Winter leaves

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Camera

So, I am back from Denmark, and since then the
weather in Gothenburg has proved really unfriendly. Snowfall is in full steam (if i may use this word) for two days. But i braved it last night and went to check out the discounts at the electronics stores in Hjalmar Brantingsplatsen. The idea was that maybe I will get myself a cheap mp3 player. But! i ended up buying a camera!

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Link: Ninjam

Realtime Music Collaboration Software - Ninjam

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Goteborg - Frederikshavn - Aalborg

Took a cool rollin tumblin ride on a Stena Line Ferry to Aalborg yesterday. Its pretty barren place... but good to be among old friends... to see those old faces again. Hope to have a nice time here.

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Looking Back: Somewhat Damaged

That was the name of the work we did for the 'Hidden Agenda' project. An oversized comic book with the story of a person who relies on his imaginary friends - the two conflicting sides of his psyche to survive. The creations of his imaginations were really parts of him, and portrayed as real persons and the main character named 'Nadie' was drawn always as an outline except for that one page where we put in a trip back to his childhood.

None of the pages had text on them, just pictures, drawn by hand (sketches and paintings), photographs, cut outs, collages etc. Every page however had a soundtrack to it which starts when one turns the page. For this to work we made a contraption over the top which sents a signal to the computer which in turn identifies the page from the signal and plays the corresponding soundtrack.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our work:

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Looking Back: Hidden Agenda Exhibition

Ok, the exams are over! done with. Now i have time and i have been able to get some of the photos of our 'Hidden Agenda', exhibition of our term projects for the Art & Technology Project Introduction course. Martin did a good job of teaching and Mats and Palle did a good job of directing the students. All the teams worked extremely hard, wracked their brains and produced the best they could.

Here are some pics from that day...

Last minute preparations...















Opening Night:

















A little something in the bathrooms too -




Dan was his usual 'Robot Cowboy' self...

























All Photos Courtesy of
Yuan Yuan

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Going back to Monuments....

Guess which monument is in trouble according to 2006 World Monuments Watch:

http://www.wmf.org/html/programs/resources/bycountry.html


Its been a while (years and years) since I have been there. Its funny even how meaningless our movements have become. Supposing I was home at this instance and went there for a visit, would I notice its decay? If I did, would I do anything about it?

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All mixed up.

SO, the hurly burly is done (the exhibition and all that leading to it) and now the new hurly burly is on... the EXAMS. yikes. catches me off guard every time, no helping it. We had a day long exam today. first lookup about the monuments the profesori put up on the board [mostly relating to the monuments made is remembrance to the atrocities against the Jews in WWII]. I got to read up on Horst Hoheisel's proposal for one that the German govt. wanted to be for the murdered jews of Europe. His proposal was to blow up the Brandenburger Tor (Pic). Of course the proposal wasn't approved (it was in fact approved after a long time of debates and thought, and two competitions), but here is what he planned:

1. Blow up the Brandenburger Tor
2. Grind its stone into dust
3. Sprinkle the remains over its former site
4. Cover the entire memorial area with granite plates.

All the english articles/excerpts I found relating to this was by a profesori by the name of James E. Young, and here is what he said about it:

"Rather than commemorating the destruction of a people with the construction of yet another edifice, Hoheisel would mark one destruction with another destruction. Rather than filling in the void left by a murdered people with a positive form, the artist would carve out an empty space in Berlin by which to recall a now absent people.

...

How better to remember a destroyed people than by a destroyed monument?"

I thought this was really interesting, also it sheds a light on his methods if you also look at this work of his which he did earlier: Negative Form

Then we had to write our own proposals for a monument commemorating some tragic incident of the past, and also read this epic about Gilgamesh or some account of it and write another proposal of an artwork relating to something from it. And in between all that was a short/long interview with the profesori about the readings we had to do so far. So all this was from 9 am to 7 pm, and now I am very confused. We had no idea what the exam will be like, and I expected it all to end at 5pm, whereby I would go home and sleep, and start on the next exam after that, since my oral session is at 8, it would be well to be awake till that time. But now, I am confused.

And for some reason I remember the office days where we would change Asif's desktop wallpaper to some crappy dhaliwood actress' wallpaper with exuberant colors whenever he would leave his desk. Hahhaha... sorry Asif but it was a lot of fun! hhahhah

I should study again....

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Fluxus: The "Art" in life.

if artists were on the lookout for things to portray things from life in their art decided that life just the way it is suffices... then what? isn't life good enough to be art? to be thought of and treated as art?

having done a presentation on Dick Higgins (1938 - 1998) a few days back I found out about a group of artists who had this viewpoint. Dick Higgins was a man with many talents - poetry, music, visual art... and also writing about art. There he spent a good amount of time and had his own publishing house named the "Something Else Press".

He writes about the art - life dichotomy:

“In the situation of art that is in a dialectical relationship with the ‘real world’ outside itself, the art work (as in both Dada and Fluxus, for instance) directly incorporates elements from daily living – treating the making of a cup of coffee as music, for instance. The purpose of this is not, of course, to shock or proclaim originality. If it were, the artist would surely propose to mix concrete and turds and fill the pot with that. Rather, it is to see something that many people experience in a new and aesthetic way, and thus it is very important that real water, real coffee, and a real stove (for instance) be used, not the illusions of them. In this way the overall experience of art will be enriched by one’s life, and one’s life will be enriched by art.”
[from his essay Modernism Since Postmodernism]

The group of artists were scattered over USA and Europe. And when George Maciunus and Dick Higgins started the publication for the kind of activities these like minded artists, a name was given to the collective... FLUXUS, from the word 'Flux' for change. The other artists associated with this style is John Cage, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Nam June Paik.

For an interesting short history of Fluxus, read Higgins' A Child's History of Fluxus

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Touch Table Roulette

Some of us have volunteered to work as testers for one company here for testing touch table roulette games they have developed. Its pretty neat and right now there are some sleepless zombies stooped over it running on adrenaline. not quite.. the machine has shown some signs of let up recently and there are guys working on it now. It was running from saturday afternoon till this morning. And the objective is to keep it running for 48 hours straight. I slept some in the middle, after like round 4 which was probably at 4 am today, and woke up for round 10 around 9 am! There werer those there who had gone all the way without sleep. Some had real fun with it. For me it was fun too, but my sleeping habbits have recently not allowed me to do anything overnight so far. Lost those undergraduate habbits right after starting on the working life. Anyway, the machine is cool and soon to hit casinos in a lot of places.

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1:41an

Thats the name of the block where the art tech programm goes on.. where the magic happens or the people sleep or party... some live some visit. Well, the last few days have probably been the busiest for most of us... and its still going strong. amidst all that the bunch of guys who set out to make a website for this planet have completed it. There is also the wiki where we put our notes up for the seminar course, and the stuff about the workshops we did, and the Hidden Agenda exhibition that is coming up.

Without further adieu.... the website:
http://www.141an.se/home/

Since the exhibition is the current focus, the default home page will lead to the exhibition's page... http://www.141an.se/

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Winter Updates.

so, we are in the middle of the winter now. From bangladesh to sweden.. the winter takes a different appearance... a different degree of cool. Before arriving here, most students i guess pack their bags with the heavy stuff... to survive the winter here. I did the same. But since coming here i have been hearing the same thing about the winter in Gothenburg. More Rain Less Snow. And so far, its been quite the 'universal truth'. We had one day of snow so far! well, that taking out of consideration the 'baby snow' (tiny white fluffy particles floated around one friday afternoon), and the wet icy snow (it was raining with little bits of ice also with it), and the ice downpour.

But frankly the one night of snowfall changed the view of the city I am used to! White white white.. all around, and with the help of the street lamps things just looked bright... and beautiful. here are some pics from that night... You'll notice that the pics from my phone are the shittier ones, compared to the ones from my friends' cameras!

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Photo of the day (and last night!)!

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Theremins

What is a 'Theremin'? If i was asked this question before today...i would have probably guessed it was some sort of medicine! But as Ivonne explained to the class, it is a musical instrument! And a very unique one at that! It is playable without any physical contact with the instrument. It is shaped in the form of a radio, with one vertical antenna, and another one placed on the other side. The vertical one allows the control of the pitch of a sound being produced and the one on the side allows the control of the volume of the sound. So one can just play this thing by standing by it and moving the each hand around and about each antennae! bring it closer the pitch goes high, start moving it away, the pitch goes low.. similarly the volume is made to go high and low with the other hand!

This is my explanation from what i saw and heard today! If you have any bit of fascination for music or its instruments.. look this up. Heres a little help:

http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/theremin/
http://www.thereminvox.com/

I couldn't understand why this was not used widely like the other instruments, sure looked like an interesting one. And i found this website that lists the artists who have at one point or another used this instrument (Among the ones that i listen to are queens of the stone age, david gray, garbage... portishead!):

http://www.thereminworld.com/

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Art Introooo

Well, paint just does not seem to be my cup of tea... then again.. what is????
Graham (teacher) made us do quite a few paintings on the second day to get us used to it. and out of all those i did.. I ended up liking the one sheet of paper i used to mix my paint.










Also.. this one..i kinda like... the instructions for this one read: in the dark, all the cats are grey (something like that!)...

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Stuff!

Well, it was 8 degrees today! and since i had no way of knowing that while i was dressing up in the house...i kinda felt the heat when i got on the tram! The streets were wet, but i don't recall rain at any time of the day. Snow is not common in Gothenburg, that is what everyone here told me so far, and so far.. it hasn't snowed.

The temperature however dropped below zero a few days ago!




Also, while I was walking to the tram station, i noticed a bumper-to-bumper situation. Kind of a rare sight to me... and i of course hurriedly took out my phone and 'snap'ped it.

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Down Memory Lane: Guns n' Roses

Since Faisal bhai (present roomie) wanted to borrow the GNR mp3s, i had to dig them up and give it to him.. i had almost forgotten i had them. But the whole incident made me remember the time i was so crazy about this band! I think Slash is one of the reasons i was interested in guitars in the first place. he may not play much, but he had style and andI put on chain bracelets on my wrist becaus of him. I used to know the backgrounds of the bands, and each of the members... of how Axl Rose was a straight A student and Duff a car thief (really?)! I haven't listened to them in quite a while (= years and years!) until recently of course... now that hey have been dug up!

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For Whom the Bell Tolls...

[Our profesori ran this by us today during class discussion...]

by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

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South Asian Rock Fest!

wow!






Going back to AG (amadergaan) after quite a while.. i get this goood news, courtesy of a freind who calls himself 'butpar-tanim'! Black and The Watson Brothers are going to be playing in a concert in Kathmundu, Nepal alongside bands from India, Nepal and Pakistan!

cool!

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Art introoo

We started using colors today... Acrylic to be more exact, and also learnt amazing historical facts about color in the world of art. Apparently in the start, Blue was the hardest to come across. And whenever a color was hard to come by, when it was expensive it was used by royalties or religious authority figures.

Anyway, here are the shades I could produce and a head that looks like Homer Simpson's!

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