Category: Installation

August 13, 2011

PULP CRYPTION 2011

Pulp Cryption
- a prototype project featuring self-folding origami.

Many people are worried about having their identities stolen and consequently shred all kinds of documents that contain sensitive information. Yet such documents may be decrypted by painstakingly putting the shreds back together (as seen on CSI, etc).

- How could one protect oneself against such decryption?

The solution: encryption in three phase

Phase 1. Mashup
Use simple DIY techniques to recycle shredded documents as new sheets of paper to make decryption a virtual impossibility.

Phase 2. Camouflage
Add some extra form of camouflage, such as colour and aroma.

Phase 3. Special defense
As an extra precaution, make the encrypted documents further protect the data by folding themselves up when feeling threatened (#think: hedgehog). Hence the idea of self-folding origami.

The prototype shown here contains all the information you need to steal my identity. It has gone through encryption phases 1 and 2. I am still working on phase 3.

Prototype tests:

This work has been developing through my participation in the Soft Technology research project at Atelier Nord and the National Academy of the Arts in Bergen, 2010. Special thanks go to Hillevi Munthe, Øyvind Mellbye, Nick Stevens and Hilde Hauan for collaborative experiments with muscle wires.

URLS
Soft Technology @ Atelier Nord
Muscle wire worklab documentation
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 – Part 4

September 23, 2010

Desert Walker. Atmosphere 41°’

Desert Walker. Atmosphere 41°’
28 September – 3rd October 2010
Fest i Nova. 2nd International Festival of Contemporary Art
Art Villa Garikula, Akhalkalaki, Shida Qartli region, Georgia

In 2008 I was co-director and choreographer of a performance called Desert Walker by Motherboard (www.liveart.org) that took place on the Great Salt Playa in Utah, USA with people from Norway, Finland, Denmark and England.The performance took place only once and unannounced. It was based on the choreographic score of Samuel Beckett’s TV drama Quad (1981).

In July 2010 I traveled to Art Villa Garikula and held a workshop where a small scale version of this performance was re-enacted with an interdisciplinary group of artists and cultural workers from Georgia and France.

For the Fest i Nova exhibition I worked on a mixed media installation and performance event that seeks to tie these events together, drawing on documentation material and physical artefacts from both events.

I am interested in what happens when the same choreographic score is re-enacted elsewhere, and outside the confines of a screen or theatre. What senses and narratives of place can it evoke? How such ephemeral performance events, contextualized via the places they take part in and the people who participate in them, be documented without losing the sense of immediacy and presence?

My solution was to come up with a plan that allowed for the continued reworking of the documentation material, adding new elements to it, and inviting people to participate in it. I arrived at Fest i Nova on Monday 27th September with a portable studio made up of ideas, materials and media-making and presentation equipment that can be carried onto a plane as hand baggage. Collaborating with people at the villa, an installation and performance event schedule was made and presented as the installation was constructed.

The remains of an archaic bunker-like refrigerator was given a thatched roof, and in and around it, with sunshine, thunderstorms, torrential rain and power cuts, the atmosphere of Desert Walker at 41°’ was re-imagine and recreated.

CREDITS
Thanks to Fest i Nova and the Art Villa Garikula community, especially George Simonishvili, Vasil Macharadze and Misha Chelidze for installation assistance.

Desert Walker team, Garikula 2010
Jay Japaridze, Katie Bochoidze, Insa Nino, Shoko Chachua, Ira Lomsadze, Teiko Mgaloblishvili, Anna Bourdichon, Damien Coco, David Nemirovich Gabunia, Denis Gonobolin and Lasha Samadalashvili.

Desert Walker team, Utah 2008
Per Platou, Annesofie Norn, Leon Cullinane, Saila Hyttinen, Håkon Gundersen and Kristine Øren.

URLS:

September 4, 2010

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

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:

September 4, 2010

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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September 4, 2010

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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September 4, 2010

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