...
..interview _ LAb[au] - Teknemedia
..posted: 30.11.2005
..LAb[au]
...laboratory for
...architecture and urbanism
...Manuel Abendroth,
...Jérôme Decock,
...Els Vermang
...http://www.lab-au.com
...http://www.mediaruimte.be
LAb[au], Jerome Decock written interview with the italian art & architecture online portal ' teknemedia' about the interactive installation ' point, line, surface computed in seconds' by LAb[au] and the <proce55ing> exhibition in the MediaRuimte during the Brussels audiovisual art festival ' Cimatics'.
contextual links:
1. Mediaruimte web-site, http://www.mediaruimte.be
2. Cimatics festival, http://www.cimatics.com
3. teknemedia, http://www.teknemedia.netpage content:
1. the interview ...>
2. project abstract: point, line surface computed in seconds ...>
the interview..
..interview written 18.11.2005
-what can you say about the interactive installation "Point, Line and Surface computed in seconds" that seem to me really interesting?
Well, PLSCiS is an installation that started as some thoughts gathered while reading about Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie, the approach this painting was taking on the level of sound/music to visual composition. The very strict formal grammar was a point that we could directly link to our own approach, the coherency with the medium as well. So we started by developing a visual and sonic grammar, reflecting the realm of interactive computer technology, in a similar manner but keeping the coherency with the medium rather than opting for formal similarities with Mondrian’s work. For example, primary colours became red, green and blue in PLSCiS as we are working with light rather than pigments. What we found interesting as well in Boogie Woogie was this link created in between visual elements and sounds through the canvas’ space, as the eye is exploring the painting and patterns of rhythms and tones emerge. For us sound is linked to visuals, formally in tonal aspects (frequency to colours) and structurally in spatial aspects, position of the visual element is as well the emitting point of the sound, this logic finding its main focus in sound topology corresponding to shapes, you can then experiment points, lines and surfaces not only visually but as well through sound, a unification of sound and vision thanks to the construct of space, which can be considered as really specific to computer technology.
But the real goal of the installation was to make an interactive artwork, something that implies process and parameter design, through involving the user in the creative process. Movements on the touchscreen became the way to compose and animate, to build a space-time composition. This has been rather successful if we judge how people are playing with it. You can save your audiovisual composition, and some compositions are really artworks! The landscape of towers (compositions are saved as objects representing points lines and surfaces on time layers) is amazing by its diversity. One person even said to me “I can finally really make something with a computer”, others are not missing the link to Mondrian and the level of artistic research.
-what about the Proce55ing exhibition, it's one of the first and unique
exhibition focused particullarly to this technolology, and what are the tendencies in this kind of artistic production ?Perhaps the principal achievement of Proce55ing is that it managed to build a community of persons, sharing knowledge and interest in digital artwork, clearly showing that it has been conceived as a computer language which you can read. What is especially good is that this isn’t done with compromising the logics and the way a computer works, it reveals you the way it works as you are experiencing with it. In this terms Proce55ing is one of the focal point of the emerging digital media art scene, its success proves somehow that digital art is more mainstream than one can think. The variety of the works tends to prove that the scene is alive and that there is more freedom in digital medium than technological restrictions, the profile of the artists shows somehow that practices evolves and that discipline segmentation and difference in artistic level consideration we had in the past, is more than ever blurry, a reconsideration of the artistic field which probably will influence the globality of creative arts. What we are trying to show in this exhibition is all of that , we define ourselves as a place for digital culture and Proce55ing is truly about “culture”.
- How is the public reacting to the digital art pieces, are they surprised, open, or whatever?
Nowadays most people are spending at least a few hours a day in front of a computer screen, in the case of children perhaps even more, it would be rather odd to say that they don’t know what a computer is and what a screen is. They understand more and more what leads artists to use this medium, the time when people were reacting by saying “this isn’t art because it is virtual” is definitively the past, acceptance of digital media is there and if some would have some doubts about hanging a screen rather than a painting on a wall, at least nowadays it’s only doubts, for them it’s just a matter of time. So as this is on the verge of invading even our homes, I would say public opinion is rather expressing why there isn’t more of that. On that question the lectures we had at Mediaruimte are giving some hints, first when computer technology will be as cheap as some brush, paint and canvas (and we are not far from that) artists will use it, second when digital art will expand outside of institutional context, artists will be able to live from it (nowadays only a handful of artists are living from digital art). The most conservative finally are “non digital” artists, art critics and experts, but this was the same debate for photography or video art some decades ago. Finally what I like about the word digital is that it talks about a medium, what would be the history of painting without consideration about painting? I think it says it all and even more than that ;)
about the project..
project abstract:' point, line, surface computed in seconds ' is an interactive installation which immerses the user in an audiovisual space. On a touch-screen the user creates a sonic and visual composition spatialised through quadraphonic sound and a 10x10m floor projection which can be animated through finger-movement. Referential to Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie which draws a relation between the rhythmic structure of a jazz-piece, the composition of graphic elements on canvas and the urban grid of New York, the project Point Line Surface prolonges these relationships to an interactive vocabulary inside the urban and electronic space.
© LAB[au] 2005
