Last year we produced a series of Gabriel’s video artworks for MINI. The project was curated by Meiré und Meiré for the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) 2011. Read more about the project and see all three pieces in full in our portfolio.

Often when we discuss our projects internally at KS12, we reflect on the interconnectedness our videos share. We’ve explored themes – open design, prototyping, future forecasting, aesthetics, identity, economics, nomadism, creativity, communication – which cross boundaries of individual projects and recur or transform depending on the focus of a given story. We see this as a natural way to engage the world of ideas – viewing the fields of knowledge which interest us as unmapped territory.

One of the biggest drivers of connectivity in our work stems from our engagement with communities. Many of the people we’ve interviewed have been friends or acquaintances with one another. By focusing on event-based productions we often tap into social cliques or professional groups which increase the network effects when the videos get published. We’ve interviewed a couple people more than once for different videos, and sometimes our interviewees make recommendations which lead us to other interviewees.

Take a moment to browse around our growing list of over 80 interviewees – you might find someone you know!

This weekend I had an excellent time at Resonate. Highlights included: The RGB+D workshop led by James George, Alexander Porter and Jonathan Minard of the Studio for Creative Inquiry which introduced a fairly large group of people to the exciting world of depth mapping HD video with the Microsoft Kinect using custom open source software tools. I was thoroughly compelled by the presentations given by Karsten Schmidt, Jürg Lehni and Alexandros Tsolakis of United Visual Artists. Karsten shed new light on the future of multi-core processing, while Jürg shared elegant typography and drawings created by his computer-driven automata Hektor and Viktor. Alexandros asked us to all believe – if even for just a moment – in the power of a sublime audiovisual experience.

I would liken Resonate to a primordial soup of potential collaborative energy. Both festival attendees and participants represented some of the brightest minds in generative design, code art, interactive art, mixed-media installation and data visualization. The smalltalk at the event was a generous mix of high-caliber intellectualism, code-geekery and agency gossip making for a perfect incubator of serendipity.

When we interviewed Bruce Sterling for Timeless, he enjoyed describing artists who have created influential works as the “spiritual ancestors” of related contemporary works which follow. He stressed the importance of acknowledging such spiritual ancestors when engaging in a theoretical art discourse. At Resonate I learned that KS12 and the RGB+D team share the spiritual ancestor of Bruce himself!

In an answer to a question posed by one of the RGB+D workshop participants as to why the team had decided to experiment with the Kinect, James George explained that they’d been inspired in part by Bruce’s Vimeo Awards address Vernacular Video (link is to the full keynote; the relevant excerpt is embedded below). In this speech, Bruce describes a future video camera technology that allows camera angles to be decided in post-production.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now many months later the RGB+D team is working on a larger interview-based video project using interviews shot exclusively with their RGB+D methodology.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When we were commissioned by MU to create Timeless there was initally some consideration on our part whether to use the Kinect in our process. We too were inspired by the same Vimeo Awards speech. For reasons partly curatorial and partly technical, we decided to use a design fiction approach in our depiction of future technology.

We’re fascinated by the evolution of ideas and the way that similar creative impulses can lead to parallel results which share so many fundamental qualities despite developing independently of one another. By acknowledging the ancestry of digital works it sparks new potentialities as we understand each other’s inspirations and motivations.

What new connections did you make at Resonate? Have you had similar experiences at other events?

This week I’ll be presenting our videos The Future of Art and Timeless at the first edition of the Resonate festival, which – as it says on their website – is “a new platform for networking, knowledge sharing and education bringing together world class artists to drive a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture.” With Rafaël Rozendaal (interviewed in Timeless) and Régine Debatty (interviewed in The Future of Art) participating as well, the context of the festival has a familiarity which suites the way we think about storytelling in the networked era. There’s a sort of rapid-cycle self-reflexivity happening in which the videos we make create a magnetism that connects them to other events or people. In Timeless, Bruce Sterling waxes poetic on the alias of Karsten Schmidt. Sometimes it feels like such references are incantations, drawing that much closer a potential future in which video and reality collide. Who knew it would happen so fast – and in Belgrade of all places, where Bruce lives part of the time. Ah, serendipity!

Have you had any experiences of the serendipitous intersection of digital storytelling and real life?

UPDATE:

Worlds collided: Rafaël Rozendaal and Régine Debatty interviewing one another at Resonate about art and the Internet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeless
a video essay / design fiction by KS12

Directed and Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Designed by Patrizia Kommerell
Produced by KS12
Producer: Karen Cifarelli
Commissioned by MU, Eindhoven
Curated by Angelique Spaninks
Production Assistant: Rob Versteeg

Interviews
(in order of appearance)

Bernhard Herrmann
Rafaël Rozendaal
Bruce Sterling
Peter Kirn
Jorien Kemerink
Markus Kayser
Elske van der Putten
Vivian van Gaal
Toby Barnes
Mary Flanagan

Ghost Box

Concept and Design: KS12
Electronics: Philip Steffan
Manufacture: Günter Herrmann Lehrmittelfabrik
3D Prototype Modeling: Mendel Heit
Fabrication Consultant: Fons Schiedon

STRP Artworks

E‪dwin van der Heide‬ DSLE -2- (2011)
Marnix de Nijs Exploded Views 2.0 (2011)
Telcosystems 12_series (2010)
Digitale Werkplaats Bristlebots (2011)
Bart Hess Liquified (2011)
Fourcelabs Dance Engine (2011)

Music

Excerpt from “sketch_111229” by stra.
© 2011 Shingo Inao

“Anaxagoras” and “MeeBlip Landscape” by Peter Kirn
© 2011 Peter Kirn

“Melted Rubber Soul” by Campfires
© 2011 Jeff Walls

Special Thanks
Bernhard Herrmann
Helmut Seefeld

Shot on location in Eindhoven, NL during the STRP Festival 2011 and in Hofgeismar, Germany at the Günter Herrmann Lehrmittelfabrik

#timeless
© 2012 KS12

Premiere: Friday 13 January 2012 – 8 pm – MU Artspace, Eindhoven, Netherlands
On view from 13 January – 4 March 2012

We are happy to announce the premiere of Timeless, our new video essay / design fiction. This work was commissioned by MU and was shot on location during STRP Festival 2011 and the Playful Post Digital Culture symposium at the Klokgebouw at Strijp-S. Timeless focuses on questions of identity and experience, time and place in a post-digital era. We are looking forward to see you at MU, Eindoven!

In case you cannot make it to the premiere, be sure to check back with us in mid-January so you can see the video when we put it online.

January 13 will also mark the opening of The Tosso Variations, a videomusical suite in five movements by Gabriel Shalom. We are very excited as this will be Gabriel’s first solo show!

We are currently in preproduction for our new video essay / design fiction piece, titled Timeless. To be shot on location during the 2011 edition of the STRP festival in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

The digital settles in as background. We remember less and query more. Our identity play would be considered schizophrenic in the last century. We have more friends than ever before yet know new frontiers of isolation. The quantification of our experience haunts us in the form of a persistent history. And we are distracted more than we ever knew possible. These circumstances are paradoxically a description of the near future and a diagnosis of the current state of affairs. The truly timeless is redefined – it has transcended that which is classic; it has become that which is never finished.

The première of Timeless is scheduled for Friday January 13, 2012 at 8.30 pm in MU.

Directed and Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Designed by Patrizia Kommerell
Produced by KS12
Producer: Karen Cifarelli
Commissioned by MU
Curated by Angelique Spaninks

Click here to view the embedded video.

“It Becomes Public” is a round robin video discussion on these and other issues, generated from a single evening’s workshop facilitated by KS12 at the British Council Berlin. The workshop was held during Social Media Week Berlin 2011.

Produced by KS12 in collaboration with British Council Berlin
Directed & Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Executive Producer Patrizia Kommerell

1st Camera Gabriel Shalom
2nd Camera Mates Al-Fakhri
3rd Camera Sven Stegemann
4th Camera Pippin Wigglesworth

FEATURING
Pippin Wigglesworth
Hamze Bytyci
Rana Deep Islam
Anna Rojahn
Thilo Lenz
Ben Hammersley
Jón Þór Ólafsson
Philip L. McKenzie
Joerg Wolf
David Sorrentino
Karen Cifarelli
Isabelle Beaulieu

MUSIC
Rho – Day Into Morning
myspace.com/​rhotunes
Revolution Void – Obscure Terrain
revolutionvoid.com
Custodian of Records – Five Years
thecustodianofrecords.blogspot.com
Discount Fireworks – Dots #4
discountfireworksband.co.uk

SPECIAL THANKS
Julia Rawlins, British Council Berlin
U.S. Embassy Berlin
Embassy of Canada Berlin
Joel Dullroy, Social Media Week Berlin
All the Workshop Participants
Willi Schroll

Continue the Conversation!
twitter: #smwberlin #influence #TN2020
quora: quora.com/​Transatlantic-Network
flickr: flickr.com/groups/transatlantic-influence/

CC 2011 KS12 BY-NC-SA

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tonight’s workshop at the British Council resulted in a lively discussion, in no small part thanks to the telepresent participation of Ben Hammersley, Philip L. McKenzie and Jón Þór Ólafsson. We hope you enjoy these Skype interviews as they whet your appetite for the results of our video sprint (coming soon).

We’ll be tweeting some updates along the way during the editing process under the #influence #TN2020 and #smwberlin hashtags if you want to follow along. If the interviews inspire you, think about contributing any photos that you think relate to the issues discussed to our Flickr group. Over the next days we’ll also be adding a number of questions to Quora which came up spontaneously during the workshop.

One of the new key topics which was raised: privacy on social networks.