Can the devastation of war be answered artistically? Can physical considerations be transformed into artistic aesthetics? And how do digital and analogue realities come together? These are some of the questions that the three exhibitions that can be experienced in the Linz OK (Offenes Kulturhaus) tackle.
Daily Archives
March 29, 2023
Wikipedia chooses sound identity promising to encapsulate human knowledge
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
If human history and knowledge had a sound, what would it sound like to you? Certainly, it will have very different sounds for each person in different regions of the world —but a clear sound identity can activate similar sensations in any part of the shot, see the short sounds that identify the start of a Netflix production, the Windows startup ringtone or from an Apple device to adapting “Fur Elise” for gas trucks. Because Wikipedia went following a sound to call its own too.
the result is a mixture of book pages turning, keyboard clicks and other synthetic sounds which encapsulate, as the name implies, “the sound of all human knowledge”.
The brief four seconds of this sound logo came from a Wikimedia Foundation contest. More than 3,000 collaborations were evaluated until they opted for the noise of knowledge created by Thaddeus Osborne, a nuclear scientist, who won US$ 2,500 (regarding R$ 13,000) for the feat.
Wikimedia will also take you to a professional recording studio to help produce a final version of your experiment. The result should come out by June this year.
“Thaddeus’ presentation captures the curiosity and joy that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects create for millions of people around the world,” said Zack McCune, director of marketing for the Wikimedia Foundation. “We are honored by his contribution to the free knowledge movement and grateful to the selection committee and voters for choosing a song that wonderfully represents free knowledge.”
China has disbursed $240 billion in bailout loans to 22 developing countries over the past 20 years at risk of default. Pushing some to cry “debt trap”.
Almost all of these funds have gone to countries that are part of the New Silk Roads – including Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Turkey. This ambitious Beijing project, launched at the instigation of Xi Jinping, aims to improve trade links between Asia, Europe, Africa and even beyond by building ports, railways, airports or industrial parks.
These infrastructures should enable the Asian giant to access more markets and open up new outlets for businesses. This project, to which more than 150 countries adhere according to Beijing, is criticized internationally for the dangerous debt it imposes on poor countries.
The Chinese government on Tuesday dismissed any criticism of the matter, accusing “some people” of “making a big fuss regarding so-called Chinese ‘debt traps’ and opaque loans, and smearing China, something we absolutely reject” .
“China (…) has never forced anyone to borrow money, has never forced any country to pay, places no political conditions on loan agreements and does not seek any political interest” in this system, said assured Tuesday Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, questioned during a regular press briefing.
Opacity and high credit rates
Loans granted by China increased between 2016 and 2021, a period which concentrates 80% of the total amount granted over 20 years, according to a 40-page report by the American research laboratory AidData, the World Bank, the Harvard Kennedy School and from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
“China has developed a ‘Belt Roads bailout’ system that helps recipient countries avoid default and continue repaying their loans, at least in the short term,” the report said. Cases that have multiplied in recent years in a context of rising inflation and interest rates, as well as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Compared with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the liquidity support offered by the US Federal Reserve (Fed), the amount of bailout loans from China remains small but is growing fast, the document said. These loans are also more opaque and at an interest rate of 5% on average, once morest 2% for those of the IMF.
“Beijing has targeted a limited number of possible beneficiaries, and almost all of the Chinese bailout loans have been for low- and middle-income Belt and Road countries, but with significant debts to Chinese banks,” he said. The report. China agreed this month to restructure its loans to Sri Lanka, paving the way for the South Asian island to release a $2.9 billion IMF bailout.
Pour L‘Eye of Photography, photobooks matter as much asan exhibition or a portfolio. They do thehistory and thenews of the medium. Our correspondent Zoé Isle de Beauchaine takes a tirelessly curious and knowledgeable look at the latesteras publications.
For several years, Caroline Corbasson has observed the sky and space through drawing, sculpture and video. Inspired by astronomical instruments, the French visual artist tries to answer universal questions regarding the place of Man within the universe. She publishes Heat at Area books, a poetic diversion of forgotten space archives, carried out with the photographer Andrea Montano.
In 2019, during a residency at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, Caroline Corbasson discovered a box filled with negatives, prints and observation glass plates dating from the 1950s to the 1990s. Intended to be destroyed or thrown away, they finally fall to him a few months later.
Then begins an experimental work around the printing of these black and white negatives, to which the Corbasson-Montano duo decides to add colors. Evoking the extreme temperatures of space, these vary from red, the color of the coldest planets, often in decline, to blue, which indicates heat at its peak.
The work is built around this thermal and chromatic variation. The archives of the Marseille laboratory unfold over the pages, punctuated with red, pink, purple and then blue sheets. Devoid of captions, these images of constellations or stardust disturb our sense of scale, never leaving us certain of what we are looking at. From scientific documents, they become abstract works of great aesthetic and poetic force.
While working around this series, Caroline Corbasson discovered the practice of silver print, which turned out to resonate with her interest in the cosmos: “What is interesting with the lab is to be in complete darkness. This leads to a real loss of bearings, you have to memorize each gesture andlocation of each item. JI hadrather mystical impression of being in the’space.”
The appearance of the print in the developer echoes the discovery by scientists, then the public, of a new image sent by telescopes from space. This is the effect that these archives certainly produced in their time. Transformed by Caroline Corbasson and Andrea Montano into superb visual poems, they are also a tribute to the pioneering work of Marseille astronomers since the 1960s.
Caroline Corbasson and Andrea Montano – Heat
Published by Area Books, 2023
320 x 240mm
Texte : Luce Lebart
Editorial direction: Bureau Kayser
Graphics: Syndicate
Jeffrey Zucherman Translation
Published thanks to the support of the Antoine de Galbert Foundation
Available in bookstores and online