CREDITS arranged by creative work
March 6, 2008 xw
March 16, 2008 jc
March 16, 2008 xw
March 17, 2008 ts
——————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Main Gallery

Cell Sculpture
Patrick Harrop; Gregory Rubin, JC Nesci, Candace Fempel, Evan Marnoch, Dirk Blouw, Jean-Sebastien Rousseau; Flower Lunn
Welded PVC plastic, mono-filament, fabric, water, plants.
Description: A net of transparent cells fills the airspace at diverse heights.

Calligraphic Video Projection
Jean-Sebastien Rousseau (Michael Fortin)
Max / Jitter, OpenGL, projectors, Mac G5 computers, cameras
Description: Multiple streams of camera input transmute to responsive video projected onto the surfaces of the Gallery, providing weather.

Sound Field
Timothy Sutton
Max / MSP, Logic, microphones, Mac G5 computer, hardware sound
processors, speakers
Description: Ten channels of synthesized and transmuted sound form a
palpable dynamical field.

Dynamic Light Field
Harry Smoak
Lighting instruments, DMX dimmers, LAN interface, Max, Macintosh computer
Description: 1. A row of luminous pattern at the base of the south wall refracts activity from the sidewalk. 2. An array of lights build and respond to conditions in the gallery.

Electrified Flight Sensate Weaving
Marguerite Bromley (XS Labs); Elliot Sinyor, Doug van Nort + IDMIL McGill; WYSIWYG group TML
20′ wide, 4′ high Jacquard-woven fabric, conductive thread, custom electronics, Arduino micro-processor, speaker, Mac Mini computer
Description: A 20′ wide weaving diverts flow around a corner of the gallery. It sounds as a visitor approaches or touches a pattern.

Black Box

Suitcase
Elena Frantova, Timothy Sutton (Lenka Novak, JS Rousseau)
Suitcase, plaster sculpture, electronics, sound.
Description: An old suitcase contains a doll-sized TML, with plaster figures illuminated by dynamic lights. Multi-channel, algorithmic sound playback system.

Cone Sculpture
Lenka Novak
Mono-filament, cast glass, projected video.
Description: Seven glass disks are suspended from cones of monofilament. A projection of a river textures on to the monofilament.

Plant Systems
Flower Lunn
Plants, moss, soil, wood, string, aquaria, water, pumps, gro-lights, timers
Description: Arranged moss clusters at the base of the vitrine. Water plants float in the cell sculpture. Soil-based plants climb trellis made of string and plastic tubing.

Vitrine Corridor
Louis-Andre Fortin, Flower Lunn, Nadia Frantova, Elena Frantova, Timothy Sutton
Cut and printed paper, found objects, plasma display, subwoofer, microphone, sound processing system.
Description: A line of stills from the official TML documentation videos forms a vector from Mackay Street end through 3 sections of the vitrine. The actual, messy history lies on the floor as found objects and images from the lab. Microphones and moss cluster at the air gaps between the vitrine’s glass plates, absorbing air, sound, moisture. Low sounds permeate the space.

Sebald Cabinet
Mark Sussman, Ayesha Hameed
Wooden cabinet, television set, speakers
Description: This cabinet, augmented by recorded sound and video, references a series of table-top theater pieces by Mark Sussman and colleagues in Great Small Works based on the writing of W.G. Sebald.

Documentation Pedastal
David Jhave Johnston
Cabinet, PC computer, Display monitor

Events

Remedios Terrarium Event
Sha Xin Wei, Morgan Sutherland, Emmanuele Thivierge (Yon Visell)
Max / C, Mac G5 computer
Description: The Gallery’s weather constantly evolves according to pre-composed tendencies as well as activities inside and outside the space.

Vernissage March 20
Lynn Beavis, JA Drolet
Thursday March 20, 18h00 - 20h00

Touch2 March 20, Dusk (19h06)
Choreographer: Soo-yeon Cho
Dancers: Soo-yeon Cho, Kiani dal Valle
Edited video: Desh Fernando
Video & Projection: Jae-Ok Lee
Real time video design : Jean-Sébastien Rousseau
Set design & Construction : Josée-Anne Drolet, Pascal Simard, Jae-Ok Lee
Costume design : Josée-Anne Drolet, Jae-Ok Lee
Touch1 video : Touch creators, filmed by Desh Fernando
Touch1 sound design : Timothy Sutton
Touch2 sound editing : Soo-yeon Cho
Touch2 sound sources : Timothy Sutton, Freida Abtan, Akumu
Lighting : Harry Smoak
Coordination : Josée-Anne Drolet
Technical consultation : Harry Smoak, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau

Description: A 6 minute version of the Touch1 dance video of two dancers will be projected onto west wall. At dusk, Soo bursts from a paper structure on the west wall. She and Kiani dance among the suspended cells and the Tapestry, leaving visual traces on the wall.

I’ve simplified the event topology to a bare minimum that still has a chance of flow in two dimensions, and has a beginning, muddle, end. Let’s call it the VISIT4 topology, since it’s got only 4 states: NIGHT, DAY(=DAYDREAM=DESERT), GLASS, FIRESTORM.

We media folks met and talked about the experiential aspect of these states last week. Basically, the room leaves its NIGHT activity as the clock shows it’s Gallery business hours (9 - 19h?).

NIGHT is time for the Gallery to dance (danse macabre, sibelius’ valse triste, hiphop, etc. according to the season) as you like. It would be interesting to suggest autonomous life, autonomous intentionality, locked behind glass.

DAY is when the clock shows Gallery is open for business and there’s a minimal activity in the room. (We can set the threshhold just below one-body’s-worth of activity by calibration under the Gallery’s conditions, or we can use the surveillance camera trained on the receptionist desk to see when someone is near the receptionist area.) It could be interesting to characterize DAY state as when no visitor is there in the Gallery, but it’s open, and showing its dreams. What those “dreams” are is up to the creators to interpret. We did speak about playing back processed, previously recorded material.

As visitors infuse the Gallery, the room gets “wetter” (derives more energy from visitors). As it gets wetter, more weather happens: i.e. the state tends away from DAY and toward the mixture between GLASS - FIRESTORM .

GLASS is viscuous, liquid, continuous. In this state, horizon is distinct from sky: the projections on walls are distinct from projection on the ceiling. The visitor may be able to “write” on the surfaces — only one attractor (that associated with the biggest blob?), permits writing, e.g using a scattering of dust.

FIRESTORM is violent; sparky, atoms in void. Maybe nervous in the sense that the dynamics are quite sensitive to perturbations from sensors. Eg. motion from camera input drives the particles very hard, bc the particles’ masses are low, or attractors’ gravitational masses are high.

In terms of physical configuration, what distinguishes GLASS from FIRESTORM could be how people are positioned and / or moving near the sculptural elements in the room: the Cells, the Sensate Tapestry, possibly the Suitcase in the other, hidden room.

I don’t know what activity should tend to correlate with GLASS & FIRESTORM in the most tangible or compelling way. My first cut guess would be to sense whether people (a person) are gathered close to a (any) sculptural element. For example, people “touching” (within threshhod of our sensors) any part of the Cell structure or Tapestry could send the system into FIRESTORM.

This we’ll have to work out in situ, in vivo, of course.

here are two videos edited together from Patrick’s cell demo a few weeks ago.
the first video is a 5 min demo with sound; the second is a rapid fly-thru of building a cell circuit (w/o sound)

See Patrick’s drawings of cells now in the TML Galleries / album “cells” –particularly the suspension side image:

jelly + cell

2_cell

musclecells

nervecell

plant cell

shadow-projection cell

shadow-projection cell

sonic cell

structure_side_image

suspension system

Hi Soo, Kiani, Josée-Anne,

What do you think of this as the beginning: The idea would be that Touch2 picks up where Touch1 ends, in an indirect way, In fact we could project the Desh’s video onto the Atrium wall right up to the point where we see Kiani’ facing the camera, fading.

What if the way we open Touch2 is to have Soo, the one who emerges from the womb (in Touch1) emerge from the Atrium wall in the following way. I imagined that the emergent dancer (Soo) would, initially be covered in a very large film of tissue paper wheatpasted to the wall, so that her body is behind of a continuous sheet of very thin translucent fibrous material following the contours of her body and blending into the rest of the wall. (Josee-Anne, Harry gave precise ideas of how to make this. He and I think it is eminently buildable. We will always make it breathable, and as comfy as possible! Of course we have to see what Soo and Kiani think
Soo’s initial pose could be a frozen moment of a movement of escape, emergence. Kiani initially would be offstage (ready to enter from the blackbox gallery). Desh’s video could be projected over Soo’s body-as-part-of-wall-as-screen.

At a given moment, (say the end of the video), Soo would emerge out of the tissue paper wall, bursting through the layers of tissue paper,
(EXFOLIATION is one of the themes of Remedios.)

The sound could be quite strong bc paper is stiff. I imagined with Harry that we could prepare this as a “costume” in the form of a sandwich of a cardboard back and tissue paper at least 8′ x 8′…. It is important not to read as clothing, but as “wall”. The edges of this would have to be dressed to make flush with the actual wall.

Obviously we would pre-assemble of sandwich, complete with pre-drilled holes in the wall for attachment of the sandwich to the wall, and store the assembly somewhere in the Gallery together fast-drying plaster-water mix ready for rapid assembly minimum time before showtime. That time is the time of comfortable wear for the Dancer, of course. We must figure out a way to rapidly assembly, and dress the set+costume, before — but not much before — the vernissage starts.

After this event, we could paint over the eruption “scar” so that it simultaneously remains as evidence of the event, and can hold projected image, so subsequent Jitter imagery would pick up the traces of the physical peeling layers of the exfoliation. (Thanks to Harry.)

Cheers,
Xin Wei

On 19-Feb-08, at 3:43 AM, Josée-Anne wrote:

I saw Kiani on Sunday and we talked about it. That’s cool! She’s interested.

I need to check with the Gallery director tomorrow and see if we can cut into on of the Gallery’s walls.

JS, we would probably want to to project Desh’s film first and at the end (shortly before the dancers emerge from the wall) move-on to the one of the patches that you have been using to do it. Would that be something possible?

XW I’m back at the drawing board on this. Now trying to put together the paper and what I showed you before… did you have sketches for this as well? Or an event design.

Talk with Harry re specific construction ideas, and bring back notes. Then we can enroll production help. I would say Marine Antony.

I’m also wondering, Soo, if you think the movement should be centered on/close-to the floor or not. (Vertical crack - like the Remedios paintings or Horizontal-on the floor to accommodate Touch-like movements…)

Whatever the movement — Touch, as Soo and Kiani know, is concerned with the ethical medium in-between bodies.
See the forwarded email re Aristophanes below.
Touch2 indirectly (NOT literally) follows after the emergence event in Touch1.

Could we schedule a meeting towards the end of the week, as things get better defined.

Thanks.
Bye.

On Feb 19, 2008 3:00 AM, SOO <chohansoo@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Jo,

Yeah!

I asked Kiani and she would be available as well for the event. If you want, we can set a schedule to talk about it more specific.

Soo

On Feb 17, 2008 9:36 PM, Josée-Anne <joseeanne@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I’d like to work with the Touch team (and possibly JS) on costumes and a temporary installation for the video-movement performance event Touch2. If there is time/interest.

I thought that Touch2 was part of the vernissage event? any updates regarding this? What do people think, together, separate, beginning, middle, end…

On the calendar we have the opening on Monday the 17th. What about the other event(s)?

Reminder: 3 Weeks before setup, 4 Weeks before opening.

On Feb 16, 2008 10:30 AM, x w <shaxinwei@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

Among those of you who are not already committed to one of the
productions, would one of you be able to take charge of managing the
events: the vernissage, the possible performances (Touch2 and Sebald3) ?

Xin Wei

Begin forwarded message:
From: x w <shaxinwei@gmail.com>
Date: January 27, 2008 1:07:05 PM EST (CA)
To: sutton Timothy <tim@synthist.net>, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau <jsrousseau@gmail.com>, Morgan Sutherland <morgan@morgansutherland.net>, Ludwig Manahan <vjmoots@gmail.com>, Soo-yeon Cho <chohansoo@gmail.com>, Marine Antony <marine.antony@gmail.com>, desh Fernando <nacando@gmail.com>
Subject: Aristophanes on love; and going beyond Aristophanes

Hi Touch Folks,

People have made excellent work preparing for the shoot. So we’re almost there. This is a good moment to take stock of where we are in spirit….

In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes presented a history of sexed love, based on Zeus splitting the atom of round, primeval man. In the beginning, man-woman were powerful, spherical creatures, with four legs and four arms. But for their arrogance, Zeus split them into halves that Apollo healed and shaped into the sexed bodies we have today. Doomed to seek our other halves.

I’m augmenting this myth by de-emphasizing the human organisms and foregrounding the medium of tissue and the liquid plenum of the world. So the effects we’ll see from the live video process will make palpable the

0. the single composite body (only light, some moments of delay)
1, the bodies internal forces (textures — only within the bodies)
2. the forces between the bodies (with bodies in black silhouette)
3. the forces suffusing everything - the bodies as well as the space exterior to the bodies.

How the visual dynamics work is up to JS. The staging of the different swirling video textures as the event unfolds step by step, should suggest that:

1. ethical relations are mediated by tissue (substance, not formal grammar of a moving part of body);
2. the very fabric of space itself is a medium (not just body tissue).

So the “womb” is merely a context for a dramatic event of “birth” but we don’t have to over emphasize the womb (too clichéd, and too over-coded with expectations). But the birth event itself is the moment at which the sound connotes to much huger space, and more clarified voices — as Tim has been suggesting — and when the video textures display the delayed forces / tensions built up from the earlier activity between the two separated halves — Soo and Kiani.

Compliments to all of you,
Xin Wei

514-817-3505

Hi Patrick, JC, JS, Harry,Tim,Does the sketch below make sense? There could be two phyla of cells: “cloud” cells near the ceiling, and “head-height” cells. The strato-cells are filled with an image-bearing material (lexan, tracing paper, white chalk dust). The head-height cells are the diverse species of cells as described before.

JC made one cell with lexan embedded into it for JS to test projection. If we project from floor up to cells onto ceiling we should have a lot of coverage. Will the Jitter textures as pictured in JS’ recent Gallery posts work on these ceiling “cloud” cells?The Jitter projected on to the “cloud” cells can be quite distinct from the Jitter projected onto the atrium wall. OR it could be the same field, but with a variation as the one’ eye lifts from the atrium wall to the ceiling. see the attachment of the Sala dei Giganti in thePalazzo Te.During the GLASS state, the atrium wall and the cloud ceiling can show distinct Jitter visuals, but perhaps in the FIRESTORM state,we can achieve a dizzying effect by filling the entire gallery with one continuous field of MeteorShower.As the state evolves from GLASS to FIRESTORM, JS’s instrument(s) can go from sluggish translucent oily slicks, to the fast-streaking (very low inertia) particles that whip around the movements of the visitors. Maximum can show brief flashes of very different structure, such as the needles, but I’d prefer to not use visible planar/linear geometrical shapes unless they can fit into the alchemical. The point is to fuse symbolic and natural orders, rather than “cast” geometrical shapes into matter. (Neo-euclidean form may emerge from material flow, part of which is due to human activity, but neo-euclidean form should not be imprinted by us designers onto matter. I’m not dead set against figurativeness, only that the figurative should come directly out of and dissolve back into the visual material’s idiomatic dynamics. Similarly for sound — but I think for sound this comes for free. What do you think, Tim?

Sala dei Giganti, Palazzo del Te, Mantovahttp://www.palazzote.eu/W3C/w3c_quicktime/set_giganti03iscrizioni.asp

New — rough concept — sketches are up considering,

1. cell architecture (suspension areas & system)
2. traffic mapping (in rapport to cell architecture)

Give us your ideas.

This here is my proposal for a cell, based on the “Mother Cell” concept.  It’s name is “Garbo”.

Who is Garbo?

Garbo loves to live in excess. It’s a cell that consumes, consumes, and consumes so much that it is forced to share. There is only one Garbo cell, because there is not enough excess to feed mor ethan one.

To what type of cell can Garbo connect to?

Any cell that produces excess. The more the merrier.

What does Garbo provide to the visitor?

Garbo provides a funnel as input, and a tap as output. A passer-by that does not like their drink, can feed it to Garbo who will digest it with whatever else the other cells excrete. Then, the passer-by can refill their cup with the results from Garbo - a souvenir of sordid sorts.I presume just seeing everything mix together will be more entertaining for people than having a sampling of the goop.

What does Garbo provide to the other cells?

Garbo provides access to goop. The collection of the excesses of all other cells.Garbo is kind, it likes sharing it’s excesses

Where does Garbo live?

Beneath the cells, so that the forces of gravity can help with expedient delivery of the excesses.

What about upper-level cells?

They can have Garbo Jr. with a link draining into Garbo.

Here are brainstorming sketches, some from before any formal RT meeting (thus quite unfocused, lacking direction) and some from immediately prior to/during yesterday’s Campfire meeting.

These sketches are only meant to initiate discussion and brew ideas. Please comment, be it positive or negative.