supereverywhere

“We’re trying to start a death cult, and for that you really need a lot volunteers.”

So explained the fresh-faced etoy spokesman Zai as he led a tour of new recruits through a container built to house the remains—both physical and mental—of the dead. He delivered this line straight, to a small group of art viewers, and the whole thing seemed remarkably uncontroversial, especially given that every visitor was made to sign up with this new death cult as part of viewing the art. Just the procedure, and therefore, unquestioned.

Etoy, the Swiss artist group was part of the International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA exhibit in San Jose this year, showing off a part of Mission Eternity, a container for memories and identity, meant to stretch out a life’s meaning into a post-mortal existence.

A person — in this first test case an 80-something Swiss scientist and actor — is interviewed, photographed, and otherwise documented. Then the resulting digital memories of each person is displayed in pods like the one below. All information is backed-up with a redundency built in to the system by distributing each person’s files among 50 participants. The project is open source, in hopes that it will outlast its creators and take on a life of its own.

I’d met Zai before, when I interviewed him and a friend at Wired News back in the 90s. They’d shown up, heads shaved and wearing vaguely military, bright orange suits. The dress and manic energy of his group raised eyebrows in the Wired News offices, which at that time was becoming more corporate by the day, an increasingly dreary office routine hiding behind a façade of day-glo. I liked what they were doing, and later included their work in an multi-media art exhbit, Taos Talking Pixels, that I’d helped curate for a couple years.

The idea of an open-source repository of memories and lives is an interesting one to me. When I was in high school I wrote a treatment for very similar project. Of course not nearly as ambitious, and not networked installations, my idea was meant to be a way for people to focus on the lives they’re currently leading. A simple variation on the standard momento mori theme: Asking yourself what you’d like to be remembered for can change the way you live today.

There were other connections, such as some inspiration from Timothy Leary and R.U. Sirius (in particular Design for Dying). Zai and I talked about Leary and Sirius and how he hoped to meet the latter on this current trip. I tried to hook them up.

Next up I had to run around trying to find the “SOFA” district, site of the closing block party, carrying a digital sampler and mini amplifier to play along with my friends band. I’d met Kazuhiro Jo (below, second from the right) of the Sine Wave Orchestra when I was in Japan a few years ago. He studies sound and human interface and was working at IBM when we met, though he’s now returned to graduate studies. One of Jo’s inventions is currently in use by Eye of the Boredoms (or Voordoms), a hand-held, light-producing sound interface that Eye uses to great theatrical effect. Jo’s own group is in the middle of a world tour of Italy, USA, and Latvia.

A Sine Wave Orchestra performance is based on audience participation, with as many people as want to join creating sine waves, making a fun and strange effects as the tones interact in surprising ways. Jo created the egg-like interfaces shown below, which are handed out to any willing participants.

There wasn’t a huge crowd, but the audience was enthusiastic, and played their sonic eggs with inventive gusto: some fluttered their hands over the speakers; others just walked around in circles to hear things differently. Jo was very interested in the differences between the audiences he’d had. Evidently the Japanese need the most encouragement to join, while the Italians have no problem shouting for more and including their own laughter in the sounds being made. The Americans were somewhere in between, I gather. I sat off to the side and played my sample waves, enjoying the fun.

After the Sine Wave Orchestra, the audience had another Japanese treat: the Breadboard Band, who makes music with solder-less circuit boards (known as “breadboards”) that they construct on the spot. The also use pre-assembled stuff, including a bright yellow pokemon doll rigged up with knobs and a patchcord coming out of its ass. The BBB is the brainchild of the prolific Professor Masayuki Akamatsu of the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, in Gifu.

The audience was really into the spectacle of the intensely concentrating foursome, as the music confounded expectations, sputtering into a groove and then pulling out, then moving on to another. Some starting dancing, and I heard one young lady joking about what her father would say about the strange things she was being explosed to. Finally, the band encored with a sweetly surprising version of “A Bicycle Built for Two.” Wonderful.

(Here is a video of an earlier performance, shot by a pair of mobloggers from New York ad agency Lowe.)

Afterwords, I tried to find some good food for the two bands, within walking distances of the performance site. Sine Wave Orchestra had recently been to Italy and they were bemoaning the quality of American cuisine. Unfortunately, by the time we got it together, the only thing open was Original Joe’s. Everyone was impressed by the size of the steaks and sandwiches, along with a big side of mushrooms to share, but that’s about the only thing that was impressive. Still it was great fun to hang out.

Other notes: I ran into Jon Winet, who is now a professor at the University of Iowa, and active as ever. As usual Jon seemed to know everyone, which is unsurprising given his enthusiasm and gregariousness.

I didn’t recognize Eric Paulos, who was on site running Interactive Cities while keeping a steady pace delivering baby formula. He was wearing sunglassses and an orange shirt, so I just assumed he was a etoy member, until he walked up to me.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries had a piece in the show, and I’m happy to see the work continues. She’s another person/organization that I included in Taos Talking Pixels, back in the day, and I’m always into her work.

Sadly, Frédéric Madre decided not to fly out from Paris, even though his work was included and he was to give a presentation. My long-time Internet friend will continue to play a virtual role until whenever I can make it to Paris. And I hope that day is coming soon!

Overall the work at ISEA seemed interesting and I was sorry that I only made it down for half a day, really much too short. My work has been very busy and I’ve been out of town, so not only have I been tired, I’ve also had plenty of home stuff to take care off.

My main criticism of the festival this year is that everything was spread a little too thinly over the city. Although I like the idea that you never quite know where something interesting may be lurking, I think it mainly turned out that visitors (and participants for that matter) didn’t know where to go to find all the stuff. Of course if I would have had more time, and I could twist my way through the sunny sidestreets of San Jose, stumbling on groovy electronic installations and unsettling performances along the way, maybe I wouldn’t object. Time considerations aside, I think an important part of these events is encouraging community in the participants, and all those I talked with said that they weren’t feeling it.