Automatic Souvenirs exhibition, Montevideo

“En el pasado el tiempo era simplemente tiempo. El tiempo era una especie de segunda piel para los hombres, y a pesar de las inclemencias meteorológicas ocasionales uno se sentía parte de un orden mayor dentro de la naturaleza. Sin embargo, ahora el tiempo ha devenido en clima, una entidad física anónima, de amenazadora naturaleza y capaz de desatar en todo momento la catástrofe”

(Alfons Hug, curador de la exposición)

Partiendo de la premisa que los cambios climáticos siempre conllevan transformaciones culturales y apostando a la capacidad crítica del arte y la facultad de activar una toma de consciencia por parte del público, esta muestra apunta a dar un tratamiento artístico del tiempo y del paisaje como modo de preservación de estos.

Artistas: Erika Blumenfeld (EE.UU), Simon Faithfull (Inglaterra), Lutz Fritsch (Alemania), Shin Kiwoun (Corea), Marcellvs L. (Brasil), Kalle Laar (Alemania), Raquel Lejtreger (Uruguay), Alexander Nikolaev (Usbekistán), George Osodi (Nigeria), Reynold Reynolds (EE.UU), Juliana Rosales (Uruguay), Michael Sailstorfer/Jürgen Heinert (Alemania), Laura Vinci (Brasil), Guido van der Werve (Holanda)- - - - -

jueves 3 de diciembre - 19 hrscme-

SUBTEPlaza Fabini s/n (del Entrevero)
Montevideo, Uruguay.

Inclemencia del tiempo text

the awe inducing corridor for the contemporary traveler.

Automatic Souvenirs. Banff Center for the Arts

Automatic souvenirs

If land is transformed into landscape through media, we have to figure out what kind of landscape is shaped.

Would locative media ease the relationship between nature and us, or definitely eliminate wilderness? Being continuously connected, would we be able to get a glimpse “the sublime”? Is it still possible to think about wilderness when the amount of data we can collect is huge?

This project explores the shape of this wider data landscape, through a device that registers our journey with another narrative, another description of that experience, to see if we can get another hint of “what can not be expressed”.

Open air is synonymous of free, unspoiled pristine environment, and wandering through it, freely and without destination was intrinsically linked with self discovery. Exploring, learning, isolation, remoteness are much easier to conquer these days with locative media, but also change the conditions, making us constantly available and connected.

An invisible web of these experiences where we could share them could originate another kind of representation of these places? The aim of this project is to explore, compare, mix and pollinate the representation of these events, trough pictures, sounds, diagrams, a device that would make visible contradictions in our relation with nature, no more “there outside”, but a conscience of our time.

Athabaska Glacier. a trip on the ice

ahi_afuera

http://ahi-afuera.blogspot.com/2009/10/prototipo-y-consideraciones.html

I did an installation: Nature_Data in Montreal and with sensors and cameras. With them I collected pictures and data on weather conditions in situ: like, temperature, pressure and luminosity. In Uruguay, I have been working with Diego Azar, a musician and programmer developing a visual and sound prototype. The project is still developing, and in Diego´s words:

“The prototype done in puredata consists in the execution of instructions stored in a table and read, by rows, at a certain rate. The table plus the reading rate emulates the process of receiving data from the sensors periodically.
The sample rate of the prototype is 100ms, this means that every 100ms there is a state change in the whole system. These changes of state can be seen as new events in a score that is executed by a certain instruments built in Pd as well as changes in the visual part of the system constructed in Gem....”

“Sound aspects: ------------------------------------- As for the musical portion of the installation in particular, sounds to be used will be recorded at a certain rate of time .......The sounds used in the prototype are the ones collected by Juliana in the initial installation in Canada, the forerunner of this one.”

“Score aspects: ------------------------------- The score that will be played, is based on the values given by the sensors periodically.
This are rows of four values: temperature, humidity, pressure and light. These rows will be constantly processed by algorithms to generate statistical patterns that will give us what values are more usual for guide the composition forming something like a recent history. This will allow us to create ordered tables whose values will be assigned to compositional algorithms that will run when matched with the values read by the sensors. ...”This model is an example of data translation, a possible new reading of nature, a model that in time shows the evolution of the variables registered. Those variations are an alternative representation of subtle changes, and another way of representing complex natural phenomena.

Nature_ Data Montreal Langlois Oboro

In 2008, I made an interactive installation in Montreal. The work was done with plants from Quebec, sensors, cameras and a screen. Working with a programmer I included technical devices and translate the information collected into sound and images. I searched for an alternative way of measure and describe nature.

focos fac

Fachada Centro Cultural de España

In 2007, I made a year long installation with Uruguayan native plants in Montevideo. It was made in the facade of the Centro Cultural de España. It was a testing field in the confrontation between nature and artifice, city and landscape and a opportunity to test the resilience and fragility of the “non contaminated” in a highly modified and rarified atmosphere.

Focos-Fac

Fotografias

Journey as a translation