I am very pleased to finally publish this new project I’ve been working on the last couple months (def. not a Speed Project ;) It was premiered last week at my solo show opening ‘Reply All’ at [DAM] Berlin.  If you are in town drop by, check out the show and make your own mask! FOR FREE!!

‘Reply All’
Solo show: Aram Bartholl, January 28 – 10th March 10  2012
[DAM] Berlin, Neue Jakobstr. 6/7, 10179 Berlin

Materials:

• polysterol 1-1,5 mm, 23 x 33 cm
• plaster
• hose, hose connectors
• clamps
• vacuum hand pump, (camping supply)
• toaster
• wooden board, rods
• stop watch
• original, prototype or master mask to make copies from

Tutorial:

1. positive plaster cast from mask
2. additional plaster modeling (chin and forehead) optional
3. negative plaster cast from model to obtain master mold
4. include hose, hose connector and holes for decompression in the cast
5. toaster parts rearranged to heating board, mounted on stand
6. heat 1mm polysterol approx. 2 min in 6cm distance
7. and keep pumping !!

all pics on flickr!

Vacuum forming is a quite old technique and is used a lot in mass industry especially packaging and such. The lid of your coffee cup is vacuum form i.e. Students in product design are used to vacuum form their prototypes, it’s a very common technique in that field. You also find all kinds of tutorials on the web how to build your own DIY vacuum former (Instructables). The one I am proposing is less flexible in what you can produce but are able to produce the same piece in a rather fast cycle (2:30 min) The setup above was inspired by this video.
I think we live in a super interesting era. This is just the start of a paradigm shift from mass industry production to self DIY fabrication. And it s going to get very interesting with all the patents and copyright issues for physical objects very soon. Like Cory Doctorow puts it: “… to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it’s just been the mini-boss at the end of the level, and the stakes are only going to get higher.” I am super curious to see someone print a pair of Nike sneakers on the new makerbot replicator or just imagine Apple would sue everyone because your DIY tablet looks like an iPad. It might happen soon. – Aram Bartholl 2012

Build your own vacuum forming gear today. Copy, experiment and remix! Start coping physical things! And keep pumping!! ;)

Transparent Guy Fawkes

“You don’t know the power of the dark side! We are Legion. The force is with you. Expect us. Join the dark side !”

Darth Fawkes

“How To Vacuum Form”
by Aram Bartholl 2012

Aram Bartholl
Reply All

Gallery [DAM]Berlin presents Berlin based artist Aram Bartholl (*1972, Bremen) in his first solo exhibition, whose works create a dynamic tension between online- and real-life. In 2011 Bartholl was partaking in exhibitions by MoMA, Pace Gallery New York and [DAM]Cologne.

His pieces are cutting-edge – not just product of observation, but formed by thought-provoking impulses that Aram gives and by the subsequent independent existence of the artworks created by the user. His interventions in public space, his readymade-like installations and sculptures are based on a do-it-yourself-culture with regard to personal creation and responsibility as well as the Internet’s popular icons with whom Bartholl confronts us in reality. But Aram Bartholl’s artworks are not to be seen as entirely digital: they deal too much with space, are too haptic in their approach, and the awareness of potential political influence is too intense – his pieces push out of gallery and museum surroundings into the city space, into society.

Things, that seem to be trivial parts of the internet, irritate the viewer as soon as they confront him in the physical world: In Are you human? a CAPTCHA-code, used by web services to differentiate between human request and automated scripts, is applied in aluminium form onto murals and gallery walls. A screen with illuminating pixels turns out to be a hand crafted object operated by a candle. In a subtle but accurate way Bartholl reveals discourses concerning the power of a digitally affected world, e.g. in his successful, often quoted project Dead Drops, consisting of USB-sticks, mured into city walls, that refuse data exchange via the internet structures established by big global companies.

‘Everything develops extremely fast on the net. I have the urge to create something that deals with the topic, but that endures anyway,’ says Aram Bartholl about this de-digitalisation of the digital. Where media art, urban intervention and interactive performance meet he asks basic sociocritical questions, thinks about our cultural memory. The rapid development of the digital age is slowed down in his artworks, it is liberated of its technological appeal and exposed for intentional examination. For example his new project Dust: Bartholl wants to convey the worlds most played computer game landscape from Counter Strike – a virtual space, a place seen by millions of people that is fixed in their visual memory even though they were never able to really ‘enter’ it – into an accessible 1:1 model made of concrete.

With the performance and installation shown at the exhibition for the first time, Bartholl, who is active in net political circles like the Chaos Computer Club, turns towards the symptom of an already existing frontier crossing of digital and analogue world: The Anonymous-movement and its characteristic comic-inspired Guy-Fawkes-masks, that are its distinctive mark and protection of identity. They have gained huge media presence thanks to the civil movement Occupy Wallstreet as well. The Anonymous-movement pushes forward the idea of a free, net-based information- and creativity-collective – a kind of global brain, that develops political capacity to act without hierarchic organisation and without determined identity.

The exhibition ‘Aram Bartholl. Reply All’ is part of the associate programme of Transmediale 2012.

———————————————————-

ARAM BARTHOLL
The Speed Book

Josephine Bosma,
Jonah Brucker-Cohen,
Jon Cates,
Lindsay Howard,
Alessandro Ludovico,
Evan Roth,
Bruce Sterling,
Brad Troemel

More About This Book

]]> http://datenform.de/blog/solo-show-at-dam-berlin-opening-jan-27/feed/ 0 http://datenform.de/blog/book-glasses/ http://datenform.de/blog/book-glasses/#comments Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:51:34 +0000 Aram http://datenform.de/blog/?p=3176

A new piece from the glasses series and one of my favorite pages of my upcoming book! :) To be in the shelves very soon!

ARAM BARTHOLL
The Speed Book

Perceptive and entertaining investigations of digital culture.

Edited by Domenicio Quaranta
Design by Manuel Bürger

Great low(high)tech cartoon reality mix by Markus Neidel, student at HAW Hamburg

Just moved into my new temporary work space at Supermarkt, Brunnenstrasse, Berlin. (untill the fire-ashes-mess in Gerichtstr. is cleaned up …) Handwritten wifi passwords are awesome!! (and always wrong ;)

(Birthday present from/by Nico Princen, great read that post, thx man!! :)

The anual congress by Chaos Computer Club germany (#28C3, the 28th year) last week was great. I had a lot of fun with a new piece in progress there and as ususal many interesting dicussions. Cory Doctorrows talk on ‘The coming war on general computation’ turned out to be the unofficial keynote. :) He draws a very good picture how closed hardware will affect the freedom in computation. Check it out below!

Check all talk recordings at https://www.youtube.com/28c3 or direct and torrent downloads at FEM. I also recommend How governments have tried to block Tor or Politik hacken

In a Pecha Kucha Lightning talk I present Dead Drops on day 3!

Curious Minds: New Approaches in Design

The Israel Museum
December 16, 2011-April 30, 2012
Location: Nathan Cummings Building for Modern and Contemporary Art
Curator by Alex Ward

The exhibition presents about 30 international designers from Europe, Asia, and the US whose works map out new territories and encourage a new discourse about the role of design in shaping the world of tomorrow. Some of these designers also address – under the umbrella of Critical Design – social, political, and environmental concerns, bringing together new partnerships between designers and researchers of other fields such as science or biology.

Participants in the exhibition:

rAndom International
Troika
Studio DRIFT
Simon Heidjens
Aram Bartholl
Elio Caccavale
Sascha Pohflepp & Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Veronica Ranner
Kevin Grannen
Hwang Kim
Ka Fai Choy
Studio Fons  Hickman m23
Studio Mrmann (Geoffrey Mann)
Studio Glithero
Studio Unfold
Marie Blaise
Studio Makkink & Bey
Studio El Ultimo Grito
Freddie Yauner
Julian Bond
Raw Edges Design Studio
Alon Meron
David Bowen
Julius Popp
Studio Karlssonwilker Inc; New York
Studio Stefan Sagmeister
Noam Toran

Participants in the exhibition:

rAndom International
Troika
Studio DRIFT
Simon Heidjens
Aram Bartholl
Elio Caccavale
Sascha Pohflepp & Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Veronica Ranner
Kevin Grannen
Hwang Kim
Ka Fai Choy
Studio Fons  Hickman m23
Studio Mrmann (Geoffrey Mann)
Studio Glithero
Studio Unfold
Marie Blaise
Studio Makkink & Bey
Studio El Ultimo Grito
Freddie Yauner
Julian Bond
Raw Edges Design Studio
Alon Meron
David Bowen
Julius Popp
Studio Karlssonwilker Inc; New York
Studio Stefan Sagmeister
Noam Toran

Edited by Domenicio Quaranta
Design by Manuel Bürger

With essays by:

Josephine Bosma,
Jonah Brucker-Cohen,
Jon Cates,
Lindsay Howard,
Alessandro Ludovico,
Evan Roth,
Bruce Sterling,
Brad Troemel

————————————————-

Thx to everyone involved in this!!

————————————————-

https://shop.gestalten.com/index.php/catalog/product/view/id/4453

Aram Bartholl
The Speed Book

Perceptive and entertaining investigations of digital culture.

Release Date: January 2012
Format: 21,6 x 28 cm
Features: 268 pages, full color, hardcover
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-89955-393-2

About This Book

Aram Bartholl’s work explores the power structures, the social systems, the cultural innovations, the inner dynamics, the languages, and the products that are shaping our age. This first comprehensive monograph offers entry to an oeuvre in which space and cyberspace mingle and mangle each other, a realm that uses as little technology as possible while still speaking a digital language.

Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book features savvy experiments with transitions from the virtual to the physical: USB sticks embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google’s red map markers positioned in public spaces; portraits generated from search results. An introduction by critic and curator Domenico Quaranta as well as essays by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, art critics, and fellow artists guide readers through a wonderfully skewed version of reality under the influence of the internet, something Sterling refers to as Bartholl’s “self-created twilight zone.”

… read more and preview etc