Alan Dunning, Morley Hollenberg and Paul Woodrow are working since 1996 on the Einstein's Brain, a project that explores how the brain can act as an interface between bodies and worlds in flux, that examines the idea of the world as a construct sustained through neurological processes. In collaboration with scientists, artists and technologists from around the world the team is investigating ideas about consciousness and embodiment through the realization of virtual environments and the construction of surrogate bodies.

The Canadian collective has a very uncanny and captivating installation on view until mid-January at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. in Gijón (Spain.)

Ghosts in the Machine, uses the ideas inherent in Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) to examine ways in which we construct the world and extends it to the visual. EVP is the recording of errant noises or voices that have no explainable or physical source of origin. For some, the voices are subjective interpretations (similar to some form of anthropomorphisation) of what are actually random patterns of sound. For others, the voices are genuinely mysterious, opening up for example the possibility to communicate with other realms.

The installation Ghosts in the Machine looks simple: two large images are projected onto the walls of a room. One projection shows video static overlaid with text and the outlines of bounding boxes, the other shows b&w images of what appear to be blurry and ghost-like images of human faces. Ambient noise fills the space. Just at the threshold of recognition can be heard what appear to be human speech in different languages. A box, encloses tightly a CCD camera, only letting through the video noise inherent in the system. Audio patterns are scanned by a voice recognition system that looks for words and sentences which are then projected as words and played as voice-like sounds in the exhibition room.

Face tracking algorithms look for any combination of pixels that form the basic characteristics of a human face. When the software finds a combination of pixels akin to eyes, nose and mouth with a sufficient degree of symmetry, it draws a bounding box defining the area and zooms the area to full screen, its contrast and brightness is adjusted, blurred and desaturated to clarify the found images. More often than not the images produced fail to resolve themselves into anything recognizable. But occasionally, images are produced that are strikingly like a face although in actuality containing only the barest possibility of being so.

As the authors of the project explain: It is the very ambiguity and intedeterminacy of the images that allows the brain to reconfigure them as indexical. This work is one of several that examine systems of meaning making that rely on pattern recognition, and the problematized relationship between meaning and the meaningful.

The project examines how we construct worlds, and bodies in worlds, through pareidolia, (when a vague and random stimulus is perceived as significant), apophenia (the seeing of connections where there are none) and the gestalt effect (the recognition of pattern and form).

All images courtesy LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial.

Ghosts in the Machine, produced by LABoral's Projects Office, is on view at LABoral, in Gijón (Spain) through January 12 , 2009.

More ghosts this way ladies and gentlemen: Man Machine 2, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Haunted pixels, (don't) Show me the Chip, Ghost by Olaf Breuning, and a vacuum cleaner to capture goblins.

During the Conflux weekend, Jamie O'Shea was submitting his body to polyphasic sleep, the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period.

The artist walked around the Conflux area with his Vertical Bed in a suitcase, found himself a nice spot, anchored his prostheses above subway vents or other rigid contact points and stayed there sleeping in an upright position for 40 minute intervals several times in a day.

Concealed harnesses ensure that Jamie didn't fall over. He also wore noise canceling headphones and double-mirrored sunglasses, padded with little cusions to keep his eyelid closed. In case of bad weather, an umbrella clips in the infrastructure for shelter.

The project is designed for the visual performance of an alternate way of occupying urban space, born partly out of fantasies of minimal need and elegant futurism, and partly out of fears of the dehumanization of space. Occupants will absorb the vertical structure of urban architecture into their bodies. The vertical sleeper is in a constant state of readiness, never succumbing to collapse. Homelessness is most often marked by the forbidden act of lying down on the sidewalk, an act that the vertical bed circumvents.

The Gustav Zander's institute in Stockholm, founded in the late nineteenth century, featured 27 of the physician's custom-built machines.

Via Hugo Strikes Back! and boingboing. More images and information in Cabinet Magazine.

Although i tend to spend most of my time inside every single branch of Sephora when i'm in New York, i got to see some pretty interesting exhibitions while i was there. Daneyal Mahmood Gallery is hosting until June 14 an arresting installation and series of photographies by Justine Cooper.

Sally, 2008

Cooper has an unquestionable interest for science. The Australian artist is known for having spent one year snooping around the storerooms of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Charles, 2008

According to an interview she gave to Trace blog, the Terminal portraits she is currently exhibiting are inspired by the formal portraitists of the late 19th century and by the scientific work of Bernice Abbott. The stars of Cooper's photographs are medical mannequins (just like Tomer Ganihar's hospital series) and robots. Highly sophisticated, they have been designed to simulate human traumas for training doctors and surgeons.

During her research, the artist found that the personnel charged with the care of the mannequins had humanized these objects into subjects by calling them Sally, Peter, Charles or Mandy. They dress them as if they were about to leave for the Bahamas and even construct a narrative through their care.

Peter, 2008

Also on show, RAPT I is a computer animation created 10 years ago from hundreds of images produced when Cooper voluntarily underwent six hours of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanning (video). RAPT II is a fascinating installation comprised of 76 of the MRI axial scans, printed on architectural film, suspended and aligned to create a 24 foot long floating body. I found very distressing the idea that i was able to pass my hand between the slices of her body.

Rapt II, Detail, 1998

Rapt is what the artist calls a universal Self Portrait, originally posing the question of if and how new technologies shift the way we can conceive of space, by presenting us with an alternate, elastic interpretation of the body.. "Just as the body is re-codified through medical technology, so its internal spaces and brute physicality are remapped and made accessible in these works. Living flesh is translated into malleable data"

The exhibition is on view at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery until June 14, 2008.

Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology, by Sabine Seymour (Amazon UK and USA.)

Published by Springer, abstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.

Lags, a series of patches for coping with social jet lag, by Teresa Almeida

The book contains only 15 pages of theoretical discourse. It might not sound like a lot but they have the virtue of going straight to the point. Sabine Seymour knows what she's writing about. Because the Vienna slash New York-based designer and researcher has spent several years dedicating her energy and brain to the exploration of what the next generation wearables would bring, she can see beyond the hype and detect what is truly inspiring or meaningful design-wise. Mondial Inc is a commercial entity born from her research and her role as an educator. She has lectured and exhibited her work internationally and she's currently a faculty member at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and the University of Arts and Industiral Desin in Linz, Austria.

Taiknam Hat, by Ricardo Nascimento, Ebru Kurbak and Fabiana Shizue, reacts to medium wave radio signals

The theoretical intro covers briefly the history of wearable computing, comments on the technology used to enable garments to interact, underlines textile innovations, adds some design considerations in the process, etc.

Space invader knitting by Be-Geistert

After the intro, there's just a magnificent show and tell of some of the latest (a number of them haven't been published anywhere else) and most interesting techno-fashion projects. You'll find the big names of the industry (phillips, Nike, Adidas) but also pioneering and fearless fashion designers (Hussein Chalayan), the explorers of poetical fashion (Ying Gao), the young stars (CuteCircuit), the makers of fermented dresses (Donna Franklin), the always elegant (Despina Papadopoulos), the unclassifiable Kate Hartman), the lady ready for the catwalk in outer space (Kouji Hikawa), the geeky knitters (Cat Mazza, Ebru Kurbak & Mahir Yavuz), etc.

Kouji Hikawa's Space Suit and Cooling Pants

The book won't tell you everything you dream to know about fashion and technology, how to make a singing skirt or used nanotech in your next project, but it will definitively enable you to have an idea of the breadth and scope of the discipline. Besides it demosntrates that techno-fashion designers have gone a long way since the time "wearable technology" consisted of a keyboard roughly distributed over the body.

There are many books about fashion and technology but this one is truly unique. It's engaging, intelligent and it will make you smile and inspire as you turn the pages over. Besides, it makes a fantastic resource for students and anyone interested in the subject. There's a bibliography, a glossary of innovative materials, a list of blogs and websites but also events and institutes which will enable readers to dig further into the subject.

Textile XY by Maurin Donneaud

The book was launched last Thursday in New York. Phil Torrone from Make magazine was there. Just for info, Ulrike Reinhard had a chance to video one of Sabine's presentation a while ago.
Image on the homepage is Diana Eng and Emily Albinski's Inflatable wedding dress.

Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology, by Sabine Seymour (Amazon UK and USA.)

Published by Springer, abstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.

Lags, a series of patches for coping with social jet lag, by Teresa Almeida

The book contains only 15 pages of theoretical discourse. It might not sound like a lot but they have the virtue of going straight to the point. Sabine Seymour knows what she's writing about. Because the Vienna slash New York-based designer and researcher has spent several years dedicating her energy and brain to the exploration of what the next generation wearables would bring, she can see beyond the hype and detect what is truly inspiring or meaningful design-wise. Mondial Inc is a commercial entity born from her research and her role as an educator. She has lectured and exhibited her work internationally and she's currently a faculty member at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and the University of Arts and Industiral Desin in Linz, Austria.

Taiknam Hat, by Ricardo Nascimento, Ebru Kurbak and Fabiana Shizue, reacts to medium wave radio signals

The theoretical intro covers briefly the history of wearable computing, comments on the technology used to enable garments to interact, underlines textile innovations, adds some design considerations in the process, etc.

Space invader knitting by Be-Geistert

After the intro, there's just a magnificent show and tell of some of the latest (a number of them haven't been published anywhere else) and most interesting techno-fashion projects. You'll find the big names of the industry (phillips, Nike, Adidas) but also pioneering and fearless fashion designers (Hussein Chalayan), the explorers of poetical fashion (Ying Gao), the young stars (CuteCircuit), the makers of fermented dresses (Donna Franklin), the always elegant (Despina Papadopoulos), the unclassifiable Kate Hartman), the lady ready for the catwalk in outer space (Kouji Hikawa), the geeky knitters (Cat Mazza, Ebru Kurbak & Mahir Yavuz), etc.

Kouji Hikawa's Space Suit and Cooling Pants

The book won't tell you everything you dream to know about fashion and technology, how to make a singing skirt or used nanotech in your next project, but it will definitively enable you to have an idea of the breadth and scope of the discipline. Besides it demosntrates that techno-fashion designers have gone a long way since the time "wearable technology" consisted of a keyboard roughly distributed over the body.

There are many books about fashion and technology but this one is truly unique. It's engaging, intelligent and it will make you smile and inspire as you turn the pages over. Besides, it makes a fantastic resource for students and anyone interested in the subject. There's a bibliography, a glossary of innovative materials, a list of blogs and websites but also events and institutes which will enable readers to dig further into the subject.

Textile XY by Maurin Donneaud

The book was launched last Thursday in New York. Phil Torrone from Make magazine was there. Just for info, Ulrike Reinhard had a chance to video one of Sabine's presentation a while ago.
Image on the homepage is Diana Eng and Emily Albinski's Inflatable wedding dress.

Reading the lovely blog of Cati Vaucelle, i discovered the work of Kate James. Kate is a second year graduate student in the Visual Arts Program at MIT. After having studied dance/kinesthesia and architectural history at Brown University, she did a Master of Architecture at MIT before transferring into the Visual Arts program.

Her design, fashion, performative, video and space projects focus on the body, its habits, movements, and the dynamic sectional relationship to its surrounding structures. They have this wonderful mix of quirkiness and deep relevance to the issues she investigates.

You have a background in both dance/choreography and architecture. How does your knowledge of the body and its dynamics feeds your thoughts and creativity in architecture? How do you make these two seemingly different fields meet?

I started studying dance and architecture at the same time, during my first year as an undergraduate. Maybe because of that, my understanding of architecture has always been rooted in the body. I think of architecture as a built echo of body itself: corporeal issues of public/ private, structural systems, skins, orifice and interface all resound in architecture.

Now, I often site my art practice between the body and its surrounding structures. This dynamic negative space houses habitual life and cultural inscription, and is therefore subject to interrogation through artistic intervention.

Your MIT page says that your work attempts to "question and complicate the interfaces between the corporeal and the environmental". In a time when most designers talk about "making it simple", why do you think it is important to "complicate"? Which form does this complication take?

I guess by 'complicate' I mean to acknowledge and engage with the complexity of the interfaces already in play. We so easily naturalize our interactions and surroundings, ignoring the layers of choreography imposed on the everyday. By tweaking and reframing the everyday relations between the body and its environment, my work refutes the source and nature of that everyday ritual.

I was very intrigued by the atHABITat costumes. There is one for vacuuming, one for serving food and a third one for putting away the dishes.
What was the inspiration for them?
Can you describe us what they are about and how each of them should be used?

The atHABITat costumes are about a contemporary vision of the woman in the home, and a need to multi-task and overlap the upkeep habits of the body and the home. They are costumes worn to augment the household maintenance task, transforming it into an iso-kinetic exercise. Each costume records and accentuates the ergonomics of the activity.

In one, resistance band connects the vacuum wand to the wearer, intensifying the sweeping motion of the vacuuming. The 'putting away dishes' costume attaches a similar resistance band between the dishwasher and the wearer's vinyl gloves. In the 'serving food' costume, bands run through an oven mitt corset piece to accentuate the tension in the serving motion.

Once you have an idea for a project how do you push it forward and bring it to life? Do you test the idea on other people? Ask for feedbacks? Get depressed because it is technologically impossible to prototype it? What is the path that leads from idea to working prototype?

I would say the process goes like this: dream, doodle, make, discuss, research, make more, research more, discuss, display.

In terms of the making, I'm not a pre-planning type. I design and make things in one fluid mess of a step, whether this involves sewing, welding, or performing. The concept and research frame are usually fixed, but the work formally develops in an organic way as it goes along.

My biggest frustration is usually the scope of the projects compared to my personal capabilities. Because my work is very much about self-production, and because of the flow of my design process, I am committed to be involved with the craft and production of my costumes and props. But this production can involve 200 pounds of steel to weld or 60 hours of hand-sewing on a particular project.


Kate's working space

The garments you create are very well-designed. But do they function purely as accessories for performances or could you imagine everyday people wearing a modified version of them?

When I make costumes, they aren't intended as prototypes for products. They are very individuated, for one thing, designed specifically for my own home and body(both formally and functionally).

The costumes are an integral part of my performance practice. They are there to suggest that there is a latent potential for self-production in the scene of the everyday, and to transform actions into performances.

What was the inspiration for Dressails?

As a dancer, I was fascinated with falling. I studied how to fall, and tested gravity all the time.

I also sailed a lot when I was younger. I was terrified of, and in love with, especially strong winds that would tip the boat up on its edge and press hard on the sail.

I thought about this moment of negotiation between the control of the boat and the natural force of the wind. I wanted to give over some control of my body's movements to the wind in the same way, and used clothing design to achieve that. The dresses cause the wearer's body to teeter, spin, and lean, to be engaged with a natural and sporadic force a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Could you tell us about some of your recent projects?

One thing I'm working on in an ongoing way is a series of videos about my (7) vacuum cleaners. One piece involves assessing the manual instruction versus reality of use. Another documents a normal vacuuming session that turns into a full-on wrestling bout with the machine.

I also made some wearable trampolines last year, and performed with them in a piece called 'Six Corners'. There is a dynamic relationship between the body and the material and weight of the skirts. They are meant to discuss movement pattern, issues of personal boundaries, and body extension.

Which artists or designer do you find most inspiring and why?

Artists whose work I look most often at include Rebecca Horn, Martha Rosler, Bruce Nauman, Miranda July, Joan Jonas (who is my thesis advisor, which is an amazing privilege), Nina Yuen.

More and more I find myself looking at dancers/ choreographers who make art, especially Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Ann Carlson.

I look at screen stars as well, those who use their bodies to tell stories: Lucille Ball, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the cast of Three's Company.

Any upcoming projects you could share with us?

I'm working on a project right now in conjunction with my thesis (titled 'homebody'). I'm making more home maintenance costumes and associated performances. So far, I've made a video of a phone conversation I had with my mortgage agent while wearing/using a dress constructed of Swiffer rosettes.

A last one: what is your relationship with fashion?

As an artist, I certainly engage with fashion. By this I mean that I think closely about how the body is clad, and how clothing can inform the body and vice-versa. Fashion becomes a key interface in the investigation of the body in the environment.

In terms of performance and the impact of costuming, fashion offers a fantastic bank of codified aesthetics, which can be drawn from for conceptual and phenomenal meaning.

Thanks Katherine!

Nice, nice. I've lost my connecting flight and now i'm stuck in Madrid Barajas waiting for the next flight to Sevilla. It's an 8 hour wait but i'm on my way to ZEMOS98 so i am still cheerful.

Anyway, gives me plenty of time to catch up with the emails and the long overdue posts. So back to New York where i was a few days ago and the Exit Art gallery. I'm still wondering how this place managed to escape my radar so far.

Until April 19 they are running a fascinating exhibition on artistic explorations of the current advancements in neurological research. The works shown in BRAINWAVE: Common Senses encourage visitors to consider the brain not only as the center of human activity but as a site for interpretation, for scientific and philosophical debates, for examining our relationship to the world - and for questioning our common sense.

I am usually not very excited by media art works which engage with the little grey cells. Blame it on the BrainBar, when i discovered it i somehow felt that had seen it all. Well, maybe not... I went to Exit Art to see Fernando Orellana and Brendan Burns' robot that "plays back dreams" which was twice as fantastic as i expected but i also discovered 2 or 3 outstanding works.

Suzanne Anker's fascinating and elegant The Butterfly in the Brain uses three-dimensional Rorschach inkblot tests, brain scans and images of butterfly wings to explores the imagery of the symmetrical (or virtually symmetrical) structures of butterflies, the brain, and chromosomes.

I somehow can't get the black hovering butterfly bat she painted on the wall out of my mind. "By taking the butterfly bat image out of a textbook, scaling it up to a large size, and putting it in a site-specific environment, one turns the image into an entirely new and other kind of affective entity," she explained.

Suzanne Anker, The Sum of All Fears (detail). Image courtesy of the Exit Art gallery

Although the use of Rorschach inkblots is controversial in psychology, the images are widely recognized among the public.

Crab, 2005

Anker used a computer program to convert an inkblot into 3D structure so intricate they could probably not be re-created using traditional sculpture. After which a machine produces the object using plaster and resin. "Looking in 3-D," Anker argued, "one begins to assess new meanings: bones, sea creatures, body parts. These are surrogates for the imagination itself, opening up a dialog between the mind and body. What happens when you can pick up a psychology test in your hand? The mind essentially has been embodied."

Gossipers, 2005 (more images)

She also transposed butterfly wings onto MRI scans, drawing a parallel between genetic patterns in nature and advanced imaging technologies. Like constellations in the sky, butterfly shapes may be found in neurological maps as well as charts of urban sprawl.

Suzanne Anker, MRI Butterfly (detail). Image courtesy of the Exit Art gallery

Another work i found really moving and riveting was a video installation by Phil Buehler, a photographer, fascinated by "haunted ruins" of abandoned Psychiatric Hospitals.

Buehler, Windows of the Soul. Image courtesy of the Exit Art gallery

Windows of the Soul, asks whether or not one can read madness in another's eyes. 300 b&w mug shot photographs of mental patients, taken in the '50s when they were admitted in the hospital. The eyes of the individuals are projected on a canvas hanging from the ceiling. The rest of the face lays on the floor. Every 5 seconds, another pair of eyes and a face take their place on the split screen. Riveting and disturbing.

Dustin Wenzel's brass sculptures are brain-cavity castings of Great Whales from the New Brunswick Museum collection.

Dustin Wenzel, (front) Sperm Whale Endocranial Cast, (back) Right Whale Endocranial Cast. Image courtesy of Exit Art Gallery

It has recently been discovered that some humpback whales have spindle neurons, a type of brain cell previously considered to exist only in dolphins, humans and other primates, which may indicate a high capacity for intelligence. Although white males possess the largest physical brain of any animals (Wenzel's castings were indeed impressively big), there is no scientific consensus about the nature, magnitude or even existence of cetacean intelligence.

And now for the gizmos:

Jamie O'Shea, Alvin (image courtesy of Exit Art gallery)

Artificial neural networks are often used in voice recognition systems and IA research. They consist in mathematical computations that mimic the neural network patterns of the nervous system. Jamie O'Shea's Alvin is a realization of an interactive and electronic neural network constructed with physical hardware. When left alone Alvin is dormant, but if you the lay your hand on the interface provided, you will set an electronic neural-like network in motion.

Alvin is a cellular automaton organized around eight cells which produce sound. The sound one cell produces is determined by what sound the other cells are making. This interrelated input and output scheme is an artificial neural network; a simulation of a brain. The imitation of life goes even further, because Alvin's sound circuits are built and destroyed by one another, rather than just turned on or off.

Swarm, by David Bowen (whom i interviewed a year ago), is an autonomous roaming device whose movements are determined by houseflies housed inside the device itself.

David Bowen, Swarm (detail). Image courtesy of Exit Art Gallery

The chamber where they live contains food, water and light to keep them warm but also sensors that detect the changing light patterns produced by their movements. The sensors send the light data to an on-board microcontroller, which in turn activate the motors moving the device in relation to the movements of the flies.

David Bowen, Swarm. Image courtesy of Exit Art Gallery

Oh, look! i took all those little images.

BRAINWAVE: Common Senses is on view until April 19, 2008 at Exit Art Gallery in New York. This exhibition is part of Exit Art's Unknown Territories series of exhibitions that explore the impact of scientific advances on contemporary culture and examine in particular how contemporary artists interpret and interact with the new knowledge and possibilities created by technological innovation in the 21st century.

Sensorium. Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art, edited by Caroline A. Jones, Director, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art and Professor of the History of Art at MIT (Amazon UK and USA)

Publisher MIT Press says:The relationship between the body and electronic technology, extensively theorized through the 1980s and 1990s, has reached a new technosensual comfort zone in the early twenty-first century. In Sensorium, contemporary artists and writers explore the implications of the techno-human interface. Ten artists offer their own edgy investigations of embodied technology and the technologized body. These range from Matthieu Briand's experiment in "controlled schizophrenia" and Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller's uneasy psychological soundscapes to Bruce Nauman's uncanny night visions and François Roche's destabilized architecture. (...) Artwork by each artist appears with an analytical essay by a curator, all of it prefaced by an anchoring essay on "The Mediated Sensorium" by Caroline Jones. In the second half of Sensorium, scholars, scientists, and writers contribute entries to an "Abecedarius of the New Sensorium." (...) Sensorium is both forensic and diagnostic, viewing the culture of the technologized body from the inside, by means of contemporary artists' provocations, and from a distance, in essays that situate it historically and intellectually.

The book is actually the catalog of an exhibition of the same name which was curated by by Bill Arning, Jane Farver, Yuko Hasegawa, Marjory Jacobson and Caroline A. Jones in 2006 at the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Installation view: Sensorium Part I

Sensorium explores the ways artists address the physical and emotional aspects of our increasing engagement with technology. I missed the exhibition so i found it a bit difficult to engage with the chapter that focuses on the show. Nevertheless i found the book extremely engaging and caught myself adding loads of notes in the margins of the pages or underlying sentences i didn't want to forget. Starting at page 2 of the book: "The only way to produce a techno-culture of debate at the speed of technological innovation itself is to take up these technologies in the service of aesthetics. Aesthetic contemplation buys us time and space." Not bad for a start.

Janet Cardiff and George Burns Miller, Opera For A Small Room, interior, 2005. Photo by Markus Tretter

After an essay by Jones on "The Mediated Sensorium", the book includes curatorial essays and artists statements on each works participating to the Sensorium exhibition. Artists includes Mathieu Briand, Yuko Hasegawa, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Ryoji Ikeda, Bruce Nauman, Sissel Tolaas, etc. But also François Roche and R&Sie(n) which means that i have to contradict the statement above about my lack of interest for an exhibition i have not seen.

In his contribution to the exhibition, R&Sie(n) introduced the notion of repulsion and taboo in architecture by proposing the Mi(pi) Bar. Meant to look like a "physical secretion" from I.M. Pei's Wiesner Building where the Visual Arts Center List resides. Mi(pi) Bar is in fact a tearoom in which people drink tea made using their own recycled urine. The outer shape of the tea room is based on the forms of bubbles produced in urination.

The project was never executed but it certainly sparkled some debate. Will knowledge of the tea origin create repulsion, paranoia? Will it change how water seems to taste? After all, rumor has it that from 2009, astronauts will drink their own urine, sweat, and even rat pee recycled and purified by a high-tech machine. In her essay about the project Jane Farver recalls that although clean water is a readily commodity on the MIT campus, it comes at a great expense as the majority of the state's lakes, rivers and estuaries have pollution problems.

The chapter worth its weight in gold is the Abecedarium, a series of 36 essays which will bring you from the most mundane (an essay on the yuck factor!) to the most unexpected (Turner's paintings) entries to a re-thinking of our sensory relationship with technology.

Image discover magazine

Starting with "Air" where Bruno Latour explains how WW1 soldiers realized that air shouldn't be taken for granted when chlorine gas was thrown at them in Ypres; Michael Bull writes about society's ipodization in "auditory"; Caroline Jones investigates the increasingly porous boundaries between the biological and the mechanical in "biomimetics"; Chris Csikszentmihalyi draws our attention to the central role that "Control" plays in technology; in "Corpus" Stephen Wilson campaigns for the involvement of art in biological research; Constance Classen wrote a fascinating study on the odor of sanctity; i discovered the "Godscans" in Peter Lunenfeld'd essay about Andrew Newberg's affirmation that he had uncovered some evidence of the "biology of belief"; Caroline Bassett wrote about how identity theft is giving rise to governmental claims that we need a digital shadow to match our physical bodies; Peter Galison's "Nanofacture" essay mentions the dimension that art can take in nanotechnology; William J. Mitchell has a fascinating text on the role of camera phones in the development of a new panopticon of networked consumer electronics; Sherry Turkle explores the way mobile phones transport us to the state of a new ether and have given rise to the tethered self; Iroko Kikuchi recalls the culinary and cultural importance in Japan of the umami (the "fifth taste"), etc.

Sensorium is not one of those easy-to-review and flaunt-it-on-your-livingroom-table glossy volumes that you flip through more than you read. It's solid, it has depth, historical knowledge and a 360 degrees perspective of what notions related to "embodied technology and the technologized body" mean and involve.

More images of the exhibition.

Image on the homepage: Sissel Tolaas whose contribution to Sensorium was an to embed synthesized human sweat pheromones into the white paint on the gallery's walls in order to give visitor an idea of what the "smell of fear" is.

Consolation prize for everyone who missed the sk-interface conference. The videos of the talks -which took place at FACT in Liverpool on February 8 & 9 as part of the sk-interfaces exhibition - have been made available online. Yeah!

Culture de Peaux d'Artistes by Art Oriente Objet

I'm quoting curator Jens Hauser:

This international conference examined the aesthetic, philosophical and biomedical issues raised in the exhibition. Specialists from a wide range of disciplines and artists of international renown discussed past and future roles of skin, shifts in the concept of interfaces, the emergence of 'biofacts' in philosophy, as well as the most contemporary practices of artists using new technologies, biomedia and their own bodies.

Make your way to the FACT archive.

In the order of the conference schedule: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4.

The archive also includes footage of the performance Bleu Remix by Yann Marussich, recorded on the opening night of sk-interfaces.

Videos are encoded in H.264 format - you need a recent Flash player.

There's a also a great catalog with essays, interviews and project presentations: Sk-interfaces: Exploding Borders - Creating Membranes in Art, Technology and Society (Amazon USA and UK.)