Kutlug Ataman’s “Küba” installation at Hangar Bicocca, Milan

After traveling through the UK, Austria, Belgium, Australia, Germany and USA, the installation Küba, by famous Turkish film-maker Kutlug Ataman is now staged in the exhibition “Not Afraid of the Dark”, at Hangar Bicocca in Milan. A spatial representation of a neighborhood in Istanbul, populated by fundamentalists, outsiders, Kurds and Turkish people with particular life stories. 40 old TV sets of all shapes and all sizes, playing at moderate volume, placed on TV tables, all different, and a chair in front of each. Taken by surprise, especially for someone that does not know the story of the installation, a visitor might be attracted by a face or by the comfort of a particular chair. I had the curiosity to watch two interviews without knowing what the story around them was. I got immediately struck by the violence that sprouted through the person’s story, but also by a feeling of alienation, common to the handful of interviews I watched. A young man speaks about friendship and how friends have particular ways of manifesting themselves in Küba: one day someone might be invited to drink a tea, eat something at a friend’s house, he is well-treated, particular attention is dedicated to his having a good time, then out of a sudden he is taken off the chair and beaten savagely. Next day, they are friends again. Friends in Küba, confesses the young man, understand that friendship is also about beating, but because of this, it is not less of a friendship. A woman in her fifties recalls the good times, when Küba was free and you could beat policemen on the street and bear no consequences. A middle-aged woman narrates her life story from the beginning, with coming to leave in Küba, getting married, being unhappy all along but moving on and refusing divorce for the sake and pride of her family. She would have liked to study, but she could never afford it. Now she is cleaning houses and does her best to convince her husband to go the right way, take a job, take care of his family. She has just born a son and hopes he will change her husband to the better.
You can move around the TV sets and select a story to watch, driven by a face, a phrase or the comfort of a chair (indeed, attention has been paid to this not neglectable detail). Each visitor leaves with his own impression of the neighborhood, the people, life of an outsider community. He operates his own selection. The path in this installation takes the form of a curve from the collective to the individual, from the generalized loudness of all the stories heard at once, to concentration on one particular story. Even when listening to an interview, you catch glimpses of other stories, you may leave one unfinished and head towards another one.
It took Kutlug Ataman three years to gather all the interviews. The inhabitants are men, women of all ages, children, most of them have a secure tone of voice and a single-pointedness in dealing with hard issues, even for the very young ones. It takes an attentive eye to find, between all these hard stories, a sensitive perspective on daily life moments.
Erol: “Birds give my eyes pleasure. Their beauty, their colours, their gentleness… there’s a yellow bird. A very pleasant yellow. It seems to be laughing with its mate.”

TEC-CH Seminar: Museum Anthropology

Tomorrow, May 30, starts a three-days seminar held by guest-speaker Paolo Campione. Prof. Campione has a wide experience as anthropologist, he has conducted fieldwork in New Guinea, Bali and, most recently, northern Laos; in Italy, has studied the popular arts of traditional communities in Sardegna and the Alps. He teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of Insubria and from 2005 he is curator of the Museo delle Culture, in Lugano.

The seminar is themed on Museum Anthropology, encompassing the history of the anthropological museum, issues in the interpretation of cultural objects, complexity of giving meaning, classification and display of ethnographic objects, with rich examples drawn from the Museo delle Culture in Lugano and the exhibitions which have been designed with the collaboration of prof. Campione. A special section is dedicated to the interpretation of Indian works of art and of distinctive objects from Melanesia and Polynesia, with examples from the museum collection.

All lectures will be held at Museo delle Culture in Lugano, in Via Cortivo 24/28.

Video: A life-changing decision

A great parody on TEC-CH student life. Video developed by Fede, Susi & JP for the video-editing lab
For an insider's view on the TEC-CH Master :)
A life-changing decision (opens in YouTube)

Explore the European digital cultural heritage

Through the multilingual MICHAEL service you can find and explore digital collections from museums, archives, libraries and other cultural institutions from across France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Whether you are interested in art or archaeology, family history or planning holidays, the Romans or modern History, MICHAEL can show you what is available.

http://www.michael-culture.org/en/home

Interactive art and the making of an experience: Spiritual De-Krypt at Museo Cantonale d’Arte

On Saturday I have been to an interactive art exhibition, INnet HUB 11.0, at Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano, part of the INnet Project with media artists in focus Maurice Benayoun and the couple Vasulka. The Vasulkas are legends of media art, they have been active with video installations since the seventies. As for Maurice Benayoun, he has a history of himself with media and virtual reality installations, if you check his website, you might wanna read about his virtual reality installation Is God flat? (“first metaphysical videogame”, Le Monde 1994)

However, the exhibition was developed with little care of masking technology into a true experience. Altogether, technology was just as obvious as the interactive experience itself and left little space for the visitor to be immersed. The So.So.So. installation of Maurice Benayoun is based on a powerful concept – visitor controls the perspective of what is being viewed and dives into the image projected with the help of VR binoculars, getting closer and closer to a detail of interest, while images keep changing in the very moment he focuses on a specific detail. Less powerful was its staging, the environment was cold like a scientific lab, no climax apart from the Aha of figuring it out. Another installation with a motion-capture system triggered attention, but the experience stopped there, at seeing my projection on the screen and at the fact that there was indeed a mathematical precision to the way my movements corresponded to the sounds generated. I see a huge potential for the association between movement and sounds, and for systems that can provide a synchronous reproduction of units corresponding to different senses. Provided the environment is created for an experience to take place.

The last room had something special: a black curtain that you could just leave to fall behind you and enter a self-sufficient environment. Not here to make the definition of an environment for an experience, but this is all about it: create a world in itself, cut off from the world outside, establish different rules of interaction, exploit senses to the maximum and allow them to come together different than out here, challenge and defy perception, empower people to rediscover themselves and their actions. The installation in that last room was called SPIRITUAL DE-KRYPT, developed by Roberto Vitalini and Dante Tanzi. The room was very dark. When I moved towards a very subtle red light, my body was suddenly projected on two screens, in lightened colours, the music got stronger. If I stopped the projected "aura" slowly faded away, the music got softer. The light projection became visible again, naturally following my movements, triggering melodic sequences. The surrounding sound was leading my gestures into a circular rhythm that, if repeated, amplified the melody generated by my movements and the visual traces of my actions.

Drawing data out of my own experience and into the analytical level, there are some elements that I consider essential for changing a sum of media into an authentic experience: first, closing the environment from the gallery, the world, the people outside. This was the feeling I experienced when the curtain fell behind and the light grew dimmer. Second element can be drawn from dramaturgy rules of dosing silence and sound, the element of surprise. The visitor does not understand immediately that it is him who generates sound and the amplification of sound (even though he might read the informative panel at the entrance, the text is cryptic and incites curiosity rather than explaining). The same applies for projections: he realizes he is projected, but not immediately that only movement generates light, whereas stillness makes him invisible to the screen. Third element: the visitor is in control, he creates the world around him. Fourth element: powerful game with perception: you move, you project, you generate sound. Your movement is projected as light on the screens, as if movement itself is decomposing and enlightening your body. In fact, you don’t see your body anymore, you just see light projected. Fifth element: Continuity of the experience. Movements generate sounds, melodic sequences. Your movement then produces music that can inspire your subsequent movements and so on. Dancing in this room is a circle in which movement generates its projection and its musical counterpart that propels the dance and its projection again and its music again.

Many thanks to Roberto, who explained me how the system works and what the motivation behind creating this experience was.

Les sentiments des personnages by Serena

Serena's first home-made video (..that I get to see :)
Certain it won't be the last, I guess this will be a lifelong passion
See video

ExhibitFiles: community site for exhibit designers

..and not only. A website where exhibit designers and developers may post reviews and case studies of exhibitions and exhibits. It is still in its early days, but there are some interesting reviews and case studies that you may already check.

See the website ExhibitFiles