ecopolis

The city of Turin will host the fourth edition of the Piemonte Share Festival from 11th to 16th March 2008. The festival promises to be at the cutting edge of the vast cultural programme of events lined up for the city currently brandishing the title 2008 World Design Capital.
Steering us round this wonderful artistic adventure is Bruce Sterling, guest curator and chairman of the jury that has selected the work on show. Better known for his science fiction writing and inventor of the cyberpunk genre, he is currently a guest in Turin for six months, actively involved in raising the temperature in this ferment. He will also supply the public with regular personal rundowns on goings-on at the Piemonte Share Festival, which is set to become a year to remember.
Free entry.

The theme for the 2008 edition, which will dominate the contents of the conferences, round tables, workshops and performances, is the new materiality of digital arts. In the 90s the net art phenomenon addressed a need to reach beyond its own limits, drawing immateriality into the equation and threatening the real. Nowadays, society relates to technologies in a natural way by allowing the immaterial to become real. By exploring new, intelligent interaction between man and machine, this relationship has been completely integrated into everyday life. In the new millennium man and machine interact on the same level, shaping and changing the surrounding environment as they see fit. The Piemonte Share Festival is an international cultural event that probes the vast panorama of new technologies and investigates their applications in art and design.

Because of recent advances in digital fabrication technology, manufacturing is becoming a digital art and culture enterprise. The exciting advent of 3d printing, rapid prototyping, and rapid manufacturing is of profound importance to SHARE, for it bring the power to create physical objects to the techno-artist’s lab-bench, studio and atelier. It means that digital artists, whose work was once mostly virtual, can create in the actual.

SHARE has chosen the theme “Manufacturing” for its 2008 event for two compelling reasons. First, we want to demonstrate digital manufacturing to our core audience, who are very technically adept people, but not used to the idea that they can create real objects with CAD, fabricators and the Internet. The second reason is that Torino is the World Capital of Design 2008. Torino is a strong manufacturing center. SHARE is very international in its outlook and audience, but in 2008 this Torino festival should and will emphasize the fact that it is from Torino.

Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic reviews the OLPC at LIFT Conference. The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a ICT4D non-profit organization, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, set up to oversee The Children’s Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 “$100 laptop”. Both the project and the organization were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. According to the home page of the project’s wiki at laptop.org, “OLPC espouses five core principles: child ownership; low ages; saturation; connection; and free and open source.“

Front is a design group of four: Sofia Lagerkvist, Charlotte von der Lancken, Anna Lindgren and Katja Sävström. They work as a group where all members are involved in the design process from initial discussions and ideas to final product. Their works are based on common discussions, exploring and investigations about different topics. And the final products often communicates a story to the observer about the design process, about conventions within the product field or about the material it is made of.

The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.
Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

The Swedish design group FRONT has been working in Japan since September. During this time they have developed and explored the technique they used in the making of Sketch Furniture which they showed in Art Basel Miami / Design 05 with Barry Friedman Gallery Ltd ( New York ). Front make design as a performance. During Tokyo Design week they will show the process of making Sketch Furniture and the final pieces of furniture at Tokyo Wonder Site 31 October – 5 November.

Rather than focusing on the current development of nanotechnology, such as creating lighter and stronger materials, Chris Woebken Project focuses on exploring its potential further, creating more manipulative prototypes such as organic electronics.

What do organic electronics look like and how will our relationship with these products change? Can organic electronics with biosensors open up new possibilities for sensual and poetic designs? Seeds contain material and information needed to grow organisms as well as algorithms for device networking.

Using seeds as a simulation for smart dust, it allows one to easily visualize new interactions such as breaking, sharing, throwing away and mining data. These new interactions not only generate new behaviors but also redefine existing stereotypical electronic products.

Reduced Carbon Footprint Souvenirs is a project by Héctor Serrano, with 3D consultancy by Javier Esteban and sponsored by 3D Systems. This project was created for the Ten Again exhibition of sustainable design at 100% Design in London last September.

A collection of souvenirs that can be send by e-mail and then materialize using a 3D Printer (stereolithography rapid prototyping). No transport or standard production methods are required so the object carbon footprint is reduced to the minimum.

The project questions the way objects are manufactured and new technologies are applied to propose alternative ways of reducing their impact on the environment.

The project becomes specially relevant as the 3D printers are getting smaller and more affordable. In the near future this technology will be as accessible as standard in-jet, so objects could be printed from our homes.

Along with Beuys Everybody is an Artist maxim was born the performance pieces. Embodied art, which contributed to create a sort of semi-mythological persona bound between showman and shaman, audacity and megalomania. Embodied reality: in 1979 he was one of the five hundred signatories who founded the German Green Party.

Beuys’s project 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung, was begun in 1982 at Documenta 7, the greatest art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.

His plan called for the planting of seven thousand trees, each paired with a columnar basalt stone approximately four feet high above ground, throughout the greater city of Kassel.

Beuys actions’ were central to his use of sculpture as an evolutionary process. Also the use of evocative materials to recall forth multiple associations. As much for Eva and Franco Mattes and their Synthetic Performance in Second Life.

All their actions are performed through their avatars, which were constructed from their bodies and faces. People can attend and interact with the live performances connecting to the video-game from all over the world. The series started in January 2007.

The couple are reenacting historical performances such as Beuys’ work “7000 Oaks” in the synthetic world of Second Life. An action which encourage the synthetic viewers to contemplate possibilities for new meaning of Art embodiment.

The first virtual tree and stone were planted on March the 16th 2007, exactly 25 years after the original oak was planted.

The 7000 basalt stones have been stacked on an island in Second Life: Odyssey. The diminishing pile of virtual stones will indicate the progress of the project, which will go on until all 7000 oaks and stones will be placed.

Second Life inhabitants will have the chance to take part to the performance, placing stones and trees in their lands.

But what kind of performance is that? Self-awareness, probably.

Imagine ergo sum. With the minimal effort, thou.

Capitàn Germàn è il titolo della mostra che il MIAAO dedica all’artigiano metropolitano Germàn Impache, aperta al pubblico dal 12 gennaio al 24 febbraio 2008. Conclusa con successo la mostra Astronave Torino. Turin Spaceship Company, che ha segnato il take-off verso AFTERVILLE – rassegna di manifestazioni progettata da Undesign di Michele Bortolami e Tommaso Delmastro con Fabrizio Accatino e Massimo Teghille, ufficialmente collegate al prossimo Congresso Mondiale degli Architetti UIA Torino 2008 – ora si continua la missione onorando un membro del suo equipaggio torinese, protagonista di un sequel del fortunato viaggio nel mondo delle arti applicate spaziali. Nella Galleria Sottana del MIAAO verrà esposta una selezione inedita di opere di Germàn Impache, attivo a Torino ma di origini argentine, specialista nella realizzazione di maquettes di astronavi ma anche realizzatore di progetti di scenografie e allestimenti per rassegne scientifiche (padiglione degli effetti speciali nella rassegna Experimenta 1995 organizzata per il Centenario del Cinema) e noti festival di fantascienza (fra cui i celebri raduni dello Star Trek fans club), creatore di modelli di prototipazione rapida e di plastici areonautici per importanti industrie internazionali.

In un’epoca in cui gli effetti speciali sono ormai prerogativa della computergrafica, Impache, sfruttando al massimo la fantasia e l’abilità artigianale con un approccio che lui stesso definisce ‘passionale’, ripercorre le tappe dei costruttori degli esordi – fra i riferimenti fondamentali 2001, Odissea nello Spazio di Kubrick – e realizza le sue opere con l’ausilio di pochi mezzi tecnologici, creando navicelle – di good design oppure di delirium design – a volte ispirate a veicoli realmente inviati nello spazio, con oggetti trovati e materiali di recupero. Su basi strutturali molto calcolate architettonicamente e meccanicamente, quasi come le sue astronavi dovessero realmente decollare, Impache dedica ai particolari e alle finiture una cura sorprendente. Il suo fine ultimo è quello di affascinare, perché, come dice Massimiliano Fuksas, “progettare è sognare” e le astronavi di Capitàn Germàn, nate come lui stesso afferma da visioni oniriche, non sono solo macchine da sofisticato intrattenimento, ma anche veicoli per trip mentali.

Accanto alle astronavi di Impache, come ‘relitti spaziali’ di Astronave Torino, prima tappa di una esposizione-esplorazione dedicata alle interferenze concettuali e figurative tra il pensiero progettuale e l’immaginario della fantascienza nel ’900, definita dal critico Filippo Rossi come una mostra importante per la cultura e la politica italiana (Architetti a lezione di Futurismo, in “Secolo d’Italia”, giovedì 27 dicembre 2007), restano visibili alcune opere di ‘artigiani curiosi’ come Marco Patrito, autore della multimedia graphic novel Sinkha, Tullio Rolandi, mago di rendering futuribili, Giulia Caira, Giampiero Fontana, Roberto Zucca, Michele Guaschino, Bruno Petronzi e le opere di nano-arte dei grafici Alessandro Scali e Robin Goode.
E resta anche aperto il MIAAO DRUGSTORE, lo “spaccio di arti applicate” che ha creato con la vendita dei suoi prodotti una “dipendenza” che dovrà essere, d’ora in poi, sempre soddisfatta.

Astronave Torino. Turin Spaceship Company Sequel
CAPITÀN GERMÀN
Artefatti astrali di Germàn Impache
MIAAO – via Maria Vittoria 5
dal 12 gennaio al 24 febbraio 2008

apertura al pubblico
dal martedì al venerdì ore 16.00-19.30
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