Leap second festival 2012

Leap second festival

Festival flyer. Forwarding appreciated.

Festival program

The leap second is approaching... The coming Saturday at midnight, 30th June 23:59:60 (UTC), the first Leap second festival will take place. It will last until the 1st of July 00:00:00 (UTC). Within this leap second all the works of the festival are exhibited and performed.

There are thirty-seven participants exhibiting and performing works of different types - video, audio, text, poem, visual, visual text, animation, conceptual, instructional, narration, dedication, musical score, polemic (if we want to categorize them as such).

The participants are A. Andreas (Andreas Maria Jacobs), Cristina Andries, Sissel Berntsen, Brian Blaney, Ana Buigues, Yiorgos Chouliaras, Elisabeth S. Clark, Simon Coates, Roger Cummiskey, Chris Funkhouser, Peter Grass, Mathias Hauan Arbo, Martin Howse, INTERLICHTSPIELHAUS, Karl Heinz Jeron, Halvard Johnson, Irena Kalodera, Daniel Kelley, Jyrki Kirjalainen, Bonnie MacAllister, Bjørn Magnhildøen, Nick Mattan, albert negredo, Pasha Radetzki, Stefan Riebel, Jesse Scott, Alan Sondheim, Anthony Stephenson, Otto Tall, andrew topel, jurgen trautwein aka jtwine, Nico Vassilakis, Visuel Sound : Blaise Merino & Irène Strubbe, Paul Wiegerinck, Jan Windle, Margo Wolf.

Most works are shown in digital format and using the net as their venue, though their content might as well refer to other formats, venues and domains - whether online, offline, outline, site, on-site, non-site (or how we prefer). The festival is a distributed event coordinated on the net.

Most works last one second. Though some are time-independent (in format), the basic idea of a miniature work that can be exhibited/performed within one second is followed.

Since the festival only lasts one second, everything has to be shown simultaneously. So, Saturday at midnight, 30th June 23:59:60 (UTC), people going to the Leap second festival site will be able to see all the works executed, exhibited, and performed (or what it takes).

In reality, the festival is an event that happens in a particular time, and not in any particular place. And since we all share the same time living on this free oscillating ball, disregarding relativity theory for the moment, the festival will actually take place everywhere and at the same time. We earthball-people operate with timezones, so take care to check when 30th of June 23:59:60 (UTC) is likely to happen in your temporary zone (autonomous or not), because the leap second does not occur on June 30 everywhere. Have a look at what UTC time is and compare to your clock to know when it's due.

With this in mind, we proceed to the festival program, and have a look at what will happen during the leap second.

All @ 23:59:60

• A number of video and visual works will be shown. A mini movie with and without media by Paul Wiegerinck investigates the minimal requirements of the movie media.Bending Time and Space 1 Second for 10 Times by Jyrki Kirjalainen explores the perceptional illusion of time contraction through a repetition of a one-second sequence of the earth exploding. Change Brief Abridged by Anthony Stephenson is a series of motion studies based on the multi-paneled painting titled "Change - 3 Coins 64 Times". Martin Howse describes in container//mpeginmpeg a set of content-free, protocol-driven code objects which are embedded Russian-doll-style within themselves, in this instance one single video frame, and further explains, "The code for each object (commandline, Python or C code) is self-consciously literal, describing the process as algorithm without shortcuts. The container project embraces the use of the quine with any compiler considered as an embedding device. Future container examples will extend to include film-in-film and pornography-in-pornography. The container project raises the question of where any protocol boundaries for embeddings can be established". Irena Kalodera's film suite I-II can be considered, in the festival's opinion, self-referencial 'motion pictures' and meta-framing. millisecond(s) by Jesse Scott is an executable/applet of generative, random programming. 
  
  shut@#%$^$up by Cristina Andrieș is described as "The necessary solution to an unnecessary situation" and might be said to be a short and brutal political statement. INTERLICHTSPIELHAUS is showing six approximate seconds, based on 3D-model animations (as far as we know). The stitch by Ana Buiguesdemonstrates in the textile arts the extra stitch at the end of every round that one has to do, and without which the next round gets too tight. Whatever by Jan Windle is a 0.8 second polemic on the relationship of the present to the future (leaving some time for reflection before the festival ends). Bonnie MacAllister will be showing What the Water Wore filmed on location in Solomon's Island, MD. Also on the program are Caveat 1.1 by Simon Coates, Geschenke by Visuel Sound : Blaise Merino & Irène Strubbe,Mumble Sign by Otto Tall, Jump/cut//Impossible continuous action by Bjørn Magnhildøen, and Phony Lounge by Pasha Radetzki. 
  
  
  
• Event/intervention. During the light intervention En un clin d'œil (23h 59m 60s) by Elisabeth S. Clark, 218 street lampposts in Bad Ems, Germany, will simultaneously be switched off as a split-second negation of light. This single second non-(street)light orchestration is ephemeral but will nevertheless signal and question the very measurement and distribution of time. At the leap second, Elisabeth S. Clark proposes that Bad Ems encounter a glimpse of non-time. 
• Music, sound, and audio related work embrace many different types of work. With Leap Second Split the sculptor Sissel Berntsen will in an action record the sound of a 13100 kg piece of black diabase stone splitting in the moment of the leap second. This action will take place in Johansen Monumenthuggeri, Skjeberg , Norway. 
  
  Frenchmebeerby Jurgen Trautwein AKA jtwine is ordering a draft beer in french. Jaa Nee - Yes No by Karl Heinz Jeron, a computer voice, a possible reference to Joseph Beuys, the bible, the digital, or all... . Daniel Kelley is for this 25th leap second presenting the musical score L25, A Free Oscillation of Earth During the Leap Second of 30 June 2012. In the informal notes, L25 for dummies he says about the work, "Using the Earth as a model of a couple of large bells, which can be excited by a Great earthquake, such as the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman, one of the bells represents the uniform ringing of the atomic time scale, the other bell beats slightly out of phase based on the prediction of change the Earth rotation rate between 29 and 30 June." Another poignant sound work for the festival, concerning global instability and precarity (whether political or physical), is The sound of money by A. Andreas (Andreas Maria Jacobs). This is the sound of 5 years Germany daily electricity prices from 2008 - 2013, squeezed to 1 second and compressed to the audible frequency range. 
  
  
  
• To continue pigeonholing and hair-counting the works, we've come to textual based ones. Chris Funkhouser's three work that are to be shown - Ascend Pole, Oceans Pled,Placed Scaled Planes Spaced Places - are digital poetry text animations, dealing with anagrams for/of the leap second (which itself can be considered an anagrammatic operation on time). Buffering... by Bjørn Magnhildøen is an instruction piece about the stopping of time and mind. Classic Outlines (part of the Fast Food Classics) by Yiorgos Chouliaras is a poem which can be read in less than 1 second (by an epically fast narrator/reader). Dedication Pieces by Stefan Riebel is a performative textual piece, dedicating to the leap second. The Four videos by Nico Vassilakis are visual poetry pieces exploring narratives between text, image, and motion. k!: cal 1752 by Alan Sondheim presents a textual command that outputs the singular calendar of 1752 when it went from Julian to Gregorian. 
  
  Halvard Johnson's word-poem deals with an aspect of spacetime. Andrew Topel's [untitled #1], [untitled #2] are instruction pieces for anybody to perform during the leap second. The sun is bright by Mathias Hauan Arbo is a 1 second video of rewriting a text. Also to be exhibited are Nick Mattan's text animation [untitled], John Connor is Peter Parker by Margo Wolf, Messi by Roger Cummiskey, One Second Omby Peter Grass, and Records by Albert Negredo. 
• In addition there's also a small text section of the festival that consists of: Dead moments in time - The micromanaging moments of a cave man - By Ana Buigues. L25 for dummies - Notes on the musical score L25 by Daniel Kelley - A correspondence between Daniel Kelley and Bjørn Magnhildøen. Leap second perspectives - Poem - By Brian Blaney. mafestOmarch (doc) - An art-social initiative - an art march rather than an art movement - by Pasha Radetzki. One should produce that thought which is nowhere supported - A commentary on a sentence from the platform sutra (teachings of Hui-neng) - By Bjørn Magnhildøen. VR Improvised - A improvised meditation on the virtual and the real - By Alan Sondheim.