Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero G. : the experience of parabolic flights
Festival @rt Outsiders, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 4-5 October 2003
Introduction
Curated by Annick Bureaud, the Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: The Experience of Parabolic Flights symposium is the product of a collaboration between the @rt Outsiders International Festival curated by Jean-Luc Soret and Leonardo/Olats.
Whether it is in the scientific, commercial or artistic field, space exploration introduces extremely diverse practices. This year, the @rt Outsiders International Festival 2003 proposes to investigate some of these practices within the world of contemporary art.
The sensation of weightlessness, of “floating,” “flying,” “freely” in three dimensions, of “holding still” without support and without fear of falling, is one of the more tenacious dreams, desires – fantasies? – and surely one of the chief reasons human beings succumb to the urge to venture outside of their native planet. For many artists, creating work in, with, for, or about this condition of “zero gravity” is an artistic re-examination extending far beyond the dream.
With the exception of a few cosmonauts or astronauts who are also painters, such as the Russian Alexei Leonov, to this day no artist has been able to “live” weightlessness in a durable fashion aboard a space station or the American shuttle. On Earth, the parabolic flight remains the sole means of experiencing this unique condition.
In a parabolic flight, a specially equipped plane describes a series of parabolas in the air (bell-shaped curves with a 45° angle). In the “climbing” phase, gravity goes from 1 G. (normal terrestrial gravity) to 2 G. for 20 seconds before attaining the weightless phase at the “top of the curve” for approximately 25 seconds. During the “descent” phase of the flight, the plane returns to the 2 G. phase for roughly 20 seconds. The cycle is repeated.
Thus, the parabolic flight can be described as a succession of very short periods (2 G. – 0 G. – 2 G. – 1 G) constituting a rather exceptional environment, where the experience of weightlessness is “framed” by moments of 2 G.
Although access to parabolic flights remains a challenge for artists, to date 22 have been able to work with and within their unique environment. Thus, we have a very diverse body of work and projects at our disposal (ranging from dance to performance, sculpture, painting, sound/music, video, etc.) by artists from different artistic horizons and diverse cultures (France, Japan, Spain, Russia, United States, Great Britain, etc…).
Within the category of space art, creation during parabolic flights constitutes a comprehensive subgroup that defines a “common base” from which to conduct an artistic and aesthetic analysis of these practices. This is the challenge of this symposium. Thus, the Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: The Experience of Parabolic Flights symposium proposes to:
present the details of parabolic flights and consider the main issues outside of their spectacular nature;
– specify their different roles within the creative process. Often perceived as the space where creation takes place (site of performance and exhibition), parabolic flights are first and foremost the space of experimentation (a “studio” or creative workshop) as well as the material for creation;
– conduct a preliminary aesthetic analysis of the works: what is their form, what do they say, how do they relate to contemporary art and to techno-scientific art in general, in what way are they “informed” by weightlessness and the environment that constitutes the flight? etc.;
– highlight the importance of these works within a broader artistic process;
– raise questions regarding the “visibility” and “legibility” of the work, to question art critic.
This symposium gathers artists, theorists as well as parabolic flight specialists.
Participants
Participants : Alex Adriaansens I Marcel-li Antunez Roca I Annick Bureaud I Richard Couzins I Kitsou Dubois I Kodwo EshunI Anna Piva & Edward George I Rob La Frenais I Jean-Pierre Haigneré I Roger Malina I Takuro Osaka I Marko Pelhjan I Frank Pietronigro I Thierry Pozzo I Mikhail Ryklin I Anjalika Sagar I Denis Thierion I Nicola Triscott I Louise K. Wilson
Alex Adriaansens - May the Force be with you
V2_ is a member of the EncArt network for defining a virtual European Medialab between the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica Centre in Linz and C3 in Budapest. This network is focussed on the exchange of knowledge and experience between the four medialabs in Europe and to set up European projects for research and presentation.
V2_ participates in the Production House Rotterdam, a network in which the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Rotterdamse Schouwburg and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and V2_ closely collaborates in interdisciplinary projects around media.
V2_ participates in the Virtual Platform a national platform for media-art organisations in the Netherlands that focusses on advising national policymakers and collaborations between the different participants of this platform.
V2_ collaborates in different projects with Technical Universities.
V2_Organisation is a centre for art and (media)technology since 1981. It is an interdisciplinary centre focussing on art, science and mediatechnology. V2_Organisation deals with presentations, research and production and runs a store with independent released information carriers. The activities are: symposia, exhibitions, workshops, publications, network projects, concerts, performances, research and production and a biennale festival called DEAF.
Biography : Alex Adriaansenss studied at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. He is the director of V2_Organisation, which he cofounded in 1981. He is also a member of several advisory boards for organizations including De Berlage Institute a post academic architecture research center in Rotterdam; the Transmediale in Berlin. He is on the advisory committee of the (Dutch) Foundation for Visual Arts, Architecture and Design. He has given presentations at many festivals and art institutes and written texts for different publications.
⇧ Participants
Marcel-li Antunez Roca - Transpermia : the Dédalo Project
Like a metaphoric International Space Station Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca show his work in a different modules. This presentation is a hybrid between lecture and concert. During the presentation Antúnez dress his interface Dresskeleton and with that make interactive sounds and control the movies projected in two back projection screens. The first module shows the formal works like: fleshbots, dresskeletons, vudubots, biometrics, soundbots and systematurgy. The second module talk about his topics. The module three shows the parabolic flights preparation in Star city (Russia) and the complete micro-performances made during the zero gravity parabolas. In these parabolas Antúnez experiment with the bodybot Requiem and with the interaction between dresskeleton, softbot and interactive movies. The last module talk about how the microgravity experience changes his point of view about the art possibilities: Antúnez propose a new space for Utopia called Transpermia.
Biography : Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca (Moià, 1959) is well-known in the international art scene for his mechanotronic performances and robotic installations. Founding member of La Fura dels Baus, he worked in this company as art co-ordinator, musician and performer from 1979 to 1989. In the nineties his avantguard mechatronic performances combined such elements as Bodybots (body-controlled robots), Systematugy (interactive narration with computers) and dresskeleton (the exoskeleton body interface). The themes explored in his work include: the use of biological materials in robotics, as in JoAn l’home de carn (1992); telematic control on the part of a spectator of an alien body in the performance EPIZOO (1994); the expansion of body movements with dresskeletons (exoskeletical body interfaces) used in the performances AFASIA (1998) and POL (2002); involuntary choreography with the bodybot REQUIEM (1999); and microbiological transformations in the installations RINODIGESTIO (1987) and AGAR (1999). He is currently working on the spatial artwork DEDALUS.
⇧ Participants
Annick Bureaud - Visibility - Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: the experience of parabolic flights
Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero Gravity: the experience of parabolic flights : this is for sure too long a title for a symposium or an article. It aims to be programmatic : raising the artistic issues of space art by defining and delimitating an object of analysis : art and micro-gravity. We are going here to examine each of its components, or, in other words to “state the reasons of a symposium”
Biography : Works and lives in Paris, France. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats. As an art critic she runs a regular column on electronic art in the French contemporary art magazine Art Press. She teaches at the Art School of Aix-en-Provence and at Ecole Centrale Paris (engineers school). She has been guest lecturer at the School of the Art Institute Chicago/SAIC in 1999 and at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) in 2001. In 2002, she co-edited the book Connexions : art, réseaux, media published by the Press of Ensba ; she co-organized the International Symposium “Artmedia VIII: From the Aesthetics of Communication to Net art”, in Paris and edited the online proceedings published by Leonardo/Olats. The article “Typologie des interfaces artistiques”, has been published in the collective book Interfaces et sensorialité, edited by Louise Poissant, Sainte-Foy, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2003. She is the co-editor of SpaceartS, the space and the arts database”, a joint project of Leonardo/Olats and the Ours Foundation.
⇧ Participants
Kitsou Dubois - From Lived Experience to Creation: Trajectories and Analogies
Kitsou Dubois works with the “matter weightlessness” since 1990 when the CNES (French space agency) gave her the opportunity to experiment microgravity aboard the Zero g. Caravelle. Since this first experience, which radically changed her approach of the movement in dance, she took part in 14 flights and she has collaborated during several years with two neurophysiology laboratories, at the CNRS in Paris and at the Imperial College in London. Alongside with this art/science research, she presents he evolution of her artistic work. How the form of the work is informed by the lived experience, which are her links to research, and what new directions this approach offers.
Biography : Choreographer, pedagogue, doctor in aesthetics, sciences and technologies of art, Kitsou Dubois has worked for more than ten years with the spatial research on body movements, processes of orientation and perception in weightlessness. First dancer and choreographer to experiment weightlessness within parabolic flights, she has developped a proposal to train astronauts based on dance technics. Her first choreography in this field, Gravité Zéro, aimed at sharing with the audience the experience of the flight. With Trajectoire Fluide, she evokes the trajectories between zero gravity and gravity one, the trajectories of the movements within the body, the trajectories of the bodies in space, the trajectories of the human beings within new environments. Her artistic work is pluridisciplinary. To performances it associates video installations about the mouvement in space with images.
⇧ Participants
Kodwo Eshun - Initial report 3.0 on the pilot study on the minimal behavioural preconditions for the partial demilitarization of permanent habitation in microgravity - by the Otolith Group of Kodwo Eshun, Richard Couzins and Anjalika Sagar.
Sci-art has historically approached microgravity as a space of experiential self-absorption. The contemporary moment renders this approach redundant and calls for experimental procedures that link the microcosm of microgravity to the geopolitical crisis the planet is undergoing. THE OTOLITH GROUP’s practice tests the hypothesis that agravic space-time may be reconceived as a temporary heterotopia for producing the apprehension of disorientation that accompanies global crisis. THE OTOLITH GROUP understands microgravity as a field of forces that immerses and extends subjectivity. The process of navigating such a field of flux opens the sensible awareness of the groundless systems that support the Era of the Pre-emptive Nuclear Strike.
Biographies :
Richard Couzins is a video and mixed media artist based in London whose work focuses on the relation between language, moving image and audio. Couzins has exhibited solo and in group shows throughout the UK and Europe. Recent projects include Actual Size, Overgaden, Copenhagen and New Video Work at Hoxton Distillery, London.
Kodwo Eshun is a cultural critic, author of More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Quartet) and curator based in London. In 1999, he co-curated “Dub Housing”, the exhibition, symposium and concert for Steirische Herbst in Graz, Austria and attended Ars Electronica as Judge for the Digital Music Jury in 1999 and 2000. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Artangel and an Assessor for the Arts Council Arts and Science Research Fellowship in 2003. Eshun is co-curator of the first “Retrospective on the work of the Black Audio Film Collective”.
Anjalika Sagar is a sound artist and curator based in London. As composer and artist, Sagar has collaborated with Talvin Singh and Jem Finer and is Resident at Berlin’s Humboldt University Kittler Group/Bootlab in 2003. An Arts Council Fellow of 2001, Sagar is co-curator of the first “Retrospective on the work of the Black Audio Film Collective”, supported by the International Institute of Visual Arts.
⇧ Participants
Vadim Fishkin - Kaplegraf 0g (drop orbits)
Biography : Vadim Fishkin was born in Penza/USSR in 1965. Studied at Moscow Institute of Architecture, graduated in 1986. Lives and works in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Moscow. Solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb ; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston ; Biennale di Venezia (1995). Group exhibitions “Imaging Prometheus”, Pallazzo della Ragione Milano, Italy (2003) ; “Station Utopia”, Biennale di Venezia (2003) ; “Collection 2000 +” and “Iconoclash”, ZKM (2002) ; “Projet Utopie, Construction”, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2000) ; “After the Wall”, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999) ; “Europaer”, Grazer Stadtmuseum, Graz, Steirischer Herbst, (1993). Stage design for various dance performance among wich the Cabinet Noordong, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⇧ Participants
Flow Motion: Anna Piva and Edward George - Kosmos in blue
The subject of our presentation is KOSMOS IN BLUE, our project for the Arts Catalyst’s Zero Gravity Workshop in Star City, Moscow, in 2001. K.I.B was a three part project about space travel and interiority, using the work and music of Sun Ra, and the invention of sentics by Nasa scientist Manfred Clynes. We’ll talk about our experience of the flight and our post flight thoughts and feelings – about zero gravity as a trigger for pre birth and dream states; about the connections the flight suggested for our music making as Hallucinator, and the post flight reflections on the connections between Sun Ra and Nikolai Fedorov.
Biographies :
Edward George is from london of west indian parentage, received ba. hons in fine art @ portsmouth polytechnic, founder member, television documentary production company, black audio film collective (1983-98), whose work included last angel of history/mothership connection. founder member, arts group Flow motion & electronic music group Hallucinator, 1998 – present.
Anna Piva is born in Italy. Studied physics and philosophy at the Liceo Scientifico di Pordenone, and music at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Received a Masters Degree at the Universita’ di Magistero di Bologna in 1986. 1987-2000, worked as a bass player with various groups, including Tricky and PJ Harvey. Founder member, arts group Flow Motion and electronic music group Hallucinator, 1998-present.
⇧ Participants
Rob La Frenais - An artist in space - an achievable goal?
How possible would it be to actually send an artist into orbital space? The question leads to a number of debates, both practical and theoretical. The success of the last two space tourists flying with the Russian Space Agency to the ISS, Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, leads those of us involved in promoting greater contact between the cultural area and space agencies to ask the question – if an arts organisation could raise that amount of money could they train and launch the first artist-cosmonaut in the same way, that is on a paid third seat on the Soyuz craft, and if so, would it be desirable?
Biography : Rob La Frenais is a contemporary art curator and writer living in London, England and Albi, France. Trained as a journalist, he became involved in the art and community video scene in the seventies, and participated in early media art exhibitions in Europe and internationally. From 1979-1987 he founded and edited Performance Magazine, a key international cultural journal that charted the explosion of performance art in the eighties. From 1987, he became a curator, specialising initially in performance and site-specific sculpture and installation, producing 3 major international biennales, with new commissions by over 100 artists in London, Newcastle, Glasgow and Madrid, Edge 88 ,90, 92. In 1993 he curated Earthwire, an exhibition of art and technology in rural sites. From 1994-95 he was the artistic director of the Festival de Belluard, Fribourg, Switzerland, with a theme of artists working with consciousness, which later toured to the ICA, London. In 1996 he worked with artist James Turrell to develop a new major site-specific work in the North of England. In 1997 he joined the Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency as curator and developed and produced a number of major initiatives involving nuclear art, (Atomic) space exploration in art (Gravity Zero, Artists and Cosmonauts), indigenous science (Parallel Universe) new living systems for artists and scientists (Makrolab in Scotland) and art and biotechnology (CleanRooms). He has organised and chaired a number of conferences and forums (Eye of the Storm, Cosmic Chances, UK Space Art Forum, Working With Wetware). With the Arts Catalyst he has organised four zero gravity campaigns, in Star City, Russia and Bordeaux, France. He participated in the first dedicated artists zero gravity flight in the Ilyushin MDK 76 in Russia with Noordung/Projekt Atol in 1999. He will not be going into space until the technology improves.
⇧ Participants
Jean-Pierre Haigneré - Entre réel et virtuel, repérages (Dialogue avec Jacques André, Observatoire de l'Espace du CNES)
Biography : Born May 19, 1948 in Paris, France
Married, 3 children
CNES Astronaut from 1985 to 1998
Named Chief Astronaut of the ESA in 1999 (Cologne, Germany)
2 flights on record
In 2002 Jean-Pierre Haigneré returned to the Paris-based headquarters of the European Space Agency (ESA)
Titles
Commander of the Legion of Honor
General in the French Air Force
Test Pilot
Spaceflight Experience
Jean-Pierre Haigneré was selected as an astronaut by the French National Space Agency in 1985. From 1986 to 1989 he directed the Manned Flight Division of the Hermes and Manned Flight Directorate and was involved in preliminary studies for the Hermes space plane.
He also developed and perfected the Zero G Caravelle program (parabolic flight) for which he was later named technical and operational officer-in-charge.
In December 1990, he underwent training at Star City, near Moscow, and was chosen as Michel Tognini’s stand-in for the Franco-Russian Antarès space flight.
ALTAÏR Mission
As a primary crew member for the fourth Franco-Russian Altaïr space mission from November 1992 through 2003, Jean-Pierre Haigneré practiced the execution of a dozen scientific experiments pertaining to life sciences, the behavior of fluids and materials in weightlessness in addition to pursued research of a more technological nature.
Accompanied by Vassili Tsibliev, commander on board, and Alexander Serebrov, the engineer on board, he arrived at the MIR Space Station on July 3, 1993, 2 days after their departure from the Baïkonour Cosmodrome.
He returned to earth on July 22, 1993 accompanied by the crew members residing aboard the space station for the previous six months: Guenadi Manakov, commander on board, and Alexander Polechtchouk, engineer on board.
In 1994, he received qualification for Airbus, an aircraft designed to replace the Zero G Caravelle, an aircraft enabling the CNES to pursue campaign flights in microgravity and encourage French as well as European experiments on board.
In September 1995, he assumes the direction of Franco-Russian space relations for the French Embassy in Moscow. At the same time, he acted as the liaison between the Kaliningrad’s Russian Space Control Center (near Moscow) and the crew of the MIR Station during the entire MIR 95 mission.
In 1996 he is chosen as a substitute crew member for the PEGASUS spaceflight.
PERSEUS Mission
In May of 1998, Jean-Pierre HAIGNERÉ is elected member of the ESA’s European Corps of Astronauts; he is named test pilot and first engineer of the primary flight crew aboard the MIR Space Station during the Franco-Russian Perseus Mission (February 22 – August 28 1999). This long duration mission (186 days) also involved a spacewalk (EVA) to perform biological and comet dust experiments outside of MIR.
At the conclusion of this flight, Jean-Pierre HAIGNERÉ joins the Center for European Astronauts in Cologne, Germany as Chief Astronaut of the ESA.
Education
Jean-Pierre HAIGNERÉ attended the French Air Force Academy at Salon-de-Provence and graduated with an engineering degree in 1971. He obtained his fighter pilot’s license in 1973 and was a fighter pilot and squadron commander for the 13th squad of Colmar, on Mirage 5 and Mirage III E, until 1980.
In 1981, he graduated from the Empire Test Pilots School (EPTS) in Boscombe Down, England, after passing his final thesis on a Harrier plane (aircraft with vertical take-off and landing).
Upon his return to France, he is charged with the development of one of the versions of Mirage 2000 and of the in-flight presentation of the Dewoitine 520 at the Flight Test Center located in Brétigny-sur-Orge.
In 1983 he is named Chief Test Pilot. He logged 4200 flight hours on 102 different types of planes of which 1500 were for test flights. He holds commercial and test pilot licenses, as well as mountain and seaplane rating.
Hobbies
In addition to piloting various types of aircrafts (including WWII planes and seaplanes), his interests include golf, skiing, playing tennis and reading.
Honors
Jean-Pierre Haigneré is Commander of the Legion of Honor, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite, and the recipient of the Order of People’s Friendship and Order for Personal Courage from the Russian Federation.
⇧ Participants
Roger Malina - Contextualizing Zero Gravity Art
Biography : Roger F Malina is an astronomer and editor. He is Director of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille and former Director of the NASA EUVE Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and Secretary of Commission VI on Space Activities and Society. Roger Malina serves as the Chairman of the Board of Leonardo/ISAST in San Francisco and as the Executive Editor of the Leonardo publications, he is President of the Association Leonardo in Paris. He writes on art and science and is particularly interested in the cultural dimensions of space activities.
⇧ Participants
Takuro Osaka - The new viewpoint from the world.-Zero G
From 2001, I have been invited by NASDA (National Space Development Agency of Japan) as a fellow of the “Space Art Projects” to join one of the feasibility studies for the space asset like ISS. It let interchange with seven Japanese astronauts pass, and the theme was decided to be “The art which relieves a space citizen’s heart.”
Cosmic Wind Bell and Sound Wave Sculpture are the works materialized only in Zero G. Since the motion of an eye differed from the ground, the art of the light using the afterimage was also tried.
My biggest surprise in experiencing weightlessness is having felt it very natural to float in the air.
One of Japanese astronauts said, “Man is made so that it may advance to space.” I also felt the same thing after Parabolic flight.
I report the experiment of Zero G Art and the proposal from the new viewpoint which has been in sight through such an experience
Biography : Born in 1948 in Tokyo, he is considered as the pioneer of light art in Japan.He initiated “Cosmic Ray Series” in 1995 and has had the continuity since then. This demonstrates that the cosmic rays captured by a detecting device are transformed into the blue LED.
“Lunar Project” was performed on July 16, 2000 when a long total eclipse of the moon took place. This project exhibited the layout and the installation to capture the moon light with 18 large mirrors over a rice field in Japan.
From 2001 on, he has been invited by the NASDA (National Space Development Agency of Japan) as fellow of “Space Art Projects” to join one of the “Feasibility studies” for space assets like the ISS. He has experienced micro gravity in parabolic flights to develop and research art projects in this environment.
⇧ Participants
Marko Pelhjan - Projekt Atol Flight Operations, The Slovenian Space Agency and Makrolab
In this presentation, I will develop the history of the space and microgravity based efforts within the framework of these initiatives, focusing on the theatre work of the Cosmokinetical Cabinet Noordung, open source remote sensing intelligence gathering, the Terra/Aqua partnership and the Artjom-MM LEO satellite definition and launch. Prospects for a wider creative, cultural and tactical media access to space assests will be discussed.
Biography : Marko Peljhan, born 1969 in September pri Gorici, studied theatre and radio directing at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and in 1992 founded the arts organisation Projekt Atol in the frame of which he works in the performance, visual arts, situation and communications fields. In 1995 he founded the technological branch of Projekt Atol PACT SYSTEMS ; in 1999 he founded Projekt Atol Flight Operations. In 1995 he co-founded LJUDMILA and from 1996 on worked at LJUDMILA (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab) as a programs coordinator on many different fields. He is coordinator of the international INSULAR TECHNOLOGIES initiative and the Makrolab project as well as flight director of the parabolic flights with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Moscow. In 2001 he became member of the strategic council for information society established by the government of the Republic of Slovenia. He also invented and coordinated the production of a mobile media lab project, Transhub-01, which was first realized as Mobilatorij in 2002. His work was presented at major international exhibitions such as Documenta X in Kassel, the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Ars Electronica, Media City Seoul, Gwangju Biennale, Manifesta and Venice Biennale. In 2000 he received the special Medienkunst prize at the ZKM and in 2001 the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica together with Carsten Nicolai for their work Polar. He is currently professor in Art and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara and director of Projekt Atol.
⇧ Participants
Frank Pietronigro - 'Drift Painting' In Microgravity
On April 4, 1998, I flew from the NASA Johnson Space Center, aboard a KC135 turbojet, to creating “drift paintings” as my body floated within the 3-D kinetic painting space facilitated by parabolic flight.
I write and wonder what meaning my experience offers.
Biography : Frank Pietronigro is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and author. He is the first American painter to create “drift paintings” in zero gravity, aboard NASA’s KC135 turbojet. His project was featured in the Sunday New York Times, Hot Wired and Leonardo. Pietronigro’s work has been presented with institutions including: MIT’s Center For Advanced Vidual Studies Sky Art Conference; Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Museum Für Gestaltung, Zurich; Galeria Ze Dos Bois, Lisbon; and the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. Pietronigro studied at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the Multimedia Studies Program, San Francisco State University, and he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Interdisciplinary Arts, from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996.
Thierry Pozzo - Visual Perception of the Living
Biography : A Doctor in Behavioral Neurosciences, Professor at the Bourgogne University and director of INSERM/ERM team no. 0207 Motor Skills-Plasticity-Dysfunction in Dijon. His team is working on motor handicap due to ageing or to neurological, cardiovascular and osteo-articulary deficiencies. His research activities concentrate particularly on the issue of plasticity of balancing functions and their modeling. From an experimental point of view, these aspects are examined during locomotion in healthy elderly subjects and subjects placed in a condition of hypo-activity (microgravity or extended confinement to bed). Another aspect of his work and research concerns the study of relationships between action and perception, particularly in observing biological movement.
⇧ Participants
Mikhail Ryklin - The Russian-Soviet Cosmism in Zero-Gravity
Biography : Studied at Moscow State University, B. A. in Philosophy and Aesthetics, 1971 and at the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Ph.D. in History of Philosophy, 1978
Teaching and Research : Leading Researcher, Department of Philosophical Anthropology, Institute of Philosophy, Moscow, 1997-present.
Senior fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol, February-May 2002 ;
Gastwissenschaftler, Zentrum für Literaturforschung, Berlin, October 2001- January 2002.
Guest lecturer and invited professor in many Universities (Hannover, Berlin, Bremen, University of California San Diego, Strasbourg, EHESS, Paris).
Advisor, Open Society Institute, Moscow, 1995-1998; Member, New York Academy of Sciences, since 1994; Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell
Books
The Spacies of Jubilation. Totalitarianism and the Difference. Moscow, Logos Publishers, 2002
Deconstruction and Destruction. Conversations with Philosophers (Derrida, Guattari, Baudrillard, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Rorty, Zizek, Groys etc.), Moscow, Logos Publishers, 2002
Art as Obstacle, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1997
The Frame Group Performances, Moscow, Obscuri Viri, 1995
Jacques Derrida in Moscow. The Deconstruction of a Voyage, Moscow, Kultura Publishers, 1993 (abridged French Translation by Editions de l’Aube, 1995)
The Logics of Terror, Tartu, Eidos Publishers, 1992
Book Editing and Commenting
The Evasive Context. Russian Philosophy in the XX-th Century, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 2002
Essays for the World. The Weimar Project, 2002
Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers. Briefwechsel, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 2000
Walter Benjamin. Ueber Kafka, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 2000
Vladimir Sorokin. Collected Works, vol.1-2, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1998
Pavel Pepperstein. Old Man’s Diet, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1998
Roland Barthes. La Chambre Claire, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1997
Alain Robbe-Grillet. Projet pour une Révolution à New York, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1995
Marquis de Sade and the Twentieth Century, Moscow, Kultura Publishers, 1992
Current Structuralist Ideology, Moscow, IFAN Publications, 1984
Book Translations
Roland Barthes. La Chambre Claire, Moscow, Ad Marginem, 1997
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipe, Moscow, INION Publications, 1990 (abridged)
James G. Frazer. The Golden Bough, Moscow, Politizdat, 1980,1983,1986; AST, 1998
Claude Levi-Strauss. Anthropologie Structurale, Moscow, INION Publications, 1980
⇧ Participants
Denis Thierion - Access to micro-gravity. Parabolic Flights
In the present day, there is no means of escaping universal gravity. It is, however, possible to make certain gravitational effects disappear for an observer placed under certain conditions.
In free fall, for example, all of the contact forces are negated and an accelerometer will show a reading of 0g because the acceleration is equal to gravity.
These same phenomena will occur for a plane on which the sum of the exterior forces is equal to the gravitational force alone. This is the case, for example, during a parabolic flight when the traction and the lag cancel one another out and the load-bearing capacity is equal to zero.
Originally conceived as a preparation and training tool for cosmonauts, parabolic flights proved to be an economical means to attain microgravity. Indeed, with the proper safety precautions, laboratory equipment can be loaded onto the plane and scientists aboard the aircraft will have the ability to test, advance and optimize scientific protocols. This is an important feature of parabolic flights, one that makes them of great interest to the scientific community.
Biography : An engineer at the CNES (National Space Studies Center, French Space Agency). He took part in the major scientific space projects carried out in cooperation with the Soviet Union: Arcad 3 (a study of earth’s magnetosphere), Vega (flyby of the planet Venus and encounter with Halley’s comet), Granat (gamma telescope). He then worked for six years on the manned flight program as project leader for the flight of Jean-Loup Chrétien in 1988 and as technical manager for the flight of Michel Tognini in 1991. Since that time Denis Thierion has been project manager for “Recoverable Capsules” (flights of French scientific instruments on board Russian Photon recoverable capsules) and for the “Parabolic Flights” project.
⇧ Participants
Nicola Triscott - The Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory
Biography : Director and founder of the Arts Catalyst, the UK science-art agency, which she set up in 1993 to promote dialogue, exchange and collaboration between artists and scientists. Arts Catalyst’s mission is to extend, promote and activate a fundamental shift in the dialogue between art and science and its perception by the public. The organisation works nationally and internationally, pioneering new territories and venues for artistic practice, including nuclear science, space exploration, biotechnology, global systems, theoretical physics, and setting up multidisciplinary research laboratories, such as the zero gravity flights. Nicola has initiated and organised with colleagues three parabolic ‘zero gravity’ flight campaigns for scientists and artists with the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, Star City, Russia, and she is also a co-investigator on science and movement experiments on European Space Agency parabolic flight campaigns with choreographer Kitsou Dubois and scientists from Imperial College London. Nicola studied physics and political geography at university and then, from 1985 – 1993, worked as an arts producer and administrator in a wide range of sectors, from commercial theatre production to community arts, before setting up Arts Catalyst 10 years ago.
⇧ Participants
Louise K. Wilson - On the history of parabolic flight and on feeling sick
I’ve been interested for some time in the material effects of gravity on the body and curious about the metaphorical, psychological and physiological aspects of motion (and space) sickness. I am intrigued by the study into the syndrome, the experimental protocols and the technologies involved. This talk explores some of my personal research and also looks at a short history of parabolic flight.
Biography : Louise K Wilson is a British artist, born in 1965; she studied Fine Art at the University of Northumbria and Studio Arts (Open Media) at Concordia University in Montreal where she completed a MFA in March 1996. She has exhibited widely in Europe and North America, most recently in “Memory and Forgetting” at the Hatton Art Gallery, Newcastle; “Open Plan” at Leeds City Art Gallery (2002); “East of Eden”, Spacex Gallery, Exeter (2001); “Space Camp”, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, Canada, (2000); “Dreams in the Void”, Temple Gallery, Philadelphia, (2000) and “Spectacular Bodies”, Hayward Gallery (2000). She has undertaken many artist residencies and commissions and produced site-specific mixed media pieces in diverse spaces including cinemas, museums, hospitals, industrial plants, and sculptures parks as well as in art galleries. Her recent curatorial project “Flock” (which opened at Spacex Gallery in 2003) explores the relationship between humans and wild birds.
⇧ Participants
Publications
Adriaansens Alex – May the Force be with you, 2003
Antunèz Roca Marcel-li – Transpermia – Dédalo Project, 2003
Bureaud Annick – Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero G. The Reasons for a Symposium, 2003
Dubois Kitsou – Body, movement, dance and weightlessness, 2003
Fishkin Vadim, Pàldi Livia – Kaplegraf 0g (drops orbits), 2003
Flow Motion (Anna Piva & Edward George) – Flow Motion: Out There, 2003
La Frenais Rob – An Artist in Space – An Achievable Goal? – 2003
Malina Roger – Contextualising Zero Gravity Art – 2003
OsakaTakuro – The New Viewpoint from the World.-Zero G – 2003
The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun, Richard Couzins and Anjalika Sagar) – Initial Report 3.0 On The Pilot Study On The Minimal Behavioural Preconditions For The Partial Demilitarization Of Permanent Habitation In Microgravity – 2003
Peljhan Marko – Projekt Atol Flight Operations and the MIR Network -2003
Pietronigro Frank – “Drift Painting” In Microgravity – 2003
Pozzo Thierry – Gravitational Field, Bodily Equilibrium and Perceptive Activity – 2003
Ryklin Mikhail – The Russian-Soviet Cosmism in Zero-Gravity – 2003
Thierion Denis – Access to Microgravity. Parabolic Flights. A300 ZERO-G – 2003
Triscott Nicola – The Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory – 2003
Wilson Louise K. – On the History of Parabolic Flight and on Feeling Sick… – 2003
Archives
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