dotAtelier

Snakes hallucinating in a tea-tree forest

2012-02-01T13:21:00.004+11:00

Here is the blip.tv version of Snakes

Snakes hallucinating in a tea-tree forest

2012-01-29T14:57:00.005+11:00

A new shockwave flash movie is now available to be viewed at dotAtelier.net called snakes hallucinating in a tea-tree forest.

Snakes is constructed out of images made during 2011 in coastal areas of the west Pacific. The dominant influence is the tea-tree forest (leptospermum). Mingling among the tea-trees are Mesopotamian-Celtic snakes, spiraling in the vegetation. Their perspective is taken. Forms of the ocean feature also.

The music accompanying snakes is the complete 4th string quartet of Becerra played by the Phila String Quartet( Cc-by-sa from Free Music! ). This is the whole piece as he intended it to be heard. You may recognise two of the movements from Intertidal Zone where the first and fourth movement also are heard.

This version of snakes is a shockwave flash movie (.swf), offering the highest quality performance. You can watch it in a page of its own here and full-screen is recommended. It will take a few seconds to load. If you have bandwidth problems, download it by right clicking (control-click) here and saving the file to your computer, then open it with a browser.

Shortly a flash video will be available on Blip.tv and YouTube. Unlike the shockwave flash movie you can start and stop the flash video as well as fast forward and rewind. If you like! Although some quality was lost in the rendering, I am more satisfied with this rendered flash video than any others I have made. This clip does not use movement, but colour change, transparency and layers to achieve its effects, so pixeling is avoided in the rendered product to a large extent.

Snakes runs for about 15 minutes. Turn on the audio and relax.

Images are licenced CC BY-NC-SA.

Trees

2012-01-26T17:47:00.003+11:00

This is the full-length version of Trees which was previously truncated to 10mins on YouTube. The film length rules have been relaxed so here is the complete film from 2008.
Trees is dedicated to the trees of the world and incorporates images of them from the coasts and rainforests of Australia to the forests of Europe. It is accompanied by Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata.
The full-length Blip.tv version of this video was reviewed in May 2011 by Krapo arboricole which is a beautiful blog dedicated to trees and presenting very special trees to the world.

Hampe

2012-01-26T17:13:00.004+11:00

This link leads to the collected posts in this blog which deal with Hampe.

2012 - a bomb of a year

2012-01-01T12:05:00.008+11:00

The new year began with a firestorm inspired by the dominant perception of what is special and beautiful, desirable and good. If this is a symbol of the year to come, 2012 will be engineered into a very difficult year.

Sydney, like other cities across the world, showered its residents with toxic clouds, a chemical storm which the citizens turned out in hundreds of thousands to be subjected to voluntarily. The simulation of war included powerful detonations and visual explosions sending shock waves through the night. Wildlife was traumatised and day birds forced to fly aimlessly into the vulnerability of the night. Waterways were left contaminated with toxins and exploded remnants.

If this pyro-artistic introduction to the new year is taken as a sign of things to come, we can expect intense wars, chemical pollution and a continuation of the rapid loss of biodiversity and extinctions on our damaged planet.

We can also expect assets to be burnt in large amounts on senseless spectacles, just at a time when there is never enough for essential projects for stability.

We are overdue for a changed aesthetic accompanied by a new valuation of the circumstances which support life on Earth and a move away from the values which see beauty in destroying our unique living basis.

Anyonion Christmas 2011   in Berlin

2011-12-02T19:05:00.006+11:00

In its next edition for the two weeks from 8th December 2011, Tip Berlin has a report on anyonion’s presentation of knitted wraps by Neil Horne as Christmas presents this year.  

Anyonion will be open for extended hours (1 pm to 7 pm) on all the Saturdays leading up to Christmas (Advent). You can choose wraps and other knitware there or order them according to your colour wishes. Everything is made on site.  

Fronau Christmas market
 There will be an anyonion stall at the Fronau Christmas market on 3rd and 4th of December. Fronau is probably the best Christmas market in Berlin as it only has hand made goods on offering.  

Schloss Charlottenburg Christmas market
Anyonion will be there every day until 10pm up to 26th December. The Charlottenburg Palace is a beautiful venue and a high quality market definitely worth visiting.  

 photo by Rita

Imagination

2011-11-27T10:03:00.003+11:00

The imagination is what art is made of. An image does not correspond to reality but takes the place of reality. (Safranski p 286) The imagination uses objects from the world external to itself but makes new constructs out of them which then interact again with that reality. Colours, moods, shapes, desires from the real are materials for the imaginary world. Imagination is a second world which steers our action in the first world and can under given circumstances dominate it.

In the age of media, imagination and reality are woven together in a flow of images. It has become difficult to think about the real and the imaginary in isolation from one another.

Marine. A short film clip.

2011-10-15T18:55:00.004+11:00

The newest animated clip by dotAtelier can now be seen here.

Marine consists of images of the ocean in movement accompanied by the music of Beethoven - the Pastorale. The version which can be watched here is a high quality flash film.

Shortly there will also be versions available on blip.tv and YouTube which unfortunately lose some visual quality in the rendering process but load more easily in the flv-format. This swf-version is the best available. Enjoy it.

Art for art’s sake

2011-10-05T11:49:00.003+11:00

It is often held that art derives its meaning from its usefulness for something else. Socialist realism demanded that art workers make political struggles to the content of their work. Art must serve the oppressed masses. Without political content it is unacceptable or is attributed with a tacit political message. It is similar in a commercial culture where it is implicit that art must be marketable and have a price to have any value. Producers have to include content in their work which sells. They are required to be driven by marketability. Non-market-driven work does not exist in this system. Art must serve the mass market of consumers.

Nietzsche turned this goal dependency around arguing that authors of culture have to be inconsiderate with their work. (Safranski p 238 ) They cannot have their orientation to cultural production dragged down by the requirements of the masses but need to persevere despite the suffering or demands of other people. Only in this way can quality works emerge of historical significance.

Kafka takes another angle on justifying art in relation to the “real world”. For him the real world needs to justify why anyone would want to leave the world of art and enter
into bad reality. (Safranski p 242 )

Art has a kind of ecstatic existence. It allows us to depart the mediocrity of human functional existence and enter a symbolic, constructed world of visual, poetic and musical difference.

Art is like the world of dreams. It is a spacetime with its own reference criteria and does not stand in a dependency relationship to political, economic or functional needs.

Creativity out of nothing

2011-08-31T17:43:00.004+10:00

In medieval times art works were not signed. They have always been exhibited as ‘anonymous’. It was considered to be inappropriate to claim to be the creator of a work as creation could only be performed by higher forces. Humans could at best imitate creation. Creation out of nothing - creatio ex nihilo - was not accessible to artists. (Safranski p 225ff)

More recently, artists claim to be authors and originators of their work. Copyright is enforced. Plagiarism is discouraged and originality is required. Artists and authors may go to great lengths to cover their tracks if they feel their originality is compromised.

Dependency on the ideas and techniques of others is a basic quality of creative work. Being part of a movement (e.g. Bauhaus) adds to the inspiration and promotes new content and style. Each individual is spurred on by the others. Artists do not thrive in competition or surrounded by hostile relationships towards their work. Cooperation and community are essential conditions for creativity. Living in an alien and antipathetic context stifles art and creativity. Energy is wasted.

The challenge for artists is to create something new but not to deny the dependency on others for crucial aspects of their work. Creation out of nothing carries with it the fear that the derivative work is nothing just like the nothingness it came from and can return to being nothing. “Out of nothing comes nothing.” This insecurity demands the right setting.

Artists and authors have trouble using reason to ground their work, unlike scientists and bankers who can always use instrumental justifications. Art and music are always on the edge of meaninglessness. “What is the point of it?”

Recent research has shown a negative attitude among most people towards creativity. In a supportive context, creative work is safer from the influences of community prejudices. Collective projects can be satisfying and more powerful than individual work.

What is art? Ernst Cassirer.

2011-08-12T18:35:00.007+10:00

The human is a symbolic animal. The liberal arts, fine arts and science developed parallel to one another through history. Science discovers the natural laws, while artists discover the forms of nature. According to Cassirer, art shows us the different possible ways we have to gain insight into the world and to give expression to this. “The artist is just as much a discoverer of the forms of nature as the scientist a discoverer of the facts or natural laws” (Ernst Cassirer, Essay on Man, 1944, p 143-144 via Bernard Frischer via Mike).

However, just as science has a concept of truth to select between what is scientific and what is not, art selects using its own aesthetic criteria. In this way a distinction can be made between a photograph which is called ‘art’ and a family portrait snap of significance to a small circle only. Various attempts at offering criteria for “what is art” have been outlined here previously, including that art facilitates a contact with being, away from the distractions of human social activity.

Being or nature.

The concept being suggests an strong connection between a perceiver and that which is being perceived. As such it includes highly subjective forms in its scope, including the virtual world and possible worlds of the imagination. Nature on the other hand suggests a reduction of art to a reflection of the empirical world of objects, so that art becomes a mere representation of material. However, if nature is understood as very general, abstract, imaginary and all-inclusive, then Cassirer’s art as the ‘discovery of forms’ can be understood as more open than just representation of an outside world.

Artistic discovery becomes a process of how to perceive the forms of the world. Discrimination is incorporated. Art becomes the creation of subject-object experiences with something special about them, not just random forms.

Civilised identities

2011-07-13T13:51:00.003+10:00

According to Rousseau the positive qualities of the pre-civilised identity, such as empathy, cooperation and sharing are replaced by tendencies to possessiveness, competition and greed when people move into societies. However, beyond this entry phase, the process of development of identity continues within the urbanised setting. Communities develop over time in the midst of the challenging social world facilitating and promoting new character types. Identities emerge which are oriented to knowledge and beauty, open to exchange of ideas and feelings, ready to learn. Intense populations create an impetus for improvement of conditions, demanding skills of cooperative labour.

When identities encounter one another in civilisations, some type of socialisation occurs. A more formalised development of this is structured education. Formal education by societies is necessary to ensure the development of positive character types capable of advanced communication, peaceful coexistence and collaborative knowledge.

The effects of socialisation and education spread extensively and intensively. Individuals become more civilised as well as the proportion of civilised people increasing. When neglected, the level of civilisation decreases.

According to the liberal tradition socialisation does not need steering by the society which instead is guided by an “invisible hand” (Safranski p 184). However without the intervention of education, society tends to fall into barbarism and totalitarianism, characterised by violent gangs and defensive citizens unable to sustain trust.

Empathetic character types are constantly under threat from the aggressive, competitive types with whom they share a common origin and amongst whom they learn to live. Laws have to be developed and enforced to protect and foster the developing civilisation in the identities of the participants.

As well as being responsible for a living environment for citizens, socialisation and education also are responsible for the formation of friendship. Unlike the general social order, friends can have a higher degree of trust than the general trust required and enforced for community to be an ordered, civilised place.

Unlike family or neighbourhood, friendship is born of communities of interest and common ideas. Love is a form of friendship.

Flower of the day

2011-06-23T20:05:00.000+10:00

Discovering your self - Rousseau

2011-06-21T19:05:00.008+10:00

The original nature of the human is to be peaceful, compassionate, cooperative and sympathetic towards others, according to Rousseau. This corresponds to life in peace and quiet prior to civilisation. It is only when people formed into societies that their characters developed negative characteristics such as aggression, selfishness and competition.

Having or being

Humans entered social relations as a result of of their own resourcefulness. Through clever thinking, the production of the necessities of life is facilitated. The creation of plenty required action to be taken to protect and retain the benefits of one’s crafty labour. This was the origin of property (Safranski p 156).

Increasingly, human productive intelligence becomes oriented to having rather than being and humans take on the character types required for property. The being-oriented self is not entirely lost but overwhelmed by the having-oriented one. People develop multiple selves, becoming ‘proteus-natured’, fragmented selves coexisting in the one person. Amongst this polyphony of civilised survival selves - greedy, lustful, miserly, mistrustful, dominating, mean, ruthless - the original self can occasionally still be experienced.

For Rousseau, in order to find the self of being rather than those of having it is necessary first to find peace and quiet. When this is achieved the conditions of pre-social humanity are present.

Then the work of getting in touch with the authentic self begins.

There are three stages at which the self can be rediscovered. The first is in a quiet setting away from interruptions by others, just self and nature. The second is a step beyond the first where the self merges with nature, bringing a feeling of oneness. The third is when the self ceases to be experienced at all. There is just being. (Safranski p160)

Rousseau might have agreed with Ernst Jandl’s view of art as a way to free oneself from the human conflict and anxiety distracting us from being: (the right type of) art becomes a way of finding being by leading our minds away from the affairs of other humans just as nature does for Rousseau.

He subsequently found that searching for the original self is a dangerous endeavour bringing selves necessarily into conflict. He proposed that all should be subordinated to a public will which everyone should swear allegiance to above their own self, enforceable if necessary by exile or death (guillotine). He became the philosopher of terror (French revolution).

The need for recognition

2011-06-10T20:35:00.006+10:00

When humans formed themselves into social organisations, which they did to avoid continual violent conflicts, they had to give up their personal power, and their right to exercise violence, to the greater social organisation. This for Hobbes was the origin of the state. The state has a monopoly on power and the ability its members have to do violence can only be exercised in the service of the state’s institutions to make it strong against external and internal enemies.

This is also the origin of equality among people. All are identically powerless in a state.

However it is not in the nature of the human consciousness to accept such equality to others, according to Hobbes (Safranski p 117 ff). The self must distinguish itself from others, assert its difference. This then is the origin of hierarchy in the state. The individual members of a society need recognition that they are unique and not equal to the rest of the mob.

A striving to stand out from the crowd necessarily emerges in all fields of life within civilisations. Not only artists seek a dominant status. Hierarchical thinking is deeply entrenched in all social forms. Bureaucracies and career paths are structured to exploit the need of workers to be special. Citizens are flattered, promoted, rewarded and granted paper and metal awards from governments, institutions and royalties sometimes for dubious projects such as over-populating cities or wasting energy in innovative ways, sometimes recognising activities for sustainability or peace.

Recognition may be by representatives of the society, by economic success, from an opposition group, or by one’s partner alone. Some are even satisfied with the tail wagging of a dog.

Avoiding the struggle for recognition, the hermit abandons the signifiers of civilisation.

Trees

2011-05-20T14:54:00.003+10:00

Krapo Arboricole is a blog about trees and forests. It celebrates the beauty and diversity of the disappearing arbor of our planet showing trees as individuals and in forests.

Krapo Arboricole is an excellent resource for short films and animations about trees. It is a beautiful blog with stunning photography of forests and trees in unusual settings.

What is art - Schopenhauer

2011-05-15T10:47:00.007+10:00

Art and philosophy lead us along the path towards enlightenment according to Schopenhauer. This is achieved through a distancing from the will. The combined wills of people in a world of survival is a negative force on the self, preventing us from seeing clearly.

Through art and philosophy a distance from instrumentality and survival thinking can be achieved. This gives a hint at the brightness which is outside of the practical world. We can only achieve this temporary enhanced awareness through a kind of “aesthetic or contemplative distance”.

For him it is not enough to raise up of the human will towards reason through education and culture. The development of practical reasoning is not enlightening because humans are, as willing animals, primarily interested in their survival and self-maintenance.

The will is basic to the nature of the human. Without a will we cannot even stand up or lift a finger.

Enlightenment for Schopenhauer (p 97 Safranski) is a kind of ecstatic experience which can be experienced through becoming free from the world of things and willing. This is achieved through art and philosophy as they facilitate a distancing from instrumentality.

This concept of the role of art is resonant with the idea of Ernst Jandl, that beauty offers an escape from conflict and anxiety.

48-Stunden Neukoelln 2011

2011-05-01T11:30:00.005+10:00

This year’s 48 Hours Neukoelln festival in Berlin is from Friday 17th at 7 pm to Sunday 19th June at 7 pm.

At the anyonion shop there will be an exhibition of merino wool wraps by dotAtelier.net and anyonion.de accompanied by prints as well as fashion accessories from gloves to pullovers.

Anyonion creates computer designed knitware at its Buerkner Str premises in Berlin-Neukoelln and visitors can observe the production in process on the massive one tonne knitting machine. You can order knitted goods in a large range of colours of your choice.

The shop is located at Bürkner Strasse 10 close to the underground railway station Schönleinstrasse (map) on the U8. It is near the Maibachufer markets.

Images of some of the wraps can be seen here.

This year there is no big footy game to interfere with the Neukoelln festival. People win the luxury to play their own lives rather than watching others play on TV. The focus this year is on “luxury”.

The complete programme can be seen at the 48-Stunden-Neukölln website.

Reason and art

2011-04-11T18:05:00.004+10:00

Schopenhauer (Safranski p 81) regards reason as subordinated to the will. It is one of the will’s functions. However he also posits another type of reason which is separate from the will and is beyond individual needs and desires. This type of reason is expressed in art and asceticism (abstinence from worldly pleasures).

His super-reason does not have the purpose of seeking out objects of desire, as does the reason of the will of the humans, but can lead towards release or redemption from being.

Art and artificial intelligence

2011-04-07T14:54:00.003+10:00

Artificial intelligence is sometimes characterised as essentially replacing the intellectual effort of humans, as indeed it does in many areas. Safranski (Das Böse, p 71) argues that AI cannot completely substitute creative intelligence but can take over certain types of repetitive tasks. He represents this (through Schiller) as allowing human intelligence to discover its creative basis after externalising its mechanical and automatic components to machines.

This separation of information technology from the creative process neglects the insights of Trogemann and Viehoff, that knowledge of programming and digital media belong to the artist’s toolkit. These skills become part of a new way of thinking for artistic intelligence, a means of expressing creativity, not just a way of performing fast repetitive tasks.

Digital transformations and substitutions have become part of the concept of a contemporary artwork, just as a woodcut has a concept beyond the piece of wood it is cut into.

Manly Beach birds

2011-03-30T17:37:00.014+11:00

The best-known and most overwhelming birds of Manly Beach are the lorikeets which can’t be overlooked as they screech through the pines around sunset before settling in for the night in the beachfront trees. Early risers can hear them again flying off at sunrise to the nectar of the remnants of suburban gardens and bush inland. The Norfolk pines are also a habitat for another parrot species, the sulphur-crested cockatoos which occupy them during the day until just before the lorikeets arrive, breaking open pine nuts for food. They are joined at times by currawongs, singing magpies, conversing noisy miners and in fig season by figbirds. Wattlebirds occasionally seek insects near the pines.
On the sand and on the promenade silver gulls are at home. As well as eating fish and chips they collect various types of food washed up by the surf. Highly-skilled at diving for small fish, crested terns often mingle among the gulls on the sand or sit on ‘no diving’ signs. Unbelievably fishing is still allowed on urban Manly Beach and sometimes the terns can be seen with fishing string coming out of their beaks, starving and unable to hunt after catching someone’s bait and hook while their offspring are calling to be fed on the beach among the silver gulls. Local authorities claim they cannot control this abuse.
Ravens regularly patrol the beach cleaning up the rejects from fishing and victims of storms.
Regular visitors in small numbers include willy wagtails catching insects, swallows which are thankful for any disturbance of their prey among the seaweed, masked lapwings (plovers) picking among the dry sand and great-billed herons around the lagoon opening and on the cliffs at the northern end of the beach.

The diving skill of the terms is matched by the larger gannets fishing in the deeper ocean for bigger fish. They keep well away from the beach.
Also hunting out to sea are white breasted sea eagles. These rare visitors may catch fish but also pursue gulls which fly in formation when a sea eagle is around. Sea eagles hunt land animals too.

Migratory visitors include short-tailed shearwaters (mutton birds) which usually do not stop over in Manly unless they are exhausted and cannot fly and further. These stragglers can be seen on the beach and in the water before they die. In summer, koels and channel-billed cuckoos can be heard.

Cormorants, both the black and the white breasted varieties, live in the calm waters of the Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve and at the harbour beach, where the little penguins live, sometimes flying across to the lagoon.
Pelicans regularly fly by, sometimes stopping at the lagoon.

What is art?

2011-03-18T19:25:00.004+11:00

Viktor Shklovsky, who developed the concept of defamiliarisation, explains what art is in this way:

“The goal... is to give us the sensation of the thing, a sensation which is seeing and not recognition.” Shklovsky in Bernd Stiegler p 11.

Art enables us to encounter something and to experience it as if we had never seen it before. We do not recognise the object in the artwork but see it as if perceiving it for the first time.

“The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important." (Shklovsky, "Art as Technique", 12)

The nature of the human

2011-03-16T13:43:00.002+11:00

For Socrates the nature of the human is its perfected or completed state, unlike the view of modern sciences which use the average human as their reference (Safranski, Das Böse). Both versions are abstractions, not corresponding to any particular individual.

The Socratic view sees humans in a development towards our nature. This nature is not a set a pre-given attributes but a potential corresponding to the freedom inherent in people to choose what we do. One has the potential to become good, reasoning, and to have harmony within one’s self. These are not inborn qualities, so self-development is central to being human as is the development of reasoned concepts of what it is to be human.

Humans are free to realise their nature by striving to become human and to understand what that development is.

Safranski interview

Dee Why Beach

2011-02-27T10:49:00.002+11:00

A painting from the 1990s of Dee Why Beach created using pointillist techniques

Characters

2011-01-28T16:58:00.003+11:00

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Risks, Greek gods, war, prediction

2011-01-26T19:22:00.004+11:00

The gods of bronze age Greece intervened in human affairs from time to time just as we now experience chance or accidental interventions in everyday activities we undertake. Even the best thought out strategies can be ruined by unanticipated events which may be the actions of other humans or forces of nature. Alternatively, outcomes may be unexpectedly enhanced. Either way, by human agency or nature, gods were held responsible by the ancients.

War is a time of intensified intervention by gods. They are constantly joining in. The outcome of wars is highly unpredictable at all stages because there are opposing, dynamic strategies at play. Beginning a war is extremely risky. It may bring about the end of your own civilisation or the opponent’s or both. When the enemy is a comparable match, the uncontrollable variables are many. They can range from a weapon shot during peace negotiations (Alexander p 61) to a plague epidemic, from weather to the psychology of the soldiers, and from essential supplies to a leader’s dreams of victory or defeat. These are in the hands of the gods. In secular terms, they are influences external to the system of human planning.

In peacetime, external interventions are occasional, taking some of the best planned ventures down unintended paths.

Instrumental planning can achieve a great deal but is able to come off track when the unexpected arrives. Acts of gods may occur through the agency of humans, however this is external to the predictable actions of the people in the given system of reference. At any time when we think we have everything under the control of reasoned planning, something external may occur.

In the ancient system of gods, external influences were categorised taking the form of gods who were specialised on particular areas, such as the sea (Poseidon), love (Aphrodite), reason (Zeus) etc, so that whenever anything was undertaken in that field of influence, accidental factors were attributed to that personalised agent.

The gods of the Achaeans were just like humans except they lived forever and didn’t age. They pursued intrigues of their own, the realisation of which appeared to mortals as fortuitous or unlucky events.

Intertidal Zone slides

2011-01-21T07:51:00.007+11:00

Intertidal Zone stills from dotatelier on Vimeo.

These are the basis images for the flash clip Intertidal Zone, just the pictures without animation. The clip itself is best viewed here in full-screen mode.

Intertidal Zone

2011-01-15T19:17:00.002+11:00

The place where the beach meets the ocean is in constant flux. It is never the same on any two occasions. To this constant change, various life forms have made adaptations. Intertidal Zone captures some of the transitory moments of this space as they disappear forever. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes peaceful, the interface of land and sea accommodates and recycles.
The music of Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt’s string quartet complements the shapes and forms of Intertidal Zone with sometimes dramatic, sometimes calm and often driving and repetitive themes.
Becerra originates from the other side of the South Pacific Ocean from whence he was forced by political oppression into exile in Europe in 1973.
For a sharper version of Intertidal Zone see the flash clip on dotAtelier.net. Best viewed on full screen.

See also Ocean.

Happiness

2010-12-02T20:23:00.003+11:00

A major obstacle when searching for happiness in life is defining what is meant by happiness.
Hampe reformulates Wittgenstein’s idea on the meaning of life, replacing ‘meaning of life’ with ‘happiness’:
“One notices the solution to the problem of happiness in the disappearance of the problem. (Isn’t this the reason why people who have found happiness in life cannot say what this happiness consists in).”
Hampe p 280

Manly Images

2010-12-01T12:40:00.002+11:00

Body and self

2010-11-23T12:00:00.006+11:00

The body is older than the self by millions of years. It has evolved its own dynamics and systems in time spans far greater than the self’s emergence through interaction with the others of its immediate surroundings.

The body is alien. It is arbitrary what kind of genetic container the self develops in.
Unlike the self, the body only offers very limited influence potential. Its fundamental systems organise and maintain themselves. The self can choose what to feed the body, how to exercise it and what postures to adopt. Crucial features such as the face can be trained to smile, frown, relax and express meaning to others. The body takes on a limited range of characteristics of the self either by choice or by default.

The self can befriend its body or co-exist with it as a stranger. This autonomous system has the potential to be accepted and appropriated.

Generally the effort of appropriation of the body is neglected. Modern selves rely on its automatic systems and seek professional intervention if they fail. They may engage a fitness trainer to somewhat modify its shape temporarily. It is treated as an external machine to the self. It is however an interface to other selves. To make it an expression of the self, the body is adorned with objects. Objects can be freely chosen, unlike the arbitrariness of genetics.Adornment
The first layer of objects is clothing. Clothes and accessories create an individual appearance for the self, covering the naked, alien body. Exposed parts are altered with hairstyles, tattoos and make-up masks. Body hacks can adjust exposed parts. This expression of the self on the body is driven by its interaction with influential social contexts over time.

The next layer is consumer goods which accompany the self wherever it goes. The car - the vehicle of the self - is the wrapping which the self is seen in. The body is concealed. Its size, colour, sound and brand can be freely chosen unlike body characteristics which are limited to genetic, familial determinants.

Further layers of the body’s packaging include the house, the pram, the dogs and the family.
One of the most difficult conditions for the self is nudity.

As the self develops, it has to accommodate a changing body. It is perceived by others differently as time goes on. One can never be complacent about being in a body.

At various times and places, techniques have been developed to adapt one’s self to the body without adornment or packaging. Feldenkrais, Alexander, Tai Chi and Yoga involve learning to use the body in a conscious way and finding alternatives to the default socialised habits acquired mostly in childhood. These approaches involve appropriation of the alien and possibly dysfunctional body, bringing it into confluence with the self’s needs.Language
Language also plays a central role in self expression. Through language the self can by-pass its physical expression and approach others symbolically.

Unlike the genetic body, language can be infinitely developed and refined. It does not get old but can mature. Selves can interact in language without the body being present through electronic communication and writing.

Symbolic forms of self-expression beyond language allow images or sounds to be sent to one another without reference to the bodies from which they originate. Such expressions can exist beyond bodily lifespans.

When we look in an ever-present mirror, we see reflected the body at a stage in its development. We become accustomed to it and see it as our self. It is only when the body suddenly changes dramatically that its alien character becomes evident. Then the process of accustoming ourselves to it begins again.

Throwing away old clothes is like throwing away your self.

Free solar hot water

2010-11-11T12:43:00.006+11:00

A repairman came to fix the solar hot water:
“ I really enjoy washing with water heated by the sun.”
“Yeah it’s nice that it doesn’t cost anything.
“That’ll be $110.”

The upright animal

2010-11-05T17:55:00.009+11:00

Unlike most other animals, the accustomed posture for the human is standing upright on two of four limbs. Other animals use this posture for surveillance of potential danger (e.g. marmots) or as an aggressive posture (e.g. bears). Using the upright posture for both these purposes, the human animal evolved into a permanent state of fear and aggression, always watching and ready to engage with enemies. This is our animal precondition.

Out of this disconcerting state of being, the upright animal has developed societies to reduce fear and enable peaceful interaction. In society, internal and external peace is possible. Civilised upright people can approach one another face to face on a new basis in friendship, love or as opponents but without physical violence. Interaction is mediated via language. Language skills become highly developed.

For societies to function, their members need to be educated and socialised into symbolic modes of peaceful interaction, self-control and advanced communicative strategies for resolving the conflicts which necessarily emerge when diverse wills and desires come into contact.

If education and socialisation are not competent or are neglected, violence emerges within societies, threatening the basis of civilisation. Creative forces are destroyed or forced into exile. Barbarism replaces them.

Each child has to repeat the entire evolutionary process from going on all fours to an upright position and then coming to terms with the implications of this powerful posture. Before they can access civil institutions (including libraries, cafes and restaurants) extensive training is necessary otherwise the usable character of these places is lost. Without adequate preparation for social life, new generations become aggressive upright predators. Their violence is expressed against their fellows as street fighting, urban rage, bullying, domestic violence and all forms of physical conflict. It is also directed at other species and the common environment.

The upright animal can come in an advanced social symbol-using form or in a more primitive aggressive variety.

see Hampe p 235 ff on upright posture.
#

Beauty, truth, happiness

2010-10-28T20:37:00.008+11:00

Humans are in unavoidable fundamental conflicts which originate from their social being. For Freud, aggression is a basic drive which brings individuals in societies into conflict with the aggression of others. This becomes transformed into internal conflict, in the superego, the conscience of each person. The society’s rules rule us from within.

The search for happiness as a continuing condition fails on this presupposition. In or out of society, humans can only exist with internalised or external conflict.
Trust and friendship are developed within this framework, but it involves considerable communicative effort to achieve closeness rather than superficiality.

Instead of the search for happiness, Hampe suggests the goals of truth and beauty in life (after Plato). Truth is central to Freudian therapy, to replace illusions which cause suffering with enlightenment rather than other illusions. This does not bring happiness but releases from the suffering caused by particular illusions or delusions. The belief in the goal of happiness is itself an illusion.
Illusions must result in disillusionment.

Beauty offers an escape from conflict and anxiety. Art should be free of all traces of humans. Each artistic object should not be reminiscent of something human.

Not “the field of the bread, the forest of the house and cupboard, stone of walls, the spring of drinks...”,
but just “white of white, black of black, red of red, straight of straight, round of round.
“This is how the soul becomes healthy.”
(Ernst Jandl in Hampe p 202)

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

Blankets at the beach

2010-10-27T12:03:00.004+11:00

Wraps and throws by anyonion & dotAtelier at a Pacific beach here.
anyonion fashion accessories.

Manly Beach Sounds

2010-09-14T07:55:00.021+10:00

Manly Beach Sounds presents the sounds of Manly Beach, Sydney in the context of images of the beach and its surroundings. This application allows the user to compose ‘nature music’. The full-sized version of it is more effective (here).

Click on any image to hear a sound click again to turn it off. Combine the sounds by clicking more images. Use it like a musical keyboard to compose musical ambiences based on sound elements form nature.

The present and the experience of art

2010-09-02T07:43:00.007+10:00

The present, as we think about it, is embedded between the past and future. The practical needs of everyday life strongly encourage this association. Socialisation into practical reasoning requires modern consciousness to contextualise everything. Causation, logic, sequence, value, networks all affect our immediate perception. The person who doesn’t associate the present with its contexts may be considered naive or foolish. An enormous collective effort is made in education and disciplining to establish this way of thinking. Just as in language where we cannot understand a sentence without the discourse around it, fragments of existence require a context to give them meaning (Michael Hampe [German]).

Life is a series of present moments (Hampe p147ff [German]). The future and the past are intangibles, memories or possibilities. Nevertheless they overwhelmingly dominate thought at the expense of immersion in the present.

The associations with the past and future make it extremely difficult to experience the present without being immediately transported into another thought space. Being in the here and now, undistracted by other time-spaces, is not facilitated in modern cultures. Few activities are designed to bring our minds into the present, the present into our minds.

One of the characteristics of works of art is decontextualisation. Objects are removed from their instrumental systems of reference. They are placed on walls or screens, in public spaces, in museums in frames, on wearable objects. They are freed from their intrinsic associations with the past and future. In this way they have the potential to transpose the modern observer into the immediate and to open a window to the present. The opportunity may be missed if the viewer is not prepared for this (what is it worth?, who made that? how was it made?). The work succeeds if adequately disposed viewers can look and be transformed into the moment of now.

hear an extract from Das vollkommene Leben [German]
hear Michael Hampe [German]
podcast review [German]

Perception and objects of scientific knowledge

2010-08-17T16:20:00.004+10:00

When planets line up, it takes some mental effort to see them as something other than stars next to one another. Knowledge of the event enables us to see the aligned planets in orbital positions in relation to the sun, aligned only in relation to ourselves as the observers.
We spontaneously see our galaxy as a milky smear in the night sky. However through thought adjustments we can see ourselves as a beings watching from the edge of a massive bright spiral and looking into it. After some time, it is hard to see it as a smear again.

When the Earth approaches the debris remaining from a comet, we see it as a shower of meteors coming from a place called say Perseus, a star constellation which is in fact far away from the meteors. With an effort of imagination we can see and feel the Earth turning into the debris and consuming it with the Perseus stars in the far distance. We can adjust our minds to the relativity of the situation for a truer experience.

Perception is led by knowledge. Whatever objects we see are only objects as constructed by our thoughts.Gravity
Understanding gravity is a difficult step for the perceptive process. We need to think in the four dimensions of space-time. The Newtonian view was easy to grasp. All objects have an attractive force between them. The apple does not fall but attracts the Earth which is attracting it.

In his general theory of relativity, Einstein brought space and time inseparably together so that gravity was no longer a force operating between objects in space but became a geometrical constant. Gravitation is four dimensional space-time curved by mass (p 317-8 Hubert Mania on Gauss, who for Mania is the intermediary between Newton and Einstein). This theoretical position is a serious challenge for the perceptual process.

The Soldier Crab of Hungry Beach

2010-08-15T22:55:00.010+10:00

Soldier Crabs (Mictyris platycheles) live in 'armies'. They are social creatures living on the beaches of the west Pacific. So when cars drive over their sandy home, they have little chance.

This particular crab at Hungry Head Beach NSW is all alone. Its beach is used as a highway. Not for any particular purpose like going somewhere or getting something but just for 'recreational driving' - burning fossil fuel while squashing crabs, shells and birds' eggs for 'fun'. This is a typical use of beaches in Australia - senseless destruction of paradise. The beaches are spoiled not just for the humans who want to enjoy them but also for the creatures that live there.
South from the Hungry Beach Nature Reserve, cars are not allowed on a section of the beach. Unfortunately this crab does not live there. In fact, there do not seem to be any Soldier Crabs living on the car-free part.

Unlike other crabs these ones walk forwards not sidewards. They have lungs not gills. They filter the sand for food leaving behind little balls of cleaned sand.

The music is by Sylvius Leopold Weiss - ponce - preludio in e major played by Jeff Carter
It is in the public domain made available via musopen.

Berlin knits in a Pacific setting

2010-07-29T08:20:00.018+10:00

Here are some photos of more knits in the anyonion / dotatelier collection which have not yet been presented on this blog. These pieces were exhibited at the 48-Stunden-Neukoelln festival at anyonion in June 2010.

They are shown here in a rural context in the sub-tropical west Pacific, including the rainforest of Dorrigo, New South Wales.

The design of Brittle Star in creamy-sandy colours is based on the sea life of the Pacific as it appears on the beaches of eastern Australia. It continues the theme previously presented with Sea Stars.Manly Pines reconstructs the trees, waves and stars of Manly Beach, Sydney, one of the most popular and scenic urban beaches in that country.
Surf Foam is reminiscent of a swim in the ocean on a warm day, early in the morning when the waves are quite powerful. Alternatively it may call up the feeling of leafy environments.Wave Map, which was previously shown in the context of the anyonion shop in Neukoelln (together with Surf Foam), is here shown with the rainforest mountain chain of Dorrigo in the background.
Universal Script attracted considerable attention at 48-Stunden-Neukoelln where is was presented in different colour combinations. Here the burgundy-grey combination has an ancient Roman effect. The universality of the script demands the viewing eye to find meaning, to project an interpretation onto what is recognised as code but corresponds to no language. Here in the rural setting, no hints are provided for a cultural setting which might provide clues about its place in a meaning context.The knits show here can be seen in Berlin at the anyonion shop at Bürknerstr. 10, Neukoelln along with the other works in the anyonion.de / dotatelier.net collection.

photos by Rita

Gaussian summation formula

2010-07-20T08:13:00.007+10:00

Hubert Mania describes Gauss’s approach to problem solving as similar to looking at a pointillist picture. You need to take a look from a different angle to capture the constructed whole object, to move further away to see more than a collection of coloured points.

He postulates how Gauss came to his summation formula - by way of the task of summing all the numbers from 1 to 100 - as a child of 7. He proposes that Gauss recognised the sum of the columns in 2 number rows as always being 101:

..1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .....,98,99,100

100,99,98,97,96,95,....... 3, 2, 1
______________________________________ 101,101,.................101,101,101

The process involves stepping outside of the given task of adding the numbers one by one starting at the beginning and seeing the sequence as a whole with a beginning and an end. Then it becomes clear that adding the end and the beginning and moving inwards produces a series of equal sums of 101. Just multiply 101 x 50 and the answer is 5050.

Knowing exactly what occurred in the thought processes of the 7-year-old is necessarily speculative. Even the events around the thoughts are diversely described. The English Wikipedia claims Gauss was given the task as a punishment for being naughty and solved it in seconds. German sources suggest it was a normal practice for teachers to give children such tasks to keep them quiet for a long time or to justify beating them for not performing and that it was a shock to the teacher that the problem was solved by Gauss in a matter of minutes.

Although the number 101 is generally used to explain his thinking, an alternative possibility would be to use a similar procedure with sums of 100. Why would a child of 7 be so attracted to the number 101 when the process would also work using the easier and more intuitive number 100?

......1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .....97,98,99,100

100, 99,98,97,96,95,......... 3, 2, 1 _____________________________________________ 100,100...........................100,100

A minimal complication comes when the number 50 is reached in the middle which has no partner. It just has to be added on:
50 x 100 +50 =5050

Using the number 101 gives a more generalisable form to the solution and fits with the algebraic formula x(x+1) / 2, which also works with other whole number sequences. But the easier use of sums of 100 may be the method which occurred to the 7 year old. For anyone acquainted with the decimal system, number pairs adding up to 100 are spontaneously eye-catching.

Urban Cycle Gallery archive

2010-07-06T20:24:00.005+10:00

An archive of summer, which was first released at the dotAtelier exhibition at the Urban Cycle Gallery in Berlin-Mitte in April 2010 can be now seen at the UCG website.
Also archived there are flowers and dream.

48 Stunden Neukoelln

2010-06-21T05:12:00.004+10:00

Some of the blankets to be seen at the Neukoelln festival presented together with the works they are derived from. Music based on the sound of the anyonion knitting machine created using Garage Band and Adobe Sound Booth.

48 Stunden Neukoelln - English

2010-06-18T05:03:00.005+10:00

Here is the programme for the anyonion / dotAtelier part of the festival in Neukoelln in English.

48 hour festival in Neukoelln, Berlin

2010-06-13T23:09:00.018+10:00

48 Stunden Neuk oelln 2010

25 - 27th June
Bürknerstr. 10

With less than 2 weeks until the festival opening on 25 June, some new blankets are emerging from the anyonion knitting machine.
Here you can see some detail from dotAtelier's 'surf foam' as well as the whole blanket displayed on a chair in front of the anyonion shop in Neukoelln.

The photos were taken on a hot sunny day in Berlin last week. In Neukoelln it is currently a comfortable time to walk around the streets looking at the unusual shops which are among the incubators of modern culture in Europe, stopping occasionally for an organic snack or a drink.

In this warm weather, blankets may be the last thing you are thinking of, but in the cool of the long summer evening it can be a welcome accessory around the shoulders or warming your legs while looking stunningly unusual.

Alternatively it can be used simply to convert that old wooden chair into an inviting warm seat or decorate a bed in a functional way.

Here are also two more shots of 'wave map' in the outdoor sun in front of the shop where it was made. The clarity and contrast of black and white is apparent here in the natural sunlight.

48-stunden-neukoelln

2010-06-04T04:05:00.005+10:00

The detailed programme for the festival is now on-line. Artful knitting is listed together with the other art events in Neukoelln. Visitors can move between different events on foot or in free taxis. At anyonion visitors will be able to see and hear projections of new media art whilst touching the knitted shawls, blankets and scarves which have been knitted using visual elements extracted from the new media works.

The knitted products of the joint project between anyonion and dotAtelier will be available during the 48 hour festival from Friday afternoon until Sunday.

Pointillist-inspired techniques and digital output media

2010-05-25T00:57:00.010+10:00

As well as having the advantage of clarity and purity of colour, pointillist-like techniques are suitable for computer output media.

Computer output devices include not only the ones that most immediately occur to our everyday thinking, such as the monitor or the printer which have been refined to deal with millions of different colours, or if we think further the projector, the large urban screen or the digital litefast with its 360° led-based imagery.

Fabric design is another output form for computer imagery. Digital knitting machines can produce knitted products using a limited number of colours with each individual knit representing a pixel of a digital image. Appropriate digital images need to be reduced in colour multiplicity to the available number of knitting colours. This may be as few as 2. Gradations in an image which are significant, render the image unsuitable for such output media.

Techniques based on distinct limited colours, in the form of lines, points or circles are highly suitable for knitted output media. Clarity and purity of colour are advantageous and are reflected in the quality of the knitted product. Photographic images with gradations based on interpolation of millions of distinct colours as tiny pixels are unsuitable for this type of output.

The range of output media for digital art in increasing. In fabric design, there is knitting and weaving. Led-light based clothing design uses a limited number of coloured lights machine-embroidered into a circuit to reproduce designs integrated into clothing items based on a few distinct programmed colour points. Other products such as ceramics use digital designs which are programmed into the production process.

It is important that the principles of design correspond to the production technology. Artists in the digital world need to think digitally.

Wave map blanket

2010-05-22T23:19:00.005+10:00

This latest blanket by anyonion and dotAtelier has been prepared in strongly contrasting black and white. The effect is stark on both sides. The white on black has a quite different impact to the black on white of the inverse side.Here the blanket is shown draped over a chair in the showroom at anyonion as well as a detail of it. It would also look very effective in other strongly contrasting colour pairs.
It will be presented at the Neukoelln Festival from 25 to 27 June 2010.

photos by Gaby

Sea star blanket

2010-05-14T01:23:00.004+10:00

These are images of the other blanket that was on display at the Urban Cycle Gallery. It will be again available at Anyonion in Berlin for the Neukoelln Arts Festival in June.Sea star was inspired by the ocean and sky of the South Pacific near Manly, Sydney.The inverted colours of the reverse side (which side is the reverse side?) can be seen here contrasting the lightness of dove blue against the deep tones of black current.photos by Rita

Entwined art

2010-05-11T18:54:00.008+10:00

Preparations for the arts festival exhibition at anyonion from June 25 to 27 in Berlin are advancing.
Woollen blankets will now include Manly Norfolk Pines as well as Coral and Sea Stars (from Ocean) which were on display at the Urban Cycle Gallery (images). Other knitted blankets are also in preparation. As seen on the images, the colours on the top side are the inverse of the reverse side.Visitors will be able to observe the knitting machinery in action and select their own colour combinations.New scarves and shawls will be presented in formats which have until now not been available in anyonion’s range. One of these will be based on Scribbly Gum. Another scarf features the bronze age figures in this blog’s sidebar.photos by Rita

Anyonion and dotAtelier at 48-hours Neukoelln

2010-04-26T08:50:00.004+10:00

Following the exhibition / installation at the Urban Cycle Gallery in Berlin Mitte, the next opportunity to catch up with dotAtelier outside of the internet will be from 25 to 27 June 2010 in Berlin’s creative inner city location Neukoelln.

Together with anyonion, which creates knitted accessories using a 2 tonne computerised knitting machine in their premises at Buerkner Str 10, we will be presenting blankets, shawls and scarves etc during the 48 hour arts festival of Neukoelln. The anyonion shop will be open along with other galleries and artistic venues in that part of Berlin for the entire 48 hour period, day and night. Free buses and taxies will transport visitors between locations, although it is possible to experience a great deal on foot.

Anyonion will feature dotAtelier designs whilst hosting new media works. Knitted works will be available in different forms representing extracted special moments from new media works as seen on blip.tv, extending those knitted works which were shown for the first time at the Urban Cycle Gallery.

New media finds its expression not just via screens and printers but also through the knitted medium.

Summer

2010-04-18T05:33:00.009+10:00

On 14. April, Summer was played for the first time at the Urban Cycle Gallery in Berlin Mitte. It is now available for viewing via Blip TV.
This clip is inspired by the multiple references to summer through the designs on walls, plants in gaps, drawing elements in museums and other symbolic representations that can be seen around the streets of Berlin and other places in the region. It is accompanied by the music of Albeniz, Suite Espanola, op 47 (via Musopen).

The influence of the observer

2010-04-08T07:28:00.005+10:00

Before his journey to America, Alexander von Humboldt prepared himself extensively as an observer - not just through scientific education and language learning but also the preparation of his body.

The measuring instruments he used required a disciplined agent to take adequate measurements. As well as climbing deep into narrow caves to overcome common fears and learning to assemble his instruments while standing on one leg using only one hand, he also spent a year in the countryside taking measurements near cow herds to become accustomed to being surrounded by biting insects and in extremely discomforting conditions. Exposure to the constant critical gaze of the village community was preparation for using instruments surrounded by potentially hostile and strange cultures. Subsequently, when gathering data in the silver mines on his journey he was seen by locals as the devil when he wore his oxygen mask to navigate deep caves.Scientific instruments without an observing subject produce no meaningful information. All observation involves subjective factors and these are already involved during data collection. Observation is projection of meaning, just as viewing the art of no longer existent cultures (and existing ones) requires parameters of interpretation.When Humboldt arrived at the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan he began measurements of the sun, moon and planets. What had previously been perceived as a fascinating remnant of an ancient civilisation was reinterpreted by him as a calendar (Kehlmann p 207). Everything had been built according to the movements of the universe. Scientific, measured observation saw something different than the common-sense view.
Bodily preparation also had survival implications. When they reached the top of a mountain they found themselves in a swarm of bees. Bonpland threw himself on the ground and covered as much of his exposed body as he could. Humboldt, however, remained still and allowed the bees to land on him. He waited as long as was necessary for the insects to move on. The preparation with the flies of that Austrian village had enabled him to confront his fear. Fear precludes discovery. Similarly when faced with a jaguar immediately in front of him in the rainforest, he remained still and slowly moved away. A panic reaction may have been fatal.

Installation at Urban Cycle Gallery, Berlin Mitte

2010-03-12T04:48:00.003+11:00

16 to 24 April 2010
Urban Cycle Gallery
Fehrbelliner Str 17
Berlin Mitte
map

Hats and bicycles

2010-02-20T23:02:00.009+11:00

Prior to the age of the internal combustion engine, urban mobility was not so door-to-door. Moving about involved leaving climatised spaces and spending some time outside in the weather. Walking, using public transport and cycling required that the body be protected from rain, sun and cold temperatures. Hats were part of everyday clothing until the ubiquitous mobile heated box took over the open space of our cities. Hats became old hat, something that ruined an expensive hairstyle.

Coinciding with the imminence of peak oil and the renaissance of the bicycle, the hat is also returning to the urban costume. Hatters, whose profession almost disappeared in the second half of the 20th century, are now returning.

As the costs of non-human energy increase due to depleted resources and increased populations worldwide, using fuel will be limited by the means to pay. Meanwhile, as the impact of car pollution, accidents and dysfunctional transport on cities becomes intolerable, vehicles will be further excluded from walkable and cyclable cities. People need the space taken up by cars to get around. Freed from the omnipresent, stressful four-wheeled box, a stylish hat and a bicycle become highly desirable.

The resurgence of the comfortable urban bicycle and the return to fashion of the hat go hand in hand with the re-humanisation of cities.

Climate change and Babylonian gods.

2010-02-16T22:47:00.005+11:00

In Babylon, the worst that could happen was for the gods to leave the city. This was associated with the golden statue of Marduk being carried away to another city following invasion.

Gods were not isolated individuals, but lived socially. Marduk was the king of the gods for the Babylonians, a role which he had taken over because of his wisdom as well as his strength in countering the threats of another god. The humans and their universe were created to provide special venues for gods to have gatherings and festivities in.

The repercussions of providing inadequate circumstances would include famine, climatic disasters, deteriorating relations between people, lack of healing and exposure to attack by enemies. To prevent this, a good ruler would make the city an attractive place for the gods by promoting the beauty of its buildings, streets and public spaces, caring for the relations between people and providing food sacrifices at altars.

In this way an instance of the social whole was created, to which the context in which one lived was dedicated. The people took an interest in caring for their city, not just their own property, to make sure that the collective well-being of all was protected. This in turn ensured the well-being of individuals.

The role of the ruler was to be an agent pursuing the interests of the god of their city-kingdom. A good ruler was without self interest. An egotistical ruler would bring the city down. Corruption and greed resulted in the demise of all.

Modern individualistic societies could learn from the ancients. Where governments see their role as mediating the interests of the individuals and organisations, the common needs are neglected. Expressed in ancient terms, without care for the whole the gods will go elsewhere. The consequences are unpredictable weather (famine and flood), chaotic human relationships and a vulnerability to international conflict.

We do not have to make golden statues to care for the places where we live. A consciousness of larger common ground is required, a commitment to make the places we live in beautiful rather than unpleasant dangerous surroundings which no self-respecting god would want to visit. Like the ancient gods, today we travel to other places to experience beauty. Home is a godforsaken place where we just get things done.

Dreaming

2010-01-26T11:02:00.008+11:00

Dreaming is dependent on the quality of waking experiences for its content and emotion. Not just experiences of the previous days but from long ago in one’s life flow into dreams without regard for time.

Different cultures dream differently. Contemporary dreaming can range from stressful anxiety to the experience of gliding through space or water. Sometimes we dream of traffic accidents, workplaces, journeys in vehicles, machinery, traumas and social discomfort, with roots ranging from experiences in early childhood to the immediate present. Such dreaming may end in waking shock, a welcome escape, or just grind on in disturbed sleep. At other times dreams are relaxing explorations inspired by people, safe social ambiences and remnants of nature.

Indigenous dreaming cultures, which are known for their orientation to dreams, used to have a different waking context to the one they cohabit today. Prior to being colonised, their everyday was shared with a rich array of animals, birds and plants and was set in a clean natural surrounding of biodegradable objects and connected natural systems. Life was generally predictable. Without chronic stress and machinery, the animals of everyday life appeared in dream world experiences in different forms and emotional contexts. Waking memories of dreams had a different quality to those of the present time, often expressed as meetings with ancestors and totemic beings in animal form. Dreaming was a total environmental experience. Such dreaming is unachievable today.

While dreaming, a person experiences his/herself as a butterfly. S/he wakes and believes s/he is a person. Or is s/he a butterfly dreaming it is a person?

The belief that the dream world is more real than the waking world because it is not finite or functional suggests, if it is true, that the modern consciousness is far removed from the real because of the quality of dreams which are experienced. Everyday hectic and degraded nature hinder our contact with the real.

New calendar year

2010-01-01T23:36:00.006+11:00

After to failure of the Copenhagen Climate Conference to agree on a plan for a liveable future for the planet, the new calendar year was initiated across the world with a massive display of waste and pollution. Birds everywhere were driven from their habitats at night and many killed by explosives and disorientation. Toxic substances were spread over cities and scenic locations in the air and water ways, leaving contaminated rubbish seeping into the ground water. An ambience of urban warfare was ubiquitous throughout the night and subsequent days.

As a simple gesture of goodwill, the people of the world could agree to abolish this one type of waste, pollution and destruction as a symbol to inspire the protection of the planet against the larger scale catastrophes such as global warming and flooding which are similarly caused by massive wasteful consumption.

Instead of representing the war against the planet, the end of the calendar year could become a symbol of peace with ourselves and the creatures we share the Earth with. It could become a time symbolising regeneration of the conditions supporting life on Earth for another year.

Ocean

2009-12-11T08:49:00.008+11:00

Ocean is taken for granted from the human life perspective as something which does not change, a stable force although sometimes unpredictable for short periods. As the waves pound the beach it appears to embody perpetual motion, a constant movement of cool salt water advancing and retreating forever.

Although salt is continuously washed from the land into the ocean, the level of salinity has been stable for billions of years. As much salt is removed by ocean processes as is deposited.
However within a very short time period the ocean is now changing its consistency. It is becoming increasingly acidic. Since industrial times the acidity has increased by 30% and the trend is accelerating. Shells are 30 to 35% lighter now. Increasing acidity threatens the existence of coral reefs and the fish that depend on them. Marine wildlife is massively threatened by an acidic living environment.

The ocean is being acidified “many times faster than anything experienced over the last 55 million years”. Combined with ocean temperature rises, acidity reduces the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2, adding to global warming with a possible chain reaction scenario emerging as the oceans further warm.

This planet is predominantly water, and the human body also. Water, including ocean water, deserves respect. Let’s see if the Copenhagen Climate Change summit can agree to stop the acidification of the oceans by modifying human activity patterns.

Exhibition in Radolfzell

2009-12-07T10:05:00.011+11:00

A very diverse and exciting exhibiton was held at Drei Art Galerie in Radolfzell from 15 to 22 November 2009. The offering was greatly varied including jewellery, musical instruments, new media, paintings, photography, pottery, sculpture, and wood carvings. Works from the following artists were exhibited:

Herwig Bayerl (Salzburg)
Lena Bosch (Salzburg)
Marianne Hagemann (Allensbach)
Beatrix Hardt (Allensbach)
Matthias Holländer from Allensbach
Neil Horne (Sydney/ Berlin)
Klaus Küster (Radolfzell)
Dieter Metzing (Bonn)
Manuela Metzing (Bonn)
Martine Metzing-Peyre (Bonn/ France)
Andreas Müller (Höri)
Geru Müsch (Radolfzell)
Grit Roth-Spanknebel (Reichenau)
Mike Roth (Reichenau)
Franzis von Stechow (Constance)

Many friends and guests were also present at this event which the realisation of a great idea of Grit Roth-Spanknebel.

Night flight

2009-11-01T23:34:00.005+11:00

Somewhere between the Pacific and the Atlantic flying westwards high above the Earth.
A flash animated version of Night flight can be viewed here.

Dream

2009-10-20T20:34:00.003+11:00

Dream was inspired by a dream so it is a realisation of a dreamy unreal space. The interactive soundscape is made with Flash. It consists of two parts, forest and beach. It may be extended in future to include cosmos.
The design is experimental. It uses programming techniques with Flash to create continuity whilst distributing loading time. This is necessary as it is resource intensive. That does not mean that it loads quickly! It loads in segments initiated by the user. With slow connection speeds there is a delay between segments until it is cached, so the best effect is then achieved when it is played a second time.
Some of the programming with ActionScript3 was tricky to get the sequential shockwave films to load comfortably with appropriate user messages, as well as making the sounds load and switch off at the right time/space. Copies of scripts are available on request.
The graphics are largely sourced from Australian nature, mostly from the Manly area. The audio effects are the calls of various individual east-coast birds (black cockatoos, wattlebirds, magpies, lorikeets, kookaburras, figbirds, currawongs) and the sounds of the surf at Manly beach from different angles and in various conditions. Sounds respond to mouse movements and so are combined through user interaction. They create an auditory ambience to complement the dreamy animation of forest or beach images.

Human habitat

2009-09-27T20:58:00.003+10:00

Trees are the “natural” companion plants for humans. Unlike four-legged animals which are focused on the two dimensions of the land surface (or other surfaces), the upright human is 3-dimensional in focus. Like trees we stand up and have limbs. We stretch upwards and look towards the heavens with eyes at the top of our bodies. Our limbs are inclined to grasp the limbs of trees as our primate ancestors did and move into the vertical dimension.
The idea that savannah is the natural habitat for homo sapiens denies the physiological inclination to live among trees. Although savannah with hills may offer strategic advantages for hunter gatherers vulnerable to attack from their competitors, this type of landscape is more suitable for horizontally-oriented four-legged species. This is a suitable place to find such animals and hunt them or domesticate them as cattle.
The forest is the true human habitat, as enjoyed for example by Saxon tribes in pre-Roman times. The modern preference for flat, cleared land and lawns is physiologically inappropriate for our species which evolved with trees.
Eradication of trees on planet Earth is the elimination of the human habitat. As in the microcosm of Easter Island it will lead to global disaster for our species as well as all the others living in the ambience of trees.

The sounds of Manly

2009-08-25T20:53:00.007+10:00

Manly beach is a unique natural system under increasing strain from its urban setting on the edge of central Sydney. Despite this it has remnants of natural significance including a vivid bird life, sizeable frog populations and a long and remarkably resilient beach.

This latest Flash application is made from collected sounds taken from the nature of Manly associated with images produced over recent times. It is designed for enjoyment and should be approached at a suitably relaxed moment.

Images of Manly are presented. Click on any one and a sound from the environment will play. It may be a parrot calling, frogs creating a rhythm, or the flow of the ocean meeting the beach sand. Another click will turn off the sound before it is complete. Completed sounds can be replayed with double clicks.

Sounds can be played simultaneously to create synergies of birds and ocean, frogs and cockatoos, or ocean and ocean. Use good quality sound gear or headphones to appreciate the quality. Compose your own ambience.

The sounds collected here and the images, represent a time when these things still exist in this place. The black cockatoos may have already gone. Already population explosions of humans and dogs are reducing the habitats of the others, including penguins. Sadly, one day this application will be just an echo of more diverse times.
Birds include:

The frogs are the Common Eastern Froglet.
The ocean is the Pacific.

Perseid meteor shower

2009-08-12T14:12:00.010+10:00

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the highlights of the cosmos as seen from Earth, is at its peak at present. Tonight in eastern Australia, it will begin at about 1 am but viewing conditions will not be optimal because the moon rises shortly before midnight.

The meteors appear to come from a radiant which is in the star constellation Perseus. In fact they are remnants from the tail of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle which the Earth passes through each year in its journey around the sun.

Estimates of the number of meteors per hour vary from 50 to 80 (Science Daily) to 110 (Vienna planetarium).

The Earth will be showered with the substances from the comet which is largely composed of "dirty ice" which is transported from the outermost parts of the solar system or interstellar space.

Search for #meteorwatch on Twitter or follow @NewburyAS and @astronomy209uk.

Listening to birds in their environments.

2009-08-10T15:36:00.006+10:00

At the atelier a new activity is developing where users can listen to bird sounds in their environmental settings. Visually, you are presented with small animations which play together with different bird songs or background sounds in response to mouse movements. The user can move the cursor around the space activating different images and sounds creating a consonance of birds.

In keeping with the concept of an atelier, the page is in a state of change with new elements appearing and existing ones being modified through time.

Leaves

2009-07-17T19:47:00.002+10:00

Leaves animated

New website

2009-07-08T08:36:00.010+10:00

dotAtelier has a new website featuring animations which are also hosted at blip.tv and YouTube as well as higher quality versions of recent animations as shockwave films in large format.
Nature music, an interactive java programme for composing music from nature sounds is also hosted here.
Images can be browsed on the new site.

Leaves

2009-06-30T18:39:00.005+10:00

Mini solar collectors provide shade from the power of the sun and convert its energy into wood, water vapour and oxygen. In the process they support a wide range of flowers, nuts and fruit. As they reach the end of their life cycle they display radiant colours and fall to the earth. On the ground leaves regenerate the soil as they degrade and provide cover for insects and worms as well as small reptiles such as legless lizards. Leaves are a wonder of nature.

However they are disrespected in human perception and practice. On the ground they are called ‘leaf litter’ akin to rubbish. Gardeners and landscapers do not recognise their value but blow them onto ‘waste’ land, public land or neighbouring properties using priceless fossil fuels, wasting unique energy to remove the valuable agents of renewable energy production. In other places leaves are piled up and burned wasting their composing potential and adding to the pollution and heating of the atmosphere we depend on.

Elsewhere the potential of leaves to protect human skin against solar rays is overlooked as trees are removed from human habitats and their surrounds, increasing solar exposure and the temperature levels in already overheated places.

Leaves are not seen as objects of great beauty but as obstacles to easy mobility catching in dysfunctional shoes as one stumbles towards the nearest fossil fool transport.
As one of the main contributors to human survival, providing the oxygen we breathe, feeding the wood we consume, giving the shade we need, easing our eyes with green colour and supporting the animals we share the planet with, leaves deserve respect, should be lovingly collected and used in confluence with their function on our Earth or enjoyed as they blow around in the wind adding character to the urban and rural landscapes.

Animations on YouTube

2009-06-28T22:25:00.001+10:00

I have been working on the settings to render Flash videos for YouTube and the quality of them has greatly improved as a result. There are now new versions of Kosmos on a G-string, Flowers and Ocean, which can be viewed in normal resolution but look even clearer in HQ.

Authors of new media

2009-06-21T08:53:00.000+10:00

The romantic pre-industrial ideal saw artists as creators from nothing. (p 125)They began work with a blank canvas and added detail until an existence had been created, a world of their making. Artists were seen as the subjects of this process. (although much of their skill in object representation was learnt from their predecessors). Although many artists in modern times continue to see themselves through this model as originators of unique works, in the industrial and post-industrial eras this has long been superseded.

What Barthes called the “death of the author” refers to the definite sourcing of works in other places than the artist, of collaborative social texts. Art becomes industrialised, a mass product constructed out of elements collected elsewhere from diverse origins.

New media continue to reflect this diversity of origins of its products. The objects created are made from reuseable objects from software libraries, framed in the products of various designers and artists, programmers and project managers. Development environments such as Flash or Photoshop allow the transformation of imported visual objects or locally created objects using the tools developed by teams of software developers for visual effects.
Lev Manovich sees this process as a finite realisation of a subset of the possibilities which are contained in the concepts of the software designers. “If a complete work is the sum of all possible paths through its elements, then the user following a particular path accesses only a part of this whole. In other words the user is activating only a part of the total work that already exists.”(p 128)
With bitmap manipulation however the process becomes infinite, just as language is infinite in its capacity to generate new expressions. As with language new words emerge constantly which combine with existing word combinations and structure. It is an open system. Imported bitmaps whose uniqueness is constructed outside of the image manipulation programme offer reuseable software tools new material to transform in infinitely new ways.

Nature music will be deleted soon

2009-06-04T19:40:00.004+10:00

As of 30 September 2009, some dotAtelier websites including the interactive nature music programme and exibitions will be deleted by the Australian web hoster BigPond.
Their explanation for discontinuing this service to their paying customers are given here.
It is very unfortunate that this web hosting is to terminate and the sites destroyed after many years. The hosting was acquired as part of commercial arrangements with the expectation of continuity. Various web sites have linked to it as is usual and these links will break after September. Broken links are common enough due to bankruptcy or death, but are not usually to be expected from large organisations providing web services.
A new hosting arrangement for these resources will be established soon using a hopefully more reliable provider.

YooouuuTuuube

2009-05-12T08:32:00.005+10:00

YooouuuTuuube is an application which reprocesses YouTube videos into a multi image screen. With well-selected films as its source this effect works very well. In some cases it is an improvement on the YouTube version.
I tried it with the dotAtelier film “Ocean” which has no black edges so the original colours fill the whole screen without unwanted stripes.
The result actually looks better than the version on YouTube. The low-quality rendering of this film on YouTube is inferior to one available on Blip.tv because of the reprocessing that YouTube does and the high-quality version there buffers constantly. YooouuuTuuube takes the low quality option and reduces its size greatly while simultaneously mirroring it into an array of several rows and columns.

Variability

2009-05-11T16:15:00.015+10:00

Variability is a defining criterion of new media. Like words in natural language, new media objects exist in proximity to other objects in a system which gives them meaning. They are like words which do not depend on internal definitions for their meaning but have shifting meanings as they are reinterpreted and reshaped in different contexts (Ludwig Wittgenstein).
They make themselves available in new interactive environments.
A new media object is designed to enter a network of objects - images, texts, programmes - which can extend it and further develop it as a cultural expression. They are conceived to become ever more complex objects in collaboration with others.
The old media artwork on the wall depends on its one-off definition of itself and is invariable. It just hangs there.
Old media are also context dependent. If a brand-name artwork is found at a flea market stall it has a different meaning than if it is hanging on a gallery wall.
The difference is that new media objects exist in a creative collective medium in which they are constantly fluxing as they are picked up and reworked by aggregators, programmers, film makers, writers into new objects which modify and recombine them into new forms of creativity. They are input for the work of others in the creative community.
New media is essentially on creative common ground. Old copyright restrictions on the further development of objects contradict the variable character of the medium.

Convert audio from midi (mac)

2009-05-10T18:52:00.003+10:00

How to convert audio files from midi to other formats using mac applications.
There may be some simple ways to do this with free or commercial software, but they have always eluded me so here is one way using only mac software.
I use a Treo680 to record sounds in spontaneous situations. I always have it with me. It records in midi format in very good quality. To convert it for use in GarageBand or in Adobe Creative Suite where midis are not supported formats, do the following:

Beam the midi to your mac with bluetooth.
Open iMovie.
Drag the Midi into the iMovie timeline. Do several in a sequence on the timeline if required.
Export the movie as a QuickTime movie of web quality.
Open GarageBand. Drag the ready movie into the timeline.
Delete the video track.
Edit the sound track and export to iTunes or to file.

The recording is now in a format which can be recognised by Adobe Creative Suite as well as being recognisable by GarageBand for further editing / mashing up.

New media objects

2009-04-28T16:15:00.008+10:00

Lev Manovich prefers the term new media object to new media artwork (p 14, The Language of New Media).
Object is more in keeping with computer technology, a more general and inclusive term for new media works. New media objects link in with the object-oriented programming surrounding them.
For Manovich this also calls up connotations of the avant-garde artists of 1920s Russia who referred to their creations as objects rather than artworks. In this they are connected to the Bauhaus movement where objects are part of industrial society rather than fine arts to be hung in galleries and private collections. Analogous to design for industrial purposes, new media objects exist in a relationship to the productive system of worldwide information technology and communication. The boundary between art and design becomes fuzzy.

New media objects are in this way distinguished from traditional artworks, which may seek to be accommodated as new media art by being digitalised in a new form but have no integral relationship to the digital medium. New media objects have an essential relationship to their medium. They may take many forms, but are conceived in relation to the processes they exist in. This is what makes them new.

They are “a disruption of physical space and matter, a process that privileges interchangeable and mobile signs over original objects and relations...Different physical locations...now meet within a single electronic screen.” p xxii). “Synthetic computer-generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality.” (p xxiii)

The making of "Ocean"

2009-04-13T07:37:00.013+10:00

The animated films Ocean, Flowers and Kosmos in G were made using a combination of Adobe programmes (Flash, After Effects, Sound Booth, Photoshop) and some Apple Mac software (Garage Band). All others were made using Mac programmes and open source applications (Audacity).

The example used here is Ocean, as it has image, animation and sound editing.

The visual side begins with drawing. What is unusual here is that the drawings are designed to be digitally altered. So already in the concept of a drawing is what it is to become as an animation. You don’t draw what you see but what it will become. What you see is not what you get. In this sense it is a bit like a wood cut, where you cut an image but print its inverse. With this in mind colours become variables.

The first image in Ocean is of waves. The original was drawn with black foam and a white background, but foam has to be whitish and the background should vary in its animated form. Only by considering the computer-based tools can a drawing be optimally designed for new media. The turquoise and green would be insignificant if drawn on black or dark blue, but on a white background they shine out and the white can subsequently be made variable (from black to dark blue), retaining the brilliance of the foreground colours.

Create layered images in Photoshop out of the scanned bitmaps. Selecting a colour range of a picture with only four colours can effectively replace a white background with transparency. (Experimenting with different degrees of fuzziness gives different results which can be saved on new layers.) Replacing a colour with another colour involves selecting it, cutting it, placing a new layer behind it in the desired colour and then merging layers.

To animate in Flash, the images in Photoshop format are imported to the library with transparent areas (background), converted to movie clips and added to a layer on the stage. A background layer of variable colour replaces the background of the original drawing. A sequence is created out of these elements using Flash tools controlling alpha levels, tints and image size with motion tweening. I use Adobe CS3. The film is made into a Shockwave Flash Movie (.swf) without a soundtrack although a soundtrack can be added in Flash if desired.

To make a Flash video (.flv) out of it, the swf file is imported into an After Effects project. Here it can be reduced in size for appropriate web formats or rendered large for use off line on a large screen. This is where the soundtrack is integrated.

Sounds were recorded using the built in microphone of the MacBook Pro in the rainforest of the east coast hinterland of Australia. Using Sound Booth to capture, the computer was carried to places where the birds, frogs and insects were calling or placed somewhere and left to record whatever was happening such as thunder and rain.

Sound Booth visualises the sounds so that you can recognise particular sounds without having to listen to a whole long recording. So you can see a wren or a whip bird’s call. Weak sounds can be strengthened. The essence of a sound can be isolated. The hardest part here is to avoid interference from the ever-present debris blowers, lawn mowers, slashers, trail bikes, bulldozers, stereos and electric guitar enthusiasts which rain forest environments attract. Sound Booth can identify and remove some of these sounds. Import the .wav files into Garage Band and check that they really sound right.

In Garage Band you can use effects that loop sounds and save time, but to get the sounds you really want it may be best to avoid them. Place the sounds exactly where you want them and use copy and paste to achieve repetitive rhythms. Garage Band is good for fading in and out and strengthening sounds. Export your finished composition to iTunes (.aif) or to file (.m4a).The .aif or.m4a file can be imported to After Effects and added to your project.Re-edit the animation or the sound track to make them match as you wish.

Render the animation in After Effects as a Flash Video (.flv). Choose settings to create a high or low resolution. Rendering takes several hours depending on dimensions and length.
The finished Flash video can be uploaded directly to Blip.tv where it will be made available as it is without processing. Carefully-prepared animations like these do not take well to further processing, so although I put them on YouTube also, I prefer the quality which I can control on Blip.tv.

Adobe programmes: Flash, After Effects, Sound Booth, Photoshop
Apple software: Garage Band
Open source software: Audacity

Ocean

2009-03-18T19:23:00.009+11:00

Ocean is inspired by the South Pacific Ocean near Manly. It uses images which were conceived to have areas of variable colour. The animated film is their realisation.

The nature-music is composed from the birds, frogs, thunder and rain of Gleniffer, New South Wales, Australia. Elements of the bell birds, whip birds, cuckoo doves, lewin's honey eater and fairy wrens are remixed to generate rhythms to accord with the human ear. The rhythm of the frogs, rain and thunder are universal.
The animation features the shells of the South Pacific which are disappearing with the acidification of the oceans due to fossil fuel use. Shells are 30 to 35% ligher than in pre-industrial times. In the absence of a change in human habits, both the shells and the birds featured here may soon no longer be around to inspire us.

Produced with Adobe Flash, AfterEffects, SoundBooth, PhotoShop and Apple’s GarageBand.

Drawing, images, animation

2009-03-17T20:37:00.003+11:00

The challenge of Bauhaus was to use the tools of modern times for creating artworks. This concept was taken up by Trogemann und Viehoff in relation to the computer.
The images presented here are influenced by this kind of approach. The original drawings are made using colours designed to be substituted with other colours by software which can exactly select and replace a colour range. The emerging image with new colours is the final work as it was conceived. The drawing is not to be understood as the graphic that the image is based on, but a phase in the construction of the graphic. The approach has similarities to lithography or woodcut, where an inverse of the intended graphic is made and printed onto a medium on which the final image is displayed.
A variation on this is creating images which are made to be used for animations. Here a particular colour in an original drawing is a placeholder for a variable colour, which in the animation of the image passes through a range of colours.
This method depends on drawings using fixed colours, without colour mixing. As with pointillist technique, where a base set of unmixed colours create brightness and clarity, images made from a few unmixed colours can vary elements while retaining distinctness. Shading effects alter with the variation of colour.
In physical colour-space, bright colours may fade away to insignificance when applied to a black background. However they retain their character when applied to a white background which can be subsequently transformed into black in virtual space. Colours become independent of the influence of the medium they are superimposed upon.
New media art is in this way stepping out of traditional means of image construction, using the tools available with computers to construct new concepts of images.

Infinity of points

2009-01-26T20:20:00.004+11:00

A point occupies no space. It is zero-dimensional. When it is connected to another point it becomes a line. The two points which begin and end a line are joined by an infinite number of dimensionless points. In this way one dimension is established.
When two lines are brought into relation with each other a second dimension emerges. The possibility of an infinite number of lines, each containing an infinite number of points establishes a second order of infinity, an infinity of infinities.
The two-dimensional area defined by two lines, when extended into another dimension with an infinite number of planes creates 3-dimensional space, a third dimension of infinity.
Space emerges theoretically out of infinite accumulations of spaceless points.
Dot art and pointillist techniques construct impressions of multi-dimensionality with finite sets of points with extension. The infinity of points to make a continuous object from a finite collection of points is interpolated by the perceiving consciousness. It is sufficient for the perception and recognition of patterns to receive a finite set of elements to make the theoretical leap to a trans-finite concreteness. Continuity is projected onto a sufficiently large quantity of hints.
Combination and repetition of points and lines, whether straight lines or formed, elicits the projection of continuity involving the abstraction from the finite lines and points to an infinite set of them. Ambiguity may result with diverse or alternate constructions possible. Although this is called optical illusion, it is like the illusion of “objectivity” - it reflects the process of perception in general.
Pointillism works as an art form because pattern recognition is fundamental to our perception of phenomena. We can only ever perceive a finite amount of anything, but we experience it as “real”, as complete, that is we transcend the finiteness into infinite abstractions across several dimensions to construct that which we experience as continuous things, objects, processes and possibilities.

Flowers

2009-01-01T15:07:00.004+11:00

An animation of flowers set to the music of JS Bach’s Partita no 3 in E major, Preludio, transcribed for and played on guitar (originally composed for lute) by Gordon Rowland. Using the graphics of dotAtelier, the animation was produced using Adobe Flash (also Photoshop and After Effects) as a celebration of the beauty and variety of flowers.
Music via Musopen

Kosmos - stars and flowers

2008-11-16T12:17:00.010+11:00

Since ancient times, humans have looked into the night sky and learned speculative thought through the stars. The relationship between stars and flowers was explored in their cosmologies, science and by their artists.
From the point of view of modern science, the cosmos and its non-lving mineral matter has an integral relationship to flowers, plants and all living things.
At the starting point of planetary mineral evolution pre-stellar molecular clouds have only a dozen refractory minerals. By the time planets form, the number and types of minerals multiply. Through the effects of biochemical processes as planets evolve, the minerals required for complex life systems are generated. The prerequisite for life is 1500 different mineral species created through fluid-rock interactions such as volcanic activity and crystal formation. Then biological processes take over which are responsible for the 4300 mineral species known on Earth today.
This animation is made with Flash and is more technically complex than the previous Kosmos which was made with iMovie.
Links:
Ancient Greek and Mesopotamian myths (search for flowers)
planetary mineral evolution (pdf)
this animation on blip.tv or on YouTube

Bells

2008-10-20T08:41:00.005+11:00

The Lifecycle of Artworks

2008-09-24T15:01:00.007+10:00

To protect artworks from destruction, they have to be taken into care by someone or institutions for a long continuous time. If the artists’ executors recycle the works on death, they are probably gone forever, unless they are accidentally preserved in landfill where paper may last for 10,000 years away form air and water (p 119 Weisman). If some admirer stores them in an attic and they survive a few generations, they may gain market value and be accepted by an institution long after the artist’s death.
Someone, somehow has to do the work of protection.
Additionally, materials themselves have a life span which depends on where they are located. Although paintings were created in ancient European cities such as Athens and Rome, none of them remain today. They are only imaginable through descriptions by authors such as Pliny. Marble sculptures however from these times are quite common, often with essential organs removed by more modest subsequent generations of art enthusiasts.
Preservation also often depends on alternative uses for the materials the art works are made of. The majority of copper and bronze statues from European civilisations have been recycled into war materials. Most of the gold artworks of Meso-America have been melted down into pure value. Egyptian gold artifacts were reduced to pure metal to avoid laws about the export of unique artworks. Stone artworks were often converted into other uses for stone such as building materials. Rock art in Australia became car parks, the foundations for buildings, mine sites or sandstone building blocks.
“95% of all artwork ever made doesn’t exist anymore” (Paul Himmelstein quoted in The World Without Us p 247).
Materials

bronze artworks are extremely stable and can last forever, but historically most of them have been melted down for weapons
paintings on canvas do not last more than a few hundred years because water destroys the canvas eventually, unless they are preserved in a dry dark environment, like a pyramid in a desert
ceramics are very stable if they are not broken. We know what we know about ancient Greek textiles from paintings on ceramics.
drawings on paper can last for thousands of years if they are in acid-free containers and in a dry environment, as ancient Egyptian scrolls were preserved. But even in the library of Alexandria, the best preservation methods did not help against the actions of a bishop with a flaming torch. p 248
It is unlikely that digitally preserved media will survive beyond the civilisation that produced it. Without the technology to interpret the encoded content, art, music, films and texts in digital form will be lost.

Starflowers

2008-09-19T15:27:00.001+10:00

Insect talk

2008-09-06T20:15:00.005+10:00

In the walls of the houses of eastern Australia, mud wasps make their homes. The music of this animation uses their communication with one another as sound elements, combined, repeated, intensified and softened into a wasp concert.
Accompanying the sounds are images of insects and the spaces they inhabit as they see them - the world of flowers. Finally the animation blends into universal script, symbolic communication without specificity.

Boronia

2008-08-31T18:00:00.001+10:00

Landscape and character

2008-08-17T14:57:00.011+10:00

Unlike the modern character, the ancient Greeks and other ancient Europeans, rooted character types in nature. Rather than constructing oneself by choice, self development demanded the discovery of one's nature defined in terms connected to natural environments and landscapes. The aim was to discover your destiny and achieve it. Your destiny corresponds to your nature.
This does not imply a deterministic system without choice or will. The realisation of one's destiny can take endless different forms in various places. Only an oracle can foresee the consequences of choices. However one's nature is pre-given and requires reasoned willing to realise itself, to discover one's nature.
Landscapes had Gods associated with them. People were associated with these specific Gods for their destiny and hence with a landscape type.
For example:
Apollo has an overview, a view from afar. He clears the air and earth. His landscape has vibrant lines and a combination of abundance and clarity.
Pallas Athena is a neighbour of Apollo. She has a clear view of things, a bit harsh but shining like still water or shimmering heat.
Artemes is unapproachable and ferocious if disturbed. She is the goddess of the outsider. Her character can be experienced in the uncultivated cliffs which support a lot of wild animals such as butterflies and goats.
Jupiter has the character of the majestic mountains with a clear overview. He is the white and grey of the mountain tops against a clear blue sky.
Aphrodite is infatuating, associated with opulent river lowlands. The landscape of Ares (Mars) is conflict land in nature, the edge of the forest in the mountains. (source: Sieferle et al p 142)
In modern times character is disconnected from nature and landscapes. We make our destinies via social parameters which are determined by clan ambitions, social workers, educational advisors, and the results of diagnostic tests to find out where required work skills can be trained up. It is machine-inspired. Within the destinies which are constructed, the modern subject may choose where to live, who to work for, and what clothes to wear without reference to any natural environment or landscape type which they may belong to.
People in ancient societies saw the development of the self in terms of the coming and going of nature. Their destiny was their nature, not a chosen path. In nature, all beings develop from a tiny core to a maximum extension, pulsating back and forth. The river, the sun, the heart, the tree are suitable symbols for life.
Mountains have become motorcycle racetracks, rivers are sewers, and cliffs without buildings on them are hard to find. Perhaps in our age it may be preferable to associate a character with the moon for an overview of the Earth rather than a degraded Alpine peak, if association with natural systems were desired. Or can we find inspiration for ourselves in the remnants of nature.
Freeing the self from the constraints of what is held to be a "natural" human has its benefits. However, the extreme disconnectedness from nature of the modern character neglects the human's eco-systemic roots and has associated dangers.

2008-08-14T22:02:00.002+10:00

Universal signs

2008-07-14T13:10:00.009+10:00

Omens - the beginning of Mesopotamian science

2008-06-23T17:48:00.008+10:00

Science in Mesopotamia begins with the documentation of the study of tendencies. This research goes beyond the cause and effect of everyday reason to a systematic approach which published its results in the form of omens. The meaning of these sets of omens can be understood from the view point of modern belief systems as either superstitious or as essentially valid or somewhere between the two where strands of valid ideas can be identified. The following examples from Mesopotamia demonstrate this.

“If there is a high tide in the month of Nisan and the river is coloured red like blood, there will be an epidemic in the country. “ (from the omen series Summa alu, quoted in Sieferle et al)
Prior to knowledge about red tides as an effect of human population impact, the red water flowing back into the river at high tide was understood as a sign, the basis for an omen. Through scientific research, the coincidence of it with disease outbreaks was established and written into the collection of omens as a tendency to be aware of when the river turns red.
As omens are expressions of tendencies rather than cause and effect statements, the sign can be interpreted and action taken to avoid the tendential consequence. Omens may contain clearly sensible solutions to practical problems accompanied by ritual ceremonies of sacrifice.
A mould growing on the eastern outer wall of a house is an omen of disaster for the house and household. To avoid the disaster, “scratch the mould off the house with an axe made of poplar wood, sweep it up with a reed broom, and have a torch stroke along it.” Then begins the ritual animal sacrifice to give it that mystical effect. “Dye a black goat with a white forehead completely black and slaughter it for Ischtar at the entry posts of the house. Say ‘receive God and Goddess!’ and bury the head and hooves under the door step. Then let the house owner stand on it, pour holy water on them and recite the following...” Sieferle et al
Through the ritual practices mixed with practical solutions, the tendency can be halted. The practical is not enough in itself. Also required is a response to the element of chance(“why me”). Practical interventions may prevent the disaster but human experience is plagued with unexpected tragedy which can occur to anyone, at random. This appears as divinely determined, so a material appeal to the gods and goddesses is the only channel in such cases.
Not all omens express a tendency to disaster. Any object in nature can indicate good or bad tendencies.
“If a moth climbs up a man’s body, he will experience hearty joy at a given time.” Sieferle et al
On first reading this omen sounds like pure superstition. But in what situations does one encounter moths? Usually in pristine nature, rather than in urban situations. Not just seeing moths but also having them climb on you is a sign of a nice natural surrounding.

Sacred rainforest and sustainability

2008-06-19T05:38:00.009+10:00

It has previously been described here how notions of sacredness are not necessarily consistent with environmental sustainability. In particular circumstances this may be true but when contexts change notions of sacredness are insufficient.
In the Highlands of New Guinea cultural practices emerged, linked to beliefs about spirit ancestors, which sustained the productivity of the land. This related to yam and sweet potato agriculture, pig raising and war.
Rainforest was cleared to grow sweet potatoes to feed to the pigs, although some land was never cleared as it was considered sacred. Pigs were raised to be slaughtered at festivals which occurred every 8 to 15 years and continued for 1 to 2 years. The festivals included all neighbouring tribes which were allies of the one giving the party. The function of this was to enhance power. The festivals ended with war against unfriendly neighbours and the outcome of the war was the destruction of crops and pigs as well as annexation of land. Both sides had their populations reduced.
As rainforest soil is shallow, it is rapidly depleted by agriculture. Clearing exposes soil to erosion as it is washed away by heavy rains. Soon it is unusable and has to be left to regenerate adequate top soil, which takes between 8 and 15 years of rainforest re-growth. It can then be cleared again and returns a high yield.
After a successful war, neighbouring land is claimed, but cannot be immediately used because of the belief that it is still occupied by the unhappy spirits of its previous occupants। Even the pigs of the prior inhabitants cannot be used as they are tainted by their purpose to be sacrifices for foreign spirits, and are therefore killed. Only young pigs can be taken. Before the land can be used it has to be cleansed of the alien spirits through pig sacrifices which can only occur at the next festival in 8 to 15 years. Endemic plants revegetate the land during this period, just enough time to regenerate its productivity. Hence war has the dual effect of reducing population and regenerating depleted land. (Jörg Helbling "Resourcennutzung einfacher Gesellschaften" in Natur-Bilder).
The sustainability of the this cyclical agriculture, one of the oldest, sustained agricultural systems in the world, was overwhelmed by practices that have been experienced across the world for thousands of years. The stronger tribes with more allies overused their land, including clearing sacred forests, to raise more pigs and gain more influence. They then invaded the tribes which had maintained more sustainable practices, because of their greater respect for the spirits, and occupied their more fertile land.
One of the effects of this change was an increase of malnutrition-related illnesses in the Highland people. Nevertheless, they maintained their rainforests, clean water supplies and their unique animal species to a greater degree than most other people of the world.

Sustainable hunting and traditional belief systems

2008-05-24T23:19:00.005+10:00

The Cree people from the icy north of America hunted animals long before they were engaged by European traders to hunt beavers for their fur. The sustainability of their traditional hunting was related to their beliefs about animals which linked them with humans. Like humans, animals were believed to have two distinct characteristics, a body and a spirit. The hunter only could take the body. The spirit returned to the owner of that species, and waited for reincarnation. (Jörg Helbling "Resourcennutzung einfacher Gesellschaften" in Natur-Bilder).
A hunter would apologise to an animal before killing it. An animal could not be wasted and its bones had to be disposed of in a proper ritual manner. If these rules were obeyed, there would be plentiful game next season. If not, sickness would come and animals would be scarce.
There was no limit on how many animals could be hunted. Killing a lot of animals was a sign that the owner of the spirits of the animals was positively inclined to the hunters in response to their good behaviour. Because of the cold conditions, food could be stored for the harsh winter. This hunting regime never threatened the traditional sustainability of provision of food and furs. (Jörg Helbling quoting Calvin Martin, Keepers of the Game).
When more powerful hunting tools were introduced, including guns, traps and baits, hunting became faster but did not increase in quantity. It resulted in more leisure for the Cree. An increase in numbers only came about because of increased population, a credit system (payment in advance), increased prices for supplies and a collapse of social boundaries between tribes. The greater numbers killed by the Cree were seen by them as a sign that the owner of the spirits was pleased with them. Under the changed circumstances however it led to the demise of the wild animals and to total extinction in some cases.
The belief system of the Cree only led to sustainable hunting in given circumstances. Once the circumstances changed, the ideas promoted the opposite effects and lent themselves to unsustainable hunting.
Image inspired by rock engravings of the Eora people of NSW.

Book burning

2008-05-11T19:25:00.013+10:00

10 May: the anniversary of book-burning.
An author whose work was not included in the public incineration of cultural writings complained, that the work had the necessary qualities to be included in the fire.
"Burn me!"
"Don't do that to me! Don't leave me out! Haven't I always reported the truth in my books? And now I am being treated by you like a liar! I order you, burn me!"
Bertold Brecht quotes, translated from original German poem.

Saentis

2008-05-04T20:08:00.005+10:00

Today it was a unique experience walking in the snow at Säntis in Switzerland. The snow is melting, giving way to large numbers of wildflowers, especially crocuses. The melting snow trickles into cool rockpools.

Miro guide

2008-05-04T19:51:00.009+10:00

dotAtelier selections is a new channel on Miro. It is currently a featured channel in the Miroguide.
Miro is a top quality open-source aggregator which facilitates subscription to a wide range of channels using software which is installed on your own computer in association with on-line services.
The openness of Miro was presented at re:publica 08 in Berlin where the evident advantages over others were demonstrated.

Manly beach animation

2008-04-30T05:32:00.003+10:00

This animation is constructed out of images of the landscape, ocean and beaches around Manly drawn over a period of about 15 years from early 1990s until the present (2008) and in part modified with image editing software. Manly is the major beach resort of Sydney and one of the main visitor destinations in Australia.
The music is developed using the concept of Earth music, derived from nature music software. The tonal foundations are derived from insects, birds, the ocean, thunder, wind and the sound of sand.
The film presents a whole experience of the multi-dimensionality of this area in the South Pacific and its overwhelming natural beauty as modified by the urban setting of this continent's largest city.

2008-04-17T07:08:00.004+10:00

Miro channel
There is now a new channel of dotAtelier animations on Miro which is a selection of animations in a higher-quality format including Kosmos, Trees and Water at present.

Natural sounds and music

2008-04-15T22:14:00.007+10:00

In the early years of the 20th century, Cowell anticipated the use of sounds of the Earth as a "new tonal foundation" of music, rather than using existing musical scales and instruments to try to imitate the sounds of nature.

"Natural sounds, such as the wind playing through the trees or grasses, or whistling in the chimney, or the sound of the sea or thunder, all make use of sliding tones. It is not impossible that such tones may be made the foundation of an art of composition by some composer ... Instead of trying to imitate the sounds of nature by using musical scales, which are based on steady pitches hardly to be found in nature, such a composer would build perhaps abstract music out of the same category as nature sound - that is, sliding pitches - not with the idea of trying to imitate nature, but as a new tonal foundation." ("New Musical Resources" quoted in Douglas Kahn p88).

This is the concept of nature music - music based on a tonal foundation of the sounds of nature recorded digitally, mixed and repeated with software.

Cowell wrote New Musical Resources in 1919. It was first published in 1929.

Sound and space

2008-03-28T03:29:00.004+11:00

In the construction of virtual spaces, such as animations, sound plays a complementary role to the visual in lending a sense of concreteness or reality to the experience. This process is related to perception in general, since films are watched by sensing humans.
Just as in perception generally, sound in film mediates another dimension on the scene constructed. Sight is "the most abstract of our senses, the one that constructs all things as things belonging to the outside, projected at our far edges, mounted like a stage set."(Douglas Kahn p 27) Sound on the other hand constitutes space around, behind and within us. It penetrates us whereas visual appearance remains outside and in front. Sound lends an "all round corporeality and spatiality" to the contexts we perceive. It lends secure space to them.

Shared spoken language symbolically constitutes agreed objects with sounds. It is more direct than the visual image as the construction occurs within not outside. Meaning is heard not in the space of the sound wave but in the self. Speaking involves two senses as what is spoken is simultaneously heard by the self as well as the other. "There is no visual equivalent to the utterance of the voice."(Kahn p28)

The role of sound in constituting certainty and materiality goes largely unnoticed to the common sense mind for whom the dominant sight mode is regarded as the material medium. As well as grounding perceived being, sound also conveys unconsciously qualities to space through its unnoticed complexity. Echoes inform about objects and their attributes in a room or in an open space. We do not notice the sublime differences by being insensitive to them but the unconscious intelligence of our perception builds them into a whole view without our consent.

dotAtelier

Snakes hallucinating in a tea-tree forest

Snakes hallucinating in a tea-tree forest

Trees

Hampe

2012 - a bomb of a year

Anyonion Christmas 2011 in Berlin

Imagination

Marine. A short film clip.

Art for art’s sake

Creativity out of nothing

What is art? Ernst Cassirer.

Civilised identities

Flower of the day

Discovering your self - Rousseau

The need for recognition

Trees

What is art - Schopenhauer

48-Stunden Neukoelln 2011

Reason and art

Art and artificial intelligence

Manly Beach birds

What is art?

The nature of the human

Dee Why Beach

Characters

Risks, Greek gods, war, prediction

Intertidal Zone slides

Intertidal Zone

Happiness

Manly Images

Body and self

Free solar hot water

The upright animal

Beauty, truth, happiness

Blankets at the beach

Manly Beach Sounds

The present and the experience of art

Perception and objects of scientific knowledge

The Soldier Crab of Hungry Beach

Berlin knits in a Pacific setting

Gaussian summation formula

Urban Cycle Gallery archive

48 Stunden Neukoelln

48 Stunden Neukoelln - English

48 hour festival in Neukoelln, Berlin

48-stunden-neukoelln

Pointillist-inspired techniques and digital output media

Wave map blanket

Sea star blanket

Entwined art

Anyonion and dotAtelier at 48-hours Neukoelln

Summer

The influence of the observer

Installation at Urban Cycle Gallery, Berlin Mitte

Hats and bicycles

Climate change and Babylonian gods.

Dreaming

New calendar year

Ocean

Exhibition in Radolfzell

Night flight

Dream

Human habitat

The sounds of Manly

Perseid meteor shower

Listening to birds in their environments.

Leaves

New website

Leaves

Animations on YouTube

Authors of new media

Nature music will be deleted soon

YooouuuTuuube

Variability

Convert audio from midi (mac)

New media objects

The making of "Ocean"

Ocean

Drawing, images, animation

Anyonion Christmas 2011   in Berlin