Info
Artistic tinkerinkg from the WRO Collection as an appendix for the Not To Be Seen. The nemesis of the technological progress exhibition.
Trickster-handymans work on household items to show alternative paths of technological development. Clichés, youtube aesthetics and ironic subversion walk a tightrope of humour and dead seriousness.
So, we see hacking of the technology with a hammer and a chisel, deconstruction of the display and the construction of the universal artwork. In the meantime, we blast a tutorial channel and launch a new trend: sofa challenge.
Compiled by: Dagmara Domagała, Maurycy Wiliczkiewicz, Kamil Kawalec
Works
Jacob Tonski (US), Balance from Within, 2010-2013, sculpture, 3:04
Balance is delicate, and sometimes we fall down. A 170 year old sofa balances precariously on one leg, continuously teetering, responding internally to external forces.
The project had two unique technical and artistic goals: it creates a kinetic metaphor for the inherent risk in social relations and tests whether an object could actually be balanced perpetually on a fixed point.
The internal mechanism of the sculpture is based on a concept known as a reaction wheel, a technology most often deployed in satellites to correct spatial orientation. Rather than shift its center of mass in reaction to falling, or employ gyroscopic forces, freely spinning motors apply torque to the frame of the sofa, causing it in turn to attempt to rotate in the opposite direction, effecting a weight shift about its foot on the ground.
Stefan Tiefengraber (AT), User-Generated Server Destruction, 2013, interactive installation, 2:53
The visitors of the website www.ugsd.net can trigger six hammers and drop them onto a server that is located in the exhibition. This server hosts exactly the same website www.ugsd.net, which also shows a video stream to follow what’s happening with the piece. The installation ends when the server is destroyed and thus can not host the website any more. It is then presented as an object along with the documentation of the process.The internet is a continually growing network of servers spread all over the world. There are users and the providers, supplying the network. Usually, it is just possible for computer viruses and very qualified users to attack and destroy highly protected servers that are locked in well-secured places. With User-Generated Server Destruction every user has the possibility to erase one of this servers and thereby shrink the worldwide network for a short moment.
Szymon Wojtyła (PL), AC, 2014, installation, 0:53
The installation draws from the once popular game of skipping rope. The relation got substituted by electric current. Originally, artist was thinking about this work in a very narrow, even personal context, concerning a direct relation. Over time he has expanded it to various areas, such as the treatment of a relation with reference to the transfer of minds or the in silico method, where the boundaries between what’s biological, and what’s technological disappear.
Igor Krenz (PL), Circle Guaranteed!, 2010, installation, 0:21
Universal multimedia artwork. An ironic remark about video art as an exhibition challenge.
Maciej Markowski (PL), Polypody Polychords, 2014, installation, 2:32
Polypody Polychords is an interactive audio-visual composition. Layered spatial repetition of orchestral instruments is visualized by a spider plant image. Houseplant stays a mute listener.
Niklas Roy (DE), Perpetual Energy Wasting Machine, 2012, installation, 2:25
Perpetual Energy Wasting Machine consists of a rope and pulley construction installed in the staircase moves the elevator in an endless loop between the first and the second floor. Each cycle, a modified calculator, mounted inside the elevator sums up the energy which is required to lift a glass and steel cabin of 350 kg up by 3,42 m (the floor height of WRO Art Center). The unit is Kilojoules.
Karina Śmigla-Bobiński (PL), Hacking of the Media Appliances and Technology, 2015, workshop, 11:39
Analogue hacking of the digital media appliances. LCD displays are equipped with several layers of polarizing film. The most external one can be removed easily without damaging the digital architecture and without impact on the screening. The basic display function comes back when we put an alternative polarizing film layer between the display and viewer’s eye.
Maciej Olszewski (PL), DIY (Destroy It Yourself), 2014, installation, 8:32
DIY (Destroy It Yourself) refers to the canonic formula of the DIY (Do It Yourself) participatory culture. The works have been made in the video tutorial poetics and lined into a YouTube channel. The series is inspired by the military tutorials posted on the internet by the military and DIY enthusiasts of all ages.