Followed the mounted police force of Helsinki trough the independence day rallies. Eight hours in minus five celsius weather and I only got one decent shot of the horses. A pair of geldings grooming each other, yellow back light and police lights reflecting from their facial armor plexiglass. The nationalist “612 freedom rally” was an eye opener.. Bigotry is winning.
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Visited Hybrid Matter symposium at TeaK last Thursday. Jennifer Gabrys gave a talk concerning animals as sensors. She referenced projects that had embedded animals with sensory technologies to collect data on weather conditions, migration routes etc. The approach is of interest for our Trans-Horse project. We’ve investigated the possibility to set the horse’s views and environmental requirements as a premise of urban planning in hopes of crafting more environmentally engaged and versatile environments. Gabrys approach was critical and she argued the majority of animal aided data is used to confirm human perceptions. She is currently working in a project called citizensense.net. Her talk gave me the idea to use the horse care-journals of the Mounted police of Helsinki as data to study city development!
Steen Rasmussen gave an interesting talk about BINC economics (bio-, info-, nano- and cogno.). His talk was a useful reminder of the historical importance of the middle class: The empowered, wealthy and democratic middle class of the last century was a unique historical glitch and automation of labor is it’s biggest threat. He was optimistic about 3d printing and other “new” manufacturing technologies and urged the audience to engage with new technologies open mindedly. Unfortunately many new technologies categorically renunciate agency of the makers. This renunciation is embedded in modern worldviews – Factories and 3d printers are equally bad! There are no new technologies.. New tools fuel the same old colonization. After the symposiums I came across the concept of Critical Making which I’ll have to study more. Critical Making seems to fit many Ore.e Refineries projects neatly.
On Friday I joined a dinner organized by the Union for Rural Culture and Education. The dinner completed my involvement with the Grey Cube Gallery project. I was seated next to Päivi and sound artist Petri Kuljuntausta. Kuljuntausta was kind enough to share field recording techniques and motivated me to continue with sonic experimentations. We talked about the Ihme audio-guide project I completed last spring and he had some ideas on whom to contact concerning the future of the project. I had to leave the dinner early as I rushed to Turku. On the buss I read some of Kuljuntaustas texts on sound art. He has used a KaossPad in his live setup.
In Turku I met with Jesse and we made 232 separate machine/tool sounds and two binaural recording at his smithy (The binaural equipment is on loan from Circus Maximus). The recording went as planned and we worked on site for eight hours. The majority of the sounds are high pitched and we’ll possibly make additional recordings next year. Jesse had the idea of fitting the smithys floor with piezo microphones, so that we could hear the bottom end sounds. We’ll likely call this sample-pack “Sound of Work: Blacksmith vol.1”. I’ll demo the sounds for Jesse next weekend.
I’m meeting students from the Kankaanpää Art School online this week to discuss their upcoming graduate exhibition and art projects. Also met with Antoine Pickels concerning possible Trans-Horse engagements next year.
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Burning Man at Google lecture by Fred Turner explains how companies like Google foster (and capitalize) creativity and a sense of community using architecture, mailing lists and other nasty schemes. Turner argues that engineers and coders are the primus motors of social change and culture (like artists and poets were in the past). The talk makes it easier to understand what artist/facilitators like Andrew Gryf Paterson are after with their work- and talkshop activities. Technology (and art) is a tool for social (re)organization. It is made and used to express desires. The talk also discusses the growing role of self-reliance (and how survivalism is related to it). “Vocational ecstasy” (Ideological work) is also an interesting concept. It describes a creative mode people can arrive to when working in teams on creative tasks. Individual egos fade away through joined unpaid labor and participants feel transferred something else (work on modular technology is key in the experience).
I’ve been trying to motivate myself into editing Horse Porsche Show documentations I shot with Hanna. Also contacted the Workhorse hobbyist association in regards of their winter forestering workshops. Trans-Horse activities are progressing slowly and I’m having trouble with setting goals for next years activities. The funding I’ve managed to accumulate is not adequate for building collaboratory schemes together with professionals in the horse-community. Making mere representations (videos, texts etc.) of their work and horses feels boring.. Particularly as the reception of our “Come Together, Leave Together” (2015) movie was so lame (We didn’t get it into any festival screenings in Finland and it’s been rejected from the YLE (Uusi kino) programming too). We got positive reviews from peers and horse culture collaborators but the movie has failed to reach audiences through mainstream channels.
Alex Schweder continuing on Performance Architecture (lecture).
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Visited Susanna at the Etelä-Espoon ratsastuskoulu and she took me for a ride around the pond. Worked with the horse Emma and got my muscles sore. We did some stable work and discussed the technicalities of introducing horses on stage. Had a nice moment with the Awaited Son too. For the evening I went to the Helsinki International Horse Show with Hanna. It was a boring sports event merged with a cheap horse gear and accessory sales event. Food was bad and beer was expensive. Shot video of the event and I’ll make a post about the event for the Trans-Horse blog.
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Videos of Antti Salminen investigating how art is going to change as we run out of oil, Eeva Anttila presenting dance as the ultimate post-fossil artform (she’s arguing in a modern fashion) and Jesse Sipola living the dream.
Learning “The Theory of Affordances” by James J. Gibson (The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, 1979) in an effort to understand how animals change the way we perceive our surroundings. As we learn to work with the animal we are granted new “affordances” to the environment and collaboration between horses and humans build habits which benefit both species. Jussi Parikka cites J.J Gibson in his “Mutating Media Ecologies” (2015) article. The controversial concept of Niche Construction also offers interesting routes for investigation!
When investigating affordances I found a funny fitness project by Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen “Bringing Performance Art into Everyday Life Situations“.