coded cultures: Symposium Tag 1 Event

Exhibition - open daily from 10 am - 08 pm

Craving - soundwalk
meeting point: freiraum/quartier21
time: 11.30 am - 1.30 pm

A Geo-Spatial Sound Composition for a Listener Moving Freely through Deserted Urban Landscapes
Craving is a site specific spatial sound composition set up by the two artists in the public space of Vienna’s Donaucity district. There they arranged musical and spoken sound fragments inspired by the late Sarah Kane’s play “Crave”. The selection of sounds and their spatial as well as temporal distribution follows a detailed study of the text and the emotional tectonics of the physical space itself. The latter one, which is reflected in features such as rhythms and flows of pedestrian movements and architectural layers.

The piece is experienced by the listener while he individually wanders though the outskirt high-rise area. He wears headphones and a GPS- and sensor equipped computing device, allowing the composition to unfold while he drifts through the area. A binaural sound simulation incorporates the sounds that have been affiliated by the artists to certain places into his acoustic environment, as if they were around him. While the listener explores the urban environment himself, he is also shaping his very own spatial sound narrative. The project is based on the artists’ self-developed software “Global Player”.
Bernhard Garnicnig, Gottfried Haider (Austria)
Bernhard Garnicnig studies Digital Arts at the University for Applied Arts and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a founding member of c17, an artist-run space in Vienna. His current work focuses on establishing social, theoretical, sculptural and audiovisual constellations.
Gottfried Haider studies Digital Arts at the University for Applied Arts Vienna. He is interested in urban soundscape theory and researches the interdependencies of algorithmic acquisition of space, its coexistent manipulation and numerology.

* offspacecenter.com/infoblast - Homepage of Bernhard Garnicnig
* gottfriedhaider.com - Homepage of Gottfried Haider

: MUMOK Auditorium
Artist Presentations
time: 2.00 pm - 3.30 pm

Ryota Kuwakubo (JP)

Ryota Kuwakubo: Selected Works (1998 - 2009)
(Bitman, Vomoder, VideoBulb, PLX, R/V, Nicodama)

Creating each work as a complete device rather than an interactive installation, Ryota Kuwakubo not only intends to offer pure experience, but also to relate it to the visitor’s cultural context. It means that the works can take some aspect even if none of its functions are running. This time, he shows several selected works including the early work “Bitman” and the most recent work “Nicodama”, displaying all the works in a static representation to evoke the visitor’s imagination.

BITMAN 1998/2001: Wearable LED display (in collaboration with Maywa Denki.)
VOMODER 2000/2002: Voice reactive animation device.
VIDEOBULB 2000/2004: Tiny capsule generating a video signal. Plug into your TV set.
PLX 2001: Game machine for two persons. Each player duels in a different context.
R/V 2005: Radio controlled vehicle equipped with a video camera and monitor.
NICODAMA 2009: A pair of mechanical eyeballs. Put in on something to empathize it.
Ryota Kuwakubo (Japan)
Ryota Kuwakubo is a media artist based in Tokyo. Since 1998, after studying contemporary art and media art, he produced art works mainly by means of electronics, focusing on topics that appearing on borders such as analog / digital, human beings / machines or senders / recipients. He was honorably mentioned in the interactive art category at Ars Electronica 2002 & 2003, as well as the grand prize of the art division at the Japan Media Arts Festival 2003.

Ludic Society (Margarete Jahrmann, Philip Lammer, Gordan Savicic / AT)

Plays on a metamorphosis of contemporary electronic toys into arts by transforming unique codes attributed to objects and subjects via ubiquitous numerological processes.

ToyGenoSonic MAKES THE PLAYERS DISCOVER the invisible heart of commodities in urban space. ToyGenoSonic’s notation consists of the mathematical representation of player movements, objects and locations of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) numbers. The interaction-concept plays with the fact, that RFID tags are found in key cards, city transport tickets, ID-cards. Each found RFID tag has a unique number, which generates sound on the Nintendo DS game console by numeric processes that drive the sound synthesis. With an extended game-console, after inserting the artisan Ludic Society’s pataboard tag-reader into the toy’s slot, the player can generate a RFID number specifi c sound, by holding it over a tag. As expanded game console the sharply inclined front-shield becomes an art collector’s item!

Alternate Theory Objectives - Game Fashion and Urban Play!
“(Ludics) tantalisingly offers a new approach to under-standing play through the process of play itself. Here we find play used as a conceptual catalyst for theoretical thought. In drawing on the ‘pataphysical, it presents a parody of scientific and philosophical concept-ions, or a science of emerging solutions, that functions as playfulness itself.” (Emma Westecott/ Andreas Jahn-Sudmann, In: Eludamos, issue1, 2007)
Ludic Society constitutes as arts research affiliation, a social game system to develop a new discipline on play and cultures. Its emphasis lies on Futility as resistance by the investigation of actual philosophical toys as objects of desire. The association is active since 2006, it actually gathers together 54 socialites. This proposal addresses the introduction of the Ludic Society affiliation as game system in the field of games and play research. An experimental approach of Ludics as “Alternate Theory” conception, rooted in game arts practice and game design education, as worked out in the Game Design programme of the University of Arts and Design Zurich.
Part two would present innovative forms of both, art, design and theoretical research as Ludics, a playful gaya scienza (Nietzsche), illustrated by the LS’ alternate reality VISUAL CODE fashion and QUICKREAD PERFORMANCES 2009, ludic-society.net/sema.
Devices as symbolic vehicles, contemporary PHILOSOPHICAL TOYS, are presented in museum and gallery exhibitions and as game projects from 2007 to 2008, which accompanied the recent five issues of the ludic Society Magazines in print and online. Implementations in alternte reality games: Objects of Desire. 2008. RFID Judgement day for First Life Game figures”. Borgesian Psychogeographic Collective Mapping game, ludic-society.net/tagged.
“Ludic Society Blitz Play”, ludic-society.net/blitz (NDS, audio software for RFID tag street concert). Game Fashion: ludic.priv.at. Workshop with Naba Fashion Institute Milano: gamefashion.org
OBJECTS/toys: Electronic Wunderbäumchens, ludic-society.net/tagged/objects.php
Home Brew NDS software, NFC software, RFID-readers, EM zappers, absurd self etched electronic circuit
boards. The conducting paths become a design element of Ludic Interfaces, New Bachelor
Machines;PhiloToys: ludic.priv.at/ludicwheel/index.php?target=photo
GoApe Chindogus ludic-society.net/play/objects.php

The Ludic Society constitutes as international association (54 members, founded 2006) to provoke Ludics as emerging investigation discipline, which ironically follows inverse trajectories of toy and mobile technologies culture to cause an effect of awareness in the critical constitution of a society, in which the shifting increase on games and gadgets, smart objects, technical objectiveness of the subjects (RFID implants, blobjects, „blog-jects“ etc.) can be indicated as phenomenon of a crisis of reality constitution abilities of the individual in the society in general. Real Play is investigated as phenomenon, which transfers the rules of play into real life, as statement and as reaction to indicate western societies as game systems of power, as evident in the world economic fall of capitalism in 2008. Ludic Society as arts project features combinatory, metamorphosis devices. aesthetic experiments on the electronic layout of toys towards plays on identity of the artists and players.

In contemporary “Ludic” realities the presenting artist performs in her arts practice as 1st Life Game Figure. The lecture will include a video of the art-game “Judgement day for 1st Life Game Figures”, Plymouth, UK 2007, including a chip implant session of a subcutaneous Radio Frequency Identification Tag, RFID, declared as “toy” by the performers/players. The introduction of tracking and tracing technologies, gadgets like GPS or WIFI scans as contemporary “toys”, or even more its detection as integrated part of Standard Model toy gadgetry, in Game-boys or NDS consoles, is demonstrated by works, which integrate this
technologies in urban games from 2007-2008.

As general description of the argument, this thinking-layout will cover crucial elements of play culture investigation and will suggest possible solutions in a detected lack of discourse and joyful practice in the design, art and reception of games, play and toys. ludic-society.net/desire

The final point indicates a new genre, to introduce 1st Life Game-figures”, which was labelled by the artist as “game fashion” (2006). Absurde ‘pataphsyical and neo-situationist plays in the “reality engine”, (expect a presentation of the WIFI mapping game Objects of Desire, Gijon, 2008), will sumup conclusions for players in everyday life, in relation to omnipresent subject-object alterations.

Warables without wires, “gamefashion sans fils”, will be introduced. Such toy-dresses transform players into toys themselves. Their movement patterns can be identified by everyday mobile gadgetry, uploaded to a collective gathering place, in Web2.0. Accordingly such Game 3.0 VISUALLY CODED GAMEFASHION, integrate the construction of an Avatar by 1st Life data-traces and misuse geographical mapping systems, like “Google” maps, as Game-maps and metaphors.

PLAY_OBJECTS
What role does the individuality and subject plays in relation to the artefacts, either in materialised Internet of Things (Kranenburg, 2008) or in synthetic worlds games: On one hand Japan’s costume players generate their own communities and incorporate a reality shaped by the new more-way mass media games. On the other hand the Internet of Things declares each commodity and each object as an elaborated entity with its own history and traceable time and way of nascence. The presentation tries to show how these individual worlds of things affect and subsequently change the role of the subject object dualism.

As first step objects and subject relations in toy worlds will be clarified. The so called Internet of Things must not only be considered as playground for commodity logistics, but as constitutive element of „Subjectivation by Dingpolitik“. In this theoretical construct the Thing indicates a gathering place for the community. Similarly virtual play-grounds are a Thing, a community play fetish inside the game of life, filled with objects of desire.

Such contemporary evidence of the link of the construction of subjectivity to toys draws attention towards toys as political “Things”. The cultural scientist Bruno Latour (2005) describes the THING in its etymological meaning and in its political tradition, as gathering place, comparable to a magic circle of play. This social gathering is triggered by objects, by things, which differentiate its opposing realities of self perception in social platforms, whereas the technological toys intrude the subjects skin.

A new paradigm shift is expressed in an unexpected turn towards the „real“, expressed and incorporated in a new consciousness, focusing on materialism. Spheres of electronic networks are made conscious by the means of objects and things, called Spimes, Blogjects, Smartifacts (Sterling, 2006). In the following toy objects shall be addressed as semi-material objects, which serve as vehicle to present the shift of selfconsciousness. In actual games and Online Worlds toys are properties of shape shifters, play-forms of multifacetted self, as expressed in Avatar environments. Metaverse conceptions offer another level of playerconsciousness, formed by the use of synthetic objects. The semi-material toy of actual techno-gadgetry, as a Nintendo DS game console, Iphone, or a Nokia N95 communicator with 3G sensors of WII consoles inherently hold this semi-materialism between a synthetic object and a material toy.

Introducing Ludics / The Ludic Society / Ludic Society Magazines
Ludic methodology must be rooted in theory and applies principles of play as modus operandi. Its emphasis lies on the futility of actual western culture gadgetry rush. Beyond the focus on ostensible toy object accelerando as objective, lays the self reflexive observation of the meta-game of establishing a metascientific society, which constitutes in a collaborative structural play and communicates in its specific Lingo terminology and means and vehicles of publication.
Ludics as emerging investigation discipline ironically follows inverse trajectories of toy and mobile technologies culture to cause an effect of awareness in the critical constitution of a society, in which the shifting increase on games and gadgets, smart objects, technical objectiveness of the subjects (RFID implants, blogjects etc.) can be indicated as phenomenon of a crisis of reality constitution abilities of the individual in the society in general. Real Play is investigated as phenomenon, which transfers the rules of play into real life, as statement and reaction indicating western societies as game systems of power. The poetic method of Ludic texts applies aphorisms as introduced by Nietzsche.

Yuko Mohri (JP)

Yuko Mohri uses a scanner as a plate with salad and also a printer with four wheels which runs along a platform…?

Everyday machines, such as computer devices for instance, are specifically designed to work with data; on the other hand, these machines carry within the possibility to be treated as real objects. In her installation, computer and data devices, used in an unconventional way, are subjected to unusual operations and becoming “performative objects”, open up unpredicted possibilities. The resulting images represent a record, which enables us to look at these media devices from another point of view. This installation is made of three main devices: a scanner is placed on the wall upright; a gadget made of gearwheels producing motion, is installed in front of the scanner; a printer with four wheels runs along a platform.
Yuko Mohri (Japan)
Yuko Mohri, an artist, was born in 1980. Her main works, shown in Japan and abroad, include “Magnetic Organ” (2003), a three-dimensional piece using powerful magnetism, “Vexations” (2005, joint work with Soichiro Mihara), a sound installation using compositions by Erik Satie, and “Bairdcast Media” (2008), a three-dimensional work in which she attached wheels to a printer and made it run.

MUMOK Auditorium
Theoretical Lectures
time: 4.30 pm - 6.00 pm

Sabine Seymour (AT)

MUMOK Auditorium
Keynote
time: 7.00 pm - 8.00 pm

Machiko Kusahara (JP)

Martin Pichlmair (AT)