Declare dependence!

Recently I went to a demonstration of the Reactable in a bar situated in the centre of Vic. This is a revolutionary new musical instrument, invented by a team leaded by Sergi Jordà. He explained how he came to the idea of the Reactable. It is a table on which you can play with different elements to create different sounds. These computer generated sounds, which before only could be created with a screen and a mouse are now made with physical objects that interact with each other.

This same afternoon I went to a conference of Kevin Kelly from California. He did research to the web. His most recent publication is his book “Out of Control”. In this book he compares the World Wide Web as a huge world wide brain. He compared the functions and capabilities of our brain with that of the World Wide Web. Also he speculated about the possible future trends. He expected more and more dependence of electronic technique. Further more a expansion of this World Wide Brain. Also he talked about a trend of more and more interaction, not only within the information distribution, but also interaction with other physical things. For example the I-pod that communicates with the computer and also with a build-in-chip in shoes of Nike to keep track of information of your running-behavior.

Our brain is capable of link a lot of thinks, so this evening in the bar, when Sergi was performing with his Reactable, I remembered the conference from Kevin Kelly. This was exactly what he was talking about. So, we can ask ourselves, was it really so revolutionary of Sergi Jordà to invent the Reactable? I believe that it can be seen more as a creation of the time we are living in. Electronic interaction of physical things is what is happening right now at the moment and the Reactable is a product of this time.

Bjork was the first big artist who brought the Reactable to the public. In 2007 she performed the song Declare Independence.

Jahfed.com

Yanagi and My Grandmother

Lately Japan is developing from a conservative country to a more western-orientated country. However the role of the woman is still subordinate to the role of the man. In “the My Grandmothers series” Yanagi expresses how Japanese women think of their career. Pictures of his works can be seen on www.artnews.info/miwayanagi.

I quote a piece of the extraction of an interview with Yanagi which is the most essential part of all:

“Wakasa: What is the process of shifting from restricted women to free women?

Yanagi: I used a lot of models for the elevator girls series. They were like dolls or mannequins because of my control. I switched to photography from performance art because I wanted to control their performance 100 percent. As a result, they became mannequins. In the process of making the series, I had opportunities to talk with models who were in their twenties. It was interesting. They want something for their future. But, they have hard time expressing what they want as if their desires were subdued or locked inside. It's hard to tell when locked. Japanese women today conceive themselves as someone who are lovable. They think they have to be lovable and liked by everyone around them. Especially young women think that they don't deserve to live if they are not like that. As a result, they don't talk openly about their wishes or strange desires even though they had some ideas about who they wanted to be when they were children. In order for them to recall their childhood dreams, they need to be liberated from their youthfulness.”
(Interview can be found at: www.jca-online.com/yanagi.html)


Japan is one of the biggest exporters of art and technology. The Japanese photography differs a lot from the western society photography. This makes the Japanese post-photography an interesting subject.

Jahfed.com

Contemporary Blog

This ‘blog’ I will use to present some articles about contemporary art and the new media. There are two reasons for keeping a ‘blog’ on Digital Art.
Art is a thing that always will fascinate me, although I might not know everything a bout it. I use art as well as a tool of inspiration, which can be used in the professional field as well. This is a kind of diary on which I treat different subjects of modern and digital art.
Further more: keeping a ‘blog’ is simply a child of it’s time: The generation of the World Wide Web. A ‘blog’ simply couldn’t exist without the internet. Where a diary and private writings used to be held in writing on paper, it is now a public exposure of thoughts and opinions spread publicly in digital information.
An additional reason could be to start discussion on the different subjects and create more interaction; this however still depends on the willingness of the people to react whether or not.

Jahfed.com