[spectre] nicolai/peljhan: polar m [mirrored], continued

[Andreas Broeckmann]

there's a first photo of the installation here:
http://www.mikro.in-berlin.de/wiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=138
-ab



Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), Yamaguchi, Japan


polar m [mirrored]
by Carsten Nicolai and Marko Peljhan

Opening Saturday, November 13, 2010

The premiere presentation of the situation polar m [mirrored] by 
Carsten Nicolai and Marko Plejhan will be presented on Saturday, 13 
November 2010, at the YCAM Center in Yamaguchi, Japan. The 
installation explores natural radiation phenomena and exposes them to 
the limits of human sensorial perception. Our understanding of the 
basic indeterminancy and the non-linear intelligence that one finds 
in nature's apparent randomness and noise, is limited by the physical 
characteristics of our senses. The installation offers an unusual 
insight into the complexity of those natural structures. Like its 
predecessor project, polar, that was created at the Canon Artlab in 
Tokyo in 2000 and that won the Prix Ars Electronica for Interactive 
Art in 2001, polar m [mirrored] was created by the German artist 
Carsten Nicolai and the Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan. The 
exhibition is curated by Yukiko Shikata (guest curator) and Kazunao 
Abe (YCAM).

Nicolai and Peljhan are two internationally active artists who both 
deal with questions of art, science and technology and who have been 
collaborating occasionally since 1997, when they both took part in 
the documenta X contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Both 
artists are researching and designing methods of environmental 
observation based on information and sensor technologies. With polar 
m [mirrored], they are proposing new perspectives on the global 
ecosystems. Their new work consists of two mirrored cubical spaces 
(one accessible and one not), a field of radiation generators and a 
system of radiation observatoria. It probes our understanding of the 
intelligence of nature and of human existence through the prism of 
radiation phenomena and their visualisation and sonification.

polar m [mirrored] follows the conceptual traces of the initial polar 
project which was concerned with the assumption of the global 
communications networks as an intelligent matrix. The initial thesis 
of polar was that the human created networks, with their exponential 
growth in complexity, begin to mimic indeterminant phenomena as we 
find them in nature itself.  In that project the inherent 
intelligence of global networks and their qualities were analysed 
through a logical and deterministic system, based on the relationship 
between language, semantics and networks. The result of that analysis 
was then projected into an observation and events space and a 
dictionary of terms that grew over time. The visitors interactively 
affected the analysis system. In the first  polar  the matrix of 
cognition of the Solaris  ocean was the inspiration for a human 
created communications and cybernetic system, whereas polar m 
[mirrored] ventures into a more in-depth understanding of the Solaris 
ocean.

The polar m [mirrored] landscape explores the noise intelligence 
present in ephemeral and apparently random radiation phenomena 
through micro and macro transitions. Its spatial setup questions the 
relevance of the viewer, her or his presence within the space, and 
potential influence on it through the indenterminancy principle.  The 
focus is on the work of art as an autonomous construction in a large, 
potentially infinite structure enveloped in an ocean of radiating 
particles.

Visual radiance together with different types of radiation 
(electromagnetic, _, _, _) and associated sub-atomic particles are 
the dynamic triggers of the polar m [mirrored] algorithms. These 
algorithms sonify and visualise the events transmitted from the 
instruments present in the landscape (geiger counters, cloud chamber, 
high frequency receivers, and granite radiation generators observed 
by robot-controlled sensors). The soundscape is generated through the 
coupling of indeterminant radiation events. The sounds are 
spatialised using otoacoustics which generates them in the inner ear, 
making it impossible to locate them in physical space. Processes of 
nature, both man made and cosmic, which normally elude human 
perception, are temporarily brought down to a human scale.


Further info: http://polar-m.ycam.jp

(photos coming up in a few hours)