Exhibition of Space the Final Frontier at CKP
We have reached the end of the Space the Final Frontier journey culminating in an exhibition at Chitra Kala Parishad, Bangalore on March 17, 2011. Each of the groups was asked to make a presentation of their research in some way, and all installations are considered a work-in-progress as there was very little time for fine-tuning. But all participants rallied and the works came together very nicely, some at the very last moment and were viewed by the 75 or so visitors to the exhibition. The following post contains a brief description and some images of the collaborative works and their authors. Participants then uploaded these descriptions of their installations, along with images, links and keywords to the meta-project Shadow Search Platform.
These form objects in the corpus that are now being tested by the Narcissus algorithm. Narcissus works as a plug-in and is an alternative to mainstream search engines where popular sites become demoted, moved to the bottom of the page and are placed in ‘darkness’ for two search rounds. More developments are on their way. But you can view and test (the word ‘space’ works best) the alpha version here.
Bengaluru Data Bank Soundtrack
How does technological development affect individual and collective imagination of a certain place? How does it affect us, artists, arriving at an unknown place whose satellite images we already knew? These were the initial questions for the participants of Bengaluru Data Bank Soundtrack group who collected visual data based on individual experience of Bangalore as an IT city and then translated it into another form -as sound. By initiating a process of transcoding, this extended the limits of the experience of space itself. The content, gathered at http://bangaloredataaccumulations.in, was partially transcoded into a sound file with the program Sound of an Image. The digital soundtrack was interpreted and translated by the musicians of the New Bharath Brass Band, a family band specialised in playing folk songs on weddings. In the end, five musicians, playing horns, drum and trumpet, performed their translation of the soundtrack during the Space the Final Frontier opening at CKP.
Participants: Doris Denekamp, Patricia Sousa, Sylwia Galon, Venkatesh K N, Kostas Tzimoulis
Mind Mapping
This project centres around the idea of making the personal map through the memories of our daily life with the help of ours brains and digitally storable media or hand drawn images. As we know our mind maps the places according to movements, which are close to us, but it never maps the places that we leave behind and beyond our body. The translation of this mapping activity comes together in this sound piece, as an installation consisting of a tower of speakers. The voice that resonates from the work talks about the unclaimed spaces that exists in our lives, placing that existence in the geographical space, political space, the mental space, etc. But it also raises the question, what are these spaces? How can we actually define space? Which spaces already exist? How can we define those that do not? What are the aesthetics of the space conceived as multicultural activities, multiple perspectives and diverse ways of thinking?
Participants: Deepak.D.L, Prathiba Nambiar, Lopa Shah.
Locations/actions
The group decided to make an interactive movie about the most popular locations in Bangalore city. Thinking about locations they realized that every location has its own body language that was translated into actions. For example praying in a temple is accepted behaviour, but what will happen when you do it on the street or in the park? What is the bodily and mental reaction to doing an action that isn’t appropriate for the surroundings in which we find ourselves? In order to research this and the reactions of the local people, three different locations in Bangalore city were used as the sites of shooting: a very commercial location (Brigate Road), a natural location(Cubbon Park) and finally, a religious location (Shiva Temple).
In the movie the viewer gets invited to follow the actions, reactions and locations of the actors. For the exhibition various ‘stills’ were shown of the actions as well. The actions (pouring water, praying, stopping traffic) were the same in all three places: in the street, in the park, in the temple. The movie showed how strange and out of place actions can be when the surroundings don’t fit the picture, looking disconnected and very idiotic to the people that are passing by. During filming, people at the locations were also asked the following questions: What is your connection with this place? What does this location mean to you?
Participants: Mantu Das, Mampi, Nancy Tjong & Pierre Vinet
Objects
Objects of different functions are juxtaposed with a computer monitor on cement blocks to form a pedestal showing the videos of an everyday journey from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad to Srishti School of Design. During this long stretch of 12kms, one encounters recent widened roads. The participants have stopped visiting some parts of the city because of the newly built shopping malls and other consumption stores. The idea of the city has been completely changed by Bangalore’s wall beautification and the construction of flyovers and magic boxes, along with an ugly display of Karnataka’s state icons and tourist places. The articulation of Bangalore’s IT status has made public space an object for intervention, merging activism and art practices by NGO’s working here. At the center of this installation is the computer monitor that displays satellite images of Bangalore a few years back, along with video clips of Bhim’s daily journey from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad to Srishti School of Design. Bangalore’s images from Google Earth are projected on the wall behind it. The computer monitor plays a major role in the display and creates a location for the photographs. Reality is no more the same, nor is it traditional photography as this installation uses apparatus (computer monitors and LCD projection) to capture Bangalore’s image. Photography of the city has changed from being painterly to a technological apparatus.
Participants: Venkatesh K N, Bhimappa Pattar, Deepak D L
Afterimage
This installation consists of 4 short video loops and a text reflecting five different perspectives of the same event. The participants were at the Majestic Bus Station in Bangalore when a demonstration passed by. Not knowing what it was about, they instinctively pursued the crowd and each observed the situation, trying to understand what was happening and what they were doing there. Navigating the space, they interacted with the protesters, and spoke to the demonstration leader, documenting their views of the event with video and sound recordings. The protest moved swiftly through the city, and they walked with the crowd until it came to its final destination at a council building were they waited until officials came to hear the protesters demands.
Upon leaving the procession they discovered how different their experiences of the last 2 hours had been. This was dependent upon diverse cultural backgrounds (North and South India, Norway, Switzerland and the UK) and not completely understanding the language and the social and political context. Previous experiences of protests have been added to one work, while contact, interaction with the protesters in the procession is also shown in the videos. Observing the event as well as being seen, each contribution reflects the same event quite differently. As a whole, the installation allows the viewer to construct the event as an entirety.
Participants: Rosie Heinrich, Babitha Lingraj, Ane Østrem, Eric Philippoz, Avni Sethi
Iknowyouknow is a site aimed primarily at initiating a conversation by building a platform on the largest space for exploration available today, the worldwide web. Just as the name suggests, the site explores and acknowledges the repertoire of skills existing across a range of schools and kids in Bangalore. This, in the simplest set of words, is a Web School, except it doesn’t have any teacher involved. Kids here can learn, share and exchange knowledge, using the interactive spaces proposed and designed primarily to have them connect with each other at various levels. Iknowyouknow delves into the idea that high sounding words like “education”, “knowledge”, curriculum” and “school” have much deeper substance and understanding, which if explored better, can transform the premises that our education system stands on today. Kids share a language, naturally woven with innocence, love and curiosity, which makes them relate to each other, despite all the subjective differences. Little challenges, similar interests, urge for a company to play with, school timings, common problems or simply the pleasure of sharing brings them to establish a healthy space for interaction between them. This is turn facilitates an exchange of thoughts, skills and practices that otherwise fail to find a way out amidst the daily pressures of school work and tests. Iknowyouknow seeks to connect all the schools across Bangalore, through a variety of interactive games, challenges, videos, music and much more. To learn more, visit iknowyouknow.com! More coming soon!
Participants: Lopa Shah, Prathiba Nambiar
Solar Energy Clock
This installation stands for an alternate perception of time.
There is a clock in which the speed is dependent on the amount of solar energy collected at that time. The more sun (energy) the faster the clock ticks. Sunlight or solar energy is one of the only free products remaining (so far…). The clock is built in such a way that it is self-sustaining, feeding energy off the solar energy which is collected and stored as energy in a battery. At night time the clock runs very slowly and switches the lights on for a ‘shadow society’, represented by a micro world that comes alive when the night time comes- the clock switches on some lights so that the mini-robots receive energy to be able to move.
The rhythm of the clock is displayed by a kind of 3D pendulum. A globe of the world swings back and forth once in a while. The interval is directly dependent on the amount of solar energy collected. The more energy, the shorter the intervals. During its operation a sound is played and recorded simultaneously. At the same interval as the pendulum moves (depending on the amount of solar energy), the recorded sound will be played and again simultaneously recorded. Of course this will lead to background noise in the recording and therefore the sound will change with every recording, like a ‘Chinese whisper’.
Participants: Claire Boutroux, Clement Martin, Shibaji Pal, Bahnu Shankar Ghosh, Eelco Wagenaar
