December 02, 2004
Energie_Passagen
Public Voices Thrown Into the Flow
From Audiohyperspace: "Emergie_Passagen: Reading and (De)Scribing the City" - so the subtitle of this interactive audiovisual installation, which [could] be experienced until November 29th on Munich's Salvator Place. The installation understands a city's public speech - its inhabitants' chatting, the language of politics and media - as diverse streams of energy, from which an architecture is taking shape. The latter is made audible and visible by the art work. Every evening between 6 and 10 p.m. the square in Munich's city center is becoming a place, where a mediated, up-to-date intellectual-political milieu is emerging. The installation is mainly dealing with the interactive generation of semantic connections. A process, which can be initiated by every single passer-by and whose principles can be followed very well online.
Starting point for "Energie_Passagen" are texts taken from a mass medium, the daily newspaper. An automated computer process analyses the German newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and reduces it to catchwords. The terms which are filtered in this process are then projected as the "information flow" on the square "Salvatorplatz" in Munich.
As a visitor, you can choose between terms and "throw" your choice into the flow. Thus, movements of text are initiated and links between the terms become apparent. The resulting networks of terms create contextual links and new meanings which differ from the original linear texts. Computer voices immediately react to your "input" and accompany you in an echo of many voices.
In addition, a world map visualizes the path through the geographic landscape of news which the visitor takes based upon her/his choice. A developing linear illustration emphasizes the links between local location and global events.
The visible result of this interactive process is the "Living Newspaper". Its dynamically generated texts are projected on the square's "information cube". Newspaper texts are fragmented and transformed, creating new sense or non-sense. - A model maybe, how texts become catchwords, catchwords become arbitrary language patterns. It shows, how not content is the object of mental appropriation, but selections of terms and words are based on association and deliberate playfulness. By this, an intellectual is emerging, coined by the concert of terms and catchwords.
A livestream, accessible via the project's index page, makes the process audible via Internet.
Posted by jo at December 2, 2004 10:21 AM
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Energie_Passagen [Energy_Passages]
by Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss
The project »Energie_Passagen« reproduces the linguistic space of the city in form of a data flow. Hundreds of catchwords taken from current newspaper reports appear in a projected »information flow« and they are spoken by artificial computer voices. As soon as passers-by select individual words, thematically related networks of terms start to perform in this flow, which can also be experienced as an audiovisual echo. Thus text is detached from its linear context and it is staged as a medial reading in urban space. More…
http://www.energie-passagen.de/projekt_engl.html
Video Energie_Passagen:
http://www.energie-passagen.de/bilder/energiepassagen.mpg
Webinstallation Energie_Passagen
http://www.energie-passagen.de/webinstallation_engl.html
Public Voices
http://www.energie-passagen.de/presse2.html
Technic
http://www.energie-passagen.de/technik_engl.html
Publication on http://netzspannung.org
http://netzspannung.org/positions/digital-transformations/artists/
Posted by: mia at December 20, 2004 07:47 PM
