entropy8zuper
In 1999, Auriea Harvey (Entropy8, USA) and Michaël Samyn (Zuper!, Belgium) merged their lives and careers in Entropy8Zuper!, a hypermedia research studio and design company. They now live and work together somewhere in Europe. Their portfolio includes design jobs for corporate clients, commissions from arts organisations and personal work. Numbers belongs in that third category. It is the fourth chapter in an ongoing project of interpretations/appropriations of the books of the Bible, called The Godlove Museum, the previous chapters being Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus.
Numbers tells the story of the Israelites in the desert, after they had escaped Egypt, how their faith in their God was tested and how this God tells them to go to war and conquer the promised land. It was shocking to realize that what was currently happening in the Middle East was a repetition of what had already happened once thousands of years ago.
So there was a very negative interpretation at the base of this chapter. We were disgusted with the way how one group of people claims superiority based on orders received directly from god. And according to these orders, this group of people allowed itself the right to destroy other "inferior" groups. The fact that this applies almost literally to current-day Israel should not make us blind for the fact that it is also the story of the Western world as was illustrated by the US response to the attack on the WTC buildings. The Western world engaged in war against everything that is different, lead by their god of liberty and capitalism. Civilization against barbarism, good versus evil.
The music and sound effects in Numbers were all made with the same amount of beats per minute (200). This was an attempt to ensure a continuous soundtrack despite of synchronisation issues that are inherent to networked media. The different melodies hook into each other differently every time one goes through the site. Unlike when one would listen to a linear sound track.
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS (Seoul, South Korea)
Marc Voge (U.S.A.) and Young-Hae Chang (Korea)
2003 The American Effect, Whitney Museum, New York
"Dakota" (shown), is a film noir digital animation by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. It's a browser page of words flashing in a variety of sizes and shapes at a variety of rhythms, set to a fabulous Art Blakey drum solo. In true film noir fashion, it's all in black and white, and tells three noir stories, one of kids on the road, one an homage to Blakey, and one set in the seedy, fast-food-noodle-stand world of late-night Seoul, Korea. You can actually view it on line at the link above. Be sure to pump up the volume.
http://www.fallonandrosof.com/archives/2004_05_16_archive.html
They Rule by Josh On (San Francisco, CA)
A few companies control much of the economy and oligopolies exert control in nearly every sector of the economy. The people who head up these companies swap on and off the boards from one company to another, and in and out of government committees and positions. These people run the most powerful institutions on the planet, and we have almost no say in who they are. This is not a conspiracy. They are proud to rule. And yet these connections of power are not always visible to the public eye.
They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.
It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston
by kanarinka
November, 2007
kanarinka ran the entire evacuation route system in Boston and attempted to measure the distance in human breath. The project also involves a podcast and a sculptural installation of the archive of tens of thousands of breaths .
The project is an attempt to measure our post-9/11 collective fear in the individual breaths that it takes to traverse these new geographies of insecurity.
The $827,500 Boston emergency evacuation system was installed in 2006 to demonstrate the city’s preparedness for evacuating people in snowstorms, hurricanes, infrastructure failures, fires and/or terrorist attacks.
It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston consists of:
1. a series of running performances in public space (2007)
2. a web podcast of breaths (2007)
3. a sculptural installation of the archive of breaths (2008)
Archive of Breaths (sculptural piece)
Medium: custom-made table, 26 jars, 26 speaker components, wire, 13 CD players
Dimensions: 45″x72″x16″
I created a sculptural & audio archive of the collection of breaths. There are 26 jars on a custom-made table which correspond to the 26 runs it took to cover the evacuation routes. Each jar size corresponds to the number of breaths from that run. The speaker inside the jar plays the breaths collected from that run.