Priceless
Interface Cultures Student Exhibition
5th – 20th of October 2016
Exhibition Opening 5th October at 18.00.
Opening time: Monday to Friday from 14:00 to 18:00.
University of Art, Domgasse 1, 4010 Linz
The value is an aspect which is strictly bound to art, but it is also irrespective of the endless definitions of art itself. It seems to be the unique objective and common thread that is able to relate the experiences that span through creative forms of: realism, techno-fetichism, conceptualism, expressionism, situationism, and all the possible directions of art. Any authorial subject, within the limits of its influence, can confer value to the products of any practice, legitimizing their artistic status. A value, as any other kind of quality, is the response of an objective view, placed between subjective parameters. Historical economic principles associated value to the utility of the objects, to their exchangeability, and finally to constructed needs. A movement toward an absolute abstraction, that in one side, push any economical form in the hands of financial bets. In the other side, determines the triumph of services as major commodities. Art is not immune to this process, and it is probably one of the most explanatory subjects of the volatility of value, and its ungraspable fluctuations. However art is fulfilled of so many expectations, energies, mythologies, which any kind of evaluation is not able to acknowledge. Where should we allocate the values of the materials compound of an art object? How to objectively evaluate the referentiality of an art context? Which is the right price for the time employed for art? How to calculate the cost of the efforts, and the expenses of passion? How much would you pay for aesthetic or intellectual stimuli? There is no form of value that is able to satisfy the purposes of art and their beautiful complexity. For this reason, even if economical circumstances are able to determine value, the reason of artistic practice will always be priceless.
Exhibited Works:
César Escudero Andaluz – Tapebook
“Tapebook”is an exercise in media archaeology. It involves the conversion of data which are extracted from social networks into audio documents. They are recorded on cassettes. “Tapebook” takes the information directly from the GUI, alters the rhizomatic (root-likes) structure of the hypertext and converts it into linear sequence of sounds. The user is able to select and listen to recordings made from the text of philosophers, artists and writers who talk about media art in their profiles.
Stefan Tiefengraber – Analog Delay
Visitors are asked to start a chain reaction by pushing a switch. If the first switch is pushed continually it activates a solenoid, the enclosed moving bolt pushes another switch that again is connected to the next solenoid. This continues over 424 solenoids and 425 switches. At the end of this chain there is a motor siren, which starts moving when the signal reaches its position. This very same chain reaction of switches and solenoids is again required to turn off the siren that generates big noise in this location where silence is generally present. The delay effect is the result of the mechanical parts used and is added up by the number of components.
Martín Nadal – Death of Things
Death of Things (DoT) is a series of moving figures representing public personas whose operation depends on these people being alive. Each of these figures has one embedded microprocessor and the ability to connect to the internet. When the system detects that a character has died, the figure will stop moving permanently. A connection between the ‘life’ of the object and the person’s life is established.
Mario Romera Gomez and Klimentina Milenova – Dradoc
The electrical capacity of our body and the plant makes the conductive difference which triggers the relations between the human, plant, and technology. The plant response is over its appearance that make us see its health by the colour of the leaves and shape. In this work the sound is the quality which trigger other unexpected feeling.
Irene Ródenas and Julia Nüßlein – Green Filter
The speculative design project Green Filter proposes a symbiosis between humans and nature. The visitor is invited to imagine we’d be using nature’s elaborate ways to filter the air that we breathe, instead of causing polluted air and ecological imbalance by exploiting the earth for plastic and oil. Imagine plants being part of our every move, and every human having a pet plant. Green Filter consists of wearable objects made from plants and natural materials that filter the air we breath. The objects challenge habits and assumptions, and encourage critical thinking about our position on planet Earth.
Mihaela Kavdanska – Hacking Meditation
Is meditation a special spiritual practice or a usual one in everyday life? Could meditation be a method of hacking the public space? Is the stillness a way to hack the daily routine? Mind Hack. Life Hack. Hacking the Universe.
Idil Kizoglu – That way
That Way looks into involvement of a digital tool in our everyday lives while investigating how it affects our habits. Visualizations present walking route suggestions of Google Maps among various locations in Vienna. Do the most recommended streets reflect dynamics of the city? How do personal habits differ from decisions of a smart system? Are there less or never recommended streets in the city that start to be invisible to us?
Alessio Chierico – The Best of 360 (Man with a Movie Camera)
The series “The Best of 360” consists in screen captures that imposes unusual kinds of camera shots to virtual reality videos. These works has being made collecting 360 videos from Youtube, and operating some of the few interactions allowed by its interface.
A part of this series “Man with a Movie Camera”, is inspired by the movie of Dziga Vertrov, and presents camera shoots which focus on the cameraman.
Ivan Petkov – Time Based Ghosts
Geometric and organic shapes seem to emerge from irregularly blinking and randomly distributed points in a moving picture. However, this illusion instantly breaks as soon as the video is paused – the shapes disappear mysteriously. This leads to a singular situation, where objects are only visible in a moving picture but impossible to catch on a still image.
Notes
Many sensibilities suggests to change the perspective of our way of seeing the environment. Abandoning the idea of nature as pure exploitable economical resource, it is possible to envision new symbiotic relations. “Dradoc” speculates about possible technologically mediated forms of communication between humans and plants. “Green Filter” instead, elevates the status of living forms toward the preciousness of jewelry, with a valuable double sided functionality. The work “Tapebook” appropriates of contents that are voluntarily shared by their owners on social networks, and resell them in a different support, questioning the value of information. Playing with perceptual effects, “Time Based Ghosts” demonstrates the profound fictionality of representation, which exploit our bodily weakness for the sake of attention economy. “Analog Delay”, gives the possibility of triggering a chain reaction, an unstoppable sequence of causes-effects. Decisions moves with the speed of electrons, and they can determine dramatic changes: launching bombs or moving impressive quantity of investments. Milliseconds, minutes, hours, or days. The time which elapses from the decision to its consequences, suspends any rationality. The expectations about the Internet of Thing, and its promise to open new branches of the saturated market of information technology, is ironically questioned by “Death of things”. Foreseeing an ocean of smart objects for dumb purposes, this work presents a lifelong waiting of an occurrence. The market of technology relies on continuous enhancements. Oppositely “The best of 360 – (Man with a Movie Camera)“ exploits the 360° video technology, negating its particular functionality and exposing the less relevant content that it propose. With “Hacking Meditation” a shopping mall, temple of the contemporary devotion to commodities, is turned to a space of meditation. An act of reappropriation that transform the impersonality of a non place, in a quiet intimacy. The expression – “time is money” – represents a well know equation. This motivates people to always find shorter ways, metaphorically and not. “That Way” suggests a sort of psychogeographical dérive that criticize the request of efficiency in planning the faster path.
