<nettime-ann> Subtle Technologies Festival & Digicult present: "Phenomena. A journey around audiovisual art-science"

["Redazione Digicult" <redazione@digicult.it>]

.

Subtle Technologies Festival 2011 | May 28 - June 5, 2011 & Digicult 
present:


PHENOMENA:
A JOURNEY AROUND AUDIOVISUAL ART-SCIENCE
Curated by Marco Mancuso and Claudia D'Alonzo for Digicult

http://www.subtletechnologies.com/festival/film
http://www.iictoronto.esteri.it/IIC_Toronto/webform/
http://www.digicult.it/en/2011/SubtleTechnologiesPhenomena.asp

For official images and videos descriptions, please contact:
press@digicult.it

-----

Innis Town Hall, Toronto
June 02-03, 2011

Screenings:
"Hidden Worlds" - curated by Marco Mancuso for Digicult

"When the eye flickers (Quando l'occhio trema)" - curated by Claudia D'Alonzo 
(Univeristy of Udine, Digicult) & Mario Gorni (archivio DOCVA)

Lecture:
"A Myriad of vibrant phenomena. The hidden worlds of audiovisual 
art-science" - lead by Marco Mancuso for Digicult

-----

Digicult has been invited by Subtle Technologies festival in Toronto to 
present 2 Videoscreenings: "Hidden Worlds" curated by Marco Mancuso and 
"When the Eye Flickers" (Quando l'Occhio Trema) curated by Claudia D'Alonzo 
(Univeristy of Udine, Digicult) e Mario Gorni (archivio DOCVA) .

"Hidden Worlds" is another chapter of Marco Mancuso's research on 
audiovisual art-science which started from Bruce Sterling's Fabrica 
Workshop, continued with the lecture taken at Museo della Scienza in Naples 
in 2009 and fixed with the curatorship at Sincronie Festival 2009 and 
invitation at Cinema & Science convention organized by University Roma 3.

"When the Eye Flickers" (Quando l'Occhio Trema) is a Claudia D'Alonzo's 
critical research on reconstruction of the historical and methodological 
path of the use of the Flickering technique, togher with Mario Gorni and 
Docva Archive (Milan)

The videoscreening "Hidden Worlds" was enriched by a critical essay & 
lecture, led by Marco Mancuso, entitled "A Myriad of Vibrant Phenomena: the 
hidden worlds of audiovisual art-science"


Subtle Technologies is a gathering of artists, scientists, technologists, 
engineers and the general public. The festival share cross-disciplinary 
ideas, explore new technologies, showcase creativity and incubate the next 
generation of practitioners at the intersection of art, science and 
technology.

2011 marks the 14th year of festival and organization. The audience and 
visibility have steadily grown since 1997. The festival is now well-known in 
Toronto and internationally as a unique venue for bringing together cutting 
edge science and art. Our events are attended by intellectually curious 
people from all parts of society-especially those with an interest in art, 
technology, science, engineering, architecture or design.

The annual June Festival includes a symposium (3 days of interdisciplinary 
presentations, demos, lightning talks and panel discussions), performances, 
exhibitions and films, speed networking and more. Starting in 2010-2011, the 
festival began a series of year-round events, partnering with many community 
groups to run workshops, literary events, documentary screenings and other 
events throughout the year-all focused on bringing together art, science and 
technology.

-----

"HIDDEN WORLDS"
Screening curated by Marco Mancuso for Digicult: Short Version

The screening "Hidden Worlds" is a critical reflection upon the existing 
connection between audiovisual art, energy and science on the borders of 
cinema, video and digital.

The "Hidden Worlds" exhibition celebrates one of the most fascinating yet 
obscure territories of artistic audiovisual contemporary research: the 
relation between art and science. The video screening produces works that 
induce into a critical reflection on the existing relation between 
audiovisual contemporary artistic research (as regards to cinema, video and 
digital experiences) and applied sciences.

This project, dealing with different artistic examples which investigate new 
expressive forms for the representation of the sound-image relation, 
deliberately avoids focusing on the existing common aesthetics among them, 
as well as on a possible expressive language. It rather suggests an overview 
on specific systems for sensorial perception, and emotional mechanisms of 
"saturation", achieved through the use of hybrid techniques, that today like 
never before expand the tradition of analog experimental cinema and digital 
audiovisuals.

What it is today recognized as "immersive art-science" is a form of creative 
expression meant to rise above the notion of art as abstract representation, 
in behalf of a multi-sensorial experience. The purpose here is to create 
aesthetical fascinating objects and also to invite the public to go beyond 
ordinary perception's border. Immersivity awakens a synesthetic awareness 
both in the mental and in the physic space. A myriad of vibrant phenomena, 
usually beyond the observer's reach, are instead made reachable through an 
accurate psychophysical conditioning.

This video screening takes the spectators to wonderful "hidden worlds", 
illustrated by artists and scientists who more and more often collaborate 
and share experiences with one another on the research of new expressive 
potentialities within specific mathematical processes and physical, optical, 
chemical and electro-magnetic phenomena.

By watching the audiovisual representation of the existing energetic and 
electromagnetic phenomena on the Sun's surface and of current interferences 
generated from interaction of electromagnetic fields between the Sun and 
Earth, as possible instrument of aestheticization of the space phenomena by 
the Semiconductor duo (in works such as "Black Rain"), the passage to the 
audiovisual representation of chemical-physical-optical reactions of the 
Portable Palace duo (Evelina Domnitch & Dmitri Gelfand) is extraordinary 
short indeed. In their first work present in this exhibition, ("Camera 
Lucida") they study the chemical-physical phenomena of "sonoluminescence", 
while in their second one ("10000 Peackcock Feathers in Foaming Acid") they 
analyze the potentialities of optical phenomena generated by investigating 
the laser light within the nanometric structures of foams. Moreover, the 
first work by Thorsten Fliesch present in the exhibition ("Energie!") shows 
the scorches on photographic paper produced by an high potential energy flow 
of an electron beam contained in a cathode ray tube.

The number is an ever present concept, being the fundamental element of 
every mathematical and algebraic formula which involves not only a single 
energy phenomenon present in nature, but also a series of 
disturbing/superimposition phenomena, such as interferences, beats, 
accumulations, harmonies and other optical event, like Moirè's (optical 
illusion created by geometrical sequences of interference phenomena), as 
shown by the purely glitch and software work by Carsten Nicolai ("Spray")

The number, in its highest abstraction of key element for a fourth dimension 
representation , is still an important part of Thorsten Fleisch's video 
("Gestalt"), a sort of recognition of the quaternion worlds 
(four-dimensional fractals) visualized in a three dimensional space through 
appropriate software. Yet maybe John Campbell's masterpiece ("LI: The 
Patterns of Nature") is the work that mostly evidences the geometric 
structures spontaneously present in Nature, through a kind of magical and 
hypnotic audiovisual document, perfect sample of a deep critical conviction: 
contemporary audiovisual art, today more than in the past, has the 
technological instruments and the ethical duty to confront itself with the 
empirical world and the "natural" technologies within it. Technologies that 
should be collected, observed and manipulated by man, who has already given 
proof of his skill with light, sound, image and space.

SCREENING:

- Semiconductor
Black Rain (2009, GB)
col., sound, 3'02'', HD Format: 16:9 widescreen

- Evelina Domnitch & Dmitri Gelfand
Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory (2006 - Rus, Bel)
col., sound, 8'57''

-Thorsten Fleisch
Energie! (2007, Ger)
col., sound, 5'18''

- John N. Campbell
Li: The Patterns of Nature (2007 - Usa)
col., sound 9'06'', original format: 16mm

- Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand
10000 Peackcock Feathers in Foaming Acid (2009 Rus, Bel)
col., sound, 2'52''

- Alva Noto
Spray (2006, Ger)
col., sound, 8'

- Thorsten Fleisch
Gestalt (2003, Ger)
col., sound, 5'20''

-----

"WHEN THE EYE FLICKERS (QUANDO L'OCCHIO TREMA)"
Screening curated by Claudia D'Alonzo for Digicult and Mario Gorni for Docva

Inspired by a 1989 film by Paolo Gioli with the same name, this screening 
reconstructs the historical and methodological path of the use of the 
Flickering technique, using a selection of works from the DOCVA and INVIDEO 
archives, as well as from works of a number of authors connected to the 
Digicult international network.

The "flicker" is a technique applied to a number of art forms, from the 
experimental cinema on analog film, light installations and environments, as 
well as video analog and digital audiovisual. This technique is based on a 
specific perceptive phenomenon. Our perception of moving images normally 
happens with a 24 frames per second frequency.

If we decrease this frequency to between 6 to 18 frames per second, we 
create a visual blinking leading to a direct stimulation of the optic nerve 
and, thus, to a proto-vision where the visual rhythm becomes directly 
synchronized with our cerebral waves.

The flicker belongs to what Edmund Husserl defines as perceptive ambiguity, 
for its potentials to go beyond and offer a chance to overcome the habitual 
conventions that govern our knowledge of the real. This may be achieved 
through destabilizing-in some cases violently, or traumatically-perceptive 
common, almost addicted, habits.

Artists experiment with flickering using a phenomenological approach, 
through the anomalous stimulation of our perceptive apparatus, as well as 
through the structural analysis of the codes that compose the moving image.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Archive of DOCVA and Digicult, "When 
the Eye Flickers (Quando l'occhio trema)" is meant also as a moment of 
research, a way to conceive the archival material as a dynamic instrument 
through which to establish relations and exchanges, a point of departure to 
establish comparisons between the historical experiences of the audiovisual 
experimentation and the most contemporary developments.

SCREENING:

- Claudio Ambrosini
Light solfeggio (Italia, 1977)
2'17'', b/w, Courtesy Archivio DOCVA

- Paolo Gioli
Quando l'occhio trema (Italia, 1989)
12', b/w, Courtesy Paolo Gioli

- Kurt Hentschläger/Ulf Langheinrich (Granular Synthesis)
Form ( Austria, 2000)
3', col., Courtesy Granular Synthesis

- Thorsten Fleisch
Superbitmapping (Germania, 2000)
2' 3'', col., Courtesy Thorsten Fleisch

- Graw & Bockler
Because (Germania, 2002)
3'47", col., Courtesy Archivio, DOCVA

- Scott Arford
Untitled for television (USA, 2003)
5' 57'', col., Courtesy Scott Arford

- Alessandrà Arnò
Stars (Italia, 2003)
4', b/n, Courtesy Archivio DOCVA

- Otolab
Vagina cosmica (Italia, 2009)
video: xo00, audio: _dies, , 4' 50'', col., Courtesy of Otolab

-----

"A MYRYAD OF VIBRANT PHENOMENA.
THE HIDDEN WORLDS OF AUDIOVISUAL ART-SCIENCE
Lecture by Marco Mancuso for Digicult

Between 1899 and 1904 the german philosopher and biologist Ernst Haeckel 
published a book of lithographic and autotype prints entitled Kunstformen 
der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), one of his best known works and a symbol of 
his zoological research and philosophy, centered on the observation of 
marine micro-organisms as well of various natural species and animals. The 
complete volume, consisting of over 100 lithographs, each accompanied by a 
short descriptive text, obtained a great success even among the 
non-specialist public and among some Art Nouveau artists, committed to find 
new models to be used in the nascent industrial design and in architecture.

> From the first experiences on the field by Haeckel to theories of fractals 
and morphogenesis, dreams of genetic algorythms, studies on quaternions, 
perceptions of Moirè's and optical effects, computational periodics 
achievements, recordings of electromagnetics phenomena, chemical-physical 
sponteneous reactions, cymatics observations on dynamics of sound waves and 
vibrations, it's clear that Mother Nature is characterized at the root by a 
matrix of numbers and mathematical expressions involving a series of 
physical, optical, chemical-physical, electromagnetic and nanometric 
phenomena influencing its forms, species, colours, sounds and structures.

If science is considered an organic complex of knowledge obtained through a 
methodical procedure, capable of providing a precise description of the real 
aspect of things and the laws by which the phenomena happen, and if the 
rules governing such process are generally called "scientific method", then 
the experimental observation of a natural event, the formulation of a 
general hypothesis about such event and the possibility of checking the 
hypothesis through subsequent observations become fundamental elements in 
modern scientific research.

What it is today recognized as "immersive art-science" is a form of creative 
expression meant to rise above the notion of art as abstract representation, 
in behalf of a multi-sensorial experience. The purpose of the this lecture 
which enrich and complete the "Hidden Worlds" screening, is to critically 
map those artists acting with a "discovery approach", observing and 
recording,  sharing experiences and ideas with scientists and science 
communities, working without the use of cinematographic or video or digital 
tecniques but obtaining the fluxus of sound and images only by natural and 
spontaneous scientific phenomena (physical, optical, chemical, mathemical 
and electro-magnetical). Hidden Worlds wants to create fascinating objects 
and also to invite the public to go beyond ordinary perception's border. 
Immersivity awakens a synesthetic awareness, both in the mental and in the 
physical space. A myriad of vibrant phenomena, usually beyond the observer's 
reach, are instead made reachable through an accurate psychophysical 
conditioning.

VIDEO LECTURE

- Hans Jenny Cymatics Soundscapes (1967, Switzerland)
- Mary Ellen Bute Abstronic (Usa, 1954)
- John Whitney Permutations (USA, 1971)
- Semiconductor Magnetic Movies (USA, 2007)

-----

THE CURATORS

Claudia D'Alonzo: Graduated in Contemporary Art History, Claudia PhD student 
in Audiovisual Studies at the University of Udine (Italy). For several 
years, she has been interested in new media art, particularly in the 
audiovisual interactions allowed by electronic and digital technologies. 
Within the Digicult network she takes care of press office activities and 
curatorial projects. She belongs to the management committee of Digimag 
magazine, with which she collaborates also as writer in the audiovisual 
experimental cinema section. She has published catalogues and articles for 
contemporary art magazines, among which "Exibart" and "Luxfluflux Prototype. 
She collaborated with Galleria Sala1, in Rome, MLAC, Museo Laboratorio di 
Arte Contemporanea, in Rome, DOCVA Centro di Documentazione per le Arti 
Visive, in Milan. She has been curator for national and international 
presentations, screenings and exhibitions.

Marco Mancuso: Marco Mancuso is a new media art critic, curator, editor and 
teacher, expert of the impact of digital technologies on art, design, 
culture and contemporary society. Founder and Director at Digicult project 
and Digimag magazine, Marco Mancuso focuses his researches on the connection 
between sound, light, image & space, with an historical/theoretical point of 
view, among a cross-disciplinary territory crossing art, cinema, music, 
design, architecture & science. With the art-agency Digimade he is working 
for international art festivals, galleries, cultural and media centers as 
guest curator and media partner, organizing exhibitions and cross media 
events, workshops, meetings, performance and screenings and promoting, among 
others, Italian live media & live cinema artists. As Digicult director, 
Marco Mancuso has been also expertising and skilling in the last years on 
networking strategies, online marketing & comunication developments and web 
2.0 editing & journalistic activities. His interviews and critical texts can 
be read on Digimag archive, while his essays were published in festival and 
exhibition catalogues, and lectures and presentations he joined, both 
nationally and internationally.Marco Mancuso regularly teaches "Multimedia 
Art Languages" at NABA-New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and "Audiovisual 
Design" at IED-European Institute of Design in Milan. He is also invited as 
guest lecturer and teacher of "New Media Art, Design & Culture" to seminars 
and workshops at academies and labs in Italy and Europe (like 
Transmedia-Brussels, Politecnico-Milan, Vasa Project.). Marco Mancuso is 
member of international art-prices juries, like Celeste Prize, Kernel 
Festival and In/Out Festival - http://www.marcomancuso.net/ 

_______________________________________________
nettime-ann mailing list
nettime-ann@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann