in anticipation of rotterdam

a few weeks ago i had a taste of life in rotterdam while working for the V2: Institute for Unstable Media. called in by my good friend and colleague danja, i had the opportunity to work in the “hack” department of the V2 Lab during this years DEAF07 and V2 25th anniversary events.

most of the work i did was of a technical nature, and involved climbing up to the tops of buildings fixing yagi antennae (all hail the mighty zip-tie!!!) to throw network accessibility wirelessly between the various locations of the festival. some buildings i am proud to say i stood on the roof of include Witte de With / TENT, NAi and of course the V2 building proper.

we also had to lay down quite a bit of patch cable (we were dropping CAT-5e like spidey slings web) and also deployed numerous wireless hotspots, computer terminals and workstations for visiting artists and other tech-monkee-ish jobs. even had a chance to VJ along side danja at unDEAF… that was cool.

one of the more mundane tasks i had to perform at the festival was to monitor audio and video live-streams that were being cast on the DEAF07 webpage. this involved sitting and watching and listening to lectures… which isn’t so bad until you realize that you have spent the entire day sitting in a dark hall staring at 4 or so monitors while outside it is immaculately sunny and 25 degrees.

what i did enjoy the most was getting to spend time with some sorely missed friends. sabruno and danja were kind enough to let me stay at their place during the duration of my contract with V2, and even though i was pretty tuckered out by the time we got home from work, we still managed to have that cozy feeling. eating good food and sitting in the twilight of the setting sun over the vista of rotterdam’s skyline, on top of bruno and danja’s building, drinking beer and fixing bikes, is my minds’ eye of the netherlands quintessential.

thanks to danja and bruno for putting up with me while i was in rotterdam and i can’t wait to come back this summer with karin and alex to begin work with OMA/AMO… w00t!

ensche-daze AKi endexam 2006

i recently had a chance to return to enschede and found myself back in the city of my alma mater, and paid a long overdue visit to the community that raised me so well at the aki. i also spent a few days at the offmess (a former military air base turned squat house that i lived in during my final year in the aki) to help my friend danja vasiliev, aka binary.koala construct his endexam installation, PowerOnOff.

calling upon my much sought after skills of messy soldering and bad jokes, i helped danja where i could (like lifting things) and even picked up a few new skills (like putting things down) and also helped out with the much neglected process of documentation OF process (something all artists have problems with during the heat of creation… haha, i said “heat of creation”… uf.. too much family guy).

about the installation: the concept as i initially perceive it; for i wont get to see the end result until the end of the month at the opening, involves translating how ones actions in a virtual space (i.e. surfing the web) can affect the real-life or actual world.

about the artist: danja vasiliev – super cool (russian) guy, MPC colleague and brotha-from-anotha-motha. what can i say, like all good artists his work speaks for himself. he recently was invited to join the masters program at the piet zwart institute in rotterdam. congrats to you, man!

back to the installation: parts of the installation consist of an interface that is familiar, like a standard laptop and a common web browser, and also a custom built computer consisting of a GNU/linux installation and 7 optical relays that control the power given to all the chosen house hold devices that make up of the rest of the installation; hence the name PowerOnOff.

as an experience, the installation draws the viewer into an inclosed space initially deprived of light. once given a chance to ajust to the slight sensory depravation, an arrangement of standard household devices used everyday will become apparent in the space, presented on a stage. situated before the stage will be the laptop where people can surf. on another screen, an ascii readout of the behavioral patterns of the participant will be tracked.

as you surf you build credit for visiting certain websites. this credit is translated into energy that powers for instance the lights, fans, an old school audio tape reel recorder, a washing machine, etc., thus providing the resources to do things we take for granted every given day.

it is an installation that reveals the ever increasing transparency between our online and off-line existence, and also tries to address the fact that what we do in these two seemingly separate worlds (real and online) does in fact have an effect on one another, making the world we live in and the world we have “created” as one..

..well that was a’lil esoteric i suppose. anyways its soooo freaking cool (LOL!!) so check it out if you are in the neighborhood, OK?. visit the AKi’s webpage for more details, and i will of course follow up with updates on this humble weblog, eventually.

zhaus: the living room exhibitions

Here is a follow-up to the first zhaus article I posted a few days prior.

After some days of sleepless nights, i have finally finished poopooshoping the joiners for zhaus: the living room exhibition. Sometimes i feel as if i muscle pixels around for hours, just to get some extra interestingness on flickr and provide some twinkle-twinkle to the normally drab candor that occurs on this weblog, but I digress…

The opening of the show featured quite an intellectually digestible lecture regarding the Turkish Diaspora within Vienna and how various case studies within the community show correlations in identity towards Turkish or western homogonous culture based on the way Turkish Austrians decorate their living spaces and the items of art they choose to display and contextualize themselves with.

The living room is a place where one goes to relax, but it is also identified as a place of social meeting; where one would entertain guests. The art items that are chosen to be displayed in a host’s home provides a situation with which the guest may observe the socio-cultural context or displacement of the host. It’s kinda like putting away that funny looking vase of yours; you know, the one with no flowers in it, when your parents come to visit, because you don’t want your mom and dad associating funny looking vases filled halfway with water and no flowers in them as your own personal flair for interior design.

Along with a lecture for the opening, there was also screenings of videos from participating artists and much of the work was observed in the company of friends and colleagues. At the closing, another zhaus artist spun electro records cross-legged while sitting on a pillow.

Because of the nature of the concept, the gallery space and living space were intermingled, and I often found myself shifting seamlessly from conversations of an artistic nature, to didactic discussions, small talk, etc. never once shedding the feeling of being at a friends place for a party that focused on art in various social, political and cultural contexts, and the consuming of wine. Designers like beer more, apparently. Or was that sekt? I met many intriguing people in those three days.

There were three main rooms that housed all the artworks; the living room, dinning room and toilet, or WC. The bathing room was not available to the public.

And like any home I am comfortable in, I spent most of the time during the opening and closing in the kitchen, close to the booze and cheese supplies… i mean supervise… to supervise the booze and cheese supplies.

Trying very hard to not sound like an alcoholic (but seriously, I’m not) zhaus has been a success of an exhibition in every sense of the word. Not only did the show facilitate a multidisciplinary collection of works and discussions, but also provided a platform for people to freely exchange ideas and email addresses, while fusing the characteristics of both the home and gallery space.

Since zhaus is an international phenomenon, I encourage you to get hold of the zhaus people through their webpage and organize an exhibition of your own when situations allow, in your respective city. I can already think of some super creative peeps i know in toronto that may be interested in the potential to organize using a self-directing, thematic, international exhibition concept. There is already a standardized publication format that you can use and modularly add your zhaus documentation to, contributing to the existing publication. Pretty much roll your own with a tinge of cult identity.

I hope to be able to contribute my skills and eventually make live a weblog and forum for zhaus, depending on the reception and response of the community, and hopefully get one going in berlin when the time is right.

I look forward to participating in the next zhaus:vienna some time this summer, and big ups to Mimi and Karin for organizing such a splendid and creative forum.

hacking sankt oberholz

hacking sankt oberholz

Originally uploaded by smallcaps.

on monday night masterpiece cleaners went to sankt oberholz to finally install the portal/proxy server we have been working on in the past month. the installation will function as a web portal for users to authenticate with before continuing onto the internet. the server also acts as a dns and finally alleviates the connection problems that some of you may have been experiencing when trying to connect at sankt oberholz. finally, a content management infrastructure is also present so that if the cafe would ever want to move towards an online social networking scheme, it is easily scaleable to meet future demands. still in beta phase, we hope to iron out all the kinks after some daily use. Presently, there is actually two networks up and running for redundancy. all in all the installation went rather smoothly, but please feel free to visit the cafe so that you can stress test it for yourself. oh, and by the way, its secure so don’t even think about it :^P

[SmarcH]’s brand spanking new weblog!

before bedtime i often find myself infront of NetNewsWire for a min or 120, reading the latest headlines being fed to me by RSS. curiously enough, i noticed a secret message dispatched to me from [SmarcH] using his feed from his ‘old’ villainy.biz weblog. the contents were as follows:

Help me smallcaps you’re my only hope, tear this excuse for a blog down, build something new. or should we just keep villainy.biz as a test bed for all projects? I feel a warm embarrassment for the content that occupies this space. also i think that you are the only one that will actually read this post. hope all is well in berlin, keep rockin’ the metaverse, now that you are in your “teens”

smarch
out.of.europe.

feeling the call for help by my brother from another mother, and since i already pwn3d! all access to his entire web server, including administrator level logins & passwords for webhosting admin, ftp, and phpmyadmin (what?! no email?). there was no need to log into his old wordpress weblog, i just dropped the entire database and created a new one 😉 . deployed in its place is a shiny new installation of the latest wordpress build for him to use with some minor tweaks (its got theme-switcher dawg!)* and once he finds internet in South Africa (he is there now to take care of family matters, but will be back in berlin soon. did you know that the BCC conference hall used for 22c3 in berlin had more bandwidth then all of Africa… the continent, not the Bambaataa.) lets hope it serves him well.

here is the address. update your links and feeds please.

– = villainy.biz weblog = –

now [SmarcH], start blogging!

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*edit: removed theme-switcher cause its being a bitch!