DéCOLLAGE: TORN EXTERIORS–

AUGMENTED REALITIES FOR THE SMARTPHONE

//CURATED BY SARAH DRURY

TECHNICAL CONSULTANT: CHRIS MANZIONE

ventana244 ART SPACE

244 N. 6th St.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 11211

APRIL 16-MAY 8, 2011

OPENING RECEPTION:

SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2-5PM

Crude by Curt Belshe & Lise Prown

Augmented reality using the smartphone

allows the participant to visualize digital

images, “collaged” over the present location,

as seen through the phone’s camera. Although

this superimposition of visual information into

the landscape is an additive process, Décollage:

Torn Exteriors implies instead a tearing

away of existing surfaces, revealing what is

underneath or inside.

http://tornexteriorsshow.blogspot.com

NINE PROJECTS

graphics by Ephrat Seidenberg

UNMASKED HEROES // PATRICIA ADLER

Location: ventana244 Art Space, 244 N. 6th St.

photography by Bill Drury

Unmasked Heroes is a meditation on the power of our

personal potential. By placing augmented reality markers

on our foreheads, in reference to the traditional South

Asian bindis, a gateway to our inner world is created.

The smartphone then unlocks the door, revealing our full

potential within.

As per the theme of the show, Décollage: Torn Exteriors,

‘Unmasked Heroes’ pulls back the mask we usually hide

behind, revealing the one of our deeper self - that of the

superhero. We spend most of our lives as mere shadows

of ourselves (nod to Plato), until confronted with a situation

that calls for extraordinary action. This project is

about ordinary people recounting their true, heroic stories,

showing us how we all can be, and often are, heroes in our

everyday lives.

Formerly based as a designer in London, Adler has been

living and working as an artist in Brooklyn, New York since

2009. Her projects seek to create immersive, trans-reality

experiences by means of technology, as kinetic sculptures

that engage mobile platforms, performance, video, installation

and sound art.

AFTER DELVAUX // STEVE BULL

Location: 257 N. 6th St.

After Delvaux is an Augmented Reality room inserted into

the front of a residential building. The inhabitants are a

child seemingly absorbed in his mobile phone, a woman in

bondage who might be looking down at him, a man looking

past both of them toward us. Recalling the Surrealist

paintings of Paul Delvaux, “After Delvaux” calls attention

to the experience of looking, both through the browser on

the handset and at the figures within the frame who look not at

each other but into an unknowable elsewhere. And, of course,

you are looking through the bricks of the building.

Since 2000 Steve Bull has created location-specific narratives

and games that explore the social, technological, and creative

possibilities of cell phones. These projects have been exhibited

at SWSX Interactive 2011, San Jose ZeroOne Festival, NIME

2007 and 2009, ICMC 2010, and E.A.T. Revisited. Other projects

have been shown at The Getty, the Museum of Modern Art,

American Film Institute, PBS, and Creative Time.

BROOKLYN SPACE TIME // LUKE SCHANTZ

Location: 104 Roebling St.

Our “world lines” through the 4-dimensional manifold of

spacetime intersect here and are not bound to any specific

theory. Neither are we. Tracing out the complete (time) history

of a particle, observer or small object has never been

possible. What if it were possible to access a complete

record of time and place?

Luke Schantz is a media artist, designer, citizen scientist

and trans-humanist. He currently resides in Brooklyn and

keeps a studio at the 3rd Ward. Over the last several years

he has specialized in media for theatre and stage shows.

He came to NYC 3 years ago to work with the Blue Man

Group as a visual FX artist. While technical minutiae are

involved in his daily operations and activities, he has a

deep appreciation for the esoteric and occult. Currently

he is working on development of modular electromechanical

devices, making media for stage and screen, urban agricultural systems,

antennas for broadcasting into space, painting, 3D modeling/printing,

performance art and research.

4. THE SKY-CONE // CARLTON BRIGHT,

with 3D modeling assistance from Larry Auerbach.

Location: Parking lot, corner of Driggs & N. 5th St.

The Sky-cone is an idea that sprang from my morning walk

toward areas in the neighborhood where I can see the sky.

It is my way of getting in touch with the day. The Sky-cone

encourages people to use their personal mobile devices to

look up at the sky, outside themselves: a departure point for

awareness of the ever-present and yet ever-changing sky

above, and the space we exist in.

We are fortunate to be living in an era where the discrete

areas of the arts can merge and transform themselves via

the new territories that technology is making available.

Augmented Reality for mobile devices is a good example.

As a long-time sculptor and video artist I am intrigued by

the fresh notion of a sculptural “antigravity-ness”. I am also

interested in being able to make a virtual geological placement

of a sculpture, determined by, and reliant on, a host of

distant and never-to-be-seen, man-made satellites.

Mr. Clarke described it is this way: “Any sufficiently advanced

technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Carlton Bright has been based in New York City since 1978.

His media projects include video documentation of art and

performance, as well as the use of paired SX-70 cameras

and other devices to make stereoptical photographs. He

currently works a sculptor and has developed extensive

experimental work with stereoptic video.

5. 310 N. 7TH STREET // ROBIN MICHALS

Location: 310 N. 7th Street

When standing on the spot once occupied by 310 N. 7th

Street, what you see, hear, and smell is the devastation

wrought by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, one of many

highways built by Robert Moses in New York City that has torn

exteriors and neighborhoods. The buildings that stood

here including 310 were razed in 1947 taking with them the

visible legacy of a part of Brooklyn’s industrial history. With

mobile AR, a trace of what can no longer be seen here can

be experienced. Still open farmland in the mid-19th century,

in 1873, A. B. Ansbacher opened a factory here that made

Paris Green, a dye that got its name because it was used

to kill rats in the sewers of Paris. A vivid bluish-green, it

was widely used in the 19th century to dye everything from

wallpaper to dresses though by the end of the century was

primarily marketed as an insecticide. Relatively inexpensive

and freely available, Paris Green was often used for

suicide. Cezanne loved its brilliance. The resulting arsenic

poisoning was probably the cause of the artist’s diabetes.

Demand for Paris Green was high and Ansbacher got rich.

There was labor unrest and ethnic tension as the company

grew, expanding out of Brooklyn and finally being absorbed

into Sun Chemical, a national corporation. Now this site is

a state superfund site. Text situated with mobile AR serves

as a reminder that another world existed here where a

fortune was made, Irish and Italians fought over turf and

for higher wages, and a beautiful vivid blue-green pigment

finally banned in the 1960s, yet still unmatched in brilliance

by contemporary chemistry, drifted out over the neighborhood.

Michals first became aware of the Ansbacher dye factory

when researching her series Toxi City: Brooklyn’s Brown-

fields, (www.e-arcades.com/toxicity.html), with photographs

of over 50 of the locations in Brooklyn that have

a legacy of industrial pollution. Toxi City was presented at

the Brooklyn Lyceum in 2009 with support from Brooklyn

Arts Council, Puffin Foundation, and PSC-CUNY Research

Award. She teaches photography at New York City College

of Technology, CUNY

6. CRUDE // CURT BELSHE AND LISE PROWN

Location: McCarren Park Dog Run, Driggs & N. 12th

Crude references the large underground oil spill in northeast

Greenpoint, between North Henry Street, Norman

Avenue, and Newtown Creek, the site of various petroleum

industries for over 140 years. From early refineries processing

whale oil to later petroleum based processing, the

banks of Newtown Creek have been an area synonymous

with oil production. In 1970’s, a massive spill, most likely

the result of years of industrial dumping, was discovered

under the east side of Greenpoint.

“The Greenpoint Oil Release….is presumed to be among

the largest releases of oil to date in the world. The amount

of oil is estimated to be between 17-30 million gallons,

approximately 50% more oil than the Exxon Valdez oil spill

in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Unlike spills like the Exxon

Valdez, the Greenpoint Oil Release was not an episodic

event, but rather an accretion of oil from many of the

refineries on Newtown Creek1.” (From http://www.dec.

ny.gov/chemical/8682.html)

The “out of sight” nature of this environmental disaster

resonates with the virtual qualities of an augmented reality

artwork. Augmented Reality makes use of the layered

nature of our modern technologies to comment on issues of

history, culture and environment.

Lise Prown & Curt Belshe have worked collaboratively for

more than 20 years on projects that explore the intersection

of public art, local history, and information graphics. These

transient public artworks use the language of signage to

examine expectations of signification in an urban environment.

7. PLAYGROUND: A BEAM OF INTENSE

DARKNESS // SARAH DRURY

Location: McCarren Park Playground, Driggs & Lorimer

“…, one must cast a beam of intense darkness so that

something that has hitherto been obscured by the glare of

the illumination can glitter all the more in the darkness.1”

Contemporary educational wisdom returns to the notion

that play is at the heart of learning, i.e., that kids don’t so

much receive knowledge as discover multiple facets of the

matter through experimental engagement. The knowing

self emerges through continual emptying and filling, erasure and

embrace, ignorance and seeing. The play space is a container

for the unknown, with its darkness and desires, and against

which the outlines of change flicker.

Mobile Augmented Reality presents a similar paradigm: the

viewer catches a glimpse of an emergent image continually

re-drawn against a moving landscape.

Sarah Drury’s work of the past 10 years has explored the

subject, “I”, as a dynamic, fragmentary, emergent instance of

sound, image, movement and touch using sensing and tracking

technologies. Some of these projects have pointedly

questioned: What is the self? How is the self formed in social

interaction? What is the self as a phenomenon existing in and

around representation? Sarah Drury is a media artist working

with video, interactive installation

and performative media. Her work has been presented

at international venues, including: BAM’s Next Wave Festival,

National Theater of Belgrade, Boston CyberArts Festival,

Brooklyn Museum, the Kitchen, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Philadelphia

Fringe Festival, and others. Drury is an associate professor in

the Temple University Film & Media Arts Program.

[1] In his book “A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bion’s

Legacy to Psychoanalysis”, James Grotstein recounts his experience

of being read this phrase by Bion, in a free translation from

Freud’s correspondence.

8. X/Y // HANA IVERSON & CHRIS MANZIONE

Location: 897 Lorimer St. (near Bedford)

Hana Iverson and Chris Manzione share an interest in the body

as shape, metaphor and site of meaning. In their work, the

body’s inherent properties of weight, mass and physicality operate

within a digital field of ephemera, instability and generative

thought. These figures “dance” in the landscape, loosely tied

to location, simultaneously present in the mobile phone and

absent in the physical world.

In Hana Iverson’s multimedia work, the body, often fragmented,

has been the site of her exploration, the locus of perception,

of identity, of memory. The bodies in this work merge with the

landscape, they touch each other but also speak independently

to their own emotional expression. The images reflect a dream:

shadows of people who were there but are no longer. Iverson’s

public projects, Cross/Walks: Weaving Fabric Row and View

from the Balcony along with her education initiative Neighborhood

Narratives, employ the neighborhood as social practice to

explore questions about place, embodiment, and social engagement

inside of mobile and alternative forms of distribution. She

is currently Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Women & Art,

Rutgers University and Senior Fellow at the Center for Creative

Research, NYU.

Chris Manzione is a sculptor who works with both physical

and virtual shapes and structures. For him, the body is a shell,

a husk that is shed to reveal the echo of its spatial properties,

invisibly changing over time. He perceives bodies as silhouettes,

and uses touch and the tactile aspect of form to seek

intimacy and closeness. In 2010 Chris initiated the Virtual Public

Art Project (VPAP), a platform for the public display of digital

works of art, maximizing public reception of augmented reality

art through smartphones.

9. NASCI Å PINHOLE-TORN EXTERIORS

REALITY // HOLLY SENTER

Location: Intersection of Bedford Ave., Lorimer St. and

Nassau Ave.

The conception of Nasci å Pinhole was my attempt to reconcile

what I saw as a senseless human intervention in the 2010 Prospect

Park goose slaughter. 450 birds were systematically exterminated

in the middle of the night to ensure the apparent safety

of airline travelers. However, the birds that were killed were

non-migratory and not a threat to airline traffic. In response to

this perceived over-kill, I created a void, devoid of all color and

history. Both my own ghosts and the ethereal nature of nature

then reformed in my studio space, albeit upside-down.

With use of small holes and slits I turned my space into an

ultra-reflective pinhole camera that reflects the augmented

landscape of Pratt Institute’s campus. I filmed the daily

pinhole eclipse of the sun and the fleeting happenstance

reflected in front of it onto the floor and wall, digitally. This

new, seemingly living form, exists without the specific

time and place of its creation. Yet, the digitized video is

both the result of and a reflection of a specific time and

place. For Décollage: Torn Exteriors, this digital video was

filtered again into an animated .gif to be viewed through

Layar. Augmented reality, via Layar, further displaces the

orb by allowing it to be seen out-of-doors, as a reflection of

outdoors in indoor space. In reality it should cease to exist

in the light of day, yet it jumps along in your palm on your

Smartphone, captured. Nasci å Pinhole, literally translates,

to be born a pinhole. Nasci is the root of both the word

nature and nation. It references both the unformed nature

of regret and memory with a physical searching for time

and place. It is formed yet unformed; it exists within, but

only as a reflection.

Holly Senter has a BFA from Ontario College of Art &

Design (OCAD) and is about to receive her MFA from Pratt

Institute. Her works include installations and performances

based on fleeting happenings and their subsequent exploitation.

She currently lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

DOWNLOAD THE LAYAR APP

Décollage: Torn Exteriors projects can be viewed inthe-

round on iPhone 3GS and Android phones using

the Torn Exteriors layer in the free application Layar.

1. Download Layar for IPhone 3GS or Android

2. After having the Layar app installed on

your phone, the Torn Exteriors layer can be

accessed via Layar’s built in layer directory

(Search for “Torn Exteriors” layer).

3. Once Torn Exteriors layer is running and you

are physically in the vicinity of one of the

Torn Exteriors projects, you can switch

to ‘Map view’, which will direct you to the

precise location of the project.

4. Once you have arrived within viewing

distance of one of Torn Exteriors projects,

switch to “Reality View”, you can now walk

up to and around the virtual object, using

the iPhone 3GS or Android phone to vie

details.

DOWNLOAD THE JUNAIO APP

For Décollage: Torn Exteriors, Patricia Adler’s Unmasked

Heroes can be viewed in the

Ventana244 gallery following instructions posted

there.