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Ambo Dextro
Reconfigured typewriter, enamel
2005
Category: art
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27OctTypewriter
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28OctMariko Mori
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Mariko Mori lives and works in New York. This November, Deitch Projects will be pleased to present Tom Na H-iu, an exhibition of new work by Mariko Mori. The title of the exhibition draws its name from the monumental 4.5 meter sculpture of the same name, and will be exhibited along with two other large-scale sculptures, Flatstone and Roundstone. The works develop Mori’s continued interest in a fusion of art and technology, Buddhism, and the idea of universal spiritual consciousness. Drawing from ancient rituals and symbols, Mori uses cutting edge technology and material to create a strikingly beautiful vision for the 21st century.
Mori’s last installation at Deitch Projects was Oneness in 2003, a project held in conjunction with the Public Art Fund’s installation of her Wave UFO project. Oneness is an allegory of connectedness, a representation of the disappearance of boundaries between the self and others. It is a symbol of the acceptance of otherness and a model for overcoming national and cultural borders. It also is a representation of the Buddhist concept of oneness, of the world existing as one interconnected organism.
Mariko Mori’s remarkable sculpture, Wave UFO was included in the 2005 Venice Biennale, after being exhibited in New York with the Public Art Fund and at the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa. It was recently included in her solo exhibition at The Groniger Museum. The Wave UFO is on view through January 2008, at the Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, as part of Oneness, their survey of Mariko Mori’s work.
More on Deitch
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06NovPhones
Photo by James BowskillA phone that seems to come out of L’Odeur de la papaye verte (Cyclo).
Photo by Patrick GriesThis one is more for a need that I witness around me! Adjustable isolation space by Robert Stadler.
Apparently one can notice a need for blocking out all peripheral sensory distraction while talking on the phone, hence the Auger-Loizeau’s Isophone.
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22NovToy or not toy exhibit
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An exhibition I should not have missed! Thankfully Etienne Mineur reported on it wonderfully: Toy Comix, an exhibition at the musée des Arts décoratifs.
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23NovA portent of human augmentation
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Greasy Spoon, 2007 by Brian WalkerIn our cyborg world, I think it would be nice if prosthesis could mean expanding human skills or on a contrary re-creating fragile and powerless human sculptures.
Examples of prostheses
- Researchers explored the ability of the skin to acquire and process information rivaling our senses of sight and hearing. The e-skin lab researches on tactile interfaces consisting both of sensors and actuators: wearable artificial skins as a navigation aid in space.
- The Rheo Knee made by Ossur adapts to an individual’s walking style by detecting 1,000 times every second the knee’s position and the load applied to the limb. The user gets the proper amount of resistance for every step.
Via wired- Victhom’s urinary implant, a catheter-free, fully implanted pacemaker for the bladder. If trials go well, it could help 800 million people worldwide with bladder dysfunctions caused by spinal cord injury.
- Durom™ Hip Resurfacing a joint replacement system that offers “freedom” of movement.
- The cyberhand gives amputees the ability to use thought to move and grasp naturally, even to feel whatever the device touches.
- A nanotechnology developed at MIT can “knit” together damaged neurons. Researchers have already restored sight to rodents and they believe the technique might also help repair injured spinal cords
- Penn State developed the first fully implantable artificial heart, and in 2000 AbloMed acquired rights to further develop the technology. It is FDA approved only for emergency use and the company hopes to have broader approval by 2008. Eventually, researchers hope it can be a long-term solution for heart failure patients.
- Current research on technological prostheses by Hugh Herr -director of the bio mechatronics group at the MIT Media Laboratory- transforms the perception a person wearing a prosthesis has of his artificial body part. While the mechanical properties of conventional passive prostheses remain fixed with walking speed and terrain, this research explores the prosthesis not just as a passive object, but also as an extension of the body. The prosthesis enables additional mechanical energy for forward propulsion of an ankle as well as controlling the ankle joint impedance.
- The rehabilitation institute of Chicago made a biohybrid arm that allows amputees to move the prosthetic by thought alone.
- For patients who have lost the use of their arms, scientists at the Cleveland FES Center are developing functional electrical stimulation systems.
- Harvard and Massachisetts General Hospital researchers are developing an implantable artificial electrolarynx communication system for patients who have had a complete laryngectomy. The technology includes a neural interface and hands-free control of a natural sounding voice prosthesis.
- Advanced Bionics made a cochlear implant that sends sounds directly to the auditory nerve instead of amplifying sound like a regular hearing aid.
- IIP technologies and Intelligent Medical Implants made a retinal implant that bridges and replaces the processing function of a defective retina. Using it some blind persons can regain partial vision and orientation, even in unfamiliar surroundings.
- A silicon hippocampus replacement could eventually replace damaged areas of the brain. Currently being developed by scientists at the University of Southern California.
- Cyberkinetics created Braingate, a neuroprosthetic system with a patch that attaches directly to neurons in the brain to sense electrical signals. The sensor sends signals that can move a computer cursor or flip a switch.
- Living bacteria have been incorporated into an electronic circuit to produce a supersensitive humidity sensor. Similar devices could one day be made that take greater advantage of living organisms, perhaps even using bacteria’s energy systems to power electrical devices. Via We make money not art.
- Microsoft Research filed a patent on power and data transmission through the human body. The human body is used as a conductive medium, which distributes power and/or data by coupling a power source to the human body via a first set of electrodes. In this case, the body acts as a computer network.
Don’t forget to check out the insightful Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future
The prosthesis is not a mere extension of the human body; it is the constitution of this body qua “human.”
—Bernard Steigler,Technics and Time
Natalie Portman by freaking news.
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27NovTransitional objects
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Filet From the series Hommage au Sol – accesoires de prolongement du corps, objets transitionels de perception
1989-1994Marie-Claire Bevar works with textiles, transforms them, adds all kinds of other materials to them, turns them into objects which has been her passion and necessity since childhood.
After collaborating both in trade and in theater, she decided to create objects as part of a personal introspection expressing itself through propositions evolving around the theme of the body. Both in Hommage au Sol and in L’Avant-Bras, Le Lien, Le Trait d’Union on one side and in Artextilabo, a laboratory of experimentations.
DoréHommage au Sol focuses around the foot and its relation to the ground. It includes accessories extending the body, transitory objects of perception, photos, videos and written documentation.
VeniseL’Avant-Bras, Le Lien, Le Trait d’Union is a work in progress. First she experimented with materials and techniques proper to the theme. A first series of objects were created, and now the artist is reflecting on them, furthering her research and figuring out how to stage them and present them to the public.
Chatting with Paulina on transitional objects made me revisit its classical roots. And what a pleasure to re-read Jerome Singer and his wife Dorothy’s -authors of the awesome house of make believe book– fascinating journal paper from which I quote:
One possible route to the beginnings of the creation of miniaturized virtual realities by the very young may emerge in the course of older babies’ or toddlers’ manifestations of what the psychoanalyst, Winnicott (1971), termed involvement with “transitional objects.” Early on many children become attached to a soft cloth or to some combination of an old crib blanket and a “plush” toy, a cloth bunny rabbit, bear, or lamb. The well-known Peanuts’ cartoons’ youngest character, Linus, carries a worn blanket around all day and clings to it tenaciously. Such behavior generally meets those criteria of play developed in the research of Smith and Vollstedt (1985), nonliteralness and associated positive affect. Actually, one might propose that the tenacity with which children cling to these objects even as they fade in color, shrink or become ragged, may reflect the very beginnings of an experience of autonomy (“my blankie”) and personal ownership, a primordial expression of our nearly universal adult sense of private property upon which whole societies and legal systems are constructed.
In Singer, Jerome L. & Singer, Dorothy G. (2006). Preschoolers’ imaginative play as precursor of narrative consciousness. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 25 (2):97-117.
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10DecPoetic chairs
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I stumbled upon Stuhlhockerbank by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz. For a public use of architecture merging chair and stool into seat elements, the life of the sitting place becomes engraved in the artist’ sculpture. The chairs are discombobulated.
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26DecCultural Chicago
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Icelandic Rift by new media artist Sabrina RaafCultural Chicago is a community site for the arts based in Chicago. The online journal offers the possibility for readers to contribute with local cultural news. Among other things, it advertises Chicago artists, exhibitions, art events and allows readers to create a local community by sharing similar interests through a forum, regular posts and bookmarks. I wish such a journal existed in Boston. Combining the sharing of local art events with informative interviews to a social network is kind of unique.
Reading and subscribing to the journal, I discovered the spectacular work of Sabrina Raaf on creative machines capable of generating unique and unpredictable manifestations of art.
In her interview by Cultural Chicago, Sabrina Raaf explains:
“Technology (software and hardware) is not only a means or set of tools. It does also necessitate a type of logic-based thinking in order to use it and subvert it creatively. You really have to be a person who is innately fascinated by new technologies in order to be able to suffer through the learning curves and endless upgrades. But, ultimately, new technologies offer an endless string of more and more powerful and flexible tools to make art with. Even beyond that, they offer a new language to speak to viewers with; there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., that artists haven’t ever strung together before in the service of art. And, that’s something really exciting.”Grower is a piece that responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air generated by human breath. It draws individual blades of grass along a wall in varying heights in accordance to the amount of carbon dioxide present. As such it functions as a real time display on people attendance to the art space!
Dry Translator, a sculptural installation piece, is built in response to new trends in ‘smart architecture.’ Smart technology is being created for enhanced human interaction and control of one’s work and home environments. Interestingly what excites many is not the necessarily the enhancement of control, but really more the idea of intelligent responsiveness and heightened personal connection with the rooms they inhabit, dixit Sabrina Raaf.
In the journal I also enjoyed reading the interview of Colleen Plumb, Nature in Urban Spaces. The artist “examines nature in the urban environment, seeking to examine the relationship humans have with animals, how we coexist with the natural world, and the disappearance of it within the urban space.”
Lobby with trees by Colleen PlumbBeing a video game addict at the same time than loving being lost in the countryside, I am always puzzled by criticism on a virtual reality that drives us from our physical reality. Reading this interview was refreshing and the following image by Colleen Plumb talks for itself. The overgrown tree squeezed within walls to provide a relief to humans, an experience of nature, recreated and artificial for the sake of us feeling/being connected to nature.
Laundromat“We live in a time of games and virtual experiences which I find funny, sad, and, I guess, a reality. What effect could this be having on people? I guess representations are created due to a lack of the actual. We certainly can’t walk through a forest of bamboo trees in downtown Chicago. It seems that almost real will suffice most of the time. It must provide relief, these fabrications, otherwise they would not be so popular: The Rainforest Café. Well, the trees here are real—they are in a fake habitat, a lobby, and seem to be thriving. – Colleen Plumb”
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26DecCultural Chicago
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive the latest Architectradure’s articles in your reader or via email. Thanks for visiting!
Icelandic Rift by new media artist Sabrina RaafCultural Chicago is a community site for the arts based in Chicago. The online journal offers the possibility for readers to contribute with local cultural news. Among other things, it advertises Chicago artists, exhibitions, art events and allows readers to create a local community by sharing similar interests through a forum, regular posts and bookmarks. I wish such a journal existed in Boston. Combining the sharing of local art events with informative interviews to a social network is kind of unique.
Reading and subscribing to the journal, I discovered the spectacular work of Sabrina Raaf on creative machines capable of generating unique and unpredictable manifestations of art.
In her interview by Cultural Chicago, Sabrina Raaf explains:
“Technology (software and hardware) is not only a means or set of tools. It does also necessitate a type of logic-based thinking in order to use it and subvert it creatively. You really have to be a person who is innately fascinated by new technologies in order to be able to suffer through the learning curves and endless upgrades. But, ultimately, new technologies offer an endless string of more and more powerful and flexible tools to make art with. Even beyond that, they offer a new language to speak to viewers with; there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., that artists haven’t ever strung together before in the service of art. And, that’s something really exciting.”Grower is a piece that responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air generated by human breath. It draws individual blades of grass along a wall in varying heights in accordance to the amount of carbon dioxide present. As such it functions as a real time display on people attendance to the art space!
Dry Translator, a sculptural installation piece, is built in response to new trends in ‘smart architecture.’ Smart technology is being created for enhanced human interaction and control of one’s work and home environments. Interestingly what excites many is not the necessarily the enhancement of control, but really more the idea of intelligent responsiveness and heightened personal connection with the rooms they inhabit, dixit Sabrina Raaf.
In the journal I also enjoyed reading the interview of Colleen Plumb, Nature in Urban Spaces. The artist “examines nature in the urban environment, seeking to examine the relationship humans have with animals, how we coexist with the natural world, and the disappearance of it within the urban space.”
Lobby with trees by Colleen PlumbBeing a video game addict at the same time than loving being lost in the countryside, I am always puzzled by criticism on a virtual reality that drives us from our physical reality. Reading this interview was refreshing and the following image by Colleen Plumb talks for itself. The overgrown tree squeezed within walls to provide a relief to humans, an experience of nature, recreated and artificial for the sake of us feeling/being connected to nature.
Laundromat“We live in a time of games and virtual experiences which I find funny, sad, and, I guess, a reality. What effect could this be having on people? I guess representations are created due to a lack of the actual. We certainly can’t walk through a forest of bamboo trees in downtown Chicago. It seems that almost real will suffice most of the time. It must provide relief, these fabrications, otherwise they would not be so popular: The Rainforest Café. Well, the trees here are real—they are in a fake habitat, a lobby, and seem to be thriving. – Colleen Plumb”
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06JanTherapeutic objects
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Having researched and designed haptic devices to support psychotherapeutic treatments, I am fascinated by French designer 🙂 Mathieu Lehanneur’s work on therapeutic objects he conceived with psychiatric consultants: Bernard Lachaux, Patrick Lemoine and model makers: Alban Danguy des Deserts. These objects are part of the permanent collection of the MOMA, NYC.
He proposes a series of objects not only as an attempt to bring design into the medical sphere, but essentially to design medications from the perspective of the patient and his/her illness relationship.
His scenario envisions: the placebo effect, a participation of the patient in his/her treatment, making the medication a communicative and sensory object, debating on the mechanistic approach of modern pharmacology, playing on emotions of attraction, desire, fear and repulsion towards a device or a particular form using gestures, usage practices and rituals.
Therapeutic felt-tip pen, 2001.This analgesic for chronic pain is a systemic medication, which acts on all symptoms together. All that is required is to write on the painful area of the body each day and to remove the used cartridge at the end of each day. This transdermal product is coupled with a user-friendly ink that disappears after several minutes.
The Third Lung, 2001.
This project consists of a base treatment for asthma. The patient who refuses to accept his illness will reject even more the idea of taking medication unnecessary. The idea behind this therapeutic object is to establish a relationship of dependence.
But in this case the medication is dependent on the patient. Between two doses, the volume of the medication increases, this displaying its own physiological problem and indicating to the patient the urgency of taking the medication. Once the dose is administered, the volume decreases and returns to its normal level, only to expand once again until the next dose is administered.
The First MouthfulPosted by Cati Vaucelle
Architectradure
