projection mapping / light space

Pablo Valbuena - Medialab Prado, Madrid

First brought to our attention via the digital archive slowly building on the excellent ICASEA blog attached to the UK/JP electronic art label, the work of artist/architect Pablo Valbuena challenges the perception of space by the direct manipulation of light to create complex geometric illusions. The use of form, space and light, highly conventional architectural terms, as layers of intervention and re_presentation through sculpture and projection mapping in his work is well removed from the prevalent employment of such.

Perhaps of most interest here are the interventions in urban space, rather than those in interior environments. The animation of the hard rectilinear landscape outside of the Medialab Prado in Madrid (2007) is a post-Tron digital dissection of space. It is remarkable how the aesthetic of cybernetic art has returned to a minimal and binary position. The works of Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda have consistently relied upon a retreat to minimal linear and geometric form that can be easily perceived as not too distant from the pioneering work of Lloyd Sumner and Roman Verostko.

Ryoji Ikeda - Datamatics

watch this space

This is an entry that definitely falls under our tagline ‘instruments of control’. Normally reserved as a term we apply to the ambiguities of space formed by formal response to policy, in this instance the Casio F91W watch is the instrument of control and is reported by the Guardian newspaper to be the Al-Quaeda electronic timer of choice. Apparently it was the universality and cheap retail price of the watch that made this ubiquitous item the focus of training sessions at camps in Afghanistan. Wikipedia has a list of Guantanamo detainees who were wearing Casio watches purportedly supplied by Casio themselves. In this escalating and slightly hyped narrative Casio were then forced to deny sponsoring terrorism. This isn’t news to Casio, who have actually been involved with the US Department of Homeland Security since 2005.

I had an F91W when I was a runner in my youth, it’s probably still in the drawer in the spare room at my mum’s. There is a healthy number of colourways for the discerning athlete these days and a fashion conscious runner who chooses to accessorise their training shoe highlights with a complimentary timepiece, thus engaging in multiple purchases, may well find themselves on a ‘watch list’.

punctuate by gersham

This is one of those things that we met during our research for the pending book Urban Maps, but it never made the cut.

Sourced from the early web based graf site n-igma by Dek. He didn’t know then and we don’t know now; who and why?

All that can be said here is that type characters and the space between is/was a distinct counterpoint to graf that conventionally is about fills and coverage. Obviously type and fonts have a history in graf, as Steve Powers states, ‘The first time I saw somebody paint their name as a font, it was SANE, and it was a complete shock’ (interview Jan 2010)

Most of all… we like it.