Tomorrow April 14th starts in Madrid this year’s edition of Campus Party in Europe. Around 800 guests from the 27 European Union nations were invited to come discuss, tinker, create and associate. The event will be held at Caja Mágica and can be followed at http://blog.campus-party.eu/ or, in a more personal level, on twitter.com/andregoiano. Twitter hash tags are #cpartyeu or #campuspartyeu. See you there.
And the winner is… Andreas Muxel with Connect. Honorary mention goes to Ralph Baecker for Calculating Space.
Here’s the jury statement, crafted with impeccable style by my fellow judge Bruce Sterling.
The winner of the SHARE Prize 2009 is Andreas Muxel for his mobile sculpture “Connect.” This mesmerizing installation, with its precarious mixture of bouncing rubber and flying steel, is like a world financial crisis all by itself. With simple but powerful elements, “Connect” generates endless dramatic episodes of comical failure and heroic determination. The vital network of “Connect” won’t stop changing, and we can’t stop looking at it.
The honorable mention goes to Ralf Baecker for “Calculating Space,” an intricate, meticulous work of modern device art. This geometric structure of wood, string, and tiny motors brilliantly combines its elements as a single, enigmatic, functional presence. It evokes the early history of computing while standing outside time in a calm, rigorous space of stark mathematical beauty.
I am at the Share Festival in Torino where I’m representing Fabrica as this year’s Guest Curator. There are 6 finalists in this year’s exhibition and later today Bruce Sterling and I will be making the hard decision about who wins the first prize.
Here’s the statement released by the jury after selecting this year’s finalists:
Share 2009 – Jury Statement
This year’s finalists are:
Ernesto Klar Convergenze Parallele
Lia Proximity of needs
Andreas Muxel Connect
Francesco Meneghini-William Bottin Sciame 1
Ralf Baecker Rechnender Raum
Random International / Chris O’Shea Audience
The theme of Share 2009 is Market Forces. The Share Festival in 2009 showcases works about complexity. “Market Forces” responds to the crucial contemporary concerns which affect us all. These works explore what happens when we connect things together into systems and set these systems into motion - questions of chaos and value, meaning and randomness, politics and economics. These unstable abstractions have a concrete effect on our daily lives.
Five of the 6 pieces are sculptural – substantial installations which model their abstractions in wood or in steel, in string or paper or dust. These works refuse to be defined as digital, going beyond limits of generative and interactive aesthetics to expand the boundaries of digital art and culture. They are also beautiful in the old fashioned way, in their form and their physicality, and in the way they slide between hacking and traditional craftsmanship. The walls dividing digital art and the rest of the art world are breaking down. Freed of its ghetto, digital art is celebrating its power and growing relevance.
The jury was faced with a difficult, almost impossible task – to select six finalists from among almost 300 submissions sent to Torino from all around the world. Some superb pieces could not be included in our final selection and the jury took its responsibility seriously. We chose artworks which deal with important questions in an innovative and aesthetically relevant way. There is a cluster of mirrors which follow the spectator as he or she wanders among them – who is watching whom? – a cloud chamber which makes art from human breath and a handful of dust, and a neural network realised in wood and string which simulates the process of thinking, yet has nothing to say. A kinetic sculpture models chaos with flying spheres of steel, and a simple hacked toy sends swarm of paper fragments floating in the wind. A generative net art piece grows into gorgeous patterns which are always unique and always the same.
The theme builds on and develops the previous Share theme of Manufacturing into a new but related terrain – from production to consumption, from the creation of a commodity to its exchange value. We look forward to selecting the overall winner from among these six superb pieces and to participate in what we believe will be the best Share Festival ever.
Andy Cameron
Rosina Gomez
Emma Quinn
Bruce Sterling
Giovanni Ferrero
Pee at the Ars Electronica Festival 09.
Rich Bubbly Fertilizer
This was one notable souvenir from this year’s Ars Electronica Festival and I didn’t expect my urine sample can be so endearing to me. But give it to artists Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray and they’ll chemically transform any summer-grass smelling urine into rich bubbly fertilizer for your household plants. The drink.pee.drink.pee.drink.pee project takes on an epic challenge to curb pollutants in our urine from getting into out waterways.
The LANDREFORM is ongoing exhibition series by the KUNSTrePUBLIK in the Skulpturenpark- vacant lots formerly part of the “Mauerstreifen” (Militarised zone of the Berlin wall). Below “Carousel” was held on June 10th.
“In 1918, Irving Berlin penned the patriotic, “God Bless America”. Twenty two years later and considering Berlin’s lyrics unrealistic and complacent, Woody Guthrie wrote his own American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land”. The song celebrated the country’s land while protesting its class inequality. Now, 68 years later, the song is brought roundabout back to a different Berlin.
Eight BMWs, the sponsor of the bb05, drove in a slow perfect circle. “This Land Is Your Land” played on their radios–remixed for an amusement ride sensation. The cars, roped together like a carousel, circled like an auto display or western wagon train. Every couple rounds the drivers systematically stopped to pick-up and drop-off spectators and riders. Just before dusk, a fire was lit inside the circle.
In Landreform, the banality of economic determinism drives in a circle around itself upon a ground which will soon be developed with luxury condos and office buildings. As sung by Guthrie, the land of Skulpturenpark was made for you and me.”
Wow. This experiment from André Mintz is beautiful. It is part of the wider “Marginalia” project which aims to “incorporate the gesture and body movement of the spectator into image projection”. Check out the blog (in Portuguese).
Via Today and Tomorrow
For all those cheesecake lovers, here is a sweet. Andrew Bawidamann creates contemporary pin-up art through his graphically oriented girls, offering appeal to today’s soldiers,
tattoo artists, bikers, rockers and just about anyone with a fetish.
Via Priya
“Mission Statement: To show that regardless of what any president would have you imagine, despite what any media outlet would have you believe, life goes on in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.”
A personal monthly photo blog by a former Los Angeles resident who recently moved to Tehran, using a camera phone and showing to the world that fear and lack of knowledge about Iran is nothing more but the result of negative Western media. He also shows that Iran, for the most part, it’s a beautiful country with kind, loving and hospitable people.
Via Andrew Watson (looking forward to seeing you around!)
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