Transcendendo tecnologia: computacao ubıqua ou technomagia? (Transcending technology: ubiquitous computing or technomagic?)

How do we transcend technology? How does technology transcend us? Can technology be used as an instrument to expand subjectivity and create another reality? The pervasive use of technology nowadays raises a number of questions and perspectives concerning its relation to spirituality: research has been conducted through interviews and selected literature; different ways to incorporate aspects of spirituality in our interactions with technology are out- lined in this chapter

Anche i files hanno un'anima

Even files have a sou

Exploring the space between instrument and controller

Electromagnetic sensing systems allow for expressive interaction in electronic music, performance, and time-based media art. REBUS is a machine which emits and receives electromagnetic waves to form a sensing space where human movement and presence can be detected with previously unknown precision. The potential of the system is explored through a workshop and a study targeted to selected groups: whereas the workshop observed the approach of coders and musicians in proposing compositional methods that this electromagnetic field sensing instrument offers, the study inspected the behaviour of classical musicians, mainly trained on strings or keyboard instruments, vis-a-vis that of selected electronic musicians. The terrain between instrument and controller is also explored through a fruitful deception. The paper narrates the conceptual assumptions behind these experiences through an initial analysis and some reflections on the data collected

Artist talk and Rebus demo

Artist talk and Rebus dem

Il segno audiovisivo. Cinema d'animazione e nuovi linguaggi

Quali sono gli elementi che caratterizzano la fruizione di un frammento audiovisivo di un disegno in movimento? E quali le differenze tra un disegno che comunica senso e uno che invece ne è privo? Per rispondere a queste domande, l’autrice scompone nei suoi elementi costitutivi una breve animazione di Osvaldo Cavandoli – una linea che separa e crea, sintetizza e divide – proponendo un modello della significazione audiovisiva discusso con il geniale “artigiano”. Dopo una panoramica sulla nascita del cinema d’animazione, il volume affronta una riflessione sui linguaggi e sulla comunicazione in generale fino a giungere in una zona altamente semiotica e, attraverso una rivisitazione dei concetti di fisiognomica e sinestesia, guardando la simulazione con il binocolo, suggerisce l’immaginazione come strumento di ricerca, l’analisi minuziosa come metodo di scoperta e la digitalizzazione dei dati reali come comune identità delle sostanze del mondo, nonché frontiera e nuovo linguaggio di interpretazione e verifica della conoscenza

The EM Field as a Sensor System

The presence of the electromagnetic field is ubiquitous and pervasive, yet elusive and not fully explored in its artistic potential, eventually because of its invisible nature. Whereas some forms of 'wave' or 'radio' art have been emerging over the last century, a certain materialism of media art uses waves directly, not just as a carrier of information. This paper, imagining novel possibilities to integrate the electromagnetic field in the design of an interactive piece, reflects on the process of crafting a sensing system and proposes a methodological approach to engineering new media and contemporary art

The Ball in the Hole

“The Ball in The Hole” is an interactive video installation, running on GPL homemade software, which uses the principle of tele-presence. Two rooms are showing a projected mirror, where the user can see and recognise himself. On the floor there is a spiral, containing a luminescent ball. When the user grabs the ball, spontaneously attempting to play with it, the projected mirror will start erasing, showing the other room. The ball, as an interface, will act on the video as an eraser on a pencil drawing. The two rooms / spaces are symmetrical. After the complete erasure of the image, the mirror will show the remote room only. At this point the game flips: the ball, rubber and pencil at the same time, gets the capability to erase the other person / space / video. Therefore this deletion of the Otherness corresponds to the redrawing of the Self. You draw as much as you erase, in direct proportion. The process continues endlessly rendering the installation a social happening where the user becomes the main character of an improvised performance

Because there was no user in art: imagining a technological sublime

This paper contrasts the procedures of science and art by examining the processes of the evolution of thought, and of the context which grounds thought, in both families of disciplines. The decisive difference is the attitude towards reproducibility: in science, reproducibility is sought after, whereas, in contrast, variation (either deliberately produced or arising out of random, uncontrollable processes) is an essential part of the creative process. After reviewing models from logic and programming, which give useful insights into the relation between thought and context, the work of Otto Neurath on the possibly discontinuous evolution of cluster concepts is examined. This body of theory is then applied to music, art and performance, and the relations between them, reflecting upon the current tendency of industrial design and product engineering to construct a smooth, frictionless world inhabited by a fictional being called The User