Makrolab

"Projekt Atol/Makrolab was founded in 1992, an initiative of Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan. He has spent the past five years, together with a team of young Slovenian hackers, bedroom engineers and radio hams, creating errant offspring of the military-industrial complex."
Source: Lisa Haskel, Pretty Good Pirates, 1997
http://makrolab.ljudmila.org/haskel.html

"MAKROLAB is interested in three basic global areas of research. These are telecommunications systems, weather systems and migrations as a phenomenon - migrations of people, capital, goods, fauna, flora. In short, we are interested in everything ...I once said that ML was the big eye and ear of the world, and now I might say that it is also a big processor." Marko Peljhan, 1999 (src)

"The MAKROLAB project is an ongoing mobile laboratory setup built for the open and integral research and common work of artists, scientists and tactical media workers in the fields of telecommunications, migrations research, weather and climate. It was first set up in 1997, during the documenta X exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and was consequently operating in Western Australia (Rottnest Island), Slovenia (Veliki Kras) and in the Scotish Highlands (Atholl Estates). The final aim of the project is the establishment of an independent art and science based research station on the Antarctic continent in 2007."
Source: http://info.ljudmila.org/article.php?story=20030912144712451

"What is Makrolab? I defined it as a closed and isolated/insulated environment which in its inner structure, the structure of the micro- social events functions as a communication center and a reflective tool-machine. But it is declaratively set into isolation a position in which it is supposed to observe the world only through mediators. The thesis is, that only this kind of isolated position can produce the code for the evolution of social relations. So, isolated individuals in a restricted space, extended time and intensive communication produce more evolutionary codes in social relations than wide scope political and geographical social movements.

Insulation/isolation is understood as a vehicle to achieve independence from and reflection of the actual entropic social conditions. The environment will serve as a development surface for the further formation of new, creative social, spirtual and economic relation, based solely on integral individuality. LADOMIR_faktura is the first training stage of the project pointing the way towards the achievement of final PROJEKT ATOL goals:
- communication will be developed through technological, representational and pedagogical systems
- insulation-isolation autonomy will be achieved through energy/material and space time autonomy
- the dematerialisation of logos will be replaced by the logoisation of the material
- methods for the augmentation of maximum sensory awareness and sensory connection will be used throughout the work."

Source:
Marko Peljhan: INSULATION/ISOLATION PROCEEDINGS
Lecture for the 100 days-100 guests documenta X programme, August 31 1997
http://ellipsetours.free.fr/wikiblog/wakka.php?wiki=Blog-20050131010116-Textes

Timeline:
1992: foundation of Projekt Atol.
1994: film: Ladomir: First Surface, "a meditation in colour, line and movement inspired by Vassily Kandinsky's Bilder Einer Ausstellung, made by a mixture of home-brewed programming and high-tech real-time graphic rendering".
1995: the technological arm of Projekt Atol, called PACT Systems (Projekt Atol Communication Technologies) is founded.
1996: an installation, Terminal, where aircraft navigation charts were projected in the gallery, with sound transmitted from scans of radio conversations between pilots and controllers as they negotiated the no-fly zones over the former Yugoslavia.
Urban Colonisation and Orientation Gear - 144 (1996), was an experiment overlapping psychogeography and communications technology.
1997: Makrolab is installed at documenta X, Kassel. "MAKROLAB is the third and final manifestation of a cycle of projects called Ladomir - Faktura, which pivot on the writings of the Russian Avant-Garde poet, Velimir Khlebnikov." (Lisa Haskel). "The name of the project is MAKROLAB - Ladomir-faktura 3rd surface and is the fourth project in this cycle of works and for now also the final one." (Marko Peljhan)
See: MAKROLAB information bulletin 001
"Saturday, June 28 - 10:00am - Water supply installed and operational.
Toilet operational. Galley operational. - 3:00pm - First real lunch at Makrolab. Galley functional for 6 people. Satisfied."
makrolab information bulletin 002
"The activities are not proceeding as planned, due to some extremely difficult technical problems connected with the signal intelligence part of our work. (...) The project seems to really run the boundaries of the contemporary art system, it is so self contained and has such an individual inner logic that it causes problems wherever it appears at the moment."
1998: MAKROLAB overhaul - "The SOLAR performance and Wardenclyffe situations cycle performances were presented, among other places in the Bauhaus, at the V2, at the Ars Electronica festival, on Long Island in New York and in Steim, all incorporating material gathered at Makrolab during the documenta X, mark I period."
1999: the flight operations branch, Projekt Atol Flight Operations, is founded.
2000: February-April: MAKROLAB mark II is installed on Rottnest Island, Western Australia, during the Perth 2000 festival.
2002: Mai-July: MAKROLAB mark IV is located for four months on the Atholl Estate in Perthshire, Scotland.
2003-2004: June 2003 - December 2004, MAKROLAB in Venice, Isola di Campalto, Laguna di Venezia. "The MAKROLAB markIIex structure was installed on the island of Campalto (Isola di Campalto) in the Venice Lagoon on June 13, 2003 as part of the Biennale di Venezia art exhibition, Individual systems section and the PHARE CBC Interreg IIIA program, organised by Patagonia Art, rx:tx and Projekt Atol." (src)
2004: Makrolab-UNTP (unmanned network tactical phase) (src)
2005: SPECTRAL-SYSTEM MEMBX (src)
2006-2007: First arctic expedition. "This involved the identification of remote sites of scientific and environmental interest within 100km of SANAE for the deployment of the LADOMIR mobile station in 2008/2009" (src)
2007-2008: Makrolab Arctic Base (International polar year)
2007: C-ASTRAL SPECTRAL SYSTEM S-77CCR is exhibited at Ars Electronica - http://www.c-astral.com

Sources:
http://makrolab.ljudmila.org/patol.html - Projekt Atol
http://www.kud-fp.si/~luka/makrolab/ - Makrolab website, ca. 1997.
http://www.krcf.org/krcfhome/cfa/hh/makrolab/makrolab.ljudmila.org/ - Backup of Makrolab website, ca. 2000.

On MAKROLAB Mark I at Documenta X:
A visit to the Makrolab in Lutterberg, interview with with Marko Peljhan and Brian Springer, by Geert Lovink, 1997:
http://www.medialounge.net/lounge/workspace/deep_europe/DOCS/mail/0152.html
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9707/msg00090.html

On Makrolab Arctic Base:
http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/details.php?id=1055 - Makrolab Arctic Base, Project Outline
http://www.interpolar.org/ - I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation)
http://www.i-tasc.org/ - I-TASC website

Marko Peljhan at Ars Electronica 2007:
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/95744
http://www.aec.at/en/festival2007/program/project.asp?iProjectID=14060

Related:
Media Labs

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