Dynamic Abstraction, the beauty of randomness by Joshua Davis – Joshua Davis said in a Wired interview: “Pollock showed that there was beauty in randomness“. But if Pollock argued that the process of abstraction, not the end result, is what is dynamic (in his case a static painting), Joshua Davis’ work is never static: the painting is never the same. The compositions are beautifully software generated. ‘Dynamic’ and ‘Abstraction’ are in fact the two words that define the process he uses. Dynamic because of the programming property of outputting an endless array of compositions. Abstraction is defining multiple meanings in the process itself. As Joshua points out: “I was abstracting the act or process of being a designer and doing design, but also my personal visual aesthetic is rooted in abstraction“. Continue reading

Between Chaos and Cosmos: ngel KALENBERG reviews MediaArtHistories, Oliver GRAU (Ed.), Cambridge/Mass., MIT Press 2007.

Ortega y Gasset saw man not as natural, but instead as an anomaly of nature. Human beings, beyond being animals like the rest, have features that clearly differentiate them from, say, hominids. Those elements are human-created, and one of them is technology: our tools. But, these days, technology is met not only with praise. Many theorists hold it to be producing the catastrophe presaged by Heidegger and bemoaned today by Baudrillard and Virilio. Ultimately, it marks a twist of history, like others that elicited James Joyce’s celebrated dictum: “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake?” Continue reading

Documenta as a Fiction Workshop :: August 2-4, 2007 :: Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk, 1 Doki Street, building #145B, 80-958 Gdansk, Poland :: +48 58 320 44 46.

Fiction touches on invented stories, fantasies and literary conventions. It sits on the side of creativity, arbitrariness and doubt. Its power belongs to the speaking subject… but also to the listening one, flickering in the instantaneous and capricious relation between the two (or more) of them. In this framework, Documenta as a Fiction is foreseen as both an event and a theoretical figure based on an actual story. Resonating the ontological dissonance between the traditional notions of document and fiction, the workshop seeks for the plots and narratives of contemporary art as well as its institutional visions, giving a space for the performative encounters of individuals. Continue reading

John Whitney (1917 – 1995) was an animator, composer and inventor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation.

In Sharkrunners, by Area/code, players, “take on the role of marine biologists who seek to learn as much as possible about sharks through advanced observation techniques. In the game, players control their ships, but the sharks are controlled by real-world white sharks with GPS units attached to their fins. Real-world telemetry data provides the position and movement of actual great white sharks in the game, so every shark that players encounter corresponds to a real shark in the real world. Ships in the game move in real-time, so players receive email and/or SMS alerts during the day when their boat is within range of an encounter. Players login, choose crew members and an approach technique, and then collect various data from the nearby sharks.” [via]

“We are all at the mercy of dream, and in the waking ours we have to suffer its power.” – La Révolution surréaliste, Issue 1, December 1924

Domenico Quaranta is pleased to announce SPAWN OF THE SURREAL, his Second Life alter-ego’s blog. “Spawn of the Surreal: Travel notes of an art critic lost in the dumpster of the imaginary” will feature the considerations of an imaginary art critic who tries to make art in Second Life make sense to him and to the contemporary art audience. The idea came out from the fact that there are a lot of accounts about art in Second Life, but a little criticism; and that there isn’t enough space for this subject on contemporary art magazine. Obviously, every comment and discussion will be welcome! Continue reading

NanoArt 2007 INTERNATIONAL ONLINE COMPETITION :: Deadline: December 31, 2007 :: Open to all artists and scientists.

NanoArt is a new art form where micro or nanosculptures created by artists or scientists through chemical or/and physical processes are visualized with powerful research tools like Scanning Electron Microscopes. The monochromatic electron microscope scans are processed further using different artistic techniques to create pieces of art that can be showcased for the general public. Nanoart21.org, founded by artists / scientist Cris Orfescu, will provide 3 high resolution monochromatic electron scans as seed images for artists to choose from. Continue reading

Copper Giloth, chair of the SIGGRAPH ’82 art show, has been working with a team of students to compile documentation of the exhibition. They are trying to contact these individuals: Michael Assante, Richard Balabuck, Robert Faught, Richard Frankel, Harold Hedelman, James Hockenhull, Tony Johnson, Eihachiro Nakamae and Dean Winkler. Please contact giloth[at]oit.umass.edu

Looking Back 25 Years: Siggraph’82 Art Show: 25 years ago, ACM Siggraph sponsored its first juried public exhibition of experimental two-dimensional, three-dimensional, interactive and time-based works by artists and scientists experimenting with computer graphics technologies. Continue reading

“Challenges to traditional copyright resulting from peer-to-peer applications, free software, filesharing and appropriation art have caused a wide ranging debate on the future of copyright. Dmytri Kleiner brings existing critiques of material property from the left to bear upon the realm of copyleft artistic production and asks how, within the existing copyright regime, can artists earn a living?

In the area of software development copyleft has proved to be a tremendously effective means of creating an information commons which broadly benefits all those whose production depends on it. However, many artists, musicians, writers, film-makers and other information producers remain sceptical that a copyleft based system where anyone is free to reproduce their work, can earn them a living. Copyleft licenses guarantee intellectual property freedom by requiring that reuse and redistribution of information be governed by ‘the four freedoms,’ the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute.” Continue reading Copyfarleft and Copyjustright by Dmytri Kleiner, Mute magazine. Also see Rhizome Adds Creative Commons Licenses.

Rubén Ortiz-Torres – Power Tools :: The United Nations Plaza Radio Network, WUNP – 95.2 FM :: July 28, 2007, 6PM CEST (Berlin) :: Hosted by neuroTransmitter.

Taking cue from the subtitle of Rubén Ortiz-Torres’ blog, Saturday’s conversation is a live rant about art and culture across borders in the post colonial era. Ruben Ortiz-Torres was born in Mexico City in 1964 and has been living / working in Los Angeles since 1990. He was educated within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism confronted by the tragedies and cultural clashes of the post colonial third world. After giving up the dream of playing major league baseball, he decided to study art. Continue reading