Lesson Nº 1 + The Ascension
Glenn Branca has always been a musician positioned halfway between the role of avant-garde composer and that of a rock musician. A pupil and disciple of the masters of American minimalism such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he has always had to fight against prejudice and fierce criticism. His position was certainly uncomfortable, too academic for rock fans and too “politically incorrect” for academics. In fact, Branca was trying to unhinge all the limits imposed by the rigid schemes of the avant-garde, aware of the fact that those who want to be truly avant-garde should have no limits. John Cage was also able to criticize him, even calling him a fascist ( Luciano Berio also did so for all minimalists) for the excessive rigidity of his compositions, even though he recognized his innovative power. After having created his best known album, The Ascension (1981), a true monument of maximalism played with a classical rock formation (guitars, bass and drums), he tries to approach a different format, the Symphony, as always halfway between rock and academia. Branca will like the experiment and will re-propose it several times in the following decades, to date there are sixteen symphonies (not all recordings are available). Here is how young Branca’s ensemble appeared to the American composer John Adams in one of his first live performances of the First Symphony: “Branca’s event that I listened to at the Japan Center Theater in San Francisco in 1981 was one of his symphonies for guitar . The group didn’t look very different from thousands of other independent or alternative rock bands of the time: guys in jeans and worn t-shirts busy with cables while maintaining that typical distracted expression of rock musicians.

萧子文
エリック·シウ
Touchy
file festival
Touchy is a human camera – a wearable device that literally transforms a human being into a functioning camera. The individual who is wearing the device is constantly “blinded” unless someone touches his/her skin. The touch causes the shutters in front of the eyepieces to open and restores the wearer’s vision. When physical contact is maintained for 10 seconds, the camera takes a “Touch-Snap” (i.e., a photo that is taken by Touchy), which is displayed on the device’s LCD.

PLANT BOT
plant bot is a time based interactive art installation where the fates of a living plant and a computer are interdependent. Essentially the plant attempts to train a computer using image recognition. Through this process the computer will learn to recognize when the plant needs water based on images it takes of the plant. If the plant appears healthy, the computer will maintain a regular water regiment. If the plant does not appear healthy to the computer it will attempt to aid the plant by adjusting to what it “thinks” the plant needs based on the images gathered. As the computer becomes more intelligent and hence more adept at caring for the plant, the plant will conceivably thrive and grow in proportion. If the computer is unsuccessful, conceivably the opposite will occur.

Earthrise
With our planet positioned at the forefront of the global agenda more than ever before, ‘Earthrise’ explores the splendour of this blue body we call home by circling towards the amalgamated awareness to maintain the grandeur of the turning sphere we traverse along. In parallel to Van Herpen’s drive towards an interconnected approach to fashion, the 19 look collection narrates the circular processes that usher change in our sentient world by weaving a symbiotic thread between artisanal tailoring and organic craftsmanship, derived from the perception of our world as one living and breathing organism.

Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin
HYBE’s Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin re-illuminates the minimalist fluorescent light tubes of Dan Flavin from the 1960s, through digital technology. Experimenting with light and its effect, Flavin explored artistic meaning in relationships between light, situation, and environment. The readymade fluorescent light fixtures he used created space divided and adjusted by light and composition, offering a newly structured space with light. HYBE’s work expands the logic of Flavin by reinforcing the physical property of light through interactive media. It presents an escape from traditional lighting, as light and color changes when touched by viewers. Lighting here is divided into front and back, and colors are programmed to maintain complementary colors. The front lighting constantly interacts with colors on a back wall through visual contrast and mixture. A random change and diffusion of light with the involvement of viewers provokes tension extending and segmenting space, turning space into a forum for emotional perceptual experience.

Ange
Ange is the result of discussions between two artists and a “hikikomori”. This term imported from Japan, which has no equivalent in France, is used to describe young people, sometimes even teenagers, choosing not to leave their room or their apartment for months or even years. Ael is one of them, recluse in a shed in his parents garden for 13 years, somewhere in the south of France. The artistic duo fleuryfontaine has maintained a relationship with him using internet. They used the video game as a medium to try to reconstruct the world of this hikikomori and to engage a dialogue during game sessions where Ael evolves in the environments created by the artist. His room, his objects, the parental home, his neighborhood, this film reveals the fragmented portrait of a man hiding from the world.

Needle Tower
“Inspired by architect Buckminster Fuller’s interest in the geometry of structure, Snelson’s experiments led to a prototype for a “floating compression structure.” Fuller subsequently credited Snelson with having invented a new structural principle which the architect named tensegrity, a contraction of the words tension and integrity.
These investigations into the physical properties of structure became more fully realized as an art form beginning in the 1950s. Snelson created sculptures consisting of tubes and cables. Cylinders of steel seemingly dance through space in defiance of gravity, yet it is the structural competition between tension and compression which underlies their construction. Snelson finds beauty in bringing these forces of nature into balance: the rigid compression tubes pushing outward, the flexible tension cables pulling inward. His sculptures would maintain their structural integrity beyond gravity, in the vacuum of outer space.” Joelle Burrows

Japanese firm yoichi yamamoto architects has completed ‘2D/3D chairs’ for tokyo fashion labels issey miyake store. featuring a series of traditional dining chairs, the installation transforms from a two dimensional graphic into a tangible piece. The perspective is manipulated creating a unique appearance from different vantage points for onlookers. graphics of legs in varying perspectives are printed onto a horizontal plane while the chair backs rest upon the surface. The seat backs maintain a seamless transition from the graphics by utilizing assorted sizes, heights and placed at diverse angles.

Encapsulated environmental system: Paludarium YASUTOSHI
This machine is fully equipped with a mist machine as if wrapping plants in a fog from both sides and drip feed-water system which can be activated depending on the situation in order to maintain the condition of a plant and control inside temperature and humidity. Also the cylindrical shape can fully capture the natural light by 365°angles from glasses, and it can correspond to plant growth by having the series’ largest scale of height. Fans on the ceiling play a role of wind, and a plant can listen music from the waterproofed speakers. The machine takes in essential elements – rain, wind, light and sound – by artificial means and completes a small world where its ecological cycle is condensed. It enables us to admire the beauty of the plants by not being affected by external environment.

Kinematope
Kinematope is specific twice over. First, for being formulated as a response to the perceptual qualities and inner structure of the place it activates. Second, its kinematic nature is directly connected to the function of the train station itself: transit, transport, motion. Kinematope uses ephemeral and intangible materials, projected light and sound, to set the space in motion. It makes use of elements from the cinema apparatus to generate a spatial film. It is a direct filmic experience that omits the mediation of the camera, transporting the observer into a virtual space-time and maintaining at the same time the real, physical bonds of the body with its environment.

Internet Machine
“Internet machine is a multi-screen film about the invisible infrastructures of the internet. The film reveals the hidden materiality of our data by exploring some of the machines through which ‘the cloud’ is transmitted and transformed. The film explores these hidden architectures with a wide, slowly moving camera. The subtle changes in perspective encourage contemplative reflection on the spaces where internet data and connectivity are being managed. In this film I wanted to look beyond the childish myth of ‘the cloud’, to investigate what the infrastructures of the internet actually look like. It felt important to be able to see and hear the energy that goes into powering these machines, and the associated systems for securing, cooling and maintaining them.” Timo Arnall

Orbits
“The aesthetics of man-made objects in space, their appearance and especially their orbits are transformed into a minimal audiovisual performance, showing the poetic dance satellites and their trash perform while revolving around us. Seemingly chaotic paths mutate to amazing patterns of an almost organic nature—all of it due to pure physical necessity. When we started working with global satellite data, their information was based on a website maintained by the US Air Force. Yet after some time, based on information from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we discovered that some objects were missing. Fortunately the data on classified satellites is generated by enthusiastic amateur astronomers observing the night skies.” Quadrature

Wall
Riccardo Blumer Atelier worked with a team of students to create this machine on show at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which is programmed to build and repair an 11-metre-long bubble wall. The robotic installation, called Wall, is designed to highlight the limitations of physical boundaries. It is programmed to fulfil one goal: maintain a complete wall-like structure made up of eleven bubble-like segments for as long as possible.

Swamp Radio
Swamp Radio gets beyond our anthropocenic reality, and maintains connections between the humans and other species. By artistic interventions and transmitting interfaces, the Swamp Radio is turned into a social media megaphone for invisible and inaudible actors of nature. The artists are installing microbial fuel cells, environmental monitoring sensors and transmitting devices to transform the swamps into dynamic power plants and the 21st century multi-voiced broadcast media.

Mira Madrid
Jürge Hermann Mayer and Juan Rey sign this project whose flagship is the placement of seven bastions (one for each star of the Community flag) 100 meters high that would be illuminated at night. Km 0 and the statues would maintain their position, and the entrances to the Metro would be surrounded by landscaped areas and perimeter seats.

Internal view of the O’Neill cylinder
“One of my earliest Space Colony paintings was based on the giant ‘Model 3’ cylindrical habitats envisioned by Gerard O’Neill. I imagined the clouds forming at an ‘altitude‘ around the rotation axis. At this time the scene is bathed in the ruddy light of all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth at that moment as the colony briefly enters the Earths shadow, out at the L5 Lagrangian point where stable locations are easily maintained. Oil on canvas panel disposition unknown. “

ARART
File Festival

“Arart” is an application that breathes life into objects. It links reality with the expressions delivered through mobile devices adding new stories and values to the real environment.
How will the impressions of the environment that surround us and the various objects that envelop our bodies change through “Arart”?
We propose “Arart” as a new platform of expression that can maintain a strong link with reality.

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.”

“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

Fungus Wearable
The Fungus Wearable was designed based on the assumption of ‘What if… people elevate their immune system by wearing the portable vaccine attenuated fungus?’ The cloth is made with solid agar which can maintain the fungus to grow fast and maintain itself.

Fall 2018
Even though he was only given a few days’ notice of the royal’s attendance, Quinn lived up to the expectations. He maintained his focused vision, shining the spotlight on his impressive printwork and flair for standout, dramatic silhouettes. An array of abstracted floral prints — all created in-house at the designer’s print studio in Peckham — were mashed up on loose halterneck dresses, delicately pleated chiffon skirts and oversize bomber jackets, to create a visual feast of color and pattern.

Wyne Veen is a Dutch artist working in the photographic medium. Veen’s work consists of sculptural arrangements, utilizing everyday objects and their isolated materials. The work possesses an aesthetic and absurd appeal. Inspired by all things overly developed, Veen is fascinated by our highly manufactured lives, while also endlessly drawn to all steps of the production process. Veen graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2008 and maintains a studio in the Red Light district of Amsterdam

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.”

伊恩·克劳福德
איאן קרופורד
이안 크로포드
Iain loves to capture images that have a strong graphic and textural quality, often searching out the graphical symmetry in chaos, while still maintaining the personality and emotion of the subject. His career has lead him to shoot campaigns for many of the world’s top brands and receive commissions from a host of top international magazines.

Folding the Chesapeake
Maya Lin has maintained a careful balance between art and architecture throughout her career, creating a remarkable body of work that includes large-scale site-specific installations, intimate studio artworks, architectural works and memorials.

Nicolas Deshayes’ sculptures use materials such as annodised aluminum and vacuum formed plastic to embrace the glossy aesthetics of 21st century design. Despite their emphasis on slick industrial surfaces and physicality, Deshayes’ works maintain a human presence in the form of glutinously rich, bodily allusions, engaging with the materials in ways that distort the ordinary.

At 117-year-old (as of June 2018), the Centennial Light is the world’s longest-lasting light bulb. Burning since June of 1901, it is currently located inside Fire Station #6 at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department.

Broken Flower
Liquid Nitrogen
Throughout his career, Shireman has maintained a connection with flowers in decay; in other still lifes, he has cataloged the wilting of tulips and mums. This series, unlike those previous, is brutal and instantaneous. Where his other flowers underwent a slow, gradual death, these broken flowers are quickly frozen and violently ruptured. The process captured here is not a natural one but one that necessitates the use of a manmade element.

COLLECTIVE JUMPS / COLLECTIVE JUMPS (EXCERPTS)
Projekt von Isabelle Schad und Laurent Goldring
’The group’s body is made out of many. We exercise practices that have the potential to unite instead of individualize. We understand these practices as a relationship to oneself and to one another, as a pathway. These practices are biological ones, cellular ones, energetic ones. We look at freedom in relation to form : to form that is made of and found by an inner process and its rhythms. Rhythm creates the form. Therefore, there is multitude, multiplicity, subjectivity, and variation : variation within repetition. We look at freedom as the essence of happiness. We experience happiness when the flow of movement can be done together and be maintained. We look at freedom that is guaranteed once everyone within a group can find form in a subjective way. Therefore, there is a specific relation to the term equality : Everyone can be equal, once subjectivity in one‘s own respective rhythm is guaranteed within the form.’I.Schad

launch interactive book

FILE – Electronic Language International Festival and SESI publishing house launch the “highlike book”. This is a yearbook on global contemporary ART and CULTURE. Its first edition has 584 pages with 577 artists from 35 countries. The “highlike book” encompasses several aspects of contemporary culture, providing the user a new form of appreciation of an art book. This is a book connected to the cloud. All information, images, videos and texts, is connected to their on-line counterparts in several languages, in a hybrid book which maintains its physical aspects and the virtual simultaneity of multimedia information. Its main purpose is to provide users with a new way of access culture in a global diversified view on the contemporary creativity in its transversal and heuristic aspect, by means of technologies currently available.

Vocal Trio
FILE FESTIVAL
“Vocal Trio,” which consists of three musical instruments, transforms the voice of a singer or a speaker received through a mike into a sound of each musical instrument while maintaining the same rhythm and musical scale. A pipe horn, which looks like a long trumpet or pipe, makes a deep and low-tone horn sound. A water bell, which looks like a water drop, makes a clear bell-sound, and a leaf flute, which looks like a leaf, makes a reed pipe sound. The spectator’s voice is transformed into the sound of a musical instrument by means of a microcontroller chip. The microcontroller chip of each musical instrument makes a sampling of his or her voice’s frequency. A sampling of the voice made through frequency data is sent to midi chips, which transform it into the sound of a particular musical instrument and the sound is released through the speakers.

bionic research pavilion

The Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) of the University of Stuttgart have constructed another bionic research pavilion. The project is part of a successful series of research pavilions which showcase the potential of novel design, simulation and fabrication processes in architecture. The project was planned and constructed within one and a half years by students and researchers within a multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers and biologists.
The focus of the project is a parallel bottom-up design strategy for the biomimetic investigation of natural fiber composite shells and the development of novel robotic fabrication methods for fiber reinforced polymer structures. The aim was the development of a winding technique for modular, double layered fiber composite structures, which reduces the required formwork to a minimum while maintaining a large degree of geometric freedom. Therefore, functional principles of natural lightweight structures were analyzed and abstracted in cooperation with the University of Tübingen and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Through the development of a custom robotic fabrication method, these principles were transferred into a modular prototype pavilion.

Дэйв Коул
the music box

‘the music box’, a monumental sculptural piece commissioned by the cleveland institute of art and developed in partnership with ohio CAT, sees the american artist dismantling a 22, 000 lb steamroller in which he refabricates more than 80% of the machine–though still maintaining its identifiable physical qualities–transforming it into a fully functioning musical box, and at a fraction of its original weight.
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كريستوفر دانيال
克里斯托弗·丹尼尔
כריסטופר דניאל
Кристофер Дэниел
California Roll House
a structure which self-adapts to its extreme environment, the prefabricated ‘california roll house’ by korean practice violent volumes uses the latest
in sustainable technologies and mechanized systems to maintain a comfortable atmosphere in the desert surrounding. a carbon fiber truss frame
system supports the irregular wrapping form, providing a lightweight and strong skeleton on which a solid exterior shell is attached to reflect the
intense sun. transparent glass panels change opacity automatically with the angle of the sun to absorb the nighttime coolth and reject the daytime
solar gain. the roof element then transforms into an entry courtyard, providing a flat artificial ground plane from which one can enter the hydraulically-
powered door, which is the only door in and out of the house and services all spaces. interior curtains subdivide the rooms for privacy, with skylights
for extra light.