Knowbotic Research, Hawara checkpoint.exe

Artists in Residence September 2008 - April 2009


The art group Knowbotic Research - Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Huebler, Alexander Tuchacek - was established in 1991, and has experimented with formations of information, interface and networked agencies. Their more recent projects present artistic practices in an attempt to find viable forms of intervention in translocal spaces and economies. Since 1998, Knowbotic Research has a professorship in the Art and Media Department at the University of the Arts in Zurich, Switzerland.

Within NIMk's artists in residence program Knowbotic Research pursues the development of Hawara Checkpoint.exe, a project that invenstigates the presence of media images within actual events.



Hawara checkpotint.exe confronts two different time and action layers enacting media memories of mass media and situative forms of post media presence (e.g. bloggers).
This proposal intends to provide specific Space Time constructions which are able to investigate and reflect the dynamics of different media within news events. It will do so by combining the re-enacted stored scoop about Hussam Abdo (short time coverage), a Palestinian boy, from Nablus, who made international headlines on March 24, 2004, when he entered the Hawara Checkpoint, on the West Bank, Israel, strapped with an explosives belt as part of a suicide attack attempt; with the long observations of the Matchsom Watch, the mediablog of the Israelian women that monitors the events on the checkpoints on the Israelian-Palestinian borders.



Hawara_checkpoints.exe will re-enact the stored scoop of the Hawara_checkpoints news sequence by 3D models and computer animations. The virtual version will activate changes in timing and in the spatial setup of the dramaturgy. The resulting participative installation will provide the observer with different perspective on the past actions at Hawara Checkpoint, offering a multi-layered and experimental access to the stored media coverage.



Background

Cartoon worlds provide adolescent with heroic roles of identification, salvaging them from their unresolved self-discoveries. Such animated heroes constitute themselves through physical use of force. The formats of media can be different (anime, games, cartoons), the narrations are mostly similar. The individual actor serves the communitity and heroically takes the risk of death.
The design of the Hawara_Checkpoint.exe animation refers to the cartoon series Transformers, produced since 1984 in cooperation by the Japanese toy company Takara Tomy and the US company Hasbro.



The cartoon is about android robots, which can be categorized into good and evil ones. Both types can transform from humanoid into other forms. The 'good' turn into transporters, aircraft and tools, the evil ones into weapons and tanks. The good, headed by Optimus Prime, flight to protect their own living space (Cybertron) and that of humans, especially of children. Similar to actual warfare concepts, within the Transformer cartoon series, machines and not humans become victims.