Movies – Interface

A smattering of videos shown to the CCA Interface classes

Lots of movies downloading. Please be patient.

“Pulse Index” at MCA Sydney (2011) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

In this work commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu employ an industrial robot, visual-recognition sensors, and software systems to examine our increasingly automated global reality, one in which territories are controlled mechanically and the relationship between people and machines is rapidly changing. Placed behind clear acrylic walls, their robot has one specific duty, to contain a viscous, deep-red liquid within a predetermined area. When the sensors detect that the fluid has strayed too far, the arm frenetically shovels it back into place, leaving smudges on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls. The idea to use a robot came from the artists’ initial wish to test what could possibly replace an artist’s will in making a work and how could they do so with a machine. They modified a robotic arm, one often seen on production lines such as those in car manufacturing, by installing a custom-designed shovel to its front. Collaborating with two robotics engineers, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu designed a series of thirty-two movements for machine to perform. Their names for these movements, such as “scratch an itch,” “bow and shake,” and “ass shake,” reflect the artists’ intention to animate a machine. Observed from the cage-like acrylic partitions that isolate it in the gallery space, the machine seems to acquire consciousness and metamorphose into a life-form that has been captured and confined in the space. At the same time, for viewers the potentially eerie satisfaction of watching the robot’s continuous action elicits a sense of voyeurism and excitement, as opposed to thrills or suspense. In this case, who is more vulnerable: the human who built the machine or the machine who is controlled by a human? Sun Yuan & Peng Yu are known for using dark humor to address contentious topics, and the robot’s endless, repetitive dance presents an absurd, Sisyphean view of contemporary issues surrounding migration and sovereignty. However, the bloodstain-like marks that accumulate around it evoke the violence that results from surveilling and guarding border zones. Such visceral associations call attention to the consequences of authoritarianism guided by certain political agendas that seek to draw more borders between places and cultures and to the increasing use of technology to monitor our environment. (Xiaoyu Weng) Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Can’t Help Myself. 58th International Art Exhibition, “May You Live In Interesting Times”, La Biennale di Venezia, Central Pavilion, Giardini. May 8, 2019.

::vtol:: until I die from ::vtol:: on Vimeo.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Making of Biologic from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.

Macro-Cymatic Visual Music Instrument Demo from mvjakobsons on Vimeo.

Demonstration of my “Macro-Cymatic Visual Music Instrument” which transforms sound into fluid motion and light.
Built April 2016 at Djerassi Resident Artist Program.
Materials: Epoxy Resin, Acrylic Plexiglas, Programmable RGB LED’s controlled by Arduino
More info see www.mariellejakobsons.com

Listening Post at the Whitney (2003), part 2 from Ben Rubin on Vimeo.

Octobot: A Soft, Autonomous Robot from Wyss Institute on Vimeo.

Filament Sculptures from Lia on Vimeo.

Reuben Margolin – Kinetic Wave Sculptures from MaddMultimedia.com on Vimeo.

Data as Immersive Installations

Traces, Physical Programming of Freeform Folding in Soft Matter. from dana zelig on Vimeo.

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Biology | Neri Oxman |

BLOOMS: Strobe Animated Sculptures Invented by John Edmark from Charlie Nordstrom on Vimeo.

Blooms are 3-D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. Unlike a 3D zoetrope, which animates a sequence of small changes to objects, a bloom animates as a single self-contained sculpture. The bloom’s animation effect is achieved by progressive rotations of the golden ratio, phi (ϕ), the same ratio that nature employs to generate the spiral patterns we see in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotational speed and strobe rate of the bloom are synchronized so that one flash occurs every time the bloom turns 137.5º (the angular version of phi).* Each bloom’s particular form and behavior is determined by a unique parametric seed I call a phi-nome (/fī nōm/). -John Edmark

John Edmark is an artist, designer, and inventor. He teaches at Stanford University.

Website: www.JohnEdmark.com

To learn how blooms are made visit: http://www.instructables.com/id/Blooming-Zoetrope-Sculptures/

Cinematography and editing by Charlie Nordstrom – www.charlienordstrom.com

Music – "Plateau" by Lee Rosevere – http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Farrago_Zabriskie/Lee_Rosevere_-_Farrago_Zabriskie_-_03_-_Plateau

*For this video, rather than using a strobe, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed in order to freeze individual frames of the spinning sculpture.

Fibonacci Zoetrope Sculptures from Pier 9 on Vimeo.