abstractmachine

• Conference: Générativité, Perspectives et enjeux esthétiques
• Speakers: Antoine Schmitt, Douglas Edric Stanley, Miriam Gourfink, Louis Bec
• Location: Le Fresnoy, Studio national d’arts contemporains
• Date: 18 Octobre, 2005

I was curious, more than anything else, to finally see what this place the Fresnoy is like. The official word from the Fresnoy is that they have been working with new technologies, and specifically with Interactivity, from the very beginning. But from very strange meetings with people who work there, people who have given workshops there, and lots of horror stories from friends and former students who’ve studied there, the reality appears to be a whole other story.

So I went to get some responses. I didn’t really get any. A lot of conflicting signals. I don’t think I really understood the project.

The building itself is impressive. But just a few minutes in, I started noticing things. When I tried to plug in my Mac, it was explained to me that all the machines run on Windows because the IT staff says it’s too complicated to make Macs and PC work together (and don’t even mention Linux). Huh? A high-end audiovisual studio doesn’t use any Macs? I’ve heard engineer bullshit like this before, that Linux, for example, isn’t really secure because it’s open-source (cough). But the worst is when they dictate this pure ideology to artists who just don’t know any better (although they should). Anyway, I headed into the theatre, which was nice, but the videoprojector image was pale and veering on illegibility. The bulb needed replacing, for one, and the projector serviced — or simply replaced with something more serious. I couldn’t understand how a center dedicated to the ‘contemporary’ image couldn’t have a more serious digital image projection system in their main theatre. Don’t they ever have digital projections? Are they still only projecting celluloid? On that front, the machines looked pretty sweet.

Just before our conference, the Director of the studio — a brilliant visual artist named Alain Fleischer — showed up, gave a little speech about digital art being the future, then dissapeared. Too bad, I guess I don’t get to meet Alain Fleischer after all.

The conference itself was pretty non-descript. Apparently, my talk went over well, considering the response I got during the break. Several enthusiastic students presented themselves, interesting debates, a couple of requests to come and study in Aix. But when it came to the Q&A, the whole energy shifted as we ended up with a sterile debate from some annoying remarks from the audience. Go-nowhere debates suck.

Luckily Louis Bec (the infamous ‘zoosystematician’) was there, ever acting the mind-expanding gourou that he is. If he were Indian, they would have built him a temple. In France he’s just a wacky artist/scientist/philosopher that no one really knows what to do with. We spent a wonderful evening together, and promised to meet up again at his home in the countryside not far from here. I’m going to have to go with a video camera. Someone has to record this man, he can go on for hours and it’s always brilliant; who cares if you agree with him or not. A real shame he left Aix-en-Provence so soon after my arrival. I would have liked to work with him more.

• Concert: 8=8=Les Joueurs de cartes
• Concept + Design: Nao, TM, JankenPopp, Abstractmachine
• Festival: Arborescence
• Location: Le cabaret aléatoire, Friche bel de mai, Marseille
• Date: 8 Octobre 2005. 22:30:00 sharp
• Photos + Video: 8=8 rehearsal video with photos

8=8 is a group of four programmers = four performers = four artists. We each built our own program for my Hypertable platform, then created a program that would group them together for a public performance. The performers/programmers/artists = Naoyuki Tanaka a.k.a. Nao, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre a.k.a. JankenPopp, Thomas Michalak a.k.a. TM, and me. All of us are or have been a part of the Atelier Hypermedia

Everything went great. Better than I had imagined. The images are for real : all the interactions take place directly with the images and all of the sounds are being generated by movements within the image programs. We let the programs run after the concert, which led to some interresting discussions. The public was very enthusiastic. One couple stayed for several hours, as they realised that each program was set after the concert to last about 45 minutes : they didn’t want to miss the next one. Someone else we spoke to took some time to accept the idea that in fact the interactions were generating the sounds (odd, it seemed pretty obvious to me).

We came up with an idea that we knew would be f#!&#& brilliant, but that we didn’t know if it would work in practice. It goes back to our hatred for boring stage shows and the formulaic nature of rock n’ roll which becomes even more boring when you stick someone behind a turntable and (gasp) comotose when they’re sitting behind a laptop. So since we were going to change all that, we also had to change the “announcement” of the concert (also because we were competing with noisy DJs in the other room).

Basically we created two modes : public interactive mode and live performance mode. To move from one to the other we created the “Big Daddy”, a program that would move us back and forth as well as choose the different programs. But to give the audience a bit of a feeling of all this, and create some anticipation, we created a sort of demo mode with a clock ticking down to the performance (time of the performance 22:30, with the T-minus clock opposite). Around the clock was a little interactive dribble-program that the public loved (personally I found it a bit limited : put your hand in, sounds go bling, and images smear about, but the “public” tends to like this sort of thing). People kept pouring in for the dribble, and the count-down kept ticking down. Then, ten minutes before the concert, the whole thing went black (except the clock) and all interactions stopped, giving us some time to spread out some room, get installed, and wait for Big Daddy to dish us the first bite.

That clock thing is totally brilliant. It really should be used by other musical groups. It creates a nice tension. Automating the stage is actually pretty cool : when your time is up, your time is up. You have to keep up. It’s pretty stressful = I like it.

Here is the link to the Arborescence festival webpage describing the event.

Here are some photos Colette Stanley took of the event: