OOITO blog

During the hiatus from Pigeon Express, we've been preparing the new OOITO blog with background info and updates, and plans for art and music news. Have a look, and Happy New Year!

Season’s greetings

A lot of lucky people are off for the next 10 days...
Happy holidays to you all!

ChowPourian Studio

Huschang and I have joined forces to become ChowPourian Studio, as reflected in the intro info, left. While the new site is under construction, updates will be posted here.

Unintentional chindogu

New post at OFD. Sometimes simple is best.

Exhibition news & views

Due to the seasonal crunch, the OOITO/Rezidents exhibit will run until December 24. The show of personal work which was scheduled for this week has been postponed.

Mind over matter

Last week at Open for Design, Futurefarmers posted an entry called Senseless about Crispin Jones' An Invisible Force. Their description brought me back to the BankArtLife reception in Yokohama almost exactly a year ago. Jones was showing a table alongside work by a number of other artists, all of which was kinetic and/or interactive and tactile. A constant queue of people were ready to be challenged by Painstation , the sadistically entertaining work by two German media artists, Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff.

As with An Invisible Force, the point of Painstation is endurance against discomfort. Two players face off in a game of Pong, right hand on the controller, left hand on a sensor unit. Both players receive various distractions from the unit -- heat, whipping, electric shocks etc. As time goes on, the punishment intensifies. The first person to remove their hand from the sensor loses. The real game is who can withstand the most pain.

I lost every time. Despite the open wounds and blue welts some of the pros were sporting, with me the unit had not even escalated to the point of inflicting pain. Of course being a leftie put me at a disadvantage because the controller forced me to use my weak hand. But in truth the reason I lost was that the anticipation of the being touched by the whip made me flinch.

OOITO x th’ Rezidents

Monday is the start of a two-part exhibition I'll be doing with Huschang Pourian. Part one is a joint show for OOITO and th’ Rezidents, on till December 17.


Part two will begin the following Monday (December 18) with more details to come later.

The venue is Café Pause, where I participated in Canadian Style earlier this year, curated by Jean Snow.

We'll be there on Friday from 7 to 10pm. Please drop by if you're in town!