Featured image: “Binoculars” at CHB in Berlin (2013)
Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet have been working together as an artist duo since 2009. They have exhibited their art pieces in a number of international shows and festivals. As an artist duo they locate thermselves in the fields of art and technology, and are interested in new forms of art and innovation, which includes the application of knitting digital fabrication. They use and challenge technology in order to explore novel concepts in art and design. Hence, research is an integral part of their creative practice. In addition to kinetic and interactive installations, the artists have also experience with working in public spaces and with urban media.
Varvara is originally from Estonia, and gained her bachelor degree in IT from Estonian IT College, and a masters degree in digital media from ISNM in Germany and currently is a PhD candidate at the Estonian Art Academy in the department of Art and Design. Mar (born in Barcelona) has two degrees: in art and design from ESDI in Barcelona and in computer game development from University Central Lancashire in UK. He is also a co-founder of Derivart and Lummo.
Filippo Lorenzin: Open culture is one of the main points of your research and activity. Could you describe how this influences your art practice?
Varvara & Mar: We are living in very exciting times. Open source has introduced democratization of production and creation. Now you can build your own 3D printer, laser cutter, knitting machine, make a light dimmer circuit or develop a body tracking system. Some years ago we couldn’t even imagine this and now we have access to this knowledge. People share their creations and these process, which is incredibly inspiring for us and many more people. Thus, knowledge is built on top of knowledge. We make use of open source marterial in our work and we try also to contribute back. This is the whole point of open source in our mind. And if one looks in the perspective of art to open source projects, then really many open source projects have artists on board, for example, OpenFrameworks, Processing, and more.
Open source also has an educational aspec. We do many workshops with people and teach what we know and how we work. We think open source culture is largely based on the spirit being open to sharing knowledge with many others.
FL: I’m really fascinated by your interest in textile fabrication. it reminds me the early industrial developments that were deeply connected to in the textiles industry. How and why would knitting be integrated these days as part of a makers’ culture?
V&M: The process of integration is well under way. There has been a good number of makerspaces who have dedicated areas for textile production, like WeMake in Milan and STPLN in Malmö. And believe it or not this simple thing helps to introduce gender balance in these kind of places. We’re not just talking about innovation, which can boost gender equality when you introduce knitting to hacking. We’re also talking about the democratisation of production, when thinking about clothing too. This area is quite vital and commonly understood. 3D printing toys is a cool activity for a weekend, but then it becomes boring. Knitting a sweater or a scarf has real value and the quality is always higher than a typical mass produced factory product.
For 3D printing we cannot say the same. Don’t get us wrong, we are not against the 3D printing. We love it and have six printers in our studio. Our point is that the areas of concern for digital fabrication are not complete, and the founders of FabLab have overlooked the whole area of textiles.
FL: You’ve run many workshops taking in account various topics such as 3D printing, solar energy and knitting, of course. How do these activities connect with your research?
V&M: First of all, we like to teach and interact with our students. Second, preparing a workshop, allows us to research more about the field, and organise and share our accumulated knowledge and experience.
And finally, workshops are one part of our income. We don’t have any other jobs on the side, and exhibitions and commissions are not regular and do not always pay well, and yet the bills keep coming in. Hence, workshops help us to pay our bills.
FL: One of your works which most fascinate me is “Sonima” (2010). It’s a project that takes in account questions that have become quite recurrent in last months, mostly linked to Anthropocene discussions. The soft coexistence of technology and nature which is organic and artifical. Which is one of the main topics of your research: why are you so interested in this question? It looks like you’re trying to develop experiments for an utopistic future in which humans and nature live in symbiosis. Am I wrong?
V&M: Yes, many of our works express our futuristic thoughts or imagination where the digital age will lead us and our planet to. It is nice that you have noticed this. I would say this kind of concept in 2010 was quite subconscious. I (Varvara) was very interested in organic form but with mutational origins but still adapted by nature.
More conscious approach towards anthropocene epoch can be seen and felt in “Tree of Hands” (2015), which is one of our recent works. However, it looks like we have touched quite a taboo topic. For instance, “Tree of Hands” was rejected by jury of PAD London fair because of its depressive concept.
FL: “Shopping in 1 Minute” (2011) is another project I would like to ask you about. This work is about consumerism at its finest (or worst), turning one of the most typical capitalistic places (supermarkets) into ludic spaces. It’s a piece of social art that presents itself without informing the public what is right and what is wrong, but it rather suggests in a more subtle way the perversion at the base of that system. What do you think?
V&M: Yes. What we are doing is the absurd exaggeration of the same action (buying) to a maximum with one but: not buying and playing instead. There is a saying that shopping is 5 min happiness. The artwork tries to create a synthetic feeling of satisfaction of the ability to buy. The shopping centers are doing everything to stimulate our consumption needs, and our artwork manages to get inside their ecosystem and playfully releases that artificial desire to buy.
FL: With at least a couple of projects, you’ve also worked to the redefine hurban landscapes by looking at the invisble while at the same time taking on rather specific forces such as mass use of Wi-Fi networks becoming part of the everyday. I can’t help thinking that this is somehow related to privacy questions, probably because one of the most notorious scandals some years ago was Google’s secret recording of Wi-Fi networks with their Street View cars. Am I wrong?
V&M: Not really. But definitely Google has played a role in feeing our concerns about being watched, spied, hacked, scanned, etc. For example, the last scan for WiFi router names we did last summer in Tallinn some people were quite freaked out seeing a person on a bike with a camera on its head and tablet in front. I was even once asked if I worked for Google. 🙂 Anyways, the project was great fun for us, and we got to explore the city and discover the whole invisible communications networks and the self expressive layers of it all. After the Tallinn scan we even changed our minds about the 32-character local Twitter that the WiFi router SSID could be used for. The Tallinn experience showed us the new tendency: where people would use radio waves for semi-anonymous graffiti, communicating sometimes silly, protective, racist or political messages.
Talking about inspiration for this project, we got our interest for WiFi names from one article talking about the ability to track down pro- and contra-Obama communities by just looking at WiFi names in the neighborhood. This was before the US president election. Then we started to thinking of an art project on this topic.
FL: “The Rythm of City” (2011) is another project which is also ‘subtly’ related to control issues. The idea that someone can depict the state of a city by looking at data deducted from social media and web platforms. This type of thing is real now isn’t it – what do you think?
V&M: Definitely it is. However, the work’s main intention is not to talk about control issues rather about big data and its applications. Perhaps the main intention of this work is to offer to the viewer(s) a birds eye view on different cities in real time. In other words, The Rhythm of City allows you to zoom out and witness the larger picture on the current situation. And this larger picture is formed by everybody’s activity on social media, which is tracked down every minute. We call this action ‘unaware participation’ by digital inhabitants. The urban studies of Bornstein & Bornstein from early 1970s served as an inspiration for this artwork. They had discovered a positive correlation between the walking speed of pedestrians and the size of a city. Simply put: the bigger a city, the faster people move. The artwork demonstrates our interpretation of a city’s tempo through in its digital form or life. Hence, The artwork talks about pace of life in different cities at the same moment when the piece is viewed.
FL: What have you been working on these last few months and what plans do you have for 2016?
V&M: We are working on a series of new works talking about money. When we have completed “Wishing Wall” in London in 2014, since then we have noticed that the majority of people, especially a younger audience, wish for money. This really caught our attention. The ongoing hard economical situation in Europe pushes forward the need for money and also introduces a growing gap between the economical classes. So we’re investigating people’s desire for money and its connection with happiness. Making use of interactive technology we are aiming to approach playfully and magically the desire for becoming rich. At the same time, we cannot let go of knitting. At present, we are working on an open source flat knitting machine, which will be able to knit patterns also. Besides the new productions, we are showing our existing works in various exhibitions. For the confirmed ones, “The Rhythm of City” will be part of “REAL-TIME” a group show curated by Pau Waelder in Santa Monica museum in Barcelona from the 28th January. In February “Digital Revolution” (the touring exhibition by Barbican), which “Wishing Wall” is part of, moves from Onassis Cultural Center in Athens to Zorlu Center in Istanbul. And hopefully we get couple of other shows and new productions that are in the air at the moment and still to be confirmed soon.
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer considers her Commodore 64 Computer and Fischer Price Loom to be defining objects of her childhood. She creates tactile representations of cyclical data structures in candy and knitting and is currently researching the intersection of textiles, technology, and the body.
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Rachel Beth will be working as an Artist in Residence at HTTP, Furtherfield’s Gallery and lab space in April 2008. She has been brought to UK from San Francisco as part of the Distributed South initiative, which is a network intended to raise awareness of the considerable activity in media arts in South of UK. Through residencies and collaborative events co-curated by SCAN and Space Media, Distributed South seeks to develop and build collaborations and networks in media arts and all are welcome to take part. Egenhoefer’s residency consists of several key parts – experimental studio time to create new work at the University of Brighton, presenting workshops and lectures across the south of England, a commissioned exhibition at Lighthouse Brighton, all culminating with time spent in residence at Furtherfield.
Currently Rachel Beth is working in the studio on ideas comparing tactile knitting to intangible computer code and how the body interacts and moves with both. In addition to building a knit zoetrope, casting the space between body and machine in candy, she has also been tracking the motion of knitting needles in both physical and virtual space and knitting with the Nintendo Wii. Her time at Furtherfield will be used to continue exploring these ideas while interacting with the larger community and audiences Furtherfield brings.
Higher Education Student Day
Wednesday April 15, 1:00-4:00pm
Rachel Beth will present her work and professional practice from the residency to higher education students
This event is free however advanced booking is necessary.
Networking Event and Residency Closing Party
Configurations: Technology and Textiles Networking Afternoon
25 April, 3.30 – 6pm, HTTP Gallery (Booking essential)
You are invited to share ideas, discuss and develop future working around art work that investigates the relationship between new technology, traditional making techniques and transformative political actions. Anna Dumitriu, Ele Carpenter, Nicola Naismith and Rachel Beth Egenhoefer will present their work using diverse approaches to the making of work using new technology alongside textiles, followed by a “Long Table Discussion”.
The “Long Table Discussion” is an experimental public forum developed by performance artist Lois Weaver. It is a hybrid performance, installation and roundtable discussion designed to facilitate informal conversations on serious topics encouraging everyone to contribute. Previous “Long Table Discussions” include conversations on Women and Prisons, Human Rights and Performance and Manufacturing Bodies.
This event is free however advanced booking is necessary. To book places please email Aaron, visibilityATfurtherfieldDOTorg.
Closing Party for Rachel Beth Egenhoefer 6pm – 9pm (all welcome): Party to celebrate the close of Rachel Beth Egenhoefer’s residency at Furtherfield/HTTP Gallery and providing an opportunity to discuss her work and experiences during the residency.
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer’s residency and Configurations is part of Distributed South an initiative co-curated by SCAN and Space Media. The residency and event is funded by the Arts Council England, University of Wales, University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton with support from Furtherfield.org, Textile Futures Research Group (TFRG) and University of the Arts London.
71, Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY
Click here for map and location details
Distributed South www.distributedsouth.org.uk
www.rachelbeth.net
www.elecarpenter.org.uk
www.nicolanaismith.co.uk
www.annadumitriu.co.uk
Candy & Code
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) London _Textile Futures Research Group
Monday March 17, 2008, 6:30-8:30pm
Presentations from Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Barbara Rauch & Nicola Naismith
Following by a panel discussion with the artists and Dr Jane Harris, Director of TFRG, Helen Sloan, Director of SCAN.
Exhibition of New Work
Lighthouse Brighton
March 20- April 5, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday March 20, 6:00-9:00pm
Talk on Residency and Distributed South (with Rachel Beth Egenhoefer and Helen Sloan) with an opportunity to view the exhibition: Thursday March 27, 7:30pm, doors open at 7
Rachel Beth’s residency for Distributed South is funded by the Arts Council England, University of Wales, University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton and supported by SCAN, Space Media, Furtherfield.org, Textile Futures Research Group (TFRG) and University of the Arts London.
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