Ральф Беккер

The Conversation
Pataphysical Processing Environment

source: rlfbckrorg
“Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality” — Mind and Nature, Gregory Bateson

The Conversation is an autonomous apparatus that consists of 99 solenoids mounted in a circle. Together they carry three rubber bands (attractors) in their center. Each magnet works autonomously and tries to adapt to the forces in the network. Depending on the tension, measured by analyzing the changes of the electromagnetic induction in the electromagnets, they adjust their pulling force in order to conserve its position.

Similar to a homeostat it tries to establish a hyper stable equilibrium. The rubber band acts as mediator between the single autonomous entities. Environmental noise and friction picked up by electronic and mechanical elements prevents the machine from achieving its task. Constellations appear and stay until disturbances make them decay. The whole installation is immersed in a polyphonic buzz generated by the constant shifting forces of the solenoid array.

about:
Berlin-based artist Ralf Baecker works at the intersection of art, technology and science.

Through installations and machines, Baecker explores fundamental mechanisms of action and the effects of new media and technologies. In his representations and spatializations of microscopic processes he seeks to completely disrupt our perception. At the core of his objects lies the entanglement of the virtual with the actual, or rather, with the world. With a media-archaeological outlook, Ralf Baecker digs within obsolete devices for traces and functions that are still detectable in technologies today. His work seeks to form a hybrid between current digital aesthetics and an historical understanding of materials. As a result, he understands technology not as a tool but rather as an epistemological instrument, in order to pose elemental questions about a world perceived through technological impressions.

Baecker has been awarded multiple prizes and grants for his artistic work, including an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2012 and 2014, and second prize at the VIDA 14.0 Art & Artificial Life Award in Madrid for “Irrational Computing,” a sound and light installation that relates to the disappearance, or rather invisibility, of materiality in contemporary information technology. The artist developed the project during a three-month-long residency at DOCK e.V. in Berlin with support from the Schering Stiftung.

His work has been presented in international festivals and exhibitions, such as the International Triennial of New Media Art 2014 in Beijing, Künstlerhaus Wien, ZKM | Center for Art and New Media in Karlsruhe, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, WINZAVOD Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, Laboral Centro de Arte in Gijon, and Malmö Konsthall.

Born in 1977 in Düsseldorf, Ralf Baecker studied Computer Science and Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Since 2016 he teaches at the University of the Arts Bremen as Professor for Experimental Design of New Technologies.
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source: artwikifr
Baecker nous présente la conversation,une installation fabriquée en cercle, il combine les élèments élèctriques et mécaniques. Des bobines magnétiques ( cable) sont reliées entre elles, le mouvement de chaque composant a un impact sur chaque autre composant, les fils sont en mouvements en permanance, l’objectif est de créer un cercle parfait, ce qui est alors impossible.. Baecker matérialise le système d’une conversation, les cables représentent l’idée d’une confusion dans le dialogue. On entend aussi le bruit d’un buzz que l’on peut avoir dans certaines conversations au téléphone. Les mouvements sont trés lents, et sacadés, ce travail minutieu ( on pourrait parler de travail de fourmis) est à la fois intéressant et captivant.