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Buoyxstat
installation - work in progress, 2008/2009

Tanja Vujinovic: BUOYXSTAT
Installation (video projection, objects, water, hydrophones, live sound and video processing, computers)
Author: Tanja Vujinovic
Producer: Jan Kusej
Programmers/advisers: Damir Dezeljin, Slavko Glamocanin
Electronic components: Lenart Kranjc
Production: Exstat, www.exstat.org
Project is developed in collaboration with Marin Biology Station Piran, Slovenia, http://www.mbss.org/

Description of the project
The audio-visual installation Buoyxstat deals with the issues of the pollution of the environment and the existence of new plastic “animal” species in water habitats.

The Buoyxstat audiovisual installation consists of water, floating plastic ducks, and the transmission of data and live processing of digital visual and sound material. Data retrieved from the VIDA oceanographic station-buoy are transmitted to computers, which according to previously defined algorithms produce dynamic and changeable audio-visual signals, which are displayed in the gallery space in almost real time.

The Piran oceanographic buoy-station called VIDA is located in the sea, approximately 2 kilometers from Piran, on the Slovenian coast. It is equipped with contemporary measuring sensors for meteorological and oceanographic data, and the role of the buoy in this project is to serve as an external data provider. Data retrieved from the station will continuously provide the elements of the audiovisual installation.

Measurements from the oceanographic station are continually transmitted via radio connections to the National Institute for Biology, from where they are, after processing, published in almost real time on the web site http://buoy.mbss.org. Applications made in Max (Max/Msp/Jitter) will retrieve the data from the mentioned website and together with the data captured by hydrophones in the gallery, they will generate the final material for the installation.

An important part of the setup are plastic ducks floating on the surface of the water within the pool. The video projector installed on the ceiling of the gallery will continually project the images retrieved from the depths of the sea, as processed by the Max application, creating a dynamic surface for the ducks to float on. The underwater video fragments will be affected by meteorological data, such as the temperature and humidity of the air and the speed and direction of the wind. Oceanographic data such as the current temperature and salinity and speed of the sea waves in the Bay of Piran will affect the sound signal retrieved from the water pool by means of hydrophones.

Concept of the project
Buoyxstat, or Where are the Phantom Plastic Ducks?

The Loch Ness monster belongs to the notorious phenomenon of animals whose existence is not scientifically proven, and which are studied by cryptozoology. The vague evidence of the existence of the Loch Ness monster that began to emerge as far back as 1933 is all based on anecdotes, legends, and a small number of trivial photographic materials that have mostly been proven to be faked. This creature, called Nessie for short, and whose existence is still not verified, together with other cryptids such as Big Foot and the giant sea snake, became very popular after the Second World War. Nessie attracted public attention, piqued the imagination, and generated stories as well as numerous attempts at scientific approaches towards the verification of her existence, such as sonar scanning of the Loch Ness lake, surveillance of its water surface, and the like.

A numbers of sources claim that during a storm in January 1992, several containers full of plastic toys fell off an ocean-going container ship in the North Pacific. The ship was carrying containers full of products made by Chinese toy manufacturers from Hong Kong to Tacomo in the state of Washington, USA. According to testimonies and suppositions, at least one of the containers opened before sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and set free 29,000 plastic toys made especially for bathtubs. This anecdote has been circulating in the mass media since that strange event occurred. This event was discussed in a number of research projects; mostly the anecdote was useful for studies of ocean streams that affect the movement of synthetic "animals" in the sea. Many are convinced that a number of these unluckily freed toys are still floating around, and that a certain number of the plastic toys supposedly reached the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. Besides the masses of plastic ducks and similar toys for bathtubs, in a number of places in the sea flocks of floating discrete objects have been spotted, such as groups of Nike shoes, or Lego plastic bricks, but plastic ducks have definitely attracted the most attention.

As some sort of a container for the projection of imaginary and poetic situations, this incident sparked a series of questions and polemics about environmental pollution with plastic and oil, on one hand, and the hyper-production of plastic toys in China on the other, as well as the numerous actions of individuals attempting to track the flocks of floating plastic ducks. One can note stories about the spotting of flocks of plastic ducks, or the announcement of destinations where their arrival might be expected. Although the interest in these dispersed plastic discrete units is great, the actual evidence of their existence in such quantities is still lacking.

In The Secret Life of Puppets, Victoria Nelson analyzed and traced our need to aestheticise simulacra and infuse them with soul, pointing towards the ritual functions such entities play in our lives. In the Tailors' Dummies stories, Schulz casts this metamorphic, amorphous transitory creatures as, according to his own words, a kind of pseudofauna and pseudoflora, the result of a fantastic fermentation of matter. These pseudoforms are the result of fusions of various species, suspended at any transitory moment. Pointing towards the definition of grotesque as the fusion of human and non-human elements, Nelson discusses the semi-anthropomorphic creatures omnipresent in our culture. This brings up grotesque connections of various extensions added to the typical shapes of plastic ducks, such as ties, crowns, guitars, and the like, or human intelligence and intuition, the human attributes assigned to various fabricated synthetic animals. Through their amorphous and easy to reshape and appropriate nature, toys and dolls serve as a kind of omni-potential canister and device for placing various unsettling, odd, bizarre contents or even monstrous properties and supernatural powers within works of mainstream cinema, literature, and the visual arts. The amorphic amalgam of shapes that these characters embody shows a tendency towards the taming, softening, and humanizing of animals that present a treat in the natural setting, by lending them human-like facial features. The melting of various shapes into soft, lovable, and hyper-sweet, squeaker objects, or magical icons in Bailey's terms, continuously provides a portable, pocket-sized comfort in a twisted game of mirroring emotions.

Just like the Yeti, Big Foot, and Loch Ness monster, plastic ducks have also inscribed themselves into the history of real-imaginary creatures within the fabricated in-between spaces of the global imagination.

In the Buoyxstat installation, phantom ducks are floating within the real gallery space, and simultaneously within the virtual cyberspace of digital impulses and data that are being retrieved from the local oceanographic station. As a continuation of the Discrete Events in Noisy Domains cycle, Buoyxstat embodies the tracking of informational noise within the cyclic movements and existence of discreet units – phantom ducks – and as such continually produces noisy evidence of the existence of synthetic animals.

References
Bruno Schulz, in Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2001).,p.115.
Cryptozoology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptozoology,
(2.6.2008)
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Beachcombers Alert, http://beachcombersalert.org/, (2.6.2008)
Lee Worth Bailey, The Enchantments of Technology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005)., p.176.
Obalna oceanografska postaja Piran, http://buoy.mbss.org, (2.6.2008)
Simon de Bruxelles, Plastic duck armada is heading for Britain after 15-year global voyage, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1996553.ece, (2.6.2008)
Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2001).,p.114.
Why oceanographers love plastic duckies, http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~sumner/teaching/gel116f00/duckies.html, (2.6.2008)

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Tanja Vujinović: BOJAXSTAT
Instalacija (video projekcija, objekti v prostoru, voda, hidrofon, procesiranje zvoka in videa v živo, računalniki)
Avtorica: Tanja Vujinovic
Producent: Jan Kušej
Programerji/svetovalci: Damir Deželjin, Slavko Glamočanin
Elektronske komponente: Lenart Kranjc
Produkcija: Exstat, www.exstat.org
Projekt je narejen v sodelovanju z Morsko Biološko Postajo Piran, http://www.mbss.org/

Opis projekta
Projekt skozi zvočno-vizualno instalacijo se ukvarja z vprašanji polucije okolja ter obstoja novih plastičnih »živalskih vrst« v vodnih habitatih.
Razstavo sestavlja zvočno-vizualna inštalacija iz plastičnih račk, (morske) vode in predvajanega digitalnega vizualnega in zvočnega materijala. Podatki se iz oceanografske obalne postaje VIDA prenašajo v osebne računalnike, ki po vnaprej določenih algoritmih proizvajajo dinamične in spreminjajoče se zvočne in video signale, ti pa se v praktično realnem času predvajajo v galerijskem prostoru.

Obalna oceanografska postaja Piran, takoimenovana oceanografska boja, je v globini 22 m pod morsko gladino zasidrana približno 2 km od piranske punte. Opremljena s sodobnimi merilnimi senzorji za meteorološke in oceanografske podatke bi služila kot zunanji odjemalec/strežnik podatkov, ki bi se v realnem času koristili za ustvarjanje zvočno-vizualne inštalacije v galerijskem prostoru.
Meritve z oceanografske boje se nepretrgoma pošiljajo po radijski zvezi na Nacionalni inštitut za biologijo - Morsko biološko postajo, kjer se po obdelavi v praktično realnem času objavljajo na spletni strani http://buoy.mbss.org. Za potrebe inštalacije Bojamix, bi posebej za to narejene aplikacije v programu Max (Max/Msp/Jitter) s spletne strani merilne postaje zajemale in obdelovale podatke skupaj s podatki, ki bi jih zajemal preprost hidrofon na samem mestu postavitve inštalacije – v galerijskem prostoru. Programsko obdelani signali bi bili predvajani v realnem času v galerijski prostor s pomočjo zvočnikov in video projektorja.
Pomemben del postavitve bi bile plastične račke, ki bi plavale na površini vode v posebej za to priložnost narejeni posodi. Od zgoraj (s stropa) navzdol usmerjen video projektor bi projeciral sliko z dna morja na površino vode v posodi, ki jo nepretrgoma zajema podvodna kamera na oceanografski boji. Na ta način bi se ustvarila dinamična podoba račk, ki plavajo na morski gladini. Projecirana podoba vode bi bila opremljena in obdelana še z meteorološkimi podatki kot so temperatura in vlažnost zraka ter hitrost in smer vetra, pri čemer bi oceanografski podatki kot so trenutna temperatura in slanost morja ter hitrost morskih tokov v piranskem zalivu vplivali na zvočni signal, ki bi ga zajemali s posode v galerijskem prostoru s pomočjo hidrofona.

Koncept projekta
Bojaxstat ali kje so fantomske plastične račke?

Pošast iz Loch Nessa pripada znanemu fenomenu živali, katerih obstoj ni znanstveno dokazan in s katerimi se ukvarja kriptozoologija. Sumivi dokazi o obstoju teh živali, o katerih se govori že od leta 1933, so zasnovani na anegdotah, legendah in majhnemu številu trivialnega fotografskega dokaznega gradiva, za katero je bilo v glavnem ugotovljeno, da je fabricirano. Ljubkovalno poimenovana Nesi, ki pripada kategoriji kriptidov, živali katerih obstoj ni dokazan, in v katero spadajo še Big Foot, velika morska kača in druga legendarna bitja, je postala zelo popularna po Drugi svetovni vojni. Nase je vlekla pozornost javnosti, podžigala imaginacijo in generirala zgodbe ter poskuse znanstvenega pristopanja k dokazovanju obstoja, kot so recimo sonarno skeniranje celotnega jezera, nadzorovanje površine vode in podobno.
Številni podatki kažejo, da se je v času nevihte v Januarju 1992 s tovorne ladje v severnem Pacifiku izgubilo več kontejnerjev s plastičnimi igračami. Ladja je prevažala tovor kitajskih proizvajalcev igrač iz Hong Konga v Tacomo v zvezni državi Washington v ZDA. Po pričevanju in predpostavkah se je najmanj eden od kontejnerjev odprl, preden je potonil na dno oceana, in tako naj bi se “osvobodilo” 29.000 plastičnih igrač, namenjenih igranju v kopalnih kadeh. Anegdota je bila neštetokrat omenjana v množičnih medijih. S tem fenomenom so se ukvarjali tudi v številnih raziskavah, predvsem pa je bila koristna za preučevanje oceanskih vodnih tokov, ki botrujejo gibanju sintetičnih “živali” po morskih gladinah – ljudje so prepričani, da je veliko število teh nesrečno “osvobojenih” igrač še vedno v "obtoku", določena količina njih pa naj bi po mnenju nekaterih prispela celo do Arktičnega in Atlantskega oceana. Poleg množice plastičnih račk in podobnih igrač, ki sodijo v serijo igrač za v kopalno kad, se na številnih mestih omenja tudi "jata" plavajočih diskretnih objektov, kot so Nike superge, ali pa Lego kocke, od vseh teh pa so račke brez dvoma zbudile največ zanimanja. Kot nekakšen kontejner za projekcijo imaginarno-poetskih situacij je ta fenomen sprožil na eni strani vrsto vprašanj in polemik o onesnaževanju okolja s plastiko/nafto in hiperprodukciji plastičnih igrač na Kitajskem, ter številne akcije organizacij in posameznikov, ki poskušajo plavajoče plastične račke ujeti, pri čemer se občasno pojavljajo zgodbe o videnih “jatah račk”, ali pa lokacijah, kjer se njihov prihod/priplutje lahko zdaj pričakuje. Ob velikem zanimanju dokaznega gradiva za obstoj teh diskretnih enot, ki naj bi plule samotno po oceanih in morjih, še vedno primanjkuje.
V knjigi Tajno življenje lutk Victorija Nelson analizira potrebo po estetizaciji simulakrov in vnašanju duha v te iste simulakre, ki kažejo na ritualnost funkcij, ki jih te entitete vnašajo v naša življenja. V zbirki zgodb Krojačeve lutke Bruno Schulz ustvari metamorfna, amorfna tranzitna bitja, ki so po njegovih besedah neke vrste pseudoflora in pseudofauna, rezultat fantastične fermentacije materije. Te pseudoforme so rezultat fuzije različnih zvrsti, suspendiranih v kateremkoli od lebdečih tranzitnih momentov lastnega nastajanja. Victorija Nelson v svojem delu govori o poli-antropomorfnih bitjih, ki so vseprisotna v naši kulturi, in so groteskna v fuziji človeških in ne-človeških elementov. Tako so lahko tudi groteskni spoji različnih dodatkov plastičnim račkam, kot naprimer kravate, krone, kitare in podobno, ali pa človeška inteligenca in intuicija, človeški atributi pripisani imaginarnim, oziroma na tak ali drugačen način fabriciranim živalim. Skozi svojo amorfno in enostavno obvladljivo in spremenjljivo naravo igrače, lutke in ostala sintetična bitja služijo kot neke vrste omni-potentni kanistri in naprave za formiranje različnih vznemirljivih, čudnih, bizarnih vsebin, ali pa celo monstruoznih posebnosti, ki zgodovinsko spremljajo človeka vse do današnjih dni. Amalgam form, ki jih ti karakterji utelešajo, kaže na tendenco po krotenju, mehčanju in humanizaciji živali skozi proces projeciranja človeških karakteristik na fizionomijo/psiho živalskih likov - vrst, ki so v svojem naravnem habitatu lahko vse prej kot ukročene, ali pa predstavljajo določeno stopnjo nevarnosti. Pretapljanje različnih oblik v mehke, ljubke objekte, ki piskajo, ali pa v magične ikone, kot bi jih poimenoval Bailey, prinašajo prenosno, priročno potešitev v zamršeni igri odsevajočih se emocij.
Kot nekakšni Jetiji, Big Footi ali pa pošast iz Loch Nessa, so se vinilne račke vpisale v zgodovino realno-imaginarnih bitij v ustvarjenih vmesnih prostorih globalizirane imaginacije. V instalaciji Bojaxstat fantomske račke plavajo v realnem galerijskem prostoru, a ob enem tudi v virtualnem, v kiberprostoru digitaliziranih impulzov, podatkov, ki prihajajo z lokalne oceanografske postaje.
Kot nadaljevanje cikla Diskretni dogodki v hrupnih domenah uteleša Bojaxstat iskanje informacijskega hrupa v cikličnih premikih in bivanju diskrenih enot - fantomskih račk, in kot taka proizvaja "hrupne"dokaze o obstoju sintetičnih živali.

Reference
Bruno Schulz, in Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2001).,p.115.
Cryptozoology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptozoology, ( 2.6.2008)
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Beachcombers Alert, http://beachcombersalert.org/, ( 2.6.2008)
Lee Worth Bailey, The Enchantments of Technology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005)., p.176.
Obalna oceanografska postaja Piran, http://buoy.mbss.org, ( 2.6.2008)
Simon de Bruxelles, Plastic duck armada is heading for Britain after 15-year global voyage, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1996553.ece, ( 2.6.2008)
Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2001).,p.114.
Why oceanographers love plastic duckies, http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~sumner/teaching/gel116f00/duckies.html, ( 2.6.2008)