Residency: Cartographies of the Vanishing Now - Fiber Lab

Cartographies of the Vanishing Now is a research and development project - initiated by Fiber Lab - that "explores the potential of sensory art and alternative cartographic methods to remap reality in the age of environmental collapse”. Inviting media artist, designers, performers, anthropologists and scientist “to research the topic of instability and symbiotic relationships between man, technology and ecology", while "developing immersive experiences and hybrid instruments through critical research and audiovisual exploration."

This first LAB, in the form of a 5 day residency/laboratory, took place in Amsterdam and the Oosterschelde.

An ode to the ambiguity of the anthropocene.

Objective
The core theme of my entering the COTVN lab was this idea of the body as mapping agent and the inscribing of knowledge and environment - such as weather phenomena - unto experience and memory. Taking an interest in walking as a way of mapping and experimenting with alternative ways of ‘capturing’ experiences. Not per se via hard ‘data’ but via subjective and phenomenological instances.

The set up for the week was to frame the visit to the Oosterschelde and lectures, with practices that have the power to be transformative and informative agents, but not rely on cognitive thinking. To go into the week as an ‘participating in’, rather than a ‘viewing and understanding of’. To create a (for me) new modus operandi where all that is seen, heard, photographed, tracked, written and traced is of equal nature and - most importantly - to add my personal and felt experience as an additive marker in this collecting and making of archive. And thus, by doing so, explore the non-tangible aspects of an environment and topic in a new way.

Outcome
The result has been a translatory fuck-fest. A continuous inserting of one experience into the next interpreter. Tumbling from the inner to the outer, the human to its digital counterparts. Becoming maker, and re-maker. Taking loans and rebranding that which was of other as it’s own. Oozing and leaking half baked truths and ramblings.

Leading to a variety of renderings, scores, poems and traces. Works and sketches that were created via the procedures of trance-writing, erasure, enquiry, sensing, experiential drawing and collaging. As well as photogramitry and the collaborations with Ai and their machine learned image analysis and narrative building. A pallet of makings that I since then have called by own.

To what extent is it possible for a deeply personal experience to go through multiple iterative translations - both human and non-human, and still speak to the same truth? Or even - to become ‘more truth’, ‘more real’, spoken and made by an even ‘truer’ ways of expressing. “Who is the intelligence in this setting?!”

M<ud

Mud score was a iterative experimentation where a ‘objective’ registration of one our walks, was translated into different scores. Going from that what was ‘real’, to that which was fictive, to that which was a commentary, to that which took on another identity and perspective, to a series of (actual?) testimonies of a non-performed score.

Songs of Destruction

Songs of destruction is a series of short eco-spatial poems that came about via a open ended play with different translative agents. What started of as a series of experiential and embodied drawings - create on site at various locations at the Oosterschelde, was transmuted by means of distortion and assemblage. A continuem of cutting and pasting, writing and erasing.

My personal experience formed the basis for a series of abstract drawings > which were ‘read’ by an AI > who matched the drawings with real life photo’s > in order to create written captions > which were assembled to form allineas > which formed the input for yet another AI > who made use of an archive of science-fiction, anarchist and environmental literature > to fabricate newly written stories > which were printed and combined > then read again my me > who used trancereading to highlight only some of the words > and manually erase all other > in order to only be able to use these last couple of words > to create these songs of destruction.

What is the work in this work? Who is the maker? Who is the intelligence in this setting? Who speaks? To what ‘truth’?

Thanks to Tivon Rice who allowed me to make use of his AI’s. 

Cartographis

Cartography of a collected now is a digital spatial collage/sketch. An assembled memory that plays with the (false?) recollection of an experience. Created during the COTVN residency at Fiber lab, the trial embodies both an actual representation of the archived and a fabricated spin on this personal journey. All is ‘actual’, but all is also morphed. A combination of snapshots, video, gps-routes and rendering of mud (or is it?) collide to adhere to the ambiguous environmental reality of the visited sites at the Oosterschelde. A synthesised new environment, where chronology and spatial recollection are reutilised for my personal need. But then again. Who is the intelligence in this setting? Who steers my findings. Which knowledge feeds my fear and wondering?

The rendering was presented during the final day of COTVN. As a viewer you yourself could place yourself on various points on this map and therefore change the elements of this representation. Allowing them to create a (shared?) narrative of their own. Or was it mine? Or was it?

The sketch was created in close collaboratorium with Darian Brito, who - via the making use of his generosity, kindness, skills and software - allowed me to play with my material in the digital realm. Do check out his work!

2019