Update: Current Nam June Paik Art Center director Younchul Lee and his curator Tobias Berger are responsible for the current search underway for alan∂, which has gone missing. After inviting alan∂ for a successful on site installation in Seoul, they mistakenly shipped the work to the wrong location where it was lost, destroyed or both! Apparently both Youngchul Lee and Tobias Berger were fully aware of the risk they took upon themselves, resulting in the loss of a complex and unique mix of literature, cinema, sculpture and participation. So far neither Y. Lee nor T. Berger has acted to locate, collect, restore and return alan∂. Makes one wonder, if Wall St. has found its way onto Museum Mile. Frankly, both the director and curator at Nam June Paik Art Center are not up to the job, should neither act to accept and correct their careless misshipment of art.

Tobias Berger in Venice (with blue shopping bag).

Physical Computing - Prototype Your Life!

alex wenger, julian finn, datatects on alan∂, and associate midi-guru manuel odendahl have compiled a catalogue of sustainable and intriguing 21st century media art and music ideas involving participation, sensory extension and the open source Arduino hardware platform.

during the long research period for this valuable manual on the cutting-edge, alan∂ datatects produced the OLED micro-cinema armatures for the alan∂ installations at the Seville Biannual and the Nam June Paik Art Center, 2008-9. Best price.

aland OLEDs at Nam June Paik Art Center from alan∂ on Vimeo.

Philip Pocock translocal birdseye scopic image and mashup tests:

Philip Pocock explains alan∂ principle to students Lorenz Schwarz and
Yunjun Lee. Teaching and learning as part of art.

THE MOON WAS DONE BEFORE I WAS BORN

From aland - seoul station

alan∂: seoul station installation sketch by philip pocock at nam june paik art center. the space offered by the curator had a matrix of memento backlit images from nam june paik’s journey on one side. opposite, a passageway. between, a temporary divide with a moorish cut-out entrance. opposite that, the back side of a screening room wall. our space i realized had no walls. i imagined then a change from the seville configuration of aland’s three media sculptures - in the round, like a desert island. after all media sculpture is both spatial (2) due to the flatscreens, and spacial (3D) due to everything else. alex wenger and i made a new work for the biggest white bordering surface - 1 mini cellphone oled screen with databank of images. it looked great centered on that huge whiteness.

TRANSLOCALITY

some little sketches alan∂ director made from the middle of nowhere and on the terrace waiting for the alanders to arrive and the nam june paik art center crew to get to the space that youngchul lee had offered. it had walls but no ‘walls’, the dominant border being a memorial mosaic of tv and video scans relating to paik’s history and colleagues, the others being an entrance with an arabesque doorway detail ’surprise’ from youngchul lee, an exterior of a black cube bordering, and a quirky oblique passage wall.

so the original idea of birds, migration and desert island connected well to this island of space. i wanted it to be away from the wall as things had worked well in seville and space allowed. media sculpture is relief of sorts as the screen vector of light demands that in part, but if the 3 main aland elements - moses, muhammad and federico - the subject/object for installation were placed ‘in the round’ the guests would circulate along with the myriad of scopes and images…

From aland director at work

alan∂ : seøul statiøn :: a few general installation views. more to come…

EXPosition of Mythology - ELectronic Technology explores notions of technology, mythology and religion through the perspective of Nam June Paik’s first solo exhibition in 1963, EXPosition of Music ELectronic Television. Nam June Paik’s first solo exhibition is taken as representative of the thinking and concerns Paik would later explore in his practice and represents a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies offering an alternative perspective into how technology, mythology and religion can be understood from a more anthropological perspective.
In this 1963 exhibition, Paik presented his first experiments with televisions, his prepared pianos and several other objects that invited audience participation. Paik’s use of the exhibition space, including hanging a dead cow’s head in the entrance and making people walk around a giant balloon to enter the rest of the exhibition, highlights his emphasis the viewer’s participation and bodily experience. In addition, Paik also raised issues concerning the experience of time,media, history, and knowledge by suggesting different themes and concepts through the works created for the exhibition, the posters displayed, and the type of participation solicited to experience this show. The following were some of Paik’s themes:
instruments for Zen Exercise, Objects Sonores, Sonorized Room, Kindergarten for the Old, Memories of the 20th Century, How to be satisfied with70%, Hommage to Rudolf Augstein, Prepared WC, Fetish is mofidea, Que sais je?, Do it your…, Synchronization as a principle of indeterminate relationships, Is the time without content possible?, A study of German idiotology, among others.
For the upcoming exhibition the aim is to play with these themes, reflect on them, update them to current situations and even possibly parody some of them. Selected works will be presented alongside documentation related to different themes to emphasize the relevance and development of the concerns present in Paik’s exhibition in relation to historical, cultural and anthropological perspectives informed by a reading of the forty years that have passed since EXPosition of Music, Electronic Television.
– curator/director Lee Young Chul.

alan∂ being named by the project’s commissioned artist and director, prof. philip pocock, in his open lab, the moment captured by hfg karlsruhe students jayoung bang and yunjun lee january 8, 2008. the students raininganimals works currently derive from this lecture on (tele)scopic mosaical media mashups, bots, PC housing ‘cuts’ and the conviviality of culture in 11th c. southern europe. alan∂ spare objects and equipment have been ‘borrowed’ in raininganimals school presentations. teaching and learning as art (Roberst Filliou) after hours…

From Naming Aland

From Naming Aland

alan∂ is ‘a land’ and ‘no land, from the land’. alan∂ is a desert island © deleuze. alan∂ is an abbreviation for its content, the conviviality of a moment in eurasian history - ‘al andaluz’. alan∂ is nowhere but everywhere. alan∂ is the middle of nowhere. the moon was done before alan∂ was born. alan∂ is translocality, the space inbetween. alan∂ is participatory web2 post-cinema. alan∂ is where scopes surveil screens, media landscapes of andalusian blogger content. alan∂ is a band of legendary andalusian writers, moses mainomonides, muhammad ibn tufayl, and federico garcía lorca cloaked in code as neo-dada synthespian bots. alan∂ is sculpture concerning the denigration of both image and vision, the spontaneous birth of code-image cinema. alan∂ is an ocean-image.

the students jayoung bang and yunjun lee joined linus stolz, alan∂ second life metaverse guru, alex wenger, code- and co-artist alan∂ technical director, julian finn, informatic student and hacker activist, and daniel burckhardt, datatect and alan∂ weblication director/designer on the alan∂ team. jayoung bang assisted diligently on project admin and database accumulation and yunjun lee assisted with great precision illustrations and design renderings following the alan∂ concept, a well as metal work and fine mechanic construction with fellow hfg student lorenz schwarz, contributing to the project’s conceived scopic and pc housing ‘cut’ sculpture greatly. learning and teaching as art (Robert Filliou) in action.

Core alanders Alex, Julian and Philip (minus Daniel and Linus) at work in Philip Pocock’s ZKM Lab on the essentials for alan∂, the andalusian bot synthespians, the cyber-andalusian mashup video code… . Students Jayoung, Yunjun and Lorenz not present for the core work.

Philip Pocock’s sculpture lab at ZKM, where he was assisted by students Yunjun Lee and Lorenz Schwarz.

A derivative work based on the above ‘teaching as part of art’ by student group raininganimals cooperative, jayoung bang, yunjun lee and lorenz schwarz: