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residency</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000">The Soft, the Hard and the Wet</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Summer residency, June to September
2014<br>
Station Messschiff Eleonore, Linz, Austria</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Artists: Afroditi Psarra, Ce
Quimera,</font> Robertina ·ebjaniã</div>
<div><font color="#000000">Curation: Shu Lea Cheang</font><br>
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<div><font
color="#000000"
>http://donautics.stwst.at/content/soft-hard-and-wet-residence<br>
http://stwst.at/</font><br>
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<div><font color="#000000">"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.</font><br>
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<div><font color="#000000">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</font> Robertina ·ebjaniã<font
color="#000000"> (the wet) with a focus on self-exploration and
thematic research.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.</font><br>
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<div>Robertina ·ebjaniã<font color="#000000"> (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,</font>
·ebjaniã<font size="-3" color="#000000"> </font><font
color="#000000"> 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.</font><br>
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<div><font color="#000000">"The Soft, the Hard and the Wet"
performance featuring the three residency artists is to be
held</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">on September 6 during ARS Electronica 2014
aboard</font> MS Wissenschaft <font color="#000000"> in the
Danube and outside/inside Stadtwerkstatt at Linz,
Austria.</font></div>
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