International Symposium of Electronic Arts RUHR 2010

Moids 2.0 - Saita Kazuki & Soiichiro Mihara & Hiroko Mugibayashi
Moids 2.0 – Saita Kazuki & Soiichiro Mihara & Hiroko Mugibayashi

August saw the yearly International Symposium of Electronic Arts take place in the RUHR region of Germany.- spreading over Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg. To say the program was a dense one would have been an understatement. Over the week the festival presented recent works, along side well-known ones, workshops, conferences, club events, and concert performances.

The group exhibition TRUST, held in the iconic Dortmunder U building, explored ‘the aesthetics of trust by questioning its status, attempting to challenge the audience’s convictions and by encouraging a reflected dialogue with machines and media’. Carsten Nicolai’s piece Rota is a large scale Dreamachine – where light penetrates holes on a revolving cylinder to generate a specific stroboscopic effect which can induce different kinds of mental/cognitive states. Seiko Mikami’s piece, Desire of Codes, consisted of multiple sensors, cameras and a projection that resembled the multifaceted geometry of an insect eye. On moving through the gallery space the sensors triggered cams which recorded images and footage of viewer. A tapestry of images is generated and projected onto the gallery wall containing both past and present fragments of the ongoing surveillance process.

Epiphora  - Yunchul KimEpiphora – Yunchul Kim

The ISEA2010 RUHR Exhibition held at the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte housed an equally impressive and diverse group of works. Yunchul Kim’s Epiphora, resembling an alchemists laboratory set-up, presents a ‘fictional pathology’ where fluids pulsate and react with one another simulating the actions of a group of imaginary organs. Vladimir Todorovic’s movie The Snail on the Slope utilises Processing to generate sequences of abstract/organic forms. The film, which can be viewed here, consists of narrative sequences which are based on a story of the same name by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky.

Running alongside the exhibitions were a number of concerts of electronic music from the likes of Thomas K̦ner, Asmus Tiechens and Eliane Radigue. The evenings saw a program of related club orientated events. For the Audiovisual Pilots night I was invited to perform an newly adapted version of ryNTH Рa real-time piece where transformations and modulations of geometric forms are generated by sound.

My Flicker set documenting the symposium can be found here.

Leave a Reply