Useless Hands

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Infratonal – Useless Hands – France

When our hands become useless, what will we choose to do with them? We can use AI to visualize the unthinkable, the strangely familiar yet indescribable forms and structures. Generative AI could be used as an amplifier of our ability to explore abstraction and surrealism rather than a simple mirror of our usual perceptions.

Bio

Infratonal is an artistic project led by Louk Amidou, a Paris-based multidisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of digital arts, electronic music and interaction design. He uses algorithms to create hybrid visual and sound pieces which aim to be performed by the human gesture as intangible instruments. He questions the artwork’s nature at the age of AI and the relationship between the artist and the algorithm.

アンヌ·テレサ·ドゥ·ケースマイケル
АННЫ ТЕРЕЗЫ ДЕ КЕЕРСМАКЕР
Quatuor N°4
The movement vocabulary of “Quartet No. 4” (originally part of a longer evening, “Bartok/Annotations”) is simple, with elaborations on walking and turning movements that incorporate everyday motion (smoothing hair, opening out the hands, a quick unpolished handstand) and folk dance-like skipping, hopping and heel-clicking jumps.

Winterreise
Captured moments are central in Kicsiny’s installations. His characters are simultaneously frozen still and in motion. In some works this paradox becomes literal, as in the installation Winterreise that depicts two priests skiing in different directions using the same skis, which makes forward motion impossible. The figures seem lost, isolated and their journey endless. In their hands they hold Jacob’s staffs, navigational instruments used in the 17th century. The work alludes to the continuous search for one’s place in life.

Blooming
“Blooming” is an interactive audiovisual installation that highlights the importance of human connection. It takes the form of a life-size 3D Cherry blossom tree, which is a common symbol of social ties and transience of life in East Asian culture. As a response to participants’ skin-to-skin contacts, heart rate, and gestures, “Blooming” blossoms according to their intimacy. As audience members hold hands or embrace, the digital Cherry tree flowers bloom and scatter. When they let go off their physical contacts, the flower return to its pre-bloom state. The color of the flowers turns white or red based on participants’ heart rate as they interact with each other. (the faster the heart rate, the redder the tonality; the slower the heart rate, the whiter the tonality). In addition to the visual responses, sounds are also modulated according to the tree’s different stages: pre-bloom, blooming, petals falling.

IN MEMORIAM
Joachim Sauter

1959-2021

R.I.P

ART+COM Studios

MOBILITY
THE INSTALLATION SPANS A CORRIDOR OF 7-METRES WIDTH. ON THE LEFT WALL ONE HUNDRED PROSTHETIC HANDS ARRANGED IN A MATRIX REVOLVE AROUND THEIR OWN VERTICAL AXIS, THE MOVEMENTS BEING CONTROLLED BY MOTORS. THE MIRRORS THEY HOLD REFLECT THE BEAM OF A STRONG LIGHT ACROSS THE SPACE AND ONTO THE OPPOSITE WALL. WHAT INITIALLY SEEMS LIKE AN ASYNCHRONOUS, CHAOTIC PATTERN OF MOVEMENT SOON REVEALS ITSELF AS A COMPLEX, COMPUTATIONAL
.
流动性
该安装跨越了7米宽的走廊。在左墙上，排列成矩阵的一百个假肢手绕其自身的垂直轴旋转，其运动由电动机控制。他们持有的镜子将强光光束反射穿过整个空间并射向对面的墙壁。最初看起来像是一个异步的，混乱的运动模式，很快就显示出一种复杂的计算编排：首先，一百个光点围绕一个中心点移动，类似于行星的天体动力学或昆虫群的飞行模式。并创造出三维空间的印象。然后突然之间，这种有机振动会聚成一个表示运动和动作的汉字。

Micro-Utopia
In response to London’s pressing housing crisis Micro-Utopia proposes a shared, immersive and interactive version of a home, where space is born from the finely-tuned sensorial interplay between the body and virtual/physical objects connected to the Internet of Things. A chair invites us to stay with it for a moment; we crawl through a demanding fireplace; our hands are washed in a bowl of digital liquid – the highly speculative model of domesticity explores the architectural implication of co-inhabiting a minimal physical infrastructure within infinitely bespoke virtual worlds. Drawing on radical art practice, interiors in historical painting and contemporary product design, Micro-Utopia is the dream of a house that is nothing, but the parameters of our perception are triggered through the metaphorical dimension of the objects we interact with on a daily basis.

山海塾

butoh

TOBARI

“Over the 90 minute performance, I feel no less than transported. There are eight male performers, including Ushio Amagatsu himself. The dancers often move slowly, with incredible muscular control, fluidity and elegance. And suddenly the spell will be broken and they’ll run across the stage, their painted bodies leaving clouds of white powder hanging in the air like a shadow or ghost. Slow sustained movements are countered with tiny, minute gestures of the fingers. Hands are often gnarled, the joints contorted with incredible tension. It is mysterious, hypnotic and strange. The countenance of the performers is most arresting – behind the white paint, their faces reveal the fragility, humility, vulnerability and truth of their humanity.”Day Helesic

دومينيك ويلكوكس
多米尼克·威尔科克斯
דומיניק וילקוקס
ドミニク·ウィルコックス
Доминик Уилкокс
I designed this product in an attempt to give those people a new, more acceptable alternative. I hope that this device will lower the bar for initiating reconciliation from the heights of the full contact hand on hand handshake to a more palatable non contact handshake. I plan to contact embassies around the world where resentment is prevalent. I would like to see all family counseling offices have one in their meeting rooms. I would encourage anyone who has fallen out with a friend, family member, work colleague, gang member or world leader to use the Pre-handshake Handshake Device and let bygones be bygones.

Нед Кан
Tornado
A 10-foot tall vortex is formed by air blowers and an ultrasonic fog machine inside a sculpture installed in the atrium adjacent to the Winter Garden. The vortex continually changed shape in response to the surrounding air currents.These fluctuations gave the vortex an erratic and life-like appearance. Viewers were encouraged to alter the shape of the vortex with their hands. The calm, central core of the vortex is clearly evident.
Kahn’s interactive scientific projects leave little doubt about his command of meteorological processes. Through his immense technical ability, he demonstrates the versatility of turbulent systems, such as the vortices of wind and water. He employs diverse mechanical, pneumatic and electrical technologies to design, build and refine his installations. This is how he constructs dazzlingly complex but comprehensible images of nature that respond to viewers, conform to architectural structures, and reveal environmental conditions.

The Augmented Hand Series
The “Augmented Hand Series” (by Golan Levin, Chris Sugrue, and Kyle McDonald) is a real-time interactive software system that presents playful, dreamlike, and uncanny transformations of its visitors’ hands. It consists of a box into which the visitor inserts their hand, and a screen which displays their ‘reimagined’ hand—for example, with an extra finger, or with fingers that move autonomously. Critically, the project’s transformations operate within the logical space of the hand itself, which is to say: the artwork performs “hand-aware” visualizations that alter the deep structure of how the hand appears.

In ‘We Need Sanctuary’ (2016) and ‘Symptom Machine’ (2017), Cooper offers the body up as a contested space for communication and representation. Using computer-generated imagery, situations and characters are brought together to think through politics of exploitative labour, and the somatic experience of image production and distribution. Both works present, scenes of a Computer-generated bodies; both female and non-human who loom at the very edges of the screen. Their hands touch; they move backwards on a conveyor belt; and blood drips from the girl’s mouth while the non-human sweeps the floor behind her.

Untitled (to Barnett Newman) two
Dan Flavin was an American artist and pioneer of Minimalism, best known for his seminal installations of light fixtures. His illuminated sculptures offer a rigorous formal and conceptual investigation of space and light, wherein the artist arranged commercial fluorescent bulbs into differing geometric compositions. “I like art as thought better than art as work,” he once said. “I’ve always maintained this. It’s important to me that I don’t get my hands dirty. It’s not because I’m instinctively lazy. It’s a declaration: art is thought.”

New Work
Mi Deng and Jason Shipley-Holmes perform
In “New Work” (dance), the viewer was best served by looking at the bodies’ wavering outlines, the women in strapless black leotards and tights, the men in black suits (though sometimes shirtless; costumes by Liz Vandal). Observe the strobe-like effect created by the ferociously waving arms and flexed hands, or the reflections that bounced off the ballerinas’ skin and pink toe shoes. Notice the exaggerated contours of sinewy muscles.

The Masking Machine
Using a custom wearable computer I can walk around any space wearing the still images now animated by my facial expressions. When seen through the screen hovering in front of my face I wear the images like an avatar, but unlike with the stills on a wall or images online I can reach out from behind the screen to shake hands and talk with viewers.

“I think that there is both a science technology and a human technology in technology. I am interested in making clothes by crossing over these two different technologies. I think that in any age, it is important to maintain a close relationship with the technology of that specific age. Combining the technology made by man’s hands and the high technology made by the latest machines may be our future task.” Kunihiko Morinaga

فريتز لانغ
弗里茨·朗
הפריץ לאנג
フリッツ·ラング
Фриц Ланг
Metropolis
Made in Germany during the Weimar period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master. The film’s message is encompassed in the final inter-title: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart“.
cinema full

Oneness
Oneness features two bodies of work, both related to the Wave UFO project. Oneness is a sculpture of six “alien” figures, linking hands in a circle. The aliens connote otherness, but are irresistibly attractive, encouraging the viewer to kneel down and hug them. When the viewer participates in the work by hugging the figures and welcoming them, the aliens’ eyes light up and their hearts start beating. When all six are hugged at once the base lights up as well. The figures are made with Technogel, a high tech flexible material molded onto a metal armature.

BONE
anrealage spring
I think that there is both a science technology and a human technology in technology. I am interested in making clothes by crossing over these two different technologies. I think that in any age, it is important to maintain a close relationship with the technology of that specific age. Combining the technology made by man’s hands and the high technology made by the latest machines may be our future task.”

Korean artist Kyuin Shim creates work that your pupils will interpret as a straight up science fiction novel. One body of work in particular, “Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

VETERANS OF THE WARS OF YOUGOSLAVIA, BOSNIA, KOSOVO, SERBIA & SOMALIA FACING THE CORNER
Santiago Sierra’s third solo exhibition at Team Gallery, Veterans, displays nine photographs of war veterans standing in corners. All that is visible are the backs of their bodies; their hands are clasped either behind or in front of them. Some are in uniform, and some are not. Some are accessorized, wearing for example, a watch or cowboy hat. One veteran in particular stands in plain clothes holding a cane, signifying a possible combat wound.

Manic Botanic
The Brooklyn-based, Minneapolis-born photographer is blessed with a phenomenal combination of acute eye for composition, natural understanding of colour and a terrific sense of narrative and timing that elevates her work beyond that of many of her peers into a world that’s sharp, enchanting and lusciously coloured. There’s not many photographers out there that could hook you in with a shot of a photo in a plastic bag, but in Bridget’s hands this uninspiring subject matter becomes a visual treat.

Black Black
“Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

פיונה טאן
フィオナ·タン
Фиона Тан
فيونا تان
Rise and Fall
Fiona Tan explores storytelling, memory, and the part they play in the formation of identity throughout this exhibition of five video installations, various associated sketches and one single-channel video. Rise and Fall (2009), elongated projections onto two large, side-by-side screens, is a wordless meditation, set to music, of a woman no longer young but still conscious of her looks; she was clearly a beauty in her youth. As the video proceeds we gather that the young woman pictured on the second screen is the memory of her younger self. They often move through domestic activities (sleeping, bathing, dressing) in parallel; this is inter-cut with scenes of violently rushing water (shot at Niagra Falls, it turns out). It’s a hackneyed metaphor – the water’s endless surging as an image of time’s relentless uni-directionality – but in Tan’s hands that doesn’t seem to matter; she creates extraordinarily emotional work out of simple stories and well-worn themes.

hands

CubeBrowser

CubeBrowser is a six display cube with digital screens that connects to online databases like Flickr.com. The owner is able to move through thousands of image-sets by turning and shaking the small cube in space. The pictures, which are streamed onto the cube from the internet, are grouped by tags. Horizontal turns change images, while vertical turns change to other tags and therefore associations. This creates a situationism-like “derive” in a collaboratively created archival architecture in your hands. What lies next to the mountains, what is next to the sky? CubeBrowser unfolds an awe-inspiring trip through the hidden realms of online databases. Originally, this project has been started with the help of Andreas Muxel and Charlotte Krauß.

加布里埃尔·奥罗斯科
גבריאל אורוסקו
ガブリエル·オロスコ
ГАБРИЭЛЯ ОРОСКО
My Hands Are My Heart

Animatronic Teen Head & Arm
Project: The Worlds End

Waldo Mason “Decapitated Teen “Blank” Head This is the first reveal of the Blanks in THE WORLD’S END after Gary, played by Simon Pegg, gets into a fight with a teenager in the Cross Hands toilet culminating in the teen’s head being knocked off against a urinal! The head was a self contained radio controlled animatronic model, with eye movement & blinks, frown, jaw open & close and slew. The mechanics were built by Gustav Hoegen & supervised and performed by Matt Denton.”

Mobility
The installation spans a corridor of 7-metres width. On the left wall one hundred prosthetic hands arranged in a matrix revolve around their own vertical axis, the movements being controlled by motors. The mirrors they hold reflect the beam of a strong light across the space and onto the opposite wall. What initially seems like an asynchronous, chaotic pattern of movement soon reveals itself as a complex, computational choreography: at first the hundred light spots move around a central point, akin to the celestial dynamics of the planets or the flight pattern of a swarm of insects and creating the impression of a three-dimensional space. Then suddenly this organic oscillation converges to form a Chinese character denoting movement and action.

Bring Me the Hands of Piri Reis

Hands

Silent Percussion
File Festival
The “Silent Percussion Project” (SPP) consists in building a set of computer musical instruments that use human gestures to control sounds, composing and performing with them in an attempt to re-incorporate the body in music performance practice. The “SPP” is a response to the question: what kinds of musical instruments does live computer music performance need? To answer this question it researches the aesthetic qualities and language of non-live electronic music, action-perception systems and new media theory to experiment new ways of bridging between gesture and sound. In that sense, the “SPP” looks to address the problem of sound control by introducing new sensing techniques that take advantage of our sensorimotor capabilities. The Silent Drum and MANO instruments analyze shapes made by hands and transform them into multiple streams of continuous data. These streams, or variables, are directly applied to sound control, avoiding the key paradigm. Continuous data is analyzed to extract discrete features of the signals. The variables resulting from analysis are interdependent, that is, changes in one result in changes in the others, creating complex systems that the performer learns by experimentation.

MILKY HANDS 2

It´s fire, you can touch it

On the other hand, an example of a work representing a difference in which the viewer is faced with participation in the event, is an installation by Yoko Ishii and Hiroshi Homura It’s fire, you can’t touch it (2007). In this work which appoints the active environment, onto the hands reached out by the participants, miniature light signs are projected—a Japanese tanka poem is running through, glyphs change form, fuse together, move. Here we deal with a poetic spectacle in which the perspective of cognitive interactivity, set off in contact with poetry, is complemented by tactile sensations and poems themselves are as if extracted from the environment by interactive gestures of receivers-readers.

Hands & Feet Study

هوانغ يونغ بينغ
黄永砯
הואנג יונג פינג
황 용 핑
Хуан Юнпин
buddha’s hands

Фрейд Лебайн
A Spring in New York

fred lebain is not scared of the mundane or clichés.
instead, he plays with them, superimposing their images on one another. last spring lebain took images of various areas in new york city, each one of them an occasion of a ‘first visit’ to the location, in which he photographed and then printed in large poster format. later, he returned to the same spots for a second visit, capturing a larger framed shot in which he aligned the poster documenting his first visit to the current scene. these postcard images show lebain’s preference for particular areas of the city, telescoping his views – a time parallax representing the days which separate the two shots – and superimposing his vision of new york. hands, feet or a pair of jeans can be seen… like surrealistic winks, indicating that the photographer is not alone in his mission.

Fade out
The project focuses on the progressive burying of a drumset under a gravel flow. Each impact is amplified in contact with the different instrument’s parts. The gravel flow produces a rythm section which turns into a sound and visual chocking. In opposition with the process of traditional music composing, the instrument is taken away from the hands of musician towards a rough experience. The sequence shot proposes an experimentation around the technical state of Fade-out, by materializing the decrease of sound and visual signal, until a complete silence and disappearance.

Requiem

The robot Requiem is an interactive pneumatic exoskeleton made of aluminium sheets, stainless steel and nineteen pneumatic pistons enabling movement of the knees, thighs, groin, hip, shoulders, elbows, jaw and hands. The robot is suspended by the head from an iron support, hanging a short distance from the floor. As an installation Requiem has eight sensors located around the exhibition space and they can be activated by the spectators.

porous hands

Натан Савайя
나단 사와 야
ネイサン澤谷
ناثان صوايا
Hands

Dirty Hands

ליאון טרמין
레온 테레민
Лев Термен
théremin

he invented an electronic device known as the theremin, which was a unique musical instrument that could be played without physical contact. Rather than plucking strings or pressing keys, the musician need only move their hands around antennas located on the device.The device became a popular curiosity and he proceeded to tour Europe in order to demonstrate it. In 1928, he moved to New York City in the United States, where he played a theremin in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1928. In 1929, he was granted a patent for the device by the United States. He decided to give RCA the rights to manufacture and sell the theremin for a lump sum payment and a percentage of the sales.In the early 1930s, Theremin purchased a laboratory in New York that he used for experimenting with electronic musical instruments. One of the products of his lab was the Rhythmicon, which was purchased by Henry Cowell, a composer. In 1930, a group of ten “thereminists” performed at Carnegie Hall.Theremin also began researching a method to cause lights and sound to respond to the movement of dancers. His system became popular with ballet and dance clubs throughout the country.

Дженнифер Крупи
ornamental hands

The Golden Calf

This work is constituted by a white pedestal on which there stands an LCD colour monitor connected to computing machinery by a cable running through the pedestal. The viewer of this work picks up and holds this monitor in his hands. The screen shows a representation of the pedestal with a computer-generated image of a golden calf on top. By moving the monitor around the actual pedestal the viewer can examine this golden calf from above and below and all sides. Thus the monitor functions like a window that reveals a virtual body apparently located physically in the real space.

休克雷奇默尔
ХЬЮ КРЕЧМЕР
Circle Of Hands Final

تاكاهيرو ماتسو
松尾高弘
타카히로 마츠오
Такахиро Мацуо
Phantasm
file festival

To explore a fantasy world experienced sometime and somewhere in our memory. Phantasm is an interactive installation in which participants light up in a small dreamlike world in space. As you take hold of a glowing sphere that releases a pale light, the area lights up in pale blue light, and white butterflies appear from nowhere as a soft piano melody flows. Butterflies fly slowly and gloriously, gathering toward the sphere, and chase you as you move the sphere. The sphere is the key to the real world and fantasy. Participants can experience the nostalgia of playing with butterflies by moving around or holding the sphere in the air. Beautiful white butterflies draw wing strokes in the air as if they are symbols of a fantasy world; they delicately lead you into their world. If you cover the sphere with your hands to shut out the light, the butterflies gradually disappear, leaving silence and lingering light, bringing you back to reality. You will find yourself perplexed as if it were a fleeting dream. Technical statement of “Phantasm” LEDs are used as the light source for the sphere which is the interface, so that the sphere glows in uniformity and allows the interaction of participants hiding the light or releasing the light with their hands. Light, color tone, and the position of the sphere are monitored with a sensor camera placed on the ceiling, and by connecting with real time CG, the butterfly movements (appearance, disappearance, gathering, and chasing) become possible.