EXIT 07 / MAY 12 - JULY 8 2007

I do like this piece a lot. It is the work of a just graduated student of the Royal Danish Art Academy… Shame on me, I do not remember the name. Will have to go there again or get the catalogue, available at the end of May… Something to do with the neo-nomad? Don’t know… drifting in Copenhagen, and digital exploration of boundaries…

Works and projects by graduate students from the Royal Danish Art Academy and School of Visual Arts are presented in this annual exhibition. Exit is a panorama of the current tendencies within painting, video, photography, sculpture, graphics, digital animation and installations created by 29 artists.

In the intimate surroundings of GL STRAND, it’s possible to get an overview of new Danish art – a rare occurrence for gallery owners, collectors, critics, curators and art lovers alike. Everyone’s a critic, including GL STRAND itself as we invest in chosen works which are then given away to members in a lottery.

Currently reading: Deborah Chambers, New Social Ties: Contemporary Connections in a Fragmented Society (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)… and found this ad on facebook:

The book examines FRIENDSHIP as a core concept for the analysis of relationships across times and spaces.

Invited juror for the International Networked Art Competition 2007: Mixed Realities!

A way to recycle, the temporary art interventions of Leo Fitzmaurice, via PingMag:

From 2005 to 2006, artist Leo Fitzmaurice became a Detourist: while traveling to Berlin, London, Shanghai, Stavanger, Zurich and back to his own city Liverpool, he made around half-a-dozen temporary artworks by rearranging found materials such as catalogues, flyers, or cardboards in their own environment creating some unexpected new meanings. By placing those rearranged objects in public spaces, and sidewalks he made art in the form of small, temporary interventions. PingMag wanted to find out more about Leo’s theory behind his objets trouvés and met him at Berlin’s General Public gallery…

Leo Fitzmaurice’s “Craterform” made out of the well-known UK shopping catalogue of Argos, which sells just about everything [PingMag]

Making art out of an everyday object… something that you don’t mind renouncing when you leave. So art is not about the object, but about its making, the intriguing creation that a found object inspires. More about the readymades of Duchamp…

Bill Thompson, an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet wrote Monday 19 March, 2007 an article entitled: In search of the neo-nomad. He writes:

As one of the millions of people who work wherever they happen to find themselves, relying on a laptop and a wireless connection for all their computing needs, I certainly live a nomadic lifestyle, pitching my virtual camp wherever I happen to find myself.

And I’d rather be a neo-nomad than a laptop warrior, a term which was clearly designed to make corporate executives feel that the evenings spent in dull business hotels in Utrecht preparing the monthly sales figures had some heroic aspect.

Nomads certainly have lots of places to settle for an hour or two of work.

And later (I am flattered):

The term neo-nomad has actually been around for a while. Researcher Yasmine Abbas calls her blog neo-nomad, and she has been writing about what she calls “digitally geared people on the move” since 2005.

Abbas is especially interested in how people who work on the move retain a sense of belonging to places and organisations, and at the way new technologies open up new ways of belonging to groups and even companies.

My good friend Simon runs an online recruitment company and it has operated as a hybrid business since it started.

There is a real office, and meetings take place there, but in general the team work remotely from wherever they happen to find themselves, whether that’s in Brighton, Suffolk or Australia.

Here below is an observation that I would like to discuss for that it is often a question that comes up when I make a presentation:

Neo-nomads and digital bedouins sound very exciting, but we mustn’t forget that this will only ever be a viable way of working for a small, skilled and privileged minority of people.

Will be back soon…

I had students of the Digital + Mobilities seminar read an excerpt of Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: identity in the age of the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1997) and bring in visuals to complement the readings so to further the discussion/debate. As I was googling to look for the “if you don’t have it, you’re a loser” image (I like the sarcasm) that P.K. brought to our attention as it triggers a reflection on identity mediated by the machine, I came across this still photograph of the movie Garden State, 2004*:

Which triggers even more ideas about ubiquitous computing, identity and the electronic/electric influx…. And that reminded me very much of the practicables of Coucou Bazar, an “animated painting” by Jean Dubuffet:

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.

I am a pacifist. If humans were capable of living together, we wouldn’t need this… Anyway… This piece of information feeds my reflection on cyborgs: read the article by Wendy Y. Lawton for the George Street Journal (now Inside Brown journal): The Research group exploring limb loss hopes biohybrid will bridge gap between human and machine. Scientists based at Brown and MIT receive $7.2 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dec. 10, 2004!

Now, through $7.2 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a team of researchers is working to restore natural movement to amputees - particularly Iraq veterans. Within five years, scientists based at Brown and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope to have created “biohybrid” limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move an arm or leg. WL

Dove Self Esteem Fund’s campaign for real beauty feeds the reflection on cyborgs. Thank you Cati for the info!

screenshots of the movie clip ‘evolution’

An article in lemonde.fr: La danse s’offre l’univers des nouvelles technologies by Rosita Boisseau LE MONDE | 08.12.06 | 15h25 makes me think of another relationship between the digital and the body… a link to remember as I dwell in cyborgs’ stories:

Screen shot, compagnie Magali and Didier Mulleras