Bion - Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg

“Bion” is an interactive installation that explores the relationship between humans and artificial life. “Bion” makes reference to an individual element of primordial biological energy identified as orgone by the scientist Wilhelm Reich. The installation is composed of hundreds of mass-produced, 3-dimensional glowing and chirping sculptural forms. Each bion, measuring approximately 4×3x2 ½ inches is an synthetic “life-form” fitted with an audio speaker, blue lights (LED’s), and multiple sensors. The bions are suspended by fine gage wire connected to panels that are attached to the ceiling. When installed the panels form clusters of bions arranged at different elevations. Each bion has the ability to communicate with the others and with viewers that enter the space.

rBot

!rBot is a mollusk-like structure made of leather, aluminum and steel. A mechanical system of cams and levers powered by two motors opens and closes !rBot’s shell. As the shell opens, a platform holding a shaking percussive rattle protrudes from the robot’s interior, receding again as the shell closes.

Lemur - Robotic Musical Instruments

LEMUR is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer. Here are a couple of their instruments and I recommend checking out the videos on their site of them all in action.

Edge Monkeys - Stephen Gage & Will Thorne

In an article published in the cyber journal Technoetic Arts; Professor Stephen Gage of the Interactive Architecture Workshop and Will Thorne (UCL) describe a hypothetical fleet of small robots they call “edge monkeys.” Their function would be to patrol building facades, regulating energy usage and indoor conditions. Basic duties include closing unattended windows, checking thermostats, and adjusting blinds. But the machines would also “gesture meaningfully to internal occupants” when building users “are clearly wasting energy.” They are described as “intrinsically delightful and funny.”

via Architectural Record

Future Paintings

There is a lot of art out there that cobbles together timely social critique from classic video game and web imagery. But Michael Bell-Smith's videos, with their stylized colors, mini narratives, and figurative elements, have more in common with traditional painting than nostalgic digital bricolage. The artist's first solo show, entitled 'Focus Forward,' is now up at New York's Foxy Production Gallery, and the work on view typifies his painterly style. Displayed on an all-black version of a Pac-Man cocktail table, his figurative work, 'Birds Over the Whitehouse,' features colored blips circulating over a maze-like schematic of the famous home. The piece crafts the classic arcade console into an allegory for terrorist threats and the unreality of contemporary warfare. In 'Continue 2000,' Bell-Smith creates a video game-style cartoon apocalypse and uses it to channel the sublime awe of a Romantic painting into a critique of the fear and spectacle of modern disasters. The exhibition runs through May 27th, but if a trip to New York is impossible, each video can be viewed in its entirety on the gallery's website. - Rhizome.org

http://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/475

Interactive Installation

An installation that has its autonomous life and leaves the "user" aside.

Artificial Intelligences and bots are increasingly populating real or virtual spaces. They are even sometimes standing alone in those spaces, waiting for hypothetical users to interact with them. First designed to fake human intelligence, the bots are now frequently used to interact with humans and to mimic them. When they are programmed to stimulate user's reaction through keyboards, screens, or other media, real human beings usually bring the variation in the discussion that often makes them perceive the A.I. as a real person.

But what happens if two A.I./chat bots talk together? What happens if, in addition, it is the same "brain" that drives the two hardware (two game consoles in this case)? What will they talk about?

Electroscape 004 develops these questions and sets up a kind of auto-logical and self reflexive environment (A.I. to A.I., PS2 to XBOX, self-spaces) where visitors are placed in the fringe, in a passive and frustrating posture, witnessing the two game consoles interacting and playing with each other, listening to their chat.

To whom does the space of the installation belong to? Is it public? Is it private? Does it belong to the two machines? All three? And how are used the data that are being collected by the machines?

The Gif show

The GIF Show, an exhibition opening today, at San Francisco’s Rx Gallery, takes the pulse of "GIF Luv," a frenzy of file-sharing and creative muscle-flexing associated with GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format files).

Curated by Marisa Olson in a Rhizome collaboration with Rx, the show presents GIFs and GIF-based videos, prints, readymades, and sculptures by artists, including Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Lovid, Tom Moody, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear (aka 893/umeancompetitor). From the flashy to the minimal, the sonic to the silent, the artists in The GIF Show demonstrate the diversity of forms to be found in GIFs, and many of them comment on the broader social life of these image files. Tonight's opening will be further animated by Eats Tapes's music and Nate Boyce's visuals.

Via rhizome.

Fantasy Island

Imagine a world filled with colourful creatures floating around in an orange sky. A world where you can dance the night away in a circus, with muscular full-bread stallions trotting around wearing clown's masks… Encounters with hybrid Formula 1 hammerhead sharks and a girl with hair from head to toe whom tenderly touches your hand…This is not a dream!

Fantasy island - exhibition Robinson shows the work by 13 international artists. On the surface these artists seem to invite us to wander around in their fantasy-world. When we take a closer look though, there seems to be more than meets the eye. This often bizarre universe appears to be constructed by the artist through a serie of rewritten laws of nature.

for more info check http://www.showroommama.nl/projects/fantasyisland.cfm