Squeezed together around a coffee table in the public sphere, we managed to activate some traces of actions and movements in and around the building,
mainly remains of happenings and events in the Space studios,
spread out as they have been, all over the place,
spaces within spaces, temporary spaces, textile spaces, nomadic structures, tents;
memories of a workshop where large pieces of fabric would run through rooms, cutting through spaces,
Martin by a sewing machine, draped in cloth, trying to handle a non-participatory material, a wicked design problem;
other at times, Richard, Peter F, Peter W and who else, deeply exploring an immersive, kill-crush-and-destroy gaming environment, half alive-half virtual, all of them facing a high resolution screen covering the entire wall;
other occasions more relational, embodied; a sunset barbecue on the quay, another garage-like party on the old loading platsform;
serendipity – always attentive to surplus meanings, as to the sound of cooking, at a party, sampling the noise in order to generate a new kind of interactive and abundant music;
not to forget the many late night serenades created when the alarm went on at parties, an image reinforced by the fact that at that time, the security responsible would have fallen asleep in an armchair with salty sticks stuffed into his ears;
and Thomas B managing to wear out a K3 table two years in a row by dancing on top of it, thereby showing off his own embodied move from systems and tools to stages and props;
Eva B generating her own kind of bubbly and abundant blob architecture using washing up liquid instead of powder in the machine, reminding us of the productivity of cultural clashes;
of irrational interjections and somnambular encounters,
borderline experiences,
like the metabolistic transformation of our everyday environment staged by Horst Kiechle,
or the surreal pilgrimages through the building arranged by Hotel Pro Forma in their Jesus Christ appropriation of the building, spatializing narrativity, opening up unknown spaces, like the corridor behind the Black Box, exploring strange means of moving about, crawling along the walls, encapsulating themselves in plastic containers; moving around on wheels;
and the repeated re-enactments,
showing that that the K3 memory is a short one, and that it perhaps should be;
the Human Aquarium in the Aquarium being one innovative example of a Pro Forma attitude, a social experiment with a group of people on display for 24 hours;
and the fact that we have seen two computerized confession chairs over the years, the first one Annette’s beautiful creation, hypnotizing its confessors;
perhaps even Peter Greenaway would have been blown away had he happened to see it upon his visit; Greenaway more engulfed in his own multimedia universe, at the time Flying Over Water, an artistic fantasy not too related to the themes of participation, user-orientation or interactivity;
and yes, this might reflect the fact that the Space studio was always the austere one, the grave and responsible one, wallpapered with post-it labels and ethnographic snapshots from sewage plants and plastic factories,
and that while the Narrativity studio always kept lots of expectant students on tenterhooks at Open House days, the Space studio with its posters of lorries and industrial control rooms never managed to attract more than one or two puzzled souls;
a cultural difference that also embraces food; while the Narrativity studio explored the storytelling dimensions of ethnic and cross-over nutrients, including the mixture of soja milk and coca-cola, the space studio would live up to its Bauhaus heritage, “Essen bei Muttern”, most often going for a decent German carnivorous meal;
yet, despite its squared appearance, the space studio was also at times playfully staging its events,
its public defenses accompanied by adequate space-tunes, like Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon, completely transforming the atmosphere;
only to be transformed again by a sixties hit (“Slit och Släng” med Siw Malmqvist) mediating the fun of ready-made media interaction;
and the odd traces of projects, like the memory of Device H - a fascinating project noone ever understood – a device cutting through the building, from one floor to the other;
as embodied as the memory of a gigantic nose on the wall, synthesizing smells just like its relative, the Silver Fox, an aluminum foil result of physical computing, spraying coffee aroma around through a built-in coffee machine;
and the remains of Gigant, a mobile, physical and social game where you interacted in symbiosis with an electronic Ant, parts of its extremities and food supply still emerging from behind desks and bookshelves once in a while;
and also the recollection of conflicts, of design students reminding the faculty of the radical Bauhaus heritage, draping K3 in images of the masters – Mies, Itten, Kandinsky, some of who also gave name to the first K3 servers; remember how we all used to log on to Gropius every morning if not to pay tribute to him only to remind him of his multiple personality and non-characteristic materiality;
perhaps not much of a conflict but still;
neither was the break between K3 and the Institute particularly grave,
only architecturally quite explicitly manifested, as an outdoor luminous sign-board was mounted indoor,
a minor crisis, like so many similar crises, probably a quite productive one…
By the minutes
Maria
Monday, January 21, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Embodying interactive storytelling
I would add under 'embodying interactive
storytelling' the vision of Jael Petersson, John Wentworth and Anders
Wedmar clad in colourful curly wigs practicing being Vedic avatars;
visiting artist Horst creating a virtual K3 and setting up a RuneCast kiosk
inside it, in the corner, next to the Coke vendor; Maureen, Mika and Brian
presenting to a serious-looking Pelle Ehn and the assembled members of the
Narrativity Studio their overnight movie of how 'RuneCast' could be made
without any computers or software - Mika playing 'Vala' the
fortuneteller/shaman, packed into the bathtub representing her Well with a
fringed shawl over his head and a voluminous black silk skirt wrapping his
legs, muttering over a globular lamp representing a crystal ball, while
Maureen, from inside a packing-case standing for the aleatoric system,
throws out A4 sheets with pictures of runes on them to support his/her
inventive fortunetelling; Mika's cosy Friday Evening 'Studio Culture'
drinks ritual, as the setting sun glows over the harbour; Ylva solemnly
moving white stones around the edges of the prototype interactive sandpit,
while small children bathe ecstatically in the light of Asa's projections,
and Anders and Birgitta experiment with wooden sauna benches and sensors;
Studio visitors fascinated by Anders Petter's forest of musical flowers;
Birgitta clutched in the embrace of a huge floorcushion embellished with
flashing lights as she curls and stretches, operating A-P's interactive
musical installation; Bengt emerging from behind the theatrical curtains of
the studio corner with a benevolent if bemused smile, a handful of strange
paper objects in one hand and a mobile phone in the other; Asa arranging
toys and plants on shelves; Inger signing the chit to enable the purchase
of plants to convert the studio from sterile to fertile - and at the first
Christmas party, dispensing good cheer, good food and good sense ...
That's what occurs for now - no doubt there is much more where that came
from, but deadlines press, and my attention is diffused. Please keep in
touch on progress, though!
Maureen Thomas
storytelling' the vision of Jael Petersson, John Wentworth and Anders
Wedmar clad in colourful curly wigs practicing being Vedic avatars;
visiting artist Horst creating a virtual K3 and setting up a RuneCast kiosk
inside it, in the corner, next to the Coke vendor; Maureen, Mika and Brian
presenting to a serious-looking Pelle Ehn and the assembled members of the
Narrativity Studio their overnight movie of how 'RuneCast' could be made
without any computers or software - Mika playing 'Vala' the
fortuneteller/shaman, packed into the bathtub representing her Well with a
fringed shawl over his head and a voluminous black silk skirt wrapping his
legs, muttering over a globular lamp representing a crystal ball, while
Maureen, from inside a packing-case standing for the aleatoric system,
throws out A4 sheets with pictures of runes on them to support his/her
inventive fortunetelling; Mika's cosy Friday Evening 'Studio Culture'
drinks ritual, as the setting sun glows over the harbour; Ylva solemnly
moving white stones around the edges of the prototype interactive sandpit,
while small children bathe ecstatically in the light of Asa's projections,
and Anders and Birgitta experiment with wooden sauna benches and sensors;
Studio visitors fascinated by Anders Petter's forest of musical flowers;
Birgitta clutched in the embrace of a huge floorcushion embellished with
flashing lights as she curls and stretches, operating A-P's interactive
musical installation; Bengt emerging from behind the theatrical curtains of
the studio corner with a benevolent if bemused smile, a handful of strange
paper objects in one hand and a mobile phone in the other; Asa arranging
toys and plants on shelves; Inger signing the chit to enable the purchase
of plants to convert the studio from sterile to fertile - and at the first
Christmas party, dispensing good cheer, good food and good sense ...
That's what occurs for now - no doubt there is much more where that came
from, but deadlines press, and my attention is diffused. Please keep in
touch on progress, though!
Maureen Thomas
The COWALL
The European Disappearing-computer Atelier project, which Pelle Ehn was coordinating, was running towards an end (may 2004). To exhibit and share many of the findings and designs of the project, Pelle insisted that we should create a K3 version of the projects 'Tangible Archive' - At K3 called 'The COWALL'. It is not easy making IT/computers disappear and integrated in the existing environment... It took days of creating a layout for the modular plexiglass structure, gathering and tagging objects and stories of previous activities and designs from people at K3, testing projections on different types of fabrics, etc. Together with Per Linde, Peter Warrén and I, Mette Agger Eriksen, Pelle was climbing the big ladders up underneath the ceiling to mount the projection surface for showing image and video stories. The next moment we were crawling around the floor to connect the dissapearing computer (in the middle of the plexiglass structure) with printers, tagreaders, scanners, etc.
A satisfying interactive installation indeed, however, maybe the wrong physical positioning at K3 - behind locked doors?! So the students could not access it... After a while Pelle was arguing for and working on having the whole set up moved to the café area, however, rebuiling and making a really stable interface for adding more objects and stories was unfortunately too big a job in relation to the resources available...
by Mette Agger Eriksen
Comments on no 11:
Summer 2004. My third visit to K3. Not rushing through to get to the assembly hall. Stopping. Standing in a. Room. Open space. Something in between and at the same time the centre of attention. Me sitting conversing mixing it with others, creating a humming singing among phones ringing. Thinking. That's it.
/Pernilla
/Pernilla
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Snapshots from space and narrativity
Ylva and I spent a moment yesterday to visualize memory snapshots from K3.
Here are some of the things we thought of. Feel free to add detail to these sometimes very sketchy memories:
- Maureen Thomas transforming the Narrativity Studio into a jungle of potted plants (1999)
- The interior architect visiting the premises every 6 months or so to make sure nobody violated the design guidelines by introducing soft furniture, patterned textiles, non-scandinavian colours etc.
- counter strategy: "creative allocation", i.e. making a tour of the building late in the evening and drag all soft furniture found (sofas, armchairs) into the studios. Building secret cosy corners invisible from the outside where the peepholes in the doors do not reach.
- The functionalist army: a large collection of Arne Jacobsen "syveren" chairs in black lining up in the café. Since they were such a popular object of theft, they now have anti-theft stickers of the type also used for digital equipment and technology. A hint that they contain some digital technology after all, some active agent that works on environments and minds...
- Video ethnography in the space studio. Large tables with many toy-like objects, playing cards and the like, surrounded by people that through posture and voice signal the serious of the situation in spite of the playing cards. Two persons (or more) with videocams circulating around the table to capture all words, movements of cards or toys, facial expressions.
- Post-it notes in large numbers
- John Wentworth in a yellow costume with feathers. Mika with high-heel shoes and a long scarf artistically swaying around his body. More generally: the narrativity studio as a breeding ground for impersonating the new kind of narratives rather than only writing or programming them.
- September 11. Internet goes down when all want information of the terrorist attacks. We realise that the Digital Bauhaus has no television connection - we are isolated without any information channel. Until somebody finds one old transistor radio in the electronics lab. All gather around in double rows to listen to the news. My version of this memory snapshot is like some old photo from World War II with people gathering around the radio, eager for any information.
- The physical of the virtual in the digital bauhaus. No room for storage. No conceptual or physical space for junk. Piles of junk growing under the stairs to the mezzanines, in spite of all signs, interdictions and restrictions from Peter Winther and the fire authorities.
- Strategies to subdivide large open spaces into small personal spaces. "billy design games" with bookshelves used as walls.
- food habits. The computer nerd/media lab style: pizza and coke served on the keyboard. The Narrativity Style (women AND men) all sorts of ethno, vegetarian, vegan, cross-cuisine food. Maureen preferring red aliments over other. The space studio (men) generally eating meat-brown-sauce-potato lunches at the little Bavaria restaurant.
- The narrativity workshop that somehow ended into the runecast project: Mika Tuomola glueing researchers together with gaffa tape. Maureen initiating schaman voyages and Runic Yoga in the corner studio. Lots of space: there was always another room to appropriate and fill in with new creative ideas.
- Discussing names for the studios - until now an unsolved project! Gropius and Itten were names proposed. Does somebody remember names for computer servers, by the way?
- the very different excentricities of the Narrativity studio and the space studio. Narrativity studio as a collection of colorful theatrical persons kept toghether as helium-filled baloons by Michael Thomsen, who tried to counterbalance the artistic flair with a sound commercial perspective. Space studio very much attuned to the excentric style of Thomas Binder: rustique, very skeptical towards the elitist dangers of aesteticism, with a firm belief in mapping out and verbalizing large fields of knowledge with equally large surfaces of post-it-notes.
- Said Ylva: the only place to exist is on the threshold between the narrativity and the space studio.
- Social computing experiments as part of the environment: plastic dolls symbolizing researchers in the creative environments studio, the "studio sandboxes" where relations within the space and narrativity studios were represented by piling sugarcubes and small plastic objects in the sand. Myu overall feeling about them now: they did not work. We had too much confidence in artifacts conveying meaning by themselves. Or too little patience, or too many opportunities to attend to.
- Grief: Micke Wallin who somehow captured the whole idea of the narrativity studio as a student, and did a lot to make it manifest later as a member of the narrativity studio. He used his knowhow as a filmmaker and stage technician to create corny and hilarious workshops where Narrativity excentricity was confronted with municipal politicians and local industrials in Hässleholm ...
Here are some of the things we thought of. Feel free to add detail to these sometimes very sketchy memories:
- Maureen Thomas transforming the Narrativity Studio into a jungle of potted plants (1999)
- The interior architect visiting the premises every 6 months or so to make sure nobody violated the design guidelines by introducing soft furniture, patterned textiles, non-scandinavian colours etc.
- counter strategy: "creative allocation", i.e. making a tour of the building late in the evening and drag all soft furniture found (sofas, armchairs) into the studios. Building secret cosy corners invisible from the outside where the peepholes in the doors do not reach.
- The functionalist army: a large collection of Arne Jacobsen "syveren" chairs in black lining up in the café. Since they were such a popular object of theft, they now have anti-theft stickers of the type also used for digital equipment and technology. A hint that they contain some digital technology after all, some active agent that works on environments and minds...
- Video ethnography in the space studio. Large tables with many toy-like objects, playing cards and the like, surrounded by people that through posture and voice signal the serious of the situation in spite of the playing cards. Two persons (or more) with videocams circulating around the table to capture all words, movements of cards or toys, facial expressions.
- Post-it notes in large numbers
- John Wentworth in a yellow costume with feathers. Mika with high-heel shoes and a long scarf artistically swaying around his body. More generally: the narrativity studio as a breeding ground for impersonating the new kind of narratives rather than only writing or programming them.
- September 11. Internet goes down when all want information of the terrorist attacks. We realise that the Digital Bauhaus has no television connection - we are isolated without any information channel. Until somebody finds one old transistor radio in the electronics lab. All gather around in double rows to listen to the news. My version of this memory snapshot is like some old photo from World War II with people gathering around the radio, eager for any information.
- The physical of the virtual in the digital bauhaus. No room for storage. No conceptual or physical space for junk. Piles of junk growing under the stairs to the mezzanines, in spite of all signs, interdictions and restrictions from Peter Winther and the fire authorities.
- Strategies to subdivide large open spaces into small personal spaces. "billy design games" with bookshelves used as walls.
- food habits. The computer nerd/media lab style: pizza and coke served on the keyboard. The Narrativity Style (women AND men) all sorts of ethno, vegetarian, vegan, cross-cuisine food. Maureen preferring red aliments over other. The space studio (men) generally eating meat-brown-sauce-potato lunches at the little Bavaria restaurant.
- The narrativity workshop that somehow ended into the runecast project: Mika Tuomola glueing researchers together with gaffa tape. Maureen initiating schaman voyages and Runic Yoga in the corner studio. Lots of space: there was always another room to appropriate and fill in with new creative ideas.
- Discussing names for the studios - until now an unsolved project! Gropius and Itten were names proposed. Does somebody remember names for computer servers, by the way?
- the very different excentricities of the Narrativity studio and the space studio. Narrativity studio as a collection of colorful theatrical persons kept toghether as helium-filled baloons by Michael Thomsen, who tried to counterbalance the artistic flair with a sound commercial perspective. Space studio very much attuned to the excentric style of Thomas Binder: rustique, very skeptical towards the elitist dangers of aesteticism, with a firm belief in mapping out and verbalizing large fields of knowledge with equally large surfaces of post-it-notes.
- Said Ylva: the only place to exist is on the threshold between the narrativity and the space studio.
- Social computing experiments as part of the environment: plastic dolls symbolizing researchers in the creative environments studio, the "studio sandboxes" where relations within the space and narrativity studios were represented by piling sugarcubes and small plastic objects in the sand. Myu overall feeling about them now: they did not work. We had too much confidence in artifacts conveying meaning by themselves. Or too little patience, or too many opportunities to attend to.
- Grief: Micke Wallin who somehow captured the whole idea of the narrativity studio as a student, and did a lot to make it manifest later as a member of the narrativity studio. He used his knowhow as a filmmaker and stage technician to create corny and hilarious workshops where Narrativity excentricity was confronted with municipal politicians and local industrials in Hässleholm ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
