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RAINING ANIMALSCOOPERATIVE SOCIETY

Perhaps art begins with the animal, at least with the animal that carves out a territory and constructs a house (both are correlative, or even one and the same, in what is called a habitat). The territory-house system transforms a number of organic functions - sexuality, procreation, aggression, feeding. But this transformation does not explain the appearance of the territory and the house; rather it is the other way around: the territory implies the emergence of pure sensory qualities, of sensibilia that cease to be merely functional and become expressive fea-tures, making possible a transformation of functions. No doubt this expressiveness is already diffused in life, and the simple field of lilies might be said to celebrate the glory of the skies. But with the territory and the house it becomes constructive and erects ritual monuments of an animal mass that celebrates qualities before extracting new causalities and finalities from them. This emergence of pure sensory qualities is already art, not only in the treatment of external materials but in the body’s postures and colours, in the songs and cries that mark out the territory. It is an outpouring of features, colours and sounds that are inseparable insofar as they become expressive (philosophical concept of territory). Every morning the Scenopoetes dentirostris, a bird of the Australian rain forests, cuts leaves, makes them fall to the ground, and turns them over so that the paler, internal side contrasts with the earth. In this way it constructs a stage for itself like a ready-made; and directly above, on a creeper or a branch, while fluffing out the feathers beneath its beak to reveal their yellow roots, it sings a complex song made up from its own notes and, at intervals, those of other birds that it imitates: it is a complete artist.

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari. What is philosophy? p.183-184.

RAINING ANIMALSNetworking based cross-cultural co-accidental event

Objectives :

AdaptabilityCollaborationDistributed network structureSelf-initiated

RAINING as actual event, ANIMALS as being

Event : Co-accidental

The project involves a metaphorical meaning of a type of habitat that indicates a place where. It implies a change of relationship between habitat and environment that influ-ences the eco- and geological system and structure. Ex-ploring a location-based storytelling in the history traces relevant topology but coincidental events. The theme of Raining Animals denotes a supernatural phenomenon resulting from the involuntary conflict and collision. It is more or less a becoming-animal idea that is based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a symbolic language of cultural transformation and social evolution extends the conversation of different habitants when it is a becoming-virtual from the actual. The main shift of the project still remains in a new narrative cinema that defies beyond hypertext, that is considered as a co-accidental event, namely, a transition by co-accident.

Space : Trans-local

Raining Animals provides a space where users can par-ticipate in networked public project, that continuously captures the peripheral landscape and feeds the message from one place to another. The image overlaps the move-ment through the installation is recored as ephemeral traces, that reflects on the surface of the exhibition space. It is an assemblage of each component, which is intercon-nected to the mirror images. Combining the public across geographical locations, the result will blur the bound-ary and the distinction between a physical space and a virtual world. It is immersed in a profound spectrum of mapping in the range of the site-specific and the non-lieu. Mapping the physical site pertains to emotionally chang-ing geography driven by the web, which reveals a concep-tion of deterritorialization.

Time : Non-linear

As a mongrel, it consists of a real-time imagery of collage, a conversation in a particular screenplay, and a fictional interactive installation. The result from the actual and the virtual collapses into one frame of time that is based on the frequencies of different uploading events. The con-tents of Raining Animals retrieve data from computer-generated combinatorial geography that betokens het-erogeneity. A fringe-dwelling, errors and disequilibrium engages a loss, that is related to an ecological niche.

Language : Folksonomy

Due to the barrier of controlled vocabulary on web search engine, the figure of speech in Raining Animals would be transitory. Using a method of social bookmarking for images on Web2.0 is constructed on the concept of combining all its particular collaborative tagging in an automated/user-generated content. It is a general idea of aggregation derived from specific occurrences of tagging in shared vocabulary that allows users to find and inter-pret other related subject. It is regarded as resulting from the cultural construct to label or tag content and the envi-ronment of its representation. It has to become a selected vision of the future based on a past timeline, analyzed and categorized information that shows us a comprehen-sive image of nature that is related to us.

Visualization : Metonymy

The characters with different types of letter, natural features including human being, and configuration of ter-ritory are the branches of geometry on multiple screens. The properties of figure remain unchanged and intrinsic when it is uploaded on screens unless the input area gets feed from the output. The flow of data into and out of computers by means of a networking conformation where several computers or work stations are linked to a central system environment, the image is deformed by blending, overlapping, stretching or twisting, etc. These compo-nents make a continual visual, but not a sequential. It is a metonymy of raining animals.

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.3. No animal shall wear clothes.4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.5. No animal shall drink alcohol.6. No animal shall kill any other animal.7. All animals are equal.

- Animal Farm, George Orwell

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM삼라만상(森羅萬像) - En. All things in nature. Originally, the word ‘森羅萬象’ means the universe, all nature and the whole creation and phenomenon in a sense of Buddhism. It consists of 4 different chinese characters and denotes “Dense trees like a Net and Thousands of Elephant(Form)”. Usually ‘象(elephant)’ is the symbol of wisdom or knowledge, and its shape ‘象’ + ‘人’ makes a combinative word ‘像’ that means image, reflection, form, shape, phase, reason, principle, truth, style, resemblance and etc. It is the first step of knowing, the obvious truth and wisdom as if all things would be reflected in the mirror.

The term of “elephant in the room” refers to “the blind men and the elephant”. It is a situation or phenomenon that one can see all matters and immense variety on web. Nonetheless, we could not examine it because of its extensive and all-inclusive substance or even boundless entity. The conception of the virtual and its actualization is charac-terized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries in web. We emphasize that we use “elephant” here not as a metaphor, which would demonstrate the duality in the age of Web2.0 is regarded as a specular idiosyncrasy.

Yet a “becoming-animal” does not belong to history. . .

FARMtowards a newer parody

FARM is a net-based installation in various dimensions with the emphasis on science and fiction as well as a reflection on Web2.0 and recycling technology. Visitors can participate in generating real-time photomosaics that portray rhizomic movies. It consists of indefinite temporal images on Web query to seek for the meaning of narrative structure that is a script run by AI (Markov chain) based on a screenplay, a parody of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, rewritten for the simple utterance including a few platitudes. Micro and telescopic two-way TVs and monitors mirror the conjectures about the movies of two different species, that interacts together to form a multiplicity. It approaches a vertical intertextuality towards a hypertext, for the democratic social networking.

Becoming FARMThe project aims at animal (including human) environment based on sociocultural evolution of intersection and interaction. It is a metafiction of art and technology, whether it is high or low, that beckons such as real-time generated photomosaic movies imply a complex meaning as a particle of a full picture. Besides, it has a general usage; a method of protection in media or protective device. Generated by non-hierarchical entry and search results in data visualization and interpretation, this transitional fiction consists of non-linear structure. It is involving our expanded horizon pertaining to trans-species connections.

“Rhizome”, as the term of Deleuze and Guattari, describes a multiplicity; What we envisage a non-linear and peripheral movie is distinguished from a system with linear and vertical relationship. The situation of the Web is now a hybrid of identities, and relatively changing through the networks and end-users. It approaches to the level of etymological idea, that shows a rhizomic environment, made of a symbiont.

The installation exposes the meaning of “elephant in the room”. The idiom is considered to be inter-preted as all things in nature, i.e. universe, that one can only conceive a part of the whole. Seemingly created as a compound installation, but trans-formed into “all things in crates” circumnavigate Web2.0. Data, temporarily collected from Web im-age search result, regenerate movies compositing by thousands of photomosaics diverge to the modified micro- and telescopes, storytelling devices, and customized screens.

Rendering FARMWhen the characters talk each other about a given subject on the FARM with other online participants, the conversation assimilates context to a certain norm, so that the story continuously evolves itself. A new variable screenplay provides not only an actual information but also a virtual scenario towards a hyper-text that will conglomerate a mise en abîme of science and fiction. Sounds and visuals are triggered by the screenplay, significantly run by Artificial Intelligence through database on internet. It is based on Markov chain, that is a random process where all performative utterances and conversations are contained in the present state. This goes to mingle with others’ voice from social networking and micro-blogging website (Twitter). It allows us a communication between the narrative figures in fiction and the beholders.

Our own screenplay entitled “Le Retour du Cochon (The Return of the Pig)” (2009- ) is a parody of “Ani-mal Farm” (1945) by George Orwell. Originally motivated by a personal level of experience, but also woven by anonymous users (potential protagonists) who make a variable screenplay possible. A literal rendering of “Animal Farm” will melt down its didactic message. However, in the sense of appropriation, its circum-stance is still relevant to forgotten monologue or dialogue in-between us. It will translate the poetic prose of a new parody into the vertical intertextuality; the ever changing movement and time-image go over the intertextuality, as well as to the hypertext. The notions of “media art” or “media technology” shift from the governmental perspective to the reflection on technology. Therefore, the meaning of FARM includes the reflective questions on hypertext and interaction, beyond responsive environment.

Le Retour du COCHONA variable screenplayInspired by Animal Farm (George Orwell) and Snowball’s Chance (John Reed)

The screenplay is ever changing and regenerating the voice of the conversation hence a net-based play. People who would write and feedback to the original play could affect the story and it is actual composition.Multiway of conversation including the original characters (main bots) :

Monsieur CochonSnowflakeFreinds (means Friends, and with reversed “s” shape) &Twitterers

Location :Rendering FARM

Original quote from Animal Farm, 1945.Screenplay by RACS, 2009.

We respect for the exclusive rights of copyrighted work and its originality. The screenplay followed the Fair Use and observed the international copyright law.

www.raininganimals.netFARM © 2009

PURPLE PROMISE01-03.DECEMBER 2009

OPENING01.DECEMBER 2009, 6PMKUBUS, HFG KARLSRUHE

RAINING ANIMALS COOPERATIVE SOCIETYwww.raininganimals.net

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