13: exhibit performance

Images courtesy of Morgan Sutherland.

laurie simmons

Hylozoic Soil

Annette Messager

Marine Antony, a dancer and Fine Arts student at Concordia University, stopped by the Black Box to share some thoughts on my project. A few of the dancers were really interested in the idea of locating sensors on themselves and then translating their motion to the marionettes. Marine also brought some fascinating images by French artist Annette Messager. I saw Messager's work when I was at the Centre Pompidou in Paris over last summer. Her pieces are fascinating, grotesque, stuffed, moving, dramatic...I could go on. Messager was awarded the Lion d'Or at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

The 2007 Venice Biennale showcased some of Messager's work as well as a few other very interesting installations working with robotics and inflatable devices.

12: performance

Installing our work in the black box was really gratifying. The shuffling, spinning, dripping, typing, whirling, jerking and scraping of our grotesque monsters was magnified by the light, sound and video effect wizardry of the TML team. To paraphrase the words of Gregory Beck Rubin, " the projects we brought to Montreal are not the ones we see here tonight". The atmosphere of the black box changed the way we saw our own work and re-established in my mind the importance of light and sound in any environment. The monsters really began to take on a life of their own. The layers of complexity: light, sound, movement, and time created an enchanting space where exhibit-goer's could manipulate and interact with our strange creatures.

Of course, the highlight of Montreal experience for me was watching Homunculus perform. The dance of these puppet creatures confirmed proof of concept for my own work with sync discs. Fundamentally, the circuit worked, the motors ran, the propellers whirled (all except one) and the strings jostled the exo-skeletons around in space almost gracefully. The story was told. The creature's subtle, smaller movements, were just as mesmerizing-- and perhaps even more uncanny than the larger continuous gestures. The system worked. Reflecting on the performance has suggested a few compelling directions in which to begin questioning the tectonic substance and architectural ramifications of my work.

RHYTHM ANALYSIS & DIFFERENCE IN REPETITION:

Because the sync disc I used to control the motors was small in diameter (one revolution every 20 seconds) the dance of Homunculus was a simple continuous repetition over the course of the two hour exhibit. Essentially, over time the dance began to fold back in on itself, and as the motor batteries died, the pattern became less noticeable and the sporadic movements of the strings less determinate thus, unintentionally, ambiguity emerged in the performance. Hume wrote, "Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated but does change something in the mind which contemplates it." Gilles Deleuze proposed the notion that difference is introduced to a system through repetition. A discussion of his seminal work, Repetition and Difference will soon follow. Classical Greek and Roman architecture draws heavily on order and repetition. On repetition, architect, Bernard Tschumi hypothesizes that there is no architecture without repetition: "with its rows of windows, columns, bricks, steps etc. architecture inevitability is the art of repetition". More than any other art, architecture depends on the nearly endless accumulation of similar elements. "A need for commerce has created the repetition of stackable floors (skyskraper), a need for power resulting in the repetition of courtyards (Forbidden city, Beijing), a need for mass housing: repetition of units (Levittown) and the need for economic development creating the repetition of nearly identical cities world wide."

ENCHANTMENT AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST GRAVITY:

Performance has always held an aura of enchantment. The audience, through the proscenium, witnesses the creative drama of the players and is suspended in an expression of delight. Similarly, technology-- automatons and the ghost in the machine, holds mystique. It is this thrill and surprise, by which an artefact or environment is experienced, that measures our engagement with a space and place. The technologically enabled dance of Homunculus, the light, sound and play of shadow created for and during the performance was offered as the object of enchantment, attracting exhibit-goer's to an inherently transformative performance which shifted in significance and understanding over the course of the exhibit. McCarthy, Wright, Wallace and Dearden explore the concept of enchantment as a means of creating criteria for interactive experience in Human-Computer Interaction. They postulate that, "enchantment engages with paradox and ambiguity, putting being into play in an open world. This contributes to creating depth in a system or object that allows it to contain within it the possibility for complex, layered interpretation even the kind of interpretation that surprises the person interpreting." 1 Enchantment becomes a means of describing an indeterminate and evolving state of interaction, where the meaning of the interactive object or environment remains exploratory and unpredictable. 2

Homunculus draws reference from the grotesque and approaches the conceptualizaton of space and place primarily through the motions of the marionette. Heinrich von Kliest's essay "On the Marionette Theatre" argues the relationship between dance and the movement of the puppets. His fictional character Herr C. argues of the puppet that "each movement... will have a center of gravity; it would suffice to direct this crucial point to the inside of the figure. The limbs that function as nothing more than a pendulum, swinging freely, will follow the movement in their own fashion without anyone's aid. He further stated that this movement was really quite simple; that each time the center of gravity was moved in a direct line, the limbs would start to describe a curve; and that often when simply shaken in an arbitrary manner, the whole figure assumed a kind of rhythmic movement that was identical to dance." The dance of the puppets and the loss of the proscenium is an instance of interaction which communicates the boundaries and depth of an interactive space--or an event space* to the audience.3

*The concept of event space is borrowed from the work of architect Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and choreographer Carol Brown, as defined in Sites of Flux: imagining space in the dance-architectures of The Changing Room and Sea Unsea. 2006 .

hexagram//tml//montreal 2007

02: Monday. Arrive at Concordia

At Concordia we were introduced to Sha Xin Wei and his crew of talented techies at the TML (Topological Media Lab).  The TML is a research arm of Hexagram " a media arts and technologies research/creation institute".  At their disposal the TML has the "black box" an approximately 25' high space with permanent lighting grid, control booth, a raised concrete floor, black damper panel clad walls and a giant projection screen wall.  The space is a dynamic environment for total media and sound work.  The TML crew brought new iMacs, high end digital video cameras, streaming spot cameras, microphones-- condenser mics, contact mics (which record vibrations), wireless mics, projectors, sound mixers and synthesizers, a lighting board, and all the software and hardware needed to make the black box into one large grotesque perturbation.  It was a pleasure getting to work with Harry, JS, Marie Josee, Morgan, Elliot, Flower and the rest of the crew over the week.

Image courtesy of Daniel MacGibbon.

03: Tuesday. Hexagram Tour

Floors 10 and 11 in the Engineering and Visual Arts building are devoted to Hexagram and the approximately 80 researchers (including graduate students) that are supported by the facilities.  Hexagram operates coordinately between the Université du Montréal, L'Université du Québec a Montréal (UQAM) and Concordia University.  Hexagram boasts state of the art sound, animation and film editing technology-- including suites for Avid, Final Cut, and Maya.  There are also rooms devoted to rapid prototyping equipment such as 3D printers and scanners.  The 3D printer uses a sugar-type solution to build objects-- the printer deposits the ink much like an ink jet printer.  The user has to have some familiarity with the proccess as the fragility of the objects varies with size. When completing especially small pieces the application of "ink" has to b controlled by physically re-orienting the piece as it is being printed to allow for the best results.  There were also large format fabric plotters, which allowed for printing on everything from silk to vinyl, high resolution large format paper plotters, and an amazing collection of looms and other weaving equipment including an automated Jacquard loom.  Hexagram also offers a metal machining shop, wood shop and studio space for installations and research.

The Jacquard loom, 3D printer, 3D scanner and  prototypes/molds produced by the 3D printing process.

Image(s) courtesy of Nick Bell.  Sound studio and editing suite complete with speakers and cube shaped mathematically designed acoustic tiles which decrease reverberation.  The corners also have fitted panels to reduce the base reverberation.

Mark Sussman, an assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and a founder and co-artistic creator of Great Small Works, a theatre collective in NYC, stopped by the black box to discuss his work.  I was especially interested in Mark's lecture because his background is in puppetry, performance and the toy theatre.  Mark spoke about the importance of staging work, about notions of impression, spectacle and the unpredictable.  His talk re-asserted for me the importance of connection through narrative in my own work, and he highlighted for me that the thrill and surprise by which an artifact or environment is experienced becomes a measure of the engagement by which we explore our own surroundings. 

Mark also sent me Heinrich von Kleist's essay, " On the Marionnette Theatre" of which I have included a passage below:

In addition, he went on, these puppets possess the virtue of being immune to gravity's force. They know nothing of the inertia of matter, that quality which above all is diametrically opposed to the dance, because the force that lifts them into the air is greater than the one that binds them to the earth. What wouldn't our good G. give to be sixty pounds lighter, or to use a force of this weight to assist her with her entrechats and pirouettes? Like elves, the puppets need only to touch upon the ground, and the soaring of their limbs is newly animated through this momentary hesitation; we dancers need the ground to rest upon and recover from the exertion of the dance; a moment that is certainly no kind of dance in itself and with which nothing further can be done except to at least make it seem to not exist.

Soon I will post further thoughts on Mark's work and on its connections to enchantment, event space (an idea proposed by Mette Ramsgard Thomsen) , and my own theoretical postulations. For more information on Mark click here.

The crew with the TML gave a short show-and-tell about some of the software, namely, Max/Msp and Jitter which can be used to generate video effects in real time via a life camera feed.

04: Wednesday. Textiles and Interactive Fabrics

Today included a discussion and presentation by Barbara Layne who directs the Studio subTela team.  Their research at the Hexagram Institute involves the "development of hand-woven fabrics with embed microcomputers and sensors to create surfaces that are receptive and responsive to external stimuli.  Light emitting diodes are used to create a flexible message board.  Wireless transmission can change the patterns and texts from a distance.  Layne's demonstrated a series of electronically embedded garments including a dress with photosensors that reacts to light and a jacket embedded with an LED grid which allows for scrolling text and interactivity between wearers.

idea sketch

hoffmann: the turk tales

Excerpt from The Puppet Tractates:
Victoria Nelson. Secret Lives of Puppets. 2001.p 65

... Enthusiast of puppets and automatons (like Goethe, he had puppets, and even as an adult he would often bring them out for guests), composer, and supreme innovator, E.T.A. Hoffmann was also the bearer of what is, on the surface, a more immediately familiar notion of the human simulacrum-- that of the "soulless" automaton that falls far short of its human model. By virtue of his very fascination with puppets and mechanical androids that pass for human, however, Hoffmann kept alive the debate over the presence of souls in matter in the new intellectual environment of the nineteenth century. The entire worldview of Hoffmann's stories, for that matter-- with their alchemical manipulations, metal queens, and talking vegetables that marry humans--remains that of the old living cosmos, the nostalgic worldview of Romanticism that coexists in a certain tension with his views on the sinister imitation of the human by the puppet-machine and is reinforced by the fact that the automaton usually brings about the destruction of the human's hopes and sometimes the human himself...

11: trial BATCH 4 etching

Despite the poor quality of the transfers, I decided to run the 4"copper plates from trial: BATCH 4 through the etching bath to see the results because I need a better understanding of the overall process of crafting the discs from start to finish. Before etching, the paper remains were removed from the discs. This was completed in the warm soapy water bath with some fine steel wool and a little elbow grease. The ink was quite robust with good adhesion and the paper eventually pealed away.


trial: BATCH 2. You can see decent adhesion of the trace underneath the paper cover. The flip sides of these discs have inaccurate traces. Adhesion on both sides is a must in order for the sync disc to work properly.

After removing the residual paper, I took a sharpie marker (which acts as etch resist) and filled in the areas of the trace that didn't transfer properly. Once the transfer process is perfected the markup/infill will be minimal.


Prepping discs for etching. The different colors are interesting. The tree disc on the left had a white coloring while the star disc on the right was very much blue in nature. The same toner from the same copier was used on both.
I suspended the discs in the Ferric Chloride solution and monitored the process. I did not heat up the etchant but I did plug in the air pump which kept the liquid agitated.


Filling the tank.


Submersing the discs.

The discs were monitored and checked at key intervals throughout the process. From prior research on etching it figured that the overall etching time would probably be approximately 30 mins. This etch went from start to completion in 32 mins.


12 minutes submerged.


12 minutes submerged.


25 minutes submerged.


25 minutes submerged.

At 32 minutes the discs appeared to be finished and were pulled from the etch bath and placed in soapy warm water to be cleaned up.


The copper not covered in the etch resist is dissolved and reveals a yellowish colored epoxy substrate board and the trace patterns on both sides of the disc. The next steps will be to use alcohol and acetone to remove the transfer ink to reveal the copper traces.