Tabula Magica

Alex de Jong Timo Mank

Sunday, December 4, 11

concept
Tabula Magica, enacts one of the oldest trompe loeuil tropes from art history, the imaginary hole in the ceiling, or oculus through which inhabitants of a magical other space may be viewing us, in ordinary space. Its embodiment as a table is an evocation of the old magical practice of scrying, of peering into a well. This aspect of trompe loeuil, its magic of fooling the mind, points to the notion that it is the brain that sees, that mere ocular seeing makes blind and that sight is unreliable sensor input. By discarding its primacy it is possible to hack into the very act of seeing. Tabula Magica grew out of and is a continuation of an installation that was first presented in november 2011 as one of the elements of The hours are breathing faint and low. Then, the table was a preliminary experiment with multiple streams, soundscapes and presence, both virtual and real. Around the table, both actual and virtual, visitors in different realms were able to witness the coalescing of architectural space and interventions applied to it, the gaze, the gazed-upon and time-as-sound. Hence, Tabula Magica is also an experiment in manipulating feedback mechanisms presenting parallel streams across realms, bridging the gap between the material real world and virtual, meta-worlds, enacting sensory inputs and outputs as vehicles for presence and communing. Like the table, the Oculus too is an architectural element: a mirror, a window, a connector. The table is also a social focal point, and can - most literally - be a tablet, a surface on which to leave a mark, an imprint, a sign of having witnessed. These messages, annotations left by the spectators, in turn become strands in the pieces sensory fabric. Thus, Tabula Magica turns spectators into co-creators, co-conspirators. Not only the gaze and the gazes object are at play but also a communal assemblage of what it is to be seen. Spectators curate and manipulate content simply by being present in the Tables vicinity.

Sunday, December 4, 11

structure
Tabula Magica is presented as a self contained table in a room. The tables surface holds a projection and a soundscape. A live streaming camera provides sensor input for a live feed projecting visitors images integrated into the tables projection, while a feedback loop plays back environmental sounds that table picks up through a distortion layer that also broadcasts in a meta-world. Visitors may access the Tabula Magica directly, or gain access to it through an application that runs in iOS.

Sunday, December 4, 11

Sunday, December 4, 11

timo mank: archipel

Timo Mank (Leiden 1957) is artist- curator at the Archipel Medialab. In 1999 he co-founded Art Hotel Dit Eiland in the village of Hollum on Ameland. The Medialab initiates Artist In Residences focused on cross reality projects. Many artists from PARK 4DTV worked on Ameland creating content for web based virtual islands. Until recently Timo a.k.a. Haglet Alter was curating Playground Ameland Secondlife. Early this year the Foundation Archipel Ameland shifted focus from yearly media art interventions to transmedia story telling for iPad. The project is called TMSP TV and it connects twitter with guests at the TMSP studio in Secondlife. The Medialab uses the daily on goings in the World Herritage Waddensea and brings this material as live feed to virtual space where its playfully reevaluated, mixed and redistilled by guests and performers. The cooperation with Alex de Jong started in 2010, with the art month project Be Quiet Eyes. TMSP TV blog: http://tmspnow.wordpress.com/

Sunday, December 4, 11

alex de jong: rethinking visual

Alex de Jong (Netherlands, 1963) is a photographer and digital artist and graduated from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London. He then went on to apply his knowledge of South Asian languages and cultures to streamlining product introductions for mobile telephony operators. As a strategist he scoped out what being online could mean for companies ranging from the Hilton Group to British Telecom. For a while he worked as a researcher for the BT Futures Group and helped develop a virtual environment for call centre agents that was then (in 1999) at the forefront of digital presence and social collaboration online. With Minne Belger he founded Cellspace in 2004 as an exercise in how art can inform a company's "voice". As a consultant he worked on implementing social media appplications in corporations and was on the editorial board of Dutch trendwatching magazine "Eye". In cooperation with Minne Belger, he developed "liveonline", a project that was launched with a bang at SIME 2007, in Stockholm. Liveonline seeks to explore ways in which humans can gain digital immortality through the use of technology. Currently he is developing multi media and sensory art installations, of which "Longing For Sight" was exhibited in the Musee des Arts Contemporains in Geneva, in 2010. In collaboration with Timo Mank, he presented Be Quiet Eyes in 2010 and an expanded media installation, The Hours are Breathing Faint and Low in 2011, together with Laetitia Boulud.

Sunday, December 4, 11

budget
2000 - Audio production! 2000 - Video production 1000 - Metaworld installation, server costs, bandwidth! 5000 - Physical Build, sensor installation, programming, transport, insurance 10000 - Total!

Sunday, December 4, 11

contact

Timo Mank Hollum haglet@live.nl

Alex de Jong Rotterdam studio@rethinkingvisual.net

Sunday, December 4, 11