can be seen on justinmarshall.co.uk.

The installation Cyclone.soc by Gavin Baily & Tom Corby presents the viewer with a new take on flamewar-ridden online discussion groups for politics and religion. By mapping texts taken from these forums onto the atmospheric topologies of extreme storms, the artists comment on the volatile nature of debate, while simultaneously highlighting the beautiful forms of cyclonic weather formations.

Lionel Theodore Dean (whose FutureFactories project was also featured in the Generator.x exhibition) is showing Holy Ghost, a baroquely ornamental chair design that is created by a generative model. Two “hard copies” of the chair have been produced for the exhibition using rapid prototyping.

Be sure to look at the exhibition web site for an overview of the other artists. Even better, see this excellent documentation on Flickr. Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders is a co-production between Fast-uk and Folly, for the f.city festival of digital culture in Lancaster. It runs until the end of this week.

Links:

• Exhibition documentation on Flickr (by John Marshall)
• More pictures on Flickr (by Michelle Kasprzak)
• designedobjects.blogspot.com, a blog by John Marshall of Fast-uk

Thanks to Michelle Kasprzak for the link.

There is now photo documentation of the Further Processing exhibition (see pts. #1, #2) online on Flickr: Further Processing photoset.

Karsten Schmidt: enerugii wa antee shite inai (2006)

C.E.B. Reas: Process 9 (Software 3) (2006)

Mark Napier - Genesis (7 Bit) (2006)

Golan Levin: The Dumpster / Martin Wattenberg: Thinking Machine 4

DATA ART: The art of the database
The other identifiable tendency in the FURTHER PROCESSING exhibiton is data visualization as a new type of cultural artifact. Ben Fry's “Isometric Blocks” is a scientific visualization of blocks of genetic codes, while Golan Levin's “The Dumpster” datamines the world of teenager blogs to find patterns in blog posts relating to romantic breakups. Martin Wattenberg's “Thinking Machine” shows the user how a computerized chess player “sees” the playing board as a field of energies in flux. Pablo Miranda Carranza experiments with architectural principles and parametric design, creating systems that learn to design their own output through the use of genetic algorithms.

These works have aspects of design objects or results of scientific research, but their popularity with lay audiences are proof positive of their emotional impact. Contradicting their status as “objective” visualizations of dry data, these works can in fact be seen as a pure form of computational art. Within the context of FURTHER PROCESSING these works are shown as examples of a new type of cultural artifact, pointing to a need for better tools for understanding the complex world of information that surrounds us.

PROCESSING: The tool
Processing was originally created by C.E.B. Reas and Ben Fry in 2001, when they were both at the Aesthetics & Computation Group (AGC) at the MIT Media Lab. Directed by John Maeda, the ACG was the one of the first academic programs to combine computational and aesthetic theory.

Processing tries to reduce the threshold keeping non-technical persons from experimenting with code by employing a set of core strategies:

• A simplified language syntax, allowing immediate experimentation with visual output.
• A programming interface which is intuitive and non-technical
• An Open Source architecture, which allows the extension of the tool by its users.

Since its inception, the Processing project has received considerable attention and the tool is now used as a standard teaching tool by many art and design schools worldwide. In 2005 Processing won a Golden Nica award in the Prix Ars Electronica.

Processing will be on display in the exhibition, so that visitors can try the tool and hopefully get a taste of code for themselves.