amanda steggell : testing testing

Flight Bags

Flight Bags. Transparent and resealable (work-in-progress)
EU flight safety regulations
Dangerous liquids
Body fluids
More or less innocent

Frequently asked questions concerning EU flight regulations and fluids in hand baggage.

What do you mean by liquid?
Some things are evidently liquid, like drinks and perfume. Others are less obvious, like gels, pastes, lotions, mixture of liquids and solids and the contents of aerosols. Some examples of these are toothpastes, hair gels, face creams, liquid cosmetics, lip-gloss, deodorants, perfumes and shaving foam.

Even bottles of water?
Yes, even water that is in a container over 100ml is not permitted through security.

Photo experiments from trips between Bergen and Berlin 2009:

L-R: Beauty free, Crack, Duty free, MC Wax Air, MC Wax

What are the limits?
Only liquids in containers of 100ml or less, fitting comfortably into a one litre transparent plastic bag (approximately 20cm x 20cm) when fully closed, are permitted. This transparent bag, with containers of 100ml should then be presented at the passenger security screening area.

Can I bring my medication on board the aircraft?
Yes, passengers are allowed to bring essential medication and dietary requirements in liquid form through the screening points in the quantities needed during their trip. Passengers may be required to demonstrate that what they are carrying is real and for genuine purposes, and not something less innocent.

Can I bring baby food/milk through security?
Yes, baby food or food for people on special diets is exempt from the new regulations. Passengers are allowed to bring these items through the screening points in the quantities needed during their trip.Passengers may be required to demonstrate that what they are carrying is real and for genuine use and not something less innocent.

Status report:
Next phase: I will travel between Oslo and Stockholm at least four times before 2011. I will make more flight bags and try to photograph them on the security belt.

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Tagged beauty free, crack, dangerous fluids, duty free, EU regulations, flight, waxed

2010 09 06 amandajs Photography
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Energy Bank 2010

Energy Bank 2010 (work in progress)
Public artwork.
Public facility.
Target audience: Random pedestrians; tourists, city dwellers, commuters, etc.

Energy Bank is a special type of bank; an altruistic public power dispensing machine that generates, stores and dispenses electricity derived from kinetic energy (muscle power) for recharging electronic mobile devices. It functions when pedestrians (clients) interact (transact) with its moving parts. While there are already prototype ideas for such a facility in circulation as well as similar commercial products, my version aims to be fully functional, fun and communicative by playing with actualities and metaphors of the production, consumption and distribution of power and energy (think Geothe’s Faust!). —

Energy Bank re-invents the fast-fading public facility through the concept of a chain of electricity banks. From minibanks, to retro-fitted petrol stations and new bank designs, it envisions and investigates what forms and aesthetics such banks could take on in different locations and environments. The Current model, The Pioneer is based on the idea of a free-standing revolving door.

An Energy Bank is thought of both as a physical object and a conceptual container for collaborations with an audience that are meaningful as they relate to/investigate the public’s immediate social and cultural environment. On the one hand is the idea of an Energy Bank as an altruistic utilitarian machine that proposes a solution to pollution and provides a public service. On the other, an artwork that celebrates natural resources and commemorates (ab)use of the urban landscape by proposing an alternative one. In resonance with events that have occurred or are occurring, it generates new events. As an installation that works experientially, it propose a potential for becoming a focal point of discussion concerning real events and experiences of the place it occupies. Whether people choose to use the bank as a game, competing on how much energy they can deposit, a meditative experience, or simply to withdraw energy, the Pioneer can become not only an attraction in the city, but a powerful instrument for the imagination that can work beyond the scope of its parts.

URL: Energy Bank sketches on flickr

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Status report:
Pilot project funded by Public Art Norway.
Grant application sponsored by Atelier Nord, Oslo.

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Tagged alternative energy, public art, public utility, Work-in-progress

2010 09 04 amandajs Art in public space
Choreographed sites
Installations
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Electromagnetic Fountain 2008

Temporary public installation, urban intervention
Fill with water, plug in and play
Target audience: random pedestrians; city dwellers, tourists and passers by
Video documentation

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Every city has an invisible twin, an architecture in flux made up of electromagnetic waves emitted by its numerous electrical and wireless communications devices. The water jets and lights of the Electromagnetic Fountain are programmed to respond to these waves as they pass by in its near vicinity. The fountain is transportable and designed to appear in urban spaces for a limited period of time. Once loaded off a lorry it only needs to be filled with water and plugged into a electricity supply to work. Everything else happens automatically. All its technological devices (computer, VLF detector, network boxes, pumps, etc) are hidden in its base.Though the fountain dances to ambient signals, an audience can influence and play with its kinetic behavior by coming close to its antenna with one’s own cell phone and other electronic devices. Each brand, model and type of device create different responses.

It has eight programmed choreographic sequences that are triggered by various qualitative changes of the signals it detects and digitizes, such as pulse and amplitude. The discreet parameters of these qualities also affect the speed and rhythm of each sequence and the jumps and drops of each of the five peripheral the water jets, organized in the geometric form of a pentagon. The central jet is the “solar plexus” of the fountain. Both it, and the colour changing lights work together and reflect the over-all flow and strength of the detected signals. The lights shift back and forth through the frequency ranges of blue to violet, magenta and red. In all cases the fountain responds most strongly to “change”.

The Electromagnetic Fountain recycles both water and electromagnetic waves as artistic material, and its bowl is recycled too – a redundant parabola antenna dish that once transmitted analogue signals from Norway’s monumental TV tower before the transition to digital signals occurred. Now it has been given new life as a “placeholder” in an artwork that creates a focal point, a temporal oasis, a playground and a meeting place that changes the ambient flow of the city space. Finding out where to place the fountain involves electromagnetic field trips/ surveys and observations of how people moved through and used the city square through out the cycles of a day. The location of the fountain, in addition to the interaction design, form a set of ground rules for something comparable to contact improvisation, with the “contact” occurring via human and machine-enabled touchings and touch-like sensings of bodies, codes and spaces extending through technological and non-technological networks and systems. As a form of public intervention, the sudden appearance and disappearance of the fountain draws attention to the hidden nature of the invisible twin city, as well as the territorial issues and uncertain health risks related to the increasing use of wireless technology in daily life.

Exhibitions
March-July 2010: Norwegian Telecom Museum, Oslo
September 2009: National Research Days, Porsgrunn
November 2008: City Square, Stavanger, Article 08, biannual exhibition for electronic and unstable art.
November 2008: Porsgrunn square, Culture Night.

Credits
Producer/curator: Atle Barcley/ROM3
Industry Partner: NLI Engineering AS
NLI team: Øystein Lia, Svein Kjetil Haheim, Espen Jorgensen and Geir Erbo
EM sniffers: Martin Howse (uk/de)
Programming help: Trond Lossius (no), BEK (Bergen Centre for Electronic Art)

Funded by: ROM3, Arts Council Norway
Sponsorship: NLI Engineering AS

URLS:

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Tagged Electromagnetic Fountain, Electromagnetic radiation, EM detection, EM visulisation, public art

2010 09 04 amandajs Art in public space
Choreographed sites
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The Emotion Organ 2007

Emotion Organ Synaesthetic simulacrum machine
Participatory installation
Target audience: first person player
Video documentation

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“Time has passed us by,” Maury said at once to me. “Our electronic organ is obsolete.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “The trend is actually _toward_ the electronic organ because that’s the way America is going in its space exploration: electronic. In ten years we won’t sell one spinet a day; the spinet will be a relic of the past.”
“Louis,” Maury said, “please look what our competitors have done. Electronics may be marching forward, but without us. Look at the Hammerstein Mood Organ. Look at the Waldteufel Euphoria. And tell me why anyone would be content like you merely to bang out music.”
- We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick

Why would anyone want to merely bang out music, when you could have euphoria? Why be satisfied with an ordinary spinet when you could have The Emotion Organ? Developed over a rigorous three-year period in a small studio in Oslo The Emotion Organ is a synaesthetic, simulacrum machine that takes its public on a phenomenological journey through the physical senses. With the organ, you can hear colors and smell sounds. The Emotion Organ is also a time machine. It connects obsolete technology with the new, combining a 19th century organ with contemporary gadgetry to create a hybrid form that is part performance object and part scientific instrument for studying phenomenon. When playing the organ, various combinations of chords and foot pedals trigger cross-sensory events, such as the projection of visual patterns, vibrations, and/or emission of compelling aromas. Each viewer is invited to play the organ and come up with his or her own set of discoveries. As a sculptural object used to explore processual practices, Steggell’s The Emotion Organ is an exciting contribution to a contemporary artistic practice and redefinition of artistic roles from makers to facilitators that enable the exploration of complex relational, networked and social experiences.
(text by Michelle Teran)

Exhibitions
June/July 2010: IMAA On.Fire and WARC Gallery,Toronto
September 2009: Ultima International Festival of Contemporary Music, Oslo
Oct/Nov 2008: ACM Multimedia 2008 Interactive Arts Program, Science World British Columbia, Vancouver
October 2007: Lydgalleriet, Bergen (solo)
June 2007: Norwegian Short Film Festival (festival artist)
April 2007: Close Encounters, Stockholm
January 2007: Norwegian Theatre Academy (solo)

Credits
Programming help: Piotr Pajchel

Funded by
Arts Council Norway
Østfold University College
Cultural Fund of the Municipality of Bergen
Norwegian Embassy in Canada

URLS:

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Tagged art installation, Emotion Organ, interactive art, synaesthesia

2010 09 04 amandajs Installations Comments (0) Permalink

Desert Walker. The Impossible Mission

Desert Walker. The Impossible Mission (work in progress)

About a performance that virtually nobody could witness …..

and a text I have been trying to write since 2008.

On a stage that stretches beyond the scope of human vision, where the weather can shift faster than the blink of an eye, four solo walkers performed a simultaneous act of endurance – a serial choreography inspired by Samuel Beckett’s experimental TV drama Quad. It was performed unannounced and only once. To be able to see Desert Walker in its entirety would require hovering high above the performance area for a period exceeding 11 hours. What is the remaining artefact of this project? A text, the presentation of the documentation material, a new work? This is what I’m trying to find out.

URLS:

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Status report:
Funded twice over by Arts Council Norway, manuscript development.
The application for the first writing period was sent via the committee for visual art to the committee for the performing arts. The application for the second period was sent from the committee for the performing arts to the “diverse other” category. I look forward to seeing where the application for the final period will go, when the time comes. The latest phase of this project took place in July 2010 during a month residency at the Art Villa Garikula, Georgia, and the results will be presented at the International festival of Contemporary Art, Fest i Nova at the villa in October 2010.

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Tagged land art, Performance work, public art, Work-in-progress

2010 09 04 amandajs Art in public space
Choreographed sites
Performance work
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In Death Valley 2005

In Death Valley, everywhere we looked, gently waving stands of desert gold blossoms danced in the wind, their daisy-like faces punctuated with vibrant orange centers, Motherboard 2005
Kinetic installation of sound, light, metal, salt and aroma
Video documentation

… There are moments when being an art critic feels like a burden, and the act of describing and expressing opinions feels almost perverse in that it is hard to do so without violating the actual experience. Per Platou and Amanda Steggell have created a work that I am so intensely in love with that I am actually a bit embarrassed to talk about it. It is as though the work is custom-made for my private feelings and longings, however I can’t put my finger on exactly what or how. At the same time, it seems to be the exhibition’s most universally accessible work – because it is so instantaneously sensuous. (Erlend Hammer, Billedkunst 04.06)

URL: In death valley webpage

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Tagged art installation, kinetic sculpture, Motherboard, Per Platou

2010 09 04 amandajs Installations Comments (0) Permalink

The 8th Sister 2005

Pro_sq_8s The 8th Sister. An exercise into the depths of Freudian perception, Motherboard 2005
Underwater sculpture to be viewed via echosounder display in Træna, off the coast of North Norway
Target audience: fisher people, seafarers and tourists
Video documentation

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The 8th Sister is an art project that investigates the practical and contextual implications of creating an underwater sculpture in which its “true” form is manifested as an image on an ultrasound/echosounder display. Most people today are familiar with 3D, and comprehend 3D as representations in a two-dimensional form (on a screen) in computer games and as animations on TV and in films. The 8th Sister poses questions with the general acceptance of this type of reality rendering in that the actual process transforms depth to surface – from 3D to a flat 2D. The manifestation of the naked woman on an ultrasound screen can evoke deep speculations of the sculpture’s actual physical form, while offering a cheeky, humorous and mystic resonance of clumsy pin-up posters that once flavoured male dominated workplaces.

URL: The 8th Sister website

Tagged art installation, Motherboard, Per Platou, public art, site specific art, Træna, underwater sculpture

2010 09 04 amandajs Art in public space
Choreographed sites
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