Beautiful! A fantastic article by PinMag: Jum Nakao: Paper Fashion Art.

Screenshot From PingMag… 

Long time ago, I was what… 14? 15? Titouan Lamazou came to the Lycée Descartes, the French school of Rabat, to show some of his drawings. Along with the navigator came a gorgeous “brune,” ou “rousse” (du henné peut-être?), une magicienne en falbala, magnifique. I have little memories from my childhood, but this is one of them. Un voyageur-explorateur, Titouan embodied what I always wanted to be… and I haven’t started yet… well…

File from the Hugo Pratt archive

Titouan for me, c’est Corto Maltese, a hero of Hugo Pratt, ou encore Rimbaud (Rimbaud here interpreted by Xavier Pignon-Ernest)… : car à l’age de 17 ans, Titouan décide de créer un carnet de voyage, and to do so embarks on a boat (Rimbaud had not seen the sea when he wrote the Bateau ivre, but was the same age)…

[…] Et Dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème
De la Mer, infusé d’astres, et lactescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend ; […]

+ Rimbaud, Le Bateau ivre

Rimbaud par Pignon-Ernest

Check Titouan’s exhibit… Zoé Zoé aura lieu du 11 Octobre 2007 au 30 Mars 2008, à Paris. Au Musée de l’Homme, Titouan parlera de femmes!

Dessin de Titouan Lamazou

Le lien avec mes neo-nomades… l’ IMAGINAIRE

Great evening: ART ZOYD & METROPOLIS BY FRITZ LANG. It is the third time I watch Metropolis. It is the first time I watch it accompanied with music. Download Art Zoyd’s .pdf on Metropolis. Art Zoyd is fantastic!

Fritz Lang’s black/white masterpiece Metropolis projected onto the wall of the last historical industry building at the Harbour of Copenhagen to music of the ground-breaking avant-rock band, Art Zoyd.

Experience the Metropolis Biennale opening with the ultimate cult film that provided endless discussions and became implemented on the world political arena. Fritz Lang’s black/white Metropolis film will be shown in city parameters on the outer wall of a massive storage tower in Copenhagen harbour – a building that is going to be demolished in due course.

“Metropolis will have no equal”, said the master of movies, Luis Bunuel, after the premiere in 1927. The ground-breaking French avant-rock band Art Zoyd accompanies the film with their minimalist installations and compositions created specific for this film.

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece experienced on a massive screen accompanied by live music is a unique cocktail you won’t forget. (Metropolis website biennale)

Not practical… but with a sense of humour that we all need when going through the gates…

via: perpetual kid and eyebeam reblog!

METROPOLIS Biennale in Copenhagen this weekend… highlights!

I renewed with my old love for the theater (which was also the subject of inquiry of my Architect diploma, DPLG 1997… I was then fascinated by the ‘dream manufacturing’ machines of Italian theaters). I listened to Michel Crespin, founder of “Lieux Publics”, presenting along with Yohann Floch, responsible for the international relations in HorsLesMurs, different projects involving spaces, time, bodies and objects, the social fabric and it symbols, to explain that the “arts de la rue” is a multidisciplinary art form that however ephemeral wants to transform cities; “the artist being political in the Greek sense of the term” says Crespin to whom also “La ville est une scène à 360º” (If we consider one plane).

After Christo’s building packages Crespin showed us the work of Xavier Juillot Ritalcalfoul: I particularly liked the airtight packaging (to conserve buildings) of the Royal Saltworks of Arcs et Senans, built by the famous architect of the French revolution, Claude-Nicholas Ledoux, where salt—a very precious preservative at that time—was produced.

Atopia Research did present their research + design services related to Tsunami recovery in Sri Lanka, including ICT infrastructure development, e-learning…:

ATOPIA RESEARCH INC. is a research and design organization that works globally to bring innovation, strategic thinking and design expertise to bear on some of the most intractable complex environmental and social issues that we encounter today, engaging in humanitarian relief projects and conducting research into the interdependence of informatics, economics and ecology. The organization’s mission is both charitable and educational.

The next day I met Jasmine Zimmerman, a NYC artist whose web project meshes different social fabrics together. As she writes in her manifesto:

Art is an encounter. Embodying the uncontainable and elastic nature of contemporary art, The Web Project creates situations that invite spectators to become active participants, in dialogue with both their context and each other. Encompassing the sphere of human interactions and it’s social context, installation sites become convergence points, introducing a time to be experienced and encountered by all walks of life, opening a dialogue that never ends.

I also had a delightful Sunday afternoon watching the movie Hikikomori by Francesco Jodice and Kal Karman and presented by Emiliano Gandolfi, currently the curator of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. What is happening to our cities? And again the classical question: what is the role of architects and designers in times of ‘alienation’?

Pix of the session. From left to right; Marc Armengaud, Jane Harrison from Atopia, Emiliano Gandolfi.

Hikikomori? Wikipedia states that:

Hikikomori is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive adolescents and young adults who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement due to various personal and social factors in their lives. The term hikikomori refers to both the sociological phenomenon in general as well as to individuals belonging to this societal group.

Marc Armengaud, founder member of AWP presented the Troll Protocol project, which explores urban strategies at night. The project was organized in collaboration with the City on the Move.

To follow up on the relationship between dance and new technologies (previous post) find the article A Monaco, la danse a dompté les nouvelles technologies | LEMONDE.FR | 18.12.06 | Sylvie Chayette:

Cette année, deux grands noms de la chorégraphie, deux Américains qui n’ont de commun que leur immense capacité créatrice, se sont approprié ces nouveaux moyens : Bill T. Jones et Trisha Brown. Tous deux se sont également servis des compétences de l’Université d’Etat d’Arizona (Arizona State University) et de son département AME (Media and Engineering Program) qui a passé plus de trois ans à élaborer son programme “motione” avec les deux directeurs de troupes.

Find here the Monaco Dance Forum, program of Installations .pdf

Have a look at the portfolio in LEMONDE.FR

Screenshot LEMONDE.FR!

Screenshot, motione…

Still thinking about cyborgs, body, machine, bio~… this image created by Erik Vervroegen for Sony Playstation is striking! Found via NEXT NATURE!!! Some idea about what it is:

Q: Can you give a few examples of next nature?
A: Yes, here are some examples.
Example 1: Products that grow in its own packaging (see how to grow an orangina bottle).
Example 2: Lots of people play games. That’s culture. But when some people start living in games and even manage to earn an income within a virtual world. Then it becomes next nature.
Example 3: The use of domestic robots is rapidly increasing. People don’t have time to look after their smart alarm clocks, toasters and vacuum cleaners anymore. They will have to organize themselves.
Example 4: The Enologix company of Sonoma, California, makes software that predicts how a wine will rate in reviews even before it is made. In order to achieve the high rating, winemakers invest in processes rooted not in agriculture but in biochemical information. Wine making becomes an information science.
Example 5: In cities like Los Angeles, it is almost impossible to live without a car.
Example 6: The global economy is such a complex system we are unable to control it. Of course people try to influence it, but we cannot completely control it. It’s a next nature phenomenon.

I have found also the post virtual missing limb.

“Le mouvement est l’acte le plus important en ce que toutes les fonctions empruntent son concours pour s’accomplir.” Etienne-Jules Marey

Every since Jean sent me the info about PikaPika, I kept on thinking about perception and visualization of the ephemeral…

PIKAPIKA

PikaPika, the Lightning Doodle Project, is a development—mixing animation, light, and photography—upon earlier experiments. Recall the chronophotographies of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904)

and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912.

White Noise/White Light, the interactive sculpture/landscape by MIT Professor J. Meejin Yoon experiments spatially with these notions.

To read: Laurent Mannoni, Etienne-Jules Marey, la mémoire de l’œil (Milan-Paris: Mazzotta - Cinémathèque française, 1999)

Thinking about “surface real estate” for 2D codes, I came to envisage printing 2D codes on post-its… You know already how much I like post-its, as ubiquitous in our environment as 2D codes… so why not combining both… like that:

Let’s have them printed; let’s people pick the information about ourselves or rooms for rent… though YES!… once I see a 2D code I can scan it with my cellphone… so no need for carrying it you may say… yet… I or others can distribute the 2D-code-post-it, place it, re-place it, dis-place it as wish (and as long as the glue stands :) The post-it is certainly a good advertising tool, as the MIT Advertising Lab, blog on the future of advertising technology posts (And I will try to develop upon this post).

In fact the post-it enables both the posting and the un-posting of notes. Maybe you remember my un-post-it calendar? Having experienced using it, I have noticed:
1. It is slightly fatiguing for the arm to write on post-its, especially when standing
2. One gets an amazing sense of achievement when all the items on the list of the day “disappear”
3. It augments stress when there is a deadline coming up… but some, like me, may work better under a little of good stress!

So I have read that not so long ago, some celebrated the 25 years anniversary of this incredible invention. As the article by Greg Beato emphasizes, this minuscule idea, soon to be big, was the invention of a man who had a vision… that an outdated management couldn’t see.

Anyway, the original post-it, mainly because of its “pixel” shape has inspired many art works based on digital pictures! The pictures of the Post-it Note Video Games Characters are good examples of PIXEL ART, of which, I think, some Post-it art pieces belong. But have a look at the Post-it Note Elvis images!

The article “The Girls Guide to Elvis” by the New Observer newspaper gives us some data: “We’re talking about a mosaic of the King, Elvis Presley himself, made from Post-it Notes. A total of 2,646 sticky notes, to be exact, on a 14-by-9-foot wall.” Tedious though to calculate how many post-it per color scheme one would need, so to calculate how many pack to get… Anyway, would you want to convert a flat image into a post-it art piece, please follow the post-it mosaic howto [updated]!

I (as well) like very much the post by the insurgent muse, “The Under-Appreciated Art of the Post-it”! The art work by Rebecca (picture below comes from the same posting) makes me think of many of the customizable-environments-and-hotel-rooms inquiries that I have been sharing with you.

But I still think that the dimension of the PACK of post-it, which gives a depth to the post-it surface, has unfortunately not been taken into close consideration. After all there might be as much jubilation to post a note as that to un-post it; and to keep un-posting it until the pack ends (Actually, I shall now revise my un-post-it calendar ;)

Hence, one of the most beautiful Post-it work of art is that of the artist VASSEVA, who I have met when drifting in the streets of Budapest (I went to Budapest for the SASE2005 conference and to give a presentation about neo-nomads). Here is a picture downloaded from her website… For me it is more about “effeuiller” (defoliate, denudate…) than “leaving a message.”

Yet I also recall the power of Post-its (mute messages) in the movie by Elia Suleiman, Divine Intervention, 2002. Poignant. On another note, the interview of the movie director in VACARME is particularly interesting, as he also “compares himself to a Bedouin, and claims his experience of nomadism…” The article is in French.

“On Monday, February 16, 1981, after a year of trying and waiting, I was finally hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks, in a Venetian hotel: Hotel C.
I was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor.
In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and the way this succession of people staying in the same room set up their temporary homes. I observed through details lives which remained unknown to me.
On Friday March 6, the job came to an end.” Sophie Calle: L’Hôtel, 1981

The project of Sophie Calle: L’Hôtel caught my eyes for its beautiful simplicity in detailing life of strangers. In 1981, the artist—visual ethnographer, detective and fiction storyteller—Sophie Calle surveys a population in transit. By capturing traces of living being in transit, and appropriating evidences “She transgresses the boundaries between public and private, fact and fiction.” [1]

If I am not yet getting into the notion of objectivity, I would like to stress the interest of such a project to me who is developing a method to explore, describe and analyze people’s habits, in transitional spaces like hotel rooms. Statistical data can hardly inform you about the psychological and the emotional level of people on the move, and to what extent and how they get attached (or detached) to the built environment.

However, all the work is amazing! If you haven’t been to the Centre Georges Pompidou exhibit: SOPHIE CALLE M’AS-TU VUE held in 2003-2004, it is always time to track her :) or have a look at the book!

[1] Sophie Calle, a Survey; Exhibit curated by Deborah Irmas for the Fred Hoffman Gallery