September 22, 2007, 1:37 pm

Danielle and I travelled to London last night to see a portion of LOLA Fest. Specifically, we went to see Sigi Torinus and Jose Seoane along with Blackhole Factory perform live visuals, Talking Walls, on Dundas Street. As well, Brian Eno had installed his 77 Million Paintings in the Library and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see this piece either.

While Eno's work was hypnotic and I personally found the randomly generative aspect of it to be very intriguing, I think there was also a sense of frustration with ideas around authorship. The fact that he hand-made every slide that was eventually combined in one form or another helped to ease any questions around the validity of his work beyond just an ongoing experiment. However, even at that level, the work made me think about the way that nature, maybe specifically trees, grow slowly, but steadily and their movements are so often unnoticed... in Eno's work I would find myself drifting in and out of actually viewing the work and just letting my mind wander and when I came back, I realized I had somehow missed the transitions (growth) that happened and was now met with an entirely new piece.

Talking Walls was inspiring at another level. The processing still occurred in the machine, but the engagement of Sigi, Jose and BF was at an entirely different level. They had parsed the history of London from a variety of sources, including literature, Google Image Search and live interviews to create a moving and wonderfully incomplete history of the region. Above this idea though was the fact that these visuals were projected onto boarded up buildings in the downtown of London. Combined with the ongoing soundtrack being generated from a small collection of locally purchased kitchen utensils, it was a beautiful relief from the usual traffic and disruptions. The passing cars and buses were muted by the sound, the visual blight of surrounding advertisements and the encouragement to look above street level was something I had never experienced before. So, at both levels, the historical telling through live visuals and parsed data and information and the performance (location, techniques, etc) itself, reinforced my (current) lack of interest in creating art for galleries.

Why cities do not openly invite the use of street-level power outlets and encourage the ongoing visualization of the city's culture and stories is beyond me. It seems like an obvious opportunity to encourage the use of these urban spaces that seem so barren, concrete and commercialized for the creative potential of a population.

Also, Danielle and I came home with a few lovely ideas, hopefully we can engage these sooner rather than later.

By justin Langlois | 0 COMMENTS | POSTED IN: text

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