Owen Mundy

Curator and theorist, Eduardo Navas, has published an essay he wrote to accompany the Transitio_MX 2009 exhibition which included Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art by Joelle Dietrick and myself. The essay, “La Influencia de los No-Lugares en el concepto de America Latina.” (English “The Influence of Non-places in the Concept of Latin America”), was published in Spanish in Errata #3, Cultura digital y creación Dec 2010.

Here’s an excerpt of the essay in English. You can read more about (in English) on Eduardo’s blog or the full text is available in Spanish here.

Airplane travel and airports, which have been a key reference in the theory of non-places by both Augé and Ibelings finds direct commentary in Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art. This time-based work consists of a photograph of the Tallahassee Airport Check-in area, which hosts a wall sized reproduction of McClay Gardens Park. In front of the wallpaper image we find: on the left hand side a plant in a pot and on the right a portable fan, next to three airportline-dividing-poles which are connected with a dividing strip, and a dolly cart at the far end. The photograph of the actual lobby is projected on the wall along with a series of numbers, located at the bottom of the screen’s frame, complemented with an algorithmic simulation of Tree Pollen falling surrealistically, while a sound track of birds plays in a loop. In essence the airport check in lounge is turned into a staged moment where the reproduction of a natural environment is treated as a mere decoration.

Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art (2007) by Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick

In Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art the airport as a non-place is taken apart. The image is not only commenting on how parks are careful orchestrations of nature to fit human ideals, but also exposes how this aesthetic has entered the airport, a space of transition, in order to make people feel comfortable upon their arrival or departure. If one tries to believe that what one is looking at is real nature, or even a meta recording of nature, one only needs to notice that the pollen is falling just a bit too perfectly, executing an algorithm meant to appear naturally, magically. This orderliness, this pristine aesthetic, as in the other four selections has a direct link to the control that is inherent in supermodernism: “This boundless space is no dangerous wilderness or frightening emptiness, but rather a controlled vacuum, for if there is one thing that characterizes this age it is total control. The undefined space is not an emptiness but a safe container, a flexible shell.” Anemophilous Formula for Computer Art exposes the type of activity that more privileged migrants perform—those unlikely to work in maquiladoras or any other blue-collar job. Therefore, the wall projection is a commentary on the growing supermodern aesthetic of glocalization, and thus a critical commentary on a specific activity that is ingrained as much in Latin America as well as other regions. Viewers can project themselves into the computerized image, and feel comfortable in the virtual airport lobby; whether the viewer may potentially be in Japan or Mexico is irrelevant because the language of non-places has transcended space in this sense. And therefore makes the conceptualization of a constant migration an issue of class rather than identity.

—Eduardo Navas

Finally finding time to edit documentation from A Single Composite exhibition this summer in Berlin.

A Single Composite is a series of kinetic installations and projection apparatuses that stretch, twist, and loop film strips containing declassified and other found reconnaissance footage. Using reconstituted digital printer chassis, this cinematic enterprise is projected on walls, ceilings, and floors, to form a series of individual moments of surveillance and implied violence.

I am happy to announce the launch of the new website for Drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture and the corresponding release of issue #11 POWER, which I co-organized with Avantika Bawa.

POWER, issue #11

This issue of Drain attempts to expose the cultural faciality of power, as well as manifestations of power as simulacra which obfuscate traditional inquiries into its construction. If power connects the virtual and the actual, how does cultural creativity channel or destabilize this connectivity? The corporate-academic-entertainment-military-industrial complex and its front-end, the global information machine floods us with images and images of images, to cause sensory overload, and yet, at the same time, acute sensory deprivation. Most of all, power entrenches a visual literacy that allows us to see only its style, leaving us unable to access other ways of seeing and becoming. How can we parody this visual literacy, and the speed, cadence and grammar of this power and its affects?

Necropolis by Roi Kuper

If the simulation of power is necessary and absolute, can creative acts and molecular politics slip through the surveillance and desensitizing of territorializing systems?

GWOTEM by J.M. Badoud

This issue of Drain presents artworks, essays, and other creative works to actualize answers to these questions and re-channel them into different connectivities, ways of becoming and conceptual production.

The Gift of Giving by Oscar Perez

We are pleased to present Ian Buchanan and Roi Kuper as our feature writer and featured artist. This issue also includes essays by Emma Cocker and Chris Revelle, as well as interviews by Alexander Stewart with artist Andy Roache and Bertha Husband with Blazo Kovacevic. In our Creative Writing section, we present works by Camille Meyer, BT Shaw & Elizabeth Lopeman, Vanessa Norton, Emma Cocker and Morgan Campbell. Art projects works by Jamie Badoud, Diana Heise, Cyrico Lopes, Bob Paris and Oscar Perez.

Past issues

The Processing.js project is really cool. It allows you to run Processing .pde files inside (HTML5 compatible) web browsers using Javascript. You can pass data back and forth between the two programs, access the DOM with Processing, and you don’t need any plugins or Java.

Click here to run this Processing sketch in your browser

One caveat… When importing a Processing .pde file into the HTML5 canvas you must access the files on a web server or by using localhost (a server running on your computer, e.g. MAMP) because most (all modern?) web browsers don’t allow file:/// access for security reasons. Unfortunately this is not intuitive as Javascript should run in the browser regardless of file:/// access. Nor is it mentioned in any of the Processing.js Quick Start documentation. I found it by testing, and then confirmed it in their README. Darn, need to remember to read (all of) the instructions.

UPDATE: A friend pointed out that the problem accessing the .pde file could be due to the same origin policy. Though not explicitly stated on the Github page for Processing.js, they do mention that disabling same origin setting in your browser is a(n undesirable) workaround.

Some web browsers (e.g., Chrome) require secondary files to be loaded from a web server for security reasons. This means loading a web page that references a Processing.js sketch in a file via a file:/// URL vs. http:// will fail. You are particularly likely to run into this problem when you try to view your webpage directly from file, as this makes all relatively links file:/// links.

// Hello World file for Processing or Processing.js
void setup(){
  size(1000,700);
  background(255);
}
void draw(){
  stroke(random(255),random(255), random(255));
  line(random(width),random(height), random(width),random(height));
  println("Hello World!");
}

I recently published an essay, “Camp La Jolla Military Park: Creative Disturbance Through Adaption of National Park Iconography,” in the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping (PJIM) documenting my thesis work at the University of California, San Diego. Here is the abstract for the essay:

This paper details the motivation and the method behind the creation of Camp La Jolla Military Park, a fictional national park on the current site of the University of California’s San Diego campus. Camp La Jolla Military Park borrows the iconography and language from historical battlefields as designated and protected by the U.S. Congress; the use of such iconography and language allows for the investigation, as well as consideration of the campus as a site for research and development of weapons and technology for the defense industry. The website http://camplajolla.org/ is the publicly accessible collective of the research and expression behind Camp La Jolla Military Park.

The project began by developing a data-collection system in order to record the historical, geographic, and economic ties that bind the relationships of power within the complex of military, industrial, and academic institutions in Southern California. Through appropriating the vernacular language and imagery of the National Park System the research was made public and accessible to audiences both within and outside of the protected spaces of art and academia. This writing introduces the concepts and processes of the project in order to encourage the restaging of other similar creative disturbances.

Ryan Boatright at Atelier Boba in Paris running one of my I am Unable to Fulfill Your Wish images through their new line plotter.

Through A Glass Darkly will be included in an international exhibition next month in Berlin, Germany.

Keine Z E I T / No TIME
Time phenomena. Phenomena of time.

The fourth international, interdisciplinary and topic centered exhibition of G.A.S-station.

48 Positiones out of science, art and literature.

Erik Andersen (Ger), video – Ewelina Aleksandrowicz, Andrzej Wojtas (UK), video – Elisa Asenbaum (A), video/installation – Thomas Bedürftig (Ger), science – Axel H. Bertram (Ger), video – Hubert Blanz (Ger), video – Thomas Born (Ger), fine art – Udo R. Bruening (Ger), performance – Amandine Crozat (FR), fotografie – Franz Embacher (A), science – Oliver Feigl (Ger), video – Volker Frechen (Ger), audio installation – Peter Funken (Ger), publicist – Bruno Goosse (BE), video – John Greiner (US), literature – Stephan Groß (Ger), video – Marion Habringer, E. Asenbaum (A), installation – Heiko Hecht (Ger), science – Anna Elisa Heine (Ger), literature, lecture – Batya Horn, Edition Splitter (A), literature – Helen Acosta Iglesias (ES), installation, – IMAGO e.V., Anne-Katrein Maschke, Ina Krauß (Ger), fashion, performance – Britta M. Ischka (A), video – Grace Kim (US), video – Ina Krauß (Ger), audio-collage – Renate Krätschmer, Elli Schnitzer (A), installation – Till Kreutzer (Ger), science – Verena Kuni (Ger), webproject, lecture – Anna Maria Kursawe (Ger), painting – Team K.U.SCH. (A), video – Wolfgang Marktl (A), science – Owen Mundy (US), video – Wolfgang Neipl (A), video – Julia Nuss (Ger), fine art – Jerzy Olek (PL), fine art, video – Herbert Pietschmann (A), science – Arnold Reinthaler (A), fine art – Hartmut Rosa (Ger), science – Miriam Schwedt (Ger), fotografie – Christiane Spatt (A), fotoinstallation – Renée Stieger (A), installation – Ralf Tekaat (Ger), drawing – Guichard Thibaud (FR), performance – Tomax (A), installation – Mirko Tzotschew (Ger), fotografie – Burchard Vossmann (Ger), fine art – Gisela Weimann (Ger), literature, reading – Peter Whittenberger (US), video

Vernissage: October 7th 2011 – 7 pm
Exhibition: October 8th 2011 until Februar 4th 2012

+++

Berlin: Thomas STUCK, Fon: 030 221 609 312 Mov: 0160 995 78 158
mail: info@2gas-station.net

Vienna: Elisa ASENBAUM, Fon: 0043 1 533 56 77
mail: elisa@2gas-station.net

Drain Magazine – SUPERNATURE

Supernature is more than nature as science, or nature as art – it exceeds the boundaries of these classificatory systems and opens up a space where the species of things conjure wonder and curiosity, as well as fear and repugnance.

This issue of Drain calls for a rigorous exploration of the habitual ways by which nature is known to us, a questioning that unfolds the limits of the subsensible imagination.

How does supernature allow us to read the unwieldly connections between nature, art and science? Is it possible to open up to a supernature which creates and lives through us?

Please send submissions to: Celina Jeffery or Avantika Bawa

Submission guidelines

I recently completed a redesign of United Faculty of Florida – Florida State University (UFF-FSU) union website at uff-fsu.org with colleague, Phil Steinberg. This site runs on WordPress CMS with an altered Twenty Eleven theme. Here are some screenshots:

I just moved back to Florida after a one year research project in Berlin and have subscribed to Comcast broadband service. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, though not because the tech showed-up 2 hours after the installation appointment window. Nor was it because he held loud personal conversations on his cell phone while he was setting up the service. No, the icky feeling is more corporate and selfish, and impedes much more into my private space than “Joe the cable guy” ever could.

Comcast made me install software on my computer in order to use their broadband.

Upon his arrival, “Joe” announced he would need access to my computer to setup broadband service. Understanding that most of the people Joe deals with might not be IT whizzes, and could manage to not be able to connect their machines without his help, I decided to let him use it rather than attempt to prove I was not a member of the usual group. After half an hour of complaining about previous customers to his friend on his cellphone, waiting for an other Comcast person to flip a switch allowing him to do his job, and multiple trips to his truck, he showed me that the internet was indeed accessible on my computer.

At this point the laptop was directly connected to the cable modem via an ethernet cable. He announced I was to follow the steps on the screen and he was out the door. The web page he had left up required me to agree to some terms, create a username and then… install software? Really? I tried to access the net without the final step but nothing doing. Unless I installed this software I was stuck. So I did it, still not believing that a company had really initiated this final invasion onto every customer’s computer. After it was done I had new bookmarks everywhere, for Comcast email, security, and some branding nonsense called “XFINITY” (I thought “X” was out with the ’90′s and “X”games?)

So I thought, “OK, Comcast, you got me, hit me with your best marketing slime. Whatever, I can delete the bookmarklets you installed in my browser, just let me access the service I paid for, wirelessly, on whichever device I want.”

But this is where the relationship got really creepy. Apparently when I installed the Comcast (spyware?) on my machine, it made note of my MAC address, a unique identifier of networked machines, so that it would only allow my machine (or another machine with that MAC address) to connect to the internet. This means when I attached a wireless router to the cable modem I could connect to the wifi, but there was no internet.

So it turns-out that Comcast is not only forcing their adware on customers, it’s also making it difficult (though not impossible) for them use more than one device. Presumably Comcast is doing this in order to circumvent sharing of services among neighbors, but the end result is that you can’t share the service between more than one device, or between roommates or spouses for that matter.

An example (albeit a geeky one): between my wife and I we have 2 laptops, 2 smartphones, and a desktop computer that all might be talking to each other or accessing the net. Comcast’s so-called internet service didn’t allow for any such geekery because it only allows one device, with the correct MAC address, to connect.

So, here’s what I did, on my Mac, with some help from my sister’s boyfriend, Tom, and a lot from Google, to get my linksys wireless router to work with Comcast internet.

1. Confirm you can access the internet with your machine connected directly to the Comcast cable modem.
2. Open Terminal and type (without the quotes): “ifconfig en0 | grep ether”
3. Now disconnect your computer from the modem and connect the modem ethernet cable to your wireless router. Make sure both are plugged-in.
4. Connect to your wireless router via the airport on your machine.
5. Go to the following link: http://192.168.1.1
6. Under Setup, choose DHCP as the Internet Connection Type. Save Settings.
7. Under Setup : Mac Address Clone, enter the alpha numeric characters returned from Terminal. Save Settings.
8. Configure your wireless router like you normally would and you are up and running.
9. Snicker at Comcast