User:Jonas Lund/Description of Work: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:04, 10 October 2011

Description

"This Too Shall Pass" was a site specific installation, made by Anika Schwarzlose and Jonas Lund, shown at the Second Act festival at the Brakke Grond, Amsterdam in September 2011. The installation consisted of four parts, a custom built paper shredder mounted on the wall, a webcam suspended in the ceiling above the shredder, one photographic print in an edition of six and a website (http://t2sp.net) displaying the view of the webcam live.

When the exhibition opened, the first edition of the print was placed in the paper shredder and the installation was activated. During the exhibition, each time a visit was recorded on the website, the paper shredder turned on for a third of a second and shredded a small part of the print, this continued until the print had been completely destroyed.

As soon as a print had been turned into shreds, the authors emerged from the crowd with white gloves on, carefully carrying the next print in the edition and placed it in the shredder. This continued until the entire edition had been depleted. The edition had been shredded in its entirety at 14:04 on the second day of the exhibition. After that point, there was a fairly large pile of shreds underneath the shredder.

The installation was documented photographing each of the different parts and how they related together. Next to that, the webcam was saving a picture every 10 seconds, which was later displayed as a time-lapse video.

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 The installation was documented photographing each of the different parts and how they related together. Next to that, the webcam was saving a picture every 10 seconds, which was later displayed as a time-lapse video.
-==Annotation==
-At the [http://eyeofestival.com/ Eyeo Festival], Norwegian artist [http://mariuswatz.com/ Marius Watz], held a 50 minute long lecture, titled [http://vimeo.com/30035982 “Random Thoughts on Code And Form”], discussing the state of computational aesthetics and using code and software as a mean of artistic production.
-Marius Watz is an artist based in New York/Oslo, and his practice is based on images and objects generated by code, in the lecture he explains that: “I’ve never thought creativity in any other medium than code”.
-In the lecture Watz starts off with a short introduction of his work, and then continues with sharing his thoughts, sometimes erratic, on code within an artistic practice. He concludes the talk with proposing a new concept, Software Abstraction, which Watz views as an opposite to generative art.
-Watz argues that the essential quality of code is that it’s plastic, it can change state and as a consequence, it lacks a materiality. However, software has a material quality, in the sense that the user choses how to configure the code, by for example selecting or manipulating algorithms, patterns and structures.
-Watz proposes, Software Abstraction, as a term for an artistic practice that’s based on “visual / spatial abstraction through code and computational processes”. Wether it’s technology based, a hybrid or entirely distanced from code, it’s important to note that it’s not primarily concerned with technology. Software Abstraction is a formal approach with abstraction through logic, it accepts an object based practice and doesn’t require a technical component. Watz lists a few examples of Software Abstraction topics, like
-“kinect behaviours”, “software as instrument” and “improvised performative systems”.
-Watz ends the lecture by showing a selection of examples which he thinks encompasses the notion of Software Abstraction.