transcript of article in “the west coast messenger” wed 26th march 08 by Jo Keppel

Enter the Left Bank Art Gallery Vault (dodgy link?) and close the heavy door behind you to find yourself in an exhibition of works that twinkle and dance in the darkness.

The 16 paintings, by Flow Ir In, somewhat reminiscent of those “magic eye” pictures which used to have us touching our noses to the page and then drawing back cross-eyed to see the “real image” gain extra impact by their large size. One, on unstretched canvas covers a whole wall of the Vault.

The mysteries of that aside, the exhibition has the appeal of being familiar in the way of post-war American abstract expressionists, with the contemporary addition of some special lighting and sound effects – adding up to a whole new original experience.

Flow was born in the United Kingdom, in Kent.

“From as far back as i can remember, I’ve always known I’d come to New Zealand. It’s been calling me. When i first put my foot on Aotearoan soil, five years ago, I had this huge feeling of coming home,” she said.

“My dad taught me how to draw when i was tiny, and i excelled at school. I had a bit of a flair for photorealistic still life. At 16, i had to make a choice between art and science, and i chose science, as I could always draw, but needed a university education to learn the esoteric mysteries of modern science.”

That study is now the basis of Flow’s new and original art.

“I would call what i do a chaotic boundary condition which interfaces with the viewer’s neural network to allow direct communication between the hyperspatial entity which i represent, and the viewer. That’s not very catchy, though, so i just call it chaos art for short. Although it looks nothing like the mathematical fractals which are commonly called chaos art as well, it is created using similar principles.

“I spent a lot of time attempting to visualise simplexes – four dimensional tetrahedrons. The day i succeded, which took about three years of intensive meditation, i stepped outside this world, and entered a place that is … ‘other’. Ever since, i’ve been trying to create a communication bridge, so that i can show other people what i learned. This art is my latest, and most sucessful attempt.”

She wanted to make something that would have universal appeal, so that all sorts of people would be able to enjoy it without having to know anything about her intentions.

“To that effect, the major moment to moment guiding principle is one of beauty. I’m in constant conversation with myself about what colour, which brush, which hand … and i keep increasing the complexity of the surface until a little voice tells me to rest, or do something else.”

each painting goes through a numebr of stages. “First, i paint a pretty normal picture, to give a theme to the painting, be it a portrait, a landscape, or a representation of a spiritual or religious concept. You can see what the theme was by the painting’s title. I then apply a number of totally random layers, until i feel i am in a neutral place. From then on, I am working to bring beauty back, using progressively more detailed layers, until the original picture is totally obscured, and a complex surface looks back at me. This can take a long time – especially if i am fighting against some pre-conception of correctness. I have a lot of faith ‘in the process'”.

Flow describes the music accompanying the pictures as “a bit of mix”.

“It is on random play, and i trust my computer to pick songs suitable to the people around. Some are regular songs, with themes that match in some way the theme of the paintings. Others are tracks I have made myself, which are in 5.1 surround. Those are literally part of the paintings. I take photographs, then run them through some software which i wrote which performs a “k-space” transformation. That takes each colour channel and flips it from a spatial map into phase-frequency space, which basically makes sound. I then either keeps this raw, or re-sample and re-sequence them into more musical creations. I have also built chaotic oscillators, which make a wobbly, ever changing sound, and turned that into music. That is currently touring the world as part of Soundlab IV’s Memoryscape exhibition.

“The tiles in the Vault exhibition are a bit of a proof of concept – they fit together any way, despite having a totally random pattern. Very odd.”

Flow’s exhibition runs at the Greymouth gallery until April 3.

by Jo Keppel

picture link

tiles tesselating

MESSAGE DISPLAY Message number 35

35 saved-messages sent-mail neomail-trash .cppop.cache .cppop.cache.msgs .mailboxlist Drafts Sent Items films inbox shipping

Date: 11/10/2006 09:57:00 +0100
From: “{soundlab4 }”
Reply-to: “{soundlab4 }”
To:
Subject: [R][R][F]200x—>XP – a digital challenge All headers
Agricola de Cologne
is featuring
[R][R][F]200x—>XP, VideoChannel, SoundLAB & Cologne OFF
on
2nd Digital Art Festival in Rosario/Argentina
http://www.rattlesnakeproductora.com – 16-18 October 2006.
It is that occasion in 2006
for which Agricola de Cologne, media artist and New Media curator from Cologne/Germany
prepared a special digital project combination—>

The lecture entitled
“The Network”, memory and identity
a challenge in digital art –
is spotlighting Agricola de Cologne’s activities in digital art since 2000
and the development of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne – “The NETWORK”

and

the global networking project [R][R][F]200x—>XP
[Remembering, Repressing, Forgetting] – http://rrf200x.newmediafest.org –
the most prominent project environment, Agricola de Cologne realized until now.
The festival in Rosario represents the countdown of the finalization of this global project
which was running very successfully during the past three years.

A new, updated and final project version will go online on coming Tuesday, 14 October 2006,
just in time before the festival is starting.

[R][R][F]200x—>XP is an ongoing, long term experiment starting in March 2004 simultaneously in Internet and at National

Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest/Romania, Bergen Electronic Arts Centre Bergen/Norway and New Media Art Festival Bangkok.

Many networking instances as artists, curators, institutions, organisations from all parts on the globe joint the project and

form an unique collection of collected memory of mankind manifested in advanced technological forms of contemporary art, i.e.

net based art, an Internet specific form of digital art. The project is a hybrid form of a research, New Media event and an

art project.
It is based on three basic components, the subject: “Memory and Identity” , the operating aspect: ”networking as artworking”,

and the presentation aspect: installation in an exchange/combination between virtual and physical space.
The project consist of a low-tech blog, which contains also textual information and the latest news, the high-tech Flash body

contains the actual art project.
The project is structured like a human brain, consisting of countless synapses which all are connected to each other. In the

case of this project there are 8 main synapses, called “memory channels”, which may consist again of several moduls in form

of individual artists projects.
Curators from many countries were invited to prepare contributions in the categories “netart” for RRF Channel, “videoart” for

VideoChannel and “soundart” for SoundLAB Channel. More than 50 curators and about 800 artists form this way the basis of a

new and gigantic artwork online and offline.

On occasion of the festival in Rosario, the finalization of this global networking project will be initiated, which is

planned to be completed until the end of 2006. Once completed, the project will remain for permanent online and beyond that

active in different ways.

RRF Channel will be extended by v3 of RRF, a selection of netart pieces on the theme “memory and identity”
featuring new works by these artists: – http://rrf200x.newmediafest.org/blog/?page_id=4
Lisa Cianci (Australia), Mark Cypher (Australia), Dario Quaranta (Italy), Moar Joanne (New Zealand), Rainer Prohaska (Austria

), Jt Wine (USA), Carlos Katastrofsky (Austria), Mark Sedgewick (USA), Humberto Ramirez (USA), Roberto Echen (Argentina),

Päivi Hintsanen (Finland), Andreja Andric (Italy/Serbia), Societe Realists (France), Filh (France), Calin Man (Romania),

Bjoern Karneborgen (Germany), Alexa Write (UK), Robert Spahr (USA, Khaled Sabsabi (Lebanon/Australia), Jason Sweeney

(Australia), Sonya Nielson (USA), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga (USA), James Robert Ford (UK), Deb King (USA), Osvaldo Cibils

(Uruguay), Panios Kouros (Greece), Tobias Sternberg (USA). Fabian Taranto (Italy)

SoundLAB Channel – http://soundlab.newmediafest.org (also operating independently) will be extended by Edition IV –

“memoryscapes” which is featuring not only a contribution of soundart from Chile curated by Rainer Krause (Santiago/Chile)–

->Luis Barrie, Claudio Fernandez Sini, Foro de Escritores (FDE), Ensamble Majamama, Radio Ruido, Mario Soro, Andres Torres,

Pintor Z –
but also more than 135 artists and 200 pieces of soundart curated by Melody Parker-Carter. All details and the lists of the

selected artists can be found here: http://soundlab.newmediafest.org/blog/?page_id=20

VideoChannel (also operating independently) http://videochannel.newmediafest.org
is extended by the new selection on the theme “image vs music”, featuring 50 video artists, more details on

thanks for all the fish

Since 2005, especially VideoChannel became very active in presenting selections from the more than 200 videos of this unique

film and video selection on numerous festivals.. In 2006, VideoChannel initiated Cologne OFF – Cologne Online Film Festival –

http://coff.newmediafest.org – directed by Agricola de Cologne,
a mobile film and video festival, operating simultaneously online and offline via screenings.

2nd Digital Art Festival Rosario will be screening two selections from Cologne OFF:
Cologne OFF I – “genderscapes” – a selection dealing with gender issues and sexual idenfication, featuring these artists:
1. Rahel Maher (Australia), 2. Unnur A. Einarsdottir (Iceland), 3. Ane Lan (Norway), 4. Alla Girik and Oksana Shatalova

(Kazakhstan), 5. Sinasi Günes (Turkey), 6. Beatrice Allegranti (UK), 7. J.G. Periot (France), 8. Ina Loitzl (Austria)
9. Lorenzo Nencini (Italy), 10. Elia Alba (Domincan Rep.), 11. Risk Hazekamp (the Netherlands), 12. Agricola de Cologne

(Germany)

and Cologne OFF II – “image vs music”,
a selection dealing with a compettion between the moving image and sound/music”, featuring:
*Andreja Andric (Italy), *Bundaberg Media Research Group (Australia), *Daniel Blinkhorn (Australia), *David Burns (USA)
*Dennis H. Miller (USA), *Gabriel Shalom (USA), *Jason Paul Cardot (USA), *Lane Last (USA)
*Laurent Pernot (France), *Erika Frenkel (Brazil), *Mauro Arrighi & Marco Buziol (Italy)- *Pygar – Hugo Olim/Joao Ricardo

(Portugal), *Shawn Towne (USA), *Sinasi Günes (Turkey), *Sonja VUK (Croatia), *Unnur Einarsdottir (Iceland), *Agricola de

Cologne (Germany)

More information about Agricola de Cologne’s artistic and curatorial activities
can be found on his homepage – http://www.agricola-de-cologne.de

All projects of Agricola de Cologne’s festival participation and presentation
were realized in the framework of
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne – www.nmartproject.net
the experimental platform for art and New Media founded and directed by Agricola de Cologne.

The featured projects and screenings are presented on the festival by
Media/Art/Cologne – http://www.mediaartcologne.org
the global window to media art from Cologne directed by Agricola de Cologne.

Links:
[R][R][F]200x—>XP – http://rrf200x.newmediafest.org
VideoChannel – http://videochannel.newmediafest.org
SoundLAB – http://soundlab.newmediafest.org
Cologne OFF – http://coff.newmediafest.org
Media/ArtCologne – http://www.mediaartcologne.org
Agricola de Cologne – http://www.agricola-de-cologne.de
The Network – http://www.nmartproject.net

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