Thoughtography – Mirror, Mirror …

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This is katiers first experiment concentrating into a mirror, coated with photographic emulsion, trying to focus, expose and reveal the image hiding behind the foggy blurriness.

Exposure time: 20 minutes
Developing Time: 9 minutes, using Adox Developer
Result: tiny, somehow suspicious black spots throughout the mirror

Image: scan of the exposed and processed mirror

Breakthrough 27th June Berlin

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breakthrough

Breakthrough is created as an experimental 12 hour event distributed across Berlin locations, inter-network and radio space. Self-organising nodes construct an event occupied with the dislocation of representation [language, software], time and space, and maintained with a strict scheduling and interrupt system backbone (micro-FM and Internet).

The term breakthrough describes a sudden shift in understanding or technologies, and, finally, a clearing (Lichtung), an entry into unknown and unmapped territories. An enclosure is breached allowing access to another, totally unforeseen state or space. Communication is thus implied, a new form of exchange, perhaps between two otherwise unconnected domains, between the living and the dead, between many worlds. What does the sheer possibility of a breakthrough imply for communication between the past and the future?

Breakthrough, as event, signals a change in direction, a pointing towards new ways of actively describing and creating the world. Within a complex mise en scene of workshops, lectures and performances, diverse artists, theorists, researchers, and hackers collaborate in the creation of a breakthrough which can rupture the enclosure of scientific rationalism and enlightenment without recourse to named magic.

Participants
backyardradio Berlin, Benjamin Cadon, Alejo Duque, Leif Elggren, Verena Friedrich, Brendan Howell, Jonathan Kemp, Martin Kuentz, Bjørn Magnhildøen, Olga Panadés Massanet, PATO, Shintaro Miyazaki, Douglas Park, Otto Rossler, Der Tapeman, TeleKommunisten, Danja Vassiliev

Activities/projects
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and:
practical endophysics, sound and radio wave transitions, diagrammatic formation, clustering and islanding, simulations coding and exploration, biologic interface, crashing, brain writing, construction, environmental steganography, data forensics, escape hatch literature, novel geometry description, life coding, interrupt theatre, pornographic coding, amateur radio astronomy

Constructivist workshop
Breakthrough will be constructed and prepared within a three day workshop at _____micro_research [Berlin]

2PM 24,25,26 June 2009 2PM. Linienstrasse 54. Berlin 10119

Postscript:

1]
Byrne: “I do not want to get a long half-hour involvement about Faraday cages, diodes, or transistors and so on. Ken, in very simple language and very shortly, have you been able to break this thing technically?”
Attwood: “Technically, no.”
[Voices From The Tapes. Peter Bander. 1973]

2]
Whatever you feed into the machine on subliminal level the machine will process–So we feed in ‘dismantle thyself’ […] We fold in writers of all time in together and record radio programs, movie sound tracks, TV and juke box songs all the words of the world stirring around in a cement mixer and pour in the resistance message “Calling partisans of all
nation–Cut word lines–Shift linguals–Free doorways–Vibrate ‘tourists’– Word falling–Photo falling–Breakthrough in Grey Room.

[William S. Burroughs. The Soft Machine. 1961]

Details
Breakthough is supported by:
Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin 2009

With the assistance and collaboration of:
backyardradio Berlin
General Public
Mute Magazine
STYX Project Space
ua.

A production of:
_____-micro_research, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119

U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl. U8, Rosenthaler Pl.
Telephone: 3050187482.

Katier shows: “Wach sind nur die Geister” – Über Gespenster und ihre Medien PHOENIX Halle Dortmund

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Abbildung / Image: Agnès Geoffray, Night #3, 20 x 30 cm, 2005

‘Awake Are Only the Spirits’ – On Ghosts and Their Media

Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
16 May – 18 October 2009
Thu+Fri 16:00-20:00, Sat+Sun 11:00-20:00

OPENING: FRIDAY, 15 MAY 2009, 19:00

The exhibition ‘Awake Are Only the Spirits’ – On Ghosts and Their Media is dedicated to a topic that appears, at first glance, timeless: it involves the presence of the supernatural – the appearance of ghosts and (trans-)communication with ‘the beyond’ facilitated by technical media. The exhibition begins with the audio-tape archive of Friedrich Jürgenson who discovered the so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) in 1959. As a result of the strong interest in the topic on behalf of contemporary artists, the exhibition questions why – despite our faith in the rational – at regular intervals irrational properties are ascribed to respective new media and technologies, such as those purportedly serving as channels for messages from ‘the beyond’. The exhibition shows 22 international artistic positions questioning the existence of ghosts, exploring the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, investigating the making-visible or making-perceptible of the invisible, and tracing the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary trans-communication phenomena.
Inke Arns, Thibaut de Ruyter

CURATORS
Inke Arns & Thibaut de Ruyter

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Lucas & Jason Ajemian (US)
Archive of an Anonymous Ghost-Seer (DE), curated by hans w. koch
Sam Ashley (US)
Corinne May Botz (US)
Erik Bünger (SE)
Damien Cadio (FR)
Michael Esposito (US)
Nina Fischer/Maroan el Sani (DE)
Agnès Geoffray (FR)
Kathrin Günter (DE)
Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE)
Tim Hecker (CA)
Susan Hiller (GB)
Martin Howse (GB)
International Necronautical Society (GB)
Friedrich Jürgenson (SE)
Joep van Liefland (NL)
Chris Marker (FR)
Jorge Queiroz (PT)
Scanner (GB)
Jan Peter E.R. Sonntag (DE)
Suzanne Treister (GB)

The Clearing

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Recording Device: Self Constructed Eye Kamera with Instant Image Filmholder, 3rd Version [Medium Format]
Film: Black&White Polaroid 667, 3000 ASA
Daylight Collection: short walk to the supermarket, no intentional daylight collection
Exposure Time: 19 minutes;
Visual Thought Keywords during Exposure: Extreme concentration on producing a light spot in the lower middle part of the image

The Clearing

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[2]

Recording Device: Self Constructed Eye Kamera with Instant Image Filmholder, 3rd Version [Medium Format]
Film: Black&White Polaroid 667, 3000 ASA
Daylight Collection: 1 hour; 13 °C; bright sunshine
Exposure Time: 25 minutes;
Visual Thought Keywords during Exposure: Concentration on producing visible spots and light

Comments: This experiment leads to weird chemical reactions. Polaroid had to be pulled manually through the rollers. Next image got lost, last image [2] on film turns out with light spots without being exposed to any light and pulled out normally of the polaroid back.

Encyclopedia of Psychic Science

Seeing one’s own double

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(…)
Comparing a large number of cases Dr. Sollier found that the apparition has many degrees from the simple impression of being in one’s own presence to the clear vision as if in a mirror. In the last case the apparition is sudden and does not last long. Any excitement whatever will make it disappear. When the phantom has different attributes, is smaller in stature, different in clothes, it may persist for hours in different intensity. The moment of apparition is usually during the evening hours, in states of deep meditation, self-concentration or anaesthesia. The distance at which it is seen varies from a few yards to close proximity. Sometimes it marches before the subject and vanishes all at once, sometimes it turns about or moves to the side and imitates his movements. In most cases it is silent. Occasionally there is a dialogue and difference of opinion between phantom and self. When the phantom has different attributes his clothes are usually black and the ressemblance is like that of a brother. The costume, however, may be identical with that of a favourite romantic hero or with one worn in the past.

From: Encyclopedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor, University Books, 1966, excerpt from entry: “seeing one’s own double”