Zone A Exhibition -The Good Night
Curator, Gerald McMaster
October 2, 2010

For Nuit Blanche, oddspaces is attempting to engage large scale, public participation by connecting 3 remote locations Karachi, Toronto and New York  for 12 hours.

Audience from each locations will be using virtual interaction to create a real-time collaborative installation. The Installation consists of a virtual projected tree on both locations that grows and become live in the course of 12 hours.

Audience will be interacting using their cell phones to twitt OR SMS (Text) and see their messages to be a part of  the tree’s growth. Live camera streams on both locations enables participants to see each other and engage with a participating viewer from a different location.

Toronto Collaborator: Randy Horton — Toronto, Canada
New York Collaborators: Jeff Howard, Marco Antonio Castro
Pakistan Collaborators: Hassan Mustafa

Co-presented by VASL  Artists’ Collective, Pakistan http://www.vaslart.org
Sponsored by The Centre for Creative Communications, Centennial College http://www.centennialcollege.ca/thecentre

CONCEPT/ARTIST STATMENT
/ Complex communication and digital structures are part of our lives, ‘data’ is moving faster than the speed of travel and new behaviors are introduced in the way we communicate, live, know one another and form a society.  /titra explores and generates a critical comment on our media rich and technology filled life, experiencing notions of time travel, thus making a reality of once science fiction.  A time where the access to know the unknown has become too quick, reaching out and making friends has become fast and simple and the idea of living virtually has become the best way of living. Perhaps we are living in an illusion of space with distorted realities and relationships while experiencing past, present and future simultaneously.

\Historically the ideas of traveling through time and space has existed in fiction, scientific theories and in several mythologies and tales, for example, “Albert Einstein (1879-1955) talks about Theory of Relativity, recognition that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and an absolute physical boundary for motion. This does not have a major impact on a person’s day-to-day life since we travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects traveling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from the point of view of an observer on Earth”.

\In Hindu mythology, the Mahabharata mentions the story of the King Revaita, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth. Another one of the earliest known stories to involve traveling forward in time to a Distant future was the Japanese tale of “Urashima Tar?”. first described in the Nihongi (720). It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. Sufism or taawwuf is defined by its adherents as the Inner, mystical dimension of Islam, where through meditation one can reach the level of travel with ones spirit to experience future or a different location, while sitting in the same place. Star Trek explores the ideas of transiting bodies within different locations and time zones.

Now question is do we really need a physical time travel? Perhaps time travel is already happening and we are looking at it from a different point of view. Perhaps its the data, pixels, stream and ‘experience’ which will become so rich, immersive and real that the notion of physical time travel will become obsolete. On the other had there are inevitable, yet exciting challenges of the time or present, we are bound by the norms of the present, we struggle to adopt or to know about a ‘different’ culture or cultural values. Our languages, appearances and social conditioning stops us from forming a global community. Certainly if there is ever a physical time travel, first we’ll need to deal with the very basic issues of our times.

\titra is a fiction based, transmedia art work. It may includes a site-specific interactive installation, photo based work and interactive website. STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PROJECT DETAILS.

\titra in interested to explore

• Future of digital forms and communications
• Time travel in modern age
• Distance experience, participation and how to create transmedia installations and
  create new experience cross platform
• Creating new forms and technologies to reach out and learn about world/ its cities and exchange dialogue
• Finding ways to create meaningful understanding about urban cultures and how we can come up with new technologies to understand each others
• Creating new forms with soicalmedia, real time video and smart phones

‘They’ took the wrong path in ‘globalization’. Instead of making things better and connected they forced to make it similar and disoriented.

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16 March—19 March 2011
The MENASA Studio Dispatches are a series of over 50 five-minute audio works, commissioned by The Island and Art Dubai Projects, by artists working across the North Africa, Middle East and South Asia regions.

Each dispatch reflects the artists’ current work and they range in form from spoken word and music to abstract sound collage. As well as creating a living archive of artistic practice across the region, the dispatches interrogate the contemporary notion of the ‘studio’ and the accelerated expansion of related technologies over recent years, which have transformed the way in which knowledge is produced and disseminated.

The MENASA Studio Dispatches is the second edition of The Island’s Studio Dispatches Project. It was presented at Art Dubai Projects at Art Dubai, 16-19 March 2011.

A selection of dispatches was presented on Dubai Eye 103.8 between 14-19 March and the entire project will be serialised on Art International Radio over the coming weeks.

This project was made possible with the kind support of the British Council, DubaiEye and Art International Radio and with the generous assistance of ArtSchoolPalestine, Ashkal Alwan, Darb 1718, Delfina Foundation, Green Cardamom, KHOJ and Vasl Artist’s Collective.

www.artdubai.ae

We can be able to connect through our stories and be able to learn about a different world & different perspective. This platform provides the opportunity to create social change through ideas, stories, pictures and videos. You have the opportunity to engage and tap into the untold stories that each one of us carry? What is your story and how does it connect you to the global community, visit mycitystories!

Oddspaces was Co presented by CODElive and the Canadian Film Centre in partners with VASL Artists Collective, Pakistan and Britto Arts Collective, Bangladesh.

Project Locations:

Vancouver – Canada, CODE Live 2 at Emily Carr University of Art and Design
Dhaka –Bangladesh, Britto Arts Trust is an artists’ led non-profit organization
Karachi- Pakistan, The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) Karachi

Partners and Collaborators:
CFC Media Lab – Toronto, Canada
VASL Artists’ Collective – Pakistan
Britto Artists’ Collective – Bangladesh
Techniques collaborators: Hassan Mustafa, Karachi, Pakistan and Salman Bari, Dhaka, Bangladesh

About  Odd Spaces
Odd Spaces is a real-time interactive installation that engages the spaces of human interactions. This project seeks to connect people separated by geography, social and cultural status by using new technologies to help facilitate their exchange. Using multiple projectors, screens, cell phone and locations, the task of linking an assortment of people in Toronto and Karachi becomes an almost seamless act. Yet, the people connected by it are far from familiar to the idioms, social gestures and practices of those they are interacting with. Odd Spaces attempts to show the unease that can arise through technologically mediated interactions.

Vancouver – Canada, CODE Live 2 at Emily Carr University of Art and Design

Dhaka –Bangladesh, Britto Arts Trust is an artists’ led non-profit organization

Karachi- Pakistan, The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) Karachi

Video

Visit the Website

An interactive performance directed by Darren O’Donnell, produced by Mammalian Diving Reflex.

Performed at Buddies in Bad Times theater 2007, Playright festival, Calgery, 2006, International Performing Arts Festival, Lahore, Pakistan 2007

Directed and created performance based real-time video work and special effects, also collaborated as a researcher and performer

Diplomatic Immunities is a multimedia interactive ensemble piece, presenting encounters between a company of research artists and the inhabitants of a city.

Conceived and directed by Darren O’Donnell, produced by Naomi Campbell, co-direction and lighting by Rebecca Picherack, video compositing by Faisal Anwar, sound by Nick Murray and screens by Daniel Young. Research Artists: Faisal Anwar, Naomi Campbell, Ulysses Castellanos, Misha Glouberman, Darren O’Donnell Rebecca Picherack, Tanya Pillay and Beatriz Pizano.

Into It! is a networked set of kinetic animal sculptures that have been wired with video screens, sound, vibration, voice inputs and motion sensors. Kids “become” the animal by using their bodies as controllers to explore a virtual ecosystem. The game is made from the animal’s point of view so kids get to really experience what it is like to be an animal. The movements the kids make are in the spirit of their animal character.

Accessible Into It!

Accessible Into It!  is a bat sculpture which would accommodate the physical needs of the multiple-disabled in order to engage. The bat’s body is adjustable to accommodate most sizes of wheelchair. Different sensors and adaptable buttons were employed for alternative interactive play. Touch video screens, attached to an adjustable arm that can be positioned for different head postures and focal lengths enable teachers or attendants to intervene and assist in the play if the disabled user is having difficulty.

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Content Screens

An interdisciplinary sight, sound, performance experience, based on the tradition of tableaux vivant directed by Tazeen Qayyum. Performed at AKA Gallery Saskatoon, 2006 and Lennox Contemporary Gallery Toronto, 2007.

Created a site specific, real-time video projection as part of the performance

Double Date is a collaborative, inter-disciplinary, interactive performance project between artists from SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Center), Toronto and AKA Gallery, Saskatoon. By using contemporary experimental and performance techniques, this project investigates the possibilities of merging South Asian and Western artistic practices.

A collaborative Real-time webcam stream and performance presented in partnership with Loading Open Lab in Bucharest, Romania.

Collaborating artists: Theo Pelmus (Ottawa), Ulysses Castellanos (Toronto), Faisal Anwar (Toronto) and Loading Open LAB (Romania)

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Interactive Installation at the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto 2008
Co-conceived and directed with artist Ulysses Castellanos

XIBALBA is an interactive sculpture/installation consisting of 8 cubic structures that glows and pulsate in increasing increments depending on the viewer’s proximity to each structure.