We are facing some updating issues in our blog, as readers may have noticed. We do have news to publish, though, and we will do that as soon as we make the changes we intend to do in this site.
Therefore, for the moment, you won’t find any updates. But don’t forget to come back after a while!
Cheers!
aeurásia in mexico city
From September 27th to October 2nd Marginalia Project was in Mexico City setting up the interactive video installation AEurásia in the event Transitio_MX03 – Festival Internacional de Artes Electrónicas y Video – Autonomías del Desacuerdo [autonomies of disagreement].
Karla Villegas, artistic director of Transitio_MX, points that in its third edition the event “endeavors to establish an interactive space, which promotes encounters and dialogue between the distinctive tendencies in Electronic Art from their own site of production, thus, conforming a scene of localized practices”. Workshops, clinics, forums, international exhibitions and a symposium are gathering artists from all over the world in Mexico City to show projects and discuss matters related to art and technology.
The event spreads throughout the city taking place in several cultural spaces from October 1st to 10th. Laboratorio Arte Alameda holds two international exhibitions: Dense Local [curated by Eduardo de Jesus and Gunalan Nadarajan] featuring instalative works by Alice Micelli [Chernobyl Project], Edgar Endress, among others and From Insile to Exile. Are we all outsiders? [curated by Arlindo Machado and Araceli Zúñiga] showing more than 30 video art pieces by Francis Alÿs, Jorge La Ferla, Éder Santos, Marcellvs L., and others.
In the Centro Nacional de las Artes and the Fonoteca Nacional one can see Yuri Suzuki’s Musical Kettle, Nova Jiang’s Flyer Paper Piano, amongst other works by several artists. In addition to this the public can participate in workshops, forums, clinics and the symposium.
As for this event, AEurásia was invited to be part of the international exhibition Dense Local, curated by Eduardo de Jesus and Gunalan Nadarajan, which is being shown at Laboratorio Arte Alameda in México City until December of 2009.
setting up the installation
Following the event’s curatorial premisse of bringing “the issue of culture into a world context” – thus suggesting the terms local and global as ones undergoing redefinition -, the curators of Dense Local state that “today we are experiencing new territories with new forms of presence (Weissberg), where our immediate sense of place is often a dynamic construction that is formed with multiple references, both local and global. With this reimagining, we are in a position to counterpose a notion of “territories-network” where there is a dispersed and spatiotemporally interpenetrated notion of territory against the conventional logic of “territories-zone”, which is policed by borders, laws and nationalistic notions of nation-state and territorial integrity. The notion of ‘territories-network’ is also intimately allied to recovering the ‘local’ as the active mediator and locus rather than as a stage-set for globalization.”
Studying several locations from the perspective of tourists, the creators of AEurásia – Alessandra Soares, André Amparo, Cláudio Santos and Fernando Maculan – recorded footage throughout the years depicting unusual ocurrences, monuments, short documentaries of many cultures presenting foreign lands they have visited as they see them. To conform this installation, local registers are later put together in contrast to elected places in Belo Horizonte: finding small traces of several countries inside the boundaries of one city. AEurásia: an imaginary continent; a suspended territory in which Japan and a japanese-inspired garden are put side by side complementing one another through metaphorical and visual connections: the footage recorded at first working as a basis from which to find similarities in their local environment, their hometown; searching details that grab their attention. After visiting AEurásia, one can take with him a postcard, a souvenir that registers their presence in this fragmented environment.
souvenir from AEurásia
In 2008 Marginalia Project was responsible for developing the system of softwares that deals with the production and online distribution of such postcards, removing the visitant from the physical environment and placing him in one of AEurásia’s most proeminent touristic attractions. For this particular set up of the installation we have enhanced the chroma key system [AESoulCaptor gets to version 2.1] in order to create smoother photo montages and faster response time, producing an even more interesting experience to the public.
chroma system
Working late on a daily basis did not stop us from getting the chance to discover the ruins of Templo Mayor – emerging from the ground in the midst of this chaotic metropolis -, watching the unprecedented fight between Mistico, Ultimo Guerrero and Black Warrior against Yujiro, Naitoh and Okumura for the Campeonato Mundial de Lucha Libre, and drinking tequila surrounded by a horde of terrifying mariachi. Our drifts led us from the Plaza de la Tecnología to a street vendor’s stall in which the best corn in México is cooked and covered with a mixture of mayo, cheese and chilli.
You can check out AEurásia’s Flickr to see the latest photos submitted by the attending public of Transitio_MX. For further information on this piece and a more thorough technical description of the system of softwares check this post from our archives.
souvenir from AEurásia
Marginalia Project in currently in Recife/PE, northeastern Brazil, setting up the installation Anamorphosis I at Continuum – 1st Art and Technology Festival of Recife. The installation will be open for visiting from the 8th to the 18th of October at Malakoff Tower, in Old Recife region.
In its first edition, the festival’s program is broad and interesting, with exhibitions, seminars and workshops. Also from Belo Horizonte, Fred Paulino presents the installation Conto Concreto and Rodrigo Minelli presents the lecture “Artistic Appropriation of Mobile Media” on thursday, 15th of October.
We will post more details soon.
Frame Seductions is an interactive video installation project by Pierre Proske, in which Marginalia Project integrant André Mintz collaborated in the Interactivos? Lima ‘09 workshop, held at Escuelab, in Lima, Peru, earlier this year. It uses face tracking interaction to alter the framing of a panoramic video image, enabling the exploration of the video beyond its original frame.
Pierre recently upgraded the project’s software and made available a short demonstration at vimeo.
The interactive audiovisual installation AEurásia – for which Marginalia Project developed a system of softwares last year – is being exhibited in Mexico City from October 3rd to 10th as part of the event Transitio_MX03 – Festival Internacional de Artes Electrónicas y Video – Autonomías del Desacuerdo [autonomies of disagreement].
The work was invited to be part of the international exhibition Dense Local curated by Eduardo de Jesus and Gunalan Nadarajan which is being shown in Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, together with works by Alice Micelli, Edgar Endress and Ashok Sukumaran.
Marginalia Project attended the event from September 28th and October 2nd to set up the installation and enhance the system of softwares that control the interactive portion of the installation. We will soon post more details about our participation in the event.
Anamorfose I at Siana Brazil 2009
From June 30th until July 12th, Marginalia Project participates of Siana Brazil 2009 [International Week for Digital and Alternative Arts], the Brazilian version of the renowned French event in its first edition abroad, held in the city of Belo Horizonte. In the collective exhibition at Palácio das Artes, Marginalia presents the installation Anamorfose I, a second installation version of the Chronotopic Anamorphosis project, developed last year by the group. In this exhibition, the installation has a door built to it, in reference to the most popular part of the demo video released last year at vimeo.
We’re getting to know great people and great works. Thanks to the organization and artistic coordination of the festival!
Marginalia Project participated in early june of the collective exhibition of the Amostra de Vídeo Guignard, a week dedicated to video projects at Guignard Art School, of the State University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The week had all kinds of interesting video projects, from installations and performances to experimental and documentary videos, and was organized by students of the institution.
At the school’s gallery, Marginalia presented a simple installation-like version of its popular software Chronotopic Anamorphosis, made about a year ago, in 2008, soon becoming a hit at Vimeo, through its demo video. For this exhibition, the software was adapted to Open Frameworks libraries, gaining faster video processing through the advantages of C++ language. With a webcam enabled computer and a projector, the public there could interact with the system in real time and distort themselves in the projected image.
Thanks, Nairza, for the invitation and everyone else that worked hard at the school to make it happen.
Still photo from Frame Seductions' video, by Pierre Proske (photo: Federico Andrade)
last April, I attended as collaborator, representing marginalia project, to the Interactivos? Lima ‘09 Magic and Technology Workshop, held at the Peruvian capital in a partnership between Medialab-Prado, from Madrid, Centro Cultural España en Lima, and Escuelab, a pretty cool space, recently inaugurated downtown Lima, for the creative development of technologies. it was at this center, idealized and coordinated by the association ATA – Alta Tecnología Andina (Andine High Technology), that we were received from the 13th to the 28th of April for the workshop.
Interactivos? is a project developed for some years now by Medialab-Prado as a temporary and itinerant lab for the development of creative projects with a technological base. it had already been held in cities like Madrid, Mexico City and New York and, last month, it came to South America for the first time, with the coordination of Marcos García and Laura Fernández, from Medialab-Prado; the production of Mónica Cachafeiro, also from Medialab; and with teachers Diego Diaz and Clara Boj [Spain]; Julian Oliver [New Zealand] and Kiko Mayorga [Peru].
The strange desertic landscape of peruvian coast.
in the beginning of the year, there was an international open call for projects to be developed during the two weeks of the lab. eight proposals were selected and, next, there was an open call for collaborators interested in working on one or a few of the selected projects. I enrolled myself as a collaborator for the project Frame Seductions, by artist Pierre Proske [Australia] and, departing to Lima, I integrated the collaborator team of the project, in which also figured Federico Andrade [Argentina - Modular colective], and Billie Pate [USA].
in Frame Seductions, we developed an audiovisual interactive piece in which portions of a panoramic video were shown accordingly with the relative position of the visitor in front of the screen. therefore, the visitors movements in the space modified the section of the image that was seen, allowing to see beyond the framing of the image – at least virtually, because, eventhough there was image beyond the edges of the screen, it wasn’t infinte, and had also its framing. curiously, eventhough Pierre didn’t know it in advance when he idealized the project, the relation between the spectator and the image is precisely the one seeked – without success, by the character from Les Carabiniers, film by Godard, in his first cinema screening [check out in a previous post marginalia 0.2 - cinematographic appropriations].
Frame Seductions installation in exhibition (photo: medialab-prado's flickr)
from start, my interest in Pierre’s project was related to the similarity between its conceptual proposal and our own, at marginalia project, as well for a personal interest i have towards new media works that are closely related and reflect about the “old media”. in Frame Seductions case, we worked with framing, one of the most fundamental elements of visual arts and, particularly, of the technical image and the cinema. it’s precisely for the act of framing that the artist stablishes the two most important dimensions for cinematographic language: the field and the out-of-field; the visible and the invisible. and, in the case of cinema, the out-of-field, has also a ‘unstablizing’ role of the filmed scene, being one of the most importante element in the ellipsis of movie grammar and in the creation of suspense – as in the classic Rear Window, by Alfred Hitchcock.
in the conception and execution of Frame Seductions, we tryed to work conceptually those aspects through a tension play among the field and the out-of-field which was opperated in the moment of interaction. in our discussions, we understood that the mobility of the framing doesn’t implicate the extinction of those tensions, but rather their increase. it was in this sense that we worked on the images and on the responses of the system to the visitor’s participation.
my practical role in the project’s development was related to video production and processing, studying different techniques to the creation of panoramic videos, as well as different compression settings that would allow the rapid processing by the system. the programming was done by Pierre, using the openFrameworks libraries and algorithms for face detection and tracking. on the course of the process, I could also work on the conception and the system for a modularity of the video image, by spliting it into sections that could be swapped while the espectator wasn’t looking to that part. this way, the out-of-field image became less stable, creating some interesting surprises in the course of interaction [more info about the project at the workshop's wiki].
at the end of the workshop, I also had the opportunity to briefly collaborate with Masa project, by Andrea Sosa [Argentina] and Rolando Sánchez [Peru], giving some consultancy on compression, resolution and other technical video matters.
as a parallel activity of the workshop, I also participated of Lima’s Pecha Kucha Night, together with the other collaborators. Pecha Kucha is a kind of project presentation evening in which each presenter must use 20 slides which are programmed to last exactly 20 seconds each, totalizing a 6min 40sec duration. trying to work directly with the limitations imposed, my presentation was titled “0.05 fps” and I showed some images of my video “Paik for Kids” while talked a little about my motivations to work with audiovisual and new media. the response of everyone there was really good, and my presentation ended up in the Pecha Kucha Daily site, of the international Pecha Kucha community.
paticipating of the workshop in Lima was an incredible learning, collaboration and research experience. it really created a perfect environment for collective experimenting and I hope to have the opportunity to participate in other editions of the event. it was also great to meet the other participants – people with interests so close to ours, from other parts of the world, in special Latin America. many of the people there heard me saying some times how we – latinamericans [and particularly Brazilians!] know so little of what happens around us and for that we miss great opportunities of working together with our continent neighbors. I hope that the contact stablished with people from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico can become partnerships and collective projects in a close future.
we have some great news to announce. but before we do that, we would like to introduce the first experiments with diachronic blending – developed in processing -, by pedro veneroso. this particular video is composed of four different manipulations of the same video sequence and represents the first test of the software.
the diachronic blending effect consists of merging frames on a time progression using a set of different merging techniques blending an array of frames individually each time the screen is rendered. the outcome is a fluid and distorted succession of images that vaguely document the way in which movement evolves, while transfiguring both actions and forms into mutable and organic shapes.
furthermore, for this particular video a ‘blur’ class was created to implement randomly generated blur to each frame of the video on an attempt to develop organic-ish forms based on movements of rigid structures.
so far the code for the software that will control this effect is still under development; as soon as we have it done we will release both the source code and the software.
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for these experiments we used raw footage of the feature film ‘os residentes’ [yet to be released], by tiago mata machado. actress simone sales brushing her hair violently.
For the past few months the team of Marginalia Project has been involved on the development of a series of communicating softwares [we call the whole system AETeletransporter] which makes the project AEurasia work.
AEurasia is a Belo Horizonte based interactive video-installation by Cláudio Santos, Alessandra Soares, André Amparo and Fernando Maculan being exhibited at Espaço 104 from December 12nd to 20th of 2008. Sketching a brief description:
“The video-installation AEurasia presents a trip around the world inside of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Specific locations where selected in the city based on the correspondence existing between their names and diverse chosen locations of the world. The diagram resulting of the connection of the points representing each elected spot is a map tracing the world inside a city. Four main concepts shall conduce the spectator’s experience: difference, distance, time and mobility. A stimulus to acquire better knowledge of the city we inhabit.”
Seven videos are presented to the spectators sketching objective and subjective relationships between corresponding places, one of which is a distant city while the other is a location in Belo Horizonte. An eighth projection summarizing the whole installation responds to actions of the spectator, capturing his image in real-time and placing him in the video he watches by cropping only his body from the surroundings [this procedure is mediated by a software we call AESoulCaptor which is basically responsible for doing a real time Chroma Key]. By doing so, the spectator is merged to a distant location as if he had visited it: while he can enjoy interacting in real-time with all the locations, a postcard is produced as a souvenir of his ‘traveling’ experience inside AEurasia, this imaginary continent.
The spectator can, then, retrieve his souvenir when leaving the installation using a terminal running the software we call AECheck-in which is responsible for presenting every image produced that day in order for the spectator to choose his favorite photo which can then be sent to himself or others by e-mail and uploaded to AEurasia’s Flickr.
Among the many softwares developed by Marginalia for this project, two main applications are of greater importance: AESoulCaptor and AECheck-in, developed, respectively, on C++ using the open source library openframeworks and Processing 1.0.1.
This project represents the first attempt of Marginalia Project on working with the library openframeworks for C++ and AppleScript with outstanding results so far; Processing has been employed in order to develop a user-friendly interface, which is the first attempt of Marginalia Project on developing this sort of programming practices [interface-based softwares]. These new fields of work are of major importance from now on, since Marginalia will be developing the projects to come [soon to be announced] mainly on openframeworks and taking advantage of Apple features such as AppleScript, Quartz Composer and Automator.
AETeletransporter is a system working simultaneously on two connected terminals composed of the following softwares: AESoulCaptor [openframeworks], AECheck-in [Processing], AESender [AppleScript], AEConnect[AppleScript]. In addition to the development of the already mentioned system, Marginalia Project worked on the making of the videos and documentation of the installation.
More information on the new projects of Marginalia will be given on the following posts which are intended to briefly cover present and future projects of the group.
General view of the installation showing the chroma key region.
Aline (88), André (marginalia), and chroma background
Postcard merging a visitor with a distant landscape.
Screenshot of a terminal while running the software AECheckIn.
