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April 30, 2007

The Situational Drive

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Complexities of Public Sphere Engagement

inSite and Creative Time are pleased to present The Situational Drive: Complexities of Public Sphere Engagement, a two-day multidisciplinary sequence of panel discussions, conversations, and art projects rethinking the challenges of artistic, curatorial, architectural and theoretical engagement in urban and other public spheres :: May 12 - 13, 2007 [May 12, 10am – 7pm; May 13, 10:45am – 6:15pm] :: Cooper Union, The Great Hall, 7th Street, btw 3rd and 4th Ave, NYC :: Organized by Joshua Decter.

In the network society everyone puts together their own city. Naturally this touches on the essence of the concept of public domain…Public domain experiences occur at the boundary between friction and freedom. --Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of New Public Domain

What is at stake today in terms of public domain experiences? How do we know the impact of cultural projects upon the imaginations of citizens? Do we believe in the possibility of transforming publics? What is the nature of our situational drive?

Participants: Dennis Adams, Doug Aitken, Doug Ashford, Judith Barry, Ute Meta Bauer, Mark Beasley, Bulbo, Teddy Cruz, CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy), Tom Eccles, Peter Eleey, Hamish Fulton, Gelitin, Joseph Grima, Maarten Hajer, David Harvey, Mary Jane Jacob, Nina Katchadourian, Vasif Kortun, Laura Kurgan, Rick Lowe, Markus Miessen, France Morin, Antoni Muntadas, Kyong Park, Anne Pasternak, Vong Phaophanit, Michael Rakowitz, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Osvaldo Sanchez, Saskia Sassen, Allan Sekula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective), Michael Sorkin, Javier Tellez, Nato Thompson, Anthony Vidler, Anton Vidokle, Judi Werthein, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Mans Wrange.

For a full program of events: http://www.inSite05.org or http://www.Creativetime.org.
Tickets are Free! No reservation necessary.

The Situational Drive is made possible, in part, by Artography: Arts in a Changing America, a grant and documentation program of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, funded by the Ford Foundation.

Additional support provided by haudenschildGarage and the Ronald and Lucille Neeley Foundation; media support by The Village Voice.

In conjunction with The Situational Drive, inSite is pleased to launch Dynamic Equilibrium: In Pursuit of Public Terrain, the third in a series of books documenting inSite_05. Dynamic Equilibrium includes essays and dialogues drawn from the inSite_05 Conversations, which took place in San Diego and Tijuana from November 2003 through November 2005. For more information, or to place an order, please visit http://www.inSite05.org.

Posted by jo at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

The Aesthetic Interface

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Conference

The Aesthetic Interface :: 9-13 May 2007 :: Aarhus University, Denmark.

The interface is the primary cultural form of the digital age. Here the invisible technological dimensions of the computer are given form in order to meet human perception and agency. This encounter is enacted through aesthetic forms stemming not only from the functional domains and tools, but increasingly also from aesthetic traditions, the old media and from the new media aesthetics. This interplay takes place both in software interfaces, where aesthetic and cultural perspectives are gaining ground, in the digital arts and in our general technological culture – keywords range from experience oriented design and creative software to software studies, software art, new media, digital arts, techno culture and digital activism.

This conference will focus on how the encounter of the functional and the representational in the interface shapes contemporary art, aesthetics and culture. What are the dimensions of the aesthetic interface, what are the potentials, clashes and breakdowns? Which kinds of criticism, aesthetic praxes and forms of action are possible and necessary?

The conference is accompanied by an exhibition and workshops.
Christian Ulrik Andersen(DK): ’Writerly gaming’ – social impact games
Inke Arns (DE): Transparency and Politics. On Spaces of the Political beyond the Visible, or: How transparency came to be the lead paradigm of the 21st century.

Morten Breinbjerg (DK): Music automata: the creative machine or how music and compositional practices is modelled in software
Christophe Bruno (F): Collective hallucination and capitalism 2.0
Geoff Cox (UK): Means-End of Software
Florian Cramer (DE/NL): What is Interface Aesthetics?
Matthew Fuller (UK): The Computation of Space
Lone Koefoed Hansen (DK): The interface at the skin
Erkki Huhtamo (USA/Fin): Multiple Screens – Intercultural Approaches to Screen Practice(s)
Jacob Lillemose (DK): Interfacing the Interfaces of Free Software. X-devian: The New Technologies to the People System
Henrik Kaare Nielsen (DK): The Interface and the Public Sphere
Søren Pold (DK): Interface Perception
Bodil Marie Thomsen (DK): The Haptic Interface
Jacob Wamberg (DK): Interface/Interlace, Or Is Telepresence Teleological?

Organised by: The Aesthetics of Interface Culture, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, TEKNE, Aarhus Kunstbygning, The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, .

Supported by: The Danish Research Council for the Humanities, The Aarhus University Research Foundation, The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, Aarhus University's Research Focus on the Knowledge Society, Region Midtjylland, Aarhus Kommune. The exhibition is supported by:Region Midtjylland, Århus Kommunes kulturpulje, Kunststyrelsen, Den Spanske Ambassade, Egetæpper.

Posted by jo at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston

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How do you measure fear?

Right now, kanarinka is running the entire evacuation route system in Boston and measuring its distance in breaths. The project is an attempt to measure our post-9/11 collective fear in the individual breaths that it takes to traverse these new geographies of insecurity.

It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston consists of a series of running performances in public space (2007), a web podcast of breaths (2007), and a gallery installation of the archive of breaths (2008).

It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston is presented by iKatun for the 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival. The project will be on view at the Cyberarts Gala on Fri, May 4, 2007, 6:30pm at the Hotel @ MIT, Cambridge, MA. If you want to attend a running performance, email kanarinka AT ikatun DOT com for upcoming dates & locations or just subscribe to the podcast.

Posted by jo at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

ctrl_alt_del

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Open Call

In 2007, ctrl_alt_del will be realized by NOMAD in corporation with Istanbul Technical University – MIAM and Kadir Has University. The base of the project will be Kadir Has University which is located on Golden Horn. This year ctrl_alt_del will include Opening Concert, Performance Series (live), Workshops, Panels, Presentations, Open Call, Field Studies/Workshops, Exhibition, Radio Programmes, Publication and CD release. The theme of ctrl_alt_del in 2007 will be “remote orienteering”. As the first dedicated sound art festival in Turkey, ctrl_alt_del enjoyed a great deal of international publicity in 2003 and 2005. For the third ctrl_alt_del to be held in September 2007, we are now looking for interesting, provocative, subversive, experimental and sophisticated works. 5 pieces will be selected by the jury and will be presented during ctrl_alt_del.

JURY: Georg Dietzler, Paul Devens, Murat Ertel, Hassan Khan, Scanner, Eran Sachs, Istanbul Technical University - MIAM (Pieter Snapper and Can Karadogan), NOMAD (Emre Erkal, Erhan Muratoglu, Basak Senova)

THEME: The practice of “remote orienteering” suggests generating content and schematics in our conduct. Equally applicable for radical means of urban subversion, “remote orienteering” is the key process which the entries of ctrl-alt-del should be directed. The pieces are asked to be compliant with the following subjects in order to create an intellectual climate of comprehension and discussion:

1. sounds for orientation, or sound as orientation.
2. distant sounds or sound in spatial contexts
3. sound and cultural subversion

SUBMISSION MATERIALS

1. Two audio CD’s (original and a copy) of only ONE piece is the format of the submission. Piece will not be more than 4 minutes long. Projects which rely on specific visual documentation can be submitted on a DVD, but in any case clip should not be longer than 4 minutes.

2. The name of the participant and the name of the piece(s) should be written on this CD with a permanent marker.

3. An A4 size page with name, address, e-mail and telephone number of the participant, and the names of the piece will be submitted.

4. An optional, separate A4 size page with a description, clarification or reflection could be submitted depending completely on the desire of the participant. These optional documents will not be used for evaluation, but they could be used in later stages.

The works should be at the below mailing address before the 29th of June, 2007: Basak Senova PK 16 Suadiye 34741 Istanbul, Turkey

ANNOUNCEMENT: Selected works and their owners will be announced in August 2007 on the NOMAD website: http://www.nomad-tv.net/

All of the submitted material will be kept in NOMAD archive.

info[at]nomad-tv.net

Posted by jo at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Gebhard Sengmueller: SLIDE MOVIE - DIAFILMPROJEKTOR

SLIDE MOVIE - DIAFILMPROJEKTOR, a new installation by Gebhard Sengmueller, will be presented at the European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck :: April 25 - May 20, 2007.

Black cube installation: A film sequence (35mm motion picture, 24 frames/sec.) is cut up and the individual frames are mounted as slides. They're then distributed among 24 slide projectors that are all focused on the same screen (the exact same point). Via electronic control of the projectors, these individual images are then reassembled-in an extremely cumbersome way-into a chronological sequence. The formula - one projector per frame - thus gives rise to something that at least rudimentarily (and inevitably very inaccurately, due to the lack of precision of the mechanical devices) suggests a motion picture. The film soundtrack emerges as a byproduct - the mechanical clattering of the projectors changing slides.

[...] Slide Movie, the most recent of Sengmueller's apparatuses, is located not only in the field of media archeology, though, but also in the field of media theory. With the infernal noise produced by twenty-four slide projectors changing pictures, the "film projector" is liberated from the sound-proof projection room and opened up. With the inside out, we find ourselves no longer in the audience space, but in the middle of the projector. The film, whose content is conventionally the focal point, moves into the background. What becomes visible, as though under a magnifying glass, is the medium, the illusion, the way still images are turned into moving pictures. In the terms of cognitive psychology, from which Heideggerian phenomenology also draws, this can be understood as a displacement of "figure" and "ground". The figure is that, to which attention is directed; the ground is everything that first makes the figure possible, but which is omitted by perception, so that we can concentrate on the figure. The ground of the figure "film" is the cinema, the box office cashier selling tickets, the darkened projection room, the muted projector, the electrical currents that provide the projector with energy, and so forth. All of this must be present, in order for us to see the film. At the same time, however, we must also fade it out, so that we can concentrate on the content of the film, the "figure". Although - or perhaps specifically because - they are faded out, all these things have a much more lasting influence on our culture than any single film, which often disappears again after a few weeks, only to be replaced by the next film. [...] (Felix Stalder)

Gebhard Sengmueller is an artist working in the field of media technology, currently based in Vienna, Austria. Since 1992, he has been developing projects and installations focussing on the history of electronic media, creating alternative ordering systems for media content and constructing autogenerative networks. His work has been shown extensively in Europe and the US, among others at Ars Electronica Linz, the Venice Biennale, ICA London, Postmasters Gallery NYC. His main project for the last few years has been VinylVideo, a fake piece of media archeology.

Posted by jo at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

A-WAL, Edition Q2

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Art for Technovernacular and Non-Traditional Environments

A-WAL Public Art Project: | Edition: Quarter 2, 2007 | Vers des lendemains qui chantent. | Curated by Tirdad Zolghadr | Artists featured in this edition: Cassius Al Madhloum, Fia Backström, Cabaret Voltaire (featuring a dotmaster piece), the Parking Gallery - a project by Amirali Ghassemi, and Richard Rhys.

The A-WAL Public Art Project is an experimental initiative that situates art in the vernacular through the commissioning of curators and artists for special projects in technovernacular and non-traditional environments. This project is at once central and extracurricular to A-WAL email, the email where cyber expression is commandeered through use of art and personal images as backgrounds. A-WAL has been featured as extension of exhibition at Satellite Project Shanghai Biennial, Observatori Contemporary (Valencia, Spain), Spring / Wooster graffiti project (New York), and will be present at the Venice Biennale in various unorthodox locales including a cave. A-WAL challenges traditional and technical modes of communications channels, redefines the relationship of public/private, and attacks the bourgeoisie notion and privileged role associated with collecting.

Posted by jo at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

MadCat Women's International Film Festival

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Seeking Submissions

The 11th Annual MadCat Women's International Film Festival is seeking submissions! MadCat seeks provocative and visionary films and videos directed or co-directed by women. Films can be of any length or genre and produced ANY year. MadCat is committed to showcasing work that challenges the use of sound and image and explores notions of visual story telling. All subjects / topics will be considered. Submission Fee: $10-30 sliding scale. Pay what you can afford. International entrants may disregard the fee. For more details go to www.madcatfilmfestival.org or call 415 436-9523. Preview Formats: VHS or DVD. Exhibition Formats: 35mm, 16mm, Super8, Beta SP, Mini DV, VHS, DVD. All entries must include a self addressed stamped envelope for return of materials. Previews will not be returned without a self addressed stamped envelope. Late Deadline: May 21, 2007.

TOUR

MadCat is currently on TOUR with a portion of last year's Festival. We will let you know if MadCat plans to travel to your area. Or let us know if you want to set up a screening near you.

Private Eyes

"Private Eyes," the first program in curator, Ariella Ben-Dov's series features an eclectic selection of experimental documentaries and animated works from the UK, Czech Republic, Norway and the US. The Intimacy of Strangers, follows a clandestine film crew that prowls the streets, capturing phone conversations. The filmmaker "steals" these intimate moments and explores the ever-shrinking gap between private and public spheres. Deep Woods is a performative video that lures male participants through evocative advertisements. These innovative works reveal the power of modern technologies to upend of notions of privacy.

Fools Tricks

The second program in curator Ariella Ben-Dov's series - "Fools Tricks," highlights experiments in avant-garde filmmaking. Optical printing, painting on film and other tricks of the cinematic trade create an intriguing body of work. Set against the background of real and imagined calamities, Boll Weevil Days re-conceptualizes the disaster narrative. A fragile paper city and yellowing pictures of rescue workers from the 1930s creates an elliptical portrayal of intimacy in the face of oblivion. Blending documentary and conceptual audio Tune-In uncovers the world of amateur radio operators. Also see an abstracted lunar eclipse, the inner workings of a monastery's bakery and the re-creation of planets, among other stories.

MadCat Women's International Film Festival
639 Steiner Street Unit C
San Francisco, CA 94117 USA
P. 415 436-9523
F. 415 934-0642
E. info[at]madcatfilmfestival.org
www.madcatfilmfestival.org

Posted by jo at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

a-m-b-e_r

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Body-Process Arts

a-m-b-e_r is an Istanbul based initiative that aims to explore artistic forms of expression at the conjunction of the body and the digital process. It was founded in 2007 as an association by a team of researchers and artists from disciplines such as dance, performance, design, social sciences and engineering. The founders of amber came together in order to create a local discussion and production platform in a Globalized World itself transformed by new technologies.

a-m-b-e_r defines its area of interest through the wording of its subtitle. Body-process arts points to artistic forms that incorporate and exploit the interaction of human bodies and technological processes. a-m-b-e_r's objective is to establish a permanent center in Istanbul, which would focus on research, production and education in the field of body-process arts. Simultaneously, a-m-b-e_r seeks to create an international network of artists, researchers and technicians with whom it would continue to work and cooperate. It thus aims to participate in universal art from its local and regional perspective.

From this year on, a-m-b-e_r will be regularly organizing a-m-b-e_r body-process arts festivals as part of its activities. a-m-b-e_r'07 body-process arts festival will take place in between 9-17 November, 2007 in Istanbul. The theme of a-m-b-e_r'07 is "voice and survival".

Posted by jo at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

From White Box to Inbox

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Jesse Aaron Cohen

On the last Friday of every month, archivist Jesse Aaron Cohen 'opens' a new email exhibition. The shows are delivered to subscribers' inboxes, in the form of thematized collections of digital images. (Below is the root directory for these images.) Cohen is based in New York and many of the shows in his series revolve around immigrants to the city and diaspora Jewish culture. The current one, number 28, is called 'Dr. Z's' and features scans of ads for 'health, beauty, and wellness products and practitioners as they appeared in programs from various Yiddish theaters in New York between 1890 and 1928.' The title is inspired by dermatologist Dr. Zizmor's (Dr. Z's) ubiquitous subway ads, as traced in the supplementary links included in the email. Each of the exhibitions features such extra info and is contextualized by a brief curatorial statement.

Number 21 was simply called 'Myspace,' and the statement read, 'This exhibition features images found on the Myspace pages of US soldiers currently in Iraq. Click on the photo to view the profile.' Together, and without extra editorializing, the images painted a broader picture of the anxieties and banalities, of the soldier's daily life. Exhibition 4 ('Envelope Art') focused on mail, itself, and identified 'four disparate groups in which envelope art has thrived as a creative medium, namely: members of the US Armed Forces, Deadheads, incarcerated Americans, and video game enthusiasts.' Once again piecing together artifacts to make a thoughtful cultural statement, Cohen's musings might also apply to email art: 'If the medium is the message, then the message of envelope art seems to generally involve craft, dedication, boredom, and the desire to communicate personality with the recipient from afar.' - Marisa Olson, Rhizome News. http://brightbrown.fastmail.fm/

Posted by jo at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)

Mushon Zer Aviv + Dan Phiffer

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Present ShiftSpace Today

Mushon Zer-Aviv and Dan Phiffer will present their thesis ShiftSpace - an open-source layer above any website - at ITP today. Dan's presentation is at 4:00 pm, Mushon's is at 7:00 pm :: 721 Broadway at Waverly Place, 4th Floor, South Elevators, New York, NY 10003. If you can't make it you can follow it online.

While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web is undergoing a transformation whose promise is user empowerment—but who controls the terms of this new read/write web? The web has followed the physical movement of the city’s social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web.

By pressing the [Shift] + [Space] keys, a ShiftSpace user can invoke a new meta layer above any web page to browse and create additional interpretations, contextualizations and interventions – which we call Shifts. Users can choose between several authoring tools we’re working to develop – which we call Spaces. Some are utilitarian (like Notes) and some are more experimental / interventionist (like ImageSwap and SourceShift). In the near future users will be invited to map these shifts into Trails. These trails can be used for collaborative research, for curating netart exhibitions or as a platform to facilitate a context-based public debate.

Posted by jo at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2007

THE RENDERED ARENA:

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Modalities of Space in Video and Computer Games

"Abstract: During the last 30 years computer and videogames have grown into a large entertainment industry of economical as well as cultural and social importance. As a distinctive field of academic inquiry begins to evolve in the form of game studies, the majority of approaches can be identified as emerging either from a background of literary theory which motivates a concentration on narrative structures or from a dedicated focus on the rules in video and computer games. However, one of the most evident properties of those games is their shared participation in a variety of spatial illusions. Although most researchers share the view that issues related to mediated space are among the most significant factors characterising the new medium, as of yet, no coherent conceptual exploration of space and spatial representation in video and computer games has been undertaken.

This thesis focuses on the novel spatial paradigms emerging from computer and video games. It aims to develop an original theoretical framework that takes the hybrid nature of the medium into account. The goal of this work is to extend the present range of methodologies directed towards the analysis of digital games. In order to reveal the roots of the spatial apparatus at work an overview of the most significant conceptions of space in western thought is given. Henri Lefebvre’s reading of space as a triad of perceived, conceived and lived space is adopted. This serves to account for the multifaceted nature of the subject, enables the integration of divergent spatial conceptions as part of a coherent framework, and highlights the importance of experiential notions of spatiality. Starting from Michel Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia, game-space is posited as the dynamic interplay between different spatial modalities. As constitutive elements of the dynamic spatial system mobilized by digital games the following modalities are advanced: the physical space of the player, the space emerging from the narrative, the rules, the audiovisual representation and the kinaesthetic link between player and game. These different modalities are examined in detail in the light of a selected range of exemplary games. Based on a discussion of film theory in this context an original model that serves to distinguish between different visual representational strategies is presented. A chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the crucial and often overlooked role of sound for the generation of spatial illusions. It is argued that sound has to be regarded as the privileged element that enables the active use of representational space in three dimensions. Finally the proposed model is mobilised to explore how the work of contemporary artists relates to the spatial paradigms set forth by digital games. The critical dimension of artistic work in this context is outlined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact of the prevalent modes of spatial practice in computer and video games on wider areas of everyday life." From THE RENDERED ARENA: Modalities of Space in Video and Computer Games by Axel Stockburger, 2006. [via selectparks]

Posted by jo at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

Second Front - Spawn of the Surreal (Live at NMConnect)

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Alternate Perspectives

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Floating Eye

[...] (photo by Saxinger) Floating Eye (2001), by Hiroo Iwata (VRlab), is an interactive installation that separates vision from the body. The participant can only see wide-angle image floating in the air. The image is captured by a wireless camera attached to an airship, pulled along by the user. The participants can see themselves from above, along with the surrounding area.

A large helmet provides the immersive experience. This helmet contains a convex mirror, with a projector mounted at the rear, so the image takes up the users whole field of view. The movie belows shows how this works. Movie (10mb mpeg) More images and video.

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Inter Dis-Communication Machine

(photo:Kurokawa Mikio) The Inter Dis-Communication Machine (1993), by Hachiya Kazuhiko, lets two participants see things from the other persons perspective. The site states “the concept to make it possible to kiss or to make love with the partner while keeping the machines on”. [blogged by Chris on Pixelsumo]

Posted by jo at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)

CounterPULSE presents STREAM/fest

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Media-Assisted Performance

CounterPULSE presents STREAM/fest a festival of cutting-edge performance, including MAP: Media-Assisted Performance (Thurs-Fri) and EPF: Emerging Performance Festival (Sat-Sun) :: When: Thursday-Sunday, May 17-20 @ 8pm :: Where: CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street @ 9th, San Francisco :: Tickets: $12-20 Sliding scale :: Info/Res: 415-435-7552 or info[at]counterpulse.org :: Contact info: Jessica Robinson, 415-626-2060 or jessica[at]counterpulse.org.

MAP: Media-Assisted Performance-- Thursday & Friday, May 17 & 18: Artists respond to climate change, advances in technology and media saturation with a sophisticated mélange of live performance and interactive media. DAVID SZALASA presents a sneak preview of “My HOT Lobotomy,” a farcical interdisciplinary media performance about a NASA employee who willingly has a lobotomy to forget what he knows about global warming. SUBJECT TO CHANGE PERFORMANCE COMPANY's "Study 2013" references both global warming and the second coming of Christ, employing bodies, video, text and sound to explore both the tension and the comedy of living in 'The End Times.'

• SMITH/WYMORE DISAPPEARING ACTS employs a high-tech sound and motion tracking process to create "Unstable Atmospheres," a technologically enhanced interactive environment where performers negotiate a charged and turbulent space, resulting in surprising relationships between computers and humans.

• In "Frames of Mind," CATHERINE GALASSO's dancers stagger across the stage clutching televisions containing images of themselves, highlighting our culture's increasing divide between the physical body and the digital self.

• The ERIKA SHUCH PERFORMANCE PROJECT presents the dance film, "To Hellen Bach," a visually arresting and dream-like journey into the interior of a disturbed mind, featuring performance by Erika Chong Shuch and video by Ishan Vernallis.

• Esther Williams meets MTV in ERIC KOZIOL's experimental dance film, "Synchro," a study in human kinetics and buoyancy featuring a solo swimmer in a technicolor underwater environment.

EPF: Emerging Performance Festival—Saturday & Sunday, May 19 & 20: Performances ranging from modern dance to dark comedy and from Bharathanatyam to spoken word explore the complexities of contemporary life.

• RABBLE ROUSER DANCE THEATER, directed by Sarah-Luella Baker, uses raw movement, live music, and illuminated singing to create a non-linear parable about the burial and unearthing of the archetypal feminine in "SCORE: sad song with birds."

• In "Blood of the Virgin," by JULIA STELLE ALLEN, a male hustler haunted by his first time intersects with a virgin woman struggling for purity in a “dirty world”, and the tragic true-story of the sacrifice of a small child. Sex and violence, saints and sinners, all speak the truths we try to forget and the fictions we hope to believe.

• DEEP WATERS DANCE THEATRE, Directed by Amara Tabor-Smith, examines how deforestation and inner city living are cultural genocide for people whose traditions are rooted in nature. Drawing from folklore and ritual of the Yoruba spiritual tradition, “Precious Dirt” tells a story of violence in our communities and the link to our disconnection from nature.

• COURTNEY MORENO & SONYA SMITH use movement to create a visual landscape of expression and response. "Right Behind You" investigates emotional intelligence using two dancers, a quiz, a blindfold, and photographs. The result is a relationship as unique as it is universal, and a dance on the edge of risk and vulnerability.

• "A Young Wife's Journey" by DEEPA SUBRAMANIAM fuses classical South Indian dance, world music and spoken word poetry, as it chronicles the fear, loneliness and excitement of a young Indian wife's immigration and subsequent shift in identity.

• KIM HARMON's "parts is parts: animal nature" presents striking visceral imagery, energetic choreography, and soaring original music. Questions of responsibility, objectification, containment and fragmentation wordlessly spiral around the structure of our "natural" world in this first installment of an evocative performance sequence on the theme of compartmentalization

Posted by jo at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

Borders Boundaries and Liminal Spaces

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Go there now!

Posted by jo at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)

Critical Mass Brooklyn 2007

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Mobile Broadcast Unit

The G.R.L. rolls out its newest probably-not-street-legal vehicle, the Mobile Broadcast Unit: audio, projection and L.A.S.E.R. tag systems all mounted on a big tricycle. Last Friday, the G.R.L went to war against boredom and had a blast riding and writing with Critical Mass in Brooklyn. Beginning in the summer in NYC you will be able to borrow the MBU to wage your own personal wars in the city. Stay Tuned.

Posted by jo at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION

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90 Degrees Equatorial Project

JAMES GEURTS' 90 Degrees Equatorial Project :: through May 19 :: EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION :: Lion Arts Centre North Terrace at Morphett Street, Adelaide, Australia 5000 :: eaf[at]eaf.asn.au.

90 Degrees Equatorial Project combines three aspects of Geurts' practice - photography, video and site-specific installations. The works are primarily abstract documentation generated by situated on-site performance. Geurts works with video by manipulating live feed to force errors in the recording process. Abstraction of real-time into video static opens the possibility of unexpected relationships between visual and aural elements.

"At four equal sites on the equator, a corner of a right angle plastic frame pierces the skin of the landscape to give the illusion of a frame that passes through the earth. I developed a portable sculpture in the form of a 90-degree frame, which was set up at the four sites and photographed. The frame is made from fabricated plastic and internally lit with fluorescent light." James Geurts

The project worked at four locations which are 900 apart :
1000 East - Pandang, Sumatra, Indonesia
100 East - Libreville, Gabon, Africa
800 West - Perneldes, Equador, South America
1700 East - Kirimatti Atoll, Pacific Ocean

Posted by jo at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

The Centre for Research into Material Digital Cultures

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Sensorium: Embodied Experience versus Digital Media

The Centre for Research into Material Digital Cultures at the University of Sussex, Public Lecture: 'Sensorium: Embodied Experience versus Digital Media' :: Monday May 21, 2007 t 5:30 pm :: Brighton and Sussex Medical School Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex :: All Welcome :: RSVP to Vanessa Sammut so we can keep track of numbers: V.A.Sammut[at]sussex.ac.uk

Speaker: Caroline Jones, Professor of Art History, MIT :: Respondent: Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Welcome: Professor Sue Thornham, University of Sussex/Caroline Bassett, Director, Centre for Research in Material Digital Cultures Chair: Dr Michael Bull, founding editor of Senses and Society.

Posted by jo at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2007

RECONFIGURABLE HOUSE: HACKING LOW TECH ARCHITECTURE

By Usman HAQUE & Adam SOMLAI-FISCHER using sensors and actuators developed by the Reorient Team.

The Reconfigurable House is an environment constructed from low tech components that can be "rewired" by visitors. The project is a critique of "smart homes",which are based on the idea that technology should be invisible to prevent DIY. Smart homes actually aren't very smart simply because they are pre-wired according to algorithms and decisions made by designers of the systems, rather than the people who occupy the houses.

Posted by jo at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! São Paulo

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Networks and Artistic Spaces of Intervention

Upgrade! São Paulo: gilbertto prado: Networks and Artistic Spaces of Intervention :: May 17, 2007, 7:30 pm @ i-People: Av Vergueiro 727, next to the Vergueiro Subway Station.

Experimentations with art and technology have multiplied in the last three decades with the use of several kinds of creation, production and distribution by artists. Those possibilities are emphasized particularly through the internet and its popularization in the 90's and more recently through the wireless devices and the virtual multi-user environments. The purpose of this presentation is to bring a brief panorama pointing out some artists, as well as to present some recent personal artistic works such as interactive installations and videogame.

Gilbertto Prado is multimedia artist, professor of the Department of Fine Arts at the School of Communication and Art of the University of São Paulo. He studied Engineer and Fine Arts at UNICAMP and in 1994 he receveid his Doctorate Degree from the University of Paris 1. He has curated and participated of numberless exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. In 2003, his book "Telematics Art: from the punctual interchanges to the virtual multi-user environments" was published by the Itaú Cultural, São Paulo.

Posted by jo at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

aMAZElab

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Art and Urban Practices

Art and Urban Practices: New City-Territories :: 12-13 JUNE 2007 :: VENICE :: aMAZElab via Cola Montano 8, 20159 Milan, Italy :: Ph/Fax +39 02 6071623 :: info[at]amaze.it

aMAZElab proposes an international workshop aimed at students and young artists, along with a study day / conference on the theme of Mediterranean Atlas. Art and Urban Practices. New city-territories. Artists, architects and theorists describe contemporary living and the transformations of six Mediterranean cities: Istanbul, Beirut, Nicosia, Tel Aviv, Alexandria and Barcelona and Venice. An experimental and multi-disciplinary debate on these six "case study" cities, on contemporary perceptions of the city, as well as on the theme of new territories. Migratory flows of people, cultures and economies. The writing on the walls of contemporary city-territories, open maps with multiple meanings between their emotional, geographical, historical and social layers.

Posted by jo at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

Bios 4

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Art, Biology and the Environment

Bios 4: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporneo :: Seville 2007 May 3 - September 2 :: curator: Antonio Cerveira Pinto.

A broad view on biotech art, including some of its relations with the human body, nano-entities, environmental issues, artificial life and robots. Open seminar on biotech and environmental art | may 2, 1800 (free entrance) Opening | may 3, 2000 (invitational).

Biotech art is part of the cognitive art vortex. It is actually the real new thing in post-contemporary culture. It is not another modern art melting down of symbolic representation. Post-contemporary art entities are basically cognitive in the way that they need both knowledge to evolve and inteligent perusers to interact. - Antonio Cerveira-Pinto

ARTISTS

Agnes Denes | Amy Youngs | Andrew K?tting, Giles Lane, Mark Lythgoe | Andy Gracie | Andy Lomas | Aniko Meszaros | Antony Hall | Genetic Architectures | Aviva Rahmani | Beatriz da Costa | Bestiario (Santiago Ortiz, Jose Aguirre, Carolina Valejo, Andr?s Ortiz) | Betty Beaumont | Bill Vorn | Bioteknica (Shawn Bailey, Jennifer Willet) | Brandon Balleng? | Catherine Wagner | Cynthia Verspaget & Adam Fiannaca | Dmitry Bulatov | Driessens & Verstappen | Eduardo Kac | France Cadet | Biopresence (Georg Tremmel, Shiho Fukuhara) | George Gessert | Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey | Joe Davis | Justine Cooper | Kathy High | Ken Rinaldo | Laura Cinti, Howard Boland (c-lab) | Mark Cypher | Marta de Menezes | Mateusz Herczka | Natalie Jeremijenko | Nell Tenhaaf | Norman T White | Paul Vanouse | Paula Gaetano | Peter Gena | Philip Ross | Polona Tratnik | Sonya Rapoport | Theo Jansen | Ursula Damm | Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski, in collaboration with Gil Kuno, Sarah Cross, Tyler Adams, Paul Wilkinson |

ANTONIO CERVEIRA PINTO (CkS): I am an artist, content designer, writer and professional consultant, presently futurizing the world in a post-carbon era. Post-contemporary culture, complex art and architecture, is my specific field of investigation and creativity.

Postal address:
Rua Alberto Oliveira, Palacio Corucheus, At. 27
1700-019 Lisboa - PT
Phones:
Mobile 1 : +351 965 416 370
Mobile 2: +34 664 012 855
antonio.c.pinto{at}risco{dot}pt
Skype ID: antoniocerveirapinto

Posted by jo at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2007

a show of hands: May 1, 2007

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Show of Solidarity

A year ago, the immigration reform movement swept through city centers across the United States in an historic series of marches. Over a million workers and their families took to the streets. This year a second wave of marches has been planned (May Day 2007). Although media outlets frequently focused on Latin American immigrants, the rallies invited all immigrants and their supporters to make their presence known, and many answered the call. After attending that march and being swept in the currents of political change, I began a show of hands.

As a show of hands is still in its early stages, I encourage readers to explore it and to send their feedback. Remember to register for Literatronica (even just as a guest) so the system can best adapt to your reading habits. Literatronica is available to authors who are interested in developing their own literary hypertexts. Readers can see a list of the current selections at the site.

Culminating in the May 1, 2006 marches, a show of hands is an adaptive hypertext written on Literatronica (or Literatronic), a system developed by Colombian doctoral candidate (FSU) Juan B. Gutierrez. Although the piece is in-progress, [Mark Marino] wanted to take this moment to present its early manifestation in commemoration of the marches that inspired it.

The icon of a show of hands is a photomosaic (there are currently two in the piece), featuring images of the hands of the marchers as well as of those of other people I encountered through Los Angeles at the time. The photomosaics also act as navigational maps, leading to the various storyheads in the tale. The reader chooses from the hands.

The hands could not be reduced or flattened to an iconic Brown Power fist. While at the march, I snapped pictures of hands, waving flags, raising banners, cradling cell phones, and aiming cameras. Marches often become a single image in the newspaper, members dissolve into a solitary stream. However, the vision, this showing of hands could not have been predicted, and the hands themselves, in all their activities and difference, good not have been imagined. And this is the age of multiple media as this Flickr set from the Chicago march attests.

The photomosaics bring together these photographs to form the broader image of this moment. Of course, due to the gaps inherent in mosaics, the image requires the viewer to complete it, to integrate the pieces, to recognize the larger pattern in what might be called gestalt. Read more >>

Posted by jo at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

[iDC] THE ANTI WEB 2.0 MANIFESTO (Andrew Keen)

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CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How the Internet is killing our culture

Hi everyone -- My name is Andrew Keen and I'm the author of the forthcoming (June 5) CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How the Internet is killing our culture. For more about my ideas, see my Internet writing at: CultOfTheAmateur, ZDNet, and Britannica. A blogging critique of blogging, eh. What is the world coming to? Anyway, I've been invited by kind Trebor to join your newsgroup and discuss / defend / critique my ideas. Trebor will post my anti Web 2.0 manifesto (aka: Adorno-for-idiots). So that should provide some lite afternoon reading for y'all. All the very best from sunny south-central Berkeley, Andrew.

Trebor wrote:

Welcome to Andrew Keen. His "deliciously subversive new book," "The Cult of the Amateur" "exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values..." There is a parallel to Jaron Lanier's "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism." (Thanks to Bernardo Parrella for the link.)

THE ANTI WEB 2.0 MANIFESTO (Adorno-for-idiots) by Andrew Keen

1. The cult of the amateur is digital utopianism’s most seductive delusion. This cult promises that the latest media technology -- in the form of blogs, wikis and podcasts -- will enable everyone to become widely read writers, journalists, movie directors and music artists. It suggests, mistakenly, that everyone has something interesting to say.

2. The digital utopian much heralded “democratization” of media will have a destructive impact upon culture, particularly upon criticism. “Good taste” is, as Adorno never tired of telling us, undemocratic. Taste must reside with an elite (“truth makers”) of historically progressive cultural critics able to determine, on behalf of the public, the value of a work-of-art. The digital utopia seeks to flatten this elite into an ochlocracy. The danger, therefore, is that the future will be tasteless.

3. To imagine the dystopian future, we need to reread Adorno, as well as Kafka and Borges (the Web 2.0 dystopia can be mapped to that triangular space between Frankfurt, Prague and Buenos Aires). Unchecked technology threatens to undermine reality and turn media into a rival version of life, a 21st century version of “The Castle” or “The Library of Babel”. This might make a fantastic movie or short piece of fiction. But real life, like art, shouldn’t be fantasy; it shouldn’t be fiction.

4. A particularly unfashionable thought: big media is not bad media. The big media engine of the Hollywood studios, the major record labels and publishing houses has discovered and branded great 20th century popular artists of such as Alfred Hitchcock, Bono and W.G. Sebald (the “Vertigo” three). It is most unlikely that citizen media will have the marketing skills to discover and brand creative artists of equivalent prodigy.

5. Let’s think differently about George Orwell. Apple’s iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial is true: 1984 will not be like Nineteen Eighty-Four the message went. Yes, the “truth” about the digital future will be the absence of the Orwellian Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth. Orwell’s dystopia is the dictatorship of the State; the Web 2.0 dystopia is the dictatorship of the author. In the digital future, everyone will think they are Orwell (the movie might be called: Being George Orwell).

6. Digital utopian economists Chris Anderson have invented a theoretically flattened market that they have christened the “Long Tail”. It is a Hayekian cottage market of small media producers industriously trading with one another. But Anderson’s “Long Tail” is really a long tale. The real economic future is something akin to Google -- a vertiginous media world in which content and advertising become so indistinguishable that they become one and the same (more grist to that Frankfurt-Prague-BuenosAires triangle).

7. As always, today’s pornography reveals tomorrow’s media. The future of general media content, the place culture is going, is Voyeurweb.com: the convergence of self-authored shamelessness, narcissism and vulgarity -- a self-argument in favor of censorship. As Adorno liked to remind us, we have a responsibility to protect people from their worst impulses. If people aren’t able to censor their worst instincts, then they need to be censored by others wiser and more disciplined than themselves.

8. There is something of the philosophical assumptions of early Marx and Rousseau in the digital utopian movement, particularly in its holy trinity of online community, individual creativity and common intellectual property ownership. Most of all, it’s in the marriage of abstract theory and absolute faith in the virtue of human nature that lends the digital utopians their intellectual debt to intellectual Casanovas like young Marx and Rousseau.

9. How to resist digital utopianism? Orwell’s focus on language is the most effective antidote. The digital utopians needs to be fought word-for-word, phrase-by-phrase, delusion-by-delusion. As an opening gambit, let’s focus on the meaning of four key words in the digital utopian lexicon: a) author b) audience c) community d) elitism.

10. The cultural consequence of uncontrolled digital development will be social vertigo. Culture will be spinning and whirling and in continual flux. Everything will be in motion; everything will be opinion. This social vertigo of ubiquitous opinion was recognized by Plato. That’s why he was of the opinion that opinionated artists should be banned from his Republic.

Michel Bauwens wrote:

Here is some of my own commentary:

1. The cult of the amateur is digital utopianism's most seductive delusion. This cult promises that the latest media technology -- in the form of blogs, wikis and podcasts -- will enable everyone to become widely read writers, journalists, movie directors and music artists. It suggests, mistakenly, that everyone has something interesting to say.

I would go further than Guido and this, and indeed affirm that and I mean indeed everybody, has something interesting to say, but it depends crucially on what topic, and on the context of exchange.

Peer to peer processes are based on the principle of equipotentiality, see the entry here for a full treatment: http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Equipotentiality

Jorge Ferrer expresses beautifully what it is about:

Everybody can be considered ...

"equals in the sense of their being both superior and inferior to themselves in varying skills and areas of endeavor (intellectually, emotionally, artistically, mechanically, interpersonally, and so forth), but with none of those skills being absolutely higher or better than others. It is important to experience human equality from this perspective to avoid trivializing our encounter with others as being merely equal." (http://www.estel.es/EmbodiedParticipationInTheMystery,%201espace.doc)

Good participatory systems allow this to happen through self-selection first, then through communal validation.

A problem can arise with the second process of distributed quality control. Massification of judgment can lead to a bottoming effect, but not necessarily. It can be configured in such a way that either affinity groups or experts can play a privileged role in the validation process. The only difference is that the control is a posteriori instead of a priori. The advantage of a broader participation is that there is a greater quantity to select quality from. Finally, it is based on the idea that "together we know everything", and that even experts have limited and biased viewpoints.

The key point is that the "danger" that Keen points to is a matter of good design principles and processes, not of the participatory process itself.

There are many p2p projects where experts, and pro-ams successfully work together.

My comments here also reply to point 2, where Keen simply repeats the arguments that have always been brought against democratization, but each time, democratization has brought more cultural creativity and diversity.

>>3. To imagine the dystopian future, we need to reread Adorno, as well as Kafka and Borges (the Web 2.0 dystopia can be mapped to that triangular space between Frankfurt, Prague and Buenos Aires). Unchecked technology threatens to undermine reality and turn media into a rival version of life, a 21st century version of "The Castle" or "The Library of Babel". This might make a fantastic movie or short piece of fiction. But real life, like art, shouldn't be fantasy; it shouldn't be fiction.

Isn't this the same old tired argument assuming that the real and the virtual are 'separate' realms, where in fact there is just one embodied life, using various tools. This is not to say that there can be various 'abuses' and 'exagerrations' (people reading all the time, phoning all the time, surfing all the time), but they are not different from physical addictions (gambling, alcohol).

>>4. A particularly unfashionable thought: big media is not bad media. The big media engine of the Hollywood studios, the major record labels and publishing houses has discovered and branded great 20th century popular artists of such as Alfred Hitchcock, Bono and W.G. Sebald (the "Vertigo" three). It is most unlikely that citizen media will have the marketing skills to discover and brand creative artists of equivalent prodigy.

Of course, but lets turn his argument around. Not all small media are bad media. Distributed media can aggregate so to achieve scale, and can produce qualitative works as well. I'm thinking of the music in Bali, where every musician has to follow a collective score, and can only change the score through coordination with all other participants. This is just one polarity, the other being the jazzband model of free individual creativity in communal mode. Different production modalities will produce different types of creative possibilities, which have to be judged on their own merit. Big media has clear dumbing down effects, micro media, through wrong design, can have as well.

>>6. Digital utopian economists Chris Anderson have invented a theoretically flattened market that they have christened the "Long Tail". It is a Hayekian cottage market of small media producers industriously trading with one another. But Anderson's "Long Tail" is really a long tale. The real economic future is something akin to Google -- a vertiginous media world in which content and advertising become so indistinguishable that they become one and the same (more grist to that Frankfurt-Prague-BuenosAires triangle).

The centralisation of sharing can , and will, have some of such effects, but this is not the only future for micro production. True distribution can avoid some of these centralisation effects. The key is to defend the continued capacity to change hubs, since hubs will always exist through voluntary choices (power law). But it is possible to design for autonomy and diversity, to offset the protocollary power of invisible architectures.

Conclusion: againt Andrew Keen we must insist that participation (the peer to peer process) and elitism (the selection for quality process), can and will inevitable co-exist. The difference is that elites will be more diversified and flexible. The role of the elite is to sustain a more and greater creativity, not to put themselves as gatekeepers.

To quote John Heron, about leadership:

"The sole role of hierarchy is in its spontaneous emergence in the initiation and continuous flowering of autonomy-in-co-operation in all spheres of human endeavor."

Michel Bauwens

Simon Biggs wrote:

This is part of a bigger question, as Adorno suggests.

Where does good taste reside and how does a particular taste become prevalent?

Fashion might be an interesting example here. To quite an extent it is true that high fashion taste is set by an elite - mainly the fashion houses of Paris, Milan, London, NYC and Tokyo. However, they take their ideas from all over the place. It is accepted as standard practice in the fashion industry, as well as other design professions, to regard other people's creative work as fair game. Having taught (many years ago) on a reputable UK fashion program I was surprised (at the time) to see lecturers setting students projects where they were told to take the work of an artist (any artist they like, or perhaps a specific artist, or a style) and to use it as the basis for designing a collection.

Coming out of a contemporary arts background I was amazed at this. One would never suggest this to a fine art student as a means to initiate work, as the value of novelty and self expression are the touchstones of both fine art practice and pedagogy. The initiative has to come from the artist (or at least that is the premise).

The point of this story is to suggest that taste can have murky orgins. Those so called "trend setters" or "opinion formers" get their trends and opinions from somewhere...

Taking the example of fashion a little further, whilst it is the case that high fashion is primarily determined by a few fashion houses it is also the case that street fashion is quite different. Having lived in London for some decades I have observed how trends emerge and are picked up. Sometimes they come out of the media (via pop groups, TV, etc) but more often than not they start with small groups of individuals somewhere just trying something out, for the heck of it, finding it cool as a means of badging themselves, and then others joining in.

This would suggest that Adorno didn't quite get it. He may have been right speaking of Germany in the 1930's but the London of the late 20th Century, and many other such places, would seem to suggest a different model of how taste is created and picked up.

In this respect there is nothing new in the digitopian calls for a democratic web. Street culture already is like this. Of course you could say that such culture is tasteless...and you could very well be right.

However, it is a matter of taste.

Regards

Simon

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Posted by jo at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

boredomresearch's

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the Forest of Imagined Beginnings

boredomresearchs' latest web project is now live! Go to Explore the Forest of Imagined Beginnings & leave your thoughts embedded in the trees.

boredomresearch are interested in creating landscape environments online that develop over time, where users can explore and manipulate these environments, creating an individual experience which is both contemplative and rewarding. In the Forest of Imagined Beginnings there are no clear rules or objectives. It is simply an online landscape that is vulnerable to the whims and wants of the community that adopt this digital terrain as their own.

Forest of Imagined Beginnings will be exhibited at enter_unknown territories, International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK (25th-29th April). During this festival boredomresearch will be discussing the development of this work in a public presentation on Saturday 28th April.

This project has been co-commissioned by folly, Lancaster & enter_unknown territories, International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK and supported by the National Centre of Computer Animation, Bournemouth University.

Posted by jo at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

Borders Boundaries and Liminal Spaces

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Conference ON/IN Second Life

Borders Boundaries and Liminal Spaces: A conference in the liminal space of Second Life sponsored by Ars Virtua and presented with the New Media Consortium Virtual Worlds. Teleport HERE (instructions are here) you must be a member of the NMC Guests group to use this link, membership is free)

Borders are frequently under contention; they are regions that neatly separate two entities and enable a form of deconstruction. However, the distinctions formed by borders are not sufficient and we realize that often the border begins to represent a third region and generates more contentious borders. It is truly difficult to discern the breadth a border, an indeterminate space, and it's depth is dependent on the sphere, there is a point when you can cross into the "other." Borders would be impossible to cross if this was false and the liminal space would disappear. It is our assertion that the synthetic world is a fundamentally liminal space....

Day 1 (Thursday, April 26, 2007) -all times Pacific Time/SLT

* 11:30 - 11:50am Invocation/Welcoming Statements

* Noon - 1:15pm Session: Remains

Brad Kligerman -Artist and Architect Brad Kligerman has turned the idea of art making upside down or rather inside out in his AVAIR exhibit. Kligerman questions the idea of materiality in the rendered environment and the nature of image. He successfully blends the idea of moving through "space" with the idea of moving through image in his new multi-sim installations.

Renée Ridgway - is an artist and free-lance curato ased in Amsterdam. Ridgway´s visual projects can be interpreted as a mapping of different occupations/occupancies by the use of a migrating identity to understand foreign territories, unknown areas and (sub)cultures. While social groups, peoples and cultures usually emphasize apparent differences to define themselves, she chooses to focus on similarities and raise questions about how identity can be constructed, including her own.

Laura Jones -- is an applied anthropologist and archaeologist. Her research areas are California and French Polynesia. She has worked for the Muwekma Tribe of Ohlone Indians, Stanford University, the Field Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

moderator James Morgan

* 1:15pm - on De-compression Event: Demo Day - building, scripting and animating in SL

Day 2 (Friday, April 27, 2007) All Times Pacific Time

* 11-12:15pm Session: Out of Body

Michele White - Michele White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University. She teaches Internet and new media studies, television and film theory, art history and contemporary visual culture, science fiction and technology literature, gender and queer theory, and critical race and postcolonial studies.

Elouise Pasteur - Eloise Pasteur is an avatar on Second Life and is widely known as an educator, writer, coder, and businesswoman with a first life background as an educator of students with disabilities. She is the author of innovative educational designs that foster in world learning and and is also known for her designs that she sells to the Second Life S&M community.

Dore Bowen - Dore Bowen holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Art from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. in Media Studies from The Evergreen State College. Her writing and curatorial projects focus on the phenomenology of perception, particularly within the interstices of the temporal and visual arts. Her criticism has appeared in journals and catalogues. She is currently Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at San Jose State University.

Moderator: Thomas Asmuth

* 12:30-1:30 De-compression Event: Sex Tour

* 1:45- 3:00 Session: Body in Quotes

Nathaniel Stern - an internationally exhibited installation and video artist, net.artist, printmaker and performance poet. His interactive installations have won awards in New York, Australia and South Africa, and his video and net.art have been featured in festivals all over Europe, Asia and the US. nathaniel's collaborative physical theatre and multimedia performance work with the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative has won three of South Africa's FNB Vita Awards and seen three main stage features at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival.

Jeremy Turner - aka. Wirxli Flimflam is a new media artist, published writer, avatar performer and music (audio) composer currently based in Vancouver but exhibits, curates, performs and collaborates globally. As Wirxli Flimflam, he is the founding member of the performance art group Second Front in Second Life. He was the Coordinator for the LIVE 2005 Biennial of Performance Art in Vancouver. www.livevancouver.bc.ca and is now the Director of Avatar Development for LIVE 2007.

Stuart Bunt

moderator Carlos Castellanos

Day 3 (Saturday April 28, 2007) All Times Pacific Time

* 11:00-12:15 SLT Session: Game the System

Patrick Lichty - is a conceptual intermedia artist working in activist art, retrotech, digital minimalism, alpha revisionism, and experimental video, among others. In addition, he is an editor, curator, writer, musician, and engineer. He is Editor -in-Chief for Intelligent Agent Magazine.

Joseph DeLappe - has been engaging in visual arts practice since the early 1980s. His works in mixed media, digital photography, sculpture and interactive installation have been shown throughout the United States and internationally. DeLappe joined UNR as the head of the Art Department's New Genres area in 1993. DeLappe is a native of San Francisco, California.

Trevor Smith - founder of the Ogoglio project which is building an online city for creative work. A graduate of the dot.com boom and bust, he spent several years as a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC before starting a Seattle based space hosting company, Transmutable. He is available in digital form at http://trevor.smith.name/

comoderated kyungwha lee & john bruneau

* 12:30 on De-compression Event: WoW raid(s)/Grind

Schedule: http://arsvirtua.com/bordersprog.php
Location: http://arsvirtua.com/borders/location.php
email: nmc at arsvirtua dot com

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Posted by jo at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

The Stakes + the Networks of Creation in the Post-Contemporary Era

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A Symposium

Symposium on "the stakes and the networks of creation at the post-contemporary era" proposed by Abdallah Karroum (The apppartement 22) Morocco, from 25 to 27 Ocober 2007. (Date and place to be confirmed later)

The three principal axes of this symposium will stress on the reflexion on: 1- The practice of art as an act of participation in society. (ecology, politics, economics). How does contemporary forms of creation act and interact in society? 2- The role of the school, is it information or formation? or for providing tools of individual development or the development of the collective memory and social creativity? How to prepare students to the stakes of coperation and to the sharing of knowledge? The "workshop" as an alternative to the traditional school of art?

3- Co-operative networks and the problematic of contemporary creation. Co-operative approach of the cultural action. This window will be a platform of reflexion in order to develop an active method that we will adopt for the 3co_operative Festival of Contemporary Creation". The question of representation of the aurhor as well as that of the subject and public will be aproached with regards to existing experiences as well as future projects.

To participate in this symposium please send your proposals by email to akarroum[at]yahoo.fr or by snail mail to Apartment 22, 279 avenue Mohamed V, Rabat, Morocco.

PARTNERS: ESAV (Ecole Superieur d'Arts Visuels), Marrakech and Site des Editions hors-champs, Fez.

Posted by jo at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)

Hz Journal

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Call for Articles and Net Art

On-line journal Hz is looking for articles on New Media, Net Art, Sound Art and Electro-Acoustic Music. We accept earlier published and unpublished articles in English. Please send your submissions to hz-journal[at]telia.com :: Deadline: 25 May, 2007. Hz is also looking for Net Art works to be included in its virtual gallery. Please send your URLs to hz-journal[at]telia.com.

Hz is published by the non-profit organization Fylkingen in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen has been known for introducing yet-to-be-established art forms throughout its history. Nam June Paik, Stockhausen, Cage, etc. have all been introduced to the Swedish audience through Fylkingen. Its members consist of leading composers, musicians, dancers, performance artists and video artists in Sweden. For more information on Fylkingen, please visit http://www.fylkingen.se/about or http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html.

Posted by jo at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2007

Opensource: {Videodance} Symposium

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Call for Proposals

The second international Opensource: {Videodance} Symposium :: Universal Hall Arts Centre, Findhorn Foundation Community, Morayshire, Scotland :: 21st - 25th November 2007.

Screen dance is a rapidly expanding area of artistic, academic and curatorial activity worldwide. Inherent in screen dance practice is the interface and collaboration between dance artists and media arts practitioners. Opensource: {Videodance} 2007 is an open symposium for video dance-makers and dance artists, academics, curators and producers coming together, to share ideas and work, network and debate, and provide a valuable platform for current issues in the area of screen dance practice to come to the surface.

Building on the strengths of the 2006 event, this symposium expressly aims to place current screen dance practice in a wider theoretical and critical context and to bring people from the collaborating disciplines together in a way that rarely happens, in order to impact significantly and positively on the lives and work of the participating individuals. The vision is to create an exciting and supportive place for people to engage, talk, hang out, relax, think, and listen, and to enable the spontaneous and dynamic unfolding of events. The programme for the four days will be a mixture of pre-arranged presentations and open forums initiated by the participants.

Whilst the greater part of the timetable will be dedicated to allowing the participants to initiate and following though discussion, we will again approach a select few artists/academics to give special presentations/lectures designed to inspire and provoke thought beyond the direct concerns of the participants. In addition, this year we are inviting proposals for limited number of presentations.

Call for proposals:

Seminar and Paper proposals are invited for presentation from authors (Academics and practitioners) of investigations into the interfaces of screen dance to one of the following formats: Academic research paper, Reports on practice-based work, Essay, Curated screening of work.

We encourage contributions that are related to all aspects of screen dance practice including interdisciplinary approaches in performance,

architecture, music, literature, visual arts, and new media but particular preference will be given to those exploring the outcomes of the first Opensource {Videodance} symposium in 2006, notably the "draft (hu)manifesto" available to read here.

All proposals will be peer-reviewed and selected based on their quality, originality, and potential for further discourse and appropriateness for the symposium. Paper Proposals/Abstracts should be submitted no later than June 30, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 30, 2007. Those selected will be invited to submit their presentation for publication in the first issue of The Screendance Journal. email: abstracts[at]screendance.org

Due to the open nature of this symposium presentation slots are limited therefore we are interested in inviting speakers who will be able to engage fully with the wider aims of the event.

Produced by Bodysurf Scotland and Videodance.org.uk . Funded and supported by Scottish Arts Council and The School of Media Arts and Imaging, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK

Contact bodysurf[at]findhorn.com for booking details and to register interest and keep checking http://videodance.blogspot.com for bulletins.

Posted by jo at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

TACTICAL MEDIA CONFERENCE-4/28-NY

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Presentations by ITP Graduate Students

Venue: The Change You want to See Gallery, 84 Havemeyer @ Metropolitan, Brooklyn, NY 11211 :: L to Bedford o Lorimer, G to Metropolitan, J/M/Z to Marcy :: Hours: 12-5 pm, Saturday, April 28, 2007.

Presentations on the theory & practice of tactical media and contemporary protest art, by graduate students in the ITP program at NYU's Tisch School of the arts.

The presenters' talks will be grouped into three panels, to be moderated by their Professor, Marisa Olson (Editor & Curator, Rhizome), on the topics of Play & Consumption; Fear, Spectacle, and the Media; and the Interfaces and Architecture of Control. These panels will consist of both artist talks and analytical essays and audience members will be invited to give feedback on a few works in progress.

Program:

12:00 Open Seating

12:15 Welcome & Introduction, Marisa Olson

12:30-2 Practicing Play & Consumption

Panelists: Kati London, Felipe Ribeiro, Tim McNerney, and Stefanie Wuschitz

2-3:30 Fear, Spectacle, and the Media

Panelists: Armin Cooper, Emery Martin, Anjali Patel, and Ben Yee

3:30-5 Interfaces & Architectures of Control

Panelists: Mushon Zer-Aviv; collaborators Nick Hasty, Josh Knowles,
and Tim Stutts; and collaborators Kunal Gupta and Tristan Perich

About the venue: The Change You Want To See is the gallery and convergence stage run by the activist arts collective Not An Alternative.

Posted by jo at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)

URSULA BIEMANN

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Geographies of the Migrant Bodies

TEKFESTIVAL AND QWATZ PRESENT: URSULA BIEMANN, GEOGRAPHIES OF THE MIGRANT BODIES :: May 5th-12th 2007 - Rome, Italy :: Agadez Chronicle / video-installation (Love&Dissent Gallery, opening May 5th h.6.30pm) :: 3 video-essays: Performing the Border (1999), Writing Desire (2000), and Europlex (2003) :: (Cinema Farnese, May 6th/8th): A workshop on migration and mobility (1:1projects, May 7th/8th).

It all started in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city at the U.S. border grown around the industrial parks managed by multinational companies with the approval of the Mexican government. Here Ursula Biemann has filmed Performing the Border (1999) and started her journey exploring the darkest sides of globalization. To describe the border, the Chicano writer Gloria Anzaldua has used the metaphor of 'nepantla', a liminal and unstable space that discloses new ideas, encounters and a feeling of uneasiness. Living in this 'tierra disconoscida' means to experience a state of unbelonging and change.

The women in Performing the Border perceive the frontier as a space of control and exploitation and, at the same time, as a space of transgression from an overbearing patriarchal structure. If gender identity is constituted through a series of negotiations and disciplinary rituals, by the same token the border is the result of the repetition of relations of belonging and exclusion that produce material and emotional effects.

Drawing on the idea that "gender and border are performed simultaneously on the border under very specific economic and spatial conditions," Ursula Biemann has realized a video-essay trilogy that, besides Performing the Border, comprises Writing Desire (2000) and Remote Sensing (2001) - a film presented at the Tekfestival 2006. The latter two films focus on the affective and sexual services offered in the global sex market after the end of the Cold War. Writing Desire's aesthetics incorporates the graphic style of the Internet through a highly fragmented editing which simulates Internet browsing. Analyzing the bride traffic phenomenon and penpal relationships, the artist shows that the Internet is the ideal space for the marketing of desire.

The contradictions of the European space - caught between the increasing circulation of goods and the closing down of the border - emerge in the last works of the Swiss artist, including Europlex (2003) and Agadez Chronicle that visualize the "movements of life" across the Mediterranean coasts. Biemann's counter-geographies show the plurality of migrants' passages. The relationship between migrants and borders is always precarious, resulting from the constant conflict between state efforts to control mobility and the people's desire to inhabit the possibilities opened up by globalization. Biemann is not interested in dealing with the romantic metaphor of nomadism. She prefers, instead, to highlight the ambivalence of migratory experiences. In her video-essay, often realized in collaboration with other artist, activists and scholars, the migrants are recognized as "political subjects" who acquire a voice in their own right.

WOP/Ursula Biemann. Geographies of the migrant bodies is presented by Tekfestival and qwatz, a new artist-in-residency program in Rome, with the support of Province of Rome and the Swiss Institute in Rome. The project is realized in collaboration with 1:1projects and Love&Dissent.

Posted by jo at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

doing digital: using digital resources in the arts and humanities

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

doing digital: using digital resources in the arts and humanities :: DRHA07 :: Dartington College of Art : 9 - 12 September 2007 :: Bringing together creators, practitioners, users, distributors,and custodians of Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities :: Deadline: May 2nd 2007.

Over the last decade the annual Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts (DRHA) conferences have constructed an unusual kind of meeting place: a space in which researchers, curators, and distributors of digital resources could meet and share perspectives on their complementary agendas. Last year, that forum was expanded to include participants from the creative and performing arts, giving the event a new flavour and a new direction.

This year, the conference aims to explore further major issues at the interface between traditional humanities scholarship and the creative arts, by focussing on their differing or complementary approaches to the deployment of digital technologies. Can the Arts and the Humanities share expertise? Are they divided by a common tongue? To what extent are they developing common technical solutions to different problem areas?

As in previous years, the conference will articulate these questions by showcasing the very best in current practice across the widest spectrum of digital applications in the arts and humanities and by fostering informed but accessible debate amongst professionals.

The Programme Committee for DRHA07 is now soliciting imaginative and provocative contributions for the conference addressing such topics as:

* the benefits and the challenges of using digital resources in creative work, in teaching and learning, and in scholarship;
* the challenges and opportunities associated with scale and sustainability in the digital arena;
* new insights and new forms of expression arising from the integration of digital resources in the arts, humanities, and sciences;
* social and political issues surrounding digital resource provision in the context of global ICT developments;
* the implications of "born-digital" resources for curators, consumers, and performers;
* training methods and best practice for digital arts and humanities practitioners.

Other themes include: interactivity and performance; digital media in time and space; integration and deployment of existing digital resources in new contexts; policies and strategies for digital deployment, both commercial and non-commercial; cataloguing and metadata aspects of resource discovery; digital repositories; Web 2.0 and other new technologies; encoding standards; intellectual property rights; funding, cost-recovery, and charging mechanisms; digitization techniques and problems.

Format: The conference will take up three intensive days, comprising presentation of academic papers and technical reports, performance and installation events, software and product demonstrations, debates and training events. The atmosphere will be informal, the discussion energetic. Leading practitioners and representatives of key funding agencies, such as the the Arts Council, the AHRC, the JISC, and the AHDS will be amongst the participants. We hope that from this occasion a new consensus will emerge based on real life
experience of the application of digital techniques and resources in the Humanities and Arts.

Timetable: Proposals are now invited for academic papers, themed panel sessions and reports of work in progress.Your proposal should be no smaller than 500 words and no longer than 2000; closing date for proposals is May 2nd 2007. All proposals will be reviewed by an independent panel of reviewers, and notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 13th June 2007. All accepted proposals will be included in the Conference preprint volume, and will also be
considered for a post-conference publication.

Cost: The all-in conference rate covering all meals and accomodation as well as conference registration and proceedings will not exceed £400. Reduced rates for early registration, and partial rates for one- day or non-residential attendance will be announced shortly on the conference website.

Further information: The conference web site will be regularly updated, and includes full details of the procedure for submitting proposals, the programme, and registration information. Bookmark it now!

Posted by jo at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

Media Art Friesland Festival 2007

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Call for submissions

Nederlandse tekst: zie hieronder | Media Art Friesland Festival 2007: Call for submissions.

We invite you to send your works in the areas of film, video, DVD, CD-ROM & Internet project, installation, performance and workshop.

WHO: Artists and students Fine Art working with audiovisual and new media WHAT: Media Art Friesland Festival 2007 is the 11th edition. It’s is the international platform for audiovisual arts, as video, film, new media, sound, installations and internet in the north of the Netherlands WHERE: The main locations are Leeuwarden, Drachten, Beetsterzwaag and Groningen WHEN: 20 - 30 September 2007 TO APPLY: submission guidelines and entry form online DEADLINE: 1 June 2007

Posted by jo at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)

Climate Change Threat Advisory

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re-learn the threat levels

Climate Change Threat Advisory: In 2004 Sir David King, Chief Scientist in Tony Blair's government, began saying that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism. Hans Blix, who ran the UN weapons inspection programme in Iraq, said the same. Studies made for the Pentagon and the World Bank recommended immediate action to address imminent threats posed by global warming, with the Pentagon's report warning that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism. With this idea in mind, the Bush administration's terrorism warning system has been redesigned. The new advisory system clarifies the climate change threat levels facing people everywhere. Please re-learn the threat levels: Earth Day comes only once a year, but the environment needs year-round care. Has audio. Produced for Transnational Temps.

Posted by newradio at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

Enter_Unknown Territories

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The MediaShed

THE TEMPORARY MEDIASHED at Enter_Unknown Territories :: April 26th-29th :: Dome 1, Parkers Piece, Cambridge.

Free-media from the Mouth of the Thames: The MediaShed is the first "free-media" space in the East of England, located in Southend-on-Sea. Now you can experience it for yourself by visiting the temporary MediaShed in Parker's Piece. Join in with activities such as video sniffin' local CCTV cameras, Data Jamming, flying "spy-kites" over Cambridge or just making use of the recycled PC internet cafi. Guest slots are available each day for other free-media artists to present their work.

THURSDAY 26 April, 12:00 - 13:00 :: Welcome to the MediaShed! The MediaShed was set up last year after a workshop involving local artists, designers, arts organisers, computer engineers and technicians. What is special about the MediaShed model that made us choose it for Southend?

13:00 - 14:00 :: Social Telephony: from Cromwell's Head to Congolese Street Phones (Richard Wright) :: Mongrel has been developing new forms of "contagious" telephone media to engage marginalised communities that have fallen outside of mainstream media. Using cheap telephony cards and free software these projects allow people to build social networks by passing phone calls between each other.

14:00 - 15:00 :: Free LED Sculpture Workshops (Mark Dixon) :: We will be getting people to contribute to the NETWORK covering the main dome viewable in the evening. Workshops will be a very friendly hands-on event. Accessible to ALL ages.

15:00 - 15:30 :: SkintStream :: SkintStream uses streaming media to connect audiences and grass roots sound producers previously separated by economic, geographic and political distances - a "poor to poor" network. SkintStream.net radio and the "SkintStream Europe" network are now taking this to the next level.

15:30 - 16:00 :: AWSoM (Stuart Bowditch & Damien Robinson) :: AWSoM - the Ambient Weather Sound Machine - uses found-sounds, triggered by the weather on recycled and found technologies to recreate environmental sound and feelscapes.

16:00 - 16:30 :: Antarctic Data Jam - Dance to the Sound of the Ice Caps Melting :: MediaShed launches the CD/DVD of the Antarctic Data Jam sessions /In February 2007, Adam Hyde from r a d i o q u a l i a set up the first artists radio station on the South Pole, beaming back cold Antarctic data to the MediaShed and The Junction to be melted into pulsating audio visual performances by members of the public.

16:30 - 17:00 (outside the Dome) :: Video Sniffin' (David Valentine) :: Hack wireless CCTV cameras while strolling through the streets of Cambridge. Video Sniffin' means you can create your own television studio within the buildings, shopping centers or streets of any town.

FRIDAY 27 April

11:00 - 12:00 :: On The Fly: VJ Mokital (Mike Lowther) :: Free and informal visual performance workshop using free open source software, video distortion, live insects and humans.

12:00 - 13:00 :: The Mimeticon: How to Talk to Images (Richard Wright) :: Although we are used to hunting for images using search engines, we still have to use words to describe them. "The Mimeticon" is a search engine that uses visual similarity to find images that could not be retrieved in any other way. It is also an artwork about the visual history of writing.

13:00 - 14:00 :: NetMonster: The Networked Image (Harwood) :: The "NetMonster" is designed to continuously generate a "networked image" of the internet. Made up out of the results of internet searches guided by various keywords, it allows people to collaboratively build up a composite "snapshot" of the internet out of images, text and addresses.

14:00 - 15:00 :: gearbox.mediashed.org (The Free-media Video Toolkit) :: A collaboration with Eyebeam in New York, "gearbox"will create an online toolkit for young people to make low budget videos using free and open source software. Touring throughout the Eastern region by the end of 2007. If you are interested in learning more about the tour there will be a meeting directly afterwards.

16:30 - 17:00 (outside the Dome) :: Video Sniffin' (David Valentine) :: Hack wireless CCTV cameras while strolling through the streets of Cambridge. Video Sniffin' means you can create your own television studio within the buildings, shopping centers or streets of any town.

SATURDAY 28 April

12:00 - 16:00 :: Retro Gaming (Tommy and Phil Pope) :: Despite the likes of Xbox 360's and Playstation 3's, games are becoming more and more bland. It's time for people to get reacquainted with classics from the past that still boast unbeatable game play. Come and experience the games that helped shape the industry and kept us imprisoned in our bedrooms.

12:00 - 16:00 (outside the Dome) :: Spy Kiting :: Fly kites equipped with CCTV cameras in Parkers Piece and get an aerial "spy-cam" view of the area. The images will be beamed directly to screens in the MediaShed.

12:00 - 16:00 (outside the Dome) :: Video Sniffin' (David Valentine) :: Hack wireless CCTV cameras while strolling through the streets of Cambridge. Video Sniffin' means you can create your own television studio within the buildings, shopping centers or streets of any town.

16:00 - 18:00 :: E2PROM (David Valentine) :: The E2Prom (pronounced ee-prom; the 2 is silent) events showcase the best of local work alongside international talent in animation, photography, film and electronica, giving them a chance for critical feedback and exposure to new ideas.

SUNDAY 29 April

10:00 - 14:00 :: Retro Gaming (Tommy and Phil Pope) :: It's time for people to get reacquainted with classics from the past that still boast unbeatable game play. Come and experience the games that helped shape the industry and kept us imprisoned in our bedrooms.

10:00 - 14:00 (outside the Dome) :: Spy Kiting :: Fly kites equipped with CCTV cameras in Parkers Piece and get an aerial 'spy-cam' view of the area. The images will be beamed directly to screens in the MediaShed.

10:00 - 14:00 (outside the Dome) :: Video Sniffin' (David Valentine) :: Hack wireless CCTV cameras while strolling through the streets of Cambridge. Video Sniffin' means you can create your own television studio within the buildings, shopping centers or streets of any town.

12:00 - 14:00 (outside the dome) :: We will be breaking-down Mark Dixon's 'Network' LED sculpture for distribution around the city so people can come back and collect their workshop work and help distribute the 3000 units on display

Every night on the MediaShed dome from 18:00

Network (Mark Dixon) :: A visually exciting artwork to animate the dome structure during the night. Using custom electronics and ultrabright LEDs Mark will create a work that will visibly respond to wireless activity such as mobile phones using thousands of LED's to cover the outer skin of the centre dome.

Every day outside the MediaShed dome:

Inflatables (Gordon Flemons) :: Inflatables subvert the classical understanding of buildings as being solid, permanent, and worthy. Instead, the use of materials such as polythene bin bags and plastic shopping bags emphasises their qualities as hollow, ephemeral, and playful.

General Info

-Parker's Piece is located in the centre of Cambridge, bordered by Park Terrace, Regent Terrace, Parkside and Gonville Place.

- The Temporary MediaShed is part of the Enter_net festival and as with all the Festival's exhibitions, and public events, it is free. You can find out more about the festival and the conference at www.enternet.org.uk. The MediaShed is an community interest company set up by Mongrel members, an internationally recognised artists group specialising in digital media. Mongrel is supported through Arts Council England's Grants for the Arts.

Posted by jo at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

HACKmit!

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Exhibition, Performance + Workshops

HACKmit! :: Medien und Kunst zum Leben (Media and Art to Live) :: 1st May - 26th August 2007, MACHmit! Museum, Berlin, Germany :: Opening: 1st May, 11.00am :: Free entrance :: A project curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli at MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder.

HACK MIT! is an exhibition and event about art and new media, with a particular focus on the concept of hacking. The idea is to bring children closed to the new technologies, like computers, videos, televisions, and at the same time associate those technologies to the more traditional art field, from the classical avant-gardes (such as Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism) to the present. Italian artists and German ones are brought together to realise a project where children can playfully learn to use media. The aim is to provide an approach of using technology in a creative way.

Central concept is the do-it-yourself creation and hacker ethic. Hackers give life to an alternative and independent way of producing information, cultural consciousness and communication. They share the good of knowledge and fight for free communication and access for all, aiming to create and spread knowledge for the public domain. This way of thinking is very closed to the approach children have to objects and society in general: they learn playing and de-constructing the reality, applying new meanings and unpredictable results to it. Today, many children learn very early how to use computer and technologies, but many of them have no possibility to learn how to use them in a critical and non-commercial way, and understand how media can be easily linked to art and creativity. With this exhibition, they can experience how art can be easy to do, and how technology can be consciously used.

Much research are focused on the bad effect of media in children's perception of reality and the construction of cultural and social paradigms. But if children learn how to use media self-consciously, technology can be an important tool for creating, learning and realising art. Media are considered in their creative possibilities, presented in a historical perspective and highlighted in their diversity from the past to present. Art thus becomes common experience, a field of experimentation with media, offering an opportunity of individual participation in the process of artistic creation.

The history of contemporary art has gradually destroyed the concept of art as a property. It has empowered the spectator as a no longer a passive consumer, but active participant of the artwork. The role of the artist as an all-powerful creator has also been gradually broken up as well, by artistic happenings which require the participation of the audience (from Fluxus to Mail Art) so that a process takes place which is controlled by the creative spontaneity of the people, showing that it is possible to make one's own art and create self-made media.

The idea is to illustrate how art and technology have increasingly converged and how it is possible today, through a self-governed use of media and languages, to practice a "hacking art" and work in truly collaborative fashion. Art makes sense if people can act inside, the artwork becomes a stream of collective patchwork, contaminations, copying, alteration of language codes and icons.

Several workshops will bring together the diverse Italian cultures of hacking and media art with its German counterparts. Children can view interactive models of media and art and can participate in video and computer laboratories. They can create works of art, such as dada-collages, surrealistic sculptures and be involved in mail art process. They can become artists and inventors building up their own television and constructing their own TV show, presenting their ideas in public as real TV "directors". They can do art with a vacuum cleaner and experiment the art of realising and printing stamps.

Performance-laboratory: The exhibition event will be open with the Minimal TV performance made by the Italian group Quinta Parete. With Minimal TV anybody, at least for one day, can have their own private network and children can create their own television-show together with the artists. Let's understand how television is running and what is the difference between reality and pure fiction! http://www.minimaltv.cjb.net

Workshops

The workshops are realized by Italian and German artists in the course of the exhibitions.

- RUUUUUMBLE - Futurism Printing Workshop (by Gabriele Zaverio, Aldo Cesar Faga)
- The interview - Video Workshop (by Simonetta Fadda)
- Linux - Digital Fotos and Graphic Works with Free Software (by Bjoern Balcke)
- Creative Writing (by Sebastian Luetgert).

Stages/Stations

Children interact directly with projects in the field of art and technology. There are 7 different stages/stations:

1. Dadaism: "Dada Sprechen" (Speaking Dada); Dada Project by Giuliana Del Zanna and Anna Laudani.

2. Surrealism: "Ich und mein Traum" (Me and my Dream): A Surrealistic project by Giuliana Del Zanna and Anna Laudani.

3. POSTmit! "Ein 5-jaehriges Kind kann dies tun!" (A five-years-old child can do it!): A mail art network project coordinated by Vittore Baroni. The process of the "Eternal Network" of Mail Art is reproduced by activating a direct postal exchange between the children and a sample of the Mail Art population (30 mail artists from all over the world).

4. "Empty World" - VACUUM Work Station: Project by Aldo Cesar Faga': Realizing artworks with a Vacuum Cleaner and a machine constructed with assembled technologies.

5. Radio Scanner - Discovering Radio Waves: A Radio project by Gabriele Zaverio. Millions of weird and strange radio stations all around the world, spreading codes, data, informations, incredible transmissions can be hearded and decoded.

6. Museum Visit: A PHOTO-STORYBOARD Workshop and Project by Simonetta Fadda: How to realise a film script and draw a short storyboard of the MACHmit
museum visit.

7. Cinema. The Lumiere Brothers' First Films Experience: Screening of the first film: "Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat" (1895); curated by Simonetta Fadda.

Installations

1. Ambient/Sphere Installation: by Aldo Cesar Faga'. Immersive 360° installation with a synchro-optical sphere.

2. The Mirror-game (Spiegel-Spiel) by Simonetta Fadda. with: "Videogame" and "I is another" Installations. Video is a "fake mirror": let's play together with our mirror and tv images and discover their differences.

3. Klang-chromatische Energien: Interactive Installation by Flavia Alman and Sabine Reiff – Pigreca. By moving and interacting in front of the screen, children produce colors and sounds.

4. DADA Theater: Experience the Tristan Tzara Theatre (A Dada-Soirée in Paris, 1923). An interactive installation by Anna Laudani and Giuliana Del Zanna.

With: Minimal TV (Giacomo Verde, Federico Bucalossi, Vania Pucci), Freaknet Medialab (Gabriele Zaverio, Aldo Cesar Fagà ), Pigreca (Flavia Alman and Sabine Reiff), Simonetta Fadda, Sebastian Luetgert, Vittore Baroni(*), Bjoern Balcke, Anna Laudani and Giuliana Del Zanna.

(*) Networking with: Martha Aitchison (UK), buZ blurr (USA), Gregory T. Byrd (USA), Bruno Capatti (IT), David Dellafiora (Australia), Mike Dickau (USA), Jas W Felter (Canada), John Held Jr. (USA), Jo.Anne Hill (UK), Susanna Lakner (D), Michael Leigh (UK), Graciela Gutièrrez Marx (Argentina), Emilio Morandi (IT), Angela and Peter Netmail (D), Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Franco Piri Focardi (IT), Claudio Romeo (IT), Karla Sachse (D), Gianni Simone (Japan), The Sticker Dude (USA), Giovanni and Renata Strada (IT), Lucien Suel (France), Rod Summers / VEC (The Netherlands), Annina Van Sebroeck and Luc Fierens (Belgium), Reid Wood (USA), Special Guest: Anna Banana.

MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder gGmbH
Senefelderstr. 5, 10437 Berlin
Tel: +49-30-7477 82 00
Fax: +49-30-7477 82 05
info[at]machmitmuseum.de
http://www.machmitmuseum.de

Director: Marie Lorbeer
Press: Katrin Fandrich and Edgar Steiger (Assistent)
Tel: +49-30-7477 8202
E-Mail presse[at]machmitmuseum.de

The HACKmit Exhibition is supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

Posted by jo at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2007

Futuresonic presents Art For Shopping Centres

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Three Commissioned Works

Thirty years after Brian Eno's Music For Airports, Futuresonic presents Art For Shopping Centres, an exhibition of major, world premier artworks, after which you will never look at a shopping centre the same again. Transforming the city into a space of experimentation, freeing urban space, making it strange. Featuring three major new artworks commissioned by Futuresonic 2007:

MediaShed ft's Methods of Movement, The Duellists: Parkour, or freerunning, involves fluid, uninterrupted movement, adapting motion to obstacles in the environment. Like free-media, freerunning makes use of and re-energises the infrastructure of the city. MediaShed ft Methods of Movement present an acrobatic parkour competition between two late-night traceurs, staged overnight in the Arndale shopping centre, filmed using only the in-house CCTV system, in the first official implementation of the GEARBOX free-media video toolkit, and shown on the screens inside the shopping centre, with an original soundtrack by Hybernation.

Katherine Moriwaki's Everything Really Is Connected After All: Visit the Arndale to discover a whole new shopping experience. Using a flock of mobile devices, emergent narratives adapt to the proximity of other people around you while you roam the plazas and arcades. The shopping centre is a 'non-place', a space that is unique but identical everywhere across the world. The stories are tales of everyday people encountered in this space. As a backdrop for desire, projection, and the acquisition of material objects, the Arndale and the experience of shopping is explored in order to locate and find experiences and concerns that bind us together in small and large ways.

Harwood's Netmonster:Harwood seeks to uncover truths forgotten in the light reflected from the endless shop windows, in an ever-evolving 'network image' showing how the Arndale and Manchester city centre have risen from the ashes of the 1996 IRA bomb. Coinciding with the date Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams are scheduled to form an historic power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, Harwood revisits the legacy of the 1996 IRA bomb, which famously detonated just a few meters away from Manchester Arndale. Harwood's NetMonster software searches the internet for thematic content, sniffing out links and connections, creating a living, composite image from images splintered around the worlds media.

Art For Shopping Centres is the centrepiece of Urban Play, continuing Futuresonic's focus since 2004 on taking artworks out of the galleries and into urban space.

Posted by jo at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)

GHava{SL} Center for the Arts + Fuse Gallery present

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Destroy Television

GHava{SL} Center for the Arts is proud to announce Destroy Television, an interactive virtual art installation by futurist Jerry Paffendorf and metaverse architect Christian Westbrook. This exhibition will occur simultaneously in the metaverse Second Life as well as in NYC at Fuse Gallery. It opens May 23, runs through June 2, 2007. It is curated by Annie Ok of GHava{SL} Center for the Arts.

Born and raised beneath a kitchen sink in Brooklyn, Destroy Television is an avatar in the user-created 3D virtual world of Second Life. But unlike other avatars that are owned and controlled by individuals, Destroy is an expression of everyone who controls and speaks through it at destroytv.com. As a result it encompasses many simultaneous voices and motivations, of which any given user can be one. For the duration of the show it will be recording a searchable video lifelog of its experience that visitors can easily explore, edit, and comment on. They can also click through its live online video and visit Destroy as an avatar inside Second Life, surf over to its lifelog afterwards and find themselves in its perfect memory as part of the menagerie.

Additionally on display in Fuse Gallery and at GHava{SL} Center for the Arts will be an installation documenting Destroy's real life conception beneath the kitchen sink as well as its early days in Second Life.

Destroy Television unleashes numerous true intelligences on a world that's simultaneously finite and limitless. People who visit the avatar in real life at the gallery and in Second Life at the art center will be encouraged to interact, communicate, and perform with the avatar, and by doing so enter its lifelog, unforgettably.

Jerry Paffendorf is resident futurist with The Electric Sheep Company where he explores the future of virtual worlds and how they're coming to intersect with and impact the real world. Previously he worked with the nonprofit Acceleration Studies Foundation who research accelerating technological change, why it happens and what it means. He has an MS in Studies of the Future from the University of Houston-Clear Lake and a BFA in Fine Arts from Montclair State University in New Jersey. He's always talking at conferences, pushing new projects, lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and believes the 21st century will be absolutely insane as the web goes everywhere all the time and we turn the world into something like a video game and ourselves into something like avatars.

Christian Westbrook is a creative technologist who constantly seeks new ways to merge code, music, and art. He currently is metaverse architect for The Electric Sheep Company, building bridges between real and virtual worlds and improving open source tools that enable others to create. Christian has a BS in Computer Science from Rice University, where DTV's older brother, a robot named Virgil, still gives tours on sunny days, and is a big fan of sushi and Ableton Live.

Jerry Paffendorf & Christian Westbrook: "Destroy Television" Opens May 23, runs through June 2, 2007.

Fuse Gallery
93 2nd Ave
(between E 5th & E 6th)
NY, NY 10003
Phone: +1.212.777.7988
http://www.fusegallerynyc.com

GHava{SL} Center for the Arts is located at
Haenim (11, 114, 550) in Second Life
SLUrl: http://tinyurl.com/2yxyc4
http://www.virb.com/ghavasl

Posted by jo at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)

LA Freewaves 2007

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Call for Contributions

LA Freewaves: Do you dare support art on the edge?

Where can you see a bird’s eye view of thousands of rooftop gardens amid Hong Kong, a South African short experimental love story and a battle of stereotypes all in one place? Freewaves dares to unleash media art: * outside the art marketplace * outside the political mainstream * beyond US borders.

In 2006, Freewaves: * presented our most ambitious exhibition of 100 videos in our biennial festival * developed a new online curatorial model, working with diverse international curators, resulting in a truly global perspective * upgraded our website into an interactive, next generation festival venue.

In 2007, Freewaves: * is reengineering past festival websites into a searchable media arts archive * is gearing up for our 2008 festival in a new ground-breaking format.

Although Freewaves accomplishes a lot on a small budget, with the help of our supportive friends, it has become a challenge to survive the current economic and political environment. We must now rely more heavily on those who share our vision. Your donation of any amount will contribute immensely towards artists fees, equipment upgrades, technical advances, and public outreach.

With sincere thanks and continued hope for emerging ideas,

Anne Bray
Executive Director

Posted by jo at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

205A Morning Lane

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Temporary Urban Video Interventions, Architecture + Art

205A Morning Lane is a site-specific video installation using a building as a projection screen to explore possibilities of temporary urban video interventions, architecture and art. It marks the end of 205A Morning Lane studio building with two sets of visuals projected to the building's windows. First floor projection of 205A Morning Lane artists' eyes closing and second floor projection of artists' eyes opening - as eyes, window to the soul q the metaphor for cycles - endings and beginnings.

10 Video projectors are distributed in 10 artists' studios (5 on the first floor and 5 on the second) and projecting directly onto windows from inside - out thus creating two stripes of projections on the main facade. The projected material is changed on a nightly basis (five consecutive nights of projections) to play slower and slower motion so that at the end of projection all eyes close.

25TH - 29TH APRIL 2007 :: [PRIVATE VIEW: 26TH APRIL 2007 7-9PM] :: Morning Lane Studios :: 205A Morning Lane, London, E9 6LG. To get there: Hackney Central BR or busses 30, 48, 55, 106, 254; Map.

Posted by jo at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

BIP 2007: BUILDING INTERACTIVE PLAYGROUNDS

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Call for Applications

BIP 2007: BUILDING INTERACTIVE PLAYGROUNDS :: Elettrowave, July 20-21, 2007 – Florence [Stazione Leopolda] :: We are currently accepting applications to participate in BIP 2007, a festival about interaction design projects for events and public spaces.

After the great success of BIP 2006 edition in Arezzo (43 high quality proposals received from 12 different countries and 4 selected and presented projects) BIP goes to Florence, together with Italiawave and Elettrowave.

BIP is an international competition for interaction design projects for public events. Through an international call for works, opened to interaction designers, artists, researchers, architets and students, it aims to select, invite and show interactive installations, specifically conceived for events and public spaces. Simple and straight-forward projects, involving exploration, irony, play and social relationships, that can intrigue a curious and young audience. Projects that are able to transform festival locations into programmed spaces, active processes, playing with time, space and people.

Interaction Design applied to an electronic music festival's environment: nightlife, clubbers, a young, unrespectuful and challenging audience. BIP is an arena in which music and design live together and talk to each other, trying to tear down the usual distinctions between high & low, entertainment and research.

All project proposals must be submitted by May 10, 2007

More informations about BIP 2007 call for works and submission rules are available at: www.todo.to.it/bip2007

In the context of BIP - building interactive playgrounds festival Arsnova - Accademia per le Arti e le Scienze Digitali, in collaboration with Elettrowave and Associazione Culturale NADA, organizes Touchdown!, an intensive workshop about physical computing applied to videogames.

Posted by jo at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

This happened

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The Stories Behind Interaction Design

This happened: Orlando Mathias , Moritz Waldemeyer, Durrell Bishop and Troika :: May 2, 7:45pm :: The Griffin (Shoreditch London). Register online to attend.

This happened is a series of events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. Having ideas is easier than making them happen. We delve into projects that exist today, how their concepts and production process can help inform future work.

Interaction design companies are often too closed off to the outside. We want to encourage people to be more open in their methods and ideas. We aim to have a mix of established practitioners, commercial companies and students. We want to encourage the perspectives from the other side of the fence, so will also be inviting curators and commissioners of work to give presentations.

This happened was started by Chris O’Shea (Pixelsumo), Joel Gethin Lewis (United Visual Artists) and Andreas Müller (Nanika). Each event will be curated by the trio to select a balance of speakers and topics related to the field.

Posted by jo at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine

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Three Events

[PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine Trifecta.

[PAM] TO BE FEATURED AT COACHELLA MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL :: April 27 - 30, 2007 :: In its first appearance on the U.S. West Coast, Perpetual Art Machine [PAM] will be a featured multimedia installation at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Indio, California, April 27-29.

This year, Coachella is presenting over 100 of the biggest names in music and art, including Bjork, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and Sonic Youth. [PAM] is putting into place its largest installation to date, at the Empire Polo Fields, a desert oasis just outside Palm Springs, for this three day outdoor 70,000 person sold out event.

Combining touch screen and projection technology, [PAM] gives its users an immersive 5 channel interactive video experience. Entering into the [PAM] installation, the user becomes the curator of some of the most cutting edge video work made this century. [PAM] democratizes the curatorial process by inviting both the artist and the viewer/user to participate on site and online at perpetualartmachine.com.

[PAM] was created in December 2005 as a collaboration between the artists Lee Wells, Raphaele Shirley, Chris Borkowski and Aaron Miller and has had installations and screenings worldwide including the United States, England, Austria, Russia, Brazil, Canada, France and Croatia.

At this year¹s Coachella festival, [PAM] will premiere its first ever compilation DVD titled "Perpetual Art Machine 2006-2007: Year one · Volume One" featuring 16 videos highlighting some (but not all) of the best work in the [PAM] archive.

For more information on Coachella go to http://www.coachella.com
For immediate assistance please call Lee Wells at 917 723 2524.

[PAM] TO BE FEATURED IN NEW MEDIA ART LOUNGE at artDC. :: April 27 - 30, 2007 :: Perpetual Art Machine [PAM] will be featured as a new media project at the inaugural Modern and Contemporary Art Fair, Washington DC - artDC. Modern, contemporary and high quality cutting edge work defines this newest art fair in America.

[PAM] will present a single channel interactive multimedia installation and will feature the artwork of Bill Dolson, Miroslaw Rogala and Raphaele Shirley. The New Media Lounge is organized by Rody Douzoglou and artDC takes place 27 ­ 30 April at Washington Convention Center, Hall E.

[PAM] co-founder, Raphaele Shirley also will be part of the New Media: Exploration and Innovations panel, which will explore the exciting area of new media, which is gaining more attention than any other medium in the current art market. The very distinguished panel of experts will discuss the topic.

Panelists include:
Peggy Parsons, Moderator,
Film Department Head of the National Gallery of Art, DC
Kerry Brougher,
Chief Curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens, DC
Beth Turner,
Senior Curator of the Phillips Collection, DC
John Hanhardt,
Consulting Curator of Film and Media of the Smithsonian Museum, DC
Raphaele Shirley,
Artist and co-founder of Perpetual Art Machine, NYC

For more information on artDC, go to: http://www.dc-artfair.com.
For immediate assistance please call Raphaele Shirley at 917 805 6320.

[PAM] PROFILED IN VIDEO AS URBAN CONDITION PROJECT IN AUSTRIA AND BRAZIL :: Exhibition @ Lentos Kunstmsueum/Museum of Modern Art Linz, Austria :: April 19 ­ May 27, 2007.

Screening: Fundação Clóvis Salgado/Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
April 28, 2007.

Compiled by UK artist, Anthony Auerbach, the Video as Urban Condition project explores how video shapes urban experience.

Video is a medium of mass production, mass participation and mass consumption. Video as Urban Condition recognizes the diversity of activity in the field and challenges the participant to reflect on how the relations of representation in society are mediated by video.

The project reflects on the mutability of video as it shifts between fact and fiction, entertainment and persuasion, urban fantasy and reality-TV, art and activism, surveillance and control - tracing the web of interactions between of media and architecture, subject and commodity, identity and desire, the city and its phantasmagoria.

Video as Urban Condition examines a medium whose most distinctive characteristics are multiplicity and diversity, a form, which is not contained by the norms and institutions of art nor by the exclusive domains of professionals.

[PAM] Video Pool contributing artists: Anonymous (Iraq), George Barber (UK), Luis Berrios-Negron (Puerto Rico), Chris Borkowski (US), Josephin Böttger (Germany), Wilson Brown (Brazil), DnasaB (US), G.H. Hovagimyan (US), Stephanie Lempert (US), Aaron Miller (US), Motomichi Nakimura (Japan), Pierre St. Jacques (US), Sanotes (Spain), Raphaele Shirley (US/France), Jeremy Slater (US), Endre Tveitan (Norway), Lee Wells (US)

For more information on Video as Urban Condition go to:
http://www.video-as.org
For immediate assistance please call Raphaele Shirley at 917 805 6320.

Posted by jo at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media

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The Art of Living a Second Life

Emerson College, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org, and the Museum of Science present OurFloatingPoints 4: The Art of living a Second Life :: DATE: April 25, 7 pm :: VENUE: Museum of Science, Cahners Theater, Boston :: STREAMED LIVE online and BROADCAST TO SECOND LIFE :: FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!

A panel discussion with Wagner James Au (aka Hamlet Linden), John Lester (aka Pathfinder Linden), and John (Craig) Freeman (aka JC Freemont); moderated by Eric Gordon (aka Boston Borst).

Called "the biggest digital art installation in the world" (Warren Ellis), Second Life is a highly imaginative, online, 3-D rendered environment populated with avatars (graphic representations of people). In Second Life you can teleport, fly, live in a house, go to clubs, take classes, make and view art, or just "hang out." You cannot drown and you do not age. Spanning more than 42,000 acres in real-world scale--larger than metropolitan Boston--Second Life is second home to over 2 million "residents," many of whom collaboratively create its content. It is a place where real business is conducted using virtual dollars that can also be traded in the real world. Join us during the Boston Cyberarts Festival for a discussion about the creative, social and economic implications of Second Life. For more information, go to the Museum of Science.

Posted by jo at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

Collaborative Observatories for Natural Environments

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aka Project CONE

Collaborative Observatories for Natural Environments :: PI: Dezhen Song (Texas A&M University) CO-PI: Ken Goldberg (UC Berkeley).

This project is a collaborative effort by computer scientists and engineers from Texas A&M and UC Berkeley consulting with natural scientists and documentary filmmakers. The goal is to advance the fundamental understanding of automated and collaborative systems that combine sensors, actuators, and human input to observe and record detailed natural behavior in remote settings.

Currently, scientific study of animals in situ requires vigilant observation of detailed animal behavior over weeks or months. When animals live in remote and/or inhospitable locations, observation can be an arduous, expensive, dangerous, and lonely experience for scientists. The project proposes a new class of hybrid teleoperated/autonomous robotic "observatories" that allow groups of scientists, via the internet, to remotely observe, record, and index detailed animal activity. Such observatories are made possible by emerging advances in robotic cameras, long-range wireless networking, and distributed sensors.

This project will investigate the algorithmic foundations for such observatories: new metrics, models, data structures, and algorithms, that will comprise a robust, mathematical framework for collaborative observation. The project will build on past work to extend and formally characterize hybrid models of collaborative and automated observation that draw on computational geometry, stochastic modeling and optimization. The project will advance fundamental understanding of networked robotics and develop efficient algorithms for collaborative observation that combines human and sensor input. This effort is intended to benefit biological scientists and facilitate collaboration among researchers. It will produce working prototypes that will be accessible via the internet to scientists, students, and the public worldwide.

Updates, hardware designs, CAD models, schematics, source code, experimental data, and documentation will be posted on this website as they emerge.

CONE Sutro Forest: Collaborative observatory to identify birds in sutro forest, California, Spring 2007
ACONE 1.0: Automated Observatory to assist in the search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Arkansas, Fall 2006
CONE 1.0: Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments, Audobon Nature Preserve, Mill Valley, CA, Fall 2005

Posted by jo at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

We Love Technology. Again.

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WLT needs you

We Love Technology is back. After a fabulous first year, the only conference to focus on the creative (mis)use of emerging technology returns in July, with a fun and informal programme of presentations and workshops on the themes of games and architecture. What's more, WLT needs you.

WLT is different. In a nutshell, it's the place where art, culture and technology is souped-up, subverted, and made a lot more fun. It ignores the everyday stuff, and aims to find out what weird and wonderful things artists, games designers and architects are doing with new-fangled wizardry. As one of last year's participants commented, "WLT opened me up to a world of new media that I'd only dreamt existed.I went back to work buzzing with ideas."

The annual creative technology showcase is chaired by Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education New Media at Channel 4, hosted by the University of Huddersfield and The Media Centre, and supported by Arts Council of England Yorkshire and Screen Yorkshire.

And WLT is calling for papers and presentations. Conference organisers are looking for mind-expanding presentations and workshops (30 or 60 minutes) from leading edge technology manufacturers, new media artists, technologists, researchers, academics and tec bloggers, concerned with games and/or architecture. As always, speakers should focus on why they love technology, and how their work encourages new forms of creative expression. The deadline for proposals is 14 May.

And if you're feeling really creative, send in your own interpretations of a test card, to be displayed during WLT 2007. What's a test card? Find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/test_card. The audience vote winner takes the mystery prize. Send in your jpegs - 300dpi 8x10cm landscape format - by 29 June.

To promote your own business at WLT 2007, send fun tec toys, magazines, books, flyers, stickers, badges to the address below by 10 July.

Contact: Lisa Roberts lisa[at]blinkmedia.org

Blink, the Old Caretakers House, J L Brierley Mills, Quay Street, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD1 6QT

Posted by jo at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Of Skins and Screens: Hyperdance, Haptic Cinema, and Contact Improvisation

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Somnambules

"...The browser window opens onto a nightmarish vision of death, disembodiment, and decay engulfed in the darkness of a black screen. Dancing specters and haunted souls—casualties of digital media—appear throughout Somnambules, a hyperdance piece. A small but growing genre of dance and new media, hyperdance [1] shifts the material conditions of dance creation and spectatorship by considering the computer screen a site for dance performance. Combining visual art, music, and dance by collaborating artists Nicolas Clauss, Jean-Jacques Birgé, and Didier Silhol, respectively, Somnambules emphasizes the computer user’s body in navigation and exploration. The user’s motion, confined as it is to the small geographies of mouse or trackpad, and the user’s physical contact with the image, similarly confined, stand out in this piece as compared with other hyperdances. [2] Users affect onscreen motion through their own movements, which operate simultaneously with qualities of touch (click, drag, mouse, etc.): motion and touch work in tandem at the mutually-defining sites of the user’s body and the image. Drawing attention to the piece’s cinematic and choreographic components, I explore movement and touch as both objects of interaction and means of interaction in Somnambules. I further tease out specific modes of bodily interaction, working toward a more nuanced understanding of bodily engagement in the broader fields of interactive and responsive media..." From Of Skins and Screens: Hyperdance, Haptic Cinema, and Contact Improvisation by Harmony Bench, Extensions Journal.

Posted by jo at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

Extensions Journal Volume 4: TempoRealities of Performance

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Call For Submissions

Extensions invites submissions for its forthcoming issue: TempoRealities of Performance. We welcome scholarly essays, experimental writing, interviews, reviews, media / Web-based art works / projects, and documentation of music, dance, visual, sound, and performance art that interrogate the relationship of temporality to performance.

Time, particularly "the present," has been configured as the ontological force field that grounds performance. Yet, the present as a temporal category, and presence as material proof of that time, is being challenged on many fronts. For example, how have the virtual stages of new media shifted definitional assumptions about presence and performance, and of what constitutes a performance event? How have the space-time compressions of globalized capital and travel suggested simultaneous and sometimes competing geo-temporalities? Do performance sites create / condition / presuppose their own temporality? How do archival technologies figuratively and literally mediate performance?

Submission topics might include but are not limited to:

Intersections of spatiality and temporality
Technology and the archive
Ephemerality and endurance of performance
Lingering presents/presence
Futurity and/or historicity
Memory
Recyclings and (re)imaginings of pasts, presents, and futures
Foucauldian technologies of performance
Tempo, rhythm and other measurements of time
Performativity of time: spectacular, messianic, queer, etc.

Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment and Technology is an annual Web journal produced by the graduate students of the UCLA Center for Performance Studies. Extensions follows the Center's mission to "engage performance at every front, to open and broaden the definition of performance and the texts that prompt them, to explore performance practices and test the ground on which they rest." Extensions is further dedicated to interrogating performance according to new logics of embodiment and technology, opening those terms to methods and objects of contemporary scholarly and artistic inquiry.

Submissions should be received/postmarked by August 1, 2007. Essays should be sent to extensionsjournal_at_yahoo.com. Other files should be sent on CD or DVD to:

Extensions Journal c/o Harmony Bench
Glorya Kaufman Hall 120 Westwood Plaza, Suite 50 Box
951608
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1608 USA

Articles must be sent in full as MS Word documents and should follow MLA style. Images should be sent as .jpg files and video submitted in QuickTime. We are also happy to accept Flash (.swf) files. If applicable, please include a thumbnail image to accompany your submission. Inquiries regarding supportable file formats and other questions should be directed to extensionsjournal_at_yahoo.com. Extensions requires hardcopy media files and 50-word bios from all accepted contributors. Artistic submissions should include an original statement that elucidates, expands or reflects on a conceptual or technological aspect of the work.

Contributors will be notified of acceptance by October 15, 2007. Our anticipated launch date is May 1, 2008.

Extensions Volume 3: Interactivity and Kinesthetic Sense can be viewed at www.performancestudies.ucla.edu/extensionsjournal/

Posted by jo at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia

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Migration Addicts

ddm warehouse :: 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia :: Migration Addicts, Curated by Biljana Ciric, Karin Gavassa :: Urban interventions, Venice :: June 6 -15, 2007 :: Opening party (by invitation) on June 7th 2007, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., at Orange Restaurant and Champagne Lounge, Campo Santa Margherita, featuring Rizman Putra The Hyperbolic Alpha Male performance, and Giorgio Pulini aka RACH3 live dj set.

Migration Addicts began as an ongoing project two years ago in Shanghai, investigating how migration re-determines issues related to human identity, gender and spiritual needs. The fast expansion of urban spaces, following the model of big cities, has led to new social conflicts within the social structure. Recently the tension between Western and Chinese traditional values and lifestyles, as well as the late arriving of capitalism and the persisting communism, have not hindered the Chinese impulse towards assimilating the “international standards”, while fostering its own economic development.

The project is touching upon topics which concern not only Shanghai but many other expanding Asian and Western cities. The structure of the exhibition is based on a series of interventions that will take place throughout the public space in Venice, articulating new perspectives entrenched directly in the urban environment, and methodologically operating in time and in space.

The exhibition investigates the questions of temporal and spatial strategies which deal with this situation. On political and aesthetic levels, these projects interact with people from outside artistic circles opening to the encounter with the unknown viewer, expanding the idea of art and its experience, to continue an engagement with the public sphere.

Venice is currently undergoing profound changes with respect to the urban landscape and its own future depends on the new structure it undertakes. More and more Venetians are leaving the lagoon to settle in other towns. In the next 30-40 years, it is certain that Venice’s population will be dramatically reduced.

The artists participating in Migration Addicts face through their own culture and artistic practices the topic of migration, providing a direct relationship with the public space where the exhibition is hosted, reflecting on the peculiarities of the territory, investigating differences and possible points in common.

Participating artists and sites: Htein Lin, (Myanmar), Campo San Barnaba; Jin Shan, (China), Campo San Polo; Li Pinghu, (China), Campo San Salvatore; Huang Kui, (China), Campo San Maurizio; Miljohn Ruperto, (Philippines / USA), Campo Sant’Angelo; Josefina Posch, (Sweden / USA), Campo Santo Stefano; Mogas Station, (Vietnam), Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Piazza San Marco, 48,49,50; TODO, (Italy), the town - starting point at Chiostro Ex Chiesa Santi Cosma e Damiano, Giudecca, 620; Belén Cerezo, (Spain), Campo San Bortolomio; Yap Sau Bin, (Malaysia), Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Piazza San Marco, 48,49,50; Hasan Elahi, (Bangladesh / USA), Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro, 3054; Rizman Putra, (Singapore), Orange Restaurant & Champagne Lounge, Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro, 3054.

Presented and organized by ddm warehouse, Shanghai, China

Collaborator: Vision

Sponsors: New Margin Ventures, ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, Creative Capital Foundation, Oriental Vista Art Collections, CCAA, N.O. Gallery-CONTEMPORARY ART, Milano.

Media partners: DROME magazine, www.ionly.com.cn, art in culture, Art China
Art World, universes-in-universe.de, art.mofile.com, and art monthly.

Special thanks: Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Venezia; Stefano Coletto and the Atelier of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia; Galleria d’Arte Santo Stefano, Venezia.

Please check http://www.ddmwarehouse.org for updates.

For more information please contact: biljana.ciric[at]gmail.com or karin.gavassa[at]gmail.com

Posted by jo at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

PicoPond

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A Microfunding System

Picopond is a microfunding system for financing the net projects of Noemata. It's a nickel-and-dime operation run out of an exploration of ways of making a living from doing public domain, copylefted work on the internet.

With Picopond you can fund a net project by Noemata with a small amount of money. The funding is displayed on the project web site and appears as a one-line text or text-link. [For example]: Funded by: Monty Cantsin, Art Institution, neighbour dog, my mom or MoMA.

Net projects by Noemata are dispersed on different web sites. Funding information is generally available at the bottom of a project page at a web site. Generally Noemata keeps all projects online and publicly accessible. The funding information will be attached and displayed together with the project, whether as material for exhibitional, documentational, or archival purposes.

Alias Noemata is the working moniker of Bjxrn Magnhildxen born 1966 in Norway by his mother. Noemata has been active within net art and technology for a quarter-century, from mail art to internet art, 1982-2007 [1]. From this, Noemata has received prizes and funding to some degree but not enough to make a living in Western Europe. After having given up his regular job as a system developer in an insurance firm in the year of poom, around 2000, Noemata has been supporting himself and not from doing net projects within art and new technology (insert comma to disambiguate the sentence).

According to EU's definition of poverty he's poor - below 50% of his country's average income; on the other hand this definition makes 10% of the population poor in one of the richest countries in the world. With OECD's definition he's still below the poverty line. As with other lines they aren't visible in reality; the only line we can see is the horizon - maybe that's why the sea symbolizes death, the only straight line?

Anyway, who's he to complain? One billion people live on less than 1 dollar a day [2]; he's a citizen of a rich country; in fact, he's so spoiled that he can work without being concerned about always getting paid.

So what's the idea? In reality I'm not sure. We all need things to do, we need to do things. I was lucky to be born at this place and time, though I'm not sure that sentence has meaning. If I believed that everybody could be happy and content I would rather work in that direction than do net project, but luckily enough I don't believe that. On the other hand my forefathers were murderers, and in the future still the lamb won't sleep with the lion.

Well, if you like some of these projects you might want to give some money to them and show your appreciation; maybe the schema here is sharing-similarity and a form of social networking in part - we all like each other, maybe because we all become more and more alike each other? Let's move on to the next paragraph.

In 2003 Ars Publica was established as a means of exploring ways of funding Noemata [3][4]. PicoPond is founded now as I write this introductory text, or in reality, will be founded later, because the text comes first, as an alternative way of funding Noemata, exploring the concept of small-time microfunding of net projects, hoping people might find them $adjective.. By the time you're reading this, you, not me, ... Sorry, I just realized that there's a distinction between a writer and a reader of this text - I didn't realize it before now, which also makes one think ... What does that mean? When I read what I wrote, am I a writer or a reader, and what's the difference? It seems the difference is that the writer can edit the text, and that that's the only difference. That's also why I copyleft my projects and material and just leave it in the public domain; I don't think anybody owns it - once it leaves me, well, me leaves it also; it occurs to me this relation is less a parent-child type than a peer-peer type - I mean, like a writer has several readers for instance - one to one too many. As there isn't any aura around the artwork or the artist, I don't even care to finish that sentence properly. OK, you might edit this text, but you might not edit it while you read it. I guess. But then, when you edit it you have to read it - it's called writing. The writing is formulated. The reading is formulated. We approach the state where editing isn't the difference between writing and reading. Born to be alive. It was written to be read. It was read to be written. Alive to be born. I was born for nine months. There is no beginning, there is no writer, so to say. Every leaf grows as to get as much sun as possible; this defines the exact angle of the bifurcation. If there is anything it would be a reader. The sun made us. And the reader devours.

Fine. As this introductory text comes to an end one gets the idea. Does that mean the idea comes last? How strange that would be. Finally we have the beginning!

Best regards,
PicoPond
Bjxrn Magnhildxen Alias Noemata
contact: noemata[at]gmail.com

Notes

1. CV of Bjxrn Magnhildxen Alias Noemata
2. Poverty Reduction - OECD
3. Rhizome.org : Welcome to Ars Publica - net.art commerce on the net
4. ARS PUBLICA  Curator Ana Buigues4 report. March, 2007

Posted by jo at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2007

Upgrade! Istanbul

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Alternative Directory by Anna Sala

Upgrade! Istanbul: Alternative Directory by Anna Sala :: 26th of April 18:00 :: santralistanbul will host this meeting at Istanbul Bilgi University, Dolapdere Campus, Z-04

The goal of the project is to have an useful tool for a transcultural dialogue and a platform to interconnect the alternative or independent movements (artists and spaces) with other geographical scenarios in order to create and spread cultural exchange networks.

Anna Sala is currently based in Barcelona. She graduated as a graphic designer from Massana School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. Her career as a graphic designer brought her to multimedia studios in Paris, Wrexam and New York. Since 2004 she has been involved with social movements and several political arts projects in Barcelona. She was one of the founders of the collective Eclectica dv, a non-profit arts organization that wants to promote the use and benefits of new technologies through the independent art production and networks using free software & copyleft. She is currently involved in developping interfaces for people and networks using printed and online material.

Projects: Map & workshops; Technology: http://www.eclecticadv.net, http://donestech.net; Public space; In summer of 2006, she participated in Lost Highway Expedition.

Upgrade! Istanbul is a monthly gathering for new media artists, academicians, practitioners, curators and for all of the other actors of digital culture, organized by NOMAD and hosted by santralistanbul.

The Upgrade! is a network of international monthly meetings in the field of art and technology. Founded by media artist Yael Kanarek in 1999, the Upgrade! exists as forums for artists, designers, critics, curators and educators who form the communities in different cities to discuss and share knowledge. Current nodes include Boston, Chicago, Montreal, Munich, NYC, Oklahoma City, Scotland, Seoul, Sofia, Tel-Aviv, Istanbul, Vancouver Lisbon and Toronto. Host organisations include Eyebeam, Turbulence.org , New Media Scotland, Art Centre Nabi, The Western Front, The Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), InterSpace, I-camp, DCA, CCA, No-Org.net, Art Interactive, santralistanbul, Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea. Open-Node.com and TUBE.

Posted by jo at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)

1001 nights cast

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night 667 from LA

This week 1001 nights cast passed the two-thirds milestone with a story by Caroline Lee for night 667. And this Sunday, for the first time, the International Date Line will be crossed. This event gets Barbara Campbell across the Pacific without missing a date on the calendar and she gets a 24 hour holiday as a bonus (largely spent in an economy class seat).

Performance number 671 will be on April 22 at 7.30pm from Los Angeles. That is: 10.30pm in New York, Toronto and Bogota; April 23, 3.30am in London; April 23, 4.30am in Madrid, Paris, Berlin; April 23, 5.30am in Beirut, Jerusalem, Istanbul; April 23, 10.30am in Hong Kong and Perth; April 23, 12.30pm in Sydney.

As you can see, for most places other than North and South America, there will be no performance on the April 22 date. Campbell will do three performances from LA before heading to the east coast of the US. The pop-up news page on the site will give the relevant information about changes to performance times according to where you are. You'll start to see lots of new writers' names, as well as European ones returning.

Posted by jo at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

Turbulence Commission: Pulse Pool

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Connects Boston and Oklahoma City via Human Pulse

For the first time, two cities will be connected via the human pulse. From April 23 through April 29 during the Cambridge Science Festival and the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the Museum of Science and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., Boston present Pulse Pool, an interactive installation that uses internet and radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies to allow people in two different cities to experience one another’s pulse. Pulse Pool bridges art and human biology via technology—as well as two capital cities: Boston and Oklahoma City.

Designed and engineered by the Symbiotic Media Group at the University of Oklahoma, Pulse Pool consists of two ten-foot, round pools of water—one located at the Museum of Science and the other at the University of Oklahoma. Visitors stand by the pool and wear computing devices that track their pulse. The pool detects the transmission from the wearable devices, and each individual's pulse is then represented in real time as a series of water drops released into the pool by a disk suspended directly above. By synchronizing the rhythms of the pulses and water droplets, the pool will enable visitors to detect the drips that correspond to their pulse. By watching the ripples from the droplets, visitors can see their “pulse” meet and interact with the “pulse” of others surrounding the pool. In addition, the two installations will relay information to one another, causing LED lights under the water in each location to flash corresponding to the pulses in the other city. Visitors will also be able to track the connections via a web interface from April 23 through April 30 on http://turbulence.org/Works/PulsePool/.

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"Pulse Pool will offer Museum visitors a chance to experience a basic wonder of human biology: their own pulse and the pulse of others,” says Mike Alexander, director of public programs at the Museum of Science. “And through cutting-edge technology and the art of installation, participants will experience the pulse in a completely new way that is both visual and interactive."

"Imagine if you could see and experience another human's pulse just as intimately as you know your own. How would access to this otherwise unavailable information change the way you interact with one another?" asks Adam Brown, director of the Symbiotic Media Group. He adds, “Through cutting-edge technology, Pulse Pool explores these questions by connecting participants with each other through their pulses in real time.”

Pulse Pool is a 2006 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence web site made possible with funding from mediaThe Foundation. with funds from mediaThe Foundation. Additional funds from the Museum of Science, Boston; the National Endowment for the Arts; Rhizome.org; and the University of Oklahoma Symbiotic Media Center, Lester Wilkinson Chair, College of Engineering, School of Computer Science, Symbiotic Computing Laboratory, and School of Art.

Admission to Pulse Pool is included with regular Exhibit Halls admission: $16 for adults, $14 for seniors (60+), and $13 for children (3-11). For more information, the public can call 617/723-2500, (TTY) 617/589-0417, or visit mos.org. See Fred Jones Museum of Art for more information.

Posted by jo at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Turbulence Commission:

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Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments

Turbulence Commission: Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments by Carmin Karasic, Rolf van Gelder and Rob Coshow, with special thanks to the HP mscapers team, Brett Stalbaum, and Jo Rhodes :: Part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, pick up a smartphone at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, 130 Newbury Street, Boston :: April 21-28, 2007, Tues-Sat 10am-6pm. Gallery talk today: 2:00 pm.

Designed for HP iPAQ 6900 series smartphones, Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments uses GPS and mobile technologies to address historic bias in Boston's public monuments. The artwork gathers non-official stories to socially construct hyper-monuments that exist as digital doubles, augmenting specific historic monuments. For example, imagine you are near the Old South Church in Boston, MA, USA. The smartphone sounds church bells to get your attention. It then displays an easily identifiable image of the Old South Church circa 2007, followed by images of the church that take you back in time. Finally you see the location as it was in its natural, wild state. You can send text, image and audio content to the website from the monument location via any internet enabled device. Or use any internet browser to view and add histories to the hyper-monuments.

HHHM requires HP mediascapes locative media software to create content rich hotspots on GPS aware maps. Once the HHHM mediascape is installed on a handheld device, a GPS fix is required to automatically display the hyper-monument. WiFi internet connectivity is best for viewing and contributing to the hyper-monument via the handheld's browser.

“Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments” is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the LEF Foundation.

BIOGRAPHIES

One November morning in 1994, CARMIN KARASIC was listening to digital artists on NPR when she realized she was a digital artist trapped in a Fidelity Technical Project Manager's body. This simple realization changed her life. A multimedia artist focused on Internet Art, she is also an Assistant Director of Boston Cyberarts, and on the faculty of Lesley University. Her work can be seen online in several e-zines, websites, and galleries, such as CAGE. She has exhibited in the Boston area at the DeCordova Museum, MIT List Center, the Attleboro Museum, Computer Museum, New England School of Art and Design, The Art Institute of Boston, and The Brodigan Gallery; in NY at the Studio Museum, Harlem; Brooks Gallery at Cooper Union, and the New York Hall of Science; and Austria, Canada, Japan, and Germany. Carmin has been awarded a Mudge Fellowship from the Groton School and a duPont Fellowship from the Art Institute of Boston.

ROLF VAN GELDER is an artist and web developer. Self-taught, he has been creating visual art since the early 80s. He has been collaborating with Carmin Karasic since the 1990s. They created "d{s}eduction dialogue" for the 2001 Boston Cyberarts Festival and "Virtual Quilt" (2002) for the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, USA (with Clara Wainwright). In 1995 Rolf founded one of the first on-line art galleries, CAGE - Cyber Art Gallery Eindhoven (http://www.cage.nl). His work has been exhibited in over 50 exhibitions in the U.S.A., Canada, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Germany, UK, Spain and the Netherlands.

ROB COSHOW is an artist/photographer who recently graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Art Institute of Boston. Trained in classic wet-lab photography as well as digital and new media, Rob has honed his experimental approach to create works that bridge multiple disciplines. In 2006, he exhibited his “Crab Cake” robots at Axiom Gallery, and collaborated with Jeff Warmouth, Roland Smart and other Boston artists to create “Art Show Down” at Art Interactive. He has received various honors for his photography and illustrious reviews for his new media work.

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LOCATING OURSELVES

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A KQED Digital Storytelling Summit

LOCATING OURSELVES: A KQED Digital Storytelling Summit :: May 26, 2007; 10-4 pm (Bonus: Friday evening, May 25, 6-8 pm party and showcase celebrating the Coming to California contest) :: KQED, 2601 Mariposa Street, SF :: All are welcome ::Lunch provided, so please RSVP: lrule[at]kqed.org

Come participate in an exploration of the current Digital Storytelling Landsacpe, with special attention given to place-based storytelling, locative media, and mobile technologies. So much is happening, and it's been a long while since we've come together to discuss where we might be going.

Many of us are practitioners, so please let us know what themes you'd like to see explored. Email Leslie Rule at lrule[at]kqed.org. We also invite you to join us Friday evening as we celebrate our high school digital storytellers who participated in the 5th Annual Coming to California Digital Storytelling Contest.

Posted by jo at 08:21 AM | Comments (0)

Web 2.0

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Study finds weak participation

"Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed on Tuesday. A tiny 0.16 percent of visits to Google's top video-sharing site, YouTube, are by users seeking to upload video for others to watch, according to a study of online surfing data by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Web audience measurement firm Hitwise.

Similarly, only two-tenths of one percent of visits to Flickr, a popular photo-editing site owned by Yahoo, are to upload new photos, the Hitwise study found. The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation's couch potatoes--voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer's statistics show. Wikipedia, the anyone-can-edit online encyclopedia, is the one exception cited in the Hitwise study: 4.6 percent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site..." More Study finds weak participation on Web 2.0 sites by Reuters :: April 17, 2007.

Posted by jo at 08:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2007

Prototypes of Moving Pictures

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A Spontaneous + Collaborative Approach to Video Creation

The full paper written for Interact 2007 with http://web.media.mit.edu/~ishii/ is accepted! It shows how Textable Movie designed for facilitating video production has informed Moving Pictures. It presents a mechanism to seamlessly interface the various parts in video production and present our observations. The conference topic is socially-responsible interaction. So see you in Rio de Janeiro in September!

Abstract: The paper presents a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It is shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland are discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform are addressed. Download the 14 pages paper. [blogged by Cati Vaucelle on Architectradure]

Posted by jo at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC)

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10th Anniversary

10th Anniversary Session Series: Established on April 1997 to promote dialogue between science and the arts around the core theme of "communication," NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. In the past decade, information technology has undergone dramatic change. Above all, penetration of the digital network environment has enabled people to send out or share information beyond the limitations of space. Given these circumstances of today, the significance and possibilities of arts and media technology need to be re-defined in relation to society and culture. To that end, ICC is launching the "10th Anniversary Session Series," which offers various events throughout this year as opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue on a variety of themes. As the first event of the series, we are holding a special two-day symposium, "The Future of Media and Art" in April (to be broadcast live online).

2) ICC 10th Anniversary Session Series Vol. 1: Special Symposium "The Future of Media x Art"

Date : April 21(Sat.) , April 22(Sun.) 2:00pm-5:00pm
Venue : ICC Gallery A
Capacity : 250 persons(first-come basis)
Admission : Free * English/Japanese translation
*Live on the Internet

As the information environment is constantly updated, the realms of art and creation associated with media have been diversifying on an unprecedented scale. Creation in today's world is related to social trends of culture, science and technology, while simultaneously highlighting these facets from unique perspectives, opening the way for wider participation of, and communication between, people. This symposium invites key players in the media culture from Japan and abroad, who have spearheaded the formulation and development of media culture by providing creative inspiration via media technology and art, to talk about the creative possibilities of the future, in consideration of the circumstances and changes over the past decade from multiple perspectives.

April 21(sat):
Alex ADRIAANSENS(Director, V2, The Netherlands)
Soh-Yeong Roh(Director, art center nabi, Korea)
FUJIHATA Masaki(Media Artist/ Dean, Graduate School
of Film and New Media, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) MIKAMI Seiko(Artist/Associate Prof. Tama Art University) moderated by HATANAKA Minoru(ICC)

April 22(sun):
ABE Kazunao(Artistic Director, YCAM, Yamaguchi)
Alessandro LUDOVICO(Executive Editor, neural, Italy)
Casey REAS(Co-founder of "processing"/Associate Prof. UCLA) TAKATANI Shiro(Artist/dumb type) moderated by SHIKATA Yukiko(ICC)

3) ICC Chronology

"ICC Chronology : 1997-2006", a special exhibition commemorating ICC's 10th anniversary, presents its 10 years of activities through posters,chronologies, images, and videos of the decade.

Date : April 19(Thu.)-June 24(Sun.),2007
Venue : ICC Gallery A
Hours : 10:00am-6:00pm
Admission : Free

4) Open Space 2007

ICC Open Space is a community space that is free of charge and open throughout the year. It utilizes part of the gallery, library, mini theater and lounge and is organized around this year's concept, "Open!" As an accumulation of the core activities at ICC, about ten works are presented free of charge at the following ICC Zones and Corners: Art & Technology, Research & Development, Network, and Archive. It is also possible to further research the activity history of ICC through various reference materials and visual recordings. With a completely functional cafe, shop, and lounge, ICC aims to create an environment where one encounters and engages with the progressive experimental activities derived from the dialogue between technology and art. Exhibitions are planned to change annually.

Date : April 19(Thu.)-March 9(Sun.), 2008

Posted by jo at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

N3KROZOFT LTD's Aether 9

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Collaborative Video Performance

the N3KROZOFT LTD media group is pleased to announce the world premiere of the collaborative video performance, Aether 9. Linking nine performers in various remote locations around the globe, this performance will occur on May 3, 2007, 21:00 CET, in the framework of Mapping Festival Geneva, in conclusion to a 3-day workshop directed by N3KROZOFT members.

Conditions of participation: [1] Participating in the workshop : If you wish to follow the workshop in Geneva: plase send an email to wrkshp[at]1904.cc describing briefly your experience and motivations (moderate knowledge and experience of video tools + originality of ideas is expected). Workshop dates are: May 1st-3rd, 14:00-18:00. Workshop location: BAC, Geneva (see below).

[2] Participating as a remote performer: Artists wishing to participate in one of the remaining performance slots: please send an email to remote[at]n3krozoft.com. Requirements for remote performers:

- You need to have access to an imaging device (webcam, miniDV camera) and a computer linked to the internet.
- Sufficient knowledge of video tools + performance is expected, to operate for instance a webcam and upload its images to a server. Server access will be provided.
- Knowledge of Max/msp or Pure Data is an advantage, but not a necessity.
- You are required to be available through skype or similar protocols for instructions and synchronisation during the days prior to the performance (1st-3rd May).
- 100% availability during the performance and at least 1 hour prior to performance is crucial.

Questions and Answers

Q - What will this look like?

A - The basic concept: 9 different locations will be linked during a 60 minute performance. The performance will be projected as a 3x3 grid of videoframes.

Q - When and where will the performance take place?

A - The performance will occur on Thursday 3rd May 2007, 21:00 (9 PM) Central European Time. The location is the BAC (Bâtiment d'Art Contemporain), 10 rue des Vieux-Grenadiers / 28, rue des Bains, Geneva, Switzerland.

Q - Is it possible to watch the performance on the internet?

A - The performance will be visible through the internet. Not directly as a video stream, but as a standalone viewer application, which will be available at http://n3krozoft.com/remote. If you are in charge of a public venue, you are welcome to use the standalone viewer to broadcast to performance to an audience. Click here to find your local performance time: http://tinyurl.com/2rjxhb

Q - Will there be any dogma/ritual imposed on the performers?

A - The content of the performance will be dictated by a formal set of rules, which will be established in part during the first 2 days of the workshop. The significance of time and the subjectivity of human experience in a specific
timeframe will be a crucial element of the performance.

Q - What technology will be used for the transmission of images?

A - To insure the possibility for performers in low-tech situations to participate, the system will be designed for robustness rather than for speed. Since streaming video needs a considerable upload rate, the transmission of images will occur rather through image-by-image upload, allowing participants to use slower transmission lines. The target frame refresh rate will be 5 seconds, similar to the transmission rate of the videophone devices in use during the 1990's. At the main performance venue, buffered playback will occur at much faster or slower framerates, depending on the performer's actions.

Posted by jo at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Brad Kligerman Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR)

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Determining Image-Space

Brad Kligerman Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR) « Organizing light in the time and space of the projected image » (the determination of an Image-Space) :: Opening TONIGHT April 20 (23:59 SLT) & April 21 (12:00 SLT - noon) :: Go Here >>

Artist and Architect Brad Kligerman has turned the idea of art making upside down or rather inside out in his AVAIR exhibit. Kligerman questions the idea of materiality in the rendered environment and the nature of image. He successfully blends the idea of moving through "space" with the idea of moving through image in his new multi-sim installations.

Over the course of Kligerman's eleven week residency he has collected images from various experiments in SL. These images have been deftly applied to objects which form a path through three "machines." Kliger uses these machines to extract data from SL in order to understand materiality, quote the history of art and painting and contrast with what has become "traditional" Second Life architecture. The end result is a series of places where image and space become one.

"In contrast to projects that view virtual worlds as simply another node in a communication strategy, this project attempts to find another creative and productive scenario by interrogating the physical and material extents of SL."

"This project recognizes synthetic space not for its faculties of communication, but rather for its potential as a representational, sensational medium. "

"Image resonates on its surface, through its envelope and beyond its physical reach, to capture, through the distribution of space, its tangible atmosphere. Avatars merge in image, emerge through the image, we lose ourselves in the image, of art, only to reemerge through it. The colors, lights and forms, the tensions and compressions of the space's force, superpose to project an «Image-Space »."

AVAIR is an extended performance whose purpose is to investigate the nature of art making in the 3D synthetic environment of Second Life. It is an examination of policy and institution, as well as a reflection on place and art. Artists are given a stipend and technical support. They are expected to have an open studio, produce an exhibition, and make a public presentation. Their methodologies are documented here. Orchestrated through the classic structure of the gallery, the performances run at any time of the day or night, and create a platform for exchange between artist and audience.

“AVAIR” is a 2006-2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Posted by jo at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

Natalie Jereminjenko

The Floating Clinic-GOOD Magazine.

Posted by jo at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

THURSDAY CLUB

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CURATING INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS

THURSDAY CLUB: CURATING INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS :: 10 MAY, 6-8:30pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

Issues of policies have frequently emerged at Thursday Club presentations, specifically in relation to the funding and curation of digital/ media arts, art-science collaborations, and interdisciplinary work in general. So, for the summer term 2007, we invited four distinguished speakers to take part in a round table discussion addressing the question:

Is curation as a practice relevant within the field of interdisciplinary work such as digital /media arts, sci-art, and networked arts? If so, what type of curation is appropriate to, and can support such practices?

The speakers are:

KELLI DIPPLE: Kelli is currently Webcasting Curator at Tate, London. Working on the development, programming and production of live webcasts and interface design in conjunction with Digital programmes - Tate Online and Education and Interpretation at Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Kelli has worked for the past decade at the intersection of digital technology and performance practice under the name of Gravelrash Integrated Media, specializing in the integration of visual, interactive, communication and network technologies into live events for live audiences. More info: http://www.macster.plus.com/gravelrash/

FURTHERFIELD.ORG [RUTH CATLOW & MARC GARRETT] : Furtherfield is an online platform for the creation, promotion, and criticism of adventurous digital/net art work for public viewing, experience and interaction. Furtherfield creates imaginative strategies that actively communicate ideas and issues in a range of digital & terrestrial media contexts; featuring works online and organising global, contributory projects, simultaneously on the Internet, the streets and public venues. It focuses on network-related projects that explore new social contexts that transcend the digital, or offer a subjective voice that communicates beyond the medium. Furtherfield is the collaborative work of artists, programmers, writers, activists, musicians and thinkers who explore beyond traditional remits. Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett are Furtherfield's co-founders and co-directors. They are both artists involved in research into net art and cultural context on the Internet. They co-curate works featured on Furtherfield.

ARMIN MEDOSCH: Armin is a writer, curator, artist, and Associate Senior Lecturer in digital media at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. He has written and edited several books on new media and network culture, his latest work including texts on wireless community networking and free and open source culture. His latest work as a curator includes a contribution to the exhibition OpenNature at NTTICC Tokyo and the exhibition Waves, Riga 2006. In his spare time he is conducting research on collaborative and participative art forms, open cartography and mobile and interactive travelogues. Armin is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

CHAIR: PROF. JANIS JEFFERIES: Janis is an artist, writer, curator, and Professor of Visual Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College. She is Artistic Director of the Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, and Convener of the GoldsmithsThursday Club.

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today' (and tomorrow') cultural landscape(s).

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email maria x at drp01mc[at].ac.uk
To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/. Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL.

Posted by jo at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army

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Circus of (Im)Migration

The Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army is a gaggle of clowns who spend their days trying to create a world without borders by clowning fascists. They display their videos online and the lovely Minutemen gladly patricipate in the networked performance by engaging in a debate about immigration with all the other posters. You can see their videos here.

The Boredom Patrol is doing a traveling Circus of (Im)Migration from Portland to Tijuana, all along the west coast of the US and a bit of Mexico. Join us for stories, ridicule of fascism, creative resistance, tearing down walls and building community, including Fantastical feats of Fire, Lion Taming, Tight Rope Walking, Knife Throwing, Burlesque, Punk Rock Opera, Theater, oh yeah and clowns too!

..We are C.I.R.C.A. because we live in the borderlands, always in between, on the edge of the nation state, mischevously ambiguous...You can see our lovely flyer here and our travel schedule here.

Posted by jo at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)

Electronic Loneliness

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Change the world; stay home

"Post-sociologists disguised as trend tasters are projecting all their reborn enthusiasm onto the home. Their concern is directed at the army of out-of-action white- and blue-collar workers, who will be taken out of their state of anomie and unproductivity thanks to home terminals. Individual enthusiasm for techno-gadgetry is being transformed into the hope of a new economic élan. It turns out that installing new media in your own home provokes a labour situation. The combination of data highway and enhanced television will inevitably lead to the return of cottage industry in the form of virtual looms. The countryside will bloom again, traffic jams disappear, the environment will be spared and the family restored. And in all reasonableness, who wouldn't want that?

In the age of the shop floor, the open-plan office, the canteen and the meeting room, a political work climate still existed. One could still speak of spatially proximate and visible hierarchical relationships within a technically integrated division of labour. Engagement in material production fostered a compelling solidarity. This laid fertile ground for the corporate dreams of the 20th century, from Fordism and Taylorism to Japanese management and New Age. Labour unions ensured the pacification of always-latent labour unrest. After World War II in the West there thus arose a configuration which guaranteed a manageable social dynamic. Until the perpetual restructuring finally resulted in empty factories. Passion for socialism and communism disappeared just as soundlessly. The social question thus shifted from the factory gates to people's front doors. The home has thereby become the object of fantasy for political economists and other social visionaries..." From Electronic Loneliness by Adilkno with Martin Buber, Laura Martz, Mediamatic, 1995.

Posted by jo at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

The Reception

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Performance + Discussion

A tele-immersive cross-disciplinary performance piece called The Reception will be presented April 20, 21, 27, 28 at 8pm and April 22, 29 at 2pm as a part of the Berkeley Dance Project 2007. The piece was created by the co-directors of SmithWymore Disappearing Acts, Lisa Wymore and Sheldon B. Smith in collaboration with Ruzena Bajcsy of CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society). Live performance and streamed realtime 3d tele-immersive technology are used to poetically examine the subject of presence. BDP is an annual collection of danceworks presented by UCBerkeley's Department of Theater Dance and Performance Studies. Performances will take place at UCB's Zellerbach Playhouse theater.

The April 22 performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion: Being Here: Presence/Remote Presence within Live and Media Based Performance by N. Katherine Hayles. The discussion will feature a demonstration of a live bi-located dance utilizing the tele-immersion labs at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, the Towsend Center Dance Studies Working Group, and the Dance Department and Intermedia Program at Mills College. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Posted by jo at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

assume vivid astro focus

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a very anxious feeling

assume vivid astro focus a very anxious feeling :: May 3rd - June 30th, 2007 :: John Connelly Presents (JCP) is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by assume vivid astro focus (avaf). The exhibition will use the architecture of the gallery to create a dialogue between three distinct environments featuring an installation of 3-D wallpaper, a dark subterranean corridor of music and flashing neon sculptures, and a cordoned multi- disciplinary room that will feature an ongoing series of music-related performances.

In the main gallery an installation of text-based wallpaper consisting of grids of four-letter words - BUSH, IRAQ, SPIT, HOMO, DYKE, ANAL, IRAN, AMEN, PRAY, EVIL, LOVE, EDEN, HOPE.. - alludes to the iconic design of Robert Indiana's LOVE emblem from the 60's and General Idea's AIDS insignia from the late 80's. "Four-letter words" tend to have a special status in the English language and in most cases reflect the more crude, sexual subset of the lexicon. The virus-like dispersion of these terms throughout the walls of the gallery and their political tenor suggest how the public policies and decisions made by our governments indiscriminately contaminate and shape our private lives and futures. By inviting the viewer to don a special mask with custom 3-D glasses to view the wallpaper, the artists also encourage the viewer's participation in activating the work from a two- dimensional static experience into a three- dimensional event that is both sculptural and temporal.

The gallery's basement space, which is usually reserved for storage of artwork and tools, is transformed into a long dark corridor illuminated by a sequence of five animated abstract neon sculptures. The sculptures syncopate and flash along to a custom soundtrack featuring music by PolaroidHomoPhoto (an anonymous duo that looped a fragment of the song Zombi by French musician Sebastien Tellier). Furthering the multi-dimensional experience of the wallpaper installation upstairs, avaf's corridor of light and sound combines the aural and visual into a visceral occurrence meant to stimulate both the mind and the body. The space itself - marginal, dark and intimate- reflects upon avaf's interest in the multilayering of both structure and image and the generation of new platforms, vistas and vanishing points through architectural tools such as barricades and stairways.

In the JCP project room avaf has transplanted an installation from their 2006 solo show, absorb viral attack fantasy at Hiromi Yoshii, Tokyo comprised of wallpaper, sculptures, video, neons, and balloons. Here, the group continues to explore the fertile confluence between art, architecture, performance and entertainment by presenting an ongoing series of performances and events including Barr, Tobias Bernstrup, Julie Atlas Muz, Loconuts, Ann Magnuson, Japanther, Good Good and Frankie Martin (full schedule to be announced). However, the entrance to the project room has been sealed shut and the only given access to both the performances and installation is peering through portholes fitted with sheaths and wigs.

For the duration of the exhibition avaf has also invited UK artist Giles Round to take over the gallery's Tunnel Room (known for it's arched public display window that looks onto the former Tunnel nightclub). Round works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, installation and video. He will present a new video installation addressing issues of public space, theatricality, reflection and formal/spatial orientation.

Image: assume vivid astro focus
Courtesy of John Connelly Presents, New York

Posted by jo at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)

Intellectual Economy by Robert Ladislas Derr

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@ Athens Video Art Festival

(Athens, Greece) Robert Ladislas Derr will exhibit Intellectual Economy, a two-channel video installation in the Athens Video Art Festival, April 27 – April 29, 2007.

The act of making Intellectual Economy was as much cerebral as it was physical. The process of creating has a structure that begins with getting the idea out. Intellectual Economy physically documents the struggle endured during the creation process. It comprises of two simultaneous video projections on opposite sides of a suspended wall, displaying Derr busting his head through a wall. One projection shows the view of the wall he will eventually bust through, and the other presents the back of his head allowing the viewer to witness his act.

The installation conveys a metaphor for the thought process of creating art. The front side view of the rupturing wall echoes the process of birth and challenges the notions of illusionistic space. Breaking through the wall from one side to the other illustrates that art is not easy. While this rupture occurs on a two dimensional surface, the positioning of the projections allows the act to appear as if it is actually happening. The viewer is able to walk around this suspended wall and watch Derr’s progression.

Once the wall breaks, the art product takes form illustrating the construction and deconstruction of the art process. The breaking of the wall indicates that the act is almost complete. Derr continues to break pieces away from the wall creating a hole large enough to allow his head to comfortably protrude into the new space. After a long painful struggle to access this new space, the videos repeat the act illustrating the continuous struggle of the artistic process.

Derr derived the name for the installation after a conversation about his artwork with Michael Govan in 2001 (Govan was director of the Dia Center for the Arts at the time). Mr. Govan told Derr the he would have to be part of the "intellectual economy" before his artwork could be shown at the Dia.

Articles about Derr’s artwork:
Discipline
Void
To Helen

Posted by jo at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Boston

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Technological Frontiers and the Limits of Nature: Networked Interventions

UPGRADE! BOSTON: Technological Frontiers and the Limits of Nature: Networked Interventions -- a panel discussion with Jane D. Marsching, Cary Peppermint and Brooke Singer; moderated by Shane Brennan :: WHEN: May 3, 7 pm :: WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, Cambridge.

Technology both extends humanity into the natural environment and brings the "wilderness" indoors. "Arctic Listening Post" by Jane D. Marsching seeks to create hybrid digitally based forms that interweave science, culture, representation, history, and wonder through works that look at our human impact on climate change in the Arctic. "A Series of Practical Performances in the Wilderness - Summer 2005," by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir, attempts to bring wilderness into the global digital network through vlogs (video blogs) via Quicktime, DVD interactivity, and the database format with which it was conceptualized. Brooke Singer will discuss working with and documenting communities living in toxic sites across the US who are tackling remediation themselves because either the government has not responded or simply says, “all is well.” About the speakers.

Part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival. Funded by the LEF Foundation.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 24 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo[at]turbulence.org.

Posted by jo at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

Upstage Matchmaking

There will be another UPSTAGE "matchmaking" session on 24/25 April for people interested in collaborating or supporting performances for the 070707 UpStage festival. it will be at 9pm on the 24th in Western Europe, which is 5am on the 25th in Brisbane, Australia. find your local time here:

if you want to come and you don't have your own login, you must email Helen beforehand for a guest login. helen[at]creative-catalyst.com.

Posted by newradio at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

Emma on Relationships

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How to Play

Call (617) 544-3022. You will hear: "Hi this is Emma. Leave a message for me or one of my friends. To leave a message for me, press 1. For Chris, press 2, for Jamie, press 3, for Emma's brother, press 4, for Eugene, press 5, for Sarah press 6, and for Paresh, press 7." Leave a message (up to 15 seconds). You can ask a question like "How do average girls get with hot guys?" or whatever you want. Listen to what other people are saying by choosing one of the cards on the right. Emma will try to respond to your questions and concerns in her next episode. The latest episode is on the topic of "Breasts." Please call. Website.

Posted by jo at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Berlin

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Field trip to NewYorkRioTokyo

Upgrade! Berlin: field trip to NewYorkRioTokyo :: Thursday, April 19, 5 pm at NewYorkRioTokyo :: Brunnenstrasse 7/2, near U - Station Brunnenstrasse.

The mobile caravan of Upgrade! Berlin will visit the nomadic gallery NewYorkRioTokyo tonight and have a discussion with the curators. Join us on our caravan of questions on media art in Berlin...

The non profit association NewYorkRioTokyo has been founded in summer 2005 with the purpose to create an international network for the promotion of young artists, designers and curators. In the project room “E 4" in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg they mainly present videos, installations, performances and interventions in public space. Additionally, the NYRT team organises lectures and talks on a regular basis. This platform is run by seven 7 curators and artists from different countries.

You are invited to join us on our next Upgrade! field trip, where we will meet the NYRT's curator Kai Schupke for a talk about the curatorial agenda of this place. We are especially interested in finding out more about their approaches towards innovative presentation formats of media art. The video of this evening will be available online by the beginning of May.

You want to join us on our caravan of questions, roaming the media art spaces of Berlin? Just get in touch with us here.

Posted by jo at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

[iDC] A critique of sociable web media

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Trebor Scholz

Our discussion about affective labor and the sociable web came up again at a recent panel at The New School. Afterwards there were quite a few fascinating responses to the arguments across the blogosphere to which I responded (here).

I summed up my ideas in a willfully provocative essay for a new issue of the journal Re-Public. (The issue also features essays by Geert Lovink, McKenzie Wark and Michel Bauwens.)

What is a fair exchange in the context of the highest traffic sites of the sociable web? Yes, we get much out of many sites to which we contribute. We can "egocast," build friendships, develop thousands of weak ties, learn, date, and simply enjoy hanging out with friends on this disembodied platform.

It is hard, however, not think of utilization when NewsCorp spent $583m on MySpace, which is now estimated to head toward a market value of $15billion (over the next 3 years). A definite value is created and that surplus value is not shared in a fair way.

The community, which indeed undoubtedly benefits, is monetized. People cannot simply leave if they don't like being used because their friends are all on that site. You can't post a video to a small video-sharing site if online fame is what you are after. Perhaps the days of "Friendster-mobility" are over. Here, the networked publics left in large numbers. The choice that participants have is limited; they are in a social lock-down of sorts. This lack of true alternatives may have well been the reason that 700.000 users of the Facebook recently protested when the unpopular RSS feature was introduced.

On the before mentioned panel, both, danah boyd and Ethan Zuckerman brought up the tremendous costs for NewsCorp that are associated with technically supporting all that sociality on MySpace. Ethan also pointed out that it may take big business to facilitate large scale networked social life.

In the end, what really matters is not only that people become aware of the fact that they are being used on these giant sites. It is important to be clear about the ownership of content and it is also crucial to know the privacy rules of the platforms that we are using.

What is most important, however, is the ability to be independent, which means that I have a way of leaving-- taking with me what I invested (the content-- the blog entries, the photos, the videos...). For me, much of the ethics of the sociable web is related to the ability to call it quits.

-Trebor

PS:
Some of these topics were also picked up in Sweden: http://www.whomakesandownsyourwork.org/mw/index.php?title=Main_Page

New subscribers-- you can read our list archive of this debate at: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-April/thread.html

iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity iDC[at]mailman.thing.net http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc

List Archive:
http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/

iDC Photo Stream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/

Posted by jo at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2007

AreYouHere?

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Venice - Urban Mobile Game

AreYouHere? :: 2007 - June 6th/15th - Venice - urban mobile game :: AreYouHere? is one of the 12 urban interventions of Migration Addicts, 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Collateral events :: Site: the whole city - starting point at Chiostro Ex Chiesa Santi Cosma e Damiano, Giudecca, 620.

AreYouHere? is an urban mobile game that aims to explore Venice through its inhabitants/migrants. More and more Venetians are leaving the lagoon to settle in other towns. In the next 30-40 years, it is certain that Venice's population will be dramatically reduced. Bar and hotel owners now come from abroad while the town is losing its original inhabitants and becoming more and more globalized. Thousands of tourists arrive to Venice everyday. The Observer provocatively wrote that if the only destiny of the town is low cost tourism then it would be better to have Venice managed by Disneyland Corporation. A kind of paradox is happening. Venice could be everywhere, that "exotic" does not exist anymore. Labor migrants from Asia are welcoming you and serving you Italian food. You are in Venice. But are you really in Venice? What do you see? Who do you meet?

AreYouHere? is an urban exploration through the faces of the people anyone can meet during his/her stay. Faces of migrants that have become the actual inhabitants, while the player is the stranger. A touristic and personal exploration of people and their faces. Those photos will be joined together into a personal postcard. He/she will receive the postcard at home. A postcard that is actually sent by him/herself. The player will receive the postcard to his/her home: a postcard that is actually sent by him/herself.. But the places you are supposed to visit, however, are not the ones you would expect to go, the top visited.

Surely you'd never take a photo of people who lives and works in these places. But that's what you have to do: shoot photos at immigrant people who live and work in Venice, carefully following the path that has been created for you, because you are the stranger, the tourist, and they are a part of Venice instead. You should take those photos with your mobile phone and send them by MMS to the number you found on the invitation. But remember, the first photo you send must be a photo of yourself: because you are a part of the game. [via]

Posted by jo at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public Art Bucharest 2007

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Artists’ Interventions

[Image: Anetta Mona Chisa, What the fuck are you staring at!?, color video with sound on DVD pal, 01'56" (loop), 2001, courtesy of the author] Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public Art Bucharest 2007 :: 20 April – 15 October 2007 :: Bucharest – Romania :: Curated by Marius Babias and Sabine Hentzsch :: Assistant curator: Raluca Voinea .

Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public Art Bucharest 2007 is a pilot project which creates a platform for trans-disciplinary discussions and debates exploring how public art encourages a critical engagement with the structures of power which are dominant in society.. The non-existence of a public sphere in Romania during Communism created the conditions for the unfettered capitalism of the post-Communist period to acquire a monopoly on the public space. Bucharest is one of the fastest developing cities in Europe, however one where post-Communism and globalization have created specific tensions and eccentric juxtapositions in the architecture, urban environment and social life. The ways in which people in the city perceive, experience and respond to these tensions define an active public space, which needs to be acknowledged by the cultural discourse and analysed in open debates.

The project Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public Art Bucharest 2007 has three objectives:

--to support Bucharest’s synchronization with the evolution of contemporary art and to create awareness about the importance of the public space;
--in the medium term, to create a self-sustained initiative for public art;
--in the long term this self-sustained initiative allows continuous and consistent realization of public art projects.

For the pilot stage of the project, taking place throughout 2007, the following Romanian artists with international profile were invited to participate: Mircea Cantor, Anetta Mona Chisa in collaboration with Lucia Tkácová, Nicoleta Esinencu, H.arta, Daniel Knorr, Dan Perjovschi, and Lia Perjovschi. The artists’ projects confront the public with a series of contemporary themes relevant both from an international perspective and for a context in which the exercise of democracy has not yet been fully incorporated. The streets, squares and markets of the city, public and private institutions, public transportation, and mass media channels constitute settings for the artists’ interventions. Within the artists’ projects a central role is held by a multifunctional project space, which opens in September for one month, with a daily program of activities.

Professionals from different fields will present and discuss contemporary issues. The project space will attra ct not only an audience with a cultural background, but also young people, a casual street audience or people frequenting bars. Along with the discussions and workshops, a variety of activities will be staged, such as lectures, film projections, musical performances and club events.

The artists’ books series is published by IDEA Publishing House Cluj and Walther König Cologne, 2007.

Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public Art Bucharest 2007 opens on 20th of April 2007 with an international conference which brings together theorists, representatives of institutions which are supporting public art initiatives, as well as key figures of the cultural and public life of Bucharest. The conference participants are: Marius Babias, Marlis Drevermann, Sabine Hentzsch, Olaf Metzel, Timotei Nadasan, Horia-Roman Patapievici, Serban Sturdza, Michael M. Thoss, and Adriean Videanu.

Initiated by the partner institutions Goethe-Institut Bukarest, Institutul Cultural Român (ICR), and Allianz Kulturstiftung. Financially supported by the Cultural Programme of the German EU Presidency in 2007 provided by the German Foreign Office, and Erste Foundation. Media partners: IDEA, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, Suplimentul de Cultura, E-cart.ro.

http://www.spatiul-public.ro

For more information contact Goethe-Institut Bukarest
T: +40 21 3119762
E: il[at]bukarest.goethe.org

Posted by jo at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

Computação Física

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Physical Computing Workshop

CADA - Atmosferas Digital Arts Center is organizing "Let's Get Physical - Physical Computing with Arduino", Lisbon, 3-6- May, Massimo Banzi.

Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board and a development environment that implements the Processing language. Arduino can be used to develop standalone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, Max/MSP). The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.

The Arduino Project was developed out of an educational environment and is therefore great for newcomers to get things working quickly. The Arduino philosophy is based on making design rather then talking about it. It is a constant search for faster and more accurate ways to build better prototypes. We have explored many prototyping techniques and developed ways of thinking with our hands. This workshop has a strong practical component. At the end of the workshop participants will devellop a mini-project.

Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of Arduino. Currently teaches Physical Interaction Design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Has worked on interactive design projects for clients like Prada, Artemide and Adidas. He is the co-founder of the Interaction Design Lab; Personal site.

Computação Física envolve o design de objectos interactivos que comunicam com humanos e com o ambiente envolvente através do uso de sensores controlados por software. O Projecto Arduino nasceu num enquadramento educacional e está desenhado para permitir uma experimentação acessível e rápida. É uma plataforma Open Source - hardware e software - baseada no IDE de programação Processing.

A filosofia Arduino baseia-se na ideia de fazer design em vez de falar sobre design. Este workshop tem uma componente fortemente prática de iniciação à computação física que dota os participantes dos conceitos e das ferramentas necessárias à criação de um mini projecto final. Massimo Banzi - Milão, It - Fundador do Arduino. É professor de Computação Física e Design Interactivo no Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea. Trabalhou em projectos de design interactivo para clientes como Prada, Artemide e Adidas.

Projectos recentes incluem Tune Me, uma instalação interactiva para o Museu V&A, Londres, e o design, tecnologia e prototipagem para a loja Prada epicenter. É co-fundador do Interaction Design Lab.

Local e Datas: 3 - 6 Maio, 07, Lisboa, nas instalações do Clube Português de Artes e Ideias, Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, 29, 2º (ao Chiado).

6 Maio, 22h – Apresentação pública dos resultados do workshop.

Informações e inscrições: www.atmosferas.net

CADA - Centro de Artes Digitais Atmosferas
R. da Boavista 102-2º, 1200-069 Lisboa
21 343 07 77 | 93 447 3003
sofiaoliveira[at]atmosferas.net

Posted by jo at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

(re)collector

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"A memorable event is a dramatic one."

(re)collector by James Coupe – produced in partnership with The Junction for Enter_Unknown Territories, Cambridge, UK, April 2007 :: (re)collector is a public art installation that approaches Cambridge as a 'museum of the mind', using cameras to acquire memorable images that can then be reorganised into ideas. The Greek concept of ut pictura poesis claims that poetry is more ‘imageful’ than prose. In this project, the cameras do not document Cambridge using a simple, straightforward archive of events, but rather seek to record a collection of dramatic moments. The city becomes a tableau for pictura poesis, with events amplified through combinations of framing, movement, and silence becoming more memorable and cohesive as a result.

ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES is a five-day international festival and two-day conference of new technology arts, taking place throughout Cambridge from Wednesday 25TH to Sunday 29th April 2007. Its three main activities of public art events, workshops and conference, will address, explore, and question the possibilities of making and experiencing new technology arts. Following an international call for submissions three major commissions were chosen to highlight the festivals’ programme. [via]

Posted by jo at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2007

2007 Bent Festival

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The Fourth Annual Circuit Bending Festival!

The term circuit bending refers to the inspired short-circuiting of battery-powered children's toys to create new musical instruments, and over the last few decades a worldwide subculture has sprung up around this amazing art form. We are very excited that for the first time the Bent Festival will be crossing America in April, making stops in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and New York.

We will bring together performers, educators, and visual artists from around the world who not only push the circuit bending genre forward but also are on the cutting edge of the contemporary music and art scenes. In addition to interactive art installations and nightly concerts, adults and children alike can participate in workshops l ed by some of the world's greatest circuit benders.

A direct result of experimentation and play, circuit bending requires very little technical know-how to get started, giving everyone the opportunity to experience making electronic music. "In a society that is increasingly focused on sophisticated technology, it is amazingly satisfying to get the general public ripping apart circuit boards and showing them how much fun they can have with just the smallest bit of know-how", explains festival co-curator Daniel Greenfeld. This year the festival will also focus attention on artists who create new circuits in addition to those who modify old ones. Mike Rosenthal explains, "Each year the level of skill and creativity these artists bring to the festival increases substantially. Folks who started out bending a few years ago have been honing their skills, taking their work to the next level, and increasingly creating their own instruments from scratch. That's something we're really looking to highlight this year."

The Festival will start off in Los Angeles this year, move next to Minneapolis and then come home to New York City April 26-28 with three days of concerts, workshops, and art installations at Eyebeam Atelier. The Saturday morning circuit bending intro workshop is perfect for kids and adults of all ages and requires no previous knowledge. Just come with an open mind and any old toys that make sounds that you dont mind breaking! Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the art tools for digital research and experimentation and is proud to be hosting the New York Bent Festival this year..

The 2007 Bent Festival is produced by The Tank, a non-profit space for performing and visual arts in New York City with a mission to provide a welcoming, creative, collaborative, and affordable environment for artists and activists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas. The Festival is Intermedia Arts is proud to be co-presenting the Minneapolis Bent Festival"made possible in part by Make Magazine, the first publication on the subject of DIY technology projects. And by Periscope Entertainment, a Los Angeles based film and television company that prides itself on supporting independent thought and innovative creation. This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Bent Festival New York City - April 26-28 2007 :: Presented by The Tank :: All workshops, concerts, and installations will be held at Eyebeam Atelier 540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues), NY, NY Artwork from: Matt Durant Ranjit Bhatnagar Andreas Stoiber Stephanie Rothenberg Patrick Boblin Phil Stearns Jeff Donaldson Caitlin Berrigan Joker Nies

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

FRIDAY APRIL 27

6:00pm: Solid Logic - With Phil Stearns. $10.: This hands-on workshop will consist of a brief intro to electricity, resistance, capacitance, RC timing and basic CMOS digital ICs.

SATURDAY APRIL 28

11:00am: Intro to Circuit Bending Workshop - FREE and fun for kids of all ages! Circuit bending is a do-it-yourself sound art, which allows one to discover new hidden organic sounds in battery-powered electronic toys recycled from thrift stores and garage sales. In the Introduction to Circuit Bending Workshop participants will learn the fundamentals of circuit bending and have the opportunity to take a hands-on approach to modifying their own electronic devices. Participants are encouraged to bring their own devices for bending; this would include any battery-operated children's toys that make sounds (keyboards, speak and spells, etc). Participants are also encouraged to bring extra batteries to use on their machines.

12:00pm: Usernomics 1.0 with Stephanie Rothenberg. $10. 2 hours The School of Perpetual Training presents "Usernomics 1.0". Participants will learn how to interface hacked USB keyboards with Macromedia Flash and other interactive computer programs to explore alternative ways of interacting with the computer. In the first hour participants will disassemble USB keyboards and experiment with various materials and soldering techniques to create unique and unusual external interfaces. The external interfaces will be used to control the movements of an onscreen avatar. In the second hour, participants use their newly created devices in a competition to control an online "worker". Participants are encouraged to bring their own computer and random electronics junk.

2:00pm: Introduction into The Giant Chaotic Circuit Bending Merzbau Jungle, with Andreas Stoiber. Andreas is an artist in residence for the Bent Festival and will be creating a rhizomatic structure of interactions between musical instruments and other devices. For this workshop, the audience is encouraged to plug their own instruments somewhere into the wires and learn how his installation works and how it can be engaged with. All are welcome! Bring your bent toys!

2:00pm: MintyBoost with Limor Fried. $20. 90 minutes: Participants will make the MintyBoost USB charger (for iPods, mp3 players, cell phones, etc.). Will cover basic soldering skills.

2:00pm: From Circuit Bending to Circuit Design -- Intro to the Dark Arts of The Man: Circuitbending has long taken a subversive role in the world of electronics by using consumer products as a starting media. While this approach has much in the way of ideological validity, many circuitbenders find they want to learn more about how the circuits they are bending actually work. This workshop functions as a crash course in the tools, methods and theories that are actually used to design circuits from the ground up. With Todd Bailey.

4:00pm: Scavenged Analog Video Games with Ed Bear and Lea Bertucci

4:00pm: Alternative Power Sources for Bent Creations with Mouna Andraos: During this workshop, participants will be provided with an introduction to basic physical computing and make a flashlight powered by shaking motion. Participants are encouraged to bring their battery powered 'bent creations with them, as they will learn how to power various creations using this form of energy.

4:00pm: Arc Anomino and the sono-reductronic

Evening: Jamie O'Shea: 10 min demonstrations from his famous machine research centering on the creation of a human-sized chamber with giant suspended antenna whose function will be to make its occupant famous

CONCERT SCHEDULE: COMING ALL THREE NIGHTS? CONSIDER PURCHASING A FESTIVAL PASS

Thursday 4/26 (Doors @ 7:30pm) Friday April 27 (Doors @ 7:30pm) Saturday April 28 (Doors @ 7:30pm) Buy Tix Now Buy Tix Now Buy Tix Now Andrew Hlynsky and EncantithegovernmentMario de Vega Sebastian Boazarc.OzzzDie Fuchteln Pixel FormGmackrrMr. Resistor Gunung SariLorin Edwin ParkerLoud Objects Jamie AllenBeatrix*JarAndreas Stoiber Jeff DonaldsonCarlos Antenna MudboyDr. Rek PatterndiverBurnkit2600 Peter EdwardsAlias Pail

Posted by jo at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)

Version>07

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the Insurrection Internationale

Version>07 the Insurrection Internationale is starting this week: April 19 - May 6, 2007.

Produced by the Public Media Institute, a non profit 501 3c corporation, Version is an annual springtime convergence that brings together over 500 artists, musicians, and educators from around the world to present some of the most challenging ideas and progressive art projects of our day. The eighteen day festival showcases emerging trends in art, technology and music and has earned critical accolades here in Chicago and abroad.

The hybrid art festival / art fair brings together individuals, groups and networks that utilize visual and conceptual art strategies, innovative social practices, public art projects, and new music to push the counter cultures forwards.

Version festival presents a diverse program of activities featuring an exposition/art fair called the NFO EXPO, multiple art exhibitions, urban events, film screenings, interactive technologies, performances, street art, presentations, talks, workshops, and art rendezvous and action.

Alternative spaces open for staging actions. Public spaces and corporate places become terrains of intervention. Much of Version>07 Insurrection Internationale was programmed via an open online submissions platform.Other projects and programs were selected and curated by the Version>07 Organisers

Posted by jo at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)

Artware4

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Generative Art Peru

Announcing Artware4, the digital art bienale of Lima, Perú. Organized and curated by Umberto Roncoroni for the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano of Lima. This year' edition is dedictaed to generative art, aiming to preasent to peruvian public different aspects of international generative art, ranging from visual art, architecture and programming.

Artists: Alain Lioret (France) Andy Lomas (UK), Michael Handsmeyer (Germany), Umberto Roncoroni (Italy), Bogdan Soban (Slovenia)and a group of peruvian artists: Beno Juarez, Arturo Reategui and a group of students of the faculty of Architecture of the San Martin de Porres University.

Here is a link to the past editions' web page:
http://www6.icpna.edu.pe/Artware/Artware01.html

Posted by jo at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Paris

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Horia Cosmin Samoïla + Ewen Chardronnet

Upgrade! Paris: HORIA COSMIN SAMOÏLA & EWEN CHARDRONNET :: Friday, april 20th, from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm :: CONFLUENCES: 190, Bd de Charonne 75020 PARIS :: Metro: Philippe-Auguste or Alexandre-Dumas (12) [This meeting will take place during the Mal Au Pixel Festival, in the "new cartographies" program, and will precede a lecture on Multimedia Cartography, a new perception of our territories, with Benjamin Cadon and Franck Ancel.]

Horia Cosmin Samoïla and Ewen Chardronnet work together since a few months within Spectral Investigations Collective (with Bureau d'Etudes and other people). Inside Net radio Radio operator Tower Xchange program, Horia Cosmin Samoïla and Spectral Investigations Collective will explore the electromagnetic (and psychotronic) environment of the Eiffel Tower, and this at the time of the first turn of the presidential elections. Ewen Chardronnet will question Horia Cosmin Samoïla on its former artistic activities and the current hot lines of its projects.

Horia Cosmin Samoïla: Originally from Romania, founder of Ghostlab and member of SIC. Uses the electromagnetic medium like raw material with the realization of immaterial sculptures, experimental installations and extra-cognitive devices.

Ewen Chardronnet: Artist, curator and journalist, author of an anthology on the Association of the Autonomous Astronauts ("Quitter la Gravite", l'Eclat Editions) and prize winner of the Leonardo Price New Horizons 2003. http://e-ngo.orghttp://semaphore.blogs.com

Posted by jo at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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Olivier Perriquet

Upgrade! Lisbon: Olivier Perriquet /*(un)setting rules*/ :: April 26, 2007 19:00 :: @ Lisboa20 Arte Contemporâneam, Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão 18B (Campo de Ourique).

Olivier Perriquet was born in Lille, France in 1974. He is both a media artist and a scientific researcher. After having completed a master degree in pure maths and a PhD in computer science, he currently works as a researcher in the bioinformatics department at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CENTRIA) in Lisbon. His ongoing artistic work is inspired by a scientific approach that leads to performances and installations and often makes reference to scientific protocols, in which the public is actively involved but not always in control of their interactions, contrary to what they might believe or feel during their experience of the work.

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In 2002, as a performer, he started to experiment with the cinematic live event. During these performances, he explores the mental images of childhood contained in family footage of the 70s and searches for new narative forms, naming them protonarrative, in which the spectator sees himself responsible for part of the construction of the narratio of the work. The images - sequences of ordinary life taken fro super8 amateur films - are composed live via a set of mechanical picture machines and hybrid 16 mm projectors connected to a computer.

In parallel, Perriquet also graduated from Le Fresnoy with first class honors. Lately he has focused his work on the behaviour of the body and its immersion into a virtual world. Within a protocol that looks permissive, the public finds itself involved in the ambivalence of game (playing within a set of predefined rules) and play (i.e. playing a role, playing an instrument). The nstallation is based on the hypothesis that the motions of the body may witness somehow one's personality and thus unveil the strategies one has developed in order to grow up.

During the talk he will expose the leading directions of his artistic work and thoughts. He may also make an insight into some mathematical aspects of bioinformatics in order to give a certain experience of the scientific approach. The title, written as a comment line in a c++ code should be considered as an underlying guideline of the talk.

Posted by jo at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

Collision Collective presents

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COLLISIONeleven (C11)

Collision Collective presents COLLISIONeleven (C11) :: MIT Stata Center Balcony Gallery, 3rd floor up stairs from main entrance, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA USA :: part of Boston Cyberarts and the Cambridge Science Festival :: April 20 - May 1, 2007 :: Weekdays 9-5 :: Weekends 12-6pm :: Opening Sat Apr 21 6-9pm

C11 is an experimental art show where artists invent new technologies, new art forms, and even new forms of life. Artists include jonathan bachrach, rebecca baron, david bouchard, marcelo coelho, rob gonsalves, doug goodwin, eric gunther, steve helsing, shawn lawson, georgina lewis, jeff lieberman, henry kaufman, owen meyers, peggy nelson, dietmar offenhuber, roy pardi, amanda parkes, kim sinae, mark stock, fran trainor, and william tremblay.


Posted by jo at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua New Gallery and New Media Center

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CADRE Salon: Camille Utterback

April 18th 2007, 6:30pm, Ars Virtua New Gallery and New Media Center presents CADRE Salon with artist Camille Utterback.

Camille Utterback is a pioneering artist and programmer in the field of interactive installation. Her work has been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and museums internationally including The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; The NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; The Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Netherlands Institute for Media Art; The Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art; The Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine; and the Ars Electronica Center, Austria. Utterback's work is in private and public collections including The La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, Spain.

In addition to creating her own artwork, Utterback develops long term and permanent installations for commercial and museum settings via her company Creative Nerve, Inc. Creative Nerve commissions include work for The American Museum of Natural History in New York, The Pittsburgh Children's Museum, The Manhattan Children's Museum, Herman Miller, Shiseido Cosmetics, and other private corporations. Utterback holds a BA in Art from Williams College, and a Masters degree from The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dowden/42/60/52

You must register at http://cadre.sjsu.edu/salons/ to attend in RL.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Posted by jo at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)

unitednationsplaza: Five Short Texts on the Possibility of Creating an Economy of Equivalence

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Liam Gillick

Five Short Texts on the Possibility of Creating an Economy of Equivalence: Liam Gillick :: May 7 – May 11, 2007 :: All sessions will start at 7:30 PM :: unitednationsplaza, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a, Berlin 10249 Germany :: T. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 90 :: Admission is free but space is limited, please register with Magdalena[at]unitednationsplaza.org

Five thirty minute lectures, followed by drinks in the bar at unitednationsplaza. The outline of a possible text. Five parts will be tested and developed, quickly.

Day 1: The day before closure of an experimental factory.
Day 2: Redundancy following the lure of infinite flexibility.
Day 3: Reoccupation, recuperation and aimless renovation.
Day 4: Reconfiguring the recent past.
Day 5: Relations of equivalence – three potential endings.

“The text looks again at the dynamic that exists within a group when one set of people thinks that there will ‘have to be change’ and ‘things won’t be able to continue this way’ and the other believes that change will only occur as a result of direct action.”

“We are interested in the cone shaped gap that you could argue is perceivable in the trajectory between modernity and modernism. Modernity leading to both Wal-Mart and memory sticks on one hand and modernism as a kind of ‘circling the drain’ complex of striated, layered forms of self-referentiality which at the same time attempts a way to envision creating continual and endless possibilities of critique in relation to modernity, modernism or any of its late and post iterations.”

“The question is whether they return to the abandoned factory to play out a new economy of equivalence or finally put it to rest and focus on other places that remain fixed and secure in earlier models of spectacular exchange masquerading as revelation or mere reflections of dominant models that currently leave all relationships intact.”

Liam Gillick is based in New York and London. Numerous solo exhibitions since 1989 include ‘Literally’, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2003; ‘Communes, bar and greenrooms’, The Powerplant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2003; ‘The Wood Way’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; ‘A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence’, Palais de Tokyo, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include ‘Singular Forms’, Guggenheim Museum, 2004; 50th Venice Biennale, 2003; ‘What If’, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2000 and documenta X, 1997. Numerous public projects and interventions include Ft. Lauderdale Airport in 2002; the new Home Office government building in London in 2005 and the Lufthansa Headquarters in Frankfurt in 2006. Since 1995 Liam Gillick has published a number of books that function in parallel to his artwork including Literally No Place (Book Works, London, 2002); Five or Six (Lukas & Sternberg, New York, 1999); Discussion Islan d/Big Conference Centre (Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Ludwigsburg, and Orchard Gallery, Derry, 1997), Erasmus is Late (Book Works, London, 1995) and most recently PROXEMICS: SELECTED WRITINGS 1988–2006 (JRP|Ringier, Zurich, 2007). Liam Gillick has contributed to many art magazines and journals including Artforum, Parkett, Frieze, Art Monthly and a regular column for Metropolis M in Amsterdam and has taught at Columbia University, New York, since 1997.

Admission is free but space is limited, please register by email with
magdalena[at]unitednationsplaza.org

unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it will involve collaboration with approximately 60 artists, writers, theorists and a wide range of audiences for a period of one year. In the tradition of Free Universities, most of its events will be open to all those interested to take part. unitednationsplaza is organized by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Martha Rosler, Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Nikolaus Hirsch, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Tirdad Zolghadr.

Selected lectures at unitednationsplaza are now available to view online at http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/broadcast.html

Posted by jo at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

LabforCulture workshop, Istanbul

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Facilitating Cross-Collaboration

Organised by the LabforCulture in collaboration with Art Management Programme at İstanbul Bilgi University :: Dolapdere campus :: April 18, 2007; 17:30-19:30.

What could be done to better understand and use more efficiently the power of new technologies to improve cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration in Europe? How can we build a truly interactive, effective and innovative online community for cultural practitioners across Europe that will enhance creative exchange and collaborative actions?

Moderated by Katherine Watson, Director, LabforCulture and Angela Plohman, Content Development, LabforCulture. With a presentation by NOMAD.

Posted by jo at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)

Memefest

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Call for Entries

MEMEFEST 2007- ENTERING THE SECOND HALF OF A DECADE OF CREATION, SUBVERSION, AND RESISTENCE! Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2007.

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication -- born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide -- is proud to announce its sixth annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging students, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges. This year, jury members will include P.K. Langshaw, the Chair of and Associate Professor in the Department of the Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Jason Grant, Director of Inkahoots, the adventurous graphic design studio in Brisbane, Australia, Luli Radfahrer, Professor at the Communication and Art School in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and founder of Hipermidia, one of the first digital communication agencies in that country and Carmen Luke a leading international scholar in the field of media literacy and new media, feminist studies and globalization, based in Brisbane.

Traditionally, the Memefest team has asked participants to respond to the opinions expressed in a selected text using the medium appropriate for each category (Communication and Sociology- both written, Visual Arts, and Beyond). This year, for the first time, we have chosen the same text for the academic and artistic categories, and, also unlike other years, where the chosen texts were essays, or book or manifesto excerpts, this year's chosen text is the 1960's movie trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. This trailer features a witty, cynical, and humorous, yet dark and serious soliloquy by the director himself.

Even more pertinent (might we say urgent) today than when first seen generations ago in movie theatres, Hitchcok's genius commentary on man's relationship with nature will no doubt provoke a plethora of unequivocal responses. And, as always, those whose work does not take a conventional format can enter the Beyond category, where the name of the game is challenging mainstream practices and beliefs! Beyond continues to grow in popularity as a category not only because of its avant-garde appeal but because it is open to non-students as well.

Memefest occurs completely online at www.memefest.org, and all entries will be available for full access and commentary in the site galleries. In 2006, Memefest received almost 500 entries from participants of every continent on the globe (except Antarctica). We hope to get bigger, and to spread more of those good infectious ideas, so keep thinking- and producing.

Posted by jo at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

Domenico Quaranta's Interview with

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Second Front: A Leap into the Void

At first sight they may appear like a pop hybrid between the X-men and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, reviewed through the exaggerated and postmodern aesthetics of a virtual world such as Second Life. Quite the contrary. They are the first performance art group in Second Life: serious guys, practicing artists, curators and academics in real life, who decided to sound out the performative possibilities offered by a public virtual space that is growing at an impressive rate and being filled up by media agencies, stores, products, brands and inhabitants.

Second Front officially formed on November 23, 2006, gaining new members up right until the last few days. Now they are: Wirxli Flimflam aka Jeremy Owen Turner; Tea Chenille aka Tanya Skuce; Man Michinaga aka Patrick Lichty; Alise Iborg aka Penny Leong Browne; Tran Spire aka Doug Jarvis; Great Escape aka Scott Kildall; Lizsolo Mathilde aka Liz Pickard; Gazira Babeli aka CLASSIFIED.

The attention of “in world” media comes fast, even if Second Front doesn't seem to work much on communication: its very first performances are set up, unannounced, in public spaces, for a little, unconscious audience. Then, almost immediately (January 5, 2007) comes the big intervention scored at Ars Virtua Gallery – the most notable contemporary art gallery in Second Life – for the opening of the visionary installation by the American artist John Craig Freeman (JC Fremont in Second Life). And may other performances...

Saying that Second Front is opening new paths in an unexplored territory is not rhetorical; and the loose, immodest and a little bit punkish way in which they do it is definitely unrhetorical. Their key feature is openness: openness and plurality of visions and perspectives, quite blatant in this interview (where almost each one of them decided to give his/her answer to the same question); they are open about a wide range of interventions, from reenactment to improvisation to code performing; open about different ways of shaping their work for the art audience, from prints to video to live broadcasting. They are growing up before our very eyes. And, rest assured, they hold good things in store.

DOMENICO QUARANTA: What is Second Front?

MAN MICHINAGA: Second Front is an international performance art group whose sole venue is the online world, Second Life. Second Front has members from Vancouver, St. Johns, Chicago, New Orleans, and Milan (to name a few), and works with numerous artists from around the world.

WIRXLI FLIMFLAM: As of January 14th, Second Front received official legitimacy from The Ava-Star tabloid (owned by Die Zeit in Germany) as the “first performance art group in Second Life”. This basically makes us the in-world equivalent of Fluxus – perhaps we could also be nicknamed “SLuxus”. This sudden rush from formation to celebrity has been quite fascinating since Second Front officially formed on November 23, 2006.

As for a more detailed idea of what Second Front is all about, some people in Second Life might confuse us with a “performing arts” group rather than a “performance arts” group. We are not a circus act nor a dance or a theatre troupe although our artistic practice might superficially resemble those other performing acts at times.

TRAN SPIRE: Second Front is a network of performance interested artists exploring new and different environments, specifically the online 3d animated game world of Second Life. The members have come together through a myriad of personal relationships that existed during the early days of the group’s formation. This dynamic has morphed and mutated to include and involve variations on membership based on who is available and what presence can they perform with the others.

DQ: What does it mean, for you, to make performances in Second Life? Do you make rehearsals or do you prefer improvisation? Do you work with code or do you simply make what all other avatars do?

ALISE IBORG: So far we have done both. I think it depends on what kind of performance we wish to make. If it is better improvised we will probably do that. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. With prerecorded performances, we can fine tune and edit out things we don't want the audience to see. But with improvised performances, the work takes on a life of its own fueled by the creative energy of our players which really shows through. Also, many times, it's the surprises and unintended actions that make the work really come alive!

MAN MICHINAGA: Performing in Second Life gives Second Front the opportunity to work at scales they would not normally be able to work in if done in the physical world, and often has the opportunity to play to a wider audience. Our level of preparedness is dependent on the context for the event.

In regards to whether we use code or not, Second Front is using a growing set of code-based interventions in its performances, thanks to our techno-doyen, Mama Gaz Babeli. In regards to our avatars, and props, almost nothing we use is ‘standard’, but some of us retain a few basic props like specific wings, or even old beginner’s props like hair as a sign of their past as newcomers to Second Life.

WIRXLI FLIMFLAM: When we rehearse and plan scripts for major public performance events, we still have to rely on individual improvisation. Nothing is ever entirely scripted so each member can do their “own thing” and have breathing room yet at the same time not be confused as to what they should be doing. We use scripts and rehearsals etc. as a guide to help the performing member to feel secure with the thematic manner with which they wish to improvise. This allows for group cohesion both on an optical and practical level.

GREAT ESCAPE: Second Life offers a unique space for performance. Without the normal constraints of the body ― the usual center of performance - and without a traditional audience, we can try and do things that have been previously thought to be impossible.

TRAN SPIRE: Performing in Second Life introduces variables and situations that complement and push further the understanding and comprehension that the members of the group share as a sense of what is real. By engaging the contrived space of an online gaming environment the challenges to perform are exaggerated by the parameters that persist as the interface with the context, the others members of the group, audiences and the templates of performance as an art medium. All of the tropes of performance are available to the group to use at will, hopefully to ends beyond the surface of what may appear evident around us.

GAZIRA BABELI: The real performance starts with login, the rest is performance record. The avatar just tries to forget being a code.

DQ: Do you prefer, for your performances, a public space or an art venue?

MAN MICHINAGA: Second Front chooses its venues to fit the context of the piece and the performance. In the case of Border Control, it was done at Ars Virtua, therefore the context was that of an art space. For our Breaking News and Abject Apocalypse pieces, these were context specific (the Reuters building and the Star over the Christmas Tree at the US’s NBC Rockefeller Plaza), and were performed in situ, with the product being the documentation.

WIRXLI FLIMLAM: Personally, I prefer a large and well-known public venue that is not usually within the context of high-art. So for example, IBM, Sears, American Apparel, Wired, and Reuters are all great examples of the kind of venues I think are really inspirational for me. Again, this is a personal preference and not necessarily reflective of Second Front as a group.

GREAT ESCAPE: It depends on the nature of the performance. An art venue is interesting because it brings Second Life into the physical space. I think it is ideal to broadcast the performance at an art venue while engaging a specific site in Second Life.

GAZIRA BABELI: In art venues you can be welcomed with cheers, in public spaces with bullets. I prefer the latter, as death doesn’t exist.

DQ: What kind of audience are you looking for? Do you think that a performance in Second Life could be displayed also in the real world?

MAN MICHINAGA: We are interested in reaching out to audiences who are interested in Second Life, and are curious of the possibilities that avatar-based performance art can have. Currently, Second Front is performing in hybrid venues, such as simultaneous events in its home, the BitFactory in Han Loso, and in physical spaces, like Vancouver’s Western Front, and Chicago’s Gallery 416. We do hope that in addition to our performances in Second Life, Second Front can have exhibitions of its performances, imagery, video, and ephemera in the physical as any and all possible media. We do not wish to be limited by media, and also wish to spread our curiosity to the widest possible audience.

GREAT ESCAPE: One thing I think we’re looking to do is to question the underlying assumptions of Second Life and what it means to be a virtual being in that space. A dominant trend in Second Life is to shop, make friends online and participate in a virtual economy. We think this can be a venue for unique artistic expression. In this way, anyone in Second Life is an appropriate audience. The possibilities for the space haven’t been fully explored as of yet and so I think people are much more receptive to performances that they might be in real life. Because it is so new, we can have a huge affect on people’s thinking.

TRAN SPIRE: I like the idea that the notion of an audience is being blurred by my own participation in this group. I am conscious of the fact that during all the stages of our performances from pre-production planning emails to after-party videos, I am both a performer with the group and an audience to the many things taking place. Anything that contributes to challenging this space and dichotomy between creator and audience I think is an interesting thing to pursue.

ALISE IBORG: We are looking for open-minded audiences who are not afraid to be part of the performance. And absolutely, Second Front could be displayed in the real world. The term that I use to describe this intervention into the real world, is 'virtual leakage'.

I define virtual leakage as a two way exchange between the virtual and the real, through which new hybrid meanings can be made. Meaning-making can no longer operate within the hermetic cases of the real vs. virtual, but instead, becomes a back and forth exchange in which ideas migrate by osmosis. While we as Second Life avatars become more real in the virtual world, so too, that we as human inhabitants of the real world become more virtual.

In my opinion, there is an amazing opportunity for Virtual Reality (VR) to stake its own territory but in order for VR to produce meaning that breaks from the real and from past artistic social practices, and to become a medium that produces singular works, the binary of the real vs virtual must be dismantled. Only then, will we be able to look at VR not as a simulation of the real, but as a simulation of itself.

GAZIRA BABELI: I prefer an unaware audience, an audience who does not necessarily have to understand what’s going on. Second Life is a real world.

DQ: Can you tell me something about the performances you had till now? How did your approach changed from the first one?

MAN MICHINAGA: Like any experimental troupe, we are always learning, and this affects our performance process. In addition, for Breaking News, many of us were only recently active, so our first performance was a really interesting experience. In short, Breaking News was an absurdist play on the 18th Century idea of the Town Crier, played out in the latest of 21st Century news facilities. By shouting out non-sequiteur, moment-to-moment headlines, Second Front hoped to perhaps jam the usual flow of information in the Reuters space, and possibly (ridiculously enough) barge into Adam Reuters’ office itself! On the second occasion, we did get an audience, as passers-by stopped and sat to listen to our tabloid headlines. Of course (we assume) they did not take us seriously. For Border Control, we knew we would have an audience, and that we would need to fill a fairly set period of time with detailed orchestration, we experimented at the BitFactory, rehearsing a series of vignettes that fit the context of JC Fremont & Rain Coalcliff’s Mexican Border installation. The first act, “Border Patrol” was a Dada-esque performance of the increasing militarization of the borders throughout North America. Following that, “Red Rover” was a play on the creation of a border in the traditional children’s game, but in our case the border decided to break down the audience instead of the other way around. Lastly, the final act, “Danger Room” was a piece that was intended to inspire a gestalt of danger and chaos in the age of Terror, but unexpectedly, chaos erupted and the sim actually crashed, whether by our actions or a combination of us and the audience isn’t really clear. The approaches for the two pieces are quite different, as one is ad-hoc and the other following a set choreography and set. Are we changing? Of course; it wouldn’t be interesting if we weren’t. We learn new things each performance, and while certain things get easier, we then try to push the envelope harder in other areas.

TRAN SPIRE: I like to think that part of the script of each performance is written in the code of the place or environment in which it is situated. This lets the content be influenced by not only the art or non-art context but also by the different terrains that can exist in the real life as well as Second Life.

DQ: What do you think about art in Second Life? Is performance the only possible way to make art out there?

MAN MICHINAGA: Absolutely not. While Second Life has limitations like any medium, the members of Second Front are excited to see individuals working in many different forms of expression, such as live music, ‘painting’, sculpture, even fireworks and aerial ballet. While Second Life is relatively new, the possibilities for expression in virtual worlds has yet to be fully explored. That’s why Second Front was created!

WIRXLI FLIMFLAM: Context is extremely important here. Part of what makes Second Life itself is the fact that every moment seems like part of a performance. The fact that everything can be customizable in Second Life as well as the fact that just about any object can be wearable enhances my personal impression that performance art is the most “authentic” medium of Second Life in that Greenbergian sense.

GREAT ESCAPE: Right now, the Second Life galleries are mostly replicating paintings and sculpture, enhanced with visual effects in Second Life. These are what you’d expect with the first generation of art-making in any new medium. I think that what we’ve seen so far in Second Life is only a glimpse of what the future holds.

ALISE IBORG: Absolutely not. Second Life has offered the ability for anyone to create in VR which means that there is boundless possibilities for creativity and unprecedented work. In my opinion, VR is in itself a new medium but what is unique about VR is that through its technology, it can create work that can free itself from past art practices, though, there is also amazing avenues of creation by referencing precedent artists and works, For instance, our Last Supper performance appropriates one of the most canonic religious events by producing an event of binging and purging art itself!

GAZIRA BABELI: Second Life is a frame-space which can include all sorts of artistic perversion. I call it performance, anyway. But if you find a better definition, please let me know.

DQ. What is your relationship with your Real Life counterpart?

MAN MICHINAGA: There really is none. Patrick Lichty does not exist. Only I am real, and I control him. On a more serious note, the relationship between Man and Patrick is completely in line with my RL life. I am very sensitive to context, and the way I act in one context may be very different from another. In Second Life I feel that one has to be “Larger than Life”, and that's what Man is – He’s a big dark, figure – part angel, part rock star, part architect, part actor. That is, all the things that Second Life gives the individual more freedom to be if they so desire. I think that most of Second Front do this with great effectiveness and aplomb. My greatest concern is “the risk of the Artist”; that is, the bleed between worlds that I take by making potentially controversial art in Second Life. I think that Second Life is the first place where we can say that sometimes our action online DO matter, and this is very perplexing.

GREAT ESCAPE: I think that the avatar Great Escape occupies a strange nook in my subconscious. In many ways, Second Life operates as a fantastical dream state. We can fly, teleport and pick up houses and cars. My avatar has purple skin and fire out of his hair. When I go to sleep at night, images of the other Second Front members often fill me head. So for me, my avatar is embedded in my psyche, rather than an extension of my self.

WIRXLI FLIMFLAM: In a lot of ways, the relationship between Wirxli and Jeremy is much more closer than one might think from first seeing me. I did intentionally want to make Wirxli more of an alien than human or perhaps as a kind of first-generation “post-human”. I was also reading up about the stereotypical shaman in most cultures who is gender-ambiguous... so in this case, there is a slight departure here from my Real Life self.

TRAN SPIRE: I prefer to triangulate, dimensionally shift my relationship to each of the entities constituting themselves as versions of me. Therefore, I am waiting for the two to have a discussion and then ask me to join in on the conversation. I am interested to hear what they come up with and how they define themselves in regards to existence in a spatio-temporal plane, and whether they recognize each other.

GAZIRA BABELI: My body can walk barefoot, but my avatar needs shoes.

LINKS:

Second Front - http://slfront.blogspot.com/
Gazira Babeli - http://gazirababeli.com/
The BitFactory - http://patricklichty.com.thing.net/bitfactory.html
Ars Virtua Gallery - http://arsvirtua.com/
Imaging Place - http://imagingplace.net/

Domenico Quaranta is an Italian art critic and curator focused on New Media Art. He is the author of the book Net Art 1994 – 1998: La vicenda di Äda'web (Milan 2004) and, together with Matteo Bittanti, the editor of GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (Milan 2006, http://www.gamescenes.org/). He curated several exhibitions in Italy, including: GameScenes (Turin 2005), Radical Software (Turin 2006), and Connessioni leggendarie. Net.art 1995 – 2005 (Milan, 2005). He teaches “Net art” at the Accademia di Brera in Milan.

A LEAP INTO THE VOID: INTERVIEW WITH SECOND FRONT by Domenico Quaranta is was commissioned by Rhizome.org.

Posted by jo at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice

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Call for submissions

At once, the word video game is associated with both interactivity and seclusion. Through the agency of the internet, online gaming has become a participatory source of virtual interaction with online communities of gamers. However, video games can also be considered a solitary retreat into a virtual utopia—lands in which the empowered user can manipulate, destroy, and engender. Historically, ideas of games and play are inextricably bound up with pleasure, desire, and a retreat into the self via intense absorption. This withdrawl into the self, however, is connected to outside relations, as it is an ultimate yearning for exterior engagement.

The word “gameplay” refers to the creative, resistant, or artful manipulation of video games by users. It can be said that “gameplay” relates not only to the strategic, but also emotional framework of play, as it is a unique reflection the individual’s meaningful bond to the game itself. According to Sid Meier, a world-renowned designer, a game is a “series of interesting choices.” If art can also be considered a “series of interesting choices,” what happens when the realms of art and video game intersect?

Around the Coyote is seeking submissions for our July 2007 group show, Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice. For Gameplay, we are looking for artists who use video games in a myriad of ways: Do you use video games or its software to explore your own identity or place in this world? Do you use it politically, as a site of resistance? Do you use it as a tool for interactivity or collaboration with other artists or subjects? Do you see virtual worlds as a site of meaning? Does your video game work result in art objects such as photographs, installations or performances?

If your practice is related to video games, and you would like to be considered for Gameplay: Video Games in Contemporary Art Practice, please apply in accordance with the following application procedures. For questions, please contact jessica[at]aroundthecoyote.org.

Deadline and Application procedure:

If would like to be considered for this exhibition, please submit the following to the Around the Coyote Gallery no later than May 5, 2007 at 6pm.

1. Digital documentation of each submitted piece - artists can submit a maximum of six images on CD. All submitted images must be of work that is available for sale and exhibition from July 6 through July 28, 2007.
2. An image list with your name, title of each piece, year it was made, media, dimensions and price (in US currency). Keep in mind that Around the Coyote takes 35% of all sales when submitting your pricing information.
3. Artist’s Statement
4. Artist’s Bio/C.V.
5. One paragraph description about each submitted piece and/or a short description that applies to all submitted work (if not covered in your artist statement).

Submission materials will not be returned. Slides are not accepted.

Send Application Materials:
Around the Coyote
1935 ½ West North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
Attn: Gameplay

For submission questions please contact Jessica Cochran: jessica[at]aroundthecoyote.org

About Around the Coyote: Around the Coyote is one of Chicago’s most active and dynamic non profit arts organizations. Located in Wicker Park, ATC supports, promotes and makes accessible Chicago's multidisciplinary arts community. Our activities enhance public discourse and provide creative outlets for emerging artists. Year-round programming includes multi-media arts festivals featuring visual art, theater, dance, film, music, video and poetry in the winter and fall; art exhibitions in the Around the Coyote gallery; an artist-in-residence program; membership opportunities for artists and art aficionados; educational outreach for all ages through multi-media art workshops, lectures, collaborations with local schools and agencies, and career development workshops for artists. This programming is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the CityArts Program 2 grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Posted by jo at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

On Byways and Backlanes:

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The Philosophy of Free Culture

"In this short paper I attempt to follow Heidegger (2000) in suggesting that the work of a philosophy of free culture is to awaken us and undo what we take to be the ordinary; looking beyond what I shall call the ontic to uncover the ontological (Heidegger 2000c: 28-35). In this respect we should look to free culture to allow us to think and act in an untimely manner, that is, to suggest alternative political imaginaries and ideas. For this then, I outline what I think are the ontological possibilities of free culture and defend them against being subsumed under more explicitly ontic struggles, such as copyright reform. That is not to say that the ontic can have no value whatsoever, indeed through its position within an easily graspable dimension of the political/technical the direct struggles over IPR, for example, could mitigate some of the worst effects of an expansion of capital or of an instrumental reason immanent to the ontology of a technological culture. However, to look to a more primordial level, the ontological, we might find in free culture alternative possibilities available where we might develop free relations with our technologies and hence new ways of being-in-the-world." Read On Byways and Backlanes: The Philosophy of Free Culture by David M. Berry, NOEMA.

Posted by jo at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)

Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning

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by Edward A. Shanken

"... The human and political implications of agency, especially with respect to technology, demand that agency be problematized as it relates to telematics and telerobotics. By analyzing artworks that use these telecommunications technologies, it is possible to differentiate between various models of agency and suggest their epistemological and ontological implications. Simon Nora and Adam Minc originally defined telematics as a broad field of computer-mediated communications, such as the Internet. In this context, telerobotics can be seen as a specialized sub-division of telematics. By comparing the historical ideological issues underlying telematics and telematic art with the goals for telerobotics and telerobotic art, it is possible to identify some of the continuities and discontinuities between them, especially as they concern agency. In particular, in classic works of telematic art such as La plissure du texte (1982) by Roy Ascott, active agents exchange information with other active agents. Standard implementations of telerobots, by contrast, are predicated on a model in which an active agent controls a passive entity that lacks agency. Some works of telecommunications art expand conventional conceptions of telerobotics. For example, Norman White and Doug Back’s Telephonic Arm Wresting (1986), Paul Sermon’s Telematic Vision and Eduardo Kac and Ikuo Nakamura’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1994) employ active-active models of telerobotic agency. Such artworks shed light on the philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic limits of active-passive telerobots and offer alternative structures for the creation of knowledge and being at a distance..." from Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning by Edward A. Shanken, Neme.

Posted by jo at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

E-Poetry Symposium 2007

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Present Poetic Forms in Action!

E-Poetry Symposium 2007 :: NYC: Performances and A Symposium on the LEA New Media Poetry Special Issue 21 April 2007 1600 - 1800hrs :: Segue Reading Series at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery at Bleecker, New York City :: Event Guest-Curated by Loss Pequeño Glazier :: Featuring Aya Karpinska, Elizabeth Knipe, and Jim Rosenberg. Shawn Rider, Respondent: Tim Peterson, Series Curator.

Live performances, talks, and discussion about New Media art forms, issues, and poetics in a cordial setting. Poetry is on the move ... catch a glimpse of present poetic forms in action! This event seeks to further conversation about poetics through its sampling in digital forms. Join us for an historic presentation of digital poetics featuring an engaging mix of foundational and emerging digital poets!

About the participants:

Aya Karpinska is a digital media artist and interaction designer. She is the 2006 recipient of the prestigious Brown University Fellowship in Electronic Writing.

Elizabeth Knipe is an engaging interdisciplinary artist. She is digital poet and experimental video artist who entertains an interest in physical electronic installations.

Jim Rosenberg has been working in non-linear poetic forms in one medium or another since 1966 and is one of the foundational figures in digital poetry. His best-known work is *Intergrams*.

Shawn Rider is a writer, artist, teacher and programmer, currently working as a Web Technologist for PBS TeacherLine. He is also the owner and Editor in Chief of GamesFirst.com, a long-running independent videogame review website.

Loss Pequeño Glazier is a digital poet, professor of Media Study, and Founder and Director of the Electronic Poetry Center. He is the author of the digitally-informed poetry collection *Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm* (Salt Press) and the digital theory treatise *Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries* (Alabama UP).

Tim Peterson is the author of *Since I Moved In* (Chax Press). He edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts and currently curates part of the Segue Reading Series in New York.

About the LEA issue

Guest edited by Tim Peterson, the issue features Loss Pequeño Glazier, John Cayley with Dimitri Lemmerman, Lori Emerson, Phillippe Bootz, Manuel Portela, Stephanie Strickland, Mez, Maria Engberg and Matthias Hillner. Don't forget to scurry over to the equally exciting gallery, exhibiting works by Jason Nelson, Aya Karpinska, Daniel Canazon Howe, mIEKAL aND, CamillE BacoS, Nadine Hilbert and Gast Bouschet. Click here to access the LEA New Media Poetics Special (LEA Vol 14 No 5 - 6). URL: http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n05-06/index.asp

Join us on April 21st for this celebration of *LEA*, the poetics of the present, and the diversity of digital forms!

Useful URLs

LEA Current Issue: http://leoalmanac.org/

Gallery: http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/index.asp

Posted by jo at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

Locative Media Summer Conference

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Call for Papers

Locative Media Summer Conference: Call for Papers :: September 3-5, 2007 :: Research Center "Media Upheavals", University of Siegen, Germany :: Submission deadline: May 15, 2007.

"Everything is related to everything else, but closer things are more closely related" (Waldo Tobler's First Law of Geography, 1970)

Nowadays everything in the media world gets tracked, tagged and mapped. Cell phones become location-aware, computer games move outside, the web is tagged with geospatial information, and geobrowsers like Google Earth are thought of as an entirely new genre of media. Spatial representations have been inflected by electronic technologies (radar, sonar, GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, RFID etc.) traditionally used in mapping, navigation, wayfinding, or location and proximity sensing. We are seeing the rise of a new generation that is "location-aware". This generation is becoming familiar with the fact that wherever we are on the planet corresponds with a latitude / longitude coordinate.

The term "Locative Media", initially coined in 2003 by Karlis Kalnins and the 2006 topic of a special issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, seems to be appropriate for digital media applying to real places, communication media bound to a location and thus triggering real social interactions. Locative Media works on locations and yet many of its applications are still location-independent in a technical sense. As in the case of digital media, where the medium itself is not digital but the content is digital, in Locative Media the medium itself might not be location-oriented, whereas the content is location-oriented. Can Locative Media like digital media thus be understood as an upheaval in the media evolution? This is one question we want to discuss at the Locative Media Summer Conference in Germany.

Locative Media can now be categorized under one of two types of mapping, either annotative (virtually tagging the world) or phenomenological (tracing the action of the subject in the world). Where annotative projects seek to demystify (see all the Google Earth Hacks), tracing-based projects typically seek to use high technology methods to stimulate dying everyday practices such as walking or occupying public space. The Japanese mobile phone culture, in particular, embraces location-dependent information and context-awareness. It is thus projected that in the near future Locative Media will emerge as the third great wave of modern digital technology.

The combination of mobile devices with positioning technologies is opening up a manifold of different ways in which geographical space can be encountered and drawn. It thereby presents a frame through which a wide range of spatial practices that have emerged since Walter Benjamin's urban flaneur may be looked at anew. Or are Locative Media only a new site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people? In the early days of sea travel, it was only the navigator who held such awareness of his exact position on Earth. What would it mean for us to have as accurate an awareness of space as we have of time? In the same way that clocks and watches tell us the exact second, portable GPS devices help us pinpoint our exact location on Earth. As we dig a bit deeper into how particular Locative Media projects negotiate local and global spaces, we see the increasing "technologisation" and commodification of urban and public spaces. Are Locative Media the avant-garde of the "society of control"? If this kind of media practice resides in pure code (tracklogs), what is the difference between Locative Media and software development? Or is the recent rise of Locative Media just a response to the disappearance of net art?

In reaching beyond art, many of us are becoming familiar with GPS units, such as navigation systems. GPS technologies now appear in mobile, location-aware computing games such as "Mogi" or "Tiger Telematics Gizmondo," which utilize GPS to enable players to see each other's locations. Most of the location-based games nowadays seem to emphasize collecting, trading and meeting over combat. Does this indicate a social trend in mobile entertainment? Do Locative Media generate more accessible than aggressive play plots? Can we say that the numerous distributed geotagging projects (Flickr, Geocaching etc.) unleashed have given rise to a new genre of collaborative "geocommunities"? Could these geolocated spatio-temporal web portals become a dynamic visualization matrix for all scales, from nano to astro, and incorporate interoperability standards for the biological sciences, the geosciences, history, economics, and other social sciences? And finally, are Locative Media a kind of manifestation of what Bruno Latour means by the "Internet of Things"? By geotagging objects instead of people, and having these objects tell us their stories, do we create what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called for, an awareness of the genealogy of an object as it is embedded in the matrix of its production?

This summer conference will attempt to give an overview of actual research on this topic, especially focusing on how Locative Media tackle social and political contexts of production by focusing on social networking, access and participatory media content including story-telling and spatial annotation. Participants from all relevant disciplines are invited, especially researchers in social science, IT design, urban, media and cultural studies. Project demonstrations are warmly encouraged, but the main objective is to move beyond presentation and to build conceptual and theoretical links and exchanges between disciplines. This kind of conference is meant a forum for the presentation of papers, further discussion, collective reading work and as a preliminary step for the publication of an edited volume in 2008.

Invited Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Lev Manovich, University of California, San Diego (USA), http://www.manovich.net/

Prof. Dr. Stephen Graham, University of Durham (GB), Department of Geography, http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/information/staff/personal/graham/index.html

Dr. Miya Yoshida, Malmv Art Academy, Lund University (S), http://invisible-landscapes.net/

Dr. Drew Hemment, University of Salford/Futuresonic Festival (GB), http://www.drewhemment.com

Dr. Adrian Mackenzie, Lancaster University (GB), http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/mackenza/

How to participate:

Submissions should include 1) Title, 2) 500-word abstract 3) Selected bibliography and 4) 200-word CV for the presenter.

These should be sent to thielmann[at]spatialturn.de as pdf or doc attachments by May 15, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be provided two weeks later so as to allow adequate to make travel arrangements. Full papers for publication are due on December 31, 2007.

For further information contact Tristan Thielmann: thielmann[at]spatialturn.de. The summer conference is organised by the research group "Media Topographies" of the Collaborative Research Center "Media Upheavals", University Siegen, Am Eichenhang 50, 57076 Siegen, Germany.

Posted by jo at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

Subtle Technologies 10th Annual Festival

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IN SITU: Art, Body and Medicine

Subtle Technologies 10th Annual Festival: Art, Body and Medicine :: 10 years of blurring the boundaries between science and art :: May 24 - 27 :: Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto, Canada.

To celebrate its 10th Annual Festival, Subtle Technologies presents practitioners of arts, sciences and medicines, and those who study their context to contemplate how these disciplines can work together and reshape perspectives on the body. As scientific and technological breakthroughs prominently occupy our culture, we ask where the boundaries are. We investigate how we relate bodies in situ: as parts, as a whole, as systems; how we identify, map, modify, protect, violate, and heal.

Festival includes:

- Exhibitions at Ontario Science Centre and InterAccess Media Arts Centre
- Tissue Engineering Workshop for artists
- Performances ranging from butoh to dancing with robots
- 'Art, Science and the Emotional Response': An evening of discussion with bioartists and microbiologists
- Symposia featuring over 30 speakers on Art, Body and Medicine

More details to follow.

Subtle Technologies is a multidisciplinary Festival exploring complex and subtle relationships between art and science. The annual international event combines symposia, exhibitions, workshops and performances that juxtapose cutting-edge artistic projects and scientific exploration.

Posted by jo at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2007

Karaoke DeathMatch 100 (AKA KDM100)

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New Rounds Daily, April 15 - June 4

Artist collaborative M.River & T.Whid Art Associates face off in the most brutal performance art smack down of the new millennium… Karaoke Deathmatch 100! This alcohol-fueled blood feud features 50 rounds of sing-along fury (taped live over an 8-hour period with hardly any pee breaks). No Carpenters hit too cheesy, no heavy metal lyric too trite for these teleprompter warriors to hurl in a battle to the end. Who will emerge victorious? Only YOU can decide.

MTAA's Karaoke DeathMatch 100 is a video blog performance that takes place over 50 days starting April 15th, 2007 and ending June 4th. Each day, a new round is posted pitting M.River & T.Whid against each other in drunken karaoke competition. Visit the web site daily to view the sets of videos, vote for your favorite and discuss the artists' performances. At the end of the competition, the votes will decide who is the Karaoke DeathMatch 100 Champion.

The web version of KDM100 is an official selection of Visual 07. 7º Festival De Creación Audiovisual Ciudad De Majadahonda. The gallery version of KDM100 premiered at the Leonart '05 art festival in Leonding, Austria.

KDM100 was shot in May 2005 over 8 hours.

credits:

video production:
Bill Hallinan, Andre Sala and George Su

web production:
T.Whid & M.River
Developed using open-source software: Wordpress, X-Poll and embedthevideo.

URLs:
web site: http://www.mteww.com/kdm100/
QuickTime feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kdm100m4v
Windows Media feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kdm100wmv

also available on iTunes...

Posted by jo at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)

Turbulence Commission: The Simultaneous Translator

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ONLINE Performance Today

Turbulence Commission: The Simultaneous Translator by John Roach and Willy Whip [Requires Windows OS] LIVE PERFORMANCE: Sunday April 15; 12:00 PM EST to 3:00 PM EST [Mac users can listen via the player of their choice].

"The Simultaneous Translator" (SimTrans) is a Windows based audio interface that enables anyone to load audio streams and manipulate them in real time on the Internet. SimTrans makes the delays and fluctuations of the Internet visible and audible. The Internet becomes your collaborator as you create your mix, and the instability you usually try to avoid becomes a tool for creation. Distance and delay are manifest within the interface numerically and as a series of sliding heads; there is also a link to Google Earth where you can watch the dynamic flight of data travel between yourself and the audio source.

“SimTrans” is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Murray G. and Beatrice H. Sherman Charitable Trust.

THE PERFORMANCE: "The Simultaneous Translator" grew out of the artists’ live networked performance project "Simultaneous Translation," in which the delays of the internet are used to dynamically effect the live performances of geographically distant artists.

The upcoming performance will take place from 12:00 PM EST to 3:00 PM EST on Sunday April 15. Log on via http://turbulence.org/Works/simtrans.

Participants: Greg Davis (USA), Kenneth Goldsmith (USA), John Hudak (USA), Keyman (France), Lawrence Li (China), Mice69 (France), Miguel Ramos (Spain), Joe Reinsel (USA), John Roach (USA) and Willy Whip (France).

BIOGRAPHIES

JOHN ROACH doesn't consider himself an installation artist, a sound artist, or a sculptor, but prefers to think of himself as a nomad, touching down in whatever place is most hospitable to his ideas. Recent projects have been an installation at the 2B Gallery in Budapest, Hungary; a collaborative performance with objects and video at the Saint Stephen Museum in Szekesfehervar, Hungary; and a web video project called Sweet Music. He continues to work with Willy Whip on their long-standing live networked performance project Simultaneous Translation.

WILLY WHIP is a designer and teacher in hypermedia interactivity. Outside his institutional work he likes to produce mashups that fertilize his own secret garden. This personal research and development leads him on a quest for hybrids: connect this information to that information; grow new contents; release new senses. Recent activity includes projects with the artists Anika Mignotte, Reynald Drouhin, and Du Zhenjun.

Posted by jo at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2007

Glocal & Outsiders

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Call for Proposals

Center for Global Studies (Academy of Sciences and Charles University), International Centre for Art and New Technologies (CIANT) and Prague Biennale 3 invite you to send proposals for Glocal & Outsiders, the conference on the interplay between art, culture and technology and issues of globalization and international cooperation (part of the Prague Biennale 3) :: Prague, July 13-14, 2007.

Since the mid 1990's biennial exhibits in cities such as Johannesburg, Istanbul, Melbourne, Havana, Sao Paulo and other expanded the art world's institutional context beyond any imagination. Art became a new global spectacle which exposes various cultures and nations to an international audience. Asian contemporary art has become something like a fashion and museums are being built at an increasing rate in Asia as well as throughout South America with new collectors popping up all over the world.

Parallel to this, art also incorporated emerging technologies and developed various interdisciplinary relations to science and industry. Technological innovations and artistic creativity joined forces in various new media festivals and events which brought new and very diverse groups and interests into play. Technology and globalization also changed the economic infrastructure of the art world.

Internet services such as artprice.com allow artists to showcase their work to a very broad audience of international collectors which fund the contemporary art boom. On the other hand, many artists use the distributive and peer to peer properties of the internet to experiment with new economic models. Artists, critics, curators but also buyers are part of these global and technological exchanges and it is not clear yet whether these interdependences, integrations and interactions lead to reduction in diversity, to assimilation or to hybridization:

What are the challenges artworld is facing in the time of globalization and increasing technologization? How to balance cultural interests and local scenes with global opportunities and art with technological innovations? How to view the interplay of art and globalization in the context of complex economic, trade, social, technological, cultural and political interrelationships? How does art reflect upon globalization: does it support intercultural and transnational ideals or it is indifferent to claims of geography, history, and identity? How does it resist and how does it support globalization? Do new institutions and technologies allow us to enjoy and experience art from different cultures or they unify them? What new forms of artistic and technical exchanges are taking place? How does international cooperation help emerging fields of art? How can new technologies expand the social, economical, cultural and artistic aspects? What are the limits or possibilities on the technological level to build art projects that improve international cooperation? Do emerging technologies and art institutions support cultural diversity or they level it?

We are calling for proposals by cultural theorists, cultural historians, museum experts, art historians, art curators and experts of other disciplines. Any program formats (papers, roundtable discussions, media presentations etc.) are welcommed.

Proposals should include the following items:

1. Preliminary abstract, 150-300 words.
2. CV with e-mail address, phone and fax numbers.

Please send them by May 15, 2007 via e-mail to: Denisa Kera (kera AT ff.cuni.cz) and Aurelie Besson (aurelie AT ciant.cz)

Posted by jo at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2007

Pierrick Sorin: La Pietra del Paragone

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There is an interesting article on Pierrick Sorins (a French video artist) latest collaborative venture in this months Artpress (April issue, number 333) La Pietra del Paragone or The Touchstone in english ... an opera by Rossini which was at Paris’ Châtelet theatre in January.

I’m not a hugh opera fan but the staging of this particular opera seems as if it was an event to see. The singers perform on stage against a bluescreen which is filmed by a trio of cameras positioned centre stage clearly visible to the audience. Simultanously a scale model of a set (stage right) is filmed by another trio of cameras. The two sets of video are paired off, left, centre and right and each cooresponding two are superimposed and projected on three giant screens above the stage to give the impression that the singers are actually in front of a real set.

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A similar set up to those used in news and weather forecasts however here the end result is seeing the composited image and its construction in real time. The possibities this gives for large scale and rapid set changes or even the construction of impossible sets, using areas of the stage which normally prove difficult to use etc. are suburb. The network here? Well its the linking of real and simulated to create a very different type of virtual reality to what must be comic effect in real time.

A television broadcast and DVD of the opera is planned for the near future. To see other work by Pierrick Sorin see his website. Below is a video of some of his video installations created for Chanel in 2001.

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Another video artist / directors you may want to have a look at if this interests you is Zbig Rybczynski. Thanks to Frédérique for showing me this. [blogged by Garrett on Network Research]

Posted by jo at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

spring_alpha

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Rewritable on both the Narrative and Code Level

spring_alpha is a networked game system set in an industrialised council estate whose inhabitants are attempting to create their own autonomous society in contrast to that of the regime in which they live. The game serves as a "sketch pad" for testing out alternative forms of social practice at both the "narrative" level, in terms of the game story, and at a "code" level, as players are able to re-write the code that runs the simulated world ... 'spring_alpha' is a game in permanent alpha state, always open to revision and re-versioning. Re-writing spring_alpha is not only an option available to coders however. Much of the focus of the project lies in using game development itself as a vehicle for social enquiry and speculation; the issues involved in re-designing the game draw parallels with those involved in re-thinking social structures. [via]

Posted by jo at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

Henry Jenkins' Interview with

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Wagner James Au

[Image, left: Wagner James Au with Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase.] "I have been using this blog, off and on, across the past few months, to focus attention and generate debate about Second Life as a particularly rich example of participatory culture. Those who have followed this blog over time will have read my response to Clay Shirkey's critique of Second Life, my conversation with Peter Ludlow, the editor of the Second Life Herald and the co-Author of a new book on virtual worlds, and my response to questions about the relationship between Second Life and real world politics. Today, I want to continue this consideration of Second Life with an interview with Wagner James Au, the author of a forthcoming book, New World Notes, which describes his experiences as an "embedded journalist" covering the early days of Second Life. Au had contacted me in response to some of my earlier posts on this topic and I asked if he'd be willing to share some of his thoughts to my readers." Notes from a New World: Interview with Wagner James Au (Part One) and Notes from a New World: Interview with Wagner James Au (Part Two) (For our readers in Boston, Wagner James Au will participate in "The Art of Living a Second Life" panel discussion at the Museum of Science on April 25. More information here.)

Posted by jo at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

MIT reveals the tangle under Turbulence

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MIT visualization

Posted by jo at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Intermedia Arts Group

Two Birds by Nathan Bowen

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"I have had a long interest in the relationship between motion and stasis, particularly in nature. For example, one could say that the sky is always the same (it's always above, it's blue, there are clouds, etc.), or that it constantly changes (depending on the time of day, the color is always different, the clouds are in constant movement, things fly in the sky, etc.). I am drawn to such things as the sky because they provide both reliability and incomprehensible variety. In this piece I explore how to create dynamic and static behavior simultaneously. Three visual objects projected on a screen each correspond to specific audio events or layers. One object acts as a frame, projecting a video of clouds and sky. The two other objects are three dimensional birds. Through Max/MSP/Jitter, I will be able to control the movement of each object and their corresponding sounds by touching preprogrammed keys on my laptop keyboard and mouse. The relationship between visuals and audio is symbiotic: the visual movement of the 'birds' is initiated by amplitude of drum beats, while the position of the 'clouds' in 3D space directly influences the amplitudes of a cluster of drones." Nathan Bowen, Intermedia Arts Group.

Posted by jo at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

16 Beaver Group

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Realizing the Impossible

Realizing the Impossible -- Art and Anarchism: What: Roundtable Discussion on Anarchist Aesthetics :: When: Monday 04.16.07 @ 7:30 :: Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor :: Who: Free and open to all.

We are happy to host a conversation on Anarchist Aesthetics with several contributors to the new book “Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority” (AK Press), edited by Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland. Erika Biddle, Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Cindy Milstein will present a roundtable discussion that is intended to be an open forum, not a panel.
Their hope is that this public event will bring together people that may not be in dialogue yet, but should be. We would like to start the Roundtable promptly at 7:30, so please come early if possible, and bring questions.

This event dovetails with Saturday’s 1st Annual New York Anarchist Bookfair.

For the complete contents of the book please go to http://www.16beavergroup.org/anarchist/content.jpg

Presenter Bios:

Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator and activist currently living in Troy, NY, usa. His work often revolves around themes of radical politics, privatization and public space. His second book Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (AK Press, co-edited with Erik Reuland) was just published. He also organizes the Celebrate People's History Poster Series and is part of the political art collective.

Cindy Milstein is co-organizer of the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference and a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies. [LINK TO www.anarchiststudies.org] She's also a member of the Free Society Collective and Black Sheep Books Collective in Vermont. Her written work appears in periodicals and several recent anthologies, including Globalize Liberation (City Lights), Confronting Capitalism (Soft Skull), and Only a Beginning (Arsenal Pulp).

Erika Biddle is a founding member of the collective Artists in Dialogue. She can often be found tweaking text for Autonomedia and for Perspectives, the biannual journal of the Institute for Anarchist Studies. She is also on the board of the IAS. One of these days she's going to lose her mind, remember how to write, and become a full-time poet.

Dara Greenwald has participated in collaborative and collective cultural production and activism for many years. Participation includes the Pink Bloque, Ladyfest Midwest Chicago, Version>03, Pilot TV Chicago, and other groupings that resist being named. She worked as the distribution manager at the Video Data Bank from 1998-2005, where she distributed independent media and experimental video art and worked on the preservation of the Videofreex collection. She also writes, curates, and makes art. Her videos have screened widely, including at Images Festival(Toronto), New York Underground, Yerba Buena Center (SF), and Ocularis(NY). She is currently studying Electronic Arts at RPI in Troy, NY.

Introduction/Realizing the Impossible

It is said that an anarchist society is impossible. Artistic activity is the process of realizing the impossible. —Max Blechman, “Toward an Anarchist Aesthetic”

by editors Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland

For years we have wanted to read a book like this, and finally we have been able to produce it. As anarchists, we have seen our politics denigrated by other artists; as artists, we have had our cultural production attacked as frivolous by activists. Our interest in the intersection of these subjects is both extremely personal and intensely political. One of the goals of this book is to put forth examples, past and present, of groups and individuals that have attempted to collapse the dichotomy between pure aesthetics, unmoored from a societal context, and purely utilitarian art, slavishly beholden to politics. Much of what is explored in this collection, from Clifford Harper’s focus on craft to the social experimentation of 1970s video collectives, exists in this in-between space, each in its own way refusing “art for art’s sake” as well as the rigid rules of propaganda.

Even if we reject the idea that art can be boiled down to simple utility, that doesn’t mean we can abandon a concern with efficacy. Although our art might be rooted in an attempt to achieve some sort of liberated self-expression, as artists we also create in order to communicate. It is not surprising, however, that we have little sense of the influence of anarchist art, since there is hardly any discussion about art within anarchist and anti-authoritarian circles (or any Left political circles beyond Marxist academia, for that matter). We want to interrogate this here: What is the impact? Who is the audience? What are anarchist artists trying to say, to whom, and why?

Of all the political philosophies, anarchism has been the most open to artistic freedom, rejecting the basis of both Marxist and capitalist conceptions of art. Both of these ideologies use different language to make the same basic claim: the former states that all art is simply a product of class antagonisms, or in other words, art is the result of the prevailing economic conditions (currently, market capitalism); and the latter demands that all cultural production should be squeezed into the market system, or in the logic of capitalism, the primary productive use of art is economic. For full text please read online at: http://www.16beavergroup.org/events/archives/002200.php

Reappropriate the Imagination! by Cindy Milstein
(published in Realizing the impossible, edited by Josh MacPhee & Erik Reuland, AK Press, 2007)

An art exhibit, albeit a small one, is always housed in the bathroom of a coffeehouse in my town. A recent display featured cardboard and paper haphazardly glued together, and adorned with the stenciled or hand-lettered words of classical anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Errico Malatesta. The artist’s statement proclaimed, “I am not an artist.” The show offered only “cheap art,” with pieces priced at a few dollars. Undoubtedly the materials came from recycling bins or trash cans, and perhaps this artist-who-is-not-an-artist choose to look the quotes up in “low-tech” zines.

There is something heartwarming about finding anarchist slogans in the most unexpected of places. So much of the time, the principles that we anarchists hold dear are contradicted at every turn, never discussed, or just plain invisible. And thus seeing some antiquated anarchist writings scribbled on makeshift canvases in a public place, even a restroom, raised a smile of recognition.

But only for a moment—then despair set in. Why is anarchist art so often a parody of itself, predictable and uninteresting? Sure, everyone is capable of doing art, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is an artist. And yet it is generally perceived as wrong in anarchist circles that some people are or want to be artists, and others of us aren’t or don’t want to be. Beyond the issue of who makes works of art, why can’t art made by anti-authoritarians be provocative, thoughtful, innovative—and even composed of materials that can’t be found in a dumpster? More to the point, why do or should anarchists make art at all today? And what would we want art to be in the more egalitarian, nonhierarchical societies we dream of?

This I know: an anarchist aesthetic should never be boxed in by a cardboard imagination.

Pointing Beyond the Present

The name of one radical puppetry collective, Art and Revolution, aptly captures the dilemma faced by contemporary anarchist artists. It simultaneously affirms that art can be political and that revolution should include beauty. Yet it also underscores the fine line between art as social critique and art as propaganda tool. Moreover, it obscures the question of an anarchist aesthetic outside various acts of rebellion. It is perhaps no coincidence at all, then, that Art and Revolution’s logo design echoes the oft-quoted Bertolt Brecht contention that “art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”—with “ART,” in this collective’s case, literally depicted as the hammerhead.

Certainly, an art that self-reflectively engages with—and thus illuminates—today’s many crushing injustices is more necessary than ever. An art that also manages to engender beauty against the ugliness of the current social order is one of the few ways to point beyond the present, toward something that approximates a joyful existence for all. To read the full text with images and notes, please go to: http://www.16beavergroup.org/anarchist/cindy.pdf

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
phone: 212.480.2099

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,M Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

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REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY

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Aesthetics and Politics

REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY by Josh MacPhee, Erik Reuland, editors :: There has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Today, the movement against corporate globalization, with its creative acts of resistance, has brought anti-authoritarian politics into the forefront. This sprawling, inclusive collection explores this vibrant history, with topics ranging from turn-of-the-century French cartoonists to modern Indonesian printmaking, from people rolling giant balls of trash down Chicago streets to massive squatted urban villages and renegade playgrounds in Denmark, from stencil artists of Argentina to radical video collectives of the US and Mexico. Lots of illustrations, all b&w.

Posted by jo at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2007

The Minnesota Museum of American Art

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Sound in Art/Art in Sound

Sound in Art/Art in Sound :: Exhibition dates: April 14 through July 1, 2007 :: OPENING PARTY: SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2007, 7-10pm :: $10/$5 MMAA Members :: Live music by Beatrix Jar, a local sound-art-duo :: Food and drinks!

St. Paul, MN–The Minnesota Museum of American Art is pleased to announce the opening of its new exhibition Sound in Art/Art in Sound, an auditory exploration of the power and nuance of sound. The artwork in this exhibition is comprised of both sound art pieces and visual art which incorporates sound as a critical element, and ranges from sound art, digital projection, installation, and sculpture to interactive artwork.

The first exhibition in the Twin Cities to focus solely on the role of sound in art, this exhibition showcases the many forms of sound- as mechanical, temporal, dynamic, collected and altered. The artwork brings “noise” from the background of our daily lives to the foreground of our consciousness; it examines the ways in which we communicate with each other and with the world around us; it speaks about place, dialogue, documentation, and humor by transforming perception and transporting the mind/body experience.

Eleven artists from across the nation are featured in the exhibition which includes thirteen works of art. The artists in Sound in Art/Art in Sound are as follows: J. Anthony Allen of Minneapolis, Christopher Baker of Minneapolis, Leif Brush of Duluth, Cheryl Wilgren Clyne of St. Paul, Shawn Decker of Evanston, IL, Matthew Garrison of Downingtown, PA, Mike Hallenbeck of Minneapolis, Helena Keeffe of Oakland, CA, Abinadi Meza of Minneapolis, Jack F. X. Pavlik of Minneapolis, and Anne Wallace of San Antonio, TX.

Descriptions of the artwork:

Mike Hallenbeck’s Sound Spandrel: MMAA is an acoustic architectural portrait of the “silent” gallery space experienced through headphones. Anne Wallace’s Clear Fork Soundscape transports listeners to a ranch in Texas through the crisp sounds of nocturnal animals, storms, and livestock which she recorded over the course of a year.

Cheryl Wilgren Clyne’s film three addresses the roles of generations within a family through repetitive imagery and a carefully synched cacophony of sounds resulting from manipulated recordings. Matthew Garrison’s Autorange combines chilling United States Department of Defense video and sound footage from recent international conflicts with clips from D.W. Griffith’s silent films of war and sound from American Revolutionary War reenactors.

Composer J. Anthony Allen and visual artist Christopher Baker’s collaborative Urban Echo interweaves voicemail and text messages, live collected sounds from four remote locations across the Twin Cities, and live transmitted sounds from within the gallery into a dynamic interactive projection and composition. To participate in Urban Echo, the public may now call 612-501-2598 in response to the following two questions: What do you hear? What do you want others to hear? The artists request that callers leave their zip code as part of their voice or text message so they can create a map of the locations of the added material.

An unsung pioneer of sound art, and equal parts artist and physicist, Leif Brush combines science and nature in his sound pieces with recordings of normally undetectable natural sound phenomena such as the sounds of roots growing. This winter, sound artist Abinadi Meza recorded the pinging of individual snowflakes hitting a steel plate and the low rumble of nighttime snow plows. From those recordings Meza has created Beacon, a voluminous, seductive soundscape that visitors experience through wireless surround-sound headphones while watching his mesmerizing video of snow falling in front of a streetlight at night.

Shawn Decker’s installation Green, was inspired by the patterned sounds of insects and birds in Midwestern meadows. Made up of 32 small speakers and four homemade custom-programmed micro-controllers, Green creates a spatial and rhythmic series of clicks and buzzes resulting from impulses based on ever-changing light levels and natural radiation.

Sculpture in the exhibition includes Jack F. X. Pavlik’s The Storm, a large-scale kinetic sculpture made of a wide strip of steel undulating loudly on a steel frame, and Meza’s Creatures, two pet carrier bags with emanating purring and scratching sounds.

A mixed media piece in the exhibition by Helena Keeffe titled The Past Is Over includes speeches written by 5th graders for George W. Bush and recorded by a professional voice impersonator along with the handwritten speeches and a celebratory cake.

Posted by jo at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)

Object of Desire by Yael Kanarek

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Three Languages, Four Ports of Entry

World Premiere of Internet art project Object of Desire by Yael Kanarek: Object of Desire is the third chapter in World of Awe, and online travelogue that chronicles a search for lost treasure in a parallel world called Sunset/Sunrise. The project imagines a post-gender and post-national protagonist. Born from an observation that language defines borders and territory on the Internet, Object of Desire examines these borders, as the chapter is written in three languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew. Challenging the notion of fixed territory, thirteen scenes of the online project download from servers in four locations-—in Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Izmir and New York.

Object of Desire has four web addresses by which to enter: New York; Tel Aviv; Ramallah; Izmir.

Object of Desire was awarded a 2005 Renew Media Fellowship (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation)

Friday April 20, 2007, 7:15 PM: Artist's Talk with Yael Kanarek :: 8:00 PM: Panel Discussion: Plausible Maps, Possible Worlds: Memories for a Post-National Future with Galit Eilat (moderator), Livia Alexander, Hakan Topal, and Michael Connor :: Exit Art, 475 Tenth Ave (at 36th street), New York, NY 10018, Tel. (212) 966-7745.

Posted by jo at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

Multiplace – Network Culture Festival

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10 Cities, 6 Countries

Multiplace – Network Culture Festival :: Brno, Prague (Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary), Kielce (Poland), Cluj (Romania), Bratislava, Kosice, Trnava, Zilina (Slovak Republic), Providence (Rhode Island, USA) and Internet :: April 13 – April 22, 2007.

Multiplace is a network of people and independent organizations interested in the interaction between media, technology, the arts, culture and society. Activities of this network culminates this year in the sixth annual festival that take place between April 13 and April 22, 2007, in 10 cities and 6 countries simultaneously. There are around 70 different projects organized around the framework of the festival – workshops, installations, discussions, concerts, performances, exhibitions, presentations, screenings, streaming or parties, and also live streaming from different locations through the internet.

This year's new definition, Network Culture Festival replaces, "new media" because it more accurately defines the festival's emphasis on networking collaborations and related inspiring possibilities. Since the festival is an open structure, there in no exact number of events and thanks to the "floating" part of the program called "Jump Into the Network", it is open to your participation.

Jump into the Network is an interactive part of the program. You can join, via the Internet, a series of psycho-geographical games created by the Rumanian Association AltArt, take part of one of the workshops, bring your old computer to be recycled, or offer your talkative parrot for Internet discussion. In both Bratislava and Brno, there are also platforms for the realization of your own projects.

Program selection

In Bratislava, there is a festival Infocentre at A4 – Zero Space with information and daily public events. Young designers in their Open Design Studio present work on topics like collaborative design, DIY magazines and give you personal advice about your visual communication. You can also take part in discussions about the state of the internet in Slovakia, or about phenomena like web2 or Second Life. A4 also features screenings, hardware workshops, as well as evenings of the international music festival, "Unsound on Tour Across Borders", that will also stop in Brno and Prague.

Additionally, in Bratislava, there is the opportunity to see the video installations of Nora Ruzickova in the 13m3 Gallery and to visit artists' studios and design studios such as OST-960 (of artist Erik Binder), STUPIDesign and Kamikadze. There are screenings of films awarded Prix Ars Electronica and YouTube, Machinima films, concert by the Polish experimental sound group Karbido in Kosice and Zilina. In Trnava, there are lectures connecting science and art, talks on non-conventional music and video presentations.

In Brno, there is another Festival Infocentre and concerts at the Faculty of Visual Arts at the Technical University, as well as workshops, discussions, live presentations, a radio show, video installation, parties, 'chill out', and open platforms for your creativity.

Visitors in Budapest will have the opportunity to see a screening of films related to architecture, as well as presentations of VJs, Polish Kiecle presents light sensitive installation and video screening and in Providence, (Rhode Island, USA) the RISD Museum offers screenings of New Central European video art.

There is also a couple of "matches" going on – in the radio space between Czech and Slovak radios, and between different young artists from various "competing" art schools taking part on billboards.

We are looking forward to meeting you at Multiplace, in real or virtual word.

MULTIPLACE 2007: people, machines, design, music, video, software, workshops, exhibitions, visits and more.

Jump into the network of art and creativity!

Zuzana Cernakova, Executive Director, +421 907 467 598, zuzana[at]34.sk
Maria Riskova, Program Coordinator, m[at]13m3.sk
Viera Levitt, Multiplace USA, International PR, 001 401 714 9698, vieralevitt[at]gmail.com
Peter Pankuch, PR Manager Slovakia, +421 907 151 565, pagastan[at]post.sk

http://www.multiplace.sk , admin[at]multiplace.sk

Posted by jo at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

Social Tapestries'

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Snout Performance

Images from Tuesday's Snout performance around Hoxton, London can be viewed on our Flickr site and we are pleased to announce the prototype 'scavenged' sensing and public authoring site for Snout is now live. View the sensor traces collected during the performance together with other local information and links to ways to stimulate local conversations and action.

Social Tapestries will be publishing the technical documentation for the Snout sensor hardware and software (an updated version of last year's Feral Robots sensing system) later this summer, along with video documentation and a Cultural Snapshot exploring Snout's concepts and ideas – a recipe for others to create their own participatory sensing events and websites for bringing communities together to discuss and act on local issues.

Posted by jo at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Gazira Babeli: Collateral Damage

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A Comprehensive Survey, 2006-07

On April 16t, 2007, 6:00 pm SLT, the ExhibitA gallery (38,30,23) on the Odyssey simulator within the online virtual world called Second Life, will present the first comprehensive look at the pioneering work of Gazira Babeli. Gazira Babeli is an artist creating works within Second Life and a member of Second Front - the first performance art group in Second Life.

Gazira labels herself a "code performer" and indeed the code is at the heart of her work, tying it to the system at a deep level and reaching out to the viewer in ways that inherent to the SL platform. Her pieces are alive with scripts created using the Linden scripting language - a core component of Second Life. A Campbells soup can that is a trap, and a self proclaimed menace disguised as pop art, encases the viewer and takes him on a ride proclaiming "you love pop art, pop art hates you" until the unsuspecting avatar manages to run fast enough to escape. The sky filled with question marks, a vengeful tornado, these are a few of Gaz's signature works that can be seen on her site. In the spirit of opensource - Gazira has licensed much of her code via creative commons, and you can download it for your own use on her site.

Gazira Babeli: Collateral Damage - a comprehensive survey of works from 2006-2007 :: location: Odyssey (38,30,23)

Please join us for the opening of this exhibit. Press are invited to attend at 1pm SL time. The general opening is at 6pm SL time. Inquiries may be directed to Beavis Palowakski: rushchris[at]mac.com, or to Sugar Seville: sugarseville[at]gmail.com.

Posted by jo at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2007

Net(works): Art and Pre-Existing Web Platforms

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Call for papers

Net(works): Art and Pre-Existing Web Platforms @ SECAC 2007 (Southeastern College Art Conference) :: Call for papers :: Proposals are due May 1st, 2007. Conference is October 17-20, 2007 in Charleston, West Virginia.

Beyond using the internet as a way to show representations of visual and performance work, artists have been using pre-existing dynamic content web sites as the actual site of the work. One of the first projects of this nature included Keith Obadike selling his blackness on eBay. More recently, Cary Peppermint’s Department of Networked Performance (image, left), an educational situation, uses MySpace as its host. The Gif Show also used MySpace, appropriately, as a parallel site for a curatorial project in real space about the aesthetics of low-bit production. A public art competition and gallery shows have suddenly been popping up in Second Life, a virtual world created by users and inhabited by their avatars, which interact with each other in real-time.

Some of the topics raised may include, but are not limited to: How are artists currently using these and similar spaces? Are these projects considered interventions, or otherwise? Are these spaces appropriate for undergraduate education projects? How do real curatorial spaces intersect with these virtual spaces? What do these spaces, with or without the art world, mean within visual culture contexts? Please propose your presentation as it pertains to any field - practice, history/theory/criticism, museum studies, and/or education.

Patrick Holbrook, Georgia College & State University :: Email: patrick.holbrook[at]gcsu.edu (Please let me know if you have any questions, if I can help you with anything, or even if you are just thinking about it)

Posted by jo at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

Last Tag Show Net Performance

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Exploring the Facade of Web 2.0

Multiplace 2007 | network culture festival presents Last Tag Show :: On 14th of April watch http://www.lostpostservice.net/lts for a net performance exploring the facade of Web 2.0. Name it social media hack or Web 2.0 circuit bending, but above all the show is going to refer to global performance of users building and enhancing their own web image setting thus a social mask and yielding a performance of it's kind.

Last Tag Show will start at 8am London time, 3am NY time, 9am Prague time, 11am Moscow time and will run for 24 hrs. For time converter tool go to world time server.

Posted by jo at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)

Christiane Paul

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artport

[Image: one of various projects from Software Structures by Casey Reas] a minima / newmediaFIX Feature on Christiane Paul ::

artport, a website designed as a main portal to Internet art worldwide, and as an online gallery space for new and specially commissioned net and digital art was launched by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on March 1, 2001. The site provides both a comprehensive resource of net art and access to original art works created specifically for the site and commissioned by the Whitney. artport consists of five areas:

A gatepage section that archives the splash pages created by artists who are invited on a monthly basis to make a small artwork as a gateway the artport site. The gatepages contain links to the respective artist’s site and most important projects, so that the gatepage archive functions as a database of net art projects created since the beginning of Web-based art. An exhibition section, where current net art / digital arts exhibitions are accessible and past exhibitions, such as the Whitney Biennial Internet art projects, are archived.

A resources archive with links to new media organizations and virtual galleries on the Web, net art exhibitions worldwide, festivals, as well as net art publications on the Web. This archive is continually evolving as new organizations and resources are being added. A collection area that archives the works of net art and digital art in the Whitney Museum’s holdings, such as Douglas Davis’ The World’s First Collaborative Sentence, the first work of Internet art acquired by the Whitney Museum in 1995. A commissions section, which provides access to artworks commissioned by the Whitney specifically for the artport site. More >>

Posted by jo at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Sofia

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Demo Scene Phenomenon

Upgrade! Sofia: Demo Scene Phenomenon :: Today 11.04.2007 :: place: Club Apple, Sofia :: time: 20:00 (free lecture) :: Party: 22:00 (4 BGN entrance fee)

What is the demoscene? Short answer: A subculture in the computer underground culture universe, dealing with the creative and constructive side of technology, proving that a computer can be used for much more than writing a letter in MS-Word and hence emphasize on computer technology as just another medium that can transport ideas and styles, show off skills and express opinions etc. Another theory says, that it's just a bunch of boozing computer nerds, programming weird, useless multimedia stuff.

In Bulgaria the demo scene is a unknown phenomenon. In Europe this cult status form of art became hyperpopular in the last 20 years. Yet in our country we still don't know nothing about it, despite the fact that Bulgaria is already a member of the European Union. When we talk about demo, the last thing that pops up in our minds is high-tech multimedia installation. That's why Georgi Penkov (aka EXo) and Kamen Merachev (aka kmn) will join Upgrade! Sofia for a event that threatens to unveal the mistery of the 10 MB files that give birth to a 20 minute high-quality video.

The one of the king lecture will be held at club Apple and will present the whole history of the demo scene (coming from the '80s hacker scene) and it's development during the years. Examples of cult demo productions will be given, the ideas behind them, the basics of the making -of process, as well as presentations of the best demogroups. The gathering will turn into a party with special DJ appearances by DTX (click & tech sounds), EXo (dubstep), CooH (experimental dub). The event is supported by Mirizma.org, HMSU.org and InterSpace. For more information: scene.org

Posted by jo at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

Last Chance Upstage Festival

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The 070707 UpStage festival will soon be finalising its programme. Friday April 13 is the last chance to be a part of the first ever UpStage festival! Please send:

o working title of your cyberformance and 3-4 sentences about it;
o names and locations of people involved;
o brief background/bios (not more than 300 words);
o preferred time(s), in your local time, for presentation on 070707;
o contact email and postal address (so thst we can send you documentation after the festival).

Performances can be on any theme or topic - adapt a stage classic, tell your own story or go for the avant garde! The only rules are it must be no longer than 21 minutes, and must be created and performed in UpStage.

Posted by newradio at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

DEAF 07 Exhibition

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MOBI

MOBI (Mobile Operating Bi-directional Interface), by Graham Smith, is a human sized telepresence robot that users remotely control to move through distant environments, see through its camera eye, talk through its speakers and hear via its microphone ear. Simultaneously a life sized image of themselves is projected onto the robots LCD face, creating a robotic avatar. MOBI allows people to "explore far away art shows, attend distant presentations and make public appearences from anywhere on earth, thus helping to reduce air travel and reduce global warming". MOBI is at DEAF 07.

Graham Smith is a leading expert in the fields of telepresence, virtual reality, videoconferencing and robotics. He has worked with leading Canadian high tech companies for more than 14 years, including Nortel, Vivid Effects, VPL, BNR and IMAX. Graham initiated and headed the Virtual Reality Artist Access Program at the world-renowned McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, and has lectured internationally. He holds numerous patents in the field of telepresence and panoramic imaging, and was recognized in Macleans magazine as one of the top 100 Canadians to watch.

Posted by jo at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

Composite club

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JODI @ VertexList

VertexList space has the pleasure to announce “Composite club”, a solo exhibition by the legendary new media collaborative JODI. A reception will take place on Friday, May 4th 2007 from 7pm - 10pm, with the artists in attendance. The exhibition will be on display until Sunday, June 10th, 2007.

JODI, or jodi.org, are unanimously considered pioneers of new media art. It is a collective of two artists: Joan Heemskerk (the Netherlands) and Dirk Paesmans (Belgium). Their background is in photography and video art; and in the mid-1990s they were the first to create Internet based artworks. In more recent works, they modified video games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, Jet Set Willy, and Max Payne 2.

Works on display at VertexList include brand new projects including “Composite Club” (an installation Involving Playstation camera games triggered by prerecorded video clips), “wrongbrowser.us” (live online browser limited to the .us domain), and RSS based mailinglist "Wordstar". They will also feature JODI classic Wolfenstein modification S.O.D Bcd etc (sod.jodi.org).

“Composite club” will be presented in conjunction with and/or gallery in Dallas, TX, which will features JODI game hacks and work of Arcangel Constantini. Life video feed will be set up between the galleries during the opening reception. JODI’'s work has been included in many international exhibitions and festivals, including Documenta X in 1997. They received a Webby Award in the Arts category in 1999 (UCSOB) and were featured in “Digital Art” by Christiane Paul and “Internet Art” by Rachel Greene.

JODI project url: www.compositeclub.cc
Live demo by Jodi @ the opening reception.

email: info[at]vertexlist.net

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

[-empyre-] Brooke Singer: Thoughts on the topic

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TechnoPanic: Terrors and Technologies

"... In the last several years I have seen the rise of work termed "Locative Media" and my own work is sometimes grouped in that category. I usually ignore labels but this one is particularly bothersome to me because there is a trend here to collapse this ever-growing field of terror technologies into infotainment objects. This gets to the issue of what Tim calls the "ambivalent attraction to technologies of terror" and, as Horit questions, "what is the relationship between the production of art by means of digital technologies and the production of terror by the same?" Locative Media (as with the term Web 2.0) is deceptive in its appearance of being simply shiny, fun and new. Yet, do we question computer art for its use of the digital computer, originally designed to quickly crunch numbers to project missiles more accurately -- wherein lies the difference? Is it only distance from inception?..." -- Brooke Singer, empyre. Read the full post >>

Posted by jo at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

Biology and Art: Two Worlds or One?

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What's science, what's art?

Scientific discoveries pervade popular culture more and more and artists are becoming part of this cycle. Several recent exhibitions, books, and magazine features have demonstrated the popularity of science-based projects among contemporary artists. However, it is in symposia like the upcoming one organized by the New York Academy of Sciences (scheduled for April 14), that the examination of this new field is more often taking place. The conference's title, 'Biology and Art: Two Worlds or One?' acknowledges that the artistic approach to the scientific realm is mainly occurring within the biological sciences. Therefore, the focus of the discussions will be on how biological objects--whether viruses, animals, plants, cells, or organelles--inspire or even are employed by artists, and how scientists-always stressing objectivity in method-respond to artistic representations, which are necessarily subjective.

The keynote address will be given by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, recognized within the community for 'Cloaca' (2002), a work that resulted from a three-year collaboration with scientists at the University of Antwerp, whose shared mission was to duplicate the functions of the human digestive system. The rest of the day will be comprised of conversations between artists and scientists that are collaborating or in which the latter's current research informs the former's current output. Speakers include Laura Splan, Jonathan A. King, Michael Joaquin Grey, and Gabriel Robles-De-La-Torre. Lively talks and extensive debate will provide a forum where ideas generated in these two different spheres of creative endeavor will be expressed, elaborated upon, and deliberated, thus bringing together what has been separated throughout history. - Miguel Amado, Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 08:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2007

Networked_Music_Review Launches Today!

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New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. / Turbulence.org is pleased to announce the launch of Networked_Music_Review (N_M_R).

N_M_R is a research blog focused on emerging networked musical explorations made possible by computers, the Internet, and mobile technologies. N_M_R gathers data about projects, performances, composers, musicians, software and hardware. It includes interviews, articles, papers and reviews. N_M_R also provides up-to-date information on conferences, workshops, competitions, and festivals. Readers may comment on each of the blog entries and converse with interviewees. N_M_R Features:

LIVE STAGE: Online and offline events are spotlighted in real-time; INTERVIEWS: Interviewees are available for discussion via the comments. We begin with and interview with Jason Freeman. Please join the conversation beginning right now and ending on May 20; NETWORKED_MUSIC_WEEKLY (N_M_W): selected projects, artists, or events sent to subscribers weekly; NETWORKED_MUSIC_NEWSLETTER (N_M_N): a monthly newsletter sent to subscribers; GUEST BLOGGERS: Ryan Sciano is our first Guest Blogger.

If you would like to be a guest blogger, please contact us at: newradio at turbulence dot org

RSS Feeds are available for: Main page - all the posts; Live Stage; Interviews; and Net_Music_Weekly. Subscribe now.

N_M_R is supported by the New York State Music Fund established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. It was designed by Shual and built by Dan Phiffer.

We look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Helen and Jo

Posted by jo at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

SKINdoscope

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A Game of Alterity and Identity

Participate in Martha Gabriel's SKINdoscope by entering your personal data and your skin color (by clicking the button "add your skin"), and choosing your position in the kaleidoscope. You can also interact with the SKINdoscope by controlling th speed, mirrors, zoom and filters, or by choosing a specific visualization mode (skin, gender, name, age, etc...), therefore changing the visual presentation and effects.

The skin is the largest human body organ, and besides being its protecting layer and a system that regulates the body temperature and receives pain and pleasure stimuli, it also strongly contributes to the individual identification: it is the skin that in the first place separates physically our inside and the outer world – the other.

Among several skin characteristics that distinguishes one person from another, its color is one of the most interesting and maybe the most controversial. The human skin has nuances of colors that form together a true and interesting aquarelle. The skin has been reason for passions and wars in the human history, for it can either unite or separate, either regarding the semblance or the difference. “The difference is simultaneously the base of the social life and permanent source of tension and conflict.” (Gilberto Velho, in “Cidadania e Violência”, 2000).

According to the skin color and some other physiological and characteristics, the present work – SKINdoscope –builds a kaleidoscope on the web, where the poetics and visual result are formed and depend on the relationship between the pieces and the shapes and colors of each one, in a game of alterity and identity.

The SKINdoscope is formed by the pieces that represent people who have interacted with the work – the size of each piece is proportional to the person’s BMI (body mass index), the color of the piece is the person skin color and the shape of the piece is determined according to the person gender. The position each piece occupies in the space of the kaleidoscope is defined by the person herself/himself, and she/he can choose who to stay close or far, or even to overlay.

In this context, the present web-art work intends to lead the participant to reflect about questions related to the poetics of the alterity, the value and importance of the difference, and the way we interact with it when we face it by positioning ourselves among others.

Posted by jo at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)

DEAF: Snack&Surge Brunch: Marked Up City

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You Are Not Here.org: Gaza - Tel Aviv

Marked Up City: You Are Not Here.org: Gaza - Tel Aviv :: Hosted and introduced by Nat Muller (NL) :: Saturday 14 April 2007, 11:00 – 13:30 hrs :: Location: V2_Studio :: Entrance: € 7,50 :: LIVE STREAM (REALVIDEO) - 14 april, 11:00-13:30 (Clicking on the above link before the indicated time will result in an error message!) This live stream can be viewed with the free RealPlayer.

Cities are more than their streets and squares, their commerce and inhabitants: they are part and parcel of a whole economy which brands and markets "the urban experience" to us as a commodity. Tourism is of course the latter's most logical instrument: more often than not we are sold a sugar-coated product, which discards the dynamics, frictions and population groups, which make up the city proper. Marked Up City dips into the belly of city branding and urban tourism... with a twist.

You Are Not Here.org (YANH), urban tourism mash-up project by artist Thomas Duc (US), media activist Mushon Zer-Aviv (IL/US), interaction designer Kati London (US) and new media hacker Dan Phiffer (US) :: Laila El-Haddad (PS/US), journalist and writer :: Merijn Oudenampsen (NL), specialises in issues concerning flexibility of labour, precarity, gentrification, and city branding.

The SNACK & SURGE Brunches create a performative and gastronomic theatre of operations addressing political, technological and artistic questions relating to the poetics of power. We invite the DEAF audience to kick off their day pondering the aesthetics, actions and media of resistance and critique. Part hang-out, part culinary experiment, SNACK & SURGE intends to be a caress for the palate, an opener for the mind, and a rebelliously festive wake-up for the mood.

Rise and start your day deliciously: biting at the poetics of power!

Food by: anders eten.com

Posted by jo at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

Time Based Text

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The gesture in computer art

"Thinking about gesture in art, people usually refer to choreography. If the topic is related to IT, instead, usability becomes the issue. But, what about gesture in computer art? Does it mean natural interaction or is it just a matter of performance? Certainly, a gesture is a way for emphasizing communication. Based on this concept, pioneers of net.art (or as we should better say 'net.art is dead') such as Jaromil and Jodi are exploring this area with a project called Time Based Text (TBT). TBT is a free software that records performances of written text and vehicle it as additional information. This is both a command line and console tool that records and playback keyboard strokes with a millisecond precision. As a command line tool it can record from standard input or playback to standard output (from and to a file or pipeline), so it can be interfaced with other software reproducing a sequence of actions.

As a console tool it offers a simple typing interface to record and playback text exactly as it is typed, including all corrections and hesitations. This'd be a unique possibility in electronic poetry, literature, and even daily email. The authors simply describe this process as: saving and reproducing every single action during the composition of a text let us vehicle emphasis in written communication. But, this 'recorded' gesture is then a new time-based medium." Valentina Culatti, Neural.

Posted by jo at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

16 Beaver Group

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Deborah Bright + Linda Dittmar

16 Beaver Group: Deborah Bright + Linda Dittmar :: What: Presentation / Discussion :: When: Friday evening 4.13.07; 7:30 pm :: Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor, NYC :: Free and open to all.

16 Beaver Group is very pleased to have photographer Deborah Bright and Israeli-American writer and scholar, Linda Dittmar, at 16beaver. Deborah and Linda will present an informal slide preview of their collaborative project documenting remains of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) when some 750,000 Palestinians were exiled from their homes in what became the State of Israel.

This work is predicated on the belief that until the pain and losses (of family, community, homeland) of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 (not to mention 1967) are publicly recognized and dealt with by both Israel and its primary sponsor, the United States, no lasting peace and stability is possible.

Deborah Bright is an internationally known photographer, writer, and professor of photography at RISD. She edited 'The Passionate Camera: photography and bodies of desire' (1998). More information about her work can be found at http://www.deborahbright.com

Linda Dittmar grew up as a third generation Israeli who witnessed the events of 1948 as a child in Tel Aviv. She is professor of literature and film at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and co-edited 'From Hanoi to Hollywood:The Vietnam War in Film' and 'Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism'.

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
phone: 212.480.2099

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,M Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

Posted by jo at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

[PUBLIC] _____ curating

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METHODS - RESOURCES - THEORIES

[PUBLIC] _____ curating is an ongoing research-project by the Vienna-based organisation CONT3XT.NET, collecting methods, resources, and theories concerning the changing conditions of curatorial practices on the Web. The blog is an experimental database of international curating projects, theoretical approaches and a resource for curatorial platforms, art-databases and contemporary ways of New Media Curating.

With the changing of the production and reception of art on the Internet, not only the art itself changed but also the possibilities of curation and thus require new forms of investigation and communication too. During the past decade the concept of what was called "Curating (on) the Web" (1) already in 1998, has changed into a multifaceted and interrelative communication-process between artists, theorists, writers and "normal" Internet-users -- nowadays curators are described as "cultural context providers" (2), "meta-artists" (3), "power users" (4), "filter feeders" (5) or simply as "proactive consumers" (6).

_____ research-blog: http://publiccurating.cont3xt.net
_____ link-collection: http://del.icio.us/publiccurating

(1) http://www.archimuse.com/mw98/papers/dietz/dietz_curatingtheweb.html
(2) http://www.metamute.org/en/Art-Place-Technology-Conference
(3) http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2006-April/000325.html
(4) http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0606/msg00136.html
(5) http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol3_No1_curation_schleiner.html
(6) http://ullamaaria.typepad.com/hobbyprincess/2006/06/museums_and_web.html

Posted by jo at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations (Tokyo July 13-16,2007) :: DEADLINE: April 26 :: Plenary speakers will include: Rem Koolhaas (OMA Rotterdam); Mark B.N. Hansen (University of Chicago); Katherine Hayles (University of California at Los Angeles); Shigehiko Hasumi (Former President of The University of Tokyo); Ken Sakamura (The University of Tokyo); Barbara Maria Stafford (University of Chicago); Friedrich Kittler (Humboldt University); Akira Asada (Kyoto University); and Bernard Stiegler (Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris).

Today media are increasingly ubiquitous: more and more people live in a world of Internet pop-ups and streaming television, mobile phone texting and video clips, MP3 players and pod-casting. The media mobility means greater connectivity via smart wireless environments in the office, the car and airport. It also offers greater possibilities for recording, storage and archiving of media content. This provides not just the potential for greater choice and flexibility in re-working content (tv programmes, movies, music, images, textual data), but also great surveillance (CCTV cameras, computer spyware, credit data checking and biometrics). The media, then, can no longer be considered to be a monolithic structure producing uniform media effects. Terminology such as 'multi-media,' and 'new media,' fail to adequately capture the proliferation of media forms. Indeed, as media become ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception. Media pervade out bodies, cultures and societies.

These ubiquitous media constitute our consumer and brand environment. Their interfaces and codes pervade our bodies and our biology. They pervade our urban spaces. They are ubiquitous in art, religion and our use of language. Yet from another angle art and language are, and have immemorially been, media. Media are about the physical, algorithm and generative code; but they are also immaterial and metaphysical. Communication is about channels and hardware/software; but communication is also about communion and community. Media deal in images: that is in the material; but their idiom is also symbols and the transcendental.

To theorize about today's world, we evidently need to theorize media. Yet to theorize media also means we need to focus on how technological media are used in everyday practices. Not least, we need to address the question of the relationship of media practices to politics. This opens up questions about the formation of informed publics, new social movements and media events, not just the alleged need to combat media terrorism, nationalism and crime. Suggesting further questions about the power and influence of transnational media, intellectual property rights and openness of access. Raising issues of generativity, creativity and critical intervention.

Asia - East Asia, South Asia, and increasingly crucial, the Middle East - are becoming sites for these processes. Global geopolitics has been restructured by the 'rise' of China and India and the turbulence of the Middle East. With concomitant transformations of the role of the West and Japan, this conference becomes also a question of 'ubiquitous Asia.' These transformations are producing new trans-Asian culture industries, social movements and activism. At stake are a set of transformations of Asian culture(s) itself - of language, and modes of cultural thought and being. We will seek to address these uestions of media transformations and their relation to social and cultural processes in a number of plenary sessions, paper sessions, round tables and events.

About Organizers

This conference is organized by Theory, Culture & Society and Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies / Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo.

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

Mladen Bizumic: How If – A Translation in III Acts

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A 'Spatial Opera'

Mladen Bizumic: How If – A Translation in III Acts :: 29 March – 28 April 2007 :: Finissage April 27, 19.00 :: PROGRAM: initiative for art + architectural collaborations, Invalidenstrasse 115, D-10115 Berlin :: t: +49 (0)30 39509318 :: in collaboration with Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

PROGRAM – initiative for art + architectural collaborations presents ACT III of the exhibition How If – A Translation in III Acts by New Zealand artist Mladen Bizumic. Bizumic's first solo exhibition in Germany is structured as a ‘spatial opera’ in which he explores the facets of contemporary geopolitics in relation to representations of architecture. In each of the piece’s three acts, we find the contribution of other artists, musicians, theorists and in one instance, his mother. Act III is presented at PROGRAM, while ACT I & II form the installation at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

Bizumic’s work is often based on the architecture, urban context and history of the space in which he is living. How If - A Translation in III Acts activates Berlin, his current abode, as the urban fabric comprising the space between Künstlerhaus Bethanien and PROGRAM.

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ACT III (at PROGRAM)

Since 2004 Bizumic has been working on a multi-channel video project called event.horizon.black.hole. An angled wall in the gallery acts as a screen for a pair of mirrored video projections. A video of the crumbling architecture of the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris is projected back-to-back with images of an avalanche on Mt. Cook, itself a UNESCO world heritage site in New Zealand. Mirrored along the bend in the wall, each pair of projections resembles an enormous, constantly morphing Rorschach blot. On this occasion, a multi-channel soundtrack has been added, bringing together ambient sounds taken from the Berlin Museum Island (also a world heritage site), with the flapping noises of flags outside the UN Headquarters in New York. The projections dematerialize the wall while the soundtrack organizes notions of nationality, geography, and the concept of a world heritage.

ACT I (at Künstlerhaus Bethanien)

Freud Museum (for her) 2006-2007 is a vitrine of fragments from buildings in Vienna. Two commissioned works accompany this: a piano piece composed by his Viennese girlfriend (a musician), and a ‘psychoanalytic poem’ written by his mother (a psychologist) which both articulate the personal dimensions embedded in the work. The material index of Vienna’s built environment becomes a self-consciously museological display – it’s materiality abstracted and questioned in turn by the music and poetry.

ACT II (at Künstlerhaus Bethanien)

Sister Cities of Berlin (Paris) 2007 is a video installation depicting streetlights seen through the glazed door of a building near the National Highway 7 in Paris. The distorted image through the glass is contextualized as a voice-over begins to tell a story of the Parisian suburb Le Kremlin-Bicetre, loosely based on an interview conducted by Bizumic with French artists Saadane Afif and Valerie Chartrain – themselves residents of the aforementioned building. The characters in the narrative are reduced in their description, but a counter point of complexity is provided by the collision of images, poetic verses and ambient sounds composed by MINIT.

Mladen Bizumic (born 1976, lives and works in Berlin) will present his work in the New Zealand Book at the Venice Biennale (2007). Notable exhibitions in the past include: Through the Picture at the 2nd Moscow Biennale (2007), Busan Biennale (2006), Hide-Tide, CAC, Vilnius and Zacheta National Art Museum, Warsaw (2006), Re: Modern, Künstlerhaus Vienna (2005), Fiji Biennale Pavilions, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2003), Mladen Bizumic, ARTSPACE, Auckland (2002).

PROGRAM is a nonprofit project aimed at testing the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through collaborations with other fields. Initiated in 2006 by Carson Chan and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, PROGRAM provides a discursive platform for artists, architects, critics and curators to explore ideas through exhibitions, performances, workshops, lectures, and residencies. PROGRAM intends to diversify the ways we understand and make architecture by engaging the discourse with emerging creative processes that activate the space between pure theoretical research, professional praxis and architecture's social role.

The exhibition is generously supported by Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Embassy in Berlin.

opening hours:
Tuesday–Friday 14.00–19.00 hrs
Saturday 11.00–19:00 hrs

For further information please email info@programonline.de, or visit http://www.programonline.de

Posted by jo at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

Turbulence Commission: The Simultaneous Translator

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Live Performance on April 15

Turbulence Commission: The Simultaneous Translator by John Roach and Willy Whip [Requires Windows OS] LIVE PERFORMANCE: Sunday April 15; 12:00 PM EST to 3:00 PM EST

The Simultaneous Translator (SimTrans) is a Windows based audio interface that enables anyone to load audio streams and manipulate them in real time on the Internet. SimTrans makes the delays and fluctuations of the Internet visible and audible. The Internet becomes your collaborator as you create your mix, and the instability you usually try to avoid becomes a tool for creation. Distance and delay are manifest within the interface numerically and as a series of sliding heads; there is also a link to Google Earth where you can watch the dynamic flight of data travel between yourself and the audio source.

“SimTrans” is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Murray G. and Beatrice H. Sherman Charitable Trust.

THE PERFORMANCE: The Simultaneous Translator grew out of the artists’ live networked performance project "Simultaneous Translation," in which the delays of the internet are used to dynamically effect the live performances of geographically distant artists.

The performance will take place from 12:00 PM EST to 3:00 PM EST on Sunday April 15. Log on via http://turbulence.org/Works/simtrans.

Participants: Greg Davis (USA), Kenneth Goldsmith (USA), John Hudak (USA), Keyman (France), Lawrence Li (China), Mice69 (France), Miguel Ramos (Spain), Joe Reinsel (USA), John Roach (USA) and Willy Whip (France).

BIOGRAPHIES

JOHN ROACH doesn't consider himself an installation artist, a sound artist, or a sculptor, but prefers to think of himself as a nomad, touching down in whatever place is most hospitable to his ideas. Recent projects have been an installation at the 2B Gallery in Budapest, Hungary; a collaborative performance with objects and video at the Saint Stephen Museum in Szekesfehervar, Hungary; and a web video project called Sweet Music. He continues to work with Willy Whip on their long-standing live networked performance project Simultaneous Translation.

WILLY WHIP is a designer and teacher in hypermedia interactivity. Outside his institutional work he likes to produce mashups that fertilize his own secret garden. This personal research and development leads him on a quest for hybrids: connect this information to that information; grow new contents; release new senses. Recent activity includes projects with the artists Anika Mignotte, Reynald Drouhin, and Du Zhenjun.

Posted by jo at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

Maxwell City: an artistic investigation into the electromagnetic urban environment

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call for workshop participation

Maxwell City: an artistic investigation into the electromagnetic urban environment :: Two consecutive workshops: Workshop I: Wednesday 9th of May - Saturday 12th of May; Workshop II: Wednesday 30th of May - Saturday 2nd of June :: Where: Atelier Nord Lakkegata 55D N-0817 Oslo :: Directors: Erich Berger and Martin Howse; Guests: Armin Medosch, Honor Hager :: Participation is free of charge :: Application deadline: Friday 13th of April :: Send applications with CV and motivation to sense[at]anart.no

In 1864 the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell presented a set of mathematical equations to the Royal Society. These equations which are now known as Maxwell.s equations describe the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and their interaction with matter - electromagnetism. Maxwell showed that his equations predict waves of oscillating electric and magnetic fields that travel through empty space - electromagnetic waves.

Almost 150 years later, the practical applications of Maxwell's mathematics are deeply and indispensably entwined with our everyday lives. Radio, Television, Mobile phones or wireless networks, all are based on wireless data and information transmission utilizing electromagnetic radiation as a medium. Every wire, cable and electrical device leaks electromagnetic waves during operation. The electromagnetic spectrum which is the range of all possible electromagnetic radiation is a hotly fought over private, commercial and political territory.

Every city with its uncountable electric facilities, devices, senders and receivers has an unknown and invisible man-made twin; the Maxwell City. It is an alien kind of architecture and landscape composed from the electromagnetic emissions of its substantial sibling; a truly spectral double resonating across bodies, vehicles and an architecture of embedded conduction.

Maxwell City is an artistic investigation into electromagnetic substance within the city of Oslo and its surroundings. Naturally these investigations will happen in the city itself, including possible originating artworks, situations or interventions. Short lectures, presentations and discussions within the group will provide the workshops with the necessary theoretical and practical background. Maxwell City is interested in both the theory and praxis of electromagnetic waves, politics of technology and the electromagnetic spectrum, electromagnetic waves as artistic material, artistic strategies in the urban environment, invisible and alternate realities and how to make these perceptible.

Participating artists do not need to have practical or theoretical knowledge about the electromagnetic spectrum. They need to bring a keen interest to work as a group with unusual artistic material within the urban environment. As the workshops build upon each other it is preferable to participate in both workshops.

Further information about the workshop, the content, the directors and guests is available at: http://anart.no/projects/maxwell-city/

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

DEAF07 Workshop

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Tracking Technology for the Performing Arts

DEAF07: Tracking Technology for the Performing Arts :: V2_Testlab2 :: Wednesday 11 to Saturday 14 April :: Cost: € 200 / € 150 (student discount), including lunch, workshop materials, entrance to the Interrupting Realities seminar and the exhibition :: Maximum participants: 30.

This hands-on workshop on Tracking Technologies is oriented towards performing artists / choreographers who are interested in using new technologies, as well as people with a technical / scientific background who want to apply their technical knowledge in an artistic domain. In the performing arts exciting new ways of expression are becoming possible by recent advances in tracking and sensing technologies. Body-worn sensors and large area position tracking systems are now accessible for use in performances, enabling for example new types of interaction.

The workshop will set out to investigate data interpretations from real-time tracking devices and mappings of this data for artistic purposes, using max/msp. Working in small groups with a workshop leader the participants will explore two integrated modules:

_Data interpretations for the performing arts, with applications such as movement analysis and interactive soundscapes.
_A technical introduction to state of the art tracking technology.
_Participants will be challenged to create their own systems that interpret real-time tracking data.

After completing the workshop participants will have a clear understanding of how data from tracking systems can be interpreted for use in the performing arts.

The workshop is accompanied by the seminar Interrupting Realities , which will attempt to deal with some of the theoretical issues raised by this seminar. Entrance to the seminar is free for workshop participants.

Posted by jo at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2007

Lessons in NetArt: Theory

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by Thomas Dreher

IASL online Lessons in NetArt: Theory: Now two texts are available in English:

Conceptual Art and Software Art: Notations, Algorithms and Codes: Self-replicative and generative codes have been developed in Software Art. Intermedia Art´s relations between notation and realisation are expanded by new mutations in relations between readable code and computer processing: Examples of program codes appear as the next step after formalizations of verbal concepts in Dada, Fluxus and Conceptual Art. And on the other hand: These formalized notations can be presented as precursors of Software Art.

Participation with Camera: From the Video Camera to the Camera Phone: The development of the camera´s technology (video camera, WebCam, camera phone) and its context had and has consequences for the development of strategies to integrate participative uses of cameras into projects. The article outlines the camera´s use as a subject of change from video and net projects to collaborative mapping with locative media.

The article "Participation with Camera" offers an overview on some of the nearly hundred projects described in German in:

Collected tips: Interactive Urban Experience with Locative Media (Mapping) Part 1, Part 2.

Collected tips 1-3: Interactive Urban Experience with Digital Media (Internet, Mobile Telephone and Locative Media).

Dr. phil. Thomas Dreher
Schwanthalerstraße 158
D-80339 München
B.R.D.

URL:
http://dreher.netzliteratur.net

Posted by jo at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)

Urban Interface | Berlin (Olso)

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Interspaces of Public/Private Urban Space

Urban Interface Berlin :: A symposium, exhibition and curatorial research project exploring the interspaces between public and private urban space :: April 15 to May 6, 2007 :: Berlin and Oslo :: Some of the works are:

Exposure, by Jussi Ängeslevä (FI) and Richard The (DE), is a spatial art installation combining smart materials, simple sensor electronics and poster design to weave micro narratives for the unsuspecting public as they navigate through the urban landscape. An array of unobtrusive, monochromatic posters is arranged along a segment of a passageway. Adjacent to the individual posters a light gate is watching when a pedestrian passes by the poster. The light gate is connected to a tele-objective camera flash and triggers it, casting the person’s shadow momentarily on the poster. The poster, being covered with fluorescent ink, captures the shadows and retains the glowing silhouette, becoming an integrated element of the poster’s graphics which gradually fade away. The work can be seen as a commentary and counter-reaction to the established disempowerment of the individual. Above and beyond the exhausted Big Brother discourse, Exposure takes a stand also on the new emergent "Participatory Panopticon", or "Little Brother", the ever present prying eye of the neighbours’ ubiquitous camera equipped digital device.

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The project series Mitting operates at the interface between the sociologically and culturally different boroughs of Mitte and Wedding. For two days, the area that has been defined for the exhibition acts as a space for actions and as a starting point for mobile and stationary events. Oliver Hangl puts on two “Secret Tours” through public and private spaces that bring the coexistence of these parallel cultures to awareness. The participants, equipped with two-channel wireless headsets that enable them to choose between two alternative streams of information presented by the guides and musical liveacts, will be led through the different areas by two tour guides as well as musicians, actors, artists, DJs and a technical crew. Statements from pedestrians and local residents will flow into the liveact audio streams.

Mitting separates levels of perception while isolating the participants. On the streets, in warehouses, flats, and wherever the groups enter, they appear mute to residents and passers-by. Because of the dialogue that is sent inward through headphones, the action bears a subversive potential. But the participants should also be alert to when reality turns suddenly into fiction.

Oliver Hangl declares spaces, participants and watchers an open field of imagination, an audiovisual energy field that oscillates between performance, demo-protest and communication experiment… „Remember, that it’s all in your head!“ (Gorillaz)

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Daniel Jolliffe presents the project Berliner Stimmen in the context of urban interface | berlin. His work is a mixture of mobile sculpture and performance that examines the participatory moment. Visually, Berliner Stimmen is a sculpture mounted behind a bicycle, but its main function is performative. Over a period of three weeks, Jolliffe will cycle through the borough of Mitte, Wedding and Gesundbrunnen three times a week. While he is travelling, the loudspeaker broadcasts previously recorded one-minute calls. It is possible for each caller to have his message broadcast in the public space. The past realisations of the project under the name of One Free Minute in San José and Vancouver have shown that the callers use this public platform for different reasons. The spectrum of the recorded messages includes private statements and stories as well as commercial announcements and political speeches. In times when governments and public agencies are increasingly vigilant of who is saying what and where, citizens and activists can express their opinions in Berliner Stimmen freely and without fear of repression.

Also on exhibit: Laura Beloff's Head; Zone-out of Vision.

ABOUT urban interface | berlin

The project deals with the changing notion of private and public space that occurs due to, particularly, the everyday use of communication technologies. The artworks in the context of urban interface convey the idea of public space as an accessible and contributive sphere and call attention to a more sensitive engagement with the private, physical and digital spheres.

The works are developed for individual spaces by participating artists and if possible realised in cooperation with hosts. Hosts can be private individuals as well as companies, which then communicate the artworks out of their private spaces into the public. Private becomes public, public becomes private. Art space intermixes with urban space.

In responding to selected public and semi-public sites and their inherent qualities, the artworks will become focal points of the shifting conceptions of private and public space. Being often immaterial and digital and located at the difficult-to-define boundaries of private and public space, the artworks challenge all users – perceivers, organisers and the local authorities to formulate and discuss their individual understanding of those spaces. At the same time, the dispersed and temporary nature of the artworks challenges the formula of exhibitions in public space.

This website is conceived as an archive and contributive forum which ideally could serve as a knowledge platform for other art projects dealing with or happening in public space. To that end, relevant processes between the involved parties such as artists, sponsors, organisers and the city administration will be published on this website. Hence this website can be understood as another interface between private and public, theory and practice.

The thematic discourse is extended to presentations and panels accompanying the exhibitions

Posted by jo at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

Supermarket 2.0

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Internet of Things: Where milk is commented, eggs come with rss feeds and the shelves are full of FUN. [via boingboing] [blogged by Anne on PLSJ]

Posted by jo at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

Network Notebooks

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Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat?

Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web by Rosalind Gill is the first publication in the series Network Notebooks, published by the Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Order printed copies by sending an email to info (at) networkcultures.org. A pdf is also freely available.

Accounts of new media working draw heavily on two polarised stereotypes, veering between techno-utopianism on the one hand, and a vision of web-workers as the new ‘precariat’, victims of neoliberal economic policies and moves to flexibilisation and insecurity on the other. Heralded from both perspectives as representing the brave new world of work what is striking is the absence of research on new media workers own experiences, particularly in a European context. This report goes beyond the contemporary myths of new media work, to explore how people working in the field experience the pleasures, pressures and challenges of working on the web. Illustrated throughout with quotations from interviews, this research examines the different career biographies emerging for content-producers in web-based industries, questions the relevance of existing education and training, and highlights the different ways in which people manage and negotiate freelancing, job insecurity, and keeping up to date in a fast-moving field where software and expectations change rapidly.

The research is based on 35 interviews carried out in Amsterdam in 2005, and contextually draws upon a further 60 interviews with web designers in London and Brighton. The interviews were carried out by Danielle van Diemen and Rosalind Gill.

Rosalind Gill is a teacher and researcher based at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is author of The Gender-Technology Relation (with Keith Grint) and her new book Gender and the Media has just been published by Polity press. She carried out research on new media working for the European Commission in 2000 and published some of the results relating to new inequalities in this field in an influential article entitled ‘Cool, creative and egalitarian?’ She is currently preparing a book about women and the web, and completing analysis of 180 interviews with web designers in London, Brighton and L.A.

Colophon
Interviews: Rosalind Gill and Danielle van Diemen
Copy editing: Ned Rossiter
Design: Léon&Loes, Rotterdam
Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer
Printing: Cito Repro, Amsterdam
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam

If you want to order copies please contact:
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactieve media
Weesperzijde 190
1097 DZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
info(at)networkcultures.org
t: +31 (0)20 5951863 f: +31 (0)20 5951840

This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Netherlands License.

Posted by jo at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

II MOBILEFEST 2007

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CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROJECTS

II MOBILEFEST 2007 SEMINAR AND EXHIBITION:: CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROJECTS :: November 21-23, 2007 :: Sesc Paulista, Sco Paulo, Brazil.

Mobilefest - International Festival of Mobile Arts and Creativity is an event that aims to question and discuss the advent of the new mobile technologies in their relationships with the various segments of society, being the first International Festival of the kind. The main objective is to provide and multifaceted and heterogenic environment of discussions, actions and creations that seek for intelligent solutions, through the virtualities of the new mobile technologies, to solve or even discuss the issues that trouble contemporary societies.

The effort of the event about the new communication technologies is based on the perception of its potential growth - there are nearly 3 billion active mobiles in the nowadays[1] - and the increase of its use not only for communication between people but, also in activities of education, social inclusion, varied artistic productions, entertainment, security, content production and distribution, sociability nets configuration, activism actions, health, commerce, advertising, etc.

History: The I Mobilefest was launched in November 2006, with an international seminar that took place in Sco Paulo, at Sesc Paulista, with live and free transmission via the Internet.

In its first edition, it broached the social, cultural and aesthetic implications that the mobile ands mobile technologies have been promoting in global scale. The festival discussed the main outlining of the relationships between mobile technologies (like mobile, handhelds, etc.) and the many segments of the society listed above. Besides the discussion, the event is made of technical and cultural activities and also includes expositive exhibition and the launch of recognition award of the best mobile jobs and applications, the I Mobilefest Awards. The seminar gathered 14 foreign artists and researchers and Brazilian 20 artists and specialists.

Objectives: Popularise the mobile technology as to contribute to social inclusion though the generalisation of knowledge, its use and possibilities of interaction promoted by these new communication media. Offer the audience the first awarding specialised in recognising works that use mobile technology. Promote cultural interchange among national and international researchers and producers of this area. Incentive the creative thought and production about the new technologies aiming to expand the possible hardware e software functions in the technology mobile sector.

Stimulate the production of content in the mobile technology segment in Brazil in terms of production in the industrial segment as well as from the point of view of the independent creator, thus intending to seek for balanced ways of relationships between these two players which will not mean mutual negation. Enable the participation of all interested in producing and distributing content through the mobile communication networks.

II Mobilefest - International Festival of Mobile Arts and Creativity / 2007

The use of the mobile phone, the main development feature of mobile technology, starts in Brazil in 1990, when we had around 667 units. Since then, and added to all changes linked to globalisation, opening of market shares, more and more accelerated development of new technologies, all that already announced since the 80s in the core countries, the amount of mobiles has increased exponentially reaching 6700 no in the following year, 30 thousand in 1992, nearly 50 millions in 2004 and, nowadays according to Anatel, Brazil has already almost 100 million active mobile units (what means 53 mobile/ 100 inhabitants)[2].

It was also during the 1990s that the environmental issue started being present in the daily guidelines not only of the mass communication media but, as well in the civil associations as a rather relevant topic of the main social movements all over the world, and as core subject in several universities and specialised research institutes. Among the numerous points and dimensions involved in the planet's environmental problem, the climate issue directed everyone's attention due to uncountable environmental disasters caused by weather alterations.

While the technological development takes wide steps, considering the a mobile technology as one of the main protagonists of lately, environmental issue also grow disputing the news with the high-tech market good news. Many times it seems like a battle in fact, since the productive and technological development is takne as one of the main causes of environmental problems. Specially about mobiles, one of the shocking points between technological development and environmental issue regards the garbage generated by disused units and discarded batteries that grows as fast as the new technological developments.

However, if less than 150 years ago we only had a telegraphic signal to generate an S.O.S, now we have the latest generation networks mobile phones with photo and video cameras, GPS and LBS, linked to wireless, viral and instant internet that challenging us to find new technological solutions and collective actions in favour of the environment.

How can Mobile Technology contribute to democracy, culture, art, ECOLOGY, peace, education, health and third-sector?

Considering that, II Mobilefest 2007 intends to dedicate part of its activities and reflections upon environmental issue.

Festival Mobilefest 2007 Theme: In 2007, besides the more general proposal which leads to the question - How can Mobile Technology contribute to democracy, culture, art, ecology, peace, education, health and third- sector? Mobilefest has in view special emphasis in ecology, with the theme Environment, trying to explore the potentialities of the mobile technologies through the proposal "Protecting the environment using mobile technologies". The choice of the theme Environment intends to mobilise the civil society before numerous environmental tragedies already under course and, because we see this as a very rich experimentation space through the use of mobile technologies.

[1] According to forecast by research company Informa Telecoms an Media (cf. < http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/bbc/ult272u59649.shtml >).

[2] According to Anatel: http://www.atarde.com.br/especiais/telefoniamovel/mat_histbrasil.php


MOBILEFEST 2007 - CALL FOR PAPERS

II MOBILEFEST 2007 is open to receive project and paper proposals to be selected to participate in the II Mobilefest International Seminar and Exhibition that will take place in the second semester 2007, in Sco Paulo, Brazil. It is intended that papers and projects presented reflect upon Mobilefest
theme: How can Mobile Technology contribute to democracy, culture, art, ecology, peace, education, health and third- sector?

REGISTRATION PROCEDURE: Registrations are open until 31st July 2007 via email sent to 2007(at)mobilefest.com.br with the following information:

Full name:
Age:
Country:
City:
Land line:
Mobile:
University (not compulsory):
Graduation level (not compulsory):

Category:

( ) democracy
( ) culture
( ) arts
( ) ECOLOGY
( ) peace
( ) education
( ) health
( ) third-sector

Presentations sent should last no longer than 30 minutes.

Projects sent will be selected by categories, marked in the registration form.

Registration should include a brief description of the presentation proposed (up to 200 words), technical information and participants involved, in .rtf, doc or pdf.

Send your work to: 2007(at)mobilefest.com.br

All selected presentations will be broadcasted live via internet and will be available on podcast soon after.

DEADLINES - IMPORTANT DATES:
Project sending: 31st July 2007
Notification: 1st September 2007

In case of doubt, please write to 2007(at)mobilefest.com.br

Related links:

http://www.mobilefest.com.br/blog/participe/seminario-mobilefest/call-for-papers/
http://www.mobilefest.com.br/blog/participe/seminario-mobilefest/chamada-de-trabalhos/
http://www.mobilefest.com.br/blog/participe/seminario-mobilefest/llamada-de-trabajos/

Posted by jo at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

Symposium C6:

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The Art World is Flat: Globalism--Crisis and Opportunity

Symposium C6: The Art World is Flat: Globalism--Crisis and Opportunity :: April 26-28, 2007 :: Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago.

Symposium C6 will explore how the forces of globalism are challenging traditional cultural hierarchies, redistributing capital, creating powerful collaborations, and generating new hybrid cultural practices. It will feature keynotes, presentations, panel discussions, and performances by an international group of innovative and socially engaged artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, writers, designers, curators, patrons, and collectors.

Conference highlights include a keynote by Peter Sellars, world-renowned theatre director and professor of World Arts and Culture at U.C.L.A., a private screening of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s new film Strange Culture, and a very special closing performance by award-winning playwright, actress and MacArthur Foundation fellow Anna Deavere Smith.

“Unlike any other gathering in the art world, Symposium C6 is bringing together people not just from the arts, but from a variety of disciplines and practices who can generate new ideas, collaborations and solutions to the challenges we face”, according to Lynne Sowder, conference organizer with Victoria Burns of Burns Sowder Arts Advisory. “We hope this gathering helps create new connections between participants and attendees and points the way toward new, vital, engaged cultural practices.”

The three-day conference will feature over 30 speakers working across various disciplines. Topics and speakers will include:

New Capital(s), looks at new models of cultural activism, production and distribution with presenters including:

Stanley Hainsworth, Vice-President Global Creative for Starbucks Coffee Company; Rick Lowe, artist and founder of Project Row Houses; Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of the cultural production agency Creative Time; and Ruby Lerner, director of Creative Capital, an arts foundation modeled on venture capital concepts.

No Borders Here? explores the relationships between cultural practice and international nomadism, ubiquitous technology and new political alliances, with presenters including:

Artist, pilot, and award winning film maker Simone Aaberg Kærn; artist, engineer, former Director of the Experimental Product Design Initiative at Yale University Natalie Jeremijenko; designer Stephen Burks, whose is presently collaborating with crafts people in the developing world for Artecnica’s Aids to Artisans initiative; and Lu Jie, whose Long March Project is designed to “interrogate Chinese visual culture and revolutionary memory.”

Green World, examines how cultural practices are shaping and responding to a global ecological crisis, with artists, architects and designers including:

David Buckland, artist and creator of the Cape Farewell climate change project; Ed Gillespie, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Futerra, a consultancy developing creative communications for sustainability; Bruce Mau, visionary designer whose recent Massive Change project positions design as “one of the world’s most powerful forces…in a period were all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational and interconnected”; and artist and designer Lucy Orta whose Fluid Architecture and Refugee Wear blur the boundaries separating art, fashion and architecture.

Symposium C6 was conceived and developed by Lynne Sowder and Victoria Burns of Burns Sowder Arts Advisory in collaboration with independent curator and critic Bruce Ferguson, and is produced by Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc.

Registration in advance is required; passes for single day and all three days are available.

Posted by jo at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Skopje

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Skopska Street

Upgrade! Skopje presents Skopska Street: (exhibition on two locations) :: Tuesday, 10th of April 2007 :: Openings: press to exit project space, 8 p.m.; Open Graphic Art Studio – Museum of the City of Skopje, 9 p.m.

You are kindly invited to the opening of the group exhibition Skopska Street on Tuesday, 10th of April 2007, on which 19 artists from the group NMP will be presented. The exhibition is exposed on two different locations and will be open on a same day. The first opening will take place at press to exit project space at 8 p.m. (Marsim Gorki 19), and the second at the Open Graphic Art Studio – Museum of the City of Skopje at 9 p.m. (Mito Hadzivasilev Jasmin bb) The exhibition will be open until 19th of April 2007.

Skopska Street is initiated by the curator Elena Veljanovska. In the realization of the curatorial concept were involved: Elena Veljanovska and Antonio Dimitrov (Line [I+M] initiative and movement), Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski (press to exit project space), and Atanas Botev (Open Graphic Art Studio – Museum of the City of Skopje).

Please find the text about the exhibiton below:

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Skopska Street, a former main artery of the city of Skopje (today only some 100-odd meters long) is the leitmotif of the exhibition. In a photograph by Ana Jakimska, an NMP member, we can see the remains of that old part of town blending together with a new, urban, post-earthquake architecture. It cuts the city in two and creates a new urban structure, leaving an occasional trace of the old town. The show attempts to present a new group of artists and mark the changes occurring in the city today, which some day are to be part of a past urban culture.

The traces that the artists leave behind, working in public spaces, change the city’s countenance and the visual culture of its passers-by. Utilizing these spaces as their own, free of the rules and limitations of galleries, they make up their own protocol and their own development line. Thus, parallel galleries are created, with no lesser merits than spaces intended to promote current artistic outcomes. The city, in fact, transforms into an open gallery. Authors and critics alike still feel ambivalent towards this sort of artistic creation. Experience, however, has shown that the process is inevitable when establishing new cultural phenomena. The NMP authors, have, with different approaches, for three years been leaving their marks all over real and virtual Skopje, precisely in such public areas. Group endeavors are more common to the younger generations, as alternatives to the already established social and aesthetic norms and criteria. They have proved to be most inspirational and crucial in introducing new aesthetic values. The demand for organizing like-minded individuals in groups must needs result in change. NMP is still a fairly new group, so its future is still uncertain. At this time, however, its modus operandi is to absorb a number of individual energies and forms of expression. NMP is a fusion of tendencies of a generation still building on its visual and audio articulation. The idea for this particular show originated from the need for timely follow-up and archiving of such changes, and the support aims to present this line of work to a larger audience.

The common ground is precisely the exhibition, which is to take place on two different locations on the same day. The locations chosen have different positioning within the city itself. The first one, the press to exit project space, directly in passers’ faces in the most dynamic part of town, and the second, the Open Graphic Studio – the Museum of the City of Skopje, hidden behind the symbol of the old Skopje, envelop the busiest core of the city. Their respective positions and physical features impose different atmospheres, in which authors of diverse sensibilities are to be presented. They represent the two faces of the city, the real and the imaginary, and fuse together audio and visual experiences on both locations.

Upgrade! Skopje is a monthly gathering of new media artists and curators. Upgrade! Skopje will organize presentations, exhibitions, workshops, discussions, sound performances, dj and/or vj gigs, video presentations… with general aim for promotion and development of new media art practices, through various kinds of exhibiting and performing. Meetings can take place on various locations in Skopje like: clubs, cafes, galleries or studios. We think that is very important to find different space, appropriate for each kind of event, building different type of audience, establishing collaboration with various scenes, building stronger scene, community and networking. Upgrade! Skopje is opened for every artist that is travelling this way to present their work here, get promoted and become introduced with the local scene with aim to develop collaboration/communication. Upgrade! Skopje is organized by Line – initiative and movement.


Posted by jo at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2007

Turbulence Commission:

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AVAIR: Brad Kligerman

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR)--a project of James Morgan, Amy Wilson and Jay van Buren--is an extended performance whose purpose is to investigate the nature of art making in the 3D synthetic environment of Second Life. It is an examination of policy and institution, as well as a reflection on place and art. Artists are given a stipend and technical support. They are expected to have an open studio, produce an exhibition, and make a public presentation. Their methodologies are documented here. Orchestrated through the classic structure of the gallery, the performances run at any time of the day or night, and create a platform for exchange between artist and audience.

Brad Kligerman, Ars Virtua's first AIR, is winding down his 11 week tenure. He is fabricating three machines capable of extracting in-world data pertinent to discovering the rules of materiality inherent to Second Life: (1) the Calibration Machine for reading the world; (2) the Analogy Machine for learning about it; and, (3) the Mutation Machine for writing, inventing and transforming it. His exhibition will consist of interactive hyper-spaces made of images, ideograms and holograms. Join us for the opening on April 20 at midnight (SLT), and April 21 at noon (SLT). If you do not have an avatar, go to Second Life and register for a free account; download the client and launch it. Teleport to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dowden/42/60/52.

"Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR)" is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHY

Brad Kligerman is an architect, artist and teacher. Previous projects include the design of astronaut work and habitation spaces that address the body's physical and psychological adaptation to the temporal and spatial environment of low orbit space for the NASA space station, Grumann Corp; and the design of large scale architectural projects, for instance The Bibliotheque de France (Dominique Perrault Architects); and 544 Park Avenue (SOM). Kligerman also produces gallery installations and multi-media projects.

Posted by jo at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2007

iPoi -- Accelerating Digital Live Art

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Jennifer G. Sheridan

Lansdown Lecture: iPoi -- Accelerating Digital Live Art :: Speaker: Jennifer Sheridan :: Date: Wednesday 18 April 2007, Time: 4:45pm for one hour :: Location: Middlesex University, London, EN4 8HT, Cat Hill Campus: Room 97, LONDON :: Admission is free

iPoi: Accelerating Digital Live Art: Imagine swinging a tiny computer around your body to create live visuals and audio like a DJ or VJ. iPoi is based on the ancient Maori art of poi and uses a wireless, peer-to-peer, sensor-packed upgrade of the original. iPoi is created by embedding tiny computers in tennis balls, and swinging them wildly around your body. iPoi uses the wonder of acceleration, the hidden force that is in our every movement and has been performed in nightclubs, festivals and conferences in the UK, North America and Australia.

Dr. Jennifer G. Sheridan is a Digital Live Artist and Researcher who specialises in Digital Live Art (the intersection of HCI, Live Art and Computing). Her research focuses on encouraging witting transitions in performative interaction by creating embedded computing and tangible exertion interfaces for nightclubs and festivals. She is Director of BigDog Interactive Ltd., a company of computing experts and artists who create bespoke code and hardware for installations and performance events. She has exhibited her work in the UK, North America and Australia and has numerous publications and in the fields of Digital Live Art, mobile phone interaction and tangible computing. She co-founded the (re)Actor conference series and is currently consulting on a number of projects including AHRC Designing for the 21st Century: Emergent Objects (Leeds University), and Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies (Lancaster University, Microsoft, Nokia).

Any enquires to Stephen Boyd Davis: s.boyd-davis@mdx.ac.uk
http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/

Posted by jo at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)

ITP Spring Show 2007

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Free and Open to the Public

ITP Spring Show 2007 :: May 8 and 9 from 5 to 9 pm :: A two-day festival of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP :: Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 721 Broadway, 4th Floor, South Elevators, New York NY 10003 [Take the left elevators to the 4th Floor] :: 212-998-1880; itp.inquiries[at]nyu.edu.

An oversized Greenwich Village loft houses the computer labs, rotating exhibitions, and production workshops that are ITP -- the Interactive Telecommunications Program. Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 230 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry's most daring and prolific practitioners.

Posted by jo at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

The New School: Democratization and the Networked Public Sphere

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boyd, Scholz and Zuckerman

[READ A REVIEW] Democratization and the Networked Public Sphere: Panel Discussion with danah boyd, Trebor Scholz, and Ethan Zuckerman :: Friday, April 13, 2007, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. :: The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, New York City :: Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff, and alumni with valid ID.

This evening at the Vera List Center for Art & Politics will discuss the potential of sociable media such as weblogs and social networking sites to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad participation.

danah boyd will argue four points. 1) Networked publics are changing the way public life is organized. 2) Our understandings of public/private are being radically altered 3) Participation in public life is critical to the functioning of democracy. 4) We have destroyed youths' access to unmediated public life. Why are we now destroying their access to mediated public life? What consequences does this have for democracy?

Trebor Scholz will present the paradox of affective immaterial labor. Content generated by networked publics was the main reason for the fact that the top ten sites on the World Wide Web accounted for most Internet traffic last year. Community is the commodity, worth billions. The very few get even richer building on the backs of the immaterial labor of very very many. Net publics comment, tag, rank, forward, read, subscribe, re-post, link, moderate, remix, share, collaborate, favorite, write. They flirt, work, play, chat, gossip, discuss, learn and by doing so they gain much: the pleasure of creation, knowledge, micro-fame, a "home," friendships, and dates. They share their life experiences and archive their memories while context-providing businesses get value from their attention, time, and uploaded content. Scholz will argue against this naturalized "factory without walls" and will demand for net publics to control their own contributions.

Ethan Zuckerman will present his work on issues of media and the developing world, especially citizen media, and the technical, legal, speech, and digital divide issues that go alongside it. Starting out with a critique of cyberutopianism, Zuckerman will address citizen media and activism in developing nations, their potential for democratic change, the ways that governments (and sometimes corporations) are pushing back on their ability to democratize.

About the Panelists:

danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. Her dissertation focuses on how American youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Xanga, etc. In particular, she is interested in how teens formulate a presentation of self and negotiate socialization in mediated contexts amidst invisible audiences. This work is funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal learning.

Trebor Scholz is a media theorist, artist, and activist who is interested in the economics of sociable media and networked social life in relation to politics and education. As founder of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC), he contributed essays to several books, journals, and periodicals and co-edited "The Art of Free Cooperation" (forthcoming). He is currently professor and researcher in the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo and research fellow at the Hochschule fuer Kunst und Gestaltung, Zurich (Switzerland).

Ethan Zuckerman is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, and on the use of technology for international development. With Rebecca MacKinnon, he leads a project called "Global Voices" which focuses on using weblogs around the world to close gaps in mainstream media coverage. In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa.

* This event is presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “The Public Domain.”

Posted by jo at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

Mistaken As Red

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Loraine Leeson's Art for Change

With political art now celebrated in galleries and museums all over the world what happens when practices tied to specific struggles and places are institutionalised? At the recent retrospective of textbook political artist, Loraine Leeson, Peter Suchin uncovers the remains of an earlier discussion intitiated by Art & Language to propose a radical reconsideration of Leeson’s art and the terms of the debate.

The recent retrospective of the work of Loraine Leeson at London’s SPACE studios, Art for Change, throws up a number of questions about the efficacy and even the desirability of something one might term, for the sake of convenience at least, ‘political art’. This is an issue to which I will return below. Based on a much more substantial exhibition organised by the New Society of Visual Artists in Berlin, 2005, the London show focused upon a number of key projects organised and executed by Leeson in collaboration with her former partner and colleague Peter Dunn... ‘The exhibition’, according to the accompanying leaflet, ‘celebrates Loraine Leeson as an artist whose work has influenced and supported social change for over thirty years. Leeson’s practice’, the text tells us, ‘is underpinned by a collaborative process which has involved health workers, trade unions, tenants associations, action groups, young people, schools and institutions, as well as other artists and professionals.’" Continue reading Mistaken As Red by Peter Suchin, Mute.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Brussels/Ghent

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On Public Space and Sound Practices

Upgrade! Brussels/Ghent: On Public Space and Sound Practices :: We examine and discuss meshed networks in public space. Artist networks reappropriate public space by means of sound, and comment and annotate public space by soundtags. Can we speak of hybrid transmission spaces? Do these mobile modes of exchange provoke new creative practices? Project presentations by Tapio Mäkelä; Justin Bennett; Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann. Discussion moderated by Annemie Maes and IRC chat by Dusan Barok.

Tapio Mäkelä: My first radio project was called Sound Calendar in 1994 with artist association MUU. Sound Calendar consisted of 24 sound pieces by participating artists, broadcast before morning and evening news on Finnish national radio and through intercoms at eight Finnish railway stations. My own piece in the work made me an accidental radio hacker as it caused a shut down of the entire Finnish radio network for approximately 10 minutes. My interest in hybrid uses of radio has to do with combining Internet radio with listening or participatory interfaces in public spaces.

I am currently developing “Translocal radio workshops” in two locations in the Barents Sea region. Inter-connected artist led workshops in Kirkenes (No) and Murmansk (Ru) bring together media and sound artists and community groups to develop content locally and across the border. The work is presented through public events and temporary listening environments as well as through Internet radio and temporary FM. The workshops are planned for late summer this year and Spring 2008.

In the summer of 2008 a fourth Polar Circuit workshop will take place in the Baltic Sea. Concept:Islands, among other topics, invites participants to experiment with radio and mesh-up networks and alternative energy solutions. In both of these workshops I am working on a sound archive with geo-annotation, not with an interest of GPS as such, but how the location of samples and interviews can also be a meaningful archival interface.

Justin Bennett is an artist and composer working with sound and visual media. While living in Sheffield in the 1980's he colllaborated with bands such as Hula, TAGC, and Fabricata Illuminata. Since 1989 he is based in the Netherlands. Bennett is best known for his work with field recordings, which he uses to create installations, soundwalks, CD-releases and live performances. Much of his work is concerned with urban space and the relationship of sound to place. In the last few years he worked with GEM Den Haag, the CCS, Paris, the Guangzhou Triennial, moorroom Roma, Sonic Arts Network, UK. Upcoming projects include a permanent sound work for a public space in The Hague and a text-based piece for a park in Luxembourg. He collaborates with, among others, BMB con., Renate Zentschnig, Grand Mal, 242.pilots, Kreutzerkompani.

Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann talk about the radio lives and works that have been encountered by in their last one and a half years on the road around Europe. Working in more than a dozen countries and meeting people from all over Europe, visiting their projects, doing workshops and participating in radio conferences, festivals and live-to-air events, has give these 'radio gypsies' a unique overview of the state of experimental radio activity across Europe today. In this presentation they will also give you a taste of their own approach to radio production, and demonstrate how their ongoing enthusiasm for the medium allows them to develop singular radio events in cooperation with others.

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

AXIOM Gallery presents:

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Selected Works from Aspect Magazine

AXIOM Gallery presents: Selected Works from Aspect Magazine :: April 6th - May 6th :: Opening reception: Friday April 6th, 6-9pm :: AXIOM Gallery is located on the ground floor level of the Green Street Subway ("T") station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets, Boston :: Hours: Wednesday, Thursday 6-9pm - Friday and Saturday, 2-5pm, or by appointment.

Works Selected from Aspect Magazine, a collaboration between AXIOM Gallery and Aspect Magazine, features works that demonstrate the depth of contemporary media art and the breadth of artists working within the realm of new and experimental media.
Featuring: Jim Campbell, Tony Cokes, Jill Magid, and Christopher Miner.

Posted by jo at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

SPACE2/ | Transcendence

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A Psychocartography of Conceived Presence

(Oslo, 03.04.2007) Following the success of the installation Space2 at ROM for Art + Architecture, its new location is now at Euklides (Pilestredet 75C, Oslo). Space2 is the continued development of Transcendence, developed by the Norwegian architectural laboratory SERENDIPIT:US (Eli Goldstein & Kjersti Wikstrxm) at Dispatx Art Collective.

During 2 simultaneous journeys in Berlin and New York, an archive of experience (atlas of emotion) was established. Through conceiving presence, the project Transcendence crystallizes the condition of sensing one space while imagining / conceiving the presence of another - a process that mirrors the shared experience of being in two places at the same time, whilst co-existing in the shared virtual space.

Hundreds of visitors from architects and artists to established writers, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers have experienced the playful and interactive installation in the past three weeks. Space2 has a critical focus on the processes and procedures of design - constituting in a methodological experiment within the borders of art, architecture and research.

Focusing on the creative method - the organisational process that translates creative vision to creative product - is fast moving beyond online curatorial platforms such as Dispatx. The Norwegian Architecture Association (NAL), the Association for Interior Design, and KHIO, the Oslo School of Art, have all expressed significant interest in SERENDIPIT:US as a result of this work.

Euklides is focused on crossing borders between art & design, looking to make anti-standardized products and building commercial models related to them. For SERENDIPIT:US, this touches on some of the main reasons for engaging in the study of subjectivity, personal habitats and spatial values, as well as these factors' role in the perception of space and in generating new spaces or objects. Focusing on methodology and analysis in generating and exploring real or imagined spaces, their work approaches phenomenological aspects of spatial conditions.

Dispatx Art Collective is a curatorial platform for the development and presentation of contemporary art and literature.

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

WESTERN FRONT NEW MUSIC Presents

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ALTERNATE VISIONS

WESTERN FRONT NEW MUSIC Presents the West Coast "virtual" premiere of ALTERNATE VISIONS, a new opera by Vancouver composer John Oliver and librettist Genni Gunn :: May 5, 2007 at 5pm :: The Western Front, 303 East 8th Avenue (near Main) :: Admission by donation: Free to Western Front Members :: Reservations / Information: 604 876-9343 / www.front.bc.ca

An alternate vision of love: Staged in Montreal by Chants Libres, and broadcast by a live video stream to the Western Front in Vancouver, this bilingual opera presentation is truly an encounter mediated by cyberspace. Taking the subject matter of computer dating as its focus, Alternate Visions addresses the internet¹s power to create personas and perfection. In a space where musical styles merge, real and virtual universes collide, robotics and intelligent skin mingle...what happens to human carnal relations?

Two singles develop a relationship over the Internet in a virtual 3D environment; they decide to break the ice of cyberspace and meet in person at a high-tech karaoke bar, which is in fact the set of Alternate Visions, a reality television show. At the last minute, they both get cold feet and ask their respective best friends to take their places. Why take the risk? Why change anything?

Misunderstandings multiply ad infinitum, raising questions around the perception of reality and the culture of identity. Cher internet, peux-tu me dire qui je suis?

Vancouver audiences can attend this live large screen video broadcast of the closing night performance of Alternate Visions on Saturday May 5 at 5pm at the Western Front. Please reserve seats by calling 604 876-9343 - admission is by donation at the door. The opera will be performed in English and French.

Music: John Oliver, on a libretto by Genni Gunn. Soloists: Rinde Eckert (tenor, Richard), Jacinthe Thibault (mezzo-soprano, Valerie), ÉthelGuéret (soprano, Susan), Patrick Mallette (baritone, TV host). The three Girls: Jean-François Daigneault (countertenor), Ghislaine Deschambault (soprano) and Claudine Ledoux (mezzo soprano). Musicians: The Bradyworks ensemble, directed by Cristian Gort.

Production team: Pauline Vaillancourt (stage direction), Jean Décarie (visual design and interactivity), Jean Gervais (lighting), Pascal Dufaux (stage design), Liz Vandal(costumes), Joanna Berzowska (interactive textiles), Jacques-Lee Pelletier (makeup).

This opera is co-produced with the DEII(Laboratory of Immersive and Interactive environment development), in partnership with the Hexagram Institute for Research and Creation in Interuniversity Media Arts andTechnologies, and in collaboration with Bradyworks, the Usine C and the CIAM.

Since its beginnings in 1990, CHANTS LIBRES has always presented operatic repertoire with a modern flavor and has constantly explored new techniques and approaches in the sphere of vocal art. The company works in close collaboration with creators and researchers of all disciplines. ALTERNATE VISIONS, the company's 12th operatic production, integrates state-of-the-art technologies.

For further information, contact DB Boyko, Music Curator, Western Front New Music 604 876-9343 newmusic[at]front.bc.ca

Posted by jo at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2007

Coverage of Gameworld at Laboral

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You'd be right to think Gijon, Spain might seem like an unlikely place to host the largest exhibition on the field of artistic games to date. This didn't stop thousands from attending, many who flew in for the show. The great turnout was of course also due to the fact that Gameworld was just one of four concurrent exhibitions inaugurating the opening of the Laboral, the gigantic new Asturian art center (North of Spain).

I arrived on Tuesday after spending a few sleepless nights working on my own piece for the exhibit, a 2 player version of my Second Person Shooter in the form of a QuakeIII mod. I had no idea quite what to expect, though I'd helped out curators Carl Goodman and Daphne Dragona a little with advice on what shape the show should've taken. I walked into an enormous interior partly-clad blue landscape, a lot of hardware, whirring drills and a few dozen people looking quite confused about it all. This is what it looked like less than 36 hours before the opening (thanks to Feizi for the snap). More >> [blogged by Julian on Selectparks]

Posted by jo at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

Second Life Flood

An immersive demonstration of global warming's worst case scenario impact-- whole regions throughout Second Life, submerged under water. [via]

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lifecrawler lifestream service

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Bring secondlife presence on your website. Increase your coverage of your secondlife events by streaming your outstanding performance realtime to the internet.

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ARS PUBLICA REPORT

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By Ana Buigues

ARS PUBLICA – Ana Buigues´ report: March 27th, 2007 :: What follows is the curator’s report on the development of the Ars Publica project based on the theoretical context for the ¨raison d´être¨ of this net.art project.

The inception of the Ars Publica project started in the second half of 2005, when we, the Ars Publica team, in view of the lack of a painstaking study about the art market from the artists´ point of view, felt the need to fill this void through the realization of a study that would include art theory and case studies in a project that would be a combination between an academic article and an art project. After NKR (Norsk Kulturråd - Arts Council Norway) approved our application and granted us financial support in January 2006, via the Kunst og ny teknologi fond (Art and Technology Fund), we were able to conduct most part of the research. Bjørn Magnhildøen as net.artist and programmer established the ¨physical¨[1] point of departure - the Ars Publica web site, which includes the net art sale exhibition, the library and the museum. Thanks to Magnhildøen´s technical implementation of the dynamics of electronic commerce the Ars Publica web site is completely prepared for the interaction with the public and customers.

Until now we have focused on the general public front, having collected records about the responses obtained from the public who accessed Ars Publica from the Internet, as well as from a few off line performances, as Magnhildøen explains in his report of the project:

In the next months we will concentrate on the marketing of our project on the elitist front: established art and culture institutions. We are presently working on the design of CDs and DVDs to be distributed to world wide libraries, museums, and universities. The contents of the CDs and DVDs will consist of a version of the Ars Publica project accompanied by a critical essay written by the curator, Ana Buigues, contextualizing this art project. The essay is still under development and what follows are excerpts from some of its sections. The entire text will be published in the Ars Publica web site as soon as it is completed.

Ars Publica : The Art Market and Corporate Parody

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The tradition of corporate parody in conceptual art and literature, includes, among others, the works of General Idea, Yves Klein, and Robert Morris with pieces about monetary value of art, or Hans Haacke's interventions in social economy, like the series of Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, 1971 -- as well as his collaboration with Bourdieu, in the dialogue Libre-échange, 1994.

Ars Publica basically is a commentary on the paradox that while art constitutes another type of production to be commercialized, the financial situation in which most artists encounter themselves, is due to a sub-paradox that responds on the one hand to the irrelevant socio-economic value generally associated with art; and on the other hand with the elitist channels of art commercialization. Artworks have come to be considered consumer goods and, as such, depend on the laws of offer and demand, functioning within free-market structures based on price competition. However, perhaps these principles cannot always be applied to the world of culture and art, and instead of a growing 'cultural industry' closely linked to the 'art market,' what artists might rather need is certain protection from the State, since there are some activities which cannot be measured solely by the economic benefit they generate. Neither can the value of a specific artist be determined solely by the prices previously paid for her/his works, or by the promotion art dealers and art critics attach to a certain type of art or artist (based on both their economic self interest and personal preferences, which, in turn, may also be linked to their connections to the art market).

The project Ars Publica is a mélange of interventions within social networks: what we know as situationism, urban art/action, political protest, performance, and net.art, with an emphasis on the economies of [artistic] loss and [economic] profit. The foundations of Situationism, and Fluxus will present the existing analogies among the Internet networks, urban zones, and social structures that mediate our perception of the world, and how they can be challenged through certain actions and interventions. The Baudrillardian concepts of simulacrum and spectacle, are also included here to deal with the distorted, and accommodated messages transmitted by the media, and in this case through the Internet, and how it has fulfilled the needs for the consumers of a society of spectacle and entertainment. As it is known, the Situationist International (SI), formed in 1957 and leaded by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's were a group of artists and political theorists, with a Marxist and anarchist ideology, who rebelled against bourgeois societly values, in line with the traditions of Dada, Surrealism, CoBrA, and Fluxus. They were strongly opposed to a growing consummerist society and their artistic statements commented on concepts of art production and trade. Some of their actions included attacks to established art circles and academies.[2]

Ars Publica : Art + Technology = Public Domain

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In 1968 Barthes theorized the elimination of the author as the ultimate creator. An effect of this theorizing has been to assign a new, protagonist role to the spectator, that depends on the ways that a given spectator interprets and conceptualizes a given artwork. Walter Benjamin’s famous elaboration of the aura surrounding the sacred object and the artwork took as a positive sign its disintegration. [3] Michel Foucault also took up these conceptions in a particular way that interests us here, since he emphasized the operations of power in society. Foucault conceives of the author and artist-genius as a Romantic myth imbued with patriarchy and elitism. [4] In his revision of history, he analyses the discourses of power, knowledge, and truth and their legitimation through social institutions, arguing that individuals, rather than institutions, can and do transmit certain power and knowledge to different strata of society. He also suggests that what we call an "author" varies from period to period according to the social function assigned to the author.

Ars Publica : net art

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We must call to mind that while the media has contributed to the spread of cultural stereotypes, standards of acculturation, consumerist bombarding, and power centralization, Internet activity continues this legacy on the one hand (when the Net acts as a mass media tool) and tries to break from it on the other hand (when activist networks enter the game). The use of the Internet for political contestation is what is known as “hacktivism,” in which a hacker’s rebellious mentality and activist commitment meet. Again, “hackers” without computers existed before, since radical artists have been commenting on social injustice and art institutions firstly subtly and later more openly, and made use of either mainstream or underground transmitters for many years. The Internet contribution to this aspect is higher bandwidth, a complimentary effect to off line activism, omni directionality and participation. Secondly, there is the concept of simulacra and e-commerce, advertisement and media, that also bears some attention, making the critique to capitalism and consumer art culture more easily 'believable'. The Internet offers a whole new scope and scale to such strategies, since it constitutes the virtual reality version of social and economic reality

[1] The word _physical_ is here in quotation marks due to the virtual nature of a web site, although nowadays the widespread use of the Internet has almost turned the virtual spaces into physical ones.

[2] The Situationist International (SI) was formed in 1957 as the result of the merging of the Lettrist International leaded by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (IMIB). The situationists envisioned a somehow 'ideal city' where its inhabitants would have a more playful, meaningful and just life. They created sketches of their envisioned city which reminds one of the Utopian Socialists such as Charles Fourier, Etienne-Louis Boullee, etc. Psychogeography was used to describe the study of the urban environment’s effects on the psyche. The situationists produced psychogeographical reports based on the results of their dérives (drifting). They saw themselves as abolishing the notion of art as a separate, specialized activity and transforming it so was part of fabric of everyday life.

Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, "Art and Modern Life," in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1992) 693-700.

Further reference to other aspects of the situationists, such as de detournement and 'spectacle' are provided further ahead in this chapter.

[3] German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-40), working within the context of the Marxist Frankfurt School envisioned to a certain degree some of our postmodern cultural and artistic conditions. He provided a model for how the artist might function politically through changing the forms of artistic production. In “The Author as Producer,”1934, he argued that the uniqueness of the aura of a work of art, would be eliminated and that this would result in a more democratic consumption of imagery, since until then art appreciation and ownership were reserved for an elitist public, where art would shift from that negative theology dependant on the aura, fetish, and ritual, to be based on politics. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” See Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, “Freedom, Responsibility and Power,” in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1992), 512-519, “The Author as Producer,” Harrison and Wood, Ibid, 483-488.

[4] Keith. Moxey, The Practice of Theory. Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 56

By Ana Buigues - Curator of Ars Publica
http://www.plus.el-estudio.net/cvw.html

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Roy Block: A platform game with real platforms

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Experimental gaming these days is all about playing with reality. From virtual reality and alternate reality to augmented reality, more and more people are trying to merge video games and real life in interesting ways. Sebastien Schmieg's art project/game Roy Block adds another term to this growing list: mixed reality.

Roy Block uses real life, handheld wooden building blocks as the platforms for an on-screen avatar. A hidden camera detects the blocks as they're pressed against the tracing paper projection screen, translating their position and alignment to in-game data.

The "gameplay" in the project is pretty basic -- just guide the periodically jumping Roy from one end of the screen to the other while avoiding floating enemies -- but Schmieg sees the potential for more complex play by assigning different functions to each side of the blocks. Schmieg also has an idea for a version "as big as a wall ... with blocks so big that you need both hands to hold one." Would that be mixed reality exergaming? More buzzwords, stat! [Posted by Kyle Orland on Joystiq]

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Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center hosts CADRE Laboratory Salon

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Eric Paulos

April 5th, Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center--CADRE Salon--with artist and researcher Eric Paulos :: 6:30 PM SLT.

Eric Paulos is a Senior Research Scientist at Intel in Berkeley, California where he leads the Urban Atmospheres project - challenged to use innovative methods to understand society and the future fabric of our emerging digital and wireless public urban landscapes and lifestyles. Eric's research interests span a deep body of work in Urban Computing, Social Telepresence, Robotics, Tangible Media, and Intimate Computing. Eric received my PhD in EECS from UC Berkeley where he researched scientific, and social issues surrounding internet based telepresence, robotics, and mediated communication tools. During that time he developed several internet based tele-operated robots including, Personal Roving Presence devices (PRoPs) and Space Browsing helium filled tele-operated blimps.

You must register at http://cadre.sjsu.edu/salons/ to attend in RL.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

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April 04, 2007

Neo-nomad ID:

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Cati Vaucelle

Yasmine Abbas challenged [Cati Vaucelle] on mobile-related questions for her NID series. The interview.

Yasmine initiated an interview serie the NID. The NID stands for Neo-nomad ID. The concept wants to push the envelop of a classical interview by providing readers clues to reflect on mobilities, and the paradoxes engendered. These NIDs are "tranches de vies", meaning "slices of lives", rather than a questionnaire listing projects. They dwell into the intimate and the everyday life of beings to understand better our relationship to mobilities and technologies. Necessarily, because the method of investigation relates more to ethnography than journalism, I felt that visuals were essential to the NID. Also, NID in French means "nest". [via] Come to Upgrade! Boston on April 12 to here Cati and Yasmine.

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Participatory Urbanism

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Phone as Environmental Instrument

Last week in Oslo, i attended a very inspiring talk that Tom Igoe gave at the Oslo School of Architecture. He presented open source ideas and explained their impact on the way we think about space.

Among the projects he showed was Participatory Urbanism, a work by Eric Paulos, Ian Smith and RJ Honicky that turns the mobile phone into a “networked mobile personal measurement instrument."

On the one hand, there's a sophisticated device, the mobile phone, which provides us very little insight into the actual conditions of the terrain we traverse with it.

On the other hand is the fact that we must defer to a handful of civic government installed environmental monitoring stations that use extrapolation to derive a single air quality measurement for an entire metropolitan region. Such data doesn't reflect the dynamic variability arising from daily automobile traffic patterns, human activity, and smaller industries.

0aaghana.jpg [Left: Carbon Monoxide readings made with taxicabs across Accra, Ghana] The goal of Participatory Urbanism is to provide mobile devices with new “super-senses” by enabling sensing technologies such as noise pollution, air quality, UV levels, water quality, etc. to be easily attached and used by anyone, especially non-experts.

Integrating simple air quality sensors into networked mobile phones promotes everyday citizens to uncover, visualize, and collectively share real-time air quality measurements from their own everyday urban lifestyles. This rich people-driven sensor data leverages community power imbalances, and can increase agency and decision maker understanding of a community's claims, thereby potentially increasing public trust.

Other projects Tom Igoe presented: Public Air Quality Indicator, Area's Immediate Reading and i'll add Neighbourhood Satellites. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization

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Experience, Movement and the Creation of New Political Forms

Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, Volume 6, Number 4: Experience, Movement and the Creation of New Political Forms, Brett Nielson and Ned Rossiter (eds).

This collection of essays was born somewhere between Moscow and Beijing. While the ephemera conference on the trans-Siberian train has already inspired an issue of this journal, the experience of that journey would raise, for some who were on the train, a number of issues that go way beyond that which unfolded between these points of departure and arrival. At stake are a series of questions about experience, movement and political life that were neither loaded nor unloaded with the baggage carried by each participant. More than the conference’s content, it was its form that interested us – which is to say its organizational process. ‘Organization without ends’ was one way in which this process was repeatedly described – a practice that intervenes at the level of human potentialities rather than some goal-oriented activity. A bringing together of bodies and minds not in common cause but in movement: attraction and rejection, combination and withdrawal. More >> [PDF]

::articles::

Towards a Political Anthropology of New Institutional Forms
Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter

The Artistic Device, or, the Articulation of Collective Speech
Brian Holmes

Outside Politics/Continuous Experience
Niamh Stephenson and Dimitris Papadopoulos

The Auto-Destructive Community: The Torsion of the Common in Local
Sites of Antagonism

Marina Vishmidt

Erasing the Line, or, the Politics of the Border
Carlos Fernandez, Meredith Gill, Imre Szeman and Jessica Whyte

Train of Thought: Movement, Contingency and the Imagination of Change
Helen Grace

::reviews::

Taking Over the Asylum
Nick Butler

Toward a 'Pro-biotic' Study of Organization
Roy Stager Jacques

Creativity and Class
Craig Prichard, Bronwyn Boon, Amanda Bill & Deborah Jones

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Paul Brown

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Stepping Stones in the Mist

Paul Brown, one of the most prominent pioneers of British computer art, is back in the UK, and will present his work at Tesla under the title Stepping Stones in the Mist :: April the 17th, 18:00 :: Malet Place, Eng 1.02 :: All are welcome.

This presentation is an ongoing, idiosyncratic and non-rigorous account of my work as an artist who has been involved in the field now known as Artificial Life for over 30 years. I begin with a few opinions that define my position within the visual arts (which is far from the current mainstream) and then go on to describe early influences from the 1960's and 70's that have framed my involvement in the field of computational/generative arts. This includes some examples of my work from this period. The latter part of the presentation describes my working methodology and includes examples of my more recent work and ends with a some speculations about where I may go in the future.

The title is a metaphor for my self view as an artist and individual. A long time ago I stepped off the bank of a misty river or lake and onto a line of stepping stones. Now, many years later, the stepping stones are shrouded in the mist. Those behind me are dimmed by the mists of memory and those in front are hidden by the mists of uncertainty. The one in front of me is quite clear (as is the one behind) but then they quickly fade as they progress. I have no idea what lies on the further bank, or indeed if such a shore even exists! Memories of the bank I left are now long eroded. I only really know where I am at this moment or, perhaps, where I have just been.

Statement: During my 35-year career as an artist my principal concern has been the systematic exploration of surface. Since 1974 my main tool has been the computational and generative process. I have established a significant international reputation in this field of work and was recently described by Mitchell Whitelaw as. one of the ... pioneers of a-life art (Metacreation - Art and Artificial Life, MIT Press, 2004, pp.146, 148-152).

My work is based in a field of computational science called Cellular Automata or CA's. These are simple systems that can propagate themselves over time. CA's are part of the origins of the discipline known as Artificial Life or A-life. I have been interested in CA's and their relationship to tiling and symmetry systems since the 1960's. Over the past 30 years I have applied these processes to time-based artworks, prints on paper and large-scale public artworks.

In my artwork I attempt to create venues which encourage the participant to engage both visually and physically with the work. Because my work emerges (in the computational sense) from game-like processes I include elements of play in order to capture and sustain the participant's attention.

Rather than being constructed or designed, these works " evolve". I look forward to a future where computational processes like the ones that I build will themselves make artworks without the need for human intervention. The creation of such processes is something that has always fascinated me.

Paul is currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex.

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Ars Virtua Presents:

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Fandomania & Furries

Fandomania & Furries :: Opening April 5 @ 1pm SLT thru May 25 :: go here.

Avatars express identity. The life of and choices made in creating ones avatar are processes that are well known and long lived in real life. Fandomania is an exhibit of works by Elena Dorfman from the soon to be released book by Aperture of the same name. The work is represented through portrait photography and provides an interesting window into the world of “cosplay.” “The theater of cosplay has no boundaries, is unpredictable, open-ended. It includes both the fantastic and the mundane, the sexually aberrant and innocent, female characters who become samurai warriors and brainy scientists, and male characters who magically change their sex,” as described by Dorfman.

In contrast to this both through medium and subject we are presenting the lifesized Fur-Suit portrait paintings of Jay Van Buren. These paintings are executed through lengthly ten hour sittings of the subject in a traditional painting studio. Three of these were exhibited at the BRAVO! art space in Rotterdam, a project of the Foundation D.S.P.S.

Ars Virtua finds the contrast of photography and painting interesting especially in the synthetic environment. The discussion of constructed identity is particularly relevent in this new medium and context.

ELENA DORFMAN’s work has appeared in the Village Voice, International Herald Tribune, Art & Auction, and Artweek. Her series, Still Lovers, appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions internationally and is the subject of two monographs. An exhibition of her work at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, opens on April 5.

http://arsvirtua.com
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Butler/229/16/52
http://aperture.org/fandomania

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Posted by jo at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

Day Of The Figurines at Lighthouse, Brighton

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UK Premiere

Blast Theory presents the world premiere of Day Of The Figurines, a mass participation artwork using mobile phones that is part board game and part secret society. Set in a fictional English town that is littered, dark and underpinned with steady decay, the game unfolds over 24 days, each day representing an hour in the life of the town. Up to 1000 players place their plastic figurines onto the board. They are moved by hand in a meticulous performance throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Players participate by sending text messages. They must help other players as they receive updates from the town, missions and dilemmas. They can also chat to players who are near them in the town using text messages as events unfold in the town: a gig by Scandinavian death metallists, an invasion by an Arabic army, a summer fete. Day Of The Figurines is the world’s first MUD (Multi User Domain) for mobile phones.

Opening times
4th to 27th April 12 – 4pm
Venue: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington Street, Brighton, BN1 4AJ

Day Of The Figurines was developed by Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at The University of Nottingham, Sony Net Services and The Fraunhofer Institute as part of the European research project IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming).

Additional tour Dates

Day Of The Figurines, Fierce! Festival, Birmingham, 18th May to 10th June
Can You See Me Now?, Donau Festival, Krems, Austria, 19th to 21st April
Can You See Me Now?, Dublin, 9th to 12th May

Can You See Me Now? won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Prix Ars Electronica and was nominated for a BAFTA Award.

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2007

The Present Group

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Anthroptic

The Present Group, a quarterly art subscription service, made public an interactive online version of their first edition today. The hand-made artist book “Anthroptic” is a collaboration between new media artist Ethan Ham and writer Benjamin Rosenbaum. It was produced for the organization’s subscribers, however, an interactive, digital version of the work is now available for everyone online, along with an interview with the artists, critiques, information on the books’ construction, and a forum for discussion.

Subscription Art: The Present Group is like a mutual-fund that produces art instead of profits. It enables a community of subscribers to support contemporary artists and receive original artwork in return. For an annual subscription of $150 TPG subscribers receive four limited edition works from four different contemporary artists. Artists submit proposals for projects that are reproducible in intent (i.e. will not lose quality by being reproduced). TPG chooses one project every season, collaborates with the artist to produce it, and return their subscribers’ investment in limited-edition artwork. Each piece is accompanied by information to help subscribers gain insight into the work, its creator, and recurring themes in the contemporary art world.

Anthroptic: "Anthroptic” is an edition of 80 hand-made artist books by Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum. The book contains 8 folios that pair one image with one “chapter” of the story. The images were taken from Ethan’s online project “Self-Portraits” in which he trained a facial recognition program to his face before unleashing it onto Flickr. While searching the millions of photos for its creator, the computer program sometimes made mistakes, identifying inanimate objects as Ethan. These mistake images became the starting point for Benjamin’s short, short story. Benjamin weaves these images into an exquisitely interconnected tale that can be read in any order.

A New Way of Supporting Contemporary Art: The Present Group’s goal is to create a new source of funding for artists while expanding the base of art lovers and collectors. They aim to de-mystify the art world by providing a free online resource and discussion area built around each piece. Subscribers can learn about and absorb each piece at their own pace, in the comfort of their own homes, without the intimidation factor of a gallery or museum. At only $150 per year, The Present Group provides an affordable opportunity to explore your tastes while collecting. It’s the most current contemporary art class you can take.

Posted by jo at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Future Histories of the Moving Image

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Call for Papers

Future Histories of the Moving Image: An international conference to be held at University of Sunderland :: 16-18 November 2007 :: Keynote Speaker: Professor Patricia Zimmermann (Ithaca College, New York), with other keynotes to be confirmed.

As is now widely acknowledged, with the advent of digital technology the nature of moving image production, distribution and exhibition has changed dramatically. In particular, a rapidly increasing number of people are now accessing an increasing volume and range of moving image material online. This technology is also changing the way in which we analyse and document current and historical moving image practices, as there has been a recent proliferation of digital archive and database projects relating to film, video and television practices. It is timely therefore to examine the changing ways in which we are circulating and interrogating moving image culture.

We would particularly welcome papers that address the following areas:

– What impact does the increasing reliance on database resources have on the nature of the histories we produce and write?
– History as database vs history as narrative.
– Implications of the proliferation of online critical writing (from refereed academic journals through to personal blogs) and its dissemination, with the blurring of the traditional distinction between professional and amateur writer.
– The role and implication of immediate online distribution/exhibition of works
– What impact is digital distribution having on theatrical exhibition?
– Issues arising from the perceived need on the part of major producers/broadcasters to develop content for multiple platforms.
– The implications of multiple producers being able to disseminate a wide range of material to multiple niche audiences (giving the idea of ‘narrowcasting’ a new meaning).
– Revival/development of found footage production practices with the availability of digital archives such as Library of Congress Internet Archive (including the Prelinger Archive) and BBC Open Archive initiative.
– Questions relating to the increasing accessibility online of moving image material in relation to intellectual property and the development of the Creative Commons copyright licence.
– The creative influence of database logic on film structure.

The conference will also host an open workshop – with participation by the Arts Council England, the Tate and the British Film Institute – which will address the issues of securing the sustainability and maximising the use/visibility of the growing number of film and video database/online research resources. The workshop is funded by the AHRC Networks and Workshops Scheme.

Please send proposals of 200-300 words for papers of approx. 20 minutes, together with a brief biographical note by 30 May 2007 to the conference organisers (Steven Ball, Julia Knight and Stephen Partridge) at futurehistories[at]sunderland.ac.uk

Future Histories of the Moving Image is a joint conference organised by the Univeresity of Sunderland, the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection (University of the Arts, London) and the Visual Research Centre REWIND project DJCAD at the University of Dundee, in collaboration with Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. All papers delivered at the conference will be considered for publication in the journal.

Posted by jo at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)

Groundbreaking:

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Extreme Landscapes in Grains and Pixels

This paper reflects on Groundbreaking: Extreme Landscapes in Grains and Pixels, a real-time generative installation commissioned from the authors by the UK Research Councils. The work interrogates visual and sonic representations of soil studies to reveal interaction and tension between extreme environments and cultural experience, between scientific understanding and contemporary soundart practice. The work offers a critique of scientific hierarchies; its assertions, assumptions and attendant aphorisms. Challenges to established hierarchies are embedded in science's history - Francis Bacon's Novum Organum still questions today's domains - and continue to resonate within debates about risk in science's future directions. Such a resonance is re-evaluated in processes of deduction, to link scientific assertion with societal comment, and abstraction, to link scientific modes of representation with artistic values of communication, visualisation and sonification .

People who live in geographically and socially marginalised areas, vulnerable to climate change, provide compelling impetus for this investigation. The Sahel is one such area, contrasting the desertified extremes of the Sahara with the needs of nomadic pastoralists and of settled agrarian peoples.

There are established deductive understandings of interaction between the environment and society at a regional- and local-scale; how people use (and used) the landscape to support their daily lives, how landscapes are managed to achieve this and influence the development of society. Repeated snapshots of the Sahel region offer one understanding, at least within subject domains entrained in sequences of similar studies: they suggest how adaptive strategies can be developed for the future of this region. Instead, we can break out of this entrenchment, investigate new forms of dialogue that examine atypical physical scales of human-landscape interaction. Evidence of human activity may be preserved in the sediment of an extreme landscape, and by examining these we gain an understanding of the nature and intensity of past human-landscape interactions in an extreme context, and a trajectory for the future.

This paper aims to further the comprehension of such interactions, reaching across barriers presented by different temporal and spatial scales: between landscape and the production of artefacts, between the scientific analysis of artefacts and their manufacture, between the perception of visual and sonified representations, and between micro-scale information and macro-scale evidence of extreme climatic change. In doing so, and with reference to the authors' installation work, novel understandings are elicited regarding the nature, scale and quality of the interfaces present.

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh 2007. Supported by Research Councils UK, NSW2007 Award.

Blackwell, T. and Young, M. (2004) Self-Organised Music. Organised Sound 9:2, 123-36

Adderley, W.P., et al (2004) Enhancing ethno-pedology: integrated approaches to Kanuri and Shuwa Arab definitions in the Kala-Balge region. Catena 58, 41-64.

Adderley, W.P., Simpson, I.A. and Davidson, D.A. (2006) Historic landscape management: a validation of quantitative soil thin section analyses. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 320-334.

Paul Adderley is a soil scientist with interests in geoarchaeology and environmental history. An RCUK Academic Fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland, he specialises in the sustainability of societies in extreme environments such as Greenland and the African Sahel; he lectures on topics surrounding environmental risk. Recent studies have centred on understandings of long-term societal-climatic interactions.

Michael Young is a composer with interests in computer music and interactive media. He lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London and cofounded the Live Algorithms for Music network www.livealgorithms.org. Recent compositions include Aur(or)a, a generative system for solo instrument and computer (2006) and Argrophylax (2005) for oboe and electronics.

Paul Adderley and Michael Young will speak a the MUTAMORPHOSIS conference, Nov 7-10 2007.


Posted by jo at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

1ST BIENNIAL OF THE END OF THE WORLD

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USHUAÏA PATAGONIA

USHUAÏA PATAGONIA: THE SENTINEL AT WORLD'S END :: Warning message for all humanity from the Land of Fire :: This year like every other, Fred Forest made sure to mark the occasion of the Fête de l'Internet, an event to which he was one of the initial contributors. And now, in the wake of interventions in Brazil and the USA, the multimedia artist has been called on to represent France during this the International Polar Year at the first Biennale of the End of the World in Ushuaia, Patagonia, at the heart of the Land of Fire.

Known for his critical approach and his mindful independence from the official contemporary art market, he represents an emerging category of artists refusing compromise with the dominant artistic system. Fred Forest's ambition is to have artists be exemplary new actors in direct contact with social, economic and political realities whose purpose is to "pacify" the world thus giving it back its meaning. Dubbed "The Sentinel at World's End," a lighthouse equipped with varied communications equipment will stand at the brink of the sea in Ushuaia, turned towards Ushuaia, and emitting distress signals.

The primary objective of these signals is to warn the world of the peril that mankind's blind madness places it in. Mass extinctions, the pillaging of natural resources, pollution, human violence of all breeds, fanaticisms, fundamentalisms, terrorism, economic disparities, ever-encroaching world mafias, gangrenous democracies, political and ethical obsolescence. "The Sentinel at World's End," propped between earth and sky, between pack-ice and the luminescence of The Land of Fire, will incessantly transmit this warning message along with other wavelengths. The beneficent fluctuations of these wavelengths will envelop the world in a light shawl, a shawl which would embody the precursory signs of a new consciousness. This emerging consciousness, wisdom, and intelligence will allow humanity to finally move towards a next level of individual and collective evolution at this time of crisis at the beginning of the third millennium

For Fred Forest, changing the world begins in your own front garden. Without an ecology of the mind, ecology its in classical sense is an empty promise, instrumentalized by politics, scientists, industry, and soon, no doubt, big business. Contact: reseauactif[at]wanadoo.fr

Posted by newradio at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

Moroccan Mixed media artists

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TROC ART: Art & Identity

TROC ART: Art & Identity :: Contemporary Art Exhibition: Foundation ONA (Villa des Arts) Casablanca / Rabat 2007 / Opening 12 April / 04 June 2007 in Casablanca / 2nd Opening 14 June in Rabat.

The Exhibition will be curated by the VIDEOKARAVAAN and will explore the new forms of art expressions with a new generation of Moroccan Mixed media artists. (Video, Photography, graphic design, installation, fine arts, new media, music, live performances.). Troc Art resembles video makers and mixed media artists from Moroccan different kind of backgrounds: some produce their work within Morocco, others are part of European migration... and others come from different contexts but, for critical or personal motives, have decided to immerse themselves in this one culture. We think that the reflection is made richer by this difference in the situations of the authors, which also helps to give a better understanding of the complexities of the tensions at play, and to offer new and more open keys for approaching the Moroccan culture.

The project seeks to put our ideas of national identity under pressure and to examine and challenge the processes of inclusion and exclusion in The Netherlands today. As questions of cultural identity and normative 'national' values become ever more of an issue in political and cultural debate the concept behind Be[com]ing Dutch is to move the agenda of multiculturalism from notions of toleration and difference towards building a shared but agonistic democracy on a cultural level through the use of one of the few remaining public sphere institutions left to us - the museum. It requires wide public participation, that is encouraged, prepared and committed to over a longer term than a single exhibition.To begin the project Be[com]ing Dutch we are issuing a call to join us in Eindhoven for a three day Gathering.

We invite you to come together to listen, debate and discuss with a variety of invited artists, thinkers and activists including (a.o.) Babak Afrassiabi, Abdellat! if Benfaidoul, Bik Van der Pol, Igor Dobrovici, Surasi Kusolwong, Sarat Maharaj, Sohelia Najand, Maria Pask, Mario Rizzi, Superflex, Nasrin Tabatabai, Abdelaziz Taleb, and Aline Thomassen. They will present ideas and models of art practice that challenge and critique our various understandings of identity and visibility and offer imaginative possibilities for organising ourselves collectively.

Posted by jo at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

Furthernoise.org

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April 2007

Welcome to the April issue of Furthernoise.org which features a host of new reviews on adventurous cross genre music, sound and writing. Included in this is our new net label release Appropriate Re-Appropriations which is a compilation of international musicians and sound artists compositions utilizing the Freesound Project archive. It is free to download with printed folded sleeve from Fn net label menu.

We introduce our new guest reviewer Derek Morton from US drone merchants Mikroknytes as well as podcasts of Furthernoise radio on BCfm.

We are also hosting a live performance by Derek Holzer & Rob Curgenven who will be mixing improvised field recordings and analogue synth explorations at the Blue Lagoon Cafe Bristol on 14th April from 8pm.

"Roggbif Records - Purveyors of Fine Norwegian Noise." (feature) Sten Ove Toft has been of a mainstay of Norwegian Noise for sometime and his Roggbif label is turning out some of the most interesting and aggressive music from the genre. The first time I met him however, it was a somewhat quiet affair. I had received a txt msg from someone saying "You should like this" a time and an address. Review by Mark Francombe.

"Clair / Shahar 'Avner's Arrival'" (review): John Clair and Jed Shahar record a session of 'electro acoustic improvisation'. This is news to the security guard whose venue they are in. An interesting conversation develops. Review by Mark McLaren

"Eavesdropping" (review): Blind people are not casual listeners. Blind since birth, Stephen Kuusisto recounts the surprise that comes when we are actively listening to our surroundings. There is an art to eavesdropping. Review by Mark McLaren

"Helicoids / Psychotic Breaks Mix CD - Alex Young" (review): In June 06 Alex Young created a special continuous mix for the Furthernoise Month Of Sundays live A/V event in London. Combining tracks from two of his releases, psychotic breaks and Helicoids. The result was a thirty-minute trip into frenetic beats, glitch textures, flowing synthesizer ambience and melodic tones. Review by Bill Binkelman

"Sonic Postcards - Sonic Arts Network" (review): Sonic Postcards is a UK wide education project devised and delivered by Sonic Arts Network. It is a unique and innovative project that enables 9-14 year old pupils from across the UK to explore and compare their local sound environments through the exchange of sound postcards with other schools via the internet. Review by Roger Mills

"SuperTexture by Gary Smith" (review): SuperTexture throws away post-processing and effects, leaving just Gary Smith, his guitar and amp to take us on a journey of virtuoso guitar experimentation. The first disc, Smith's solo work, is pure guitar and amp. The second disc features guests exploring each improvisation through their own interpretation. Review by Alex Young

"Terraform EP - Razing Darkness" (review): The journey begins with ominous bass drones and industrial machine noise in the track Gravity Damage. Its evident that we are exploring planetary territories through alien droid transmissions. Headphones are recommended if you prefer to maximize the dizzying array of stereo panning and acoustic mind fuck. Review by Derek Morton

Roger Mills
Editor, Furthernoise

Posted by jo at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

OknoPublic

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Nocturnal Performance Sessions

During our OknoPublic mini festival, we present nocturnal performance sessions related to the discussions of the day. Every evening performances start around 21h and will continue to about 23h, there will be no performance on thursday. On Saturday, everything is mixed up as Society of Algorithm brings a fresh B22F event of discussions and performances, starting at 19h. If you can't be there physically, you can catch the video stream here: http://okno.be

Performances Wednesday 04.04.07 – from 9pm -> 11pm: Tonic train (Sarah Washington & Knut Aufermann) :: Sarah and Knut form the ongoing duo Tonic Train. For her sounds Sarah Washinton creates hand-made electronic musical machines using bastardizing techniques such as circuit-bending on toys, ultrasonic devices and radio paraphernalia. Knut Aufermann uses modified feedback of a mixing desk and radio transmitter circuits. http://mobile-radio.net

Justin Bennett will combine field recordings with live inputs and processing. He's an artist and composer working with sound and visual media. While living in Sheffield in the 1980's he colllaborated with bands such as Hula, TAGC, and Fabricata Illuminata. Since 1989 he is based in the Netherlands. Bennett is best known for his work with field recordings, which he uses to create installations, soundwalks, CD-releases and live performances. Much of his work is concerned with urban space and the relationship of sound to space and location.

Little Solar System (Haraldur Karlson): The Little Solarsystem is an audiovisual performance originated by focusing on the rhythmical signals produced by our own little solar system. Taking the speed of time, signals and the location of the present, using human body controllers gives the experiment a view on another dimension. Hard facts are mixed with fantasy. As a work in progress based project, things can go to unexpected galaxies. The Little Solar system is prepared. Might there be a change to see and hear an inverted black hole? http://lhi.is

Performances friday 06.04.07 – from 9pm -> 11pm:

G-player.com (Jens Brand): BRUSSELS LAUNCH :: After G-Turns turned on at Oldenburg, Berlin and Luxembourg in spring 2007 our company decided to visit the home of OKNO for a little Q & A. On top, Mr. Brand, our sales and marketing representative will have the pleasure to hand out free BEELINERS to the people of Brussels! So don't miss it and join us at OKNO!

ecoradio (APO33): The radiophonic ecology is the reduction of produced materials and the recycling of other radio broadcasts available on the web. With this approach APO33 will use their own webradio production as sound source for aa performance and recycling webradio device. We see the radio as potential waste. The sound production as trash potential for a recycling radiophonic transmission and a way to rebuild our own production. No one will organize the recycling system, only a machine will use this material to re-compose a new piece based on its own development and its own logic.

elpueblodechina: Machines are composed of technological and non-technological elements. We can look at hardware, software and tools in general as - at least, a continuation of meshed ideas. Based on networks of conversation, pueblo wants to focus her sound performance on different talks maintained with people. Ideas and spontaneous connections that rise through sharing time and a common ground for inspiration may become the basis for material assemblages.

Performances saturday 07.04.07 – from 7pm -> 11pm

Society of Algorithm: An hour of topological études for network pieces :: Baku 2022 foundation will realize a streaming proceeding on 7 april 2007, 7 pm. within the framework of OKNO's public #3 :: The theme is 'the complexity of collaboration' and deals with the way we are performing using small meaningful units such as material, process, abstraction, hypothetical construct, etc... in a network situation: simple ideas combined would result in a complex outcome, people say - so let's try and see.... Guest appearances to be expected from the audience members and invitees attending OKNO's public #3 mini festival, as well as other online artists.

Masato Tsutsui, Jeroen Uytendael and Isjtar: Masato Tsutsui, Jeroen Uytendaele and Isjtar get together for a casual electrified jam. Post technoid textures, sonic rainclouds and architectural visuals melt together into a calamity of which the outcome is uncertain. Rhythm, timbre and polygons are the parameters that keep us together and will form the skeleton of the session.

oknopublic#03 public discussions and presentations (daily from 2pm till 6pm):

wednesday 4/4: Tales of a Connected City - (the last mile is the network)
thursday 5/4: on public space and sound practices
friday 6/4: on the reinvention of everyday practices
saturday 7/4: A = particles-waves-streams // B = the complexity of collaboration

detailed program and schedules: presentations and discussions; performances; installation

oknopublic#03 online

audiovisual streaming & IRC chats, daily from 2pm > 11pm

check site for streaminglinks and program updates; continuous streaming on
info: okno[at]okno.be

okno public01 onsite

04 > 07 april 2007, daily from 2pm > 11pm
@ okno – koolmijnenkaai 30/34 – 1080 Brussels – Belgium
metro Graaf van Vlaanderen / Comte de Flandres ::: tram 18

support

okno is supported by the Flemisch authorities, the VAF (Flemisch Audiovisual Fund) and the VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie) and is affiliated to upgrade!international

Posted by jo at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

Hidden Lives

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A Social Experiment

Everyone leads two lives. An 'outer' life filled with day-to-day activities and to do's. Jobs, routines, meals, meetings, bills, discussions about the weather. And then there is the 'inner' life. The things that you think but seldom say. Hidden Lives is a space to reflect on your innermost thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears and imaginings. Pause, let your soul drift, listen and then reveal your hidden life to the world. Hidden Lives aims to become a unique global artwork brimming with intimate, beautiful and moving self-expressions from people all over the world.

Hidden Lives, by Justin McMurray and Remko Steenstra, is a social experiment dabbling in the realms of authentic expression and intimate revelation. The website responses are uniquely personal and yet undeniably universal. When people have the opportunity and courage to share their hidden lives, it is a powerful reminder that, for everything that separates us, we are all intimately connected. Play around and see what lives are unveiled. Unveil your hidden life today.

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2007

Interface Space

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What is the Physicality of the Screen?

"You probably spend hours a day staring at this screen — working, playing, talking to friends, shopping. With so many creative people spending so much time on their computers it is no surprise that the computer interface itself has become source material for contemporary art. Daily immersion in a two-dimensional space has raised an intriguing question that many contemporary artists can’t resist: what is the physicality of the screen? The ubiquitous interface experience has created a symbiosis between the metaphorical space of the computer and the physical world.

The boundary between the screen and life started blurring with the first graphical user interface. Architectural metaphors like the desktop and the window were used to make the screen more intuitive. But these interfaces have gained so much symbolic importance in our lives that they have left their metaphorical antecedents behind. In his series of scrollbar pieces Jan Robert Leegte makes luminous recreations of browser handles. The sculptures are reminiscent of Dan Flavin’s work — both artists are interested in light and space." From Interface Space by Dmitri Siegel, Design Observer.

Posted by jo at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Boston

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Cati Vaucelle + Yasmine Abbas

UPGRADE! BOSTON: Cati Vaucelle + Yasmine Abbas :: WHEN: April 12, 7 pm :: WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge. Free parking in the lot on the corner or take the T to Central Square and walk 1 block.

Cati Vaucelle is a PhD student and research assistant at MIT Media Laboratory's Tangible Media group with Dr Hiroshi Ishii. She has degrees in Philosophy, Fine Arts, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Economics. Her current work examines the interdependencies of the virtual and the physical, and explores the fundamental differences between them.

Yasmine Abbas holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS 2001) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Doctor of Design (DDes 2006) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 2005 she founded neo-nomad, a digital platform dedicated to design and mobility in the digital world. Abbas teaches at Northeastern University and Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 24 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo[at]turbulence.org.

Posted by jo at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

New American Dictionary Interactive Security/Fear Edition

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BOOK LAUNCH PARTY!!

A new book by The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, The New American Dictionary: Interactive Security / Fear Edition is the most comprehensive collection of American terms for the 21st century. Over 65 new and most redefined terms including "terror", "torture", "axis of evil", "smart bomb", "friendly fire" and many more. Standard pronunication and easy-to-use, interactive format make this your essential guide to the new millenium.

Book launch party! Food, drinks and booksigning with the Institute. 25% off retail price :: WHEN: Thursday, April 26th 6:30 - 8:30pm :: WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139.

WHERE TO BUY: Lulu.com , Amazon.com or Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA.

Posted by jo at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

E-flux Video Rental

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ALL ABOUT YOU

ALL ABOUT YOU by iKatun :: Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center, Harvard University, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA :: Thursday, April 5, 7 - 8pm.

iKatun invites you to ALL ABOUT YOU, a free screeening of short video art works we preselected for you from the E-flux Video Rental (EVR) collection. Join us for an evening of video art that is about you.

E-flux Video Rental (EVR), by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, is an installation comprising a free library of over 600 works of video art selected by some of the international art world's leading curators and critics. See the screening schedule for April and the list of guest curators here.

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

Judgement Day for 1st Life Game Figures

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Tagged City Play for Real Players in Real Cities

The Ludic Society's Tagged City Play for Real Players in Real Cities was recently presented at Social Hacking, a series of temporary public art commissions for the city of Plymouth (UK).

Attracted by the slogan Become a game figure by implant!, participants were invited to get an injection of “RFID Judgement tags” under the skin. They then become Real Players, 1st life personae who are also game figures in the Reality Engine while playing in a real city. They can drive tuned Plymouth racing cars to tag the city and receive a tagging toolbox containing graffiti, spray stencils, stickers, RFID stickers and implant injection kits.

Real objects in the city are subjectively chosen for tagging. The tags are functional but useless (RFID-tags with zero data.) By putting this zero-tag on an object, players de-valuate real world things into virtual play-objects. If the Real Players find a tagged object with a value assigned to it, they zap it. The goal is to change the value of tags into the value Zero by using their “Wunderbäumchen” (inspired by the car air fresheners in the shape of a pine), technical toys used for finding and reading tags and/or emitting a target-oriented electro magnetic pulse..." Continue reading >> [blogged by Regine on we-make-moeny-not-art]

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

E K T A: A Sensory Awareness Installation

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UNITY

E K T A: A Sensory Awareness Installation by Ashanti Vivia and Chris Korda: EKTA is an interactive multimedia and biofeedback installation that allows a user to control light and sound directly with their brain waves. EKTA mirrors the user's brain state, allowing them to mentally program many aspects of the experience, in real time. The user wears a special EEG headband, which radios their brain waves to a network of computers. The computers respond with synthesized algorithmic music, and a video projection of continuously morphing kaleidoscopic imagery, both of which follow changes in the user's brain waves. For example, as the user relaxes, the music gets slower and deeper, encouraging them to relax even more (positive feedback). The experience leads the user through seven distinct stages, which correspond to the seven chakras (energetic centers) of the human body. Each chakra is represented by a unique color, geometry, bass note, and change of musical instrument.

EKTA is the Sanskrit word for UNITY. EKTA allows the user to experience the unification of their inner and outer vibrations. The goal of this heightened awareness is transcendence, a state in which they see things as they really are. As with many meditative and spiritual practices, this has the potential to bring about internal transformation.

Part of Emergent Consciousness :: April 21, 2007:

3:00pm - 8:00pm :: Ashanti and Chris Korda will be facilitating sessions with EKTA
8:00pm - 9:30pm :: Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot presents Dreams in High Fidelity
9:30pm - 11:00pm :: Sean Stevens presents Synaesthesia

Posted by jo at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

Presence and the Design of Trust

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by Caroline Nevejan

Caroline Nevejan, long years of Paradiso, co-founder, and formerly director of the Waag Society (for Old and New Media), both in Amsterdam then senior advisor to the college of regents of the Amsterdam Polytechnic, will defend her PhD thesis, titled Presence and the Design of Trust on April 11, at the University of Amsterdam. The whole thesis is downloadable here [PDF]

SUMMARY: Designing presence in environments in which technology plays a crucial role is critical in the current era when social systems like law, education, health and business all face major challenges about how to guarantee trustworthy, safe, reliable and efficient services in which people interact with, and via, technology. The speed and scale of the collection and distribution of information that is facilitated by technology today demands a new formulation of basic concepts for our modern societies in terms of property, copyright, privacy, liability, responsibility and so forth. The research question assumes that presence is a phenomenon that we have to understand much better than we currently do.

The title of this dissertation “Presence and the Design of Trust” reflects the inspiration as well as the outcome of the research that is presented here. The research itself was focused on the design of presence. The question that guided the study was “How can presence be designed in environments in which technology plays a crucial role?”. I argue that presence as a phenomenon is influenced by technology, and that social structures that rely on presence will therefore be affected by technology as well. One of the major findings is the fact that the design of presence relates to the design of trust in social interaction. This study does not elaborate on trust as such but it establishes the connection between the design of presence and the design of trust.

In this study presence is understood as a phenomenon that is part of human interaction. The nature of being with another person in a certain place, at a certain time, involved in a certain action is undergoing change because of the fact that technology mediates, contributes, accelerates, controls and/or facilitates communication. The broad spectrum of information and communication technologies that mediate presence facilitates acting, connecting, witnessing and being witnessed in other places at other times.

While conducting the research I found that I needed to make trust operational from the pragmatic and normative perspective of individual human beings. I have chosen to use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it was was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 (United Nations, 1948). Even though the universality of the declaration has been contested since 1948, the text constitutes the only secular instrument that has functioned for over 50 years as a normative reference point for the quality of well-being of people around the world. It is part of the international political discourse as a mechanism of protection for human dignity as well as a tool of empowerment that helps people to realize their rights and articulate their suffering. Information and communication technologies have an impact on the realization of Human Rights (Hamelink 2000). I have taken the position that for trust to develop human rights have to be respected. The fact that human beings act to secure their survival and their well-being will prove to be crucial in constructing the argument that I present here. Therefore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been chosen as the essential normative perspective for the quality of social interaction, and thus for the potential building or breaking down of trust.

AN ITERATIVE PROCESS (chapter 1)

“Presence and the Design of Trust” is based on the analysis of two exploratory case studies of networked events, the Galactic Hacker Party and the Seropositive Ball, which took place in Amsterdam in 1989 and 1990 respectively, and in which I was personally involved as initiator and producer. A networked event entails a gathering of people in a physical space, and also these people and others who are not actually present in the same physical space gather together in an online environment. This study draws upon multiple sources, and it uses literature and methodologies from a variety of disciplines, and in this regard this study has chosen social theory as its context (Giddens 1984).

When I commenced this academic study I had already conducted extensive research into the design of presence from a variety of non--academic perspectives and professional roles. I wanted to bring to the surface the implicit knowledge that I had acquired throughout the course of these experiences. I identified three research concepts that helped me to embed the earlier non--academic work into this academic study: parresia (Foucault 1983), text laboratory (Latour 2005) and techno--biography (Henwood et al 2001). Parresia, a concept that was elaborated upon by the Greeks in the classical era, involves the revealing of truth through a process of revealing truth to oneself. The text laboratory aims to contribute to social sciences by doing experiments through rigorous writing and describing, which triggers new writing and describing, to reveal unexpected links and connections. In a techno--biography the researcher analyses the former self, possibly with the help of original texts written by the former self and/or archives and artefacts from that time.

Both in the data gathering and in the analysis these three concepts, and the classical features of an exploratory case study (Yin 2003), have been interwoven into one iterative research design, which has facilitated my professionally acquired knowledge to contribute to the academic context of this study. As a result, this study proposes a conceptual framework to support the analysis and the design of presence in social interaction.

PRESENCE: A SCIENCE OF TRADE--OFFS (chapter 2)

The amazing acceptance of the variety of technologies that facilitate the mediation of presence and generate the multiple presences that people are confronted with in their day--to--day lives is taken as a starting point for this study. It appears that the "presence" of the other person and the "presence" of one self can be mediated in such a way that this is accepted or rejected as "real" presence within the context of social interaction. After discussing the current research into presence in the military, in industry, in the commercial realm, in the arts and in European policy making, I have concluded that presence research is a science of trade--offs (IJsselteijn 2004), and presence design is characterized by trade--offs as well. In the trade--off of presence design I have identified three basic dynamics that interact, construct and confuse the sense of presence of the self and also the sense of presence of other human beings. Natural presence, mediated presence and witnessed presence (which occurs in natural and also mediated presence) each trigger certain dynamics and influence the perception and understanding of the other presences.

A communication process that uses multiple presences is not a linear process. Time, space, action and the meeting of other people continually alter the shape of the process. Through the different configurations an image of the situation emerges, upon which a person will base his, or her, next actions. Any perceived presence, mediated or not, can mark a moment of significance in a chain of events or in a communication process. Therefore, at the start of this study I harboured the assumption that all presences and their hybrids may be equally significant to a human being in orchestrating his or her life. This assumption has been severely challenged by the research I carried out. I first formulated these three presence dynamics more profoundly and these are summarized below.

Natural presence: the quest for well-being and the drive for survival A human being"s body, which is present at a certain moment in a certain place, defines its natural presence and this is perceived by the body itself and/or its environment. Human beings strive for well--being and survival; they want to avoid pain. This process takes place on three levels of consciousness (proto, core and extended consciousness), from the level of the cell to the organism as a whole (Damasio 1999). The sense of presence is part of human evolution and plays a crucial role in helping people to survive; it helps to distinguish between the self and the environment, between the different relationships in the environment and between imaginary events and what is actually happening. On each level of consciousness the sense of presence operates. When all levels of consciousness collaborate a maximum sense of presence is the result (Riva, Waterworth and Waterworth 2004). People make a trade--off between the multiple presences they perceive when constructing the reality upon which they will act. The claim that technology enhances the quality of natural presence is as viable as the claim that it is threatened by technology. The "new" confusion between perception and deception, between truth and lies, between real and unreal in societies where technology is embedded and media are everywhere influences people"s natural presence profoundly.

Mediated presence: transcending boundaries of time and place Human beings have been mediating presence for as long as humankind has existed. When they are moving around people leave trails of footprints, shelters and other signs that they "have been here". For centuries people have mediated presence consciously by telling stories, making drawings, sending messengers and writing books. Via technology people can now mediate their presence to other places in real time. Via radio, mobile phones, Internet and TV we perceive other people"s presence in a variety of ways. In this study I do not focus on the media--industry and the way it operates; I focus on social interaction between people from the perspective of an individual human being. Even when it is possible to meet in real life, people regularly choose the partial perception of another person that mediated presence offers. In mediated presence one does not have to use all senses and one does not have to address the cognitive, emotional and social structures that usually have to be confronted in a physical encounter.

Through using information and communication technologies people develop media schemata that help them to operate and understand the machines, help them to accept the mediated presence of other people and help them to distinguish the one "agreed" reality from the other. Media schemata are particular to a certain time and place, to a certain generation of people and to different social groups. When involved in mediated presence, processes of attribution, synchronization and adaptation take place all the time (Steels 2006). Because the senses have limited input and output in mediated presence -- it is not the context but generally the connection itself that matters -- these processes of attribution, synchronization and adaptation can become very powerful.

Witnessed presence is a catalyst for good and bad

The perceived presence of other human beings plays a crucial role in the social organization of communities in natural presence as well as of communities in mediated presence. Witnessed presence influences natural presence and mediated presence. An action that is witnessed becomes a deed. That is why "witnessing" is an important action in social life. Witnessing, being witnessed and witness reports are part of the negotiation of trust and truth between people in communities, organizations and societies. Throughout evolution people have changed shape in each other"s eyes. "The other" has acquired more and more identities over time. In general terms it is clear that the variety of divisions of labour, the development of science and technology, urbanization and globalisation have changed how people perceive each other.

A crucial distinction in the diversity of other human beings we perceive is between those who we have a relationship with and those we do not know (Buber 1923). The relationship that we have, or do not have, with another person defines how we will orchestrate our own presence. I argue that witnessing the presence of other people, as well as being witnessed, influences the sense of presence of the self. Witnessed presence causes an acceleration in what occurs next; it can generate more that is "good" and also more that is "bad". It functions as a catalyst.

THE CASE STUDIES: THE GALACTIC HACKER PARTY (1989) AND THE SEROPOSTIVE BALL (1990) (Chapters 3 and 4 and 5)

The Galactic Hacker Party explored "The Computer as a Tool for Democracy" and connected the international hacker practice to scientific and political debates about the evolving information society. The Seropositive Ball was about "Living with HIV and AIDS" and aimed to shatter the silence and social exclusion surrounding people living with HIV and AIDS, for which there was not yet a cure at the time, while many young people were dying. The Seropositive Ball connected Dutch national and international political movements, self--help organizations, health institutions, policy makers, artists, scientists, people in hospitals and many who were touched by or concerned about AIDS. In the Galactic Hacker Party electronic networks that already existed and the fledgling Internet were used and demonstrated. The Seropositive Ball utilised a variety of media and created its own network, which was also linked to existing networks.

Both networked events were produced and staged by Paradiso, a music venue with a distinct international reputation located in the heart of Amsterdam. Over the years Paradiso has developed a methodology, which I will discuss in this study, whereby it nurtures the direct experience of the artist as well as that of the audience. When organizing a networked event, in which a new sense of place is meant to come into existence, dramaturgical laws not only have to be applied to performance elements of the show, but also to the possible contributions of participants in the networked event. They will influence what happens and invent things that cannot be foreseen.

The basic dynamic of both events was influenced by the experience of multiple presences in Paradiso and of mediated presence for people outside Paradiso. Natural presence and also mediated presence were witnessed. Natural presence, witnessed presence and mediated presence were perceived in connection with each other, and in the experience of the event these presences "merged" and influenced the "reality" of the other experienced presences.

ANALYSIS OF THE CASE STUDIES

By focusing on brief moments of perception and by drawing on my experience as the producer of these events, through acts of parresia and the writing in the text laboratory, which was then contrasted with the more than 2000 documents that were archived in a techno--biographical manner, I conducted an analysis from four different perspectives. A primary analysis consists of reflections in which I share and elaborate upon insights that I acquired as the producer of these events. A secondary analysis deals with the clash between intention and realization that every actor has to deal with. A third analysis concerns the collaboration between people of different disciplines, skills, interests and cultures. The fourth analysis focuses on what can be formulated about natural, mediated and witnessed presence given the research done.

1. Reflections
In the reflections on the Galactic Hacker Party the conveying of trust between people in natural presence and in mediated presence, and also the trust people have in the technology, was an issue both during the production and the execution of the event. To address this problem, the notion of the "social interface" surfaced. This is a person who bridges different realms of time, place, relations and networks, and who is dramatically positioned to be able to convey trust. The fact that "words act" in digital technology made me realize profounder questions about the influence of technology on identities. I realized that in the first instance human beings deal with technology as actors. The notion of the "thinking actor", who will use whatever works, became crucial in the development of the argument I set out in this study.

In the reflections that evolved from the text laboratory on the Seropositive Ball, the idea of "vital information" was elaborated upon. In this event technology was used without hesitation because the interface was easy and beautiful and the need to find good information was a matter of life and death at the time. Information is "vital" only in the exact time--place configuration where the receiving person is physically located and it has to provide this person with the opportunity to act. A person will only do this when he or she rightly or wrongly trusts what he or she receives. One of the ways to create trustworthy vital information is to gather what I formulated as "the crucial network": thus everyone and everything that has contributed to the state of affairs and everyone or everything that has the potential to change the status quo has to be present. Orchestrating the crucial network involves the shaping of the space between the different disciplines, skills, interests and cultures. Collaboration in a crucial network requires a perspective that is shared by all and which has the capacity to synchronize natural and mediated presence and provides the catalyst effect of witnessed presence with a direction (which in certain conditions can also cause counter--directions).

2. Thinking actors
Being involved in a networked event, and any day in our regular lives can be considered a networked event, creates an unavoidable clash between intention and realization. This clash occurs physically, emotionally and cognitively and this clash provokes our "thinking" as actors. The word "thinking" refers to the fact that people are confronted with a discrepancy, which evolves from the clash between intention and realization, and which they have to resolve. In mediated presence concepts of causality change because the connection provides the context. The context offered by a place with an embedded culture has disappeared. Context, and especially local and implicit knowledge, can hardly be mediated. Mediated presence does contribute information that influences the mental maps that people have of a certain situation and it can influence how people may adapt this map following such a clash.

The emotional clash between intention and realization appears to be much more profound and significant than I had realized before I conducted this study. Emotions, basic feelings of pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, about what is good for life or bad, guide a human being towards well--being and survival on different levels of consciousness. This includes not harming others, which leads to the assumption that human ethics are grounded in emotions and the more elevated feelings like compassion, love and solidarity, which people acquire over time (Damasio 2003). In mediated presence the personal ethical experience is not as profound because mediation involves a limited sensorial experience. Strong feelings and emotions that may be triggered through mediating presence do not inform the body of how best to act to ensure well--being and survival. I conclude that when issues of an ethical nature are confronted, natural presence offers a better understanding upon which one can act towards ensuring well--being and survival because the sense of presence can be maximized.

3. On collaboration and incommensurability
For the accomplishment of an act, an actor is dependent of the work of other actors. When collaborating incommensurability (a fundamental not sharing of an understanding) between practices is a factor that has to be overcome for acts to be successful. Actors share terrains of incommensurability and terrains of commensurability. Project management, meta--cognitive skills, boundary objects and a shared perspective help in this. In communities of practice, taxonomies are built that represent conceptual schemes that define how actors act. In this context an act cannot be true or false. It is a result of the being--in the world that a taxonomy provides (Kuhn 2000). In the community that an actor operates in multiple mediated presences contribute to the evolving taxonomies, which influence and are a consequence of the way actors interact. Mediated presence contributes to the evolving taxonomies in communities in which witnessed presence plays a crucial role. I conclude that especially when vital information is generated mediated presence contributes significantly to the capacities that natural presence provides, When actors have conversations about "what to do" and "how to do it", these also include the "what would be good to do" and this is a question of an ethical nature (Pols 2004). I therefore argue that when questions arise, which also have ethical implications, people need to meet in natural presence. When people brainstorm, innovate, find solutions and evaluate, their personal ethical experience in natural presence, and the embodied presence of power positions, interests, disciplines and skills, contribute more significantly to the outcomes than a meeting via mediating presence could provide. Mediated presences add to taxonomies and these may reflect the shared ethics in a certain community, but they do not offer such a rich personal and collective ethical experience as natural presence does when having to invent or adapt to situations.

4. On presence
Natural presence is distinct and grounds ethical behaviour in one"s own, as well as other people"s, survival. Mediated presence can provide vital information and significant communication. Through social interaction, witnessed mediated presence may contribute to taxonomies of communities of practice. The dynamics of witnessed presence create grounds, rightly or wrongly, for trust to build up or to break down. Witnessed presence in mediated communication does not trigger a sense of responsibility and respect for human dignity in the way that this happens in natural presence.

Before analysing the case studies I was inclined to think that we, as human beings, were dealing with multiple presences that each have their own reality and are of equal importance because the experience of each presence can be very immersive. By carrying out this study I came to realize that all presences are ultimately rooted in natural presence. Without natural presence, no mediated presence or witnessed presence can be received or generated. To be able to partake in mediated presence one needs to have enough physical and psychological energy, access to financial and technological infrastructures and attention. It is the different natural presences that are mediated by mediated presences. Mediated presence has to be comprehensible and acceptable to the natural presence where it is received, and the mediator has to have confidence that what he/she mediates will convey what is intended. Competent intercultural communication between natural presence contexts is indispensable for mediated communication to succeed. Catharsis is bound to natural presence, to have spent time here, now and with you. The fact that in natural presence the personal ethical experience is most profound, makes natural presence distinct.

Through mediating presence one can reach out to another human being in different time/space configurations, which is often not possible in natural presence alone, and people really appreciate this. When connecting in mediated presence, only elements of the human being can be mediated. Input is not output; only bits are exchanged. People can handle this very well because they contextualize and attribute missing elements to the communication. Mediated presence is edited and framed by the technology and it is also edited and interpreted within these frameworks by people using the technology. Mediated environments that offer both information and communication facilities are attractive. The more layers of consciousness that can be addressed, the stronger the presence experience. Previous knowledge and opinions (including prejudices), media schemata and processes of attribution, synchronization and adaptation define how people receive and contextualize the mediated presences they perceive. Other media also influence the media schemata of a particular mediated presence. Mediated environments contribute to the taxonomies of communities. When mediated presence generates vital information, it can add elements to natural presence which natural presence otherwise would not have possessed. Vital information creates the bridge between mediated and natural presence in a very convincing way.

Through witnessing each other, in mediated and in natural presence, people construct shared realities. Witnessing in natural presence and witnessing in mediated presence have different effects. Witnessing in natural presence changes the situation because the witness can also decide to act on his or her behalf. Also, the witness can change the nature of an action by testifying about it. For an act to exist in natural presence it has to be witnessed because the act itself elapses. Being seen, having certain interests or shared feelings recognized (without the social judgment and/or limitations that may be part of natural presence) is a powerful trigger for contributing to mediated environments. In mediated presence, which can be endlessly stored and copied by the digital technologies, acts do not have to disappear, which diminishes the need to testify. In natural presence, being a witness includes having a responsibility for what happens subsequently and people sense this. In mediated presence the responsibility for what happens next is more limited and often people do not sense that they can or need to influence what happens next, they just enjoy being seen.

YUTPA (chapter 6)

The question in all social interaction is whether people will treat each other with the respect that their human dignity requires. In natural presence this is already problematic. In mediated presence, where responsibility is much more difficult to sense and act upon, this is even more so. As a result people adopt a moral distance towards others, towards their own actions and even towards themselves. Adopting a moral distance ultimately diminishes the sense of presence, the quest for well--being and the survival of the self.

Because human beings are for the most part thinking actors in their relation to technology, I propose to analyse and design products and processes from a conceptual framework, which I have called YUTPA. YUTPA is the acronym for "being with You in Unity of Time, Place and Action". You, time, place and action can be understood as dimensions that can have different values between You and not--You, Now and not--Now, Here and not--Here, Do and not--Do. The word unity refers to the specific set of relations between these four dimensions that is designed in a certain product or process, which makes certain interactions possible while it excludes others.

To be able to act and receive feedback, and to be able to contextualize how one relates to other human beings, is essential when living in a world full of multiple presences in which the respect for human dignity is at stake. Certain YUTPA configurations of presence design foster respect for human dignity and create a basis for trust to develop, while others clearly do not. In a communication process, in which multiple presences are enacted, a certain YUTPA configuration is built through the multiple presences, which informs the actor in which time/space configuration he relates, or does not relate, to certain people in a certain way, based upon which one can act or not. In the design of information and communication technologies -- in its infrastructures, servers, hardware, software and interaction design -- a YUTPA awareness that is founded on respect for human dignity should reflect this, for trust to be built up in social interaction.

via http://www.nettime.org

Posted by jo at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

LIVE Performance Art Biennale

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CALL FOR SECOND LIFE PERFORMANCE ARTISTS

LIVE Performance Art Biennale :: October 2007 / Vancouver Canada :: CALL FOR AVATAR / SECOND LIFE PERFORMANCE ARTISTS :: Deadline : May 1, 2007 ::

LIVE 2007 (in partnership with Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center) is presenting an exciting new performance art initiative in the virtual world of Second Life. LIVE 2007 invites international Avatar performance artists to participate. The event will be simulcast as part of the festival program.

Please email a brief expression of interest, avatar performance proposal, CV, bio, and links before May 1, 2007 to: • Jeremy O. Turner (a.k.a. Wirxli Flimflam) Director of Avatar Development, LIVE jerturner536[at]yahoo.ca or • James Morgan (a.k.a. Rubiayat Shatner) Director/Curator, Ars Virtua gallery[at]arsvirtua.com

The LIVE Performance Art Biennale was founded in 1999 and has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national and international performance art activity and critical study.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Posted by jo at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space:

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TechnoPanic: Terrors and Technologies

April 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space: TechnoPanic: Terrors and Technologies with Horit Herman-Peled (IS), Brooke Singer (US), Paul Vanouse (US), and Sean Cubit (AU); moderated by Tim Murray (US) and Renate Ferro (US).

From surveillance and mobile technologies to fears and public panic, the ambivalent attraction of technologies of terror shifts registers between post-cold war and post 9-11 sensibilities, whether from international or cross-generational zones of engagement. We will discuss how panic, paranoia, critical resistance to, and appropriation of technologies of terror are mediated by the threat and fear of violence in the interlinked networks of mobile media, domestic space, and the public sphere.

Horit Herman-Peled (IS) is a media artist, theorist, and feminist activist in Tel Aviv, who teaches art and digital culture at the Art Institute, Oranim College, Israel.

Brook Singer US) is a Brooklyn-based digital media artist and arts organizer who lives in Brooklyn. A member of Preemptive Media, her most recent collaborations, both as an artist and curator, utilize wireless (Wi-Fi, mobile phone cameras, RFID) as tools for initiating discussion and positive system failures. She is Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY Purchase.

Paul Vanouse (US) makes data collection devices that include polling and categorization (for interactive cinema), genetic experiments that undermine scientific constructions of identity, and temporary organizations that performatively critique institutionalization and corporatization. He teaches in the Art Dept. at the University of Buffalo (SUNY).

Sean Cubitt (AU) teaches media and communications at the University of Melbourne. Among his numerous books on cinema and new media are EcoMedia, The Cinema Effect, and Digital Aesthetics. Sean has curated numerous exhibitions and is Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Book Series for
MIT Press.

Renate Ferro (US) conceptual artist, visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Cornell University, and Timothy Murray (US), curator, the Rose Golden Archive of New Media Art and Acting Director of the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University. Their most recent collaboration has involved Renate's installation "Panic Hits Home" for the The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in Marchl 2007. (FLEFF) is a one-week multimedia inter-arts extravaganza that reboots the environment and sustainability into a larger global conversation, embracing issues ranging from labor, war, health, disease, music, intellectual property, fine art, software, remix culture, economics, archives, AIDS, womens rights, and human rights. This year's festival will focus on new content streams: Maps and Memes, Metropoli, Panic Attacks, and Soundscaping.

Subscribe for participation at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre/

Posted by jo at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

Turbulence Commission:

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Urban Attractors, Private Distractors

Turbulence Commission: Urban Attractors, Private Distractors by Angie Eng in collaboration with Rich Streitmatter-Tran and a collective of student interns in New York and Ho Chi Minh City.

"Urban Attractors and Private Distractors" is a vlog project about privacy in public space in Eastern culture. It compares the results of dérives (French for "drift," dérive was defined by the Situationists as the "technique of locomotion without a goal") in Ho Chi Minh and New York City. The collective will address questions such as: How is a city constructed in a culture where the inhabitants have little experience of a private physical space? Do they adapt more readily to cyberspace which is both private / public simultaneously? How do Westerners reclaim their 'public space'? Organized dérives in both cities will commence at the most public of spaces--the town square. Participants will submit videos as urban indicators of private and/or public to the vlog until the workshop meetings in June 2007. Angie Eng, the project director, will continue vlogging until the commencement of the physical installation in Fall 2007.

"Urban Attractors, Private Distractors" is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHY

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation, web-based and video performance. In 1993 she moved to New York City to pursue her career in media arts. She co-founded The Poool (1996-1999), a live video performance group, with Nancy Meli Walker and Benton Bainbridge. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Experimental Intermedia, and Roulette Mixology Festivals. Eng’s videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, Greece, Japan, Germany, Former Yugoslavia, Switzerland and Canada. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., Harvestworks Residency, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, mediaThe Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and the Experimental TV Center. She was recently awarded an Eyebeam residency to develop the installation component of "Urban Attractors, Private Distractors."

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

ARTRAGES – THE LEGENDARY ANNUAL ART PARTY

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presented by MOBIUS

What: ArtRages, Mobius’ annual art party and fundraiser :: Who: Local bands, performance, installation and video artists :: When: Saturday, April 14, 2007 8 pm – 1 am How Much: $15 in advance, $20 at the door :: Where: 368 Congress St. Boston, South Station stop on the T red line, Courthouse stop on the T silver line :: More info: 617.542.7416 or www.mobius.org

Boston, MA: Mobius announces its legendary annual art party, ArtRages. This loft party will feature nonstop, wrap-around, bound to astound performance art, music, video, installation by the Mobius Artists Group and guests, and music by Universal Truth, Pulnb Trio, Ken Field & Friends, and more. Cash bar and fabulous free buffet by local businesses including The Barking Crab, Carberry’s, Picante, the Middle East, Flour Bakery + Cafe, Lucky’s and more. ArtRages is sponsored by Berkeley Investments and Harpoon Beer.

Mobius first began hosting ArtRages, nearly 20 years ago. Conceived as a blow-out art party showcasing the work of the Mobius Artists Group and other talented local experimental artists, and with music by local bands, ArtRages has become a feature on the benefit scene, the performance art circuit, and a great place to catch current and up and coming local stars. The party has also been a crucial fund-raiser for Boston’s oldest enduring alternative art organization, Mobius.

ArtRages recently was awarded the second place prize for an Exhibition of Time Based Art Boston-area (Film, Video, and Performance) from AICA/New England (Association Internationale des Critiques d'art, the International Association of Art Critics).

Artists: Kristina Lenzi & Mari Novotny-Jones, Alisia L.L. Waller, Milan Kohout, Lewis Gesner, Diego Guzman, Liz Roncka & Jane Wang, Ian Colon, Coach TV, Tom Plsek, Margaret Bellafore, Danielle Sauvé, Sandi Schaefer, Philip Fryer, and more! Music by: Universal Truth, Pulnb Trio, Ken Field & Friends, and more!

ABOUT MOBIUS

Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 29-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.

Mobius, Inc is funded by the LEF Foundation; the Boston Cultural Council, a program of the Mayor's office on Arts, Tourism, & Special Events; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Oedipus Foundation; the Artist's Resource Trust of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation; Bank of America; the Japan Foundation; and generous private support.

Posted by jo at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

[iDC] A critique of sociable web media

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Community as Product

Perhaps this exchange could lead us to deepen our earlier debate about possibilities for a radical critique of sociable web media.

If you agree with Paolo Virno's and Maurizio Lazzaroto's theory that argues that "virtuosic performance" and "the act of being a speaker" is the new immaterial labor [of the North], then yes, the sociable web is the new "factory without walls." I, for one, don't sign off on the fucked up naturalization of the exploitation labor that is so dear to capitalism. Where are the people who care if big profits are made of their distributed creativity? Most participants are not conscious of their embrace of market-based behavior. The most central sites of the World Wide Web create massive surplus value and small startups are frequently bought out by the Walmarts of the Internet (NewsCorp, Yahoo, Google) the very moment that they attract sufficient numbers of page views. People spend most time on the sites of these giants and not in the "mom and pop stores." Almost 12 percent of all time spent by Americans online is spend on MySpace.

Nicholas Carr pointed out that forty percent of all web traffic is concentrated on ten websites (www.sina.com.cn, www.baidu.com, www.yahoo.com, www.msn.com, www.google.com, www.youtube.com, www.myspace.com, www.live.com, www.orkut.com, and www.qq.com).

Most of these sites owe their popularity to the wealth of content generated by the visiting net publics that spend significant amounts of time on these very, very few sites thus creating wealth for a handful of corporate owners. What pulls people in?

In a recent interview with Forbes Video Network, Jay Adelson (CEO of Digg.com) was asked "What's going to keep people to come back?" Adelson responded:

"Community is what really keeps people coming back. These people are passionate about what Digg has done for them. The user experience they get from being part of that community is only getting better each day."

Attention translates into concrete monetary value and community is the product. Crude offline capitalism is replicated online, much against the hopes of early cybernetics and the linked back-to-the-land, countercultural aspirations of the late 60s and early 70s that Fred Turner talks about.

The dynamic of-- being used-- may hold much less true for peripheral websites in the concentric hierarchy of the participatory web. The online "mom and pop store" has a much more benevolent ratio of participant benefits versus the company's running costs. And then there are also the two or three non-profits like Archive.org and Craig Newmark's initiatives holding up 'Fort Hope.' They are, to be sure, not dominating the read/write web.

The immaterial, "affective labor" of net publics produces data. Contributors comment, tag, rank, forward, read, subscribe, re-post, link, moderate, remix, share, collaborate, favorite, write; flirt, work, play, chat, gossip, discuss, and learn. They fill in profiles: 120 million people shared detailed personal information with NewsCorp, for example. 18 million students shared personal details in their Facebook profiles with Yahoo. They share information about their favorite music and clubs. They are not shy to list the books they are reading and the movies they are watching. They detail their sexual orientation and postal address complete with hometown, phone number, and email address. They share pictures, educational history and employment. Profiles, even if only visible to their buddies (and well, Yahoo), they list their daily schedules, general interests, and friends.

It seems obvious that all this channeled networked sociality represents monetary value. Post-dot.bomb, the Google zars would not buy a very young video website like YouTube for the price of the New York Times Company if there would not be a clear monetary value.

The dicey ethics related to property issues and exploitation of labor of *the core of the sociable web* becomes apparent if we look at Yahoo's privacy policies for Facebook.

"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience."

That is a dream come true for any market researcher. But it does not stop at bizarre privacy policies, Yahoo also claims rights over the content on Facebook:

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content..."

The picture of net publics--being used--is, however, complicated by the fact that participants undeniably get a lot out of their participation. There is the pleasure of creation and mere social enjoyment. Participants gain friendships and a sense of group belonging. They share their life experiences and archive their memories. They are getting jobs, find dates and arguably contribute to the greater good.

The scale and degree of exploitation of immaterial labor is most disturbing when looking at the highest traffic sites. The sociable web makes people easier to use and this dynamic will only be amplified by the increasing connection of mobile devices to the big social networking sites.

Trebor Scholz

PS: I'll add the necessary references to this text and post it on my blog. http://collectivate.net/journalisms/

Pat Kane wrote:

Great piece, Trebor, but just a few semi-naive questions I want to throw in:

* What about the civil liberties dimension of omnivorous data capture? I just finished reviewing Lessig's Code 2.0 (the updated version) http://theplayethic.typepad.com/play_journal/2007/03/the_fair_cop_in.html, and I've been chilled to the bone by his prescription of an 'digital identity passport', as a solution to spam, and a means of managing information privacy vis-a-vis the state and corporations (though he sets out some really surprising threat-to-state preconditions for legal disclosure of digital identity). Google's revelation that it's only going to keep 18 months of your websearching only makes you realise how much they *were* keeping - and when Google told the Feds to butt out, when they wanted to look at their user archives to research porn use, it makes you realise that we should be replacing 'in God we trust' with 'in Google we trust' on the dollar bill. That seems far too much civil responsibility for one shareholder-driven corporation to bear. But Lessig's 'ID card' vision of the net - all derived from his vision of the net as a constitutional phenomenon, an 'architecture of value' - feels far too grown-up for me. But I think I'm going to have to grapple with it. Adam Greenfield's musings on 'a jurisprudence for everyware' are also interesting here (use yer cached, http://tinyurl.com/3bw7la).

* But isn't there also something about advertising on the social web that, at the very least, puts it in its proper place - ie, as secondary to the social experience? We can bemoan and drum our fingers at the interstitials that stand in the way of us getting to that Salon article - but let's be honest, how many of us fulfill the advertiser's aspiration and click through to a website for yet another stylish people carrier, or post-colonial alcoholic spirit? In terms of an old-fashioned (and yeah, ok, social-democratic) Habermasian framework, this feels to me like the "system" (or various systems) very much being rebalanced in terms of the values of the "lifeworld" (or community). But maybe I'm being too politically boring here...

* ... Because I'm also an avid reader of the autonomists, and there's a recent interview with Virno that really focuses the political question of how immaterial labour might or might not become a class for itself, as much as in itself: http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?id=06/01/17/2225239&mode=nested&tid=9

"The global movement ever since Seattle resembles a half-functioning voltaic battery: it accumulates energy without rest but does not know how and where to discharge it. We face a marvelous hoarding to which no adequate investments correspond at this time. Or do we face a new technological apparatus, powerful and refined, for which we, however, ignore the instructions? The symbolic-media dimension has been at once a propitious occasion and a limit. On the one hand, it has guaranteed the accumulation of energy; on the other, it has hindered or deferred to infinity its application.

"Every activist is aware of this: the global movement does not yet manage to have an effect—I mean, to have an effect with the grace of corrosive acid—on the current capitalist accumulation. From where is the difficulty born? Because neither the profit margin nor the functioning of constitutive powers have been disturbed more than a tiny bit by the new global movement? To what is this paradoxical “double bind” due on which basis the symbolic-communicative sphere is both an authentic springboard and the source of paralysis?

"The impasse that seizes the global movement comes from its inherent implication in the modes of production. Not from its estrangement or marginality, as some people think. The movement is the conflictual interface of the post-Fordist working process. It is precisely because, rather than in spite, of this fact that it presents itself on the public scene as an ethical movement.

"Let me explain. Contemporary capitalist production mobilizes to its advantage all the attitudes characterizing our species, putting to work life as such. Now, if it is true that post-Fordist production appropriates “life”—that is to say, the totality of specifically human faculties—it is fairly obvious that insubordination against it is going to rest on the same basic datum of fact.

"To life involved in flexible production is opposed the instance of a “good life.” And the search for a good life is indeed the theme of ethics. Here is at once the difficulty and the extraordinarily interesting challenge. The primacy of ethics is the direct result of the material relations of production. But at first glance this primacy seems to get away from what, all the same, has provoked it. An ethical movement finds it hard to interfere with the way in which surplus value is formed today. The workforce that is at the heart of globalized post-Fordism—precarious, flexible border-workers between employment and unemployment—defends some very general principles related to the “human condition”: freedom of language, sharing of that common good that is knowledge, peace, the safeguarding of the natural environment, justice and solidarity, aspiration to a public sphere in which might be valorized the uniqueness and unrepeatability of every single existence.

"The ethical instance, while taking root in the social working day, flies over it at a great height without altering the relations of force that operate at its interior. Whoever mistrusts the movement’s ethical attack, rebuking it for disregarding the class struggle against exploitation is wrong. But for symmetrical reasons, they are also wrong who, pleased by this ethical attack, believe that the latter might put aside categories such as “exploitation” and “the class struggle.” In both cases, one lets slip the decisive point: the polemical link between the instance of the “good life” (embodied by Genoa and Porto Alegre) and life put to work (the fulcrum of the post-Fordist enterprise)."

--- I think it's so productive to muse on this Virno passage, both for where it might be right and wrong. To what extent are we 'ignoring the instructions' of these new technological apparatuses - or testing them to their limits (ie, if YouTube gets too censorious, where do we go next to 'become the media')?

His point about the "symbolic-communicative sphere" being both "an authentic springboard and the source of paralysis" is also acute - anyone observed how the New Tories in the UK are radically embracing the social web (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_osborne/2007/03/the_internet_is_changing_the.html, http://www.webcameron.com)? And how they're also combining that with a explicit politics of the 'Good life' - General Wellbeing (GWB) instead of GDP as the index of progress for societies, etc? (See http://theplayethic.typepad.com/play_journal/2006/05/well_beings_or_.html). Now, if anything looks like an "ethical instance" flying over the conditions of the 'social factory' without 'altering the relations of force that operate at its interior', it's going to be the British Tory Party 2.0.

Thoughts?

Pat Kane

Nocolas Ruis III wrote:

The problem with this analysis is that it completely ignores the fact that we are all capitalists. Yes, the scales of exchange are unevenly balanced, but where in the world is such not the case?

Rather, we must seek to cultivate democratic spaces of exchange that are more equitable, and structures of governance that do not add insult to injury...an
egalitarian modulation process of equity, where the highest, is not so high (no trillion dollar salaries for film actors and basketball players,CEOs, etc.) and the lowest is not so low (no starvation, abusive exploitation, etc. on the plains of poverty).

Herein lies the importance of the political. It is not that we will not be capitalists--this has already been decided by virtue of our birth as living capitalizing beings, driven by the currency of the Code; that genetic protocol of environmental utility and capitalization. Every breath we take is a capitalization on the environment we exist within...

NRIII

Burak Arikan wrote:

Thanks for this post Trebor.

So what can we do against networked exploitation?

I think an obvious strategy is to exploit those exploiters. Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI)[1] and Amazon Noir[2] are good examples for finding the holes in sociable web media systems and using the holes for reverse exploitation.

I think another strategy is to stay in context for collective action while all those sociable web media giants are fighting with each other for your attention (aka attention economy). There are many ways to stay in context such as email lists, forums etc. and all that social software actions as Trebor mentioned: commenting, tagging, ranking, forwarding, linking, moderating, remixing etc. Tools and environments for such actions are mainly provided by giant corporations, and under US laws, one who aggregates information owns it. But we can make our own web services for staying in the context, just like the way we can setup and maintain an old email list technology.

So this brings in the discussion of "open service provider". As open source software development communities demonstrate, we can collectively create value independent from the capitalist exploitation. If we are in the software-as-service era [3], support and use open service providers as much as you support open source software. It is very important to intensify and redirect our collective techno-cultural production to a territory that is formed more by individual’s free-will than capital's interests. But of course making one open alternative for each commercial-social web tool/environment is not all that relevant, it sounds just like making the free version of MS Office. So an open service provider can use existing techniques but I think they should invent new types of interaction and aggregation for the good of the community.

I use software-as-service strategy in my artwork. They are not commercial services nor utilitarian. I believe that building an open service is closer to making a cultural product than making a commercial one. As Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble puts it the relation of the creative expression to social processes is as important as the materials, processes, and products. [4]

Burak Arikan

* A version of this email is also posted in my journal burak-arikan.com/blog

[1] GWEI. gwei.org

[2] Amazon Noir amazon-noir.com

[3] Open Source Paradigm Shift, Tim O'Reilly. http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html


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Posted by jo at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)