Art.On.Wires Festival Oslo 2010 - day 2

[Johanna Roggan]

May 11th

As a festival like this, or maybe every festival, it is always a contact-making-connections-pool.

A possibility to get to know other fields of art/artists which could or do collaborate in order to create new art (pieces).
Along those lines the day yesterday ended in an open space introducing the people who give the workshops.
Everyone who was interested in talking a little about their work, their art-approach, projects etc. got a microphone in his/her hand and could give a glimpse into their life to the audience.

Today we(*) started our workshop for interactive environments. Talking about recent projects and showing some video material to expose the listener to some ways of making use of the system/environment.
I was talking about the need of finding a common working-language. Just by trying to understand the other participating project-developer. Which means, everyone creating a performance (for instance) should move a little in the interactive space, should look over the shoulder of the musician, try to comprehend the graphic program or install the camera system. Within this crossing the boarders you bring everyone to a point of equality. There you have a chance of a communication which eventually will lead to an artistic output with hopefully some semantic comprehensible line for the audience.

Across the hall where the festival happens, Alexander Carot ( http://www.carot.de/ ) is giving his workshop on a software he developed to enable musicians to rehears and perform together without meeting in real person. Having the problem of delivering the sound with a delay he invented his software “Soundjack” ( http://www.soundjack.eu ).

Another interesting workshop deals with kids toys. Through soldering components together they create the weirdest sounds. After everything is put together, you just press buttons and the sounds come out of a toy. Very funny one.
( http://www.daal.at/ )

After a very intriguing key note by Mark Coniglio about his work, he is giving a workshop on the software Isabora, which he invented himself.

In his lecture he was talking about some art pieces which work with the matter of fact that we are the number one in our life.

I am - is the most used expression in Skype chat.

When we use interactive environments we are fascinated by the music I can create because I move (or graphics etc).

Mark introduced us to one of his recent works "loopdiver". Loopdiver was created with the Isadora software.

They basically filmed a dance phrase from 6 different ankles and then cut them apart and together in all possible orders. In addition they put loops on top with different durations and so on.

At the end, the dancer had to learn what they created with the software.

( http://www.troikaranch.org/vid-loopDiver.html )

In one corner you could see a huge table with stooped people around again soldering something together. The goal was to built a small LED Gadget/Screen with a USB connection which can be fed with any information you want. Some of the components just need to get a software, which has yet to be written.

( http://www.daal.at/ )

Before dinner time I was sitting together with some people and Frode Volden (docent for cognitive psychology and human interface design at Gjøvik university) for a so called focus talk.

The question to discuss was on perception of quality. What does it mean to us. How do we use it in a artist approach.

This focus talk is used as a platform to develop a new vocabulary in the field of audio-visual cognition in order to find a way to measure quality. To install parameters and make technology/interfaces more effective, better designed for an intuitive use, to simply define it with its own words/vocabulary.

A few statements shall be listed here

- in the moment there is human energy invested it has a high level of quality

- everything containing passion has high quality

- that would be nice

- it is a matter of (expert) knowledge if you receive something as high or low or no quality

- it's a matter of content

- don't mix high and low quality components

- but "south park" does it

- does technology helps to raise the level of quality?

- depends on the use of it

- restrictions within the use of technologies can be useful

and so on.

Frode Volden was mostly listening, making some notes and asking some questions.

Even that we all came from a very different background (musician, dancer, wearable LED artist, VJ, programmer) we were able to talk on an equal level. We made similar experiences and so had a platform of communication in a high quality ;-)

After dinner there will be a concert with Alexander Carot.

http://www.carot.de/

(*)
We is:
Marko Ritter - VVVV programmer - http://blog.intolight.de
Valérie-Françoise Vogt - graphic design - http://veevee.de
Jacob Korn - musician (Abelton, Max 4life) - http://www.jacobkorn.de/
Johanna Roggan - dancer, choreographer - www.moveonit.net