radarboy

My current work, Look to the Sky, is a contemplation of our thoughts as a broadcast medium across the sky and beyond. , is on display this week at Fabbrica del Vapore as part of Salone del Mobile 2010.

Look to the Sky was made possible through the kind assistance of Mind The Box, a Berlin association that promotes cultural inter-city exchange, and Process 4 Labs.

I have always been fascinated by space as a representation of the future and the hope that it inspires. Look to the Sky is a physical representation of our imagination and of our thoughts as they are broadcast across the sky and beyond.

Inspired by German abstract sculptor Norbert Krick and his Raumplastik series. 30m x 8m. Plastic wire, fishing line, light.

Pics courtesy of Mind The Box

During Transmediale a few weeks ago, Berlin had an awesome lazer rainbow over the city.

The installation entitled From One To Many, was created by American and Berlin artist Yvette Mattern.

Read more about it here: http://www.transmediale.de/en/from-one-to-many-en

Lithuanian artist Zilvinas Kempinas uses unspooled video tape as a primary medium in his installations to create beautiful, fluid pieces. I’m quite chuffed he’ll be exhibiting at the Transmediale Future Obscura event in Berlin next week.

More of his work can be found here.

Congratulations to Berlin and Germany on a peaceful transition of power 20 years ago, a successful reunification and the end of the silliness, known as the GDR and the Berlin Wall.

Although we normally blog about installation art, design and other such things, today’s post is on the most beautiful art of all – the art of life.

That’s How The Light Gets In has a nice account of the buildup to the 9 November the peaceful revolution.

The “Friendly Revolution” and the mass mobilization of people across eastern Europe had a great personal impact on me, and many other fellow South Africans, in the belief that an end to Apartheid was possible.

Under the banner of the Mass Democratic Movement hundreds of thousands of people flooded onto the streets of every city in South African, effectively leading to the un-banning of civic organisations, the release of Tata Madiba and to the negotiated settlement.

So 9-11 is a fitting day for me to get my residence permit in Germany. It was quite an ordeal. And as a reminder to the state of the nation, as I was walking into the visa offices, a girl came out crying – her residence permit having obviously being refused.

I am no longer really interested in the past. I only mention all this, as perhaps an opportunity for me (and maybe you?!) to reflect for a moment as humans on what kind of society we would like to create.

For me it’s one of an end to nationalism, and a strengthening of a community of respect. A society where quality of life is valued. An end to pragmatism. Where the spaces we design and the lives we lead are not merely a means to an end, but a celebration of beauty and magnificence. A society where details are important. Where the journey is as important as the destination.

The silliness, however, unfortunately, still continues. Our governments still have a lot to learn and a long way to go.

Now it’s time for the next revolution. The removal of all the other walls on our planet.

“You should know that no human being is illegal. This is a contradiction in terms.
People can be beautiful or more beautiful. You can be just or unjust. But illegal?” How can a person be illegal? ”

Elie Wiesel

Read more about the Kein Mensch Ist Illegal movement in Germany here.

Happy 5th birthday Dirt Crew Recordings!! To celebrate their 5th anniversary, my friends at Dirt Crew are giving away 10 free quality dirty house tracks from the likes of Tigerskin, Martinez, Tensnake and the Dirt Crew boys Break3000 and James Flavour themselves. These guys are one of my favourite DJ crews in Berlin at the moment.
Get the tracks here: http://www.whatpeopleplay.com/dirty

Check out their Myspace: www.myspace.com/dirtcrewrecordings

And then check out some of their other stuff, such as Till von Sein, Tigerskin, Marc Romboy and the 5 YearsDirt Crew compilation, here: http://www.whatpeopleplay.com/?redirect=/news_events/detail/1720

Says Sergej Hein on Berlin Block Tetris:

“It´s kind of a parody about the former socialist building style. They use to build whole cities, without any change in House design or room layout to create cheep housing for workers (we call them Blocks). In Soviet times you could easily wake up at a friends place in another city and still feel like you are in your flat as the furniture was the same as well…

I was living in a Block on the opposite side of the street in Berlin 2 years ago. Living there remind me of my early childhood in Riga where we had nearly the same Blocks.

I think Alexei Paschitnow, the inventor of Tetris, had kind of the same Idea as me in spring 1984. I bet he was looking out of the window of his Block in Moscow and thought how do soviet architects actually plan this buildings?”

More from the artist’s recent exhibition at the ATM Gallery in Berlin: http://www.ekosystem.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5979
http://www.davethechimp.co.uk

Went to see Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Murder of Crows at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art today. Was pretty inspiring.

98 speakers scattered around the room for an emotive aural experience. The songs were beautiful. Reminded me of Pink Floyd.

From the Gallery’s site:

In the otherwise empty historical hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof, 98 loudspeakers are installed. These emit the sounds of voices, music and soundscapes generated by special stereophonic recording and replay techniques, creating a composition that has a direct physical impact on the listener. The special Ambisonic soundfield system generates a greatly intensified aural and emotional space, so that the acoustic events that transpire in the three-dimensional soundspace have a startling, disconcerting immediacy. The installation is conceived like a film or a play, but one whose images and narrative structures are created by sound alone.

The installation’s title, “The Murder of Crows”, refers both to the English term for a flock of those birds and to the strange occurrence known as a ‘crow funeral’: when a crow dies, many other crows converge around the body and caw, perhaps in lament, for over 24 hours. The work also references the etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” by Francisco de Goya.

Wasn’t really feeling the rest of the stuff at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Didn’t really grab me at all – pretty abstract.