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AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Luksch / Patel. Chapter 5/breaking the frame
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Luksch / Patel. Chapter 5/breaking the frame
Mukul N Patel
Manu LukschAMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
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AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS ed Luksch/Patel Chapter 2: A film always has an end while reality continues2006 •
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
The publication collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel. Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
The dissertation Public Life and Pervasive Systems: A Critical Practice is part of the research conducted both in the UK and Brazil, between the years 2001 and 2005, in a context permeated by issues related to the introduction of intrusive technologies and practices in the field of communication. The research involved the production by the author of three pieces of artwork: an interactive installation called 4walls, the web-based work meta4walls and the Spio project, defined as a de-generative installation. Each project deals with distinctive technologies and establishes dialogues with specific cultural and geopolitical contexts. The projects simultaneously point to a common ground of alienating factors found in contemporary societies, affected by the production of semiotic power in late capitalism. More to the point, pervasive technologies are detected behind the shifting boundaries between the private and public spheres, where new dichotomies are generated, such as intimacy and privacy, mixophobia and mixophilia, representation and mediation, ‘forged reality’ and social reality. The research considers interfaces as the key tool in the analysis of such dualities in the domain of art. Among the many mediation possibilities promoted by pervasive systems and communication technologies, the creation of strategies based on non-corporative networking and social interfaces that encourage individuals to re-enact participation in the construction of public-life is seen as a challenging responsibility for artists committed to social reality.
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
160/161
---
VITAMIN’S COCKTAILS
Octopussy
1
fresh figs blended with vodka
Draculina
1
gin
1/2 Aperol
1
Campari
1/8 lemon juice
1
Martini Rosso
1/8 cream
1/2 amaro
shake with ice
gelatin
allow to set in salt-rimmed glass,
top with fresh raspberry jelly
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
Genkisthesis
1
Gokuri or fresh grapefruit
1
peppermint tea
Thaifood Mary
1/3 Cointreau
1
1/3 Campari
3
vodka
fresh tomato juice
fresh chillies
1/3 gin
Thai basil
peppermint essence
soy sauce
on the rocks
Cyndi Suicide
1
Di Saronno
1
gin
1/2 fresh passion fruit
Thaichito
1
2
rum
Thai basil
1/2 lemon juice
shaken with ice, topped up with
fresh ginger
dry ginger ale
brown sugar
or on the rocks
topped up with 7-Up, on the rocks
White Panther
Oysterism
1
vodka steeped with cardamon
1
1
amaro
1/2 lemon juice
1/2 cream
gin
1/4 ginger cordial
almond essence
shaken on ice, topped up
shaken with ice, or as shooter
with tonic or soda
--Photo & recipes: Vitamin AA
This is not a Sex Party
Ever wondered what to do
with Becherovka?
1
gin
1
Cointreau
1
Becherovka
1
Green Chartreuse
1
gin
shaken on ice, topped up with tonic
1
tangerine liqeur
slice of orange
1/2 Irish whiskey (not smoky!)
fresh mint
ice
Wrasseberrice
1
topped up with tonic
whisky
Fed up with Margaritas?
1/2 amaro
1/2 lemon
1
raspberry purée
1
tequila
1
pomegranate juice
1
Campari
with ice
1
red vermouth
twist
ice
Indigo Blue (not blue at all)
topped up with freshly
squeezed orange juice
SOPHISTICATED VERSION
1/2 Cassis
1
aquavit
1
secret ingredient
tonic with ice
SWEET VERSION
1
Di Saronno
1
whisky
1
secret ingredient
1/2 lemon juice
mango and apple juice with ice
162/163
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LUX & MUX
AV DINNERS: EPIC EROS
2003
Live and online audio-
Co m bi n i n g th e f i n e tra d itio n s of T V co o ke r y s h ows a n d
visual-gastronomic
extreme gastronomy in a sensory networked cook-in, hungry
performance, commissioned
artists gather to reinterpret rituals of food preparation
by Moon Radio Web TV
and presentation. Four cunning winners of an online quiz
(with cryptic clues involving extreme foods) are invited to
Special thanks to dinner
ambient.space in East London as guests of honour.
guests Jane Willis, Adrian
Gothard, Andrew Humphrey
and Masashi Fujimoto; to
doc mic hostess: Kelli
Dipple; to MYYMÄÄLÄ’s
Gareth and Voytec in
Helsinki for pikniking
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
with us remotely; and
to all chatterers from
Amsterdam, Baghdad,
Birmingham, Helsinki, and
Madrid for joining the
prandial discussions.
1
Notorious epicure Vitamin AA, assisted by his able auxiliary,
Koko di Mari, conjures a series of ambrosial dishes to overload
the senses of live and remote participants. The menu is crafted
to loosen corsets, set tongues wagging, and unhinge minds
without mercy. Licentiousness and depravity duly ensue ...
--1
The dinner guests
2
The kitchen
3
Shane Solanki, against a
backdrop of Max/MSP/Jitter
spaghetti
4
The blender, an online
interface for mixing among
three incoming streams
Photos: Gavin Starks
2
Synaesthesia is getting easier
Inspired by texts
including: Jean Anthelme
The sights and sounds of food preparation are captured using
Brillat-Savarin’s The
multiple cameras and microphones, and manipulated using the
Physiology of Taste
Max/MSP/Jitter software environment by LUX & MUX, who
(Or, Meditations
provide flashes and glimpses, gurgles and slurps. Lascivious
on Transcendental
aur-or-al poetics are composed and delivered by sometime
Gastronomy) of 1825, David
Madsen’s Confessions
Ninja Tune wordsmith Shane Solanki.
of a Flesh-Eater (1997),
Georges Perec’s ‘Attempt
at an Inventory of the
Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs
Ingurgitated by Me in
the Course of the Year
Nineteen Hundred and
Seventy-Four’ (originally
published in Action
Poétique, 1976) ...
and films including: Marco
Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe
(1973), Luis Buñuel’s Le
3
Charme Discret de la
Networked Cook-Ins
Bourgeoisie (1972), Xiaowen
Zhou’s Ermo (1994), Juzo
The sounds and colours of Vitamin AA’s salacious cooking
Itami’s Tampopo (1985),
methods serve as sources for an audio-visual feast, streamed
Nagisa Oshima’s Ai No
live. Agent Gav’s stream blender enables remote participants
Corrida (1976) ...
to mix three different streaming audio tracks – MUX’s sizzles
and fizzes, Shane’s speaking-in-tongue-in-cheek glossolalia,
and a documentary stream with behind the scenes commentary
by the rest of the crew, which reveals the studio setup, tools
and techniques. Simultaneous feasts take place in Amsterdam,
Baghdad, Birmingham, Helsinki and Madrid. A chat channel enables
remote participants to join in the dinner conversation.
4
164/165
Quiz clues
1. aperitif (3, 7)
5. dessert (3, 4)
Buñuel’s dry use for a ray of light
A former king of Poland
defected to France
2. hors d’ouevre (5, 8, 6)
bringing Arabian Nights
This aphrodisiac marine surprise
to a drunken dinner dance
is commonly found between the thighs
6. liquer (8)
3. entrée (4)
Sweet when squeezed from
Kabuki Killer – Puffer Daddy
the fruit of Cybele
Who is this asiatic saltwater baddie?
(but the fruit itself –
deadly when bitter)
4. on the side: (9)
It seemed to me that these celestial nuances
7. cheese ... (4, 5)
betrayed the delicious creatures that had
... taken to its logical conclusion
8. after dinner (4, 5)
edible flesh, gave a glimpse in these dawn-
Its expense and fragrant aroma
born colours, these rainbow sketches, this
products of the bowels
extinction of blue evenings, of the precious
of a paradoxical bisexual
essence that I would still recognize when,
all night following a dinner where I had eaten
them, they played their crude, poetic farces,
like one of Shakespeare’s fairies, at changing
my chamberpot into a bottle of perfume.
4. asparagus
3. fugu
2.rocky mountain oysters
1. dry martini
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
amused themselves by becoming vegetables
and which, though the disguise of their firm,
Shane’s Aur-or-al Poetics
(xxxcerpts)
[...] A raw pearl necklace
[...] Fall into the arms
consumed by the reckless ...
of the truffle’s handsome charms
Human lips meet oyster hips
Your nostrils flare
In an orgiastic embrace
You stretch and yawn
that very moment
Animal instincts thrice reborn
when slippery sensation
You growl and purr
slides down the sides of the throat
Skin becomes fur ...
Into the belly of a whale slips our heroine
‘Oh, my’, says the truffle,
Oceans implode within
‘you do look sweet!
Neptune beckons in a fleeting pause
come sit here on my lap, pretty thing,
and then aftertaste
and tell me all your secrets’ [...]
the lingering satisfaction
a dark salty question mark [...]
---
--[...] I can’t bear these fruits
taking off their clothes
it makes my mouth water
it makes my panties wet
these parting shots of summer
so sweet and full of sex [...]
---
--Stills from the animated quiz
clues
8. kopi luwak
7. casu marzu
166/167
6. amaretto
5. rum baba
7:42:42] helsinki: yep, some whacked out echo-ey stuff [17:42:43] mmmomo: looking good coco [17:44:08] mmmomo: that¥s Mukul¥s ambient
ear shaped for a bit.. [17:53:14] mmmomo: mmmmmmnice [17:53:45] mmmomo: nice waiter-maan [17:56:35] middleageman: <Entered the chatr
the ambient studio - dinner guests soon to arrive [18:06:24] dinnerguests: helloooooo....it s manu.... i sneaked away from my comput
nnerguests: ooooo..... [18:07:52] MungoToadfoot: <Entered the chatroom.> [18:07:58] middleageman: whos your guests? [18:10:17] Iren
he live feed? Realplayer says “unknown format”! [18:11:06] MungoToadfoot: Hi Irene, by the way :o) [18:11:15] Irenehowson: I know I’m
8:11:41] Irenehowson: whooo hooo hello missus! [18:12:00] MungoToadfoot: Oh look! There she be! [18:12:03] Irenehowson: how’s it going
an you smell? [18:14:18] dinnerguests: We have Cindy Suicide ccoktails coming [18:14:37] helsinki2: <Entered the chatroom..> it’s gone all p
ut listen to Muse he is giving you smells [18:17:44] middleageman: looks like flashing blue spaghetti on the menu [18:18:17] MungoToadfoo
8:20:41] IreneHowson: ok back again - what do I need to upgrade? [18:23:05] dinnerguests: Passionfruit cocktails fantastic [18:23:18] d
p with an auto-upgrade window [18:26:27] dinnerguests: I’m a bit worried about the huge bed in the corner [18:26:50] MungoToadfoot: G
ll get there and Jane don’t start eating just yet! [18:32:28] IreneHowson: <Entered the chatroom..> Nope I’m still struggling here - X
or all the sound [18:34:19] helsinki2: aha, cheers for the tip ! [18:34:58] IreneHowson: I got some music and then an error again [18:35:
he chatroom.> [18:36:31] dinnerguests: we have oysters with saki and ginger [18:36:33] IreneHowson: I can hear knives and forks but ca
ow some slurping noises [18:36:56] dinnerguests: but they won’t tell us what’s next [18:37:13] jane: hi all, struggling to figure out how
ddleageman: <Entered the chatroom..> looks like you spilled a bit [18:38:49] helsinki2: what’s the problem? [18:41:22] dinnerguests: Ou
nnerguests: I think they are the best oysters I have had [18:42:37] middleageman: i’m going to get some nuts [18:42:45] helsinki2: can i
e keeping us in the dark about the next courses so we know as much as you [18:43:10] middleageman: pistachio? [18:43:46] dinnerguests:
f you then? [18:45:09] dinnerguests: No they are over on the other side of the space [18:45:21] dinnerguests: We can hear and smell [18
ke your getting some worms in the next course [18:46:10] spanner: ooo..can we see?? [18:46:14] IreneHowson: oh nooooooo not worms [18
8:48:06] helsinki2: no no, i definately saw worms [18:48:33] middleageman: EGG [18:48:38] dinnerguests: we will let you know -- its on its
nnerguests: I think you were looking at the manipulated image [18:49:44] juanitab: hello ih [18:49:44] middleageman: i’m not sure i’d trust
quail egg and asparagus [18:51:32] helsinki2: damn! [18:51:46] helsinki2: no worms? [18:51:55] juanitab: i saw eggs! [18:52:06] middleagema
ey there is jane! [18:53:19] IreneHowson: Janettte - how did you get real player to work? [18:53:30] juanitab: ummmmmmmmm it just did
ear but can’t see anything [18:55:04] juanitab: welllllllllll it looks all psychodylic like the 60s [18:55:25] juanitab: but I just saw jane take
eneHowson: posh lippy? how dare she?
[18:56:03] juanitab: we are talking reall flower power 60s [18:56:11] spanner: <Left the chatroom
ell you later what it looks like) [18:57:24] juanitab: and at times it looks like a kalidiscope [18:57:32] dinnerguests: the ‘worms’ are highlt
hat do they taste like? what they cooked in? [18:57:59] juanitab: ummmmmmmm yes driving my kids up the wall [18:58:08] juanitab: cos tehy
een someone look like they are breakign up white dough buns like we sell at work (chinese ones) [18:58:52] dinnerguests: and buttered st
8:59:43] juanitab: nothing as fancy as aspargus tho [19:00:07] dinnerguests: we will let you know what the b un-looking things turn out to
9:00:47] juanitab: ooooooooooooooo Irene! [19:00:53] juanitab: you going to be in trouble! [19:01:20] juanitab: tomatoes! [19:01:45] juan
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
anitab: oh there is the waiter [19:03:28] juanitab: close up on jane oging in for the kill [19:03:39] IreneHowson: janette can you save a
de [19:04:15] juanitab: get it in there girl [19:04:31] dinnerguests: who was the lead sinjnger in Hot Chocolate? It’s very important [19
rrol brown [19:05:04] dinnerguests: it’s going to be arvchived on the site [19:05:08] IreneHowson: thta’s him [19:05:17] juanitab: no ire
n broadband [19:06:43] juanitab: brb goign to put me pasties in the oven [19:06:53] juanitab: haute cusine here you nose [19:07:52] hello
o see the live dinner guests working together with the people out there on line to work out what the courses are as they arrive [19:08:0
oytec: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:08:53] dinnerguests: how is the audio stream now for the people in helsinki - here in the studio it is
he same time and no doubt
--- third is downloading [19:09:30] IreneHowson: I’m hearing stuff but seeing a black box - but I guess that’s my
Entered the chatroom.>
[19:09:38]
voytec: anyone
from ambient or myymala here? [19:09:42] IreneHowson: hi there voiytec [19:09:57]
Background:
Transcript
of
ore exciting to have an
image
that had some reference points when things got too abstract they said they were less interested what do
chat
channel
ungotoadfoot: Woohoooo! Piccys! [19:10:44] voytec: i¥m in a ecafe without realplayer!!! [19:10:50] hello: hi can someone explain how the
ooh poetry [19:11:38]Below:
beautifulstream:
<Entered the chatroom.> [19:11:45] voytec: <just sitting here> [19:11:46] helsinki2: audio is a l
Video stills from
eed is dominant... if you
the muse triangle you get the staight pet interpretations [19:12:12] hungry: <Entered the chatroom.>
thechoose
live stream
osed - yes I imagine reference points are a good thing [19:12:34] hungry: interesting stream [19:12:49] voytec: I tried to run the thi
oetic descriptions orRight:
technical
stuff. technical
[19:13:12] voytec: damn southern middle age [19:13:21] dinnerguests: sorry i meant muse = poe
Preliminary
nnerguests: if you choose
triangles
in the middle you get a mix of the sound [19:13:50] voytec: helsinki2 - who are you? [19:13:50] hungr
sketch
for AV Dinners
9:15:22] juanitab: looks like squid coming up [19:15:31] dinnerguests: are you ready to get back to the food? We’ve just had buffalo moz
9:15:48] juanitab: aha I was right tomatoes [19:15:49] IreneHowson: jane - they’re talking tools - [19:16:01] hungry: is anyone watchi
9:16:33] juanitab: squid or octupus and tentacles [19:16:34] hungry: oh that sounds yummy [19:16:41] Mungotoadfoot: Yes Jane :o) [19:16:
9:16:51] hungry: is ti a seris of still Mung? [19:17:17] hungry: 56k digestion [19:17:46] Frank: I eat faster in front of the television [19:1
anitab: well it is getting prepared now, i fancies a nice bit of calarmes fritos right now [19:18:56] IreneHowson: brb - gotta wake hubby
d he is describing the tentacles [19:20:02] hungry: are all the av dinner makers experienced chefs? [19:20:24] helsinki2: I thought there
ngry: ho war e you doing the live effects? [19:21:24] Frank: I suspect they are just holding photographs from food mags in front of th
nything i would want to digest from this angle... amc [19:22:07] hungry: at least no-one is saying “pucker” or “lovely jubley” [19:22:13] d
pukka” rather than “pucker” [19:22:57] helsinki2: hmm well, the grapes and strawberries are fine here too. it is the season for it... [19:23
ngry: sorry I havn’t my cheeky cockney monkey chef lingo quite licked, I shall have to ask Jools [19:24:21] juanitab: celery stuff or som
ank: I had a listen in the kitchen but could hear no cockney chef [19:24:57] IreneHowson: what’s the food looking like now jane? [19:24
ngry: can we see the chefs? [19:25:22] IreneHowson: How many chefs are there? [19:25:23] voy: finally I got the thing working!! [19:25:
nnerguests: there are two chefs, one in a swimsuit [19:26:19] voy: do you have a lot of people? [19:26:32] juanitab: soudn has gone here
hef: sounds like a finnish holiday cottage influence? [19:27:17] mamasonga: hi there [19:27:20] helsinki2: hi..Sounds like a big soup. [19:27:
here people in myymala? [19:28:11] juanitab: stuffed with rocket [19:28:24] juanitab: dill and something else and tied together with a s
aybe a shoe string [19:29:01] helsinki2: frozen images, no cooking smells... not necessarily the gourment experience of choice. [19:29:14]
ame [19:30:08] hungry2: who’s the fellow eating? [19:30:17] helsinki2: there are people and strawberries and grapes at myymala [19:30:
ppening right now,? is this a live dinner [19:31:15] dinnerguests: we have squid filled with rocket, dill and mint and drizzled with pumpki
hat’s it taste like then? it sounds scrummy [19:32:04] dinnerguests: live [19:32:07] helsinki2: u make me hungry. [19:32:14] IreneHowson
hatroom..> Sounds a bit...well, as you say, herby [19:32:42] IreneHowson: erm, anyone want a ham sarnie? hubby has just decided that no
ll go for a ham sarnie [19:33:48] Frank: maybe we ought to tell them what we are eating at home? [19:33:53] hungry2: what was that abo
9:34:10] dinnerguests: go on then tell us [19:34:22] helsinki2: Well, I guess we¥ll have to hit the grill kiosk. [19:34:30] helsinki2: <just si
ne [19:34:50] Frank: motoke and nan [19:34:57] IreneHowson: whilst sprtoing a nice shade of green envy,are they watering you also ja
roadcast from? [19:36:41] helsinki2: voy, you still about?? [19:37:10] MungoToadfoot: Jane’s too busy scoffing to answer, I reckon [19:
omeone likes their cup-a-soup [19:38:01] Frank: I am off to get some bread pudding -see you. [19:38:04] MungoToadfoot: It’s somewher
vent? [19:39:05] dinnerguests: it’s in Bethm]nal Green [19:39:28] dinnerguests: Sorry, there’s a lot of wine flowing [19:39:29] hungry2
t audioscapes [17:46:19] mmmomo: more hats [17:50:46] helsinki2: <Entered the chatroom.> [17:52:27] helsinki2: back now, things went a b
room.> [17:57:49] middleageman: what’s for dinner? [18:02:06] dinnerguests: <Entered the chatroom.> [18:02:59] dinnerguests: we are her
ter.... [18:06:36] dinnerguests: hello helsinkiiiiii [18:07:17] dinnerguests: i think stream i s darker than the visuals here..... [18:07:2
nehowson: <Entered the chatroom.> [18:10:40] Irenehowson: Hello Mungo [18:10:53] MungoToadfoot: ARGH! What are people using to watc
m struggling over here Mungo [18:11:21] middleageman: good evening [18:11:36] MungoToadfoot: Aw! A friend of mine is one of the guest
g Jane? [18:12:46] middleageman: what’s cooking? [18:12:49] MungoToadfoot: I really don’t like Realplayer!! [18:14:14] middleageman: wha
psych on us :) [18:14:48] MungoToadfoot: They sound delightful [18:14:57] dinnerguests: No cooking smells just yet [18:17:37] dinnerguest
ot: Irene: Realplayer says it needs to be upgraded to watch this feed - 8Mb! [18:19:08] dinnerguests: you have plenty of time to uploa
dinnerguests: Irene good luck [18:24:18] dinnerguests: oysters! [18:26:02] MungoToadfoot: Hi Irene, I just had an old version and it cam
Guests: I’ll *need* plenty of time! :o)[18:27:21] IreneHowson: <Entered the chatroom..> I’m working hard over here Mungo - bear with me
XP throwing up errors! Doh! [18:32:49] helsinki2: <Entered the chatroom..> get a mac ;) [18:33:36] dinnerguests: click the middle triang
:34] helsinki2: it’s working fine here [18:36:07] helsinki2: what’s actually being cooked, other than the oysters? [18:36:19] jane: <Entere
an’t see anything [18:36:36] dinnerguests: <just sitting here> [18:36:37] spanner: <Entered the chatroom.> [18:36:50] IreneHowson: an
to negotiate this [18:37:53] dinnerguests: you’re better off not seeing me eating oysters [18:38:22] jane: ok, help me here [18:38:3
ur oysters were sensational [18:41:50] middleageman: it’s making me hungry [18:42:02] dinnerguests: Ginger and sake dressing [18:42:2
i have one? [18:43:00] IreneHowson: How many peeps are eating there then [18:43:02] spanner: yum ..me too [18:43:06] dinnerguests: The
OK we are getting some great smells now [18:44:11] dinnerguests: There are 4 of us [18:44:17] IreneHowson: Are they cooking it all infron
8:45:30] dinnerguests: And I might wander over in a moment [18:45:52] IreneHowson: go on - wander - be a devil [18:46:00] helsinki2: loo
8:46:19] middleageman: bring some back [18:47:12] dinnerguests: worms? [18:47:31] dinnerguests: asparagus and some great-looking seawee
s way\ [18:49:08] helsinki2: egg’n’worms! [18:49:12] juanitab: <Entered the chatroom.> [18:49:31] IreneHowson: Hiya Janette [18:49:3
t the chef with the creepy voice [18:50:52] helsinki2: no no, definately ^real^ worms [18:51:17] dinnerguests: we have a seaweed nest wit
an: <just sitting here> [18:52:06] juanitab: looked like eyes in a kaladascope [18:52:25] middleageman: how’s it taste? [18:52:48] juanita
[18:53:52] juanitab: what version you got [18:54:26] IreneHowson: god knows - just down loaded something [18:54:38] IreneHowson: I ca
e a bite out of something [18:55:32] juanitab: she has got posh lippy on [18:55:41] IreneHowson: wot flares and Showaddywaddy? [18:55:5
m. (autologout).> [18:56:19] juanitab: a lot fo mirror work [18:56:28] juanitab: makes it look ummmmmmmm rude at times [18:56:43] juanita
t recommended [18:57:41] IreneHowson: - you’ll have to do - I’ve got the music bit - a bit like a banging sound no? [18:57:57] IreneHowso
y canhear it from a distance whihc is worse [18:58:33] dinnerguests: arame seaweed we think with a quail egg yolk [18:58:43] juanitab: jus
teamed asparagus [18:59:33] juanitab: i should put headfones on and not annoy them really but am cooking tea and up and down stairs et
o be [19:00:32] IreneHowson: Horse clopping now - or is that jane chewing? ;o) [19:00:39] juanitab: right now it looks like sychodilic spong
nitab: ummmmmmmmmm cherries [19:01:53] juanitab: no maybe radish [19:02:26] middleageman: <Left the chatroom. (autologout).> [19:02:5
any of this and send it to me as a video or something? [19:04:01] juanitab: dunno it is streaming int it [19:04:10] juanitab: go on jane ope
9:04:42] IreneHowson: ,shrug> you know me - don’t understand that kinda talk [19:04:50] IreneHowson: Errol someone [19:04:53] juanita
ene I meant eat it [19:05:24] IreneHowson: great - that’ll do for me
[19:05:50] juanitab: kids are online gaming so that doesnt help eve
o: <Entered the chatroom> [19:08:07] IreneHowson: hello hello [19:08:07] dinnerguests: kelli here at the dinner table - it has been grea
09] juanitab: my boys would starve! [19:08:30] IreneHowson: We’re right behind them kelli - just wish we were right beside them!! [19:08:3
s a little blocky due to the maximum use of bandwidth [19:09:19] voytec: hi there! [19:09:25] juanitab: blocky here but two lads gaming a
doing and no yours - iyswim [19:09:35] juanitab: nice shot of herbs [19:09:36] Mungotoadfoot: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:09:38] Fran
IreneHowson: ooh the sounds just got better! [19:10:12] dinnerguests: it was interesting that one of the guests here said that it wa
o other people think? [19:10:13] IreneHowson: very clear sound now [19:10:24] helsinki2: <Entered the chatroom..> sup voytec?! [19:10:2
e muse, feast talk works at side of stream? [19:11:29] dinnerguests: ok you can click on the triangles in order to [19:11:38] IreneHowso
little blocky too, but not so bad in general- we’ve a nice soundsytem here at the moment :)’ [19:12:02] dinnerguests: select which aud
> [19:12:14] voytec: helsinki2!!! [19:12:22] helsinki2: no realplayer v.? oh dear ! [19:12:25] IreneHowson: referring back to the questio
ing from 3 different places but it never worked!! [19:13:03] Frank: It seems to work by clicking on the triangles. You get kitchen noise
et / feast = sounds of cooking being reprossesed / talk - a literal documentry feed of what is happening here in the space [19:13:3
ry: are these live audio feed in the diagram? [19:15:08] hungry: can we interact with the dinner, get them to experiment with the cookin
zzarella with baby plum tomatoes in balsamic vinegr and truffle oil [19:15:39] Mungotoadfoot: I conclude that I *really* need broadban
ing on a 56k? [19:16:03] dinnerguests: Of course yuo need broadband Mr Toad [19:16:17] Mungotoadfoot: 56k? Well, trying to but failin
:43] Frank: I have just eaten my dinner in front of the computer.Slowly at 56 K [19:16:49] dinnerguests: tools? II’m here with three men...
18:09] dinnerguests: we can smell fish [19:18:09] hungry: this reminds me of blue jam tv prog [19:18:32] dinnerguests: fish sorry [19:18:3
y up [19:19:19] helsinki2: Hi Manu, this is Minna [19:19:33] dinnerguests: we can see via the [19:19:47] juanitab: aha clicked somewhere els
e was going to be a camera here too! Zour fLooks delicious! [19:20:31] dinnerguests: their food is fantastic, it def seems like it [19:20:5
he camera [19:21:29] dinnerguests: We are just the guests [19:21:40] helsinki2: looking rather more like stelarc’s stomach scultpure tha
dinnerguests: well it smells good from here [19:22:34] hungry: did stelarc recently visit Manchester [19:22:42] dinnerguests: surely it
3:06] dinnerguests: like the pies [19:23:18] mamasonga: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:23:21] dinnerguests: and the cloudberries? [19:23:3
me sort of choi too [19:24:29] helsinki2: the stomach sculpture was a work he did some years ago.. a. over to cloudberry girl.. [19:24:4
4:58] voy: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:24:59] helsinki2: Cloudberries onlz grow here in the chillz fall. now its hot hot summer. [19:25:0
:33] helsinki2: zes, we wnt the chefs! [19:25:38] voy: myymala!! how are things there?? [19:25:45] hungry: or the dinner guests? [19:26:0
e [19:26:42] juanitab: in a swim suit? [19:26:46] juanitab: is it raining a lot? [19:27:00] mamasonga: hi there [19:27:05] helsinki2: a swimmin
:47] Frank: Is the spinach being wrapped in fish? [19:28:06] juanitab: envelope of squid [19:28:09] voy: helsinki, how¥s the event going? ar
sea string [19:28:35] Frank: Thats alot posher [19:28:39] IreneHowson: how many courses have you had up to now? [19:28:46] juanitab: o
] hungry2: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:29:25] IreneHowson: train passing through? [19:29:38] Frank: On 56k it looks abit like a baccarat
:47] helsinki2: but not enough wine [19:30:55] helsinki2: and the conversations are foc [19:30:56] hungry2: sorry to ask dumdo q, is th
n seed oil [19:31:24] helsinki2: fucussed and live [19:31:30] helsinki2: live it is [19:31:54] dinnerguests: yes it’s [19:31:57] IreneHowso
n: so do we!!
[19:32:18] helsinki2: we’re starving here [19:32:19] dinnerguests: a bit too herby [19:32:41] Mungotoadfoot: <Entered th
ow is the time for me to do his pack up! Men!! [19:32:45] hungry2: why doesw that <just sitting here> happen? [19:33:29] Mungotoadfoo
out wireless network? [19:33:59] Mungotoadfoot: <Left the chatroom.> [19:34:07] IreneHowson: oh go on rub it in why don’t you? !! :o)
itting here> [19:34:33] MungoToadfoot: <Entered the chatroom.> [19:34:42] IreneHowson: I’m nibbling on a chashew nut and sipping whit
168/169
ane? Is there wine? is it good? [19:36:22] Frank: Hungry left the chat room for obvious
reasons [19:36:25] hungry2: where is this bein
:37:19] mamasonga: <Left the chatroom. (autologout).> [19:37:47] IreneHowson: she does right [19:37:58] hungry2: likethe slurpy noise
re near Bethnal Green, I believe[19:38:15] IreneHowson: broadcasting from ambient space in London [19:38:55] hungry2: is this a regula
2: sorry about that don’t know what causes it [19:39:32] IreneHowson: what’s sdrian think of it? [19:39:40] IreneHowson: sorry Adria
---
---
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel
2006
AV DINNERS 2: AJU J.’S NEW YEAR FEAST –
IN THE YEAR OF THE FIRE DOG
Single screen 10-minute
A New Year’s feast is prepared according to a traditional Akha
video installation with
recipe appropriate for the year of the Fire Dog. Under the
labeled cans of food
skillful guidance of chef Aju J., a dog is chosen, slaughtered,
elaborately spiced, and sautéed in a wok. The Akha distinguish
between dogs that are to be eaten, and others that are used to
hunt or guard. Dog-lovers of a different kind, who feel squeamish
about eating their ‘best friends’, should look away now.
---
---
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
Photo: Installation at
Temporary Art Museum
Soi Sabai, Bangkok 2006,
courtesy Makoto Yoshihara
and TAMSS
---
---
TELEJAM
ambientTV.NET
2001–04
TELEJAM is a forum where audiovisual artists and musicians
explore the possibilities and limitations of streaming media and
its interaction with other media and physical spaces.
TELEJAM_01/DELAY_28
In J u ly 2001, th e b roa d ba n d it s fro m a m bie ntT V.NE T a n d
Latvia’s rigasound.org (a 24-hr artist-run net.radio station)
held up the information superhighway with the first TELEJAM
laboratory. Audio-visual jammers based in Public Life (London)
and Casablanca (Riga) worked in ‘delayed synchrony’. Sound
and image underwent punctuated accretion, with the jammers
TELEJAM_01 ARTISTS
at each physical location mixing live into the received media
London: Manu, Mukul, Kertal,
stream, before sending it back online. Taking place on the
Milky Bar Kid, Joanna and
occasion of broadbandit Ilze Black’s 28th birthday, in London
many more alchemists;
the crew worked with patterns of seven, and in Riga, of four.
Riga: DJ heincha, d-9,
The experiment was fortuitously blessed with a 28-second
gonzalez, heleena, NEI,
transmission delay, generating a laid-back feedback piece.
Linards Kulless, MKII, pk
TELEJAM_02 ARTISTS
TELEJAM_02/FRO_03
London: Mukul, Mario
Extending the audio-visual jam to three remote locations,
Ventrelli, Manu Luksch,
TELEJAM_02 celebrated the 3rd anniversary of independent
Rachel Baker, Vortex, Black,
Austrian FM station Radio FRO 105.0 (Linz) in November 2001. The
Christa Geiselhofer, Ian,
three-phase transcontinental party featured artists based
Kate Rich;
at ambientTV.NET’s studios in London, the Dizzi club in Riga, and
Linz: Fadi Dorninger (head
Posthof in Linz.
operator, main mixer),
Dietmar Bruckmayr (Reden
an die Nation, Stimme),
TELEJAM_03/flipflop–TRyPTiCHON
Martin Greunz aka Impact
aka Nautic Cuts, Jomasound;
flipflop and TRyPTiCHON (2002–04) further developed the
Riga: Kulless, Ratnix, F1,
TELEJAM idea to use audio-video-data jamming between mobile
dill9jah, mums speelees
devices. These projects would eventually develop into the
Ivarx & @TOMS (No Rest),
critical network dance/theatre work, Myriorama (2004).
NGC-5128 (Fabrique)
---
170/171
---
---
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel
2002
FLIPFLOP
A SOLO-PERFORMANCE FOR TWO BODIES
IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
R & D document
A proposal
flipflop is a polemical exploration of the pathos and comedy in
our ambivalent romance with communication technology. There
are two audiences: those who have come to watch the show,
and those who are going about their everyday business in the
streets neighbouring the venue. Between these audiences is a
human interface - one character in two bodies (the performer
in the venue and the roaming performer), with a talent for
cornering people at parties and gathering crowds on street
corners. Via this performing interface, the audiences (inside
and outside the venue) emerge as both actors and directors,
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
both surveilleurs and the surveilled. The title alludes to a
bistable logic device (the foundation of computer memory), and
to the act of walking.
SETTING
The audience is invited to a party. There are the usual aids to
conviviality: music, lights, video projections, a bar; though just
where a performance might take place is unclear. There is no
stage, there are no seats.
The guests chatter and network, hang around at the bar and
flirt, dance and drink, listen to music and enjoy the view. Over
the course of the evening, one of the partygoers (actor
and motion poet Ajay Naidu) emerges as a performer, and the
audience gradually realizes that it is participating in theatre.
CHARACTER
In-venue performer Ajay ’s ’character ’ is a storyteller, a
megalomaniac who wants to conquer time and space with his
omnipresence mediated by technology. He is on a search for
enhanced social connectivity, enhanced human being-hood. He
extends himself through bionics – the roaming performer is
his avatar, in the ‘real’ space outside the venue. Ajay directly
addresses audience members, allows himself to be interrogated
by them, provokes them and serves as interface between them
and the roamer. These interactions are caught by the roamer
and thrown back to the venue.
PLOT/DRAMATURGY
The story-generating structure and key vignettes focus on
humanity’s ambivalence to technology and bionic extension.
Dreams of overcoming distance and defeating time, of being
in many places at once, are realised, but their nightmarish
character is also explored. Does the mediation of experience
through telepresence throw light on the location of mind? Is
the true self where the brain sits? where the sensors and
actuators are? (brains in vats). Narrative vignettes explore
cyber-utopias, omniscience and loneliness, intimacy and
immediacy.
First th rough small talk, and then th rough more tightly
s c r i pt e d s c e n e s t h a t i n c r e a s i n g l y c o m m a n d a u d i e n c e
attention, Ajay tells his story, while simultaneously, the
roaming performer – Ajay’s ‘other 1st person’ and avatar –
wanders in the neighbourhood of the venue, equipped with a
multimedia communications device. The street performer visits
locations such as train stations, kiosks, bars, ATMs and petrol
stations. The route is choreographed to synchronise with
Ajay’s storytelling, and a live ‘point-of-view’ video feed from
the wanderer is relayed by wireless broadband to the venue.
Ajay extends his radius-of-transmission step by step, starting
from personal conversation, through more attention-catching
acts making use of the venue PA and video projections, to
using his bionic extension (his avatar) via the neighbourhood
network. At various points, people inside the venue feel
(and behave) like partygoers, like a theatre audience, like
performers. Sound and video elements are echoed back into
the venue or relayed to people in the street via the roaming
avatar. Initially, the screens in the venue display seemingly
‘unpurposive’ party visuals. Over time, as they incorporate
more of the wanderer’s video feed, the projections become
increasingly explicit backdrops for Ajay’s stories.
At the culmination of the performance, the virtual extension
im plod es a n d Ajay f in d s him se lf: th e roa min g pe r fo rm e r
arrives at the venue and the two bodies of Ajay synchronise:
they engage with each other in a fusion of breakdance and
capoeira. Crescendo: sonically, Ajay’s words are looped and
reformed into rhythm, and visually, feedback loops between
the roaming performer’s camera and the projection screens.
The two bodies of Ajay then melt ‘off stage’ and become mere
partygoers again. The event flips back into pure party mode.
172/173
Perthshire, Scotland,
July 2002: preproduction
workshop for flipflop at
Makrolab, a sustainable,
mobile, communications and
meteorological research
laboratory.
A song carries Ajay in
unknown lands, audio
waveforms turning into
undulating terrain. After a
long journey he is desolate
and begins to explore his
unbound inner space. He
re-encounters himself as
newly arrived from a planet
of alienation.
http://
makrolab.ljudmila.org
174/175
Michael Uwemedimo
Reflections on form
2002
Ca p o e i ra f i n d s a sa lie nt p la ce with i n th e te c h n ic a l a n d
Notes from the movement
thematic framework of flipflop – a framework of surveillance
workshop with Manu Luksch,
apparatus that stages the compositional aspects of feedback
Mukul Patel, Ajay Naidu,
and exploits them to dramatic effect through a series of
Michael Uwemedimo, and
projections, echoes and shadows.
Andrea Zimmerman, July
2002
Capoeira is corporeal dialogue – an exchange in which one’s
partner is a mirror possessed of a will to deceive, dissimulate
and disguise. Each capoerista echoes the other, a play in which
it is possible to out-manoeuvre one’s own shadow, an echo
that tends to a Chinese whisper. Each partner extends the
movement of the other and turns it against them. Dissimulation
is central to the form; not only do participants deceive
each other, but the spectacle of the roda (circle: the space
where capoeira is played), is used as both an attraction and a
distraction – it gathers a crowd and then diverts them while
their pockets are lightened. Further, the form itself is a
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
disguise. Martial practices amongst the slaves who developed
capoeira were prohibited. The martial implications of the form
had to be disguised as a recreational, quasi-religious dance.
Also like flipflop, capoeira is a syncretic discourse, in as much
as it draws on and fuses, martial, musical, religious and dance
forms from the communities along slave routes to the African
interior. Along the course of its development, it has also
incorporated movements and strategies from a number of
other martial arts, most notably Taekwondo.
Mukul Patel
Trials of technology (and its sponsors)
2003
flipflop required a light, portable hardware solution to transmit
and receive audio and video over WLAN (wireless network). The
devices would be worn by both performers and would need to
be robust enough to function outdoors in poor weather, and
indoors while they played capoeira.
One of the project’s funding agencies tried to pass off
some ‘wearable PCs’ (made by Swiss company Xybernaut) as
--Left: Photos from the
movement workshop by
support-in-kind, and even attempted to stipulate their use
in the work. Presumably the result of a sponsorship deal, the
PCs, with ‘futuristic’ peripherals including wrist-mounted
Anthony Auerbach (above) &
keyboards and head-mounted displays (HMDs), were barely
Ilze Black (below)
functional. We conducted a thoroughgoing technical evaluation
176/177
of the devices [1]. Many of the failings were fundamental, for
example: insufficient number of sockets for peripherals and
insufficient clearance for peripheral plugs, no option for
wireless peripherals (leading to ‘cable spaghetti’), PCMCIA card
chamber too small for wireless cards, HMD unusable in daylight,
headset not adjustable to different head sizes, unreliable
connections between hard drive and motherboard. In terms
of both function and ergonomics, the devices were completely
unsuitable for any computing task – let alone the rigorous use
that flipflop would have subjected them to.
Given the state of ultramobile PC development at that time, we
decided to move away from the PC/streaming media platform.
There were also connectivity issues with WLAN, particularly in
the ‘urban canyons’ surrounding potential venues. On paper,
WLAN has the necessary range, but in practice, in the city it is
vulnerable to signal attenuation and multipath distortion. As
part of The Spy School Exercise #2, we had tested miniature
imaging chips and microphone capsules in combination with
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
analogue UHF transmitters and receivers. While adequate for
that project, range and noise issues plagued this approach
too, making it unsuitable for a larger scale theatrical piece.
Advances in mobile phone networks (3G) promised to fulfill flipflop’s
technical requirements, though the use of a closed network
(as opposed to the open WLAN protocol) jarred with our
championing of independent media infrastructure. This concern
[1] www.ambienttv.net/3/
notwithstanding, we trialled the Motorola A920, one of the first
flipflop/inprogress/
3G phones with a built-in GPS (Global Position System) receiver.
flipflop_report_nov2002.pdf
It soon became clear that video calling was not yet practical,
and given the earlier difficulties with video over WLAN or UHF FM,
together with the availability of GPS, the original dramaturgy
based on video telepresence was abandoned, in favour of an
---
approach using sound, text, and location data.
Above: The Xybernaut
wearable computer and its
A BRICK IN A WALLED GARDEN
numerous design failings.
When attempting to access the GPS data from the A920, a
Photos: Mukul Patel
major problem arose: the phone would not run third-party
Right top: flipflop movement
applications unless they had been ‘signed’ (approved) by the
studies workshop
network operator Hutchinson, ostensibly to prevent the
Photos: Anthony Auerbach
distribution of malicious software. Hutchinson was running a
developer competition at the time, but would only provide
Right: Video data from the
movement studies workshop,
manipulated live by Jaromil
software emulators to the public – useless for applications
that required access to the phone or GPS radio chips. Despite
using FreeJ/dyne:bolic on an
lobbying, Hutchinson refused to allow full access, so inevitably
‘obsolete’ Pentium I
the phone was hacked. When we eventually accessed GPS
178/179
data from the phone, we discovered that the GPS receiver
on the phone only updated its location every five minutes –
too infrequently for precise tracking. Like the Xybernaut
computer, the Motorola phone failed to deliver on its hype.
After a year of trials, we eventually assembled a working
solution for mobile sound, text and location data communication
using the Palm Tungsten W (a PDA and 2.5G mobile phone) coupled
with an external GPS unit. While bulkier and more expensive than
the A920, this device combination was robust and reliable, and
proved itself in several performance works.
With the replacement of video telepresence with sound, text
and location data as the dramaturgical basis, and open WLAN
data channels with a closed, proprietary mobile phone network,
the flipflop project had changed substantively. We tested the
Palm/GPS combination under the title TRyPTiCHON at the DMZ
Media Arts festival in London (November 2003), and subsequently
developed a performance for pixelACHE 2004 in Helsinki. The final
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
manifestation of this line of enquiry was the networked dance/
theatre work Myriorama, presented in London and at ISEA 2004,
Helsinki. The general ambivalence towards technologicallymediated omnipresence/omniscience of flipflop was replaced
with a sharp critique of network surveillance. This refining of
focus occurred across our practice, as playful explorations
of new technologies were increasingly tempered with a growing
awareness of the systems of control that they instituted.
---
--Catalogue of the DMZ Media
Arts Festival, London 2003
Right: Data traces from
wandering performers of
TRyPTiCHON 1.0 at DMZ,
London
---
---
TRYPTICHON
ambientTV.NET
2003–04
a leash of minstrels
sings streets into existence
leashed by time’s ticks...
TRyPTiCHON 1.0 at DMZ
Media Arts Festival, London
2003: a wandering wireless
performance by manu/
TRyPTiCHON co m bi n e s so u n d a n d text tra n s mis sio n s a n d
mukul/muth with malo/mU!/
location data from wandering performers with mobile phone/
minna and agent Gav
GPS units, to form a collaborative piece writ large over the
neighbourhood. Each mobile unit sends text and GPS data via
the mobile phone network provider to a server computer at
the base station, from where it is relayed to other machines on
a network for processing in the Max/MSP/Jitter application.
In November 2003, TRyPTiCHON 1.0 was shown as a work-inprogress at DMZ Media Arts Festival, London. Aims of the
exercise included a technical proof-of-concept, the discovery
of salient data types and the exploration of narrative.
TRyPTiCHON 1.0
Roaming performers (mU! and Agent Gav) equipped with two
mobile units transmitted to three artists (manu/mukul/muth)
at the base station who managed the data and presented
th e a u d io/visu a l p e r fo rm a n ce . Roa m e rs co u ld fo llow a n
algorithmically-derived route (e.g., only streets beginning with
the letter ‘C’, or those having newsagents; or using the 1st bus
that arrives for a journey of 1 stop, then the 2nd for 2 stops,
and so on). Alternatively, they travelled under the suggestion
of texts such as Hänsel und Gretel , Thoreau’s Walden , and
Kerouac’s On The Road. A balance was struck between objective
(if non-traditional) and subjective mapping.
GPS fixes from the roamers were visualized as on-screen
traces in a perspective projection. Other data flags set by
the roamers (signifying, for example, mood) were interpreted
and used to modify traces on screen.
Technically, the system worked, but the data from the roamers
needed to be richer in order to feed a performance piece.
This point would be addressed in the version developed and
presented the following year in Helsinki.
180/181
---
TRyPTiCHON 1.0 Roamer log
Gavin Starks
November 2003
I started by cycling to Canary Wharf. Noted the sterility
of the place: it was like a ghost town. Found a neat little
street where older houses were overshadowed by the newlydeveloped ‘New Providence’ buildings directly behind them.
At New Providence Wharf Development, stopped and took photos
of the building. Within five minutes a security guard came out
and told me that photography was forbidden; I replied that
since I was on a public highway, he had no jurisdiction over me.
Happened to be on the phone to Mukul and was relaying some
of the conversation to him, and holding the phone/GPS unit
as if it were a measuring device, all of which made the guard
nervous. Eventually he left.
Went up to all the CCTV cameras I could find and took photos
from directly underneath. Within a minute, the manager was
out asking what I was doing. Continued to use the phone/GPS
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
unit as if it were a measuring device, which really unnerved
him. He kept trying to see what was on the screen. He did not
want ‘the tabloids taking photos’. I confirmed they were ‘noncommercial’ and he went away. There was also a radar unit right
outside the building.
P r o c e e d e d s o u t h e a s t t o w a r d t h e G r e e n w i c h Tu n n e l ,
noting the significant contrast in architecture, but similar
desolation in the people. Travelling th rough the tu n nel,
was able to confirm that it is completely radio-quiet for
ce ll p h o n e s . Th e lo c atio n co u ld b e of u se fo r a n o nymity
(though you’d be seen entering and leaving). There was much
more life in Greenwich: bustling, happy people. Looped around
Deckspace and headed back via the south bank of the river.
Later: a chance encounter with a beautiful sailing ship in
front of Canary Wharf; further along, I was held up as Tower
Bridge opened to let the ship through.
Took far longer to traverse the south side of the river
because of the new, exclusive property developments that bar
access to the riverfront. I’d find my path repeatedly blocked
and would have to double back and take an alternative route.
(This happened eight times: very annoying.)
Arrived back at DMZ at 6 pm, having cycled for about 4 hours.
--Photos: Gavin Starks
TRyPTiCHON 2.0
Anthony Auerbach
April 2004
the city rewritten
TRyPTiCHON 2.0 by
plots upon plots
textured in dance
ambientTV.net (Manu
Luksch, Mukul Patel, David
The audience at the Kiasma Theatre was led all the way down
Muth)
the steps of the tiered seating area and invited to take their
places inside a hexagonal tent of veils raised on the stage.
Live locative media and
A roaming performer equipped with a mobile phone/GPS unit
dance performance.
left the building on a walk. As the lights dimmed, the semi-
Developed at the NIFCA
transparent walls of the tent became a myriad of projections
Media Air artist residency
and the stepped auditorium a stage for a dancer dressed in
on Suomenlinna, Helsinki,
white. The bip-bip-bip sound of a pedestrian crossing signal was
Spring 2004.
heard, introducing an evocative live surround-soundtrack.
Presented at Kiasma
The walk, framed between the steps of Helsinki’s Parliament
Theatre, Helsinki as part
building, the steps of Tuomiokirkko (the Lutheran Cathedral),
of the pixelACHE 2004:
and those inside the theatre, also formed the framework of
Audiovisual Architecture
the 45-minute show as text messages from the roamer and
festival.
positions reported by GPS were mapped in real time projections.
The roamer wrote in one of three modes: internal space (my
With: Hanna Ylitepsa
world), shared space (our world), external space (their world).
(choreography and dance),
Gavin Starks (roaming
The live messages from the roamer emerged from the context
performer), Camalo Gaskin
of layers of archived walks and the earlier roamers’ messages,
(costume and tent design)
and threaded their way through a forest of texts across
and featuring walks
the walls of the tent. As the roamer’s data was visualised and
through Helsinki by John
sonified, the dancer interpreted and narrated the three modes
Hopkins, Mariko Montpetit,
of physical and emotional space through her movement. She was
Nick Grindell, Hermanni
also multiplied: seen through and casting shadows on the tent-
Ylitepsa, Voytec Mejor and
screens, her image projected from archive video and also via a
others
live camera. Sight lines from the audience, seated at will in the
tent rather than in traditional theatre rows, criss-crossed
as they traveled to the manifold figures of the dancer and the
architectonic threads of texts.
ambientTV.NET’s interest in ‘locative media’ (mobile positionaware systems) stems from earlier ‘telejams’ which linked
performers in different cities with live video, and draws from the
tradition of psychogeography the notion of a spatial encoding
of narrative and its subsequent unveiling. The development of
TRyPTiCHON 2.0 has yielded valuable technical solutions, but
above all has generated critical approaches to locative media
that prevent the work from being a gadget-piece.
---
182/183
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
--Left: TRyPTiCHON 2.0 in and
around Helsinki, April 2004
Photos: Anthony Auerbach,
Camalo Gaskin, Mariko
Montpetit, Mukul Patel,
Gavin Starks
Above: TRyPTiCHON 2.0
performance at the Kiasma
Theatre, Helsinki 4 April 2004
Photo: Anthony Auerbach
184/185
--Left and above: TRyPTiCHON
2.0 at the Kiasma Theatre,
Helsinki 4 April 2004
Photos: Anthony Auerbach
186/187
“The basic survival of the poor,
undocumented or ‘illegalised’
often depends on the ability
to operate without detection,
the necessity of ID, or the
creation of official records.
This grey zone of anonymity is
constantly squeezed in the
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
interests of population
management, border enforcement,
welfare clamp-downs,
technocratic convenience and,
of course, the economy.”
--Josephine Berry Slater,
from her Editorial for Mute
magazine, Vol. 2, No. 7, 2008
www.metamute.org/en/
Editorial-Mute-2-7
--Students at Srishti
College of Art, Design and
Technology in Bangalore
setting up movable
projection screens for the
installation Hinges On
188/189
---
---
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel
HINGES ON
2005
Responsive media
Hinges On is a responsive media installation that functions as a
installation by students
comment space on the economic ‘grey zones’ of the information
at the Srishti School of
& communication technology sector in Bangalore. The work was
Art, Design and Technology,
developed by students at the Srishti School of Art, Design
Bangalore, India
and Technology during a month-long tactical media lab that we
led in April 2005, and presented at Ars Electronica in Linz that
September.
Visitors enter through a sparsely-lit sound tunnel, where
they are exposed to an audio montage of failed attempts
at information retrieval. Released into the video installation
room, they are faced with large hinged doors in the centre of
the space that serve as target surfaces for the projectors
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
on each wall. As the door-screens are turned, they catch a
juxtaposition of projected images, consisting of reenacted
interviews with people involved in Bangalore’s info-techboom,
from labourers laying cables to the police chief in charge of
cyber crime. Visitors to the installation choose different
permutations of the video reenactments using a switchboard.
The coexistence of mainstream multinational branded markets
and thick multilayered networks of informal economies provides
a complex space to explore questions regarding access,
distribution and regulation of products and systems. The
employment and revenue generated in the informal sector
is significant, making the question of regulation particularly
interesting.
Th e re is n o o n e sto r y. We collect th e voices, o pinio n s,
viewpoints and concerns of a wide range of people together
in one space where they can be in dialogue with one another.
Visual frag me ntation creates voids an d ma kes room for
interaction, interpretation and reflection.
– Ramyah Gowrishankar
What is intriguing about the setting is that one is provided
the ability to control what one views, which in turn reflects
the way in which one functions in and interacts with these
systems. Seemingly, every dimension of the economy is visible
simultaneously. And yet some aspects of the perspective do
not reveal themselves unless the right door is opened, the
correct alignment is struck. It is not enough to be mere
spectators – move things around till the picture becomes
clearer!
– Nishita Kavadia
The informal economy and the formal live like old neighbours in
a system of mutual understanding.
The characters in the game we call our economy become other
characters in a play that we construct. These characters want
to speak to each other, to locate themselves in a dialogue
that has never before taken place.
Ideas emerge for an interface: how to get an audience to
interact with the characters that increasingly define the
fabric of their world?
– invite them to conversations through telephone handsets
– allow them to juxtapose characters, using movable projections
– provide a switchboard to physically connect characters in
dialogues
– Divya Vishwanathan
---
---
---
SIDELONG GLANCES
Mukul Patel
2007
3. Measuring the gallery
At B e l l a d o n n a , IC A , Lo n d o n 1997: c o nfro nt e d by A n i s h
Kapoor’s highly polished cosmic navel yawning out of the wall,
Sue promptly stuck her head in it. The guard became very
agitated, pointing to a nearby sign that said ‘Please Do Not
Touch’. A war of attrition between human and steel is onesided. But anyway – wasn’t that sign part of the piece? The
work is entirely about boundary. Was she not already touching
it by occupying the void it emptied into? or even by merely
being mirrored in it?
---
190/191
---
---
Mukul Patel
AMBIENT.VISTA 2008
ARTIST RESIDENCIES AT AMBIENT.SPACE
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
2008
ambient.vista 2008 artists:
The ambient.vista residency series invited international
Wolfgang Staehle (New
artists to reframe the city by critically addressing the vista
York/Berlin), Tuomas
over it afforded by ambient.space, the studio/workshop/
Toivonen (Helsinki), Fahim
salon of AIS. The creation of an artist residency was a natural
Amir (Vienna), Shiho
development of the informal networking and hosting that AIS
Fukuhara (Tokyo)
has been engaged in since inception.
Works were shown at
Located on the 7th (top) floor of an industrial building in
ambient.space as part of
South Hackney, ambient.space has a continuous 12 m stretch
the Whitechapel Gallery’s
of window facing due south, overlooking Regent’s Canal and a
‘First Thursdays’ late-night
gasworks. The view encompasses the City and Docklands, the
openings, and at E:vent
grime of Bethnal Green, church steeples and the Kingsland Road
Gallery in Bethnal Green;
Mosque, the Royal London Hospital’s helipad, Tower Bridge, the
Fahim Amir also performed
Barbican, Centre Point, and the Millennium Dome; and above
at the Austrian Cultural
the horizon: columns of smoke rising from disused properties;
Forum, London. There was
violet explosions of fireworks celebrating Eid, Diwali, Chinese
a group show in October
New Year, or Guy Fawkes Night, flocks of geese leaving Victoria
as part of E:vent’s The
Park and streams of aircraft approaching Heathrow and City
Beautiful Children at the
airports, and an hour’s advance forecast of the local weather.
V22 Wharf Road project.
Not least, the studio grants a perspective on the rapid and
controversial redevelopment of the East End in the lead up to
ambient.vista 2008 artist
the 2012 Olympics.
residencies generously
supported by:
Simon Bishop
Wolfgang Staehle: Imperial Gas Works
Arts Council England
Austrian Cultural Forum
EXCERPTS FROM A CONVERSATION WITH MUKUL PATEL
The Japan Foundation
MP – You’ve made several 24 hour (or longer), live broadcast
Embassy of Finland London
or recorded time-lapse photographic panoramas. How does
Imperial Gas Works fit into this series?
London gallery shows in
partnership with Colm Lally,
WS – Imperial Gas Works is a recent piece in what one could
E:vent Gallery.
call a series of ‘vedute’, which is a genre of landscape painting
www.eventnetwork.org.uk
that’s been around since the early 17th century. Technically
speaking it’s not painting, of course; it’s rather some sort of
Programme Director and
chrono-photography. A static camera takes a picture every
Producer: Mukul Patel
couple of seconds with intervals usually in the 5 to 10 seconds
range. Because they looked so much like today’s postcards,
www.ambientTV.NET/
vedute paintings were sometimes considered a minor genre, but
content/?q=ambientvista
I think there is something quite metaphysical about showing
the world just like it is. For me the most exciting thing is
everyday reality, the fact that it occurs at all.
I always liked realist painters, such as Vermeer or the painters
and photographers of Neue Sachlichkeit (‘new objectivity’) in
the early 20th century. This cool, objective and distanced
style suits me quite well – it’s in itself a statement against
the prevailing trends in contemporary art, which increasingly
favour big spectacular productions. My work is not very
entertaining and only few critics grasp the phenomenological
underpinnings. It stays pretty much on the periphery of the
major trends, although recently there were some discussions
in a few art journals about ‘slowness’ as a phenomenon in the
Wolfgang Staehle, in
works of certain artists.
residence intermittently
March–July 2008
MP – Interestingly, the time-lapse aspect of your work also
diminishes Docklands and the City relative to other parts
Imperial Gas Works
of the image, by muting the strobing lights on top of the
Digital photographs, taken
buildings, which normally draw the eye. When you talk about the
at approx. 10 s intervals
‘phenomenological underpinnings’ of your work, are you pointing
over 24 h periods
to the temporal aspect of perception?
MP = Mukul Patel,
WS – Time is certainly an important aspect of the work. By using
WS = Wolfgang Staehle
stills that are refreshed at certain short intervals, I feel I can
The conversation took
affect a slight shift in perception. It’s very different from
place on 11 September
looking at a continuous film or video of the same scene. To me
2008.
it’s almost hypnotic to watch the slight changes from one image
to the next. The almost imperceptible changes in the light, a
cloud moves a tiny bit or a crane in the distance shifts its
position. Time moves, but it also quite literally stands still.
By ‘ p h e n o m e n o l o g i c a l u n d e r p i n n i n g s ’ I d i d n ’t m e a n a ny
investigation into the mechanics of human perception, but
rathe r about achieving a te m poral state of pe rce ption
stripped of any intentionality. An awareness that there is
something, rather than nothing. I’m perfectly aware that in
contemporary culture this sounds pathetic and banal at the
same time, but think about it.
MP – How much of your work have you viewed in real time?
WS – It’s not necessary to view it all. Just look as long as you
wish and then maybe return a few hours later. I think the only
time somebody watched all 24 hours was when the Metropolitan
Museum bought Eastpoint, a Hudson River vista, and some poor
guy had to sit and check each and every frame of it.
192/193
--Imperial Gas Works
26 April 2008 (05.18.46)
Digital chrono-photograph
(Wolfgang Staehle, 2008)
--Imperial Gas Works
8 July 2008 (12.40.06)
Digital chrono-photograph
(Wolfgang Staehle, 2008)
194/195
Tuomas Toivonen: New Rooms (NOW AVAILABLE)
Tuomas Toivonen’s mixed-media sculpture, New Rooms (NOW
AVAILABLE) was installed along the public balcony adjoining
ambient.space on the seventh floor of Regent’s Studios.
Accompanying the installation was a series of flyers and
posters advertising the availability of the ‘new rooms’. The
sculpture tested architectural effects and ideas through an
optical experiment. The flyers were distributed in neighbouring
Broadway Market, a street whose modest corner shops and
cafés have gradually been replaced by boutiques and real
estate agents over the recent years, to direct prospective
property buyers to the installed sculpture.
Tuomas Toivonen, in
residence May–June 2008
New Rooms (NOW AVAILABLE)
Mixed media site-specific
installation, postcards,
posters
--New Rooms at ambient.space,
5 June
Photos: Mukul Patel and
Manu Luksch
196/197
--New Rooms (NOW AVAILABLE)
installed at ambient.space
(Tuomas Toivonen, 2008)
Photo: Mukul Patel
--New Rooms (NOW AVAILABLE)
installed at ambient.space
(Tuomas Toivonen, 2008)
Photo: Tuomas Toivonen
198/199
Fahim Amir: Drinking Theory – Grammar of the
Metropolis – The End of Space and Time
(As We Know It) – Against the Dictatorship of
‘There’s a Time and Place for Everything’
AMBIENT.VISTA ARTISTIC RESEARCH PAPER VERSION 2. 5:
THE END OF TIME AND SPACE (AS WE KNOW IT)
Thick speaking: speaking in hypertext modality.
In a Europe destroyed after WWII, a world of without place, a
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
world without any spaces whatsoever, ‘a new race of characters
Fahim Amir, in residence
was stirring, a kind of mutant: they saw rather than acted;
June–July 2008
they were seers.’
Drinking Theory – Grammar
Modest witness question:
of the Metropolis – The
Why did I decide to move to the Cyborg Market area? This is a
End of Time and Space (As
very artistic and lively community to be part of. You meet a lot
We Know It) – Against the
of talented and inspiring people when you go out and about.
Dictatorship of ‘There’s
It’s not very inspiring, though, that my friend was knocked off
a Time and Place for
his bike with an iron bar. Some teenager now has the two teeth
Everything’
that he’s missing.
Posters, ‘speaking
installation’, lecture-
---
performance, sound work
Urban poor usually pay the highest rents relative to their
living conditions. London’s East End, the Victorian world’s
greatest slum: a vicious circle of housing demolition, rising
rents, overcrowding, and disease. ‘The really high profits were
not made from investment in the housing boom in the suburbs,
but the rack-renting boom in the inner area.’ Slums like St.
Giles, Whitechapel, and Bethnal Green attracted aristocratic
investors whose ‘expectation of high returns on foreign
investment had been disappointed’ as well as the frugal middle
class for whom inner-city housing was ‘the most popular and
the most accessible means of capital gain.’ Mega-slumlords like
Thomas Flight (reputed to extract rent from more than 18,000
dwellings) had a lucrative stake in the immiseration of the East
End. The same is true for Flight’s counterparts in fin-de-siècle
Naples, or rural landowning elites in the Third world transforming
themselves into urban slumlords. In India, an estimated threequarters of urban space is owned by six percent of urban
--Performances by Fahim Amir
at ambient.space (above)
households, and just 91 people control the majority of all vacant
land in Mumbai/Bombay. In the inflationary environment of the
1980s, real estate became the highest-profit-sector. Smart
and Austrian Cultural Forum
money flowed into the booming market for converting slums
(right)
into upscale apartment neighbourhoods in Istanbul.
What about trickster market?
I think it’s tough for most creative people who want to stay
independent and make what they believe in. I’ve been working
seven days a week for almost three years, just to get to where
I am now. It’s especially tough at the moment because of the
recession, and I don’t want to look back and say what if? or,
did I try hard enough?
--Neudeutsch Chef-Duzen: Kaffe ist gratis, alle sind per Du, und
Überstunden werden nicht bezahlt. The creative entrepreneur is
on the one hand a neoliberal role-model: working collaboratively
is a necessity, lifelong learning is a matter of course; disciplined
and subjected to project-based labour, the contemporary
artist paves the way for cutbacks in the social system. Since
she is identifying herself in her social entirety with her job,
paid overtime is a foreign word for contemporary creatives.
The successful artist embodies neoliberal social skills of
networking, flexibility and mobility. Be creative, be be creative!
– ‘Hang on! Is this a dinner or are we networking?’
My body my te m ple, my powe rna p, my retreat: f it fo r
capitalism.
In the context of artistic and cultural work, the following
conditions are most frequently mentioned as evidence of
precarity:
1. project work and multiple job-holding;
2. a high level of formal education in combination with ‘learning
by doing’;
3. low income and often little motivation to earn more;
4. close affective attachment to one’s work;
5. overlap of work, private life, and leisure time: passionate
work;
6. uncertain expectations for the future, including inability
to even imagine one’s future, deep insecurity with regard to
future employment, and inability to plan reliably;
7. informality as a structural principle (network sociality,
obligatory sociality), and clubs, pubs, friends and friends of
friends as sources of new work opportunities;
8. new forms of self-discipline (as artistic individual, as
entrepreneur) and the outsourcing of industrial control
and safety mechanisms to the ‘entrepreneur of his/her own
labour’;
9. long working hours associated with passionate/intensive
work; extraordinarily high working time per week, no holidays;
10. a high degree of spatial, temporal, and social mobility;
200/201
11. a l t e r n a t i n g , f r e q u e n t l y u n f o r e s e e a b l e , p h a s e s of
employment, unemployment, and permanent training.
Everything is changing so fast nowadays, but the centre can
still hold. Just look at this area: city officials working with real
estate developers, local landlords; rents are rising, but the
wages won’t. Hard to imagine my life in five, let alone 10 years.
I came to London in search of a part for my motorbike but ended
up staying and getting into fashion design instead. After taking
a few short courses I was accepted at the London College
of Fashion and moved to Vampire Fields to be near the college.
I have lived and worked in the Cyborg Market area since moving
from New Zealand. I bought a flat here eight years ago when
the area was still affordable to buy in. That was a great move.
The development of the area over the past five years has
really helped me grow the business. Having a Cyborg Market
address is really great as people know this street all over the
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
world now.
But on the other hand, as a ideal potentiality the creative
could be the transgressor per se, crossing territorial, topical
and disciplinary borders:
We did some working class related politics the last years here
around Cyborg Market – we even browbeat the Labour Party.
If we had won seats on the Council, we would have founded an
activist social centre here in the Leased End. We nearly did it.
--The classical bourgeois ideology treated space as the domain
of the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile – a
world of passivity and measurement rather than action and
meaning. Accurate packages of such geographical information
continued to be of use to the state, in the West and in the
East, for military intelligence, economic planning, and imperial
administration.
These three arenas of intelligence, planning, and administration
defined an ‘applied’ geography, cementing a special relationship
with the state that probably arose first in an earlier age of
imperial exploration. The majority of the most prominent midcentury geographers in the United States of America were tied
---
in one way or another with intelligence-gathering activities,
Opposite & following two
especially through the Office of Strategic Services, the
pages: Posters by Fahim Amir
progenitor of the CIA.
This is a project of urban geography as artistic research. The
analysis of the spatiotemporal fixes focuses on processes of
deterritorialisation, reterritorialisation and subjectification.
Temporalities as war machines.
Baghdad and its slum Sadr City. Mind the urban gap! Future
wars will take place in slums, where guerrilla tactics from dead
Maoism could have a zombie-life on new urban battlefields. The
price of urban warfare: after WWII, an inversion of norms. The
civilian to military casualty ratio is now roughly 8:1.
Military geographers and warfare in the first century of the
third millennium. The dark side is preparing. A revolution in
military affairs, the cybernetic battle system for urban war, is
a reaction to the ‘universalization of information technology’
and ‘the efflorescence of capitalism’.
Walking through walls with Deleuze. Be part of the swarm talk.
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
MOUT: military operations in urban terrain are nomadological. In
these assaults, troops eschew traditional lines of advance the alleys and streets of refugee camps – and burrow through
buildings instead. MOUTs invert figure-ground relations in
architecture. Military strategists use reversed city plans –
w h e re vo i d s a re t re at e d a s s o l i d s a n d s o l i d s a s vo i d s .
Reverse your tactical assumptions to subvert the logic of an
insurgency.
--‘Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is
as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tips of
my words.’
Agoraphobia and claustrophobia first appear three decades
before the start of the twentieth century. Agoraphobia
and claustrophobia: the yin-yang of spatial thinking in the
modernist period. What comes now?
The passionate intensity of the urban arcades PLUS the chancy
promiscuity of the urban stranger EQUALS a poetry of the
pavement.
Koolhaas calls it ‘junk space’.
Maximum velocity. Smart bomb.
‘It is not we who make cinema; it is the world which looks to us
like a bad film.’
Any composition is a mixture (melange) of smooth and striated
space. The major task of micropolitics: mapping different kinds
of space, analyse that mix in each assemblage (social, political,
geological, biological, economic, aesthetic, musical).
Politics of non-identity. Reinheit ist der schlechte Fusel der
Seele. Cyborgs, parasites and symbionts: living together in the
New Urban Order. If chimpanzees and dogs have politics, why
can’t we?
‘I use Mixotricha Paradoxa as an entity that interrogates
i n d ivi d u a lity a n d c o l l e ctivity at t h e s a m e ti m e . It i s a
microscopic single-celled organism that lives in the hindgut of
the South Australian termite.
‘ Wh at c o u nt s a s “it” i s c o m p lic ate d b e c a u s e it live s i n
obligatory symbiosis with five other kinds of entities. Each
has a taxonomic name, and each is closely related to bacteria
because they don’t have a cell nucleus. They have nucleic acid,
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
they have DNA, but it’s not organized into a nucleus.
‘Each of these five different kinds of things live in or on a
different region of the cell. For example, one lives in the
interdigitations on the exterior surface of the cell membrane.
So you see these little things that live in these folds of
the cell membrane, and others that live inside the cell. But
they aren’t in the full sense part of the cell. They live in
obligatory symbiosis. Nobody can live independently here. This
is codependency with a vengeance! And so the question is – is
it one entity or is it six? But six isn’t right either because
there are about a million of the five non-nucleated entities
for every one nucleated cell. There are multiple copies. So
when does one decide to become two? When does this whole
assemblage divide so that you have, now, two? And what counts
as Mixotricha? Is it just the nucleated cell or is it the whole
I want to thank the
assemblage?’
Cultural Academy research
group (London/Vienna)
Mixotricha means mixed threads. This is obviously a great
where some of the ideas of
metaphor, that is a real thing, for interrogating our notions
the manuscript were first
of one and many.
discussed. All intellectual
labour is social.
Biology is an endless resource. Prefer it to psychoanalysis!
End of manuscript.
Shiho Fukuhara: Parts Unknown
VOICEOVER TEXT FOR VIDEO WORK
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Japan,
there is a new and independent country. A country without
beaches, without mountains, without rivers, without soil,
without ground. A country without land.
This country is made from floating islands. Only a few humans
have heard of it. Even fewer have dared to journey to the
island and set foot on-shore. And no explorer has yet planted
Shiho Fukuhara, in
a flag to claim this country.
residence October 2008
It is a country without a name. A new white spot on the map. A
Parts Unknown
new Atlantis, rising from the waters in front of our very eyes.
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
Plastic work, text,
single-screen video work,
But this country is not foreign to us. This is not a strange place,
photographic prints.
floating just beneath the surface of our consciousness. It is
the by-product of our global metabolism, a manifestation of
Thanks to Rachel Baker for
our common culture, the results of our collective consumption.
reading the voiceover text
for the video.
It is – plastic.
Plastic – like the wrappers of your sweets.
Plastic – like the bottle you drink your water from.
Plastic – like the toys your children play with.
Plastic – like the housing of your computer.
Plastic – like the bags from your last shopping.
Plastic – like the shell of your mobile phone.
Plastic disposed over the last 50 years, since the dawn of
the plastic age. A primordial plastic ocean, a perfect mixture
of accumulated plastic garbage and the steady influx of new
arrivals. A post-mordial soup of post-mortem consumption.
The dimensions of this plastic country are massive, and it
is getting bigger every day. Every time a plastic package is
bought, every time a plastic package is dumped, it contributes
to the growth of the island. Now, it is already twice the size
of the US, but still it is growing, still it is gaining weight, still
it is gaining strength. Driven by the currents of the Pacific
and trapped in its gyre, it keeps on developing, it keeps on
revolving, it keeps the vortex moving.
And it is has a cloak of invisibility, it does not want to cast a
shadow. It does not want to show itself yet, it prefers to stay
hidden for the moment. It keeps itself just below the water
surface, so that satellite images fool us into believing in a
clear, blue, untouched Pacific Ocean, while the island slowly
and patiently prepares to rise up.
Once it appears on the ocean surface, the heat of the sun
softens the plastic and melts it down. This meltdown gives
rise to fumes, to ether-like structures, to ghosts.
They will exist inside us. Each one of us will become in some
part plastic. We will become plastic people. Large pieces of
plastic are broken down into microscopic particles. Microgranular plastic is mistaken by fish, crustaceans and other
sea creatures for food. But the consequences are dire. The
plastic clogs their bloodstream and kills them in the most
gruesome way. It replaces the building materials of their
bodies. How long until nano-plastic particles are replacing
the building materials of our bodies?
The island itself is like a living entity, ‘it moves around like a
big animal without a leash’. It is unleashed and Big. It is big
and fearless. It bites and barks. And when it barks, ‘it spits
its guts over real beaches of real island, leaving a deadly
confetti of shredded plastic in its wake’.
Immigrants are secretly travelling to this unknown country.
They don’t need money for the ticket, they don’t need
passports for border control. They are expelled from their
countries of origin, but they are going to find a new place
to call home. They become part of this melting pot, their
brands and logos slowly fading away, their memories getting
bleached by the sun. Their one-way journey might be over,
but their mission is only starting. They are the foundations
of a new habitat, a habitat of eternal plastic, revolving only
around itself. A plastic time-capsule with all the time in the
world.
They carry small maritime species collected along their
journey with them. Species not supposed to belong together.
Bioremixing to create lifeforms yet unknown.
A new nation is being built. The process of construction is
underway. New flags will be flown across its acres, new hymns
will be whistled by the passing winds, new stories of origin will
be heard and told. A new nature made from cultures past. A
new polymer nature from the global consumer monoculture.
208/209
--Above & right: Parts Unknown
Photographic prints
(Shiho Fukuhara, 2008)
210/211
A long journey is coming to an end.
After millions of years of transforming from organic matter
into oil ...
After decades of being drilled and probed and pumped and
refined, shipped, refined again, transfomed and moulded into
form ...
After decades of being filled, wrapped around, stacked,
carried, worn, kicked, taking on logos and marks ...
After years of being shipped from one place to the next, from
one country to the other ...
... th e g h ost s a re fre e d fro m th e bu rd e n of atte ntio n,
freed from the agony of consumption. Hollowed out, emptied
of the substances and goods that were made in their ideal
imag e . Gh ost s whispe rin g of th e d esires a n d wish es a n d
vanities they once were signs for. After-echoes, vanishing
in the distance, taking with them their meaning. Leaving behind
pureness. Nothing to prove, nothing to lose, everything to
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
be.
All rivers flow into the sea. Canals, like veins, transport the
used and exhausted material forward to the source, back to
the origin. An arduous journey, many miles long, many seas wide,
many storms deep. Blood is flowing back to the heart and send
out again, refreshed, rejuvenated, new. Plastic is flowing into a
heart of darkness, no escape, no way out. Terminal. End.
Start. Beginning. Emergence as something else. No longer
product, no longer object of consumption. Form without
Structure, shape without meaning. Ready to be a part of a new
country, a new commonwealth, a new union.
The new Atlantis.
---
1
--2
1
Plastic garbage in Regent’s
Canal
Photo: Manu Luksch
2
Boat with wireless camera
used to film Parts Unknown
Photo: Mukul Patel
3
Parts Unknown video and
plastic works installed
at E:vent Gallery’s The
Beautiful Children show,
V22 Wharf Road Project,
October 2008
Photo: Mukul Patel
3
212/213
---
---
Mukul Patel
WORKS FOR GHETTOBLASTERS
2004
Public sound art and
The eight-piece Danish Ghettoblaster Ensemble is a mobile
choreography for portable
sound art unit that performs works in public space. In 2003 the
tape/CD players; site-
Ghettoblaster Ensemble performed my Diaspora.In.Synchro.City
specific sound work and
( D.I.S.C. ) as pa r t of Årh u s Festu ge . D.I.S.C. ma ps pa r t s
choreography for Trafalgar
of c o nte m p o ra r y B o m bay o nto th e p e r fo rm a n ce s p a ce .
Square
Performers arrive by train and move through four locations
5/BREAKING THE FRAME
(railway platform, station forecourt, marketplace, a city
D.I.S.C. was commissioned
square) before departing again. Based on manipulated field
by Århus Festuge for the
recordings, the ghettoblasters G1–G8 take on individual
Streets of Asia festival;
characters, including a radio announcer, a taxi driver, a
England Expects ...
b-boy and a street hawker. D.I.S.C. is designed for seven
(Nelson– not -Nelson) was
playback machines and one recorder – and so documents its
commissioned by Greenwch
own performance – but was adapted for the CD playback-only
& Docklands Festival for
machines of the Ghettoblaster Ensemble. The 15-minute work is
Square Perspectives, 2004.
given in the form of CDs or tapes with multiple tracks, scores
(and frameworks for improvisation) for each ghettoblaster, a
www.ssshhhhh.dk/
cue sheet for the conductor, and choreographic notes.
ghettoblast.htm
England Expects ... (Nelson- not -Nelson)
In 2004, I invited the Ghettoblaster Ensemble to perform a
new work, England Expects ... (Nelson- not -Nelson) in Trafalgar
Square for the Square Perspectives 2004 festival. Arranged
for seven ghettoblasters and a megaphone, the 10-minute
work anticipates by a year the bicentennial of the Battle of
Trafalgar, and is a witness to the history of the square and its
environs (Admiralty Arch, South Africa House, and St. Martinin-the-Fields).
England Expects ... is based on field recordings and samples
including speeches by Nelson Mandela on his release; reports
from the bombing of Trafalgar Square during World War II, from
the Falklands/Malvinas War, and from the bombing of Baghdad
in 2003; recordings of anti-capitalism demonstrations in
the Square on June 18th 1999 and on May Day 2000 and antiwar demos in London and Cairo in 2003; and a recording of a
stuntman’s parachute leap from the top of Nelson’s Column to
raise awarness for Act for Tibet. Beginning with and punctuated
by megaphone announcements (‘England expects ...’), the
work concludes with a toppling of statues – of Saddam Hussein
(during the ’liberation’ of Baghdad), of Bush (during the 15th
February protest against the war), and of Admiral Nelson (during
the performance, ideally). The performers are choreographed
in a narrative that begins with a triumphal march down the steps
from the National Gallery, circles around the fountains to
cascade down the steps again in a struggle between police and
demonstrators, points to South Africa House and the sites of
WWII bombardment, follows the trajectory of the parachuting
protester, and finally, using maximum volume, topples Nelson off
his column.
---
--Above: Conductor Ture
Larsen and megaphone
operator Michael Uwemedimo
in Trafalgar Square, July
2004
Photo: Anthony Auerbach
Left: Conductor’s cue
sheet for D.I.S.C.
214/215
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