A nice video done by Lily Henderson

Last month when I was in Paris I went to see “Verticale Rouge, Paroles en l’air”(which you can translate Red vertical, idle words. Note that “paroles en l’air” means idle words or empty promises, “en l’air” also means in other context “up in the air”), the work of Brigitte Brandeau in a group exhibit at La Madeleine.

In this work Brigitte is exploring how text disappears behind its shadows. The text (made of copper) is hanging in the air, a floating panel, projected on a white background. One can’t read the copper words; in fact they don’t even really look like words but the projected shadow does look like, “is” text. It reminded me of these old handwritten letters, with a fading ink. Brigitte told me how she was aiming to explore the ephemeral nature of the text which does not “really” exist, while its shadows seems more “real”. I won’t get into a discussion about the notion of reality (it’ll take us too far, and this has been an on-going discussion for centuries) but I was really intrigued by this approach as in my work with Anca Metiu on writing and correspondences, we’ve been looking at writing as a trace and as an objectifying process. Brigitte’s notion of text (close for me to the work of Blanchot) also reminded me some previous posts on literary texts as creating a space for the reader. (Once again we could have a very long discussion on the notion of text, esp. literary text, but it will take us far away from the issues - already broad - discussed in this blog).

It also made a lot of sense for our work with Aileen as while by projecting text on semi-transparent panels we were aiming to create a “physical” space for people to walk through, Brigitte by projecting a “physical” text made of copper made it disappear in front of its shadow. Yet in both cases, we all worked with materials. Brigitte told me about the tenuous work of writing the text with copper and it reminded me of our work with the wires, fabrics, projectors and ladders…

If you’re in Paris, stop by. Verticale Rouge is at the end of the Church, on the right.

As a follow up to my post on visualization, Tufte has explored ways to “embody”, “materialize” his research work presented in an exhibition, Seeing Around, currently at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum:

“Tufte’s monumental sculptures—including Larkin’s Twig, which stands 32 feet tall, and Rocket Science, which weighs 48,000 lbs—are partly a response to his own well–known books on analytical visual displays of data and information. Two–dimensional space—the flatlands of paper and the computer screen—inherently compresses and makes illusory the reality of the three–dimensional world. In contrast, outdoor sculpture provides endless and complex experiences of space, light, color, and airspace in nature’s full reality of three dimensions. Tufte’s outdoor artworks reside in the land, the trees, and the air. His essay on sculpture, Seeing Around, accompanies the exhibition.” (from the introduction to the exhibition on the website).

Interesting attempt to present research ideas in a different medium, using the language of art…

I am also intrigued by the move from a 2-D space (the flat representation of data on the piece of paper or on the computer screen) to the 3-D space as it was an important element in our work with Aileen: going from the flatness of words printed on paper or read on the screen to the maze created by projected text.

I’ve just read an article in the Business Weeks on Data Visualization: Stories for the Information Age. Maria Popova, the writer argues that with the new technology and the abundance of information we have (e.g. the NY Times and the Guardian opening their archives) “artists and designers are turning to data visualization to interpret the deluge of information around us, often with unexpected results”.

She contrasts data visualization with infographics, defining data visualization as “an interpretation, a different way to look at and think about data that often exposes complex patterns or correlations.

Data visualization is a way to make sense of the ever-increasing stream of information with which we’re bombarded and provides a creative antidote to the “analysis paralysis” that can result from the burden of processing such a large volume of information. “It’s not about clarifying data,” says Koblin. “It’s about contextualizing it.”

She interestingly stress the importance of what she calls the “the importance of creative vision along with the technical mastery of software”, i.e. highlighting the contextualizing or story telling process: “Data visualization isn’t about using all the data available, but about deciding which patterns and elements to focus on, building a narrative, and telling the story of the raw data in a different, compelling way.(…) It’s about the most ancient of social rituals: storytelling. It’s about telling the story locked in the data differently, more engagingly, in a way that draws us in, makes our eyes open a little wider and our jaw drop ever so slightly. And as we process it, it can sometimes change our perspective altogether.”

I really like how she links the current practice of data visualization enabled by new technology and the storytelling practice. It’s all about the (re-)enactment of a sociomaterial practice. I also like this idea of trying to think of data as a material to tell stories in a similar way that Aileen and I thought of using words to build a space.

I just think it would have been nice to have a reference to the work of people like Tufte who has explored the role of “envisioning information” as a contextual and narrative process in his numerous books - one of my favorite being Envisioning Information. Indeed it would be interesting to look at the current work (see the spreadsheet in the BW website) in the light of previous works.

As a follow up to the discussion started with my post on the project, Taking From, Leaving in, Moving on, I thought that the installation “Waste Not” by the Beijing artist Song Dong is very relevant. It is currently at MOMA. I saw it last Friday before leaving for London.

The installation consists of objects collected by Song Dong’s mother during 50 years. “The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.”My first thoughts were for the concept of materiality, of evocative objects, of the importance of “stuff” in our lives when I first came in the space. My second thought was “His mother did not move!”. I had thrown so much before moving to London, and had been throwing so much before (which is hard for me who tend to get attached to objects, and who love my books - these I don’t throw them. I left a few behind, but only a few and I keep shipping them… ). It also reminded me Yasmine’s post: All what I own or another post by Yasmine: How much does home takes?

These are issues we started exploring with Aileen in a curating collaboration on neo-nomads, evocative objects and a sense of place, with Baseera Kahn at Rotunda Gallery planned for March 2011 (I know it seems far away… to us too! but it’s an exciting project. We’ll keep you posted).

al

An interesting article was posted by Jesse Shapins and Brian House (who collaborate on the Yellow Arrow) on the Urban Omnibus entitled Designers and citizens as critical media artists. They discuss their views on maps, cities, technologies and the role of art as a research practice.

Here are few themes and quotes that I found really interesting. I let you read the whole article and I’d be curious to read your thoughts.

On the method (which is a theme that emerged from our discussion on this blog - collaboration between artists and scientists, social scientists), they have several interesting points and a great quote:

“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.”

- Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” (1917)

Jesse and Brian note: “We wanted to stimulate another mode of urban practice that was based fundamentally in the physical, social spaces of the city. In other words, we wanted to get students out of the classroom and onto the streets. We were inspired by Shklosvky’s concepts of estrangement and “Art as Technique”, we then aimed to use media arts critically as a mode of research to gain new perspectives.”

On language and ” a mutually transformative relationship between language and the city”:

An interesting project they mentioned: ” One of the projects I’ve always found fascinating is ABCDF: A Graphic Dictionary of Mexico City. The general principal of this book is to re-define the city through a new form of dictionary. Thousands of words are defined by images from a wide variety of sources, ranging from the home photographs of ordinary citizens, to historical newsprints, to the work of famous contemporary artists. These images are complimented by short texts in a glossary at the back. What emerges is a highly detailed mosaic of the city that brings to life the everyday life of the metropolis.”

… and a project they develop for their students: “Furthering the language theme, we built on De Certeau’s understanding of walking through the city as an act of reading and writing. After each student defined around 35 words for their territory, the final assignment aimed to synthesize this material and create a series of design interventions in physical and virtual space. Writing in this new language, the core component of the students’ final project was to write a “poem” that linked together multiple words they had defined in their territory. In addition to the longer and visual media, students had to also now define their words in 140 characters as text messages. The poem would be read, then, as an SMS-based walking tour of their territory that poetically connects the words in physical space using the new vocabulary they have defined. We created the interface and the messaging infrastructure, which they could then script for their particular walks. The walks provided an experiential tour of the multiple layers of physical, social, historical and fictional qualities that students identified through their research throughout the summer.”

Go and check Periplurban their research platform

al

For those interested in the intersection of art, science and social science intersections, Lucy Kimbell’s movie about her Rat Fair (see her post on December 23rd) is online

Seven Minutes in the Service of Rats from Lucy Kimbell on Vimeo.

This film documents the Rat Fair event organised by artist Lucy Kimbell at Camden Arts Centre, London in 2005 attended by 40 rats and 450 people. Activities for rats and people included a rat beauty parlour, memory and agility tests, and roborat racing. The highlight was the world premier of the “Is Your Rat an Artist?” drawing competition for humans, rats and software, inspired by the Morris water maze used in animal experiments. The Rat Fair was the result of months of conversation with and observation of people and rats working together in the fancy rat and scientific communities.

Please see below. An interesting event on the collaboration between social scientists and artists in which, Lucy Kimbell, one of our blog members is involved. If you happen to be in London, make sure you attend and please post your thoughts afterwards.

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Tactical Play
A one-day colloquium for social scientists and artists about playful enquiry as a tactic for research
Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
1 July 2009, 09.30am–5pm
Room GO1, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck, University of London

Speakers include: Anne Douglas (Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen); Lynn Froggett (University of Central Lancashire); Pat Kane ( author of The Play Ethic); Lucy Kimbell (Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford); Justin McKeown (artist, Spartaction.com) and Christian Nold (artist, Softhook.com). Convened by Sophie Hope and Elaine Speight.

Informed by discourses of cross-pollination between art and social science, this colloquium will discuss the role of “play” as a tactic for social change within reflexive and performative social science methods and socially engaged art processes.

Positioning playful enquiry as both a method and meeting place between the disciplines, the event will seek to address the following questions through the presentation of case studies and open discussion:

- In what way do the essential characteristics of one discipline offer possibilities for “play” within the other?

- How is research through performance, fiction, collaboration and conversation employed by each discipline and what are the individual motivations for this?

- At what point does playful enquiry meet “hard edged” research, and what are the academic implications?

- In what way is “play” a politicised method, and how can members of each profession use it to antagonise the frameworks in which they operate?

To book a place go to: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/news/tacticalplay

Cost (includes vegetarian lunch): £35 standard, £15 students.

Numbers are strictly limited, please register early.

Many topics have been raised by this post by Aileen (posted on March 13 ). One issue has been the status of the art work (especially when it emerges from the collaboration of an artist and a scientist, social scientist, etc). Lucy Kimbell’s post on the difference between art and design  is very relevant to this discussion:”One of the things that comes up in discussions of design is if, and how, it’s different from art. At last week’s European Academy of Design in Aberdeen, there was talk of critical design, a term associated with Dunne and Raby (see my earlier post about the conference) as well as other practitioners. One of the claims Fiona Raby made in her keynote at EAD was that in contemporary art, now you can do pretty much anything, nothing is shocking or draws attention, whereas it can be a radical gesture to present an artefact in the context of design, inviting audiences to imagine something in use through proposition and speculation. Here’s a contribution to that discussion. It’s a work called Aurabox (2005). It looks a bit like something you might buy at IKEA. But what is not (yet) at IKEA is the two embedded LED lights indicating the status of the object’s aura, either on or off. It’s inspired by Walter Benjamin’s idea inThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) that “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.”. Here’s a short film showing the Aurabox in the group show Product and Vision in Berlin in 2005.    

Yesterday we put down the installation after Milena’s last visit (a just-in-time impromptu visit to New York) and in fact, Milena who’s been so involved in the discussion, ended up helping us putting the installation down.It was nice to have one of our blog’s contributors involved as it was nice to see some of you at the opening or visiting afterward - a nice way to connect the blog and the physical installation, to reflect of how virtual and physical space are intertwined.It went so much faster: it took us two full weeks to put it up (without mentioning the previous months of visits, measuring, and prototyping) and in more or less two hours most of it was down and folded in different boxes. I realized how this was partly due to the whole process that was involved in the putting up the installation - the thinking with our hands process, the open ended nature of the work.It was a weird feeling to see the empty space back to its original “shape” and nice to hear people with neighboring offices telling us they will miss it.This being said the end of the installation only closes the visitor account door but it does not end our conversation which had evolved to become a thing of its own.Looking forward to more interesting discussions,al