from 12th to 15th of october 2006 : CHAOS MICROMEDIA PROJECT @ PIKSEL06
VIDEO STREAMING LIVE @ SCOPTIONE 2006

from 12th to 15th of october 2006 : CHAOS MICROMEDIA PROJECT @ PIKSEL06

piksel : http://www.piksel.no/piksel06/

report (english) / compte-rendu (français)

CHAOS MICROMEDIA - CIA/APO33 - Piksel Festival 2006 from apo33 on Vimeo.

CHAOS MICRO MEDIA at PIKSEL festival (2006)

One participant (member of a laboratory in articial intelligence), a guest of the XXXX seminar at PIKSEL (Bergen), in the course of a discussion on the relationship between software and hardware, expressed his worries on the future of human kind, given the impending opportunity to replace (damaged or deseased) parts of the human brain with electronic devices.

He was concerned that a cyborgian future was creeping in for humanity

At the same time, in an outlandish bunker buried under wet rocks, we, nerds, geeks, freaks and other odd balls, were exploring, with a different outlook, the other potentialities of the same future. Together with a few hackers twitching over their keyboards, we were the eager symposiasts in a workshop called 'Chaos Micromedia Project'.

If we try to be scientific about it, as the crow flies over the history of cybernetics, the cyborg hypothesis, coming out of the WWII fusion of soldier and airplane, raises serious questions on power and control over the bodies and minds of people. Looking at it from a rather more 'cyberpunk' perspective, we speculated on an altogether different hypothesis : how the hacking/hijacking of these technological devices could generate new potentialities in our individual and collective existential experiences.

Chaos Micromedia Project : we posit hacking and experimentation as elementary procedures in the actualisation of a potential. The technological device is no longer just considered as a means of power (which it is and remains, hence the rationale for a hacking), but as an activator of potentialities, a generator of virtual processes (as different from the ideal and static virtuality of the Internet).

During the course of four days, we constructed various micro devices : radio and TV transmitters, microphones, oscillators, amplifiers, controllers…

Armed with welding irons as magic sticks, we became like magicians, manipulating forces.

The border which devides physical from mental forces - border which, as one of the seminar participants reminded us, is at the foundation of modern science - was continuously upset, crossed, questioned or even erased.

On the second day of the workshop, the action of the TV and radio transmitters generated a maelström of forces in the bunker, as the specters of sounds, images and waves overwhelmed its rooms and corridors. The space was incessantly reorganised by the proliferation of radio or TV signal receivers, and the various crisscrossing transmissions and feedbacks. The stroboscopic shape of the picture generated by a micro-camera feeding back to a micro-transmitter, together with the sounds of dolphins transformed by a digital automaton then broadcast onto various radio transmitters, evoked the presence of these invisible entities. Spectralisation of the waves. Potentiation of the bodies.

On the third day, the devices were grafted on to our bodies. The catalysts bound to a fixed and bulky volume (the bunker) became prosthesis for nomadic interventions.

We just had to walk about (back to our hotel to drop our bags, visiting the exhibition hall, having lunch in the School of Fine Arts restaurant).

Five persons, each one with is own device, result of his experimentations :

Julien, with an oscillator and a radio receiver, generating adjustable frequencies, playing with processes of feedback. An autonomous device, autonomous from the body, an undetermined automaton, left in odd places, randomly, to react with the environment.

Jörg, with a light-sentitive oscillator, a microphone, a radio. Handling the device as if it were a musical instrument.

Christian, on the left arm, a prosthesis-extension of oscillator/light sensitive sensor/radio. The device as an organic extension of the body and of its reaction with the environment.

Esther, loud speaker taped on the left hip, a microphone in the mouth: songs and glossolalia, interviews, voice amplification…

Sophie, micro in the mouth linked to a radio transmitter, and a portable radio: her second mouth.

The band is on the run and new arrangements are cobbled up :

Sophie hands her radio (her second mouth) to Esther, who acts as relay via her loud speaker. A new unit emerges, out of the mixing of Sophie with Esther, each one being crossed by the other, and the device slicing away their bodies. A trans-individual arrangement takes form. Esther becomes an extension of Sophie. Then Jörg is grafted on the new collective device. He receives Sophie's waves and messes them up with his oscillator. then he lays his radio on Esther's device which transmits the combination of Sophie's voice and his own messed up reception. This goes on, creating ever new arrangements according to the grafts and connections activated. Then Christian's oscillator is made reactive to the black and white alternation of a shop window tapes. Further on, Julien leaves his automaton in the middle of a busy street, turns around it, lets it interact with the passers-by, moves it again, causing the passers-by to deviate, as if it were a dangerous zone of crossing waves. Esther meets one of the festival nerds. She interviews him on the micro-radio which is now called 'RadioSo' for the occasion. The new radio station is very localised, she says: between her and him. Radio as an amplified social relation.

This cyborgian future becomes then more than just the threat of control by an anonymous and invisible power: hijacked micro-devices become vectors of permutation and transmutation of trans-individual arrangements and combinations, operating transfers and connections between multiple, multiplied bodies. Each one through the other.

Then beginns : the potentialization of levels and forms of interaction between living beings, and between living and dead (virtual or material) bodies, involving a de-hierarchisation of social relations and a de-atomisation of people.

Then we might be abble to appreciate Foucault's 'end of man'.

(10 october 2006)

by APO33

Copyleft - Art libre licence

COMPLETE PHOTO REPORT

project :

The Chaos Micromedias project =====⇒ is a new kind of medialab based on hacking & hijacking of electronics & FM/TV transmitters to make noise & images on the micro level . It is composed of workshop sessions to build electronic sound devices (microphones, mixers, oscillators, audio amplifiers, controllers…) and FM/TV transmitters etc., and performances and micro-installations diffusing sound on small and mobile radio receivers and different types of televisions. The sounds and images are collected in the space of the intervention and reintroduced in the context through the mobile diffusion systems. The sounds and images captured are also transformed by PureData automatons and send by streaming on the internet.

Micro versus mass, DIY electronics versus customer & factory addict, low tech versus high tech… the Chaos Micromedias project develops a space for creation of micromedia construction & action.

look at some photos story about it

a lot of micro_video of micromedia action in Nantes06