PAISAJE INTERACTIVO

Nave Espacial Tierra

2006-07-03T14:20:00.000-05:00

Los origenes de la especialización.
Como la razón de la fuerza destronó la fuerza de la razón, o, como el paso de de la holística a la especialización se da por la fuerza y no por la razón.

"...Leonardo da Vinci is the outstanding example of the comprehensively anticipatory design scientist. Operating under the patronage of the Duke of Milan he designed the fortified defenses and weaponry as well as the tools of peaceful production. Many other great military powers had their comprehensive design scientist-artist inventors; Michelangelo was one of them.

Many persons wonder why we do not have such men today. It is a mistake to think we cannot. What happened at the time of Leonardo and Galileo was that mathematics was so improved by the advent of the zero that not only was much more scientific shipbuilding made possible but also much more reliable navigation. Immediately thereafter truly large-scale venturing on the world’s oceans commenced, and the strong sword-leader patrons as admirals put their Leonardos to work, first in designing their new and more powerful world-girdling ships. Next they took their Leonardos to sea with them as their seagoing Merlins to invent ever more powerful tools and strategies on a world-around basis to implement their great campaigns to best all the other great pirates, thereby enabling them to become masthe world and of all its people and wealth. The required and scientifically designed secrecy of the sea operations thus pulled a curtain that hid the Leonardos from public view, popular ken, and recorded history..."

Finally, the sea-dwelling Leonardos became Captains of the ships or even Admirals of Fleets, or Commandants of the Navy yards where they designed and built the fleets, or they became the commandants of the naval war colleges where they designed and developed the comprehensive strategy for running the world for a century to come. This included not only the designing of the network of world-around voyaging and of the ships for each task but also the designing of the industrial establishments and world-around mining operations and naval base-building for production and maintenance of the ships. This Leonardo-type planning inaugurated today’s large-scale, world-around industrialization’s vast scale of thinking. When the Great Pirates came to building steel steamships and blast furnaces and railroad tracks to handle the logistics, the Leonardos appeared momentarily again in such men as Telford who built the railroads, tunnels, and bridges of England, as well as the first great steamship.

The topmost Great Pirates’ Leonardos discovered-both in their careful, long-distance planning and in their anticipatory inventing‹that the grand strategies of sea power made it experimentally clear that a plurality of ships could usually outmaneuver one ship. So the Great Pirates’ Leonardos invented navies. Then, of course, they had to control various
resource-supplying mines, forests, and lands with which and upon which to build the ships and establish the industries essential to building, supplying, and maintaining their navy’s ships.

Then the Pirate said to the king, "You will finally say to all of them: But each of you must mind your own business or off go your heads. I’m the only one who minds everybody’s business.’ "

And this is the way schools began‹as the royal tutorial schools. You realize, I hope, that I am not being facetious. That is it. This is the beginning of schools and colleges and the beginning of intellectual specialization. Of course, it took great wealth to start schools, to have great teachers, and to house, clothe, feed, and cultivate both teachers and students. Only the Great-Pirate-protected robber-barons and the Pirate-protected and secret intelligence-exploited international religious organizations could afford such scholarship investment. And the development of the bright ones into specialists gave the king very great brain power, and made him and his kingdom the most powerful in the land and thus, secretly and greatly, advantaged his patron Pirate in the world competition with the other Great Pirates.

But specialization is in fact only a fancy form of slavery wherein the "expert" is fooled into accepting his slavery by making him feel that in return he is in a socially and culturally preferred, ergo, highly secure, lifelong position. But only the king’s son received the Kingdom-wide scope of training.

However, the big thinking in general of a spherical Earth and celestial navigation was retained exclusively by the Great Pirates, in contradistinction to a four-cornered, flat world concept, with empire and kingdom circumscribed knowledge, constricted to only that which could be learned through localized preoccupations. Knowledge of the world and its resources was enjoyed exclusively by the Great Pirates, as were also the arts of navigation, shipbuilding and handling, and of grand logistical strategies and of nationally-undetectable,therefore effectively deceptive, international exchange media and trade balancing tricks by which the top pirate, as (in gambler’s parlance) "the house," always won.

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth
Buckminster Fuller

Glowlab: Laboratorio Urbano en N.Y.

2006-04-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

Entrada Múltiple:
Glowlab es un portal hacia la exploración urbana contemporánea. Los recorridos, intervenciones y derivas aqui convocadas tienen un particular sentido lúdico, creativo y crítico. En general es un acceso de lujo a asuntos de nomadología urbana y en particular destacan aqui una aplicación de recientes tecnologías al graffiti. Por favor ver estos dos videos:
Graffiti Research Labs;
LED Throwies I
LED Throwies II

"...Glowlab is an artist-run production and publishing lab engaging urban public space as the medium for contemporary art and technology projects. We track emerging approaches to psychogeography, the exploration of the physical and psychological landscape of cities. Our annual Conflux festival, exhibitions, events and our bi-monthly web-based magazine support a network of artists, researchers and technologists around the world..."

LED Throwies
The Graffiti Research Lab, a division of the Eyebeam OpenLab, is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers and artist with open source technology for urban communication. Our goal is to enable parity between advertisers and individuals in the business of getting attention and expressing a perspective. G.R.L. agents are working in the lab and the field to develop hybrid graffiti technologies that combine traditional graf tools and techniques with contemporary materials research and embedded electronics. Each project or campaign is documented in the form of a video, images and a How-to page on Instructables dot com Graffiti campaigns and field tests have occurred throughout New York City, most recently on "The Cube" at St. Marks/Astor Place, where G.R.L. agents wrote "FREE BORF" and tossed over 425 throwies.

SOCIALFICTION.ORG

2006-04-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

Socialfiction.org is a long-term research project that seeks to develop speculative knowledge that subverts ordinary ways to employ, experience and measure space, time and language.

The day to day reality of socialfiction.org is filled with projects. For most of them we encourage participation by persons known and unknown. Some of our projects are like whales, most are like plankton: the small ones feed the large ones.

Here are our whales:

Generative Psychogeography

Unlike what most people think psychogeography is really very simple: the moment you first step into a room you immediately, without conscious effort, have a heartfelt opinion about it. Psychogeography is the study of the 'stuff' that causes this mental reaction and the psychological and behavioural effects that are evoked by it.

Moving away from the automatism of surrealism and situationism, we used generative algorithms for our drifts in search for the psychogeographic. That is to say:

first left
second right
second left
repeat

or instructions to that effect. Perhaps to your surprise this actually works in generating strange unconventional routes and it is fun too. The next step was to open source these algorithms by calling for a "Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography 2002", inviting, with success, people to try it for themselves with their own friends and share their ideas with the likeminded.

http://socialfiction.org

Diseño para el riesgo

2006-04-03T02:22:00.000-05:00

A mitad de camino entre la concepción de productos y el arte, el encuentro fue una interesante excusa ideada por el arquitecto italiano residente en Brasilia Nicola Goretti, del Grupo A. G., con la consultoría de Paola Antonelli, curadora del Moma y responsable de la muestra Safe: Design Takes on Risk, para ponerlos a reflexionar sobre el papel del diseño en la búsqueda de seguridad y la protección doméstica.

“El término riesgo asume múltiples miradas en distintas culturas”, explica Goretti. “Safety Nest aborda esta obsesión imaginando escenarios, intentando definir límites y contradicciones. Brasil, sede de este primer panorama, asume un papel protagónico por su diversidad cultural y artística. Consciente de esta pluralidad, el objetivo está centrado en promover iniciativas que coloquen al diseño como generador conceptual y de producción, abriendo puertas para nuevos pensamientos y mercados”, detalla.
Confrontar, explorar, reflejar ideas, tabúes, estereotipos, miedos, miserias propias y ajenas. El diseño es futuro. Si una de las metáforas de este siglo es la inseguridad: ¿se podrá proyectar un mundo más justo?

Pasión latina
Si hay algo que quedó de manifiesto en este encuentro es que si bien hay sensaciones y sentimientos que nos igualan, la preocupación y procuración de seguridad es distinta según los países y sus contextos. Y en esto de dar cuenta de las necesidades propias, los brasileros nos llevan la delantera. Sobre todo porque tienen una escuela de programas donde el diseño asume un rol central en pos de comunidades vulnerables: “En Brasil y creo en toda América latina, la visión de la seguridad es muy diferente. Aquí, la comida asegura la protección de la vida. Si no hay qué comer no hay qué proteger. La preocupación para nosotros pasa por el pan nuestro de cada día”, explica la encantadora diseñadora brasilera Simone Mattar. (...)

"...la arquitecta y especialista en mobiliario urbano Diana Cabeza, estuvo en la calle dando como resultado: “Una reinterpretación antropológica y experimental de refugios para el nómade urbano que, eyectado de la sociedad, resuelve su propio amparo a partir de la reutilización de los desechos que la misma sociedad genera”, cuenta. Así creó sus propios Nidos Urbanos, “contenedores a mitad de camino entre la bolsa de dormir y el recinto, especie de interfases entre el cuerpo y el espacio, posibilitando su uso desde adentro y desde afuera, que intentan indagar ‘el lugar en el no lugar’, ‘el calor en el desamparo’, ‘la privacidad en lo público’, ‘la ausencia en la transparencia’, ‘el cubrirse en la desnudez urbana’, ‘el alumbrarse sin luz’”, señala Cabeza..."

De más allá
El israelí Ezri Tarazi, quien durante su estadía en Río experimentó una sobredosis de latinidad (se fascinó con la comida, las playas, la música y obviamente las garotas) presentó su Mabool (diluvio en hebreo). Una sala de estar con muebles en metal oxidado colgados por cables de acero y un piso de espejos para representar un diluvio universal de nuestro tiempo. “Construimos arcas con el deseo de anticiparnos, como Noé, a algo que desconocemos, sin saber exactamente qué clase de objeto ejecutar, pero con la necesidad de construir, para el próximo Mabool. Todo es flotante, movedizo, inestable. Inseguro”, señala.
¿Su propuesta? “Hoy no hay que ser ni inteligente, ni fuerte. Sobrevivirán los que sepan adaptarse, los que estén abiertos al cambio. Cuando la gente piensa en su seguridad, piensa en cómo protegerse de cosas del pasado. Hoy se hace indispensable transformar el pensamiento. Yo no sé cuál será mi seguridad futura, pero estoy abierto al cambio.”

Lea el artículo completo en Pagina/12

Nociones de Refugio Urbano 1

2006-04-03T02:00:00.000-05:00

CULTURA : LA OTRA CARA DEL DISEÑO EN UNA MUESTRA EN RIO DE JANEIRO
Modelos de hogar para una Latinoamérica a la intemperie
Carolina Muzi. RIO DE JANEIRO

"...Nada menos que en Río, un seleccionado internacional de diseñadores se dio cita para exponer sus visiones acerca de cómo cada cultura interpreta la noción de seguridad en el ámbito doméstico. Bajo el título "Nido seguro", con la curaduría de los arquitectos Nicola Goretti y Paola Antonelli —del MoMA de Nueva York—, el 1° Panorama de Diseño Internacional reúne hasta fin de mes el trabajo de profesionales de Israel, Canadá, Francia, Uruguay, Holanda, España, Brasil y Argentina.

Si bien las respuestas fueron disímiles en general, los representantes locales (la arquitecta Diana Cabeza y el diseñador industrial Alejandro Sarmiento, ambos con reconocidas trayectorias de dos décadas) se plantaron en arcos extremos de la noción de refugio. Sarmiento, embanderado con el diseño de artículos y la resolución de problemas a partir del reuso y la resignificación de objetos existentes, apuntó hacia el "interior del interior".

El nombre de su instalación recupera una bella palabra rural: Querencia. "En las casas de hoy, cada miembro de la familia va perdiendo espacios personales, eso intento recuperar", señaló el autor. Un cerco modular para desplegar dentro del espacio doméstico busca una demarcación territorial individual: ese lugar para aislarse cuando uno lo necesita, sin que nadie moleste.

El habitáculo, de confección artesanal pero de aspecto high tech, está realizado con pelotas inflables metidas en redes y conectadas a través de picos de botellas plásticas. Aunque el espacio es mullido y promueve al rélax, "tantos picos apuntando, también señalan cuánto nos invade el plástico que no reciclamos". Fiel a su ideología, que lo emparenta con los movimientos slow, Sarmiento entregó unos pequeños objetitos manuales para jugar con la leyenda "No tech, no stress". Es que la seguridad, al menos a nivel emocional, también pasa por "bajar un cambio"..."

Color desesperanza
Casi todas las respuestas desde el diseño al tema de la protección expresaron algo entre desesperante y esperanzado. "Es que para algunas regiones pasará por el confort, pero para otras reside en objetivos más primarios e instintivos. Mostrar y discutir esto en Sudamérica es imperioso y movilizador", señala el curador, Nicola Goretti. Hubo desde una cantada interpretación de lo uterino realizada a partir de un sillón de 1957 (del carioca Sergio Rodrigues) hasta un living colgante y oxidado, post diluviano, del israelí Ezri Tarazi. La paulista Simone Mattar presentó la instalación comestible "Luminofagia": una lámpara de gelatinas. "Es que —decía la diseñadora— la seguridad es tener qué comer, si no qué vamos a cuidar."

Tomado de un articulo aparecido en el diario el Clarín de Buenos Aires

Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica y el M.I.T.

2006-04-03T00:50:00.000-05:00

Dos artistas plásticos brasileros en los años 50´s y 60´s quisieron ampliar las fronteras de sus profesiones, experimentaron con el tropicalismo, la corporalidad, el reciclaje de desechos y la resignificación del entorno y de la propia vida. Practicamente sin dinero, sin apoyo estatal, sin tecnología y sin conocimientos científicos especializados, se adelantaron decadas a su tiempo y hoy son reconocidos como pioneros del arte interactivo, la performance y la arte terapia. ¿Como lo lograron? Aún estamos descubriendolos: Por su autentica y libertaria actitud ante la vida, el arte y la sociedad. Aqui un reconocimiento tardío desde el Media Lab del M.I.T

Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica
A Legacy of Interactivity and Participationfor a Telematic Future
Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica:A Legacy of Interactivity and Participationfor a Telematic Future
Simone Osthoff

ABSTRACT
This essay discusses the artistic legacies of Brazilian artists Lygia Clark (1920-1988) and Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980), focusing on the interactive vocabularies developed from their participatory creations of the 1960s and 1970s and pointing to the practical and conceptual relevance of these vocabularies for artists working with digital communications technology. The article also explores the critical and original way Clark and Oiticica, working at the margins of capitalism, reframed modernist aesthetic issues by translating them directly into life and the body. The author concludes with an examination of the artists' interactive non-electronic works, which share common conceptual ground with the works of Australian artist Stelarc, the New York-based X-Art Foundation and British artist Roy Ascott.

Lea el artículo completo aparecido en la revista Leonardo online del M.I.T.
Leonardo On-Line: Art, Science and Technology

Sandy Stone, Performance e Interactividad

2006-04-02T23:43:00.000-05:00

Ciberartista:
Sandy Stone

Una de las pioneras en la investigación de la identidad en los ambientes virtuales dirige el ACTLAB en la Universidad de Texas, Austin.

Think of it as New Media production. But that's just a phrase, and not even a good one. Occasionally there are naming races among people who do similar things, and a gazillion names are springing up -- digital media, digital arts, intermedia, transmedia, convergent media, transvergent media, etc., etc. -- since the people who began this stuff (maybe I'm one of them, depending on who's counting) started doing it in the early XXth Century. You can call it whatever you want. For me it means doing new things with old (and new) tools.We use a lot of digital stuff, but I'm not head over heels in love with the catchword "digital", except as digital equipment enables new forms of creativity. Digital is lovely and highly seductive, like tulips in the 1600s. Creativity, on the other hand, is unruly by nature and unsettling while in progress. My focus is primarily on creativity and secondarily on technology, on circuit bending rather than using prepackaged devices, on ripping up technology, reassembling it in unfamiliar forms, and making it do unexpected things.

My research and scholarly interests
Primary areas of interest include:
New Media production, video production, performance, installation, gender and sexuality with emphasis on Transgender, and fantasy/science fiction. All my current work involves making stuff, though inevitably the stuff is theory-laden.

Secondary areas of interest include:
body, desire, technological prosthetics, performance and performance theory, phenomenology of interface and interactionvirtual systems, gender and sexuality, transgender studies, nonpredicate communication, the complex interplay of science fiction and fictions of science, and the traffic in the boundaries between art and technology

Sandy Stone
Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone's onlinesite for drive-by theory, performative-fu, New Media, and radical decontextualization

Laurie Anderson y el Arte Multimedia

2006-04-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

Ciberartista:

Laurie Anderson

No borders on the planet are more rigid, more vacuum sealed than those around the rectangular screen. The females who clutter videos and films are airheads, baby dolls, bimbos, bitches, earth mothers, martyrs, madonnas, material girls, morons, shtickmeisterin, shrews, witches, wiseacres, whores, welfare queens, and n-factorial recombinations of those dreary roles. Any and all of them are interesting, apparently, only insofar as they relate to men - bearing and rearing men, loving them, helping or impeding them, above all sacrificing for them, and meanwhile laughing, crying, singing, and dancing about it.
Let a mature woman, reasonably serene in her person, relatively confident in her tastes - in any case self-sufficient - concerned about public issues and knotty puzzles of human existence, let such a woman penetrate those borders and she'd be unlikely to find any company.
So how is it that Laurie Anderson, nobody's mom or sweetheart, nobody's victim, nobody's predator - indeed, a disquieting undocumented alien among all those cliches - has broken through and made some of the most interesting art of the late 20th century within those borders, earning as she goes a reputation as one of the world's premiere performance artists? Her complex and multifaceted art crosses and mixes genres with witty grace (she is musician, singer, dancer, sculptor, poet, photographer, technology-freak) and renders these persistent subjects: her country - the United States - and what it means to be an American adult today.
For more than twenty years, Laurie Anderson has taken her art around the world. On stage, on records, CDs, videos, and in books, she has amused, provoked, charmed, and sometimes puzzled her viewers with an ensemble of the latest electronic instruments, effects, gadgets, and paraphernalia. Yet none of her work appears strained or studied, no razzle-dazzle for razzle-dazzle's sake; all of it serves to show and tell stories that we instantly recognize, though we hadn't seen it quite that way before.

Entrevista completa en la revista Wired

America's Multi-Mediatrix
With a new book, new show, and new album, Laurie Anderson reinvents herself - again.
By Pamela McCorduck

Brian Eno sobre la Interactividad

2006-04-02T22:44:00.000-05:00

Ciberartista:
Brian Eno:
Artista intermedial, pionero de la música electrónica, padre del ambient, productor de U2 y profesor de arte en Londres y San Petersburgo.
Legendaria entrevista de Kevin Kelly para la revista Wired Issue 3.05 - May 1995.

If anyone could be said to embody the spirit of the artist in the digital age, it's Brian Eno. The 47-year-old holds a degree in fine arts, is the father of a genre of pop music (ambient), produces albums for rock stars, and regularly exhibits multimedia artwork in tony museums. Underlying Eno's worldwide cultural prominence is a spectacularly unusual intelligence. The Brits call him Professor Eno: he was recently named Honorary Doctor of Technology at the University of Plymouth and appointed Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art in London. Although he shuns the term, Eno is a Renaissance man, an artist gracefully hacking the new media of LPs, TVs, PCs, CDs, MIDI, photos, and e-mail. He is as comfortable (and brilliant) collaborating on albums with David Bowie, U2, or Laurie Anderson as he is giving a lecture on perfume (he's an expert), haircuts, or "The Studio as a Compositional Tool."

Africa?
"...Africa is everything that something like classical music isn't. Classical - perhaps I should say "orchestral" - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities. And the fact that orchestras play the same thing over and over bothers me. Classical music is music without Africa. It represents old-fashioned hierarchical structures, ranking, all the levels of control. Orchestral music represents everything I don't want from the Renaissance: extremely slow feedback loops.
If you're a composer writing that kind of music, you don't get to hear what your work sounds like for several years. Thus, the orchestral composer is open to all the problems and conceits of the architect, liable to be trapped in a form that is inherently nonimprovisational, nonempirical. I shouldn't be so absurdly doctrinaire, but I have to say that I wouldn't give a rat's ass if I never heard another piece of such music. It provides almost nothing useful for me.
But what is tremendously exciting to me is the collision of vernacular Western music with African music. So much that I love about music comes from that collision. African music underlies practically everything I do - even ambient, since it arose directly out of wanting to see what happened if you "unlocked" the sounds in a piece of music, gave them their freedom, and didn't tie them all to the same clock. That kind of free float - these peculiar mixtures of independence and interdependence, and the oscillation between them - is a characteristic of West African drumming patterns. I want to go into the future to see this sensibility I find in African culture, to see it freed from the catastrophic situation that Africa's in at the moment. I don't know how they're going to get freed from that, but I desperately want to see this next stage when African culture begins once again to strongly impact ours. .."

Lea la entrevista completa en el archivo de la revista Wired en línea

Gossip is Philosophy
Kevin Kelly talks to the prototypical Renaissance 2.0 artist about why music has ceased to be the center of our cultural life, why art doesn't make any difference anymore, and why Brian Eno offers no resistance to seduction.
By Kevin Kelly

ADBUSTERS: Diseño y Artivismo

2006-03-10T16:05:00.000-05:00

DESIGN ANARCHY
A radical new aesthetic vision by Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn, Design Anarchy takes an unflinching look at contemporary art and design, implicating its seemingly innocuous practices in crimes against our culture and our planet. Equal parts memoir, manifesto, scrapbook and revolutionary design manual, this book is an urgent call for artists, designers, architects and communicators to re-engage with the world, to explore their role in the pollution and future redemption of our mental and physical commons. In the battle for a new kind of meaning, Design Anarchy is 400 pages without precedent.

Design Anarchy examines the historical roots of commercial design culture, the impact of the post-modern sensibility and the problem of aesthetic recuperation. It also takes us on a tour of psychodesign and true cost design, two truly revolutionary schools of design practice and thought.

Richly illustrated with highlights from 15 years of Adbusters design activism, and featuring the work of Banksy, Chris Woods, Andy Goldsworthy, Jeff Wall, Edward Burtynsky, John McWilliams, Ryan McGinness, Andre Serrano, Dah Len, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Goto, Mark Tansey, Mieke Gerritzen, Gregory Crewdson . . .
Design Anarchy Preview

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máquinas nómadas y estatales

2006-03-10T14:21:00.000-05:00

La diferencia entre máquinas nómadas y estatales se la debemos a la filosofía contemporánea, específicamente a Deleuze-Guattari, este "autor" expone en su Tratado de nomadología (Deleuze y Guattari, 1997: 359-431) otra versión de la Máquina de Guerra. Pensamos que tal versión le fue sugerida al "teórico" por su lectura de "La construcción de la muralla China" de Franz Kafka. En este relato un funcionario menor, al parecer un albañil, narra los métodos que siguió el Celeste Imperio en la construcción de esa muralla inverosímil. Durante la faena, los obreros observaban que las tribus nómadas cruzaban frente a las obras para luego perderse en las estepas. El cronista anota que quizás los nómadas tenían una mejor visión de la muralla que los mismos constructores y albañiles.

La lectura anterior indica la presencia de dos aparatos: El uno, estatal, que intenta a todo alcanc estriar el espacio, limitarlo (limes: muralla). El otro, nómada, que se mueve por un espacio abierto. Esta diferencia es la misma que Deleuze y Guattari usa para construir la genealogía de la máquina de guerra. (Máquina, en la teoría usada, es un sistema de cortes, corta flujos. Una máquina produce un determinado flujo que esa máquina u otra corta).

El devenir, para el "autor", es un lugar de flujo, un estar entre una cosa y otra, implica derrotar el binarismo y abandonarse en una corriente, un flujo… Devenir es, a partir de las formas que se tiene, del sujeto que se es, de los órganos que se posee o de las funciones que se desempeña, extraer partículas entre las que se instalan relaciones de movimiento y de reposo, de velocidad y de lentitud. En este sentido el devenir es "el proceso del deseo". Luego, la máquina de guerra está atravesada, en su interior, por todo tipo de estos devenires, dentro de ella los números, los hombres, que la componen devienen, por ejemplo, animal en el furor, hembra en la derrota. Exterior a ella, el devenir de la máquina se expresa en que "traza una línea de fuga creadora, la composición de un espacio liso y el movimiento de los hombres en ese espacio" (Rodríguez, 2002). Este párrafo contiene y perfila las características de la máquina de guerra en tanto invención nómada:

1. Un aspecto espacial geográfico.
2. Un aspecto aritmético.
3. Un aspecto afectivo.

1. Aspecto espacial geográfico: El nómada se desplaza por espacios lisos. Los trayectos determinan los puntos. Los nómadas se mueven o permanecen, en un lugar de la naturaleza que no está fijado por estrías o demarcaciones estables, sino que movimiento y permanencia están determinados por velocidades, intensidades, devenires. Estos hombres van de un lugar a otro como consecuencia de una necesidad de hecho, lo cual genera una distribución espacial de los sujetos en un espacio abierto no comunicante. Al contrario de los espacios sedentarios que son estriados por muros, lindes, el espacio nómada está marcado por trazos que se borran, irregulares. No olvidemos, a este respecto, que la comunicación es una de las obsesiones del Estado.

3. Aspecto afectivo: Afectos, en la teoría que nos ocupa, significa algo así como provocar una conmoción en otro o en una cosa. El aspecto "afectivo" de la máquina de guerra está dado en que la existencia nómada tiene por afectos las armas, armas que proyectan la desterritorialización. El afecto es la descarga rápida de la emoción, de la respuesta. Los afectos son proyectiles tanto como las armas. Desde este punto de vista, se puede combinar el paso del Estado inmóvil del guerrero a la velocidad pura, con la relación reposo-velocidad de la máquina de guerra.

Se observa claramente que la propuesta del autor se pliega a los desarrollos propuestos sobre la forma de pensar producida por el Estado. Aún más, es típico de los sedentarios "distribuir a los hombres en un espacio cerrado, asignando a cada uno su parte…"

La forma estatal de delimitar el espacio está basada en "un modelo hilomórfico… de distribución de las materias en franjas paralelas…" (Deleuze y Guattari, 1997: 375). Aquí en la frontera de González de Nájera se plasma el organon que "sería algo así como la forma-estado marcada en el pensamiento" (Deleuze y Guattari, 1997: 380)⁵, marca que no sólo consiste en estriar el espacio y limitar todo lo que se pueda al planeta y a sus habitantes, sino que además conlleva obscuras intenciones. Las que se muestran en el Desengaño… a través de unas observaciones reveladoras: la primera es que se propone que una vez instalada la frontera se debe suprimir todo trato con los indios, pues en la época éstos comerciaban con los españoles, obtenían hierro de ellos⁶, etc.

RODRIGUEZ ANGULO, José.
El desengaño del Estado. . Acta lit.. [online]. 2004, no.29 [citado 03 Abril 2006], p.121-133. Disponible en la World Wide Web: . ISSN 0717-6848.

Idea del Vehiculo para Indigentes

2006-03-09T02:34:00.000-05:00

Pataphysics Magazine Interview with Krzysztof Wodiczko
1991
from the Kitten issue

Pataphysics: Could you tell us something about the formation of the original idea for the Homeless Vehicle?

Krzysztof Wodiczko: It was four years ago when I started to think about the possibilities for this type of emergency tool. The situation in New York since I moved here in '83 has dramatically and increasingly become worse. The cutbacks for public housing since '81 have been about 80%. So for New York City from year to year there has been a very visible, a very clear increase in the number of homeless. But somehow it was not very clear to people that the homeless are products of the same transformation of the city which were also contributing to the so-called revitalization, beautification or re-development of different parts of downtown. Something needed to be done to make the situation clear - to say this was a legitimate problem. Those who are doing better, who are not homeless, see the homeless situation as being something that can be avoided, a waste. I would call the vehicle a new type of 'spleen,' perhaps a postmodern 'spleen' - using the term used by Baudelaire and elaborated by Walter Benjamin, meaning a shock-absorbing mechanism that allows people to live between those homeless, and maybe even be very close to them, but without really recognizing them as people and asking who these people are - on most occasions not even recognizing that they are people who are working, day and night, heavily working, and trying to not only resist but also earn meager income to survive. They are the workers of the city, who are using tools. In other words, among the large population of the homeless there is a significant group of them, not very large in number, but very visible, high-profile people who are strong and who are capable of working day and night collecting bottles and cans. Their position in the city regarding the city by-laws is legal. The law encourages people to return bottles - the bottle law. So I realized that the best way to really make the situation clear to the non-homeless would be to help this group, which is already quite visible, by providing them with a tool which would not be associated with stolen objects, such as shopping carts, but something that would be especially designed for them, and through the increasing presence and mobility of this object it would become both communication and the transport; a vehicle that would articulate the real conditions of work and life and the resistance of this group.

P: What do you consider to be the influences on the design of the object?

KW: I don't see any influences. I might see ironic relationships. For example, an ironic relation to Constructivist or Productivist design. The vehicle is operating on the ruins of a city that has failed to supply and respond to basic things. In this sense it is not a postmodern vehicle, it is a contemporary post-architecture. To a degree it ironically resembles the postmodern forms of the realist-citadels, such as Battery Park City - that is, the citadels of the realist state that are pretending to be cities within the city. These 'cities' are defending themselves from the city. The cities are defending themselves against nomads - nomads who are not coming from outside of the city, but are the product of the city. So that's why, not without some sense of humor, it resembles some of those buildings except that it's positioned horizontally. In fact it has proved to work very well in Battery Park City itself. The guards of this citadel couldn't remove it from the territory for many reasons. The first reason was that the vehicle was legal - it was collecting bottles. Secondly, because it was neat, it was a very precise design, and thirdly, because it was an object for which they could not find a clear definition - in other words the object was somewhere in-between. Something useful, maybe being tested, and something disturbing - something that was defensive. There was no action against it on the part of the confused Battery Park security system.

http://www.pataphysicsmagazine.com

O sentido do espaço

2006-03-09T02:10:00.000-05:00

Em que sentido, em que sentido? – 1ª parte Fernando Freitas Fuão

Este texto carece de sentido, e até mesmo sua existência é questionável. Qualquer tentativa de compreender o sentido do espaço, percorrendo esses estranhos lugares em busca de um sentido, só pode resultar numa tola incursão.

Normalmente, atribuímos existência aos espaços e às coisas, mas na realidade, sem nós, elas não existiriam. Pensar um espaço como existente, significa pensar em si próprio.

Infelizmente, na exigência da objetividade, acabamos por abstrair os espaços, as coisas e, conseqüentemente, nossa própria existência.

Gabriel Marcel, certa vez disse: “Quanto mais eu acentuar a objetividade das coisas, cortando o cordão umbilical que liga à minha existência, mais converterei este mundo num espetáculo sentido como ilusório” (2).

Para os existencialistas a existência precede a essência. Em termos filosóficos todo objeto tem uma existência, um sentido e uma essência. E essa essência é o próprio sentido, ou vice-versa. Entretanto, muitas pessoas crêem que a essência vem antes da existência.

O sentido do espaço. Em que sentido, em que sentido? – 2ª parte
Fernando Freitas Fuão

busca desesperada do sentido muitas vezes nos leva a bater na figura da porta ou entrar no labirinto.

A porta é o elemento que se abre, é a cisão, o corte que permite a passagem dos corpos, estabelece um dentro e um fora, estabelece uma ligação. Porta em si a própria existência do espaço, o inicio da vida.

Na antiga Escandinávia os exilados levavam consigo as portas de suas casas, em alguns casos lançavam-nas ao mar e desembarcavam no lugar onde encalhavam essas portas. Eram, a sua vez, passagens e bússolas (2).

Mas existem portas que não levam ao nada, num jogo sinistro, um labirinto composto de portas e passagens, como no filme O cubo (3).

http://www.vitruvius.com.br

Nomadic City

2006-03-09T01:37:00.001-05:00

New Babylon

Definitions

Utilitarian society

The term designates all known forms of society, including the modern capitalist and socialist State. It asserts a fundamental reality, the same for all these forms of community life, old and new, namely the exploitation of the human being's capacity for work. 'Utility' is the principle criterion in appreciating man and his activity. The creative man, Homo Ludens, can only claim his rights on rare occasions.

The opposite of utilitarian society is ludic society, where the human being, freed by automation from productive work, is at least in a position to develop his creativity. The terms 'class society' or 'classless society' do not express, or imperfectly so, this conflict. But it is clear that a ludic society can only be a classless society. Social justice is no guarantee of freedom, or creativity, which is the realization of freedom. Freedom depends not only on the social structure, but also on productivity; and the increase in productivity depends on technology. 'Ludic society' is in this sense a new concept.

Homo Ludens

Term used for the first time by Johann Huizinga in a book of that title, subtitled: 'A Study of the Element of Play in Culture.' In his foreword, Huizinga speaks of the man who plays in still-measured terms: 'In the course of time we have come to realize that, after all, we are not as reasonable as the eighteenth century, with its worship of reason and its naive optimism, assumed; hence, modern fashion inclines to designate our species as Homo Farber: Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens, it is, as a name specific to the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals, too, are makers. There is a third function, however, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making -- namely, playing. It seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature.'

On some elements of New Babylonian culture

The essence of New Babylonian culture is playing with the elements that make up the environment. Such play is possible due to the integral technical control of all those elements, which thus become a conscious creation of the environment.

The components of the environment are numerous and of different kinds. In order to imagine them in all their diversity, it would be necessary to begin by distinguishing several groups, proceeding from two separate criteria: an objective criterion and a subjective criterion.

A. Elements of spatial construction, which determine its appearance and are the object of prior planning. They can be grouped within the category of 'architectural elements.' (Examples: the form and dimensions of space, the building materials, their structure, their colors);

B. Elements defining the quality of space. Being more malleable, they cannot be planned to the same extent. These are the 'climatic conditions' (temperature, humidity, atmosphere, etc.);

C. Elements that, without deciding the quality of space, influence the perception of space. Their utilization is aleatory and their effect of brief duration. These are 'psychological elements.' (Examples: movement, eating and drinking, the use of verbal or other communication, etc.).

Another classification, using more subjective criteria, distributes the environmental elements according to the influence they exert on us. Here one discerns visual, sonorous, tactile, olfactory and gustatory elements.

But whatever the criteria, it is difficult to isolate an element, to separate it from the rest. And a great number of important elements can form part of many different categories. Thus, among the elements chosen according to the first criterion, the structure of space is linked to climatic conditions as well as to movements in space. The pleasure taken in eating and drinking is not the same in every space, whatever the climate. As to the second criterion, it enables us to discover even more complex associations. A structure, for instance, can be perceived by the sight and by the touch; language is addressed equally to the hearing and to sight. Food and drink to taste, but also to smell, to sight, to the touch. To these elements others are added, acting one on the other in close interdependence. Dissociative analysis is only justified from the viewpoint of technical control. Being sensitive to an environment, to an atmosphere, one does not imagine distinguishing between the elements that make it up, just as when looking at a painting one does not separate out the different materials used by the painter.

The dynamic labyrinth

While in utilitarian society one strives by every means towards an optimal orientation in space, the guarantee of temporal efficiency and economy, in New Babylon the disorientation that furthers adventure, play and creative change is privileged. The space of New Babylon has all the characteristics of a labyrinthine space, within which movement no longer submits to the constraints of given spatial or temporal organization. The labyrinthine form of New Babylonian social space is the direct expression of social independence.

The ambiance of an environment possessing certain specific plastic and acoustic characteristics depends on the individuals who find themselves there. A single individual can passively submit to this ambiance or change it according to his mood at the time. But with the entrance of a second person, a new presence is felt and the interaction of the two presences excludes any passivity. The quality of the environment and its ambiance no longer depends on material factors alone, but on the manner in which they will have been perceived, appreciated and used, on the 'new way of looking' at them. And when a third or fourth person comes to take his place alongside the others, the situation -- being more complex -- escapes the control of any of the people present. As the number of visitors gradually increases and the composition of the group alters, complexity also increases, while the individual control of space decreases.

Vehiculos Críticos

2006-03-09T01:37:00.000-05:00

Krzystof Wodiczko

Para el arte actual, […] la tarea consiste en encontrar su relevancia en medio de las transformaciones políticas, demográficas y psicosociales; asociadas al desplazamiento y al cruce de límites individuales y colectivos. Los cambios en los límites externos (fronteras étnicas y estatales, por ejemplo, Norte-Sur, Este-Oeste) están estrechamente ligados a las migraciones y al cruce de esos límites. En particular, la fachada de Europa y Norteamérica se está transformando en ese sentido. Y a su vez, en lo que respecta a los límites internos –ideas, creencias, ideologías, lenguajes, metáforas, eslóganes–, esos países imponen sobre los desplazamientos trazos psicológicos, líneas, atajos y parapetos al mismo tiempo, que atraviesan los territorios individuales de las mentes humanas. Los movimientos migratorios que se producen en nuestro interior incluyen necesariamente un importante límite interno, la línea que separa la persona que uno ha sido pero ya no es y la persona en la que uno se convertirá, estableciendo así, por transgresión, una zona extraterritorial desmilitarizada, el lugar donde el intruso se siente más cómodo. Asumir las direcciones cambiantes de esos desplazamientos y cruces internos (y sus correspondientes zonas desmilitarizadas) es un proceso muy complejo, pero cartografiar esas zonas constituye uno de los movimientos sociales más importantes que se están produciendo hoy […]

[…] El artista que se atreva a ofrecer una contribución a este presente, entendido como un hogar donde pasado y futuro habitan juntos (Benjamin), así como a la historia de ese presente y futuro (Nietzsche, Foucault), debería aprender a operar como un sofista nómada en una polis migratoria, ofreciendo nuevas herramientas de lenguaje al uso (en el sentido representativo de actos de discurso metafórico), ya que los intrusos se alienan de sí mismos por falta de lenguaje. Como el sofista en la antigua Grecia, el nuevo sofista, como practicante de la democracia en ese espacio vacío –políticamente garantizado pero prácticamente inexistente— llamado espacio "público", debe recrear en la práctica un ágora o foro cada vez que (él o ella) desee hablar o escuchar. Incluso en una democracia, el Estado liberal o corporativo llena ese espacio con su propia "publicidad" (Habermas), en lugar de dejarlo a la "libre comunicación de ideas y opiniones" (Declaración de los Derechos del Hombre, 1791), convirtiéndose de hecho en un "tirano de la opinión" (Tocqueville). El sofista debe estar preparado para un papel de adversario si va más allá de las formas de comunicación corruptas. En una democracia, el derecho más importante es el derecho de representación. Ni pedagogo ni demagogo, el sofista es un interrupteur, un "interruptor", siempre dispuesto a abrir más que cerrar el circuito de comunicaciones. Siempre tendrá que haber lugar para ese espacio vacío, para abrirlo a una multiplicidad de expresión e interpretación (Lefort). El arte intruso está en ese espacio vacío, existiendo sólo entre líneas. […]

Krzystof Wodiczko. Critical Vehicles. Writing, Projects, Interviews (Cambridge-London: The MIT Press, 1999): 24-25.

Diseñar, Performar e Interactuar

2006-03-09T01:04:00.000-05:00

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Critical Vehicles

Krzysztof Wodiczko's work is an ongoing aesthetic research on how design, performance, and media interact to encourage dialogue for social change. This research has taken the form of projections on public monuments and buildings, and "vehicles", such as the Homeless Vehicle and Poliscar. Wodiczko's last solo exhibition in New York was "Xenology: Immigrant Instruments" in 1996 at Galerie Lelong. In the last seven years, Wodiczko has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions: Hiroshima City Art Museum, Polish Pavilion – Biennial of Architecture- Venice, Fundacio Tapies - Barcelona, Walker Art Center - Minneapolis, Centrum Sztuki Museum – Poland and De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam. He has also been included in several international group exhibitions, such as Ars 95 in Helsinki and La Ville at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Recent video projection: "Let Freedom Ring" for ICA Boston in 1998, projected upon Bunker Hill monument. Krzysztof Wodiczko is currently Director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts. An anthology of Wodiczko's writings, entitled "Krzysztof Wodiczko: Art Public/Art Critique" was published by the Ecole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux Arts, Paris in 1995. A collection of his writings, "Critical Vehicles", the first book in English, was published by MIT Press in March 1999.

Listen to the entire lecture in MP3 format

Krzysztof Wodiczko
Slide Show / Interview

Entrevista para Babelia:
La paz no es un concepto pacífico

Krzysztof Wodiczko
Bio

Krzysztof Wodiczko (Varsovia, 1943) se graduó en la Akademie Sztuk Pilknych en el año 1968, especializándose en diseño industrial.

A controversial project of his was the design and construction of a special cart for homeless people. After consultation with homeless people in New York City, the cart could be used to transport a small number of belongings, provided space for the collection of bottles, and could be used as a primitive shelter.

His more recent work involves the construction of highly designed electronic objects to encourage interaction between immigrants and the public.

Cultura de las ciudades

2006-03-09T00:51:00.000-05:00

Situacionistas: la deriva y el placer
El urbanismo contra la sociedad del espectáculo

Lo que cambie nuestra manera de ver las calles es más importante que lo que cambie nuestra manera de ver la pintura. Nuestras hipótesis de trabajo serán reexaminadas en cada desorden futuro, venga de donde venga. (Informe sobre la construcción de situaciones..., 1957)

Ahora que las calles vuelven a llenarse de multitudes, ahora que en las ciudades se marcha contra la guerra y las injusticias, ahora que la política es espectáculo y el arte quiere volver a ser una bandera, es buen momento para recordar a los situacionistas. El más politizado y conceptual de los movimientos de vanguardia artística de los '50 y '60, el más extremo en sus postulados y consignas, pero probablemente el más lúcido en cuanto a su comprensión de la esencial mezcolanza y ambigüedad de la ciudad, el arte y la política en la sociedad global del capitalismo avanzado.

La clave de su ideología artística y política es la creación de situaciones ("es decir, la construcción concreta de ambientes momentáneos de la vida y su transformación en una calidad pasional superior", Informe sobre la construcción de situaciones...), que trascienden la separación y nomenclatura previa de las artes, y especialmente la distinción entre artistas y espectadores. El teatro de Pirandello y Brecht, ampliado a campos territoriales que trascienden los de la representación convencional, resultan antecedentes de esta concepción donde ya no habría más artistas sino en cambio "vividores" de situaciones. Previsiblemente, los situacionistas abominan de su propio nombre(aunque su órgano de difusión responde al nombre de Internacional Situacionista, una revista que aparece una o dos veces por años desde 1958 hasta 1971), y prefieren decir que no hay un arte situacionista sino un uso situacionista del arte y de la vida. De alguna manera desarrollan la propuesta de Rimbaud, aquella de que "la Poesia ya no marcará el ritmo de la acción: estará por delante".

Se puede decir que la construcción de situaciones reemplazará al teatro sólo en el sentido en que la construcción real de la vida ha ido reemplazando cada vez más a la religión. Evidentemente el primer campo que vamos a reemplazar y a realizar es la poesía, que se consumió a sí misma en la vanguardia de nuestro tiempo, que ha desaparecido por completo. (Problemas preliminares a la construcción de una situación, 1958)

Nuestra acción sobre el comportamiento, en relación con los demás aspectos deseables de una revolución en las costumbres, puede definirse someramente por la invención de juegos de una esencia nueva. El objetivo general tiene que ser la ampliación de la parte no mediocre de la vida, de disminuir, en tanto sea posible, los momentos nulos. (Informe sobre la construcción de situaciones...)

En 1959 el arquitecto situacionista holandés N. Constant desarrolla el proyecto de New Babylon, una ciudad que por sus posibilidades de conectividad y derivaciones casi infinitas, David Cox (en su crítica al libro de Iain Borden sobre este proyecto) y Colin Fournier (en el número de AD de junio de 2001, dedicado a los situacionistas) comparan con la Internet. La ciudad está diseñada como un espacio dinámico donde es imposible repetir experiencias o desarrollar rutinas fijas. Liberados de las formas capitalistas de producción, sus habitantes se dedicarían al juego y el ocio. El proyecto tiene algunos contactos con la megaestructura presentada años más tarde por Yona Friedman (una ciudad espacial sobre París), sobre todo por la idea de continuidad e indeferenciación del espacio.

El movimiento tiene una especial intervención en los acontecimientos de mayo del ´68 en París, muchas de cuyas consignas son tomadas de las páginas de la Internacional situacionista (compárese por ejemplo aquello de "inventen nuevas perversiones sexuales" con estas frases del Informe sobre la construcción de situaciones...: "Ya se han interpretado bastante las pasiones: se trata de encontrar otras nuevas", o "Hay que definir nuevos deseos en relación con las posibilidades de hoy"). De hecho, un artículo de The Economist de 1998 sostiene que episodios como las clases en la calle o la entrada de los obreros en La Sorbonne, y en definitiva, todo el mayo francés, pueden ser leídos como "situaciones" en el sentido de Debord y sus camaradas.

Probablemente el mérito más grande de los situacionistas es el de postular al urbanismo como una suerte de arte integral, que resultará de una sustancial renovación de las relaciones de poder (algo que en la época se identificaba con la Revolución ..."

Vehiculos

2006-03-09T00:40:00.000-05:00

para SITIOS

2006-03-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

Michael Rakowitz: paraSITIOS.

En colaboración con las personas afectadas en ciudades tales como Cambridge (Massachussets), Boston y Nueva York, Michael Rakowitz ha estado creando sus paraSITIOS desde 1997. El costo mínimo de sus creaciones arquitectónico-artísticas, tales como construcciones que usualmente no cuestan mas de 5 dólares americanos y en la mayoría de los casos compuestas de materiales simples como las bolsas de residuos, se corresponden con el estándar de vida de sus futuros ocupantes. Los habitáculos toman forma y temperatura al conectar la doble membrana inflable a las ventilaciones de los edificios.

"...Los paraSITIOS son reminiscencias de las tiendas de los hombres nómadas o de los productos neumáticos como los almohadones de aire, burbujas con forma de tienda y células, que en los años 60´ eran vistas como un contrapunto arquitectónico a los procesos sociales y arquitectónicos de rigidizacion, solidez y falta de flexibilidad. Las estructuras de Rakowitz no son solamente incorporaciones de un simbolismo que se les ha anexado sino también una ayuda concreta que es requerida por la sociedad.

Las ideas actuales sobre el concepto de “patria” están relacionadas a nociones tales como expulsión, éxodo masivo y nuevos indigentes en la llamada “Era de la Globalización”. Incluso en las grandes ciudades de los países “desarrollados”, el problema de la urbanización, migración y nueva pobreza son evidentes, con un número de personas sin hogar en aumento. Medidas “cosméticas” para las ciudades, como la gran cantidad de medidas en contra de los vagabundos, se han vuelto tristemente familiares, por ejemplo en las leyes anti-vagabundos de la ciudad de Nueva York. Bajo la alcaldía de Rudolph Giuliani, el ejecutivo y la justicia fueron obligados a castigar severamente el uso de cualquier estructura más alta de 106 centímetros como un acto de campamento ilegal..." (...)

"...Los vagabundos son abusados como parásitos a pesar de que la mayoría vive en lo que ninguno quiere o necesita por mas tiempo. La forma en que se utiliza el aire y las bolsas de residuos como materiales de construcción es también un avance en términos de ecología y reutilización energética. El “Anfitrión”, al cual el paraSITIO puede dañar, seria mas o menos el paisaje de la clase-media urbana. Este es el lugar de acción, donde las tiendas, igloos y bolsas de dormir de Rakowitz hechas de plástico se convierten en un símbolo de resistencia de la parte mas débil de la sociedad.
Lo que según el consenso previo, no concuerda con la imagen urbana o no se adapta a la misma se convierte en una molestia para los sentidos y las conciencias de los mejor posicionados, que prefieren mirar en otra dirección. Por eso, para el comercio urbano los vagabundos son un factor de interferencia, donde grandes partes del espacio publico urbano se han convertido en escenografia para la publicidad y prolongaciones de los espacios de venta, no hay deseo de una fachada anti-estética y sus alrededores deformes, que generen la sospecha o les recuerden de alguna manera como luce la sociedad realmente.

Para los antiguos Griegos, los parasitós – literalmente co-habitante – cumplían la función de catadores de comida y solían ser visitantes bienvenidos a los cuales se les mostraba hospitalidad invitándolos a comer. El mismo principio que en la actualidad se plantea al ofrecer a uno de los para SITIOS el aire usado de la casa propia..."
Tomado de todo arquitectura

**********************************
PARASITISM IS DESCRIBED AS A RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH A PARASITE TEMPORARILY OR PERMANENTLY EXPLOITS THE ENERGY OF A HOST.1 paraSITE proposes the appropriation of the exterior ventilation systems on existing architecture as a means for providing temporary shelter for homeless people. PARASITES LIVE ON THE OUTER SURFACE OF A HOST OR INSIDE ITS BODY IN RESPIRATORY ORGANS, DIGESTIVE ORGANS, VENOUS SYSTEMS, AS WELL AS OTHER ORGANS AND TISSUES.2 The paraSITE units in their idle state exist as small, collapsible packages with handles for transport by hand or on one's back. In employing this device, the user must locate the outtake ducts of a building's HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) system. FREQUENTLY A HOST PROVIDES A PARASITE NOT ONLY WITH FOOD, BUT ALSO WITH ENZYMES AND OXYGEN, AND OFFERS FAVOURABLE TEMPERATURE CONDITIONS.3 The intake tube of the collapsed structure is then attached to the vent. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure.

http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/

Lev Manovich y las Meta-Media

2006-03-08T21:58:00.000-05:00

Understanding Meta-Media

Lev Manovich

"...If we want to describe what new media does to old media with a single term, 'mapping' is a good candidate. Software allows us to remap old media objects into new structures -- turning media into 'meta-media.'[1]

In contrast to media, meta-media acquires three new properties. First, with software, data can be translated into another domain -- time into 2D space, 2D image into 3D space, sound into 2D image, and so on. (More complex and unusual mappings are also possible -- and the search for new mappings allows us to access old media objects in new ways congruent with information interfaces we use in our everyday life represents one of the most fruitful research directions in new media art.) Second, media objects can be manipulated using GUI (Graphical User Interface) techniques such as: move, transform, zoom, multiple views, filter, summarize.[2] And third, media objects can now be 'processed' using standard techniques of computerized data processing; search, sort, replace, etc..."

Lea el artículo completo de Lev Manovich en Ctheory

Projects for Public Spaces

2006-03-06T00:46:00.000-05:00

Agnes Denes: Projects for Public Spaces
October 16, 2003 - January 4, 2004

Denes is perhaps best known for Wheatfield—A Confrontation, 1982, a four-month project on the future home of the World Trade Center. At the time of the project, the Battery Park site was worth 4.5 billion dollars. In 1982, Denes negotiated temporary rights to the two-acre area in lower Manhattan and transformed it into productive cropland. The site was cleared, planted, tended and then harvested. The ever changing natural site was an anomaly in the context of a crowded metropolis.

“All of my work up to now culminates in my environmental art and installations. From the early poetry to the philosophical drawings, from the abandonment of painting to working without color for eleven years – this complex body of work is the most rewarding.”

Montage

2006-03-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Montage
In film terminology, a montage (literally "putting together") is a form of movie collage consisting of a series of short shots which are edited into a coherent sequence.

Montage allows the director to compress days, weeks, or even months of movie time into only a few minutes of entertainment.

http://www.movie-montage.com/index.php

Montage can be seen in the Naked Gun films, frequently to lead the viewer to draw incorrect conclusions.

For instance, in one of the films, Frank Drebin is in a shootout with another character. The viewer sees a series of close-ups showing the two peeking out from behind objects to fire at each other, followed by a wider shot showing the two to be about six feet apart.

Meaning produced from the editing technique, choice of shots, shot interlinking, and rhythm. cut overlap cut sequence montage:

Montage (in its European sense)
Shots are constructed rather than just 'edited' together.
A dialectical process that creates a third meaning out of the original two meanings of the adjacent shots
Editing has only two fundamental methods: cut, overlap
The idea of continuity editing is to push the narrative along.
Still pictures can be put together solely with regard to the rhythm of the succeeding shots.
Any kind of montage is defined according to the action it photographs.
Unless you choose a split-screen effect that suggests simultaneous coverage, you'll have to decide on a sequence of shots that is most appropriate for the action.

This is not always apparent or easy.

The Eighth Day

2006-03-04T23:46:00.000-05:00

Eduardo Kac

Eduardo Kac makes transgenic art. In his world, rabbits, fish, plants and mice glow in the dark – not because they are virtual or digital but because they are genetically engineered to do so. These synthetically luminescent life forms share their environment with a biobot, a robot whose actions are controlled by a colony of amoeba acting as its brain.

A New Ecology of Fluorescent Creatures

Premiering at Arizona State University from October 25 to November 2, 2001, The Eighth Day is a transgenic artwork that investigates the new ecology of fluorescent creatures that is evolving worldwide. The work was developed between 2000 and 2001 at the Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe. While fluorescent creatures are being developed in isolation in laboratories, seen collectively they form the nucleus of a new and emerging synthetic bioluminescent system. The piece brings together living transgenic life forms and a biological robot (biobot) in an environment enclosed under a clear 4 foot diameter Plexiglas dome, thus making visible what it would be like if these creatures would in fact coexist in the world at large.

The Eighth Day presents an expansion of biodiversity beyond wildtype life forms. As a self-contained artificial ecological system it resonates with the words in the title, which add one day to the period of creation of the world as narrated in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. All of the transgenic creatures in The Eighth Day are created through the cloning of a gene that codes for the production of green fluorescent protein (GFP). As a result, all creatures express the gene through bioluminescence visible with the naked eye. The transgenic creatures in The Eighth Day are GFP plants, GFP amoeba, GFP fish, and GFP mice.

About the Artist

Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio art. A pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-web 1980s, Eduardo Kac (pronounced ‘Katz’) emerged in the early 1990s with his radical telepresence and biotelematic works. His visionary combination of robotics and networking explores the fluidity of subject positions in the post-digital world. His work deals with issues that range from the mythopoetics of online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Genesis); from the changing condition of memory in the digital age (Time Capsule) to distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State); from the problematic notion of the ‘exotic’ (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny). At the dawn of the twenty-first century Kac shocked the world with his ‘transgenic art’ – first with a groundbreaking installation entitled GenesisCentre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts (CAiiA) at the University of Wales, Newport, United Kingdom. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Eduardo Kac is represented by Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. Eduardo Kac can be contacted at: ekac@artic.edu. (1999), which included an ‘artist's gene’ he invented, and then with his fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). Eduardo Kac is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts (CAiiA) at the University of Wales, Newport, United Kingdom. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Eduardo Kac is represented by Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. Eduardo Kac can be contacted at: ekac@artic.edu.

Stelarc & the Extended-Body

2006-03-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

: Interview with Stelarc

Paolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford
Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany

Stelarc is an Australian performance artist, born in Limassol, island of Cyprus. Stelarc moved to Australia, where he studied Arts and Craft at T.S.T.C., Art and Technology at CAUTECH and M.R.I.T., Melbourne University. He taught Art and Sociology at Yokohama International School and Sculpture and Drawing at Ballarat University College.

Stelarc has been extending his body through performances since the late 1960s. His performances include attaching a "Third Hand" to his body, extending himself into virtual space with a "Virtual Hand", and over 25 "suspension" events where he hung his entire body from hooks piercing his skin. Stelarc's artistic strategy revolves around the idea of "enhancing the body" both in a physical and technical manner. It originates as a polarism between the "primal desire" to defeat the force of gravity with primitive rituals and a low- tech and the hi-tech performance with the third arm and the related cybersystem. His intention in both cases is to "express an idea with his direct experience."

For Stelarc, "Electronic space becomes a medium of action rather than information".

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

Interaction, Art and Technology

2006-03-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

Interaction in Art and Technology

Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds
Creativity and Cognition Research Studios
Department of Computer Science
Loughborough University
Leicestershire, England

Abstract. The interest of artists and art theorists in audience participation with artworks has been particularly active since the 1960s. Interactive artworks that could transform viewers into participants were envisaged and created using the media available at that time. Today the opportunities for including audience participation have been increased significantly by the widespread availability of digital technology. The degree of collaboration between technologists and artists affects the necessary interaction between artist and computer. This paper discusses the role of technology in interactive art and the complex ways in which the artist can interact with computers and digital media in order to specify artworks. Categories of interactive art systems defined earlier as static, dynamic-passive, dynamic-interactive and dynamic-interactive (varying) are brought up-to-date and illustrated by examples of work from the Creativity and Cognition Research Studios.

"...

Environments for Interactive Art

We need computing resources and software to enable the kind of guided or playful exploration of possibilities in which artists engage. But how can we ensure that the artists have access to digital environments that are adaptable to their evolving needs? One solution might be the creation of more software tools that allow the artist access to deeper levels of the computer's programming system, rather than software applications that have been developed for specific tasks such as image manipulation. Such tools could provide a bridge between the use of an environment that requires programming knowledge and the ‘closed’ application, which does not provide sufficient flexibility.

Our experience suggests that even today, with all the advances in software, the degree of programming and systems expertise is critical to having more artistic control over the development process. Those artists who had such knowledge were in a position to make more interim decisions during the exploratory process that guided the next course of action. Those artists who depended on a technologist often felt uncertain as to how much control they might have to relinquish to achieve their goals.

There is no one solution to designing environments for creative use. Conflicting requirements, such as accessibility and ease of learning on the one hand, and a high degree of control by the artist on the other, may not be mutually achievable. Ways forward combine new technology, new ways of working and new collaborations. Each artist will chose a personal approach, and the intersection of art and technology will lead along different paths in each case. Nevertheless, it is important to understand as much as possible about what is general in art and technology creative processes and how applicable different technologies are.

A fundamental question that we have been considering is, what kind of environments best support the development of digital art? There is one answer to this question which, although it may sound a little strange, is, nevertheless, appropriate. In art and technology environments, we need environments for building environments. This approach is analogous to having a store which stocks all of the components that one might need in order to build a carpenter's workbench. The store is an environment that has all of the components that one might need, such as vices, bench tops, tool racks, etc. By selecting from them and assembling the items in our own workroom, we can build a specific environment suitable for our particular carpentry needs. The store provides an environment for building the particular environments that its customers need...."

Paper en Crossings

http://crossings.tcd.ie/issues/2.1/Candy/

Jaron Lanier

2006-03-03T00:21:00.000-05:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jaron-lanier/

Feng Shui of Virtual Reality

2006-03-03T00:09:00.000-05:00

The Feng Shui of Virtual Reality

Michael Heim
Art Center College of Design
Pasadena, California
USA

Abstract. Flow is a subtle but important feature of virtual worlds design. Flow or blockage of flow belongs to the aesthetic dimension of online virtual worlds. The study of flow goes beyond the usual dichotomies of user/tool, subject/object. Examples from the CyberForum@ArtCenter series of online events hosted in virtual settings highlight four different aspects of flow in 3-D avatar worlds currently deployed for online learning and conferencing. Discussed are: atmospheric flow, the flow of words with visual images, the flow of group dynamics and the flow between virtual and physical architecture. The implications of flow suggest strategies for enhancing immersion in virtual worlds.

Introduction

Flow is a smooth, unimpeded movement through space-time. It is an aesthetic quality of spatial movement and occurs throughout the physical world. As conceived in the Chinese art of arrangement, feng shui (literally water and wind), everything in the universe consists of subtle patterns of moving, flowing energy. feng shui sees the universe alive with yin-yang pulsations. Polarities create pulsations, which in turn create flow. Without flow, the universe would be dead. On micro and macro levels, energy currents continually balance and counter-balance one another, creating a dynamic system. The Taoist tradition from which feng shui derives considers the universe to be as fluid and shifting as smoke and wind. In this emphasis, Taoist thinking parallels the process philosophies that broke away from the Artistotelian legacy of western metaphysics where substance and substantial definition became the primary focus of science [15].

Feng shui is the art of arrangement, of placing things in such a way as to enhance the flow of energies and minimize dissipation [3; 23]. Optimal flow for living organisms means that the atmosphere feels like a spring breeze – neither fast and vehement, nor sluggish and stagnant. The quality of flow causes living beings either to flourish or deteriorate. This paper argues that the art of placement applies, mutatis mutandis, to the design of virtual environments as well as to the arrangement of the physical world. Because space-time differs from the physical to the virtual, the art of placement is not identical in both realms, but the two branches of feng shui share much in common since both deal with the felt experience of flow. This paper explores four specific ways in which flow applies to the aesthetic of virtual environments: atmospheric flow, the flow of words with visual images, the flow of group dynamics and the flow between virtual and physical architecture.

Lea el Paper completo en Crossings

The Feng Shui of Virtual Reality

Accelerated Culture

2006-03-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

The Dreams of an Accelerated Culture

Mads Haahr
Department of Computer Science
Trinity College, Dublin
Ireland

Abstract. Contemporary society, driven by the continued need for acceleration, encourages us to adopt a pace of cultural interaction not easily compatible with the reflection necessary for deeper understanding. This paper discusses the roles of art and technology in the acceleration of culture and, using an example work of art from the digital avant-garde, argues that reflection is important and should not be neglected.

The Dreams of an Accelerated Culture

Lea el Paper completo en CROSSINGS

"...At the beginning of this essay, I argued that we as cultural participants have the choice between adapting to the accelerating environment, leaving it and changing it. While adaptation is what we do automatically, it is important also to consider the other options. Leaving culture is becoming increasingly difficult and the same can be said for changing it. To change the heading of culture away from acceleration, we need to shift focus away from acceleration and towards reflection. This very act in itself requires insight and reflection, something which the accelerating feedback loop by its very nature makes increasingly difficult as time goes on. The faster we go – the more we adapt to acceleration – the less time we have to think about the other options. Perhaps the most ambitious objective of Crossings is really found in this context, namely to promote and encourage reflection. If the lines drawn in this journal can help us understand the world better, we will have participated successfully in the cultural feedback loop – we will have processed a portion of the vast sea of information, synthesized it into meaning and put that meaning back into culture...."

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

2006-03-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

Totalitarianism is latent in technology. It was not merely Hitler or Mussolini who were totalitarian, or the Pharaohs as far as I am concerned. Totalitarianism is already present in the technical object. Paul Virilio

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

The twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity are presently one of the most pressing problems confronting political and military strategists alike. Real time now prevails above both real space and the geosphere. The primacy of real time, of immediacy, over and above space and surface is a fait accompli and has inaugural value (ushers a new epoch). Something nicely conjured up in a (French) advertisement praising cellular phones with the words: "Planet Earth has never been this small". This is a very dramatic moment in our relation with the world and for our vision of the world.

Three physical barriers are given: sound, heat, and light. The first two have already been felled. The sound barrier has been cut across by the super- and hypersonic aircraft, while the heat barrier is penetrated by the rocket taking human beings outside the Earth's orbit in order to land them on the moon. But the third barrier, that of light, is not something one can cross: you crash into it. It is precisely this barrier of time which confronts history in the present day. To have reached the light barrier, to have reached the speed of light, is a historical event which throws history in disarray and jumbles up the relation of the living being towards the world. The polity that does not make this explicit, misinforms and cheats its citizenry. We have to acknowledge here a major shift which affects geopolitics, geostrategy, but of course also democracy, since the latter is so much dependent upon a concrete place, the "city".

The big event looming upon the 21st century in connection with this absolute speed, is the invention of a perspective of real time, that will supersede the perspective of real space, which in its turn was invented by Italian artists in the Quattrocento. It has still not been emphasized enough how profoundly the city, the politics, the war, and the economy of the medieval world were revolutionized by the invention of perspective.

Cyberspace is a new form of perspective. It does not coincide with the audio-visual perspective which we already know. It is a fully new perspective, free of any previous reference: it is a tactile perspective. To see at a distance, to hear at a distance: that was the essence of the audio-visual perspective of old. But to reach at a distance, to feel at a distance, that amounts to shifting the perspective towards a domain it did not yet encompass: that of contact, of contact-at-a-distance: tele-contact

(...)

The dictatorship of speed at the limit will increasingly clash with representative democracy. When some essayists address us in terms of "cyber-democracy", of virtual democracy; when others state that "opinion democracy" is going to replace "political parties democracy", one cannot fail to see anything but this loss of orientation in matters political, of which the March 1994 "media-coup" by Mr. Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian-style prefiguration. The advent of the age of viewer-counts and opinion polls reigning supreme will necessarily be advanced by this type of technology.

The very word "globalization" is a fake. There is no such thing as globalization, there is only virtualization. What is being effectively globalized by instantaneity is time. Everything now happens within the perspective of real time: henceforth we are deemed to live in a "one-time-system"¹.

HORIZONTE

2006-03-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

Paisaje Interactivo
Programa para el Modulo:
Instalación desde el Arte

Profesor: Alvaro Moreno Hoffmann

Planteamiento:
¿Cómo abordar el concepto de instalación desde el arte? ¿Qué le aporta el arte de la instalación al diseño industrial y arquitectónico o al espacio que habitamos? ¿En que se diferencia la Instalación Arte de otros procesos de intervención llevados a cabo por arquitectos y diseñadores? ¿Cómo fortalecer el proceso interdisciplinario e iluminar los nuevos campos de aplicación del diseño de paisajes interactivos dentro del entorno real?

Antecedentes:
La Arquitectura, el Diseño y el Arte, aunque aparecen hoy como especialidades independientes, en el fondo son partes de un mismo campo del saber que ha evolucionado de manera unificada durante milenios. La modernidad, al imponer la funcionalidad y la especialización a ultranza abrió el camino a la división de las artes, la separación de las ciencias y el aislamiento de los oficios, produciendo fronteras tan grandes para la acción como los puentes que construyó con la razón. La escuela Bauhaus y otras vanguardias artísticas viven ésta disyuntiva impuesta no solo por los intereses corporativos y estatales de la europa totalitaria, sino tambien por el celo privatizador y utilitarista al otro lado del atlantico. Una de las secuelas de ésta falla en la transmisión del saber es que de la noción de Arte Total de Walter Gropius a duras penas queda la referencia a algunos edificios y muebles de oficina en el imaginario colectivo.

En el presente asistimos a un renovado interes en la aproximación entre las disciplinas distintas. La búsqueda de plasticidad y performatividad humana en la Arquitectura y en el Diseño contemporáneo, así como la expansión del Arte hacia lo ambiental y lo público, son claros signos de una tendencia reciproca hacia la reintegración y redefinición de estas artes y oficios en el mundo actual. Una revisión crítica de los valores entorno a los cuales se han perfilado estas disciplinas en nuestro medio abre las puertas al redescubrimiento del potencial creativo, social, urbanístico y cultural que encierran.

¿Que hay más allá de la funcionalidad y la belleza a ultranza? ¿Como sacar la cabeza del oficio de la inercia, del condicionamiento, de su vulnerabilidad frente al dinero, la fama y el poder, para mirar hacia un horizonte más amplio y abierto al medio natural, social y cultural?

Presentación:
Pensado para responder a estas y otras preguntas, el modulo de Instalación Arte abre una visión reflexiva al contexto y motiva los procesos creativos desde puntos de vista conceptuales, éticos y estéticos. Estudiar las nociones de Instalación desarrolladas desde el arte contemporáneo nos lleva a descubrir una nueva dimensión del quehacer creativo y del entorno real que habitamos. A medio camino entre la escultura, la arquitectura y el performance, la instalación subvierte nuestros hábitos perceptuales y modelos espacio-temporales. Al implementar visiones ambientales, relacionales y experimentales al ejercicio de la reconfiguración del espacio, la instalación se convierte en la ficha perdida del rompecabezas llamado habitat.

Objetivos
Comprender los problemas estéticos y simbólicos que han rodeado a la escultura y a la arquitectura desde el origen mismo de las ciudades. Diferenciar las artes y ciencias nómadas frente a las vertientes sedentarias instituidas. Revisar el sentido de fondo en el uso creativo del espacio y del tiempo a lo largo de la historia del arte. Redescubrir el papel de las instalaciones desde la construcción de catedrales hasta el laboratorio de la Bauhaus. Comprender el papel de las transformaciones de forma y de fondo en el arte (la abstracción, el cubismo, el collage, el montaje) y el sentido de la desmaterialización del Objeto del Arte. Introducir el aspecto lúdico en el manejo de las nociones de Tiempo Libre y Espacio Público. Ampliar la base creativa y cultural para abordar retos de diseño humano y urbano de altura mundial y arraigo local.

Contenidos
Construcción: De la Catedral a la Bauhaus
Deconstrucción: El Collage, el Cubismo, el Montaje.
Abstracción: Desmaterialización del Objeto del Arte. Lo Concreto y el Concepto.
Proceso: La Tierra, el Cuerpo, lo Fluido. El Tiempo y la Energía.
Nomadología:
Deriva Urbana
Movilidad alternativa

Bibliografía

Francesco Careri, 2002
Editorial Gustavo Gili, SA, Barcelona

WEB

http://paisajeinteractivo.blogspot.com/
http://devenirnomada.blogspot.com/
http://www.eldespertador.info/altiplano/mapa.htm

Movilidad
Nomadismo

Diseño basado en usuario
Diseño Humano
Situacionismo
Nomadologia
TAZ
Burning Man
Maquina Convivial

Ivan Illich
Buckminster Fuller
Francesco Careri

Nam June Paik
John Cage
Marina Abramovic
Joseph Beuys
Laurie Anderson
Allan Kaprow
Robert Long
Maya Lin
Ana Mendieta
Gomez - Peña
Robert Wilson
Mark Pauline
Stelarc
Robert Smithson
Helio Oiticica
Lygia Clark
Agnes Denes
Rebeka Horn
Kurt Schwitters
Oscar Schlemmer

Arquitectura y Nomadologia
http://enteoria.arrakis.es/art/patrimonio/lan/lan1.htm

SOCIEDAD CIVIL: DE LA DISCIPLINARIZACIÓN A LA NOMADOLOGÍA
http://www.ucaldas.edu.co/lunaazul/numero_20/articulo_176.asp