Quick Response Corpse was a day-long event presented at Athens Plaython. Aiming at constructing an interactive art installation, the event was completed through three different stages; that is the workshop, the game and finally the exhibition of the outcome, which was open to the public.
Quick Response Corpse refers to the “exquisite corpse”, an artistic methodology that emerged through a game developed by the Surrealists. Each collaborator adds in a common composition, words or pictures, continuing linearly the composition in what the previous individual has contributed, without however knowing its content. In this way a unique common associative narration is being created.
Following this artistic methodology, Quick Response Corpse’s participants were called to create one collective interactive patchwork, the narration of which was be developed through information found online.
Each one of the participants was called to stitch/embroider one two-dimensional QR code. Then, the first participant to complete his/her embroidery was called to connect his/hers individually created code with information personally from the Internet. Only a part of this information could be revealed to the participant that had completed next the stitched/ embroidered QR code. The participant had then to think his own information, in association with the element that was revealed to him and to repeat the same procedure with his follower.
Stopover is a pseudo-historical documentation, fictional figures, comments on cultural activities, on the challenges accepted and risks involved for a place-passage, like the city of Thessaloniki.
The visitors are invited to freely position 7 speakers on top of the 14 available columns, this way unveiling in space different audio streams. Sounds of the past (miscellaneous songs from the city’s song contest, 1962-2007) are recalled from Thessaloniki’s memory to become part of an ever-changing audience-incited composition. The work was realized in collaboration of M.Koutsomichalis, M. Varela and K. Vafeiadou. The project was conceived for the inauguration of the 100 years since Thessaloniki became part of Greece.
Unidirectional Mono-View is a machine that interferes with stereo and mono analog reproduction techniques, imposing the one-dimensional experience of storytelling. Deliberately limitating the fullness, the breadth and freedom of perception.
The audio part is resourced from a found tape of 40s resistance songs (Antistasiaka) recorded in stereo sound. The right canal from A side has been mixed to the left canal of B side and the other way round. This is exported to Mono sound and recorded back to a tape.
As the Unidirectional Mono-View machine plays the tape, the circle motion of the tape is transferred to a view master reel which lies beneath a light projector. View-master works in stereoscopic view. The way it is placed, is projected as mono and the way the images displayed on the wall are not sequential. The narrative becomes incomplete and illegible. Also, the speed displayed slides depending on the speed of the tape affects visibility
Downtime (post-domestic fiction) refers to the representation of a system comprising of obsolete electric appliances.
Through hacking methodology, the redefinition of their original identity is investigated, thus giving them new uses. The objects have been removed from the original frame of reference becoming rich in functionality. The post-use of existing objects – tools, deliberately questions existing hierarchies. These capabilities extend beyond the system’s practical everyday life applications and become part of a new system. The new system created, a hybrid of analog and digital technologies, faces the depreciation of units not as a conclusion but rather as an opportunity to review their functional capabilities.
In this way, the conditions are being created to maintain the content of the objects active. Through the new use which is assigned to them, the objects become accessible to their reuse and manipulation, while they stand as a potential long-term archival resource.
While the electric appliances are the composers which produce live audio and video, the viewer’s subjective presence is crucial for the development of the project. Through his/her interaction with the objects, his/her personal intervention to the narrative produced, provides a constant influx of new material. Thus the experience evolves rather as a perceptual than a conceptual one.
The project served as a collaborative platform, through which the multilevel reading of the dynamic new system is ensured. Starting from DIY methodologies the project is completed into a DIWO (Do It With Others) ethics.
Read here Jussi Parikka’s review on Downtime (post-domestic fiction).
Participating artists are Ioanna Angelopoulou, Nefeli Georgakopoulou, Veroniki Korakidou, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Antonis Lyras, Afroditi Psarra, Maria Varela.
Workshop facillitator: Marinos Koutsomichalis (www.marinoskoutsomichalis.com)
Curating: Maria Varela – Frown Tails (www.frowntails.com)
Argleton is a town in the northwest of U.K. which appeared in Google maps without existing in reality.
This project attempts to locate the city of Argleton in a wider cultural narrative. The project comments on the cognitive conceptions of space understood through maps, the notion of place in a mobile and globalised world and the production of place as a container of experiences.
Buildings from all around the world were projected in a real time video synthesis, creating the hybrid space and time of a non-existent town. During the three days of the event the participants exchanged messages through Twitter, sharing experiences and information about this particular town.
Project in collaboration with Marianna Christofi
During the days of The false project workshop, a glossary was created substituting popular words appearing in social networks with words from Greek News portals. The taxonomy of words in the first column have resulted from research in social media and those in the second column from research in Greek News web sites. The popularity of a given word determined with which word it was substituted.
The experiment was a call and a cause to speak. By asking participants to replace the key words in their own verbal interactions they created their own personal language facet. A story started and was completed in multiple participatory layers revealing interesting narratives. This experiment focused on attempting to chart the limits of falsity and divergence in the linguistic creation and use. More than this it provided a novel medium to tease out the different aspects of falseness.
Project in collaboration with Marianna Christofi
The project concerns the construction and the performance of an algorithm that negotiates with a procedure of redefining one’s image – and his relationship with it – playing around with physical characteristics as elements of identification from a digital mechanism.
The procedure of identification is followed by the attachment of a series of new, peculiar, characteristics to the subject via new body images re-enacting a psychological situation of re-discovering our physical and moreover mental perception of our ego.