Fundação EDP, Museu da Electricidade
Lisbon, Portugal

exhibited work: leon night

Lisbon-based artist Miguel Soares’ signature 3D animations render virtual realms in which landscapes, characters and objects provoke myriad futuristic fantasies. In ‘Time Zones’ (2003), sequences of collaged images that evoke the Cold War accompany experimental band Negativland’s track by the same title. An engaging allusion to the post-war world order, this work connects what was seen as a permanent state of siege with our current time. Recently, Soares has utilized different technologies to develop his practice, making it less politically charged and more metaphorical. On view until the end of last week at Lisbon’s Museum of Electricity was the installation ‘Do Robots Dream of Electric Art?’ (2007), that consisted of three robots, all equipped with moving heads, tracing red laser beams on the gallery wall in the rough outlines of human bodies. Bringing together Philip K. Dick’s science fiction best-seller ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,’ in which the main character is an android, with the imagery of cave painting, Soares combines representations of the past and the future into an allegory for present society. Another notable work is ‘Jumping Nauman’ (2006), that is currently featured in the group show ‘Stream,’ presented by New York’s White Box. Using the Google Earth software, this video compiles the exhibition spaces in which Bruce Nauman work was shown in 2006– from New York’s Andrea Rosen Gallery to the Berlin Biennale–thus illustrating the global economy of today’s art scene. A sort of digital appropriation artist ‘fascinated by things that do not exist’–as he once put it–Soares’ output is one of the most significant in the contemporary expanded field of new media, in which concept is taking the place of the once prevailing high-tech fetishism.
- Miguel Amado

November 30, 2007 > Jamuary 05, 2008
White Box
New York, USA

exhibited works: Jumping Nauman

related links: Stream on whiteboxny.org

September 28th > November 25th, 2007
10 AM > 01 AM, closes Mondays
Fundação EDP, Museu da Electricidade
Lisbon, Portugal

Three moving-head robots are aparently carving a drawing on the wall with red laser beams.

scroll down for portuguese version

Disco Wall Painting
text by João Lima Pinharanda

Three “disco” robots (of the “moving heads” variety) trace upon the grey wall the precarious outline of a human
being – probably a male.
A “disco” can, in this context, be seen as a new kind of cave, or even a “post-cave”. The darkness of the space, its
near subterranean location, the darkened walls, the play of lights, the collective rituals taking place inside it all
concur to confirm that scenographic metaphor.

On the other hand, the robots are equally beings of a new kind which seem to collaborate here in a remake: in a joint
action, they draw an ancient being that preceded them in time, a being that conceived them, a human.
And they do it by swerving from the accomplishment of the actions for which they were designed and built by that
same being: to follow the rhythms of dance music at a disco, heightening the interplay of light and darkness, sound
and noise, body and bodies.
And they do it here in anomalous conditions: continuously, without music, with no humans on the dancefloor,
combining efforts in the construction of an obsessive drawing that is in no way decorative, sophisticated or rhythmic.

The role played by these robots takes the form of a transferred regression: they are not evoking what they themselves were, but what the men who designed them were once. This piece by Miguel Soares fictionalises the appropriation, by robots, of a founding memory of humankind. That memory does not belong to them: have the beings that created them inserted it, inadvertently or unconsciously, into their programming? We do not know.
Anyway, these “created” beings have appropriated some secret file of human reminiscences which probably has survived and may always be
deciphered under all the layers of subsequent technological and digital (in)formation.

The title of this piece by Miguel Soares evokes one of the most effective projections of mankind’s fear regarding their own creations, from its Romantic incarnation as Frankenstein’s Monster to the post-modern androids of Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968, where Miguel Soares found his title) and Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, 1982).

This artist’s vast body of work, which comprises installation and video along with the construction of mechanical and electronic objects, not forgetting the composition of digital images or synthesised sounds, culminates here in the most extreme of metaphors: the automata’s possibility of autonomous action and awareness has led them to resume the evolutionary cultural line of mankind, their original creators. Returning to a logic of caves as iconographic sanctuaries,
these “disco” robots paint/engrave a human image on the walls available to them. And their action is charged with the same ambiguity already described by the historians of the Palaeolithic age: the model used is not necessarily the animal used as a basis for daily sustenance; it may be the most venerated, the one whose capture does not stem from an act of physical survival but from a will to cultural endurance, aggregating the group’s identity and catalysing its social communion.

Lisbon, 12 September 2007
João Lima Pinharanda

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Versão Portuguesa / Portuguese Version

A peça de Miguel Soares ficciona a apropriação, pelos robots, de uma memória matricial da humanidade. Essa
memória não lhes pertence: os seres seus criadores fizeram-na passar inadvertida ou inconscientemente para os
programas? Não sabemos. Seja como for, os seres “criados” apropriaram-se de um qualquer ficheiro secreto de
reminiscências humanas. E, regressando à lógica das cavernas como santuários iconográficos, estes robots “de
discoteca”, pintam/gravam uma esquemática imagem humana nas paredes.
A sua acção carrega-se da mesma ambiguidade detectada pelos historiadores do paleolítico: pode não ser
imediatamente o animal de que se necessita para o sustento diário aquele que se desenha; pode ser o que mais se
venera, aquele cuja captura não resulta de um acto de sobrevivência física mas de uma vontade de sobrevivência
cultural; um agregador da identidade e catalizador da comunhão social do grupo. A verdade é que se trata sempre
de evocar (antecipar ou celebrar) uma caçada.

Pintura Mural de Discoteca

Três robots “de discoteca” (do tipo moving heads) desenham na parede cinzenta a silhueta precária de um ser
humano – provavelmente do sexo masculino.
Uma discoteca pode, neste contexto, ser vista como uma gruta de novo tipo ou uma “pós-gruta”. A escuridão do
espaço, a sua localização quase subterrânea, a cor escurecida das paredes, os jogos de luz, os rituais colectivos nela
desenvolvidos concorrem para confirmar essa metáfora cenográfica.

Por outro lado, os robots são seres também de um novo tipo que igualmente parecem participar aqui num remake:
na sua acção conjunta desenham um ser antigo, que os precedeu no tempo, um ser que os concebeu, um humano. E fazem-no, desviando-se do desempenho das funções para que foram, por esse mesmo ser, projectados e construídos:
acompanhar os ritmos da música de dança de uma discoteca potenciando os jogos entre luz e escuridão, som e ruído, corpo e corpos.
E fazem-no aqui em condições anómalas: ininterruptamente, sem música, sem humanos na pista de dança, conjugando-se na construção de um desenho obsessivo que nada tem de decorativo, sofisticado ou ritmado.

O título desta obra de Miguel Soares remete para uma das mais eficazes projecções dos receios da humanidade em relação às suas próprias criações. Tal receio vem do Frankenstein romântico e passa pelos andróides pós-modernos de Philip K. Dick (”Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, 1968, de onde Miguel Soares retira o seu título)/Ridley Scott (”Blade Runner”, 1982).

A vasta obra do artista, utilizando a instalação e o vídeo, a construção de objectos, mecânicos e electrónicos, a composição de imagens digitais ou sons electrónicos culmina aqui na mais extrema metáfora: a possibilidade de autonomia de acção e consciência dos autómatos leva-os a retomar a linha cultural evolutiva da própria humanidade que os criou.
Regressando à lógica das cavernas como santuários iconográficos, estes robots “de discoteca” pintam/gravam uma imagem humana nas paredes que lhes cabem em sorte. E a sua acção carrega-se da mesma ambiguidade já detectada pelos historiadores do paleolítico: pode não ser imediatamente o animal de que se necessita para o sustento diário aquele que se desenha; pode ser o que mais se venera, aquele cuja captura não resulta de um acto de sobrevivência física mas de uma vontade de sobrevivência cultural, agregadora da identidade e catalizador da comunhão social do grupo.

Lisboa, 12 de Setembro de 2007
João Lima Pinharanda
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invitation

September 28 > November 03, 2007
Plataforma Revólver
Lisbon, Portugal

exhibited works: untitled (playing with Gould playing Bach)

related links: Remote Control at Artecapital.net

when i throw away data cd’s that i’m converting to dvd, i scratch their surface with a x-cutter, so that the data cannot be retreaved.
I noticed that the data layer particles released by this action fall slowly against the black background of the garbage bag.

Galeria Graça Brandão Lisboa
Rua dos Caetanos, 26
Lisbon

list of works:

PRINT

• Liine 2007 (8 images)
• retarC 2007 (4 images)
• Palindrome (3 images)
• Boeing, Shuttle, Boeing, Shuttle, Boeing, Shuttle (1 image)

VIDEO

• Jumping Nauman
• untitled (playing with Gould playing Bach)
• Liine 2007 video

OTHER

• leon night
• A to B in c

exhibition views

variable dimentions
2007
vinyl lettering, gaffer tape

measure of a given distance (a wall) in light-years (commonly represented as c).