fromCONCENTRATE

Wandering thru a graveyard in Prenzlauer Berg one morning (one of my favourite tourist pastimes) I encountered this unusual and beautiful marble gravestone with a bold repeating circle design in the place usually reserved for an epitaph.

This stone was the most interesting art object that I encountered during my visit to Berlin’s Transmediale.10.

The dead individual (whom this stone is representing) presents us with a subtle, final-word: a challenge to living-beings.

The ‘optical illusion’ of physical depth against this pristine, flat, surface evidences our flawed and filtered sensory apparatus and disturbs any complacency regarding attempts at understanding the nature of perception (and by extension: space; consciousness; life; and death…)

I have begun working with the design from the stone to test out some ideas in Processing.

(My initial code for the above outline is shared here.)

int a;

void setup()
{

size(500, 500);
background(255);
smooth();
noFill();
stroke(0);
a = 10;

ellipseMode(CORNER);

ellipse(125, 250, 250, 250);

for(int a=0;a<360;a=a+10)
{
pushMatrix();
// move the origin to the pivot point);
translate(250,250);
// then pivot the grid
rotate(radians(a));

// and draw the square at the origin
noFill();
ellipse(-125, 0, 250, 250);
popMatrix();
}
}

Berlin: The Transmediale 2010 opening was an eerie disconcerting spectacle featuring:

• a manmade laser rainbow across the sky
• ominous droning from the bell tower
• mass gathering outside of the House of World Cultures

Price and Value of Cultural Work – Session:

Liquid Democracies – Discussion:

• Steve Lambert – EYEBEAM
• Matteo Pasquinelli – Digital Neofeudalism

What is Futurity Now?

(insert blog post here!)

Rainbow on 12seconds.tv

Below are links to un-edited wiki notes on various sessions:

Wed 3rd Feb 2009

• Price and Value of Cultural Work
• Basis of Free Culture

On the 20th of February I made a presentation at Newcastle Life Centre’s ‘Dorkbot’ Event, which was hosted by Andy Lloyd. Here’s the blurb:

“John O’Shea is an artist and Co-Director of artist collective Re-Dock. Through the transference of digital-realm metaphors onto physical spaces, using simple material props, Re-Dock transform social spaces into information environments using cardboard cut-outs, sports equipment, old rope and balloons. After sharing some recent projects around concepts of ‘interfaces’ John will facilitate a discussion resulting in our collective mapping and extrapolation of technological trajectories for the coming decade!”

Abandon Normal Devices commissioned me to conduct an experiment at FACT this week, based on my “Message equals Medium” photographic archive of text messages.  The result was a subtle intervention into the Btween09 “bells and whistles” new-tech / social-media / business conference.

The idea was, that the work should stimulate discussion around the ‘human-face’ of technology and act as a trailblazer for September’s inaugural ANDfestival in Liverpool.

Inadvertently  :-) the work was actually interpreted as a REAL WORLD model for a NEW TECH business – uh-oh!  (see vid below…)

…and power and co-ersion and compliance”

- Presentation within FACT’s “Climate for Change” Un-Conference.  The presentation can be watched in full at on FACT TV

Question: “Who is happy with the fact that their Police Force is operating in a subversive way with “Special Powers?”
(image credit: Andy Miah )

Peter Martin, photographer and undergraduate of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam, invited me to share my perspective regarding the seemingly “disposable” nature of image-making in contemporary digital culture…

The interview was documented on video and presented as part of a multimedia installation within the exhibition “Quadruplex.”

Peter Martin:
“In this work I interview my former manager by whom I was employed as a camera salesman for a high street retailer. As we both have personal art practices relating to image-making, we open a discourse into how our time at the shop changed our approach to photography.”
(quoted from the catalogue text)

Over the course of one week in November, 16 artists from across Europe, took part in a special intensive workshop held within the Biological Science Department of the University of Stavanger and hosted as part of Article|08 – Biennale for the Electronic and Unstable Arts, Stavanger/Norway.

Led by Oron Catts, Director of Symbiotica this was a hands-on induction into the some of the techniques of Bio-Art.
EXTRACT FROM MY NOTES:
Day 1
Lab Primer / D.I.Y. Laboratory Equipment / Bacteria in the Environment and Self
Oron Catts is interested in how artists are working with life and asked the question:
Is there something intrinsically different when working with life?
Reasons why artists might work with life:

-  warm fuzzy feeling
-  solving real problems in real world?
-  making strange, defamiliarisation (Victor Shlovski 1917)
-  Critique of life sciences, P.R., Promotion (of life sciences) Aesthetics
-  Research, Intervention, Activism

Strategies for artists:

-  Representation
-  Visualisation
-  Interpretation
-  Hands-on

In most human cultures there is tension when working with life.

Case Study:

Steve Kurtz, Criticle Art Ensemble

- Tactical Media Artist
- Sharing Biological Knowledge held by governments (for warfare) and corporations
- Charged with “Bioterrorism” under the PATRIOT Act – Grand Jury rejected the charge
- Judge threw out the case.

Authorities have strong agendas against democratisation of knowledge

What constitutes human manipulation of life?

Bacteria

Task: Take, and label, samples from four different sources in order to test for bacteria.

-  single cell organism
- no nucleus
-  DNA (circular) contained in cytoplasm
- multiply asexually
- replicate quickly, make colonies

Some highlights:

- extracting our own DNA using household products and ethanol

- making our own DIY laboratory equipment
- combining, at a genetic level, Jellyfish DNA and DNA taken from faeces
- transforming the genetic material of a found bacteria, causing it to glow under U.V. light

- harvesting bone marrow stem cells from a dead animal (which had been sold as meat)
- facilitating tissue culture cell division of (HeLa) cancer cell line, using a fetal calf serum

Jun Takita and his work – “Light, only light”.