BVPS Next Nature in LA – Pictures!
May 17th 2008. Biggest Visual Power Show: Next Nature in LA. More pictures below.
We are all born in a world that has been designed already. BVPS intro video by Floris Kaayk.
Big screen, big stage. Welcome in the Million Dollar Theater, Downtown Los Angeles.
Koert van Mensvoort – Your next nature explorer & safari host during the night.
The Car is not the limit – Showleaders by Arnoud van den Heuvel.
Kevin Kelly – Technology: the 7th kingdom of life. An opening keynote on the nature of technology. “Our entire system of technology is now so complex that it forms a tangled ecology of ideas and devices which support each other. Human mind, so essential for its birth, play a decreasing role.”
Erik Davis – Analog versus Digital (video by Niels Schrader). Getting over the nature vs culture divide by talking about two different styles of technological encoding, which have different kinds of nature attached to them, analog being more romantic and flowing and organic, digital more abstract, mathematical and discrete,. but ultimately each one is in the other, like yin and yang.
Floris Kaayk – Metalosis Maligna. An extraordinary disease.
David Kremers – Visualizing Complexity. Artist helps scientists at the California Institute of Technology to use artistic painting techniques in order to visualize the incredible complexity of their scientific data. What can we learn from Van Gogh?
Ceci n’est pas une voiture. Showleader by Arnoud van den Heuvel.
Karl Grandin – Corporate animal sweater. Models Janna Fassaert & Jonathan Jarvis.
Michiko Nitta – Extreme Green Guerillas, the ultimate green lifestyle. The image shows an example of a wale used as a sustainable transporter of messages.
Show leader by Arnoud van den Heuvel. The driver is injected into the car.
Judith de Leeuw – My new shoes. Disassembles and traces her shoe back to their place of birth.
Tinkebell – A twist of cat.
Fucking and dying with Playboy and Disney – Media philosopher Peter Lunenfeld explains how Disney and Playboy, who seem miles apart, are in fact sides of the same coin, flipping to decide what the next nature of sex and death will be.
Playboy meets Disney. The Mickey Mouses backstage.
Christian Bramsiepe – Intelligent Design.
Rene Daalder & Folkert Gorter – Spacecollective. The future of everything.
Koert van Mensvoort – Papilio Nike-Ulysses. The future of advertising: just do it?
Roel Wouters and Luna Maurer – Jubilator 2.0. A ball with a wireless high-speed camera was thrown into the audience, to create a collaborative movie.
Sunny Bergman – Over the Hill. An intimate peek in a Los Angeles ‘rejuvenation institute’. What is the price tag of a hot, sexy, hypernatural body?
Susana Soares – Genetic Trace. New perceptual organs.
Quirine Rácke – Starring. (video by marjolijn Ruyg)
and Helena Muskens.
Julian Bleecker – Mobzombies. The Human joystick. A game where you run away from zombies by really running. A piece of special hardware that you wear at your waist detects your movement, allowing you to physically steer your virtual character away from zombies.
Joris van Gelder – Magical interaction. How to control the wild ecology of electronic devices in your house? Designer Joris van Gelder proposes ‘magic’ as a way to interact with our technological environment and demonstrated his magical lamp and remote control.
Casey Alt – Slightly Sociopatic Software. Young billionaire CEO of Vacillogix Software, shares his views on the emerging phenomenon of social software networks like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, etc. and their relation with the older social software embedded in human nature.
Hendrik–Jan Grievink – Brandalizing. Nowadays the average kid knows more brands and logos than bird or three species. Hendrik-Jan Grievink analyzes the strategies of recognition, the most successful product of our time.
Mieke Gerritzen – More brandalizing. Once upon a time in the West.
Rob Schröder – Something missing in Sao Paolo? About a year ago, the government of Sao Paulo ordered to remove all the commercial billboards and neon signs in the city. Imagine your own.
Luke Johnson – Los Angeles destroyed by Hollywood Nature.
The power show was brought to you on ‘real’ green grass and it felt quite real too!
Walk in video/audio installation. Video by Koert van Mensvoort. Sound by Christophe Stoelinga & Dennis Lodewijks.
Afternoon preparations in the theater.
Presenters & crew members informally chitchatting backstage.
The theater before for the show.
Don’t you just love that classical ticket booth?
Million Dollar Theater, May 17th 2008. Seen from the Bradbury building.
Billed as “More than 25 visionary statements from artists, scientist, designer, filmers, writers…” the Biggest Visual Power Show presentation of “Next Nature” came to the historic Million Dollar Theater in Downtown Los Angeles this Saturday night, May 17th, appropriately across from the utopian architectural landmark, the Bradbury Building.
http://leblog.exuberance.com/2007/08/the-bradbury-bu.html
“Next Nature is the nature caused by human culture,” a very h+ concept. What initially interested me was that Kevin Kelly (Out of Control) and Erik Davis (Techgnosis) would be among the presenters. However, it turned out I had read Kelly’s presentation essay, “The Seventh Kingdom of Life” before and Davis’ talk on the mythological relationship between our conceptions of analog and digital was not one of his strongest, especially since the visuals by Niels Schrader overwhelmed Davis’ thoughts. However, what got me to stay were all the other artists, predominantly Dutch and all previously unknown to me, whose work was profound, funny, cutting edge and a thought-provoking step in understanding humanity’s relationship with nature and technology.
Our emcee for the evening was artist/scientist/organizer/curator Koert van Mensvoort, who explained why the Dutch have such a profound appreciation of the manipulation of nature. The Netherlands is a country that only exists by dint of nature-changing technology. Reclaimed from the sea, the land is a densely populated bulwark against the encroachment of the natural world. The Dutch understand perhaps better than most that people design and craft the world around us to suit our ends.
My date for the evening was Norman Gilmore, tech entrepreneur/ futurist/software architect/business analyst and fellow avantgardist. He enjoyed the show as much as I did.
My personal highlights out of over two dozen presentations were:
Joris Van Gelder’s magical interaction technology. This young man just graduated from Eindhoven University of Technology. From his early studies observing how people bring magical expectations to their interactions with technology, he developed a “magical” remote control for Bang & Olufsen which is one of the cleverest, sexiest devices I’ve seen. As Norman said, if Steven Jobs doesn’t kidnap the boy and ferry him (magically) back to the Apple kingdom, he’s crazy.
http://www.student.tue.nl/n/j.m.v.gelder/flash/#/BandORemote_Perspective/
http://www.student.tue.nl/n/j.m.v.gelder/flash/#/BandORemote_Balance/
Katinka Simonse aka Tinkebell, an animal rights artist/filmmaker, “mockumented” her slaughtering and skinning her pet cat to make into a purse. Her fabulous faux-naïveté and sweetness, her political incorrectness and the gory, graphic how-to images of the all-too-real skinned dead cat made Sarah Silverman look like a wimpy wannabe shockette.
Filmmakers Rene Daalder and Folkert Gorter, who lead Space Collective, “where forward thinking terrestrials exchange ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction today.” It looks like a fun and stimulating creative community.
Casey Alt’s fabulously slick and disturbing “Slightly Sociopathic Software” digital presentation called “Vasillogix” was a very American presentation! Part American Psycho, part Gattaca, part Dale Carnegie, I highly recommend watching it once he posts the completed film.
Floris Kaayk’s film “Metalosis Maligna” was another cute mockumentary about the spread of post implantation infection from metal implants, causing bodies to sprout chaotic metal structures like a Meccano set on acid.
Christian Bramsiepe made a snappy graphic short on intelligent design (or the lack thereof).
Extreme Green Guerillas, a mockumentary on the ultimate green martyrs:
Even the two dozen or so interstitial videos designed by Arnoud Van Den Heuvel, depicting a generic car graphic doing clever and technologically ironic things were well executed.
I expected a bigger turn out for such a wide-reaching program, but I’m not sure how much PR was done to promote it. It deserved a bigger audience than it got. Let’s hope “Next Nature” travels and gets more exposure.
After seeing some well thought out, creative and inspiring visual shorts at the Visual Power Show 2008, I am reminded of only one that disturbed me greatly. A young woman was applauded for her grotesque display of how she created her Cat Purse. This should not be condoned as second nature! I am not an animal rights activist, however this has spurred me to speak out!
Her accounts of wringing her cats neck to kill it, then the act of skinning it… only to make a purse of it… It is NOT second nature to kill your pet for the purpose of making a commodity for yourself, then making a self glorifying video of it that encourages others to do the same. This is not the kind of behavior one should be rewarded and you should consider banning such works that have such disrespect for life. A public apology should be in order from the producers of the event as well as the woman herself!!!
I will publicly speak out against this event from ever happening again and encouraging such acts.
Sort of stumbled into this event by chance and had a fine night! Very timely and inbetween blend of things. I loved casey’s performance. And Marcy… where have you been? Are you like twelve or what? I found that cat act just SO boring. Clearly a quick photoshop with some peaces of meat from the supermarket. Shock art is so nineties. That spoof with the plastic surgean I did like. But the girl with the sportshoe: now that was disturbing. And Kevin kelly ofcourse!
Poor Taste on her part and bad judgement on the part of the event producers for allowing it to be shown. Thus shock art is not Next Nature.
Dear Marcy, I am glad you liked the largest part of our program. I am sorry you could not appreciate the Tinkebell act. We invited this artist because we believe the consumptive attitude people have towards their pets, is a relevant subject within the theme of the event.
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We are long aware of the controversial and politically incorrect nature of the project. It is not our goal to just ‘shock’ people (that would be bad taste), nor is it our ambition to organize an event which only establishes people in what they already think and feel (that would be mere entertainment).
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We selected this project, because opens up a debate how people ‘consume’ animals and points at some of the inconsistencies. We carefully presented the Catbag performance in the context of Judith de Leeuw’s ‘New Shoe’ presentation (which dealt with our disconnection with consumer goods) and Sunny Bergman’s ‘Over the Hill’ (which pointed at our relation to women as consumer goods). I hope you can see the invitation of Tinkebell was a clear curatorial decision. We are aware that in an audience of 800 people not everyone immediately will ‘get’ this and I glad to be able to explain it here in detail.
Congratulations guys. That was a pretty impressive happening.
wow, mieke and koert, well done!!! this was surely the best BIGGEST VISUAL POWER SHOW ever! concratz!
My name is misspelled! It’s “Jonathan Jarvis” not Jarfish!