PRESS ESC TO EXIT FULL SCREEN MODE, 2011

I’m trying to describe the feeling I had when I first met Santiago Taccetti and saw his artwork. As he scrolled through his website showing me piece after piece I became excited about what he was doing in his art practice. Images of installations, paintings, video and prints all emphasized a similar consideration and viewpoint toward our relationship with technology and the pervasive aesthetic that has emerged. What’s incredible is that Taccetti translates this across artistic disciplines, which to me means you are onto something. His work floats on the white page of a website with the same ease that he builds a sculpture or paints. This delicate sensitivity towards contemporary aesthetics is something we are all becoming more attuned to through the web. To make a comparison I have a historical anecdote. As a kid watching way too much television I became a super critic of TV and movies. The editing, lighting, sound and costumes all spoke to me. I understood this medium naturally and could differentiate between incredibly subtle details and differences. The web is developing a similar critical and aesthetic awareness and Taccetti’s artwork translates this like a mother tongue. His work represents a certain perfection that is more than real–it is actually unreal. It is the aesthetic of the machine. And strangely after viewing his work I began to perceive the city differently. I started to see the digital aesthetic everywhere, permeating the real world.

UNTITLED (Accidents series) continuous

We speak about the magical day when electronics will coexist with us in reality. But this has happened. Most of our surroundings are machine made and designed on computers. They are the by products of digital imaginations and they are born into reality. Consider how striking it is to see something made by hand in our surroundings rather than by a computer. Looking at the city from this perspective I began to question where the reality actually was and realized it was becoming a pretty blurry line. Everything started to seem like it could be digital born even the grit and graffiti. Take a look at some of Taccetti’s paintings and you will see what I mean. I wonder where the shadows and layers of paint end and whether they could be made in After Effects. It is from this point of questioning reality, technology and aesthetics that Taccetti is working in his art practice. The world is on a sort of super drive and all the materials are available for interpretation and the potential creation of an illusion. Walk into any dollar store, hardware store or IKEA, peruse the Internet or find a discarded package. You will find the influence of the computer age, the strange place in between, and you are stepping into Taccetti’s playground.

(Images courtesy of the artist)

Rachel De Joode, Seeing the Future, a skype-performance, 2011

A young, naked man stares at us, reacting in real-time via webcam; his image is projected onto a typical artist’s canvas and easel a few meters away. Every few minutes he speaks to us. Sometimes I hear what he says, “a woman walks across the room” or “the man with a blue jacket just moved towards the back”. Other times the Internet connection is too weak and his words become fragmented. But the audience understands he is watching us. We continue standing in front of him immobilized, it is awkward and the tension is real.

This performance entitled “Seeing The Future” by Rachel De Joode was a highlight of the opening at The Future Gallery last Friday. The event celebrated the sixth edition of PWR PAPER, a “phuturist” publication focused on art and design. The performance transported the character “Brennan” who is ten hours ahead of us back into the gallery space. Drawing attention to the collapse of present and future time De Joode’s concept seems fitting considering the name of the gallery and PWR PAPER’s tagline.

PWR PAPER , 2010-2011

PWR PAPER publications are usually one large, newsprint foldout and feature artists from the post-internet arts community. Friday’s event saw the launch of a bound book with over one hundred and fifty pages of artworks and writings.  Featuring more than twenty-six artists, the exhibition also included work by Aaron Graham, Andreas Banderas, Ben Schumacher, Carson Fish-Vittori, Martin Kohout, Oregon Painting Society, Sarah Hartnett and Travess Smalley. Many of the exhibiting artists regularly contribute to PWR PAPER. This publication and exhibition bring together an expansive group of artists, intermingling “phuturistic” perspectives on technology and culture.

It Pays My Way and it Corrodes My Soul, 2011, Performance by Stephen Cornford(UK) and Paul Whitty

Last Saturday LEAP, the Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance, launched a new bi-monthly series called Body Controlled, presenting
artists dedicated to performance art and exploring sound using electronics and other art forms. For its first installment titled, Other Spaces, the artists used the dynamic of preexisting architecture and virtual spaces as a point of departure for work on display through December 2, 2011. Highlights of Saturday’s inaugural event included Robert Henke’s twelve-hour installation/performance, Microsphere. Well known within both academics and club culture Henke has been involved in negotiating the evolution of computer based music for decades and helped pioneer today’s standard software for live performance, Ableton Live. While I only stayed for the first two hours of his set visitors were welcome to pass by until mid-morning the next day, breakfast was apparently served in the final hours. During the time I was present I took notice of Henke’s peaceful performance demeanor, the invisible anxiety that permeates most was non-existent. His expert execution allowed sounds to develop within the space breaking down typical audience-performer barriers. Focus returned to the audience and the space as Henke took short smoking breaks and even ate some grapes while he played at what looked like a recording station from the future. Massive cabling protruded from the back of a desk that was under lit by a florescent red tube and a carefully rigged computer screen floated, suspended from the ceiling. Fluctuating between listening to the development of sound, Henke added various traditional and non-traditional instruments to the mix and their play back became part of a developing new sound and spatial atmosphere.

Microsphere 2011, performative installation for ten speakers and percussion, Robert Henke (DE)

Henke translated the present space through sound but the rest of the performances explored sounds of other spaces bringing prerecorded environments and objects into the mix. Peter Kirn used preexisting recordings from various locations and samples of piano that were played back through digital tools. Hardware based performance duo, Stephen Cornford and Paul Whitty deconstructed the sounds of a reel-to-reel tape recorder and various other obsolete machinery in an operation-like performance. Piece by piece the equipment continued to play until the duo deteriorated the mechanics beyond playability and thus ended the performance. Stephen Cornford also presented a sound based installation in the front window of LEAP. Binatone Galaxy is a series of old tape recorders, wall mounted in random formation that play hacked tape cassettes. The result is a symphonious sound wall amplifying each machine as it works. Motion sensors vary the composition by stopping the tape players whenever a person gets close. This seems to tease the viewer who is forced to stand back and listen from a distance while being tempted to get close and hear the noise of each player.

Binatone Galaxy, 2011, installation with used cassette players

In a stairwell leading up to the second floor (and an amazing view of Berlin’s Fernsehturn) a site responsive piece called Volume by Robert Mathy amplifies the noise of the infrastructure. A series of small motors are attached to various objects and a small metal spike on each one hits the surface of the object. The noises they produce are spread out over the space and create a sound composition from the architecture. The experience was really playful and reminded me of being a kid, exploring the sound of objects in your proximity. Somehow the environment also started to feel cavernous. Anticipating the possibility of sound seemed akin to moving through a dark space and waiting for visual cues to guide your way. While standing still, the installation produced new depths and its time based evolution made your ears wander. The event, Other Spaces, on a whole could be said to be working towards this same sensation. While we remained at LEAP the sounds presented therein brought us to new spaces.