What to do on a Sunday afternoon when you’ve worked up an appetite for art? The galleries are closed and you’ve seen what’s up in the museums. Browse through Art Forum and you’ll see an ad from “The Performance Call Girl”! The Icelandic artist, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, has for more than a year now been alert by her computer every Sunday in case someone anticipating a web performance rings her on Skype. Each person gets a special treatment, a spontaneous, dreamlike fantasy that invokes questions of the identity of the performer, who transcends a diversity of mythical roles via current image technology.

They are a modern merger of female stereotypes, e.g. the Gypsy fortune-teller and the prostitute who accepts appointments by call. Ásdís has a variety of oddments close at hand; wigs, glimmer, Christmas decorations, feathers, mirrors and lights. Should someone call, she delivers an abstract display – a “visual poem”, she calls it – reciting improvised phrases and demonstrating all sorts of gimmicks. It is fascinating to associate the ridiculously frivolous stunts that she actually employs with the baffling outcome at the other end of the line. The viewer will only get a partial glimpse of what is going on, distorted colours, blurred shimmers and vague messages. Behind the razzmatazz there is a serious investigation into the relationship between artist and viewer.

As an art experience, the Skype performances take place in a unique set-up and far from the traditional art space. The viewer is one on one with the artist, who not only performs for him or her alone, but sees them in the same way as they se her. It is an intimate situation evoking the notion of various trades of the sex industry, such as the peep show, and Ásdís certainly does not attempt to conceal this reference by literally naming the happening “The Performance Call Girl”. However, hers is less an attempt to take on the clichéd metaphor of art and prostitution, as it is a pun aimed at highlighting the unorthodox art site, which is the Internet.

The work became an experiment in presence and absence of artist and viewer … She and the viewer are both looking at a computer screen with a built-in camera, they gaze at her and she gazes back at them. The screen becomes a mystical tool, where the body and the senses get distorted. In Iceland (where there is a tradition for the creation of new local words for new inventions) the word for “computer” is “tölva”, a portmanteau word deriving from “tölur” for numbers and “völva” for seeing stone. The computer becomes a crystal ball that Ásdís and the viewer scry simultaneously.

She flirts with the notion that the persistent enchantment with technology finds its roots in religious or transcendental imagination. Marshall McLuhan, who is considered a leading thinker of the electronic age, once remarked that the telephone might be likened to a form of telepathy. Technology is pursued in order to extend the human condition and the various ways human beings extend themselves affects our relationships with one another. Skype is certainly a form of human extension, a medium that abolishes the limitations of space between people who wish to communicate.

She is generous enough to offer one “client” after the other a beautiful and unique moment every Sunday, a genuine afternoon delight. As they engage in the conduct, mesmerized, their senses are challenged and the relationship of art and audience put to the test.

From Afternoon Delight
on Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir’s Performance Call Girl
by Markús T. Andrésson (2008)

In diretta su internet
giovedì 9 aprile ore 21,30
http://www.oistros.it/lunapiena

Ignazio Licata è un fisico teorico, professore presso l’Institute for Basic Research di Palm Harbor, Florida, Usa ed attualmente direttore scientifico dell’ISEM, Institute for Scientific Methodology a Bagheria, Palermo. Ha iniziato lavorando nel campo delle particelle e della cosmologia quantistica. Ha discusso le sue ricerche con teorici del calibro di David Bohm e J. P.Vigier.
Oltre ai numerosi contributi specialistici (www.i-sem.net) ha pubblicato: Osservando la Sfinge. La realtà virtuale della fisica quantistica, Di Renzo, Roma, 2006 e La Logica Aperta della Mente, Codice Edizioni, Torino, 2008 che hanno incontrato un notevole successo di pubblico.
A settembre dell’anno scorso ha ricevuto il Premio “Veneri di Parabita” per l’arte e la scienza che gli ha permesso di aprire un proficuo rapporto col Salento ed in particolare con le ricerche condotte dal gruppo Oistros sul tema del tarantismo.
Un Incontro nella luna piena del 9 aprile specialissimo, dunque, che prenderà le mosse da una domanda: Se tanti percorsi di conoscenza si sono risolti in circoli viziosi, possiamo continuare a pensare entro le gabbie delle discipline come ci hanno insegnato a fare, o è possibile trovare percorsi virtuosi?

Yesterday I was reading about Tru2way™ technology, the new name for the “OpenCable Applications Platform” (OCAP) that’s being built into televisions, set-top boxes and other electronic devices to enjoy television anywhere, anytime you want.

With tru2way technology, cable companies, content developers, network programmers and consumer electronics companies can quickly deliver the interactive services consumers “want”, and it will work on almost every cable system in the United States as well as in other countries.

This tru2way technology will prove once and for all that any medium (newspapers, magazines and radio before it, TV and just like the internet after it) performs (multi) media services. (the question is how we use or abuse it!)

Anyway: Electronics industry – including Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Intel, TiVo, Motorola, Cisco and Microsoft, are working with COMCAST -cable industry leader – to make the tru2way solution a reality – introducing the industry’s first portable DVR player powered by tru2way technology that will let the consumers watch their recorded programs anytime and anywhere – in the home, at the seaside or on a road trip with their families or friends. Simpler operation with a single remote control. And shared views of course…

“The tru2way platform is here today, and provides the best way to get two-way devices into the hands of consumers, while also giving them access to the full suite of services they want and expect from cable”, said Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Comcast Corporation and Chairman of CableLabs.

Panasonic Viera HDTV with tru2way technology provides infact multiple benefits including the access the full range of interactive digital cable video services, video on demand and interactive program guides without a set-top-box.

The Comcast AnyPlay™ Portable DVR (P-DVR) is expected to be available in early 2009 and will let playback DVDs and audio CDs.

The Body Language User Interface, or BLUI™ began as a collaboration between a computer scientist and an artist. The artist was interested in drawing and sculpting in a 3D virtual environment, while the computer scientist was interested in exploring virtual reality user interfaces.

First result of this collaboration is called BLUI : an unique form of hands-free interaction that supports blowing at a laptop or computer screen to directly control certain interactive applications. Localization estimates are produced in real-time to determine where on the screen the person is blowing.

BLUI is a creation of Bill Brody and Chris Hartman of the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The aim is also the basis for a user interface: there is no proper surface and you move with complete freedom in the environment. http://www.blui.org/

Last weekend i went to the ElettroWave Festival to have a look to the BIP – building interactive plagrounds, by NADA and in collaboration with ArsNova.

Situated at the beginning of a industrial pavillion there’re many interesting installation: Zygote – Interactive Ball by Alex Beim, a flying ball that change colors when touched, the Laughing Swings by Rinotchild (Michal Rinott & Michal Rothschild), two swings that the more swings the more laugh, an interface, developed at the Touchdown Workshop, that works as a drinking race inside a videogame , Moving Forward by QOOBtv and iRagazzidellaPrateria, a table to realize real time stop motion animation, ReacTable by Interactive Sonic Systems team, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a wonderful digital musical instrument/interface and VIP, Virtual Ideinty Process by the Master in Digital Environment Design, NABA, that is an interactive table that generates audiovisuals.
You can see all of them in the video that speaks better than any word.

Online Videos by ECOPOLIS

The audience was quite interested and it’s quite difficult usually to involve people with interactive installation inside a musical festival, particularly at night. It was the invisibility of the computer to let people enter into the dimension of each of the installations, no manuals, no instructins, each piece was really transparent and easy to access.

Two words about ReactAble: i met Carlos, the musician of the group that developed this instrument and he instroduced to us tthe tool showing us its potentiality in a quick and dirty demo with two other people ( one of them is the boyguard that liked it so much to play it..:)

Online Videos by ECOPOLIS

About Elettrowave the setting was really nice, inside a big industrial pavillion, with three stages with many names like Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu, Zip, Matthew Dear’s Big Hands, Cassius, Davide Squillace, Hugo, DJ Raresh, Modeselektor but most of all i appreciate the good mood of the people involved from the bodyguard to the people at the bars, from Dino Lupelli to all the musicians involved that played really good motivated.

If you want to see more photos check here.

It’s alla about the people adaptation and inspiration to the materials they have: Vladimir Archipo, a young russian, collected since many years a lot of tools made of re-used material. The Wall was down, the Communism was falling, but people still needed the tools for their daily lives. Vladimir Archipo collected thounsands of tools and handmade objects just for their beauty. He collected them and also he recorded the story behind every object, realizing a wonderful book called Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts .

There’s also a web arsenal of all this artifacts, just in russian, but you can just surf it for pleaseure and beauty.

Here some examples taken from the Kevin Kelly’s blog:

Television aerial Aleksandr Tarasov, Ramenskoye, Moscow region, 1980. Made from table lamp base, textolite, a conductor, screws.
This is a television aerial, for the 33rd channel, which in the period between 1978 and 1980 was transmitted in Leningrad. There weren’t any antennas for sale and the magazine Radio published some different plans for making them. Basically this antenna was made using a sketch from this magazine. Instead of cutting it out of a sheet of metal I took a piece of fibreglass laminate, which is plastic with foil on one side. And the tracks were cut out from foil according to the sizes published in Radio. As for the base, I used a base from a table lamp – it was necessary to fix it on with something. There’s nothing miraculous about this construction, I was more amazed that Arkhipov saw something in it. I consider it to be a very simple thing, made for a purpose between other jobs. The signal from the antenna is received through this cable and then sent to the TV. The cable has to correspond with the elements of the antenna in order to effectively transmit the signal coming from the antenna. Apart from that, this cable has to go around the antenna in a certain way so that the wave resistance in the current of the cable connecting the antenna matches the ‘line’. Well, here you need to use your wits. How can you lay this cable around the antenna? Around the edges some openings were drilled and thread was put into them and then with the method they use in radio electronic equipment it was tied on. They bind sausages up like that. And because of this it reminds some people of plaits, or a sausage.

Badminton Shuttlecock. Made from Plastic bottle, cloth, elastic band– Gennadii Konychev, Ryazan region, 2000
I took a plastic bottle and cut out something looking more or less like a shuttlecock. These stabilisers are supposed to be the feathers. And to soften the impact I covered the end with soft pieces of material and an elastic band.