Some Things Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault Have to Say About Maps (original) (raw)
Abstract A complex corporeality, as this paper argues, can be established by revising our understanding of the relationships between our body, and bodies associated, inter-actant, investigative or correspondent to our body. Fastforwarded by advanced computational design and fabrication, and increasingly embedding sensory and interactive technologies, this poses a challenge to the conceptualisation of body, material and space. At the intersection of architecture, human-computer interaction and choreography, we ask: What is the current status, and potential, of body and bodily experience in this relation? We are exploring here Duchamp’s Large Glass, and Grosz’s Theory of Spatial Complexity as conceptual drivers for a sentient environment that off ers relational exchange for a choreographed number of bodies. GOLD (Monstrous Topographies) is a spatial interactive installation set in the context of a performance that combines actors, audiences, kinetic interactive elements and programmed...
Michelkevičė, L. & Michelkevičius, V. (eds.) Atlas of Diagrammatic Imagination: Maps in Research, Art and Education, 2019
We invite you to traverse the imagination and knowledge of all the artists and researchers who contributed maps, diagrams, and texts to this atlas. Here, scientific and artistic modes of research interact with other practices: drawing, visualisation, mapping, mediation, and education. How does a diagram differ from a text? What are the pros and cons of diagrams when compared to text? Can a map be a research component, an artwork, and a scientific means of communication, all at the same time? How do diagrams mediate between different cognitive systems? How can diagrams convey bodily experiences and gestures? How do they facilitate education? These are only few questions that delineate a general research territory where the book authors’ imaginations overlap. Even though cartographic references play an important role, many of the maps presented and discussed in this atlas go beyond the geographical notion of map, and they often bear no reference to either a location or its representation. They may involve multilayered diagrams, trajectories of a freely moving body or a hand, visual signs of hesitancy, tools of material or visual thinking, charts of tacit knowledge, notations of sensual data, or the models of research hypotheses or findings. This research is also a response to the times we live in. In the face of ever-increasing information flows and the challenges of big data processing and rendition, a linear text is not always the most suggestive form of communication. Meanwhile in maps, within a single plane, we can operate with multiple layers of knowledge, and use different means of expression in order to discover unexpected links. And yet, in the context of our lifestyles as driven by ubiquitous touchscreens, this atlas might appear as a capricious act of dissent. We call our readers and users to slow down, get comfortable, and immerse or even lose themselves in the essays, diagrams, and fold-out maps. The book will prove useful to those working in and between the areas of art history, media and visual studies, literary studies, urbanism, design, sound art, philosophy, science and technology studies (STS), and education. Lina Michelkevičė and Vytautas Michelkevičius (eds.) 2019 *** Bilingual (EN/LT) collection of texts by Arnas Anskaitis, Tomas S. Butkus, Vitalij Červiakov, Christoph Fink, Nikolaus Gansterer, Aldis Gedutis, Giedrė Godienė, Sandra Kazlauskaitė, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt Translator: Tomas Čiučelis Copy editors: Dangė Vitkienė and John Fail Designer: Laura Grigaliūnaitė Language: Lithuanian and English Publisher: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press Release date: 2019 Pages: 208 p Format: 35×25,5 cm Covers: hardback Circulation: 365 ISBN 978-609-447-329-6 Weight: 1150 g
Fucking with the Human Outline: Notes on Zach Blas's SANCTUM
Unknown Ideals, published by Sternberg Press and Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, 2022
In his 2018 installation SANCTUM, Zach Blas transforms the exhibition space of Abierto × Obras at Matadero Madrid into an immersive environment of moving images, sculptures, and a soundscape whose inspiration seems equal parts dance hall, detention center, and place of worship. An accompanying text by Blas titled "Generic Mannequin Gets Fucked," written in first-person narrative form, functions as a guide through the space, its title and content alluding to the central figure of the exhibition.1 Generic Mannequin-think the Incredible Crash Dummies gone digital, reduced to
The body of architecture and its images
Choreographing Space, 2021
The technical reproduction of images has eviscerated something fundamentally corporeal to the appreciation of artwork and its architecture. Experiencing an artwork in the flesh requires a full body commitment; even when the artwork itself is two-dimensional, the experience itself is three-dimensional. It always requires physical presence and bodily engagement; whether it is walking toward it, around it or looking up to get a better view. One would have to engage with our body's kinesthetic capacity to appreciate the work or get a full picture of the meanings and techniques behind the image. When an artwork is integrated into a built space, such as frescos and plastered paintings, conditions for viewing may not be optimal. Sometimes the spatial configuration may impede a full view, or the lighting conditions might not be equal throughout, which may cause strain to the viewer. As such, it also demands the engagement of senses other than the visual: the smell and tactility provided by the architecture that houses it, as well as our sense of balance and orientation, all contributing to the experience of the artwork image. 1 An increased awareness of its architecture, how integral the artwork is to the space that supports it, contributes to the appreciation and communicative capacity of the artwork itself. An artwork that cannot be reproduced is, by its very irreproducibility, demanding of the viewer a commitment to engage with it by using all our senses, and not only the visual register. Given its bodily dimensions, the artwork is essentially understood as three-dimensional, because that is the only way to experience it; with the body, with motion. Even frescos, which are two-dimensional, are not ever really experienced as such, because they are always intimately tied to the architectural space that houses them and by the bodily movement needed to appreciate them. 2 An artwork becomes dissociated with its physical architectural space once it is reproduced and exhibited elsewhere, or seen in a book or on a screen. This shift in viewing modes-in the spectator and in the space-and the resulting loss of dimensionality from technical and digital reproducibility can be explored by zooming into three moments in history with a glance into the changing conception of images, and our relationship to them and the space that contains them.
Unspoken Dialogues, 2017
PT Gary Hill é um artista intermedia que expõe internacionalmente desde os anos 70 e que, desde então, tem marcado o panorama artístico contemporâneo através de uma abordagem profundamente experimental sobre a sicalidade do medium, estabelecendo, por isso, uma relação singular entre arte e tecnologia. Usando ecrãs, instalações de imagens projectadas ou escultura, Gary Hill é reconhecido pelas suas visões poéticas da linguagem, do corpo, da identidade e da imagem, a partir das quais reaquaciona a materialidade, a performatividade e as experiências liminares. No seu trabalho podemos assistir à reinvenção de possibilidades técnicas e tecnológicas do medium que se destacam pelas inovadoras propostas videográácas, performativas e instalativas através de sistemas electrónicos de produção de imagens. A conversa seguinte foi realizada por e-mail e inclui complementos e revisões de Gary Hill. EN Gary Hill is an intermedia artist who has been exhibiting internationally since the 1970s and, since then, has been shaping the contemporary artistic panorama through a deeply experimental approach to the physicality of the medium, establishing a unique relationship between art and technology. Using screens, projected image installations or sculpture, Gary Hill is known for his poetic insights into language, the body, identity and image, raising concerns about materiality, performativity and liminal experiences. In his body of work we can see the reinvention of the technical and technological possibilities of the medium highlighted by his innovative video, performance and installation works, using electronic image production systems. The following conversation was conducted via email and includes Gary Hill’s additions and revisions.
Beyond the Artifact: Unfolding Medieval, Algorithmic, and Unruly Lives of Maps
Material Culture Review, 2022
Discovered on the walls of caves in present-day France, some of the earliest known maps do not depict the earth but the brightest stars of the milky way. Although we know almost nothing about the artists who made them, we sense that they, much like us, looked beyond the terrestrial for meaning and connections. As material artifacts, maps (re)connect temporally distant human experiences, thus underlining Doreen Massey’s concept of place as “the ever-changing outcome of complex sets of relations.” Scrutinizing the ostensible emotional flatness of maps, this paper examines how they enter sensuous, affective, and biographical dimensions of placemaking. Acknowledging that mapped spaces are (socially) constructed not just of sight but also of memory, affect, sound, or tactile experience, it asks when and how maps assume lives of their own, for instance by engendering social change or interfacing with mental geographies of individuals. The paper investigates and historicizes these questions through various styles and periods of mapmaking, for example Ai Weiwei’s map of China made from Tieli wood of demolished Quing dynasty temples, Becky Cooper’s experiential maps of Manhattan, Guy Debord’s “Naked City” depiction of Paris, or Mona Hatoum’s “Present Tense” map of Palestine made from olive oil soap that mediates the soluble borders of the region. Building upon spatial turn scholarship and the theoretical frameworks of critical cartography and affect studies, the paper argues that instead of truthful statements about the world, maps are sites of affective negotiations of meaning. They are ‘living’ socio-material agents that build upon complex assemblages of identity, memory, emotion, and power.
In the early nineteenth century, the translation of nature observations into quantified records often intended to convey both epistemologically and aesthetically determined forms of experience. Diverse fields of knowledge such as literature, philosophy, and art as well as natural history, cartography, and microscopy accomplished this demand in a process of mutual exchange and gradual assimilation of ideas and practices. The book investigates the intriguing complexity of this 'osmotic dynamics', in which various positions on the significance of inner and outer world were continuously exchanged.