EEG Game Controller

Initially treated by NASA as a mere spin-off of their pilot monitoring technology, this method has been tested in recent years for a variety of purposes. One approach was to reduce the use of Ritalin by kids diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), but now it found its way into the games sector as a brainwave interface controller. That basically means that players will be able to control in-game actions with their thoughts alone.
I first came in contact with this technology at Synworld in Vienna in 1999, but at that time, it was far from advanced in terms of actually controlling actions in a virtual environment. But it was nevertheless impressive to see what a mere readout of brain activity could trigger on different computers. To my knowledge, the application towards treating ADD began around 2002 and seems to have reached its commercial implementation as well. It is exciting however to see that the interface is not only getting more comfortable to wear but also cheaper. It will be interesting to see how this technology will be picked up by gamers and media artists alike.

DJ night at Live Bar in Deptford, Sunday 8th

Coming Sunday, a few fellow electronic music afficionados and me will host yet another one of our weekly nights at the Live Bar in Deptford, South London. This one is special in terms that we not only will have a long weekend to begin with, Monday is also still a bank holiday so I am looking forward to play some nice tunes and get a good party running on Sunday. I would be happy if everybody who's interested could make their way to Deptford that night in order to celebrate with us! See you there!

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Weekly at The Live Bar in Deptford; 41-42 Deptford Broadway, SE8, London

Starts Sunday 8th April

Nearest Tube: Deptford Bridge, T:020 8469 2121, www.thelivebar.co.uk

Electronica/ Techno/ Electro

With Lipsis, DJ Choccybiccy, Атомск, Crewdson, and guests

FREE ENTRY
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Andreas Gursky at White Cube

Those among you who know Andreas Gursky know what to expect from him but it's comforting to see that he can still surprise you even if you have grown accustomed to his style.

The new exhibition at White Cube Gallery Mason's Yard features new works from North Korea, Japan and a location seemingly unknown (for the F1 Boxenstopp series).

What's really stunning about his pictures is his masterful combination of both grandeur and detail, overlapped and intertwined by notions of seriality, repetition and uniformity. He's interested in the bigger picture (in a very literal way) of things yet manages to depict bigger relations which we would describe as artificial or uniform with a respect to detail that always hints towards some form of transgression of these serial structures. A civil parade in North Korea with thousands of participants might aesthetically appear almost as a military parade of the good old Cold War days (which North Korea is not really willing to get out of anyway right now) but it also reveals the transgression of this very grid-like and mostly symmetrical form. People not waving their banners at the right time, individuals sleeping or simply not paying attention. These are the details that differentiate a civil from a military parade as it allows for these things to happen.

F1 Boxenstopp is slightly different as it depicts racing cars getting checked up by the team of engineers during a race. Although they -in principle- all perform the same actions and have to act as a greater whole on the car and the pilot, given their tight time restrictions, you are still able to see the differences in movement from team to team, even if it is a similar engineer performing a similar task. This leaves us with the impression that although complying to standards and protocol is of the utmost importance here, the individual capacity to handle the form of self-organisation by the particular team as a whole is equally important. It only becomes clear by the leaflet that these pictures are in fact digitally constructed and so Gursky manages to challenge our whole perception of what his work is about once more.

White Cube Mason’s Yard is pleased to present the work of Andreas Gursky in his first major solo exhibition with the gallery. Renowned for his large-format colour photographs charting themes of globalised society at work and play, Gursky’s new production employs the latest digital technology to capture and refine an astounding compilation of detail on an epic scale.

The perspective in many of Gursky’s photographs is drawn from an elevated vantage point. This position enables the viewer to encounter scenes, encompassing both centre and periphery, which are ordinarily beyond reach. For the Pyongyang series (2007), Gursky travelled to the Arirang Festival, held annually in North Korea in honour of the late Communist leader Kim Il Sung. The festival’s mass games include more than 50,000 participants performing tightly choreographed acrobatics, against a backdrop of 30,000 schoolchildren holding coloured flip-cards that produce an ever-changing mosaic of patterns and images. Gursky’s photographs describe, in panoramic dimensions, the incongruity of the brilliant colours and smiling faces of the performers within the controlled, totalitarian nature of the event.
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F1 Boxenstopp (2007) focuses on the frenetic activity around Formula One cars stationed in their pits during a race. Dozens of mechanics and technicians in bright team colours surround two vehicles, hurriedly refuelling and repairing, all but obscuring the cars and drivers from view. Above this scene, members of the audience look down from the darkened interior of the hospitality suite. Shot at various Grand Prix races around the world – Shanghai, Monte Carlo, Istanbul, São Paulo – the figures appear captured in a moment of authenticity, yet in reality, such simultaneous action would not be possible; these images are in fact a carefully composed digital construct.
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Andreas Gursky was born in Leipzig and lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Since the 1980s he has exhibited extensively, including major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, MCA Chicago and SF MOMA, San Francisco. His most recent museum exhibition opened in February 2007 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and will tour to Istanbul and Sharjah.

Andreas Gursky at White Cube Mason’s Yard coincides with a presentation of new work at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London, 7a Grafton Street, London W1S 4EJ from 22 March to 12 May 2007.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.