Glowlab

Intel and the Situationists

"What happens when Intel researchers start quoting Guy Debord as their strongest influence?"

-- our friends at socialfiction.org

psy.geo.CONFLUX this weekend

Put your walking shoes on...Glowlab's annual psy.geo.CONFLUX festival is taking place this weekend in New York, May 13 - 16.

Events begin at noon Thursday at PARTICIPANT INC [95 Rivington Street between Orchard and Ludlow]. The opening reception is Thursday evening from 7 - 9pm. We've got a huge lineup of artists and speakers from all over the world planned for this year, and Glowlab's own project, One Block Radius, will be presented on Saturday May 15 from 2 - 3:45pm, starting at PARTICIPANT.

Check the schedule for event times and locations. The closing party will take place at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, on Sunday May 16, starting at 8pm.

We recently spoke with Gothamist about the Conflux, and are now keeping our fingers crossed for warm spring weather and seeing you there...

Collido_scope

Collido_scope is a project presented by Joseph Rabie for interactive photographic explorations of France's psychogeographic landscape. The piece is "a 42 inch plasma screen, a microphone, and a powerful computer" mounted on the sidewalk in close proximity to the place where Joe takes the source images. The piece asks viewers to participate through clapping in order to alter the image in the screen in front of them.

For PC users (Macs seem to not be compatible) who try the interactive pieces to the project, you will be able to click to simulate the clapping. When Joe sent us a CD of the work, the collidoscope was not interactive, but the changing of the images occured anyways. Parapluie, MonoPrix, and Greziolles especially caught my itnerest. The viewer is entered into a sort of timelaspe voyerism, which is subtle enough (when changing on its own) to be digital landscape painting.

Psychogeographic referencing is apparent in Joe's process, but also in the more urban space montages. Rabie's process requires him to wander the landscape in search of compositions that can work for the sequences. The urban areas he stops at show how the exact same space can be used and interacted with by the community in a multitude of ways. Parapluie shows is particularly intertesting in composition and sequence because it shows the street and the side walk being used, while the bikes on the rack and the rest of the environment remain in place.

Rabie shows a few other psychogeographically related works, such as Landscopes, which might be of interest to some. Rabie shows a sense of humor and a willingness to tell a story to the audience while displaying an interest in the landscape and pushing the methods of communicating these ideas.