The Stream of Ma
PJAIT’S Multimedia Studio is Blurring the Boundaries Between Art and Technology
The Multimedia Studio on PJAIT’s New Media Art MA programme is here to push boundaries, and because of this it isn’t for the faint hearted. But if you stick it out you can end up being at the forefront of what the practice, the profession and its associated technologies can achieve. In this article we’ll showcase some of the studio’s projects and the ideas that form the program.
It’s been written about alot before, on this Medium channel too, that our on and offline lives are indistinguishable. We may think that the device is the portal, but everything is so enmeshed now that to gaze at the network through these things misses the point. It is everywhere, omnipresent: from when we buy a carton of milk, withdraw money from a bank or fall in love. Somewhere along the line the digital has informed our actions.
So this is world we live in, a far cry from the world previous new media artists have inhabited. An obvious observation, but one that needs to be stated every so often to make sure we’re dissecting reality with the right tools.
A recent example of the Multimedia Studio’s work is Stream of Ma. An interactive site specific installation inspired by the Japanese concept of MA (間). A conviction that can be translated as the ‘space in between’. According to the concept, it’s the space that’s left empty rather than the inscribed that carries the meaning of a piece of art. Within this poetic framing the tutors and the students collaborated to create a shared interactive playground for live LED visuals streaming and playback. The project exists at the intersection of reality and VR.
So what’s left empty when we look at and watch Stream of Ma? An exciting question to ask when witnessing this project, even if it’s only online (which doesn’t diminish the experience, so imagine actually being able to walk inside of it!). It’s also interesting to consider such project in light of the current trend of interactive data visualisations. One area of research and practice that could overlap nicely with a project like Stream of Ma is Design and Journalism. A branch of the practice that is gathering speed in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Researchers like Daniëlle Arets, the design duo Cream on Chrome (with their project 4D news), and the cheesily named Designalism are all examples of this. This crossover makes special sense now given our current relationship with anything news related, Ma’s conviction that it’s the space that’s left empty that carries significance, and the way facts are often left out in favour of triggering strong emotional reactions.
The installation becomes a stage where each person can experience their own animation in space. A place to both experience and construct.
According to Olga Wroniewicz, the co-head of the studio together with Tomasz Miśkiewicz, the purpose of the research and practical module is to explore the new media and multimedia art that doesn’t necessarily fit into the broad category of the other options offered to the MA students at PJAIT. This means they explore everything from generative art and design, realtime rendering, realtime audio lighting and projection mapping to name just a few. But in the last few years they have been exploring how these technologies can bleed into experiences:
Of course you can say that user experience is an experience when you are using a phone. But I’m usually thinking about something more immersive, or something more engaging than this screen to human interaction. So I think it’s something very important for people who are usually facing a screen, referring to graphic designers and how they are trained… I’m thinking about creating something as a different possibility aimed towards people who are studying graphics.
There is a generosity of outcomes in this studio. An openness to process and authorship that counters the current form of interaction we have with the world. With the skills of realtime rendering and generative graphic design at the forefront of this. Tomasz Miśkiewicz (check out his lecture Your Diploma with ToughDesigner) emphasises this when describing the process,
“a lot is left to the people that experience the artwork or the interactive piece. There is an aspect of designing something, and then ultimately not having exact control over it. And leaving the ultimate final result up to the person that’s interacting with the piece.”
For those with the stamina and enthusiasm to see through two years of boundary pushing, the results speak for themselves. Hard work combined with creative imagination, skill and an openness to process places the Multimedia Studio at the centre of a future where buying milk, withdrawing cash or falling in love could take wholly different forms. Embracing the complexity of our hybrid reality, in beautiful and interactive ways.
This also opens the door to other possibilities for people. But the question is also whether the people are able to invent something that is far from what they’ve been doing. That’s also something that we are doing here; pushing and pulling with the students because we are all swimming in some kind of bay of possibilities and examples.
Click here to experience the installation in 360°.
The Stream of Ma was collaboratively conceptualised and built by Olga Wroniewicz, Tomasz Miśkiewicz, Joanna Ostrowska, Adam Sawicki, Mateusz Król, Emilia Ishizaka, Ludwika Białkowska, Nikita Mazurkevych, Natalia Dobrzańska.
For more of the studio’s projects check out:
Hotel Manhattan by Małgosia Bielecka, 2014.
ACM : MRI by Aleksandra Chodakowska-Malkiewicz, 2015.
Hypermove by Paulina Moneta, 2017.
