http://www.glu-sg.si

MARIBOR
FREE guided tours – every hour on the hour (until December 15, 2012)
Location: PORTAL, Valvazorjeva 40, Maribor, Slovenia
Opening hours: daily 10:00 to 20:00
International Exhibition Soft Control: Art, Science and Technological Unconscious. PART II: Top-Down (on view until 15 December 2012)
About the exhibition:

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol

Artists in exhibition:
Marina Abramović (RS/US) with Suzanne Dikker and Matthias Oostrik (NL) / James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau (UK) / Tuur Van Balen (BE) / Brandon Ballengee (US) / Guy Ben-Ary and Kirsten Hudson (AU) / Boredomresearch: Vicky Isley and Paul Smith (UK) / David Bowen (US) / Ursula Damm (DE) / Joe Davis (US) / Louis-Philippe Demers (SG) / Stefan Doepner and Lars Vaupel (SI/DE) / Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha (NL) / Andrew Gracie (UK/ES) / Floris Kaayk (NL) / Kuda begut sobaki (RU) / Seiko Mikami (JP) / Neurotica (AU-US) / Leo Peschta (AT) / Maja Smrekar (SI) / Stelarc (AU) / The Tissue Culture & Art Project: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr (AU) / Polona Tratnik (SI) / Bill Vorn (CA).

You will sit with another person for 30 minutes while your brainwaves are recorded and visualized in real time.
Are your brains on the same wavelength with each other?

During the experiment, the audience can see
(a) your individual brain activity / mental state
(b) when the brainwaves of you and your partner synchronize

Your data will be analyzed by neuroscientists after the exhibition.

If you want to participate, please fill in the application form (available by curators Maja Pardeilhan and Žiga Dobnikar and assistants Metod Baloh and Rafael Kurnik at the exhibition space of Soft Control exhibition – Portal, 2nd floor, Valvasorjeva 40, Maribor).

Location map:
SOFT CONTROL: ART, SCIENCE AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS
November 14–December 15, 2012

This intensive workshop offers hands-on introduction to interactive systems, based on various methods of motion tracking, gestural interfacing, monitoring of small variations of electrical parameters of different conductive materials including a human body, liquids, plants, metal objects, foil and metal threads, thin metallized plastic films etc. As a starting point of the workshop participants will convert their laptops into digital multichannel theremins to develop further during the workshop unusual gestural interfaces and unique musical instruments, based on principles similar to the well known electronic musical instrument the theremin, invented by the Russian inventor Leon Theremin in 1919. Daily theoretical introductions which accompany the workshop give detailed technical overview of the sensor technology and construction, basic principles of operation of the theremin based systems, art and music applications, useful concepts and ideas, condensed historical content related to almost forgotten historical facts. The workshop is oriented on sound and media artists, composers and musicians, who have particular interest in sound art and interactive systems, forgotten history and musical technology in general. Participants should bring their laptops and have some basic skills in MAX/MSP or PD programming. Various kinds of analog and digital USB theremin-sensors, different stuff for antenna construction as well as all appropriate software libraries for testing, experimenting and performance will be provided by the instructor.

Registration:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dC00Q25kT0tQX1M4ak9BWDY0R0JQNEE6MQ

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol/?p=178

Andrey Smirnov (1956, Moscow, Russia) is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, composer, author, educator, researcher and developer of interactive computer music techniques. He is a founding director and the senior lecturer of the Theremin Center at Moscow State Conservatory and the lecturer at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia where he teaches courses on the basics of Electroacoustic Music, recent Computer Music technologies and Physical Computing. He has conducted numerous workshops and master classes, curate a number of exhibitions in Russia, Europe and the U.S., attended various festivals and conferences. He is collecting and keeping unique archives on the history of Music Technology and Sound Art in the early 20th century Russia as well as original historical electronic musical instruments, combining deep research into the history of music technology with extensive experience of computer assisted composition and interactive performance.

Information:
Tanja Grosman
E: tanja.grosman@kibla.org
T: 059 076 371
M: 031 682 579

Documentary about the performances by John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg and Öyvind Fahlström.

The history of the 9 Evenings began when Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver organized a group of artists to work together with engineers on a series of performances involving new technology. The group included John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman. During the summer of 1966 more than 30 engineers, most of whom were from Bell Laboratories, worked in one-to-one collaboration with individual artists, depending on the artist’s project and engineer’s area of expertise.

9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering opened on October 13, 1966, at the 69th Regiment Armory, a huge space on Lexington Avenue at 25th Street in NYC. The art community in New York became involved in the project: artists, dancers, musicians, and performers worked as volunteers and later took part in the performances. Afterwards, the E.A.T. Foundation was established to promote the collaboration between artists and engineers. The performances were recorded and filmed both in colour and in black &white. In the mid 90’s Billy Klüver and Julie Martin (E.A.T. Foundation) accompanied these films by interviews of the participants.

Both screenings will be presented by Maria Punina, art and theatre historian, interdisciplinary programs department of NCCA, Moscow. Films produced by E.A.T. in collaboration with Artpix. Distributed by Microcinema International.

Under support of E.A.T. Foundation (USA), National Сentre for contemporary arts (Russia)

For more information: http://www.9evenings.org

The modern science makes set of new hybrid objects (cyborgs, live artificial fabrics, network communities-virtual of a commune). These incomplete objects in the course of “meaning” formation face unconscious structures of values and relations between them. Unconsciousness already speaks, remaining not learned. It repeats as superdetermination (symptom) and unconscious repetition in process of constructing of new objects and subjects. In modern European culture there are two main types of unconscious structures. One accepts value of individual existence, and staking on pleasure principle, force a science to serve humanism, to do life more comfortable, immortal and painless. Other tradition is based on inequality of the subject to itself and demands permanent transformation of a reality by new Knowledge. The reality in this case represents operative system making the subject simultaneously with object manufacture. This tradition demands new scientific objects to perform the subject as dynamic process. Each of these traditions forces out another, as impossible and not true.

The nonclassical philosophy offers some theoretical tools to advance a solution of the problem. The true isn’t now ahead on a course of proofs, it could be found out by return thinking akin psychoanalysis and deconstruction. Practice of “return thinking” connects itself with opening unconscious by Freud and critics of ideology by Marx. Thus the ideology is dependent from unconscious, and unconscious is connected with horizon of history. We could say that Marxism and psychoanalysis started the theory of discursive differentiation, which is mainly important in the time of globalisation. Here we take theoretical technology to augment and transform our reality. That is why I will speak in terminology of nonclassical late soviet Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol/?p=170

Alla Mitrofanova (1959, St Petersburg, Russia) is a philosopher, art curator, theorist of new-media arts. With a background of art history and philosophy from St Petersburg University, she focuses on the interactions between art and technology, as well as on trans-genre and contextual aesthetics. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions such as Individual body in the epoch of late totalitarianism (Museum of Modern Art, Mexico), Geopolitics (Museum of Ethnography, St Petersburg), 40 years of contemporary art (Expocenter, St Petersburg), etc. She was editor of Virtual Anatomy e-zine on media theory in 1996–98. Mitrofanova organizes interdisciplinary conferences and guest lectures at universities and international art academies. Her interest ranged from media theory, post-marxism, psychoanalysis to neurophysiology. In her current research she investigates the conception of semiotic chaos and technological art. Mitrofanova is also a co-founder of Media Gallery 21 (1994), Cyberfemin Club (1994), Philosophical cafe (2002) in St Petersburg. She published in n.paradoxa (intenational feminist art journal), Variantology 2 (Research on archaeology of the media, Cologne 2006) and catalogues. She is currently a moderator of Philosophical cafe in St Petersburg (Gallery of Experimental Sound Free Culture Foundation).

Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey

Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey is a 1993 documentary film directed by Steven M. Martin about the life of Leon Theremin and his invention, the theremin, a pioneering electronic musical instrument.

Directed by Steven M. Martin
Produced by Steven M. Martin
Starring: Léon Theremin, Clara Rockmore, Robert Moog, Lydia Kavina, Nicolas Slonimsky, Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren
Cinematography: Robert Stone
Running time: 83 minutes
Release date: 1993-2003
Language: English
Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey tells the life story of Lev Sergeivich Termen, known in the West as Leon Theremin, a Russian physicist who invented the entire field of electronic music with his remarkable musical instrument, originally called the aetherphone, but soon simply referred to as a Theremin, or Thereminvox (voice of Theremin). It follows his life, including being imprisoned in a Soviet gulag, and the influence of his instrument, which came to define the sound of eerie in 20th Century movies, and influenced popular music as it searched for and celebrated electronic music in the 1960s.

Documentary is a story about a man with a passion for electronics and music, a man with an inventive and radical mind. It should come as no surprise that he had a profound influence on the development of electronic music as we know it.

The Theremin works by moving one’s hands (or any object) near a device with two antennae that manipulate pitch and volume (due to the capacitance changes resulting from the moving object). The Theremin was used to supplement the soundtrack in various movies, including Spellbound, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Delicate Delinquent. It also profoundly influenced inventors like Robert Moog (who explains the role Theremin played in the discovery of the Moog synthesiser) and musicians like the Beach Boys (who used it a variant of it, the electro-theremin, in their classic 1966 song, Good Vibrations and a couple of other tunes) and Led Zeppelin (in fact, when Page and Plant reunited a couple of years ago, their live shows featured a Theremin). Throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s, Theremin enjoyed the advantages that came with the fame and success of his invention.

But Theremin’s life was more far exciting than that. Theremin was a Russian who had immigrated to the U.S. In the late 1930s, a decade or so after his instrument was featured in performances at Carnegie Hall he mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead.

Given Theremin’s contribution to electronic music, Steven M. Martin, a Theremin afficionado, decided to make a documentary about the instrument. During the course of his research, he discovered Theremin was alive in Russia. In the documentary, at the age of 94, we see Theremin recounting what had happened to him: he had been kidnapped by Russian agents for his technological expertise, and was put to work in various places in positions that would help the Russians in the Cold War (and was even awarded a medal by Stalin). As they say, fact is stranger than fiction. There are no special-effects or gimmicks here—this is a factual restatement of events as they happened; the excitement in the documentary is in its content.

Conceptual frame of the workshop is based on demistification of power positions in an era of overexpanding populism of science which is serving public with hermetic information which disable options of equal dialogue levels. Using one of the popular maneuvers in a workshop by executing the saliva collection which is routinely being used for forensic and human identity samples at the field of molecular biology, the workshop content is focussed on a disclosure of the specific gene as one of the source files of decoding one’s own body to understand certain consequences of its operational system. However the genetic profiling test results are coded within the specific system of knowledge which is based on the principles of references and probability. We would like to disclose to the visitors some of those specific systems of knowledge and at the same time critically examine the probability principles which modern science uses within the approach of discovering the ultimate levels of “the truth”. At the same time an interdisciplinary collaboration between an artist, a scientist and other technological experts is being addressed to the broadest public sphere since the position of establishing an objective point of view, with the interest of general public in mind, which is being generated by informed (non)experts, could have a profound impact on the discourse of the processes and final products in the field of science. Within this frame it is important that society gets an overlook over life science structures too, by raising the awareness that every view on “the truth” can be some kind of a manipulation based on an operational system of a specific device.

Registration:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dC00Q25kT0tQX1M4ak9BWDY0R0JQNEE6MQ

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol/?p=174

Maja Smrekar (b.1978, Brežice) in 2005 graduated at the Sculpture Department of Fine Art and Design Academy in Ljubljana, currently finishing MA at the Video and New Media Department. Among others, she has been collaborating with Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana for the last five years and Aksioma Institute in Ljubljana for the last three years where she has executed projects by researching frequency phenomena through biofeedback and thelematic presence, molecular biology and neuroscience in relations to body and (inter)subjective perception of space. In 2010 she organised International Intermedia Art Festival HAIP10/New Nature which took place at Multimedia Centre Cyberpipe in Ljubljana where she has been active as an artistic director (2008–2010).

Špela Petrič (b. 1980, Ljubljana), PhD, is a researcher and artist, currently studying Transmedia at Sint Lukas School of Art and Design. Until recently she was employed as an assistant at the Institute for Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana. Her creative practice takes shape at the interface of science and art. She collaborates with Kapelica Gallery and several Slovenian and international artists and is an active member of Hackteria (hackteria.org).

Information:
Tanja Grosman
E: tanja.grosman@kibla.org
T: 059 076 371
M: 031 682 579

November 27th, 2012, 17 pm–20 pm
Multimedia Centre KIBLA, Maribor

The BioCyberKidzz workshop has been developed as a result of collective brainstorms of many individuals and communities that are devoting their rich experiences in creating the alternative crossovers between arts and science. BioTehna is a platform to initiate curiosity and encourage experimentation and research in the field of life sciences. Through creative and innovative combinations between nature and technology and the inspiring guidance of artists and researchers.

Registration:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dC00Q25kT0tQX1M4ak9BWDY0R0JQNEE6MQ

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol/?p=1293

Credits: The workshop is presented as part of the BioTehna project initiated in 2012 by Kapelica Gallery and Hackteria – Open Source Biological Art. The BioTehna project is supported by a grant through the Swiss Contribution to the enlarged European Union.
Biography

Monika Pocrnjić (SI) is a student of visual art education in Maribor. She is also a tutor and works as an assistant and organizer of visual art workshops for youth with special needs (cerebral paralysis). Lately she’s been actively connected to Biomodd team, which combines live biology and computer waste. In her projects she explores the interaction and impact of organic substances.

Špela Petrič (b. 1980, Ljubljana), PhD, is a researcher and artist, currently studying Transmedia at Sint Lukas School of Art and Design. Until recently she was employed as an assistant at the Institute for Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana. Her creative practice takes shape at the interface of science and art. She collaborates with Kapelica Gallery and several Slovenian and international artists and is an active member of Hackteria (hackteria.org).

Marc Dusseiller (b.1975, Schaffhausen) is a transdisciplinary scholar, lecturer for micro- and nanotechnology, cultural facilitator and artist. He works in an integral way to combine science, art and education. He is Co-Founder of SGMK (Zürich) and Hackteria – Open Source Biological Art, a global community bridging bioart, DIYbio, hackerspaces and science.

Information:
Tanja Grosman
E: tanja.grosman@kibla.org
T: 059 076 371
M: 031 682 579

In the Stone Age from the first simple splitters to the fist-axes, which are more refined but not so different, there is a gap of one million years. Instead, between the discovery of fire and today’s fire-based many different devices pass four hundred thousand years. For thousands years, until the invention of the telegraph, the speed of people, animals, things and information had approximately the same order of magnitude. In roughly one century and half the information speed had an extraordinary boost to: in fact today the information can roughly reach the speed of light that is being more than five hundred thousand times quicker than people, animals and things.
The acceleration also happened in the media realm. In the USA the radio required 38 years to reach 50 million people, the television needed 13 years, the cable 8 and the Internet 5. And inside the Internet-based communications Facebook required less than 4 years to reach 50 million users, while Skype took roughly two years. Sciences and technologies deeply influenced human life. In ancient Greece the average lifespan was 30 years, in the Roman era it was about the same, and by the end of the XIX century it reached 40 years. Today, in roughly one century, in the so called “technological world”, the lifespan expectation has doubled.

Humans also developed a wide range of artefacts, machines, entities that are quickly becoming more and more powerful, complex, autonomous, and independent. These could be defined to a certain extent as “living entities”, expanding the idea of life and of life forms. All this processes seem pushing forward the human biological, cultural, technical boundaries. How do they happen? Where are technologies based on? Can these processes give any glimpses on a possible evolution?

http://arhiv.kiblix.org/kiblix2012/softcontrol/?p=164

Pier Luigi Capucci (b.1955, Lugo, Italy) is a researcher and art theorist. Since the early ‘80 he has been concerned with the communication’s studies, the new media and the new art forms, and with the relations among arts, sciences and technologies. He extensively published texts in books, magazines, catalogues and proceedings and he has written the books Reality of the Virtual (1993), The Technological Body (1994), Art and Technologies (1996). In 1994 he founded the first Italian online magazine and in 2000 he founded NoemaLab, a web magazine on culture-sciences-technologies interrelations. He has participated to international conferences and has delivered lectures in universities and institutions in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, UK, Brazil, France, Turkey, USA, Greece, Norway, etc. He has been a professor at the Universities of Rome “La Sapienza”, Bologna, Florence, at the SUPSI – University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland and at the University of Urbino. Currently he is professor at the NABA International Academy of Arts and Design, Milan and he is a supervisor in the M-Node PhD Research Programme of the Planetary Collegium (University of Plymouth).

ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS
International interdisciplinary conference
Maribor, Slovenia, November 16–17, 2012
The showpiece event of the educational program of the SOFT CONTROL project will be an international conference involving theoreticians and artists from Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and Singapore, to be held 16–17 November 2012. Conference participants invited include recognised experts in the field of contemporary art and new technologies, famous artists and philosophers. The conference will place special emphasis on the presentation of new strategies in contemporary technological art and education in the field, as well as practical presentations. 2-day conference consists of 2 thematic sections: “Technological Matter and the New State of the Living” and “The Technological Unconscious as a Medium”. A publication forthcoming in 2013 will sum up the project.

DAY 2: The Technological Unconscious as a Medium
Date: Saturday, November 17 (2 p.m.–8 p.m.)
Location: Portal – Valvazorjeva 40, Maribor, Slovenia
Moderator: Dmitry Galkin, Tomsk State University, Russia
The thematic section “The Technological Unconscious as a Medium” is devoted to anthropocentric variants of technological development. Examining the technological unconscious as a medium, i.e., as a form and generative principle of a whole new generation of ideas, the discussion participants raise the question of how the language that constructs and describes the world of technologies forms. Which discourses of the technological unconscious can be singled out today, and which will it be essential to reconstruct tomorrow? Is the artist capable of reinventing and rewriting the very foundations of the technology myth? Well-known practicians and theoreticians of contemporary art will talk about different aspects of the creation of new forms and new identities.

Keynote speakers:
Roy Ascott, Plymouth University, United Kingdom
Erkki Huhtamo, University of California Los Angeles, USA

Panel speakers:
Louis-Philippe Demers, the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Jurij Krpan, the Kapelica Gallery, Slovenia

Artist presentations:
Brandon Ballengee (US), Stefan Doepner and Lars Vaupel (SI / DE), Vicky Isley and Paul Smith (UK), Suzanne Dikker and Matthias Oostrik (NL), David Bowen (US), Guy Ben-Ary and Kirsten Hudson (AU), Tuur Van Balen (BE)