The prize hunter  is a 2005 project by the Spanish collective VHPlab. The project is kinda old but still… it’s a simple idea with a harsh sense of humour. It was though for a art call for an exhibition of new young artist. So they decide to make a clever critic of the art selection process of this kind of art events by inventing game where you have to shoot the selection committee inside an art gallery. In fact, I believe (but not sure) that the little character you see in the game are a cartoon version of the real members of the selection committee.

Note what is written at the the end of the video:

“The artist Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with  AT&T.”

What is that suppose to mean?!

You can also see Christo and Jeanne-Claude installation video here

One of them was Céleste Boursier Mougenot amazing installation From here to ear. The artist created an attractive and naturalistic environment where you can go around the place surrounded by cute little birds. Everything was put together with a sense of harmony and elegance, at the same time with some sort of tenderness (maybe that’s just me…). The birds fled all over the place but the artist knew how to make them stop on the right place: there was some instruments like a guitar and plates with bird-food and water, and by landing on this instruments the birds played their own little concert.

Check out the video while presented in London

The Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota was present in this exhibition too.  We enter in a room and find this set of an empty audience and a piano with tons of black wool string giving us the feeling that this is a trapped space. Besides being an installation it was actually a performance too: the piano and the audience chairs were burned in a public place (if I’m not mistaken).

This is definitely an exhibition worth to see twice, specially if you saw it kinda in a hurry…  It will be possible to see it in Madrid until January 16th and is possible to download the audioguide mp3 files from the La Casa Encendida’s Website.

The production of Le Roi et l’Oiseau -  in english The King and the Mocking – took nearly 30 years. Its first concept was an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s  tale The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep but after a long production due budget issues, the film evolved to what it is today  considered a masterpiece of french animation cinema, influencing other animation directors like Isao Takahata (directed the famous tv series Heidi, Girl of the Alps) and Hayao Miyazaki (directed some episodes of Lupin III). Besides its technical aspects, what makes this film a singular piece is the cultural and political of the 20th century references which can be found even in the set design.

I’ll try to talk about some aspects of the film focusing on the scenarios and try not to transform this post into a spoiler.

This is the Kingdom of Takicardie. A kingdom apparently placed in the middle of nowhere, ruled by the cruel King Charles V + III = VIII + VIII = XVI who hates everybody. The sets were designed by Grimault and, as you can see, the entire Kingdom seems to be concentrated in some sort a castle that expand vertically instead of horizontally.

The entire castle of the King is a result of a amalgam of different architectural styles. It’s easy to recognize the style of Neo-romanesque of some European castles mixed with ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Just take a look at the still bellow and see all those tower and the window right next to them.

The entire castle expresses the extreme ostentation of a cruel , vain and self-centred king. There a sense of exaggeration that help to define the king’s character, but at the same it transmit a feeling of harmony that, despite the exaggeration of the castle, everything fits beautifully together  building a sort of a fairy-tale atmosphere… and … well, this is also a love story.

Also the interior were conceived with detail. They are elegant in a 19th century like style. here once again the set mirrors the kings character and, just like a true tyrant, has a refine taste for art and likes to be surrounded by luxury and beauty.

Here is a particular sign of the refined taste for art of the as a medium of proclaiming a  cult and adoration of his persona. Also there is a clear cultural reference of the film:  in the upper right corner of of this still it is possible to see a Picasso like portrait of the King.

A set inspired by a real place. It’s easy to recognized  Venice here.

Another thing that I love in the film is the amazing Top-Bottom perspectives. It gives to the viewer an incredible space notion, emphasizing the verticality of Takicardie kingdom.

Takicardie is also a kingdom full of technology. The King has a bottom almost everywhere that activates a trapdoor to eliminate any undesirable person to the king. Technology in this film has a negative meaning in this film, almost like the means to the evil intentions of the tyrant king.

Although on the surface the city is beautiful, full of light and projects an image of prosperity it stands upon another city placed underground, dark and lugubrious. Its core is also like a fabric working only for the king’s cult, producing statues and images of Takicardie’s monarch.

The presence of machinery is very strong and is portrayed not only as a mean of fast production but also of slavery and forced labour. Throughout this film we can find references to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin Modern Times.

I believe that I’ve made this post long enough. I’ve not put some key moments/images here because I think I would be making a spoiler. There is still so much to talk about but the best way to understand the magic of this film and why is a master piece is to actually see it. Anyway, my point was to underline some interesting thing about the sets composition and I think here are some good examples that, hopefully, would make also make someone curious about the film.  This is not only one of the best animations films out there, but one of the best films in general.

Buck Fuller must be one of  the most peculiar and multi-faceted people that lived in the past century (maybe some sort of Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century?!). He was an architect, poet, mathematician, ecologist, designer, engineer… Was so many things and at the same time and maybe none of them.



The Dymaxion House was one of the main Fuller’s work at the exhibition. Dymaxion stands for dynamic (DY), maximum (Max) and tension (ION). The house was planned to be mass-produced and affordable to anyone,and I think its design embodies the idea of effortless efficiency and pragmatism.

The House was developed in the 1940′s with truly innovative features being a real sustainable project:Its shape was round  in order to avoid heat loss, it was sustained by a central column though to be resistant to tornadoes and earthquakes, an internal rain gutter system, a fine-mist shower to less water consumption, a rotation system of the house for cooling during …

Everything seems to be perfect. But, why this house didn’t became popular and a common model of housing? Why it wasn’t successfully commercialized? Apparently the business vision of this project or the company’s management wasn’t as pragmatic and efficient as the house project itself.

Another example of Buck Fuller’s work present was a replica of the dymaxion car. The car was developed in 1930 with a futuristic design resulting from a combination aeroplane and auto-mobile technology. I took a look on the inside of this car and it is impressively  spacious. This was another project that ended up failing and the car never was commercialized due an accident that occurred during a demonstration and killed the driver. The car was considered as non safe.

There’s so much to say about Buck Fuller’s intensive work but I will end up with one of the most emblematic: the geodesic dome. Although it was first developed by Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was given the USA patent gaining with this work international recognition.

The geodesic dome has a sphere alike shape composed by a network of triangles. Once more we can see Fuller’s desire to accomplished results and built something with the minimum effort and maximum efficiency. With this design  it was possible to built a dome in an easier way but with a strong structure, since the triangle network permitted to distribute the weight evenly.

The Montreal Biosphere, World Fair 1967

Extremely ambitious project of covering Manhattan with a Geodesic Dome

“Spaceship Earth” at Walt Disney World Resort, inspired by Buck Fuller’s geodesic domes.

If someone asked me which projects I found interesting the first that would come to my mind would be Ocean of Light: Surface by SquidSoup. This installations combines sound, light and the physical space resulting in some kind of immersive light sculpture where you can see beautiful fluid movements any angle.

Another excellent project and one of the Honorary Mentions in Interactive art was f5x5x5 by Lab[au]. A kinetic sculpture  capable to generate different patterns light patterns.

Take a look at the video to have a better idea

The EyeWriter, the golden nica for interactive art this year, was one of the projects that call the attention in this festival due its unique team work. A team compose by the artists  Zachary Lieberman, Chris Sugrue, Theo Watson, Evan Roth, James powderly and, of course, Tony Quan joined efforts in order to build a system that would make possible to draw with. I belive that the main reason for this project was Tony Quan’s will to continue to draw graffities. Tony Quan was a graffiti artist living in L.A. but a few years ago he was diagnosed with ALS, a illness that paralyses the body muscles, and at the moment the only thing he can move is his eyes. So, he started to work with an artists team in a development of a eyetracking system that would allow him to draw again.

Like I said in the beginning, it would take me forever if I talked about all the good things I’ve seen at Ars electronica this year but it would also be unfair not to mention (at least very briefly) this great projects: The toaster project by Thomas Thwaites where he engaged himself in the process of building his own toaster from the scratch, The Whispering table by TheGreenEyl, the amazing sound installation Rheo: five horizons by Ryoichi Kurokawa, and Cycloid-E by Michel and André Décosterd.

Anyway, last week I’ve just returned from a small pause from work. Once more I visited the cosy city of Linz in Austria because of Ars electronica Festival. This year the organisation of the Festival was quite peculiar: instead of the exhibition and all the other events being distributed by the Brucknerhaus, the OK Center (for those who know Linz will certainly know this places, mostly cultural institutions), the festival was concentrated in the TabakFrabik of Linz.

The TabakFabrik is one of the protected landmarks of the City of Linz and after its closure last year, the city council decided to seize the building for cultural purposes such as Ars Electronica’s Festival. So, this year instead of going around the city centre the visitor had almost everything concentrated in one unique and huge space.

The festival theme was repair, proposing to think about  our critical present and the upcoming future with a sense of idealism and realism as well, with a strong focus on sustainability, in politics, environmental and economical problems of today’s world. you can take a look to some of the conferences here. However, my purpose is to write about some of the artwork that I’ve seen during the Festival and not  about the conferences.

If art is suppose to show something that usually it’s there  but we don’t see it, then Jon Rafman may have get to that point and done one of the most interesting projects that I’ve seen.

The Nine Eyes of Google Street views is a project that uncovers a hidden, yet visible, reality of google street maps.  Rafman started to collect captures from google street maps in a search of a human transparency and a truthful image of reality capture by a neutral eye. In Jon Rafman’s words:

“The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project.”

What I like about this project is the critical approach of reality and the world, but also a critic perspective about the technology of google street view and the experience we can extract of it. There is another aspect that I also enjoyed that is the narrative inherent to images, making almost impossible not to think about the story behind those frozen moments by the google camera.

To be continued…

The whole project shows a simple, elegant and poetic way of reflecting about mobile technology, whether if it is a mean of communication or surveillance.

FILE Festival has become one of most important international media art festivals. This year the festival’s organization has decided to  take the festival to the next level by creating the FILE PRIX LUX competition. There are three categories, interactive art, electronic sonority and digital language, and a total of 90 nominated artist. The best part is that the public is allowed to vote in its favourite art project… so participate!

This 16 minutes videos is composed by a series of small décors set with delicacy by some anonymous hands and translate the memory of the space experienced by the artist himself. The décors reflect the absence of people allowing the spectator to experience melancholy, sadness and sometimes even to sense humour in the compositions, but what makes this piece special is the clever, yet simple, strategies in the composition of those stages (or décors) and the amazing lightning work.

Another amazing work at this exhibition is You and I, Horizontal (III) by Anthony McCall, a light projection through the smoke builds up a solid but ethereal sculpture.

Anthony McCall is well know and this specific work has almost become a myth. I have seen so many times images of this work that I was thrilled when I finally got to see it for real. McCall had played an important role on avant-garde american cinema during the 1970′s exploring sensuous experience with film projections. Definitely this piece is one of his most emblematic works where corporeal sensations are present. You and I, Horizontal (III) is part of a series of works that transform the idea of image projection (we may think about film projection) in a three-dimensional sculpture opening a new perspective of it. The visitor steps out of the 2D appreciation and is able to built for himself a spacial connection with the piece.

Finally, another well known artist Ryoji Ikeda presented the multimedia installation Data.matrix[nº1-10]. This piece was like a data symphony composed by several projection of graphic representations of data together with a sound composition.

The visuals displayed in this installation include secuenses of  Ikeda’s previous work datamatics [ver.2.0] and each graphical panel represents in a constant flow of data time, space and matter. Some of my friends who saw this with me considered minimalist, but honestly I felt like it was quite the opposite, considering the visual and the sound composition as well. The visuals were displayed with such a velocity and variation that one could be almost hypnotised, and instead of aesthetic reduction of the visual composition (common in minimalism) I felt more like an amplification but in the best of senses… Is definitely a striking piece of art!

There was much more at the rencontres internationales this year but I truly believe that this were the works that most stood out.