Folding and Unfolding on Command

Oribotics–by Matthew Gardiner–is the fusion of origami and technology, specifically ‘bot’ technology, such as robots, or intelligent computer agents known as bots. The system was designed to create an intimate connection between the audience and the bots; a cross between gardening, messaging a friend, and commanding a robot. It was developed during an Australian Network for Artists and Technology (ANAT) artists lab; achieved with Processing as an authoring tool, and connected a mobile phone via a USB cable.

“Ori-botics is a joining of two complex fields of study. Ori comes from the Japanese verb Oru literally meaning ‘to fold’. Origami the Japanese word for paper folding, comes from the same root. Oribotics is origami that is controlled by robot technology; paper that will fold and unfold on command. Continue reading

Body as Audible Instrument within Sonic Composition

Freq2, by Squidsoup, uses your whole body to control the precise nature of a sound – a form of musical instrument. The mechanism used is to trace the outline of a person’s shadow, using a webcam, and transform this line into an audible sound. Any sound can be described as a waveform – essentially a line – and so these lines can be derived from one’s shadow. What you see is literally what you hear, as the drawn wave is immediately audible as a realtime dynamic drone.

Freq2 adds to this experience by adding a temporal component to the mix; a sonic composition in which to frame the instrument. The visuals, an abstract 3-dimensional landscape, extrudes in realtime into the distance, leaving a trail of the interactions that have occurred. This ‘memory’ of what has gone before is reflected in the sounds, with long loops echoing passed interactions. The sounds, all generated in realtime from the live waveform, have also been built into more of a compositional soundscape, with the waveform being played at a range of pitches and with a rhythmic component. Continue reading

100,000 Farmer Suicides

“The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti has put up a blog as part of its campaign for statehood for Vidarbha as also the continuing farmers’ suicides. Amongst other things there is a list of names of 655 farmers who have committed suicide since June 2005. A group of farmers is planning a march to Delhi on 15 August.

Imagine such a large number of people committing suicide in any other profession – say, in the BPO industry – and imagine our response. It would be frontpage news in all national papers. It would occupy far more air time than on TV than what the continuing agricultural crisis in Vidarbha and Telangana is currently getting. There would be dedicated “campaigns” and people across the country would be sending money to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. Ordinary people would come out to their rescue, companies would announce relocation packages. Continue reading

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS

ArtCamp is the World’s First un-Conference on Art. We are calling it an un-conference, but you can also think of it as a BarCamp about Art, a gathering that uses Open Space Technology, an Open-Source Conference, or just as an opportunity to get together during the New Forms Festival in Vancouver on September 21, 2006 to meet, greet, learn, collaborate, mashup, and share practices and ideas about art, media, networks and technology.

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS :: It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join. hen you come, be prepared to share with artcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world. Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people who are present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see. ArtCamp is free and open to everyone but you must sign up on the Wiki.

ArtCamp is co-presented by Upgrade! Vancouver and the New Forms Festival. For more information email Kate Armstrong kate[at]katearmstrong.com Continue reading

OPEN CALL

August 2006 :: This is a call from the French based Audio in art research group Locus Sonus to participate in their streamed soundscapes open web-mike project. Open an ogg audio stream from your home or garden (no pre-recorded playlists please) and become a remote member of the Locus Sonus orchestra.

Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art (École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence, École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nice Villa Arson). Its objective is to experiment and evaluate the innovative and transdisciplinary nature of audio art forms in a lab-type context. It is also concerned with in the communal, collective or multi-user aspects inherent in many emerging audio practices and which necessitate working as a group. Two main thematics define this research – audio in it’s relation to space and networked audio systems. Continue reading

radio.territories urban intervention

Radio Vehicles with Darius James (USA/DE) and Peter Dennett, Art Yard (UK) :: Aliens Am Alex: radio.territories urban intervention at: TV Tower, Alexanderplatz, Berlin :: On Air 95,2 FM or online http://radioeinszueins.de :: July 30, 2006, 16:00 – 18:00.

Apocalypso: The Cosmic War Dance of Sun Ra’s Army of Anthropodial Transistors :: When the composer and mystic, Sun Ra, returned to his native Saturn on May 30th, 1993, he left behind him a vast and varied body of recorded musical works. Up until now, much of this music was unreleased and unavailable to the public. But, through a series of séances conducted in the studios of Radio 1:1, with Dr. Snakeskin acting as medium, Mister Ra informed us that he will be returning to this planet in his astral form on Sunday, July 30th, 2006. He will not be alone. He is bringing his army of Anthropoidal Transistors. “We are going to invade Berlin!!!” he chuckled, “Our first target is the TV Tower in Alexanderplatz! My weapons?!! Two full hours of sonic attack—or acoustical magic — taken from a secret library of unreleased recordings. We will dance a cosmic dance. A cosmic WAR dance. It’s the Apocalypso!” Continue reading

The Architecture of Spam

Alex Dragulescu has some extremely interesting projects up on his website right now. For the most part, they’re “experiments and explorations of algorithms, computational models, simulations and information visualizations that involve data derived from databases, spam emails, blogs and video game assets.” However, this one – called Spam Architecture – totally blows me away: “The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.”

Applying this to large-scale architectural design would be endlessly and hypnotically fascinating – not to mention quite profitable if you turned it into a kind of immersive, 3-dimensional version of Tetris. You turn digital photographs of your last birthday party into architectural structures; your Ph.D. thesis, exported as an inhabitable object; every bank statement you’ve ever received, transformed into a small Cubist city. Your whole DVD collection, informationally re-presented as a series of large angular buildings. Continue reading

Responsive Architecture + Organism

Wald-Forest by Chris Ziegler :: a forest is both an architecture and also a organism. Forests are areas outside of civilization and human culture, ambivalent places of fears and inspiring fantasies. Wald-Forest is an interactive installation, a performance environment for dance, light, electronic sound and life piano. Neon lamps, hung in a matrix of 16 – 64 units, create a forest-like interactive matrix of light emmitting objects.

The installation is designed to be a light-architecture and also a responisve, digital organism. Moving in it can be as simple and playful as a shadowplay, but there is also disorientation in a matrix of light objects. The indeterminacy of places like this is most interesting to us. Wald-Forest’s interactive light and surround sound architecture is related to the movement parameters of the dancer / the audience. The motion tracking parameters are: position and speed of movement. Continue reading

‘There Has Been a Change of Plan’

:: Raqs Media Collective: ‘There Has Been a Change of Plan’ (Selected Works 2002-2006) :: Nature Morte Gallery, A 1 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi :: August 5 – 26, 2006 ::

Sometimes, adjustments have to be made. Schedules need calibration. There are contingencies, questions, obstinate demands, weak excuses, strong desires. You return to the city you never left. You pause, take stock. Sit still and let a conversation begin. Maybe? Around you, aeroplanes sit on wooden platforms in a wilderness like widows on a funeral pyre. Clocks measure fatigue, anxiety and modest epiphanies across latitudes. A door to nowhere stands obstinately against the sky. All your cities are a blur. “Do you like looking at maps?”

Meanwhile, measures are taken, shoes lost and found, ghost stories gather, the city whispers conspiracies to itself, the situation is tense but under control. Someone offers you a postcard. Now: Let’s see what happens. Raqs Media Collective is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition in Delhi – ‘There Has Been A Change of Plan’ at Nature Morte Gallery. The exhibition features selected works (2002 – 2006) in the form of cross media installations with networked computers, objects, postcards, video, sound, prints and projections. Continue reading

Art as Disease

Random and Artificial are proud to present The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success by Carlo Zanni, a two minute movie transformed by an Internet data flux and re-edited server-side when web statistics (Google Analytics) are available: the public can watch a new movie every day. Opening: August 3rd 2006 at La Rada Centro Per l’Arte, Locarno as part of WIRELESS a show in partnership with 59° LOCARNO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL.

The core idea of the work is the relationship between manic-depressive illness forms and success at large, a theme it symbolically tracks through the filming of a ill man lying in a bed and the presence of his partner (actress Stefania Orsola Garello). The manÂ’s body (actor Ignazio Oliva) progressively fills with stains: quantity and position depend on the number of users (and country of origin) visiting the website. The more users, the more stains, thus causing the “illness” to spread all over the body. The public grants success while appropriating the body of the artist. Continue reading