Aram Bartholl – Blog

I finished editing Chat movie today. The project is kind of similar to “Speech Bubble” but works differently. Produced by Ars Electronica this piece has been shown the first time. We had funny reactions a dialogues during Ars. It was fun watching people having public conversations and commenting the situation. The LED projectors worked very well. The construction was a bit to heavy but I’ll improve for the next version. Actually it should be very easy to follow the “talking” person. Full project site including description coming soon. It was fun!

Better quicktime quality can be found here

Pics on flickr

Thx to the Ars team for support and production!

I will be on vacation for the next two weeks. More news and links in August. Take care.

Good news! Upcoming project Chat is part of the Second City area I am working on at Ars Electronica. But I will talk about this whole Ars-Second-Life topic later.

The project Chat is of course the next stepp coming from the project Speech Bubble. In fact the concept of Chat is even older than the Speech Bubble project.

Project description goes something like this:

Chat is an interactive installation and a performance in
public space.
Similar to online computer games like Second Life or
World of Warcraft two persons are having a conversation
by writing text messages on a keyboard. The speech
bubble floating above the participants head displays the
written words of this ‘player’ in real time. The wireless
keyboard is connected to a PDA. A very small and light
weight LED beamer projects the text messages on the
translucent speech bubble. The whole equipment and
the speech bubble are attached to a stick which is carried
by a technician. These two technicians do follow each
participant individually so that the speech bubble stays
above the ‘players’ head even if they move.
It is recommended to show this piece at night or dark
places. Crowded clubs or conferences with many people
on a spot are a good environment to run this installation.

There is a more detailed german text version which will be translated for the AEC catalogue.

More infos about Ars Electronica and Second Life coming soon. Nice projects and workshops. It sgoing to be fun.

(By the way, the comment of Ahmet made me blog this. Sure, everybody wants the interactive speech bubble. Although I do like the first version very much)

Like on the web links don’t last for every. This plazemark I did in autum in Berlin is still kind of visible. But of course it won’t work with a mobile anymore. I like the fade out.

Finally I have this new project online. I am using the same technique as in the Tagging project but on a different and very appropriate topic.

“A Google Portrait is an interactive painting which contains the Google search string of the portrayed person in encoded form. Every java enabled camera phone is capable to decode the “Semacode” called 2D-code by taking a picture of the portrait. The result leads the mobile phone browser to Google doing a search on the portrayed person’s name…”

read on at project page Google Portrait Series

Thx to Daniel, my first victim. ;-)

Holger sitting next room asked me for help today because he couldn’t find the mobile phone which was constantly making that typical connection noise on his iBook speakers. Of course he already tried to get rid of that sound by shutting off his mobile which didn’t help. I even suspected his mobile to be in stealth mode.

The solution was really simple. He had my thesis website datenamort.de open. LOL.

(My own stuff keeps tricking me, a good sign.)

The people from NewBerlin uploaded the video documentatio the public space intervention “256² “ where I marked the NewBerlin Sim of Second Life in real life Alexanderplatz Berlin two weeks ago. As you can see it was raining heavily. Although it was “painful” in the moment in the end it stresses very well this kind of temporary piece.

The Speech Bubble performance at the party of Plazes last week went very well and it was great fun. Beside some problems to spell words right there were no technical problems. I didn’t even need the second batterie. I edited the video footage some days ago. Thanks again to Ariel for helping me out documenting.

Find more pics, a high res quicktime, full concept and description at the “Speech Bubble” projects page.

Three months ago at the Second Life panel during Transmediale 07 I showed this new project “Missing Image”. The missing texture default message of unloadable Second Life clothing is transferred into real life. Find more pics and a detailed description on the projects page here.

If there is somebody ( gallery, designer, fashion label …) interested in coproducing a small series of these shirts don’t hesitate to contact me.

The solution to the 16 meter chalk line is a new piece called “256²”. Although it didn’t stop raining yesterday noon I used almost 64 pieces of chalk to mark the outline of the Second Life Sim NewBerlin (Teleport) around Alexanderplatz Berlin real life. It was a lot of fun. Check out more pics and a detailed description on the projects page here.

See also joachim’s post on this event.

Continetal Airlines provides these very high quality headphones on the airplane which have a really ugly dubble mono = stereo plug to prevent you to use these nice headphones somewhere else than in the airplane. But recently I found out that this dubble plug perfectly fits into my laptop headphone and microphone input. This turns the Continental Airlines headphones into a perfect high quality headset! You just have to abuse one of these small speakers as a microphone.
(Yes, I know you have to shout into that little speaker and the quality is really poor, but it does work!)

I am still working on the design and form of my upcoming project “Tree”. This is the current design which I like much more than the first one. Now I have to find a way to keep the lightness and transparency.

“Tree

Installation in Public Space, on schedule autum 2007

The project „Tree“ is an object imported from the 3D online world “Second Life”. The unfinished “virtual” tree becomes part of everyday life in public space….” read on

The project “WoW” is a workshop and a performance. I did this piece with a group of 14 people at the ‘The Game is up’ festival at Vooruit (unfortunately no english version of theirs website) in Gent, Belgium in feburary this year.

“We are presenting a festival ‘the game is up! – about breaking rules and changing codes. we are inviting artists with very different backgrounds: theatermakers, performars, musicians and media-arts to present them in a 10day festival with performances, talks and an exhibition.”

Vooruit is a really big Arts Centre in a beautifull old building originally based in music, theater and performance but opend up to media art some years ago. The curators Eva de Groote and Tom Bonte doing a great job and they have a very friendly, proffessional and well organized team. I had a very good time there and I am very happy about the outcome of the project. Thanks to Greg Young who filmed the action and did the editing.

For everybody who haven’t seen the documentation yet find some pictures on flickr and a quicktime- or youtube movie below.