The work that I set out to accomplish in DXARTS 505, Research Techniques in Digital Arts, at the beginning of the Winter 2010 term was to find the most appropriate methodology for recording and archiving my workflow and work outcome that was in consensus with major archival standards for media art. Notions of record and archive are critically investigated, raising questions about applying traditional archival definitions to the media art. The biggest challenge was finding the archival standard that is widely recognized and that fits my own methodology. I found the consensus in an open model of archives that encourage multiple representations and allow for personal creative reuse and reinterpretation to keep the spirit of the artwork alive. In the case of creating metadata for my projects according to CODEXA, Dublin Core, MANS, VR, I had to analyze their principles, usage by other artists and researchers, and find a best version that I can then adopt to my own model of recording research and projects, and that I can use consistently and as externally acceptable standard throughout my workflow.

The process remains to be problematic and it keeps raising many issues, including preservation of digital work that relies on the ability to represent individual digital records in such a way that they may be decoded and accurately rendered many years hence, preservation of control over updating the formats of the digital records that will sustain faithful documentation, recording the sense of the ephemeral and atemporal elements of the work. These issues have been vividly illustrated by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling at this years Trasmediale festival, where he said: “So, what is ‘atemporality’? I think it’s best defined as ‘a problem in the philosophy of history’. And I hate to resort to philosophy, because I am a novelist. But I don’t think we have any way out here. It is about the nature of historical knowledge. What we can know about the past, and about the present, and about the future. How do we represent and explain history to ourselves? What are its structures and its circumstances? What are the dynamics of history and futurity? What has happened before? What is happening now? What is really likely to happen next?… Now, history is a story. And to write down the story of the fourteenth century, to just ask yourself – “what happened in the fourteenth century?” — Feynman style — is a very different matter from asking the atemporal question: “What does Google do when I input the search term ‘fourteenth century?’” I think we are over the brink of that. It’s a very, very different matter. History books are ink on paper. They are linear narratives with beginning and ends. They are stories created from archival documents and from other books. Network culture, not really into that. Network culture differs from literary culture in a great many ways. And step one is that the operating system is an unquestioned given. The first thing you do is go to the operating system, without even thinking of it as a conscious choice…  The question is: now what? Given that we have atemporal organized representations of verbal structures, what can we actually do? Where is the fun part?… We are going to have Early Atemporality, where we are struggling with what it means and how it’s different from post-modernism, and we are going to have Late Atemporality, where we pretty well get it about what was going on, and we can see the limits of that, and we know that something else is going to happen. That’s going to take ten years. You can physically outlive the period in which explaining things in this way makes sense… Atemporality is a philosophy of history with a built-in expiration date. It has a built in expiration date. It’s not going to last forever. It’s not a perfect explanation, it’s a contingent explanation for contingent times.”
www.transmediale.de/en/keynote-bruce-sterling-us-atemporality

Besides focusing on the long-term sustainability of the media artwork and it’s documentation, I spend time researching topics concerning realization of my project “The Crack”. My interest was in learning about the chemical and mechanical fracturing processes, which is the subject of chemistry and structural engineering, and cracking in nature that is studied in geology. My research included exploring online scientific databases and contacting UW based scholars in those areas. Some of the databases that I used were Earth Science Image Bank, Engineering Library homepage., LibSphere – University of Washington Libraries News for the Natural and Environmental Sciences Subject Areas, The Soil Liquefaction Research Center, and GeoNet. These resources provided me with a productive insight in processes of cracking in nature and it’s consequences that relate to my work in both physical and metaphorical manner (shaping of the crack and the meaning of the crack).

Title: The Crack

Creator: Maja Petrić

Creator Affiliation: DXARTS Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media

Date of Creation: December 2009 – ongoing

Hardware: computer, projector, LEDs, DMX controller

Software: TBD

Materials: wood, paper, LEDs

Medium: installation

Description: The Crack is an installation of a wall that cracks in real time. As the wall cracks, lights and video appear through the cracks to create an experience that ranges from frightful (cracking wall) to pleasurable (light coming through the cracks and moving images of nature).

Artist statement: The Crack is a part of my larger research of the sublime within the realms of art, light and architecture.

In the 1st century AD Longinus discussed the sublime as something that is great, elevated, or lofty. In 18th century Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant introduced horror as a source of the sublime. These prompted even more definitions of the sublime in which the biggest question remains the experience of it. My interest is the multiplicity of those experiences and my focus is on the dichotomy between pleasure and pain, divine and hell, as distinct instances of the single sublime.

Through transformative spatial experiences of the cracking wall, I aim to create new opportunities for accessing the sublime by means of experimentation with both technology and traditional materials. My approach to creating spatial installations for facilitating new interpretations and incarnations of the sublime combines principles of architecture, lighting design, and audiovisual systems.

Keywords: art, sublime, tension, dichotomy, frightful, pleasant, lightness, darkness, crack, fracture, interruption, ruin, space, architecture, light, color, experience, nonlinear, narrative, video, sound, perspective, movement, scale, rhythm

Sketches and models:

Bibliography (using Chicago Manual of Style):

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Theologian Armstrong here investigates myth: what it is, how it has evolved, and why we still so desperately need it. She takes us from the Paleolithic period and the myths of the hunters, up to the Great Western Transformation of the last five hundred years and the discrediting of myth by science.

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Bachelard applies the method of phenomenology to architecture basing his analysis not on purported origins (as was the trend in enlightenment thinking about architecture) but on lived experience of architecture. He is thus led to consider spatial types such as the attic, the cellar, drawers and the like. This book implicitly urges architects to base their work on the experiences it will engender rather than on abstract rationales that may or may not affect viewers and users of architecture. It is about the architecture of the imagination.

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This is a science fiction novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was Bioy Casares’ breakthrough effort, for which he won the 1941 First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires. He considered it the true beginning of his literary career, despite being his seventh book. The first edition cover artist was Norah Borges, sister of Bioy Casares’ lifelong friend, Jorge Luis Borges.

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Works of art can enrich our awareness of human experience, educate us, or even offer an emotional outlet, but how exactly should we assess their artistic value? British philosophy professor Malcolm Budd argues that although there are many varieties of artistic success, there is but a single value that ranges across the arts. Budd examines many of the issues involved in the appraisal and appreciation of specific art forms.

Budd, Malcom. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

The aesthetics of nature has over the last few decades become an intense focus of philosophical reflection, as it has been ever more widely recognised that it is not a mere appendage to the aesthetics of art. Everyone delights in the beauty of flowers, and some are thrilled by the immensity of mountains or of the night sky. But what is involved in serious aesthetic appreciation of the natural world? Malcolm Budd presents four interlinked studies in the aesthetics of nature, approaching the subject from a variety of angles. As well as developing Budd’s own original ideas, the book provides a comprehensive treatment of Kant’s classic aesthetics of nature, and an encyclopaedic critical survey of recent literature on the subject.

Budd, Malcolm. Music and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.

The most fundamental debate in the philosophy of music involves the question of whether there is an artistically important connection between music and the emotions. Many theories of the nature and significance of music as an art form have maintained that at least one important value of music is its capacity to represent, express, communicate, or symbolize a variety of extra-musical emotions or a certain aspect of emotion. Yet these theories are rejected by those who believe that the value of any musical work is specifically musical, and accordingly must be independent of any relationship between music and the emotions.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: Routledge and Paul, 1958.

Burke’s analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated thinkers from Kant and Coleridge to the philosophers and critics of today.

Campbell, Joseph, Phil Cousineau, and Stuart L. Brown. The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.

Campbell, Joseph, and Eugene C. Kennedy. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato: New World Library, 2001.

Campbell, Joseph, and Bill D. Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Eco, Umberto, and Alastair McEwen. History of beauty. New York: Rizzoli, 2004.

This inspired book begins, after a little throat-clearing, with 11 verso-recto “comparative tables”—sets of contact-sheet–like illustrations that trace representations of “Nude Venus” and “Nude Adonis” (clothed sets follow) as well as Madonna, Jesus, “Kings” and “Queens” over thousands of years, revealing with wonderful brevity the scope of the task Eco has set for the book.

Eco, Umberto. On Ugliness. New York: Rizzoli, 2007.

On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and arts. Eco’s encyclopedic knowledge and captivating storytelling combines in this ingenious study of the ugly, revealing that we often shield ourselves from what we’re most attracted to subliminally. With numerous examples of art, and quotations from the most celebrated writers and philosophers of each age, this provocative book explores in-depth the concepts of evil, depravity, and darkness in art and literature.

Flavin, Dan. Dan Flavin: the Architecture of Light. New York: The Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, 1999.

Furuyama, Masao. Tadao Ando: 1941. Cologne: Taschen Basic Architecture, 2006.

Philippe Starck describes him as a “mystic in a country which is no longer mystic.” Drew Philip calls his buildings “land art” that “struggle to emerge from the earth.” He is the only architect to have won the discipline’s four most prestigious prizes: the Pritzker, Carlsberg, Praemium Imperiale, and Kyoto Prize. His name is Tadao Ando, and he is one of the world’s greatest living architects. Combining influences from Japanese tradition with the best of Modernism, Ando has developed a completely unique building aesthetic that makes use of concrete, wood, water, light, space, and nature in a way that has never been witnessed elsewhere in architecture.

Goldsworthy, Andy. Enclosure. New York: Abrams, 2007.

Andy Goldsworthy has created a series of artworks in Northwest England in sheepfolds: stone enclosures found across the countryside that have been used for assembling, sheltering, and washing sheep for hundreds of years. After working on and off for more than a decade, he completed thirty-five folds, often rebuilding them in the process; many of them can now once again serve their intended purpose. These form the core of Enclosure: they reflect Goldsworthy’s lifelong interest in the land, its history, and the people who work on it. They are accompanied by a rich collection of ephemeral work related in various ways to sheep, including a spectacular series of large sheep paintings—paintings made by the hoof-prints of sheep.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Theory of Colours. Boston: MIT press, 1970.

In this classic of speculative science, the author of Faust provides a unique perspective on the nature of color. Although not scientifically accurate in light of current knowledge, it offers an invaluable exploration of color, art, aesthetics, and philosophy, marked by inimitable prose and stimulating ideas.

Gordon, Gary. Interior lighting for designers. Hoboken: Wiley, 2003.

Goossen, E. C., and Ellsworth Kelly. Ellsworth Kelly. New York: Museum of Modern Art; distributed by New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, Conn, 1973.

Hawkins, Erick. The Body Is a Clear Place and Other Statements on Dance. Pennington, NJ: Princeton Book Co, 1992.

The Body is a Clear Place is a collection of ten intelligent, lyrical essays that serve as a testament to Erick Hawkins’ long career in dance. The last two essays were written especially for this volume while the first eight essays were collected from speeches, statements and articles Hawkins has written. The essays are framed by a foreword written by Alan Kriegsman.

Maurer, Ingo, and Kim Hastreiter. 2007. Provoking magic: lighting of Ingo Maurer. New York, NY: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Instituttion.

Julbez, Jose. The Life and Work of Louis Barragan. New York: Rizzol, 1996.

Kahn, Louis I., and Nell E. Johnson. Light is the theme: Louis I. Kahn and the Kimbell Art Museum: comments on architecture. Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1975.

Comments on architecture by Louis Kahn, with photographs, plans, and drawings that trace the development of the building from design to completion.

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The Critical project, that of exploring the limits and conditions of knowledge, had already spawned the Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant argued for a Transcendental Aesthetic, an approach to the problems of perception in which space and time are supposed not to be objects but ways in which the observing subject’s mind organizes and structures the sensory world. The end result of this inquiry is that there are certain fundamental antinomies in human Reason, most particularly that there is a complete inability to favor on the one hand the argument that all behavior and thought is determined by external causes, and on the other that there is an actual “spontaneous” causal principle at work in human behavior.

Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Kant states that feelings of enjoyment are subjective. In this book, he will describe his observations. His interest is not in coarse, thoughtless feelings or in the other extreme, the finest feelings of intellectual discovery. Instead, he will write about the finer feelings, which are intermediate. These require some sensitivity, intellectual excellence, talent, or virtue.

Kapoor, Anish, Homi K. Bhabha, and Pier Luigi Tazzi. Anish Kapoor. London: Hayward Gallery, 1998.

Kapoor, Anish, Donna M. De Salvo, and Cecil Balmond. Anish Kapoor, Marsyas. Unilever series. London: Tate Pub, 2002.

Keller, Max. Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting. New York: Prestel, 2010.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Over the past decade, radical questioning of the grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of the aesthetic experience can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open, model for human understanding.

Malnar, Joy Monice and Frank Vodvarka. Sensory design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

In Sensory Design, Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka explore the nature of our responses to spatial constructs-from various sorts of buildings to gardens and outdoor spaces, to constructions of fantasy. To the degree that this response can be calculated, it can serve as a typology for the design of significant spaces, one that would sharply contrast with the Cartesian model that dominates architecture today.

Matta-Clark, Gordon. Gordon Matta Clark: you are the measure. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Mende, Kaoru. Designing with light and shadow. Mulgrave: Images, 2000.

Maurer, Ingo, Alexander von Vegesack, and Jochen Eisenbrand. Ingo Maurer: light–reaching for the moon. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2004.

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Millet, Marietta S. Light revealing architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1996.

Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923.

It is one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is now available in about 20 languages. The book defines the concept of the holy as that which is numinous. Otto explained the numinous as a “non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self”.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin. New York: John Wiley, 2005.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema. Helsinki, Rakennustieto, 2001.

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Zweite, Armin, and Gerhard Richter. Gerhard Richter. Düsseldorf: K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2005.

Filmography:

Bergman, Ingmar, Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Kari Sylwan, Sven Nykvist, Siv Lundgren, Frédéric Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Erland Josephson. Cries and whispers [Viskningar och rop]. [U.S.]: Criterion Collection/Janus Films, 2001.

The film is set on a mansion at the end of the 19th century and is about two sisters who watch over their third sister on her deathbed, torn between fearing she might die and hoping that she will.

Besson, Luc, Christian Pétron, and Eric Serra. Atlantis a world beyond words. [S.l.]: Gaumont, 2003.

Atlantis is a film containing underwater images of the  animals in the sea.

Coppola, Francis Ford, George Lucas, Godfrey Reggio, Mel Lawrence, Lawrence Taub, Ken Richards, Philip Glass, and Michael Riesman. Powaqqatsi. Qatsi trilogy. Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, 2002.

Powaqqatsi concentrates on people of the developing world. Images from Brazil, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nepal, and Peru make the film a good contrast to Koyaanisqatsi.  Powaqqatsi concentrates more on people and less on their creations or surroundings than in Koyaanisqatsi.

Coppola, Francis Ford, Godfrey Reggio, Ron Fricke, Philip Glass, Michael Riesman, and Michael Hoenig. Koyaanisqatsi. Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment, 2002.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word meaning ‘life out of balance’. Created between 1975 and 1982, Koyaanisqatsi is an apocalyptic vision of two different worlds – urban life, and technology versus the environment.

Fricke, Ron, Mark Magidson, and Michael Stearns. Chronos. Seattle, Wash: Miramar, 1991.

Time lapse sequences, concepts and techniques clearly being the seed for Baraka.

Fricke, Ron, Mark Magidson, Bob Green, Genevieve Nicholas, Constantine Nicholas, Michael Stearns, David E. Aubrey, and Richard Vetter. Baraka. [Orland Park, Ill.?]: MPI Home Video, 2001.

The film has no plot, contains no actors and has no script.  Instead, high quality 70mm images show some of the best, and worse, parts of nature and human life.

Jacob, Irène, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Frederique Feder, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Trois couleurs. Three colors. Red Rouge. Burbank: Distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2003.

Red is about fraternity (brotherhood), which it examines by showing characters whose lives gradually become closely interconnected, with bonds forming between two characters who appear to have little in common.

Kieslowski, Krzysztof, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Zbigniew Preisner, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, and Jerzy Stuhr. Trois couleurs, blanc Three colors, white. Burbank: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2003.

This film illustrates the second theme of the Three Colors trilogy, equality, through the two desires of the protagonist Karol Karol: improving his station in life, and revenge. In contrast to the introspective, melancholy, and eventually hopeful stories of Blue and Red, White is a black comedy.

Kieslowski, Krzysztof, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Juliette Binoche, Benoît Régent, Hélène Vincent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Véry, and Emmanuèle Riva. Trois couleurs, bleu Three colors, blue. Burbank: Miramax Home Entertainment, 1994.

According to Kieślowski, the subject of the film is liberty, specifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning.

Perrin, Jacques, Claude Nuridsany, and Marie Pérennou. Microcosmos le peuple de l’herbe. [S.l.]: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2005.

Microcosmos the animal world is bought to life with the aid of ‘Macrovision ‘ and specially adapted cameras.

Reggio, Godfrey, Joe Beirne, Lawrence Taub, Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Riesman, and Philip Glass. Naqoyqatsi. Burbank, Calif: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2002.

Naqoyqatsi is he final part of the Qatsi trilogy, in which Godfrey Reggio expresses technology and more modern times.

Tarkovsky, Andrei. Le Miroir. France: mk2, 2000.

Film is loosely autobiographical, blending childhood memories, newsreel footage and poems by his father Arseny Tarkovsky.

Tarkovsky, Andrei. Solaris. 2002.

A meditative psychodrama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the planet Solaris.

Wilson, Robert, Susan Sontag, Philip Glass, David Byrne, Katharina Otto-Bernstein, and Robert Wilson. Absolute Wilson. [New York]: New Yorker Video, 2007.

Chronicles the epic life, times and creative genius of Robert Wilson.

Research Outcomes

METADATA schema/application profile for a work of art previously created

Title: The Eyes of the Skin

Media: Light installation for the dance performance

Exhibition date and location: Faculty Dance Concert at Meany Studio Theatre, University Washington, Seattle, WA, December 4-6, 2009

Premier location and date: Meany Studio Theatre, University Washington, Seattle, WA, December 4-6, 2009

Choreography: Jennifer Salk
Media Artist: Maja Petrić
Stage Director: Peter Bracilano
Fabrication Lead: Nathan Wade
Dancers: Alethea Alexander, Callie Arnold, Chloe Bonnell, Arianne Herman, Courtney Lawson, Jennifer Lin Le Mesurier, David Lorence

Description: Associate Professor Jennifer Salk explores the often twisted and delicate nature of tenderness as she works with dancers in collaboration with digital and experimental artist Maja Petrić. Tenderness is defined as a tendency to express warm, compassionate, or affectionate feelings. But in medicine it stands for pain or discomfort when an affected area is touched. By definition, tenderness is both a pleasure and pain as a result of susceptibility that is being defined by the juxtaposition of the two opposed characteristics. Maja Petrić focused on the dichotomy of tenderness that ranges between pleasure and pain and as such relates to her research of the sublime and the multiplicity of the sublime experience. These ideas are combined in the form of a fabricated wall that covers the north wall of the stage and that cracks during the dance performance. As the wall cracks the light appear through the cracks. The wall is lit to change colors and light appearing from the cracks intensifies and changes color in response to the dancer’s presence.

Artist statement: My work is focused on changing the perception of space in function of art. For that she looks into perception, space and art. Study of perception includes looking into sensation, experience, and phenomenology. Dealing with space involves working with various materials, fabricating structures and designing light. In core of her artistic research is the sublime.

In the 1st century AD Longinus discussed the sublime as something that is great, elevated, or lofty. In 18th century Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant introduced horror as a source of the sublime. These prompted even more definitions of the sublime in which the biggest question remains the experience of it. My interest is the multiplicity of those experiences and my focus is on the dichotomy between pleasure and pain, divine and hell, as distinct instances of the single sublime.

Through transformative spatial experiences of the cracking wall, I aim to create new opportunities for accessing the sublime by means of experimentation with both technology and traditional materials. My approach to creating spatial installations for facilitating new interpretations and incarnations of the sublime combines principles of architecture, lighting design, audiovisual systems, multisensory devices, electrical, mechanical and software engineering.

Keywords: sublime, dichotomy, light, color, crack, deterioration, fracture, deconstruction, construction, art, responsive, architecture, dance, performance, susceptibility, tenderness, lightness, darkness, change, rhythm

Documentation:

Image documentation date: December 2nd, 2009.

Documentation author: Maja Petrić

Documentation of the production process: Gallery

Documentation of the preproduction process: Proposal, Light Synopsys, Storyboard

Status of the work: Disassembled and disposed after the closing of the performance on December 6th, 2009. Currently creating new iterations of this work.

The Crack
Research Project Title and original description/proposal
Ongoing

Research Outcomes

The video installation Three Colors and Shapes is inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s color theory. Kandinsky didn’t see color in isolation but in relation to shape and that together they create specific spatial effects. This theory is used as a starting point for creating a new iteration of sensory fusion through video installation. Three distinctly shaped and colored objects – yellow pyramid, red cube and blue sphere are positioned on the wall. Inside of each objects there are dynamic LED lights and a video that add to the look and feel of the same colored shape that they are displayed in. Viewers are invited to look inside the objects and engage in three distinct experiences of color and shape.
Below are the screenshots and the videos that appear in three objects.

Cracking is an installation of a wall in a room cracking in real time and light coming through the cracks. These iterations display different processes of deterioration that are juxtaposed with light which stands as an opposite of the deterioration. Together, elements symbolizing ugly and beautiful are to create experience that ranges from dreary to placable.

Choreography: Jennifer Salk
Media Artist: Maja Petrić
Stage Director: Peter Bracilano
Fabrication Lead: Nathan Wade
Dancers: Alethea Alexander, Callie Arnold, Chloe Bonnell, Arianne Herman, Courtney Lawson, Jennifer Lin Le Mesurier, David Lorence

Associate Professor Jennifer Salk explores the often twisted and delicate nature of tenderness as she works with dancers in collaboration with digital and experimental artist Maja Petrić. Tenderness is defined as a tendency to express warm, compassionate, or affectionate feelings. But in medicine it stands for pain or discomfort when an affected area is touched. By definition, tenderness is both a pleasure and pain as a result of susceptibility that is being defined by the juxtaposition of the two opposed characteristics. Maja Petrić’s focused on the dichotomy of tenderness that ranges between pleasure and pain and as such relates to her research of the sublime and the multiplicity of the sublime experience. These ideas are combined in the form of a fabricated wall that covers the north wall of the stage and that cracks during the dance performance. As the wall cracks the light appear through the cracks. The wall is lit to change colors and light appearing from the cracks intensifies and changes color in response to the dancer’s presence.

Balkans is an experimental documentary stereoscopically projected onto the walls, floors, and ceilings of a cube shaped space. It consists of animated visualization of Wikipedia’s definition of the word Balkans. The following keywords that are found in Wikipedia’s definition of Balkans are visualized – southeastern Europe, 550,000 km, 53 million Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, mainland of Greece, The Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, the European part of Turkey, somewhat elastic, Balkan mountains, fragmented, violent, wars, rebellions, invasions, clashes, splinter, violence, religious strife, ethnic clannishness, and hinterland. Most of these words and other definitions of Balkans have a  negative context, and evoke a daunting sense of the place. The documentary questions means of constructing these classifications.

Beton is an art book that resulted out of the site study of the SUNY Oswego campus in the Oswego, New York that is in large built in concrete. The material, which in German and Croatian is called beton, became the source of inspiration for creating an art book. Within concrete covers there is a sequence of images about concrete and a German man who inhabits the concrete environment.