[Earth_To_Disk (aka Flat Earth Society), 2008-2011] Art of Failure :: until March 16, 2012 :: Devotion Gallery, 54 Maujer Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Imperfections identify a medium as it is with glass becoming visible by accumulated dusts and scratches. The Art of Failure collective, Nicolas Maigret and Nicolas Montgermont, experiment within the capacity of contemporary technologies to generate specific sounds and visual languages. In their realizations, the internal characteristics of media are revealed through errors, dysfunctions, borderlines or failure threshold, which they develop into sensory and immersive audio visual experiences.

This exhibition brings together works produced by the Art of Failure collective dealing with issues of perceptible representations of digital data. The pieces on view explore the connections between our concrete space and the immaterial spaces of information. The series of LAPS projects takes a close look at the internal vibrations of the worldwide communication network in the manner of a seismic analysis. It enables the audience to perceive the digital and intangible space peculiar to the Internet network. The Flat Earth Society series surfs at the heart of global cartographic data and offers an acoustic experience of terrestrial reliefs.

Works in the Exhibition:

Earth_To_Disk (aka Flat Earth Society) Earth elevation data analogically transposed on a 12 inch record (produced with Flo Kaufmann): Earth_to_Disk proposes a transposition of the earth elevation at the scale of a microgroove record. A standard turntable can read this relief. Each side of this 33rpm record is a transfer of an hemisphere starting with the equator at the extremity and ending with one pole at the center. While playing, the chain of the elevation data crossed by the needle is directly transposed into audible sound vibrations. By every rotation of the disk, we can recognize patterns corresponding to the relief of the crossed continents. The engraving of this elevation’s information on the surface of the disk generates in consequence a subtle image of the earth. This image may remind us the representations that are proposed to us since the stellar exploration. This object can also remind the Flat Earth as described by Thales. This representation is also in use by the Flat Earth Society, a group of people that still believe and defend the fact that the earth is flat.

Infinite Stream Loop - Archives [2010...] Generative composition for Internet: Infinite Stream Loop is a continuous stream that travels around the web. Originally, a silent stream has been injected into the web the 1st of July 2010, it performs a permanent back and forth between France and Japan following different path defined by the network’s internal rules. Since this date, the sound content of the stream keeps developing and remodeling according to the errors of transmission produced at every nodes passed through the network. This process draws up a temporal portrait of the digital space, a kind of sound agglomerate that offers a sonic perception of the unstable and untangible network’s space.

Internet_Encephalography [2011-2012] Global network activity measurement: Digital data are emitted from the exhibition space towards 193 computers located in every UN member state. Variations in the travel time towards the 193 states are represented as diagrams. They draw what could be an encephalography of the Internet. Through this set of located probes, the 193 electrograms informs on the internal dynamics and the overall state of the network. Also comparable to echo location or sonar methods, this process draws up a geography of nations in the digital network.

Douglas Kahn reviewed the work last year.

Artist Bios:

Nicolas Maigret has been developing an experimental practice of sound and electronic images (performances, installations, programming, radio) since 2001. After studies in Intermedia arts where he followed a theoretical education about the avant-gardes, he joins the laboratory Locus-Sonus in Nice dedicated to audio art researches. He has been teaching new media during workshops and at the Fine arts school of Bordeaux. He is presently involved in an artist run space named Plateforme in Paris, and develops digital and sound art researches in duo with Nicolas Montgermont under the name of Art Of Failure.

Nicolas Montgermont studies the relations between art, sciences and medium using the computer as a workshop. After a formation in signal processing, he studies sciences applied to music at the IRCAM center. His creating work is the search of a numerical aesthetics, using and developing personal tools to explore the specific possibilities of the computer. With the chdh collective, he develops a work of audiovisual performance that is shown in many festivals in Europe and is continued by the release of a dvd, vivarium in 2008. Since 2007, he also works with the Art of Failure collective mainly in the sound art field. In parallel, he teaches the usage of the computer for creation at the Louis Lumière school, at the university of Tunis and in workshops.

SYSTEM_INTROSPECTION [raw take @leCube] from Nicolas Maigret on Vimeo.