Kruno Jošt

During nonconsecutive three months artist in residency in Halland region of Sweden, a research was conducted around the problematic toxic sediment created by extensive industrial history of the Borås city on the Viskan river as a part of proposals for the theme of artistic “ecological literacy”.

During residency, for the project purposes Viskan was visited on many occasion. Canoe travel was undertaken to collect samples of the river that were later used to examine microbiological life of the river.

As known from scientific research, some forms of toxicity can be remediated with microorganisms so this was taken as an inspiration to look into ways of enlarging their numbers and activity locally.

Microorganisms can be influenced trough certain sound frequencies in certain volumes that in some cases enlarges their number in shorter time, and without any unwanted effects to environment.

After conducting a research on sound frequencies and its influences on observed microorganisms in the collected samples some of them were designed for the informance (informative performance) on the river itself.

Canoe was arranged into a vessel that can take one participants on the river trip. This canoe had an installation for playing sounds beneficial for the bacteria, but was also tailored for each participant to get into a state of appreciation of the river. At the same time participants could release what is known as Miracle Enzyme, organic compound beneficial for the microorganisms that was created in a prior workshop. An intimate visual reference was tailored for each individual observance of Viskan river and its inhabitants, with accompanying sound and information about micro and macro cosmos.

Research and performative action were executed during Art Inside Out residency Between the Rains in region Halland, Sweden in 2022.

Whole photo-log can be seen below

Photo of a found object, an oak tree leaf that has fallen on the snow. Radiated by the sun, leaf has accumulated enough energy to melt its own image in inverse, a sort of its own cast in the snow.

Photo is a part of  Minor Disturbances with participation of following artists: Rita Cachão, Henry Collins, Edith Doove, Bruno Duarte, Margarete Jahrmann, Kruno Jošt, Jason Karaindros, Robert Maddox-Harle, Ollivier Moreels & Jean-Louis Vincendeau, Sana Murrani,Guiherme Pontes, Michael Punt,Aparna Sharma and Paul Towey.

Inspired by Charles Ives vision of spatially distributed creativity in his unfinished Universe Symphony, The Faculty of Minor Disturbances (FMD) sent out an invitation to create a minor disturbance as we corralled the forces of the universe together with 2I/Borisov, an interstellar comet which visited the solar system.

Ives’s The Unanswered Question was said to be written under the influence of by the New England writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

See participating works here >>

MSF at Stützpunkt ​Teufelsberg gallery, Berlin, is an installation that uses renewable energy, plant, light and sound to create elements that are presented in need of questioning relations of “us” and “nature”.

Installation produces light and sound frequencies that are beneficial to the plant. It is a mobile installation that is powered by sun light over photo-voltaic panel. Electricity is than stored in a battery that powers recycled mobile phone playing specific frequencies for the plant. Battery also powers a light that shines trough red and blue led diodes benefiting plant growth and fruit development.

MSF is art that is beneficial to the plant. It is not solely here to be an art piece for human observation. thus, it is asking a question of art production – who is it for and why, art institutions – who they present art and why, and reasons for art in Anthropocene.

Installation that utilizes sound, light and living plant, “Sound  Fertilizer” is presented at Cologne gallery Tiefgarage situated in multicultural Ebertplatz, between 22. and 26. July 2018.

Zucchini plant is positioned at the middle of the gallery, a light bulb above and two mobile phones with sets of frequencies placed next to the plant. Zucchini has been planted in the straw bale at Center for Creative Solution in Croatia and after few months transported with  car over the half-borders (borders running only on one side of the neighboring countries) to Cologne. Cucurbita L has no known origin, some coming from USA and some from India. Its multiculturalism resembles every large EU city with its multicultural inhabitants and especially Cologne’s Ebertplatz where it is situated. 

Light used has spectrum of 4000K that enables growth and flowering, while two recycled mobile phones (non functioning, used only as sound players) play sets of frequencies created especially for zucchini plant.

Sound Fertilizer encourages plant to grow in healthy and stable conditions, inside the gallery. Technology enabled art for the plant can also pos3e a question of its environment – anthropocentric culture that grows on both neo-liberal capitalism and/or social state of liberal humanism, while neither of options are furthering away from unbalanced relationship of people as subject and plants as object.

This installation makes plant a subject, as sound is artistically produced and intended for a plant.

3 weeks of workshops with Srishti University for Art, Design and Technology students resulted with an exhibition opened on 14.12.17.  in the complex of RMZ Ecoworld in Banglaore, India’s most rapidly growing city that has it’s devastating effect on the environment. As Bangalore is known as Silicon Valley of India, its population is growing at amazing rate. RMZ IT Park, with office spaces, health activity facilities, shopping, dining, amphitheatre and art gallery, promotes itself as “work-leisure sustainable environment where natural and architectural forms are symbiotically integrated using responsible planning and precise engineering”.

Site specific installation “Ecocentric” juxtapositions its organic aesthetics to human engineered pavilion that proudly announces its ecological concept. A small forest was created, mulched with coconut leftovers from Bangalore street vendors. After that it was inhabited with multi-plant life that was “fed” by the custom frequencies from small speakers placed in the soil.

LCD screen was informing public on ecocentric activities dating all the way back to beginning of 20th century, proposing sound as a genuine organic fertilizer for the plants.

16 Channel sound Fertilizer presented at Büro für Bestimmte Dinge, Berlin, in April 2017, with opening talk by Kruno Jošt.

16 small speakers are connected to multichannel sound card run by the computer. Each channel plays a sound or song that was researched as the one beneficial to the plants – from classical to binaural, from high frequencies to traditional sitar sounds. This conglomerate of sounds was not intended only for human gallery visitors, but for the plants as well.

More photos can be find here >>

Pixelache Festival 2013 with its theme of Facing North Facing South profiles the work of the Bricolabs mailing list, an independent and dynamic network of people absorbed with sharing, DIY, open source software, hardware and environmental sustainability living in various localities across the world whose online and offline exchange of heterogeneous practices and ideas have driven the network since its formation in 2006.

Bricolabs’ Exhibition

Where: Suvilahti ‘Square’ (location to be confirmed), free entrance!
Opening: Thursday 16.5. at 19.00
Exhibition dates: 17.-26.5., from Wednesday to Sunday 13.00 – 18.00

Three shipping containers will host workshops and artworks made by various members of Bricolabs: A ‘brico-archive’ corner assembled by Gabriele Asbesto, including diverse documentation on processes, including “how-to’s”, video works, texts and brico-objects; A nearby graffiti wall will provide an evolving open canvas for demonstration and exchange of concepts, ideas and views; An interactive installation – Vjing Nature – created by Ivan Henriques & Kasia Molga and Erik Overmeire will invite us to address inter-connections between sensor technology, data vis and microbiology; In addition, the Sensorium project from Salvador de Bahia will be presented on video. Collaborative curation; visual design: Kruno Jost.

Read the rest of this entry »

De(con)struction found its way into issue number 3 of on-line magazine MAKE8ELIEVE: 3rd issues topic was OIL.

with:
Jennifer Axner, Julie Badin, Hélène Baril, Kristen Baumlier, Mehdi Benkler, Edward Burtynsky, Arnaud Cohen, Valerie Constantino, Stephanie Craig, Olivier De Sagazan, Cédric De Smedt, Jason DeMarte, Adam Dumont, Edouard Duvernay, Jane Fulton Alt, Olivier Garraud, Mihai Grecu, Henry Hargreaves, David Herbold, Ryan Hopkinson & Christopher Raeburn, Rebecca Horne, Franck Hoursiangou, Kennedy James, Harris Johnson, Kruno Jost, Sofia Karlström, Amir Hossein Keihani, Florent Konné, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Liberate Tate, Katie Loesel, Antonio Maia & Fernando Belfiore, Michael Massaia, Lauren McCleary, Elizabeth McCue, Michelle Marie Murphy, Sorin Oncu, Holly Parker, Vincent Petitpierre, Sarah Pickering, Wilson Roscoe, Evan Roth, Mary Rothlisberger, Fred Rougerune Loison, Diego Sanchez, Wolfgang Stiller, Arya Sukapura Putra, Marc Neys Swoon, Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, Carlos Vergara, Paul White, Christophe Wlaeminck, Marshall McLuhan, Slavoj Žižek, M.I.A., Roland Barthes, Yohji Yamamoto, Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing.

www.make8elieve.com

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki is a showcase of works answering the question How would you host an ancient alien? The artists in the exhibition responded to an international call for proposals inspired by Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, a book detailing how the human species originated from extraterrestrial beings. These distant relatives are scheduled to return to the earth in December 2012.

Participating artists have proposed a variety of convivial acts to welcome Annunaki families from the planet Nibiru upon their return visit to earth after a 3,600-year orbit. The projects take a variety of forms, from an intergalactic calling card to a bed away from home, collegial gestures of kindness that reveal the customs that we embrace as human citizens of earth.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki provides a constructive take on Sitchin’s mythology, one of the many associated with the year 2012. Exhibition is held in Open Space Artist Run Centre (Victoria, Canada), November 16, 2012 – December 21, 2012.

Among many, I am am the one, who has been contacted by Annunaki, many times, sometimes while asleep, sometimes awake. They inform me over and over again of their visit, and I know I have to await for them and clean my temple. I have to await and take care of the temple that will host them. And that temple is me.

Most of us are unaware that Annunaki is/are not of mater, but of spirit, and to host them you do not clean the interior of your house, but interior of your self. One cleans it with rigour, spiritual and mental, in taking out the trash, and taking in the health and beauty.

When Annunaki comes, we greet It to our temple, we let It to ourself, and we carry It where we go, we feed It what we eat, It sleeps when we sleep, It sees what we see. That is why if we host them we have to restrain from bad habits, we have to restrain from manipulative toughs, we have to restrain from hurting ourself and others. When we host It we do it with pleasure and It lives trough us.

De(con)structing Conformity – video documentation from GentleJunk on Vimeo.

De(con)structing Conformity is performance done during the opening of the exhibition REFLECTION – Ecology of Cultural Landscape on 22nd November 2012. in gallery Scheier, Čakovec, Croatia.
In De(con)structing Conformity Kruno Jošt together with collaborators Maja Kohek and Simon Podlauf destroys an armchair as a symbol of conformity in contemporary society. The armchair represents a passive attitude in an even more passive society where one doesn’t want to lose their armchair while making political moves. It gives us false security and is as such a symbol of power. The de(con)struction of the symbol enables reflection on our own conformity. The question now is how we confront conformity in contemporary society?

Field recording during MMKamp '11

Multimedia cam – MMKamp was held this year in Marija Bistrica and Zabok, north Croatia. Read more about it here >>
Have a look at the photolog>> or lilsten to the audio drama recorded in a group fashion by all the participants:

PeasantUprisingSoundwalk Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Noise event SONIFICATION III hosted noise musicians from Croatia and Italy. In culture centre Kocka in Split on 14th Novembre BRAINTOURNIQUET (Venice), NARAYAN (Sisak), GENTLEJUNK (Zagreb), VIŠESLAV LABOSH (Zagreb)
KARMAKUMULATOR + POWERSET AXIOM (Split) presented their audio-visual works that was questioning what is and how can therm Sonification be represented.

BRAINTOURNIQUET, Venice. Creating noise with el. magnetic fields.

EEII’10 and MMKamp’10 reports can be found here:

MMKamp >>

EEII >>

ART01 is a project that examines art operating systems trough self reflection on artistic practices done in last 11 months – from September 2009 to July 2010. On 25th July ART01 has a public presentation in ContentArt gallery, Kreutzbergstr. Berlin. Please join for collaborative public event, spiced with pirate radio, on-line broadcast, social games, linux install party, exchange and swap, loop and feedback.

More on ART 01

Diagrams are important part of ART01 project, have a look at gallery >>

Click to enlarge

PDES (Pure Data Exchange Summit) is yet another step into the research on collaborative environments, its stimulants, individuals and their mind-sets which forms a group work. PDES is an example of what are (generally) the themes created in collaborative process orientated work environments that are critical to art itself.

Read the full report here >>

Mario Jaksic in interactive performace suit

In gallery Scheier, Čakovec, Croatia, on 05th December 2009, EEII’09 12 hour event brought together artists from Greece, Netherlands, Italy and Croatia.

Blog entry with personal observation >>

ART01 entry describing how EEII’09 functioned >>

Wall graphite

Inspired by London collective ‘Random Artists’, over the past few years collective groups in Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh and Brighton have been coming together to create a cultural, interactive, autonomous space where people are free to be, free to create, and free to express themselves. Forbiden Arts Manchester in 2009 happened in occupied primary school building that was left empty waiting for decisions by city hall and omnipotent property developers will it be brought down or repaired. Idea was to enter existing space that is not used at the moment and put it into public use for local community. Doors were open to everyone who wanted to take part in collective art event.

Noisy Toys room - colective sound/noise experiance

Wall paintings, poetry readings, video nights, fashion show, sound workshops, cabaret, installations, raveoke night, all fitted in aesthetics of local event that is characterized on MFA web page as: “An event like this doesn’t just happen but is the result of many, many people’s hard work.”

TAA Manchester big hall event

Noisy Toys collaborative event video >>

As it is, as it goes, prizes are starting to come in for the work that insisted on taking representative form from participative processes developed beforehand. Its 4th reincarnation happened in slightly different context, most notably in its new terms of negotiating project in the newly formed team. Positions that prizes involve: question of value, ownership, possible marketing strategies, group dynamics according to personal needs and acceptance of needs of others have surfaced at metalevel. CultureRobot became something that could easily be put into broad cultural concept and disseminated in the form it is trough events and festivals. Read more on Belo Horizonte and Salvador festival here >>.

September started with THE LAST THEATER SHOW EVER,  I-Camp theater, Munchen. Idea and methodology was to deconstruct traditional theater trough series of collaborative works where one work was supposed to lean on another, where each participant brings an idea and connects it to someone. International crew came around and investigated for 5 days in what might be called horizontal construction decision making and constant reevaluating of the final presentation that was constructed of three distinctive pieces.

All three were on collaboration but with different input and output models: one was following movements outside of theater and by computer calculations bringing it inside trough sound and visuals done with found (theater) hardware.

Another used sound in feedback communication that deconstructed viewers position and placement in theater, being done under the stage and audience sitting space.

Third one used virtual theater through on-line software with international particiants being projected on theater walls, together with orchestrated individual who brought event there.

Experiment was worth while intentions to discover what are group dynamics when artist are put together to work on something that calls for collaboration and sharing. Not to forget to mention that putting creativity with different bacgrounds into same place can be very frustrating and cathartic at the same time.

During Liwoli festival in Linz (April 2009), Austria, Ricardo Palmieri and Kruno Jošt created another MIMOSA. Read more on creating it here >> and more on the MIMOSA ACTION here >>.  Thanx for all the help to all participants!
At Liwoli fest a performance of LiveNoiseTupi also took place with helping hand of  Daniel Turing and other people from the audience. Documentary about the festival can be downloaded here >> and photolog here>>.
Most interesting are talks made during MIMOSA Action with the students >>, free media jurnalist>>, tourist>> and with artist>>.

Social Technologies Summit Futuresonic is international festival trying to answer questions of tomorrow: how will we interact with each other and nature around us in future. Futuresonic festivals fringe at Arcspace in St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center answered the question trough its grassroots movement created events that hosted, among many other events, CultureRobot installation.

Arcspace is situated in ex-church building that is turned into St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center  since 1992  – a unique architecture where insides of the church are transformed into enterprise center for ethical businesses and NGOs. St. Wilfrid’s Enterprise Center is situated in Hulme, an  area near to Manchester city center. Hulme was mapped not only as a territory but also as a specific part of the city with vibrant activist community and a history. ArcSpace was visited by people of different age and heterogeneous needs and activities, exchanging their beliefs, stories and producing new possibilities for exchange and collaboration in spirit of free culture.

Culture Robot installation was created by help of the community from the start to the end. Materials were collected or borrowed instead of purchased or rented, help with programing for interactive part of the installation was done by  friends and volunteers, and installation debuted at Saturday on the open, community day, that hosted events inside and outside the Center.CR 3.0 installation created a new relationship between local community and this art piece. More than ever people were active in collecting material, discussing and managing to interconnect installation with other events during Futuresonic fringe.

CR 3.0 mapped more than just Hulme, it mapped its people, relationships, how they feel about city development, architecture, organizations working with art and culture in Manchester and how financing is a part of the culture and where does it lead culture to, it showed community strength and grassroots development.  During the open days, all ethnic, age, academic and other walks of life were united and exchanged opinions, questions and ideas.

Guerrilla busking was happening in the city throughout the day, graffite artists were spraying on the vans and trailers (an identifiable vehicle in the Redbrick’s area of the Hulme – where travelers and free people of all sorts live). People from recycled biodiesel group, local bcycle repair man, drummers, community artists, foreign guests, local volunteers and experts were united to make a truly social event, creating bridges between cultures, people and technology in universal feeling of unity.

Read “Report From FutureSonic 2009” By Jonah Brucker on Rhizome.org

Photolog on Futuresonic Fringe at Arcspace >>

LNT has had 6 performances since November 2008 until end of February 2009. It is project that was born under exchange of open culture between Croatia and Brazil and established by Ricardo Palmieri, by making PD patch under name od ‘I Love Noise’. Since than history is in making. LNT performed in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Sao Paulo and Sao Caetano. Audio visual performance are bricolage of noise, circuit bending and prepared instruments sounds, improvisation, collaboration with local artists and spoken word on Tupi lenguages, a similarity of languages most of west coast South American natives are speaking.

For your viewing pleasure performance recorded at Sao Caetano in two parts.

Part one:

Part two

CR installation 2.0 at SESC Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil followed 1.0 that was installed at HAIP festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia. CultureRobot is interactive installation that rises awareness about maps, open spaces and borders. It invites visitors/users/participators to rearrange, open or close borders and thus interact with the map inhabitants – CultureRobot (simple robots powered by batteries, moving randomly on the map) allowing them to consume more or less of different cultural aspects. CR is interactive installation made to raise awareness of social and political sphere that is affecting autonomous cultural sphere, synergies and correspondences in geo-techno-socio-political topology.

CR 1.0

CR 2.0

Check extensive blogging with video, photolog and process description on CR  here>>