ARMIN LINKE . PHENOTYPES . LIMITED FORMS 2007

THE STRANGEST COPY CENTER I’VE EVER USED

THE EARLY ESPRESSO BOOK MACHINE OR ONLY A SIMPLE PLAGIARISM?

How can curatorial selection processes be presented as part of an artistic work in museum contexts? How can interactive internet applications be transferred to physical space? Where does it lead when authorship is extended to the visitor? The installation Phenotypes / Limited Forms from ARMIN LINKE (born 1966, lives and works in Berlin) could offer some answers. Maybe Linke has invented the ESPRESSO BOOK MACHINE (EBM – http://www.ondemandbooks.com/the_ebm.htm ), one of the Best Inventions of 2007, long before its introduction into the market. But it could also be the case that he has devoloped his PHENOTYPES after he has explored the EBM. The answer is blowing in the wind!

Exploring the meaning of the individual image within a picture archive, illustrating the conditions of its production and use. Relocating Armin Linke′s photo archive into the museum space, the installation takes the artist′s studio situation and proposes a serviceable experimental arrangement: the visitor can view a thousand images, select works, group them, present a selection on the wall, print their selection as a unique edition, the title assigned is then projected in the exhibition space. These actions of individuals become the basis from which later visitors are received. The installation builds on the concept of a virtual book on demand accessible through arminlinke.com. The project is the formed through the cooperation between Armin Linke, Peter Hanappe (Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris), Alex Rich (London), Peter Weibel (ZKM), and the programme in exhibition design and curatorial practice at the Hochschule für Gestaltung. The resulting collective process of selection from Linke′s photo archive confirms that Phenotypes / Limited Forms is not a finished object for presentation but rather a space for production.

http://www.arminlinke.com/

robotlab – bios [bible] – THE BIBLE SCRIBE

THE STRANGEST WRITING MONK I’VE EVER MET

robotlab . Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz, Jan Zappe

bios [bible] . The Bible Scribe
2007

The installation ‘bios [bible]‘ consists of an industrial robot, which writes down the bible on rolls of paper. The machine draws the calligraphic lines with high precision. Like a monk in the scriptorium it creates step by step the text.

Starting with the old testament and the books of Moses ‘bios [bible]’ produces within seven month continuously the whole book. All 66 books of the bible are written on rolls and then retained and presented in the library of the installation.

‘bios [bible]’ is focussing on the questions of faith and technical progress. The installation correlates two cultural systems which are fundamental for societies today – religion and scientific rationalism. In this contexts scripture has all times an elementary function, as holy scripture or as formal writing of knowledge.

In computer technology ‘basic input output system’ (bios) designates the module which basicaly coordinates the interchange between hard- and software. Therefore it contains the indispensable code, the essential program writing, on which every further program can be established.

www.robotlab.de

THE STRANGEST BOOK I’VE EVER READ

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Physica sacra, 4 Volumes, Augsburg und Ulm 1731 – 35.

The lecture of these finest illustrated books at midnight totally alone in one of worlds most famous libraries  is an extraordinary experience comparable with nothing else.

 

Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (August 2, 1672 – June 23, 1733) was a Swiss scholar born at Zürich. The son of the senior town physician (Archiater) of Zürich, he received his education in that place, and, in 1692, went to the University of Altdorf near Nuremberg, being intended for the medical profession. Early in 1694 he took his degree of doctor in medicine at the University of Utrecht, and then returned to Altdorf, Germany to complete his mathematical studies. He went back to Zürich in 1696, and was made junior town physician (Poliater), with the promise of the professorship of mathematics; this he obtained in 1710, being promoted to the chair of physics, with the office of senior town physician, in January 1733, a few months before his death on June 23. His published works (apart from numerous articles) were estimated at thirty-four in number. His historical writings are mostly still in manuscript. The more important of his published writings relate either to his scientific observations (all branches) or to his journeys, in the course of which he collected materials for these scientific works.

In the former category is his self-published Beschreibung der Naturgeschichte des Schweitzerlandes (3 vols., Zürich, 1706-1708), the third volume containing an account in German of his journey of 1705; a new edition of this book and, with important omissions, of his 1723 work, was issued, in 2 vols, in 1746, by JG Sulzer, under the title of Naturgeschichte des Schweitzerlandes sammt seinen Reisen über die schweitzerischen Gebirge, and his Helvetiae historia naturalis oder Naturhistorie des Schweitzerlandes (published in 3 vols, at Zürich, 1716-1718, and reissued in the same form in 1752, under the German title just given). The first of the three parts of the last-named work deals with the Swiss mountains (summing up all that was then known about them, and serving as a link between Simmler’s work of 1574 and Gruner’s of 1760), the second with the Swiss rivers, lakes and mineral baths, and the third with Swiss meteorology and geology. Scheuchzer’s works, as issued in 1746 and in 1752, formed (with Tschudi’s Chronicum Helveticum) one of the chief sources for Schiller’s drama Wilhelm Tell (1804). In 1704 Scheuchzer was elected FRS; he published many scientific notes and papers in the Philosophical Transactions for 1706-1707, 1709 and 1727-1728. In the second category are his Itinera alpina tria (made in 1702-1704), which was published in London in 1708, and dedicated to the Royal Society, while the plates illustrating it were executed at the expense of various fellows of the society, including the president, Sir Isaac Newton (whose imprimatur appears on the title-page), Sir Hans Sloane, Dean Aldrich, Humfrey Wanley, etc. The text is written in Latin, as is that of the definitive work describing his travels (with which is incorporated the 1708 volume) that appeared in 1723 at Leiden, in four quarto volumes, under the title of Itinera per Helvetiae alpinas regiones facta annis 1702-1711.

These journeys led Scheuchzer to almost every part of Switzerland, particularly its central and eastern districts. Apropos of his visit (1705) to the Rhône Glacier, he inserts a full account of the other Swiss glaciers, as far as they were then known, while in 1706, after mentioning certain wonders to be seen in the museum at Lucerne, he adds reports by men of good faith who had seen dragons in Switzerland. He doubts their existence, but illustrates the reports by fanciful representations of dragons, which have led some modern writers to depreciate his merits as a traveller and naturalist, for the belief in dragons was then widely spread. In 1712 he published a map of Switzerland in four sheets (scale 1/290,000), of which the east portion (based on his personal observations) is far the most accurate, though the map as a whole was the best map of Switzerland till the end of the 18th century. At the end of his 1723 book he gives a full list (covering 27 4to pages) of his writings from 1694 to 1721.

Scheuchzer is also known for his paleontological work. In his Lithographia Helvetica, he described fossils as “plays of nature” or alternately as leftovers from the biblical Flood. Most famously, he claimed that a fossilized skeleton found in a Baden quarry was the remains of a human who had perished in the deluge. This claim, which seemed to verify the claims of Christian scripture, was accepted for several decades after Scheuchzer’s death, until 1811, when French naturalizt Georges Cuvier re-examined the specimen and showed that it was actually a large prehistoric salamander [...]

Text ex: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Jakob_Scheuchzer

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