Hasta La Creative!

It might appear that London doesn’t spare much thought for art & technology. The capital doesn’t host any institution specifically dedicated to art & technology, like FACT in Liverpool. Nor does it have a media art festival with an international reputation such as FutureEverything in Manchester, or the AV Festival in the North East of England.

But look closer, and you’ll realize that there’s no reason to despair… continue

Hexen 2.0 charts the coming together of diverse physical and social sciences in the framework of post-WWII US governmental and military imperatives. The art works represent Suzanne Treister’s research into the development of cybernetics, the history of the Internet, the rise of Web 2.0, mass intelligence gathering and the interconnected histories of the counterculture. Through her work she explores the implications of new systems of societal manipulation and the development of a ‘control society’ alongside historical and current responses to advances in technology continue

I’ve visited 5 photo exhibitions all over London yesterday. Here’s a few words about the ones i found most interesting. Starting with ‘Last Days of the Arctic’… continue

Some of the works on show at Kinetica this year are candidly whimsical, others explore responsive architecture, pay homage to Jean Tinguely or to Newton’s third law, take the form of small models of celestial mechanics, or of experimental music gigs on modified Fisher Price Turntables continue

Black, illegal street vendors in Venice are paid to get their hair bleached blond. Couples are geometrically arranged according to the colour of their skin and asked to have sexual intercourse. Junkies have a line shaved on their head in exchange of a shot of heroin. Drug addicted prostitutes have a black line tattooed across their back. Asylum seekers spend hours inside cardboard boxes. Veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq face a corner. Others are paid to remain tied down to a block of wood, stay in a ditch, block a museum entrance, hold an object against a wall, etc. continue

70% of chicken, the UK’s favourite meat, is currently produced in an unethical and unsustainable manner. The welfare provided in intensive farming systems is insufficient and always will be. At the Centre for Unconscious Farming, welfare is eliminated. Chickens have their brain stem separated from their neocortex and are unconscious throughout the growing period. Their homeostatic functions continue but they are oblivious. continue

With HORTUS, the architects from ecoLogicStudio are inviting the public to become cyber-gardeners and “invent new protocols of urban biogardening.”

There’s a bright green carpet on the floor and hundreds of intravenous-style bags are suspended above our heads. The bags are in fact photo-bioreactors and they form a ‘greenhouse’ that hosts nine different species of algae, from chlorella to algae found in London’s canals. Visitors can blow into flexible plastic tubes, fostering the growth of the algae with their carbon dioxide and activating the oxygen production continue

Yesterday evening i went to Foto8 in London again for the screening of How to Start a Revolution, a documentary tracing the global influence of Gene Sharp’s work. Sharp believes that non-violent struggle has a greater chance of success than violent resistance, because violence is typically the most powerful weapon used tyrannical regimes and they will always have the upper hand. His booklet From Dictatorship to Democracy provide a list of 198 “non-violent weapons”, including mock awards, alternative communication system, wearing of symbols, pray-in, boycott of elections, withdrawal of bank deposits, consumers’ boycott, renouncing honours, etc. continue

The everyday lives of the British gangsters, pimps, prostitutes and players, as the world changes irrevocably around them continue

The exhibition at Somerset House shows 28 projects shortlisted for a competition that invited architects, engineers, students and designers to submit proposals that reclaim overlooked spaces across Greater London. Inspired by success stories such as New York’s High Line, the competition aims to demonstrate how alternative way of thinking about urban space can inject new life and energy into some of London’s most neglected corners.

The selected entries range from underground climbing tunnels to Atlantic salmons in the Thames, firepits in Crystal Palace, bee keeping, rooftops of tower blocks turned into social hubs and artist studios nested inside church spires continue