The project AUGMENTED SOFAS was an installation done in 2003 and that took place in Sidney, Australia and Berlin, Germany.

Objectives:

- To question the concept of identity and how society has identity stereotypes based upon physical characteristics

Method:

- Two inflatable sofas were set in two different locations, one in Sidney/Australia and the other in Berlin/Germany

- These two sofas were connected to two different air compressors.

- The air compressors connected each to a computer that was connected to the internet

Installation:

- When someone sat in one of the sofas and no one was sitting on the other one nothing happened

- When two people were seated, one at each location, the weight of those people created pressure on the sofa.

- A software,that was written for the installation, would then measure the pressure on both sides and take air out of one of them – on the one were the person was heavier – and eject air on the one where the person was lighter, creating an elevation effect

- People on both sides were then asked to describe who they tought the other person on the other side was

Results:

- 92% of the visitors to the installation, when asked to describe who was on the other side, could not guess correctly age nor gender

- 87% of the visitors that were lowered by the sofa thought that the person on the other side was from the opposite gender and younger

- A Grand D’Anois [a dog] was described as “possibily an overweight in the mid 40s american woman”

Conclusion:

- When given just one trace of a person’s identity our brain recurs to a snapshot of a stereotype and makes his own image of the person. This identification is erroneous – as showned by the results – and can lead to gross mistakes.

The Bio Mapping tool allows the wearer to record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of the emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. This can be used to plot a map that highlights point of high and low arousal. By sharing and reflecting on this data, we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.

How will our perceptions of our community and environment change when we become aware of our own and each others intimate body states?

This project will now be applied to the audience of a theater play and the result will be a part of the videocenogaphy that is being made for the same play.

The technology presented on the video below was seen in 2002 on the big movie screens brought to us by Steven Spielberg, on the the movie “Minority Report”, based on the short story by Phillip K. Dick [2]. The difference is that in 2002 all there was to it was a good special effects and CGI team.

[[1] “The Jetsons” was produced by the Hanna&Barbera Studios during 1962 and 1963 and a result of the space race phenomena that existed between the USA and the former Soviet Union]

[[2] Philip Kindred Dick was an American writer mostly known for his works of science fiction. He wrote forty-four books and more than 120 short stories. “Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?” was his first of 8 short stories adapted to the big screen. The movie took the name “Blade Runner” and was directed by Riddley Scott in 1982. K. Dick had written the short story in 1968.

April 2007 will bring to the big screen “Next” based on the Dick’s short story “The Golden Man” by the hands of Lee Tamahori and it will star Nicholas Cage..

On a somber note, it is only now, almost 20 years after K.Dick’s death, that he is starting to be appreciated. On his own time he was almost ignored. Maybe the reality that he described on his superbly well written stories and books was then too far out for us but now seems more and more feasible.

EdA, the german based label, is proud to present Clark|KENT’s “TH” DVD.

Fully recorded on location in Thomar, Portugal – the city of the templar knights, “TH” presents 6 video works and 5 extra audio tracks.

“TH” will be launched on March,23rd in Europe and in the US on April, 27th.

“Clark|KENT” spent 3 days on location making video and field recording and then presented the results on a live performance,under the “cityscapes”pr
The material was then edited on studio, once more, including only footage made during those 3 days. The result is now presented in this DVD that also includes an interview with the artist and preview of upcoming projects.

What is databending?

Databending is a process that goes to the core, some call it the “soul”, of a file and changes its “identity”.

For a computer, everything is “0″s and “1″s. This letters that you are reading at the this very moment are only “0″s and “1″s to the computer.

What databending allows you to do is to tell the computer that a given file is of another type thus forcing it to interpret it like, not what it was originally, but what you want it to be.

In the case of the videos on “Previously”, two sound files went through the databending process and were “transformed” – re-encoded is the correct term – into video files. Then they were re-encoded back into sound files.

The resulting video and audio, from this process, was then put together using a out-of-the-shelf video editing sequence.

The original sound files were field recordings.

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a C flat sound turned into an image using databending

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Clark|KENT started the “cityscapes” project in S.Francisco, comissioned by the art gallery “Southern Exposure”. At the time, the objective was to give the visitors of the gallery an “alien perspective of every day places around the city” and was filmed in the MiniDV format during 3 days prior to the opening. On the night of the opening, the audio and video material gathered, were manipulated live – using live performance software -.

Instead of being passive, the audience began to discuss among themselves what parts of the city were those, “where is this building that i never saw?“, un-aware that some of the footage that they were watching had previously been shot in Lisbon, Portugal.

Justaposing both the material shot in San Francisco and the material previously shot in Lisbon – both cities have in common not only the bridge, built by the same company, but also an identical geography of hills and even a similar earthquake history – an augmented city was created during the performance and the viewers made positive identification of it.

The CITYSCAPES project was thus born. Looking for rupture points but also similarities in the urban environment, Cityscapes adds new cities to its library and questions the viewers about their relation with the urban environment where they live.

“(..) One living in a big urban environment will end making a village out of it. this village is made of discontinuous places in the city and the city, as a whole, becomes invisible. From this discontinuos village we all make personal snapshots, ‘polaroids’, and for every single building, street, burrough, public space there exist as many polaroids as people that have taken those spaces has part of their own village…(…)“