Under Scan - Softcover

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0978134702 ISBN 13: 9780978134709

Publisher: emda & Antimodular, 2007

Synopsis

under scan was a large-scale public art installation featuring 1,000 interactive portraits. The piece was commissioned by East Midlands Development Agency (emda) to celebrate the new cultural quarters in the East Midlands region of England. This book and DVD document the massive shadow play that transformed pedestrian areas in Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton and Nottingham in 2005 and 2006.

The book includes critical essays by Timothy Druckrey (USA), Beryl Graham (UK), Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico), Nadja Mounajjed (Syria/France), John Plowman (UK) and Mirjam Struppek (Germany).

About this title

About the Author:

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967.

Electronic artist, he develops large-scale interactive installations in public space, usually deploying new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces. Using robotics, projections, sound, internet and cell-phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide "temporary antimonuments for alien agency". His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001), the United Nations' World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the opening of the Yamaguchi Centre for Art and Media in Japan (2003) and the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004).

His work in kinetic sculpture, responsive environments, video installation and photography has been shown in two dozen countries, including Art Basel Unlimited (Switzerland), the Sydney Biennale (Australia), the Liverpool Biennial (UK), the Shanghai Biennial (China), the Istanbul Biennial (Turkey), Bienal de la Habana (Cuba), Architecture and Media Biennale (Austria) and others. His work is in private and public contemporary art collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jumex collection in Mexico, the Daros Foundation in Zürich and the Tate Collection in London.

Review:

Lozano-Hemmer's work requires us to reassess our notions of the analog and the digital, of language and code, meaning and force, human and nonhuman communication. But it does so not by commenting, critiquing, or sending a message itself. It does it aesthetically, by which I do not mean "beautifully" (although his installations always are that, too). Rather, I mean "aesthetic" in something closer to the etymological meaning: as in aesthesis, "making sensible." --Brian Massumi, critic and writer, Artforum Magazine.

There are only a few contemporary artists who can use new technology in a way that is not a gimmick, who can display a deep insight on its potential as an artistic resource, as well as an awareness of the social implication of technical innovations. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is certainly one of those few. --Manuel de Landa, Author, "A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History" and "War in the Age of Intelligent Machines", Mexico

The interest in Lozano-Hemmer's work resides in its application of technology not as an end in itself but as an actualized tool for the intervention of urban environments in ways that are at the same time analytical and festive, perhaps anti-authoritarian, integrative of a wide public's potential for play. --Enrique Jezik, Art Nexus Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: emda & Antimodular
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0978134702
• ISBN 13: 9780978134709
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 120
• Editor: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer And David Hill