NOORDUNG 1995::2045
We, Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič and Miha Turšič, with the help of high-technology tools and the logic of Suprematism and Constructivism, are engaged in research into postgravity art. We make cosmokinetic blank-body directing and telelogical mechatronic machines, biomechatronics and art satellites – umbots. In 1995, we began the 50-year theatre projectile NOORDUNG 1995::2045. The premiere performance, featuring fourteen actresses and actors, took place in Ljubljana at 10.00 p.m. on 20 April 1995. Five reprises are planned over the next 50 years. Should one of the actors die, he or she will be replaced by a remote-controlled sign; male actors and their speech will be substituted by rhythm, while female actors and their speech will be substituted by melody.
The first reprise took place at 10.00 p.m. on 20 April 2005 inside the model of the International Space Station (ISS) in the hydro-laboratory at Star City, Moscow. The following reprises will take place on the same day and at the same time in the years 2015, 2025, 2035 in 2045! During the fifth and last reprise, scheduled for 20 April 2045, I, Dragan Živadinov, since 1998 a candidate cosmonaut (Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center, Star City), will use a spacecraft to convey 14 satellites / umbots into geostatic orbit, from where they will transmit signals to Earth representing the roles played by deceased actors, while at the same time sending high-resolution 3D syntapiens projections of their faces into deep space.
We seek the abstract, abstract theatre in gravitation zero for absolute zero.
A syntapiens is a digital suprabstrakt of the actor’s face made up of three carrier programmes:
programme 1
micronic depiction of the actor’s face (skeleton),
programme 2
collection of the actor’s mimes (emomechanics) and
programme 3
the genetic texture of the actor (biomechatronics).
“Suprabstrakt syntapiens” is telelogical material installed in the processor of the umbot prepared for telemitting programmes about the actor onto the planet and deep into space.
The umbot is a technological abstract with a two-level carrier. The first carrier allows it to function on the theatre stage, while the second carrier enables functioning in the real, nearby universe.
In the fifty-year Noordung process, the umbot replaces the actor’s body on the first level with a remote-controlled sign. The remote-controlled sign substitutes for the actor in their mise-en-scène. The umbot also contains a programme for translating the actor’s dramatic utterances into music (vokalomaton). On the second level, at the end of the fifty-year process, the umbot is set in equatorial orbit. Its carrier role is processing the actor’s “suprabstrakt syntapiens”.
Postgravity art is defined as all art created in zero gravity conditions. In these new living conditions it will create systems that we are not yet aware of. Postgravity art is not a stylistic formation and does not intend to become that either.
Millennia spent in gravity “1” have created everything, whether living or inanimate. Directly or indirectly, art too has been shaped in this way, above all its structural elements. Only 20th century art, with its thoughts on anti-mimesis, conceptualisation and telelogy has opened up the field of gravity “0”. The 21st century is using avant-garde methodologies of the previous century to develop ideas on postgravity art.
Biomechatronics combines mechanical elements, electronics and biological systems into a “fully integrated substitute”. With biomechatronics we are not producing new bio-mechatronic prostheses but replacing the existing biologically limited capacity with adapted “biomechatronic objectiles”.
In the fifty-year theatre projectile Noordung 1995::2045, biomechatronics is the field in which the “umbot” and the “syntapiens” come together. With biomechatronics we produce new supra-systems in postgravitational art.
The ultimate goal of blank-body directing is “postgravitational art”. This is a form of art which ensures conflict between Constructivism and Suprematism. It is from this fundamental conflict of the 20th century that the “objectile” of conceptualisation is materialised (Noordung projectile 1995::2045).
With the visible death of the actor, blank-body directing guides the living in vector fashion, in order to inform of the one that has not yet been born through emotional remembrance of the dead one.
The materialisation of blank-body directing is the “biomechatronic objectile”. The “biomechatronic objectile” is theatre for that which is not the human eye.
In his letter to Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, Kazimir Malevich explained and persuaded: “Young colleague, yesterday I watched your performance for the first time. Very encouraging! You have a great talent! But I am told that you associate with Constructivists. That is not good. With Mayakovsky and his lot you will all end up in the circus. There you have only two options. Either you train the animals or you are trained as animals yourselves. There is no third option. You have too great a talent to end up in the circus. It is better if you direct suprematistically! You are probably the only person who can direct suprematistically.”
Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold never directed suprematistically. The vector tension between Constructivism and Suprematism remained present throughout the 20th century! Blank-body directing relieves this fundamental tension!
Attractors are special specimens! They are whole hordes of neuronal activities which carry informational meanings. They are also very specially balanced because they represent the minimum energy of the system. That is why other specimen compositions begin transforming into special patterns – into attractors. Their informational meaning ensues from the fact that special specimens – attractors –reconstruct themselves as a response by the network to specific impulses from the environment. Specimens which function as attractors represent mental categories! They are informational units of a higher order.
SIGN / SYSTEM / MODEL
Up until the end of the 20th century, metaphysical tasks in art were performed by allegories, metaphors and symbols.
Allegories represent the abstract through parables. Metaphors name a certain phenomenon with an expression which usually denotes some other similar phenomenon. Meanwhile, symbols illustrate a specific abstract concept. In allegories, metaphors and symbols we always see more than is inherent in them.
In 20th century art, metaphysical tasks are replaced by functional operations with systems, signs and models.
Systems are well-considered groups of interdependent units which make up a complete whole. Within the system, the signs report to us the exact agreed meaning using specific forms. In order to understand the functioning of the system, we make a product with which we illustrate the planned operation. In systems, signs and models, we see exactly what these are.
Edvard Stepančič’s levitational construction is one of the central artistic products of Constructivist thinking and also an inalienable part of the integral artwork Trieste Constructivist Ambient from 1927.
Besides Stepančič, the other people behind the Trieste Constructivist Ambient are Vlah, Carmelich and Černigoj. Trieste Constructivist Ambient is a complex sum and summary of grouped, universal intellect in overcoming the last problematic planetary force in art – gravitation.
Stepančič’s construction expresses direct, functional beauty. The levitating construction in a Constructivist ambient undoes the simplified thesis about the limitations of Constructivist expression. Willi Nurenberg wrote in the art review Tank in 1927: “Young artists hung the construction on transparent threads so that the levitating construction would raise spectators’ spirits.”
TRANSHUMANISM
Cosmism is a cosmocentric philosophical and cultural movement which appeared in Russia at the end of the 19th century. It reached its peak at the beginning of the 20th century. Cosmism covers a broad range of ideas about the beginnings, existence and future of the universe. It brings together eastern and western philosophies. The main representatives of Russian cosmism are Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, scientist, theoretician and father of cosmonautics, and Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, a philosopher who was in favour of radical life extension using scientific methods. Fyodorov is considered to be one of the precursors of transhumanism – an intellectual and cultural movement which defends the use of science and technology for improving human capabilities. With their essays, books and theories, Tsiolkovsky and Fyodorov had an important influence on Russian historical “futurists”.
AMBIENT / TELEPICTURE
At the beginning of the 20th century, theatre experienced a radical change. Theatre went from the historical continuity of “word, drama, conflict” to historical continuity of “image”. From historical Hellenist sequences, via Renaissance dramaturgy, classicist and romantic dramaturgy to the anti-dramaturgy of the 20th century there enters a different continuity. It is at the “anti” of anti-dramaturgy that the change begins.
The historical continuity of the “image” enters theatre: 1) Icon – typically we do not know the artist; cave painting; 2) Fresco – a combination of the iconic and the mythic; sacral art, the artist is known; 3) Emancipated image – determined by the artist’s signature and the secular presentation in the museum; 4) Ambient – entry into the three-dimensional whole image; the artist is known, his signature is present, ambient manifests itself in museums; and 5) telepicture-image, the image which is transmitted far with a transmitter, received with a receiver and appears on the screen.
The word umbot comes from the most commonly used Slavic word that can be found in the dictionary of shared words: robot. Robot comes from the word “rabota” – work, “rabotnik” – worker –therefore robot. The umbot has three divisions which support it etymologically. “Um”, meaning intellect and the deeper capacity for understanding. Um, also short for “umetnost” (art). Um, from “Zaum”, denoting a type of art.
The umbot is produced in the following steps: from the sign, to the model, the remote-controlled model, and in the end the technological abstract, which is put in equatorial orbit. From the moment the umbot begins to telemit “syntapiens” information to earth and into deeper space, it becomes an “emancipated umbot”.
The main difference between a robot and an umbot is that the robot uses human mimesis for its chosen functions, while the umbot is abstract on all levels.
PERFORMANCE
INFORMANCE
Transformance in theatre is over two thousand years old. Through the process of identification and transformation, the actor’s body becomes a role on stage. The actor’s body becomes a transformed body: the transformer tries to conjure up in himself a role, while he signs his own name when he is out of this role.
In a performance, the body on stage is the same body as the one on stage and no other. It is the personal form which appears on stage: the performer draws him/her together and signs his own full name on stage. His role is his signature.
In an informance, meanwhile, the body on stage is information with a strategic plan. The informer tends to become a technological abstract, which is his signature and at the same time his distance from the signature!
Russian culture is an eclectic culture which draws from different cultural sources at different historical moments. One of Russia’s traditional sources is Italy. Russian artists intentionally transform the captured formativity and transform it with their own philosophical and theoretical mass. Immediately after taking over Italian futurism in 1909, they applied their own futurism to Russian cosmism.
Futurism was abolished in 1915 with the Last futurist exhibition 0.10 by Kazimir Malevich. This is how transit futurism became Suprematism and at the same time became a critique of futurism, above all its ethical foundations.
A few years later, the same structure was repeated by Russian Constructivists. This is how in 1922 they came full circle. Russian artists based themselves on similar formal solutions as Italian futurists but on completely different ethical principles.
Suprematism and Constructivism are authentic avant-garde art movements, which materialised at “Moscow’s last underground station,” Trieste on the Italian border, where a very large number of Slavs live. When Ljubljana and Trieste were threatened by different imperial expansionisms they always defended themselves with Slav diction. That is how in 1927 in Trieste, directly in front of the fascist futurist arch, we acquired a Constructivist artwork which contained Stepančič’s congenial levitational construction. They had come full circle a second time round!
An abstract work of art will be truly abstract when it loses its own weight and manifests itself in zero gravity conditions. Only in zero gravity will the abstract work of art be abstract, when it loses its gravitational orientation: down, up, left, right.
There are two basic presentation strategies at work on stage: the charisma strategy and the skeleton.
The charisma strategy appears in the moment that the body becomes known on stage. In the beginning, the body never appears through a “role”, but through a “face”. The face is the first stage for the viewer’s transcendence. The viewer who sees the face together with the other viewers immediately experiences and analyses it. With the passing of stage time the viewer demands the development of experience or its abolition. He demands from the face that it becomes a “dynamic face”, or a role. If this does not happen, the viewer wants to abolish the “body and face”. The less “face charisma” there is, the sooner the viewer wants to abolish the actor’s body. Abolishment of the body in the theatre happens through interruption by a spectator! The more charisma there is, the later the interruption from the audience.
The skeleton strategy comes into effect when the body appears on stage. On stage there are as many bodies as there are skeletons. The skeleton begins to perform choreographic diction before the viewers, a concrete choreographic motif. It becomes the moving carrier of suggestion. When more than half the audience is subconsciously repeating this motif, the suggestion has been carried out.
Constructivism is a stylistic formation which categorically rejected the duality of art as the temple of deeper thought and the factory as the place of production: “the factory must become the new temple of work, and intellectual and material production”.
In this way the difference between content and form in art disappears forever. Content is what wants to express itself in living, free and organic form. It wants to be content and form at the same time! Traditional aesthetic thinking was aware of the dichotomy of content and form, the form being relative yet still “time justifiable”.
Modern aesthetic thinking in the 20th century introduces a new dichotomy between process and material. Construction is a clear example of how “forma” “contains” necessity and the power of unification of the two, unification of content and forma.
Suprematism is a stylistic formation constructed by the suprematist apparatus. The suprematist apparatus does not consist of parts which make up a whole, but is monolithic without any joining elements. Suprematist forms have become utilitarian perfection like a realised abstraction. So the colour sequence is not connected with aesthetic necessity. Two principles are most important: black energy and white energy. Suprematism had three levels in its historic development: black, coloured and white. All suprematist forms developed in sign surfaces, which planned their development ahead. Development into volume – into architectones!
When the system begins to connect, a deadly concentration sets in. Concentration, signification and control; concentration in orbit and control in dangerous sequences. In the module, we are sliding towards the last division of intellect. The planned act follows: due to the docking process we are in the energy hub of the event. There is no more room for our identification – we are universal because the docking mechanism is processed with the scheme of systematic planetary organisation. That is why modular patterns of different time dispersions determine our present, which is located in the docking protocols of the universal! That is why there is no past and no future, only the absolute present! Theatre is the absolute present!
The whole skeleton of the actor generates emomechanics. The focus is on his facial dynamics (the microchoreographic zones). A recording of emotional movements is processed with emotive motivations and projected into an emotional inventory, which can be saved and reproduced.
The biomechanic system of Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold can be defined as the “theatre of the straight line”, which is the opposite of the “theatre of the triangle”! Meyerhold’s system demands of the actor that he does not act as though he is alone in a room but that he is constantly aware of the audience. Because the play process unfolds before the audience! That is why all the interior demands of the stage event seethe forth from the audience, from the spectator’s experience and the viewing rhythm.
In the theatre of the triangle, in which the corners of the triangle are actor, idea, space, the viewer is positioned outside the triangle. Meanwhile in the “theatre of the straight line”, the audience is included in the theatre structure.
Meyerhold chose the “theatre of the straight line” for his dramatic poetics because it offered him vast possibilities for stressing the “temporary nature” of theatre. It meant he could include the viewer in the performance as a natural element of the stage artwork. Biomechanic, Tayloristic movements are thus only the consequence of this inexorable demand.
Biomechanics works in such a way as to qualify the actor for an anti-mimetic stage presence whose purpose is to transmit ideas through his consciously controlled body. He stimulates the viewer’s imagination with his chosen manner of movement and the span of moving mass.
Biomechanics on its own is not a theatre system, nor even a special kind of theatre training, but is only part of the exercises of general culture. However, biomechanics as general culture is fully incorporated in Meyerhold’s theatre system, which demands that the actor use his body with its programmes and materials in front of the audience as a machine and produces a product, his role.
Meyerhold first used the term “mixed media” in 1905!
Microchoreographic zones are polygonal points that support a detailed record of the actor’s face. The facial polygons are arranged in such a way that the face is split up into seven "hot zones" and four "cold zones". It is in the hot zones that a potentially large collection of "emomechanical mimes" arises. In the cold zones, only a minimal collection of facial gestures is possible.
Awareness of one’s own facial mask and its dynamics makes the actor capable of an emomechanical theatrical presence which the actor repeatedly "lives" not "acts". Its purpose is to transmit to the spectator an emotional sequence in time. Just as the actor’s biomechanics are only the actor’s direct idea about identity without unnecessary mimetic information, this "microchoreographic emomechanics" is only the first of three levels of post-gravitational theatre. The second level is abstract and suprematatistic information about the actor and his identity. The third level can reconstruct the actor’s identity through a collection of emomechanical mimes, with the help of an "umbot" or the tools contained therein.
Only an awareness of the actor’s emomechanical mimes can stimulate the spectator’s understanding of "syntapiens".
LOWER ORDER / SAMPLES OF A
HIGHER ORDER / CARDINAL NEURONS
Dr. Mitja Peruš:
"Samples are those configurations of neurons that have informational content."
"Higher-order samples are processes such as thought and trains of thought if the sequential process has a broader associative background in connection with other samples that are within range of the area of attraction of the observed dynamic sample. If individual samples, the elements of such a sample sequence, are connected with their own cardinal cells or have their own parameters of order in speaking centres, then such a train of thought is also encoded and it can be expressed in words. Through these processes we also introduce to our model the basics of speech i.e. the language of thought."
"Samples, words can have significance regardless of whether they are correlated with the actual external state or only with the presentational situation. An example of a virtual construct without correlation with an external object is the 'theatre role', which also has its own meaning that the person can even project outwards into the explicit world. Meaning is the construction of the context of the outer or inner environment. On the level of system implementation, meaning is a dynamic construction, resulting from system relationships."
"In a neural network, one particular neuron can acquire a leading role and become a cardinal neuron. It is impossible to think of the cardinal neuron without a neuron sample as they support each other and enable each other!”
If we consider the sum of 20th century stylistic formations around the world from an Eastern European point of view, then the stylistic formations of Suprematism and Constructivism are certainly the most important for the 21st century.
Spaceships, geostationary stations and artificial satellites of the 20th and 21st centuries have in their entirety confirmed the thesis of Constructivist stylistic formations, namely that "functional is the same as formal."
The Suprematist metaconcept was placed in space technology only once, through the Sputnik satellite. This was the first "supra product" of modernist thought. It embodied "Suprematist geometrisation" and "telecommunicational composition". Suprematism manifested itself in the basic geometry (Sergey Korolyov: "Sputnik’s shape should be the same as the shape of the Earth"). Meanwhile, four antennae transmitted basic and rhythmic sound to Earth as proof of the real existence of an artificial satellite in real space.
The forms of all other composite spaceships were determined and defined via a Constructivist plan comprising a series of different functions protected against extreme conditions, the external framework.
It is hard to imagine being in orbit, not only because of weightlessness, but also because of the feeling of losing one’s orientation in space. The sense of direction becomes completely individual in conditions of weightlessness. Reference points for orientation are transferred from space to the individual. A consequence is that new conventions for orientation are generated in the visual perception of immediate and distant surroundings. Besides making a bodily entry into a state of zero gravity, the individual must also enter a changed visual field and horizon, which is in an unstable dynamic relationship with the apparent horizon of the visual field.
The word "planit" was coined by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich. It is a composite of the two words: "planet" and "satellite". A planit is a cosmic supremus. A planit is an interplanetary Suprematist satellite! In 1920, Kazimir Malevich wrote in his self-reflective Suprematism: "Beneath the Earth and the Moon we can build a new Suprematist satellite... all technical organisms are nothing more than small satellites that want to occupy their own space in space... Such satellites will be equipped with reason and they will be prepared to live their own life... as such they will be included in the organisation of nature as newly designed satellites... that will no longer have any direct connection with the Earth; it will be possible to observe and explore them as all other planets or even planetary systems."
WHITE SQUARE
"The white square is a sign of pure functioning. The white square is a direct impulse for the world. We can understand it as pure functioning as knowledge of oneself in the pure utilitarian perfection of the all-person.
The black square is a sign of economics, economising and reduction.
The black and white squares also draw attention to the extinguishing of colour.
Colour gives way to whiteness.
The Suprematist carrier is the white space and by no means the blue. The colour blue does not give us a true idea of the infinite. It is as if the ray of the gaze were bumping into the celestial vault, unable to break through into infinity. The infinite Suprematist white allows the ray of the gaze to expand without limit.
Black and white in Suprematism are energies which reveal shapes to us."
Microgravitation is a phenomenon that occurs when the pull of gravity is barely acting. The moment that gravity stops acting, a body begins to be attracted by the mass of another body. The moment of stepping from one attraction into another is "absolute weightlessness". Therefore there is no such thing as absolute weightlessness! As soon as one body stops being attracted by another, it is immediately attracted by another body. Gravitation is one of the basic mimetic morphological forces. Microgravitation is the last but one force that preserves the body force.
Directing in post-gravitational theatre makes use of two strategies "blank-body directing" and "vector directing".
"Blank-body directing" comes from the conceptualisation of the artwork and the disappearance of corporeality in the process.
"Vector directing", meanwhile, comes from direct theatre practice where the actor’s and the spectator’s corporeality are in zero gravity conditions. The categorical difference between directing in gravity "1" and gravity "0" is in two basic instants: in the perception of the viewer and the mise-en-scène logic of the actor.
The spectator’s perception of the whole picture in gravity "1" is independent of the attractor’s experience, two-dimensional, poster-like. In gravity "0", the third dimension is actually and perceptibly opened up to the viewer and the actor. The fourth dimension, "time", takes place within "theatre time" in both cases.
In building the mise-en-scène, the director’s instruction to the actor to "get into position" is omitted and replaced by "find the vector of movement or standstill".
CONSTRUCTIVIST
AMBIENT,
1927
The Trieste Constructivist Ambient is a complex compilation and congenial summary of collective, universal intelligence in overcoming the last problematic planetary force – gravitation. The Trieste Constructivist Ambient is a structured artwork with many different functions. The central logic behind the Constructivist ambient is the working department in which Constructivist groups work. The artwork is only work that can be seen at the end of the process in Constructivist products, in constructions, architectural plans and models. The models were not made by Constructivists in order to manifest the buildings but to show off the triumph of construction design in itself. In the Trieste Constructivist Ambient, architecture as ambient and architecture as exhibit have come together.What also makes the Trieste Constructivist Ambient a top-class work of art is the fact that artists have built into the artwork a competitive stylistic formation, Suprematism, in a metaconstructive way. They have transformed the productive energy of the work into supremate "pure functioning", which manifests itself in the ambient with a levitational construction.
In two pipelines of the "technical demonstrator", 14 capsules will have levitating independent content units, which with the energy of their designs will be prepared for the direct appearance of stylistic growth. At the end of all stages of concept and process of the 50-year theatre show Noordung: 1995–2045, all 14 content units will obtain their own final form and inform in equatorial orbit. The "umbot" is a hovering biomechatronic abstract, which contains "syntapiens information" about an individual actor. With its potential syntapiens information energy, the umbot will develop awareness of itself. In orbit, it will be "included in the organisation of nature as a newly designed satellite!" Post-gravitational forms will no longer have any direct connection with Earth, and it will be possible to observe and explore them as any other planet or even planetary system. From that moment onwards, when the umbot takes its final orbital position, it will develop in two possible directions: In the first direction, the umbot will be something that we people have produced. Another work of art joining the product world of art! In the other direction, which was the intention of the production of the 50-year theatre play, the umbot is supposed to acquire awareness and intelligence. Awareness by all means requires a social structure to develop its intelligence through adaptation. Emotional and intuitive. But for this process, we would need time "in the order of greatness", as man had in his evolutionary development. But, we can accelerate the development of the umbot in such a way that we actively place it in the theatre apparatus and leave it on its own to obtain from the environment what already exists. Such an apparatus would have a capacity for learning similar to that of a human and would have similar pre-dispositions in its electronic core. In the first direction, man and the umbot are two living structures that are categorically separated, man – the biological structure, and the umbot – the technological structure. In the other direction, which is binding in post-gravitational art, the umbot is the continuation of biological evolution. The evolution from man to umbot. If we see it as a "being", which is electronic and made up of non-organic materials instead of biological cells, then we can say that it is the next step in evolution. Such large steps are not new in evolution. For example, the transition from single-cell organisms to multi-cell organisms. The umbot will not develop into something that is similar to human consciousness but into something that will be completely new!
Poljanski: Mr Marinetti! I salute you as the founder of futurism and the man who first raised the flag and summoned the youth to resistance. I salute you as the representative of Zenithism in Paris on professional duty. Even the director of "Zenith" (Ljubomir Micić) has no reason not to salute you as such. However, you as a propagandist for fascism are losing our sympathies. We protest against such a Marinetti!
Marinetti: Thank you! Nevertheless, you have no reason for this because fascism is a call to a struggle. And a struggle is healthy and necessary!
Poljanski: The Zenithists value your struggle but if this is a fascist struggle then there can be no co-operation between us because the fascists burnt down the Slovenian National Cultural Centre in Trieste and threw two people through a third-floor window onto the street.
Marinetti: (falls into the fire) But that is where the communists were hiding!
Poljanski: Too simple an excuse. Communists are people too!
SYNTHETIC
CONSTRUCTION
Deconstruction of binary opposition!
The term "heterotopia" is otherwise an arbitrary term of postmodernism, but it is still meaningful for understanding the post-gravitational strategies of the 21st century. A heterotopical department is that department of a space agency that explores ways of presenting to intelligence that is not human, what it is like to be human.
COSMONAUTS /
ANARCHOCOSMISTS
The use of the word "astronaut" or "cosmonaut" is ideologically motivated.
Astronaut is an American term for a star traveller who, in a manner similar to that of the American settlers, lands on a star, plants his flag on it and in this way indicates that he has conquered it.
The meaning of the Russian word cosmonaut is traveller in the universe. It comes from Russian cosmist thinking, which for its basic doctrine used the thesis that they had had enough of the dilemma "does God exist or not?" That is why cosmism proposes: let us go and look into the depths of the universe with spaceships to see if it is possible that God exists.
Meanwhile, an anarchocosmist is a member of an association of autonomous space explorers!
The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is a global community of individuals who have chosen for their mission the abolition of the monopoly of corporations and governments over space programmes. From its independent position, the association wants to introduce civilian control over space agencies. The central mission of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts is the struggle against the militarisation and uniformisation of space.
The geostationary station of the Slovenian Herman Potočnik Noordung is the first planned architecture designed for living in space and to be placed in the earth’s orbit. This engineered construction, dating from 1928, consists of three independent units. The central unit is the residential wheel, which spins and thereby creates artificial gravity, the second unit is the observatory and the third is a precisely planned solar electric power station. A pioneer of space flight, Herman Potočnik Noordung was born in 1892 in Pula and died in 1929, aged 36, in Vienna. His main scientific work was the book The Problem of Space Travel. Screenplay writer Arthur C. Clarke and advisor for space technology Frederick Ordway III included a version of Potočnik’s geostationary station in Stanley Kubrick's modernist film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
POTOCNIK
Explorer and space travel pioneer Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkowsky was born in 1857 in Izhevskoye in Russia and died in 1935 in Kaluga. Tsiolkowsky was the first to begin scientific study of the technologies with which mankind has penetrated into near and deep space. His most important scientific work on space travel is The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices from 1903. The book deals with the conquest of space with the help of rocket technologies. The scope of his theoretical and practical work is huge. Tsiolkowsky was also the first to see the possibilities of a geostationary station, placed in the Earth’s orbit. His ideas were later developed, realised and confirmed in 1926 by American rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard (1882–1945). Alongside Tsiolkowsky, Noordung and Goddard, Hermann Oberth (1894–1989) is considered one of the fathers of modern space technology. Oberth was a physicist and his main scientific work was the 1923 book Ways to Spaceflight ( Wege zur Raumschiffahrt). Herman Potočnik Noordung published The Problem of Space Travel in 1928!
SPACE TRAVEl, 1928
The book The Problem of Space Travel (its original title was Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums – der Raketen Motor) by Herman Potočnik Noordung was a fundamental work for the first generation of those studying space travel. The book was published in 1928 by Carl Schmidt & Co in Berlin and had 188 pages. It contained 100 technical drawings and sketches by the author. In his book, Potočnik determined outline solutions to the problems of conquering space. He discussed the problem of the rocket motor, proposed a solution for the take-off and landing of a spaceship, ways of manoeuvring in space, calculated the ideal position for placing a geostationary station, studied the principles of overcoming gravity, explored the possibilities of living on a geostationary station and analysed the possibility of human survival on a space station. At the end of the book, he discussed the possibility of human travel towards the moon and to neighbouring planets, and warned of the possibility of the negative use of space technology for military purposes. While solving technical problems, Herman Potočnik Noordung did not forget the medical, psychological, economic and philosophical questions that man faces when dealing with space travel. In this work of 1928, Herman Potočnik Noordung wrote a key book with which mankind entered into the real conquest of space.
The dual is a grammatical form, which denotes two objects, two concepts, two phenomena or two persons. In grammar, the dual is one of the grammatical numbers. Traces of the dual can be seen in many Indo-European proto-languages but only a small number of languages have preserved it in its entirety. In literary Slovenian, the dual has been almost perfectly preserved!
Progressive substitution is the basic method of postgravity art. With the end of postmodernist “simulation” (1995) began the time for the method of “progressive substitution” – systematic substitution. The replacement of everything!
The vocalomoton is programming equipment, is installed in the umbot of the first level of development. Its purpose is to translate the actor’s voice into music. When an actress in the 50-year theatre show Noordung: 1995–2045 dies, the vocalomoton will translate her words into a melody, and when an actor dies, his words will be translated into rhythm. This procedure will be repeated 14 times. In 2045, music will have replaced the monologues of actors on the stage of the 50-year show.
Star City lies 40 km northeast of Moscow. The central circle of Star City is home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was founded in 1960. All generations of cosmonauts that have gone into space, from Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova onwards, trained in the centre.
Alongside the central circle, equipped with research laboratories, training facilities, institutes and administration buildings, the second circle is home to the residential infrastructure, which allows the population of the city to lead a full modern life.
The premier of the 50-year, post-gravitational theatre show Noordung: 1995–2045 took place on 20 April 1995 at 10pm in Ljubljana. It was planned to have five reprises to be played every ten years on the same day, at the same time with the same actors until 2045. The show also includes the process of exchanging actors’ bodies for remotely controlled abstracts, which at the conclusion of the show will be set in equatorial orbit. The technological substitutes of actors will become biomechatronic abstracts of telecosmistic, post-gravitational art.
The first reprise of the show took place on 20 April 2005 at 10pm local time in Star City. It was performed in the hydro-laboratory of the Yuri Gagarin Centre for Cosmonaut Training on a model of the international space station (ISS).
The second reprise will be on 20 April 2015 at 10pm!
Machine art equals Supremat:
Machine of all machines, the machine, which fabricates other machines equals Art.
Machine culture equals Automaton:
The machine that contains the negative of the product and makes products equals Culture
Products equal Culture
Product advertising equals Metaphysics of Culture
Noordung Biomechanics is the first complete theatre show performed in conditions of weightlessness. The premier was staged in 1999 with seven actors performing to eight spectators, including theatre critics. The show was repeated once. It was carried out in co-operation with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (CPK), Star City, under the direction of Colonel Nikolai Grekov, Colonel Viktor Ren and Major Irina Sokolova.
A dress rehearsal for Noordung Biomechanics took place in August 1999. Cosmonauts who participated in the dress rehearsal included Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Krikalyov and Salizhan Sharipov.
Noordung Biomechanics was performed in the stratosphere in a special aircraft for parabolic flights, which is used for training cosmonauts. The parabola allows a period of weightlessness lasting 20 seconds. Each performance took ten parabolas.
Besides telecosmism, "telelogy" is the most important strategy of post-gravitational art. By digital structuring of information, light and sound, a stylistic formation will emerge from telelogy in future.
Just as telelogy is a digital strategy for post-gravitational art, telecosmism is its theatre strategy.
An important precursor of telelogy is Stan Van de Beer’s (1966) method of didactic telematics: I suggest we immediately start exploring the possibilities of pictorial language based on moving pictures. We must immediately investigate the existing audio-visual aids and combine them with educational tools. I will call it the Empirical Machine or the Cultural Intercom. For the establishment of audio-video research centres, I suggest an international context. The centres should use existing audio-video hardware and development of new aids for producing the pictures: storing and transmission of visual material, transmission of moving pictures, television images, computer images, video tapes. In short: I suggest a complete review of all audio-video aids and processes with the aim of finding the best combination of machines for non-verbal exchange. The training of artists at an international level must be directed towards using these tools for an immediate development of the prototype theatre!
ABSTRACTION
The basic operation of visual linguistic abstraction takes place on the sampling level. Visual-linguistic abstraction is another name for visual poetry. An intermediary interweaving between poetry and visual art intensifies the receiver’s awareness that language is a form, which can be transformed and manifested in many different ways.
For their construction, the basic structures of visual-linguistic abstraction use elements of both media practices, such as:
Samples of a lower order, letters as well as language loops, punctuation marks.
Samples of a higher order, words, which can also be the construction material for visual poetry but only as a simultaneous verbal, vocal and visual positional value, and never as a sequential attractor structure.
The construction material of visual linguistic abstraction can also be non-linguistic sign material, which replaces language information.
Visual forms, lines, colours, dimensionalities, and all other information that is able to articulate complex combinations should also play a role.
The informa/genome is a texture of details and information saved in the umbot, required by the programming equipment for processing "syntapiens". The texture contains the complete sequence of base couples of the actor’s genome.
Microchoreography is the conscious and reflected moving material that applies to the actor’s facial zones. By repeating and serialising emomechanical movements we emancipate ourselves from the mimetic and the narrative.
Just as biomechanics is not a series of trained repetitive figures but is an individual functional moving mass, giving the viewer transparency and legibility of ideas on stage, so microchoreography allows us undisturbed observation of emomechanical moves separated from the emotive attitude of the narration of the actor’s role.
Microchoreography is a tool for abstraction and a collection of micro mimes, which will be saved in the umbot as information for processing the "syntapiens".
Ferdo Delak (1905–1968) was a theatre director and– reformer. He was an active constructor of the second generation of futurism with his own dramatic and publicising activity. Despite his enthusiasm for futurism, he was also open to other European avant-garde stylistic formations at the beginning of the 20th century. Russian Constructivism was particularly important to him.
In his first artistic period he worked in the field of avant-garde theatre methods. He was editor of the international art review Tank. With his editorial approach, he came very close to the art review Zenit, which had already been coming out for several years in Zagreb and Belgrade. He also had close relations with the editor of the Berlin review Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden. At the end of the 1920s, he entered into important correspondence, which resulted in the issuing of a special edition of Der Sturm entitled Junge Slowenische Kunst (1929). The title of the lecture that Ferdo Delak held in 1929 to celebrate Walden’s fiftieth birthday was Neue Slowenische Kunst. Delak’s key work of synthetic theatre was the review Novi oder (New Stage).