Technological Art

These days winter is showing its real face and cold wind gets through to all my jacket layers and touches the skin smoothly. Actually these days are mostly around zero degree but I was expected much colder before coming in Sweden. After all I feel this is not bad winter some how winter should be like this.

I was walking in the street last weekend and looking at shiny Christmas signs hanging in every corners of city. Most restaurant are crowded by people who came to celebrate early Christmas and eat Special Swedish Christmas Dish and preparing for incoming holiday. I like walking in the street at night under a lot of light and soft snow. It feels more Christmassy when you have actual snow and Christmas tree in town.

After an hour walking and enjoying weather, I went to my usual coffeehouse to finish my present book (The Lost Weekend). I mentioned this book previously, it old novel that was popular in 40’s and became famous movie with same name at 1945. I like whole story but everything goes so slowly and there are many unnecessary descriptions for everything. For example in first chapter when main character seat on his chair and thinking about his brother the writer start describing a lot of details about house and everything inside it for in few pages and I couldn’t use those descriptions to find relation to the main body of story or main characters personality. It was possible to get readers same image of descriptions by few sentences such as The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster. Even I didn’t like Auster’s story because of black drama but the writing skills was strong and you could have really good imagination about the father’s house in few sentences not some pages. Anyway, even the story and whey of telling it has old structure but subject is still interesting for me to follow. After two hours readying I finished chapter two even I don’t want to stop but it’s time to go home and wake early morning for work.

Today after work, I was arranging some photos that I got in Electrohype Exhibition in Malmo. This Exhibition was the biennial for computer based and technological art. The exhibition give an updated picture of the scene for newly created electronic art by presenting 14th works by some international artists. The biennial holds a common theme about time and ongoing processes. In the exhibition the viewer invites to experience works that are independent machines slowly working in a methodical way, alongside with objects that are animated with, for example, motors and lights and yet others controlled via mathematical rules. Other works show on a change in our perception of time or of our physical existence. Most interesting peace I saw that was Live2 by Bill Vorn from Canada. Live2 was a light installation based on the classic algorithm Game of Life. Each light represents an individual in an extremely simplified model of how life can be self-organizing. The individuals are born, live or die according to simple rules governed the surrounding neighborhood. I’m sure you can find more details in internet but when as a visitor I was front of the light board I could totally feel the flow of life in simple lamp network. Second interesting peaces was two robots that one of them could sense the motion and other could sense the distance and they had interesting conversation based on their observation from surrounded area. You could see this conversation on the big board behind them. I think sometime is really good to simplify the nature to understand its mechanism more clear and I should say it is really enjoyable as well.