media-N spring edition, 2009: Foreignness and Translation in New Media :: Call for Papers — Deadline: February 14, 2009.

This issue will deal with the relationship between foreignness and translation in new media. We look forward to a discussion on the idea of foreignness seen as an investigation surrounding notions of travel, displacement and migration beyond those tied to the geographical movement of populations.

We are interested in the broad practice of translation in new media, in the use of an electronic system that mediates and enables the movement from one state to another. We also welcome submissions exploring the specific notion of cultural translation and migration in new media. Continue reading

Liquidacion Total, in collaboration with Medialab-Prado, Madrid, presents In a short stretch of time — A project on narratives and micro-fictions.

On the basis of the publication “Zonas de intensidades”, (Aconcagua Publishing, Madrid, 2008), Virginia Villaplana proposes a workshop on generative writing, creativity and collective production of knowledge. The lines of work to be developed on the basis of the device in the exhibition venue, through screenings and readings, will cross through the notions of space and time in the dissemination of everyday stories. The infra-ordinary and the extra-ordinary, intra- history and meta-history are positioned as the starting points of a nomadic journey which will last for three days. Continue reading

Time Slip by Antoine Schmitt — On the screen or on a public display, a news ticker constantly displays scrolling textual news, but these news are conjugated at the future tense: “the NASDAQ will drop 4.3 points today”, “A plane crash in Madrid will kill 153 people”, “The Giants will crush the RedSocks 10 to 3”. Apart from the tense of the verbs, all the news are completely true…

For the spectator, it is as if he was projected in the past of a few hours and that someone told him the future: feeling of going back in time. Or for someone who would not already know the news, it would be like if an oracle would tell her the future in advance: feeling of anxiety or of perverse full power. Continue reading

Storytelling is fundamental to being human: itʼs how we share our experiences, learn from our past, and imagine our future.

With the establishment of the Media Labʼs Center for Future Storytelling, the Media Lab, together with Plymouth Rock Studios, is rethinking what “storytelling” will be in the 21st century. The Center will take a dynamic new approach to storytelling, developing new creative methods, technologies, and learning programs that recognize and respond to the changing communications landscape.

The Center builds on the Media Labʼs more than 20 years of experience in developing society-changing technologies for human expression and interactivity, and will now take this to the next level. Continue reading

Curating Architecture with AMO/Rem Koolhaas & Reinier de Graaf; Ângela Ferreira; Nikolaus Hirsch & Philipp Misselwitz; Walid Raad, with response by Celine Condorelli :: November 20 – December 14, 2008 :: The Showroom, 44 Bonner Road, London.

Bringing together artistic and architectural projects by distinguished international practitioners, Curating Architecture focuses on the relationship between architecture as an increasingly influential (and dominantly transdisciplinary) aesthetic practice and the complex claims on public and institutional space made by artists, curators and architects as they seek to articulate new, often political and certainly critical, modes of approach. Continue reading

Software Takes Command by Lev Manovich – Version: November 20, 2008.

“[…] What is “software studies”? This book aims to contribute to the developing intellectual paradigm of “software studies.” What is software studies? Here are a few definitions. The first comes from my own book The Language of New Media (completed in 1999; published by MIT Press in 2001), where, as far as I know, the terms “software studies” and “software theory” appeared for the first time. I wrote: ”New media calls for a new stage in media theory whose beginnings can be traced back to the revolutionary works of Robert Innis and Marshall McLuhan of the 1950s. To understand the logic of new media we need to turn to computer science. It is there that we may expect to find the new terms, categories and operations that characterize media that became programmable. From media studies, we move to something which can be called software studies; from media theory — to software theory.” Continue reading

Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Conference 2009 (ANZCA09): Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship :: July 8-10, 2009 :: QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Australia :: Call for Papers – Deadline: February 5, 2009.

Communication exists as an everyday social practice, as a skill or art applied in a range of contexts (business, politics, entertainment, etc.), as an application of media technologies to reach audiences and communities, and as an interdisciplinary field for teaching, research and scholarship, and community engagement. Continue reading

Haikus by Kuang-Yu Tsui — Video art selection from 2002 to 2006 :: December 4-5, 2008 :: Le FRUC, 3biz rue Labbé, 34 000 Montpellier, France.

The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life (Single Channel Video, 09’ 00” loop, 2002): Extending from the series of Eighteen Copper Guardians in Shao-Lin Temple and Penetration, the artist transforms the idea of the biological term of “mimicry” into a systematic adaptation and measurement of various life circumstances in this work. To change one’s outfit according to the outside environment is like a chameleon-like camouflage, and it is also a shortcut to penetrate different circles in the society. The work connotes and reflects the absurdity of reality, mocking the schizophrenia caused by changes in the living environment. Continue reading

Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) presents: David Hammons: Six Sites in Alexandria — Interventions / Works in Public Space :: Opening November 26, 2008; 6:00 pm :: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt :: Curated By Salah M. Hassan.

Six Sites in Alexandria is conceived as a citywide series of public works that will be revealed on the day of the opening. Hammons has chosen six specific locations where he will create works of an ephemeral and temporary nature. The works will be mapped out by the artist in cards that will be available to the audience. Read an article here. Continue reading

“We often think of mobile technologies simply in terms of their communication capabilities, but their increasing ability to trace our movements and collect information about the spaces through which we pass, can also make it easier for people to keep track of the places and things that matter most to them. From geo-visualisations and mapping mash-ups, to the mobile geospatial web and location-based services, people’s relationships to places (and each other) are changing.

Community mapping and sensing projects that use commonly available consumer electronics as environmental measurement devices, enable people to collect and view a wide array of location-based data. As a form of public science, such projects stand to reinvigorate environmentally focused civic engagement. Continue reading