Intro
Bjørn Wangen
Born in Oslo, now living and working in Malmö, Sweden.
Education: The Trondheim Academy of Fine Art at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Runs the art project "Pineapple Project Room", with artist Torbjörn Limé. http://www.thepineapple.cc/
Educator of arts and media communication (ICT) at the Teachers education, University of Malmö.
Full details available at:
http://kunst.no/wangen/
Born in Oslo, now living and working in Malmö, Sweden.
Education: The Trondheim Academy of Fine Art at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Runs the art project "Pineapple Project Room", with artist Torbjörn Limé. http://www.thepineapple.cc/
Educator of arts and media communication (ICT) at the Teachers education, University of Malmö.
Full details available at:
http://kunst.no/wangen/
Interview
1. who are your influences?
I get influenced by a lot of things, it changes depending on what I work with for the moment. As a teenager, an early encounter with Christo's Running fence made me see new levels and ideas about landscape imagery. It was something about that enormous orange piece of clothing and the relative small holes made for passing through for animals and cars, which made it possible to reflect landscape differently than say; the Caspar David Friedrich' point of view. I am fascinated by the twenties, dada and other movements with the certain energy and belief in the potential of art to chance things. De Chirico's empty streeets and Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau are important to me, as well as Barnett Newman's Who's afraid series from the sixties. Odd as it may seem, the German painter Blinky Palermo is a favourite. When I work, I read a lot or listen to music. Paul Virilio was a must. Don de Lillo is important to me as well as Rabelais. Music: Eno, Hendrix, Aphex Twin.
2. what about the weather, data and image most interests you and informs the work?
In my piece "X – I live here" what mostly interests me is the type of image. Weather images we gaze at every day in the forecasts. They are quite dull or I mean, they look like every other weather satelite photo. I am interested in the everyday-ness in the images. The images say that there is always weather. They look more or less the same from a day to another and yet the image from yesterday is of no interest. They are autonomous, we recognize the shapes in them and say; "There is home" as if we actually knew it and we are all of us in (acting in) these images. It is a different view on the landscape with an actual lack of lines of perspective. It is a flattened image which sees everything, or as I believe artist Jordan Crandall says: the satelite image look at you before you look at it. Still the landscape imaging is about positioning in the field, I'm here (and you are there). Weather is actually just a running engine for this work. You look out the window to see what the weather's like. You do that every day. There is a little xml-file in this work which works as a database to ensure that the images are replaced with new ones every day. Every day, new noise.
3. what drew you to working with the tools of new media?
I'm interested in databases and the possiblities to derive narratives from the information in them. But this work uses old technology as well. There is a sound signal transmitted from the satelite and received by a radio with an antenna. I built the antenna myself with copper tubing and wire. The image is a fax image, weather fax. The satelite orbits and constantly scans the earth surface by the width of 3000 km, like a gigantic data scanner. I guess they fascinate me, all those machines, though I'm not a technician nor do I have any special technical skills.
4. What aesthetic and conceptual connections do you see between data signal and generated imaging and interpretation?
This work is dependant on the disturbance of the radio signal. The noise comes from the ground and blend into the images. It is the traffic in the urban communication systems, FM-radio, taxi, data networks and my neighbours' hearing aid which influence the images in an almost indexial way. The fax image resembles a photographic image, but is actually apprx. 15 minutes older at the top than the bottom if the satelite moves southbound. This time interests me, it draws the imagery away from photography towards drawing. There are notions about time in this work, static time, loops and time differences which oscillate.
5. What areas and aspects of weather and its processed most interests you?
Weather determines when I gonna take my photo and where or how I move in the landscape. Weather is also the result of political decision-making (or lack thereof) nowadays. By not taking steps to prevent further global heating politicians affect weather conditions on a global level.
6. What connections/ana;ogs/tensions can you see between unpredictability and patterns that inform your work?
Randomness and patterns are often connected in generative artwork. The pattern nourishes on the variations coming up by chance.
7. How did you select the title?
I think I answered that one.
8. Where do you see this type of work moving towards in the near future?
The origin of the images is the sound signal sent towards and echoed back from the earth's surface. It is a simple blip which carries all the necessary information to create an image. When this work is shown at art galleries the public can hear the satelite blips from the radio when they actually pass. So sound is generating images. I would like to loop it and generate new sound from those images. I would like to use the images to generate sound in realtime to go with the Flash movie.
9. What tools do you see as most interesting in future work with weather data and image manipulation?
Different open source tools. As I would work with generated sound, I think I'll use SuperCollider because of the programming environment. I use a shareware tool for recording and interpreting the sound signals, WXtoImg. It is a nice app with a very hard working programmer, Craig, in New Zeeland constantly developing the tool.
I get influenced by a lot of things, it changes depending on what I work with for the moment. As a teenager, an early encounter with Christo's Running fence made me see new levels and ideas about landscape imagery. It was something about that enormous orange piece of clothing and the relative small holes made for passing through for animals and cars, which made it possible to reflect landscape differently than say; the Caspar David Friedrich' point of view. I am fascinated by the twenties, dada and other movements with the certain energy and belief in the potential of art to chance things. De Chirico's empty streeets and Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau are important to me, as well as Barnett Newman's Who's afraid series from the sixties. Odd as it may seem, the German painter Blinky Palermo is a favourite. When I work, I read a lot or listen to music. Paul Virilio was a must. Don de Lillo is important to me as well as Rabelais. Music: Eno, Hendrix, Aphex Twin.
2. what about the weather, data and image most interests you and informs the work?
In my piece "X – I live here" what mostly interests me is the type of image. Weather images we gaze at every day in the forecasts. They are quite dull or I mean, they look like every other weather satelite photo. I am interested in the everyday-ness in the images. The images say that there is always weather. They look more or less the same from a day to another and yet the image from yesterday is of no interest. They are autonomous, we recognize the shapes in them and say; "There is home" as if we actually knew it and we are all of us in (acting in) these images. It is a different view on the landscape with an actual lack of lines of perspective. It is a flattened image which sees everything, or as I believe artist Jordan Crandall says: the satelite image look at you before you look at it. Still the landscape imaging is about positioning in the field, I'm here (and you are there). Weather is actually just a running engine for this work. You look out the window to see what the weather's like. You do that every day. There is a little xml-file in this work which works as a database to ensure that the images are replaced with new ones every day. Every day, new noise.
3. what drew you to working with the tools of new media?
I'm interested in databases and the possiblities to derive narratives from the information in them. But this work uses old technology as well. There is a sound signal transmitted from the satelite and received by a radio with an antenna. I built the antenna myself with copper tubing and wire. The image is a fax image, weather fax. The satelite orbits and constantly scans the earth surface by the width of 3000 km, like a gigantic data scanner. I guess they fascinate me, all those machines, though I'm not a technician nor do I have any special technical skills.
4. What aesthetic and conceptual connections do you see between data signal and generated imaging and interpretation?
This work is dependant on the disturbance of the radio signal. The noise comes from the ground and blend into the images. It is the traffic in the urban communication systems, FM-radio, taxi, data networks and my neighbours' hearing aid which influence the images in an almost indexial way. The fax image resembles a photographic image, but is actually apprx. 15 minutes older at the top than the bottom if the satelite moves southbound. This time interests me, it draws the imagery away from photography towards drawing. There are notions about time in this work, static time, loops and time differences which oscillate.
5. What areas and aspects of weather and its processed most interests you?
Weather determines when I gonna take my photo and where or how I move in the landscape. Weather is also the result of political decision-making (or lack thereof) nowadays. By not taking steps to prevent further global heating politicians affect weather conditions on a global level.
6. What connections/ana;ogs/tensions can you see between unpredictability and patterns that inform your work?
Randomness and patterns are often connected in generative artwork. The pattern nourishes on the variations coming up by chance.
7. How did you select the title?
I think I answered that one.
8. Where do you see this type of work moving towards in the near future?
The origin of the images is the sound signal sent towards and echoed back from the earth's surface. It is a simple blip which carries all the necessary information to create an image. When this work is shown at art galleries the public can hear the satelite blips from the radio when they actually pass. So sound is generating images. I would like to loop it and generate new sound from those images. I would like to use the images to generate sound in realtime to go with the Flash movie.
9. What tools do you see as most interesting in future work with weather data and image manipulation?
Different open source tools. As I would work with generated sound, I think I'll use SuperCollider because of the programming environment. I use a shareware tool for recording and interpreting the sound signals, WXtoImg. It is a nice app with a very hard working programmer, Craig, in New Zeeland constantly developing the tool.
Project
"X I am Here"
synopsis:
My four year old son David says this work is about where we live. "Now we don't need a map anymore to see where we live". The red cross represents Malmö, Sweden. The noise in the pictures comes from urban radio traffic and computer networks and radio shadow. The images are fetched with a simple antenna on my balcony in downtown Malmö.
Click here to view "X I am Here"
Please Note: "X I am Here" requires the Adobe Flash Player and a broadband connection is recommended.
synopsis:
My four year old son David says this work is about where we live. "Now we don't need a map anymore to see where we live". The red cross represents Malmö, Sweden. The noise in the pictures comes from urban radio traffic and computer networks and radio shadow. The images are fetched with a simple antenna on my balcony in downtown Malmö.
Click here to view "X I am Here"
Please Note: "X I am Here" requires the Adobe Flash Player and a broadband connection is recommended.