The gap between the presentations and lectures of the previous days and BridA’s project was a political divide. There was an obvious difference between investigative practices of the artists who deeply explore the poetic and scientific aspects of physical phenomenon and the collective that has been commissioned to illustrate science for educational purposes. Their works had been hijacked by EU commission. Interestingly enough, Nano Plotter had been exhibited in a gallery context, since the collective has been present in the fine art field for a number of years. If a project is done by artists, could everything they do also be considered as art? BridA collective commented that they are very enthusiastic about this transition and are eager to see what will happen…

For more detailed information and an explanation of the reasons behind the project and the techniques of its development, please listen to an interview at Radio Ars by journalist Petra Tanko http://tvslo.si/#ava2.88733371;;

CUEN: Time for Nano Kit

The first real-time testing started quarter of an hour before the lecture at 5pm. It was all quite exciting and attracted lots of curious artists and participants. The transmission was successful. So what has been done in the course of an afternoon to enable this first gimps of the plant’s biopolarity. First of all our little Gaya was completely traumatised, she completely shut down her flowers and the access to it’s nerves became impossible, so we would need to traumatise a meat eating plant that would have the same physical qualities only that it’s devouring flower doesn’t close up when irritated.

Another problem occurred with digitisation of the frequency. What we will be measuring and converting is going to be the difference of the reference signal, and not the absolute potential. If the difference in the signal is too weak or too small, we are not going to have good results, that is why we will have to amplify the ratio of the signal that we are receiving. But in the first place we needed to set-up a space that would isolate the signal from the environment interference buzz of 50 Hertz. Gaya – still traumatised – was surrounded with a copper wall and aluminium cover. This set-up however functional seems visually rather unattractive. In this context Marc emphasised that the aim of the workshop is by no means the construction of an art piece, because that would take much longer, but rather just to understand how things function.

There are a few ways of how we convert the signal into digital data. As we have mentioned the basic principle is to measure the voltage ratio between ground and the sensor, so we will measure ground and 5 volts ratio with on e of the 6 Analog Inputs in the Arduino converter that will be connected to the computer with a USB and transmitted to a Pure Data Patch written by Marc. As long as the plant is in a stress, we would receive a lot of interferences. So we gave the plant a night time to slightly adapt to the shock. Hopefully today we will have a moderately relaxed plant to facilitate our aesthetic experience.

Getting on Plant's Nerves

The star of the show was a meat eating plant gladly exposing its vulgar carnal parts to a microscope. As Žižek would put it: flowers are inherently disgusting! And this one apparently had particularly exhibitionist tendencies. The microscope was the first successful outcome of this DIY workshop. It is quite remarkable how we all daily carry around extremely powerful microscopes without being aware of their potential. Who would have thought such a powerful microscope with an enhancement up to 500 micrometers could be constructed with knowing only some very simple optical facts about our cheap cell phones or web-cams. It’s just a question of where we would put the lens in relation to the sensor, the further it is from the sensor the more we are able to magnify the object of observation. They had the great joy of observing a colony of yucky larvae that looked amazingly fascinating in the light of this eye enhancement. Well not directly under the eye. The camera’s gaze was directed to an ancient black & green monitor that gave it a special aesthetic touch similar to the night vision of surveillance cameras. This whole construction was suggested by Marc Dusseiller who devotedly teaches poor artists to construct accessible generic laboratory equipment for electronic sensing and visual observation of living systems. How to view the fascinatingly surreal space of the world that evades non-enhanced human eye? He was an indispensable driving force and the motivator for the participants. As much as Andrej Megič’s Biotechnical Faculty was informative when constructing the electrodes. The workshop was followed by Marc’s inspiring presentation of hackteria.org and his other works, but we will post that a little bit later. Just to mention, the process of the workshop and protocols will later be published on hackteria.org with a booklet pdf of the hacking process.

The second product was the above-mentioned electrode in Špela’s hands. When she explained what this seemingly harmless glass tube is suppose to do, some ridiculous ethical questions started popping in my head. Let’s first call the meat eating plant Gaya to establish a closer relationship with this poor plant. They will making use of physical properties of every living being called depolarisation – the potential of cell’s membrane to become aroused by any contact. Much like human nerves Gaya’s hair will release an electric signal when the diode will be pierced through its tissue. They plan to amplify this reaction visually on a monitor and auditory with oscilloscope and amplifiers, applying Arduino microcontrollers to convert this reaction to digital signal. Špela tells us about an interesting and somehow poetic evolutionary fact that depolarisation or potential physical reaction to touch was supposedly developed before the divide of animal and plant world.

Is this the revenge of the vegetarians? Most of the participating artists (if not all) are vegetarians and Gaya is seriously objecting to the ideology of the majority. Today from 2pm to 5pm there will be a sequel to Gaya’s torture and on Friday hopefully also her performative confession. (http://hackteria.org/)

Getting on Plant's Nerves: Poor Gaya

In a sense there was everyone who’s anyone in the local new-media scene. So here goes a quick name list and some basic gossip. Kapelica Gallery people Jurij Krpan and Sandra Sajovic were gravitating around the ever perfectly designed Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand who were performing Camera Lucida at their gallery two years ago. The Cirkulacija 2, minus Ksenija Čerče were quite amused before their own festival aftermath. This was an initiative of Marc Duseiller when he realised that parallel to HAIP there are two separate but similar events (MFRU & Kiblixx) in Maribor. So they are going to invite everyone to their chaotic cozy space in Rog Factory on Saturday evening. There were of course also producers Aksioma and current and ex-selectors of HAIP like net-poet Jaka Železnikar or Luka Prinčič. The father of interactivity in the local art scene Marko Košnik came to the opening in the company of a very lovely artist Natalia Borissova who is based in Munich/Berlin, who he had met at a workshop in Estonia. Natalia was immediately intrigued by the afternoon workshop that will take place in the following three days. It was also wonderful to see Tanja Vujinović after quite some time. She was busy with international festivals and a very stressful renamed of her NGO to ultramono.org. There was Semira Osmanagić from Intermedia Office of Cultural Department of Ljubljana Municipality and my dear friend Miha Colner also a member of the jury at the same department. We were also happy to see Tomaž Dobrila – Peco from the Ministry of Culture, several journalists from Radio Student, Polona Balantič from the national television who shoot an interview for the evening news that same afternoon. We were also happy to see a Catalan curator Pau Cata Marles and cultural attaché from the Spanish Embassy Laia Ros. And many many more…

The cellar was pact and public was playing around the pieces on the ground floor, competing for artist’s attention, curious to know more details of their work. Geeks were especially attracted to sonic installation by Verena Friedrich that were proudly showing the inner structure of this fascinating intimate instrument – transmitting the vibration of the hair genome. Late in this frizzing November evening we were still waiting for Sascha Pohflepp’s arrival.

Molecular Kitchen

The public view from a frog's perspective.

Herwig’s mind was apparently busy with thinking of the status of so-called new-media art and the possibilities of transgressing into fine arts. However this idea or rather a wish seemed at first somehow conformist for an artist who works in this field. His argument that new-media is an extremely hermetic practice is perhaps justified to a certain extend, but I had to fiercely oppose this. A little bit merely for the sake of an argument and mostly because new-media’s relation to fine arts is much less interesting or complex than its relation to science. After all – as he has reminded me – his bigger version of zgodlocator was included in the large scale exhibition See This Sound a year ago at Lentos in Linz (first piece to the left). It was at the time of Ars Electronica, but the institutional frame was fine art based. As we have learned by example of history e.g. video art, photography or sound art, new-media were incorporate into the canon in the course of 20 to 30 years, but maybe it is not too idealist to claim that its contribution to the field of science potentially leads to some of the most remarkable technological and social deviations.

Leaving this utterly general conversation aside I got to learn some much more interesting details about his attitude to his art. The work he is showing on HAIP was constructed five years ago, which is quite a number of years if we look from the perspective of light-speed acceleration of new-media art’s obsession with “the new”. At the time when the piece was constructed the use of ferrofluids in the field of art was a very new thing, but the artist was not merely fascinated by the new material. He is generally annoyed by the technology-focused use of new-media. What he is looking for is the message that the construction of his environments is going to have. He would like the public to be fascinated by the aesthetic qualities or sculptural characteristics of his work, rather than to be obsessed by the mechanical function. The latest is to conceptually support the idea of the construction. Like in the case of zgodlocator. There are four different versions. Despite the different scale of the piece from remarkably huge surface diameter of a couple of meters to the very portable piece with two circular surfaces with the diameter of an LP, the conceptual frame of the piece stays the same. He has hacked the electronic signals of the computer’s guts that are presented on a circular surface – one with a dust and the other with liquid ferrofluids. The installation is by all means very user friendly and fascinating in a quite poetic way, far from being solely intrigued by mere mechanics, enjoying the loud audio hubbub. And the kids at the opening – the most sincere critics simply loved it!

Herwig Weiser: zgodlocator/version zII

V svoji četrti ediciji bo festival HAIP predstavlja nekaj primerov dobrih praks sodelovanja med znanstveniki s področij nanotehnologije, sintetične biologije in drugih biotehnoloških in fizikalnih smeri ter akterji sodobne raziskovalne umetnosti. Naš motiv izhaja iz prizadevanj za vzpostavitev diskurza na podlagi transdisciplinarnega povezovanja umetniških konceptov z inovativnimi znanstvenimi pristopi, ki se skupaj stekajo v področje novih izrazov umetniških vsebin.

Z vzpostavljanjem teh novih načinov raziskovanja in učenja soustvarjamo jezik, ki razširja pristope k procesom (so)delovanja umetnikov in znanstvenikov, s čimer pripomoremo k relevantnosti tovrstnih transdisciplinarnih praks tudi v širšem družbenem kontekstu.

Festival se prične v torek 23.11. z otvoritvijo razstave in performativnim cateringom Hiše Franko + DJ House Wife ob 20:00.

Kuhinja molekularnih gastronomov je bolj kot običajni kuhinji podobna fizikalnemu ali kemičnemu laboratoriju. V molekularni kuhinji s transdisciplinarnimi postopki priprave živil tej
»znanstvenofantastični« hrani s pomočjo aditivov in z zviševanjem ter zniževanjem temperature spreminjamo agregatna stanja. Pri molekularni kuhi se uporabljajo novi stroji in instrumenti: nove, še natančnejše tehtnice in termometri, ki merijo od –30 do +300 stopinj Celzija. Pridružujejo se jim sifoni za razne vrste zelenjave, iz katerih pridobimo fine pene. Posebnost so sifoni, s katerimi živilo brizgnemo na žlico in ga pomočimo v posodo s tekočim dušikom, da v trenutku zmrzne; pri postopku pa gre za spreminjanje agregatnega stanja živila pri –196 stopinjah Celzija. Postopki s tekočim dušikom, ki je v molekularni kuhinji najpogostejši element, v proces kuhanja pogosto interaktivno vpletajo tudi gosta oziroma gledalca.

Festival se zaključi v petek 26.11. z zvočnim performansom Paula Prudenca in klubskim večerom Dubstep / Bass electronice.

Festival bo potekal v Kiberpipi, kavarni Metropol (Kersnkova 6) in Klubu K4 (Kersnikova 4).

Se vidimo!