The Gallery of the NT in Lodz, Poland was the first Polish gallery dedicated to exploring art and science projects. It cooperated with the local Technical University on projects related to video, software, and emerging technologies. The gallery presented works from international artists working at the intersection of art, robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology. However, in 2011 the Lodz Cultural Center decided not to renew the gallery's funding, effectively shutting it down. This followed a pattern of eliminating institutions in Lodz that were important for its cultural profile. The closing of Gallery NT removed an important venue for artists to create works exploring new technologies.
It's been possible to instantly push information from a web server to a web browser for at least 10 years, but this technology has finally gone mainstream. In this talk I'll cover the past, present and future of web browser technology and the realtime web.
Slides saved as PDF from HTML presentation. Original presentation available here:
http://www.leggetter.co.uk/pres/techmeetup_edi_2012-02-08/
At Scotch on the Rocks (http://sotr.eu) the sponsors were given a chance to talk about their products. These are the slides that I used to talk about BladeRunnerJS - the developer toolkit focusing on providing modular workflow and application structure to help you built complex HTML5 Single Page Apps.
The Past, Present and Future of Real-Time Apps and CommunicationsPhil Leggetter
It has been possible to instantly push information from a web server to a web browser for around 15 years. Real-time web technology has been mainstream for a while thanks to the experiences offered by applications like Twitter, Facebook, Uber and Google Docs, and more recently the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). Technology advancements have also played their part with low-level improvements such as WebSockets and WebRTC, and high-level solutions like Socket.IO, SignalR, Faye, Firebase and Pusher.
In this talk Phil will cover the past, present and future of real-time communication technology, the realtime web and provide a number of use cases and demonstrations of how the technology is actually used today (it's not just chat and spaceship games!).
Real-Time Web Apps & .NET - What are your options?Phil Leggetter
Real-time is becoming the life blood of applications. Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Google Docs and many more apps have increased user expectation to demand real-time features. Features such as notifications, activity streams, real-time data visualisations, chat or collaborative experiences instantly keep users up to date and enable them to work much more effectively. So, how do you build these sorts of features with .NET?
In this session, Phil will cover the benefits of moving away from polling to push, the options you have with .NET web application to do this and when adding real-time features to your apps, and the pros and cons of each to help choose which is the best solution for you.
Under the banner of Cultural Geographies, Globalisation and Nationalism this lecture critically examines the effects of the new neo-liberal world economic order.
Neoliberalism supports free markets, free trade, and decentralized decision-making. Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer control of the economy from state to the private sector. This is a particularly timely debate in light of the current global collapse of neoliberalism.
Globalisation:
The meaning is not always clear it has something to do with the idea that we all live in one world, in what ways exactly, and is the idea valid?
Accepted that globalisation exists, the world has become financially and materially interdependent.
Debates are more likely to be about the form of globalisation, how it came into being and where it will lead.
Two major issues of globalisation are communication as the driving force of social change, and increasing dependence on mobility.
I will also deal with a few of the difficulties which appear in the course of the globalisation process and look at the accompanying discussions surrounding increasingly global cultural spaces as they concern artistic practice and the cultural industries.
I will consider the idea that the art world knows no synthetic boundaries; that it realises an actually existing globalisation and that art is the vehicle for the creolisation, hybridity and mixing of cultures that challenge the conventional in aesthetics and the hegemonic in politics.
I also want to consider the relevance of nationalism as the sites of contemporary art diversify away from the traditional metropolitan centres such as London, Berlin, or New York.
The soft power of the artmarket - a new East European fresh look at the art s...Oana Nasui
”The Soft Power of the Art Market” is a new East European fresh look at the systems that are now in charge of producing contemporary art in a globalized world. It reveals the challenges of the contemporary art as a soft power, defined by its geopolitical strategies and defined as an extension of the powerful global markets. The contemporary art between media and power is changing the equilibrium between the cultural capital and economic capital.
The idea of the New Folklore is introduced in terms of the new aesthetics for the XXI century. The new aesthetics of production and consumption (under the sign of the paradigms launched by Duchamp and Warhol) is nowadays generating a very large amount of cultural artistic products lost, in a very accelerated manner. This speed and this amount lead to an unexpectedly anonymity, thus generating not individual specific creation but general, collective types of artistic work – actually a new type of folklore.
ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel - (What Comes After) Metamodernism - Digital Booklet Esmod Berlin
ESMOD Berlin is pleased to present a digital publication from our inaugural Annual Panel held in May of this year. The panel discussed (What Comes After) Metamodernism, a term coined to describe the shift in contemporary culture away from the trademarks of post modernism. The panels’ brief was to explore the dominant oscillation in culture between disillusionment and meaningfulness, between apathy and empathy with key questions such as; In what direction are the globalized youth going and why? Where is there an overlap with the recent past? Where do we find a combination in the analog and digital in designing individual concepts of life?
Bringing together experts from across various cultural fields the panel discussion was led by Paul Feigelfeld from the Digital Cultures Research Lab Centre, Leuphana University, and included special guests speaker Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer and Lead Design Director of 42 Entertainment based in California. 42 Entertainment are one of the leading companies in transmedia marketing whom blur the boundaries between marketing and entertainment. 42 Entertainment are most well known for their innovative campaign for American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails for their album Year Zero, which extrapolated the theme of a dystopian future beyond the album through leaking unreleased recordings online, and planting USB sticks in the toilets of concerts venues, which lead fans down a thrilling rabbit hole into a world of online and offline acts of underground resistance.
Dealing with the life and work of digital dissents, German Author and Director Angela Richter also participated in the panel discussion. Richter spoke about her time working with Wikileakers Founder and digital activist Julian Assange, of whom she wrote a play Assassinate Assange, premiering in 2012. Other notable panelists included Joerg Koch, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of German culture magazine 032c, as well as Dutch cultural philosopher Robin van den Akker, whom with his colleague Timotheus Vermeulen, coined the term metamodernsm and founded the online magazine Notes on Metamodernsim.
Traversing topics such as sci-fi literature, digital hacktivism, sustainable architecture, fashion and DIY maker culture, the publication aims to capture some of the intense and surprising discussions that took place. The ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel is a program conceived for students from a number of international schools, including L'Institut Francais de la Mode, Paris; ESMOD Berlin International Masters Programme – Sustainability in Fashion, Berlin; and Dessau Institute of Architecture. The booklet also aims to deliver an insight into how the students negotiated the concepts and questions raised during discussion.
Download the digital booklet HERE and for further information please contact Lizzie Delfs, Public Relations Manager, International Masters Programme – Sustainability in Fashion, ESMOD Berlin International University of Art for Fashion, m
Since a museum has developed from the institution which is dedicated to selection, preservation and presentation of objects to the one willing to communicate, educate and extend the audience, the museum tourism has become really important branch of cultural tourism. There are many theoretical perspectives of how to build the image of a museum, how to develop its audience nowadays and many mechanisms of museum management which show this theory functioning very well practically. Still, when it comes to the region of ex Yugoslav countries, there are many heritage spots which are floating in the limbo of shifted ideologies that once where spaces of the ruler’s representation and magnification and today are more or less successfully being converted into particular museums. Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, an institution still linked to Josip Broz Tito in public discourse due to its position and collection, is maybe the most illustrative example to research how, through complete image building, new mission and vision, new name, new interpretation of inherited collection and new setting development, one place of memory and political happenings is being converted to a contemporary museum. In this paper, all the challenges of the new museum audience and programs building will be followed on this quite unique example of the (re)construction of the Museum of Yugoslavia.
It's been possible to instantly push information from a web server to a web browser for at least 10 years, but this technology has finally gone mainstream. In this talk I'll cover the past, present and future of web browser technology and the realtime web.
Slides saved as PDF from HTML presentation. Original presentation available here:
http://www.leggetter.co.uk/pres/techmeetup_edi_2012-02-08/
At Scotch on the Rocks (http://sotr.eu) the sponsors were given a chance to talk about their products. These are the slides that I used to talk about BladeRunnerJS - the developer toolkit focusing on providing modular workflow and application structure to help you built complex HTML5 Single Page Apps.
The Past, Present and Future of Real-Time Apps and CommunicationsPhil Leggetter
It has been possible to instantly push information from a web server to a web browser for around 15 years. Real-time web technology has been mainstream for a while thanks to the experiences offered by applications like Twitter, Facebook, Uber and Google Docs, and more recently the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). Technology advancements have also played their part with low-level improvements such as WebSockets and WebRTC, and high-level solutions like Socket.IO, SignalR, Faye, Firebase and Pusher.
In this talk Phil will cover the past, present and future of real-time communication technology, the realtime web and provide a number of use cases and demonstrations of how the technology is actually used today (it's not just chat and spaceship games!).
Real-Time Web Apps & .NET - What are your options?Phil Leggetter
Real-time is becoming the life blood of applications. Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Google Docs and many more apps have increased user expectation to demand real-time features. Features such as notifications, activity streams, real-time data visualisations, chat or collaborative experiences instantly keep users up to date and enable them to work much more effectively. So, how do you build these sorts of features with .NET?
In this session, Phil will cover the benefits of moving away from polling to push, the options you have with .NET web application to do this and when adding real-time features to your apps, and the pros and cons of each to help choose which is the best solution for you.
Under the banner of Cultural Geographies, Globalisation and Nationalism this lecture critically examines the effects of the new neo-liberal world economic order.
Neoliberalism supports free markets, free trade, and decentralized decision-making. Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer control of the economy from state to the private sector. This is a particularly timely debate in light of the current global collapse of neoliberalism.
Globalisation:
The meaning is not always clear it has something to do with the idea that we all live in one world, in what ways exactly, and is the idea valid?
Accepted that globalisation exists, the world has become financially and materially interdependent.
Debates are more likely to be about the form of globalisation, how it came into being and where it will lead.
Two major issues of globalisation are communication as the driving force of social change, and increasing dependence on mobility.
I will also deal with a few of the difficulties which appear in the course of the globalisation process and look at the accompanying discussions surrounding increasingly global cultural spaces as they concern artistic practice and the cultural industries.
I will consider the idea that the art world knows no synthetic boundaries; that it realises an actually existing globalisation and that art is the vehicle for the creolisation, hybridity and mixing of cultures that challenge the conventional in aesthetics and the hegemonic in politics.
I also want to consider the relevance of nationalism as the sites of contemporary art diversify away from the traditional metropolitan centres such as London, Berlin, or New York.
The soft power of the artmarket - a new East European fresh look at the art s...Oana Nasui
”The Soft Power of the Art Market” is a new East European fresh look at the systems that are now in charge of producing contemporary art in a globalized world. It reveals the challenges of the contemporary art as a soft power, defined by its geopolitical strategies and defined as an extension of the powerful global markets. The contemporary art between media and power is changing the equilibrium between the cultural capital and economic capital.
The idea of the New Folklore is introduced in terms of the new aesthetics for the XXI century. The new aesthetics of production and consumption (under the sign of the paradigms launched by Duchamp and Warhol) is nowadays generating a very large amount of cultural artistic products lost, in a very accelerated manner. This speed and this amount lead to an unexpectedly anonymity, thus generating not individual specific creation but general, collective types of artistic work – actually a new type of folklore.
ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel - (What Comes After) Metamodernism - Digital Booklet Esmod Berlin
ESMOD Berlin is pleased to present a digital publication from our inaugural Annual Panel held in May of this year. The panel discussed (What Comes After) Metamodernism, a term coined to describe the shift in contemporary culture away from the trademarks of post modernism. The panels’ brief was to explore the dominant oscillation in culture between disillusionment and meaningfulness, between apathy and empathy with key questions such as; In what direction are the globalized youth going and why? Where is there an overlap with the recent past? Where do we find a combination in the analog and digital in designing individual concepts of life?
Bringing together experts from across various cultural fields the panel discussion was led by Paul Feigelfeld from the Digital Cultures Research Lab Centre, Leuphana University, and included special guests speaker Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer and Lead Design Director of 42 Entertainment based in California. 42 Entertainment are one of the leading companies in transmedia marketing whom blur the boundaries between marketing and entertainment. 42 Entertainment are most well known for their innovative campaign for American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails for their album Year Zero, which extrapolated the theme of a dystopian future beyond the album through leaking unreleased recordings online, and planting USB sticks in the toilets of concerts venues, which lead fans down a thrilling rabbit hole into a world of online and offline acts of underground resistance.
Dealing with the life and work of digital dissents, German Author and Director Angela Richter also participated in the panel discussion. Richter spoke about her time working with Wikileakers Founder and digital activist Julian Assange, of whom she wrote a play Assassinate Assange, premiering in 2012. Other notable panelists included Joerg Koch, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of German culture magazine 032c, as well as Dutch cultural philosopher Robin van den Akker, whom with his colleague Timotheus Vermeulen, coined the term metamodernsm and founded the online magazine Notes on Metamodernsim.
Traversing topics such as sci-fi literature, digital hacktivism, sustainable architecture, fashion and DIY maker culture, the publication aims to capture some of the intense and surprising discussions that took place. The ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel is a program conceived for students from a number of international schools, including L'Institut Francais de la Mode, Paris; ESMOD Berlin International Masters Programme – Sustainability in Fashion, Berlin; and Dessau Institute of Architecture. The booklet also aims to deliver an insight into how the students negotiated the concepts and questions raised during discussion.
Download the digital booklet HERE and for further information please contact Lizzie Delfs, Public Relations Manager, International Masters Programme – Sustainability in Fashion, ESMOD Berlin International University of Art for Fashion, m
Since a museum has developed from the institution which is dedicated to selection, preservation and presentation of objects to the one willing to communicate, educate and extend the audience, the museum tourism has become really important branch of cultural tourism. There are many theoretical perspectives of how to build the image of a museum, how to develop its audience nowadays and many mechanisms of museum management which show this theory functioning very well practically. Still, when it comes to the region of ex Yugoslav countries, there are many heritage spots which are floating in the limbo of shifted ideologies that once where spaces of the ruler’s representation and magnification and today are more or less successfully being converted into particular museums. Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, an institution still linked to Josip Broz Tito in public discourse due to its position and collection, is maybe the most illustrative example to research how, through complete image building, new mission and vision, new name, new interpretation of inherited collection and new setting development, one place of memory and political happenings is being converted to a contemporary museum. In this paper, all the challenges of the new museum audience and programs building will be followed on this quite unique example of the (re)construction of the Museum of Yugoslavia.
Lecture slides for MA Contemporary Art Theory and for MFA1 Studio students in the School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art.
http://www.eca.ac.uk/pdf/getCourse.php?id=88
M a n u e l Castells Toward a Sociology of the Network Soc.docxsmile790243
M a n u e l Castells
Toward a Sociology of the Network Society
Manuel Castells
The Call to Sociology
The twenty-first century of the Common Era did not
necessarily have to usher in a new society. But it did.
People around the world feel the winds of multi-
dimensional social change without truly understanding
it, let alone feeling a grasp upon the process of change.
Thus the challenge to sociology, as the science of study
of society. More than ever society needs sociology, but
not just any kind of sociology. The sociology that people
need is not a normative meta-discipline instructing
them, from the authoritative towers of academia, about
what is to be done. It is even less a pseudo-sociology made
up of empty word games and intellectual narcissism,
expressed in terms deliberately incomprehensible for
anyone without access to a French-Greek dictionary.
Because we need to know, and because people need
to know, more than ever we need a sociology rooted
in its scientific endeavor. Of course, it must have the
specificity of its object of study, and thus of its theories
and methods, without mimicking the natural sciences
in a futile search for respectability. And it must have a
clear purpose of producing objective knowledge (yes!
there is such a thing, always in relative terms), brought
about by empirical observation, rigorous theorizing,
and unequivocal communication. Then we can argue
- and we will! - about the best way to proceed with
observation, theory building, and formal expression of
findings, depending on subject matter and methodo-
logical traditions. But without a consensus on sociology
as science - indeed, as a specific social science - we
sociologists will fail in our professional and intellectual
duty at a time when we are needed most. We are needed
because, individually and collectively, most people in
the world are lost about the meaning of the whirlwind
Source: Contemporary Sociology, 29, 5, September 2000:
693-9.
we are going through. So they need to know which
kind of society we are in, which kind of social processes
are emerging, what is structural, and what can be changed
through purposive social action. And we are needed
because without understanding, people, rightly, will
block change, and we may lose the extraordinary
potential of creativity embedded into the values and
technologies of the Information Age. We are needed
because as would-be scientists of society we are posi-
tioned better than anyone else to produce knowledge
about the new society, and to be credible - or at least
more credible than the futurologists and ideologues
that litter the interpretation of current historical
changes, let alone politicians always jumping on the
latest trendy word.
So, we are needed, but to do what? Well, to study the
processes of constitution, organization, and change of
a new society, probably starting with its social structure
- what I provisionally call the network societ ...
Michał Brzeziński - VideoArtist, BioArtist, working with biocultures, microorganisms and medical media as EEG, GSR, USG interested in transspecies affective communication and sexual interfaces. Combining his bioart, software and videoart activities. Creator of Galeria NT (2010). His roots of the artistic activitiy have ground in music subcultures, literature and video culture. His wide, theory based, artistic and curatorial activity had animated theoretical discourse touching role of video in recent man cognition process where he appointed an extraordinary role of experimental cinema haritage. Curator working with galleries such as the Museum of Art in Łódź, Center for Contemporary Art Łaźnia in Gdańsk. Referring to the conceptual art and mediated experience of recent art transforms art itself and englobe into video art, formulated the strategy describes this process as Fake Art, arising from the antimaterialistic theory of art as communication.
Boudoir photography, a genre that captures intimate and sensual images of individuals, has experienced significant transformation over the years, particularly in New York City (NYC). Known for its diversity and vibrant arts scene, NYC has been a hub for the evolution of various art forms, including boudoir photography. This article delves into the historical background, cultural significance, technological advancements, and the contemporary landscape of boudoir photography in NYC.
Hadj Ounis's most notable work is his sculpture titled "Metamorphosis." This piece showcases Ounis's mastery of form and texture, as he seamlessly combines metal and wood to create a dynamic and visually striking composition. The juxtaposition of the two materials creates a sense of tension and harmony, inviting viewers to contemplate the relationship between nature and industry.
Brushstrokes of Inspiration: Four Major Influences in Victor Gilbert’s Artist...KendraJohnson54
Throughout his career, Victor Gilbert was influenced heavily by various factors, the most notable being his upbringing and the artistic movements of his time. A rich tapestry of inspirations appears in Gilbert’s work, ranging from their own experiences to the art movements of that period.
This tutorial offers a step-by-step guide on how to effectively use Pinterest. It covers the basics such as account creation and navigation, as well as advanced techniques including creating eye-catching pins and optimizing your profile. The tutorial also explores collaboration and networking on the platform. With visual illustrations and clear instructions, this tutorial will equip you with the skills to navigate Pinterest confidently and achieve your goals.
2. Gallery of the NT was developed in the framework of Lodz Cultural Center ( ŁDK
- Łódzki Dom Kultury ) as artistic project, but also the first Polish fully institu-
tional structure (Gallery NT / Imaginarium) engaged in a Art & Science projects.
Cooperated actively with the Technical University of Lodz in a series of *.VHS
*.EXE *.DNA. During the year of the gallery made contact with leading artists
and groups involved in this type of issue. Presented to the scientific performance
of many leading artists such as Victoria Vesna, Eduardo Kac, Stelarc. This resulted
in an attitude of openness and willingness to cooperate in the field of robotics, bio-
technology and nanotechnology. Several Polish artists began work on the projects
which have used these materials - were to be part of a plan of the exhibition gallery
in 2011.
The growing interest from the artistic community, however, encountered a sig-
nificant problem - Lodz Cultural Center ( ŁDK ) decided first to eliminate the
funding from the institution (under the influence of the truncated budget for the
entire institution), and later decided not to apply as Galeria NT for a grant from the
Ministry of Culture (ŁDK sent in place of that two other applications of a photo
gallery - sic!), and finally, despite the reduction of the budget proposals by 85% -
which is still allowed to maintain the existence of a current profile of the gallery at
a similar level, it was decided not to extend the contract with Michael Brzezinski
- its founder.
This fits in quite a long string of elimination of many of Lodz institutions - impor-
tant festivals. It has effect already in lost the chance to get the title of European
Capital of Culture, and every subsequent liquidation makes the Lodz as the city
gradually lose their position on cultural map.
This time eliminated not only the gallery showing the finished products’, but also
the institutional tool that artists can use to create really unique in the world of art.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142253295828609
3. GALERIA NT
In 2010 the Łódź Cultural Center founded a new
gallery. Initially, it was created to be a gallery with
an original program, exploring the areas of video
and thus, it was wonderfully equipped especially
for that purpose. It was when Michał Brzeziński
took the gallery over that the whole idea evolved
into a new direction: an area dedicated to art, cre-
ated when the scientific and artistic interests meet
– in the new technologies field. Therefore, it was
named as the Gallery NT.
The Gallery NT (New Technologies) was a space
for presenting the artistic phenomena that appear
in the field of new technology art, with a special
stress put on electronic media. The gallery’s goal
was not only to cumulate the creations in time and
place, but more to inspire artists to create new
works in the context of the gallery itself. The gal-
lery serves as a forum for different definitions of
art to confront each other.
The Gallery NT was a sort of a buffer between
the experiences of artists and scientists, which en-
ables its educational profile. The works presented
in the gallery was not only a form of esthetisation
of technology, was devoted to creation of hypoth-
eses and theories, but also were provokative and
has created discussions and vast social resonance.
The Art of New Technologies is a perfect reason
for discussions on humanism’s paradigms and that
is what we desire the most, as we believe that the
“art is to make you think”. Similarly to the prob-
lems of freedom, emancipation or equality in a so-
ciety, in the case of building the new technologies
conscience in a society, or the so-called techni-
cal culture, art is to play an important part. Many
kinds of technology are initially rejected by a so-
ciety, whose members have a distorted image of
it. Thanks to the open debate on a level of human-
ism, different from religion or science, that is – on
a level of art – one can observe many important
revaluations.
4.
5. GLOBALNE OCIEPLENIE
THE MEDIAGATE
Exhibition curated by: Marco Mancuso and Clau-
dia D’Alonzo for Digicult & Michal Brzezinski
Exhibition period: 20/04/2010 - 27/05/2010
Opening: Friday 20/04/2010
Artists:
Milycon / En, Dorota Walentynowicz, Sašo
Sedlaček, Jan Van Nuenen, Les Liens Invisibles,
Marc Lee, Yorit Kluitman, Vít Klusák a Filip Re-
munda
6.
7. On November 20, 2009, just few days before
the COP 15 in Copenhagen, the credibility of
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) - the government body
that monitors the UN climate change studies, suf-
fered a severe blow. A group of Russian hackers
had published a series of documents, e-mails and
confidential data from Hadley Center, Research
Center of East Anglia University, one of the ma-
jor international institutions of climate studies,
strongly affiliated with the IPCC itself. The action
seems to expose efforts of scholars and research-
ers to falsify data on one of the hottest media top-
ics of the millennium: anthropic global warming,
the so-called AGW. The ‘Climategate’ has shaken
the conscience of many: if international govern-
ment bodies, research centers, environmental or-
ganizations and even ecologist organizations like
Greenpeace and even eco-activists groups have
been warning us for years that independent funda-
mental problems like global warming, the green-
house effect, emission harmful gases, are based on
solid scientific foundations, what should we think
about the leak? That global warming is all a big
media game, serving superior economic and po-
litical interests? It’s a doubt that many are begin-
ning to have.
In early days of January 2010, many internation-
al media revealed a striking news: the A(H1N1)
flu seems to be a hoax orchestrated by the World
Health Organization and the pharmaceutical com-
panies. It was claimed not by some no-global crit-
ics, but the chairman of the Health Council of Eu-
rope, Wolfgang Wodarg, who forced the Council
to approve a tough resolution demanding an inter-
national inquiry into the matter. After months of
warnings and measures against the risk of infec-
tion involving the media and institutions around
the world, one wonders when we can speak of
trusted sources on a subject as important as health.
“Frankly, I believed beyond any doubt that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction” - said
the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on
29th of January 2010, in front of the Commission
of Inquiry on Iraq at the Queen Elizabeth Center in
London. Blair denied that the government had put
the idea, in the intelligence dossier, that Baghdad
could use weapons of mass destruction in 45 min-
utes, admitting, however, to have said so in his speech to the
Commons in September 2002, although “without too much
emphasis”. The emphasis was placed by the press, raising the
issue that Blair now denies. So, how many and what threats
are real? How and why is ‘global fear’ started?
These ‘cases’ exposed the incredibility of news that for
months, if not years, have filled the media all over the West-
8.
9. ern world. We talk about cases and not news, because
in them is put into question the very meaning of news,
of factual information.
The world that we live in, with its division into me-
diasphere and biosphere, have been defined in many
ways, among which two ideas are best known and
best describe the relation between man and medium.
Coined over 50 years ago by Marshall McLuhan,
these ideas seem not too precise, however prophetic.
One of them is the ‘global village’ theory (as a result
of media becoming the extension of our nerve sys-
tem), the other is the division of media into ‘hot’ (the
ones that send a lot of impulses to stimulate senses)
and ‘cold’ (the ones that require imagination in creat-
ing the transfer). Paradoxically, it is frequent that the
‘cold’ media generate bigger emotions as they involve
imagination and feelings attached to it. Hot media, on
the other hand, often cause greater distance towards
the experiences. All visual media are hot as the visual
communication absorbs around 80 per cent of atten-
tion. However, when interactivity is involved, visual
media become cold, as they require complacement
from the recipient. Contemporary visual art, that use
abstraction or the beauty of artistic matter, are losing
the figurative forms. They are the means of ‘cooling’
the visual art and involving the imagination or knowl-
edge in it. Viewer’s distance towards the classic forms
of art, which created a certain beauty canon, started
evolving in the beginning of the 19th century. Visual
art tend to approach literature, so much as through de-
veloping the conceptual layer of the work. The apogee
of the process is achieved in the art of new technolo-
gies. With this exhibition, we try to present different
attitudes of artists towards global warming of the me-
dia in our global village.
In recent years, we are witnessing the disintegration
of the belief that the Internet was, for its unique na-
ture, a free, participatory medium, in contrast to the
medium of television. Positivity of the early years of
the Internet is giving way to a situation in which one
cannot help but admit that the Interet, even with large
areas of autonomy, is subject to the same dangerous
political and economic dynamics of traditional media.
It becomes crucial not just to understand what is the
most democratic medium of the third millennium, but
rather open our eyes to the dual nature of all media, to
identify ways in which we learn to move strategically
between truth and deception.
These methodologies are the focus of many works of new
media art: art is in fact the territory within which lays the
duality of the media, playing creatively between liabili-
ties and autonomy of the viewer’s interpretation of mis-
conceptions and information. The art is able to expose the
media automation because it puts the audience, and our
role as spectators, in the center of the discourse on media.
Globalne Ocieplenie / The Mediagate exhibition aims at
reflecting, through the new media artworks by interna-
tional artists, our constant battle between questioning and
faith towards the media, without suggesting solutions, but
triggering questions and doubts about our role as users.
Globalne Ocieplenie / The Mediagate wants to become
explicit homage to the word Watergate, that has entered
common parlance to describe an embarrassing and outra-
geous discovery, often used as a measure to test the seri-
ousness of a sudden truth, considered to be big enough to
be able to undermine any system.
10. Ape-x
artist: André Sier
curator: Michał Brzeziński
vernissage date: 18/06/2010 at 7 PM
the exhibition will be open from 18/06/2010 to
30/07/2010
Contemporary art opens to a subject as a creator.
Contemporary artist, being familiar with the art of
internet and software, does not offer ready prod-
ucts, but delivers easy-to-use creative platforms,
which live independently afterwards. Consequent-
ly, we can say, that we have moved to 2.0 culture
whose manifestation is also Gallery NT. Artists
such as Ben Fry (creator of the processing – plat-
form used also by Andre Sier) create artworks
presenting infinite opportunities of transforming
into unlimited number of subsequent artworks.
These are not only the tools, although artists treat
them as such. These works constitute one organ-
ism, enabling proliferation of subsequent, inter-
related artworks – collective, but expressing the
ideas or expression of certain people. Contempo-
rary art tries to establish interpersonal and social
bonds, but respects freedom and expression of in-
dividual, since the individual is a condition of its
existence.
Such situation is visible in the works of Andre
Sier, which become a rhizome of such dialogue,
at the same time visualizing data brought from our
presence in the gallery. It is not us, who decide
about the final shape of the artwork, but our body,
which speaks for ourselves. Entering a gallery, we
do not intend to interfere with the artwork, since
we have no readiness for the artwork in our con-
sciousness. Next, observing its reaction to our
behaviour, we pay attention to the way we func-
tion in that particular space and we learn its (art-
work’s) language. The artwork is our partner, sub-
ject which has its own logics, coupled to our body
and, thus, to our mind. In his other works, Sier
creates worlds closed in the glass ball of computer
monitor. He produces simple subjects, which he
puts to evolution and sets up laws, which will rule
these worlds:
„Now I’m a network of cells 2,5. My state depends
11. on 1,4, 2,4, 3,4, 1,5, 3,5, 1,5, 2,5, 3,5 and we will
be adding these values to check the current map of
rules and to check if I’m dead or alive. I’m alive.
Now, I’m a network of cells 3,3. My state depends
on 2,2, 3,2, 4,2, 2,3, 4,3, 2,4, 3,4, 4,4 and we will
be adding these values to check the current map of
rules and to check if I’m dead or alive. I’m dead.
Now I’m a network of cells 7,3. My state depends
on 6,2, 7,2, 8,2, 6,3, 8,3, 7,4, 8,4, 9,4 and we will
be adding these values to check the current map of
rules and to check if I’m dead or alive. I’m alive.”
(Andre Sier)
The work of Andre Sier refers to the cubism aes-
thetically and visually, but, being interactive, it
does not evoke either broken mirror reflecting our
face, or typical cubist painting, which usually pres-
ents the picture spread on geometric solid figures.
It is the art of multitude of parallel information,
which are procured by different, not necessary
visual channels and subsequently visualized by
the computer. Computer is an instance creating
a picture, based on rules established by the art-
ist. Gained information splits on the figures of
algorithms. His works also struggle with the un-
derstanding of physical and evolutionary mecha-
nisms or the chaos theory and use simulation for
that. These are not ready artworks, but processes
or sometimes records of particular spaciotemporal
relations. Processualism and peformativity of his
works, as well as the temporality of final effects
is the fugitive artifact for the work of art. Graph-
ics produced by the speakers splashing ink, which
makes random patterns on paper, is only a con-
scious, fetishistic record of what happened in gal-
lery on a particular day, since the sources of sound
are the movement and the sound detected by the
system. However, it has nothing to do with the
artist’s expression or the search for chance in the
painting, it is not an action painting either. The es-
sence of his art is algorithm – structure, which lays
at the basis of picture produced by the machine, it
is a programming language game, emerging at the
meeting point of human and machine languages.
It is possible to find it if we look at his works with
tenderness which characterizes the way human be-
ing looks at the other human being in action.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17. CRASH 2.0
OPENING
7.00PM 10 IX 2010
Łódzki Dom Kultury ul. R. Traugutta 18, 90-113 Łódź
Exhibition is on: Tue - Fri 12.00 - 18.00, Sat 14.00 -
20.00
The exhibition of Robert B. Lisek analyzes the context
of a “security” idea based on an example of the Smo-
lensk crash.
Robert B. Lisek analyzes the social processes which,
through increasing public insecurity, contribute to the
legitimacy of violence, deprivation of freedom and civil
liberties and the consolidation of the authority as well
as its credibility. At the outset, the artist raises questions
about the nature of security:
What is the basis of security? What ensures it? He asks
about the state of security absence - permanently sus-
tained uncertainty and constant raising of fears to main-
tain the services and structures responsible for security.
Conspiracy theories as a modern heresy, apostasy from
the doctrine of faith sustained by the media have recent-
ly become a very strong inspiration for artists around the
world.
The history of modern societies knows many forms of
activity such as hijacking of both aircraft and people,
mysterious disappearances, plane crashes, bomb attacks,
and others that have influenced changing political situa-
tion and the distribution of power relations of a particular
country or group of countries. Rapid social chain reac-
tions accompanied by such incidents become a primary
energy, a type of libido that animates culture, and this
constitutes the starting point for the project Crash 2.0.
It is widely known that such incidents and revolutions
usually resulted in the introduction of so-called doctrine
“son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch” (S.O.B. in short).
This obviously contributes to the rise of conspiracy the-
ories around Smolensk accident, which are, however,
treated here as one of a class of phenomena occurring
around the world. The project addresses the issues of
security and analyses the disaster, particularly the air
18. crash near Smolensk as a culturally active factor, a fac-
tor which causes a political crisis and changes in existing
system. Robert Lisek uses the methods of contemporary
art and theory of computability, raises questions con-
cerning political power and discussion which focuses on
the key points of the collective experience of the disaster.
The artist describes the work of the installation in short
words:
The project begins with the analysis of large data sets,
examines how the disaster / conflict is depicted in the
web and media. Then, the new information is concluded,
as well as the probability of future events.
Robert Lisek stays within the long avant-guarde tradi-
tion which started with efforts to cut off the artwork from
the subjective individual, the artistic vision, inspiration
and the need for expression. Drawing this line in the text
constitutes a repetition of the avant-guarde history. The
artist defines this context in a following way:
In art, there is a tradition which combines both critical
and analytical approach with activities that can be seen
as a political praxis. The artist is inspired by groups such
as Group Material active in the US in the 90’s, and his
work should be considered in the context of contempo-
rary groups connected to hacktyvism and tactical media:
Institute of Applied Autonomy, Critical Art Ensemble.
It is important that when Robert Lisek tackles the issue
of Smolensk, he distances from the old paradigm of the
artist showing subjective point of view, and this way
he can cut off from the explicitness characterizing the
authors of conspiracy theories, which would inevitably
discredited the artist entangled in his own opinion based
solely on the belief. The artist researches alternative sto-
ry lines and to achieve it, he uses a web worm written
by him i.e. a programme for automatic search for infor-
mation in the web (based on the model of the software
used by Russian special services GRU) and NEST portal
(http://fundamental.art.com / NESTofficial.html) which
is a web platform designed to analyze and visualize con-
nections between individuals, groups, events, documents
and places. This way, the artist arranges a situation in
which the outside reality speaks for itself. In such ar-
rangement, the artist’s creation is limited to constructing
transparent apparatus and arranging such construction as
a spatial artwork.
Using his own system, Robert Lisek recovers, analyses
19.
20. and visualises information, creates a history, doing the
job of historians. The model of history with the monkey
at the typewriter is transformed into a model of a think-
ing machine which selects the data, creates versions
and stories itself. Intellectual’s work in the world of to-
day transforms into the consciousness of communicat-
ing the rules of work, whereas the work in a traditional
sense is done by machines. Similarly, in the field of so-
cial communication, open sources and the opportunity
to intervene in the source code enable to put this artistic
project in the place previously occupied by the media.
Corporate Media imposed global outlook according
to the policy of the capital standing behind them. On
the other hand, the project 2.0 CRASH proposes ever
proliferating versions of events, connects facts using
contemporary logic and mathematics. The mechanisms
behind its work, related to analysis and data processing
are much more readable than the mechanisms of pow-
er manipulating the media. Open sources makes the
means of processing information takes reconfigurable!
Corporate media are therefore useless, become elimi-
nated and replaced by an art project, since they pro-
vide only one possible course of events. In the world
of media there seem to appear a new site for alternative
portals, becoming leading sources of information, for
example WikiLeads, which published 75 000 docu-
ments revealing an alternative picture of the war in
Afghanistan. Such information is then analyzed. Crash
2.0 also provides information unavailable from official
channels, subversive reinterpretations of events, alter-
native narratives, from which we can choose the most
suitable one. However, such a choice is always limited
and shows that we believe only to what suits our lim-
ited minds.
21.
22.
23.
24. Pomyłka / The Tipping Point of Failure.
29 Oct – 05 Dec 2010
Galeria NT / Imaginarium
ul. R. Traugutta 18, 90-113 Łódź
Today many people enjoy their time watching super 8 tapes,
while listening to poorly recorded vinyl records or endlessly
copied cassette tapes. They enjoy the discolorations, cracks,
and noises of these media. This retro-fetishism shows that we
find ourselves at an aesthetic turning point; the good quality
of the old image is no longer important. Instead, we are at-
tracted to the traces of “old” media, that seem to be absent or
at least imperceptible in the “new” media of today.Artists such
as Rosa Menkman aim to show and evaluate the flaws that we
haven’t yet learned to appreciate or even recognize in our new
media – the imperfection.
ROSA MENKMAN (1983, Arnhem, Netherlands) is a leading
international theory-practitioner of glitch art. She has written
extensively on digital artifacts and noise, including the Glitch
Studies Manifesto (2010). Her videos and real-time perfor-
mances have been included in festivals like Cimatics (Brus-
sels ’08 + 09), Blip (Europe and US in 2009), Video Vortex
(Amsterdam ’08 + Brussels ’09), ISEA (Dublin ’09) and File
(Sao Paolo ’10). She was also one of the organizers/curators of
the successful GLI.TC/H festival that took place in Chicago in
2010. She has collaborated on art projects and performed to-
gether with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org and
the Internet art collective, Jodi.org. Menkman received her
Master’s degree in 2009 and is currently pursuing a practical
PhD at the KHM Cologne, writing on the subject of Artifacts.
Roman Jakobson identified various functions of communica-
tion in the primary axis between the addresser, the addressee
and the message. When communication revolves only around
the message itself, it has, according to Jakobson, a poetic func-
tion. Such a message does not communicate anything but its
structure. Glitch is a radical implementation of this postulate
on the grounds of visual arts.
The aesthetics of glitch, which continues traditions of structur-
al film, comes from the interest in the medium itself, and thus,
the process of image formation. The medium and its inherent
specificities has become radically important for contemporary
art, since many significant contemporary artworks use some
form of exploitation of the material of (modern) media, or are
known thanks to documentation done within these media.
The exhibition of “Pomyłka / Tipping point of failure”
(„Pomyłka” means „Mistake”) aims to pinpoint a quintes-
sential phenomenon of aesthetics and contemporary art – the
phenomenon of glitch. The aesthetics of glitch stems from an
25. interest in the structure and research on conditions and charac-
teristics of each medium.
Technically, this is can be accomplished by the exploration of
the opportunities offered by for instance circuitbending and da-
tabending. These techniques that are often used by artists that
are working within this field of art can be divided into several
main types. Firstly, they focus on observation of the audiovisual
effects caused by reconstruction of hardware, such as soldering
wires, the changing of values (of resistors or data), introducing
external components to the integrated circuit, etc. A second type
is intentional damaging the media. A third type is damaging and
redesigning data in digital files, when the artist gets to the con-
tent of the file and changes it manually by typing in a variety of
values (computer graphic programs perform the same actions
but in a mechanical way). A fourth type is the action associated
with the transmission of the signal and its modulation. Artists
repeatedly send the same files between devices up to the point
when some of them commit certain errors. A fifth type of activi-
ties are actions related to the repeated compression of files or
using errors of various compressed audio-visual materials.
To this collection we can also add many other related strate-
gies such as the usage of TV interlacing or “freeze frame” in
the VHS machines, the scrolling of the preview of DV devices,
exposing differences in the frequency of images’refreshing and
scanning rates in the camera and TV systems, the usage of dif-
ferences in the lighting of different parts of the old style kin-
escopes that are invisible to the naked eye or the large variety
of feedback techniques, etc. It is an extremely interesting field
of aesthetic exploration, which influences design, advertising
industry and popular culture.
Often, the artists within this field treat each of these tactics as
a research in the extensions of the human senses. Such orien-
tation places them close to the position of for instance scien-
tists. Artists, similarly to scientists, set up a research context
and let the examined matter speaks for itself. But in glitch art,
the word mistake has also become a synonym for the natural
consequences of actions and gives right to a following and a
following trial, which might cause different effects every time.
From this perspective, glitch art could become a chapter in the
history of art by just a simple exploration of the aesthetical rela-
tionships between a first and a subsequent mistake and its refer-
ences to known canons of composition. Each of the redesigned
devices can produce dozens of interesting abstract images per
second and disrupt a yet to be constructed history by the inher-
ent impossibility of capturing ephemeral artifacts – mistakes.
However, this kind of art can also, and maybe more interest-
ingly, be understood in a metaphorical or even political or ethi-
26. cal way. Glitch is obviously related to the aesthetics
of punk or DIY strategies. Striving for a poor quality
image (Low Quality) or deliberately destroying or re-
designing a final message, or to recapture the creativity
of a medium can be described as the key features of an
anti-corporate attitude.
Rosa Menkman aims to show and evaluate the flaws
that we haven’t yet learned to appreciate or even rec-
ognize in our new media – the imperfection – and sets
out to create an awareness of the many questions and
different dichotomies inherent to these imperfections
are brought to the front.
„Within a high-tech world, consumers are blinded by
the sparkles of the latest protocol. They are on an el-
evator that seems to take them to a realm that functions
cleaner, better and faster. However, during this trip in
the elevator they never seem to arrive at a final desti-
nation – the holy grail of perfection. New media are
not perfect and will never be perfect. Diverging and
sometimes even opposing retro-fetishism, we need to
be aware of the doctrine of our flawed, yet superficially
perfect new media.„
The essence of Rosa Menkman’s art does not lie in
achieving visual effects or within the development of
just another glitch aesthetics. Instead she is conduct-
ing an advanced glitch studies, in which she strengthens
practical research in aesthetics and design by scientific
research, with focal points on politics, art-history and
technological forms and discourses.
While artists are no longer interested in achieving results,
but they want to explore the material and are open to the
strangest sensory conclusions, it must be a meaningful
sign that we live in a time in which totalitarian and fas-
cist aesthetics of ideal projections, or the principle of so-
called art without randomness, are fading into oblivion.
Instead, once again, art has become the domain of cre-
ative experiment. This is why, if the history of art wants
to explore this strategy, it has to go very deeply not only
into the artifact, the mistake, but into a process of creat-
ing these images and the unveiling of their hidden logic.
The artists no longer create finished works of art or even
exclusive artistic ideas, but instead they produce creative
platforms, where the addressee has the power to become
the creator of the final work of art. In this sense, glitch
is a constantly mutating entity, that can move from a
ephemeral form of randomness to a new paradigm. This
is where we can find the tipping point of failure.
Michal Brzezinski