[spectre] The Soft, the Hard and the Wet - Eleonore summer residency 2014

[shu lea cheang]

The Soft, the Hard and the Wet
Summer residency, June to September 2014
Station Messschiff Eleonore, Linz, Austria
Artists: Afroditi Psarra, Ce Quimera, Robertina ·ebjaniã
Curation: Shu Lea Cheang

http://donautics.stwst.at/content/soft-hard-and-wet-residence
http://stwst.at/

"The Soft, the Hard and the Wet" takes Sergio 
Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as a cue 
to examine the current media art practices - 
respectively in soft circuit, open hardware and 
wet lab.

Making use of soft textiles to embed electronic 
circuits, conductible materials and Arduino 
microcontroller, the electronic embroidery maps 
circuit diagrams with needle point precision and 
creates own genre of e-textile soft art. The open 
source culture in FOSS (free and open source 
software) and open hardware is widely adopted and 
disseminated through DIY/DIWO workshops, hardware 
schematics and programming data are made 
accessible for reconfiguration and resourcing. 
Appropriating recycled e-trash, off the shelf 
boards and bolts, the hard artists aims at high 
notes of glitched sonic expression. Countering 
the sanitized high-tech biolabs, hackeria style 
DIY wet labs emerge with chemicals, drugs, body 
fluids all boiled together under the observation 
of hand-made microscopes. While Leone's Spaghetti 
Western features three gunslingers in a plot of 
chaotic violence for finding a buried fortune in 
the wild wild west, "The Soft, the Hard and the 
Wet" situates three artists aboard Messschiff 
Eleonore parked in the harbor of the Danube at 
Linz, Austria. The summer residency organized by 
Linz' alternative culture center Stadtwerkstatt 
brings together three artists - Afroditi Psarra 
(the soft) , Ce Quimera (the hard) and Robertina 
·ebjaniã (the wet) with a focus on 
self-exploration and thematic research.

Afroditi Psarra (Athens) proposes "Divergence" 
with a wearable EMF detector. The soft-circuitry 
garment embedded with a LilyPad Arduino 
microcontroller and two embroidered coils serving 
as antennas, intervenes the electromagnetic field 
that encircles us. The strength of the signals 
detected manifests itself in the haptic feedback 
experienced in the form of vibration patterns and 
sonic feedback in the forms of variant pitches. 
This formally constructed wearable locates the 
physicality of human body in perceiving and 
countering the invisible forces that propagate 
around us in the form of EM waves.

Ce Quimera (Barcelona) proposes "There is no body 
without F[R]ICTION". F[R]ICTION as a DIY 
electronic device is built on an IC 4093 based 
synthesizer. The mutant body modified with 
prostheses situates herself
within an expandable architectural space littered 
with recycled electronic devices. The body/space 
collide, f(r)ictional sound elements generated. 
Noise makes up the chaotic imaginary, disrupting 
the narrative linearity. As a member of Quimera 
Rosa lab, Ce's work aims to create a new 
subjective fiction of body,  playing on the 
border between body/environment, reality/fiction, 
human/machine, flesh/plastic, touch/sound.

Robertina ·ebjaniã (Lublijana) proposes "H y d r 
a   r e m i n i s c e n c e " with an Eleonore's 
own DIY wetlab made up with DIY microscope and 
biotech tools a la Hackteria doctrine. Featuring 
Hydra, a biologically immortal fresh water animal 
capable of self-regenerative, as the research 
subject under the torrents of the Danube, 
·ebjaniã  plans to conduct a series of 
experiments in exploring the regenerative 
properties of Hydra cells. While her study 
considers human's eternal quest for prolonged and 
healthier life span, she aims to create an 
ambiental poetic immersive performance.

"The Soft, the Hard and the Wet" performance 
featuring the three residency artists is to be 
held
on September 6 during ARS Electronica 2014 aboard 
MS Wissenschaft  in the Danube and outside/inside 
Stadtwerkstatt at Linz, Austria.
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