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Notes on a New Nature is a physical manifestation of an ongoing research project conducted by artist, writer, and curator Nicholas O’Brien. The research critically examines and compares the relationships that contemporary artists working with digital media have to practices started in Modernist Painting – specifically the pursuit of capturing the virtual qualities of what constitutes a landscape. How does an artist depict a space faithfully enough to show its affect on a subject? Can art capture the space between the viewer and the horizon, and where does that horizon reside now that we can digitally circumnavigate the globe? Can the digital reconcile the physical?

One way that we know how to understand the natural is through the domestic spaces of our daily lives. The interior shelter allows for reflection on what is “outside,” and as a result positions civilization away from the natural. However, as various digital and virtual landscape permeate the domestic space, our notion of what constitutes the natural has become more complicated than a simple inside/outside dichotomy. We use all forms of digital and analog technologies to simulate the natural world daily, and artists in this show point to how these tools affect the ways in which the “realness” of the natural is no longer as simple as locating it outside your window.

This newfound complication highlights the central argument of Notes on a New Nature: our varied notion of what constitutes the natural is shaped by technology, which is a narrative that can be traced all the way back to the advent of agriculture and the dawn of civilization. Through employment of various digital approaches, artists in this exhibition reference this long-standing problem we face when attempting to represent landscape and acknowledge the ways in which digital technology has forever changed our understanding of nature.

Participating artists include: Duncan Alexander, Mark Beasley, Chris Collins, Petra Cortright, Theo Darst, Marjolijn Dijkman, Paul Flannery, Joe Hamilton (aka Hypergeography), Jan Robert Leegte, Sara Ludy, Garrett Lynch, Michael Ray-Vaughn, Sherwin Rivera Tibayan, Nicolas Sassoon, Rick Silva, Pascual Sisto, Kate Steciw, Wes W Wilson, and Krist Wood.

Gallery site:
http://319scholes.org/nov-10-%E2%80%93-nov-20-2011-notes-on-a-new-nature/

Facebook event page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269943109714089

319 Scholes Brooklyn, NY
November 10 – November 20, 2011
Opening: November 10, 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Gallery hours: Friday and Saturday, 2:00pm – 6:00pm and by appointment

Above: A live capture of Netscapes.

Netscapes is an automated application that uses live feeds from networked webcams to create combined and imagined landscape compositions, networked landscapes. The application does this by employing a technique called web scraping where data is retrieved from websites and presented elsewhere. Web scraping exists in a number of contexts on the web from the legitimate e.g. widgets retrieving data such a weather or statistical information from sites, to the illegal e.g. user data harvested from sites for email addresses or bank account details.

Unlike standard webscraping however, Netscapes does not retrieve textual data. Instead it retrieves imagery and considers the network as an augmented lens, an extension of our vision as a means to see distant places. In turn the computer screen is a window, a vista, on a landscape that is simultaneously real and yet impossible. We see Netscapes where lakes reflect mountains that are not there, where pyramids cast no shadow in full daylight, where hills obscured by fog are shadowed by distant mountains in perfect clarity and where a rain filled sky does not allow its rain to touch the desert it drifts over. Netscapes merge multiple time zones and so we can observe dawn, midday, dusk and night all at once. This creates a virtualised place that exists both in and outside of multiples times and spaces.

Above: Screenshots of Netscapes. Click here to view on Flickr.

Netscapes is a landscape work in the tradition of classical western landscape art. Similarly it depicts landscapes that are idealised, displaying the most aesthetically pleasing. However the edit, composition and display of the Netscapes is in constant flux. Just as we see the method of rendering a landscape in traditional landscape art, the brush stroke or perhaps mark of the drawing implement, in Netscapes we are constantly reminded of the lens as we see drops of water or dirt obscuring the view and forcing the camera out of focus, lens flare from the sun or the pitch black of night that the webcam cannot penetrate.

Audio heard in the work is generated live and is influenced by the current composition. Netscapes currently sources 42 webcams from all over the world. All webcam locations and links can be found on the map below which documents the distribution of Netscapes ‘eye’. Netscapes is a system that can be updated with webcams as they appear and disappear from the web. Any viewing of the work is a essentially a snapshot of the web and its change over time.

Above: View map of current Netscapes webcams in a larger map.

Above: Images of the sandwich board miniature replica. Click to view.

The artist uses the virtual world of Second Life® as a staging point for work dealing with identity, representation and place. Within the ‘virtual’ world the artist’s representation wears a sandwich board stating I’m Garrett Lynch (IRL), an acronym that plays on both the artist’s national identity (Ireland) and ‘real’ location, In Real Life. The sandwich board now exists as a wearable art object for use by the artist in mixed reality performance.

Sandwich Board - Miniature Replicas are two handcrafted scaled miniature replicas of the sandwich board, both mementos of the artists work in ‘virtual’ spaces made ‘real’ and a toy sized version of the life size sandwich board. The sandwich board has moved from the ‘virtual’, the original created for the artists representation, to the ‘real’ for the artist himself and now finally to a miniaturized ‘real’ version perhaps destined to be worn by an action figure, a representation in its own right.

Above: Flickr slideshow documenting making the replicas. View on Flickr.

One replica will be exhibited as part of The Vending Machine, an installation of international artists at the 54th Venice Biennale who have responded to its theme of ILLUMInations. Each art work in the installation can be purchased by a visitor to the biennale. The following is from the exhibitions curatorial statement:

The two vending machines supplied by Luca S r L become dispersers of transparent spheres, that can be compared to greenhouses, where the metaphoric growth of an idea is linked to the nurturing, development and growth of a plant, where chance intervenes to determine the outcome. Each sphere represents the lume (light), a world, an artist, a creative seed and will contain an original piece of diverse artwork produced by both emerging and established artists. Through the game of interaction and the inherent chance of the machine, an automatic distributor, an exchange takes place for both the artist and receiver of the art work. Playfulness is essential to creativity and quintessential to art. Through this installation an artistic exchange could opens new dialogues and ideas in a global context, amongst differing cultures, territories and landscapes.

While one replica will be purchased through chance by an unknown visitor to the biennale its counterpart will be retained by the artist. Both replicas come packaged with five display cards containing; a statement by the artist, an image of the artists Second Life® representation wearing the original sandwich board, an image of the artist wearing the ‘real’ life size reproduction of the sandwich board, a card with url details to the works documentation online and a card addressed to the new owner with contact details for the artist. If contacted by the new owner the artist will provide the owner with provenance and credit as owner here.

The Vending Machine installation will be sited at two prestigious locations, Galleria Perela and Serra dei Giardini from the 14th-30th of September 2011.

Above: The sandwich board scaled replica.

The sandwich board worn by the artists representation in Second Life (and OpenSim) has now appeared in ‘real’ life. It is a scaled replica of the ‘virtual’ sandwich board to fit the artist and be used in mixed reality performances.

To date the sandwich board has been exhibited at Being and worn during a performance at Dorkbot Cardiff.

Above: The sandwich board exhibited at Being. View the set on Flickr

Above: The sandwich board worn in performance at Dorkbot Cardiff. View the set on Flickr

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DecemberLab presents

Being

“Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every da-sein has already surrendered itself, in its being-among-the-other.”

Being and Time. Martin Heidegger.

with:
Garrett Lynch
Daniel Jeczalik
Jonathan Thomas
Freeman & Fine
Inga Burrows
Henrik Hendinge
Liam O’Conner

DecemberLab, organisers of VerticalCinema have curated a group show loosely themed upon the idea of ‘Being’, collating a cross-section of artists working in moving image (and related fields) that deal implicitly with the terminology or are evident within the taxonomy, whether this be a subjective or non-subject context, Da-sein, or an objective, material/structural realisation of ‘a being’, the curated space then observing any topology due to dialogic relations.

You are invited for a private view and drinks at what used to known as ‘The Wardrobe’ in High St Arcade, Cardiff from 7pm onwards on Thursday 19th May. Feel free to bring a bottle.

The Wardrobe
High St Arcade, Cardiff

20th – 28th May
10a.m – 5p.m

Opening Night 19th May
7p.m – 10p.m

Above: Motion capture software developed for the Visuosonics research project. Click for larger view.

Since February 2010 I’ve worked on a series of applications which allow motion capture for performance as part of the Visuosonic research project at Southampton Solent University. The research:

uses real-time sound-image interactivity to create immersive environments in which the art gallery, the concert hall, the theatre and the cinema converge into a ‘total’ performance space.

My contribution involved creating bridging applications in Max/MSP and Java which would allow hardware to be used with a variety of software front-ends. This included:

• Vision motion capture: USB or Firewire camera → capture software → OSC receiving software.
• Gesture motion capture: Acceleglove → capture software → OSC receiving software.

Above: Vision capture software tracking.

For details on how to use an Acceleglove in Max/MSP, please see the Acceleglove capture in Max/MSP tutorial.

Above: The performance prologue, leading the audience into the space.

Above: The full performance.

The final work created for the Yoshikaze Residency involves a live mixed reality, trans-locative performance before an audience in Second Life, in Umeå Sweden and streamed on the web.

An enclosed stage was constructed for the performance. This was populated with a set consisting of a green house, silhouettes of ‘real’ people and props of reclaimed and reworked Second Life marketplace items. Behind the house, through the trees, a live vista of a mountain range (the Rockies, Canada) can be seen. Next to the house is a floating Second Life client window.

Prior to the performance, the audience were required to wait outside the enclosed stage in the gallery. When ready my representation ascended to the gallery and instructed the audience to follow down the winding tunnel into the space. This ‘passage’ from outside to inside served to highlight the inner ‘virtual’ world to be created during the performance.

Above: The video stream broadcast live to the stage screen in Second Life.

During the performance, props within the space and client windows which appear and float through the space are timed to change colour periodically. My representations movements and direction of gaze is choreographed by a controller software external to Second Life and it is this gaze that is broadcast live to the Second Life client window (see video below). The audience simultaneously see the performers representation and through its point of view as my representation moves through the space panning, tilting and zooming.

The live broadcast however is manipulated. Green within the imagery has been keyed out and replaced by a video of the artist from the ‘real’ world. As my representation moves around the space, my photographic representation moves around its surfaces as they change to green, flattening the ‘virtual’ world, looking through its very window into another and breaking its stylised illusion. Sound heard is the artists heart beat from an ultrasound monitor reworked in a number of ways. Image and sound links the constructed space to the artist.

While the space of the performance as a whole exists as a combination of ‘real’ place, constructed ‘virtual’ representations of place(s) and physical personal data directly experienced by all present, the client window displays a unique vision of a multi-layered hybrid space, an inner ‘virtual’ world replete with representations, seen only first hand by my representation.

Above: The performance keying screen. Click to view more images of the performance.

To view more images of this work and others from the Yoshikaze “Up-In-The-Air” Second Life Residency please see the Yoshikaze Residency set on Flickr. An artists book has been published which documents all works produced during the Yoshikaze “Up-in-the-air” Second Life Residency. To purchase simply follow this link.