Some days ago, I’ve seen in my academy (Ecole d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence) a Blank Pages jam-section. But… What is Blank Pages? The easy answer is visit this link.

 On this link you can watch the video (sorry for that, I stopped using Youtube since they started to put adds in the video itself and wordpress.com still don’t allow to embed videos… grr…) Blank Pages session at the Aix-en-Provence School of Art on Vimeo.

Ok… I’ll explain you in a more explicit way. Blank Pages is a jam session (improvisation) concept, initiated by Thomas Thiery and Erwan Inyzant, using Pure Data (free) or MAX/MSP (not-free). People with all levels in programming, without having prepared themselves for the occasion, get together and produce sound starting with a blank patch (in Pure Data or MAX/MSP). There are some rules :

– The session lasts 60 minutes ;

– Only use MAX/MSP or Pure Data ;

– Start with a blank page ;

– You cannot load previous projects or save ;

Some notes : You cannot use abstractions or objects that are not built-in Pure Data or MAX/MSP ; you can use help files ; the number of participants is unlimited.

An advice : Think to listen your mates while programming your patch.

The TodaysArt Festival 2008, which will take place on the 26th and 27th of September in the city centre of The Hague, closes the Dutch festival season and primes the cultural season, bringing over 300 artists to The Hague, from all four corners of the world, for a weekend of unique and cutting edge artistic showcases. Talented explorers invite you to witness their own personal take on today´s creativity.

Extrait from the festival’s site. More info coming soon.

Text from the festival’s press release :

In 2008, the Ars Electronica Festival is scrutinizing the value of 

intellectual property and thereby facing one of the core issues of our modern knowledge- 

based society: that of freedom of information vs. copyright protection, big profit-making 

opportunities vs. the vision of an open knowledge-based society that seeks to build its 

new economy on the basis of creativity and innovation. And beyond that, we want to 

hammer out practical, workable rules to govern this new reality. 

The 2008 Ars Electronica Festival. September 4 to 9. In Linz. 

www.aec.at/culturaleconomy 

Sorry for the text in French : 

DROP
Arno Laurens
installation

Expérimentation de rencontres entre art et science organisée par le collectif l’Art FéEcho, réunissant six étudiantes en information et communication de l’Université de Provence. L’exposition de l’installation plastique Drop est l’une des dernières étapes de l’expérience menée depuis décembre 2007 par le collectif L’Art FéEcho.

La création de l’œuvre s’est nourrie, au fil de plusieurs mois, de regards, de perceptions, d’expérimentations artistique et scientifique sur la thématique de l’eau. Au cœur de ce processus, Arno Laurens, artiste à l’École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence et Elio Flesia, chimiste et chargé de partenariats au Laboratoire Chimie de Provence ont été sollicités pour échanger sur leurs pratiques respectives. Réflexions, rencontres et entretiens ont permis à cet artiste de créer son œuvre.

Drop est une installation expérimentant l’impact de l’eau sur le métal. Une recherche s’est portée sur les aspérités, la couleur et le son lors de l’association de ces deux matériaux.
En lien avec la création et l’exposition de l’œuvre, un compte-rendu présente le cheminement des échanges et des démarches de médiation du collectif L’Art FéEcho.

Le son est le bruit de la goutte qui tombe dans le sceau d’eau.

English summary : 

The Art FéEcho collectif, composed by six students in information and communication in Provence University, Arno Laurens, artist at the Aix en Provence School of Art and Elio Flesia, chimist and partnerships responsable in the Chemistry Laboratory of Provence worked together, debating and exchanging information, to build the presented piece (exhibited in the Arbois Europole).

Dorp is an installation experiencing the impact of water on the metal.

The sound is the sound of the falling drop in the bucket.

Here a video:

During the Festival C’est Sud in Aix en Provence, the Metronome group was, together with other students for Aix en Provence school of art, got invited to present a part of our work.

The metronome was originally build during the Hybrid workshop. For this exhibition we made some revisions : the aesthetic, the sound now is pickup live and treated by Pure Data (thanks to the help of François Parra), we improved the sonic isolation, we installed lights in it.

We still have some work to do on this piece to get it even better. And I am willing to keep on improving it.

Here is a video of the piece presented in the Aix en Provence city Hall :

The second semester of my academic year turned around a “group project” called “Laboratoire des Fictions”.

We had to get together to think on the fiction laboratory topic. The project ends up with a public presentation in the Studio space (in Aix en Provence School of Art).

We (the class) had to think on different art works and space arrangement in this big room that is the Studio. Each of us presented projects, ideas, concepts, definitions and we debated on theme in order to get a coherent set.

We decided to build a space where the visitor is manipulated, and used as laboratory object of study. The visit starts with charming attendants dressed like nurses/scientist that gives the visitor a placebo pill explaining that the active substance in the pill will make theme feel never before felt sensations. Then the visitor passes through a set of two corridors built with elastic fabrics with the objective to disturb the visitor’s senses. The visitor passes through a third corridor where the soil is soft, the left wall captures the visitors’ shadows and the right wall (nearly invisible because of the darkness)  keeps falling on the visitor’s head. This third corridor leads the visitor to the main room where several installations are establish. The first installation the visitor sees is an anamorphosis activated by a giant hamster wheel where visitors are invited to run. In the same room, the visitor can see the other side of the falling wall, this side of the wall has mirrors, when it falls (this time away from the visitor) our perception of verticality is disturbed and we feel like if we were falling. Another installation is a set of green neon lights that turn off after some time in order for the visitor to see the “Vie en rose” (there is an effect of persistence of vision, when the green light is switched off, the eyes have a adaptation time and you see everything in the opposite color – pink). When the neon light is turned off, we can hear a specialized quadriphonic mix of several versions of  “La vie en rose”. On the floor, a crazy robot drives around avoiding walls and visitors, presenting bugs and errors, annoying people. Finally, a door, in the center of the room, is used to play a Tetris game projected on a waterwall. The waterwall is also the exit. The visitor has to choose between waiting for a random waterfall stop, playing the game to see if it makes the water stop or just cross it with water anyway. Once outside the room, the visitor could find an evaluation machine called “I.D.I.O.” (in french it means “stupid”), where, during a performance, some of the visitors are randomly chosen to get evaluated by a group of (crazy) scientistes.

Since it’s hard to explain the exhibition with words, here are some videos showing it :

Here is a 3D animations made by Floriane Rebatue:

My work in this project is the Tetris waterwall projection. I have designed, built and programmed a big part. The game was programmed using Processing, the door has sensors linked to a PIC 16F876. The waterwall is 4 meters width and 3 meters high, it’s a closed circuit using a water-pump to inject water in a pipe with 1500 holes (1mm diameter). The collector is 4 meters width (in the central part) and is 1 meter large. A small bridge allows visitors to cross the water. The sound is generated by Pure Data (thanks to François Parra). I also got help from Jane, Pierre Loup and Florent.

Here are some sketches :

Here is a video :

Here you can find the code source (addapted to use with a computer keyboard and with a PIC) - Requires oscP5 (project site) library and Processing

Here is the PureData patch (activation of the OSC Library and PureData required).

Here I am, back home again, in Aix en Provence, after a two week trip to the Netherlands. In a future post, I’ll be giving more details about the 12th edition of Sonic Acts. I’ll also present Yolande Harris, English artist in residence at the Montevideo institute in collaboration with the STEIM (STudio for Electro-Instrumental Music, located in Amsterdam), working with sound.

Coming week, in the Aix en Provence School of Art, we will have Sonotorium, 3 days with conferences about sound and art.

The first day, February the 25th, Jean-Paul Ponthot, headmaster of the Aix en Provence School of Art, will present “Idéologie du bruit” (Ideology of noise). Then Bastien Gallet will held “Le son et ses dehors” (Sound and its outsides). Finally, Christina Kubisch programmed a sound projection.

The 26th, Alexandre Castant will start with “Le son, l’image et son double” (Sound, image and its double). Jerome Hansen will continue with ““Le problème d’image“ des arts sonores, une généalogie en trois zones de contacts” (The sound art “image problem“, a genealogy in three contact zones). We’ll finish the day with Kaffe Matthews‘ performance.

The last day, February the 27th, will start with “La forme comme traversée” (The shape as crossing) presented by Christophe Kihm. The next conference will be “Son et déraison” (Sound and unreason) by David Zerbib. To enclose the conference week, we will watch Philippe Franck’s selection of films:

“Luc Ferrari face à sa tautologie, 2 jours avant la fin” (2006, 52min) by Guy-Marc Hinant and Dominique Lohlée;

“The movement of people working” (2003) by Phill Niblock.

This morning was marked by two conferences and a performance in De Bali.

The first conference “The Diorama Revisited”, presented by Erkki Huhtamo, treated about Diorama and many “ama” ending words (like panorama, diaporama, futurama…) history.

You can find here videos from the performance “Digit”, done by Julien Maire, where Maire printes sentences passing his finger over white paper. He uses the words as lines to draw.

The third morning conference was a round table about yesterday’s drone performance. The participants were with Stephen O’Malley, Joachim Nordwall and CM von Hausswolff, moderated by Mike Harding.

The afternoon started with the conference “INTERACTIVITY AND IMMERSION” held by Jeffrey Shaw and Marnix de Nijs.

Jeffrey Shaw presented different technologies to produce images providing an immersion experience and the ways to interact with this devices. He mainly focus his conference around the iCinema center. He presented Cave immersion (projections on the wall, roof and floor) and cylinder immersion environment (the viewer is in the center of a cylinder, the images are projected on the cylinder wall’s) and spherical modular video cameras (cameras that films 360°).

Marnix de Ni presented some of his works:

Exercise in immersion is a 3D immersion experience game where the user wares a suit to travel inside a virtual world superimposed over the real space. The player is free to move around, interactivity is controlled by it’s movements.

Beijing accelerator is an interactive installation with a rotating video projection. The viewer sits on a rotating chair with a joystick (that controls the chair rotation). The objective is to syncronize the chair with the image.

Run motherfucker run is an interactive installation inviting the visitor to run within one of the 25 scenes mostly shot at night in the Rotterdam area. The device, a roller carpet, tends to slow you down by increasing running resistance. This piece is about adrenaline and the expirience of speed.

You can find this post http://www.sonicacts.com/wordpress/?p=109 too.

Today, February the 21st 2008, was the opening night for the 12th edition of the Sonic Acts Festival, in Amsterdam – Netherlands. The festival takes place in 4 different localizations: the Netherlands’ Media Art Institute, also known as Montevideo; the Melkweg, the Paradiso and the De Balie.

The night started at Montevideo, where we could enjoy the exhibition opening. In there, we can see the instalations from Ulf Langheinrich (Soil – 2005 – and OSC – 2006)

Julien Maire (Low Resolution Cinema – 2005 – and Exploding Camera – 2007)

Boris Debackere (probe)

and Kurt Hentschläger (Scape – 2007).

After that, in De Bali, we could watch Stan Brakhage’s film Dog Star Man (1961-1964,73’00), in parallel we could experience the live performance done by the Drone People(Joachim Nordwall, Mika Vainio, Hildur Gudnadöttir, C. Spencer Yeh, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Stephen O’Malley and BJ Nilsen). The live performance is a 4 hours succession of individual performances. No rules were defined except to be alone on the stage and to end like the beginning.

Post done for the festival, you can see it here

Coming weeks, I will be following as a volunteer blogger the 12th edition of the Sonicacts festival… I’ll be publishing posts here in my blog and in the festival’s site.