The Singing Plant is an installation that lets the audience interact with a natural plant.
When the plant is touched it gives feedback in the forms of sounds and light. The more people touch the it, the more enegetically it responds. The sound gains volume and the light in the room grows from dim to bright.
Peoples reactions become part of the installation. We have seen people pity the plant. We have seen people caress it. And we have seen people dance enthusiastically around it.
The purpose is not to provide answers, but to question established preceptions of the relationship between man, machine and nature.
The exhibition went well in the Botanical Garden about 11.000 people came by and saw our installations.
http://halfmachine.dk/posts/56
(via: Make)
EOD 02 _ electric organ discharge 02
EOD 02 is an installation by Frederik De Wilde created in collaboration with LAb[au]. EOD 02 is a new-media installation exploring the capacity of special species of living blind fishes to perceive (electrosense) their environment and communicate with each other by emitting electric signals, either in pulses or waves. The installation is based on four aquariums of taintless mirror, each presenting a specific composition of fish producing different electric signals. In each aquarium antennas capture the electric communication between the fishes and render these signals into sound. Under each aquarium a matrix of leds is placed pulsing according to the intensity and rhythm of the emitted signals. In this manner the electrical impulses of the fishes drive sound, light and an entire audiovisual space.
Video.
On view from until April 19, 2008 :: Théâtre de l’Agora, Place de l’Agora- BP 46 F-91002 Evry cedex (France).
Via networked_performance.
James Yamada‘ Birth of the Cool installation investigates the contrast between ‘natural’ landscapes and ‘digital’ landscapes typical of post-industrial society. The apparent cold and minimalist sculpture is actually a structure for transforming organic matter – it hosts thousands of worms inside.
These worms digest organic waste from the foundation’s catering facilities and turn it into compost – soil that is rich and fertile – thus creating a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of processing 20kg of organic debris each week. The public cannot detect the presence of the organisms contained within the sculpture as they produce no sound or odor, though the rich compost they generate during the months of the exhibition will gradually be deposited on the floor underneath the sculpture as it falls from a series of holes in the base of the container. Yamada chose the title to evoke what is happening inside the structure – the birth of new earth and new ‘cool’ worms. Above all it is a metaphor for the mechanisms of society and its ongoing, ‘silent’ production of contrastingly useless waste.
For the past ten years, Brandon Ballengée’s work has been the observation of amphibian declines and deformities.
In 2007, The Arts Catalyst in England commissioned the artist to lead a UK study into declining amphibian species, working with the public as well as collaborating scientists.
Cleared and Stained American Bullfrog, collected in Brown County, 1954. Photographed July 17, 2001, from the collection of the Hefner Zoology Museum, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
I find his work deeply moving for many reasons. One of them has to do with the way he communicates his work. He produces not only amazingly beautiful images of these deformed amphibians but also takes his discourse out of the white walls of art galleries (where aonly a certain category of people will ever get to see them) by taking people to field trips and let them experience first hand what his happening in their own backyards.
The Arts Catalyst has just released a video that documents the project to date:
You can also see some of Brandon’s work at Exit Art in New York in the E.P.A. (Environmental Performance Actions) exhibition through May 17, 2008.
One of my favourite magazines is aminima. The name of the publication comes from the fact that its editors, the lovely Barcelona-based Andrea Garcia Mendez and Clara Alba, claim that they take a “very minimal” part to its redaction. It’s the artists themselves who write about their work. The selected authors maintain a critical view on the problems of their time. Their work reflects on aesthetic, technological and political questions.
Part of the mag is online and i just spotted this selection of writings by people “making art with living systems.”