projects/projekte > Overtures Environmental Office

project information
artists:
Overtures Environmental office
Kalle Laar
Rúrí
Silver & Hanne Rivrud

initiative/organizer:
artcircolo mit Vodafone Group R&D Germany

curator:
Serafine Lindemann

place:
7.-9.Juni 2007 Mobile Journey/52. Biennale von Venedig
5.-11. September 2007 ars electronica 2007 in Linz

Artists, in collaboration with technologists and scientists, will stage and run an Environmental Office in a former shop in Marienstraße to provide environmental information, monitoring and control. This will include a future-oriented water fountain for processing water. The ironic use of an office serves as an allusion to the self-perception of companies in relation to their societal credibitlity. The selected projects of Kalle Laar, Rúrí and Silver & Hanne Rivrud document the way in which artists utilize the potential of changing modes of communication, interaction and story-telling in current art formats within the spectrum of mobile technologies, and how they use these to take a public position on controversial issues.

Intrigue E

Silver & Hanne Rivrud from Norway introduce an avatar, the typical graphic representative of a real person in the virtual world, into the authentic public sphere. Via a cellphone’s command keys, the user can issue all kinds of orders to an initially unidentifiable action figure. But there’s a nasty wakeup call awaiting at the end, when the display shows the amount of CO2 emissions that were caused by the interaction.

www.intriguee.mobi

Flooding

is an installation based on the waterfall Toefrafoss which is disappearing under the rising waters of an enormous reservoir that has been created by a colossal dam for a hydro electrical power plant, built to power an aluminium smelter. This is Rúrís latest work of the series Endangered Waters, she documents using video and audio how industrial interests are bringing about the flooding of a unique highland ecosystem in her country and causing its unalterable destruction. Even though the artist focuses her camera on waterfalls in her own country, Iceland, the Endangered Waters works are simultaneously local and global in concept.

www.ruri.is

Calling the Glacier – A Mobile Elegy

Sound researcher Kalle Laar has set up the first direct telecommunications hook-up with European glaciers. Microphones placed in the landscape of glaciers provide users with an up-close-and-personal auditory experience: the actual sounds—hissing, streaming, creaking, grunting and groaning—made by these melting ice-giants. This lingering glacial process of erosion will be transmitted directly in real time to cellphones.

Call me!
+49 89 37914058 (Vernagtferner/ Austria)
+49 89 37414602 (Pasterze/ Austria)
www.callingtheglacier.org