July 10, 2007

San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival

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Screenings, Conversation and Party

The 5th Biennial San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival :: July 14 - 22 :: The San Francisco Sex Worker Festival was established in 1999 to provide a forum for the accomplishments of sex worker artists and filmmakers and to show work about sex workers and sex industries from around the world. The Sex Worker Festival provides an opportunity to recognize and honor prostitutes, dancers, porn performers and other sex workers who have historically been a dynamic part of arts communities. The Festival includes performance events, parties, art exhibitions, film screenings and educational discussions and seminars. Visit our website for full schedule and event details, and come join in on the fun!!

1. Asian Sex Worker Film Screening at Ar+Space :: July 20, 7-9 PM :: Location ar+space gallery (1286 Folsom Street (nr 9th) :: Sliding Scale $5-$20 (no one turned away for lack of funds).

We, Asian Sex Workers is screening videos by sex workers from San Francisco and from around the globe. We are proud to have the opportunity to present the premiere screening of "Memory of Mrs. Guan," the story of the leader of the sex worker movement, Guan Xiou Qin (of COSWAS in Taiwan) who committed suicide recently as a culmination to her political struggles. These videos range widely from this very political memoir to the experimental work "Whore's Diary : Pornography made by me & my client by BuBu de la Madeleine. Miss Erochica's Burlesque Diary explores a background of images through which burlesque artist, Erochica Bamboo, constructs her persona. This collection provides a unique view of Asian women in the sex industry, usually portrayed as victims and slaves, here portrayed as strong, often political, proud and sexy individuals with a range of goals and struggles.

2. We, Asian Sex Worker Exhibit: Migrant Sex Work Forum and Discussion in conjunction with 5th Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival :: July 18, 7PM :: ar+space gallery (1286 Folsom Street (nr 9th) :: Prices: Sliding Scale $5-? (no one turned away for lack of funds).

7pm: Migrant Sex Work Panel and discussion - Panelists include local experts in issues of sex worker and migration. Topics include the underside of 'rescues,' adverse impact of US trafficking policies, migrant rights and more.

8pm: Urban Justice Center presents "Taking the Pledge" USAID money, anti-prostitution pledges and migrant sex work presentation/discussion. Taking the Pledge by Melissa Ditmore & Erin Siegel (Network of Sex Worker Projects) - 13 min - Powerful activist detailing with interviews spanning the globe, addressing the impacts of new US funding restrictions under the Bush administration.

9pm Melissa Gira: Report Back from Cambodia - Representing Desiree Alliance, the Ms. Gira recently attended a consultation in Cambodia held in conjunction with The Sexual Health and Rights Project of Soros' Open Society Institute to organize cross cultural efforts to support sex worker rights.

3. Roaming Hookerfest: Outdoor Video Projection Roaming the Streets of San Francisco in conjunction with the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival :: July 20, 9-11PM :: 1st screening at corner of 16th and Folsom (route to be posted at website) :: Free.

The Roaming Hookerfest is a traveling outdoor caravan of sex workers bringing the films to the street. This first-ever Roaming Hookerfest was developed by Festival co-director, Erica Berman (AKA Fabulous). Fabulous wanted the festival to reach out past the usual crowds so she created this guerilla art event. On Friday night of the festival we will be driving a movie van with films and safer sex materials to alleyways throughout San Francisco. We will be showing a half hour of excerpts and short films highlighting the festival. We will post the locations and the list of movies at our site.

Meet us at 16th and Folsom at 9 PM for an elegant soiree on the streets. Dress up or dress down! Join our caravan afterwards for a party at Lipo Lounge, Red Lit Dance Nite with DJ Bent in Chinatown. Drink, eat Chinese food and discuss 'sex worker sinema' with sex workers from around the country.

The movies we will screen focus on entertainment for sex workers on the street including The Aphrodite Project by Norene Leddy which presents magical hooker platforms, designed for the street hookers of the future, and Jyanta Meetei's Street Survivor a precious portrait of a Taiwanese street hooker, her time and the cop who arrested her.

4. Red Lite Dance Nite-Afterparty for the Roaming Hookerfest :: July 20, 2007; 11pm :: Venue: Lipo Lounge, 916 Grant (nr Washington) :: $5-20 sliding scale; free for ho's with no dough

An incredible nite of booty beats, reggaeton rythms, and more music than you can imagine at the Red Lite Dance Nite!!! An extremely rare West Coast appearance by the infamous DJ bent - spinning reggaeton, funk carioca, hip-hop, baltimore club, miami booty bass, reggae/dancehall, and a whole lot more.

This is the after party for the Roaming Hookerfest, so drink, dance, eat Chinese food nearby and discuss 'sex worker sinema' with sex workers from around the country. This party supports Sex Worker Arts & Film Festival and this fall's National Sex Worker Activist Trainings.

Media Contacts: 310-562-8201; 415-751-1659
Telephone number (public): 415-99-ASIA-9 (415-992-7429)

Posted by jo at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

Volunteers Needed for Conflux Festival 2007

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Glowlab seeks volunteers to work with the fourth annual Conflux Festival, taking place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from September 13th-16th. We're looking for volunteers in a variety of areas: tech support, audio / video / photo documentation, general installation, sales, event staff. You'll have the opportunity to assist national and international artists, work with local venues and get hands-on production experience. Previous event production experience is preferred, but not required.

About Conflux: Conflux is the annual New York City festival where visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city.

Volunteer Requirements: You must: have a working mobile phone; be available for at least one full day of the festival; be able to attend a short volunteer meeting Monday August 20th and / or Monday September 10th from 7pm-8pm. For more information, contact Sarah Pace: pace[at]confluxfestival.org

Posted by jo at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

[1001] 1001 nights cast news

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Have your Say, Workshop and more

1001 NIGHTS CAST News: THE THREE-QUARTER MARK; YOUR SAY; MOVING TIMEZONES; LONDON WORKSHOP.

THE THREE-QUARTER MARK: Sometime between tonight's performance (#750) and tomorrow's I will pass the three-quarter mark of the project. Since the two-third mark back in April, I'm very honoured to have performed stories by these new contributors to the project: Jordan Peimer (LA), Peter S. Petralia (London), Catherine Lord (LA), Adrian Heathfield (London), Sara Jane Bailes (Bristol), Karen Christopher (Chicago), Rinne Groff (NYC), Rebecca Schneider (NYC), Tony White (London), Geoffrey Batchen (NYC), Trevor Smith (NYC), Kate McIntosh (Brussels), Michael Grosberg (NYC), Hannah Chiswell (UK), Angela Piccini (Bristol), Lina Saneh (Beirut), Thalia Field (Paris), Alisa Lebow (London), Jane Gleeson-White (Sydney), Robin Bale (London), Branislava Kuburovic (Prague), Lara Pawson (London), Matias Viegener (LA), Kathryn Ryan (Sydney), James Tierney (Portland), Linda Dement (Sydney), Agnes Kocsis (London) and Nicholas Royle (London).

YOUR SAY: There is a new feedback section on the site. It's called Your Say. If you want to make a comment about a story, a performance or the project in general, please Have Your Say. You can choose to have it published on the site or to keep it private. If you want to see the published comments, hit the What You Said button.

MOVING TIMEZONES: The project moves to London on Tuesday July 17. That night, performance # 757 will be webcast at 9.10pm. That is: 10.10pm in Paris, Madrid and Prague 11.10pm in Jerusalem, Beirut and Istanbul 4.10am, July 18 in Perth, Hong Kong and Manila 6.10am, July 18 in Sydney 7.10am, July 18 in Auckland 4.10pm in New York, Toronto and Bogota 1.10pm in Los Angeles

LONDON WORKSHOP: Ten writers from the UK will join Barbara Campbell in London on July 20, 21 and 22 to write a three part story for the project. The writing workshop is part of DIY 4. DIY 4 is a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin, and New Work Network, and is being developed with Nuffield Theatre/LANWest, New Work Yorkshire, Fierce Festival, Colchester Arts Centre, The Basement Arts Production South East, and Dance4. DIY 4 is part of Joining the Dots, a Live Art Development Agency initiative supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

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

July 09, 2007

EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION presents

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James Dodd and Ubermorgan.com

JAMES DODD | SPEAKEASY + UBERMORGEN.COM | WORK 1999-2007 :: 13 JULY - 18 AUGUST :: OPENING THURSDAY 6PM 12 JULY :: EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION, ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA :: James Dodd Artist's talk: FRIDAY 17 AUGUST, 4PM ::

JAMES DODD uses images and logos from popular, sub, and outlaw culture to construct his artwork. Rock'n'roll, commercially and individually applied street cultures, and their modes, are all constants in Dodd's practice. Political comments and seemingly inane social observations come together in densely presented groups of work that offer critical analyses of Australian culture. The work explores critical examinations and applications of design and subculture inherent in non-disciplined graffiti. Speakeasy is a a major installation that has painting, sculpture, video and aural elements. The installation references the American prohibition era practice of running illegal and secretive booze establishments as an analogy for the political concept of sedition that we currently experience as Australians. Speakeasy is presented in association with 2007 SALA Festival.

James Dodd is active as an arts practitioner, co-ordinator and teacher. He has spoken as a representative of street art culture at the National Gallery of Australia and in forums in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Dodd's work appears in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian National Maritime Museum, the Gold Coast City Art Gallery and many private collections. He is currently a full time Masters candidate at the University of South Australia. Dodd is repr esented by Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane. James Dodd on EAF website; also http://www.ryanrenshaw.com.au

UBERMORGEN.COM is an artist-duo created in Vienna, Austria, by Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, a founder of etoy. Behind UBERMORGEN.COM we can find one of the most unmatchable identities - controversial and iconoclastic - of the contemporary European techno-fine-art avant-garde. Their open circuit of conceptual art, drawing, software art, pixel-painting, computer installations, net.art, sculpture and digital activism (media hacking) transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk.

UBERMORGEN.COM's work is unique not because of what they do but because of how, when, where and why they do it. The computer and the network are (ab)used to create art and combine its multiple forms. The permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction points toward an extremely expanded concept of one's working materials, that for UBERMORGEN.COM also include (international) rights, democracy and global communication (input-feedback loops). "Uberm orgen" is the German word both for "the day after tomorrow" and "super-tomorrow."

Lizvlx is a Vienna and St. Moritz based artist, designer and technologist, producing both artistic and commercial work for companies, collectors and institutions. Using technology and computers as a medium since 1994, she has exhibited her net.art works in venues like Ars Electronica (Austria), Konsthall Malmoe (Sweden), the NTT ICC Museum (Japan), ARCO (Spain) or the Lentos Kunstmuseum (Austria).

Hans Bernhard is a Vienna and St. Moritz based artist working in the fields of digital and fine art. Using technology, computers and the internet as a medium since 1994, he exhibited and performed in venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Japan), Ars Electronica (Austria), Konsthall Malmoe (Sweden) and the SFMOMA (USA). Ubermorgen.com on EAF website

Ubermorgen.com is presented with the assistance of Pro Helvetica, Swiss Arts Council.

For further enquiries contact EAF Program Manager: Design & Publicity, Teri Hoskin at: info[at]eaf.asn.au or phone 08 82117505

The EAF is assisted b y the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA. The EAF is also supported through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION
LION ARTS CENTRE, NORTH TERRACE [WEST END] ADELAIDE SOUTH
AUSTRALIA
11-5 TUES-FRI; 2-5 SATURDAY | +61 8 8211 7505 |

Posted by jo at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

Evidence of Movement

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Documenting Performance-Based Art

Evidence of Movement :: July 10-October 7, 2007 :: The Getty Center :: Getty Research Institute Exhibition Gallery.

In the collecting and display of art, performance has posed strong challenges to established notions of both the art collection and the archive. Unlike painting or sculpture, performance-based art exists without an original, tangible, and self-contained object. Because of this, archival material such as documentary photography, film and video, and artists' notes and sketches are often studied, collected, and exhibited as works of art. Nearly every medium imaginable has been used by artists to document performance work, including photographs, videos, audio recordings, notes, drawings, paintings, scores, posters, prints, books, objects, and sculptural remnants.

Drawn primarily from the collections of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, this exhibition surveys the great variety of creative means by which artists have used durable and traditional media to document performance-based art. These attempts to transpose the dynamic and experiential qualities of performance into documentary and archival media have influenced the field of art as a whole, and have opened vital avenues of exploration. Artists featured in the exhibition include John Baldessari, Gunther Brus, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley, Suzanne Lacy, Paul McCarthy, Hermann Nitsch, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneemann, Tony Oursler, Yvonne Rainer.

Posted by jo at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

ACTIVE AGENTS

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The Blurring of Borders

ACTIVE AGENTS :: Maria Hahnenkamp, Zilla Leutenegger, Ulrike Lienbacher, Manuela Mark, Mara Mattuschka / Chris Haring / Gabriele Szekatsch, Eva Stern :: Opening: September 22, 2007, 10 a.m. :: From September 25 - November 24, 2007; Tue - Fri 2-6 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. :: Location: Kunstverein Medienturm, Josefigasse 1, 8020 Graz, Austria :: Coproduction: steirischer herbst & Kunstverein Medienturm.

The relation of nature and technology has obviously shifted within the last years. The body increasingly is pressurized by a technology which more and more lets the borders of the body blur. Technical objects and procedures define to an always stronger extent what we understand as our subjectivity. Which potential of acting must already be allowed technical objects? Which "images" of the subject can yet be detected?

ACTIVE AGENTS analyses the current techno culture by asking how the differentiation between the technical and the social has been blurred and in what way this suspension of an ontological border also has to be described as political project. In this respect, the exhibition handles also the preconditions, interfaces and potentials of acting in the frame of extended body dispositivs, thus also questions of models or even utopias of coexistence.

Interventions in the frame of ACTIVE AGENTS:

Will (I, II)
Ulrike Lienbacher
Period: 16.08. - 07.10. 2007, Mon - Sun 12 - 7 p.m.
Location: Koje Medienturm, QDK/MQ Vienna, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria

The Legal Errorist
Mara Mattuschka / Chris Haring
Period: 11.10. - 09.12. 2007, Mon - Sun 12 - 7 p.m.
Location: Koje Medienturm, QDK/MQ Vienna, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria

Image: Maria Hahnenkamp, "O.T." (from the series "Cut-Out"), 2007. C-print on Dibond, 72 x 92 cm. Courtesy: Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Art Weeks 2007: Place Relations

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PLACE RELATIONS: A special exhibition has been installed at Der Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich, Switzerland for Digital Art Weeks 2007 :: Participating Artists: Eteam (DEU), John Craig Freeman (USA) and Will Pappenheimer (USA) :: July 10 - 14; open daily from 14:00 - 20:00 :: Exhibition Host: Patrick Huber, Kunstraum Walcheturm.

The import of location in place-based artworks represents a set of relations that become visible as they are affected or reconfigured. The artists in this exhibition explore the potential of public space, geographic territory, architectural location, social relations, online informational media, and virtual 3D worlds to form situational works. Their methods include participatory performance, field documentation, new media interactivity and mixed media installation. Results emerge as a hybrid reading of community venture, memory map, psychogeographic inquiry and information aesthetics. The works are situational in revealing the conditions or potential of place. They appear momentarily, as a shift in the relations of everything that blends into city life, distant landscape, or the event-stream of global digital space.

International Airport Montello by eteam: On top of chosen public or private terrain, we are visualizing a "possibility" ­ one, that is usually suggested or challenged by the borders and limits of the place and its environment itself. The ability of a possibility to exist within a specific place is of temporary emergence. It usually lasts as long as it takes to realize that the possibility is possible. In our work, this "realization" often happens in a very practical and participatory way. Everyone engaged in the piece has the opportunity to experience a certain probability within the piece's possibility. All 3 projects (1.1 Acre Flat Screen, The Paradox of the 10 Acres Square and International Airport Montello) are based on random pieces of land we bought on ebay.

Imaging Place by John Craig Freeman (aka JC Fremont): Imaging Place is a place-based, virtual reality art project that combines panoramic photography, digital video, and three-dimensional technologies to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. The goal of the project is to develop the technologies, the methodology and the content for truly immersive and navigable narrative, from real places. The project has been under development since 1997 and includes work from around the world. The interface leads the user from global satellite images to virtual reality scenes on the ground. Users can then navigate an immersive virtual space.

Join JC Fremont at Emerson Island in Second Life for the opening reception on Tuesday July 10 from 14:00 - 16:00 CEST (5:00 - 7:00 AM PDT Linden Time). ">SLurl tag.

Public Mood Ring by Will Pappenheimer: Public Mood Ring is a combined internet and spatial installation displaying the emotional condition of public news stories as color hue. It is based on the wearable "mood ring" which chemically changes color according to body temperature. A series of animated web pages allow users to pick a news story, a cultural color model and to observe the process of the search engine. The artwork responds to participants news concerns and recalibrates the color of exhibition space with architectural LED lighting. The shared experience is the gift of the remote participant and an immersive color representation of current world events.

Participate in a live performance of the Public Mood Ring during the the opening reception of the exhibition on Tuesday July 10 from 14:00 - 16:00 CEST (8:00 - 10:00 AM EST) or for the duration of the exhibition.

Posted by jo at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

STREAMFEST: SALENTO NEW MEDIA FESTIVAL

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StreamFest :: July 26-28, 2007; 8pm :: Quartiere Fieristico, Galatina (Le)

StreamFest is the first international new media festival in South-East Italy, an event whose aim is to present the creative applications of the most advanced technologies in the Salento, an Italian region selected as a special location for the European cultural summer. It will host a sample of interactive installations and audiovisual experimentations by some of the forerunner of a research path which tends to conjugate images and music through the creation of VJ sections stretching beyond the usual modalities of live concerts and music videos.

The first edition of the StreamFest looks towards the future of the Salento region with the awareness that it is possible to conjugate technological development and the love for nature harmonizing the electronic nights of the StreamFest and the days spent by the sea in the typical Salentinian mood. The party atmosphere traditionally characterizing the Salentinian nights can be translated in a contemporary note through the multisensorial partecipation and emotional involvement which are the aim of the artistic researches about multimediality.

Among the internationally acclaimed protagonists, the StreamFest will present the already historical HASCII CAM from Jaromil, the free radio war experience of Cecile Landman with SteamTime, the ambient installation of Scenocosme, the Italo-austrian duo with Salentinian roots, Casaluce-Geiger, the music of North-Europe with Lacklaster from Finland and Felix Randomix together with Carsten Schultz from Germany. The Italian VJ scene is represented, among others, by Flxer, Kinotek and Claudio Sinatti. During the StreamFest, a project created by the Master in Digital Environment of the NABA-Milan will also be presented.

StreamFest is a project of the Cultural Association 'sud-eStream' (art director Antonio Rollo, with the consulency of Carlo Infante and the Performing Media Lab, Luca Barbeni from the Share Festival, and Giulia Mainent) in collaboration with Ente Fiera Salento S.p.a, supported by Regione Puglia, and with the patronage of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce and ITAS 'G. Deledda' in Lecce.

The VJ and Dj sets of the StreamFest are going to be populated by the new authors of the interactions between sound and image, who, like shamans, manipulate electronic visions for emotionally involved spectators in search of new proposals.

Posted by jo at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2007

ProvFlux 2007

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Carnival | Conference

July 12-15, 2007 :: Providence, RI :: Part carnival and part conference, ProvFlux brings together artists, theorists, urban adventurers and the general public to share their visions of what the city can be, and to take action to make it a reality. The simple premise behind ProvFlux is to create an environment of positive activity, and to continue expanding upon the ideas of what one can do in their city. It exists to invite people from all walks of life to meet on the common ground that is our city streets, in an unjuried, completely free and 100% participatory environment.

One event amongst many is An Atlas, a traveling exhibition of artists working with “radical cartography”—a practice that uses maps and mapping to promote social change. The 11 participating artists, architects, and collectives take on issues from globalization to garbage and explore the map’s role as a political agent. Works include Ashley Hunt’s intricate diagram of the social effects of the global prison-industrial complex; the Center for Urban Pedagogy’s mapping of the people who make and manage the “garbage machine” in New York City; Trevor Paglen and John Emerson’s route map of CIA rendition flights; and Invisible 5’s audio tour of the “toxic landscape” along Interstate 5 in California. Other participating artists include: An Architektur, Institute for Applied Autonomy, Pedro Lasch, Lize Mogel, Brooke Singer, Jane Tsong, and Unayyan.

Posted by jo at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference

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Call for Proposals

Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference :: May 29 - June 1, 2008 :: Vancouver, Washington :: Deadline for Submissions for Presentations: November, 30, 2007 :: Notification of Acceptance: December 30, 2007 :: Sponsored by Washington State University Vancouver & the Electronic Literature Organization :: Dene Grigar & John Barber, Co-Chairs (website, coming August 8).

Producing a work of electronic literature entails not only practice in the literary arts but sometimes also the visual, sonic, and the performative arts; knowledge of computing devices and software programs; and experience in collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and hybridity. In short, electronic literature requires its artists to see beyond traditional approaches and sensibilities into what best can be described as visionary landscapes where, as Mark Amerika puts it, artists "celebrate an interdisciplinary practice from a literary and writerly perspective that allows for other kinds of practice-based art-research and knowledge sharing."

To forward the thinking about new approaches and sensibilities in the media arts, The Electronic Literature Organization and Washington State University Vancouver's Digital Technology and Culture program are inviting submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference to be held from May 29 to June 1, 2008 in Vancouver, Washington.

"Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference" is interested in papers that explore forms of digital media that utilize images, sound, movement, and user interaction as well as––or in lieu of––words and that explore how we read, curate, and critique such works. Topics may include:

• New, non-screen, environments for presenting multimedia writing and /or electronic literature
• Research labs and new media projects
• Strategies for reading electronic literary works
• Curating digital art
• Innovative approaches to critiquing electronic literature
• Emerging technologies for the production of multimedia writing and /or electronic literature
• Building audience for new media literary works and writing
• Digital, literary performances
• Publishing for print or electronic media connecting literature and the arts through common archiving and metatag strategies
• Artistic methods of composition used in intermedia storytelling (improvisation, collaboration, sample and remix, postproduction art, codework, hactivism, etc.

In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried Media Arts Show. Along with prizes for the most notable work, selected artists will be awarded bursaries to attend the conference featured at the show. Submission guidelines will be posted beginning August 15, 2007 on the conference website.

The keynote speaker is internationally renown new media artist and writer, Mark Amerika, named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator." His artwork has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the ICA in London, the Walker Art Center, and the Denver Art Museum and has been the topic of four retrospectives. Amerika is also the author of many books, including his recently published collection of artist writings entitled META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (The MIT Press), founder of the Alt-X Network, and publisher of the electronic book review. He currently holds the position of Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Vancouver, Washington, located in the Pacific Northwest just across the Columbia River from Portland, OR, is about a six hour drive south of Vancouver, Canada and three hours south of Seattle, Washington. The conference day events will take place at Washington State University Vancouver, a Tier One research Institution built in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains with views of Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. The official conference hotel is the Hilton Vancouver located in downtown Vancouver, Washington with easy access to restaurants, bars, and evening conference events. Special rates have been negotiated for conference attendees. A conference shuttle will take attendees to and from the campus daily. The recommended airport is PDX at Portland, which is about a seven minute drive to downtown Vancouver, WA.

The cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated artists pay only $100. Conference registration covers access to all events, the reception, some meals, and shuttle transportation.

For more information, contact Dene Grigar at Grigar[at]vancouver.wsu.edu.

Posted by jo at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

070707 UpStage

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Online Performance Festival

The 070707 UpStage Festival kicks off in less than 24 hours, live online and at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington, NZ. From 2.30 to 11.30 pm NZ time (10:30 pm Friday, July 06, 2007 EST; find your local time), on Saturday 7th July, performances created in UpStage by artists from around the world will delight, entrance, engage, baffle, amuse and rock you!

070707 UpStage Festival has all the information, including links to find your local time for each show, and 15 minutes before each show there will be a live link directly to the stage for that show.

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Learn to Hear Through the Lies of Your Eyes: The Cyberforming Hybridization of Tuxedomoon: Devised and performed by Miljana Peric, Teodora Peric and Ana Markovic, in Belgrade, Serbia. This cyberformance addresses the position of the contemporary musician in a relation to predominantly scopophilic regime of the Artworld based on information technology. Standard phonocentrical practice will be replaced with poetocentrical praxis by quoting, paraphrasing and mixing up the lyrics of Tuxedomoon. Instead of counterpoint techniques, it involves the counter-soundpointless tactics, which symbolise the protest against disregarded role of music in cyberformances in general.

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Isis: for my mother: Devised and performed by Marlena Corcoran, with Tamiko Thiel. Loss, fragmentation, searching … the inevitability of losing one’s mother, and the ways that we cope. A collage of medical body fragments - x-ray, sonic graph, surgical photo, ultrasound image and others – hints at a female person, but there’s always something missing, and something left over. Marlena is based in Munich, German.

And many more performances...

Posted by jo at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2007

Antony Gormley

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The Body in Space

Antony Gormley at The Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London until August 9, 2007.

"The body is our first habitation, the building our second. I wanted to use the form of this second body, architecture, to make concentrated volumes out of a personal space that carries the memory of an absent self, articulated through measurement … Bodies and buildings, cities and cells, monuments and intimacies, each of the “rooms ” in (allotment) is someone’s, is connected to the moving body of an individual, alive and breathing."

'Architecture is supposed to be the location of security and certainty about where you are. It is supposed to protect you from the weather, from darkness, from uncertainty. Blind Light undermines all of that. You enter his interior space that is the equivalent of being on top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea. It is very important for me that inside it you find the outside. Also you become the immersed figure in an endless ground, literally the subject of the work.’ - Antony Gormley 

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From the exhibtion website:

Taking the body as its point of departure, the exhibition is an invitation to embark on a journey through different kinds of space. New works include Blind Light: lose yourself in light and vapour in this cloud-filled glass room that is cold, wet and disorientating; a spectacular series of suspended figures in light-infused webs of steel; and a colossal 27-ton structure, Space Station, that tilts precariously, dominating the gallery space.

The exhibition extends beyond the confines of the gallery with Event Horizon, an ambitious urban artwork featuring around 30 sculptural casts of the artist’s body on rooftops and public always across central London, subtly punctuating the city skyline. Spanning outwards from The Hayward, all the figures face towards the gallery’s three sculpture terraces, which form the main viewing platforms for the project as a whole. [via pruned]

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

LABworkshops: Second Life & Chiptunes

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Call for Participation

ENTERING THE TERRITORIES OF SECOND LIFE :: July 17 - 21, 2007 :: Deadline: July 8, 2007 :: Registration :: Fee: 50 :: CHIPTUNES - 8BIt MUSIC :: July 26-27, 2007 :: Deadline: July 16, 2007 :: Registration :: Fee: 25 :: Working language for both: English and Spanish :: @ the workshop premises of the LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries.

ENTERING THE TERRITORIES OF SECOND LIFE: Second Life (SL) is an online virtual world currently inhabited by over six million "residents". The workshop hosted in Laboral explores SL as a platform for art expression, activism and critique. It will be led by a machinima professional, two media artists and a programmer who work on SL on a practical and theoretical level using it as an ideal platform to share ideas and to perform. Participants will learn through collaborative work how to make machinimas, how to write basic scripts and how to use SL as a platform for social action and artistic expression.

Workshop led by: RICARD GRAS (ESP) is an artist, producer and director of machinima Europe Board. He explores new creative uses for technologies and relationships between art and the media. In 2003, he founded LA-INTERACTIVA, one of the companies that are officially in charge of the development of SL.

KRISTIAN LUKIC (SERBIA) is a writer, artist and a cultural and game researcher. He is a program manager in New Media Center - kuda.org and the founder of Eastwood - Real Time Strategy Group and also of Napon - Institute for flexible culture and technologies.

ILIAS MARMARAS (GR) is a new media artist and a leading member of the international group Personal Cinema. He has been working in gaming environments and game art since 1999.

YANNIS SCOULIDAS (GR) is a technical director, administrator and programmer of Personal Cinema and specialist in software and hardware.

CHIPTUNES - 8BIt MUSIC

8bit sound and music is a distinctive feature of early videogames, and has become a seminal contemporary music style utilized by artists and DJs in engaging live audiovisual performances and remixes. This workshop will bring together creators from US and Spain who will work with young people to create music using Gameboys. The workshop will close with an evening of Chiptunes performances with sounds by the artists, the workshop participants and visuals by media artists Entter.

Workshop led by: HAEYOUNG KIM (BUBBLYFISH) (KO) is a sound artist and composer who explores the textures of sounds and their cultural representation. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs and new media festivals around the world.

CHRIS BURKE (GLOMAG) (USA) has been making 8bit music since 2001. He has performed in many countries and his music has played in films, on television and on the Internet. The machinima series "This Spartan Life", features his music as well as other 8bit artists and is featured in Gameworld.

RABATO(ESP) composes music with the famous software Littlesounddj created by Johan Kotlinski for a Nintendo Gameboy consoles. He is the co-founder of microBCN and has participated in festivals and concerts in various cities.

YES, ROBOT (ESP) mix Gameboy sounds with other instruments like synthesizes, samples and toys modified by themselves. They are founding members of the 8bit collective microBCN.

ENTTER(ESP) is formed by Razl Berrueco and Raquel Meyers. Entter was formed to create a collective space for the expression of the common restlessness felt by many creative people in the interactive media art field. Their fields of research include AVperformance, installations, non-linear narrative, videogames, interfaces, experimental music, VJing and net.art.

Concept of workshops: Daphne Dragona, independent new media arts curator, Athens Carl Goodman, Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media,Museum of the Moving Image, New York

Organised by: LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries Director: Rosina Gsmez - Baeza Universidad Laboral s/n, 33394 Gijsn, Asturias - Spain T. +34 985 185 577 F. +34 985 337 355 labworkshops@[at]aboralcentrodearte.org

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

TEST_LAB: PLAY!

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European Art Graduation Projects 2007

TEST_LAB: PLAY: European Art Graduation Projects 2007 :: July 12, 2007, 8:00 p.m. :: V2_Groundfloor, Eendrachtsstraat 10 , Rotterdam :: Free entrance :: Streamed Live :: Invited speakers: Simon Jones (Human-Computer Studies, University of Amsterdam) and Dirk Paesmans and Joan Heemskerk (jodi.org). [Related; Essay by Josephine Bosma.]

Play as a form of social interaction has a rich tradition in various branches of the arts. But it was only recently that human-centered-technology designers realized play offered interesting new approaches and techniques for the development of their field. This brings them together with contemporary artists who explore play by experimenting with a wide range of (often wearable) human-machine interfacing technologies. Such experiments often combine a strong DIY attitude toward technology design with a desire to take advantage of people's naive or intuitive understanding of technology through play. In TEST_LAB: PLAY! the audience and participants will test and discuss the approaches and techniques used to implement play. They will also discuss the broader context of the demonstrated work.

TEST_LAB: PLAY! will feature a selection of the best European electronic-art graduation projects of 2007. The pieces have been selected according to originality and quality, and especially the way they use the concept of play - that is, the playfulness evoked by the work. At TEST_LAB: PLAY! these projects will be demonstrated, tested, and discussed among makers, audience and experts.

Demonstrations:

- Dobrze by Dorota Walentynowicz (Interfaculty Image and Sound, The Hague)
- Block H. by Faith Denham (Goldsmiths, University of London)
- CollecTic by Jonas Hielscher (Media Technology, Leiden University)
- Wi-Fi Straitjacket by Gordan Savicic (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
- Paraphernalia by Nancy Mauro-Flude (Piet Zwart Institute, Hogeschool Rotterdam)

TEST_LAB is a bimonthly public event hosted by V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, that provides an informal setting for the demonstration, testing, presentation, and discussion of artistic research and development (aRt&D).

For more information, please contact Michel van Dartel (michel[at]v2.nl,
+31-10-206-7272).

Posted by jo at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

Intermedia Art Show

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Public Performedia Collective

Intermedia Art Show (a collaboration between the International Festival of Contemporary Art, Experimental Art I.M.A.N. and Gallery Zero Berlin) :: Performance: July 7, 2007 ; 8:00 pm :: Artists: Alexandre A.R. Costa & Jorge Fernando dos Santos: Public Performedia Collective & Lucky Zulu + Hugo Paquete (sstfm) :: Portugal.

Public Performedia: This Project combines a live performative act, done In-Situ (City of Berlin), with a post-concert within the realm of electronic music / Experimental Intermedia Art Show. This Performance that begins a continuous process, and that culminates in an Intermediate experimental art show, will be established by the contextualization of the artists and their performative actions within emblematic buildings of Berlin (interiors and / or external sites).

Project Description (Live Art Work): Immobility, silence and disguises are key - concepts in this process, developed through an interrogative perspective of the daily social paradigm of our days in the deep of the wild "Business world", metaphorically referenced by the elements that these are holding and let fall and for the movement of the city itself, collected in the show in video audio and worked in digital Interfaces in real time.

Conclusion: Intermedia Art Presentation (Post-Live Art Work in Berlin):
In conclusion there are clearly two phases in question: the first one happens in a perspective of an investigation In-loco and In-Situ (during which Video Audio recordings are performed with the participation of audiences and the performing intervention of the Artists). The second moment happens with the Intermedia Presentation / Concert.

The video audio registrations on the mentioned action are worked in real time in an audio-visual/ Intermedia presentation (a minimal performing proposal and a subscription through the universe of electronic music) as exemplified by the following registrations included in the demonstration DVD herewith.

www.iman-arte.blogspot.com
www.publicperformedia.blogspot.com

Posted by jo at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

Pioneering Second Life artist to inspire Australian artists

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Brad Kligerman

On 12 July, the Australia Council for the Arts, in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), will host its first ever artist forum in Second Life. The in-world event, to be moderated by ABC's Sunday Arts reporter / producer Fenella Kernebone, is for the Australia Council's inaugural Second Life artist residency.

In an open forum at 7 pm (EST) on ABC Island, Paris-based artist and architect Brad Kligerman - one of the first artists in Second Life to complete an in-world residency - will present his work, discuss ideas and answer participants' questions. [Videos and more here.]

Brad, an architect and teacher, completed his 11-week residency with US-based Ars Virtua a new media centre and gallery in Second Life, where he questioned the idea of materiality in the rendered environment and the nature of image. Australia Council chief executive officer Kathy Keele said the partnership with the ABC was a great fit with the Australia Council's Second Life initiative. 'The ABC was the first Australian media organisation to establish a presence in Second Life and we are excited about working with them on this project.'

'We hope that Australian artists gain valuable insight from Brad Kligerman's successful art interventions in Second Life and that they will be inspired to create innovative works in-world that will place them at the forefront of this groundbreaking practice,' Kathy Keele said.

The Australia Council has also set up an artist's forum in Second Life for artists looking for other artists with whom to collaborate. The moderated artists forum can be found at ABC Island and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) Island, Esperance.

Opened in February 2007, ABC Island explores new and different ways to present content to its audiences. As well as creating social spaces for Second Life visitors, the island showcases Australian talent and creativity in an innovative way.

Places for the 12 July Second Life event are limited. To register email slrsvp[at]ozco.gov.au with your Second Life Avatar name. The event will be streamed live at http:\slcn.tv. A vodcast of the event will also be available on the ABC Sunday Arts website. Sunday Arts screens Sundays at 5.00pm.

The Australia Council's Second Life residency will enable a team of up to three artists, including a writer, musician / sound artist and digital visual media practitioner to collaborate on the development of inter-disciplinary artwork in Second Life. The project, which will take place online, will require the artists to explore the possibilities of literary, music / sound art and real time 3-D arts practices within the virtual realm.

The residency is open to Australian citizens and permanent residents. Applications close on 27 July 2007. For more information visit www.ozco.gov.au/rez

For more information on Ars Virtua and Brad Kligerman visit www.arsvirtua.com. Media enquiries - Victoria McClelland-Fletcher, communication officer phone 02 9215 9008 or 0400 808 013 or email v.mcclelland[at]ozco.gov.au.

Posted by jo at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

okno / Network Summer

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Invitation to Participate

okno / network meetings :: July 12-13, 2007 :: okno HQ, koolmijnenkaai 30-34, 4th floor, 1080 BXL :: entrance free ::

This summer, okno (code31, so-on, riseau citoyen) will take a look at artistic networks. In a series of meetings, we share our research and collaborate in hands-on experiments with wireless technology. Whether you're a visual artist, writer, musician, coder, hardware developer or just have a keen interest in wireless networks, we would like to invite you to come over and join us.

Together, we'll look for new ways of using networks, investigate their artistic value and their social and geographical context. Wireless technolgies are affordable and powerful instruments. By learning how to make and use them, we can break out of the limits imposed by corporate and government-regulated restrictions. //meh In our hands-on experiments, we'll be builing antennas, setting up the network and use it for audio and video.

July 12, 2-7pm :: an introduction to the Reseau Citoyen-network and how to work with it by Cidric Thernon - Reseau Citoyen is a Brussels project for a user-run wireless network via wi-fi; free of big operators, run by the people for the people. Riseau Citoyen is not an organisation, it's much more a phenomenon. Beside its technological aspects, Riseau Citoyen is a vector for ideas. Community network projects are coordinated by citywide user groups who freely share information and help using the Internet. They often emerge as a grassroots movement. Reseau citoyen is run on a voluntary basis. Reseau Citoyen has a distinct ideological approach in putting up a free and open network. The volunteers provide the technological expertise and in a collaborative spirit make it available to the inhabitants of Brussels.

Okno tries to complement the social and technological infrastructure from a cultural point of view, hoping to put together a vehicle for socio-cultural activities in the information age.

July 13, 2-7pm :: hands on experiments with meshed networks by Patrick De Kooning - In this session, we'll go straight to the technological basics. What is a wireless network? What material do we need? We make our first connections over several ranges, hook up our material and hope to get the network live and streaming. When we get the nodes talking to each other, what will they talk about? How can we use it? Why not just use the internet? What can low power, inexpensive networks add to artistic and social practices?

Posted by jo at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2007

Digital Art Weeks 2007

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Keynote: Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum

Digital Art Weeks 2007 at ETH Zurich :: July 10 - 14 :: Keynote: Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum :: ETH Zurich, Auditorium Maximum, F 30 :: Host: Prof. Dr. Jürg Gutknecht, Computer Science Department (D-INFK) :: Additional keynote speakers at this year's Digital Art Weeks: Régine Debatty (we-make-money-not-art), Jeffrey Huang (EPF Lausanne), Helen Thorington and Michelle Riel (turbulence.org), Roger Malina (CNRS Marseille).

The DIGITAL ART WEEKS program is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of symposium, workshops and performances, the Digital Art Weeks program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances during the Digital Art Weeks Festival each year, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of application of technology in the arts.

We are proud to announce this year's special guest Prof. Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum, author of the influental book "Computer Power and Human Reason - From Judgment to Calculation" (1976). He will open the festivities with a talk directed at both scientists as well as cultural workers. His talk will be followed by two important documentary films on computer science. The first concerns Weizenbaum's life and work and the second shows how influential computers can be on the arts.

Keynote Address
Prof. Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum

In 1972 I published a paper under the title: On the Impact of the Computer on Society (Science, Vol. 176, Issue 4035, pp. 609 - 614, May 1972). Four years later the Book: Computer Power and Human Reason - From Judgment to Calculation (Freeman, San Francisco 1976). Years later, I began to have second thoughts about the titles of both works. Yes, the computer had enormous impact on societies world wide. But it became ever clearer to me that the very shaping of computers, the very manner of their development and refinement, the actual purposes, ex and implicit, for which they were created, that all of these were determined by the values of the societies in which they were imbedded, My paper should have been On the Impact of Society on the Computer and not the other way around. The main thesis of the paper should have been that science and the technology are not value free, that both inherit their values from the society in which they are imbedded. Insane societies produce insane ideas and corresponding instruments. Warier societies produce weapons, and, in our time, weapons of mass destruction.

As for the Book: Its subtitle, it is now clear to me, should have been its main title. For now, obviously, judgment in human affairs has been and is increasingly replaced by calculation. The largely self appointed deep thinkers of our time preach that all aspects of reality are computable. Things are "figured out". Parameters are optimized, strategies computed. Human beings are said to be "merely" machines whose fates are anyway determined by the natural laws that the physicists teach the neurologists, they the behavioral scientists and they, in turn, those who say they are philosophers. And all of them compute. They cannot do otherwise, for concepts such as wisdom, dignity, will, respect, kindness love and joy and grief simply do not exist in their universes of discourse. They are not measurable, not computable, not part of their vocabulary and hence not of their reality. What remains for them IS indeed calculable. The fundamental dogma of our time is that to understand a thing is to be able to program it ... finally to simulate it in the form of a computer model. Then, truly, the intelligent robot becomes the ideal of what it means to be human.

If the above is true, then, a question becomes of enormous relevance to our time: what should be the highest priority of formal education, independent of whether in the schools or in so-called higher education? It is a matter of utmost importance, for whenever something new is to be inserted into a curriculum, something already there has to be reduced or eliminated. It is a question of what, in education, is more important than what else. For example, how much more important, if at all, is it to teach the writing of computer programs as opposed to teaching the history of one's homeland?

The answer to the central question is, it seems to me, obvious and true for all places and all times: the first priority of formal education is to educate students to master their own language, to give them the ability to clearly articulate their thoughts in speech as well as in writing ... and that also implies to be able to listen and to read, to critically interpret the vast flood of signals that constantly impinge on all of us. I want to emphasize the distinction between hearings and listening, namely that hearing is largely passive while listening involves thinking and judgment. Absent this ability, as I believe it to be in very large parts of our people, condemns the afflicted to a life of servitude to the clichés, half-truths and lies served up by the overwhelming majority of the world's mass media!

Posted by jo at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

Josephine Bosma, Mediated Remains:

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Hidden Bits of Ourselves

[This essay was written by Josephine Bosma for the graduation show catalogue of the Media Design M.A. programme of the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. The show will open on Saturday, July 7th, 15:00 + 21:00, at WORM, Achterhaven 148, 3024 RC Rotterdam]

The Human System: Technology is part of the body. Humans have been able to sustain themselves in the world by incorporating bits and pieces of that same world into their own expanding physical system (the monkey and his stick are one). A celebration of technology is a celebration of ourselves. A critique of technology is a critique of ourselves. An investigation of technological systems and errors is an investigation of the way we recreate and handle ourselves. The 'body' can be perceived as a collection of systems and fragments of systems. It is at the same time dispersed and whole. We are experiencing a continuous but fruitful fragmentation and recombination.

The 2007 graduation show of the media design students of the Piet Zwart Institute seems to revolve around one theme, even if it was not consciously chosen. All works show a fascination for obscurity, for the hidden, for the disappearing, for the superfluous. The graduates explore drifting fragments of ourselves in our media environment. These fragments are sometimes part of hidden processes and at other times they are (remnants of) unwanted objects: trashed bits. A few of the projects are not based on the obviously hidden.

These projects reveal the delicate obscurity inherent to old and new taboos: from the acceptance of physical death to the 'death' of the author. All works deconstruct or question the wholeness of the image. Our expectations of technology, and our exchanges with it, reflect not only simple needs and desires, but they also reflect value systems. It should be quite safe to say that one of the most dominant drives behind technological developments is a quest for perfection. Perfection is always a highly subjective experience, yet throughout history it has mostly been connected to the divine, to the whole, to the absolute. Like we have projected perfection outside of our messy, mortal bodies onto a divine power, we have projected a similar higher power onto our willful material attempts to a state of perfection through technology. The promise of perfection has even become one of the most persistent slogans in present day advertising. We can have the perfect hair, the perfect smile, the perfect car, the perfect phone and the perfect software solution for your company. Our relationship with technology has almost become a matter of faith.

In Praise of Noise

In the beginning of the 20th century the Futurists exclaimed a loud, naïve yet energetic praise of technology. This art movement seemed to believe in the technological triumph of man over nature. Filippo Marinetti writes an ecstatic piece about the car in his famous Futurist Manifesto: "We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed". The Futurists glorified technology through practically all art disciplines: from architecture and theatre to painting and music. Marinetti's Futurist colleague Russolo invented a new kind of musical instrument, an instrument to create noise, the 'intonarumori', which was to be more in tune with modern life then violins or pianos could ever be. It even had to create an appreciation of the sounds of war. Was it their glorification of war and violence, which made John Cage write his 4'3'', 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, in 1952? It does not matter, for both Russolo's manifesto The Art of Noises and Cage's 4'33'' opened the musical ear to the previously non-musical, to machinic noise and environmental sound as music.

Noise is always transgressive and as such it is part of the obscure. Even in contemporary music, in which it is largely accepted and perceived as an inextricable part of a track or song, loud or dissonant sounds are still recognizable as noise. Noise cannot be safe. Noise is accepted as music, but it is still an outsider, a polluter, a sign of dissidence and discordance. Much like the ultimate state of perfection, the divine, the ultimate noise equals the experience of near death. The ultimate in noise is that of white static: the death of the televised image. Whereas the Futurists created music that more or less celebrates technological productivity, Piet Zwart graduate Nancy Mauro-Flude seems to pay homage to its neglected, inescapable imperfection. She has built her own noise instruments from trash, to be used in her performance art. Performance art is noise by many standards (as art is often perceived as superfluous in itself and performance is the most fleeting form of it), yet in the environment of media art it tends to represent the source of all technological imperfection: the body. Nancy Mauro-Flude's "breakcorenoise- performance" 'Paraphernalia' is a temporary (re-) combination of dance and noisy, trashy and poetic fragments.

The transgressive and dissonant qualities of noise make it attractive for so-called alternative music cultures. Noise in that case represents criticism and rejection of commercial and mainstream music cultures. Andreea Carnu's project 'Incoreporated' is a pr company for the punk and hardcore music community. She combines contemporary research (in this case statistics retrieved from myspace) with personal consultations with musicians in order to make 'hardcore' tailored business plans for punk bands, for whom a dedication to noise apparently can make them loose touch with reality altogether. Carnu seems to want to create not just a commercial enterprise, but also a monument and ode to the hardcore punk, counter-cultural lifestyle.

Noise represents the fallable physical source of technologies. It reminds us of our most basic self, of our imperfect body, of illness and death. The imperfect, mortal body is but a faint echo in our mediated environment. We have become nearly numb to images and news of death and disaster in far away countries. Yet as mediation starts invading every aspect of our own lives we loose a sense of intimacy with our loved ones too. This is what Audrey Samson's 'Spectres?' is about. She recorded several personal stories about death for us. We have to listen to them standing at a crowded bar, with headphones on. This experience is moving and embarrassing at the same time. Death is carefully edited out of our lives. The dead and stories of death have turned into electronic ghosts that we can turn off and switch on again, like in for example John Jesurun's 1986 award winning play about a boy that gets trapped in a cinematic projection: Deep Sleep. In western culture only two things equal death in their transgressive qualities: sex and violence. Strangely enough depictions of sex are often censored more strictly then those of violence. The orgasm is sometimes called 'the small death'. Sex and orgasm in particular are a threat to the quest for the perfect, whole body. In the digital domain several tools have been released that are supposed to automatically cleanse our sexual experience. Dominik Bartkowski's project with the provocative title 'Bareback' takes these tools and turns their purpose around. Instead of filtering the most sensitive, 'bare' sexual imagery, the filter becomes an aesthetic tool, creating special visual effects. Instead of accepting the morality of the filter, it reveals the dubious logic behind it. Bartkowski is critical of the trend towards automated filtering. The definition of noise is often too subjective and temporal to be left to a machine.

Defragging Culture

There are also other trails through the static. The digital terrain is layered, logical, but 'flexible'. We create distinctions and rules in this environment that are by no means demanded by its structure. We tend to disregard the importance of what we choose to leave out (and what we can only hide from sight). As we develop our physical selves in this further mediated environment (as in Katherine Hayles' posthuman) we accumulate a huge amount of technological and cultural debris in our trail, which is just as telling about us as our 'official', neatly raked path is. In the digital age the amount of hastily discarded trash and obscured technological traces has grown exponentially.

This explosion of technical, cultural and social traces might be a nightmare for authorities, but they offer a radically fertile ground for all kinds of explorations. The fecundity of our current media environment is almost poisonous in its strength. It is because of this that we witness an explosion of all kinds of play with existing digital structures (like SecondLife, Google or social software such as MySpace). Artists and designers are tapping into the boiling sources of our information flows and they find a huge amount of superfluous, hidden, 'cached', filtered, forgotten or trashed material to toy with. This is the new wealth: a simultaneous, indistinguishable production of culture and cultural sources.

In 1998 the american artist Perry Hoberman presented an installation called 'Systems Maintenance' at the Rotterdam based institution for unstable media V2. In this installation the audience was invited to allign a set of furniture in physical space with its copy in digital space, the result of which could be followed realtime via a projection on the wall. This deceivingly simple work revealed its magic when interacting with it. It turned out to be very, very difficult to allign the apparently identical objects in the two different worlds. Frustration and despair grew by the second. 'Systems Maintenance' was a brilliant combination of poetic and conceptual gestures. I was reminded of it when seeing Walter Langelaar's project 'TODO (Tangled_Object_Description_Overview)'. Langelaar uses 3D object material from Second Life which is 'mixed' with a representation of the WORM building (in which the Media Design graduation show takes place) taken from Google Earth. The new virtual structure that is created this way is then 'collided' with the original building. Differences are emphasized by adding them to the original building physically, by "perforating" the real space with virtual architecture. Whereas Hoberman lets the audience actively experience the awkward split between physicality and activity in real and virtual environments, Langelaar chooses a more subtle approach. Much like Jan Robert Leegte, just like Langelaar originally a sculptor, he creates a sense of estrangement by literally placing virtual objects outside of the digital grids into the real world. If Hoberman is skeptical of our new environments, Leegte and Langelaar experience it much more as a room for play and surprise.

The mathematical structure of the internet, despite the human landscape created in it, simply begs for systematic and generative art practices to explore it. Like traditional sculptors will see a lump of clay or wood and feel the possible structures inside of it, artists working with the net see connections and metastructures most of us are blind to. Already 8 years ago the first net art generators started to appear. The most (in)famous one is the one created by german artist Cornelia Sollfrank, whose 'net.art generator' was part of a larger project called 'Female Extensions'. Sollfrank is still exploring the legal consequences of her 'net.art generator' today, since she stumbled upon possible lawsuits when creating exhibitions of it. Piet Zwart graduate Marc de Bruijn has now built a web site generator, a work entitled 'This website is under construction'. De Bruijn is very critical of web design and created his generator as an ironic statement on hypes and fashions, such as the 'web 2.0' buzz. His software includes the option to create four different aesthetics: the aesthetic of the amateur, the aesthetic of web 2.0, the corporate design aesthetic and that of graphic design. By turning these design clichés into caricatures he forces an escape from failing web design, and 'teases out' a new approach.

Sometimes caricatures can be hard to recognize. The most subtle form of satire is the one in which the subject in question does not really notice he or she is being ridiculed, or responding to the joke would be more damaging then the joke itself. One such work is a relatively unknown work from 1997 by the artist Vuk Cosic: 'Mira'. 'Mira' shows a picture of the wife of Slobodan Milosovic, the late president of Serbia. Cosic calls Mira Milosovic "the cannibal" in one of his texts on the mailing list nettime. The audience can choose different flowers to put into Mira's hair. Mira Milosovic was known to wear flower corsages, a habit that rather contradicted her bad reputation. Shahee Ilyas has created a similar ironic tool, which generates frames for portraits of presidents and other rulers of countries. 'Framing Leaders' uses statistics of various sites to track the freedom of press in a country and the length of reign of its leader. The data then are used to generate more or less ornamental frames around the picture of a particular leader. The heavier and more pompous the frame is, the less democratic is the depicted leader.

Reading into data, interpreting information, has become the new challenge, and not just for marketeers and authorities. Most of this reading and interpreting, like Ilyas' work, is done automatically. It is virtually impossible nowadays to surf around the web without enabling your browser to accept cookies for instance. Cookies gather information about Internet users. They are relatively invisible, only showing themselves in almost hidden directories on your harddrive. Andrea Fiore developed a plug in for the Firefox browser that allows the user to do a bit of countersurveillance: cookies are tracked and the information about them gathered in an online database. The 'info-cloud' that is constructed this way maps the use and spread of cookies, enabling a view of the extent of for instance ad campaigns. A different view of the Internet then unfolds.

Delicious Pre-Decompositions

We are witnessing a new form of recombination of materials that bears resemblance to earlier forms like collage, quotation, citation, assemblage, but which is more evident, more inescapable, due to changed technological parameters. Writer and DJ Kodwo Eshun described this situation in relation to music and sampling in an interview published in his book 'More Brilliant Than The Sun', already in 1998: "The idea of quotation and citation, the idea of ironic distance, that doesn't work, that's far too literary. That assumes a distance which by definition volume overcomes." The sheer volume of technological bits, scraps and products that surrounds us and the simple means to re-interpret, re-arrange and re-use them almost within the blink of an eye is turning cultural production into a form of cultural scavenging.

The fragmentation of culture, due to new technologies and also due to sheer volume of information, is seldom represented through 'old' media such as books. Experiments are scarce and often unsuccessful. New publishing techniques, especially publishing on demand, slightly erode the illusion of completeness of the book. Publishing on demand often refers to single or few prints of a specific book. Like unprinted publications however, the book now becomes personalized, and is created from unique, individual choices by the reader.

In 2003 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo hosted an exhibition about net.art called 'Written in Stone'. This exhibition had a unique catalogue, which visitors could assemble on the spot by choosing texts on a computer, printing them and having them bound. The catalogues even had an ISBN number. This years graduation show of the Piet Zwart has a similar catalogue. It is the graduation project of one of its students: Jorrit Sybesma. 'Design Paradigm Shifts' allows for the audience to choose an individualized catalogue. There are two options: a simple, basic, informative catalogue or an elaborate, individually adjusted catalogue. The latter contains unique, specially generated pages of the work of each artist. The pages are not bound into a traditional book, but presented as loose leaves in an envelope that accentuates each individual gift. What better way then to present this exhibition of fragments, scraps, traces, bits and noises?

Josephine Bosma, Amsterdam, June 2007 [via nettime]

Posted by jo at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem

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Dan Phiffer + Mushon Zer Aviv

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem: Dan Phiffer (US) & Mushon Zer Aviv (IL) - ShiftSpace (the talk will be held mainly in English) :: July 10, 7:30 pm :: Minshar Art School, David Chachmi st. 18, Tel Aviv :: Free Entrance.

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 Highlights) 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.

Recent commissions from Turbulence.org and Rhizome.org will help ShiftSpace continue to grow its user base and further its Open Source model. It will support our upcoming goals including a developer API, a workshop series, a ShiftSpace commissions program and a research into peer-to-peer network architectures.

Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, interested in exploring the cultural dimension of inexpensive communications networks such as voice telephony and the Internet.

Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer and a media activist from Tel-Aviv, interested in challenging the perception of territory and borders and the way they are shaped through politics, culture, globalization and the world wide web.

Posted by jo at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

transmediale.08 – Conspire ... | club transmediale.08 - Unpredictable

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Call for Entries

transmediale.08 – Conspire ... festival for art and digital culture berlin :: 29 January - 3 February 2008 AND club transmediale.08 - Unpredictable :: festival for adventurous music and related visual arts :: 25 January - 2 February 2008 :: Call for Entries - Deadline: 7 September 2007 :: Award Ceremony: 2 February 2008.

Together, transmediale and club transmediale invite the submission of works and projects for the festival 2008. Submissions for both festivals participate in the transmediale Award 2008, for which an international jury will award prizes totalling ca. 10 000 EUR. Abstracts and papers for a proposed Vilém Flusser Theory Award are also being invited.

As one of the leading international festivals for art and digital culture, transmediale presents and pursues the advancement of artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural, political and economic impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience the technologies which impact virtually all aspects of our daily lives. As such, transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques that need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape global societies.

club transmediale (CTM) is a prominent international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound and club culture. CTM presents projects that experiment with new aesthetic parameters and new forms of cooperation, develop possibilities for informational and economic self-determination, and reflect on the role of contemporary music against the backdrop of technological and social transformations. Now more than ever, music emerges as a laboratory for multiform experiments and as an active agent that allows for new cultural techniques to be tested and proffered to the wider world. CTM puts the focus on direct experience, risk-taking and personal interaction, and thereby emphasises the situational potential of live performance, the interplay of various media – sound and image, in particular – and candid exchange between sub-cultural and academic initiatives.

transmediale is a project of the Kulturprojekte Berlin in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt. transmediale is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. club transmediale is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Posted by jo at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

Found Footage Workshop

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Call for Select Participants

Open Call: Found Footage Workshop :: Deadline: August 1, 2007 :: Announcement of selected participants: August 10, 2007 :: Organizer / Location: KSAK-Center for Contemporary Art, Chisinau Workshop Period: 9-25 September 2007 (six hours per day, six days per week). Participants: 15 persons will be selected from Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia & Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia.

The Found Footage Workshop is an in-depth exploration of the use of archival material, the aesthetics of appropriation, sampling and detournement, and the transfer of cinematic language to digital forms. The workshop will consist in theoretical presentations, film screenings, and assisted hands-on workshops (selection of archival sources, analogue-digital transfers, montage). Each participant will produce a film based on the re-use of archival sources. The workshop will provide an opportunity for cross-cultural exchange between artists and students from Moldova, regional artists from Balkan countries, and the international guests who have been invited to prepare the workshop.

Guest tutors & content of the workshop:

John Davis (San Francisco, USA) is a media artist exploring the intersections of film, video, photography, experimental sound and social practices - Introduction to the reuse of popular culture for critique, satire and poetic investigation. Assisting participants in extracting fragments from sources like film, VHS, DVD, television and the internet, and incorporating them into projects that reshape the media landscape with their personal vision. Screening of American found footage films.

Joanne Richardson (Cluj, Romania) is a cultural theorist, video artist and coordinator of D Media, an NGO producing digital media & engaged art. - Introduction to history of found footage and detournement, its relation to struggles against intellectual property, and the political dimensions of "counter-documentary." Assisting participants with developing concept / montage. Screening of 1960-70s French films and post-1989 found footage from Eastern Europe.

Stevan Vukovic (Belgrade, Serbia) is an art critic, film theorist, curator, and co-founder of Belgrade Art Initiatives. Links: http://www.baza.org.yu, http://www.o3.co.yu, http://www.schoolofmissingstudies.net - Introduction to recent documentary film and video production from the Balkans. Screening of films by Zelimir Zilnik and other Serbian directors.

Kathrin Becker (Berlin, Germany) is an art historian, curator and the director of NBK (Neuer Berliner Kunstverein) Video Forum. - Introduction to the NBK Video-Forum Archive. Screening of international artist videos from late 1960s to the present from the NBK collection.

Film Content/Production: The workshop aims to facilitate a critical engagement by artists toward the current condition of post-soviet (former USSR) or post-socialist societies. We are especially interested in investigations that use film aesthetics and digital technologies to explore and comment upon the "transition" (gaps, ruptures, or continuities) between the dismantling of socialism and the current neo-liberal system, although artists can also propose ideas that depart from this focus. Each participant will develop a film scenario, select and choose appropriate archive sources corresponding to the idea, and edit a short digital film (5 to 10 minutes in length). The basic principle underlying the concept and production of the film should be the re-use or re-contextualization of archival sources, including propaganda films and archives from the socialist period (KSA:K has an available collection of these), fragments of new films, home movies or private archives, television and internet.

Skills gained by taking the workshop: Selecting and digitizing analogue materials (16 - 8 MM film, VHS), filming with professional cameras, editing with AVID, postproduction techniques. Films will be finished on mini DV and exported to DVD. Please note that some prior experience in video production (camerawork, montage) is required.

Practical information: Selected participants will receive reimbursement for travel costs (train or bus), their accommodations and meals will be covered by the organizer for the duration of the workshop. There is no participation fees.

Criteria and submissions: Applicants should be nationals or residents of Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, or Slovenia. We are looking for inspired proposals by visual artists, filmmakers and video activists that envision an intersection (dialogue, clash or complementarity) between past histories and present realities. Interested artists will prepare a proposal package containing the following documents: a CV (1-3 pages), a short statement about the particular interest in this workshop (150 words), a film synopsis (500-600 words), a production plan or timeline, and a tentative list/description of archival sources to be used. If these archival sources are difficult to find and specific to the region, artists are encouraged to bring them along. The application documents should be sent as a single file (.doc, .rtf or .pdf) by email. If applicants would like to submit samples of previous works, the package can be sent by post to the following address, but the electronic documents should also be sent separately by email to:

Stefan Rusu - FFW project curator
E-mail : suhebator[at]gmail.com,
ksak.info[at]mail.md
Addresa: Centrul pentru Arta Contemporana , Chis8ina u -[KSA:K], Str. Independent8ei, 1, (Colegiul Al. Pla ma deala ) Cod pos8tal: MD-2043, Chis8ina u, Republica Moldova Web site: www.art.md
Phone: GSM+37369312435
Tel. +37322 772507,
tel/fax: +37322 573395

Project partners: D Media Association, Romania, Baza - Belgrade Art Initiatives, Serbia, and NBK Video Forum, Germany.

Center for Contemporary Art-[KSA:K] is a non-profit, independent institution registered in the year 2000. The new strategy of the Center is the development of cultural forms and art practices, which would reflect the dynamic of the social, political and economic transformations of the society. Center pleads for the advocacy activities in promoting of the cultural policies suitable for the defining and the consolidation of the artist position and contemporary art practices in the society.

This project is supported by ECF (European Cultural Foundation), Amsterdam; USA Embassy in Rep. of Moldova; Fine Arts College Al. Plamadeala; The Union of Cineastes from Rep. Moldova.

Posted by jo at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Flash Cube

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Photographic Perspective

Flash Cube :: July 5 - September 30, 2007 :: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art 747-18, Hanam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea 140-893 :: Opening: July 4, 6.00 p.m. :: Panel discussion: Mapping Photographic Space: Thomas Demand, Jan Kaila, Sanggil Kim, Aglaia Konrad, Henk Slager :: July 5, 1.00-5.00 p.m.

Since its acceptance as a form of art around the 1930s, photography has been forced as no other artistic medium to justify its medium-specific qualities. Particularly, the Greenbergian heydays of Modernism have produced such pressing urge for justification. At that moment around the end of the 1930s, painting had surpassed by far its interest in the subject of perspectivist illusion. As a consequence, painting entirely concentrated on the qualities of the two-dimensional surface implying a passion for painterly components such as planes, colors, and lines. From that time onwards, the artistic working field of perspectivist painting would be remediated by photography as an artistic medium.

However, in the artistic practice of our day, which, in line with New York-based theorist Rosalind Krauss could be said to be determined by a post-medium condition, the photographic image can no longer be viewed as a mere aesthetic registration of a situation in the real world. Rather, the topical photographic image demands the investigation of how the photograph as an imaginary medium produces diverse forms of realities and worlds which are still based on its perspectivist capacities.

Such researching attitude requires a critical reevaluation - either through other media or through the history of the photographic medium - of the photographic medium as such. Subsequently, the medium-specific qualities of the photographic image have been deconstructed effecting a turn to captivating forms of spatial investigations.

Indeed one could argue that a critical attitude towards framing, centristic, and perspectivist styles of photography produced a novel generation of photographers fascinated by spatial environments and architectonic constellations. That fascination is connected with interesting, topical forms of photographic criticism on functionalist ways of thought parallel to perspectivist-based photography and on the subdivision of a 3D world into transparent, comprehensible, and instrumental entities.

The exhibition Flash Cube will chart a series of such spatial research strategies implicating a diversity of artistic points of departure such as fluid inner space, open urban space and installative space. The various photographic strategies will be mutually confronted in a transformative way in the exhibition's methodology of mounting (floorplan) - underscored by Rem Koolhaas’ unique non-perspectivist display system of Leeum's exhibition space - so that both spatial reflection and spatial experience can occur in dynamic and invigorating ways.

Artists: Gerard Byrne, David Claerbout, Thomas Demand, Jonas Dahlberg, Geert Goiris, Andreas Gursky, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Klaas Hoek, Candida Hofer, Jan Kaila, Sanggil Kim, Koo Jeong A, Aglaia Konrad, Yoon-jean Lee, Armin Linke, Hermann Pitz, Thomas Ruff, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Haegue Yang, JeongMee Yoon, Mieke Van de Voort and Jeff Wall :: Curator: Henk Slager :: Coordinator: Hyesoo Woo.

Flash Cube was also made possible by Samsung Electronics, Cyworld, Asiana Airlines and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Posted by jo at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2007

FLOSS + Art = people.makeart

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Call for Papers

FLOSS+Art :: Call for Papers :: Deadline: September 15, 2007 :: people.makeart is a new project by GOTO10. It is a repository of articles and lecture materials focused on the relationship between FLOSS (Free / Libre / Open Source Software) and digital arts, as well as a database of free digital art projects. The selected papers will be published on the people.makeart website and will be printed in the FLOSS+Art book, scheduled for spring 2008, using OpenMute's POD publishing service. GOTO10 is now accepting new, old and recycled papers on the following issues:

- opening digital art's practice, code and culture - FLOSS communities VS. art collectives - digital art licensing, copying and distributing, using open content models - role of the artist in FLOSS development - influence of FLOSS on digital art practices - free software to produce art and the art of producing free software - economy of an open digital artwork - FLOSS as an embedded political message in digital art - paradox and limitations of open licenses for digital art - FLOSS as a way to quote and embed other artworks in a new one - digital artist as a FLOSS developer / user and vice-versa - definitions and manifestos for a free software art - branching and forking of an open digital artwork - opening digital art to ensure future maintainance and porting.

Submission Procedures:

- Submit your final paper to pmafloss[at]goto10.org no later than September 15th, 2007. Include the text "FLOSS+Art" followed by your paper's title in your e-mail subject line.
- Submit as many papers as you want, one mail submission for each.
- Accepted formats : plaintext, LaTeX, OpenDocument. No other file format will be accepted.
- The paper must be attached to the mail, do not send us links
- The submitted paper must be written in English
- Paper must be 1500 words minimum

The FLOSS+Art POD publishing is a collaboration between GOTO10 and the Digital Research Unit of the University of Huddersfield and the Bergen Center for Electronics Arts with commissions and contributions from various organisations and institutions.

Posted by jo at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2007

Re-Mediating Literature Conference

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Relocating Literature within Networks, Technologies, + Media Studies

Re-Mediating Literature :: Utrecht University :: July 4-6, 2007 :: Recent developments in digital and electronic media have stimulated new theoretical reflections on the nature of media as such and on the way in which they evolve across time. The aim of this conference is to examine how recent technological changes have affected the 'old' medium of literature.

Multimedial and interactive texts, digitalized archives, cyberpoetics, and technological innovations such as foldable screens: together these have influenced the production and reception of literature, along with the ways in which we think about writing and reading. These ongoing developments call for a critical examination both of the relations between literature and the new media, and of the relations between literary studies and media studies.

The concept of 'remediation' in our title thus has a double thrust. Firstly, it refers to the transformative exchanges between literature and the new media: how has digitalization affected literature as a cultural medium? Secondly, 'remediation' indicates a relocation of literary studies within the broader field of (new) media studies: how could literary studies profit from the various analytical tools developed in (new) media studies and, conversely, how could our understanding of earlier phases in the evolution of the literary medium contribute to our understanding of present developments? By working on both these issues, we hope to relocate the place of literature within the milieu of modern media networks and technologies, but also to relocate the aims and practices of literary studies within the field of media studies.

Main themes:

A. New technologies and literary practices - the state of the field: will literature continue to develop as a schizophrenic medium, a hard medium of printed matter and an unstable medium of electronic data at the same time, or will it fork out in one of two directions? How is digitalization affecting reading practices and the circulation of literary texts? What new forms of intermedial and multimedial literatures are emerging?

B. Literature and the new media - the longer view: what new light do recent developments throw on the history of literature as a cultural medium and, conversely, how might insights from the history of the literary medium contribute to our understanding of recent developments? How can literary history be rewritten in conjunction with such media technologies?

C. Media compatabilities and competitions: new media hardly ever completely subject and annihilate older media. Rather, the two tend to co-exist, each taking on different tasks and responsibilities (cf. film and the novel in the earlier twentieth century). At the same time, however, they often interrupt and compete with each other (cf. television and the digital in the later twentieth century). How can this duplicity or compatability and competition be mapped and analyzed, and which are the insights that such analyses might yield into media formations as techno-cultural formations?

D. Disciplinary relocations: will literary studies become a branch of media studies in the foreseeable future - and if so, how? Will literary studies profit from such a relocation and how will this relocation affects its objects and methodologies?

Keynotes:

Marie-Laure Ryan: "Self-Reflexivity in Net-Art" - Self-reflexivity is widely considered by cognitive scientists a distinctive feature of the human mind. It is therefore not surprising that this fundamental thinking process should manifest itself in most human artistic and intellectual projects. The postmodern fascination with self-reflexivity can be attributed to the sense of pastness that permeates turn-of-the millennium culture. But self-reflexivity could also be a response to the curiosity aroused by the development of a new medium in search of its cultural function. By filling the World Wide Web with images and inverted images of its own utilities and by often making these utilities dysfunctional, Net.art invites us to reflect on the kind of immersion in digital culture that fools us into thinking that we fully control the technology that supports it.

Samuel Weber: "'Seagulls': A 'Script-Image' of Walter Benjamin" - No writer-critic of the 20th century was more attentive to intermedial questions than was Walter Benjamin. One of the forms this attention takes is his notion, and practice, of the "Schriftbild". This talk translates and reads this as a 'Script-Image' (Schriftbild). A Script-Image is both a written image, and one that "scripts" a scenario. This presentation will address one particular staging of a script-image: the short piece entitled "Seagulls" (Mvwen), one of five that Benjamin wrote in the summer of 1930 during a three-week trip to Scandinavia and then published under the title, "Nordic Sea" (Nordische See). (An English translation will be made available).

N. Katherine Hayles: "Narrative and Database: Remediating Literature Through Data" - Recently several theorists have proposed that database is replacing narrative as the dominant cultural form, among them Lev Manovich and Ed Folsom. This presentation will argue for that narrative is essential for human communication and culture, but it will also acknowledge that contemporary narratives are transforming through the impact of data. Remediation here implies that the feedback cycle described by Bolter and Grusin in Remediation can also be understood to take place through different cultural forms as well as through different media, where the dynamics are informed not by the hypermediation / transparency dialectic they describe but rather by the circulation through narrative and data.

Jan Baetens: "Novelization and Intermediality" - This paper tackles first of all the major characteristics of the novelization, a very popular although badly known example of intermediality in 20th Century storytelling (not "the film of the book", but "the book of the film"). Il will give a broad historical survey of the genre, which is actually as old as cinema itself, so to speak. In its second part, the paper tries to define what is really at stake when we study this genre, and why it can be interesting to focus closely on such a "minor", and often espised, practice. Finally, this paper presents a short analysis of one or two case studies, among them the novelization of Jacques Tati's "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" by Jean-Claude Carrihre, a famous French screenwriter (his collaboration with Bunuel is still very famous) and author of various novelizations since his first attempt in the late fifties until today( cf. Goya's Ghosts, 2006).

Joanna Zylinska: "Logos bio-ethikos: What If Foucault Had Had a Blog?" -This paper focuses on one particular domain of contemporary media culture which blurs the boundary between the literary and the literal:blogging. Arguing that blogs aim at creating an experience of total life by building intricate systems of connections between online and offline spaces, personae and narratives, I will explore the extent to which practices facilitated by blogging can be interpreted in terms of bioethics. However, bioethics for me is not limited to the study of ethical issues arising from the biological and medical sciences. Rather it becomes a broadly conceptualised ethics of life, which requires judgement on what we understand by life in its different forms, and on what our position as those who deem themselves to be human is in this bioethics. Interestingly, Foucault associates the practice of self-writing precisely with an ethos of life. The keeping of individual notebooks focused on the recollection of the past is for him a matter of constituting a logos bioethikos for oneself, an ethics quite explicitly oriented by concern for the self toward objectives defined as: withdrawing into oneself, getting in touch with oneself, relying on oneself, benefiting from and enjoying oneself. This phrase logos bioethikos provides a key for my ereading of bioethics as a practice of good life, always on the way to becoming-a-good-life. But I suggest Foucault has in mind something much more material and direct than just a story about one s life and about how it should be lived: this practice of self-writing is actually said to produce a body. Drawing on Seneca, Foucault claims that writing transforms the thing seen or heard into tissue and blood. From this perspective diaries and blogs are not just commentaries on someone's life, already lived to this point but also somehow more real outside its narrative; rather they are materialisations of it, as I will argue in this paper. In doing so I will show that in blogging this materialisation occurs very much through an enactment of a different, more embodied, aware, and lively relationship with technology.

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

Dislocate 07 - Exhibition and Symposium - Tokyo

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ART, TECHNOLOGY, LOCALITY

Dislocate 07: ART, TECHNOLOGY, LOCALITY - Exhibition, Symposium and Workshop series :: 24th July – 5th August :: Tokyo and Yokohama - Ginza Art Laboratory (Wednesday – Sunday 3-8pm); Koiwa Project Space (Tuesday – Sunday 2-7pm); ZAIM 28th & 29th July 11am-4pm - Symposium and Workshops; Opening Event Koiwa Project Space 24th July 7pm; Performance Event ZAIM 29th July 6pm :: All Events are Free.

The city is no longer built of concrete, a static posture no longer endures. Our surroundings have become a malleable space which can be warped, spliced and expanded at will. We no longer stand in one place alone, a mass convergence of coordinates is taking place beneath our feet. As we traverse these points of perpetual motion we are enclosed by structures of elsewhere, met with the sliding walls of other places which lead us through a never ending maze. Shrouded in alternative layers of space, we escape to another confinement through the mesh of new media.

As our presence is extended by the veins of technology our sense of space is transformed, our nervous system stems through endless reaches of universal skin. Our eyes see through a thousand windows, each with a different view, a collision of a multitude of global sounds meets our ears, our fingers pass beyond tiers of materiality.

But can we see what is before us? Are we listening to the resonance of our surroundings? Can we feel the texture of this place?

Engaged in distant or imaginary space, we flick through the channels with our remote control and choose when to plug in when to switch off. But as we are absorbed by these electronic pulses are we disappearing from the here and now?

Personal technologies offer a kaleidoscopic sensation of a multi-layered existence, but perhaps may also provide a microscope by which to examine the place which we are in at this moment.

Dislocate 07 – Festival for Art, Technology and Locality

Dislocate brings together a group of over 30 international artists in an exhibition, symposium and workshop series in Tokyo and Yokohama. Considering the spacial and social dislocation which can occur through technology, these artists are investigating how new media can be rooted in its specific location and form a meaningful relationship between ourselves and our surroundings.

Dislocate aims to explore the potential new media has to increase our awareness of our environment, enhance participation in our locality and community and transform our perceptions of the space we inhabit.

This project presents cutting edge approaches to new technology art but with a view to seeing beyond the technology itself, examining what lies past the screen.

Dislocate prompts us to reconsider the alternative uses of the personal technologies which surround us, not merely offering an escape route from our current situation but also a tool to actually confront this very location.

With an endless array of spaces available to us, we can select our contexts of participation like the channels of a television. We may be highly active in an online space, engrossed in our constructed personal space, but by choice or otherwise we may distance ourselves from our immediate surroundings. We are presented with the freedom of ‘unlimited’ possibilities and yet are we making these decisions consciously or are they occurring without thought?

Dislocate considers the very integration of new media with the environment and this might be utilized to consciously reconnect with our location, seeking to explore, question and debate how can technology be used to heighten our engagement with our surroundings instead of isolating us from our immediate space. When numerous places converge in one site, how do we navigate such space? How does our interaction within a given space formulate identity and how can this be communicated effectively to elsewhere?

These are some of the questions which will be raised through the Dislocate events.

Exhibition: Taking place over two sites, of contrasting locality, this exhibition aims to present a particular relationship to its surroundings, revealing new perspectives of our immediate space, engaging with and investigating this site while also fusing with spaces beyond. Works include a city wide game in which teams play against each other with their mobile phones, an exploration of the streets led by the beat of your heart, architecture which responds to environmental conditions and emotion mapping of the urban landscape.

Symposium: Christian Nold, Active Ingredient, Dan Belasco Rogers, Taeyoon Choi, So Hyeon Park, Erik Pauhrizi, Augmented Architectures, Sascha Pohflepp, Miguel Andrés-Clavera and Inyong Cho

Dislocate presents an international symposium with confirmed delegates from UK, Germany, Republic of Korea, Indonesia and Japan further contributing to the discourse surrounding the interplay of art, technology and location.

This symposium aims to explore what is meant by ‘locality’, how does new media impact upon our notion of space, our interaction with our surroundings, and how this can be used to transform communities, both virtual and physical. The conflicts and integrations which emerge as separate spaces collide in one site will be examined raising concerns of homogenization and de-contextualisation alongside the awareness of local identity and culture. This will include a scrutinization of sensitive, meaningful exchange between different localities facilitated through new media and the manifestations which reconnection or further connection with our environment can take.

Workshops: In a series of workshops participants will have the opportunity to engage further with some of the Dislocate artists and investigate with them in an active form of research and collaboration. The focus of these workshops will be upon the exploration of the surrounding environment, investigating its many layers and connections with other spaces. Workshops will enable direct participation and engagement with the locality and may also draw attention to our simultaneous interaction with elsewhere.

Workshop leaders include Christian Nold, who will present his bio-mapping project, allowing participants to create emotion maps of their travels through the city by the use of bio sensors. Erik Pauhrizi will lead a workshop exploring lo-tech solutions to advanced mobile and locative media.

Performance: Andreas Schlegel and Vladimir Todorovic; Naoko Takahashi; Musashino Art University Media Art Students.

All events are free
If you wish to attend the symposium or workshops please email info@dis-locate.net with your name and contact telephone number

Artists Include:

Active Ingredient www.i-am-ai.net
Christian Nold www.softhook.com
Dan Belasco Rogers www.planbperformance.net/dan/
D-Fuse http://www.dfuse.com/
Taeyoon Choi http://tyshow.org
So-Hyeon Park
Erik Pauhrizi http://butonkultur21.org/
Andreas Schlegel and Vladimir Todorovic http://syntfarm.org/projects/btc/
Yuko Mohri http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~moo/
Augemented Architecture http://www.augmented-architectures.com/
Stanza http://www.stanza.co.uk/sensity/index.html
Disinformation

For more information please contact Emma Ota: info[at]dis-locate.net

Participating Artists: Active Ingredient, Christian Nold, Dan Belasco Rogers, DFuse, Taeyoon Choi, So Hyeon Park, Erik Pauhrizi, Stanza, Yuko Mohri, Ryosuke Akiyoshi, Disinformation, Augmented Architectures, Martin Callanan, Frank Abbott, Sascha Pohflepp, Andreas Schlegel and Vladimir Todorovic, Mouna Andraos, Miguel Andrés-Clavera and Inyong Cho, Laurent Pernot, Esther Harris, Andreas Zingerle, Julian Konczak, Genevieve Staines, Marco Villani, So Young Yang, Liu Zhenchen, Nisha Duggal, Lori Amor & Kevan Davis, Maria Raponi, Lisa Mee, Leo Morrissey, Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir, Anne-Marie Culhane, Jomi Kim, Harry Levene & Jon Pigrem, Naoko Takahashi, Son Woo Kyung.

Dislocate is supported by The Asia-Europe Foundation, The Sasakawa Foundation, The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and Arts Council, England

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

Transitio_mx 02: Electronic Arts and Video Festival

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Call for Entries

The Electronic Arts and Video Festival, Transitio_mx is the most relevant platform in Mexico for the expression and analysis of the contemporary artistic practices with electronic media and the digital culture.

The title for the current edition of the festival is Nomadic Borders, making reference to the electronic / media arts through two metaphors: on the one hand, the border as the symbolic site that lies in the limit itself; on the other, the nomadic as an image of what is mobile, that which lacks a specific location. At the nomadic frontier there is no belonging, the communities developed there are always about to be built. From that idea, the conceptual axes of the festival are derived: Communities in Process and Processes in Community.

The main objective of the Festival is to support, recognize and spread production and current research around the artistic-electronic media, in an inclusive and expansive environment, by means of an exhibition, a symposium and a competition.

The competition is open to all individuals, groups and associations involved in the creative production using electronic media like videoart, sound art, net-art, installations, performing arts, performance actions and other related manifestations.

In the current edition, the National Council for Culture and the Arts, through the Multimedia Center of the National Center for the Arts, opens the calling for the following awards:

TRANSITIO AWARD: The national and international community is called to participate in the Second Electronic Arts and Video Competition that will be carried within the Festival framework from October 13th to 19th, 2007. During the Festival the following prizes will be granted as a recognition to produced work: A single prize worth $ 120,000.00 Mexican pesos or its equivalent in U.S. dollars. The honorary mentions that the Jury considers pertinent.

Proposals for this award will be taken in from the publication of this announcement and until July 27th, 2007 6:00 p.m. (GMT -6). No proposals will be taken in after this deadline. The shipping date can be taken into account as long as the shipment is done using express mail and not ordinary service. In case of international shipments, the package or envelope should be clearly labeled as "Cultural Material with no Commercial Value". The FESTIVAL WILL NOT COVER SHIPPING OR CUSTOMS TAXES COSTS.

SIZIGIA AWARD: The national and international community is called to send its electronic art proposals for the SIZIGIA project, coordinated by Laboratorio Curatorial 060. SIZIGIA is an island in the middle of the Usumacinta River, in the border between Mexico and Guatemala. After its claim as an independent territory by the members of Laboratorio 060, the island was mapped and transferred accurately to the virtual world of Second Life. By working as an independent zone in two planes of interaction, real and virtual, SIZIGIA is self-assumed as a micro-State possible of socio-imaginary confluences. The project impels the application of a biopolitical engineering through different interaction methods between real structures and virtual developments. As a part of their curatorial proposal for Transitio_mx 02, and to be presented in the international exhibition, Laboratorio 060 will coordinate the following awards:

Up to three virtual residences lasting 2 months for the development of the winning projects, which include the amount of 265.000 Linden dollars (approx $1000 USD).

Proposals for this award will be received from the publication of this call and until July 20th, 2007 6:00 p.m. (GMT -6). They can be sent through the Internet, or directly by courier to the Multimedia Center. No proposals will be taken in after the deadline. Proposals after the deadline will not be received. The shipping date can be taken into account as long as the shipment is done using express mail and not ordinary service. In case of international shipments, the package or envelope should be clearly labeled as "Cultural Material with no Commercial Value". The FESTIVAL WILL NOT COVER SHIPPING OR CUSTOMS TAXES COSTS.

TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITIES AWARD: Granted by the US-Mexico Foundation for Culture, Inc, Fomento Educacional, A.C. and Fundación Cultural BBVA Bancomer :: The Transnational Communities Award is open to artistic, cultural and social projects that creatively use the technologic and conceptual tools available in the web, broadening the channels of communitarian communication and interaction and giving rise to spaces online where practices and stories are shared. The purpose of this award is to foster the access to cultural goods and to the technologies involved in its production and distribution, to promote the diversity of expressions and to recognise the citizen participation of the Transnational Communities that link Mexico and the United States in a daily and permanent way.

The call for submissions is open to individuals, groups, associations, organizations and institutions from Mexico and the United States that develop artistic, cultural and social projects for which the Internet is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing, expressing and participating.

Among the fields of activity subsumed are: video (communitarian video, documental, videoart, videoclip, videomail, telenovelas/soap operas), net.art, citizen journalism, digital communities, online forums, weblogs social networks, videogames online, online artistic collaboration projects, electronic literature, digital narrative, online communitarian radio, podcasts, etc.

During the Festival, the winner will be awarded with USD 3,500.

Proposals for this prize will be received from the publication of this call and until 6:00 p.m. (GMT -6) on July 27th, 2007. No proposals will be taken in after this deadline. The shipping date can be taken into account as long as the shipment is done using express mail and not ordinary service. In case of international shipments, the package or envelope should be clearly labeled as "Cultural Material with no Commercial Value". The FESTIVAL WILL NOT COVER SHIPPING OR CUSTOMS TAXES COSTS.

For further information on the submission please visit www.transitiomx.net/concurso

DOCUMENTATION: To obtain the information on the specific participation guidelines for each prize as well as the Application Form and all the information on the documentation that must be included, please go to the Festival’s webpage http://transitiomx.net or the Multimedia Center webpage http://cmm.cenart.gob.mx.

Or refer directly to:
Mariana Delgado
Communication and Public Affairs Coordinator
US-Mexico Foundation for Culture, Inc.
Tel. (52 55) 55 35 76 35
E-mail mariana[at]contactocultural.org

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

June 29, 2007

Double Skin/Double Mind

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Experience a workshop, virtually

The interactive installation version of Double Skin/Double Mind will preview at Beeldmedia Studio, Amsterdam School of the Arts, Jodenbreestraat 3 on June 29 + 30 from 16:00-20:00.

Double Skin / Double Mind is a virtual version of the Double Skin / Double Mind workshop. This workshop, which has been taught by dance company Emio Greco | PC since 1996, represents the basis of the creative work of choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. Participants in this workshop are challenged to discover new interpretations of their dancing body.

Throughout 2006 an interdisciplinary research group, consisting of dance notators Eliane Mirzabekiantz and Marion Bastien, motion capture researcher Fridiric Bevilacqua, cognitive neuroscientist Corinne Jola, media artist Chris Ziegler, cinematography Maite Bermudez, artistic research processes Scott de Lahunta and EG | PC researcher Bertha Bermudez, has been focusing on this specific workshop trying to analyse and document it.

The different data from each research area have been collected, and interactive graphic visualisation tools and motion capture were re-implemented to create this preview of the Interactive Installation Double Skin / Double Mind. The current installation offers participants the possibility of taking part in a virtual version of the workshop in real time, while receiving verbal, physical and peripheral information. By following a life size moving figure, the participants will recognize, compare and understand their actions and involvement in the practice of this workshop. They will travel through the Double Skin / Double Mind structure in a mental and physical way, experiencing what the different layers are.

Concept and realization: Chris Ziegler (ZKM Karlsruhe), Fridiric Bevilacqua (IRCAM, Paris), Bertha Bermudez (Emio Greco | PC)
Co-production with: Amsterdams School of the Arts, research group Art Practice and development, Marijke Hoogenboom
With thanks to: Maite Bermudez, Katharina Pohlmann, Eliane Mirzabekiantz, Marion Bastien, Corinne Jola, Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst / Montevideo, Scott deLahunta, Jeroen Fabius, Paul van der Ploeg, Cinedans and the EG | PC team
Project supported by: Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
Emio Greco | PC receives funding from: the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and from the Dutch Fund for Amateur Art and Performing Arts.

contact: berthabermudez]at]egpc.nl


Chris Ziegler
mobile +49172 89 56 328
http://www.movingimages.de

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

A Theatre Without Theatre

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The Links Between the 'Experience of the Senses' and 'Action'

A Theatre Without Theatre :: until September 11, 2007 :: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Placa dels Angels, 1, 08001 Barcelona :: Curators: Bernard Blistène and Yann Chateigné, with the collaboration of Pedro G. Romero :: Co produced by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Museo Berardo in Lisbon.

A Theatre Without Theatre explores the metaphors in which the influences of the theatre model made themselves felt in the arts of our times throughout the 20th century. This exhibition brings together more than 800 works, including paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos, manuscripts and various other types of documents.

The exhibition reflects on the condition of the subject in contemporary society and on the links between the 'experience of the senses' and 'action'. At the same time, it considers the dramatic roots of art as a constituent element of western modernity: from Vsevolod Meyerhold to Oskar Schlemmer, from Antonin Artaud to Judith Malina and Julian Beck (founders of the Living Theatre company), from Samuel Beckett to Tadeusz Kantor, the theatre has been a wellspring of ideas and theories that have been absorbed by art, becoming models of the aesthetic and spatial relationship. Art could, to a certain extent, be 'the other stage' of dramatic practice.

A wide range of approaches to the notion of drama and the points of convergence between an 'archaic' art and aesthetic innovation and the break with the past are presented in various fields of research in this exhibition, which reveals the artists and the themes common to both the theatre and art. The exhibition is not structured to show a pattern of evolution over time but instead centres on various core areas of analysis in which the genealogies and influences from the early 20th century are set out.

The theatre stage is a space isolated from the real world and hence is fictitious (though not false). It is perhaps this separation -- the distance between the actor and the audience member -- that enables the theatre to serve as a critical model as regards the 'apparent' and to use its full weight to facilitate the circulation of ideas. The 20th century was a period when the theatre got caught up in a process of transformation that eventually came to affect the roots of western culture as a whole and art in particular.

From the mid-1960s onwards, the notion of theatricality was a prominent element in contemporary art criticism. Minimalism was initially regarded as harmful and thought likely to destroy art as it had been known till then. Michael Fried, the American critic, railed against it in his famous essay Art and Objecthood (1967) on the grounds that it proposed a relationship between the work and the spectator that could lead the space of the artwork to absorb the viewer. The artists of the generation immediately after Minimalism appropriated the theatre model in order to create a core from which the foundations underpinning the contemporary could extend outwards. These foundations were the simultaneity of action and perception in the arts and the constant swapping of roles between actors and audience.

In the early 20th century, Dada, Futurism and Constructivism clearly expressed the close bond between aesthetic renewal and the theatre model. Cabaret, music hall, soirées or social gatherings, declamation and reading became modes of presenting active art for many artists after 1916. Playwrights such as Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett have been regarded as the true founders of artistic approaches and practices that go beyond the mere quotation.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE begins with the confrontation between the invention of Minimalism --with works by Carl André, Robert Morris and Donald Judd-- and its rejection and refutation by the following generation -Dan Graham, Bruce Naumann, Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman and Michelangelo Pistoletto-. In the works of these latter artists, it is possible to see the importance of the text and the 'set' and to appreciate the need for a new attitude on the part of the audience, which is sometimes directly addressed and always questioned during the act of perception.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE is complemented by the research of Pedro G. Romero into the relationship between art and the theatre model in Spain: works by Federico García Lorca, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Helios Gómez, Antonio Miralda, the Teatro Estudio Lebrijano Company and Ocaña, among others, are featured in the various sections of the exhibition.

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

June 27, 2007

CADAVRE EXQUIS CARTOGRAPHY (C.E.C.)

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Urban Game & Mapping Exercise

FRIDAY SESSION 18 :: CADAVRE EXQUIS CARTOGRAPHY (C.E.C.); An urban game & mapping exercise followed by Talks from Dr. Maria Kaika and Julie Myers :: June 29, 2007; 6.30 pm :: Outside Bank Tube station - Take the 'Cornhill North' exit and meet us on the square outside the Royal Exchange, corner of Threadneedle St. and Cornhill :: Bring: a digital camera with its download equipment (Cables!), so we can download the images after the walk at Public Works and team-mates.

CADAVRE EXQUIS CARTOGRAPHY prompts people to explore and collect ground-level images of the City. Walks will be followed by two short talks at the public works studio at 8pm. Dr .Maria Kaika of Oxford University will talk on the continuously changing development of the City of London. Julie Myers will present - To travel Somewhere - a mobile phone / mapping project developed from a series of walks in San Francisco, USA, Cambridge, UK and Helsinki, FIN.

CADAVRE EXQUIS CARTOGRAPHY is played in pairs sharing one digital camera with display screen. Player 1 starts by taking a picture with a designated building or object in the frame as well as a second object / building of any kind. After handing over the camera to player 2, both leave the first photographed object behind, moving towards the second element of the shot. Player 2 now takes a picture with this building / object in the frame, but again with something else in the background or foreground, which will be the linking element in the next image. The camera is then handed over to player 1, who takes the next photo of the series.

THE AIM OF THE GAME IS TO COVER AS MUCH GROUND AS YOU CAN.

THE RULES:
1. A team is only allowed 30 shots and 1 camera per walk, so SHOOT CAREFULLY!
2. Images have to overlap physically and can only be of ground level building or object, so DON'T SHOOT IN THE AIR!
3. Only take images of objects/buildings in front of the team so SHOOT FORWARD!

All images will be assembled online and will allow visitors to wander through the City from behind their computer.

Maria Kaika holds a D.Phil. in Geography from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens as well as professional qualifications as an architect. Her previous posts include: Director of Studies in Human Geography at St Hugh's College, Oxford, Departmental Lecturer at the School of Geography, Oxford, Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford, Lecturer in Human Geography at St Peter's College Oxford.

Dr Kaika's research focuses on urban theory, and more specifically on the politics and culture of architectural technology and design and on urban political ecology. Collaborative projects include work on: urbanism and culture; modernist urbanism and nature; urban environmental history; representations of nature and the city; governance and environmental policy; European environmental policy; theoretical approaches to sustainability; political ecology of water supply in western cities.

Julie Myers is an artist who's practice is informed by social encounter and intervention. Her work investigate memory, gesture and narrative in relation to physical environment. Sometimes recording just a brief moment captured between strangers and at other times building sustained relationship with multiple participants over a sustained period of time. She uses film/video, mobile technologies and database formats to document and present material that exists both on the web and in site specific or exhibition space.

Julie is a senor lecturer at Middlesex and Kingston Universities and lives in London. She has exhibited and screened work extensively receiving a number of awards including an AHRB research award and an Erasmus Scholarship. Previous work has been commissioned by The Arts Council of England, NESTA, The BFI, The Institute of Contemporary Art, BAA and the National Portrait Gallery. Julie has recently completed a placement at Adobe in San Francisco as part of the ACE interact program.

public works
Northgate House
2-8 Scrutton Street
UK London EC2A 4RT
Click here to view map

For more information email Jim[at]citymined.org or andreas[at]publicworksgroup.net

Posted by jo at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

Tina Gonsalves' "Feel_Insula"

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Stillness, Emotions and Hypnosis

Tina Gonsalves' Feel_Insula: An interactive Installation about Stillness, Emotions and Hypnosis :: At New Greenham Arts, The Corn Exchange, 113 Lindenmuth Way, New Greenham Park, Newbury, Berks, RG19 6HN UK :: Preview: Sunday 1 July 2007 12-2pm :: From June 28 - August 3 :: 10am-5pm; Thursday (10am-8pm; Saturdays by appointment).

Feel.Insula is an intimate and vulnerable responsive video installation driven by the stillness of the audience. In a darkened space, a video is projected on the wall. It is of the artist under hypnosis. Under hypnosis, the artist is asked to re-experience potent emotional memories of her life. As soon as the viewer enters the space, the artist wakes up from hypnosis. Only after the audience is completely still does the video fall back into weaving the stories re-lived under hypnosis. FEEL_INSULA emerges from a collaboration between neuroscientist Dr Hugo Critchley and artist Tina Gonsalves, and was created over her artist in residency at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, London.

Emotion expression databases such as Karolinska and Ekman databases are commonly used with in affective neuroscientific experiments. The artist started to question the validity of these performed emotions as stimuli. In the search for more authentic emotiona; expressions, she began working with Dr. David Oakley, the Director of the Hypnosis Unit at UCL. She asked Oakley to hypnotise her in order to re-experience different potent emotional memories. Over 3 one-hour sessions, Oakley induced her into states of fearfulness, sadness, happiness and calmness. Each session was recorded using two 3 chip digital cameras focused on the artists face and also radio mic and ipod recorder. These video and audio recordings formed the basis to FEEL_INSULA.

Tina Gonsalves (AU) is currently honorary artist in residence at the Wellcome Department of Neurology at University College London. Combining diagnostic imaging, biometric sensors and mobile technologies, her installations, films for television, and software investigate emotional signatures both within the body and among interactive audiences. Since 1995 her work has shown internationally at venues including Banff Centre for the Arts (CA); Siggraph (US); International Society for the Electronic Arts 2004; European Media Arts Festival; Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (JP); Australian Centre For Photography, Sydney; Barbican (UK); Pompidou Centre (FR), Institute for Contemporary Art, London; and Australian Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne. Her music videos for Universal, BMG, EMI, and Festival Mushroom Records have been televised worldwide.

Posted by jo at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

Networks and Boundaries

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Call for Applications

Call for applications at the Getty Research Institute for the theme Networks and Boundaries. The Institute welcomes applications from established scholars, postdoctoral scholars, and predoctoral candidates, as well as writers and artists who wish to be in residence in 2008-2009 and whose projects explore cross-cultural exchange and the visual arts.

The study of the visual arts can and does cross cultural, civilizational, ethnic, religious, and geographic boundaries. Cultural exchange takes place through kaleidoscopic networks that are themselves dynamic and transformative. These exchanges are integral to the construction of boundaries, contributing to definitions of self and other. The contact zones within which they occur are marked by appropriations, hybridizations, and syncretisms-all of which remap cultural boundaries.

The study of the visual arts has its own networks and boundaries, including interdisciplinarity and divisions between national, area, and world histories. How freely have artists, art objects, and artistic concepts and practices moved across socio-political and cultural boundaries? And with what results? How closely do artistic crossings and their analyses map onto larger networks of power and economics? How do we negotiate the different demands of local cultural contexts with larger regional and/or global concerns?

Scholars in residence will find that the special collections of the Getty Research Library are especially rich in primary materials that bear upon this topic, ranging from nineteenth-century photographs by European travelers in Asia to the collection of the Association Connaissance de l'histoire de l'Afrique contemporaine (exploring the influence of French colonialism in Africa); from the papers of international architect Bernard Rudofsky to documentation of such global activities as Fluxus and mail art.

Eligibility: These grants are for established scholars, artists, or writers who have attained distinction in their fields. Applications are welcome from researchers of all nationalities who are working in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

Grants For Scholars: Getty scholars are in residence for the entire academic year (from September 2008 to June 2009). A salary-replacement stipend is awarded equivalent to the applicant's current academic base salary, up to a maximum of $75,000. The grant also includes an office at the Getty Research Institute, research assistance, airfare to and from Los Angeles, an apartment in the Getty scholar housing complex, and health benefits.

Grants For Visiting Scholars: Visiting Scholars are in residence for a three- month term. A monthly stipend of $3,500 is awarded, prorated to the actual dates of residency. The grant also includes an office at the Getty Research Institute or Getty Villa, research assistance, airfare to and from Los Angeles, and an apartment in the Getty scholar housing complex.

Application Availability and Deadline: Completed application materials must be received in the Getty Foundation office on or before November 1, 2007. We regret that incomplete applications, or late applications (those received after November 1, 2007, regardless of their postmark date or place of origin), cannot be accepted for consideration. Unfortunately, we cannot accept applications hand-delivered to the Getty Center or those sent by e-mail or fax. Application material cannot be returned.

Posted by jo at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance

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OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS, POSTERS & PERFORMANCES

How are bodies represented through technology? How is desire constructed through representation? What is the relationship of the body to self-awareness?” [Stone, Allucquère Rosanne The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1995, p. 17]

[Image from Paul Sermon's "Telematic Dreaming"] INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance is a three-day (December 7-9) interdisciplinary programme of events made to illicit connectivity, induce interaction and provoke debate between makers, participants and witnesses of works that explicitly address proximity and hybridity in performance. It will feature workshops, seminars, performances, posters, and a 1-day symposium. INTIMACY will employ digital and live art practices as agents, aiming to further practical exploration of and vibrant discourse into notions of intimacy in contemporary performance. It is framed as a forum for artists, scholars, community workers, performers, cultural practitioners, researchers and creative thinkers.

INTIMACY will provide a platform for the discussion of live art/performance practices concerned with displaying intuitive, intimate and visceral relationships between artist and other. It will explore performance practices that engage in intimate encounters, raising issues around bodies of data and flesh; presence as aura and representation; desire as embodied condition and disembodied fantasy; the human and posthuman self. Confirmed contributors include: Johannes Birringer, Kira O'Reilly, Tracey Warr, Janis Jefferies, Amelia Jones, Dominic Johnson, Kelli Dipple, Paul Sermon.

SPACETIME

INTIMACY will take place on the 7th, 8th and 9th December in and around Goldsmiths University of London, LABAN and The Albany (South London).

CO-DIRECTORS: Rachel Zerihan and Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x]

BOARD

Prof. Johannes Birringer, Chair in Drama and Performance Technologies, School of Arts,Brunel University of West London; Artistic Director of AlienNation Co.
Hazel Gardiner, Senior Projects Officer, AHRC ICT Methods Network; Researcher.
Dr. Adrian Heathfield, Principal Research Fellow (Performance and Live Arts), School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University; Writer; Curator.
Prof. Janis Jefferies, Artistic Director, Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Artist; Writer; Curator.
Gerald Lidstone, Head of Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London.

PROPOSALS

All participants will be selected on an open submissions basis.
Proposals will be peer reviewed by the INTIMACY Board and Advisory Panel. Proposals must not exceed the word limit specified. You may provide additional info such as links to digital material including online video, photos and websites. Further supporting documentation such as hard copies and discs are welcome; if you want these returned please enclose a SAE. We are accepting proposals for:

Paper presentations or Performance Lectures
Poster presentations
Live performances -physical and/or digital

Proposals should be concerned with the relationship between visceral and digital environments/methodologies being explored in contemporary performance practice. Specifically, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

The politics of intimacy in contemporary performance
Risk in relation to intimacy in contemporary performance
Pornography/erotics and performed intimacy
(Dis)embodiment, (tele)presence and intimate performance encounters
Technologies as affective instigators of intimacy
Intimate aesthetics in contemporary performance
Interfaces of performed desire

Accepted proposals will be published on our website. Further publishing possibilities are being explored.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submit by email to Maria X at and Rachel Zerihan intimacyrachelz[at]yahoo.co.uk writing INTIMACY SUBMISSION in the subject line. Send hard copies to INTIMACY c/o 22 Dutton Street, London, SE10 8TB.

Performances: Submit 1) 500-word statement detailing your project; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Tech Drive; 4) Any other supporting material as described above. Please note that only limited technical support can be provided.

Papers/ Performance Lectures: Submit 1) 500-word abstract. This contribution would form a 15 minute paper to be presented at the Symposium on Sunday 9th December; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

Posters: Submit 1) 300-word abstract /summary; 2) 200-word CV; 3) Any other supporting material as described above.

DEADLINE

Deadline for submissions: 19 August 2007
Notification of acceptance: early October 2007

ADVISORY PANEL (confirmed to date)

Daisy Abbot, AHDS Performing Arts Glasgow
Gavin Barlow, CEO The Albany
Alice Bayliss, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds
Brian Brady, Head of Programming, LABAN
Anna Furse, Drama Department, Goldsmiths University of London; Director
Marc Garrett, Artist, Co-director Furtherfield
Gabriella Giannachi, Co-director Centre for Intermedia, University of Exeter
Joe Kelleher, School of Arts, Roehampton University
Roberta Mock, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth
Molly Mullen, Re-Write Co-ordinator
Chris Salter, Artist; Researcher Hexagram; Department of Design and Computational Arts, Concordia University (Canada)
Jennifer Sheridan, Director BigDog Interactive
Igor Stromajer, Artist (Slovenia)
Bojana Kunst, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Tony Thatcher, Choreographer; Programme Leader LABAN
Helen Varley-Jamieson, Performer (New Zealand)

INTIMACY Across Visceral and Digital Performance is supported by the AHRC ICT Methods Network, Goldsmiths Graduate School, Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Goldsmiths Drama Department and LABAN.

For more information on INTIMACY please visit http://www.cybertheater.org
If you have further queries, please contact intimacyrachelz[at]yahoo.co.uk or drp01mc[at]gold.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2007

Net User 4

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Call for registration

Net User 4 international working camp :: July 16-24, 2007 :: Organized by InterSpace Association, Bulgaria.

Net User is an international and interdisciplinary forum taking place biannually in Bulgaria, which features a wide variety of current trends in network activities in order to develop a better theoretical and pragmatic understanding of ICT, new media and creativity. Building on the previous well-attended three editions of the forum, Net User 4 will bring together researchers and practitioners from many disciplines, fields and countries for a working camp with a variety of events like presentations, common and panel discussions, workshops, workgroups, free mutual skill sharing panels, a screening and exhibition program, music performances and informal exchanges.

The working camp will explore various issues around the theme of Networking or how do people living in the technological era develop and use the network technologies.

Net User 4 will take place in the heart of Balkan Mountains - Pleven Hovel, 1504 meters above sea level. The isolated place and the beautiful nature will provide the perfect environment for the programme of free mutual skill sharing panels, informal exchanges, and mostly for a creative holiday in a pleasant company.

The participation in the international working camp is free of charge, however the participants should cover themselves their travel and lodging costs.

Posted by jo at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua Presents: We are the Strange

Ars Virtua is proud to present the Second Life premier of We are the Strange :: June 29 at 6:00 pm SLT [SLURL].

M dot Strange takes us into the new realm of video game structured and inspired storytelling with his character's harrowing quest for ice cream. The variety of animation styles, game and cultural references and distopian beauty of this work make it important to modern filmmaking. Add to this that m dot strange created this virtually single handedly and had it selected for Sundance based on his YouTube audience and you end up with a very powerful piece of contemporary media.

We are the Strange is an animated feature film in which two diametrically opposed outcasts fight for survival in a sinister fantasy world. After meeting in the somber Forest of Still Life, an abused young woman (Blue) reluctantly follows a care free dollboy (Emmm) to Stopmo City on his unreasonable quest for ice cream. They're lives are constantly in jeopardy after they're caught in the middle of a deadly battle between bizarre monsters on their way to the ice cream shop. A flamboyant ultraviolent hero(Rain) appears and effortlessly dispatches all the horrible monsters in his path. Blue meets Rain before he partakes in an impossible battle against the source of all that is evil in Stopmo City. When it seems as if darkness will have the last laugh a gleaming fist made of aluminum foil bursts through the ground thus starting the final showdown
between mega_good and hyper_evil.

We Are the Strange is its own imaginative and immersive universe. M dot Strange spent three years painstakingly creating this film, using a range of animation techniques: traditional, stop-motion, computer, and his own unique blend of 8-bit graphics and anime, dubbed "Str8nime." The stunning visuals are complemented by a soundtrack that is both beautiful and harrowing. The end result is a freaky technocarnival ride that climaxes with a momentous battle between innocence and darkness.

Posted by jo at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2007

Art + Music of the Overhead Projector

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Call for Participation

ART AND MUSIC WITH THE OVERHEAD PROJECTOR - A one week experimental workshop around the overhead projector :: August 20-25, 2007 :: Moltkerei studio in Cologne / Germany :: Presentation and Performance August 25, 7pm - in the tradition of The Art of the Overhead- Festival.

The workshop is about a playful and artistic exploration with the overhead projector. It aims at everybody wanting to develop overhead projector based light/sound or performance works. In a final presentation the works created during the workshop will presented to the public. Overhead projectors, tools and materials will be supplied by the organisers. Simple accomodation can also be organised if needed. Travel expenses won't probably be covered.

If you are interested or have questions send an e-mail to tageslichtprojektor[at]derstrudel.org. Organization: Christian Faubel, Ralf Schreiber, Tina Tonagel

Posted by jo at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

United Nations Plaza

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Inaugurates WUNP – 95.2 FM

The United Nations Plaza Radio Network, WUNP – 95.2 FM :: Inaugural Broadcast – LIVE INTERNET STREAM :: June 30, 9-11pm CEST (Berlin) :: unitednationsplaza, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a, Berlin 10249, Germany :: followed by a party at Salon Aleman.

WUNP is a radio station produced by neuroTransmitter [Valerie Tevere + Angel Nevarez] for United Nations Plaza. WUNP is a portal for broadcasting audio works and conceptual radio projects. Over the course of the summer and fall of 2007 WUNP will be on air across Berlin (95.2 FM) and beyond through internet stream. We will initiate our broadcast schedule with special in-studio contributions and conversations with: Fia Backström, Regine Basha and Julieta Aranda, Uta Meta Bauer and Piotr Nathan, Karl Holmqvist, Stefan Saffer, and Tirdad Zolghadr.

WUNP radio programs will be available for continuing use in cassette form and are accompanied by a script or blurb to radio broadcasters.

Local broadcast times: 9-11am Honolulu / 11am-1pm Anchorage / 12-2pm Los Angeles, Vancouver / 1-3pm San Salvador / 2-4pm Bogotá, Mexico City / 3-5pm Montréal, New York / 4-6pm Buenos Aires, São Paulo / 4:30-6:30pm St. John’s / 7-9pm Casablanca, Reykjavik / 8-10pm Algiers, Dublin, London / 9-11pm Berlin, Rome, Zagreb / 10pm-12am Beirut, Istanbul, Nairobi, Ramallah / 11pm-1am Baghdad / 11:30pm-1:30am Tehran / +1 day -- 12-2am Islamabad, Moscow / 1-3am Dhaka / 1:30-3:30am Mumbai, New Delhi / 2-4am Chiang Mai, Hanoi / 3-5am Beijing / 4-6am Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo / 5-7am Sydney / 6-8am Vladivostok / 7-9am Auckland / 8-10am Anadyr / 9-11am Christmas Island /

United Nations Plaza 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.

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Magdalena Magiera
unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin 10249 GermanyUNP
T. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 90
F. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 85

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

re:place 2007

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re:place 2007: The Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology :: Date: November 15-18, 2007 :: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

This conference is a sequel to 'Refresh!', the first in this series, chaired by Oliver Grau and produced by the Database of Virtual Art, Leonardo, and Banff New Media Institute, and held at the Banff Center in Canada in September 2005, which brought together several hundred artists, scientists, researchers, curators and theoreticians of different disciplines.

re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, 're:place', we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology.

Posted by jo at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2007

Camp for Climate Action

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Workshop on Art Activism

Departure Lounge: A weekend workshop designing creative resistance against the root causes of Climate Change :: July 13-15, near Heathrow, London.

Some of the most successful political movements have been those that have developed creative forms of protest: the suffragettes chaining themselves to buildings, the beautiful tree houses of the anti roads protesters, the Zapatistas with their poetic communiques and masks, Reclaim the Streets' rebel carnivals, the Italian white overalls' imaginative take on civil disobedience. All these forms have emerged when the unbridled imagination of art mixes with the deep social engagement of politics. The growing radical movement for climate justice needs its own new forms.

Departure Lounge is a weekend workshop where we will collectively explore the spaces between art and activism and design creative actions in preparation for the Camp for Climate Action. The Camp, which takes place near Heathrow from 14th to 21st August, has been described by the Independent as "Glastonbury, science seminar and protest all in one." It mixes low-impact ecological living, dozens of workshops and mass direct action aimed at the root causes of climate change. This year it will be targeting the aviation industry and airport expansion.

At the workshop we will work together to create imaginative new forms of protest, share skills and ideas, and design events / actions that will take place during the Camp to engage, delight, provoke, challenge and encourage participation.

The weekend is suitable for those who are interested in work that does not merely 'represent' a political issue, nor serves as propaganda but directly confronts and transforms the issue itself. If you are interested in radically engaged practices that look neither like art nor activism but take the best of both of these worlds, that sit somewhere between direct action and performance, resistance and creativity then this workshop is for you.

A key inspiration for the workshop will be Steven Duncombe's concept of creating "Ethical Spectacles".

Taking place from the evening of Friday 13th July to late Sunday afternoon, 15th July, the workshop will be funded on a donations basis. We hope to be in one of the villages threatened with destruction by the expansion of Heathrow airport. The exact location will be confirmed later.

Facilitated by artist / activist John Jordan, and writer / activist Katharine Ainger, the workshop aims to inject a large dose of radical imagination into the rising movements for climate justice.

Places will be limited so please fill in the attached form and email it to - createresist[at]riseup.net -- before the 29th June. We will Confirm your place by 1st July. Even if you have done nothing like this before, please consider applying. We are looking for a diversity of perspectives. If you have special needs for attendance please let us know once your application has been received and accepted.

"Heathrow is its own city, a Vatican of the western suburb! The airport complex with its international hotels, storage facilities, semi-private roads, is as detached from the shabby entropy of the metropolis as is the City, the original walled settlement. They have their own rules, their own security forces, the arrogance of global capitalism. They service Moloch in whatever form he chooses to reveal himself; they facilitate drug / armament, blood / oil economies." - Ian Sinclair, "London Orbital"

Posted by jo at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

Seoul International Film Festival 2007 Net Section

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

The 8th Seoul International Film Festival is open for entries. Seoul International Film Festival Net Section is trying to introduce talented visual artists all over the world and their brilliant works and to lead the new audio-visual experiences based on the Internet and New Media. We sincerely hope you consider this exciting opportunity to show your great endeavors in the digital convergence era.

WHEN : September 6 - December 31, 2007 :: WHERE : WWW.SENEF.NET / Mobile and DMB :: SUBMISSION DEADLINE: July 13, 2007 :: ELIGIBILITY: For the official competition section, only works completed after January 2006 may be submitted to the Festival. Submissions should be creative works produced or adopted through digital technology. There will be no restrictions regarding the genre, length or subject matter of the work and all types of works, including fiction, documentary, experimental work, music video, animation, motion graphic, flash animation, game, web-art, etc. will be accepted.

MATERIALS REQUIRED FOR SUBMISSIONS:

1. Completed application form (can be downloaded here)
2. Preview material:
- By Post : DVD / DV6mm / CD / VHS (Seoul International Film Festival Head Office - Program Dept. of Net Section, 5F Youahn Bldg. 146-23 Samsung-dong, Kangnam-gu, Seoul, 135-090 South Korea)
- By FTP Server (under 300 MB) : FLASH / WMV / MOV / AVI / MPEG
* For File-Transferring indications, please mail to program3[at]senef.net
- By E-MAIL : URL address to program3[at]senef.net

3. Complete script in English (.doc)
4. Photo of the Work (.jpg) : more than 300 dpi
5. Photo of the Artist (.jpg) : more than 300 dpi
6. Any other publicity materials related to the submitted work (optional)

* Application form and photos can be submitted by E-MAIL.
* Resolution should be more than 640 * 480.

CONTACT

Park, Ju Youn
Program Coordinator
Seoul International Film Festival
program3[at]senef.net
bleu3901[at]hotmail.com
Tel. +82-2-518-4332
Fax. +82-2-518-4333
Mobile Phone. +82-11-9923-3190
5F, Youahn Bldg. 146-23 Samsung-Dong,
Kangnam-Gu, Seoul, South Korea
zip code 135-090

Posted by jo at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)

EVA Conference: Keith Armstrong

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Ecology, Performance and Collaboration

As part of this year's EVA Conference, Australian media artist Keith Armstrong is giving a talk for the Computer Arts Society at Birkbeck: Ecology, Performance and Collaboration - Embodying Intimate Transactions :: July 10; 6:30 for 7:00 :: The Screen on Gordon Square, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Sq, London, WC1H 0PD :: Nearest tubes - Euston Square, Warren Street, Russell Square. More info.

Intimate Transactions is a dual site, telematic installation currently been shown in the US. It allows two people located in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using only their bodies (predominantly their backs and feet), using two identical interfaces called 'Bodyshelves'. During a 30-minute, one-on-one session their physical actions allow them to individually and collaboratively explore immersive environments. Each participant's own way of interacting results in quite different, but interrelated animated and generative imagery, real time generated audio (seven channels), and three channels of haptic feedback (felt in the stomach and back). This experience allows each participant to begin to sense their place in a complex web of relations that connect them and everything else within the work.

Intimate Transactions is an investigation in creating embodied experiences that are both performative and improvisational by harnessing individual, performative languages of 'untrained' bodies as a means to engender understandings of 'ecological' relationship. It arose from a deep collaboration between media artists, performance practitioners, sound artists, hardware and software engineers, a furniture maker and a scientific ecologist. Our entire process was informed by a praxis-led approach to art making that stressed embodied connectivity and inseparability. This allowed us to understand how participants might move within the constraints of a particular interface, allowing us to shape and form the overall phrasing and sensibilities of their experiences, whilst maintaining the unique nature of their collaborative experiences. In this presentation Keith will discuss his practice-! led rese arch approach and illustrate the presentation with videos, images and sound.

Keith Armstrong is an Australian/English interdisciplinary media artist, Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Creative Industries Research Fellow and has just finished a Visiting Professorship at Calpoly State University, California, working in collaboration with their Liberal Arts and Architecture Faculties. His recent work Intimate Transactions, created with the Transmute Collective, received an Honorary Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica and featured in the 2005 Ars Electronica Festival in Austria. His latest interactive installation, Shifting Intimacies, was presented at the ICA London in March 2006.

Posted by jo at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

Mute Vol 2 #6 Call for Artwork Contributions

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Mute Vol.2 #6 is due to come out in August 2007 and will feature a group of articles investigating the implications of a global economy sustained by unprecedented levels of debt, and the crisis of value production that underlies it; a crisis whose hallmarks are the widespread looting of resources and non-reproduction of infrastructures and labour power, the inflation of asset bubbles, high levels of liquidity and personal debt. We are making this call for artwork and visual contributions to the theme. Artworks submitted will be hosted on this site and those selected for inclusion in the printed magazine will win a year's free subscription to Mute. Please check here and here for freshly uploaded content on this theme.

Please submit your artwork in .zip .pdf .jpeg .png .mp3 .ogg or .mp4 to mute[at]metamute.org (with the subject header 'artwork' or register at metamute.org and upload image files to the following gallery. More >>

Posted by jo at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Canal Street Station

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Participatory Public Pay Phone Who-Dunnit

31 Down's interactive telephone mystery Canal Street Station runs through October 31, 2007. To play, call this toll-free number from a pay phone inside the station: 1-877-OR-WHAT-31 (1-877-679-4283). Note: This mystery takes place on the N, Q, R, W, 6, and J, M, Z platforms, not the A, C, E, station.

Canal Street Station is a free public media art installation set in the Canal Street Subway Station in New York City. Participants are invited to make a toll-free call from any public payphone in the Canal Street station (inside of the turnstyles). Participants will then be guided on a pay phone mystery. The game takes approximately 45 minutes to complete.

Tajna Tanovic stars in this public pay phone who-dunnit set in the maze of tiles that make up the Canal Street Subway Station. This is an interactive piece that challenges participants to test their skills at listening and following directions. Players are put in the shoes of Mike Sharpie, private investigator, as he searches the depths of Canal Street Station for a young French woman that may have committed a murder, or may be a figment of Mike's wandering imagination.

"Canal Street Station" is co-produced by 31 Down radio theater and free103point9 and presented by free103point9 as part of the transmission arts non-profit's Tenth Anniversary celebration. Created by: Ryan Holsopple, Shannon Sindelar, Mirit Tal, and Tanja Tanovic.

Posted by newradio at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

killer banshee

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Live Video at Bluestockings

killer banshee brings live, dual screen video performance to Bluestockings for a night of mesmerizing visuals and sound :: June 23rd, 2007 @ 7pm :: Bluestockings, 172 Allen St. Lower East Side NYC :: Subway: F, V to Lower East Side-Second Ave :: 212-777-6028 :: $5-10ss (NOTA: No One Turned Away for lack of funds).

killer banshee is a collaborative partnership between Eliot K Daughtry and Kriss De Jong devoted to creating challenging audiovisual art works. Calling a performance by killer banshee a VJ event fails to describe what you will see. Unlike others using live video in conjunction with dance or music events, this pair uses an arsenal of visual imagery culled from video they've shot, archival footage, their own paintings, drawings and sculpture, to reinterpret and redefine what their art is about. While the duo works in combinations with other performers, their focus is on works of their own. Armed with Laptops and projectors, these two willfully make a dance out of their art. When not working behind the video projectors, Kriss & Eliot can be found doing audio for video, recording spoken word artists, or working on their own eccentric art.

Posted by jo at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

PARTICIPATE IN URBAN SPACE

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Deadline: July 1, 2007

Urban Space is part of the biannual Brazilian photography festival FotoRio, taking place in Rio de Janeiro in July. Project curators will select 25 artists to participate in the 2007 edition of FotoRio. On July 20th, selected images from these artists will be projected at the festival location Oi Futuro - a landmark cultural institute in Rio de Janeiro. Simultaneous with the projections in Brazil, the same selection will be projected in the Berlin gallery, New Life Shop.

Urban Space invites submissions from artists working with issues regarding the urban environment, such as anonymity, community, displacement, informal architectures and gentrification. Traditional documentary photography as well as urban portraits, architectonic interventions, actions and documentation of street art projects, are to be considered for selection.

URBAN SPACE OPENING - RIO & BERLIN

The Urban Space opening will be held on Friday, July 20th in Rio and Berlin at 8 PM local time.

RIO DE JANEIRO VENUE:
Rua Dois de Dezembro 63/ 8º andar
Flamengo
Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Metro: Largo do Machado

BERLIN VENUE:
New Life Shop
Choriner Strasse 85
10119 Berlin-Mitte
U-Bahn: Rosenthaler Platz (U8)

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

June 21, 2007

DRIFT 2007 Exhibition @ Rush Art Gallery, NYC

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Call for Live Performance + Video Art

DRIFT (Santa Fe NM): Drift is an annual exhibition that travels to a new location every year. DRIFT 2007 marks its 5th anniversary and is scheduled as a two-day performance art and video art show at Rush Arts Gallery in the Chelsea art district in New York City. Curated by: Eileen Olivieri Torpey and Bradley Pecore. The show will take place during NYC's Performa Biennial Performance Art events in November. Proposal Deadline: Postmarked July 13, 2007. Contact them here.

DRIFT characterizes the impermanence and site-specificity of the artworks as well as the adaptive qualities of the participating artists. DRIFT highlights talented under represented artists while emphasizing the critical role of experimentation and process within both conventional and unconventional exhibition spaces.

DRIFT was first conceived in the winter of 2002 as a one-day exhibition on the Jersey Shore. The Atlantic Ocean inspired temporary works by twelve artists from the greater New York City area. Fluxus artist, Geoffrey Hendricks, punctuated the day with a famous headstand on a pile of ocean boulders. In 2003 the show moved to a former home of Buckminster Fuller, River Run Farm in New Jersey. Artists responded to thirty acres of pastoral/river landscapes and the cultural history of the farm, which was part of the Underground Railroad in the early 1800's.

In 2004 DRIFT took place at Valentino Pier Park, located on the Buttermilk Channel in Red Hook Brooklyn. The exhibition featured 20 artists working in video, painting, sculpture, installation and sound. Red Hook was one of the first areas in Brooklyn to be inhabited by Algonquian tribes and later settled by the Dutch. The surrounding landscape was named for its red clay soil and hook shaped peninsula. Today, the view from Valentino Pier includes: The Statue of Liberty, The Verrazano Bridge, and Lower Manhattan.

DRIFT 2006 took place at the Bronx River Art Center in the South Central Bronx and included 28 artists working in sculpture, installation, video and performance. Part of the exhibition existed outdoors along the Bronx River for one-day while the other part of the show stayed up for six weeks in the center’s gallery. The river covers 23 miles and runs through the Bronx and Southern Westchester. The Mohicans were the first people to live and fish along the river and named it Aquehung or "River of High Bluffs." Beginning in the 1700’s, European immigrants built twelve mills on the river and by the end of the 1800’s, the river was so polluted from industrial waste that people called it an open sewage. Today, school groups and community organizations are working hard to ecologically restore the river and have made substantial progress– there are now a growing number of fish and plant species that have returned.

Posted by jo at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

SATELLITE VOYEURISM

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Workshop Call

SATELLITE VOYEURISM - Workshop Call :: July 20 - 22, 2007 :: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany :: limited to 12 participants :: Application Deadline: June 29, 2007.

The Workshop Satellite Voyeurism addresses questions of production and reception of satellite images. In addition to public lectures by international media artists, committed scientists and commercial companies' representatives of the regions' geo-data industry, a two day workshop program with up to 12 participants takes place. Within the hands-on part the participants learn how to use a simple antenna, computer, soundcard combination to retrieve satellite images of NOAA satellites, and share own ideas and projects with the other participants. Both lectures and workshop discuss the image quality of satellite images but of course the subject will also touch upon the field of locative media, as GPS, GIS.

Through the workshop the basis for a publication shall be created, which includes documentation about recent media art projects in the field of mapping, satellite images and satellite technology.

The workshop is open to 12 participants. Participants will get free accommodation and depending on the distance we can partly support the travel costs. There is no workshop fee. With the participation in the workshop the participants agree to actively support the production of a documentation (deadline for texts October 15).

In order to apply for the workshop, please let us know, why would you like to like to participate, what's your field of interest, and what exactly you would present to the other participants. Please also send a short CV. All material to info[at]hmkv.de.

The workshop is funded by Der Ministerpraesident des Landes NRW, LAG Soziokultur NRW, and Kulturbuero Stadt Dortmund.

PROGRAM

July 20, 2007 - from 4 pm on :: Arrival of participants, Internal workshop presentations.

July 21, 2007 - 11 am - 4 pm :: Public lectures with Regine Debatty (WMMNA), Dr. Tristan Thielmann (University Siegen), Frank Warmelink (Free Consultant for geo-data appliance), Francis Hunger (HMKV, Dortmund) Internal workshop presentations by participants (until 9 pm.)

July 22, 2007 - 11 am - 4 pm :: Internal Hands-On Workshop with Thilo Elsner (Observatories Bochum/Amsat-DL) Receiving satellite images from NOAA satellites with just an antenna and a PC. Internal workshop presentations and BBQ.

July 23, 2007 :: departure.

THE LECTURES ON SATURDAY, 21 JULY 2007, ARE PUBLIC AND DO NOT REQUIRE BOOKING.

About Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund: HMKV serves as a platform for the production, presentation, education on and contextualisation of contemporary and experimental media art. The activities of HMKV deal, in different formats, with the theme Augmented Space": in exhibitions, workshops, performances, symposia, publications, Internet applications and in European research projects. The success of last year's "How I learned to love RFID" workshop at HMKV (conceived by Francis Hunger) and the emergence of popular geographic mapping tools led to the development of the Satellite Voyeurism" workshop in 2007, directed by Francis Hunger.

CONTACT

Office:
Hartware MedienKunstVerein
Francis Hunger
Guentherstrasse 65
44143 Dortmund

Exhibition and Workshop Venue:
HMKV at PHOENIX Halle
Hochofenstrasse / corner Rombergstrasse
44263 Dortmund-Hoerde

info[at]hmkv.de
http://www.hmkv.de
Tel: ++49+231+823106

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW

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Brutal Realities - Art, Subjectivity and The News

COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW: D.I.Y. talk show on art & media :: TOPIC: Brutal Realities - Art, Subjectivity and The News :: SPEAKERS: Nanette Hoogslag / OOG and Florian Schneider / DICTIONARY OF WAR :: QUESTIONS: ask-it-yourself now and during the show :: June 27, 20.30 CET :: Video stream and interface for online participation :: Location: De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam (bring your laptops and mobiles) :: EXTRA: music performance of Nanko.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: Brutal Realities - Art, Subjectivity and The News :: In the digital age you cannot stop information - how many times did we hear this hollowed out clichi? Countless for sure. But exactly what kind of information? How to judge it? How to develop a personal relation to it?

The News is one of these information flows that in the era of digital media seems to become ever more pervasive, inescapable really. As it does so it seems to divide itself into a curious dichotomy: it ( the news ) either becomes trivialised, or it reflects the perpetual miseries of the brutal realities that apparently surround us; disasters, war, famine, oppression, ecological devastation, family drama, and a general feeling of estrangement. In any case difficult to develop a personal relationship to it, be it trivia or conversely our daily portion of misery...

How does art and how do artists relate to this omnipresence of suffering in real-time? Can art help us to develop the distance, the silence, the space in-between that makes it possible to reflect The News ? Can it point a way out of estrangement of the global anxiety machine? Can it rekindle our empathy for the pain of others?

And is social reality in any case coextensive with the news ? Or should we rather develop and alternative relationship to social reality? And how then should this be done?

Can a project such as OOG in the web edition of the Dutch national daily newspaper De Volkskrant, where a different artist is invited every two weeks to comment on the news in an on-line art work every two weeks, help us to develop another (a more healthy?) subjective relationship to the news ?

Can a project such as the Dictionary of War help us to establish an alternative critical relationship to social reality? How can it reach a broader audience without falling into the same trap of mass-mediation?

Or is the very idea of subjectivity towards the news nothing but a regressive and reactionary gesture?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Nanette Hoogslag (NL) is a visual artist and illustrator. She studied graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and did an MA in illustration at Royal College of Art in London in 1990. She established herself as an illustrator and designer in Amsterdam, working for design and editorial clients worldwide. She has been teaching illustration and design at various art colleges in The Netherlands, currently she teaches illustration and concept development at the Illustration Department at the school of Visual Arts, HKU in Utrecht.

In 2005 Nanette Hoogslag developed the idea for OOG ("eye" in Dutch), inviting artists to react to the news, their role, function and content, in an online environment, which became 'Oog' a weekly online page in one of the largest Dutch national newspapers the 'Volkskrant'. In 2006 the concept of Oog was presented in a live show 'Ooglive' in the Westergasfabriek and shown as part of Faith in Exposure in Montevideo 2007. Oog: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/oog; Ooglive: www.ooglive.com; illustrations: www.hoogslag.nl

Florian Schneider (DE) is a filmmaker, writer, and developer in the fields of new media, networking and open source technologies. In his work he focuses on bordercrossings between mainstream and independent media, art and activism, theory and technology. As a filmmaker he directed several award-winning documentaries and made theme-evenings for the german-french tv station "arte" on the topics of migration and new global movements. He is one of the initiators of the KEIN MENSCH IST ILLEGAL campaign at documentaX and subsequent projects. He founded, designed and supported countless online-projects, such as the European internet platform D-A-S-H and the online-network KEIN.ORG. He is the director of the new media festivals MAKEWORLD (2001), NEURO (2004) and one of the co-organizers of the upcoming FADAIAT2 event in Tarifa / Tangiers, in June 2005. His publications include contributions in Der Spiegel and other renowned magazines and newspapers. From 2001, he has published Makeworlds paper 1-4, a newspaper magazine for theory, art and activism. For incommunicado 05, a special issue will be published as well.

DICTIONARY OF WAR, a collaborative platform for creating 100 concepts on the issue of war, invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists. The aim is to create key concepts that either play a significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been neglected, or have yet to be created.

Dictionary of War
Summit of Non-Aligned Initiatives in Education and Culture
Kein.org

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS!
VOTE FOR THE PROPOSALS OF OTHERS!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
here & now: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/

SPECIAL: ASK THE BEST QUESTION & win the COOL MEDIA PRIZE! the winner will be selected through direct and open voting.

Tickets: 5 euro :: Reservations by telephone: +31.20. 55 35 100 (during opening hours of the ticket office) Or via the Balie website: http:// www.debalie.nl/agenda.

De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10 Amsterdam.

Posted by jo at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

Fresh Moves: New Moving Images from the UK

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tank.tv @ ICA London

tank.tv: Fresh Moves: New Moving Images from the UK; a DVD of film and video art :: ICA, London :: June 28, 2007; 7:00 pm :: Book now.

The appearance of Fresh Moves is a unique event making artists' moving images, some of which are rarely seen, available beyond the conventional context of art exhibitions and fleeting lives online. The project is the result of tank.tv's continuous collaboration and exchange with artists, institutions and independent curators which has made it the inimitable platform for moving image practice that it is today.

Showcasing new moving image work since 2003, tank.tv presents its first DVD anthology. This collection contains 24 film and video pieces by 24 UK based artists, each around three minutes long, and reflects the creativity, innovation and wide variety of subject matter for which http://www.tank.tv has become known and respected. It also includes five new, specially commissioned interviews pieces between feted curators and artists.

Fresh Moves was compiled by a panel that included Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Gallery, and Stuart Comer, curator of film and video at Tate Modern. Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and infamous philosopher Slavoj Zizek both make an appearance in the series of interviews.

The DVD features recent work from some of the most important artists working in moving images today, such as Cerith Wyn Evans, Daria Martin, Runa Islam, Spartacus Chetwynd and Andrew Kötting, as well as emerging artists like Torsten Lauschmann, Anja M. Kirschner and David Blandy. Rather than a comprehensive overview, Fresh Moves aims to provide an anthology encompassing animation, fictional narrative, digital film, montage and installation-based film work. The works explore a wide variety of subjects - from politics to identity and aesthetic practices, all tempered with a healthy measure of humour - and so celebrate not just the artists featured, but the art of moving images as a whole.

"...this special project addresses the idea of carrying video and filmic work beyond the boundaries of contextually, or spatially, confined spaces pertaining to where a work can be seen. [...] It furthers the investigation into how different modes of filmmaking evolve within the changing consciousness of the public media [...] a sort of polyphony of voices, stories and philosophies. [The project] ...produced an investigation into a new generation of artists working in the UK. [...] Eric Hobsbawm, the great English historian speaks of the very necessary and urgent need for our hyper-paced culture to issue a 'protest against forgetting'." - Hans Ulrich Obrist

ARTISTS: David BLANDY, Ben CALLAWAY, Duncan CAMPBELL, Ergin CAVUSOGLU, Spartacus CHETWYND, Kate COOPER, Ann COURSE, Katy DOVE, Max HATTLER, Runa ISLAM, Kevin HEAVEY, Anja M. KIRSCHNER, Zineb SE DIRA, Andrew KÖTTING, Torsten LAUSCHMANN, Daria MARTIN, Alex HEIM, Ben RIVERS, Samuel STEVENS, Stephen SUTCLIFFE, Mark Aerial WALLER, Saskia OLDE WOLBERS, John WOOD & Paul HARRISON, Cerith WYN EVANS

INTERVIEWS: Steven EASTWOOD with Benjamin COOK, Jeremy DELLER with Chrissie ILES, Ryan GANDER with Hans Ulrich OBRIST, Laure PROUVOST with Michael CONNOR, Sophie FIENNES with Slavoj ZIZEK.

The compilation was selected by: Hans Ulrich Obrist (the Serpentine Gallery), Benjamin Cook and Mike Sperlinger (LUX), Stuart Comer (Tate Modern), Michelle Cotton (Independent curator, London), Rose Cupit (Film London) and Kathrin Becker (NBK, Berlin).

A project by: Laure Prouvost and Birgit Ludwig

Fresh Moves: New Moving Images From the UK
ISBN: 978-0-9555181-0-2
Paperback 150 x 180 mm portrait
300 pages / content printed on 81 colour pages
PAL DVD / Region 0 / running time 85 min
Published by Tank Form Ltd
Distributed by Thames & Hudson.

Interviews with artists and curators involved with Fresh Moves are on http://www.tank.tv until July 15th.

Generously funded by the National Lottery through the Arts Council, England.

Posted by jo at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2007

xxxxx 2007: Life Coding - Call for Participation

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xxxxx call for participation in a speculative 12 hour life coding event (organising hardware and software) to be held in Mid-November as part of the Piksel festival in Bergen, Norway :: Deadline for email submission: July 31, midnight.

Life coding is a mapping of the descriptive means of hardware and programming onto the world. In this instance it includes the invention and construction of models and language to actively describe and code the event; instructing, structuring, re-structuring and constructing the 12 hours. Life coding is obviously influenced by the existence of programming, fiction, scripting and execution. Participation is not limited to potential forms including: - performative presentations - advanced participatory workshops - actions - interventions

The above will be assembled into shifts which move between hardware, interface and (life) code. Proposals should suggest which shift would be suitable. Proposed topics for shifts include open hardware in relation to control, the world as interface, material as question of substance (soft/hard), and the relation of technology, code and pornography.

Please submit an introduction to your area of research/practise as well as examples of projects, performances, texts, proposals for advanced participatory workshops, performative presentations, actions, interactions, interventions and email your entry to: m[at]1010.org

Further information on the event: xxxxx [2007] is proposed and wilfully structured as a 12 hour life coding event within the context of previous xxxxx activities (Crash 2005, xxxxx 2006), and influenced by Plenum (collaboration with KOP, 2006). xxxxx [2007] will exist as a major, inspired durational, performative event allowing for exchange and construction between invited international participants who truly exist on the bleeding edge of what could be termed contemporary Crash culture.

xxxxx [2007] expands software and hardware with a wilful emphasis on construction, an interface between theory and the active entry of making' in the world.

xxxxx [2007] as event manifests a free software-led, coded structure of self-organisation, and unique working groups. Although some of these events will be ongoing (for example several working groups, and background material), the 12 hours will be assembled by way of shifts.

Posted by jo at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

Red Line Surveillance

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Birmingham

RED LINE SURVEILLANCE - As part of FESTIVAL OF EXTREME BUILDING and NEW GENERATION ARTS FESTIVAL :: June 23-29, 2007 :: Birmingham / UK; On Site (The corner of The Priory Queensway and Moor Street Queensway).

Red Line Surveillance are out to provide security for the city of Birmingham; from a surveillance tower erected on site, mobile monitoring units will emanate through the surrounding urban environment. This project is a collaboration between nine European artists, and has been developed in partnership with the Festival of Extreme Building and New Generation Arts.

Surveillance literally means "watching over", and can be seen as the art of watching over the activities of a person or group from a position of higher authority. Commonly used to describe observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, it can also involve simple, relatively no- or low-tech methods such as direct observation, observation with binoculars or similar methods.

The surveillance tower will be a monitoring station occupied by personnel 24 hours a day, providing 'security and surveillance' for the site; this presence will be clearly visible through signage, uniformed officers and increasing levels of activity emerging from the tower. These roving patrols will expand from the base into the wider landscape of the city centre, with each reconnaissance mission seeking to find the effective range of this security service and its impact on its surroundings. The collective observation of the city will ensure that no event goes un-noticed!

This process will involve: Ana Benlloch [UK], Pelle Brage [DK], Sabine Hagmann [CH], Andreas Kebelmann [GER], MACHFELD (akaMichael Mastrototaro & Sabine Maier) [A], Ed Orton [UK], Niki Russell [UK], Eliane Rutishause [CH], and Stuart Tait [UK].

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

AUTO EMOTION

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Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning

[Image: Andrea Fraser, Official Welcome, 2001 -performance, videotape and video installation, 31 min., DVD] The Power Plant presents AUTO EMOTION: Autobiography, emotion and self-fashioning :: 18 May – 19 August, 2007 :: Curated by Gregory Burke and Helena Reckitt.

Despite Conceptual Art’s disavowal of narrative and self-expression, a number of contemporary artists are mining autobiographical and biographical genres. Some artists have not hesitated to express deep feelings about the world, themselves and the artist’s role. Others have wrestled with questions of how to represent the self, sometimes trying to avoid clichés, at others deliberately appropriating them. Drawing inspiration from events in their own lives, and setting up situations that blur the division between art and life, several artists explore art’s potential for transformation and catharsis. ‘Auto Emotion’ includes works that carry an interest in the relationship between social conformism and autonomy, brain chemistry and emotion, automatic behavior and self determination, the fictional and the real.

Performance becomes self-portraiture in Official Welcome (2001) by Andrea Fraser, The Onion (1995) by Marina Abramovic, and during a hypnotized performance given by Matt Mullican. Canadian artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay represents the biographical in Live to Tell (2002) and Lyric (2004), where pop songs are represented as folklore both to tell his story, and to investigate notions of clichés as cultural truths. This element is taken into the therapist’s office for artist’s block experienced by Christian Jankowski in the pressure to make new work, or questioned as fictional elaborations of romantic partnerships by a master of disguises, Nikki S. Lee, exposing these states of perpetual flux within the varying personas. Adrian Paci’s Vajtojca (2002) shows the self in the cycle of birth and death, both as an Albanian, and as an artist, when he stages his own funeral and pays a professional mourner to weep for him.

This exhibition is a timely reflection on issues of the complexity of self-representation and deflection, within and outside the art institution as many of the artists in ‘Auto Emotion’ question the role of the artist in society.

Artists: Marina Abramovic, Reza Afisina, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Sophie Calle, Andrea Fraser, Rodney Graham, Christian Jankowski, Yayoi Kusama, Nikki S. Lee, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Matt Mullican, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Adrian Paci, Johannes Wohnseifer.


Posted by jo at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2007

Performance Paradigm 3 (May 2007)

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The End of Ethics? Performance, Politics and War

"The announcement of the ‘End of History’ has not produced nor been coincident with an end to the ideological differences encoded within that concept. Instead it has seen an intensification of conflicts which, however local in origin, are global in scope: civilization wars, culture wars, wars on terror and drugs, perhaps a re-emergent cold war? In terms of the local investment in these conflicts, the government led by John Howard in Australia has been an enthusiastic protagonist in these wars and in the absurd parody of ‘situation ethics’ that they have produced. This is the least ethical government in living memory in Australia but it has still been tremendously popular. Perhaps it’s the sheer frankness of this unethical behaviour at the highest level of political life in Australia in the last decade that provokes the question in the title of our issue of Performance Paradigm. But it is not our intention here to rehearse the litany of subtle abuses of ethics in this part of the world or in this period of political history. Nor are we announcing the ‘End of Ethics’ as the ethical correlative to arguments about the ‘End of History’. The title is a provocation to re-think the discourse of ethics in relation to political performance and art, and to re-assert its significance in a time when neo-con furies are unleashed upon the world and, in the global context, war has displaced alternative methods of conflict management and resolution.

In the Australian context, performance has been a significant site of engagement with these issues, as a number of the essays in this issue attest. Some artists have responded directly to a number of the key policy initiatives of the Howard government, particularly in respect of its infamous mistreatment of asylum seekers. But we also see evidence of an international context for this kind of protest, even if it is not in forms of direct action, in which artists and theorists are promoting alternate forms of ethical engagement.

The essays in this issue of Performance Paradigm provide an account of the diverse range of recent performance works in which the possibility of the ethical response to political events is directly broached or even structurally implicated in the work itself..." From the Introduction by Edward Scheer.

You'll need to register (it's free) to read:

Theatre of/or Truth by Maaike Bleeker

Performing war: ‘military theatre’ and the possibilities of resistance by Michael Balfour

Rupture in the Surface: Ethics of the Abject by Horit Herman Peled

Is there a gene responsible for our obsession with perfection? Disability, ethics and responsibility by Lalita McHenry

Performance, Politicians, and War: Selling Iraq in the culture war by David A. Williams

Being Near: Visiting the Rwandan genocide memorial site at Murambi, Gikongoro by Jeff Stewart

Interviews

Art And Politics And The Zürcher Theater Spektakel: Maria Magdalena Schwaegermann talks with Margaret Hamilton

Envisioning Ethics Anew: Rustom Bharucha talks with Performance Paradigm

Pathologies of Hope: Baz Kershaw talks with Performance Paradigm

Book Reviews

Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre, Joanne Tompkins by Gay McAuley

Making Theatre in Northern Ireland: Through and Beyond the Troubles, Tom Maguire by Rebecca Pelan

Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby
Denise Varney

Performance Reviews

I La Galigo. Directed by Robert Wilson. State Theatre, Melbourne International Arts Festival, 19 – 23 October 2006 by Margaret Hamilton

Posted by jo at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

V.O.S.T.

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Dubbing/Doubling

V.O.S.T. / Dubbing: video works and video installations about and around dubbing :: June 24, 2007 :: Installations : 5:00 - 8:30 PM :: Video projection and performances: 8:30 PM @ Cinima de La Ginirale, 10-12 rue du giniral Lassalle, M0 Belleville.

The event V.O.S.T. / Dubbing presents video works and video installations that adapt dubbing as a form, that explore the nature of dubbing, but also notions of doubling and the double that impact the relationship between language, image and sound. Installations by Cicile Bicler, Pierre Bismuth, Frederico Camara, RYbN, and Anri Sala; Video projections by Christophe Atabikian, Nicolas Boone, Alexis Chazard, Matthieu Clainchard, Marie Daubert, Yan Duyvendak, Flatdog, Jimmy Owenns, and Michakl Sellam; Performances by Michakl Sellam, and Gwenola Wagon; and Documentary by Cicile Bicler, Alexis Chazard, Maja Drzewinska, and Fanny Martin.

The V.O.S.T. sessions are organized by Alexis Chazard (Cela Etant) and Marika Dermineur (Incident.net). Thanks to the artists, La Ginirale, Mains d'uvres, Ars Longa, Florence Brissard, galerie Chantal Crousel, Vidioart.ch and Cosmic Galerie.

Posted by jo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Contagions:

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A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses

Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses by Jussi Parikka (New York: Peter Lang, 2007) :: Digital Contagions is the first book to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of the culture and history of the computer virus phenomenon. The book maps the anomalies of network culture from the angles of security concerns, the biopolitics of digital systems, and the aspirations for artificial life in software. The genealogy of network culture is approached from the standpoint of accidents that are endemic to the digital media ecology. Viruses, worms, and other software objects are not, then, seen merely from the perspective of anti-virus research or practical security concerns, but as cultural and historical expressions that traverse a non-linear field from fiction to technical media, from net art to politics of software. Jussi Parikka mobilizes an extensive array of source materials and intertwines them with an inventive new materialist cultural analysis.

Digital Contagions draws from the cultural theories of Gilles Deleuze and F?lix Guattari, Friedrich Kittler, and Paul Virilio, among others, and offers novel insights into historical media analysis.

Posted by jo at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

r4wb1t5 (rawbits) macro/micro-fest

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Mexico-Chicago

r4wb1t5 - Festival of Electronic Art :: June 20-24, 2007 :: Centro Multimedia, CENART, Casa Vecina Centro Cultural La Piramide, Mexico.

r4WB1t5 micro.Fests in Mexico City will build contextualized, temporary and contingent social structures in the forms of interconnected New Media Art Festivals, Sound Art Events, Social Software, Open Networks of Collaboration and Realtime Audio and Video Performances. These handcrafted digital systems and timespaces will operate as open ports and collaborative situations. Selected artists from Chicago will inhabit these open sourced software architectures hosted by institutions, organizations and individuals in Mexico City. Artists in Mexico City will collaborate and continue conversations initiated by the MEXICAN r4wb1t5 macro.Fest hosted in Chicago during April 2006.

r4WB1t5 micro.Fests are international, decentralized, self-organized and independent festivals of raw bits of digital art and dirty new media. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is itself an open platform or framework for creating these events in alternative and conversational contexts such as bars, basements, lofts, art spaces, apartments, galleries, online video game environments and other networked spaces. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fests extend out of and feeds back into DaDaist, Situationist, Fluxist, punk, digital art and New Media theorypractices, histories, possibilities and positionalities. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fests are always free and open collaborative projects, available to anyone interested in self-organizing Digital Arts and dirty New Media.

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

June 18, 2007

UpStage version 2

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Launch

You are warmly invited to join the UpStage team to celebrate the launch of UpStage version 2 :: June 28, 5:30-7:00 pm :: New Zealand Film Archive (cnr Taranaki & Ghuznee Streets) :: To mark the software launch an exhibition, Puppets to Pixels – an interactive playground for children of all ages, will run at the New Zealand Film Archive Gallery from June 28 - July 15. And 070707, a festival of UpStage performances, takes place on July 7, online and screened simultaneously at the Film Archive.

UpStage is a ground-breaking web-based venue for live, online performance. First launched in 2004, it’s time for the second release with improvements to the interface and innovative new features. UpStage V2 has been developed by Avatar Body Collision and Douglas Bagnall, with funding assistance from the Community Partnership Fund of the Digital Strategy, and the generous support of sponsors CityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology.

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

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem

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Yael Kanarek

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem: "Object of Desire" - Yael Kanarek (IL/USA) on the occasion of her new show in Israel :: June 16, 2007, 21:00 :: @ Daila, Shlomtsion Hamalka st. 4, Jerusalem :: Free Entrance.

Object of Desire is the third chapter in World of Awe, and online travelogue (www.worldofawe.net) 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. To raise the notion of physicality of the Internet, the fifteen scenes of the online project download from servers in four locations---New York, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Izmir.

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During the artist's talk, Yael will guide the audience through several scenes, point to memes born in the Middle East and Mediterranean that are present in contemporary culture, and talk about her upcoming solo exhibition at Nelly Aman's gallery, opening July 1 in Tel Aviv.

Since 1995, Yael Kanarek has developed a unique project using photography, text, sculpture, and performance. For the past decade she has integrated a range of media into a hypertext system with epic proportions titled World of Awe. Grounded with an original narrative that expands the ancient tradition and genre of a traveler's tale, Kanarek's World of Awe explores connections between storytelling, travel, memory, and technology. With a solo exhibition slated for 2007 at the Jewish Museum, Kanarek has been recognized internationally with a Rockefeller New Media fellowship, the Netizens Webprize, and the CNRS/UNESCO Lewis Carroll Prix Argos in France. Selected for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, she has received grants from the Jerome Foundation Media Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and commissions from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Turbulence.org, and The Alternative Museum. Kanarek has also held residencies at Eyebeam and Harvestworks. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Le Monde Interactif, Tema Celeste, ARTnews, Time Out, Flash Art Italy, Firma, Paper, Wired, The Journal News, ArtByte, and Internet Art by Rachel Greene. In 2000, Kanarek founded Upgrade!, an international network of artists and curators.

Posted by jo at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

Collaboration:

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New Ways of Learning and Working Together

If one principle could be seen to inform the opaque surface of what in the 1990s was called a "new economy" – the shifts and changes, the dynamics and blockades, the emergencies and habit formations taking place within the realm of immaterial production – it would certainly be: "Work together".Facing the challenges of digital technologies, global communications, and networking environments, as well as the inherant ignorance of traditional systems towards these, 'working together' has emerged as an unsystematic mode of collective learning processes.Slowly and almost unnoticeably, a new word came into vogue. At first sight it might seem the least significant common denominator for describing new modes of working together, yet "collaboration" has become one of the leading terms of an emergent contemporary political sensibility.Often collapsed into the most utilitarian understanding, 'collaboration' is far more than acting together, as it extends towards a network of interconnected approaches and efforts. - Collaboration: Seven notes on new ways of learning and working together by Florian Schneider, NOEMA.

Posted by jo at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

alt.SPACE Festival 2007

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Radical & The Revolutionary

alt.SPACE Network of Artist Research Groups presents alt.SPACE Festival 2007: The Radical & The Revolutionary :: It is time for the third annual alt.SPACE Festival. This time it will take the form of a month-long peripatetic symposium, criss-crossing the urban wilderness that is London in a variety of ways, through a variety of means and involving a variety of events and activities ranging from dinner parties, picnics and informal walks, to project presentations and discussions, to more theoretical papers and a concluding 24 consecutive hour long conference.

The overall theme this year is The Radical and the Revolutionary. What is the validity and usefulness of these concepts in terms of contemporary, and future, forms of politically engaged cultural practice? Can they be reclaimed, rendered affirmative and dissentious tools, and if so, how? What kind of histories can we access and how do we access them? What strategies are ours to employ? What forms of linkages and connections, what kinds of networks and collaboration? This year the overall theme will be engaged with from four perspectives each of which involved its own set of events and activities: *Sound*, *Cartography*, *Illegality*, and *Dissemination*.

*This year also sees* the launch of *alt.SPACE Radio* - our IT-radio station which will broadcast much of the festival and many other forthcoming alt.SPACE events. Additionally, the festival celebrates the very first issue of our journal: *alt.SPACE hardCOPY. *Please see www.altspace.info for further details.

*Come join us.* All events are free of charge. Everyone is welcome. For some events we ask you to let us know beforehand, particularly those that involve public space meetings or preparatory readings or discussions. It's all very informal and convivial. We look forward to seeing you. If you have received this directly from the alt.SPACE Network you will receive updates as of the specific events of the festival: specific speakers, presentations and other details will be announced week-by-week. If you did not receive this email directly from us but wishes to continue to receive these updates, please feel free to join our mailing list. Simply visit www.altspace.info and follow links for 'workspace' and then 'mailing lists' for directions.

Posted by jo at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

Gallery TPW presents

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Dubious Views

Dubious Views: Questioning Institutional Representations in Tourism and Cartography :: Curators: Michelle Kasprzak, Michael Alstad, Shawn Micallef :: A bilingual online exhibition produced by Gallery TPW and funded by the Virtual Museums of Canada.

Every time you open your eyes, a hundred different sources vie for your attention. This spectacle - the cacophonous accumulation of images superimposed over the "real" world - is built by everything from advertisements to entertainment to government. This institutional view of the world can come to stand in for and suppress any other visions or versions that might be out there.

The artists discussed in Dubious Views address the role of the "institution" in terms of its effect on the understanding of place. It is examined in relationship to the tourism industry, and in the context of mapmaking and geography. In both cases, the artists involved look at and play with creating alternatives to the institutional view, and attempt to challenge its singularity, its authority, and its monolithic profile.

Artists include: David Rokeby, Surveillance Camera Players, Michelle Teran, Proboscis, Sylvia Grace Borda, Janet Cardiff, Eugene Atget, Nikki S. Lee, Charles Marville, Roger Minick, [murmur], N.E. Thing Co., Shelley Niro, Louise Noguchi, Mitch Robertson, Ed Ruscha, Camille Turner, Jin-me Yoon, and more.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2007

(re)Actor2: The Second International Conference on Digital Live Art

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CALL FOR PAPERS, INSTALLATIONS & PERFORMANCES

(re)Actor2: The Second International Conference on Digital Live Art: Bad Girls, Gadgets & Guerrilla Performance :: Broadcasting House & Leeds Met Gallery, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK :: September 10th, 2007.

Digital Live Art is the intersection of Human-computer Interaction (HCI), Live Art and Computing. (re)Actor2: The Second International Conference on Digital Live Art seeks to bring together practitioners and academics from the varying worlds of Live Art, Computing and HCI for a lively debate and event which will explore this emerging field. We are particularly interested in unanticipated performance spaces and playful arenas, such as festivals and nightclubs.

This year's theme, BAD GIRLS, GADGETS & GUERRILLA PERFORMANCE focuses on women who are practicing at the intersection of Computing and Live Art. In focusing on women, Computing and the Arts, this year we look to celebrate the diverse skills, knowledge and experience that women bring to the field. It is our hope that bringing these people together will foster an environment for mutual learning, mentoring and support. Proposals and participation are welcomed from all genders.

KEYNOTE

Our keynote presentation this year will be from the Guerrilla Girls of New York. In 1985, a group of women artists founded the Guerrilla Girls. They assumed the names of dead women artists and wore gorilla masks in public, concealing their identities and focusing on the issues rather than their personalities. Between 1985 and 2000, close to 100 women, working collectively and anonymously, produced posters, billboards, public actions, books and other projects to make feminism funny and fashionable. At the turn of the millennium, three separate and independent incorporated groups formed to bring fake fur and feminism to new frontiers. Guerrilla Girls, Inc. was established by two founding Guerrilla Girls and other members to continue the use of provocative text, visuals and humor in the service of feminism and social change. They have written several books and create projects about the art world, film, politics and pop culture. They travel the world, talking about the issues and their experiences as feminist masked avengers, reinventing the “f” word into the 21st century. They could be anyone; they are everywhere.

VENUE – DAYTIME EVENT

As before, this year we include both a daytime and evening event. The formal daytime event will take place in the old BBC Broadcasting House, a newly refurbished building at Leeds Metropolitan University on Monday, September 10th, 2007. The day will consist of keynote presentations, formal papers and interactive installations. Leeds Met Gallery will curate a special exhibition which will see some of the accepted proposals exhibited in the gallery during the conference.

EVENING AFTER PARTY

The daytime event will be followed by an exhilarating after party with commissioned installations, DJs, VJs and live performances in the vibrant city of Leeds. Commissioned performances will be followed by the incredible Lost Vagueness http://www.lostvagueness.com/ of Glastonbury fame. Over the years, Lost Vagueness has picked up a reputation for being the most anarchic and culturally twisted location at the festival, a place where performers and guests languish together in the warped decadence of the surroundings. This will be the first time Lost Vagueness has performed in the city of Leeds.

FUNDING

We have a limited number commissions available for live performances and installations. You can make a request for funding when you submit your proposal. We also have a limited number of travel bursaries available for those who may not be otherwise able to make it to the conference.

PROPOSALS

All proposals will be peer reviewed by the conference committee. Proposals must not exceed the 2-page limit and must be prepared using the conference publications format provided on our website. However, you may provide additional info (links to digital material including online video, photos and websites) using the third page of the proposal template. We are accepting proposals for:

* academic paper presentations (day)
* live performances (including DJ/VJ sets) (day and evening)
* interactive installations (day and evening)

Topics of interest included but definitely not limited to:

• Technology as a vehicle for social and peformative interactivity
• Human-computer interaction and intervention
• Women, performance and technology
• Audience behaviour and rules of engagement in interactive works
• Non-complicit performance
• Stumble performance and digital live encounters
• Guerrilla interventions
• Performative contracts – rule making and rule breaking
• Digital/live performance and the club space
• Experimental visual and sonic interfaces for live performance
• Performance and social infection

Accepted proposals will be published in the conference proceedings and included on our website. Following last year’s conference, participants were invited to submit their papers to a special edition of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media on Digital Live Art (2007 - Intellect Press). A similar publication will be produced from this year's conference.

IMPORTANT DATES

Proposal submission deadline: 28th June, 2007
Notification of acceptance: 28th July, 2007
Conference date: September 10th, 2007

(re)Actor DIRECTORS

Jennifer Sheridan, BigDog Interactive
Alice Bayliss, University of Leeds

CONFERENCE CHAIRS

Rebekka Kill, Leeds Metropolitan University
Alice Bayliss, University of Leeds
Jennifer Sheridan, BigDog Interactive

EVENT ADMINISTRATION
Patsy Robertshaw, Leeds Met University

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Maribeth Back, FX PAL, California
Christopher Baugh, University of Leeds
Steve Benford, University of Nottingham
Joanna Berzowska, Concordia University
Teresa Brayshaw, Leeds Metropolitan University
Daniel Brine, Live Art Development Agency, UK
Susan Broadhurst, Brunel University
Nick Bryan-Kinns, Queen Mary, University of London
Linda Candy, University of Technology, Sydney
David Collins, Doncaster College
Beatriz da Costa, University of California
Steve Dixon, Brunel University
Jon Dovey, Bristol University
Linda Drew, Chelsea College of Art and Design
Matt Fenton, Nuffield Theatre Lancaster
Geraldine Fitzpatrick, University of Sussex
Bill Gaver, Goldsmiths University of London
Gabriella Giannachi, University of Exeter
Ceri Hand, Metal, Liverpool
Rania Ho, Korean Advanced Institute of Culture & Technology
Moira Innes, Leeds Met Gallery
Clare Jackson, Axis
Lois Keidan, Live Art Development Agency, UK
Boriana Koleva, University of Nottingham
Charles Kriel, London Metropolitan University
Annie Lloyd, Leeds Metropolitan University
Suzy Mason, Speedqueen, UK
Jill Morgan, Leeds Metropolitan University
Angela Piccini, Bristol University
Sita Popat, University of Leeds
Michelle Teran, Artist, Canada
Mick Wallis, University of Leeds

Sponsored by the Arts Council of England, University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University, BigDog Interactive and Nokia. Jointly organised by the School of Performance and Cultural Industries – University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University and BigDog Interactive

Posted by jo at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2007

Living Room Lecture Series: Alison Norrington

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Female Icons: It's Not The Gaze, But The Look...

FEMALE ICONS: IT'S NOT THE GAZE, BUT THE LOOK... As a part of the Living Room Lecture Series, De Geuzen welcomes author Alison Norrington. The event will be streamed live from Rotterdam :: FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2007 @ 15:00 (calculate the time for your own region).

For the Female Icons series, Norrington will be lecturing about her own experiences in the world of Chick Lit, a rapidly expanding genre of women's contemporary fiction. Talking about some of the characters in her novels, she will discuss the possibilities and restraints of the genre as a whole. Norrington's lecture is a part of De Geuzen's Living Room Lectures, a series of talks hosted in our respective homes.

Alison Norrington is the author of Class Act, Look Before You Leap and Three of A Kind. She has written articles for The Irish Star, Irish Tatler and Evening Herald. She is also a regular contributer to Women's Way. For more information on Alison Norrington see:

:: Alison Norrington's site http://www.alisonnorrington.com
:: Alison Norrington on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Norrington

For background reading on Chick Lit visit:

:: Chick Lit defined by wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_lit
:: Chick Lit Author Rountable http://www.authorsontheweb.com/features/0402-chicklit/chicklit.asp
:: Step into the shoes of a chick-lit author http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1753802006

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

LOYAL_ROOFTOPS_2007

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OPEN CALL

As part of the program of the festival "Bürgerstolz und Stadtfrieden" (Civil Pride and Urban Peace) we offer a billboard for screening video works from May 15 - September 24, 2007. Loyal_Rooftops_2007 shows video works, that point at social grievances and/or the struggle of independent culture/cultural institutions and therefore the festival "Bürgerstolz und Stadtfrieden" seems to be the right place at the right time to position themselves, short before those free spaces are closing.

The works will be shown without sound and as a loop, alternating daily. All participating artists will be present on our info media. We will be happy to give you a hand concerning accommodation. (more info here shortly; Galerie Loyal -Werner-Hilpertstr. 22 - 34117 Kassel)

Download Application Form.pdf. Send your DVD to: Martin Dege, Menzelstrasse 13, D - 34121 Kassel (dege (ät) uni-kassel.de).

Posted by jo at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)

Neural n. 27

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Celebrating 10 years

The new printed Neural issue in English is available. Neural.it celebrates 10 years of activity! Please check it and subscribe to RSS feeds, if you want :: 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION! 3 issues + EXCLUSIVE DVD BY GRENZE (Helsinki, 2006); Europe 24,90 Euro - World 38.97 U.S. Dollars :: BACK ISSUES:

Neural n. 27 contents: new.media.art . Cornelia Sollfrank (interview) . Arthur Kroker (interview) . news (Mire.project, Journal, Wordie, Email Clock Independent Robotic Community) . reviews (Book of Imaginary Media, In Human Format, City2City, Electronic Literature Collection 1, At the Edge of Art Words in Flux, GameScenes, Designing Interactions) . centerfold: 'netPong' by Oriol Ferrer Mesia.

e.music: . Girl Talk (interview) . Kim Cascone (interview) . Alex McLean, Live Coding (interview). news: (SoniColumn, Deep House for Symphonic Band and Choir, Ambient Addition, Breadboard Band, Forester) . reviews: (Vj, RT-32 Acoustic Space Lab, Synken, We Are All Drifting, 7ft_Konka, Women Take Back The Noise) . reviews cd: (Muslimgauze, @C, Funkstorung, Johan Johannsson, Kim Cascone, Nathan Davis, Mattin, Giuseppe Ielasi, Rosy Parlane, Strange Attractor vs Disinformation, Eric La Casa, Freiband, Flim, The Alps, Cagesan, Chris Watson & Bj Nilsen, Peter Rehberg, Marc Behrens and Paolo Raposo, Nick Didkovsky, Blotnik Brothers).

hacktivism: . Pirate Bay legal response style . Thieves of the Invisible . An Education and Labor Dispatch, by Trebor Scholz . news (PigeonBlog, Fake Progress Bar, View Finder Heatmap, Ad Generator, Logo.Hallucination) . reviews: ([the] xxxxx [reader], M.White - The Body and the Screen, H. Wagenbreth - Cry for Help, 36 scam Emails from Africa, F.Snelting+P.Westenberg - The Language of Sharing, T. Hansen - What Does Public Mean?)

Posted by jo at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

Andy Gracie and others

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BIORAMA

DIGITAL UNIT RESEARCH presents BIORAMA @ MEDIA Centre Huddersfield :: July 13, 2007: A one-day event serving to contextualise, examine and expand upon the work and theory produced while Andy Gracie is Artist in Residence at the DRU. The research undertaken during the residency weaves together the microbiology of the Pennines around Marsden Moor, traditional and digital networking systems, perceptions of landscape and the history and possible future of interstellar communication.

Biorama Hike: _starting at 10 a.m. @ Marsden :: A 5 mile guided walking lecture and environmental study with Andy Gracie and Brandon Ballangee on Marsden Moor lasting around 3 hours. The walk will cover some of the physical territory featured in Andy's research, the talk will cover the parallel conceptual territories and simple scientific experiments will be carried out at various points on the way. Each participant will receive the Biorama Hiking kit with which to enhance their experience of the event. Particpants should book in advance as places are limited and should bring sturdy walking footwear and sun block.

Biorama Sessions: _starting at 3 p.m. @ Media Centre of Huddersfield :: The Biorama Sessions will introduce a number of artists whose work explores the natural environment, artificial landscapes and interactions with real or imagined lifeforms.

Participants: Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Andy Gracie, Brandon Ballengee, C-Lab, etoy, France Cadet, and London Fieldworks. Special guests in the evening.

Designed and presented by Monica Bello (CAPSULA) for the Digital Research Unit. Contact: monica[at]capsula.org.es.

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Artists Space

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New Economy

Artists Space presents New Economy, curated by João Ribas :: June 15 – July 28, 2007 :: Opening Reception: June 15; 6:00-8:00 PM :: 38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013 :: 212.226.3970 :: info[at]artistsspace.org

Chantal Akerman, Kader Attia, Ursula Biemann, Mike Bouchet, Heath Bunting, Los Carpinteros, Carolina Caycedo, Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, Harun Farocki, Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG, Cildo Meireles, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Oliver Ressler, Joe Scanlan, Santiago Sierra, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Milica Tomic, and Donelle Woolford.

Special Film Screenings in conjunction with New Economy: Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street) :: June 19 and July 5; 7:30 pm - Chantal Akerman's FROM THE OTHER SIDE / DE L'AUTRE CÔTÉ; 2002, 99 minutes. In English and Spanish with English subtitles.


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Netherlands Media Art Institute

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Pond

pond: Artists in Residence - Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk, Opening and presentation: June 15, 4:00 pm :: Exhibition from June 16 -July 14, 2007 :: Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Keizersgracht 264, 1016 EV
Amsterdam, Nederland :: Tel: 020 6237101 :: Email: info[at]montevideo.nl

Part of the 'Metabiosis' project, Marloes De Valk (NL) and Aymeric Mansoux (FR) investigate to what extent information can develop in a network of computers linked with each other and how it is possible for an audience to interact with it. The pond installation consists of three interconnected machines. Each machine runs a simple ecosystem model in which small strings of data are produced, processed and sent back and forth from computer to computer.

In reality the string contains a set of items that only make sense in the virtual machine / pond that interprets all this information. Because the model includes a two dimensional environment, visualized on screens, it is possible to follow the whole process as it is being computed on each machine. Even though the number crunching methods are abstract, with the aid of the visual output, one string of information can be tracked and referred to as a visible and animated 'creature'. When the machines are turned on, these 'creatures' remain in the computer memory and can jump to other computers/ecosystems.

They can reproduce (copy of information), evolve (update of information), and they can die (non recoverable loss of information). These self organized ecosystems produce patterns emerging from the initial rules set in the ecosystem model. At the same time, on a projection, the whole process and data exchange is visualised, bringing an even higher level metaphor and different point of view on how the information is flowing through the three machines.

It is possible for the audience to interact with each pond via a touchscreen, directly influencing and breaking the self organizing process. The input has immediate effect on the overall system and provides a way to bend or control the information flow.

pond is an experiment and a game for people who are curious about the possibilities of standalone processes, generative systems and artificial life.

During the residency, Mansoux and de Valk will investigate how the fragile transition regime between periodic and chaotic phases of a self organizing system can lead to complex behaviours with which an audience can interact with. The two visualisation models of the processed information raise the issue of the matryoshka effect through the relationship between interpretation and processed data.

Aymeric Mansoux is an artist and co-founder of GOTO10, an organization dedicated to create, produce, and support FLOSS+Art. He has taken part in many artistic experiments based on the internet and the emergence of networks, and considers any form of data to be a new clay that can be used to develop autonomous artistic processes. Currently part of the Digital Research Unit of the University of Huddersfield, his recent projects include the mysterious packets toolkit (with Tom Schouten and Marloes de Valk), the 0xA band (with Chun Lee), the digital artlife Metabiosis project (with Marloes de Valk), the pure:dyne GNU/Linux live distribution for media artists (with Chun Lee and Antonios Galanopoulos) and ongoing theoretical research into tools and digital autonomous processes. He is also part of the production and curatorial team of make art, an international FLOSS+Art festival in France.

Marloes de Valk is an audiovisual artist, part of digital art collective GOTO10. She was born in Holland, 1976, and is currently based in the UK. She studied Sound and Image at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, specializing in abstract compositional computer games, HCI and crashing computers. Her work consists of audiovisual performances and installations, investigating machine theater and narratives of digital processes. She is part of the packets project, developing and documenting new tools for artistic creation, and is currently collaborating with French artist Aymeric Mansoux on Metabiosis, a project investigating the ups and downs of data packets living in a world of connected ecosystems. Marloes is part of the Digital Research Unit at the University of Huddersfield.

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WGBH Lab

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Open Call and Filmmakers-in-Residence Programs

WGBH Lab's Open Call seeks big ideas for small screens, including cell phones, PDAs, and television broadcast. Selected applicants receive funding to complete their short films, input during the production process from professional media makers, and a place to showcase their work.

This year, the Lab invites filmmakers and other aspiring media makers to submit proposals for 3-minute videos expressing reflections on and/or responses to war. Possible entries might include a grandfather’s story from World War II, thoughts on the current war in Iraq, or other contemplations on how war impacts society. Finished work may be presented via broadcast and broadband in conjunction with Ken Burns’ PBS documentary miniseries The War, airing in September 2007.

The deadline for entries is June 21, 2007. Later this year, P.O.V. will curate a Lab Open Call to develop original short content. P.O.V.’s editorial team will work closely with WGBH Lab and filmmakers to create rich content that can be distributed on multiple platforms during P.O.V.’s 2008 season.

Filmmakers-in-Residence: WGBH invites filmmakers and innovators from related industries to work on their independently funded projects during a nine-month residency at WGBH. Selected participants will receive a stipend, working space, administrative support, editing equipment, editorial guidance, and access to WGBH staff to advance their projects.

The deadline for the next round of filmmakers-in-residence applications is August 4, 2007.

P.O.V. will host a visit of Filmmakers-in-Residence at their New York offices. Workshops on a variety of topics will be conducted on areas such as: communications, production, community engagement and interactive strategies. These sessions will be individually tailored to the needs and goals of each filmmaker.

Sandbox: The WGBH Lab Sandbox is an open content initiative that allows users gain access to use rights-cleared, WGBH-owned content to use for their own (non-commercial) purposes. The public is invited, but not required, to share the results of their work by posting a link to the site. Users can post comments on each other’s work. The WGBH Lab Sandbox will relaunch in July with a new and expanded collection of content.

WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster, producing such celebrated national PBS series as Masterpiece Theatre, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Nova, Arthur and more than a dozen other award-winning primetime, lifestyle and children’s series. Boston’s last remaining independent TV station, WGBH’s local TV productions (among them, Greater Boston, Basic Black and La Plaza), focus on the region’s diverse community, while WGBH 89.7 FM is Boston’s NPR Arts & Culture station, offering a rich menu of classical, jazz, blues, news programming and more. WGBH is the leading producer of online content for pbs.org—one of the most-visited dot-org sites on the Internet—a major producer for public radio and a pioneer in developing educational multimedia and new technologies that make media accessible for people with disabilities. For its efforts, WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors, including Oscars, Emmys, Peabodys and duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards.

Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and celebrating its 20th season on PBS in 2007, the award-winning P.O.V. series is the longest-running showcase on television to feature the work of America's best contemporary-issue independent filmmakers. Airing Tuesdays at 10 p.m., June through September, with primetime specials during the year, P.O.V. has brought more than 250 award-winning documentaries to millions nationwide, and now has a Webby Award-winning online series, P.O.V.'s Borders. Since 1988, P.O.V. has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today's most pressing social issues.

Posted by jo at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

iCommons Summit 2007

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The Art Happens Here

[Image: Nathaniel Stern's Sentimental Construction #1, part of The Wireframe Series site-specific, publicly performed “spaces,” made of rope (2007). Performers / documentarians / collaborators: JC Bukenya, Tomislav Domis, Joy Garnett, Ana Husman, Kathryn Smith, Tim Whidden (MTAA) and Jaka Zeleznikar.] The Art Happens Here :: Opens 15 June @ 21h30, Croatian time :: iCommons Summit 2007, Lazareti Art Workshop, Dubrovnik Croatia :: Simulcast to Annenberg Island in SL, 12h30 PDT, Second Life.

The Art Happens Here is a contemporary art exhibition and presentation at the iCommons Summit 2007, resulting from an ongoing artist in residence programme. Six international artists and a critic were invited to produce physical and virtual work that engages with fair use, copyright, re-mixing, piracy and/or collaboration on some level - whether directly or indirectly.

Works on show will include, but not be limited to, art books, murals, net.art, sculpture, public performance, video and installation -- all conceptually linked by their engagement with the Commons, by the artists' time spent in Dubrovnik. Participants include: Joy Garnett (USA), Ana Husman (Croatia), Kathryn Smith (South Africa), Nathaniel Stern (USA / South Africa), MTAA (Mike Sarff & Tim Whidden, USA), Jaka Zeleznikar (Slovenia) and blog-critic Paddy Johnson (of artfagcity, USA). There will also be a special appearance in the SL exhibition by Patrick Lichty, aka Man Michinaga (USA).

Artist Discussion Panel on Creative Commons and its potential uses and effects in professional arts practice will be a part of the iCommons main programme in Dubrovnik, 15h00 Croatian time.

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June 13, 2007

Canadian Journal of Communication

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Call for Papers

Special Issue on Wireless Technologies, Mobile Practices :: Mobile wireless devices such as handheld pdas, cellular telephones, and portable computers are part of a changing landscape of communications and culture. In the last decade alone, for instance, the use of cell phones has increased fourfold in Canada signaling a remarkable shift in the telecommunications industry, the convergence of a number of technologies onto a single platform, and new ways of conducting person-to-person communication and creating community. In addition to these devices, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth, WANS, and GPS comprise integrated segments of the new infrastructure of the so-called wireless world as well as an emergent vocabulary for citizens and consumers.

The Canadian Journal of Communication invites submissions, in English or in French, for a forthcoming special issue on mobile communications and wireless technologies. We are interested in innovative, critical approaches that decipher a range of mobile technologies and practices in wireless contexts. Possible themes include:

:: Everyday uses: sharing our lives via the mobile (text, voice, video)
:: Civic engagement, activism and mobile technologies
:: Wireless services and emergency communication
:: Privacy, surveillance and mobile phones
:: Community Wireless Networks
:: Policy: CRTC regulations and spectrum policy
:: Mobility, Labour: new conditions of work
:: Shifting notions of space, place and time in a mobile world
:: Rhetoric and discourses on mobility and wireless worlds
:: Art, design and mobile technologies
:: Mobile genres and cellular convergence
:: Global and international perspectives on mobile technologies

Full-length papers (@ 7000-9000 words) should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website. Make sure to write in all caps "MOBILE" in the Comments to the Editor field, and to include it on the cover page of your article as well. Do not include your name on the cover page.

Deadline for papers is Sept. 1, 2007. Papers selected by the editors will then be sent for peer review for final decision.

Comments and queries can be sent to one of the special issue editors:

Dr. Barbara Crow, York University, bacrow[at]sympatico.ca
Dr. Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University, kim.sawchuk[at]sympatico.ca
Dr. Richard Smith, Simon Fraser University, smith[at]sfu.ca

Posted by jo at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Lynette Wallworth

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Hold: Vessel 2, 2007

Lynette Wallworth: Hold: Vessel 2, 2007 :: BFI Southbank, London SE1 :: 23 June - 2 September :: Artist's talk: Lynette Wallworth in Conversation with renowned scientist, writer and presenter Mark Lythgoe - July 3, 18:20 NFT2 :: FREE :: 020 7928 3232

Lynette Wallworth's London debut sees the BFI commissioning Hold: Vessel 2, 2007, enabling the artist to further develop her critically acclaimed piece Hold: Vessel 1, 2001. An interactive, large-scale installation that explores the intimacy and immensity of the natural world and our relationship to it, this work uses moving image and technology to reveal the hidden intricacies of human immersion in the wide, complex world.

The piece is activated by the viewer, the interaction being a metaphor for our connectedness within biological, social and ecological systems. Upon entering the exhibition space, the visitor is encouraged to 'catch' falling projected images of astronomical and underwater life in lens-shaped glass bowls. With intimate moments of synchronised light and sound, the installation celebrates minutiae - microscopic views of marine life forms and photographic imagery of deep space - leaving the visitor with a sense of communal participation within a complex system of which we are a part.

The images in Hold: Vessel 2 come from current visioning technologies such as X-ray Microtomography and remotely operated light sensitive cameras allowing us to see intricate detail inaccessible to the human eye. A reflection upon our own place in a complex and starkly beautiful world, the work helps us explore the complex interconnectivity between things that we do not always see or know.

Lynette Wallworth is the second of an ongoing series of art exhibitions at BFI Southbank exploring contemporary artists' use of the moving image.

Lynette Wallworth - Hold: Vessel 1, 2001
Courtesy of and commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia http://www.acmi.net.au

Lynette Wallworth - Hold: Vessel 2, 2007
Commissioned by the BFI, London, Produced by Forma Touring and Supported by Arts Council England

Posted by jo at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

N3krozoft Ltd

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The REMOTE FAIRYTALES

REMOTE FAIRYTALES - CONTES LOINTAINS - FABEL OP AFSTAND - N3krozoft Ltd exhibit + live internet performance :: Performance: June 14, 2007, 7pm :: Exhibition: June 14-September 12, 2007 :: Location: MAAC Gallery, 26 rue des Chartreux, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.

LIVE INTERNET PERFORMANCE: feat. the girl without hands, a lecture & the Aether collective. The opening performance can be followed ONLINE :: June 14, 7 pm CET (central european time) - 10am in California - noon in Colombia - 9pm in Moscow - midnight in Bangkok - 2am in Tokyo. Get your local performance time here.

INCLUDING: 3 fully functional ZOETROPES, graphical prints, a rare exhaustive screening of the classic videoperformance LOL (laughing out loud) & other artifacts. Additionally, n3krozoft ltd will release an EXCLUSIVE edition of its complete videographic works (1904-2007).

In addition to being the world leader in Biometrics-Based Information Exchange (BBIX), N3KROZOFT has strong market positions in non-euclidean translation systems and on-the-fly data processing and visualisation. The Strategic Imagery Group is currently testing and integrating a fully functional real-time media architecture that will be reliable, unexpensive, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in terms of desired features).

Aether collective: Initiated in May 2007 during a workshop at the Mapping Festival in Geneva, Switzerland, Æther9 is a collaborative art project exploring the field of realtime video transmission. Developed by an international group of visual artists and collectives working in different locations spread around the globe and communicating solely through the Internet, Æther9 intends to become a functional framework for collaborative video performance.

Zoetrope: The zoetrope was invented in 1834 by William Horner. It was based on Joseph Plateau's phenakistoscope, but was more convenient since it did not require a viewing mirror and allowed more than one person to use it at the same time. Original zoetrope by William George Horner, 1834. Exhibit of Optical Toys.

LOL (laughing out loud): Media performance created by N3krozoft Ltd Media Group (2003-2005).

Beklemmende Online-Tragödie – review by Raffael Dörig for Regioartline (in german)

in(security) by Ryan Holsopple for ITP 2006 Thesis Week.

Posted by jo at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

[-CC-] "curating media/net/art

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Call for Papers

Call for [-CC-] "curating media/net/art--papers" :: Abstracts deadline: June 30, 2007 :: Notification of acceptance: July 7, 2007 :: Deadline for finalized papers: August 31, 2007.

For the project [-CC-] "circualting contexts--curating media/net/art" from June 1st - October 31st, 2007 which takes place in Vienna and in the online medium, the public is invited to enter papers concerned with contemporary curatorial practices in- and outside the virtual space. The papers should be limited to max. 15.000 characters and must be licencened under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. [-CC-] "curating media/net/art--papers" is open to all thematic fields but may be related to the topics below too. Selected papers will be printed in the forthcoming catalogue.

1 visualizing work.flows and (filtering-) processes
2 virtual/real representations in real/virtual spaces
3 facing participation / the lack of collaboration
4 web 2.0--curatorial facilities or technical barriers
5 involvement of (art-)institutions / rise of significance

Please send your submissions or questions to: curating(at)cont3xt.net

The curating of Internet-based art on the Internet is a multifaceted communication-process between Internet-users with all kinds of different backgrounds regarding the content. Along with the changing conditions of production and reception of art on the Internet came new possibilities of curation which deserve study. [-CC-] "circualting contexts--curating media/net/art" is a series of experimental long-term research projects hosted by the Vienna-based organisation CONT3XT.NET, investigating current tendencies in the curation of (New) Media and Internet Art.

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

June 12, 2007

Upgrade! Paris

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chdh

Upgrade! Paris: Cyrille Henri and Nicolas Montgermont present chdh :: Date: June 15, 2007 at 7:00 PM :: Place: Point Ephimhre, 200 quai de Valmy 75010 Paris, M0 Stalingrad :: Mediator : Dominique Moulon.

chdh is a live hybrid performance, offering a symbiosis between the sound and the image. Between minimalism and industrial, chdh creates a single, cold but organic universe. Thanks to the use of mathematical algorithms and physical models, chdh brings a new vision of the use of data-processing tools in musical creation. The use of audio-visual objects, having a sound component and a video component controlled by the same parameters allow an effective management of the relations between the two medias.

This project evokes a virtual world, made up with more or less autonomous abstract creatures. The aesthetics of the video and the sound is minimalist: sines, diracs and noises interact with cubes, spheres and other primitive in 3D on a black and white visual environment.

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The role of chdh during live performances is to play with the movement of these objects, in order to make them live and react. Two musicians handle the instruments by using an abstracted layer, software representation of the audio-visual object. Each algorithm then creates data used for the video synthesis and for the sound synthesis, creating a strong cohesion during the performance.

Cyrille Henry, artist and multi-field developer, he is interested in interactions between human gesture and data processing for artistic exploration. His work was directed in turn towards the sensors or physical modelling for gestur analysis, human interface devices, as well as the sound and visual synthesis in real time. He worked 4 years in La kitchen in Paris (in charge of the hardware department) for the development of sensors interfaces and their uses in an artistic context (live spectacle, dance, interactive installation, music). He is one of the founder members of the chdh project. Since 2005, he works as a free-lance developer/engineer around pure-data/Gem and sensors.

Nicolas Montgermont, researcher and artist, studies the relations between art and sciences using the computer as a workshop. After a formation in signal processing, he studies sciences applied to music at the IRCAM center, being specially focused on real time control of synthesis. Currently, he carries out a PhD thesis on the analysis of the flutist playing at the Laboratory of Musical Acoustics (LAM) in Paris. His creating work is the search of a numerical aesthetics, using and developing personal tools to explore the specific possibilities of a computer. Founder of Basses Lumihres, an association working on the fusion of the relationship between various mediums of the contemporary art, he works mainly in the musical field, through three projects : chdh ; ABM, a break/noise laptop duo and Ngio, a minimalist and numerical sound.

Info and archives on: http://incident.net/theupgrade. The Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners: CITU, Ars Longa, RYbN, The Upgrade! International.

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

Sonar 2007

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Spam, the Economy of Desire

SPAM as an art form: As in previous years, one of Sonar's exhibition areas is once again set aside exclusively for displaying the latest developments in digital art. Located on the 1st floor of the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea, this year's exhibition focuses on SPAM, one of the most common and undesirable elements on the net. In this selection of works curated by Alessandro Ludovico, the unwanted information that we delete every morning without a second thought becomes an artistic device used by artists to explore different mechanisms for communication – and intrusion - in the technological age.

Sonar also gives a place to the latest new media art from Barcelona through Digital Art on Demand, organised in collaboration with the gallery Niu, one of the city's main new media cultural centres. Local artists and foreign Barcelona-based artists participate in this showcase called Viviendo@bcn. Mediateletipos.net (a satellite project of the important Galician portal artesonoro.org) will also be a guest at this year's Sonar, with eight interesting projects that explore the same general area: the revolution that the widespread use of web 2.0 will imply in relation to the music scene.

Spam, the Economy of Desire :: Alessandro Ludovico (IT) - As one of the inescapable communication phenomena of our times, junk e-mail is a substantial part of our infoscape. "Spam" is an exhibition of works curated by Alessandro Ludovico that explores how digital artists have proven themselves smarter than spammers. Taking Spam beyond the computer screen or responding to it through aesthetic strategies of all kinds, these artists could be considered to be the bravest, definitive email heroes.

Jonathan Land, "The Spam Letters"
http://thespamletters.com

Richard Airlie, Ian Morrison, "Spamradio"
http://thespamletters.com

Alex Dragulescu, "Spam Architecture"
http://www.sq.ro/spamarchitecture.php

Bill Shackelford, "Spamtrap"
http://billshackelford.com/home/portfolio_spamtra_826

Markus Boeniger, "Spam Shirt"
www.spamshirt.com

Luca Bertini, "800-178968, a Toll Free Number"
http://ilnumeroverde.net/about/cornice3_eng.html

Dean Cameron, Victor Isaac, "Urgent & Confidential"
www.spamscamscam.com

Nick Philip, "Nowhere.com"
http://nphilip.best.vwh.net/instal.htm

"Today's Spam"
http://spamtoday.blogspot.com/

Viviendo@bcn :: Niu (ES) - Barcelona, a Mediterranean and usually sunny city, is one of Europe's most active and innovative hubs for audiovisual and multimedia arts. Much of this innovation and richness comes from artists born outside of Barcelona, people from a thousand and one different cities who decide to stop here for a time. Many of these artists explore audiovisual language as a form of artistic expression. This small selection shows the creative scope of eight collectives led by artists who have made Barcelona their home over the last few years. Recent arrivals from Sevilla, Bogota or Berlin who are making Barcelona a stop on their professional path and contributing a cultural richness that may be hard to quantify, but is undoubtedly positive. Niu is a cultural space located in Barcelona's Poblenou area that produces, exhibits and publicises contemporary audiovisual arts, multimedia design, digital art and independent electronic music. The subject of study, production and exhibition is the "audio and visual" culture that emerges with the inrush of digital technology into the world of art, design and communication.

Alberto Tognazzi, "Intimidades"
www.intimidades.es

Dslnc Studio (con música de Pablo Maffi), "Electrospoken World Video
Collage Generator"
www.desilence.net

Matekemata, "Airport"
www.matekemata.com

Sebastián Seifert & Miguel Marín, "Catangos Remixed"
www.niubcn.com/catangos

AC 3monitor, "28 Dead...Hundred Injured"
www.myspace.com/ac3monitor

Háztelo, "El Cruce"
www.haztelo.com

Institut Fatima, "Wireless Artist for Everyone!"
www.myspace.com/institutfatima

Equipo & Txalo Toloza-Fernández, "Usted No Está Aquí"
www.miprimerdrop.com
www.equipoweb.de

Redes Aurales :: Mediateletipos.net (ES) - We find ourselves facing the need to construct a new theory of knowledge that will allow us to study societies through their sound imaginaries. In this supposed new stage, the semantic web plays an essential and major role, a place for construction rather representation: from the figurative plane to pattern, from perspective to immersion, from object to process, from content to context, from reception to negotiation, from observation to action and from brain automatism to the distributing mind. Here in this new context is where we may find the keys to help us resolve the problem. Mediateletipos.net (a satellite project of the portal artesonoro.org), has selected eight projects that use social consensus as a means of working towards constructing that longed for means to knowledge through "aurality".

"Ccmixter"
http://ccmixter.org

"Earlabs"
http://earlabs.org

"Escoitar"
www.escoitar.org

"The Freesound Project"
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu

"Jamendo"
www.jamendo.com

"Pandora"
www.pandora.com

"Ruccas"
http://ruccas.org

"Soundtransit"
http://soundtransit.nl

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

CHArt 2007

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FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

CHArt (COMPUTERS AND THE HISTORY OF ART) TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE: DIGITAL ARCHIVE FEVER :: CALL FOR PAPERS :: November 8 - 9, 2007 :: London Venue to be confirmed :: Deadline: June 30.

Museums, galleries, archives, libraries and media organisations such as publishers and film and broadcast companies, have traditionally mediated and controlled access to cultural resources and knowledge. What is the future of such ‘top-down’ institutions in the age of ‘bottom-up’ access to knowledge and cultural artifacts through what is generally known as Web 2:0 - encompassing YouTube, Bittorrent, Napster, Wikipedia, Google, MySpace and more. Will such institutions respond to this threat to their cultural hegemony by resistance or adaptation? How can a museum or a gallery or, for that matter, a broadcasting company, appeal to an audience which has unprecedented access to cultural resources? How can institutions predicated on a cultural economy of scarcity compete in an emerging state of cultural abundance?

For the twenty-second CHArt conference we are looking for papers that reflect upon these issues, particularly in relation to visual culture. We particularly welcome contributions from those working in either ‘traditional’ cultural organisations or those involved in new forms of cultural access and distribution.

Please email submissions (a three hundred word synopsis of the proposed paper with CV of presenter/s and other key figures) by 31 May 2007 to Hazel Gardiner (hazel.gardiner[at]kcl.ac.uk).

Dr Charlie Gere, Chair, CHArt
CHArt
c/o Centre for Computing in the Humanities
Kings College, University of London
Kay House
7 Arundel Street
WC2R 3DX

Posted by jo at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2007

Come Out & Play Festival

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

TURN AMSTERDAM INTO A PLAYGROUND IN THE SECOND ANNUAL COME OUT & PLAY FESTIVAL, SEPTEMBER 22-23 :: SUBMISSION DEADLINE :: July 15, 2007 :: The Come Out & Play Festival seeks to provide a forum for new types of public games and play. We want to bring together a public eager to rediscover the world around them through play with designers interested in producing innovative new games and experiences. Oh yeah, and we want to have city-size fun.

The festival offers a chance to explore new styles of games and play. Last year the festival featured games from the creators of I Love Bees, PacManhattan, The Go Game, Conqwest, Big Urban Game and more. From massive multi-player scavenger hunts to public play performances, the festival gives players and the public the chance to take part in a variety of different games. We are extremely excited to announce that Come Out & Play will be landing in Amsterdam, Netherlands this September for a two day festival. In collaboration with the PICNIC'07 cross media week, Come Out & Play will be running a two-day mini-festival in Amsterdam this September.

SUBMIT TO THE FESTIVAL

Have you got a game? We want to include as many different types of games as possible in the festival schedule. We are looking specifically for games with defined goals and interesting, meaningful choices for the players. These games should be interactive and directly engage the participants. Your game can have a technology component or it can be old school with absolutely no tech; to us, it's much more important that the game produce an interesting experience for the players. We will be reviewing submissions focusing on these criteria when we select games for the schedule:

Most importantly, your game must be playable in Amsterdam during the festival.

Your submission will be reviewed by a panel of street game "experts" brought together to assemble the lineup for this most sacred event. Okay, we are actually a bunch of yahoos. But we have run a few games and we really like playing in fun ones. So make sure your game sounds fun and interesting. We like innovative use of public space. We like games which make people interact in new ways. We like games that alter your perception of your surroundings. But most importantly, we just want the players to have fun.

APPLICATION :: Download the application form (.doc).

SCHEDULE

- Submission deadline: July 15
- Notifications: July 31
- Festival: September 22-23

INQUIRIES?

Email us at info[at]comeoutandplay.org

PLAY or VOLUNTEER

WHAT ABOUT NEW YORK?! The Come Out & Play Festival will return to New York City in the Spring of 2008 for more city-sized fun.

Posted by jo at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

Disrupting Narratives

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Real-time Interaction in Electronic Media

LIVE WEBCAST OF Disrupting Narratives :: July 13, 2007, 10.00–18.30 :: Tate Modern Starr Auditorium, Bankside, London SE1 :: in collaboration with iRes (Research in Interactive Art & Design) at University College Falmouth :: Concept by Kate Southworth, developed in collaboration with Tate Modern :: Tickets £20 (£12 concessions) booking recommended or call 020 7887 8888.

This international symposium brings together some of the world's leading media artists, theorists and researchers to explore real-time interaction in electronic media. Over the last few years network theories have started to shape our thinking about social and cultural issues. This event seeks out artistic strategies and art forms that engage with these ideas. Contributors include: Mark Amerika, Alexander R Galloway, Andrea Zapp, Kelli Dipple, Kate Rich and Paul Sermon.

Timetable

10:00 Arrival and Registration

10:15 Welcome and Introduction (Kate Southworth)

10:30 Session 1: Counter-Narratives

Mark Amerika: Remixology, Hybridized Processes, and Postproduction Art: A Counternarrative - In this keynote address, artist and theorist Mark Amerika remixes personal narrative, philosophical inquiry, spontaneous theories, and cyberpunk fictions that investigate the emergence of digitally constructed identities, fictional personas, experiential metadata, narrative mythologies, and collaborative networks. Locating what he describes as the "postproduction artist" who engages with D-I-Y networking and alternative distribution schemes to build new models of audience development, Amerika will role-play the contemporary remixologist who is part VJ, part novelist, and part net artist, a made-up character in a book yet written, someone who uses the forms of new media not so much to counter spectacle in the media culture, but to create a counternarrative drift that moves away from the art object per se while investigating the depth of possibilities waiting to be discovered in the creative unconscious.

11:30 Andrea Zapp: For We are Where We are not: Mixed-Reality Narratives and Installations - Andrea Zapp’s practice focuses on room installations in the gallery that are linked to a digital network, mostly through components of surveillance technology. At present she also concentrates on model and miniature aesthetics as a format of expression and narrative architecture; small or shifting scales become another motif to discuss virtual and personal spaces of memory and identity. Life-sized installations like a hut or a hotel room as well as participants are linked to their remote model replicas or online versions – to create surreal stages of viewer involvement that discuss the change of existence in a wired world.

12:15 Kelli Dipple: ... duration, distribution and participation _ the performative-emergent narrative - Focussing on examples of contemporary artists' work, this presentation will observe a notion of performativity in context of cross-platform artistic and curatorial practice. Providing examples of emergent counter-narrative; demonstrated through interaction, participation, interventions and interfaces - that effectively penetrate an exhibition's mode, duration, functionality, and design. Technology is increasingly ubiquitus within all practice, it permeates interpretation, education, exhibition, performance, communication and distribution; it is sometimes therefore, difficult to tell where an artwork begins and ends. The fluid spaces without protocol dominate emergent narratives of New Media that engage both internal and external configurations of the institution. In order to redraw our expectations of what is possible, how are we able to imagine the virtual museum, the distributed museum or the online gallery - are they feasible platforms? How satisfied are we with broadcast and redistribution as primary modes? How do we present New Media Art and make better use of platform-specific versioning in conjunction with social networks, to facilitate more detailed dialogues and provide more satisfyingly responsive cultural architectures?

13:00 Lunch Break

14:00 Session 2 Counter-Protocols

Alexander R Galloway: Counter-Protocol - In this keynote address, Alexander Galloway asks us to imagine an art exhibit of computer viruses. How would one curate such a show? Would the exhibition consist of documentation of known viruses, or of viruses roaming live? Would it be more like an archive or more like a zoo? Perhaps the exhibit would require the coordination of several museums, each with "honey pot" computers, sacrificial lambs offered up as attractor hosts for the contagion. A network would be required, the sole purpose of which would be to reiterate sequences of infection and replication. Now imagine an exhibit of a different sort: a museum exhibit dedicated to epidemics. Again, how would one curate an exhibit of disease? Would it include the actual virulent microbes themselves (in a sort of "microbial menagerie"), in addition to the documentation of epidemics in history? Would the epidemics have to be "historical" in order for them to qualify for exhibition? Or would two entirely different types of institutions be required: a museum of the present versus a museum of the past? In this talk Alexander Galloway explores a "counter-protocol" aesthetic and how it relates to the contemporary landscape of artmaking.

15:05 Paul Sermon: My work in the field of telematic arts explores the emergence of a user-determined narrative by bringing remote participants together in a shared telepresent environment. Through the use of live chroma-keying and videoconferencing technology, two public rooms or installations and their audiences are joined in a virtual duplicate that turns into a mutual, visual space of activity. Linked via an H.323 Internet videoconference connection, this form of immersive interactive exchange can be established between almost any two locations in the world. As an artist I am both designer of the environment and therefore ‘director’ of the narrative, which I determine through the social and political milieu that I choose to play out in these telepresent encounters.

15:50 Tea Break. Tea, coffee and biscuits are served in the Starr Auditorium Foyer

16:15 Kate Rich: Feral Trade (Import-Export) is an artist-run grocery business established in Bristol, 2003. The process is called Feral Trade to distinguish it from other methods such as Fair or Free. Feral Trade forges new, wild trade routes across hybrid territories of business, art and social interaction. Goods are run along social routes, avoiding official channels of grocery distribution in preference for a hand-carried cargo system, often using other artists or curators as mules. This distribution infrastructure is modelled on the 'store and forward' protocol of email, and proposes the surplus freight potential of networked social and cultural movements as a viable alternative to regular freight services (white van, supermarket lorry, Parcelforce, DHL).

17:05 Panel Discussion

17:50 Closing Remarks (Kate Southworth)

18:00 Drinks Reception. Drinks are served in the East Room on Level 7

Mark Amerika has been named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator" and has had four retrospectives of his digital art work. In spring 2000, GRAMMATRON was selected as one of the first works of Internet Art to be exhibited in the prestigious Whitney Biennial of American Art. His most recent book, META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, was just published by The MIT Press. A Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado, Amerika's practice-based research methods have been translated into novels, feature-length films, museum installations, and live multimedia performances that integrate experimental music, live writing, and video sampling into the narrative mix.

Kelli Dipple is the Webcasting Curator for Tate, working across Tate Media, Performance and Adult Education programmes. Her role is to oversee live event broadcasts, curate a context for the development of Tate's Net Art commissions and to curate performances For Tate Modern's Long Weekend. Kelli trained in theatre directing and choreography at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and has worked for over a decade at the intersection of new media and performance practice, specializing in the integration of visual, interactive, communication and network technologies. Previous to working for Tate, Kelli curated and produced digital media and performance programmes for Site Gallery in Sheffield. She also continues her own performative research, which has taken the form of site-specific and interactive performance, software development, personal data exchange and multi-screen or single-channel broadcast. For the past twelve years she has worked in the area of live cinematic and networked events. Undertaking artist residencies and projects in conjunction with Virtual Platform (NL), PVA (UK), Montevideo (NL), Steim (NL), Interaktions Labor (Germany), The University of Manchester (UK) and The University of Florida (USA). She has also worked and collaborated extensively with artist-lead groups in the UK including NODE.London, Active Ingredient, Future Physical, Resonance FM and Furtherfield; as well as with Australian artists, Company in Space, Keith Armstrong and The Transmute Collective.

Alexander R. Galloway is an author and programmer. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG and creator of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. The New York Times recently described his work as "conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely attuned to the political moment." Galloway is the author of Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (MIT, 2004), Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006), and a new book coauthored with Eugene Thacker called The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (forthcoming). He teaches at New York University.

Kate Rich is an Australian-born artist & trader. In the 1990s she moved to California to work as radio engineer with the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an international agency producing an array of critical information products including economic and ecologic indices, event-triggered webcam networks, and animal operated emergency broadcast devices. The Bureau's work has been exhibited broadly in academic, scientific and museum contexts. Restless at the turn of the century, she headed further east to take up the post of Bar Manager at the Cube Microplex, Bristol UK; where she launched Feral Trade, a public experiment trading goods over social networks. She is currently moving deeper into the infrastructure of cultural economy, developing protocols to define and manage amenities of hospitality, mobility, catering, sports and survival in the cultural realm.

Paul Sermon is Professor of Creative Technology and leader of the Creative Technology Research Group in the Adelphi Research Institute for Creative Arts and Sciences, University of Salford. Born in 1966, he received a BA Hons. Fine Art at the Gwent College of Higher Education in 1988 and an MFA at the University of Reading in 1991. He was awarded the Golden Nica for Interactive Arts at the Prix Ars Electronica 1991 in Linz, and the Interactive Media Festival Sparkey Award in Los Angeles in 1994. Paul Sermon was artist-in-residence at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in 1993; dozent for telematic arts at the HGB Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany from 1993 to 1999; and guest professor for performance and environment at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz from 1998 to 2000. Since June 2000 he has been based at the University of Salford, where he is researching immersive and expanded telematic environments.

Kate Southworth is an artist and researcher. With Patrick Simons she is a founding member of the art group glorious ninth - producers of distributed artworks, DIY installations and invisible networks. Current experiments into co-poietic relationships between code and ritual find form as aural-visual works, installations, performative presentations and texts, and expose their ongoing aesthetic and political attempts to evade systems of control. Recent works, such as November and love_potion, use magic, tactical gardening and social networks to recover knowledge of herbs and healing from commercial control and to share it as common knowledge. glorious ninth’s work has been exhibited in academic, gallery and online contexts. Kate received BA (Hons) in Fine Art and an MSc in Multimedia Systems. She has taught Media Art subjects at Universities in London, Dublin and Cornwall. Currently she is leader of the iRes Research Group in Interactive Art & Design at University College Falmouth where, for the last five years, she has been Course Leader of MA Interactive Art & Design.

Andrea Zapp was born in Germany and has a background in film and TV studies and creates disorientating digital platforms mixing real, virtual and online spaces, combined with surveillance interfaces and technology. She has edited two books, Networked Narrative Environments as imaginary spaces of being, MMU/FACT Liverpool, 2004; and New Screen Media, Cinema/Art / Narrative, BFI, London/ ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2002, (with Martin Rieser). She curated StoryRooms, an international Exhibition on Networking and Media Art that took place at The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, from October 05 to January 06. She has lectured widely internationally; her art works have been shown at Siggraph 06 Boston, Ars Electronica Linz; ISEA Liverpool and Paris; Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; Festival of Visions Hong Kong - Berlin, Media Forum Moscow, Austrian Photo Triennial Graz, Museum of Image and Sound Sao Paulo; Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts Tokyo; Kunstverein Stuttgart, Intern. Art Fair Madrid, Film Festival Rotterdam; and at conferences including the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth, Australia; Siggraph Los Angeles, ISEA 02 Nagoya; Muestra Euroamericana de Video y Arte Digital, Buenos Aires. In 2005 she was appointed Senior Lecturer and Route Leader for the MA Media Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Posted by jo at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

Igor Stromajer presents Ballettikka Internettikka

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Valencia, Spain

Igor Stromajer presents Ballettikka Internettikka :: June 14, 18:30 :: Sala Parpalls, New Media Room, Carrer Alboraia 5, Valencia, Spain.

Igor Stromajer's Internet oeuvre is characterized by the substitution of the traditional theatre space by the use of the Internet for his intimate performance.
[ . . .] "Ballettikka Internettikka" realized by net.artist Igor Stromajer and net.composer Brane Zorman is an internet guerrilla performance. Differently from other net.art works by Stromajer, which are confined to fixed spaces on the Net, accessible from infinite co-ordinate combinations of time, place, and space, "Ballettikka Internettikka" combines the Internet based ubication with the artist's placement in an offline scenario (corporeally speaking), so the intervention takes place both online and offline, conceived as a complimentary effect. [ . . .]

This Internet situationist performance is a critique of elitist and bourgeois art spaces and consumer art culture and capitalism, by claiming public art spaces. This is achieved by entering secondary locations of established art institutions and then broadcasting the action via the Internet, taking advantage of the whole new scope that the Internet offers: a higher bandwidth, a complimentary effect to off-line activism, omni-directionality, and participation.

Posted by jo at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

SWITCH, Issue 23

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FUNCTION // BORDER // DYSFUNCTION

SWITCH: The online New Media Art Journal of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University is pleased to announce the launch of Issue 23: FUNCTION // BORDER // DYSFUNCTION.

After 2 solid years of work leading up to ISEA2006 and the ZeroOne Festival, CADRE and SWITCH have been considering new agendas, strategies and opportunities. Over the last several months, the CADRE Laboratory has engaged in a diverse set of activities. We have explored issues such as failure (its lessons and its utility), borders (real / virtual, body / technology, open / closed), and in what direction "new" media may be going. Issue 23 highlights the diversity of these activities, which we have grouped under the rubric of "Function / Border / Dysfunction". Among other things, we have interviews with Michael Joaquin Grey, Saskia Sassen and Lu Jie. Cultural theorist / art historian Dore Bowen explores "The Function of Dysfunction" in her article on Fluxus event scores. The CADRE Lab introduces its Speaker Salon Series, it's new artist residency with the Montalvo Arts Center and its collaboration with Ars Virtua in sponsoring the Borders conference in Second Life.

About SWITCH: SWITCH is the new media art journal of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media of the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University. It has been published on the Web since 1995. SWITCH is interested in fostering a critical viewpoint on issues and developments in the multiple crossovers between art and technology. Its main focus in on questioning and analyzing, as well as reporting and discussing these new art forms as they develop, in hopes of encouraging dialogue and possible collaboration with others who are working and considering similar issues. SWITCH aims to critically evaluate developments in art and technology in order to contribute to the formation of alternative viewpoints with the intention of expanding the arena in which new art and technology emerge. SWITCH is overseen by CADRE faculty Joel Slayton and Rachel Beth Egenhoefer.

Posted by jo at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary:

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Shared Visions between Art and Technology

Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary: Shared Visions between Art and Technology :: June 4 - August 24, 2007 :: Opening Event: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 :: Exhibition Viewing - 6:00-8:00 PM :: Performance by Roger Dannenberg :: ACM Creativity and Cognition Panel: Bridging Art and Science with Creativity Support Tools with Rita Colwell (University of Maryland), Sara Diamond (Ontario College of Art and Design), Paul Greenhalgh (Corcoran Gallery of Art), and Dr. William Wulf (National Academy of Engineering) - 8:00 - 9:00 PM :: National Academy of Sciences Rotunda Gallery, 2100 C Street N.W., Washington D.C. :: Curator: Pamela Jennings.

Complementing the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference themes: cultivating creative minds; sustaining creative communities; and promoting creative engagement, the works in this exhibition illustrate the breadth of creative digital media that impact interdisciplinary practices across the arts, science and technology research.

This exhibition features interactive computer installations, large format digital prints, and wearable technology, representing a confluence of technology research and creativity that include the visual arts, design, architecture, performance, science, technology and engineering. The exhibited works share a common trajectory of exploring speculative inquiries, imaginary scenarios and real-time phenomenon from outer space to cyberspace; multi-dimensional space to urban space; public space to virtually embodied space; ecological space to social space.

This exhibition is dedicated to outgoing National Academy of Engineering President William A. Wulf, in recognition of his many years of support for the arts program at the National Academies in Washington D.C. Contributors to this exhibition include: Nell Breyer, Sheldon Brown, Donna Cox, Roger Dannenberg (opening night), Ernest Edmonds, Tiffany Holmes, Pamela Jennings, Greg Judelman and Maria Lantin, George Legrady, Marcos Novak, Sabrina Raaf, Bill Seaman, Thecla Schiphorst, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, and Martin Wattenberg.

Special Presentation Event at the National Academy of Sciences Gallery Auditorium Thursday, July 12, 2007:

Film Screening of Robert Rauschenberg's - Open Score with special Introduction by producer Julie Martin
Reception: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Film Screening: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

In 1966, 10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances that incorporated new technology. They used video projection, wireless sound transmission, and Doppler sonar -- technologies that are commonplace today but that had never been seen in the art of the 1960s. Julie Martin, producer of the ?9 Evenings? DVD series, will discuss the film series as well as the 1966 event that was the first large-scale collaboration between artists, engineers, and scientists. Open Score is co-produced by E.A.T. and ARTPIX and distributed by Microcinema International.

Press Contact: Alana Quinn, Outreach Manager, Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs, National Academy of Sciences (202)-334-2415 aquinn[at]nas.edu
Public Contact: arts@nas.edu (202) 334-2436

Posted by jo at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2007

University College Dublin Conference

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Perspectives on the Body and Embodiment

Perspectives on the Body and Embodiment :: University College Dublin :: Friday June 8-9, 2007 .

Since the investigations of phenomenological theorists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, the themes of embodiment and situatedness have enjoyed increased popularity over a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, literature, women's studies among others. Recognition that the body is not merely an appendage to the self, but rather is what opens up the possibility of meaningful subjective existence, has radically shifted the classical philosophical understanding of the body. Within popular culture this shift is reflected with an increased interest in embodiment in realms such as design, architecture, education and business.

This conference aims to explore the themes of the body and embodiment in contemporary discourse inviting papers from a range of disciplines including, but not limited to, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, performance studies, women's studies and literature. This unique inter-disciplinary perspective will provide a multi-faceted understanding of how Western thinking has changed with understanding the role of the body in constituting or influencing cognition, subjectivity, identity and discourse.

Nathaniel Stern: Implicit Bodies through Explicit Action

This research contends that the body is performed. A body can “act” as a site of emergence, a boundary project, and an incipience. While Rebecca Schneider’s “explicit body” in feminist performance art performatively unfolds (Latin: explicare) and explicates, the implicit body concordantly enfolds (Latin: implicare) and implies. Inter-action is both constitutive of, and always already involved in, the flesh. Like an animated moebius strip, the body feeds back between affection and reflection. This paper attempts to think through digital art as a proscenium for, and framer of, the implicit body.

Nathaniel Stern is an internationally exhibited installation and video artist, net.artist, printmaker and performance poet. He is currently working towards a production- and research-based PhD on interactive art and embodiment at Trinity College, Dublin. Recent works include an article in the Leonardo Journal of, Art Science and Technology, a write-up in NY Arts Magazine, solo exhibitions at Art on Paper gallery (Johannesburg) and the Johannesburg Art Museum, and artist residencies at the iCommons (Croatia), Frans Masereel Centre (Belgium) and the Anderson Ranch (USA).

Posted by jo at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2007

H2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities

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'Hacking the Human'

[Image: Aimee Mullins, a Paralympic athlete and model, showed an image of her running with her 'cheetah legs,' which helped her break world running records.] Creative technology meets quiet humanity in Media Lab's adaptive device event: Mission is 'hacking the human,' says director Frank Moss - by Stephanie Schorow, MIT News Office Correspondent, May 11, 2007. VIDEO -Archived webcasts and presentations.

Forget cool new gadgets or killer-ap software. "We're hacking the human," said Frank Moss, director of MIT's Media Lab, in introducing "H2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities," the lab's May 9 symposium that showed -- often in mind-blowing detail -- how addressing the challenges posed by disabilities can broaden the scope of human ability.

"The goal of today's symposium is to demonstrate the amazing possibilities in new adaptive technology," as MIT President Susan Hockfield noted.

But "amazing" came with a sense of humor, as provided by MIT Media Lab Distinguished Fellow and veteran TV journalist John Hockenberry, who acted as master of ceremonies and got things rolling by showing off the sparkling lights on his wheelchair.

And tales of the "amazing" were tempered by the quiet humanity of author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, the keynote speaker, who mesmerized his audience with stories of the brain's adaptability.

Hockenberry set the tone by bringing on stage a telephone and a typewriter (which he defined as a "laptop that prints while you type.") The typewriter, he noted, was invented to let the blind write, and telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell was seeking ways to help the deaf.

What if, he asked, new technology was about more than creating new devices to "dump" on the population? What if it involved thinking about "human mechanisms and abilities?"

"Who knows about that? People with disabilities," Hockenberry said. They "know about that intimate relationship with technology. In a sense, people with disabilities are first adopters of this extreme collaborative quality that's going to define technology in the 21st century."

The 73-year-old Sacks, the author of "Awakenings" (which became a movie starring Robin Williams) and the seminal "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," took the stage, the very picture of vitality in black sneakers, black pants and a black T-shirt, his large dome of a head matched by a snowy beard. Yet he acknowledged he has some retinal problems and is keenly interested in new eye research.

Speaking diffidently, in the self-effacing style of a bookish don, Sacks described how Parkinson's patients, frozen into human statues, could be led into dancing and singing with the right stimuli. Perhaps, he speculated, the Media Lab will come up with a device that will provide the right stimulation. But "the most wonderful power resides in music," he said. Music "will facilitate movement and action in a Parkinsonian as nothing can."

Sacks also spoke of "phantom limbs," a phenomenon in which amputees retain sensation in missing limbs. Once thought to be a "nostalgic construct like the memory of departed parents," such sensations represent the brain's ability to map out senses and motor skills, Sacks said. A famous pianist who lost his right arm could still create fingering on a new piece for students.

Citing 19th-century doctor Silas Weir Mitchell, who identified the phenomenon in the Civil War, Sacks noted, "A phantom is longing, as it were, to be re-embodied."

South African poet David Wright lost his hearing at age 9, but he didn't realize he was deaf because he would continue to hear phantom voices, Sacks said. "If they turned away, he couldn't hear them." In the blind, the sensory cortex of the brain becomes hypersensitive, producing experience or images that are "quasi visual," something the rest of us cannot imagine, he said.

Sacks turned from natural to artificial adaptations, describing how a grid of electrodes can be placed on the tongues of the blind and connected to a video camera.

"This sounds absurd, if not obscene, but in fact people who have this can not only rapidly learn to interpret it and derive information, but they can start to experience it as if visual. You don't have to have eyes to have a visual experience."

But "one needs some caution in this brave new world." Sacks also told of "Virgil," a congenitally blind man, contented with his life, who was talked into an operation that would restore his sight. When the bandages were taken off, there was "a long confused silence." The shifting mass of colors and textures meant nothing to him and only worsened his disabilities. Virgil "was never able to make sense of the visual world," Sacks said. "You have to learn to see."

Other speakers described MIT research initiatives for augmenting mental and physical capabilities to improve human life. Many gave deeply personal accounts. Writer Michael Chorost ("Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human") explained -- and showed -- what he could hear with his cochlear implant. Deb Roy, AT&T Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, who is videotaping every waking moment in his home, demonstrated ways to cull specific information from the "ultra dense" data of recording, including his son's vocal progress from saying "ga-ga" to "water."

During a talk by Hugh Herr, NEC Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, about breakthroughs in building adaptive gait prostheses, Herr reached down and rolled up his pants leg to show the latest prototype, adding that he often forgets to mention he is an amputee himself. "This is the strongest ankle in the world -- when I walk up steps it pushes me up," he said, provoking an Arnold Schwartzenegger imitation from Hockenberry. (Herr lost his legs in a climbing accident as a teenager.)

Another symposium high point came when Aimee Mullins, a Paralympic athlete and model, strutted on stage with her prosthetic legs tucked into four-inch stiletto heels. Not only does she compete in sports events, often on unusual, curved "cheetah legs," Mullins, a stunning, slender blonde, has modeled her "legs" as fashion accessories. "People say I have no legs, but, in fact, I have 10 pairs," she remarked.

Rosalind Picard, professor of media arts and sciences, demonstrated software that recognizes human emotions (which may help those with autism), while Cynthia Breazeal, LG Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, introduced the robot Leonardo, which can work through classic "false belief" scenarios.

William J. Mitchell, MIT Design Laboratory director, showed designs for folding electric cars that address both air quality and parking issues. Other experts outlined differing ways to approach neural disorders, from "back entrances" via the nervous system to direct brain interfaces.

The symposium also was punctuated by short films in which Hockenberry -- in deadpan, Stephen Colbert fashion -- visits various MIT luminaries to demand an "upgrade." The clips showed images of MIT's research from robots to voting screens to spray-on clothing.

Famed architect and designer Michael Graves, who suffered a mysterious illness in 2003 that paralyzed his legs, discussed new home product designs, such as adjustable tub rails, easy-grip shower heads and reversible walker/wheelchairs -- all increasingly attractive to an aging baby boomer population, as well as the disabled. "This is a business opportunity," Hockenberry noted. Indeed, "There are things that are simple to do and they don't cost more; you just have to use your mind and your convictions," Graves said.

Receiving a standing ovation was a performance of "My Eagle Song," by Dan Ellsey, who has cerebral palsy, on a computer designed by Tod Machover and Adam Boulanger that allows him to both compose and play.

The symposium ended with a flourish as Herr nimbly scaled a climbing wall erected on stage (he said he had been told he would never climb again) and Hockenberry showed off his "upgrade," a "hacked" Segway wheelchair.

"You see how we're changed. How have you changed?" he asked the audience.

To see the archived webcast of "H2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities," go to h20.media.mit.edu/.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 16, 2007 (download PDF).

Posted by jo at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2007

xxxxx workshop_15 Berlin: Electric Art Lab with Jeff Mann

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Call for Participants

xxxxx workshop_15 Berlin: Electric Art Lab with Jeff Mann :: June 16, 2:00 pm :: Course fee: 15 euros :: RSVP at m[at]1010.co.uk :: xxxxx, pickledfeet, Linienstrasse 54, Berlin 10119 :: U2, Rosa-Luxemburg-Pl.; U8, Rosenthaler Pl. :: Telephone: 3050187482.

Our ancestors believed that ordinary objects could contain energies, spirits, intelligence, and the spark of life. Today, tens of billions of tiny electronic processors permeate our reality, embedded in phones, watches, appliances, toys, cars, factory equipment, and our entire technological infrastructure. In this lab / workshop, we'll look at the microcontroller - the basic element of this distributed network of intelligent objects. These "computers on a chip" are small, inexpensive, simple, and unlike their desktop/laptop cousins, are designed for interaction with the physical world. How can creative individuals use microcontrollers to produce evocative, compelling objects and experiences that go beyond typical mass-produced consumer products?

We'll look at examples and discuss how artists have incorporated embedded processors into sculpture, installation, and performance. We'll compare various microcontroller platforms and, using the open-source Arduino board, we'll experiment with building activated objects that include sensors, processing, and movement. We'll also look at using the microcontroller as a physical interface for audio / video environments like Pure Data, and for remote interaction over the Internet.

The workshop is designed for people of all levels of experience. No equipment is required, but it's recommended to bring as many of the following things as possible:

- Materials to modify, hack, and build objects with. Household items, battery-operated toys, plastic, wood, metal, anything you find interesting. Before the workshop, try to imagine two or three simple ideas you might try to make.
- Laptop with Arduino and Pd software installed.
- Toolbox with cutters, glue gun, screwdrivers, as well as soldering irons, multimeter, etc.
- Microcontrollers - a limited number of Arduino boards will be shared between the participants. You can also purchase your own before the workshop for 27 euros in Berlin at: http://www.segor.de/
- Sensors and Actuators - pushbuttons, photocells, rangefinders, accelerometers; DC, R/C servo, and stepper motors.
- Electronics parts and supplies - a selection of wire, connectors, resistors, capacitors, transistors, chips, and so on.

More details about tools and materials can be found at: http://jeffmann.com/resources.html

About the instructor: Jeff Mann creates electric art with computers, electronics, kinetics, and telecommunications media. His work explores the nature of technological life and its cultural representation; it draws out tensions between notions of utopian industrialism, personal theatre, and the evocative enigma of electronic equipment.

Background: A weekly series of constructivist workshops emphasising making and connection within the field of the existent. Workshops led by field-expert practitioners extend over realms of code and embedded code, environmental code, noise, transmission and reception, and electromysticism. Workshops solely utilise free software and GNU toolbase.

Practitioners include Julian Oliver (http://selectparks.net/), Derek Holzer (http://soundtransit.nl), Jeff Mann (http://jeffmann.com), Martin Howse (http://1010.co.uk), Fredrik Olofsson (http://www.fredrikolofsson.com/), superfactory (http://superfactory.biz).

Further planned workshops will cover PD connectivity and hardware, ATmega8 microcontrollers, free software documentation, VLF reception, radio antenna design, FPGA design...

http://1010.co.uk/xxxxx_research_institute.html
http://1010.co.uk

Posted by jo at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

SELF 2.0 at vertexList

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Emerging American Media Artists

VertexList space has the pleasure to present “SELF 2.0”, a group exhibition of emerging US based media artists. On display recent projects by Mike Beradino, Charles Beronio, Zachary Biberstine, Kara Hearn, Jia Lim and Laura Nova. Commenting on the contemporary strategies of electronically mediated self, SELF 2.0 introduces new and exciting voices of artists from across the country.

A reception will take place on Friday, June 15th 2007 from 7pm - 10pm. The exhibition will be on display until Saturday, July 08th, 2007. Live circuit music performance by Jamie Allen/Season of the Bit @ the opening reception. Curated by Marcin Ramocki and Sakurako Shimizu.

Mike Beradino: Mikey Newchurch - My works are physical recursions, between the digital and physical. These recursions are similar a feed back loop such as a microphone next to a speaker. The speaker output signal becomes the input of the microphone and so on and so on.

An object is created then digitized then produced then digitized then produced. Environments such as SecondLife are populated with objects from real life, but our real life objects probably originated in some digital environment. These two pieces are re-presentations of the hollow vessel of the digital avatar. Mikey Newchurch is re-presented from a CNC mill in a series; which is an attempt of giving some physicality to my virtual body. While Mica Sicling is produce in at life sized scale in paper. An indexical relationship of re-presentation of the avatar is created, the original data that is used to create the virtual is used to create the tangible. That is why I included the process of production.

Mike Beradino’s work addresses issues involving the appropriation of digital environments, antiquated technologies, and Internet based do-it-yourself communities. He is particularly interested in the dissemination of 3-dimensional digital environments such as the video games, within our culture. Mike showed his work at Alterspace (Chicago) and online (Aho Museum, Second Life). He is currently working on his MFA degree at Parsons.

Charles Beronio: Untitled (Pretty Vacant) - Vinyl banner with applied vinyl lettering and grommets, 4' x 15', 2006 :: Charles Beronio (b. New York City) lives and works in Oakland/San Francisco and Brooklyn. He completed his MFA in Sculpture at the California College of the Arts (2005), where he is currently developing his thesis on the aesthetics of supermarkets for his MA in Visual Criticism. As an artist and writer, his practice includes a diverse range of work steeped in romantic conceptualism and allegorical formalism. His work utilizes a diverse range of familiar and common materials found in the marketplace and constructed landscape to reveal submerged meanings and narratives– challenging the trajectories of ideology and commerce. He has shown at Galeria de la Raza, Intersection for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Triple Base, Queens Nails Annex, and the S.F. Art Commission in San Francisco, as well as Gallery Lui Velazquez (Tijuana, Mexico), High Energy Constructs (Los Angeles), and Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery (Portland). He was included in Consume/d: Creative Critical Acts from the Bay Area (2005) in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. In 2006 he curated Material World at the Alliance Francais San Francisco and staged the collaborative exhibition Blackout with artist Sasha Dela at Diverseworks, Houston. He will also be included in New American Talent 22 at Arthouse in Austin, Texas. He has published several design related articles in CMYK magazine (New York) and his forthcoming magazine/book project Dark Prospects will be published by Printed Matter Inc. later this year.

Zachary Biberstine: flag - This 2006 video performance begins with the unfurling of the American flag and ends with the gasping for breath. This attempted embodiment, although painful and enduring, was an effort to understand and progress. The performance attempts to not only share this experience, but also evoke the experiences of others; create a connection on a visual, audible, and memory level.

Currently working in personal, time based performance; the work of Zachary Biberstine takes many shapes. Interested in experience and embodiment, his recent work lives in and through performative acts, sometimes shown as artifacts or documentation. His work deals with ideas of experience, embodiment, displacement, expansion, and collapse.

Kara Hearn: Reincarnated scenes - These scenes are my effort to degrade and venerate the heroics of Hollywood movies. By utilizing the echniques of cinema in the simplest possible ways I hope to recreate narratives that are stripped of everything but the pathos inherent in the medium.

Kara Hearn is an interdisciplinary video artist. She works with the stuff of popular entertainment to map the complexities of various emotional states, such as fear, melancholy, courage, and obsession. She studies these conditions and builds intimate and absurd narratives to understand them by. Her work has shown at White Columns, Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, the Walker Art Center, Dallas Video Festival, and the Festival Tous Courts International Festival of Cinema. She recently received an MFA in Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jia Lim: Avatar Duet- Home Spring - 3 D animation, sound, single channel installation :: It all started with my curiosity about the human mind, conscious and unconscious. After reading Elegant Universe, my curiosities were somewhat solved. It was then that I realized that science and philosophy have the same value system as the artistic process, which is creation originates from the imagination or unconsciousness.

Jia Lim is a Korean – American new media artist involved in analysis of identity in pop-culture. Her work was exhibited in Gwang-ju Bienale, Gallery 24 (NYC) and Gallery Andante (Seoul). She holds and MFA in Electronic Arts from the University of Cincinnati and M.P.S in Interactive Telecommunication Program (NYU).

Laura Nova: First Love - I will provide the opportunity for participants to reconstruct memories of their “First Love” using a facial composite software. Images of reconstructed faces will become a part of the installation.

Laura Nova was born in 1973 and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. Lives and works on the Lower East Side, New York. Laura Nova is a visual artist working in video, sculpture and installation. Her work is rooted in social relationships and literalized emotions. Using the gallery and site-specific spaces, she creates installations using a wide range of media to explore concepts of public and private behavior and the relationship between the human body and architecture. She received her B.F.A. and B.A. in art and history from Cornell University in 1996 and an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001 as a Jacob Javits Fellow. She lived and worked in London as a Rotary International Scholar and completed Associate Research at Goldsmiths College in 2002. She has exhibited internationally, most recently at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City and VTO Gallery in London. For the past year she participated in the Henry Street Settlement Artist in Residence Program. She has taught at City College, School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, The College of New Jersey and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. /

Jamie Allen makes interactive art and sound makers with his head and hands. He thinks technology can allow us to circumvent and reinvent traditional, commercial and hierarchical relationships to art and performance. His work in design, music, performance and public art creates physical relationships between people and media. Jamie has teaching engagements in interactive art and robotics at the Pratt Institute and musical interface design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Department. Jamie's art and performance work is regularly exhibited in New York City and abroad.

Michael J. Horan is a musician and artist based in New York City.

VertexList gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday 2pm - 6 pm, or by appointment. We are located between Graham and Manhattan Avenues on Bayard St. For more info please visit our website www.vertexlist.net or call 646 258 3792.

Posted by jo at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

June 05, 2007

FLOSS+Art - Call for Papers

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FLOSS+Art :: Call for Papers :: Deadline: September 15th 2007 - people.makeart is a new project by GOTO10. It is a repository of articles and lecture materials focused on the relationship between FLOSS (Free / Libre / Open Source Software) and digital arts, as well as a database of free digital art projects. The selected papers will be published on the people.makeart website and will be printed in the FLOSS+Art book, scheduled for spring 2008, using OpenMute's POD publishing service.

GOTO10 is now accepting new, old and recycled papers on the following issues: - opening digital art's practice, code and culture - FLOSS communities VS. art collectives - digital art licensing, copying and distributing, using open content models - role of the artist in FLOSS development - influence of FLOSS on digital art practices - free software to produce art and the art of producing free software - economy of an open digital artwork - FLOSS as an embedded political message in digital art - paradox and limitations of open licenses for digital art - FLOSS as a way to quote and embed other artworks in a new one - digital artist as a FLOSS developer/user and vice-versa - definitions and manifestos for a free software art - branching and forking of an open digital artwork - opening digital art to ensure future maintainance and porting.

Submission Procedures:

- Submit your final paper to pmafloss-at-goto10-dot-org
no later than September 15th, 2007. Include the text "FLOSS+Art"
followed by your paper's title in your e-mail subject line.
- Submit as many papers as you want, one mail submission for each.
- Accepted formats : plaintext, LaTeX, OpenDocument
No other file format will be accepted.
- The paper must be attached to the mail, do not send us links
- The submitted paper must be written in English
- Paper must be 1500 words minimum

More information: http://people.makeart.goto10.org/

The FLOSS+Art POD publishing is a collaboration between GOTO10 and the Digital Research Unit of the University of Huddersfield, with commissions and contributions from various organisations and institutions.

Posted by jo at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

Inter-Arts: Grants: Second Life Artist Residency

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Call for Applications

The Australia Council for the Arts is offering up to $20,000 for a collaborative artist residency in the virtual world of Second Life. Application closing date July 27, 2007. The aim of the residency is to offer Australian artists and writers the opportunity to creatively and critically explore new interactive, virtual platforms.

The residency allows for a collaborative team of up to three people (including a writer, musician/sound artist and digital visual media practitioner) to develop inter-disciplinary artwork in Second Life. Applications will only be accepted from teams who fulfil all the residency requirements, including having the necessary artform experience. Artists or writers who have professional experience in more than one of the required artform areas can include this as part of their submission.

Program purpose: The Second Life artist residency is an initiative of the Literature Board, Music Board and Inter-Arts Office of the Australia Council. The residency is ‘in-world’ and requires artists and writers to explore the possibilities of inter-disciplinary literary, music/sound art and digital visual media practices. The successful team will develop new artistic in-world practices and comment on the social and cultural layers that have evolved in Second Life.

Key requirements of the project are a clear strategy for harnessing both in-world and ‘real life’ audiences and developing public exhibition opportunities for the artwork in Australia.

The main objectives of the program are to:

Provide opportunities for artists and writers to develop art that challenges and explores the aesthetic, social, political and cultural realities of Second Life
Encourage collaborations between artists and writers working across literature, music/sound art and digital visual media to develop high quality, experimental arts practices in Second Life. More info here >>

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

June 04, 2007

LABworkshops: Modding, Reversing and Intervening in Today’s Gaming Worlds

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

LABworkshops: Modding, Reversing and Intervening in Today’s Gaming Worlds - July 2 – 27, 2007 :: In July LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is organising four workshops exploring the intersections between videogames, art and reality today. A different side of videogames will be revealed by creators who can uncover their codes, subvert the standards imposed by the industry and can even address social and political issues through them. Game hardware and software will be used for performances, activism and critique and participants will have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the language of videogames and create new meanings and results.

MODDING: An intense workshop tackling the basic notions about modding and editing of Quake III Arena levels with the aid of open source code elements. In order to create fully redistributable games, participants will learn to generate interactive 3D contents for Quake III and to engineer new game features in the game engine’s source code.

Workshop led by: JULIAN OLIVER (NZ) is an artist, educator and media theorist specialising in the development of free software. In 1998 he set up Select Parks, an artistic game development collective.

Dates: 02. – 07. 07.2007
Hours: 10 am – 2 pm & 4 – 7 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter in English
Registration fee: 100 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 15.06.2007
Working language: English
Prior experience in programming and 3D modelling will be valued

BORDERGAMES: The Fiambrera Obrera team will work with digital cameras and image editing, teaching basic levels of 3D modelling as well as some “tricks” and activities related with their software: narrative design and characters, modelling and remodelling of scripts and characters. Participants will be involved in field work in the area of Gijon.

Workshop led by: LA FIAMBRERA OBRERA (ES) is an open group that works in areas charged with a high degree of political and social conflict. Their methods are primarily direct action and intervention.

Dates: 09. – 13.07.2007
Workshop limited to members of Asociación Mar de Niebla
Hours: 12 am – 2 pm & 4 – 8 pm
Working language: Spanish

ENTERING THE TERRITORIES OF SECOND LIFE: Second Life (SL) is an online virtual world currently inhabited by over six million “residents”. This workshop explores SL as a platform for art expression, activism and critique. It will be led by a machinima professional, two media artists and a programmer who work on SL on a practical and theoretical level using it as an ideal platform to share ideas and to perform. Participants will learn through collaborative work how to make machinimas, how to write basic scripts and how to use SL as a platform for social action and artistic expression.

Workshop led by: RICARD GRAS (ESP) is an artist, producer and director of machinima Europe Board. He explores new creative uses for technologies and relationships between art and the media. In 2003, he founded LA-INTERACTIvA, one of the companies that are officially in charge of the development of SL; KRISTIAN LUKIC (SERBIA) is a writer, artist and a cultural and game researcher. He is a program manager in New Media Center – kuda.org and the founder of Eastwood – Real Time Strategy Group and also of Napon - Institute for flexible culture and technologies; ILIAS MARMARAS (GR) is a new media artist and a leading member of the international group Personal Cinema. He has been working in gaming environments and game art since 1999; and YANNIS SCOULIDAS (GR) is a technical director, administrator and programmer of Personal Cinema and specialist in software and hardware.

Dates: 17. – 21.07.2007
Hours: 10 am – 2 pm & 4 – 8 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter in English
Registration fee: 100 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 03.07.2007
Working language: English
Experience in on-line game environments and especially familiarisation with SL will be valued

CHIPTUNES – 8BIt MUSIC: 8bit sound and music is a distinctive feature of early videogames, and has become a seminal contemporary music style utilized by artists and DJs in engaging live audiovisual performances and remixes. This workshop will bring together creators from US and Spain who will work with young people to create music using Gameboys. The workshop will close with an evening of Chiptunes performances with sounds by the artists, the workshop participants and visuals by media artists Entter.

Workshop led by: HAEYOUNG KIM (BUBBLYFISH) (KO) is a sound artist and composer who explores the textures of sounds and their cultural representation. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs and new media festivals around the world; CHRIS BURKE (GLOMAG) (USA) has been making 8bit music since 2001. He has performed in many countries and his music has played in films, on television and on the Internet. The machinima series “This Spartan Life”, features his music as well as other 8bit artists and is featured in Gameworld; RABATO(ESP) composes music with the famous software Littlesounddj created by Johan Kotlinski for a Nintendo Gameboy consoles. He is the co-founder of microBCN and has participated in festivals and concerts in various cities; YES, ROBOT (ESP) mix Gameboy sounds with other instruments like synthesizes, samples and toys modified by themselves. They are founding members of the 8bit collective microBCN; and ENTTER(ESP) is formed by Raúl Berrueco and Raquel Meyers. Entter was formed to create a collective space for the expression of the common restlessness felt by many creative people in the interactive media art field. Their fields of research include AVperformance, installations, non-linear narrative, videogames, interfaces, experimental music, VJing and net.art.

Dates: 26. – 27.07.2007
Hours: 11 am – 2 pm & 4 – 7 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CVand motivation letter
Registration fee: 50 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 16.07.2007
Working language: English and Spanish
Prior basic programming experience and music ability will be valued

Concept and Coordination of workshops:
Daphne Dragona, independent new media arts curator, Athens
Carl Goodman, Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media, Museum of the Moving Image, New York

Activities will take place at the labs and workshops of the LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries.

LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is a space for artistic exchange. It is set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress and the goal of becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art, new technologies and industrial creation. It throws a special spotlight in production, creation and research into art concepts still being defined.

LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries
Director: Rosina Gómez-Baeza
Universidad Laboral s/n, 33394 Gijón, Asturias – Spain
T. +34 985 185 577 F. +34 985 337 355
labworkshops[at]laboralcentrodearte.org
www.laboralcentrodearte.org

Posted by jo at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

SIGGRAPH Unraveled 2007

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Call for Proposals

As this year's fashion event, SIGGRAPH will present a living exhibition of fashion, an event combining the fun and glamour of a runway show with the personal engagement of interactive installations. We are looking for fashion design which pushes the boundaries of technology -- computational & conceptual couture & wearables, fashion with a social agenda concerning technology (although may not have embedded technology), and fashion produced using algorithmic fabrication or innovative manufacturing techniques. Because of the exhibition format, it will also be possible to show architectural textile installations, we are also open to submissions in this category.

Like last year, the event will be combined with the chapters party (3000+ tech savvy people in the audience). Here's how it will work: early on in the party, we will announce and present the designers as they enter with models wearing their garments, kind of an informal runway entrance to let the audience know what work is present.

The designer / models pairs will then join the party and interact with attendees, showing and discussing their works, possibly even letting the the attendees try the works on, or if the pieces are too fragile, they can be placed on mannequins; the format and degree of interactivity will be up to the designers. We hope that this format will allow attendees a better way to experience the pieces up close, giving them a chance to understand their depth-- in concept, construction or technical means -- something that can be lost in a traditional runway setting. However, this presentation method still allows the pieces to be shown in action and 'embodied' with live models.

As part of the show, we will be producing a high quality printed catalog which will serve as program for the show and as take away documentation after the show (all designers will receive free copies). The event will also feature professional photography and videography (available for use royalty free after the show) and professional models.

Submitted works should be functional (not concept projects) and able to be withstand some level of demonstration by the time of the show. Designers (or a representative) are expected to appear in person to present their work.

Please submit:

Title of work

Names and email addresses of designers

Brief description (not to exceed one page, one paragraph is fine) Photos (if available, if not, a sketch), Video (if available) Method of Display preferred for party interaction (worn by model, worn by designer, static on mannequin, tried on by audience, etc, can be changed and negotiated closer to event)

Please email your submission as a single PDF (photos embedded) to: amanda[at]media.mit.edu (does not need to be ACM formatted). Video can be sent separately or it can be viewed by us on a website, send the URL

Submission Deadline: June 15, midnight PST: The submissions will be committee reviewed and you will receive a notification by July 1 (at the latest). You may also email with questions before the submission deadline.

SIGGRAPH 2007 will take place in San Diego, CA from August 5-9 2007 (Unraveled event will occur on either Aug 6 or 8, TBD). SIGGRAPH: the premiere international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques Photos, runway video, project info and curatorial statement on last year's show, Unravel 2006, can be found at: http://www.siggraph.org/s2006/unravel.

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

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics

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9 Scripts from a Nation at War + Martha Rosler

[Image: “9 Scripts from a Nation at War,” 2007, Video still] The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is pleased to mark a presence at Kassel, Germany, this summer with several works by Martha Rosler, member of the Vera List Center’s Advisory Committee and 9 Scripts from a Nation at War, 2007, a video project by the 2006/2007 Vera List Center Fellows: David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, Andrea Geyer :: All are to be presented in an international exhibition in the city of Kassel, held from June 16- September 23, 2007.

“9 Scripts” investigates the idea of the individual as defined by and through the expectations and exigencies of society and politics, specifically in the context of the American war in Iraq. Within continuously shifting perspectives, the work is essentially structured around a central question: How does war construct specific positions for individuals to fill, enact, speak from, or resist.

Martha Rosler’s works will include “Kassel Gardens (from the Perspective of a Mole)” (2007), as well as “The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems” (1975/76), “Hothouse (Harem)” (c. 1975), and “Flower Fields (Color Field Painting)” (1975). They will be displayed in various venues and parks in Kassel and present views of landscape and the natural world invested with history, beauty, metaphor, and subversion.

“9 Scripts from a Nation at War” was developed, in part, during a Vera List Center Fellowship at The New School, New York, with support from the American Art Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation and the Swing Space Program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School advances the discourse on the role of the arts in society and their relationship to the socio-political climate in which they are created. It organizes public programs that respond to pressing social and political issues of our time as articulated by the academic community and visual and performing artists. The center complements the university’s educational mission and brings together scholars and students, the people of New York, and national and international audiences to explore new modes and possibilities for civic engagement.

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics
The New School
66 West 12th Street, room 903
New York, NY 10011
212.229.2436
kuonic[at]newschool.edu

Posted by jo at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

ENDOSYMBIONT

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Gallery transformed by Trains/Commuters

ENDOSYMBIONT:: Curated by Dana Moser :: June 7 - July 15 :: Opening Reception: Thursday, June 7, 6-9 p.m. :: Gallery Hours: Wednesday, Thursday 6-9pm, Saturday, 2-5pm, or by appointment :: AXIOM Gallery.

Artists Jake Lee High, Jerel Dye, Sean O’Brien, and Fred Wolflink redefine the AXIOM gallery as an interactive monument. The gallery space is metaphorically transformed into a biological cell that feeds off the sounds and electromagnetic fields of passing MBTA trains. Viewers’ interactions with the interior and exterior of the gallery reshape conditions within the cell, while at the same time, drain the cell’s energy. Through the use of sensors and cameras, pedestrians, as both variable and viewer, affect the cell’s functions- including video, lighting, motors and other electronic instruments. Taking advantage of the unique location of the gallery, and through analysis of people’s daily commutes, the gallery space engages the public and enriches their transit routines.

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.

Posted by jo at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

DearCinema Fest 2007

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Call for Submissions

DearCinema, an online community of filmmakers and film-lovers is organizing an online film festival, the first DearCinema Fest 2007. Short films made on any format (including mobile phone cameras and web cams) may be submitted. The maximum duration of an entry should be not more than 30 minutes. An eminent jury will select the films for online and offline screening.

Submission closes on June 30th, 2007.

For further details visit: http://DearCinema.com

Posted by jo at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

June 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

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Constructions of Identity: Performance Life

June 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space: "Constructions of identity: performance life" with Barbara Campbell (AU), Jill Magid (US) and Stacia Yeapanis (US). Please join our guests for a month's reflection and debate; subscribe here.

This month on -empyre- will concentrate on the construction of identity among artists who have explored notions of 'feminine' identity at one point or another - especially how it relates to space and landscape. The emphasis of the discussion will focus on the play between 'real' and 'virtual' space, as it is so much a part of the everyday and a powerful tool for artists to promote and create their works. The discussion will also focus on how curators have worked with artists with these concerns.

Barbara Campbell is a performance artist who has worked with the contextual properties of all kinds of sites since 1982. Back then, her sites were physical: galleries, museums, stairways, atriums, piers, to name some. At the moment her performance site is actually a website. "But I don't think this qualifies me as a new media artist. In fact I waited until the internet acquired the patina of age before I became really interested in it, because then it became possible to discern user patterns and the messages of the medium itself. Community, distribution, globalisation, interactivity, citizen-media, were some of those messages, and these are what I'm employing now." Barbara's current project is 1001 nights cast, in which she performs a short text-based work for 1001 consecutive nights. The performance is relayed as a live webcast to anyone, anywhere, who is logged on to http://1001.net.au.

Stacia Laura Yeapanis is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Her work can be seen in the Museum of Contemporary Photography's Midwest Photographers Collection and in the Rhizome Artbase. Stacia is an avid Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and has two wonderful cats, Gertie and Gloria.

Everybody Hurts, a hybrid fansite/conceptual art piece exploring mediated emotion and the fansite as a performance of identity; My Life as a Sim, documentation of this ongoing project on my portfolio site; Commercial-Free: The Museum of TV on DVD, another hybrid fansite/conceptual art piece exploring fandom in relation to museum curation.

Jill Magid: "I seek intimate relationships with impersonal structures. The systems I choose to work with- such as police, secret services, CCTV, and forensic identification, function at a distance, with a wide-angle perspective, equalizing everyone and erasing the individual. I seek the potential softness and intimacy of their technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view, the ways in which they hold memory (yet often cease to remember), their engrained position in society (the cause of their invisibility), their authority, their apparent intangibility and, with all of this, their potential reversibility."

Posted by jo at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2007

Upgrade! Berlin

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Iliadahomero from Curitiba / Brazil

Upgrade! Berlin presents: Iliadahomero from Curitiba / Brazil :: Friday, June 8th 2007; 8 pm :: Studiobühne, Ritterstrasse 12-14, 10969 Berlin / Germany, U Prinzenstrasse.

Brazilian composer & director Octavio Camargo from Curitiba shows together with Claudete Pereira Jorge an interpretation of the first chant of the Iliade, the epos of Homer. The Iliade is known as the most ancient oeuvre of occidentail literature. The 50-minutes monologue reveals the impact of this text as the source code of European culture. The performance will be in Portuguese, but the underlying semiotics of this piece can be grasped beyond any language restraints. And that's exactly the intention of this play: Homer is used here as a media and a vehicle for interaction in different platforms of language, thus projecting different translations to different idioms.

"I see language as a code" says Octavio Camargo, "and with this dramatic piece, we want to share this code with our audience. I believe that the texts of Homer can provide a deep understanding of the modern human condition." Indeed, the Iliade is a veritable semiotic knot of the European culture and still, after 2500 years, provides a broad array of the most important archetypes and topoi of the occidental thinking.

Interpretation: Claudete Pereira Jorge | Director: Octavio Camargo | Translation: Odorico Mendes

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Claudete Pereira Jorge is a popular actress from Brazil, who has been working on many different theatre and film stages for more than 30 years now. Octavio Camargo is a composer and theatre director, and has been teaching Aesthetics and Harmony at the University of Arts in Parana (EMBAP), Brazil, since 1992.

Some Links to Octavios works:

http://organismo.art.br/blog/?p=2026
http://organismo.art.br/blog/?p=2015
http://www.errantbodies.org/camargo.html
http://errantbodies.blogspot.com/

Iliadahomero is currently guest at the Thessaloniki Biennial and will continue its travels throughout different European cities of the Upgrade! network http://theupgrade.net.

Posted by jo at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

May 31, 2007

ARTIST in RESIDENCE [AiR] 2007

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OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

[Image: Usman Haque & Rob Davis – Evolving Sonic Environment, Artists in Residence from April – June, 2007] DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1, 2007 :: Residency Period: 3 months :: Dates from September 2007 :: Location Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute is pleased to annouce an open call for the fall 2007 round of its Artist in Residence (AiR) program. The AiR programme at the Netherlands Media Art Institute aims to support the exploration and development of new work in digital / interactive / network media and technology based arts practice. The residency provides time and resources to artists in a supportive environment to facilitate the creation of new work that is produced from an open source perspective. We encourage a cross disciplinary and experimental approach. This is a practice based residency designed to enable the development and completion of a new work.

Our focus for this open call is on open source interactive installation art, in which the following occurs:

* interaction between tools and/or software
* interaction between tools and artwork
* interaction between audience and artwork

The Netherlands Media Art Institute offers an open environment with technical assistance and an active advisory board which will give feedback and support in technical, conceptual and presentation issues. There is access to studio and exhibition equipment, technical support from the Institute's staff and production help from interns. The technical staff is specialized and has good contacts with programmers of the following software, a.o.: PD/PDP, Blender, Dynebolic, Linux. We expect the artist to have knowledge and insight in the technical realization of the concept.

It is integral to the mission of the AiR program that artists participate in presenting their work in a public form appropriate to their project. This can include gallery installations, demonstrations of research in progress, panel discussions, on-line projects, or multimedia performances, in addition to open studio events and workshops. For this reason we ask that artists include in their proposal possible examples of how they might like to present their work publicly.

At this moment the Netherlands Media Art Institute provides in travel costs. It doesnt provide accommodation for artists living outside of Amsterdam. However, we are willing to help the search but cannot guarantee a place for living.

The application form can be send to:

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Artist in Residence
c/o Annet Dekker
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
the Netherlands

Posted by jo at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2007

Jonathan Monk

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Five Ballerinas in Manhattan

Five Ballerinas in Manhattan :: May 30, 9-10pm: TIMES SQUARE beginning near 42nd Street and 7th Avenue :: May 31, 1-4pm: SOHO beginning at 420 West Broadway :: June 1, 2-3pm: CENTRAL PARK beginning near Rockefeller Center :: June 2, 12-2pm: WALL STREET beginning near Greenwich and Fulton Street. Download brochure.

Jonathan Monk will restage Daniel Buren’s key performance work, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, on its 32nd anniversary. Re-titling the work, Five Ballerinas in Manhattan, five performers, dressed in dance rehearsal clothes, will attempt to perform Buren’s choreography at the identical locations on the same days and times of the original performances. In 1975, the dancers carried placards featuring the striped work of Buren; for this rendition, Monk will have the dancers distribute an adaptation of Buren’s brochure featuring illustrations of the choreography for each site.

This enigmatic work in its original presentation prompted questions regarding the status of art in the public realm and how such confrontations are defined in its initial presentation. For example, audiences in SoHo, then the center of the commercial gallery scene in New York, accepted the work as art, but audiences on Wall Street interpreted the parade of placards as a potential unidentifiable threat. By re-phrasing and re-presenting works from the Modernist Canon of the 1960s and 1970s, Monk aims to test their continued strength and validity, in part through demystifying the process. Part homage, part parody, the work suggests alternative outcomes, differing audience responses and new-routes for the cultural producer and artist of today.

This is conceptual artist Jonathan Monk’s first non-gallery based work in New York. Born in Britain in 1969, and now based in Berlin, Monk works in a wide range of media including installations, photography, film, sculpture and performance. His tongue-in-cheek methods often recall procedural approaches typical of 1960’s Conceptualism, but without sharing their utopian ideals and notions of artistic genius. Monk, like Daniel Buren, is a key practitioner in the “art into life” debate.

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FEEDBACK

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Responsive Art

FEEDBACK focuses on art responsive to instructions, input, or its environment and creates one possible narrative of the multi-faceted histories of art that uses digital technologies as a medium. FEEDBACK interweaves two themes relating to responsive art. One theme traces the concept of feedback from art based on instructions—be they natural language or code—to art that sets up open systems reacting to input from its immediate environment or the Internet. A second theme explores the concept of light and the moving object and image from Kinetic Art and Op Art to responsive notions of television and cinema. FEEDBACK links these themes in order to illuminate how different artistic practices developed over the past 50 years are interconnected and have informed each other. The exhibition is not a historical survey but features a selection of pieces that underscore how related ideas have been expressed at different points in time. Artworks are not presented in chronological order but in thematic groups or pairs that branch and connect.

Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Charles Csuri, Sol LeWitt, Casey Reas, Roman Verostko, 5voltcore, Harold Cohen, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Hans Haacke, Edward Inhatowicz, David Rokeby, Lygia Clark, Hachiya Kazuhiko, Robert Rauschenberg, Eddo Stern, Mary Flanagan, Paul Sermon, Victoria Vesna, Boj & Diaz, Antoni Muntadas, Marcel Duchamp, László Moholy-Nagy, Alejandro & Moira Sina, Herwing Weiser, Takis, James Seawright, Jean Tinguely, Chico MacMurtrie/Amorphic Robot Works, Nam June Paik, Cory Arcangel, JODI, Wolfgang Staehle, Thomson & Craighead, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Marie Sester, Jenny Marketou, Char Davies.

TELEMATICS AND GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

Artists have used devices ranging from faxes and phones to satellite TVs in works that involve remote locations. In a 1978 report to the French president Giscard d’Estaing, Simon Nora and Alain Minc coined the term telematics for the combination of computers and telecommunications. Using ‘new technology’ such as video and satellites, artists in the 1970s began to experiment with ‘live performances’ and networks that anticipated the interactions currently taking place on the Internet. Digital technologies and the Internet have allowed for unprecedented possibilities of ‘being present’ in various locations at the same time.

CYBERNETICS, OPEN SYSTEMS AND INSTRUCTION-BASED ART CYBERNETICS AND OPEN SYSTEMS

In the 1940s, Norbert Wiener coined the term ‘cybernetics’—from the Greek term ‘kybernetes’ meaning ‘governor’ or ‘steersman’—to specify the important role that feedback plays in a communication system. In Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), Wiener defined three central concepts crucial to any organism or system: communication, control, and feedback. During the 1960s artists increasingly started to think about technological systems, the systems of the social world and aesthetic systems. In connection with movements such as Fluxus and Conceptualism, artists explored generative and ‘open systems’ for the creation of culturally and politically responsive art.

INSTRUCTION-BASED ART ::

A set of instructions is the basis for many art works. Art created by the Dada movement in the early 20th century was often based upon formal instructions. In the 1960s, the Fluxus movement and conceptual art, such as Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, emphasised variations of formal instructions and focused on concept, event, and audience participation as opposed to art as a unified object. Since the 1960s instruction-based artistic practice has been making use of computational procedures connected to output displays, from early plotter printers to digital screens and projections.

KINETICS / OPTICS

In scientific terms, kinetic energy is the energy possessed by a body by virtue of its motion, and kinetic art, which peaked from the middle 1960s to the middle 1970s, produces movement, often through machines activated by the viewer. Kinetic Art overlaps with the optical art or Op Art of the 1960s, in which artists such as Victor Vasarely, Julio Le Parc, and Nicolas Schöffer used patterns to create optical illusions of movement, vibration and warping. The term first appeared in print in Time magazine in October 1964, but works falling into the Op Art category were produced much earlier. The influence of the Kinetic and Op Art experiments with ‘machines’ that produced light and movement can be traced in many digital installations today.

CINEMATICS

Aspects of Kinetics and Op Art find their continuation in responsive forms of television and digital cinema that have been developed since the late 1960s. Artists have constructed moving images based on responses generated from the apparatus itself—such as TV sets or projectors driven by motion and vision tracking; through to the software-driven selection and manipulation of data; or navigation systems that allow the viewers’ bodies to drive and respond to the imagery.

ESSAYS:

CHRISTIANE PAUL FEEDBACK: FROM OBJECT TO PROCESS AND SYSTEM
Download PDF

JEMIMA RELLIE FEEDBACK/FEEDFORWARD
Download PDF

CHARLIE GERE ART AS FEEDBACK
Download PDF

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Upgrade! Skopje

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Iliadahomero: Language as Code

Upgrade! Skopje: Iliadahomero [ performance ] :: The Iliad of Homer, book 1 :: Translated by Odorico Mendes (Brasil, 1799-1864) :: directed by: Octavio Camargo :: performed by: Claudete Pereira Jorge :: Monday, 04 June 2007 :: start: 21:00 sharp :: Length of the performance: 50 min :: Cultural Center Tocka, Skopje :: free entrance.

Line I+M proudly presents the Iliadahomero performance, which is part of the European tour of the Iliadahomero Theatre Company in May - June 2007 with Claudete Pereira Jorge, directed by Octavio Camargo. The performance will be in portugese. Here, Homer is used as a media, a vehicle for interaction in different platforms of languages projecting different translations to different idioms and also sharing the code, (seeing language as code) of the literary matrixes of occidental thinking bringing this ancient formulation to a more comtemporary transposition. This brazilian group begins their tour from Thessalonikа (for the first Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art ), and then travels to Skopje, Istanbul, Sofia, München, Lisbon, Porto... This event is established as a collaboration between Upgrade! International nodes, emerging network of new media artists and curators.

Interview with the actress as well as some parts of the perfomance can be seen here.

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.

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May 29, 2007

Interactive Futures: The New Screen

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CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS, PERFORMANCES, & SCREENINGS

Interactive Futures: The New Screen :: Nov. 15-19, 2007 - Victoria, British Columbia, Canada :: CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS, PERFORMANCES, & SCREENINGS :: DEADLINE: Monday June 18, 2007 :: Part of the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival (VIFVF) :: Co-sponsored by Open Space Artist-Run Centre .

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is a forum for showing recent tendencies in new media as well as a conference for exploring issues related to technology. The theme of this year's event is The New Screen. IF07 will explore new forms of screen-based media from a diverse body of artists, theorists, writers, filmmakers, developers, and educators. Interactive visual environments, screen-based performances (with or without sound), new forms of narrative experiences, web-based environments, and innovative educational models will all be explored in The New Screen.

The development of tools and strategies for the presentation of screen-based environments has radically accelerated in the past few years. Artists and writers are exploring new ways of controlling narrative flow, formal structures, and ways of viewing. Immersive tools for experiencing visual environments have allowed artists to provide radically subjective experiences of visual surroundings and forms. With the introduction of interactivity, multi-screen environments, and media-rich web-based applications, a new era of performed, live, streaming and/or improvised media art is contributing to the creation of new modes for the screen that are distinct from older forms such as print, film or video art.

The New Screen will include installations, screenings and performances by visual artists, writers and performers. These practitioners are critiquing usual modes of visual interface, such as rectangular screens and determined techniques of interactivity. Interventionist strategies, public participation, experimental projection methods, and destabilizing interactive interfaces are some of the approaches that are used in their work. For IF07, leading Canadian and international artists, researchers, and educators working with screen-based media have been invited to present their work and to participate in the installation, performance, and panel events.

IF07 is seeking further papers, artists' presentations, performances and screenings related to the theme described above. Screenings may include demonstrations and/or documentation of screen-based, interactive and installation projects. Successful submissions will be selected for their critical, innovative and aesthetic tendencies. Here is a link to a Word doc with the full Interactive Futures 2007 call for papers and contact emails: http://cfisrv.finearts.uvic.ca/interactivefutures/IF07_Call_final.doc

Posted by jo at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale 2007

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Citizens and Subjects

Dutch Pavilion :: The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale 2007: Citizens and Subjects :: 10 June–21 November 2007 :: Commissioned by: Mondriaan Foundation :: Concept, Curator: Maria Hlavajova :: Artist in the Dutch Pavilion: Aernout Mik

Citizens and Subjects is a three-part project conceived as the Dutch contribution to the 52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The project reflects on the notion of the nation-state in the present day circumstances of the so-called West and asks how we can negotiate its prospects vis-à-vis the challenges posed by the enduring state of anxiety stemming from various threats, real or imagined. This contemporary condition is co-defined by immigration, an issue of major political and moral consequence, which we seem to have been incapable of resolving. Instead, fear, ‘security’ and violence have increasingly become tools for maintaining the status quo. The project proposes this situation as the paradigm of our contemporaneity and prompts us to think through art about other possible ways that a new kind of political reality could be constructed.

Critical Reader edited by: Rosi Braidotti, Charles Esche, Maria Hlavajova :: ‘Extension’ of the Pavilion (The Netherlands, autumn 2007): a collaboration among BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht University, Treaty of Utrecht, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and Witte de With, Rotterdam :: Organized by: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.

Citizens and Subjects: Aernout Mik

In Citizens and Subjects, Aernout Mik presents a multichannel video installation consisting of three new works – Training Ground, 2007, Convergencies, 2007 and Mock Up, 2007 – embedded in an architectural intervention in the Dutch Pavilion. Training Ground and Mock Up are fictional works (two- and four-channel video installations, respectively), in which Mik starts from the idea of a ‘training’ or ‘exercise’, asking how we prepare teams of first responders (policemen, fire brigades, medical teams, etc.) – and ourselves – to deal with potential future crises or threats to national security and handle issues such as (illegal) immigration. Convergencies (two-channel video installation), by contrast, employs both documentary footage of such trainings and footage from real situations in which the acquired techniques and strategies are applied. Through repetition, re-enactment, mimicry, inertia, building irrational excess by means of staging scenes or editing existing film material and by over-saturating the work with unexpected play and empowering invention, Mik questions the simplified distinction between citizens (as those with the rights and full privileges of belonging to a state or nation) and subjects (as those under rule or authority) today. On one hand he asks, aren’t we all actually subjected in the same way to this rather disquieting reality? Concurrently, he clarifies the notion of the ‘subject’ as one who is capable of acting in order to overcome the distinction between subjection and possible liberation, metaphorically suggesting that perhaps it is from here that new opportunities might emerge.

Citizens and Subjects: The Netherlands, for example

Instead of a traditional catalogue to accompany the exhibition in the Dutch Pavilion, a critical reader is published, in which ideas and questions that Mik introduces in his project are debated and analysed by a number of scholars and artists based in the Netherlands. The reader takes the state of the Netherlands as an ‘example’ of the contemporary western condition and considers how our society fails to negotiate the challenges posed by economic globalization, human migration and cross-cultural influence. It asks how art and artists can react to these changes and what possibilities they can create to see things differently.

Contributors: BAVO (Gideon Boie & Matthias Pauwels), Sarah Bracke, Esther Captain & Guno Jones, Marlene Dumas, Halleh Ghorashi, Suchan Kinoshita, Sven Lütticken, Aernout Mik, Melvin Moti, Sohelia Najand, Henk Oosterling, Pages (Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi), Baukje Prins, Willem de Rooij, Iris van der Tuin and Lawrence Weiner.

Edited by Rosi Braidotti, Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova. Language: English. Number of pages: 336. Published by: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and JRP|Ringier. Designed by: Kummer and Herrman. ISBN: 978-3-905770-73-5.

Citizens and Subjects: Practices and Debates

The ‘extension’ of the Dutch Pavilion to the Netherlands in autumn 2007 is envisioned as a platform for contributing to the general public debate about a variety of key issues, including changing national identities and the anxieties brought about by such changes. These and other ideas related to the project Citizens and Subjects are debated through art and other disciplines by means of discussion groups, research residencies, teaching modules, lectures and conversations. The programme takes place in Utrecht through a collaboration between BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht University and Treaty of Utrecht, as well as at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in conjunction with the project Be[com]ing Dutch and at Witte de With in Rotterdam in connection with the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. These respective projects have grown out of a similar analysis of current cultural, artistic, social and political conditions, and the possible role cultural institution s can play in their development.

Project Partners

Utrecht University; Treaty of Utrecht; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Witte de With, Rotterdam

Financial Partners

The project Citizens and Subjects has been commissioned and funded by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam. The Municipality of Utrecht kindly supported Citizens and Subjects: Practices and Debates. This part of the project has been realized with additional contributions from Utrecht University and Treaty of Utrecht. carlier | gebauer, Berlin has generously provided financial and production assistance. Further financial or in-kind support has been provided by: Forbo Flooring, the Netherlands; Rabo Art Collection, the Netherlands; Independent Television News, London; Associated Press, London.

International press
Beate Barner
t: +49 30 398009609
m: +49 173 6076643
info[at]citizensandsubjects.nl

Dutch press
Hanna Sohier
t: +31 30 2316125
f: +31 30 2300591
info[at]citizensandsubjects.nl

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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Ivan Franco

Upgrade! Lisbon: Ivan Franco :: May 30, 2007 19:00 :: @ Lisboa20 Arte Contemporâneam, Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão 18B (Campo de Ourique).

Ivan Franco was born in Lisbon in 1974. In 1993 started studying engineering and in 1995 he joined the research group GASA, one of the most advanced in the fields of computing experiments and owner of the first Virtual Reality Lab in Portugal. During this time, Franco also developed an interest in music, having played in several rock bands.

Departing from these two interests (computers and music) he started exploring the possiblities of computer music. Frustrated by the lack of physical performativity in electronic music, he looked for ways of recovering both that physicality and the man-machine interaction. In 199 he started a Master program in Barcelona where he developed his own instruments, presented in some of the most important festivals of that city.

In this presentation Ivan Franco will show his work in the area of the man-machine interaction, with special attention to his artistic creations. He will also show his most recent musical instrument, the Airstick, precently presented at NIME (New Interfaces for Musica Expression).

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Source Code: A 10-year retrospective of programming

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Eyebeam style

Source Code: A 10-year retrospective of programming, Eyebeam style :: Opens Thursday, May 31, 6-8:00 PM :: On view May 31 – August 10, 2007 :: at Eyebeam.

Since 1998, artists, programmers, hackers, activists, technologists, kids and adults have come to Eyebeam to share ideas, find collaborators, experiment with new tools and create new work. The projects in Source Code – the first of three exhibitions presenting the very best of creative exploration at Eyebeam – frame technologies, generate new processes and offer the audience a platform to contemplate the impact of technology on everyday life. This group show will feature works by: Cory Arcangel, Carrie Dashow, eteam, Steve Lambert, Nina Katchadourian, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, MediaShed, neuroTransmitter, Alex Galloway and Carnivore clients Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Golan Levin, MTAA and Mark Napier.

The exhibition's opening reception will be catered to, in part, by Steve Lambert's Co-op Bar (2007), which offers a low-level investment and community space in the form of a co-operatively owned bar.

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Virtual Systems and Multimedia 2007: Call for Participation

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The 13th International Conference Virtual Systems and Multimedia 2007 :: September 23 – 26, 2007 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia :: Theme: Exchange and Experience in Space and Place :: Papers - Long and Short Papers: June 17, 2007 :: Notification July 15 - Camera-ready August 10 :: Posters due July 15, 2007 :: Notification August 10 - Camera-ready due September 15 :: Long Papers will be published by Springer in their LCNS. Others will be published locally.

Keynotes currently include: Dr Mark Billinghurst, Director, Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand, based at Canterbury University; Professor Mark Burry, Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture), at RMIT University; Dr Jonathan Fulcher, Head of Native Title Practice, Minter Ellison; Aden Ridgeway, Executive Chairman, Indigenous Tourism Australia (ITA); Ms Minja Yang, Director and UNESCO Representative to Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka. The conference is endorsed by the Australian National Commission for UNESCO.

Bursaries for postgraduate students

Five student bursaries of USD$250 each will be offered. To be considered you must be a full-time postgraduate student and have a letter endorsing your full-time enrolment status from your supervisor and which also states that you do not hold an academic staff position. Full details are shown on the web site.

Brisbane information

Brisbane is an alive and bustling city of 1.6million people with all the requisite offerings of the nation’s fastest growing capital and remarkable recreational experiences. Go to http://www.brisbanemarketing.com.au/aboutbrisbane/.

You will be just a short plane trip from Sydney with its stunning Harbour and world-famous Opera House, or you can visit the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park and Uluru in the Northern Territory. Attending VSMM 2007 and also visiting some of Australia’s truly great places is highly recommended!

Theme - Exchange And Experience In Space And Place including:

- Virtual Heritage and Virtual Cultures for details see http://australia.vsmm.org/cfp-theme1.htm
- Virtual Environments and Virtual Experiences for details see http://australia.vsmm.org/cfp-theme2.htm
- Applied technologies and systems for details see http://australia.vsmm.org/cfp-theme3.htm

In addition to traditional conference paper and workshop proposals, VSMM07 encourages innovative submissions including movies, interactive or immersive designs and simulations, theatre, and installations. Non-academic submissions are very welcome.

Multimedia and Virtual Environment technologies are increasingly appearing in an array of applications that foster deeper understandings of the environments around us. In the spirit of international exchange, cooperation and development, the focus of VSMM in 2007 will be on the application of these technologies in ‘Bridging Space and Place through digital exchange and experience’.

Detailed conference themes include, but are not restricted to:

Virtual Heritage and Virtual Cultures:

Addressing the Digital Divide
Applied Cultural Theory
Applied Virtual Heritage
Cultural heritage legislation in a digital domain
Cultural Heritage Management
Cyber anthropology
Ethics of the design and use of VR
Experience Design
Finance and Legal
Funding for cultural heritage projects
Guidelines and International Charters
Heritage legislation, IP and digital rights management
Historical perspectives
Indigenous Knowledge & Knowledge Systems
Indigenous Knowledge and Virtual Environments
Legal issues, challenges and solutions
Narratives and Knowledge
Policy development and the role of technology
Professional Guidelines and Ethics
Social dimensions of Virtual Heritage
Space and place
Theoretical Virtual Heritage
Virtual Heritage and Museum Environments
Virtual property
Virtual Reality in Archaeology and Historical Research

Virtual Environments and Virtual Experiences:

Application of Serious Gaming technologies
Artificial life and dynamic worlds
Digital Arts and Politics
Digital performance
Digital storytelling
Engagement research
Generative VR
Human-Centred design issues
Immersion and emotion
Immersion research
Immersive Audio for presence and immersion
Media Arts & Creative Expression
Mobile Futures and devices and their application
Playfulness and experience design
Presence Research
Simulation and engagement
Spatial narratives
Virtual systems and real worlds
Visualisation and perception

Applied technologies and systems:

3D GIS: modelling and interpretation
3D scanner and remote sensing devices and their application
Augmented VR
Capture Technologies and Delivery Platforms
Convergent devices
Delivery and Distribution
Immersive Systems
Installations
Mobile Devices and their application
Modelling and rendering
On-site Delivery
Participatory 3D GIS
Projection Spaces
Standards and metadata
Stereoscopy and Panoramas

Important Dates:

Long and Short Papers: June 17, 2007
Notification: July 15, 2007
Camera-ready: August 10, 2007

Posters due – July 15, 2007
Notification – August 10, 2007
Camera-ready due – September 15, 2007

Long papers: 12 pages (approx 3000-4000 words)
Short papers: 5 pages (approx 1200-1800 words)
Posters: single A2 (or other format by negotiation)

Earlybird Registration: August 10, 2007

Five student bursaries of USD$250 each will be offered (see official website for details).

Contact us: Any queries, email aus_reviewers[at]vsmm.org or phone +61 7 3337 7821.

Note: VSMM07 SYDNEY WORKSHOP 21ST SEPTEMBER 2007 - In addition to the conference, VSMM invites all participants to attend a one day seminar on the 21st September 2007 in Sydney that focuses attention on new virtual heritage and electronic art research applied to the Advanced Visualisation Interactive Environment (AVIE), at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, University of New South Wales http://australia.vsmm.org/sydworkshop/seminar.pdf.

Posted by jo at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

NET ART V1+2.0. GENESIS, FIGURES, SITUATIONS

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CIAC's Electronic Magazine No 27

"A more "expressivist" form of communication is apparent today in a range of media - in the flourishing growth of the means for self-production and the production of the self in the form of personal web sites, blogs and their attendant technology (syndication, tags, podcasting, videoblogging, etc.) and the networks for communication among Internet users and their associated practices (fansubbing, fan films, etc.). Since the late 1990s, net art has been guiding and prefiguring these "mass" technologies and practices by multiplying the ambivalence of our relationship with the Internet, which is both intimate and dreadfully solitary. As new dialogue interfaces grow and expand, we withdraw from the real world, which is both more collective and community-minded. Today, the term net art refers to interactive works of art designed by, for and with the Internet, as distinct from more traditional forms of art which have simply been transferred onto the web sites of art galleries and other virtual museums. In the art world, the originality of the Internet lies in the fact that it is simultaneously a medium, a tool and a creative environment.

By medium I mean a vector of transmission, in the sense that the Internet is its own broadcaster; by tool, the way it is used as a means of production, giving rise to different usages and generating new artistic products; and by environment the fact that it is a space both inhabitable and inhabited. In this context, artists seek at least as much to design interactive devices1 as they do to create settings for communication. Using all the means at its disposal-the Web (HTML FTP, peer to peer) but also e-mail and chat-net art encourages the production of works whose relational and collaborative aspects have turned the relations between art and society upside down. Internet sites, home pages, blogs, mailing lists and discussion forums have become the new forms of sociability. Net art, by associating itself with this dynamic, can take the shape of specific forms of interactivity but also of the production of on-line lifestyles and communication strategies. The Internet has become both an on-line artist's studio and a gallery space: a space for artistic creation and for communicating and receiving artistic practices." Continue reading NET ART V1+2.0. GENESIS, FIGURES, SITUATIONS by Jean-Paul Fourmentraux (Translated from French by Timothy Barnard), CIAC's Electronic Magazine No 27, Printemps 2007 / Spring 2007, 10th Anniversary Special.

Posted by jo at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

New Media Art Mythologies

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COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW

COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW: D.I.Y. talk show on art & media :: TOPIC: New Media Art Mythologies :: SPEAKERS: Geert Lovink and Armin Medosch :: QUESTIONS: ask-it-yourself now and during the show here :: June 5, 20.30 CET :: Video stream and interface for online participation :: Location: De Balie, Amsterdam (bring your laptops and mobiles)

New Media Art Mythologies...to be questioned... :: Recent discussions about (new) media art concerned a wide range of issues: starting from the validity of the term itself and ending with questioning the very premises of the modes of distinction through which the (new) media art field constitutes itself as a form of art, cultural practice, social context, institutional domain, and discourse. The feeling of a certain Rubicon, provoking self-introspective reflections, was expressed by many.

The coming edition of Cool Media Hot Talk Show on the topic "New Media Art Mythologies" will welcome persistent critical voices of the media art scene - Geert Lovink and Armin Medosch. They will present their judgements and arguments regarding the current critical stage in the development of new media art. The debates will address socio-cultural position of new media art in a historical perspective, which both speakers are discussing extensively in their writings. Preliminary suggested focal points are:

- The marginalised position of new media art within the broader cultural context.
- New media art vis-`-vis changing trends of cultural policies.
- Discursive troubles: in search for mediatory theories and media art criticism.
- New media between aesthetics and politics.

It seems that the media art community has got itself into a trap by creating a rather contradictory mythology, which very much concerns the idea of being open to disciplinary and discursive confluxes and at the same time being immune to the biases of the criticised cultures. Geert Lovink pinpoints a range of critical issues which mark the contradictory relationships of (new) media art with the broader socio-cultural context, more specifically: art institutions, "hard science", media industries, and cultural policy mediators. He sees the contradictions between current cultural-political trends under an increasingly conservative agenda, and internal intentionalities of media art, which lead to decrease of funding and institutional support as a result.(1) Armin Medosch stipulates that the critical agenda of media art in relation to mainstream media politics is its distinctive value, and should be put forward as a driving force behind artistic practices. He promotes the idea of "Open Source Culture" as an integral socio-cultural movement in which artists can and do participate actively in order to develop and exercise alternative models of engagement into creative production.(2)

The question of media seems to be crucial for the identity of (new) media art, which in itself has a lot to do with the values and socio-historical conditions of art as such. How does the issue of media affect self-determination, or identity, of (new) media art communities in relation to the broader cultural context, and what exactly renders the relationships between (new) media art practitioners and this context? It is not just a matter of being conscious and critical about the politics of media in a broader sense. It is also very much about redefining the context and agenda of art as such through exploiting this distinctive media consciousness, which has always been an intention at least. Here a dilemma occurs: to comply with its own propositions based on a disengagement from promoting ideas and values of dominant cultures (whether it is the art market, media industries, popular culture, popular politics), the media art community in all its variety, groups and individuals, should find its own sustainable platform for existence. On which ground can it be established? Should it be done under a common, umbrella and agenda? Or are centrifugal survival strategies on the basis of tactical alliances, whether with science, media industries, other art domains, cultural and social movements, more productive and likely options? Armin Medosch calls for dissociation of techno-determinist art, which rather fascinates itself with technology, from art which explores social dimension of technology through engaging with activist, Do-It-Yourself, Open Source and other critical socio-cultural movements adopting "hacker ethics", while crossing and blurring the borders in between. Geert Lovink outlines four possible "models to deal with the current stagnation" together with their down-sides: a semi-autonomous existence on the basis of interdisciplinary collaborations; transcendence of (new) media art into the existing institutional art practices; withdrawal from the art domain altogether; merging with the creative industries.

Both Armin Medosch and Geert Lovink indicate the absence of a strong theoretical back-up for (new) media art practice as a crucial set back. Indeed fascination with interdisciplinarity, resulting in discursive mash-ups, makes it confusing: neo-marxist critique of industrial cultural production and mass media goes in hand with inventive post-structuralist ideas about producer-consumer relations, borrowings from scientific discourses, communication theories, etc, while high-brow pessimism and techno-snobism is accompanied by ommunitarian euphoria and advocacy of openness and all-inclusivity. Add to it the desperate attempts to provide audiences with explanatory thresholds through mapping of key concepts next to exhibits, and the absence of strong media art criticism, and the public gets totally confused. It is not that there is a need for discursive unity, of course. At the end (new) media art is an extremely young art, and the search for self-articulation is an important process. Although even at this point two essential things are already missing: a healthy, preferably external, mediatory art criticism, and strong theoretical methodologies which would help to demystify existing obscurities.

The important issue which lacks serious critical attention is the political dimension of media art practice. Implications of both political causes and effects of artistic messages are somewhat overshadowed by the general motto "be critical". A more politically aware approach in discussions of media art, beyond declarative generalities, is definitely needed. Geert Lovink pinpoints a range of political aspects of media art practice and its discourse to be addressed, such as post-colonial issues, the weakness of links with contemporary social movements, while Armin Medosch advocates structural creative resistance of Open Source Culture to the capitalist society of control on the basis of awareness about its modus operandi.

The historical conditions of media art are changing. So does the attitude to it. The question is what the media art community is going to do with it?

1. All references to Geert Lovink: "New Media Arts: In Search of the Cool Obscure. Explorations beyond the Official Discourse" to be published in "Zero Comments", Routledge New York, August 2007; texts published online: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0308/10-fragments.php
http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/neue-medienkunst-das-coole-obskure/
http://www.cargoweb.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=479&sid=893f3ca5fe11b1c143f7810d6fdef6db

2. All references to Armin Medosch: the statement for http://www.coolmediahottalk.net; texts published online:
http://theoriebild.ung.at/view http://theoriebild.ung.at/view/Main/TheNextLayerDraft
http://theoriebild.ung.at/view/Main/RootsCulture
http://theoriebild.ung.at/view/Main/TechnologicalDeterminismInMediaArt

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Geert Lovink (NL/AU) is a media theorist, critic, currently holds the position of senior researcher/associated professor at Amsterdam University. He is the organiser of conferences, festivals and (online) publications and the founder of numerous Internet projects, such as www.nettime.org and www.fibreculture.org. More info: http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/ and http://www.laudanum.net/geert.

Armin Medosch (AT/UK) is a writer, artist and curator specialized in media theory, media art and network culture. His recent work includes the exhibition WAVES, the new live event format PLENUM with Kingdom of Piracy, and the research project The Next Layer, an investigation into the culture of open sources. More info: http://theoriebild.ung.at, http://armin.manme.org.uk/blog/.

EXTRA: music performance of Remus (humanworkshop records) http://www.humanworkshop.com

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS! VOTE FOR THE PROPOSALS OF OTHERS! JOIN THE DISCUSSION! here & now.

SPECIAL: ASK THE BEST QUESTION & win the COOL MEDIA PRIZE. The winner will be selected through direct and open voting

Tickets: 5 euro
Reservations by telephone: +31.20. 55 35 100 (during opening hours of the ticket office) Or via the Balie website: http://www.debalie.nl/agenda

De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics,
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl

Posted by jo at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2007

Upgrade! São Paulo

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Lucia Leão

Upgrade! São Paulo: lucia leão: Networked bodies: art, culture, environment and sustainment in cyberculture :: jun 14.2007 :: 7:30 pm @ i-People: Av Vergueiro 727, next to the Vergueiro Subway Station.

The relationships between art and nature have always been present in the human history. Since pre-historic times, draws of animals in caves reveal the aspiration to represent and/or control nature. Enigmatic pre-historic monuments and planetary observatories are also amazing samples of man interventions in order to understand the surrounding environment and its movements. From the Egyptian frescos, passing through moments of the Renaissance and 18th century art, the landscape becomes the environment for building narratives and, often, it takes an ornamental or symbolic character. The landscape paintings, not by chance, are very frequent and popular in the colonialist expansion periods and show very clear relationships between the territorial conquest and the aspiration of representation.

In the 20th century, starting in the 60's, a radical transformation happens: the art stop seeing the nature only like an object for representation and the artists start interacting directly in natural spaces. In that period, artworks emerge pointing to several readings of the environment, among them: nature and space problems (Richard Serra); light transformations, time effect and visitor's interaction (Robert Morris and Nancy Holt); environment and consumption (Christo); actions and incisions in the environment (Michael Heizer and Alberto Burri), among others.

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In the cyberculture age, when we think about environment problems, we face two opposite scenarios. From one point of view, the technological apparatuses figure as degrading elements of the environment, they are responsible for a huge amount of garbage production and are related to the pollution emission in several moments. On the other hand, the Internet communication and content production potential have stimulated either a larger awareness and comprehension about environmental problems as much as the creation and development of collective and multi-author projects. Therefore, we could wonder: how can the technology act in the role of preserving ecosystems? How can the environmental thinking and consciousness get associated with the fashion and art creation (while life style, modus vivendi)?

In this talk, it will be presented creative projects that evoke and stimulate communitarian actions. They are works that make use of cybrid spaces and question the modus vivendi through dressing and other nomadic practices. The networked body statute, in all its complexity, requires sensible perception, acts and new visions of the word. In this sense, we will see works that state the inter-relationships between aesthetics, ethics and politics. With activistic propositions, thought and designed by multidisciplinary teams, the contemporary environmental art proposes disturbances in habits and systems. Without mattering with embarrassing or even enormous difficulties, the environmental poetics make it clear that their objectives are stimulating the body perception in network; sowing a systemic consciousness and generating reformulations in the everyday acts.

Lucia Leão is interdisciplinar artist, PHD in comunication and semiotics from PUC-SP and post-PHD in arts from UNICAMP. Author of several articles about art and new media and of the books "The Labyrinth of Hipermedia: architecture and navigation in cyberspace" (1999) and "The Aesthetics of the Labyrinth" (2002). She organized the Interlab collections, with international papers: Labyrinths of the Contemporary Thinking (2002), with nomination for the Jabuti Award; Cybercultura 2.0 (2003); e Derivas: cartography of the cyberspace (2004). Lucia is professor at PUC-SP and SENAC. As artist, she has exhibited, among other places, at ISEA 200, Paris; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Campinas (MACC); XV Biennial of Sao Paulo; II International Biennial of Buenos Aires; ArtMedia, Paris; FILE -SP (2002); Arte Digital Rosario 2003; Cinético Digital, Itaú Cultural (2005); Mostra SESC de Artes (2005) e FILE Rio 2006.

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

May 23, 2007

Platform 2 presents

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The Commons on The Common

Platform 2: The Commons on The Common :: Friday, June 1, 5:30 – 7:30PM :: Meet in front of the State House on Boston Common at the 20-foot picnic blanket :: Food & drink on hand, but please bring something of your own to share ::

A picnic on the Boston Common where we will discuss “the Commons” in relation to the work of invited guests, including Iain Kerr/spurse and David Bollier of onthecommons.org. Excerpts from Lewis Hyde’s upcoming book on the commons will be read.

What is the Commons? “The commons is an emerging new paradigm for understanding how groups of people can create and preserve value in more sustainable ways. Unlike the conventional market paradigm, the commons consists of a diverse set of models rooted in social norms and ecological principles. A growing number of scholars, activists and policymakers is beginning to recognize the power of the commons matrix and its importance in creating and managing resources.” — from www.onthecommons.org

Featuring

spurse is an international collective composed of individuals with experience in a wide variety of fields. spurse has no (fixed) content or members – rather it is a viral multiplicity that is continuously reforming itself as it becomes new projects and new events. In this, it is open to change, contradiction, multiplicity, tangents, infection, and betrayal. We are interested in considering the public as that which must be continually constructed as a part of the invention of public space. In this we are interested in emergent forms of individuality – swarms, crowds, the person, groups, ecosystems…

David Bollier is an activist, author and Editor of OntheCommons.org, the website and blog of the Tomales Bay Institute that explores the commons as a new paradigm of politics, economics and culture. He is the co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington public-interest advocacy group that fights reckless extensions of copyright law, and the author of /Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth/ (2002), /Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture /(2005), and seven other books. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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

New Network Theory

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Conference

New Network Theory: International Conference :: Dates: 28-30 June 2007 :: Location: University of Amsterdam :: Organized by: Institute of Network Cultures (Interactive Media, Amsterdam Polytechnic, HvA), Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, and Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.

The object of study has shifted from the virtual community and the space of flows to the smart mob. When the object of study changes, so may the distinctions that dominate, particularly the schism between place-based space and place-less space, both organised and given life by networks. We would like to exploit the potential of writing contemporary network theory that suits and reflects the changes to the objects of study that come to define our understandings of network culture – a post-Castellsian network theory, if you will, that takes technical media seriously.

It is time to look for elements that can make up a network theory outside of post-modern cultural studies (which marvelled at the place-less place) and ethnographic social sciences (which reminded us of the ground). What network culture studies needs is a ‘language of new media,’ perhaps even signage, to speak in terms of Lev Manovich; what it currently has is a science-centered ‘unified network theory,’ to paraphrase the language of Albert-László Barabási.

Whilst it may come as no surprise to critical Internet scholars, the notion that networks are not random but have underlying structures remains the key insight for network scientists. Instead of posing new questions, the work that follows from that insight often seeks to confirm that structure and its accompanying patterns, across more and more network-like objects. The question remains which specific contribution critical Internet scholars and practitioners can make to opening up network thought. Such is the purpose of the network theory conference. How must we rethink network culture with a renewed emphasis on technical media and social software?

Speakers:

Siva Vaidhyanathan: The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Shaking Up Culture, Commerce and Community

Tiziana Terranova: Everything is everything: network science, neo-liberalism and security

Wendy Chun: Imagined Networks

Alan Liu: Just Networking: Can Network Knowledge Be Better Than "Good Enough" Knowledge?

Anna Munster: The Image in the Network

Martin Kearns: Network-centric advocacy and rapid response

Warren Sack: From Networked Publics to Object-Oriented Democracies

Olia Lialina: The Work of Users in Times of Perfect Templates

Nosh Contractor: MTML meets Web 2.0: Theorizing social processes in multidimensional networks

Valdis Krebs: Al-Qaeda networks

Katy Börner: Towards Scholarly Marketplaces

Tincuta Parv: Fibers, links and networks – a parallel between textiles, data communication systems and social interaction

Marianne van den Boomen: E-sociability metaphors: From virtual community to social network and beyond

Leslie Kavanaugh: The Philosophical Foundation of Network Theory: the Reticulum

Verena Kuni: Subversive Stitches and Revolutionary Knitting Circles. Between art and activism, DIY and prosumer cultures: Weaving new networks in times of Web 2.0

Mirko Tobias Schaefer: From Network to Foam. Extending the dispositif of user interactions

Iina Hellsten: Bird Flu as a Public Hype: Networks of Communication on the Web

Astrid Mager: Mapping, practicing and thinking "the Internet". Challenging network thought in the context of online health information

Clifford Tatum & Kirsten Foot: From ad-hoc to infrastructure: The lifecycle of hyperlink networks and its implications for social, cultural, and political activity

Charli Carpenter: Assessing Virtual Networks: Human Rights Advocacy in Real- and Cyberspace

Leah A. Lievrouw & Lilly Nguyen: Linking and the Network Imaginary

Adrian MacKenzie: Wirelessness and radical network empiricism

Claire Roberge: The Sedimentation of the Passage: Conceptualizing the Locality Today

Nancy Nisbet: Stories, Roadmaps and RFID. Exchange; a performance releasing location, memory and identity

Sophia Drakopoulou: Toothing and Bluetoothing; network–fantasy-reality

Bernhard Rieder: Rethinking Structure and Causation in Network Theory

Michael Goddard: Post-Rekombinant Networks or the Transition from the Cognitariat to the Precariat

Konstantinos Vassiliou: Subjects that matter: Subjectivity in Network Reality

Franz Beitzinger, Natascha Zowislo and Jürgen Schulz: Saying 'No': On the rejection of consensus-oriented communication on the Internet

Ulises Ali Mejias: Hyperlocality and the tyranny of nodes

Yukari Seko: Acting Out Network: Self-destructive Murmurs in the Blogosphere.

Kristoffer Gansing: Community (New) Media - Public access in the age of networked social media.

Alice Verheij: Re-thinking network theory and analysis concerning social care networks in the Internet age. A case description.

Kimberly de Vries: Desire, Dissent and Differentiation: Sustaining Growth in Virtual Networks.

Kenneth Werbin: The List Serves: Bare Life in Cybernetic Order.

Olga Kisseleva: LANDSTREAM

Wayne Clements: Infernal Thunder

Jacob Lillemose: Heath Bunting from physical space to the net and back again

Katja Mayer: Imag(in)ing Networks

Olga Goriunova: Internet platforms: cultural production in late capitalism

Thomas Berker: Suffering in Networks. An exploration into conceptions of marginality, conflict and exploitation in network theories

Adolfo Estalella: Blogs as Traps: Imputing Interests through Statistics Systems

Marijk de Valck: The Festival Network Revisited

Betina Szkudlarek: Actor-Network Theory - ontologizing realities.

Michael Dieter: Open Cartographies, On Assembling Things Through Locative Media

David Garcia: Faith in Exposure

Paolo Gerbaudo: A network of events: leafleting and mobility in the “Stop the War” campaign

Megan Boler: The Politics of ‘Truthiness:’ Digital Dissent and Satire as Networks of Activism

John Duda: Bodies and Swarms: Networks, Multitude, and Biology

Ramesh Srinivasan: Conceptualizing Semantics and Ontologies in a New Network Era

Jana Nikuljska: Communicative Societies in a Networked World

Ali Mohammad Javadi: Study of the rate, types and behavioral model of internet's users in Mashhad city in Iran

Deborah Wheeler: The Political Importance of Internet Cafes in Jordan and Egypt

Greg Elmer: Robots.txt: The Politics of Search Engine Exclusion

Jussi Parikka: Bad Bits: Software and Incorporeal Events

John Johnston: Viral Evolution and the New Software Ecology

Tony Sampson: On Anomalous Objects of Digitality. An introduction

Claudia Padovani & Elena Pavan: Between Issue and Social Network. Insights from an ongoing research on mobilization on Communication Rights in Italy

Giorgia Nesti & Matteo Cernison: Advocacy networks and policy networks in the European Union: the case of media pluralism

Stefania Milan: Networks of radical tech collectives: Social logic and technological dimensions of emancipatory practices in the field of digital communication

Francesca Forno: Consumption Styles and Digital Networks in Italy

Claudius Wageman & Manuela Caiani: The extreme right, networks, and the internet: a comparison of the multi-organizational field of the extreme right in Italy and Germany

Marga van Mechelen: Glocalisation as a curatorial and artistic mission

Jean-Paul Fourmentraux: Innovative Artists. Transformations of Work and Arts organizations with ICT

Desiree Hoving, Gertjan de Werk, Danny Soetanto, Dirk-Jan Peet & Heleen Vreugdenhil: Building Successful innovative networks, insights from multidisciplinary research perspectives

Robert van Boeschoten: The executive language: Coding the future

Noortje Marres: The special effect of issue-affectedness. On being sensitive to the normative charges of networks

Matthew Fuller: Requests, Recommendations and Standards: RFC10 and reflexive engineering

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

May 22, 2007

The Latency of the Moving Image in New Media

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Curated by Eduardo Navas

The Latency of the Moving Image in New Media :: May 25 - June 9, 2007 :: Curated by Eduardo Navas :: Telic Arts Exchange, 975 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90012 :: (213) 344 - 6137 :: info[at]telic.info :: The Chilean Collective TROYANO will present their recent bilingual publication, Art and Digital Culture :: Thursday May 24, from 7:30 - 10pm

“The Latency of the Moving Image in New Media” purposefully overlaps the presentation by TROYANO collective on Art and Digital Culture, to take place on May 24. The exhibit in combination with the talk are meant to provide a space for critical reflection on the ongoing development of media culture.

What separates new media from previous media is in part waiting periods that define public and private experience; whether the download of a file from the Internet is taking longer than expected, an e-mail message has not been sent from one server to another for some unknown reason, or a large file is being rendered in video software like Final Cut Pro for output as a viewable movie, new media is largely dependent on constant moments of waiting, often referenced as latency. “The Latency of the Moving Image in New Media” presents artists who make the most of latency as a crucial element in their works.

Some of the works included in the exhibition are to be experienced online while others are to be seen as projections in an actual space, and others are downloadable interactive projects developed as freeware. The works will be available for viewing at TELIC in a way that is sensitive to their original contexts. A website will also be available for viewers outside of Los Angeles to experience the online projects, and to give information about those that are only viewable in the art space.

Artists participating in the exhibition include:

Art blogs:

Corey Eiseman (Miami, Florida, US)
Gustavo Romano (Buenos Aires, AR)

Online art:

Arcangel Constantini (Mexico City, MX)
Yann Le Guennec (Lorient, FR)

Videos:

Jorge Castro (Cordoba, AR)
Antonio Mendoza (Los Angeles, CA, US)
Katherine Sweetman (Los Angeles, CA, US)

Audiovisual interfaces:

Fuss! Members include
Rey Juan Carlos and Guillermo López, (Madrid, ES) and Timo Daum, (Berlin,
DE)
Brian Mackern (Montevideo, UY)
Julia Masvernat (Buenos Aires, AR)

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2007

Transitive Materials Ubicomp 2007 Workshop

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Call for Papers

Transitive Materials: Towards an Integrated Approach to Material Technology - Ubicomp 2007 Workshop: Call for Papers :: Submission deadline: June 15, 2007 :: Workshop date: September 16, 2007 :: transitive[at]media.mit.edu

The worlds of architecture, fashion and ubiquitous computing are rapidly converging. Shape-changing polymers, parametric design, e-textiles, sensor networks, and intelligent interfaces are now positioned to provide the underpinnings of truly ubiquitous interactivity. Seamless and effective integration will determine our ability to create more cohesive computational systems that extend invisibly from on-body to indoor environment to urban-scale structures, and can more meaningfully respond to our personal and social actvities.

This workshop will focus on the use of responsive materials as the physical and computational bridge between form and function, body and environment, structures and membranes. Rather than overlaying computation using add-on patches or gadgets, we seek to define and emphasize the integration of novel “transitive materials” that blur the gap between computation and structure, and between disciplines that have traditionally stood apart.

We hope to foster an open discussion between researchers and practitioners from the design (architecture, fashion, textiles) and scientific disciplines (ubicomp, wearables, computation, materials), in order to shed light on the possibilities and limitations brought forth by new material technologies. We also hope to explore how such transitive materials can function as the binding matter in the design of objects, garments and spaces that realize truly omnipresent interactivity.

Workshop Format and Submission Instructions

We invite researchers and practitioners from the design (architecture, fashion, textiles) and scientific disciplines (ubicomp, wearables, computation, materials) to submit their work. Full submission details are available at the workshop website.

Organizers

Marcelo Coelho MIT Media Lab), Sajid Sadi (MIT Media Lab), Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab), Joanna Berzowska (XS Labs, Concordia University), and Neri Oxman (MIT Department of Architecture).

Program Committee

Michelle Addington (Yale School of Achitecture), Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, CITA) and Jennifer Leonard (IDEO)

Posted by jo at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at La Biennale di Venezia

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Pulse Room

Pulse Room, one hundred incandescent light bulbs controlled by the heartbeat of the public :: Mexican Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia :: Press Preview: 7-9 June, 10 AM-8 PM :: Receptions: 7, 8 and 9 June, 8-10 PM :: Exhibition: 10 June–21 November, 2007 :: Palazzo Van Axel, beside the Chiesa dei Miracoli, Cannaregio 6099, Venice 30121 Italy :: +39-041-520-4807 .

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer represents Mexico at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia with the exhibition “Some Things Happen More Often Than All of the Time”, curated by Príamo Lozada and Bárbara Perea, a show which will mark Mexico’s first official participation in the Biennale. The exhibition will consist of 6 large-scale installations covering 1,000 square metres of the Palazzo Van Axel, a 15th-century gothic landmark bordering the Chiesa Santa Maria dei Miracoli, in the vicinity of the Rialto bridge.

Lozano-Hemmer (Mexico City, 1967) develops large-scale interactive installations combining the languages of architecture and performance art. His work uses technologies such as robotics, surveillance and telematic networks to create platforms for audience participation, creating "anti-monuments for alien agency". His large-scale light and shadow installations are inspired by animatronics, carnivals and phantasmagoria, situating the spectator as a fundamental component to “complete” the work.

“His work succeeds in giving the unchoreographed the power of a full orchestra..."-- CK Kuebel, NY Arts Magazine

Lozano-Hemmer’s work in kinetic sculpture, installation, video and photography has been shown in over thirty countries, including the Biennials of Sydney (Australia), Shanghai (China), Liverpool (United Kingdom), Istanbul (Turkey) and Havana (Cuba). His work is part of important private and public art collections such as those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, La Colección Jumex in Mexico City, Fundación Cisneros Fontanals in Miami, the Daros Latin America Collection in Zürich and the Tate Collection in London.

The official participation of Mexico in Venice is the result of joint efforts by Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Consejo de Promoción Turística and the generous support of the Fundación/Colección Jumex and the Fundación BBVA Bancomer. The non-profit Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, which has also contributed funding and resources, is in charge of the administration of the project. The receptions, starring DJ sets by Sonido Changorama, will feature sponsored drinks by Jumex, Tequila Cuervo and Cerveza Sol.

A bilingual catalogue will be published by Turner Libros, featuring essays by Manuel de Landa, José Luis Barrios, Barbara London, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Victor Stoichita and curators Príamo Lozada and Bárbara Perea.

Coinciding with the 52nd Biennale di Venezia, Lozano-Hemmer’s work will also be exhibited at Art Basel Unlimited, at the Luminato Festival in Toronto and in the exhibition “Automatic Update” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Contact information:

Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes:
Plácido Pérez Cué, Director General de Comunicación Social
Tel. +52 555 662 1907
Fax +52 555 662 4314
pperzcue[at]correo.conaculta.gob.mx

Contact for Rafael Lozano-Hemmer:
Natalie Bouchard
Tel +1 514 597 0917
Fax +1 514 597 2092
natalie[at]antimodular.com
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/

Contact for the curators:
Proyectos Hélix
Príamo Lozada and Bárbara Perea
+ 39 340 755 9584 in Venice
+ 52 555 207 6411 in Mexico
helix.curatorial[at]gmail.com

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is represented by Galería OMR (Mexico City), bitforms gallery (New York) and Galerie Guy Bärtschi (Geneva).

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Furtherfield May 21, 2007

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New Reviews / Articles / Interviews

Charlotte Frost Interviews David Rokeby- Twisting Fistfuls of Time (Part 1) :: An Interview with David Rokeby, in conjunction with his first UK retrospective ‘Silicon Remembers Carbon’, FACT, Liverpool, (20th April – 10th June). David Rokeby has won acclaim in both artistic and technical fields for his new media artworks. A pioneer in interactive art and an acknowledged innovator in interactive technologies, Rokeby has achieved international recognition as an artist and seen the technologies which he develops for his work given unique applications by a broad range of arts practitioners and medical scientists. Part 2 of the interview.

Review on TRANSreveLATION by Natasha Chuk :: TRANSreveLATION was a one-night showcase of live performance, dance, real-time processing, and a reverie of previously recorded audio compositions. Performed on April 26, 2007 in the basement auditorium of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of New York in midtown Manhattan, fifty guests gathered to engage in and aurally witness a unique collection of sound art and movement. Nature and technology remarkably mix as a means of exploring the concept of ekphrasis, the basis for this concert, developed and curated by Melissa Grey and Jim Briggs III.

Put simply, ekphrasis is imagery dramatically translated by poetry, but it pertains to any form of media. Pulling us deep into the trail of inspiration, ekphrasis can provide an artist the opportunity to delightfully bury the tracks of artistic motivation in an interpretative web of rhetoric, freely describing one form with another. That tactic is clearly demonstrated in this program.

Review on html_butoh by Alexandra Boutros -lost in…metamorphosis: ursula endlicher’s html_butoh :: Butoh is enigmatic. Sometimes characterized as dance, sometimes as theatre, sometimes as meditation on what it means to be human, butoh seems to resist definition and easy categorization. Undeniably, however, butoh is about movement. Butoh emerged in post world-war II Japan, in part rising out of dissatisfaction with the prevalence of Western dance movements and influences in that country. Some have suggested that the goal of butoh is for the dancer to cease being him/herself, to stop being human, and to become instead another entity altogether. If butoh drives the human out of the dancer through movement, Ursula Endlicher’s html_butoh—a web-driven performance piece—raises questions about humanness in the realm of the internet.

Review by Wylie Schwartz: Kollabor8 - Toegristle Studios :: Kollabor8 is a ‘perceptual canvas blog,’ where any given chain of images has infinite potential for change as each artist manipulates the previous image, and so forth. Functioning as an artists’ hub, members are invited to transform works of digital collage by adding original images, digital photos, reproductions and scans, or by starting a new chain. To encourage collaboration, members are not permitted to upload a direct mutation to their own image. To encourage growth of chains a system of credits is in place. Two credits buy a new chain, and one is earned for every five images uploaded to a pre-existing chain. The art in this case is a virtual archive of the process of creating a work of art.

Other Reviews:
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreviews.php

About Furtherfield Reviewers:
http://www.furtherfield.org/reviewersbio.php

If you want to be a reviewer or wish for a project to be reviewed on Furtherfield, contact - marc.garrett[at]furtherfield.org

Posted by jo at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

070707 UpStage Festival

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Performances Announced

Shadow puppets, flights of fancy, air guitar and a visit to a London building site will be some of the virtual attractions at 070707 UpStage Festival - a feast of online performances on July 7, 2007 to celebrate the release of UpStage 2.

New Zealand and international artists are creating work specifically for the UpStage environment, which will be performed for an online audiences and simultaneously screened at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington.

UpStage is software that allows audiences from anywhere in the world to participate in live online performances, created in real time by remote players. Audiences need only an internet connection and web browser and can interact through a text chat tool while the players use images to create visual scenes, and operate "avatars" - graphical characters that speak aloud and move.

The diversity of proposals for the festival has impressed the organisers. "It's exciting to see UpStage being used in such a variety of ways," said UpStage project manager Helen Varley Jamieson. "We have all manner of artists - writers, musicians, dancers, performers, videographers, story-tellers - experimenting with how they can use the internet as a creative medium and a site for their work."

The full list of performances and artists is on the UpStage web site. Performance times will be publicised on the UpStage and New Zealand Film Archive web sites soon, and live links to the stages will be accessible from the UpStage web site on July 7; online audiences just need to click!

The performances will be screened live in the the New Zealand Film Archive mediagallery where visitors can buy a coffee, take a seat and watch the performances taking place from remote locations around the world. Exhibitions Manager Mark Williams says "It will be like watching a live movie, as the shows unfold in front our eyes."

UpStage workshop facilitator Vicki Smith has been providing graphic, technical and tutorial support for artists and education groups who are creating performances, and says that the level and range of work being produced promises breathtaking cyberformances (online performances) for audiences to view and take part in.

UpStage 2 is funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the NZ Government's Digital Strategy, with the support of partners CityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology, and developed by programmer and digital artist Douglas Bagnall.

The launch takes place on 28 June and will be accompanied by an exhibition at the NZ Film Archive from 28 June to 15 July, and the festival on 7 July.

For further information and images, contact:

Helen Varley Jamieson: helen[at]upstage.org.nz
Vicki Smith: vicki[at]upstage.org.nz http://upstage.org.nz/blog/

Posted by jo at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

Technologically Expanded Dance

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Call for Participation

Technologically Expanded Dance: Call for formal presentations, art installations and pocket performances :: November 22 - 24, 2007 :: CULTURGEST, Lisbon Portugal.

The Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, TU Lisbon, is pleased to announce the Conference Technologically Expanded Dance. The following conference topics will be considered: 1. Cross modal perception, artificial synesthesia and intermedial relations between artistic languages 2. Motion capture systems and archives of body movements 3. Aesthetic signification of technology 4. Transfers from game structures onto audible, visual or kinetic narratives 5. Corporeality and new technologies 6. Virtual and augmented reality applied to the stage.

CULTURGEST has a small auditorium, 4 rooms and 1 foyer that could host pannels on the above themes, media art installations, new media artworks and pocket performances. Submitters are invited to check the rider of the hostage spaces within the perspective of site-specific*. Eventually submitters should provide their own equipment. Proposals should be submitted online by 29 June 2007. Following an evaluation by the reviewers, authors will be notified by the end of July 2007.

Posted by jo at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

project:rendition by JC2

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Installation and Performances at Momenta Art

project:rendition by JC2 :: momenta art :: May 25-June 25, 2007 :: Performance Schedule :: Reception: May 25, 7 - 9pm :: 359 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 :: 718.218.8058.

project:rendition examines the concept of rendering through an installation that incorporates elements of architecture, printed agitprop, audio, and performance in an interactive environment.

The project title refers to "extraordinary rendition," the Bush Administration's practice of clandestine kidnapping and extradition of suspected terrorists to countries where they can be interrogated and tortured beyond the reach of the US judicial system. While extraordinary rendition is an extreme form of political repression, state-induced fear and disenfranchisement are far more common means of rendering individuals and whole populations politically mute or existentially invisible.

The exhibition revolves around a five-sided structure built entirely of one-way mirror, which functions as an inverted Panopticon or surveillance tower. Visitors may either observe those inside the illuminated structure from the safety of the darkened gallery or reverse roles and become potential objects of scrutiny or fascination by entering it.

An excerpt from the famous 1630 sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," written by the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, will be available as a free broadside to visitors. From Ronald Reagan's "Shining City on the Hill" to George Bush Sr.'s "Thousand Points of Light," Winthrop's Puritan text has served as the lynchpin for the philosophy of American Exceptionalism for the past 200 years.

Performances are scheduled to take place on site throughout the duration of the show. Please check the project:rendition website for performance schedule: www.projectrendition.info

project:rendition is a collaboration by JC2, a group composed of artists Joy Episalla, Joy Garnett, Carrie Moyer and Carrie Yamaoka. JC2 thanks Brian Webster for his invaluable technical expertise, without which this project would not have been realized.

DIRECTIONS: Momenta Art is located at 359 Bedford Avenue, ground floor, between S4th and S5th Sts. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. By subway, take the L train to Bedford stop (the first stop in Brooklyn). Exit on the Bedford side. Walk south 12 blocks. By car, take the outside lane of the Williamsburg Bridge to the first exit. Make a sharp right onto Broadway. Drive 2 blocks to Bedford Avenue and make a right. We are located a half block on the right after you pass under the bridge.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

P.Art.y 2007: Network Performance

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LAST CALL FOR PROJECTS

P.Art.y [People, Art & Technology] :: 3 day festival for live performance, media arts and electronic music :: Organized by ART CENTER NABI, Seoul, Korea :: September 14-16, 2007 :: Deadline: May 31 :: First Prize: $5,000 (US)

Art Center Nabi, a leading media art institute in Seoul, Korea, is organizing P.Art.y, 3 days’ festival for live performance, exhibition, screening, seminar, and workshop in September 2007. All the creative energies at the intersection between arts and technology will gather and explore new landscape of arts in technological era.

Highlighting live and multi-modal experience in arts making and its reception, P.Art.y will present media performances by Korean and internationally-renowned sound, visual, and performing artists. Responding to a changing data flow and the real-time transmission of information, works of our time are often dynamically open-ended. This open structure of arts foregrounds the live, here and now, and improvisational aesthetics, which harks back to the early network art, Global Grove by Nam June Paik in 1973.

Opening up new artistic and cultural outlets in Seoul, P.Art.y will be a platform for gathering, networking, exchange and inspiration for the people who are in the fields of media arts, electronic music, performing arts, popular culture and other cross-disciplinary creative practices emerged in the networked environment.

CATEGORY: Network Performance :: Physical world and virtual space meet and bring out new interactions. The concept of ‘here and now’ has been questioned, reinterpreted, and reconstructed. Especially the technological progress in so-called ubiquitous computing and pervasive network has opened up new creative platforms for the performative experiences. At P.Art.y, artists, audience and all other participants will share the moment of live event where the existing notions of space and time are put in flux and new communities evolve.

We are looking for fresh and original projects that are relating but not limited to the following examples:

_Live performance with real-time communication, impromptu actions, interactions, audience participation
_Sound-visual performance using diverse network technologies such as radio, internet, mobile, and wireless
_Performative project that explores multi-sensory experience
_Investigations onto the city streets and alternative use of public spaces
_Project incorporating street culture such as skate boarding, graffiti, or dérive activity
_Mobile or locative media-based performance
_Telematic or mixed reality gaming
_Performance using interactive instrument and participatory installation

PRIZE & JURY

_PRIZE

1. 1st winner will be awarded with $ 5,000 USD. Traveling and technical support will be additionally offered for the realization of the proposal at P.Art.y 2007 in Seoul.

2. Other selected works (total numbers not determined) will be invited to P.Art.y 2007. Traveling and technical support will be offered.

_JURY: An international panel of jurors will conduct selection procedure:

Julian Bleecker (US), Professor of Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinematic Arts
Jo-Anne Green (US), Co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. and Turbulence.org.
Drew Hemment (United Kingdom), Director of FutureSonic Festival and Future Everything
Gunalan Nadarajan (Singapore), Festival Director of ISEA 2008, Singapore
Soh Yeong Roh (Korea), Director of Art Center Nabi

_SELECTION CRITERIA

1. Theme relevance: Project should relate to the theme of network performance.
2. Originality: Project should address unique issues and take original approaches.
3. Creative use of the medium: Project should make creative re-use of high and low technologies. Interactive and participatory aspects will be highly scored.
4. Practical feasibility: Project should be in realizable and reasonable scope financially as well as technically.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

_HOW TO APPY

1. All the applicants must register and submit materials via online platform.
2. Biography, project proposal, and other supporting materials (image, sound, movie files) should be uploaded in appropriate format indicated in each section.
Go to http://www.nabi.or.kr/party2007_submission to complete your submission.

Note1: Pre-realized work will be also taken into account only when it is redesigned, upgraded or in different version. In this case, previous versions should be clearly indicated with the information about the exhibitions or events of its previous presentation.
Note2: Awarded works in other festival or competition are not eligible for apply.
Note3: Submitted materials shall not be returned.

_IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline: May 31
Announcement: June 30
(Winner and selected works will be contacted by email and announced at the website.)
P.Art.y 2007: September 14-16, 2007

CONTACT: For more information about the competition, please visit www.nabi.or.kr/party2007.
General info: party[at]nabi.or.kr
Tel: +82-2-2121-0915

Art Center Nabi
99 Seorin-dong, Jongro-ku, SK bldg. 4th fl. Seoul, Korea 110-110

Posted by jo at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)

Anne-Sarah Le Meur

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# Eureka + Eye-Ocean

Anne-Sarah Le Meur will present at Eureka: The Moment of Invention, a dialogue between art and science, May 31, 2007.

Eye-Ocean--experimental real time 3D--is on line for 5 days. It is a mono-screen version of an immersive and interactive 3D artwork, Into the Hollow of Darkness, based on exploration and contemplation of non realistic light phenomena in computer generated image. The images are abstract but organic, metaphors of a world both cellular and cosmic, very carnal, so minimal that they become archaïc, a sort of pre-semantic vision (before language). Eye-Ocean is part of the Abbaye de Maubuisson at Contemporary art center in Val-d’Oise during Nuit Blanche on the October 6, 2007.

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

May 19, 2007

404 FESTIVAL - ON TOUR / EUROPE 2007

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Einstein's Brain Project

[left: Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow, The Einstein's Brain Project: The Errant Eye, 1997-2001. Virtual reality installation. The participant navigates around a recognizable visual environment, a forest whose outline faded into an abstract visual universe reflecting the variations in biological signals processed in real time by a computer module.]

Astas Romas & 404 Festival decided to launch a European Tour that begins on May 31, 2007. Directors and team of the "404 Festival" will be visiting cultural centers, public and alternative places performing live concerts, projections and conferences, also presenting "404 selected" artworks from international authors. Artists from different countries will join this tour, such as SadMb (Japan), Synchdub (Belgium), Sample Mousse (Finland), Guillermo Giampietro & Lara Baracetti (Italy), Einstein's Brain Project (Canada), Vladimir Manovski and Aleksandar Secerov (Serbia), Miha Ciglar (Slovenia), among others.

"...The cycle of installations in The Einstein's Brain Project (1995-2001) is a major technological detour for Dunning that, nonetheless, re-examines his past conceptual concerns. In this long-term project begun in 1995 with Paul Woodrow and a team of scientists from different fields, Dunning probes the new epistemological models that have developed thanks to technological advances in virtual reality.

The artificial worlds summoned up by the immersive universes often rekindle the presuppositions of a naturalistic project whose aim is to simulate familiar experiences. The interfaces created by Dunning and Woodrow propose a critical counterbalance to the withdrawal to the Cartesian universe. In the wake of recent research in cognitive science, the two men are interested in how biological and brain processes shape our perception of the world.

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[Left: Diagram showing the way biological data gathered in real time on the participant's body is altering the display parameters of a three-dimensional virtual universe.] An initial series of installations completed between 1997 and 2001 explored popular culture's fascination with the human brain. Evidence of this fascination is found in Roland Barthes's essay on the fetishism of Einstein's brain, a reflection that serves as a critical point of reference for the installations in this body of work. By reactivating obsolete systems of representation (phrenology, eugenics, etc.), this series also underlines the impact of pseudo-scientific projections on our knowledge of the body and psyche.

In The Fall, The Furnace, The Flesh (1997), (7) participants underwent a sort of ritual as they crossed through a curtain made up of thin vinyl strips. These strips served as a screen for projecting an image of a blazing fire. Participants found themselves in a cubic space defined by four screens. In the middle of the space was an anatomically correct model of the human head covered with touch-sensitive pads (audio-digital). The location of the 55 pads replicated the brain map developed by the phrenologists Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Spurzheim. In the Victorian age, studying the skull's contours over these zones supposedly revealed a person's character traits and psychological predispositions. Dunning recycled the paradigm of phrenology as a means of accessing the installation's touch-sensitive interface. As participants pressed the pads, a series of video segments were projected on the wall. These segments, which came from various sources, showed irreconcilable objects and events that evoked the series of random associations produced by the brain as it assembles fragments of stored memory. Here, the unconscious content could not easily be distinguished from fragments of images from the media sphere. Images appeared erratically: a lunar eclipse, close-ups of the body, a political demonstration, a hall in a museum, a text flashing at a dizzying speed, barely perceptible abstract images. With the combination of images almost infinite, the screen constantly offered new sequences of juxtaposed images.

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[Left: Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow, The Einstein's Brain Project: The Furnace, 1997-1999. Video and sound installation with interactive components. Segments, from various sources, showing irreconcilable objects and events evoking the series of random associations produced by the brain as it assembles fragments of stored memory. Excerpt of the video documentary The Einstein's Brain Project, The Errant Eye, The Furnace, 1998-1999. Go here and click on the first segment under "Multimedia."]

The virtual environment installations The Errant Eye (1997-2001) and The Madhouse (2001) delved into Dunning and Woodrow's premise that the image captured on the retina doesn't always converge with brain activity. In The Errant Eye, the biological data gathered in real time on the participant's body altered the display parameters of a three-dimensional virtual universe. The participant donned a head-mounted display equipped with encephalogram electrodes that recorded the changing amplitude of brainwaves from the brain's right and left sides. The participant then navigated around a recognizable visual environment, a forest whose outline faded into an abstract visual universe reflecting the variations in biological signals processed in real time by a computer module. Once the feedback process reached the balance sought, the participant could recognize recurring motifs that corresponded to certain types of reactions and perceptions.

The Madhouse (2001), which was presented at the gallery Oboro (Montreal, Canada) in 2001, allowed participants to pool their individual perceptions as they experimented simultaneously with feedback. A luminous life-size cast of the human body lay in the centre of a room and was surrounded by participants in an immersive state. The participants touched the surface of the body, which stored and displayed their handprints and fingerprints as if which stored and displayed their handprints and fingerprints as if the body's material presence were providing them with a kind of anchorage in the physical world. Behind their displays, the participants were catapulted into a virtual world, while viewers on the periphery could observe their erratic gestures, which resembled the spasms of mental patients (hence the work's title). Through this sharing of the immersive experience, which is often deemed autarchic, Dunning and Woodrow's project created a more complex model of a virtual community that didn't exclude the body of the participants.

A series of installations in development will further explore technological and conceptual aspects begun within The Einstein's Brain Project. Under the working title (WIW), Worlds in Worlds, Dunning plans to put together an immersive environment whose boundaries will be defined by the real dimensions of the room the participant is in. Dunning is also interested in the Anatomically Lifelike Biological Interface, which operates via a model reproducing certain bio-anatomical functions. In this vein, he is pursing research on the properties of ferrofluids, liquid matter that can be altered by an electromagnetic field and modified by biological signals from the human body.

V.B. © 2002 Fondation Daniel Langlois

Posted by jo at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

m-cult news 05/07

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Urban TV, Participatory Politics +

M2HZ tests underway: M2HZ, the Helsinki-based urban television project is performing tests in May 14-20, 2007. The test broadcast aims to demonstrate a new type of open television in Finland, where local and public access tv is close to nonexistent. The M2HZ model is based on distributed production for a multi-channel transmission platform.

M2HZ is a collaboration between dozens of media, arts and civil organisations, who wish to affect the media landscape and find new audiences. Over 300 people have contributed their voices, insights and work to the development which kicked off in late 2005.

The test week's days are themed around debates on television and media criticism, local and global issues, live and media art, and the public domain. Throughout the week we follow the Sound & Fury of young bands, the events in the Kallio Kukkii neighbourhood festival, exercises by the Hunger theatre, and short films by media artists and students.

The programme is mostly in Finnish but also includes the first international exchanges: the new film Faceless by Manu Luksch and a retrospective of work by the Swedish Rafilm collective.

The test uses the digital tv and streaming platform of DINA tv, a cable channel of media schools. First tests for digital antenna (DVB-T) and mobile (DVB-H) distribution are performed with the VTT Technical Research Centre and the FinPilot2 project. Other key partners are the Youth Centre of Helsinki, Stadia polytechnic, and Otaniemi Underground Broadcasting System OUBS, the live-in television station of engineering students. M2HZ is coordinated by m-cult and supported by the Uusimaa Regional Council.

Participatory politics: m-cult and the Democracy Unit of the Ministry of Justice realize a workshop on participatory politics and foresight on June 8, 2007. The workshop gathers researchers, decision-makers and NGO representatives to discuss experiences of participatory forums and web tools to support deliberative democracy. Visiting experts are Lars Klüver (Danish Board of Technology) and Richard Rogers (University of Amsterdam / govcom.org).

The aim of the workshop is to find new methods, processes and tools for democracy. A special challenge is to bring citizen's views to affect the early phases of government and technology programmes.

m-cult at Pocketfilms: The Forum des Images has invited m-cult to present work on mobile and urban media at the Pocketfilms festival, Paris June 8-10, 2007. At the Pompidou centre, m-cult presentation includes Heidi Tikka's project Situations, the Mobicast project by Adam Hyde and the mobile production experiments realized within M2HZ.

Posted by jo at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

The Showroom: Props, events, encounters: the performance of new sculpture

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Conference

The Showroom: Props, events, encounters: the performance of new sculpture :: Two-part conference at the Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, London E2 7ES :: Saturday 26 May 10.00 – 17.00hrs :: Keynote speakers: Joan Jonas, Andrea Phillips, Jan Verwoert :: Artists: Matti Braun, Pablo Bronstein, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan :: Chair: Sally Tallant

Props, events, encounters: the performance of new sculpture takes its cue from Mike Kelley’s description of the inherent structure at work in the objects that he uses in his performances. He ascribes to these objects a self-governing ordering system that is enacted as they appear in his work, a system that differentiates between objects that stay in the background, contextualising objects and those that will be active within the performance itself.

This one-day conference seeks to examine the emergence of forms in contemporary art in which objects are imbued with a theatrical status, but which avoid a return to Michael Fried’s famous distaste for theatricality in minimalist sculpture. Whilst previous generations of artists might be said to have sought a set of phenomenological relations, now artists form autonomous systems, enlivened in some capacity by the entry of a viewer. These objects attest to philosophies of emergence as well as affect, gift economies as well as forms of magical thinking, the existence of different, perhaps utopian or perhaps avowedly anti-social spaces and times. In these environments the viewer is no longer subservient to the object but is granted instead a personal autonomy. Some of these objects stand in for complex systems of rhetoric, others are simply props in a private theatre in which stories may or may not be revealed to the viewer. Many of these objects, left behind in the gallery, are residues of past events, imbued with the melancholia of lost opportunities. Others are detritus, arranged not so simply.

Props, events, encounters… seeks to address the following questions:
• How are contemporary artists changing the status of the object in their work?
• How might these modifications be aided – and abetted – by the presence of the viewer?
• How do such shifts in attitudes towards objects reflect a changing politics in the status of contemporary ‘sculpture’?

To reserve your ticket please call the gallery as soon as possible on +44 (0)208 983 4115.

Props, events, encounters: the performance of new sculpture is generously supported by The Henry Moore Foundation and Outset.

Posted by jo at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2007

paraflows 07 - annual convention for digital arts and cultures

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Proposals due JUNE 15: PARAFLOWS 07, the annual convention for digital arts and cultures in Vienna, is taking place for the first time, it features an exhibition, a symposium, workshops, and various social events. The topic of the 2nd annual convention for digital arts and cultures in the city of Vienna is UN_SPACE.

"A body is defined by having length, width and depth." (Euclid)

In his Philosophy of Nature, Aristotle employs the three dimensions of the body as the basis for his theory of space. For Aristotle, space is the sum of all places occupied by bodies. Space is defined as the limit of the surrounding body toward what is surrounded. This is a theory of relations by which Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void. Empty space is an impossibility since space is always occupied and there can be no in between.

If aside from the space a body occupies an empty space existed which it enters, empty space and occupied space would overlap, resulting in an unnecessary duplication of space" (Aristotle, Physics).

This year's Paraflows exhibition, titled UN_SPACE, is going to focus on inaccessible, invisible, theoretical, and immaterial space per se. Virtual spaces - a prominent issue in media and net art - as well as social and personal space dimensions and territories (see Erving Goffman, Territorien des Selbst) and real spaces like architectonic, geographic, or elementary, are to be compiled, visualised, and discussed according to their characteristics, their meaning, and their respective insufficiencies.

We also think of UN_SPACE as the elimination of distances, borders and barriers interfering with cultural, social, political and media reality. Concepts dealing with the development of inaccessible territories, technical approaches and theoretical attempts are key aspects of this year's exhibition. Please submit proposals featuring contemporary artworks dealing with the topics mentioned above.

All proposals must be submitted via mail as PDF-files: un_space(at)paraflows.at

in special cases via snail mail to:

paraflows
paraflows headoffice
c/o monochrom
QDK, Museumsplatz 1
A-1070 Vienna
AUSTRIA

Mandatory information for submissions to PARAFLOWS 07 - UN_SPACE:

1) name, institution (if existing), address, e-mail, phone number, website/s
2) submitted work: title, medium, author/artist, year of production
3) work description: 1 page max., photos are recommended
4) technical details, room/space requirements, technical requirements(hardware, operating system, additional software)
5) additional information
6) biography
7) documentation of earlier projects and works (url, website will do)

Language: all submissions have to be in ENGLISH or GERMAN, projects dealing with text must have English and/or German subtitles

We especially encourage international submissions.

DEADLINE: 15th of June, 2007

paraflows 07 / CONTACT
office(at)paraflows.at
Festival-Management: Judith Fegerl, Guenther Friesinger
Office: paraflows headoffice
c/o monochrom
A-1070 Vienna, Museumsplatz 1, Austria
+43/650/20 49 451

Posted by jo at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

Art Action Festival

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Poetic performance and Action Art: Over the past 30 years, Action Art found fertile fields of confluence between the experimentation on vision and gesture and poetic-visual sound dramaturgy. Most of this research was characterized by the connection between Performance Art , “total poetry” and the nomadism of the performer that restlessly shifts through linguistic fields just like through geographic territories and varied socio-cultural circles. This year Harta Performing stresses the concept of nomadism perceived as the key element in the performer work. In the theoretical intervention opening the fifth edition of the festival, great attention will be given to the dialectic of relationships “between spiritus and corpus, subject and object, imagination and reality, thought and action, private and public, local and global, specific and total, project and performance”.

As stated by Giovanni Fontana “on these oppositions, a fluctuating dynamics takes shape, it holds up the energy and matter continuum in which action is strenuously built. The body energy is used to get rid of imposed references and directions and to generate new situations; it continuously breaks the temporary balances and favours the construction of interlinguistic and intermedial systems that influence the dynamics of the elements involved.”

The international festival “ART ACTION - Harta Performing Monza ”, unanimously considered one of the most interesting events in the framework of international Art innovation, is a significant point of reference for cultural exchange. After the success of the previous editions, this year the festival offers to the city of Monza not only a comparison between the new arts but also an opportunity to reflect on one of the most pressing and thrilling issues of the theoretical debate: the meaning and the creation techniques of the “plural work”, true action field of the polyartist , “who can play his cards right between poetry and cinema, theatre and music, dance and visual arts”.

PROGRAMMA

Giovedi 24 Maggio
ore 21 intervento teorico

di Giovanni Fontana
(Nomadismo e tensioni performative)

dalle ore 21,30 alle 24 performances di:

Boris Nieslony (Germania),
Victor Petrov (Bielorussia),
Denis Romanovski (Bielorussia),
Ryszard Lugowski (Polonia),

Venerdi 25 Maggio
dalle ore 21 alle 24 performances di:

John G.Boehme (Canada),
Giovanni Fontana (Italia),
Jan Swidzinski (Polonia),
Luigi Bianco (Italia),

Sabato 26 Maggio
dalle ore 21 alle 24 performances di:

Helge Meyer (Germania),
Gruppo Sinestetico (Italia),
Angelo Pretolani (italia),
Llewyn Maire e Lisa Newman (USA)

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

Mediamatic ARDUINO BASIC & BLUETOOTH WORKSHOP

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Call for Participants

ARDUINO BASIC & BLUETOOTH WORKSHOP; DIY wireless interative networking for artists & designers :: 11 | 12 & 13 | 14 | 15 June 2007 :: Mediamatic Amsterdam.

Arduino is an affordable computing platform which is particularly useful for designers and artists who want to build small interactive projects. Arduino takes input from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other outputs. In this workshop you will learn how to work with the basic and the wireless Arduino.

WORKSHOP APPROACH: We offer a 5-day workshop. Depending on your experience you can also register only for the first two, or only for the last three days. We start with a 2-day introduction to Arduino (11 | 12 June), for those who haven't worked with Arduino's before. We will work on the basic USB Arduino, the lay-out of the board, how to connect hardware and some basic programming skills.

In the following days (13 | 14 | 15 June) we will deal with more advanced versions and uses, including Bluetooth Arduino's and the programming possibilities with Pure Data. In these three days you will work on your own small prototype of a wireless Arduino application.

TARGET GROUP: Art students, product developers, computer scientists, hardware hackers, nerds, dancers - everyone is welcome. However, note that some technical affinity is required. Some experience in programming and electronics will come in useful, specifically in soldering and java, but is not strictly necessary. We advise you to download the Arduino software and have a look at http://www.arduino.cc before.

TRAINERS: Ubi de Feo (It) will lead the first days of the workshop. Massimo Banzi (It), who invented Arduino, is present during the last two days.

INFORMATION & REGISTRATION: Check the full programme. For more information about this workshop call Deborah Meibergen of Klaas Kuitenbrouwer + 31 (0)20 6389901 or workshops[at]mediamatic.net. Register here.

LOCATION: Mediamatic is located in the centre of Amsterdam, Oosterdokskade 5, fifth floor, 1011 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

COSTS: 5 days EUR 200,- | 3 days EUR 125,- | 2 days EUR 100,- (incl. VAT).
Including coffee, tea, juice, fruit and cookies but without lunch.

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

May 17, 2007

Men in the Wall

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Men in the Wall by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie :: Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 20, 7 – 10 pm :: Artist Talk 7:30 p.m :: Installation runs June 20 – 30 :: 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404 :: FREE admission :: 310-453-3711.

Men in the Wall is a four-screen, 3-dimensional stereoscopic video dance installation. Special stereoscopic glasses will be provided to watch this 3D world of four men, who share their framed lives in a public quartet while retaining their private differences. The piece runs on a continuous 25-minute loop and will be projected from four different projectors onto the wall.

Billy Cowie and Liz Aggiss principally work together in the area of dance/theatre performance, screen dance and installation. They have made over thirty live performance pieces for their company Divas Dance Theatre, have toured Europe extensively and completed four major screen projects (two BBC Dance for Camera commissions and two ACE Capture projects).

They have created commissioned work for 'Extemporary Dance Theatre',' Mantis', 'Transitions', 'Intoto', 'Carousel' and 'Hi Spin'. Aggis and Cowie’s dance screen work has received numerous international awards including: Czech Crystal, Prague Golden Film Festival (2002); Special Jury Golden Award, Houston (2003); Best Female Film, Mediawaves Hungary (2003); and the Romanian National Office of Cinematography Award (2003). A book about their work entitled Anarchic Dance was published by Routledge in January 2006.

Billy Cowie has composed music performed by Marie McLaughlin, Nicola Hall, Gerard McChrystal, Daphne Scott-Sawyer, Juliet Russell, Rowan Godel, Pammjit Pammi and Naomi Itami. He has also composed music for three BBC Radio projects: 'The Tempest', Philip Pullman's 'Dark Materials Trilogy' (both dir by David Hunter) and Thinking Earth (dir Pam Marshall). He has also composed music for film directors Tony Palmer, Chris Rodley, Stephen Frears and Bob Bently. Billy Cowie is currently Principle Research Fellow at the University of Brighton.

Liz Aggiss is a performer/choreographer/film-maker and has received numerous awards including the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award (1994) and the Arts Council Dance Fellowship Award (2003). She has written for Dance Theatre Journal and animated and is currently Professor of Visual Performance at the University of Brighton.

Posted by jo at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

darkmatter Journal-Issue: 1 May 2007

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Celebrity Big Brother

"The banality of the UK Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) reality television show prepared no one for the global media spectacle of the fracas between the b-list Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty and the d(?)-list British super-ignoramus Jade Goody.1 To debate whether the exchanges between an Indian Actress and a white working-class ex-Big Brother participant (and her co-conspirators) wasn’t a racist confrontation simply denies the multiplicity of racisms of British life. Contrary to Germaine Greer’s2 insistence that Shetty vs. Goody exposed class rather than racial antagonisms, the aftermath of CBB raises more complex issues: What does the CBB media stampede say about the discourse of local-global race, gender and class relations? Is Reality TV the political unconscious of everyday repressed racisms? Does the ‘victory’ for Shetty indicate the triumph of anti-racism and/or multicultural neo-liberalism? These are some of many of the issues which have motivated the production of the first Journal Issue of darkmatter in the form of a series of dialogues interrogating CBB...

...darkmatter is an experiment in creating a collective ‘prosthetic race memory’ that reconfigures the circuits of knowledge and power, in a situation where at present the blinding whiteness of network culture continues to make most of the people on the planet invisible. It seems appropriate for darkmatter to emerge at a time where a eurocentric media culture is reproducing itself as the champion of anti-racism, while simultaneously denying the central role of racism in the terrain of contemporary geo-politics. CBB was a minor symptom of the new digital politics of race to come." From Editorial: Celebrity Big Brother dialogues - the global pantomime of race.

Posted by jo at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

In The Country of Last Refuge

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Call for Work

OPEN CALL: In The Country of Last Refuge: A mash-up, on urbanism, communication (and its breakdown, on an intimate and global level) violence and geography :: by Emma Wilcox and Evonne Davis :: With full color illustrated, perfect bound catalog :: Gallery Aferro, Newark NJ:: Submissions in any and all media due Aug 15.

Urbanism :: Vitality :: Paranoia :: Transformation :: Endurance :: Communication :: Perception :: Geography :: Isolation :: Memory :: Justice :: Violence :: Action :: Indifference

Notification by Sep 1 Delivery by Sep 29. Materials for catalog may be requested earlier than work delivery. In the Country of Violence will be on display at Gallery Aferro, Newark NJ, October 2007.

In The Country of Last Things 2004
In The Country of Last Things 4-Ever 2006
In the Country of Last Refuge 2007

Please refer to exhibition guidelines on website.

Please email work to mapsandguns[at]gmail.com or mail work to Emma Wilcox Gallery Aferro 248 Sherman ave #43 NY NY 10034

The mission of Gallery Aferro is to bring cultural education and esthetic engagement with contemporary issues to all people equally, and to create an environment where artists can gather and share physical and intellectual resources. We are working towards an arts community that is available to everyone, without sacrificing standards or quality of experience. Founded in a converted factory building in the Ironbound, Gallery Aferro was planned as a pilot project to be recreated in different architectural forms, in multiple American cities. Gallery Aferro is currently being run out of a 20,000 sq ft building in downtown Newark.


Posted by jo at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)

iMagine: A workshop envisioning the potencies of

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artistic creativity for producing social reality

iMagine: A workshop envisioning the potencies of artistic creativity for producing social reality :: May 17-19, 2007 :: CAC Vilnius.

iMagine is the second event in the series of Public Preparation project: the public preparation phase for the upcoming Biennale of Young Artists in Tallinn in October 2007. Public Preparation is a sequence of informal encounters which at the same time constitutes the publicly visible preparation process of the Biennale as well as the course of preparing and educating the public for the Biennale.

3-day-workshop iMagine gathers ca 30 art professionals from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Each workshop day will be conducted by one contemporary art professional and enacted by all participants. It is aimed to become a 'total environment' with its own rules, obstructions and ways to generate meanings and ideas. iMagine focuses on discussion, exchanging ideas and sharing opinions rather than producing art objects.

The workshop will be structured as a non-hierarchical knowledge-oriented environment that will develop ideas and ideals regarding the role of artists in contemporary society. The workshop will deal with issues like the concepts of "legality" and "illegality" in creative practice; the consequences of psychoanalytic theory for art and politics; the role and limits of exhibition format etc.

iMagine also serves as a meeting machine for younger generation art
professionals based in Baltic States and Poland. We would like to imagine iMagine as a huge warm swimming pool full of progressive ideas, coffee breaks, topical topics of contemporary art, younger generation art professionals, provoking questions, experience of collective working practice and participation, relevant theories, and contacts of new friends and collaborators.

Tutors: Aaron Schuster, philosopher and art critic, Brussels; Simon Sheikh, curator, Berlin/Copenhagen; Mara Traumane, curator, Berlin/Riga.

iMagine is organised in collaboration with Biennale of Young Artists, Tallinn, CAC Vilnius and CAIC Vilnius.

The team of organisers: Rael Artel (independent curator, co-curator of the Biennale of Young Artists, Public Preparation, Pdrnu); Virginija Januskeviciute (Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius); Airi Triisberg (freelance researcher, co-organiser of Public Preparation, Berlin); Dovile Tumpyte (Contemporary Art Information Centre of Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius).

iMagine was kindly supported by Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia
Estonian Cultural Endowment, Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts.

Posted by jo at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

Snappy Dance Theater

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String Beings

Snappy Dance Theater threads together computer science and classically-trained musicians via contemporary dance and theater in its newest work String Beings, Celebrating its 10th Anniversary Season :: May 30-June 10, 2007 :: The Virginia Wimberly Theatre, Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston :: Press Night / Opening Night: Wednesday, May 30 ::

Widely acclaimed for its edgy, ironic and acrobatic performances, Snappy Dance Theater celebrates its 10th anniversary with the world premiere of String Beings, a collaboration with MIT scientist and new media artist Jonathan Bachrach and BSO first violinist Lucia Lin. With real-time video feedback using intelligent video processing and live musicians who become part of the choreography, the new work explores the metaphors of string, focusing on relationships, and commonalities that tie us together by means of Snappy's signature daring, muscular and witty style.

Martha Mason directs the new work, and is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Snappy Dance Theater, a Boston-based contemporary dance company of nine performers who tour nationally and internationally. Mason envisioned the collaboration in early 2006 and brought these artists together to share and develop their ideas. Working closely with Mason is new media artist and MIT computer scientist Jonathan Bachrach Ph.D. He uses his own uniquely-designed intelligent video processing to manipulate live video footage of the Snappy dancers, and then projects the animated video onto the stage, allowing live dancers and virtual “dancers” to interact. String Beings is set to the music of Berlin composer Michael Rodach, and will be performed by Lucia Lin (Boston Symphony and Muir Quartet) and an electric guitarist. Virtuosic Lin brings Rodach’s haunting contemporary score alive, while partnering with the dancers. In one scene, she is lifted and passed between the dancers without ever touching the ground.

Technically, the group works with 2-3 cameras, 2 projectors, multiple screens and stage lighting. Coordinating these technical aspects with the physical, artistic and human elements has created a unique playground for the collaborators. Through the year-long creative process, the artists have explored the dark and humorous sides of social manipulation and the dynamics of power changes both in society and in our personal lives. Snappy’s unique blend of dance, theater, puppetry, circus arts and acrobatics, has provided the artistic and physical elements in which to present these themes. Mason and Bachrach work closely with lighting designer, Joseph Levendusky to experiment with staging and lighting these varied elements. Mason’s direction provides a provocative balance between comedy and tragedy that creates compelling and surprising scenes.

Snappy is the leading contemporary dance company in Massachusetts, and has been presented in 18 States and four countries. The company has attracted major commissions (The Temperamental Wobble by Bank of America Celebrity Series), received critical acclaim in publications, and developed an extensive youth outreach program that complements its general programming. String Beings is partially funded by the LEF Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, an anonymous donor and the artists themselves. String Beings is presented in Boston in association with World Music/CRASHarts and Boston Center for the Arts, as part of the BCA’s 2006-07 Cultural Partners Series.

Performances run Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday at 7:30pm; Friday and Saturday at 8pm; and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3pm. Tickets are $15―$45. Tickets and information: CRASHarts (617) 876-4275 or www.CRASHarts.org, or at www.BostonTheaterScene.com.

Learn more about the artists:
Snappy Dance Theater – http://www.snappydance.com
Jonathan Bachrach, Ph.D. - http://people.csail.mit.edu/jrb/jrb.html
Lucia Lin - http://www.bso.org/biography.jhtml?area=bso&id=2100095
Michael Rodach - http://www.michaelrodach.com/

Contact Snappy to interview the artists. Carey Foster, cmckinley[at]snappydance.com, 617-947-8370

Posted by jo at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

VJ THEORY

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PRACTICE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY

In collaboration with VIVO and VJ Theory, The Escape Artists presents INTERCONTINENTAL SKYPE DISCUSSION ON VJ THEORY (vjtheory.net), PRACTICE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY :: Saturday, May 26, 1-3 pm, at the VIVO (Video In | Video Out), 1965 Main Street, Vancouver :: 604-872-8337.

We expect this presentation will be of interest to practitioners and people interested in the area of vjing and realtime interaction (theorists, developers, programmers, artists, activists). This presentation/discussion hopes to create awareness and get people interested in the vjtheory project. We would also like to receive feedback from the participants on the work done so far and ways in which it could expand, specifically, what people want in terms of interacting with each other online about vjing.

We would like to focus our presentation on the subject of community development: How does VJ Theory become a platform for the development of theory informed by individual and collective practice and theory originated by a community instead of an author or group of defined authors.

Participants should expect to get more familiar with the vjtheory project and people involved (contributors and editorial body), providing the opportunity to ask questions to the editors about contributions or any other relevant subject. People can also participate by introducing examples of communities they are familiar with and expressing their ideas on what kinds of interaction they may like to find in a site such as vjtheory.net

For more info on the event contact Camille Baker at camille[at]escapeartists.ca at 604-708-0997

ABOUT VJ THEORY

vjtheory.net is an online community of VJs and artists who reflect on their work and share their ideas with others in the community. This community actively discusses and reflects on philosophy and theory related with VJing and realtime interaction.

The project has been running for over two years and has built up an extensive collection of work which can help other practitioners to critically examine their practice. Through publishing articles, interviews and reviews, the project is able to distribute the work of the community and organise online debates in areas which are highlighted by our contributors.

In this way we have been, increasingly, linking artists, activists and VJs (the links are often already there) which in turn links practices such as realtime installation, performance and political praxis.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED

VJ Theory: Philosophy and Theory of VJing and Realtime Interaction
Editors: Ana Carvalho and Brendan Byrne
Co-editors: Lara Houston and Paul Mumford

The Escape Artists Society (T.E.A.S.) is a small Vancouver media performance society, putting works of media art, performance media, music/sound art, and visual art events into predominantly unusual locations – inserting ‘our’ world into ‘there’ world– penetrating public perceptions of culture, genre and form.

VIVO Media Arts (Video In | Video Out) is a 33 year old media centre focusing on the exhibition, production, education and distribution of video and interdisciplinary media art.

Camille Baker
The Escape Artists Society
Executive Director/ Curator
camille[at]escapeartists.ca
http://www.escapeartists.ca

Posted by jo at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2007

(in)visible sounds

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Exhibition and Seminar

(in)visible sounds :: June 2 - July 14, 2007 :: Opening June 1, 5:00 p.m. :: Erich Berger, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Usman Haque & Rob Davis, Informationlab (Ursula Lavrencic & Auke Touwslager), Olga Kisseleva, Brandon LaBelle & James Watts, Semiconductor, Theodore Watson :: Exhibition in cooperation with the 5 days off festival.

The omnipresence of computers and mobile communications apparatus has led to digital technology increasingly becoming a part of our environment. Invisible wireless networks have altered our ways of communicating, working, learning and playing. They have even taken on an important role in the creation of our identity and our relationships with others. In the course of this development, interest in the apparatus has increasingly shifted from the technology itself to the role it plays in shaping our experience. The artists in this exhibition investigate the invisible world of sound waves and frequencies and electromagnetic fields. In all cases they touch on issues concerning the radiation that is ever-present, but imperceptible to our senses. They make use of technologies that are present around us, but invisible, and by playing with electromagnetic waves and different frequencies their works surprise us with an abundance of information and possibilities.

In his work Tempest (2004) Erich Berger (Sweden) makes use of the basic principles of Van Eck Phreaking, a technology through which the content van a computer screen can be reconstructed at a distance by picking up the electromagnetic field surrounding that screen. In Tempest pure generative graphic forms are transformed into a dense and intense composition of sound, noise and light. The graphic forms that appear on the screen produce radio waves, which are then picked up by several transistor radios. These are tuned to various AM frequencies and ultimately produce the distinct and lively sounds that go together with the images. David Haines and Joyce Hinterding (Australia) use the live data stream from televisions to precipitate avalanches. In their work Purple Rain (2004) Haines and Hinterding draw an overwhelming connection between the mystic forces of nature and the presence of the thousands of watts that are stirred up by the frequencies of the electromagnetic field.

In the installation Evolving Sonic Environment (2005-2007) Usman Haque and Rob Davis (UK) investigate to what degree the presence of people in a space influences the audio composition created, without the intervention of sensors. Several audio speakers hang form the ceiling, each generating a sound with a different frequency. Intercommunication between these units balances the sounds and maintains the sensitive sonic ecosystem, which is only disrupted by visitors. The consequences these interventions have on the brain of the space can be observed, live on the internet..

The visitors also play an important role in the installation AudioSpace (2005-2007) by Theodore Watson (US). In the 3D augmented aural space visitors can leave messages for others in the form of sound. By means of a special headset with a microphone, texts can be spoken into the space, and at the same time, messages left earlier can be retrieved. The space is filled with invisible messages from previous visitors. On the other hand, Brandon LaBelle and James Watts (US) let one hear the mystic sounds of the building. In the site-specific installation Radio Flirt (2007) visitors with small portable radios walk through the space in search of characteristic noises and the secrets of the building.

Olga Kisseleva (Russia) lets us see the flows of energy and magnetic pollution that surround us. In Landstreams (2006) she creates a new type of abstract landscape art. The paintings are based on various data flows that have been analyzed by a computer. In the film Earth Moves (2006) by Semiconductor (UK) the visualization of unseen forces is also central. Earth Moves reveals an unstable world that is always in flux. The contours and forms of everything around us are being altered by the invisible force of acoustic waves. This process is imperceptible to the naked eye. By combining digital photos of various places with sound from the same locations, new acoustic landscapes are created.

Finally, in a humorous way Informationlab (Ursula Lavrencic, SLO and Auke Touwslager, Netherlands) reveal the invisible aura of the mobile telephone. Cell Phone Disco (2006) is an installation made out of LED-lamps that respond to the electromagnetic field of mobile telephones. As visitors walk through the installation while making calls, the telephone signal activates the LEDs, so that a trail of flickering LEDs follow them through the space. The unseen body of the mobile telephone becomes perceptible.

In addition to the works in the exhibition a selection of video works from the Institute's own collection can be viewed on monitors. These afford insight into an important historic tradition.

Websites artists:
http://kisseleva.free.fr/
http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/
http://randomseed.org/ http://www.sunvalleyresearch.com/haines.htm
http://www.haque.co.uk/evolvingsonicenvironment.php
http://cellphonedisco.informationlab.org/
http://www.errantbodies.org/labelle.html
http://muonics.net/

Seminar (in)visible technology :: Saturday, June 2, 2:00 to 4:30 p.m.

The consequences of invisible technology are to be further examined in a brief seminar. It is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize the effects of these technologies, because once technologies become invisible they also disappear from our consciousness. The environment is no longer experienced as constructed, and people become even more remote from the technology and its influence on their everyday life, actions and thought. In order to break out of this cycle we need to have examples that throw a new light on existing networks and structures. A number of speakers will be casting light into the darkness. The conversation will be based around examples which introduce other ways of accessing invisible networks.

With: Usman Haque & Rob Davis, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding and Olga
Kisseleva.
Commentator: Rob van Kranenburg.
Admission 5,- (students 3,-).
Reservations: info[at]montevideo.nl

5 days off takes place from July 4 through 8 in Paradiso, Melkweg, the Netherlands Media Arts Institute and the Heineken Music Hall. Check for updates: www.5daysoff.nl

Exhibition open: Tuesday through Saturday, 1:00 - 6:00 p.m., also open the first Sunday of the month. Admision 2,50 (1,50 with discount). During 5 days off, free admission with any sort of 5 days off ticket.

For more information and visual material: Marieke Istha, Communications 020 6237101/06 41635002, istha[at]montevideo.nl

With thanks to: Fund for Podium Programming and Marketing, Mondriaan Foundation, Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund, VSB Fund, Australian Council, Maison Descartes, BeamSystems and Steim

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Montevideo / Time Based Arts
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.montevideo.nl
T +31 (0)20 6237101
F +31 (0)20 6244423

Posted by jo at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Paris

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Igor Stromajer presents Ballettikka Internettikka

Upgrade! Paris: Igor Stromajer presents Ballettikka Internettikka :: mediator: Anne Roquigny :: Date: Friday, June 1 at 7:00PM (Paris) :: Place: Ars Longa, 67, av Parmentier, 75011 Paris, M° Parmentier :: Streamed (video & audio) in English.

Ballettikka Internettikka, by Igor Stromajer and Brane Zorman, is a serial of tactical art projects which began in 2001 with the exploration of internet ballet. It explores wireless internet ballet performances combined with guerrilla tactics and mobile live internet broadcasting strategies.

Igor Stromajer is an mobile intimate communicator. He researches tactical emotional states and traumatic low-tech strategies. He has shown his work at more than a hundred exhibitions in forty-two countries and received a number of awards. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Slovenia; Computerfinearts Gallery, New York and others.


Posted by jo at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2007

The Geospatial Web

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Shaping the Network Society

Arno Scharl, Klaus Tochtermann (Eds.): The Geospatial Web - How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series. London: Springer (2007). With a Foreword by Patrick J. Hogan, Program Manager of NASA World Wind

The Geospatial Web will have a profound impact on managing knowledge, structuring workflows within and across organizations, and communicating with like-minded individuals in virtual communities. The enabling technologies for the Geospatial Web are geobrowsers such as NASA World Wind, Google Earth and Microsoft Live Local 3D. These three-dimensional platforms not only reveal the geographic distribution of Web resources and services, but also bring together people of similar interests, browsing behavior, or geographic location.

This edited volume summarizes the latest research on the Geoweb’s technical foundations, describes collaborative tools built on top of geobrowsers, and investigates the environmental, social and economic impacts of geospatial applications. The role of contextual knowledge in shaping the emerging network society deserves particular attention. By integrating geospatial and semantic technology, such contextual knowledge can be extracted automatically - for example, when processing Web documents to identify relevant content for customized news services.

The book's Web site provides the table of contents, preface and foreword, author biographies, 25 abstracts and a sample chapter on "Media Platforms for Managing Geotagged Knowledge Repositories".

Posted by jo at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

Psychobotany

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Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communication

An evening of psychobotany with performances, presentations, and live demos by Botanicalls and the Center for Tactical Magic :: May 15, 8pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA.

Wouldn't it be great if your plants could call you if they needed water? The Botanicalls team has found a way to make this happen. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. The Botanicalls team will be on-hand to demonstrate their unique system of human/plant communication and promote inter-species understanding.

The Center for Tactical Magic presents a performance lecture exploring the magic and mystery of psychobotany. Ranging from Moses’ consultation with a burning bush to the Pentagon’s recent development of “sentinel plants,” Aaron Gach of the CTM provides a brief history of plants as purveyors of knowledge. Audience members will also participate in a live demonstration of extra-sensory perception mediated through the cooperation of living plants.


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

May 14, 2007

Geert Lovink interviews

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Vito Campanelli

Interview with Vito Campanelli about Web Aesthetics by Geert Lovink, nettime.

Ever since I worked with Matthew Fuller in 2004 on A Decade of Web Design, I have been interested in the question if there is such a thing as web aesthetics that could operate beyond the overheated nineteen nineties Internet rhetoric. It is easy to historicize net.art as a pseudo historical avant-garde and then declare it dead, but whats the point of such an all too obvious statement? The Web continues to grow and change at an astonishing rate. It is not sufficient to criticize Web 2.0 as a remake of dotcommania. Corporate and state dominance of the Web continues to be a threat, but this should not shy us away from a rigorous theorization of the Web in all its aspects. It was on the Web that I first encountered the works of the Italian theorist, Vito Campanelli, culminating in a visit to his hometown, Naples, in October 2006. After an inspiring meeting in-real-life we continued our exchange online, culminating in this online interview.

Vito Campanelli is assistant professor of Theory and technique of the
mass communication at University of Napoli LOrientale and a free
lance contributor to magazines such as Neural, Boiler, and Memenest.
Vito also co-founded the web designers collective Klash. From there,
he joined USAD in 2005, a research and development group focused on
e-learning. He is also an independent curator, working for cultural
events in Naples such as Sintesi, the Electronic Arts Festival, and is
the originator of the Web aesthetics research project called The Net
Observer. More recently he co-founded the Napoli new media initiative
MAO, the Media & Arts Office. Vito Campanelli published the book,
Larte della Rete, larte in Rete. Il Neen, la rivoluzione estetica
about the artist Miltos Manetas.

GL: Lets start. Youre working on web aesthetics. The first
association, of course, would be with web design, HTML and the look
and feel of a website. But perhaps thats not what youre aiming at.

VC: In my research into aesthetic forms of the Net, I make a clear
division between commercial expressions and aesthetic expressions,
without qualification. Im not so interested in the latter, while
Im fascinated by the former - those aesthetic forms that exhaust
their essence just in being there, without any intent or aim that
exceeds the personal expressive needs of whoever designed them. This
distinction could seem arbitrary- it could also find a basis if we
consider that modern mediated mass communication is poles apart
relative to any aesthetic feeling: vulgarity and arrogance nullify any
hypothesis of meaning. On the contrary, the research of an aesthetic
point of view is the attempt to assign - again - a sense to our human
paths.

In my opinion aesthetics is the more powerful answer to the violence
of mass communication (or modern commercial communication).
Mass communication eludes every determination, it aims to be
contemporaneously one thing, its own opposite - and everything
between the two opposites. Exposing the message to all its possible
variants, it finishes to abolish it. Indeed, the goal of mass
communication is always the dissipation of any content.

The only alternative to the effects of mass communication is a
return to an aesthetic feeling of things, a kind of aesthetics not
so much ideological, but rather more active (e.g. Adorno) - a kind
of aesthetics able to bring again into society and culture feelings
of economic unconcern (rather an unconcerned interest), discretion,
moderation, the taste for challenge, witticism, and seduction.
Aesthetics is exactly this.

Talking about feelings and emotions means to free oneself from the
communication domain, while facing a category of beauty has become
one of the most subversive actions we can devise in contrast to
the reigning factory of culture and consensus. Within this view
Im suggesting, technology stays in the background: it creates the
necessary conditions for spreading ones own creativity through
digital media. If we accept this position, no matter if a website is
made using HTML or Flash, whats really important is the beauty it
expresses.

GL: Do you find it useful to build a bridge back to the classics of
aesthetics - from Kant to Croce? How should we read such old authors
in the light of the Internet and its development?

VC: A theory that doesnt interface itself to the historical
presupposition of our thinking is nothing more than a stupid and
useless utopia. Nevertheless, the authors you mentioned are not at
the center of my thoughts. Kant doesnt attribute any cognitive value
to art, while Croce is sidelined with respect to Internet and its
socio-cultural postulates. In Croces aesthetics there is a strong
devaluation of technique, as he considers it extrinsic to the art and
linked instead to the communication concept. Moreover, Croce himself
doesnt pose the question of communication. The intuition-expression
is indeed already communication in itself. Croce would never say that
the medium is the message. I refer to other authors, above all Deleuze
and Guattari, who had the merit of prefiguring the actual rhizomatic
structure of the Internet society, and Panofsky, who is a source of
inspiration for Manovich. I find the approach of Rudolf Arnheim very
valuable: according to him we must build aesthetics, starting from
the perceptive and sensory world, not from the idea. If we consider
the relational nature of most Net Art, it becomes interesting also
trying to read, under a different lens, Herbert Marcuses Eros and
Civilization.

GL: It is hard to move away from the postmodern chapter and the way
that era defined aesthetics. Is that a struggle for you? Could we say
that we, still, live in the aftermath of that theory storm and merely
apply the collected insights of the late 20th century to a phenomenon
like the World Wide Web?

VC: What you emphasize is a concrete risk and perhaps it is also a
reason for the difficulties academia has in opening itself up to
a dialectic comparison with the issues the Web has introduced. If
we look closely at the more relevant aesthetic phenomenon in the
last twenty-year period, Net Art, it becomes hard to refute that
this movement, even in its heterogeneity, has introduced new and
confrontational aesthetic canons. Above all, it seems crucial to me
the overtaking of any distinction between content and form or medium:
the interface (that, as Manovich asserts, replaces the form and the
medium into the modern paradigm) is so merged with the content that
thinking of it as a separate level means to eliminate the artistic
dimension. Broadly speaking, I think that authentic advances will be
reached when we cease thinking of the Web as an expressive medium, and
more of a cultural and social interface.

GL: It is said that Deleuze and Guattaris concept have become so
virulent, so active, that they have passed the point of anticipation,
and are now an integral part of our media life. It doesnt mean that
D&G and their followers were wrong or sold out. In fact, it points at
a new condition of theory in which critical concepts start to open
up spaces and come alive, in the midst of the mess called global
capitalism. Seen in this light, what role should a theory of web
aesthetics play?

VC: What happened to Deleuze and Guattaris theories is merely what
always happens: human thought is faster than technical progress. It
often occurs that we are not able to understand the true significance
of contemporary thought, nevertheless,afterwards, inrereading a
book, we see clearly its capacity ofbeing ahead of its time. Its a
situation that characterizes not only philosophy but also, in general,
literature. Im still amazed, for example, at how some cyberpunk
novels have anticipated the focal themes of our times, according to
simple literary inventions. Gibson wrote Neuromancer(July, 1984)
without any knowledge of the Webs reality, still, he had not
difficulty carrying his thought over technologicalarts state.

My idea of aesthetics has - above all - a factual dimension. Id
like to think about a kind of aesthetics busy with dirtying its
hands with the concrete and daily world.Its role should be therefore
giving back to us a beauty dimension which we can contrast against
the widespread vulgarity. To contrast an ephemeral aesthetic act
to the actual dogma of creativity under command, means to take
oneself away from the alienation that characterizes contemporary
creative production. To affirm that aesthetic forms possess a social
and cultural (even pedagogic in some ways) value, it means to negate
- at root - the modern social organization that comes to measure any
expression, including artistic ones, on the basis of market value.

Again, to affirm that a message, a form, a thought, has an intrinsic
value before the commercial one seems banal, nevertheless is an
aversive affirmation if compared to that you describe as the mess
called global capitalism. In my opinion, the diffusion of a Web
aesthetics is ultimately one of the few practicable ways to liberate
our new (digital) world from the slavery in which it has been
condemned by commercial communication.

GL: Its so easy these days to proclaim that theory is dead. How
do you deal with such cynical observations? Is there an Italian
equivalent of pragmatism?

VC: To ask an indolent idealistic Southerner a question about
pragmatism could sound like a provocation, even if - to tell the
truth - you get the point when highlighting the possibility of
different approaches. I do believe that there are peoples who, due
to historical and cultural traditions, are more inclined to theory,
while others are more inclined to direct experience. Even with regard
to new technologies, it seems to me that its possible to highlight
an approach, predominantly European, that tends to make an issue of
technique and to design paths between actual technologic conquests
and the classic thought. There is another approach, one that finds
its fulcrum in California, that appears instead much more focused on
technique in itself. Manovich is an exception, but in his theories
he continuously betrays his Russian origins. Theorys death is
like spring and autumns death: a good topic of conversation for
boring living rooms. History teaches us that theory always returns in
unexpected ways. Theory is dead, long live theory!

GL: Do you teach Web aesthetics? Can you tell us something how
students are bridging theory and the immense drive towards tinkering
and producing?

VC: I wish I was teaching Web aesthetics! Actually, I teach Theory
and techniques of mass communication and I try to feed pills of
aesthetic evaluations into these lessons.

As for students, they seem to me mainly oriented to use the more
various objects (PC,digital devices, books, etc...) and not inclined
to ask themselves questions about the things they are using. They
use them without asking themselves where they come from or which
valences they express over the function of use, or even, which
evolutionary paths they design? This attitude is probably the fruit of
the ruling consumerism that represents, de facto, the only historical
reality that new generations know first hand. Nevertheless there
is perhaps something more: the more or less widespread resignation
and renunciation ofplaying an active and critical role in examining
what surrounds us. Most of the students I usually meet seem to
incarnate the ideal consumer model dreamed up by marketing gurus.
They uncritically accept a lifestyle that other people have designed
for them, rather than shaping their own. The picture of the situation
could appear tragic, nevertheless, its amazing to look at the
reactions that you can breed in them when you are able to uncover
some conditioned thought processes of which they are victim. When it
happens, you can clearly see how a growing interest rises in them,
together with the determination to react (also in a creative way). The
walk is quite long, therefore its important that none of us give up
the responsibility to educate and make new generations aware.

GL: Can you tell us what your theory of Web aesthetics consists of? Is
it a book that youre working on?

VC: Ive published a book on Miltos Manetas and the Neen movement
that, in my opinion, is one of the more significant artistic
avant-garde expressions in the last twenty-years. To state that
websites are the art of our times, as Manetas did in his Manifesto,
means to put intangible and immaterial artworks outside of the art
merchants tentacles. Indeed, the market still doesnt know how to
sell objects like websites, but if we erase the commercial layer, then
Art returns to its natural function: to open windows where mankind can
look at its own condition.

At present Ive finished, together with Danilo Capasso, another book
that has moved from five questions about digital culture that Lev
Manovich thought for us at the occasion of a lecture that Danilo and
myself organized in Naples in April 2005. We asked more than 100
persons (artists, theorists, curators, mathematicians, etc.) all
around the world to answer to Manovichs suggestions and then we chose
50 contributions in order to publish them. The book is now complete
with two different authors reflections but - unfortunately - we are
still waiting for the editor to make up his mind and pass our work
over to the press. This is one of the most significant problems of
publishing nowadays: editors are far too slow to follow the velocity
of circulation of modern ideas. More generally, I look forward to
writing a book on the aesthetics of the database theme and lately,
Ive focused my research in this direction, but - to tell the truth
- the visualization forms of data are so numerous that Im still
lost at sea. GL: The first decade of web design was focused on
speculative thinking about the potentials of the medium, followed by
best practices literature and the long silence after the dotcom boom
crashed. Where are we now?

VC: We are at the Web 2.0 point, and this indicates an evolution of
the way we look at this medium. Despite a lack of unanimity on what
Web 2.0 should be, we certainly have made some steps forward - for
example, we have dropped the useless antithesis between texts and
images: now we consider them as modalities of reading and representing
reality, and we believe that a rich medium (such as the Web) has to
enhance them both, instead of contrasting them. Nowadays we can easily
observe, within the framework of the Net, words that become images and
images that becomes words.

We have also dropped the ideas that the Web constitutes a return to
the oral tradition or to the written word indeed, both statements
have proven fallacious, and we now prefer to speak about a continuum
of languages. These conceptual advances also find a hands-on
application in web design, as interface designs are responding to
narrative and orientation needs that are miles beyond the early
desktop metaphor. As a consequence, the web designers role is no
longer to draw, but rather to arrange environments for interaction
(between users, between image and text, between books and TV,
between the symbolic and the perceptive, between the active and the
passive, etc...). More generally, I think we have overcome that stage
of excitement over the potentials of the medium, and we are now
focusing on the nature of the Web itself - its developments and the
interactions between the Net and society.

I feel tempted to suggest a bold comparison with the situation of
falling in love: first comes the arousal over the potentials of a
body, then the attention shifts to the nature of the soul trapped in
that body (a person takes the place of a body), and finally, all our
thoughts are absorbed in imagining the possible relations between that
person and people all around us (our family, our clan, our workmates,
our flat mates, our playmates, our comrades, etc...). Its also
funny to note that, in accepting this comparison, we have to admit
that network culture is a postulate of the early excitement over the
Web (an excitement that had been driven by the dotcom boom), as a
marriage is a postulate of the initial arousal over a body (driven
by a hormonal boom), allowing us to put the two booms on the same
level.

GL: Is theory in Italy a place of refuge because there is so little
institutional support for new media in your country?

VC: Yes, it is. In my country new media are like Godot in Samuel
Beckettstragicomedy: all the institutions keep on chattering about
the advent of the Internet and new digital tools, but nobody realizes
that they already surround us. In this upsetting situation, theory
becomes the only way to be in touch with such things.

GL: Could we also read the lively Internet scene in Italy as a
subcultural necessity from the age of Berlusconi who managed to
monopolize both commercial and state media when he ruled as prime
minister? And, as a result of that could we say that there is a
sort of temporary compromise between autonomous cultures and more
progressive part of the (IT) business community?

VC: On one hand the lively media scene in Italy is an answer to the
Berlusconi monopoly on broadcast media, but we must not forget that
the one you emphasized is not the only critical situation, indeed
Italy is the country of monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels: Internet
and telecommunications, banks and insurance companies, most of the
vital business articulations are monopolized by the usual suspects.
Onthe other hand there is a very deep-rooted tradition in media
activism. It would suffice to remember the experience of Radio Alice
that started transmitting in 1976, and introduced techniques such as
linguistic sabotage and diffusion of arbitrary information. Many of
the actual initiatives are expressly linked toones born at the end of
the 1970s, although the needs of that period are replaced with more
modern issues.

From my point of view, the most interesting aspect in media activism
is that it leaves behind the dominant communication language;
breaking with language in order to reach life as Artaud said.
Its fascinating to me how the language of advertising, as well as
various modes of ideological communication, are revised into the
best-made operations of subadvertising. Reusingelements of well-known
media such as popular icons and clichs, along with the detournement
of contemporary mass culture headlines, are very creative ways to
criticize the context we live in. To my great displeasure I have to
underline that often initiatives such as street TV or illegal radio
exhaust their energy in building a new transmitting source but what
fails is content. Its like building empty boxes: after the initial
curiosity, nobody wants really to get in.

I dont see any progressive part of the (IT) business community in
Italy. Sure, there is a part that looks cool: its the one that
scans the autonomous cultures searching for coolness. The point
is, there isnt any dialogue. A dialogue presumes a predisposition
to change ones point of view and Im quite sure that thebusiness
communityabsolutely doesnt want to put their assumptions up for
discussion.

GL: You attended the MyCreativity conference in Amsterdam. Do you see
any trace of the creative industries discourse in Italy? If Europes
destiny is going to be exporting design and other lifestyle-related
experiences, then Italy would be in the best possible position. Is
it?

VC: Debate about the creative industry in Italy still has far to go.
The term industry is still not used in association with the term
creativity, as we usually speak about the fashion industry, or
shoe industry or, even, furniture industry. This layout doesnt
encourage the emersion of the creative works element as lowest common
denominator around the different entrepreneurial activities that bring
to life the famous Made in Italy moniker. Creative work is - without
a doubt - at the bottom of the product Italy; nevertheless, the
emphasis is always on Italian genius (that is, the attitude to invent
surprising things), or on Italian lifestyle. I guess that if we took
a poll of strangers accustomed to buying fashionable stuff made in
Italy, we would discover that they believe they are buying the right
to participate in the Italian lifestyle, more than the fruits of
Italian creative labor.

GL: Southern Europe envies the North for all its festivals, centers
and cultural funding whereas Northern Europeans cant stop showing
their excitement for the Virnos, Berardis, Negris, Agambens,
Lazzoratos and Pasquinellis. Isnt that a strange form of symbolic
circulation? How do you see this play between ideas and institutional
cultures on a European scale? Shouldnt we just stop thinking in those
terms and start working on equal levels and forget all this regional
labeling? Eastern Europe, for instance, has suffered for many years
from the regional stigma. Where you come from overdetermines what you
do. Northerners tend not to respond to that criticism.

VC: Maybe the answer is already in your preamble: due to the fact
that in Southern Europe it is quite tough to get funding and support
for cultural initiatives (especially when you move outside of the
mainstream), and many people are more inclined to make intellectual
reflections, rather then to plan events. I would like to avoid any
regional labeling, nevertheless it can be said, with some justice,
that those labels express a state of affairs that is still heavily
conditioned by disparities and specificities working on a regional
basis. Also if we assume a merely linguistic point of view, it is
completely evident that non-anglophone realities suffer enormously
from the inability to participate in an active way with the European
(or international) cultural debate. This fact pushes these realities
to retreat into themselves and to bring to life expressive modalities
distinguished by perspectives that are more regional than global.

As for Italy, one of the most interesting specificity is that the
lack in cultural funding has transformed the country into an amazing
training ground for auto-production phenomena. Operating from the
bottom is, in my opinion, a key phenomenon these days, indeed, it
puts into the cultural economy some truly innovative dynamics, as
long these dynamics break (finally) the chain constraining cultural
production to the economy of (induced) consumptions and needs.
>From this field, to put a lens on the specificity of this Italian
phenomenon could offer answers more interesting than the ones you
obtain considering Italy in the overall European movement.

GL: Is it desirable for you to overcome net.art, media theory, and
electronic arts by integrating it into a broader praxis that would not
have a techno prefix?

VC: My attempt is just that: to free media theory and electronic arts
from techno prefixes in order to consider them just as contemporary
culture. In a book I wrote a couple of years ago, I stated that we
need, now, to surpass the concept of Contemporary Art in order to
define a new contest, one able to contain the theory and the culture
born during the last years and centered around the new medium: the
Internet. Indeed if Contemporary Arts medium has been Television,
it is right to close that chapter so we may open a new one dedicated
to the cultural movements produced by the impact of the Net on
contemporary society. Its not just a question of definitions, rather,
it is an issue of a cultural shift: giving up the critical and
interpretive tools still in use, to build new ones rising from the
awareness that the computer (or the database, as Manovich would say)
has replaced narration as a predominant cultural representation.

GL: Lets go back to web aesthetics. Besides beauty, could we also
use the term style? Is there a positive and critical tradition
of talking about style or is that merely something for fashion
magazines? Maybe it is not wise to look down on fashion Is there
style on the Net?

VC: Nowadays the term style appears to be monopolized by fashion
and design gurus, nevertheless, we should be able to overcome the
nuisance that this linguistic abuse causes, in order to reactivate
a genuine critical debate. To deny the existence of style means to
erase more than five hundred years of philosophical and aesthetical
reflections: the term style, in fact, has been used since the
16th century with the ascendance of the Renaissance maniera that
indicates the personal style of an artist. Style is not a genre and
not prearranged forms that the artist can choose according to his
preferences. Instead, style is a need because it reflects a way of
living, thinking, and imagining the world in which the artist is
immersed. Style is a reflection of the times, and very often the
choice of a style is not even an aware choice: the artist applies the
style of his environment/times without any consciousness (in this
sense the critic is much more aware than the artist).

Style is always related to an epoch, thus it changes along with
the life and the culture existing under the influence of social,
economical and psychological factors. This is the reason style (as
the expression of an epoch) is not transmitted from one generation
to the next. Sometimes the term style is inaccurately described as
artistic individual preferences (le style cest lhomme), but we
have to refuse this equivocal interpretation: individual forms and
preferences need a different denomination, while style is today as
it was 500 years ago the common language of an epoch. If we accept
this interpretation, the pretension of being without a style becomes
silly and disingenuous: can we imagine an artistic work that doesnt
reflect its times?

When I hear speeches about the refusal of style, my mind goes
immediately to the characters of an Orhan Pamuks novel: My Name is
Red. The main characters in this novel are miniaturists of the Ottoman
Empire that discuss (and fight and kill each other) around the subject
of style, the question is: which is true art? The expression of the
individual artist, or a perfect representation of the divine (in
which the artist suppresses any trace of his personal vanity)? The
Nobel Prize-winnings novel describes a very paradigmatic situation:
two different cultures are colliding (the Ottoman Empire meets the
Venetian Empire) and a new epoch rises. There is nothing to do for
the miniaturists - a new epoch introduces a new style, and all their
efforts to keep the traditional approach to the miniature are in vain.

If we look at the Net we can clearly see a lot of genres (mail art,
ASCII art, generative art, hacker art, pixel art, and so on...), but
we can also identify a style. A couple of the main elements of this
style are in my very personal opinion the remixing attitude and
the D.I.Y. practice. Human culture has always been defined by its
ability to remix ideas, concepts and inspirations, but nowadays there
is something new: the new media advent has extended our potential to
such an extent that we remix continuously, even when we are not aware
of it. New media force us to do a continuous cut and paste of the
endless digital data surrounding us. Thus, we can assume that remixing
is the composition method of our times.

At the same time, new media give us the potential to get our hands
around this growing digital data sea, indeed, we can manage and shape
it even if we dont have particular expertise. So we draw data from an
endless source and we recombine them using all kind of digital tools,
in few words: we remix culture on our own. In this situation, can we
imagine an artistic expression that is immune to the two most popular
practices of our times? I dont think so. Instead, the style of our
epoch can be found into what I am tempted to call: R.I.Y. (Remix It
Yourself).

Obviously, there are other elements that contribute to the actual
style, for example, its easy to observe how non-linear narrative
is taking linear narratives place. Instead of denying the concept
of style, we should look around us to identify what are the
characteristics of our times, and in doing that, we would also
understand what the actual style is shaped by.

GL: How do you deal with the popular in web aesthetics? Often it is
said that popular culture is so trashy. But with Internet culture the
masses of users these days are so advanced. Theory and criticism have
yet to discover blogs, Second Life, Wikipedia and all that. Having
said that, its clear we no longer live in the 1980s and have to
promote a serious study of popular (media) culture. Cultural Studies
has established itself in such a big way, we shouldnt have to make
such calls Still there is the question, from a theory point of view,
whether or not to overcome the popular.

VC: What is the popular? This is a good starting point, if we refer
to the Web, and broadly to digital media. Common people are the
vanguard we need to test our theories, our hypothesis, our projects,
and our products too. Whos discovering a new world like Second Life?
Whos populating our databases, our wikis and our blogs? Whos testing
our new digital tools? We need them to reach a critical mass. As a
consequence all the communication is directed to them: try this new
product for free, trial period, make a free tour, open your own
blog, publish your photo album, these and many others formulas
witnessing that we need the masses of users in order to get feedback,
to give basis to our theories, to shape our products.

We dont need them just as audience (the TV age model), the Internet
age postulates an active participation, thus, the masses are required
to turn themselves into players. What would remain of Web 2.0 and
social networks without masses? A desert, I guess.

With all the digital media and contexts we are creating the masses
have also produced an incredible amount of content. If that is
actually what we define as popular culture, then the questions are:
what are we supposed to do with all this stuff? Is this cultural
production significant? Should we spend our time in studying and
analyzing it?

For sure we dont have time to do that, so (usually) we limit
ourselves to give a bit of our attention to the events that, pushed
by mass media, bounce under our noses. The most interesting thing for
me is to observe how the top rated/most viewed videos on YouTube are
all commercial TV like products; the usual Second Life public spaces
(streets and buildings) are crowded with more advertising than Las
Vegas (most of them are dedicated to sex); the stick memories of the
average MP3 players are filled with the same music you can listen to
on any commercial radio station, and shall we talk about the subjects
of the photos stored in millions of digital cameras?

What Im trying to mark is that with new media we are repeating the
stupidity and the uselessness of our TV formats, the advertisings
invasion of any public space, the boredom of the pop music scene,
etc... Vulgarity and the dissipation of any significance are moving
from old media to new media, and I dont see any good reason to spend
my time with such popular culture.

Besides this, its also very interesting to observe how the old media
are becoming more and more permeable to blogs and D.I.Y. information.
This phenomenon is not due to a fascination in more democratic
information sources (the traditional media holders hate new media and
people involved with it), on the contrary - the pressure is rising due
to the growth of the eyes (digital cameras and all the new devices)
that are watching the same events that mainstream media are reporting
to us: the possibility of being uncovered are too many and broadcast
journalists are forced to tell the truth (or at least a plausible
version of it). As a consequence, blogs have become the major source
of news and information about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal
(a scandal born thanks to modern digital devices) and the Iraq War.
Then the question is: what impact is the blogosphere having on the
traditional medias control over news and information? We also have to
consider that bloggers are often the only real journalists, as they
(at their own risk) provide independent news in countries where the
mainstream media is censored or under control.

GL: Is it your aim to promote sophistication in web design? How can we
identify, and then design sophisticated communication?

VC: I dont like sophistication very much, I prefer a minimalist
approach to web design, with clear and linear interfaces that give
intuitive access to sophisticated and very structured data. When you
have to manage complex data sets or very rich multimedia contents, the
best you can do is design a structure that is very minimal. Indeed,
you dont have to add meaning to the content you are representing,
otherwise you make it useless and baroque. Nevertheless, minimalist
doesnt mean careless or dull, instead it means not one sign more
than necessary, it means taking care of details, it means being
moderate and objective.

We also have to consider that there are so many kinds of data that
there cant be one universal formula of access. In fact, some
information, such as the structure of a network, need graphic
expedients to be understood. Also, there are many realities that
have no meaning if showed only in a textual format. In those cases
we use graphs, charts, etc., and very often we obtain wonderful and
unexpected forms. For example, if you look at the Manuel Limas
project, Visual Complexity (www.visualcomplexity.com), youll easily
find many wonderful visualizations of complex networks.

In view of such artistic representation of data the problem becomes:
where is the line? How much graphic sophistication (or embellishment)
do we need to solve a visualization problem? I guess the answer can
found on a case-by-case basis, and the only line we can certainly
detect is the one between the amount of complexity required by a
representation (objective factor) and the self-satisfaction that
pushes any designer into going over what is required (subjective
factor).

(edited by Henry Warwick)

- --

URLs:

Vito Campanelli's home page
Media & Arts Office
Web designers collective Klash
The Net Observer
Boiler magazine

Posted by jo at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

History Will Repeat Itself: Strategies of Re-enactment

histrenact.jpg

in Contemporary (Media) Art and Performance

History Will Repeat Itself: Strategies of Re-enactment in Contemporary (Media) Art and Performance :: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany: June 9 - September 23, 2007; Opening: Friday, June 8, 2007, 19:00 :: KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Germany: November 18, 2007 – January 13, 2008; Opening: Saturday, November 17, 2007 :: Concept: Inke Arns; Curated by: Inke Arns and
Gabriele Horn; Co-curator: Katharina Fichtner.

The exhibition History Will Repeat Itself illuminates current strategies of re-enactment in contemporary (media) art and performance, and presents the positions and strategies of 23 international artists. A cooperative project by Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) Dortmund and KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, this is the first comprehensive exhibition project on the subject of re-enactment in Germany.

Unlike popular historical re-enactments, artistic re-enactments are not simply affirming what has happened in the past, but rather they are questioning the present via repeating or re-enacting historical events that have left their traces in the collective memory. Re-enactments are artistic interrogations of media images that try to scrutinise the reality of the images, while at the same time pointing towards the fact that the collective memory is significantly informed by media images.

Participating artists include: Guy Ben-Ner (IL/DE), Walter Benjamin (YU), Irina Botea (RO/US), C-Level (US), Daniela Comani (IT/DE), Jeremy Deller (GB), Rod Dickinson (GB), Nikolai Evreinov (RU), Omer Fast (IL/DE), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (GB), Heike Gallmeier (DE), Felix Gmelin (SE), Pierre Huyghe (FR), Evil Knievel (US), Korpys/Loeffler (DE), Zbigniew Libera (PL), Robert Longo (US), Tom McCarthy (GB), Frédéric Moser / Philippe Schwinger (CH), Collier Schorr (US), Kerry Tribe (US), T.R. Uthco & Ant Farm (US), Artur Zmijewski (PL).

In Dortmund, the exhibition will run in parallel (9 June - 23 September) to Documenta 12 in Kassel and skulptur.projekte muenster in Munster, Germany. The venue of the show is Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, a spectacular 1895 factory hall measuring 2.200 square meters belonging to a giant former steel production plant.

Located in the formerly heavily industrialized region of the Ruhr valley, Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) Dortmund is one of the leading institutions for media art in today's Germany. Founded in 1996, HMKV serves as a platform for the production, presentation, education on and contextualisation of contemporary and experimental media art.

Please note that Dortmund is only 30 min. by train from Munster, and 2,5 hours from Kassel.

Later this year, the show will travel to Berlin and be on display at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art from 18 November 2007 until 13 January 2008.

The exhibition History Will Repeat Itself is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation, Kunststiftung NRW, Staatskanzlei NRW, Bundesamt für Kultur BAK (Switzerland), NRW Kultursekretariat Wuppertal, The Henry Moore Foundation, Pro Helvetia, and The British Council.

The program of Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund is supported by Kulturbuero and by Wirtschaftsfoerderung der Stadt Dortmund.

The cultural programs of KW Institute for Contemporary Art are made possible thanks to the support of The Governing Mayor of Berlin - Senate Chancellery - Cultural Affairs.

For press material, please contact Roland Kentrup, kentrup[at]zk.nrw-online.de

Venue and opening hours:
HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund (exhibition venue)
Thursday and Friday 11 - 22
Saturday and Sunday 11 - 20
Hochofenstrasse / corner Rombergstrasse
Dortmund-Hoerde

How to get there- Map.

Hartware MedienKunstVerein (office)
Guentherstr. 65
44143 Dortmund
Germany
T ++49.231.823106
F ++49.231.8820240
info[at]thmkv.de

Posted by jo at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2007

Upgrade! Vancouver

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New Writing, New Technologies

Upgrade! Vancouver: New Writing, New Technologies :: May 17, 2007, 7:30 pm :: Launch Party for The Capilano Review [TCR] 2-50: Artifice and Intelligence, guest edited by Andrew Klobucar :: With panel discussion, food, & live a/v by CineCitta :: Co-presented with The Capilano Review :: Intersections Digital Studios (IDS), Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, 1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island.

The latest issue of The Capilano Review: 2-50 - Artifice and Intelligence, features an array of cultural producers currently investigating the complex and rapidly evolving relationships between writing, art, and digital technology.

Join us as we explore critical questions on how contemporary developments in media technologies - its tools and methods - continue to influence many of today's most important literary and art movements, and how these new technologies affect the concept of knowledge.

Panel discussion with Jim Andrews, Kate Armstrong, David Jhave Johnston, Laura Marks, Sandra Seekins, and Darren Wershler-Henry, moderated by Andrew Klobucar.

Join us for food, drinks and live a/v by CineCitta 7:30pm
Panel discussion: 8:30 pm

Supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, Capilano College, Upgrade! Vancouver, & Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design. Darren Wershler-Henry appears courtesy of Capilano College's new Creative Writing Program reading series OPEN TEXT.

The Capilano Review: 2-50 - Artifice and Intelligence
Contributors:
Global Telelanguage Resources
Sandra Seekins
Kate Armstrong
David Jhave Johnston
Laura U. Marks
Sharla Sava
Antonia Hirsch
Kevin Magee
Jim Andrews
Gordon Winiemko
Nancy Patterson
Darren Werschler-Henry

Posted by jo at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

Flux Factory presents

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Paterson, a collaboration between Flux Factory and a city

Flux Factory is proud to present Paterson, an artistic collaboration between Flux Factory and an entire city :: June 2-July 14 :: Opening Party: Saturday, June 2, 4pm at the Paterson Museum, Paterson, NJ :: For further information: Website, Phone: 718-707-3362, Email contact: Stefany Anne Golberg, info[at]fluxfactory.org

What Are We Doing? Flux Factory has assembled a team of artists and art professionals to create a proposal for a monument to the city of Paterson, New Jersey. We will keep a headquarters at the Paterson Museum which will act as a meeting place, research library, and installation. We are going to immerse ourselves in Paterson in order to come up with ideas that reflect the real people and the real experience of the place. During our six weeks in Paterson there will be daily events like walking tours, lectures, readings, discussions, performances, get-togethers, picnics, boat and bicycle rides, and debates, all free and open to the general public (not including transportation). Tours will be given by Flux Factory and Patersonians alike. Please visit our website for an updated list of event schedules.

Why Paterson? Paterson, New Jersey is a special place. Founded as the first planned industrial city by Alexander Hamilton and others, it played a major role in the industrial and economic development of the United States. But Paterson is also part of the cultural imagination of our country. William Carlos Williams wrote an extended lyric poem taking Paterson as his title and subject. The important American artist Robert Smithson considered Paterson and the surrounding Passaic Valley to be a source of artistic inspiration. Indeed, Paterson and the American Imagination are deeply connected.

Anything Else We Should Know? Monuments are often a disappointment, to say the least, though human beings have been building them since the beginning of civilization. There are places and people we all want to pay homage to. But the end result is often dull and lifeless, the very opposite of the subject being memorialized. What is a monument? Is it an ode to bygone days? A celebration of the past or an expression of the future? We think that “Paterson” will create an artwork out of the process of thinking through these questions. Most fundamentally, this project carries forward an idea of collaboration that animates everything we do at Flux Factory. Flux Factory projects are always about bringing groups of people together in order to create an experience. In this case, the idea of collaboration is being pushed to a whole new level: a collaboration that involves an entire city. Indeed, more than an entire city, since a basic assumption of this project is that Paterson is a lens through which one can discover things about the American experience in general and involve people from all over the world.

PATERSON PARTICIPANTS: Jean Barberis, Mikey Barringer, Angela Beallor, Jason David Brown, Christine Conforti, Joseph Costa, Giacomo De Stefano, Peter Duyan, Alita Edgar, eteam, Neil Freeman, Dana Gramp, The Ivanhoe Artists Mosaic of Paterson, Suzanne Joelson, Joe Milutis, The Paterson Museum, Leonora Retsas, Joe Ruffilo, Shuli Sade, Ruth Stanford.

*Conceived and Organized by Stefany Anne Golberg and Morgan Meis*

‘Paterson’ is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Queens Council on the Arts, as well as generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York.

EVENTS AND TOURS

*PLEASE NOTE: Schedules may be subject to change, so please visit our website, www.fluxfactory.org, for more information. Most tours, unless otherwise indicated, are walking tours. Please wear comfortable shoes and be prepared to walk.

Town Hall Meetings: Discuss the project with the design team. This is open to the general public—Patersonians and New Yorkers alike. Make your voice heard!
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Dates: Every Thursday evening from June 7-July 12
Time: 7:00pm

Opening Party: Reception and introduction to the project
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Saturday, June 2
Time: 4:00pm

Paterson reading group with Joe Milutis: The “Paterson Reading Group” will be an informal discussion of William Carlos Williams’ epic poem Paterson, meeting on throughout June, and featuring tours and special guests. Participants will be expected to furnish their own copy of ‘Paterson’; we’ll be using the “revised edition” with annotations by Christopher MacGowan. To register for the reading group and receive updates and meeting locations, please email joe_milutis[at]brown.edu.

Sunday, June 3; 2pm
Introductions; tour of the Passaic Falls, Paterson Museum;
dutch-treat dinner at Griselda’s.

Monday, June 11; 7pm
Discussion of Book I of Paterson.

Monday, June 25; 7pm
Discussion of Book II of Paterson;
walk on Garrett Mountain

Monday, July 2; 7pm
Discussion of Book III of Paterson;
visit to Paterson Public Library

Monday, July 9; 7pm
Discussion of Books IV and V of Paterson

Special Tour with artist duo eteam: More information to come
Where to meet: TBA
Date: Saturday, June 9
Time: TBA

The Expert’s Historic Tour: Tour with Paterson Museum Director Giacomo De Stefano
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Dates: Sunday, June 10
Time: 2:00pm

The Flâneur Tour: Three cooperative, unstructured car drives through Paterson with artist Neil Freeman. PLEASE NOTE: Because of space, these tours are limited to 3-4 participants each. First come first serve. Please RSVP to 718.707.3362.
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Dates: June 10, June 16, June 30
Time: 11:00am

The Pilgrimage Tour: Jean Barberis takes you on a stroll that starts in Grand Central Station and leads you all the way to the Great Falls in Paterson. Actually, it’s only 20 miles, so don’t be shy! Beverages are on us.
Where to meet: Grand Central Station, NYC
Date: Saturday, June 16
Time: 11:00am

The Paterson Art Scene-War Stories from Those Who Know: Artists Joe Ruffilo and Don Kommit give you the lowdown on Paterson’s rich artistic and literary history, from personal stories of Kerouac and Ginsburg to the present.
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Saturday, July 23
Time: 2:00pm

The Religious Institutions of Paterson: Their Architecture and Influence on the Community: The city of Paterson has nearly 140 places of worship. This tour will focus on the design of a few of the institutions and their effects on the growth and development of the community. Led by Leonora Retsas.
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Sunday, June 24
Time: 2:00pm

Wednesdays at the Ivanhoe: Visit the one and only Ivanhoe Artists Mosaic, a nonprofit arts organization, meeting house, and gallery in Paterson, for their monthly "Open Mike" with the opening reception for "Love Affair with Paterson" a tribute to all there is to love about the world's first planned industrial city. See website for details and directions to all events, www.ivanhoeartists.org.
Where to meet: Ivanhoe Wheelhouse, Spruce Street between Market St. and McBride Ave, next to Burger King
Date: Wednesday, June 27
Time: 8:00pm

Industrial Archaeology Tour: Tour the city’s unbelievable old mill buildings and industrial architecture with Shuli Sade and others.
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Saturday, June 30
Time: 1:00pm

Cinematic Visions of Paterson: Films about Paterson, films by Patersonians, and unexpected films… An event with Mikey Barringer. To be followed by a party at the Ivanhoe.
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Sunday, July 1
Time: 3:00pm

A Re-Tour Of The Monuments Of The Passaic: Travel with Peter Duyan as you re-create, re-walk, and re-photograph Robert Smithson's experience of monumental discovery through Passaic, New Jersey. What are today's New Monuments? Lets find out.

Where to meet: Port Authority NYC. Meet at the 190 bus gate going to Paterson. Roundtrip tickets between NYC and Paterson are $9.00 and can be purchased at the bud station. Call 646.708.2360 for more info.
Date: Saturday, July 7
Time: 10:45am

The Paterson Mystery Tour: Stefany Anne Golberg and Morgan Meis take you on a tour of Paterson full of special discoveries and hidden places…To be followed by drinks and more at The Ivanhoe
Where to meet: Paterson Museum
Date: Sunday, July 8
Time: 2:00pm

Closing Party: Details TBA. See www.fluxfactory.org for updates. Date: Saturday, July 14

There are a number of great festivals happening in Paterson this summer! Check them out:

African American Heritage Parade: June 16, 2007, beginning at 10:00am. Parade starts at the Masonic Temple on Broadway

Puerto Rican Parade and Festival: The festival will happen on Marshall Street from August 24-16. The parade will be on Main Street on August 26

Getting to Paterson from NYC

By Bus: From Port Authority, take the 190 bus to Paterson. For Paterson Museum, take the bus to the end of the line, Broadway. Buses usually leave every 15 minutes. Go to www.njtransit.com for more info. Cost: $4.50 each way

By Train: From Penn Station. Must switch trains in Secaucus. Go to www.njtransit.com for more info and schedules. Cost: $5.25 each way

By Car:Follow Route 80 West and signs to Paterson. For the Paterson Museum, get off at Exit 57-A/B, to Downtown Paterson.

For detailed driving directions to the Paterson Museum, visit www.thepatersonmuseum.com

Flux Factory is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization.

Posted by jo at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

mech[a]OUTPUT

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koosil-ja / danceKUMIKO

The Japan Society presents mech[a]OUTPUT by koosil-ja / danceKUMIKO :: Thu-Sat May 31- June 2, 2007.

Radical New York-based choreographer/dancer/ singer song writer/ new media artist Koosil-Ja presents an electrifying multimedia dance-performance with live 3-D environment, seamlessly incorporating elements of traditional noh music and choreography from the classic noh play Dojoji. The legends surrounding Dojo-ji Temple in Wakayama, southeast of Osaka, have inspired numerous noh and kabuki plays about the vengeful spirit of a spurned woman. By juxtaposing the restrained and subtle choreography of Dojoji with 3D world imaging projected on to a large screen, the daring Bessie Award and Guggenheim Fellowship-winning artist Koosil-ja transposes the work into her own aesthetic context, creating an innovative blend of modern and traditional, digital and flesh.

The production features 3D world designed and production by Claudia Hart, 3D Interactive interface designed and performed by John Klima, live Neo Punk Music by Geoff Matters, dramaturgy by Nanako Nakajima, Pendulum & Physical Apparatus Design and Kinetic Engineering by Michael Casselli, Head Gear by Tara Webb, and Betnon-C Bainbirdge (Video Projection Super Engineering).

With:

Geoff Matters (Live Neo Punk Music and Software Design)
Nanako Nakajima (Dramaturgy)
Michael Casselli (Pendulum & Physical Apparatus Design and Kinetic Engineering)
Claudia Hart (3D Wrold)
John Klima (3D Interface & Live Performance)
koosil-ja (Concept, Dance, Video, Video pendulum, Song, Sound Installation and Costume)
Tara Webb (Head Gear)
Benton-C Bainbirdge (Video Projection Super Engineering)

Dates: Thu-Sat May 31- June 2, 2007
Time: 7:30PM
Location: 333 East 47th Street, btwn 1st and 2nd Ave. NYC
Tickets: $25/$20 Japan Society members.
Reservations: Japan Society (212) 715-1258
at JAPAN SOCIETY Ticket Information

STUDENT RUSH $12.50 Student Rush (50% off!)
Pending availability, Student Rush tickets will go on sale an hour
before showtime. Valid ID required, 2 tickets max per ID.

mech[a]OUTPUT is made possible by a commission from Japan Society; funds from American Music Center Live Music for Dance, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and generous individual contributions.

Posted by jo at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

The Prosthetic Impulse:

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From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future

Prosthesis -- pointing to an addition, replacement, extension, enhancement -- has become something of an all-purpose metaphor for the interactions of body and technology. Concerned with cybernetics, transplant technology, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, among other cultural and scientific developments, "the prosthetic" conjures up a posthuman condition. In response to this, the 13 original essays in The Prosthetic Impulse reassert the phenomenological, material, and embodied nature of prosthesis without dismissing its metaphorical potential. They examine the historical and conceptual edge between the human and the posthuman -- between flesh and its accompanying technologies. Rather than tracking the transformation of one into the other, these essays address this borderline and the delicate dialectical situation in which it places us. Concentrating on this edge, the collection demonstrates how the human has been technologized and technology humanized.

The eclectic approach taken by The Prosthetic Impulse draws on disciplines ranging from gender studies, philosophy, and visual culture to psychoanalysis, cybertheory, and phenomenology. The first section, "Carnality: Between Phenomenology and the Biocultural" concentrates on the organic, describing a body that, by its very materiality, is always and already prosthetic. The second section, "Assembling: Internalization. Externalization," considers the technological qualities and peculiarities of prosthesis, raising questions about the ways in which film, photography, AI, drawing, and literature -- representation itself -- can be situated within the framework of a prosthetic discourse. Taken together, the essays suggest that prosthesis is material as well as metaphorical. "It is just a matter of pondering where the inelegant edges lie," the editors write, "and living them most wonderfully."

From The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, Edited by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra.

Marquard Smith is Course Director of the Masters Programme in Art History and Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture in the School of Art and Design History, Kingston University, London. He is editor-in-chief of the journal of visual culture.

Joanne Morra is Senior Lecturer in Historical and Theoretical Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. She is principal editor of the journal of visual culture.

Posted by jo at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York

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Michael Mandiberg

Upgrade! New York: Michael Mandiberg :: Thursday, May 10, 7:30 PM :: @ Eyebeam, 540-548 west 21st street (bet 10 & 11 Ave).

Michael Mandiberg will be giving a talk + workshop about his new project Real Costs. Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop to play along. Programming knowledge useful, but not necessary. This hybrid talk/workshop will include a 30 minute presentation of the project, and how it relates to Michael's previous work, followed by guided mod'ing of the script. Michael will provide a focused walk through of the code, and then set everyone free to make some modifications and provide feedback for the project.

Michael Mandiberg is an artist, computer programmer and rogue economist who uses the Internet, video and performance to explore subjectivity, labor and commerce. Michael’s most recent project, Oil Standard, created a browser plug-in that converts all prices on any web page to their equivalent value in barrels of oil. He will continue this vein of work at Eyebeam, employing devices such as Firefox plug-ins and open API platforms to highlight real environmental costs in a global economy.

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Sofia

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Blender & Open Source Software and Communities

Upgrade! Sofia wakes up in the heat of May to bring local enthusiasts a few steps closer to the international open source software and community with Blender & Open Source Software and Communities :: Wednesday, May, 16th, 2007 :: Cammer Hall, National Theatre of Satire "Aleko Konstantinov", 26 Stefan Karadja Street :: start: 19:00.

An evening of three presentations. Three professionals from three different countries with long experience in 3D graphics and open source software and communities. Three points of view: Why is Blender one of most successful open source projects in multimedia?

Presenters: The point of view of a 3D developer: Rui Campos (Portugal) - Head of the Blender Foundation Education Board. Developer and Trainer of an e-learning platform for internal use. NewsForge writer.

The point of view of an game designer: Sanu Vamanchery Mana (India) - 8 years of experience in the broadcast, gaming and web Industry. Thorough knowledge of 3D Max and Maya's capabilities. Skilled modeler, excellent lighting, dynamic procedural texturing, compositing, keying and mattes, motion tracking and rotoscoping.

The point of view of an architect: Theodore Dounas (Greece) - Research in architectural design and threedimentional computer games Phd candidate. Teaching of architectural design in Intergraphics College, Intergeraphics educational group, www.intergraphics.gr Teaching of computer aided design for architects and designers, in educational organization Papiotis.

The presenters are official trianers at the TOSMI (training on open -source multimedia instruments) organized by InterSpace and supported by the MEDIA programme of the European Commission.

For the people still working with Maya and 3D Studio Max - Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. In one word: it does everything you usually do, but for free.

Links: theupgrade.i-space.org
tosmi.i-space.org
slovo.bg/satirata
blender.cult.bg
intergraphics.gr

Posted by jo at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

ArtCamp

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9 juin (9 of june), Rennes (France - UE)

A BarCamp(1) will be organized in Rennes. It will be held on June 9 in Rennes in France. All are welcome! This BarCamp is on contemporary artistic practices ("ArtCamp" : digital arts, Net art, electronic music, visual arts...) with sciences and ICT. The purpose is to support exchanges between international experts, researchers, engineers, amateurs, artists from all horizons... Everything is possible: to cross methods of innovation, to make known a project or a innovating idea, to imagine new collaborations, to show your experiments, to find competences which you lack... A maximum of 80 people can come. Inscription is free but obligatory! Information can be found here. Contact : emmanuel.mahe[at]orange-ftgroup.com

(1) What is a BarCamp? BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. The name is a playful allusion to its origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off from Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing luminary, Tim O'Reilly.

BarCamps are organized (and evangelized) largely through the web, harnessing what might be called a Web 2.0 communications toolkit. By "open-sourcing" the organizational process of a Foo Camp unconference, that is, codifying it in a wiki and making that publicly available, BarCamp seems to have struck a chord. It has since been implemented in 31 cities around the world and is serving as a reference for unconferences in other fields. The involvement of key figures in the web development community, such as Tantek Çelik and Ross Mayfield, no doubt has helped its adoption. More information about BarCamps.

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

May 09, 2007

Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix

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Download it Now

Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix :: Edited by Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye. Design by Joel Swanson (hippocrit.com). Contributors include Niall Lucy, Jon McKenzie, Linda Marie Walker, Craig Saper, Rowan Wilken, Marcel O'Gorman, Teri Hoskin, and Michael Jarrett, with an introduction by editors Tofts and Gye.

"Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix" is an exciting new ebook publication that employs theorist Gregory Ulmer's invocation to invent new forms of electronic writing. As the ebook's editors, Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye, write in their brilliant introduction, "Ulmer has been at the forefront of thinking about new cultural formations as the paradigm of literacy converges with digital culture." Ulmer's work has been central to contemporary thinking on the future of writing and his international presence as one of the leading figures in media arts discourse has influenced a multitude of disciplines from electronic literature and Internet art to critical theory, communications studies, and art history.

The ebook features a diverse group of artists, theorists, and creative writers who develop new forms of hybridized "digital rhetoric." Their inventive and audacious experiments take advantage of recent developments in the field of new media studies, and as part of Alt-X's mission to participate in the creative commons provided by the Web, are available for free download.

This provocative collection of multi-tracked writing puts into play many of Ulmer's breakthrough theories summed up in his most recognized hot-button terms: applied grammatology, heuretics, post(e)-pedagogy, textshop, mystory, and choragraphy. Encouraged by the example of Ulmer's own hyperrhetorical writing style, the authors incorporate collaged imagery, mp3 soundtracks, and QuickTime movies into their innovative multimedia mix while exploring how these same extensions of "writerly performance" explode the false barrier between academic discourse and spontaneous poetics, narrative and rhetoric, and autobiography and fiction. Positing an "illogic of sense" to reclaim what Ulmer calls an "anticipatory consciousness," designed to utilize the force of intuition as a way to invent emergent forms of knowledge, this grouping of hypermedia texts showcase how interdisciplinary writers can remix the methodological approach of an avant-garde philosophy propelled by Ulmer, one that prioritizes an ongoing process of discovery and media arts assemblage.

The ebook is beautifully designed by artist Joel Swanson of hippocrit.com, who crosses his visionary design sensibility with state of the art technology to produce an original work of ebook-art that many will view as finally fulfilling the long-promised potential of online publishing to use stimulating visual arrangement, media hybridization, and typographical ingenuity to blur the distinction between publication, exhibition, and design performance.

Download "Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix" ebook here. (46MB)

Posted by jo at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

Fijuu2

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Needs your Help

Fijuu2 was accepted for installation at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in New York, on show from June 07 through til the 10th this year. We have a very nice (read 'expensive') small form-factor shuttle that we usually use for presenting the piece here in Europe, running Ubuntu 6.10 and a recent NVIDIA SLI graphics card.

As is common in America, there's no fee for presenting work at NIME, so we're reluctant to send the machine over the Atlantic at our own expense. Travel expenses are also not covered, so we're not going to NIME itself. To that effect we can't bring the machine with us as carry-on luggage (like we normally do).

So, we're looking for someone in the New York area that would be willing to provide a machine on which to present Fijuu2 for those three days - publically credited as our official NIME07 hardware sponsor ;)

Installing Fijuu2 itslf is now just a case of double-clicking a few Debian packages - no UNIX kungfu required. this places the only requirements being a gamepad (we can send that over), Ubuntu 6.10, a reasonable sound-card and fast graphics card.

Here's a bit about the project: http://fijuu.com/outline/index.html; recent video describing the interface model: home page here; and here's a bit about NIME 07. Write to inf[at]@fijuu.com if you think you can help. Thanks for reading!

julian
http://julianoliver.com
http://selectparks.net

Posted by jo at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

Psychobotany:

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Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communication

Psychobotany: Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communication" :: Opening May 12th 7-10pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles :: curated by Aaron Gach.

It is rumored that attendees may witness: - documentation of collaborations between plants, dancers, and synthesizers in the 70s - a plant alerting its owner of underwatering via telephone - plants responsive to touch - newsreporting by the Plant Media Network - a potion corner. Vistors can also participate in a social experiment that tests the collective impact of positive and negative thoughts on tomato plants. Druids may or may not be in attendance. All plants and humans welcome.

Featuring the efforts of...

Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
Botanicalls
Cleve Backster
Center for Tactical Magic
Peter Coffin
DARPA
Earth Films
Molly Frances
Marc Herbst
Denise King
John Lifton
Richard Lowenberg
Jim Wiseman
Tom Zahuranec
plus Moses, the Druids, and More!

Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-483-8761

Posted by jo at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

MediaNoche presents

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Ursula Endlicher to Perform www.myspace.com

MediaNoche presents: New media artist Ursula Endlicher will perform www.myspace.com from her "Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited" series :: May 12 2007, 8PM :: 161 East 106th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues.

Ursula will take direction from the site's real-time source code combined with material from her 'html-movement-library', which contains movements and gestures submitted by the public. This will determine the flow of her "Website Impersonations" as she follows these choreographic instructions in MediaNoche. Visitors to the exhibition and passers-by are invited to participate in the performance.

According to the artist, "Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited is a performance series utilizing the html-movement-library for enacting and re-interpreting the "ten most popular" websites. The choreography for each Website Impersonation comes from the real-time html structure of each site, translated by the library into movement suggestions 'on the fly.' As a performer I never know which html tag, and therefore which movement task will come next as this is depending on how the site is scripted at the moment.

MediaNoche is Uptown's first new media gallery where the digital arts and community converge. Only blocks from Museum Mile, MediaNoche is easily reached by the IRT #6 train to East 103rd Street, or by the bus routes along Third and Lexington Avenues.

FREE and open to the public!
For more information:
Judith Escalona, Director of MediaNoche
212.646.228.7950 or 212.828.0401

This performance is presented in conjunction with Ursula's current exhibition "The html-movement-library and Singing Website Wallpaper" at MediaNoche, extended through June 8, 2007. For more information on the performance series go to
http://www.ursenal.net/wi_ttmv.

Posted by jo at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Berlin

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Field trip to Trampoline Berlin

Upgrade! Berlin: field trip to Trampoline Berlin :: Wednesday, May 9 at 7 pm at Trampoline Berlin, Rungestrasse 20; near U - Station Jannowitzbrücke.

Meet the curators of Trampoline Berlin 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 end of May.

Trampoline is dedicated to the promotion of new technology art and artists and aims to present cutting edge art in an informal atmosphere; encouraging new artists to exhibit work to a real audience, whilst providing a platform for established artists working in new directions. Trampoline began life in 1997 as Nottingham's first ever platform event for new media art.

In 2001, founders Miles Chalcraft and Anette Schäfer moved to Berlin and expanded Trampoline to Germany. Co-founder Gareth Howell continued Trampoline Nottingham throughout 2001 and 2002. Since then Trampoline has been left in the capable hands of a series of guest curators including Sharmila Cogger and Lizzy Whirrity, Nottingham art based collective, REACTOR and now Emma Lewis. The most recent events took place in October and December 2005, as part of the Radiator Festival. Work is always selected for Trampoline from an open call for submissions. Please find more information here.

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 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2007

Psychological Prosthetics

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@ Pathogeographies

Anya Liftig will be in Chicago this weekend performing her piece, 'Loomed' for the Pathogeographies Show at University of Chicago and Mess Hall. May 13: 2pm: Anya Liftig, Loomed' Performance :: at MESS HALL, 6932 N. Glenwood Avenue, Chicago, IL 60626 :: 773 465 4033 :: 'Morse' stop on the CTA.

Liftig and Lian Sifuentes (PSYCHOLOGICAL PROSTHETICS™) will participate in a Roundtable Discussion, "The Pathological Body," on May 12: 7pm.

About Psychological Prosthetics: Founded in 2005 Psychological Prosthetics explores your political feelings; we help you handle your emotional baggage in these political times. Our products and services range from deluxe to economy. Each service and product is designed for you to explore your political feelings of anxiety, guilt, outrage, apathy, anger, hopelessness and regret. Explore our full range of products from our 30 second rant recorder (investigate your outrage) to our custom designed suitcases for your personal emotional, political baggage.

Psychological Prosthetics™ has traveled internationally to England, France, Switzerland, Israel and the US. Most recently the full range of services was available at the “Corporate Art Expo 07” at the LAB, San Francisco, and at the University of Chicago “Pathogeographies” exhibition.

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About Pathogeographies: Pathogeographies: Or, Other People’s Baggage

How do you carry your pile of political feelings, and how do you want to encourage others to carry theirs? Pathogeographies is an exhibition project to be held at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, June 15-July 7, 2007.

The term pathogeography is modeled on the Situationists’ psychogeography but substitutes pathos (feeling) for psyche (the soul), emphasizing the emotional investments, temperatures, traumas, pleasures, and ephemeral experiences circulating throughout the political and cultural landscape. For Pathogeographies, we have invited other collectives and individuals—artists and non-artists alike—to create suitcases, real or imagined, that can carry tools around the city of Chicago and elsewhere to incite, create, collect, and record political/emotional scenes and return them to the gallery to be inspected, collated, discussed, distributed, and diverted to new uses. We envision the project as a surrealist but not unsympathetic irritant to current cartographic trends in art making. With our collaborators, we want not only to reveal hidden political histories as we map the affective expressions of various body politics, but also to create magical linkages and intensities that might extend our political horizons.

What’s at stake in such a project? Some might argue that despair is the pervasive/prevailing emotional current right now in many political communities—where the only “belief” is in our collective and accumulated failures—of stopping the war, of building a creative and effective left. The political arena seems either unthinkable or out of reach, eliciting intense cynicism from people whose votes aren’t counted, whose needs are ignored, whose grievances have no impact, and for whom “politics” signifies little but abuse of power. An unending sense of emergency is matched only by a corresponding sense of alienation, of not “knowing what to do,” and often, of not knowing what to think and how to feel. And yet, like so many, we persist; we are moved, not only by necessity, but by a relentless search for joy, for a life that can be called good and just. Can hopelessness be transformed? Is there anything useful about guilt? How might we collectivize our despair, and our joys? What’s YOUR utopia in need of a rescue? To explore all these pathogeographies, we call on you, your ideas, energy, participation.

Reviewed by Ryan Griffis:

Pathogeographies
June 15-July7
Gallery 400, University of Illinois, Chicago

In an overcrowded London neighborhood in 1854, the powerful combination of cartography and medical knowledge defeated a cholera outbreak that had killed over 600 residents. Dr. John Snow, credited as single-handedly halting the spread of the disease, mapped the proximity of the deaths to water wells and determined that a single well was the source of infection. Subsequently, he managed to have the use of that well stopped, despite the reluctance of local officials, by removing the pump's handle, thus stopping the outbreak. At least, that's how the story of the development of medical cartography and epidemiology if often told.

A century after Snow's formative maps of London's cholera-stricken Broad Street neighborhood, members of the Lettrist International initiated the theory and practice of psychogeography as the study of how the urban, physical environment impacted the consciousness of its inhabitants. Like Snow, the post-Lettrist Situationists sought to counter a disease they saw contained within the built environment. Also like Snow, they did so with the help of maps - only their maps sought to counter, rather than ameliorate, the oppressive instrumentality of capitalist urban space.

Cartography and mapping, including variations on psychogeography, have become a common trope in contemporary art practice, finding expression in forms across media and subject. It is within this context, among others, that I read the recent exhibition and event series, Pathogeographies. Organized by a Chicago-based collective known as Feel Tank, who's work investigates "the emotional temperature of the body politic," Pathogeographies offers an empathic critique of the urban environment, adding social bonding strategies to the oppositional methods of earlier psychogeographic practice.

The exhibition at Gallery 400 is organized into five key themes, giving some framework to the multitude of projects presented. "Moving Compan" contained interventions in space and place, such as the Institute for Infinitely Small Things' "Unmarked Package: A Case for Feeling Insecure" in which the group traveled around the city with a collection of white boxes marked "Unmarked Package" discussing insecurity with passersby. In "Left Luggage," designed by another Chicago collective, Material Exchange, visitors can browse through a collection of suitcases containing artist projects Laura Davis' autobiographical "My Eighties Self," to Matthew Slaats participatory photo-documentary "Timed Change." Gallery visitors were asked to take an emotional and political breather in the "Slow Feeling" section, where Laurie Palmer's "Cloud Cover" challenges us to connect the effects of UV light on our emotional health with the architectural and political reality we have constructed around us. "Raw Material" presents informational projects, such as the Friends of William Blake's "New Yorkers' Guide to Military Recruitment" and Bonnie Fortune's "Radical Grandmothers" zine in a space also designed to encourage visitors to produce projects of their own. And for "Body Politic," Feel Tank organized a series of events distributed throughout Chicago, including their own "Fifth Annual International Parade of the Politically Depressed," on, appropriately, the Fourth of the July.

At the exhibition opening, Dewayne Slightweight performed "I Want to Know the Habits of Other Girls," a self-described 'queer opera.' The artist performed conversations with characters Gilda Radner, Gordon Gaskill, Limbo Tomboy and The Great Auntie, played by life-sized mannequins made of sewn and stuffed shiny fabric. Slightweight's choreographed music and recorded call-and-response dialogue, unevenly, but quite movingly, climaxed in a utopian, choral sing- along with the audience.

"I Want to Know the Habits" provided, arguably, a great encapsulation of the desires and overall effect of Pathogeographies. The audience, seated mostly on the floor, in a semi-circle around Slightweight's minimal yet baroque 'set,' was presented with a constructed narrative, but without the mandate to suspend disbelief. Yet, neither was there an imperative to reveal truth. Both fiction and reality can serve to oppress and liberate, their objective status as one or the other matters little to our experience of them. What seems to matter most here is the collective nature of reality, how individual experience is multiplied and magnified through social structures. Emotional states become emotional States.

Even as mapping tools become more and more available to a larger public, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe in the potential of maps to lead us somewhere more liberating. While artists and activists will no doubt continue to visualize the spaces of both oppression and community, the organizers of Pathogeographies seem to suggest that it's equally important to resist and create those respective spaces. At some point, the handle might need to be put
back on the pump.

Posted by jo at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

ISEA 2008 Artist In Residence

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Call for Proposals

ISEA 2008 Call for Proposals - Artist In Residence @ National University of Singapore.

The organizing committee of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts 2008 (ISEA2008) with generous support from the National University of Singapore (NUS), is soliciting proposals from New Media artists to work collaboratively with NUS centers of research and arts in preparation of work to be submitted for exhibition during the July 2008 ISEA in Singapore. Unlike previous symposia where there was a separate call for artists in residence and one of art works for exhibition, ISEA2008 will only have one call for artists' submission. The submissions selected for the AIR will also be subsequently produced and shown in the main ISEA exhibition. Submissions from countries and cultures underrepresented at other New Media venues are particularly encouraged.

Residencies of up to 3 months in duration can be supported, and must be completed before July 2008. Financial support from NUS is available for:

- Economy airfare to and from the artist/designers country of residence,
- University housing while the artist is in Singapore,
- A monthly allowance of S$2000,
- Materials cost of up to S$1000.

In addition, NUS Host Centers will provide equipment, facilities, and expertise as agreed to on a per-project basis.

Artists will have the opportunity and be expected to participate in public and academic community activities such as lectures and demonstrations during the course of their residency.

More details and the guidelines about AIR call submissions can be found at:
http://www.isea2008.org/air.html

Symposium Themes
http://www.isea2008.org/themes.html

The global and unequally distributed proliferation of information, communication and experiential technologies has led to the development of a highly differentiated and structurally complicated media arts field. Even as the advent of some technologies is actively celebrated and their potential exploited by some, some others have barely come to grips with the possibilities of 'long-obsolescent' technologies.

Even as some struggle with the newness of certain technologies, others somewhat jaded with the determinative influence on their lives and creativity are consciously opting for "old" and "low" technologies. In such a globally differentiated situation, the very notions of "new" and "old" technologies though pandered as an issue of relative sophistication is revealed as an issue of relative access largely determined by historical, political, economic and cultural contexts. That such technologies have become important engines of economic development has made a critical evaluation of their complicities in and complex relationships to particular socio-cultural, economic and political ways of being especially difficult. That one can simultaneously critique technologies and yet enjoy the benefits and pleasures of some particular technologies might seem like a compromise and sell-out for some, but is a necessary aspect of one's being in a world infused with such technologies to a point where opting out is both pragmatically impossible and ethically irresponsible.

In the art world, the problems of how one critically evaluates creative uses of technology are often confused with the questions of how one creatively enables the critical uses of technology. The themes for ISEA2008 Symposium have been selected to respond thus to the challenges of new and old technologies in creatively engaging the critical problems and possibilities of our age.

Locating Media

The oft-heard rhetoric of recent media technologies is that it complicates traditional notions of spatial and geographical location insofar as these technologies are said to attend to one's technological needs without regard to where one is; for example, one common myth goes like this: 'one can access information about anything and communicate with people on the net without regard to which country one is in'.

Such postulations of location-neutrality, however, are based on a fallacious assumption that one's location is merely a secondary aspect of one's experiential environment and thus can be phenomenologically simulated or even negligibly circumvented by the mediation of communication, information and experiential technologies.

Location, however, is a complex experience constituted by one's cultural, economic, political and technological environment that is differentially distributed and conceived in different parts of the world. Thus, new technologies, even while purporting to surmount location, seem to be merely following the contours of the location-specific 27 variables that operate in any particular space. While many recent technologies also present themselves as 'location-aware' that enable one's ability to address these location-specific variables in some ways, it is noteworthy that such experiences very often rely on simulating only an indexical notion of location through a series of sensory cues related to a particular space.

In the light of the centrality of location as a critical problematic and possibility, this theme seeks to examine how the specificities of location mediate and are mediated by both old and new technologies of information, communication and experience. We invite academic research, design and artistic explorations that explore the possibilities and problems of addressing location through media technologies. We are especially keen on works that address the complex historical, cultural, socio-political and economic contexts that affect location-specific interactions with such technologies.

Wiki Wiki

It is interesting that the Hawaiian word, 'wiki wiki', meaning "quick" has become co-opted to label the revolutionary systems and practices that support the easy and speedy tele-collaborative authoring of knowledge online
- i.e., wiki.

Wiki is an extremely easy-to-use authoring system for online content that cannibalizes on the HTML protocols with additional facilities to monitor all the changes being made, revert to content prior to editing as well as a space to discuss the evolving content. The fact that users are able to access the pages and change content without any restrictions, defies the development of a notion of single authorship and thus also the possibility of authorial responsibility for such content.

The relative ease in developing online content with a community of 'at a distance' presents wiki as a model tool for tele-collaborative production. Wiki is yet another example of how technologies are changing the ways in which creative knowledge production is being transformed by enabling collaboration between diverse individuals. In this theme, we seek to initiate discussion, deliberation and development in collaborative creation using new technologies. How have new and old technologies contributed to the development of collaborative making? What are some of the issues raised by collaborative creation; for example, authorship, artistic responsibility, claims to intellectual property, conflicts and confluences of disciplinary knowledge and practices, etc. What are the spaces of such collaborative work - what are the transitional spaces between the artists' studios and scientific labs?

We invite artistic and academic work that addresses and/or exemplifies the problems and possibilities of collaborative creative work that are enabled by technologies. Works that are created by collaborations between diverse and geographically diverse communities are especially encouraged.

Ludic Interfaces

The infantilization of play, that is, the historical association of playing with children and non-serious activities, has led to the systematic exclusion of play and fun from 'serious' creative, scientific and technological investigations. While the ludic (i.e., play-related) dimensions of artistic creativity have been variously explored recently in both art works and in scholarly research, the interactions between technological developments and the pleasures described as 'fun', are few and far between.

In fact, the history of technological development has more instances of people enjoying technologies than of those willing to acknowledge or systematically deliberate on such pleasures. It has been argued recently that the phenomenal development of the game and entertainment industries, primarily driven by various technologies that engender the expanded exploration of embodied pleasures, has highlighted the potential of technologically-driven experiences of fun.

However, there are those who assert that there is still much more need to investigate the complicities between technology and pleasure in these experiences and to develop alternative modalities of exploring the technological possibilities of pleasure and vice versa. In this theme, we seek to address the ways in which fun and enjoyment interact with and complicate new media technologies both in its design, creative development, everyday uses and discursive articulations. We especially encourage works that critically explore the entertainment industries and their use of recent technologies.

Reality Jam

While the reality effects of photography had forced a re-evaluation of the conventions and concerns of painting as well as of perception in the mid 19th century, the realistic aspirations of recent visualization and experiential technologies (e.g., in animation, gaming, immersive environments, mixed / augmented reality) are forcing us to reconsider our registers of the 'real' in our media and our everyday lives.

The confusing of the real and the virtual through seamless transitions and the perpetual obfuscation of the edges that demarcate them are increasingly the focus of scientific research as well as of creative works. The improvisational nature and interference potential of such 'reality jamming' - i.e., this pressing together of the real and virtual in a context where their distinctions are deliberately obscured - open further possibilities for research, scholarship and creative production.

In this theme, we also seek to encourage artists and researchers to explore the ways in which the 'virtual' presences and experiences of folklore, religious beliefs, magical rituals and science and media-fiction interact with and counteract the lived experiences of the 'real'. Scholarly presentations, art works and research in the areas of virtual, mixed and augmented reality, not restricted to the technological platforms and equipment that enable such experiences, are especially encouraged.

Border Transmissions

The 'borderless world' and the 'global village' are different imaginaries of a world seemingly transformed by the speed and efficiency of information, communication and experiential technologies - of a world where the political borders of nation states were considered to be either irrelevant or difficult to sustain.

The age that announced the 'borderless world' is, however, ironically also the one that has displayed the greatest anxiety about this breakdown and invested the largest amount of resources and time in the increasing surveillance and control of these borders. While these borders historically have been permeable to certain kinds of economic, socio-cultural, political and military transactions (i.e., trade, cultural objects and experiences, religious missions, etc.), the development of technologies that facilitated greater communication and transportation across them has only increased the anxiety to control these transactions. The contestation over these borders and of the transmissions across them continues to be a struggle as much determined by technological developments as it is by the politics, cultures and socio-economic systems that mediate within and between these borders. The question of how one negotiates technological developments that simultaneously contribute to the increasing opening and ossification of borders is of utmost significance and in this theme, we invite artistic and scholarly work that engages this question.

We seek to showcase research and creative interventions that deal with the strategic and tactical possibilities of networking, communication and experiential technologies in ways that enable the emergence of different conceptions of borders, nation-states and of the infectious transmissions that problematize these demarcations.

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

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

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Feminist Movement: Constant Action + Restless Criticality

Huis & Festival a/d Werf presents If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution: Edition II: ‘Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice’ :: Episode III at Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht May 17 – May 26 2007.

bel hooks talks about ‘feminist movement’, reactivating the term in a transitive way - as a verb almost - so that it becomes this notion of constant action and a kind of restless criticality. – Connie Butler 2007

If I Can’t Dance… is a rolling curatorial project based on performative practices, which departs from a spirit of open questioning and a long term enquiry with artists. Currently it focuses on the legacies and potentials of feminism(s) in relation to art today. Inspired by the quote of Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”, the project explores the critical and celebratory implications of this statement in artists’ work.

This edition of If I Can’t Dance… explores how feminist thinking on all levels (social, artistic, political, theoretical, ideological or structural) may be important in our cultural life. The project has explored these tendencies as inquisitively and openly as possible over the last year and a half by repeatedly working with an expanding group of over thirty artists and mounting exhibitions, organising symposia and performance events, and running an on-going reading group.

This May for Festival a/d Werf in Utrecht a new programme of performances by Jutta Koether, Jon Mikel Euba, Itziar Okariz and planningtorock will take place. If I Can’t Dance… will also premiere the newly commissioned film of The Otolith Group, “Otolith II’”, at Casco in Utrecht.

Programme

The Otolith Group - “Otolith II”
Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Nieuwenkade 213-215
Dutch premiere on Thursday May 17, 20:00 with an introduction by the artists Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun; further screenings on Friday May 18, Saturday May 19 & Sunday May 20 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00, 19:00, 20:00 (45 min)
“Otolith II” is coproduced by Huis & Festival a/d Werf, If I Can’t Dance..., KunstenFestivalDesArts & Argos, Centre for Media and Art

Jutta Koether - “Touch and Resist”
Huis a/d Werf, Studio 2 and 3
Monday May 21 & Tuesday May 22 19:30 hrs (30 min)
“Touch and Resist” is coproduced by Huis & Festival a/d Werf

Jon Mikel Euba – “Re: HORSE” & “RGB Horse”
Cartesiusweg
“Re: Horse”: Tuesday May 22 & Wednesday May 23 17:00 (60 min)
“RGB Horse”: Friday May 25 & Saturday May 26 19:30 (30 min)

Itziar Okariz - “Climbing Buildings”
De Neude
Friday May 25 & Saturday May 26 in the afteroon

planningtorock - “Show me what you got”
Huis a/d Werf, Koepelzaal
Friday May 25 & Saturday May 26 22:15 (45 min)

Curators: Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher.

Partners & Episodes: Edition II of If I Can’t Dance…is staged in 4 episodes: Huis & Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht, May 2006 & May 2007 | de Appel, Amsterdam, November 2006 – January 2007 | MuHKA, Antwerp, October 2007 – January 2008

Financial Support: Edition II of If I Can’t Dance... is financially supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, British Council, Stichting Cultuurfonds van de Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten, The Netherlands Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Mondriaan Foundation, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

Information: For updated information on the programme and addresses of the venues, times and entrance fees check: http://www.festivalaandewerf.nl.

Contact: info[at]ificantdance.org

Posted by jo at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

Urban Pilgrims

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Generating a New Cartography of Place

urbanpilgrims.org/wien :: Exhibition, Website, Survey, Guided Tours, Performances.

Based on an interactive and continuously growing online archive that is generated by the inhabitants of a place, urbanilgrims.org researches individual stories of urban space and interweaves them with real space - guided tours in public using performance / gesture / sound, photographs, as well as discussions with guests / audiences and an installation. On an online questionnaire and map of the city visitors are asked about their personal experiences in relation to specific locations of their choice. Naturally, and through the accumulation of answers, issues of power relationships, space structures, image production and forms of urban appropriation will be addressed. The results of the questionnaire-responses will be structured according to different key-words to easily facilitate access to the information. The questionnaire is adapted throughout the project and tailored to specific issues that want to be addressed by the community. Individual experiences become a public field which generates a new cartography of the place.

Urban Pilgrims are interested in finding aspects, images and moments that are characteristic of place. They want to come closer to the subconscious and collective knowledge, the aim is to converge site-specifically to the genius loci of the location. The genius loci (latin: genius = (protective) spirit, loci = genitiv singular of locus = place) was historically the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted as a snake. In contemporary usage, genius loci usually refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or a 'spirit of place`. (source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

'Angela Dorrer's Pilgrimage digs into the strata of urban myth and anecdote. Responding to a survey model it does not propose a 'more true' reading of the urban landscape. Instead it gives the viewer a glimpse of a particular subjectivity, a part of which is the viewer's own. Dorrer dislocates her project from totalistic narratives and instead aims for a pilgrimage tracing a constellation across the urban environment, responding to traces collected through her survey and the tales of those surveyed.` (Marc Clintberg, Montreal 2006)

With Vienna is starting an internationally planned series. The next cities are Montreal and Copenhagen. Every city originates a complete new series of works.

EXHIBITION: BlumbergB0, blumberggasse 20, A - 1160 Wien
11.05.-24.06.2007, ErC6ffnung Freitag 11.05., 19:00
Installation: Angela Dorrer
with works of Isabel Becker, Judith Fegerl, Barbara Husar, Gerd Gerhard Loeffler, mschuber, monochrom, Doris Steinbichler, vice versa (Gertrude Moser-Wagner/Beverly Piersol)

5 URBAN PILGRIMAGES: The pilgrimages adopt the form of the traditional religious pilgrimage - a journey with several stations. They are a combination of a guided art-tour, punctuated with discussion, performative gesture, and occasionally specific food or music.

19.05.07, Wo die Sonne nie unterging. Multikulturelles Wien und ParallelitC$ten.
Guest: Parvis Amoghli (author, Vienna/cologne), 16:00 b 19:00, 20:00 pilgrims theme-meal
BlumbergB0, blumberggasse 20, A - 1160 Wien,

- b u s p i l g r i m a g e

17.06.2007, 17:00 - 20:00, 20:00 pilgrims theme-meal sonntags 191/urbanpilgrims.org
hosted by Az W Architekturzentrum Wien
meeting point: 16:45 Uhr Museumsshop im MQ, Museumsplatz 1, A - 1070 WIEN
Tickets 18/14 b reservation 1/522 31 15 12, kuzmany[at]azw.at

Concept, design, update, realisation: Angela Dorrer
Programming, technical and support: Patrick Gruban
tel 0043-650-5145356, mail: info[at]urbanpilgrims.org, Info: urbanpilgrims.org

BlumbergB0, blumberggasse 20, A - 1160 Wien, 0699/11 36 41 10

urbanpilgrims.org is supported by the city of Vienna Wien Kultur MA 7, the festival Sohoinottakring, monochrom and AzW Architekturzentrum Wien.

Angela Dorrer, Max Weber Platz 9, 81675 Munich
[email] angela[at]andorrer.de
[april-july07] c/o BlumbergB0, blumberggasse 20, 1160 Wien [cell] +43-(0)-650-5145356 [skype] angela.dorrer [e-fax] +49-(0)-12120-248202 [www] andorrer.de, urbanpilgrims.org, programangels.org (2000-2005)

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

New art dynamics in Web 2 mode

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CALL FOR PAPERS / ART PROJECTS

MEETING [New art dynamics in Web 2 mode] :: Meeting moderator: Juan Martmn Prada :: Deadline for Submissions: June 1st 2007 :: Places: Medialab Madrid, Madrid, Espaqa.

Norms of participation: Researchers, artists, professionals, teachers or collectives interested in participating in this meeting must send an abstract of the research or art project (in the case of theory research, we recommend sending in the full paper) and a brief risumi through the following application form.

Main subject areas of the meeting: What follows is a draft proposal of a number of high-priority subject-matter nuclei for this meeting. Nevertheless, we will also consider projects and research initiatives related to other subject areas proposed by the researchers and/or artists, insofar as they pose an interesting contribution to the subject areas engaged in this meeting.

-An analysis of the processes of transition to the so-called Web 2 and their relationship to the development of new aesthetic and artistic phenomena. New projects, and the current state of the research endeavour.

-Art projects as a model for alternative communication practises in the new digital networks. New media design and new tools for community-based digital action.

-Artistic appropriation of online collective participation technologies.

-Subjectivity, creativity, and critical thought in the context of the new ditigal cooperation platforms.

-The creative, social, and political dimension of the "blog" phenomenon.

-Developments in the field of "Blog-art".

-Cyberfeminist art creativity in the context of the current models of digital participation and cooperation.

-The possibilities of Web 2 regarding the intensification of the inter-cultural dynamics and the circulation of cultural diversity.

-The role of Web 2 in the processes of cultural globalisation.

-Educational applications and/or experiences in Web 2 oriented towards the critical comprehension of the new aesthetic and artistic behaviours.

-New initiatives and cultural policies for the development and support of online art creation.

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Second Life

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Brad Kligerman

Upgrade! Second Life presents Brad Kligerman, Ars Virtua Artist in Residence :: Thursday May 10 at Noon SLT (Pacific time) :: Here. Brad Kligerman will present a program of short videos that illustrate his current exhibit at Ars Virtua and his residency.

"SL is unique, even as far a synthetic worlds are concerned, due to the fact that all of the its material artifacts are invented, fabricated and owned by its citizens. The world's creators provide the material context (the physical rules and the tools with which to manipulate them) and the social-spatial fabric emerges from a multiplicity of intentions and interests that migrate with its inhabitants. Observation reveals that most of this content, the buildings, clothes, weapons... are replicas of similarly functioning objects from the real world. In the case of objects representing the inhabited environment, this reveals a strange inconsistency in that the SL objects do not function at all like their RL counterparts. This begs the question for the invention of spaces & forms, buildings & agglomerations, programs & structures that are emerging from real SL usages, and not just a symbol of an intention." -- Kligerman

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Kligerman will talk about how his interaction and experiments during his residency effected his final work in the gallery. He will show how his work represents the depth and breadth of his experience during the 11 week period. His video presentation will examine his view of the different sources of "creation" in Second Life and his push toward fully "native" experiences.

"Avatars "Engage" in this process which projects them from image to project site in a transformative process expressing the inherent condition of immaterial space. It is a function of frames per second, flickering forever between Image+Space: 2-D+3-D, concept+fabrication, machine+architecture, actual+virtual..." -- Kligerman

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. Their methodologies are documented here.

“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.

Upgrade! Second Life or UpgradeSL is a bi-monthly meeting of artists and interested parties held in Second Life. UpgradeSL is currently sponsored by BitFactory and Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center.

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

TOURING SHOW

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Curated by Marisa Olson for Rhizome

Touring Show is an online exhibition of artists' maps and 'virtual tours' of contested spaces, ranging from the Military Industrial Complex, to the US-Mexico border, to the body. The mapping and social organization of spaces has not only had a profound impact on the cultures that inhabit them, it has also contributed to the development of a number of artistic traditions, including cartography, drafting, and landscape painting and photography. More recently, the emergence of the artists' lectures and tours as artistic media has coincided with the practice of 'radical cartography,' which in its most elemental terms is the charting of a space's relationship to the empire or ideology that governs it. Also significant to the specific cultural moment traced here is the mingling of technology's impact on our landscape and the use of technologies to explore and document this terrain. The artists here offer a combination of web-based and public projects that can be interpreted as tours in this vein. While some of the projects read as interventions, others simply present the information needed to navigate viewers' own subjective traversals.

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

May 07, 2007

Silver Lake Film Festival "fringe fest"

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Think Again + Miracles in Reverse

Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in conjunction with the Silver Lake Film Festival "fringe fest" presents: Think Again (outdoor public projection) and Miracles in Reverse (interactive video installation) :: Reception and Screenings: Thursday May 10, 2007 7-9pm (in conjunction with downtown art walk).

Think Again is pleased to announce the NAFTA Effect, a public projection project that challenges anti-immigrant rhetoric and mistreatment of migrant labor. It is a two person collaboration between David John Attyah and S.A. Bachman. Think Again's mobile projection will be on view after dark in downtown Los Angeles on May 10 during the Silver Lake Film Festival and the downtown los angeles art walk. talking back to the advertising-dominated landscape of the city, this project acknowledges the contribution and participation of immigrant laborers in the life of Los Angeles.

On the level of policy, the NAFTA Effect highlights how international treaties like NAFTA, in concert with national anti-immigration efforts, reshape the ways that families live and work on both sides of the border. The project addresses current debates surrounding h.r.4437, challenges the proposed 700-mile border fence, and criticizes the criminalization of undocumented workers.

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Miracles in Reverse, an ambitious challenge to classic cinematic technique, is an interactive dvd-rom written, directed, and produced by New York artist Julia Heyward. This interactive feature invites single players to navigate a labyrinthine, blair-witch style tale by "scratching" hot spots in the film with a mouse, much the way d.j.'s scratch vinyl records to alter their sound. "Dizzyingly provocative, the film works like memory... it''s a dark, harrowing piece, and the technology works in its favor." Cate McQuaid/ Boston Globe.

Posted by jo at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)

Inbetween Zone Workshop, Budapest

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Call for Participants

Inbetween Zone workshop by Impex – Contemporary Art Provider :: Deadline for applications: 14 May 2007

Challenged by the ongoing rapid and substantial transformation of urban environment, IMPEX aims to act as a platform for the critical analysis of urban development, social discourse and collaboration in art and cultural practices. Therefore, with its own location as a starting point, and at the same time encompassing a wider general discourse on the role of cultural potentials in urban development, IMPEX initiates a long-term interdisciplinary research project. This long-term project will include workshops, exhibitions, public interventions, publications and other alternative methods of collecting, generating and organizing ideas and knowledge.

The first stage of the project is the workshop entitled Inbetween Zone, which will take place from 16 to 23 June 2007, simultaneously with the 7th Biennial of European Towns and Town Planners. (http://www.makingplaces.hu).

The Corvin Promenade project covers an area larger than 80,700 m2 in a zone of the VIII. district adjacent to the downtown, presently undergoing complete urban and architectural reconstruction. Meanwhile, development projects of a different scale, but similar impact as regards urban restructuring, are under way in two neighboring districts (VII, IX). This continuous zone, reaching over districts, will be the ground of the workshop.

Themes of the Workshop are:

1. Public art and urban planning
2. Techniques of collective and individual intervention: how inhabitants can use and form their own living-space
3. Grassroots: creative, grassroots initiations vs. urban planning
4. Limits to planning: limitations of urban planning projects
5. Mistake assessment: analysis and planning of errors in city development projects.
6. Urban policy and identity formation: urban legends – local heroes

What do we provide? Maximum 100 EUR traveling cost for the participants, accommodation and production costs of the workshop. Participation in the workshop is free of charge.

Whom do we expect? Hungarian and foreign applicants who are engaged in the fields of culture, commerce, media or social sciences (artists, architects, sociologists, urbanists, cultural managers, philosophers, filmmakers, anthropologists, designers, economists, managers, communication experts, etc.).

The application has to include: CV and attached documentation of relevant professional practices in English or Hungarian. We accept applications via email, not larger than 1 MB, to the following address: urbancreativity[at]gmail.com

Deadline for applications: 14 May 2007

Further information: contact[at]impex-info.org

Posted by jo at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Subtle Technologies Symposium

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in situ – art | body | medicine

in situ – art | body | medicine: The 10th Annual Subtle Technologies Festival 2007, Toronto, Canada :: May 24-27, 2007: Subtle Technologies Symposium - Register Early for discounted Festival Passes!

Subtle Technologies is a unique, multidisciplinary festival that explores the complex and subtle relationships between art and science. For the 10th Annual Festival, Subtle Technologies presents practitioners of arts, sciences and medicines, and those who study their context, historians, ethicists, and other critical thinkers 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.

The programming juxtaposes cutting-edge artistic projects and scientific exploration.

Events include:

BioArt Online Discussion co-presented with Year Zero One.

SymbioticA Tissue Engineering Workshop for Artists co-presented with Year Zero One.

Panel Discussion on the biological as a medium in art and science: Art, Science, and the Emotional Response co-presented with MicrobeWorld and Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD).

Symposium featuring 26 speakers.

Evening of Performance featuring dance, robotics, butoh.

Exhibitions at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Ontario Science Centre, Innis Town Hall Neighbourhood + Ayurveda on Queen Street West.

For more information, please visit our website

Partners: InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Year Zero One, SymbioticA, University of Western Australia, Ontario College of Art & Design, Ontario Science Centre, MicrobeWorld, University of Toronto Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, Design Exchange, University of Toronto Health Care, Technology, and Place.

Supporters: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Australian Network for Art & Technology.

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2007 Subtle Technologies Festival

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SymbioticA Tissue Engineering Workshop for Artists

SymbioticA Tissue Engineering Workshop for Artists, part of the 2007 Subtle Technologies Festival - in situ – art | body | medicine :: May 18, 19, 20, 2007 :: Toronto, Canada.

The increasing recognition of technological intervention and integration in medicine and the body has introduced tissue culture (TC) and tissue engineering (TE) as new possibilities for artistic engagement. Bioart, an emerging art form that uses the biological as its medium, explores the vast possibilities of biotechnology. The use of TE for non medical ends is also been explored in areas such as food production (in-vitro meat), leather replacement, locomotion, research models, and art.

Biomedical research has a major influence on perceptions of body, self and medical thinking. TE enables researchers to grow three dimensional living tissue constructs of varying sizes, shapes and tissue types. These constructs continue living and growing in-vitro or as a “new kind of body”.

This two and a half day intensive workshop will introduce artists and other interested people (including architects, designers, ethicists, policy makers) to basic principles of animal TC and TE, as well as to its history and the different artistic projects working with TC and TE. No prior experience necessary.

The workshop was developed by Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Dr Stuart Hodgetts and is conducted by artist/researcher/curator Oron Catts, the Artistic Director of SymbioticA (University of Western Australia).

SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning and critique of life sciences. SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department. Catts has eleven years of experience researching tissue technologies as an artistic medium through the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) that he founded in 1996.

Tissue engineering is the use of a combination of cells, engineering and materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physio-chemical factors to improve or replace biological functions. While most definitions of tissue engineering cover a broad range of applications, in practice the term is closely associated with applications that repair or replace portions of or whole tissues.

Dates and Times:

May 18, Friday, 1pm~5pm
May 19, Saturday, 10am~5pm
May 20, Sunday, 10am~5pm

Location: University of Toronto

There are approximately 25 positions available for this workshop, including up to 5 fully funded scholarships.

More information and application procedures are detailed on the website.

Subtle Technologies Festival includes Performances, Exhibitions, Panel Discussions, Symposium, and Community-based Artwork in addition to this Workshop. Subtle Technologies is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council, and the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

Posted by jo at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

MOUSEMIXER

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Creative Interruptions

MOUSEMIXER: An evening of creative interruptions featuring experimental mashups of digital and new media art technologies :: March 8, 2007 @ 9PM :: Schupf Artists Studios, 54 Montgomery Street, Hamilton, NY. :: INSTRUCTIONS: Find the Mixmouse and knock seven times for admission.

MIXMOUSE.NET is an ongoing, experimental site of student works from Arts 302, Digital Studio II at Colgate University. MIXMOUSE.NET is a platform for the online exhibition and distribution of digital and new media works including net.art and networked performances. MIXMOUSE.NET is: Jon Costantino, Jessica Cozzetta, Polina Koronkevich, Phill O'Connor, Mary Pratt, Jason Rand, Bailey Rogers, Cori Schattner, Ruth Sylvia, Shelby Scott, Colin Twomey, and Jess Worby. MIXMOUSE.NET was initiated and is directed by Cary Peppermint, Assistant Professor of Digital Art. Mixmouse.net is made possible by the Department of Art & Art History at Colgate University.

Posted by jo at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

1st Internacional Congress Art Tech Media

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Spain, May 9-11

1st Internacional Congress Art Tech Media :: 9 - 10 - 11th m a y 2007 :: Spain.

The First International Art Tech Media Conference has been set up in order to reflect upon and analyse questions currently being raised about art and new technological media within an international context. In a globalised world, dominated by communication technologies, with countless questions concerning a future that affects our everyday life, it is essential to make this analysis and to consider, from different perspectives, how our polyhedral, altered reality is being effected by the widespread use of new technology as a support for new ideas and possibilities that are almost infinite. We need to investigate how this occurs in different societies and cultures and to propose models that may go beyond what has been known until now.

The Conference will focus on three clearly complementary regions: national, international (European, Asian) and Ibero-American. The conference is open to the general public, especially those connected to the visual arts and in particular those working in digital art.

Wendsday 9 th may:
MINISTERIO DE CULTURA
Auditorio
Plaza del Rey

12,00 h
Traslation systems receptors

12,30 h:
Opening of 1st Internacional Congress Art Tech Media

Ministra de Cultura. Carmen Calvo
Institutions Collaborators
Directors of Art Tech Media . Montse Arbelo y Joseba Franco

Afternoon:

16,30 - 18,45 h. - Debate: Culturals Politics
- Pavel Smetana. Director CIANT. Prague
- Gefried Stocker. Director Ars Electronica.Linz
- Alberto Saraiva. OI Futuro. Brasil
- Rachel Baker. Visual Arts: Media Art and Moving Image . Art Council UK
- José Carlos Mariategui. Founder of Alta Tecnología Andina (ATA) in Lima, Perú. Currently researcher
in technology and media at London School of Economics, UK.
- Ricardo Echevarría. President of AVAM
- Rebeca Allen. Media Artist /Professor at UCLA Design | Media Arts , former Research Director
at MIT Media Lab Europe in Dublin. Work with Nicholas Negroponte OLPC/MIT
- Andreas Broeckmann. Director TESLA. Berlin

19,00 - 20,00 h. - Presentation of Libro Blanco FECYT
- Eulalia Pérez. Directora Generalof FECYT (Science and Technology Spainish Foundation la Tecnología)
- José Luis Brea.Principal Researcher and Coordinator of Libro blanco
- Javier Echevarría. Director Humanidades CSIC (High Commision of Science
Research)

20,00 - 21,30 h. - Cocktail

Thursday 10th may: MINISTERIO DE CULTURA

Morning:

9,30 h – 11,00 h. Debate: Museums and Art Centers XXI Century: Production, Curators and exhibition of digital art , Inmaterial Museum

- Nina Colosi. Founder/curator, TheProjectRoom.org
International arts & education program @ Chelsea Art Museum, New York
- Lisa Dorin. Curator The Art Institute of Chicago
- Marie-Claire Uberquoi. Director Es Baluard
- Javier Panera. Director DA2
- Laura Barreca. Curator Pan-Palazzo delle Arti Napoli and Università degli Studi della Tuscia
- Elena Rossi. Curator NetSpace: Viaggio dell'arte della rete at MAXXI.
Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Roma
- Antonio Franco. Director MEIAC
- Angela Martínez. Director Audiovisual Department of CCCB
- Nacho Ruiz. Gallery T-20

11,00 h – 12,00 h. Coffe break

12,00 h – 12,30 h. Internacionals Abstract: Centers of art production :
MediaLab, new platforms and process
- Niranjan Rajah. Assistant Professor School of Interactive Arts and Technology Simon Fraser University
- Semi Ryu. Assistant Professor, Kinetic Imaging School of the Arts Virginia Commonwealth University
- Zhuang Lixiao. Counselor Cultural Matters. Embassy of the Popular Republic of China
- Menene Gras. Director Exhibitions Casa Asia

12,30 h – 14,00 h. Debate: Centers of art production : MediaLab, new platforms and process
- Andreas Broeckmann. Director TESLA, Director Transmediale
- Gefried Stocker. Director Ars Electronica.Linz
- Ximo Lizana. Robotic Artist
- Luigi Pagliarini. Robotic expert and director of Peam Festival
- Rosina Gómez-Baeza. Director La Laboral
- Pedro Soler. Hangar
- Marcos M.. Medialab Madrid
- Montse Arbelo y Joseba Franco. Directores Art Tech Media

Afternoon:

16,30 h – 18,00 h. Debate: Art– Industry– Research

- Innovación Tecnológica. Comunidad Madrid
- Vicente Matallana. La Agencia
- Luis Prieto. Sudirector Sociedad de la información. Miniterio de Cultura
- Alejandro Sacristán. Silicon Artists
- Anne Nigten. LAb V2 . Roterdam
- Marcel.lí. Artist
- Anna María Guasch. Crítica de Arte, Universidad Barcelona

18,00 h – 19,00 h. Break

Thurdays 10th may: INSTITUTO CERVANTES

Evening:

19,00h – 21,00 h. Debate: Art and new media . The Iberoamerican Platform

- José Carlos Mariategui. Founder of Alta Tecnología Andina (ATA) in Lima, Perú. Currently researcher
in technology and media at London School of Economics, UK.
- Arcangel Constantini. Artist , curator Cyberlounge Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo . Mexico city
- Graciela Taquini. Curator: Centro de Desarrollo Multimedia del Centro
Cultural General
San Martin of Ministerio de Cultura del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
- Enrique Aguerre. Coordinator : Video Department of Museum Nacional of Visual Arts in Uruguay .
Curator of Uruguay in Biennal of Veneza 2007

Friday 11th may: MINISTERIO DE CULTURA

Morning

9,30 – 11,00 h. Debate: Art Critic, pensamiento and Mass Media

- Francisco Serrano. Director Foundation Telefonica
- Rachel Baker. Art Council. UK
- Roberta Bosco. new media journalist. CiberPaís
- Anne Nigten. Roterdam V2
- Graciela Taquini. Curator: Centro de Desarrollo Multimedia del Centro Cultural General
San Martin of Ministerio de Cultura del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
- Margarita Schultz. Philosphy´s doctor (Aestetic). Facultad de Artes. University of Chile
- Sergio Calvo Fernández. Decano Facultad de Comunicación. European University of Madrid
- Tina Velho Artista, Coordinadora del Laboratorio de Arte e Tecnologia da Escola de
Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

11,00 h – 12,00 h. Coffee break

11,30 – 13,00 h. Debate: New market: galleries, fairs, biennals, rights

- Montxo Algora. Director Art Futura
- Nestor Olhagaray. Director of Bienal de Video y Nuevos Medios de Chile.
- Luis Silva. Curador, turbulence y director The upgrade Lisboa
- Enrique Aguerre. Coordinator : Video Department of Museum Nacional of Visual Arts in Uruguay .
Curator of Uruguay in Biennal of Veneza 2007
- Ricardo Echevarría. Presidente AVAM

13,15 – 14,00 h. Conclusions

Friday 11th may CASA DE AMERICA

Afternoon:

16,30 – 20,00 h. Abstracts, Iberoamerican Debates

- Tania Aedo. - Tania Aedo. Director of Multimedia Center of CENART (Centro Nacional de las Artes. Mexico
- Gustavo Romano. Artist. Coordinator of Medialab of Centro Cultural de España
at Buenos Aires. Director Limbo project at Museum of Modern Art. Buenos Aires
- Maria José Monge . Adj. Director of MADC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Costa Rica. (San José)
- Mauricio Delfín. Director of Realidad Visual / Gestor del Programa New
technologies, gestión and cultural politics in Peru.

Posted by jo at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2007

Storefront for Art and Architecture

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Postopolis!

Storefront for Art and Architecture :: New York City :: May 28 - June 2, 2007

Postopolis! is a five-day event of near-continuous conversation about architecture, urbanism, landscape, and design. Four bloggers, from four different cities, will host a series of live discussions, interviews, slideshows, panels, talks, and other presentations, and fuse the informal energy and interdisciplinary approach of the architectural blogosphere with the immediacy of face to face interaction.

"BLDGBLOG (Los Angeles), City of Sound (London), Inhabitat (New York City), and Subtopia (San Francisco) will meet in person to orchestrate the event, inviting everyone from practicing architects, city planners, and urban theorists to military historians, game developers, and materials scientists to give their take on both the built and natural environments.

For the past five years, blogging has helped to expand the bounds of architectural discussion; its influence now spreads far beyond the internet to affect museums, institutions, and even higher education. Postopolis! is an historic opportunity to look back at what architecture blogs have achieved – both to celebrate their strengths and to think about their future.

Posted by jo at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

DANUBE TELELECTURE #3

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Myths of Immateriality

DANUBE TELELECTURE # 3 from the MUMOK, Vienna : Myths of Immateriality: Curating, Collecting and Archiving Media Art :: Christiane Paul and Paul Sermon :: The Department for Image Science at Danube-University Krems created a new format of international lecture and debates on key questions of Image Science and Media Art with high-calibre experts - the DANUBE TELELECTURES. The discussion will be recorded by several cameras and transmitted live over the www. Online viewers can participate live in the discussion via email.

During the last decades media art has grown to be the art of our time, though it has hardly arrived in our cultural institutions. The mainstream of art history has neglected developing adequate research tools for these contemporary art works, they are exhibited infrequently in museums, and there are few collectors. Media art is hardly being archived and systematically preserved like ancient and traditional forms of art. This loss of data our society is facing because of the change in storage media and operational systems threatens to result in a total loss of our contemporary digital art. Which practices and strategies in the curating and documenting of media art do experts in the field suggest?

CHRISTIANE PAUL, curator for New Media, Whitney Museum, NY, author of "Digital Art" (Thames & Hudson 2003)
PAUL SERMON, media artist and scientist at the University of Salford, UK.
*(Introduction: Oliver Grau, Univ.-Prof. and Head of the Department for Image Science, Danube University Krems).

Danube TeleLecture # 3 at the MUMOK, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
Time: May 27, 2007, 17.00h CET (Start of Streaming).

You can attend the event in MUMOK or in realtime over the www.

After 20 minute long lectures the audience will have the possibility to ask the speakers questions. Internet users may join the discussion via e-mail.

Contact: Mag. Jeanna Nikolov-Rammrez Gaviria
Tel: +43 (0)2732 893-2570
E-Mail: jeanna.nikolov[at]donau-uni.ac.at

PARTNERS
ORF
DATABASE OF VIRTUAL ART

Posted by jo at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

Piksel07

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Call for Participation

Piksel07 :: November 15-18 2007 :: Call for Participation :: Deadline: July 15, 2007 :: Piksel[1] is an international event for artists and developers working with open source audiovisual software, hardware & art. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK) [2] and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of FLOSS & art.

This years event - Piksel07 - continues the exploration of free/libre and open source audiovisual code and it's myriad of expressions, and also investigates further the open hardware theme introduced at Piksel06.

Piksel07 is done in collaboration with Gallery 3,14[3] which will host this years exhibition. Piksel is organised by BEK and a community of core participants including members of collectives dyne.org, goto10.org, ap/xxxxx, hackitectura.net, riereta.net, drone.ws, gephex.org and others.

CALL for PROJECTS

For the exhibition and other parts of the programme we currently seek projects in the following categories:

1. Installations: Projects related to the open hardware theme including but not restricted to: circuit bending, reverse engineering, repurposing, modding and DIY electronics, preferably programmed by and running on free and open source software.

2. Audiovisual performance: Live art realised by the use of open source software and/or hardware.

3. Software/Hardware presentations: Innovative DIY hardware and audiovisual software tools or software art released under an open licence.

Deadline - july 15. 2007

Please use the online submit form or send documentation material - preferably as a URL to online documentation with images/video to piksel07[at]bek.no

BEK, att: Gisle Froysland
C. Sundtsgt. 55
5004 Bergen
Norway

piksel07 is produced in cooperation with Kunsthoegskolen in Bergen dep The Academy of Fine Arts, Gallery 3,14. Supported by Bergen Kommune, Norsk Kulturfond and Vestnorsk Filmsenter.

Posted by jo at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Montreal

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POLITICS UNDER FIRE

UPGRADE! MONTREAL: POLITICS UNDER FIRE :: THURSDAY, May 17th :: 20:30H -­ 24:00H :: Société des arts technologiques (SAT), 1195 St. Laurent :: Free and open to the public :: video-art screening & experimental music.

Renegade curators Horea Avram and tobias c. van Veen present works that tackle the social and political dimension of new media, from control and alternatives to control, strategies of democratization and access to creative tactics for confronting mechanisms of power.

The evening is presented as part of the [CTRL]: Technology : Art : Society Symposium, taking place at McGill during daylight hours of May 17th, to which everyone is welcome.

::: UPGRADE SCHEDULE :::

20H30 + / presentation of 'Anti-Data Mining' by RYBN, France. Rybn is a transversal collective which came out of new practices linked to vjing, electonic music, sensorial technologies and open source software.

21H15 + uninterrupted screening of video art. Featuring video-artists Rozalinda Borcila, Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau, Andrew Lynn and The Vacuum Cleaner. Curated by Horea Avram.

22H30 + live electronic and experimental music. Performances by Tara Rodgers, Doug van Nort, Javier Arciniegas, tobias.dj. Also time for drinks.

:: HORAIRE [CTRL]: TAS schedule :: 17 MAI 2007 ::

14H ­ 15:30 DEMOCRACY, ART & MEDIA: PANEL :: With members of / Avec des membres du the Levier Project, Oboro, Centre Canadien d¹Architecture (CCA), Fair Trade Media & Île Sans Fil. [ Banquet Room, Thomson House, 3635 McTavish St., McGill ]

16H ­ 18:00 McKENZIE WARK: GAMER THEORY :: Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at Lang College, New School University. He is the author of several books, most recently Dispositions and A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard UP, 2007). Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. [ Keynote talk, Adams Auditorium, 3450 University St., McGill ]

18H ­ 20:00 Time for dinner

20:00H ­ 24 UpgradeMTL :: POLITICS UNDER FIRE :: [ Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), 1195 St. Laurent ]

[CTRL]: TAS is sponsored by The Beaverbrook Fund for Media@McGill with assistance from the Post-Graduate Students Society and AHCS_GSA. TAS partners include UpgradeMTL, the Society for Art and Technology and the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University. [CTRL]: TAS is Anna Feigenbaum, tobias c. van Veen & Horea Avram.

Upgrade! is an autonomous, international and grassroots organization of monthly gatherings for digital culture and the technology arts. Upgrade Montreal is generously supported by the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], through networks of the Upgrade International, the various partners we work with, the artists who donate their time and the personal energies of its organizer triumvirate of tobias c. van Veen, Sophie Le-Phat Ho & Anik Fournier.

Posted by jo at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mobilized!

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An Unconference

Mobilized! Exploring Mobile Media and Public Space :: an unconference focused on mobile communications media practices and technologies and the ways they are rapidly changing public space and social interaction :: Saturday, May 5, 7PM EYEBEAM 540 W.21st St. Bet. 10th & 11th Ave., NYC. :: Sunday, May 6, 10AM - 8PM POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY - Six Metrotech Center, Brooklyn.

Mobilized! is an unconference where content is driven and created by a convergence of students, designers, artists, scholars, activists, and media professionals in the spirit of the open source movement. Mobilized! is a chance to look at what people are doing with mobile media, a chance to find out how to do it yourself, and a moment to reflect on the social significance of these practices.

Mobilized! will feature: A kickoff event with keynote by Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library; a showcase of student, artist, community and new business projects and mobile video and project awards; workshops focused on creating platforms and projects on mobile devices including new tools like Python, Java Micro Edition (J2ME), Microsofts .NET Mobile Edition, Flash Lite, Google Maps and Mobile, Mobile Processing, and a look at how they are being used in areas from open source telephony and mobile video blogging, to mobile gaming and locative urbanism with noted designers, programmers and artists.

There is still room to present projects or conduct a workshop: That means were ooking for anyone, particularly but by no means exclusively, students, interested in doing a presentation of work, a workshop, a talk or discussion around mobile or locative technologies and public space, interpreted widely

If you want to do a workshop, let us know. We have spaces with projectors, computers, etc. If you want to present work, either finished art, design, software, hardware, finished or a work-in-progress, let us know. We will have a presentation area.

Send a note to email: tellme (at) mobilizednyc.org

CUNYcolab, The Center for Social Media at American University, and a group of university programs doing work in digital media have joined to sponsor an event that brings together people making mobile media, designing software, and using mobile and locative technologies.

Posted by jo at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

Artists' Television Access

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Call for Work

Artists' Television Access (ATA) is accepting experimental and independent shorts (running 20 minutes or less) in all genres for the ATA Film & Video Festival 2007! POSTMARK DEADLINE: June 15, 2007. More details.

Artists' Television Access is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, all-volunteer, artist-run, experimental media arts gallery that has been in operation since 1984. ATA hosts a series of film and video screenings, exhibitions and performances by emerging and established artists and a weekly cable access television program. To celebrate and promote experimental film and filmmakers, ATA hosts the ATA Film and Video Festival —an assembly of short films you won’t see anywhere else.

Posted by jo at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2007

THURSDAYS@ARGOS

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Jon Ippolito: Art After Institutions

argos, centre for art & media in Brussels, presents: THURSDAYS@ARGOS LECTURE: Jon Ippolito: Art After Institutions.

Participatory media like Flickr and YouTube have given ordinary netizens a chance to shine as media creators, but this fact hasn't gone over well with "serious" artists and their curatorial counterparts. Seemingly bereft of the social status, economic privilege, and institutional recognition of mainstream art stars, some new media artists wonder what role, if any, remains for them to play in the the Web 2.0 age of peer-filtered creativity. As Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito argue in the 2006 book 'At the Edge of Art', new media art's dependence on institutions is indeed in crisis, but this is more of a loss for galleries and museums than for the artists themselves. For participatory media are on the verge of enabling creators to regain the power they once held before the era of commodity speculation and the art market: the ability to reconnect people in new forms of creative kinship, whereby artworks facilitate social transactions rather than financial ones. To accept this new role, however, artists, curators, and critics may have to renounce the pyramid scheme offered by the brick-and-mortar art world, replacing the monolithic canon of Great Artists with a dense network of creative participants.

The recipient of Tiffany, Lannan, and American Foundation awards, Jon Ippolito exhibited artwork with collaborative teammates Janet Cohen and Keith Frank at the Walker Art Center, ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and WNET's ReelNewYork Web site. As Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, he curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and, with John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Ippolito's critical writing has appeared in periodicals ranging from Flash Art and the Art Journal to the Washington Post. At the Still Water lab co-founded with Joline Blais, Ippolito is at work on three projects--the Variable Media Network, the Open Art Network, and their 2006 book 'At the Edge of Art'--that aim to expand the art world beyond its traditional confines.

In cooperation with the International Visitors Program for Media Arts organised by Digitaal Platform IAK/IBK and Flanders Image.

argos
Werfstraat 13 rue du Chantier
B-1000 Brussels
Belgium
tel +32 2 229 00 03
fax +32 2 223 73 31

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

the story of a never ending line

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Call for Contributions

Zachary Lieberman is making a performance at the OFFF festival along with his good friend Theo Watson (of L.A.S.E.R TAG fame). The idea of the performance is really quite simple -- the story of a never ending line -- and the performance will be made up of both videos as well as live material, and synthesized graphics.

We are asking you, with your awesome brains and wicked fast design skills, to send us videos in your own style, of a line being drawn from one side of the screen to another. It can be animated, live video, computer generated, or some other way we can't even think of yet.

We would love to get videos from you to use in our performance. The more imaginative the better! All the videos used will be credited at the end of the performance so it will be a great chance to show what you can do with a line and 5 seconds of time. Multiple submissions are encouraged!

Rules:

1: The line should start off screen, enter on one side and leave on
another (doesn't have to be right to left, can be any side to any side, including the same leaving on the same side the line started on).

2: The line should have the effect of being drawn, not moved across the screen. See examples bellow.

Good: http://impssble.com/OFFF/good.mov
Bad: http://impssble.com/OFFF/bad.mov

3: Once a part of a line is drawn it should not move too much, the animation should be the effect of drawing the line (as in the good movie above).

4. The video doesn't necessarily have to be the drawing of a line (although most of what we are working with is), but it can also be something moving along a very clear path. The idea should be about going from point a to point b.

5. Both sound or silent is ok.

6: Videos should be 3 - 8 seconds long, 640 480 quicktime format. (320x240 also ok)

7: Videos should be submitted to zlieb[at]parsons.edu or theo[at]muonics.net (if under 10MB) or posted online for download.

8: We need them by tuesday 8th of May.

We hope you enjoy this challenge, and would like to take part in our project. Thanks and have fun!

zach & theo

Posted by jo at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2007

Conflux 2007: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 10TH

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Call for Proposals

Conflux 2007 will take place in Brooklyn again this September and we want you in it! The call for proposals is at http://confluxfestival.org and has all the information you need on how to participate. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 10TH.

The Conflux festival has been described as "a network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators…making fresh, if underground,contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today's fight for the soul of high-density metropolises." At Conflux visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city. For more information about Conflux, check out the Conflux 2006 site.

Posted by jo at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

TransISTor

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Call for Participants

Last chance to apply to TransISTor workshop in JUNE organised by www.FAMU.cz and www.CIANT.cz.

TransISTor focuses on computer games technologies while opening up their creative potential for non-gaming storytelling domains including art, cinema, TV, educational applications and cross-media productions.

Session 1: Game modifications and machinima films :: 14. 06. - 17. 06. 2007, Prague :: Application deadline: 14. MAY 2007 :: Working language is English :: From combination of comics and video games to films created with game engines. This session will provide an overview of tools and techniques used for customizing and expanding computer games. We will examine issues of game design and game play in the context of cross media production. The goal is to explore the basics of how to create and modify game levels. In the intensive 4-day workshop your will create your first machinima film.

14. - 17. JUNE 2007 | Prague | € 400 (freelancer) / € 800 (corporate) - The price includes training, didactic materials, accommodation and meals.

Preliminary schedule:

14. June
9:00 - 12:00 AM | VIKTOR ANTONOV: Visual storytelling for Game worlds: designing and building a sci-fi universe
1:30 - 5:00 PM | DANI SÁNCHEZ-CRESPO: Independent Vs. Commercial games: from aesthetic to industry aspects

15. June
9:00 - 12:00 AM | FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: From game engine to machinima movie 1:30 - 5:00 PM | FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: Machinima workshop I.: What makes a machinima?

16. June
9:00 - 12:00 AM | MICHAEL NITSCHE: Machinima and performance 1:30 - 5:00 PM | FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: Machinima workshop II.: Live Machinima Sketch.

17. JUNE
9:00 - 12:00 AM | MICHAEL NITSCHE: Machinima and the moving image 1:30 - 5:00 PM | FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: Machinima workshop III: A small Movie.

VIKTOR ANTONOV: Visual storytelling for Game worlds: designing and building a sci-fi universe - Case studies of game design by Viktor Antonov, the concept designer and the lead art director of Half-Life 2. On examples of his previous and current work, he will illustrate the different stages of world creation from research to architecture, lighting, and concepts, concentrating on the functions of visual design and visual storytelling. In the presentation he will discuss the fundamentals of game design and principles of creating game environments and spaces that provide good gameplay.

VIKTOR ANTONOV (USA/FR/BG): Art-director and concept designer for Half-Life 2 currently working on a new game “The Crossing” which merges single- and multiplayer aspects into a new genre of "cross-play“.

FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: From game engine to machinima movie Machinima is somewhat new and emerging medium that makes use of the realtime rendering capabilities of modern day computer systems to create animated movies. Often enough, machinima repurposes computer gaming technology to help „shooting film in virtual reality“. Though by definition not necessarily bound to computer gaming as such, the two are closely link, not only technologically, but also in their social relevance. Often using the characters and assets from the underlying computer game, machinima works as a way of criticising the games' content and enables the audience to become creative and expand the boundaries set by the rules of the computer game. Machinima transforms into creative play, emphasizing the process of filmmaking as a socially relevant new form of expression and media awareness. With the way machinima is made come broader issues stretching from copyright infringement to new channels of distribution.

FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER: Machinima workshop I. What makes a machinima? In this session we will look at the Workflow and Content ProductionPipeline for Machinima movies.

II. Live Machinima Sketch. In this session we will create a simple character setup and perform a live sketch.
III. A small Movie.

In the final Workshop session, participants will create a small Machinima sequence and render it to the disk for editing, sound and post-production. The Machinima workshop will consist of a brief overview of the history of machinima, followed by a basic explanation of the concepts and workings and finally some hands-on experience. Through analysis of example movies, attendees will get an idea of what makes machinima unique. The larger context of computer games and gaming culture will be explained and the idea of the social relevancy of machinima will be discussed. We briefly talk about the legal aspects of machinima moviemaking and take a look at newly formed distribution channels like youTube or google video. Druing the 4 day workshop participants will create a small machinima movie with a tool based on the game Unreal Tournament 2004 called MovieSandbox.

FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER (AT): Artist and researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz working with the emerging genre of machinima films.

DANI SÁNCHEZ-CRESPO: Independent Vs. Commercial games: from aesthetic to industry aspects :: Should we consider video games an art form or they are simply a commercial product with no values? The presentation will discuss the need for an aesthetic of video games and evaluation of artistic merit, so consumers learn to appreciate what is and what is not relevant in a video game. We will talk about video game artists, their training, and the need to broaden our creator base to incorporate new ideas and creativity. The lecture is driven by examples, from Mario to Half Life, trying to bridge the gap between classic gamers and art critics.

DANI SÁNCHEZ-CRESPO (ES): Entrepreneur and one of the leading voices in game research in Europe who founded Europe’s first Master’s Degree in Video Game Creation. Sub-director of ArtFutura, Spain’s main multimedia festival, and a member of the jury at the Independent Games Festival.

MICHAEL NITSCHE: Machinima and performance: 'part theatre, part film, part videogame' [Salen 2002, 99] Machinima grows from a performance in a virtual world. What are the conditions of this performance? We will look at theory and practice of the idea of the computer as theater for machinima.

Project presentation: Tangible User Interfaces for 3D Real-Time Environments (TUI3D) MICHAEL NITSCHE: Machinima and the moving image 'Filmmaking + Animation + Game Tech' [Marino 2004, 3] No matter what the appearance of machinima, it always deals with the question of the cinematic. But because it is generated so differently from established methods, the 'question of the cinematic' is a two-sided sword in the case of machinima. Is it a move of game media towards film or a simple acquisition of game technologies in the world of moving image production? What is the position of machinima in relation to film? Project presentation: Machinima editing tool Pre-vis efforts.

MICHAEL NITSCHE (USA) Assistant Professor at the School of Literature, Communication & Culture LCC at the Georgia Institute of Technology who launched a website on the academic take on machinima and the first academic book publication on this relatively new field where games and film/ video merge.

TransISTor is a training initiative organised by CIANT - International Centre for Art and New Technologies in cooperation with FAMU - Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague supported by the MEDIA Training Programme of the European Union.

CIANT - International Centre for Art and New Technologies
Address: Kubelíkova 27, 130 00 Prague, Czech Republic
Tel.: +42 (0) 296 330 965, Fax: +42 (0) 296 330 964
e-mail: transistor2007 AT ciant.c

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

SUMMIT non-aligned initiatives in education culture

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Meeting in Berlin

SUMMIT non-aligned initiatives in education culture :: May 24 to 28, 2007, Berlin (DE) :: Two weeks before this years G-8 meeting a wide range of projects, initiatives and protagonists from the fields of art, culture and political activism are going to gather in Berlin for "SUMMIT non-aligned initiatives in education culture": SUMMIT is a proposal to question and to change some of the fundamental terms of the debate around education, knowledge production and information society.

Beyond the widespread lament about the crisis in education there are numerous initiatives converging around "education", recognizing that it is equally a platform for cultural actualisation and self organization: these projects range from free academies, to exhibitions as educational modes to ad-hoc initiatives within social, political and cultural organisations. Parallel to that many initiatives are taking place within or at the margins of institutions which work against the grain of their official modes and expand rather than defy existing aims.

SUMMIT seeks to bring together various approaches from different genres and calls to come forth and unalign from both, the tendencies of bureaucratization and privatization of knowledge and education. The four-day event focusses on four thematic tracks: "Knowledge and Migrancy", "Self-authorization, -organization, -valorization", "Creative Practices" and "Education unrealized and ongoing".

SUMMIT features an evening program with lectures, curated dialogs and performances, a series of meetings and sessions in working groups caucuses, workshops, drafting sessions and history lessons as well as open forums for initiating proposals, highlighting practices and making theory urgent.

SUMMMIT is designed by Irit Rogoff and Florian Schneider in collaboration with Kodwo Eshun, Susanne Lang, Nicolas Siepen and Nora Sternfeld.

Registration and further information at: http://summit.kein.org

Organization: Multitude e.V., together with Goldsmiths College, London University and Witte de With, Rotterdam. SUMMIT is supported by the Federal Culture Foundation, Germany.

Posted by jo at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)

A Handbook for Coding Cultures

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Platforms for Communication and Creativity

A Handbook for Coding Cultures provides a lasting companion to the inspiring projects and topical currents of thought explored in the Coding Cultures Symposium and Concept Lab. Six invited writers and groups from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, England, Italy and Hong Kong share their experiences of building imaginative digital tools, social networks, open labs and internet-based knowledge platforms for communication and creativity. Complementing these commissioned texts are contributions from our guest artists from Canada, England and Jamaica. Artist statements from Symposium speakers completes this snapshot of contemporary cultural practice.

Keeping true to the traditions of the free circulation of knowledge and culture, the Coding Cultures Handbook is available free of charge. A limited print edition of the Handbook was launched at the Coding Cultures Symposium on 9 March 2007. It was commissioned by Francesca da Rimini and d/Lux/MediaArts.

The complete Handbook can be viewed or downloaded below. Alternatively, essays can also be downloaded individually ... and where available, a link to the Author's online essay is also provided.

A Handbook for Coding Cultures (in pdf) (3MB) (full version)
A Handbook for Coding Cultures (zipped ) (2.8MB) (full version)

List of Contents :

Lisa Havilah (AUS) - Foreword
David Cranswick (AUS) - Preface

Francesca da Rimini (AUS): Introduction: Archipelagos of open code and free culture

Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Furtherfield (England): Do It With Others (DIWO): contributory media in the Furtherfield Neighbourhood

Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney, (Belgium): Open ended processes, open space technologies and open laboratories

Andrew Lowenthal, (AUS): Free Beer vs Free Media

Leandro Fossá, (Brazil) in collaboraton with Claudio Prado (Brazil): Digital Culture: The jump from the 19th to the 21st Century

Lam Oi Wan, (Hong Kong): What is that Star? Media cultural action in the claiming of space

Agnese Trocchi (Italy): Shivers of sharing

Alice Angus and Giles Lane, Proboscis (UK): Cultures of Listening

mervin Jarman (Jamaica) in collaboration with Sonia Mills: mongrelstreet: the culture of codes

Camille Turner (Canada): Representing in Digital Space

David S. Vadiveloo (AUS): A time for empowerment or a new digital divide?

Tallstoreez Productionz (AUS): Returning the Gaze: the hero-project, how to join politics, youth empowerment and entertainment

Christopher Saunders (AUS): Big hART - a model for social and cultural change

Lena Nahlous, Ben Hoh and Trey Thomas (aka MC Trey) (AUS): A presentation about why ICE exists and how it works

Posted by jo at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

h2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities

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Conference Webcast

h2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities :: Massachusetts Institute of Technology: May 9 :: 8:30 am to 4:30 pm :: webcast here.

Ushering in a New Era for Human Capability: The story of civilization is the story of humans and their tools. Use of tools has changed the human mind, altered the human body, and fundamentally reshaped human identity. Now at the dawn of the 21st century, a new category of tools and machines is poised to radically change humanity at a velocity well beyond the pace of Darwinian evolution.

A science is emerging that combines a new understanding of how humans work to usher in a new generation of machines that mimic or aid human physical and mental capabilities. Some 150 million of us are over the age of 80, while 200 million of us suffer from severe cognitive, emotional, sensory, or physical disabilities. Giving all or even most of this population a quality of life beyond mere survival is both the scientific challenge of the epoch and the basis for a coming revolution over what it means to be human. To unleash this next stage in human development, our bodies will change, our minds will change, and our identities will change. The age of Human 2.0 is here.

Hosts: JOHN HOCKENBERRY, award-winning journalist; distinguished Media Lab fellow and HUGH HERR, NEC Career Development Professor, MIT Media Lab :: Keynote: OLIVER SACKS :: Special Guests: MICHAEL GRAVES, MICHAEL CHOROST, JOHN DONOGHUE, AIMEE MULLINS and DOUGLAS H. SMITH.

The Media Lab at the Center

In a dramatic and crucially important new initiative, h2.0, the MIT Media Lab seeks to advance on all fronts to define and focus this scientific realignment. The Lab will leverage a new understanding of human cognition, emotion, perception, and movement to produce machines that better serve humanity.

Positioning itself at the center of a confluence of new science is a familiar place for the Media Lab. Understanding the adaptive impulse of humans and harnessing it for the pursuit of a new generation of machines is an endeavor as world shattering as anything the Media Lab has ever undertaken. The goal? New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities.

Posted by jo at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Brussels/Ghent

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Courtisane Festival for Shortfilm, Video and New Media

Upgrade! Brussels/Ghent: Courtisane Festival for Shortfilm, Video and New Media :: May 3-6, Vooruit, Ghent. From the part of Frictions, platform for media art at Vooruit, your special attention for:

From Safety to Where -- exhibition :: May 3-6 (daily from 13.00 to midnight - ballroom and studio's - free entrance): From Safety to Where gathers video and audiovisual installations where urges and senses rule supreme, where nature turns your world upside down or where nature is the lost piece in the puzzle that makes everything right, where violence can be a catalyst and music is salvation for the soul. (With Aernoudt Jacobs, Jacob Kirkegaard, Lars Nilsson, Jeremy Shaw and Richard T. Walker)

Andrea Bozic: Still life with man and woman -- dance performance :: May 3-6 (20.00 - dome - 11/8 euro): A film set within a live performance with uninvited apparitions, imaginary friends and some real people: a man and a woman. One follows the other but they never manage to end up in the same space. Instead, the space develops a life of its own.

FrictiesSalon: Gerard Holthuis :: May 5 (18.30 - dansstudio - free entrance): Gerard Holthuis recently finished his series 'Careless Reef', six films about life underseas and managed to snatch several international prizes right away. He is the central guest in the FrictiesSalon where we would like to hear him speak about different modes of watching and his peculiar fascination for underwater life and city landscapes.

Christian Marclay's 'Screen Play' -- audiovisual performance :: May 6 (20.00 - theatrehall - 10/8 euro): With Screen Play Christian Marclay made a silent visual score that combines found filmfootage and graphics. Three trio's will bring their interpretation of Marclay's visual score: Greg Kelley/Bhob Rainey/Jason Lescalleet, Tetuzi Akiyama/Ignatz/Stef Irritant en Steve Beresford/John Butcher/Paul Lovens.

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2007

OK.VIDEO MILITIA

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Call for Submissions

OK.VIDEO MILITIA: 3rd Jakarta International Video Festival, Indonesia :: July 10 - 21 July, 2007 :: Call for VIDEO IN / VIDEO OUT / TV SCRATCHING / VIDEO SHOP / WORKSHOPS SERIES :: DEADLINE MAY 15, 2007.

OK.VIDEO: O.K. Video – biannual Jakarta International Video Festival that was established in 2003 by ruangrupa, an artists’ initiative based in Jakarta that focuses on supporting the development of the arts in the specific context of culture in Indonesia through research, study and documentation, along with intensive collaboration and cooperation with artists through organizing exhibitions, artist residency programs, art projects and workshops.

OK.VIDEO: MILITIA: In this 3rd OK.Video Festival, we will try to develop a collaboration work between the artistic team of the festival with the participating artists or with the context of a certain public space. This collaboration work will try to get an artistic strategy that could be fit with the context of the community, public and certain space. The theme of the 3rd Ok. Video Festival is “MILITIA”, means to empowered the civilians in a more organize way or by plan so it also mobilize and connected with some activity that push some changes which is initiated from itself.

In this context, we relate this theme with the development of video as the medium in the society today. With this focus we will try to empower the society as a technology and media user to build a social, political, cultural, and historical consciousness towards the reality that happened in our surroundings.

With MILITIA, as the theme of this year festival, the festival will be showing video works that have this kind of tendencies:

- playing or questioning video/audio technology in our daily life such as video camera, digital camera, videophone, computer, television, surveillance camera, etc.
- investigation, which is raise a social, political and cultural issue or situation that happened in our surroundings.
- video exploration, as a strategy to empower the society such as community video.
- presenting history with personal point of view.
- showing personal experience or society in the daily life with video diary or testimony.

Posted by jo at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)

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)

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)

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)

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

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

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Borders Boundaries and Liminal Spaces

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Go there now!

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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.

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April 26, 2007

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.

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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.

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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

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April 25, 2007

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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

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)

April 20, 2007

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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 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

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

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

April 05, 2007

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

Posted by jo at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2007

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

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

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.

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

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)

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)

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)

April 02, 2007

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)

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)

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)

March 29, 2007

ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art

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ReMix / Broca II (Letters / Numbers)

The multimedia installation ReMix / Broca II (Letters / Numbers) will open the international exhibition tour of the work of Mischa Kuball (*1959), a light and media artist from Düsseldorf, Germany, at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will be open from March 31-May 13, 2007.

Kuball has worked conceptually with light for more than twenty years, and in a unique way has linked light, which is otherwise largely considered an aesthetic medium, with social and political statements. Within his complex and multifarious work, the pieces that confront human communication form a specific concentration. "I am interested in language as a function of a code—that is, in the sense of coding and de-coding," says Kuball. Presented for the first time is the new, extensive multimedia installation ReMix / Broca II (Letters / Numbers), which is a further development of his earlier work, broca'sche areal. With both of these works, Kuball refers to the eponymous brain region, which forms language capability, and thereby the basic conditions for human communication.

Taking six different rotating projectors as a point of departure, in ReMix / Broca II (Letters / Numbers), letters and numbers are cast on the walls of a room. This leads to the chance overlapping of a multitude of connections of meaning from various semantic areas, which generates the need to construct meaning. In addition, sculptural elements in the room reflect the light of the projectors; these sculptural elements are the artist's digitized brain waves transferred to three dimensions. In this way, grasping, expressing, and representing thoughts are all connected on different levels as the preliminary stage of communication. "When language and light come together, the basic elements of knowledge are present" (Kuball).

Artist Talk On 31 March 2007 at 4pm in the ZKM_Lecture hall there will be a discussion on "Art and Science" with Mischa Kuball, Peter Weibel, and Gregor Jansen and the artists represented in the related exhibition My Gene, It has Five Corners...

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

March 28, 2007

OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media

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Log on Tonight!

Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org present OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media: McKenzie Wark and David Weinberger :: DATE: March 28, 7 pm :: VENUE: Emerson College, Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont Street, Boston :: STREAMED LIVE online and BROADCAST TO SECOND LIFE :: FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!

McKenzie Wark: “Gamer Theory from Screen to Page” :: GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1 / “Gamer Theory” was created to investigate new approaches to writing in the networked environment, and to see what happens when authors and readers are brought into conversation over an evolving text. Wark will discuss the issues and questions that came up in the process of designing, writing and publishing the book, due out this month from Harvard University Press.

David Weinberger: “Everything is Miscellaneous” :: The digital revolution has created billions of shards of knowledge and information. Now we are inventing processes and techniques for pulling them together, unconstrained by the physical limitations that have silently guided our traditional principles of organizing ideas. From Britannica to Wikipedia, news media to blogs, the Dewey Decimal system to "folksonomies," we are overturning the old assumptions about who is an authority, who is an expert, and who gets to decide what's worth knowing.

MCKENZIE WARK is an Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City. He is the author of several books, including A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard University Press) and Dispositions (Salt Publishing).

DAVID WEINBERGER, Ph.D. is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is a co-author of the best-selling “Cluetrain Manifesto”, and the author of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined.” Weinberger has written for Wired, Salon, The Guardian, The NY Times, USA Today, Harvard Business Review and many others. His new book, “Everything Is Miscellaneous,” will be published in May by Times Books.

For more information about the series, please visit http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/
Contact: jo at turbulence dot org

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

THE PLANETARY COLLEGIUM MONTREAL SUMMIT

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Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence

THE PLANETARY COLLEGIUM MONTREAL SUMMIT - 2007 :: "Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence" :: Montreal, Canada, 19-22 April, 2007

The first International Planetary Collegium Summit will be held in Montreal from April 19 to 22, 2007, on the premises of University of Quebec in Montreal's Coeur des Sciences. Among the speakers are many internationally recognized artists, thinkers and researchers, such as Roy Ascott, founder of the Planetary Collegium, transdisciplinary artist Victoria Vesna, astrophysicist Roger Malina, nanotechnologist James Gimzewski, philosopher Pierre Levy, culture theoretician Derrick de Kerckhove, media artist and theoretician Bill Seaman, and many others.

Entitled Reviewing the Future: Vision, Innovation, Emergence, the summit will allow 65 presenters from fifteen countries to share the results of their latest works and researches with their guests, and with the Quebec media arts and technologies community. The Summit will be an occasion for members of the different nodes of the Collegium (Plymouth, Beijing, Milan and Zurich, which will soon be joined by Seoul and Sao Paulo), along with several members pursuing their research on an individual basis as part of this international network, to get together. Many of these are amongst the best known artist / researchers of their fields.

Through mostly transdisciplinary research, calling upon artists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, educators and communications specialists, the Collegium is contributing to the production of new knowledge in the field of media arts and to the transfer of this knowledge to other fields. Computer science, communications, research on consciousness, biotechnologies, cognitive sciences, hypermedia, variable environments, robotics are but a few of the disciplines whose development feeds and informs the Collegium research in all artistic disciplines : performance, dance, architecture, new narrative forms, music, installations, design, performing arts and the arts of the screen. Although the Summit is first and foremost an occasion to come in contact with unique artistic approaches, which cannot be classified into traditional fields and are at the cutting edge of contemporary practice, several presentations will discuss the theoretical, cultural, social, educational, museological and environmental stakes of these practices. For further information and registration: http://summit.planetary-collegium.net.

The Planetary Collegium

The Planetary Collegium is an international community of researchers, thinkers and artists dedicated since 1994 to research/creation. Through its network of nodes in Europe, South America and Asia, it also offers a unique research program leading to the University of Plymouth PhD. Although its members meet regularly in various places around the world, the Montreal Summit will be the first large scale meeting of its young history. It will offer the Montreal based artist/creators and the Montreal media arts community the opportunity to take notice of the projects, methods, tools and research projects that are amongst the more advanced in the field.

Posted by jo at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology

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Call for Fellows

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular is pleased to announce its fourth annual summer fellowship program to take place June 18-22, 2007 at the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. We are seeking proposals for projects related to upcoming issues devoted to the themes of Reading (vol. 4 no. 1) and Noise (vol. 4 no. 2). Vectors publishes work which need necessarily exist online, ranging from archival to experimental projects.

We invite you to consider submitting an application or to circulate this email to your peers and graduate students. Vectors' fellows not only attend our summer workshop but also have the opportunity to work over several months with a world-class design team in realizing the scholar's vision for online scholarship. You may download the Call For Proposals for the 2007 Vectors Summer Fellowships here.

Posted by jo at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2007

CROSSMEDIALE 2

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Transcultural Change and Translation

[Image: Patrick Lichty, Cicci, virtual avatar, digital print on paper, 2007] CROSSMEDIALE 2 :: Gosia Koscielak Studio & Gallery, 1646 N. Bosworth Ave., Chicago, IL 60622 :: T.847.858.1540 :: info[at]gosiakoscielak.com. CROSSMEDIALE 2 will also be at Gosia Koscielak Studio & Gallery’s Booth # 12 at Bridge Art Fair Chicago; April 27-30, 2007. For more details on Bridge Art Fair Chicago.

An exhibition of American and International art in new media curated by Gosia Koscielak :: April 13 – May 12, 2007 :: Opening reception: Friday, April 13, 6-10 p.m. :: Second Saturday Special Event: April 14, 6 – 10pm :: An electro-audio-visual performance by La Bande Sans Fin, a Chicago-based multimedia artistic team formed by David Zerlin and David Blum.

CrossMediale 2 focuses on the concept of transcultural change and translation in a broader sense. As a continuation of the ongoing curatorial Transcultural Projects initially developed by Gosia Koscielak Ph.D. in 2000 (which was exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2001 and at the National Museum in Szczecin, Poland in 2002), Crossmediale 2 continues to investigate how complex identities, a multimedia reality, and the multicultural mosaic of humanity create the Global-Local world and GLOCAL identity through a variety of local and international artistic responses. Ultimately, the artworks featured change our understanding of transcultural society, and thus change our understanding about human existence.

The exhibit focuses on new media works as well as on artworks that relate to this curatorial concept in a variety of media – including photography, video, drawings, side specific installation, virtual animation, website artworks/project, and virtual performance.

Participating artists in Crossmediale 2: Annette Barbier (Chicago); Hans Bernhard (Vienna); Drew Browning (Chicago), David Blum (Chicago); Scott Kildall (San Francisco); Lizvlx (Vienna); Erik Olofsen (Amsterdam); Silvia Malagrino (Chicago), Pat Badani (Chicago); Galina Shevchenko (Chicago), UBERMORGEN (Vienna); Patrick Lichty (Chicago), Susan Sensemann (Chicago), Richard Purdy (New York); Silvia Rozanka (Chicago); Ben Chang (Chicago); Deborah Boardman (Chicago); Janell Baxter (Chicago), Tracy Marie Taylor (Chicago): David Zerlin (Chicago); and La Bande Sans Fin (Chicago).

Some highlights from the exhibit include:

Chicago digital artists Annette Barbier and Drew Browning’s collaboration in Stream-ing, an interactive installation about the interdependent relationship of people and the environment. The Illinois Waterway, which includes the Chicago and Illinois rivers and runs from Chicago through Peoria, operates as both the metaphor for interconnectedness and the subject of data collection in this interactive installation that surrounds participants with a responsive aural and visual environment including a 30 foot long projection on the floor that viewers/visitors must navigate.

Scott Kildall’s video, Something To Remind Me, works at the intersection of cultural memory and the psychology of time. Seeing himself as a gatherer, creator and editor, Kildall’s stitches together media such as voicemails from personal ads, “in-between” cinematic moments and found landscapes from Second Life, and weaves them into architectural structures and sculptures.

Patrick Lichty, a Chicago based new media artist, curator, and lecturer, presents animation work and digital prints from the project, Reconstructing Cicciolina: A Virtual Reality Opera. Lichty performs in the online virtual reality world as La Cicciolina, a virtual avatar who appears as a Lady Godiva of sorts, and in the process explores whether this artificial being is any more or less constructed or real than the artist himself.

Susan Sensemann will present her drawing Scan, an abstract interpretation of the scan of the human brain which transcends the physicality of the BRAIN image. Sensemann’s translation of this high tech scan through her hand and into the more intimate medium of drawing shows how the artist can transcend the physicality of the BRAIN, by convert a technological product into a metaphysical experience.

UBERMORGEN will present a photo series from The Chinese Gold Project, a web based project in which artist mixes up the real "virtual" (the game) with the virtually "real" (money). Also UBERMORGEN’s paintings from the ART FID (2005) series will be on display. These digital prints on canvas portray the structure of round RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips, mini identification systems that can be attached to a person or a product to collect diverse information about the product or person and continue and which are a terrifying reality of the future.

Richard Purdy’s encaustic paintings on wood wrestle with quantum mechanics, cosmology, computer programming, and fractal geometry. This work combines the use of computer-generated imagery with children's drawing implements like the Spirograph. While inevitably coded, these images make themselves accessible to people of diverse backgrounds.

An electro-audio-visual performance by La Bande Sans Fin, a Chicago-based multimedia artistic team formed by David Zerlin and David Blum, will take place at the opening reception.

Posted by jo at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

Dispersive Anatomies

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Call for papers

Dispersive Anatomies :: Call for papers :: Guest Editors: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim and Mez Breeze :: Editorial Guidelines :: Discussion Group: leadispersive-subscribe[at]googlegroups.com :: Deadline: 31 May 2007.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that address dispersion - dispersion of bodies, objects, landscapes, networks, virtual and real worlds. A fundamental shift in the way we view the world is underway: the abandonment of discrete objects, and objecthood itself. The world is now plural, and the distinction between real and virtual is becoming increasingly blurred, with troubling consequences within the geopolitical register. This shift is related to a cultural change that emphasizes digital deconstruction over analog construction: a photograph for example can be accessed and transformed, pixel by pixel, cities can be taken apart by gerrymandering or eminent domain, and our social networks are replete with names and images that problematize friendship, sexuality, and culture itself. One issue that emerges here: Are we networking or are we networked? Are we networks ourselves?

LEA is interested in texts and works that deal with this fundamental shift in new and illuminating ways. Specifically, anything from essays through multimedia through networks themselves may be considered. We're particularly interested in submissions that deal with the incoherency of the world, and how to address it.

Key topics of interest

Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
- Networked warfare in real and virtual worlds.
- The wounded/altered body in real and virtual worlds.
- Transgressive sexualities across borders, sexualities among body-parts, dismemberments and groups, both real and virtual.
- Critical texts on the transformation of classical narrative - from its emphasis on an omniscient narrator and coherent plots/characters, to literatures of incoherency, dispersed narrations, and the jump-cut exigencies of everyday life.
- Deleuze/Guattari, TAZ, and other phenomena at the border of networking.
- Internet visions and their abandonment or fulfillment.
- The haunting of the world by ghosts, virtual beings, dreams and nightmares that never resolve.
- The geopolitical collapse of geopolitics.
- Military empires as scattershot entrepreneurial corporations.

Dispersion has two vectors: the breakup or breakdown of coherent objects; and the subsequent attempt to corral, curtail, or recuperate from this breakdown. How do we deal with networks that are constantly coalescing and disappearing? Where are we in the midst of this? In an era of pre-emptive culture, is guerilla warfare to be accompanied by guerilla culture as the order of the day?

Want to be kept informed?

For the latest news, updates and discussions, join the LEA Dispersive Anatomies Mailing List. Email: leadispersive-subscribe[at]googlegroups.com

Publishing Opportunities

As part of this special, LEA is looking to publish:
- Critical Essays
- Artist Statement/works in the LEA Gallery
- Bibliographies (a peer reviewed bibliography with key texts/references in Dispersive Anatomies)
- Academic Curriculum (LEA encourages academics conducting course programmes in this area to contact us)

LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students / practitioners / theorists to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage authors outside North America and Europe to submit essays / artists statements.

Proposals should include:

- A brief description of proposed text (200-300 words)
- A brief author biography
- Any related URLs
- Contact details

In the subject heading of the email message, please use *Name of Artist/Project Title: LEA Dispersive Anatomies Special - Date Submitted.* Please cut and paste all text into body of email (without attachments).

Editorial Guidelines: http://leoalmanac.org/cfp/submit/index.asp
Deadline for proposals: May 31, 2007
Please send proposals or queries to: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim, Mez Breeze leadispersive[at]astn.net

and
Nisar Keshvani
LEA Editor-in-Chief
lea[at]mitpress.mit.edu

Posted by jo at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

Franklin Furnace Retrospective

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A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art

Franklin Furnace presents a retrospective: The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art :: One Night Only - April 27th, 2007.

Franklin Furnace, the internationally-acclaimed incubator of the avant-garde, is proud to present a one-night only benefit event on Friday, April 27th at 8:00 PM: The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art, to take place at the Harry de Jur Playhouse of Henry Street Settlement (located at 466 Grand Street, Manhattan). For this unique evening, Patron tickets are $500 and $100, and are available through Franklin Furnace, or call 718-398-7255. General Admission tickets are $20, and are available through www.theatermania.com, or call 212-352-3101.

The benefit will be co-curated by C. Carr, critic and author of On Edge; RoseLee Goldberg, scholar and author of Live Art: 1909 to the Present; and Martha Wilson, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace, and will contain both video footage of historical performance works and live performances by some of the most influential artists of our time. This program will serve as an overview of performance art works which changed art discourse over three decades.

The History of the Future will include live performances by Karen Finley, Murray Hill, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Tom Murrin, Julie Atlas Muz, Reverend Billy, Alba Sanchez, Michael Smith and Martha Wilson.

Artists whose recorded work is represented in the event include Moe Angelos and Peggy Healy, Ron Athey, Blue Man Group, Eric Bogosian, Patty Chang, Nicolas Dumit Estevez, John Fleck, Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez- Peña, Grupo 609, Tehching Hsieh, Holly Hughes, John Jesurun, Joshua Kinberg and Yury Gitman, The Kipper Kids, Ana Mendieta, Tim Miller, Mouchette, William Pope.L, Martha Rosler, Sapphire, Stuart Sherman, Annie Sprinkle, Jack Waters, William Wegman and Man Ray, Wooloo Productions, Adrianne Wortzel, X-Cheerleaders and Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga.

The History of the Future will honor Marina Abramovic, Simone Forti, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer and Carolee Schneemann for their pioneering performance work and Judson Memorial Church for its role as a cradle of experiment.

It has been 30 years since Franklin Furnace was founded to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, and 10 years since Franklin Furnace "went virtual," taking its website as its public face. Here’s an historic outline of seminal FF events:

--February, 1981: Eric Bogosian's first performance in New York, "Men Inside," is presented by Franklin Furnace.

--February 1984: Franklin Furnace is reprimanded by the NEA and dropped by several corporate sources for presenting Carnival Knowledge, an exhibition and performance extravaganza that questioned if there can be such a thing as "feminist pornography." Annie Sprinkle makes her artist debut in "Deep Inside Porn Stars."

--May, 1985: Franklin Furnace creates its Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, which allows emerging artists to produce major work in New York. The panel selects three of the "NEA Four" artists before they were so identified (Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck) along with many others who have gone on to change the world: Papo Colo, Kaylynn Two Trees Sullivan, William Pope.L, Jennifer Miller, Andrea Fraser, Peggy Pettitt, Kim Irwin, Keith Antar Mason, Murray Hill, Pamela Sneed, Tanya Barfield, Deborah Edmeades, Patty Chang, and Stanya Kahn, among others.

--February, 1988: Franklin Furnace and Thought Music produce Teenytown, a multimedia performance by Jessica Hagedorn, Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley with film by John Woo and choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zolar, which examines how racism is embedded in popular culture and entertainment.

--May - August, 1990: Franklin Furnace's performance space is closed by the New York City Fire Department for being an "illegal social club," and the organization is demonized for presenting Karen Finley's installation, "A Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much." Inquiries and audits are conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Comptroller and at the request of Senator Jesse Helms, the General Accounting Office. Cathy Simmons is the first artist in Franklin Furnace's performance program "in exile," at the Kitchen.

--January, 1992: Franklin Furnace's Visual Artists Organizations grant from the NEA is rescinded by the National Council because of the sexually explicit content of a 1991 performance by Scarlet O. The Peter Norton Family Foundation replaces this $25,000 grant.

--November, 1993: The Museum of Modern Art acquires Franklin Furnace's collection of artists' books published internationally after 1960, the largest in the United States, forming the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace/Artist Book Collection.

--February, 1997: Franklin Furnace launches its website, www.franklinfurnace.org, as the Board determines that access to freedom of expression and a broader audience for emerging artists through new media will be a prime program focus.

--January, 1998: Franklin Furnace's first netcasting season of ten artists including Lenora Champagne, Alvin Eng, and Patricia Hoffbauer is mounted in collaboration with Pseudo.com.

--January - December, 2000: The Future of the Present 2000 is redesigned as a residency program in collaboration with Parsons School of Design in order to give artists access to the full range of digital tools, and to exploit the Internet as an art medium and venue.

--May, 2006: Franklin Furnace receives notification of $124,030 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year grant to digitize and publish on the Internet records of performances, installations, exhibits and other events produced by the organization during its first ten years. This project will create electronic access to what are now the only remaining artifacts of these singular works of social, political and cultural expression.

--June, 2006: ARTstor and Franklin Furnace announce a collaboration agreement, ARTstor's first with an "alternative space." Digital images are fast replacing slides and slide projectors in the teaching of art and art history. To respond to these changes, Franklin Furnace is working with ARTstor to digitize and distribute images and documentation of events presented and produced by Franklin Furnace, with the goal of embedding the value of ephemeral practice into art and cultural history.

Posted by jo at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)

MediaArtHistories

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Bridging the Gap

New from MIT-Press (Leonardo Book Series): MediaArtHistories, Edited by Oliver GRAU :: with contributions by Rudolf ARNHEIM, Andreas BROECKMANN, Ron BURNETT, Edmond COUCHOT, Sean CUBITT, Dieter DANIELS, Felice FRANKEL, Oliver GRAU, Erkki HUHTAMO, Douglas KAHN, Ryszard W. KLUSZCZYNSKI, Machiko KUSAHARA, Timothy LENOIR, Lev MANOVICH, W. J. T. MITCHELL, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Louise POISSANT, Edward A. SHANKEN, Barbara Maria STAFFORD and Peter WEIBEL.

Digital art has become a major contemporary art form, but it has yet to achieve acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions; it is rarely collected, and seldom included in the study of art history or other academic disciplines. In MediaArtHistories, leading scholars seek to change this. They take a wider view of media art, placing it against the backdrop of art history. Their essays demonstrate that today's media art cannot be understood by technological details alone; it cannot be understood without its history, and it must be understood in proximity to other disciplines--film, cultural and media studies, computer science, philosophy, and sciences dealing with images.

Contributors trace the evolution of digital art, from thirteenth-century Islamic mechanical devices and eighteenth-century phantasmagoria, magic lanterns, and other multimedia illusions, to Marcel Duchamp's inventions and 1960s kinetic and op art. They re-examine and redefine key media art theory terms – machine, media, exhibition – and consider the blurred dividing lines between art products and consumer products and between art images and science images.

Finally, MediaArtHistories offers an approach for an interdisciplinary, expanded image science, which needs the "trained eye" of art history.

Oliver Grau is Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Image Science, Danube University Krems (Austria). He is the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (MIT Press, 2003), editor of Mediale Emotionen (2005) and founder of the pioneering international digital art archive http://www.virtualart.at

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

Anne-Marie Schleiner and Luis Hernandez

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Chispitas

Chispitas is an exhibit of experimental game art pieces by Luis Hernandez and Anne-Marie Schleiner, and collaborators of theirs. Included is an arcade-like interactive sculpture :: Opening: Thursday March 29, 2007, 8:30 p.m. :: Galeria Sector Reforma, Guadalupe Victoria 398, Entre Analco y Nicolas Bravo, Guadelejara, Mexico :: T/ 36 18 88 10.

"Corridos" a car driving music game inspired by the Mexican/US Border. Also showing is "Oversaturation", an abstract game rooted in Mexico City's urban problematics, and "Heaven711" a hip hop poetry game in four languages. Chispas also shows a number of "Machinima" remixed game art videos, such as "Riot Gear for Rollartista", a series of short videos dealing with European police abuse of Islamic immigrants, shown on small screen PSP's. Some other pieces are OverMachinima and OUT, an urban intervention in America's Army. "Chispitas", a name suggested by guest curator Rene Hiyashi, is a variation of slang for Mexican game arcades, which are popular spaces of play and public social interaction in many parts of Mexico.

Posted by jo at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2007

Code31 + OKNOPUBLIC

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Workshops + Events

Audio and video Streaming Workshop, dis-organized by /Code31/ and led by Arjen Keesmaat :: March 31-April 1, 2007.

During the second workshop within the framework of Code31's xmedk online research, we'll present a two day crash course in audio and video streaming. What does it take to send a live video stream from your desktop to the whole world. We'll learn how to configure a streaming server, take a look at different kinds of broadcasters. Deal with the technicalities: Which protocols to use? What is the difference between udp en tcp? What is with all these codecs?

We'll start low level but in a further stage, dive deeper into the technicalities of streaming: How to configure your network and deal with protocols? How your video imagery gets compressed to those coded bits and bytes? The people at rambla.be are giving us an introduction in getting your streams out in the open, reliably streaming to the bigger public.

:: partcipants :: The workshop is free and open for anyone. If you're interested in participating, send an email with short bio and motivation to ef4db at code31.lahaag.org

non-physical: This workshop is a testcase for the Code31 online research, so those who can't make it to the workshop can follow online, details will be provided on the code31 site. We will provide a live video stream and a moderated chat channel. We're looking for participants who want to join and also evaluate the setup! So, if you're interested, point your fingers to ef4db[at]code31.lahaag.org

Arjen Keesmaat is an interaction designer and media artist, graduated at the Utrecht School of Arts (The Netherlands), faculty of Art, Media and Technology, now active developing media-installations, from in concept to realisation.

Former collaborator at waag.org in the Sensing Presence - (KeyWorx, Connected / Anatomic) and the Creative Learning (ScratchWorx) departments, conducting workshops, technical realisation and development.

:: location ::

OKNO -- Koolmijnenkaai 30/34 -- 1080 Brussels -- Belgium
metro: Graaf van Vlaanderen/Comte de Flandre -- Tram18
dates/data: saturday 31/03 -- sunday 01/04 from 10am till 5pm Free coffee, tea and soft drinks.

http://code31.lahaag.org
http://okno.behttp://www.xmedk.be

With the support of / met de steun van / het VAF (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds) the .x-med-k. workshop series is a collaboration between okno, nadine and foam.

------------------------------

OKNOPUBLIC #3 :: from 4 -> 7 april 2007

OKNOPUBLIC #03 is the result of the collaborative effort of different organisations (http://code31.lahaag.org; http://so-on.be; http://societyofalgorithm.org), initiatives, artists and residents Alejandra Perez Nunez and Dusan Barok.

During 4 days it brings together people who have an interest in looking at new ideas for creative work, willing to question their own practices. We hope some are interested in working together after these days in a context where some network based artworks can be made, from different geographical and ideological places and from different content based approaches.

The program is structured along 4 thematic days with cross-overs, and consists of project presentations and public debates, workshops, performances and an installation. Detailed program on: http://www.okno.be/?id=1053

Day 1: wednesday 4/4: from 2pm -> 6pm
Tales of a Connected City - (the last mile is the network)

The network as truly social : your neighbours stay your neighbours. A look at local mesh networks: what makes the difference between connected places and non-connected ones. What are we connecting to? A discussion about collaboration, content and techniques, setting up new structures and developing new practices for creative work.

With: Riseau Citoyen, okno, Citymine(d), bna-bbot, Rotor, An Mertens. Introduced by Pieter Heremans and Annemie Maes, moderated by Givan Bela and IRC Alejandra Perez Nunez.

Followed by a bombolong install-party: get onto the riseau citoyen!

MAI - interactive installation by Isjtar and Masato Tsutsui, daily between 7pm and 9pm

performances : from 9pm -> 11pm
Day 1: Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann, Justin Bennett, Haraldur
Karlsson

Day 2 : thursday 5/4: from 2pm -> 6pm
on public space and sound practices

Well examine and discuss audio 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?

With: Tapio Mdkeld, Justin Bennett, Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann; moderated by Annemie Maes and IRC Dusan Barok.

MAI - interactive installation by Isjtar and Masato Tsutsui, daily between 7pm and 9pm

Day 3: friday 6/4: from 2pm -> 6pm
on the reinvention of everyday practices

We will gather ideas around creativity and the reinvention of social practices. We will explore how the interest in the transformation of society can initiate the reinvention of practices that become conceived as tactical. In the Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau emphasizes the particular status of ways of using and operating in the social practice or "everyday practice". He differentiates between strategies: the tools of the powerful and tactics: the art of the weak. In this meeting we will be reflecting on various approaches.

With: Apo33, Barb Huber, Alejandra Perez Nunez; Moderated by Tapio Mdkeld, and IRC Givan Bela.

performances: from 9pm -> 11pm
Day 3: Jens Brand, Apo33, elpueblodechina

MAI - interactive installation by Isjtar and Masato Tsutsui, daily between 7pm and 9pm

Day 4: saturday 7/4: from 2pm -> 6pm
A = particles-waves-streams

Can our networks become a new playground where we can meet to show-and-tell, invent, share and toy around with creativity till it becomes something to admire while there, and wonder about later... we will try to percieve how people work with audio and visual data, and how structure emerges through interaction, and build on communication to become visible and heard as a thing of shared beauty that can be different from what flikr and tube give us...

With: Haraldur Karlson, Jasna Velickovic, Bojan Fajfric, Vesna Madzoski, Jens Brand, Todor Todoroff, Maja Kuzmanovic, Nik Gaffney Moderated by Givan Bela and IRC Dusan Barok.

B = the complexity of collaboration / b22f#4 / from 7pm -> 8pm An hour of topological itudes for network pieces

MAI - interactive installation by Isjtar and Masato Tsutsui, daily between 8pm and 9pm

performances : from 9pm->11pm
Day 4: the society of algorithm, Isjtar, Masato Tsutsui and Jeroen Uyttendaele

workshops:

31/1 and 1/4: streaming workshop by code 31, arjen keesmaat and rambla

During the second workshop within the framework of Code31's xmedk online research, we'll present a two day crash course in audio and video streaming. What does it take to send a live video stream from your desktop to the whole world: we'll learn how to configure a streaming server, take a look at different kinds of broadcasters. Deal with the technicalities: Which protocols to use? What is the difference between udp en tcp? What is with all these codecs?

We'll start low level but in a further stage, dive deeper into the technicalities of streaming : How to configure your network and deal with protocols. How your video imagery gets compressed to those coded bits and bytes. The people at rambla.be are giving us an introduction in getting your streams out in the open, reliably streaming to the bigger public. Info and subscriptions: http://www.xmedk.be/index.php?id=676

4/4: riseau citoyen install party by riseau citoyen

For a detailed program and schedules : http://www.okno.be/?id=1053

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

oknopublic#03 online @ http://okno.be; audiovisual streaming & IRC chats, daily from 2pm > 11pm. Check site for streaminglinks and program updates info: okno[at]okno.be

okno is supported by the Flemisch authorities, the VAF (Flemisch Audiovisual Fund) and the VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie)

Posted by jo at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

Listening to the Archive I: Memoires de Sourds

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A Workshop

Listening to the Archive I: Memoires de Sourds :: A workshop around Les Immateriaux :: Date: 30 March 2007 :: Venue: Auditorium, Jan van Eyck Academie, Academieplein 1, 6211 KM Maastricht, Netherlands :: Contact: Antony Hudek at ahudek[at]hotmail.com.

The first in a series of public workshops analysing the impact of Les immatiriaux, the exhibition co-curated by Jean-Frangois Lyotard and Thierry Chaput at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1985. Workshop participants Luca Frei, Marysia Lewandowska, Emily Pethick, Antonia Wunderlich and Peter Zeillinger will address Les immatiriaux as a sum of archives, from the show's two catalogues to the sound records transmitted via headphones during the exhibition. In a bid to rethink Les immatiriaux as an unprecedented phenomenological reflection on excavation, memory, and translation, the workshop will call upon, among other references, Lyotard's late essays (Chambre sourde, La confession d'Augustin), Jacques Derrida's Mal d'archive and Mimoires d'aveugle, as well as contemporary artistic practices concerned with participatory forms of aesthetic engagement.

Posted by jo at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2007

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

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Call for Submissions

This is a general call for submissions to Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Convergence is published by Sage Publications, and is one of the longest-standing journals in new media studies.

Regular readers and subscribers will know that, apart from two annual special issues, Convergence publishes two numbers a year which are open to any submissions that fall within our remit. This is an open call for papers for Volume 14, number 2, which will appear in May 2008. For this issue, papers would need to be submitted by 30th May 2007.

Papers in areas including the following are welcome: Video games, Cable and telecomms, Mobile media / content, Internet studies, Digital / new media art, Digital photography, VR, Control and censorship of the media, Copyright / intellectual property, New media policy, New media industries / institutions, New media history, New media in cross-cultural/international contexts, new media products, Digital TV, DVD, Digital music – recording, production, distribution, file formats / file sharing, Cinema, and gender and technology.

Submission details: Electronic submissions are preferred via email (Macintosh Word98 compatible) These should be sent to the editors with the following information attached separately: name, institution and address for correspondence, telephone, fax and email address. Papers should be typed on one side of the sheet with endnotes in accordance with Sage referencing style (see our website at http://www.luton.ac.uk/Convergence). Refereed articles should be between 5000-8000 words, ‘Debates ‘ pieces should be between 1000-3000 words and Feature Reports should be approximately 4000 words, Authors should also enclose a 50 word biography and an abstract.

Proposals for articles or completed papers should be sent to: convergence[at]beds.ac.uk

Please note NEW author-date style for Convergence

Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
Editors: Julia Knight and Alexis Weedon
Editorial assistant: Jason Wilson
Associate editors: Jeanette Steemers (Europe), Rebecca Coyle (Western Pacific), Amy Bruckman and Jane Singer (North America)
Published quarterley. ISSN 1354-8564
Copyright of Convergence articles rests with the publisher
Editorial e-mail: Convergence@beds.ac.uk
Editorial website: www.beds.ac.uk/convergence
SAGE http://con.sagepub.com

Jason Wilson, Reviews Editor - Convergence

Research Institute for Media, Art and Design
University of Bedfordshire
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
LU1 3JU
United Kingdom

T +44 (0)1582 489144
F +44 (0)1582 489212
M 07828482604
jason.wilson[at]beds.ac.uk

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

March 23, 2007

Evolution de l'Art

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No Physical Residue

Evolution de l'Art :: Bratislava, Slovak Republic :: March 21 - April 22, 2007.

The gallery Evolution de l'Art arises from a collaboration between SPACE (Juraj Carny, Diana Majdakova and Lydia Pribisova) and Cesare Pietroiusti. Evolution de l'Art is a gallery for contemporary art which only sells artworks that are immaterial, with no physical residue, and it does not release certificates of authenticity, nor statements or receipts. EdlA will represent, on a non-exclusive basis, artists whose artwork is, at least in the case of some specific projects, alien from any physical-material component. Beyond this condition, there will not be any other limitation or requisite for represented artists in terms of medium or technique. EdlA offers the possibility of becoming contemporary art collectors to the widest possible audience. Therefore the gallery will offer artworks at a range of very different prices, including some that can be purchased for a few Euros. Purchases can be made at the headquarters of the gallery (Lazaretska 9, Bratislava) or through the website.

On the gallery website, anyone can find the updated list of artworks for sale, with their price list, as well as a list of all those that have been already sold, including the buyers' names (unless anonymity is requested).

Participating artists (among others):

A Constructed World /AUS/
aiPotu /NOR/
Lara Almarcegui /NL/
Ayreen Anastas /USA/
Erik Binder /SK/
Ondrej Brody - Kristofer Paetau /CZ/
Joanna Callaghan /AUS-UK/
Juraj Carny /SK/
Asli Cavusoglu / TK/
Carla Cruz /PT/
Nemanja Cvijanovic /KR/
Catherine D'Ignazio Institute fo Infinitely Small Things/ /USA/
Roberto De Simone /I/
Stanislao Di Giugno /I/
Andrew Duggan /IR/
Esculenta (Raffaella Spagna e Andrea Caretto) /I/
Emilio Fantin /I/
Petra Feriancova /SK/
Ulrika Ferm /FIN/
Stano Filko /SK/
Harrell Fletcher /USA/
Michael Fliri /I/
Viktor Fucek /SK/
Rene Gabri /USA/
Liam Gillick /GB/
Ellen Harvey /USA/
Nina Hoechtl /A/
Philippine Hoegen /NL/
Christoph Hoeschele /A/
Per HC Iain Kerr & Morgan J. Puett /CAN-USA/
Sharon Kivland /F/
Eva Kotatkova / CZ /
JiEC- Kovanda /CZ/
Jaroslav Kysa & Radovan Cerevka /SK/
Gareth James /GB-USA/
Pedro Lasch /Mex/
Otis Laubert /SK/
Pia Lindman /FIN/
M+M /D/
Antonino Musco /I/
Angel Nevarez /USA/
Giancarlo Norese /I/
Boris Ondreicka /SK/
Adam Page & Eva Hertzsch /DE/
Eugenio Percossi /I/
Jorge Peris /E/
Jenny Perlin /USA/
Alessandro Piangiamore /I/
Cesare Pietroiusti /I/
Giuseppe Pietroniro /I/
Mira Podmanicka /SK/
LC=dia PribiE!ovC! /SK/
Ben Readman /UK/
Ruth Sacks & Robert Sloon /SA/
Dorota Sadovska /SK/
Scanner /UK/
Michael Schumacher /USA/
Rudolf Sikora /SK/
Shelly Silver /USA/
Wolfgang Staehle /D-USA/
Janos Sugar /HU/
Barry Sykes /UK/
Valerie Tevere /USA/
Jan Triaska /SK/
Enzo Umbaca /I/
Nikola Uzunovski /Macedonia/
Marcella Vanzo /I/
Roman Vasseur /UK/
Kamiel Verschuren / NL /
Cesare Viel /I/
Dusan Zahoransky /SK/
Danielle van Zuijlen /NL/
Mary Zygouri /GR/

Evolution de l'Art
c/o Space
Lazaretska 9
811 08 Bratislava 1, Slovak Republic

Posted by jo at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

Comp_07: MIXED REALITIES

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One Week Left to Apply!

Comp_07: MIXED REALITIES :: Juried International Networked Art Competition :: Call for Proposals :: Deadline: March 31, 2007.

MIXED REALITIES: (1) a competition and series of simultaneous exhibitions that engage users in three discrete environments: the Internet (Turbulence), an online 3-D rendered environment (Ars Virtua), and physical space (Art Interactive); (2) works that evaluate the concepts "virtual," "simulation", and "real"; (3) a series of experiences in which participants connect with one another and contribute to the creation of the work. Five commissions @ $5,000 (US) each. More >>

APPLICATION GUIDELINES: Proposals MUST BE in the form of a web site. More >>. NOTE: While collaborative projects are preferred they are not a requirement. We have set up a FORUM for applicants to ask and answer questions and seek collaborators. GO TO FORUM >>

JURORS: MICHAEL FRUMIN, Technical Director Emeritus, Eyebeam; NATASHA KHANDEKAR, Director, Art Interactive; JAMES MORGAN, Director, Ars Virtua; TREBOR SCHOLZ, Founder, Institute for Distributed Creativity; HELEN THORINGTON, Co-Director, Turbulence. See bios >>

IMPORTANT DATES:

Proposal Deadline: March 31, 2007
Notification: Winners will be contacted after May 15, 2007
Delivery: Works must be completed by February 2008

This project is supported by a generous grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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

Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary

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Shared Visions between Art and Technology

Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary: Shared Visions between Art and Technology :: June 4 – August 24, 2007 :: Open weekdays, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. :: National Academy of Sciences, 2100 C St NW, Rotunda Gallery.

This group exhibition of work by artists, designers, architects and computer scientists will present projects based on manipulating data to explore speculative inquiries, imaginary scenarios, and real-time phenomenon. The works will address the malleable matter of data in a number of spaces from outer space to cyberspace, n th dimensional space; urbanized space; public space; virtually embodied space; constructed space; language space; environmental space; and collective space. Contributors to this exhibition include: Sheldon Brown; Christa Sommerer and Laurant Mignonneau; Nell Breyer and Jonathan Bachrach; Ernest Edmonds; George Legrady; Techla Schiphorst; and many others.

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

Processing:

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A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, with a foreword by John Maeda.

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it's clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. "Extensions" present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.

Casey Reas is Associate Professor in the Design | Media Arts Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ben Fry is Nierenburg Chair of Design in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, 2006-2007.

Posted by jo at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

The Aesthetics of Net Literature:

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Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media

The Aesthetics of Net Literature: Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media; Peter Gendolla, Jörgen Schäfer (eds.)

During recent years, literary texts in electronic and networked media have been a focal point of literary scholarship, using varying terminology. In this book, the contributions of internationally renowned scholars and authors from Germany, USA, France, Finland, Spain and Switzerland review the ruptures and upheavals of literary communication within this context. The articles in the book focus on questions such as: In which literary projects can we discover a new quality of literariness? What are the terminological and methodological means to examine these literatures? How can we productively link the logics of the play of literary texts and their reception in the reading process? What is the relationship of literary writing and programming?

With contributions by Jean-Pierre Balpe, Susanne Berkenheger, Friedrich W. Block, Philippe Bootz, Laura Borràs Castanyer, Markku Eskelinen, Frank Furtwängler, Peter Gendolla, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Fotis Jannidis, Thomas Kamphusmann, Mela Kocher, Marie-Laure Ryan, Jörgen Schäfer, Roberto Simanowski and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Peter Gendolla (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor of Literature, Art, New Media and Technologies at the University of Siegen. Jörgen Schäfer (Dr. phil.) is Assistant Professor at the "Forschungskolleg Medienumbrüche" at the University of Siegen. www.litnet.uni-siegen.de

Posted by jo at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

XL Terrestrials

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THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CINEMA

The XL Terrestrials present "THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CINEMA" :: A screening program ranging from art flix to mainstream movies to guerrilla media to ubiquitous online effluvium, all presented in an open forum theater as an interactive and self-diagnostic application that will tell us if we are still connected to human consciousness, and how might we still access a customized and liveable "Operating System" based on un-programmed desires, community and individuation.

The XL Terrestrials, a team of unlicensed psycho-media analysts and illegitimate art practitioners from San Francisco, Berlin and beyond, present this cinematic, theatrical and ecological examination of movies, mass media, the internet, and You, the human species, in the midst of an epic-scale virtual migration.

Recently back from their eastern Europe and Balkan region research expedition, the XL Terrestrials bring you an incredible collection of "no border" cinema in combination with strategies for disengaging the "OS - Spectacle 2.0" in times of war, hypermarkets, and virtual cul de sacs.

Posted by jo at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

070707: UpStage Festival

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REMINDER! Call for Participation

070707: UpStage Festival, a festival of live online performances to celebrate the launch of UpStage 2: you are warmly invited to create your own original cyberformance and perform it to a global audience, using UpStage. DEADLINE: MARCH 31.

Purpose-built for live interactive performance events, UpStage is easy and fun to use. It works via a web browser so you don't need to download or install anything to create or attend a performance. The UpStage team can help you to learn how to use the software and give advice on devising work in UpStage and creating graphics.

To learn more about UpStage, come to the next open session: Wednesday 7 March, 9 pm New Zealand time - check here for your local time.

To submit a proposal, email the following information to info[at]upstage.org.nz:

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.

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.

The deadline for submissions is MARCH 31 2007; selections will be made shortly after this and you will be advised as soon as possible. The festival will take place online in UpStage, and screened at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, NZ, on 070707 (7 July 2007). There is no entry fee; participating artists will be listed in a printed programme and on the UpStage web site, and will receive a DVD of the festival and copies of promotional material.

The development of UpStage 2 has been funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the New Zealand Government's Digital Strategy; project partners are CiityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology.

For futher information, email info@upstage.org.nz or visit www.upstage.org.nz

helen varley jamieson
UpStage project manager
helen[at]upstage.org.nz

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

March 22, 2007

Upgrade! Boston

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Tonight!

UPGRADE! BOSTON: Eric Gordon + Show-n-tell :: WHEN: March 22, 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 OR please join us for live broadcast (4:00 pm SLT) from Emerson College Island (182, 112, 23), Second Life.

Eric Gordon will present “The Digital Possessive: Private Spaces in Public Space.” Gordon is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston. His work focuses on technology in public space, perceptions of place in synthetic worlds, and social software in teaching and learning. His book The Urban Spectator: Emerging Media and the Consumption of the American City is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press.

Show-n-tell will present “webAffairs,” her book about an adult video web community and her story of being both an observer and a performer. Show-n-tell was trained as a graphic designer and artist. She has been designing personal work for the Web practically since its inception the early '90s. She grew up in Turkey and upon graduation from high school came to the U.S. to continue her studies. She currently teaches and resides in the Boston area.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 22 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 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

AURORA PICTURE SHOW

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MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY: BELOW-FI

AURORA PICTURE SHOW PRESENTS MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY: BELOW-FI :: APRIL 19-21, 2007 :: 800 Aurora Street, Houston, TX 77009 :: Aurora Picture Show, recognized as the most innovative microcinema in Texas, presents the fourth annual Media Archeology Festival April 19-21, 2007. Featuring live audio-visual events at three Houston venues, the festival highlights artists who use found and original electronic media to produce live multimedia performances that combine film or video projection, theater, and music.

This year’s festival is titled Media Archeology: Below-Fi and features a number of internationally recognized multimedia artists who eschew computers in the creation of time-based audiovisual work. Curated by New York musician and curator Nick Hallett, the 2007 festival includes performances by Bruce McClure, Ray Sweeten, Dynasty Handbag, Nautical Almanac, Tristan Perich, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and visuals by Mighty Robot.

“For anyone interested in the future of moving image art, Media Archeology is a must-attend annual event,” explains Aurora Picture Show Founding/Executive Director Andrea Grover.

Curator Nick Hallett has programmed for The Kitchen, New York Underground Film Festival, Ocularis, Monkey Town, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's TBA festival, Scope Art Fair Hamptons, Artists Television Access (San Francisco), Pacific Film Archive and All Tomorrow's Parties rock festival in addition to his regular series in New York: Harkness A/V (time based media salon), Darmstadt (contemporary music), and Maison Du Chic (multimedia "cabaret"). Hallett's creative projects range from composing music for film and theater to installation and performance. He originated the band "Plantains," which from 2000 to 2003 operated as a live multimedia act, with electronic music and video.

Media Archeology: Below-Fi venues include Aurora Picture Show, Domy Bookstore, and The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. For program dates and times visit www.aurorapictureshow.org or call 713.868.2101.

Media Archeology Schedule

Bruce McClure :: Thursday, April 19, 8:30pm :: Aurora Picture Show, 800 Aurora Street :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Bruce McClure uses the tools and occasion of film projection to create a visceral hybrid of vaudeville, installation and cinema. Drawing on the experience of Harold Edgerton's stroboscopic flash and the flicker films of recent decades, McClure applies his formal training as an architect to construct mind-altering, multi-projector works of light and obstruction accompanied by optical sound.

Ray Sweeten :: Thursday, April 19, 8:30pm :: Aurora Picture Show, 800 Aurora Street :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Ray Sweeten extends the tradition of experimental- cinema pioneer (and Houston native) Mary Ellen Bute with his use of the oscilloscope–an instrument which charts the flow of electrical impulse on an x and y axis–to generate lush, geometric animations. Though its main applications are in the scientific research field, Sweeten uses the oscilloscope to visualize compositions for sweeping electronic sound, creating unique sculptural patterns.

Dynasty Handbag :: Friday, April 20, 8:30 pm :: Domy Bookstore, 1709 Westheimer (rain location: Aurora Picture Show) :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Born out of the San Francisco experimental rock scene, Dynasty Handbag is the one-woman/portable/electro/performance/music vehicle created and executed by "crackpot genius" (Village Voice) Jibz Cameron. Her elastic physicality, miraculous timing, minimalist melody arrangements combined with an over the top stage persona make for a piece of art comedy that is the expulsion of all things serious in a young woman.

Nautical Almanac :: Friday, April 20, 8:30 pm :: Domy Bookstore, 1709 Westheimer (rain location: Aurora Picture Show) :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Nautical Almanac is the duo of Baltimore-based artists Carly Ptak and Twig Harper. By breaking apart amateur electronic devices, guitar pedals, stereo components, and children's toys, the two have created an arsenal of original musical instruments, from which they generate their explosive and genre-defying sound.

Tristan Perich, 1-Bit Music :: Saturday, April 21, 8:30pm :: The Orange Show, 2402 Munger (rain location: Aurora Picture Show) :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Music project harnesses the most basic form of digital sound to complex, electrifying effect. Incorporating original minimal techno music which has been programmed and implemented into simple circuitry available in the form of a CD jewel case, Tristan accompanies his art-cum-music devices with live drumming and 1-Bit video.

Quintron and Miss Pussycat :: Saturday, April 21, 8:30pm :: The Orange Show, 2402 Munger (rain location: Aurora Picture Show) :: Tickets are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or $15 for a festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) and are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

Direct from the 9th ward of New Orleans, organ player and inventor Mr. Quintron, along with his partner-in-crime, Miss Pussycat, deliver a frenzied musical experience featuring "swamp tech" beats played on the Drum Buddy, a mechanically-rotating, five-oscillator, light-activated drum machine. As Mr. Quintron fingers boogie woogie basses and gospel chords on his nightclub organ (built out to resemble a car) and spins the Drum Buddy as a DJ scratches a record, Miss Pussycat plays maracas and performs avant-garde puppet theater.

Visuals by Mighty Robot A/V Squad: Mighty Robot are Brooklyn’s legendary visuals team, using the techniques of the 60s Psychedelic Lightshow as their starting point to create an hybrid of expanded cinema, synesthetic improvisation, and general mayhem. “The Mighty Robot Audio Visual Squad were on top form this night and the stage was constantly washed in waves of color and texture”— Punkcast

Ticket Information

Tickets to each individual show are $10 per show ($8 for Aurora members) or Aurora fans can purchase a $15 festival pass ($10 for Aurora members) to all performances. Tickets are available by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101 or aurora[at]aurorapictureshow.org.

About Aurora Picture Show

Founded in 1998, the Aurora Picture Show is the only facility of its kind in the Southwest. Art in America has called it “one of the most interesting and unusual new spaces in Houston.” Housed in a 1924 converted church building in the Heights this 100 seat theater is part of the micro-cinema movement that began in the mid-1990’s. Aurora supports non-commercial independent and artist-made film, video and new media artists through fifty programs a year. Aurora’s human scale promotes a meaningful and community-oriented exchange between artists and audiences.

Aurora Picture Show is funded by its stellar membership, Houston Endowment, Inc, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Brown Foundation,Inc., Oshman Foundation, Nightingale Code Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and National Endowment for the Arts. Aurora Picture Show is a proud member of Fresh Arts Coalition.

Contact: Delicia Harvey
harvey@aurorapictureshow.org
Phone: 713.868.2101, Fax: 713.868.2104

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

PLAYING THE URBAN

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at De Balie Amsterdam

Announcing PLAYING THE URBAN, 31 March 2007, De Balie Amsterdam :: MOBILE LEARNING GAME KIT with Jan Simons (Associate Professor New Media Studies, University of Amsterdam); PLASTICITY: A GAME FOR URBAN PLANNING with Mathias Fuchs (Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader in Creative Games, University of Salford) and Steve Manthorp (Special Project Manager, Bradford)

This presentation introduces a recently developed game for urban planning. The game, based on the architectonic visions and challenges of British architect Will Alsop is demonstrated, its features are explained, and a variety of planning processes, strategies and problems are shown in detail. LOGO PARC (Danikl van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, Gon Zifroni) Logo Parc is a research project on design and publicspace, carried out at the Jan van Eyck Academy,

Maaike Lauwaert
University of Maastricht
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,Department Of History
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht

M.lauwaert[at]history.unimaas.nl

Reservations and additional Information: Mediastudies-fgw[at]uva.nl
Info: debalie.nl
DE BALIE,
KLEINE-GARTMANPLANTSOEN 10
AMSTERDAM
TEL. +31(0)20 55 35 100

Posted by jo at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

Soundscape: Boston

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Call for Contributions

As part of the Soundmarks exhibition at Art Interactive, June 8 – August 18, 2007, new media artists Zach Poff + N.B. Aldrich are seeking audio recordings of the Boston metropolitan area for their work Soundscape: Boston. The submission deadline is April 1, 2007.

The artists are asking local residents to contribute audio recordings of meaningful elements of their acoustic environment, whether extraordinary or commonplace: from the stories of loved ones to the hiss of the morning coffee pot.

Soundmarks is comprised of five site-specific sound and video installations by Amy Stacey Curtis and the collaborative team of Zach Poff + N.B. Aldrich. Employing both new media and traditional technologies, the artists experiment with the ways in which art can serve as a catalyst for common experience and a site for community exchange.

Please visit the website for more complete information about the project and for instructions on donating your recordings. Soundscape: Boston can only work with a community-donated database of sounds, so please contribute!

Posted by jo at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: LIVE PERFORMANCES OR REMOTE VISUAL / SONIC STREAMERS :: Remote Presence: Streaming Life workshop, part of the Pixelache 2007 "Architectures of Participation" Festival is looking for participants to their final event / happening / party :: MUU galleria, Lvnnrotinkatu 33, 00180 Helsinki, Finland, +358 (0)9-625 972.

Neoscenes invites your incoming audio (mp3, ogg) and video (QT) streams for local playing, re-broadcast on the net, and re-mix. local participants in Finland are also welcome to bring sonic and/or visual set-ups to plug in to the mix and join the party. PLEASE EMAIL John Hopkins at jhopkins[at]commspeed.net with your proposal or for further information.

2000 - 2400, Saturday, 31 March 2007, Helsinki (EET) GMT+2 ** 1900-2300, Saturday, 31 March 2007, Berlin (CET) GMT+1 1:00-5:00 PM, Saturday, 31 March 2007, NYC (EST) GMT-4 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM, Saturday, 31 March 2007, Los Angeles (PST) GMT-7 0300 - 0700, Sunday, 01 April 2007, Sydney (EST) GMT+10 [Go to http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ for times in other locations]

And, we will also have an IRC chat open on:
network: irc.freenode.net
channel: #neoscenes
this will be projected during the event...

Posted by jo at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

Diapason Gallery NYC presents

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OptoSonic Tea

Diapason, gallery for sound and intermedia presents... OptoSonic Tea @ Diapason NYC :: Tuesday, March 27, 8:30pm :: Live sets by: Janene Higgins (video mix) with Mari Kimura (violin and interactive computer) and Jennifer Reeves (dual 16mm film projection) with Anthony Burr (music) :: Invited artist: Tony Dove :: Suggested donation: $7 :: Organized by Katherine Liberovskaya and Ursula Scherrer.

OptoSonic Tea is a new regular series of meetings dedicated to the convergence of live visuals with live sound which focuses on the visual component. These presentation-and-discussion meetings aim to explore different forms of live visuals (live video, live film, live slide projection and their variations and combinations) and the different ways they can come into interaction with live audio. Each evening features two different live visual artists or groups of artists who each perform a set with the live sound artists of their choice. The presentations are followed by an informal discussion about the artists' practices over a cup of green tea. A third artist, from previous generations of visualists or related fields, is invited specifically to participate in this discussion so as to create a dialogue between current and past practices and provide different perspectives on the present and the future.

Janene Higgins' videos and digital media have been presented internationally at numerous festivals and galleries, including The 2006 New York Video Festival; Documenta in Kassel, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon; City of Women Festival, Slovenia; The Chelsea Art Museum, NYC; MAD '03 in Madrid; Art Institute of Chicago; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires; and at The Impakt Festival in The Netherlands. Using laptop, mixers, tapes, and camera, she developed a technique for live video performance, and has collaborated with many of New York's pre-eminent composers and improvisors of new music, including duo performances with Elliott Sharp, Ikue Mori, Alan Licht, Okkyung Lee, Aki Onda, Nurit Tilles, and Zeena Parkins. Higgins is a frequent artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center, and is a recent recipient of their Electronic Arts grant. She has given workshops on her approach to video performance at A.I.R. Gallery and the Chelsea Art Museum, NYC, and at the Watson Festival at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mari Kimura: Hailed by The New York Times as "a virtuoso playing at the edge,"composer/violinist Mari Kimura is widely admired for her revolutionary extended technique "Subharmonics" and for the solo performances of diverse programs including her works with interactive computer music. She has won numerous awards both in her native Japan and in the U.S., and has been invited to give solo performances in international festivals around the world including Spring in Budapest, Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, International Bartok Festival, Festival Cervantino in Mexico, ISCM World Music Days, and at IRCAM, Paris. Ms. Kimura's works have been supported by grants including Jerome Foundation, Arts International, Japan Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation of the Arts. Since September 1998, Ms. Kimura has been teaching a graduate class in Computer Music Performance at The Juilliard School in New York City.

Jennifer Reeves (b. 1971, Ceylon) is a New York-based filmmaker whose films have shown the world over, from the Berlin, Sundance, Vancouver, London, Toronto, New York, and Rotterdam International Film Festivals to Princeton, MOMA, and the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Reeves' debut feature film THE TIME WE KILLED (2004) won the FIPRESCI Critics prize at the Berlin Film Festival, Outstanding Artistic Achievement at OUTFEST, and Best NY, NY Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Village Voice Film Critic9s poll honored TWK with votes for: Best Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Performance. As director of TWK Reeves was nominated for a 2005 Independent Spirit Award.

As a clarinetist, Anthony Burr has enjoyed a distinguished career as an exponent of contemporary music performing, often solo, with many leading groups, including Elision, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Sospeso, and the Chamber Music Sociey of Lincoln Center. Among the composers with whom he has worked are: Alvin Lucier, Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, and Magnus Lindberg. Burr has performed widely outside the classical arena with artists including Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Mark Feldman, Chris Speed, Jim Black, Ikue Mori, Tim Barnes, Ted Reichman, Mark Dresser, and Briggan Krauss. As a composer Burr has specialized in the creation of epic scale mixed media pieces often in collaboration with other artists. Burr has produced and/or engineered records for Charles Curtis, La Monte Young, and Ted Reichman. New releases include the music of Alvin Lucier on sigma/antiopic and a trio album with Chris Speed and Oscar Noriega.

Toni Dove is an artist/independent producer who works primarily with electronic media, including virtual reality , interactive video installations, performance and DVD ROMs that engage viewers in responsive and immersive narrative environments. Her work has been presented in the United States, Europe and Canada as well as in print and on radio and television. Projects include Arxheology of a Mother Tongue, a virtual reality installation with Michael Mackenzie, Banff Centre for the Arts (see the book 3Immersed in Technology2 from M.I.T. Press) and an interactive cinema installation, Artificial Changelings, which debuted at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and was part of the exhibition: Body Micanique, at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, at the Institute for Studies in the Arts at Arizona State University International Performance Studies Conference, in "Wired" at the Arts Center for the Capital Region in Troy, N.Y., Book-Ends Conference. Her current project under development is Spectropia, a feature length interactive movie performance for two players also to be released as a linear feature film. It previewed as a work in progress at Lincoln Center in Scanners, the New York Video Festival 2006. A DVD ROM, Sally or the Bubble Burst, an interactive scene from the Spectropia project is distributed on the Cycling '74 label and has toured as an installation. Dove has received numerous grants and awards, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the Langlois Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The LEF Foundation, and the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from M.I.T.

Diapason
1026 6th Avenue, 2S
New York NY 10018
(212) 719-4393

Avenue of the Americas between 38th and 39th Streets,
two blocks south of Bryant Park.
Subways: 1, 2, 3, 9, B, D, F, Q, N, R, W to Times Square/42nd Street

Posted by jo at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! São Paulo

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Silvia Laurentiz

Martha C C Gabriel will launch Upgrade! São Paulo on April 18, 2007 with a presentation by Silvia Laurentiz :: 7:30 pm @ i-People: Av Vergueiro 727, next to the Vergueiro Subway Station.

Cybernetics in Art: From Theory to Artworks by Silvia Laurentiz: The Cybernetics realized a big conceptual leap in the 1960s, emphasizing the information and organization processes. It meant that the focus would also be in the questions of language that would allow communication between different systems, for it was a science of the communication and control in the human being and machines. However, the definition of cybernetics was widening until it became what it is today: the study of systems -- or organisms -- complex and adaptive. The idea of programs, models, mathematics calculations and formulations, mobility, chance, networks, emergent patterns, multiple perspectives, generative structures, procedure authorship, semantic events and labyrinth, began to take part of artistic propositions. This talk will present four artworks that use some mechanisms introduced by cybernetics and the notion of system in the digital poetry that demonstrate the narrow relationship between poetics and the codes of the computational logic.

Silvia Laurentiz is professor at the department of Fine Arts of the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo. PhD in Communication and Semiotics from PUC/SP (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo), Master's Degree in Multimedia from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and Bachelor of Arts. Graphics and multimedia designer and art & new technologies researcher, she has developed works in virtual reality, multimedia and web art, participating of several international exhibitions and conferences.

Upgrade! São Paulo was founded by Martha C C Gabriel.

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

Batteries Not Included: Mind as Machine?

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

Batteries Not Included: Mind as Machine? CALL FOR ENTRIES :: DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: MAY 5, 2007 :: The 6th Shrewsbury Open will be taking place between 14 July and 2 September 2007 and will once again be linking its theme to the annual 'Darwin Summer Symposium' which this year will be exploring Artificial Intelligence or a-life.

"From the pioneering work of artists such as Edward Ihnatowicz in the 1970s to today's evolutionary robotics and generative artworks, the field promises autonomous intelligence that will be capable of existing in hostile and alien environments and learning as they go" Paul Brown, artist and writer, Chair of the Judges.

Whilst the Darwin Summer Symposium provides a context for the selection of the exhibition, the theme is intended to provoke a wide range of responses from artists who may choose to interpret this theme is many different ways.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION 5TH MAY 2007.

Download submission details and entry forms or email openinfo[at]shrewsbury.gov.uk

Artists awards and prizes include #3000 first prize, #1000 prize, #500 People's Choice prize and a new #500 Bang & Olufsen of Shrewsbury prize.

Judging panel chaired by Paul Brown, artist and writer, visiting professor University of Sussex, artist Shirley Chubb, Meroe Candy Arts Project Manager at the Wellcome Trust and Catherine Mason, art historian and researcher into the early development of the computational arts in the UK.

Further information about the Darwin Summer Symposium.

Posted by jo at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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Adriana Sa

Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporanea welcomes next Thursday, March 29th @19:00, Upgrade! Lisbon’s monthly gathering featuring artist Adriana Sa. Entrance is free and drinks will be served.

Having studied Music and Fine Arts, Adriana Sa is a transdisciplinary artist, a composing/improvising performer. She has been presenting her work throughout Europe, USA and Japan since the 90s. Her creative processes include the design and construction of the instruments. sound can be articulated with light, architecture, movement, weather or words. Part of the instruments have an architectural scale and they're designed to develop new properties everytime they are installed- you have to enter it to experience it. Space becomes reactive. Adriana Sa's work, whether created with architectural or portable instruments, connects musical performances to specific contexts involving place, memory and person.

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Sensations are a contextual product. before arriving to consciousness, sensations are subjectively "selected" by the individual's body, through an orientating reaction - a biological function existing to protect us from sensory over-stimulation. Adriana Sa is interested by these physical criteria, by this bodily intelligence. working with sound in a provocative way, she plays with the transitions between several physical states. Her graphical scores coreograph mainly texture, density, dominance and sequencing.

For her presentation at Upgrade! Lisbon Adriana Sá will present her project THRESHOLDS and from it her sonic light instrument, its versatility (also recurring to previous projects such as data projection + audio playback) as well as some technical/artistic limitations in its present state of development. She will also present some ideas through which those limitations can be overcome.

Posted by jo at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

Rhizome 2007 Commissions

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Open Now!

Rhizome is pleased to announce that in 2007 we will commission eleven new works of Internet-based art with awards ranging from $1000-3000. The deadline for proposal submission is April 2! This year, we are funding in two categories: (1) New Works of Internet-based Art and (2) A Community Project. In the first category, the works may manifest offline, in an exhibition space, on a handheld device, or on other media, but must use the Internet as a primary source. The second commissions category is new this year and will be awarded to one artist or group whose project will benefit our community by enhancing communication, participation, or the user experience on the Rhizome website. The commissions are awarded both by jury and by Rhizome Members through a community voting process. In addition to receiving an award, the commissioned art works will be exhibited on Rhizome.org, installed at the New Museum of Contemporary Art for a celebratory event, and archived in our ArtBase archive of digital art. We encourage you to get involved and spread the word!

Posted by jo at 04:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Something about Future Appearances in Space

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AN EVENING OF SOUND / VISUAL / DIGITAL / POETRIES

Something about Future Appearances in Space: AN EVENING OF SOUND / VISUAL / DIGITAL / POETRIES with Jim Andrews (from Victoria, BC), Crag Hill (Moscow, ID), Geof Huth (Schenectady, NY), & Nico Vassilakis (Alki Beach) :: WHERE: Nonsequitur CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE at The Good Shepherd, located at 4649 Sunnyside North, just south of 50th Street in Wallingford. 4th Floor :: WHEN: 7:30 PM, FRIDAY, March 30, 2007 :: TICKETS: DONATIONS, $5, at the door :: PRESS CONTACT: Nico Vassilakis.

Subtext is pleased to co-present a special evening of SOUND / VISUAL / DIGITAL / POETRIES at the future home of the Subtext reading series, which is moving from Hugo House to the Chapel Performance Space in June.

Crag Hill has been exploring the world through the prisms of verbal and visual language since his re-birth in the 1970s. Writer of numerous chapbooks and/or other print interventions, including Dict (Xexoxial Endarchy), Another Switch (Norton Coker Press), and Yes James, Yes Joyce (Loose Gravel Press), he has also edited Score Magazine, a publication seeking the edges of writing since 1983. He co-edited, with Bob Grumman, Writing To Be Seen, the first major anthology of visual poetry in 30 years. Crag runs the blog SCOREPAD.

Jim Andrews is a poet-programmer and audio guy who has published Vispo.com since 1995, which is his attempt at creating an online body of literary work that can swim in the brine of the binary. He lived in Seattle 1997-2000 and now lives in Victoria. Recent projects include vispo.com/bp, a recovery of computer poems written by bpNichol in the 80's, and vispo.com/kearns, a binary meditation on the work of Vancouver's Lionel Kearns, a contemporary wreading of Kearns's work.

Nico Vassilakis lives in Seattle. Recent books include chapbook from BCC press, Askew and DIPTYCHS: Visual Poems available at Otoliths' bookshop online. Nico has a DVD of visual poetry titled Concrete: Movies. In 2006, his work was shown at the Wright Exhibition Space as part of the exhibition 5 Visual Poets. He recently STARED in a play about Morton Feldman in NY at the HERE Theatre. With compass and pencil he is drafting his way through dread.

Geof Huth is a writer of textual and visual poetry. Over the years, he has created visual and other poems in a wide variety of formats: lineated verse, prose, paintings, drawings, and films. He has been published in venues as diverse as The American Poetry Review, Dreams and Nightmares, Kalligram, Lost and Found Times, Modern Haiku, La Poire D'Angoisse, Prakalpana Literature, ZYX, and atop bandaids. His chapbook of visual poems, "Out of Character," will soon be published by Paper Kite Press. He writes almost daily on visual poetry at his blog, dbqp: visualizing poetics.

Posted by jo at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

[ ESC ] : electronic social club

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mixer & presentations

[ ESC ] : electronic social club mixer & presentations :: Thursday, March 22, 7 - 10 pm :: Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, Black Box / Hunter North Room 543 :: / new media / experimental / video / installations / interactive / sound projects / media art /

Like a social club, [ ESC ] is formed around a common interest, activity or location. We bring together MFA students from across New York City to meet and showcase their graduate art work, and to form a common network around the theme of creating social dialogue through art and media. resentations:

freeformed by Catherine Colman, Megan MacMurray, Jadie Oh, Nanna Halinen, Yonatan Kelib (NYU ITP): A community-centred media sharing service for web and mobile phones.

Document by Karl Mendonca, Marcus Pingel, Charles Earl Love Yust (Parsons Design & Technology): An interactive installation that records situated history narrated by pedestrians in Washington Square Park.

Interactive performance by Sherrard Bostwick, Ann Adachi, Juliana Cope (Brooklyn PIMA): Images and sound will be projected into a space sculpted by transparent cloth and clear reflective plastics.

Interactive installation by Fabio Corredor (Hunter College): A multidisciplinary installation and experiment in augmented reality, centred on an iconic image of a prisoner of war from Abu Ghraib.

Video installation by Pilar Ortiz and Francisca Caporali (Hunter College): An experimental video on taxi cabs in New York, conceptualised in a master class with internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

ShiftSpace by Mushon Zer-Aviv, Dan Phiffer (NYU ITP): ShiftSpace creates a new public space on the Internet by adding an open source layer above any website.

Directions: take the 6 train to 68 Street; walk North to the entrance on 69th St. between Park and Lexington; Fifth Floor -Hunter North Room 543

for information: electronicsocialclub[at]gmail.com

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

Argos – Centre for Art & Media

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Anachronism & The Otolith Group

Argos – Centre for Art & Media, Brussels announces two new exhibitions: Anachronism & The Otolith Group :: 27 March – 26 May 2007 :: Werfstraat 13 Rue du Chantier, Brussels 1000 - Belgium :: T: +32 2 2290003 :: E: info[at]argosarts.org

1. Anachronism looks at the work of artists from different generations who have insistently grappled with history, both personal and general, and related issues of nostalgia, retrospection, and temporality. More specifically, their work often refutes the image of history as a neat trajectory moving smoothly forward in time. They acknowledge instead the possibility of working against time—of creating works that deliberately counter received ideas of what the present should look like, what the past was, or what the future will be, and thus direct attention to the seams in the construction and presentation of history. Their alternate “histories” might thus be read as alternate readings of time, and a mode of showing the ultimate constructedness of the narratives we are given about the past as well as the problems inherent to late capitalism’s notion of an inexorably progressive and productive future.

The cinematic cut, spatial dislocation, formal repetition, appropriation, idleness, waste, idiosyncratic archiving, entropic undoing of the object: these are just some of the means these artists use to create the sense of disruption at the heart of the narration of history. In diverse ways, and through various media, their work is thus not so much or certainly not only about history or historical events as a reflection on and questioning of the temporalities implict in history’s unfolding—past, present, and future. And if the possibility of a genuine revolution according to Giorgio Agamben, lies above all in the effort to “change time,” the promise of these works is in their questioning of the temporality of history as it has been given to us so that we might all the better be able to read our present and possibly redefine the future.

Works by 18 international contemporary artists —with several in situ new productions, including a functional cinema built by Tobias Putrih — are featured against the exhibition’s backdrop of a continuous screening of La Jetée, Chris Marker’s historic cinematic meditation on the paradoxes of time and memory. The exhibition is curated by Elena Filipovic, an independent curator and writer based in Brussels.

Participating artists include: Boris Belay, Guillaume Bijl, Tobias Buche, David Claerbout, Babak Ghazi, Felix Gmelin, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Erwan Maheo, Chris Marker, Deimantas Narkevicius, Sophie Nys, Paulina Olowska, Roman Ondák, Tobias Putrih, Pia Rönicke, Martha Rosler, and Bojan Sarcevic.

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2. In its first floor exhibition space argos will present the film Otolith I, by the Otolith Group. The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 by the artist Anjalika Sagar and the cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun, who collaborated with the artist Richard Couzins to make Otolith I. The film essay probes the potency of archival images, exploring the poeticisation of mediated memory. Taking its name from otoliths, the minute particles found in the inner ear that help us to balance and to navigate our way across space, the film aims at reorienting our perceptions of the world by weaving personal and public histories together into a meditation upon the persistence of utopian aspirations.

“Earth is out of bounds for us now; it remains a planet accessible only through media”, the viewer is told at the beginning of the film, suggesting a post-nuclear future in which humankind is confined to outer space. Through prolonged space travel, the film tells us, otoliths have ceased to function, leaving homo sapiens unable to walk the earth. Instead the new mutants research images “sifting aging history from the tense present in order to identify the critical points of the twentieth century”. The film’s narrator is Dr. Usha Adebaran Sagar, a fictional descendant of Anjalika Sagar, living in space in the year 2103. The narrator looks back at several generations of women from the Sagar family, linking her own experiences with those of Sagar’s grandmother during the 1960s when she met Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to orbit the Earth. “For us”, the narrator declares, “there is no memory without image and no image without memory. Image is the matter of memory”. Her attempts to understand multiple dimensions of the historical, the terrestrial and the evolutionary bring together existing images of very different qualities and registers.

In addition, the new video by the Otolith Group, Otolith II, will premiere at Argos on Monday 14th May at 20.30 pm. Following the premiere of the film Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun of the Otolith Group will talk about the film and their work in general. From the 15th – 26th May, Otolith II will be screened in Argos’ Black Box.

The Otolith Group exhibition is co-produced by Argos and KunstenFestivalDesArts.

Otolith II is being co-produced by Argos, KunstenFestivalDesArts and If I Can't Dance.../Huis & Festival aan de Werf.

Anachronism is supported by:

The Brussels Capital Region
Agnès B, Bruxelles
Tobias Putrih’s Functional Cinema has been made possible with the kind support of Galerie Almine Rech, Brussels

General support: The Flemish Authorities, the Flemish Community Commission of the Brussels-Capital Region

For more information contact Rebekka Baumann
T: +32 2 2290003
E: Rebekka[at]argosarts.org

Duration of exhibitions: 27 March – 26 May 2007
Exhibition opening times: Tuesday – Saturday 12:00 – 19:00

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Banff New Media Institute

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Call for Applications

I'm very excited about my involvement with the Banff New Media Institute's first research-based Co-production Residency programme, Reference Check, taking place this summer in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

If you're doing graduate or post-graduate research on where art, technology and culture meet, and you fancy spending a month this summer in one of the most gorgeous places on earth, with excellent facilities, ten other researchers and three peer advisors, intensely thinking and talking and making and doing individually and collaboratively, then we want to hear from you!

The official call for applications is below -- note the dates and costs -- and if you have any questions or concerns about your proposed project or the application process, please feel free to contact me directly.

Reference Check: A Co-production Residency for Developing Researchers

Residency dates: June 24 to July 21, 2007
Application deadline: April 9, 2007

The Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) invites researchers working with new media at the masters, doctorate or post-doctorate level to spend four weeks at The Banff Centre this summer.

Join BNMI for its first independent research-based Co-production Residency program, bringing together a select group of researchers. Individuals and small networks who are working with art and new media as a research strategy are invited to explore the broader social contexts of technology and digital culture.

Participants will be supported to pursue their self-directed research. They will also be given the opportunity to reflect on the field of new media and contemporary issues such as creative pluralism and multiple modes of knowledge production.

Participants will have the opportunity to develop their research with a peer group of ten participants and the support and mentorship of BNMI alumni and Reference Check peer advisors. These advisors will work with participants individually and as a group to help focus their ideas, and suggest methodologies, collaborative and multidisciplinary forms, and ways of enhancing their work and impact in the world.

Peer Advisors:
Andreas Broeckmann (DE)
Anne Galloway (CA)
Sarat Maharaj (UK)

The total cost for this intensive, four-week residency program will be $1,369.80, (CND) plus applicable taxes. Nearly $7500 of additional in-kind support for each project will be provided by BNMI staff and the dedicated studio and production facilities at The Banff Centre’s Creative Electronic Environment.

More information and to apply

We're looking forward to hearing from you!
Labels: art, culture, research, technology

[posted by Anne on Purse Lips Square Jaw]

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

Dislocate 07 - Exhibition and Symposium - Tokyo

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Call for Proposals

Dislocate 07 - Exhibition and Symposium - Tokyo :: 23rd July – 5th August :: Ginza Art Laboratory :: Deadline for Proposals: May 7, 2007 :: info@dis-locate.net

A mesh of infinite connections engulfs the very point at which we stand, longitude and latitude weave in and out, an entanglement in which our coordinates constantly shift and each footstep is one of endless displacement. Fibres of technology cocoon us in indeterminate spaces, layer our realities and transport us to elsewhere. Enveloped in our personal technologies, we are able to escape the limitations of our surroundings, but when we emerge from our enclosure do we know where we are?

2006 saw the launch of Dislocate a project exploring the relationship between art, technology and our locality. This year the events will focus on our ability to reconnect with our location, seeking to explore, question and debate how can technology be used to heighten our engagement with our surroundings instead of isolating us from our immediate space. When numerous places converge in one site, how do we navigate such space? How does our interaction within a given space formulate identity and how can this be communicated effectively to elsewhere?

Dislocate aims to explore the potential new media has to increase our awareness of our environment, enhance participation in our locality and community and transform our perceptions of the space we inhabit.

Does new media enable us to plug into our locality, or is disconnection inevitable?

As mobile and wireless technologies increasingly enable us to transcend space, our electrical roots are dug up, but are the roots which bind us with a place also cut?

Dislocate will call into question the necessity of an intermediary to our immediate surroundings, asking if mediation is a means of connecting or distancing, an expansion or an obstruction?

Dislocate offers the space to investigate the creative and social potential of new media to engage us with our direct locality and to ask what is the importance of where we are now?

Exhibition

Ginza Art Laboratory 7-3-6 Ginza Chuo-ku Tokyo 104 0061 
Koiwa Project Space 7-2-7 Minami-Koiwa Edogawa-ku Tokyo 133-0056

Taking place over two sites, of contrasting locality, this exhibition aims to present a particular relationship to its surroundings, revealing new perspectives of our immediate space, engaging with and investigating this site while also fusing with spaces beyond.

Works will include:

Installation, image, video, audio, performance, locative, mobile, interactive and web-based media and more. Dislocate is particularly interested in presenting works which extend beyond the gallery space.

Symposium

Dislocate presents an international symposium with confirmed delegates from UK, Germany, Republic of Korea, Indonesia and Japan further contributing to the discourse surrounding the interplay of art, technology and location.

Artists and researchers will have the opportunity to present their recent projects but will be encouraged to relate this to a wider context and engage in a critical debate, relating their own perspectives on these issues.

Discussion and dialogue between all participants, both speakers and audience is key to this event.

This symposium aims to explore what is meant by ‘locality’, how does new media impact upon our notion of space, our interaction with our surroundings, and how this can be used to transform communities, both virtual and physical.

The conflicts and integrations which emerge as separate spaces collide in one site will be examined raising concerns of homogenization and de-contextualisation alongside the awareness of local identity and culture.

This will include a scrutinization of sensitive, meaningful exchange between different localities facilitated through new media and the manifestations which reconnection or further connection with our environment can take.

Workshops

In a series of workshops to be held through these events artists will have the opportunity to present concepts and products to the public and investigate with them in an active form of research and collaboration.

The focus of these workshops will be upon the exploration of the surrounding environment, investigating its many layers and connections with other spaces.

Workshops will enable direct participation and engagement with the locality and may also draw attention to our simultaneous interaction with elsewhere.

How to submit

If you are interested to participate in any of the above events please send proposals to:

Dislocate
Ginza Art Lab
7-3-6 Ginza Chuo-ku Tokyo 104 0061 
Japan

Deadline is 7th May

Please state clearly in your application –

Name:

Address:

Phone Number:

Email address:

Website:

Project Title:

Outline of Project:

Technical Requirements: *moving image works should be sent in mini DV format or avi data DVD format

Please note we will not be able to support travel and accommodation costs.

Please contact info[at]dis-locate.net with any further enquiries.

Dislocate is supported by The Asia-Europe Foundation and The Sasakawa Foundation.

Posted by jo at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Skopje

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Videomart

Upgrade! Skopje: Home_video # 002 screenings series: "Videomart" [screenings + improv session of the band Martinki] :: Wednesday, 21.12.2007, 20.30 h :: Cultural center Tocka, Skopje :: organisation: Line I+M [initiative and movement] :: partners: Cultural Center Tocka, Skopje.

As part of the frontline [new initiatives], Line I+M kindly invites you to the screenings entitled Videomart from the Home_Video series of projections, at the Cultural center Tocka, Skopje. Between the projections there will be short music intermezzo, and after the ending there will be a half an hour improv session performed by the band Martinki, formed specially for this event.

In the second round there will be 5 authors presented: Vladimir Lukash, Gjorge Jovanovic, Ljubisha Kamenjarov, Vuk Mitevski and Edin Vejselovic.

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 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Locative Media Summer Conference

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Call for Submissions

Locative Media Summer Conference :: Research Center "Media Upheavals" :: September 3-5, 2007 :: University of Siegen, Germany. 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]fk615.uni-siegen.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.

"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 and confirmed speakers:

Prof. Dr. Lev Manovich, University of California, San Diego (USA) Prof. Dr. Stephen Graham, University of Durham (GB), Department of Geography Dr. Miya Yoshida, Malmv Art Academy, Lund University (S) Dr. Adrian Mackenzie, Lancaster University (GB)

For further information contact Tristan Thielmann: thielmann[at]fk615.uni-siegen.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 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

Video Vortex Conference

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Is corporate backlash eminent?

Video Vortex Conference :: November 30 and December 1 2007 :: Amsterdam

In response to the increasing potential for video to become a significant form of personal media on the Internet, this conference examines the key issues that are emerging around the independent production and distribution of online video content. What are artists and activists responses to the popularity of ‘user-generated content’ websites? Is corporate backlash eminent?

After years of talk about digital conversions and crossmedia platforms we are now witnessing the merger of the Internet and television at a pace that no one predicted. For the baby boom generation, that currently forms the film and television establishment, the media organisations and conglomerates, this unfolds as a complete nightmare. Not only because of copyright issues but increasingly due to the shift of audience to vlogging and video-sharing websites as part of the development of a broader participatory culture.

The opening night will feature live acts, performances and lectures under the banner of video slamming. We will trace the history from short film to one-minute videos to the first experiments with streaming media and online video, along with exploring the way VJs and media artists are accessing and using online archives.

The Video Vortex conference aims to contextualize these latest developments through presenting continuities and discontinuities in the artistic, activist and mainstream perspective of the last few decades. Unlike the way online video presents itself as the latest and greatest, there are long threads to be woven into the history of visual art, cinema and documentary production. The rise of the database as the dominant form of storing and accessing cultural artifacts has a rich tradition that still needs to be explored. The conference aims to raise the following questions:

How are people utilising the potential to independently produce and distribute independent video content on the Internet?

What are the alternatives to the proprietary standards currently being developed?

What are the commercial objectives that mass media is imposing on user-generated content and video-sharing databases?

What is the underlying economics of online video in the age of unlimited uploads?

How autonomous are vloggers within the broader domain of mass media?
How are cinema, television and video art being affected by the development of a ubiquitous online video practice?

What type of aesthetic and narrative issues does the database pose for online video practice?

conference themes

Viral Video critique
Vlogging Critique
Participatory Culture, Participatory Video
Real World Tools and Technologies
Theory & History of the Database
Narrative and the Cinematic
Database Taxonomy and Navigation
Internet Video: Art, Activism, and Public Media
Evening Programme / Exhibition

Viral Video critique

YouTube made 2006 the year of Internet video. The video content produced bottom-up, with an emphasis on participation, sharing and community networking. But inevitably like Flickr being consumed by Yahoo, Google purchased YouTube. What is the future for the production and distribution of independent online video content? How can a participatory culture achieve a certain degree of autonomy and diversity outside mass media? What other motives does Google have for Internet video in terms of searching and advertising? After the purchase of YouTube, Google was asked to remove a number of clips that breached copyright laws. What comparisons can be made between the Napster incident with audio and video-sharing websites?

Vlogging Critique

This section will deal with vlogging criticism. Is video blogging a form of text-based blogging with other means? How can we develop a form of criticism, and a critical practice, that is not derogative and yet surpasses the anecdotal diary level? Is vlogging the next stage of ego boosting of the blogger, who wants to raise his or her ranking status? What is a video diary and how can this emerging genre be shaped? Can there be sophistication in ‘vlogging’? How can we overcome the evangelical that stresses the possibilities of gadget features? And how can we overcome the amateurish aesthetics of this new genre?

Participatory Culture, Participatory Video

The Web 2.0 holds the promise to create a participatory culture that can renew the stagnated democracies in the West. In this utopian approach, the user has the historical task to overcome the old regime of top down broadcast media and create decentralised dialogues. To what extent can user-generated video content be energized by presenting the material as citizen journalism? Is the increased user participation really a sign of a new political culture or is it a mere special effect of technological change?

Real World Tools and Technologies

In this session we will investigate the progress that open source and free software initiatives have made in regard to the development of the codex and the player that can compete with the proprietary standards such as Microsoft Media Player. It is not enough to critique the corporate takeover of MySpace and YouTube and upload alternative content. Increasingly the intention of programmers shifts towards Peer2Peer solutions in order to create a truly distributed network in which content can freely float around without having to use centralised servers. In this session we will present projects such as;

Theory & History of the Database

Searching databases has become a dominant cultural practice. Instead of flipping through a radio and TV guide, the cinema programme or the library, we browse the Internet. In this session we would like to go back in time and investigate the history of the computer database. What are the ideological underpinnings of ‘taxonomy’? What do we search when we perform a search? Should the aim be to overcome the fragmented experience of our contemporary database culture and create overriding meaning structures that deepen our understanding without having to compromise on content diversity?

Narrative and the Cinematic

Do these fragmented video databases lead to new narratives and genres? Does a database like YouTube evoke a skill such as continuous partial attention, or a contemporary disease like the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Against the medicalization, scholars have put the ability of users to reassemble short stories into larger new narratives as a reassuring alternative that replaces old media skills. The bricollage is assembled by the end-user, not the producer. Is there a new cinematic experience?

Database Taxonomy and Navigation

How do artists relate to the possibility of building large video databases? Is YouTube the future of video art? Traditionally, artists have always worked with found footage but nowadays it has never been easier to access. The remix culture, online video tools and increased server space make it possible to create large databases in which complex interconnected content can be offered to the viewer. What is the underlining information architecture? How does one navigate Steven Spielberg’s video archive of the holocaust survivors? Or take the Dropping Knowledge project in which 110 experts answered 100 questions of the audience, which can be accessed as a database. The same can be said of large museum collections.

Internet Video: Art, Activism, and Public Media

From 16mm film and video to the Internet and back, activists have always used the moving image to produce critical and innovative work. For many, the experimentation with visual language and critical content has been one and the same. In this session we will explore early examples of Internet video and investigate how artists and social movements have responded to the YouTube challenge. Is it better to integrate your message into large existing platforms or should we rather let a thousand blossoms bloom and each have our own video server? Online video databases like YouTube seemingly are the ideal artist portfolio online, with unlimited uploads and a massive audience. MySpace is inhabited by bands and musicians, but why don’t video artists and filmmakers occupy YouTube? If we look at the videos on YouTube, what aesthetics do we find? Is there a homogenous style that only builds on eyewitness tv and candid camera formats? And now that music videos and commercials increasingly resemble video art, can we define how exactly artistic practices influence the look of online footage? What would it mean to take YouTube Art serious? Is YouTube a medium and platform in itself for art works or is it merely used as a promotional device? Many have used YouTube to produce diary-type performances in which they either played themselves or pretended to be some character. What status do we give to such ego documents? Is YouTube used by artists as a tool to intervene in social and political issues? In this session we will present projects such as:

Evening Programme / Exhibition

Video Slamming: “Short, user-created videos are creating a new kind of watching experience, one more about ‘snacking’ than half-hour sitcoms.” (The Economist)

Much like poetry slamming the use of short video fragments has become a dominant mode in visual culture. Where are the video files found and how are they used and played with? Is ‘video slamming’ the new way of watching audiovisual files? This session is all about the new ways of watching, using, and playing with moving images: scratching, sampling, mixing, but also (meta) tagging, recommending etc. This session will feature performances, live acts and lectures.

Posted by jo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)

DOUBLE VISION: To Futurism and Back Again

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Hybrid World Lab

DOUBLE VISION: To Futurism and Back Again :: When: April 12-15 [Thur-Sun] 8pm* :: Where: Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., San Francisco :: Cost: $15 :: Info/Tix: http://www.double-vision.biz / 415-287-0192 * Free Pre-show Piano Salon, 5:30-6:30, Sunday.

“To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action.” -- F.T. Marinetti, 1909

Hailing from the bay that brought you the Grateful Dead, Emperor Norton, and the iPod, San Francisco’s intermedia performance group DOUBLE VISION continues to crank the cogwheel by presenting dance, video, noise, speed, energy, and seismic activity for stage. Works range from world premiers of Three Canons and Mise en Scénes and Video Action Painting, to reconstructions of the Futurist sintesi Macchina del 3000 (The Love of Two Locomotives for the Station Master) and Macchina Tipograpfica. Throughout the evening’s performance, DOUBLE VISION connects art from the Internet Age to the dawn of the automobile while posing the question…what’s next?

Performances will present live dance, music and intermedia works for the stage. Attendees can also immerse themselves in installations before and after the performances in the gallery. On Sunday, Brooklyn-based experimental pianist, Shawn Onsgard and San Francisco’s own Wild Bill Wolter will entertain guests with an informal Piano Salon at 5:30pm. Bill Wolter will be joined by renowned San Francisco musicians John Ingle, Eric Hoagland, Jen Baker and Matt Ingalls. The Salon will afford attendees plenty of time to enjoy dinner before the dance concert. Also, join the artists for a special reception following Thursday evening's show.

DOUBLE VISION, led by Sean Clute and Pauline Jennings, is a group of dancers, musicians, video-artists, and performers. By experimenting with different methods of collaboration through the adaptation of social systems, transvergence of scientific models, and mapping of algorithmic structures, DOUBLE VISION unifies multifaceted art forms and ideas to cultivate innovative performances and provoke communication.

Choreography and video by Pauline Jennings; music and video by Sean Clute; dance and performance by Ben Baker, Tiffany Barbarash, Blaine Bookey, Sean Clute, Amanda Crawford, Pauline Jennings, Jason B. Jones, Elisabeth Kohnke, Wendy Marinaccio, Cecelia Peterson, Ammon Torrence, Nicole Zvarik; lighting design by Ben Coolik; costumes by Andrea Campbell, Jason B. Jones.

Media Contact:
Tiffany Barbarash
1677 Sacramento Street #4
San Francisco, CA 94109
Tel: 415-287-0192
tiffany[at]double-vision.biz

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

March 16, 2007

Mediamatic workshop

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Hybrid World Lab

Mediamatic organizes a new workshop--Hybrid World Lab--in which the participants develop prototypes for hybrid world media applications. Where the virtual world and the physical world used to be quite separated realms of reality, they are quickly becoming two faces of the same hybrid coin. This workshop investigates the increasingly intimate fusion of digital and physical space from the perspective of a media maker.

The workshop is an intense process in which the participants explore the possibilities of the physical world as interface to online media: location based media, everyday objects as media interfaces, urban screens, and cultural application of RFID technology. Every morning lectures and lessons bring in new perspectives, project presentations and introductions to the hands-on workshop tools. Every afternoon the participants work on their own workshop projects. In 5 workshop days every participant will develop a prototype of a hybrid world media project, assisted by outstanding international trainers and lectures and technical assistants. The workshop closes with a public presentation in which the issues are discussed and the results are shown.

Topics: Some of the topics that will be investigated in this workshop are: Cultural application and impact of RFID technology, internet-of-things. Using RFID in combination with other kinds of sensors. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and ambient intelligence: services and applications that use chips embedded in household appliances and in public space. Locative media tools, car navigation systems, GPS tools, location sensitive mobile phones. The web as interface to the physical world: geotagging and mashupswith Google Maps & Google Earth. Games in hybrid space.

Trainers & lecturers: We are happy to announce that Timo Arnall, Matt Adams and Nicolas Nova all confirmed to be trainers and/or lecturers in this workshop. Others will be confirmed soon.

Posted by jo at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)

Ursula Endlicher News

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Singing Website Wallpaper, Website Wigs + More

Opening on March 28: Opening @ MediaNoche, 161 East 106th Streeet, First Floor, New York, NY 10029 :: Ursula Endlicher is having a solo show with two web-driven installations: "Singing Website Wallpaper", which gives voice to html by re-interpreting the code on the fly as a musical score and visualizing the scales as printed patterns on wallpaper; and "html-movement-library" (*), an online database of video performances articulating html code through gesture, movement and dance, as an installation / environment in the gallery. Visitors are invited to contribute their ideas to the ever-expanding repository. Workshops, an artist talk, and a performance (a new sequence of "Website Impersonations") at the end of the exhibition will round up the program. The show will run from March 28 - May 12.

On view until March 31 @ Wood Street Galleries, 601 Wood Street, Pittsburgh, PA: Thread

Should you be visiting Pittsburgh this month, make a stop at Wood Street Galleries to see Thread, a group show curated by Michele Thursz. Ursula is showing six "Website Wigs" splayed out as a "networked" environment that spans across a large section of the gallery wall. Website Wigs are html code taken from Websites such as Google.com, Microsoft.com or Intel.com, and braided into hair, representing each Website's hypertext link structure as a hair-do. The wigs are interconnected in the form of a "hairy" diagram, showing how the sites link to each other online. For more info, videos - a peek into the installation - and reviews please go to her website: http://www.ursenal.net

(*) Ongoing call for submissions to the html-movement-library: The html-movement-libary is an ongoing project welcoming submission to its online database of video clips and images. Contributors to the library become instantly part of web-based participatory performances such as html_butoh and are co-choreographing performances such as the "Website Impersonation" series...

Check it out, read about it, participate, enjoy at: http://turbulence.org/Works/html_butoh. Read reviews for both, the html-movment-library and html_butoh, on my website: http://.www.ursenal..net

The "html-movement-library" is supported in part by a grant from Turbulence.org. "html_butoh" is a 2006 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.

Posted by jo at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

Virtual Reality & Museums

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Call for Papers

Virtual Reality & Museums :: Call for Papers :: Deadline: Friday April 27, 2007 :: Contributions are welcomed for a new book addressing the construction and interpretation of virtual artefacts within virtual world museums and within physical museum spaces. Particular emphasis is placed on theories of spatiality and strategies of interpretation.

The editors seek papers that intervene in critical discourses surrounding virtual reality and virtual artefacts, to explore the rapidly changing temporal, spatial and theoretical boundaries of contemporary museum display practice. We are especially interested in spatiality as it is employed in the construction of virtual artefacts, as well as the roles these spaces enact as signifiers of historical narrative and sites of social interaction.

We are also interested in the relationship between real-world museums and virtual world museums, with a view to interrogating the construction of meaning within, across and between both. We welcome original scholarly contributions on the topic of new cultural practices and communities related to virtual reality in the context of museum display practice. Papers might address, but are in no way limited to, the following:

* Authenticity and artificiality
* Exploration and discovery
* Physical vs virtual
* Representation/interpretation of virtual reality artefacts - as 3D spaces on screen or in a physical gallery
* Museum visiting in virtual space
* Representation of physical museum spaces in virtual worlds and their relationship to cultural definitions of museum spaces.

Please send a proposal of 500-750 words and a contributor's bio by Friday
April 27, 2007. Authors will be notified by Thursday May 31, 2007. Final drafts of papers are due by Monday October 1, 2007.

Please send your proposal to:

Tara Chittenden
Room 201
Strategic Research Unit
113 Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1PL

Or via email: tara.chittenden[at]lawsociety.org.uk

Posted by jo at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2007

Public tribute for Jean Baudrillard on World of Warcraft

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Ars Virtua will be holding a public tribute to honor the late social and political theorist Jean Baudrillard. Jean Baudrillard's criticisms and view on Simulation are influential to our discussions of the MMO. This short program will be held on the WoW Kilrogg server, 4-5pm PDT, March 17, 2007 near Orgrimmar. Please send tell to Zuluu upon arrival in-world for the location.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located primarily 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. for more information please email: thomas.asmuth[at]gmail.com

Posted by jo at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

CITYSOL 2007

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OPEN CALL TO ARTISTS!

Solar One's CITYSOL 2007 - OPEN CALL TO ARTISTS! :: July 12-15, 2007 :: DEADLINE: May 22 :: Citysol is a carbon neutral, 100% clean energy powered festival that aims to inspire interest and support for local sustainability initiatives through music, collaborative artistic installations, and numerous other elements meant to both entertain and educate. Held over a weekend in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Cove Park, the festival will attract thousands of New Yorkers in search of innovative art, music and activism.

Solar One, Citysol’s lead organizer, is accepting project proposals related to contemporary environmental and sustainability issues. All visual and performing arts media will be considered including sitespecific performance, installation, sculpture, film and video, as well as experimental practices. We especially encourage installation proposal subjects to be chosen from a field of 5 policy/technical solutions that address different environmental challenges specifically affecting New York City’s quality of life:

CONGESTION PRICING: A market-based means of reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality, revitalizing pedestrian street life, increasing safety and saving the city billions of dollars annually, this policy levies a fee on vehicles that enter Manhattan’s central business district.

PLASTIC BAG TAX (or ‘PLASTAX’): This policy adds an additional cost to disposable plastic bags, thereby encouraging consumers to use reusable bags for their shopping needs. Ireland’s plastax has cut plastic bag use by 90%, decreased waste and pollution, and has diverted millions of liters of oil.

PHOTOVOLTAICS: Photovoltaic (aka PV or Solar) power is a promising clean energy application for the New York City area that could help mitigate our serious air quality, climate change and system reliability challenges. Yet today numerous incentives which could encourage greater implementation are lacking in our City and State.

GREEN ENERGY POWER PURCHASING: All New Yorkers who pay their own electricity bill can purchase green energy credits for a small premium from select providers. “Green-E” purchasing adds clean electricity to the grid from wind and hydropower sources, and encourages further investment in renewable technologies.

CARBON TAX: Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit CO2 is essential for reducing U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change.

Installations will be featured at Stuyvesant Cove Park for the duration of the festival, July 12th-15th. A number of selected artists will receive project-based stipends from Solar One for their participation. Solar One is a young, but growing 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to increasing energy and environmental awareness and inspiring action through public education and cultural programming.

*PLEASE NOTE that Citysol is a 100% renewable energy powered event and can offer a limited electrical capacity for artistic support and use. We encourage artists to explore self-sustained power methods for their works.

Proposals must be submitted by mail or in person by no later than May 22, 2007 to:

CITYSOL ART FESTIVAL PROPOSAL
Solar One
24-20 FDR Drive,
Service Road East
New York, NY 10010

Proposals must include all of the following to be considered:

1. Artist CV with current contact information (address, phone number
and e-mail)
2. Brief project description and statement of the project’s critical objectives
3. Visual support materials
4. Technical diagram (including dimensions, materials, installation requirements, power/electrical requirements and all other technical information).
5. List of 3 preferred locations at our site
6. SASE if you would like materials returned

ABOUT THE SITE

Winding along nearly two acres of the East River greenway between 18th and 23rd Streets, Stuyesant Cove Park is home to the only sustainably designed and managed park in the city. Occupying a former brown field site, Stuy Cove now supports all native plant gardens, approximately 13,000 square feet of outdoor blacktop space used for various recreational purposes, and a 500 square-foot solar-powered education and arts center.

*Works may be proposed for installation on blacktop area or in Stuyvesant Cove Park (provided no structural damage to the park occurs).

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information about each installation subject area, artists are strongly encouraged to contact Solar One for resources (including sustainable building materials and power-generating ideas) and guidance. The festival coordinators are available to meet with artists up to May 22, 2007. During the second half of March, information sessions will be presented on each subject at Solar One’s office in Stuyvesant Cove Park (which is also the venue for Citysol). Sessions are free and open to all prospective submitters of proposals (Contact Chris Neidl for the scheduling of these events).

Tours of the site can be scheduled with Solar One staff on an ongoing basis throughout the spring. Artists residing outside of the NYC area should email Citysol’s organizers for further information.

CONTACT
Stephen Lichty, Curatorial Advisor
stephen.lichty[at]gmail.com
917.902.6347

Jenn Su, Project Coordinator
jenn[at]solar1.org
510.378.0628

Chris Neidl, Outreach Coordinator
neidl[at]solar1.org
917.660.2609

Please visit www.solar1.org or call 212.505.6050 for more information about Solar One.

Posted by jo at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2007

Upgrade! Paris

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BENOIT DURANDIN

Upgrade! Paris #7: BENOIT DURANDIN :: Moderator: Philippe Morel, architecte, EZCT :: Saturday, March 17th at 7:00 pm :: ARS LONGA: 67, avenue Parmentier, 75011 PARIS :: Metro: Parmentier (3) or Saint-Ambroise (9).

Benoît Durandin will present Highdensity. Highdensity is a world without preliminary vacuum, without gravity. By successive compressions of the matter, faults are open and closed, spaces do connect, split up, and rearranged themselves. These void to emptiness, erosion to stratification contamination processes, are the parameters from which even the negligible changes of states come to model this nerved based and fragile world. A world that constantly threatened to fold up on itself. Highdensity was produced with the help of Numériscausa and Music to Eyes.

Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners: CITU, Ars Longa, Upgrade! International.

Posted by jo at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Johannesburg

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The Art of Sound - James Webb

Upgrade! Johannesburg is proud to present: The Art of Sound - James Webb presents his major gallery installations and radio projects :: March 16, 15:00 - 17:00 :: Convent Seminar Room, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg :: All Welcome!

James Webb is a leading South African sound artist with a growing international reputation. He will discuss the challenges of his large-scale sound installations including Prayer (2002); The Black Passage (2006) and Autohagiography (2007); his collaborative radio projects including A Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths (2004) and works in progress such as Beau Diable (2007).

From the profile of James Webb by Carinne Zaayman on www.artthrob.co.za: "James Webb is a pioneer of sound art in South Africa. But his production extends far beyond that of gallery installations. Webb also works as a sound designer, curator and teacher. A keen collaborator, Webb is always involved in a number of projects where his expertise on sound as well as project coordination is invaluable.

Highlights of his career include the co-curation of the YDETAG and YDEsire events, participation in the 2002 Ars Electronica festival, his collaboration with James Sey for 'A Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths', and his two-part solo exhibition 'Phonosynthesizer' at the US gallery in Stellenbosch and the NSA in Durban. His sense of pop and eroticism characterise many of his works, especially in two of my favourites, thesexworks, a telephone artwork, and Wa, an elaborate spoof on our celebrity-mad pop culture and our romance with all things Japanese.

It is, however, his ingenious conception of the way in which sound permeates our world and thinking that defines Webb's magical oeuvre. His work never simply revolves around the playback of sound files. Instead, there is always careful consideration of the physicality of context and media, whether this is the installation of large speakers, or almost invisible interventions in public spaces. Process is further of prime importance for this artist, as his manner of sourcing sound is invariably already part of the way in which meaning is generated through his work."

Posted by jo at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

inmerso [foro.lounge]

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ELOUT de Kok + Karras

INMERSO [foro.lounge]: Cyberlounge at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, México D.F. :: Opening Performance: ELOUT de Kok with Karras (live) :: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 :: Free admission :: Pixel Lab: March 14- June 18, 2007 :: Curated by Arcángel Constantini.

Elout de Kok lives and works in Amsterdam. With his outstanding work as a programmer, Elout de Kok creates online interactive aesthetic experiences. His work is nourished from historical movements with roots in the Netherlands painting traditions like Impressionism and De Stijl, stimulus that he confronts with fiction-architecture as utopian spaces that expansions ourselves into the digital age.

Karra, pseudonim of Manrico Montero, is a sound artist based in México City. Karra creates organic sound landscapes, digi-acustic and intimistic microacustic structures.

inmerso [foro.lounge] is a space focus on net.art live performances and author interactive project presentations in a lounge environment at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo.

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

March 13, 2007

Areas of conflu(x)ence - Art, Space & Technology in the Digital Age

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Call for Papers

Areas of conflu(x)ence - Art, Space & Technology in the Digital Age :: International Conference, Sibiu, Romania :: October 4-7, 2007 :: Call for papers :: Deadline for proposals: May 4, 2007.

Areas of conflu(x)ence proposes an international debate on the relationship between art and technology in the present digital era, focusing on the impact of the new media in our lives. Today's digital technologies have created a new model of understanding different aspects of reality. The change they produced compels us to reconsider the conditioning of our modern lives while their potential demands to be explored. Post-modernist syntax is today reevaluated and there are positions that support the thesis of a hyper-industrialized society.

Science and technology are expected to push forward the frontiers of knowledge, while art is asked to mirror these new experiences. The way we handle our lives and our expectations is changing continuously according to these new frontiers. The place we give to the different aspects of our lives and the spatial articulation of our activities are subjected to constant conceptualization based on a continuous flux of discoveries.

What kind of models are we using in perceiving and understanding our new environment? If the tools we use have an influence on the way we deal with our environment, how do we use their potentiality? What traps are to be avoided? What do we expect from technology? Should the new technologies be a matter of concern? By trying to answer all these questions, the conference intends to identify the present condition of our data driven lives and the factors that influence it.

On the basis of artistic and aesthetic experiences, we will study the ways in which image, sound and space are today affected by the digital technologies.

The international conference Areas of conflu(x)ence is organized by 2580 Association in partnership with Arscenic Association Paris, Czech Cultural Center Bucharest, Kibla Multimedia Center Maribor, Planwerk Association Cluj, Visual Arts and Design University Cluj, Tranzit Foundation Cluj and Gong Theater Sibiu.

Details concerning the registration and the full conference agenda will be posted as they become available to the website.

Call for papers

Our conference hosts papers and project presentations from any discipline, methodology or combination of different disciplines that address the following three areas:

I. Types of Imagery and Sound and Their Interaction: digital and new media art, techniques of representation, imaging technology, sound technology, sound visualizations, performance sciences.

II. Spacial Forms: physical and virtual spaces, space/place/territory, space and everyday life experience, private and public spaces, mobility and mobile platforms, utopian spaces, urbanism, landscape, space organization, cartography, topography, space policy, environment.

III. Types of Memory: archiving forms, data systems and models, memory and memories.

Papers and presentations will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer reviews by the members of the Conference Committee. Authors will be notified on the results via email by June 1, 2007.

The conference will also include multimedia performances, an exhibit hall of innovative projects and tours of the art installations.

Working languages: English and French

The Conference Committee:

Inke Arns - Hartware MedienKunstVerein (Dortmund), Michael Bielicky - ZKM (Karlsruhe), Irina Cios - CIAC (Bucharest), Christian Denker - University of Vienna (Vienna), Ana-Maria Avram & Iancu Dumitrescu - CREMAC (Bucharest), Anne-Marie Duguet - Paris 1 Pantheon - Sorbonne University (Paris), Paulo Ferreira-Lopes - ZKM (Karlsruhe), Pierre-Damien Huyghe - Paris 1 Pantheon - Sorbonne University (Paris), Augustin Ioan - architect (Bucharest), Marko Kosnik - artist (Slovenia), Ciprian Mihali - Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj), Antonio Pinto Ribeiro - Gulbekian Foundation (Lisbonne), Zolta n Sébok - C3 (Budapest), Bernard Stiegler - G. Pompidou Center (Paris) and Steina & Woody Vasulka - ZKM (Karlsruhe). The invited speakers are unconfirmed.

Important dates:

Deadline for abstracts (500 words) and biography (100 words): Mai 4, 2007
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2007
Deadline for full paper submission (3000-5000 words): July 31, 2007

Submissions should be sent to papers[at]2580association.info in .doc or .rtf format as attachments only.

For more information please contact Tincuta Parv or Barbu Bejan via email at: info[at]2580association.info

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

SCAPE 2008 BIENNIAL OF ART IN PUBLIC SPACE

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Seeks Curators for 2008

The SCAPE Biennial of Art in Public Space is New Zealand’s only international contemporary biennial dedicated to public art. 2008 is the fifth SCAPE Biennial for Christchurch and the 10 year anniversary of the Art & Industry Biennial Trust, who present the SCAPE Biennials.

The Art & Industry Biennial Trust (Art & Industry) is seeking your Expression of Interest (EOI) to be considered as one of two key curators for this important New Zealand biennial taking place between September - November 2008 in Christchurch. SCAPE is one of the largest producers of new contemporary art in Australasia; engaging local, national and international audiences with new artworks by leading New Zealand and international artists in public space through partnerships with industry.

SCAPE also has a significant partnership with the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. An indoor exhibition, hub and public programme will be supported by the Gallery.

This exciting opportunity is for one New Zealand and one international curator. Once formed, the curatorial partnership will be responsible for reflecting Art & Industry’s Strategic Plan, relationships with stakeholders and partners as well as matches to industry resources. The curators will also be required to build on the existing profile of the event locally, nationally and internationally while delivering a distinctive programme which challenges the parameters of the public’s relationship with art.

Both partnered (national/international) and individual applications are welcome. Art & Industry is happy to broker relationships between interested curators.

For further details and/or to receive an application pack please contact Art & Industry: scapebiennial[at]xtra.co.nz. Final submission date for all applications is Friday 27 April 2007.

The Art & Industry Biennial Trust is supported by Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council of New Zealand and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

Posted by jo at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

2 Residency Opportunities

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"BASE ELEMENTS"

The properties of elements often reflect the properties of life itself - volatile, inert, lustrous, precious, brittle… Primo Levi

Allenheads Contemporary Arts (ACA) would like to receive proposals from artists interested in following a line of research into the earth's base elements. The project aims to explore in broad terms, how we comprehend and relate to the matter of our planet. Artists will be able to invite a collaborator from any field of the arts or sciences, to bring their knowledge and experience to the project.

These 2 residencies are the first in the Base Elements series, which will collectively present a broad picture of our complex relationship with planet earth. It is planned that the series will culminate in a conference, exhibition and publication. Each residency is for a flexible period of up to 3 months taking place between May and December 2007. Artist's fee £1800 pcm + travel, accommodation, studio and production expenses. Application deadline April 18th 2007.

FURTHER INFORMATION on the Base Elements residencies

Dates

Deadline for applications is Wed 18th April 2007.
Selections will take place during the week beginning April 23rd.
Each residency is for up to 3 months and can take place between 9th May - December 2007.
The residency period can be approached in a flexible manner. For example, 1x3 month stay or several shorter stays.

Fees

The artist will be paid a fee of £1800 pcm. This includes subsistence and some working materials costs.Expenses for 1 economy return trip from the artist's home to Allenheads will be provided. Additional travel costs will be the responsibility of the artist. A budget will be available towards materials for production, presentation and distribution of the artists work. This will be negotiated during the residency.

Collaborator

The Base Elements programme has a budget to cover the expenses of working with a collaborator. (Fee's, travel expenses etc.)
The artist may nominate a collaborator in his/her proposal, or work with ACA's help to seek the most appropriate person for their research.

Extended Programme

Artists will be expected to contribute to ACA's extended arts and education programme that may involve local and international audiences. This could be in the form of meetings, talks, presentations, exhibitions, publications, archival documentation etc. The nature of this contribution will be discussed during the residency to ensure it is appropriate to both artist and host venue.

Facilities at ACA

· Large open and versatile studio (10x10m)
· Access to workshop and digital studio for DVD editing and production
· DVD presentation with high quality projection and surround sound PA system
· Internet and TV for research purposes
· Basic comfortable private accommodation with bathroom and shower facilities
· Fully equipped self catering kitchen

About ACA

ACA is an independent contemporary Arts venue established in 1995 by Helen Ratcliffe and Alan Smith. Over the last 11 years it has commissioned, presented and distributed a diverse collection of innovative work by national and international artists. It is situated in the North Pennines in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and at 1540 feet is England's highest village and is at the geographical centre of Britain. While based in a small rural village, its scope of interest and resources is much broader, connecting the local community and environment with geographical, political, personal and cultural concerns globally. Please visit ACA's other web pages for more information www.acart.org.uk

Allenheads village is accessible by car or by a train and bus connection. While artists entering this rural setting will need to demonstrate a personal desire and willingness to work in a remote area, their social, professional and creative networks will by no means be isolated.

Resident artists are treated as part of Alan and Helen's extended family often sharing meals and leisure time. Artists have their own private quarters for sleeping, cooking and working and there is an open policy that respects the need for both privacy and companionship. Allenheads has a welcoming community with a pub, café, heritage centre. Alan and Helen work and live in the building with their two young children. Professionally and socially they have regular contact with many regional and national artists and curators with whom they share ongoing projects and interests.

HOW TO APPLY

Please send:

· Written proposal (max 1 x A4 page) outling:
- Brief statement relating to recent work
- Line of research you are interested in pursuing at ACA
- Choice of collaborator (specific names not required at this stage)
- How you envisage this residency impacting on your work
· A current CV (max.2 pages)
· Visual material supporting your proposal:
- Slides (max 10. Clearly labeled - including your name!)
- CD-R (max 10 images. JPEG Format. 72 dpi)
- DVD Show-reel (max 5 mins)
- If relevant, details of web address
· An indication of your preferred dates and working schedule.
· The contact details of a referee who we may contact during the selection process.
· If you would like your material returned, please enclose a SAE with full postage.

Please send applications by post to: Allenheads Contemporary Arts, The Old School House, Allenheads, Hexham, orthumberland, NE47 9HR, UK

Any enquiries may be sent by email to helenheads[at]aol.com but please do not send any application material via email.

Posted by jo at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2007

Barcamp Bangalore 3

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SocialTech

Barcamp Bangalore 3: SocialTech, where technology meets society at large :: March 31-April 1, at the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. At this event, we intend to share stories of technology implementations that affected society around us, and social norms that affected the course of technology.

We have stories of e-governance, electronic record keeping, and what it means for those without access; Indian copyright law and innovation in music; and celluloid, movies and the resultant shaping of society and culture. We’d love to hear more, perhaps on the application of technology to understand the human condition, or perhaps on the growing spread of personal communication technologies and the unexpected but undeniable shift in the landscape of mass media and governance.

Surely you’ve got a tale to narrate? A tale that escaped popular attention and deserves to be brought out and shared? A cautionary tale of how things may not always get better? Bring it to Barcamp. Help your fellow campers understand what it really means, beneath the surface of the narrative, and of how it affects our lives and what we should be prepared for.

For the regular Barcampers: this event may be somewhat different from what you may have come to expect. This time we’re not as interested in the tech itself as in what it means to the society that receives it. You’re welcome to continue to use the space for what you’re comfortable with, but requested to participate in expanding the presence and social impact of Barcamp, while retaining its technology flavour.

Discussion of this theme at http://jace.seacrow.com/archive/2007/03/09/barcampbangalore3

Posted by jo at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)

UPGRADE! AMSTERDAM:

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[TAG & TRACK}

UPGRADE! AMSTERDAM: [TAG & TRACK} :: When: wed. March 21st 2007 || start 20.30 hrs. / doors: 20.00 hrs. :: Where: Melkweg, Theater, Lijnbaansgracht 234 A, Amsterdam | free entrance | LIVE webcast: www.fabchannel.com

'Locative media' are hot: from cell phones to GPS, to other means of satellite communications. A world without the latter seems unthinkable, or perhaps even non-navigationable. Experiments with locative media within the arts have mostly focused on and taken place within an urban context. Upgrade! Amsterdam [tag & track] offers a counterbalance and highlights projects where the technology itself is not the main feature, but rather how their usage functions within specific contexts, and generates a multitude of meanings and experiences: from Fulani nomads in Nigeria to what the migration mapping of Montagu's Harrier brings about between ornithologists from Groningen and farmers in Mauritania.

Introduction to the theme by Assia Kraan: Recently Assia Kraan wrote an article on locative media for 'Open - magazine for art and the public domain', titled 'Public action through geo-annotation - social encounters by ways of locative media arts'. Her introduction to this Upgrade! [tag & track] will be a continuation of this article focussing on narrative possibilities of locative media and the sence thereof.

Nomadic Milk - Esther Polak - Michiel de Lange: Nomadic Milk is about mapping migration patterns of Fulani nomads as that of the diary industry their milk is processed by. Nomadic Milk visualises both social entanglements and mental maps of the two systems.

Capturing the migration of Montagu's Harrier - Ben Koks c.s. Not even as much the data produced by the tiny 7 gram satellite backpacks of migrating Harriers between the Netherlands and Mauritania, Senegal and Nigeria is of interest, but more the narratives arising from it among the Dutch ornithologists and farmers in Western Africa. http://www.grauwekiekendief.nl

After the presentations there will be a panel with Assia Kraan, Ben Koks, Esther Polak, Just van den Broeke and Michiel de Lange, moderated Lucas Evers. Just van den Broeke will be present at this panel since he has been involved in numerous projects working with a variety of locative technologies. http://www.justobjects.nl

UPGRADE! AMSTERDAM is a series of gatherings for and by new media aficionados, artists, geeks, media makers and breakers, and the generally curious. Point of departure is the premise: "No upgrade without a downgrade." UPGRADE! AMSTERDAM is organised by Nat Muller & Lucas Evers, is actively hosted by de Melkweg, and kindly supported by VSB Fonds and Mondriaan Foundation.

UPGRADE! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Since April 1999, a group of new media artists and curators have gathered in New York City. The first meeting took place at a bar in the east village with Tim Whidden & Mark River [MTAA], Mark Napier and UPGRADE! founder Yael Kanarek.

Posted by jo at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center hosts CADRE Laboratory Salon

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Sharon Daniel

Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center will be the in world host a series of salons held at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media. Sharon Daniel will be discussing her work at 6.30, Tuesday March 13.

Sharon Daniel teaches classes in digital media theory and practice. Her research involves collaborations with local and on-line communities, which exploit information and communications technologies as new sites for "public art." Daniel's role as an artist is that of "context provider," - assisting communities, collecting their stories, soliciting their opinions on politics and social justice, and building the online archives and interfaces that make this data available across social, cultural and economic boundaries. Daniel's work has been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals including the Corcoran Biennial, the University of Paris, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Ars Electronica and the Lincoln Center Festival as well as on the Internet. Her essays have been published in books and professional journals such as Leonardo and the Sarai Reader. Daniel has recently presented "Improbablevoices.net" at SFCamerawork in San Francisco, the Fundacion Telefonica in Buenos Aires and at the conference "contested commons" in New Delhi, India. Her current research is supported by grants from the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the Creative Work Fund.

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 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2007

Technology Expanding the Horizon:

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A Reinterpretation & Investigation of the Landscape

Technology Expanding the Horizon: A Reinterpretation & Investigation of the Landscape: A symposium sponsored by the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs, the Ohio State University Department of Art and the Wexner Center for the Arts.

In the past the landscape was understood as a physical place; the distance you could see to the horizon or the rows of corn needing to be plowed before sundown. Now, with ubiquitous Google Maps, the World Wide Web, digital photography and nanotechnology, the landscape, a physical place has been evolving into the landscape as a virtual place. As experimenters and meaning-makers, artists create an important dialogue about how technology impacts and changes our notion of the meaning of this landscape. To address these issues the Art & Technology area and the Photography Area within the Department of Art have invited artists, theorists, and scientists to participate in a free public symposium of art and ideas about today’s reinterpretation and creative investigations of the landscape. During the symposium there will be exhibitions and performances allowing the symposium participants, as well as the general public, to engage with the landscape of the Ohio State University and the city of Columbus.

Four panel discussions take place over this two-day symposium scheduled for March 29 & 30, 2007 at the Wexner Center of the Arts.

1. The Imaged Landscape / How Technology Changes Our Perception of the Land: This panel will consider how the imaged landscape has been used and continues to be used as a device for changing our perception of the land. An ongoing dialogue between truthful representation and fictional construction, the imaged landscape contributes to our understanding and perceptions of our environment.

Panelists: theorist videographer/photographer Peter Garfield, photographer Lori Nix, and author/historian Vicki Goldberg. Moderator: film historian, Ron Green.

2. Remapping Power: Action in Virtual and Physical landscapes: Artists are increasingly using electronic media to create, disseminate and research their projects, which has resulted in an expansion in the notion of public art and activism. The Internet audience is engaged in ways that cause a rethinking, and possibly a reconnecting to physical places, people and communities.

Panelists: cyberart activist Ricardo Dominquez and culture jammers The Yes Men, with performance philosopher Shannon Bell as respondent. Moderator: Amy Youngs.

3. Creating and Exploring Technological and Biological Nanoscapes: Nanotechnology, or working within the nano-scale, means grappling with a new landscape. Though it is much too small to “see” in the traditional sense, we are nevertheless confronted with an increasing number of images and narratives emerging from this realm.

Panelists: Russian theorist/biotech artist Dmitry Bulatov and nanotechnology scientist/artist James Gimzewski with Robert Davis, Director of Nanotech West OSU as respondent. Moderator: Ken Rinaldo.

4. Rediscovering Geography in the Everyday Landscape: Where do irrationality, spontaneity, and surprise fit into our daily existence? How do performance, sculpture, and architecture in the everyday environment disrupt notions of similitude? How can artists use geography as a canvas to introduce a new wildness in the city?

Panelists: architect/artist Vito Acconci and conceptual artist/ sculptor Erwin Wurm with art historian Martha Buskirk as respondent. Moderator: Robert Ladislas Derr.

All panels will be videotaped and available to the public as downloadable media on the symposium website: http://artandtech.osu.edu/simhorizon/

EXHIBITIONS:

Technoscape - Hopkins Hall Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of artwork and writings by the invited panelists, with related student artwork in the corridor. Opening March 29th.

Re-Surfacing – A juried exhibition of new media performances, videos and installations, organized by graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Art. March 26th – April 6.

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

TANGENT_BROTHERHOOD

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Live and Online Today

Please join us for the livestream event of the "Lost Highway Expedition" in Rotterdam: TANGENT_BROTHERHOOD Friday March 09, 2007 (20.00 - 23.00 CET, 2 pm EST) at V2 Institute for Unstable Media, Rotterdam. As most of you will not be able to make it to Rotterdam you can follow the event over livestream (REAL MEDIA) and also join moderated IRC chat (server: irc.v2.nl / channel#:tangent).

TANGENT_BROTHERHOOD presents the Lost Highway Expedition as a model of open source and do-it-yourself collaboration in the form of a mobile, cultural and artistically charged, and collectively authored project.

Featuring (in order of appearance): Ana Dzokic and Marc Neelen (Rotterdam / Belgrade), Alenka Gregoric (Ljubljana, video stream), Yane Calovski (Skopje), Kristian Lukic (Novi Sad). In the space some of the Lost Highway Expedition works by Rotterdam and Amsterdam based participants will be on show: Arnoud Schuurman, Hugo Lammernik, Auke Towuslager, Artgineering, Stealth.unlimited.

Auke Touwslager made a map of the Lost Highway Extended Event Network that will be on show at the V2 event.

Who was there? Who should have been there? This map shows the extended network of organizations around the Lost Highway expeditioners by pulling out their URL co-links. By clicking on a node you can see to/from how many sites are they connected and also visit the corresponding URLs.

The software used is the Issue Crawler and locates and visualizes networks on the Web. It is used by NGOs and other researchers to answer questions about specific networks and effective networking more generally.

The map is now available at: http://www.informationlab.org/lhe/ - follow the instructions on the site.

BUILDING LOST HIGHWAY
the first source book works session
17-19 March 2007 in Rotterdam

After the Lost Highway Expedition (LHE) in August 2006, the next phase of the project called ‘Building Lost Highway’ is to start in March 2007. It is envisioned as a process that would last about half a year, with an idea to interlink and build upon expedition generated projects, art works, networks, architecture and politics based on the found knowledge.

A series of three work sessions is to spark this process towards a ‘source book’ from which a variety of interpretations and representations can be drawn for different occasions (a book, a symposium, an exhibition...) by those interested in the issues incited by LHE - not necessarily only by the participants of the process. The source book will be Internet based, collectively authored and later made into a printed draft.

The initial idea is that the source book is built around three lines of thought: Expedition as an experimental Society, Lexicon of the future (extracting concepts and notions that relate to the future or European territory that come from a positive interpretation of the notion Balkanisation) and individual Projects. It is likely that these three strands will start to intertwine along the process and that actual result would be a kind of combination of a lexicon and atlas. The idea for a source book resulted from discussions among expedition participants that took place in Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo.

In September 2006 - right after the expedition - Ana Dzokic, Marc Neelen and Kyong Park applied on behalf of Centrala Foundation at the European Cultural Foundation for funding to get the source book process running and make a draft print out of the product. We are glad to say that our proposal will be granted with 25.000 euro. This will be seed money to let some of the participants of the Expedition meet again at different locations - not only in the Western Balkans.

It is obvious that not all of the LHE participating organisations and individuals can participate in all of the meetings but the idea is to open the process to those interested to join in and contribute with content. Therefore the work sessions will be taking place in three different cities to allow for those local or near by interested to take part.

The first source book session will take place in Rotterdam from 17-19 March. This session is to set a direction towards the final result and also think how to (technically / online) involve a large LHE community. The idea is that the second and third session would take place in the region. Initial contacts have been made with Kuda.org (Novi Sad) and Press to Exit project space (Skopje).

The first session will be joined by Azra Aksamija (Boston/Sarajevo), Ivan Kucina (Belgrade), Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (Basel/New York), Katherine Carl (Basel/New York), Ana Dzokic (Rotterdam/Belgrade) and Marc Neelen (Rotterdam) from the initial group, Yane Calovski (Skopje), Barbara Galassi (Belgrade/Rome), Vahida Ramujkic (Barcelona/Belgrade), Jaume Nualart (Barcelona/Vienna), and a group of LHE participants residing in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Arnoud Schuurman, Hugo Lammernik, Wietske Maas, Auke Touwslager, Ursula Lavrencic and Emiliano Gandolfi, curator at The Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam. The session will take place in the Harbour #1350, Maashaven in Rotterdam, studio space of Stealth.unlimited.

After the first session is over we will inform you of the next steps and we hope to start building the content collectively and that some of you will be able to join at the next source book sessions.

More about Building Lost Highway initial idea from the time of the application to European Cultural Foundation is to find at: http://europelostandfound.net/node/890. Some things have changed, like the dates but the general idea is there.

LOST HIGHWAY PHOTOBOOK

After the Lost Highway presentation in New York in October Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss came up with an idea to make a LHE Photo book that would feature images by the participants. And we started looking for possibilities to make it happen. The Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to support the project (thanks Helena!) and Marjetica Potrc contacted Revolver publishers who are interested to be publisher and distributor. During the workshop in Rotterdam the group present will discuss the content of the Photo book after which we can start creating it (based on a Creative Commons license). Ajdin Basic, who designed the LHE reader, will design this book as well. The aim is to have the book ready for the opening of the LHE exhibition at Skuc in Ljubljana this September.

EXHIBITION at SKUC, LJUBLJANA

Alenka Gregoric, artistic director of SKUC gallery in Ljubljana is starting to work on the exhibition (containing works coming from the Lost Highway Expedition) which will take place in September. More on the draft idea will be posted soon.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

WEB3DART 2007

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

[Image: Monolith[s] by Michael Takeo Magruder] DEADLINE: March 24, 2007 :: Submit your on-line 3D works to WEB3DART 2007, for inclusion in an exhibition of completely new works created by internationally regarded artists, architects, designers, students and creative 3D developers. The selection will showcase the foremost ideas and independent creations in all on-line 3D formats.

WEB3DART 2007 will be premiered at the Web3D Symposium, the 12th International Conference on 3D Web Technology, April 15-18, 2007, University of Perugia, Umbria, Italy. For more information: http://www.web3d.org/web3d2007/

WEB3DART was launched in 1999 at the VRML ART show in Paderborn; following shows at the 2000 VRML-ART Expo at the SIGGRAPH ART SHOW in New Orleans, WEB3D ART 2002 at The ICA London, the WEB3D ART 2003 in St.Malo and the Lab3D show at Cournerhouse in Manchester, WEB3D ART 2005 in Bangor, Wales, UK and at the 2006 WEB3D ART in Columbia, Maryland, USA and the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia.

SUBMISSION PROCESS: All work will be juried on-line and must be viewable on free browsers (available on-line). Send URL with application form, found at: http://www.web3dart.org to: info[at]web3dart.org Deadline is March 24, 2007. Only on-line submissions will be accepted.

QUESTIONS: ALL questions regarding submission procedure, gallery exhibition, or the jury process should be directed to Karel Dudesek info[at]web3dart.org, through March 24. 2007.

A signed release giving written authorization to link your work on-line, and copyright clearance for the Web 3D Symposium, must be received before your work will be confirmed in the program. This authorization form will be send to the final, selected artists/projects.

SELECTION CRITERIA: Keywords for the selection are art and design, imagination, and innovation. All 3D on-line projects must be complete and functional at time of submission. The selection will be made on-line by a jury listed in the submission form. Please see details on the website.

PLEASE FOLOW THESE CONDITIONS CAREFULLY: We will only accept applications which send attached to there application form by e-mail a short project description maximum 15 lines and 1-3 screen shots JPEG/PNG 500x300px of your work.

CATEGORIES (the jury reserves the right to assign or reassign a
category):

- Artists and architects
- Scientific models
- Multi-user Worlds
- Product design and unique commercial applications
- Experimental works and studies by art and design students

We are looking forward to receive your works and wish you all the best for the upcoming celebration days.

The web3Dart team

Posted by jo at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

DAYS OF BIOART

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A Project by CAPSULA

DAYS OF BIOART :: Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona :: Opening: 16th March, 8:00pm.

Days of Bioart is an ongoing project that intends to create a space of debate and exhibition dedicated to biological and living art that reflects the increasing interest around life sciences and the influence that they are having in culture and society. Created and coordinated by CAPSULA, Days of Bioart began in 2006 as a symposium and SymbioticA Tissue Engineering and Art Workshop.

This edition will reproduce in an exhibition space projects of artists and collectives that explore different formats in search of arising awareness on the techniques and discourses behind the new biotechnologies. It will analyse the performance potential and the laborious development of actions built around the domestication of concepts such as body architecture, semi-living, contestational biology or bioporn.

The projects and texts on show are by Critical Art Ensemble, subRosa, Guy Ben-Ary and Tanya Visosevic, Bioteknica, Stelarc and Nina Sellars, Kira O'Reilly, Marta de Menezes, Brandon Ballangee, Laura Cinti, Elio Caccavale, George Gessert, Adam Zaretsky, Julia Reodica, Jens Hauser and Dmitry Bulatov.

On the 16th of March at 1:30 pm the 'CD Days of Bioart 06' that documents the first edition that took place in February 2006 will be released. www.capsula.org.es/diasdebioarte

On the 7th of June the artist Adam Zaretsky will do a VIVOARTS LECTURE where he will be questioning with the public the uptake of certain techniques in modern molecular biology and the social and ethical implications they involve, including irreverent and demythologising experiences using methods such as Gooey Flesh Codex, Pure Germ Tech, Biotech Hobbyist and Body Mix, among others. Adam Zaretsky is a bioartist and lecturer. His projects can be found at http://emutagen.com This event will take place on 7 June at 8.00 pm at the Santa Mònica Art Centre.

For further information: info[at]capsula.org.es

http://www.capsula.org.es/diasdebioarte/
http://www.centredartsantamonica.net/

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

March 08, 2007

Call for guerrilla art projects

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Temps d'Images

Last week i visited a superb art venue just outside Paris: La Ferme du Buisson. Each year in October they organize an art festival called Temps d'Images. For the 2007 edition they want to spread out of their walls and invade public space. They've asked me to curate a show of guerilla art installations and performances (interactive or not) that would engage with and re-appropriate the urban space.

The spaces to conquer are outside the Ferme du Buisson: RER stations, bus and bus stops, shopping centers, parking lots, etc. Any places where the attention of passersby can be called to aspects of their everyday urban environment they might overlook or just ignore. The projects would inhabit the city without requiring any special permit.

As Temps d'Images is a European network some of the pieces would travel to other countries: Italy, Poland, Portugal, Canada, Estonia, etc.

There's a decent budget so you should be able to work in good conditions.

Plus, they are also looking for an artist who could come and see the Ferme du Buisson then head to Poitiers in April to head a workshop and help students create urban projects which might be part of the festival.

If you have any work either from France or any other country to suggest or need more detail, just drop me a line (yes, you can write me in french, it's my mother language, remember?) or post a comment here. Deadline is like... soon: mid-April.

Image from last year's edition of the festival: EXHIBIT A4206 / Stolen Property - Howard Katz / Yoann Trellu / Felix Zopf. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

Follow for Now:

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Interviews with Friends and Heroes

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes is an anthology of forty-three interviews with minds of all kinds. See for yourself:

Science: Eugene Thacker: Whole Earth DNA, Mark C. Taylor: The Philosophy of Culture, Steven Johnson: No Bitmaps for These Territories, Howard Bloom: Mind at Large, Terence McKenna: Struck By Noetic Lightning, Manuel De Landa: ILLogical Progression.

Technology: Howard Rheingold: Virtual Cartographer, Rudy Rucker: Keeping it Transreal (part 1) / Game Theory (part 2), Albert-László Barabási: Think Networks, David Weinberger: Small Pieces, Eric Paulos: ExperiMental InterAction, Richard Saul Wurman: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Media: Eric Zimmerman: Play as Research, McKenzie Wark: To the Vector the Spoils, N. Katherine Hayles: Material Girl, Geert Lovink: Tracking Critical Net Culture, Brenda Laurel: Utopian Entrepreneur, Peter Lunenfeld: Critic as Curator, Erik Davis: Mysticism in the Machine, Gareth Branwyn: Media Jam, Douglas Rushkoff: The Thing That I Call "Doug".

Music: Mike Ladd: Rebel Without a Pause, Aesop Rock: Lyrics to Go, Pete Miser: Camouflage is Relative, Yoni Wolf and Richard Adams: The Sound of a Handshake, dälek: Gods and Griots, Weasel Walter: Killing Music, Milemarker: The Only Band That Matters, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky: Subliminal Minded.

Culture: Brian Coleman: Nostalgia is Def, Hal Brindley: Wild Boy, Doug Stanhope: Deadbeat Hero, Paul Roberts: Peak Oil Recoil, Tod Swank: Foundation's Edge, Shepard Fairey: Giant Steps, Steven Shaviro: Stranded in the Jungle, Mark Dery: Postfuture Shock.

Literature: Steve Aylett: Rogue Volts of Satire, Philip K. Dick: Speaking with the Dead, Adam Voith: Missives from the Downtimes, David X. Cohen: Futurama's Head (In a Jar), Sean Gullette: Faith in Chaos, Bruce Sterling: Future Tense.

Posted by jo at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2007

unDEAF: Dutch Electronic Art unFestival

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Call for participation

unDEAF is a satellite event of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2007. unDEAF is uncurated. Your work will not be judged, or restricted by a theme, neither it has to be finalized. unDEAF is self-organized. You organize and promote your own event, whether an art piece, a performance, a talk, a workshop, a meal, a song, a party or other as-yet-undefined events.

How to participate in 3 steps: 1. Announce your event at the website. 2. Subscribe to the mailing list and stay tuned to the latest news. 3. Show up in person or avatar from 13th to 15th of April.

April 10 - 15 :: Rotterdam, The Netherlands :: Free participation :: For those brave-hearts that would like to help organizing unDEAF, we might have simple accommodation for free.

Posted by jo at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)

DEAF07 workshops

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Apply before March 15th!

DEAF07 Interact or Die! Presents three hands-on workshops where artists from different backgrounds, students and technicians work collaboratively on experiments and new creations. The basic ingredients for all DEAF workshops are: excellent workshop leaders, a carefully selected variety of participants, good ideas and materials. The workshop leaders present the theory related to the workshops in the seminars Critical Ecosystems (DIY Networks) and Interrupting Realities (Tracking Technology), where all workshop participants are also encouraged to engage in the discussions and debates. The Hive@ Soft(n) workshop includes an invitation to collaboratively create a locative media game on the basis of an integration of the networks of the Soft(n) installation and the Hivenetworks project. Subcritpition for the workshops is open until March 15th 2007. Please check www.deaf07.nl/workshop_application to submit your application online, you will be notified by March 19th 2007. Apply for DEAF07 workshops before March 15th! Contact: lyndsey[at]v2.nl

DIY Networks: A hands on workshop on media ecologies
V2_Test Lab 1
Wednesday 11 to Saturday 14 April
Cost: 250 euro / 200 euro, including lunch and workshop materials, entrance to the exhibition and the Critical Ecosystems seminar.
Maximum participants: 30

The DIY Networks workshop is oriented towards electronic artists with an interest in the possibilities of approaching technologies beyond the paradigm of control. The focus will be on sustainable, customised, weareable, networked instruments and sound ecologies. Participants are invited to build their own artistic micro experiments and perform hardware and network hacking.
see www.deaf07.nl for more information.

Workshop leaders:
Alejandra Perez Nunez - http://www.elpueblodechina.org
Jo FRGMNT Grys : T.O.B - http://noisiv.de.vu/
Sophie Gosselin and Juien Ottavi : Apo33 - http://www.apo33.org


Tracking Technology
V2_Test Lab 2
Wednesday 11 to Saturday 14 April
Cost: 200 euro / 150 euro, 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 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. 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. See www.deaf07.nl for more information.

Workshop leaders:
Armando Menicacci - http://www.anomos.org
Sher Doruff, Stan Wijnans, and Cliff Randell


Hive @ Soft(n)
V2_Lounge
Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of April 2007
Cost: 150 euro / 100 euro, including lunch and workshop materials.
Maximum participants: 20

The Hive @ Soft(n) workshop is aimed at people with visualiation skills, programming skills in Flash, PD, and/or MAX/MSP and general creative people with an interest in locative media and reporting skills. During the workshop, participants will create a locative media game in which data interpretation, selection, broadcasting and visualisation of collected content is determined by affection. In order to do so, participants will integrate the wireless network of of ‘soft objects’ from the Soft(n) installation and the wireless network of Hivewares from the Hivenetworks project and will develop the visualisation application to realise the game. The data selected while developing, testing, and playing the game will be broadcast throughout the festival, and on the Internet.

Workshop Leaders:
Hivenetworks: RayLab - Vladimir Grafov, Alexei Blinov , Will Hall - http://hivenetworks.net
Soft(n) concept: Thecla Schiphorst - http://whisper.surrey.sfu.ca/
V2_ workshop team: Siuli Ko-Pullan, Stock, Simon de Bakker, Rui Guerra, Michiel Kauw-A-Tjoe

Posted by jo at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

‘If the route’: The Great Learning of London

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[A Taxi Opera]

‘If the route’: The Great Learning of London [A Taxi Opera] :: PerformanceStudio Voltaire :: Friday 9th March at 7.30pm :: The radio works: 104.4 Resonance Fm, Wednesdays 9pm 14th of March - 25th April 2007. More times below.

A collaboration between artist Beatrice Gibson and musician Jamie McCarthy, ‘If the Route:’ The Great Learning of London is a live performance and radio work in seven parts based on The Knowledge (the infamous London cabbie navigation system and mnemonic device students must master in order to become licensed cabbies). The Performance: The live performance of the 'if the route' has been developed collaboratively with 10 students from Knowledge Point and four improvising string players. A complex and fascinating mathematics of the everyday, The Knowledge involves learning 320 routes or runs mapped within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Traveling approximately 26,000 miles across the city on Honda C90's, knowledge students memorize a total of 30,000 streets. ‘Calling over’ entails that after the completion of the days run[s], students must call them out, reciting them out loud. Partners form to call over runs to one another, using recital and repetition as a means to remember the city.

Knowledge Point on Caledonian road, one of several taxi universities students may attend and whose curriculum includes a series of mnemonic devices to aid in their endeavor, is filled with pairs of men and increasingly the odd woman aurally reciting sets of directions to one another. Entering it is to be surrounded by the city fragmented and auralized into sets of sentences and street names, a veritable symphony performing the city as text .

Using the technique of calling over as its principle sound source, the performance of ‘if the route’ celebrates and elaborates this formidable system and poetic by re-contextualizing it within in the space of the gallery. Modeled on paragraph seven of Cardew's original score, Gibson and McCarthy's compositional structure emphasizes the practice of calling over as an ongoing process of repetition, memorization, rehearsal and navigation, articulated in a networked and non heirarchical manner.

The Score

‘If the Route’ takes it title from The Great Learning, the well known score by the radical and experimental 60’s composer and musician Cornelius Cardew. Informed by similar developments and ideals in the Fluxus movement and realized around the same period, Cardew’s work was rooted in belief of the democratic potential of music as a social platform, his score’s often intended for implementation by untrained musician-performers. Cardew’s version of the Great Learning was a score in seven paragraphs, rooted in and acoustically generated by the Confucian text of the same name. Playing on the title of ‘the great learning’ as it relates to The Knowledge and its own system of learning, and borrowing from the methodology, structure and political intent of Cardew’s score, Gibson and McCarthy have used both aural and non aural research into the knowledge as the generative principle behind composition. The score for 'if the route' provides the basis for both realization of live perfo rmance and the radio works.

The Radio Works

Mirroring the seven paragraphs of Cardew’s score, the radio piece comprises seven parts and takes place over seven weeks. In keeping with the spirit of Cardew and the political gesture of experimental composition in general, seven practitioners from varying fields and disciplines have been commissioned by Gibson and McCarthy to use and translate the score for radio according to their own personal and varying interpretations.

Participants include; artist and architect Celine Condorelli, artist Beatrice Gibson, musician and composer Kaffe Matthews, musician Jamie McCarthy, artist and writer, Tom McCarthy, poet and cabbie, Simon Phillips, and architect and theorist, Eyal Weizman in collaboration with Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer (Networked Cultures)

Wednesday 14th March 9pm Beatrice Gibson and Jamie McCarthy
Wednesday 21st March 9pm Celine Condorelli
Wednesday 28th March 9pm Simon Phillips
Wednesday 04th April 9pm Eyal Weizman in collaboration with Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer (Networked Cultures)
Wednesday 11th April 9pm Tom McCarthy (International Necronautical Society)
Wednesday 18th April 9pm Kaffe Matthews
Wednesday 25th April 9pm Beatrice Gibson and Jamie McCarthy

'If the Route:' The Great Learning of London is generously supported by Arts Council England. Partnered by Studio Voltaire and Resonance FM.

With special thanks to London Contemporary Dance School at The Place.

Posted by jo at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2007

unitednationsplaza

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A Seminar with Tirdad Zolghadr

unitednationsplaza: That's Why You Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties: A seminar with Tirdad Zolghadr :: March 12th - March 23rd, 7 - 9 PM :: Closed Saturday March 17th and Sunday March 18th.

The unitednationsplaza seeks to elaborate models for art institutions that transcend the traditional boundaries between research, education and display. In this context, rather than offer a conventional course, Tirdad Zolghadr intends to pursue this possibility of new forms of discussion as rigorously as possible. In other terms, the aim is to apply the analytical rigor customarily reserved for ideological, infrastructural or art-critical concerns to the very material format in which these discussions are embedded.

Why is it that the visual arts, rather punctilious in form, format, genre, media- and site-specificity, perpetuate discursive rituals steeped in medieval university traditions. The models here are limited to the seminar and the lecture hall, or to formulaic “panel discussions” flanked by Evian bottles and Powerpoint presentations. Can one expect new answers to older questions regarding form and content, quality and innovation, aesthetics and politics, if our modes of discussing them remain so fossilized?

A serious consideration of untapped possibilities may help reevaluate age-old conventions, perhaps even allow a heightened sense of specificity. In which ways, for example, do certain formats overly predefine the reflection on certain themes. In the light of these questions, we shall reconsider issues of rhetorics, populism, symposium economics, artworld divisions of labor, postcolonialism and inclusivity, as well as helpful curatorial initiatives, teaching projects and artist interventions.

The seminar is based on an open structure allowing not only for theory, discussion and the odd Powerpoint presentation, but also surprise guests, historical digressions, entertainment, and the constant threat of genuine audience participation.

Topics include:

Symposia Tourism
The Aesthetics of Circulation
The Deictics of Knowledge
Artworld Divisions of Labor
Direct Democracy
The Odor of Discourse
University Heroics
Speaking Techniques
Gentle Condescension Gracefully Staged

Guests will include Boris Buden, Joerg Heiser, Nikolaus Hirsch, Hito Steyerl, Stefanie Wenner and others.

Tirdad Zolghadr works as a freelance curator, writes for Frieze magazine and has also contributed to Parkett, Bidoun, Cabinet, afterall, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Straits Times Singapore and other publications. Since 2004, Zolghadr has curated events at Cubitt London, IASPIS Stockholm, Kunsthalle Geneva, various Tehran artspaces and other venues. He was co-curator of the International Sharjah Biennial 2005, and is currently preparing a long-term exhibition and research project addressing social class in the art world that shall take place at Gasworks London, Platform Istanbul and Tensta Konsthall. Zolghadr is also a founding member of the SHAHRZAD art & design collective and will shortly publish his novel Softcore with Telegram Books, London.

unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it involves 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 are 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.

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

unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin 10249 Germany
T. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 90
F. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 85

Posted by jo at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

cyber feminism

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past forward :: virtual real

cyber feminism :: Opening: March 8 2007, 7 pm with a concert performance by Eva Ursprung :: March 9 - March 31, 2007 :: Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 3-7 pm :: Austrian Association of Women Artists, Maysedergasse 2, 1010 Vienna/Austria :: Tel: + 43-1-513 64 73/Fax -- 9 :: vbkoe[at]vbkoe.org

cyber feminism past forward :: cyber fems virtual real :: cyber fems real meetings :: Kloe Bratz (TC), ][mez][ breeze (AUS), Carla Cruz (PT), Cym (AUT/NL), Aileen Derieg (AUT), Valie Djordjevic (G), Nina Höchtl (AUT), Deb King (USA), lady tigers night club LTNC (AUT), lizvlx (CH/A), Jess Loseby (Various) et al, Diana McCarthy (USA/G), Nancy Paterson (CAN), Regina Célia Pinto (BRA), Suzanne van Rossenberg (NL), sisterO (NL), Nina Sobell (USA), Evelin Stermitz (AUT/SLO), Eva Ursprung (AUT), Francesco Ventrella (I), Faith Wilding (USA), Nanette Wylde (USA), Jody Zellen (USA)

Posted by jo at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

Social Hacking

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Public Art Commissions

C6 enter its tenth year with a flurry of activity, as the Dotmasters hit Plymouth for Social Hacking, 21-24 March 2007. Social Hacking is a series of temporary public art commissions for Plymouth by international artists' groups against a backdrop of urban regeneration. The project reflects the ways in which these changes to the city can be further influenced by creative human intervention.

Featuring commissioned work from: The Institute for Applied Autonomy(USA), Mikro Orchestra Project (Poland), and Ludic Society (Austria/Switzerland). The Dotmaster's Mobility in the art market by the original art wankers, C6, a Mikroparty including performances by Tetine (Brazil) and Mikrokilla & Jura (Poland), as well as the C6 disaster unit roadshow, project newsroom, artists' run workshops, workshops by The Pirate University (Global), and a public seminar with keynote presentation by McKenzie Wark (AUS/USA).

The Dotmasters travel to Switzerland in April for Bitnik's Hack culture exhibition in the Cabaret Vorltaire a series of workshop hacks where mobility in the high and low end culture markets are the subject of subversions. The exhibition will open on the 9th of March 2007 and end sometime in late August 2007 a series of +A Hack A Day; workshops accompany the exhibition. Practical How-Tos for Cultural Hacking, at Cabaret Voltaire, Spiegelgasse 1, Zurich Exhibition until May 2 2007 Sa, 14.4.07, 2pm - Cabaret Voltaire mit C6.org (London) - An Afternoon of Good Clean Fun with the dotmasters.

The C6 disaster unit continues to provide the visual backdrop for Longrange with a festival packed summer long tour, as well as continuing to work with the buzzcocks.

Plans for Nuart in Stavanger get underway soon and a bigger better celebration of street art you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Keep the 5th to the 8th of September free, stay tuned.

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2007

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR):

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Call for Proposals

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR): Call for Proposals :: Deadline: April 7, 2007. Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center in Second Life is soliciting proposals for its second artist-in-residence program. Established and emerging artists will work within the 3D rendered environment of Second Life. The 11-week residency will culminate in an exhibition and a community-based event. Residents will also receive a $400 stipend, training and mentorship as necessary.

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR) is an extended performance that examines what it means to reside in a place that has no physical location. Ars Virtua presents artists with a radical alternative to “real life” galleries: 1) Since it does not physically exist artists are not limited by physics, material budgets, building codes or landlords. Their only constraints are social conventions and (malleable-extensible) software. 2) The gallery is accessible 24 hours a day to an unlimited number of people in every part of the world simultaneously. 3) Because of the ever evolving, flexible nature of Second Life the “audience” is a far less predictable variable than one might find a Real Life gallery. Residents will be encouraged to explore, experiment with and challenge traditional conventions of art making and distribution, value and the art market, artist and audience, space and place.

Application Process: Artists are encouraged to log in to Second Life and create an avatar BEFORE applying. Finalists will be contacted for an interview. Interviews will take place in world in April. Applications will be judged based on ideas presented and work executed. We are looking for an artist who is willing to work within what may be a new environment for them and to be prepared to evolve in response to the synthetic world of Second Life. To apply send the following information to avair-at-arsvirtua.com:

1) Name, address, phone number, email, second life name.
2) Link to an online portfolio (expect a 5 minute visit) and a 500 word (two page) proposal. If you do not have an online portfolio please briefly discuss your work.

“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.

Posted by jo at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center hosts CADRE Laboratory Salon

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Anthony Burke

Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center will be the in world host of a series of salons held at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media. Our first simulcast lecture will be on March 6th at 6.30 SLT at Ars Virtua's main gallery. Anthony Burke will be the discussant.

Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer and Director, Masters of Digital Architecture, University of Technology, Sydney: Prior to his appointment as Director of UTS Masters in Digital Architecture program Anthony Burke was assistant professor of architecture at UC Berkeley. His research interests include emergent design principles and the relationship between new media and architecture. Professor Burke graduated from the Graduate school of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University with a Post Professional Masters in Advanced Architectural Design in 2000. Prior to that he gained his Bachelor of Architecture with honors from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1996. Before moving to University of California, Berkeley, Professor Burke maintained a design practice in Sydney, completing several small scale domestic and commercial projects.

He has held teaching positions at several institutions including the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, and Columbia University. Professor Burke has worked as an architectural designer in Hong Kong, Sydney and New York. He received a runner up award for the Sydney Town Hall Precinct International Ideas Competition in 2000, and has published articles on technology and architecture in Australia. His current research interests include emergent design principals, the relationship between New Media and Architecture and the history of architectural systems thinking and design after the 60's.

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 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Spatial Y

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@ FYLKINGEN

Spatial Y by Michael Nielen, Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof :: FYLKINGEN :: Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 19.30 :: Münchenbryggeriet, Torkel, Knutssonsgatan 2 (T-bana Mariatorget).

The pianist Michael Nielen, the artist Ann Rosén and the composer Sten-Olof Hellström performs the sound work Spatial Y. In a meeting between chamber music, installation art and electronic chaos the spatial aspects of sound are woven together forming a sound work to which further dimensions are added by the audience movements, sounds and choices. The audience can choose to regard the work as an installation, which you can enter and walk around inside or as a concert where you sit down and listen. 120 min with individual pause.

Michael Nielen: Born 1961 in Germany. Trained pianist from the Academies of Music in Düsseldorf and Cologne. Solo and ensemble concerts in several European countries with both classical and contemporary music. Collaboration with several composers. CD and radio recordings. Since 2000 works with sound installation and live-electronic for exihibitions and concerts. From 1998 instructor at the Kunsthøjskolen in Holbæk / Denmark. Lectures on different issues of contemporary music.

Ann Rosén's work can take the shape of video, sound art, electro acoustic music, sound and video installations etc. In the early 1990s she investigated various forms of human interaction, her work focussed on creating situations where people could meet under different forms. As computer technology became more accessible Ann Rosén started to combine social interaction with digital art forms. Many of her ideas require a large number of people from different backgrounds. This has led to that she has initiated and coordinated a number of interdisciplinary projects. In 2000 Ann Rosén started to include scientists and researchers from different fields in her projects. To address the problems encountered in these projects and create a platform for interdisciplinary collaborations Ann Rosén initiated ADRA- Art Driven Research Association in 2004.

Sten-Olof Hellström has been active as a professional composer since 1984 Masters of Music in composition at University of East Anglia, England 1990 Employed as researcher and composer at the Centre for User Oriented IT Design (CID), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) since 1997. As a researcher Hellström has mainly worked in the field of Human Computer Interaction where he has been part of several major international research projects such as eREANA and Shape. He is also very active in the field of sonification (representing data with sound). One example of current work is the construction and development of a computer interface for the visually impaired. Sten-Olofs Hellströms main occupation and profession is however as a composer working with Electro-acoustic music.

Contact and information:
0708-866459, Sten-Olof Hellström
ar[at]schhh.se
www.schhh.se

Posted by jo at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2007

UPGRADE! Second Life

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Launches

The first UPGRADE! Second Life presentation occurred on Friday at the BitFactory Chindo gallery as a co-location with the Paris node, with consistent attendance of about 15-18 avatars from North America, Europe, and South America. Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita presented their documentary work on the lives of avatars in real life. Although there were the usual technical challenges (latency times on streaming, etc.), multiple contingencies were planned for, and attendees were able to see all media clips for the event. As with most SL events, the social milieu was a little chaotic, very lively, but there was abundant conversation about the work, and virtual attendees from France stayed ar t least 30-60 minutes after the meeting.

This was a very exciting event, and James and I are very excited about the level of enthusiasm for this first meet. Documentation is here.

Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita are artists working on virtual worlds. They present their last documentary about “Second Life” universe and users. Their movie questions the notion of the virtual life. For those who wishing to live in / experiment this virtual world(s), “Second Life” offers the chance to create, manage and develop their own alternate reality. With these possibilities, and a population that is in constant growth, “Second Life” has political ramifications. Who decides the rules applied in this virtual world? What laws, what measures need to be defined? Where is the frontier between the virtual and the real, and how is it transmuted? This documentary aims to elucidate the porous nature between real and virtual worlds.

UPGRADE! SL is a forum for the promotion and sharing of New Media art and critical discourse occurring in the online world, Second Life. Founded by Rubiyat Shatner (James Morgan / Ars Virtua) and Man Michinaga (Patrick Lichty / BitFactory / Columbia College Chicago), UPGRADE! SL is the first non-geographical node of Upgrade! International.

Patrick Lichty

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http://www.myfirstsecondlife.com/upgrade-paris/

Posted by jo at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

Sharjah Biennial 8

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Art and our Relationship with Nature + Environment

The Sharjah Biennial 8 (SB8) :: April 4th, 2007 :: Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) :: Director: Hoor Al Qasimi :: Artistic Director: Jack Persekian :: Curators: Mohammed Kazem, Eva Scharrer, Jonathan Watkins.

The Sharjah Biennial 8’s theme proposes art as a way of creating a better understanding about our relationship with nature and the environment, whilst considering its social, political, cultural and subjective dimensions in an interdisciplinary way. SB8 will focus on the renewed role of art in addressing a wide range of issues that alarmingly affect human existence on earth. The Biennial is aware of the critical ambiguity of its subject matter, and of the fact that it is part of the product-producing and -consuming society, and of the constantly growing tribe of biennials, that year after year, encourage a number of artists, curators, audiences and artworks to travel around the globe. Still, SB8 needs to be critical and will attempt to implicate all sectors of society into questioning our social, political, and ecological praxis.

The Biennial’s programme includes exhibitions, performances, a film programme curated by Mark Nash and a symposium organised in collaboration with the American University of Sharjah, RSA (London) and curatorial practice Latitudes (Barcelona). The entire city of Sharjah is being offered to more than 80 international artists for the creation of new site-specific work. Exhibitions, performances and events will take place across a wide range of venues including the Sharjah Art Museum, the Expo Centre, the Heritage Area of Sharjah, and several outdoor urban and natural sites. The Sharjah Biennial Art Prizes will be awarded to two winning artists by a jury composed of Negar Azimi, Charles Esche and Geeta Kapur. Furthermore, UNESCO will award their Prize for the Promotion of the Arts & the Young Digital Creator Award, in collaboration with the Sharjah Biennial 8.

Posted by jo at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)

New Climates

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Art, Climate Change and Networked Culture

New Climates, curated by Shane Brennan, is an online exhibition of new and existing artworks responding to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture. This curatorial weblog will create a flexible and open-ended space to address these ideas at a time when climate change has become a vital concern among artists. Launching in the spring of 2007, New Climates will take the form of a continuously-updated and extensive video weblog.

14 artists have been selected to create short web-videos responding to the pervasive discourse and images of the climate change crisis. The original works may include animations, documentaries, personal testimonials, appropriations, data streams and text or image slideshows. In addition, existing videos and other artworks relating to the theme will be posted and discussed.

As a video weblog—which will be aimed at a broad, heterogeneous audience of art- and non-art-world individuals—the exhibition will be distributed across both space and time: It will be open to the contributions of artists across the globe, and it will grow organically through a series of syndicated (RSS) posts over the course of several months. In this way, the theme of global climate change will intersect with the technology and language of global media. Just as the climate change debate is constantly shifting and evolving, this exhibition will remain transitive, flexible and open-ended.

This project will also explore the contemporary phenomenon of distributed curating: exhibiting artwork across a variety of spaces, networks, temporalities and audiences. It will take advantage of popular technologies (e.g. blogging and web-video sharing) to initiate a dialogue relevant at multiple levels to artists, curator(s) and visitors.

Work will appear in the New Climates exhibition between March and May 2007.

Artists Contributing New Work:

Michael Alstad
Anthony Discenza
Futurefarmers
Jane D. Marsching
Mary Mattingly
Joe Milutis
Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir
Andrea Polli
Giles Revell & Matt Wiley
Brooke Singer
Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead
Gail Wight
Peter Eramian
Sarah Simon

Artists Contributing Existing Work:

Ben Engebreth
Michael Mandiberg

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

March 03, 2007

Subliminal Statements 2: the Interior World

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Call for Submissions

Subliminal Statements 2: the Interior World, The Newsletter of the Society for a Subliminal State :: Call for Submissions :: Due April 15, 2007.

The earth is hollow! It's surface is riddled with paths to the inside! We want your articles on the interior world! An interior world lies beneath the earth's crust. Centuries of industrial mining have etched labyrinthine shafts and caverns throughout the world. Beneath it are vast cave systems, replete with underground rivers, seas, and waterfalls, where unique plant and animal life thrive.

Still deeper, the earth is hollow. A differentiated body, its interior is molten: a permeable liquid mantle encircled by a comparatively thin solid husk. At the inner edge of the earth's solid shell, crystals sublimate, mingling with pockets of pressurized gas - heated and vibrant with the light of the molten interior.

For centuries, scientists, explorers, and writers have held that this fiery core is a small, inner sun, and that the inner edge of this shell of an earth is a balmy land with a surface area greater than that of the earth's outer surface. This land, inhabited by a varied plant and animal life features seas and continents. Its geography, anthropology, and physics are the subject of hundreds of books published since the late 17th century.

Other writers theorize concentric spheres within the earth, lit and heated by a luminous substance that adheres to the outer earth's inner surface. These spheres, also populated by abundant life are accessible through wide holes at the earth's poles, where the polar ice caps give way to temperate polar seas.

The second issue of Subliminal Statements will document this interior world.
We want your evidence.

FORMAT

Subliminal Statements is printed on one sheet of 11 by 17 inch paper (front and back). The newsletter is printed in a newspaper format. Accordingly we will accept articles and essays written in a style befitting a newspaper: written as though reported, brief editorials, etc. Due to the scientific nature of the issue's theme, we are also accepting submissions in the form of scientific papers, charts, or other data-heavy examinations of the theme.

Photos, drawings, illustrations, or other images should accompany text submissions only, and must be able to be printed in black and white.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Text submissions should be a maximum of 1500 words, though we will accept excerpts of longer documents, and article to be published serially (please contact us if you are interested in writing a serial article for Subliminal Statements). There is no minimum length. In fact, the shorter, the better.

Submit your text as .rtf, .txt, or .doc files, your data as .xls, or .csv files, and your images as .png, .tiff, .jpeg, or .gif (8 MB max).

E-mail your submissions to subhist[at]subliminalstate.org with the subject line: Subliminal Statements 3 Submission.

Your submissions must be received by midnight on April 15, 2007.

If accepted, your submissions will be published in the second issue of the Society for a Subliminal State Newsletter, a newspaper-style compact format print publication, and on the Society's web site. The print version will be distributed for free to bookstores, art events, and historical centers in New York and Massachusetts. It may be downloaded and copied for wider distribution.

ABOUT THE SOCIETY

The Society for a Subliminal State is a fledgling organization started by Carrie Dashow and Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg. The Society for a Subliminal State agitates against the exclusive use of empirical evidence in the search for truth. It is an organization that believes there are many different types of digging that to be productively undertaken. The Society for a Subliminal State mirrors the form of a traditional historical society, contributing to the public discourse through a quarterly newsletter and a website. Subliminal Statements accepts articles on topics avoided by publications that advocate fact checking. The Society grounds itself in the belief that truth is deeper than proof, and holds that if you see it three times then that too may be the path to truth.

Posted by jo at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

16 Beaver Group

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Ashley Hunt

16 Beaver Group :: Ashley Hunt - Representations Of The Erased :: Monday 03.05.07 :: What: Talk / Discussion / Screening :: Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor :: When: 7:30 pm :: Who: Free and open to all.

Ashley Hunt is an artist and activist who uses video, photography, mapping and writing to engage social movements, modes of learning and public discourse. Among his interests are structures that allow people to accumulate power and those which keep others from getting power, while learning from the ways people come to know, respond to and conceive of themselves within these structures. Rather than seeing art and activism as two exclusive spheres of practice, he approaches them as intertwined, drawing upon the ideas of organizing and cultural theory alike — the theorizing and practices of one informing the other.

This has included investigations into the prison, the demise of welfare state institutions, war and disaster capitalism, documentary practices and political activism as a mode of representation. His primary work of the past eight years is organized under the umbrella of “The Corrections Documentary Project” (www.correctionsproject.com), which centers around the contemporary growth of prisons and their foundational role in today’s economic restructuring and the politics of race.

Hunt’s work has been screened and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, as well as numerous grassroots and community based venues throughout the U.S. His writings have been published in Rethinking Marxism (‘06), the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (‘07 & ‘05), Sandbox Magazine (‘02) and at Artwurl.org (‘03–present). He is currently a fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Essays:

A Fortification of Race
Temporary Public Spaces

Interview: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ERASED by NATASCHA SADR HAGHIGHIAN and ASHLEY HUNT

Links

http://ashleyhuntwork.net
http://correctionsproject.com
http://iwontdrown.com

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

for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org

Posted by jo at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2007

NEW THURSDAY CLUB on 8 MARCH

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SUE BROADHURST ON DIGITAL PRACTICES

NEW THURSDAY CLUB on 8 MARCH with SUE BROADHURST :: Supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL :: 6pm until 8pm, Lecture Theatre at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

DIGITAL PRACTICES: Performance and technology in all its divergent forms is an emergent area of performance practice which reflects a certain being in the world - a Zeitgeist; in short, it provides a reflection of our contemporary world at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In a relatively short period of time there has been an explosion of new technologies that have infiltrated all areas of life and irrevocably altered our lives. Consequences of this technological permeation are both ontological and epistemological, and not without problems as we see our world change from day to day.

Exemplary digital practices are Blue Bloodshot Flowers (2001), featuring an avatar called Jeremiah, Merce Cunningham’s Biped (2000) with its virtual dancers, and Stelarc’s “obsolete body”; in film, the digital innovation and creativity of The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003) and the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005); in sound and new media interactive practices, the digitally manipulated sound of Optik, the “intermedia” of Palindrome, and the “electronic disturbance” of Troika Ranch; and in Bioart, the “recombinant theater” of Critical Arts Ensemble, and the “phenotypical reprogramming” and “functional portraits” of Marta de Menezes.

In my opinion the quintessential features within much of this performance demand a new mode of analysis which foregrounds the inherent tensions between the physical and virtual. These practices, in different ways, emphasize the body and technology in performance and they explode the margins between the physical and virtual and what is seen as dominant traditional art practices and innovative technical experimentation. Therefore, my main premise is the exploration and investigation into the physical/virtual interface so prevalent within the digital.

As a development of my previous theorization on liminality I believe that aesthetic theorization is central to this analysis. However, other approaches are also valid, particularly, those offered by recent research into cognitive neuroscience, particularly in relation to the emergent field of “neuro-esthetics” where the primary objective is to provide “an understanding of the biological basis of aesthetic experience” (Zeki 1999).

SUE BROADHURST is a writer and performance practitioner, Reader in Drama and Technology, and the Head of Drama Studies in the School of Arts, Brunel University, West London. She is author of Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory, London: Cassell/New York: Continuum, 1999, Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology (forthcoming, 2007), Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006) together with various articles including ‘Interaction, Reaction and Performance: The Jeremiah Project’, The Drama Review, MIT Press 48, (4): 47-57. Sue is currently working on a series of collaborative practice based research projects entitled, “Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance,” which involve introducing various interactive digital technologies into live performance including, artificial intelligence, 3D film, modeling and animation, and motion tracking. She is also editor of the on-line journal.

...and the last Thursday Club of this term will be on

22 MARCH with IGLOO

International and award winning artists igloo create intermedia artworks, led by Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martelli.

‘In the mid-sixties, Fluxus artists began using the term 'intermedia' to describe work that was ....composed of multiple media. The term highlights the intersection of artistic genres and has gradually emphasized performative work and projects that employ new technologies.’ [Marisa Olson - Rhizome.org]

igloo projects are created with teams of highly skilled practitioners drawn primarily from performance, music, design, architecture, costume, computer science and technology backgrounds. Their work combines film, video, motion capture technology, music and performance with digital technology. The work is developed in a variety of formats and made for distribution across a range of platforms, including gallery installation, internet sites, large and small scale performance and Cd Rom.

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’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

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

Programmable Media:

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Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration

See documentation of the event. !! TODAY !! BROADCAST LIVE TO SECOND LIFE. PLEASE JOIN US FOR Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration :: A symposium organized and presented by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. / Turbulence.org, hosted by Pace Digital Gallery :: Date: March 2, 2007 :: Time: 10 am to 3:30 pm :: Venue: Multipurpose Room, 1 Pace Plaza, Pace University ::

In July 2004 the not-for-profit media organization New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. began the networked_performance blog to chronicle observations that internet based creative practice is expanding due to the ready availability of wireless, mobile, and GPS computational devices and the emergence of the programmable web. We observe that artists, designers and researchers working in digitally networked and programmable environments are increasingly making projects that are media platforms, tools and services which are open and contingent upon participation and the contribution of content to realize them.

Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration, hosted by Pace University, will explore two forms of current practice. First, the creation of original software to create tools and services for creative and social use, such as a freely available 3-D drawing tool and musical instrument, or a public commons meta layer conceived as a continuous public space for collaboration. Second, the creation of original work using the tools available within open platforms such as Second Life and MySpace to build community and raise awareness.

PARTICIPANTS: John (Craig) Freeman, Tom Igoe, Cary Peppermint, Amit Pitaru, Michelle Riel, Helen Thorington, and Mushon Zer-Aviv and Dan Phiffer.

SCHEDULE

10:00 - 10:45 am: Introduction: Social Coding: Tools, Platforms, Systems

Helen Thorington: Turbulence.org's networked_performance blog
Michelle Riel: Siting this Symposium in current practice
Q&A (audience)

10:45 - 11:00 am: Transition

11:00 am - 12.20 pm: Roundtable 1

Mushon Zer-Aviv + Dan Phiffer: The Social Space of the Net: ShiftSpace
Amit Pitaru: Sonic Wire Sculptor
Tom Igoe: Networked Objects: Email Clock & Air Quality Meter & others
Discussion (with moderators)
Q&A (audience)

12.20 - 2:00 pm: lunch break

2:00 - 3:20 pm: Roundtable 2

Cary Peppermint: The Performative Space of the Net
John (Craig) Freeman: Particapatory Installation Art in Second Life
Michelle Riel: Responsive Soft-Biological System
Discussion (with moderators)
Q&A (audience)

Participant Biographies:

John (Craig) Freeman is an artist and educator who uses digital technologies to produce place-based virtual reality and site-specific public art. The virtual reality work is made up of projected interactive environments that lead the audience from global satellite images to immersive, user navigated scenes on the ground. As one explores these virtual spaces, the story of the place unfolds in a montage of nonlinear media. Freeman's work has been exhibited internationally. He has recently introduced it into the 3-D graphical world of Second Life. Freeman is currently an Associate Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston.

Tom Igoe teaches courses in physical computing and networking, exploring ways to allow digital technologies to sense and respond to a wider range of human physical expression. Coming from a background in theatre, his work has centered on physical interaction related to live performance and public space. His current research focuses on ecologically sustainable practices in technology development. Along with Dan O'Sullivan, he co-authored the book "Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers," which has been adopted by numerous digital art and design programs around the world. He is working on another book on networked objects, for O'Reilly Media, due out in 2007. Projects include a series of networked banquet table centerpieces and musical instruments; an email clock; and a series of interactive dioramas, created in collaboration with M.R. Petit. He has consulted for The American Museum of the Moving Image, EAR Studio, Diller + Scofidio Architects, Eos Orchestra, and others. He is a contributor to MAKE magazine and a collaborator on the Arduino open source microcontroller project. He hopes someday to work with monkeys, as well.

Cary Peppermint is a conceptual artist who works with digital technologies and performance art. He is assistant professor of art at Colgate University where he teaches courses in the theory and practice of digital art. Cary is known for his website "Restlessculture.net." which serves as a platform for his ongoing series of networked performances. His latest works engage the concepts of wilderness, space, the American frontier, and environmental ethics and explore how new media technologies both limit and expand our conceptions of nature and the environment, questioning how we live and make art with and in nature. Cary has curated international exhibitions of digitally infused eco-art including, “Technorganic” and “Wilderness Information Network” which both took place in the upper Catskills of New York state. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Franklin Furnace Performance Grant, Experimental Television Workshop Grant, and NYSCA's Decentralization Grant. His work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Rhizome.org at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Computer Fine Arts.

Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, interested in exploring cultural dimensions of inexpensive communications networks such as voice telephony and the Internet. Drawing on his computer science background, Dan's software projects seek to provide meaningful creative opportunities through intuitive user interfaces. Dan now lives in Brooklyn, New York and is pursuing a Masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Amit Pitaru is an artist, designer and researcher of Human Machine Interaction (HCI). Amit cross-palliates his work between a wide range of fields; As an artist, he develops custom-made musical and animation instruments, and has recently exhibited/performed at the London Design Museum, Paris Pompidou Center, Sundance Film festival and ICC Museum in Tokyo. Amit is also a designer with particular interest in Assistive Technologies and Universal Design. He is currently commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation to write a chapter for an upcoming book on his recent work - creating toys and software that are inclusively accessible to people with various disabilities. As an educator, Amit develops curriculums that focus on the coupling of technology and the creative thought process. He regularly teaches at New York University's ITP and Cooper Union's Arts department.

Michelle Riel is associate professor of new media and chair of the Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department at California State University Monterey Bay. Riel collaborates with turbulence.org on the networked_performance blog, documenting and presenting on emerging work that is both networked and live. She is an award winning designer and NEA commissioned net artist. Her current work, antSongs, is a responsive music system collaborating with ants to explore issues of sustainability, community, and globalism.

Helen Thorington is an award winning writer, sound composer and media artist. Thorington is founder and co- director of the independent media organization, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., whose projects include the national weekly radio series, New American Radio, Turbulence.org (1996-present), and the networked_performance blog (2004-present). Thorington publishes and presents internationally on these projects. She is currently teaching in the Department of Arts and New Media at Emerson College.

Mushon Zer-Aviv was born in Israel in 1976. He has been involved in and initiated cross-media projects in art, design, comics, animation, online culture and media activism. Co-founder of Shual.com design studio. A teacher at Shekar College of Design & Engineering. An active contributor to Pixelsurgeon.com, Exego.net and Maarav.org.il online magazines. Curated BD4D Tel-Aviv and started Upgrade! Tel-Aviv events, both series aimed at creating and developing the Israeli new-media creative network. Mushon is currently studying at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program.

Posted by jo at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2007

FLUXUS

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ON THE BEACH

11:00 AM FLUXUS ON THE BEACH :: 800 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach :: come join our FLUXUS parade along Lincoln Road and follow our piano od(d)yssey out to sea. witness Fluxus artists alison knowles and larry miller in performance as they perform a number of piano pieces along the way to the beach in honor of nam june paik - long time Miami Beach resident. An unforgettable experience for all. Be prepared to participate. Bring your bicycles, sport clothing, your kids and friends... It’s free!

2:30 PM FLUX FAIR :: 1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Carnival Center plaza :: Bring your cameras and writing utensils to record the FLUX FAIR at the Carnival Center’s outdoor plaza. Also, bring those old shoes that get no wear anymore, and your musical instruments, we have all else. Be prepared to participate in fluxus booth activities. It’s also free. Bring old shoes to donate and let others wear them, your musical instruments-particularly brass, and your pads and pencils and your cameras to document and share with us.

And don’t forget to attend:

9:30 PM FLUX EVE CONCERT :: 1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Carnival Center - Studio Theater :: This one costs some money ($20) but trust us: it’ll be over the top, with lots of lager-scale surprises. A truly fluxus experience that must not be missed.

gustavo matamoros
artistic director
Posted by jo at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

UpStage

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Open Session

The next open session in UpStage will take place on Wednesday 7 March at 9:00 pm New Zealand time (local time converter) - everyone is welcome.

If you're thinking about proposing a performance for the 070707 UpStage festival then this is the time to come along and learn a bit more about UpStage, the new features being introduced with UpStage 2, and how to create graphics and devise your cyberformance. The 070707 call for participation is at http://www.upstage.org.nz/news.html.

If you'd like a guest log-in for wednesday's session please email helen@upstage.org.nz; if you want to come and lurk in the audience to get a feel for things, simply point your browser at http://upstage.org.nz:8084/stages/swaray at the appointed time.

A note for dial-up users: we have been testing UpStage 2 on dial-up, and it does work - however it takes a long time for the stage to load. We recommend that you start loading the stage half an hour before the walk-thru to be sure that you are there on time. Once it's loaded, you may experience some lag but it generally functions well.

helen varley jamieson
UpStage project manager
helen[at]upstage.org.nz

Posted by jo at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2007

OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media

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Ulises Mejias + Trebor Scholz

!! TONIGHT !! Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org present OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media: Ulises Mejias and Trebor Scholz: The Challenges and Affordances of Participation in the Age of Networked Individualism :: DATE: February 28, 7:00 pm [EST] :: VENUE: Emerson College, Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont Street, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The event will be streamed live and broadcast to Second Life [Emerson College Island, Emerson Island (145, 109, 23)]. Free and open to all!

This Floating Points event will start with Ulises Mejias and Trebor Scholz both presenting their positions about opportunities and problems with participation in sociable web media. They will then discuss each others argumentation and end with a debate open to the public at large. The sheer scale of current networked sociality demonstrates the potential of sociable web media to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad participation. While phenomena like information overload accompanied the emergence of communication technologies for a very long time, this current social turn is new.

Millions of people can now perform themselves as speakers, which is more pertinent than the question of quality or even political orientation of the produced content. In his presentation, titled "The Participatory Challenge," Trebor Scholz will investigate the affordances of sociable web media by looking at examples of the different intensities and motivations for participation in sociable web media and their effects.

Is production the new consumption? In "Networked participation: Wisdom of crowds or stupidity of masses?" Ulises Mejias will assess whether sociable web media can live up to its promise of reinvigorating the public sphere. While participatory networks are certainly posing an alternative to the ways in which the old mass media generates and disseminates messages, there is increasing skepticism about their ability to transform this aggregation of (mostly self-referential) information into meaningful social change. Furthermore, participatory media networks run the risk of being appropriated by the same mass media networks that contribute to the alienation of the individual within society. To understand why this is happening, we need to engage in a critique of the network as a model for organizing social realities. Only then will we be able to conceptualize new social realities that incorporate the best of networked participation with other ways of being in the world.

Ulises Ali Mejias is an educator and technocultural theorist whose research interests include networked sociality, the philosophy of technology, and learning design. He is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, where he has taught a graduate seminar on the affordances of social media. His dissertation, "Networked Proximity: ICT's and the Mediation of Nearness" deals with the redefinition of social relevancy by digital media and explores the limits of the network as metaphor and model for organizing social realities. Mr. Mejias has been nominated two years consecutively for an EduBlog award.

Trebor Scholz is a media theorist, artist, and activist who lectures internationally on the affordances of networked sociality for media activism, art, 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 with Autonomedia (NYC). He is currently assistant 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).

Posted by jo at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

Grey Thumb Meeting Announcement

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BlenderPeople

Roland Hess is talking about BlenderPeople at Grey Thumb Boston :: When: 7:00pm March 5, 2007 :: Where: The Asgard (350 Mass. Ave, Central Square, Cambridge) :: Who: All are welcome.

BlenderPeople is a free, open source crowd and combat simulation project. The system uses a combination of Blender 3D, Python programming and a MySQL database to generate and track the motion and interaction of Actors within a simulated environment. Although there have been other partial implementations of free crowd simulation software, BlenderPeople is the only one currently in development that offers a complete solution, from initial visualization through final rendering with high resolution character models. The project is not intended to be a realistic crowd simulation in the sense that one could use it to model emergency escape routes for architectural design, but focuses on producing animation that will be believable from an entertainment perspective. Technical issues that are addressed in BlenderPeople are different path finding algorithms for different time constraints, avoidance and self-structuring behavior of Actors from short rule sets, programming of Actors through simple distance thresholds, and a novel approach to footstep based character animation. Currently, the project's focus is on slashing search times for nearest neighbors from the field of Actors.

Note: Parking is available for $3 (with validation) in the garage behind The Asgard on Green St.

Grey Thumb Boston is a group of scientists, engineers, hackers, artists, and hobbyists in the Boston metro area with a strong interest in artificial life, artificial intelligence, biology, complex systems, and other related topics.

Posted by jo at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

turned

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Resampled Dancer

Dance MADE IN BAVARIA 1. - 3. March 2007 Munich :: Chris Ziegler: turned + Herzliche Einladung nach Munchen in die Muffathalle, 2nd March 2007 8:30 PM :: director/ video: Christian Ziegler (D) / dance: Kazue Ikeda (J) / music: FLorian Meyer (D).

turned is an interactive and multi-media dance performance, developed and performed by media artist Chris Ziegler from Munich, with Kazue Ikeda, a Japanese dancer currently working in Berlin and DJ Florian Meyer (Institut fuer feinmotorik). The performance combines elements from dance, painting, visual art and music. The recorded images of the dancing body are sampled and distorted by electronic processing. The motion deconstructed in this manner opens up a poetic vision of loss and destruction. The viewer is taken along on a quest for clues. The piece turned is a turntable: it begins as a concert, continues as dance and then turns into an interactive video sequence and finally into a VR-installation - a multi-media-based spatial structure evolving before the eyes of the viewer.

The production realized during a residency at ZKM | Karlsruhe (center for art and media) was supported by: Kulturreferat der LH M|nchen, Bayerischer Landesverband Zeitgenvssischer Tanz, Fonds Darstellende K|nste e.V., Bonn.

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

MENDI + KEITH OBADIKE LAUNCH

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Big House / Disclosure

BIG HOUSE / DISCLOSURE a 200-hour long house song with the voices of Chicago-area Citizens :: WHEN: March 1st- 8th :: WHERE: Northwestern Univ. Campus – Kresge Hall and online :: CONTACTS: office[at]blacknetart.com (blacknetart.com) & w-leopold[at]northwestern.edu, 847-491-4890 (Northwestern Office of University Relations)

Big House / Disclosure was constructed using audio interviews conducted by Northwestern University students with Chicago-area citizens about slavery and the city’s slavery era ordinance. Mixing these interviews with elements of Chicago house music, the artists created a multi-channel sound installation. The project includes 200 video clips of live art and musical performances viewable from the website. Musical events in the sound installation are triggered by custom-designed software tracking the real-time rise and fall stock prices of several corporations that have admitted to profiting from slavery.

Keith Obadike received a BA in Visual Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. Mendi Obadike received a BA in English from Spelman College and a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University. They have received a Rockefeller New Media Art Fellowship and commissions from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitechapel Gallery of London, Electronic Arts Intermix, and The New York African Film Festival. Their Internet opera, The Sour Thunder, was commissioned by Yale University, broadcast in its’ entirety in (104.5 fm) Berlin, and released by Bridge Records in 2004. In 2005 they launched Four Electric Ghosts, an opera produced by Toni Morrison’s Atelier at Princeton University, and in 2006 they performed a live sound art transmission from the Amory Art Show in New York commissioned by the Franklin Furnace. Big House / Disclosure has been generously supported by a Pick-Laudati Award from Northwestern University.

Posted by jo at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)

Aesthetic Evidence

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@ Lily Pad

Aesthetic Evidence :: Halsey Burgund + Peter Bailey :: WHEN: Thursday, March 8th – 8:00 PM sharp :: WHERE: Lily Pad – 1353 Cambridge St (Inman Square), Cambridge, MA :: WHY: because we do crazy things on stage with instruments and computers and other people’s voices (and we might even ask you to donate yours…)

Aesthetic Evidence's music is based on recordings of human voices which the band members make both in the field and, in certain situations, in real-time during perfomances. These spoken voices are combined with instrumentation and singing voices to form their music. Using various sampling and triggering technologies, the band re-creates their songs live by playing traditional instruments along with real-time electronic manipulations.

Halsey Burgund uses a malletKAT, an electronic mallet percussion controller, to trigger voice samples and play various sounds while guitarist, Peter Bailey, fills out the arrangements with both electric and MIDI guitar. Please go here for more information and music downloads.

Posted by jo at 08:29 AM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2007

Upgrade! Seattle

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steve boyer

Upgrade! Seattle: CODE - The Evolution of Abstraction and the Crisis of Human Identity by steve boyer :: 7pm Thursday March 8, 2007 :: 911 Media Arts Center • 402 9th Ave N • Seattle, WA.

Humanity is undergoing an Evolution of Abstraction. The physical forms and social and economic structures that have previously defined human identity are disintegrating, often being replaced by their symbolic representations. As these new modes of being replace the old we are faced with a Crisis of Identity in that assumptions about what it means to be human are challenged by new technologies, social narratives and biological realities. But every crisis presents an opportunity and at this critical turning point in human history we have a unique opportunity to rewrite the narrative codes that allow societies to self-organize and prosper. and to re-synthesize what it means to be human.

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In this presentation connections will be drawn between medieval trompe l’oeil painting, cellular biology, insect robots and reality television in an attempt to elucidate some of the opportunities (and risks) that are posed by electronic and bio-technologies and to examine the role of electronic media in both the writing and re-writing of narrative codes.

Steve Boyer is an artist, designer and theorist with over 25 years of experience developing technology and creating content for interactive media. He has designed video games, electronic toys, musical instruments, light and sound sculpture and robotic architecture and has hands on experience in nearly every aspect of digital production from assembly language coding to 3D modeling and animation.

Currently, Steve is a visiting faculty member at the University of California - San Diego (UCSD) in the Visual Arts Department. He previously spent 6 years on the faculty of the Department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Steve has a BA in Music from Northwestern University and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Posted by jo at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

Neme: Erkki Huhtamo

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On the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art

"I encountered – “hands-on” – an emerging phenomenon called “interactive art” on my first visit to the Ars Electronica festival (Linz, Austria) in 1989. One of the works on display was Deep Contact, a laserdisc installation by the American artist Lynn Hershman. Sitting in front of a display, the user was invited by (the image of) a seductive young lady to “reach through the screen” and touch her. By means of a touchscreen interface, the spectator-turned-into-interactor responded, entering various realms, including a kind of garden of earthly delights, where s/he chose forking paths and encountered erotically loaded incidents along the way. Another installation was The Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw. By means of a stationary bicycle, like the ones at gyms, the visitor entered a virtual city consisting of letters, words and sentences. Choosing one’s routes through the spatialized database, one engaged in simultaneous acts of reading and writing with the combined efforts of one’s eyes, hands, and feet. I still remember the intoxicating feeling of diving under a giant letter “A”, or the sensation of virtually crashing through entire words. These experiences raised questions in my mind: what does cruising between and under letters, and even penetrating them, mean? What is the ontology of such experiences? Am I inside language, or even beyond it? Or inside someone else’s mind? Confronted with such uncanny issues, I had a feeling that something “new”, perhaps even the “ontological rupture” touted by virtual reality enthusiasts, was in the making." Continue reading On the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art by Erkki Huhtamo, Neme.

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

The Art World Is Flat

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GLOBALISM – CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY

The Art World is Flat: Globalism-Crisis and Oppportunity :: April 26-28, 2007 :: Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago.

Presenters: Amy Balkin, Francesco Bonami, David Buckland, Stephen Burks, Anna Deavere Smith, Bruce Ferguson, Ed Gillespie, Stanley Hainsworth, Susan Harris, Lynne Hershman Leeson, Natalie Jeremijenko, Simone Aaberg Kærn, Ruby Lerner, Rick Lowe, Lu Jie, Ken Lum, Bruce Mau, Lucy Orta, Anne Pasternak, Dan Peterman, James Rondeau, Peter Sellars, Jennifer Siegal, Stephanie Smith, Lynne Sowder and Victoria Burns, Francesca von Habsburg, Lawrence Weschler, Mathew Wilson, Jon Winet, and iro Yamagata.

Globalism is radically transforming our world, creating new political instabilities, economic interdependencies, ecological stresses and cultural hybrids. The negative results of globalism have been widely discussed: the loss of cultural and ecological diversity; the consolidation of economic and media power; the rise of violent reactionary and fundamentalist movements.

But there are concurrent trends that suggest hope for a more positive future. These include a growing awareness of the interconnectedness of human destiny regardless of religious, geographic or political differences; the uses of technology to heighten and accelerate social networks and actions; the realization of the urgency of addressing pressing, common, environmental, economic and political crises.

For the arts, the crisis of globalism is also an opportunity to interact meaningfully with visionaries in business, politics, science, and other arenas
The arts, always a harbinger of change, are likewise experiencing an unprecedented surge of new aesthetic forms, cross-disciplinary partnerships, distribution networks, market forces and inter-cultural exchanges. For the arts, the crisis of globalism is also an opportunity to interact meaningfully with visionaries in business, politics, science, and other arenas, and to play a powerful new role in the transformation of our shared reality and emerging future.

This conference will bring together an international group of innovative and socially engaged artists, writers, scientists, technologists, curators, theorists, patrons, entrepreneurs, designers, and collectors, among others. It will focus on how the forces of globalism are challenging traditional hierarchies, redistributing capital, creating powerful new collaborative models, and generating new kinds of hybrid cultural practice.

Conference participants will discuss questions relating to current trends, emerging paradigms, and possible cultural futures in three interrelated thematic areas:

New Capital(s)
Hegemony and Resistance in the Global Cultural Economy

How do shifts in wealth encourage or limit cultural visibility and diversity? Will new cultural centers emerge, offering new possibilities? What are the new models of interventionist cultural practice? Why are new patrons creating alternative structures and processes for cultural experiences?

No Borders Here?
Cultural Hybrids, Nomads, Refugees

What economic, political and cultural imperatives drive the new nomadism? How is technology erasing traditional hierarchies and boundaries of cultural production, distribution and interpretation? How is the restless peripatetic creative class producing new dislocations, networks and communities?

Green World
Art for a Sustainable Ecological Consciousness

What new solutions to the ecological crisis are emerging from collaborations between science, culture and technology? How are green artists, designers and architects using developments in science, genetics and technology? What role does culture play on the brink of environmental catastrophe?

A wide ranging and provocative discussion, the conference will raise new questions, generate lively debate and offer possible answers to how we can anticipate and respond to the challenges and opportunities resulting from the fact that for now, and for the foreseeable future, “the art world is flat.”

Posted by jo at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2007

ICEBOX 02 Cape Town

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Festival of Audio/Visual Art

ICEBOX 02 Cape Town :: February 28 – March 10, 2007 :: Liquid Fridge presents a festival of contemporary creativity in audio/visual art. With the focus on the electronic, open and South African, ICEBOX combines music, film, video and interactive media through a programme of screenings, performances, club nights, workshops and an exhibition.

ICEBOX 02 Cape Town features music-makers, free thinkers and electronic tinkerers Bernhard Loibner (Austria), Brendon Bussy, Com.it, CY Cowboys, Garth Erasmus, Heather Ford (Johannesburg), Dean Henning (Durban), Julian Jonker, Rebecca Kahn (Johannesburg), Microstripe, MTKidu (Johannesburg), Radioboy, Story Boy, and many other proponents of eclectic sounds and plush pixels.

Supported by the Austrian Consulate Cape Town, CAPE Africa Platform, iCommons and netbek. Press support by BRAND, Enjin and one small seed, and online by Kak Duidelik and Swikiri. With thanks to alt film, Bell-Roberts, INTERFACE, Magmart, MTKidu and rustpunk.

ICEBOX 02 Screening

Venue: Labia on Kloof, Lifestyle on Kloof, 50 Kloof Street, Cape Town
Date: Wednesday, February 28 at 8.30pm
Cost: R25

An evening of innovative short-form narratives, documentaries, music videos and animations by over 20 independent creators from South Africa and abroad.

Featuring both award-winning and rarely seen work, the line-up includes Ana Alvarez-Errecalde (ES), The Blackheart Gang (SA), Jaco Brouwer (SA), Tessa Comrie (SA), Fopspeen (SA), Goldfish/Iaminawe (SA), Kidult (SA), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Lark/Ontwerp (SA), Chris Moore (SA), Giorgio Partesana (IT), Andrew Schnetler (SA), Mike Scott (SA), Daniel van der Merwe (SA), Lisa Vinebaum (CA), Tina Willgren (SE) and Dale Yudelman (SA), as well as Microcinema International’s “Independent Exposure” series and the Magmart video art festival (IT).

ICEBOX 02 Exhibition

Venue: Bell-Roberts CUBE Gallery, 89 Bree Street, Cape Town
Date: Opens Thursday, March 1 at 6pm. Closes March 10

Eerie soundscapes and abstract electronica are entwined with computer-generated imagery and appropriated digital video in brief, meditative journeys and waltzes of fusion and fission. Sound painters, picture mixers and media hackers aim to challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions and question the status quo, yet at times to simply entertain the talented listener.

The line-up includes work from Kisito Assangni (TG), D-Fuse (UK), The Dualist (SA), Fabian Giles (MX), Josh Goldman (US), Henry Gwiazda (US), Corlia Harmsen (SA), Hanna Husberg (FR), Jose Insua (US), Jun'ichiro Ishii (FR), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Argyro Koutsibela (GR), Bernhard Loibner (AT), Jenni Meredith (UK), Vesna Milicevic (CS), Giorgio Partesana (IT), Carol Pereira (US), John Vega (US), Hagen Wiel (DE) and Dale Yudelman (SA).

The exhibition also features “A Light Distraction.” Sonic engineer Martin Sims and electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy have collaborated in creating a light centred installation. Technologies normally used to measure and show change in the level of sound energy have been re-wired. Now the viewer can control input - in fact create change, leaving as a measure of their interaction, light.

Gallery hours: Monday - Friday 8.30am - 5.30pm, Saturdays 10am - 2pm

ICEBOX 02 Workshop and Performance

Venue: CAPE Africa Platform, 71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 3 at 1pm
Cost: Donation

An afternoon of presentations on appropriation art, music mash-ups, circuit bending for sound, intellectual property rights and how digital artists can both protect and share their work for collaboration. The workshop also features a live audio/visual performance by MTKidu. Creative Commons-licensed videos will be available for free, legal download onto USB flash drive.

“How to stop worrying about the big C and learn to love CC: An Artists' Guide to IP” presented by Heather Ford (executive director) and Rebecca Kahn (writing and research fellow) from iCommons, Johannesburg.

What is copyright? How does it affect my art and creativity? Is there such a thing as “legal remixing” and how do artists still make a buck while giving their stuff away for free?

The Creative Commons South Africa team explain how copyright affects artists and creators, the common pitfalls, and the practical steps you can take to make sure you are in control of your creativity. They also introduce participants to Creative Commons raw materials that are freely available to legally remix and share, and show video work by artists from South Africa and abroad, who are using copyright to spur global collaborations, broaden their communities and kick-start their careers.

“Song of Solomon” presented by writer, sound artist and cultural producer Julian Jonker.

“Song of Solomon,” devised by Julian Jonker and technologist Ralph Borland, is an algorithmic audio collage using more than 70 performances and adaptations of Solomon Linda’s composition “Mbube,” also performed and adapted as “Wimoweh” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The installation intends to provoke questions about the archetypal models of creativity that inform Western intellectual property law; in its implementation at the Durban Art Gallery in September 2006, the installation arguably infringed South African copyright law in various ways.

He also discusses the interaction between other forms of appropriation art and intellectual property law, specifically mash-ups and DJ mixes.

“Basic Circuit Bending” presented by electro-acoustic artist Dean Henning from rustpunk, Durban.

Bleeps and sweeps aplenty as Dean Henning discusses and demonstrates how simple, low-cost technology (including toys) can be re-purposed for musical performance.

“Live beat construct and visual manipulation” performance by MTKidu from Johannesburg.

The dynamic design and electronic music duo perform live, and afterwards share experiences in live audio/visual experimentation.

ICEBOX 02 Screening

Venue: Zula Sound Bar, 194 Long Street, Cape Town
Date: Sunday, March 4 at 7pm
Cost: Free

An evening of innovative short-form narratives, documentaries and animations from Ciro Altabas (ES), Dany Campos (ES), Sally Giles (SA), Dmitry Kmelnitsky (US), Frédérique Zepter (FR), Microcinema International’s “Independent Exposure” series, and the Magmart video art festival (IT).

The screening is presented in partnership with alt film, a group established to collect and screen film by creative South Africans, as well as work that most powerfully incorporates and describes the inevitable evolution of the medium.

ICEBOX 02 Workshop and Performances

Venue: CAPE Africa Platform, 71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 10 at 1pm
Cost: Donation

Musicians and media artists Bernhard Loibner (Austria), Brendon Bussy and Garth Erasmus perform live on electric bass guitar, mandolin and saxophone, with an array of electronics, custom software and deft improvisation. Afterwards, they offer a detailed insight into the dark art of experimental audio, discuss their crossover work in video and other media, and share techniques with participants. Brendon’s presentation includes a collaborative performance with multimedia artist Charles Maggs.

Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio. His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.

Electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy creates sound pieces combining the mandolin and Audiomulch, a realtime audio processing tool. In 2003, he released “Diesel Geiger” (Open Record) and in 2006, he created wind-activated sound elements for Ralph Borland’s Sharks in Jetty Square, Cape Town. A recent work that utilises contact microphones will be performed at the 2007 Vancouver Signal and Noise Festival of video and audio art. Currently he is writing mandolin compositions intended as components of video works.

Garth Erasmus is a full-time artist and musician passionate about his indigenous Khoi-San roots. As a member of the music and performance poetry group Khoi Khonnexion, he plays self-made instruments based on ethnic ancestry. He is also part of Riempie Vasmaak, where he plays saxophone in an ensemble whose work can best be described as chaotic spontaneous musical invention or free improvisation, for the academic snobs. His solo work on saxophone is a synthesis between these two groups’ approaches with its rhythmic harmonic underpinning and expressive freedom.

ICEBOX 02 Club Night

Venue: The Independent Armchair Theatre, 135 Lower Main Road, Observatory, Cape Town
Date: Saturday, March 10 at 9pm
Cost: R30

Liquid Fridge presents an eclectic selection of DJ’d and live retro-tech-future-funk, accompanied by a hearty serving of performing pixels.

Line-up:
Bernhard Loibner (Austria) - Electro-acoustic
Story Boy - Hip-hop / Jazz / Soul
CY Cowboys - Afrikaans Electro
Radioboy (‘ardkore / Liquid Fridge) - Techno
Microstripe (Big Love) - Breakbeat
Com.it (Big Love / Bush Radio) - Drum & Bass

Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio. His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.

Ongoing collaborations include the sound/video/voice duo Nerve Theory with US video artist Tom Sherman, and live concerts with musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, o.blaat, Bernhard Gal and Joao Castro Pinto. Commissioned work includes compositions for films by Austrian director Mara Mattuschka, the performance extravaganza of the French collective SUPERAMAS and the Austrian National Public Radio.

His music and video has been released on CD and DVD, and he has appeared at numerous festivals, including Ars Electronica Linz, Cybersonica London and Elektra Montreal.

After a 2-year hiatus, the CY Cowboys return with their original Afrikaans Electro sound. Unique and outspoken, these two cowboys deliver not only thought-provoking lyrics, but also tongue-in-cheek local humour and slamming beats to the Cape Town electronic scene. Join them for a DJ set of their most popular anthems, as well as audio gems from the new album.

Microstripe has been spinning her beats in some form or another since 2001. Moving between Hip-hop, Drum & Bass, Breaks and Electro, she has played at numerous gigs around Cape Town, as well as a few in Johannesburg and London. These include Big Love parties, Obs and Long Street Festivals, her own annual New Year’s Eve outdoor Electronica festival, and of course Liquid Fridge events. She recently played alongside UK Breaks producer General Midi on his SA tour.

Com.it is South Africa’s longest standing female Drum & Bass DJ. She has been involved in the D&B scene since 1994, and started playing out around 1997. She is a key member of the Momentum crew and has been a resident on the Sublime Drum & Bass show on Bush Radio 89.5FM since 2002. She is also a co-founder of the Big Love movement, which aims to further the South African electronic music scene.

Story Boy is one of Cape Town's top VJs and can be found projecting visual mixes alongside a variety of Cape Town's top DJs, bands and electronic acts. He is also a crate digger who occasionally unveils his eclectic record bag of b-boy Hip-hop nostalgia, dusty Jazz and electronic Soul goodness.

Artist / Speaker Information

Brendon Bussy
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop and installation at exhibition
Web: www.openrecord.co.za/bussy.html, http://ralphborland.net/jettysquare

Electro-acoustic artist Brendon Bussy creates sound pieces combining the mandolin and Audiomulch, a realtime audio processing tool.

Performance collaborations include Abel Steen with Tinus van Dyk, Corrective with Dean Henning, and Mike Whitehead (ex-Famous Curtain Trick). He has also performed with Dutch performance art group Dogtroep, and at the UNYAZI Symposium of Electronic Music. In 2006, he created wind-activated sound elements for Ralph Borland’s Sharks in Jetty Square, Cape Town. A recent work that utilises contact microphones will be performed at the 2007 Vancouver Signal and Noise Festival of video and audio art. Currently he is writing mandolin compositions intended as components of video works.

He has taught violin, viola, piano, music theory and short courses in digital audio, and has presented at Liquid Fridge’s UPLOAD workshops. His debut solo album “Diesel Geiger” (Open Record) is a “digital twisting” of acoustic material and field recordings.

Com.it (Lecia Nel)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night
Web: www.biglove.co.za

Com.it is South Africa’s longest standing female Drum & Bass DJ. She has been involved in the D&B scene since 1994, and started playing out around 1997. She is a key member of the Momentum crew and has been a resident on the Sublime Drum & Bass show on Bush Radio 89.5FM since 2002. She is also a co-founder of the Big Love movement, which aims to further the South African electronic music scene. When speaking on her plans for the future, she says that she “would like to bring the South African scene to a point where it catches up with the First World’s standards, as well as exposing our culture to their way of life.”

Garth Erasmus
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop
Web: www.asai.co.za

Garth Erasmus is a full-time artist and musician passionate about his indigenous Khoi-San roots. As a member of the music and performance poetry group Khoi Khonnexion, he plays self-made instruments based on ethnic ancestry. He is also part of Riempie Vasmaak, where he plays saxophone in an ensemble whose work can best be described as chaotic spontaneous musical invention or free improvisation, for the academic snobs. His solo work on saxophone is a synthesis between these two groups’ approaches with its rhythmic harmonic underpinning and expressive freedom.

Solo and group performances include the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees with Khoi Khonnexion, “Healing the Feeling” with Werne Feller and Christian "Guy" Tschannen (Switzerland), “Urban Voices” with Malika Ndlovu, and the Sara Baartman Memorial Concert.

He has both exhibited and taught art extensively in South Africa and abroad, and has also coordinated various cultural initiatives.

Dean Henning
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.thesoundofand.co.za, www.rustpunk.co.za

Dean Henning has been involved in the SA music scene for many years, starting at the tender age of 16 as a founding member and drummer in the seminal Fingerhead. In the following years, he has branched out into other artistic arenas, predominantly in digital media. He co-ordinated and remixed work for the rockabilly crossover “Ricky Gass Project”, remixed work for Benguela and Illuminating Shadows, and has appeared on various compilations under his “Captain Asthma” moniker.

Recently, together with partner and collaborator Rike Sitas, he has created music videos and video pieces for dance performances (such as Jay Pather’s Republic and The Beautiful Ones Must Be Born). Rike and Dean had their first solo exhibition as part of the NSA’s Young Artists Project. Entitled “a city”, described in Art South Africa as “easily the most ingenuous, ingenious, expressive and evocative installation [the reviewer has] yet encountered.” The work also received a special mention in ArtThrob’s local exhibition of the year.

Heather Ford
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.icommons.org

Heather Ford is the Executive Director of iCommons, an international subsidiary of Creative Commons. A South African who has worked in the fields of Internet policy, law and management in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, Heather graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and has a certificate in Telecommunications Policy, Law and Management from the University of the Witwatersrand Link Centre. After working in the United Kingdom for Greennet and Privacy International, she went on to Stanford University in 2003 where she worked as a fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship Program. Volunteering for Creative Commons while she was at Stanford, she decided to go back to South Africa at the end of her studies to start Creative Commons South Africa and a project entitled “Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons” at the Wits University Link Centre. Recently appointed Executive Director of iCommons, Heather is also helping to help establish an Intellectual Property Research Unit at the Link Centre and a new NGO called “The African Commons Project”.

Julian Jonker
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.liberationchabalala.net

Julian Jonker is a writer, sound artist and cultural producer living in Cape Town. His work explores the genealogies, promises and ethics of cultural memory. He has published in a variety of literary and academic forums. He has produced music and performance projects independently, as well as for the District Six Museum, the Cape Town Festival and the Western Cape Street Bands Association. His sound art has been exhibited at the Durban Art Gallery and performed as part of the Vox Novus new music festival. He performs as a DJ and mash-up artist, and is a member of the Fong Kong Bantu Sound System.

Rebecca Kahn
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 workshop
Web: www.icommons.org

Rebecca Kahn is a writing and research fellow at iCommons, and has closely followed the growth of Creative Commons in South Africa since its launch. It took her a while to wrap her head around all this copyright stuff, but now she knows who the righteous ones are. She graduated with an Honours degree in English from Rhodes University and has worked as a freelance journalist for the last few years. She is currently completing an M.A. in Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, and likes her Bloody Marys spicy.

Bernhard Loibner (Austria)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 workshop and club night
Web: www.loibner.cc

Bernhard Loibner is a composer of electronic music, musician and media artist. Besides live concerts on a regular basis in Europe and North America, his work includes compositions for contemporary theatre and dance, as well as video, film and radio.

His compositions are characterised by the use of live electronics and computers as unique instruments to create complex musical structures between silence and noise. Starting from musical compositions, he has extended his work into the audio-visual domain.

Ongoing collaborations include the sound/video/voice duo Nerve Theory with US video artist Tom Sherman, and live concerts with musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, o.blaat, Bernhard Gal and Joao Castro Pinto. Commissioned work includes compositions for films by Austrian director Mara Mattuschka, the performance extravaganza of the French collective SUPERAMAS and the Austrian National Public Radio.

His music and video has been released on CD and DVD, and he has appeared at numerous festivals, including Ars Electronica Linz, Cybersonica London and Elektra Montreal.

Microstripe (Yalena Razis)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night
Web: www.soundsquad.co.za, www.biglove.co.za, www.myspace.com/yalena_

Microstripe has been spinning her beats in some form or another since 2001. Moving between Hip-hop, Drum & Bass, Breaks and Electro, she has played at numerous gigs around Cape Town, as well as a few in Johannesburg and London. These include Big Love parties, Obs and Long Street Festivals, her own annual New Year’s Eve outdoor Electronica festival, and of course Liquid Fridge events. She recently played alongside UK Breaks producer General Midi on his SA tour.

MTKidu (Murray Turpin and Nicholas Nesbitt)
Appearance: Saturday, March 3 at workshop
Web: www.mtkidu.com

On a path of shared creative consciousness, MTKidu is a beat construct and visual manipulation team formed in pursuit of an audiovisual language that is both experimental and dark.

As art galleries and clubs stagnate into white and grey cube commercialism, we will not forget the original purpose and potential of these spaces for invention and exploration. The time has come to break the conventional moulds.

MTKidu’s TFTD 0.5 (Tales from the Dark) multi-media album is available at The Bin in Cape Town and Canned Applause in Johannesburg.

Radioboy (Martin Sims)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night and installation at exhibition
Web: www.liquidfridge.co.za

Martin Sims tinkers with media. He is a broadcast engineer by day and a DJ god in his sleep. In 2003, he helped bring to life the short-lived Spectrum radio service. Before that he presented 'ardkore, an electronic music show on Bush Radio 89.5FM. He is a co-founder of Liquid Fridge and enjoys reading e-mail. Currently he passes the time building radio studios, teaching technology and being a Dad.

Story Boy (Anwar McWhite)
Appearance: Saturday, March 10 club night

Story Boy is one of Cape Town's top VJs and can be found projecting visual mixes alongside a variety of Cape Town's top DJs, bands and electronic acts. He is also a crate digger who occasionally unveils his eclectic record bag of b-boy Hip-hop nostalgia, dusty Jazz and electronic Soul goodness.

Sponsors

Austrian Consulate Cape Town

CAPE Africa Platform is a section 21 company established to encourage and facilitate contemporary African creativity through innovative exhibitions, discussion sessions and education programmes.

Incubated by Creative Commons, iCommons is an organisation with a broad vision to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open content, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.

netbek is passionate about digital creation and specialises in development for the web and elsewhere.

About Liquid Fridge

Liquid Fridge is a non-profit organisation devoted to advancing contemporary South African creativity by encouraging interaction between those who explore the creative uses of technology, and debating the issues of art, media, culture and society.

Started in 2002, Liquid Fridge has provided coverage of and a discussion forum for local contemporary art, has hosted screenings, performances, club nights and workshops with leading South African and international artists and academics, and has contributed expertise to media initiatives such as Spectrum 91.3FM, radio station of the Red Bull Music Academy 2003.

Contact Information

Hein Bekker, director and media liaison
Mobile: +27 (0)82 508 2922
E-mail: hein[at]liquidfridge.co.za

Yalena Razis, co-ordinator
Mobile: +27 (0)83 611 6622
E-mail: yalena[at]gmail.com

Posted by jo at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrgade! Sofia

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The Bulgarian Identity in Europe

Upgrade! Sofia :: Place: Main Hall, Goethe Institute Sofia, 1 Budapest Street :: Date: TODAY at 19:00.

After two months of absence Upgrade Sofia returns with a new kind of event. This time we have Veronika Tzekova doing a presentation on the topic "Identity Jamming" and the guest artist from Germany Wolfgang Kemptner presenting the project "Wet Interviews 2". Both presentations are united by one topic - Bulgaria and Europe. These presentations will be used as a tool to form a discussion about the Bulgarian identity in Europe, one hot topic right now. Are we part of the Europe? Nothing has changed, but things aren't quite the same after Bulgaria entered the European Union in January 2007. How does that affect our personalities and changes our point of view, even on a artistic level? Are we Europeans really?

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2007

Upgrade! Vancouver

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Outdoor Social Videosharing in the Built Environment

Upgrade! Vancouver: In partnership with Upgrade! International, Upgrade! Vancouver is launching a series of outdoor screenings of local and international art videos. Appropriating the functional model of online videosharing sites such as Youtube, we are creating a series of exploratory events that translate social videosharing into the analogue environment of the urban street.

Video programmes are curated by individual Upgrade nodes and screened outdoors in the built environment of cities including Vancouver, Paris, Montreal, Belgrade, Seattle, Scotland, Skopje, Chicago, Boston, Amsterdam and Istanbul. Videos will travel between cities, being screened locally and internationally. The social software aspect of these events is explored through a deliberately low-tech model in which flyers containing contact information for participating artists will be circulated at the screenings, with the intention of encouraging people in these cities to develop individual connections. The series will launch in Vancouver in March, 2007. For more information, to submit work, or to get involved: Kate Armstrong : kate at katearmstrong dot com. Boston artists can contact jo at turbulence dot org directly.

Posted by jo at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2007

Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp [MuHKA] lectures

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KEYWORDS/CULTURE

MuHKA lectures: KEYWORDS/CULTURE :: THU 03.01 8 PM Paul Gilroy and Steve McQueen :: THU 03.22 8 PM Rudi Laermans and Lieven de Cauter :: THU 04.12 8 PM Adrain Rifkin and Sudeep Dasgupta :: THU 05.10 8 PM Maria Hlavajova and Rosi Braidotti :: A conversation between Martha Rosler and Susan Kelly took place in October 2006.

MuHKA presents a series of dialogues on the term culture as a keyword around which individuals and societies produce, contest and share meaning, bringing together several leading figures working in this field.

In his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond Williams gives a precise and useful account of the words that are instrumental in shaping our understanding of culture and society. Words, which although familiar, he believed, would benefit from further clarification; not in order to impose a finite meaning on them, but instead to describe their development, adaptation and translation between times and places and their relationship to other words. In his definition of ‘culture’ Williams describes this word as one of the two or three most complicated words and elsewhere as the original difficult word. It can simultaneously refer to: [1] intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development [2] the way of life of a people, time or place and [3] artistic works or the output of aesthetic practices. According to Williams its complexity stems from the fact that the word culture plays an equally important role in a number of different areas of exper ience [art being one, society being another] between which it occupies an awkward place.

By way of elucidation Williams traces the etymology of ‘culture’ back to its roots in plant or animal husbandry [to cultivate or to tend]; how it came to refer to the development of manners and the intellectual faculties, how it was extended to include more generalised social processes and how through its links to civilisation, class and civil values it acquired a contested status. The formulation and maintenance of cultural elites and the culture wars that saw previously excluded groups gate-crashing the citadel. Today the term ‘culture’ is deployed for a combination of progressive, bureaucratic and reactionary causes. As a remedy for social exclusion, for the empowerment of sub and counter cultural groups, as an instrument of government policy, and in the xenophobic ring-fencing of cultural values and norms on ethnic, religious and linguistic grounds.

Williams believed that the awkward position that the word ‘culture’ occupies somewhere in-between social and artistic categories, rather than being a problem, instead produces a range and overlap of meaning that is the source of its significance. Indicating a complex argument about relations between general human development and a particular way of life, and between both and the works and practices of art and intelligence.

This lecture series at MuHKA will take the slippage that finds ‘culture’ sitting in-between, artistic, social and theoretical discourse as its point of departure and consider the following questions:

[1] Rather than divide culture into neat partitions such as art, politics and lifestyle can we approach it as a continuous field with many intersecting points? [2] How can we best challenge cultural norms which are exclusive and prescriptive and aim for a culture that is convivial and cosmopolitan? [3] Rather than accepting culture as commodity or policy objective, is it possible instead to imagine a culture that is always undisciplined, flexible and in motion?

SPEAKERS

PAUL GILROY

Paul Gilroy [1956] is a Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics. He has an extensive interests in literature, art, music and cultural history as well as in the social sciences. He is best known for his work on racism, nationalism and ethnicity and for his original approach to the history of the African Diaspora. His theories of race, racism and culture were influential in shaping the cultural and political movement of black British people during the 1990s. His books include Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack [1993] The Black Atlantic [1993] and After Empire [2004]. Gilroy’s current research projects include a study of the moral economy of blackness in the twentieth century, a volume on the social and technological dynamics of popular music, and a comparative and historical consideration of colonial government.

STEVE McQUEEN

Steve McQueen [1969] is a film maker and video artist based in Amsterdam. He became interested in film as an art student at Goldsmiths' College, London. On graduating in 1993 he spent a year studying film at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York. From his first major film, Bear [1993], exhibited at the Royal College of Art in 1994, McQueen achieved swift success on an international stage with a body of distinctive work. His black-and-white silent films, in which he often appears, are characterized by their visual economy and by the highly controlled environment in which they are projected. This minimalist and anti-narrative approach has been seen as an alienation technique, underlining his exploration of formal film language as well as popular cinematic convention. He was the winner of the 1996 ICA Futures Award and the 1999 Turner Prize.

RUDI LAERMANS

Rudi Laermans [1957] is a professor of cultural sociology and sociological theory at the Catholic University of Leuven and guest teacher in social and cultural theory at P.A.R.T.S, the Brussels based dance school of A.T. De Keersmaeker. He has published widely within the fields of social and cultural theory, sociology of the arts, cultural policy, and contemporary dance. His projects include a research into art organisations from a sociological perspective, the globalisation of the contemporary art world, culture and research in Flanders and the question of cultural heritage.

LIEVEN DE CAUTER

Lieven de Cauter [1959] is Belgian philosopher and the initiator of the The Brussels Tribunal. He works at the Department of Architecture and Urban Design [ASRO] at the University of Leuven and is professor in the philosophy of culture at several art schools and universities including RITS and P.A.R.T.S in Brussels, the University of Antwerp, and the Willem De Kooning-Academy. He is currently guest professor at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He is author of The Capsular Civilization: on the city in the age of fear [2004] and co-editor of an extensive anthology of key texts on twentieth century architecture.

ADRIAN RIFKIN

Adrian Rifkin is Professor of Visual Culture & Media at Middlesex University. He is the author of Street Noises – Parisian Pleasure 1900-1940 [1993] and Ingres Then, and Now [2000]. He has researched and written widely on cultural and art history and on topics ranging from popular music and opera to Kantian aesthetics and gay subjectivities, and is currently preparing a series of extended studies on this latter subject under the title of Hyperventilation, the search for a banal beauty, which will involve a queer lacanianism. He is also working on a series of articles on Richard Wagner including on Wagner’s techno heritage. He was previously Editor of the Journal of the Association of Art Historians.

SUDEEP DASGUPTA

Dr. Sudeep Dasgupta [1967] is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. His current research and teaching interests include: aesthetics and migrant subjectivity, art history and contemporary visual analysis, and the relevance of postcolonial theory for media studies. His fields of research also include British cultural studies, Frankfurt School critical theory, film and television studies, postcolonial theory, postmodernism, feminist and queer theory. He has published articles on globalization and national identity, queer theory and postcolonial studies, the global dimension of Hindu fascism, cultural politics and film, and is editing a book on transnational culture and the politics of identity. He is editor of Constellations of the Transnational: Modernity, Culture, Critique [2005].

MARIA HLAVAJOVA

Maria Hlavajova [1971] is a curator, the artistic director of BAK, Basis voor Actuele Kunst in Utrecht, and the program director of Tranzit, an initiative in Bratislava, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. In her work, Hlavajova engages in critical practice that both recognizes the profound connection between art and knowledge, and relates to issues that are urgent in current cultural and political conditions. Her projects often evolve in “parts” or “episodes,” which allow for the concurrent exploration of specific issues from different perspectives and in various forms. Hlavajova’s interests are interdisciplinary, with a focus on exhibitions and examining the contemporary in aesthetic context. Hlavajova was co– curator of Manifesta 3. She is commissioner for the Dutch Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Bienniale.

ROSI BRAIDOTTI

Rosi Braidotti [1954] is professor of women's studies in the Arts Faculty of Utrecht University and scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies. She has published extensively on feminist philosophy, epistemology, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. She serves as an advisor to the journals: Signs, Differences and The European Journal of Women's Studies. Rosi Braidotti’s research and writing concerns feminist philosophy and cultural studies/studies of popular culture. She is especially interested in poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, theories of sexual difference and the history of feminist ideas. Her research focuses on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Luce Irigaray. Currently she is working on the politics of feminist postmodernism from a multicultural perspective and on the history of scientific teratology. Her publications include Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics [2006] and Baby Boomers: Vite parallele dagli anni Cinquanta ai cinq uant’ anni [2003].

MARTHA ROSLER

Martha Rosler is an artist based in New York. She works in various media including photography, video, installation, and performance. Her work in the public sphere concerns everyday life, media, architecture and the built environment issues which are seen from a feminist perspective. She has participated in Documenta, Kassel, the Whitney biennial and exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Dia Center for the Arts, New York; and many other international venues. A retrospective of her work in 2000 was shown at the New Museum and the International Center of Photography in New York and toured to five European cities. Her writing has been published widely in catalogues and magazines and she has published ten books. She lectures extensively nationally and internationally and teaches at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the Staatliche Hochshule fur Bildende Kunst – Stade lschule - Frankfurt am Main.

SUSAN KELLY

Susan Kelly is an artist, writer, PhD student and lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London. Her work is concerned with the relationship between art, rhetoric and the political and how various live situations and movements investigate and activate these relationships. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the National Centre for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia; the Prague Biennial; Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven; Kunstihoone, Tallin; Mercer Union, Toronto; The Lenin Museum and Muu Ry, Finland; Art in General and LMCC, New York; Krasnoyarsk Museum Siberia; pm Gallery Zagreb and Project Arts Centre Dublin. She has also published articles in Public Culture, the Journal of Visual Cultures, Social and Cultural Geography, Chto Delat?, re-public art.net and Kunstforum. She is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Programme New York, and the University of Leeds, UK.

Lecture-series organised by Grant Watson [curator MuHKA] :: Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp [MuHKA], Leuvenstraat 32 2000 Antwerpen :: T +32 [0]3 260 99 99 :: info[at]muhka.be

Posted by jo at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

ENCLOSURE, EMANCIPATORY COMMUNICATION AND THE GLOBAL CITY

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Call for Proposals

ENCLOSURE, EMANCIPATORY COMMUNICATION AND THE GLOBAL CITY: AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNION FOR DEMOCRATIC COMMUNICATIONS :: Hosted by the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University :: October 25-28, 2007 :: PROPOSAL DEADLINE: MARCH 15, 2007.

The field of culture and communication manifests struggles between contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, pressures from capital and state sometimes promote various forms of /enclosure/ -- the private appropriation, suppression or marginalization of socially-produced public expression. Enclosure comes in many guises: the commodification of information; concentration and hyper-commercialism in media industries; the corporatization of universities; restrictive "intellectual property" regimes; or market authoritarianism as a mode of governance.

On the other hand, progressive forces, from artists and academics to broad social movements, are not only resisting such enclosure, but developing practices and policies that prefigure/ emancipation/ -- new ways of re-organizing culture and communication democratically. These include struggles over alternative media, state cultural policies, communication rights, reform of media and cultural institutions, audience empowerment, urban public space, and much else.

At the nexus of changing national cultures and policies, of transnational migrations and markets, of media flows and audiences, of consumption and surveillance, the /global city/ is emerging as a key site for such contestation.

The Union for Democratic Communications invites proposals, from artists, activists and media scholars, for presentations, roundtables, workshops and panels that examine and critique the relationship between forces of enclosure and emancipation, especially in the context of the global city (broadly defined). Other topics relevant to democratic communication are also very welcome.

The keynote address will be delivered by Mike Davis, author of /City of Quartz/, /Ecology of Fear/ and, most recently, /Planet of Slums/. Other featured speakers, including Dan Schiller, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Dee Dee Halleck (UDC Smythe Award recipient), will be complemented by presenters on a wide range of topics, video and other media presentations, and interaction with local activist and artistic groups concerned with democratizing communication. The conference coincides with Vancouver's annual Media Democracy Day, featuring an Independent Media Fair at the city's architecturally acclaimed public library.

For the first time, the UDC conference will be held in downtown Vancouver, Canada, hosted by Simon Fraser University's School of Communication; co-sponsors include the SFU Institute for the Humanities and the British Columbia Libraries Association. Vancouver is about 120 miles north of Seattle, and offers direct flight connections to many cities in Canada and the US. Vancouver is surely a 'global city': Canada's "gateway to the Pacific" and host to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics, perched amidst spectacular mountain and coastal scenery and recreation, but also home of Canada's poorest urban district and historically an incubator of influential social movements.

Proposals are invited for both individual papers and panel or workshop sessions. Individual paper proposals should include a title, a brief (maximum 250 word) abstract of the presentation, and contact information including name, title, institution, mailing address, telephone, fax and email address. Panel session proposals should include titles, contact information, and a brief (maximum 250 word) abstract for /each/ panel member; they should also include a short (maximum 100 word) description of the overall panel theme and contact information for the panel chair. Proposals from artists for individual presentations or panel sessions should also include samples of the work to be presented. Please identify any audio-visual needs in your proposal as we may not be able to accommodate later requests.

All proposals should be submitted by email to udc2007[at]sfu.ca in the form of a Word or PDF attachment.

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

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour

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A Collaborative Exhibition at HTTP Gallery, London

Hi DIWOists,

The Furtherfield crew has been discussing ways to get the most out of the co-curating session on Sunday when we will discuss and experiment with ways of exhibiting the contributions at HTTP gallery (don't forget the opening is next Thursday).

Other known contributors to this process in the gallery on Sunday are Frederik Lesage and james[at]jwm-art.net, others are welcome. Please check back with the list at 1.30 on Sunday for details of thewebcast and public chat room where you can join the discussion online. Until then you can view a gallery floor plan and tech spec here.

So here is a summary of our considerations, proposals and a number controversies for your feedback!

CONSIDERATIONS:

1) How to Survey the Contributed Materials for the Curation Process: There have been over 600 posts to NetBehaviour since the start of this project and we have 2-5pm on Sunday to review and discuss how to present contributions. The main ways that we have for looking at work is:
- through our mailboxes
- through an index of attachments that can be view browser here

Your Suggestions Please: We would like your suggestions for any other (reasonably straight forward) way to order materials for review.

2) Categories - How to Order and Discuss Materials.

It would be useful to have some broad themes or categories to discuss. Here are a couple of possible categories with examples (and these really are just examples) of what we mean.

- Threads - discussions, exchanges, actions and responses eg Sachiko Hayashi's 'The Other Half',
- Collaborations and remixes eg RandomLab's reblogging and remixing, Michael Szpakowski's remix of Thomson and Craighead's 'Additions' image
- Digital becomes Material eg Sim Gishel has sent a 'Will Work For Food' vehicle, brian[at]netartguy's currency could be laser-printed as actual currency, Other works proposed for print, Other works actually sent to HTTP etc
- Proposals/ Instructions- eg Ant Scott's installation proposal, Glorious Ninth's Love Potions
- Generative/machine Art- eg. Sim Gishel's data-mining, ARN's generative pngs
- Stand alone streams - movies, soundfiles and images eg images by Clive McCarthy, lem urtastic - movies by Lizzie Hughes, Alan Sondheim - mp3s by james[at]jwm-art.net
- Texts eg Janedepain's recent 'Poetic Terrorism and Guerrilla Art in the 21st Century' and technical discussions.

PROPOSALS:

1) We propose that the main projection consists of a Mailbox containing a DIWO archive for searching by gallery visitors. This would be organised into themed directories that would coincide with the categories listed above. PLEASE SUGGEST: more or other categories.

2) We propose that we highlight and exhibit some 5-8 works (made by individuals or collaboratively) in the form of objects, printouts, projections and sound. These would be up for discussion and debate from this point - to be decided on Sunday.

CONTROVERSIES:

1) The question of selection - how do we create an exhibition in a physical space that communicates the DIWO spirit?
- how do we highlight a selection of works?
- how do we stay true to the open principle of including all submissions?

2) Contextualisation
- do some works need contextualising in order to be accessible to gallery visitors eg should some works be displayed with titles, artist, date, materials, description of process etc?
- if so how, and who does it?

3) Is everything that has been posted to NetBehaviour since February 1st considered a submission to DIWO?
- including announcements and reblogging?

4) A number of people have proposed works in private emails to Marc or myself- should these be included under the rules of submission?

Whoever wants to contribute to the curation of this show- share your views here on the list or come along on Sunday ttp://www.http.uk.net/DIWOcurating.shtml

Let's DIWO!
: ))
Ruth [via netbehaviour]

Posted by jo at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

VideoDance2007

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Call for Submissions

VideoDance started seven years ago as an international dance film festival, but soon it widened up to include more kinds of experiment on movement and the moving image. Celebrating this year its 7th edition, it welcomes your entries on dance films, experimental film using movement as its main material, performance, video-performance, video-installations and live improvisation on image and sound. VideoDance2007 will take place in Athens and Thessaloniki from May 18 to 25. Deadline for submissions is March the 10th (10/03/2007).

VideoDance gained its reputation as a mind-expanding festival at the crossroads of new media, enhanced cinema, visual arts and performing arts, thanks to its subversive and visionary programming. The festival is considered to be a thought provoking place of encounters between artists from different backg! rounds a nd the audience.

You may submit any kind of experimental movement based film, and also any dance film (fiction, stage-studio recording, camera re-work, documentary, choreography for the camera etc.), produced between 2004 and 2007.

You may also submit your projects: performance, video-performance and other experimental projects, installations or video-installations based on body and movement, live audiovisual improvisation on electronic music and image.

Please download the entry forms and conditions of participation at VideoDance2007 or ask for them to videodance (@) filmfestival.gr

Please e-mail the form first and then send a printed copy along with your films or projects on DVD.

Christiana Galanopoulou
VideoDance artistic director
Thessaloniki International Film Festival
9, Alexand! ra's Av.
114 73 Athens
Greece
T: 0030210 87 06 000
F: 0030210 64 48 143
E: videodance @ filmfestival.gr

A few more details about VideoDance:

VideoDance was founded by its actual artistic director, Christiana Galanopoulou. It is funded a! nd organ ised since 2000 by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (www.filmfestival.gr), one of the major film institutions in Greece, part of the Greek Ministry of Culture. The festival is non competitive and non-commercial. However, it supports and encourages the production of dance films in Greece, through a funding scheme, project|exchange. For information on the festival’s past editions, please click on ARCHIVE at your right in the initial page of the site. The festival collaborates with several dance and film international festivals, archives and cultural institutions and it is a member of the Dance and Media Festivals International Network (www.media-dance.com).

Posted by jo at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

Two New Books

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Poetics of Cinema + Narrativity

Poetics of Cinema 2 by Raoul Ruiz: “Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my Poetics of Cinema. Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. Poetics of Cinema, 1 had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today is rather more of a consolatio philosophica. However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism. Following his research in Poetics of Cinema, 1 on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Raul Ruiz with Poetics of Cinema 2 makes an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing, and of conceiving the image. Read more >>

USA) DAP : dap[at]dapinc.com (http://www.artbook.com); (UK) Art Data: tim[at]artdata.co.uk (http://www.artdata.co.uk); (Australia) BAM: manicex[at]manic.com.au (http://www.manic.com.au); (Belgium, Luxemburg) : UD-Actes Sud: (a.raaekers[at]actes-sud.fr); (Switzerland): Servidis: commercial[at]servidis.ch (http://www.servidis.ch); (Canada) Prologue/ Lemeac: (p.st-aubin[at]lemeac.com); Other countries : CELF : celf[at]celf.fr (http://www.celf.fr/org.htm).

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Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today by Audet René, Romano Claude, Dreyfus Laurence, Therrien Carl, Marchal Hugues: To tackle the question of narration in its ruptures and mutations in an age of media culture and influences of videogames – where the ludic and interactive principle is an important element – is a way to draw up an inventory of the Nineties, a time when art starts to function like some kind of editing table on which the artists can recreate daily reality. Through that reflection on time, the question is to show how its new languages and new ways of writing are representative of the contemporary imaginary expressed in it and to reaffirm that the work of art is an “event” before being a monument or a mere testimony, an event which constitutes an experience drawing in the spectator. Read more >>

Posted by jo at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2007

Upgrade! Paris

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Second Life

Upgrade! Paris SL :: Who: ALAIN DELLA NEGRA and KAORI KINOSHITA with MARIE LECHNER as moderator :: When: 2 march 2007 at 1 PM - PST :: Where: Michinaga-Lichty Arts Center, Han Loso (65, 31, 137), SECOND LIFE :: Live on Radio WNE.

Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita are artists, working on virtual worlds. They present their last documentary about “Second Life” univers and users. For those who wish to live in this virtual world, “Second Life” offers the chance to create, manage and develop their own alternate reality. With these kinds of possibilities, and a population that is in constant growth, “Second Life” has political ramifications. Who decides the rules applied in this virtual world? What laws, what measures need to be defined? Where is the frontier between the virtual and the real, and how is it transmuted? This documentary aims to elucidate the porous nature between real and virtual worlds.

The Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners: RYBN, CITU, Ars Longa, Upgrade! International.

Posted by jo at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Montreal

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Rapid!Fire!

Upgrade! Montreal :: !RAPID!FIRE! SESSION! :: In the spirit of community exchange and ageless potluck, UpgradeMTL presents the first in a series of !RAPID!FIRE! sessions dedicated to presenting fresh work in the technology arts.

It's first come, first serve. The formula is simple: present, perform and show-and-tell your work; receive feedback from artists, curators, freaks & geeks. Ask questions, get answers, seek technical expertise, trade and sample concepts, files and stuff in a friendly atmosphere of collective energy. Expect socializing and cheap beer.

Presentation is organised in advance with a maximum of 4 presenters per session. Yes that is… FIRST COME FIRST SERVE to milk the public brainwaves. Each of the 4 presenters will have 15 minutes to exhibit their work, followed by questions, discussion and much merriment. There will be a projector, soundsystem and net connection. Bring your own laptop or let us know in advance if you need one.

:: PROPOSALS :: email [[ tobias @ upgradeMTL . org ]] Please include the following: name, telephone, URL, short project description (200 words max), short bio (200 words max) and a snappy title. First come, first serve.

:: LOCATION / DATE & TIME ::
March 15th, 2007 . 19H00 – 22H00
StudioXX [ http://studioxx.org ]
338 Terrasse St.Denis
(just south of Sherbrooke)

UpgradeMTL :: Rapid!Fire!:: is presented by StudioXX and hosted by tobias c. van Veen, Angela Dorrer and Kyd Campbell. Thanks to StudioXX for the space.

Posted by jo at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2007

Evasions of Power Conference

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Architecture, Literature and Geo-Politics

Slought Foundation: Evasions of Power Conference :: Philadelphia :: March 30-31, 2007 :: Poster (PDF) :: Brochure (PDF)

"Evasions of Power" is a series of events exploring the relations between architecture, literature and geo-politics. Departing from the usual academic convention of presenting knowledge in the form of straightforward talks or presentations, this project will include a series of roundtable discussions, debates and interventions of varying duration, with an integrated online presence.

These events reveal an array of understanding about the consequences and implications of "spatial practice" today, with presentations by distinguished artists, architects, theorists, and curators whose work explores urban zones, state borders, enclaves, and extra-territorial sites throughout the world. The conference will explore the following questions: how are questions of politics, conflict, and human rights articulated today in fields such as architecture and literary study? How is power theorized? How is power evaded? How can institutions aspire not just to accumulate power but also to evade power and certain forms of authority? What practices and forms might such an institution occupy, invent or build?

The "Evasions of Power" project contributes to an ongoing discourse about human rights, war, extra-territoriality, and political and social enclaves. "Evasions of Power" continues these efforts and will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in fields ranging from art, literature, and political philosophy, to architecture, design, and urban studies.

The proceedings have been jointly organized by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Aaron Levy, and Katherine Carl, on behalf of Slought Foundation and the Department of Architecture, Penn School of Design, in conjunction with the Centre for Architecture Research, Goldsmiths College, London, the Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, the Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, and Eastern State Penitentiary historic site and museum, Philadelphia. Major support for Evasions of Power has been provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Posted by jo at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

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Perception

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular is pleased to announce the launch of its Winter 2007 issue devoted to the theme of Perception.

Our fourth issue of Vectors examines the sensory, phenomenological, and epistemological stakes of perception at different moments of history and in varied geographies, paying special attention to the cultural, ethical and ideological stakes of what, how, and when we perceive. Featured scholars include Sharon Daniel, Eric Faden, Anne Friedberg, Perry Hoberman, Donald Hoffman, Caren Kaplan, Laura Marks, and Trevor Paglen. Vectors is produced by editors Tara McPherson and Steve Anderson, co-creative directors Erik Loyer and Raegan Kelly, and programmer Craig Dietrich.

Vectors is an international peer-reviewed electronic journal dedicated to expanding the potentials of academic publication via emergent and transitional media. Vectors brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research, focusing on the ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural relations. We only publish works that exceed the boundaries of print.

Posted by jo at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

MonkeyBook

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The work of Alex Itin at Monkeytown

The Institute for the Future of the Book presents: The work of Alex Itin -- at Monkeytown: An evening of motion pictures on four big screens, plus delicious food and drink, celebrating 2 years on the world wide web at IT IN place (and Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube....) :: Wednesday, February 28th, 7:30pm seating :: $10 minimum.

Since 2001 Brooklyn painter Alex Itin has been exploring what it means to be an artist in the age of digital reproduction. Working first on digital books integrating painting, audio and video, Itin moved onto the Web in February '05 at IT IN place as artist-in-residence at the Institute for the Future of the Book. Here he began to explore mixed media in a networked context. Work of the past two years combines blazing low-res images of paintings and drawings with text, photographs, short films, video quotations, animated GIFs and audio mashups -- all within the constraints of the scroll-like form of a blog. In his second year, Itin began to explore new trails out of the blog, establishing a presence on social media sites like Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace. Through these networked rovings Itin has found a larger audience for his work, attracting new readers back to IT IN place where the media fragments are reassembled.

Recently, Itin has been organizing "The Library," a collaborative project bringing together dozens of artists from online social media communities, particularly Flickr and Vimeo. In the project (a sort of exquisite corpse-Ray Johnson exercise) one artist takes a physical book and in some way alters it. They then send it by email to another artist in the network who, in turn, completes the work and mails it back. Images of these collaborative works are posted in a gallery on Flickr and often showcased on IT IN place. To celebrate its second anniversary, IT IN place will relaunch on February 28th with a spruced up design and an innovative new graphical interface to its by-now enormous archives -- a feature that will unlock the vault of stellar work Itin has produced over the past two years.

Monkeytown:
58 N 3rd St
(btw. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211

Directions:
From the L Train:
1. Exit at the Bedford stop (the 1st stop in Brooklyn).
2. Walk 4 blocks south on Bedford,
3. Make a right on N. 3rd St. (west)
4. Walk an additional 2 and 1/2 (west) on N 3rd. Monkey Town is halfway down the block on the left.

!!Reservations a must!! http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html phone: 718.384.1369

Posted by jo at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

Mapping the City

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flâneur + dérive

Mapping the City :: 16 February – 20 May 2007 :: Stedelijk Museum CS, Post CS Building, 2nd floor, Oosterdokskade 5, 1011 AD Amsterdam, NL :: Tel. +31 (0)20 5732.911 :: Participating artists: Doug Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Stanley Brouwn, Matthew Buckingham, Philip Lorca diCorcia, Guy Debord/Asger Jorn, Ed van der Elsken, Valie Export, Lee Friedlander, Dan Graham, Frank Hesse, Douglas Huebler, William Klein, Saul Leiter, Sol LeWitt, Sarah Morris, Bill Owens, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Willem de Ridder en Wim T. Schippers, Beat Streuli, Jeff Wall.

‘Mapping the City’ focuses on the relationship between artists and the city from around 1960 to the present day. The group show revolves around the way in which artists perceive urban space. The emphasis is on the city as social community, on behaviour, poses, and urban rituals.

Two ideas are at the heart of the exhibition: the flâneur, a type first described by Charles Baudelaire around 1850, and the activity of dérive, a practice coined by Situationist Guy Debord. The exhibition begins in the late nineteen-fifties when Debord published his Theorie de la dérive (1958). Another jumping-off point is Stanley Brouwn’s famous series This way Brouwn. Starting in 1962, Brouwn started asking random passers-by for directions in getting from point A to point B. He gave each route that people drew for him the title This way Brouwn.

From the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies onwards, many artists adopted the city as their workspace. Similar to Brouwn, themes such as walking through the city, chance, and grappling with our everyday environment are also integral to the work of Douglas Huebler. Others, like Martha Rosler, subject the metropolis to critical scrutiny. In her piece The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems Rosler employs photography and text to analyze the underbelly of New York society. For Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT, the city was ‘still a male space’. With her Tapp- and Touch Cinema (1968), she invited the viewer to a 'tactile experience that is the reverse of inauthentic voyeurism'.

Another theme in the exhibition is ‘street photography’. From the nineteen-fifties onwards, photographers like Ed van der Elsken, William Klein and Saul Leiter, injected post-war photography with a freshness and immediacy. For instance, Klein’s unpolished, experimental style caused quite a furore and inspired a generation of young photographers. His photo diary of New York figured people, children, parades, litter and an aggressive, alien, lonely urban landscape cluttered with raucous billboards.

Contemporary art

The core of Francis Alÿs' activities revolves around the many walks he has taken through the centre of Mexico City since the early nineteen-nineties. Alÿs’ Collection of Ephemera includes numerous drawings, photos, notes, maps and objects that relate to his walks in the ten-block radius around his studio in the historic centre of Mexico City.

The Heads of Philip Lorca diCorcia and the street scenes by Beat Streuli can be seen as contemporary variants of classic street photography. Their photographs capture the manifestly vacant expressions on the faces of anonymous passers-by.

A biography of Florida’s sun-drenched capital, Sarah Morris’ video work Miami presents the city’s various facets as the hub of the tourist industry, drug and illegal immigrant trafficking on a more or less equal footing. The film installation A Man of the Crowd by Matthew Buckingham is based on the similarly-titled short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The result is a tense mini-thriller set in the streets of Vienna. The video piece by Doug Aitken, Electric Earth, is pervaded by a powerful sense of estrangement. This overwhelming video installation projected onto eight huge screens confronts us with the modern city as though it were the remains of an alien civilization.

Posted by jo at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2007

Now Art Grant

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Call for Applications

Artists creating work that engages dialogue about current social issues will receive grant funds (minimum $500), three months mentorship by damali ayo, a second mentor who has specific experience in the project field, and the exposure to ayo's mailing list of over 3000 people.

Now Art holds that the primary role and responsibility of art is to mirror the dilemmas of society to its citizens, offering a catalyst for change and development; evolves as society evolves; values the artist's use of a wide range of media; integrates contemporary and emerging technologies; prizes the power of individuals to effect change, discarding divisions between personal and political; honors and engages the work of its predecessors, recognizing that art builds upon art.

Now Art Grants combine the small donations of many individuals and make these available to artists whose work creates art that catalyzes social change. These artists often work with no pay and slim budgets because the activist nature of their work is often dismissed as "not fine art" or because art remains devalued as a viable career choice by society. Members of the damali ayo and now art mailing lists donate any amount they choose to the grant pool. This money is combined and granted to artists who show their commitment to social change through their work.

The art created by Now Art Grants will have a component that is delivered directly to those who have donated the grant funds as a direct return of the funders' investment.

To be chosen to receive a Now Art Grant, the artist/art must:

* Take place outside of a gallery or limited-access space.
* Engage a wide audience in a dialogue about a current social issue.
* Have a component that delivers an aspect of the art directly to those who have funded it.
* Show ability to fully accomplish the proposed project over six months.
* The artist will be rigorously researched by the Now Art selection committee so that artists will not be required to spend critical art time writing extensive applications or budgets.

Projects can be created specifically for this grant money or can already be in process, as long as they are completed within the six month time frame. Money can be used for any aspect of the project including artist fees. Mentoring helps to assure the success of the project. Artists should send their project ideas and a short bio to nowart[at]damaliayo.com.

Grants will be made on a rolling basis. All artists who sign up on ayo's "now artists" mailing list at damaliayo.com or myspace.com/nowartists artists will receive regular information about various grants and support for artists engaged in social change.

Make a donation, ask a question, join the mailing list and apply by contacting nowart[at]damaliayo.com

Now Art is a mentality that art must be current, accessible and an agent of dialogue and social change. Many members of my audiences expressed frustration that they could not see my work, as it was housed in a gallery in one city often out of reach. I agreed. I dropped my art gallery and have devoted myself to creating art that provides accessibility, impact, and ways for individuals to participate and experience the work.

Now Art is immediate, accessible, participatory, low-cost, and deals with current issues that we face as a community/society. When you participate you create a dynamic moment- something that happens in the "now" and hopefully generates a cascade of thought and change for the future. I will send you concepts, instructions and sometimes even a full kit to enact each work. Your collaboration is what makes it work. Let's make art together. We're really going to have some fun. Sign up >>

Posted by jo at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

The Next Layer or:

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The Emergence of Open Source Culture

The Next Layer or: The Emergence of Open Source Culture :: Draft text for Pixelache publication, Armin Medosch, London/Vienna 2006-2007

First we had media art. In the early days of electronic and digital culture media art was an important way of considering relationships between society and technology, suggesting new practices and cultural techniques. It served as an outlet for the critique of the dark side of computer culture's roots in the military-industrial complex; and it suggested numerous utopian and beautiful ways of engagement with technology, new types of interactivity, sensuous interfaces, participative media practices, for instance. However, the more critical, egalitarian and participative branches of media art tended to be overshadowed by the advocacy of a high-tech and high-art version of it. This high-media art conceptually merged postmodern media theories with the techno-imaginary from computersciences and new wave cybernetics. Uncritical towards capitalisms embrace of technology as provider of economic growth and a weirdly paradoxical notion of progress, high-media art was successful in institutionalizing itself and finding the support of the elites but drew a lot of criticism from other quarters of society. It stuck to the notion of the artist as a solitary genius who creates works of art which exist in an economy of scarcity and for which intellectual ownership rights are declared.

In the course of the 1990ies media art was superseded by what I call The Next Layer or, for help of better words, Open Source Culture. I am not claiming that the hackers who are the key protagonists of Open Source Culture are the new media artists. Such a claim would be rubbish as their work, their ways of working and how it is referenced is distinct from media art. I simply say that media art has become much less relevant through the emergence of The Next Layer. In the Next Layer many more protagonists come together than in the more narrowly defined field of media art. It is much less elitist and it is not based on exclusivity but on inclusion and collaboration. Instead of relying on ownership of ideas and control of intellectual property Open Source Culture is testing the limits if a new egalitarian and collaborative culture.

In the following paragraphs I would like to map out some of the key components of Open Source Culture. It has been made possible by the rise of Free, Libre and Open Source Software. Yet Open Source Culture is about much more than just writing software. Like any real culture it is based on shared values and a community of people.

Open Source Culture is about creating new things, be they software, artefacts or social platforms. It therefore embraces the values inherent to any craft and it cherishes the understanding and mastery of the materials and the production processes involved. Going beyond craftmanship and being 'open source', it advocates free access to the means of production (instead of just "ownership" of them). Creativity is not just about work but about playfulness, experimentation and the joy of sharing. In Open Source Culture everybody has the chance to create immaterial and material things, express themselves, learn, teach, hear and be heard.

Open Source Culture is not a tired version of enforced collectivism and old fashioned speculations about the 'death of authorship'. It is not a culture where the individual vanishes but where the individual remains visible and is credited as a contributor to a production process which can encompass one, a few or literally thousands of contributors.

Fundamental to Open Source Culture's value system is the belief that knowledge should be in the public domain. What is generally known by humans should be available to all humans so that society as a whole can prosper. For most parts and whereever possible, this culture is based on a gift economy. Each one gets richer by donating their work to a growing pool of publicly available things. This is not a misguided form of altruism but more like a beneficial selfishness. Engaged in a sort of friendly competition everyone is pushing the whole thing forward a bit by trying to do something that is better, faster, more beuatiful or imaginative. Open Source Culture is a culture of conversation and as such based on multiple dialogues on different layers of language, code and artefacts. But the key point is that the organisation of labour is based on the self-motivated activity of many individuals and not on managerial hierarchies and 'shareholder value'.

Open Source Culture got a big push forward with the emergence of Linux and the Internet but we shouldn't forget that it has much deeper roots. History didn't start with Richard Stallmans problems with a printer driver. The historic roots could be seen as going back to the free and independent minded revolutionary artists and artisans in 19th century. More recently, it is based on post-World-War-II grassroots anti-imperialist liberation movements, on bottom-up self-organised culture of the new political movements of the 1960ies and 1970ies such as the African American civil rights movements, feminisim, lesbian, gay, queer and transgender movements, on the first and second wave of hacker culture, punk and the DIY culture, squatter movements, and the left-wing of critical art and media art practices.

In terms of the political economy, Open Source Culture could mark an important point of departure, by liberating the development of new technologies from being dictated by capital. The decision of what should be developed for which social goals is taken by the developers themselves. Technological development is not driven by greed but by deep intrinsic motivations to create things and to be recognized for ones contribution. Despite that, Open Source Culture is not an anti-capitalist ideology per se but has the potential to change capitalism from within and is already doing so.

Open Source Culture needs to be constantly aware of capitalisms propensity to adapt, adopt, co-opt and subjugate progressive movements and ideas to its own goals. The 'digital revolution' was already stolen once by the right-wing libertarians from Wired and their republican allies such as Newt Gingrich and the posse of American cyber-gurus from George Gilder to Nicholas Negroponte. More recently adept Open Source Capitalists have used terms such as Web 2.0 and social software to disguise the fact that what those terms are said to describe has emerged from open source culture and the net culture of the 1990ies and the early 2000s. Once more the creativity of the digital masses is exploited by alliances between new and old tycoons. The Next Layer emerges at a time when capitalism is stronger than ever before and it emerges at the very heart of it. This is the beauty of it. It cannot be described in a language of mainstream and underground. Open Source Culture is the new mainstream which is what capitalist media are doing their best to hide, scared by the spectre of communism as well as commonism. We don't need to ressort to the language of the Cold War and its dichotomies, howver.

The Next Layer contains not only a promise but also a threat. It emerges at a time when the means of suppression and control have been increased by rightwing leaders who try to scare us into believing we were engaged in an endless 'war on terror'. With their tactics they have managed to speed up the creation of a technological infrastructure for a society of control. The general thrust of technological development is coming from inside a paranoiac mindset. 25 years of neo-liberalism in the American lead empire have degraded civil liberties and human values. The education system has been turned into a sausage factory where engineers are turned out who construct their own digital panopticons. Scary new nano- and bio-technologies are created in secret laboratories by Big Science. And the bourgeioise intelligentsia meanwhile has stood still and does not recognize the world any more but still controls theatres, publishing and universities. In this situation it is better if Open Source Culture is not recognized as a political movement. The Next Layer will find ways of growing and expanding stealthily by filling the niches, nooks and crannies of a structurally militant and imperialist repressive regime from which, given time, it will emerge like a clear spring at the bottom of a murky glacier.

* The Next Layer is a book project by Armin Medosch about Open Source Culture. It has been supported by Franz Xaver and the Medienkunstlabor Graz in 2006. Passages of this text are informed by an extensive study into free software hackers and open source activists. Materials will be released in due time at http://theoriebild.ung.at/

Armin,

Interesting text. The formulation of a high art version of media art is particularly relevant at the current moment, as more and more media artists are trying to cross over into the commercial art world, getting gallerists and selling their work as commodities.

While I understand your critical view of "high art", I wonder if you have considered an economic model for artists to survive without some form of commodification. While Open Source is clearly a viable and attractive model, most of its proponents live from other means of income or are supported by academic institutions. At the moment, many media artists are reliant on the media art "ghetto" of publicly funded festivals, but it rarely pays enough to support a family or plan a long life.

I do find it ironic that one has to subscribe to the construction of value through scarcity, when the digital object is by its nature infinitely reproducible. But if value cannot be constructed, how are artists supposed to pay their rent without taking "real" jobs? Even if YouTube etc. should find a licensing model for paying authors for their work, I doubt it will put food on the table for most artists.

Or should your text be read as saying that the role of "artist" is simply redundant , in favor of a more egalitarian model of "culture producers" not depending on institutions for support?

-marius [posted on SPECTRE]

FROM NETTIME: http://www.nettime.org

Kimberly De Vries wrote:

<...>
Well, give how poorly American students are (allegedly) doing in science, maybe this threat has a limited future, in the US, that is. But I wonder, if remaining unrecognized is so important, wouldn't it be better not to draw attention with articles like this? I hope this doesn't sound like heckling, but in fact large corporations and also some political groups have really gone after people/companies/groups they saw as threats. Should we actually behave in a more conspiratorial way in order to protect the Open Source movement? Anyway, it sounds interesting. When do you expect it to be finished and released?

Thanks,
Kim
<...>

From: Armin Medosch:

Hi Kimberley

thanks for your your detailed feedback. this text is a draft and some phrases or sentences are not as well considered as others. I definitely dont want to sound paranoid because I am not. Maybe I get carried away a bit rethorically at the end but I dont really see the need to 'hide' the political content. what I try to say, the beauty is, it happens anyway, even if it is not being seen as that.

From a European point of view I dont think there are political witchhunts for people in academia going on, not yet at least. But what does the job pretty well of weeding out the baddies, the not so ideologically well adjusted, are 'self selecting' economic measures. ma courses closed down for low student numbers, cuts, etc. it is one of the ironies particularly here in Britain that much talkied about values of education get systematically undermined by the way the system is constructed.

The intended book will still take a while. This text is an attempt of getting a meta-view, away from the detail. I have made interviews with free software developers and artists and I will make them accessible on the theoriebild.ung.at wiki, at least in excerpts, slowly and bit by bit, cause its lots of work to edit them into some consumable shape.

regards
Armin

From: kanarinka:

[...]

I am reading an interesting book ("From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism") which is not line with what you are saying above and goes against the commonly held assumption that "capitalism" commodified an otherwise pure cultural force. The author Fred Turner tracks how computer technology became "liberating" and how digital utopianism was always hand-in-hand with various forces: corporate, market-driven, scientific, and institutional. He also shows how Wired came out of leftist libertarian New Communalist politics and long practices (on the part of Stewart Brand) of creating networked spaces of social utopianism, discussion and exchange between various actors.

From: Alexander Galloway

[...]

Thanks for this interesting polemic. First a minor point: can you please qualify the "we" in "First 'we' had media art"? Who is the we? One can only assume that by "we" you mean happy-go-lucky nettimers? The sorts of people who attend net art conferences? Lefty westerns in Euramerica who hand out Ubuntu disks on the street? I think I know who you mean, but some precision in your clarion call would be helpful.

A more thorny problem however is this question of "the new." This strikes me as inadequate for any progressive polemic today. If you maintain this position, fine, but you will have to make your peace with a number of formidable socio-political critiques that have emerged in recent years. I'm speaking of the growing list of authors and critics who recognize that "the new" is precisely the location of exploitation and valorization in today's economy, not an escape from it.

Armin's post recalls the German romantic poet Friedrich Schiller who in 1795 in his "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" put forward a notion of play as integral to human evolution and liberation. But by the early twentieth century, Adorno is on record critiquing this position: "Playful forms are without exception forms of repetition," wrote Adorno in his "Aesthetic Theory." "In art, play is from the outset disciplinary [and] art allies itself with unfreedom in the specific character of play. [...] The element of repetition in play is the afterimage of unfree labor" (pp. 317-318).

The work of Pierre Bourdieu would also undermine your position. There are certainly reasons to be skeptical of his work, but one must admit that Bourdieusian theory essentially scuttles any notion that intellectuals or knowledge workers are "creating" and working in communities free from capitalization and exchange. Bourdieu's pseudo-deterministic "fields" of cultural production indicate that there are indeed new modes of capital that exist entirely within the superstructure.

Similarly, Alan Liu's "The Laws of Cool" would also cast doubt on your claims. While I find his reading of digital art unsatisfying, his assessment of knowledge work and capitalist cultures of creativity is excellent. In my view it's the best book on the subject, at least the best one that doesn't treat creativity and "the new" as simply a question of political economy (as someone like Manuel Castells does). For Liu it is entirely a question of aesthetics and cultural production. Liu also does the extremely valuable task of providing an overview and critique of recent management theory. This body of literature--exemplified by Tom Peter's 1992 book "Liberation Management"--also casts doubt on your credo due to its explicit endorsement of "chaos," "flexibility," "change," "innovation," "diversity," "the next" as central virtues of the new economy. The management consultants know that creativity is highly valorizable. In my view this mode has been hegemonic in the economy since the 1990s, and central but not yet dominant since the 1970s. (The work of Hardt and Negri on immaterial labor is also important here, but this material is likely more familiar to nettimers.) Technology-wise, Google, Flickr, Myspace, youTube, del.icio.us, etc. are all examples of what you call "playfulness, experimentation and the joy of sharing," but I hope we can admit that all these are at the same time extremely shrewd new models for production and exploitation. (Example: Google makes money based on lots of very small amounts of unpaid "creative" labor performed by billions of web users. This is what exploitation looks like under
post-Fordism.)

Additionally, there are a number of people in art history who suspect the uninterrogated category of "the new." I'm thinking of Rosalind Krauss' "The Originality of the Avant-Garde" and Peter Burger's "Theory of the Avant-Garde."

But on the other hand, there are a number who agree with you about the essentially liberatory and progressive nature of "the new." Derrida and others from the '68 generation would be important figures here. But in the contemporary debate, McKenzie Wark's book "A Hacker Manifesto" might be the best endorsement of the resistive and progressive nature of "the new." In his view, hackers are those who "produce new concepts, new perceptions, new sensations, hacked out of raw data" (p. 2). Wark's work is extremely evocative in general, yet this point is problematic for the reasons hinted at above.

Perhaps it might help to divide the rhetoric of your piece between (1) creativity, play, and the new, and (2) the gift, the public domain. The second group of terms strike me as still fundamentally corrosive for capitalist valorization (even if capitalism might still rely on "common" entities like protocols or natural resources to grow and prosper). Furthermore, I think you can make your same argument, while avoiding pie-in-the-sky proclamations about the miraculous advent of "the new" or the liberatory potential of the knowledge labor of the creative classes.

Finally, in this age of dotcom boosterism, I'm surprised you selected a phrase like "The Next Layer" to describe your project. This sounds more like a Vista service pack, no?

... with warm regards from the evil empire,

- -ag

From: Kimberly De Vries

Hey Armin,

I don't mean you should hide it, but maybe mention/document some examples when you talk about various covert deals made between groups--just claiming they exist won't convince a reader who doesn't already agree, and I assume you would like to persuade them.

I think in the US, at least, people are sometimes so reluctant to believe these things that you have practically club them over the head with evidence.

[...]

I think that is a problem in the US as well, especially since educations has been underfunded since probably the 70s--perhaps not coincidentally the point at which it was most closely allied to civil rights and anti-war movements.

And now in Arizona, a state-level House committee has approved legislation that would ban any public school educator or college professor from advocating for or against a political candidate in class, or advocating for a social, political, or cultural issue that is part of a partisan debate. If this passes, I can't imagine what they will talk about or write about in History class, or composition, or really any of them. I guess we can all just switch to multiple choice tests.

[...]

Perhaps you should make that aim explicit and say more about how it will help? I'll be interested to see the interviews. How many people have you spoken or will you speak to?

Best,

Kim


From: Kimberly De Vries

Armin,

Sorry for being unclear earlier. I was thinking of passages like this:

"The 'digital revolution' was already stolen once by the right-wing libertarians from Wired and their republican allies such as Newt Gingrich and the posse of American cyber-gurus from George Gilder to Nicholas Negroponte. "

And this:

"The education system has been turned into a sausage factory where engineers are turned out who construct their own digital panopticons. Scary new
nano- and bio-technologies are created in secret laboratories by Big Science."

In the US, some people will nod in agreement when reading this, but by no means all, and probably most people would question many assumptions implicit in these statements.

I personally agree that coding really can't help but be political, given the current debate about copyrights and IP, etc. (among other things) and also with your ultimate proposal that the cocoa coop and hack-lab should unite. I am just pointing out that some of these underlying assumptions will probably provoke considerable resistance in some readers. You might persuade more of them if you unpack those genral statements a bit and offer some concrete examples.

Best,

Kim

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

ACM Multimedia 2007

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CALL FOR ENTRIES AND PAPERS

ACM Multimedia 2007: Interactive Art Program :: 23-29 September, Augsburg, Germany :: CALL FOR EXHIBITION ENTRIES AND PAPERS :: ACM Multimedia 2007 is the premier annual multimedia conference, covering all aspects of multimedia computing. The ACM MM Interactive Art Program seeks to bring together the arts and multimedia communities to create the stage to explore, discuss, and push the limits for the advancement of both multimedia technology through the arts, and the arts through multimedia technology.

This fourth version of the Interactive Art Program will consist of an art exhibition and a conference track. We invite artists working with digital media and researchers in technical areas to submit their original contributions to the following tracks:

1. Multimedia art exhibition: I / Other / Group :: We seek artworks that use multimedia to explore issues of self-exploration, self-presentation towards another, the self in a group or the group as a self. We particularly seek interactive multimedia works that by combining multiple media, technologies, and novel technical ideas, realize strong artistic concepts that give a new perspective on the topic of the exhibition. Deadline for submission to the Art Exhibition: May 8, 2007 ::

2. Conference track: we solicit papers describing interactive multimedia artworks, tools, applications, and technical approaches for creative uses of multimedia content and technology as well as technical approaches for the management of art-related media collections. Emphasis will be given to novel works that use a rich variety of media and those that are interactive, particularly works that exploit non-conventional human-computer interfaces or sensors in new and emerging areas. We strongly encourage papers with a strong technical content written by artists. Papers may be long (10 pages) or short (2 to 4 pages). Long papers are presented in front of an audience and short papers are presented in poster format. Deadline for full papers to the Arts Program Conference Track: May 8, 2007. Deadline for short papers to the Arts Program Conference Track: June 1, 2007.

Accepted papers and art works will be published in the ACM Multimedia Conference proceedings.

Important Dates
May 8, 2007 Long papers and art exhibitions submission deadline.
June 1, 2007 Short papers submission deadline.
June 20, 2007 Authors notification.
July 20, 2007 Camera-ready papers due.

Program Chairs
Alejandro Jaimes, IDIAP Research Institute , Switzerland
(Alex.Jaimes[at]idiap.ch)
Frank Nack, University; Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
(frank.nack[at]liris.cnrs.fr)
Thomas Rist, FH Augsburg, Germany (tr[at]rz.fh-augsburg.de)

Curatorial Committee
Annet Decker, Montevideo, Amsterdam
Anne Nigten, V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Prof. Robert Rose, time based media, Faculty of Design, Augsburg
University of Applied Sciences, Augsburg


Posted by jo at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York

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Jillian Mcdonald + Jamie O'shea

Upgrade! New York: Jillian Mcdonald and Jamie O'shea :: Eyebeam, 540-548 west 21st street (bet 10 & 11 Ave) :: Thursday, February 22, 7:30 PM.

Famous for "Me and Billy Bob," Jillian McDonald will present old and new work which focuses on the subcultures that drive the celebrity and horror film industries. She'll show a DVD, some quicktime files, a data-driven web project, and more dvd.

Jamie O'Shea will perform an extraordinarily efficient art experience. An entire performance, narrated by Corey Sullivan, will take place within 1/5 of a second. Jamie's automated memory process will create an indelible, and effortless, impression of this instant. Jamie writes:

"This Thursday, at 8:22:22 on 2/22, we will be presenting a 1/5th of a second performance, perhaps the most efficient art experience currently available. The automated memory process will be narrated by Corey Sullivan, and take place precisely on time in reference to the official U.S. time for the Eastern time zone. We guarantee that your memory of this instant will be indelible and effortless."

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art + tech + community. Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre.

Posted by jo at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

THE THIRD MIND PROJECT

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Call for Audio and Visual Art

THE THIRD MIND PROJECT :: A number of devices exist that stimulate the mind of the user by visual and audio signals. The fundamental principle applied to each is that a particular train of visual and aural pulses leads to different states of mind. These states include, for example, deep relaxation, heightened creativity and heightened awareness. Often, the aim of the device is to allow users to learn faster or relax deeper, but artists have extended the experience with such device into the realm of art. The Dream Machine, conceived in the early sixties by Brion Gysin, is a mechanical device that is viewed with eyes closed as it rotates at 12 HZ around a light source located inside it. The light, coming against the eyelids as the device rotates, effortlessly produces a relaxed state of mind. This occurs, because the optical nerve is stimulated and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. Gysin referred to the effect as "interior visions" and in his words the effect of the Dream Machine can be described as a projection of dazzling lights and celestially colored images whirling around inside one’s own head.

CALL VISUAL

The Digital Art Weeks 2007 (DAW07) invites Visual and to submit their work to the theme of the Digital Mandala. For the "refit" of the Dream Machine for the 21st Century, Visual Artists are asked to submit static or animated images in the form of "Digital-Mandalas" that are relevant in content and effect to the theme of "inner visions". The Digital-Mandalas will be projected on to the walls of the gallery space and will be dynamically synchronized to the 12 HZ flickering frequency of the Dream Machine. This flickering is then used to drive computer programs that will subtly modulate attributes of the image dynamically to gently arouse news states of mind. In this manner the inner visions of the Dream Machine become outer visions within the installation.

CALL AUDIO

The Digital Art Weeks 2007 (DAW07) invites Audio Artists to submit their work to the theme of "Today’s Ohm: The 60 HZ Hum". Audio Artists are asked to submit works of approximately ten minutes or so in length in .aif format that are relevant in content and effect to the theme of "the 60hz hum is the electronic ohm of our times". Submitted works will be projected into the space using a stereoscopic loudspeaker system from the company StereoLith® of Switzerland. The play back of the submitted works, although thought and experienced as independent works themselves, will naturally enhance the psychedelic effects of the Dreammachine environment further. Note: The submitted images and audio works will be presented in an installation type situation in which the public may experience using the dream machine up close and afar during the Closing Event of the festival. All artists will be listed in the program.

DEADLINE: Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007. For more information regarding the call please write to: daw-perfs[at]inf.ethz.ch

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

WIRED MADNESS

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Call for Proposals

CALL: WIRED MADNESS :: Deadline: Friday, 2nd March 2007 :: Wired madness has broken out! Regardless of the mode of expression, this new era of performative art is upon us. This has been revealed recently in many cases: the use of an embedded persistence of vision display to flag a taxi, or the nerdy need to extend alternate-reality games into the real world, or even ironically be more close to the military's command and control digital networks to be employed on unsuspecting audiences by trained insurgent-performers using computational and conceptual couture as a 'secondary skin' in the act of creating the newest New Media art experiences for them.

The Digital Art Weeks 2007 invites Performing Artists to submit proposals in connection with wearable technology and the arts. We are seeking works that empower the performer in an explosion of the boundaries of the body and link the audience into the virtual of technologically animated space. Any form of immersion should trigger critical observation in the mind of the audience in order to counter act the most logical form of evolution in the 21st century enabled by technology: Intelligence without morals. A series of performances during three evenings will be organized in partnership with the Cabaret Voltaire of Zurich.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007. For more information regarding the call please write to: daw-perfs[at]inf.ethz.ch

Posted by jo at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)

Visual Music Marathon

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12-hour screening of time-based art works

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY TO HOST VISUAL MUSIC MARATHON: BOSTON, Mass. - Northeastern University will host the first-ever Visual Music Marathon, a 12-hour screening of time-based art works that reflect the convergence of musical composition and animated images, as part of this year's Boston Cyberarts Festival. The Marathon will be held on Saturday, April 28 from 10am to 10pm, in the University's Raytheon Amphitheater, located in the Egan Research Center on Forsyth Street.

"Visual music is an interdisciplinary artistic genre with roots dating back hundreds of years," says Northeastern professor Dennis Miller, the event's artistic director and principal curator.

"The emergence of film and video in the 20th century allowed this genre to reach its full potential, with Walt Disney's Fantasia serving as a groundbreaking example. The artworks we are screening all take a modern perspective on this idea."

Northeastern has received over 300 artist submissions for the Marathon, representing works from 34 different countries. The Marathon will showcase historic and new works, as well as live video performance art. All new works presented at the Marathon will be included in a special permanent collection that will be housed in Northeastern's Snell Library. Larry Cuba of the Iota Center, Los Angeles, and Bruce Wands of the New York Digital Salon and School of Visual Arts will also curate portions of the event.

The Visual Music Marathon is a joint effort between Northeastern's Department of Music and the Multimedia Studies Program. For a preview of works to be shown at the event, visit www.music.neu.edu/vmm/schedule.html.

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About the Boston Cyberarts Festival: The 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival will take place from April 20 to May 6 at museums, galleries, theatres, universities, and public spaces in and around the Boston area. The Festival is the first and largest collaboration of artists working in new technologies in all media in North America, encompassing visual arts, dance, music, electronic literature, web art, and public art.

About Northeastern: Founded in 1898, Northeastern University is a private research university located in the heart of Boston. Northeastern is a leader in interdisciplinary research, urban engagement, and the integration of classroom learning with real-world experience. The university's distinctive cooperative education program, where students alternate semesters of full-time study with semesters of paid work in fields relevant to their professional interests and major, is one of the largest and most innovative in the world. The University offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and graduate programs leading to degrees through the doctorate in six undergraduate colleges, eight graduate schools, and two part-time divisions.

Posted by jo at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2007

In-Site Montréal

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Hotspot Interventions

In-site Montréal: Curator’s statement by Michelle Kasprzak :: In-Site Montréal is a collection of site-specific art presented on the portal pages of five wireless internet (Wi-Fi) hotspots in Montréal. Artists Nicolas Fleming, Maria Legault, and Virginie Laganière have created artworks that may be viewed when users of the free service provided by Île Sans Fil log in to their accounts at the selected hotspots.

The five hotspots are rooted in specific spaces, each one with its own unique properties. The In-Site Montréal project grew out of a desire to augment the experience of place for Wi-Fi users, offering an additional layer of information within the hotspot environments. The artworks that are presented on the portal pages are inventive responses to the characteristics of the spaces that the hotspots inhabit.

“The window appears to look out onto a dataspace that continues beyond the borders of the window itself. [...] But the illusion quickly wears off. The window starts to feel more two-dimensional, more like a piece of paper than a portal. The view-space appears to flatten out, to the point where the window and the data contained within the window merge.”i

Here Steven Johnson is describing the effects of using a scrolling window on a computer screen for the first time, and I am referring to it (ever so slightly out of context) to illustrate a point about the works that are being presented within In-Site Montréal. The users of the Île Sans Fil wireless network are, arguably, all hardened internet users, for whom the complexities of scrolling windows and portals and most other graphical user interface-related things are trivial.

However, since they have reached the secondary stage that Johnson refers to, where the “window and the data contained within the window merge”, there are certain expectations for an experience that can keep pace with their ability to leap from hyperlink to hyperlink.

Portals, by and large, are clumsy. The portal that occasionally pops up on my screen, which is associated with my Hotmail account, assumes I am interested in all manner of celebrity gossip and sports scores, and regional news for an area that is 45 miles to the west of where I currently live. But the works presented as part of In-Site Montréal are not attempting to form part of a portal experience that would guess the preferences of each user. The works are dealing directly with the particularities of the site where the hotspot is, which is a small enough area to be clearly defined as a common element in each user’s experience. For the elite users, something at last may jump out at them from this flattened dataspace where things feel as twodimensional and familiar as a piece of paper. Instead of the usual hurried clicking to get past a familiar “roadblock” and get to the destination they intended to go to, they may now feel that the artists of In-Site Montréal have added an observation on their local café, library, or artist-run centre that matters, that they can respond to, that strikes them out of their reverie.

“A provisional conclusion might be that in advanced art practices of the past thirty years the operative definition of the site has been transformed from a physical location —grounded, fixed, actual— to a discursive vector—ungrounded, fluid, virtual.”ii

Parts of this definition of site – fluid, virtual – are key concepts that that In-Site Montréal works with. The layer of information that floats on top, as a meta- layer to the usual experience of café users in the Île Sans Fil network is meant to be something a bit fluid, virtual and unexpected. The only definition that it does not fit is that of “ungrounded”, precisely because it is the grounding in the site that sets this project apart. Maria Legault’s interventions with her Free Sugar project may be considered particularly grounded in the sites in question. She worked with two locations, Studio XX and Café Utopik, and developed an extension of her Free Sugar project around both locations. At Studio XX, a feminist art centre that primarily consists of an office space and computer lab, she created a performance event entitled the Free Sugar Salon, that was open for anyone to attend and have the holes in their lives filled with pink pudding. She filled cracks in the architecture of Studio XX with pink icing, and then turned her attention to the attentive public that arrived at the studio, counseling them and filling their mouths with pink pudding to console them. At Café Utopik, a café/bar that regularly hosts bands and spoken word events, she conducted a surreptitious intervention, filling crevices and holes in the architecture and surrounding environment of the Café with pink icing, and documenting it in photographs. Both of these projects are presented on the portal pages of Studio XX and Café Utopik as video documentation of these actions.

Artist Virginie Laganière focused on two very different areas: the Jean-Talon Market and the area around the popular meeting place, Café Utopik. Her site-specific video pieces were shot with regular video cameras, as well as custom camera rigs attached to her body. She then manipulated the footage further in the editing suite, adding her own compositions as soundtracks and prolonging moments that happened oncamera, providing us a moment to reflect on their significance. She specifically chose to document moments where people were not as present in these spaces, and where the patterns of movement in the “off-peak” hours would become more apparent.

Through her augmentations in the editing suite, she also aims to create a piece of work that allows us to see beyond our usual clouded and harried view of the urban environment, and enjoy a view of the built environment that is tranquil, constructed, and part of an aesthetic experience. In particular, her video piece presented on the portal page of the Jean-Talon Market, usually a place so buzzing with activity as to be nearly impossible to navigate, was shot in the very early hours of the morning, when market stall owners are setting up. This meditative and slow period of the Market’s activity is hidden from most of the Market’s patrons, and Virginie’s artful editing brings out the poetry in the stasis of these moments.

Nicolas Fleming's performance art videos also present us with an alternate view of our public spaces. His work is presented at Café Kafeïn and Laïka, because of both the subject matter that he chose and the locations that he performed in. At Laïka, an extremely popular and hip bar/restaurant/club, he presents se traîner, a piece wherein he drags himself out of his apartment (which is within the same building complex that Laïka is in) and down the stairs to an escape portal – an automatic garage door. Throughout the performance he can be heard grunting with the strain of moving himself in such an unconventional way, and by the end of this performance, he is clearly exhausted. Users viewing this video must marvel about this strange and strenuous test to his body, that took place in relative secret behind the scenes of the Laïka’s festive décor. In the other piece, traîner un dj, Fleming travels to Île Sainte-Hélène to encase a dj in a canvas sac, and drag him along the pavement, with the sounds of Piknic Electronique (Montréal’s outdoor summer dance club) pounding in the background. This work is presented at Kafeïn due to the dj culture that is resonant there; the dragging of a dj must be somewhat humourous to the clientele.

Telematics is a term used to designate computer-mediated communications networking involving telephone, cable, and satellite links between geographically dispersed individuals and institutions that are interfaced to data-processing systems. It involves the technology of interaction among human beings and between the human mind and artificial systems of intelligence and perception. The individual user of networks is always potentially involved in a global net, and the world is always potentially in a state of interaction with the individual.iii

The virtual spaces that In-site Montréal inhabit are amorphous areas around several accepted gathering places such as cafés, galleries, markets, and bars. They are perhaps places where as an internet user, you may intend to use the opportunity of connectivity to the network to look outward, to read news of distant places or connect with friends far away through e-mails and online social networking sites. The art practice of telematics in particular addresses the creative possibilities when two parties are connected over distance to communicate. In some way, the pieces presented on the portal pages of Île Sans Fil’s network as part of the In-Site Montréal project present something that is almost anti-telematic, in that the works look inward rather than outward. In the case of this project, a connection to someone across the globe is not sought, it is shunned in favour of a further examination and rumination on the details of the local environment. A local resident, who is perhaps used to the culture at Café Utopik, may be best able to chuckle at the video of pink icing being added to the sign above the door. This intense inwardlooking that these pieces commit to is the essential point of the project. Instead of seeking to look outward and connect with others who are in a radically different geographic space, In-Site Montréal hopes to reconnect locals with their own space, through the language of culture, compelling users of the network to turn their gaze inward enough to consider the cultural resonances that are possible.

- Michelle Kasprzak, 2006/2007

i Steven Johnson "Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the
Way We Create and Communicate" 1997 Harper Collins, New York. Pg 86
ii Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity, October 80 (Spring
97): 95.
iii Roy Ascott: “Is there love in the telematic embrace?”
http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/07/articles/03_page01.html

Posted by jo at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

THE LAST SUPPER : ABOVE THE SKIES

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Call for Applicants

Performing Days Istanbul 2007 :: THE LAST SUPPER: ABOVE THE SKIES :: An audiovisual installation by Alexandra Reill, production: kanonmedia/Galata Perform :: 03/03/2007, 22:00.

A Last Supper is taken by the visitors of the Performing Days Istanbul 2007 - a dinner as frugal as feeding as it is with its apple on the plates of a table with thirteen seats. The looping screening of the film Above the Skies creates a stringent sacral character for this multicultural dinner where a chair is missing and where the shades of visitors become part of the scenario.

Traces of Moorish, Jewish and Catholic culture of the Middle Ages form the visual framework for a search on the inner essence and character of human suffering in life, putting the viewer in a trance-like state of slowed down introspection. Opulent Baroque versus Gothic and Muslim transparencies. Empty Jewish quarters maintained like museums for tourists' looks. A Europe place as proof for imperialistic approaches.

What does suffering mean. What does suffering mean in a lifetime. What is the sense of conflict, the sense of separation. Impressions of life, always doubled to keep the option to look through things. A journey from the Earth to the Skies and back, at a table where a chair is missing in the round.

With remixes of Middle Age chorals out of the times of Alfonso X El Sabio (1221-1284), Elisabeth the Catholic (1410-1563), the Nasrid Dynasty (1410-1563) and the Jewish culture.

PROGRAM >>

Posted by jo at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

Remote Presence: Streaming Life

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Call for Applicants

Remote Presence: Streaming Life :: Workshop Call for Applicants :: Presented by John Hopkins as part of the pixelache 2007 "Architectures of Participation" Festival and in collaboration with Artists' Association MUU :: Dates: March 21-23 & 26-31, 2007 :: Location: MUU gallery & Media Base, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland :: Hours: 1030 to 1630

In the ubiquity of networked media spaces where we distribute our wireless lives, what happens to our creative processes? How may we build a functioning architecture of participation for productive collaboration and interaction between the Self and Others? This dynamic workshop will bring participants to a new state of awareness about their own creative practice. It will accomplish this through an exploration of human collaboration and connection within the space of networks. It explores conceptual and practical issues around creative engagement, finishing with the hands-on production of a live and online streaming-media network event with global participation.

The workshop is open to anyone from any discipline with an interest in collaboration and creative engagement at both a local and remote scale. There are NO technical background requirements. People with previous experience in streaming media, performance, digital audio and video, VJ work, etc, who wish to push their practice to a new collaborative level are also welcome.

On Saturday, 31 March, the final day of the workshop will be a live & online event. Workshop participants will not only develop digital content for the event, but will also help facilitate all aspects of it including the technical infrastructure, the local ambience, and the remote coordination.

A maximum of 15 participants will be chosen from local and international applicants with the idea to bring together a wide spectrum of cross-disciplinary energies.

THE WORKSHOP IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Those interested will need to send their:

NAME:

LOCATION:

EMAIL:

Along with your reasons for interest in the workshop and a brief background (studies, creative work, activities) to: neopixel[at]pixelache.ac. DEADLINE for Applications 5 March 2007.

Posted by jo at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2007

The Bigger Picture + Urban Screens Conference

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Call for Proposals, Papers and Projects

The Bigger Picture Commissions 2007 + Urban Screens Conference, Manchester 07 :: Call for Proposals, Papers and Projects :: 1) The Bigger Picture Announces International Call for Major Public Realm Commissions :: 2) Urban Screens Conference Manchester 07 Call for Papers :: 3) Urban Screens Conference Manchester 07 Call for Projects.

THE BIGGER PICTURE :: INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR MAJOR PUBLIC REALM COMMISSIONS: National UK commissioning and production partners: Cornerhouse (Manchester), ENTER_ (Cambridge), Lumen (Leeds) & Site Gallery (Sheffield), with support from BBC, funded by Arts Council England :: DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS Friday 30 March 2007 :: to be launched at Urban Screens Conference Manchester 07.

The Bigger Picture exhibits artists’ film & video and interactive / participatory screen based projects on Big Screen Manchester, UK. Utilising this unique screening space, The Bigger Picture is able to present a host of artists’ works to large and diverse audiences reaching beyond the traditional gallery context. Cornerhouse, working in partnership with BBC and Manchester City Council, delivers The Bigger Picture’s curated programmes, whilst additionally commissioning and touring large outdoor screen-based programmes.

The Bigger Picture is inviting proposals for the production of exceptional new public realm works to be launched on Big Screen Manchester at the time of the Urban Screens Conference Manchester 07 (11&12 October), and to tour to partner city Big Screens and public sites throughout 2007/8. Four new works will be commissioned, each with an attached fee of £5000 (7400 EUR / 9700 USD) based on an agreed budget, of up to £10,000 for production (14,900 EUR / 19,500 USD).

This is a significant opportunity for film, video, new media and cross-disciplinary artists to explore unique new ways of creating and exhibiting work for a public context. Each National Commissioning partner will lead on the production of one new work. Partners are particularly encouraging proposals of the following nature:

- Interactive and participatory new work
- Interdisciplinary new work (combined arts, performing arts, audiovisual)
- Evolving or expanded work
- New media and streaming technology
- Film & Video

Artists previously commissioned by The Bigger Picture include Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (desperate optimists), Kartoon Kings (Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio), plus Paul Melia, Hilary Jack, The Light Surgeons, Adele Prince and Louise K Wilson.

For more information on how to submit, including key information, guidelines & submission form, and BBC technical specifications, see >>.

Deadline for proposals 30 March 2007.

Big Screen Manchester, is part of a UK Big Screen network, operated by the BBC.

CALL FOR PAPERS – Closing date: March 2, 2007

The next Urban Screens Conference focuses on the development of non-commercial content for big urban displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, media façades and projections onto buildings.

What characterises these huge displays as media platforms in urban space and which particular spatial and social situations do they create? How are they perceived? How does creative content flow from this?

We will discuss:

- urban screens as channels for alternative public broadcasting in times of Web 2.0, YouTube, increasing broadband rates and Creative Commons.
- which interactive and participatory applications could enrich urban life beyond simple entertainment.
- which linear artistic productions such as animations, video, film or text suit a presentation in public space.
- how displays can be integrated into the urban environment in meaningful ways.
- which economies drive and limit both the implementation of urban screens in public space and the commissioning of creative content.
- the evaluation of creative content with regard to how it is perceived.

For the Urban Screens Conference we are looking for proposals for papers that deal with the above mentioned topics or other related fields of research.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Please email proposals for papers in the form of a 500 word max abstract and your/the presenter’s CV by March 2, 2007 to info[at]manchesterurbanscreens.org.uk

CALL FOR PROJECT PROPOSALS – Closing date: March 2, 2007

The conference is accompanied by an inspiring programme of public events and exhibitions, including screening programmes as well as performance-based and participatory art projects which make use of the BBC Big Screens Network. We are looking for existing and potentially adaptable projects which employ one ore more permanent or temporary screen.

We are particularly interested in projects:

- exploring web-based content and streaming media
- connecting screen audiences in various places
- interactive and participatory works using bodily interfaces and ubiquitous communication devices
- text pieces, video and animation which suit airing on urban screens
- performance-based works including audiovisual performance/VJing

For detailed information on the BBC screens’ system please see www.manchesterurbanscreens.org.uk

HOW TO SUBMIT

Please send project proposals in the form of a project description, illustrative material and the author’s CV by March 2, 2007 to:

CORNERHOUSE
Urban Screens Conference
70 Oxford Street
Manchester M1 5NH
United Kingdom

Posted by jo at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)

19th ANNUAL SUBTROPICS FESTIVAL

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THE WORK AND LEGACY OF JOHN CAGE

[photo by rex rystedt] Produced by iSAW and presented in partnership with Carnival Center for the Performing Arts 19th ANNUAL SUBTROPICS FESTIVAL LOOKS BACK AT THE HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC THROUGH THE WORK AND LEGACY OF JOHN CAGE :: February 23 – March 4, 2007 :: nineteen concerts, outdoor events, panel discussions, oral history projects and installations about musical pioneer JOHN CAGE, his accomplices and contemporaries at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Deluxe Arts and in Miami Beach.

The festival features seminal pieces and new works by New York School Composers JOHN CAGE, EARLE BROWN, MORTON FELDMAN and CHRISTIAN WOLFF (performing), as well as CONLON NANCARROW, JAMES TENNEY, LAMONTE YOUNG and others. Plus, a full day of FLUXUS and a 14-hour-long performance of VEXATIONS for piano by the French composer ERIK SATIE (1866-1925).

This year’s Subtropics Marathon feature guest artist MARGARET LANCASTER on flute as well as performances and works by South Florida composers and sound artists JURAJ KOJS, JUAN CARLOS ESPINOSA, RENE BARGE, ARMANDO MARTINEZ, and more.

Also scheduled are the installation CAGE: RELEASED IN MIAMI, the film BASCHET: THE TRANSFIGURATION OFDAILY LIFE and the oral histories project INDETERMINACY TOO. For detailed information about the artists and programs, please log on to subtropics.org.

Posted by jo at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2007

UPGRADE! BOSTON

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Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg + Deb Todd Wheeler

UPGRADE! BOSTON: Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg + Deb Todd Wheeler :: WHEN: February 15, 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.

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg is a sound artist, composer, and shape note singer whose work explores the intersections of technology and tradition. His output encompasses installation, music for live performance, tunebooks, web design, audio tours, and transmission arts. Jesse’s current work investigates the history and practice of Sacred Harp singing and the geological, social, technological, and religious history of upstate New York. Jesse is the cofounder of the “Society for a Subliminal State” and editor-in-chief of the Society's newsletter, “Subliminal Statements.” His work has been performed and exhibited at art and historical venues internationally and throughout the Northeast.

Deb Todd Wheeler is a sculptor, inventor, and media artist. Using the vernacular of the 19th century, a time when art and science were more closely linked, she investigates alternative avenues for power that reflect our growing concern with sustainability today. She is a recipient of a LEF Contemporary Work Fund Artist grant in inter-media, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Sculpture and Installation, and the Artist Resource Trust Grant. She is on the Graduate Faculty of the Art Institute of Boston, and also teaches in the 3D department at Massachusetts College of Art.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 22 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 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

Art Center Nabi @ ARCO, Spain

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Intermediae-Minbak

Art Center Nabi of Korea and Intermediae of Spain jointly present Intermediae-Minbak project at ARCO 2007, Madrid Spain. Interaction of unique culture and people takes place at Minbak (Korean word for accommodation for temporary home stay), which an entire space can serve as a place for vivid cultural exchange. Ten Korean media artists and approximately fifty Spanish students from five art colleges in Bilbao, Cuenca and Valencia meet one another at Intermediae-Minbak, a soft platform where they can exchange ideas. The works themselves function as a medium and help those who gather to stimulate each other’s creativity through common experience, and forge a new relationship.

Wind by Ji-hoon Byun brings in the wind of Pusan in real time to cause the screen installed at Minbak to flutter, while A Garden by Minha Yang invites the guests of Minbak to an interactive digital garden with the Oriental mystique. People overcome the limit of language difference and newly start to communicate via the visualization of sound through Sound Talking by Kichul Kim. They also allow their bodies, and furthermore their thought and culture, to mingle with each in a hope to become one in Love Shaker 2.0 by Joon Kim and Seungjoon Choi.

Stories of Your Life & Others (ver. Madrid) by Sengtak Seo, Seungjoon Choi, Jaekwan Park, Junghoon Lee provides an opportunity to make ties in other dimensions through avatars which freely move around simulated spaces of Intermediae and Art Center Nabi. Communication initiated through the medium of the metaphorical works will develop into more direct interaction at workshops. Meanwhile, a series of events that take place at Minbak along with other events at ARCO 2007 will be extended outside the exhibit space by a project titled Delivery_ARCO.zip by Woosuk Jang, Taejoong Kim and Yangachi. The separate online project is a kind of combination of Internet broadcasting and web arts.

Posted by jo at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Istanbul

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re-construction of space

Upgrade! Istanbul: re-construction of space with Murat Germen + Burak Arikan :: 22nd of February 18:00 :: santralistanbul will host this meeting at Istanbul Bilgi University, Dolapdere Campus, Z-04.

Space is usually defined / experienced as a physical entity; yet, we recently began to observe that the notion of ‘space’ can exist / be perceived / used as a non-physical organism by means of interactive media and virtual environment applications in the computer platform. Such creations bring new definitions of “space” and can be named as “informational space” or “cognitive space”. As a result, it is possible to talk about a process of re-constructing space. While Burak Arikan pursues this process by creating pieces involving computer networks and using the concepts of connectivity, collectivity; Murat Germen follows a similar path within the realm of digital photography and also computational design studies that he conducts with colleagues from Sabanci University.

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.

Posted by jo at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2007

Programmable Media:

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Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration

Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration :: A symposium organized and presented by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., hosted by Pace Digital Gallery :: Date: March 2, 2007 :: Time: 10 am to 3:30 pm :: Venue: Multipurpose Room, 1 Pace Plaza, Pace University :: Contact: Helen Thorington (newradio[at]turbulence.org); Jillian McDonald (jmcdonald2[at]pace.edu). Registration is encouraged: email turbulence at turbulence.org.

In July 2004 the not-for-profit media organization New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. began the networked_performance blog to chronicle observations that internet based creative practice is expanding due to the ready availability of wireless, mobile, and GPS computational devices and the emergence of the programmable web. We observe that artists, designers and researchers working in digitally networked and programmable environments are increasingly making projects that are media platforms, tools and services which are open and contingent upon participation and the contribution of content to realize them.

Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration, hosted by Pace University, will explore two forms of current practice. First, the creation of original software to create tools and services for creative and social use, such as a freely available 3-D drawing tool and musical instrument, or a public commons meta layer conceived as a continuous public space for collaboration. Second, the creation of original work using the tools available within open platforms such as Second Life and MySpace to build community and raise awareness.

PARTICIPANTS: John (Craig) Freeman, Tom Igoe, Cary Peppermint, Amit Pitaru, Michelle Riel, Helen Thorington, and Mushon Zer-Aviv and Dan Phiffer.

SCHEDULE

10:00 - 10:45 am: Introduction: Social Coding: Tools, Platforms, Systems

Helen Thorington: Turbulence.org's networked_performance blog
Michelle Riel: Siting this Symposium in current practice
Q&A (audience)

10:45 - 11:00 am: Transition

11:00 am - 12.20 pm: Roundtable 1

Mushon Zer-Aviv + Dan Phiffer: The Social Space of the Net: ShiftSpace
Amit Pitaru: Sonic Wire Sculptor
Tom Igoe: Networked Objects: Email Clock & Air Quality Meter & others
Discussion (with moderators)
Q&A (audience)

12.20 - 2:00 pm: lunch break

2:00 - 3:20 pm: Roundtable 2

Cary Peppermint: The Performative Space of the Net
John (Craig) Freeman: Particapatory Installation Art in Second Life
Michelle Riel: Responsive Soft-Biological System
Discussion (with moderators)
Q&A (audience)

Participant Biographies:

John (Craig) Freeman is an artist and educator who uses digital technologies to produce place-based virtual reality and site-specific public art. The virtual reality work is made up of projected interactive environments that lead the audience from global satellite images to immersive, user navigated scenes on the ground. As one explores these virtual spaces, the story of the place unfolds in a montage of nonlinear media. Freeman's work has been exhibited internationally. He has recently introduced it into the 3-D graphical world of Second Life. Freeman is currently an Associate Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston.

Tom Igoe teaches courses in physical computing and networking, exploring ways to allow digital technologies to sense and respond to a wider range of human physical expression. Coming from a background in theatre, his work has centered on physical interaction related to live performance and public space. His current research focuses on ecologically sustainable practices in technology development. Along with Dan O'Sullivan, he co-authored the book "Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers," which has been adopted by numerous digital art and design programs around the world. He is working on another book on networked objects, for O'Reilly Media, due out in 2007. Projects include a series of networked banquet table centerpieces and musical instruments; an email clock; and a series of interactive dioramas, created in collaboration with M.R. Petit. He has consulted for The American Museum of the Moving Image, EAR Studio, Diller + Scofidio Architects, Eos Orchestra, and others. He is a contributor to MAKE magazine and a collaborator on the Arduino open source microcontroller project. He hopes someday to work with monkeys, as well.

Cary Peppermint is a conceptual artist who works with digital technologies and performance art. He is assistant professor of art at Colgate University where he teaches courses in the theory and practice of digital art. Cary is known for his website "Restlessculture.net." which serves as a platform for his ongoing series of networked performances. His latest works engage the concepts of wilderness, space, the American frontier, and environmental ethics and explore how new media technologies both limit and expand our conceptions of nature and the environment, questioning how we live and make art with and in nature. Cary has curated international exhibitions of digitally infused eco-art including, “Technorganic” and “Wilderness Information Network” which both took place in the upper Catskills of New York state. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Franklin Furnace Performance Grant, Experimental Television Workshop Grant, and NYSCA's Decentralization Grant. His work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Rhizome.org at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Computer Fine Arts.

Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, interested in exploring cultural dimensions of inexpensive communications networks such as voice telephony and the Internet. Drawing on his computer science background, Dan's software projects seek to provide meaningful creative opportunities through intuitive user interfaces. Dan now lives in Brooklyn, New York and is pursuing a Masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Amit Pitaru is an artist, designer and researcher of Human Machine Interaction (HCI). Amit cross-palliates his work between a wide range of fields; As an artist, he develops custom-made musical and animation instruments, and has recently exhibited/performed at the London Design Museum, Paris Pompidou Center, Sundance Film festival and ICC Museum in Tokyo. Amit is also a designer with particular interest in Assistive Technologies and Universal Design. He is currently commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation to write a chapter for an upcoming book on his recent work - creating toys and software that are inclusively accessible to people with various disabilities. As an educator, Amit develops curriculums that focus on the coupling of technology and the creative thought process. He regularly teaches at New York University's ITP and Cooper Union's Arts department.

Michelle Riel is associate professor of new media and chair of the Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department at California State University Monterey Bay. Riel collaborates with turbulence.org on the networked_performance blog, documenting and presenting on emerging work that is both networked and live. She is an award winning designer and NEA commissioned net artist. Her current work, antSongs, is a responsive music system collaborating with ants to explore issues of sustainability, community, and globalism.

Helen Thorington is an award winning writer, sound composer and media artist. Thorington is founder and co- director of the independent media organization, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., whose projects include the national weekly radio series, New American Radio, Turbulence.org (1996-present), and the networked_performance blog (2004-present). Thorington publishes and presents internationally on these projects. She is currently teaching in the Department of Arts and New Media at Emerson College.

Mushon Zer-Aviv was born in Israel in 1976. He has been involved in and initiated cross-media projects in art, design, comics, animation, online culture and media activism. Co-founder of Shual.com design studio. A teacher at Shekar College of Design & Engineering. An active contributor to Pixelsurgeon.com, Exego.net and Maarav.org.il online magazines. Curated BD4D Tel-Aviv and started Upgrade! Tel-Aviv events, both series aimed at creating and developing the Israeli new-media creative network. Mushon is currently studying at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program.

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

Lines of Flight

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Screenshot - Triptych: Motion Stillness Resistance by Peter Horvath

Lines of Flight :: Opening Reception Friday, February 16, 4-7PM :: Exhibition Tour Saturday, February 17th, 1-4PM :: Hunter College Main Campus 695 Park Ave. NY, NY 10021 :: Main Lobby, West Building and 543 Hunter North Building :: 212-650-3415 :: Curated by: Celina Jeffery and Gregory Minissale.

Artists: Rafael Lozano Hemmer :: Thomson and Craighead :: Peter Horvath :: David Crawford

Lines of Flight addresses the following themes: the lines between technological, scientific and artistic practices from differing cultural perspectives; the negotiated status of the (networked) artist as an agent interacting and transacting in a global context; the flight from the self in collective creativity; spatial mediation suggested by open, interactive, and real time systems; mediation between inclusions and exclusions, insiders and outsiders; and processes of taking flight from the gravity of digital capitalism, digital privilege, and stratification.

Sponsored by: The Leonardo Education Forum, The Hunter College MFA in Integrated Media Arts and Film and Media Department, The Savannah College of Art and Design and Bitforms Gallery.

Directions:

By Subway

The #6 train stops directly under the College at the 68th Street Stop. Major transfer points for the #6 train are: 14th Street-Union Square, 42nd Street -Grand Central, 51st Street & Lexington Avenue, and 59th Street & Lexington Avenue. There is an entrance to the school in the Subway station.

Room 543, Fifth Floor Hunter North

Enter the North Building at the 69th street entrance (between Park and Lexington Avenues). Take the elevators on the left to the fifth floor. Make a left through the double doors. Make a right and proceed to the end of the hall. Room 543 is on the right.

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

Furtherfield Blog

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Making, Curating, and Translating New Media

The Furtherfield Blog: A shared space for personal reflections on Media Art practice: making it, curating it, translating it.

The Furtherfield blog is a place for Media Arts practitioners to intuitively explore their practice together as it occurs, to develop understanding and to learn, without the pressure to formulate complete arguments or to come up with answers. The blog was set up in Autumn 2006, initially as a place for informal, day to day exchange between members of the Furtherfield.org team, including editor/reviewers. We discovered that this format suits some people more than others and invited a couple more to join. The Furtherfield blog is not intended as a platform to promote particular projects. Instead bloggers explore their own perspectives on their own terms; personal thoughts, emotional responses and critical intentions that are rarely publicly discussed elsewhere in such detail.

Regular Furtherfield bloggers so far, are: - Camille Baker, Ruth Catlow, Aileen Derieg, Marc Garrett, Mark Hancock, Patrick Lichty and Lauren A. Wright.

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

Futuresonic +

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CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY :: FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP :: AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, 6-8 MAY 2007 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS :: Submission deadline: 12th March 2007

Combining music and mobile technology promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, Walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

Scheduling and registration fees will be coordinated with Futuresonic to allow participants to easily attend both events.

THE MAP DESIGNERS :: AT FUTURESONIC 2007 / SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT :: MANCHESTER, UK, 10-12 MAY 2007 :: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

A special event by the British Cartographic Society & Society of Cartographers, focusing on the interface between cartography and cutting edge design. It will draw together map hackers, artists, cartographers, DIY technologists, architects, game programmers, bloggers and semantic web philosophers.

To ensure that we have as wide a range of contributors as possible, we would like to invite suggestions and papers on any of the above subjects for consideration. Please email details of suggested papers or any suggestions for contributions to lynda.bailey2[at]virgin.net.

On behalf of the Map Designers Group of the British Cartographic Society, and the Society of Cartographers.

FUTUREVISUAL AT FUTURESONIC 2007 / SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT:: MANCHESTER, UK, 10-12 MAY 2007 :: FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS :: Deadline reminder: Thursday 15th February 2007.

Futurevisual is a celebration of all things audiovisual, with a focus on audiovisual projects which emerge from, reference or are inspired by the transfusion of visual media and visual technologies within music culture, and the mixing of visual culture and music culture.

Futurevisual forms the centrepiece of Futuresonic Live at Futuresonic 2007 in Manchester/UK, and a dedicated space - the Futurevisual Lounge - will be available at the main festival venue for Futurevisual screenings. A selection of works will be shown at partner festivals in South Korea and Brazil, and as part of The Bigger Picture, Big Screen Manchester on a 25 square metre video screen with full sound system situated in Exchange Square, a public area regenerated after the IRA bomb in 1996, that has an estimated daily footfall of 50,000 people.

EVNTS 2007 AT FUTURESONIC 2007 / SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT :: MANCHESTER, UK, 10-12 MAY 2007 :: FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS :: Deadline reminder: Thursday 15th February 2007

EVNTS is a strand of the Futuresonic festival which enables artist groups and event organisers to participate in the festival. Since its introduction in 2005, EVNTS has grown into a community of people who each year return to give the festival an extra edge.

Futuresonic now invites anyone working in music or media arts to take part in EVNTS 2007, with the EVNT Competition offering financial support for a limited number of events. Open to any programmer, curator, promoter, label or artist group anywhere in the world, with the focus on ground breaking and new events as well as one-off or adventurous events by established event organisers. Awards of GBP 1,000 and GBP 250 are available for people to stage an event as a part of EVNTS via the EVNT Competition. Proposals will be judged by an independent panel of music, arts and industry figures.

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2007

Slamdance Post-Mortem:

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A Discussion about Games as an Expressive Medium

Time: Wednesday, February 14, 6-8pm :: Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML).

Join Danny LeDonne (Super Columbine Massacre RPG), Sam Roberts and Peter Baxter (Slamdance Festival), Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen (flOw, thatgamecompany), and Tracy Fullerton (EA Game Innovation Lab) in an open discussion about the recent controversy surrounding the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition. The pulling of LeDonne’s Super Columbine Massacre RPG from the contest resulted in a protest which saw over half the festival finalists pull their own games from the competition, the IMD pulled our own sponsorship of the event in support of the protest, and the festival ended with the remaining finalists voting to forgo all awards in light of the protest. At the root of this controversy lie several important questions: Are games an expressive medium? Should they be protected as “speech” under the First Amendment? Should we hold them to a different standard of content then media such as films, literature, painting or theatre? Where can provocative, independent games be seen and celebrated if not at venues such as Slamdance? Bring your opinions and be ready to participate. This may be the most important issue facing independent gamemakers in the coming years. [posted by sfisher on USC Media Division]

Posted by jo at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Bits, Bytes and the Rhetoric of Practice

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Call for New Media Artist Statements

NMC Call for Papers :: Spring Edition, 2007 :: Theme: Bits, Bytes and the Rhetoric of Practice: New Media Artist Statements :: In this edition of media-N we invite new media arts practitioners to submit personal artist statements and examples of their practice. The commentary (no more than 500 words) should describe the work and contextualize it within the field of new media practice and ideas. In addition, include a short biographical statement (no more than 100 words) at the end of your artist statement.

Event reviews: The editorial board also invites proposals for reviews of exhibitions, events, festivals, conferences, etc. See examples of reviews in the current issue.

Submission deadline: April 30 2007 :: Paper format and media format: We seek artist statements of no more than 500 words, with an additional biographical statement of no more than 100 words. Please use a standard word-processing program such as Microsoft Word. PC and Mac versions are both acceptable. You may use italics, boldface, and diacritics, but do not use HTML tags. It is best to send the review as an email attachment in Microsoft Word. Please do not cut and paste the review into the body of an email, as formatting may be lost or changed in the e-mail transmission.

Include no more than 20 examples of artwork (this could be still images, video clips, audio clips, etc, as applicable.) Media Formats: jpeg, avi, swf and additional formats on case by case basis (mov/mpeg/wav/aiff). Be sure to attach these files separately as well as in the body of the text.

[·] Media-N author's agreement is available from the 'Copyright Statement' link

[·] Send manuscripts via email to: Rachel Clarke, Editor in Chief (rclarke[at]csus.edu)

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

IDEOLOGY of the IMAGINARY in the 21st century

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Exploring Cross Issues of Art, Culture and New Media

IDEOLOGY of the IMAGINARY in the 21st century: a symposium and exhibition project exploring cross issues of art, culture and new media :: 1st and 2nd MARCH, 10am - 4pm :: MERCURY CINEMA, Lion Arts Centre, North Tce, Adelaide. ADMISSION FREE. LIMITED SEATING. PLEASE REGISTER: Email your name, address, and how many attending to info[at]eaf.asn.au

Despite the numerous "tech-specific", or "future looking" events, appearing daily on the world stage, it is worth noting that we are almost at the end of the first decade of this century, and yet the discourses which we are using are quite old - postmodern at its best!

The Symposium is therefore aimed at defining the concepts and processes characteristic for the beginning of the 21st century. Some of the themes the speakers are urged to visit: What are the decisive theoretical and practical developments of this decade? How has the ideological framework of images shifted in the 21st Century? How can we measure the real power of these images? Are some aesthetic categories or concepts of the late 20th century already obsolete? Are there new categories appearing on the horizon?

Bio-technology and other wireless, or less so, technologies are offering themselves to us quite openly, but perhaps more important are the hidden, underlying processes in our society, which we seem to constantly neglect.

Symposium convened by Melentie Pandilovski

SPEAKERS: Andreas Ströhl . Tania Fraga . Mark Pesce . Melentie Pandilovski . Paul Majkut . Hélène Frichot . Anna Munster . Friedrich Kirschner + video appearance by Roy Ascott.

ROY ASCOTT \ Syncretic Strategies: A pioneer of cybernetic and telematic art, Ascott is an internationally renowned artist, theorist, and educator. Roy Ascott is the founder and President of the Planetary Collegium, the Director of its CAiiA-Hub, and Professor of Technoetic Art in the University of Plymouth, England. He is Visiting Professor in Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. AscottÅfs work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, and European Media Festival, Osnabrck.

TANIA FRAGA \ Envisioning Possibilities for Computer Art & Design: Tania Fraga is a Brazilian architect and artist. She holds a PhD on the Communication and Semiotics Program at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC) with a Post Doctoral at CAiiA-STAR. She was Professor and Co-ordinator of the Graduation Studies of the Art Institute at University of Brasilia, Brazil, from 1987-2004 and member of the Advisory Research Committee of the Banff New Media Centre in 2003, Canada. She was Visiting Scholar at the Computer Science Department at The George Washington University, Washington DC, 1991/1992 and Artist-in-Residence at The Bemis Foundation, USA, 1986, with a grant from the Fulbright Commission.

HÉLÈNE FRICHOT \ An Ethico-Aesthetics for Wet Architectures: Helene Frichot is a senior lecturer in architectural design and theory at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. While architecture is her first discipline, she holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney. Helene co-curates the RMIT University Architecture + Philosophy Public Lecture Series
www.architecturephilosophy.rmit.edu.au

FREIDRICH KIRSCHNER \ Playing games differently: Friedrich Kirschner is a filmmaker, visual artist and board member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. He re-purposes computer games to create animated narratives and interactive performances. His work has been shown at various international animation festivals and exhibitions, including the ZKM Karlsruhe, the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Ottawa international Animation festival and the Seoul Media Art Biennale. He also published machinimag, an online magazine focussing on the development of the emerging art form of machinima moviemaking. www.zeitbrand.net

PAUL MAJKUT \ Cool Media, Cold Consequences: Paul Majkut, an award-winning investigative journalist, is Professor of Literature in the College of Letters and Science, National University, San Diego, California, and international lecturer. Majkut has twice been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.

ANNA MUNSTER \ Crowds, Power and Portable Media: Anna Munster is a writer, artist and lecturer in the area of electronic and new media arts and is a Senior Lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.

MELENTIE PANDILOVSKI \ The Fundamental Change: Melentie Pandilovski is the Director of the Experimental Art Foundation. He was initiator and Director/Curator of the annual Skopje Electronic Arts Fair, the first internet and media art manifestation in the Balkans, and has written extensively on the present state of media arts and the future of technology and arts.

MARK PESCE \ Appropriations and Distributions: One of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality, Mark Pesce is a writer, researcher and teacher. The co-inventor of VRML, Pesce is the author of five books and numerous papers on the future of technology. He is currently an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Sydney, and is a judge on The New Inventors a nationally syndicated ABC television program in Australia. He maintains several blogs, including Hyperpeople, which deals with the enormous changes in media, and Yeschaton, which tracks developments in the sciences. He is currently working on a film-Man with a Movie Tube-drawn entirely from appropriated YouTube clips. His Sydney consultancy, FutureSt, develops media strategies for a rapidly changing technological environment.

ANDREAS STRÖHL \ Apparatus Images-How the Apparatus Swallows Meaning and Projects Ideology Andreas Ströhl was Director of Cultural Program of the Goethe Institute in Prague until 1997 and since 2004 has been Director of the Munich International Film Festival.

EXHIBITION

TANIA FRAGA, Responsive Membrane :: 2 MARCH - 5 APRIL (11 - 5 Tuesday - Friday, Saturday 2 - 5)

LEV MANOVICH, Soft Cinema :: 2 MARCH - 5 APRIL (11 - 5 Tuesday - Friday, Saturday 2 - 5)

Presented in conjunction with the Symposium The Ideology of Imaginary in the 21st Century in association with the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival.

Curated by Melentie Pandilovski

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION curates its exhibition program to represent new work that expands current debates and ideas in contemporary visual art. The EAF incorporates a gallery space, bookshop and artists studios.

Lion Arts Centre North Terrace at Morphett Street Adelaide * PO Box 8091 Station Arcade South Australia 5000 * Tel: +618 8211 7505 * Fax +618 8211 7323 * eaf[at]eaf.asn.au * Bookshop: eafbooks[at]eaf.asn.au * http://www.eaf.asn.au * Director: Melentie Pandilovski

The Experimental Art Foundation is assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, it arts funding and advisory body and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA. The EAF is also supported through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Posted by jo at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2007

Net(works): Art and Pre-Existing Web Platforms

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Call for Papers

Net(works): Art and Pre-Existing Web Platforms: Call for Papers - Southeastern College Art Conference :: October 17-20, 2007.

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, 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.

Questions 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

Posted by jo at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2007

Emergency Room

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The Current Pulse of the World

Emergency Room at PS1/MOMA - ER NYC :: February 8 - March 19, 2007 :: Opening Reception: February 11, 2007 12-6pm :: Raphaele Shirley, Lee Wells, and Paul Middendorf exhibit new collaborative works and installations.

Everyday there are topics which seem ignored or under represented by the media, such as the war, genocide, global warming and more. It is important to keep finding clues and links which would reveal new evidences on the reality we are living in. It is important to seek and redefine what constitutes the news as it seems to the mainstream media is fairly myopic (using censorship through omission) about what is really going on around us. The emergency room group will be replicating the idea of a set format, as the news media have which will be the base structure, image, the pictorial context of expression. Working to generate an iconic image, logo and memorable framework, the images will be disfigured or added to on a daily basis, creating a log, a trail, of emergency events. Fragments of paper, written notes, video, and performance will unfold a picture for the public. The transient and fast paced environment coupled with the premise of the installation is a great opportunity to experience a new form of artistic expression, experimenting and focusing intensely on the moment and the current pulse of the world.

Raphaele, Lee, and Paul are artists who are specializing in political critique, public interventions and collaborations. The triangle created between these artists will generate a dialogue, a smoke signal path, and a critical exchange related to what constitutes the news and how this can be expressed within this context. Varying in mediums used, alternating freely between live video, internet, performance, painting, photography and installation according the needs of the moment we will document everyday, each day at PS1. Using the fabric of the city as our palette of expression and source of news, bringing back to Emergency Room fragments of urgency and emergency. Emergency Room is a constantly evolving collaborative exhibition conceived and led by artist Thierry Geoffroy, a.k.a. Colonel.

Emergency Room is motivated by a desire to learn what other artists think about current affairs from varied international perspectives under strict time constraints. By providing a physical space in which artists can display works made in reaction to current events, Emergency Room takes the pulse of the artistic community today. On each day of the exhibition, artists will install new work in response to the events of the last 24 hours, an arrangement that recalls daily news cycles. The artworks stay on view until the next morning when they are moved to an adjacent archive space and replaced by new work.

Participating Artists: Jaishri Abichandani, Kamrooz Aram, Victor Ash, John Avelluto, Toby Barnes, Bill Beirne, Niels Bonde, Steven Day, Mike Estabrook, Frank Franzen, Charley Friedman, Nancy Friedmann, Deborah Grant, Jean de Piepape, Jens Haaning, Sophie Hjerl, Vandana Jain, Amy Kao, Lasse Lau, Shaun Leonardo, Peter Lind, Caroline Lund & Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen, Al Masson, Marc Mer, Paul Middendorf, Mac Premo, Lisi Raskin, Susanne Schuricht, Raphaele Shirley, Lisa Strömbeck, Henrick Vibskov, Lee Wells.

Biographies

Paul Middendorf is living and working in Portland, Oregon as an artist and curator. In 2000 Paul received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began launching his career as a painter. Currently Paul works as Director and Founder of Gallery Homeland. He has shown nationally and internationally, and most recently produced and performed in Scratching the Surface in Portland Or, Lifeboat-Miami for Art Basel's International Art Fair, Lifeboat-Hamptons for The Scope Art Fair, and was co-curator for Waterways, an Istanbul Biennale project. Paul is still an active artists and curator working across the globe. www.manifestartistry.com

Raphaele Shirley lives and works in NYC. She specializes in collaborative projects and Public Art installations and events. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in interventionist projects such as ³Waterways² and ³Two Continents and Beyond² in the Venice (2005) and Istanbul Biennales (2005) and has shown recently in the Art Basel Video Lounge curated by Michael Rush. She has co-created several experimental projects including PAM Perpetual Art Machine and The New York International Fringe Festival. She works in diverse mediums ranging from sculpture to photography, video and sound.

Lee Wells is an artist, exhibition organizer and consultant currently living and working New York. He has been exhibited internationally for over 10 years, including the 51st La Biennale Di Venezia, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinatti, Museo d'arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and most recently included in the Art Basel Miami Beach Video Lounge curated by Michael Rush. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, in addition to co-founding, [PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine. www.perpetualartmachine.com, Cinema-Scope director for Scope Art Fairs and site editor for www.rhizome.org at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Posted by jo at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

Meme: Romanticism

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5 Cinematic Productions

Meme: Romanticism :: Organized by Michele Thursz :: February 16, 2007- March 31, 2007 :: Opening Reception, February 16, 6:00-8:00 pm :: Gallery Hours: Wed. through Sat., 12-6 PM :: EFA Gallery, EFA Studio Center, 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018 (between 8th and 9th Avenues) :: Artists: Tobias Bernstrup, Jeremy Blake, Claudia Hart, Michelle Handelman, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, and Carlo Zanni.

Meme: Romanticism examines five artists' cinematic productions that utilize technological aesthetics, cultural symbolism, historic compositions, and narratives to expose the conceptual underpinning of Romanticism. The exhibition will be set up like a theater, with viewing times allocated by length of the video. The room will have a sound system and projection with seating for the viewer's comfort, so they may enjoy the works. The waiting area will be set up as a traditional gallery space with prints derived or inspired by the films, but still functioning as unique objects.

The exhibition includes the artist collaborative feature film Sugar and prints by Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley; Mantis City, a video and print by Tobias Bernstrup; Winchester Trilogy, videos and print by Jeremy Blake; The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success, an interactive video and prints Carlo Zanni; This Delicate Monster, video and prints by Michelle Handelman; and The Swing, 3-D animation and prints by Claudia Hart.

Romanticism as a movement emerged in the late 1700s. Artists took a stance against formal aesthetics to define art as a place for sentiment, nature, and the play of the imagination. This was an idea of art in which individuals shared their subjective realities with the public. Since that time, technologies of representation have advanced from still to moving images, from early cinema to Hollywood films to personal computers and the Internet. A social medium of representation unfolded with the capability to archive and to edit histories, identities, and geographies. These capabilities allow the public to participate in fantastic situations. Movies became popular because they reflect the dreams, fears, or fantasies of a mass public. The impact of Hollywood film and mass media is intriguing sociologically: How does consumer culture affect the personal? How does it effect the way people define their own identities?

Artists of the 50s and 60s started using the machinery of commercial culture to create and engage a broad public. This tendency was later identified as "Pop". Today's contemporary artist raises the ante of the Pop aesthetic by creating works that reflect our communal experiences. Communality is the key to the success of the movies and mass media; both use the tactic of bringing together a general consensus and the popular. The market and the media are based on the human need to shareempathy, opinion, and historymaking the media generative by the public and the media reflecting back and forth on each other.

In the contemporary art context these cinematic or communal works become the romantic concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. The exhibited works are cinematic and poetic by the nature of their production and their narratives. They reference historic compositions to create an emotional outlook on nature. These works are also a good index of the values and needs of our society because they are invested in our cultural life. In them the hierarchies and histories of art making is deconstructed and reapplied to these artists' craft and aesthetics, aligning theirs artistic intention with the ideas of romanticism.

Meme: Romanticism suggests that Romanticism was more than a formal movement of the past but successful in changing and adapting with the times and the exigencies of historyand with the needs contemporary art making.

Michele Thursz is an independent curator. Recently she has been appointed as the director of NY Projects, an international art advisory and production company. Her previous projects include Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and its effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. Thursz' recent curatorial projects include Thread, Wood Street Gallery, Pattern: Modernism as Mediator, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, Cine-O-matic, The New Museum, public.exe: Public Execution, Exit Art, NYC, and Democracy is Fun, White Box, NYC. Contact: michele.thursz[at]gmail.com

This exhibition is presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. With additional support from The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and Carnegie Corporation Inc. and many generous individuals.

The EFA Gallery is a curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist's creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.

DAILY SCREENINGS, Wednesday through Saturday:

Winchester Trilogy: 12PM, 2PM
Mantis City: 1PM, 3PM
This Delicate Monster: 1:30PM, 3:30
Folly & Error: 1:40PM: 3:40
The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success: 1:50, 3:45PM
Sugar: 4-6PM

The Swing and the prints are in the main gallery.

ROUGH DRAFT OF VIDEO SYNOPSISESavailable at meme-romanticism.blogspot.com

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
elaine[at]efa1.org

Posted by jo at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2007

iSummit 2007

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Call for Artists in Residence

Artists in Residence program launched for iSummit '07

At this year's Summit (Dubrovnik, Croatia: 15-17 June, 2007), iCommons will be launching a new and improved Artist in Residence program, based on the success of last year's undertakings by Nathaniel Stern, the Artist in Residence at the iSummit 2006. This year's program will be bigger and better – we'll be expanding the program to include more artists, more collaboration and a dual exhibition – in a physical space at the art workshop, Lazareti and in a virtual gallery in Second Life.

Essential to the success of the program is, believe it our not – you. We would like you to suggest an artist from your country, whom we will consider when awarding the residency. Or even better, if you are an artists, don't be shy, add your name too. All you need to do is go here and add an artist's name.

Based on the suggestions from the community, we'll be picking two artists from the Croatian region and three international artists to participate in the residency. We're looking for artists who produce both in the physical and digital world; individuals who engage with copyright in some way - either by using Creative Commons licenced content as their inspiration, or by licencing their work under CC; or artists who simply challenge the boundaries of copyright law.

During the residency, the artists will be exploring different themes around what it means to be an artist creating in a digital world. The following topics will be investigated during the residency, and a workshop will be run by the artists at the Summit, based on the following themes:

• Different working modes: how do artists work with open content in their medium?
• Different presentation methods: what is the archival value of art made available online?
• Sustainability models: how do artists embrace 'copyleft' but still manage to pay the rent?

Nathaniel Stern will be coordinating the artists in their conceptual journey. The residency will officially start two to three weeks before the Summit, as a 'virtual' residency over e-mail or chat, when all the artists will start conceptualising and discussing these themes. The artists will arrive in Dubrovnik one week before the start of the Summit, so as to begin the hands-on work of creating their masterpieces.

The deadline for suggestions on potential participants for the Artists in Residence program is Monday 12 February.

Assistant to the Executive Director: iCommons
+27 11 327 3155/3201 (Office)
Skype/Aim: danielafaris

Posted by jo at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

The Future of Electronic Literature

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Invitation to Attend

The Future of Electronic Literature: A Symposium of the Electronic Literature Organization and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) :: Keynote speakers Kenneth Thibodeau (NARA) and N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA) :: Thursday, May 3 :: McKeldin Library, Special Events Room (room 6137), University of Maryland, College Park :: co-sponsored by the University Libraries, Department of English, and Human-Computer Interaction Lab. $20 (plus lunch) for those who are not affiliated with either the ELO or the University of Maryland.

Participants: Sandy Baldwin (West Virginia University), Laura Borras Castanayer (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain), helen DeVinney (University of Maryland), Neil Fraistat (University of Maryland), Bertrand Gervais (Université du Québec à Montréal), Juan B. Gutierrez (Flordia State University), N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA), Rob Kendall (Independent Writer and Scholar), Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland), Margie Luesebrink, aka M.D. Coverley (Irvine Valley College), Mark Marino (University of Southern California), Talan Memmott (Indepenent Writer and Scholar), Nick Montfort (University of Pennsylvania), Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen), Susan Schreibman (University of Maryland), Stephanie Strickland (Independent Writer and Scholar), Thom Swiss (University of Minnesota), Joe Tabbi (University of Illinois-Chicago), Kenneth Thibodeau (National Archives and Records Administration), Jill Walker (University of Bergen), Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD).

Registration and additional information: http://www.mith2.umd.edu/elo2007/

Open Mic/Mouse: There will be an open mic/mouse on the evening of Wednesday, May 2, starting at 6:15 in Art/Soc 2203. Many of the symposium attendees will be reading/performing from their current and favorite works of electronic literature, and everyone will be welcome to take a turn at the mic/mouse. A great way way to encounter this exciting body of writing for the first time. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Further information: helen DeVinney, Managing Director, ELO hdevinney[at]gmail.com or (301) 314-6545. Press contact: Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Director, MITH: mgk[at]umd.edu or 301-405-8505.

Posted by jo at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

The > I4 < International Conference

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Interactivity / Information / Interfaces / Immersion

I4: Interactivity / Information / Interfaces / Immersion :: International Research Conference, J W Goethe University, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology :: Organized by the Research Network for Media Anthropology / FAME, Frankfurt :: October 24–26, 2007.

Even before the emergence of social software, web logs and wikis, it was clear that digital communication technologies are, in essence, complex social software programs with the power to change people’s perception, the way people experience their environment, their ability to abstract, their rules of trust, and much more besides. Whereas the 1980s and 1990s were marked by “quasi-social” connections between people that occurred en passant, by strategies of urban artistic “repurposing” (Digital Amsterdam), by a conspiracy of Internet-using consumers, and by a user-based cyber society, the situation has now changed fundamentally.

There has been a shift from technology-driven systems to media-driven systems and then to user/project-generated content. As the empiricism of the artificial becomes a global given, social, cultural, economic and political frames of reference are shifting. Countless new and unparalleled means of modeling social factors are emerging within a mesh of agencies around the world. Digital natives – those who have grown up with computer and internet applications – have spawned a societal and cultural paradigm shift. Societal and cultural geography is being extended by a global scenography of cultural artifacts. However, this raises important issues concerning the logic of the continuity of interaction, of a reliable and sustained presence, of adaptive learning and abstraction – issues that have become social markers in the programming, utilization, and onward development of applications, platforms and environments.

Increasingly, today’s designs and programs for digital worlds face the challenge of delivering complex, multisensory, transcultural, and global interaction capabilities in a robust technology-based environment. The changes are creating a need for the explicit modeling of human collaboration and cultural interaction which, increasingly, is causing software production to move out of the high-tech niche of computer science and media design into the realm of cultural and social anthropology. At the same time, there is a growing need to know more about the logic of construction (v. Glaserfeld) of culture and to be able to apply that knowledge. The need for explicit and programmable cultural concepts is moving closer to the science of the artificial as proposed by Herbert A. Simon and echoes Norbert Elias’s call for the scientific presentation of a developmental theory of abstraction.

Clearly, it would be wrong to assume that explicit, programmed models for collaboration, the creation of cultures, abstraction and artificial environments can eradicate the complexities of chance relationships, interaction, imagination, fiction, routine, or forgetfulness. Nonetheless, the possibilities they offer will be changed fundamentally by the emergence of programmed worlds and environments. All over the globe, artificial cybernetic spaces are something now taken for granted. Computer technology is designed to be ubiquitous, and the direct control of computers by means of brain waves is supplanting control by means of a pointing device or the human eye. Presence and telepresence, key concepts in earlier research, are receding into the background with the advent of computer technologies which can be inserted under the skin, into clothing, and into the eyes and ears or can generate realities in their own right without which the frames of reference of today’s and tomorrow’s realities will become meaningless. Ten years ago, S. Jones asked, “Where are we when we are online?” and J. Meyrowitz noted “being elsewhere.” Electronic games, e-sports, and around a billion people working in countless local area networks all exist in a vireality (M. Klein). What are the living, communication and working circumstances in these virealities? How should virtual spaces be designed in order to provide sufficiently complex environments for perception, design, decision-making, routine, trust, etc.? 

The > I4 < International Conference addresses the emergence of complex collaboration and community software.

We assume that all human sensory and mental capabilities and the ability to abstract, conceive and implement things are, and have been, involved in the development of human ability to use media.

The concept of media encompasses perception, abstraction, storage, rules for the retention of information – of texts and holytexts, the great sagas, manifestations of cultural memory – and progression beyond existing knowledge paradigms. It is impossible to determine how perception and interaction will impact on media, either qualitatively or quantitatively. If the notion of a uniting organization is seen as a selection method or principle, the weight of these ideas becomes clear. They show that every form of interactive reciprocity is a selector and that the uniting force of interactivity lies in the definition of selection, distribution and retention criteria. This applies to methods of hearing, reading, writing, tasting, thinking, making music, and much more besides.

Increasingly, we expect and demand more from media – more information, more breadth of choice, more freedom of choice, more world, more closeness, more entertainment, more biography, more community: We want media to address us, entertain us, inform us. This is about more than consuming media. Our sense of reality has long since been subsumed into a sense of media; our sense of reality is embodied in our sense of media. We take the world presented through media seriously, we recognize the reality of information; we trust the information and the rules that make it credible.

The conference will be devoted to questions surrounding digital environments and the technology-based generation of cultural patterns in four areas: Interactivity / Information / Interfaces / Immersion. We invite submissions which explore these issues and offer answers to such questions as:

What connections can we currently identify between software development and cultural evolution? What significance can be attached to co-evolutionary processes in perception, abstraction, forms of virtualization, digital technologies and communication capabilities? What kinds of virtual spaces are developing? How are digital communication spaces influencing urbanization processes and the architecture of buildings? What significance does game software have in creating new social and cultural contexts? What kinds of cooperative and collaborative processes are developing? What are the defining properties of an explicit model of social constructs in a technology-based media environment? How are means of digital communication influencing children’s and adults’ living spaces and interior architecture? How can a transition from the idiocy of the masses and the knowledge of the crowd into a knowledge-generating virtual community be explained? Can we see signs of an emerging virtual civilization? How will network-integrated community building be important in the future? How are learning and the structure and legitimation of knowledge changing?

Please submit ideas for topics and papers (500 words max.) by March 31, 2007

Initiators and contacts:

Prof. Manfred Faßler
FAME – Frankfurt/ Research Network for Media Anthropology, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology J W. Goethe University fasslermanfred[at]aol.com

Dr. Mark Mattingley-Scott
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology
J W. Goethe University
scott[at]de.ibm.com

Posted by jo at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

After convergence, what connects?

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Call for papers

:: fibreculture :: has established itself as Australasia's leading forum for discussion of internet theory, culture, and research. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that explores the issues and ideas of concern and interest to both the Fibreculture network and wider social formations. Papers are invited for the 'After convergence' issue of the Fibreculture Journal, to be published early in 2008. Guest editors are Caroline Bassett (Sussex, UK), Maren Hartmann (Bremen, Germany) and Kate O'Riordan (Lancaster/Sussex, UK).

Everything that arises does not converge. A more variegated landscape emerges as processes of digitalization, crystallizations of an intrinsically technological-social, continue re-shaping cultures and re-working societies, not in their image, but into something new. It is increasingly obvious that there is no digital behemoth, no single form, no single function, no New World Order. Rather a series of reconfigurations, reformulations, new functions, new contents, new spaces, new grounds, new uses, have emerged and are emerging within global media networks.

There are guidelines for the format and submission of contributions at http://journal.fibreculture.org. These guidelines need to be followed in all cases. Contributions should be sent electronically, as word attachments, to: Guest editors: Caroline Bassett (c.bassett[at]sussex.ac.uk), Maren Hartmann (maren.hartmann[at]uni-bremen.de), Kate O'Riordan (k.oriordan[at]lancaster.ac.uk).

In response to the (not unexpected) non-arrival of the unifying beast, which is to say in response to the perceived exhaustion of convergence (or the re-definition of its limits), new disciplinary islands are being declared with 'keep out' and 'invented here' signs all over their beaches. In other words there has been a balkanization of techno-cultural investigation. Thus gaming scholars define themselves against internet scholars, or film scholars, locatives stand distinct from screeners. Particular groups of sub-specialists claim particular modes of inquiry: ethnographers for everyday life, speculative theory for digital art, for instance. Indeed, entire vocabularies, originally invoked in a spirit of general experimentation, are now corralled, restricted and defended by particular groups. If these vocabularies often seize up in the process, refusing to say more than they were meant to say, and in particular refusing the unorthodox connections between the empirical and the speculative, the possible and the desirable, that gave them their energy in the first place, nobody seems to notice.

So, there is no behemoth. At the same time we insist that connections are produced and so a question we consider worth addressing is not what unites digital forms as one, but what connects them together as many. Further we want to explore how these connections are made. We are less interested in doing that through mainstreaming a particular critical approach (which is to say drawing different areas back under one critical umbrella, making that the connection), than we are in trying to think about exploring/defining/critiquing some of the shared characteristics of different digital media formations. We believe that despite the exhaustion of convergence metaphors, and the rise of disciplinary sub-divisions, these connections remain crucial.

Papers addressing but not limited to the following topics are welcome:

* Media/Medium Theory
* Difference between and specificity of New Media forms
* Issues, Limits, Problems of Convergence.
* Re-thinking the vocabulary of Affect/Emotion/Perception
* Histories of New Media Theory
* 'Technology and Cultural Form' revisited?
* Methodologies

Deadlines:

* 250 word abstracts: due February 28th 2007
* Completed Paper: due September 30th 2007
* Expected Publication: February 28th 2008.

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

February 08, 2007

Digital Art Weeks 2007

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THE CITY AS AN INSTRUMENT

THE CITY AS AN INSTRUMENT: The call concerns itself with the use of the city as an expressive instrument or place of artistic practice. This may vary from art whose subject is the city to art, which is actually performed in a city. Special attention is given to telematic art practices in which activities within the city bring about changes and responses at another open or closed space.

Interactivity may take place between the open and closed space in equal relationship, but in many projects in this area the activities often take place within the open space, (City Streets, a Park, Parking Lot, Public Building) and "consumed" in the closed space (Movie theater, Gallery, Living Room, Bar, Toilets)

CALL: The Digital Art Weeks 2007 invites Artists to submit proposals for open public spaces. We are seeking works that use any form of networking that either connects performers within the space used or connects them in some form between spaces used.

DEADLINE: Friday, 2nd March 2007._Notification of acceptance of proposals will
be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007. For more information regarding the call please write to: daw-perfs[at]inf.ethz.ch or http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch

Posted by jo at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Art Weeks 07

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B.I.O.: To Be the Input or the Output is the Question

B.I.O.: To Be the Input or the Output is the Question: In the popular sci-fi film The Matrix, the human being is reduced to a copper-top battery with an output of 1.5 volts. In regard, tapping the human body as an output has become an interesting way to "power up" performance and stage presence in the electronic music and new media art genres.

Creating controllers that respond to brainwaves, galvanic response and heart rate have brought us innovations in creating and performing art with voluntary and with an involuntary signals. The performers activities on stage are therefore expanded and at the same time ironically reduced to near non-activity on stage. Further, using biofeedback brings the artist into the realm of using the human body as an input whose output is clearly linked.

The DAW07 invites artists to submit work that concentrates on the use of sensors systems that take their inputs from the human body and whose outputs are then transmapped to audio or video sources. Any type of interface that is designed to use human body signals to control outside sources and artworks that use such transmapping falls into the call's profile.

DEADLINE: Friday, 2nd March 2007. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, 2nd April 2007. For more information regarding the call please write to: daw-perfs[at]inf.ethz.ch or Digital Art Weeks 07.

Posted by jo at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2007

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem

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On Sound 2

Upgrade! Tel Aviv-Jerusalem :: February 13, 2007, 8:00 pm :: Barbur, Shirizli st. 6, Nachlaot, Jerusalem :: Free Entrance On Sound 2: Two presentations: Tom Tlalim (IL/NL): "Quantasonic" (Tlalim / Johansons) >> Live Performance >> Eran Sachs: "Critical Narrative and the Semantics of Sound Installations" (IL).

Tom Tlalim - computer musician, composer and improviser. Created unconventional musical structures, explores noise overdrive and feedback in the digital domain. He holds MA from the Royal conservatory of The Hague, the Netherlands, where he lives and works since 2000. Tlalim has performed extensively in Europe and outside of it, among others at ResonanceFM (UK), Huddersfield contemporary music festival (UK), Piksel FLOSS event (NO), BimHuis(NL), Night of the unexpected (Paradiso, NL), State-X new forms (NL), Gaudeamus live electronic festival (NL), Audio Art Festival (PL), Int. Oud festival (IL), Cerkno jazz festival (SLO).

He co-curates events in collaboration with POW ensemble, TAG, Noisecape festival, Edits and presents UCON - a radio show together with Jan Truetzschler radio.sampleandhold.org, Tlalim has collaborated with many artist and musicians including Joseph Bowie, father of the funk-noise combo Defunkt, DJ DNA of the Urban Dance Squad, composer and sonologist Richard Barrett, noise artist Gilles Aubry, visual/sound artists Voldemars Johansons, Joost Nieuwenburg, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, turntablist Takuro Mitsuta Lippit a.k.a DJ sniff, dutch improviser Luc Houtkamp and others.

Quantasonic: development of the installation by Voldemars Johansons and Tom Tlalim: a performance and composition environment for organization of audiovisual processes using n-dimensional space as a control metaphor. The environment introduces a novel approach to control over masses of data deriving from granular synthesis concept, according to which all matter, including sound and light, comprises of particle motion in space. This concept is applied to abstract data structures which are interpreted as particles in a multidimentional space and rendered as sound and image. The process results in a dynamic audiovisual landscape in which the spectator is invited to experience an immersive data field.

Space is a basic concept and entity used in the QS environment due to its familiarity to human perception largely by visual means. Any organization of matter in a space, physical or virtual, complex or simple, can instantly be recognized as a structure or form (abstraction process), thus greatly reducing the number of parameters involved in the perceptual process.

Within the framework of the project, we are aiming to develop an audiovisual installation that summarizes our recent experimentation and discoveries in using information structures as source for synchronous visual and acoustic content. Based on the notion of space, sound, and vision as the basic essential domains that constitute human understanding and perception, we are searching for ways to present anonymous data structures and place them within the context of audiovisual space.

Performance: “Impulse - stretch - feedback – resonance” :: 15'-20' long :: Tom Tlalim – Computer, Microphone, pedals:

The piece draws influence from gestalt ideas regarding perception, pattern recognition within etc. Physical/practical processes related to the performance techniqe, decision-making and the various limitations of the instrument, make the raw material to be transformed during the structure of the piece.

Eran Sachs: Critical Narrative and the Semantics of Sound Installations" :: Eran Sachs works as composer, improviser, sound-artist and curator in Jerusalem. As an improviser Sachs has collaborated with Oren Ambarchi, Thomas Koener, Marc Behrens, Achim Wollscheid, @c and many others, mainly playing his self-developed system, the No-Input-Mixer, which he has been playing since 1998. He plays this machine regularily in the Doom-Dub-Noise outfit Lietterschpich and John Zorn's "Cobra" improvising ensemble in Israel. He has presented his works and compositions in such festivals as Sonorities (Belfast), Transmediale (Berlin) and Theaterformen (Hannover), as well as spaces and platforms such as Sonic Square (Brusseles), Podewil (Berlin), Melkweg (Amsterdam), Israeli Cinemateques, Kulturbunker (Cologne), Muffathalle (Munich), Sonic Process, Heara and many others. His work "Studio" with sculptor Eytan Ronel was awarded the Excellence Award by the NY International Fringe Festival.

Sachs is also has collaborated extensively with sound artist Sebastian Meissner (Klimek, Random INC.), with whom he has recently released “Into The Void” (on Sub Rosa), a reflection on the old abandonded Jewish quarter Kazimierz in the city of Krakow. His works have been released on Mille Plateaux and Sub-Rosa, as well as various labels in Israel. As a sound-artist his works tend fuse the sonic with the political, as in the case of "Yannun Yannun", which portrays the harrasment of Palestinian villagers by fanatic right-wing settlers. He founded and managed the Yad-Vashem bookstore - the only holocaust dedicated bookstore in Israel.

Posted by jo at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2007

Dorkbot Second Life

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Wirxli Flimflam and Ian Ah

Finally! The first dorkbot meeting in-world can be announced: It will take place on Sunday 18th February at 2-3 PM PST (LA, East Coast North America) = 5-6 pm EST (NY, West Coast North America) = 11-12 pm CET (Berlin, Europe) = 7 - 8 AM (19th) (Tokyo). I am very looking forward to it, as Wirxli Flimflam aka Jeremy Turner from Second Front and Ian Ah Canadian artist and thinker have confirmed to take part at this little historical event.

Both are quite experienced with art (not design) and culture in Second Life so I am sure it will be a nice talk. We will first gather at my place (rhizomatic in SL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sand/177/16/151) and then move further to Ian Ah’s special movie screening lounge which is on Sugar Mountain (Odyssey Island).

Further readings:

http://rhizomatic.wordpress.com/
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsl/
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009304.php

Best and I hope I will see ur avatars there!

Shintaro Miyazaki aka Maximillian Nakamura

Posted by jo at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

Sarai Presentation

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The Scalable City by Sheldon Brown

The Scalable City: An Artist's Presentation by Sheldon Brown :: 4:30 P.M., Wednesday, 7 February 2007 :: Seminar-Room, Sarai-CSDS, 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines.

Sheldon Brown, Director of the Center of Research in Computing and the Arts and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego, will discuss and demonstrate his current project - The Scalable City. The Scalable City is an interactive extrapolation of the cultural condition arising from the interaction of users, data and algorithms. As our world becomes increasingly characterized by this equation, we find ourselves inhabiting the artifacts of these relationships. The Scalable City generates its urban environment via the choreography of these artifacts.

Brown's work in general examines the relationships between mediated and physical experiences. This work often exists across a range of public realms.

The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054. Info: dak[at]sarai.net. Directions to Sarai: We are ten minutes from Delhi University. Nearest bus stop: IP college or Exchange Stores. See Calendar and Newsletter online:

Posted by jo at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Skopje

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Generative Art Lecture

Upgrade! Skopje: Generative Art Lecture [as part of the BaseLine programme] :: Lecturer: Goran Kocov (MK) :: Thursday, February 8, 2007, 8:00 pm :: press to exit project space :: Curators: Elena Veljanovska and Antonio Dimitrov :: organization: Line I+M [initiative and movement].

After the lecture, there will be a presentation of the works made at the Generative art workshop, held from 26-28.01.2007 in Skopje. This event is part of the OFF program of the project Consumer vs. user*, which Line initiative and movement will develop in next 6 months.

The lecture will follow the tendencies of generative art from the very beginning, through minimalism influences, kinetic art, geometrical abstraction, abstract expressionism and the most of all conceptual art and it's representatives Hans Hacke and Sol Le Vit. Works, or maybe more important, tools created by John Maeda, Casey Reas or Benjamin Frey, are great examples for the magical connection of complexity and simplicity, interaction and automatization, the moving spirit of zero's and one's. Actually, very often, the work of generative art is toll by itself, capable of self realization through a kind of Hofstadter's magical circle. Further on, to complete a wider picture of the generative art and it's different way of approach and creation, Kocov will present the work and achievements of Tomas Briks, Tom Harden, Theo Bart etc.

After the lecture, the follow up will be the presentation of the works created during the three day workshop, that was held in Skopje, at the end of the last month. The workshop was divided in two main parts, theoretical and practical. In the first part, participants had lecture about the origin of Generative art. In the second- practical part, they were introduced in the program Processing, and it's practical use, in which they acquire experience and created it's own works.

Goran Kocov is born 1977 in Skopje. Studies at the university "Cyril and Metodius", in the department of history of art and archaeology. During the studies, he slowly forms the basics of his work in the wonderful connection of digital technology, art and Information Technology. In the same period, concentrated on the music production with software tools, publishes two compositions on music compilations "Macidonia 999" and "Macidonia 2000". Also works as a sound engineer on various TV, radio and movie projects, like "The Judge" from Zaneta Vangeli. As the time passes, visual arts join the sound art and music as his primer interest, and from the Information Technology free software and programming play the bigger role in his creative life. In the new millennium, he works as a programmer, beta-tester and consultant on various personal, commercial and non- commercial projects, all connected with audio/video software, collaborating, among the others with the software giant NVidia.

In the studio "Dream factory" works 3D modeling and animation, video design and compositing. Also he has previous experience as an editor of the movie pages of the magazines: Student's word and Urban magazine. In 2004, had lecture at the Faculty of natural sciences, Skopje entitled "Hollywood freeware". At this moment he is working as technical director in the studio for visual effects "Vertigo", where he just finished the visual effects of the Macedonian movie "Papokot na svetot".

Consumer vs. user* is a six months course that will include lecturers from Macedonia and Europe (United Kingdom, France and Italy). The seven lecturers participating in this project have a previous professional and theoretical background and practical expertise in the area in question.

The main goal is to educate a group of young creative people that are interested in learning in the fields of new media art: history of sound art and hardware; and technology: how to use open source tools, production, publishing/internet publishing, radio technology and VJ- ing. The workshops together will accomplish the basic knowledge and offer a practical usage and sustainability of the young future artists.

Consumer vs. user includes six workshops in a period of six months. The duration of these workshops can vary from 1 to 3 days. Here, besides the basic theoretical presentation, the participants will be involved in series of practical activities in an adequate environment and with adequate equipment.

Consumer vs. User OFF program consists of 6 events that will take place after each workshop. The aim of these events is to present the ideas to a wider audience, in order to develop their knowledge and get more familiar with the whole terminology of new media art.

1. Generative art ::: lecturer: Goran Kocov (MK) ::: duration: 3 days ::: date: 26-28 January 2007 :::

2. Sul Suono [about sound] ::: lecturer: Enrico Glerean (IT/UK) ::: duration: 3 days ::: date: 23-25 February 2007 :::

3. Analog synthesis ::: lecturer: Vlatko Kaevski ::: duration: 1 day ::: date: 30 March 2007 :::

4. Record labeling ::: lecturers: Dave Howell (UK) and Philippe Petit (FR) ::: duration: 2 days :::date: 28-29 April 2007 :::

5. Video world ::: lecturer: Marija Bozinovska ::: duration: 3 days ::: date: 25-26-27 May 2007 :::

6. Radio city ::: lecturer: Antonio Dimitrov (MK) ::: duration: 2 days ::: date: 22-23-24 June 2007 :::

*The name of the project is adopted from the Andrew Duke concept Consumer vs. User

This project is supported by: Swiss cultural programme, Macedonia- Pro Helvetia

Upgrade! Skopje is 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 kind 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 to each kind of events, building different type of audience for each of them, 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 his 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 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

The 21st Annual Conference of the SLSA

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Call for Papers and Proposals

CODE: The 21st Annual Conference of the SLSA (Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts) :: Nov. 1-4, 2007 :: Portland, Maine (USA) :: Call for Papers and Proposals :: Proposal Deadline: March 15, 2007 :: Topic: CODE.

Plenary Speakers: N. Katherine Hayles, UCLA; Brian Massumi, Université de Montréal :: Biological and algorithmic, protector of secrets and porthole to mysteries, universal and singular, code is an invitation to thought. Code can be “wet” (genetic, organic, human), “dry” (digital, mathematical, logical), something in-between, neither, or both (linguistic, symbolic, religious, moral, legal). Code is the meeting ground of strange bedfellows, the cipherer and decipherer, the domain of law and its subversion, communication and privacy. Code is about patterns, sequences, systems, translations, substitutions. It can bind, trick, and free. Modern technologies are affording us more and more keys to unlock nature’s code and more opportunities to manipulate it.

We welcome paper and panel submissions that explore any type / aspect / nature / culture of code in any period of history. Also welcome are submissions on any aspect of science's relationship with literature and the arts, including ones presented in nontraditional formats (such as film/video, performance, music, or visual art).

For more information, please see http://www.slsa07.com/

From the Organizer:

Artist presentations are most welcome, although they need to be part of a panel and the artist is asked to discuss his or her work for about 15 mins. Each panel has 3-4 presenters, who each present for about 15 mins, and then there are 15 mins for Q&A. So, we would need a brief proposal (250 words) and a title from each person; or a proposal for a panel (150 words) with title: http://www.slsa07.com/callforpapers.html; or a completed panel (150 word description) and the names of the participants and the titles of the presentations.

We will have 3 rooms in the hotel dedicated to displaying the artworks of participants on the panels. One room will have 2D and 3D art, one will have digital art, and one will have sound art. Here's the link describing these rooms and the submission requirements.

We will also have a book exhibit.

Posted by jo at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2007

NOEMA

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IDEAS

Identity, Transformation, and Digital Languages: a conversation with Ali Zaidi Antonio Pizzo: Motiroti is a London based international arts organisation founded by Ali Zaidi and Keith Khan in 1996. Zaidi describes himself as Indian by birth, Pakistani by migration and British by chance. Together with his art companion, he has been working with traditional art craft and new digital media in public events and performance. They have growth steadily during the years, and they were commissioned the Commonwealth Section of the Queen's Jubilee Parade in London on 2002. Now they are a well know art organization and, after Khan left, Ali Zaidi is the only artistic director. His work has always being about identity and cultural displacement, confronting a world that struggle against globalisation and homologation. The way he approaches art blurs the boundaries between films, theatre, performance, and it rather focuses on the communality of the experience. Most of the time he makes a heavy use of digital technology, bringing out what one could call digital communal performance.

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The Creative Common Misunderstanding by Florian Cramer: Whatever stance one may adopt, the name "Creative Commons" is misleading because it doesn't create a commons at all. A picture released, for example, under the Attribution-ShareAlike license cannot legally be integrated into a video released under the Attribution-NonCommercial license, audio published under the Sampling License can't be used on its soundtrack. Such incompatible license terms put what is supposed to be "free content" or "free information" back to square one, that is, the default restrictions of copyright - hardly that what Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons, could have meant with "free culture" and "read-write culture" as opposed to "read-only culture." In his blog entry "Creative Commons Is Broken," Alex Bosworth, program manager at the open source company SourceLabs, points out that "of eight million photos" posted under a CC license on Flickr.com "less than a fifth allow free remixing of content under terms similar to an open source license. More than a third don't allow any modifications at all."

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Ready for Action by Jordan Crandall: We have a critical vocabulary to understand the power of media in terms of its ideological effects. Yet we lack a vocabulary to understand the power of media otherwise: that is, in terms of its ability to transmit affects. During at least the last forty years, criticism has focused on the social and cultural construction of knowledge. It has directed attention toward the conditions that make meaning possible. It has been useful for debunking beliefs, powers, illusions, essentialist truths. But for the reasons pointed out here, it only gives us half the picture: the world of form, rather than that of force. Language, rather than readiness. Speech, but not the screech. How, then, can we expand the language of cultural analysis in order to account for this affective dimension of readiness? And, further, how can we use this orientation to generate a reinvigorated, performative politics? Might we speak of an “affective critique”? Or is the term “critique” no longer useful at all?

Posted by jo at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2007

The Garthwaite Center for Science and Art

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Call for Work and Proposals

As this call for submissions goes to press, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. (NOAA) announced 2006 was the warmest year on record for the U.S. The Cambridge School of Weston will open its doors to The Garthwaite Center for Science and Art, a sustainable science building and art gallery, in the fall of 2007.

For the building's first exhibition season, we are reaching out to artists and scientists alike who explore issues and themes related to global warming. The exhibition will run from November 2007 through the first week of February 2008. Further details will be announced. All media will be considered; however, large work may not be able to be accommodated.

In addition to exhibiting works of contemporary art and science, we also invite proposals from individuals who would be willing to partake in a symposium on global warming, or otherwise are willing to work with our students in some capacity. Submissions should include examples of work via slides or digital media, a resume, along with any appropriate written proposal or documentation.

Please include a S.A.S.E., for the eventual return of materials, and contact information. Do not send large files digitally at this point. Send all materials to Todd Bartel, The Cambridge School of Weston, 45 Georgian Road, Weston, MA, 02493. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2007. For questions please contact tbartel[at]csw.org

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

UpStage: a web-based venue for live online performance

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Open Walk-Through

The UpStage team have had a good holiday and are now ready to launch into what will be a busy six months. The launch of UpStage 2 is scheduled for the first week of July and we are planning a festival of performances in UpStage to mark the occasion. More on this to come, but if you are interested in the idea of creating a short performance for the festival, start thinking about it now and come along to the open sessions to learn about the new features.

The first open walk-through for 2007 will be this coming Wednesday, 7 February at 9pm, NZ time. Convert to your local time here. We will be on the Swaray stage, so audience members should come directly to http://upstage.org.nz:8084/stages/swaray; if you'd like to log in and participate as a player, you must email me for a log-in as we need to make sure you aren't all trying to use the same guest log-in. Then you can log in at http://upstage.org.nz:8084/.

We are now using the alpha version of UpStage 2, so you can experience the new features and enhanced interface (and help us identify bugs - this is the ALPHA version after all!).

helen varley jamieson
UpStage project manager
helen[at]upstage.org.nz
UpStage: a web-based venue for live online performance

Posted by jo at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2007

Shall These Bits Live?

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A Trip Report from New Media and Social Memory

"The title here plays on an old essay of Jerome McGann’s, “Shall These Bones Live?” In a more recent publication he delineates what he terms “the scholar’s art” : “Scholarship is a service vocation. Not only are Sappho and Shakespeare primary, irreducible concerns for the scholar, so is any least part of our cultural inheritance that might call for attention. And to the scholarly mind, every smallest datum of that inheritance has a right to make its call. When the call is heard, the scholar is obliged to answer it accurately, meticulously, candidly, thoroughly” (ix). Last week I spent two days in Berkeley, attending the New Media and Social Memory symposium and associated project meetings at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, sponsored by the NEA-funded Archiving the Avant-Garde project, part of the Variable Media Network. The central problem addressed by the symposium was the documentation, preservation, and recreation of digital, or more precisely variable works of art—works, in other words, not embodied exclusively in physical artifacts, but which are either digital and therefore possessed of a logical ontology separate and distinct from the work’s instantiation in any one particular hardware system, or digital and physical hybrids. What follows is something of a trip report, based on my notes, and also a little of my own thinking about the scholar’s art in a world where bits, not fossilized artifacts, are increasingly the basis of inherited cultural data.

The program was held in the theater at BAM/PFA. It’s a nice space, but power outlets were in conspicuous short supply—I was lucky enough to have gotten there early and so I camped the only one I could find, which was down near the front of the room. By the time things got underway a little after 10:00 I’d guess there were 60-70 people in the room. More arrived over the course of the day. The first keynote was Stewart Brand, introduced by WIRED’s Jane Metcalfe (who described the preservation problem as how to derive a collectible artifact from variable media art). Brand, of course, is one of the old-time West coast digeratti, speaking here in his capacity as guiding light of the Long Now Foundation, best known for projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock and the Rosetta Project. Brand mentioned the origin of his own interest in digital preservation as the Getty-funded Time and Bits meeting, held back in 1998, pointing out that ten years from now we’ll surely still be meeting to address these same questions (a throwaway line, but to me raising the interesting question not just of how much practical progress has been made, but how stable or contiguous our underlying conception of the preservation task has actually been). Brand then proceeded to reread a paper entitled “Creating Creating,” originally delivered in 1992 at the Passadena Cyberarts festival, a tactical choice intended to make the point that the more things change the more they stay the same. In the paper, he characterized new media art as a movement with “no tradition, no masters” (I’d take issue with that); he said that play looks like invention, and that the artist can catch a “free ride on novelty of medium.” The flip side of this is that the cutting edge is “all blade, no handle”; that is, artistic identity is constantly at risk of being subsumed and consumed by technology (the example here was Steve Benton and other artists at the MIT Media Lab, names mostly now forgotten, who pioneered white light holography, the ubiquitous technique found on credit cards and other mass-produced media). Brand then discussed a couple of examples of digital preservation, such as Spacewar! which one can play either on a working PDP-1 one at the Computer History Museum (a unique artifact, and akin to traveling to a distant archive to view a manuscript or original artwork) or via emulation software at various sites around the Web (such as this one). His point was that the latter was far more practical and achievable. (This marked the earliest manifestation of what was to become a fairly consistent theme throughout the day, namely that preservation consists in saving software, code, and logical structures or behaviors, while hardware is expendable. I understand the basis for this argument, but I would want to insist that playing Spacewar! on the PDP-1 exposes the user to material affordances that have vanished in the Web-based emulations of the game. Which is not to say that the emulations aren’t useful and desirable, only that preservation is a spectrum of activities with no one solution ever being entirely adequate.) In the same vein, he mentioned Jaron Lanier’s failed attempts to reconstitute his Commodore-64 game “Moondust” using original hardware, and the work’s subsequent availability in emulation; he did not, however, mention a coda to that story which I’ve heard repeated several times, namely that the emulation initially got the timing of the game wrong, resulting in a much faster pace of play on modern processors and leading Lanier to exclaim “That’s not my game at all!” To the question of why bother to preserve new media art, Brand concluded “it’s hard, and so it’s worth trying; and if you fail, it’s only art.” I have to admit I like that.

Next up was a panel featuring Brand along with Kevin Kelly (WIRED) and Jon Ippolito (an artist and formerly a curator at the Guggenheim, now at the University of Maine). Ippolito kicked things off with remarks and slides covering a range of points about the preservation enterprise. Storage, according to Ippolito, is the canonical way of preserving things in the art world; that is, you put things in a climate controlled box. Museums, built of stone, reify the assumptions at the heart of their cultural mission: safety, stability, solidity, and stolidity. But what if we looked at change not as an obstacle to survival, but as a means of survival? What if what we valued was not the material stuff of art, but its experience? Such a perspective may sound strange, but Ippolito pointed out the oldest and most enduring works of art we “possess” (if that’s the word) are performances (ritual, dance), not artifacts. To that end he offered the example of the Seeing Double, a 2004 exhibition at the Guggenheim, which paired “original” works of art with their simultaneous and parallel recreations. A second example is provided by the “renewal” of the Erl King, an early interactive video work (1982) still operable (just barely) on the original equipment (a Sony Z-80 computer, among other devices). A team of artists, archivists, and computer scientists built a successful emulation of the complex, multimedia installation, using radically different material but preserving the essence of the experience, as confirmed by the original artists who consulted on the emulation (full write-up here, PDF). (Jeff Rothenberg discussed the same project at greater length later in the day, see below.) This lead Ippolito into a thumbnail survey of various digital preservation approaches: migration, which involves transferring and updating data from older formats and media to newer formats and media (manually or automatically); emulation, which involves using the abstraction inherent in multiple layers of computational processing to make a newer machine impersonate the formal behaviors of an older one; and reinterpretation, which Ippolito glossed as “adding something without taking away,” that is reconfiguring or reperforming the work without abandoning the integrity of its original identity. This last approach is particuarly compatible with the remix/participatory practices increasingly characteristic of “Web 2.0.” Emulation, however, is also an opportunity for remixing, as in the example of Linux Wars, an emulation of the classic Space Invaders game which he demonstrated; it features a MS Windows banner attempting to stave off (ultimately futilely of course) wave after wave of alien “invaders” iconified as the various Linux distributions. Ippolito concluded by showing The Pool (still in beta, not currently available to the public), a project of his which creates a relational space for displaying works of digital art that highlights the derivation and appropriation of components and behaviors among them—thereby underscoring variation over time as essential to the practice of preservation, and deflating Brand’s notion of new media art as all individual talent and no tradition.

WIRED’s Kevin Kelly followed, beginning with some remarks about time capsules. According to William Jarvis (who is, according to Kelly, the world’s “foremost expert on time capsules,” good to know someone has that job), many time capsules are forgotten soon after they are buried (there apparently exists a 10 most wanted list of missing time capsules); and most of the rest are relatively uninteresting when opened. For Kelly, this raises the question: are we always going to be saving the wrong things? The key problem for preservation is that of attention scarcity. Anything to which we pay attention, suggested Kelly, stands a pretty good chance of getting preserved; but how do we know what to pay attention to now, in the present (consider this in light of McGann’s dictum about the comprehensive purview of the scholar’s art, see above). He briefly mentioned garbage and landfills as examples of “anaerobic preservation,” an intriguing idea (as a sidenote, garbage and landfills are a central theme of Don DeLillo’s millennial opus Underworld). At this point Henry Gladney spoke up from the audience, imploring archivists to put tools for preservation into the hands of the public so that we can all save the digital heirlooms in our data attics; later societies can mine the vast cultural store for that which interests them. Stewart Brand offered a distinction between continuous and discontinuous attention, describing a “valley” between an original act of creation and the interest of posterity; how do we cross that valley in the digital age, when the only technological vehicles for doing so are volatile and short-lived? Brand briefly speculated on the advent of hives of “robot enthusiasts” whose tireless algorithmic attention spans would conspire to preserve some particular digital object, an obscure game, say (or again, any of McGann’s cultural datum). Ippolito intervened to suggest that saving doesn’t mean “keeping,” it means “keeping alive”—again endorsing change over stasis. At this point the discussion began to wind down. Connections between bioinformatics and preservation were briefly raised: what if you encoded the Library of Congress as self-propagating E. coli, something theoretically possible given the platform independence of encoded representation? Kelly asked whether once everything is saved (assuming the near- or mid-term advent of infinite digital storage capabilities) does the artist’s job become one of creating works that disappear? He offered the example of William Gibson’s electronic poem “Agrippa” but neglected to mention the text’s online afterlife, available in hundreds of locales via a simple Google search (something I’ve written about at length in my book Mechanisms, forthcoming from MIT Press). Ippolito said that digital conditions give us a both/and option for preserving originals and their subsequent reinterpretations. Someone in the room from Pixar observed that there is no original in film-making today since each medium/platform/format has its own independent “master”; in practical terms, a digital film production is a series of reinterpretations by an acknowledged team of originists. Someone else from the audience pointed out the barriers of copyright, citing the instance of original Lazy Sunday video now gone from YouTube, though its derivatives remain available. Ippolito reminded us that open source has its cultural other in digital encryption, which guarantees trust and access.

And so to lunch (for me, tandoori at the curry place on the first floor of my nearby hotel).

First up after lunch was a lively panel with Alexander Rose and Kurt Bollaker, Executive Director and Digital Research Director respectively for the aforementioned Long Now Foundation. Bollaker led off by distinguishing between the preservation of bits, accessibility of bits, and comprehensability of bits. I can’t remember if this had a more specific grounding or not, but he employed the image of cultural layers, pointing out that digital technology is a fast layer and preservation is a slow one, and that “it’s hard to build slow layers on top of fast ones.” Nature, he pointed out, preserves and perpetuates itself—perhaps we can draw our lessons from nature rather than culture. From here Bollaker explored some ideas about data preservation through mobility, distribution, and diversity, using the idea of “moveage” as opposed to storage. Rose interrupted to note that Kezaar and other p2p networks are already doing this, and that the killer app of p2p may well turn out to be archiving. Bollaker then introduced a plea for preservation as a social and communal activity, pointing out that there is a vast array of motivated people—albeit possessed of uneven skills and resources and varied intentions—who should be viewed as a resource for the preservation enterprise. Collaboration is key here, as is distribution of archives and their redundant, distributed curation. He offered some examples of successful community based preservation: video games, especially MAME; Gnash for Flash; open languages like Processing; and finally, internet pornography. The key here, said Bollaker, is to teach and engage the public; digital art is less likely to die if it is frequently accessed by a diverse user base; DRM media, by contrast, will whither and die without access. Bollaker ended by showing formatexchange.org, a Wiki site which collects conversion paths for file formats.

Alexaner Rose framed his remarks in terms of “making (art)ifacts for archaeologists.” Even the most basic assumptions of digital art-making are up for grabs; as any American travelling abroad knows, even 120v/60hz power is something we already routinely emulate (via adaptors). How then do we preserve for the long-term, when the most basic affordances of objects may be obsolete because of the evolution of the human hand? (Such is the perspective of the Long Now.) He noted that language is itself always a potentially obsolescent platform. The discourse then became more concrete, as Rose discussed a durable process of micro-etching onto metal: direct a galium ion beam into silicon, plate it into nickel, and this lasts thousands of years (using this technique you can store 300,000 pages on a disk if you’re willing to read it with an electron microscope; the technology came out of Los Alamos). This is the technology used in the aforementioned Rosetta Project. The critical threshold here is that between legibility and illegibility: had Napoleon’s soldiers not known what they had found was worthy of attention, the Rosetta Stone would have been lost forever. Thus the Rosetta disks begin with marks visible and legible to the naked eye which then spiral down to the microscopic. Rose next described a visit to the Mormon’s massive store of genealogical archives; the microfiche archives themselves are housed in a concrete bunker buried in the side of a mountain in Utah; the index to the archive, however, is in an Oracle database, which no one knows how to preserve. A similar example is provided by the government’s nuclear waste storage facilities: the lesson here is that you can’t solve a 10,000 year problem all at once, but you can plan beyond your own lifespan. In this sense, the Clock of the Long Now is as much about now as later; you weren’t thinking in terms of 10,000 years before you’d heard of it. From the audience, the Pixar representative said something like, there are 50 of us who know how to make the films, but only when 10 of us are in the room together. Rose highlighted the problem of the corporate destruction of memory, where corporate policy routinely dictates that email is deleted after 30 days for fear of liability. (A problem being explored by my Maryland colleague David Kirsch.) At the same time, however, corporate memory (and military memory) are perhaps the most urgent venues for digital preservation; consider Boeing’s documentation for its 747s, planes whose active service life is measured in decades, or a recent Popular Mechanics article pointing out that the Navy’s CAD diagrams are becoming increasingly difficult to access as the software is upgraded every 18 months or so. To me, this yet again underscores the fundamentally social rather than technologically deterministic nature of preservation—itself one of the key themes to emerge form the symposium—because the CAD software could be designed in such a way as to accommodate an upgrade path.

Next up was a panel from Rhizome’s Marisa Olsen and Michael Katchen, chief archivist for Franklin Furnace. This was a more hands-on session than the others, as Olsen demonstrated the folksonomic structures soon to be incorporated into Rhizome’s ArtBase, and Katchen demonstrated the Franklin Furnace database which manages documentation of ephemeral forms of performance and installation art. In the course of this, Olsen observed that we are and always have been a culture of repetition. Much discussion about taxonomy, hegemony, and control vocabularies, with Jeff Rothenberg (from the audience) invoking the Borges story about the catalog of things in the world whose root level was birds which do or do not belong to the emperor. From the audience came the observation that language is the ultimate control vocabulary, and what are the implications of all our metadata taxonomies being in English?

Jeff Rothenberg, a computer scientist from RAND (well known in the preservation community as a proponent of emulation), and Richard Rinehart, Director of Digital Media and Adjunct Curator at BAM/PFA (and organizer of the symposium) shared the next panel. Rothenberg delivered the most structured presentation of the day, offering a detailed account of the Erl King renewal project (mentioned earlier). Full details are in this paper (PDF), so I won’t recapitulate here. “Renewal,” however, is a word that was used deliberately, as an alternative to “preservation” or even “reinterpretation.” The objective was to renew the project without changing its behaviors; the team explicitly did not want to create a new version of the work. He offered a variation of the famous parable of Odysseus’s ship, which asks how much of an original artifact’s material can be replaced before it has become a new artifact. Rothenberg was careful to note that the project team had started with a number of advantages, which included: the fact that the original hardware and software still ran; they had both source and object code in hand; they had excellent documentation of same; and the artist and original programmers were available for consultation. Rothenberg spoke at some length about the distinction between source and object code, as well as emulation and interpretation as preservation strategies. Both were options here, though the team eventually opted to employ a source code interpreter. Rothenberg noted that parts of the CP/M operating system had to be emulated (as opposed to interpreted) as did the installation’s various periperhals though this wasn’t especially challenging. The video content had to be converted and migrated to a contemporary format, also not a significant challenge. The reuslt was that the renwed Erl King’s behavior was virtually identical to the original. Conclusions: running original code preserves behavior (whether by emulation or source code interpretation); mixed analog/digital works can be preserved effectively, albeit at the cost of non-trivial effort.

Rinehart spoke next. Digital media, he said, are causing us to revisit what and how we remember as a civilization. The significance of digital art for the museum and preservation community is that it provides the most complicated possible case study of a more general problem. Where is the art? How do you define boundaries of a work from its network and environment? Do we want to preserve the work or keep it alive? (These are not the same objectives.) Rinehart then proceeded to develop an extended analogy between new media art and music, held together by the observation that both are performances that can be documented by a scripted notation scheme, that is a score. According to Rinehart, variability and performativity are as essential to new media art as its look and feel. Every experience of digital art is after all a live act (performance) of computation. A score, Rinehart said, is a specific kind of documentation about a work of art. It is intended to guide people in the future in recreating that work. (Some might first assume that the score for a digital work is its source code; but code for digital art is not a sufficient score; code is too platform dependent.) Musical notation is a robust vehicle for a score precisely because it is not dependent on any particular platform. With this Rinehart introduced his work on MANS, the Media Art Notation System (documentation here (PDF); appendices here (PDF); paper here; see also the Electronic Literature Organization’s Born Again Bits report, which independently arrives at many of the same conclusions). MANS is an XML vocabulary derived from MPEG-21, which was created by industry concerns as a way of displaying complex media objects across heterogeneous devices (excellent paper on MPEG-21 here). MANS assumes, and indeed embraces the variability inherent in digital media. The notation of a digital work as a score assumes there is no such thing as a unique computer; instead the separation of logical from physical which makes computer a universal machine is a strength to be exploited, not a liability to be offset; similarly, variation over time is not corruption or compromise but a distillation of the essence of the medium. The key move here is thus a kind of jujitsu, which takes everything that is difficult about saving variable media art—its formal, algorithmic, and computational ontology—and makes these self-same qualities the basis for reconceiving what it in fact means to “preserve” the work. Every digital art work of the future, Rinehart opined, will be a remix; research will consist in downloading art and taking it apart. He ended with offering Wikipedia and Second Life as models for a museum of the future, by which he meant their participatory, open source, user-contributed content.

Finally, Bruce Sterling. If you’ve never been in the audience for a Bruce Sterling speech, you’ve missed a signature digeratti experience. Bruce, in addition to his popular work as a novelist and journalist, is the co-founder of the Dead Media Project. He began, for some five minutes on end—a long time when you’re sitting and listening to a speech—by reciting a litany of dead media technologies, starting with magic lanterns and moving image technology from the 19th century and ending with the home computing era. It was devastatingly effective, and there was a stange poetry in the recitation of the vanished technologies. The exemplary dead media story, explained Sterling, could be embodied by one Thaddeus Cahill, inventor of something called the Teleharmonium, a 1906(!) attempt to distribute electronic music via telephone. It is exemplary because it was daring, colossal, inventive, widely publicized, and then vanished utterly. There is nothing left of teleharmonium; no one even knows what it sounded like. (Sterling wondered if the ghost of Cahill is to be found in celluar ringtones.) He mentioned a lost poem by Sappho, recently discovered. He used the phrase “pace layer after pace layer of exquisite instabilities.” He pointed out that no archival medium for bits exists, and that bits themselves are real atomic things, small, tiny, vulnerable (something I’ve written about). The centerpiece of the talk was what he termed the milk products theory of dead media. Why do some media live and some die? Media, you see, are like milk. We need milk and we make milk. Milk is also a lot more heterogeneous than most people give it credit for: there are all kinds of milk products, supported and sustained by entire industrial and technological histories. But milk is never the determining factor of dairy products; media, similarly, is never its own determining factor; media die for the same reason we no longer have milk delivered by horse drawn carts; the magic lantern died because it no longer made sense to have a kerosene steam thing in your living room. (If you’re lost, this essentially boils down to a rejection of technological determinism.) He then invoked Lev Manovich’s work, which observes that film is now a hybrid media; analog distinctions mean nothing to a teenager or young professional; digital media is not about convergence but convergement; engulfment; a creolization of media; a meta-medium. The Iliad and the Odyssey are preservation’s “victory conditions,” meaning that the fact that these works, oral in their original incarnations, have survived the ages is about the best we can hope to achieve. While all of this was going down, Sterling had Jon Ippolito running his (Bruce’s) digital art piece Embrace the Decay. Pretty neat.

So ended the symposium. There was a reception afterwards but I didn’t stay long, having hit the wall from East coast time. I’m told the panels and talks will be distributed via Podcast and will post the link for that here when it’s available. The next day I stuck around for project meetings with some of the principals above, during which I briefly talked about the Electronic Literature Organization’s work on PAD, and got an introduction to Forging the Future, the NEH-funded continuation (directed by Ippolito) of Archiving the Avant-Garde on which I’ll be doing some consulting.

Earlier I had asked whether the underlying assumptions of the preservation enterprise change, alongside of the particulars of various technical challenges. If the speakers and audience assembled for New Media and Social Memory are any kind of indicator I think I can discern some real shifts. Here are some words that would loom large in any tag cloud of the event: social, variation, change, notation, reinterpretation, participatory, renewal, remix. Museums and other forms of cultural authority were generally seen as suspect; emulation and originality, despite Rothenberg’s detailed presentation, were afforded less air time than variation and renewal. The embrace of variability is, in my opinion, a powerful move, one that harnesses precisely the characteristics of digital constructs which make them inimical to traditional preservation means. Variation and renewal are also compatible with some of the Web 2.0 cant that inevitably made its way into the proceedings, powerful ideas again, but I’m not so sure I’m ready to dispense with authority altogether. Culture is not a popularity contest, and the scholar’s art does not consist in vox populi. Hardware and material affordances are not always expendable; there is a difference between playing Spacewar! on a PDP-1 and playing it on my laptop’s emulator and that difference is worth preserving along with the ability to execute the game’s source code. Likewise, there is a difference between Googling for “Agrippa” and experiencing the text as part of the original Agrippa artifact, a much more complex work. Yet it’s possible for the pendulum to swing too far in this direction as well. In textual editing, the trend has been very much toward documentary and photographic facsimile editing, the equivalent of emulation for printed matter. As Kari Kraus has argued at length, that emphasis has obscured our sensitivity towards the very textual and linguistic affordances that emerge when we detach linguistic codes from their embodied representation in artifacts, precisely the potential for abstraction that notation systems have traditionally exploited. Microsoft, meanwhile, has apparently been hard at work on something they call immortal computing, which apparently consists in storing bits in physical artifacts such as tombstones and urns, “to be preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations.” Immortality, unlike renewal, is stone cold; shall these bits live on is (to me) a less interesting question than shall these bits live again." Shall These Bits Live? A Trip Report from New Media and Social Memory (Berkeley, January 18, 2007). Video now online. [blogged by Matt G. Kirschenbaum on MCG]

Posted by jo at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

Allan Kaprow:

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Kunst als leven – Art as Life

Allan Kaprow: Kunst als leven – Art as Life :: February 10 – April 22, 2007 :: VAN ABBEMUSEUM, BILDERDIJKLAAN 10, EINDHOVEN - THE NETHERLANDS :: 31 [0]40 238 1000 :: info[at]vanabbemuseum.nl.

Allan Kaprow, father of ‘happenings’ and ‘the most famous unknown artist’ died in April 2006. In association with the Haus der Kunst, Munich, the Van Abbemuseum organises the largest European solo presentation of the work of this American artist, displaying a development of almost 50 years of artistic work. The concept for this exhibition was developed together with the artist shortly before his death. Much of Kaprow’s art is special because it is interactive, intended to be carried out by people. The exhibition consists of a range of objects from Kaprow’s artistic legacy on view as well as a number of ‘happenings’ in which visitors can participate. The Van Abbemuseum’s artistic policy is to exhibit major overview exhibitions of artists from the sixties and seventies, who are the ‘classics’ of today.

The theme of the Allan Kaprow 'Kunst als leven – Art as Life' exhibition is the paradoxical question of how museums can display art in an appropriate manner in this day and age, while approaching real life with art as closely as possible. A range of objects from Kaprow’s artistic legacy will be displayed: early paintings, environments, video documents and photographs, as well as a fast array of original scores for his ‘happenings’ and ‘activities’.

This special presentation is not intended as an attempt to rewrite or document history, but to encourage visitors to see the ‘museum as mediation’. Kaprow was never interested in passively consumptive viewers but in active participation. The Van Abbemuseum is both a place of mediation and an agency of action. The exhibition will entail a re-enactment of a selection of happenings – on condition, however, that the visitors understand their new role and participate.

ALLAN KAPROW

Towards the end of the 1950s, American artist Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) coined the term ‘happenings’ for a new art form. A decade earlier, Kaprow had studied philosophy and subsequently art history with Meyer Shapiro in New York. At the same time he studied art with Hans Hofmann. It was while following composition classes with John Cage at the New School for Social Research in 1956/57 that he discovered he could use coincidence as well as everyday materials in his art. His work metamorphosed from expressionist scenes of figures through raw assemblies of materials to room-filling ‘environments’. With audiences participating, events took place in these ‘configured’ spaces from the late 50s onwards. Kaprow succeeded in doing what many painters and sculptors had endeavoured to achieve before him: the dissolution of the boundaries between art and reality. He accomplished the move into reality in such a radical fashion that his ‘happenings’ – which he later relabelled ‘activities’ – became indistinguishable from real life. During this process the artist drew back more and more from the institutions. To him, museums were burial chambers of art that no longer had anything to do with life.

HAPPENINGS

During the exhibition various happenings will take place in and outside the Van Abbemuseum. Participation is a must. For more information, dates and reservations, visit http://www.kaprow.org.

CURATOR

Exhibition concept: Eva Meyer-Hermann & Stephanie Rosenthal Van Abbemuseum exhibition curator: Eva Meyer-Hermann

The exhibition Allan Kaprow 'Kunst als leven – Art as Life' is a cooperation with Haus der Kunst, Munich, and co-sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The project has been carried out within the framework of TRANSFORM and with the support of the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.

Posted by jo at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2007

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour

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Call for Contributions

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour :: An E-Mail-Art project on the NetBehaviour email list culminating in an exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London :: Open Call for contributions from 31st January to 28th February 2007 via NetBehaviour email list: Subscribe here :: Exhibition at HTTP Gallery, London :: Initiated by Furtherfield.org.

The Do It With Others (DIWO) E-Mail-Art exhibition aims to highlight the already thriving imaginations of those who use social networks and digital networks on the Internet as a form of distribution. Just like Mail Art, E-Mail-Art bridges the divide between artists and non artists to share a freely accessible form of distribution.

The Mail Art projects of the 60s, 70s and 80s demonstrated Fluxus artists’ common disregard for the distinctions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and a disdain for what they saw as the elitist gate-keeping of the high’ art world. They often took the form of themed, ‘open calls’, in which all submissions were exhibited and catalogued. Mail Art has always been a useful way to bypass curatorial restrictions for those who wish to create active and imaginative exchange on their own terms; this form of activity usually flourishes outside of the gallery system.

This E-Mail-Art exhibition, intends to follow the spirit of past Mail Art endeavours by asking those submitting their works to open themselves to a shared dialogue as part of the process and medium on the NetBehaviour mail list, as a playful platform for experimentation together at the same time.

The theme of this E-Mail-Art project is Do It With Others (DIWO).

This project suggests that we extend the DIY ethos of some early net art and tactical media (said to be motivated by curiosity, activism and precision) towards a more collaborative DIWO approach. Peers connect, communicate and collaborate, creating controversies, structures and culture using both digital networks and shared physical environments.

You are invited to contribute and curate text, images, sound, net movies, physical objects, installation plans etc. on the theme of DIWO, only via the NetBehaviour email list, towards an open exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London that opens in March '07.

To participate in Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour
please join the NetBehaviour email list.

What Will Happen?

All posts to the NetBehaviour email list between 31st January and 1st April 2007 will be considered part of the artistic and curatorial project. In the spirit of early Mail Art Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour is completely open. For the HTTP Gallery contributors are be invited to propose works for networks, computers, screens, projection, sound, print...

31st January: Contributions to Netbehaviour email list begin. List members are invited to devise their own ordering and selection strategies for the exhibition.

25th February 2 - 5pm GMT: Collaborative Curation Event Open review of contributions and discussion about the exhibition. The event will be webcast from the HTTP gallery. List contributions thus far will take physical form as an exhibition. Discussions using IM (chat) between Furtherfielders and other active contributors. Documented and posted to the list.

1st March: Gallery Opening of Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour

1st March- 1st April: Continue to shape the exhibition via the email list by contributing more work, suggesting things be taken down, put back up, rearranged, anything!

1st May: All contributions documented in a catalogue available as a pdf download.

The project will also be documented in:- -- the NetBehaviour email list archive
-- LaurenDIWO's Blog [http://blog.netbehaviour.org/?q=blog/7] maintained by Furtherfield newcomer Lauren Wright.

Do It With Others (DIWO): E-Mail-Art at NetBehaviour a project by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett and Lauren Wright for Furtherfield in collaboration with all contributors to the NetBehaviour email list.

Posted by jo at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER

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The Killing Machine and other Stories

The Killing Machine and other Stories :: JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER :: Opening: Thursday, February 1, 2007, 7.30 p.m. :: Exhibition dates: from 2 February to 1 May 2007 :: Coproduced by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt :: Curated by: Bartomeu Marí (Chief Curator of MACBA) :: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Plaça dels Angels, 1, 08001 Barcelona, Spain.

Since the early nineties Janet Cardiff (Brussels, Ontario, Canada, 1957) and George Bures Miller (Vegreville, Canada, 1960) have been working together on works in which they use sound and voice as raw material and main subject. Through techniques of edition and reproduction of binaural sound and the use of earphones and loudspeaker systems these works can be characterised as authentic sound sculptures.

These installations become temporal units of experience, in narrations that combine fictional stories and sound effects and question the visitor’s sensory experience, opposing the sense of hearing with the sense of sight. The sculptural space is therefore transformed into a phantasmagorical or hallucinatory one where apparently contradictory cultural traditions coincide at a specific place and time. The spectator is looking at works that are difficult to classify, since they propose a collage that brings together forms of high culture such as opera, art films or literature with popular culture, B-movies, rock’n’roll or radio broadcasts.

This exhibition contains a total of ten installations that weave a fabric of independent but complementary experiences. Each work imposes a time and a rhythm of its own, and like a play is linked to the imaginative capacity of each individual, which gives rise to a host of readings. This very high reading visuality brings Cardiff and Miller’s work close to literature by generating a script which can be read or interpreted according to the eye or ear of each reader-spectator. This produces stories that live side by side in time and transport the visitor to superimposed fictions: of the museum and of the works.

Among the Solo Exhibitions of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller in recent years are: the Lousiana Museum and the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 2006; the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington) and the Kunsthaus Bregenz, in 2005; the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in 2004; the Whitechapel Art Gallery de Londres and the Museum of Modern Art of Oslo, in 2003; The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the L.Augustine Gallery of New York and the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin) in 2002; the Canadian Pavillion in the 49 Biennale Venice, the Ps.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and the Castello di Rivoli (Torino) in
2001. [Related 1, 2]

Posted by jo at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

Quartet

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Virtual Dancer

Quartet :: 15 Feb 2007 - 18 Feb 2007 :: The Great Hall at Barts :: Informed by new scientific research in the field of physiology, this ICA co-production is the culmination of several years' collaborative research. It is an investigation into the kineasthetics of music: determining movements which produce sounds, which in turn produce new choreographies.

Movement is played across the senses of the human body. On stage at the Great Hall at St Bart's hospital live music and dance come together in the form of a virtual dancer that is driven by the mechanics of physical expression. This multi-media interplay is the culmination of several years collaborative research from specialists from engineering, biomedical and computational science, 3D animation and motion control in the field of physiology. Three leading choreographers - Lea Anderson, Russell Maliphant and Lisa Nelson - will each shape sections of the performance.

Quartet has 4 components: a virtual dancer; a musician; a robot camera; and, a real dancer. Quartet's central figure, the virtual dancer, is an avatar of sensual information, playing between its manifestation and its puppeteers. On stage the interactions between the human and computerised performers slip through different pairings, trios, and quartets, such as the musician using the speed or acceleration of her violin playing to duet with the real dancer; or a trio between the real and virtual dancers and the robot camera, exploring the choreography of cinematic space: the poetics of looking and moving. This interplay uncovers the tensions within the transfer of data.

The performance experiments with our perception and its articulation. It demonstrates communication within and between bodies in real-time by creating relationships between music, the gesture of musical performance, dance, robotics and animation.

Quartet has been funded by Sciart Production Awards 2005-6 for the Wellcome Trust in collaboration with the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University and the Arts Council of England. It is co-produced by the Live and Media Arts Department at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, with support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, and ZKM Center for Art and Technology, Germany.

£15 / £10 Concessions / £9 ICA Members.

To book tickets please call the ICA box office on 020 7930 3647, open between 12noon and 9.00pm daily. Alternatively go to the ICA web site http://www.ica.org.uk/Quartet+12978.twl

Quartet Talk :: 17 February 2007 :: ICA Cinema

The creators of Quartet, specialists in dance, music, computational science, 3D animation and motion control, will discuss the creation of the software and hardware for its new interactive systems.

The discussion will be chaired by Margie Medlin, Project Director and Dr Susanna Ackers from the Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, Germany.

Stevie Wishart Musical Director and Composer & Todor Todoroff, Sound and Gesture Systems Engineer will speak about creating real-time musical instruments to map the sounds and gestures of the musician to a virtual dancer.

Lea Anderson, Choreographer, Gerald Thompson, Motion Control Camera Designer & Carlee Mellow, Dancer will speak about working with motion control technologies to create choreographies of cinematic space and dialogues that uncovers the tensions within the transfer of data.

Nick Rothwell, Interface Designer and Systems Development & Holger Deuter, 3D character designer will speak about creating a versatile and flexible creative system for experimenting with cause and effect in multiple media.

£6 / £5 Concessions / £4 ICA Members.

** SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER**

The first 20 people to book tickets for this talk will be able to purchase 2 for 1 tickets for a performance of Quartet (subject to availability). Offer only available via telephone bookings: call the Box Office to book on 020 7930 3647.

Emma Quinn
Director of Live and Media Arts
ICA
Visit the new ICA website www.ica.org.uk

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

Eduardo Navas

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Remix Theory

http://remixtheory.net :: http://remixtheory.org :: http://remixtheory.com :: Remix Theory is an online resource by Eduardo Navas that offers some of his research on Remix. Navas focuses on Remix itself as opposed to Remix Culture. In this site you will find a brief definition of Remix, which is examined more extensively in essays that will be added to this website as they become available.

Remix Theory is not meant to function on a daily basis. It is a resource updated periodically, according to the flow of research. It does not focus on the latest information, but on relevant material to the history of Remix, some which may have been published years ago. The site contains material that is obtained from other online sources, with the proper reference to the original source. The content of the site consists of reviews, articles, projects and images relevant to Remix. The site also features reviews, criticisms and preliminary theories by Eduardo Navas.

Remix Theory is designed to move towards a remix of itself, by recombining much of the material that is archived to put to test the possibilities of Remix. This will become transparent as the database grows, and specific projects are developed. The site is designed to host, archive and promote projects which explore the current possibilities of Remix online and offline; it is prepared to become a repository of collaborations with different people and institutions.

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

January 31, 2007

Grey Thumb Meeting Announcement

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Chuck Lewin, "Sex And The Single Algorithm"

Grey Thumb features a talk by Chuck Lewin, "Sex And The Single Algorithm :: When: February 5, 2007, 7:00 pm :: Where: The Asgard Irish Pub & Restaurant (350 Mass. Ave, Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts) :: All are welcome.

Sex And The Single Algorithm: Similarities and Differences in the Reproductive Habits of Biological and Simulated agents: In honor of Valentines day, Chuck Lewin will use selected examples from the natural and artificial world to discuss differences and commonalities in how biological and simulated organisms reproduce, and how they map their genetic characteristics into a functional organism or artificial agent.

Chuck (aka Emanuel) Lewin is an entrepreneur who has founded a number of for-profit and non-profit organizations in the past twenty five years. In 1979 he started L&M Software, a developer of micro computer software. In 1991 he founded, and is presently CEO of, Performance Motion Devices, Inc., a Lincoln, MA-based developer of motion control electronics. In 2001 he founded, and is currently board president of, Art Interactive, a Cambridge-based gallery exhibiting interactive contemporary art. In 2006 he founded, and is presently director of, New Generation Energy, a non-profit focusing on renewable energy. Mr. Lewin was born in Holland and has resided in the US since 1966. He received a BA in Biology from Brandeis University.

Grey Thumb is a group of scientists, engineers, hackers, artists, and hobbyists in the Boston metro area with a strong interest in artificial life, artificial intelligence, biology, complex systems, and other related topics. We get together on the first (non-holiday) Monday of every month to do a blend of socializing, coding and listening to lectures by group members.

Posted by jo at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Enter_Unknown Territories is an international New Technology Arts Festival and Conference happening in Cambridge for the first time from 25-29 April 2007.

PUBLIC ART EVENTS: From 25 to 29 April, Enter_ invites you to explore new ways of experiencing and making new technology performance and sonic arts. LED art installations, CCTV footage films and an interactive maze are just some of the works set to invade Cambridge’s public spaces as Enter_ unfolds, claiming new territories.

WORKSHOPS: Visit our temporary dome site on Parker’s Piece to meet artists and find out more about new technology arts practice and process. Take part in a DIY workshop or hang out at the Mediashed or just drop in for a coffee to see what it’s all about.

LIVE PERFORMANCE: Performances, featuring cutting edge sonic arts, dance and theatre, make up an electric programme of live events, during the festival nights at the Junction.

CONFERENCE: As art and new technology practice challenge the borders between creative disciplines, contemporary culture and commerce, the relationships shift between producer and consumer. As these boundaries are contested, dissolved and reformed, new kinds of spaces are emerging for creativity, discussion and experience. The conference provides an opportunity to explore these new spaces and maps the potential for collaboration and exchange. The conference will explore three topics (Participation and Consumption, Control Technology and Technology & Sustainability) as catalysts for discussion and examine existing international exemplary practices to highlight potential new spaces for future collaboration.

The conference will take place at Downing College and The Junction from 25-27 April.

PRESALE & INFORMATION

Presale will start from 15 Feb 2007. Check the website for special advance discounts, programme updates and further information: www.enternet.org.uk

Enter_ is a collaboration between essexdance, The Junction, Wysing Arts Centre and is funded by Arts Council England, East and the East of England Development Agency.

Posted by jo at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

First International Art Tech Media Congress

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Call for Entries

International Artist Call Art Tech Media 07:: Calling on all creatives of the world to participate. Submissions will be accepted from the following categories: A: - Video art - Net-art - 2D & 3D Computer Animation - Blog, videoblog - Creation for mobile platforms - Digital Music. B: - Digital Communities - Geospatial storytelling - Artificial Life, Software art, Transgenic art, Generative art.

In a globalised world, dominated by communication technologies, with countless questions concerning a future that affects our everyday life, it is essential to make this analysis and to consider, from different perspectives, how our polyhedral, altered reality is being effected by the widespread use of new technology as a support for new ideas and possibilities that are almost infinite. We need to investigate how this occurs in different societies and cultures and to propose models that may go beyond what has been known until now.

The First International Art Tech Media Congress has been set up in order to reflect upon and analyse questions currently being raised about art and new technological media within an international context.

Within this context, an intensive debate needs to take place on the influence and transformations that new media is producing in art, there needs to be a greater understanding of the foundations for more effective cooperation between the different sectors linked to digital art, and proposals need to be devised for the development of national and international collaborative networks in order to improve production, research, exhibition and promotion.

Last year, Art Tech Media 06 encounters had been held at nine Spanish museums, and given the great participation and the opinions collected, its seems clear that this is an ideal time to celebrate the First International Art Tech Media Conference. It represents a great opportunity to hold a transversal debate in order to devise proposals that will lead to greater and better coordination among the different sectors of art, aimed at strengthening its development.

www.artechmedia.net/artechmedia06.htm

Art Tech Media 06 headquaters: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Unión Fenosa, Presidencia Gobierno de Canarias, Museo Domus Artium 2002, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo Artium, Fundación BilbaoArte, Centro Párraga, Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo EsBaluard, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona.

<<<

GENERAL REGULATIONS Art Tech Media 07 art call

- Works must have been produced after January 1st, 2006.
- The number of submissions is not limited.
- Works may be presented in any language. However, a transcript of dialogues
must be included in either Spanish or English,
- The organization reserves the rights to use parts of the works for media broadcasting, within the
promotional framework of artechmedia.
- Following the process of selection based on abstratcs, all participants will be notified in writing of
the result and the required format for the presentationof their work, preferably on DVD.
- Authors will be responsible for copyright of their works.
- Works selected will be exhibited in artechmedia.
- A electronic catalogue will be produced in Spanish and English, including all the works.
- Artists with works selected shall agree to assign a copy to artechmedia, which may be
used in the subsequent exhibitions.
- The organization is not responsible for the content of works in order to preserve freedom.

Projects:

- Those interested in submitting work in these categories must send a completed entry form.
- The net-art @blog, videoblog must include the URL address in the entry form.
- A part from the entry form, those interested in taking part in video art and computer animation
must also send a DVD with their work.
- Digital Music must be sent both in digital format and as a hard copy by post.
- All mail is to be sent to the office central art tech media
Art Tech c/Méndez Nuñez 102, 6ºD. 38001 S/C Tenerife. Canary Island. Spain

DEADLINE: 30th march 2007

SELECTION AND JURY

- Works presented will be selected by a committee of the organization.
- In each category a jury composed of experts will select the works.
- Jury's decision is final, and is not open to appeal.

SELECTED WORKS must include:

- Technical credits.
- Technical requirements for its showing.
- Two colour photographs of every work sent.
- A short biography of author or representative organization.
- A transcript of dialogues in spanish or english.
- All works must include in their front page: the work's title, the delivery address, and the
data of author or representative organization.
- In case of not providing a correct delivery address, the organization will not be
responsible for the works.
- Submission of a work implies the acceptance of these regulations.

>registration form> enter

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

Art and Society:

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The Work of Fred Forest

"Art and Society: The Work of Fred Forest" featuring Fred Forest :: Slought Foundation Exhibition :: Curated by Osvaldo Romberg :: February 03 - March 23, 2007 :: Reception: Saturday, February 03, 2007 ; 6:30-8:30pm :: Free admission (Reservation not required) :: A special seminar by Forest concerning his practice will take place immediately before the opening from 5:30-6:30pm, and will be moderated by Jean-Michel Rabate.

Fred Forest, "For an aesthetics of communication" (Plus Minus Zero, 1985): "I have always considered that the natural field of artistic production is the terrain of social activity. A field which may be enlarged and explored thanks to the new Communication technologies. This option upsets the holders of a fixed concept of aesthetics, who are incapable of grasping the obvious articulation between this type of practice, the concept of art, and a society in transformation. We are called upon to ask the question "Where are the frontiers of art situated?" It's a brave man who will stick his neck out! There is no frontier. Art is an attitude--

a way of relating to something, rather than a thing in itself. There is an aesthetics of behavior, an aesthetics of gesture, just as there is an aesthetics of object. We have now to take a new category into account: the aesthetics of Communication. The media of this aesthetics are often immaterial: its substance comes from the impalpable stuff of information technology. In the sky above our heads, the electrical signals of this information trace invisible, blazing and magical configurations."

Visit: http://www.webnetmuseum.org
Visit: http://www.fredforest.org

Fred Forest is a communication artist and theorist (born in Algeria in 1933) who has worked at the forefront of interactive art and new media, sociology, and institutional critique for over forty years. His work, frequently immaterial and relational, raises questions about the nature and function of art in a market-driven age of information. Forest has exhibited and presented at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Espace Pierre Cardin, and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris; the Venice Biennial; Documenta 6 and 8 in Kassel, Germany; the Foundation Miro, Barcelona; and the C.A.Y.C./Center for Art and Communication, Argentina. Fred Forest recently created the "Digital Street Corner" at the invitation of Art Basel Miami Beach 2005, in conjunction with the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris, and the Bass Museum of Art, Miami. This interactive network, artistic environment and "virtual happening" was co-created in real time by people on the internet, which Forest in turn choreographed and projected on an outdoor screen on the exterior wall of the Bass Museum (http://www.fredforest.com/). Also in 2005, Forest was commissioned by the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) of France to create "Memory Pictures," a website and installation, for the Great Hall in the French Ministry of Culture. In this work, the artist, digital avatars, and anonymous participants create collaborate collage works of art. In 2006, Forest launched "The Biennale of the Year 3000," a participatory new media intervention staged against the "official" Sao Paulo Biennale that took the form of an exhibition without curatorial selection.

As early as 1967, Forest organized a series of participatory and community-based art activities which laid the foundations for the "Sociological Art" movement to follow. By 1969, Forest was known as the first French "plastic" artist to make extensive use of video art and carry out one of the first installations of this type at the Sainte-Croix Gallery in Tours, France. In 1972, continuing his research into this medium, he purchased media space in the French national newspaper "Le Monde," and launched a series of "press experiments" which extended from journalism to television and radio both in France and abroad. In 1973 his work in mass-communications won him the Communications prize at the XIIth Biennale in Sao-Paulo, Brazil, and in 1974 he co-founded the "Sociological Art Collective" whose activities were eventually featured in the 1976 Venice Biennale. Forest also participated in Documenta 6 in 1977, and exhibited a field frequency of 14,000 hertz in the Fredericanum in Kassel, Germany in Documenta 8 in 1987. Following the dissolution of his sociological collective, Forest staged various art actions and exhibitions, frequently involving the late Pierre Restany, such as The Artistic Square Metre, The Stock-Exchange of the Imaginary, at the George Pompidou Centre, and The Communicative Space at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. In 1982 Forest formulated the term "Communication Aesthetics," and in 1983 Fred Forest co-founded the International Group for Research into Communication Aesthetics, to explore new directions for art centered on problems of communication, new models of anthropological behavior, and our evolving relationship with a world conditioned by technological developments.

This exhibition has been curated by Osvaldo Romberg with the generous support of l'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and the School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Please note that an interview with the artist is available online on the Slought Foundation website.

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

Collision 11

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Call for Entries

Collision 11 is looking for experimental technology based artwork. Collision 11 will be held in conjunction with the Cambridge Science Festival and the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

In order to submit, first add yourself as a user (if you haven't already in a prior submission), login, and then use the submissions navigation link to submit your proposal. After initially submitting, reedit to add collaborators. If you have any trouble send me mail.

Collision 11 will take place at the mit stata center balcony apr 20 - may 3 on the two weekends from 12p-6pm and during the week 9a - 5p. The opening will take place on sat apr 21st at 6-9pm. Artists will be responsible for artsitting during the two weekends.

Submissions are now open and must be received by midnight Sun Mar 04, 2007. Acceptances will be sent out by midnight Sun Mar 11, 2007. We will also do an early acceptance for standout pieces that are received before midnight Sun Feb 18 2007 and those pieces will have an opportunity to be part of our cyberarts press photo kit. So please submit early if your piece is complete so that we can get good press photos to cyberarts.

This c11 show is meant to be rough and experimental and more inclusive than our other shows. Strong works will be selected from the Collision 11 show and will be considered for more polished future shows. Works will be judged according to the following criteria in decreasing order of importance:

art / technology -- be techno in production or product
safe -- do not be dangerous to patrons
completed / available -- be available including artist
fits space -- be a team player
exciting / novel -- be fun and unique
thought provoking -- be smart
crafty -- be quality

Collision Collective

Posted by jo at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

OPEN VIDEO PROJECTS

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Season 2

Open Video Projects (OVP) is a video archive currently based in Rome, Italy which facilitates screenings throughout the city in conjunction with a weekly appointment at the Blueroom evening at Rialto Santambrogio, a contemporary cultural center in Rome's historic district; Blueroom features a dynamic mix of live experimental electronic music, a rotating DJ line-up, live video-mixing, site-specific video installations and 3500 cm² (a weekly exhibition of poster art specially designed by a contemporary artist for free distribution at the event). There has been overwhelming public response with over 1000 guests in attendance each week. OVP’s participation in large scale cultural events exposes the public to work it would normally not see, as well as provides a unique form of visibility for the participating artists and filmmakers.

For its second season of screenings Open Video Projects is looking to expand its international network of artists working with film and video. All artists working in these media are invited to submit work to be part of OVP. All submitted materials will be evaluated for inclusion, however, only selected pieces will be screened. Lorenzo Benedetti and Sarra Brill are responsible for the selection of all video entries and will curate the weekly selections. All submitted materials will be collected in a searchable database, accessible on the program's website. In addition to the database, the site will feature a program guide, screening times, and links to websites of participating artists and filmmakers (if provided).

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING VIDEO-WORKS

- Subject matter is unlimited;
- Each submitted video must include the name of the artist, title, duration, year of production, contact information (e-mail and home address), biography, and any additional information;
- The sender is responsible for mailing costs of submission;
- Works will not be returned to the senders from Italy and the United States unless a stamped, self-addressed envelope is included in the package. For submissions outside these two countries, please contact Blueroom by email for return postage instructions.
-Acceptable formats:
Dvd
Mini DV
CD

There is no deadline for submissions, however it is advised that work be sent promptly as screening slots are limited. Please confirm your submission with an e-mail to submissions[at]openvideoprojects.org Inquiries may be directed to info[at]openvideoprojects.org

Submissions can be sent to:

Open Video Projects
c/o Lorenzo Benedetti
via Ottorino Gentiloni, 41
00139 Roma, Italia
or:

Open Video Projects
c/o Sarra Brill
177 Garfield Place
Brooklyn, NY 11215

We look forward to hearing from you!

Lorenzo Benedetti is an independent curator, Project Curator of Volume! non-profit gallery, and curator of the Sound Art Museum, RAM, in Rome. Sarra Brill is an AV artist as well as co-director of the New York-based art collective, Aviate, organizing audio/visual events in New York and Rome.
Curatorial contributions provided by Andrew Cappetta, Adrienne Drake, Giuliano Lombardo, and Irene Di Maggio.

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

RE: [iDC] wrapping up: "new media" education curricula/potentials

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The Negotiatior and the Knife

[Tiffany Holmes asked] "Would anyone wish to volunteer a story about an influential teacher or mentor who impacted their development as an artist or scholar?

There are two contrasts which taught me more about education than listing syllabi -- that between the negotiatior and the knife.

First, the knife. In the third year of my undergraduate education in English Honours (an underground mafia of critical theorists, marxists, feminists, and continental philosophers) I ended up in a two term seminar simply titled "Theory." A somewhat notorious seminar for its drop-out rate: this seminar went from a healthy bunch of 25 to about 8 within 30 days. Many students received failing grades on their first paper. They were not encouraged to return. Those of us who were doing well were pushed even harder: the comments on our papers were brief and penetrated beyond the paper itself, a kind of samurai incision to the work that reduced it to nothingness. The professor was like a zen master: the comments were koans, the lectures parables of emptiness. The professor in question was highly trained in deconstruction and psychoanalysis, a feminist and lesbian, expert in law, computer technology, James Joyce and senior faculty. She was a product of the critical '60s left.

It was a taste of what university might have meant: if we were to assume a certain mantle, we had to work for it by questioning the desire and all desire itself, beginning with our desire to be there. Thus the course dismantled the fragile structure of our fledgling intellectual egos. This was not a course in deconstruction, but a course deconstruction of our psyches to the point of trauma.

That such discipline manifested by excluding 80% of the class wasn't something I reflected upon until much later: one simply had to struggle to breath. Nonetheless, it was a kind of trauma that inspired a dedicated work ethic and fostered an intensive critical approach. She openly posed the question, like Brian and Luis, if university was at all a worthwhile path for us, as students, and if in general the system held anything for us. She wasted no time in attempting to hold everyone's hand in a grand gesture of all-inclusive pedagogy.

Second, the negotiator. Much later, as a graduate student, and perhaps more common to many of us: the professor who enlivens the seminar by negotiating each perspective, summarizing and catalyzing the movement of thought. An easygoing flow, an inspiration, a wit and ready-access knowledge that flows from all corners. Yet the program is somewhat deceptive: the generosity came first, now the marking will be rigorous and the comments detailed to the point of editorial overview. Excellent preparation work for the "real world:" here, the knife is hidden behind the overcoat of the smile. Encouraging nonetheless, but the knife remains. One learns how to perform and negotiate in the seminar, the academic environment, and the work.

There are other models too -- but these two, the negotiator and the knife, are archetypes, certainly not opposites, but rather movements in what education requires if critical pedagogy is to persist: how to sharpen the blade, which arteries to cut, and the time to slice.

tV
tobias c. van Veen
McGill Communication & Philosophy

iDC

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

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

Posted by jo at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2007

ZOO

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The Relationship Between Technology, Culture and Nature

InterAccess is pleased to present ZOO, an exhibition of three works by three artists that artfully integrate natural and artificial life, colliding the realm of living things with the genre of creative electronics. Artists Ingrid Bachmann, Garnet Hertz and Amy Youngs explore the complex relationship between technology, culture and nature.

Opening Reception Friday February 2, 8:00 pm :: Artist talks Friday February 2, 7:00 pm :: Exhibition runs February 2 - March 17, 2007 :: InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto.

Digital Crustaceans v.0.3: Homesteading on the World Wide Web involves live hermit crabs and their avatars that explore the World Wide Web. The hermit crabs have two homes - a large glass terrarium and a ‘home’ page on the Web. The movements of the real crabs within the terrarium are tracked by a motion capture system and animate a mechanical plotter that traces its movements onto a surface. These mappings serve as formal drawings as well as a record to track the movements of the avatars, as they map their itinerary and journey across the structures and sites of the World Wide Web.

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3 is an experimental mechanism that uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. If the cockroach moves left, the robot moves left. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to the cockroach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the CPU.

Holodeck for House Crickets is a suspended artificial landscape that is designed to house Acheta domesticus (house crickets), who are raised in climate-controlled tanks as food for reptiles. As actual nature would be a bit harsh for these domesticated crickets, artist Amy Youngs provided them with an artificial landscape where they can interact with a video “holograph” of the pastoral grasslands and woodlands experienced by their wild relatives. Through the use of a computer interface, the crickets are able to “interact” with their projected environment by chirping. Each chirp advances the panoramic, cricket-eye-view video footage of outdoor scenery.

Posted by jo at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

5+5=5

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Review by Tindara Sidoti

REVIEW: 5+5=5 by Tindara Sidoti: 5 short movies by 5 film makers about 5 networked art projects exploring critical approaches to social engagement.

Some of my earliest memories involve flashes of evocative cinematic imagery, Gene Kelly dancing athletically across a small screen or Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers squabbling. While studying art, this fascination with film coexisted, but the two arts were never really connected for me until I became more familiar with video and media art, later doing research on the influence of cinema on artists’ film.

5+5=5 is an experiment on the boundary of media, art and film; a cross-pollination that uses a variety of cultural influences from cinema and the Internet, to provide an access point to networked art and the artists groups’ selected projects. Furtherfield have commissioned these five short movies that feature conversations between artists, audiences and film-makers. 5+5=5 manages to tap into the current fluidity of the boundaries that exist, between genre and media; a space between art, film and technology that has resulted in artists like Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno releasing Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) in cinemas. Though interpretive, these films are more contextually assertive than Turner Prize nominee style documentaries and betray a more inter-disciplinary function. The movies are an example of how the relationship between art and film can work effectively; not only do they hook you, making you curious about the projects themselves but each one is an engaging film. Continue reading at New Media Fix.

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

[iDC] New Media Education

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Luis Camnitzer

Seeing that in this discussion (Kanarinka, etc.) many are just entering the academic tunnel, I would like to contribute a little from the vantage point of the exit. I retired 7 years ago after slowly dying during 32 years in an institution that started well. We were to take off were we thought Antioch had stopped, "break the lockstep of traditional education" as our mission stated in 1968. The three decades plus spent on observing changes of mission, corruption, brown nosing and decay, only served to teach me that there is no way to build a truly progressive institution in the U.S. The rhetoric may be progressive, but the core won't ever get there, and it is not only due to corporations, government, bad administration and self-serving colleagues.

Education in this country is only a relatively true right for the people until high-school level. After that it is a commodity in a profit making business. University profit comes of course from the tuition students have to pay for the honor of getting a job to help corporations make more profit. It comes from corporations themselves, that sponsor projects that benefit them (government and army being part of that), and it comes from non educational things like sports events. It is into this picture we enter trying to educate people, without realizing that we can't really balance a greed-based structure with our idealism.

In terms of art education I figured that if I had 5000 students over the years, maybe 20 of them managed to support a family with their art. The 5000 ensured that I could survive as a professor. The other 4980 that didn't make it in the gallery circuit, hoped to survive teaching the same way I did. If they managed to get a teaching job, each one of them would need another 5000 students to survive. We have a perfect pyramid scam here.

I suggest a different utopia than the attempt to find the precarious balance you are seeking or an impossible institutional reform within the university. It is too late for all that. It might be much more realistic to accept that the U.S. universities are corporate tools that in fact are competing with corporate training at a disadvantage. In art, the Whitney museum is training its own artists and being better at it than many schools (partly due to better filtering). Let us stop the hypocrisy and have corporations openly take over education for "real life," making sure that students survive in the market. It will provide a much better and up to date education. With this we would have a true education for serving.

Let us also have the government start from scratch and create a free humanist education system that ensures that people learn about cultures and ideas, how to speculate and how to make connections. This would be the education for thinking. The student could be in both systems at the same time and end up well rounded. Some of us are better at teaching skills than thinking, and therefore would contribute in the first system. Some of us are better at idealistic speculation and would be in the second. We all would lead much less frustrating lives, be incredibly more productive, and present ourselves with a constructive attitude to our students. Presently, those of us who are idealistic can only teach (justified) resentment." Luis Camnitzer

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Networking | The Net as an Artwork

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Presentation @ Transmediale

Presentation of the book: Networking | The Net as an Artwork @ Transmediale :: Sunday 4/2, 16:00 :: Salon, Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, D :: With Tatiana Bazzichelli [it/de], Jaromil [it/nl], Gaia Novati [it/de]; moderated by Diana McCarty [de].

Networking | The Net as an Artwork :: Written by Tatiana Bazzichelli, with the preface of Derrick De Kerckhove and the epilogue of the Italian videoartist Simonetta Fadda. The book represents a first tentative to write a comprehensive history of both analog and digital subcultural networked art in Italy, through an analysis of the realities which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies - such as Mail Art, Neoism, the Luther Blissett project, BBS culture, Telestreets, and many other subcultural movements and networks.

The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, diffused through independent and collective projects. Active in underground environments, they use diverse media (computers, video, television, radio and magazines) and deal with technological experimentation, or hacktivism, depending on the terminology used in Italy, where the political component is a central theme.

The book describes how in Italian subculture there was never a divide between artistic and political activism, covering the evolution of the Italian net culture from the Eighties till today. The book shelds light onto the affinity of 1980s Mail Art manifesto to post-1990s Internet culture, up to its terminology of artists as "network operators" and art as a "network-web", the political redefinition of the term "Cyberpunk" in early 1990s in Italy, the mutation of Cyberfeminism into Netporn activism, and presents the works of many artists and activists, such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others.

Networking | The Net as an Artwork, is printed on paper (Costa & Nolan publisher, Milan, Novembrer 2006, pag. 336), but it is also available online under: http://www.networkingart.eu (Creative Commons License) ENG: http://www.networkingart.eu/download_eng.html

Diana McCarty [de] lives and works in Berlin. She is a co-founder of bootlab and co-initiated the open source radio project, reboot.fm. She is an active member of the Free Cultural Radio Network, Radia.FM. Together with Valie Djordjevic, Kathy Rae Huffman and Ushi Reiter, she runs the Faces mailing list for women in media. As part of the International Women's University server development team, she worked with Seda Gürses, Barbara Schelkle, Prof. Heidi Schelhowe, and Heiki Pisch - and also worked to develop feminist pedagogical approaches to computing. In the mid-nineties, McCarty co-founded the Nettime Mailing list and as part of the Media Research Foundation, she co-organized the MetaForum Conference Series in Budapest. Her main interests are exploiting social and technological systems for cultural use; i.e. piracy and open source software development for real life. www.bootlab.org www.mrf.hu

Tatiana Bazzichelli a.k.a. T_Bazz [it/de] (Rome, 1974), is a Communication Sociologist and an expert in Media Art, Hacktivism and Net Culture. She gave a dissertation on Italian interactive digital art at the University la Sapienza in Rome (1999). Towards the end of the 1990's she organized events and conventions, such as Cum2Cut (Berlin, 2006), Hack.it.art (Berlin 2005), Art on the Net in Italy (Berlin 2005), MediaDemocracy and Telestreet (Munich, 2004), AHA (Rome, 2002), Hacker Art Lab (Perugia, 2000). She is the founder of Activism-Hacking-Artivism, a networking project started in 2001 in Rome and based in Berlin since 2003. She manages the aha@ecn.org mailing list regarding artistic activism and writes of art, media and new creative trends for many Italian magazines.

Jaromil [it/nl] is a hacker and author of various free software applications (GNU/Linux/BSD), known as an artist for his performances and creations, as well as activist for his social concerns and radical way of life. Online since 1994, he co-founded the italian non-profit association Metro Olografix for the diffusion of telematic cultures. Later he gave birth to the dyne.org foundation: creating software for the freedom of expression, to let people communicate free from capitalist speculations and expensive hardware. www.rastasoft.org www.dyne.org

Gaia Novati [it/de] is involved since many years in the Italian queer countercultural movement. She has worked with radio and visual media projects. Co-founder of Sexyshock, communication laboratory on gender theme and first sex-shop managed by women in Italy, she is interested since long in independent pornography. She is one of the organizers of Cum2Cut, Indie-Porn-Short-Movies Festival in Berlin, where she lives since 2006.

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Regine Debatty's

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Interview with Mushon Zer-Aviv

[...] Has the shiftspace project evolved since I first heard the presentation you made at Ars Electronica in September 2006?

Definitely! First of all, we had four more releases since then (with v0.08 is coming soon too) and have just launched the new ShiftSpace.org which is wider and more comprehensive than the previous site. The new site also allows users to watch and subscribe to RSS feeds of shifts created by the vast user community. We have been giving more presentations to spread the word and have been throwing 'installation parties' where participants were invited to install a public spaces on their laptops. We are currently working with Turbulence to start a unique commission program to support artists creating new parasitic net art and using ShiftSpace as a platform. This can become the moment we've been working towards, where ShiftSpace becomes an open-ended creative platform, shared and developed by a wide community.We are looking for more people to join us in working on it. It can be as simple as using the system, being creative with it, and also reporting bugs from time to time when they appear (and bare with us while they will most certainly appear...). You can also join by developing new spaces for ShiftSpace, or best - for the web gurus out there, we are looking for developers to help us work on the core system itself. We are pretty serious about the open source model and are inspired by the Wikipedia foundation. We hope to achieve a stage when we could hold elections for the lead of the project. We will then hopefully compete with peers who are as enthusiastic and committed as we are to the future of the (meta)web..." From Interview with Mushon Zer-Aviv by Regine Debatty, we-make-money-not-art.

Posted by jo at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2007

Make Everything New

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Ways in which the Communist Imagination can be Materialised as Art

Make Everything New—A Project On Communism :: Edited by Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord & Gavin Everall (2006):

Communism is routinely defined as defeated and its conquest the subject of regular celebration. Caught in the disappointment and negative connotations of the past, it has become all but unthinkable. Make Everything New seeks to rescue the idea of Communism from this trap. Collaborating with artists, writers and collectives, this project has commissioned and collected counter-narratives, abstract and unrealistic ideas, engaged political commentary and satirical work, that presents neither an historical or comprehensive overview nor a requiem for the past. It is a collection of partial and subjective accounts of various creative practices, an experimental platform for ideas and an attempt to see in what ways the communist imagination can be materialised as art.

Contributors include: 16Beaver, Gopal Balakrishnan, Michael Blum, AA Bronson, Maria Eichorn, Factotum, Dmitry Gutov, Wu Ming, Aleksandra Mir, Sarah Pierce/The Metropolitan Complex, CK Rajan, Raqs Media Collective, Dont Rhine, Martha Rosler, Rob Stone, Alberto Toscano, and Klaus Weber.

Posted by jo at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

[iDC] sharing "new media" curricula/potentials

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Kevin Hamilton

[from the sharing "new media" curricula/potentials introduced by Tiffany Holmes]:

saul ostrow wrote: "Seemingly, what is required of us is a view that takes into account general as well as specific conditions - that is what is the common economy and ecology of cultural production, inclusive of education as a process in which differing aspects of those network systems that circumscribe and arise from these practices are reproduced, replicated and revised (reformed.)"

I think I see what you mean, Saul - In some ways the premise of this thread has been based on a model of curriculum delivery, rather than of curriculum as a means of production within broader economies. I liked Adrianne Wortzel's mention of "curriculum as process" (which must be a hard sell to the registrar.) It would be useful to hear more about that.

Perhaps a merge of the last thread on Praxis and Research with the current one would be good - in that conversation we seemed to be talking more about the larger scope of how what we do as educators and educational institutions is complicit with broader economies.

The best I can offer to your point right now is that making curricular goals clear to students might be seen not only as a symbolic empowerment but as a way of placing the educational process under inquiry within a greater social context. It would be worth re-visiting the record of IIT, the Bauhaus, Black Mtn. School etc to see where that happened or where it didn't. My sense is that Gropius, and later Moholy-Nagy, were very happy and hopeful about producing students to serve industry, in a progressive, if non-reflexive, way. But how did that happen in the classroom? We know the assignments, the syllabi, the influence, but what attitude toward education was promoted by those old teachers? What were the politics of their classrooms?

I was surprised once to see a picture from the Black Mountain school of Josef Albers on the floor with students, cutting out shapes of color. How did the emerging work of Cage or Cunningham benefit from, or suffer from, the specific discursive models at work in Black Mountain School "classroom"?

Bailey quotes Bridgman in his essay for Frances Stark's _Primer_ reader:

"So my naive idea of the 1960s—that designers were part of the solution to the world’s chaotic uncontrollability—was precisely the wrong way round. Today’s designers have emerged from the back room of purist, centralist control to the brightly lit stage of public totem-shaping. Seen from the self-same Marxist viewpoint that I espoused in those ancient days, they are now visible as part of the problem, not the solution. They have overtly accepted their role as part of capitalism. Designers are now exposed, not as saviours of the planet but as an essential part of the global machinery of production and consumption."

I need to go the next step, I guess, and look at the role of educators in a similar way. Not just to reveal complicity, and try to erase it like a stain, but to acknowledge even the inescapable ways in which my actions as an educator benefit from some relations, produce new ones, reinforce old ones.

The danger seems to be that reflexivity or self-critique on the part of educators, even in the classroom, can so easily serve to isolate, rather than to locate. If I get Socratic on a group of undergraduate students and start asking about why we're in the room, how we got there, where we're each going, I might end up preparing them for useful future critique and re-engineering of their own institutional roles. But I just as easily might alienate students and leave them with no where to go but a tech manual or a CAA conference when they need to feed themselves or others. This is why I liked the Spivak quote from the Verwoert essay I snipped.

Singerman's essay for the USC reader also gets to some of this - his history of UCLA's MFA program serves as a way of asking what economies the department served within different visions of the University as a whole.

The Either/Or approaches to this (admittedly still ill-defined) problem are a challenge to escape.

-Kevin Hamilton


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Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD)

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Giselle Beiguelman + Sue Thomas

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 8: Wild Nature and the Digital Life special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac :: guest edited by Dene Grigar and Sue Thomas.

Monday, January 29 :: 2 pm West Coast US / 5 pm East Coast USA / 10pm UK :: Live chat with new media artist and multimedia essayist Giselle Beiguelman and Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University and an Associate Fellow of DMU’s Institute of Creative Technologies, Sue Thomas.

Chat instructions are below. The LEA website includes instructions and a complete list of upcoming chats.

Giselle Beiguelman is a new media artist and multimedia essayist who teaches Digital Culture at the Graduation Program in Communication and Semiotics of PUC-SP (São Paulo, Brazil). Her work includes the award-winnings "The Book after the Book" "egoscópio" and Landscape0 (with Marcus Bastos and Rafael Marchetti). She has been developing art projects for mobile phones ("Wop Art", 2001), praised by many media sites and the international press, including The Guardian (UK) and Neural (Italy), and art involving public-access, by the web, SMS and MMS to electronic billboards like "Leste o Leste?" and "egoscópio" (2002), released by /The New York Times/, "Poétrica" (2003) and "esc for escape" (2004).

Beiguelman's work appears in important anthologies and guides devoted to digital arts including Yale University Library Research Guide for Mass Media and has been presented in international venues such as Net_Condition (ZKM, Germany), el final del eclipse (Fundación Telefonica, Madrid), Desk Topping - Computer Disasters (Smart Project Space, Amsterdan) Arte/Cidade (São Paulo), The 25th São Paulo Biennial and Algorithmic Revolution (ZKM).

Sue Thomas is Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University and an Associate Fellow of DMU’s Institute of Creative Technologies. Her most recent book is the non-fiction travelogue of cyberspace Hello World: travels in virtuality (2004). Other publications include the novels Correspondence (short-listed for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 1992) and Water (1994); an edited anthology Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories By Women Celebrating Women (1994), and Creative Writing: A Handbook For Workshop Leaders (1995). She has published extensively in both print and online, and has initiated numerous online writing projects including The Noon Quilt, now an iconic image of the early days of the web. She founded the trAce Online Writing Centre in 1995 where she was Artistic Director until going to De Montfort in January 2005. She is Programme Leader of the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, which she teaches with Kate Pullinger, and Leader of the Production and Research in Transliteracy group (PART). Her research interests include transliteracy, participatory media,
creative writing and the creative industries. She is currently writing The Wild Surmise, a study of nature and cyberspace.

How to participate in the live chat?

Live chats will use the Writing and the Digital Life Discussion Room. To acess the WDL discussion room, it is necessary to subscribe to the list, by choosing "Join WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE" from here.

Use your subscriber email and JISCMAIL password to log into the discussion room (using the first link above). If the online interface does not start, it is necessary to download and install the most recent Java version.

Ryan Griffis

LEA Journal: http://leoalmanac.org/index.asp
LEA Gallery: http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/index.asp
Wild Nature and Digital Life Forum Info: http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/forum.asp

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2007

Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum:

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Presenting and Preserving New Media

"The characteristics of the digital medium pose numerous challenges to the traditional art world, ranging from presentation to collection and preservation. For the longest time, museums, galleries and the art world and art market in general have been mostly “objectoriented” and have configured their framework and infrastructure to accommodate the presentation and preservation of the static art object. The characteristics of so-called new media art have introduced a shift from the object to process: as an inherently time-based, dynamic, interactive, collaborative, customizable and variable art form, digital art resists “objectification” and has changed traditional notions of the “art object.”

The one thing everyone seems to agree upon when it comes to this art form is that the term now commonly used to describe it — “new media” — is an extremely unfortunate choice. This umbrella term is not at all helpful when it comes to describing characteristics or aesthetics of the extremely hybrid digital medium. The qualifier of choice here, “new,” points to the fleeting nature of terminology: in the late 20th century, the term “new media” – previously used mostly for film / video — made a fluid transition from analogue to digital media." Continue reading Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum: Presenting and Preserving New Media by Christiane Paul, Neme.

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

January 26, 2007

3 X 3: New Media Fix(es) on Turbulence

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Essays by Josphine Bosma, Belén Gache, and Eduardo Navas

Turbulence.org and New Media Fix are pleased to announce the publication of 3 X 3: New Media Fix(es) on Turbulence, three texts about works from the Turbulence.org archive. The texts--published in English, Italian and Spanish--were written and translated by members and affiliates of New Media Fix. They include The Body in Turbulence by Josephine Bosma; Narrating with New Media: What Happened with Whatever has Happened? by Belén Gache; and Turbulence: Remixes + Bonus Beats by Eduardo Navas. The translations are by Lucrezia Cippitelli, Francesca De Nicolò, Raquel Herrera, and Brenda Banda Corona & Ignacio Nieto. Ludmil Trenkov designed the PDF and HTML documents.

"3 X 3: New Media Fix(es) on Turbulence" was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The essays may be read and/or downloaded at Turbulence or New Media Fix.

BIOGRAPHIES

JOSEPHINE BOSMA (1962) is a writer and critic. She started working in the field of new media art making radio shows, documentaries and interviews about the topic for VPRO and Patapoe radio in 1993. She has published interviews, reviews and texts about art and new media in various books and magazine, both on and offline, since 1996. Her work mostly focuses on net art, sound art and net culture. Bosma has also organized several events, like the radio section of the tactical media festival Next5Minutes 2 (1996) and 3 (1999), an evening about net art criticism (2001) and the newsletter CREAM (2001/2002). She lives and works in Amsterdam.

BELÉN GACHE has a Master's Degree in Discourse Analysis with a thesis on the argentine writer Julio Cortázar. She has published books such as Escrituras Nómades, del libro perdido al hipertexto (Nomadic Writings, from the lost book to hipertext) (Spain, Gijón, Trea, 2006), El ser escrito: lenguajes y escrituras en la obra de Xul Solar (The Written Being: languages and writings in Xul Solar's works) (Madrid, Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2002), Jorge Macchi, el destino como principal sospechoso, (Jorge Macchi, Destiny as the Principal Suspect) (France, Centre Contemporain d´art, Montebeliard, 2001). As a narrator she has published the novels Lunas eléctricas para las noches sin luna (Electric Moons for Moonless Nights) (Sudamericana, 2004), Divina Anarquia (Divine Anarchy) (Sudamericana, 1999) and Luna India (Indian Moon) (Planeta, 1994). Since 1996 she develops Wordtoys , a compilation of net poems and other non-linear works.

EDUARDO NAVAS is an artist, historian and critic specializing in new media; his work and theories have been presented in various places throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has been a juror for Turbulence.org in 2004 and for Rhizome.org in 2006-07, New York. Navas is founder and was contributing editor of "Net Art Review" (2003-05), is co-founder of "newmediaFIX" (2005 to present) and is co-founding member of "acute.cc", an international group of artists and academics who organize event and publications periodically. Currently, Navas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art and Media History, theory and Criticism at the University of California San Diego.

Posted by jo at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

Biomapping Brixton

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Workshop

Biomapping Brixton-How do you feel about the area that you live in? Which areas do you have a physical and emotional response to? The Hayward are running workshops with artist Christian Nold to create bio maps of areas in Brixton and Clapham. These workshops are FREE and promise to be a fascinating insight into your community

The Bio Mapping tool allows the wearer to record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal, in conjunction with their geographical location. This can be used to plot a map that highlights points of high and low arousal. By sharing this data we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited. These workshops involve a walk around the area followed by a download session where your physical responses are downloaded and mapped on Google Earth.

It is strongly recommended that you register your interest beforehand as the number of participants has to be limited to a maximum of 10.

Meeting and download point:

Brixton - Monday 29 Jan. Meet at Brixton Library at 2.30pm
Clapham - Monday 12 Feb. Meet at Clapham City Learning Centre

For more information and to register your interest in either of these workshops please e-mail Paul.green[at]southbankcentre.co.uk

To find out more about the Southbank Centre's programme of socially engaged digital arts projects please visit.

To find out more about Christian's work and bio mapping visit:
http://www.biomapping.net or http://www.softhook.com

Posted by jo at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2007

beiLAB

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Call for Residencies, Beijing, China

Artists, Architects, Scientists, Curators and Researchers :: We invite projects undertaking RESEARCH or developing DISCOURSE / zooming in on CHINA'S URBAN AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS / confronting art and technology with the different realities of the CHINESE CITY / doing so from a MULTITUDE of perspectives and disciplines.

beiLAB is a multidisciplinary work space and research platform covering an office space, an artist studio and a project space for lectures and workshops. BeiLAB is conceived as a meeting place for artistic, architectural, scientific and corporate communities researching China's social and urban identities in all its greyscales.

THREE FRAMES

ONE / RESEARCH AND DISCOURSE

We host projects in residence undertaking research or developing discourse.

TWO / CHINA'S URBAN AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS

Projects reveal a link with China: they zoom in on China's urban and social dynamics, confront art and technology with the different realities of the Chinese city and/or the patchwork of people it unites, define and renconfigure Chinese identity in a global perspective.

THREE / MULTI DIRECTIONAL

BeiLAB is fascinated by projects that are not too rigid to stick to their own context, but experiment with knowledge, perspectives, technology and physical environments other disciplines and communities have to offer.

TWO PROGRAMS

Open Lab Residence Program: more info click here
Theatre in Motion Residence Program: more info click here

ONE STUDIO

The studio is located in the beiLAB, on the top (third) floor of an old factory building in a small hutong (traditional Chinese alley) south of the Lama Temple. The area is known as Beixinqiao (New Northern Bridge) in the north eastern part of Beijing, within the second ring road which is considered the very center of the city.

The studio covers in total 104 square metres, and consists of a 10 metres long, 5.5 metres wide open living and workspace, with two big windows with view on the old city, a separate bathroom and a separate kitchen with all necessary appliances to cook and dine. The furniture in the studio can be reorganized according to the residents need. There is wireless internet available.
The studio has a separate entrance to ensure the privacy of the resident. Next to the artist studio, the beiLAB covers another private apartment, an office space and a project space with pantry, for project presentations, workshops and lectures. In certain occassions, artists in residence use the project space to present work in process. Images.

Els Silvrants
Theatre in Motion at beiLAB
Beijing, China
Dongcheng 100007
Dongsi Shisi Tiao 93 A lou 3 ceng
els[at]theatreinmotion.org

Posted by jo at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

Interactive Architecture

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Eyebeam - New York

Interactive Architecture dot Org is going Stateside! I’ve just finished putting the final touches to organising my first Interactive Architecture Event. It has been put together with the generous support of Eyebeam, New York, and Professor Stephen Gage of the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. Here are the event details.

Friday 7pm Jan. 26 :: EyeBeam, 540 W 21st Street, New York :: Organised by Ruairi Glynn of www.interactivearchitecture.org, Eyebeam is pleased to co-host, with the Bartlett School of Architecture, an evening of presentations on Interactive Architecture. Presenters will include Phil Ayres of Sixteen Makers, Eyebeam residents Carmen Trudell and Jennifer Broutin, Marek Walczak of MW2MW and David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of the NYC architecture firm, The Living. Presenters will discuss their work for 15 minutes followed by a panel discussion moderated by Professor Stephen Gage of the Bartlett with a reception from 9-10pm. This event is open to the public free of charge with a suggested donation. This evening symposium will be the culmination of a two day "work in progress" International Jury held at Eyebeam between final year students of the Bartlett’s Interactive Architecture Workshop, and Parsons The New School of Design. The Interactive Architecture Workshop would like to thank the Stuart Murphy Travel Award Trustees for their generous sponsorship.

The Two day "work in progress" International Jury held at Eyebeam (25/26 Jan) is also open to all. We would welcome artists, architects and students from other schools in the NYC area who would also wish to share their work in progress. If you or your fellow associates / class members are interested in joining us please contact me for more details. ruairi[at]interactivearchitecture.org

About The Bartlett Interactive Architecture Workshop

The Interactive Architecture Workshop is based in Diploma Unit 14 of the postgraduate studios at the Bartlett. Postgraduate Architecture students take a 2 year Diploma where the second year of the course is set up to encourage directed research into a particular aspect of design. Our students chose to investigate the architecture of time-based transformation. Projects vary from speculations about large long-term landscape transformations to the construction of 1:1 responsive and interactive installations.

Graduates from the studio include Jason Bruges, Usman Haque, Phil Ayres, Chris Leung, James O’Leary. [blogged by ruairi on Interactive Architecture dot Org]

Posted by jo at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

IMD Forum

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Anne Friedberg

Speaker: Anne Friedberg :: Time: Wednesday, January 24, 6-8pm :: Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML). Title: The Virtual Window and it's Interactive Other: the Page and the Window; the Book and the Screen:

The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft is a book about windows and screens and frames and the virtual and the metaphors that shape our everyday access to the world around us. In his 1435 treatise on painting and perspective, De Pictura, Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed the painter to “regard” the rectangular frame of the painting as an open window (aperta finestra). Alberti’s Renaissance metaphor of the window has haunted centuries of subsequent thinking about the humanist subject of perspective, and has remained a defining concept for theories of painting, architecture, and moving image media. Unlike the metaphor of the window as a frame for perspectival view, the metaphor of the window in computer software relies on a

different set of assumptions about the viewer and the view that the window provides. An early component of the graphical user interface, the computer “window” did not refer to the full expanse of the computer screen, but rather to a subset of its screen surface: an inset screen within the screen of the computer, one of many nested on its “desktop.” The computer “window” shifts its metaphoric hold from the singular frame of perspective, to the multiplicity of windows within windows, frames within frames, screens within screens.

The Virtual Window Interactive is a translation / extension / conversion of ideas and arguments found in the book. Because the computer screen is both a “page” and a “window,” at once opaque and transparent, it commands a new posture for the practice of writing and reading—one that requires looking into the page as if it is the frame of a window. The Virtual Window Interactive forms a tangent to the matrix of concepts in the book while supplying vivid examples of the still and moving images that have—in the span of centuries-- filled the apertures of our windows, frames, and screens.

Anne's Wikipedia bio is here. [posted by sfisher on USC Interactive Media Division blog]

Posted by jo at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

New Forms Festival 2007: Re·Use

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Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals: New Forms Festival 2007 :: The New Forms Festival is an annual cross-disciplinary festival exploring installation, performance, music, film, and electronic arts.

The theme for NFF07 is Re·Use. To use something again, often for a different purpose and usually as an alternative to throwing it out. NFF 07 looks at the ideas of reuse in the media arts. These forms have been able to come from different areas all around us. Whether involving the recycling of equipment, the change in its use, reprogramming material, the sample and mash-up of sound/images and reconstruction of ideas; the concept of reuse has become one of the major entities behind invigorating, changing, and growing media and electronic arts.

Over history art has always seen recontextualization at its very core. Warhol once asked if there was ever really an original idea. Shakespearean tales become modern films, ancient sounds become electronic music anthems. Pop culture drives home sounds and imagery that have changed, grown, and evolved over time. Within this we have seen our cultures mix, grow, and shape shift as ideas get recontextualized and reapproapriated from generation to generation, and culture to culture.

For Re:Use NFF is looking for pieces that challenge these models and trends, recognizing shifts that have taken place as well as new and innovative works that re:use works on formats and in ways not yet seen. As the amount of information we receive on a daily basis increases at a pace far faster that at any other time in history, NFF 07 will become a platform for this mixed media world, and a indicator of what might lie ahead in the years to come.

NFF EXHIBITION 07: Re-Use: Everything Knows Itself
The world is round.- Gertrude Stein

Clocks are thinking, Earth is spinning, people are ticking...

Furthering the New Forms Festival’s 2007 direction of exploring things unseen the exhibition will centre on the theme of re-constructing, re-shaping and re-mixing the already extant. The aim of this reincarnation is to reflect the sameness and the difference of things revealed by repetition, iteration, rhythm and phase.

Sameness requires difference; the very regularity of a beat, of drumming, can be enhanced and overwritten. The second repetition is invariantly different then the first by being second. Difference resolves into more complex kinds of sameness.

We are interested in form as much as content. We shall invite works that are spare, astringent, and display a simplicity of means coupled with transparency of technique. Works purged of metaphor and stripped down to their most fundamental features. "Less is more, more is less. The eye is a menace to clear sight." [Ad Reinhardt]. We would like to show self-contained works that shed light on the underlying systematic action of their construction, exhibiting regularity of behavior in the elements they use. We welcome audio/visual installation, kinetic sculpture, networked and telematic art submissions. The key words, again, are: repetition, iteration, rhythm and phase.

UNCONFERENCE: ArtCamp07: Re:use

ArtCamp07: Re:use follows up on ArtCamp06, the World’s First Un-Conference on Art, a groundbreaking day-long event co-produced by New Forms Festival and Upgrade! Vancouver, which was attended by over a hundred artists, designers, programmers, critics, theorists, curators and practitioners from all fields who presented over 30 workshops, talks and hybrid events throughout a single inspiration-filled day. The theme of Re:use will be brought into the framework of ArtCamp in order to offer an opportunity for participants from all fields working creatively with technological or material frameworks to come together in an open window of time and space to meet, show work, talk about ideas, try things out, and learn new hands-on practices.

Bring your turntables, laptops, or sewing machines, your old mp3s, National Geographics, bridesmaid’s dresses, or liquor tickets. Come with something, and leave with something else. We invite all manner of on-the-spot engagements including but not limited to: DIY projects that transform discarded materials in something beautiful, cool or useful; showing people how to cut and paste code to make quick and dirty websites or applications; strategies for revisioning experiences or environments; workshops for recycling photographs, cassettes, CDs or other technological or manufacturing detritus; conceptual detournement; discussion or demonstration of interventionist practices relating to performance, psychogeography or street art; collaborative drawing events; experimentation with found materials; realtime mixing of cameraphone pictures, text messages, video, photostreams or something else; swaps, exchanges or tricked-out marketplace mods for circulating, disseminating or evolving objects, subjects or frameworks; presentation of cultural objects or artifacts that relate to reuse or recycling; discussion tracing the circulation and “reuse” of strategies or ideas; or grand schemes for social or environmental engagements. You get the idea: it’s up to you. Bring something -- object, material, idea, technology, or just bring yourself – and put it in the mix.
ArtCamp is a self-organizing event that gear up in the form of a collaborative wiki in the months and weeks leading up to the festival. Last year’s wiki.

FILM

Deconstruction

Deconstruction looks to films made entirely out of sample based material. Whether coming from a found art, archival, scratch video or other mode of presentation, deconstruction looks to those works that alter the reality of the original clips, creating new context through the finished result. Works are encouraged from a wide range of sources including poltical, pop-cultural, surreal, home-video, and the internet.

MUSIC AND VISUALS SERIES

Scratch Video

Aiming to present a comprehensive look at the world of scratch-video, one of the most prominent sub-genres of live video production and interfacing, this night takes live video mixing/scratching under the context of hip-hop/beat music production as its focus. Assembling National and International artists, software developers, and scenemakers, NFF07 affords a mash-up of sub-genres, styles, and methods, picturing where this Form has been and where it is going. Live movement within the image, movement, and sound is crucial to this evening.

Cross-Pollination

Articulating the crossovers and variances between traditional band/instrument structures and electronically-mediated production and performance, this event allows audiences to see committed efforts on both sides in order to facilitate cooperation and communication between Forms. Cross-Pollination features 30-minute sets from bands, which are sampled live and then restructured and remixed by a laptop/live p.a. artist immediately thereafter, which effectively is a live remix. This format encourages both artists and audience to stretch their understanding and appreciation to the limit, as it lays bare both the capabilities, but also inadequacies, of the Forms, while pushing both all involved to further their skills and the scope of their art.

Electronic Heritage

Electronic music as a musical art form has been in existence for nearly a century. From early modulating and noise creating machines like the intonarumori to modern day audio computer software like ACID and Pro Tools electronic musicians have been at the forefront of musical innovation since its existence. 2007 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first electronic instrument the teleharmonium. In celebration of the birth of this now antique musical art form the New Forms Festival would like to pay tribute to yesteryears electronic pioneers by inviting contemporary electronic innovators to interpret their sound. Electronic Heritage will invite artists to incorporate electronic theories, instruments and samples from their electronic forefathers into live performances that will both address the old and bridge the new. This night will show where we’ve come from and where electronic music is yet to go.

Manglification

Building off the success of the "Where We Are" and "Timestretch" nights from the Low/Music & Visual Series of NFF05 & 06 respectively, Mangling plans to showcase those at the forefront of modern dance culture and its subsequent music production. These artists provide necessary alternatives, reconsiderations, and subversions of the vast machine that has occured as the music industry has overtaken branches of the electronic music scene and its pop tangents. The event will complete the spectrum of the modern club environment, pairing the music sets with visual installations and live video performance.

RESIDENCY PROGRAM

New Forms has begun to work with Artist Run Centres in the city to produce works specifically around the festival. The goals are to create a maximum audience for these local artists works that might not be available otherwise, and also to give these artists a forum to display works in an international context. The first of these partnerships will be with OFMAS (Open Forum Media Arts Society) for 2007. We will be contacting further Artist Run Centres in Vancouver concerning this in the months ahead. The Residency Program is only applicable to local artists and community projects are encouraged. Please contact curatorial[at]newformsfestival.com for further information on the program.

All submissions should be done through the online form with accompanying material sent to: New Forms Festival 06 / Transformations #200-252 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V5T-1A6. Submission Deadline: April 1st, 2007.

(No Submissions arriving after April 1st will be accepted)

For any further information please email submissions[at]newformsfestival.com.

Malcolm Levy
New Forms Festival : Revised Films
#200-252 East 1st Avenue. Vancouver, B.C. V5T-1A6
malcolm[at]newformsfestival.com
604.648.2752

Posted by jo at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

Hyperrhiz Journal

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New Media Cultures

Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures provides a forum for experimental new media projects (both critical and creative) located outside or across current disciplinary boundaries.

New thinking need not follow established patterns. We at Hyperrhiz oppose the idea that knowledge must grow in a tree structure from previously accepted ideas. Instead, we are interested in the creative potential of thinking as a nodal process. As our name suggests, works written in the spirit of Deleuzian approaches are welcomed but not required.

We value works that are nomadic in nature: place-less but not lost. Like the nomad, we encourage migrations into new conceptual territories resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions: of the material, the virtual, the oral, the visual, the textual, the tactile. These interleavings of words and practices, expressed as electronic meditations, are the literature of the Deleuzian technological nomad.

Posted by jo at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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Marta de Menezes

Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea welcomes next Wednesday, January 24th @19:00, Upgrade! Lisbon’s monthly gathering featuring artist Marta de Menezes. Entrance is free and drinks will be served.

Marta de Menezes (Lisbon, 1975) has been exploring the interconnections between Art and Biology, by working in scientific research institutes and by showing that biological techniques can be used as a medium for artistic creation. In 1999, de Menezes created her first biological art project (Nature?) by modifying living butterflies’ wings patterns. Since then she has explored several biological techniques, namely Functional Magnetic Ressonance of the brain, in order to create portraits of the mind (Functional Portraits, 2002), fragments of fluorescent DNA, in order to create micro-sculptures in the nucleus of human cells (NucleArt, 2002), sculptures made with proteins (Proteic Portrait, 2002), with DNA (Inner Cloud, 2003) or with living neurons (Tree of Knowledge, 2005). De Menezes’s work has been widely shown in exhibitions, publications and lectures. She is currently Ectopia’s (Gulbenkian Institute for Science’s experimental art laboratory) artistic director

For this edition of the Upgrade! Lisbon, Marta de Menezes will discuss how biology and biological technologies can constitute a new medium for artistic creation.

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

Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States

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Call for Participation

Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States, a three day conference (April 26-28, 2007) in Second Life, will explore divisions and shed light on these ideas and on the nature of the synthetic environment. Hosted by Ars Virtua at the New Media Consortium campus.

• Borders define geographic boundaries of political entities or legal jurisdictions, such as governments, states or sub-national administrative divisions.

• The boundary of a set (in mathematics) is those points that can be approached from within the set and without. It is all points not contained in the interior of a set.

• The liminal state (in ritual) is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new. --(wikipedia)

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. This is not because it is functionally transitional, except perhaps that it is not a destination, but that it functions parallel to 'real' space and remains temporary in its occupancy.

Our interest lies in both the synthetic and the terrestrial world though fundamentally one is a subset of the other. A Venn diagram may hold visual information about this relationship, but it misses the point. There is a functional liminal space that exists outside the terrestrial. We want to emphasize that while there is a relationship here the liminal space that is created synthetically doesn't exist in a terrestrial sense. So the atoms and the electrons are terrestrial and represented by our friend Venn, the intellectual space is not however anything but contained by materials and represents a different space.

To that end we are considering sessions relating to gender/sexuality, race, architecture, body/technology, body/digital image, life/non-life, transgenics, and game/environment.

If you have an interest in these topics and would like to present, or would like to suggest another topic please contact nmc[at]arsvirtua.com.

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

AUR(O)RA:

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EXPLORING ATTRIBUTES OF A LIVE ALGORITHM

NEW THURSDAY CLUB EVENT :: MICHAEL YOUNG :: THURSDAY 25 JANUARY, 6-8PM, BEN PIMLOTT BUILDING, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, NEW CROSS, SE14 6NW :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

AUR(O)RA: EXPLORING ATTRIBUTES OF A LIVE ALGORITHM--This presentation proposes attributes of 'living computer music', the product of live algorithmic behaviours. The improvisation system "aur(o)ra", in development, illustrates how these can inform creative design.

A live algorithm (LA) is the function of an ideal autonomous system able to engage in performance with abilities analogous (if not identical) to a human musician. An LA is distinct from established AI which generates music from a rule-base, and is most relevant where structure and character are emergent properties, products of interaction with the heterarchical group. Living computer music diffeers from traditional live electronics and fixed-media work by avoiding performer control or explicit a priori knowledge (compositional design, notation). Instead, a number of other properties are desirable...

Dr Michael Young is Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London and composer. Michael completed a PhD in composition in 1995. He has lectured at the University of Wales, Bangor and Oxford Brookes University. His music has drawn upon a range of live and electroacoustic resources; more recent work has focused on interactive and generative music systems. An undercurrent in his output is collaborative and interdisciplinary practice; he has worked with jazz musicians and improvisers in the role of pianist, laptop musician and/or composer, and has been commissioned to provide electroacoustic music for performance in theatre and gallery exhibitions. He is co-director, with Tim Blackwell, of the Live Algorithms for Music Research Network, creaetd with funding from EPSRC.

For more information on the Thursday Club check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email maria x at drp01mc[at]gold.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

Emerson College and NRPA present

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OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media

Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) present OurFloatingPoints 4: Participatory Media (FP4) a speaker series that addresses the recent emergence of inexpensive, worldwide, and many-to-many publishing and communication media and focuses on how these media are transforming the relationship between cultural producers and consumers. FP4 is the fourth in an ongoing series of lectures and discussions planned with NRPA and its world-renowned website, Turbulence.org. (2/28): Ulises Mejias + Trebor Scholz; (3/28): McKenzie Wark + David Weinberger; (4/25): 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).

Venue: (2/28 and 3/28) Bill Bordy Theater, Emerson College, 216 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116; (4/25) Cahners Theater, Museum of Science, Boston.

Posted by jo at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

Robert B. LISEK's

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GENGINE

Fundamental Research Lab invites you to the Lecture and the Opening Reception for Robert B. LISEK's GENGINE :: January 25 - February 25, 2007 :: Lecture: Thursday, January 25, 6 pm :: Opening: Thursday, January 25, 6-8 pm :: National Gallery of Art Zacheta, Warsaw.

Gengine, the first part of project SUPRAMIND that aims to build a general-purpose intelligent system based on a visual inference engine which allows us to solve problems by extracting new information from existing. Gengine module use genetic programming as an automated "invention machine". In the Zacheta Gallery presentation the DNA of the members of Fundamental Research Lab has been used. After the translation, the sequences have been treated by various genetic programming techniques. The output sequences have been used to create extraordinary diagrams, objects and instructions on what works to make. Each object alludes to the different conditions that include not only mathematical, but also social and philosophical roots.

The purpose of the whole project Supramind is to create a artificial general intelligence ‘implants’ [SUPRAGII], i. e., programs that can be used to solve problems in many completely different fields.

The next modules of the project SUPRAMIND in preparation:

2. visual inference engine based on dynamic probabilistic logic network (NYU)
3. knowledge representation engine based on hyperposets (ready core >> FLOAT project, LMCC NYC) and optional Suprabot extensions:
4. open source game engine for visualization and sensing (UTD)
5. robotic sensimotor interface (the Hanson Robotics)
6. natural language processing interface (UTD)

The SUPRAMIND is sponsored by the Arts Links, the University of Texas at Dallas, and in cooperation with the Harvestwork Digital Media Arts Center in New York.

Robert B. LISEK is an artist, mathematician and a founder of FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH LAB; he is involved in the number of projects focused on alternative art strategies, hacktivism and artificial intelligence. A pioneer of art based on GAI (general artificial intelligence). His visionary combination of GAI and telerobotics explores the possibility of building distributed, intelligent entities.

Downloadable images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fundamental_data/

Info and contacts:
http://www.fundamentalresearch.org/
lisek[at]fundamental.art.pl

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

sagasnet: Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar

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Call for Projects

sagasnet: Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar ::Call for Projects :: Deadline: February 10, 2007 :: April 29-May 5 2007 :: Stuttgart, Germany in conjunction with fmx/07 :: Working Language: English.

sagasnet is a non-profit training initiative to further content development for interactive media supported by the European MEDIA 2007 Programme designed for participants from MEDIA member countries.

During the Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar up to 10 pre-selected interactive narrative projects in development (no limitation on media, genre or target audience) will be provided in parallel with up to ten high-profile face-to-face consulting sessions (on financing, project management, marketing, story structure, game play...).

Consultants will be chosen according to the needs of the selected projects.
Selection board: Greg Childs (ChildsEye, UK), Raimo Lang (YLE, FIN), Anthony Lilley (Magic Lanterns Production, UK), Peter Olaf Looms (DR interactive, DK), Mark Ollila (Nokia, S/AUS), Lee Sheldon (USA), Brunhild Bushoff (sagasnet, D)

Provide your 3-6 page project description (in English) before February 10, 2007. Details + application form here or contact: sagasnet[at]sagasnet.de

Projects are welcome that are in development, interactive and narrative. Main selection criteria is the potential to reach the -defined- audience /market (commercial, cultural and/or artistic).

consultancy in previous sagasnet seminars was provided a.o. by Ernest Adams, UK | Richard Adams, UK | Frank Alsema, 4xM, NL | Joel Baumann, tomato, D/UK | Sebastian Belcher, Harbottle & Lewis, UK | Margarita Betancor, Fox Kids GmbH | Frank Boyd, UK | Matt Costello, Katonah Productions, USA | Greg Childs, ChildsEye, UK | Noah Falstein, USA | Martin Freeth, UK | Bob Hopkins, UK | Eero Iloniemi, FIN | Daniel Kapelian, F | Siggi Koegl, D | Stephan Kolloff, D | Craig Lindley S | Stephane Natkin, F | Mark Stephen Meadows, USA | Thomas Miles, D | Matthias Rauterberg, D/NL | Greg Roach, USA | Christian Routh, E | Lee Sheldon, USA | Vincent Scheurer, UK | Jurgen Wolff USA/UK

Projects selected for consulting in the frame of the sagasnet Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar 2007 will qualify for application for the MEDIA Development NEW TALENT fund in 2008.

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2007

Anna Halprin: Dance/Art Experiments

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Lecture and Workshop

Graduate Lecture Series presents Anna Halprin: Dance/Art Experiments :: January 31, 2007 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM :: USC Roski School of Fine Arts / Watt Hall 104, 3001 S. Flower St., University Park Campus, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0292 :: Telephone: 213.740.2787 /Fax: 213.740.8938 :: more info: slockhar[at] usc.edu

Anna Halprin has been working in the field of dance since the late 1930's creating revolutionary directions for the form and inspiring fellow choreographers to take modern and post modern dance to new dimensions: from theatrical production, to teaching, to improvisation, to celebrations of modern ritual and myth, to environmental and street dance, to multi-cultural collaborations, and dances fostering audience participation and creativity. Among her students were Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and Robert Morris. Halprin pioneered what became known as "postmodern dance," creating work that was key to unlocking the door to experimentation in theater, music, happenings, and performance art.

"What are the possibilities for merging dance, art, and life?" In a special hands-on lecture/workshop, students will learn about Ms. Halprin's groundbreaking work in dance and education, then have the opportunity to participate in the creation of a dance-art experiment. The lecture will be followed by a workshop from 2-5 p.m. in the Roski MFA Gallery. The workshop is open to USC fine arts and dance students and others by special arrangement. Participants should bring a lunch and a scarf, and wear comfortable shoes & clothing. Please call 213.743.1804 for more information.

This event is co-sponsored by the USC Roski School of Fine Arts MFA Program and the Dance program at the USC School of Theatre.

Posted by jo at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

THE VOICE OF NEW MUSIC

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Minimal Music in New York: 1972-1982

THE VOICE OF NEW MUSIC (1991) :: An anthology of articles on the evolution of minimal music in New York in 1972-1982, which originally appeared in the Village Voice. Published originally by Apollohuis, in Eindhoven, Holland, and now available as a free download.

The Voice of New Music (PDF format, preferred) [888 KB]
The Voice of New Music (Microsoft Word format) [1.1 MB]

Please let the author know by e-mail your opinion on this new edition. Write to tom (at) johnson (dot) org

Posted by jo at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Mediaruimte

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Code 31 Workshop and 8bit / Gameboy Concerts

Mediaruimte invites Code 31 to organise one of their geek meetings / workshops which stands this time under the theme of "audio synthesis on microcontrollers". The workshop will be followed by live 8bit / gameboy concerts with: Code31 [ be ] M-,-n [ be ] Goto80 [ se ] :: 16:00 > 21:00 code31 meeting :: 21:00 > 23:00 live performances.

code31 is an open studio for research, development and discussion about techniques and methodologies in media art. It is an initiative which stimulates interchange between several artistic disciplines and serves as the space needed to experiment with new technologies. code31 gathers artists, engineers and scientists: people who concentrate on the symbiosis of art and technology, through experiment and reflection.

/ meetings

The main set-up is the openLab: a place where artists can experiment and develop and discuss the feasibility of their media art, as well as teach, learn and develop new technologies. Interested participants are free to join the weekly sessions. Questions and answers, problem posing/solving and development are researched and shared with fellow artists, designers and engineers. In this way, media artists build their own technical workspace and initiate collaborations, navigating through a landscape of technology. With our philosophy of teaching one another, code31 has grown to become something akin to a tech self-help group.

/ diversification

code31 meetings don’t fit one theme, nor one fixed technology. Content and research domains depend on the people present at the meetings. Every participant comes with his own interests/projects/context. Everyone contributes by sharing their know-how and knowledge with the group, as well as formulating problems, questions and early ideas. This approach leads to a dynamic research pattern which touches upon very diverse aspects in the artistic and technical evolution.

/ projects-workshops

code31 is not directed towards production nor realization of finished products. It’s aimed at confronting tomorrow’s reality and ideas with today’s technology, choices and options. This does not inhibit outcomes in form of public events. Experiments and research can take place in a public context, confronting and studying feasibility. Problem-solving in a group can be interesting, but sometimes it requires additional, specialized knowledge. The meetings with specialists are organized in the form of workshops. To ensure continuity of knowledge-spreading and transmission, we use an open website (wiki). This is our dynamic archive of shared knowledge, open to the world. Our main fields of attention are: audio/visual computing, open-source software, DIY, robotics, electronics (mainly digital), code hacking.

/ collaboration

The existing diversity in (digital) technologies makes it impossible for the individual artist to have an all-encompassing overview and in-depth know-how or even acquaintance with the tools. During the development of technological projects, the artist gets confronted with aspects beyond personal technical knowledge. Code31 stimulates informal bridging, a continuous flow of ideas and knowledge.

/ network - node

The collaborations appear on several levels - local and international, physical and electronic. Code31 forms a natural node in this network. The structure of the open studio implies a very strong local binding, while facilitating global collaboration with similar organisations as well.

Posted by jo at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Schwelle

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@ Tesla/Transmediale 2007

Schwelle is a new media and performance project using cutting edge acoustic and interactive technologies to explore the extreme threshold states of consciousness that constitute human experience. The multi-part project uses High Definition image and multi-channel sound, interactive installation and live performance to create states of consciousness in the spectator akin to the thresholds states that one experiences at the edge of trance, sleep and death. For transmediale '07, Tesla presents parts 1 and 2.

Part 1 is a turbulent exploration told by way of image and sound of the experience undergone at the time of the dissolution of the body and of consciousness. Part 2 is a live performance in which the audience confronts a lone single performer Michael Schumacher, master improviser and long time dancer by William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet, experiencing the traumatic transition period between death and rebirth. Utilizing wireless sensor networks in the room and on the dancer’s body, Part 2 creates a stage environment where light, sound and objects take on their own choreography, performing with Schumacher, breathing, and behaving alongside him. Where does the body end and the room begin? What happens in the threshold where body and room merge, mutually influencing and transforming each other?

Schwelle is a co-production between artists and researchers from cultural and scientific institutions in Canada, China, Germany, Holland, China, and the USA. Schwelle, Part 2 was partially developed during a project residency at Tesla in Summer 2006 and will receive its world premiere at "tesla zur transmediale".

Part I
Concept/Direction/HD Video/Sound: Chris Salter
Collaboration Sound: Daniel Moody-Grigsby and Philip Viel

Part II
Premiere: Tesla/Transmediale 2007, Berlin, February 2007
Concept/Direction: Chris Salter, in collaboration with Michael Schumacher
Dramaturgy: Heidi Gilpin
Lighting Design: Lea Xiao
Sound Design and Programming: Marije Baalman, Daniel Moody- Grigsby, Chris
Salter, Philip Viel
Interaction Design/Sensing Systems: Marije Baalman
Objects: Thomas Spier, Flora Luna
Production Stage Manager/Technical Director: Daniel Plewe
Production Assistents: Daniel Wessolek, Alexander Wilson, Brett Bergmann

Tesla: Medien-Kunst-Labor, Klosterstrasse 68, Berlin
Thursday-Saturday, February 1-3, 2007. 20:30
For tickets/more information, please visit http://kasse@tesla-berlin.de

Christopher L. Salter, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Computation Arts
Faculty of Fine Arts
Concordia University

Researcher_Interactive Performance and Sound Hexagram

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

From Land Art to Bioart

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International Conference

From Land Art to Bioart- International Conference :: will interrogate issues of Programming land and urbanism, Ecology and techno-art :: Saturday 20 January - 2007 - 9.00- 17:30 :: Modern Art gallery in Torino (Conference Room) :: info[at]parcoartevivente.it

"From Land Art to Bioart" (Curator Ivana Mulatero ) with Nicolas Bourriaud, Nils Udo, Jens Hauser, Piero Gilardi, Franco Torriani, Lorenzo Taiuti, Marta De Menezes, Pier Luigi Capucci, Louis Bec, Jean Max Albert, Alfio Bonanno, François Curlet, Roberto Marchesini, Vittorio Fagone, Raffaella Spagna & Andrea Caretto, and Claude Faure.

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

January 17, 2007

Piotr Szyhalski in conversation with Steve Dietz

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Thursday, January 18, 7:00 pm

If you've visited the Walker recently, you've likely encountered the captivating animated dolphin, a creature that engages visitors in a dialogue about subjects ranging from the philosophic to the prosaic. The Walker-commissioned Dolphin Oracle II is the work of Minneapolis-based artist/designer Piotr Szyhalski, created in collaboration with Richard Shelton. A professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Szyhalski works in a variety of media -- illustration, photography, typography, drawing, painting, sound -- which are often combined in installations, interactive media, and live performance. What remains central to his production is the insistence on the viewer as a "co-creator" of the artwork. Szyhalski will converse with Steve Dietz, director of ZeroOne: The Art and Technology Network and organizer of the recent exhibition Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose, California. Founding director of the Walker's New Media Initiatives, Dietz has curated digital media exhibitions worldwide and has contributed to numerous publications and the recently published book Else/Where: Mapping -- New Cartographies of Networks and Territories.

This lecture will be webcast and archived on the Walker Channel. [blogged by by Robin Dowden on New Media Initiatives Blog]

Posted by jo at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

S O N I C B E D _ L O N D O N plays

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pluckEhisquare_anti

Watermans New Media Gallery: S O N I C B E D _ L O N D O N :: From January 24 - February 28 :: Meet the artist Kaffe Matthews on 6 February from 3pm :: This is a free event. Booking advised on Tel 020 8232 1010 or email info[at]watermans.org.uk

Everyone is welcome to take part in Watermans’ new exhibition Sonic Bed_London, a specially designed king sized bed that covers every inch of your body with sound. Stand near the bed and you will hear its music, lie in it and you will feel it. Changing from subtle to dynamic, at times even beyond hearing, Sonic Bed plays music for you to feel rather than just listen to.

Sonic Bed _London is a sonic and social experiment, an exploration of our perception of sound. With its 12 channel surround sound, Sonic Bed_London is the ultimate in home entertainment! At Watermans, Sonic Bed_London plays "pluckEhisquare_anti", a sound work commissioned by Rich Mix that brought together for the first time Mumbai based musician/composer Shri and sound artist Kaffe Matthews from London. Classical tabla, flute and contemporary bass blend in ever changing combinations. Recombined by programmer/musician David Muth the playback elements system ensures that the resulting piece: "pluckEhisquare_anti" never repeats itself.

Sonic Bed_London, received an ‘Award of Distinction’ by Arts Electronica 2006, Digital Music category. The first Sonic Bed was commissioned by Electra for Her Noise exhibition in 2005.

Posted by jo at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Neural n. 26 IN PRINT

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Available Now

The Neural n. 26 in English is available: 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION! -- 3 issues + 1 Interferenze catalogue; Europe - 24,90 Euro; World - 38.97 U.S. Dollars.

CONTENTS: new.media.art . Rafael Lozano Hemmer (interview), .Golan Levin (interview), . Exonemo (interview), . Always On, new augmented space and its memory, . news (Academy, The Familiar Stranger Project, Bion, Media Mirror, Spam Plants + Spam rchitecture) . centerfold: 'Annual Checkup' by Lisa Erdman

e.music: . John Oswald (interview), . Geir Jenssen/Biosphere (interview), . Brian Mackern (interview), . news: (Distant Views/Culture Catchers, Paper Record Player, Yesnation, DJ Artyom, Tactical Sound Garden) . reviews: (Audiotoop, Rolf and Fonky + Scott Pagano, Carpet Curtains, KNBSC505, Music Dances Itself, Nasca, on perspectives, Journal for People) . reviews cd: (Rafael Toral, Stephan Mathieu + Janek Schaefer, Taylor Deupree, Yannis Kyriakides, Matt Rogalsky, Gabriel Paiuk + Jason Kahn, Kira Kira, Tim Exile, Anla Courtis, Vitor Joaquim, Montreal Sound Matter, Jacob Kirkegaard...)

hacktivism: . Heath Bunting (interview), . Rick Silva (interview), . Bare Life innovation, . news (The Sheep Market, TrackMeNot, Reject Me, Dark Source, Crucifix NG). reviews: (Y.Benkler - The Wealth of Networks, E.Halter - From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games, J.Leandre - Archivos Babilonia, R.F.Jorgensen - Human Rights in the Global Information Society, W.H.K.Chun - Control and Freedom)

The NEW NEURAL WEBSITE is online: please check it and subscribe to RSS feeds, if you want.

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

Hive:

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Small Mobile Open Source Networks

Killer-application is people-TV presents Hive: Small Mobile Open Source Networks live stream :: When: Wednesday 17 January start 8.00 PM :: Where: Theatrum Anatomicum, Waag building, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam.

Hive (not Hyves) is a network that feels, sees, listens and exchanges. The underlying software HIVEWARES is an open source operating system designed to function on commercial networks like WiFi. Every Hive enabled device is a node in the network. Internet- and computer-veteran Vladimir Grafov was involved in the development and tells about its history, the possibilities and the future of Hive. Grafov will be joined by Alexei Blinov and introduced by Rob van Kranenburg.

Hive Networks: Models of Networking in Post-Google Age by Vladimir Grafov and Alexei Blinov

Hive Networks are different; they watch, listen, sense and touch the world around them. They actively source, distribute and create content, they...... turn the world on.

Having said that, we realize that challenge of building the parallel models of networking is not an easy one. Started as an art project and founded by Art Council of England, Hive Networks is an artistic adventure into ubiquitous computing, creative exposure of technologies which otherwise stay hidden and incomprehensible to the public.

It is not difficult to imagine a future where billions of people regularly access applications running inside the global network as part of their daily lives, when technology recedes into the background of our lives and seamlessly integrates with it, becoming so embedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. But it is not about technology. It’s about the mismatch between the current hierarchical models in which global networks are organized and the emerging publishing culture that became possible because of the technology. It‘s about empowerment, gaining control over the identity and locality of the content. Centralized, corporately structured content aggregators and information brokers inevitably capitalized on the content they collect, accumulate and filter. Network owners and connectivity providers consider volume charges to make sure they keep growing. Copyright owners push towards tightly controlled distribution of the content.

We believe that the mismatch could be resolved by developing parallel, democratic tools of publishing that rely on shared network ownership. We base our work on three cornerstones: Open source software, Open Spectrum (WiFi) and Open hardware. These three elements come together in what we generically call “Hive enabled device”.

Each HIVE enabled device is capable of gathering content and disseminating it either to its immediate physical location or across a local or global network.

HIVEWARES is the software behind each HIVE device. It is an open source operating system designed to work on commercially available network hardware such as wireless access points or wireless LAN hard drive units. These units are attractive to use due to their relatively low cost, low power equirements, and in-built network connectivity.

Once installed with HIVEWARES each device not only acts as a node in the network but also collects, stores and forwards data and multi-media content. The HIVE device no longer only provides a connectivity structure, through which access to the global Internet is facilitated, but a content structure, a hiving network of desires and cultural/artistic creations.

During the evening, we will address some of the issues we encountered in the course of the project and give a short demonstration of the current state of development.

When: 17th of January 2007, venue opens at 7.45 PM start 8.00 PM
Stream: http://connect.waag.org
Where: Theatrum Anatomicum, waag building, Nieuwmarkt 4, 1012CR, Amsterdam

KillerTV is supported by: Mondriaan Stichting, VSB Fonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Surfnet, Pauwhoffonds

Waag Society | Floor v Spaendonck | Nieuwmarkt 4 | 1012 CR Amsterdam tel +31.20.5579898 | fax +31-20 5579880 | floor@[at]waag.org |

Posted by jo at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2007

TRANSMISSION.06/mimesis

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Call for Participation

TRANSMISSION.06/mimesis (tactics of mimetic intervention in everyday life) is an open call for the creation of an art archive about public interventions concerning camouflage and invisibility strategies in everyday life. This is the last part of the three year project TRANSMISSION (2004-2006), curated by progettozero(+).

This project intends to investigate the strategies and the dynamics of camouflage and likeness, of subtle sabotage and tampering: the techniques of fusion and intrusion between artistic language and daily life, media and public languages. The selected works of the archive will be proposed via web and then displayed in different locations across Europe.

You should carry out an intervention in a public/urban space (including media), using and altering the languages present in the context. These actions should attempt through mimetic strategies to render themselves invisible as art projects. These acts of "guerrilla communications" and interferences, aim to alter their contexts without being recognizable as such.

Posted by jo at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion [LEAD]

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Live Chat with Jennifer Willet

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 8: Wild Nature and the Digital Life Special Issue, guest edited by Dene Grigar and Sue Thomas :: Live chat with artist Jennifer Willet, of Concordia University (Montreal) and the collaborative project (with Shawn Bailey) BIOTEKNICA.

Chat date: Wednesday, January 17 :: 2 pm West Coast US / 5 pm East Coast USA / 10pm UK. LEAD is an open forum around the Wild Nature and the Digital Life special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac. Chat instructions are below. The LEA website includes instructions and a complete list of upcoming chats.

Jennifer Willet is an artist, a faculty member in Studio Arts and a Ph.D student in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). Her work explores notions of self and subjectivity in relation to biomedical, bioinformatics, and digital technologies with an emphasis on social and political criticism. She has exhibited and presented her research extensively across Canada and internationally.

Since 2002, Willet and Shawn Bailey have collaborated on an innovative computational, biological, artistic, project called BIOTEKNICA. BIOTEKNICA has been exhibited in various forms at the Break 2.3 Festival, Slovenia (2005), Biennial Electronic Arts Perth, Australia (2004), The European Media Arts Festival, Germany (2003), La Société des arts et technologiques (SAT) Montreal, Canada (2005), and The Forest City Gallery London, Canada (2004), amongst others. In addition, BIOTEKNICA has been presented in interviews and conferences at multiple venues across Canada and in France, Australia, Scotland, Germany, and Spain. BIOTEKNICA research has been conducted during residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada (2002) and SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia (2004, 2006).

How to participate in the live chat?

Live chats will use the Writing and the Digital Life Discussion Room. To acess the WDL discussion room, it is necessary to subscribe to the list, by choosing "Join WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE" from here.

Use your subscriber email and JISCMAIL password to log into the discussion room (using the first link above). If the online interface does not start, it is necessary to download and install the most recent Java version.

Ryan Griffis

LEA Journal: http://leoalmanac.org/index.asp
LEA Gallery: http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/index.asp
Wild Nature and Digital Life Forum Info: http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/forum.asp

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

January 15, 2007

16 Beaver Group

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The Case for Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq + National Protest

16 Beaver Group :: Civil War, Occupation & Resistance: The Case for Immediate Withdrawal from Iraq; A Discussion with Anthony Arnove and Michael Schwartz :: When: 7:00 pm, Wednesday 1.17.07 :: Where: 16 Beaver Street 4th floor :: All are invited.

On the occasion of the release of the paperback of Anthony Arnove's most recent book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, please come to a discussion about the real roots of the violence in Iraq and why the US seeks to continue the occupation. Anthony will be joined by Michael Schwartz for an important conversation about what it will take to build a movement to bring the troops home NOW.

Michael Schwartz is a professor of sociology at Stonybrook University and longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy. His writings have appeared on TomDispatch, ZNet and other Web sites.

About January 27th National Protest: BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!!!! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!!! Join hundreds of groups, and thousands who oppose the war in a national PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

72% of soldiers deployed in Iraq wanted troops out by the end of 2006.
Instead, the new year saw the US occupation of Iraq reach even further depths of barbarism. 3,000 US soldiers are now dead while Iraq continues to descend into civil war as a result of the US occupation. The public hanging of Saddam Hussein was just the latest attempt to justify a continued US presence in the name of "democracy." Yet 90% of Iraqis polled believe things were better under Hussein than they are today. Real justice for Iraqis can only come from an immediate withdrawal of US military from the entire Middle East.

Despite growing discontent, the one thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that the US cannot leave. In fact, Bush wants to send more troops to Iraq. The politicians and media claim that the US must stay in Iraq in order to "stabilize" the country and stop civil war. But it is the US occupation that is the source of the violence in Iraq today and there can be no peace until the occupation is ended.

United for Peace and Justice (1500 organizations) is teaming with over 500 additional groups to march on Congress to insist the US get out of Iraq. Massive numbers are expected to rally and march around the Capital on January 27 at the start of a 3-day event. We will assemble at 11:00 a.m. on the east end of the National Mall, the end closest to the Capitol, and will march on a route that will literally circle the Capitol. We'll make sure the Congress hears us.

Momentum is building for this urgent mobilization. There are already more than 500 endorsements for the demonstration and we are hearing from groups around the country that they are organizing to get people to Washington DC.

Information and details about buses leaving from NYC will be available at tonight's discussion. For more information see also www.unitedforpeace.org and http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/index.html

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 07:38 PM | Comments (0)

Character Reference

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MTAA

MTAA is in a group show -- "Character Reference" -- opening January 18th at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery. We hope that if you’re in NYC that you can come out and see the show.

"Character Reference" is a group show featuring an international group of contemporary artists. The portrait as a genre has enjoyed an enduring popularity throughout the history of art. As depictions of power and wealth, or socialist realist studies, through its current pervasiveness in contemporary photography, the portrait has long played a key role in creating and questioning identity. Through the works in “Character Reference” the artists Oliver Laric, MTAA, Julian Opie, Lee Walton and Marina Zurkow all mine this rich genre. These artists do not simply employ the portrait as a means to depict specific individuals but rather use the form to represent broader cultural types.

January 19 - February 24 2007 :: Opening Reception: January 18, 6-8pm :: 601 West 26th Street, Suite 1240, New York, NY 10001.

Posted by jo at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

New Media Consortium Campus

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NMConnect: CALL FOR ARTISTS

NMConnect: CALL FOR ARTISTS :: February 11-12-13 :: New Media Consortium Campus In the Virtual World of Second Life.

Talented creatives from around the world gather in virtual worlds to shape space for infinite potential. Connect the Dots with hundreds of artists as we Illuminate and innovate together to weave new networks. NMConnect Visual Symposium is the largest collaborative art event ever created in Second Life. Artists in every medium can submit works for one of six themes of common interest: LOVE :: WISDOM :: TRUTH :: PEACE :: BEAUTY :: CHAOS

NMConnect will include forums hosted by AMO Studio, NMC and the Better World Scouts to spotlight creative ideas and solutions for the next generation. Leaders from every discipline are welcome to submit proposals for art, interactive media and performance. To Share Your Visual/Media Art
Visit http://www.nmc.org/sl/nmconnect.php to connect your installation.

* Provide Name of Avatar
* Reliable Email contact
* Name of piece to be presented
* Medium and format
* Space and Number of prims needed
* Special scripting/features to consider (sound, light, video, interference)
* Graphic images, links or slurls

All installations and Performances must be ready and available to place between February 7th – February 9th on the NMC Campus in Second Life. Please inquire early for projects over 20 prims and prepare a notecard to help visitors at the event connect. Present, Perform or Participate.

Email InKenzo[at]gmail.com with a vision of your work in context.

•Information about your presentation or performance
•Name and Email contact
•Space, prims and technical/media needs
•Preferred time, format, co-presenters and associations

Volunteers are welcome

Posted by jo at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)

37 Isolated Events

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Contemporary Butoh Dance and Immersive Video Performance

37 Isolated Events: a Contemporary Butoh Dance and Immersive Video Performance :: Thursday January 18, 2007 - 7pm :: San Francisco Asian Art Museum :: free w/ $5-after 5 pm museum admission.

Blindsight Artistic Director/Choreographer Paige Starling Sorvillo collaborates with Los Angeles-based media artist Lucy H G and UK-based Australian composer duo imaginationandmymother.

this ocean is also the desert and I am walking into a minefield, into this installed landscape this land no longer part of the soul, I swallow, I listen, I can see your body cut into foreign lands.

37 Isolated Events begins with the normal running temperature of the human body and gradually fabricates a facsimile body. Within the noise of networked society, our intimate distance and distant intimacy induce a virtual, mediated sensibility. We are anesthetized - our breath mechanized - as the human biological system becomes hybridized with the global system. At thirty-seven degrees Celsius, in isolation, we have unprecedented potential to risk exposure and make contact inside the noise of a growing global network.

concept/direction | paige starling sorvillo
collaborating media artist | lucy hg (LA)
sound artists | imaginationandmymother (UK)
performance/choreography | sorvillo, monique goldwater, isabelle sjahsam, jez lee
lighting design | elaine buckholtz
photography | ian winters

San Francisco Asian Art Museum :: 200 Larkin, Samsung Hall (Civic Center BART)

37 Isolated Events is a supported in part by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and Asian American Dance Performances. Paige Starling Sorvillo is honored to be a 2007 CHIME awardee with Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

Posted by jo at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

aMAZElab

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GOING PUBLIC '06

aMAZElab: GOING PUBLIC '06: ATLANTE MEDITERRANEO :: Istanbul, Beirut, Nicosia, Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Barcelona :: Urban interventions, workshops, films, debates, cultural exchanges, publications. Artistic direction: claudia zanfi.

GOING PUBLIC is a mobile open platform on practices and subjects. It’s one the leading project in Italy on communities and territory, dealing with contemprary subjects such as: mobility, borders, new geographies, new EU, mediterranean and middle eastern cultures, micro-geographies, etc. It’s a space where artists, architects, curators, writers, sociologists, geographers, students, can meet and exchange opinions. With a strong international network, Going Public introduce every year new artists and involves different communities.

Therefore we’re pleased to announce that the book GOING PUBLIC '06. Atlante Mediterraneo, will be presented at:

Foundaciò Antoni Tapies (Barcelona/Spain), 18th January at 7pm :: Introduced by: Claudia Zanfi (director MAST- Museo di Arte Sociale e Territoriale), Vasif Kortun (Director Platform Garanti, Istanbul), Marti Peran (curator and professor Barcelona University).

Can Xalant, Center for Contemporary Art (Matarò, Spain), :: 19th January, 11 to 5pm :: A round table and public discussion on the subject “Public and Territorial Art”. Presentation of researches and materials by students and young artists from Barcelona University.

The book gathers the results of 12 months of researches and the site specific artistic interventions by partners and contributors from six mediterranean cities: Istanbul, Beirut, Nicosia, Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Barcelona. It’s a 250 pages book, 2 languages (it+engl), 160 images full colors.

Special projects by: Atlas Group (Beirut); Ofri Cnaani and Jenny Vogel (NYC); Oda Projesi (Istanbul); Francesca Cogni+ Donatello De Mattia/ Multiplicity (Milano); Gianmaria Conti (Milano); xurban_collective (Istanbul/NYC); Akram Zaatari (Beirut), others.

Texts by: Claudia Zanfi (curator); Tony Chakar (Beirut architect); Abdalla Daif (Alexandria art critic); Manuel Delgado (Barcelona anthropologist); Sameh El Halawany (Alexandria artist); Achilleas Kentonis (Artos Foundation director, Nicosia); Bilal Khbeiz (Beirut journalist); Elias Khury (Beirut writer); Vasif Kortun (Platfom Garanti director, Istanbul); Stefano Maffei (Politecnico, Milan); Yannis Papadakis (Nicosia sociologist); Marti Peran (Barcelona University); Sharon Rotbard (Tel Aviv urbanist); Nermin Saybasili (Goldsmiths University, London).

Published by: Silvana Editoriale, Milano
International distribution by: Actar, Barcelona

The project has won 2 European Grants for international cultural exchanges

Partners: Regione Emilia Romagna, Bologna; Provincia di Modena; Formigine Cultural Department; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Modena; Youth for Europe Programme; Artos Foundation, Nicosia; Platform Garanti, Istanbul; Askal Alwan Association, Beirut; Fondazione Olivetti, Rome; Gudran Association for Art and Development, Alexandria; Can Xalant Cultural Center, Barcelona; Transit Project, Barcelona; IUAV, Venice; Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; ECF, Amsterdam; Anna Lindh Foundation, Alexandria; DARC, Ministry of Culture, Rome.

info[at]amaze.it

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

EFA Gallery

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EFA Live!

EFA Live! A new performance program at EFA Gallery: EFA Gallery launches our performance program, EFA Live! with On Site, Moving Theater’s residency during the month of January, and the presentation of Kurt Hoffman and Michael Ballou’s The Honorable Discharge in February.

ON SITE: Moving Theater's residency and events at the EFA Gallery :: In January 2007, the experimental performance group, Moving Theater, transforms the EFA gallery into a performative construction site. On Site, a series of events open to the public, exhibits the “blueprints” for the company’s 2007 season. Photographs, scenic and costume designs, sculptures, found objects, video footage, interactive games and live performance interact to create "total environments" in every corner of the gallery, capturing the spirit of Moving Theater projects under construction. These projects range from a large-scale, site-specific performance at one of the city’s landmark Armories to a radical dance/theater interpretation of Antigone.

Public Events on Friday, January 19, Thursday, January 25, and Friday, January 26, 2007, 6:30pm. The gallery opens to the public at 6 pm each evening. Check http://www.movingtheater.org for event details.

Each On Site event at the EFA gallery is one-hour long. On Site: Moving Theater's Residency at the EFA Gallery :: Fri, Jan 19, Thurs, Jan 25, & Fri, Jan 26, 6:30 pm. Gallery opens at 6 pm. :: Space is limited, reservations required. :: gallery[at]efa1.org or 212 563-5855 x119

Moving Theater works at the frontier of dance and theater. Under the direction of Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, Moving Theater is an international ensemble of artists who collaborate on the creation and production of experimental performance projects. Since its inception in 2002, Moving Theater has performed original works on stages in New York City (Henry Street Settlement/Harry DeJur Playhouse, Dance New Amsterdam, Works & Process Series at the Guggenheim Museum, Joyce SoHo, Mazer Theater), Paris, Montreal, Boston, East Hampton, and at Jacob’s Pillow, as well as in non-traditional spaces ranging from an abandoned glue factory in Hudson, NY, to a coffee emporium in SoHo. The company has completed residencies at the Watermill Center, the Old American Can Factory and the Morriss Center Dance Institute.

THE HONORABLE DISCHARGE :: a performance by Kurt Hoffman and Michael Ballou for mature audiences only.

I will read you a story. You will be in bed and I will be sitting by your side, tucking the stiff white, chlorine-scented sheets in under your little mattress, tight until your eyes widen and I'm ready to bring out the bears, the wolves, the little girls in the forest, the golden illuminated casket, the plunge to the bottom of the ocean, the heavens opening up, full to bursting with half-dead saints and angels.

It feels safe, doesn't it? Yes, it is, and what better way to consider the transformation of the body, the passage into realms beyond life as we know it.

Look, Mr. Bear is crossing the room to wind up the Victrola. The music conjures the ghost of Franz Schubert, pants down, looking at his reflection in a sea of honey, wishing there weren't so many flies. He dives in.

"The Honorable Discharge" brings together visual artist Michael Ballou and writer/composer Kurt Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman will read some of his short short stories, augmented at intervals by a musical interludes he has composed for baritone voice accompanied by plectrum banjo, accordion, violin and tuba. Mr. Ballou, the fine artist, will reprise his famous role as Mr. Bear and, thusly disguised, will reveal to the public a mysterious set of folding painted panels.

The Honorable Discharge: a performance by Kurt Hoffman and Michael Ballou
Fri & Sat, Feb 2 & 3, 2007, 8 pm :: Tickets: http://www.smarttix.com or 212 868 444

Make no mistake, this performance is completely unsuitable for children. Adults only, please. Seating is limited reservations are strongly encouraged.

Kurt Hoffman's short fiction has appeared in Columbia (the literary journal), Pierogi Press, and in the erotica anthologies, "Tough Guys" and "Hot Off the Net," published by Black Books. As a musician, he currently arranges and sings French songs from the jazz era with Les Chauds Lapins.

Michael Ballou is a visual artist who works in diverse media, including film, installation, performance and sculpture, and has a history of organizing events that foster interaction between artists, such as the Four Walls events in Williamsburg, and his ongoing Film Club evenings. In recent years, he has exhibited at the David Zwirner Gallery, Pierogi 2000 Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, the Kunsthalle (Vienna), among others.

These performances and exhibitions are presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. With additional support from The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and Carnegie Corporation Inc.

The EFA Gallery is a curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist's creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.

EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th Avenues
Gallery Hours: open 6pm on performance nights

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
elaine[at]efa1.org

Posted by jo at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

OLIVER GRAU Lecture

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PHANTASMAGORIC MEDIA ART

Manggha – Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Cracow and Katarzyna WOZNIAK (curator) are happy to invite you to a lecture of OLIVER GRAU entitled "PHANTASMAGORIC MEDIA ART: Virtual Art of the 19th century and its utopic future" :: Thursday, January 18th 2007 6 p.m. :: 26 Konopnicka Street, Krakow

What is really new in Media Art? Also our latest Media Art has its forerunners. The Phantasmagoria, developed from the Laterna Magica and part of the history of immersion, opened up the virtual depth of the image space for the first time as a sphere of dynamic changes. In the Phantasmagoria, phenomena come together that we are again experiencing in contemporary art and visual representation - the talk will discuss a number of contemporary media artists. In contrast to the Panorama, the Phantasmagoria suggests that contact can be established to the psyche, the dead or artificial life forms. It is a model for the functioning of illusionism, a material image machine as basis of an art work that appears immaterial.

Oliver GRAU is an international known mediaart expert, he lectured in numerous parts of the world, received various awards and is widely published. Grau art historian and profesor for Image Science at Danube University Krems. He is head of the German Science Foundation project Immersive Art. Since 2000 he is developing with his team the first international Database of Virtual Art. His research focuses on the history of immersion and emotions the history, idea and culture of telepresence, genetic art, and artificial intelligence. Grau is an elected member of the Young Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Recently he was director of Refresh! First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Banff 2005. Recent publication: Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, MIT-Press2003. (4th print) and Mediale Emotionen, Frankfurt 2005; forthcoming: Oliver Grau (Ed.): MediaArtHistories, MIT Press 2007.

Posted by jo at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Paris

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Eduardo Kac

Upgrade! Paris: EDUARDO KAC :: Friday, January 19th at 7:00 pm :: ARS LONGA: 67, avenue Parmentier, 75011 PARIS :: Métro: Parmentier (3) or Saint-Ambroise (9).

Eduardo Kac presents his recent work on Biotopes, his poetic work and his approach to the evolution of Bio Art. Biotopes are living pieces that change constantly in response to internal metabolism and environmental conditions. Each of Kac’s biotopes is literally a self-sustaining ecology comprised of thousands of very small living beings in a medium of earth, water, and other materials. The artist orchestrates the metabolism of these organisms in order to produce his constantly-evolving living works. With Annick Bureaud.

The Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners: CITU, Ars Longa, Upgrade! International.

Posted by jo at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2007

Jason E. Lewis

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Everything You Thought We’d Forgotten

Everything You Thought We’d Forgotten by Jason E. Lewis--at Oboro--collects together a series of text-based interactive works that explore the border lands between conflicting cultural identities, memory and history, and the visual and the textual. Common to all these works is a formal concern with how kinetics and interactivity can be used to expand how digital texts can be written, read and performed. The exhibition includes What They Speak When They Speak to Me, an interactive poem about mistaken identity that is read by tracing a fingertip through a mass of writhing letters; I Know What You’re Thinking, a program that reminds you of forgotten conversations by dredging your hard drive for the textual flotsam found in emails, instant messages and documents; Nine, a dynamic poem examining lives that could have been—but were not—lived; TextOrgan, a series of poems read by spraying them on the wall like grafitti; Intralocutor, an interactive installation about the connection between what you say and how you say it; and the mobile messaging work Cityspeak, which enables mobile device users to “talk back” to large-scale public displays.

Jason E. Lewis is a poet, digital media artist and software designer. His practice revolves around experiments in visual language, text and typography, with a core interest in how the deep structure of digital media can be used to create innovative forms of expression. His creative work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Centre, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Urban Screens and Mobilefest, among other venues, and his writing about new media has been presented at conferences, festivals and exhibitions in Berlin, São Paulo, London, Thessaloniki and Los Angeles. His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the English Arts Council, Hexagram and Heritage Canada. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University where he founded and directs Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media. Please see www.obxlabs.net for more information.

Posted by jo at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

Mediamatic

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Workshops

Mediamatic Pure Data workshop – Making practical designs with PD by Andy J. Farnell a.k.a. Obiwannabe and Kostya Leonenko :: 03 | 04 | February 2007

PureData (or PD) is a fairly easy to learn graphical programming language for the creation of interactive computer music and multimedia works. This workshop is an opportunity for anyone to learn how to process and organize sounds, how to map and program for physical interaction, for video processing and and for networking possibilities with Pure Data. In PureData functions or objects are patched together in a graphical environment which models the flow of data. Participants will learn the basics of using PD, the basics of sound synthetization and they will build their own PureData sound- video or control patches. PureData is a free, open source software tool.

Andy J. Farnell a.k.a. Obiwannabe is a composer, open source software developer and computer scientist from the UK. Andy has produced many works for the BBC, film and game projects and worked with some well known bands as well.

Furthermore Kostya Leonenko, who studied sonology at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag, will assist participants making their projects.

This workshop is intended for nerds, musicians, artists, programmers and designers. We'll start from scratch, so programming skills will not be required, but will come in handy of course. Participants will need some technical affinity.

Registration: You can register online. The price for this workshop is EUR 100,- incl. VAT and EUR 75,- incl. VAT if you are a student.

Where and when? February 03 | 04 between 10.00 and 17.00 hrs. Mediamatic, Post CS building, Oosterdokskade 5, 5th floor, Amsterdam :: T +31 (0)20 6389901

Mediamatic Radio-to-Go workshop by Lotte Meijer and Klaas Kuitenbrouwer :: 14 | 15 | February 2007

With the developments in streaming online audio, podcasting, microtransmitters, multi-user VoIP chatrooms, (etcetera) our idea of what is radio, has thoroughly expanded. Participants of this workshop design radio experiences for (interactive?) listeners. Workshop projects consist of homegrown content ideas for a specific combination of various older and newer 'radio' practices. A couple of projects will be chosen to be brodcast live on Thursday, Feb 15, by Radio Rietveld, that broadcasts and webcasts from Mediamatics' garagebox for the next three months. Participants can also learn to solder their own radio microtransmitter!

More about Radio Rietveld: "Radio Rietveld at Stedelijk Museum" (RR.SMCS) is a temporary radio project broadcasting for 3 months 24/7 live on 105.6 FM in Amsterdam as well as on broadband internet stream (hosted by TheWaagSociety) for the international public. RR.SMCS wants to create a channel for audio art, sound related art projects, extraordinary and underestimated music as well as being a discussion platform and speaker's corner for a vivid discussion about art.

Lotte Meijer, media designer, maker of the Broadcast-Your-Podcast project and the amazing Wifio set. Lotte Meijer will present her work and lines of research into new kinds of radio experiences.

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, made various radio programmes for Radio 100, Radio Patapoe & for the VPRO and is now Mediamatic’s own workshop coach.
One or both of the ladies of Cut-n-Paste will present their innovative radio projects LoveControl, Teletap and CallCenter in which broadcast, podcast and mobile phones meet in intimate and unexpected ways.

This workshop is intended for everybody who's interested in creating new radio experiences.

Registration: You can register online. The price for this workshop is EUR 100 incl. lunch & VAT and EUR 75 if you're a student. Special offer for Rietveld students: 3 can come for the price of 2.

February 14 | 15 between 10.00 and 17.00 hrs. :: Mediamatic, Post CS building, Oosterdokskade 5, 5th floor, Amsterdam T +31 (0)20 6389901

Mediamatic Machinima workshop – Games as Tools by Daniel van Gils (NL), Jonas Hielscher (G) and Ricard Gras :: 27 | 28 | 01 | 02 | February 2007

Making Machinima is making movies in 3D games. Machinima makers use games as tools to film their own scenario's. In the Mediamatic Machinima workshop the participants are in the hands of some of the most experienced Machinima makers in the world. In 4 intense workshop days all participants make their own Machinima movies or game based projects. The workshop provides you with the skills and knowledge you need to create your own Machinima, or to further improve your skills if you already tried your hand at it.

Participants will be guided through Machinima production process by Daniel van Gils (NL), Jonas Hielscher (G) and Ricard Gras (E/UK). The coaches are experienced in a wide variety of game engines, and specialized in using the Unreal Tournament engine, the Sims 2 engine, the Machinima possibilities of Second Life and Machinimation, that runs in the Quake 3 engine.

This workshop is intended for filmmakers, animators and gamers. Some experience with playing video games or film editing is helpful, but not essential.

Registration: You can register online. The price for this workshop is reduced to EUR 250 incl. VAT !!

February 27 | 28 | 01 | 02 between 10.00 and 17.00 hrs. :: Mediamatic, Post CS building, Oosterdokskade 5, 5th floor, Amsterdam T +31 (0)20 6389901

Mediamatic Arduino Unplugged workshop by Massimo Banzi a.k.a. Mr. Arduino :: 12 | 13 | 14 | March 2007

Tiny chips, cheap sensors and the possibilities of emerging smart fabrics, conductive yarns and cheap wireless communication (bluetooth or even rfid) make wearables easier and cheaper to make. Arduino boards are small physical computing platforms: Arduino developed a fairly simple integrated development environment to deal with the small portable input/output board.
In this workshop we will have a look at wireless Arduino's (Bluetooth Arduino's).

Massimo Banzi a.k.a. Mr. Arduino, is one of the founders of Arduino. He currently teaches Physical Interaction Design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and is a consultant on interaction design projects that involve electronics and technology.

This workshop is intended for Computer scientists, hardware hackers, art students, fabric experts, product developers, nerds, dancers - everyone is welcome. However, note that some technical affinity is required. Some experience in programming and electronics will come in useful, specifically in soldering and java, but is not strictly necessary.

Registration: You can register online. The Arduino Unplugged workshop costs 125 euros. Dutch students receive a discount of 50 euros.

Where and when?: March 12 | 13 | 14 between 10.00 and 17.00 hrs. Mediamatic, Post CS building, Oosterdokskade 5, 5th floor, Amsterdam T +31 (0)20 6389901

Upcoming workshops:
Radio–to-Go workshop: February 14 | 15
Machinima workshop: February 27 | 28 | 01 | 02
Arduino Unplugged workshop: March 12 | 13 | 14
Hybrid World Lab workshop: Dates to be confirmed
http://www.mediamatic.net/workshops

Posted by jo at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences

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First Call for Abstracts

MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences, International Conference, Prague :: organised by CIANT as part of the ENTER festival in the framework of the Leonardo 40th anniversary celebrations. The festival will feature also the first retrospective exhibition of Frank J. Malina :: 8th - 10th of November 2007, Prague, Czech Republic :: Deadline: February 15, 2007

The conference will explore the major mutations that are affecting the future of our world. We invite papers from artists, scientists and researchers on the evolution of living beings and the societies they constitute, and on modes of knowledge, expression and communication of humans, animals and other forms of life.

‘MutaMorphosis’ seeks a multiplicity of perspectives as well as a qualified and diverse group of conference participants. The conference will concentrate on the growing interest -- within the worlds of the arts, sciences and technologies -- in EXTREME AND HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS. These environments appear as symptomatic indicators of the mutations that are taking place; they are potential vectors that make possible an awareness of the different problems at the origin of the disturbances that threaten the ensemble of the Earth’s eco-systems.

We invite practitioners in the arts, sciences, engineering and humanities to submit abstracts that explore the limits and extremes within the following streams of interest:

1. LIFE

How do the arts and sciences deal with new ideas about strategies of life in extreme conditions?

Keywords: adaptation, artificial life, bioart, biotechnology, cell, cloning, control, emergence, ethics, evolution, extremophilia, hybrid, limit, organization, performativity, self-organization, strategy, survival, symbiogenesis, symbiosis, tissue, transformation, transgression, transplantation, unpredictability.

2. SPACE

How do the arts and sciences face radical scales and extreme environments?

Keywords: Antarctica, astrophysics, colonisation, climate, dark matter, dark energy, deserts, deteritorialization, ethics, exobiology, exploration, geotagging, globalization, map, macro, micro, nano, singularity, outer space, speed, territory, underwater, vacuum.

3. COGNITION

How do the arts and sciences address evolving ideas about cognition in extreme environments?

Keywords: collective intelligence, complexity, connectivity, decision, deficiency, distributed, ethics, intelligence, dysfunction, emotion, efficiency, information, instrument, handicap, manipulation, memory, mobility, networked, pathology, perception, sensorial, simulation, system, therapy, visualization, web 2.0.

All submitted abstracts will be peer reviewed by an international advisory panel. Submissions accepted and presented at the conference will be published in the conference proceedings.

500-word abstracts required by 31st of January 2007 via email to mutamorphosis[at]ciant.cz.

Join us in Prague 8th – 10th of November 2007.

Conference Steering Committee: Alban Asselin, Louis Bec, Annick Bureaud, Don Foresta, Denisa Kera, Roger F. Malina (co-chair: rfm.mutamorphosis[at]gmail.com), Louise Poissant, Pavel Sedlák (co-chair: sedlak[at]ciant.cz), Pavel Smetana

Organiser: CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague, CZ.

Co-organisers: Leonardo (www.leonardo.info, USA; www.olats.org, FR), Hexagram (www.hexagram.org, CAN), Pépinières européenes pour jeunes artistes (www.art4eu.net, FR)

Partners: Centre for Global Studies at Charles University (CZ), CYPRES Arts Sciences Technologies Cultures (FR), Czech Academy of Sciences – Week of Science and Technology (CZ), French Institute in Prague (CZ), MARCEL (GB), UQAM (CAN)

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

January 11, 2007

Join us Tonight in Second Life

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Upgrade! Boston

We will attempt to broadcast Upgrade! Boston again tonight in Second Life. More information on the event (at 7 pm EST). To participate you need to do a few things:

UPGRADE QUICKTIME: Download the latest version of QuickTime. JOIN SECOND LIFE: To participate in Upgrade! Boston Second Life you need to join Second Life and create an avatar. Go to Second Life and register with them (there is no cost to joining and obtaining an avatar).

SLURL: Use this SLURL (Second Life URL) to teleport to the event in Second Life.

TURN AUDIO AND VIDEO ON: It is important that you make sure that your audio and video are turned on. Choose Edit > Preferences Audio-Video = √ Play Streaming Music and √ Play Streaming Video.

LIVE WEB CAM: Press the play button on the Movie control at the bottom of the screen. The screen will appear in front of the chairs. This will only be live if we are broadcasting in realtime.

We will project the Second Life broadcast off to the side of the live presentations so that the RL audience can see what is happening in-world. If the sound quality is poor we will do our best to keep the SL audience up with the discussion by transcribing in SLs Chat window. The SL audience is encouraged to participate by asking questions which we will read aloud.

John (Craig) Freeman

Posted by jo at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

At the Edge of Art

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Art's Long-Term Effects on the Social Body

At the Edge of Art by Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito :: Thames and Hudson :: ISBN 0500238227 :: "Art is not solely defined by its context - its appearance in the traditional art world - but rather by the type and quality of experience it offers the viewer and its long-term effects on the social body." This is one of the most shareable sentences written in this book, a net art and culture book that goes well beyond the net art stereotypes, trying to approach a 360 degrees perspective on the Internet-influenced art. Establishing six arbitrary but exhaustive characteristics (perversion, arrest, revelation, execution, recognition, perseverance) the authors place many net / digital art classics in a broader social and cultural datascape analyzing them along with creative products, various software, different art practices and hard-to-classify websites. After selecting, cataloguing, categorizing and historicizing net artworks time has come to contextualize them for the people out of the usual circles. This rich discourse, in the end heading on technology, art and their mutual understanding, is useful also for digital art habitué, opening their minds to more connections than the usual. Art, art market, creative processes, political strategies and social mutations are juxtaposed in a puzzle of meanings and strategies, inspiring on one side and confusing on the other. The same title seem to purposedly avoid any explicit reference to the net, in order to not discourage the art world average person, and finally to build a bridge between one of the most crucial 'avant garde' ever expressed and those who still write the official art history." Neural

Posted by jo at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

under.ctrl: KONTROL Online Magazine

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The Pornography of Fabricating Fear

KONTROL online magazine launches its first issue! :: Perspectives on control in the course of contemporary art, culture, technology, information channels and politics.

KONTROL is designed as an online magazine in English, featuring articles, interviews and reviews specifically on issues of control. The magazine has developed as part of the “under.ctrl” project by NOMAD. The editors of KONTROL are Basak Senova and Yane Calovski. The materials which are assembled for each issue will be structured around a sub-theme, include articles, reports, analytical studies, interviews, art projects, and photographs.

The sub-theme of this first issue is “the pornography of fabricating fear”. Contributors of the first issue are Inke Arns, Daniele Balit, Taeyoon Choi, Sebastian Cichocki, Maia Damianovic, Christoph Draeger, Marina Grzinic, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Glenn Ligon, Geert Lovink, Suzana Milevska, Ceren Oykut, Igor Stromajer, Tul Akbal Sualp, Zaneta Vangeli, and Ana Vujanovic.

KONTROL is designed by kuzudesign.com and hosted by NOMAD.

Posted by jo at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2007

Festival HTMlles 8: CROWD CONTROL

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Call for Contributions

Deadline : EXTENSION to 15 January, 2007 :: Festival HTMlles 8 - Oct. 2007 :: CONTROLE DES MASSES | CROWD CONTROL :: The HTMlles Festival for Media Art and Networked Practices is a biennale event held in Montreal. An initiative of StudioXX feminist digital art and resource center, the HTMlles Festival is now entering it's 8th edition under the thematic title of "Crowd Control".

'Occurrences of inclusions and exclusions can be observed when tracking a migrating person, object or concept through time and theory, as well as space. The ability (or inability) to migrate is an invisible measure for the capacity to move. Who/what is able to move? What information is kept and what is left out? What is transferable and what is not? What are possible options for controlling the inclusions and exclusions ?'

The festival has developed into a vibrant International forum, bringing together women and active feminists working with technology. Originally founded as a 'web art' festival, the HTMlles maintains a focus on works and dialogs related to networking.

The HTMlles festival invites guest projects and presenters and extends a call for submissions of works to be selected by jury. HTMlles 8 : Crowd Control will be held in Montreal in October 2007. The call for project submission will close on January 5, 2007

The HTMlles festival is directed by curator Kyd Campbell in collaboration with the team of StudioXX, a programming committee and a dedicated festival staff.

links to further information and the online application forms:
www.htmlles.net
www.htmlles.net/08/call

Posted by jo at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

M/C Journal

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Call for Contributions

M/C - Media and Culture is calling for contributors to the 'adapt' issue of M/C Journal :: Edited by Patrick West & Jeannette Delamoir :: M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. In 2007, M/C Journal celebrates its tenth year in publication.

'Adapt' immediately suggests the artistic notion of adaptation: reworking a work of art across the boundaries of media, audience, and context of presentation. But once shaken loose from its attachment to this narrowly artistic formulation of adaptation, adapt seems to structure virtually all aspects of our biological and cultural selves. Darwinism holds that an organism - over millennia - adapts new forms and behaviours in order to survive, while the business of global and technological living demands a sort of accelerated Darwinism on a scale of minutes and moments. We adapt into something, but what is it that we adapt from? Does stripping back the layers of adaptation ever uncover something not itself just another adaptation? And why is this (fiction of the) original so often given precedence over the simulacrum, the copy, the adaptation? Adapt sutures the poles of such cultural hierarchies.

Adapt also plunges us into the mystery of creativity itself, fracturing the illusion of originality to precisely the degree that it presupposes layers of difference infiltrating the universe's 'steady state'. Postmodern circumstances such as cyborg existence - a combinatorial difference -depend upon just such a concept of adapt, which brings things together without forfeiting entirely what tends to keep them apart. The ethics of adapt might be found in the way it opens the whole gamut of culture up to difference. For when it comes right down to it, isn't 'to adapt' the slogan of everything? Thought, writing, art: these seem inevitably products of adaptation, to the extent that an infinity of previous instantiations must always be assumed. All thought proceeds from previous thought, all writing from previous writing, and no art is ever born ex nihilo.

Our call for papers encourages contributions about adapt that themselves act as adaptations, revising whatever may have settled into a stasis of meaning. The following list of topics should be considered suggestive rather than prescriptive:

- adapt in cross-arts practice environments
- adapt as strategy of cultural and/or gender and/or ethnic identity
- adapt as mechanism of difference production
- adapt and nostalgia for the original
- adapt and case studies of adaptation
- adapt as resistance or submission to power
- adapt and new understandings of Darwinism

Submit your essays of 3000 words in length to the editors at adapt[at]journal.media-culture.org.au.

Article deadline: 9 March 2007
Issue release date: 2 May 2007

M/C Journal was founded (as "M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture") in 1998 as a place of public intellectualism analysing and critiquing the meeting of media and culture. Contributors are directed to past issues of M/C Journal for examples of style and content, and to the submissions page for comprehensive article submission guidelines. M/C Journal articles are blind peer-reviewed.

Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2007:

'complex': article deadline 4 May 2007, release date 27 June 2007
'home': article deadline 29 June 2007, release date 22 August 2007
'error': article deadline 24 August 2007, release date 17 October 2007
'vote': article deadline 19 October 2007, release date 12 December 2007

M/C - Media and Culture is located at http://www.media-culture.org.au. M/C Journal is online at http://journal.media-culture.org.au.All past issues of M/C Journal on various topics are available there.

Posted by jo at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

ColorField Remix

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OPEN CALL FOR ENTRIES

OPEN CALL FOR ENTRIES WPA\C Experimental Media Series - ColorField Remix * DEADLINE: Thursday, March 7, 2007 (entry received) * NO ENTRY FEE | NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED * KRAFT MEDIA PRIZE: $1000 Finalist | $500 Honorable Mention*

WPA\C's Experimental Media Series - ColorField Remix challenges artists to reinterpret the Color-Field artists with experimental video, sound and performance pieces. Artists are encouraged to create new work reinterpreting or inspired by Color-Field artists. The Kraft Media Prize will be awarded to one finalist and one honorable mention finalist, selected by the jurors for Night 3. Jurors will make selections based on overall quality and innovation as it relates to Color-Field.

ColorField Remix, a Washington, DC citywide project, spanning the the spring and summer of 2007 and linking numerous art venues, will celebrate the many legacies of the generation of Color Field and Washington Color School artists. Participating venues include: The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Art, The Kreeger Museum, Hemphill Fine Arts, The Katzen Center at American University, ThePhillips Collection, for a complete list of participants and programs (Insert website for colorfield remix here.)

The Washington Color-Field Painters rejected the notion that paintings could not make a statement with only color and composition. Artists explored the fundamental formal elements of abstract painting: pure, unmodulated areas of color; flat, two-dimensional space; monumental scale; and the varying shape of the canvas itself. Color-Field Artists associated with the movement include: Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring, Thomas Downing, Paul Reed, and Gene Davis.

The WPA\C Experimental Media Series - ColorField Remix All nights will run from 7:00 - 9:00 pm in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Armand Hammer Auditorium:

Night 1 - Wed, April 25 - Curated by Richard Chartier (Internationally Renowned Sound & Media Artist, www.3particles.com)

Night 2 - Wed, May 30 - Curated by Brandon Morse (www.coplanar.org) Night 3 - Wed, June 27 - Juried submissions from Open Call by Richard Chartier & Brandon Morse (Presentation of KRAFT MEDIA PRIZE to Finalist &
Honorable Mention)

SUBMISSION OF MATERIALS FOR WPA\C EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA SERIES

Name
Date
Address
City, state, zip
Email
Phone (day) Phone (evening)

How did you hear about the MEDIA SERIES?

PLEASE PLACE A CHECK NEXT TO EACH ITEM THAT IS INCLUDED IN YOUR PACKAGE: SOUND & VIDEO ARTISTS MAY SUBMIT UP TO 3 PIECES IN DVD OR CD FORMAT:

1 CD with up to 3 tracks in MP3 format only. CD cover must be labeled: (Author(s), Lengths, Title, & Year of Each Track)

1 DVD tape with up to 3 pieces cued to the beginning of presentation. DVD/VHS cover must be labeled: (Author(s), Lengths, Title, & Year of Each Piece)

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS MAY SUBMIT:
Up to 2 proposals for a site-specific work based in the Corcoran auditorium

3 examples of past performances, DVD format, cued to the beginning of the presentation. DVD cover must be labeled: (Author(s), Lengths, Title, & Year of Each Piece)

ALL ARTISTS MUST SUBMIT SUPPORT MATERIALS, (NO BINDERS PLEASE):

One Paragraph Artist Statement
Current Resume
One Paragraph synopsis or treatment must accompany each piece submitted.
One self-addressed envelope with enough postage to return your materials or prepaid, addressed FED EX, UPS or similar tracking slip. (If no SASE is provided, submission materials will not be returned to the artist.)

WPA\C Experimental Media Series - ColorFieldremix Entry Form

Name:

Work Submitted on (Check one) CD______ DVD_____ WPA\C Member?
(Check one) Yes_____ NO______

Please print/type legibly:

1. Title
Length
Year
Brief summary of Piece

2. Title
Length
Year
Brief summary of Piece

3. Title
Length
Year
Brief summary of Piece

ALL WORK MUST BE RECEIVED IN THE WPA\C OFFICE BY: THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2007

PLEASE SEND ALL ENTRIES TO:
WPA\C
Experimental Media Series - ColorFieldremix
500 Seventeenth Street NW
Washington, DC 20006

* Please, no hand-delivered packages to the WPA\C office.
* More info: 202.639.1828 / dren[at]corcoran.org (Ding Ren, WPA\C Program Director)

Posted by jo at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

WHO MAKES AND OWNS YOUR WORK?

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OPEN CONTENT MEETING 2

8 January 6 pm at Iaspis, Jakobsgatan 27, 3rd floor :: With the second meeting in preparation for the project WHO MAKES AND OWNS YOUR WORK we will expand the discussion on the production, distribution and communication of art, knowledge and research. The open content meetings are to be held once a month during the spring in an attempt to reflect and build on the experience of openness present in different areas of cultural practice. The very first Open Content Meeting held in December identified certain areas of interest such as: Fair Trade (Giving, Sharing, Owning, Trading), Trust, Research as open source, Ownership of creativity and Commodification of communities

We invite all interested participants of the project prior to the OPEN CONTENT MEETING 2 to join us online. Here you can find information about the project together with articles, images and links giving everyone the possibility of contributing and shaping the future of the project.

What is WHO MAKES AND OWNS YOUR WORK?

With a general shift in society towards information-based production, questions of ownership and organizational practices have come to the fore. Simultaneously, in the recent history of digital networks and software development sharing has been a crucial mode of coordination. Today it seems relevant to revisit this near history in order to address a wider field of cultural production. The various methods for licensing material and immaterial products have triggered an intensive international debate among cultural producers where both standpoints and awareness vary. How do these issues play into diverse fields such as medicine, law, economics and artistic practice? Which are the most pertinent international developments?

The project WHO MAKES AND OWNS YOUR WORK? is an ongoing discussion about the means of producing, distributing and thinking about artistic and knowledge production today. Through a number of live meetings and online discussions on the Wiki the project will unravel as a collaborative effort to think and act upon the most urgent questions arising for all kinds of practitioners now. The project is a collaboration between Konstfack, Iaspis and the artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby.

Posted by jo at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2007

Upgrade! Boston

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ShiftSpace and OPENSTUDIO

UPGRADE! BOSTON: ShiftSpace and OPENSTUDIO :: A panel discussion with Mushon Zer-Aviv + Dan Phiffer (ShiftSpace) and Kyle Buza + Brent Fitzgerald + Amber Frid-Jimenez + Takashi Okamoto (OPENSTUDIO); moderated by kanarinka. Join us in Second Life.

WHEN: January 11, 7 pm (EST) :: WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Free parking in the lot on the corner or take the T to Central Square and walk 1 block.

ShiftSpace provides a transparent social layer above any website. It is an open source (and free software) platform that enables users to comment, add to, and modify websites. ShiftSpace allows users to experience the web as a continuous public space rather than a collection of isolated and privately-controlled islands. Through ShiftSpace artists, developers, poets, activists and others can freely meet, play, create art, debate protest and enjoy the full potential of their online freedom.

OPENSTUDIO is web + art + community + economics. It is an open ended experiment that couples a very simple drawing tool with an economy of artists, curators, collectors, dealers and viewers. Members can create and modify drawings, set prices and licenses, exchange and exhibit work, view financial records, and commission one another. Grounded in economic reality, OPENSTUDIO is a declaration of several ideals: transparency, community, and cooperation. It asserts that through collaborative effort, creativity and intelligence can bring about positive change.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 22 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 01:30 PM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2007

Ars Virtua Artist in Residence

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Brad Kligerman

Ars Virtua is pleased to announce it's first Artist in Residence (AVAIR) Brad Kligerman.

AV will be hosting a mixer for the Second Life arts community and Ars Virtua supporters to welcome Kliger Dinkin and to help connect him up with resources and artists in Second Life. The event will be at 2pm SLT Saturday January 13th in "Greenland" in Chima at http://slurl.com/secondlife/chima/110/36/75/

Brad will be documenting his experiences at http://turbulence.org/AVAIR/

AVAIR is an extended performance that examines what it is to be a resident in a place that has no location. The residency is 11 weeks long and will culminate in an exhibit in this new medium.

“AVAIR” is a 2006 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.

Posted by jo at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

National Academy of Sciences

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Virtual Symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience

NAS Announces Virtual Symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience: The Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences will co-host a Virtual Symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience from March 5 to March 13, 2007 with the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

This international event will take place on the Internet. It is a virtual meeting of experts from many disciplines who will discuss the intersections between visual culture and bioscience. A group of thirty participants, comprised of artists, scientists, historians, ethicists, curators, sociologists, and writers, will present a variety of perspectives on topics of visual representation in art and science and their implications in culture and society.

The discussion will be accessible via the web. A related blog, accessible through the web address listed above, will provide a space for public discourse.

Suzanne Anker, a visual artist and theorist working with genetic imagery, will moderate the discussion. She is the coauthor of The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004). She curated Gene Culture: Molecular Metaphor in Contemporary Art (Fordham University, 1994), the first exhibition devoted entirely to the intersection of art and genetics. Anker teaches art history and theory at the School of Visual Arts in New York where she is chair and editor of ArtLab23. She is also the host of BioBlurb on WPS1 Art Radio.

This event is made possible through the generous support of Ralph S. O'Connor and the Marian and Speros Martel Foundation. It is sponsored by the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

For more than 20 years, the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences has sponsored exhibitions, concerts, and other events that explore relationships among the arts and sciences.

Virtual Symposium Participants:

Bergit Arends, Historian and Curator, Museum of Natural History, London, United Kingdom
Andrew Carnie, Artist and Consultant, Greater London Arts professor at Winchester School of Art, Winchester, United Kingdom
Oron Catts, Artistic Director, SymbioticA - The Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory, School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia
Catherine Chalmers, Artist Helen Chandler, Former Scientific Manager, The Arts and Genomics Center, University of Amsterdam
Carl Djerassi, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University
Florian Dombois, Professor and Head, Institute for Transdisciplinarity, Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland
Troy Duster, Professor of Sociology, New York University
Sian Ede, Arts Director, UK Branch of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Applications
Sabine Flach, Lecturer, Center for Literary Studies, Berlin, Germany
Giovanni Frazzetto, Molecular Biologist, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom
David Freedberg, Professor and Director, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University
Karl Grimes, Professor, School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland
Jens Hauser, Independent Curator, Writer, and Artist Marvin Heiferman, Professor, New York School of Visual Arts
Vladimir Mironov, Research Associate Professor and Director of Bioprinting Center, Medical University of South
Carolina Orlan, Performance Artist, France Nancy Princenthal, Senior Editor, Art in America
Ingeborg Reichle, Art Historian, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Miriam van Rijsingen, Professor of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Holland
Michael Sappol, Curator and Historian, National Library of Medicine
Brad Smith, Molecular Biologist, University of Michigan
Andrew Solomon, Writer and Board Member, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York
Susan Squier, Brill Professor of Women's Studies and English, The Pennsylvania State University
Eugene Thacker, Assistant Professor, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
Richard Twine, Principal Investigator, ESRC Center for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics
Catherine Waldby, International Research Fellow, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney, Australia
Catherine Wagner, Photographer
Peter Weibel, Chairman, Center for Art and Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Richard Wingate, Lecturer, Center for Developmental Neurobiology, King's College, London

Posted by jo at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

Hz Journal

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Issue #9

Hz #9 presents: THE COMPOSITION-INSTRUMENT: MUSICAL EMERGENCE AND INTERACTION by Nobert Herber :: Composer and sound artist Nobert Herber explores the question "What kinds of compositional technique can be used to create a music" in the field of computer games and interactive digital media where the line between "composition" and "instrument" is increasingly blurred.

LeWITTS IDEAL CHILDREN by Domenico Quaranta :: "Software art is conceptual art's acknowledged son" is the hypothesis around which art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta builds his anyalisis on genealogy of software art: "Is the history of conceptual art relevant to the idea of software as art?"

DISSONANCE, SEX AND NOISE: (RE)BUILDING (HI)STORIES OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC by Miguel lvarez Fernndez :: Composer, musicologist and curator Miguel lvarez Fernndez deconstructs the reading of history of electroacoustic music through the concepts of dissonance and noise.

BEHIND TECHNOLOGY: SAMPLING, COPYLEFT, WIKIPEDIA AND TRANSFORMATION OF AUTHORSHIP AND CULTURE IN DIGITAL MEDIA by Sachiko Hayashi :: With sampling as starting point, artist Sachiko Hayashi relocates several issues relevant to the culture of digital media.

OPENING UP PUBLIC SPACE by Art Clay :: Sound artist Art Clay's "China Gate" is a music project which utilises GPS to coordinate musicians whose physical presences are dispersed throughout a city. By "using wearable computing technology within global ubiquitous networks as an art tool," "China Gate" tries to open up civic space for "one of the most important functions of public performance: social interaction. "

TIME AND REAL-TIME IN ONLINE ART by Ewa Wojtowicz :: "New media artists, notably net artists, analyse the issue of time. Their field of interest includes time as a whole, their own time and the viewer’s time....If there is a navigable cyberspace – does it imply navigable time as well?" New Media Art historian Ewa Wojtowicz examines net art practice that employs time from various perspectives.

Posted by jo at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2007

Sensorium:

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Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art

Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art; edited by Caroline A. Jones.

The relationship between the body and electronic technology, extensively theorized through the 1980s and 1990s, has reached a new technosensual comfort zone in the early twenty-first century. In Sensorium, contemporary artists and writers explore the implications of the techno-human interface. Ten artists, chosen by an international team of curators, offer their own edgy investigations of embodied technology and the technologized body. These range from Matthieu Briand's experiment in "controlled schizophrenia" and Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller's uneasy psychological soundscapes to Bruce Nauman's uncanny night visions and François Roche's destabilized architecture. The art in Sensorium--which accompanies an exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center--captures the aesthetic attitude of this hybrid moment, when modernist segmentation of the senses is giving way to dramatic multisensory mixes or transpositions. Artwork by each artist appears with an analytical essay by a curator, all of it prefaced by an anchoring essay on "The Mediated Sensorium" by Caroline Jones.

In the second half of Sensorium, scholars, scientists, and writers contribute entries to an "Abecedarius of the New Sensorium." These short, playful pieces include Bruno Latour on "Air," Barbara Maria Stafford on "Hedonics," Michel Foucault (from a little-known 1966 radio lecture) on the "Utopian Body," Donna Haraway on "Compoundings," and Neal Stephenson on the "Viral." Sensorium is both forensic and diagnostic, viewing the culture of the technologized body from the inside, by means of contemporary artists' provocations, and from a distance, in essays that situate it historically and intellectually.

Copublished with The MIT List Visual Arts Center [exhibition].

Caroline A. Jones teaches contemporary art and theory in the History, Theory, Criticism Program at MIT. She is the author of Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist.

Posted by jo at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2007

International Remix Competition A

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Listen to Capri

In July 2006, AAIR, the independent radio station of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, listened to Capri. Invited by Diego Cortez (lostobject.org), nine AA students recorded natural and man-made sounds to create an extensive sonic map of the island. Capri holds our curiousity. An enormous, jagged slab of limestone in the sea, the intangible setting for iconic gestures of artists and lovers, and a home to people living their local lives, Capri is a fantastical island.

International Remix Competition A: We would like to invite you to create your own sonic story of Capri. Participation is open to everyone, and submission is free and desired. All original recordings are available for listening and free download at www.radioanacapri.com. Remixes must not exceed six minutes. Multiple submissions are welcome. There are no other rules, but it is important to remember that we cannot publish copyrighted material for which you don't own the rights or have permission from the owner.

Awards: For 3 best remixes we promise fame, fortune and a place on the upcoming Radio Anacapri record produced by the AAIR along with respectable sound artists and musicians.

Jury: Brian Eno, Arto Lindsay and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Deadline: 31 January, 2007 postmarked if posted

Send your remix to:
International Remix Competition A
c/o AA Independent Radio
Student Forum Pigeonhole
Architectural Association School of Architecture
36 Bedford Square
London, WC1B 3ES
United Kingdom

Posted by jo at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2007

CASAzine #4: Drawing the Line

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Call for Contributions

CASAzine #4: Drawing the Line :: Deadline - 1 February 2007 :: Following the activity of the 2006 Cultural Analysis Summer Academy (CASA) international meeting in Amsterdam (June 23 - 25), the fourth CASAzine will explore the subject of art and direct action. In particular, the issue seeks to investigate the tension between hegemonic forms of knowledge concerning what constitutes art as it is embodied by the academy versus alternative forms of creative action and knowledge production. It is an enquiry into distinctions, limits and possibilities, and into the positions our actions occupy in relation to academic knowledge sets, institutions, and ultimately to other people.

"Drawing the Line" aims to examine the implications and potential of our actions. How do aesthetic concerns affect our politics and vice versa? Do actions utilizing mass media heighten awareness, or do they merely contribute additional imagery to the spectacle? More basically, to what extent is art as creative activism a productive way to work for social change? Can 'radical aesthetics' productively challenge distinctions drawn between art and activism in traditional academic knowledge systems?

"Drawing the Line" applies to our negotiation with institutionalization. What happens to creative forms of direct action when they are defined as art by public bodies or art markets? How can creative practices push agendas for political change in relation to, or even within, those contexts? How can we take critical action that is aware of its own position in a cultural climate of fashion, celebrity, and shopping? How do aspects of cultural life as it is currently conceived (i.e. the figure of a charismatic creator a.k.a. "the artist as genius") affect our goal for leaderless, equal, collaborative forms of art and action?

"Drawing the Line" is pertinent to how we relate to others. In all our forms of activism including research, art, and direct action, the nature of our engagement with others is crucial, be they involved, hostile, critical, or indifferent. How do our activities relate to those outside the group of people specifically engaged in this alternative practice? How do the microcosms of dissent created in our daily lives relate to wider social frameworks?

These questions are not new, but they are critical to framing the daily distinctions and decision making necessary to create awareness and change. As we move on to review, discuss, and share responses to these questions, we hope to arrive at better questions to ask, which will in turn create new answers in the struggle for social and political equity and environmental protection.

Formats: We are seeking contributions in both text and image form. Contributions may be a reflection on the subject of art and direct action as it was addressed during the meeting, or it can present an entirely perspective. Contributions may be offered by anyone, including those who have not attended CASA meetings in the past.

Guidelines: 500-3000 words; Language: English preferred; German, French, and Spanish understood.

Send: Email is preferred: casazine2006[at]gmail.com. Please attach text in .doc or .rtf; and attach image samples in low resolution .jpg. :: Surface mail: Monika Vykoukal, Peacock Visual Arts, 21 Castle Street, AB11 5BQ, Aberdeen, Scotland. If you would like your materials returned, please include a stamped return envelope.

Deadline - 1 February 2007

We, Milena Placentile and Monika Vykoukal, the editors of this year's zine, met at CASA Meeting 2006. We live in Canada and Scotland respectively, and we are both curators of contemporary art.

The Cultural Analysis Summer Academy (CASA) came into existence in 2003 as an international forum that seeks to discuss the shifting functions of academia and the scholar in a globalized society. CASA offers a platform for people to combine efforts and information with a view towards social transformation.

To date, CASA has organized three meetings to provide a platform for these discussions. For more information about CASA 2004 "Acting and Spectating", CASA 2005 "Borders, Markets, Movements", and CASA 2006 "Constructing Social Change: Art, Direct Action, Knowledge, Utopia, and Desires", please visit.

Milena Placentile
http://www.shintai-z.com

Posted by jo at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Tate Britain

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Art and Immaterial Labour

Art and Immaterial Labour :: Saturday 10 February 2007, 10.30am-5.30pm :: Tate Britain, The auditorium, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG :: £15 students, £25 waged, including reception. Tickets will be available from Tate ticketing, https://tickets.tate.org.uk/ CRMEP students may obtain free tickets if they book via Ray Brassier at least 2 weeks in advance.

Art’s materiality has been the focus of fierce debate since claims about the ‘dematerialization’ of art were made in New York at the end of the 1960s. More recently, in the very different context of libertarian political debates in Italy and France, claims have been made about the ‘immaterial’ character of labour processes based on information-technology, and of the cultural and intellectual content of commodities. This conference will bring these two discourses together to stage a debate about contemporary art, ‘immaterial’ labour and new modes of production of subjectivity.

Speakers include: Franco Berardi, Maurizio Lazzarato, Antonio Negri, Judith Revel.

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

Montevideo/Time Based Arts:

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Art in the New Field of Visibility

Montevideo/Time Based Arts: Art in the New Field of Visibility :: 18 January - 17 March 2007 :: Flemish Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, Nes 45, 1012 KD Amsterdam :: T 020 6229014 (office).

Art in the New Field of Visibility is an event in Amsterdam which aims to explore the complex interactions between art and media, within the context of the debate about the role and the function of image in our society. The program consists of a series of exhibitions, screenings and talks organized by the Netherlands Media Art Institute, the Flemish Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, de Appel, Maison Descartes, Institut Français des Pays-Bas, Romanian Cultural Institute Bucharest and the Goethe Institute Amsterdam. With the kind support of: the Embassy of Romania, Den Haag, Cultures France (Ministère des Affaires Etrangères) and Project Foundation, Amsterdam.

International Symposium :: ART IN THE NEW FIELD OF VISIBILITY :: Friday 19 and Saturday 20 January :: Concept: Bogdan Ghiu, Maria Rus Bojan :: Participants: Pascal Beausse, Corin Braga, Edwin Carels, Emilian Cioc, Irina Cios, Ann Demeester, prof. dr. David Garcia, Bogdan Ghiu, Katarina Gregos, Sagi Groner, Hanneke Grootenboer (tbc), prof. dr. Boris Groys, Khalil Joreige, Eric Kluitenberg, Vesna Madzoski, Natasa Petresin, Jean-Christophe Royoux, Bart Rutten, prof. dr. Rolf Sachsse, Ive Stevenheydens, Suzanne van de Ven.

Within the context of the debate about the role and function of image in our society, the symposium “Art in the new field of visibility” attempts to create a broader framework for comprehending the recent metamorphosis of all the communication forms and the implications of this process in the art field. The emergence of a new synthesis of the worldwide communications field has generated an interesting process of unifying the semiotic distinctions between words and images, between art and non-art, between visibility and non-visibility. This process reveals a paradigm shift that is dramatically altering the boundaries, calling for new strategies of research and approach, adjusted continuously to the increasing complexity of our world.

Through four interdisciplinary panel discussions, the participants at the symposium will discuss the various aspects and features of our predominantly visual culture, exploring artists’ reaction to the generalized media experience and to stereotypes and globalization. Topics referring to the new regimes of image as a consequence of living in a transparent society, as well as topics referring to the crisis of representation and the existing situation of visual homogenization, will also be discussed.

Saturday 20 January, 12.30 h. Lecture Prof Dr. Boris Groys

Exhibition
CORCORAN, Strategies of Confinement in the Age of Biopolitics
19 January – 25 February
Opening: Friday 19 January 17.00 h
Artists: Alexandra Croitoru, Johan Grimonprez, Mladen Miljanovic, Solmaz Shahbazi, Sean Snyder
Curator: Zoran Eric

His later studies of the political techniques the State uses to embrace its subjects, to the extent of taking care of the individuals’ natural life, led Michel Foucault to establish the theory of biopolitics. Giorgio Agamben deepened this analysis by focusing on hospitals, prisons and camps as the ultimate metaphors and exemplifications of biopolitics. The camp is the space where the biopolitical aspect of power and control over bare human life can be seen at its most gruesome. Next to camps and prisons, we can also detect methods of socio-spatial segregations in both ghettos and gated communities, where the later could be seen as ‘desirable camps’. The aspect of self-confinement related to the psychological feeling of security and protective control is what motivates the individuals to create such self-regulated zones of distinction. This argument on macro social level leads us to the notion and concept of CORCORAN, as developed by futurologist Rüdiger Lutz. He stated that t error-driven societies tend to create ‘safety-belt’ environments as to the point of ‘imprisoning’ themselves behind the material and immaterial curtains of control and surveillance.

This exhibition explores and questions different means and techniques of confinement or self-confinement.

Filmscreening
CLUB VOYEUR: CORCORAN, Strategies of Confinement in the Age of Biopolitics
Thursday 8 February 20.30 h, Zoran Eric in dialogue with Bart Rutten
Videoworks from: Harun Farocki, Walid Raad & Atlas Group, Artur Zmijewski
Curator: Zoran Eric

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Montevideo/Time Based Arts
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
T 020 6237101
http://www.montevideo.nl

Exhibition
Ready Media
18 January – 10 February
Opening: Thursday 18 January from 17.00 - 19.00 h
Artists: Pierre Bismuth, Heather & Patrick Burnett-Rose, Claude Closky, Sagi Groner, Sami Kallinen, Matthieu Laurette, Gabriel Lester, Anna Maltz, Cristi Pogacean, Julika Rudelius
Curator: Maria Rus Bojan

Coined in 1995, by Kinema Ikon artists’ group, Ready Media was used to signalize the stereotypical visions induced by the media culture and the self evidence that surrounds the experience of seeing.

How do these visual constructs reveal a new regime of image and artistic language? Maria Rus Bojan regards Ready Media as the most appropriate term to define the chameleonic visual synthesis of our time. The Ready Media visual discourses are based on an increasingly sophisticated use of images. It juxtapose references from different contexts, different media, different historical periods and social experiences, weaving all these together into a texture which defines a symbolic construction with new visual qualities.

The works selected for this exhibition reflect artists’ different strategies, attitudes and reactions to the generalized media experience. Re-using already valorized images or other elements from media, which in this context function as signs, artists create new semantic shifts, breaking up the “ready made” perceptions which media generates, making us also more aware about our own process of perception.

Exhibition
Faith in Exposure
24 February – 17 March
Opening: Friday 23 February, 17.00 h
Artists (t.b.c.): Beirut Letters, De Geuzen, Govcom.org, Lynn Hershman, Olia Lialina, Avi Mograbi, Oog (Nanette Hoogslag / Volkskrant), Sean Snyder, Thomson & Craighead, Jody Zellen
Curator: David Garcia

In a universe of facts, what are the facts matter? Or rather what kind of facts can be made to matter? At its most basic ‘the news’ can be defined as the act of making things public, but what things? Must news always be revelation in the classical style of a Woodward and Bernstein’s scoop that brings down the President and his men? Is the only scoop worth its name the story that someone, someone important, doesn’t want you to know?

Faith in Exposure is an exhibition in which media artists will create installations that articulating the barely understood appetites and assumptions that drive the exponential growth of real-time 24 hour real-time news channels. An exhibition to question the claims and myths that legitimize our faith in the dubious epistemology of transparency and exposure, myths that underpin the authority of today’s ubiquitous real-time news media.

Seminar
Faith in Exposure
Saturday 24 February
With contributions by: Jody Dean, Noortje Marres, Richard Rogers, Sean Snyder, David Garcia (moderator)

De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
1017 DE Amsterdam
T 020 6255651
http://www.deappel.nl

Exhibition
The Shadow Cabinet: ‘Distorted Fabric’
19 – 27 January
Opening 19 Januari 20.00 h.
Artists: Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
Curator: Natasa Petresin

In the framework of ‘The Shadow Cabinet’ – a fixed part of de Appel’s auxiliary program, especially created for the past and present students from the Curatorial Training Programme (CTP), Natasa Petresin presents a short-term installation realized by the Lebanese artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.and organizes a two-part screening within the program ‘Art in the New Field of Visibility’.

‘Distorted Fabric’ traces the production of the plausible in contemporary art. The works shown warp our sense and knowledge of reality. They deal with the logic of facts and the logic of fiction. These two ‘categories’ are treated as two extremes on the same line of experience and though can be blurred. The works in the video screening are described by Petresin as subjective documentaries, docu-fictions or autofictive narrations. In a way the works function as statements that try to change the common belief in the material authenticity of the images and information that construct our daily reality.

Videoscreening
Distorted Fabric
Curator: Natasa Petresin
Friday 19 January 21.00 h
Videoworks from: The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Daya Cahen, Sebastián Díaz Morales
Saturday 20 January 20.30 h
Videoworks from: Egle Budvytyte, Keren Cytter, Jakup Ferri, Mario García Torres, Driton Hajredini, Ahmet Ögüt, Natascha Sadr Haghighian & Judith Hopf, SilentCell Network, Clemens von Wedemeyer & Maya Schweizer

Maison Descartes
Vijzelgracht 2A
1017 HR Amsterdam
T 020 5319501
http://www.maisondescartes.com

Exhibition
INVESTIGATIONS
20 January - 10 February
Opening Saturday 20 January 17.00 h
During the opening Pascal Beausse will talk to Bruno Serralongue
Artists: Ziad Antar, Alain Declercq, Clarisse Hahn, Florence Lazar & Raphael Grisey, Bruno Serralongue, Olivier Zabat
Curator: Pascal Beausse

How can artists tell about the world today? What can we do to oppose other images to those supplied to us every day by the information professionals? One of the most fascinating aspects of artistic work is to set up new means of production and disseminating information. It’s no longer about questioning the methods information is produced by, as the ''critic'' artists did in the '70s. On the contrary, certain contemporary artists place the bet of directly experiencing the mechanisms of documentation and information. This is why, the exhibition Investigations proposes works that investigate the real. Going beyond the patterns of sociologic or journalistic investigation, the artists reveal something else about the real, different information.

“Investigations” is a device, presenting five videos on screens and a set of photographs, which take up the form of the archive. The exhibition is designed as a space for documentation, allowing the visitor to approach the work of each artist.

Posted by jo at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2007

Mogens Jacobsen:

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Hørbar/Audiobar

Hørbar/Audiobar is a responsive environment for natural and playful exploration of huge collection of audio art. You can interact with the sounds using a tangible interface based on RFID-tagged bottles. The environment consists of two rooms: A bar-room for shared interaction and a study lounge for more in deep explorations.

Hørbar/Audiobar will be premiered at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. This museum has a huge collection of international audio art which will be accessible at the bar. The installation is part of the exhibition Social_Action - The Audience and the New Media Landscape.

The exhibition opens on January 12th 2007 at 17:00 - 20:00 :: Address: Museet for Samtidskunst :: Stændertorvet 3D, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark. The project is supported by Kulturnet Denmark and Sound Forum Øresund.

Posted by jo at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua Presents

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Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border

Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border by John (Craig) Freeman :: Jan 5 - Feb 23, 2007 :: Ars Virtua: Gallery 2 :: Opening 7 - 9pm SLT(Pacific Time) Friday January 5, 2007. Go there.

"Imaging Place," is a place-based, virtual reality art project. It takes the form of a user navigated, interactive computer program that combines panoramic photography, digital video, and three-dimensional technologies to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. The goal of the project is to develop the technologies, the methodology and the content for truly immersive and navigable narrative, based in real places. For the past several months, Freeman has been implementing the "Imaging Place" project in Second Life.

When a denizen of Second Life first arrives at an Imaging Place SL Scene he, she or it sees on the ground a large black and white satellite photograph of the full disk of the Earth. An avatar can then walk over the Earth to a thin red line which leads to an adjacent higher level platform made of a high resolution aerial photograph of specific location from around the world. Mapped to the aerial images are networks of nodes constructed of primitive spherical geometry with panoramic photographs texture mapped to the interior.

The avatar can walk to the center of one of these nodes and use a first person perspective to view the image, giving the user the sensation of being immersed in the location. Streaming audio is localized to individual nodes providing narrative content for the scene. This content includes stories told by people who appear in the images, theory and ambient sound. When the avatar returns to the Earth platform, several rotating ENTER signs provide teleports to other "Imaging Place" scenes located at other places within the world of Second Life. In "Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border," Freeman explores the issues, politics and personal memories of this contested space.

LIVE PERFORMANCE by Second Front :: Friday, January 05, 2007 - 7 PM PST :: Second Front is the first dedicated performance art group in Second Life. To officially open JC Fremont's Installation at Ars Virtua, Second Front will be creating a realtime interpretive and site-specific performance based on JC Fremont's theme 'Borders' to compliment "Imaging Place SL: The U.S./Mexico Border."

Posted by jo at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Seattle

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annie on ni wan + eunsu kang

Upgrade! Seattle :: 7 pm Thursday January 11, 2007 :: 911 Media Arts Center • 402 9th Ave N • Seattle, WA.

Annie On Ni Wan is a young activist in audiovisual performance, interactive art and an innovator in interactive technologies. She achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Media from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, in 2002. She has lived in Singapore, London, Brighton and Gothenburg (Sweden), earned a Master of Science in Art and Technology at Innovative Design, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2005. Her work includes locative media, audiovisual performances and interactive installations.

Eunsu Kang will talk about her media art work such as videos, interactive installations and interactive performances. These are her attempts to represent her consistence subjects; Alien, who is someone or some creature has been shunned by "normal" communication method, Unknown Zone and the new forms of communication which will open more channels among aliens and others. She explores a new form of communication in the form of Art, especially Media Art that concerns communication in the matter of theme and modality simultaneously.

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Annie Wan is a young activist in audiovisual performance, interactive art and an innovator in interactive technologies. She achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Media from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, in 2002. She has lived in Singapore, London, Brighton and Gothenburg (Sweden), earned a Master of Science in Art and Technology at Innovative Design, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2005.

Her works, including locative media, audiovisual performances and interactive installations, have been shown at the Mondal Museum (Sweden); Syndicate Potential (Strasbourg, France); Art+Communication Festival 2004 (Riga, Latvia); Piksel 2004; FLOSS in Motion, (Bergen, Norway); Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Conference 2004 (Singapore); and Oppositional Architecture (Berlin, Germany). She received travel and project grants from various organizations in Hong Kong, Sweden, and Norway, including the Nordic Fund and EU Culture Fund.

Recently, she co-curated the locative media gallery for Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), participated in ZeroOne/ ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Arts) 2006 in San Jose and 10th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy as an invited artist.

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Eunsu Kang is an international media artist from Korea. She has been invited to more than sixty exhibitions and film festivals around the world. She was awarded her first and second solo exhibitions for her video installations. Her third solo exhibition was held on cellular phones with wireless internet connections. She is also a winner of the Korean National Fund for Emerging Artists in 2005, the Insa Web/Mobile Art Project Award in 2003 and the Korean National Juried Project for 2000: the Year of New Arts. Kang received her MA in Media Arts and Technology from the MAT program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her MFA and BFA from the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea.

She is currently a PhD student at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media in the University of Washington. Her current research interests are the use of non-verbal languages as a new forms of communication and interactive video installations representing questions, but not necessarily pursuing answers. Recently she presented an international telematic project between Seattle (USA) and Seoul (Korea) that uses video and sound interaction by participants' shape and motion as a communication interface.

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NETWORKED NATURE

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'Nature' through the Perspective of Networked Culture

NETWORKED NATURE :: Organized by RHIZOME, an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art :: January 11 - February 18, 2007 :: Opening reception: January 11, 6-8 PM.

Foxy Production presents Networked Nature, a group exhibition that inventively explores the representation of 'nature' through the perspective of networked culture. The exhibition includes works by C5, Futurefarmers, Shih-Chieh Huang, Philip Ross, Stephen Vitiello, and Gail Wight, who provocatively combine art and politics with innovative technology, such as global positioning systems (GPS), robotics, and hydroponic environments.

In their work Perfect View, San Jose-based collective C5 reached out to the subculture of recreational GPS users, or geo-cachers, asking them for their recommendations of 'sublime locales.' The submitted latitudes and longitudes provided the guide points for a thirty-three state, thirteen-thousand mile motorcycle expedition by collective member Jack Toolin, who photographed the terrain at the given coordinates. The results, presented in triptychs, smartly subvert traditional representations of landscape and notions of the sublime.

San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers' Photosynthesis Robot is a three-dimensional model of a possible perpetual motion machine driven by phototropism - the movement of plants towards the direction of the sun. Their proposal that a group plants will very slowly propel a four wheel vehicle is a witty take on the pressing search for new forms of energy.

New York artist Shih-Chieh Huang's inflatable installation, Din-Don I, is inspired by everyday household electronic devices and his studies of physical computing and robotics. In this ingenious exploration of organic systems, he creates a dynamic circulation of electricity and
air: a living micro-environment.

San Francisco-based Philip Ross' Juniors are self-contained survival capsules for living plants. Blown glass enclosures provide a controlled hydroponic environment, where plants' roots are submerged in nutrient-infused water, while LED lights supply the necessary illumination. The artist has drawn on two culturally divergent traditions - Chinese scholars' objects and Victorian glass conservatories that share the belief that nature is best understood when seen through the lens of human artifice.

Virginia-based artist Stephen Vitiello's Hedera (BBB) unsettles our assumptions of what an appropriate soundtrack might be. The artist has constructed a sprawling vine installation with speakers hidden between the branches that quietly broadcast percussive sounds woven from the speeches and private conversations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

Creep, by Oakland-based Gail Wight, is an hypnotic three screen time-lapse video of the growth of dyed slime mold. Separately edited sequences play alongside each other, cycling through a sequence of fluorescent color shifts. In her aestheticizing of the normally repellent, Wight creates an ode to the beauty of natural growth patterns.

Networked Nature is organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator at Rhizome. The exhibition will tour to the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, New York. Networked Nature is supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The College Arts Association, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and The New York State Council on the Arts. A full-color catalogue will be published by Rhizome and available at the gallery.

Rhizome is a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Its programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. This exhibition is the final event in Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology.

www.rhizome.org
www.newmuseum.org

For further information or high res images contact Chelsea Goodchild:

FOXY PRODUCTION
617 WEST 27TH ST. GROUND FLOOR,
NEW YORK NY 10001

t: 212 239 2758
f: 212 239 2759
foxyproduction.com

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January 03, 2007

Organized Networks:

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Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions

Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions by Ned Rossiter :: First publication in the series ‘Studies in Network Cultures’, published by NAi Publishers, Rotterdam and Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam.

The celebration of network cultures as open, decentralized, and horizontal all too easily forgets the political dimensions of labour and life in informational times. Organized Networks sets out to destroy these myths by tracking the antagonisms that lurk within Internet governance debates, the exploitation of labour in the creative industries, and the aesthetics of global finance capital. Cutting across the fields of media theory, political philosophy, and cultural critique, Ned Rossiter diagnoses some of the key problematics facing network cultures today. Why have radical social-technical networks so often collapsed after the party? What are the key resources common to critical network cultures? And how might these create conditions for the invention of new platforms of organization and sustainability? These questions are central to the survival of networks in a post-dotcom era. Derived from research and experiences participating in network cultures, Rossiter unleashes a range of strategic concepts in order to explain and facilitate the current transformation of networks into autonomous political and cultural ‘networks of networks’.

* Whose Democracy? NGOs, Information Societies and Non-Representative Democracy * The World Summit on the Information Society and Organized Networks as New Civil Society Movements * Creative Industries, Comparative Media Theory and the Limits of Critique from Within * Creative Labour and the role of Intellectual Property * Processual Media Theory * Virtuosity, Processual Democracy and Organized Networks *

About the author: Australian media theorist Ned Rossiter works as a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media), Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland and an Adjunct Research Fellow, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia.

‘Studies in Network Cultures’ investigates concepts and practices special to network cultures. Exploring the spectrum of new media and society, we see network cultures as a strategic term to enlist in diagnosing political and aesthetic developments in user-driven communications. Network cultures can be understood as social-technical formations under construction. They rapidly assemble, and can just as quickly disappear, creating a sense of spontaneity, transience and even uncertainty. Yet they are here to stay. However self-evident it is, collaboration is a foundation of network cultures. Working with others frequently brings about tensions that have no recourse to modern protocols of conflict resolution. Networks are not parliaments. How to conduct research within such a shifting environment is a key interest to this series.

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Piemonte Share Festival 2007

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Digital Affinity / Communities Now

Piemonte Share Festival 2007: Digital Affinity / Communities Now :: Festival of culture and arts linked to the new media and digital technologies :: When: from Tuesday, 23rd January to Sunday, 28th January 2007 :: Where: Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti main premises :: Via Accademia Albertina, 6 10124 Torino :: info[at]toshare.it

The Festival runs parallel with the Universiade and is part of the programme connected to the sporting event. Now in its 3rd year, the Festival will host an exhibition, conferences, meetings, round tables, workshops and live performances. The event will be the size of a soft-rave (a lite version of a rave) or collective party where the magic of the moment creates an atmosphere of festivity and fun, creative exchange and different types of involvement with the audience: artistic, recreational, dance, cultural and up-beat. All admission to the Festival is totally free and the conferences will be both in Italian and English.

Every year a transversal theme impacts the Festival contents, from conferences to performances, via a sampler of creative expressions applied to digital technologies (art, music, live performance, interactive installations, 3D animation, software art). The theme of the 3rd Festival is Digital Affinity / Communities Now that will be presented through taking a look at processes that regulate Communities within creative and innovative processes via meetings and round tables.

Communities today are one of the paradigms that drive transformation by collectively moving into the era of knowledge and information. Communities are multipliers of intelligence, because they give value to individual skills and become engines of growth for society.

Communities then are not just new forms of aggregation, but a way of being and living, a collective and humanitarian project, a culture that links one billion and 80 million people today. The bonds between these people are not just geographical or family based, but inspired by cultural, ideological and political affinity.

INAUGURATION: Accademia Albertina Tuesday 23rd January 2007 from 6 to 10 pm; With aperitif and live performances!

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Frank Popper

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From Technological to Virtual Art

From Technological to Virtual Art by Frank Popper: In From Technological to Virtual Art, respected historian of art and technology Frank Popper traces the development of immersive, interactive new media art from its historical antecedents through today's digital, multimedia, and networked art. Popper shows that contemporary virtual art is a further refinement of the technological art of the late twentieth century and also a departure from it. What is new about this new media art, he argues, is its humanization of technology, its emphasis on interactivity, its philosophical investigation of the real and the virtual, and its multisensory nature. He argues further that what distinguishes the artists who practice virtual art from traditional artists is their combined commitment to aesthetics and technology. Their "extra-artistic" goals -- linked to their aesthetic intentions -- concern not only science and society but also basic human needs and drives.

Defining virtual art broadly as art that allows us, through an interface with technology, to immerse ourselves in the image and interact with it, Popper identifies an aesthetic-technological logic of creation that allows artistic expression through integration with technology.

After describing artistic forerunners of virtual art from 1918 to 1983 -- including art that used light, movement, and electronics -- Popper looks at contemporary new media forms and artists. He surveys works that are digital based but materialized, multimedia offline works, interactive digital installations, and multimedia online works (net art) by many artists, among them John Maeda, Jenny Holzer, Brenda Laurel, Agnes Hegedus, Stelarc, and Igor Stromajer. The biographical details included reinforce Popper's idea that technology is humanized by art. Virtual art, he argues, offers a new model for thinking about humanist values in a technological age.

Frank Popper is Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He is the author of Origins and Development of Kinetic Art, Art, Action, and Participation, Art of the Electronic Age, and other influential works on art and technology.

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

SERIES FORWARD vii

FOREWARD BY JOEL SLAYTON ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

INTRODUCTION
Sample Chapter - Download PDF (64 KB) 1

I. The Emergence of Virtual Art (1918–1983) 9

1. HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS (1918–1967) 11

Artistic Sources 11

Modern Light Art 13

Spectator Participation 29

Environmental Artistic Commitments 39

Technical Sources (such as Engineering and Inventions) 46

Other Sources (such as Science and Linguistics) 47

2. TECHNOLOGICAL ART AND ARTISTS (1968–1983) 49

Laser Art 49

Holographic Art 52

Eco-technological Art 59

Computer Art 64

Communication Art 75

II. Current Virtual Art and Artists (1983–2004) 87

3. MATERIALIZED DIGITAL-BASED WORK 89

Plastic Issues 89

Cognition Issues 110

Bioaesthetic Issues 118

4. MULTIMEDIA AND MULTISENSORIAL OFF-LINE WORKS 131

Language, Narration, Hypertext 131

Plastic Multimedia Issues 156

Synesthesia 161

Sociopolitical and Security Issues 175

5. INTERACTIVE DIGITAL INSTALLATIONS 181

Sensory Immersion 181

Reciprocal Aesthetic Propositions 220

Individual Commitments to Interactivity 248

Social, Environmental, and Scientific Commitments to Interactivity 275

6. MULTIMEDIA ONLINE WORKS (NET ART) 313

The Internet as a Social Communications Option 313

Personal Presence Online 355

Critical Artistic Attitudes on the Net 371

Telematic and Telerobotic Human Commitments 379

7. CONCLUSION 379

NOTES 399

BIBLIOGRAPHY 405

ARTISTS LIST 415

INDEX
Sample Chapter - Download PDF (135 KB)

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January 01, 2007

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion

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Kathryn Yusoff + Brett Stalbaum

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 8 Wild Nature and the Digital Life Special Issue, guest edited by Dene Grigar and Sue Thomas :: Live chat with Open University research fellow Dr. Kathryn Yusoff and San Diego-based artist Brett Stalbaum, discussing their respective works on visualizations of the earth, landscape and environments. Moderated by Marcus Bastos and Ryan Griffis.

:: Chat date: Wednesday, January 3 :: 2 pm West Coast US / 5 pm East Coast USA / 10pm UK :: LEAD is an open forum around the Wild Nature and the Digital Life special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

Chat instructions are below. The LEA website includes instructions and a complete list of upcoming chats: http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/forum.asp.

Author Biographies

Dr. Kathryn Yusoff is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Open University. Her research interests center on re-thinking visual culture in relation to extreme environments and technologies of vision (particularly in Antarctica, Iceland and other cold regions). She has recently completed her Ph.D, Arresting Visions: A Geographical Theory of Antarctic Light at Royal Holloway, University of London (2004). Currently, she is curating the Interdependence Day project, a research and communications project mapping the ethical terrain of globalization and environmental change.

Brett Stalbaum is an artist specializing in information theory, database, and software development. A serial collaborator, he was a co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater in 1998, for which he co-developed software called FloodNet, which has been used on behalf of the Zapatista movement against the websites of the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, as well as the Pentagon. Recent work includes Painters Flat, projects with the painter Paula Poole in the Great Basin, and ongoing projects with C5 Corporation, of which he is a founding member. Stalbaum holds a Masters of Fine Arts (computers in fine art) from the CADRE digital media laboratory at San Jose State University, and a B.A. in Film Studies from San Francisco State University. He is a lecturer and the coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM) at the University of California, San Diego.

How to participate in the live chat?

Live chats will use Jabber, an open, secure, ad-free alternative to consumer IM services like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo. It is the most widely-used open source instant messaging and chat protocol. The LEA Digital Wild chatroom is on the jabber.org public server under the name/address leadigiwild[at]conference.jabber.org and the password "leoalmanac." Follow three easy steps and you are ready to join the chat:

1) Download and install a Jabber client. A list of recommended Jabber clients is available at the following url: http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml. For Windows users, we recommend the Exodus client. For Macintosh users, please use Psi (although iChat seems to work as well), as the other recommended clients do not consistently register on the Jabber server. For Linux, Psi is also available, but the other recommended clients should work as well.

2) Register as a user on the jabber.org public server. When you first open your Jabber client you will see a start screen. If you do not see this screen, or if you are not starting the client for the first time, the screen is also available in a pull down menu as Account Details or Preferences (depending on your Jabber client). Enter a username, password, and server. Use any username and password you choose. Enter "jabber.org" as the server. When you register, if your proposed username is taken, you need to choose another. Check the button for "new account" or to automatically register the account (depending on your client). Note: you may not be able to register if you are not using one of the recommended clients listed above. Hit OK or Login. Your Jabber client will then automatically register you and connect you to the jabber.org server.

3) At this point, you are ready to chat, but there is one more step: you must join the chatroom. Select "Join a Chat Room" from your client's pull down menu. Enter the name/address of the chat room: leadigiwild[at]conference.jabber.org. Enter the password: leoalmanac. You can also specify a nickname or "handle" to use while in the chatroom. Hit "Finish" or "OK" to join the chat. The chat room window will open and you are ready to go! Note: the chat room may not be available outside of scheduled chat times.

Additional information is available at the Jabber userguide.

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

New Interfaces for Musical Expression

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

NIME 2007 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION :: On behalf of the NIME07 Committee, we would like to invite you to be part of the 7th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), organized by Harvestworks and New York University's (NYU) Music Technology Program in partnership with LEMUR and the NYU InteractiveTelecommunications Program (ITP).

We encourage contributions of the following kinds: * Papers (full-length, short-length, posters) * Demos * Live Performances * Installations. Complete submission guidelines are now available at http://www.nime.org/2007.

IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadlines, Installations and Performances :: January 31, 2007: Papers/posters, Demos, Live Performances, Installations :: Notification of acceptance: March 9th 2007: Papers/posters, Demos, Live Performances, Installations :: Registration deadlines: April 16th 2007: Early Registration (reduced fee) :: Final text submission deadline: April 16th 2007: Complete Camera-ready Papers and Abstracts.

PAPERS/POSTERS

We invite the submission of papers on topics related to new interfaces for music performance including, but not restricted to:

* Novel controllers and interfaces for musical expression
* Novel controllers for collaborative performance
* Novel musical instruments
* Augmented/hyper instruments
* Interfaces for dance and physical expression
* Interactive sound and multimedia installations
* Interactive sonification
* Sensor and actuator technologies
* Haptic and force feedback devices
* Interface protocols and data formats
* Gesture and music
* Robotics and music
* Perceptual & cognitive issues
* Interactivity design and software tools
* Musical mapping strategies
* Performance analysis and machine learning
* Performance rendering and generative algorithms
* Experiences with novel interfaces in education and entertainment
* Experiences with novel interfaces in live performance and composition
* Surveys of past work and stimulating ideas for future research
* Historical studies in twentieth-century instrument design
* Reports on students projects in the framework of NIME related courses
* Artistic, cultural, and social impact of NIME technology

Accepted presentation types are:
- Full Paper (6 pages in proceedings, longer oral presentation)
- Short Paper (4 pages in proceedings, shorter oral presentation)
- Poster (2 or 4 pages in proceedings, poster presentation)

DEMOS

Demo Sessions are an opportunity to support and discuss realized or partially realized work with conference attendees, in an informal, discursive way. Demos of technologies and applications that address the topics listed above will be considered for selection. Demonstrations are designed to give exhibitors an opportunity to show material that benefits from having a physical presence at the conference. It is important that there be a realized, demonstrable, working component to all submissions to this category. This is not to say that Demos cannot be sketches or further ideas or future plans for the project - but an activity, process, action or actionable form of the concept must exist as part of the Demo proposed.

Demos must include a 2 page poster to be displayed at the Demo Sessions and included in the printed proceedings. The poster should address the scientific/technical aspects of the project, acquired experiences and/or the context of the development.

For those submitting papers, we will provide the possibility of scheduling demo presentations within the dedicated Demo Sessions. The submission procedure will allow that a Demo option be chosen for any Paper submission. An accepted paper will not guarantee an accepted demo.

Accepted presentation types are:
- Demo (Demonstration space plus 2 pages in proceedings)

LIVE PERFORMANCES

A series of three evening concerts as well as 'NIME-at-night' events at clubs will be organized during the conference to highlight creative use of interactive instrument technology and performance systems. One of the evening concerts will feature commissioned performers playing work from their repertoire as well as pieces submitted through the Live Performances call.

We welcome proposals for performances to be featured in the NIME 07 concerts.

Accepted presentation types are:
- Concert Performance (Performance slot plus program note in proceedings)
- Club Performance (Performance slot plus program note in proceedings)
- New Work for Commissioned Performer (Performance by commissioned performer plus program note in proceedings)

INSTALLATIONS

The NIME Installations category is intended to address submissions that deal with the subjects listed above, but are intended for public-space or art gallery contexts. Accepted Installations will be shown for the full 3 days of the conference, beginning on the morning on Thursday, June 7th and ending in the evening on Saturday June 9th. The Installations venue for NIME 2007 will also be open to the general public. Installation submissions will be judge by artistic merit, interactivity, relevance to NIME, innovation, exhibition history experience and practicality criteria. A one-paragraph description of the Installation project must be submitted with other required materials, and will be included in the conference proceedings.

Accepted submissions to the Installation category will be exhibited in an environment appropriate to a public-space and gallery context. NIME 2007 is obtaining special facilities in New York City, near other conference events for exhibition of accepted Installation projects. Please check the NIME site in November for floor plan details and photos of the space. The number of accepted submission will be partially subject to available space.

Accepted presentation types are:
- Installations (Installation space plus brief description in proceedings)

SPECIAL FOCUS ON ROBOTICS AND MUSIC

NIME07 will include a number of events specially focused on robotics and music. These will include a keynote speaker from the field of robotics and music, a special workshop on the subject and a concert series the weekend before NIME07.

Therefore, we are especially inviting submissions in all categories in the area of Robotics and Music. Special consideration will be given to competent submissions in this area.

VENDOR BOOTHS

For presentations of commercial products and companies not associated with a conference submission, there will be exhibit booths. Please contact Jennifer Stock at vendors[at]nime2007.org.

WORKSHOPS, SPECIAL SESSION AND ASSOCIATED EVENTS

June 6, morning:
* Workshop on Music and Robotics
Details on how to participate in the Music and Robotics workshop to come.

June 7-9:
* NIME 2007

May 31st to June 10th:
* New York Electronic Arts Festival

NIME 07 organized site visits, additional workshops and off-concerts including jam sessions are planned.

Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. Our programs are made possible with funds from mediaThe foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, The Experimental TV Center, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Aaron Copland Fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and the Rodney White Foundation.

HARVESTWORKS Digital Media Arts Center
596 Broadway, Suite 602 (at Houston St)
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-431-1130
http://www.harvestworks.org
Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleeker, W/R Prince

Posted by jo at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Digital Art Weeks Festival 2007

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Digital Art Weeks Festival 2007 (DAW07) :: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION :: July 9 - July 14, 2007 :: ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland :: daw-info[at]inf.ethz.ch

The Digital Art Weeks is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. It consists of a symposium, workshops, and performances. The program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology. Artists and researchers will examine the use of electronic media in articulating the performer's presence through the possibilities of the multi-sensuality of electronic media. The possibility of blurring the divide between public and performer to bond them through the powers of dissemination and inclusion inherent within the technology used will also be considered. The organizers of the Digital Art Weeks at ETH Zurich seek papers, posters, and performances on themes specific to performance using electronic media. We seek proposals that explore a concept of the Performative Surround in terms of how computer-mediated communication and dialog takes place between performers and viewers and how it tends to aid in dissolving the divide between performer and viewer.

PERFORMANCES topics include:

* Media Enhanced Artwork in the areas of Performance, Dance and Sound-Art
* Mobile Art & Music that explore Performer Networking and Audience Participation
* Digital Puppetry including Enhanced, Waldo, Motion Capture, and Machinima
* Laptop Music including Live-Coding, Live-Cinema & Live-Re-Scoring
* Installations involving Net-poetry computer mediated communication

PAPERS, POSTERS and DEMONSTRATIONS topics include:

* Current Research and Innovations in Media Enhanced Artwork and Technology
* Issues Concerning the Live-Electronic Re-Embodiment of the Performance Artist
* Approaches to Performer Networking and Audience Participation using Technology
* Technology and Aesthetics of Digital Puppetry
* Approaches to Live-Coding, Live-Cinema & Live-Re-Scoring
* Novel Software Paradigms for Mixed-Media Processing and Authoring

PANEL topics include:

* Software Innovations in Mediated Communication and the Arts
* Live Cinema, Expanded Video, and Film Rescoring
* Immersive Audio and Video Space
* The Dissolve of the Performer-Audience Divide
* Networking the Private Space-Pubic Space Divide
* Digital Puppetry from Enhanced to Machinima

Submission guidelines.

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

December 28, 2006

Rapt in a fine Web of interactive art

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Internet-based exhibition is a virtual stunner

"Looking at art on the Internet can't compare to seeing it in person, but what if the art is Internet-based? The Boston group Turbulence has been promoting Internet art for a decade; it sponsors New England Initiative, a competition that awards a commission and an exhibition in real space, as well as on the Web.

"New England Initiative II" can be seen live at Art Interactive, and that's still the best way to view it. You can also check it out virtually at turbulence.org/ne2/awards.html.

The three works are bigger and more engrossing in the gallery than they are on a personal computer. This is particularly true of John Snavely's "WhoWhatWhenAir," a giant tangle of pneumatic valves that looks like a squid with 16 left feet; it can't move without tripping over itself. Each of those long, black tubular valves, ordinarily used in industrial settings, can pull up to a ton. The viewer -- either in the gallery or remotely from home -- can control the way in which the valves expand and contract, and choreograph the sculpture's movements..." Continue reading Rapt in a fine Web of interactive art: Internet-based exhibition is a virtual stunner by Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent, December 28, 2006.

Posted by jo at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2006

netcase #1

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Eduardo Navas: Net(work) Art

netcase #1: Eduardo Navas: Net(work) Art: Criticizing, producing and curating

Eduardo Navas is a critical theorist and artist born in Salvador, living and working between San Diego and Los Angeles. During his lecture at MLAC Navas will present some of his art, theory and criticism focused on culture and media at large. The lecture will also focus on Navas's recent research on Remix as a cultural activity affecting curatorial practice; he will present examples of New Media projects that challenge the way curators approach contemporary art.

Eduardo Navas is an artist, historian and critic specializing in new media; his work and theories have been presented in various places throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has been a juror for " Turbulence.org" in 2004 and for "Rhizome.org" in 2006-07, New York. Navas is founder and was contributing editor of "Net Art Review" (2003-05), is co-founder of "newmediaFIX" (2005 to present) and is co-founding member of "acute.cc", an international group of artists and academics who organize event and publications periodically. Currently, Navas is adjunct professor in Theory and Practice at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and adjunct faculty of multimedia practice at San Diego State University. Navas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art and Media History, theory and Criticism at the University of California in San Diego.

netcase is not just a space for exposition, not just a space for networking as artefact, but also a space for questioning and discussing networking as critical practice: networks as spaces of production. netcase proposes curating as a practice invested in understanding new media and methods of production. netcase is a project by MLAC – Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea of "La Sapienza" University of Rome, a museum and laboratory exploring new forms of cotemporary art practice. netcase at the MLAC is an editorial and multimedia curatorial project that embraces and oversees new technologies as its focus. netcase is curated by lucrezia cippitelli and domenico scudero.

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2006

transmediale.07: unfinish!

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Conference

transmediale.07: unfinish! conference :: January 31 - February 4, 2007 :: Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, Hanseatenweg 10.

The transmediale.07 conference, 'unfinish!', deals with the phenomenon of finiteness in art, science, architecture, computer science and politics. The digital culture of the present seems to be neither willing nor able to accept final determination and the closure of processes. Instead processuality and continuous and consecutive updates and versions are the credo of current cultural practices. The conference of the transmediale.07 enters into the discrepancy between the desire to open up solidified structures and situations, and the curse of digital work that doesn’t come to conclusions,but only to an iteration of preliminary versions. In this discussion terms such as ‘opening’, ‘closure’, and ‘restart’, figure as central aspects. In seven panel discussions and in three keynote speeches, they will be analysed and applied to artistic and socio-political questions.

The conference of transmediale.07 in organised in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

2. Keynotes: Stelarc, Kroker, Kittler

Keynote Stelarc (au)
Thursday, 1.2. 2007, 20.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

In his lecture, the Australian artist Stelarc deals with the potential of improving the human body and with the consequences this has for the perception of subjectivity. Stelarc's work explores and extends the concept of the body and its relationship with technology through human-machine interfaces. His projects are attempts at testing the scientific 'state of the art' on the human body. In his lecture-performance Stelarc describes how he compensates the imperfection of his own body and equips it with technology:in the context of the project '1/4 Scale Ear', the artist recently attached a third ear to his forearm. The soft prosthesis was grown from human tissue. Stelarc considers the ear prosthesis not as a sign for a physical malfunction, but rather as a symbol for an additional feature. Thus he tries to amplify the forms and functions of the human body and produces a human-machine-hybrid which questions the notion of the wholeness of the body.

Moderator: Florian Roetzer (de)

Keynote Arthur Kroker (ca)
Friday, 2.2. 2007, 18.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

In the 1990s Arthur Kroker was one of the most important theorists of the emerging cyber-culture. Today he is an alert critic of global digital culture which has moved on from the utopias of the waning 20th century. His lecture 'Changing the New World Order' analyses the resumption of seemingly closed but unfinished stories in a society altered by global technical changes. Kroker understands the development of technology as a global culture that also involves political, cultural and social areas.

Moderator: Florian Roetzer (de)

Keynote Friedrich Kittler (de)
Saturday, 3.2. 2007, 18.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

Kittler holds the chair for aesthetics and history of media at the Humboldt University Berlin. In his lecture, he presents his current research concerning theories of machine, media and music and asks for the meaning of reversibility and infinite loop-d-loop which is being re-processed, after its execution as long as this is not prevented by external influences. What power lies in the knowledge that is hidden in computers and their algorithms?

Moderator: Wolfgang Coy (de)

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

3. Panel: Unfinishing Creation
Thursday, 1.2. 2007, 15.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

The Panel 'Unfinishing Creation' deals with the relationship between humans, science, and the future. On the basis of artistic practices, and in conjunction with current scientific topics, especially from the life-sciences, the panel raises questions of openness, of continuous transformation and constant change in present-day society. Do concepts like reversibility, time, mistakes, and progress connect or divide artists and scientists? And do the natural sciences offer new tools to artists and other scientists to expand their own disciplines and to re-examine our society? Does the notion of an 'open system of life' form a new paradigm? And which effects do the changing media and technologies have on our cognitive structures and on the evolution of new artistic practices?

Moderator: Stefan Iglhaut (de)
Participants: Ingeborg Reichle (de), Warren Neidich (us/de)

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

4. Panel: Unfinished Cities
Friday, 2.2. 2007, 15.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

The phenomena of the multi-layered urban development and urbanisation are among the main topics of the current global cultural context. While the countries of the ‘traditional’ industrialisation are dealing with ‘shrinking cities’, the increasing megalopolises, particularly those in Latin America, Asia and Africa, are in a process of immense and uncontrolled growth. The panel 'Unfinished Cities' presents positions which consider the exuberant growth and the insecurity which go along with it not as a form of dysfunction, but as a potential. The image of the permanently unfinished, insecure and complex city creates novel spatial constellations that accelerate the urban practice of appropriation and the creation of new forms of public spheres, thus preventing any state of closure.

Moderator: Regina Bittner (de)
Participants: AbdouMaliq Simone (za/uk), Orhan Esen (tr)

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

5. Panel: Opening and Closing, Beginning and Ending
Sunday, 4.2. 2007, 14.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

The panel with Byung-Chul Han and Thomas Macho deals with notions of closing and opening from a philosophical point of view. By means of a comparison between occidental inwardness and far eastern openness, the speakers will trace different traditions of eastern and western thought.

Participants: Byung-Chul Han (kr/ch), Thomas Macho (de)

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

6. Panel: The Media Landscape of Iraq
Friday, 2.2. 2007, 12.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

The future developments in Iraq will depend crucially on whether the question whether a process of negotiation can be initiated between the conflicting groups, or whether separation and isolation will continue. The function of the media in this process is not to be underestimated. The media communicate, comment and reflect; they form opinions and mobilise atmospheres of consent or dissent. Since the collapse of the regime, the media landscape in Iraq has been growing and sprawling uncontrollably in all directions, and the coverage of the socio-political situation is as multi-layered and complex as the situation itself. The discussion with Iraqi journalists and artists explores the role that the media play in the development of conflicts and the tight-rope walk between the freedom of speech and the will to survive. MICT (Media in Cooperation & Transition) introduce the topic with a report illustrated by video and audio material from their archives.

Moderators: Anja Wollenberger & Klaas Glenewinkel (de)
Participants: Ali Badr (iq), Ismail Zayer (iq)

In cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation

7. Whatever happened to Tactical Media?
Thursday, 1.2. 2007, 16.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Salon

Creating a collaborative culture has been the main goal of video activism, independent practices that are based upon cooperation and networking. Can online tools and services such as YouTube or Flickr provide new cultural identities and open up new areas of dialogue and critique? What political role does the Net play today as a tool for collaborative production? Is self-sufficiency and the DIY ethos still important in the age of Web 2.0? And what is the actual relevance of tactical media today? Introduction and Moderation: Joanne Richardson (ro)

Participants Part 1: Baerbel Schoenafinger (de/at), Katsiaryna Herasenkava & Pauluk Kanavalchyk (by), Anastasia Nekozakova (ru)
Participants Part 2: Petko Dourmana (bg), Fran Ilich (mx), Micz Flor (de)

In cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education

8. Panel: Many Years of Video Art - Historical Views on Art and Media Wednesday, 31.1. 2007, 15.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

In spring 2006, five German museums presented the project '40 Jahre Videokunst in Deutschland' (40 years of video art in Germany). A substantial DVD edition of more than 50 individual works in combination with a catalogue (Hatje Cantz Verlag) tries to describe the field of video art in Germany since the mid 1960s. In the context of its anniversary programme, transmediale.07 presents this DVD edition and attempts its evaluation in a broader and international context. Therefore similar projects from other countries have also been invited to the transmediale. The panel discussion between the producers of '40 Jahre Videokunst' and international colleagues offers a critical debate about such projects of documentation and overview.

Participants: Chris Hill (us), Barbara Borcic (si), Wulf Herzogenrath (de), a.o.

In cooperation with the Goethe-Institute

9. Panel: Media Art Undone
Saturday, 3.2. 2007, 15.00 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

The participants of this panel discuss questions concerning the field and the term 'Media Art'. Is it time to let go of the label 'media art' altogether, and to strive for a re-inscription of media-based art practices into broader art discourses? Are the definitions of media art and media cultural practices still valid that used to justify their - positive and negative - discrimination?

Moderator: Miguel Leal (pt)
Participants: Diedrich Diederichsen (de), Inke Arns (de), Olia Lialina (ru/de), Timothy Druckrey (us)

Posted by jo at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

susana_mendes_silva

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art_room

art_room#3: Don't be afraid to ask everything you always wanted to know about contemporary art.

My Skype name is susana_mendes_silva, call me.

art_room (#3) :: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 0:00am - 1:00am (GMT) :: Untitled [ArtSpace] Upgrade! International: DIY, Oklahoma City.

susana mendes silva :: arslonga[at]netcabo.pt

Posted by jo at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2006

On Rhizome

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D.I.Y. or DIE

In celebration of their respective ten-year anniversaries, Turbulence and Rhizome collaborated with Upgrade! New York to present an exhibition of works that they commissioned or presented over the course of their histories. The term D.I.Y. (or do-it-yourself) expresses an independent ethos, one that encourages cultural producers to create and distribute work outside mainstream or commercial systems and often in direct confrontation with them. In this case, D.I.Y refers not only to works in the show, many of which create alternate models for collaborative artmaking, community building, and media distribution, but to the organizations themselves whose missions--to commission and present digital art work--had no tradition or cultural niche to call upon. Historically, net artists have included audiences in their work; many created calls to action that compel their audiences to intervene and contribute their own ideas, stories and histories. From re-purposed commercial software to homegrown digital knitting applications and works that offer alternative constructions of identity and nationality, D.I.Y. or DIE presents a cross-section of Internet-based art that, much like punk and grassroots activism has the urgency and invention required to change existing standards of art practice.

D.I.Y. or DIE is currently installed at Individual Artists of Oklahoma (IAO), a not-for-profit arts organization presenting work by Oklahoma artists, including visual art, poetry, theater, and film and video.

Organized by Upgrade! New York, Turbulence and Rhizome.

Posted by jo at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

Vagueterrain.net

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Issue 05

Vagueterrain.net the Toronto-based digital arts quarterly, has just launched its fifth issue: vague terrain 05: minimalism. This issue is dedicated to an exploration of minimalism and technology through various texts and multimedia projects which document and explore reductionism.

This diverse body of work contains contributions spanning multiple mediums from: aidan baker, bleupulp, clinker, granny'ark, greg j. smith, gregory shakar, i8u, jan jelinek (interview by greg j. smith), martin john callanan, michaela schwentner, monolake (interview by corina macdonald), patrick lichty, steven read and tobias c. van veen.

Posted by jo at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

San Jose Airport

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Request for Proposals

San Jose Airport Request for Proposals :: US residents only. Design / Fabrication / Installation of a Suspended Artwork (Open Call) :: We are seeking to commission an artist to design, fabricate, and install a suspended artwork for the San Jose Airport's North Concourse. The opportunity offers a wide range of possibilities, including, but not limited to: visually large scale, modular, dynamic, interactive, kinetic, involving data mining and visualization, and/or web-based interaction. The commission is $375,000.

The San José Art Public Art Program continues to be a model for other programs due to its extensive community outreach and participation. Each new project begins with communities defining broad goals to be considered in the development of the artwork. Artists are subsequently selected by community-based panels from the Artist Pool. Selected artists typically meet between two and four times with community members before and during the design process, in order to gain understanding of community goals, and to get feedback on designs.

Mary A. Rubin, Senior Project Manager
San Jose Public Art Program
365 S. Market Street
San Jose, CA 95113
(P) 408 277-5144 x 16 (f) 408 277-3160
San Jose Public Art

Posted by jo at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

New Reviews/Interviews at Furtherfield.org

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The December 2006

New Reviews/Interviews at Furtherfield.org Dec 2006

Ele Carpenter: Interviewed by Jess Laccetti :: Open Source Embroidery: Jess Laccetti Inquires about Ele Carpenter’s Latest Work: “‘The Open Source Embroidery’ project brings together programming for embroidery and computing. It's based on the common characteristics of needlework crafts and open source computer programming: gendered obsessive attention to detail; shared social process of development; and a transparency of process and product.” Ele Carpenter is undertaking post doctoral research with CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss) at the University of Sunderland. Her curatorial practice-based research is focused on socially and politically engaged art activism with and without new technologies. Research outcomes include: the RISK project, 2005; the Open Source Embroidery Project, 2006; and thesis due
to be completed in January 2007.

The Amazon Noir Team: Interviewed by Franz Thalmair :: THE BIG BOOK (C)RIME: About one year after the release of Google Will Eat Itself the artists Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico, Hans Bernhard and Lizvlx (both ubermorgen.com ) out foxed Amazon.com, the second global Internet player. The results of the Media Art-event, Amazon Noir - The Big Book Crime, were presented to the public on the 15th of November 2006. In this interview the Amazon Noir Crew talks about the framework of the project, its coding and art historical background, the official feedback and copyright issues.

Bio Mapping by Christian Nold: Review by Cinzia Cremona: If you go to http://www.biomapping.net, the first (moving) image you see looks like an aerial view of a spiky fence enclosing a small area of Greenwich (London) implanted onto a Google Map. Two red dots at the opposite ends are labeled ‘Yachtclub Sneaky Drink’ and ‘Busy Traffic Crossing’. This is a visualization of an individual experience of Christian Nold’s Bio Mapping Project. Christian started working on Bio Mapping in 2004 by building a Galvanic Skin Response sensor/data logger and connecting it to a commercial GPS unit.

GROUNDED exhibition: Reviewer by Lauren A Wright :: GROUNDED Unearthed. An exhibition curated by Axel Stockburger, at E:vent in Bethnal Green, London. Which has in the past few months relocated from the basement of its converted warehouse, artist-community home into a main floor space. The group exhibition GROUNDED brings together a diverse range of international artists. Showing work that deals with processes of modeling and simulation, activities that form the conceptual backbone of digital culture. However all of the artists involved are tackling this subject with an array of practices that are firmly rooted in physical environments, from architecture to installation thus addressing important elements of digital culture with essentially non-digital means.

Andy Stringer exhibiton: Review by Rob Myers :: The Destabilisation of perception by Andy Stringer :: TheSpace4, Peterborough, 10th November 2006 - 12th January 2007. Andy Stringer's show at TheSpace4 in Peterborough consists of a series of large-scale abstract paintings. The labels and the catalogue identify these works as paintings, and they are areas of liquid pigment on substrate laid down with a flatness that Greenberg could only have dreamt of. These paintings are in fact wide-format inkjet prints of images created on computer using imaging software. Artists who pursue abstraction through new technology are often accused of technological determinism. Usually, ignoring the historical relationship of art to technology and of technology and culture. J David Bolter's theory of determining technologies explains how societies regard their humanity in metaphoric terms of their highest technology, whether that is fire, pottery, steam or computers.

Installation of Ombea by Pash*: Review by Palo Fabuš ::Moving Sounds of Ombea - Pash*. Ombea is what Russian conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov calls a total installation, a designed experience. Ombea is an interactive installation, consisting of an empty room with 4 speakers, 4 light sources and 2 cameras, which are placed within a space, partially isolated from light and sound coming from outdoors, provided with a lockable entrance; a computer is located outside the ombea space with max/msp/jitter patch which serves to direct the space reaction.

If you are interested in being a reviewer on Furtherfield contact: marc.garrett[at]furtherfield.org

Furtherfield Neighbourhood & Projects:
# www.http.uk.net
# www.furtherfield.org
# www.visitorsstudio.org
# www. blog.game-play.org.uk
# www.nodel.org (with many others)
# netartfilm.furtherfield.org
# www.netbehaviour.org
# www.furthernoise.org

Posted by jo at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2006

Futuresonic 2007

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Social Technologies Summit

Social Technologies Summit - register before end of december :: Special Advance Booking Rate *Available till 31 December* £25 (Normally £45) :: The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. See here for details. A part of Futuresonic 2007

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT: The main conference strand of the Futuresonic festival, the Social Technologies Summit, is a major international conference exploring the creative and social potential of new technologies, bringing together leading figures to explore "a whole new way of doing things in the air".

The Social Technologies Summit promotes technology as social practice, and explores the social impact of technologies, in particular a new generation of network technologies that are increasingly embedded in the social sphere. It looks at how people collaborate to make or use technology, at the way in which certain technologies can create an extension of social space or support group interaction, and asks how we can make technology more social.

ENVIRONMENT 2.0

In 2007 a focus of the Social Technologies Summit is ENVIRONMENT 2.0, a new international initiative in which two worlds collide:

o The world is waking up to realities of climate change, long predicted but until now too easy to ignore.
o The world is in love with smart environments, mobile communication, pervasive media, wearable computing.

Can these two approaches to environment, each one iconic for our times, be reconciled?

The Social Technologies Summit will host a network meeting for ENVIRONMENT 2.0, and present the findings of a pioneering study of the carbon footprint of the Futuresonic festival, undertaken in collaboration with Creative Concern and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

FREE-MEDIA

A linked focus is FREE-MEDIA. Free-media is about finding inspiration and resources in our built and natural environment that were previously dismissed as being without value or irrelevant. It doesn't cost much because it makes use of public domain Free and Open Source Software, and recycles freely available old equipment, waste materials and junk (FOSS). Free-media increases access to media technologies, especially to the people who need it most and can afford it the least, and lowers environmental impact of the media we produce and consume.

THE MAP DESIGNERS

The 2007 Summit will also play host to THE MAP DESIGNERS, an event drawing together map hackers, artists, cartographers, DIY technologists, architects, game programmers, bloggers and semantic web philosophers. Presented by the British Cartographic Society, the event will focus upon the interface between cartography and cutting edge design.

FUTUREVISUAL

As the main conference strand of the Futuresonic festival, the Social Technologies Summit will also host discussions of the festival's artistic themes. In 2007 this will involve a conference strand supporting Futurevisual, a city wide celebration of future image and sound. It will mark the 40th anniversary of the first multimedia events of the kind that we would understand today, which took place in the halcyon year of 1967, the year that also saw the first crossover between avant garde and popular music, and the introduction of the Moog synthesiser. The conference will feature seminal figures from the period, alongside contemporary artists who can connect with the energy and openness of 1967, and bring it bang up to date.

FUTURESONIC 2007

Futuresonic, the urban festival of electronic arts and music, is moving from July to May, back to the Spring date it occupied in 2004. Futuresonic 2007 will feature profile music events in Futuresonic Live, and art and technology events in Urban Play, a strand of the festival introduced in 2006 that has since been mirrored in other events in the UK and Europe.

DELEGATE PASS
Advance Booking Rate
£25 (Normally £45)
Reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and
make payment by January 31st 2007
http://www.futuresonic.com/07/bookings.html

The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. You must reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and make payment by January 31st 2007. To reserve email tickets2007[at]futuresonic.com stating your name, address and contact details. You will be sent purchasing information from the festival box office by January 8th 2007.

Posted by jo at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2006

Processpatching:

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Defining New Methods in aRt&D

We would like to invite you to view the online version of Processpatching: Defining New Methods in aRt&D, a PhD thesis by Anne Nigten.

V2_ invited Anne Nigten to start the V2_Lab in 1998. She coined the term ‘aRt&D’ to refer to research and development involving art and technology. One of the next steps in aRt&D will be to formalise its assembled working methods, which can be seen as essential ingredients for interdisciplinary collaboration.

As manager of the V2_Lab, Anne Nigten decided to investigate how electronic art patches together processes and methods originating in the arts, engineering, and computer science. Her thesis provides a framework for understanding electronic art’s method, through informing others about one’s own artistic research-and-development approach, this thesis contributed to improving the collaboration among artists, technicians and computer scientists. She conducted her investigation in the V2_Lab, an electronic-art laboratory where artists establish new alliances with other disciplines. The thesis contains unique information about specific cases of projects developed or presented in the V2_Lab between 2002 and 2005. It provides sharp observations and analyses of the practical and theoretical aspects of artists’ research and development processes.

Nigten’s study addresses fundamental questions about the research and development methods of artists involved in interdisciplinary collaborations between and among the fields of art, computer science, and engineering. The artistic methods cited in her thesis include examples from a broad range of fields (such as technology, media arts, theatre and performance, systems theories, the humanities, and design practice), which are relevant to and intrinsically intertwined with this project and its position in an interdisciplinary knowledge domain.

Anne Nigten participated in the SMARTlab program at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London. Her supervisors were Professor Lizbeth Goodman, James Swinson and Professor Lynda Hardman.

This thesis has been realized with the support of V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media and Multimedian.

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

transmediale.07: unfinish!

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Performances

transmediale.07: unfinish! :: January 31 - February 4, 2007 :: Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, Hanseatenweg 10.

Performances: 1. Pierre Bastien - Orchestre mecanique :: 2. Institut fuer Medienarchaeologie - Nightline :: 3. Richard Chartier / Taylor Deupree - Specification.Fifteen :: 4. Edition Edison :: 5. Chris Salter - Schwelle 1 & 2.

1. Pierre Bastien (fr) - Orchestre mecanique :: Opening transmediale.07, 30.1. 2007, 19 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1 (by invitation only): During the opening ceremony of transmediale.07, French artist Pierre Bastien presents his unique 'Orchestre mecanique', an orchestra made of Meccano parts, electro-motors and acoustic instruments from all over the world. According to the type of instrument that is included, each automaton plays a short melody, a rhythm or some harmony repeated in a loop.

'The dream of a composer: An orchestra on the fingertip, which gently fulfils every command: A timeless-melodic orchestra, futuristic and a bit dadaistic at the same time, which evokes ancient traditions in its astoundingly sensual music. This is, depicted in a few words, Pierre Bastiens 'Mecanium', a sort of daydream, which he pursues since 1976. The musicians of his orchestra are machines. The idea behind all this is simple, effective and poetic. Traditional instruments (Chinese sounds, Moroccan bendir, Javanese saron, koto, violin, sanze, etc.) are played by a mechanical instrument consisting of parts of a Meccano construction kit and re-used gramophone motors. These hybrid and self-playing sound-sculptures perform a series of short hypnotic pieces.' (Michel F. Cote)

Pierre Bastien (born in Paris, 1953) post-graduated in eighteenth-century French literature at University Paris-Sorbonne. In 1977 he built his first musical machinery. For the next ten years he has been composing for dance companies and playing with Pascal Comelade. In the meantime he was constantly developing his mechanical orchestra. Since 1987 he concentrates on it through solo performances, sound installations, recordings and collaborations with artists such as Pierrick Sorin, Karel Doing, Jean Weinfeld, Robert Wyatt or Issey Miyake.

Pierre Bastien will also be playing in a special programme of Club Transmediale at Volksbuehne, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, on 25.1. 2007

2. Institut fuer Medienarchaeologie (at) - Nightline
Wednesday, 31.1. 2007, 21 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

With a range of different performances the Austrian Institut fuer Medienarchaeologie (IMA) focuses especially on the sonic arts and presents artists and compositions with diverse instruments and sound events.

For several years, Rebekah Wilson aka Netochka Nezvanova was pure fiction. Calling herself after a literary character of Fjodor Dostojevskij's, the trained composer was haunting the net as an Enfant terrible, anti-pop star, and digital icon. She re-appeared as a physical person in 2002 and was a curator at the STEIM in Amsterdam. In her current rebirth-phase as Rebekah Wilson she found her way back to her home country New Zealand. In the performance 'A History of Mapmaking' she uses the cello live to create sound and to manipulate sound events. (Compositions and performance: Rebekah Wilson)

The performance entitled '4:3' is a resonating memory trace transforming the experiments of Leon Theremin (Lev Sergejewitsch Termen) who worked with the avant-garde filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute in the 30s in his New York studio connecting light and sound to his 'Lichtmusik'. His idea of merging light, sound and movement opens up an exciting field for research and experiments, particularly in using digital technologies. (Compositions and electronics: Elisabeth Schimana, flute: Cordula Boesze, Terpsiton: Elena Golovasheva, instrumental design: Andre Smirnov)

In 'ghost engine - Sprechen ohne Sprache' (talking without language) two writers try to communicate without using any language. The Theremin, one of the first musical instruments designed to be played without being touched, develops the 'speech' that Liesl Ujvary and Ann Cotton explore experimentally. Additionally they play the Kaosspad (a device for music effects), and use the laptop to filter the Theremin's sounds. The emerging compositions create a panorama of human existence: straight, moving and non-verbal. (Theremin and electronics: Liesl Ujvary and Ann Cotton)

Ushi Reiter's 'Turntabel Improvisationen' brings scratching records, needles in the groove and scraps of sound into a dialogue with static sound waves and space. The performance starts with 20th century sound material produced exclusively by women. In addition to the pieces from net archives, works of contemporary sound producers will also play a key role. Vinyl records will be produced especially for Ushi Reiter's performance.

IMA is dedicated to the research and mediation of artistic practice of technological sound and visuals. As a main focus within this context IMA digs out female production of electronic art, incorporates it into the historical context and re-visualises these works for a wider audience.

3. Richard Chartier / Taylor Deupree (us) - Specification.Fifteen Honourable Mention transmediale Award 2007 Friday, 2.2. 2007, 21 hrs, Akademie Hanseatenweg, Studio 1

'Specification.Fifteen' evokes the stillness of the spaces of Hiroshi Sugimoto's seascapes which suggest infinite change under a seemingly uniform surface. Inspired by Sugimoto's series of photographic seascapes, sound artists Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree created their piece on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of the renowned Japanese photographer. 'Specification.Fifteen' will be on display as an audio-piece at transmediale's exhibition, and will be presented as a live performance by the artists in a European premiere.

Richard Chartier (born 1971), sound and installation artist, explores in his work the interrelationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. In 2000 he formed together with Taylor Deupree the recording label LINE, presenting compositions and installations by international sound artists and composers. Taylor Deupree (born 1971) is a sound artist, graphic designer, and photographer residing in New York. Founder of the music labels 12k, LINE and Happy, he devotes his work to the aesthetics of the contemporary and the development of the digital minimalism, often in collaboration with other artists. http://3particles.com/ http://www.12k.com/

4. Edition Edison: Nicholas Bussmann (de), FM3: Christiaan Virant (us)/Zhang Jian (cn), Aleks Kolkowski (uk), Nicolas Collins (us)
Workshop-Installation: Thursday through Saturday (1.-3.2. 2007) all day
Performance: Saturday, 3.2. 2007, 18 hrs
Akademie Pariser Platz, Foyer

For more than a century physical sound-storage media, from the cylinder of the Edison phonograph to the CD, have made music something to be owned - an special liaison between music and object. The LP managed to become a fetish; the CD's days are already numbered. With the emergence of the standardised compression format MP3 and the Internet, sounds are once again roaming freely.

The workshop-installation 'Edition Edison' is on display during the festival at the foyer of the Academy's new building on Pariser Platz. The artists Nicholas Bussmann, FM3 (Christiaan Virant, Zhang Jian), Aleks Kolkowski and Nicolas Collins will manufacture artistic storage media, thus commenting the immateriality of digital sounds. The performance on Saturday evening will be a live concert, where the artists work with the storage media that has been produced during the preceding days. - Edition Edison is a project by Nicholas Bussmann in cooperation with the Diaphanes publishing company.

Nicholas Bussmann is a musician, composer and curator, living and working in Berlin. He started his career as a cello player, but went for the new possibilities provided by computer and electronic devices. He is focusing more on performing music rather then recording it, and he is working on conceptual compositions and game structures. Bussmann is curator of the annual Grand Prix d'Amour in Berlin.

FM3: Christiaan Virant is a Beijing-based sound artist and musician. Active in the Chinese punk underground for nearly a decade, he founded the experimental electronic act FM3 in 1999. Zhang Jian is China's top session keyboarder and leading computer musician. He has appeared on nearly every underground rock release over the past decade and was a member of many seminal Chinese rock acts.

Aleks Kolkowski was born in London, and is based in Berlin since 1995. He performed in experimental music ensembles, and was working as an improvising musician, interpreter, composer and actor. His most recent work is concerned with the pre-electronic, mechanical technology of gramophones, phonographs and horned violins.

New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins studied composition at Wesleyan University (Connecticut). He worked as a composer and presented his audio-installations in the USA, Europe, South America and Japan. He was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Center for Research & Development of instruments for performance arts) in Amsterdam and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. Since 1997 he has been editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal.

5. Chris Salter (us) - Schwelle 1 & 2
1.-3.2. 2007, daily 20.30 hrs, TESLA, Kubus

'Schwelle' is an extensive media art project of three parts about the most ancient theme of mankind. It explores the limits of conscience on the cusp of death. TESLA presents part 1 and 2 during the festival transmediale.07. Both parts refer to the Tibetan Book of Death, the holy scriptures, which is read to dying persons in their last minutes of life, in order to guide them through the chaos of the passage from life to death.

Part 1 is a stormy meditation, in which one can undergo the moments before death through picture language and sound. In part 2 the spectators experience one single artist, Michael Schumacher, long-time dancer at the Ballet Frankfurt. The environment in 'Schwelle' is enlarged by wireless electronic sensors, so that the artists movements and gestures interact with his surrounding. This interaction controls light, sound and objects in real-time and develops its own choreography. In this environment the artist fuses with the room surrounding him.

Chris Salter studied economics and philosophy and completed in the areas of theatre and computer-generated sound at Stanford University. He has collaborated with, among others, Peter Sellars, and William Forsythe and the Ballett Frankfurt. He co-founded the art+research organisation 'Sponge', whose works stretch between the areas of performance, installation, scientific research and publications and have been shown at several festival festivals around the world. Salter works at Concordia University, Montreal. http://clsalter.com http://sponge.org

transmediale.07 - 31 january - 4 february 2007 :: festival for art and digital culture berlin :: transmediale - Klosterstr. 68 - 10179 Berlin :: tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814 info[at]transmediale.de - http://www.transmediale.de

Member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals

Posted by jo at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

Body Politics in the Americas

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Call for Submissions

6th Encuentro
CORPOLíTICAS / BODY POLITICS IN THE AMERICAS: Formations of Race, Class and Gender at the Centro Cultural Recoleta and the Teatro Empire with the collaboration of Instituto Torcuato Di Tella June 8-17, 2007 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. APPLICATION DEADLINE JANUARY 15, 2007

THE HEMISPHERIC INSTITUTE OF PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS and the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires invite artists, performers, academics and activists to propose performances, papers, performance-based scholarship (scholarship that attempts to enact what it describes), videos, installations, visual art exhibits, work group topics, activist projects, hacktivist or virtual actions, and other forms that bring together performance and politics in the Americas to participate in our upcoming 6th Encuentro
CORPOLíTICAS / BODY POLITICS IN THE AMERICAS: Formations of Race, Class and Gender.

Since 2000, the Encuentros of the Hemispheric Institute have been a meeting place for artists, scholars, students, and activists investigating the relation between performance and politics in the Americas. Gathering between 300 and 400 participants, each Encuentro is part academic conference, part performance festival, part workshop series, and wholly interdisciplinary: it is a concentrated space of experimentation, dialogue and collaboration, featuring lectures, performances, installations, roundtable discussions, exhibits, video screenings, work groups and hands-on performance workshops.

Our upcoming Encuentro in Buenos Aires will focus on body politics: the politics of the body, political bodies, bodies politic, and the relations between them. We are particularly interested in the formations of race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender articulated through body politics in different eras, geographies and imaginaries in the Americas. We understand the body as a site of negotiation, discipline, and a means of expression and meaning.

We are seeking groups or solo artists (for all areas of our performance and exhibition program, for both indoor and outdoor spaces:

Performance: Feature-length (2 hours or less), Short (30 minutes or less), and Cabaret/Bar interventions (“after-hours”). We’re calling for a wide range of performances, from traditional representations to hybrid and contestatory practices. For art exhibitions, installations and film/video, there are wonderful spaces at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, which is a prime venue for the arts in Buenos Aires. The Centro also has a small movie theater, which will allow for screenings throughout the event. These film and art exhibition spaces will be open to the public.

For more information and to apply online.

Posted by jo at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

CFP for MiT5: Creativity, Ownership, Collaboration

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Call for Submissions

The Media in Transition Project at MIT now seeks submissions for MiT5: Creativity, Ownership, and Collaboration in the Digital Age: Submission deadline: Jan. 5, 2007.

Our understanding of the technical and social processes by which culture is made and reproduced is being challenged and enlarged by digital technologies. An emerging generation of media producers is sampling and remixing existing materials as core ingredients in their own work. Networked culture is enabling both small and large collaborations among artists who may never encounter each other face to face. Readers are actively reshaping media content as they personalize it for their own use or customize it for the needs of grassroots and online communities. Bloggers are appropriating and recontextualizing news stories; fans are rewriting stories from popular culture; and rappers and techno artists are sampling and remixing sounds.

These and related cultural practices have generated heated contention and debate. What constitutes fair use of another’s intellectual property? What ethical issues are posed when sounds, images, and stories move from one culture or subculture to another? Or when materials created by a community or religious or ethnic tradition are appropriated by technologically powerful outsiders? What constitutes creativity and originality in expressive formats based on sampling and remixing? What obligations do artists owe to those who have inspired and informed their work and how much creative freedom should they exercise over their borrowed or shared materials?

One source of answers to such questions lies in the past, in the ways in which traditional printed texts, and films and TV shows as well invoke, allude to and define themselves against their rivals and ancestors; and, perhaps even more saliently, in the ways in which folk and popular cultures may nourish and reward not originality in our modern sense, but familiarity, repetition, borrowing, collaboration.

This fifth Media in Transition conference, then, aims to generate a conversation that compares historical forms of cultural expression with contemporary media practices. We hope this event will appeal widely across disciplines and scholarly and professional boundaries. For example, we hope this conference will bring together such figures as:

:: anthropologists of oral and folk cultures
:: historians of the book and reading publics
:: political scientists and legal scholars interested in alternative approaches to intellectual property
:: media educators who aim to help students think about their ethical responsibilities in this new participatory culture
:: artists ready to discuss appropriation and collaboration in their own work
economists and business leaders interested in the new relationships that are emerging between media producers and consumers
:: activists and netizens interested in the ways new technologies democratize who has the right to be an author

Among topics the conference might explore:

:: history of authorship and copyright
:: folk practices in traditional and contemporary society
:: appropriating materials from other cultures: political and ethical dilemmas
:: poetics and politics of fan culture
:: blogging, podcasting, and collective intelligence
:: media literacy and the ethics of participatory culture
:: artistic collaboration and cultural production, past and present
:: fair use and intellectual property
:: sampling and remixing in popular music
:: cultural production in traditional and developing societies
:: Web 2.0 and the “architecture of participation”
:: creative industries and user-generated content
:: parody, spoofs, and mash-ups as critical commentary
:: game mods and machinima
:: the workings of genre in different media systems
:: law and technological change

Short abstracts of no more than 200 words for papers or panels should be sent via email to Brad Seawell at seawell[at]mit.edu no later than January 5, 2007 . Brad can be reached by phone at 617-253-3521. Email submissions are preferred, but abstracts can be mailed to:

Brad Seawell
14N-430
MIT
Cambridge , MA 02139

Please include a short (75 words or less) biographical statement.

This will be our fifth media in transition conference. The previous conferences were the inaugural Media in Transiton conference, MiT2: globalization and convergence , MiT3: television and MiT4: the work of stories.

The call for papers was posted here, on the MiT site: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/subs/MiT5_call.html

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Digimag 19

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Now Online

The English Version of Digimag 19, Italian Monthly e-Magazine of Digital Culture and Electronic Arts, is Available Online :: DIGIMAG ENGLISH VERSION - #ISSUE 19 - NOVEMBER 06.

[Interviews]: Alex Dragulescu, Sergio Messina, Laurent Marques, Playing Music [Featuring]: Eddo Stern, 1st Avenue Machine, Kenneth Kirschner, Kinkaleri, Jankowski/Ahtila, Archimedes Project [Reports]: Art Futura 06, Piksel 06, Cum2Cut, ClubToClub, Interfacce 06 [Themes]: Press in Second Life, My Space Vjing, Video Online, Compendio di cultura open.

Posted by jo at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2006

Space and Culture

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CFP: The Place of Synthetic Worlds

CFP: The Place of Synthetic Worlds :: Special issue of Space and Culture edited by Eric Gordon. 500 word abstracts are due by March 2, 2007. Completed essays are due July 16, 2007. All questions and abstracts should be directed to Eric_Gordon[at]emerson.edu.

Synthetic worlds can now claim tens of millions of members. From game environments such as World of Warcraft to the social environment Second Life, these avatar-driven platforms are becoming central to the wider networked culture. Increasingly, users don’t require a game pretense to spend time in synthetic space, they log on to socialize, conduct business, go to meetings, wander around or shop. Linden Lab’s platform Second Life is leading the way in this. Distinct from other Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), there are no missions, goals, or winners in Second Life. Artists take up residence there; academic conferences are conducted there; and increasingly, institutions are establishing themselves there: Harvard and the University of Southern California have campuses, Reuters recently opened a Second Life bureau, the CDC opened an office to promote safe sex and emergency preparedness, Sony is positioning itself to deliver content, and Nike has started selling virtual shoes. As societies take shape in this environment, it has become quite clear that for most users, the second life looks remarkably like the first one. Users are engaging in everyday activities with represented environments (Sims) that are surprisingly similar to their real life counterparts. Consequently, Second Life cannot accurately be called “virtual” reality; more to the point, it is a synthetic world that produces a mixed reality through immersive digital social networks.

This issue of Space and Culture will explore the function of place in virtual spaces. It will examine how individuals, communities and institutions form identities in relation to sims. And it will interrogate the role of “real-world” places and networks in the construction of meaningful “virtual” spaces.

While Second Life presents a fascinating case study in the evolution of synthetic worlds, papers need not be limited to that platform. Possible topics include:

dwelling in virtual space
public vs. private
inside vs. outside
physical vs. virtual
home
shopping and place
place of sex
youth culture and “hanging out”
the place of the virtual classroom
landmarks, memorials, parks
location in the virtual real estate market
cityscapes
virtual place blogging
local journalism
institutions
ritual
art practice

Eric Gordon
Assistant Professor
Department of Visual and Media Arts
Emerson College
120 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 824-8828

Posted by jo at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)

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9 Evenings

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), ARTPIX and Microcinema International announce 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering - a 10 DVD set of films on a legendary series of theater, dance, music and performances at the New York 69th Regiment Armory in 1966 by 10 New York artists: Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Robert Whitman, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Lucinda Childs and Öyvind Fahlström.

In 1966 10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the world renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances that incorporated new technology. Video projection, wireless sound transmission, and Doppler sonar - technologies that are commonplace today - had never been seen in the art of the 60's. The 9 Evenings DVD Series is an important documentation of the collaborations between the artists and engineers that produced innovative works using these emerging technologies. These performances still resonate today, as forerunners of the close and rapidly-evolving relationship between artists and technology.

The DVDs – one on each artist’s performance -- will be released sequentially over the next two years with the initial publication of the series: Robert Rauschenberg - Open Score, available Feb 27, 2007, followed by the second in the series: John Cage - Variations VII, available June 26, 2007. Each DVD will be PAL and NTSC system compatible.

9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering is recognized as a major artistic event of the 1960s. The performances represented the culmination of a period of extraordinary creative energy in art, dance and music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and they also pointed to the future, as artists began to use new technology in their work.

9 Evenings was organized by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver, then a research scientist at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City from October 13-23, 1966. As Billy Klüver has written: "9 Evenings was unique in the incredible richness and imagination of the performances. The Armory space allowed the artists to work on an unprecedented scale, and their involvement with technology and collaborations with the engineers added a dimension of unfamiliarity and challenge. They responded with major works."

9 Evenings was the first large-scale collaboration between artists and engineers and scientists. The two groups worked together for 10 months to develop technical equipment and systems that were used as an integral part of the artists’ performances. Their collaboration produced many "firsts" in the use of new technology for the theater, both with specially-designed systems and equipment and with innovative use of existing equipment. Closed-circuit television and television projection was used on stage for the first time; a fiber-optics camera picked up objects in a performer's pocket; an infrared television camera captured action in total darkness; a Doppler sonar device translated movement into sound; and portable wireless FM transmitters and amplifiers transmitted speech and body sounds to Armory loudspeakers.

Using archival film footage and original sound recordings, the 9 Evenings films reconstruct each artist's performance as fully as possible; they also contain new interviews with artists, engineers and performers to illuminate the artistic, technical and historical aspects of the works.

Performances are by nature ephemeral events; this DVD series assures that the 9 Evenings will not be lost but will be available to new generations of dance and theater students as well as art scholars, artists and the general public who will have a concrete representation of what 9 Evenings looked like and how it came to play such an important role in American 20th century art.

The films on 9 Evenings are produced for E.A.T. by Julie Martin and directed by Barbro Schultz Lundestam. They are funded in part by generous gifts from Robert Rauschenberg and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation as well as with support from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art Science and Technology.

The 10 disc DVD series, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, is co-produced by E.A.T. and ARTPIX and will be distributed worldwide by Microcinema International.

E.A.T. is a service organization that promotes the collaboration between artists and engineers to provide artists with access to new technology and to facilitate their participation in projects dealing with areas of social concern.

ARTPIX is a non profit organization that produces DVDs about the arts including: Robert Whitman: Performances from the 60s; Trisha Brown: Early Works 1966-1979; William Wegman: Video Works 1970-1999.

Microcinema International - The Art of the Moving Image: Microcinema is a leading international distributor and licensor of the moving image arts. Microcinema International is exclusive distributor worldwide for the entire series of 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering. The series will be available online at www.microcinemadvd.com or for wholesale, institutional or educational purchasing. For info and for theatrical / institutional screening / display information please contact: Joel Bachar, Microcinema International, 1636 Bush St., St. 2, San Francisco CA 94109, +1-415.447.9750 / FAX +1-509.351.1530 / joel[at]microcinema.com

Contact for press/preview discs/screening bookings: Patrick Kwiatkowski +1-713-412-5120, patrick[at]microcinema.com www.9evenings.org

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

NOMUSIC.ORG Festival X

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Simultaneous Translation

Simultaneous Translation, an international collaborative web audio project, will participate in the NOMUSIC.ORG Festival X on December 13, 10pm - 11pm EST. Participants for this round are: Greg Davis (USA - Vermont) - live instruments and voice; Kenneth Goldsmith (USA - New York) - words; John Hudak (USA - New York); Lawrence Li (CHINA - Bejing) - English to Chinese translation; Joe Reinsel (USA - Maryland) - Processing; John Roach (USA - Brooklyn) - Spiral Staircase; and Willy Whip (FRANCE - Nantes) - SimTrans Software.

People speak their own languages with little concern about the etymology of the words they speak, or the structural evolution that occured as their language moved geographically, passed from person to person, changing form along the way. Similarly, people trade information on the internet without thinking how the content changes as it passes through multiple users' hands. We rarely think about the geographical aspects of the web and the number of routers that a packet of data must pass through in order to reach its destination. Communication appears instantaneous, the internet seems to defy the common barriers to remote communication such as distance and delay. In reality, the data, invisible to the average user, is still subject to these factors.

Simultaneous Translation explores these limitations of distance and time through the lens of streaming media. Just as language has changed over time and as dialects have evolved as groups of people moved from place to place, so in this project sound is effected by the distances it travels and the time it takes to get there.

Simultaneous Translation is a collaboration in which the strengths and weaknesses of the medium are allowed to become active and shaping ingredients. Fluctuation and indeterminacy are not only inevitable, but desired. Variable stream quality, rebuffering, unexpected dropouts, these are the elements (like bad grammar or slang) that can launch the language into unforseen directions and vibrant neologisms.

The project is designed to be flexible and many of its elements (software, visual components, text, participants) will change as the project moves from host to host.

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(((NOMUSIC))) wishes to generate improbable duals and gatherings between two participants during one hour time in a web audio performance. We make no storage because we think that Internet is a huge database which conveys already a great amount of dead informations and we don’t want to pollute it further. We are thus in favour of instant access to a selective event. The mechanism of the programming is not automated; it is relayed manually for 24 hours without any interruption by laboiteblanche and Carl.Y, two real human routers who are at the service of continuous audio stream and who endure technical difficulties and give rapid formation on the technologies of streaming to all the participants...

No-music stands between musical negation and anti-bruitism, in a non-silent interstice of audio manifestation. It allows the composer-performer to be his own auditor, in a place where nothing should be heard but just felt as a new entity to observe.

Posted by jo at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem:

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Guy Ben Ary: BioWorks

Upgrade! Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem: Guy Ben Ary: BioWorks: A semi living artist & a living cinematic apparatu :: Wed 27.12.06, 19:30 @ Digital Art Lab, Holon, Yrmiahu st.16 (The Forbidden games exhibition @ dal will be open till 20:00 for those who didn’t see yet the show)

Guy Ben-Ary is an artist and researcher whose work uses emerging medias, in particular biologically related technologies (tissue culture, electrophysiology and optics). His work focuses on cybernetics, the boundaries between the living and non-living and focuses attention regarding the use and future possibilities of biotechnology. In his talk Guy will present two of the projects he has been involved with in the past few years.

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MEART – the Semi Living Artist” is bio-cybernetic research and development project. MEART is a geographically detached artist that is distributed between two locations in the world. Its “brain” consists of cultured nerve cells that grow in a neuro-engineering lab, in Atlanta. Its “body” is a robotic drawing arm that is capable of producing two-dimensional drawings. The “brain” and the “body” communicate in real time with each other for the duration of an exhibition.

“The living Screen” project produces new poetics, made possible by fusing bio-technology into a living cinematic apparatus. This work explores what occurs when we cinematically engage with a living screen and employs film theory to understand Bio-Art as a Freak Show’. The Nano-Movies are projected (projection is 200 microns square in size) on Living Screens made from skin, blood, sperm or cornea cells that transform, react and change over time and eventually die. Therefore, it contorts the projected Nano-Movie in – unknown ways, and confront the spectators with issues such as life, death, virtuality and reality.

Guy Ben-Ary

Artist & researcher that works in the area of art and biology. Currently living and working in West Australia. Guy is an artist in resident in SymbioticA – The Art & Science Collaborative Lab at the University of Western Australia, since 2000. He specializes in microscopy, biological & digital imaging & artistic visualization of biological data. His Main research area is cybernetics and the interface of biological material to various devices. Member of the core SymbioticA Research Group that developed “MEART - the semi living artist” project. Guy is also a member of the “Biokino” collective that is developing the “living screen” project. He collaborated with the Tissue Culture & Art Project for 4 years (1999 - 2003). Guy is undertaking a Masters course in the school of architecture landscape and visual arts, UWA.

Posted by jo at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Paris

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MAURICE BENAYOUN

Upgrade! Paris: MAURICE BENAYOUN :: Friday, December 15th at 7:00 pm At NUMERISCAUSA gallery : 27 rue Mauconseil, 75001 Paris, 1st floor, M° Etienne Marcel.

Maurice Benayoun will show his work on The Mechanic of Emotions, and
The Dump a blog for hypothetical projects. With Dominique Moulon, as mediator.

The Dump is a vast virtual area where I deposit my hypothetical or theoretical projects daily. Also others can dig in and extract from the Dump in order to apply the same concepts to their own projects; or accelerate the process of decomposition of unwanted items. Here, I keep the possibility to recycle, adapt and finally, rarely, to complete the act.

It is a day-to-day dump where sketches, realistically difficult projects, fuzzy concepts and fleeting visions are dumped without distinction. In the midst of daily projects, popping up concepts are often forgotten before they are materialised. They escape the undertow of memory. Why not make the concepts accessible to others who could grasp and recycle them while the possibility remains for me to revisit the projects dumped?

This liberating project, The Dump, evolves and constructs itself in the first days of this process. One discovers as much of the history of the concept itself, which is included in the first posts, as, in time, one learns of the more precise initial intentions of this project. These intentions, though, are gained only after and through The Dump’s own evolution.

Maurice Benayoun’s sketchy biography: He digs a tunnel under the Atlantic (1), charts the first map of the world’s emotions (2) then sells these emotions as musical cocktails (3). He offers the only acceptable explanation of the imperfection of the World (4), launches a photo safari in the land of war (5), dares to ask the Big Questions (6): is God flat (7) and the Devil curved? (8). He shares his retina with everybody (9) and unveils the existence of Big Brother’s sister (10). To take a break, he creates the biggest interactive exhibition on Earth (11), reshapes Europe’s biggest abbey with pixels (12), introduces VR into PCs (13), reconfigures a major Paris subway station (14) and converts the Arc de Triomphe into a monument to Peace (15). And finally, he decides to put all his new projects to The Dump (16).

Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners : CITU, Ars Longa, The Upgrade! International.

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

Shared Encounters: Content Sharing as Social Glue in Public Space

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Call for Submissions

Shared Encounters: Content Sharing as Social Glue in Public Space :: Workshop at ACM SIGCHI 2007, San Jose, California :: Sunday April 29th 2007

Our everyday lives are characterized by encounters, some are fleeting and ephemeral and others are more enduring and meaningful exchanges. Shared encounters are the glue of social networks, although our everyday encounters are increasingly mediated by communications technologies that free up our social interaction from fixed spatial settings. We propose that content sharing through mobile and ubiquitous technologies, consciously situated in public space is a valuable new social practice.It can contribute towards redefining boundaries of access between communities, and create more fulfilling sustained encounters in Spatial settings.

In this context we aim to: * identify the types of encounters, and the characteristics which make an encounter a rich experience * understand the qualities of situations which sustain shared encounters * investigate how sharing through mass media and personal media provide ways for people to communicate and engage with others * differentiate the relationship between the types of social groups in networked communities * determine the components of situated computing which enable them to act as key enabling platforms.

We welcome contributions from researchers from a diverse range of fields, such as HCI, architecture, media, psychology and urban studies. Authors are invited to submit a four-page position statement in the ACM SIGCHI workshop publication format. Position statements are particularly invited which identify and discuss qualitative and quantitative methodologies, present specific case studies or that take a structured perspective reflecting on the workshop themes.

Selection of workshop participants will be based on refereed submissions and selected participants will be invited to participate actively in the workshop sessions. It is our aim to publish and document the outcomes of the workshop. At least one author of accepted papers needs to register for the workshop and for one day of the conference itself.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Jan. 12th 2007: Position papers due.
Feb. 1st, 2007: Notification of acceptance.
Apr. 29th 2007: Workshop.

SUBMISSIONS AND QUESTIONS: shared-encounters[at]mediacityproject.com

WEB: http://www.mediacity-project.org/shared-encounters

ORGANIZERS
Katharine S. Willis, Bauhaus University of Weimar
Konstantinos Chorianopoulos, Bauhaus University of Weimar
Mirjam Struppek, Interactionfield - Urban Media Research, Berlin
George Roussos, Birkbeck College, University of London

Posted by jo at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

CyBERSPACe as Universal Meeting Place

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OPEN INTERNATIONAL INVITATION

Laboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre OPEN INTERNATIONAL INVITATION - EXHIBITION OF LABCYBERSPACES PROJECTS - CyBERSPACe as universal meeting place :: 3000 euro per chosen project.

Laboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre, a new creative space located in Gijón, Principality of Asturias, Spain, is making an open invitation for projects for its upcoming LABCYBERSPACES exhibition, part of its inaugural programme.

The goal of the invitation is to foster an open reflection on the connections between art, technology and industry, and to then materialise this reflection in the LABCYBERSPACES exhibition scheduled for spring 2007. The selection will feature 10 projects effectively addressing the technological nature of the artwork in its most open conception, with a special focus on all those engaging in the notion of CYBERSPACE as a universal meeting point.

Given that the goal is to encourage a common and open reflection, we have chosen the format of an open invitation to guarantee the widest possible participation. The LABCYBERSPACES exhibition aims to be a meeting point for the community.

All entries submitted by an artist or group, significantly involving technology and the use of Internet will be accepted for consideration. A total of 3000 euro will be paid as fees and exhibition rights for each of ten the projects eventually chosen.

The inscription form will be available as from 1st December 2006 at the website. For any additional information or queries on LABCYBERSPACES, contact: lab_cyberspaces[at]laboralcentrodearte.org

ABOUT Laboral, Art and Industrial Creation Centre Laboral, Art and Industrial Creation Centre, is a newly created art centre located in Gijon, in the Principality of Asturias, Spain. The centre will undertake, from an ongoing rigorous focus, the tasks of production, research and dissemination of stable projects developed around the many meeting points existing between creation, science and technology, and which are the groundbase of the work and reflection of a large number of artist, theorists and researchers. Asturias' industrial tradition, taken together with the innovative creativity developed here, have turned this Spanish region into a particularly appropriate place for a centre dealing with the above-mentioned goals. The very name of the centre reflects the explicit determination to fulfil that goal through a direct connection of the most innovative aspects of industry with, normally distant and removed, locations of art creation.

This determination is at the origin of the project for the rehabilitation of 13,500 square metres of the former Universidad Laboral of Gijon, an initiative set in motion by the Government of the Principality of Asturias and that is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2006. The investment will provide the Laboral, Art and Industrial Creation Centre with the perfect space to implement the tasks of production, dissemination, training and professional encounters at the intersection of art and technology.

Projects Office

With this open invitation Laboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre kick starts its Projects Office. This office will be making regular open invitations for specific projects, while remaining permanently receptive to all kinds of proposals which will be evaluated for possible production at the centre. The mission of the Projects Office is to foster and support art production engaged with new technologies.

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

Second Life

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First Annual SL Literary Festival

First Annual SL Literary Festival :: Verum's Place, Yanguella :: December 16, 2006; 2:00 pm SLT :: Contact Carla Herrera, carla[at]contemporaryguide.com for more information.

Schedule of Events (Tentative/subject to change) :: Throughout the day there will be poetry readings, streaming music, discussions, art display, interactive literature projects, classes and workshops.

TBA: Patrick Lichty / Man Michinaga - Discussion: Digital Narrative and Online Spaces.

2:00 Opening ceremony Greetings & guest speaker on front lawn ::
3:00 Schedule of Workshops and Classes begin Signs and teleporters provided :: Workshops and classes run throughout the day and will conclude at 6:30 for fireworks And storytelling :: 4:00 Tours of the Gothsburg castle begin Tours last 30-45 minutes. :: 3:30 Open mic at Verum's place Essays & poetry welcome :: 4:00 Poetry Challenge $L100. to the winner :: 5:00 Tramp's Theatre Troupe Surprise performance :: 6:30 Fireworks By Spider :: 7:00 Storytelling circle on front lawn :: 8:00 Event close/Open chat/discussion.

Posted by jo at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Amsterdam

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Degradable

Upgrade! Amsterdam: Degradable :: When: Monday December 18, 2006 20.30 hours :: Where: De Melkweg, Theaterzaal, Lijnbaansgracht 234 A, Amsterdam :: | free admission | LIVE stream.

As the year draws to a close, the last Upgrade! Amsterdam of 2006 ponders the poetics of degradability, focussing specifically on the aesthetics of things mutable, morphable, and ephemeral. Whether it’s Steven Jouwersma’s serial destruction of personal memory and momentum in the DIA-EXIT, or whether it’s Jelte van Abbema’s time and emotion sensitive font in his “VIRTUREAL typewriter, or his bacterial prints in SYMBIOSIS, these artists show us that the wilful design of degradability yield surprising outcomes.

The new performance SYNCHRONATOR by Gert-Jan Prins and Bas van Koolwijk, which combines thecharacteristic visual qualitiesof analogue and digital techniques concludes the evening. In sync with the festive season, we serve apple pie and punch!

|| Participants ||

Steven Jouwersma [new media artist working predominantly with old media like 8mm film and photo slides. Currently completing an M.A. at the Frank Mohr Institute]

Jelte van Abbema [graduated at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Fascinated by the beauty and strangeness of nature. Loves cookies]

Bas van Koolwijk [audiovisual artist.His video works can be seen as an aggressive attack on the illusion of video itself.

Gert-Jan Prins [electronic improvised music performer. Uses a self-developed electronic system of radio and transmitter technology]

|| Projects ||

Steven Jouwersma | DIA-EXIT:: In exchange for apple pie people gave Jouwersma their old slides. After collecting and watching 40.000 slides he decided to destroy them, and machine for that purpose: the "DIA-EXIT", installed at the Tschumi Pavilion in Groningen. Upon pressing a red button a slide projection appears; another push on the button would cause the slide’s
destruction.

Jelte van Abbema | Virtureal |Symbiosis :: | Virtureal | Virtureal explores man-machine boundaries by way of a modified old Remington typewriter, fitted with pressure sensors. The font changes according to the intensity of the keystrokes, and is susceptible to the passage of time. :: | Symbiosis Due to his fascination for growth, van Abbema created prints composed by bacteria. As time passes, the image is continuously and organically transformed into something new.

Gert-Jan Prins & Bas van Koolwijk | Synchronator :: Since the early years of video art, works have been made which do not produce a standard TV signal waveform and therefore cannot be directly recorded or projected with current equipment. For SYNCHRONATOR, Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins have created their own hardware to overcome this problem,making use of the characteristic visual qualities of such techniques.

Upgrade! Amsterdamis a series of gatherings for and by new media aficionados, artists, geeks, media makers and breakers, and the generally curious. Point of departure is the premise: “No upgrade without a downgrade.” Upgrade! Amsterdam is organised by Nat Muller & Lucas Evers, is actively hosted by De Melkweg, and kindly supported by VSB Fonds and Mondriaan Foundation.

Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Since April 1999, a group of new media artists and curators have gathered in New York City. The first meeting took place at a bar in the east village with Tim Whidden & Mark River [MTAA], Mark Napier and Upgrade! founder Yael Kanarek.

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

Jim Andrews' Vispo.com

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Guest Work and Collaborators

VISPO.COM GUEST WORK AND COLLABORATORS :: I've been publishing vispo.com since 1995; there's a great deal of work on the site. Most of it--by 'volume'--is my own work: vispo.com is the primary way I publish my work--but over the years the site has come to house a significant body of work by other people and also collaborative work between myself and others. I've collected and annotated a page of links to that onsite work at http://vispo.com/guests.

The most recent works on this page are from 2006, and the oldest is from 1988. Soon to be 1984, actually: I'm working with Geof Huth, Dan Waber, Marko Niemi and Lionel Kearns to recover the animated computer poetry bpNichol did in 1984, and we will eventually get that up on vispo.com. Anyway, http://vispo.com/guests links close to twenty years of work. I have a sense now of working both forward and backward in time. Still trying to forge ahead with new and, hopefully, innovative, fresh projects, but also doing projects such as the bpNichol project and 'On Lionel Kearns' that look back and either recover work relevant to digital poetry now or present the work of artists who have been a big influence on me.

Most of the pieces are explorative of digital writing. The 2006 works are by Lee Worden and Marko J. Niemi, both of whom are programmers as well as writers. Lee, who has a doctorate in math from Princeton, has re-written his Cutup Engine that some of you will be familiar with. This is an excellent tool for exploring the interzones of texts. You paste text or URLs into the Engine and it dices them in a configurable way. Marko's 2006 works are the Concrete Stir Fry Poems. These deal with cutups also, but in a lettristic, visual poetic manner. Marko is a remarkable poet-programmer from Finland; his work bodes well for the future of digital poetry.

Also, the page links to the work of the Argentine poet Ana Maria Uribe, who passed away in 2004 and whose Typoems and Anipoems are, in their entirety, housed on vispo.com. She also collaborated in the production of Paris Connection, a project in critical media that examines the work of six French net artists. There are other projects in critical media such as Defib, a series of sixteen chat interviews produced with Dan Waber; in 1999-2000 we produced chats with writers who were attempting to produce work on the Web. The page links also to Strings by Dan Waber, which is a project in kinetic poetry that has been wonderfully successful; Strings is taught in many Universities that deal with digital poetry.

The oldest links on the page are from my pre-Web days as a writer and audio producer. There's a radio show I produced on the poetry of Seattle's Joseph Keppler (there are over 100 other shows in the vault, not online). And the page links to some of the music of The Laughing Boot Quintet, in which I was the drummer and audio engineer. There's also a link to a Paul McKinnon recording done at Mocambopo, a reading series I organized and hosted in Victoria Canada in the nineties (Mocambopo kept going like the Energizer Bunny for years after I left and only recently moved venues).

And there are links to other work such as collaborations with Brian Lennon and Pauline Masurel concerning stir fry texts; a link to my page featuring some of Ted Warnell's work; a link to Jorge Luiz Antonio's page that he maintains on vispo.com on Brazilian Digital Poetry on the Web; a link to Shuen-shing Lee's translations into Chinese of some of my work; and a link to work by Uruguay's Clemente Padin.

There's also a link to PRIME, the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East, which I maintain on vispo.com with my friend Sid Tafler. PRIME is headed by Sami Adwan, a Palestinian, and Dan Bar-On, an Israeli. Together, they work on some fascinating and incredibly worthwhile projects in peace-building between Palestinians and Israelis. Sid edits the site and I do the HTML.

Anyway, all this work by others and in collaboration with others has been a true joy in my life. The page is ongoing, as mentioned--it isn't finished yet--nor am I, I hope. But I wanted to acknowledge this work and thank those who have contributed fine work to vispo.com and collaborated with me on other work. You discover alternative approaches to poetry in just about all this work, that attempt some synthesis of arts, media, and fields such as programming and mathematics or music and recorded sound. As well as attempts to write of the poetics of such practice. It's about putting it all together, connecting, staying human, discovering the nature of our altered humanity and language so that we can address life with fresh insight and communicative power.

Vispo.com is an attempt to create a literary work alternative but related to the book; to create works and experience imaginatively attuned to the media and methods of the Net. Being truly literate involves not only reading but writing; vispo.com is an attempt to write through new media. It is my life's work; and the work on vispo.com by others and in collaboration with others is a huge part of the nature of that life and work to put it all together, to make strong connections. The French poet Isou said "Each poet will integrate everything into everything." And this was way before the Net. Same job, different time and circumstances.

Again, many thanks to those whose work is on http://vispo.com/guests, and to you for reading.

ja (Jim Andrews)
http://vispo.com

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Prix Ars Electronica 2007

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Call for Entries

Prix Ars Electronica 2007 - International Competition for Cyberarts :: The 21st Prix Ars Electronica will have a few new features. The new Hybrid Art category, a new prize for Media.Art.Research, and the integration of Net Vision into Digital Communities are the most visible signs of the intensive work that is being done on the definition of the competition’s categories. As always, the aim is to continually keep the Prix Ars Electronica updated in line with leading-edge developments in the dynamic field of cyberarts.

Prix Ars Electronica 2007 :: Start of Online Submission: December 8, 2007 :: Online Submission Deadline: March 9, 2007 :: Computeranimation / Film / VFX, Digital Musics, Interactive Art, Hybrid Art, Digital Communities, u19 - freestyle competition, [the next idea] grant, Media.Art.Research Award.

All details about the categories and the online submission are available online only at: http://prixars.aec.at Total prize money: 122.500 Euro.

Iris Mayr - Project Manager
Prix Ars Electronica
AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz
Museumsgesellschaft mbH
Hauptstraße 2
A-4040 Linz
Tel. ++43.732.7272-74
Fax ++43.732.7272-674
iris.mayr (@) aec.at
http://prixars.aec.at

Posted by jo at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2006

Leonardo "Digtial Wild"

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The Collaboration of Art and Nature

Leonardo "Digtial Wild": Guest editors Dene Grigar and Sue Thomas have culled a neat collection of explosive essays from the hefty haul of initial contributions received and emerged with a two-themed anthology on Wild Nature and the Digital Life, which delves into the collaboration of art and nature.

In Dene Grigar’s editorial, she explains that the first volume explores a range of issues relating to the “Emergent and Generative” in nature, the digital, and art. The second wave of another four papers, edited by Sue Thomas, features essays that are “Performative and Locative” in scope.

Peter Hasdell starts the proverbial ball rolling, with his contribution, Artificial Ecologies: Second Nature Emergent Phenomena in Constructed Digital – Natural Assemblages. Participants are asked to develop projects that learnt, borrowed, or stole from natural systems. In essence, constructing part natural/part artificial assemblages functioning as small-scale quasi-ecosystems. This unearths a “garden of strange delights” where a “level of unpredictability of outcome arose, freed from constraints of orthodoxy."

The next essay to flutter into sight is Tara Rodgers’ Butterfly Effects: Synthesis, Emergence, and Transduction. This paper describes a music project in progress that attempts to model monarch butterfly behaviors and migration patterns in sound, using the programming language SuperCollider. The goal is to achieve a dynamically generated composition that combines core elements into a complex system, describing patterns of emergence and survival."

Musical composition figures also as the subject of Dave Burraston and Andrew Martin’s Digital Behaviours and Generative Music, an essay about reaction-diffusion systems, cellular automata, and computer music.

Jennifer Willet’s Bodies in Biotechnology: Embodied Models for Understanding Biotechnology in Contemporary Art serves as an introduction to an evolving series of texts exploring the intersection between computation, biology, art, science, and education. Its focus is on “moving away from computational models and reuniting notions of embodiment with the language and representation of biotechnology with a social and political mandate towards informed discourse and public consent."

In the second-themed collection, Adam Gussow’s Kudzu Running: Pastoral Pleasures, Wilderness Terrors, and Wrist-Mounted Technologies in Small-Town Mississippi, transports us to the moment when, during what was intended to be a 30-minute jog on Thacker Mountain, the author realizes he is lost. He is then “forced to reassess both the implicit romanticism of my own understandings of nature and the real utility of the competing metric technologies I’ve grown addicted to."

On a larger scale, in Mapping the Disaster: Global Prediction and the Medium of ‘Digital Earth’, Kathryn Yusoff reports on “the mapping of disaster in digital prediction models. Concentrating on the imminent disaster of climate change, the author asks how global digital models can be expanded to incorporate a wild nature and wild data."

Jeremy Hight then looks into how the “developments in locative technology, location-based narrative and the expansion of the research and work allow new hybrid narrative forms, but more importantly, allows the entire landscape to be “read” as a digitally enhanced physical landscape” in his offering Views from Above: Locative Narrative and the Landscape.

The closing essay is Brett Stalbaum’s Paradigmatic Performance: Data Flow and Practice in the Wild, which incorporates many of the areas discussed in this volume. He uses real-time data modelling to explore ‘the intersection of data and the real via artist made technologies, with the goal of generating new configurations of exploration at time when it may be assumed that the Earth is already thoroughly explored."

The essays are packaged with a small but powerful gallery of two works, also curated by Dene Grigar and Sue Thomas.

Karl Grimes’ Future Nature “continues [his] analytical engagement with the themes of retrieval and digital resurrection, bringing to light and into the light the specimens and objects previously hidden in dispersed archives and research databanks. The project takes as its base the unique animal embryos and foetuses housed in the Hubrecht Collection of Comparative Embryology, Utrecht, Netherlands, the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany, and the Tornblad Institute in Lund, Sweden".

Elisa Giaccardi’s efforts with Hal Eden and Gianluca Sabena breathed life to The Affective Geography of Silence — Towards a Museum of Natural Quiet, a project which resulted in a “virtual museum in which natural quiet is transformed into a living and affective geography that changes over time according to participants' perceptions and interpretations of their natural environment”.

Posted by jo at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

New Media Caucus at the 2007 CAA

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Can Geeks be Humanists

New Media Caucus at the 2007 College Art Conference :: The 95th Annual conference will take place from February 14th to 17th at the Hilton New York in Midtown Manhattan.

Thursday, February 15, 12:30-2pm, Trianon Ballroom, Hilton NY :: Panel Title: "Can Geeks be Humanists” :: Panel Chair: Marcia Tanner, Independent Curator and Writer, Berkeley, California

A common perception among artists, curators, art historians, art critics, and art audiences outside the new media art community is that artists using contemporary technologies create work that alienates the viewer and conflicts with the humanist legacy of Western art and other cultural and aesthetic traditions. This notion is all too often reinforced, superficially at least, by much of the new media work produced.

This panel will address and challenge those assumptions with presentations by artists whose work and practice consciously extend and amplify humanist aesthetic traditions. In the subsequent conversation, panelists will be invited to explore the definitions and appropriateness of those apparently oppositional terms -- “geeks” versus “humanists” -- and consider a third: that of “artist.“ They will discuss those characteristics of new media art that seem to justify the charges against it -- notably in terms of communication with and/or reception by traditional art audiences and critics -- and whether these concerns should matter to anyone now, particularly to the artists themselves.

With some Papers and Panelists:

Intimacy in New Media Art
Andrea Ackerman, artist, theorist, psychiatrist, New York, New York

Claudia Hart, Pratt Institute, New York; Lehman College, City University of New York

Beyond Functional: Embedding Responsive Art into Human Systems
Sabrina Raaf, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Chicago

Animate Objects, and the Evocation of Empathy
John Slepian, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

The Beautiful and the Terrifying
Gail Wight, Stanford University, California

Here are a few crucial dates for your calendar:
December 13th is the deadline for Early Bird Registration for the
Conference (this can be done on-line or via mail).

Posted by jo at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2006

Fibreculture Journal

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Issue 9: General Issue

New Media Studies - issue 9 of The Fibreculture Journal now online Edited by Andrew Murphie

Articles: Daniel Black - Digital Bodies and Disembodied Voices: Virtual Idols and the Virtualised Body :: Erin Manning - Prosthetics Making Sense: Dancing the Technogenetic Body :: Bob Hodge and Elaine Lally - Cultural Planning and Chaos Theory in Cyberspace: some notes on a Digital Cultural Atlas Project for Western Sydney :: Gary Genosko - The Case of "Mafiaboy" and the Rhetorical Limits of Hacktivism :: Warwick Mules - Contact Aesthetics" At the Threshold of the Earth :: Michael Arnold, Martin Gibbs and Chris Shepherd - Domestic ICTs, Desire and Fetish

General Issue - Editorial :: Andrew Murphie - Editor

Let us for a moment call the field we work in "new media studies". Immediately, questions arise. For a start, one of the wonderful things about the field we work in - as thinkers, as practitioners - is that its name is constantly contested. New media, digital media, multimedia, internet studies, computer media, inter-media, simply media, cyberculture, network culture - the renaming of the field is ongoing and never finally resolved. The problem of the name is not as trivial as is sometimes assumed.

That none of these names seems adequate suggests that the field itself, perhaps by nature, is constantly shifting, encouraging a series of precise engagements perhaps but eluding homogeneity. At the same time, the problem of the name does suggest a defining feature of the "field" - this is *transversality*that becomes unavoidable when working with new media technologies.

Simply put a transversal is a line that cuts across other lines, perhaps across entire fields - bringing the fields together in a new way, recreating fields as something else.

A contributor to this issue of the *Fibreculture Journal*, Gary Genosko, takes this question of transversality into an understanding of the dynamics of institutions (in his exemplary work elsewhere on Félix Guattari - see Genosko, 2002). Here the concept of transversality suggests something like the unavoidable contagion of transference between analyst and analysand, only now *at the level of the group*. This leads to the reforming of institutions when new lines cross between older disciplines, older fields, older cultural practices. Although transversality is arguably a part of all fields, it is often something taken to be guarded against. However, I have suggested that, in tune with the object of study, that is media technologies that connect more and more aspects of the world to each other, transversality is the unavoidable discipline we must follow in new media studies - whatever we call it. This requires a particular kind of rigour, one that combines a range of specific disciplinary rigours with the ability to bring these into new harmonies. These usually feedback in turn to transform the disciplines involved. If anything "scares the horses", institutionally speaking, about new media, it is perhaps this unavoidable transversality and the new rigours it requires.

Since what I began by calling new media studies does indeed still "scare the horses" sometimes, it might be useful to take up the horse metaphor briefly from the point of view of transversality. Genosko points precisely to Guattari's metaphor regarding horses as an illustration of transversality - and what scares Guattari's horses is in fact their inability to see each, the difficulty of forming new harmonies. 'Guattari's horses … illustrate' what Guattari calls 'the coefficient of transversality' (Genosko in Guattari, 2000: 118). As Guattari writes -

Imagine a fenced field in which there are horses wearing adjustably blinkers, and let's say that the "coefficient of transversality" will be precisely the adjustment of the blinkers. If the horses are completely blind, a certain kind of traumatic encounter will be produced. As soon as the blinkers are opened, one can imagine that the horses will move about in a more harmonious way. (Genosko in Guattari, 2000:118/Guattari, 1972: 79)

Genosko concludes that 'Blinkers prevent transversal relations; they focus by severely circumscribing a visual field. The adjustment of them releases the existing, but blinkered, quantity of transversality'. Again, removing the blinkers, increasing the 'coefficient of transversality', requires a certain rigour. In our field this is perhaps simply a matter of appropriate responses to the way new media technologies keep removing the blinkers for us in the world at large.

It is exactly this rigour that this issue of the *Fibreculture Journal*celebrates. In doing so, it perhaps shows us that, despite the difficulty with names, thinking across the field of new media studies has matured, as unstable as this field might necessarily be. In this issue, the articles all operate via transversal lines that follow the use of new media technologies in areas such as dance (Manning), computer hacking and the law (Genosko), city planning (Hodge and Lally), aesthetics (Mules), celebrity (Black) and even the question of the technological fetish in everyday life (Arnold, Gibbs and Shepherd). They demonstrate the maturity of "new media studies", precisely because they tell us in so much detail what the cultural processes discussed have actually become, as they play out in everyday life (and not perhaps as they play out in the rhetoric surrounding new media technologies, within and outside the academy). In articles by Erin Manning, Bob Hodge and Elaine Lally, Warwick Mules, and Daniel Black, the authors open up new issues concerning new media technologies, with a new depth and precision of analysis regarding the body and the very real virtual. This also becomes a question of what new media technologies - seen as transversally working with the human body, the virtuality of the world - might become in the future, and how we might thinking this becoming with a greater 'coefficient of transversality'. The articles by Gary Genosko, Michael Arnold, Martin Gibbs and Chris Shepherd also help us to see in a less blinkered manner. Both provide well-researched correctives to academic and popular thinking about the lived realities of new media as taken up in culture.

The desire for less blinkered approaches to new media technologies is not just a rarefied fancy from the further reaches of theory. New media are now the mainstream (and as these articles demonstrate, they are becoming the mainstream not only in "media", traditionally considered, but elsewhere as well - in dance (Manning), in city planning (Hodge and Lally), in questions of aesthetics (Mules), in the production of what Daniel Black calls the celebrity of the 'virtual idol', even at the junction of the law and cultural studies (Genosko). The mainstreaming of new media means, of course, that new media studies, as transdisciplinary, or simply unstable, as it still might be - is now well and truly established. It is arguably now the study par excellence - and the way new media have become a necessary consideration in so many other fields, from anthropology to medicine, is another aspect of new media's unavoidable transversality.

This issue of the *Fibreculture Journal* celebrates both the instability and the maturity of that which we cannot quite call "new media studies". If there are any unifying concerns here they might include a mature understanding, not only philosophical, but practical and indeed technical, of the virtual. In this vein, Hodge and Lally propose a reconsideration of city planning in the light of chaos theory, fuzzy logic and Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle". Their revolutionary approach is indeed one of a new kind of rigour in planning - one sensitive to ongoing change, the complexity and specificity of the levels of planning involved, and the relations between these levels of planning. All this is considered in the light of much more accurately mapped details of the everyday life of the population. This sensitive approach to real geographical and cultural processes is echoed in Manning's approach to the use of technologies in professional dance. Here Manning writes of the necessity of rethinking the body itself as 'technogenetic', and of not sacrificing the dancing body to a more deterministic understanding of the dance's relation to software demands for a clarity of gesture. Via an accessible and thorough account of Alfred North Whitehead's understanding of perception and time, Manning is able to provide the philosophical tools for completely rethinking the relations between dance and technologies.

In their article on city planning, Hodge and Lally quote the following:

It is now realized, across scientific fields, that we are lacking the vocabulary to meaningfully talk about change as if change mattered - that is to treat change not as an epiphenomenon, as a mere curiosity or exception, but to acknowledge its centrality in the constitution of socio-economic life. (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002: 569)

The articles in this issue of the *Fibreculture Journal* can be seen to be building this vocabulary with which to rigorously address change. Manning's understanding of the body as 'technogenetic' (Manning) is significant within this vocabulary. "Technogenetic" means both technical and generating changing at the same time. Here technics is considered not along the easy path, as that which is predetermined, or predetermines. Rather technics is considered precisely as that which, extracting actual events from their immersion in virtuality, is a technics of new forms of indetermination at the same time of determination, of a making different at the same time as a making possible. Reconsidering the body in relation to new media technologies is never going to be easy when technogenesis is taken into account. Yet this is what many of the articles in this issue achieve.

Here, in a detailed consideration of Yuki Terai, 'the world's most successful virtual idol', Daniel Black considers 'an historical moment in which structures of data have seemingly supplanted physical materiality' and 'the human body is coming to be seen as gathered into structures of information ownership and exchange.' Warwick Mules enters into a dialog with another prominent thinker of the materiality of new media aesthetics (and *Fibreculture Journal* editor), Anna Munster (2006). Mules undertakes 'an expansion of Munster's approximate aesthetics into a general critique of embodied experience as technologically mediated presence.' This leads Mules to what he calls a 'contact aesthetics', which 'is both creative and experimental in the sense that it brings new things into life by undoing and reconfiguring the material of already constituted objects and formal arrangements.' In tune with the theme of a rigourous transversality, the aim of this contact aesthetics is to 'release singularity'. Arnold, Gibbs and Shepherd take body-technology relations into an entirely different direction. They consider not the functionality of information and communication technologies, but the affective relations created between these technologies and the humans who engage with them. In a thorough depiction of "Matthew", a collector and hoarder of information and communication technologies, they show that it is not enough to think of our relations with new media technologies in terms of the new functions they provide. Rather, there is a kind of fetishism that makes us question basic assumptions about the everyday use of new media - the roles they play in everyday lives, and the new forms of economy they provide. Genosko's article on "Mafiaboy", a teenage hacker from Montréal who famous ' brought down several blue chip American Web sites' in 2000, also deals with the everyday realities behind common misperceptions of cultural events involving new media. In a very thorough content analysis of the case, as played out in the media and the courts, Genosko thoroughly documents the way in which this apparently dramatic piece of hacking was in fact somewhat overdramatised, something perhaps surprisingly well understood by the perceptive judge presiding over the case, but not by several of the world's major law enforcement agencies or media outlets. Here again, there are some very interesting transversal lines that have to be considered in order to understand who "Mafiaboy" really was, and what he really did.

If all these articles reconfigure thinking about the body and the everyday in relation to new media, this is perhaps because there is so much at stake when considering the results of the mainstreaming of new media technologies upon questions of embodiment. It is precisely here that the rigours of transversality need to be applied.

Once again, as editor I am very grateful for the generosity and hard work of the entire editorial team of the *Fibreculture Journal* - Esther Milne, Gillian Fuller, Ingrid Richardson, Ned Rossiter, Anna Munster and Lisa Gye. I particularly thank Lisa Gye for her continuing and impeccable work on the *Fibreculture Journal* site. I would also like to thank, on behalf of everyone working on the *Fibreculture Journal*, the Editorial Board and other experts in their fields for their work on refereeing articles as they came in. You know who you are - and we could not do it without your dedication and thorough feedback. Last but not least, I would like to thank the authors - they have all given a great deal of their time, and often the best of their thinking when it is perhaps difficult to remain committed to the kind of rigour and imagination we are pleased to have published here.

Andrew Murphie, December 2006

References

Genosko, Gary. *Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction* (London and New York: Continuum, 2002).

____. 'The Life and Work of Félix Guattari: From Transversality to Ecosophy' in Guattari, Félix *The Three Ecologies* trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton,
(London: Athlone, 2000).

Guattari, Félix. *Psychoanalyse et transversalité; essais d'analyse institutionell*e (Paris: Francoise Maspero, 1972).

Munster, Anna. *materializing new media: embodiment in information aesthetics* (Hanover and London: University of New England Press, 2006).

Tsoukas, Haridimos, and Robert Chia. 'On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change', *Organization Science* 13.5 (2002): 567-82.


"I thought I had reached port; but I seemed to be cast back again into the open sea" (Deleuze and Guattari, after Leibniz)

Dr Andrew Murphie - Senior Lecturer
School of Media, Film and Theatre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2052 web:http://media.arts.unsw.edu.au/andrewmurphie/mysite/index.html
fax:612 93856812 tlf:612 93855548 email: a.murphie[at]unsw.edu.au room 311H, Webster Building

Posted by jo at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)

Methods and Evaluation in Interdisciplinary Collaboration

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Call for Proposals

CFP: Workshop on Methods and Evaluation in Interdisciplinary Collaboration :: Computer/Human Interaction Conference, 2007 :: San Jose, CA.

Research into new forms of sociality or critical applications of technology often requires unexpected and even disjunctive institutional partnerships. Universities in particular find researchers coming together around common resources or initiatives who share little in the way of methods, values, or politics.

How are researchers and practitioners from Art/Design and the Sciences negotiating and sustaining collaboration today? What differences are preserved in the process, which ones obscured, which transcended? When have quantitative and qualitative methodologies successfully co-mingled, and what do the adherents of each have to learn? Aren't disharmonious partnerships more likely to be formed in a climate of decreased resources and increased pressure to demonstrate "creativity" that produces capital?

This April in San Jose at the annual Computer/Human Interaction (CHI) Conference, we'll be conducting a workshop on these subjects for a day, and we're eager to enlist some more participants. The workshop will take the form of short presentations, large and small-group discussions, with representatives present from many disciplines.

The context, if you're new to CHI, is a professional conference based predominantly in scientific discourse. We've proposed this workshop to CHI as an interdisciplinary team from art and science, and indeed the conference has seen an increasing amount of designers and artists in attendance recently.

We'll be focusing on the following specific questions and topics:

1 - How are projects evaluated by interdisciplinary teams? Which criteria from which constituencies are applied, and to what ends?

2 - What methods of investigation are employed in design processes by teams composed of diverse practitioners? How are ideas iterated?

3 - When is labor divided based on disciplinary difference? At what stages in the process are these differences ignored?

4 - When is evaluation and critique incorporated into process, and how?

If your research or practice has led you to navigation of these or related questions, we invite you to submit proposals for participation and presentation at this Spring's workshop, on April 27th in San Jose. Please see the full CFP for more a more detailed explication of this workshop's goals.

We hope to assemble a group capable of producing applicable methods and useful processes in the pursuit of research that is interdisciplinary by necessity, and perhaps not by choice.

DEADLINE: January 12, 2007

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: http://orchid.cs.uiuc.edu/HCIandNewMedia/

RELATED LINKS (precedent at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) http://www.art.uiuc.edu/projects/memory
http://www.art.uiuc.edu/projects/mobilemapping
http://orchid.cs.uiuc.edu/people/adamczyk/pvss/
http://orchid.cs.uiuc.edu/

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

BBC Radio 3

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Soft Message by Blast Theory

Soft Message by Blast Theory :: BBC Radio 3 :: Thursday 7th December, 10.00pm :: Visitors to the Radio 3 website agreed to be rung at any time of the day and night. Matt Adams and Ju Row Farr from Blast Theory interviewed them during a one week period.

The calls catch people drunk at parties, in art galleries and out on the street. We hear them arguing, shouting at their cats or as their friends grab the handset. They open their lives to the listener, they reveal secrets and declarations of love. From the first call to a Mancunian goth pretending to be Romanian we follow these four people through a week in their lives.

The conversations use the intermittent, slow motion nature of the interview to explore the things that are rarely said, rarely heard. And, most importantly, we hear the voices of people alone, confessing, contemplating, opening up.

The programme explores the ways in which radio and telephones lend themselves to a certain kind of intimacy. The programme asks how is the rise of the mobile phone affecting how we talk to one another and what does it mean to talk to strangers?

About Blast Theory: Blast Theory is internationally renowned as one of the most adventurous artist’s groups using interactive media. The group’s work has been shown around the world, most recently in Berlin and Singapore. The group was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003 and has been nominated for five Interactive BAFTAs.

Posted by jo at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2006

JOIN KUNSTRADIO'S

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Celebration of Art's Birthday

INVITATION TO JOIN KUNSTRADIO'S CELEBRATION OF ART'S BIRTHDAY 2007! ::Art’s Birthday 2007: Adore and be still ::100 years of radio

Art's Birthday Party is a celebration in memory of Robert Filliou who declared, on January 17 1963, that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years ago when someone dropped a dry sponge into a pail of water. After Filliou's death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate Art's Birthday in the spirit of his concept of "The Eternal Network" or "La Fete permanente". The Birthday parties took place in different cities across the world, and artists were asked to bring birthday presents for Art – works that could be shared over the network.

On Christmas 1906, on the other hand, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden undertook the very first radio broadcast of voice and music. Luckily, he had the foresight to time his experiment exactly, its 100th anniversary practically coinciding with the 1,000,044th birthday of Art. We therefore ask you to join Kunstradio's celebration of this stunning fact. We invite you to search your own territories for further firsts in radio history. Premieres of different kinds; the first transmission in stereo, the start of a series of brilliant shows, the first time you listened to the radio, the first time they played 'your' song, the first time you were broadcasting, were on air.

Soundfiles of these broadcasts we ask you to upload to our website.

Feeding on your individual sonic archives and this database of numerous people's special radio moments you can then assemble your own radiophonic versions of our medium's history. These we invite you to stream to our party in Vienna on January 17th, 2007. We will re-mix and further distribute your streams via our live Kunstradio broadcast on the cultural channel of Austrian National Radio Ö1,as well as in our slot on the EBU satellite.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us under kunstradio[at]kunstradio.at

Please feel free to spread the word! This is the party you can bring along as many people as you like!

The short version:

What do we want?
A present. Not for us, for Art's birthday.

Which present?
Your radio's history. Or: Your history of radio.

How?
Streamed, mailed, sent, posted, uploads at
http://kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/AB2007/index.html

Format?
mp3 files, live-streams, images, webcams, ..

When?
January 17th, 2007 from 20:00 - 24:00 CET, 19:00 - 23:00 GMT

Why?
To celebrate.

What?
Art's Birthday.

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

[ A r t i v i s t i c 2 0 0 7 [ [ un.occupied spaces ] ] ]

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

A r t i v i s t i c 2 0 0 7 [ October :: Montreal ] :: [ [ [ un.occupied spaces ] ] ] < CALL FOR PARTICIPATION >

We are infiltrating all levels of society. Artists, activists, academics, architects, bureaucrats, the homeless, anarchists, first nations, immigrants, doctors, geeks, lawyers, teachers, witches, philosophers, clowns. Artivistic does not only provide a platform for political artists and artistic activists, but partakes in the very movements that work for change. In the pursuit of temporary moments of pleasure, we move towards freedom, for resistance is perpetual and oppression, ever-changing.

We oppose the progression of monolithic thought and work for the development of new and dynamic forms of knowledge, exchange, representation and practices of everyday life. We aim to stimulate the mind, the imagination, and the body. We seek alternative models, portals unto un.occupied spaces. Artistivic moves beyond the moment, becoming a process of contamination through interpersonal dialogue that exceeds the event.

Building on the 2005 generation, Artivistic in 2007 will continue to ask questions that do not leave us thinking we have resolved the issues. We strongly suggest that you answer one, or all, of our questions with a question of your own. Please submit your proposal for participation related (but not restricted) to the following:

< what is indigenous ? >

The very use of the term “indigenous” presupposes a claim to the existence of rights. The right to land. The right of return. The right to self-determination. The right to a life with dignity. In what context does indigenous mean something and how is it represented today? What is the relationship between identity based on place, the land and/or territories and the right to resources? What is indigenous in the context of globalisation, migrations and mobility? (Perhaps the question is not what is indigenous but how is indigenous?)

< what is a natural space ? >

The environment is in a pretty bad shape. Yet, does not typical environmentalism often propose “solutions” which alienate the very people that could make a difference by using a false dichotomy (natural/human-made, natural/artificial, nature/culture) and by perpetuating the myth of a pristine nature? Current strategies often make use of fear and guilt to provoke action, yet will we not be helping our environment in a more efficient way once we let go of our arrogance as humans and start living with and in the world rather than of, and alienated from, the world?

< what is (there) to occupy ? >

The term “occupation” often inspires images of invasion, enclosure and rape. How are spaces and bodies ruled over? What is public space, ultimately? Why do reserves exist? To ask what is occupation is in fact to ask what is left to occupy for occupation is more pervasive than it first appears. At the same time, occupation echoes resistance when it comes to certain forms of appropriation. So how does one occupy appropriation or how can one appropriate occupation?

Your abstract or project description should be no longer than 250 words, your bio 75 words (seriously, we will stop reading after that).

Please also include 50 words on how you will stimulate audience participation (sorry, NO paper reading).

We welcome proposals for : roundtables, workshops, expeditions & walks, interventions, performance, projections, show-and-tells, broadcasts, games, visual arts, media & technology arts, street arts, informal arts, experimental arts, is-it-art arts, etc. and any combination of the above.

We also welcome proposals having to do with personal experience, lessons learned, or future projects that could include other participants of Artivistic (this is a good place to start organising and collaborating).

Deadline : 15 February 2007

Please send your proposals to : participation.artivistic[at]gmail.com

The Autonomous Conference

Artivistic also includes an open-source component. Participants will be able to sign up on the day-of to hold an ad-hoc session that is not in the official program but is fully part of the event. You can prepare in advance, but you don’t need to submit anything.

Co-presentations

Artivistic cannot fulfil its networking and pluralist agenda without collaborating with existing organisations of overlapping mandates. If you are an organisation interested in mutual aid in the context of event planning, please contact us (considerably in advance) with your idea for an event that you would like to organise and present with us : info.artivistic[at]gmail.com

Volunteers

If you want to help us before, during and/or after the event, that would be really nice of you! We need a lot of extra hands with promotion, billeting, set-up, facilitation, cooking, tech, time-keeping, documenting, wrap-up, etc. Please email us at : volunteers.artivistic[at]gmail.com

Travel funding

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide funding for your travel (we are not even getting paid to do this), but will be happy to offer any assistance with your own steps in finding funding. On the other hand, in-house accommodation and food will be provided to all Artivistic participants.

Press

If you want to cover Artivistic, please send us your information by email here: press.artivistic[at]gmail.com

Artivistic is a transdisciplinary three-day gathering on the interPlay between art, information and activism. Artivistic emerges out of the proposition that not only artists should talk about art, academics about theory, and activists about activism. Founded in 2004, the event aims to promote transdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on activist art beyond critique, to create and facilitate a human network of diverse peoples, and to inspire, proliferate, activate.

General inquiries : info.artivistic[at]gmail.com

Posted by jo at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

transmediale.07

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unfinish!

transmediale.07: unfinish! :: Berlin, January 31 - February 4, 2007 :: Akademie der Kuenste :: Berlin, Hanseatenweg 10 :: Open (only during the festival!): Daily 10.00-21.00 hrs :: Admission: 3 Euro (reduced 2 Euro).

Exhibition unfinish! :: The festival's motto relates to artistic works with digital media, in which 'unfinishing' is either the inherent drama of being eternally open-ended, or highlights the possibility of continuous transformation and advancement. In the context of this theme, transmediale.07 explores the conditions of finiteness and presents a range of artistic means and strategies through which seemingly fixed situations can be kept in flux and open to change.

The exhibition of transmediale.07 deals with the motto unfinish!, too, and presents works by David Rokeby (ca), Herwig Weiser (at), Kurt d'Haeseleer (be), Herman Asselberghs (be), Antoine Schmitt (fr), and others, in the Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin (Hanseatenweg).

David Rokeby (ca) - 'Taken' :: Interactive Installation, 2002 :: 'Taken' is an interactive video installation which provides two readings of the activities in the gallery space using surveillance cameras and a double projection. 'Taken' suggests a critical reflection on the methods of observation and classification of people in public spaces. On one side of the projection, gallery visitors are extracted from the ground of the gallery floors and walls and then looped back onto themselves at 20 second intervals. This image stream provides a kind of seething chaos of activity. The other side is a catalogue of the gallery visitors, their heads are zoomed in on and adjectives such as 'unsuspecting', 'complicit' or 'hungry' are attributed to them. These individual head shots are collected as a set of the last 200 visitors and occasionally presented as a matrix.

David Rokeby is a sound and video installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. He studied at the Ontario College of Art where he began to use technology to make pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. His works address issues of digital surveillance, while engaging as well in a critical examination of the differences between human and artificial intelligence.

Herwig Weiser (at) - 'Death Before Disko' :: Installation, 2006 :: Herwig Weiser has built a machine which confronts us with its technical elements in a particularly clear and alienating way. 'Death Before Disko' uses an online data stream from space observation and translates it into simple yet spectacular sound and light events. With the growth of digital technology, users become more and more distant from the physical hardware of their laptop or hi-fi units. 'Death Before Disko' aims to come back to the roots of the hardware, and shows how our relationship towards technology is more often emotional than rational.

Weiser is a interdisciplinary artist in the broadest sense - his long term investigation of the relationship between electronic systems, sound and material environments and the representation of the raw hardware stock that drives these technologies, draws on aesthetic, engineering and programming disciplines, as well as a wider spectrum of scientific principle.

Kurt d'Haeseleer (be) - 'Scripted Emotions' :: Installation, 2005 :: Honourable Mention, transmediale Award 2007 :: 'Scripted Emotions' is a pseudo romantic drama for two tourist binoculars: The installation consists of two binoculars with built-in screens. The spectators can roam with the binoculars through a digital landscape where the nocturnal drama takes its course…

D'Haeseleer is a Belgian video artist who has been associated with the Brussels collective De Filmfabriek, doing the videography for multimedia theatre and dance projects. His work applies state of the art digital montage and production techniques. From seemingly everyday shots he creates organic and associative images.

Herman Asselberghs (be) - 'Proof of Life' :: Video (30'), 2005 :: Nominated for the transmediale Award 2007 :: The video image shows the interior of an empty, open space: the borderline between inside and out is thin. Human presence can only be felt through the adjoining sounds: a male voice recalls horrendous TV-images, a popular disaster movie, a long-term imprisonment or hostage-taking. The radical rift between sound and image reveals a film which needs to be listened to. The described scenes come uncomfortably close to the visitors. A sound movie with empty images which testify to their own, problematic redundancy.

Asselberghs is an artist and an art critic. He writes about audio-visual culture in 'De Tijd', and he teaches in the 'Transmedia' department at Sint-Lukas College in Brussels. He is a founding member of Square vzw and a co-curator of [sonic]square, an ambulant concert series for electronic music. His installations have been shown, among others, by the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and documenta X (Kassel).

Antoine Schmitt (fr) - 'still living' :: Installation, 2006 :: Nominated for the transmediale Award 2007 :: To Schmitt 'still living' inaugurates a new personal artistic language. The project revolves around the concept of 'living' graphics. The graphics are using immediately readable visual codes: pie-charts, bars, curves, etc. But instead of transmitting information about specific developments and alteration, they produce vague and imprecise images. Instead of strict rationality we see metaphors of a type of indecision which is not supposed to exist in our world dominated by precise numbers.

Artist and programmer Antoine Schmitt uses programming as a essential artistic material, to create installations, online exhibitions, performances and CD-Roms, in which he confronts abstract artificial systems with visitors or performers. His work has been shown at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), at Sonar (Barcelona), at Ars Electronica (Linz). In 2001 he received an Honorary Mention for his work 'Vexation 1' at transmediale.01.

Other Works

Herwig Turk / Guenter Stoeger (at) - 'setting 04_2006' :: Video-Installation :: The installation 'setting 04_2006' is part of the Blindspot-Project which aims at investigating the interface between science and art. The installation shows the hands of a scientist who performs the movements of four consecutive throughputs of the same experiment - without the necessary instruments. This demonstration of gestures highlights the ambivalence of repetition and the theatricality of scientific experiments. Herwig Turk and Guenter Stoeger are founding members of HILUS (Intermedia Research Project) in Vienna, and of the Blindspot project.

Moon Na (kr) - 'Against God by Water Pistol' :: Video (1'40), 2006 :: The protagonist (the artist herself) is armed with a water pistol and 'shoots' it into the sky on a rainy day. The act of rebelling against god with only a toy is deliberately paradoxical and underlines the implicit failure: A strong gesture of not accepting given rules, including the force of gravity, and a poetical defiance concerning one's place in this world. Moon Na lives and works in Seoul. After her degree in Fine Arts in Fine Arts at Saint Martins College in London, she took part in several group exhibitions, including 'About Beauty' at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Gwangju Biennale in Korea.

Aram Bartholl (de) - 'Random Screen' :: Installation, 2006 :: Honourable Mention, transmediale Award 2007 :: 'Random Screen' is a mechanical, thermodynamic screen working without electricity. Conventional tea candles illuminate and generate the changes on the 4x4 pixel screen. This work is part of a series of low-tech screen projects that were originally inspired by the Blinkenlights media facade of the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin. Aram Bartholl comes from Bremen and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1995. He studied architecture at the University of the Arts in Berlin. His graduation thesis as an engineer won him the Browserday competition 2001. He is a permanent member of the 'Urban Media Salon'.

Roman Kirschner (at) - 'Roots' :: Installation, 2006 :: 'Roots' is a dreamlike screen that follows an old Persian image: A bush growing heads... In a green and brownish fluid iron crystals grow steadily... Bubbles ascend like jellyfish… Branches break off and sink to the dark ground… Thick clouds hovering over the scene. Roman Kirschner comes from Vienna, where he studied philosophy and art history. He continues his studies at the Kunsthochschule fuer Medien in Koeln. He co-founded the artists collective //////////fur////.

Christoph Korn (de) - 'Sorge und Kapitalismus' :: Sound and Web Installation, 2005 :: The sound installation confronts precise time data pronounced by one voice with another one offering poetic and associative words. Every hour a time engraving is produced randomly, and is stored in an archive accessible on the website. From this archive the machine reads time engravings, and - at the same time - it selects simple terms describing human existence, phrasing different possibilities of 'Sorge' (care, concern, sorrow) under capitalism. Christoph Korn studied political science and philosophy in Frankfurt/Main. In the Eighties he did political work. In the early Nineties he started working on artistic projects, including composition, radioplays, installations, text and web-based works, dealing with language and time. 'Sorge und Kapitalismus' was commissioned by the German public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk.

Richard Chartier / Taylor Deupree (us) - Specification.Fifteen :: Sound piece 2006 :: Honourable mention transmediale Award 2007 :: Sound artists Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree created 'Specification.Fifteen' as a commission for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of renowned Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. His series of Seascapes inspired Chartier's and Deupree's live piece which premiered in March 2006 in front of the panoramic window of the Museum's Lerner Room as the sun set across the city's skyline. 'Specification.Fifteen' evokes the stillness and opposing yet related spaces of Sugimoto's Seascapes which suggest infinitesimal change under a seemingly uniform surface. Richard Chartier (born 1971), sound and installation artist, explores in his work the interrelationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. In 2000 he formed together with Taylor Deupree the recording label LINE, presenting compositions and installations by international sound artists and composers. Taylor Deupree (born 1971) is a sound artist, graphic designer, and photographer residing in New York. Founder of the music labels 12k, LINE and Happy, he devotes his work to the aesthetics of the contemporary and the development of the digital minimalism, often in collaboration with other artists.

transmediale.07
unfinish!
festival for art and digital culture berlin info[at]transmediale.de

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

Turbulence New England Initiative II

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Opening + Performance + Upgrade! Boston

Turbulence New England Initiative II: Brooke A. Knight, Mobius and John Snavely :: WHEN: December 8- January 14, 2007 :: Opening Reception: Friday, December 8, 6-9 pm :: Performance of Variations VII: Fishnet by Mobius Artists Group 7 - 8 pm :: Gallery hours: Saturday & Sunday, 12-6 pm :: WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge.

Turbulence New England Initiative II :: Turbulence.org's competition for networked, hybrid projects awarded three commissions: "Cell Tagging" by Brooke A. Knight, "Variations VII: FishNet" by Mobius, and "WhoWhatWhenAir" by John Snavely. Jurors of the competition were Julian Bleecker, Michelle Thursz, and Helen Thorington. Turbulence NE Initiative II is supported by Art Interactive, the LEF Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Cell Tagging by Brooke A. Knight

The mobile phone occupies a space that is both connecting and distancing. Seemingly ubiquitous, it has become an increasingly powerful tool, functioning as a phone, PDA, browser, and camera. With "Cell Tagging" it becomes a remote control that allows users to dial, draw, and speak. Cell phone users "graffiti" the sound-space around them, making every place their own.

Variations VII: FishNet by Mobius

In "Variations VII: FishNet," the primary component is an autonomous networked space in which users "fish" among myriad live audio/visual internet feeds. Sources include air traffic controllers, police and fire departments, horse races, and webcams. The project will also make use of live, distributed input from cell phones. FishNet is inspired by John Cage’s Variations VII, a pioneering “art and engineering” performance event from 1966.

WhoWhatWhenAir by John Snavely

An interactive, kinetic sculpture that users can communicate with via a bicycle pump. Next to this direct interaction, a web-based, distant interaction connects the digital with the physical. Coordinated efforts produce unexpected structural choreographies.

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UPGRADE! BOSTON: Turbulence New England Initiative II Artist Talks: Brooke A. Knight, Mobius and John Snavely.

WHEN: December 14, 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.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 22 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 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Seattle

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Caleb Larsen + Brett Walker

Come join us for the December Upgrade! Seattle meeting featuring Caleb Larsen and Brett Walker on Thursday December 14 at 7pm at 911 Media Arts Center.

Upgrade! Seattle is a once a month event for new media artists working in the Seattle area. Every second Thursday of each month Upgrade! Seattle invites artists / curators / thinkers / everyone to gather at 911 Media Arts Center to see and critically discuss new media work. Upgrade! Seattle is hosted by the 911 artists2artists group and is affiliated with the Upgrade! International network. If you are interested in presenting your work, please contact Carrie Bodle (artists2artists[at]911media.org).

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Caleb Larsen is a young Seattle based new media and installation artist. He was raised in the northern reaches of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and attended school in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Originally trained as a painter, Larsen attempts to treat technology, not as a gimmick, but as natural addition to the artistic practice. His most recent works loosely revolve around two central concepts: Language and Mapping. Larsen’s current point of inspection involves creating intersections of digital and physical culture by reinterpreting online information and resources from community based websites.

At the present Larsen is working on a suite of projects based on Google News headlines. The headlines are processed in realtime and produce simultaneous outcomes ranging from bizarre video montages to large generated associative word drawings. Using computer programming, Legos, video, dynamic images, and printed text Larsen aims to create an alternate methodology for exploring contemporary culture.

Larsen holds his Bachleor of Fine Arts from Western Michigan University. He has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Canada, Greece and Romania. He attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art, the School of Visual Art Artist Residency, and most recently the I-Park Artist Residency in Connecticut.

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Seattle resident Brett Walker grew up in suburban Portland, Oregon, and became interested in art early in life. Walker attended the Art Institute of Seattle and graduated in 2002 with an Associates degree in Commercial Photography. Shortly after, he moved to Maine and attended the Maine College of Art, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography and graduated in May of 2006.

Walker's work is created as a response to life and the environments in which he lives and interacts. He is interested in duration and repetition, and in re-thinking societal norms and commonly-held truths. Much of his work is done in film and video, as well as in photography and sound. The physicality of these mediums allows Walker space to form a more real and honest artistic practice.

During the past several years, Walker has exhibited work in a variety of locations: the Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine, the 916 Gallery in Seattle, the Student Gallery at the Maine College of Art, the SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, and at an outdoor video screening in Tampa, Florida. He has shown work in a variety of mediums ranging from photographs, to video work, to a custom-built 1977 Puch moped.


Posted by jo at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

A-WAL

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Art Wallpaper Email Exhibition

A-WAL | art wallpaper: adorning the vernacular one email at a time. Email Exhibition Project. A-WAL is a new kind of cultural tool that allows individual users and organizations to upload their own photos and images to be displayed as background wallpaper in their email messages. A-WAL email is web mail, so you can access it from anywhere in the world, and use it the way you would your regular email. However, A-WAL is the only email that allows you to take creative control through featuring your own images. For its pre-launch, A-WAL email was a featured project used by artists participating in Satellite Project, Shanghai Biennial 2006 as an extension of exhibition.

Email Exhibition Project: The A-WAL Email Exhibition is a quarterly curated art project that is two-fold in approach. Each quarter, a curator recognized for having achieved a unique distinction in an area of experimental curatorial practice will construct the Email Exhibition around their own set theme. This will be featured on the A-WAL website as an online exhibition, and the art images are available for use as art wallpaper for A-WAL users as an extension of this project. The A-WAL Email Exhibition is a non-profit public art project, with this edition being sponsored and brought to you in kind by Batteli.

For this quarterly installment, we are pleased to feature independent writer, lecturer, and curator Dr Kathy Battista, who is based in London. Kathy’s abiding interest in and support for experimental art forms and innovative practice has been displayed through her past involvement and work with esteemed organizations such as Artangel, Tate Modern, and the Serpentine Gallery. Kathy has regularly contributed to Contemporary, Frieze, Third Text, and Art Monthly amongst other publications, is an editor of Art & Architecture Journal, and has recently authored the forthcoming book Women’s Work: Feminist Artists in 1970s London (I B Tauris, 2007), resulting from her doctoral research re-considering the work of feminist artists in 1970s London and their role in the context of perfomative practice and alternative spaces. While at Artangel, she founded and was Head of the Interaction Programme, a series of contextual projects based around Artangel’s project s in unusual places, working with artists including Steve McQueen, Richard Wentworth, Matthew Barney, Janet Cardiff, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov and Tony Oursler.

The artists featured in this exhibition include: Daniel Jackson, Delaney Martin, Jamie Robinson, Sans Facon (Tristan Surtees & Charles Blanc), Dallas Seitz, Krisdy Schindler and Heather Sparks.

Excerpts from the writings for the Online Exhibition Project: The development of the World Wide Web is the most important technological advancement of our time. It has revolutionized the way we work, communicate, shop and live. The immediate transfer and dissemination of information has resulted in a truly globalized world, for better or for worse. It has also had a profound effect on art practice. The twentieth century notion of the white cube gallery space has given way to an infinitely expanded notion of digital display, where art can be seen anywhere in the world at any time.

The A-WAL project engages with the computer and in particular email as a site for artistic production. Using what has now become a vernacular form—email —A-WAL merges the everyday with the artistic. The selection of artists for this first A-WAL exhibition explores themes around patterning and wallpaper. The group of international artists shown here engage with these ideas through various media.

The Chinese are credited with first developing wallpaper around 200 BC, when they began to cover domestic walls with rice paper. French courts, such as that of Louis XIV, would commission artists to create paper for wall panels that could be moved when travelling between various residences. In England during the arts and crafts movement William Morris elevated wallpaper to new artistic heights. His designs, which played with a tenuous balance between abstraction and natural form, are still in production today. Morris broke with the Victorian ideal of illusionistic wallpaper, and devised designs that flattened out and enhanced the two-dimensionality of the wall. This is akin to the screensavers and wallpapers that are ubiquitous in our culture today: from computer screens to mobile phones two-dimensional images are at the center of our existence.

One of the main characteristics of wallpaper since the late nineteenth century is a repeat pattern that can be joined to make a coherent whole. The artists featured in this A-WAL project each work with a pattern that can be repeated in this way. This patterning is also a nod to the dots and zeros that make up computer programming. The A-WAL artists use various media—from painting and drawing to photography, video and computer rendering—to create their images.

The artists in this incarnation of A-WAL take the notion of patterning and wallpaper into the twenty-first century. Regardless of medium—the resulting patterns play with notions of surface [...].

- Taken in part by Kathy Battista's writings for the A-WAL Online Exhibition.

A-WAL is proud to enable this new form of techno-vernacular display, and would like to thank the artists curated who boldly embrace new forms of installation practice. A-WAL is committed to supporting public art projects through the use of this medium to enable an exhibition, or for use as an extension of a physical exhibition. Inquiries for such special projects can be sent to artprojects[at]A-WAL.com, although anyone can register for their own personal or organization A-WAL email account on the website.

A-WAL wishes you interesting and artful email messages.

Posted by jo at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

r4wB!t5 micro.Fest PRESENTS

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0P3NFR4M3W0RK

[ (A) r4wB!t5 micro.Fest PRESENTS ] ][]P3|\|.|=r@/\/\3.\/\/()r|<][ AKA 0P3NFR4M3W0RK AKA Open Frame Work :: [ @ The Art Gallery of Knoxville TN .US opening 2007.01.05 ] [ as a component of the Distribution Religion Exhibition ] [ 1rst DEADLINE == 2007.01.04 ] [ 2nd DEADLINE == 2007.02.04 ]

][]P3|\|.|=r@/\/\3.\/\/()r|<][ AKA 0P3NFR4M3W0RK AKA Open Frame Work is an open archive of dirty new media + digital still art exhibited as an aspect of the 2007.01.05 (A) r4wB!t5 micro.Fest to be held @ The Art Gallery of Knoxville in the Distribution Religion exhibition. 0P3NFR4M3W0RK is an open DIY digital art exhibition ware every artist will receive equal time (length of event divided by number of participants) in the display of their digital art [works/worlds]. ][] P3|\|.|=r@/\/\3.\/\/()r|<][ is potentially the interweb's, dataspheres' ++ world's largest open exhibition of digital art. all work submitted w/the following conditions will be displayed in the The Art Gallery of Knoxville + will be listed as work shown in the 2007.01.05 (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest. the current Open Frame Work will include all materials submitted to the previous instances, i.e. from the 2005.08.27 (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest @ Alterspace in Chicago IL .US + will be including in the ongoing (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest.

[ INSTALL YOUR DIGITAL IMAGE ART DATA ]

send images via email, attaching your *.ANSII, *.BMP, *.BUM, *.CLP, *.CUR, *.EPS, *.GIF, *.ICNS, *.ICO, *.JIF, *.JPG, *.JP2, *.PDB, *.PDF, *.PICT, *.PSD, *.PNG, *.RAW, *.RSRC, *.SVG, *.SGI, *.SUN, *.TIFF, *.YUV, *.X-FACE, etc files to:

install[at]0p3nfr4m3w0rk.org

or via Flickr, by uploading + then tagging your images w/the "0P3NFR4M3W0RK" tag:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/0P3NFR4M3W0RK

or via bookmarking the images that are already online using del.icio.us + then tagging your images w/the "0P3NFR4M3W0RK" tag:

http://del.icio.us/tag/0P3NFR4M3W0RK

or by uploading your data directly:

http://0p3nfr4m3w0rk.org/install

(A) r4wB!t5 organizers will harvest files from these interwebbed locations 11:59 PM on 2007.01.0+ EVERY IMAGE (AKA ALL DATA SUBMITTED!) WILL BE SHOWN IN THIS EVENT.

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-= 2007.01.05 =-
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(A) 2007.01.05 r4WB1t5 micro.Fest in Knoxville TN .US is an open collaborative aspect of the "Distribution Religion" exhibition at The Art Gallery of Knoxville. (A) 2007.01.05 r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is being organized around themes of sharing, systems of {exchange|distribution} + creating crossroads of digital punk, blues musics + freak folktronics as forms of protest + resistance to current socio-economic situations + political contingencies.

on the night of 2007.01.05 The Distribution Religion exhibition will open at The Art Gallery of Knoxville + will include the r4WB1t5 projects Open Frame Work + Radio Play Back Boom Boxor. these ongoing components of (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest feature artists from around the earth-planet.

simultaneously, (A) 2007.01.05 r4WB1t5 micro.Fest will occur @ The Pilot Light in Knoxville TN .US, across the tracks from The Art Gallery of Knoxville. the (A) 2007.01.05 r4WB1t5 micro.Fest @ The Pilot Light will feature a folksonema screening, open source artware distribution + realtime audio + video performances by r4WB1t5 participants from Knoxville, Chicago + beyond. a live data stream will also connect these physical-virtual spacestations across the global wide interweb.

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=- (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest -=
=- ---= --= '--' =-- =--- -=

(A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fests are international, decentralized, self-organized + independent instantiated situations of raw bits of digital art + dirty new media. (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest is itself an open platform or framework for creating these events in alternative + conversational contexts such as bars, basements, art spaces, apartments, galleries, etc... (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest extends out of + feeds back into DaDaist, Situationist, Fluxist, punk, digital art + New Media theories + practices... (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fests are always free + open collaborative projects, available to anyone interested in self-organizing Digital Arts + dirty New Media.

http://r4wb1t5.org

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= FOLKSONEMA =
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folksonema is a bi-weekly screening evnt @ the flowershop (2159 w 21st pl, chicago il), inspired by the `][]P3|\|.|=r@/\/\3.\/\/()r|<][ (aka open frame work)` program developed by jon.satrom for r4wb1t5 2005.08.27. every two weeks, jake elliott propagates information about a certain tag to use (ie “ravepartyinaspaceship” or “thatrobotatemysandwich”) on sites like youtube, del.icio.us, flickr, etc. for each screening, jake elliott scrapes the tagged media (images, mp3’s, exe’s, videos, web pages, txt’s, etc.) from those sites && screens them in the greenhouse of the flowershop, a space inhabited by various artists, projects && public initiatives.

folksonema == folk + taxonomy + cinema

http://folksonema.nothingistrueeverythingispermitted.com
http://www.flowerglass.net

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= THE ART GALLERY OF KNOXVILLE =
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The Art Gallery of Knoxville is a new experimental space, dedicated to the discussion of emerging Art. Located in Knoxville Tennessee, the Gallery coordinates the exhibition + publication of work in all media. Project proposals may extend from all disciplines. Regular performances + events include avant-garde + experimental music, video screenings (every Wednesday night at 7 PM), + public discussions of contemporary artists. Exhibits change monthly. Open Submissions Accepted.

The Art Gallery of Knoxville
317 N Gay St
Knoxville, TN 37917
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Sunday (2 PM - 9 PM)
http://www.theartgalleryofknoxville.com

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= PILOT LIGHT =
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since may 2000: knoxville's home for experimental and independent musics, film, and performance. we've hosted well over 1500 different local, national, and international bands (many of them multiple times) since inception. all volunteer. we are bringing it here for you. come find a new favorite band.

Pilot Light
106 E Jackson Ave - Knoxville, TN 37915
865.524.8188
http://www.thepilotlight.com
http://www.myspace.com/pilotlightclub

Posted by jo at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

Art Center Nabi

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Connected

Connected :: Exhibition: From Thursday Dec. 7 - Dec. 30, 2006 :: Opening: Thursday December 7, 2006 :: Artist Talk: Friday Dec. 8, 2006 from 5 pm :: Workspace Unlimited at "Connected" exhibition Art Center Nabi - Seoul, South-Korea.

Art Center Nabi organizes the exhibition Connected. Works of Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke, Jed Berk & Julian Bleecker, Ann Poochareon & Mark Argo, Ubermorgen.com, Daniel Sauter, Sara Kolster, Derek Holzer & Marc Boon will be presented in the gallery space of the Art Center Nabi. On Friday Dec. 8 the artists will explain their work to the public. For this occasion we have made an additional level to the Common Grounds Network. People from Korea will be entering Common grounds from this level. People from Belgium and Montreal can meet and have a chat with the Korean visitors in Implant, Devmap or Extension from the terminals installed at the Society for Art & Technology in Montreal and the Vooruit Art Center in Belgium.

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

December 05, 2006

This is the Public Domain

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A Viable Practical Framework for Common Land

The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents: This is the Public Domain :: 7pm December 5th :: Timken Lecture Theater, California College of Arts, 1111 8th Street, SF, CA 94107 ::Free admission.

A panel discussion organized by San Francisco-based artist Amy Balkin to debate and explore ways to achieve a viable practical framework for common land in the 21st century. With Keith Aoki, UC Oregon law professor and co-author of, among other works, the comic book 'Bound By Law - Tales From the Public Domain'. Iain Boal, Director of the Environmental Politics Colloquium at the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, and co-editor of the recent book 'Afflicted Powers'. Brady Moss, senior project associate for the Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization. Ramon Sender, writer, activist and participant in the Morning Star Ranch open land experiment of the early seventies.

Amy Balkin's art practice combines cross-disciplinary research and social critique with a search for unrealized possibilities outside conventional systems. Her ongoing project This is the Public Domain is an effort to create a permanent international commons from 2.5 acres of land purchased near Tehachapi, California.

As part of the Wattis Institute's exhibition Radical Software, Balkin has organised a public conversation between artists, legal experts, and people who have been engaged personally and politically with open land and commoning, exploring the search for a real-world framework for —with the aim of proposing a solution that the artist will then implement.

Balkin's recent projects include Invisible-5, a collaborative environmental justice audio tour of the I-5 corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Public Smog.

For more information, call: 415.551.9251

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

WRO 07 Competition

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12th International Media Art Biennale

12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07 Competition :: 16 - 20 May 2007, Wroclaw, Poland.

WRO Foundation for Media Art in Wroclaw/Poland, announces an international competition open to any work created using electronic media techniques, exploring innovative forms of artistic communication. The competition welcomes creators of artistic projects of diverse forms such as screenings (video art, computer animation), installations, objects, performances, multimedia concerts and network projects from all over the world.

The main prize is 5000. The deadline date for entry submission is 15.02.2007.

Presentation of shortlisted works and the international jury's announcement of the competition results will take place during public screening at the WRO 07 Biennale. The competition regulations and entry form are available in downloadable format at http://wro07.wrocenter.pl. Requests to receive the regulations and entry form by post can be made at print[at]wrocenter.pl.

Posted by jo at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

Climate Commons:

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A Networked Conversation About Climate Change, Sustainability, and the Arctic

Climate Commons: a networked conversation about climate change, sustainability, and the Arctic :: Developed by Jane D. Marsching with Matthew Shanley :: November 27 2006 - February 28, 2007. Please join the conversation by reading the posts and comments and then logging in to respond with your own comments.

Climate Commons is a conversation between thirteen people who focus on climate change, sustainability, and the Arctic in a wide range of disciplines including a glaciologist, an architect, a journalist, and a comedian. Each author contributes weekly posts about their work, inspirations, discoveries, or questions. Readers can join the conversation by clicking on the comments hex icon and choosing a hex cell to respond to any particular post. As an interdisciplinary collaborative hybrid art/research project, Climate Commons seeks to point to the multiplicity of voices behind the complex environmental concerns and to create connections/analogies/discussion across disciplines, economies, and ideologies.

Core participants:

Sally Bingham, Episcopal Priest
Jock Gill, Carbon Neutral by 2020
Mitchell Joachim, Architect
Jane D. Marsching, Artist
Larry Merculieff, Alaska Native Science Commission
Robert Newman, Comedian
Matt Nolan, Glaciologist
James Overland, Climatologist
Sarah Rich, WorldChanging
Russell Potter, Historian
Andrew Revkin, Environmental Journalist, New York Times
Matthew Shanley, Artist/Programmer
Juanita Urban-Rich, Windows Around the World

Climate Commons is part of a larger project, Arctic LIstening Post, a series of interdisciplinary, collaborative hybrid art research works in digital technologies by Jane D. Marsching. On exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 12/10/06-3/11/07.

A project of Creative Capital with the generous support of the LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund.

Posted by jo at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

thresholds 34: portability

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call for submissions

thresholds 34: portability :: call for submissions :: thresholds is the bi-annual critical journal of architecture, art and media culture produced by editors in the Department of Architecture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On July 1, 1979, the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 went on sale in Japan, ushering in an age of mobile privatization. Since then, the portability of cultural and informational content has become ever more portable: television consumers of today can timeshift with the TiVo and placeshift with the Slingbox, reminding us that TV, like fast food, need not be different everywhere.

More object-oriented than the concept of mobility, design for portability aims to maintain the coherent function, appearance, and identity of the thing transported: be it a lipstick carried in a purse, software moved to a competing platform, health care benefits taken to another job, or a Star Trek officer who needs to be beamed down to the planet. Thus, the pursuit of the thing's fidelity after transport and transfer is also a quest of translatability, enabling exchange and reciprocity in an age of translocational identity. Just as mobility and immobility encapsulate modern social dilemmas, portability encapsulates all things in transition between times and places, and the desire to make solid, truthful, and durable, all that melts into air. We are as much mobile agents, as we are porters of weighty baggage.

thresholds 34 invites contributions examining the aesthetic, architectural, political and technological uses of portability. We invite critical perspectives that explore these issues in a variety of media, including essays, projects, proposals, policies, and models. Points of inquiry can include, but need not be limited to, portable objects, spaces of portage, systems of transport and transfer, processes of translatability, markets of import and export, and designs on, and for, a portable life.

Submissions from fields other than art and architecture are strongly encouraged. Essays are limited to 2500 words. A digital copy of the text is required as well as 300 dpi digital files of all images. Please include a two-sentence biography of each author. Thresholds aims to print material not previously published.

Submissions are due February 15, 2007. Please send all materials and correspondence to thresh[at]mit.edu or to:

Winnie Wong, Editor
thresholds
MIT Department of Architecture
Room 7-337
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139

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

Visual Music Marathon

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Call for Submissions

Northeastern University is pleased to announce a call for work for the 2007 Visual Music Marathon, to be held on April 28th, 2007 as part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival. The Marathon will include screenings of new and historic works that reflect the theme of the event and a live video component. Approximately thirty minutes of programming will be selected for national cablecast on the Harmony Channel, available to subscribers of digital cable on the Comcast and Cox networks.

The Visual Music Marathon will be held in the Raytheon Amphitheatre of Northeastern University, Boston and is produced in conjunction with the Northeastern Multimedia Studies and Music Technology programs, the Departments of Music and Visual Arts, and the Harmony Channel.

Visual Music: Fine art animation, video or film in which the visual elements are informed by musical processes. Deadline: (postmarked) January 22nd, 2007.

Posted by jo at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Neil Salley's

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Musée Patamécanique

Neil Salley, Musée Patamécanique :: Exhibit / Installation :: by appointment (BRISTOL, Rhode Island, USA)

"'Patamechanics is a method of discovering/manifesting artifacts' much like those of the ancient Wonder-rooms of old, 'which symbolically attribute their properties described by their virtuality to their lineaments.' A Patamechanical artifact or device is displayed with the intention of validating the existence of a realm or entity 'supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, describes a universe which can be - and perhaps should be - envisaged in the place of the traditional one.' The primary goal of the Musée Patamécanique is to explore the meaning and possibilities of Patamechanics [...]" [1]

You are invited on a curatorial tour of Musée Patamécanique, a hybrid institution; part museum, part laboratory, part carnival for the senses.

Le Musee is open thru March of 2007 on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings between 6:30 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. The exact location of the exhibit is revealed only after you have scheduled your tour, however we can tell you that Le Musée is located in Bristol R.I.

If you would like to read a recent review of Musée Patamécanique, please follow this link.

If you would like to learn more about the institution or to schedule your tour please follow this link: http://museepata.org/

[1] Taken from the website of Le Musée Patamécanique. Please refer to this site for related footnotes and quote attributions.

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

December 01, 2006

Eye or Ear:

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Walter Benjamin on Optical and Acoustical Media

UCSB Conference Explores the Work of Essayist, Philosopher Walter Benjamin
Santa Barbara, Calif.) – Five scholars from the United States and Germany will meet to discuss the work of the early 20th-century philosopher, essayist, and translator Walter Benjamin at a one-day conference at UC Santa Barbara on Dec. 1. The event, "Eye or Ear: Walter Benjamin on Optical and Acoustical Media," is free and the public is invited to attend any or all five lectures.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Organized by the Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies and co-sponsored by the Program of Comparative Literature and the Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture, the conference will investigate the relationship between three aspects of Benjamin's work: his language theory, media theory, and contributions to radio programming of the time. It begins at 10:30 a.m. in the McCune Conference Room, Humanities & Social Sciences Building 6020. A reception at 5:15 p.m. follows the final lecture.

Speakers include Wolfgang Hagen, professor of German at Humboldt University in Berlin; Rob Ryder, doctoral candidate in German at Northwestern University; Wolf Kittler, professor of German and comparative literature at UCSB; Michael Levine, professor of German at Rutgers University; and Bettine Menke, professor of German and comparative literature at the Erfurt University in Germany and currently a visiting professor at UCSB.

Menke's residency at UCSB is supported by a grant from the Max Kade Foundation, which promotes the study of both German and German-American history and works to increase understanding between the people of Germany and the United States. The foundation funds diverse educational initiatives in both Germany and the United States.

"For the first time we have a Kade visiting professor at UCSB and one of her areas of specialty is Walter Benjamin and acoustics," Elisabeth Weber, professor and chair of German, Slavic, and Semitic Studies at UCSB, said of Menke. "Since this is an unexplored field in Benjamin's scholarship, we decided to have a conference on it."

Benjamin is considered one of the most influential voices of 20th-century European thought, Weber added, noting his work has contributed to literary studies, film and media theory, and translation studies around the world.

The first lecture begins at 10:45 a.m. and features Hagen speaking from Germany via the Internet on the topic of Benjamin's silent work for the German radio. Ryder will follow at 11:30 a.m. with "Shell-Shock: Sounding the Acoustic Unconscious," and Kittler will begin the afternoon session with "Benjamin's Aura: Breathing, Seeing, Listening" at 2 p.m.

Levine will speak on "Eavesdropping on Tradition: Benjamin's Reading of Kafka" at 2:45 p.m., and Menke will present the final lecture, "Echo( es ): The Evanescent Presence of Sound in Benjamin's Texts," at 3:30.

Posted by jo at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2006

Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City

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Upgrade! Boston

Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City :: November 30-December 3, 2006 :: International Upgrade! organizations and their artists will converge in Oklahoma City to present art and ideas to each other and the community in the second annual international symposium. Included in the event will be workshops on art and technology, audio/video performances and presentations, and exhibitions of works by international and regional artists representing this year’s theme: DIY (Do-It-Yourself). Upgrade! Boston will contribute the following:

DIY or Die: An Upgrade! New York, Turbulence, and Rhizome Net Art Exhibition :: In celebration of their respective ten-year anniversaries, Turbulence and Rhizome collaborated with Upgrade! New York to present an exhibition of works that they commissioned or presented over the course of their histories. The term D.I.Y. (or do-it-yourself) expresses an independent ethos, one that encourages cultural producers to create and distribute work outside mainstream or commercial systems and often in direct confrontation with them.

In this case, D.I.Y refers not only to works in the show, many of which create alternate models for collaborative artmaking, community building, and media distribution, but to the organizations themselves whose missions--to commission and present digital art work--had no tradition or cultural niche to call upon. Historically, net artists have included audiences in their work; many created calls to action that compel their audiences to intervene and contribute their own ideas, stories and histories. From re-purposed commercial software to homegrown digital knitting applications and works that offer alternative constructions of identity and nationality, D.I.Y. OR DIE presents a cross-section of Internet-based art that, much like punk and grassroots activism has the urgency and invention required to change existing standards of art practice.

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Imaging Oklahoma City by John (Craig) Freeman :: Participants will go out into the streets to produce the material for "Imaging Oklahoma City." "Imaging Place," is a place-based, virtual reality art project that takes the form of a user navigated, interactive computer program combining panoramic photography, digital video, and three-dimensional technologies to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities.

Artist and educator John (Craig) Freeman's work has been exhibited internationally including at the Kaliningrad Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts, Russia; and Ciberart Bilbao, Spain. In 1992 he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Lucy Lippard cites Freeman's work in "The Lure of the Local".

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networked_performance: participatory art by Helen Thorington :: The networked_performance blog chronicles network-enabled practice, discloses a wide range of perspectives, and uncovers commonalities. Artists are utilizing technologies that are inexpensive, mobile and wirelessly networked. Thorington will review works - from telematic and locative events to wearables, and responsive objects and environments - and show how they use objects and events from everyday life to create work that is characteristically hybrid, performative and relational.

Helen Thorington is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally. Thorington has created compositions for film, installation and dance. She performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. Her articles on networked musical performances are published in the December 2005 and February/April 2006 issues of Contemporary Music Review.

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Participation, Technology, and Musical Performance by Jason Freeman :: Jason Freeman breaks down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using new technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. He will discuss "Glimmer", "N.A.G.", and "Graph Theory" which connects composition, listening, and concert performance by coupling an acoustic work for solo violin/cello to an interactive web site. There will be a ten minute performance of "Graph Theory."

Jason Freeman received his D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University. His music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, the So Percussion Group, the Nieuw Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Evan Ziporyn; and his interactive installations and software art have been exhibited at the Lincoln Center Festival, and the Transmediale Festival.

A Day in the Life with Burak Arikan

A DAY IN THE LIFE is a platform for simultaneous global performances and a base for international collaborations. Urban spaces in MUNICH, OKLAHOMA CITY, BOSTON and ISTANBUL will be connected with each other via a streaming video server. The full performance will only be complete when all four locations are viewed simultaneously. A DAY IN THE LIFE was conceived by Horst Konietzny and Tamiko Thiel of Upgrade! Munich.

BURAK ARIKAN is contributing Upgrade! Stock Market, in which participating Upgrade nodes (Boston, Istanbul, Munich and Oklahoma City) will become traded companies. Each Upgrade node will have 100 shares. Sensors mounted at the entrance to the gallery will register how many people are in the room at any one time and send this information to a central server. Each node will gain or lose value depending on the number of people in its local space.

Burak Arikan is an artist and designer creating systems that evolve with the interactions of people and machines. He shows the instances of these systems through diverse media including prints, animation, software, electronics, and physical materials. His work has recently been shown at Ars Electronica, and the Venice Biennale. Arikan recently completed his master's degree at the MIT Media Laboratory in the Physical Language Workshop (PLW) led by John Maeda.

Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City
John (Craig) Freeman
A Day in the Life
DIY or DIE
Helen Thorington
Jason Freeman
DIY Recipe [PDF] [catalogue entry for Upgrade! Boston]

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

November 27, 2006

First Generation:

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Art and the Moving Image, 1963-1986

First Generation: Art and the Moving Image, 1963-1986 :: November 7, 2006 - April 2, 2007 :: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, c/ Santa Isabel, 52, 28012 Madrid (Spain).

First Generation: Art and the Moving Image, 1963-1986 has the intention of presenting in a contextualized manner the historic core of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía's video collection. It has been built up in recent years with the goal of laying solid foundations upon which the collection could grow. Curated by Berta Sichel, director of the Museum's Audiovisual Department, the exhibition aims to reconstruct a history which has been neglected for a long time via the acquired works and with the support of a small yet significant group of works on loan to cover existing gaps. The exhibition has been organized around the different approaches and ideas of the artists who worked with video during the first 25 years of this medium. These include the inspiration of Fluxus, the critique of commercial television, the relationship between the medium and the viewer, feminism, performance and the legacy of minimalism and conceptual art.

Not a thematic exhibition, it does not try to follow a strict chronological order either. Rather, it is a vision of how and why a technology of recording, broadcasting and reproducing sound and images, which emerged in 1950 —and technically different than cinema— became an artistic medium. It is also a “study” of the influence technology and mass culture on the social and artistic changes of an era, at a time when cultural acceleration and the cross-pollination of ideas was beginning. In this sense, the year l963 is a landmark for the history of video. Wolf Vostell showed for the first time the installation 6 TV Dé-Coll/age at Smolin Gallery, New York City. Nam June Paik, then living in Germany, had his first exhibition at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. Music Electronic Television consisted of twelve altered TV sets, four adapted pianos in the same spirit of John Cage and, in the most genuine Fluxus Spirit, the head of a freshly-slaughtered ox hanging above the g allery's entrance.

1986 was not chosen randomly as the final year. In this timeframe a group of artists from the first generation had achieved international recognition and the young artists started to work in much larger media arts practices, using a wide range of hybrids which have opened a new chapter in the history of art and moving images. The mid 1980s also reflected a change in criticism, with theories of postmodernism and post colonialism raising questions of historiography and subjectivity. Consequently, the year this exhibition closes the term video art was already considered historic.

To tell this story, the exhibition diplays 32 video installations by the main artists belonging to this first generation: Eugènia Balcells, Dara Birnbaum, Jaime Davidovich, Juan Downey, VALIE EXPORT, Rafael França, David Hall, Gary Hill, Takahiko iimura, Joan Jonas, Shigeko Kubota, Thierry Kuntzel, David Lamelas, Mary Lucier, Antoni Muntadas, Nam June Paik, Ulrike Rosenbach, Carolee Schneemann, Ira Schneider, Bill Viola, Wolf Vostell, Roger Welch, Robert Whitman and Hannah Wilke; as well as 14 single-channel projections by: Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Peter Campus, Douglas Davis, Anna Bella Geiger, Joan Logue, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujín, Bruce Nauman, Otto Piene and Joan Rabascall/Benet Rossell.

The exhibition closes as it opens: with works by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell. Mirage Stage (1986) by Paik, and a video recording of his performance with the cellist Charlotte Moorman, made by Otto Piene the same year; and New York Stuhl (l976) by Vostell that immerses us in a state of total amnesia about the origin of information.

A reference area consisting of 80 single-channel videos in a database complements the content of the show. This format allows visitors to make their own connections and discoveries, to interpret and reinterpret the history of the first generation of video artists, and to arrive at a new understanding of video work from its beginnings up to 1986.

For more information and photographic material please contact:
e-mail: prensa3.mncars@cars.mcu.es, tel: +34 91 774 1005, fax: +34 91 774 1009

Posted by jo at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

UpStage

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Open Walk-Thru and ADA Swaray

The last UpStage open walk-thru for 2006 will be combined with the last ADA Swaray for the year, and held on Wednesday December 6 at 9:00 pm NZ time. To join the online festivities, just point your browser here at party time (we have some surprises up our cyber-sleeves!). To find your local time, go here. If you'd like to log in and play, email me for a username.

Helen Varley Jamieson: helen[at]creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2006

Networking

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The Net as an Artwork

Networking: The Net as an Artwork represents a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of the realities which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the formation of Italian hacker communities.

Written by Tatiana Bazzichelli, with the preface of Derrick De Kerckhove and the epilogue of the videoartist Simonetta Fadda. Networking means to create nets of relations, by sharing experiences and ideas in order to communicate and experiment artistically and where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the public, act on the same level.

In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years of experimentation a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed. Active in underground environments, these projects use diverse media (computers, video, television, radio and magazines) and deal with technological experimentation, or hacktivism, depending on the terminology used in Italy, where the political component is a central theme.

The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, diffused through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is also a central theme.

The book describes the evolution of the italian hacktivism and net culture from the Eighties till today. At the same time, it builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who become networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to neoavant-garde artistic practices of the 1960’s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail art, Neoism and Luther Blissett.

A path which began in BBS, alternative web platforms diffused in Italy half way through the 1980's even before Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art of different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others. [download the book (PDF)] [via]

Posted by jo at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! International

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DIY in Oklahoma City

Upgrade! New York announces Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City :: Nov 30-Dec 3 :: ARTISTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD CONVERGE IN downtown OKLAHOMA CITY :: Traveling across the globe from cities such as Berlin, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Seoul and Salvador, artists will come together in Oklahoma City to present art and ideas to each other and the community in the second annual meeting of Upgrade! International. The Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City symposium, to be held November 30 – December 3, 2006, is an opportunity for local and international artists to exchange ideas about the developing field of new-media arts.

Open to the public, the four day symposium will feature exhibitions, workshops, presentations, lectures, screenings and performances by new-media artists. Topics such as Water Testing and Art, Making Art Interactive and Social Mapping as a Medium of Self-Expression will be explored in lectures and workshops. Interactive installations will offer participants a chance to explore an abstract universe, hear experimental audio works or experience the pulse of other participants through a created environment. A variety of short film and experimental video works will be screened at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Noble Theatre as well as in a Do-It-Yourself Drive-In Theatre setting. "DIY or Die," a net art exhibition featuring 25 artists will open at IAO gallery. The exhibition celebrates the 10th anniversary of Rhizome and Turbulence, and was curated in collaboration with Upgrade! New York.

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Three downtown locations will host the symposiums events and exhibitions, with participants moving between venues, giving them an opportunity to experience more of Oklahoma City. Untitled [ArtSpace] at 1 Northeast 3rd, Individual Artists of Oklahoma at 811 N. Broadway and The Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Noble Theatre at 415 Couch Dr. will provide a diversity of spaces for the array of activities.

A global network of international artists, The Upgrade! is united by art, technology and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. The Upgrade! International: DIY Oklahoma City symposium is presented by Untitled [ArtSpace], Individual Artists of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, The University of Oklahoma School of Art, The University of Central Oklahoma School of Art, The Oklahoma City Museum of Art Film Program, Upgrade! International Oklahoma City and with additional support from Kirkpatrick Foundation, Allied Arts and Oklahoma Arts Council.

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art + tech + community.

About our partner: Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre.

Posted by jo at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

V2_ presents

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TANGENT_CONSPIRACY

V2_ presents TANGENT_CONSPIRACY :: Friday 1 December, 2006, 20:00 hrs :: Live stream: & IRC chat: irc.v2.nl/#tangents.

Long before a clandestine military-academic collaboration created the 1960's ARPANET the speculative mechanisms of conspiracy theories have fueled global events. The Internet and its growing Web 2.0 counterpart have moved beyond the realm of information exchange and redundancy to become the real-time fora of narrative construction. Fuelling and fanning all forms of popular speculation the net now creates its own post-modern mythologies of world domination, corporate control and government induced fear fetishism. If the net itself is not a conspirative construct designed to control and influence global intellectual expression then, rumour has it, it plays the central role in implying as much. Has the Internet now become a self-fulfilling prophecy of its own destructive speculation? V2_, in collaboration with the Media Design group of the Piet Zwart Institute, invites you to join Florian Cramer, Claudia Borges, Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico in an evening of net-based conspiracy built upon abrasive speculation, conjectural divination and devious web bots.

Alessandro Ludovico, editor in chief of Neural, has been eavesdropped upon electronically for most of his life due to his hacktivist cultural activities. Promoting cultural resistance to the pervasiveness of markets, he is an active supporter of ideas and practices that challenge the flatness of capitalism through self-organized cooperation and cultural production. Since 2005 he has been collaborating with Ubermorgen and Paolo Cirio in conceptually conspiring against the smartest marketing techniques of major online corporations.

Florian Cramer, course director of Piet Zwart Institute Media Design, had his education sentimentale as a member of the Neoist Cultural Conspiracy and is rumored to be involved in numerous anonymous collective efforts. His interest in plots, networks and signs brought him to study literature and investigate networks, speculative programming and cultural semiotics. Next to encouraging hacker approaches to information design, he currently researches the subliminal impact of obscenity on the human mind.

tatibrazil aka Maria Claudia de Azevedo Borges hails from São Paulo, Brazil where she graduated in Clinical Psychology. Her official life as an artist began in Rotterdam where, after 10 years of busying herself with oil paint, she was seduced by the Internet. As part of her practice exploring women's issues she trains and designs critical bots using female identity, language and narratives. Her methods are highly unorthodox, using the material of conversation and jargon as a means of information gathering. Currently, it is claimed, that she collaborates with the ethereal being known as Joy Evidence. http://www.d-tati.org/bot/
http://tati.sohosted.com/retrieveme/index.html

Hans Bernhard is a St. Moritz based artist whose true madness first surfaced when he started up the internet-underground cult etoy in 1994. In 1999 he and three other founding members of etoy bought the mother company etoy.holding while investing dot-com money in a Sofia based software firm (esof ltd). During the web site action Vote-Auction to buy and sell votes during the 2000 U.S. presidential elections Hans and lizvlx (UBERMORGEN.COM) were sued by 12 U.S. states, investigated by U.S. federal attorney Janet Reno, observed by the FBI, the CIA and the Austrian secret police and put under NSA surveillance. Afterwards he initiated NAZI~LINE (with Christoph Schlingensief), a neo-nazi re-integration project. Other projects currently getting him into serious trouble with German/Austrian secret services and corporate lawyers include GWEI (Google Will Eat Itself), the Injunction Generator and Amazon Noir. BERMORGEN.COM / etoy.holding http://ubermorgen.com

TANGENT_CONSPIRACY will also feature sisterO and The Algorithmic Oracle who will reveal your place in the manifold of time with their *Media Divination 2.0. *Bring an image or article of personal interest and be ready to disclose your date of birth ...

Andrea Fiore, The Algorithmic Oracle, is currently a second year student of Media Design at the Piet Zwart Institute. He holds a degree in communication sciences from the University of Rome with a thesis on software as cultural artifact and spends much of his time data mining, profiling, conjuring social software, and exploring digital archives and privacy issues.

Nancy Mauro-Flude's sisterO project involved an extended period of research in Colombia looking at new & old media at the Society of Ethnomedicine; this resulted in a series of transmission-based performances. Her work as a performing artist refers to the history of political cabaret, mesmerism and the experiential worlds carried in their wake. Currently a Master's candidate in Media Design, Piet Zwart Institute.

TANGENT_CONSPIRACY will also be streamed live via www.v2.nl. *We welcome and encourage external online participation to V2_'s moderated IRC channel: irc.v2.nl/#tangents. During the event we will be introducing V2_'s new chat bot, the incorrigible and witty CyB!

Posted by jo at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

Internet Research 8.0: Let's Play!

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Call for papers

Internet Research 8.0: Let's Play! :: International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers :: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada :: Workshops: October 17, 2007 :: AoIR conference: October 18 20, 2007 :: CALL FOR PAPERS :: Deadline for submissions: February 1, 2007.

Let's Play The Internet better, internet/s - is at once part of the background hum of the developed world and an exotic realm of fantasy and play. It is an essential, mundane part of daily life, and simultaneously radical, revolutionary, profane, and fun. Internet/s invite us to play. We surf, blog, role play, and chat in the interest of work, learning, and play. Serious technologies and applications invite playing around as a way to learn how to use them. Playful applications take root in serious business, as online chat becomes a business communication tool.

Games find applications in education, business, and war. Playful blogging evolves into a social and political force to be reckoned with. We play with our identity online, shaping current and future roles offline. The play goes onS Our conference theme of play invites empirical research and theoretical reflection on how human beings "seriously play" with one another on, via and through internet/s, on local, regional, and global scales. We call for papers that explore the intersection of the serious and the playful, the sacred and the profane, the revolutionary and the mundane, and fantasy and the reality.

CALL FOR PAPERS

We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and communities, that address the (playful) blurring of boundaries online. The following TOPICS are suggestions simply intended to spark initial reflection and creativity:

* Mundanity implies normalcy, and thereby, the efforts to understand and regulate online interactions in ways that are analogous to and consistent with offline practices and norms (e.g., privacy protection, norms for community interaction, efforts to regulate information flows involving pornography, hate speech, etc.). As internet/s become interwoven with ordinary life on multiple levels, in what ways do these alter ordinary life, and/or how do prevailing community and cultural practices reshape and 'tame' such internet/s and the interactions they facilitate?

* Global diffusion: how do internet/s, as they exponentially diffuse throughout the globe facilitate flows of information, capital, labor, immigration and play and what are the implications of these new flows for life offline?

* eLearning: how can such practices as distance learning and serious games utilize the liminal domain (the threshold world of dream and myth, in which important new skills, insights, and abilities are gained in the process of growing up) to go beyond traditional ways of learning? Are they necessarily better, or easier, to use or to learn from?

* Identity, community, and global communications: how will processes of identity play and development continue, and/or change as the role and place of the Internet in peoples lives shift in new ways including the expansion of mobile access to internet/s?

* E-health: what do new developments in sharing medical information online and expanding telemedicine technologies into new domains imply for traditional physician-centered medicine, patient privacy, etc.?

* Digital art: from downloading commercially-offered ringtones to facilitating cross-cultural / cross-disciplinary collaborations in the creation of art, internet/s expand familiar aesthetic experiences and open up new possibilities for aesthetic creativity: how are traditional understandings of aesthetic experience affected and how do new creative / aesthetic / playful possibilities affect human "users" of art?

* Games and gaming: the average gamer in North America is now a twenty-something whose lifestyle is more mainstream than adolescent. As games and gamers "grow up" and as games continue their diffusion into new demographic categories while they simultaneously continue to push the envelopes of Internet and computer technologies what can we discern of new possibilities for identity play, community building, and so forth?

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference theme, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on that theme. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet beyond the conference theme - e.g., in CSCW and other forms of online collaboration, distance learning, etc. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non-AoIR members.

SUBMISSIONS

We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference papers, but we also encourage proposals for creative or aesthetic presentations that are distinct from a traditional written paper.

We also welcome proposals for roundtable sessions that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, as well as organized panel proposals that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme.

* PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 500-750 words
* CREATIVE OR AESTHETIC PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-750 words
* PANELS - submit a 500-750 word description of the panel theme, plus 250-500 word abstract for each paper or presentation
* ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - submit a statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each individual is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. A person may also propose a panel session, which may include a second paper that they are presenting OR submit a roundtable proposal. You may be listed as co-author on additional papers as long as you are not presenting them.

Detailed information about submission and review is available at the conference submission website http://conferences.aoir.org [available December 1, 2006]. All proposals must be submitted electronically through this site.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS

Several publishing opportunities are expected to be available through journals, based on peer-review of full papers. The website will contain more details.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Graduate students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Any student paper is eligible for consideration for the AoIR graduate student award. Students wishing to be a candidate for the Student Award must send a final paper by June 30, 2007.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Prior to the conference, there will be a limited number of pre-conference workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose, methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as well as explaining its relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections. These proposals and all inquires regarding pre-conference proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to the Conference Chair and no later than March 31, 2007.

DEADLINES

* Submission site available: December 1, 2006
* Proposal submission deadline: February 1, 2007
* Presenter notification: March 31, 2007
* Final workshop submission deadline: March 31, 2007
* Submission for student award competition: June 30, 2007
* Submission for conference archive: July 31, 2007

SUBMISSION OF FULL PAPERS

Full papers and a conference registration by at least one of the paper authors must be in place by July 31, 2007 for papers to be presented.

Formatting: Please submit papers in PDF with simple formatting, using sans serif font and in-text referencing. If you can't submit in PDF, use DOC or RTF format.

Submission process: Submit full papers to aoir2007[at]gmail.com by July 31, 2007.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Program Chair: Dr. Mia Consalvo, Ohio University consalvo[at]ohio.edu
Conference Chair: Dr. Richard Smith, Simon Fraser University smith[at]sfu.ca
Vice-President of AoIR: Dr. Charles Ess, Drury University cmess[at]drury.edu

Association Website: http://www.aoir.org
Conference Website: http://conferences.aoir.org

Posted by jo at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

After convergence, what connects?

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Call for papers

After convergence, what connects? :: Call for papers :: fibreculture has established itself as Australasia's leading forum for discussion of internet theory, culture, and research. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that explores the issues and ideas of concern and interest to both the Fibreculture network and wider social formations.

Papers are invited for the 'After convergence' issue of the Fibreculture Journal, to be published early in 2008. Guest editors are Caroline Bassett (Sussex, UK), Maren Hartmann (Bremen, Germany) and Kate O'Riordan (Lancaster/Sussex, UK).

Everything that arises does not converge. A more variegated landscape emerges as processes of digitalization, crystallizations of an intrinsically technological-social, continue re-shaping cultures and re-working societies, not in their image, but into something new. It is increasingly obvious that there is no digital behemoth, no single form, no single function, no New World Order. Rather a series of reconfigurations, reformulations, new functions, new contents, new spaces, new grounds, new uses, have emerged and are emerging within global media networks.

In response to the (not unexpected) non-arrival of the unifying beast, which is to say in response to the perceived exhaustion of convergence (or the re-definition of its limits), new disciplinary islands are being declared with 'keep out' and 'invented here' signs all over their beaches. In other words there has been a balkanization of techno-cultural investigation. Thus gaming scholars define themselves against internet scholars, or film scholars, locatives stand distinct from screeners. Particular groups of sub-specialists claim particular modes of inquiry: ethnographers for everyday life, speculative theory for digital art, for instance. Indeed, entire vocabularies, originally invoked in a spirit of general experimentation, are now corralled, restricted and defended by particular groups. If these vocabularies often seize up in the process, refusing to say more than they were meant to say, and in particular refusing the unorthodox connections between the empirical and the speculative, the possible and the desirable, that gave them their energy in the first place, nobody seems to notice.

So, there is no behemoth. At the same time we insist that connections are produced and so a question we consider worth addressing is not what unites digital forms as one, but what connects them together as many. Further we want to explore how these connections are made. We are less interested in doing that through mainstreaming a particular critical approach (which is to say drawing different areas back under one critical umbrella, making that the connection), than we are in trying to think about exploring/defining/critiquing some of the shared characteristics of different digital media formations. We believe that despite the exhaustion of convergence metaphors, and the rise of disciplinary sub-divisions, these connections remain crucial.

Papers addressing but not limited to the following topics are welcome:

* Media/Medium Theory
* Difference between and specificity of New Media forms
* Issues, Limits, Problems of Convergence.
* Re-thinking the vocabulary of Affect/Emotion/Perception
* Histories of New Media Theory
* 'Technology and Cultural Form' revisited?
* Methodologies

Deadlines:

* 250 word abstracts: due February 28th 2007
* Completed Paper: due September 30th 2007
* Expected Publication: February 28th 2008.

There are guidelines for the format and submission of contributions at http://journal.fibreculture.org. These guidelines need to be followed in all cases. Contributions should be sent electronically, as word attachments, to:

Guest editors:
Caroline Bassett (c.bassett[at]sussex.ac.uk)
Maren Hartmann (maren.hartmann[at]uni-bremen)
Kate O'Riordan (k.oriordan[at]lancaster.ac.uk)

Posted by jo at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

ELECTRA WITH EMMA HEDDITCH

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NOISE ARCHIVE AND 'WE'RE ALIVE, LET'S MEET!'

HER NOISE ARCHIVE AND 'WE'RE ALIVE, LET'S MEET!' in residence at LANDMARK, BERGEN KUNSTHALL :: ELECTRA WITH EMMA HEDDITCH :: 27 November - 1 December 2006, 12 - 1am daily (except Friday 12 – 8pm) ::
Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers Alle 5, 5015 Bergen :: Tel 00 47 55 55 93 10.

Electra opens up its extensive archive of sound based work by women and invites visitors to Landmark to take part in a range of events and to contribute to the archive.

Her Noise was an exhibition which took place at South London Gallery in 2005 with satellite events at Tate Modern and the Goethe-Institut, London, curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hide Neset of Electra. Her Noise gathered international artists who use sound to investigate social relations, inspire action or uncover hidden soundscapes. The exhibition included newly commissioned works by Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether, Hayley Newman, Kaffe Matthews, Christina Kubisch, Emma Hedditch and Marina Rosenfeld. A parallel ambition of the project was to investigate music and sound histories in relation to gender, and the curators set out to create a lasting resource in this area through building up an archive.

ABOUT THE HER NOISE ARCHIVE:The backbone of the Her Noise project is the Her Noise Archive, developed by Electra with artist Emma Hedditch, comprising the collected research materials, interview and performance footage recorded by the curators and a number of guests during the development of the project.

The archive contains books, fanzines, records, CDs, catalogues and other ephemera, as well as exclusive on camera interviews and concert footage with artists including Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, Diamanda Galas, Else Marie Pade, Jutta Koether, Marina Rosenfeld, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Blechdom, Kembra Pfahler, Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Peaches and others.

HER NOISE ARCHIVE AT LANDMARK, BERGEN KUNSTHALL: The Her Noise Archive will take up residence at Landmark between 27 November and 1 December. Combining a research area, listening posts and a viewing space, the archive is open for audience to browse books, catalogues and magazines, listen to records or view videos.

In addition, London based artist Emma Hedditch will present ‘We’re Alive, Let’s Meet!’ - a series of ‘Get Togethers’ to exchange knowledge, discuss and contribute to the Her Noise Archive. These meetings will take the form of discussions and screenings with specially invited guests and visitors. All events are free and open to everyone.

‘WE’RE ALIVE, LET’S MEET!’ EVENTS:

Tuesday 28 November, 6 - 8pm: HER NOISE DOCUMENTARY; Duration: 90 minutes; Followed by discussion with Emma Hedditch, Lina Dzuverovic and Irene Revell (Electra) ::The video documents the development of the Her Noise project between 2001 and 2005 including interviews with a range of artists involved in the project including Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Peaches, Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Pfahler, Chicks On Speed, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Emma Hedditch and the show’s curators. The documentary features excerpts from live performances from Erase Errata, Kevin Blechdom, Lydia Lunch and events during the exhibition at South London Gallery: Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether and Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Christina Carter, Heather Leigh Murray, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats), Spider And The Webs, Partyline, Marina Rosenfeld’s “Emotional Orchestra” at Tate Modern, and footage compiled for the “Men In Experimental Music” video made during the development of the Her Noise project by the curators and Kim Gordon.

Wednesday 29th November, 6pm - 8pm: HOW AND WHAT ARE WE DOCUMENTING? Introduced by Emma Hedditch :: A discussion of the politics of documentation – looking at history, representation and visibility. Participants are invited to bring their own materials to show and explain, or donate a copy to the Her Noise Archive.

Thursday 30th November, 6pm - 8pm: HERE? HAPPENING? :: An invitation for local organisations and artists to share their knowledge of women working within experimental sound and music. A discussion of local conditions in comparison to what is perceived to be happening elsewhere.

Friday 1st December 6pm - 8pm: CLOSING AND TEA PARTY :: A reflection and conclusion on the days of the Her Noise Archive at Landmark. Audience are invited to bring materials to be catalogued, play records, dance, show video clips, bring books, photocopy, socialize, drink tea and eat cake.

ABOUT EMMA HEDDITCH

Emma Hedditch (1972 Somerset, England) is a visual artist and writer living in London. Her productions include: “A Pattern” (since 2000), an ongoing collectively shot and edited video; “This Is What We Have Done, And This Is What We Are Doing” (2005), animated drawings by persons in the context of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; “Video Home, Come On” (2004), a home-video viewing session and archive, with Electra and Electric Studios, Brixton; “A Political Feeling, I Hope So” (2004), Cubitt Gallery, London, a social situation exploring conditions of belonging. Ongoing research into Feminist thought and writing has informed much of her activity, as well as a desire to expose the economics of art production. She has been engaged in collaborative dialogue with The Copenhagen Free University since 2001, and has worked for Cinenova Women’s Film and Video distributor since 1999.

ABOUT ELECTRA

Electra is a London-based contemporary arts agency founded in 2003. Electra commissions and produces artworks across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts, which it presents in the UK and internationally. Recent projects include a film/performance commission “Perfect Partner” by Kim Gordon, Tony Oursler and Phil Morrison (Barbican Centre), group exhibition “Her Noise” (South London Gallery), “Sound And The Twentieth Century Avant Garde” lecture series (Tate Modern and Stavanger, Norway), soundtrack consultancy on films by Daria Martin working with composers Zeena Parkins and Maja Ratkje respectively, “The Sounds Of Christmas” installation by Christian Marclay (Tate Modern), “Emotional Orchestra” and “Sheer Frost Orchestra” by Marina Rosenfeld (Tate Modern), “Once Seen” Programme for The British Council (Oslo and Tromso, Norway).

Electra gratefully acknowledges support from Arts Council England

This residence is a collaboration with British Council Norway

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2006

THURSDAY CLUB: MARK D'INVERNO

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CELL –An Interdisciplinary Investigation

THURSDAY CLUB with MARK D'INVERNO :: Thursday November 30, 6-8pm in the Seminar Rooms, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Corss, SE14 6NW :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

CELL –An Interdisciplinary Investigation Into Adult Stem Cell Behaviour :: The CELL project was an interdisciplinary collaboration over 4 years that included an artist, a stem cell researcher, a curator, an ALife programmer and a mathematician. It employed a range of approaches to investigate stem cell behaviour. This included agent-based models; simulations and visualisations to model stem cell organisation in silico as well as art installations, which reflected on how different disciplines use representations and data visualisation.

The impact on all members of the team was very significant and it motivated Mark d’Inverno along with the artist Jane Prophet to set up an interdisciplinary research cluster (funded jointly by both the science council and the arts council in the UK) to further investigate the potential of interdisciplinary collaborative research in general.

In this talk I will reflect on my experience of this process of interdisciplinary collaboration and attempt to lay down some ideas relating to the minimal conditions that need to be in place for it to flourish, as well as enumerate some of the major obstacles.

Mark d'Inverno is Professor of Computer Science since 2001. In 2006 he took up a Chair at Goldsmiths College, University of London, principally to continue his investigations into interdisciplinary work. He has been interested in formal, principled approaches to modeling both natural and artificial systems in a computational setting. The main strand to this research, focuses on the application of formal methods in providing models of intelligent agent and multi-agent systems. This work encompasses many aspects of agent cognition and agent society including action, perception, deliberation, communication, negotiation and social norms. In recent years, ideas from both formal modeling and agent-based design, have been applied in a more practical and interdisciplinary settings such as biological modeling, computer-generated music, art and design.


For more information on the Thursday Club check
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email maria x: drp01mc[at]gold.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2006

Radio Communities:

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The Other Side of the Electronic Divide

Radio Communities: The Other Side of the Electronic Divide :: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 – 6:30 p.m. :: The Vera List Center For Art And Politics :: The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, New York City :: Admission: $8, free for all students, as well as New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID.

Radio creates a broadly accessible dimension in which various communities can meet, exchange, discuss, and develop ideas on their own terms, often free of commercial and governmental constraints and regulations. It is thus transforming the way we think of notions of geography and public place. Since cyberspace and advanced technologies in media have not yet reached all of the developing world, broadcast radio is still the easiest medium for sharing knowledge across borders and in spite of the restraints of time and space—a quality that also informs artistic radio endeavors. As a non-visual medium, radio has also gained additional prominence and validity in politically charged situations, where a certain degree of anonymity is necessary. What political, cultural and humanitarian goals can be served by this medium exclusively? How does radio function as a tool for shared information? This panel discusses the ability of airwaves to keep the world connected near and far, and where other technology fails.

Posted by jo at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

New Media and Social Memory

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What is important to remember?

Symposium: New Media and Social Memory (Save the Date, details to follow.) :: Thursday, January 18, 2007, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

What is important to remember? This public symposium will explore how the canonical historical record is created and maintained in the digital age by "memory institutions" such as museums, libraries, and archives, and how digital media artists are influencing / hacking / critiquing this construction of social memory. These issues will be explored in concrete terms by focusing on the tangible case study of preserving digital art as emblematic of the larger social issues in preserving digital culture.

Works of digital and Internet art, performance, installation, Conceptual, and other variable-media art represent some of the most compelling and significant artistic creations of our time. These works constitute a history of alternative artistic practice, but because of their ephemeral, technical, or otherwise variable natures, they also present significant obstacles to accurate documentation, access, and preservation.

Without strategies for preservation, many of these vital works-and possibly whole genres such as early Internet art-will be lost to future generations. Long-term strategies must closely examine the nature of ephemeral art and identify core aspects of these works to preserve. New media gives us the challenge and the opportunity to revisit the question "what is important to remember?" on a long-term, public scale.

This event is part of a consortium project, Archiving the Avant Garde, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Contact: Richard Rinehart (Rinehart[at]berkeley.edu).

Posted by jo at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

FUTURESONIC 2007

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10-12 May, Manchester UK

FUTURESONIC 2007 :: 10-12 May, Manchester UK :: Futuresonic, the urban festival of electronic arts and music, is moving from July to May, back to the Spring date it occupied in 2004. See below for next year's highlights and special advance discounts on
delegate passes.

FUTUREVISUAL: In 2007 the centrepiece of Futuresonic Live will be a celebration of all things audiovisual and a homage to 40 years of multimedia events. 40 years ago there were the first multimedia events of the kind that we would understand today. While the rest of the world was celebrating the soft-centred Summer of Love, a fusion of artforms and a crossover between avant garde and popular was taking place. This was the moment when events like Futuresonic became possible...

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of these seminal events, Futuresonic Live goes back to the future - revisiting one of the inspirations of the first Futuresonic festival in 1996 - to look at the cutting edge of immersive sound and image today.

URBAN PLAY: Urban Play is the art and technology strand of the festival featuring exhibitions, workshops and interactive projects in the city streets. It was introduced in Futuresonic's 10th anniversary year, reflecting Futuresonic's focus since 2004 on artworks in urban space, and has since been mirrored in other events in the UK and Europe.

Thirty years after Brian Eno's MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS, Futuresonic 2007's Urban Play presents ART FOR SHOPPING CENTRES, an exhibition of interactive artworks in a major shopping centre.

Urban Play will also feature FREE-MEDIA activities in association with Mongrel, MediaShed and Access Space, including a UK first implementation of the free-media Video Toolkit developed by MediaShed and Eyebeam (more TBA).

EVNTS: A competition and showcase for the best new and ground breaking events from around the world.

EVNTS is a strand of the Futuresonic festival which enables artist groups and event organisers to participate in the festival. Since its introduction in 2005, EVNTS has grown into a community of people who each year return to give the festival an extra edge.

INVITATION FOR SUBMISSIONS: Futuresonic now invites anyone working in music or media arts to take part in EVNTS 2007, with the EVNT Competition offering financial support for a limited number of events.

For further details announced soon. Visit here for more info, or sign up to Futuresonic's subscriber list to receive regular updates.

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT: A major international conference exploring the creative and social potential of new technologies, bringing together leading figures to
explore "a whole new way of doing things in the air".

In 2007 a focus of the Social Technologies Summit is FREE-MEDIA. Free-media is about finding inspiration and resources in our built and natural environment that were previously dismissed as being without value or irrelevant. It doesn't cost much because it makes use of public domain Free and Open Source Software, and recycles freely available old equipment, waste materials and junk (FOSS). Free-media increases access to media technologies, especially to the people who need it most and can afford it the least, and lowers environmental impact of the media we produce and consume.

The 2007 Summit will also host a network meeting for ENVIRONMENT 2.0, a new initiative joining the dots between locative media and environmental calamity, being launched by Futuresonic to assess and offset the environmental footprint of future arts and culture.

And it will play host to THE MAP DESIGNERS, an event drawing together map hackers, artists, cartographers, DIY technologists, architects, game programmers, bloggers and semantic web philosophers.

Delegate Pass - Advance discount available. See Below.

GET INVOLVED!: Visit the website or subscribe to Futuresonic updates for upcoming calls for submissions, job offers and volunteering opportunities.

ADVANCE DELEGATE PASS DISCOUNT ... SAVE £20 :: Delegate Pass - £25 (Normally £45): The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. You must reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and make payment by January 31st 2007. To reserve email tickets2007[at]futuresonic.com stating your name, address and contact details. You will be sent purchasing information from the festival box office by January 8th 2007.

*Futuresonic 2007 may burn when exposed to oxygen.

Posted by jo at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2006

Martha Rosler:

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Art & Social Life; The Case of Video Art

"The wide-open field of early video may arguably be the typical condition of a medium at birth (compare the internet, on its way from being a utopian arena of activity to a gated compound locked down by corporate toll takers, if the latter get their way). Despite the competition of sites like Youtube, video as an art form has become, by definition, an expensive captive of the gallery and museum, the black box inside the white box."

unitednationsplaza is pleased to present a seminar and a video festival organized by Martha Rosler: Art & Social Life; The Case of Video Art. The program will begin with a public lecture by Marta Rosler on Sunday, December 10th at 6 pm.

The video festival will present a selection of early video works, dating from 1968 to present, from the personal archive of Martha Rosler, including numerous works rarely seen and largely excluded from the canonical history of video art, and others that form the backbone of early video histories as now written.

The video program will be free and open to the public daily from 2 - 6 pm at the screening room of the unitednationsplaza, starting Monday, December 11th through Friday, December 15. The schedule of screenings will be posted shortly at http://www.unitednationsplaza.org

The seminar, comprised of four evening sessions scheduled to take place from 7- 9PM, will start on Monday and continue through Thursday evening. The seminar is open to the public, however due to space limitations please register in advance with magdalena[at]unitednationsplaza.org

Martha Rosler: Art & Social Life; The Case of Video Art
December 10 - 15, 2006

The early history of autonomous video art is a pivot point in the internal culture wars of the art world. Starting in the late 1960s through the early 1970s, artists with quite diverse practices experimented with the new (but not yet widely available) portable video apparatuses.

Film had by mid-century superseded both architecture and music as the queen of the arts. But by the 1950s the broadcast television industry and its structures of celebrity were challenging the social status of high art. Television was a problem… and then the Portapak was invented. Video suggested varieties of freedom to artists restive about or dismissive of traditional studio practices. Video promised a sort of gesamtkunstwerk on the ruins of a high modernism that had demanded a strict separation between forms. Video offered not just the experience of time married to the illusion of space accompanied by sound; because of poor image quality, video also offered relative freedom even from the concerns of cinema / art film / movies. It provided the opportunity to sketch or to perform, to record a gesture or a narrative, to sing in the shower or dance in the studio, abetted by simple in-camera edits. Artists could, without commitment, break free of the studio if they chose, and, in the political ferment and upheavals of the era, while look around, report, raise a voice, show a face, register anger, offer an opinion, analyze social structures and events, tell a joke, join with friends, and yell back at the mind-melting products of broadcast television while nevertheless making use of its capacity for instantaneous, unrecorded transmission and endless flow or using a recorded format that was easily reproducible and could be widely disseminated. The international potentials of this form were immediately obvious to artists and even museum administrators, to judge by the range of international 'video opens' of the mid-1970s-

The wide-open field of early video may arguably be the typical condition of a medium at birth (compare the internet, on its way from being a utopian arena of activity to a gated compound locked down by corporate toll takers, if the latter get their way). Despite the competition of sites like Youtube, video as an art form has become, by definition, an expensive captive of the gallery and museum, the black box inside the white box. But the transformative impulses that drove utopian hopes in the earliest days have not completely evaporated. It is absolutely vital to revisit early video works and their context (including the texts of the era), to provide a deep slice into the moment of origin and see what may be refurbished and adapted for the present —beyond the stylish appropriations of the 70s “look.” In the face of the Society of the Spectacle, taking back / talking back to the media was a watchword of the era, offering the hope of social transformation through art, activism, and community interventions. This hope animates many today, in whatever form and medium it may be furthered.

Martha Rosler was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives, after spending the 1970s in California. She works in video, photo-text, installation, sculpture, and performance, and writes on aspects of culture. She is a renowned teacher and has lectured widely, nationally and internationally. Rosler's work is centered on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women's experience. Recurrent concerns are the media and war as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to systems of transport. Her work has been seen in the Venice Biennale of 2003; the Liverpool Biennial and the Taipei Biennial (both 2004); as well as many major international survey shows, including Open Systems at the Tate Modern (2005). Her work has been included in the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and several Whitney biennials, and she has had numerous solo exhibitions. She has been invited to participate in Skulptur Projekte 07 in Münster as well as in documenta xii. A retrospective of her work, ‚Positions in the Life World,’ toured Western Europe and was shown at two New York museums from 1998 to 2000. Rosler has published fourteen books of photography, art, and writing. Among them are Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Essays 1975–2001 (MIT Press, 2004, An October Book, in conjunction with the International Center of Photography), the photo books Passionate Signals (Cantz, 2005), In the Place of the Public: Airport Series (Cantz, 1997), and Rights of Passage (NYFA, 1995). Sur/Sous le Pave (Rennes, 2006), like the much earlier If You Lived Here (Free Press, 1991) addresses the urban landscape and focuses on housing, homelessness, and urban life. Rosler has been awarded the Spectrum International Prize in Photography for 2005, the Oskar-Kokoschka Prize (Austria’s highest fine arts award) in 2006, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award for 2007. Her solo exhibition, London Garage Sale, was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2005. Her installation Kriegeschaüplatze (Theaters of War) was shown in Berlin (Christian Nagel) in 2006, and a selected retrospective of her work was shown at the University of Rennes.

unitednationsplaza is exhibition as school. Structured as a seminar/residency program in the city of Berlin, it involves 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 are 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.

unitednationsplaza
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a
Berlin 10249 Germany
T. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 90
F. +49 (0)30 700 89 0 85
http://www.unitednationsplaza.org

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

The Kitchen presents

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Dance without Bodies

Koosil-ja's Dance without Bodies :: The Kitchen :: Dec 6-9 (Wednesday-Saturday) 8pm :: Tickets $12.

Dance Without Bodies is a new, commissioned, dance and multi-media performance by Bessie award-winning choreographer Koosil-ja that questions the fundamental role of “presence” in performance and forges new relationships among dancers, technologies, and the audience. In this new work, two dancers move between the space of the stage and that of video projections, performing simultaneous yet spatially disconnected solos for an audience seated in two separate areas, situated back-to-back in the theater. Created through her “live processing” performance method, which she developed with dancer Melissa F. Guerrero and Geoff Matters (music, video, and software design), the performance is different each night, as the movement in the work is neither strictly set choreography nor pure improvisation. Rather, the dancers generate their solos nightly, in real-time, in response to the action depicted on three different videos, which are randomly combined each evening on clustered sets of monitors. The piece also includes lighting design by Jane Shaw, video design by Benton-C Bainbridge, and graphic design by Pascale Willi.

Box Office: 212-255-5793 ext. 11. Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat, 2-6pm

The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues.
Subway: A, C, E to 14th Street; 1 to 18th Street; L to 8th Avenue.

Posted by jo at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2006

Kazoo

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It's a Live Art Thing

The Premises Gallery at The Johannesburg Civic Theatre presents Kazoo - it's a live art thing; Performance/ Live Art: Play, Action, Intervention in Public and Private Spheres :: Launch Event: 2nd of December 2006, doors open at 6pm, performances begin at 7pm; Performances in Public Places: 3rd of December 2006.

The launch of Kazoo, at Premises Gallery on Saturday December 2nd is the first ever international annual event of its kind in Johannesburg. At the opening there will be maps available for performances/ actions and interventions that will be held in Johannesburg in Public Spaces on Sunday, December 3rd.

In South Africa there is a trend in art towards issues that are socio-political and have a limited audience. We recognize the relevance of these issues; however we are aiming to look at things through a different lens. Our intention is to be unpredictable, accessible and more democratic. We believe that the more playful side of art needs to be given attention. It is our goal through Kazoo to promote performance art which focuses on play, action and intervention. We hope to give local and international, emerging and established artists working within the Live Art / Performance Art arena an opportunity to engage with the people and space within the city of Johannesburg.

In turn we will try and reach a diverse audience that will create an exchange between artist and community. The artists we have chosen are working in ways that are playful in nature, engaging, which break the typical ideas of performance and deal with issues of space and accessibility. We want the people of Johannesburg to be excited about art.

Participating Artists: Juliana Smith (USA), and Anthea Moys (SA) are pleased to present the following artists, Penny Siopis (SA), Benedikt Partenheimer (Germany), Lerato Shadi (SA), Alison Kearney (SA), Ella Ziegler (Germany), Barend de Wet (SA), Simon Gush (SA), Donna Kukama (SA), Karin Lustenberger (Switzerland), Sarah Burger (Switzerland), Maja Marx, Edda Holl (Germany), Jemma Kahn (SA), Nhlanhla Thulane (SA), Nina Barnett (SA) and Robin Nesbitt (SA), Timo Mueller (SA) and Jonas Etter (Switzerland).

Kazoo is proud to have the support of the American Embassy, Goethe-Institut, Wits School of Arts, Absolute Vodka and Red Bull.

Event Enquires: Anthea Moys 084-822-6577 / Juliana Smith 076-612-8290 ; azoo.liveart[at]gmail.com

The Premises at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre :: Loveday Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa :: www.onair.co.za/thepremises
thepremises[at]onair.co.za :: Gallery Hours - Tuesday - Saturday 10h00 - 17h00

the trinity session
office[at]onair.co.za

Directors -

Stephen Hobbs
+27 (0) 11 403 8358
sh[at]onair.co.za

Marcus Neustetter
+27 (0) 11 339 2785
mn[at]onair.co.za

Posted by jo at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

Subtle Technologies: in situ, art | body | medicine

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

May 24th – May 27th 2007 :: University of Toronto, Toronto Canada :: Submission Deadline January 3, 2007 :: Subtle Technologies is a four-day 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.

For the 10th Annual Festival, Subtle Technologies invites practitioners of arts, sciences and medicines, and those who study their context, historians, ethicists, and other critical thinkers 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 are interested in investigating how we relate bodies in situ: as parts, as a whole, as systems; how we identify, map, modify, protect, violate, and heal.

We invite a wide interpretation of bodies including the molecular, physical, cultural, economic, legal, political, energetic, electrical and spiritual.

A range of approaches are welcome, including interdisciplinary work, specialized presentation proposals that focus on a single topic in depth, and general discussions that draw upon multiple topics. We welcome a diversity of presentation formats, including those practitioners who may not emphasize the use of science and technology.

Proposals for the following will be considered: workshops, performances, poster sessions, and symposium presentations.

How to Apply:
Details are available on the online submissions form

Examples of possible topics include:

Racial and Personalized Medicine
Tele-Medicine
Pharmaceuticalized Body
Organ Trafficking
Inter- Species Communications
History of Medicine
Reproductive Technologies
Addictions and Obsessions
Sexual / Gendered Body
Body Machine Interfaces and Sensors
Violated Body
Embryoid Bodies and Stem Cells
Infectious Agents and Diseases
Local or Traditional Healing Practices
New Therapeutic Paradigms
Population Dynamics and the Environment
Spiritual Body
Extropian and Post Human Investigations
Body and Performance, Body and Rituals
Bioethics
Trangenic Bodies and Tissue Engineering
Genomics Proteomics Metablomics and other -omics
For Questions, contact us at:
(email) programs [at] subtletechnologies [dot] com
(phone) 416.532.5018

Subtle Technologies is hosted by the University of Toronto, and supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council. Toronto Arts Council, Canadian Heritage

Posted by jo at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)

NOW - Meetings in the present continuous

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NEURóTICA

NEURóTICA: - CCCB - Barcelona, Spain :: Friday 24th November, 2006 at 7.00 pm:

[Contemporary man] is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by "powers" that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food – and, above all, a large array of neuroses. (Jung, 1964:82).

Neurotica is a research project that examines the anxieties of contemporary society, generated by the rapid advances made in science and technology, and looks at the way individuals and the community is coping with these innovations and their offshoots. The project has been designed and initiated by Capsula, an investigation group based in Barcelona, Spain, launched by Mónica Bello Bugallo and Ulla Taipale that generates cultural products exploring the interrelations between arts, science and nature.

The first phase of Neurótica is exploring society’s perception of biotechnology and the hopes and fears associated with it. The project will be launched by a conference presented at CCCB, Center of Contemporanean Culture of Barcelona on 24th November 2006. During the event Californian based artist and inventor Natalie Jeremijenko will present her views on these issues, followed by the interventions and comments of Dr. Alfonso Valencia, a biologist and head of The Spanish National Center of Biotechnology and Dr. Fabio Tropea, sociologist and language analyst.

The conference is part of “NOW - Meetings in the present continuous” –a project that reflects on the present on the basis of the scientific, technological, artistic, social and spiritual transformations taking place at the start of the 21st century. It aims to bring together local and international agents promoting a change of paradigm in current society.

For information: info[at]capsula.org.es

Posted by jo at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

A THOUSAND TINY SEXES

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CALL FOR WORK

A THOUSAND TINY SEXES: A publication edited by Jaimes Mayhew and kanarinka

CALL FOR WORK: To imagine that there are only two sexes - M & F - is an absurdity. There are at least 1000 sexes. The daily lived reality of transgender and intersexual people (and gay, lesbian, queer and all other people, for that matter) proves this over and over again, yet many people continue to operate as if 'M' and 'F' are the only sexes, the only options, the only expressions, the only goals, the only way ("the way it is").

Help us imagine 1000 more sexes. Describe them, imagine them, invent them, publish them, use them, realize them, perform them.

A Thousand Tiny Sexes is an art-book-research-action project to collect and publish 1000 proposals for TINY SEXES which are not Male or Female. We are setting out to collect a thousand more sexes - imaginary ones, as-yet-unrealized ones, or real ones- in the hopes that these one thousand might make for one thousand more after that. In so doing, we hope to contribute to a collective reimagining of sex as a legal, biological, political, economic, cultural, and political category.

ABOUT THE PUBLICATION

The collection of A Thousand Tiny Sexes will be published as a book with an introductory essay by the editors, Jaimes Mayhew and kanarinka. We are seeking publishers. The publication will be available for sale once published. Submissions must meet the criteria below and the editors reserve the right to reject any submission.

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION

* Deadline: No deadline, we will keep collecting until we have 1000 good ones.
* You may not propose a sex such as Male or Female that has been legally codified and naturalized as "the way things are".
* You may propose "in-between" sexes which are combinations of Male-Female, but we will favor sexes that seek to entirely reimagine sex as a biological, cultural, political, and social category.
* Multiple submissions OK.
* We prefer visual submissions to text, though both are ok. Diagrams and drawings with fine lines are especially encouraged.
* Original artwork will not be returned.

HOW TO SUBMIT

* Download and Complete the submission form on the website
* Attach your Drawing, Image or Text. 1.5 inches x 1.5 inches (3.8 cm x 3.8 cm) or less in dimensions. B&W, no Color.
* Email 300dpi electronic submissions to 1000tinysexes@[at]mail.com or mail them to: Jaimes Mayhew, 102 Longwood Ave #3, Brookline, MA, 02446.

QUESTIONS?

* Email us at 1000tinysexes[at]gmail.com
* Visit the site at www.1000tinysexes.com

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING ABOUT THE TITLE

"If we consider the great binary aggregates, such as the sexes or classes, it is evident that they also cross over into molecular assemblages of a different nature, and that there is a double reciprocal dependency between them. For the two sexes imply a multiplicity of molecular combinations bringing into play not only the man in the woman and the woman in the man, but the relation of each to the animal, the plant, etc.: a thousand tiny sexes." (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus).

"There is nothing about a binary gender system that is given." (Judith Butler, Undoing Gender)

Posted by jo at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2006

Franck Ancel

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Tuut: Utopia of Theater

"Studying the terrain, the litterateurs believe they have established the existence of a major psycho-geographic crossroads — with Ledoux's Rotonde de la Villette at the centre – which can be described as a unity…" - the journal Les Lèvres nues, November 1956, Paris.

Mobile_Wireless_Digitale, for the bicentenary of the death of the utopian architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux in Paris, faced with the extension of the Cité des Sciences et de la Musique. I am no longer drafting a utopian performance which could have involved an immersive projection (cf. estimate drawn up with the UTRAM company) within Ledoux's Rotonde, and have been made possible by means of an inflatable dome (cf. study by another company), as conceived by me since 2001.

In contrast with some of the anticipated utilitarian hijackings aimed at establishing a modicum of social aesthetics on the square that is dedicated to the battle of Stalingrad in Paris, my idea involved a light and sound projection at the entrance to this capital: issues not only of physical fluidity but also fluidity of data. Thus, this space that traces the old boundaries closing in on the city, would be transformed by opening up the city, at a time when a dark globalisation is being prepared for us by some of the uses to which technology is being put.

I therefore propose an open-access 3gp stream broadcast from GPS co-ordinates N 48°53.365' E 002°22.555' to video receivers at this address: rtsp://217.71.210.164/ancel/19 , to other portables and on the Internet, on 19 November 2006 between 19:00 and 20:00 (Paris GMT). The 3D animation of this presentation has been created in association with Bryan Bey. It transfigures my Black Time epoch, for this action is primarily the echo of a manifesto for a Pari(s) lancé dans un lyrisme électronique (‘Paris (bet) cast in an electronic lyricism'), between active memory and the virtual future. - Franck Ancel

Posted by jo at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

Resistant Maps:

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Artistic Actions in the Interconnected Urban Territory

The Leonardi V-Idea Association presents the exhibition-conference: Resistant Maps: Artistic actions in the interconnected urban territory by Alessandro Ludovico, Gianfranco Pangrazio, Tommaso Tozzi, Marco Villani :: November 25-26, 2006 :: Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce: Via Jacopo Ruffini 3, Genoa.

The representation of the territory holds a historical role in the privileges of power. The geographical data has always been in its hands. The regaining of this representation goes through the description and sharing (often in personal perspectives too). This is made possible thanks to the collaborative tools and consequent changing of the value of the maps. These maps are not granted anymore by structures of power, but built by individuals who, drawing on the ideas of the psychogeographical movements, repaint the urban space according to fresh new coordinates.

WORKS BY: 01.org Vopos :: Cartografia Resistente Triangolazione :: Les Flottants Lasciare libero il passo :: Giuseppe Chiari Musica verità, Suonare la città, Che cos’è un happening :: Vincenzo Agnetti Spazio perduto e spazio costruito :: Guy Debord In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni :: Ernesto Fialdini, Matteo Dentoni Debordare.

CONFERENCE

SATURDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2006

Nicola Bucci 16.00-16.30
Sandro Ricaldone 16.30-17.00
Tommaso Tozzi 17.00-17.30
Decoder (Raffaele Scelsi) 17.30-18.00

Discussion 18.00-19.00

SUNDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2006

Alessandro Ludovico 10.00-10.30
Wikiartpedia (Tommaso Tozzi) 10.30-11.00
Cartografia Resistente (Lorenzo Tripodi) 11.00-11.30
Guerrigliamarketing (Andrea Natella) 11.30-12.00

Discussion 12.00-13.00

Lunch break

Vittore Baroni 15.30-16.00
Arturo Di Corinto 16.00-16.30
Franco Berardi “Bifo” 16.30-17.00
Brian Holmes 17.00-17.30
Discussion 17.30-19.00

(Giuseppe Chiari, Gianni Emilio Simonetti and Mirella Bandini have also contributed to the catalogue with their articles).

This exhibition has been organised with the support of the City of Genoa Council, the Head of Culture of the City of Genoa Council, the Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce, Association “Amici dei Musei”.

Catalogue printed by: neos.edizioni.

For further information contact Marco Villani (tel. 0039 340.3160660)

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

November 17, 2006

XpositionREVERSE

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A Modern Gesamtkunstwerk

XpositionREVERSE :: Aarhus/Denmark – Gothenburg/Sweden :: Real-time streaming: web :: November 29 -December 2; 8 p.m.

XpositionREVERSE is a live digital chamber performance about position and identity on and with the Internet. Presented simultaneously in Aarhus and Gothenburg, and streamed on the Internet, XpositionREVERSE s a surrealistic and humorous montage of new text, dance, video, electro acoustic music and streamed bits. A modern Gesamtkunstwerk, placing itself somewhere between installation and the intimate chamber play. Inspired by cabaret, sitcoms and cosy evenings in the sofa.

XpositionREVERSE is a complex creation about being outside and excluded contra to be inside and included. About being in the centre of the events contra being in the periphery. The performance is about the modern man’s need to be "on" and wish for "15 minutes of fame". But do we only exist if we are seen, filmed and are placed in the focus point of the media lens? What defines centre and where is it placed? And what will happen, if focus is moved and periphery and centre is swapping place?

To be another place. Another position. Xposition.
To expose oneself. Exposure. Exposition.

PARTICIPANTS IN AARHUS

Staging, choreography and performer: Annika B. Lewis
Dramatist and performer: Gritt Uldall-Jessen
Interactive media and set design: Signe Klejs
Composer and live music: Anders Krøyer
Video technique and live music: Jens Mønsted
Internet architect and streaming: Jonas Smedegaard

For more information about live location in Aarhus and ticket reservations contact EntréScenen: phone: +45 86 190079 (10 – 16)

Produced by Kassandra Production in collaboration with Atalante in Gothenburg and EntréScenen in Aarhus, with others. Subsidized by The Municipality of Aarhus’ Kulturudviklingspulje, Koda, Dansk Skuespillerforbund and Tuborgfondet, with others.

Posted by jo at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

MAAP-Multimedia Art Asia Pacific

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OUT OF THE INTERNET

MAAP-Multimedia Art Asia Pacific :: OUT OF THE INTERNET :: features: *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS (Fukuoka), Feng Mengbo (Beijing), LIM + PHUA (Singapore), Iain Mott (Melbourne) , YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (Seoul) :: Opening: 6:00pm Thursday 30 November :: Exhibition: 1 December – 25 January 2007 :: State Library Queensland, Stanley Place, South Bank.

OUT OF THE INTERNET as the theme for this years festival considers artists that are working in or connected through internet art practice. The festival explores locations and contexts that host the artists’ work to concretely realize the medium in a tiered series of situations. Without a whimsical word to say about cyberspace (the space in-between the physical location of a computer server and retrieval monitor) the task was set to realize presence in a range of locations from elite museums, galleries, library networks and into a cascade of urban spaces. The central exhibition is mounted in the newly rebuilt State Library of Queensland in Brisbane while the Institute of Modern Art host Singapore artists LIM + PHUA. In Shanghai, The Zendai Museum of Modern Art hosts Iain Mott.

In New York the Museum of Modern Art host a presentation in their MediaScope series by *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS in conjunction with 'out of the internet'. And 'out of the internet' coincides YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES online commission by Tate, London.

OUT OF THE INTERNET as a global exhibition takes a further step into the exploration of how we might consider and engage with artworks that ‘breath the air’ of the information age. It draws back to a dialogue with Seth Siegelaub’s ground breaking exhibition ‘July, August, September 1969’ where he arranged 11 artists to show in 11 different locations around the world and included artists such as Lawrence Wiener, Jan Dibbets, Joseph Kosuth and Sol LeWitt. A seminal figure of the conceptual art movement, Siegelaub was absorbed with the speed of communication and the transference of ideas rather than objects. In transcripts from an original interview by Patricia Norvell, Siegelaub describes the redundant nature of the museum space and challenges the New York centric nature of the art world. In some respects, the exhibition is putting to test working in reverse from Siegelaub’s position. The artists are circulating in the world through the internet already and it is not a simple mono cultural field in which these artists operate. The artists’ activities are apprehended through a span of online audiences, literature sites, university teaching programs, online gaming sites, information porn sites, nightclub entertainment, community workshops and galleries. The artwork is in fact apprehended by audiences in multiple fields simultaneously and puts challenge to Pierre Bourdieu’s pure sense of a singular view to the way art is perceived in its cultural field. The exhibition shepherds the work back into taking a material or contextual form in the museum to achieve an authority integrating different fields in which the artists operate and joining an official art history canon. Making a representation of all the works in the State Library of Queensland adds another dimension or escape route out of the closed museum context. ‘out of the internet’ then grafts onto the established library networks via links on library home pages all over the world, filtered through museum authority.

OUT OF THE INTERNET International Symposium:
Time: 1pm – 6pm Date: Sunday 3 December Place: slq Auditorium 2,
State Library of Queensland
This symposium examines the position of online artwork and the implications of the internet in fine art culture and community cross overs in Australia, Asia and internationallyA free event, essential to register: info[at]maap.org.au

MOVE ON ASIA - DVD Programme: The curators of twelve art spaces from six countries in Asia, presents 22 emerging artists.

OUT OF THE INTERNET (and into the world): Community workshops developed by Fatima Lasay focusing on open source software for artists working in the Philippines.

Artists’ Talk OUT OF THE INTERNET
Date: Friday 1 December Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Place: slq 2 auditorium State Library Queensland: A chance to hear international and national internet artists speak about their practice

Manhua Wonderlands
Date: 1 December – 25 January 2007.
A major media arts exhibition and education initiative involving established and emerging artist working directly with Asian communities and site-specific venues which include karaoke clubs and purikura sticker booths. Manhua Wonderlands has developed an extensive network of public presentations, screening and links over 330 libraries, schools, museums, and urban sites in a common viewing experience. Manhua Wonderlands hosts major presentations by artists; Jemima Wyman, Van Sowerwine, Alice Lang, Luke Ilett, Jean Poole: curated by Thea Baumann

Further information info[at]maap.org.au

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Trampoline 23rd November

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Gaming, New Media Art and our Urban Environment

Trampoline – Platform for new media art :: Thursday 23rd November 6pm til late :: Broadway Cinema, Broad Street, Nottingham, UK :: £5.50/£4.20 concessions.

Playing with urban structures - the city becomes alive at the touch of a button. Trampoline will be investigating the relationship between gaming, new media art and our urban environment.

The structures of the city are increasingly pervaded by new media with screens, cctv, electronic networks, mobile devices, implements often designed to control our movement through urban space and even to remove us from our surroundings. We wish to investigate how new media can form an even tighter relationship with our immediate environment – challenge and subvert its conventional structures – hacking the city.

The evening of events brings together performance, video, installation and artists’ presentations.

Blast Theory, renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists' groups using interactive media, will be giving a presentation about their most recent work ‘Day of the Figurines’, premiered at Trampoline’s event First Play Berlin, held in October of this year.

Le Quan Ninh will be bringing his unique form of percussion improvisation to Nottingham in a highly anticipated performance.

Electronic musicians Vastik Root and Little Boy Blue will be meddling with their gameboys and various computer consoles resulting in a climax of energetic noise.

Frank Abbott will be presenting his epic performance ‘From Here to the End of my Garden’ a series of four presentations throughout the evening, merging spaces together with his mobile projector, recreating his garden within Broadway Cinema.

Other works on show include:

An ‘urban carpet’ will be set somewhere in the streets of Nottingham and pedestrians may find the ground beneath their feet suddenly responding to their movements.

An interactive virtual pool by Giles Askham, creates visual and sonic response in the form of ripples as the viewer investigates ‘Aquaplayne’.

A new audio tour by Jon Aveyard will be available for you to experience the city in a very different way.

And Martin Callanan’s ‘Sonification of You’ will make tangible the mass of mobile phone signals, wifi networks and general electronic radiation which surrounds us by detecting these transmissions and making them audible.

Timetable for the evening:

6pm Film Screening
7pm Le Quan Ninh
7.30pm Vastik Root
8pm Patrick Farmer and James Smith – please bring a tuneable radio for a special performance
9pm Blast Theory
10pm Little Boy Blue
10.30pm Leif Gifford

8pm, 9pm, 10pm and 10.30pm Frank Abbott – From Here to the End of my Garden; Live Performance with a mobile projector.

Other participating artists include: Giles Askham, Jaygo Bloom, Thomas Laureyssens, Jon Aveyard, Martin Callanan, Carolina Briones, Andy Gubb, Joe Duffy, Kentaro Taki, Regina Kelaita and many more

Trampoline is supported by the Arts Council England, Broadway Media Centre and Future Factory.

Those interested in these events may also be interested in Futuresonic’s activities: Futuresonic launched Urban Play as the art and technology strand of the Futuresonic festival at the end of 2005, reflecting Futuresonic's focus since 2004 on artworks in urban space. Futuresonic 2007 will be announced soon, visit www.futuresonic.com or www.urban-play.org for details.

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

November 16, 2006

Garrett Lynch's review of

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Networked Art: Practices and Positions

Finally managed to get hold of a copy of Network Art (perhaps the world’s most difficult to get net.art book) edited by Tom Corby (of Corby and Bailey and teaches Media Art at the University of Westminster) and gradually worked my way through it when I had a spare moment between classes.

The book, an outcome of research funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Board, takes a similar approach to Tilman Baumgärtel’s net.art 2.0 (and there is a text by Baumgärtel entitled The ludic hack: artistic explorations of computer games) in that it gives an overview of the practice of a selection of artists working with networks (principally the internet), their art, themes and method of working. It shouldn’t be compared with net.art 2.0 however as it does this differently. It takes a less historic overview of net.art, is more concerned with current practice than origins or development of the genre and this is executed in a number of ways, interviews, writings about art work, ideas and themes (net.art 2.0 is entirely interviews with the artists conducted by Baumgärtel).

The book is broken down into two sections, Contexts and Practices. Contexts, the first section, prepares the reader for some of the art discussed in Practices and contains writings by some of the most important theorists currently writing, curating and teaching about net.art and new media theory. Charlie Gere, Reader in New Media Research and Director of Research at Lancaster University, author of Digital Culture and Art, Time and Technology introduces the reader to The history of networked art, Sarah Cook who works at the University of Sunderland and has jointly set up Crumb, a new media curatorial reseource (also funded by the AHRB), with Beryl Graham writes about Context-specific curating on the web while Baumgärtel has a chapter which is already mentioned above.

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While the book is certainly a valid and welcome contribution to the area of net.art I do have a few issues with it. Due to the availability and price of this book, Routledge have put this out of the range of any curious readers / artists (at £75, sharp intake of breath, certainly any students) and refused to publish the paperback version (there was an ISBN released for this as it was initially listed on Amazon - send them an email requesting it), this is a publication which will only be bought by those who know the area well and are most likely practicing net.artists or researchers. The necessity of a chapter covering the history of net.art becomes a little redundant. This is certainly not an oversight of the author (Charlie Gere) or the Editor (Tom Corby) but of the publisher. Practices is a little less successful in my opinion than Contexts again this is related to who the book is targeted at. The contributors to Practices The Yes Men, Thompson and Craighead and 0100101110101101.org amongst others while contributing good texts are very much the standard fare of artists and we know these artists and their works very well. They are what have become the net.arts who have made the transition to the contemporary art world and exhibit widely. From a personal perspective it is a shame the book does not start to move away from net.art and discuss the now rapidly developing field of networked art (see Baumgärtel distinction) as it seems to suggest it will which we are seeing on weblogs such as here, Networked Performance and occasionally We Make Money Not Art.

All in all, a good publication which unfortunately simply will not get a significant audience. I can’t find any reference to contents of this book anywhere on the web although there is a list of contributors on the University of Westminster’s website. So above is a photo of the contents page. [posted by Garrett on Network Research]

Posted by jo at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2006

Opening at Ars Virtua Tonight

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13 Most Beautiful Avatars

13 Most Beautiful Avatars by Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) :: Curated by Marisa Olson :: Nov. 15 - Dec. 29, 2006 at Second Life's Ars Virtua gallery. Nov. 30 - Dec. 19, 2006 at The Italian Academy, Columbia University (NYC).

"13 Most Beautiful Avatars" is the newest installment of Time Shares, a series of online exhibitions co-presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Rhizome.org, in conjunction with Rhizome's "Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology". The exhibition, in Second Life's increasingly popular Ars Virtua gallery — a virtual nonprofit arts organization — will mirror the art gallery in which the newest work by Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) is being exhibited.

The Matteses have been living in the virtual world, Second Life, for over a year, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of their "video-game flanerie" is a series of portraits, entitled "13 Most Beautiful Avatars". Not unlike Warhol's entourage of stars, captured in the "13 Most Beautiful Boys" and "13 Most Beautiful Women" portrait series emerging from his famous Screen Tests, the Matteses' "13 Most Beautiful Avatars" captures the most visually dynamic and celebrated "stars" of Second Life.

The portraits reflect Second Life aesthetics, featuring the bright colors, "artificial" light, broad flat areas, 3D shapes, and surreal perspectives that are typical of this virtual world. Overall, the series draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of alternate identities within simulated worlds, and questions the impact such technologies have on art and society. Despite the relative newness of using video game-derived source materials, the avatars' icons recall questions common to earlier eras of portraiture, including the cultural and psychological context of the images, and the relationships between high art and subculture, between contemporary art and "traditional" art forms, and between art and life itself.

Eva and Franco Mattes are known for their controversial artworks, including staging high-profile hoaxes and defeating the Nike Corporation in a legal battle for a fake advertisement campaign. They are the recipients of the 2006 "Premio New York" grant, sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Cultural Institute, New York. Their real-world exhibit takes place at the Italian Academy at New York's Columbia University, and a 3D replica of this physical exhibition space has been recreated for presentation of an exhibition identical to the "real" one, at Ars Virtua.

The Second Life / Ars Virtua show is open November 15 - December 29, and the Italian Academy show is open November 30 - December 19. The Ars Virtua exhibit will be launched with an in-world opening reception on November 15, from 6-8pm SLT/9-11pm EST, here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/dowden/42/59/52/?title=Ars%20Virtua

Info:
http://rhizome.org/events/timeshares
http://www.0100101110101101.org

Downloadable images: http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/portraits/thirteen.html

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

Make Art

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Call for projects

Make Art is an international festival dedicated to the integration of free/libre and open source software in electronic arts. The second edition of Make Art will take place in Poitiers, France, from the 2nd to the 8th of April 2007.

Make Art offers performances, exhibitions, lectures and workshops,
focused on the blurred line between art and software programming. The event is dedicated to artists who create their own tools, and apply the same rules to art as to free software development.

Make Art is currently seeking new, innovative FLOSS based works and projects: performances, lectures, software presentations, installations... The focus is on works that involve innovative tools for artists, artificial intelligence/life, open hardware myths and realities and human machine interaction.

Please copy/paste the application form (http://makeart.goto10.org) in your favorite email client, fill it and send it with attached documents at:
makeart2007 -at- goto10 -dot- org

DEADLINE : Saturday 9th of December 2006

Posted by luis at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon in November

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Blindspot by Herwig Turk

Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea welcomes next Thursday, November 16th @19:00, Upgrade! Lisbon’s monthly gathering featuring Austrian media artist Herwig Turk. Entrance is free and drinks will be served.

Blindspot is an interdisciplinary research project about perception, developed by Herwig Turk, Dr. Paulo Pereira and Gunter Stoger in cooperation with Beatriz Cantinho, Brbel Buck, Patrcia Almeida, and Dr. Miguel Castelo Branco. The project aims at investigating perception in a broader context as well as its circumstances, its determinants and its contingencies. The proceedings in the research laboratories in vision sciences are translated into different settings, thereby creating a meta-language that crosses traditional boundaries between science and art. At the same time, a new heterotopic space for experimentation is created where objects, gestures and language separated from their supporting context gain new dimensions. The approach used by the authors adopts the formal structure of a research project, starting with the hypothesis that Science represents an imperfect means whereby perception is used as a privileged means of assessing reality (an improved means to an unimproved end, Thoreau).

The overall approach of Blindspot is based on a long-term interchange of knowledge methods and proceedings of sciences and arts. Perception is the process whereby sensory stimulation is translated into organized experience, Encyclopaedia Britannica). Vision sciences tend to focus on the process of sensory stimulation: from the eye to the brain or from the photon to the image. The anatomical, physiological, neurological and biochemical research can convey the means to gather a great amount of information that agglomerates in large volumes and treaties. However precise, a vast amount of information is neglected or is actively translocated to a place outside of the laboratory by the application of the scientific methods and procedures. What remains, are contaminations from the outside world and are largely the subject-matter of this interdisciplinary project. Within the project perception is defined as a proposition that includes the organized experience within and among various human and non-human elements. These elements connect and communicate through incidents and create a reality that can only be understood in a very limited timeframe.

The method used by the research team relies on a strong interaction and interference between the organic elements and the instances that contextualize the received information. One cannot say where the Organ ends and the processing starts! (Oswald Wiener).

These interactions are highly variable and strongly depend on individual dispositions and environmental factors . Thus, a real world exists just as a helpful construction to interpret ephemeral individual perceptions.

Individual perception cannot be observed or interpreted as isolated, but rather as something that is distributed within group structures (persons, objects, environments). Each individual perceives himself and his daily environment through the reflections and reactions of others. Every single person is connected to a floating system of information and a clear line cannot be draw to separate individuals from others nor from their own surroundings.

Science aims at a universal language supported by inertia referential. The scientific language is highly coded and the associations between words, concepts and the corresponding entities in the real world are often blurred by the complex system of references used. The scientific systems of references include necessarily established conventions comparable to GMT (Greenwich mean time) or the null meridian, in an attempt to identify standards that make measurements possible and universal.

A main goal in this project is to identify calibration standards and reference points that are critical in influencing individual perception. Once such points of reference are identified they can be easily manipulated by deconstructing its own fundaments and by displacing them into a different context/setting. This approach questions the fallibility of the scientific conventions and highlights the importance and contribution of social and individual constructions (constellations) to what is perceived as a scientific through or a scientific fact. More importantly, the founding elements and corner stones of the scientific method are man-made and became less abstract as the project emphasizes and brings to center-stage those structural elements that are both invisible and thought of as - infallible in daily scientific routines.

This goal can be accomplished by a variety of procedures, including the dislocation of both observer and object of observation to different scenarios where common references are no longer obvious and where the elements that support perception are often absent. Experimentally, this approach creates the field where different categories of knowledge meet and reveals the interdisciplinary nature of the project.

Posted by luis at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2006

Art Interactive presents

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COLLISIONten (CX)

COLLISIONten (CX) (art by engineers/engineering by artists) :: Art Interactive :: Nov 17 - Dec 3, 2006, weekends 12-6pm :: Opening Thu Nov 16 6-9pm.

Curated by Jonathan Bachrach and Dan Paluska, Collision Collective artwork incorporates new technologies, concepts, and installation experiments. Featuring both MIT and regional artists, Collision X is full of innovative and provocative artworks presented in a wide range of media.

Featuring: Jonathan Bachrach, Leonardo Bonanni, Benjamin Bray, Nell Breyer, Michael Epstein, Chris Fitch, Rob Gonsalves, Vanessa Harden, Guy Hoffman, Jeevan Kalanithi, Dustin Ledbetter, Jeff Lieberman, Kevin McCormick, Roy Pardi, Hayes Raffle, John Slepian, Fran Trainor, & Bayard Wenzel.

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

NOTHING TO SEE

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for the sense of touch

NewYorkRioTokyo e.V. :: NOTHING TO SEE: Piece touchee, No 1: a performance exclusively for the sense of touch. Being the interface: Touch is the most strictly codified sense in our society. This performance is an attempt at designing work to be perceived only through the sense of touch, beyond its usual connotations .

The piece will be performed on your body. (Duration 15 to 20 minutes). You will not be asked to be active. Please make an appointment either by email or by
phone in order to avoid waiting times: 0163-235-1869, piece.touchee[at]web.de

Performances possible every day, from 11.00 to 22.00 from Thursday November 16 to Sunday november 19, 2006.

Concept: Kenji Ouellet
Performance: Katharina Weinhuber, Kenji Ouellet

Kontrapunktus I, II: contrapuntal soundscapes (pieces for headphones)
Composition: Kenji Ouellet

Opening talk/discussion (and drinks) Thursday November 16, 19.00 (but performances possible before the discussion all day thursday).

NewYorkRioTokyo e.V.
Eberswalderstrasse 4, 10437 Berlin
www.nyrt.net

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

ARTIST in RESIDENCE [AiR] 2007

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ARTIST in RESIDENCE [AiR] 2007 :: OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS :: DEADLINE: 2 JANUARY 2007 :: IN BRIEF: residency period 3 months; dates from March 2007; location Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute is pleased to announce an open call for the Spring 2007 round of its Artist in Residence (AiR) program. The AiR programme at the Netherlands Media Art Institute aims to support the exploration and development of new work in digital / interactive / network media and technology based arts practice. The residency provides time and resources to artists in a supportive environment to facilitate the creation of new work that is produced from an open source perspective. We encourage a cross disciplinary and experimental approach. This is a practice based residency designed to enable the development and completion of a new work.

Our focus for this open call is on open source interactive installation art, in which the following occurs: - interaction between tools and/or software - interaction between tools and artwork - interaction between audience and artwork.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute offers an open environment with technical assistance and an active advisory board which will give feedback and support in technical, conceptual and presentation issues. There is access to studio and exhibition equipment, technical support from the Institute’s staff and production help from interns. The technical staff is specialized and has good contacts with programmers of the following software, a.o.: PD/PDP, Blender, Dynebolic, Linux. We expect the artist to have knowledge and insight in the technical realization of the concept.

It is integral to the mission of the AiR program that artists participate in presenting their work in a public form appropriate to their project. This can include gallery installations, demonstrations of research in progress, panel discussions, on-line projects, or multimedia performances, in addition to open studio events and workshops. For this reason we ask that artists include in their proposal possible examples of how they might like to present their work publicly.

At this moment the Netherlands Media Art Institute provides in travel costs. It doesn’t provide accommodation for artists living outside of Amsterdam. However, we are willing to help the search but cannot guarantee a place for living.

Application using the application form can be send to: Netherlands Media Art Institute Artist in Residence, c/o Annet Dekker, Keizersgracht 264, 1016 EV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

For more information about past residents and their projects, see our website at Research www.montevideo.nl

Application Form can be found on our website www.montevideo.nl // Research /// AiR

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Montevideo / Time Based Arts
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.montevideo.nl
T +31 (0)20 6237101
F +31 (0)20 6244423

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2006

Saskia Sassen

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Essay and Lecture

Open 11 :: Hybrid Space: The influence of digital technologies on the use of the public domain :: Thanks to new wireless technologies (WIFI, GPS, RFID) and mobile media, public space is subject to drastic changes. It is being traversed by electronic infrastructures and networks, and alternative cultural and social domains are evolving, though often invisible from a conventional viewpoint. The traditional physical and social conditions of the public domain are being supplanted by zones, places and subcultures that transcend the local and interlink with translocal and global processes. The question is whether there are also new opportunities for the individual and for groups to act, participate and intervene publicly in this hybrid, seemingly flexible space. How do people appropriate the new public spaces? Where does the 'public' take place in this day and age? Who shapes and moulds it by devising spatial, cultural and political strategies?

With contributions by Drew Hemment, Howard Rheingold, Saskia Sassen, Frans Vogelaar/Elizabeth Sikiardi, Noortje Marres, Koen Brams/Dirk Pultau, Marion Hamm, Kristina Andersen, Ari Altena, Daniel van der Velden, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Esther Polak, De Geuzen and Max Bruinsma. Guest editor: Eric Kluitenberg, Jorinde Seijdel and Liesbeth Melis (eds.)

Public Interventions: The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition by Saskia Sassen :: De Balie, Amsterdam :: Saturday, November 18, 2006 :: Start: 20.30 hrs (CET) :: Live-stream webcast.

This year’s SKOR lecture (Fourndation for Art and Public Space) is delivered by Saskia Sassen, who will talk about the ‘making’ of public space by means of architectural and artistic interventions. The evening includes the presentation of Open 11, which takes hybrid space as its theme and includes an essay contributed by Sassen.

Human experience is threatened by the massive architecture of world cities and the density of infrastructures – digital and otherwise – that exist to serve international capital and the global economy. Sassen argues that there is a need for the production of subversive narratives as a counterbalance to this, to make the local and what has been silenced manifest and to generate new forms of ‘modest public spaces’.

Saskia Sassen is Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and Professor at the London School of Economics. She has gained worldwide acclaim for studies such as The Global City and Cities in a World Economy. Her most recent publication is Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press, 2006).

Panelists: Arnold Reijndorp, urban sociologist; Willem van Weelden, artist and theorist; Moderator: Bahram Sadeghi

Language: English

Organised by: SKOR / Open / De Balie

SKOR is the Netherlands Foundation for Art and Public Space.

Open, a cahier about art and the public domain, is published twice a year by NAi Publishers in association with skor.

ADDRESS: De Balie, Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam.

RESERVATIONS: De Balie t 020-5535100, or via >>

Admission: 12,50 (students: 7,50)

Posted by jo at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2006

Mediamatic Salon

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Nir Nadler and Chris O'Shea

Mediamatic Salon :: Monday, November 13 at 20.30 hrs :: Presentations by Nir Nadler and Chris O'Shea, and the results of the Machinima Contest 2006 :: Location: Bar-Restaurant 11, Post CS Gebouw, Oosterdokskade 5, Amsterdam.

Chris O'Shea (London) constructs models of interaction that borrow from TOY design and video GAMES, to create play situations within virtual environments and in tangible devices. He will present a series of projects that begin to explore synaesthesia, the fusion of sound and visuals, through gaming devices, open source processes and interactive soundscapes.

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer shows the QUIRKIEST results of the Machinima Competition that mediamatic organised with VIRMA and the Holland Animation Film Festival. Contestants had to make a machinima about a recent news event in one week only. In his presentation Klaas explores what it is that makes machinima interesting.

Nir Nadler and Chaja Hertog portray prototypes of cultural identities and ICONIC figures through variable mediums. Some of these identities are applied onto a self-published newspaper: The Monograph, where the personality Norbert Nadler plays a central role. It is a man without character that uses all means to approach everyone. Norbert travels through the imaginary world like a CHAMELEON taking on every identity he desires, he exists only because of the media and coincided with it.

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

Center for Advanced Visual Studies

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N55

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies presents N55 :: Monday November 13th, 7:00 pm :: MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning,
265 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139 :: 617 253 4415

N55 is a Danish artists' group which designs and builds humorous but functional tools meant for a utopian way of life. Their vision of a democratically organized collaborating body of self-reliant individuals is described in their writing and embodied in their designs. Most of their writing takes the form of manuals: From their website you can learn how to build a "MICRODWELLING" or "SMALL FISH FARM," or how to create situations and relationships with "ROOM," "WORK," and "KOMMUNE." With their simply titled works, N55 engage a number of fields: "LAND" deals with land ownership by providing an alternative scheme of publicly held sites while "SHOP" provides an alternative to money by proposing a system of bartering "shops" that anybody can set up anywhere.

N55 do not claim that their manuals and designs solve pressing social and economic problems. But they believe that the very act of setting to work can empower a person and help change the way he or she sees the world.

N55 was invited to the Center by the Interrogative Design Group (head: Krzysztof Wodiczko).

N55 is based both in Copenhagen, and in LAND. The group grew out of an initial collaboration in 1996, when a number of persons started living together in an apartment located in the center of Copenhagen, trying to “rebuild the city from within” and use their everyday life situation as a platform for public events and collaborations. While their work exists primarily in the sphere of the public and everyday, the group has exhibited widely internationally in venues including the Venice Biennale; the Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Tramway Arts Centre, Glasgow; the New Museum, New York; MassMOCA, North Adams, MA; the Camden Arts Centre, London; the Royal College of Art, London; and more.

LAND is constructed from pieces of land in different places in the world. The various parts are added to LAND by persons who guarantee that anybody can stay in LAND and use it. Any person can initiate expansions of LAND. The geographical positions of LAND are updated continuously and can be found online.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies is a fellowship program that commissions and produces new artworks within the context of MIT. The Center facilitates exchange between internationally known and emerging contemporary artists and MIT's faculty, students, and staff through public programs, support for long-term art projects, and residencies for MIT students.

Posted by jo at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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BLINDSPOT

Upgrade! Lisbon :: November 16, 2006, 19:00 :: Blindspot by Herwig Turk, Paulo Pereira and Günter Stöger :: 19:00 @ Lisboa20 Arte Contemporânea Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão 18B (Campo de Ourique).

Blindspot is an interdisciplinary research project about perception, developed by Herwig Turk, Dr. Paulo Pereira and Günter Stöger in cooperation with Beatriz Cantinho, Bärbel Buck, Patrícia Almeida, and Dr. Miguel Castelo Branco. The project aims at investigating perception in a broader context as well as its circumstances, its determinants and its contingencies. The proceedings in the research laboratories in vision sciences are translated into different settings, thereby creating a meta-language that crosses traditional boundaries between science and art. At the same time, a new heterotopic space for experimentation is created where objects, gestures and language separated from their supporting context gain new dimensions. The approach used by the authors adopts the formal structure of a research project, starting with the hypothesis that Science represents an imperfect means whereby perception is used as a privileged means o assess reality (“an improved means to an unimproved end”, Thoreau).

BLINDS~1.png

The overall approach of Blindspot is based on a long-term interchange of knowledge methods and proceedings of sciences and arts. “Perception is the process whereby sensory stimulation is translated into organized experience”, Encyclopaedia Britannica). Vision sciences tend to focus on the process of sensory stimulation: from the eye to the brain or from the photon to the image. The anatomical, physiological, neurological and biochemical research can convey the means to gather a great amount of information that agglomerates in large volumes and treaties. However precise, a vast amount of information is neglected or is actively translocated to a place outside of the laboratory by the application of the scientific methods and procedures. What remains, are contaminations from the “outside world” and are largely the subject-matter of this interdisciplinary project. Within the project perception is defined as a proposition that includes the “organized experience” within and among various human and non-human elements. These elements connect and communicate through incidents and create a reality that can only be understood in a very limited timeframe.

The method used by the research team relies on a strong interaction and interference between the organic elements and the instances that contextualize the received information. One cannot say where the Organ ends and the processing starts! (Oswald Wiener).

These interactions are highly variable and strongly depend on individual dispositions and environmental factors . Thus, a “real world” exists just as a helpful construction to interpret ephemeral individual perceptions.

Individual perception cannot be observed or interpreted as isolated, but rather as something that is distributed within group structures (persons, objects, environments). Each individual perceives himself and his daily environment through the reflections and reactions of others. Every single person is connected to a floating system of information and a clear line cannot be draw to separate individuals from others nor from their own surroundings.

Science aims at a universal language supported by inertia referential. The scientific language is highly coded and the associations between words, concepts and the corresponding entities in the “real world” are often blurred by the complex system of references used. The scientific systems of references include necessarily established conventions comparable to GMT (Greenwich mean time) or the null meridian, in an attempt to identify standards that make measurements possible and universal.

A main goal in this project is to identify calibration standards and reference points that are critical in influencing individual perception. Once such points of reference are identified they can be easily manipulated by deconstructing its own fundaments and by displacing them into a different context/setting. This approach questions the fallibility of the scientific conventions and highlights the importance and contribution of social and individual constructions (constellations) to what is perceived as a scientific through or a scientific fact. More importantly, the founding elements and corner stones of the scientific method are man-made and became less abstract as the project emphasizes and brings to center-stage those structural elements that are both invisible and – thought of as - infallible in daily scientific routines.

This goal can be accomplished by a variety of procedures, including the dislocation of both observer and object of observation to different scenarios where common references are no longer obvious and where the elements that support perception are often absent. Experimentally, this approach creates the field where different categories of knowledge meet and reveals the interdisciplinary nature of the project.

Posted by jo at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2006

The Kitchen presents

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Claude Wampler's PERFORMANCE

Claude Wampler :: PERFORMANCE (career ender) :: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues :: November 16-18 (Thursday-Saturday) 7pm & 9:30PM :: Tickets $12 :: Curated by Sarah Michelson.

1906 die brucke 1909 futurism IT 1910 metaphysical painting ecole de paris 1911 blaue reiter camden town group 1913 vorticism rayonism suprematism constructivism 1914 group of seven 1916 dada 1917 de stijl neo-plasticism 1918 novembergruppe valori plastici de ploeg 1919 unovis bauhaus 1924 surrealism 1925 neue sachlichkeit 1940 organic abstraction 1942 lettrism 1943 magic realism 1945 art brut HAS 1946 action painting 1947 tachisme 1948 homme temoin CoBrA 1949 art informel 1950 existential art op art 1952 beat 1954 kitchen sink gutai 1956 pop 1957 situationism international 1958 zero 1959 funk hard edge COME 1960 body GRAV nouveau realisme 1961 conceptual assemblage 1962 fluxus aktionism 1963 post painterly expression 1964 kinetic minimalism 1965 site specific environmental 1967 arte povera lowbrow support-surface TO 1968 photorealism land art 1970 postmodernism feminist 1974 digital graffiti 1976 neo expressionism 1977 mulheimer freiheit appropriation 1978 nuovi nuovi new image painting 1979 transavantgarde figuration libre 1980 demoscene 1981 neo-geo 1986 multiculturalism 1988 britart 1989 slacker patheticism THIS 1990 net art 1992 massurrealism identity art 1994 new beauty 1998 relational aesthetics 1999 festivalism 2002 invisibility 2006 PERFORMANCE

Posted by jo at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance

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Interactive Performance Series

The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance :: Interactive Performance Series autumn 2006 :: School of Arts Brunel University

Wednesday, November 15: Research Performance Seminar, Gaskell Building 117 1-2pm :: Jayachandran Palazhy Director, Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, India. The Role of Technology in Choreography, Arts Documentation and Dissemination.

5 - 7:30 pm :: Movement and Media Workshop, BoilerHaus 101 :: Principles of movement from Indian physical traditions such as Kalarippayattu and Bharatanatyam and their application in Attakkalari's contemporary dance idiom.

8:oo pm :: Public Lecture and Film Screening, BitLab :: NAGARIKA :: An Integrated Information System on Indian Physical Expressions through Technology Followed by reception.

The public is invited to participate in this series of encounters, lectures, screenings, physical and new media workshops and discussions, focussed on new thinking in performance practices, interactive technologies, digital and scientific creativity, and cultural production.

Admission free
For more information contact 01895 267 343
Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK
Johannes Birringer
director, Center for Contemporary and Digital Performance
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/condip.html

[from netbehaviour]

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

kanarinka bot's

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42 or 363 Definitions of Cartography

42 or 363 Definitions of Cartography is a text by kanarinka which attempts 42 or 363 definitions of the term "cartography". None of the definitions are original (i.e. all definitions are stolen). The definitions come from interesting places like cartography journals, Lewis Carroll, other artists, video game sites, cultural theory, Spanish dictionaries, and military training manuals.

Buy print copy at Lulu.com for $11.98 :: Download free book at Free Press.

Free Press by Sal Randolph: 42 or 363 Definitions of Cartography was published via Free Press, an open-access publishing house launched at Röda Sten contemporary art center in Göteborg, Sweden in Fall 2006. A project of artist Sal Randolph, Free Press accepted all kinds of writing from the public; contributions in any language could be as short as a single word or as long as an encyclopedia and could include manifestos, statements, documentations, studies, stories, recipes, poems and whatever you could imagine.

"Even in the age of the internet, book publishing is a walled garden where editors and commercial interests filter out most of what is written," says Randolph. "To publish is to 'make public,' and the published materials of the world create their own kind of public space, a city of books where readers and writers are citizens. Free Press aims to open up access to that public space. Like any city, Free Press is bound to include both ugliness and beauty, though the definitions of each will certainly differ."

All participating manuscripts were published as printed books in the Free Press series, available in the project's library and reading room at Röda Sten, where events and discussions also took place. Additional copies have been placed on shelves in local bookstores and libraries. Readers can download copies from the website and order them at cost from an internet book printer.

The Free Press exhibition took place from September 16 - October 15, 2006 at Röda Sten.

Posted by jo at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

Medien Kunst Raum Unna

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Call for Applications

The Medien Kunst Raum Unna (MKRU) issues a grant addressing the history of new media. We are looking for concepts that address the social consequences of new technologies without necessarily employing high technology. Media artists from Germany and the European Union are called for proposals for works yet to be realized, selected by a professional jury. The proposal shall stand out through the medial and artistic pervasion of the chosen subject, the possibility to be exhibited in the art context and a high level of artistic quality. Additionally to the artistic concept (2-3 pages A4), a proposal (1 page A4) for a one-day workshop with Unna-based teenagers shall be entered.

The grant is awarded with a single amount of 1500 Euros by the Medien Kunst Raum Unna/ Zentrum für Information und Bildung. Material expenses will be reimbursed up to 300 Euros and a publication will be released. The grant holder will be selected from the submitted entries by a professional jury consisting of an artist, a curator and the artistic director of Medien Kunst Raum Unna. The stipends outcome will be presented in Unna. The grant's presenta-tion is combined with a workshop addressing Unna-based teenagers, who thus will get a chance to learn more about (media-) artistic practices.

Eligible are individuals with residence in a country of the European Union. Proposals can be entered in German and English.

Deadline: December 29, 2006, Application form on http://www.mkru.org

Medien Kunst Raum Unna / ZIB
Francis Hunger
Lindenplatz 1
59423 Unna
Germany Tel: 02303-103-731 (Mo/Di)
Fax: 02303-103-799
francis.hunger[at]unna.de
http://www.mkru.org

Posted by jo at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2006

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR):

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Call for Proposals

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR): Call for Proposals :: Deadline November 21, 2006 :: Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center in Second Life is soliciting proposals for its artist-in-residence program. The deadline for submissions is November 21, 2006. Established and emerging artists will work within the 3d rendered environment of Second Life. Each 11-week residency will culminate in an exhibition and a community-based event. Residents will also receive a $400 stipend, training and mentorship.

Ars Virtua Artist-in-Residence (AVAIR) is an extended performance that examines what it means to reside in a place that has no physical location.

Ars Virtua presents artists with a radical alternative to “real life” galleries: 1) Since it does not physically exist artists are not limited by physics, material budgets, building codes or landlords. Their only constraints are social conventions and (malleable-extensible) software. 2) The gallery is accessible 24 hours a day to a potentially infinite number of people in every part of the world simultaneously. 3) Because of the ever evolving, flexible nature of Second Life the “audience” is a far less predictable variable than one might find a Real Life gallery. Residents will be encouraged to explore, experiment with and challenge traditional conventions of art making and distribution, value and the art market, artist and audience, space and place.

Application Process: Artists are encouraged to log in to Second Life and create an avatar BEFORE applying. Download the application requirements here: http://arsvirtua.com/residence. Finalists will be contacted for an interview. Interviews will take place from November 28-30.

About Ars Virtua: Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located entirely in the synthetic world of Second Life. It is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. Ars Virtua is a venue for new genres; it is also a platform for showcasing traditional artists creating still and moving images, for instance, who apply scripts to extend these into the synthetic game environment. Ars Virtua maintains a close relationship with the underlying animation engine that enables Second Life architecture and 3D rendered “sculpture.” Ars Virtua brings the art audience into “new media” rather than new media to the museum or gallery, and calls upon its audience to interact with the art and one another via their avatars within the space.

About Second Life: Second Life is a 3D online persistent space totally created and evolved by its users. Within this vast and rapidly expanding place, you can do, create or become just about anything you can imagine. Built-in content creation tools let you make almost anything you can imagine, in real time and in collaboration with others. An incredibly detailed digital body ('Avatar') allows a rich and customizable identity.

URLS:
http://arsvirtua.com/
http://arsvirtua.com/residence/
http://slurl.com/secondlife/dowden/42/59/52/?title=Ars%20Virtua
http://secondlife.com

"AVAIR" is a 2006 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.

Posted by jo at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

Pall Thayer

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wassup, tYgEr_lil_E?

wassup, tYgEr_lil_E? :: Pall Thayer :: solo exhibition at Pace Digital Gallery :: Nov 15 - Dec 8, 2006 :: Discussion with the artist and Reception Nov 15, 2-4pm :: Pace University, 2nd floor, 163 William Street (between Beekman and Ann Streets), New York, NY.

"Wassup, tYgEr_lil_E?" is an examination of the impact of digital media on abstract art. The title references Woody Allen's film, "What's up, Tiger Lily?" (1966) from which it borrows a simple idea: dubbing a foreign movie's dialogue with completely unrelated text, in an attempt to alter the story. "Wassup, tYgEr_lil_E?" captures images from live video feeds and provides on-screen subtitles with text captured from live Internet chat sessions. Thayer made no attempt to match images to text. Computers have no conscious understanding of the subject material they are being made to appropriate. Therefore the result, being generated by automated computer processes, becomes an abstraction.

Pall Thayer (1968) is an Icelandic artist working with computers and the Internet. He graduated from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1999 with a background in mixed-media. His work has been exhibited widely at festivals and group shows such as Nordic Interactive in Copenhagen, Transmediale in Berlin, The Boston CyberArts Festival, Hipersonica/File in Sao Paulo and PixxelPoint in Slovenia. In 2004 he organized the Trans-Cultural Mapping: Iceland Inside and Out workshop in locative media for Lorna, The Icelandic Organization for Electronic Arts, of which he is an active member. He is currently pursuing his MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

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

DIFFUSION

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eBooks Now Available

SPECIES AND SPACE SERIES: SINGLE STEP GUIDE TO SUCCESS: DAY PLANNING by Heath Bunting :: SPACES AND PLACES OF CONVERGENCE by Anne Galloway :: URBAN TIME TRAVEL: ODD-LOTS AND FLOATING ISLANDS by Lisa LeFeuvre.

ABOUT SPECIES OF SPACES: This publication is one of a series of essays commissioned by Proboscis for the series Species of Spaces – inspired by and in homage to George Perec's eponymous book. The series contemplates how we occupy space in the contemporary world of the twenty-fi rst century – the virtual and physical, emotional and social – what Perec called the ‘infra-ordinary’. Species of Spaces questions the trajectory of contemporary urban existence,intervening in current debates on how the virtual and the physical relate to each other, and how technological advances affect cultural and social structures.

LIQUID GEOGRAPHY SERIES: PATHS FOR A LISTENER: Perhaps it's in a single moment when each of us truly begins listening by Loren Chasse :: NO WORDS by David Key :: CONSTRUCTING PLACE: WHEN ARTISTS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS MEET by John Schofield :: LANDSCAPE: RETURN • DISPERSAL • CIRCULATION by Kathryn Yusoff.

ABOUT LIQUID GEOGRAPHY: This publication is one of the third Liquid Geography series commissioned by Proboscis. This series was commissioned alongside the Topographies & Tales project in 2005 and 2006, which is about perceptions of place and geography, revealing small local stories against the larger picture of how our concept of space and environment is shaped by physical and aural experience. It involved a series of collaborations and includes a short film, an audio CD, a StoryBox of StoryCubes, two series of Diffusion eBooks and a Creative Lab. This series of books explores these issues with a particular emphasis on language, memory, and aural experience.

DIFFUSION eBooks are shareable paper books that are free to download, print and make up (in A4 and US Letter PDF formats). Designed for viral distribution at almost no cost to readers, Proboscis regularly commissions new writing and creative publications which broaden discussion and debate around themes relating to our own projects and research. Proboscis also provides online design schematics, welcoming anyone, anywhere to adopt or re-interpret the format for their own uses.

Sharing Creativity

By using the internet as the distribution mechanism, DIFFUSION eBooks are accessible to a diverse readership across parts of the world that it would not be economical, or physically possible, to distribute traditional books to. Readers are encouraged to share the eBooks electronically or as material objects. DIFFUSION aims to bridge analogue and digital media by taking the reader away from the computer screen and engaging them in the process of making with their hands. Through the physical act of making the eBook, a dynamic is created that blurs the distinctions between producers and consumers.

DIFFUSION eBooks are designed to be freely available to download and print out. Under no circumstances should any version of this publication, whether print or electronic, be sold by any third party without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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

Transformations: Walter Benjamin and the Virtual

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Call for Submissions

Transformations is seeking abstracts for the following issue: Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture.

What does Walter Benjamin offer for critical thinking and creative practice in an age increasingly mediated by virtual technologies? Much Benjaminian scholarship proposes a Benjamin at best ambivalent to, and at worst, in recoil from modernity. Yet, recent critical thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy provide new possibilities in approaching the analysis of contemporary culture inspired by Benjamin's insights and arguments. These suggest innovative ways of reading and incorporating Benjamin, ways that re-engage an active configuration between politics, art, and representation in response to the shift from mass to global culture.

Increasingly it seems possible to reconsider the role art can, and may be already playing, in such a configuration. This issue of Transformations seeks submissions that address these ideas. In the light of Benjamin's thought, and those who take that thought further, we want to look at what the concept of virtuality- the tendency in mediated contexts towards disembodied interactions and ways of being human -- does to Benjamin's ideas of politics, art, and media?

Call for abstracts: abstracts of 500 words due end of November 2006
Papers due: March 2007
Publication: mid 2007

Submissions should be sent to the Issue editor: John Grech, at
John.M.Grech[at]alumni.uts.edu.au
Or alternatively, to the General editor: Warwick Mules at w.mules[at]cqu.edu.au

For full details please visit the Transformations website.

Posted by jo at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

Translocations 1:

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New Media Practices in the Urban Context

Translocations 1: New media practices in the urban context :: 17th and 24th November 2006 :: Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS :: Facilitated by Tapio Mäkelä, researcher and artist in residence at Sarai.

This workshop looks at new media practices in urban contexts. The introductory session will take place at SARAI/CSDS seminar room on Friday, November 17th 11.00-13.00/14.00-16.00. Second session on November 24th, same time. Depending on the participants’ interests, there will either be one or two further sessions, also discussing selected readings and media art projects done or developed by the participants. Questions or suggestions, please e-mail tapio[at]translocal.net. Examples include: - public media art projects - media artistic interventions - projects using mobile phones - projects using GPS.

Workshop themes: One of the arguments made in the context of new media arts or Internet related theory is that in particular networked media offers new alternative public spaces. How are these arguments grounded in practice? What constitutes a public space in a given culture, to begin with, and how would new technologies amend or replace them?

Lucy Lippard wrote about lure of the location as a warning of essentialist artist practices about location. Today one can discuss lure of location data – as many artists offer views on urban experience based on location data, which in most cases, is merely indexical about a given location with its rich layers of urban life. Through several examples I will illustrate this new genre of locative art or location based media and discuss it in the context of technological sublime and fetishization of new technologies.

Personal computers, mobile phones, networked servers act as auxiliary memory devices. Also many artistic projects work with archiving, databases, and different ways of creating private or shared memories. How media artists and theorists address memory – and how to relate with the frenzy of creating digital artifacts, digital fever?

To register, please send in a short bio and a paragraph on why you wish to attend the workshop to dak[at]sarai.net by the 12th of November 2006.

Posted by jo at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

transmediale.07 Award

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Unfinish!

Nominated for the transmediale.07 Award: Herman Asselberghs (be): Proof of Life ; Tim Shore (uk): Cabinet ; Antoins Schmitt (fr): Still Living :: Honourable Mentions: Aram Bartholl (de): Random Screen ; Richard Chartier / Taylor Deupree (us): Specification.Fifteen ; Kurt D'Haeseleer (be): Scripted Emotions ; Liu Wei (cn): A Day to Remember ; Stefan Zlamal (at): Heinrich und Mary-Jane.

transmediale.07 Award Jury: Inke Arns (Dortmund), Eva de Groote (Ghent), Miguel Leal (Porto), Ellen Pau (Hongkong) und Mike Stubbs (Melbourne).

The 20th transmediale festival for art and digital culture runs under the motto Unfinish!, and takes place from January 31 through February 4, 2007, at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

unfinish! demands the re-opening of processes that are deemed closed.
unfinish! questions finality and claims that any given situation is full of potential.
unfinish! investigates artistic processes that are open to change and reversal of decisions.
unfinish! is the battle cry and the curse of digital work that knows no conclusion, but only consecutive versions.

Proof of Life is a 30-minute audio-visual work by the Belgian cultural philosopher and filmmaker Herman Asselberghs. Its images show the interior of a deserted space, while the viewer's attention is directed to the sound track. Spoken words reflect on hostage-taking, and sounds of imprisoned life create a claustrophobic atmosphere, inspiring an intense reflexion about the human condition in the age of migration and global media.

Cabinet, a film by Tim Shore (UK), was shot in the US-States of Montana and Wyoming, a sparsely populated and wild natural environment in which Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote his 'Manifesto' against the industrial society. The sound track uses historical material from newsreels and educational features, even Edison's recording of 'Oh Tannenbaum'. This freely associating film essay reflects on the relationship between nature, culture and power, and on the imaginary space between words and memory.

A thoroughly 'unfinished' work is Still Living, by French artist and programmer Antoine Schmitt: Animated diagrams, similar to the well known graphics used for election analysis and stock exchange rates, are in constant movement - showing autonomously and eternally fluctuating statistics and ratios. While such graphical charts usually promise exact information, in this work they are caught in a nervous game of indecision and permanent alteration.

transmediale.07 - 31 january - 4 february 2007 - festival for art and digital culture berlin.

transmediale - Klosterstr. 68 - 10179 Berlin
tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814 info[at]transmediale.de - http://www.transmediale.de

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Daniel Langlois Foundation

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Interview with Per Biorn

Interview with Per Biorn :: During 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, presented from October 13 to 23, 1966, at the 69th Regiment Armory (New York, NY, U.S.), engineer Per Biorn designed technological components to control various elements (projectors, objects, lights) used in the performance Carriage Discreteness by Yvonne Rainer. He also built a number of TEEM decoders and contributed to the development of the Ground Effect Machine, a compressed air module used in Vehicle by Lucinda Childs. Following 9 Evenings, in addition to his work with Bell Telephone Laboratories (Murray Hill, NJ, U.S.), Biorn continued to design and build technological components for numerous artists. He also restored a number of works of art.

This interview with Mr. Biorn, produced by the Daniel Langlois Foundation, was taped on August 25, 2004, in Berkeley Heights (NJ, U.S.). Present at the interview were Julie Martin, Vincent Bonin and Éric Legendre. The interview has been divided into chapters to facilitate navigation and listening

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

Shop for the Holidays

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And Support Networked_Performance at the Same Time!

It’s not too early to start your holiday shopping! And you can support Turbulence’s networked_performance blog at the same time! [WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO PROVIDE THIS SERVICE WITHOUT YOUR HELP.] Please go to our website and make a donation today. Choose from artists’ books, drawings, DVDs, CDs, archival prints, T-Shirts and more by Annie Abrahams, Kate Armstrong, Diane Bertolo, Andy Deck, Onomé Ekeh, Jason Freeman, Tal Halpern, Peter Horvath, David Jhave Johnston, kanarinka, Brooke A. Knight, Steven Lam, Patrick Lichty, Michael Takeo Magruder, Michael Mandiberg, microRevolt, Mouchette, MTAA, Andrea Polli, Preemptive Media, Gustavo Romano, Yoshi Sodeoka, Nathaniel Stern, Helen Thorington, and Jody Zellen. Or simply make a donation.

Turbulence is celebrating its first DECADE, the only program to consistently commission net art for ten consecutive years. Despite the expansion of our projects, the acceleration of our support for artists, and the valuable resources we provide in our networked_performance blog and New American Radio archive, we have seen a decline in our operating support. Please help us to continue to support emerging artists and technologies, and preserve our valuable archives. THANK YOU.

Posted by jo at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York

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tobias c. van Veen + Trace Reddell

Upgrade! New York :: tobias c. van Veen + Trace Reddell :: Friday, Nov 10, 7:30 PM :: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street, (bet 10th & 11th Ave).

tobias c. van Veen and Trace Reddell will perform and discuss their new audio works. tobias will be poking his head into the aether of the airwaves to perform a short interpretation of AUTOSEVOCOM TACSAT and will give a taste of the as-yet unreleased audiowork FOIL.

AUTOSEVOCOM TACSAT explores surveillance frequencies of encoded police
channels against a backdrop of low-end sound composed from fragments of real
and virtual war-torn landscapes. FOIL. A blend of urban recordings from a peaceful Western city with its modernist though unpeaceful counterpart in Beirut falls prey to explosive interventions in EA's BattleField 2 online wargame, eventually detonating itself into the debris of alterity.

Trace will be performing his new live cinema work, “somaticosmos.” In the "somaticosmos," cosmic dissonances intersect with bodily pulse and flow, situating human experience within a barometer of galactic conditions. Noisy space transmissions give way to lush and alien terrains, occasionally disrupted by streams of microscopic rhythms and staticky beats. The visual performance melds the techniques of live VJ projections and digital lumia with the cosmic cinema of Jordan Belson.

tobias c. van Veen is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication Studies at McGill University and a practitioner of the technology arts. He is contributing editor at FUSE and Concept Engineer at La Société des arts technologiques (SAT), where he curates Upgrade Montréal. Since 1993 he has disseminated work in sound, radio & net-art, performing and intervening with laptop and turntables, renegade soundsystems and interventions of inscription [controltochaos.ca]. His writing has been disseminated worldwide. He also mixes a mean absynthe martini [quadrantcrossing.org/blog].

Trace Reddell is a digital media artist and theorist exploring the interactions of multimedia production, networking technologies, media theory, literary criticism, space rock and ambient music, and the history of drug cultures. Over the past two years, Trace's live cinema performances and video works have screened at over thirty international venues, and his net.art and audio projects have appeared regularly on the Web since 1999. Trace is Assistant Professor of Digital Media Studies at the University of Denver, and the graduate director of the M.A. in Digital Media Studies. He founded Denver’s first digital media festival, A:D:A:P:T, in Spring 2003 at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He edits the “music/sound/noise” content at Electronic Book Review and is the producer of Alt-X Audio.

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art + tech + community.

About our partner: Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as significant genre.

Posted by jo at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

Regine Debatty's interview with

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Agnes Meyer-Brandis

"...I discovered (Agnes Meyer-Brandis's) work by chance while clicking from a festival website to another. I was a bit puzzled to be honest. Elfs? Vertical Breezometer? Mobile borehole? In February things got a bit clearer when I saw one of her installations, SGM-Iceberg-Probe, which won an award at Transmediale.

Meyer-Brandis' background is both in science and art. Her work combines pure science and creativity to explore the zone between fact and fiction, fantasy and technology. Her current focus is on “fantastic” augmented reality and other participatory urban interventions.

She also holds a teaching position at the university of applied sciences Düsseldorf, is frequently lecturing at other universities and conferences and seems to tour the world to receive awards. She is the founder of the "Forschunsgfloss / Research Raft for Subterranean Reefology”, a small institute whose chief aim is to explore and confirm subterranean phenomena." More >> [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2006

Arts Council England, London

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'The Art Of Playing Games'

The Art Of Playing Games: 14th November, 1.00pm (12.30pm lunch).
2 Pear Tree Court, Clerkenwell :: Hosted by Arts Council, London, and the LDA.

You are warmly invited to lunch at Arts Council England, London for the 'Art Of Playing Games'. This latest event is part of the Digital Culture Lunchtime talks series looking at the impact of new technologies on different artforms.

Many of you came to the fantastic Hari Kunzru talk, organised with Literature, and we continue our series with 'The Art Of Playing Games'. This time we'll consider gaming as it crosses over into theatre and visual Arts, and as a 'cultural industry' in its own right. We are extremely pleased to present a sparkling panel of gaming experts including:

Dave Green - Technology correspondent for the Phil Jupitus breakfast show on BBC 6Music and authority on web gaming :: Conrad Bodman - Our own Senior Officer who curated 'Game On' at Science Museum :: Tim Wright - digital writer and trAce contributor will present various ways of playing on the web :: Producers for Coney - facilitating a mysterious experimental theatre project.

This panel is assembled following the recent London Games Festival and Tom Campbell from the LDA will discuss the Fringe element that was supported by the LDA and Arts Council, London.

There will also be two artworks displayed in Reception from the recent Furtherfield show 'Gameplay'. 'Endless Forest' by Tale Of Tales 'Facade' by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern.

Tuesday 14th November
12.30 lunch
1.00pm talks begin.

Rehearsal Room, 2 Pear Tree Court.

Rachel Baker
Visual Arts Officer, Media Arts and Moving Image
Arts Council England, London
Direct line 020 7608 6176
Fax 020 7608 4100
Mobile 07779 650908
Email rachel.baker[at]artscouncil.org.uk
www.artscouncil.org.uk

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

State of Emergency Election Night

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Video, Slideshows, Ripped from the Headlines

Special State of Emergency Election Night SCREENING: Tuesday November 7, 8:30PM - 11:00PM :: Video projections in the window of Alias Restaurant at the southeast corner of Clinton & Rivington (NYC).

Provocative program newly updated in the run-up (stumble-up?) to the election: against the war, against the ever-deepening devastation of democracy, against the manufactured State of Emergency in which we live. Video, slideshows, ripped-from-the-headlines images and texts skewering Congressional sleaze, the anti-immigrant hysteria, the cable news hustle, super-patriotism, nuke bomb sites, global biochemical contamination, etc. Participating artists include Mary Kelly, Alan Sekula, Yvonne Rainer, Jenny Lion, Sherry Millner & Ernest Larsen, Michael Mandiberg, Louis Hock, Gregory Sholette, and Leslie Thornton along with many local contributors...

Special Throw-The-Rascals-Out drinks and snacks available at Alias :: Contact: Ernie Larsen 212-604-0231 or elarsen3[at]aol.com. [blogged by Joy on Newsgrist]

Posted by jo at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

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Can You See Me Now?

Blast Theory will present Can You See Me Now? at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago this November: Performance Dates: November 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th from 1 - 4 p.m. (CDT). Can You See Me Now? is a chase game played online and on the streets. Players are dropped at random locations into a virtual map of Chicago. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player. The runners use handheld computers showing the positions of online players to guide them in the chase.

Use your arrow keys to flee down the virtual streets, send messages and exchange tactics with other online players. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie talkies lets you eavesdrop on your pursuers: getting lost and out of breath on the real streets. If a runner gets within 5 metres of you, a sighting photo is taken and your game is over.

Can You See Me Now? is a collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham. It won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Prix Ars Electronica and was nominated for a BAFTA Award.

Posted by jo at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

EFA Gallery

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The Searchers

The Searchers :: curated by Molly Dilworth and Amoreen Armetta :: Artists: Nuno Cera, Ann Craven, AC Dickson, Joan Grossman, Lucien Samaha, Jenny Vogel; with artist publications by Bill Brown, Gabriela Forcadell and Alejandro Cesarco, LTTR, Josephine Meckseper, Aleksandra Mir, Lone Twin, Pruess Press

“For academics to be happy, the universe has to have form by contrast, to assert that the universe does not resemble anything at all and is merely formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.” – Georges Bataille, from Documents

Last year, I moved into a really small apartment so I started selling my books on eBay, and going to the library instead of buying new ones. At first, when someone bought a book from me I just mailed it to them. But then I sold my Bataille collection to Robert from Traverse City, Michigan, and tucked this note inside:

Dear Robert,

I’m lucky enough to be familiar with Traverse City since my parents live right next door in Elk Rapids. It was at the Traverse City Cherry Festival that I saw a bunch of teenagers tip over a porta-potty with someone in it. I really don’t remember who it was that rolled out, I remember the crowd, though––some people laughed. But I could tell that the kids were surprised they did it. There wasn’t as much shit as you might imagine.

They didn’t get away––the cops were watching along with everyone else, and made them apologize. I think they actually were sorry.

Anyway, enjoy Traverse City and the books.

On the day I wrote to Robert, I looked at about a hundred raincoats online, searching for the kind I used to wear when I lived in Seattle. It felt like being in a musty thrift store on a weekday afternoon, way in the back corner where the junk piles up––just you, the cashier, and the absence of so many other people. Months later, I began to read about people everywhere tucking letters into books, and sending them to strangers. It was happening on eBay—proof that people longed to hold something from someone else in their hands.

I’m part of the small, stubborn group who still attempts to read the Times on the subway––I don’t even fold it up to make it more manageable, I like being inside its pages. A few days ago, I was on the train behind my newspaper, reading the latest eBay story:

Generation Net: Log on, Join in, Drop out

eBay has rapidly absorbed hundreds of experimental communities who use it as a real space friending system. These communities form an eBay subculture who interact in real space by trading mailed letters and objects, as opposed to the real time interactions that happen on the rest of the site, and on other popular sites like MySpace. eBay began as a commerce site, but these new communities quickly began to barter rather than purchase, giving rise to the multiple-instance, real space exchanges referred to as friending. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, eBay-based real space interactions are up 34% this year; multiple-instance exchanges, where two or more people make long-term, repeated exchanges have not yet been tracked.

The eBay real space special interest group, in a post on its eBay community homepage, has defined these terms: “In real space, a structure’s parameters are formless, molded by users’ desires, rather than the cognitive boundaries of the programmers designing it.” The utopian hopes of the real space group are too rosy for some, however. “Friending is a backlash to blogging, but there’s already a friending backlash forming.” said ‘anonymous’ in a post to the group’s feedback forum. But many experts disagree, “Backlash has ceased to be a useful term here,” noted ‘professore’ (who is contractually bound to remain anonymous while posting to a blog) in a recent thread on lifestudies.org, Harvard’s Life Studies blog, “as one friending system apes another, not as a reaction to, but a mirror of. Both [communities] spread like a virus, multiply like an infestation…

I turned down the corner of my paper, and saw this woman across from me staring. I looked away. I looked back but she was still staring, her book on her lap, the edges of her mouth arranged in a smile. Then I noticed: the muffled sounds from two people’s iPods had synched up. As we stared at each other shyly, one song became audible rather than two dissonant, fuzzy beats. It lasted for almost a minute and no one else seemed to notice.

It stopped. I snapped the wrinkles out of my paper, and put my head back inside its pages.

"An imaginary room rises up around our bodies, which think that they are well hidden when we take refuge in a corner." -- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

That night, I navigated eBay by the illumination of a small strand of Christmas lights. The noise from the street filtered up two stories, so I put headphones on. I didn’t plug them into anything, I just stuck the jack in my pocket so I heard nothing but the blood rushing through my ears. Looking straight ahead at the screen, I saw the lights hanging in the windows to my right and left. They were bright, blurry orange spots blowing out the edges of my peripheral vision. I leaned back as far as the keyboard would allow, and absently grasped the cords below between my bare toes.

Later, I picked up a library book. Its soft, powdery pages smelled like wood, it said:

“It is all right to speed ahead into the desert leaving no trace.”

Someone had drawn an arrow from this sentence to the margin where they had written:

Things that leave no trace: absence, ghosts, energy, thoughts.

The Searchers is an exhibition, a library of artist publications, and a series of performances that will take place in the gallery multiple times during the exhibition.

Drawing on conventions established in Dario Argento’s groundbreaking Horror film, Suspiria, The Lost Soul by Nuno Cera shows a woman’s transformation from zombie to a ghost.

Ann Craven’s Moon Paintings confront the impossibility of ever reproducing an object perfectly. Craven paints the moon again and again from observation, adding into each painting something she remembers from the previous painting.

AC Dickson eBay PowerSeller is the alter ego and eBay screen name of artist Andrew Dickson, who with Susan Beal, uses PowerPoint, video, music, audience interaction, and evangelical zeal to spread the good word about how you, too, can achieve financial independence with eBay.

Joan Grossman’s lecture, Meditations on Amnesia, brings together filmmaking and critical writing to explore the intricacies of memory: loss of memory, amnesia, and accidental memory through video clips, archival footage, anecdotal and theoretical musings.

The Disposable Homosexual by Lucien Samaha is a slide show archive of his wanderings around gay male chat rooms, cruising and conversing with the men who get to know each other—or each other’s screen presences—in these virtual spaces.

Your Lips Are No Man’s Land But Mine, is the result of Jenny Vogel’s navigation thorough the twilight world of abandoned Web cams. She exposes screen shots of people and landscapes that seem to have forgotten that they are being broadcast around the Internet.

On view in the Library: dream whip by Bill Brown, LTTR No. 1: Lesbians To The Rescue, Masterbox by Gabriela Forcadell and Alejandro Cesarco, FAT magazine by Josephine Meckseper, The Church of Sharpie by Aleksandra Mir, Of Pigs and Lovers by Lone Twin, and The Lyrics of Ludacris by Pruess Press.

November 10, 2006 – January 6, 2007 :: Opening Reception, November 10, 6-8 pm :: AC Dickson: eBay PowerSeller! Dec 12 – 14 :: Lecture by Joan Grossman December :: Closed for holidays December 23 – January 2 :: EFA Gallery / EFA Studio Center, 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018 bet 8th and 9th Aves, Wed. through Sat., 12-6 PM and by appointment.

The Searchers is a collaboration between artist Molly Dilworth; and Amoreen Armetta, Managing Editor of Art on Paper. The Searchers catalog and wall texts were designed by Lance Wakeling.

This exhibition is presented by The EFA Gallery, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. With additional support from The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and Carnegie Corporation Inc.

The EFA Gallery is a curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent scurators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist's creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
gallery[at]efa1.org

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

November 02, 2006

Institute for Infinitely Small Things

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Impeach Bush Jogging Circus

The Impeach Bush Jogging Circus :: When :: Sunday, November 5th around 12 noon but probably a little later :: Where :: Around Mile 17 (1st & 66th St, Manhattan) of the NYC Marathon.

Our friends at the Impeach Bush Jogging Circus bring you a mobile carnival dedicated to acts of wonder, entertainment and astonishment all accomplished while moving approximately 7 miles per hour and doing cartwheels for a GWB-Free USA. Jugglers, Joggers, Clowns, Hula Hoopers and a 10+piece jogging kazoo band are running the NYC Marathon as a team on Nov 5th, 2006. Bring IMPEACH BUSH signs and wear red, white and blue to show your support for the legal case against George W. Bush.

Be our friend, Buy our stuff: Visit the circus' myspace page for pictures and fashionable athletic wear. Join in: Can you juggle and jog or flip and skip? Email the circus at theimpeachbushjoggingcircus[at]gmail.com.

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things is a research organization whose mission is to invent and distribute new practices of political engagement in everyday life. Current research interests include: performing corporate language in public space, creating definitions of cartography, destabilizing consumer architectures, hacking maps and lying to people about art.

iKatun's mission is to present and support contemporary art that fosters public engagement in the politics of everyday information. To realize this mission, iKatun supports art projects, organizes exhibitions and conferences, publishes critical writing, runs workshops, gives lectures and fosters community locally and internationally. iKatun is a 501(c)3 organization based in Boston, MA.

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

Extra-ordinary Experiences:

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A Retrospective of British Media Art

Extra-ordinary Experiences: A Retrospective of British Media Art :: Venue: Kunsthaus Dresden, Germany :: Dates: 10-19th November 2006 :: Curated by: Tom Corby.

This unique exhibition presents an overview of British media art, covering a period from the early 1990s to the present day. Work by the selected artists - Susan Collins, Rod Dickinson, Mongrel, Scanner and Thomson and Craighead - enables German audiences to explore a representative range of sound, Internet, video and interactive works, symptomatic of British media art produced during this era.

Whilst media art in the form of video, photography and other expanded time-based practices, precedes the widespread emergence of the desktop computer and Internet, the artworks seen at this exhibition places the computer as central to their form. This fact, while brute, allows us to draw a useful line between these digital "new media" practices and the older analogue media art forms. This period is significant in British art history as it describes a radical shift in creative investigation that opened up extensive new areas of practice (in the form of the Internet and human-computer interactivity) and also produced new economies of art production and distribution.

In particular a new type of artist was emerging in the UK who was quick to confront and exploit the new ways of working and communicating described by the emerging technological landscape. Characteristically informed by an iconoclastic punk "Do-It-Yourself" attitude, these "new media" practices were informed by a desire to circumnavigate mainstream art institutional contexts and an interest in re-situating new media within wider debates concerning the social, political and aesthetic implications of such technologies. Following this theme, the exhibition selects a diverse range of practitioners, who are united by a consistency of approach in which technology becomes a pliant vehicle for creative invention which is, in turn, critically motivated, poetic, playful, and formally complex.

Posted by jo at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

EXPERIMENTA 2007

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Call for Entries

EXPERIMENTA is an international film and video festival held in Bombay, India for the past 4 years; now in its 5th year, EXPERIMENTA 2007 moves to Bangalore. EXPERIMENTA seeks films from any country that challenge popular and conventional modes of cinema. Abstract to obscure compositions from any genre produced on the margins of contemporary screen-culture are welcome.

Innovative, cutting edge and non-traditional work that attempts to aesthetically extend the parameters of the mediums of film and video is encouraged. Preview copies must be submitted for selection purposes. All lengths of film are considered. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis until the final selection is complete. Filmmakers are encouraged to submit their entries as soon as possible.

EXPERIMENTA is a curated film festival and is a Filter India project.

To type in and print out a submission form, visit: http://www.filterindia.com/callexp07.htm.

Posted by jo at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

club to club

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International Electronic Music and Arts Festival

club to club: International Electronic Music and Arts Festival, 6th edition :: 9-10-11 November 2006 :: Turin (Italy) - Berlin (Germany) :: Different locations

Club To Club is the electronic music and arts festival that every year transforms into a big dancefloor the whole city of Turin: a circuit of clubs and different locations (Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jam Club, Supermarket in Turin and Watergate in Berlin - for the new project Club Europa) hosts a selection of top Italian and international dj's, musicians and performers, exclusive international multimedia shows and productions, workshops and special events.

code_in_motion :: For 6th Club TO Club edition, TODO, a creative team exploring the uncharted territories of interaction, entertainment and communication, dedicates the electronic arts section of the Festival to 'code', presenting a selection of projects that share the same attitude towards performative tools, yet with a wide range of visual results. An approach that highlights the process of writing custom software as the foundation of personal and original universes of synthesis.

code_in_motion performances:

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Friday, November 10
SUPERMARKET
Viale Madonna di Campagna 1, Torino
00.00 - 04.00

SANCHtv (France): French designer David Dessens has realized some of the most interesting experiments on 3D real-time motion graphics: complex organic surfaces are built tinkering with math formulas, transforming music into a pure movement of color. He now lives in Frankfurt, where he is artist in residence at Meso.net.

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Friday, November 10
JAM CLUB
Murazzi del Po, Torino
00.00 - 04.00

ONOXO (Croatia): Onoxo is an experimental media design project realized by Croatian Vedran Kolac, vj and motion designer, member of the collective Strukt Visual Network. Since 2002 he is mainly engaged in video and graphics production, and in the research on generative visuals with tools as Flash and vvvv. His live generative visuals show an organic dimension contaminated by cold architectures in movement.

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Friday, November 10
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
via Bossoli 83, Torino
00.00 - 04.00

TODO (Italy): At Club To Club 2006 TODO presents FACE2FACE2FACE, a live media performance that uses and abuses dancefloor's faces as its only material. The faces will be transformed and animated using a repurposed version of the Blender GameEngine, an open-source tool that is commonly used to develop 3D videogames.

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

November 01, 2006

1001 nights cast 501st Performance

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Call for Stories

1001 nights cast turns 501 this Friday 3 November. This is the half way milestone of the project. To celebrate the event I am calling upon newcomers everywhere to submit a story for that day. I will select the best to perform or I may even do a montage of several stories. So please spread the word to your writer friends.

If you want to tune in on Friday night, the live webcast will be at 7.25pm from Sydney. That is 4.25pm in Perth, Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore; 10:25am in Beirut, Jerusalem and Istanbul; 9:25am in Madrid, Paris and Berlin; 8:25am in London and Portugal; 3:25am in New York, Toronto and Bogota; 12:25am in Los Angeles.

You might like to listen to The Book Show on ABC Radio National on Thursday 2 November at 10am when I perform one of Anne Brennan's stories and she and I talk to one of the producers about the project. There will also be a piece in the arts pages of the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday 3 November (so I'm told).

Meanwhile, here are some statistics about the project to date: 133 writers have contributed since performance #0001 on June 21 2005. Together they have written about 425,000 words. At the average novel length of 80,000 that is more than 5 novels worth, all archived on the site for you to read. To this point, the site has had 23,780 visits. Currently, it is getting an average of 63 visits/day. Stories have been performed from Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne, London, Madrid, Granada and a property outside of Dungog, New South Wales (thanks to a satellite dish).

On the sobering side, I have read reports every day covering contemporary events in the Middle East in order to give writers their writing prompt. To recap on some of the things that have been told to us by journalists working for western media outlets: The coalition forces in Iraq have found no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein is still on trial for genocide. Meanwhile more than 100 Iraqi civilians are killed every day - many more if the report in The Lancet is to be believed (and why should it be discounted - the investigators were shown death certificates after all). There are now wars within wars in Iraq with no clear "strategies" for resolution. Former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafic Hariri, was assassinated, his killers still at large and Syria's involvement pointed to and denied. Hamas won the January elections in Palestine and for their voting sins, the US and Israel continue to enforce an economic blockade. The new Kadima party won the Israeli elections in March without the intellectual presence of its figurehead Ariel Sharon who still lies in a coma. Before this, some of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank were evacuated and bulldozed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come to power in Iran and has been denying any sinister nuclear intentions ever since, much to the frustration of Washington who still refuses to have direct talks with Tehran. Condoleeza Rice has been earning lots of frequent flyer points. And freshest in our minds is the five week Israeli/Hezbollah conflict with cluster bombs lying unexploded in the fields of southern Lebanon. In reading through all these reports, I have implemented my own kind of self-censorship. It may give you some comfort to know that I do not draw any writing prompts from straight reportage of beheadings, suicide-bombings or body counts. To quote from story #495, I would feel like a "lammergeyer in Tyre". --Barbara Campbell

Posted by jo at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2006

WRO 07 (C): 12th International Media Art Biennale

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International Competition

12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07 (C) WRO Center for Media Art Foundation in Wroclaw, Poland announces an international competition open to any work created using electronic media techniques, exploring innovative forms of artistic communication.

The competition welcomes creators of artistic projects of diverse forms such as screenings (video art, computer animation), installations, objects, performances, multimedia concerts and network projects from all over the world. The main prize is eur5000 and the total prize money awarded is eur8000.

The deadline date for entry submission is 15 February 2007. Presentation of works selected to the very final along with the international jurys announcement of competition results will take place during public screening at the WRO 07 Biennale.

Agenda: 16 - 20 May 2007 competition, special events, symposium; 16 May - 17 June 2007 exhibition. National Museum in Wroclaw, WRO Art Center.

Posted by jo at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

Furtherfield.org

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The New Reviews/Interviews, Oct/Nov 2006

Welcome to Furtherfield's current collection of reviews and interviews. Please find time to read all of the writings, they are in no particular order. After reading, do explore all the networked behaviour generously written and thought about, in context.

Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed
PHONETHICA: Reviewed by Franz Thalmair
Alex Dragulescu - Blogbot: Review by María Victoria Guglietti
VISP Project MACHFELD: Interview by Julian Bleecker
The Lost Biology of Silent Hill: FurtherCritic Article by [[Mez]]
disturb.the.peace [angry women]: Review by Eliza Fernbach
2nd Upgrade Meeting at Oklahoma City: Review by Luis Silva.
Jason Nelson - Vholoce: Review by John Hopkins

Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed

An interview with Boredom Research on their latest project 'F.wish' a new online project commissioned by Folly (http://www.folly.co.uk/); based on the Lam Tsuen Wishing Trees. In Hong Kong near the Tin Hou Temple you can visit these trees, write your wish on a “bao die”, tie it to an orange and throw it up into the branches. If your wish is caught in the branches it is said to come true. The tree used to be a camphor tree where a tablet for worshipping Pak Kung was placed before it withered and became hollow. The myth goes that a worshiper prayed to the tree to fix his son who was slow in learning. The granted wish led to many more wishes being made of the tree.

PHONETHICA: Reviewed by Franz Thalmair

The contradictory overlap between diversity and similarity of languages and their corresponding cultures is the initial point for the project PHONETHICA by Takumi ENDO and Nao TOKUI. More than 6.5 billion people on our planet share approximately five to six thousand languages. Nevertheless, every single individual owns a speaking equipment, which enables him/her to produce the same sounds in every corner of the world. Consequently, there exists some coincidental similarity within the different idioms. Looking at languages in this specific way, it must be concluded that phonetic rather than semantic aspects of languages result in an overlapping of language phenomena in different cultural backgrounds.

Alex Dragulescu's Blogbot: Reviewed by María Victoria Guglietti

Blogbot and productive inertia. Sometimes silence is unbearable. Alex Dragulescu’s graphic novel What I Did Last Summer inundates our screen with words that we can almost touch. The phrases are intermittent, fragmentary, irrevocably silent… “I don’t ask why…” “Now, you’ve got all that on…” “I read the Stars and Stripes and….” These are textual bombs; scattered sentences harvested by Dragulescu’s software agent Blogbot. The phrases are actual extracts captured from the famous war blogs My War[sub]1[/sub] and Baghdad Blogger[2], two of the most famous blogs written by participants and witnesses of the war in Iraq.

The Lost Biology of Silent Hill_: FurtherCritic Article by [[Mez]]

The game Silent Hill [all 5 versions] attempts to restitch game-genre predictability. The versions progress using suspense/dread evocation as their primary engagement tool. Various game elements produce this introspective thrill-connection through the use of sound biting [almost literally], sinister environ expectancies [limited visual negotiations through fog/blackness], rotten materiality [decay + dereliction] and puzzle elements designed 2 provoke survival adaptions [fight-or-flight responses].

disturb.the.peace [angry women]: Review by Eliza Fernbach

Can anger be beautiful? Can rage be aesthetic? The collaborative net-based installation site D/tP disturb.the.peace [angry women] thinks so. What after all is more powerful than an angry woman but a group of angry women doing art? The infamous 'angry young man' epitomized by the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando in the cinema of the Fifties hasn't really been mirrored in a feminine glass. Polishing a reflection on angry women- young or old is the aim of this site that Hollers back and out into the future with bravado. Curated by Jess Loseby (http://rssgallery.com/), submissions to the site are ongoing and the bar has been set high by the founding fems who grace the inaugural page.

2nd Upgrade Meeting at Oklahoma City: Review by Luis Silva

This year, the Oklahoma City node will host the Second International Meeting. Having the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ideology as its theme, as well as a metaphor for the functioning of the Upgrade! network, this city in the middle of the United States of America will witness, from November 30th to December 3rd, a worldwide meeting of new media artists, curators, critics and theoreticians. Over twenty nodes will be present and have been preparing specially for the occasion a program that will feature exhibitions, performances, lectures, workshops, screenings and debates. Spreading all over the city, in spaces like Untitled [ArtSpace], IAO Gallery or The Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

Jason Nelson - Vholoce: Review by John Hopkins

Vholoce is one project in a long line of projects which seeks to creatively engage the ubiquitous data-streams that are flooding our virtual world. The rising flood of data is useless without sensible display. Visual (and sonic) display of digital data is a fundamental contemporary issue. But what is sensible display? Using a data stream as a basically random source for visual display is one way to play with the stream. The syntax of visual display (possibly) becomes the site for expression by the creative producer. The data-stream source, the method of (and reason for) display, and the overall creative process need to be interrogated in order to find the basis for the type of digital engagement.

If you are interested in being a reviewer on Furtherfield contact: marc.garrett[at]furtherfield.org

Furtherfield Neighbourhood & Projects:
# www.furtherfield.org
# www.http.uk.net
# www.visitorsstudio.org
# www. blog.game-play.org.uk
# www.nodel.org (with many others)
# http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org
# www.netbehaviour.org
# www.furthernoise.org

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2006

Deb Todd Wheeler:

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Live Experiments in Human Energy Exchange

Deb Todd Wheeler: Live Experiments in Human Energy Exchange (endurable velocipede, version 3) :: Green Street Gallery :: October 31 - December 14, 2006 :: Opening Reception: November 10, 2006 >> 7 - 9:30 pm :: >> Artist's Talk: Saturday, December 2 @ 6 pm.

This exhibition, part utopian fantasy, part meditation on possibilities and impossibilities in sustainability, concerns technology as a mediator for human interaction with the environment. Working in the 21st century means being captive to 21st century technologies, which for the most part rely on the electrical grid. In this installation, the power to fuel the kinetic sculptures comes from an alternate source: human power.

The experiments begin >> October 31 during gallery hours. We need Volunteer energy generators!! (come by and ride the bike....) Sign up at the gallery. Come by at 6pm to make grocery bag flowers!

Central to the installation is a modified bicycle, which is hooked up to a generator and various rigs, gears and pulleys. By pedaling the bike, the rider (a gallery volunteer) activates the installation, generating light, wind, sound, and motion to fuel a series of kinetic studies on the fraught relationships between nature and technology. In one piece the bike powers a DC generator that in turn powers fluorescent lights embedded in hacked ant farms, in which worker-ant tunnels are dug beneath looming silhouettes of 1964 World's Fair pavillions.

In another work, the same bike turns gears that transfer energy to wind power by turning a windmill-like form with sails made of recycled plastic grocery bags.

That windmill then powers a series of pivoting images, which delicately align into a third image when the wind hits them. At the end of this energy chain, the last bit of energy, animated moths and butterflies made from a year's worth of junk mail cover a wood scale model of Biosphere 2. Behind the bike rider and filling the gallery, a pulley-powered cassette deck connected to the bike plays the soundtrack from 1964 Futurama video at the speed of the rider. Also in the gallery are works on paper, and wire-frame models of flight experiments, inspired by the aerial pursuits of 19th century natural philosopher Louis Pierre Mouillard.

Posted by jo at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

OPENLAB 3

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Free Software Culture

OPENLAB 3 :: Group Show, 4/11-11/11/2006, 1-7pm :: Opening Event and Private View 4/11/2006, 4 -12 pm :: Closing Event 11/11/2006, 4-12 pm :: Auto-Italia South London Gallery, 82-86 Queens Road, SE152QX Peckham, London.

OpenLab is delighted to present OpenLab3, an group exhibition with an opening and closing event featuring musical performances by more than 20 artists and musicians of the OpenLab collective. OpenLab engages in the aesthetics and politics of Free Open Source Software Culture. Free Software Culture seeks to emphasise transparency of the creative process by making all stages of development available to others, enabling them to learn how the creation works and alter it for their own purposes. When this idea is applied to artistic practices, the boundaries between the artistic usage of software tools and their collaborative development become blurred. The workings of the artist's tools are exposed, and the artists are actively engaged in developing media technologies. They can modify them to suit their goals, rather than creating works by using existing tools that impose "their way of doing things" on the artwork.

This group exhibition brings together interactive installations, sonic interventions, video works and animations which explore the audio-visual code of this network culture: computers start to paint pictures on their own, expose their internal circuits and "commit suicide"; birds will sing and fly around in multiple realities, the skylines of two cosmopolitan cities merge, language, meaning and time burst into fragments and recombine. The range of the combined works points to the strength of Open Source Culture ? its increasing versatility as artistic playground essential to contemporary debates and its continued importance not just in the invention of new media realities but also in tackling themes of "real" time and space.

The two music events feature sound and multimedia performances of artists who use and develop open-source tools such as PD, Supercollider, Processing and Fluxus. They will perform prepared sets and code their music live in various programing languages. Musicians will also experiment with a set of live instrument swapping. By exchanging PD-Patches, they will challenge each other in an uncharted space of sonic manipulation. The performances will span from excursions into the symphonica, experimental noise and soundscapes to electronica and beat-oriented minimal techno-sets.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Rob Canning, Chun Lee, Claude Heiland-Allen, Carl Forsell, Sabine Gottfried, Karsten Gebbert, Paul Webb, Rob Munro, Chiharu Kaido, Evan Raskob, U-Sun, Ryan Jordan, Oli Laruelle, Robert Atwood, Luke Jordan, Rene, Monica Subrotova & Daniel Kordik, Michael Woelkner, Andy Farnell, Martin Aaserud, Ryan Jordan & Rachel Horne, Dave Griffith & Alex
McLean

For more information please visit
http://www.fexia.com/openlab
http://openlab.pawfal.org
http://www.midnightbluecollective.com

Posted by jo at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

Natural Habitat

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Art + Nature + Technology

Natural Habitat: What happens if art and nature and technology come together? Are new worlds created? Is the distinction between nature and technology still visible, or do the two increasingly merge with one another?

In the Natural Habitat project artists are working at the interface of nature and technology. Here they investigate the extent to which nature and technology complement each other, and show possitive ideas of a new nature. In Natural Habitat the boundaries between nature, culture and technology become increasingly blurred. The project consists of an exhibition Natural Habitat, from November 4 untill December 16 (opening November 4, 15.00 hour) and a seminar Art and Science in their Natural Habitat on Saturday November 11 from 13.00 - 17.30 hour. Information about the Art and Science in their Natural Habitat seminar.

During the MuseumNight Saturday November 4 from 19.00 – 02.00 hour a special programme is organized in relation to Natural Habitat with an all-night intervention by Bodies Anonymous around the video installation Geomania (1987) by Steina Vasulka and visitors can have their own DNA put into a contemporary chain with met Genes in a Bottle (start 21.00 h. limited edition).

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Montevideo / Time Based Arts
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.montevideo.nl
T +31 (0)20 6237101
F +31 (0)20 6244423
info[at]montevideo.nl

Posted by jo at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Ken Feingold:

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Eros and Thanatos Falling/Flying

Ken Feingold: Eros and Thanatos Falling/Flying :: Exhibition at Mejan Labs :: 2nd November – 10th December 2006 :: Opening on November 2nd 5-8 pm. :: Mejan Labs, Akademigränd 3, Stockholm.

For Mejan Labs Ken Feingold will premiere a new work in his Eros and Thanatos series, titled Eros and Thanatos Falling/Flying. Here he suspends two ventriloquist puppets, one in each room of Mejan Labs, from the ceiling so they appear to fly or fall. This ambivalence, a balance between two opposites, is something you can find in several of Feingold's pieces. The mythical characters of Eros and Thanatos were used by Freud in his formulation of drive theory to metaphorically represent the fundamental biological energies of, on the one hand, Eros: life, creativity, growth, and increase in tension, and on the other, Thanatos: that of the movement towards homeostasis (elimination of all tensions), dissolution, negation, and death. Psychoanalysts who follow Freud’s ideas have characterized these in many different ways, but fundamentally agree that we are constantly driven between stimulation and action by a balance of the forces of these energies, neither one ever found in completely pure state.

Posted by jo at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

ART CAKE:

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THE DELICIOUS TRANSIENT NEW MEDIUM

AXIOM Gallery presents: ART CAKE: THE DELICIOUS TRANSIENT NEW MEDIUM :: One night show and Opening Reception - November 3rd 6-9pm :: AXIOM Gallery 186 Hampshire Street, Cambridge Corner of Hampshire and Prospect Sts in Inman Square.

ART CAKE: THE DELICIOUS TRANSIENT NEW MEDIUM: features work from eight artists and teams selected from an open call. Artists were asked to get creative and use new media, sound, video, and theory in order to create an interactive cake piece.

Featuring: Rob Coshow, Catherine Dechico and Emily Su, Heloisa Escudero, George Fifield, Mary Greenfield and Taylor Hayward, Brian and Rebecca Higgins, Ravi Jain, Georgina Lewis

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

Mil i una veus-Mil y una voces

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Thousand and one voices

Orquestra del Caos presents the sound art festival MIL I UNA VEUS (thousand and one voices) next 3rd and 4th of November in CCCB (Contemporary Culture Centre in Barcelona), focused on the research of unconventional and artistic use of the human voice.

Featuring concerts by David Moss and José Iges. Presentations by Bartolomé Ferrando and Eduard Escoffet, and a selection of over 150 sound pieces by other artists organized in four collections for individual consultation: "Text Sound", "Radio Radio", "Linebreak", "Música electroacústica i veu" and "Camí fressat: itineraris per les escriptures contemporànies"; and two collections for public audition with eight loudspeakers: "Le sixte livre dit éléctroacoustique de François Rabelais" (GMEB) and "Octofonies per a Veus" (Simon Fraser University).

With interviews and works by : Charles Amirkhanian, Bruce Andrews, Paul Auster, Milton Babbitt, Michael Basinski, Jacques Bekaert, Françoise Barrière, José Manuel Berenguer, Charles Bernstein, Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Rainer Boesh, Pierre Boeswilwald, Bufffluxus, William Burroughs, cris cheek, Michel Chion, Henry Chopin, Bob Cobbing, Robert Creeley, Hugh Davies, Francis Dhomont, Jane Draycott & Elizabeth James, Stephen Erickson, Barbara Guest, Ray Federman, Ben Friedlander, Madeline Gins, Sten Hanson, Carla Harryman, Georg Katzer, Leo Kupper, Lyn Hejinian, Ake Hodell, Susan Howe, Bengt Emil Johnson, Sianed Jones, Sherwood Lazier, Karen Maccormack, Steve Mccaffery, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Jackson Maclow, Christof Migone, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a DJ Spooky), Robert Normandeau, Lance i Andrea Olsen, Jena Osman, John Oswald, Ted Pearson, Piers Plowright, Michel Redolfi, Roger Reynolds, Jerome Rothenberg, Leslie Scalapino, Ron Silliman, J.A. da Silva, Martin Spinelli, Peter Straub, Ulrich Suesse, Luci Tapahonso, Dennis Tedlock, Fiona Templeton, Daniel Teruggi, Daniel Tosi, Barry Truax, Lawrence Upton, Ben Yarmolinsky,
Cecilia Vicuña, Hannah Weiner, Hildegard Westerkamp, Gregory Whitehead, Ben Wilson, Trevor Wishart and many others.

Free Admission

Programme on http://www.sonoscop.net/
Press information on http://www.sonoscop.net/prensa/

MIL I UNA VEUS is one of Sonoscop's showcases. Sonoscop is the public sound art archive initiative by the Orquestra del Caos, open to anyone for consultation and contribution.

Posted by jo at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

re:place 2007

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

re:place 2007: The Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology :: Berlin, 15 - 18 November 2007.

re:place 2007, the Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology, will take place in Berlin from 15 - 18 November 2007 as a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This conference is a sequel to 'Refresh!', the first in this series, chaired by Oliver Grau and produced by the Database of Virtual Art, Leonardo, and Banff New Media Institute, and held at the Banff Center in Canada in September 2005, which brought together several hundred artists, scientists, researchers, curators and theoreticians of different disciplines.

re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, 're:place', we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology.

The re:place 2007 conference will be devoted to examining the manifold connections between art, science and technology, connections which have come into view more sharply through the growing attention to media art and its histories over the past years. It will address historical contexts and artistic explorations of new technologies as well as the historical and contemporary research into the mutual influences between artistic work, scientific research and technological developments. This research concerns such diverse fields as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nano-technology, and bio-technology, as well as investigations in the humanities including art history, visual culture, musicology, comparative literature, media archaeology, media theory, science studies, and sociology.

Conference Programme

The conference programme will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed individual papers, panel presentations, poster sessions, as well as a small number of invited speakers. Several Keynote Lectures, by internationally renowned, outstanding theoreticians and artists, will deliberate on the central themes of the conference.

The conference will also include dedicated forum sessions for participants to engage in more open-ended discussion and debate on relevant issues and questions.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

re:place 2007 welcomes contributions from established as well as from emerging researchers in diverse fields. The conference will be of interest to those working in, but not limited to, the following areas: art history and theory, literary studies, cultural studies, film and media studies, theatre, dance and performance studies, philosophy, history, gender studies, human-computer interaction, contemporary art, musicology, sound studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, science, technology and society studies, history of science, and history of technology.

We are especially keen on empirical, conceptual, and historical contributions that exemplify and expand the diverse methodological and thematic concerns of this extended interdisciplinary area. These might include contributions to:

- institutional histories of centers, sites, or events that have helped to concretize and engender the intersections between media, art, science and technology. Some broad areas could be: experimental arts spaces, collaborative research labs, significant exhibitions, etc.
- 'place studies' that highlight significant locations or situations where such interdisciplinary intersections or significant historical episodes have occurred. A few examples might be: 'Tesla in Budapest', 'Flusser in Brazil', USSR in the 1920s, 'Japan between 1950s-1970s,' etc.
- historiographical issues, methods, and debates that pose critical questions in the formulation of the histories of the 'media arts'. These might include: archaeology, genealogy or variantology as methodological tools, bridging the divide between art and media history, sociologies of interactivity, etc.
- theoretical frameworks from various philosophical and disciplinary positions. Topics might include the exemplary role of film studies or musicology for the study of media arts, or the significance of cultural specificities and location in media and technologies, etc.
- the migration of knowledges and practices from different contexts, whether disciplinary, institutional, geographical or cultural. Topics might include: the role of migrant artists in the development of new discourses and practices; the movement and adoption of disciplinary ideas from science into art contexts or vice versa, etc.

SUBMISSIONS

A dedicated website and online paper submission system will be ready for submissions from 1st December 2006. Abstracts of proposals, panel presentations and posters will have to be submitted in either Text, RTF, Word or PDF formats.

The DEADLINE for submissions will be 15 January 2007.

INFORMATION about the submission process and general information can be found at: http://tamtam.mi2.hr/replace

replace 2007 is a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin.

Conference partners include Leonardo, Database of Virtual Art at Danube University Krems' Center for Image Science, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research, Forum Goethe Institut, and others.

Conference chairs: Andreas Broeckmann (D), Gunalan Nadarajan (SG/USA)

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

Upstage Walk Through

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Try out UpStage 2

The next open walk-through will be this coming Wednesday, 1 November, at 8pm NZ time. Convert to your local time here. We will be on the Swaray stage, so audience members should come directly here; if you'd like to log in and participate as a player, it's imperative that you email me for a log-in as it's now impossible for more than one person to log in with the same username, so we need to make sure you aren't all trying to use the same guest log-in!

We now have the alpha version of UpStage 2 running on our server, so this walk-through is your first chance to try out the new features and enhanced interface (and help us identify bugs - this is the ALPHA version after all!). We're extremely grateful to the AUT student team - Beau Hardy, Francis Palmer, Lucy Chu & Wise Wang - who have been working on UpStage all year, and also our wonderful programmer Douglas Bagnall who is back on board to integrate the students work & continue with other developments for UpStage 2.


Hope to see you online on Wednesday,

helen : )

PS - Wednesday is also Leena's birthday - she's immersed in her current project (the interactive TV series "Accidental Lovers") so can't join us for this walk-through, but we'll definitely be drinking a virtual toast to her virtual birthday in her virtual presence/absence ...

Helen Varley Jamieson: helen[at]creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2006

Hz Journal

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Call for Articles

Hz is looking for articles on net art, new media, electronic music / electro-acoustic music and sound art. Previously published / unpublished articles in English are welcomed. Please send your submissions to hz-journal[at]telia.com.

Hz is published by Fylkingen, a non-profit art organization in Stockholm. Established in 1933, Fylkingen has been promoting new and experimental art forms throughout its history. For more information, visit http://www.fylkingen.se/fylkeng.html or
http://www.hz-journal.org/n4/hultberg.html

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

October 26, 2006

AUTOSTART Begins

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Release of Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1

The full announcement and Web site with participant bios are already up, but here’s a quick run-down of what’s coming up at the Writers House:

The festival is in Philadelphia, PA, at 3805 Locust Walk on the Penn campus. We’re celebrating the release of the Electronic Literature Collection volume 1, which is being published on CD-ROM and the Web. AUTOSTART attendees will get a copy of the CD edition.

The big events are the discussion (1-2:30pm) and the reading (5:30-7:30pm) on Thursday. There’s an open house between these to allow people to drop in for discussion with festival participants, to see the ELC vol 1, and to take tours of it given by me and Stephanie Strickland.

Two RSVP-only events are the Wet Digit workshop for digital media newcomers (Thursday 4-5:30pm) and the Electronic Writing Jam (Friday 1-4pm). Register for these now if you’re hoping to attend: wh[at]writing.upenn.edu. There’s also a tour of the Slought Foundation Friday morning.

I’ll write up the basics of what happens at the festival as best I can. Noah and Mary will be there in their own bodies, and Scott will appear via videoconference at the E-Writing Jam. I hope to see at least a few Grand Text Auto folks out there - please say hi to me (and Noah, and Mary) if you do make it by! [blogged by Nick on Grand Text Auto]

Posted by jo at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

Hideki Nakazawa

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Brain Waves Drawing

[posted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] Brain Waves Drawing :: Live Performance by Hideki Nakazawa :: Nov 4-5, 2006 at Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo Supported by Nihon Kohden.

Not to Draw by Hand. To Draw by Brain: Artists usually draw pictures by hand with brushes or pencils. However, the activities of brains must be more important and essential than the ones of hands at the moment of creating art. Therefore, I decided to draw pictures with electrodes being set on my head through controlling the activities of my own brain. The curved lines so-called "brain waves" in medicine must be the "drawings" in the world of fine art, directly drawn by my brain without using hands.

Posted by jo at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

dorkbot-nyc

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November 1st, 2006

The dorkbot-nyc meeting will take place on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006, at 7pm at Location One in SoHo. MAKE will likely be there, so if you want to meet up, drop a comment.

Albert Hwang: The Wiremap :: The Wiremap is a design that uses an LCD projector and a custom surface to make real and interactive 3d images. The images rendered exist in the same spatial dimension as our bodies do, bridging the gap between digital 3d and analogue 3d. With this project, I hope to redefine how we encounter digital 3d. Instead of a collection of weightless polygons, digital 3d can engage with our bodies and our intuitive spatial instincts in a visceral and tangibly real way.

Cameron Browning: Electrosketch :: Electrosketch is an interactive art installation that uses a number of technological hacks to allow users to scribble paths onto the walls of their environment in real-time. During the short period of time the images are recorded, other users have the opportunity to use digital controls connected to the installation to manipulate the paths in 3D.

Natalie Bewernitz & Marek Goldowski: sound art :: EPG (Expanded Polyphonetic Generation) is an audio installation performance that uses an artificial mouth palate to control voice fragments. Using the voice of artist Meredith Monk, which is fragmented in over 3000 pieces (sylables and phonemes), two performers attempt to control the triggered samples with the mouth palate interface to build up an improvised (musical) communication between them.

dorkbot-nyc, people doing strange things with electricity - Link. [via MAKE]

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

TEXELECTRONICA ‘06

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Instrumental Texts and Texas Instruments

Those who can’t make it all the way from Texas to Philadelphia for AUTOSTART next week can still catch a grand several days of electronic media art…TEXELECTRONICA ‘06: International Forum, Exhibition & Performance-Series featuring Electronic Media Art & Music (Dallas/Ft Worth, Texas, USA).

Theme: SPIN: SOCIETY, PERSONA, INTERACTIVITY & NETWORKS :: 3-Day Forum: Fort Worth Modern Art Museum, Oct. 27-29 :: Free for the public with a suggested donation of $15 for 5 sessions, or $5 per session :: Nightly Exhibitions & Performances: DFW area art spaces. [blogged by Nick on Grand Text Auto]

Posted by jo at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2006

[DAM] Berlin

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COMPUTER FINE ARTS COLLECTION OF DORON GOLAN

COMPUTER FINE ARTS COLLECTION OF DORON GOLAN :: Internet Art / Software Art :: www.computerfinearts.com :: Exhibition 06: 10th November 2006 – 5th December 2006 :: Exhibition Opening: Thursday, 9th November 2006, 7-9 pm. :: [DAM] Berlin, Digital Art Museum, Tucholskystr. 37, D-10117 Berlin.

Doron Golan collects artwork, which have been developed for the internet. He concentrated on an aspect of contemporary art, which was consindered as not marketable. The different pieces, which were developed specifically for the Web are free available for everybody. In many cases the internet, with its specific possibilities, is an integral part of the artwork. By aquiring these pieces he enables the persistence of these artworks online. The collection is internationally and you´ll find some important artists, which were already known for internet-art in the 1990s. We present his collection as a projection in the gallery.

ARTISTS: a.abrahams s.y.ahn m.amerika j.andrews s.biggs n.bookchin m.bravo
m.breeze s.brooks h.bunting e.burton x.cahen a.campbell g.chatonsky shu
lea cheang n.clauss c.cloninger coyarzun m.daggett a.de cologne e.de kok
a.deck doctor hugo r.drouhin a.galloway m.garrett v.grancher p.horvath
s.hourany g.h.hovagimyan l.jevbratt y.kanarek j.klima KRN l.lacook m.lafia
tamara.lai t.laporta b.lattanzi j.r.leegte g.levin lia o.lialina p.lichty lokiss
j.loseby lo_y p.luining j.mcdonald j&d mcelroy a.mendoza mouchette mtaa
m.nakamura m.napier j.nechvatal j.nelson r.packer pavu.com c.peppermint
a.polli m.rackham a.schmitt j.simon a.shulgin y.sodeoka a.sondheim
n.stern b.stryker m.szpakowski m.takeo magruder i.stromajer thomson&
craighead b.todd m.tribe j.van anden m.walczak m.wattenberg a.weintraub
p.wood young-hae chang heavy industries j.zeleznikar j.zellen zhang.ga

Guest: Holger Lippmann ( GER) with his animation /Popular/

[DAM] Berlin
Digital Art Museum
Tucholskystr. 37
D-10117 Berlin

Di - Fr 12-18 Uhr | Sa 12-16 Uhr
Tue- Fri 12-6 pm | Sat 12-4 pm

phone: +49 30 280 98 135
www.dam.org/berlin
www.dam.org
www.ddaa-online.org

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

PRC | POV: PHOTOGRAPHY NOW AND THE NEXT 30 YEARS

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Turbulence.org!

PRC | POV: PHOTOGRAPHY NOW AND THE NEXT 30 YEARS :: November 3, 2006 – January 28, 2007 :: The PRC and 30 luminaries predict "ones to watch" :: Opening reception, Thursday, November 2, 5:30-7:30pm.

Boston, MA. The Photographic Resource Center—a non-profit gallery, education, and resource center—is pleased to present a unique exhibition in honor of the organization’s founding in 1976. The PRC has always been at the forefront of emerging ideas and work and for our 30th anniversary, we chose to focus attention on new and novel ideas in photography and related media. Nominations were solicited from current and past PRC staff, board, and luminaries for people, places, and things that might just be getting attention (or deserve more) as well as those that will likely make a significant contribution to the field of photographic arts in the next 30 years.

Conceived as one generation shaking the hand of another, the exhibition and its title honors all of our nominators’ “points of view” as well as the former PRC publication, VIEWS: A New England Journal of Photography. It was hoped that the “PRC 30” would reflect the insights of our nominators, but also direct attention outwards towards “up-and-coming” artists, entities, and ideas. Final selections were primarily informed by our mission as a “vital forum for the exploration and interpretation of new work, ideas, and methods in photography and related media.” The resulting gallery and online exhibition is collaborative and future-focused.

Numerous themes have emerged in PRC/POV that speak to current photographic practices and larger artworld issues. Media and genre boundaries continue to blur and frontiers, international and virtual, are ever expanding. The artists and artworks are international—including artists and images from Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and more—and the selected entities include everything from a photography bookstore, to an online arts magazine, eBay, and Photoshop. The artwork is both traditional and innovative—including documentary work from Lebanon, Ghana, and Manila to an installation from a scanned 16mm film, a collage made using a photobooth strips, to photographs and videos from performances.

Installed as an inventive survey exhibition, we hope that this unique show and project will be a true snapshot of “photography and related media now” and, if we are correct collectively, a benchmark for the next 30 years. More information and images from each artist and entity are found in a special full-color insert in the PRC’s November/ December newsletter, in the loupe, as well in a *special PRC/POV website* with statements, links, and more, to launch November 1 at prcboston.org.

FEATURED ARTISTS AND ENTITIES:
1.) Adobe® Photoshop®, (San Jose, CA), Nominated by Andrew D. Epstein
2.) Julie Anand (Phoenix, AZ), Nominated by Jim Stone
3.) ASPECT Magazine (Boston, MA), Nominated by Pamela Allara
4.) Big RED and Shiny, Inc. (Boston, MA), Nominated by Bruce Myren
5.) Martha Buskirk (Cambridge, MA), Nominated by Patricia Johnston
6.) John Chervinsky (Somerville, MA), Nominated by Barbara Hitchcock
7.) Dashwood Books (New York, NY), Nominated by Eelco Wolf
8.) Robert Ladislas Derr (Columbus, OH), Nominated by Anita Douthat
9.) eBay Inc. (San Jose, CA), Nominated by Rodger Kingston
10.) Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (Minneapolis, MN & Paris, France), Nominated by A. D. Coleman
Lajos Geenen (Born 1972, Bleiswijk, The Netherlands;Lives in New York City, NY),
Preliminary #5, From “The Preliminary” series,2004/2006, Digital C-print, 24 x 20 inches, Courtesy ofthe artist and Robert Klein Gallery, Boston, MA
11.) Miklos Gaál (Helsinki, Finland), Nominated by John Stomberg
12.) Tim Garrett and Photobooth.net (St. Louis, MO), Nominated by Henry Horenstein
13.) Lajos Geenen (New York, NY; Born The Netherlands), Nominated by Robert Klein
14.) Elijah Gowin (Kansas City, MO), Nominated by Jim Dow
15.) Chehalis Hegner (Campton, NH), Nominated by Arno Rafael Minkkinen
16.) Todd Hido (San Francisco, CA), Nominated by Carl Chiarenza
17.) In-Sight Photography Project Inc. (Brattleboro, VT), Nominated by Arno Rafael Minkkinen & Jim Dow
18.) interrupt art productions (Artist Collective; Based in Brooklyn, NY), featuring the work of Mikael Kennedy and Mandy Lamb, Nominated by Robert Seydel
19.) Jaclyn Kain (Jamaica Plain, MA), Nominated by Rick Grossman
20.) Misty Keasler (Dallas, TX), Nominated by Jean Caslin
21.) Linda Kroff (Los Angeles, CA), Nominated by Bart Parker
22.) Jonathan Monk (Berlin, Germany; Born Leicester, England), Nominated by Darsie Alexander
23.) Scott Peterman (Hollis, ME), Nominated by Terrence Morash
24.) PUBLIO Magazine (Boston, MA), Nominated by Karl Baden
25.) Susana Reisman (Toronto, CA; Born Caracas, Venezuela), Nominated by Jeff Weiss
26.) Dana Romanoff (Works Washington, DC), Nominated by John P. Jacob
27.) Claudia Saimbert (Methuen, MA), Nominated by Stan Trecker
28.) Karina Aguilera Skvirsky (New York, NY), Nominated by Sara Rosenfeld Dassel
29.) Paul Taggart (Based in Middle East), Nominated by Lou Jones
30.) Turbulence.org, a project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), (Roslindale, MA & Staten Island, NY), featuring “Self-Portrait” commission by Ethan Ham (New York, NY), Nominated by Laura Blacklow.

And one to grow on…Flickr ! This unique website and photo management application was selected by the PRC and is dedicated to our audience. We invite gallery visitors to take a snapshot, which will be uploaded to the PRC’s Flickr site. We also welcome you to leave thoughts and predictions on the future of the PRC and photography in the gallery and online.

LOCATION AND HOURS:
Photographic Resource Center, 832 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.
617.975.0600 (tel), 617.975.0606 (fax), www.prcboston.org, prc@bu.edu MBTA: B Green Line, BU West T-stop
HOURS: Tuesday through Friday from 10 to 6pm, Thursdays from 10 to 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 12 to 5pm.

ADMISSION: $3/general public, $2/students and seniors and FREE to all Institutional Plus Member Schools. In addition, the PRC is FREE to all on Thursdays and on the last weekend of every month. The PRC is always FREE to members, IP member schools, children under 18, BU students, faculty, and staff, as well as all school groups with appointments. The PRC is accessible.

ABOUT THE PRC: Founded in 1976, The Photographic Resource Center is a vital independent non-profit organization dedicated to photographic education and presentation. Operating from the campus of Boston University, it provides a highly acclaimed exhibition program of 5-6 exhibitions a year, a bi-monthly newsletter, lectures, workshops, special events, and a 4,000-volume resource library to our members and the general public. It is supported by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, numerous private foundations, corporations, and individuals, and the ongoing generosity of its members.

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

EvoMUSART 2007

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FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

EvoMUSART 2007 :: 5th European Workshop on Evolutionary Music and Art :: 11-13 April, 2007, Valencia, Spain :: EVOSTAR :: EVOMUSART :: "ArtEscapes: Variations of Life in the Media Arts"

The use of biological inspired techniques for the development of artistic systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound synthesis; architecture; video; and design.

EvoMUSART 2007 is the fifth workshop of the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest in the field, the main goal of EvoMUSART 2007 is to bring together researchers who are using biological inspired techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area.

The workshop will be held from 11-13 April, 2007 in Valencia, Spain, as part of the Evo* event.

The event includes the exhibition "ArtEscapes: Variations of Life in the Media Arts", giving an opportunity for the presentation of evolutionary art and music. The submission of art works for the exhibition session is independent from the submission of papers.

Accepted papers will be presented orally at the workshop and included in the EvoWorkshops proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

The papers should concern the use of biological inspired techniques - e.g. Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Swarm Intelligence, etc. - in the scope of the generation, analysis and interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Generation
o Biological Inspired Art - Systems that create drawings, images, animations, sculptures, poetry, text, etc.;
o Biological Inspired Music - Systems that create musical pieces, sounds, instruments, voices, etc.;
o Robotic Based Evolutionary Art and Music;
o Other related generative techniques;

- Theory
o Computational Aesthetics, Emotional Response, Surprise, Novelty;
o Representation techniques;
o Surveys of the current state-of-the-art in the area; identification of weaknesses and strengths; comparative analysis and classification;
o Validation methodologies;
o Studies on the applicability of these techniques to related areas;
o New models designed to promote the creative potential of biological inspired computation;

- Computer Aided Creativity
o Systems in which biological inspired computation is used to promote the creativity of a human user;
o New ways of integrating the user in the evolutionary cycle;
o Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biological inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these approaches; the resulting artifacts;
o Collaborative distributed artificial art environments;

- Automation
o Techniques for automatic fitness assignment;
o Systems in which an analysis or interpretation of the artworks is used in conjunction with biological inspired techniques to produce novel objects;
o Systems that resort to biological inspired computation to perform the analysis of image, music, sound, sculpture, or some other types of artistic object;

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND SUBMISSION DETAILS

Submit your manuscript, at most 10 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS format (instructions downloadable from here) no later than November 1, 2006.

The papers will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. Authors will be notified via email on the results of the review by December 15, 2006.

The reviewing process is double blind. Authors should remove their names from submitted papers, and avoid statements and references that would identify the authors.

Papers must be submitted using the conference management software. Please follow the instructions in: http://evonet.lri.fr/EvoWorkshops07-Submission/

The authors of accepted papers will have to improve their paper on the basis of the reviewers' comments and will be asked to send a camera ready version of their manuscripts, along with text sources and pictures, by January 8, 2007. The accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings, published in Springer LNCS Series, which will be available at the workshop.

Further information can be found on the following pages:
Evo*2007: http://www.evostar.org
EvoMUSART2007: http://evonet.lri.fr/TikiWiki/tiki-index.php?page=EvoMUSART

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission: 1 November 2006
Notification: 15 December 2006
Camera ready: 8 January 2007
Workshop: 11-13 April 2007

WORKSHOP CHAIRS

Penousal Machado
University of Coimbra, Portugal
Machado AT dei DOT uc DOT pt

Juan Romero
University of A Coruna, Spain
jj AT udc DOT es

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Alan Dorin, Monash University, Australia
Alejandro Pazos, University of A Coruna, Spain
Amilcar Cardoso, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Andrew Gildfind, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia
Andrew Horner, University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong
Antonino Santos, University of A Coruna, Spain
Artemis Sanchez Moroni, Renato Archer Research Center, Brazil
Bill Manaris, College of Charleston, USA
Brian J. Ross, Brock University, Canada
Carlos Grilo, School of Technology and Management of Leiria, Portugal
Charlie D. Frowd, University of Stirling, UK
Christian Jacob, University of Calgary, Canada
Colin Johnson, University of Kent, UK
Eduardo R. Miranda, University of Plymouth, UK
Eleonora Bilotta, University of Calabria, Italy
Evelyne Lutton, INRIA, France
Francisco Camara Pereira, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Francois-Joseph Lapointe, University of Montreal, Canada
Gary Greenfield, University of Richmond, USA
Gary Lee Nelson, Oberlin College, USA
Gerhard Widmer, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Gianfranco Campolongo, University of Calabria, Italy
James McDermott, University of Limerick, Ireland
Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
Jeffrey Ventrella, Independent Artist, US
Joao Martins, University of Plymouth, UK
John Collomosse, University of Bath, UK
Jon McCormack, Monash University, Australia
Jorge Tavares, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Larry Bull, University of the West of England, UK
Luigi Pagliarini, Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting & University of Southern Denmark, Italy
Maria Goga, University of Bucharest, Romania
Martin Hemberg, Imperial College London, UK
Matthew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA
Nicolas Monmarch., University of Tours, France
Nicolae Goga, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Paul Brown, University of Sussex, UK
Paulo Urbano, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Peter Bentley, University College London, UK
Peter Todd, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany
Pietro Pantano, University of Calabria, Italy
Rafael Ramirez, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Rodney Waschka II, North Carolina State University, USA
Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia, Indonesia
Scott Draves, Independent Artist, USA
Stefano Cagnoni, University of Parma, Italy
Stephen Todd, IBM, UK
Tim Blackwell, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
Tony Brooks, Aalborg University, Denmark
William Latham, Art Games Ltd, UK

Posted by jo at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Thinking the Surface

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A Workshop on Screens, Mobilities, Environments in the Global Age

Thinking the Surface: A Workshop on Screens, Mobilities, Environments in the Global Age :: Cornell University, Oct. 27-28, 2006 :: Convened by Timothy Murray, Mohsen Mostafavi, María Fernández for The Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, College of Arts and Sciences/ The Dean's Lecture Series, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.

How might the surface and its extension in mobility contribute to the evolving contexts of global networks, political frontiers, architectonic environments, cinematic visions, and lived subjectivities? In relation to both the cinematic screen and the architectural façade, the surface is both a philosophical construct and an environmental event that challenges its subordination in the binaries depth/surface, structure/appearance, mind/body, nation/frontier. Participants will discuss international developments in art, politics, architecture, philosophy, and new media that expand the energetic event and promising agency of the surface in the global age.

Schedule of Events, free and open to the public:

Friday, October 27, 2006

Opening Sessions: Guerlac Room, A. D. White House

2:00 Introduction by Mohsen Mostafavi and Timothy Murray

2:10-3:00 Cinematic Surfacings

Timothy Murray, Department of Comparative Literature
"Poiesis and the Surface of New Media"
Lauren Beeley, Department of Romance Studies
"Surreal Surfaces: Thinking Cinema through Artaud"
Katherine Groo, Department of Comparative Literature
"Rereading Josephine Baker and the Surface of Ethnographic Film"

3-4:15 Technological Complicities: Chair: Phoebe Sengers, Depts. of Science & Technology Studies, Information Science.

Park Doing, Department of Science and Technology Studies
"Laying on of the Laboratory Hands: Surfaces, Knowledge, Labor"
Natalie Jeremijenko, Department of Art, UC San Diego; NYU Distinguished Global Visiting Professor
"Interfacing human and nonhuman; re: imagining the interplay; re: calculating the interaction"

Plenary Lecture
4:30 Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall :: Chair: Brett de Bary, The Society for the Humanities.

Brian Massumi, Department of Communication, University of Montreal
"The Body Transspatial: On the Art of the Event"

Saturday, October 28, 2006:
Guerlac Room, A. D. White House

9:30 Coffee and Bagels

10-12 Architectural Surfaces: Chair: Buzz Spector, Department of Art

Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
"Structuring the Surface"
Paul Andersen and David Salomon, Department of Architecture
"The New Architecture of Patterns"

12-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00 The Personal and The Political in Art:Chair: Renate Ferro, Department of Art

Horit Herman-Peled, Media Artist, Tel Aviv
"Witnessing in elusive surfaces"
Brooke Singer, Preemptive Media Collective; Dept. of Art SUNY Purchase
"Upside-down and inside-out: A Reorientation Guide to Emerging and Mobile Technologies"

3:15:4:45 Responsive Architecture: Chair: Timothy Campbell, Department of Romance Studies.

Branden Hookway, Department of Architecture
"Cockpit Console Cubicle"
Marc Böhlen, Media Studies (SUNY Buffalo)
"Preliminary Notes on a House for the Computer for the 21st Century"

5:00-5:45 Rethinking the Surface: Workshop Roundtable: Moderators: María Fernández and Timothy Murray

Sponsors: The Rose Goldsen Lecture Series (College of Arts and Sciences),
College of Art, Architecture, and Planning, Comparative Literature Theory Project, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, The Society for the Humanities

Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Comparative Literature
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
Co-Curator, CTHEORY Multimedia: http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu
285 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
office: 607-255-4012
e-mail: tcm1[at]cornell.edu

Posted by jo at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2006

Aspect vol.7

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Personas and Personalities

"If 'identity' is one of the most important topics concerning the digital possibilities of reality construction, 'personality' is a more general aspect of the core personal traits that let us still recognize an (almost) 'human' (opposed to a 'machine'). In this issue of the valuable Aspect dvd magazine, works focused on artificially constructed or artistically abstracted personalities are included and commented, as usual, by some interested critics. Singular human entities are effectively constructed (or duplicated) upon social conventions, gestures, dresses, expressions, assumed roles and identity crisis. The daily mediated experience made us used to perceive a vast range of entities to naturally interact with. But destructuring pieces of identity and constructing credible personalities is a different process than configuring an attracting avatar. Nevertheless the avatar form is a recognized liquid second skin, that embodies some of the instinctual traits of the owner. And both these methods of representing an apparently independent entity constitute nothing more than an appropriate meaningful conglomerate of data, that can as well represents a completely artificial entity in a crowded mediascape. So the question could be: will persons be recognized as 'human' because of their ability to manage themselves as an information node? In this collection there's a wide investigation, ranging from the seminal work 'Roberta' by Lynn Hershmann made in early seventies, to the Kristin Lucas' 'Involuntary Reception', the Jill Magid's 'Evidence Locker' and The Yes Men's 'WTO', building a seminal selection that represent these topics for future references." -- Neural.

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ASPECT :: Personas & Personalities, Vol 7, Spring 2006.

This volume of ASPECT features artists working with issues of identity and personality. For some, a constructed identity is an opportunity to explore personal or cultural issues of gender, accountability and culpability. Other artists make their own personality an integral part of their work and process. All the works in this issue examine the role of personal psychology in how we interact with others and our surroundings on an everyday basis. We are thrilled by the quality and diversity of work in this issue, and with the diverse ways in which the artists and commentators interpreted our open call. Enjoy.
In this issue:

Tea Party by Anthony Goicolea
w/ commentary by Terri Smith
Boop-opp-A-Doop by Sachiko Hayashi
w/ commentary by Nicholas Economos
Becoming Roberta, DiNA by Lynn Hershman
w/ commentary by Claudia Hart
Involuntary Reception by Kristin Lucas
w/ commentary by Marcia Tanner
Evidence Locker by Jill Magid
w/ commentary by Jelle Bouwhuis
The Day We Met by Christian Jankowski
w/ commentary by Bill Arning
More Man by Erik Levine
w/ commentary by Elizabeth Smith
Dow by The Yes Men
w/ commentary by Marisa Olson
The Veils of Transference by Adrianne Wortzel
w/ commentary by Christiane Paul
Bequeaths, Oaths of Signature by CarianaCarianne
w/ commentary by Julie Rodrigues Widholm

Credits: Editor:Michael Mittelman; Assistant Editor:Liz Nofziger; Production:Meghan Tomeo;

Art Direction: 2Communique; Animation:Jonathon Ouellette; Intern:Keagan Stiles; Sound Design:George Cox; Audio Mastering:Dexter Media

Posted by jo at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

2nd Chinese Bloggers Conference

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CREATIVITY 2.0

CREATIVITY 2.0: Rotterdam Satellite of the 2nd Chinese Bloggers Conference :: V2_ (Rotterdam) :: Saturday October 28, 2006 :; 10.00 – 13.00 (CEST - Central European Summer Time) :: realmedia stream: www.v2.nl (rtsp://helix.v2.nl/encoder/cnblog_nl.rm) :: IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/#cnbloggercon.

V2_ invites you to participate in CREATIVITY 2.0, an extra-territorial Tangent_Event taking place in Rotterdam connecting to the 2nd Chinese Bloggers Conference, in Hangzhou China October 28/29. Featuring special guest Régine Debatty in Rotterdam and cultural bloggers Zhang Qing and Gino Yu in Hangzhou, CREATIVITY 2.0 will bring together leading independent writers and curators to discuss the rise of the blog as an open medium of expression in establishing and supporting unrestricted forms of dialogue and community, both in the sense of cultural enterprise and artistic practice.

Recently, and during the past year in particular, it has become increasingly popular to use the new tools and expanded online facilities that weblogs provide in order to create new social identities, define cultural practices and create active communities beyond the physical constraints of urban or national structures. This is especially the case in countries such as the People’s Republic of China in which a new ‘middle landscape’ of an increasingly affluent and mobile citizenry has zealously and enthusiastically attuned to the latest in global technology and telecommunications. Forming a significant part of the ‘Web 2.0’ phenomenon Blogs pick up the faded myth of the Internet as a user generated space of exchange with both cultural and commercial repercussions.

Associated online tools and services such as, YouTube, Biku, Flickr and del.icio.us augment the omnipresence of Blogs into complex global communities of users linked via an infinite number of personal backgrounds, interests and goals and create new forms of social, cultural, artistic and economic networks. In areas where traditional forms of monitoring and control of information is pervasive the complexity and diversity of blogging’s reach drives the creation of new platforms and forms of expression. Blogs brought to life by anyone anytime are now creating a blogosphere rapidly replacing traditional information structures by unifying in cross-media frameworks the same mechanisms of text and visual tagging, cross-referencing of information, and opinion gathering established with the Internet over a decade ago. But how do these structures originate, who do they serve, and how are the bloggers covered by ‘traditional’ or local media? Beyond global entertainment and free-for-all journalism can Blogs instill new cultural identities and open up new zones of dialogue and critique? Can they lead to cultural and artistic production per se, or drown in parody and hasty mash-ups during their authors’ 5 minute bursts of fame?

CREATIVITY 2.0 links the worlds of blogging between Europe, Asia and beyond in a live and online dialogue hosting players including Régine Debatty, Zhang Qing, Gino Yu, aaajiao and Kuang Huang who are active in defining and sharpening both active art communities and establishing new contexts for transnational cultural dialogue.

CREATIVITY 2.0 will be moderated in Rotterdam by V2_ program curator Stephen Kovats, and in Hangzhou by writer and cultural theorist Tian Sun.

The event will be streamed live using REAL MEDIA and IRC moderated online by Berlin based independent curator Vera Tollmann. The stream can be accessed directly via www.v2.nl or by using the following direct REAL player link: rtsp://helix.v2.nl/encoder/cnblog_nl.rm You can download a free Real Player at www.real.com. If you are online we invite you to participate in the event via IRC text chat on: irc://irc.freenode.net/#cnbloggercon

Schedule and Format:

V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Saturday October 28, 2006
10.00 Doors open at V2_, welcome coffee
10.30 CREATIVITY 2.0 intro + selected Chinese videoblog screening
11.00 – go live, online with Hangzhou – Stephen Kovats and Tian Sun
11.05 – speaker 1: Zhang Qing, in Hangzhou
11.15 – speaker 2: Régine Debatty, in Rotterdam
11.25 – speaker 3: Gino Yu, in Hangzhou
11.35 – open discussion with local and online participants 12.00 – close connection 12.00 – 13.00 discussion/conclusion at V2_, with screenings All times listed are local Rotterdam times (CEST)

To check your time zone, please consult:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

V2_ will also be streaming the entire conference in Hangzhou and will moderate online selected presentations and discussions. Check the conference site for full schedule: http://cnbloggercon.org/2006/en/Schedule NOTE!: Most areas (but not China!) will revert to Standard Time at 0300 on Sunday October 29. Check if your area has a Daylight Saving Time shift during the conference weekend: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst2006b.html

CREATIVITY 2.0 Participants:

Régine Debatty (panelist, in Rotterdam): Régine Debatty initiated we-make-money-not-art.com a pioneering weblog for critical media art and cultural discourse. She studied Classics in Belgium and England, worked as a teacher of Latin and ancient Greek, then moved to media, directing documentaries for Belgian national TV, working as a reporter for the radio Onda Cero in Spain and as a consultant for the MEDIA programme of the European Commission in Italy. She is now an independent writer and researcher in electronic art. As a jury member she participates in several new media art and interaction design commissions and festivals. She also gives talks about how today's artists, amateurs and hackers are using and misusing emerging technologies.

Gino Yu (panellist, in Hangzhou): Dr. Gino Yu is chairman of the Hong Kong Digital Entertainment Assocation. He received his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 where he worked to establish multimedia initiatives such as the Integrated Media Systems Center. He later taught and worked in Hong Kong where he helped to establish the Center for Enhanced Learning Technologies at the University of Science and Technology and the Multimedia Innovation Centre at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), a leading edge think tank and research centre on digital entertainment. He is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Digital Entertainment and Game Development in the School of Design at PolyU where he oversees MERECL, a commercial digital entertainment entity that provides consulting, research, instruction and new ideas for the industry. His main area research interests involve the application of media technologies to cultivate creativity and promote enlightened consciousness.

Zhang Qing (panelist, in Hangzhou): Zhang Qing is Artistic Director of the 6th Shanghai Biennale (Hyper Design), Deputy Director of the Shanghai Art Museum editor and editor of Art China . He has been a regular contributor to magazines including Art Monthly, Dushu , Avant-garde Today and Shanghai Culture since 1989, as well as editor-in-chief of the magazine Chinese Art of the 1990s. In 2000, he was named one of the "best curators in China" by CCTV. His main curatorial roles include Curator of the exhibition The Art of Yan Peiming (Shanghai,2005); Co-Curator for the 5th Shanghai Biennale(2004); Curator for Interpreting the Modern: The Collection Exhibition of Amsterdam Art Museum (Amsterdam, Shanghai, Singapore, 2003);Junction:Architectural xperiments in Chinese Contemporary Art (Shanghai, 2003); Red China: Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art , (Gwangju, 2002); Co-Curator for City_Net Asia (Seoul, 2002); Curator for Cai Guoqiang (Shanghai, 2001); Curator for Expressions of Contemporary China (Singapore, 2001); and Co-Curator for the 3 rd Shanghai Biennale (2000).

aaajiao (participant, in Hangzhou): The Chinese pendant to Régine Debatty’s media art and culture blog was founded by aaajiao in 2006. WNMNA has fis, sophywt, ilikesleep working as editors, and hlitch, phoebe, yangschwang, kulilin, dobby as translaters. The main aim of WNMNA is to introduce the information of new media art abroad to China by translating the articles on WMMNA as well as some other colaborating websites, and to write original reviews to support the 'art from China' tag, from which people get to know the development of new media art in China.

Kuan Huang (online participant, New York): Kuan Huang is a software engineer and new media artist. In 2004, in order to let his artistic side of his brain breathe the freedom of life, he came to New York City to pursue his master degree in Interactive Telecommunications Program of Tisch School of Art, New York University. His art works vary from interactive musical instrument, cell phone based video installation, interactive public projection and etc. His works have been exhibited in Sony Wonder Tech Lab, Chelsea Museum of Art, Eyebeam and New York University. Kuan Huang together with Yuchen Chiu and Chun Xi Jiang are the founders of the Chinese new media art blog Villagypsy. They are hoping that Villagypsy can serve as a bridge that links the new media industry between USA and China.

Tian Sun (moderator, in Hangzhou): Tian Sun is editor of Time+Architecture, a Shanghai-based bimonthly architectural magazine. She graduated from B. Arch. Tongji University in 2000 and received her MSc in Architectural History at the University College London in 2005.

Stephen Kovats (moderator, in Rotterdam): Canadian architect and media culture researcher Stephen Kovats is chief curator and events programmer at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam.

Vera Tollmann (online moderator, Rotterdam): Vera Tollmann studied Cultural Studies in Hildesheim and Liverpool. From 2004 to 2006 she worked as programme curator for the international media art festival transmediale in Berlin. As an independant curator, she recently curated the group exhibition Hands-on history and the video programme Picturing free knowledge. She publishes articles on internet issues and contemporary art. Her text 'I will chocolate you' deals with the internet use in China and the role of the western world, published in springerin.

More info:
www.v2.nl
http://cnbloggercon.org/
http://cnbloggercon.org/2006/en/Schedule

V2_Institute for the Unstable Media
Stephen Kovats_Program Curator
Eendrachtsstraat 10
3012 XL Rotterdam
The Netherlands

t_ **31 10 750 1519
f_ **31 10 206 7271
e_ kovats[at]v2.nl

CREATIVITY 2.0
2nd China Bloggers Conference
V2_Rotterdam Satellite
Saturday October 28, 10.00 - 14.00 (CEST)
realmedia stream: www.v2.nl (rtsp://helix.v2.nl/encoder/cnblog_nl.rm)
IRC channel at irc://irc.freenode.net/#cnbloggercon
entire conference: http://cnbloggercon.org/2006/en

Posted by jo at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

Paul Chan at

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PORTIKUS

Paul Chan :: Opening: October 27, 2006, 8 p.m. :: Exhibition: Oct 28 – Dec 3, 2006 :: Press Talk: Oct 27, 2006, 11 a.m. :: PORTIKUS :: Alte Brücke 2 Maininsel, 60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany :: Telephone +49 69 962 44 54-0 Fax +49 69 962 44 54-24.

The Portikus in Frankfurt am Main proudly presents Paul Chan’s first exhibition in Germany. Born in Hong Kong in 1973 and educated in the US, he has established himself as an important international artist. In the wake of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, Chan has become a key figure both in the American art world and in the world of political activism. He is also an artist who emphasizes what is specific of these two spheres.

Like fleeting shadows on the ground, we see objects defying gravity. Sunglasses, cars, people—everything is falling against a backdrop in shifting colours. But what appears to be simple shadows are digital animations projected on the floor—a recurring feature in Chan’s ongoing series The 7 Lights. Portikus presents 3rd Light, the first part to also involve a sculptural element: a 3-dimensional replica of the table in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. This ingredient emphasizes the theological quality already strongly felt in the previous chapters, and the first falling object to appear is an apple, followed by chairs and dogs. In spite of the calm and meditative atmosphere, this seems to be a work about a world falling apart. Here the world seems to end in silence.

Paul Chan creates films, animations and works with references to Goya as well as to Japanese pornography, to the Bible as well as to the Samuel Beckett. Previously this year he participated in the Whitney Biennial. Other recent exhibitions include a solo show at the ICA in Boston (2005), ‘Uncertain States of America,’ at Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2005), the Lyon Biennial (2005), and the ‘Greater New York’ at PS 1 in New York (2005).

This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue produced together with Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, where the artist currently presents other key works. Portikus’ and Magasin 3’s joint venture is the artist’s first institutional solo presentation in Europe.

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

Gail Wight

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Sliding Scale

Stanford, CA-The Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University is pleased to present Sliding Scale: Gail Wight, an exhibition that opens November 7, on view through December 10, 2006 at the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery where a reception will take place on November 10 with honored guest, Gail Wight.

When conducting an experiment a scientist should always control as many variables as possible, reducing the object of the investigation to the one aspect she is seeking to understand. This insight has been the great strength of the scientific method; it has allowed enormous increases in our understanding of the world through the summation of millions of tiny investigations. As we have become increasingly aware in the last fifty years, however, conducting research at such a level of abstraction is also science’s most dangerous weakness. In “Sliding Scale,” Gail Wight’s art playfully resists the dematerialization of the objects of scientific investigation. Mice eat through a representation of their genome, butterflies struggle to escape their pins, and beetles tell their stories.

Wight’s art simultaneously takes on the two great flaws of abstract scientific thinking—oversimplification and loss of perspective. In Crossing a live mouse plays with a robotic one, and the viewer is left marveling at the incredible complexity of the living being. Recursive Mutations gives a muse the chance to redesign it own genome through its interaction with the paper it lived on. With humor, “Sliding Scale” asks the viewer what has been lost in abstracting a mouse to its genes or to a mechanical prototype that replicates only some of its functions. As viewers zoom in and out with The Meaning of Miniscule they find that where they end up is not where they began. And Kings Play Cards reminds us all that no field, including science, is exempt from the lure of the hot new thing or the enticement of corporate dollars. Wight’s art prompts viewers to see the objects of scientific research and the larger field of science in a new and different light.

Through “Sliding Scale” Gail Wight will be adding her voice to the conference, "Imaging Environment: Maps, Models, Metaphors," November 8-10 at the Stanford Humanities Center, which brings together scholars from the sciences and the humanities to consider how the environment shapes how we study and use it.

VISITOR INFORMATION: Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 am – 5 pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 pm. Admission is free. The Gallery is located on the Stanford campus, off Palm Drive at 435 Lasuen Mall. Parking is free after 4 pm and all day on weekends. Information: 650-723-3404, www.art.stanford.edu

Posted by jo at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

UPGRADE! BOSTON:

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Will Pappenheimer

UPGRADE! BOSTON: Will Pappenheimer :: WHEN: October 26, 7:00-9:00 p.m. :: 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.

WILL PAPPENHEIMER is currently an assistant professor of Digital Media at Pace University. He received his MFA from the Museum School/Tufts University, Boston and BA from Harvard. His work in video, mixed media, installation and new media has been exhibited in over 50 solo and group exhibitions internationally, including the The ICA (Boston), the Stedman Art Gallery (NJ), Exit Art, New York, "immedia: 1901," MI, "Free Biennial," New York and Art Basel Miami Beach 2003. Recent work resulting from collaborations with New Media theorist Gregory Ulmer has been the subject of articles in Visual Culture, ArtUS and a chapter of Ulmer's 2005 book, "Electronic Monumentality."

Pappenheimer’s recent projects reconfiguring webcam and home surveillance networks have been presented at "Interactive Futures05" in British Columbia, FILE 2005 in Sao Paulo, Brazil and ISEA 2006/ZeroOne at the San Jose Musem of Art (CA). He was recently chosen for one of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts’ prestigious Traveling Scholars Awards and will exhibit work from this grant at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2008. http://willpap-projects.com/

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 22 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 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

LIMINAL SPACES/

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grenzraeume

LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzraeume :: GfZK Leipzig, 28 October 2006 – 21 January 2007 :: Exhibition opening: 27 October, from 19.00 pm :: Gallery Open: Tue-Sat 14.00 – 19.00 pm/ Sunday 12.00 – 19.00 pm.

LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzraeume originated from an initiative of individual Palestinian and Israeli artists united in their opposition to the destructive dynamics and ever growing hardship and deprivation of basic civil and political rights endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. An unprecedented network of artists, curators and cultural producers emerged, meeting often under difficult circumstances, despite the harsh context of ever increasing violence and the complete collapse of the political peace process. LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzraeume, a project by the Palestinian Association of Contemporary Arts (PACA), Ramallah, The Israeli Centre for Digital Art, Holon and the University of the Arts, Berlin wishes to support and strengthen this informal network and its stance.

In March 2006, the project invited Palestinian, European and Israeli artists, architects, academics and film makers to examine the condition of everyday space, borders, physical segregation, cultural territories within a reality of occupation and challenge the possibilities of art as a catalyst for political and social change. The foc! us of th e project is the radically divided and fragmented urban region of Jerusalem/ Ramallah, which has become a laboratory for an urbanism of radical ethnic segregation. Curators, cultural figures and artists developed this project through a series of meetings and discussions that sought to generate a more active political engagement of the art sector. Additionally, it is hoped that through participation in the project, new possibilities of contact and exchange will emerge on an individual basis and beyond.

The project was launched with a conference in March, 2006, in the area of the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, followed by individual residencies which gave artists the opportunity to research tactics and artistic strategies for addressing the physiognomy of specific sites and their everyday operations and adhering to exposing spatial and contextual politics of the Israeli occupation. The perception of the frontiers were investigated, and their accessibility, permeability and potential as contact and communication zones challenged. Artists employed new forms of creative practice adopting and subverting contemporary technology and systems of media communication, underlining the central role played by technology in the shaping of the physical borders.

The process resulted in over 20 new works, which are now being shown to the public for the very first time! The future library spaces of the Gallery for Contemporary Arts Leipzig (GfZK), including the already acquired shelves of Vito Acconci’s library installation at Documenta 10, provide an unusual exhibition context and generate mutual resonances between LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzraeume as an evolving archive of research and production in the Middle East and the GfZK’s declared ambition to build up a public library.

Participating artists: Jumana Emil Abboud, Sameh Abboushi, Azra Aksamija, Ayreen Anastas und Rene Gabri, Yochai Avrahami, Yael Bartana, Peter Friedl, Hagar Goren, Inass Hamad, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Khalid Horani, Sabine Horlitz and Oliver Clemens, Ligna, Suleiman Mansour, Oren Sagiv, Sala-Manca Group, Miri Segal, Sean Snyder, Superflex, Simon Wachsmuth

Curatorial Advisors: Khalid Horani, Andreja Hribernik, Barbara Steiner, in cooperation with Interdisziplinäres Projekt-Forum (Wolfgang Knapp) of the University of the Arts Berlin/ Institute for Art and Context

Curated by: Eyal Danon, Galit Eilat, Reem Fadda, Philipp Misselwitz

Screening program:

2 November 2006

20.00 pm CINEMA: >Trespassing<, selection of Israeli short films and videos curated by Eyal Danon: Artists without Walls, >April 1st< (19'30'', 2004) // Avi Mograbi, >Details 3&4< (9', 2004) // Annan Tzukerman, >Anxious Escapism< (26', 2005) // Ruti Sela & Ma'ayan Amir, >Beyond guilt #2< (18', 2004) // Ruti Sela & Ma'ayan Amir, >Alei Zahav after Aliza Begin< (5'30'', 2005) // Nira Pereg, >Souvenir< (5', 2005) // Ruti Sela & Clil Nadav, >Loopolice< (6'55'', 2003). An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.

7 December 2006

20.00 pm CINEMA: >Pasolini Pa* Palestine< by Ayreen Anastas (Jerusalem, 2003). An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.

4 January 2007

20.00 pm CINEMA: >Quelques Miettes Pour Les Oiseaux - Some Crumbs for the Birds< by Annemarie Jacir (France/ Jordan, 2005) and >Avenge But One Of My Two Eyes< by Avi Mograbi (Israel, 2005). An event organized for the Friends of the GfZK Leipzig.

International Workshop (28.10 – 29.10)

The opening of the exhibition will be accompanied by an international workshop, which will explore political and social responsibilities of art production, dis! cussing current trends that are changing the role of institutions, artists, curators and activists. The conference will explore the notion of 'responsibility' in the context of the Middle East - characterised by the escalation of violence and violations of human and civil rights, the continuation of the military occupation, the building of an apartheid wall and complete breakdown of the peace process – as well as in the context of Post-Fordist Central Europe where the erosion of social democratic principles challenges artists and institutions to survive in a harsher social climate and fight for the acceptance and the engagement of a wider public.

In Hebrew, the word responsibility (acherayut) contains within it the word acher, which means ‘other’ or ‘different.’ It also contains the word achrey, which means ‘after’ or ‘following an event or act.’ In English, the word ‘responsibility’ contains within it the word ‘response’ (originating from the old French responsun meaning ‘something offered in return’). There is a delicacy in the English language through prepositions following the word ‘responsibility’ as one can be responsible for something or responsible to someone. In Arabic, the word mas’uliyah contains within it the verb su’ila, which literally means to require a response. In all three languages, we find a unified stance which states that responsibility is linked to responding or answering an external other. How may we respond or answer the contemporary demand for a responsibility to another or a different worldview? How may we take responsibility or act differently as cultural producers and/or cultural consumers? Participants will include the artists of the project LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzr! aeume as well as international guests.

DAY 1 (Saturday, 28 October 2006)

Forum 1: Reflections on the LIMINAL SPACES project
Moderator: Francis McKee

11.00 am Short presentations by artists participating in the LIMINAL SPACES project
13:30 pm Lunch Break (for invited participants only)
15.00 pm Project presentation by the curators: Reem Fadda, Philipp Misselwitz, Eyal Danon and Galit Eilat.
16.00 pm Open session
17.00 pm Coffee Break
17.30 pm Panel discussion - Cultural Territories: Wolfgang Knapp, Salwa Mikdadi, Nina Möntmann, Erzen Shkololli, Hito Steyerl
18:30 pm Conclusion
19:00 pm Joint dinner (for invited participants only) followed by party

DAY 2 (Sunday, 29 October 2006)

Forum 2: Crisis and Potentials of Institutions (The Middle East, Near East and Europe)
Moderator: Francis McKee

11.00 am Nina Möntmann: Art and its Institutions – Current Conflict, Critique and Collaborations
11.30 am Case study 1: Jumana Emil Abboud: Al Mamal Foundation, East Jerusalem. The establishment of The Museum of Contemporary Art – Palestine (CAMP)
12.00 am Case study 2: Eyal Danon: Jaffa – An Autobiography of a City. Untold stories of different national, ethnic, religious and gender groups within Israel
12.30 am Case study 3: Boris Buden: EIPCP – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies
13.00 pm Case study 4: Salwa Mikdadi: Institutionalization of Art Practice under Occupation/Palestinian Artists Working Under Siege (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza)
13.30 pm Case study 5: Erzen Shkololli: Exit Institute for Contemporary Art in Peja, Kosovo – the dramatic transformation of the region, connected in particular with the disintegration of the local totalitarian regimes during the 1990s
14:00 pm Lunch Break (for invited participants only)
15.30 pm Open session
16.30 pm Conclusion

Partners: LIMINAL SPACES/ grenzraeume has been jointly organized by the Palestinian Association of Contemporary Art (PACA), Digital A! rt Lab, Holon and the University of the Arts, Berlin.

The Palestinian Association for Contemporary Arts - PACA
Reem Fadda, Director
Aref Al-Aref House
Behind Arab Bank Al-Bireh
Al-Nahdah Street
Ramallah, Palestine
T: +972 2 2951849
F: +972 2 2967601
E: reemfadda[at]gmail.com

The Israeli Centre for Digital Art Holon
Galit Eilat, Director
Digital Art Lab
16 Yirmiyahu st
Holon 58373
Israel
T +972 3 5568792
F +972 3 5580003
E galit[at]digitalartlab.org.il
Web www.digitalartlab.org.il

Universität der Künste Berlin
Philipp Misselwitz (Lehrstuhl Prof. Peter Bayerer) and Wolfgang Knapp (Interdisziplinäres Projekt-Forum der Universität der Künste Berlin)
Hardenbergstraße 33
10623 Berlin
T +49 177 4107168
E misselwitz[at]studio-uc.net

The exhibition and conference is made possible by:

Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Robert Bosch Stiftung
European Cultural Foundation
Heinrich Böll Stiftung Ramallah
Goethe Institut Jerusalem

Posted by jo at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2006

HABITATS

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A 4 Day Cultural Festival

HABITATS: a 4 day Cultural Festival :: Artists, scientists, and cultural commentators are joining together to create a collective vision of a sustainable habitat. The Habitats conference and festival is a 4 day event organized to promote an exchange between art, technology, and environment. With public and private cooperative efforts leading to cleaner water, the Gowanus Canal area has experienced an increase in wildlife and improved prospects for commercial and cultural revitalization. Habitats celebrates this process. Instigated by Eidolon Culture, The Habitats conferences will include speakers such as best-selling author Steven Johnson (“Emergence” and “Mind Wide Open,”); long-standing community organizers such as the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (GCCDC) ; electronic artists such as Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening Foundation) ; site specific sound and video recordings, live music performances, site specific installations, collaborative projects, recycled art, workshops and active audience participation.

The placement of the artworks in their site-specific rendition, the sharing of thought provoking ideas of contemporary cultural relevance, and the active role of audience interaction all create a “Habitat” -- a place defined by the indispensable nature of everyone and everything within it. Habitats is being Presented by Eidolon Culture and Sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Polytechnic University: Integrated Digital Media Institute (IDMI), CEC Arts Link, New York State Council on the Arts, and Material for the Arts.

Date: November 9th – 12th , 2006
Time: Programs begin daily at 12:00pm until 11pm
Location: The Brooklyn Lyceum 227 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
N Train to Union Street, Corner of President Street
Contact: mwarren[at]eidolon.org
Admission: $5 for environmental + cultural conferences, $15 for live performance program
www.global-habitat.net

ArT. ENVirONMENT. CULTUrE. COMMUNiTY. gOWANUS

CONfirMED CULTUrAL SPEAKErS

Steven Johnson – author of “Emergence, the connected lives of ants, brains and cities”
Douglas Rushkoff – author of “Media Virus”
Peter Principle of Tuxedomoon
Daniel Pinchbeck – author of “Breaking Open the Head”

ENVirONMENTAL CONfErENCE

Coordinated by: Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp

COMMUNiTY ArTS AND WOrKSHOPS

Carol Caputo, IRUBNY
Walking Tours of Gowanus with NY Acoustic Ecology
Workshop with the Prospect Park Zoo

iNSTALLATiON/ PErfOrMANCE ArTiSTS

Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening Foundation
Amoeba Technology, NYC
Kim Holleman, NYC
David Linton of Unity Gain
Bill Etra, NYC
Michael Schumacher of Diapason Gallery
free103.9, NYC
Share, NYC
Keiko Uneshi, NYC
Disney NasaBorg, NYC
Harlan Emil, NYC
2012, sponsored by CEC Arts Link
Project503, Russia
Antartic Project, Russia
Efi Amantidou, Greece
Luis Maurette, Argentina
Klauss, Argentina
Eva Sjuve, Sweden
Ken Hiratsuka, Japan
Also… Zarah Cabanias, Hans-Christoph Steiner,
Kathi von Koerber, Marianna Ellenberg, Lary Seven,
Zemi17, Peripheral Media, Claire Barrett, Ne(x)twork

GCCDC is a neighborhood preservation non-profit organization dedicated to the
revitalization of the Gowanus Canal area in South Brooklyn, New York, for twentyfour years. A community-based group with an extensive record of initiatives and involvement in the physical improvement of the Gowanus Canal, Red Hook and Carroll Gardens communities. GCCDC’s efforts are focused on the environmental remediation of the Gowanus Canal, housing, economic development, and commercial revitalization.

Eidolon Culture is a Brooklyn based non-profit arts organization, directing and producing onsite and online platforms for interdisciplinary projects, bridging the gaps of specialization between disciplines and geographical distances. Eidolon Culture focuses on the potential for creative activity at the intersections of art, technology, and culture. Eidolon Cultures identity is based on interactive sustainable business practices, promoting collaboration and partnerships between government, industry, foundations, non-governmental organisations and the general public.

FOR aDDitiONaL iNFORMatiON pLease visit www.global-habitat.net. Day aND eveNiNg pROgRaM scHeDuLe aND DetaiLs wiLL sOON be avaiLabLe.

Posted by jo at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)

KEVIN HAMILTON

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Bulletin No. 9

1. WEBSITE :: This week sees the launch of a new homepage, including documentation of new projects, more information on old projects, works rarely seen, video, sound and writing. I hope you'll take some time to have a look around, and perhaps pass some links along to someone else. This site will be updated fairly often - not as a blog exactly, but as you'll see there are some new ways to keep up with where and what I'm up to.

2. MIRROR SITE :: Also this week, a new sited project launched in Boston and Urbana, a live image/video link between spaces at Brandeis University and the Siebel Center for Computer Science here at University of Illinois. Visitors to the two spaces will experience an occasional, temporal window that opens between the two sites. The project was invited as part of the exhibition Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art, which is currently on display at Brandeis' Rose Museum of Art.

3. PUBLIC TALK IN BOSTON :: In connection with the Balance and Power exhibition I'll be in Boston for a public conversation/discussion with curator Michael Rush, Director of the Rose Museum at Brandeis - the talk will be held on Saturday, November 4 at the Rose Art Museum. Later that week I'll be working with some classes there at Brandeis as well.

4. PUBLICATIONS :: Two recent writing projects, one long and one short, debuted in print and online. My paper for the ISEA symposium, "Absence in Common" is available for download or print-on-demand from the journal Intelligent Agent. My review for the new DVD from People Like Us is the the current issue of MIT Press' Computer Music Journal - I've also included it in full on my website.

5. OTHER PROJECTS :: The Department of Rhythmanalysis met with some good mentions in the Chicago press (WBEZ, New City Chicago) before that exhibit's close at the end of the summer. Be sure and check out the photos on the site, and stay tuned for video documentation soon of this ongoing project.

Mobile Mapping for Everyday Spaces, a long-term research project based here at UIUC but including collaborators in Vancouver, has its own website, with some initial documentation of resulting projects. We're currently in a writing stage of the project, evaluating last Spring's efforts for informed application of what learned about pedagogy and interdisciplinary collaborations.

I've recently joined researcher Brian Bailey's project, the Science of Design, through the Department of Computer Science at UIUC. Together we received a National Science Foundation grant for development of new tools to aid in supporting rich, critical development processes for interactive art and design. In connection with this project I'll be leading a new, experimental course this Spring at UIUC that focuses on collaboration in the context of theme or content-based problems in new media and public space.

6. UPCOMING

- Panel presentation at College Art Association conference in NYC, February
- Zeno Boundary in an upcoming traveling exhibition, along with a new web presence
- CHI (Computer/Human Interaction) Workshop in San Jose in April 2007
- Paper for Interfaces symposium, UIUC in April 2007
- a mystery video project

Thank you for your time.

Kevin Hamilton
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
http://kevinhamilton.org

Posted by jo at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

KLab9:

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Art Call for Contributions

KLab9: Art Call for Contributions :: Technology, Authorship and Ways of Living :: A weekend gathering for collaborative and creative reflection :: 5th - 7th October, 2007 tbc. :: Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University, North West England.

The Knowledge Lab is an attempt to provide a collective space for anti-capitalist reflection. It is located at the margin of the university, an institution essentially geared towards the production of knowledge as a resource for corporate interest and as justification for particular constellations of power relations. This knowledge lab will address art and ways of critically thinking about our world. Within this broad region of enquiry, the lab will encompass notions of life and art as a political commitment, the influence art can exert in politics and how political ideas in turn influence art. It will also address new ways of making art and how this relates to technologies and social changes, and the use of art as an anti-capitalist means to change and fight the system.

We hope that the knowledge lab will not merely address, but also show that art can initiate critical thinking in the various guises outlined above. Our expectations, in terms of the event, and its outcome, are that this be a sharing of creative ideas and ideas about creativity. We hope that it will draw together people with a common interest in art and alternative ways of living, but working in different fields. From this collective thinking we hope that people will be incited to realize, or make manifest, some of these ways of living and thinking creatively when they leave: We will learn from each other.

STREAMS: Like previous knowledge labs the day will be divided into four streams, each will take place in a separate room:

STREAM 1: TECHNOLOGY Free software, art spaces and interfaces, hardware, and recycling/reusing.

STREAM 2: WAYS OF LIVING Process, moment, performance, politics, gender issues, community and cultural production, personal/political, and imaginative resistance. Also we hope to see papers touching on initiatives in direct democracy; the art of changing that system, and the paradigms of inspiration.

STREAM 3: AUTHORSHIP Copy rights, ownership, patenting, and appropriation.

STREAM 4: THE ART MARKET (new ways of) curating, spaces (physical and virtual) to show art, ways of making money: Marketing, the means of production, market forces and anti-market forces, the art market, and art and ethics.

ACADEMIC PAPERS: The list above is not prescriptive, it simply outlines some of the issues we envisage arising given the titles of the four streams. Please also send papers on other themes, these will be gratefully considered. Submit an abstract of no more than 500 words. In addition please enclose a brief biography. Try to make this, along with your paper, as accessible as
possible.

WORKSHOPS, FACILITATED DISCUSSIONS, ARTWORKS AND PERFORMANCES

These will broadly tie in with, and be presented as part of, one of the four streams above. Send a proposal [Max: A single side of A4], elaborate on: What your contribution will be e.g. a workshop, a discussion, a performance, an artwork. How long you envisage it taking. Do you need any equipment or materials? Do you want to limit the number of participants? If so, how many? What do you hope will be born out of this? How do you propose to arrive at
this end?

SATURDAY EVENING: DJ and VJ session: Call for DJs and VJs to send in samples so they might come and contribute to an evening of art in many guises. Nb. Groups are welcome to contribute workshops, materials for display

INVOLVEMENT AND SKILLS SHARING: Anybody is welcome to attend the weekend, get involved in the discussions, and take part in the workshops. HOWEVER, YOU NEED TO REGISTER TO ATTEND AS THE EVENT IS LIMITED TO 100 PEOPLE, SO PLEASE GET IN TOUCH: klab9art[at]googlemail.com

If you'd like to take a more pro-active role during the conference, you might want to ADOPT a session - that is, prepare it in advance (suggest questions, main issues, reading material etc and propose the length of the session), arrive prepared for discussion themselves, attend it, and participate passionately in the debates and in the drafting of the "output". We also still need people to FACILITATE sessions -ideally a session should NOT be adopted and facilitated by the same person(s). Facilitators are usually best if experienced in their task, and will be called upon to facilitate not only discussion, but also the drafting of the "output". Any which way, please get in touch.

INFORMATION

DEADLINE FOR ALL PROPOSALS: February 1st 2007

CONTACT: klab9art[at]googlemail.com :: Amy, Ana and Synnove

COSTS AND PRACTICALITIES: Unwaged persons: free Unfunded students / low-paid persons: donation Funded students/Lancaster university staff: £20 Academics / waged persons: £65 This contribution is for the whole weekend and includes Friday and Saturday dinner, Saturday and Sunday breakfast and lunch. All food will be vegan and predominantly organic.

ACCOMODATION: Shared accommodation is available on the floor of the very spacious and friendly Quakers' Meeting House, it is free, but please bring sleeping bag and mat. Get in touch if you have any special requirements, and again, please let us know in advance if you're bringing a child.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit respectively the respective sites for the
previous knowledgelabs:
http://knowledgelab.org.uk/wiki/FirstKnowledgeLab
http://knowledgelab.org.uk/wiki/SecondKnowledgeLab
http://knowledgelab.org.uk/wiki/ThirdKnowledgeLab
About Klab9:Art
http://knowledgelab.org.uk/wiki/KLab9

Posted by jo at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

HMKV Workshop + Vortrag + Party

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10 YEARS

WORKSHOP >> SPACES OF OPERATION IN MEDIA ART (in English) :: 11:00-17:00 >> guentherstraße 65 > dortmund:

adam hyde, xs4all.nl > amsterdam
alessandro ludovico, neural.it > bari
inke arns, mikro e. v. > berlin
hans christ // iris dressler, wuerttembergischer kunstverein > stuttgart
jacob lillemose, artnode > copenhagen
laurence rassel, constant > brussels
susanne ackers, obn.org > berlin
rasa smite, raitis smits, rixc.lv > riga and others

PUBLIC LECTURE by hans d. christ und iris dressler (in German) :: 19:00 >> phoenix halle > hochofenstrasse / ecke rombergstrasse > dortmund

After the lecture the Hartware MedienKunstVerein cordially invites you to join the HMKV Party at PHOENIX Halle. The exhibition "The Wonderful World of irational.org. Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006" stays open!

Posted by jo at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion

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Live Chat with Manuel Portela

_Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 5_ :: Live chat with poet and critic Manuel Portela, discussing concrete and digital poetics, and other topics :: Chat date: Monday, October 23 :: 1 pm West Coast US / 4 pm East Coast USA / 10 pm Paris FR / 6 am Melbourne AU :: LEAD is an open forum around the New Media Poetics special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

Chat instructions are here. PLEASE NOTE: The instructions are intended to apply to all jabber chat clients, but there may be some variation for individual clients. For example, some clients may require the chat room server "conference.jabber.org" and others clients only "jabber.org." Also, please refer to the link for a complete schedule of upcoming chats and for instructions on joining chats.

Manuel Portela has written books of visual and sound poetry, as well as a number of satirical poems. His early poems have been collected in Cras! Bang! Boom! Clang (1991) and Pixel Pixel (1992). He organized an international exhibition of visual and concrete poetry in 1993 - Wor(l)d Poem/ Poema Mu(n)do, which was held at the Museum of Figueira da Foz, Portugal. He has also exhibited his own visual poetry and he has created several digital poems. Since 1994 he has published 10 volumes of translation, including the first Portuguese editions of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1994) and Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (2 vols, 1997-98). He was awarded the National Prize of Literary Translation for Tristram Shandy. Many other translations have appeared in Portuguese and Brazilian journals and anthologies, including poems by Samuel Beckett, Edwin Morgan, Tony Harrison, John Havelda, Charles Bernstein, Mike Basinski, Bill Howe, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, Dennis Cooley, Robert Kroetsch, Roy Miki, Don Paterson. He has written short plays both for radio and stage. His latest book is O Comércio da Literatura [The Commerce of Literature] (2003), a study of representations of the literary marketplace in eighteenth-century England. Currently he works as an Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. His latest research is concerned with textual forms in digital media.

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2006

ARCO/BEEP New Media Art Awards

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Call for submissions

ARCO/BEEP NEW MEDIA ART AWARDS :: 2nd edition :: Conceded by BEEP, in collaboration with ARCO
Worth 8.000 euros and 6.000 euros.

The goal of these awards is to advance the production and exhibition of New Media Art, and art linked to new technologies. Its purpose is to promote new high-tech art, and to foster communication between the manufacturers / creators of this new technology and those who create art. A natural collaboration, which will benefit and enrich both sides.

There are two ACQUISITION PRIZES:

1) @ARCO Prize: worth 8.000 euros. To be eligible, an artwork must be shown by a gallery at the 26th edition of ARCO, the International Contemporary Art Fair, in Madrid (15-19 February 2007), and must have a significant component involving new technology or electronic media.

2) OFF-ARCO Prize: worth 6.000 euros. Artworks presented by individual artists or collectives.

The prizes will be awarded by an international jury of prestigious specialists.
Registration form will be available from the 30th of October on the ARCO/BEEP NEW MEDIA ART Prize website http://www.arco.beep.es

Posted by luis at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

CASAzine #4: Drawing the Line

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Call for Submissions

Following the activity of the 2006 Cultural Analysis Summer Academy (CASA) international meeting in Amsterdam (June 23 – 25), the fourth CASAzine will explore the subject of art and direct action. In particular, the issue seeks to investigate the tension between hegemonic forms of knowledge concerning what constitutes art as it is embodied by the academy versus alternative forms of creative action and knowledge production. It is an enquiry into distinctions, limits and possibilities, and into the positions our actions occupy in relation to academic knowledge sets, institutions, and ultimately to other people.

"Drawing the Line" aims to examine the implications and potential of our actions. How do aesthetic concerns affect our politics and vice versa? Do actions utilizing mass media heighten awareness, or do they merely contribute additional imagery to the spectacle? More basically, to what extent is art as creative activism a productive way to work for social change? Can ‘radical aesthetics’ productively challenge distinctions drawn between art and activism in traditional academic knowledge systems?

"Drawing the Line" applies to our negotiation with institutionalization. What happens to creative forms of direct action when they are defined as art by public bodies or art markets? How can creative practices push agendas for political change in relation to, or even within, those contexts? How can we take critical action that is aware of its own position in a cultural climate of fashion, celebrity, and shopping? How do aspects of cultural life as it is currently conceived (i.e. the figure of a charismatic creator a.k.a. "the artist as genius") affect our goal for leaderless, equal, collaborative forms of art and action?

"Drawing the Line" is pertinent to how we relate to others. In all our forms of activism including research, art, and direct action, the nature of our engagement with others is crucial, be they involved, hostile, critical, or indifferent. How do our activities relate to those outside the group of people specifically engaged in this alternative practice? How do the microcosms of dissent created in our daily lives relate to wider social frameworks?

These questions are not new, but they are critical to framing the daily distinctions and decision making necessary to create awareness and change. As we move on to review, discuss, and share responses to these questions, we hope to arrive at better questions to ask, which will in turn create new answers in the struggle for social and political equity and environmental protection.

Formats:We are seeking contributions in both text and image form. Contributions may be a reflection on the subject of art and direct action as it was addressed during the meeting, or it can present an entirely perspective. Contributions may be offered by anyone, including those who have not attended CASA meetings in the past.

Guidelines:

- 500-3000 words.
- Language: English preferred; German, French, and Spanish understood.

Send

- Email is preferred: casazine2006[at]gmail.com. Please attach text in .doc or .rtf; and attach image samples in low resolution .jpg.

- Surface mail: Monika Vykoukal, Peacock visual arts, 21 Castle Street, AB11 5BQ, Aberdeen, Scotland. If you would like your materials returned, please include a stamped return envelope.

Deadline: 1 February 2007

We, Milena Placentile and Monika Vykoukal, the editors of this year's zine, met at CASA Meeting 2006. We live in Canada and Scotland respectively, and we are both curators of contemporary art.

The Cultural Analysis Summer Academy (CASA) came into existence in 2003 as an international forum that seeks to discuss the shifting functions of academia and the scholar in a globalized society. CASA offers a platform for people to combine efforts and information with a view towards social transformation.

To date, CASA has organized three meetings to provide a platform for these discussions. For more information about CASA 2004 "Acting and Spectating", CASA 2005 "Borders, Markets, Movements", and CASA 2006 "Constructing Social Change: Art, Direct Action, Knowledge, Utopia, and Desires."

Posted by jo at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Fleshing Out

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Seminar and Workshop

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam-based Virtueel Platform, the expertise centre for E-Culture, are organising a two-day event on the theme of close-to-the-skin technology.

Recent developments in science, including DNA and stem cell research, tissue culturing, smart materials and wearable technology, have a growing impact on how we perceive materials and clothing in design practice. In laboratories across the globe researchers at the boundaries of materials research, electronics, chemistry, and biotechnology are laying the foundations of future applications. The key characteristics of the materials and clothing developed in these labs are their ability to adapt (such as fabrics that adapt their density according to the surrounding temperature), the seamless integration of technology (for example, woven-in solar panels) and the self-organising nature of the design process (such as skin that grows in the form of a­ leather­ jacket, independent of any living being).

It is up to the designers, artists, and developers to determine how this ‘adaptivity’, seamless integration and self-organisation will take place. Designers and artists play an essential role in the way these technologies are formed and the way they are used in society at large. More is at stake here than merely the design of the products.It is also vital to stop and think about the impact that the introduction of these kinds of technologies may have on society.

Fleshing Out aims to create a breeding ground for Dutch initiatives in the field of new technologies, in the arts, materials and clothing design practice. It also examines the social impact of this scientific innovation on our daily lives, by testing out various scenarios in conjunction with their users.

Featuring: Kristina Andersen (Media Design, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and Steim, Amsterdam) / Joanna Berzowska (Design and Computation Arts , Concordia University, Montreal) / Ger Brinks (Textile Materials, Saxion Hogescholen, Enschede) / Anne Galloway (Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University Ottawa) / Janine Huizinga (Waag Society, Amsterdam) / Tobie Kerridge (Royal College of Art, London) / Suzanne Lee (Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London) / Michiel Scheffer (Fashion and Materials Design, Saxion Hogescholen, Enschede) / Thecla Schiphorst (Interactive Arts, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) / Sabine Seymour (University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria) / Ionat Zurr (SymbioticA: the art and science collaborative research laboratory, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia).

FLESHING OUT: Seminar :: Thursday 9th November 10 am - 6 pm, at V2_ in Rotterdam: This seminar brings together leading and critical initiatives in the field of wearable technology and smart materials and presents them to a wide audience of artists, designers, scientists and students from a variety of disciplines. The seminar is part of V2_’s Test_Lab events series. Admission seminar: 40 Euro (students: 20 Euro)

FLESHING OUT: Scenario Workshops: The workshop provides a more intimate setting for a selected group of speakers from the seminar and several invited Dutch experts. They come together in this workshop to analyse best practices in the interdisciplinary field of wearable technology, come up with scenarios, and research the possibilities of setting up new innovative projects in the Netherlands.

The workshop wil be held on Friday 10th of November at the Zwijger in Amsterdam. The Fleshing Out workshop is by invitation only. However there are some open seats available. Admission scenario workshops: 75 Euro (students: 35 Euro).

You can register via our online registration form.

Posted by jo at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies: Issue 3.3: Special issue on Sound

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Call For Papers

Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies: Issue 3.3: Special issue on Sound :: Call For Papers

The aim of this issue of Liminalities is to visit new areas of research in sound culture and oral traditions; new media potentials for using audio in and as performance; and to revisit classical performance topics like elocution, oral interpretation, and voice. This special issue responds to the increased interest in sound and music in cultural studies and performance studies, the increasing availability of sound-editing and music-production software, and the rise in cultural relevance of podcasting and other methods of distributing audio-centered theoretical, ethnographic, documentary, and aesthetic content. We are looking for both audio projects and projects about sound. Contributors may address some of these themes as they relate to performance:

Aural environments :: Oral interpretation :: Digital storytelling :: Spoken word performance :: Sound environments :: Auditory culture :: Oral histories :: The "return" of orality :: Digital technology :: Multimedia performance :: Noise Sound art :: Music :: Propaganda :: Radio :: Soundscapes :: Podcasting :: Voice :: Aural memory :: Listening :: Documenting performance :: Documentary as performance :: Recording.

The editors anticipate the issue may contain (at least) three sections:
. Audio performances
. Audio essays/projects addressing the special issue theme
. Textual essays exploring theoretical and practical issues of sound in/ and/ as performance.

Submission Procedures:

Step One: Proposals (Deadline: February 15th, 2007)

For essays: In approximately three to seven pages, plus works cited, please identify the primary argument you plan to make in your essay, providing some sense of the context for that argument's relevance in terms of disciplinary conversations and praxis. Additionally, please identify any nontraditional / mediated sources / texts / strategies (e.g., video, audio, flash, etc.) you intend to use in your final piece. Please use MLA format where appropriate and submit three hard copies of the proposal to the address below.

For performances: Please describe your performance, contextualizing the work's relevance in terms of disciplinary history, conversations, and praxis. In addition, please identify and discuss (where necessary) any presentational strategies you have beyond mp3 audio files.

The editors will notify authors about the status of their proposals by March 15th.

Step Two: Final Materials (Deadline: July 15th, 2007)

Authors with accepted proposals should plan to submit final versions of their essays/works in appropriate formats: (a) audio and other media projects should be burned onto a CD or DVD and mailed to the address below; (b) for essays, please send three hard copies to the address below and email one copy, in MS-Word, to the email address below.

Step Three: Peer review and editorial changes will take place over the summer, with publication of this issue scheduled for November 1st, 2007.

Please send all proposals and submissions for this special issue to: Marcyrose Chvasta (mchvasta[at]cas.usf.edu ) or Michael LeVan (mlevan[at]tampabay.rr.com )

Or by mail to:
Marcyrose Chvasta
Editor, Liminalities
Department of Communication CIS1040
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Ave
Tampa, FL 33620-7800

Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies is a peer-reviewed online journal for performance studies scholarship, criticism, praxis, and pedagogy. We welcome the submission of essays, interviews, reviews, performance scripts, poetry, and multimedia projects. We support a wide range of performance perspectives, practices, methodologies, media, contexts, styles, and sites. All submissions should be in cross-platform formats. For information or inquiries, contact Marcyrose Chvasta or Michael LeVan at editor[at]liminalities.net .

Posted by jo at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

Two Thousand + SEVEN: International Symposium on Virtual Performance Environments

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Call for Presentations / Papers

Two Thousand + SEVEN: 2nd international symposium focusing on networked performance environments :: The upcoming edition of Two Thousand + SEVEN will once again run in parallel to the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, hosted by the Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen's University Belfast. The festival is the longest-running new music festival in Ireland that presents cutting-edge new music and features some of the most thought-provoking and controversial musicians.

Call for papers/presentations: The call for papers is now open. Please go to: www.sonorities.org.uk/symposium for details. The focus will be on cultural and practical issues that arise in virtual performance environments.

Keynote Speakers: George Lewis (Columbia University) and Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, London).

George Lewis previously taught at UC San Diego,Mills College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Arts Summer Institute. He has served as music curator for the Kitchen in New York, and has collaborated in the "Interarts Inquiry" and "Integrative Studies Roundtable" at the Center for Black Music Research (Chicago). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. An active composer, improvisor, performer and computer/installation artist, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. His artistic work is documented in over 120 recordings and has been awarded by a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship, 1999 Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts, and numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His oral history is archived in Yale University's collection of "Major Figures in American Music," and his published articles on music, experimental video, visual art, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes.

Steven Connor has taught since 1979 at Birkbeck College, where he is now Professor of Modern Literature and Theory. He is currently Academic Director of the London Consortium Masters and Doctoral Programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is also the College Orator. For publications see: www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc.

Further Details:

Paper sessions will take place in the morning and the afternoon bridged by a lunchtime performance and finished off with two evening concerts.
Date: Saturday, 21st of April 2007
Location: Sonic Arts Research Center/Belfast.

Deadlines:

A maximum of 8 papers of 20 minutes duration (plus question time) will be accepted. Abstracts (max. 350 words) are due in electronic format by the 15th of December 2006. Presenters of accepted papers/presentations will be informed by the 15th of January 2007. All accepted papers will be published on the SARC site.

Registration: This includes free access to all Sonorities Festival events on the day of the symposium.

Submissions and all queries should be directed to:
f r a n z i s k a s c h r o e d e r: franzisk[at]lautnet[dot]net

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

October 19, 2006

workshop by JULIAN OLIVER

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Art + Game

Art + Game: 3D GAME for ART :: iMAL , Brussels, 27/11 - 1/12/2006.

A workshop about artistic usage of 3d game engines directed by Julian Oliver The workshop will explore artistic usages of 3d game engines, with a particular emphasis on using open source tools. The workshop will be directed by Julian Oliver, an artist internationaly known in the field.

Using Blender as a core development context, Julian will cover rapid protoyping, 3D modeling, event frameworks, game scripting (using Python) and the basics of networking your interactive project with PureData or MaxMSP. In the last day, Julian will introduce how engines such as Soya3D, Ogre3D and QuakeIII can be used for more ambitious projects, using techniques and strategies learned in the first phase of the intensive.

About Julian Oliver: Julian Oliver is a New Zealand born artist, free-software developer, educator and media-theorist. He has presented papers and artworks at many international electronic-art events and conferences. Under the moniker 'delire' he has performed his game-based music software at venues throughout North America, the EU, Japan and the South Pacific. More on selectparks.net/~julian/index.php

Julian has given numerous workshops and master classes in game-design, artistic game-development, virtual architecture, interface design, augmented reality and open source development practices worldwide. In 1998 he established the artistic game-development collective www.selectparks.net.

When ?

Workshop dates are : from Monday 27 NOV to Friday 1 DEC in Brussels. From 10am to 18pm with lunch break.

Where ?

at iMAL office, Centre Dansaert, 7 rue d'Alost, 1000 Brussels.

Registration > registration form

Only through the registration form. The workshop will accept a maximum of 12 participants. The participation fee is 80 EUROS.

Posted by jo at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

RISD Digital+Media Lecture Series

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Douglas Kahn + David Rokeby

Douglas Kahn :: 11.07.06 - Tuesday, 7:00 PM :: RISD Auditorium (North Main St.).

Douglas Kahn, Professor of Technocultural Studies at University of California at Davis, is author of Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (MIT Press) and, under a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, is completing the book Sound No Sound, on the artistic trade between acoustics and electromagnetism. He will be a keynote speaker at Sonic Focus at Brown University, November 3-4.

Media Ventriloquy: Election Night Coverage: News editing is a crude form of ventriloquism. Throughout the 20th Century artists, musicians and media activists have taken editing news events and personalities into an art form. Present day media ventriloquists have grown increasingly sophisticated in how speak through representations of people who are still, ostensibly, alive through performed recordings and electoral performance, as crafted revenge for the way these selfsame people speak for others. This evening’s talk surveys the history before focusing on Bryan Boyce, Pauline Pantsdown and the speaker's own one-hit wonder.

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David Rokeby :: 11.28.06 - Tuesday, 7:00 PM :: RISD Auditorium (North Main St.).

David Rokeby is a sound and video installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. He has been creating interactive installations since 1982. He has focussed on interactive pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. His work has been performed / exhibited in shows across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, including:

the Venice Biennale in 1986
Ars Electronica (Linz Austria) in 1991
the Mediale (Hamburg Germany) in 1993
the Kwangju Biennale (Korea) in 1995
the Biennale di Firenze (Florence, Italy) in 1996
Alien Intelligence (Kiasma, Helsinki) in 2000
The National Gallery of Canada in 2002
The Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002
Ars Electronica in 2002

Recent Awards include the first BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for Interactive Art in 2000, a 2002 Governor General's award in Visual and Media Arts and the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art 2002. He was awarded the first Petro-Canada Award for Media Arts in 1988, the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art (Austria) in 1991 and 1997.

Posted by jo at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

sonic.focus

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Symposium / Performances / Screenings

sonic.focus: theory and practice between sound and image :: Symposium / Performances :: Modern Culture and Media, Brown University :: 11.03-11.04.06, Friday and Saturday

sonic.focus is a project that examines complementarities and antagonisms between sound and image in contemporary culture. Starting with film & video screenings on October 20th and 27th, the events will culminate in a conference and performance series to be held at Brown University on November 3 and 4, 2006.

This program is prompted by the emergence over the past decade of an auditory culture that parallels the dominant visual culture. Among the phenomena that signal this emergence are: the increasing presence of sound in visual arts exhibitions and venues; the proliferation of visual and media practices in which sound is central to meaning; and the development of a body of theory that examines the nature, history, and circulation of sound as a useful social or conceptual model.

The aim of the conference is to foster a fruitful dialogue among theorists and practitioners working at the intersection of the visual and the sonic arts. Keynote speakers will include David Toop, Diedrich Diederichsen, and Douglas Kahn. Panels will include presentations by Christian Marclay, Renee Green, Stephen Vitiello, Steve Roden, and others. Finally, two nights of performances will include appearances by artists such as Tony Conrad, Robert Lippok, AGF & Sue C. and David Shea. All talks and panels will take place at the Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer Street in Providence.

The program opens with two nights of screenings exploring classic and contemporary films and videos by Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Kenneth Anger, Brian Eno, Phill Niblock, Carsten Nicolai, Billy Roisz, Leslie Thornton, and others. The screenings will take place from 6-9pm on October 20th and 27th in the Modern Culture and Media Cinematheque, 135 Thayer Street in Providence.

sonic.focus is organized by Tony Cokes, Christoph Cox, and Roger Mayer, and sponsored by the Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University. Additional support for sonic.focus has been provided by the Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Research in Culture and Media Studies; the Creative Arts Council (Fitt Artists-in-Residence); The C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureships Fund; Global Security Program of the Watson Institute for International Studies; German Studies Department; and the Goethe-Institut (Boston).


sonic.focus: Screenings :: Modern Culture and Media Cinematheque, 135 Thayer Street, Brown University :: 10.20 & 10.27.06 - Fridays, 6:00 PM.

The program opens with two nights of screenings exploring classic and contemporary films and videos by Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Kenneth Anger, Brian Eno, Phill Niblock, Carsten Nicolai, Billy Roisz, Leslie Thornton, and others. The screenings will take place from 6-9pm on October 20th and 27th in the Modern Culture and Media Cinematheque, 135 Thayer Street in Providence.

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

Halsey Burgund

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Performance of One Hundred and Four Thousand

The Forest Hills Educational Trust will be hosting a performance of Halsey Burgund’s One Hundred and Four Thousand :: WHEN: Friday, October 27th at 8PM :: WHERE: Forsyth Chapel at Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, MA :: $8 :: Tickets purchased at the door. More information and directions to Forest Hills.

Burgund wrote One Hundred and Four Thousand for the current art exhibit at the cemetery and this event will be the premiere performance of the piece. You can hear the studio recorded version here. The piece was created by stitching together fragments of interviews of cemetery visitors and employees - conducted on the cemetery grounds in the Spring of this year – with traditional instrumentation to yield an original piece of music intended to be heard while at the cemetery.

For the live performance, Burgund will be playing marimba and piano as well as using sampling technologies to trigger the voices. He will be joined by Peter Bailey on guitar and MIDI guitar, Javier Caballero on cello, Bennett Miller on upright and electric bass, Michael O’Connor on sax, flute and clarinet and Bekka Schellenberg on violin. They will also be using live electronic manipulations to recreate some of the desired effects as well as take it one step further by using surround sound to put the audience right in the middle of the piece. There will be a Q&A session for those interested in learning more about the piece and Halsey’s composition techniques as well as the performance of several other shorter pieces to round out the evening. [Related]

Posted by jo at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

C Theory Live

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Religion, Technology & Terrorism

CTheory Live symposium: Religion, Technology & Terrorism will take place at the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, University of Victoria on Thursday, October 19, 2006 at 2:30pm (PST). The symposium will be streamed live. View past lectures in the video archive.

The symposium will be followed by the electronic book launch of two new CTheory Book projects: LEFT BEHIND: TECHNOLOGY, RELIGION AND FLIGHT FROM THE FLESH by Stephen Pfohl, and BORN AGAIN IDEOLOGY:RELIGION, TECHNOLOGY, AND TERRORISM by Arthur Kroker.

Symposium speakers:

Andrew Wernick is a sociologist and historian of ideas as well as a cultural theorist and jazz pianist. He is the founder and director of Trent University's Institute for the Study of Popular Culture as well as the current chair of Trent's Cultural Studies Department. His interests focus on media theory and advertising, the place of religion in postmodernity, and the notion of time in contemporary culture. He is the author of _Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology, and Symbolic Expression_ (Sage, 1991) and co-editor of _Shadow of Spirit: Religion and Postmodernism_ (Routledge, 1992) and _Images of Ageing_ (Routledge, 1995).

Stephen Pfohl is Professor of Sociology at Boston College where he teaches courses on social theory; postmodern culture; crime, deviance and social control; images and power; and sociology and psychoanalysis. Dr. Pfohl is the author of numerous books and articles including _Death at the Parasite Cafe_, _Images of Deviance and Social Control_, _Predicting Dangerousness_, and the forthcoming volumes _Venus in Video_ and _Magic and the Machine_. A past-President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and a founding member of Sit-Com International, a Boston-area collective of activists and artists, he is also co-editor of the 2006 book _Culture, Power, and History: Studies in Critical Sociology_.

Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory and Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Co-editor of CTheory and Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (www.pactac.net), he is the author of numerous books on technology and culture, including _The Possessed Individual: Technology and the French Postmodern_, _Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class_ (with M. Weinstein), and _The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx_.

Posted by michelle at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)

RUEDIGER JOHN

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Some Remarks On Aesthetic Possibilities Of Unfinished Works of Art

/ ad utrumque paratus / Some Remarks On Aesthetic Possibilities Of Unfinished Works of Art :: RUEDIGER JOHN :: Artist Statement & Talk for NYU students and open to the public :: New York University, Languages & Literature Building, 19 University Place :: Wednesday, September, 20th 2006 - 3:30 pm.

In his statement the artist Ruediger John points out the intrinsic possibilities - or rather abilities - a work of art can have if it is still unfinished (or considered so).

"[...] Typically we rely on and value works of art that are already completed by the artist (unless there is a nice or tragic little anecdote why he or she was not able to finish it) - because we want to be sure e.g. a) it is worth the time to look at b) we can lean back to enjoy, judge and criticise c) it can be bought as it is d) and so forth. The crucial point is: We want to be secured about the character and impact of the piece of art. But what if an artist obviously does not give the audience this secured position? What if a work of art can bite you in the ass some time later - because it is developing its teeth while you already own it (as a simpler way of an interventionistic effect)? Or, more important, if a work of art uses its obviously unfinished characteristic to refer to, or rather inherit the qualities of what remains open and 'unsolved' as an additional source of 'value'?

But not to define every detail of a work can make it more dependable on influences of its surroundings (it is a problem every artwork faces - and most of all the classical form of painting does) - a contemporary artist has to incorporate this in the work during the process of creation [...]" (Ruediger John in an interview with Paul Kovac)

He also talks about what happens if he employs elements and tactics used in performance art to create installative works in an interventionistic way (e.g. outside the preoccupied perspective of audiences in gallery spaces, museums and other 'white cubes') using camouflage and irritation to guide and focus the aesthetics of an audience - to ultimately broaden its experiences (maybe).

Posted by jo at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

IN_TENTION: Emerging Contemporary Performance Art Practices

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Steven Lam

IN_TENTION :: October 25-November 4, 2006 :: Tyler Gallery, Elkins Park, PA :: OPENING Thursday, October 26 2006, 7-9 pm.

This exhibition explores emerging contemporary performance art practices, and is curated by the student group Produce. The project will include work by five artists from across the country. A two-week exhibition will present ongoing performances by David Howe (GA) and Steven Lam (NY), and there will be three one-night performances by artists Quentin Davis (PA), Benjamin Kinsley (OH) and Nelson Loskamp (NY). In addition, a panel discussion will be led by philosopher, critic and artist Tom Zummer, and a workshop for students will be offered by Benjamin Kinsley from the Poke Orchestra.”

Steven Lam's project (in the Main gallery) will consist of an alternating suite of videos and a pirate radio transmission. Pulling from cybernetics/systems theory, apparatus theory, post-modern dance, and historical video art, the project is dialectical in nature; it re-uses discarded clips from an earlier library splicing them with new footage.

For the past few years, Lam has been interested in video as a medium that recodes, archives, and transmits. A new suite of videos will be introduced periodically within the duration of the exhibition. A perpetually evolving archive, the exhibition, ironic and deadpan, will be an experiment for me to toy with “distributional media.” Additionally, Lam will transmit an audio project on a local AM radio band of me reading the entirety of Friedrich Kittler’s "Gramophone, Film, Typewriter." This will be broadcasted and accessible 24 hours a day during the exhibition. The AM band will be announced shortly.

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

HTMlles Festival

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EXPORT 2 Belgrade | Sofia | Istanbul

HTMlles Festival: EXPORT 2 :: October 19-29, 2006 :: Belgrade | Sofia | Istanbul.

From the 19th-29th of October 2006, a program of art works and artists that participated in the 7th edition of the HTMlles festival themed Peripheries + Proximities will travel to 3 cities: Belgrade, Serbia ; Sofia, Bulgaria; and Istanbul, Turkey with the goal of fostering new dialog and collaborations. Through a series of focused encounters, interactive workshops, artists talks, performances and short exhibitions, the traveling Canadian artists and their works will encounter numerous curators, gallerists, cultural operators, local artists and local publics in each of the 3 cities. The touring works will be presented in parallel to programming produced by local partners and translated in English and in the respective local languages. All events are open to the public, including the interactive workshops.

Visit the website for info on participating artists and city schedules:

Participating Artists and Curators include: Chantal Dumas[ca], Michelle Teran[ca], Caroline Martel[ca], Joanna Berzowska[ca/po], Jennifer Willet + Shawn Bailey[ca], Emily Hermant[ca], Andreja Kuluncic[cr], Maja Ciric[sr], Miroslav Karic[sr], Basak Senova[tk], Selda Asal[tk], Anica Vucetic[sr], Zana Poliakov[sr], Natasa Teofilovic[sr], Aleksandra Jovanic[sr],Yofka[bg], Veronika Tzekova[bg], Adelina Popnedeleva[bg], Diana Popova[bg], Greta Gancheva[bg], Leda Ekimova[bg], Nina Boyanova[bg], Yana Kostova[bg], Vladia Mihailova[bg], The Upgrade! Sofia and The Upgrade! Skopje, Ceren Oykut[tk], Ozlem Sulak[tk], Hatice Guleryuz[tk], Bengu Karaduman[tk], Filmmor Women's Cooperative[tk], Ulku Songul[tk], Melek Ozman[tk] and Tuna Erdem[tk].

Events in Belgrade: held at O3one Gallery and Kontekst Gallery: October 19-21.

Events in Sofia: held at the Red House Center for Culture + Debate: October 23-26.

Events in Istanbul: held at Plat Form Garanti Gallery and The Apartment Project: October 27-29.

The HTMlles Festival is an ongoing project of StudioXX, Montreal, Canada's foremost women's digital resource centre, in operation since 1995. The HTMlles Festival, started as an annual event focused on the position of women in cyberspace, has now evolved to become an international biennial project which includes all facets of new media and web art technologies. The Montreal events now stand as a globally-known meeting place for women and feminists working in creative digital mediums and the addition of circulation projects has created an international network for Canadian new media artists.

Following the EXPORT2 tour, the next HTMlles biennial event will be held in October 2007, in Montreal. As a major international event, the HTMlles Festival seeks submissions from international artists and academics and collaborations with international curators, and cultural operators. Visit the website for further details. www.htmlles.net :: www.htmlles.net/08/call.

StudioXX and the HTMlles Festival receive support from numerous governmental and private bodies including : The Canada Council for the Arts, Le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, Heritage Canada, The Municipality of Montreal and The Canadian Embassy in Ankara.

Kyd Campbell, HTMlles Festival Director
contact: info[at]htmlles.net

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

October 16, 2006

The Futures of Entertainment Conference

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At MIT November 17,18

The Comparative Media Studies Program is proud to announce an exciting forthcoming conference, The Futures of Entertainment, to be held at MIT on Nov. 17 and 18. The event is designed to bring together leading thinkers from across the entertainment industry to speak about core issues around media convergence, transmedia storytelling, user-generated content, and participatory culture.

Speakers confirmed so far include The Long Tail's Chris Anderson, Flickr's Caterina Fake, DC Comic's Paul Levitz, Warner Brother's Diane Nelson, Big Spaceship's Michael Lebowitz, social networking researcher danah boyd, television scholar Jason Mittell, and many others, including representatives from MTV, Cartoon Network, Bioware, and other leading companies in this space. The event is free and open to the public but we ask that you preregister since seating will be limited. The event is being hosted by the Convergence Culture Consortium.

This program is a draft and may still change before the conference.

All events take place in the Bartos Theater in the MIT Media Lab (building E15).

Friday, Nov. 17
9-9.30am: Intro and Welcome: Henry Jenkins
9.30am - 12.30pm: Television Futures: Chris Anderson, Andy Hunter, speaker to be confirmed
12.30-1.30pm: Lunch
1.30-4.30pm: User-Generated Content: Caterina Fake, Ji Lee, Rob Tercek, Kevin Barrett
4.30-7.30pm: Transmedia Properties: Paul Levitz, Michael Lebowitz, Alex Chisholm

Saturday, Nov. 18
9-9.30am: Intro and Welcome: Jason Mittell
9.30am - 12.30pm: Fan Cultures: Diane Nelson, danah boyd, speaker to be confirmed
12.30-1.30pm: Lunch
1.30-4.30pm: Not the Real World Anymore: John Lester, Ron Meiners, speaker to be confirmed
Television Futures

New distribution methods, new revenue strategies and changing modes of audience engagement are transforming how television works. Off- and post-broadcast markets make 'old' television valuable as a continuing source of income and suggest new ways to reach viewers. Digital video recorders threaten the 30-second commercial but offer the possibility of more detailed information about audience members. Some television producers may reach out to consumers directly rather than going through the networks and networks are using online distribution to generate buzz about new shows before they reach the air. Creative responses to these challenges are re-writing how we understand what was once just the box in the corner.

User-Generated Content

Media culture is becoming more participatory, rewriting the relations between media producers and consumers. New tools and distribution platforms, a changing cultural ethos, and innovative corporate approaches to user-generated content are turning viewers into active participants. Innovation may occur at the grassroots level yet influence decisions made within corporate media. Yet, are media companies ready for the grassroots creativity they are unleashing? What challenges does greater user-participation pose to both producers and audiences? What corporate policies enable or retard the growth of user-generated content?

Transmedia Properties

The cultural logic of convergence lends itself to a flow of narratives, characters, and worlds across media platforms. Moving beyond older models based on liscensed ancillary products, transmedia extensions are now seen as expanding the opportunities for storytelling, enabling new kinds of entertainment experiences, building up secondary characters or backstory. Transmedia extension may also create alternative openings for different market segments and enable more extensive contact with brands. The great potential of transmediation is to deepen audience engagement, but this requires greater awareness of the specific benefits of working within different platforms. How are media companies organizing the development of transmedia properties? How are storytellers taking advantage of the "expanded canvas" such an approach offers? How do transmedia strategies impact the new integration between brands and entertainment properties? What new expectations do transmedia properties place on consumers?

Fan Cultures

Once seen as marginal or niche consumers, Fan communities look more 'mainstream' than ever before. Some have argued that the practices of web 2.0 are really those of fan culture without the stigma. Courted, encouraged, engaged and acknowledged, fans are more and more frequently being recognized as trendsetters, viral marketers, and grassroots intermediaries. Fan affinity is being seized as a form of grassroots marketing, representing the bleeding edge of brand and property commitment. The sophistication of fan-created products rivals the professional products they honor, sometimes keeping defunct properties alive long after their shelf life might otherwise have expired. How is the increasing importance of fan behavior re-writing the media landscape? What kinds of accountability should media companies have to their most committed consumers? What kinds of value do fans create through their activities? What are the sources of tension that still exist between media producers, advertisers, and fans?

Not the Real World Anymore

Virtual spaces are more than sites for emulating the real world. They are becoming platforms for thought experiments -- some of which involve fantasies we would not like to enact in the real world, others involve possibilities that we may want to test market before putting into practice. Much more than simulacra of Real Life or a 3D version of text-based Internet communities, online worlds represent new sites for considering questions of community and connectivity. Marked by user- creativity, online worlds balance, sometimes precariously, the rights of users with the rights of sponsoring organizations. As we move closer to the cyberpunk vision of a wholly parallel 'metaverse', questions of power, community, and property are coming to the fore.

Posted by newradio at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

Futherfield.org

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Become a Reviewer

Furtherfield receives regular submissions from artists and groups from all over the world, inviting us to feature and review their projects. We have an excellent team of reviewers working with us at the moment. Yet, because we are receiving more innovative and high quality media artworks from different cultural contexts, than we ever have before, we are finding it hard to keep up. So, now we need even more reviewers.

In November 06, Furtherfield will have a brand new design with new features that enable reviewers to have more control over their own text, images and different formats when reviews are submitted. We welcome contributions from all kinds of writers - but would especially value bi-lingual reviewers who are able to introduce work created by artists in non-English-speaking cultures.

We are also interested in people who understand and know net art, software art, social networks, live net art, live Internet tv, open source, tactical media, art blogs, net films, media art connected- self institutions, psychogeography, activist games, media art related exhibitions online and in spaces, and related conferences.

As a reviewer you will be asked to select from these works and contribute to the context of what is being created and write about why it is relevant. You will also have the option of seeking out and writing about other works that you personally think should be seen on Furtherfield.

If you possess knowledge and enthusiasm for any of these subjects, are able to write and communicate clearly;-) and are interested in being part of a explorative group, that is growing daily as an adventurous community in its own right. And like us, are passionately and critically engaged in investigating the constant shifts and reinvention of the creative, digitally related vista as we know it; we welcome you aboard...

contact - marc garrett:
marc.garrett[at]furtherfield.org
http://www.furtherfield.org

Other projects related to Furtherfield:
http://www.http.uk.net
http://www.visitorsstudio.org
http://blog.game-play.org.uk
http://www.nodel.org
http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org
http://www.netbehaviour.org
http://www.furthernoise.org

Posted by jo at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

EAR APPEAL

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Control and the Production of Space

EAR APPEAL :: 19.10.2006 – 18.11.2006 :: Artists: Rashad Becker (DE), Justin Bennett (GB/NL), Benjamin Bergmann (DE), Elisabeth Grübl (A), Arthur Köpcke (DE/DK), Genesis P-Orridge (USA), Ultra-red (USA), Ruszka Roskalnikowa (PL), Paula Roush/msdm (PT/GB), Mika Taanila (FIN), Annette Weisser (D) :: Curator: Doreen Mende :: Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Währingerstraße 59, 2nd staircase, 1st floor, A 1090 Vienna.

"Listening to music is listening to noise, realizing that its appropriation and control is a reflection of power, that is essentially political." – Jacques Attali

Our sonic environment has a far more direct impact on daily actions than just suggestive image production. Soundscapes define economic, social, and cultural territories. In response to the question “How does sound influence our society?”, eleven artists deal in site-specific works with two issues: control and the production of space.

Ear Appeal is not a sound-art exhibition: instead, it approaches sound as conceptual and analytic material, examining the ways sound defines space and exerts control.

Every day, we are surrounded by sound waves in the city, functional music in shopping malls, elevator music, telephone please-hold-the-line loops, and the comforting tinkles in hotel lobbies, restaurants, and doctors’ waiting rooms. Audio-branding confronts us through radio and television, but also in the slam of a car door or the crunch of a cookie. We perceive noises not only with our ears: sound waves are also absorbed by the skin, nose, mouth, and bones. In the sixties, a standard slogan of Muzak Inc. was “Boring work is made less boring by boring music.” The intentional sound of muzak, a concept developed in the 1920s to describe functional tape music designed for specific target groups, is one of the best examples of how music and silence are used in the control and surveillance of consumer behavior in supermarkets, but also in factories, parks, clinics, and swimming pools. Here, the Foucauldian internalization of discipline and power is perfected on the level of hearin g.

As John Cage stated, there is no absolute silence. Sound defines space and space allows sound to be perceived. A key approach of several works in the show, some of them new, is the mapping and unraveling of sound phenomena in the political and social fabric of urban Vienna. These methods develop a direct relationship with the city, functioning as an inventory and acoustic field guide. An exhibition on the theme of sound in public and social space cannot take place solely indoors. Research, radio transmissions and on-site institutional cooperations will expand the exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Exnergasse out over the city, the source of the material being explored.

In her new work, produced in the venerable broadcast hall at Austrian Radio (ORF), Annette Weisser questions definitions of cultural identity. Based on a series of interviews in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, Rashad Becker’s installation creates an audio feature on people’s understandings of work. The contribution of Fluxus artist Arthur Köpcke takes a BBC radio program to absurd lengths. In a text piece, Genesis P-Orridge focuses on how we can use information and strategies to fight a guerilla war against muzak. Artist and filmmaker Mika Taanila documents the phenomena of functional music. Ruszka Roskalnikowa translates familiar strategies of video surveillance to sound. Sound cannot always be escaped in the same way images can, as visitors experience in sculptural installations by Benjamin Bergmann and Elisabeth Grübl which push the relationship between sound waves, the body, and the space to extremes. As part of his ongoi ng cities project, Justin Bennett contributes a cartographic audio recording of Vienna. Urban space is analyzed by Paula Roush/msdm in terms of protest culture: including a workshop, her piece is the latest installment in her Protest Academy project. The installation by Ultra-red is the setting for a gathering where political activism and artistic praxis are discussed via the concrete question of how the concept of ‘poverty’ in Vienna can be differentiated and defined in acoustic terms.

Wednesday, October 18, 19:00 - Exhibition opening
Saturday, October 21, 12:30 - Encuentro fascilitated by Ultra-red/Manuela Bojadzijev (Berlin) and Dont Rhine (Los Angeles)
Saturday, November 11, 14:00 - Protest Academy Workshop with Paula Roush/msdm
Sunday evenings (October 29, November 5 + 12, all starting 23:05): “Ear Appeal” on Ö1 Kunstradio.

A cooperation with Ö1 Kunstradio.

Kunsthalle Exnergasse
Tuesday – Friday: 14:00 – 19:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 13:00

Contact: Christina Nägele
christina.naegele[at]wuk.at
Tel +43.1.40121-41

Währingerstraße 59
2nd staircase, 1st floor
A 1090 Vienna

Posted by jo at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

OPTRONICA

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Call for Submissions

A hybrid of music/film festival :: OPTRONICA: visual music on the big screen :; March 2007, London at the BFI Southbank (NFT) & BFI IMAX.

Playstation teams up with the BFI and leading audiovisual artists/producers Addictive TV with new-media curators Cinefeel to present Optronica, a hybrid of music festival and film festival taking place over 5 days in March 2007. Optronica explores the fusion of music and visuals, and features live audiovisual performances, screenings, talks, workshops and related special events. The festival will be held at the BFI IMAX and the newly renovated National Film Theatre, which will re-open as BFI Southbank on 1 February.

:: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS :: visual music animations / music videos / video installations :: For our cinema screenings, we're looking for innovative and unconventional music videos, ambient and experimental work, animations, audio/video remixes and video cut-ups that express or explore the close relation of music and image. We're open to all styles of music and all styles of images, be they created on celluloid or in the digital domain.

We are also looking for video installations that utilise this close relation of music and image; these can be interactive and preferably for a single screen exhibit. These installations will be hosted in one of the new BFI Southbank spaces over the five days of the event as part of the Optronica Lounge.

DEADLINE: Friday 1st December.

Please download a submission form and details from here www.optronica.org.

The cinema programmes are curated by Cinefeel who, for over a decade, has been promoting new media culture and music videos as an artform in their own right. Cinefeel has programmed for major international festivals and organised countless music/video events.

Posted by newradio at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2006

Turbulence Commission:

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"Nothing Happens - a performance in three acts"

Turbulence Commission: Nothing Happens by Nurit Bar-Shai, Zachary Lieberman and Rich Miller :: Nothing Happens is a networked online performance in which the viewers work together to make a series of objects tip over. The performance consists of three acts, which are centered on staged environments – a high shelf, a cluttered tabletop, and a deserted corner. Each scene contains a central protagonist, respectively: a cardboard box, a clear pint glass full of water, and a wooden chair. In all three acts, web-enabled physical devices controlled by the viewer’s clicks will make these objects tip over.

The three acts will be presented on October 15th, 22nd and 29th at 3rd Ward gallery Brooklyn. Please join the artists for an opening reception Sunday, October 15, 2006 6-8 p.m.

"Nothing Happens" is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from The Greenwall Foundation. Additional support from 3rd Ward Gallery.

BIOGRAPHIES

NURIT BAR-SHAI'S main interest lies in exploring tensions between the mundane and the uncanny in everyday life. Emanating from her creative roots in fine arts, Bar-Shai employs video and new technologies to explore fundamental questions of presentation and representation, to reframe the familiar and turn audiences into foreigners in their own ontological domains.

ZACHARY LIEBERMAN'S work uses technology in a playful and enigmatic way to explore the nature of communication and the delicate boundary between the visible and the invisible. He creates performances, installations, and on-line works that investigate gestural input, augmentation of the body, and kinetic response.

RICH MILLER is a sculptor and a recent graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. His creative energies are focused on making electro-mechanical pieces that humor him, as well as designing and fabricating innovative and dynamic children’s museum interactives and furniture. He lives and works in Astoria, NY.

Posted by jo at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

Enter_ and Norwich International Animation Festival

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ART ON AUTOPILOT

Enter_ and Norwich International Animation Festival invite you to ART ON AUTOPILOT :: 19th October 2006, 6.30-8.00pm :: The Puppet Theatre Studio, Norwich :: FREE :: Please join us for drinks afterwards. Places are limited! RSVP by 18/10/06 to sarah[at]junction.co.uk.

An evening of generative systems, intelligent algorithms, ideas as code and drawing machines, with: Marius Watz [D] visual hedonist and generative art pioneer / Dave Miller [UK] on experiments with digital interactive stories / Paul Brown [UK/F] on the future of muzac: generative music / Geoff Cox [UK] artist, teacher and project organizer between software and generative art.

Enter_ is a creative network that brings together artist, researchers and businesses that work at the intersection of art and new technology in the East of
England.

Posted by jo at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2006

Antony and the Johnsons with Charles Atlas

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European tour of Turning

Antony and the Johnsons with Charles Atlas – European tour of Turning :: 31 Oct – 10 Nov 06.

Turning combines the haunting and dramatic music of Antony and the Johnsons with a vivid visual backdrop provided by award-winning film director and video artist Charles Atlas. The live performance features a simple yet moving orchestration from an ensemble of eight musicians alongside Antony, as well as video footage of fourteen NYC Beauties, whose intimate and hypnotic portraits whilst slowly turning onstage are captured, processed and projected by Atlas.

By combining Atlas’ innovative live video processing with Antony’s vocal stylings, which have been compared to the likes of Nina Simone and Lotte Lenya, Turning explores issues of innocence, metamorphosis, and transcendence in a visually dramatic and highly compelling format. Turning was first performed at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, 2004.

:: 31 Oct & 1 Nov, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Romaeuropa 2006, Rome IT
:: 4 & 5 Nov, Barbican Hall, London, UK
:: 7 Nov, Olympia Hall, Paris, FR
:: 8 Nov, Palacio Municipal de Congresos, Madrid, ES
:: 10 Nov, Theatro Circo de Braga, Braga, PT

For full tour details visit http://www.forma.org.uk

Antony graduated from NYU’s experimental theatre programme before going on to receive an N.Y.F.A. fellowship for performance art and emergent forms. After a series of solo cabaret performances at the East Village’s Pyramid Club, he assembled the Johnsons and the band recorded its debut album in 1997. His harrowing voice, which Laurie Anderson called “the most exquisite thing that you will hear in your life,” has continued to gain the group acclaim, with the album I am a Bird Now (2004) winning the Mercury Music Prize, 2005. Over the past year the group has toured extensively across Europe, The States and Australia. Antony has toured with Lou Reed and appeared on his albums The Raven and Animal Serenade. He has also made various film appearances with directors such as Steve Buscemi and Sebastian Lifshitz.

Charles Atlas, an award-winning filmmaker, video artist, and pioneer of the medium of media-dance, has created work for film, theatre, television and such prestigious museums as the Whitney, NY and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Best known for his acclaimed collaborations with choreographers, dancers and performers such as Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, Diamanda Galas and John Kelly, Atlas spent ten years as film-maker in residence for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; his feature-length film Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance won the Best Documentary Award at Dance Screen 2000 in Monaco. Recent dance-related pieces are Rainer Variations (2002), a video portrait of Yvonne Rainer, and two collaborations with Merce Cunningham: Views on Camera (2005) and Views on Video (2005).

Further projects featuring the work of Charles Atlas, November 2006, London:
• Hail The New Puritan, a survey of Charles Atlas's work in film and video, Tate Modern Starr Auditorium, 16 -20 Nov 2006, details at http://www.tate.org.uk.
• Instant Fame, an interactive video installation at the Vilma Gold Gallery, London, from 23 Nov– 3 Dec 2006, details at http://www.vilmagold.com.

Turning is produced by Forma and International Music srl and is co-commissioned by The Barbican & Fondazione Musica per Roma & Romaeuropa 2006

The first presentation of Turning in New York was co-produced by Arts at Saint Ann's, True Love Productions, UCLA Live! and Pomegranate Arts

Forma Arts and Media Producers is one of Europe's leading contemporary arts agencies specializing in the production of cross-artform projects. Pioneering new hybrid forms of music, visual art, film, new media, dance, theatre and live art, Forma’s international touring programme for 2006/2007 includes projects with alva noto [carsten nicolai]; Antony and the Johnsons; Charles Atlas; Gina Czarnecki; Ryoji Ikeda; Ryuichi Sakamoto and Lynette Wallworth.

For further information visit http://www.forma.org.uk

Posted by jo at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)

INCIDENT.NET / SERIES: THE DETAIL

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Last Call for Participation

INCIDENT.NET / SERIES: THE DETAIL: DEADLINE: OCTOBER 31, 2006.

Important: Thank you to send us your netart/videoart project, a short description and your biography by email (incident[at]incident.net). Only the works using technologies (interactivity, generativity, network, etc.) will be selected. Thanks.

Between the subject and the object, between the perceiver and the perceived. As we shift from the detail to the entirety, the change in scale is ascertained through comparison. Can a detail exist all by itself? Would it still be a detail? Do we have to stop once we arrive at the detail? Can't we just keep going until the detail breaks up into endless fragments of further details?

We go from a human being to the body to the hand to the skin, the material of the skin, to pigments, eventually are we even looking at matter at all? The detail is a voyage of perception. What does perception see in a detail? Does it reflect? Is one detail ever alone? Once we reach the detail through this tortuous path of perception, don't we actually find ourselves in an infinite multiplicity? If our perception is shifting, doesn't this imply heterogeneity? How do we decide what is revealed by the visible, and what we see, and how relevant it is to us?

Today's technologies of memory also propose new ways of navigating, travelling through memory, radicalizing the question of the detail and of the other to which it necessarily refers. A detail is never alone, and when it is, it is testament to its isolation, because it is missing something. What is a detail on the Internet? How do we define a hierarchy by which we can go from the detail to the whole or vice versa? If it is hopeless to attempt to find anything which could be called 'the final detail' which would complete our whole, how can we even begin to speak of details?

Yet, we get the sense of never seeing anything more than fragmentary details. The whole is a default, as is reason. As we go from one detail, one perception to the next, we can stop, we may pause, but there is never a good reason to. The world is disconnected.

The detail concerns aesthetics as much as it does thinking. The word itself implies a hierarchy: a detail is something particular, an ornament, nothing of importance, something which may even be on the edge of nothingness. But it is also precision, sophistication, if not subtlety. It is still part of something, a piece, a remnant. The detail is not a concept.

Walter Benjamin described "a thought of detail": Let's remember this garden, this grass, these blades of grass, each blade is unique and has as much to do with the next blade as with anything else. It is through the irremediable vulgarity of thinking that we perceive anything that could be described as 'grass' forgetting the singularity of each detail.

How do interactive cross-referencing, database stratification, and the capacity for unceasing movement of today's technology account for this implied 'other' which is the aesthetic of details? Is it possible to elaborate a perception of details which does not refer back, through the sign of missing something, to an initial totality? A detail, but without nostalgia.

Gregory Chatonsky

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

Riot Gear for Rollartista

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An Action Dedicated to African/Muslim Immigrants

Riot Gear for Rollartista: a blog and mobile gaming performance project by Anne-Marie Schleiner and Talice Lee. This blog is for posting information about a performance action we are doing in Castellon Spain on Saturday October 21, 2006 as part of an exhibition at EACC Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castell from October-January 2007. It will involve three short Machinima (stories told with video game footage) videos that will be beamed from an ultra-light projector stapped to one of our head helmets. (The videos are now linked from the blog to YouTube.) We sampled the two Playstation games Narc and MechWarrior. It sort of evolved into a violent (break) dance musical and each video is dedicated to an African or Muslim immigrant who was seriously abused by police in Spain or France. We, two American women in padded anime/riot gear/something else inspired moda, will be holding Playstation controllers and rollerskating at the same time, (and sometimes dancing), while we coast around projecting onto surfaces of the city.

After the performance/action we will also post documentation videos and photos on the blog.

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

October 13, 2006

Laurie Anderson with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio

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Live Webcast

Live Webcast of conversation with artist Laurie Anderson and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, moderated by Professor Anne Balsamo, following a lecture by Anderson :; Saturday, October 21st, 8 p.m. (PDT) at USC's Norris Theater and simulcast FREE at HASTAC website.

Laurie Anderson: Recent Works :: Saturday, October 21st :: University of Southern California's Norris Theater :: 7 p.m. (PDT) :: Free and open to the public!

Laurie Anderson will present a special audio-visual lecture exploring the intersections of art, science and creativity. One of the permier perfromance artists in the world, Ms. Anderson has consistently intrigued, entertained and challenged audiences with her multimedia persentations. Anderson's artistic career has cast her in roles as various as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, ventriloquist, electronics whiz, vocalist and instrumentalist. Following her presentation, Ms. Anderson will be joined in conversation by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and a leading researcher of cognition, emotions, and neural
systems.

This special presentation is part of the HASTAC In|Formation Year, devoted to twelve months of public programming from a number of universities meant to promote the human and humane dimenstions of technology and to encourage conversation and exchange between humanists, artists, technologists, and scientists.

Recognized worldwide as a leader in the groundbreaking use of technology in the arts, Ms. Anderson has collaborated with Interval Research Corporation, a research and development laboratory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle, in the exploration of new creative tools, including the Talking Stick. Anderson has produced numerous albums and touring shows and has worked with artists and performers as diverse as William Burroughs, Arto Lindsay, Andy Kaufman, Ian Ritchie, Peter Gabriel, Perry Hoberman, David Sylvian, Jean Michel Jarre, Brian Eno, Nona Hendryx, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Stewart, Hector Zazou, and Lou Reed. She wrote the entry about New York for Encyclopedia Britannica, hosted the PBS special Art 21, and received the 2001 Tenco Prize for Songwriting in San Remo, Italy and the 2001 Deutsche Schallplatten Prize for Life on a String. Currently, Ms. Anderson is touring a new solo work begun during her tenure as the first artist-in-residence of NASA in 2003-2004. Other recent projects included a new commission for the World Expo 2005 in Japan and benefit performances on behalf of Hurricane Katrina victims.

Professor Damasio is a leading neuroscientist. His research interests are directed at the neural basis of cognition and behavior at large-scale systems level. The work is based on MR lesion method, PET/fMRI, and histological mapping of neuropathological tissue. Major contributions include:

(1) the elucidation of cortical and subcortical contributions to face and object recognition;
(2) the identification of specific neural sites involved in emotion processing;
(3) the demonstration that emotion is covertly implicated in decision-making; and
(4) the identification of limbic and brainstem sites of pathology in Alzheimer's disease.

Until earlier 2005, Antonio Damasio was at the University of Iowa as Van Allen Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology. Damasio's books, Descartes' Error (1994), The Feeling of What Happens (1999), and Looking for Spinoza (2003), are translated in numerous languages and taught in universities worldwide. He is also the recipient of numerous awards (including, most recently, the 2005 Asturias Prize in Science and Technology; and the 2004 Signoret Prize, which he shared with his wife, Hanna Damasio). Damasio is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has been named "Highly Cited Researcher" by the Institute for Scientific Information.

Professor Anne Balsamo is the Director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California. She previously served as the Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Lab and is a founding partner of Onomy Labs, a Silicon Valley-based technology design firm. She has faculty affiliations with Stanford University's Center for Design Research and its Feminist Studies Program. Until 2001, she was a principal scientist and a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents) at Xerox PARC, where she did collaborative research on experimental documents and new media genres. She served as project manager and new media designer for the development of RED's touring museum exhibit, "XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading." Her first book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies. She is currently working on a new book entitled Designing Culture: A Work of the Technological Imagination, which examines the relationship between cultural theory and the design of new media. She is a founding member of HASTAC.

This event is made possible by the USC School of Cinema-Television, the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, the USC Arts and Humanities Initiative, MOCA, and the Annenberg Center for Communication, among others. For more information, see http://www-cntv.usc.edu/resources/events/events.cfm

Posted by jo at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Vancouver

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Matt Rogalsky

Next up for Upgrade! Vancouver is a talk by Matt Rogalsky on Wednesday, October 18 at 8pm.

Matt Rogalsky's work as a media artist often focuses on exploration of abject, invisible/inaudible, or ignored streams of information. Since 1985 his performances and installations have been seen and heard across North America and Europe. Most recently he presented the installation When he was in high school in Texas, Eric Ryan Mims used a similar arrangement to detect underground nuclear tests in Nevada, in a solo show at the Agnes Etherington Art Center in Kingston Ontario, and a new multi-channel sound work Memory Like Water, in a solo show on Hornby Island BC, presented by the GroundWater Foundation. A double CD documenting the past ten years of live performances, also entitled Memory Like Water, was released in July 2006 on XI Records.

At Upgrade, Rogalsky will discuss his installation Ellipsis (2001), on view at the Western Front, in which software "listens" to a single talk radio input. In the exhibition space we hear only the gaps between the words-the "silences"-as they occur in realtime, but amplified to a louder than normal listening level. A time counter projected on the wall shows the hours, minutes, seconds and hundredths of seconds of accumulated "silence", inexorably advancing with each fragment. This piece is one of several exploring aspects of "silence" in the media and in musical performance. It has previously been shown at Diapason (New York City, USA), Sleeper (Edinburgh, Scotland), the Slade Gallery (London, England), SoundPlay Festival 2004(Toronto), as part of the Digital Poetics and Politics symposium at Queen's University in 2004 (Kingston, Canada) and in the exhibition Disquiet curated by Christof Migone in 2005 for Modern Fuel Gallery (Kingston, Canada).

Upgrade! Vancouver (http://www.katearmstrong.com/upgrade/vancouver/) is curated by Kate Armstrong. It is one of 22 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International (http://theupgrade.net), 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 kate[at]katearmstrong.com.

When: Wednesday, October 18 at 8pm
Where: Western Front, 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver, Canada
FREE! Everyone welcome.
URL: http://www.katearmstrong.com/upgrade/vancouver/
On NowPublic.

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

October 12, 2006

Control + Shift.

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Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet

Dear All,

I am happy to announce the publication of the book of research on the russian internet. it's a great opportunity for those of you who don't speak russian to get acquainted with the digital cultures of the runet. The volume coves various issues, from aesthetics, diaspora, cultural identity, communities, and intelligenzia to gender, public sphere, polit technology, propaganda, pornography, and many more.

I myself contributed to this volume with the analysis of a new literary trend that I call "mate lit" (or male literature) - a bizarre mixture of brutality, protest and patriarchic mainstream - developed entirely through an online platform and becoming influencial in the offline domains.

"Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet". Eds. Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova; Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2006; ISBN 3-8334-4988-8; Price: 24,90 EUR. The volume is entirely available for download

enjoy your reading,
olga goriunova

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

October 11, 2006

Mordechai Omer and Avi Rosen

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The Ultimate Cathedral

"Abstract: This article examines the development throughout history of the means that man has used to locate himself at the center of the Universe. It surveys cathedrals throughout history, from the prehistoric era from the Pyramids to the Tabernacle, to the Gothic cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, the Panopticon, the Eiffel Tower, the radio and television station, up to the cyberspace era. In parallel there is an analysis of the human icon as expressed in art, through the beliefs in the various periods. The icons and structures reflect the scientific knowledge, technology, and philosophy of their respective periods that seek to create aesthetic effect through compressing space and time. The conclusion of the article is that we are part of the ultimate cathedral developing in the Universe, whose building blocks are the communication networks, like cyberspace that link diverse subjects and objects in a closed space in the manner of Georg Riemann's geometry. Existence in the ultimate cathedral is the continuous artistic act of a hyper-subject." From The Ultimate Cathedral by Mordechai Omer and Avi Rosen, September 2006.

Posted by jo at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

NEW NETWORK THEORY International Conference

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Call for Papers and Participants

NEW NETWORK THEORY :: 2007 ASCA International Conference :: Location: Amsterdam Dates: 28-30 June 2007 :: Organized by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam Polytechnic) and Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, has issued its first call for papers. The conference, to be held on Thursday, 28 June to Saturday, 30 June, 2007, also includes a public program with renowned speakers.

Deadline for Submission of Paper Abstract (500 words) and Biography (100 words): 10 January 2007 :: Submit to: networktheory[at]networkcultures.org :: Acceptance Notification: 1 March 2007 :: Further inquiries to: Dr. Eloe Kingma, Managing Director, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, Oude Turfmarkt 147, Oude Turfmarkt 147, 1012 GC, Amsterdam, tel: +31 20 525 3874, asca-fgw[at]uva.nl.

The object of study has shifted from the virtual community and the space of flows to the smart mob. When the object of study changes, so may the distinctions that dominate, particularly the schism between place-based space and place-less space, both organised and given life by networks. We would like to exploit the potential of writing contemporary network theory that suits and reflects the changes to the objects of study that come to define our understandings of network culture – a post-Castellsian network theory, if you will, that takes technical media seriously.

It is time to look for elements that can make up a network theory outside of post-modern cultural studies (which marvelled at the place-less place) and ethnographic social sciences (which reminded us of the ground). What network culture studies needs is a ‘language of new media,’ perhaps even signage, to speak in terms of Lev Manovich; what it currently has is a science-centered ‘unified network theory,’ to paraphrase the language of Albert-László Barabási.

Whilst it may come as no surprise to critical Internet scholars, the notion that networks are not random but have underlying structures remains the key insight for network scientists. Instead of posing new questions, the work that follows from that insight often seeks to confirm that structure and its accompanying patterns, across more and more network-like objects. The question remains which specific contribution critical Internet scholars and practitioners can make to opening up network thought. Such is the purpose of the network theory conference. How must we rethink network culture with a renewed emphasis on technical media and social software?

Suggested Topics:

Networking and Social Life
Social Software and Insider Networks
Network Policy
Network Governance / Organised Networks
Actor-Network Theory and the Assemblage
Network Knowledge Production
Networks and Disengagement
Media Networks
The Link
Locative Media and Networks
Mapping Quests

Other topics may be suggested.

Prospective Themes and Panels:

Networking and Social Life

‘Networking,’ colloquially speaking, continues to be encouraged in our professional lives, but no one seems to have thought through how life would be guided if we apply network theory to professional ‘networking’ rather literally.

As network scientists’ terms and ideas spread, it is of interest to speculate about one’s social life governed by the power law, preferential attachment, hubs, self-organization, swarming and cascading effects. To network in a colloquial sense, essentially is to connect oneself with a hub. As the hub receives more connections (or becomes ‘preferentially attached’), the hub may become a superconnector, handling a disproportionately large number of connections relative to those of the other hubs in the overall network. As the network continues to grow through self-organisation, general knowledge of the existence of the superconnector may cause swarming behaviour.

A superconnector, network science reports, has the greatest vulnerabilities, however. If the superconnector cannot handle the traffic, the network breaks down. If there's breakdown, with or without cascading effects, which determines the extent of the damage, you’re on your own again. One implication is that one should continue to seek fresh hubs (as long as they last), and keep them from becoming overheated superconnectors. Hub-seeking behaviour, along with
superconnector-care, come to guide social life.

Social Software and Insider Networks

What if the social software model, which performs networking in private and public spheres simultaneously, came to dominate our social life? One could argue that we would witness the spread of insider influence. Would networking be the means by which we discuss and effect social change, above all else?

Having registered with social software, your friends may write to you, asking you to associate yourself with them and their acquaintances in an online environment. You cannot see your friends’ networks unless you join, too, making it something of a secretive realm at first. Invitations sent by the software are becoming more explicit about why you are invited, and the purpose of social software:

"Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn. I'm using it to discover inside connections I didn't know I had. It's interesting to see the level of access you can have with only a few people in your network."

It may be unreasonable to concern oneself with the prospect of everyone creating and building insider networks. The democratisation of insider influence (social software for all), however, seems contrary to (or perhaps helps to explain) the current infatuation with governance and transparency.

Network Policy

Moving to the level of social policy, we can ask about the effects of network-centric thought put into practice institutionally. We are used to the phrase, “it’s company policy,” as a justification for a particular decision that has been taken for you. “It’s network policy” is a phrase not yet in circulation. What if it were to change our ideas about what is ‘social’?

Perhaps it was the accessibility of Barabási’s Linked (2002) that prompted networks to be given to great expectations, ones they may not be able to meet and ones that may change our ideas about what is ‘social.’ In Linked, the special case studies and stories that connected the small community of social network researchers for so long grew beyond the realm of familiarity, dependability and implication. Network research was no longer in the business of studying social influence only, and usually after the fact.

Before, they asked: how did the Medici family increase its power base in Renaissance Florence (strategic marriage); which mid-western doctor should be approached by a pharmaceutical company to serve as the broker for spreading the word about a new product? With Linked, networks moved on to account for many other phenomena, including the spread of disease (HIV-AIDS). Since then network thought could very well lead to prospective planning; controversial action could be undertaken by employing a kind of ‘network policy’ that would supplant social policy.

Historically, waiting lists in hospitals, for example, were determined on the basis of first come, first served, where an extreme emergency would call for the queue to be jumped. With a network policy the hubs should be served first, as they have a greater chance to spread disease than the isolates. They are better networked.

Networked Multitude

Whereas networks hardly played a role in Hardt and Negri’s popular book Empire (2000), in Multitude (2004) the network form of organisation reached centre stage. According to Hardt and Negri, “the multitude must be conceived as a network, an open and expansive network in which all differences can be expressed freely and equally, a network that provides the means of encounter so that we can work and live freely in common”. Beyond good or evil Hardt and Negri, like the scientists, now see networks everywhere we look – “military organizations, social movements, business formations, migrations patterns, communication systems, physiological structures, linguistic relations, neural transmitters, and even personal relationships.” The multitude authors present distributed networks as a general condition. Hardt and Negri: “It is not that networks were not around before or that the structure of the brain has changed. It is that network has become a common form that tends to define our ways of understanding the world and acting in it.”

After September 11, 2001 the enemy is not a unitary sovereign state, but rather a network, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote in Networks and Netwars (2001). Networks move in to failed states, taking them over, allegedly, but without re-establishing the borders. The enemy, in other words, has a new, sprawling form. But that particular military insight reverberates to the technical media, too. According to planners of the war against terrorism the Internet is not well equipped to face up to the networked enemy, at least not with its currently protocol. Is the end-to-end principle on which the Internet is based increasingly viewed as quaint architecture?

Dawn of the Organized Networks

At first glance the concept of ‘organised networks’ appears oxymoronic. In technical terms, all networks are organised. There are founders, administrators, moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think back to the early work on cybernetics and the ‘second order’ cybernetics of Bateson and others. Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is shaped by the ‘constitutive outside’ of feedback or noise. The order of networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions, effects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations is never static, yet is not to be mistaken for some kind of perpetual fluidity. Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as political agents. The theory of organised networks is to be read as a proposal, a draft, a concept in the process of becoming that needs active steering through disagreement and collective elaboration. (See the Fibreculture mailing list, discussion on organized networks in November/December 2004 and Ned Rossiter's upcoming book Organized Net).

Needless to say, organised networks have existed for centuries. Their history can and will be written, but where would that bring us? The networks we are talking about here are specific in that they are situated within technical media. They can be characterised by their advanced irrelevance and invisibility for old media and p-in-p (people in power). General network theory might be useful for enlightenment purposes, but that doesn’t answer the issues that new media-based social networks face. Does it satisfy to know that molecules and DNA
patterns also network?

Truism today: there are no networks outside of society. Like all human-techno entities, they are infected by power. Networks are ideal Foucauldian machines: they undermine power as they produce it. Their diagram of power may operate on a range of scales, traversing intra-local networks and overlapping with trans-national insurgencies. No matter how harmless they seem, networks bring on differences. Foucault’s dictum: power produces. Translate this to organised networks and you get the force of invention. Indeed, translation is the condition of invention.

Mediology, as defined by Régis Debray (1996), is the practice of invention within the socio-technical system of networks. As a collaborative method of immanent critique, mediology assembles a multitude of components upon a network of relations as they coalesce around situated problems and unleashed passions. In this sense, the network constantly escapes attempts of command and control. Such is the entropic variability of networks. Network users do not see their circle of peers as a sect. Ties are loose, up to the point of breaking up. Some would say the user is just a consumer: silent and satisfied, until hell breaks loose. The user is the identity of control by other means. In this respect, the ‘user’ is the empty vessel awaiting the spectral allure of digital commodity cultures and their promise of ‘mobility’ and ‘openness’.

Networking and Disengagement

Networks are everywhere. The challenge for the foreseeable future is to create new openings, new possibilities, new temporalities and spaces within which life may assert its insistence on an ethical and aesthetical existence. Organised networks should be read as a proposal, aimed to replace the problematic term ‘virtual community’. It should put the internal power relations within networks on the agenda and break with the invisible workings that made out the consensus era. Organised networks are ‘clouds’ of social relationships in which disengagement is pushed to the limit. Community is an idealistic construct and suggests bonding and harmony, which often is simply not there.

The same could be said of the post-9/11 call for ‘trust’. Networks thrive on diversity and conflict (the notworking), not on unity, and this is what community theorists were unable to reflect upon. For them disagreement equals a disruption of the ‘constructive’ flow of dialogue. It takes an effort to reflect on distrust as a productive principle. Indifference between networks is a main reason not to get organised, so this aspect has to be taken seriously. Interaction and involvement are idealistic constructs.

Passivity rules. Browsing, watching, reading, waiting, thinking, deleting, chatting, skipping and surfing are the default condition of online life. Total involvement implies madness to the highest degree. What characterizes networks is a shared sense of a potentiality that does not have to be realized. Millions of replies from all to all would cause every network, no matter what architecture, to implode. Within every network there is a long time of interpassivity, interrupted by outbursts of interactivity. Networks foster, and reproduce, loose relationships – and it’s better to face this fact straight into the eye. They are hedonistic machines of promiscuous contacts. Networked multitudes create temporary and voluntary forms of collaboration that transcend, but not necessary disrupt the Age of Disengagement. The concept of organised networks is useful to enlist for strategic purposes.

Media Networks

After a decade of ‘tactical media’, the time has come to scale up the operations of radical media practices. We should all well and truly have emerged from the retro-fantasy of the benevolent welfare state. Networks will never be rewarded and ‘embedded’ in well-funded structures. Just as the modernist avant-garde saw itself punctuating the fringes of society, so too have tactical media taken comfort in the idea of targeted micro-interventions. Tactical media too often assume to reproduce the curious spatio-temporal dynamic and structural logic of the modern state and industrial capital: difference and renewal from the peripheries. But there’s a paradox at work here. Disruptive as their actions may often be, tactical media corroborate the temporal mode of post-Fordist capital: short-termism. It is retro-garde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of ‘tactics’. Since the punctuated attack model is the dominant condition, tactical media have an affinity with that which they seek to oppose. This is why tactical media are treated with a kind of benign tolerance. There is a neurotic tendency to disappear. Anything that solidifies is lost in the system. The ideal is to be little more than a temporary glitch, a brief instance of noise or interference. Tactical media set themselves up for exploitation in the same manner that ‘modders’ do in the game industry: they both dispense with their knowledge of loopholes in the system for free. They point out the problem, and then take off. Capital is delighted, and thanks the tactical media outfit or nerd-modder for the home improvement.

The Link

What constitutes linking, and how could we describe its mirror phantom, or rather, its shadow? The link as a reference to another informational object only comes into being as a conscious act. There is no automated process of putting links. And there is no unconscious or subliminal linking either. These could all be worthy scientific propositions but as of yet they do not exist. Linking is tedious work. It’s an effort and should be considered ‘extra work’. There is no routine in linking. It’s a precise job that needs constant control. But the opposite of the conscious link is not the broken but the absent link. What is the
lifespan of links and networks?

Locative Media and Networks

The Internet has long been considered as the next step in the process of abolition of space and time constraints through media. Wireless and mobile media seem to have brought this process further along: people and places can be accessed anywhere any time. Paradoxically, the mobility of mobile phones, PDA's, portable game consoles, MP3 players and other devices have also re-introduced questions of space and place. 'Where are you?' is probably the most frequently used opening sentence of a mobile phone conversation. Activists, 'flash mobs' and soccer hooligans use mobile technologies to coordinate surprise actions at specific places and specific times. Mobile technologies have moved computer games from the desk-top screen into the streets (e.g., Pack Manhattan). Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have given the term 'navigation' back its old meaning: from 'surfing in cyberspace' (remember Netscape Navigator) it has re-acquired the meaning 'finding one's way through geographical and physical space'. Streets, buildings, objects, animals and people can be 'tagged' in order to provide location-based and contextual information about their whereabouts, preferences, medical needs, bank accounts, sites, businesses, institutions, histories, and sales and discounts.

Cyberspace and the so-called 'real world' converge into what Lev Manovich has called 'augmented reality,' and in this 'augmented reality' it does matter where you are. Locative media allow people to map and share their own cartographies (which implies the dazzling theoretical possibility that there are as many maps as there are map-makers), but they also allow authorities to keep track of everybody and everything. Locative media (in combination with biometric technologies) might also give rise to two extreme forms of claustrophobia: on the one hand one might ask whether it will be possible to ever break out of one's own maps (a new variety of the Cartesian question), and on the other hand one might ask whether it will be possible to keep out of sight.

Conference organizers:

Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures/University of Amsterdam) Sabine Niederer (Institute of Network Cultures) Richard Rogers (University of Amsterdam) Jan Simons (University of Amsterdam)

Locations: Pakhuis de Zwijger Media Warehouse (28 June), University of Amsterdam (29-30 June)

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

DOCS ONLINE

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Film Festival Amsterdam

IDFA / CUT-n-PASTE presents the DOCS ONLINE programme :: 23 November and 3 December, 2006 Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

In 2000, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) started a special programme focusing on new practices and changes within the media landscape as set out by documentary filmmakers and their audience. This year, the Festival will reanimate this 'DOCS ONLINE' programme and provide a platform for the actual 'state of the art' in this field.

What can we say after five years? Interaction designers and filmmakers DO work together. Audiences ARE multi-channel users in getting their information and entertainment. The development of new media platforms and the availability of new devices used by large audiences require a different approach from the documentary field. While devices become cheaper and lighter new ideas can lead to new ways of storytelling.

During the coming Festival which takes place between 23 November and 3 December, 2006, DOCS ONLINE will focus on this theme. We plan to invite various (film)makers, artists and documentary storytellers who are inspired by new means and work in different ways. We would like to give the floor to these authors who use other channels and platforms and who interact with their audiences in new manners.

IDFA would like to make an appeal to filmmakers and artists to present their work in DOCS ONLINE. We, the editors (Cut-n-Paste), are urgently looking for interesting documentary projects.

DOCS ONLINE focuses on the actual 'state of the art,' and so we ARE interested in inspiring concepts which communicate strong content in a logical and effective way. Therefore, we are NOT looking for ideas to exchange material or collaborate in research and financing.

There MUST be a project we haven't heard about in the documentary world that you might have seen and we want to present to a bigger audience.
So, TELL us soon!

SEND your information to Cut-n-Paste: info@cut-n-paste.nl or to IDFA (adriek@idfa.nl)

Research and editors: Carolien Euser and Nathalie Faber (Cut-n-Paste)

Posted by newradio at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

A Day in the Life: Streaming performance event

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Call for Participants

A Day in the Life :: Streaming performance event :: @ Upgrade! International :: November 30, 3-5pm (Oklahoma City time) :: We are developing A DAY IN THE LIFE as a platform for simultaneous global performances and as a base for international collaborations. Urban spaces in Munich, Oklahoma City, Boston and Istanbul will be connected with each other via a streaming video server for the duration of the event.

At each location, local activity in and around the space is formally framed and streamed to all other locations. Thus the audience in each location sees the activities in four international cities at one time, and the full performance is only complete when viewing all four locations simultaneously.

The simple act of framing causes the viewer to impart the activities of daily life with meaning, following Marcel Duchamp’s dictum: "It is the viewers who make the pictures.” The construction of meaning is however aided by focusing on specific themes. This is done through targeted media interventions and activities that take place at all four locations simultaneously, and that at pre-arranged times react to a common theme. Daily life becomes a performance of itself.

Local activities will be framed by the lens of the video camera, but additionally, if the interior space has a view into the exterior space, for instance through a storefront window, the physical frame of the window can also define the exterior space as a stage for the activities.

Activities will ideally dynamically engage each local interior space with its respective exterior space, whether engaging passers-by in street performances or luring them inside as participants.

The full performance, viewed over all four locations at once, becomes a synergistic confrontation of chance occurrences at each location with the prepared interventions, plus the inevitable cultural differences between the four locations that become apparent as reactions to the common theme.

A DAY IN THE LIFE locates the global in the local. The peculiarities and characteristics of the location at which a given viewer happens to be are contrasted with the typical and untypical aspects of another location, another city, another country, coalescing into a poetic fusion.

A DAY IN THE LIFE creates connections, discovering the familiar in the foreign and the foreign in the familiar. It transforms your local streetcorner into part of a Do-It-Yourself global stage.

Concept:: Horst Konietzny & Tamiko Thiel

MoreMX.com / InterLake GmbH of Munich (Germany) and Jacksonville, Florida (USA) will be providing technical support and the streaming video server.

INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE CONCEPTS:

Realtime subtitles
Concept: Horst Konietzny
Text: Marlena Corcoran, et. al.

An author in each location writes a literary text in realtime, commenting on the local events and activities. This running commentary appears as subtitles at the bottom of the streamed image.

NEEDED: 1 writer who can produce a running commentary in English in realtime (if there's more of you, just switch off between yourselves.)

Realworld supertitles
Concept: Aram Bartholl

In many online worlds, players are represented by avatars, computer graphic figures, whose names float as text over the avatar’s head. Following Aram Bartholl’s instructions, people construct real “supertitles” for themselves which can be made to float mysteriously over their heads as they walk around the city.

NEEDED: whoever wants to participate!

Realtime networked music performance
Concepts: Christoph Reiserer

Concept #1) Musicians in each location improvise on the basis of phrases
played by musicians in all other locations. Concept #2) Beginning with a common, well-known musical score, the streamed images of musicians in each location are linked in a chain such that movements of musician in location A modifies in realtime the score seen by the musician in location B, etc.

NEEDED: 1 or more musician(s) who can either 1) improvise freely or 2) sight read well (or both)

Realtime video processing
Concept: Wolfgang Diller

The video from each location (ideally realtime stream from the local street scene) is altered and remixed by local VJs.

NEEDED: 1 VJ with own VJing setup

Realtime trading of upgrade node shares
Concept: Burak Arikan

Participating Upgrade nodes become traded companies on the Upgrade Stock Market. Each node gains or loses fair value depending on the number of people in its local room. People can buy and sell shares from a web based interface. Speculation on the values and the dynamic fair value of the nodes together affect the total valuation. Overall market activity is projected on a large screen in each node location.

NEEDED: whoever enters the room adds to Oklahoma City's share value -
and whoever buys or sells on the website trading interface affects the
overall market activity!

Contact Tamiko Thiel: tamiko at alum.mit.edu

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

ICEBOX 02 Audio/Visual Art Festival

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Call for Entries & Proposals

Tags: electronic music, sound art, digital film, animation, photography, video art, graphic design, interactive and generative media, Net art, video game art, electronics :: Deadline: 24 November 2006 :: Contact: Hein Bekker, hein[at]liquidfridge.co.za or +27 (0)82 508 2922

ICEBOX 02 Audio/Visual Art Festival, February/March 2007 :: ICEBOX is a collaborative festival of contemporary creativity in audio/visual art. With the focus on the electronic, open and South African, the festival combines music, film, video and interactive media through a programme of screenings, multimedia performances, club nights, workshops and an online exhibition.

ICEBOX enables the exchange of techniques and concepts between artists, media creators, technologists, academics and enthusiasts, and provides a space for participants to expand their creative vision and express their ideas through the innovative use of technology and artistic mediums.

Liquid Fridge, partnered by MTKidu and rustpunk, presents ICEBOX 02 in February/March 2007 in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa. The festival is calling for the participation of established and emerging South African and international artists and professionals working in a broad range of disciplines including electronic music, sound art, digital film, animation, photography, video art, graphic design, interactive and generative media, Net art, video game art, electronics and open source advocacy.

Web: www.liquidfridge.co.za/icebox

Screenings and Online Exhibition

ICEBOX is open for submissions of short-form narratives, documentaries, music videos, experimental motion graphics and recorded visual performances for its screening programme.

Interactive media, generative art, Net art and other forms using Director(r), Flash(r) or Java(tm) software, as well as digital photography, illustration and graphic design work, may be entered for the online exhibition and a live presentation at ICEBOX.

Innovation is the main criterion, whether through creative use of technology or a storyline with a twist. Preference will be given to work relevant to South Africa and the continent. No commercials or showreels.

Selected entries will appear in South African creative magazines B(r)AND and Enjin, and in partnership with the "bring & burn" project Freedom Toaster, entries and source material under Creative Commons licence or in the Public Domain will be available for free in various locations around South Africa after the festival.

Enter: Send submissions with completed entry forms by Friday, 24 November 2006. Entry is free. Visit www.liquidfridge.co.za/?p=icebox_02_screen and www.liquidfridge.co.za/?p=icebox_02_web for details and entry forms for the screenings and the online exhibition respectively.

Club Nights

The ICEBOX sound system promises a selection of DJ'd and live retro-tech-future-funk rather difficult to define. Overlay a hearty serving of videoboxing and performing pixels, and you have an eclectic evening where the notions of "underground" and "overground" are irrelevant.

Provisional dates:
* Cape Town - 2 March 2007
* Durban - February/March 2007
* Johannesburg - February/March 2007

Format: Sets should be 30-60 minutes long, though this is open to interpretation. These may include DJ sets, band and electroacoustic performances, VJ/video performances, and various styles in between.

Enter: E-mail info[at]liquidfridge.co.za by Friday, 24 November 2006 with a short summary of the set, a supporting web link (if any), a list of required equipment, an estimated budget, and a biography. Do not e-mail any media - further materials will be requested if necessary.

Final dates for the club nights will be announced on the website, or you can ask to be informed by e-mail. Please note that, as with other Liquid Fridge public benefit activities, all parties donate their services to keep entry fees and costs down, which allows us to invest any proceeds in future projects. We are not able to pay normal artist fees, though nominal compensation might be in order.

Workshops

To facilitate exchange between the traditional creative practices and electronic subcultures, ICEBOX invites presentations, performances, demonstrations, discussion panels and hands-on experiments in all disciplines.

The main areas of interest include:

* Production and Performance - composition, animation, non-linear and interactive narratives, electroacoustic performance, cutting-edge DJing, video performance, live coding, improvisation and audiovisual synaesthesia
* Network, Mobility and Public Space - networked performance, field recording, locative media, ephemeral installations and guerrilla interventions
* Computation - generative processes, information visualisation, sensors and interfaces
* Re-creativity - mash-ups, circuit bending, reverse engineering and machinima
* Society - interdisciplinary collaboration, peer production, cultural identity in the age of global media, activism, demoscene and community-based arts organisations
* Rights and Distribution - open licensing, IP protection and delivery platforms
* Documentation and Preservation - emulators, digital archives and archiving tools

Speakers not able to attend the festival in person may present by prior recording or live videoconference, depending on the venue. Travel and accommodation can only be provided in special cases.

Technology demonstrations by vendors can be arranged in exchange for sponsorship.

Provisional dates:
* Cape Town - 28 February, 1 and 3 March 2007
* Durban - February/March 2007
* Johannesburg - February/March 2007

Format: Sessions should be 15-45 minutes long and will be followed by informal Q&A. Presentations should be comprehensive yet accessible to a non-technical audience. Audio and/or visual aids are recommended. Audience participation is welcomed.

Enter: E-mail info[at]liquidfridge.co.za by Friday, 24 November 2006 with a summary of the session, a supporting web link (if any), a list of required equipment, an estimated budget, and a biography. Do not e-mail any media - further materials will be requested if necessary.

Final dates for the workshops will be announced on the website, or you can ask to be informed by e-mail. Pre-recorded presentations should be submitted by January 2007.

Sponsorship

As ICEBOX is a non-profit initiative, contributions from private and corporate donors and sponsors in the creative and technology industries will be greatly appreciated. These include hiring of audiovisual equipment and venues, videography, photography, audio recording, printing and courier services, media exposure, and prizes. Please contact us if you are interested in supporting this project: Hein Bekker at hein[at]liquidfridge.co.za or +27 (0)82 508 2922. Formal proposals can be presented.

About Liquid Fridge

Liquid Fridge is a non-profit organisation devoted to advancing contemporary South African creativity by encouraging interaction between those who explore the creative uses of technology, and debating the issues of art, media, culture and society.

Started in 2002, Liquid Fridge aims to forge a sense of community and common purpose amongst these individuals and groups through workshops, club nights, screenings, online discussion and arts coverage.

About MTKidu

On a path of shared creative consciousness, MTKidu is a beat construct and visual manipulation team formed in pursuit of an audiovisual language that is both experimental and dark.

As art galleries and clubs stagnate into white and grey cube commercialism, we will not forget the original purpose and potential of these spaces for invention and exploration. The time has come to break the conventional moulds.


About rustpunk

rustpunk started out of a need for a unique party night with a diverse mix of music, steering clear of the single-genre format that everyone else seems to be hell-bent on dishing out.

Our performances include the screening and live VJing of video and motion graphic work, serving as a platform for South African artists. rustpunk is committed to challenging and enhancing the local scene, and promoting all things interesting being done with electricity.

About Creative Commons South Africa

The vision of Creative Commons South Africa is of a thriving African Internet community using Creative Commons licences to educate our people, grow our markets, share our knowledge, and celebrate Africa's culture and heritage with people around the world.

Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists and educators that build upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach.

About Freedom Toaster

Freedom Toasters are self-contained, "bring & burn" facilities dispensing free and open source software and digital content. The kiosks provide a way for computer users in economically disadvantaged regions and areas with limited or no Internet access to get software, legally. By providing this service, the people behind the Freedom Toaster project hope to address the issue of the digital divide.

Partners

Logistics:
MTKidu - www.mtkidu.com
rustpunk - www.rustpunk.co.za

Suppliers:
Mike Scott - Illustration and Animation - www.bruandboegie.com
netbek - Design and Media - www.netbek.co.za
NetKeepers - Web Hosting - www.netkeepers.ca

Media:
B(r)AND Magazine - www.brandmagazine.co.za
Enjin Magazine - www.enjin.co.za

Interest Groups:
Creative Commons South Africa - http://za.creativecommons.org
Freedom Toaster - www.freedomtoaster.org

Venues:
CAPE Africa Platform - www.capeafrica.org
WSOA Digital Arts - www.wits.ac.za/artworks

Contact

Hein Bekker (Liquid Fridge)
Coordinator and Media Liaison
hein[at]liquidfridge.co.za
+27 (0)82 508 2922

Yalena Razis (Liquid Fridge/Big Love)
Coordinator, Cape Town
yalena[at]gmail.com
+27 (0)83 611 6622

Brad Roodt (rustpunk)
Coordinator, Durban
brad[at]rustpunk.co.za
+27 (0)76 508 7617

Dean Henning (rustpunk)
Coordinator, Durban
dean[at]rustpunk.co.za

Nicholas Nesbitt (MTKidu)
Coordinator, Johannesburg
mtkidu[at]gmail.com
+27 (0)72 213 7401

Postal Address (Cape Town)
Liquid Fridge
PO Box 780
Sanlamhof
7532
South Africa

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2006

Event: Live Chat

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New Media Poetics and Poetry

Leonardo Electronic Almanac begins a live chat discussion and moderated list to accompany the electornic issue themes.

Current speakers on New Media Poetry and Poetics include:
:: John Cayley - 9 Oct 2006 @ 1400hrs EST
:: Loss Glazier - 10 Octo 2006 @ 1900hrs EST
:: Stephanie Strickland - 20 Oct 2006 @ 1300hrs EST
:: MEZ – 17 Oct 2006 @ 0300hrs EST
:: Jason Nelson – 24 Oct 2006 @ 1300hrs EST

Live chats will use jabber, an open, secure, service. The New Media Poetics chatroom is on the jabber.org public server under the name "leanmp" and the password "leoalmanac.

Posted by michelle at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)

ARCHITECTURE AND SITUATED TECHNOLOGIES

[Locative] Reminder

The Center for Virtual Architecture at the University at Buffalo, the
Institute for Distributed Creativity, and The Architectural League of
New York present:

ARCHITECTURE AND SITUATED TECHNOLOGIES
October 19-21, 2006
@ The Urban Center & Eyebeam
New York City

http://www.situatedtechnologies.net

A 3-day symposium bringing together researchers and practitioners from
art, architecture, technology and sociology to explore new sites of
practice, research vectors, and working methods for the confluence of
Architecture and Situated Technologies.

Organized by Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, and Mark Shepard, the symposium is a co-production of the Center for Virtual Architecture, The Institute for Distributed Creativity, and the Architectural League of New York, as part of the League's celebration of the 125th anniversary of its founding.

Participants: Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Richard Coyne, Michael Fox, Anne
Galloway, Charlie Gere, Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko, Sheila
Kennedy, Eric Paulos, Karmen Franinovic, Kazys Varnelis

NOTE: Space is limited. Reservations/advance ticket purchase required.
Contact: Jessica Blaustein - blaustein@archleague.org or call
212.753.1722x13

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

October 07, 2006

STRP Festival

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A Reminder


STRP - ART & TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

CALL FOR PROJECTS - Deadline 20 Oct. 2006

After a successful first edition, the STRP festival, which took place
in Eindhoven, Netherlands at the end of March 2006, is launching a
call for projects for its next edition, which will be taking in late
April of 2007.

The focus of the festival is the common ground created at the
intersection between art, popular culture and technology. The first
edition which welcomed over 10 000 visitors, and received very
positive attention from the press, made use of performances,
installations, lectures, films, etcetera in order to convey this
crossroads.


STRP takes place on Strijp-S, the 'holy' ground of the forbidden city
of Philips, where in the 20th century numerous technological
innovations were made which changed the world. A place where Einstein
once worked, the first complete electronic music album was created and
the collaboration between le Courboisier and Varese resulted in one of
the most interesting amalgamations between art and technology, Le
Poeme Electronique for the World Expo in Brussels (1958).

FOR THE 2007 EDITION

STRP is looking for projects, installations, or proposals that concern
themselves with interactive art, robotics and/or Live Cinema (in the
live cinema category we are looking for projects that rely on both
performance and technology in order to become an audio-visual whole).
All of the above in a context in which the artistic side is furthered
by technology. This year we will also be paying special attention to
projects, which involve light in their concept, composition, and/or
execution.

The application forms are available in
PDF format - http://downloads.strp.nl/strp-call06.pdf
RTF format ? http://downloads.strp.nl/strp-call06.rtf

To find out more about the 2006 edition of the festival, including a
full line-up, press-releases and photographs please take a look at:
http://www.strp.nl

If you have further questions please contact us at projects@strp.nl

URL:
http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20061006/067f
eacb/attachment-0001.html

------------------------------

Posted by newradio at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

Game/Play at HTTP

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London Games Festival


HTTP were asked to be part of the London Games Festival, to introduce an alternative perspective of contemporary game culture from a grass roots level, in contrast to the traditional corporate elements that usually dominate these large and popular events. This is a major step forward for the London Games Festival group, and hopefully this will be the first of many 'Fringe' orientated opportunties, that serve in offering experimental and up and coming game artists/groups to have their work seen andc experienced by a diverse audience.

[giantJoystick] by Mary Flanagan was commissioned by the HTTP Gallery/Furtherfield.org and other independent video games selected by Corrado Morgana, are featured in the World Series of Video Games at the London Trocadero as part of the London Games Festival.

London Trocadero.
Friday 6th - Sunday 8th October
Open Fri- Saturday 10am-10pm, Sunday 10-5pm
7 - 14 Coventry Street,
London W1D 7DH
10am - 10pm

Information about London Games Festival
http://www.londongamesfestival.co.uk/Custom/EventDetail.aspx?ID=66

Information about the Game/Play (touring) Exhibition.
http://blog.game-play.org.uk

Information about HTTP Gallery.
http://www.http.uk.net/

Posted by luis at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

GAMESCENES / GAMESCAPES

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Art in the Age of Videogames

GAMESCENES: THE BOOK

M. Bittanti, D. Quaranta (editors), GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames, Milan, Johan & Levi 2006. Hardcover, 454 pages, 25 x 25 cm, 200+ hi-res illustrations, available from October 2006.

GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames is the first volume entirely dedicated to Game Art. Edited by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, GameScenes provides a detailed overview of the emerging field of Game Art, examining the complex interaction and intersection of art and videogames.

Video and computer game technologies have opened up new possibilities for artistic creation, distribution, and appreciation. In addition to projects that might conventionally be described as Internet Art, Digital Art or New Media Art, there is now a wide spectrum of work by practitioners that crosses the boundaries between various disciplines and practices. The common denominator is that all these practitioners use digital games as their tools or source of inspiration to make art. They are called Game Artists.

GameScenes explores the rapidly expanding world of Game Art in the works of over 30 international artists. Included are several milestones in this field, as well as some lesser known works. In addition to the editors' critical texts, the book contains contributions from a variety of international scholars that illustrate, explain, and contextualize the various artifacts.

ARTISTS: AES+F, Cory Arcangel, Aram Bartholl, Dave Beck, Tobias Bernstrup, Nick Bertke, John Paul Bichard, Marco Cadioli, Mauro Ceolin, Brody Condon, Joseph DeLappe, Delire (Julian Oliver), Todd Deutsch, Micah Ganske, Beate Geissler − Oliver Sann, Brent Gustafson, Jon Haddock, Margarete Jahrmann − Max Moswitzer, JODI, Joan Leandre, Miltos Manetas, Alison Mealey, Mark McCarthy, Shusha Niederberger, Nullpointer (Tom Betts), Nullsleep (Jeremiah Johnson), Totto Renna, RSG (feat. Alexander Galloway), Anne-Marie Schleiner, Eddo Stern, Palle Torsson, UBERMORGEN.COM.

AUTHORS: Matteo Bittanti, Rebecca Cannon, Pierluigi Casolari, Maia Engeli, Henry Lowood, Sally O'Reilly, Domenico Quaranta, Philippa Stalker, Valentina Tanni.

GAMESCAPES: THE SHOW

GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists
curated by Rosanna Pavoni
Monza Civic Gallery
Monza, via Camperio 1
October 13 – 29, 2006. Free Entrance
From Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 – 13.00 and 15.00 – 19.00.
Opening: Thursday October 12 from 6:30 PM
email: salecomunali@comune.monza.mi.it

The release of GameScenes coincides with the launch of GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists, a group show featuring works by some of the most celebrated artists working with digital games: Cory Arcangel, Mauro Ceolin, Jon Haddock, Eddo Stern, and Carlo Zanni.

Monza, September 16, 2006 — The Civic Gallery in Monza is pleased to present GameScapes. Videogame Landscapes and Cities in the Works of Five International Artists. Curated by Rosanna Pavoni with the collaboration of Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, GameScapes investigates the notion of digital games, spaces, and urban environments in in our hyper-mediated age. Comprised of paintings, installations, and projections, the exhibition space will be transformed into a real-life gamespace.

Included in the exhibition are a video installation by Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Movie (2004), a series of paintings by Mauro Ceolin from the SolidLandscapes (2004-2006) series, Carlo Zanni’s interactive installation Average Shoeveler (2004), Eddo Stern’s recent urban machinima Landlord Vigilante (2006) and the entire series of Jon Haddock’s seminal Screenshots (1999). Most of these artworks have never been presented in Italy before.

Johan & Levi is publishing the GameScapes catalog which features new commentary texts by Rosanna Pavoni, Matteo Bittanti, and Domenico Quaranta.

More information:

Gamescenes.org
Videoludica.game culture


Posted by luis at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

Interconnect @ between attention and immersion

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Media Art from Brazil

ZKM | Media Museum invites the public to a large-scale survey of contemporary Brazilian media art, with selected works from this year's Sérgio Motta Prize competition.

New spaces of experience. With an eye schooled in the artistic trends of Europe and North America, the new generation of Brazilian artists treads various paths. The broad spectrum of their media art ranges from the digital manipulation of structures and textures, through the creative-playful appropriation of new technical possibilities, to the radical criticism of media and society. In the selected works, experiences from everyday life, personal and public spaces merge into a far-reaching reflection on the meaning and status of self-images in society. At the focus of this coming to grips with the new media of film and television, video, computer and their interlocking, is not the most virtuoso possible application of new technologies, but rather the now considered, now nervous, driven and never-ceasing search for identity and determination of position which rapid social change constantly demands of the individual. This is all the more urgent as new interface technologies and immersive installations are constantly expanding the spaces of our experience.

Media art in Brazil. The »Prêmio Sérgio Motta de Arte et Technologia« was first awarded in 2000. Its goal is to foster artistic and theoretical work in the area of the arts and new media in Brazil. Today the prize is one of the most important initiatives outside the academic context for the promotion of contemporary culture in combination with the new dimensions of Brazilian digital culture. Conceived as a response to the waxing acceleration of the dialogue between the arts and sciences, it has been adjusted every year to current development and formats. Today it fosters works in the categories of the fine arts, music, literature, dance, performance, interactive art and the interdisciplinary theoretical discussion of these.

The exhibition shows works by Lucas Bambozzi, Giselle Beiguelman, Caetano Dias, Luiz Duva, Raquel Kogan, Daniela Kutschat & Rejane Cantoni, Kátia Maciel, Gisela Motta & Leandro Lima, Alice Miceli, Simone Michellin, André Parente, Grupo Poéticas Digitais.

Curators: Vitoria Daniela Bousso, Peter Weibel
Project director: Bernhard Serexhe.

Further information: http://www.premiosergiomotta.org.br

The exhibition is supported by the cultural programme of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

Posted by luis at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

Imagined Landscapes Symposium

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New media landscaping


Imagined Landscapes is a two day symposium (26-27 October) presented by Cumbria Institute of the Arts’ Centre for Landscape and Environmental Arts Research (CLEAR) in association with the Brera Academy, Milan. The symposium considers the work of leading international practitioners working between and across art forms and with new media technologies to create and explore imagined landscapes.

Aims:
The broad aim of the symposium is to examine the ways in which the artists
explore the notion of the imaginary through their work and to critically reflect on how such works can help us to understand our relationship with landscape and the environment, opening up a site for critical exchange and creating opportunities for future practical exploration and theoretical engagement.

Programme:

Thursday 26th October

1.15 – 1.45 Registration
1.45 – 2.00 Welcome from Charles Mitchell, Vice Principal (academic),
Cumbria Institute
2.00 – 2.15 Introduction from Antonio Cioffi, Brera Academy, Milan

2.15 – 3.00 Key Note: Charlotte Davies, visual artist, Canada/ San
Francisco
3.00 – 3.45 Anouk de Clercq, video artist, Brussels
3.45 – 4.45 Discussion with Charlotte Davies, Anouk de Clercq and David
Uzzell, Environmental psychologist, University of Bath

4.45 – 5.15 Break

5.15 – 6.00 Julian Oliver, free software developer, lecturer and media-
theorist, Berlin
6.00 – 6.45 Jorn Ebner, visual artist, Newcastle upon Tyne
6.45 – 7.45 Discussion with Julian Oliver, Jorn Ebner and Ian Thompson,
lecturer, Landscape Architecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

7.45 – 8.45 Buffet and launch of Imagined Landscapes website
8.45 - Drinks, viewing of Summerbranch by Igloo and the work of
symposium delegates

Friday 27th October

9.45 – 10.00 Introduction to the day from Antonio Cioffi
10.00 – 10.30 Studio Azzuro, artist collective, Milan
10.30 – 11.15 Igloo, artist collective, London
11.15 – 12.00 Jen Southern, new media artist, Huddersfield

12.00 – 12.30 Break

12.30 – 13.30 Discussion with Studio Azzuro, Igloo, Jen Southern and John
Urry, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University

13.30 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 14.45 Johannes Birringer, Choreographer and media artist
14.45 – 15.30 Trevor Wishart, Composer, Durham
15.30 – 16.15 Discussion with Johannes Birringer, Trevor Wishart, Carl
Lavery: Lecturer, Theatre Studies, Lancaster University and Larry Sider:
Director, School of Sound/ Lecturer, National Film and Television School.

16.15 – 16.45 Closing Comments

Intended audience
The symposium will be of interest to artists, designers, new media art
critics, curators and those interested in the sociology and philosophy of
landscape.

Price:
Places are available for £75 full price and £45 for concessions and
include all presentations, discussions, meals and daytime refreshments.

Promoting Work
We recognise the important networking opportunity offered by the event and
are therefore happy to showcase digital works by delegates on the theme of
imagined landscapes, where possible. Delegates interested in having their
work available at the symposium should contact the event organiser.

Further information on contributors, event location and how to book can be
found on the Centre for Landscape and Environmental Arts Research website:
www.clear.cumbria.ac.uk

For all enquiries, please contact Charlotte Stuart, Research Assistant,
Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Brampton Road, Carlisle, CA3 9AY,
charlotte.stuart@btinternet.com, 01228 400318/ 07985 193 219

Posted by luis at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

Live Media Art

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First Play Berlin

TRAMPOLINE presents: FIRST PLAY BERLIN – a programme of live media art.

1. Day Of The Figurines NOW LIVE! – read Game Rumours for the gossip
2. FIRST PLAY BERLIN – launched Thursday 12th Oct.

FIRST PLAY BERLIN is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation,
British Council, Hebbel am Ufer and Radiator Festival for New Technology
Art. For more information about FIRST PLAY BERLIN and Trampoline – the
international platform for new media art - go to www.trampoline-berlin.de.

1. Day Of The Figurines – Blast Theory

Since September 28th, the population of the fictional town represented in Day Of The Figurines has been growing. Inundated by an increasing number of game characters, the laser cut steel city at the heart of Hau 2 provides the stamping ground for an equal number of miniature figurines, each one representing a player enjoying the game. If you aren’t a player yet and live in Berlin, come and join in the experience every day from 16h – 20h at HAU2.

Day Of The Figurines: Game Rumours

9.02 am at the RATResearch institute. HASSAN, who has a muscular chest, is frustrated from trying to throw his SICK DOGS over the gates. The brawny liberator has a clutch of the animals with him after creeping out of the institute with the sound of alarm bells in his ears. Now, stuck inside the perimeter fence, HASSAN meets SUPERGIRL, who kick starts a little fun by hitting him with her BRANCH.

JOHN, on the other side of the gates, says nothing.

Meanwhile in KATH's Cafe, rumours have started that HASSAN was in bed with SHINGLES, thus blowing his chances of success at the RATResearch institute. However, dreamy MARGHERITA, still angling for a way to run away with HASSAN, pointed out that SHINGLES left town the day before.

By 9.35am FRÄULEIN AGATHE, a stewardess cool as ice, is standing outside the institute gates. She has followed HASSAN from the PRODuct Barn. HASSAN apologizes for not being able to give her a bunk up, explaining that he can't quite get the hang of his STEPLADDER. JOE AND BILLY appear and offer some advice on the use of tools and they all head off to KATH's for some TEA. They are feeling poorly.

Back at KATH's Cafe, MARGHERITA is trying to get HASSAN's attention by feigning illness. BARNEY enters wearing a colourful WRISTBAND. "That's a lovely wristband Barney. Where did you get it from?" hopes HASSAN and dwells on the subject until BARNEY, an eight year old boy, DROPs it. Seeing her chance, MARGHERITA suggests to HASSAN that they go get themselves a SAUNA but it's shut until 2.00pm, as BARNEY found out. It's still only 10.40am. HASSAN, MARGHERITA and BARNEY all leave to the INTErnet Cafe together.
CINDY looks on across the steamy cafe but says nothing.

Day Of The Figurines is the world’s first MUD (Multi User Domain) for mobile phones and was developed as part of the European research project IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming) and in collaboration with Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham. Following FIRST PLAY BERLIN, Day Of The Figurines will visit the National Museum of Singapore in December 2006 and tour the UK in 2007.

For more information go to
www.dayofthefigurines.co.uk
www.blasttheory.co.uk
www.trampoline-berlin.de

2. FIRST PLAY BERLIN – big opening Thur 12th Oct with a TRAMPOLINE Event Be the first to experience FIRST PLAY BERLIN. A virtual tree. A handheld world evolving with every beat of your heart. Memories of a childhood home and an English garden brought to life by new technology. A CCTV city tour. FIRST PLAY BERLIN fuses the player and the game, the handheld and the
heartfelt, the cerebral and the technical – short-circuiting the limits of
play.

Blast Theory, Active Ingredient, Michelle Teran, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Simon Heijdens and Frank Abbott converge on Hebbel am Ufer for FIRST PLAY BERLIN. The result is a weekend of trend-setting, cutting-edge international live media art projects that combine technology, performance, interaction and installation.

The opening is taking place at Hebbel am Ufer, HAU2 on Thursday 12th October from 8pm in form of a TRAMPOLINE Event. For one night only, TRAMPOLINE showcases a unique blend of eclectic and emergent new technology art from around the world. With live performances, installations, screenings and presentations, the evening will culminate in a live concert of Heidi Mortenson.

It's a packed programme. Don’t miss it.

Posted by luis at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2006

Autostart

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A Festival of Digital Literature
Philadelphia, PA

AUTOSTART
:
. October 26 & 27 at Kelly Writers House
: Celebrating the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1
: MACHINE series # Electronic Literature Organization
: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/autostart.html
:
:=:#=:.#=::==.=....:...> Charles Bernstein
.#.=..=:#.=::===...:.:.> Jim Carpenter
::.=.==...::==:.=#:...#> Mary Flanagan
:#.:...:.:=#..=.=.=:==:> N. Katherine Hayles
:.=#:.===.:.:::.=..#..=> Daniel C. Howe
:=#:::=:.#:=.=.=....=..> Aya Karpinska
..:.==#==::#==:......:.> Aaron Levy
:#=.=..:..=.::=::#..==.> Marjorie Luesebrink
::=:=:...:=..#.==#.=.:.> Nick Montfort
.....:==::.=.#:.=.==#.:> Stuart Moulthrop
:=...=#:...:::=#===..:.> Jason Nelson
:#..=.==..:=.=..:#.=:::> Jena Osman
:..=.=.=.=#:=:#.:...=::> Bob Perelman
:....:.:.===#=.:=:#=..:> Scott Rettberg
.==:.=...:..#.::=:.=.=#> Ron Silliman
.=...:=#.=:..=:..#.==::> Brian Kim Stefans
:#.::...=:.:.==.==:..#=> Stephanie Strickland
...=..=#=::=.=..:.:=:.#> Noah Wardrip-Fruin

All events except the tour of Slought take place at the
: Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania,
. Philadelphia, PA

: THURSDAY  Oct 26
:
: 1:00-2:30 pm   Discussion (Arts Cafe)
.       A conversation about writing and literature in the digital
.          age, featuring four prominent poets:
:     > Charles Bernstein - University of Pennsylvania
:     > Jena Osman - Temple University
:     > Bob Perelman - University of Pennsylvania
:     > Ron Silliman - Silliman’s Blog
:
: 2:30-5:30 pm   The Open Machine Open House
:       Electronic literature available for reading and discussion
:          throughout the downstairs area, with guided tours at
.          3:30 pm & 4:30 pm by two Electronic Literature Collection,
:          volume 1 editors:
:     > Stephanie Strickland - New York City
:     > Nick Montfort - University of Pennsylvania
:
: 4:00-5:30 pm   Wet Digits Workshop
:       An introductory workshop for those new to HTML and digital
:          writing, led by the editors of The New Media Reader:
.     > Noah Wardrip-Fruin - University of California, San Diego
:     > Nick Montfort - University of Pennsylvania
:          [[[ RSVP REQUIRED: contact wh@writing.upenn.edu ]]]
:
: 5:30-7:30 pm   Reading (Arts Cafe)
:       Presentations of electronic literature by Electronic
:          Literature Collection, volume 1 contributors:
:     > Mary Flanagan - Hunter College
:     > Aya Karpinska - Brown University
:     > Stuart Moulthrop - University of Baltimore
.     > Noah Wardrip-Fruin - University of California, San Diego
.
: FRIDAY  Oct 27
:
: 10:30-11:30 am   Tour of Slought Foundation (4017 Walnut St)
.       Slought Foundation broadly encourages new futures for
:          contemporary life through public programs featuring
:          international artists and theorists.
:     > Aaron Levy - Slought Foundation Executive Director
:
. 1:00-4:00 pm   Electronic Writing Jam (Room 202)
:       A time to write collaboratively and to discuss forms,
:          techniques, and technologies, hosted by:
:     > Jim Carpenter - University of Pennsylvania
:          Participants include readers and editors from AUTOSTART’s
:          Thursday program as well as:
:     > Daniel C. Howe - Brown University
:     > Brian Kim Stefans - Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
:          Participants by videoconference include two editors of
:          the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1:
.     > N. Katherine Hayles - University of California, Los Angeles
:     > Scott Rettberg - University of Bergen, Norway
:          An editor of volume 2 and volume 1 contributor:
:     > Marjorie Luesebrink - Irvine Valley College
:          And volume 1 contributor:
.     > Jason Nelson - Griffith University, Australia
:          [[[ RSVP REQUIRED: contact wh@writing.upenn.edu ]]]
:
:::::::.:::::.::::…::::::::.:::::.::::.:::::::.:::::::.:.::::::::::::
:
:    The Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1 is edited by
:       N. Katherine Hayes # Nick Montfort
:       Scott Rettberg # Stephanie Strickland
:    This volume features 60 digital selections by
:       Jim Andrews # Ingrid Ankerson # babel # Giselle Beiguelman
:       Philippe Bootz # Patrick-Henri Burgaud # J.R. Carpenter
:       John Cayley # M.D. Coverley (Marjorie Luesebrink) # Martha Deed
.       David Durand # escha # Damien Everett # Sharif Ezzat
:       Edward Falco # Mary Flanagan # Marcel Fr’emiot
:       Elaine Froehlich # geniwate # Loss Peque~no Glazier
:       Kenneth Goldmith # Tim Guthrie # Richard Holeton
:       Daniel C. Howe # Jon Ingold # Shelley Jackson # Michael Joyce
:       Aya Karpinska # Robert Kendall # Deena Larsen
:       Kerry Lawrynovicz # Donna Leishman # Bill Marsh # Talan Memmott
:       Maria Mencia # Judd Morrissey # Brion Moss # Stuart Moulthrop
.       Jason Nelson # Marko Niemi # Millie Niss # Lance Olsen
:       Jason Pimble # William Poundstone # Kate Pullinger
:       Melinda Rackham # Aaron A. Reed # Shawn Rider # Jim Rosenberg
:       Megan Sapnar # Dan Shiovitz # Emily Short # Alan Sondheim
:       Brian Kim Stefans # Reiner Strasser # Dan Waber
:       Noah Wardrip-Fruin # Rob Wittig # Nanette Wylde
:    The Collection will be available on the web and on CD-ROM under a
:    Creative Commons license - see http://eliterature.org
:
:.=.=##.##=:.#.##:#=.##:.#.:..=.::.##.:=:.=#=:.#…..#=#.:.#…:##….=:

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

October 05, 2006

DorkbotSF

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doing strange things with electricity

DorkbotSF meets next week at the BOCA Bar or Bar of Contemporary Art at 7:30pm Wednesday, 11 October 2006, 414 Jessie Street (off 5th @ Mission), San Francisco, CA.

Speakers:
Tim Hunkin - Reinventing the Amusement Space
Mike Kuniavsky - The Coming Age of Magic

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

Nanotechnology

IANano-2006-logo.jpg

International Congress 2006
San Francisco, CA



This premier international nanotechnology event will be held on October 30-November 2, 2006 in San Francisco at the San Francisco Atrport Marriott Hotel

More than 150 speakers and presenters from 35 countries will cover a complete spectrum of the emerging field of Nanotechnology: from the latest research and development in nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, nanobiotechnology, nanomedicine, nanoethics, workforce education and training, environmental, societal and health and safety implications, to nanotech venture capital investment.

Early-bird registration will end on October 7, 2006. Please register now and save: http://www.nanotechcongress.com/registration.htm

Please visit our web site: http://www.icnt.org

Highlight of some distinguished speakers:

Dr. Juan Antonio Carballo
Venture Capital Partner
IBM
Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA

Prof. Bernard Cathala
Directeur de recherche
INRA, Nantes, BP 71627 F-44316, FRANCE

David J. Dykeman, Esq.
Greenberg Traurig LLP
One International Place, Boston, MA 02110, USA

Prof. Lieve Goorden
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Centrum voor Wetenschap, Techniek en Ethiek
Heverlee, BELGIUM

Dr. E.I.Givargizov
Institute of Crystallography RAS, Moscow, RUSSIA

Dr. Robert Irving
Scientific Director
Nanotechnology Victoria Ltd
Clayton, VIC 3800, AUSTRALIA

Prof. Sungho Jeong
Department of Mechatronics, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST),
Oryong-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju 500-712, KOREA

Prof. David Jishiashvili,
Georgian Technical University
Republican Center for Structure Researches
Tbilisi, GEORGIA

Dr. Amit Kumar
President and CEO
Combimatrix, Inc.
Mukilteo, WA 98275 USA

Dr. Lenka Martinova
Technical University of Liberec, Faculty of Textile Engineering, Department of Nonwovens,
CZECH REPUBLIC

Prof. Michel Meunier,
Laser Processing Laboratory, Department of Engineering Physics, Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, Case Postale 6079, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal (Québec), CANADA, H3C 3A7

Dr. Falk Mikosch
Head of Department
Project Management Agency Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe
Production and Manufacturing Technologies Division
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH
Leopoldshafen, GERMANY
Dr. Hideyuki Nakano,
Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc.
Nagakute, Aichi, 480-1192, JAPAN

Dr. N. Pradeep
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 USA

Prof. N. M. Butt,
Pakistan Science Foundation & National Commission on Nano-Science and Technology(NCNST) Islamabad, PAKISTAN

Dr. K. Ramakrishnan
Nanomix,Inc.
Emeryville, CA 94608 USA

Dr. Michael Schen
Director, Information Technology and Electronics Office
NIST Advanced Technology Program
Gaithersburg, MD 20878 USA

Dr. P. Tavolaro
ITM/CNR
Dept. Chemical Eng. Mater.
Rende, ITALY 87030

Dr. Justin G. Teeguarden
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA 99352, USA

Prof. L. Znamirowski
Polish Academy of Science, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics
Gliwice, POLAND

and more than 100 speakers from around the world. Abstract can be submitted online: http://www.nanotechcongress.com/abstract-online.htm

Speaking opportunity: http://www.ianano.org/speaking.htm

Registration online: http://www.nanotechcongress.com/registration.htm


Abstract Submission
deadline for poster presentation deadline has been extended to October 7, 2006

Early bird registration will end on October 7.
Register now and save
TOPIC

Nanomaterials
Nanodevices
Nanoelectronics
Nanobiotechnology
Nanomedicine
Commercialization
Nano-Delivery Systems
Nomenclature
Standards
Nano Tools
Molecular Engineering
Nano Manufacturing
Nanotoxicology
Societal
Environmental Impacts
Heath & Safety
Intellectual Property
Technology Transfer
Workforce Training
Nanotech Initiatives
Capital Funding
Investment

International Association of Nanotechnology
2386 Fair Oaks Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95825 USA
Email: info@ianano.org Web site: http://www.ianano.org

Posted by newradio at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2006

PIXILERATIONS [v.3]

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Exhibition Providence, RI



191 Westminster St.
http://firstworksprov.org/

PIXILERATIONS [v.3] is a digital arts showcase taking place within the FirstWorksProv Festival. It features works in digital media and interactive performance.

Pixilerations [v.3] will be open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through October 14. The exhibition is open: Thursdays 11-1pm, Fridays 2-6 pm, Saturdays 2-6pm

Featuring:

INSTALLATIONS: Liz Phillips, Rachelle Beaudoin, Betsy Connors, Edrex Fontanilla & R. Goldschmidt, Daniel Howe, Bokyung Jun, Naomi Kaly, Brian Knoth, Alex Kotch, Lisa Lee, Carmen Montoya, Magaly Ponce, Christopher Robbins, Hans Spinnerman, Jon Shumway.

SINGLE CHANNEL VIDEOS: Maria Dyer & Louise Despont, Lucky Leone, Joe Milutis, Ben Russell & Sabine Gruffat, Brian Kim Stefans.

CONCERTS: Damon Baker, Robert Griffin Byron, Lyn Goehringer, GRAY CODE, Brian Knoth, Peter McCulloch, mem1, Jim Moses, Kevin Patton, Greg Souza, Arvid Tomayko-Peters, Alice Vogler & Maxwell Dulaney, Matthew Warne & Jamie Jewett, Chapman Welch, MEME Ensemble, cyberbillies.

Closing Performances: Friday October 13 at 10:00pm

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

Upgrade! Seattle in October

Upgrade! Seattle.jpg

Rebecca Cummins

Come join us for the October Upgrade! Seattle meeting featuring Rebecca Cummins on Thursday October 12 at 7pm at 911 Media Arts Center.

Upgrade! Seattle is a once a month magnet group for new media artists working in the Seattle area that aims to gather, promote, critically discuss, and present Seattle new media work hosted by the 911 artists2artists group at 911 Media Arts Center. If you are interested in presenting your work, please contact Carrie Bodle (cbodle@alum.mit.edu).

Rebecca Cummins explores the sculptural, experiential and sometimes humorous possibilities of light and natural phenomena, often referencing the history of optics. She frequently incorporates obsolete technologies such as camera obscuras, phantasmagoria and periscopes, often in combination with newer media, such as video, computers, photography and digital imaging.

Installations have incorporated a rainbow machine, camera obscura / fibre-optic journey through the center of the earth, paranoid dinner-table devices ('Liquid Scrutiny' referenced a 17th century Czech camera obscura goblet), an interactive computer/video rifle ('To Fall Standing' updated French physiologist E.J.Marey’s photographic rifle of 1882), portable camera obscuras and a periscope birdbath.

Recent photographic and sculptural projects record the movement of shadows (in daylight and moonlight) over regular intervals of time, including large scale sundials (“Aperture Skylight Sundial” opened recently at the new Montlake Public Library).

She received her doctorate at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, in 2003 and is an associate professor at the University of Washington.

Recent exhibitions include the Shanghai Biennale, China; Toronto Images Festival, Canada; Alan Klotz Gallery, New York City; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; the South Australia Biennale of Australian Art, Adelaide; Performance Space, Sydney; I Space, Chicago; and the Exploratorium, San Francisco.

Posted by luis at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Body, Space & Technology Journal

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Call for Submissions

Editor Sue Broadhurst at Body, Space & Technology Journal is calling for submissions for a November 01, 2006 deadline.

Posted by michelle at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

Pervasive 2007

pervasive.jpg

Call for Participation



Pervasive 2007
The Fifth International Conference
on Pervasive Computing
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
May 13-15, 2007
http://pervasive07.org/

Call for Participation
Call for Papers & Workshop Proposals

Pervasive 2007, the Fifth International Conference on Pervasive Computing, will be held May 13-16, 2007 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The annual conference provides a premier forum in which to present research results in all areas related to the design, implementation, application and evaluation of pervasive computing as it integrates into our lives. Building on the success of previous conferences in this series held in Zurich (August 2002), in Linz/Vienna (April 2004), in Munich (May 2005) and in Dublin (May 2006), Pervasive 2007 will include a highly selective single-track program for technical papers, accompanied by posters, videos, demonstrations, workshops, a doctoral colloquium, invited tutorials, and an invited plenary speaker.

Papers due October 13th
For more info: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/conferences/pervasive2007/index.phtml

Posted by newradio at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2006

at MetaMute: xxxxx electromysticism

xxxxx.jpg

substance and software

xxxxx proposes a radical, new space for artistic exploration, with essential contributions from a diverse range of artists, theorists, and scientists. Combining intense background material, code listings, screenshots, new translation, [the] xxxxx [reader] functions as both guide and manifesto for a thought movement which is radically opposed to entropic contemporary economies. xxxxx traces a clear line across eccentric and wide ranging texts under the rubric of life coding which can well be contrasted with the death drive of cynical economy with roots in rationalism and enlightenment thought. Such philosophy, world as machine, informs its own deadly flipside embedded within language and technology. xxxxx totally unpicks this Hiroshimic engraving, offering a dandyish alternative by way of the deep examination of software and substance.

Life coding is primarily active, subsuming deprecated psychogeography in favour of acute wonderland technology, wary of any assumed transparency. Texts such as Endonomadology, a transcript from celebrated biochemist and chaos theory pioneer Otto E. Roessler who features heavily throughout this intense volume, make plain the sadistic nature and active legacy of rationalist thought. At the same time, through the science of endophysics, a physics from the inside rigorously examined here, a delicate theory of the world as interface is proposed.

xxxxx is very much concerned with the joyful elaboration of a new real; software-led propositions which are active and constructive in eviscerating contemporary culture. xxxxx embeds Perl Routines to Manipulate London, by way of software artist and Mongrel Graham Harwood, a Universal Dovetailer in the Lisp programming language from AI researcher Bruno Marchal rewriting the universe as code, and self explanatory Pornographic Coding from plagiarist and author Stewart Home and code art guru Florian Cramer. Software is treated as magical, electromystical, contrasting with the tedious GUI desktop applications and user-led drudgery expressed within a vast ghost-authored literature which merely serves to repeat over and again the demands of industry and economy. Key texts, which well explain the magic and sheer art of programming for the absolute beginner are published here.

Software subjugation is made plain within the very title of media theorist Friedrich Kittler's essay Protected Mode, published in this volume. Media, technology and destruction are further elaborated across the work in texts such as War.pl, Media and Drugs in Pynchon's Second World War, again from Kittler, and Simon Ford's elegant take on J.G Ballard's crashed cars exhibition of 1970, A Psychopathic Hymn.

Software and its expansion stand in obvious relation to language. Attacking transparency means examining the prison cell or virus of language; life coding as William S. Burrough's style cutup or riot playback (Stewart Home). And perhaps the most substantial and thorough-going examination is put forward by daring Vienna actionist Oswald Wiener in his Notes on the Concept of the Bio-adapter which has been thankfully unearthed here. Equally, Olga Goriunova's extensive examination of a new Russian literary trend, the online male literature of udaff.com provides both a reexamination of culture and language, and an example of the diversity of xxxxx; a diversity well reflected in background texts ranging across subjects such as Leibniz' monadology, the ur-crash of supreme flaneur Thomas de Quincey and several rewritings of the forensic model of Jack the Ripper thanks to Stewart Home and Martin Howse.

xxxxx liberates software from the machinic, and questions the transparency of language, proposing a new world view, a sheer electromysticism which is well explained with reference to the works of Thomas Pynchon in Friedrich Kittler's essay, translated for the first time into English, which closes xxxxx. http://xxxxx.1010.co.uk http://openmute.org

Posted by michelle at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Johannesburg in October

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Collecting Digits

The Upgrade Johannesburg presents our first Panel Discussion:
Collecting Digits. This panel and discussion on the possibilities and problems with collecting new media art will include presentations by:

Warren Siebrits - founder of one of Johannesburg's most prestigious contemporary and modern commercial art galleries
Franci Cronje - curator of several collections & competitions, including Sasol New Signatures
Nathaniel Stern - digital and interactive artist, in several public & private collections
Clive Kellner - Director of the Johannesburg Art Museum

Friday October 6, 2006 @ 3pm:
WSOA Digital Arts. Map: http://digitalarts.wits.ac.za/artworks/
contact/map.htm

About Upgrade! Johannesburg
About once per month a group of new media students, artists and curators gather in Johannesburg, South Africa. At each meeting one or two artists present work - theirs, or a favorite's - in order to foster critique, dialogue and collaboration in our growing digital arts scene. The Upgrade! Joburg grew out of Professor Christo Doherty's (WSOA Digital Arts; Map ) regular Friday 'Digital Soirees' at Wits School of the Arts, and artist Nathaniel Stern's atjoburg
initiative, both founded between 2002/3 and still ongoing. They wanted to invite a larger, participative audience into their space, and be plugged into a more diverse and international network. Our first official Upgrade! featured Daniel Hirschmann, a South African Wits alumnus who alsostudied at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and went on to help shape the Physical Computing studio at Fabrica. At number two, Stern presented MTAA's brilliant work remotely (with their permission), rather fitting given their initial
involvement in the first NYC Upgrades....

http://atjoburg.net/upgrade/index.html

Posted by luis at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

THE MAP DESIGNERS

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A Cartographic Event November 17th, Glasgow

The world of Cartography is changing beyond all recognition. It is no longer dominated by a few specialists in major companies or national organisations. The explosion of non-cartographic map makers has brought a vibrancy and freshness to the subject, the like of which has never been seen before. This presents two opportunities. Firstly an opportunity for the cartographic profession to learn from, and hopefully to incorporate, the graphic and artistic skills so abundant in other disciplines; and to benefit from the contribution Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has made to the industry. Secondly, there is an opportunity for the cartographic profession to explain some of the principles cartographers use when making maps. Cartographers have not been making maps for over 5000 years without learning a thing or two in the process. And yet for all the skills these diverse groups have brought to bear on map making, from GIS to map-Art, there remains one crucial problem. Most people can't read the maps they produce. For the first time in the UK, and probably worldwide, this seminar will bring together cartographic designers, and designers from the world of media and GIS, to discuss how to make maps effective, exciting, irresistible and ...readable.

Anyone who commissions maps, or who is involved in the making of maps, whether from GIS data or the imagination of the artist will be welcome at 'The Map Designers' seminar. The seminar is designed for architects, surveyors, tourism, foresters, utilities, earth scientists, cartographers, graphic artists, and government; in fact every branch of society that uses or creates maps. We would especially like to welcome students from Scotland, the North East and
further afield, with our incredible deal - for a once in a lifetime seminar! This amazing concessionary price is also open to all on proof of eligibility, i.e. unemployed, retired, BCS Associate Members etc... So here it is:-

THE MAP DESIGNERS at The Lighthouse Scotland's Centre for
Architecture and Design Glasgow 17th NOVEMBER 2006

PROGRAMME Chaired by Michael Wood OBE. Aberdeen University. President of the Society of Cartographers. Past President of the International Cartographic Association, and the British Cartographic Society.

SPEAKERS Alan Collinson FBCart.S Geo-Innovations. Co-Convener of the British Cartographic Society Design Group. The Principles of Cartographic Design, Cartographic Impressionism and Map Art. Mary Spence MBE FBCart.S, Global Mapping. President of the British Cartographic Society. The Qualities of Better Mapping. Dave Barbour FBCart.S, Stirling Surveys. International Award Winner. Maps People Can Read Easily. Design for Recreation and Orienteering. Wendy Price, Wendy Price Cartographic Services. Map Making as an Art. Susie Jones FBCart.S, Senior Lecturer at the School of Military Survey. Co-Convener of the British Cartographic Society Design Group. GIS and Map Design. Paul Stickley Head of Media Design, Glasgow School of Art. To be confirmed.

OPEN FORUM. Map Designers Talking. Cost. (BCS and SOC members, Students and concessions).

Details and booking from Lynda Bailey Cartographer and Map Librarian E213 FCO Library Foreign and Commonwealth Office King Charles Street London SW1A 2AH lynda.bailey2@virgin.net

Posted by newradio at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2006

Maps & Devices (Glade)

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André Sier's exhibition

atan, je t'aime..., struct_0. To reach the glade. Maps & Devices will take several shapes at Agência de Arte Vera Cortês, in Lisbon, starting September 2006 and throughout 2007; in a series of small exhibitions, the audience will have the opportunity to see works by André Sier, who tries to cristallize inovative space-time relations, using computer programming languages to develop interactive audiovisual art works. In the first part of Maps & Devices - the Glade, we will find advertisements and maps for the construction of algorithmic devices that make time unravel in various ways.

attan (2005) is a group of cuomputer generated program-drawings that bring into view glimpses of arrangements of small objects and their interconections. It includes small image programs that develop around topics like Babel, Europe, WWW III, the sun and that map the evolution of moving code links that have become static in print. Atan is the mathematical operation that searches the arch based on its tangent- The drawings evolve using only elemnts of the program that generates them, creating incoherent programs that can not run without breaking down the system - but it is possible to provide these kamikaze programs with standard structural images, from which to evolve and crash.

je t'aime... (1998) is Sier's first site-specific work with continuous sound. it sends the sound from a space, through omnidirectional contact microphones that translate the vibrations created by the environment's sounds and people moving around, into a woofer modified in order to contain fluids. The physicalness of the amplified sounds creates concentric patterns that vibrate on the water surface of the speaker/object to the sound details captured by the microphones. The device also amplifies the fluid oscillating patterns using a light projector and a mirror to luminously enlarge the pattern at the woofer.

struct_0 (2001) is the first version of the struct series, exploring several conjugations of the open using sound and image. It is a site-specific audiovisual installation running code on the sound of the space. The computer application seeks to permeate different sound lines captured in the room, drawing gaps in the natural time flow. Visually, one can see a particle (line) system in synchrony with the orchestrated sound fabric, in permanent flow.

For more info visit Vera Cortes Agencia de Arte

Posted by luis at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

in_rete

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Digital art meets textile industry

Arte&Arte is pleased to announce in_rete (in_the_net), the XVI edition of the International Exhibition of Contemporary Textile Art Miniartextil. The exhibition will take place in various public and private venues in Como (Italy), and will run from the 7th of September through the 12th of November 2006.

This year, the exhibition will focus on the connections – both metaphorical and literal – between two worlds and two media: the fabric and the Net. In order to suggest these connections, the main venue of the exhibition – the fascinating church of San Francesco in Como – will host five new media installations, from both Italian and American artists: Relations (2004), a generative software by Italian Alessandro Capozzo; Exuvia (2006), mixed media innstallation by Alessandro Capozzo and Katia Noppes; Quixote (2004 – 2006), a moblog living performance by Italian artists Gianni Corino and Lorenzo Verna; Screening Circle (2006), the interactive installation of an online work by the American artist Andy Deck, a 2006 commission of the Whitney Artport and the Tate Online; Knitoscope Testimonies (2006) by Cat Mazza, a series of videos produced with a software that translates digital video into a knitted animation; and the Infome Imager Lite Workshop (2005), an installation featuring a Web Visualization Software by the American artist Lisa Jevbratt.

As the New Media Art section curator Domenico Quaranta wrote: “There are many associations between digital media and the world of textiles, dating right back to the advent of the computer and gradually firming up over time. Such links can be observed not only in terms of how computers work and the structure of binary code, but also in a series of metaphors, concepts and forms: the net, the web, weaving pixels, pattern, texture, etc.

New Media Art, which works with the social, political and cultural consequences of the media it utilises, is well aware of these links, and this awareness emerges both in its aesthetics, and in the operative techniques implemented. In particular, all Net Art (namely art which comes into being on the web and for the web, and uses the web as its tool of choice, and also its main theme) is by definition a textile art, as it plays a part in enriching the fabric of cyberspace and creating networks, building and activating communities. In other words, net art is the art of weaving the web, which grants it an enormous potential, enabling it not only to comment on the media it utilises but also to contribute to its life, its creation and its history.”

WORKS:

Alessandro Capozzo (IT), Relations, 2004, http://www.abstract-codex.net/relations/index.html
Alessandro Capozzo & Katia Noppes (IT), Exuvia, 2006, http://www.abstract-codex.net/exuvia/index.html
Gianni Corino & Lorenzo Verna (IT), Quixote, 2004 – 2006, http://www.quixote.it/
Andy Deck (USA), Screening Circle, 2006, http://artcontext.net/act/05/screeningCircle/
Cat Mazza (USA), Knitoscope Testimonies, 2006, http://www.turbulence.org/Works/microRevolt/
Lisa Jevbratt (USA), Infome Imager, 2002 – 2005, http://jevbratt.com/infome_imager/lite

HI-RES IMAGES & CATALOGUE TEXT:

http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/miniartextil.html


ORGANIZATION:

ARTE&ARTE Associazione Culturale
Via Pannilani 23 - 22100 Como
Tel & Fax 031.305621
Email artearte@miniartextil.it

Posted by luis at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2006

submidialogy#2

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4 days of studies and debates about theories and practices of brazilian digital media

"what we really want, actually, is that the ideas become dangerous again."

The first Submidialogy conference, that took place in Campinas, Sao Paulo, in October 2005, was derived of cooperation between India, Netherlands and diverse Brazilian groups. It was a joining of independent projects, the third sector, governmental, artistic and experimental to an international network of collaborators, searching above all to bring these different experiences to the acknowledgment. This year, it becomes an open festival, with lectures, production laboratories, fm radio broadcast, television, the Internet and the delicious chat with cachaça among @ll submiditics.

Submidialogy will aggregate talks, production and collaborative learning, as well as music, free radio, vj and independent media. These are some of the typical “tastes” that could be appreciated - without moderation - during the second edition of the conference.

Another characteristic of this festival is to investigate the social, cultural and political possibilities of the digital media, besides fomenting the dialogue (in)existent between theory - the scope of ideas, and the practices - the scope of actions.

As much subject as much format are still under construction, but are suspended in the convergence among culture, communication, resistance, re-signification, media, technology, art and tactics. In the construction page and by the dicussion list, you can take part of it. We invite you to help to organize this subversion and thus to share our ideas in different contexts and times, aiming future perspective, exchange of experiences, concepts, critical production and, mainly, fun.

If you wish to take part of this mess, sign up to the discussion list! Don’t get shy in forwarding this invitation to other people that would be possible interested.

When: October 12, 13, 14 and 15th 2006.
Where:Mercado da Ribeira - Centro Luiz Freire - Casa do Turista / Olinda -Pernambuco

For more info visit Submidialogia


Posted by luis at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2006

boycott "festival Émergences" - la Villette /Paris

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Call

Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:13:54 +0200 (CEST)
From: fougeras nathalie
Subject: [spectre] Appel : boycotte festival "Emergences" la Villette-Paris/Call: boycotts "festival Emergences"

English translation:

Several women wanted to intervene on a mailing list on numerical arts concerning this abuse representation where only men, (with share 2 or 3 collectives but which one does not know if there are women within them) expose in this event that is the Festival "Emergences" which takes place from the 28 to September 30 in the Villette.

This configuration was noticed and a discussion initiated by a woman on this list to question this obvious catch of party of nonrepresentation of the woman. Few men reacted politically and socially by giving an opinion against this failure of the art and in particular of the numerical art of classification per kind. As much to say that silence - and very ambiguous reaction of the other men - completely guarantee this case of figure and classification of art by kind!

Meanwhile, we were sent malls in deprived and parallel to continue the discussion. We received by private malls of the returns of people, for example, in the field of the music who speak about a "configuration" rather close to that to numerical art.

Doesn't art thus put ahead an intelligent thought...? Inevitably do not ask to reason on the social one?! While at the same time it is a question of thinking of it not only "the technological" but "sensitive" medium perhaps too!!

What thus remains "to be applied" by this equality "required" (for example by the completely applicable quotas and with completely serious files artistic) in order to re-examine "quality" and the "nature" of the works presented and exposed on the public place for more otherness "between us".

Because for the moment we rather see a manner of avoiding "carefully" the mixture, the "not-co-education" which becomes an increasing fear on the public place and in this field (it can be connected with the fear of being mixed to its neighbor, with the immigrant, etc.)

We thus boycott this festival "Emergences" since the women are not represented there and that the indifference reigns in full day.

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

Scape 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space

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/don't misbehave!/

Scape 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space /don't misbehave!/ in New Zealand presents 4 new media based artworks:

The group SIMPEL contributes Paper Cup Telephone Network (PCTN). Do you remember stringing two cups together and talking with your friend? Well, the PCTN is the same, but imagine people around the world whose cups are all tied together, so that everyone can speak to anyone, any time, for free. The PCTN uses a combination of string and internet technologies to create a free and open communication system similar to Antonio Meucci's (the inventor of the telephone) vision for the telephone, a social network where everyone speaks to everyone. This project is by the new media art group SIMPEL. SIMPEL is Matthew Biederman (CA), Aleksandar Erkalovic (HR), Lotte Meijer (NL), and Adam Hyde (NZ). Forecourt of Christchurch Art Gallery and south quad of Arts Centre.

Auckland based media artist Sean Kerr installs Neighbourhood Watch. Neighbourhood Watch consists of a number of peering eyes which create an inquisitive neighbourhood in the central urban area of Christchurch, unsettling and interrupting the locals in the surrounding environment. These animated eyes are goggling out of windows, observing the ever-changing scenery of Christchurch ’s streets, and participating in public commentary. Worcester Boulevard.

Swiss artist Johannes Gees will make you see The Christchurch Menetekel. The work is a collaborative, interactive laser text installation inspired by the story of King Belshazzar’s feast, from the biblical Book of Daniel. Taking its cue from the flaming Hand of God and its mysterious warning in the story, Menetekel writes messages on walls in laser light and invites the public to text their own contributions and responses back. The artwork addresses the public’s relationship with religion and its meaning in contemporary art and society. 30 Sept 7pm–12am, 1 - 4 Oct 8 pm - 12 am, Cathedral Square.

Auckland based collective et al. presents /untitled/, 2006. An installation in which multi-media components including synthesised voice and video projection and an internet feed from Google Earth are situated in a fenced and empty enclosure. Apparently integral to the GE imagery are 5 animated units which move over an area of the Middle East . The Google Earth link was first used by et al. as a component in the /fundamental practice/ Institute of Modern Art , Brisbane 2006. Christchurch Art Gallery.

A discussion panel entitled “Beyond spectacle: media art in public space” will look at the strategies and the effect of media art practice in public space. On the panel with Susanne Jaschko are Johannes Gees, Sean Kerr and Matthew Biederman. Sunday Oct 1, 4 pm, Christchurch Art Gallery.

* Scape 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space /don't misbehave!/ *
* Sept 30 - Nov 12, 2006 *
* Christchurch, New Zealand*

susanne jaschko
curator Scape 2006 Biennal

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

CREATIVE THINKING FOR INTERACTIVE TV

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FIRST CALL

11th European Interaction Design Workshop CREATIVE THINKING FOR INTERACTIVE TV by Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás, University of Brighton :: October 5-8, 2006, Istanbul Kadir Has University.

This winter, one of the most prestigious interaction design workshops, IDWS, is looking for 14 talented design students (7 Turkish nationals and 7 non-Turkish nationals). This time, IDWS will host Spanish Researcher Anxo Cereijo Roibás who specializes in Interactive TV application. The workshop will explore suitable methodologies and techniques to design new scenarios defined by intersections between handhelds and other devices (e.g. iTV). It will also analyze crucial issues in the design of applications and interactive content in these contexts.

Application deadline: November 30, 2006 (Application fee is not required) For more details concerning scope, background of participants, accommodation, workshop fees, etc., please see: http://web.idws.info

IDWS winter workshops are part of the ERASMUS IP project 2006-2008 and has sponsored by Istanbul Cervantes Institute and British HCI Group.
contact: application[at]idws.info

Oguzhan Ozcan
Curator

Posted by jo at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell

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Release Party

Join us to celebrate the release of Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell , the latest World of Awe project. The music CD is a collaboration between composer Yoav Gal, dancefilmmaker Evann Siebens and Yael Kanarek. In World of Awe a traveler searches for a lost treasure in a parallel world called Sunset/Sunrise. Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell sets texts from the treasure hunt to soprano and Atari, with a dancefilm shot on 6th street in Manhattan.

October 5, Eyebeam, NYC :: 7:00 Drinks :: 7:30 Introduction by Innova Director, Philip Blackburn :: 7:35 Performance by composer Yoav Gal, sopranos Heather Green and Sarah Rivkin, and dancer Evann Siebens. Drinks courtesy of bitforms gallery. The CD is available for sale at the Eyebeam bookstore and Innova website. CD design by Mushon Zer-Aviv

"[...] this is a "postmodern opera", and features a performance of the opening track Portal as a Quicktime movie in addition to the eleven songs. The musical backing and interludes are all performed on an Atari 800XL. Soprano Sarah Rivkin's voice is layered into choirs of operatic/angelic voices. The Atari 800XL sections have a thick antiquated/timeless quality, sometimes sounding like a seriously deranged harpsichord. Quite lovely, listenable, and beautifully packaged as well." — George Parsons, Dream Magazine #7

worldofawe.net
eyebeam.org
bitforms.com
innova.mu
yoavgal.com

Posted by jo at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

PORTA2030

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BRING BACK THE NETWORK, BRING THE FOOD

Please join us Wednesday 4th October 2006, 7pm @ Regent Studios, Unit 73A, 8 Andrews Road, London E8 4QN for an evening with PORTA2030 and Broadway Market PORTA-PORTERS public review with John Jordan, Ann Light, Gini Simpson moderated by Marina Vishmidt. :: TALK network reality :: PLAY network vision :: for Broadway Market and beyond. There is food to consume and network to share. Come with your doubts, thoughts and affirmation.

In April 2006 media arts group TAKE2030 initiated a week-long networked performative exercise PORTA2030 with 10 porta-porters on Broadway Market. Staged within the connected wifi zone on Broadway Market, the porta-porters, each assigned with a wifi networking porta-pack, take part in a collective communicative scenario.

For this public review session, TAKE2030 brings together the PORTA-PORTERS to reflect back on the April event with the launch of its DVD. We also invite network media researchers and activists to join us for a cross-over discussion on community and performative media practice. We hope to address the realization of PORTA2030's responsive network vision by means of network public art exercise. Furthermore, we question how can the PORTA-net be self-sustainable public network for Broadway Market and beyond toward year 2030.

Posted by jo at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Leanardo Electronic Almanac

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Special Issue on Digital Poetry

LEA just released an extensive new issue on Digital Poetry. While I’ve just taken a quick look, it appears to be a terrific collection of essays on contemporary digital poetry, in addition to featuring several compelling works in the gallery. The issue edited by Tim Peterson includes essays by Loss Pequeo Glazier, John Cayley with Dimitri Lemmerman, Lori Emerson, Phillippe Bootz, Manuel Portela, Stephanie Strickland, Mez, Maria Engberg, and Matthias Hilner, in addition to works in the gallery by Jason Nelson, Aya Karpinska and Daniel Howe, mEIKAL aND and CamillE BacoS, and Nadine Hilbert and Gast Bouschet. The correlation between the essayists, authors and works reviewed in this issue of LEA and the contributors to the forthcoming Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One suggests to me that the two free publications will make a great pair for teaching. All of the essays in this edition of LEA are available both in HTML and downloadable PDFs. [blogged by Scott on Grand Text Auto]

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

Mediaterra 7th International Art + Technology Festival

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GAMING REALITIES

GAMING REALITIES
4-8.10.2006 / ATHENS / GREECE
@ Technopolis, Pireos 100, Gazi


What role do videogames play in our lives today? As the boundaries between the virtual and the real blur more and more in the new gaming worlds we have come to inhabit, new conditions arise.

With the theme Gaming Realities, medi@terra 06 aims to explore the different dimensions and developments in the gaming fields and the impact they have on the different fields of society today. This year's Festival and International Conference set up to explore the diverse ideas, narratives, and ideologies involved in the video games.

Videogames express and reflect today's world, its aesthetics and technologies, give rise to new identities and new mentalities. Medi@terra Festival has invited individuals who have realised the importance and dimensions which this field has acquired, asking them to deposit their viewpoints and experiences with regard to the connections of the game to society, the identity and psychology of the player, the space and narration of the game, new technologies and conceptions and possibilities for the computer game to comprise the key art of 21st century.

'Gaming Realities: the Challenge of Digital Culture' is a three days International Conference [6-8 October, Athens] organised by Fournos Centre for the Digital Culture.

57 papers will be presented in the following thematic units:

Gaming Situation: Game-Player-Society
[Gaming Society / Identity and Psychology of the Player / Game Politics]
Gaming Environments
[Game in Urban Space / Gaming New Narratives / Gaming Technologies / Immersion in Game]
Game Art
[Game Art and Culture / Game as art]

Keynote speakers include:
Adrian David Cheok, Director of Mixed Reality Lab, NTU Singapore, Associate Professor in the Schools of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Celia Pearce, Assistant Professor, School of Literature, Communication & Culture, Ivan Allen College, Georgia Institute of Technology
Chris Crawford, Game Designer (Atari), Author 'The Art of Computer Game Design'
Eric Zimmerman, Game Designer, CEO, Gamelab
Espen Aarseth, Associate Professor and Principal Researcher Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Co-founder and Editor-in-chief
Gamestudies
Frans Mayra, Director of Research, Hypermedia laboratory, University of Tampere, President of DIGRA
Gonzalo Frasca, IT University of Copenhagen, Editor www.ludology.org, Co-editor of www.gamestudies and www.watercolergames.org
Julian Dibbell, Contributing Editor Wired Magazine, Author 'My tiny life: Crime
and Passion in a Virtual World'
Julian Oliver, Free-software developer, composer, media-theorist, Founder of
www.selectparks.net
Kristian Lukic, writer, artist, cultural and game researcher, Founder of
Eastwood, Real Time Strategy Group
Manthos Santorineos, artist, Artistic Director of medi@terra festival, Assistant
Professor Athens School of Fine Arts
Margarete Jahrmann, Professor for media arts & game arts, University of Arts and Design, Department of New Media Switzerland
Matt Adams, member of the Blast Theory
Micheal Mateas, Faculty Member University of California, Santa Cruz, Creator of
FACADE
Tom & Vicky Arundel, Creators of the Darwinia, Introversion Software
Xavier Lardy, Storyboarder, game designer, founder of www.machinima.fr

The conference will follow an exhibition of Game installations / Political games
/ Game mods / Text adventures / Game multiplayer environments / Machinimas / Sound based games


Exhibition: Alter Gaming
4-8 October, Athens, Greece

Exhibition Opening: October 4, 20.30

30 game projects by independent creators and artists from the international
field that work on the new media and explore the possibilities given by the
videogaming platforms. Different 'unseen' sides of today's gaming realm
are proposed with games characterised for their interdisciplinary character,
the socio-political messages they convey, the technical and aesthetic
innovations they introduce and the subversion of game standards imposed by the gaming industry.

Featuring games by
Christoph Anthes / Blast Theory / Benjamin Chang / Dimi Christopoulos / Devart / Eastwood Group / Sylvia Eckermann / Gerald Nestler / Christof Cargnelli / Oliver Irschitz / Fiambrera / David Gauthier / Henri Marino / Laurie Prevot / Jean Batiste Spieser / Troy Innocent / Introversion Software / The Ludic Society / The mamayans / Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern / Panagiotis Koutlemanis / Dimitris Dinieas / Axel Stockburger / Persuasive Games / Molleindustria / Nick Montfort / Personal Cinema / Persuasive Games / ATI / Prof. Marie-Helene Tramus / Cedric Plessier / Orna Portugaly / Daphna Talithman / Sharon Younger / Serious Games Interactive / Axel Stockburger / Tale of Tales / Julian Oliver / Steven Pickles / sheismartha / Alexandros Plakidas Dasios / University of the Aegean / Mathias Fuchs + Oliver Farshi

Machinimas La petite Anthologie de Machinimas
A compilation by Xavier Lardy (founder of machinima.fr) presenting some of the
most interesting machinima works created in the last years. A collaboration of
Paris Cinema, the Forum des Images and Machinima.fr that premiered in Paris
last July.

Including projects by:
Ethan Vogt / Bernie Burns / Dave Lloyd and Matt Kelland / Pierce Portocarrero /
Hugh Hancock / Ezra Ferguson and Terran Gregory / Katherine Anna Kang / Paul Marino / Friedrich Kirschner / G Hoffmann / Alex Chan

PLUS!
Special Sound performances + parties by the Videogame Orchestra
Mathias Fuchs + Oliver Farshi that mix old video game tunes with contemporary electronic sounds offering a different unique navigation in a audiovisual environment

More information and details
www.mediaterra.org
or contact us
info@mediaterra.org
tel +302106460748
FAX +302106470069

Organised by Fournos, Center for Digital Culture
With the collaboration and support of Hellenic Ministry of Culture, General
Secretariat of Youth, British Council, American Embassy, French Institute of
Athens, Embassy of Switzerland, Embassy of Austria, Technopolis, AKTO
Sponsors: Sony Playstation, Sony, FNAC
Internet Sponsor: Forthnet
Media Sponsors: Computer Games, Game Pro, Ozon magazine, MAD TV, Rock Fm, Games
Radio, Highlights, Ozon, Start, Videorama, Cultureguide.gr

Posted by luis at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

Rhizome Tenth Anniversary Festival

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August 2006 to February 2007

Rhizome celebrates Tenth Anniversary with Festival in New York and online.

From August 2006 through February 2007, Rhizome will present a number of innovative exhibits, performances, discussions, and online projects throughout New York and elsewhere, in celebration of ten years of leadership in the new media arts field. This ambitious slate of programs will honor the vibrancy, diversity, and strength of this growing field and will provide an opportunity to connect with new media art both online and offline.

Rhizome was initiated in 1996 as an online platform for the global new media art community. At that time, the organization’s focus was primarily upon Internet art. Ten years later, Rhizome retains this focus and has also grown to support a wide range of art that engage emerging technologies—including sound art, locative media, digital video, software art, and modifications of video games. As the Internet and other computing technologies have come to play a more prevalent role in culture, Rhizome has supported artists’ expanded involvement with these tools and materials. The anniversary festival provides a touchstone moment to celebrate new media art and look forward to further advancements in the field.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS include collaborations with a number of organizations committed to supporting new media, including Rhizome’s affiliate, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and also the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Kitchen, the Vera List Center, ISEA, and Foxy Production.

Rhizome and the New Museum will co-present Time Shares, a series of nine Internet-based exhibitions on themes ranging from globalization to pop culture to site-specific works in the popular online game space, Second Life. An exhibition of the eleven compelling Internet-based art works commissioned by Rhizome in 06-07 will also be included.

This Fall, The Kitchen will host a night of Internet-related performances, the Vera List Center will host a discussion about open source issues, and the Guggenheim will be the venue for two media activists’ performative lectures. In February, an exhibition at Foxy Production gallery will look at the relationship between nature and technology. The international group of artists included in these programs includes some of today’s most engaged practitioners, such as Young Hae Chang/ Heavy Industries (Hong Kong), Olia Lialina (Moscow), JODI.org (Rotterdam), Jacob Ciocci (Pittsburgh), the Yes Men (Glasgow/ Paris), Ze Frank (NY), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga (Mexico City/ NY), and the Raqs Media Collective (Delhi).

Considering Rhizome’s origin as an email list, Rhizome has always been a catalyst for discourse. During the festival, Rhizome and the New Museum of Contemporary Art will continue to collaborate on a new series of book releases, entitled Celebrating New Media Scholarship, three of which have already drawn very large audiences. Additionally, an online collaborative writing project, entitled Keylines, will provide a site for active discussion of issues relevant to new media and culture at large, including the environment, feminism, protest, and art historical questions. The site launches this week, with specially-commissioned essays by Raqs Media Collective, Bruce Sterling, David Ross, Lynn Hershman, and others.

For a full schedule, images, or more information, visit the website.

festival[at]rhizome.org
T: 212-219-1222 ext. 208

Rhizome would like to thank the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), College Art Association and the Experimental Television Center and for their generous support of the Festival.

Posted by jo at 07:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2006

Simultaneita: Ars HyperMedia Almanac

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Call for Papers and Artworks

Ars HyperMedia, Call for papers and artworks, the submission deadline is November 20, 2006. Simultaneita new media arts magazine is pleased to announce this call for submissions for a special project. Yearly full-color printed "Ars HyperMedia Almanac" on digital culture / media arts. The publication will feature various sections, to be formed through articles, texts, interviews and images. Keywords: -- net / web art -- digital art -- hacker art / hacktivism / artivism -- architecture / design -- dance / theatre -- sound / sonic art / electronic music -- electronic literature -- festivals / art centers / galleries -- curating and preserving new media art -- cross-media -- cinema / animation / comics.

Articles may be 2,000 words in length.

What kind of artworks are we looking for? Digital art, graphic works, illustrations, digital photos, sketches, drawings, video, CD or DVD, graphic novels are accepted. File format: photoshop tiff, jpg 300 dpi.

For more information:
info[at]simultaneita.net

Simultaneita
Via Isole Curzolane 18 / E
00139 Roma - Italy

About Simultaneita

"Simultaneita new media arts magazine" is an online journal and periodically printed with international contributors: it's a publication with an explicit futurist attitude, largely aimed at today cultural topics and special reference to art-technology relationship; it features in-depth essays, unpublished materials, reviews, notes and articles on new media arts, digital culture, architecture, music, cinema. Established in 1997 as a printed magazine, Simultaneita' is a direct follow-on from the monthly "Futurismo-Oggi" (1969-1993). A magazine to promote the strength and diversity of new media arts scene and the Futurist legacy: the mission is to be an outlet with a resolutely international orientation for the reflection, knowledge, research and diffusion of these new artistic forms, without wanting to pigeon-hole digital art and its characteristic fluidity.

The magazine was in Sevilla as media partner for "Art Futura '98 the second skin" the new media & digital art festival, "Loop '00" International Video Art festival (Barcelona 2003), ³hack.it.art Hacktivism in the Context of Art and Media in Italy² (Berlin 2005), "Wayleave" art & architecture magazine exhibition (Rome 2005) and "fmx" International Conference on Animation, Effects, Realtime and Content (Stuttgart 2006). Simultaneita was media partner to the 2006 edition of the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Symposium / ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.

Posted by jo at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2006

Independent Photography

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Artist's Commission, Woolwich

Independent Photography is looking for an artist working with film or digital media to undertake a participatory arts project involving a range of residents from the Walpole Estate in Woolwich. The project aims to engage and bring together estate residents of different generations and diverse cultural backgrounds to explore a sense of place and questions of belonging. Seeking to elicit perceptions of individual and community identity from a variety of perspectives, the brief is open as to whether the commissioned artist will work with a group of residents on an integrated project or with individual residents on discreet activities which come together in the commission's conclusion.

This artist's commission is for new work that can address and explore the following aims: - inspire and intrigue through the use of contemporary media arts and socially engaged practice - activate a level of participation from the diversity of communities on the estate - explore issues relevant to these communities regarding the estate on which they live and how the proposed regeneration of Woolwich town centre will affect them - investigate these issues within personal as well as wider social, environmental, and cultural contexts

We are offering a £4,500 commission for a socially engaged project that explores the above aims and can be undertaken over the period October 2006 - January 2007, culminating in some form of outcome, whether event, exhibition, and/or distributed products.

The project is managed by Independent Photography and funded by the SRB6 Health Benefits Programme.

Artist profile: The commission seeks an artist experienced in engaging with members of the public and the complexities that this involves. Independent Photography is keen to develop contemporary participative and public art practice, through the use of visual, audio, or audiovisual media.

The commission seeks to offer an investigative and engaging opportunity to an artist working in site specific practice. Work that allows meaningful participation by members of the community is central to its aims, as is the opportunity for innovative approaches to this challenge. Location Walpole Estate is situated in the Woolwich Common Ward of the London Borough of Greenwich. It is one of four council estates in this culturally diverse Ward, south of Woolwich town centre and adjacent to Woolwich Common, where the high proportion of BME residents includes significant Indian, West African and Somali communities.

The area suffers from multiple deprivation including high unemployment, low incomes, higher than average numbers of single parent families, low educational attainments and higher than average crime rates. Using the Government's measure of deprivation, the Index of Deprivation 2004, Greenwich is the 41st most deprived borough in England and Wales and the Woolwich Common Ward has areas in the 10% most deprived in England.

The Estate is privately managed by the Walpole Estate Management Board, and as well as a Youth Club there are a number of community organisations based on the estate including a crèche and a Somali teaching project, both of which include members from beyond the estate itself.

Woolwich is undergoing significant regeneration, which will have a dramatic effect on the town centre and its transport links, as well as on housing provision. The DLR will open in Woolwich in 2009, providing a link to London City Airport, and a new rapid transit linking Woolwich with Abbey Wood, North Greenwich and Greenwich town centre will be in operation by 2008. Plans for the Woolwich town centre include 2 major supermarkets, 250,000 sq foot of retail and over 1,000 new homes. The Council has agreed to remodel three estates which comprise over 1000 council homes in the area as part of its decent homes strategy, and if current plans go ahead, Walpole Estate will be the only housing estate left in the Woolwich Common Ward.

Project Management: The overall management of the commission is the responsibility of Independent Photography's Artistic Director, Isabel Lilly. The co-ordination and day-to-day running of the project will be conducted by Rohini Malik Okon, Project Co-ordinator, who will be the artist's point of contact and support throughout the commission.

Budget: This commission offers a budget of £4,500. Please provide a budget proposal as part of your application. The budget should cover artist's fee, materials/additional equipment, and final event/exhibition costs including marketing. IP will provide full administrative and marketing support to the project.

Timescale: The commission is intended to take place between October 2006 and January 2007.

Artists are invited to submit a timescale as part of their proposal, which should include: an initial period of research to get to know the area and its residents; time for the delivery of the project with participants; and post production time to deliver the finished outcome. Copyright Copyright of any work produced as part of the commission will be the property of the Artist. The Artist would grant IP the right to reproduce any work created during the Commission as necessary by photography, lithography, print film, videotape, CD, mini disc, DAT, or audio cassette for publicity or promotional purposes connected with the Commission.

Application Procedure: Artists are invited to submit the following as an application for the above.

commission:

1. Commission proposal, to include:
- Conceptual approach
- Project Description
- Detail of community participation / engagement
- Budget outline
- Timescale
- Potential outcome(s)

2. Current CV

3. Samples of recent work
(These can be printed material, audio, video, digital media, URL's)

Application deadline: 5pm, Monday 2nd October

Shortlisted applicants will be invited to interview at IP on: Friday 6th October

Please send application either by email or by post to:

Isabel Lilly / Rohini Malik Okon
Independent Photography
Rothbury Hall
Azof Street
London SE10 0EF

isabel[at]independentphotography.org.uk
rohini[at]independentphotography.org.uk

Rohini Malik Okon
Project & Events Co-ordinator
Independent Photography

Rothbury Hall, Azof Street, London SE10 0EF
T: 020 8858 2825 F: 020 8858 2025

Posted by jo at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

Seiko Mikami

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On the Continuum of Perception and Interfaces

http://www.tesla-berlin.de">TESLA salon - art/science 2 :: Thu. 28 Sept., 20:30 h (conversation in English) :: TESLA, Klosterstr. 68, Berlin-Mitte :: Seiko Mikami - On the Continuum of Perception and Interfaces: The renowned Japanese artist Seiko Mikami talks about her work and presents a preview of her latest project which she is working on during a year-long residency in Berlin.

All projects by Seiko Mikami involve human perception. Perception is highly significant, yet also a very complex and wide subject area. Moreover, we still don't understand our body and its functions very well. In order to approach these issues, Mikami decided to disassemble the individual senses: seeing, hearing, the sense of touch, gravity, etc., advancing eachsense separately through different interfaces. The point of each project is to create an 'interface' set to one sense of perception by elaborating a particular sensory mechanism. Mikami's entire project is motivated by the conviction that something like what we call 'interface' in the context of computer technology, already exists within us. Mikami's projects make the audience experience their own state of perceptions. The interfaces designed for her projects function as extensions of what we already have--a network that mediates our subjectivity, that synthesizes what we perceive and the world that is perceived.

Mikami explores the 'in-between' or 'inter-medium' of the information interchange, through perception, between the body and the surrounding space. She audifies and visualises what is not conventionally the object of those sense. Thus her key proposition is: "the eye is not merely a thing that sees and the ear is not merely a thing that hears; it is possible for the ear to see, for the nose to hear, and for the eye to touch."

Seiko Mikami (Japan) is an artist who teaches Information Art at Tama Art University, Tokyo. Most of her works are interactive media art installations incorporating human perception, including the eye tracking project "Molecular Informatics" at Canon ARTLAB (Tokyo 1996), about the acoustic sense and the living body sound at NTT InterCommunication Center's permanent collection (Tokyo 1997), "Gravicells" on the theme of gravity called the 6th consciousness in Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Japan 2004, in collaboration with Sota Ichikawa). She has participated in festivals and exhibitions all over the world, incl. DEAF, Ars Electronica, and transmediale (2002, 2005). Her latest work, first shown in the "Desire of Codes" show at Kulturhuset (Stockholm, Sweden, 2006), will be presented at TESLA during transmediale.07. Her work was published in "Seiko Mikami - Art Works" at Diputacion Provincial De Malaga, Spain (2004). - Mikami is currently on a sabbatical and based in Berlin as a fellow at the University of the Arts. From December till February 2007 she will be an artist in residence at TESLA.

The information list of transmediale international media art festival berlin :: transmediale: http://www.transmediale.de
list-info: http://mailman.transmediale.in-berlin.de/mailman/listinfo/newsletter

Posted by jo at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

BIENNIAL OF THE YEAR 3000

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ARTISTS AND CITIZENS TAKE POWER

FROM 5 OCTOBER TO 15 DECEMBER 2006, FRED FOREST INVITES ALL ARTISTS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE BIENNIAL OF THE YEAR 3000, A BIENNIAL IN WHICH ARTISTS AND CITIZENS TAKE POWER AND EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS TO THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE FREEDOM OF IMAGE. YOUR PRESENCE, EITHER THROUGH IMAGES, WORDS OR BOTH, WILL BE HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT.

ACTIVELY PASS ALONG THIS PROPOSITION THROUGH ALL YOUR PERSONAL NETWORKS.

THE SUCCESS OF THIS INITIATIVE WILL ALSO BE YOUR SUCCESS AND WILL DEMONSTRATE THE CAPACITIES OF ARTISTS TO SELF-ORGANIZE AGAINST DIFFERENT CULTURAL POWERS AND THE EXISTING INDUSTRY, USING THE TOOLS OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND THE INTERNET.

CONTRIBUTIONS WILL BE DISPLAYED IN A LOOP ON THE MAC IN IBIRAPUERA PARK AND UPDATED PERIODICALLY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION

FRED FOREST

BIENNIAL OF THE YEAR 3000

A BIENNIAL IN WHICH ARTISTS AND CITIZENS TAKE POWER AND EXERCISE THEIR RIGHT TO THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND IMAGE

The French artist, Fred Forest, Docteur d'Etat from the Sorbonne, who organized the controversial Biennial, the "Biennial of the year 2000", in 1975, under the military regime, with the support of Walter Zanini, then director of MAC--has done it again in 2006! Thirty years later, he is organizing a "Biennial of the year 3000", with the participation of Brazilian and foreign artists.

In 1973, representative artists such as, Amelia Toledo, Anesia Pacheco Chaves, Armando Canuto, Cesar Loureiro, Conrado Silva, Euclides Sandoval, Fabio Magalhães, Gilberto Moirimitto, Luiz Augusto de Aruda, Luiz Carlos Homem da Costa, Regina Celia Canel, Sergio Fuiza, participated in his Biennial.

This year Fred Forest is organizing the Biennial of the year 3000 in São Paulo from 7 October to 13 December 2006. A Biennial that breaks free from the official Biennial, because it is a digital, planetary, participatory biennial, a biennial without selection and consequently, truly democratic.

Fred Forest has always played an important role as a pioneer. In 1973, he was already involved in the creation and performance of street art, participatory art, protest art, and social art. Over thirty years later, these art forms constitute an important part of today's artistic practices given the slowness of cultural institutions to assimilate innovation. This "Biennial of the year 3000" will happen in the same places as the "Biennial of the year 2000": in the Mac USP, Ibirapuera Park.

It will affirm with strength and independence that art does not stay tied to past concepts.

It will demonstrate that in an age where the Internet is helping to abolish the concepts of time and space, and where the aesthetics of communication invades all symbolic and social dimensions, art does that remain stagnant.

The making of art is first done with our senses, and our senses are not created from obsolete concepts when the world transforms itself in real-time under our very eyes.

Annick Bureaud (annick[at]nunc.com)
tel/fax : 33/ (0)143 20 92 23
mobile : 33/ (0)6 86 77 65 76
Leonardo/Olats : http://www.olats.org

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

September 26, 2006

Networked Digital Storytelling:

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Call for Participation



Networked Digital Storytelling: Call for Course Participation :: Time: November 6, 2006 – January 18, 2007 - 15 ECTS points :: Place: K3 School of Arts & Communication, Malmo University, Sweden.

Networked Digital Storytelling is a course that critically explores the artistic possibilities of new networked media such as videoblogs, social media, mashups and locative media. Participants in the course use these technologies in a series of workshops built around the theme of mediating and telling stories about the city.

During the workshops there will be guest lectures by artists, social media workers, bloggers, and theorists. Regular teachers are Kristoffer Gansing, PhD student specialising in alternative media, and Tina Giannopoulos, cultural producer and architect. The course ends in a common presentation in the form of an exhibition, installation or urban intervention.

How to apply: If you read Swedish fill out the following form:
The course code is: 00334
More info can be found at: http://www.mah.se/efteranmalan (in Swedish only). If you don’t read Swedish, send an e-mail with a statement of interest to: kristoffer.gansing[at]k3.mah.se (and you will receive the necessary papers for applying)

Workshops & Curriculum

1: Networked Stories/Spatial Stories: Untold stories and places of Malmö. Google map mashups + video. With Bitlab Malmö, Surreal Scania. http://www.bitlabmalmo.net http://www.surrealscania.se.

2: Hybrid Spaces/Hybrid Media: In collaboration with tv-tv and the t-vlog project. Ends in a transmission at Copenhagen based tv-station tv-tv. http://www.t-vlog.net http://www.tv-tv.dk.

3: Social media: Going deeper into technologies of videoblogging, participatory culture and culture jamming. In between workshops there will be a regular theory class, with close analysis of texts and films. We read everything from 60’s expanded cinema gurus like Gene Youngblood to recent online theorists like Adrian Miles and Jill Walker. Full course syllabus is available at http://www.edu.mah.se/KK3219/syllabus (literature list is subject to change / update!)

Relevant links and References

http://www.networkedstorytelling.org
Blog by Kristoffer Gansing, with info about earlier workshops.

http://www.mah.se/K3
Malmo University, School of Arts & Communication site.

http://www.edu.mah.se/KK3219/syllabus
The full course syllabus.

http://webzone.k3.mah.se/projects/nds
The internal course page.

Posted by jo at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Center for Advanced Visual Studies

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Terminal Air

Center for Advanced Visual Studies MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning :: 265 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 :: 617 253 4415 :: Monday October 2, 7:00 pm. The Center for Advanced Visual Studies presents Terminal Air (Institute for Applied Autonomy and Trevor Paglen).

Tad Hirsch (Institute for Applied Autonomy) and experimental geographer Trevor Paglen will present early research for their new project, Terminal Air, an interactive installation that enables audiences to track a fleet of CIA-operated aircraft around the world. These airplanes, which were first uncovered by an international network of amateur aviation enthusiasts and later reported on by various investigative journalists, are known to be involved in "extraordinary rendition"—the practice of illegally transporting terrorism suspects to secret overseas military bases for torture and interrogation. Paglen will also talk about Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, which he co-wrote with journalist AC Thompson. Andrew Woods of Harvard Law School will also speak. Terminal Air is supported by 2006-2007 commission from Rhizome.org.

Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently completing a PhD. His work involves deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us. His most recent projects take up secret military bases, the California prison system, and the CIA’s practice of “extraordinary rendition.” Paglen’s artwork has been shown at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (2003), the California College of the Arts (2002), MASSMOCA (2006), Halle 14 - Stiftung Federkiel (2006), Diverse Works (2005), and numerous other arts venues, universities, conferences, and public spaces.

Tad Hirsch is a researcher and PhD candidate in the Smart Cities Group at MIT's Media Lab, where his work focuses on the intersections between art, activism, and technology. He is also a 2005-7 graduate affiliate at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. He has worked with Intel's People and Practices Research Group, Motorola's Advanced Concepts Group and the Interaction Design Studio at Carnegie Mellon University, and has several years experience in the nonprofit sector. Tad is also a frequent collaborator with the Institute for Applied Autonomy, an award-winning arts collective that exhibits throughout the United States and Europe. He publishes and lectures widely on a variety of topics concerning social aspects of technology, and has received several prestigious commissions and awards. Tad holds degrees from Vassar College, Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Their mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies is a fellowship program that commissions and produces new artworks and artistic research within the context of MIT. A laboratory for interdisciplinary art practice, the Center facilitates exchange between internationally known contemporary artists and MIT’s faculty, students, and staff through public programs, support for long-term art projects, and residencies for MIT students.

Call 617 253 4415 for more information or to get involved.

Thanks to the MIT Arts Council, the LEF Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, Rhizome.org, and the Loeb Fellowships at Harvard.

Meg Rotzel
Curatorial Associate
Center for Advanced Visual Studies
In the Office M,W,Th
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
265 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
617.253.4415

Posted by jo at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

vague terrain 04:

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the body digital

vague terrain 04: the body digital is now live. The Fourth issue of the Toronto based digital arts quarterly is dedicated to surveying contemporary conceptions of the body in light of digital technology. This issue features work from: Andrea Polli, Andrew Bucksbarg, Chris Twomey, Ellen Waterman, Jenny Mason, Skyapnea, Suguro Goto, Susanna Hood, Testroom, and an interview with Stelarc conducted by David McCallum. Stay tuned for the launch of the vaguecast podcast in the coming weeks. -- greg smith & neil wiernik, editors/curators, http://www.vagueterrain.net.

Posted by jo at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

ANAT Wearables Media Lab

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reSkin

New facilitators confirmed for ANAT Wearables Media Lab January 15 - February 4, 2007 :: Australian National University, Canberra :: SUSAN COHN (Australia), NIKITA PASHENKOV (USA), CINNAMON LEE (Australia) and STEPHEN BARRASS (Australia) have been confirmed as facilitators for the reSkin Media Lab, to be held in Canberra, January 2007. They join the previously announced team of renowned media artists ELISE CO (USA), JOANNA BERZOWSKA (Canada) and ALISTAIR RIDDELL (Australia).

Facilitators will be working with artists to research, develop and rapid prototype sensor, time based and reactive clothing, jewellery, shoes, bags, personal environmental and device designs - anything wearable and technologically integrated. ANAT has a limited number of scholarships for participants and funding is also available through the state based arts funding bodies.

About reSkin: reSkin is an intensive three-week workshop focussing on wearable technology, embracing the skill-based practices of object, jewellery, fashion design and media art. The Lab will focus on research and development, experimentation, collaboration and project development.

How to Apply: reSkin is open to Australian and International artists and designers with at least 3 years of practice in the fields of jewellery and object design, textile design, fashion design, media arts, hybrid art and other related disciplines. Application guidelines including further details on the Lab, facilitators, and public outcomes can be downloaded from the reSkin website.

Applications close Monday 9th October.

SUSAN COHN is an internationally known goldsmith and designer who has exhibited extensively and is represented in all major Australian gallery collections. Her many accomplishments include being the first Australian to have a product manufactured by Alessi. In 2001-2003 the National Gallery of Australia celebrated her work with a touring survey exhibition.

Born in the former Soviet Union, NIKITA PASHENKOV has lived in the USA since 1991, where he earnt degrees from Princeton and MIT. He worked with the Aesthetics & Computations Group in the MIT Media Laboratory before moving to live in Tokyo for 2 years where he won the 2001 Tokyo TDC Award for Interactive Design. Nikita's work investigates the intersections between design, programming and electronics technology and has featured in exhibitions at MoMA (New York), Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Eyebeam (New York) and Ginza Gallery (Tokyo).

The work of metalsmith CINNAMON LEE focuses on the relationship between the body and object through interaction. She uses a range of traditional skills and new processes, most recently working with electric illumination and rapid prototyping.

STEPHEN BARRASS is Associate Professor in the School of Creative Communication and co-Director of the Sonic Communications Research Group at the University of Canberra. His artistic works include animated couches, haptic poems, edible soundscapes, virtual opshops, symphonic sculptures and a brain concert.

Further information:
Alexandra Gillespie
Project Manager reSkin
ANAT Media Arts Lab 2006
Email: alexandra[at]anat.org.au

Melinda Rackham
ANAT Executive Director
Tel: (08) 8231 9037
Email: melinda[at]anat.org.au

The ANAT New Media Lab 2006 reSkin is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. reSkin project partners are Australian National University School of Art, Centre for New Media Arts (ANU), Australian National Museum and Craft Australia.

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

Interactive Digital Cinema Workshop

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Call for Participation

Call for Participation :: Interactive Digital Cinema Workshop :: ZKM, Karlsruhe :: October 19 ­ October 25 2006.

Besides effecting production, distribution and projection technologies and procedures the rollout of digital cinema will enable interactive experiences in cinemas even without further major financial investments.

During this intense 5 day-workshop participants will explore the potential for new interactive film theatre experiences starting with a look back at early interactive cinema projects and building on advances in interactive technologies and media usage. (keywords: multi-user <­> single location/several networked locations, live-gaming, VJing, machinima, group-interaction, live cinema, databased narratives, ad-hoc customization of content, live audience participation, expanded cinema, d-cinema-alternate content...)

Sagasnet workshops are aiming in the first place at professionals (developers, writers, producers, designers, programmers, artists, researchers...) coming from MEDIA member countries. Applicants coming from other countries please contact the sagasnet office for details.

Application forms: www.sagas.de
There is a limited budget for scholarships available.

Interactive Digital Cinema Workshop
Preliminary Timetable

Thursday, October 19 2006
Arrival
7.00 p.m. Meet & Greet

Friday, October 20 2006
9.15 a.m. Brunhild Bushoff (sagasnet)
Opening Speech

9.30 a.m. Greg Roach :: Introductionary Session Part 1: Identifying the opportunity.

How digital projection, next generation platforms and the growing pervasiveness of interactivity are combining to create a unique, new opportunity for filmmakers. What separates digital interactive cinema from games, interactive narrative or other forms of new media. The overview will then be followed by a detailed examination of Sony's failed InterFilm project. We'll also look at a brief overview of interactive cinema in general and examine the range of expectations audiences are likely to bring to the genre.

11.00 a.m. Chris Hales :: Kinoautomat Rediscovered

This presentation will explain and contextualise the world's first interactive film system, Kinoautomat, which ran for several hundred performances at the Expo'67 in Montreal. Created in Czechoslovakia as the brainchild of Raduz Cincera, the film¹s seminal interaction and narrative scheme has been much discussed in the academic literature - despite the fact that it had never been publicly performed since 1974. Interactive cinema was most certainly kick-started by the Kinoautomat, even though it predated the use of digital technology (it was shot on film and shown using synchronised projectors). Although Mr Cincera himself died a few years ago, I have conducted research in Prague in collaboration with his eldest daughter to author an interactive DVD using the original material of the film (which was actually entitled "A Man and his House") and have edited a book of 120 pages around the subject of Kinoautomat. Additionally, in February 2006 a Œlive¹ screening was produced at the National Film Theatre in London. The presentation will include a run-through of the DVD. www.kinoautomat.org

12.30 a.m. LUNCH

2.00 p.m. Greg Roach: Introductionary Session Part 2: Possible Modes of Interaction

How might the audience effect and alter the experience? Narrative forms, aesthetic variance and different ways to compute the results of audience choice. Media forms in interactive cinema: film, video and real-time 3D. The implications of media choices on both emotion and interaction. A detailed look at Volumetric Cinematography and it's implications for interactive cinema. Playback engines: from high-end PCs to XBox, xServe, HD DVD, Blu-Ray and PS3 - the choice of platform is more powerful and robust then ever before. How do you know which to choose? The problems of group interaction: input forms (gesture, sounds, buttons, etc), interface constraints, user feedback techniques, signal-to-noise. The tyranny of the majority. Basic production overview: how do you go about combining film making and computer software design?

4.00 p.m. Greg Roach: First Brainstorming Session with assignment for exercise

Saturday, October 21 2006

9.30 a.m. Greg Roach: Presentation and discussion of exercise results

11.00 a.m. Chris Hales

Interactive Film Performance, based on the experience of "Cause and Effect". Since 2002 I have been creating interactive movies specifically for "live" performance to large groups, and have taught numerous workshops from which additional films have been created. This hour-long show will present a variety of these films, each of which can be affected by the audience in a different way, for example audio frequency detection or the video-tracking of a bright light. Most of the films fit into the existing repertoire of "Cause and Effect", a collaboration between myself and Teijo Pellinen, which has performed almost thirty live shows at various venues and events in Europe and North America and from which important experience has been gained. www.causeandeffect.tk

12.30 a.m. LUNCH

2.00 p.m. . Friedrich Kirschner

Using Realtime Engines and Machinima for Audience Participation The Session will introduce the machinima approach of creating live performances with audience interaction - using game engines to produce realtime content that can react to audience participation in a wide variety of ways. Examples and demonstrations will illustrate basic approaches to use this new way of animated filmmaking in a performative context.

4.00 p.m. Greg Roach/ Tom Klinkowstein: Second Brainstorming Session followed by group work sessions

Sunday, October 22 2006

Horizon Projects Workshop

Horizon Projects are proposals for the future created to gain fresh perspective on current creative undertakings. This workshop employs the Horizon Projects premise as a tool to imagine new forms, locations and themes for the interactive cinema concepts already created to that point in the larger workshop.

9.15 a.m. Tom Klinkowstein: Introduction, teams formed, teams work ...

12:00 a.m. Tom Klinkowstein

Proposal presentations by teams from the perspective of the Future Frame of Reference, followed by discussion/ feedback from the other members of the workshop.

1:15 p.m. Lunch

2:15 p.m. Tom Klinkowstein: Proposal presentations continued ...

3.15 p.m. Tom Klinkowstein: Team work sessions

5.00 p.m. Tom Klinkowstein

Presentations with iterated proposals based on morning feedback and suggestions on how what is being proposed for the future might be adapted to current conditions. Wrap-up discussion.

Monday, October 23 2006

9.15 a.m. Greg Roach

Final team formation and reconsidering concepts on the basis of brainstorming and Horizon workshop results, Assignment for building a (paper) prototype Mentored group work session.

12.30 a.m. LUNCH

1.30 p.m. Greg Roach: Mentored group work session

3.00 p.m. Greg Roach: Testing and feed-back

Tuesday, October 24 2006

9.15 a.m. Greg Roach: Mentored group work session; Preparing for final concept presentation.

12.30 a.m. LUNCH

2.00 p.m. Greg Roach: Final concept presentation, discussion and overall evaluation

Wednesday, October 25 2006

Departure

BIOS

Christopher Hales: Artist and researcher specialising in interactive film and video, based in the Smartlab’ research centre of the University of East London. Taught many years in art/design with computers, and studied MA Interactive Multimedia at the Royal College of Art, London. His PhD "Rethinking the Interactive Movie" is due for completion in October 2006. His cdroms were selected at numerous film/multimedia festivals, and his touch-screen installation (showing a dozen or more films) was presented in Seoul, Helsinki, Warsaw, Nagoya, San Francisco and Sydney (amongst other places) and was included in the 2003 "Future Cinema" exhibition curated by the ZKM. He writes frequently about "interactive moving image", has taught over 80 short workshop courses on this subject in numerous institutions in Europe, and is a regular speaker at international events. Recent projects include "Cause and Effect", an experimental interactive cinema performance staged with Finnish colleagues, and a research project in Prague to rediscover the "Kinoautomat" from 1967 - the world's first interactive movie. www.kinoautomat.org www.causeandeffect.tk www.smartlab.uk.com

Friedrich Kirschner is a filmmaker, visual artist and board member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. He recently worked as a senior researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz. He re-purposes computer games to create animated narratives and interactive performances. His award-winning work has been shown at various international animation festivals and exhibitions, including the ZKM Karlsruhe, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Ottawa international Animation festival and the Künstlerhaus in Vienna. He also publishes machinimag, an online magazine focussing on the development of the emerging art form of machinima moviemaking. www.zeitbrand.net friedrich.kirschner[at]zeitbrand.net

Tom Klinkowstein is President and Creative Director of Media A, LLC, an internationally recognized design and consulting group with clients such as NASA, Reuters, the Ford Foundation, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Nissan and Japan Airlines. He has spoken to over 100 art, design, business, political and academic groups, including the United Nations Conference on the Information Society, the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper Hewett Museum of Art and Design, the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, the Industrial Design Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai and the Dutch Design Institute¹s, Doors of Perception conference. Klinkowstein previously was a professor at the West Brabant Art and Design College in the Netherlands and since 2000, an Associate Professor of New Media at Hofstra University on Long Island. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in New York City. His work has been shown in art centers, museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. Mr. Klinkowstein¹s work also can be found in the archive of the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in The Netherlands.

Greg Roach, M.F.A., is the CEO and Artistic Director of HyperBole Studios, which he founded in 1990. For nearly fifteen years Roach has been recognized as a worldwide leader in the field of interactive film, video and storytelling. His company, HyperBole Studios, explores interactive multimedia as a new artistic and cinematic form. In 1990, Roach´s first effort was the creation of an online, interactive digizine - years ahead of the internet explosion. During the two years he published HyperBole magazine, he designed, wrote and produced the world's first interactive, multimedia novel. The Madness of Roland, one of the first non-reference CD-ROM's, which was published to great acclaim. While finishing work on Roland, Greg also wrote, produced and directed a short interactive film called The Wrong Side of Town, a work that the American Film Institute considers to be the "first interactive narrative film." With these two milestones under his belt, Greg began work on Quantum Gate, the industry's first full-length interactive movie, and the first product to use his newly conceived VirtualCinema technology. His first six years in business culminated when Fox approached him and asked him to helm the much sought after X-Files game. Upon its release The X-Files Game exceeded all expectations, premiering at number one in nearly every territory where it was released, and going on to sell over a million copies worldwide. Currently he is primarily focused on the DVD and wireless platforms. The ROM applications which he designed for "The Terminator 2: Extreme" DVD won an IRMA award for best DVD ROM. He is currently working on several DVD and wireless projects for major publishers. Recently, he presented a paper entitled "Imagine Places: Distributed Telepresence Installations for Creating Immersive Historical Reconstructions" at the UNESCO "World Heritage in the Digital Age" conference held in Alexandria, Egypt.

sagasnet
Bavariafilmplatz 7
D-82031 Muenchen-Gruenwald
tel: + 49 89 64 98 11 29 /30
fax: + 49 89 64 98 13 29/30
mobile: + 49 (0) 171 45 28 0 52
URL: http://www.sagasnet.de :: http://www.sagas.de
e-mail sagasnet[at]sagasnet.de :: sagas[at]sagas.de
Skype: brunhildbushoff

sagasnet is a non profit initiative to further interactive content creation in the frame of the MEDIA Programme TRAINING .

Posted by jo at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

Temporary Travel Office

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Irregular Update

The Temporary Travel Office irregular update:

1. The TTO was invited to present our 2004-5 audio tour of the Chicago Technology Park, a self-guided exploration of spatial eugenics in Chicago's Near West Side, in MAPQUEST, an exhibition at PS122 in Manhattan, NY.

Details: Exhibiton on view from September 16 – October 9, 2006 at PS122Gallery, NY. :: Works by: Lize Mogel and Dario Azzellini - Daniel Blochwitz - Cartographic Perspectives: Map Art - Center for Urban Pedagogy (with Eric Schuldenfrei, Marisa Yiu, and Rosten Woo- Ewen Chardronnet - The Friends of William Blake- Elise Gardella - Ryan Griffis/Temporary Travel Office - Ashley Hunt - Lasse Lau - Nadxieli Mannello - Carlos Motta- Sarah Ross - Gregory Sholette - curator Elena Sorokina.

Mapquest brings together work by artists, activists, writers and organizers, involved in experimentation with critical and dissident cartography. The exhibition examines various mapping strategies employed as response to specific social and political issues. Working not unlike investigative journalists, some participants conduct and map in-depth research of themes such as the functioning of private military contractors or recruitment centers. Others design maps as tools, featuring information that can be used to support for social action. In a similar vein they employ mapping strategies to produce alternative knowledge about networks of power and control in urban spaces.

The exhibition ran from September 17 through October 9, 2006 at PS122 Gallery, New York.

Acknowledgements to Benj Gerdes and Daniel Tucker.

2. For the Conflux 2006 conference/festival of psychogeography, the Travel Office led a Parking Public bus tour (actually, a 12 passenger van) through downtown Brooklyn during a rainy rush hour. Parking Public is an ongoing series of tours and investigations into the mechanics and politics of parking lots in the United States. Despite the negative conditions, the van was full. Sites included the Grant Ave. Municipal Parking Field in east Brooklyn, an Edison Properties surface lot, and the BAM Local Development Corporation's South Site (a former city owned parking lot now the future site of a Frank Gehry designed theater).

A text summarizing the research (titled: Public Parking Revisited: The Storage of Utopia), with some specific emphasis on Brooklyn is now available online as part of Glowlab's 10th issue of their regular publication. http://glowlab.com/lab2/issue.php?project_id=143&issue_name=13

3. COMING SOON! The Parking Public project will soon have a self-guided audio tour for each of the four completed locations (Downtown Los Angeles,CA; Hollywood, CA; Champaign, IL; Brooklyn, NY) and video document. http://temporarytraveloffice.net/hollywood/parking.html

Thanks for your attention.

Let us take you somewhere,
visit the Temporary Travel Office online http://www.temporarytraveloffice.net

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

September 25, 2006

Antoine Schmitt & Jean-Jacques Birgé

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Nabaz'Mob: an opera

Atari is happy to present Nabaz'Mob: an opera for 100 communicating rabbits by Antoine Schmitt & Jean-Jacques Birgé featuring Nabaztag by violet.

Installation http://nabazmob.free.fr/ from September 27th to October 1st 2006 during Wired Magazine's nextfest at Atari Showroom Javits Center, HALL 3B, Chelsea, NY.

100 Nabaztag meet at Javits Center to all play together an opera specially composed by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé after an original idea by Guylaine Monnier. Inviting John Cage, Steve Reich, Conlon Nancarrow and György Ligeti, this musical and choreographic partition in three movements, transmitted via wi-fi, plays on the tension between the music ensemble communion and individual behavior to create a strong and involved showpiece.

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

ARCHITECTURE AND SITUATED TECHNOLOGIES

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A 3-Day Symposium

The Center for Virtual Architecture at the University at Buffalo, the Institute for Distributed Creativity, and The Architectural League of New York present: ARCHITECTURE AND SITUATED TECHNOLOGIES :: October 19-21, 2006 @ The Urban Center & Eyebeam, New York City.

A 3-day symposium bringing together researchers and practitioners from art, architecture, technology and sociology to explore the emerging role of "situated" technologies in the design and inhabitation of the contemporary metapolis. Organized by Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, and Mark Shepard :: Participants: Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Richard Coyne, Michael Fox, Anne Galloway, Charlie Gere, Usman Haque, Natalie Jeremijenko, Sheila Kennedy, Eric Paulos, Karmen Franinovic, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Kazys Varnelis :: Contact: Jessica Blaustein - blaustein[at]league.org

Since the late 1980s, computer scientists and engineers have been researching ways of embedding computational intelligence into the built environment. Looking beyond the model of personal computing, which placed the computer in the foreground of our attention, "ubiquitous" computing takes into account the social dimension of human environments and allows computers themselves to vanish into the background. No longer solely virtual, human interaction with computers becomes socially integrated and spatially contingent as everyday objects and spaces are linked through networked computing.

Today, researchers focus on how situational parameters inform the design of a wide range of mobile, wearable, networked, distributed and context-aware devices. Incorporating an awareness of cultural context, accrued social meanings, and the temporality of spatial experience, situated technologies privilege the local, context-specific and spatially contingent dimension of their use.

Despite the obvious implications for the built environment, architects have been largely absent from this discussion, and technologists have been limited to developing technologies that take existing architectural topographies as a given context to be augmented.

At the same time, to the extent that early adopters of these technologies have focused on commercial, military and law enforcement applications, we can expect to see new forms of consumption, warfare and control emerge.

This symposium seeks to occupy the imaginary of these emerging technologies and propose alternate trajectories for their development.

What opportunities and dilemmas does a world of networked "things" pose for architecture and urbanism? What distinguishes the emerging urban sociality enabled by mobile technologies and wireless networks? What post-optimal design strategies and tactics might we propose for an age of responsive environments, smart materials, embodied interactions, and participatory networks? How might this evolving relation between people and "things" alter the way we occupy, navigate, and inhabit the city? What is the status of the material object in a world privileging networked relations between "things"? How do distinctions between space and place change within these networked media ecologies? How do the social uses of these technologies, including (non-) affective giving, destabilize rationalized "use-case scenarios" designed around the generic consumer?

Through a combination of presentations, discussions, and performative design scenarios organized around the notion of "encounter" with the city, this symposium will explore how architecture might contribute to the development of situated technologies, and how a critical engagement with these technologies might extend architecture beyond itself.

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Architecture and Situated Technologies is a co-production of the Center for Virtual Architecture, The Institute for Distributed Creativity, and the Architectural League of New York, as part of the League's celebration of the 125th anniversary of its founding.

Architecture and Situated Technologies is supported by the J. Clawson Mills Fund of the Architectural League and is supported in part by the School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo.

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The Center for Virtual Architecture at the University at Buffalo

The Center for Virtual Architecture' research is ocated at the intersection of architecture, new media and computational technologies. We are interested in the possibilities offered by computational systems for rethinking human interaction with (and within) the built environment. Our focus areas include learning environments, design environments, responsive architecture and locative media. Computational technology provides both a means and a medium for this research: an operative paradigm for conceptualizing relations between people, information, and the material fabric of everyday life.

The Institute for Distributed Creativity

The research of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC) focuses on sociable media and media theory with an emphasis on social justice. Its mailing list is a vivid discoursive platform for the social implications of emerging forms of networked sociality. The iDC is an international network that combines collaborative research, events, and documentation.

The Architectural League of New York

The Architectural League of New York is an independent forum for the
presentation and discussion of creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related design disciplines. Founded in 1881, the League promotes excellence and innovation in architecture and urbanism by furthering the education of architects and designers, and by communicating to a broad audience the importance of architecture in public life. Through an active schedule of programs, the League provides a venue for contemporary work and ideas, identifies and encourages the work of talented young architects, creates opportunities for exploring new approaches to problems in the built environment, and fosters a stimulating community for dialogue and debate. All of the League¹s work is shaped by its ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and international exchange, and by its concern for the quality of architecture and city form as critical components of a vital and dynamic culture.

Posted by jo at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

Knowbotic Research

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Room for Manoeuvre

Galerija Skuc, Ljubljana, October 5 - 27, 2006 :: Knowbotic Research - Room for Manoeuvre; four vehicles: white_sovereign, passion_cleaner, tiger_stealth, blackbenz :: Exhibition opening: Thursday, October 5, 2006, 20.00 h.

The exhibition 'Room for Manoeuvre' is the new solo-show of the artist group Knowbotic Research (KRcF), known for their advanced network and media works since the founding of the group in 1991. In a specially designed audio-visual installation including four video projections, 'Room for Manoeuvre' presents four of the 'vehicles' that Knowbotic Research have developed for their current projects, and places these vehicles in a series of hypothetical scenarios. The exhibition explores the meaning of codes and actions in public spaces. It proposes possibilities for acting through strategies of transcoding in these spaces of power, of scientific knowledge, of surveillance, and spaces of migration. Going beyond these possibilities, the show suggests to the audience that such 'vehicles' might in fact be used for other, self-designed strategic purposes.

The projects “naked bandit / here, not her / white bandit" (2004/05), “Passion 5" (2005), “be prepared! tiger!" (2006) and “BlackBenz Race" (2006-) use different vehicles to act as catalysts for such transcodings: in the first case it is an autonomous flying robot which produces technologically coded forms of sovereignty under the conditions of a (university) research laboratory; in the second case, a street cleaning machine clears up the petrified political passions of a May demonstration; the amateur-built stealth boat, invisible for radar, processes the intercultural translations between the US stealth bomber and the tactical speedboats of the Tamil Tigers; and in a car race, a caravan of black Mercedes cars traverses the translocal conditions of the Albanian space of migration. The term transcoding describes the translation of abstract facts and conditions which usually evade public representation, into temporary visibilities that can be dealt with. These facts cannot be described by simple representations in clearly defined, local contexts, but require networked scenarios within which they can be reflected and acted upon.

In the exhibition, some original vehicles (white_sovereign, tiger_stealth) are on display, as well as the 'Adaption KITs' with which normal vehicles can be transformed into passion_cleaners and blackbenz. The atmospheric and metaphorically rich short film loops. They are projected in four separate rooms of the gallery, each showing one of the vehicles in action, pointing to potential applications that they can be put to. Brochures and printed tableaus offer information about the vehicles in the form of manuals through which their usages can be further explored. A specially designed sound environment developed together with Roly Roos and Joana Aderi traverses the entire gallery and sends echoes and acoustic reverberations of the different projects through the exhibition space.

The text publication accompanying the exhibition includes essays by Andreas Broeckmann, Stefan Riekeles, Giaco Schiesser, Sabine Schmidt, Felix Stalder, Stefan Wagner, and Knowbotic Research.

Exhibition by Knowbotic Research (Christian Hübler, Alexander Tuchacek, Yvonne Wilhelm) in collaboration with Simon Jaquemet, Roly Roos, Joana Aderi, Peter Sandbichler, Yannick Fournier.

Curated by: Andreas Broeckmann and Stefan Riekeles (assistant)

Production: Skuc Gallery in cooperation with Knowbotic Research More about the group: http://www.krcf.org

Supported by Bundesamt für Kultur BAK - sitemapping, Pro Helvetia, Kunst Öffentlichkeit Zürich, 'PubliCity' - 29. Duisburger Akzente, Kulturforum der Österreichischen Botschaft Laibach.

The programme of Skuc Gallery is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Cultural Department of the City of Ljubljana.

Galerija Skuc - Stari trg 21 - 1000 Ljubljana - T: +386 1 251 65 40 -
http://www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si

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

FOLLY LAUNCHES F.CITY

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FESTIVAL OF DIGITAL CULTURE

FOLLY LAUNCHES F.CITY – FESTIVAL OF DIGITAL CULTURE :: 29 September to 21 October. In Lancaster and online at www.folly.co.uk :: Private View - Thursday 28h September, 6.30pm, Venue: CityLab, 4-5, Dalton Square, Lancaster LA1 4PP, 01524 582114.

folly is launching f.city, a major festival of digital art and culture including exhibitions, events, performances, talks, screenings and podcasts from late September. The festival features Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders, an exhibition of work existing at the point of convergence between art, architecture and design.

Other events include the first major field trial Steve Symons’ GPS virtual sound environment Aura, the launch of two online works from boredomresearch and Adele Prince; a collective dance performance developed in partnership with Ludus Dance; a 3D films night and workshop with Julian Oliver; podcasts; music events and Open Source workshops.

More information is available at www.folly.co.uk

New SMS info service: If you send us your mobile number, we’ll make sure you hear about how you can get involved in the f.city events. Simply email your mobile number to E: enquiries[at]folly.co.uk

PERIMETERS, BOUNDARIES AND BORDERS SYMPOSIUM

The f.city exhibition presented by Fast-uk and folly, Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders presents practitioners that blur the conventional boundaries of sculpture, industrial design and architecture through the use of digital technology. The exhibition asks the question “What new types of objects and environments are being created by art and design professionals through the use of computer-aided design, data processing and manufacturing technologies?”

The Symposium, the afternoon of the private view, is an opportunity to hear those practitioners talk about their work and discuss how digital technologies have enabled a convergence of disciplines, creative practice and production techniques.

The symposium is free, but booking is essential.
To book, telephone 01524 388550 or email enquiries[at]folly.co.uk.
Venue: St. Martin's College, Lancaster Campus, Bowerham Road, Lancaster LA1 3JD, 01524 384384
Date: Thursday 28 September, 1 – 5pm

www.fastuk.org.uk
www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk
www.folly.co.uk

Supported by Fast-uk, MIRIAD and Arts Council England

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

Upstage

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Three Events

1. UpStage Workshop at the Dunedin Fringe Festival - Wednesday 4 October
2. Familiar Features - Avatar Body Collision's current work in progress - Saturday 7 October
3. UpStage Presentation in Wellington - Thursday 12 October

If you're not in Dunedin or Wellington, don't worry - you can join us online for part of the workshop and for "Familiar Features". Read on for details ...

1. UpStage Workshop, 12.30-5.30pm (NZ time), Wednesday 4 October :: The workshop is part of the Blue Oyster Gallery's "Performance Art Series" within the Dunedin Fringe Festival. It is a hands-on workshop in which 12 participants will learn the basics of UpStage and create short performances. The performances will be shown in UpStage from 4pm (NZ time) on Wednesday 4 October. To join the performances online, go to http://upstage.org.nz:8084 at 4pm (NZ time). If you are in Dunedin and want to register for the workshop, contact Charlotte at Blue Oyter Gallery, boat[at]blueoyster.org.nz. The fee is koha/donation.

2. Familiar Features by Avatar Body Collision, 12.30pm (NZ time), Saturday 7 October :: Avatar Body Collision invites you to Put yourself in the Picture with our current work in progress, "Familiar Features", designed for both online and on-site audiences. Go to here for more information. The presentation is also part of the Blue Oyster Gallery's "Performance Art Series", and two colliders will participate in a panel discussion at the gallery on Sunday 8th.

3. UpStage Presentation @ MediaLab (Wellilngton), 6pm Thursday 12 October :: If you're in Wellington, please join the UpStage team and our partners to mark the beginning of "UpStage Phase 2" - the development of the software to its second release and community workshops to promote UpStage as an accessible platform for community content and projects. Please RSVP to Meremeraea Cowan, email meremaraea[at]medialab.co.nz or phone (04) 381 4468.

Helen Varley Jamieson: helen[at]creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

Paradiso presents

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Ooglive: Artists Live Commentary on the News

"You're going to be told a lot of things. You get told things every day that don't happen. It doesn't seem to bother people. It's printed in the press. The world thinks all these things happen. They never happened. Everyone's so eager to get the story, before in fact the story's there. The world is constantly being fed things that haven't happened. All I can tell you is, It hasn't happened. But it's going to happen." Donald Rumsfeld—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing.

Paradiso presents "Ooglive" Artists Live Commentary on the News. At Picnic at night Friday 29 September, 2006 :: Westergasfabriek Amsterdam Starts 20:30 uur :: Door open 20.00 uur :: Price Picnic at night: € 17,50.

Ooglive is a live evening program in the Westergasfabriek in which audiovisual and performing artists comment on news in a direct and visual way. Ooglive is an evening divided in two parts about news, arts and media. In Ooglive the audience will experience the scale, urgency and diversity of the news, placing the audience in the middle of the news experience.

In Ooglive more then 35 well known artists from Holland and abroad will be presenting works most of which will be unique pieces made for this Ooglive, which can only be seen at this event. The first part of the program, 'The Interface', takes place on and around an interface, projected on a cinematic scale and inspired by the organized hysteria of 24 hour TV news channels where all media streams converge onto a single screen. The multiple possibilities of multi-media and live performance will be combined: from SMS to print media, from pre-recorded presentations to live feeds, from visual to performing artists. The interface will be developed by Joes Koppers , whose work has recently been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

For the second part of the program, called 'The Newslounge' the audience will be invited to come to 'Zuiveringshal Oost,' In a bazaar like environment, Ooglive will present installations, performances and VJ's. Here Ooglive will join other acts which are part of the Picnic at Night event. Amongst others: Riciotti Ensemble and Pipslab. Along with enjoying the performances and installations, the audience can have a drink in the many lounge area's and dance to the beat of DJ Phill Horneman.

Ooglive, the Interface, presents audio-visual contributions by: Annie Abrahams, Jonathan Barnbrook, Persijn Broersen en Margit Lucács, Cut 'n Paste, Eddie D., Robert Hamelijnck and Nienke Terpsma (Fucking Good Art), Jonathan Harris, Han Hoogerbrugge, Jimpunk, Max Kisman, Jeroen Kooijmans, Yvonne Kroese, Nils Mühlenbruch, Jochem Niemandsverdriet, Richard Rogers, Robin Sloan, Doron Solomons, Theatre of War, Vandejong, Jody Zellen and Sylvie Zijlmans.

and live performance by: Sonja Dover, Yvonne Kroese, Jochem Niemandsverdriet, PJ Roggeband, Richard Rogers, Frank Starik, Theatre of War, Dick Tuinder and Peter de Wit. host: Bart Oomen

live music by: Han Buhrs and the POW ensemble
interface design: Joes Koppers en Bente van Bourgondiën

Ooglive, the Newslounge, presents installations by: Bass Beek, Cut'n Paste, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht school of Visual Communications, Kesselskramer and Mauzz. Performance and installations by: The Geuzen, Kwasten met die Gasten en Lancel en Maat. VJ-ing by: SF&L and VJ-Moto. artistic director: Nanette Hoogslag production: Maarten Duinker, Paradiso

For more information about Ooglive and the participating artists, please check the website www.ooglive.com

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

No2Pho/notovo research project

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Happy New Ears (festival for New Music), Kortrijk (be)

notovo at Happy New Ears (festival for New Music), Kortrijk (be) :: The No2Pho/notovo research project: investigates the behaviour of language in its many appearances: textual, sonic and visual, as well as gestural or body language. How do these disparate elements relate to each other and how do they organize within a system which includes human and computer as a sender and a receiver [and vice versa].

The notovo-installation [article (PDF)]: as a generative sound installation NoToVo (noise to voice) plays with a connected set of elements. It is composed of dissonant synthetic voices, changing in real time from speech to sound. A physical network and a virtual network. People and voices. Wireless headphones and spatialized soundsources. People walk their traject through space. Their localisation and orientation is tracked. These data modulate the behaviour of realtime generated synthetic voices. As such, a conversation can be physically crossed and experienced according to the visitors' own position. Voices are layered and mixed by movements and trajects through space: the visitor becomes the performer.

No2Pho/notovo is developed by so-on (a collaboration between sukandar kartadinata, johannes taelman, edo paulus, billy bultheel and annemie maes). With the support of the VAF (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds).

http://so-on.be
http://okno.be/?id=954
http://happynewears.be

location: Happy New Ears festival, september 23rd --> oktober 8th
meetingpoint: busdascoop - kapucijnenstraat 10 - 8500 kortrijk
opening: saturday september 23rd from 2pm till 8.30pm
open: every monday, wednesday, friday and saturday from 2pm -> 8.30pm; sundays from 2pm -> 6pm

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Dartmouth College

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Senior Position in the Digital Humanities

Dartmouth College is pleased to announce the creation of a senior position in the Digital Humanities for a newly endowed Chair in innovative fields. The successful applicant should be committed to inter-disciplinary collaboration, technological innovation, and creating curricular links within the Humanities and across divisions. The position offers the opportunity to define a new area of research and teaching, building on Dartmouth’s existing strengths in the Humanities and Computing,

The field of research and teaching is open; we seek candidates with practical and/or theoretical expertise in one or several of the following disciplines in the Arts and the Humanities: visual arts, screen studies, new media, performance arts, music and sound, film, TV/Video, and literature. Expertise in computer hardware and/or software will be welcome but is not essential.

The role of the Chair in Digital Humanities is intended to be broad in scope, potentially incorporating current or future initiatives in cyber-culture and the creation, performance, and critical study of digital arts, including a consideration of the socio-political and theoretical implications of new artistic technologies. The endowment for this Chair provides additional funds for projects involving research and teaching in the Digital Humanities. The successful candidate will be located in a single Dartmouth department or program, or jointly appointed to one or more departments or programs. Considerable flexibility exists regarding joint appointments, which may cross departmental or even divisional boundaries.

One of the most diverse institutions of higher education in New England, Dartmouth College is an equal opportunity/ affirmative action employer and has a strong commitment to diversity. In that spirit, we are particularly interested in receiving applications from a broad spectrum of people, including women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, and veterans.

The Search Committee will begin reviewing applications after October 1, 2006. Applications will be considered until the position is filled.

Please send letter of application, CV, and the names of three references to:

Gerd Gemünden
Chair Search Committee in Digital Humanities
Dept. of German Studies
6084 Dartmouth Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755 USA

Digital Humanities Chair Will Address Emerging Field

Through funding from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, a longtime benefactor of the College, Dartmouth has created the new post of Digital Humanities Chair, one of two Distinguished Professorships in Emerging Fields in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences endowed by the foundation.

The Digital Humanities Chair, a senior-level appointment for which a national search is being conducted, was created to lead Dartmouth's efforts to integrate digital culture and innovation with the humanities across disciplinary and departmental lines. Professor of German Studies Gerd Gemünden, who chairs the search committee, explains, "The digital revolution affects all fields-how we learn, how we write. By creating the new chair, we are acknowledging the significance of the digital revolution."

Carol Folt, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and professor of biological sciences, says the College was motivated by a need to integrate constantly evolving technology with its long-standing commitment to the humanities. "In creating the Digital Humanities Chair, the Dartmouth administration is seeking an academic of the highest caliber who can coalesce nascent efforts, build on core strengths ripe for advancement, effect major changes in curriculum and scholarly development, and influence global discourse," she says.

Gemünden says the position is open to scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and that the job will require the new chair to work across disciplines and help coalesce the digital humanities work already underway at Dartmouth. The new chair could be housed in almost any department, or possibly be a dual appointment. A second innovative faculty position is in development at Dartmouth as provided for by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation's grant.

Already, several other institutions of higher learning have begun exploring similar models of integrating digital and analog culture. The Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, and the MIT Program in Media Arts and Sciences are serving as curricular means of exploring the relationship between the humanities and information technologies. Given the scale and ubiquity of the digital revolution, Dartmouth's new chair will work in a challenging field. As Gemünden notes, "The classes of 2008 and 2009 have never really lived without Google. That puts the burden of learning on us."

Posted by jo at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

A Performance by Coco Fusco

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Women and Power in the New America

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN: Women and Power in the New America, a performance by Coco Fusco :: Presented by PS 122 in conjunction with Creative Time :: September 28 - October 1 :: Thursday - Saturday 8:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 5:00 p.m. :: Tickets: $20, Students: $15 :: To purchase tickets call: 212 352 3103 or go to www.theatermania.com.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN is Fusco’s performance monologue about the expanding role of American women in the War on Terror. She speaks as a female graduate of interrogator training school. Using power-point and simulated live feed video from actual interrogations, Fusco gives a briefing about how a career in military intelligence offers great opportunities to emancipated women of the 21st century. Her performance explores how the current administration’s rationalizations of detention and prisoner abuse have led to a reconsideration of the possible legitimacy of torture. Fusco also raises questions about feminism in the 21st century and the ways that political conservatives have appropriated the language of women’s liberation.

Posted by jo at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2006

Upgrade! Tel Aviv + Jerusalem

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Yair Reshef + Tsila Hassine

Upgrade! Tel Aviv + Jerusalem :: gathering at 20:00, Tuesday 26th, 2006, @ Daila, Shlomtsion Hamalka st. 4, Jerusalem, free entrance.

Yair Reshef: The perfect Mousetrap :: Ultimately, we experience every interactive system as a risky game. Interactivity always implies the use of energy to initiate and manifest a relationship of call and response. This relationship is bordering on the abusive: the user, the victim, is put by the abuser in an uncertain situation, never fully sure what kind of reactions his actions will yield. Interactive systems never outrun the dangerous, but the danger is downplayed by the user basic trust in the benign intentions of the abuser. The contribution of the victim to his own downfall has been part of warfare from the very beginning and is widely used in guerrilla tactics. It is the very essence of The Booby-trap. But this use of other's energy and motivation can also be applied for navigation and exploration of the system.

Tsila Hassine: The Internet: Who's afraid of too much information? :: In this talk, Tsila Hassine will present three works that tackle some of the crucial issues involved in living in the networked galaxy. These works suggest ways of critically engaging with the Internet's visible matter, and attempt to reveal its dark matter. Through Shmoogle, Ctrl-F Reader and the Historiography Tracer, Tsila conveys her unique approach to the ways the Net can be used and abused.

Tsila Hassine is a media artist/designer whose works deal with the effects of media technology on our culture and daily life. She has recently earned an MFA degree from the Piet Zwart Institute's Media Design program, and currently holds a research residency at the design department of the Jan Van Eyck Academie.

Posted by jo at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Regine Debatty

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Interview of Tom Igoe + Tad Hirsch's Tripwire

I subscribe to the feed of several del.icio.us tags such as tangible_computing, physical_computing and you know how this works, if a webpage or a person is regarded as particularly interesting resource, they get tagged again and again, that's how i get to read the name of Tom Igoe every week. Igoe is Area Head for physical computing classes at Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University. His courses invite students to explore ways to allow digital technologies to sense and respond to a wider range of human physical expression and i've blogged dozens of projects that come right from his courses. Tom Igoe's background is in theatre, and his work today centers on physical interaction related to live performance and public space. Along with Dan O’Sullivan, he co-authored “Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers.” His own projects include an internet-aware player piano; a clock that reads emails (my favourite); and a series of interactive dioramas, created in collaboration with M.R. Petit. He has consulted for The American Museum of the Moving Image, EAR Studio, Diller + Scofidio Architects, Eos Orchestra, etc.

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[...] As far as physical computing artwork that's impressed me lately, there's one piece that I really liked, featured at ISEA this year: Tad Hirsch's Tripwire. He basically made sound sensing coconuts that he hung in the trees in San Jose, and each time the noise levels from planes exceeded the acceptable maximum, the coconuts called the city's noise abatement complaint line. He's done a number of really smart activist works like this that use humor tactically. The other thing that impressed me about this piece was that it was the one from the festival that made the most earnest attempt to try to address a real problem of the city hosting the festival. Many of the other pieces could have been done in any city, but this one attempted to give something back to the citizens of San Jose, by drawing the attention of the city bureaucracy to something it tends to ignore. I thought that was very gracious of him. [read the full interview at we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Lisbon

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Santiago Ortiz

Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea welcomes next Wednesday, September 27th @19:00, Upgrade! Lisbon’s monthly gathering featuring digital artist Santiago Ortiz. Entrance is free and drinks will be served.

Santiago Ortiz will be presenting artificial life and information representation works. His projects relate to the idea (scientific or not) of life. The interactive processes happening inside a cell, between cells, inside a living organism, between living organisms of the same species or from different ones, especially those processes dealing with information, surpass largely in speed, creativity and diversity, human imagination. Both digital art and information representation science can find in life a multitude of processes, devices and ideas.

Genetics represents life as a group of cells loading, sharing and replicating code. Code, a simplifies representation of language, can also be found in the history of human culture (in literature, laws, music, religion…). Digital art creates narrative complexities through code. In all these examples code can be shared and replicated.

The writing of performative code, creative programming, allows writing code that will process other code, that simulates living interactions and constitutes information that will generate more information.

In his presentation for the Upgrade! Lisbon, Santiago Ortiz will show and discuss some of his projects dealing with artificial life and the representation of biological information. In the end, Ortiz will present a small musical performance based on a research addressing the musicalization of a virtual life model, in collaboration with Miguel Cardoso.

Santiago Ortiz was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1975. Artist, mathematician and researcher on subjects such as art, cience and representational spaces, He is the co-founder of Blank, a digital art and culture magazine and of Bestiario.

For more information visit Upgrade! Lisbon at http://www.lisboa20.pt/upgrade

Posted by luis at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

Vida 9.0 Eighth Edition

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Art & Artificial Life International Competition

Fundación Telefónica launches the eighth LIFE 9.0 international awards, the purpose of which is to acknowledge excellence in artistic creation carried out in the field of “artificial life” and associated disciplines.

The event is addressed at all artistic projects that explore the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life, and innovative projects that develop the field of Artificial Life. In previous years, award-winning projects have included robots, electronic avatars, chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses and virtual ecologies that evolved with the interaction of the participant. Applicants can view all these winning projects from previous years at the Internet portal of LIFE, at http://www.telefonica.es/vida.

The themes on which the contents of this year’s awards have been organized are, among others: autonomous agents that give form to and interpret our environment saturated with data, various artefacts (robots, Artificial Intelligence agents, wetware, etc., that question pre-existing notions of what is “human”, “natural” and what it means to be alive), how to create empathy between artificial entities and human beings, anthropomorphization of cyberspace and its inhabitants, and how interactive systems can be designed to arouse interest in the emerging field of “artificial life.”, etc.

The competition is open to participants from all round the world and each of them may only present one project completed after September 2004 which will consist of a video with the project in which the images will be accompanied by an audio narration explaining the artistic concept and the technological execution of the project, plus a transcript of this explanation. They must also attach a brief biography (150-200 words), a description of the concept and the technique of the project and between one and three images (slides, photos or high quality CD or Internet digitalizations). The language used may be Spanish or English and the total duration of the video may be between 5 and 10 minutes.

To register, candidates should follow the rules for submission, complete and sign the application form on http://www.telefonica.es/vida and send it with the tape or DVD before 16th October 2006, to any of the sites of the Fundación Telefónica in Spain (Madrid) or Latin America (Mexico D.F., Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Lima), the addresses of which can be found at the end of the announcement on http://www.telefonica.es/vida

The works submitted will be examined by an international panel of judges that will meet in Madrid as of 2nd November 2006: Sally Jane Norman, France/New Zealand; Jonah Brucker-Cohen, USA; Mónica Bello Bugallo, Spain; Daniel Canogar, Spain; José-Carlos Mariátegui, Peru; and Nell Tenhaaf, Canada.

A total of 20,000 euros will be awarded for the three projects selected by the judges: First Prize, 10,000 euros; Second Prize, 7,000 euros; and Third Prize, 3,000 euros. The prize-winning projects will have the possibility of being displayed at exhibitions organized by Fundación Telefónica or in which it participates.

Incentive to Iberoamerican productions
The second category of the competition fosters the production of pieces using Artificial Life techniques and associated disciplines, in the Iberoamerican field. With prize money of 20,000 euros, this category will award between one and three proposals that show a relevant concept, a proven quality in earlier works and a clear capacity of the artist to produce the piece. This prize is conceived as an incentive to production, not as a subsidy to cover the total expenses of a project, and therefore the participant’s ability to achieve technical, economic and logistical infrastructure to do the piece will be valued. Each project must be described in a text not exceeding 2,000 words and which must include details of the concepts and techniques planned to develop the piece. The competition is open to participants from all of Iberoamerica, Spain and Portugal and proposals may be sent in Spanish, Portuguese or English. Each participant, however, may only submit one work.

Posted by luis at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

MESH #19:

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Global/Regional Perspectives

Experimenta will launch the latest issue of MESH at Newcastle Region Art Gallery! :: Friday 29 September 2006, 6.30pm :: 1 Laman Street, Newcastle.

MESH#19 looks at the relation of the local to the global by focussing on specific media art and screen-based practices around the world. The six articles commissioned by Experimenta highlight contemporary media arts that are an expression of current cultural movements in Europe, South America, the Middle East, New Zealand and North and Central America.

Each article provides insightful and thought-provoking explorations of current trends in the creative applications of technological development, the cultural contexts from which media art practice emerges, and cultural reactions to the practice and exhibition of media art.

With full-colour images, references for further research and highlighted key words and concepts, Mesh #19 is an excellent resource for artists, curators, writers, researchers, students as well as those with a general interested in contemporary arts.

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F FOR FAKE [NET ART]: Or how I Iearned to manipulate the media to tell the truth by DOMENICO QUARANTA, Europe. Translation from Italian by Anna Carruthers.

Media manipulation is probably one of the greatest issues this Millennium. Now more than ever, truth is unstable, nebulous and difficult to grasp as it is hidden under layers and layers of information. But if the media manipulate truth, they can be manipulated in turn to interfere with the flux of information, so as to make it clearer or even thicker. This article aims to explain the rules at play in today's European net art, and reflect on the relationship between reality and fiction, information and manipulation, the artificial and authentic, drawing on the latest amazing fake by 0100101110101101.org (United We Stand), UBERMORGEN.COM's [F]originals (forged originals) and the cruel hyper-realism of the Where-next website (MOLLEINDUSTRIA + GUERRIGLIAMARKETING). PDF version.

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TELECOMMUNICATION ART IN BRAZIL by MARTHA CARRER CRUZ GABRIEL, Global Practices :: Artist and scholar Martha Gabriel takes up the dialogue about telecommunications in the context of language as our main mode of communication and shared meaning and discusses the inherent challenges of translation. The artworks she presents include those that use telematics, SMS (short message service), mobile phones and telephone on the web. Gabriel details an ongoing net.art project titled VoiceMosaic that she designed and presented at SIGGRAPH Art Gallery 2006 which uses intelligent voice technologies on the web, converging phone and web.

This article is about artworks that use telecommunications technologies and aims to discuss some Brazilian artists whose works are representative of telecommunication art. Of course I do not have the pretension here of covering the entire Brazilian panorama of artistic manifestation in telecommunication art since Brazil is a country with continental territorial dimensions, with cultural differences among regions and broad artistic production. The aim here is to give a ‘taste’ of the Brazilian scene in this area through the presented artists and their works. PDF version.

Posted by jo at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2006

Langlois Foundation Grants for Researchers in Residence

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Call for Submissions

This year, the deadline for submission of research proposals for the Grants for Researchers in Residence Program is October 31, 2006.

A number of changes were recently made to this program, including the introduction of two research components: CR+D documentary collections and archival fonds and Information architecture and online publishing. As in previous years, the Daniel Langlois Foundation will award two research grants for 2007. The proposals selected will allow researchers to work at the Langlois Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D).

Anyone interested in submitting a research proposal is asked to read the new program guidelines [PDF]. An application form is available online, and must be used to submit a proposal.

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

Re:Transmission Event and Network

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Invitation to Participate

Invitation to participate in Re:Transmission Event and Network :: Dates: Friday 13th – Sunday 15th October, 2006 :: Location: Limehouse Town Hall, London, also British Film Institute and RampArt Social Centre.

Re:Transmission is a gathering of citizen journalists, video makers, artists, programmers and web producers who are developing online video distribution tools for social justice and media democracy. Earlier this year thirty groups met in Rome for four days of intensive workshops, discussions and presentations to identify key infrastructural needs of video based alternative media production. The Transmission event provided a vibrant cross-pollination of projects in the wider context of Internet communication; for reports go here.

Based on existing work by groups active in the field for many years, the meeting successfully identified a clear set of projects required for alternative media groups to collaborate on, with the goal of overcoming infrastructural problems of increasing visibility and cooperation.

This event is entitled 'Re:Transmission' because participants will be passing on and developing some of the ideas, contacts, plans and processes begun at the
Rome Transmission meeting.

Citizen journalism and independent artists representing themselves on-line is a big focus of this event. As we witness the growth of user-contributed content, people continue to blog, upload, pirate, learn. The Free Open Source Software community has provided a wide number of production and distribution tool on the Net, while the Creative Commons copyleft licence offers a way to share content without commercial exploitation. The event has been organised to add to the work of these and other communities to contribute to the building of real world usable tools for distributing and sharing video online.

The gathering is participant-run and will made up of discussions, workshops, screenings, training, presentations and a 24/7 lab.

All welcome but workshop places are limited so please book early. RSVP to: r_transmission[at]yahoo.com

Ways to get involved:

Participate by suggesting and running a workshop or take part in an existing working group; contribute films for screenings, offer specific trainings and presentations. Alternatively you can volunteer to help with one of the areas of coordination. Read our call for co-ordinators here.

Post a story to the website and/or join the discussion list.

Workshops, screenings and presentations at the Limehouse are free, but donations most welcome to cover costs. BFI events are ticketed, see below.

If you want to speak to a human being about how you can help, press enquiries or for further information please contact:
Adele: 07733 227 335
Simon: 07904 066 702
Mick: 07913882193

Summary of Events

Re:Transmission screenings / discussions at the British Film Institute

Saturday 14th October

14:00: Citizen Video: Urgent, politicised, this programme of contextualised screenings explores the emergence of citizen video reporting on the Net.

16:00: Soft TV: Software cultures are changing the way that we make, distribute and watch moving-image, creating new opportunites for participation,
collaboration and content-sharing.

This is a ticketed event, tickets cost £6 each, or £9 for both, concesssions available, contact BFI box office on (0)20 7928 3232 or book online at https://tickets.bfi.org.uk

Main Programme of Events at Limehouse Town Hall

Friday 13th October:
12:00/19:00: Workshops, Presentations and Discussions
[further details to come].
20:00: Film Screening – co-ordinated by
Clearerchannel.org.

Saturday 14th October

09:00/12:00: Workshops. [further details to come] 20:00: Open Access Film Screening; co-ordinated by Collective Vision.

Sunday 15th October
10:30 / 17:30 Workshops, Presentations and Discussions. [further details to come]

Friday – Sunday

On-going 24/7 Hacklab and tech experimentation sessions at the Rampart Centre. Bring what you expect to find.

Posted by jo at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

CAFKA.07: Haptic

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Call for Proposals

Our physical connection to objects and spaces is essential to our being in the world: in the environments we inhabit, in the ways we relate to one another, and in the products we create. From the distinctive craftsmanship of the Waterloo Region’s German and Mennonite founders to the region’s current role in shaping the technological future we see a consistent understanding of the importance of haptic relationships from the outstanding design and use of materials in early furniture to the engineering prowess and innovation in our high-tech and research sector. This local context gives us a unique perspective from which to investigate the interplay of science, technology and artistic vision in the formation and understanding of our connections to places and things.

We ask artists to consider actual or metaphorical possibilities enabled by the haptic connection, whether achieved through exceptional handling of traditional materials or of new media. Artists may wish to consider how contemporary art practice, with its emphasis on the new, co-exists with and incorporates the skills, techniques and values of the past: to explore haptic relationships, or how contemporary art practice places into question the Cartesian duality of mind and body.

For Haptic, CAFKA invites proposals for new or existing works that engage with the theme and the environment in and around City Hall. Works in all media will be considered including sculpture, performance, video, audio, installation, photography, painting, drawing and new media. Video artists are invited to submit work relating to the theme. CAFKA.07 will create a video compilation to be screened during the Forum.

The exhibition will take place in and around Kitchener City hall for 11 days at the end of September, 2007. Artist Fees paid for Visual and Media Art Projects: CND $2,000 (intended to cover all aspects of mounting including materials and transportation). Video and one-time Performance fees paid in accordance with CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representation/le Front des Artistes Canadiens).

Please submit 10 images (JPG/JPEG format or 35mm slides), or video documentation (NTSC DVD or VHS), along with 10 copies of printed matter including: Curriculum Vitae, project proposal, technical requirements, budget, and a completed application form. All applications must be received by November 1, 2006.

Mail address:
Haptic – CAFKA.07 Submissions
P.O. Box 1122
Kitchener, ON N2G 4G1 Canada

Courier Address:
Haptic – CAFKA.07 Submissions
141 Whitney Place (rear entrance)
Kitchener, ON N2G 2X8 Canada

For more information please contact cafka@contemporaryartforum.ca or call (519) 744-5123.

23 projects will be selected and artists will be notified within approximately two months. Absolutely no fax submissions will be accepted. Support material must be in one or more of the following formats: CD, DVD, VHS, JPG/JPEG, PDF (for text) or 35mm slide. Other media will not be considered. Please do not refer CAFKA to a website for information about you or your work.

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

London Games Festival Fringe, Cybersalon and Select Parks

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Artful Gaming

ARTFUL GAMING FORUM :: Thursday, 5th October 2006, 1-10pm :: The Science Museum's Dana Centre. ARTFUL GAMING EXHIBITION :: Monday 2nd, 2-6pm, Tuesday 3rd - Thursday 5th, 10am-6pm, Friday, 6th October, 10am-2pm :: The Science Museum's Dana Centre. More info at Cybersalon.

As part of the London Games Festival Fringe, Cybersalon and Select Parks host Artful Gaming at the Science Museum's Dana Centre - a one-day forum and week-long exhibition that spotlights innovation and platforms new work, new developments and new thinking in gaming culture.

Through an exhibition of key works, artistic and technical 'knowledge sharing' workshops, panel discussions, artist talks and playful interactions Artful Gaming will explore a series of key questions at the frontiers of gaming innovation: :: How are independent developers and artists exploring and extending the horizons of both gaming and art? :: How are they shaping alternative approaches that challenge traditional games development and distribution? :: What impact could this exploration have on the mainstream gaming sector and the longer-term development of gaming and gaming culture?

The programme showcases artists and developer groups and small pioneering agencies developing alternative gaming experiences - be it devising new interactive interfaces; exploring non-traditional gaming environments; modifying existing game engines; using innovative R&D and production methods; or distributing their work via new networks.

The sharing of expertise, technical or otherwise, formed the original 'grass roots' of game development, as we know it today. Artful Gaming aims to foster this tradition by bringing the underground art games community into contact and dialogue with small, independent commercial gaming agencies and make them more visible to the commercial gaming sector and to game enthusiasts, London's digital art community and the general public. Artful Gaming will make the case that art games are to the game industry what short films are to the film industry; that you don't have to work in the industry to experiment with game design/development; and that gaming should be reclaimed as a medium for any use, not only 'entertainment'.

Contributors, speakers and works include: Myfanwy Ashmore - Mario Battle No. 1, Ed Cookson of The Sancho Plan - The Sancho Plan, Ole Ciliox of Susigames - EdgeBomber, Toshi Endo - Chit Chat National Park, Adam and Aaron Fothergill of Strange Flavour Ltd, Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli of Igloo - Summerbranch, Tanya Krzywinska, Reader in Film and TV Studies, Brunel University, Julian Oliver of Select Parks, Anthony Rowe of squidsoup - Ghosts and others to be confirmed.

A full programme for the forum and exhibition will be announced shortly on the Artful Gaming micro site via the Cybersalon website.

Cybersalon gratefully acknowledges support from the Science Museum's Dana Centre, UK Online/Sky Broadband and Creative London.

THE LONDON GAMES FESTIVAL :: Monday, 2nd - Saturday, 7th October 2006 :: The London Games Festival is a new major international event to celebrate the diverse creativity and cultures of interactive entertainment. The festival is the first of its kind in a country that is both one of the leading sources of creativity and innovation in video games and other interactive media as well as an international centre of business excellence in a rapidly growing industry.

The LGF programme will include a series of diverse events for consumers as well as industry. Participants will include publishers, developers, creative professionals, artists, students, trade organisations, academia, arts and media organisations as well as anyone who just likes to play.

The LGF is unique in the UK in being backed by every sector of the games industry: developers, publishers, platform owners and trade associations. The mainstream of the festival will include a range of consumer-facing events in major venues alongside B2B events organised by the industry's trade bodies and other organisations. It includes BAFTA's relaunched Games Awards.

The Festival's ambition is to become the most significant event in the world celebrating the culture and creativity of video games and interactive entertainment.

THE LONDON GAMES FESTIVAL FRINGE

This year's London Games Festival includes a festival fringe that explores the cultural aspects of interactive entertainment, their creative form and how there is a market that often falls outside the recognised games industry. The fringe is designed to recognise that many computer games and most digital play, fall beyond the scope of the mainstream games industry.

It encompasses a spectrum of activity: performances, exhibitions, master classes and seminars, participatory workshops and, of course, opportunities to play. Areas of interest include; independent game development and distribution, participatory community play, the future of game design, artists' games, live action role-play, augmented reality games, interactive storytelling and much more.

The Fringe will be a source of inspiration, innovation and opportunity; a series of events aimed at new entrants and people who would like to develop their careers in the industry - especially those currently under-represented.

The London Games Festival and Fringe is supported by the Creative London (London Development Agency), TIGA, ELSPA, BAFTA, 01zero-one and a range of developers, publishers and educational institutions.

Posted by jo at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

Urban Play

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Call for Submissions

The city is paved with pixels, the flow of traffic becomes the flow of bits, the flow of people, the flow of electrons. Streets and circuit diagrams become meshed. The race has begun. Each one of us becomes a player in the game of the city, furiously manipulating the control pad, tapping buttons, flicking switches. Leaping from platforms, scaling the walls the concrete/media playground is before us. Hurtling around corners, lunging up surfaces, shooting through the streets. Join the rush and surge of the city, find new ways to play the game.

Trampoline invites you to participate in Urban Play, a one day event held on 23rd November in Nottingham, UK. Its objective is to merge video gaming, art and design with the investigation of the city space. The structures of the city are increasingly pervaded by new media with screens, cctv, electronic networks, mobile devices, implements often designed to control our movement through urban space and even to remove us from our surroundings. We wish to investigate how new media can form an even tighter relationship with our immediate environment challenge and subvert its conventional structures hacking the city.

Trampoline is searching for work which explores urban space and methods of play, in particular projects which combine these areas in examining and utilising new media elements of the city.

Trampoline invites you to submit proposals of urban games, creative computer games, video, interactive installation, audio guides, sound, music and performance exploring play, gaming, new media and the city.

The submission of participatory works which promote a high degree of audience involvement this includes informal exploratory workshops as well as completed projects is highly encouraged.

Key points to focus the proposal on are:
The relation between the work and the city
The element of play
and
Its encouragement of audience participation

How to Submit work:
Please fill in the Submission Form, downloadable from

http://www.trampoline.org.uk/Applicationform.doc

Submissions should include:
Images/documentation/videofootage
Description of work
CV

Please note for those submitting video works:
We would request that you send the full version of your video works in PAL avi data format if possible

Deadline to submit proposals is October 23rd 06
Submissions should be postmarked by this date

Please send your applications to:
Emma Lewis
Trampoline
14-18 Broadway Media Centre
Broad Street
Nottingham
NG1 3AL
UK

Posted by luis at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

Rumour as Media

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The Performative Power of Rumour

Rumour as Media :: 20 October 2006 – 21 October 2006 :: Opening: 26 Sept 2006, 6 p.m. :: Petra Bauer / Jochen Gerz / Lamia Joreige / Martha Rosler / Walid Sadek / The Speculative Archive / Ultralab™ :: Akbank Sanat, Istiklal Caddesi No. 14-18, Beyoglu - Istanbul :: Tel: +90 212 252 35 00 or +90 212 292 39 84. Discussion Forum: “How to do things with rumour”, Wednesday, 27 September 2006.

Rumour may be the world’s oldest media. What is more all-pervasive, more corrosive than rumour? Like its siblings, gossip and hearsay – or what is loosely referred to as “news” – rumour is not just the channel through which the subordinate classes vent their spleens against the rich and famous, spreading compromising half-truths about them. Nor conversely, is rumour merely the way in which the powers-that-be manipulate public opinion. If rumour is so corrosively effective, it is because it is itself a media.

Though rumour is characterised by its indeterminacy – its basic anonymity and lack of identifiable source or authentication protocol – rumours are performative. That is, they make things happen. As everybody knows, there is “no smoke without fire,” and once a person is stained by rumour, it is next to impossible for them to clear their name. It is for this reason that rumours have always proven so devastatingly effective in provoking panic and pogroms. Whether they spread from the outskirts to the corridors of power, or the other way around, rumours have terrified and inspired the common people no less than their rulers, sparking fear of war and reprisal, thirst for vengeance and retaliation. At the same time, rumours are always context specific. A rumour “flies” in one context though it would never leave the ground in another. This context specificity is linked to rumour’s indeterminacy. In short, precisely because it is by definition unauthored, rumour is what “people are s aying”, what’s “going around” or – to quote songwriter Leonard Cohen – what “everybody knows.” This is what makes rumour so impossible to suppress or control, and why in the age of the blogosphere, cell phones and media concentration, rumour has such a promising, and eminently ambiguous, future before it.

This exhibition seeks to document the performative power of rumour and to examine some of the ways in which seven contemporary artists and artists collectives have made use of that media to deconstruct, manipulate or exploit its fascinating power. In highly different ways, their works focus on rumour’s paradoxical capacity to build community, by instilling in its listeners an almost overwhelming urge to pass it on to someone else, drawing its participants into a collective rhetorical operation of confident uncertainty.

Curated by Stephen Wright

Posted by jo at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2006

www.res-qualia.net

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

We would like to invite you to collaborate in res-qualia.net. You can introduce your projects or texts related to the themes: art-science and evolution of consciousness. www.res-qualia.net aims to create an working collaborative environment among artists that are working on the proposed themes. To know all the works that are related to this area and to make them public in different events such as conferences, press, publications, etc. We ask for your participation to know that your work "does exist".

Topics: -Digital-art-science-consciousness -Philosophy of consciousness -Cognitive psychology -Linguistics -Neuroscience -Qualia -Awareness/ Perception -Synaesthesia -Levels of consciousness -Spirituality -Meditation -Evolutionary systems -Emergent behaviors -Adaptive systems -Complexity -Artificial life -Artificial Intelligence -Natural phenomena -Genetics -Transgenic -Life Sciences -Astronomy -GPS technology -Robotics -Virtual Reality -Inmersive Environments -Augmented Reality -Gravity 0.

Posted by jo at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

The International Digital Art Festival

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On the Edge

The International Digital Art Festival :: In November 2006 Denmark’s biggest international digital art festival so far, will be unrolled. The festival includes exhibitions, concerts and real-time events in a number of cultural institutions in Aarhus. Amongst the bigger international names are Critical Art Ensemble and Eduardo Kac, who both exhibit their work in Aarhus Kunstbygning from November 3.-26. and also participate in the festival’s seminar from November 4.-5. at Kasernescenen at Institute for Aesthetic Studies, University of Aarhus.

Critical Art Ensemble, USA, is known for its work on critical theory, bio tecnology and political activism. On May 11. 2004 Steve Kurtz, lecturer in Art History at University of Buffalo, co-founder and a member of CAE, was seriously in the searchlight of the authorities. Steve kurtz found his wife Hope dead from a heart attack and called 911. When the authorities came to his home, they found the materials that Kurtz and CAE so frequently had used at art arrangements all over the world. Due to the find/discovery of these materials, which can all be easily required, Kurtz was accused of bio-terrorism, in spite of the fact that it was only a contemporary art matter.

Eduardo Kac, USA/Brazil, is known for his creation of a luminous/flourescent green rabbit by means of a GFP gene. Eduardo Kac is one of the pioneers of the new art trend in USA: Biotech Art. By manipulating the gene material in living organisms, the artists are capable of making “living works of art”. Besides from the luminous/flourescent rabbit, Eduardo Kac has also created a tobacco plant, the leaves of which have an extra twist, making the plant sculpturally beautiful. The plant is a part of the artwork “Move 36”, which will be on show in Kunstbygningen during the International Digital Art Festival.

The International Digital Art Festival is divided into two sections:

Theme projects: The exhibition “On the Edge” and the seminar to match “Crime and Political Aspects in New Media Art” focus on the human curiosity and need of posing questions. The artists challenge the dominant structure and order represented by society in general, for instance by affecting the very goal-directed results of research and the technological and commercial product development. What is in question is art on the edge, that seeks to tickle and disturb the present order

Satellite projects: In a local network of cultural institutions, educational institutions and organisations that hold resources and experience on digital art, the festival and its collaboration partners present an excellent row of exhibitions, concerts and performances. Each location that covers the Festival will, as far as possible, illuminate digital art from their own point of view and proportional to the locations own perspective on the digital field. The satellite projects will among other places be shown at: The Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction, The main Library, Gallery Splab, Gallery Image, Aarhus Film Workshop etc.

The International Digital Art Festival, that will be launched in November 2006, is arranged by Kulturforeningen Pappagallo.

Curator
Annette Damgaard
International Digital Art Festival
Skt. Nikolausgade 4
8000 Aarhus C
info[at]digitalfestival.dk
Mobile phone: (+45) 60 64 18 16

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

Oslo's interfaces

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Interface and Society

In our everyday life we constantly have to cope more or less successfully with interfaces. We use the mobile phone, the mp3 player, and our laptop, in order to gain access to the digital part of our life. In recent years this situation has lead to the creation of new interdisciplinary subjects like Interaction Design or Physical Computing.
Currently we live between two worlds, our physical environment and the digital space. Technology and its digital space are our second nature and the interfaces are our points of access to this techno sphere.
This division will dissolve into a seamless distribution of information technology into most aspects of our life, advertised as ubiquitous computing. Immaterial information and physical objects will fuse into an Internet of Things. Our world will transform into an interface as a whole.

Since artists started working with technology they have been developing interfaces and modes of interaction. The interface itself became an artistic thematic in its technical, social and political dimensions.

Interface and Society investigates artistic strategies and practices which deal with and build upon the transformation of our everyday life through information technology and electronic interfaces.
With the rapid technological development a thoroughly critique of the interface towards society is necessary. The contribution of the artist thereby is relevant. S/he takes the freedom to deal with technologies beyond form, function and usability. The utilisation of an eclectic range of strategies and practices guaranties a diversity of results.

EXHIBITION: 10th to 19th of November
PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITION OPENING: 10th of November at 20h
PLACE: Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway

Art by Accident (Kalle Grude, Jan L�chst�er) (no)
Franz Alken and Karl Rueskaefer (de/uk)
Artificial Paradise (uk)
Norene Leddy (with technical lead Andrew Milmoe) (us)
Agnes Meyer-Brandis (de)
Silver
Daniel Skoglund (se)
Leonardo Solaas (ar)
Marius Watz (no/de)


CONFERENCE: 10th and 11th of November

Erich Berger (at/fi) - Interface and Society
Bruce Sterling (us/cs) - Spime: a map of ideas
Susanne Jaschko (de) - On the virtuality of public space
Laura Beloff (fi) - Not imagined, it is real
Per Platou (no) - Failure is success (is failure)
Truls Lie (no) - On Guattaris concept of the "machin" as the mental and social apparatus that directs our everyday praxis
Adam Greenfield (us) - Everyware: Some thoughts on the social and ethical implications of ubiquitous computing.
Artificial Paradise (uk) - Instruction Sets
Marius Watz (no/de) - It`s all about the software, baby
Sabine Seymour (at/us) - The Epidermis as Interface, Dynamic Textile Surfaces

Interface and Society is produced by Atelier Nord in collaboration with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and Le Monde Diplomatique (Nordic Edition). Supported by Arts Council Norway and Freedom of Expression Foundation, Oslo. Trolleys provided by ISS Lufthavnservice AS

See http://www.anart.no for detailed information.

Posted by luis at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

The Junction

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Call for public art project

The Junction in Cambridge, UK, is seeking to commission an artist (individual or collective) to produce an innovative and exciting high profile public artwork encompassing new technologies for the south façade of its original auditorium. This is the second of two commissions funded by Turnstone Partners and Arts Council England East for the site, the first being Bins and Benches by Greyworld in 2005.

Expressions of interest are invited from artists, to be received before the 1st October 2006.

The budget for this commission is 60,000 (to include fee, production and installation costs). For more information, including a detailed brief, please see www.junction.co.uk/publicart.

Posted by luis at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

Digital technologies in Lancaster

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Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders

Fast-uk and folly have partnered to present the exhibition Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders which explores the possibilities afforded to artists, architects, designers, and others for the creation of new types of objects, buildings, and products stemming from the increasing use of and integration between digital technologies for design and fabrication. The converging and blurring of traditional disciplinary boundaries is made possible by these technologies, from rapid prototyping to the use of generative and algorithmic software for design.

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders is an exhibition of contemporary arts and design practice. It is especially concerned with object and spatially oriented disciplines, the use of digital technologies and the convergence of sculpture, product design and architecture.

This exhibition will bring emerging and existing contemporary practitioners and technologies into the public arena and help to make cutting-edge developments in art and technology more accessible. 'Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders' will be held from 29 September - 21 October 2006 at venues across Lancaster city centre in the North West of England. The main exhibition space will be the new CityLab development in Dalton Square .

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders features:

Gavin Baily & Tom Corby
Human Beans
Simon Blackmore
Brit Bunkley
Future Factories
Simon Husslein
Tavs Jrgensen
Aoife Ludlow
Geoffrey Mann
Justin Marshall
.MGX by Materialise
NIO Architecten
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sjln & Usman Haque
Masaru Tabei & Yasuno Miyauchi
Ben Woodeson

Venue: Citylab, 4-5 Dalton Square, Lancaster LA1 4PP, 01524 582114
Date: 29 September 21 October, 12 - 5 pm, Mon Sat.

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders Symposium
An opportunity to hear a selection of practitioners participating in the Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders exhibition talk about their work and discuss how digital technologies have enabled a convergence of disciplines, creative practice and production techniques.

This symposium is free, but booking is essential. To book, telephone 01524 388550 or email enquiries@folly.co.uk
Venue: St. Martin's College, Lancaster Campus, Bowerham Road, Lancaster LA1 3JD
Date: Thursday 28 September, 1 5pm followed by Private View: 6-8pm

Keynote: Dr. Paul Rodgers

Grow Your Own Media Lab in 3D - Julian Oliver
A free one day workshop on the use of Blender, an open source 3D graphics software package used for modelling, animation, post-production, interactive content creation and playback. Blender is available for all major operating systems and can be downloaded for free.

Julian Oliver is a New Zealand-born artist, free software developer, teacher, composer and media-theorist. He has presented papers and artworks at numerous international electronic art events and conferences, and has led workshops and master classes in game-design, virtual architecture, interface design, augmented reality and open source development practices worldwide.

This workshop is free, but booking is essential.
To book, telephone 01524 388550 or email enquiries@folly.co.uk
Venue: St. Martin's College, Lancaster Campus, Bowerham Road, Lancaster LA1 3JD, 01524 384384
Date: Tuesday 17 October 9:30am 4:30pm
www.blender.org www.selectparks.net

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders is funded by Arts Council England, Lancaster City Council and Miriad.

Posted by luis at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2006

PERFORMING PLACES seminar: media and embodiment in the urban environment

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Call for participation

Call for participation :: PERFORMING PLACES seminar: media and embodiment in the urban environment :: Helsinki, November 7-9, 2006 :: Submission deadline: October 6, 2006 :: Notification of acceptance: October 12 :: Full papers due: October 31 :: Seminar opening/closing: November 7, 6 pm / November 9, 4 pm.

Seminar theme: The Performing places seminar will bring together researchers, artists and developers whose work touches on the experiential, affective and political aspects of urban and technological life, and who share an interest in inventive artistic and technical practices of the urban environment. The seminar addresses the current urban situation, where lived environments are undergoing major experiential and social changes, driven mainly by technical and economic pressures. Our aim is to create a forum for critical, transdisciplinary exchange by bringing to resonance a set of relevant themes:

1. Urban space, in its current versions, blends embodied and mediated forms, orchestrating everyday actions to an invisible score of signals and software. With ubiquitous computing, devices pervade our physical environments to trace and modulate behaviour, enabling new modes of service, surveillance and intervention.

2. Cities are increasingly shaped by the formation of 'creative clusters', according to innovation strategies which target an evolving experience industry and seek global competitiveness for a particular region or place. These strategies typically neglect embodied, affective or everyday aspects of the production of space - even if they often include programmes to advance citizen participation and social inclusion.

3. Artists and media developers have the possibility of addressing urban space in ways that prioritize its experiential, social and political contexts. Strategies of site-specific, community and performance art are complemented by the activity of media artists and designers, producing interventions and applications that can capture the collective dimensions of our experience and render them palpable.

4. Recent theories in human geography and the cultural study of technology highlight the affective and relational qualities of the urban/technological environment. In their focus on the performative and collective aspects of use and production, these theories challenge dominant views of representation and innovation, proposing more event-based and mobile accounts of inventive agency.

Participation

The seminar invites participation from all relevant disciplines, especially from practitioners and researchers in

*media, performance and urban arts
*IT design and and urban planning
*urban and media studies.

The aim is to build conceptual links and exchanges between disciplines, in order to produce a critical framework with real relevance for urban practice, research and policy. For this reason the seminar will take the form of parallel workshops, with short presentations and a collaborative development of issues. Project demonstrations are warmly encouraged - but the main objective is to move beyond presentation and arrive at a problematization of practices. Of special interest are contributions discussing, for example:

*Performativity and performance - embodied, affective and non-representational practices in media, arts and sociality;
*Ubiquitous interaction - collective, participatory agency in urban interactions;
*Affected places - art and media interventions in the physical and virtual environment;
*Urban media experience - audiovisual, mobile and network media in the production, consumption and experience of places;
*In/visibility - techniques and practices of representing and making visible, from infrastructures to surveillance to performance;
*Critical urban practice - critical artistic and technical practice in the urban sphere; perspectives on production, coding, design, planning and development.

How to participate

Submissions should include 1) Title, 2) Keywords 3) 500-word abstract 4) Selected bibliography and 5) 200 word cv of presenter.

They should be sent by October 6, 2006 to informer[at]m-cult.org as pdf or rtf attachments.

Notification of acceptance is October 12 and full papers due October 31, 2006.

For further information, contact Minna Tarkka: minna tarkka [at] m-cult [dot] org

Invited speakers and artists

Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick, Human Geography
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~kstraus/thrift/biography.html
Sally Jane Norman, Newcastle University, Culture lab
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab/people/sally-jane-norman.htm
Adrian Mackenzie, Lancaster University, Institute for Cultural Research
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/mackenza/
Hille Koskela, University of Helsinki, Department of Geography
http://www.helsinki.fi/maantiede/kaumaa/Hille_eng.html

Invited artist-researchers

Pia Lindman, performance artist, Fellow, MIT Centre for Advanced Visual Studies
http://web.mit.edu/pialindman/
Ari Tenhula, choreographer, researcher, Theatre Academy of Finland
http://www.aritenhula.net/
Heidi Tikka, media artist, researcher, Media Lab UIAH / USED
http://mlab.uiah.fi/~htikka/

Organisers

The seminar is organised in context of USED (Urban Spaces and Experience Design), an arts and research interaction project carried out by m-cult and HIIT and funded by the Academy of Finland and the Arts Council of Finland. The co-organising partners are:

m-cult centre for new media culture, Minna Tarkka
http://www.m-cult.org
HIIT Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Giulio Jacucci
http://www.hiit.fi
Helsinki University of Technology, Urban and Regional Studies, Panu Lehtovuori
http://www.tkk.fi/Units/Separate/YTK/
Theatre Academy of Finland, Performance studies, Annette Arlander
http://www.teak.fi
University of Art and Design Helsinki, Environmental Art, Alan Prohm
http://www.uiah.fi/page.asp?path=1866,1915,4118,9086,9089
University of Art and Design Helsinki, Media Lab, Lily Diaz
http://www.mlab.uiah.fi

Posted by jo at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

Protections. This is Not an Exhibition

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Traumas and Pleasures of Life in a State of Emergency

Protections: This is Not an Exhibition :: Co-production between Gutshaus Kranz and steirischer herbst 2006 :: Curators: Adam Budak, Christine Peters :: Opening: Sat, September 23, 11am :: September 23 – October 22, 2006, Tue - Sun 10am – 6pm, Thu 10am – 8pm :: Gutshaus Kranz, Lendkai 1, A–8020 Graz :: T +43-316/8017-9200, F -9212 :: info[at]kunsthausgraz.at

A strive for safety, a constant need of security and a basic demand for care and comfort are in focus of this project which resists to be yet another exhibition. Here, no fixed points but rather a dynamic structure which bridges visual arts, performance, theatre and architecture constitutes a platform to renegotiate elemental aspects of the contemporary beyond-modern life.

From a subversive architectural gesture of Elmgreen & Dragset (prefabricated houses as a design platform for other artists’ projects), through laboratory cinema of Moser & Schwinger (a specific location set for still new episodes of good soldier Schwejk) and a vertical stage of Markus Schinwald’s Stage Matrix II (impressive site for a non-stop spectacle of everyday choreography) to the MUSU, Apolonija Sustersic’s Museum-Bus (a mobile architecture on the route between Ljubljana and Graz as a fictive Slovenian Museum of Contemporary Art) and invisible and gentle performative act of Roman Ondak (The Stray Man, performed everyday in front of the Kunsthaus Graz) and Kris Martin with his endless landscape staged on the Gutshaus Kranz inner skin – such is a maze of events and situations in the shell of a temporary Gutshaus Kranz carousel of identity.

As a project-in-progress, Protections does not protect the viewer by providing him/her with the final product of conventional exhibition making. It allows to follow the development of a concept spread in time and space and executed by the artists in a close encounter with the audience. Its composition - as a storyboard - challenges the usual perceptive habits and it invites to explore the museum space in a participatory way. As such, Protections. This is Not an Exhibition generates a situation which turns the museum into both a meeting place and a site of discovery.

As an ongoing anti-spectacle, Protections does protect the viewer and his/her desire to reflect upon the museum and its (social and cultural) function in the most independent and autonomous way. The performative character of artistic proposals as well as the organic process of collected events guarantee an experience of duration and involvement. Simultaneously, it offers and seeks for temporary shelter whilst creating a non-stable construction site: here the attentiveness is put at stake and the fragility of spectatorship is exposed. Thus the site becomes a playground for staging the relations of public and private nature and producing the knowledge on the practice of everyday life.

As such Protections is a polyphonic edifice where a variety of artistic activities is being inhabited: from architectural interventions, through performances, theatrical forms and performative installations, down to visual contributions that include film and video as well as conceptual and discursive studies. The complex and provocative architecture of the Gutshaus Kranz as well as the social and cultural milieu of the city constitute the matrix for all artistic approaches gathered within this project thus turning into a site-specific event.

Participating artists: Cezary Bodzianowski, the Centre of Attention, Katrina Daschner, Elmgreen & Dragset, Tim Etchells, Vlatka Horvat, Christian Jankowski, Marysia Lewandowska & Neil Cummings, Katarina Löfström, Daria Martin, Kris Martin, Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Warren Neidich, Roman Ondak, Elisabeth Penker, Philippe Rahm, Markus Schinwald, Dejan Spasovik, Apolonija Sustersic, Mark Wallinger, Markus Weisbeck, Herwig Weiser

A comprehensive Reader in English and German has been published on the occasion of Protections (with contributions from Marius Babias, Zygmunt Bauman, Beatrice von Bismarck, Adam Budak, Jordan Crandall, Claire Doherty, Jean Fisher, Elisabeth Grosz, Nikolaus Hirsch, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Peter Pakesch, Christine Peters, Irit Rogoff, Stefan Römer, Renata Salecl and Michael Terman).

Protections. This Is Not an Exhibition is accompanied by a very intense programme of events, Gutshaus Unplugged , grouped in four sections: CURATING AS PERFORMANCE or yet another Protections vernissage; GUIDED (PROTECTION ARTIST) TOURS AS PERFORMANCE or a subjective view of an insider; BOOK AS PERFORMANCE or staging a source material; PERFORMATIVE LECTURE or discursive qui pro quo.

Tuesday, September 26, 6pm

Curating As Performance: Florian Zeyfang, artist and curator/Berlin:
break in / break out and Proprio Aperto.

Wednesday, September 27, 3pm and 6pm

Guided (Artist) Tour As Performance: Philippe Rahm, architect/Paris
focus: architecture and ambiance.

Thursday, September 28, 6pm

Book As Performance: Maria Lind, IASPIS/Stockholm in conversation with Søren Grammel, Graz: Curating with Light Luggage, REVOLVER 2005.

Saturday, September 30, 5-7pm

Special Event At The Generosity Broadcasting House: Marysia Lewandowska & Neil Cummings, artists,/London: Open Content Film Culture.

Tuesday, October 3, 7pm

Curating As Performance: Sören Grammel, Grazer Kunstverein & Luca Frei, artist/Sweden: Installation and Presentation of SPARKS.

Wednesday, October 4, 3pm and 6pm

Guided (Artist) Tour As Performance: Elisabeth Penker, artist/Vienna
focus: sound and language.

Thursday, October 5, 6pm

Book As Performance: Claire Doherty, University of the West of England/Bristol: Contemporary Art - from Studio to Situations, Black Dog Publishing, 2005 with a screening of Guy Debord's films and Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave.

Friday, October 6 – Saturday, October 7

Walk-In-Progress: With participation of Claire Doherty, Apolonija Sustersic, Bojana Kunst, Christine Peters and Adam Budak and featuring students of the Schauspielinstitut, Kunstuniversität Graz.

Saturday, October 7, 6-8pm

Special Event At The Generosity Broadcasting House: Eileen Simpson & Ben White, artists/London: Open Music Archive.

Tuesday, October 10, 6pm

Curating As Performance: Barbara Steiner, Gallery for Contemporary Art/Leipzig: Spaces of Negotiations with AS IF Architekten/Wien, Berlin.

Wednesday, October 11, 3pm and 6pm

Guided (Artist) Tour As Performance: Markus Schinwald, artist/Vienna
focus: performance and theatre.

Thursday, October 12, 7pm

Performative Lecture: Jordan Crandall, media artist and theorist/Los Angeles:
Ready for Action!

Friday, October 13, 3pm

Performative Lecture: Beatrice von Bismarck, Academy of Visual Arts/Leipzig:
Making Exhibitions - Processing Relations.

Saturday, October 14, 2-10pm

Special Event At The Generosity Broadcasting House: MaMa, Club/Zagreb:
Skill Sharing.

Tuesday, October 17, 6pm

Curating As Performance: Nikolaus Hirsch (co-curator), architect/Frankfurt & Anton Vidokle, artist, Berlin: United Nations Plaza.

Wednesday, October 18, 3pm and 6pm

Guided (Artist) Tour As Performance: Warren Neidich, artist/New York, Berlin
focus: Phenomen(a)logic Urbanism. An Ontotopologic Journey.

Wednesday October 18 – Saturday, October 21, daily 10am-6pm

Book As Performance: Seminar and Workshop :: Nina Möntmann, curator and writer/Hamburg & Jan Verwoert, art critic/Berlin: Art and Institutions. Current Conflicts and Collaborations, Black Dog Publishing, 2006

Friday, October 20, 5pm

Discussion: Subtle Environmental Influences on Mood, Sleep an Alertness
Michael Terman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University/New York in a discussion with Anna Wirz-Justice, Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric University Clinics/Basel, Michael Lehofer, Med Uni/Graz and Colin Fournier, architect/ Bartlett School of Architecture, London

Workshop: with Michael Terman and Ann Wirz-Justice and students from Architectural Association, London, ECAL, Lausanne and Technical University, Graz. 3-4.30pm.

Posted by jo at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

PENINSULA

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Contemporary Media Arts Commissions

Independent Photography invites you to a evening showcase of PENINSULA, contemporary art exploring the Greenwich Peninsula :: Thursday 5th October 2006, 6.30pm:: Greenwich Yacht Club, 1 Peartree Way, London SE10 0BW. :: info[at]independentphotography.org.uk :: 20 8858 2825.

PENINSULA is a programme of contemporary media arts commissions by Independent Photography. The showcase will present: Greenwich Emotion Map: Mapping how people feel about the Peninsula by Christian Nold :: Exploring the peninsula through personal journeys, participants have recorded their responses to the area using biological tracking devices and digital tools, producing a new emotion map of the peninsula.

Accidental Holiday: A guide to thriving on the Peninsula by Lottie Child :: Taking inspiration from feral life, councillors, residents, developers and school children have collaborated with the artist to investigate what people need to thrive on the peninsula. The work explores playful, challenging, nuturing and risky activities, including constructing shelters and feeding off the land.

Peninsula Voices: A GPS sound walk of Peninsula life and politics by Daniel Belasco Rogers / Plan b :: A sound walk using GPS and handheld computer devices to explore the Peninsula Ward. As you walk, you hear voices recounting insights, events and memories of the landscape around you.

Gasworks to Dome: An online archive of Peninsula history by Rib Davis & Tom Keene :: A new website encouraging exploration and contribution to the history of East Greenwich and the peninsula within living memory. It presents oral histories, old photographs, and new digital images of the area as an open archive inviting contributions from the public.

Peninsula.me.uk: New tools for community communication by Comwifinet: A research project bringing residents and workers together to share information about what's happening to the area and to discuss their interests and issues. Participants are learning new self-publishing (blogging) tools, community website tools (CMS/Joomla) and email/web-based discussion lists (phpBB).

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

8 BIT

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A Hybrid Documentary about Video Games

8 BIT is a hybrid documentary examining the influence of video games on contemporary culture. A mélange of a rocumentary, art expose and a culture-critical investigation, 8 BIT ties together seemingly disconnected phenomena like the 80’s demo scene, chiptune music and contemporary artists using machinima and modified games.

Produced in NYC, LA, Paris and Tokyo, 8 BIT brings a global perspective on the new artistic approaches of the DIY generation which grew up playing Atari and Commodore 64. Some of the artists featured in 8 BIT include Cory Arcangel, Bit Shifter, Bodenstandig 2000, Bubblyfish, Mary Flanagan, Alex Galloway, Glomag, Paul Johnson, John Klima, Johan Kotlinski, Nullsleep, Joe McKay, Tom Moody, Akiko Sakaizumi, Eddo Stern, TEAMTENDO, Treewave and Carlo Zanni.

With the help of media critic Ed Halter and new media curator and writer Christiane Paul, these very recent artistic strategies are put in the historical context of modernist and postmodernist discourse and examined as potential examples of a transition into fresh, uncharted territory. 8 BIT insists that in the 21st century Game-Boy rock, machinima and game theory belong together and share a common root: the digital heritage of Generation X.

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

My Favorite Things: The Joy of the Gizmo

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Call for papers

Leonardo Music Journal 17 (2007) Call for papers :: My Favorite Things: The Joy of the Gizmo :: If, as Marshall McLuhan so famously suggested, the medium is the message, then the gizmo must be the one-liner. From baroque violinists to laptoppers, sound artists have long fetishized the tools of their trade, the mere naming of which can provoke an instant reaction: Shout "LA-2A," "TR-808," "JTM45" or "Tube Screamer" in a room full of musicians, and you will notice the eyes brighten, the breath shorten and the anecdotes pour forth. But only to a point: Many a "secret weapon" is held close to the chest.

This is the chance to get that secret off your chest: LMJ 17 will address the significance of physical objects in music and sound art in a time of increasing emphasis on software and file exchange. We are soliciting papers (2,000--5,000 words) and briefer artist's statements (500-1,000 words) on the role of purchased or homemade instruments, effect boxes, pieces of studio gear, "bent" toys, self-built circuits, and so on, in your work as a composer, performer, artist, producer, recording engineer, etc. Wherever possible, please include photographs of your subjects (300 ppi TIFFs preferred).

Please submit a brief proposal by 1 October 2006. Final texts and all materials (text, image, sound file) must be received by 1 January 2007. Contact Nicolas Collins ncollins[at]artic.edu with any questions. Finished articles should be sent to the LMJ Editorial Office at lmj[at]leonardo.info.

Posted by jo at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2006

Connecting Worlds

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Creative Possibilities of the Networking Age

09.15-11.26.06 :: Connecting Worlds, the first exhibition after the renewal of NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC] focus on the "communication", with contributions exploring the creative possibilities that emerged out of the new environments of the networking age.

'As the first exhibition since the reopening of ICC, this show raises-from the horizons of art and programming-practical alternative possibilities of various phases of communication that we currently see around us. This exhibition features artwork and projects that take a unique step into contemporary networks, politics, economies, physiology, or urban environments by manipulating sound, games, the Internet, or other media as well as foreseeing artwork created in the past.' Yukiko Shikata, curator

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cyclone.soc by Gavin BAILY + Tom CORBY, UK 2005 :: CYCLONE.SOC brings together two contemporary phenomena: (1) severe weather, the project uses weather data that charts the emergence and progress of hurricanes; (2) the polarized nature of debate that occurs in certain online newsgroup forums. The project maps textual conversation taken from the political and religious newsgroups to the isobars of a dynamic, interactive weather visualization of hurricanes - whose complex structures are used to visualize the conversational churn and eddies of the newsgroup conversations.

In staging these interactions as a process of meteorological precipitation, newsgroup conversations "condense" in the works environment as a temporal ambient patterning - a structuring that acts not only as a metonym of difference, but of ideological tensions which mirror the dynamics of social space. CYCLONE.SOC is a navigable environment that gives the user the ability to zoom in or out and skate across and through the cyclonic weather formations in order to read or be immersed in the newsgroup text.

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OBJECT B by exonemo, Japan 2006 :: OBJECT B 2006 Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) YCAM InterLab Installation presenting a modified first-person 3-D shooting game with kinetic objects and a virtual-reality setting. Installed inside the three-dimensional environment created through projections onto all four walls of the exhibition space, are three objects made of keyboards, mice, and other computer parts and electric tools, and a control terminal for players. The robots' (programmed) frequent violent actions trigger automatic commands, according to which the game develops.

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MaSS (Market as Speed Spectra) by MaSS Dev., Japan 2006 :: In e-trade, there are cases in which up to 1,000 "ticks" (contracts made when seller and buyer agree on a price are being counted per second?DThis work extracts log data of daytrade, where instantaneous decisions are being made based on numbers displayed on the computer monitor?Cand transforms the speed and rhythm of such transactions into sound and light. "MaSS" likens the steady high-speed exchange of data in e-banking to a worldwide network of reflex nerves.

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Vexations-c.i.p. (Composition in Progress) by MOHRI Yuko + MIHARA Soichiro, Japan 2005 :: "Vexations - c.i.p.(Composition in Progress)" 2006 transmediale 06, Berlin This work presents "Vexations", an odd piano piece of a single phrase repeated 840 times, originally composed by Erik Satie in the late 19th century, interpreted through an automatic, computer-controlled looping system. While incorporating modifications caused by data of environmental noises recorded with microphones at the venue, the software automatically generates new scores, based on which the piece gradually changes as the performance continues.

Artists include: ambientTV.NET (AT/IN/UK) / Wayne CLEMENTS (UK) / Robert DAVIS + Usman HAQUE (UK) / exonemo (JP) / Peter FISCHLI & David WEISS (CH) / Muntadas (UK/SP) / MaSS Dev. (JP) / MOHRI Yuko + MIHARA Soichirou (JP) / Newtype Technology Lab. (JP) / Dennis OPPENHEIM (UK) / Manuel SAIZ (UK/SP) / TANO Taiga (JP).

Posted by jo at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

RELAX

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we save what you give

Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg presents RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) – we save what you give, ed. by Irene Müller, Ilka and Andreas Ruby, Emanuel Tschumi, Susann Wintsch, Zurich / Nuremberg.

The collaboration between Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza (*1957, Tunisia) and Daniel Hauser (*1959, Bern) began in the 1980s in Paris at the squatter-occupied Giraud-Phares factory. Since the beginning of the 1990s they increasingly worked on projects in public space, respectively art-on-architecture projects. During their 1997-2001 collaboration with the city-and-landscape planner Daniel Croptier (*1949, Biel-Bienne), they changed their name to RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & croptier) Since 2003 the artists have lived and worked in Zurich; their works and projects trade under the name RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), whereby the “co” stands for partners who change according to the project.

In its works, RELAX occupies an artistic position that since the 1980s has sought out in-between spaces, infiltrated them, posed irksome questions as to economic connections and their cultural impact and examined social links and patterns. The research the artists instigated, their coming-to-grips with societal, political and social questions, their stand vis-à-vis the art system per se and the prevailing theoretical discourses are all transformed into photography, installations, drawings, video works and performances. RELAX consciously uses “poor” materials and industrial semi-products to direct our gaze to the spatial and site-specific contexts, i.e., the works’ statement. This position becomes, so to speak, paradigmatic for the artists’ way of working; it leads to works and projects in which the thematic level and situation-related aspects are always given precedence over purely aesthetic approaches and art-immanent queries. It is the site as the place of concrete realizat ion, but above all also as the mental category, the mirror of a social (activity) space, the territory for different interactions and interventions that, in the 1990s, became a central aspect of RELAX’s art.

The present publication is quite explicitly neither an artist’s book nor an exhibition catalogue, but a kind of standard work. After in-depth analysis of the works and lengthy conversations between the artists and the editors, a concept emerged that, on the one hand, corresponds with a claim of scholarliness and an overview but, on the other, gives the artists’ way-of-working its due. Texts and photos, as well as the filmed audio-visual sequences on the DVD, compile and examine the artists’ works. Over 500 illustrations allow an in-depth look into a rigorous artistic production; two hours of video material offer a comprehensive survey of the artists’ numerous video works. The volume of texts is comprised of four essays, in which scholars and curators follow the media-specific character of the works, as well as survey and reflect on RELAX’s artistic position and works against the background of theoretical models. In addition this volume contains an oeuvre catalogue of the work s, which includes a differentiated list of materials, as well as a deeper commented look into select pieces. Its fundamental essays, the oeuvre catalogue and the carefully selected picture material – and not least of all its conceptual stringency – makes this publication the definitive work on RELAX.

Book launch: 15 September 2006, 5 to 10 pm at Condor Films, Studio Bellerive, Kreuzstrasse 2, 8034 Zurich

Irene Müller, Ilka and Andreas Ruby, Emanuel Tschumi, Susann Wintsch (Eds.)
RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) – we save what you give
Text contributions by Irene Müller, Ilka and Andreas Ruby, Katharina Schlieben and Sønke Gau, Philip Ursprung, Susann Wintsch (German, French, English)

192 and 261 pages, approx. 550 color reproductions, 29.7 x 21 cm, hardcover (2 volumes), integrated DVD, Zurich / Nuremberg, a project of edition fink in Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2006

Press contact: Irene Jost/Culture_Art_Communications, Projektteam RELAX Monografie, Lindenstrasse 35, CH-8008 Zürich, Tel. +41 (0)79 456 96 55, irene.jost@culture-art-com.ch

Downloads of press images and text: http://www.culture-art-com.ch/relax (press)

Posted by jo at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2006

ROBODOCK FESTIVAL 2006

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ALCHEMY

September 20-23, 2006 :: NDSM-wharf in Amsterdam-Noord :: Robodock Festival merges technology and art to an overwhelming experience. Alchemy will be the core theme of the spectacle theatre, music, robots, multimedia and interactive installations this year. Robodock will become one big bubbling laboratory for present time wizards from here and abroad. Artists and theatremakers will turn old materials into unforgettable new experiences.

Robodock is a unique international festival with a main core of technology, spectacle theatre, multi-media and industrial installations. In cooperation with artists, technology students and theatre makers the festival is styled by re-using scrap and other industrial left-overs. Nowadays Robodock has an important international workshop-function.

The festival shows unpredictable combinations of different disciplines and bizar theatral applications, of which fire and steel are important elements. No disciplines are excluded: theatre, plastic arts, music, dance, film, multimedia, acrobatics, technical experiments, deejays.

With a surprising and renewing program Robodock shows four days 'state of the art' - projects that have no like in Europe and that are specially developed for and by the Robodock Festival. On every day of the festival there will be a different program.

Theme of 2006: Alchemy

Alchemy is the old secret science that, by using the 'philosopher's stone', aimed at brewing a life-elixer out of precious metals. In 2006 Robodock will research the question wheter this science is still actual in our modern times. Do modern technologies contain a life-elixer?

Alchemy not only is a inspiring theme. It is also a theme that touches the search in our present society to spirituality, mysticism, symbolism and religion. Functioning as a experimental platform Robodock will become a alchemist laboratory. These are the corners of our focus this year.

History

The Robodock Festival takes place since 1998 and is organised by the ADeM foundation. The festival can be traced back further in time to the former cultural hotspots of the 90ies like the Graansilo and Vrieshuis Amerika. For many years the festival took place at the ADM-wharf in the western harbour of Amsterdam. After one edition in Rotterdam in 2003, the festival came back to Amsterdam.

In 1998 Robodock was the initiator of the Amsterdamse Broedplaats Policy. Nowadays Robodock has a sharp identity within the the field of international festivals. In cooperation with NEMO Robodock also organises conventions on technology, creativity and art.

In short: Robodock gives an exciting and lifely face to the creative industry of Amsterdam.

Posted by jo at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2006

Upgrade! Berlin

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Initial Salon

September 15th 2006 Upgrade! Initial Salon :: at Gustav-Mueller-Platz 4, Berlin-Schoeneberg :: Start: 8pm GMT, open end.

The first Upgrade! Berlin meeting on September 15th leads us to the typical starting point of networks in Berlin: the private appartement, which has a long tradition as a gamet of salons and get-togethers. The private place creates a space for debates that go beyond the limitation of scientific disciplines or practical concerns. In this first meeting we want to develop question strategies for our further exploration of media art and culture in Berlin. Each of us will come up with a specific topic of particular interest and an idea of how we could implement this topic into our question structure. We will also set up an agenda for the next Upgrade! field trips and nominate the hosts of the particular meetings. This initial Berlin meeting will be live streamed and we will invite guests from the international Upgrade! network via webconference. If you want to be part to this first meeting, please visit the private place that we temporarily open for the start of Upgrade! Berlin at Gustav-Mueller-Platz 4 in Berlin, Schoeneberg. Please let us know in advance if you will come and whom you plan to bring along.

Virtual guests are also welcome! Please write us about the way you want to contribute to our question salon.

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

USC Annenberg Center Speaker’s Series

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Speaker’s Series/Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Media

As part of the USC Annenberg Center Speaker’s Series, once a month speakers will discuss issues and practices associated with Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media. These DIY Media seminars will focus on the shifting relations between cultural producers and consumers and the rise of participatory media cultures across various industry sectors due to the growing prevalence of digital tools and networks.

In line with the participatory ethos, the seminars are meant to be highly interactive. Short presentations will be followed by discussion, and throughout the session there will be a backchannel for text-based chat. If you would like to participate in the backchannel, please attend with your laptop and be sure to have an IRC client that you can use. Our backchannel will be #diymedia on irc.freenode.net.

During the week following the seminar USC Annenberg Center Fellow Howard Rheingold will post blog entries and invite other participants to join in an asynchronous discussion at http://weblogs.annenberg.edu/diy/, and to post photos with the Flickr tag "diymedia." This online space will serve as a resource and networking site for the key players in this emergent area.

Both the seminars and the online forum are a prelude to the Fall 2007 DIY Media Festival, organized by Mimi Ito, Adrienne Russell, and a committee of USC Annenberg Center staff members and researchers.

Continue reading after the jump for the Fall semester schedule for the USC Annenberg Center Speaker’s Series/DIY Media seminars:

September 14

Speakers: Mimi Ito and Howard Rheingold

Mimi Ito’s talk is entitled "Amateur Cultural Production in the New Networked Age." She is a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use, particularly among young people in Japan and the US. She is currently co-leading a multi-year project on Digital Kids and Informal Learning, with support from the MacArthur Foundation. As part of this project she is conducting case studies of anime fandoms in Japan and the English-speaking online world. She is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication.

Howard Rheingold’s talk is entitled "Participatory Media Literacy and Civic Engagement." His 2002 book Smart Mobs, was widely acclaimed as a prescient forecast of the always-on era. The weblog associated with the book (http://www.smartmobs.com/) has become one of the top 200 of the 8 million blogs tracked by Technorati, and won Utne Magazine's Independent in 2003. In 2005, he taught a course at Stanford University on "A Literacy of Cooperation," as part of a long-term investigation of cooperation and collective action, undertaken in partnership with the Institute for the Future. He teaches Participatory Media/Collective Action at UC Berkeley's School of Information, and Digital Journalism at Stanford University. He is a Nonresident Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication, and a visiting Professor at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

October 19

Speakers: Bob Stein and Todd Richmond

The topic of Bob Stein’s talk is open source academic publishing. He is Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center, and Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book-- a project designed to explore, understand, and influence the shift from the printed book to digital publishing. Stein is currently working on SOPHIE-- a new software program that will allow artists, scholars, writers and others create digital documents incorporating audio and visual elements, along with text. The underlying goal of this project is to develop software that allows users to create their publications without having to hire a specialized programmer or learn complicated programming techniques. Upon completion in 2006, SOPHIE will be distributed on an open-source basis via the Institute for the Future of the Book.

The topic of Todd Richmond’s talk is open source courseware. He is currently a Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center, and the Center for Creative Technologies at USC. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television. He specializes in basic and applied research in the broad field of digital networked media, social networks, and social software. He is currently working on a Hewlett Foundation-funded research project titled "Viral University Education" which seeks to better understand and facilitate the uptake of freely available open educational content on the Internet by using a variety of social software tools and technologies to create viral learning communities and content.

November 16

Speakers: danah boyd and Justin Hall

Danah boyd’s [sic] talk is entitled "Creating Culture Through Collective Identity Performance: MySpace, Youth, and DIY Publics." Danah is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Graduate Fellow at the USc Annenberg Center. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, her dissertation focuses on how youth engage in networked publics like MySpace. In particular, she investigates how youth formulate a presentation of self and negotiate socialization in mediated contexts where the audience is often unknown. Prior to Berkeley, danah received an AB in computer science from Brown University and an MS in sociable media from MIT Media Lab. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google and, currently, Yahoo! She also created and managed a large online community for V-Day, a non-profit organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide. She actively blogs about social media at Apophenia (www.zephoria.org/thoughts/)

Justin Hall will speak about "Passively Multiplayer Online Games." He is a Graduate Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center and a graduate student in the USC Interactive Media Division where he explores alternatives to text publishing online. He is currently developing surveillance-based gameplay online and on mobile phones called "Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming." He has taught classes and workshops at USC School of Cinema-Television encouraging the creation and distribution of short videos online. He started "Justin’s Links from the Underground" (www.links.net) in January 1994 eventually writing 4,800 pages of hypertexted personal journalism before stepping back in January 2005. In December, 2004, New York Times Magazine referred to him as "the founding father of personal blogging."

December 14

Speakers: Jennifer Urban and Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is co-editor for the popular technology blog "Boing Boing."He is also a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center, and is currently the first to hold USC's Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Public Diplomacy. He actively supports liberalizing copyright laws in order to increase the amount of creative work available to share, remix, and develop. A proponent of Creative Commons, his work emphasizes digital rights management, file-sharing, Disney, and post-scarcity economics.

Jennifer Urban is a Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center and a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at USC. She teaches Intellectual Property and classes related to Technology Law and Policy. She also is the Director of the USC Intellectual Property Clinic, where students learn intellectual property law through hands-on work with cutting-edge, real-world projects. She is a faculty member of the USC Center for Communication Law and Policy.

For more information on these talks or speakers, go to www.annenberg.edu, or call 213-743-2520. [blogged by Scott on USC Interactive Media Division]

Posted by jo at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

Invisible Geographies

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Ears to the Ground

Invisible Geographies, an exhibition organized by critic Christophe Cox, presents four works that illuminate different facets of contemporary German sound art--a scene that has been tremendously influential since the 1970s. Aside from the national focus, what is unique about Invisible Geographies, amidst a wider burgeoning of sound art practice, are the diverse, large-scale installations of which it's comprised. Encompassing sculpture, video, light, and found objects, the four works by Jens Brand, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag, Stefan Rummel, and Christina Kubisch push far-flung edges of sound art's formal boundaries. They are linked by their common interest in physical or social dimensions of sound, and in their deft re-mapping of urban space. Kubisch presents three related projects under the heading 'New York Electrical Walk' that variously highlight, visualize and transform electro-magnetic sound waves the artist recorded in Times Square. A rough-hewn installation by Rummel made with found building materials and retired electronic equipment re-constitutes the space of the gallery according to its resident aural elements, putting echoes from hidden storage spaces in conversation with the humming of light fixtures. Gallery-goers can expect their senses will be re-tuned after a trip to Invisible Geographies, which will be reverberating at The Kitchen, in New York, through October 14th. - Lauren Cornell, Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

paraflows 06

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Annual Convention for Digital Arts and Cultures

paraflows 06 - annual convention for digital arts and cultures :: 9 through 16 September 06 :: paraflows 06 focusses on the idea of a ‚net behind the net’ which can mean both the digital behind the social net, and the social behind the digital net. paraflows (the Greek prefix ‘para’ meaning: beside, near, moreover) emanates from the main motors of freedom of the net and its para-experts, the wikipedias and slashdots of all areas within which consumers help each other voluntarily to become and remain critical users and experts in their fields.

The symposium draws participants from all over the world and consists of lectures and workshops on the topic of paraflows 06: ‘nets behind the net’. The exhibition will display works dealing with the ‘social web’ focussing on the topic of the ‘nets behind the nets’. Installations and performances are meant to encourage visitors to actively participate in the event. The horizontal concept of the exhibition consciously takes on the approved principles of a decentralized organisation and of participatory practices. The exhibition will therefore be held in seven locations within the Viennese art and culture scene. The daily evening events will top off the festival and encourage participants and visitors to communicate with each other.

Symposium

Paraflows 06 – the nets beyond the net

High abstraction goals for local communities

In the year 2006, neither Amnesty International nor Greenspeace have been put out of work, yet new horizons of necessary political engagement have emerged that call on the abilities of computer scientists, lawyers and artists alike – and lots of them.

These alternative task forces have recently formed, like the state-of-the-art movement of Pirate Parties that originated in Sweden and strives to get techaware citizens elected into parliaments on a worldwide scale, the Big Brother Awards that report back and collect local cases of corporate technologialy abuse in more than 15 countries, or the Free Software Foundation that designs operation systems and licenses that can spread freedom from digital abuse in an already abusive environment. They all advise their politicians, lawyers and journalists in their free time to stop steering our societies into a direction where Europeans have little understanding of where it will lead: intimidated citizens, security-obsessed decision makers, atmospheres of faschism, powered by the IT-sector itself and its shareholders.

At this moment in time, participants in the Viennese netznetz-experiment succeeded by being entrusted 500.000 Euro every year, to distribute among themselves and their projects, obliging themselves to the task of stabilizing and re-designing their procedures collectively, step by step, and in a democratic fashion that nevertheless produces results. This complex task seems to be just like "rebuilding the plane as you are flying“ (A. Limi). Yet by co-constructing the local workflows they are already changing the flows of cash and hardware, material and knowledge, information and inspiration in the city of Vienna. Seen from a personal point of view, a lot of them already look back on a hybrid education between the computer sciences, the social sciences and the arts, testifying with their own experience in the netznetz – process that the perception of scientific facts and artistic artifacts, tools for collaboration and devices for self-alienation, promising instability and outmoded routines may sometimes blend into each other rather paradoxically, as if both states were to be true at once, or on parallel dimensions.

But how are these two scales of endeavour related, both the organisation of a local production- and safety-net via the web and the care for interrelated issues like copyrights and patent approaches via international, distributed technologies and communities? The most immediate concern that invokes scrutiny are people. Because just looking back into the ideologies and technologies of the year 1968 or 1996 will not suffice to properly adress these new power constellations that have emerged between the social, the political, the legal, the technological and the personal aspects of our daily life. And be it in Vienna or elsewhere, in order not to paralyse our momentum, these complexities must be adressed in a innovative way, by researching and testing possible re-constellations and current models of collective collaboration for the long term. And by reminding oneself that, within all complexity, "the most important source of energy is the human being and what he or she believes.“ (J.A. Wheeler). Paraflows 06 will present different viable approaches to personal self-organization with a global bandwidth reach.

Participants:

Rena Tangens (foebud.org), Albena Yaneva, Gary Danner & Elisa Rose (Station Rose), Hartmut Pilch (ffii.org), Mirko T. Schäfer, Alvise Mattozzi, Rick Falkvinge (Pirat Partiet, Stockholm; remote), Tom Fürstner, Rainer Prohaska (cntrcpy), Frank Hartmann, Denisa Kera, Florian Hufsky (Piraten Partei Österreich), Felix Stalder, Pamela Bartar (concult.at), Thomas Ballhausen, Vladimir Jeric (Creative Commons Serbia), Jan Lauth, Andreas Trawögger u.a.

Posted by jo at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School

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The Public Domain

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School Launches “The Public Domain,” annual theme for 2006-2007 :: The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, New York City :: Further information: 212.229.5353 or kuonic[at]newschool.edu.

September 14, 2006 – 6:30 p.m. :: Inaugural Lecture :: The Eclipse of the Public: The Necessity to Revitalize the Public Sphere by Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research :: Each year, an inaugural lecture launches the Vera List Center’s annual theme, defining the intellectual territory that will be explored in public programs throughout the year. Professor Bernstein will discuss the meaning of the concepts of public life and public space in the works of John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, and Jurgen Habermas, and will consider how these concepts are relevant for understanding public freedom and democracy.

Future Events:

September 25, 2006M – 6:30 p.m.
Mapping. And Now We Can See it All?
With:
William Bevington, Parson Institute for Information Mapping
Daniel N. Dubno, Producer, CBS News
Joy Hirsch, Columbia University, Department of Neuroscience
Henrik Mayer, Reinigungsgesellschaft

A discussion on the different areas in which information is decoded, presented, and processed in an overstimulated culture, with a focus on the politics of information mapping in terms of what is revealed and what is concealed.

September 29, 2006 – 7 p.m.
Negativland: Adventures in Illegal Art
A Performance by Mark Hosler
Of mythical stature in the worlds of music, performance and law, Negativland presents a film/performance/lecture by one of its four members, co-founder Mark Hosler.

For over two decades, Negativland has not just touched on critical issues but has actually provoked, and in court defended, them: concepts such as intellectual property issues, file sharing, media literacy, creative activism in a media-saturated multinational world, evolving notions of art and ownership, and law in a digital age.

October 27, 2006 – 6:30 p.m.
Public Space and Sustainable Development
The Future of an Old City
With
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, WORKac, New York
John Krieble, Office of Sustainable Design, City of New York
Victoria Meyers, Landscape Architect
Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Parsons The New School of Design
Joel Towers, Tishman Environment and Design Center, The New School

As the distinction between commerce and leisure is increasingly blurred, public space has morphed into a structure that is semi-private, semi-governmental and facilitates both commerce and entertainment. This panel considers how sustainable design—with its emphasis on energy conservation, efficiency, environmentally reflexive material specification etc.—has been deployed in contemporary public space through developers’ initiatives and government subsidies, and to what ends.

December 4, 2006 – 6:30 p.m.
Open Source on the Line
With
Cory Arcangel, artist
Daniel Mayer, CFO, Wikipedia
and others

A discussion on the contested terrain of open source culture online, and how new models and practices offer innovative artistic and political possibilities to some, and questionable author- and ownership complications to others. Panelists from different disciplines and backgrounds will explore the effects of online platforms such as Wikipedia and delicious on culture and offline systems of knowledge, as well as current challenges to open source principles such as “net neutrality.” Presented in collaboration with Rhizome.

Additional programs in the works.

Posted by jo at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

Gaming Realities

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Virtual Spaces are the New Public Spaces

In less than a month Gaming Realities, one of the biggest festivals to date encompassing the critical exploration of videogames in the fine arts and humanties, kicks off in Athens. The festival hosts a great line up of artists and speakers, many of which we've covered or archived here at Selectparks over the years (Blast Theory, Sir Frasca, Darwinia, Eastwood Group, Molleindustria and many more). I'll be there, so if you're at the festival come to my keynote and ask some impossibly difficult questions when I least expect it. Cheers! Read on for the comprehensive press release and exhbition details. [posted by julian on selectparks]

EXHIBITION: NetODrom by Christoph Anthes, Alexander Wilhelm, Helmut Bressler, Roland Landershamer, Johannes Zarl, Silke Wiesinger; Austria, 2005 :: Can you see me now? by Blast Theory; U.K., 2001 :: Philosopher Death Match by Benjamin Chang; U.S.A., 2006 :: Grid Chase - The 5€ Dance Pad Project by Dimi Christopoulos; Greece, 2002-2006 :: Himalaya’s Head by DEVART; Netherlands, 2005 :: Civilization IV – Age of Empire by Eastwood Group; Serbia, 2004 :: N o w h e r e - ein welt raum spiel by Sylvia Eckermann, Gerald Nestler, Christof Cargnelli, Oliver Irschitz; Austria, 2005 :: Bordergames by Fiambrera; Spain, 2005 :: Postvinyl by Mathias Fuchs; U.K., 2005 :: Lykno by David Gauthier, Henri Marino, Laurie Prevot, Jean Batiste Spieser; France, 2006 :: Semiomorph by Troy Innocent; Australia, 2001 :: Darwinia Introversion Software, U.K., 2005 :: Ready Played by The Ludic Society (Margarete Jahrmann/Max Moswitzer); Austria/Switzerland, 2006 :: Kalamiotou_02 by The mamayans; Greece, 2006 ::

Max Payne cheats only by Jodi; Netherlands :: Ariadne’s Sonic Threadball by Panagiotis Koutlemanis, Dimitris Dinieas; Greece, 2006 :: Façade by Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern; U.S.A., 2005 :: The McDonalds’s Videogame by Molleindustria; Italy, 2006 :: Soviet Unterzogersdorf the adventure game by Monochrom; Austria, 2005 :: Book and Volume by Nick Montfort; U.S.A., 2005 :: The making of Balkan wars: the game by Personal Cinema; Greece, 2004 :: Disaffected by Persuasive Games; U.S.A., 2006 :: Interactive Circus by Prof. Marie-Helene Tramus, Cedric Plessier; France, 2005 :: Jumping Rope by Orna Portugaly, Daphna Talithman, Sharon Younger; Israel, 2004 :: Global Conflicts: Palestine by Serious Games Interactive; Denmark, 2005-2006 :: Boys in the Hood by Axel Stockburger; Austria/U.K., 2005 :: The endless forest by Tale of Tales; Belgium, 2005 :: Game Music by Vladimir Todorovic; Serbia, 2004-2005 :: Fijuu2 by Julian Oliver, Steven Pickles; Germany - New Zealand, 2006 :: Coin Snatch by sheismartha, Alexandros Plakidas Dasios; Greece, 2006 :: History Lost Redux by University of the Aegean; Greece, 2006 ::

Conference Highlight:

The democratisation of virtual environments
Personal Cinema
International New Media Collective

A spectre is haunting Virtual Environments, their democratisation.

It is the spectre of democracy, which after the abandonment of its physical space [real life] sinking more and more in the contradiction of lies and the cancellations that lead to its constitution, it breached the relations with the real and it became itself a spectre. This is how the paradox of spectre occurred, the wandering shadow of democracy. A spectre that tries to penetrate, and aims to democratise the new kind of ghosts that constitute the space which forms a major element of human experience: The Virtual Environments.

The democratisation of virtual environments, computer and video games is one main debate issue in the industry of interactive media. In new media and especially video games the democratisation is related mainly to the fact that the user, in the context of interaction and personalisation, takes major part in the creation process of the games themselves. Mods, thousands of volunteer designers in Half Life, Everquest, Oblivion, and Quake, are examples of how the users participate in the creation process. If we are able to discuss something new in new media it is the user’s capability to participate in the creation process. This capability is not a gift or an offer of a generous democratic technology, but immanence within its own structure, it is an immediate reflection of the conflicts that constitute this capability of participation which has as its final destination democracy.

In other words, speaking of the conditions which arose from the utopian meeting of spectres, which magical ritual could be useful for both the old spectre of democracy and the ‘spectral’ world of virtual environments?

The vast majority of the users understand democracy according to the quantity of interactive “clicks” which represent the voting “right” in cyber space. The image of the voting procedure and democratisation in virtual space isn’t the supposed infinite choice of different web pages or the user’s ability to create personalised narration in a video game; it is the image of the cursor itself over the icon of “choice” accompanied by the sound of the “click” which really is the extension of the image of the poll and the hand that is “capable of choosing”.

How is possible to revive democracy in the realm of the potential, when within the context of the objective it became a commodity that has usually been exported and imported via violence?

Posted by jo at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Untitled Media

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Public Perceptions of New Media Art

In response to the ongoing debate by mainstream art establishments, contemporary art theorists, practitioners and the art going communit - to define what constitutes a New Media Art practice - Untitled Media is an attempt to document and categorise examples of artworks that might, or might not fall into the domain of New Media Art.

The Untitled Media project is a hybrid art research activity that is created at site-specific New Media galleries and events. Consisting of a data collection survey, data collection analysis software and data visualization model - the project collects information on public perceptions of New Media Art. These findings are then made public through a visualised dynamic database. The data base will be added to by running the Untitled Media project at a number of New Media venues to establish the typologies of contemporary New Media Art.

Unlike traditional artworks such as painting or sculptures, New Media Art is often difficult to describe or identify, Untitled Media is a participatory classification system that attempts to define the mutability of contemporary New Media Art, whilst becoming an artwork in itself.

The Untitled Media project is a product of the Reality Co-operative: creative technologists - Ian Gwilt - Elisa Lee - Shigeki Amitani - Adam Hinshaw

Posted by jo at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)

MONKEY TOWN

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THE MARISA AND BEN SHOW

THE MARISA AND BEN SHOW :: Saturday, September 30 :: Admission: $8 :: Showtimes: 7:30pm and 10pm (reservations are recommended: 718.384.1369) :: MONKEY TOWN, 58 N 3rd St (btw Wythe & Kent), Williamsburg, Brooklyn :: Subway: L Train to Bedford.

Join film festival prankster Ben Coonley and internet artist Marisa Olson for an evening of "ubiquitous media:" PowerPoint presentation send-ups, subversive Blogging, pro-sporting simulacra, and a host of new media topsy-turveydom. By appropriating amateur technologies to create innovative and amusing forms of entertainment, Ben and Marisa give us a slice of "life as art," just maybe pointing out that the kind of life our culture leads brings forth absurd new ways of experiencing it. The program will consist of some never-before-screened gems and a two-channel collaborative installation specifically created for Monkey Town.

Website for Marisa: http://www.marisaolson.com
Website for Ben: http://www.tvchannel.tv/

Marisa Olson: Marisa Olson's performance-based work revolves around the shared histories of popular music, cinema, and sound recording technologies. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates internet art, videos, audio recordings, drawings, and installations in tandem with live performance, to make statements about life, communication, and the voice in contemporary digital culture. these works are often infused with mixed metaphors about the relations between talent, fame, and failure.

Marisa studied art at Goldsmiths College, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric and Film Studies at UC Berkeley. Her work has most recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, the Art Gallery of Knoxville, Side Cinema-UK, and the New York and Chicago Underground Film Festivals. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her "anything but stupid."

Ben Coonley: Ben Coonley is a video and performance artist who uses comic pedagogical styles and direct audience address to explore aspects of media culture and film history. Drawing from the avant garde canon and amateur/public access video conventions, his videos are sardonic no-brow subversions of cinematic form and genre. Born in Boston (1976), Coonley studied Art Semiotics at Brown University, and received his MFA from Bard College. His works have been screened at venues and film festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas and the Pacific Film Archive. He is a regular contributor to Movies with Live Soundtracks, a quarterly DIY film/performance series based in Providence, RI. He lives in Brooklyn.

Presented by Nick Hallett (HARKNESS A/V)

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AXIOM Gallery presents:

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Art and Science: A Symbiosis

AXIOM Gallery presents: Art and Science: A Symbiosis :: Opening Reception - September 22nd 6-9pm :: Performance by John Holland: Wed. Sept 27th 7:30pm :: Cultural Evolution Discussion: Oct. 11th, 7:30pm :: AXIOM Gallery 186 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Corner of Hampshire and Prospect Sts in Inman Square.

Featuring work selected by the Nature and Inquiry group, including: Sahra Brady, Donald Burgy, John Holland, Margot Kelley, Nathalie Miebach, Amy Robinson, Nita Sturiale, Gail Wight, and Ron Wallace.

Art and Science a Symbiosis, explores biological and, cultural symbiosis and the symbiotic relationship between art and science, as well as showcasing a variety of works that exemplify the juxtaposition of art and science relating to the development and evolution of contemporary culture.

Gallery Hours: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 2-6pm or by appointment. For more information, visit www.axiomart.org or call 617-513-6375.

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Upgrade! Montreal

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explosive electro_sound

Upgrade! Montreal: The September 13th 2006 Upgrade culminates two years of explosive presentations, performances and gatherings by the grassroots organisation Upgrade Montreal. The Upgrade has always loved the sonic arts and so it is only appropriate that we close our 2006 season with two of the most intense investigators of sound that call Montréal a second-home: internationally acclaimed sound-artist Francisco Lopez and underground breakcore and genre-destroying turntablist Fishead.

Spain's Lopez is well known for his many albums exploring field recordings that approach intensive levels of noise while retaining the heterogeneity of a soundscape. He recently completed the Montreal Sound Matter project at Quartier Ephemere where he worked with local sound-artists to capture and reinterpret the sounds of Montreal. For the Upgrade Montreal, Lopez will discuss his recent "Blind City" soundwalks in which the blind lead blindfolded listeners around the city. We will also be subject to a high-volume performance in as much darkness as we can muster.

Fishead still lurks in the shadows in Montreal. A native Winnipegger and dedicated Midwesterner, Fishead has risen to acclaim as Montreal¹s number 3 DJ (ranked by Mirror columnist Steve Lalla in 2006). After some 16 years behind the turntables and with an encyclopaedic memory of vinyl history (and a massive record collection to boot), the articulate Fishead will discuss his approach to conceptually and technically layering disparate track selections. For our ears, he will demonstrate some of his "collision engineering" techniques on the decks. Don't miss what will be undoubtedly a learning experience for any DJ willing to call themselves by the name. Long-time DJ partners Fishead and tobias c. van Veen will finish the evening with a classic ControlToChaos.ca tag-team set.

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September 13, 2006

Upgrade! Johannesburg

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Andre SC: TECHNOGRAFFI

Upgrade! Johannesburg :: September 16, 2006: Andre SC: TECHNOGRAFFI: Drawing the pixel curtain :: 3pm, WSOA Digital Arts.

In /*technoGraffi* - drawing the pixel curtain/, André SC will show and discuss some of his recent ‘stuff’ involving generative procedures, pseudo neuro-biological theory, ridiculous amounts of pornography, 'post-digital abstraction' as well as netVerse - the current interactive online project that N. Stern describes as “a noteworthy feat …a cross between fridge magnet poetry, geeky guy gluttony, snot flinging, and surrealist games…”

New media manipulator (read pixel-maniac), André SC a.k.a. Clements completed a BA at the University of Pretoria in ‘95. Since then he has been a designer, corporate consultant, experimental artist, studied some more stuff and lectures in Media Design Technology. He is the web-editor/developer of davidkrutpublishing.com and keeps a personal blog site at pixelplexus.co.za. also see his net.art project, netverse.

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Drunken Boat 8

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Awards

Drunken Boat 8: W E B A R T Judged by Talan Memmott; WINNER: Jason Nelson; SPECIAL MENTIONS: Thomas Petersen, Andres Manniste; EDITOR'S CHOICE: Juliet Davis FINALISTS: J.R. Carpenter, Neil Jenkins, Bioteknica, Sally Pryor, Jessica Gomula, Maria Miranda and Norie Neumark.

V I D E O Judged by David Hall WINNER: John Fillwalk SPECIAL MENTIONS: Christina McPhee, Daniel Shiffman; EDITOR'S CHOICE: Ethan Ham; FINALISTS: Rosemary Bodolay, Joy Garnett, Keith Tuma/jUStin!katKO, Justyna Latek, Dene Grigar and Steve Gibson, Ryan Hovenweep and Rory Keohane.

S O U N D Judged by Paul D. Miller WINNER: Erik Bünger SPECIAL MENTIONS: The Night Collective, Matthew Burtner, Marcelo Radulovich EDITOR'S CHOICE: Maxime Tanaka FINALISTS: Sawako Kato, The Phonographers, Union, Ken Urban, Philip Blackburn, Joan Schuman, Krista Franklin & Alison Chesley, John Hudak.

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The Flattening and Opening of Space

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and Walking/Listening/Recording

Carrie Bodle will be presenting her work at two openings in the Pacific Northwest in the upcoming weeks. Her collaboration with Margie Livingston in the New Works Laboratory 2006, jointly sponsored by 911 Media Arts Center and the Henry Art Gallery, The Flattening and Opening of Space, explores artworks at the intersections of painting and installation art to investigate the boundaries between 2-dimensionality and 3-dimensionality. Their project incorporates drawing, sound, and projected imagery to create the experience of being inside a perspective drawing. By opening what is usually flat, and flattening what is usually spatial, Bodle and Livingston challenge the viewer’s preconceptions of space.

2006 New Works Laboratory at 911 Media Arts Center: Carrie Bodle and Margie Livingston: The Flattening and Opening of Space; Robert Campbell and Yuki Nakamura: Floating Plaster/City Motion.

September 12–October 27, 2006 :: Monday through Friday, 12:00 noon–6:00 p.m. :: Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 12, 2006, 6:00–9:00 p.m. :: Location: 911 Media Arts Center, 402 9th Ave. N. (at Harrison), Seattle 206.682.6552 www.911media.org

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Walking/Listening/Recording: Tryon Creek (2006) is a 10-channel sound installation set along the Trillium Trail in Tryon Creek State Park, Portland, Oregon. Along the initial 250ft passage of the Trillium Trail, speakers from hidden locations cast layers of found sounds interwoven with poetic murmurs and field recordings from around the Red Fox Bridge area in the park. William Stafford's poem "Walking with Your Eyes Shut" inspired the use of poetry in the piece - to form a dialogue between the visual and audible experience. These layers of sound are intended to engage visitors in a sonic narrative along the trail.

Friends of Tryon Creek State Park presents: Natural Cycles: A Celebration of Art in the Forest :: Carrie Bodle's Walking/Listening/Recording: Tryon Creek State Park.

September 17, 2006 – August 2007
Opening Reception
Sunday, September 17th, 2006
5:00 - 7:00pm
Location:
Tryon Creek State Park, Portland, Oregon

Artists:
Julian Voss-Andreae
Christine Harrington
Leta Evaskus
Carrie Bodle
Martha Morgan
Charissa Brock

Contact: Stephanie Wagner
Executive Director
503-636-4398
www.tryonfriends.org

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Upgrade! Paris Launches with

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Atau Tanaka

Upgrade! Paris: Atau Tanaka :: September 22, 2006 :: "THE UPGRADE! PARIS" - VENDREDI 22 SEPTEMBRE 19h - ARS LONGA Incident.net est heureux de vous annoncer la naissance de "THE UPGRADE! PARIS" AVEC ATAU TANAKA, qui présente son nouveau projet, « Net_Dérive » qui aura lieu a la Maison Rouge les 6 et 7 octobre prochain. Médiateur : Dominique Moulon.

Atau Tanaka bridges cultures of east and west, of technology and music. He creates music with sensors and networks - a composer who is performer, a performer who is instrument builder, finding the voice in interactive technology. His first inspirations came in the 80’s upon meeting John Cage. He came up in Silicon Valley in the 90’s making music from virtual reality technology. He moved to Paris in 1992 and played music festivals like Sonar, Musique Action and Club Transmediale, and arts centers like IRCAM, STEIM and V2, making interactive systems for Fred Frith and others. He founded Sensorband with Zbigniew Karkowski and Edwin van der Heide, mythic for their physical performances and monumental instruments.

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After five years in France, he moved in 1997 to Japan for a project at NTT/ICC and came in contact with the noise music scene, playing with Merzbow, Otomo, KK Null and others. Back in France since 2001, he has realized large scale installations with Kasper Toeplitz and network pieces including a commission from the German radio SWR. He has curated a collection of Japanese music for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Atau is best known for his performances with the BioMuse - a sensor system that turns his body into a musical instrument. Muscle tension is captured and modulates digital signal processes in the computer. Concentrated gestures, not unsimilar to Tai-chi, create pulsing organic electronic sounds. He creates layers of pure tones and noise, sculpting and filtering with broad strokes with his arms. Sweeping through empty space, he creates virtual sculptures in sound, making the listening experience visceral.

Atau’s work has beern recognized by the Ars Electronica, the Cyberstar award, and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology. He has CD releases on solo, group, and compilation recordings on labels such as Subrosa, Bip-hop, Caipirinha Music, Touch/Ash, Sonoris, Sirr-ecords, and others.

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

September 12, 2006

CONFLUX 2006

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Festival for Contemporary Psychogeography

CONFLUX 2006 begins this week, and we invite all of you to join us! This year's Conflux will take place September 14 - 17th, headquartered at the McCaig-Welles Gallery in Brooklyn. Over 80 artists from across the US and countries including Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Australia will come to Williamsburg to present projects including experimental walking, biking, boat and public-transport tours; street games and tech workshops; mobile broadcasts, performances and temporary installations. For more information, including a detailed schedule, project descriptions, and contributor bios, please check the Conflux website! [posted by krista on Glowlab]

KEYWORDS: AMBIENT TECH, AUGMENTED REALITY, CONTEXT-AWARE MEDIA, DIGITAL ARTIFACTS, EXPERIMENTAL TRAVEL, EXPERIMENTAL URBANISM, FEEDS, GPS, IMMERSIVE NARRATIVE, INFORMATION SPACE, INTERACTION DESIGN, INTERACTIVE ART, LATITUDE/LONGITUDE TRACKING, LOCAL SEARCH, LOCATION-BASED SERVICES, MANY-TO-MANY, MAP-MAKING, MICRO-PERFORMANCE, MIXED-REALITY GAMING, MOBILITY, MULTIMEDIA, PERVASIVE TECHNOLOGY, PLACEMAKING, PLAY, PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, PUBLIC SPACE, RFID, RICH MEDIA, SCRIPTED SPACE, SEMACODE, SMARTMOBS, SMS/MMS, SOCIAL CARTOGRAPHY, SOCIAL INTERVENTION, SOCIAL NETWORKING, SOUNDSCAPES, SPATIAL ANNOTATION, STORYTELLING, TAGGING, UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING, URBAN ECOLOGY, URBAN EXPERIENCE, WIFI.

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Killing the Fathers, or: If You Meet Jane Jacobs On The Road...
Adam Greenfield

This is a short talk about a great many complicated things: about urban form in an age of mobile, ubiquitous and pervasive computing; about how our relations with places familiar and unfamiliar change as a result of our engagement with new information technologies; and, above all, about how we may need to jettison our dependence on the beloved heroes and heroines of 20th century urbanism in order to understand what's happening all around us.

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Parking Public
Ryan Griffis

Parking Public is an investigation into the realities of utopian thought as materialized in the mundane and pragmatic spaces of parking lots. Parking lots, one of the most visible, yet overlooked, artifacts of American mobility reveal the concrete space required to store the supposed tools of utopian ideals. Parking Public is a mapping of these literally concrete spaces in an attempt to locate the utopia they serve. Underneath both the empty spaces of parking and the empty promises of utopia are real economies and structures of power. For Conflux 2006, The TTO will offer a guided tour of parking in the Brooklyn area that will also serve as a participatory mapping of personal utopias upon the topography of property development. These tours will add to the Parking Public database of research on parking and utopias. This tour will be conducted by van, and can accommodate 11 people. If you would like to RSVP for the tour, to ensure a seat, please visit: temporarytraveloffice.net/rsvp The Temporary Travel Office has created tours of parking lots in Hollywood, historic downtown Los Angeles and Champaign, IL. These tours are augmented with distributed surveys, in embodied space and on the web, recording the utopian desires of the users. Cell phones will allow people to participate in the phone survey, but are not necessary.

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In the intimacy of the city
Régine Debatty

Designers, artists, and hackers have been very active over the past few years trying to find a way to reclaim the boundaries that we routinely create in our use of public space and that neither passersby nor electromagnetic fields respect.

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Stations of a Commute
Nita Sturiale

Stations of a Commute is a series of audio tracks designed to be listened to during an urban commute away from one's loves - whether children, partners or life work. There are 14 stations in all, each preceded by instructions as to where they should be performed. The stations provide an opportunity to practice a walking meditation in the face of the city's noise and entropy, while also celebrating the community, culture and diversity the city provides. These 14 stations can be performed on any commute away from your loved ones and/or obligations. Listen to the narrations with a meditative and solemn approach. Stop walking, pull the car over for a moment. Take a breath. Reciprocate. This project is available as a Podcast from http://www.stationsofacommute.com or as a limited edition audio CD available during CONFLUX. Users will need either an iPod or a portable CD player to experience Stations of a Commute. The duration is as long as your commute is.

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Radio Wonderland
Joshua Fried

A solo performance in which I subvert the local media stream--live FM radio--into recombinant funk. While the processing is all in the laptop, the tools are surreal: a real steering wheel (from a Buick), four old shoes hit with sticks, and a classic ‘80s boom box from which the original sound source emanates: all of it. Live. All radio bits are to be equally abstracted, recontextualized--stripped of their ability to soothe and distract. I want to show those who may be cowed by technology and media that we can manipulate the neverending flow. Therefore the processing is simple: framing, reshuffling, repeating, transposing. The surreal touch of ordinary objects (shoes, wheel) underscores the basic, congenial nature of the transformations. So, too, my riffs must be vernacular, and not elite. I want my audience to go home and start messing with their own radios--or TVs--with just a volume knob and tuner.

And much much more....

Posted by jo at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)

Vholoce: Weather Visualiser

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Seeking a Collaborator

Vholoce: Weather Visualiser :: A net artwork merging meteorological science, and digital artwork. Vholoce*: Weather Visualiser uses real-time weather data to create a series of visualizations intended to both artistically interpret weather conditions, and create new methods of understanding weather data. Working with talented programmer Rory Hering, Griffith University lecturer Jason Nelson created the weather visualiser as a prelude to future data visualization projects. Specifically, Jason and Rory are seeking interested parties to collaborate in developing a visualiser for Australian water data.

The weather visualiser lets the user choose cities from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Those city’s current weather conditions (numbers representing temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, weather description) are then loaded into five different visualizations: Prose:Poetics, Animated, Molecular, Abstract:Noir, and Video.

*Vholoce is the Native American Creek tribe word for “cloudy”. [via Rhizome Raw]

Posted by jo at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)

TESLA Medien>Kunst

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Picturing Free Knowledge

Picturing Free Knowledge :: Friday, 15 and Saturday, 16 September, 20:30, at TESLA Medien>Kunst :: Two video programmes curated by Vera Tollmann.

Image economies take place between Big Business and Creative Commons licences: The Brasilian agency Radiobrás started publishing its news and multimedia broadcasts under CC licences just this summer. During Robbie Williams' recent tour in Germany photographers were not permitted to take pictures of the pop star. A Berlin newspaper reacted by publishing mobile phone pictures taken by their reporter -- the resolution was accordingly low. If one compares the search results in Google Images with the results from databases like Corbis and Getty Images, one has to find out that the pay services clearly
offer higher quality.

Starting from the debate on copyrights, the videos in the programme ask for the power relations in image production and distribution. Which pictures dominate the discourse of the media? How can images be created and distributed outside copyright obligations? What does the enormous and enthusiastic image production in online video communities such as YouTube mean?

The programme presents artistic strategies by which power relations and media image policies represented in images are reflected: The correspondence with the footage-department of a company selling royalty-free film and video clips for commercial purpose reveals their guidelines allowing nothing but hegemonic and stereotypical images. For a moment the logic behind the circulation of capitalist value becomes visible. In other cases, works demand a freer way of dealing with images, for example when public domain footage from film archives is rearranged and published under a Creative Commons licence.

Picturing Free Knowledge I: Image Banks
Friday, 15 September, 20:30

Videos by Johanna Billing, Nina Fischer / Maroan el Sani, Nate Harrison, Marysia Lewandowska / Neil Cummings, Sean Snyder, VitoriaMario, Florian Zeyfang and others

The first programme entitled 'Image Banks' takes existing images as its starting point: Images and their sources are reflected in different contexts, for example, the homogenous aethetics of news images or the categories of commercial image databases are called into question.

Later in the evening, Ricardo Ruiz and Tatiana Wells, currently residents at TESLA, will play a music programme and live stream mix from Brasilian radio stations.

22:00 Klub: rádio cidadão comum: net batucada brasileira on free and pirated music

Picturing Free Knowledge II: Image Agents
Saturday, 16 September, 20:30

Videos by Anna La Chocha, Anja Kirschner, Dariusz Kowalski, TV-TV, Tobias Werkner and others

'Image Agents' compiles video works that make productive use of found footage or pursue new concepts for media knowledge production. The programme is about the appropriation of visual technologies, formats and styles.

Following this logic, Serhat Köksal stirs up mass culture: orientalism, pop, politics and folklore collide in the works of DJ Hugo Chavez & VJ Ahmadinejad.

22:00 Klub: 'MyTube & YourSpace' by DJ Hugo Chavez & VJ Ahmadinejad

tesla berlin - andreas broeckmann - artistic co-director klosterstr. 68-70 - d-10179 berlin - tel. +49-30-24749-761 ab@transmediale.de - http://www.tesla-berlin.de

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September 11, 2006

A Certain Brazilianness

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Maurits Script

Maurits Script, the third part of her ongoing project A Certain Brazilianness by Wendelien van Oldenborgh :: 23 September – 29 October 2006 at Casco.

In the attempt to find an alternative mode of production, ‘A Certain Brazilianness’ became the title of a multidisciplinary process, based on relations and resonances. From a heterogeneous Brazilian culture a number of significant strategies, partly stemming from the social sphere, have led to impressive moments of cultural production. As a way of working, A C_B__ transfers these possibilities into the production of film, drawing on the basic language and roles in a film production to set up situations that lead to new relations. Two performative stages have taken place so far. In these active encounters the participants were performers as well as viewers and listeners, creating the script and cinematic material during the event.

The third part will be based on a script compiled of excerpts from different sources relating to Johan Maurits van Nassau’s period as governor of the North East of Brazil (1637 - 1644), for which he has often been credited as being an early modernist ruler. Maurits Script focuses on the paradoxes and inner conflicts produced within the art of governing, the institutions of the period, and personal relations at a moment when many different groups found themselves living together with clashing interests. It will be staged and filmed at a live event in the Golden Room of the Mauritshuis, den Haag (built by Maurits during his period of government in Brazil), where a group of participants, each of whom have differing relations to the contents of the script, will perform it and discusses its contents in relation to the present day.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh is based in Rotterdam. Recent projects include "A C_B__ Sound Track Stage" for “Cut For Purpose”, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 2006, ”The Basis For A Song” for “Be What You Want But Stay Where You Are” (by Ruth Noack and Roger M. Buergel), Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2005.

14 September : Public film shoot: Mauritshuis, den Haag, 1-4pm
Korte Vijverberg 8, NL 2513 AB Den Haag
The film shoot is open to the public, but the Mauritshuis' standard entrance fee applies to all visitors.

Friday 22 September: Opening of exhibition at Casco, 6-9pm
Sunday 22 October: Discussion and screening of final edit of the film, 5-8pm

Maurits Script is supported by Fonds BKVB, Amsterdam, Gemeente Utrecht and the Mondriaan Stichting.

Casco
Office for Art, Design and Theory
Oudegracht 366
Utrecht 3511PP
T/F: +31 (0)30 231 9995
info[at]cascoprojects.org

Posted by jo at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

Sarai READER 06:

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TURBULENCE

Sarai READER 06: TURBULENCE :: Editors for Reader 06: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram, Awadhendra Sharan + Geert Lovink ::

'TURBULENCE' (from the introduction): If there was ever to be a 'weather report' for our times, an audit of the climate in which we have grown accustomed to live, it would use the word 'turbulence' often. Turbulence is a practice for and of a time that has no name. This book, embodying that practice, is an eclectic index of an uncertain age.The Sarai Reader 6 uses 'Turbulence' as a conceptual vantage point to interrogate all that is in the throes of terminal crisis, and to invoke all that is as yet unborn. It seeks to examine 'turbulence' as a global phenomenon, unbounded by the arbitrary lines that denote national and state boundaries in a 'political' map of the world. Sarai Reader 6 surveys areas of low and high pressure in politics, economy and culture that transcend borders, investigates the flow of information and processes between downstream and upstream sites in societies and cultures globally, witnesses surges and waves in ideas and practices in contemporary art, culture and discourse as they crash against the shorelines of many dispersed locations.

How do we anticipate, recover from and remember moments of sudden transformation? How do we look at the debris of the past and brace ourselves for the whirlwind coming our way from the future? How do we deal with the simultaneous pressures of knowing too much or the anxiety of knowing too little about the world? How do we cope intellectually with the sudden dissolution of established ways of knowing and doing things? What does it mean to know and experience the pull of undercurrents - in society, politics, the economy? How do cities deal with the accumulation of complex infrastructural uncertainty? What happens when urban chaos strikes back at urban planning?How can we map the subterranean tectonic shifts and displacements that occur in culture and intellectual life? What are the histories of anxiety, exhilaration, dread, panic, ecstasy, disorientation and boredom like. How can we begin to narrate these histories? What does it take from us to tell stories, read poetry, make images and record experiences in the wake of turbulence?

Sarai Reader Series Editorial Collective: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan, Jeebesh Bagchi + Geert Lovink :: Sarai Reader 06: Turbulence is part of the Documenta 12 Magazines Projectí :: Published by the Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, 2006 [cc] Produced and Designed at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi :: ISBN 81-901429-7-6, 608 pages, 14.5cm X 21cm, Paperback: Rs. 350, US $ 20, € 20

Posted by jo at 03:57 PM | Comments (0)

Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary

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Here There Now Then

Limerick City Gallery of Art presents Here There Now Then by Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary :: 15th September – 27th October 2006 :: The exhibition will be officially opened by Mr Peter Power TD the exhibition at 7pm on Friday 15th September 2006.

Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary, installation and video artists, have lived and worked in Paris since 1990. Their work, which is highly regarded internationally, has appeared in such prestigious events as the Yokohama Triennial and the European Media Art Festival. This entirely new body of work, commissioned by LCGA with support from the Arts Council, uses interactive technology to explore a recurring issue in Cleary & Connolly’s work – the shifting boundary between art and life. The exhibition, comprising six video installations, uses 5 computers, 5 digital video cameras, and seven video projectors to create an exhibition where the spectator becomes actor, the gallery becomes theatre and the artist becomes spectator.

Collaboration has always been central to Connolly and Cleary’s work, and no less here. One of the works in the exhibition was created with Eriko Momotani who will be present at the opening to recreate one of her improvised soirées musicales, while at later date, October 14th at 3pm, the artists will be working with London based dancers John Hurley and Laura Murphy to create an interactive dance performance, made possible by Chris Hurley of the Cork Film Centre and Daghdha Dance Company, Limerick.

Here There Now Then an interactive exhibition conceived for the Limerick City Gallery of Art With the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, The Cork Film Centre, Daghdha Dance Company, Special thanks to Kinsale Arts Week And with the participation of Eriko Momotani, Laura Murphy and John Hurley.

Eriko Momotani, Japanese artist and curator, has lived in Paris since 1990, where she is a well-known figure in the Parisian art world. Renowned for her Micro-Expositions, Eriko questions the notion of public and private by curating exhibitions in her own apartment, thus turning her living place into a public space. This original and personal approach brought her to the attention of the Ville de Paris, who support her work highly, and the Yokohama Triennial, who commissioned three exhibitions from Eriko in 2005, one of which was Cleary and Connolly’s Yokohama Houseguests.

John Hurley trained at the London Contemporary Dance School. He currently works as a freelance dancer with established international choreographers and dance companies in London and throughout Ireland. Laura Murphy achieved an MA Honour in Dance Performance from the Irish World Music Centre in 2003, she is currently supported by the Arts Council of Ireland to train at Laban, London's leading Contemporary Dance Conservatoire. Limerick City Gallery of Art Pery Square, Limerick Ireland + 353 61 310633

Posted by jo at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

LAb[au] + Frederik De Wilde

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EOD02 + 12m4s

LAb[au] is pleased to invite you to the designers week exhibition presenting two installations: EOD02, a new-media installation in collaboration with Frederik De Wilde and 12m4s, an interactive audiovisual installation taking place at the auction-hall of the Palace of Fine Arts ( ...> ) in Brussels [ BE ] in the context of the exhibition Belgian designers of the 21st century, complied by Dirk Meylaerts and Marie Pok.

The exhibition includes works by: Alain Berteau, Bram Boo, Christophe Bourg, Damien Bihr, Benot Deneufbourg, Nathalie Dewez, Herman Wittockx, Hoet design, Dirk Meylaerts, Gauthier Poulain, Lucile Souflet, Sylvain Willenz , Tov Design, LAb[au] and [UR]Design.

12m4s :: The installation '12m4s' is an interactive audiovisual installation representing human flows by generating out of visitors' main parameters (position, orientation and speed) a visual (3d particles) and sonic (granular synthesis) dynamic scape in real-time. To achieve this result, the installation uses two different tracking techniques: firstly, image recognition is used to create spatial sounds (diffused through 8 speakers disposed along the 12m installation) and secondly, ultra-sound sensors are used to create visual echograms of the space (projected as background image along the 12m screen). These different tracked data influence a graphical vector-field

projected on the entire surface of the screen (foreground), where each of its vectors reacts to a visitor's movements while taking his/her orientation. Furthermore, graphical and sonic objects emerge at the point (location) where movement is recognized. Once created, these sonic and graphical elements start to move through the vector field, while trying to find their path.

For example: a visitor is passing by the installation, s/he is followed by a visual and sonic trace, but as soon as s/he changes direction or produces any other movements, s/he creates turbulences. According to this principle, the visitor can even more actively paint with his/her movements a sonic and visual space on the 12m surface, as it open ups to collective interaction.

The result, this 'particle synthesis' is projected on a 'Mylar' screen fusing projection and reflection while building a common space in between the digital and the body space.

EOD02 :: EOD 02 is a collaboration in between Frederik De Wilde and LAb[au]. The project is a new media installation founded on special species of fish that perceive, electro-sense, their environment and communicate with each other by emitting electric signals, either in pulses or waves. The project explores the normal communication mechanisms of electrical fish, including JAR (the means by which a fish avoids attempts by other fish to jam its frequency) and thus investigates communication and non-communication between individual fish as well as between fish and people.

The installation is based on four aquariums of taintless mirror, each presenting a specific composition of fish producing different electric signals. In each aquarium antennas allows capturing the fish signals which are directly related to four speakers transforming these signals into sound, what we hear is the fishs electric signals_ their communications. Further under each aquarium a light bulb is placed pulsing according to the intensity, rhythm, of the emitted signals of the blind fishes. In this manner the electrical impulses of the fishes drive sound and light, an entire audiovisual space.

Posted by jo at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

Year Zero One

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TERMINAL01: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Year Zero One is seeking submissions for Terminal01 (T01), an interactive networked art exhibition to be launched at Toronto Pearson International Airport in the spring of 2007. T01 will consist of a custom made kiosk housing a touch-sensitive screen, an audio-video output, an embedded web camera, sensors and projection screen. Artists are invited to create site-responsive computer generated work based on their experience and interpretation of air travel environs, mobility, flight data, airports and networked communities. Emphasis will be given to works with a generative component or works dealing directly with themes relevant to travel (space-time). Deadline for submissions is December 1st, 2006. Artist fees paid. T01 is curated by Michael Alstad and David Jhave Johnston. For more info and online entry form please visit: http://www.year01.com/terminal01/submit.html

Posted by jo at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

IRATIONAL ACTION WEEKEND

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DIY - Do it yourself

IRATIONAL ACTION WEEKEND :: September 15-17, 2006 in Dortmund, Germany, various venues :: DIY - Do it yourself - is the central theme of the irational Action Weekend and you are cordially invited to participate!

On Friday night, Sep 15, Daniel G. Andújar (Valencia) invites you to present the Open Source software you like most, and to share it with others. This will be accompanied by an open bbq - please bring your own grill-food and drinks! During the "Tour de Fence" by Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting (Bristol) on Saturday one can learn how to climb walls and fences and thus hack urban space. This scope is also addressed by the "International Tree Climbing Day" taking place on Sunday which will also be lead by Brandon and Bunting. Its motto is “Liberate the Horizontal! - Integrate the Vertical Super Surface!" “Natural Reality Superweed" gets planted in an appropriate Superweed Garden in front of the PHOENIX Halle. The genetically mutated superweed is resistant against Monsanto's roundup herbicides. Rachel Baker presents “Towards Death", a creative aerobic video with Cindy Crawford and music by Antifamily. The Mexico-based Mejor Vida Corporation issues Student ID cards on request which anybody can apply for in the exhibition "The Wonderful World of irational.org". On Sunday, the Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas (Mexico City) presents the actions by Mejor Vida Corporation in a lecture.

The program will be accompanied by guided tours (in German) through the exhibition “The Wonderful World of irrational.org" at PHOENIX Halle and a fabulous 10-years HMKV birthday party with the Irational Soundsystem (Valencia, Bristol, London, Mexico City), the HMKV Soundsystem (Dortmund) and Dortmund-based DJ Carstem Helmich (taxi nights).

curated by: Francis Hunger (HMKV Junior Kurator)

EXHIBITION: The Wonderful World of irational.org - Tools, Techniques and Events 1996 - 2006 curated by Inke Arns and Jacob Lillemose August 30 - October 29, 2006 Wed 11:00-17:00, Thu-Sun 11:00-20:00.

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Conference on Literature and the New Media

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Remediating Literature

An international conference on Literature and the new media entitled Re-mediating Literature will take place at Utrecht University (the Netherlands) 4-6 july 2007, with keynote speakers Katherine Hayles, Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan Baetens, and Samuel Weber. Our website features all relevant information concerning the conferencem including the call for papers (deadline is November 6, 2006).

The conference revolves around the following issues: Recent developments in digital and electronic media have stimulated new theoretical reflections on the nature of media as such and on the way in which they evolve across time. The particular aim of this conference is to examine how recent technological changes have affected the ‘old’ medium of literature.

Multimedial and interactive texts, digitalized archives, cyberpoetics, and technological innovations such as foldable screens: together these have influenced the production and reception of literature, along with the ways in which we think about writing and reading. These ongoing developments call for a critical examination both of the relations between literature and the new media, and of the relations between literary studies and media studies.

The concept of ‘remediation’ in our title thus has a double thrust. Firstly, it refers to the transformative exchanges that have occurred in the past, and continue to occur, between literature and new media: how has digitilization affected literature as a cultural medium? Secondly, it indicates a relocation of literary studies within the broader field of (new) media studies: how could literary studies profit from the various analytical tools developed in (new) media studies and conversely, how could our understanding of earlier phases in the evolution of the literary medium contribute to our understanding of present developments? By working on both these issues, we hope to locate the place of literature within the milieu of modern media networks and technologies, but also to relocate the aims and practices of literary studies within the field of (new) media studies.

Main themes

A. New technologies and literary practice: the state of the field: Will literature continue to develop as a schizophrenic medium, a hard medium of printed matter and an unstable medium of electronic data at the same time, or will it fork out in one of two directions? How is digitilisation affecting reading practices and the circulation of literary texts? What new forms of ‘inter-medial’ and multimedial literature are emerging?

B. Literature and the new media: the longer view: What new light do recent developments throw on the history of literature as a cultural medium and, conversely, how might insights from the history of the literary medium contribute to our understanding of recent developments? How can literary history be rewritten in conjunction with such media technologies?

C. Media compatibilities and competitions: new media hardly ever completely subject and annihilate older media. Rather, the two tend to co-exist, each taking on different tasks and responsibilities (cf. film and the novel in the earlier twentieth century). At the same time, however, they often interrupt and compete with each other (cf. television and the digital in the later twentieth century). How can this duplicity of compatibility and competition be mapped and analyzed, and what are the insights that such analyses might yield into media formations as techno-cultural formations?

D. Disciplinary relocations: will literary studies become a branch of media studies in the foreseeable future - and if so, how? Will literary studies profit from such a re-location, and how will this re-location affect its objects and methodologies?

Abstract submissions:

-Topics:

*Changing conceptions and manifestations of the text from print to the digital age;

*Cyberpoetics and the hypertextual in digitalized and printed form;

*Remediation as a cultural process: how have different media reworked and incorporated each other, and how can such reworkings be theorized in terms of cultural memory and media archeology? This could, for instance, focus on the representation of new media in literature (cf. James Joyce, William Gibson), and the way in which these representations have in turn been stored in the practices of such new media;

*Copy-cats and mutations: how have textual, visual, aural, digital, and performative media functioned alongside each other, how have they co-existed? Which tasks and aspects do old media delegate to new media, or which tasks and aspects do new media copy form old media, and how has this changed the status and identity of the old medium?

*Old narratives, new games: narrative and narrative transformations across media;

*Technological inventions and their effects on the object of literary studies: the impact of new mediations of the literary through foldable screens and other flexible, wearable, handheld paper displays, as well as mobile acoustic networks;

*Institutional remediations I: web publishing, accessibility and canonization of hyperfiction, funding of literary projects on the internet, the emergence of new forms and practices of literary criticism on the internet, as well as the institutional development of new strategies and conventions in editing techniques;

*Institutional remediations II: literary studies from cultural to media studies: will we witness, in the foreseeable future, a ‘post-human’ paradigm shift in the humanities that redirects our focus from cultural studies to media studies?

-Submission guidelines:
Abstracts may be submitted through the following mailing address, indicating the applicant’s name, email address and present academic function:

remediatingliterature[at]let.uu.nl

*Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words, should summarize the topic of the paper, and must be written in English;
*Abstracts should conform to one or more of the conference topics;
*Abstracts will be selected by the Program Committee on the basis of originality, significance of contribution, and relevance to the conference topics;
*Abstracts can be submitted until November 6, 2006
*Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by e-mail by December 22, 2006

Posted by jo at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

REMOTE

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You Bring the Secret Location to Life

REMOTE--by Chris Vecchio :: 9 September – 21 October 2006* :: Gallery Joe Bird Park
3rd and Arch Streets :: Philadelphia, PA :: * viewable 24-7 * best experienced at night * (but no sound after 10PM) :: INSTRUCTIONS: 1) Get up off of the couch 2) (but bring the remote control with you) 3) Go to the south west corner of 3rd and Arch 4) Use your remote to activate the park.

REMOTE is an interactive environmental installation containing a range of sound and visual effects. Installed in an outdoor space, the installation is activated, controlled, and navigated using a common household remote control which may be supplied by the viewer. The piece takes the form of an intervention in an outdoor space, along a street or in a small park. There’s an “insider” element to the installation since, when not activated, its location may not be immediately apparent to a passerby. Additionally, the viewer needs to know to bring a remote to the location to bring the secret to life.

At the installation site, pressing buttons on any (TV, DVD, VCR, audio, etc…) remote control triggers a myriad of responses ranging from subtle (bird calls or soft sounds emanating from hidden speakers, changes in the ambient lighting) to bombastic (more dramatic sound effects, explosions, strobe lights, or projected images). Each key press generates a unique combination of effects. Viewers may bring any remote control from home to activate the installation.

Central to my work is an interest in the expressive potential of electronic devices and in the potential for user interfaces to generate new modes of interaction. A set of social precedents now exists for interaction with electrical technology. When these precedents are followed but subverted or there is no clear immediate “functional” objective, a viewer’s expectations are challenged and an opportunity for reflection or commentary on the human-technology relationship is created. This project makes use of such ambiguity – juxtaposing the familiar with the unexpected – to encourage people to question their assumptions about technology and reflect upon their interaction with it.

The piece has a strong element of accessibility. People who may be intimidated by interactive work or by technology in general may be engaged because an everyday object is the agent of action. The experience of the installation is reminiscent of a coin-op arcade shooting gallery. Play and experimentation are encouraged as part of the experience. Participants can keep trying different units from their everyday collection because each remote interacts differently with the piece. This highlights the number and variety of remotes we use for everyday tasks, from the mundane to the complex.

Sound samples in this installation have been gathered from a wide range of sources including sound effect libraries, police scanners, popular music, short wave and CB radio, and by using peer-to-peer networks to search the internet for randomly (inadvertently?) shared audio files. The broad range of sources references the instrumental use of sound samples in music as well as common (mundane) technological interactions such as channel surfing or tuning across a radio band.

Finally, the installation presents the man-technology interface ironically. The couch potato is asked to get off of the sofa and experience art first hand, but still holding the ever-present remote. Issues related to the effects of technological mediation and the degree to which technology is an atrophying rather than an empowering force are raised.

Posted by jo at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)

They Heart a Computer

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Rhizome @ The Kitchen

They Heart a Computer :: Tuesday, October 3, 8:00 p.m. @ The Kitchen :: Tickets $8 :: Curated by Lauren Cornell as part of Rhizome’s Tenth Anniversary Festival, this evening of live performances and video screenings explores forms of expression, desire, and anxiety prevalent in a culture increasingly influenced by the Internet. Doo Man Group (made up of Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci, and Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad) interweaves live percussion with a dense collage of web-based visual ephemera. Jona Bechtolt (of Yacht) and Claire L. Evans combine music, dance, and PowerPoint to explore the possibilities and fallacies embedded in online communities. In addition, videos by Michael Bell-Smith, JODI, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, and humorist Ze Frank investigate how the Internet amplifies and exaggerates life offline.

512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. Subway: A, C, E to 14th Street; 1 to 18th Street; L to 8th Avenue

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

UpStage

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ADA Swaray

There will be an ADA Swaray in UpStage this sunday, 10th September,
at 9:00 p.m. New Zealand time. For other local times, check http://www.worldtimeserver.com/

ADA is Aotearoa Digital Arts, a network of digital artists in New Zealand. The swaray is a social forum for us to meet & discuss things. This sunday, a number of NZ artists who attended the recent ISEA in san jose will be reporting back on their experiences.

if you'd like to join us as audience, please come to
http://upstage.org.nz:8084/stages/swaray.

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst helen[at]creative-catalyst.com http://www.creative-catalyst.com http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2006

Turbulence Guest Curators: Ars Virtua

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honesty is our policy

Turbulence Guest Curators: Ars Virtua :: Opening Here Tonight! September 8, 7-9 pm SLT (Pacific Time).

A few months ago, we invited Ars Virtua--a new media center and gallery located entirely in the synthetic world of Second Life--to curate an exhibition of Turbulence works for Turbulence.org. James Morgan, Amy Wilson and Jay Van Buren rummaged through our ten-year old archive and produced honesty is our policy with works by Cory Arcangel (Urbandale), Nicolas Clauss (Heritage), and David Crawford (Stop Motion Studies).

"…Honesty may seem like a hokey notion in "real-life," but in an environment like Second Life, honesty is all you have. Absent social cues, history, nature, all one has to go on is the trust in another that this is how they view reality, and to interact with anyone on a meaningful level, that version of reality must be accepted.” – Amy Wilson

"Ars Virtua" is a new type of space that leverages the tension between 3D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. It brings the art audience into “new media” rather than new media to the museum or gallery, and calls upon its audience to interact with the art and one another via their avatars within the space. To visit Ars Virtua simply create a free account in Second Life and run the current client. Once you have this properly installed follow this link – secondlife://Dowden/20/40 – directly to Ars Virtua.

BIOGRAPHIES

JAMES MORGAN has shown work internationally and has recently produced a commission for ISEA2006/ZeroOne.

AMY WILSON is an artist represented by Bellwether in New York City. She has shown her work at numerous places, including PS1, The Drawing Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum, and has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, the Village Voice, and Time Out NY among others. She teaches art history and drawing at the School of Visual Arts.

JAY VAN BUREN is an artist and web designer based in Brooklyn New York. He has curated and worked in design under the name early-adopter.com for the past 7 years. He was the founder and co-director of Videoland Gallery in Manhattan's lower east side and has exhibited paintings in New York, Kansas City and Washington DC.

For more Turbulence Guest Curators, visit http://turbulence.org/curators.

Posted by jo at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

DANCEPOD 2006

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A Sculpture Composed of Simultaneous, Web-Connected Dance Parties

DANCEPOD 2006: On September 9th at 11pm in Portland, 12 am in Guadalajara, 2am in New York City, 3am in Mexico City and 7am in Berlin, dancepod will present an entirely new kind of sculpture. A sculpture composed of simultaneous, web-connected dance parties. The parties, coordinated and developed in conjunction with artists and presenters from each city, will utilize identical dancepod installations. The installations will become the core of a shared physical and virtual experience, supporting streaming video and music as well as live DJ’s, VJ’s, and surprising guest artists. Moving bodies of dancing participants will complete the sculpture.

As part of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's (PICA) Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival, in conjunction with PS122, Scene Downtown (Earl Dax), Harkness A/V (Nick Hallett), and technical directors Kraft + Purver, these 4 DANCEPOD sites will be linked by live video starting at 2:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.

NYC DANCEPOD features an eclectic array of New York artists. Join DJs Kevin Graves (Brite Bar) and Van Scott (Patricia Field's Party at element) and dance to visuals artists assembled by Nick Hallett and Harkness A/V, including Chika and Boris. Live performances by John Moran and Saori Tsukada, Sxip Shirey, and Glenn Marla.

Chez Bushwick will be hosting "The Changing of the Garde" starting at 8:00 PM on Saturday. Come early for DANCEPOD and enjoy performances by:

Wanjiru Kamuyu – Spiral
Jim Staley – Solo Trombone
Bruce Nauman - “Abstracting A Shoe (1966)” – Video Art
David Vaughan, Michael Cole, Jonah Bokaer – A John Cage Birthday Reading
Elke Rindfleisch - Untitled

Also... TECHNOPIA Interviews Carla Peterson, Newly-Appointed Artistic Director of DTW.

All this for $5. Come to both the Chez Bushwick and DANCEPOD events for just $10! That's like seeing the early show for FREE! (Regular DANCEPOD admission is $10).

Hosted By
3rd Ward Brooklyn
195 Morgan Ave.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.715.4961
www.3rdwardbrooklyn.org

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

Tag Shufflesition:

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A Mobile Game of Mimicry and Mime

Tag Shufflesition: a mobile game of movement, mimicry and mime, that uses iPod Shuffles to see how fast can you find out who’s “it”! :: Designed by Charlie Hoyt and Andrew Bucksbarg, Indiana University Bloomington (2006) :: Central Park, New York :: Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 3:00PM.

Christo may have turned Central Park into a work of art, but Andrew Bucksbarg and Charlie Hoyt are part of a group of game designers who will be transforming New York into an enormous game level. Mobile and locative technologies have given rise to an international flowering of what are called urban games, street games or Big Games. These games explore new technologies and make the real world and urban spaces their playground. Tag Shufflesition will be featured in New York’s Come Out & Play Festival

From massive multi-player walk-in events, scavenger hunts to public play performances; the festival will give players and the public the chance to take part in a variety of different games. The festival will feature the innovative use of public space and games that make people interact in new ways, such as Tag Shufflesition.

Tag Shufflesition is a mobile system for movement and dance using the random playback feature of mobile mp3 players, such as Apple’s iPod Shuffle. The “Shufflers” (participants) receive random instructions from their iPods as to how to move and interact with the other Shufflers. One iPod is loaded with a slightly different set of instructions. The task of the Shufflers to find out which Shuffler among them is “it”- the one with the different instruction, and begin to mimic all of the “it” Shuffler’s movements. The game is complete when all of the Shufflers are correctly mimicking the “it” Shuffler.

Tag Shufflesition is engaging for both spectators and participants as an interactive game of patterns movement and mimicry. Shufflers will enjoy following the directions, which often exist as small games within the larger game of Tag Shufflesition. Spectators, without the distractions the Shufflers face, will also enjoy trying to guess who’s “it,” but please don’t give “it” away!

Charlie Hoyt is an Audio Instigator. When he’s not staring at a mixing board or making “music”, Charlie enjoys video games, rock ‘n roll, and name-dropping. Charlie is pursuing a Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, studying audio and music for participatory media. Charlie’s previous artistic fracases include “ToneBeast”, which received honorable mention at the 2004 Indiana IDEAS Fest and “MESS”, which received nothing, but is nevertheless fun. Email: audioinstigator(at)yahoo(dot)com

Andrew Bucksbarg is a techno-media artist, experimental interaction designer, audio-visual performer and a professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University. Bucksbarg’s work and interests reverberate in the space of creative new media practices, technology and theory. As an experimental interaction artist, Bucksbarg concerns himself with technologies and social systems that support tactics of ambiguous, autonomous social creativity and exchange. Bucksbarg’s work appears physically and digitally around the globe, including the Rhizome.org Artbase; Share DJ, NY; The 2006 Bent Festival, NY; National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia; Sonorities Festival, Belfast, UK; The Dark light Film Festival, Dublin, Ireland; Trampoline Media Festival, Nottingham, UK and dLux Media Arts Festival, Sydney, Australia. Email: Andrew(at)adhocarts(dot)org Press: 812-219-5310

Posted by jo at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

TANGENT_BURN featuring PLATONIQ

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Bringing the Net Down to the Streets

TANGENT_BURN featuring PLATONIQ: This evening V2_Institute for the Unstable Media will be hosting a streamed performative presentation by Barcelona based activist art collective PLATONIQ. If you're not able to make it to V2_ in the flesh, and at the same time catch the opening of this year's 'Wereld van Witte de With' Festival, you're invited to join in on the stream beginning at 20.00 (CEST). The PLATONIQ presentation will be augmented by interventions from local Rotterdam sound and visual artists 'onehertexpressions', Zaplab Creative Television and Meticais.

To join the stream, please go to www.v2.nl, follow the link and have your Realmedia player ready! If you don't have the player, you may download one for free at www.real.com.

Afterwards PLATONIQ'S project BURNSTATION to bring net culture, net music and net radio down to the streets will be active throughout the weekend as part of the Wereld van Witte de Festival. Everyone is invited to partcipate in the BURNSTATION, and upload, listen to, edit and to burn their own sound compilations, the whole process being LEGAL AND FREE OF CHARGE.

more info on PLATONIQ and the BURNSTATION on http://www.platoniq.net

TANGENT_BURN Friday September 08
Rotterdam 20.00
Dublin 19.00
Riga 21.00
Montreal 14.00
Seattle 11.00
Kyoto 03.00 (Saturday)

V2_Institute for the Unstable Media
Stephen Kovats_Program Curator
Eendrachtsstraat 10
3012 XL Rotterdam
The Netherlands

t_ **31 10 750 1519
f_ **31 10 206 7271
e_ kovats@v2.nl
www.v2.nl

TANGENT_BURN featuring PLATONIQ
Friday September 08 @ 20.00 (CEST)
RealMedia stream live via www.v2.nl
www.platoniq.net

Posted by jo at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Night Swim

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Dive into the Deep End

NIGHT SWIM is a cross between a sound and light installation, a music festival and a swimming pool party which will be held from sunset till sunrise at the Trinity Bellwoods Community Centre swimming pool in Toronto on Saturday September 30, 2006. Architect and artist Christie Pearson, co-organizer of the highly successful WADE festivals of performance art in Toronto’s public wading pools, has transformed this much loved downtown public swimming pool into a shimmering, reflective dream-space for one night only. Wire contributor Marcus Boon has invited sound artists, musicians and DJs to produce site specific works and sets in a sound environment designed by sound designer Darren Copeland, which will include underwater microphones and speakers. The event is free and open all night – visitors can swim (bring your bathing suit, towels provided!), lounge in the kiddies’ pool, or hang out in the bleachers and around the pool, soaking up the sound and light. 120 people in the pool at a time maximum – first come, first served!

Sounds: Montreal dirty beats by Ghislain Poirier and colossal drone-scapes by Tim Hecker; loops by Beijing-based creators of the Buddha Machine FM3; heavy ambient sounds by Boston-based Keith Fullerton Whitman a.k.a Hravatski; turntablist-composer Marina Rosenfeld and experimental tribal rhythmist Raz Mesinai from New York; from Toronto, electronic composer and improvisor Sarah Peebles, Sandro Perri/Polmo Polpo’s indie funk, sexy nocturnal grooves with Luis Jacob, baile funk, grime and dancehall from Geoff Snack, a.k.a. DJ Showcase Showdown, and ecstatic sustained tones by Orixasound.

Night Swim
Trinity Bellwoods Community Center swimming pool
Queen West at Crawford,
Toronto
7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
September 30th 2006

Posted by jo at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

The Art of Networks

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Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Next week, Montreal's Oboro Gallery will open Deconstructing Networks, a solo exhibition by the very active American new media artist Jonah Brucker-Cohen. The works included in this show provide an excellent overview of Brucker-Cohen's insightful and witty approach to complex questions about networks, as we stare down the barrel of Web 3.0 and beyond. He vividly illustrates the possible physical applications of network structures and concepts, as with the Alerting Infrastructure project, where hits to a website are manifested in physical 'hits' to a building; in the Crank the Web project, a browser that requires elbow grease to run; and in IPO Madness, a slot machine that also acts as a domain name generator for the IPO of your dreams.

The traces and trails generated by data are explored in SpeakerPhone, an arrangement of speakers that spatialize the data it receives. Any internet user will find insights into issues of anonymity, autonomy, and security in projects such as PoliceState, a group of radio-controlled police cars that react when they detect suspicious keywords on a local network, and WiFiHog, a tool that allows a single user to dominate any wireless hotspot. Visitors can directly and spontaneously contribute to the SimpleTEXT audiovisual performance at 3PM on the 16th, so be sure to bring your mobile phone along, and don't forget a sense of play and an inquisitive state of mind, as the underlying intent of the exhibition is to interrogate our participation and implication in the networks that surround us. - Michelle Kasprzak, Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2006

CADE: Computers in Art and Design Education: Stillness

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Call for Papers and Abstract Submissions

First Call for Papers and Abstract Submissions: abstract submission for refereed papers :: Deadline 12 January 2007 :: STILLNESS: 2007 Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth Education Program: International Conference: CADE: Computers in Art and Design Education :: 12 - 14 September 2007, Perth, Western Australia.

The Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) is Australia's pre-eminent festival dedicated to showcasing innovative works of art in the areas of new media, electronic screen, sound and interactive media and is the largest and most visionary electronic arts event in the region. Through a broad program of exhibitions, conferences and public talks, BEAP provides a focus for discussion and exploration of the emergent aesthetic, social and technological implications that surround the electronic arts, in all its possible forms, whether visual, audio, interactive, temporal, experiential, digital, 'bio' or 'nano'.

The Computers in Art and Design Education (CADE) conference is a major international event for those interested in the exploration of ideas at the intersection of pedagogy, arts, design, science, and technology. The 2007 conference will provide a focus for shared learning, dialogue and interaction that directly informs professional methodologies and practice.

In 2007 CADE partners with the Biennale for its first conference outside Europe, creating a new focus for exploring the latest research and practice within creative arts education at the point where the 'digital' is both a challenge and a strength.

Perth, the capital of the state of Western Australia, has a distinct creative community that celebrates the uniqueness of Western Australia's stunning bio-diverse environment and combines Indigenous, European and Southeast Asian cultures.

Internationally recognised for its commitment to research in bio and electronic arts in tertiary education, Perth welcomes delegates to explore and reflect on global perspectives from a pivotal point within the Asia-Pacific region.

Conference theme: we invite educators, theorists and creative arts practitioners to meet in Perth, Australia, to explore the paradox of "Stillness." The concept of "stillness" will become an anchor for events in the ceaseless flows of data and provide a reflective moment for new ideas to emerge and interact, explode or coalesce, blossom or fade. BEAP will be supporting and encouraging a community of artists to explore: * Stillness as Sound * Stillness as Bio * Stillness as Data * Stillness as Duration. CADE will challenge you to confront these conceptual issues.

Call for papers: We invite contributions for paper presentations, posters and panel discussions that address the conference theme of "stillness." Papers should provide theoretical understanding, analysis and documentation of creative arts and digital technologies and related contexts for educational development.

The term creative arts includes: new media, multimedia, web design, interactive arts, computer games and mixed media performance and traditional disciplines (such as fine arts, sculpture, photography, printmaking, fashion and textiles, graphic design, illustration, 3D design, product design interior design, architecture, drama, theatre, dance and music).

All submitted abstracts, poster submissions and papers will be double blind peer reviewed by an international panel. Submissions accepted and presented at the conference will be published in the conference proceedings.

500-word abstracts required by 12 January 2007. Full submission can be made through the conference website. Follow link to conferences for http://cedar.humanities.curtin.edu.au/conferences/cade/index.cfm

Join us in Perth - 12 - 14 September 2007.

Conference Convenors
Suzette Worden, Professor of Design,
Curtin University of Technology, s.worden[at]curtin.edu.au
Lelia Green, Professor of Communications,
Edith Cowan University, l.green[at]ecu.edu.au
Paul Thomas, Artistic Director,
Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth, paul.thomas[at]beap.org

Posted by jo at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

NuArt NuRadio NuTV

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Public are Winners Again

Festival of NUART Stavanger, Norway 6th -10th September 2006 :: Nuart has started!! Artists scurry around town and test broadcasts have begun. For a week of festivities C6 are joined by Motherboard, Oslo's veterans of the live wire resistance party plan, The Graffiti Research Lab, electronic graffiti from New York City. R23, audio visual hackers from Barcelona, Tom Carden, space and flow dynamics from London, and for their 2nd farewell gig in twelve months those telepresence rockers Nood, as well as Toby Sparkz and the C6 disaster Unit providing visuals to acts from Numusic.

Contemporary public art practice has become an audienceless affair with application-based works directed purely at those that fund them. While artists and funding bodies are locked in dialogues of mutual gratification the public are the ultimate losers. The creation of alternative platforms for interaction and discussion must subvert these well established pathways and deliver their content to a wider general public.

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This year's festival uses a range of alternative media outside of conventional art practice to deliver content in ways that are easily accessible and relevant to our audiences, both actual and virtual. Live events will merge in this cross media remix. Using the town and the numusic festival as its palette, this year's nuart festival feeds its street, visual and nu media events into a multi-layered broadcast. Internet radio will merge nuartist presentations and workshops with numusic concerts and interviews. nuTV streams live acts from the numusic stages online and to your mobile phone, while text messages from the public create narratives in nuart VJ sets.

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Calls for walls in Stavanger has born fruit with 9 locations in and around the town being painted by some of the worlds great street artists. Open to the public, these street works will be filmed, cut and fed back onto the numusic stages as visual backdrop for numusic acts.

Using alternative media broadcasting techniques, subversive content is made available to those usually sidelined by a lexicon of fine art nonsense.

Official broadcast programme starts on Thursday 21:00 local time 19:00 GMT+2 with the graffiti crews armed and ready and live audio and video stream broadcasts from the numusic stages. The days nuart events will be remixed and vj'd to accompany the music.

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NuRadio can be heard here:
http://stream.r23.cc:2323/c6.ogg.m3u

NuTV can be watched here:
http://stream.r23.cc/live/numusic/stage1/
http://stream.r23.cc/live/numusic/stage2/
http://stream.r23.cc/live/numusic/stage3/

Posted by jo at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2006

Upgrade! New York

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Catherine D’Ignazio a.k.a. kanarinka

Upgrade! New York: September 14, 7:30 pm :: The Change You Want to See Gallery and Convergence Stage :: 84 Havemeyer Street, Store Front @ Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NYC

Are locative media and psychogeography projects just entertainment for white, middle-class, gadget-oriented consumers? Mapping impulses, locative media projects and psychogeographic investigations of place and community have proliferated over the past decade. There is a rich, interdisciplinary field of practice and new strategies, tactics and tools are being invented all the time. However, there is also the need for critical evaluation and discussion of the relevance and impact of these cultural projects. Factors of race and class are often overlooked. Connections to the material (often military and corporate) circumstances of the development of technologies deployed in these projects are often swept aside. Through the increasing corporatization and militarization of participation and play (Web 2.0, Joint Red Flag military war game), it is clear that more participation and play does not mean more democracy and freedom. On the contrary, participation and play are also deployed as mechanisms of social control.

Catherine D’Ignazio a.k.a. kanarinka will discuss several collaborative projects from her practice, show other examples of contemporary psychogeographic investigations and then open the forum for others to do the same. The goal of the talk is to discuss three questions:

1) Is locative media/psychogeography work just entertainment for white, middle-class, gadget-oriented consumers? (Hopefully the answer is no, but we’ll see.)
2) What is at stake in the corporatization and militarization of “play” and “participation”?
3) What kind of agency do these projects have? i.e. What do they really do?

TO BRING (optional): Failures & successes. Bring a psychogeography/locative media project to share with us, including your commentary about what kind of agency it produces, how it addresses its audience, and so on. Both failures and successes - and the numerous projects that have both - are useful.

LATER: We will proceed to the opening for the Conflux Festival at Supreme Trading Post to continue the conversation.

Posted by jo at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

artciencia.com

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Call for Submissions

artciencia.com, Number 5, October-January 2006 :: Deadline: October 28, 2006 :: For the next issue planned for November 2006, the editors of the artciencia.com invite essays and artworks with new approaches to the long-discussed topics of art and history, aesthetics, bio-science and technology in music, literature, cinema, video art, photography, architecture, new media, painting, and other arts.

We are especially interested in essays and artworks that address the convergences of the science and technology studies with art studies, or reconsider the encounters of arts with specific historical events (new discoveries of science, technology development, political and social mutations, and wars). Other possible essays might work with questions of aesthetics or genre, memory and memorializing, the impacts of critical art studies and science studies on practices of art today, as well as the role of the theories or the public in interpreting arts.

You may submit your work accompanied by a short bio note and an abstract (50-100 words) to: artscience.editor[at]gmail.com. Submissions will also be accepted via e-mail to artciencia.com[at]sapo.pt or artscience_editor[at]sapo.pt.

Please include the subject and send thh texts in Microsoft Word format. More information about submission see Guide for Authors. Direct questions to: Irene Aparicio, Editor
aparicio.irene[at]gmail.com or artscience_com[at]yahoo.com.

Published quarterly since August 2005, artciencia.com intends to publish authors’ articles or artworks on art-science-communication. Recent issue include essays on Picasso, Oscar Wilde, Chin Ce, Henry Fielding, history and literature, Greek theater, art and body, word and painting, encaustic art, tele-performance, installation and art-technology, gender differences and perception of art; artworks on fractal images and symmetries, artificial intelligence and new media art and design, textile art with encaustic application.

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

IMPLANT

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Transmittable Architecture

International premiere of IMPLANT :: A networked virtual world and installation created by Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke, Workspace Unlimited :: IMPLANT will take place at the Vooruit Kunstencentrum in Ghent, Belgium, inside the Domzaal and outside on the gallery street window. Simultaneously IMPLANT will be networked with the project EXTENSION a virtual world installation at the Society for Art & Technology in Montreal and DEVMAP a virtual world installation at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. The opening event will be live streamed from the Vooruit and can be followed at the SAT and V2_Institute in the networked virtual world installations!

About the work: Text by Wayne Ashley, Independant Curator, New York :: Workspace Unlimited's new work IMPLANT is both an electronically networked interactive virtual world and an installation physically situated in the magnificent Art Nouveau building of Vooruit, a performance venue in the center of Ghent. Founding members artist Thomas Soetens and architect Kora Van den Bulcke create a digital 3D version of the entire building and its surrounding environs which users can access and navigate on computers from inside Vooruit and simultaneously from the Society for Art and Technology in Montreal, and V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. In this way Soetens and Van den Bulcke exercise their most compelling gesture: re-imagining Vooruit as transmittable architecture, an ongoing and revisable place that does not adhere to our ordinary understanding of physics, nor to the continuities of space and time.

Once logged into IMPLANT, visitors navigate through two co-existing architectures: a sumptuous simulation of the real Vooruit, a large complex maze of theater spaces, cafes, meeting rooms, and offices which can be traversed in much the same way we move through physical space--walking upstairs, through doors, down corridors, around corners, inside and out. And a hidden hyperlinked architecture that emerges as users interact with the simulation's various walls and ceilings. This secondary architecture is a malleable, almost liquid space that is contingent and constantly in flux-portals that transport us immediately to continuously shifting destinations within Vooruit according to the position of the visitor; virtual cameras that allow us to secretly follow other visitors and project their journeys and activities onto walls in front of us; the ability to walk through the projection and find ourselves together with them in the same space.

Outside on the real street, passersby will peer into Vooruit's glass lobby only to see a projected simulation of the same lobby seamlessly integrated within Vooruit's facade. Instead of seeing the usual theatergoers purchasing tickets and socializing with friends, viewers will observe the goings-on of avatars, graphical representations of actual people in Vooruit co-mingling and exploring the same simulated space with their counterparts from Montreal and Rotterdam. A web cam outside Vooruit captures the scene on the street, projecting the performances of everyday life back into the virtual world for those inside Vooruit, V2_ and SAT to witness. The effect is dizzying as the borders between inside and outside the virtual world become unclear, and who is performing for whom confused.

The longer visitors explore IMPLANT, the more layers they encounter. Embedded throughout the virtual world and triggered at various moments users encounter video and sound documentation from a recent online symposium called Breaking the Game. The symposium brought together an international group of competing theorists and practitioners to build, debate and reflect on virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience.

Workspace Unlimited is interested in breaking down oppositions between practice and theory, interior and exterior, imagination and perception, seeing and being. Soetens and Van den Bulcke seek to explore creative ways of making virtual worlds that are simultaneously intellectual, poetic, and hallucinatory.

Events:

V2_Institute, Eendrachtsstraat 12, Rotterdam, the Netherlands :: Sept. 15 at 17:00 V2_ Ground floor: Lecture by Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke streamed in the virtual world installation.

Society for Art & Technology, 1195 Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Canada ::
Sept. 15 at 11:00 am (local time Montreal) Ground floor: Lecture by Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke streamed the virtual world installation. :: Sept. 15 - 16 - 17 Ground floor: Exhibition of the interactive virtual world installation.

Workspace Unlimited website: www.workspace-unlimited.org

IMPLANT credits: Artistic direction and creation: Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke; OpenGL programming: Patrick Bergeron; Quake 3 programming: Matt McChesney; Modeling and character design: Jason Dovey; Network setup: Simon Piette, Brecht Vermeulen (IBBT), Thomas Bouve; Modeling and character design: Jason Dovey; Communications: Stoffel Debuysere; Copywriting: Wayne Ashley, independant Curator.

Posted by jo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)

Silent Sound

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Exploration of the Mind's Receptiveness to Suggestion

Silent Sound in Liverpool, U.K. :: PERFORMANCE: THURSDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER :: EXHIBITION: 15TH SEPTEMBER - 26TH NOVEMBER :: Artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard invite you to a uniquely immersive experience which explores the mind's susceptibility to subliminal suggestion.

In 1865 Victorian performers The Davenport Brothers presented a public séance from inside their spirit cabinet on the stage of the Small Concert Hall in St. George's Hall, Liverpool. Unused for over twenty years the Hall will reopen for Silent Sound where the artists will perform on the same stage used by The Davenports. The evening will be introduced by Doctor of Parapsychology Ciarn O'Keeffe and will debut a specially commissioned original score written and performed by Jason Pierce of the band Spiritualized.

The performance takes place during the Liverpool Biennial on Thursday 14th September 2006. For more information regarding obtaining tickets for the performance please email: tickets[at]silentsound.info.

From Friday 15th September Silent Sound will feature in the inaugural programme at Greenland Street, A Foundation's major new contemporary art space - three former industrial buildings in the heart of Liverpool's Baltic Triangle which have been transformed into one of the largest and most challenging exhibition spaces for contemporary art in the country.

An ambisonic audio recording of the live performance created in collaboration with Arup Acoustics will be incorporated into a large-scale immersive installation specifically created by the artists to continue the event's exploration of the mind's potential receptiveness to suggestion. The recording will be reproduced in the installation to three-dimensionally reproduce the sound as it was actually heard in St. George's Hall.

A limited edition signed and numbered Compact Disc recording will be available from Monday 18th September, with a DVD documentary to follow in 2007. All graphic design for the project has been executed by Chris Bigg and Vaughan Oliver at v23.

More information: http://www.silentsound.info

Posted by jo at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2006

Spur McGuffin: 069recorded

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Call for Submissions

069recorded welcomes submissions for its inaugural issue on the theme of Disruptive 069recording series. We seek examples of new thinking and practice that overturn and/or reassess existing performance technology praxis. Submissions may be presented as papers, reviews, audio, visuals (stills / video) and code. Authors may use multiple formats in a single submission. mailto: spur[at] various-euro.com

SPUR MCGUFFIN is http://069recorded.de/ Consisting of major internet-based sound installations and a program of commissioned works for distinct sound stations in the web, Spur McGuffin explores the real and imagined remnants of human presence in autopoiesis. Spur McGuffin was one of the first artist-groups worldwide to use the possibilities of interactive media and especially of the internet in their work. Performances and lectures in art galleries, universities and museums are equally important as performances at media festivals and in the clubscene.

069recorded is a communication laboratory that works on political language. To do so 069recorded have use, also the hacking way, destructuring words and languages, mixing and matching situations and concept and practices; for reinventing the political language and for being more incisive on a vast level of communication. 069recorded was the first recorder managed by women in Germany (in an independent social center in Frankfurt), but it is also a hyper-place scattered with links, a circuit with which to inract that brings to other circuits. A place where sexuality is central cause, it is the zero degree of connection's desire. In the gender, beyond the gender. The 069recorded women use a collective name: "069recorded". Expressing the desire to shut down with the need of auto -- agency.

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

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's

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Platforms for Group Experiences

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer :: bitforms, 529 West 20th Street, 2nd Floor, Chelsea, NY :: 212-366-6939 :: September 15 - October 21, 2006 :: Opening: Friday, September 15, 6:00PM - 8:00PM.

(Rafael) Lozano-Hemmer's work taps into the technology of data-networks, robotics, sensors, cell phones, projections and other custom-made devices to create "connective, participatory experiences," in which several realities co-exist. Playful, yet always provocative, his installations have been praised for creating platforms for group experience rather than individual interfaces for solitary participation.

Shown for the first time, Close up and Third Person are part of the Shadow Box series that builds up on Lozano-Hemmer's concepts developed in Under Scan, and in which passers-by activate portraits in their own shadows. Each of the pieces features a high resolution, 30-inch diagonal, interactive display, made of steel and black anodized aluminum and including a built-in computerized tracking system. Close up creates the viewer's image with hundreds of tiny videos of other people who have recently looked at the work. When a viewer approaches, the system automatically makes a video. Up to 800 recent recordings are simultaneously triggered inside the viewer's silhouette, suggesting a schizoid experience where people's image sets off a massive array of surveillance videos.

In Third Person, the interactive display draws the viewer's portrait in real time with hundreds of tiny words, which are all the English and Spanish verbs conjugated in the third person. In addition to these two pieces, the exhibition will include a video of Lozano-Hemmer's critically acclaimed, large-scale public art installation, Under Scan, along with Under Scan Portraits (Lambda print), and a book of signature of the 800 people who participated in this project.

ARTIST'S TALK: Tuesday, September 12, 7pm (reservations: 212-366-6959)

Image from Bitforms Gallery. [Originally from ArtCal] [Related posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Posted by jo at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

[iDC]

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Reading List and Situated Bibliography

Here's my current reading list (won't necessarily get to all of it). Basic or even retro cybernetics, with a few prolongations:

--Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics + The Human Use of Human Beings
--Shannon and Weaver: Mathematical Theory of Communication
--Ross Ashby: Introduction to Cybernetics
--Steve Joshua Heims: The Cybernetics Group + John von Neumann and Norbert Weiner (the double biography)
--Ludwig Von Bertalanffy: General System Theory
--J.W. Forrester: Industrial Dynamics + Urban Dynamics
--Paul Edwards: The Closed World
--Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind
--Heinz von Foerster: Understanding Understanding
--H. Maturana & F. Varela: Tree of Knowledge
--Felix Guattari: Chaosmosis + Cartographies Schizoanalytiques --N. Katherine Hayles: How We Became Posthuman --Tiziana Terranova: Network Culture

Three questions:

1. What happens when I make a plane reservation, then go through security?
2. How did cybernetics become THE applied social science of the postwar period?
3. Were the most interesting 60s-70s cultural experiments a series of second-order revolts against cybernetic systems? If so, what were the consequences on those systems?

All this, to write a text on Guattari's notion of overcoding. But also, to develop a more general theory of collective art practice at grips with the control society.

best, Brian (holmes) [posted on iDC]

________


Brian,

I too have been working with many of the texts you cite. Do you know the following which I found to be incredibly informative especially regards to your question 2: Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science, Princeton University Press.

Omar Khan

_______________


Hello Omar,

No I don't that book, thanks for the tip. I'm actually an ignoramus in this area, just got very curious as my attention came to focus on that peculiar post-WWII atmosphere that Bush, Cheney and their administration seem to hark back to with such horrid insistence. I will check it out, sounds good. Basically I think there have been 2 main phases, a "closed world" electrical engineering based period where the primary issue is identifying, tracking and targetting (that's the history I am trying to catch up on) and from the 70s onward a second phase, somewhat more familiar, corresponding to "second-order cybernetics" and complexity theory, which became the operative ideology of the globalization decades (80s and 90s, Nigel Thrift makes the operative side of it very clear in is book Knowing Capitalism). Really interesting people like Bateson and Guattari are at the hinge between these two periods, it seems. But such figures contributed to the worst of globalization (eg Mandelbrot with his work on finance) and at the same time, they helped us forget that the logistics (ex: air travel) that runs the whole show is still from the first military-dominated period. So the present really does look like a return of the repressed! The figure that interests me most in the first period is Jay Wright Forrester, inventor of the Whirlwind computer and developer of the SAGE radar-defence perimeter in the 50s, who after his military years became a kind of prophet of cyberneticized industrial management. I am waiting to get his Urban Dynamics, where he applies his cybernetic management principles to cities, and discovers, among other things, that welfare is a bad policy and ought to be scrapped....

best, Brian (Holmes)

________________

Hi all

Perplexed to find myself on this list in the first place, but have been delighted by its range and quality of debate. Was thrilled by Brian Holmes invocation of Schiller and the 'play drive' - researched that for my Play Ethic book (www.theplayethic.typepad.com). I'd like to respond to the play-mobility-triviality debate soon.

But reading list is a nice idea:

Claire Colebrook - Deleuze: A guide for the Perplexed
Wendy Wheeler - the Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture Geoff Mulgan - Good and Bad Power Yochai Benkler - The Wealth of Networks James Carse - Finite and Infinite Games Paulo Virno - A Grammar for the Multitude Brian Sutton-Smith - The Ambiguity of Play Edward Castronova - Synthetic Worlds Ivan Illich - Tools for Conviviality

Amassed in order that I can try to explore the notion of a 'ground of play'
- ie, is there any other institutional (perhaps constitutional) arrangement, apart from Lessig's 'innovation commons', that could support a society of player-citizens. Felix Stalder's book on Manuel Castells is on order, and awaited eagerly.

Play well, psychonauts

PK (Pat Kane)

_________________

Thinking to Saul, Charles S. Pierce, notoriously the writings concerning the sign (but Mathematics)... [I do not know the US editions], contemporary of Saussure, is a major source of the actual researches on semiotic machines. But I'm sure that as American researchers you could not ignore his existence.

Paolo Fabbri, Fedrico Montanari
Per una semiotica della comunicazione strategica http://www.associazionesemiotica.it/ec/pdf/fabbri_montanari_30_07_04.pdf

Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel
Making Things Public - Atmospheres of Democracy
2005 MIT Press and ZKM Karlsruhe (Germany)

Both members of the French Academy, Jean-Pierre Dupuy et Michel Serres who teach at Stanford University, the USA, have large fields of knowledge, but mostly well-known for their philosophy of Sciences; it happens that both were strongly inspired and supported by René Girard, thinker of "the mimetic desire" and of the christianization of Sciences who himself has taught at Stanford university, ( himself French academician ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard. But I do not see which book could be quote in this current review.

C.
A.

__________________________

Situated Bibiliography

For my students I started a bibliography of new media: it is grouped by topical orientation and books appear alongside related art projects.

http://tinyurl.com/fcny8

A short list of readings:

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., Snyder, W. (2002) Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Ellul, J. (1964) The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Ellul's deterministic classic warns of the social implications of technology, in fact arguing that technology's internal logic and efficiency may not meet real human needs.

Willinsky, J. (2006) The Access Principle. The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. Cambridge: MIT Press. Willinsky makes the case for open access, arguing that the fruits of scholarship should be shared with a widest possible audience.

Standage, T. (1998) The Victorian Internet. The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers. New York: Berkley Books. Going beyond the Internet hype, this book examines the way in which people have communicated across distances for centuries.

Keeble, L., Loader, B. eds. (2001) Community Informatics. Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations. London: Routledge. This book addresses issues such as the rise of networked individualism, computer-mediated self-help, and participation in the information society.

Tenner, E. (2003) Our Own Devices. How Technology Remakes Humanity. New York: Vintage Books. From reclining chairs, keyboards, and eyeglasses to helmets, Tenner investigates the history of invention of everyday objects. He examines our relationship to these objects: the way we are shaped by them and how we, in turn, shape them.

Winner, L. (1977) Autonomous Technology. Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme of Political Thought. This book deals with uncontrolled technological development, the relationship between society and technology.

Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gilmore, D. (2004) We the Media. Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people. Cambridge: O'Reilly. The book on effective citizen journalism.

Warschauer, M. (2003) Technology and Social Inclusion. Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mark Warschauer's insightful book outlines the preconditions for participation in Internet cultures, a detailed look at the gap between the information have and have-nots, updating our understanding of the digital divide.

Gitelman, L. (1999) Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines. Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford: Stanford University Press. This study of machines for writing at the end of the 19th century in America explores the relationship between textuality and technology.

Feenberg, A. (2002) Transforming Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feenberg addresses the question of neutrality of technology and renders the influence that technology has on our daily lives.

Ferre, F. (1995) Philosophy of Technology. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

Ihde, D. (1993) Philosophy of Technology. An Introduction. New York: Paragon House.

Brown, J. S., Duguid, P. (2002) The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Examining the social implications of technology, this book is described as an antidote to all digital silliness.

Wegner, E. (1998) Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wegners argues for the term "community of practice" in the context of knowledge production.

Hardin, R. (1982) Collective Action. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

There are also links to several readings specific to mobile devices at: http://del.icio.us/Trebor/Mobile_Devices

Best,
Trebor Scholz [posted on iDC]

______________

This is a really interesting social networking exercise and should happen more often on lists! I think it's important to either briefly annotate the books as Trebor did so we see why we might want to go to them or else to list the problems we are dealing with as Brian did at the end.

btw Brian, Andrew Murphie (who lurks on this list) put me onto the Dupuy stuff and it's really good! Andrew is doing really interesting stuff about cognition and marketing via cybernetics and actually earlier paradigms -
you would be interested in his stuff.

My list:

Richard Rogers "Why Map? The Techno-epistemological outlook" http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/whymap/

Philip H. Gouchenour, ‘Distributed Communities and Nodal Subjects’, New Media and Society, vol. 8, no. 1, 2006. pp. 33–51

Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power

Adrian MacKenzie, Transductions

Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge

Brian Holmes, ‘Crisis Cartographies: Stratified Power and the Dynamics of the Swarm http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.html (follow Meteors link)

James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

Gustav le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

Jordan Crandall, 'Operational Media',CTheory, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=441

Precarious Labour, the fibreculture journal, issue 5, 2005.

My problems/questions etc:

How can we think about crowds after 'multitude' and in their relations to portable and networked media?

The paucity of thinking crowds in social network theory and theories of collective intelligence.

The paucity of thinking the sociality of new, networked, wireless media and of collective media/aesthetic/cultural practices.

The enduring problem of liberal individualism in new media,social network and mobile/wireless theory.

The technics of mapping crowds.

Towards a social and situated 'energetics' of crowds, media, collective aesthetics and cultural practices.

cheers Anna

Dr. Anna Munster
Senior Lecturer,
Postgraduate Co-ordinator
School of Art History and Theory
College of Fine Arts
University of New South Wales
P.O Box 259
Paddington,
NSW 2021
ph: 612 9385 0741
fx: 612 9385 0615

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

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

Posted by jo at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2006

From Here to There

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Under an Umbrella

From Here to There Under an Umbrella by Chris Barr: The "Under an Umbrella" project stems from an experience that I had as a freshman in college, in which a younger version of myself offered a young lady a spot under an umbrella during a rainstorm. From that rainy two-block walk and the conversation that it allowed, an exuberant yet naive relationship developed.

For three days during Conflux I will offer to escort local residents and festival participants to their desired location under an umbrella, as a sort of umbrella taxi. Our walk and conversation will be recorded via an "umbrellacam" and will be uploaded to the project website. With this experiment I am interested in how a shift in spatial experience, i.e. a space designed for one being used for two, can shift other relationships such as communication. And how something such as our vulnerability to our environment can offer us unique (and sometime intimate) human experiences.

Participants can sign up for a walk at UnderAnUmbrella.com or call (716) 512-9254. The project will run Friday September 15 through Sunday September 17 from 8am - 4pm with documetation available on the project website.

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

ambientTV

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Seminars, Installations, Performances...

:: SPECIES OF SPACES, mukul @ CEPT School of Architecture, AHMEDABAD (IN) 22nd July-7th August, 2006 :: Seminar at the School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad, India. Mukul leads 32 hrs of exploration for the students and faculty on art, politics, and technology as refracted through concepts (and metaphors) of space. Some areas of focus are the potentials of, and restrictions laid upon, digital networked space; the circumscribing of public space in urban zones; mediaspace (including pervasive/locative media and tactical approaches); activism and dissent; art outside the gallery walls; the body and movement; and acoustic space. A lab component explores systems- and process-based approaches to sound in space from the 1960s. The seminar is now over and student works will be documented online.

:: AMBIENT.LOUNGE, ambientTV.NET @ NTT InterCommunicationCenter, TOKYO (J) from 15th September 2006 :: ambient.lounge: The exhibition 'Connecting Worlds' marks the reopening of the NTT ICC in Tokyo. ambientTV.NET creates the ambient.lounge as a space to browse works, relax, connect, reflect, dream, and snack on wild pixels and grains of sound. As well as showcasing our own work, we have invited guest artist Juha Huuskonen to present The Moment of Long Now.

We created an ambient.lounge as part of our VBI (Voluptuously Blinking Eye) lab at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. A short video documenting VBI (and featuring Lektrolab, irational.org, Rachel Baker, Tina Hage and Juha Huuskonen) is now online in the download section.

:: WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?, Manu Luksch @ servus Clubraum, LINZ (AT) 21st Sept 2006, 7 pm :: presentation & screening of recent works making use of security and surveillance technology. servus Clubraum, Kirchengasse 4, Linz (AT).

:: IST (Indian Standard Time) - NEW CLOCKS FOR THE CITY, mukul @ Lille3000, LILLE (FR) 14th Oct 2006 - 14 Jan 2007 :: For the Lille 3000 festival, mukul is making idiosyncratic clocks that will be installed inserted in strategic places, including the metro system. The festival opens on 14th October and features a very wide of works performances that engage with the idea of India. Check back online over the next months for updates.

::ORCHESTRA OF ANXIETY, Manu Luksch and mukul @ databodies, AMSTERDAM (NL) 26th of October, 2006 :: The Orchestra of Anxiety is a collection of musical instruments that use materials and technologies from the security and surveillance industries in their construction. The first realized instrument, a harp with strings made of razor wire, will be on show in Amsterdam (NL), during databodies, on 26th of October, 2006.

:: Manu Luksch @ No Man's Land, Womanifesto, ONLINE Oct 2006 :: No Man's Land invites 65 participants internationally to present works online addressing the territorially imagined line of the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. The project will develop gradually as the invited participants upload their work. No Man's Land is part of Womanifesto 2006 (Bangkok, TH), curated by Varsh Nair and Katherine Olston.

Participants: Yoshiko Shimada, Barbara Lattanzi, Renata Poljak, Tejal Shah, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Terry Berkowitz, Kai Kaljo, Dragana Zarevac, Roland Bergere, Manit Sriwanichpom, Susanne Ahner, Pisithpong Siraphisut, Patricia Reed, Mella Jaarsma, Mideo Cruz, Mona Burr, Manu Luksch/Ambient TV.NET, Karla Sachse, Martin Zet, Wen Yau, Traci Tullius,Tintin Cooper, Jerome Ming, Estelle Cohenny-Vallier, Katherine Olston, Pinaree Sanpitak, Sutee Kunavichayananda, Lawan Jirasuradej, Sara Haq, Karen Demavivas, Nigel Helyer, Nilofar Akmut, Andrew Burrell, Pamela Lofts, Beatriz Albuquerque, Kirsten Justesen, Maryrose Mendoza, Hsu Su-Chen, Michael Bielicky, thingsmatter, Arahmaiani, Kate Stannard, Judy Freya Sibayan, Chaw Ei Thein, John Hopkins, Farida Batool, Baiju Parthan, Liliane Zumkemi, Noor Effendy Ibrahim, Tamara Moyzes, Ana Bilankov, Chakkrit Chimnok, Suzann Victor, Marketa Bankova, Sue Hajdu, Jim Previtt, Keiko Sei, Suvita Charanwong, Noraset Vaisayakul, Konrad, Reiko Kammer, Silvia Pastore, Felipe, Chitra Ganesh, Varsha Nair.

About ambientTV

ambientTV.NET is a crucible for independent, interdisciplinary practice ranging from installation and performance, through documentary, dance, and gastronomy, to sound and video composition and real-time manipulation. Techniques and effects of live data broadcasting and transmission provide theme, medium, and performative space for many of the works.

http://www.ambientTV.NET/indigo

Posted by jo at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2006

The Beall Center for Art and Technology

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Call for Proposals

The Beall Center for Art and Technology seeks projects of high artistic merit that use technology in innovative ways. We offer honorarium and project costs of up to $20,000, to realize the project in our 2500 sqf space. We are also interested in collaborating with other institutions to fund projects of larger scale. We are currently soliciting proposals for exhibition years 2007 and 2008. The proposals will be reviewed in November of 2006 by the Beall Center Curatorial Review Committee, and artists notified in early Winter of 2007.

The Beall Center produces exhibitions and performances in the visual arts, theater, dance, and music, and particularly seeks works that successfully integrate new forms or uses of technology with artistic production or performance. In addition, as the Beall Center has an exceptionally well- developed and flexible infrastructure, and knowledgeable staff that is found in very few art and technology centers, preference will be given to works that can not easily be displayed or performed elsewhere.

Eligibility: Artists, curators, or institutions are eligible to submit proposals. Priority is given to cross-disciplinary projects. Artists or organizations that have previously received funding from the Beall Center must wait at least two years before reapplying. Women and artists of color are encouraged to apply.

Available Facilities: The Beall Center is a 2500 square foot black box with a highly configurable network grid, and connectivity to gigabit speed Ethernet. See "Facility" http://beallcenter.uci.edu for additional information.

Deadline for Application:October 20, 2006
Award Notification: Winter 2007

Proposals

Proposals should be submitted only in electronic format (pdf) and should include :
1) Contact Information (name of lead applicant, address, email, phone)
2) Project abstract: 100 words
3) Project description (500 word max.)
4) Resume or curriculum vitae for applicant and all participants.
5) One page itemized budget.
6) List of equipment and other resources required. If you will require technical assistance, please outline the nature of that support (hardware, software, expectations of personnel, and programming skills that will be required).
7) Copy of any matching awards or copy of funding request for external and internal sources.
Priority will be given to projects with supplemental funding.
8) Preliminary visual diagrams indicating installation concepts, in electronic format (pdf).

9) Samples of work: For ease of presentation it is best to submit images within the PDF proposal document. Include detailed explanations about the work samples. Time-base should be submitted in QuickTime mov files on cd or dvd media only (NO DVDÕs); and for sound works, submit audio files in mp3, refer to your video or audio files in your proposal, with a describtion.

10) Please be prepared to provide two references; you may be contacted during the review process to provide these.

Award Criteria

Criteria used to select proposals include the following:
1) Intellectual and artistic merit in the proposed project
2) Degree of technological innovation
3) Feasibility of the project under sponsorship of the Beall Center
4) Extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity
5) Possibility of subsequent installation or performances outside UCI
6) Presence of matching funds

For a list of previously funded projects (2000-2006), see
http://beallcenter.uci.edu/calendar/calendar.htm

Methods of Submission: The preferred submission method (but not required) is to post your proposal and work samples on your website

1. Mail proposal cd, or dvd media (not as dvds) only to:
Beall Center for Art and Technology
Exhibition Grant Proposal
HTC 101, University of California
Irvine, CA 92697-2775
Attn: Eleanore Stewart

2. Email proposal to estewart[at]uci.edu or dfamilia[at]uci.edu

Contact Information

Eleanore Stewart, Director
(949) 824-8945
estewart[at]uci.edu

David Familian, Associate Director
(949) 824-4543
dfamilia[at]uci.edu

Posted by jo at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

Reentry: New York City

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Studies for Synthetic Meteors

Reentry: New York City :: Studies for Synthetic Meteors :: Eyebeam :: September 21 - October 21, 2006 :: Tues-Sat, 12-6pm :: 540 W. 21st St.

Reentry: New York City merges iconic night cityscapes with HD computer simulations in a series of studies for a daring new public art project: synthetic meteor showers in the Manhattan sky. Evoking the style and spectacle of the Apocalyptic Sublime painting movement with the vastness of Land Art, these new works created by Bill Dolson during his Eyebeam residency will be on view Sept. 21 through Oct. 21, with a special opening reception Sept. 21 6-8pm. The exhibition is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 12-6pm and is free of charge with a suggested donation.

Reentry: New York City contains twelve HD videos of synthetic meteors showers envisioned as luminous, ephemeral drawings in the upper atmosphere. These drawings will persist for only seconds, at most minutes. While quite fantastic, the project is technologically possible and preliminary plans have been established with the assistance of scientists at NASA JSC Ames and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Documentary information including tech specs and some of the motivation behind these artworks will be described in companion animation, presented at the entrance to the exhibition.

Reentry: New York City uses new technologies to draw on the tradition of the early large scale land art first produced in the 70s by such innovators as Heizer, Smithson, Morris and de Maria, evoking the same sense of daring, boldness and heightened awareness which the scale of these seminal works produced. However they avoid the permanent monumentalism of earlier land art through their dynamic and ephemeral nature, moderating their vast scale.

These studies invoke the Apocalyptic Sublime, a painting genre of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain, in both content and format. Leading artists of the time including Benjamin West, Blake and Turner produced popular Apocalyptic Sublime works depicting apocalyptic themes such as The Deluge or scenes from the Book of Revelations, often in an urban setting and frequently featuring comets or meteors. The projections and screens in Reentry will be presented salon style. In the two hundred years since the Apocalyptic Sublime, the purview of art has been extended from the depiction of an apocalyptic event to the physical staging of one.

Dolson is simultaneously exhibiting digital C-prints of frames from these video studies at Photographic Gallery, 252 Front Street (South Street Seaport Historic District) in New York City. The exhibition, Trajectories: Carter Hodgkin & Bill Dolson opens September 28 with an artists' reception 6-9 pm.

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Bring Your Own Voice Museum Tour

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Halsey Burgund @ P.S.1

It's like a directed Speaker's Corner run by Le Tigre...only as interesting as the participants AND editor - PJ

WHEN: Sunday, September 17th, 12–6 PM :: WHERE: P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NY :: Musician, Halsey Burgund, will bring his portable recording booth to P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center on September 17th as part of his Bring Your Own Voice Museum Tour. The tour will take Burgund to a number of art museums in the northeast where he will ask interested participants to voice their opinions about art and museums while being recorded. He will then use these recordings as raw material for original music.

Burgund is specifically targeting art museums on this tour because he wants to explore questions about art and museums and their respective roles in individual’s lives as well as in our current society. He will pose questions to participants that are designed to elicit honest responses about why they are at the museum currently, what they think about specific pieces at P.S.1, and what our society would be like without art and institutions to promote the arts.

Upon completion of the tour, Burgund will take the diverse set of thoughts and opinions he gathers in New York, and - along with collections from other museums - will compose original music representing a collective, yet highly personal, view of art and museums today. The notion of creating music out of everyday expressions not normally considered musical is the cornerstone of Burgund’s approach to composition. He is interested in the spoken voice not only as a kind of instrument (the tonalities, rhythms, unintended melodies etc), but also as a method of communicating personal experiences and opinions.

News via: PS1.org

[Posted by Paddy Johnson on reBlog]

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

August 31, 2006

JOHN MCCORMACK +

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NEW THURSDAY CLUB EVENTS @ GOLDSMITHS

JOHN MCCORMACK, Co-director, Centre for Electronic Media Arts, Monash University (Australia) :: Thursday September 7th, 2006 at 6-8pm in the Lecture Theatre, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Corss, SE14 6NW :: FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME.

SIMULATION, SYSTEMS, ARTIFICE: In this talk I will give an overview of how I have used generative processes as a creative system. My aim is to enable new modes of creative expression with computation that are unique to the medium. Most existing software tools borrow their operational metaphor from existing creative practices: for example Photoshop uses the metaphor of a photographer's darkroom; 3D animation systems borrow from theatre, film and conventional cell animation. In a tool with an oeuvre as diverse as the modern digital computer, one would hope that computation itself as a medium might have things to offer that are not based on metaphors borrowed from other media. I will illustrate some possibilities using the software systems I have developed over the last 15 years and the creative works that I have produced with them. These works include: Turbulence: an interactive museum of unnatural history (1994); Eden an evolutionary ecosystem (2000-2005) and the Morphogenesis series of evolved forms (2002-2006). Examination of these works will be placed in a philosophical framework and historical context. I will also discuss some possibilities for future development of generative software based on these ideas.

About Jon McCormack: John is an Australian-based electronic media artist and researcher in Artificial Life and Evolutionary Music and Art. His research interests include generative evolutionary systems, machine learning, L-systems and developmental models. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and co-director of the Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA) at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. CEMA is an interdisciplinary research centre established to explore new collaborative relationships between computing and the arts. John's artworks have been exhibited internationally a wide variety of galleries, museums and symposia, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Tate Gallery(Liverpool, UK), ACM SIGGRAPH (USA), Prix Ars Electronica (Austria) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Australia).

**NEW CLUB NIGHTS** NEW CLUB NIGHTS** NEW CLUB NIGHTS**

on *5 OCTOBER* with ***MICK GRIERSON*** :: *AUDIOVISUAL COMPOSITION AND THE AVANT-GARDES*

Mick is a musician, film-maker and researcher. He recently became a Research Fellow at the Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios.

*19 OCTOBER* **UNEASY SPACES*

*Opening of a photo /video show in collaboration with the New York University

*20 OCTOBER* CONFERENCE (will circulate info separately)

on *26 OCTOBER* with ***ADNAN HADZI & MARIA X***

*ON STRATEGIES OF SHARING: THE DEPTFORD.TV PROJECT*

Adnan is a PhD candidate and Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths (Media and Communications). Maria is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths (Digital Studios & Drama) and Visiting Lecturer at Birkbeck.

* 2 NOVEMBER* with ***BRIAN KAVANAGH*** :: *SONIC SENSORIUM*

Brian is an artist and musician. He is just completing his MA in Interactive Media at Goldsmiths.

*16 NOVEMBER* with ***TIM HOPKINS*** :: **ELEPHANT AND CASTLE*: A PRESENTATION OF WORK-IN-PROGRESS ON A LYRIC THEATRE PIECE*

Tim is an opera and multimedia lyric theatre director, and a NESTA Fellow.

*30 NOVEMBER* with ***MARK D'INVERNO*** :: **CELL*: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT LOOKING AT NEW THEORIES OF STEM CELL BEHAVIOUR*

Mark is Professor of Computing at Goldsmiths with a research interest in
intelligent agents and multi-agent systems.

*14 DECEMBER* with SPEAKER TBC

Finally, just to remind you that

***THE THURSDAY CLUB: works in progress***

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’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

Originally set up in October 2005 by Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include over 80 members, artists, technologists, scientists, in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are now connected via an online forum and discussion group.

There are also regular meetings in ‘real space’ at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. They are free, and in keeping them informal they allow for a more diverse and open ended discourse for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

For more information on the Thursday Club check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cccc/thursday-club.php or email maria x: drp01mc[at]gold.ac.uk

Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] PhD Art & Computational Technologies 15 Rodmell Regent Square London WC1H 8HX

The Cybertheaters blog is discussing emergent networked performance practices that employ the Internet and/or other networking technologies /techniques as media, but also as hybrid spaces - and thus, cybernetic stages.

Posted by jo at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

GROW YOUR OWN MEDIA LAB

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FREE WORKSHOPS

IN BARROW, CUMBRIA - STARTS SEPTEMBER 9TH – PLACES STILL AVAILABLE :: Grow Your Own Media Lab is a trans-regional action research project that aims to investigate, improve and document a low cost, participatory, open source media lab model.

folly is delivering a series of 5 GYOML workshops throughout September-December at The Canteen Film Project, based in Northern Riviera in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. The workshops will give participants the opportunity to work in a variety of computer-based artistic disciplines under the guidance of some of the best-known and well-respected artists working in the field.

The Workshops will be led by 7 artists from the international collectives: Openlab, Goto10 and dyne.org.

Session One: The introduction to dyne11 and puredyne, 9th September 2006
Session Two: Realtime audiovisuals (Puredata/Gem), 30th September 2006
Session Three: Realtime animation workshop (Fluxus), 21st October 2006
Session Four: Building networked games with SVS, 11th November 2006
Session Five: Home Studio (jack, ardour, weq24, hydrogen, wired...), 2nd December 2006

All workshops will run from 11am to 4.30pm at The Canteen in Barrow, Cumbria.

How to Get Involved: The GYOML project is FREE to attend. For further information and to book your place - contact Jennifer Stoddart, programme assistant at E: mailto:jennifer.stoddart[at]folly.co.uk T: 01524 388550 V: http://www.folly.co.uk

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

August 30, 2006

Medienstammtisch @ Ars

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Gathering of Independent Artists

When: Friday, September 1, starting at 10.00 p.m. :: Where: extreme couching, Goethestraße 30 (map)

The Medienstammtisch* Linz invites interested Ars Electronica Festival guests and visitors to come by during the festival. The MST includes individuals – artists, activists, cultural workers and others – from the Freie Szene (the independent art scene of Linz) and various organizations and institutions, whose special interests include tools & skills for independent artists and others working in cultural contexts, electronic and social networks, possibilities for accessing and using various types of media ...

We would be happy to talk about some of the things going on in Linz and hear about similar and related interests and experiences elsewhere, including: infrastructures (e.g. public hotspots) that can be meaningfully used for artistic and social-critical projects; working and production conditions needed for independent media art and how these can be secured; various (online and offline) communication structures and platforms that can promote cooperation and collaboration; how cooperation, collaboration, solidarity are even possible when everyone is competing (has to compete) for limited resources; the use of free software for independent media work; how tools and software need to be designed so that they can be used effectively.

Those who can't make it then will also find us at the Unofficial Time's Up "simply a party" on Saturday, September 2.

Additional information: http://www.servus.at/xchange

(*A "Stammtisch" is a table at a pub or restaurant where regulars gather to discuss certain shared interests, in our case "media". Whether the discussions lead to actions or just more talk depends on the people at the table.)

Posted by jo at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! International: Oklahoma City

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DIY Exhibition: Call For Entries

DIY Exhibition: DIY (do-it-yourself) is the overarching theme for the exhibit. We live in an era of increased technological dependency in which the phrase, “Do-it-Yourself” has and will continue to take on new cultural meanings. The Upgrade! OKC and IAO (Individual Artists of Oklahoma) are inviting local and regional artists working with digital and electronic media to submit examples and interpretations of this concept to be exhibited as part of the 2006 Upgrade! International Symposium. These works will be shown at the IAO Gallery with a net art exhibition curated by Tubulence.org, Rhizome.org, and Upgrade! New York. The Symposium will be a four-day event running from Thursday, November 30th – Sunday, December 3rd. However, this exhibition will remain on display through December 29th.

About Upgrade!: Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. While individual nodes present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists, Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year.

About the Upgrade! International Symposium: The UIOC will be the second annual international gathering where individual Upgrade! organizations and their artists converge in one physical location to present art and ideas to each other and the community. Included in the event will be workshops on art and technology, audio/video performances and presentations, and an exhibition of international and regional artists. Workshops will cover topics such as net art and creating content for the world wide web for children, creative application of open source software, social mapping as a medium of self expression, and much more.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit a detailed proposal that includes documentation, installation information, and contact information. An artist’s statement is recommended but not required. Documentation may be in the form of, but not limited to: sketches, video, CD or DVD. Installation, performance, net art, single and multi-channel video, sound/noise art, are all acceptable candidates. Please be clear about what, if any, multi-media equipment your work requires. Installations and/or works requiring extra set-up time must be installed by November 29th. Artists will be responsible for the installation of these works. This is a regional call for entries open to artists in the state of Oklahoma and surrounding areas including Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. By submitting work to the exhibit, the artist agrees to let their work be reproduced in a catalog and marketing materials. Artists selected to participate in the exhibit will also be granted free admission to all workshops, performances, etc.

Delivery:
Proposals may be mailed to:
PO Box 60824
Oklahoma City, OK 73146

Emailed to:
iaogallery[at]coxinet.net

Or, delivered in person to:
IAO Gallery
811 N Broadway
Oklahoma City, OK 73102

Sales: No commission will be retained on sales from the exhibition. IAO Gallery will provide artists’ information upon request to potential buyers. A 30% donation to IAO would be appreciated.

Liability: The artist is responsible for safe delivery and timely pickup of work. IAO Gallery will take every precaution to keep work safe for the period from November 22, until the final pickup date, Wednesday January 3rd, 2006. The artist is responsible for damage or loss after this date. By submitting work to this exhibition, the artist agrees to abide by the terms set forth here.

Important Dates:

September 27th - Submissions should be RECEIVED by this deadline.
October 18th - Notification of acceptances
November 22nd - Artwork due at IAO
December 1st - Opening
December 29th - Last day of exhibition
January 2 - 3rd, 2007 - Pick up work at IAO

Curators:

Adam Brown: Brown directs the Oklahoma component of Upgrade!. He has a diverse undergraduate educational background in Biomedical Engineering and Intermedia. He completed all of his graduate work at the University of Iowa, and obtained his M.F.A. there in May 2000. While at Iowa, Brown was instrumental in creating a new digital media art program called Digital Worlds. Since 2000, Adam Brown has been a Professor at the University of Oklahoma where he teaches courses in electronic media, computer science, interactivity, video and theory. He currently resides in Oklahoma City.

Jeff Stokes: Stokes grew up in Oklahoma and received a B.F.A from Oklahoma State University in 1990, and an M.F.A. in painting from Wichita State University in 2004. Stokes has curated numerous contemporary art exhibits in Kansas and Oklahoma museums and galleries, as well as showing his own sculpture, drawings and paintings in Kansas, Oklahoma, and New York. Stokes taught art in the secondary schools, and was an adjunct instructor in drawing at both Oklahoma State and Wichita State before accepting a position as Executive Director at Individual Artists of Oklahoma (IAO) in 2005. IAO is a not-for-profit arts organization committed to supporting Oklahoma artists in all media, including the visual arts, poetry, performance art, and film & video.

Julia Kirt: Kirt has served as the Executive Director for the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition since 1999 where she works with more than 2,500 artists statewide for professional development, grants, exhibitions and publications. She has planned and led more than two dozen workshops for artists, spoken to hundreds of students, and coordinated public educational events around the state. She instigated the Momentum exhibition and event for young artists that was attended by more than 2100 people this year and the Virtual Gallery online, which highlights hundreds of artists' artwork. She served on the board of the National Association of Artists' Organizations from 2000 until 2004, for which she acted as Treasurer in 2002 and 2003. Kirt has been a grant panelist twice for the National Endowment for the Arts in Access, Preservation, Visual Arts Creativity and Organizational Capacity categories.

Joseph Daun: Daun graduated from Florida State University in 1990 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Photography. In 1994, Daun earned his Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Texas San Antonio with an emphasis in both Photography and Sculpture. Daun was selected as Chair of the Art Department at the University of Central Oklahoma. In 2005, Daun earned a tenure appointment at UCO.

During his academic career, Daun has shown in numerous art galleries and spaces across the United States including a prestigious artist’s residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, One person Exhibit at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, NY, A large installation at Fotouhi-Cramer Gallery in New York, NY, a one-person exhibit at 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, FL, large installation at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY, One person exhibit at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christie, TX. His work is in numerous university and private collections, including the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Central Oklahoma.

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

NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE

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Joburg-Derby-London & You

The Premises Gallery at The Johannesburg Civic Theatre invites you to join us for a Red Bull and some live online performance: NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE VisitorsStudio performance Joburg-Derby-London live at The Premises and online at http://www.visitorsstudio.org.

A live-online collaborative performance by Nathaniel Stern, Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow. And open laptop mixing by audiences and invited local artists at the Premises Gallery (Johannesburg), HTTP (London) and Q Arts (Derby).

EVENT: Saturday 2nd September, 16:30 – 19:00 (SA time)
Getting started and uploading at The Premises: 16h00 (SA time)
Live scheduled performance: 17h00- 17h30 (SA time) and 16h00 - 16h30 (UK time) by Nathaniel Stern, Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow
Open collaborative mix: 17h30 (SA time) and 16h30 (UK time) Everyone welcome to join!

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About VisitorsStudio: an online place for real-time, multi-user mixing, collaborative creation, many to many dialogue and networked performance and play. VisitorsStudio is a Furtherfield project @ http://www.visitorsstudio.org. VisitorsStudio is included in the Game/Play networked touring exhibition. A collaboration between Q-Arts, Derby and HTTP, London. Please see www.game-play.org.uk for further information.

How to PARTICIPATE

First, get the latest flash player on your computer. South Africans wishing to participate can bring their laptops (with ethernet cables) or content to The Premises a bit early, and upload content on our open network via their own machine or one of ours. Or, upload anywhere, anytime - you can even mix with us from Cape Town. If you want to be part of the VS performance by nathaniel, be sure to name your files beginning with SA_, and then an idea of what it is he would be including in the mix. If you want to play on your own, supply names for your files that you will remember. File types supported are jpg, png, mp3, flv and swf files, as long as they are under 200k.

More info, and to play: http://www.visitorsstudio.org

SPONSORED BY:

http://furtherfield.org
Art & Technology, Johannesburg, Co-directed by nathaniel stern and Prof Christo Doherty
Red Bull South Africa
the trinity session
The Premises at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre

The Premises at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre
Loveday Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
+27 (0) 11 877 6859
thepremises[at]onair.co.za

Gallery Hours -
Tuesday - Saturday
10h00 - 17h00
office[at]onair.co.za

Directors -
Stephen Hobbs
+27 (0) 11 403 8358
sh[at]onair.co.za
Marcus Neustetter
+27 (0) 11 339 2785
mn[at]onair.co.za

Posted by jo at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

Furtherfield.org

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New Reviews/Articles

New Reviews/Articles on Furtherfield.org (August 06):

SCANZ - Article Written by Helen Varley Jamieson :: SCANZ (Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand, represented several firsts: it was the first Polar/Solar Circuit event to be held in New Zealand, and the first festival of its kind in this country, bringing together 25 artists from NZ and around the world for a two week collaborative residency. SCANZ provided the context for the first faces meeting in New Zealand, and it was also the first time a group residency had been offered to Avatar Body Collision – our first opportunity for the four globally dispersed Colliders to actually meet and work together in the same physical space … !!!

Slippage - Review by Yasser Rashid :: An exhibition of net.art curated by Nanette Wylde, bringing together a group of 8 artists that include: Mez Breeze; Krista Connerly; Juliet Davis; Lisa Hutton; Paula Levine; Jess Loseby, et al.; UBERMORGEN.COM; and Jody Zellen. The exhibition presents an eclectic mix of work under the broad concept of 'exploring and exposing relationships between intention, perception, control, experience, behavior, memory, knowing and the unexpected'.

aPpRoPiRaTe! - Review by Mark Hancock :: Feeding a movie that you’ve downloaded from a Peer to Peer network, into aPpRoPiRaTe by Sven König, reveals the nature of the “collaborative” effort that the image/audio undergoes in the sharing process. Watching the individual frame sequences on his website, we see how the image is staggered and broken into 'blocky' difficult to view images. There’s an aesthetic at work here that feels right in the context of shared content on the web. What appeals most of all is that the software reminds us of what movies really are.

Elephants Dream By The Blender Foundation - Reviewer: Rob Myers :: Visually, Elephants Dream is a brooding European social-realist surrealist fantasy rather than an American Disney-inspired Pixar fantasy. Bleak mid-20th-century technological landscapes are twisted into a fantastic realm of vertiginous, deep, dark spaces and vague but ever-present threats. Flying electrical cables and cthonic telephone earpieces attack as clockwork birds and self-dictating typewriters watch on. Proog and Emo walk on robotic footholds across bottomless pits or argue in front of fragments of a world projected by giant projectors on tripods that have the air of martian war machines.

All reviews:
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreviews.php
Reviewers at Furtherfield:
http://www.furtherfield.org/reviewersbio.php

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2006

Art & Activism at Mejan Labs

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Art that Presents Alternatives

Art & Activism at Mejan Labs :: August 31 - October 8, 2006 :: Opening: Thursday, August 31, 5-8 pm.

Art & Activism is the first project at Mejan Labs for the autumn of 2006. It deals with art that presents alternatives and that often has some sort of a political content. In collaboration with the British organization Furtherfield we present a number of artists who combine art, activism and new media. Participating artists are Heath Bunting, Kate Rich, C6, Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG) and Andy Deck.

We will also show the new film 5+5=5, produced by Furtherfield in collaboration with Mejan Labs. Participating artists and filmmakers are Mongrel, David Valentine, Chris Dooks, Furtherfield, Michael Szpakowski, Simon Poulter, Anya Lewin, C6 and Tobias Lee.

Mejan Labs, AkademigrŠnd 3, SE-111 52 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: +46 (0)8-796 60 30, info[at]mejanlabs.se

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2006

Art Show Down

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A Game Show About Art & An Exhibition About Game Shows

Art Show Down @ Art Interactive :: September 15 – November 5, 2006 :: Opening reception: Friday, September 15, 6-8 pm :: Gallery hours: Saturday & Sunday, 12-6 pm :: Curated by Roland Smart and Jeff Warmouth.

Beginning in the 1950s, at the end of the quiz show era, several scandals revealed that networks were conspiring to affect the outcomes of competitions and their ratings. A series of investigations by the Federal Communications Commission led to a general distrust of commercial networks. Through the process of re-branding quiz shows as game shows, along with new FCC regulations, game shows regained the trust of their audiences and soared in popularity. Art Show Down aims to critique and exploit the game show genre by exploring the nature of televised competition and how it interfaces with commercial interests, culture, and the production of contemporary art.

During the run of the show, seven half-hour episodes will be broadcast on Cambridge Community Television. Additionally, Art Show Down is a gallery exhibition featuring a display of artwork created during the live performances, as well as a behind-the-scenes view of the studio set, props, costumes, and taped episodes.

Episodes: Sept. 16, 2 & 6 pm, Sept. 30, 2 & 6 pm, Oct. 14, 2 & 6 pm, and Oct. 28, 6 pm.

Artists: Rand Borden, Paul Concemi, Rob Coshow, Megan Goltermann, Ravi Jain, Matt Nash, Nick Rodrigues, Haik Sahakian, & Jeff Smith
Installation Manager: James Manning
Music: Brendon Wood
Research & Writing: Anna Goldsmith & Ardra Whitney

Art Interactive
130 Bishop Allen Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617.498.0100
Fax: 617.498.0019
www.artinteractive.org

Posted by jo at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

WAVES

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A Show With Electromagnetism

Electromagnetic waves surround us, in fact they constantly pass through us. They propel the technologies that keep our lives in motion, so it is natural that new media artists would be drawn to them as a subject. An exhibition currently on view in Riga, Latvia, 'looks at electromagnetic waves as the principle material--the medium--of media art.' The WAVES show includes forty projects by over seventy artists from eighteen countries, many of which are much more utopian than those seen in recent medium-specific exhibits. WAVES organizers at the new media organization, RIXC, have worked to formulate a roster that 'interrogates the conventions of media art exhibitions' and educates viewers about the ubiquity and plurality of contexts in which these signals flow. The ultimate message is that taking control of the waves might actually allow for alternate realities via alternate power structures and communication systems. Considering how invisible these waves tend to be, there are some remarkably large-scale works in the show, which the curators summarize as sometimes 'based on screens and audio-visualisations of waves,' but also 'rely[ing] on physical objects... obscure or forgotten communication technologies... and the antenna as an art object.' Point your own antenna at RIXC's website to learn more about several dozen innovative art projects. - Regan McGill, Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

Playback_Simulated Realities

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The Impact of Re-Enactments on Society

Playback_Simulated Realities :: 3 September - 5 November 2006 :: Opening: 2 September 2006, 7 p.m. :: Participating Artists: Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, Christoph Draeger, Omer Fast, Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann, Lynn Hershman, Felix Stephan Huber, Eddo Stern, Milica Tomic, Susanne Weirich.

Public interest in elaborately staged history spectaculars which are supposed to bring the past to life as realistically as possible by virtue of faithful adherence to detail continues to grow apace. The form used for re-enacting political events and milestones of world history is also increasingly shaping approaches to art. Forms of 're-enactment' and simulation occur above all in the context of the new technologies. The exhibition "Playback" investigates the influence and impact re-enactments and simulations have on society. It raises questions about the function of the digital substitute worlds developed in computer games in satisfying viewers' needs. It discusses the yearnings for authentic experience which are also addressed in reconstructions of past eras. In a 'society of spectacle', which only values reproduction, it raises the question of whether we can still trust our own experiences and memories and, if so, to what extent.

What changes take place when historic events are retold? The works shown in the exhibition examine in reconstructions and stagings how experiences and memories are at once individually experienced and culturally construed.

The Eternal Frame, a video by the Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco group, is a critical commentary on the globally reknown images of the assassination of John F. Kennedy disseminated by the mass media that has engraved themselves on our collective memory. Christoph Draeger's Black September restages the terrorist attack that claimed eleven victims at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games; fact and fiction, past and present are so intricately interwoven that the boundaries between documentary and real experience are blurred. In his video Spielberg's List, Omer Fast deals with the construction of, and response to, the past, describing the casting process and what the cast of the Holocaust film "Schindler's List" by Stephen Spielberg experienced in making the film.

Return to Veste Rosenberg by Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann plunges viewers into a computer game that has become reality. Pictures of soldiery deployed in a medieval fortress alternate with fairy-tale shots of enigmatically phantasmagoric figures from a different time. In her documentary feature film Strange Culture, Lynn Hershman relates the dramatic events which changed the life of artist Steve Kurtz when the FBI, after the tragic death of his wife, suspected his art activities as an act of eco-terrorism. In the video Vietnam Romance, Eddo Stern investigates the influence of mass-media images on public perceptions of wars and shows images from computer games that recreate the representation of the Vietnam War in Hollywood films. In the computer installation Ops Room by Felix Stephan Huber, the player is caught up in the simulation of an historic place. What is staged is the celebrated control room realised in Santiago de Chile by the cyberneticists Stafford Beer and Fernando Flores in 1972, which was intended to be used as an instrument for computer-controlling the interventionist socialist economy under Salvador Allende.

In Container, Milica Tomic has succeeded in creating a memorable link between questions of identity and memory, personal and political history. Dependencies and power politics experienced by members of a capitalist society are subjected to radical criticism in this video and slide show, in which she refers to the issue of human beings as wares. In Silent Playground, Susanne Weirich stages six film sequences, which borrow the logic and setting of computer games. Matching the binary strategy of such games, each filmic sequence has a good and a bad ending.

Events: Friday, 8 September, 8 p.m. :: Sir Drone (1989) by Raymond Pettibon :: Filmscreening within the scope of the Oldenburger Filmfestival

A catalogue will be published.

Guided Tours: every Sunday, 3 p.m.
17 September and 22 October: guided tour by Sabine Himmelsbach

Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst
Katharinenstraße 23, 26121 Oldenburg
t. +49 (0) 441 - 235 3194, http://www.edith-russ-haus.de

Posted by jo at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

I Am(not)sterdam

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10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body

Radio LIGNA / Radioballet / :: I Am(not)sterdam: 10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body :: Saturday September 2nd | 13.30 pm :: Radio Patapoe 88.3 FM and Radio Ruigoord 90.3 FM :: Location: Leidsestraat :: Bring your own radios and mobile phone receivers! :: Radio receivers also distributed at De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Inc. - In the streets of Amsterdam, we are not only inhabitants or visitors of the city, but we also are part of a brand, that blends the individual being and the city into a common identity: 'I amsterdam'. There is no being in the city without being the city. The public sphere becomes the showroom for the new brand Amsterdam.

Deviant Behaviour - The appearance of the inner city as showroom is a product of sanitizing policies, eviction, surveillance and control. The latter is not only executed by police, and security personnel, but also by ourselves, as we have internalized modes of self-control and 'proper' behaviour. In the beat of the corporate city we confirm this logic by simply repeating the same set of fixed gestures again and again: walking around, stopping, looking in the shop windows, exchanging money for commodities. No rule is needed forbidding deviation: individual deviation is already part of the city branding.

'I amsterdam' means diversity. But what happens if we fail to repeat these gestures, and invent alien gestures on a collective scale? Can we, as inhabitants and visitors of Amsterdam, intervene in its regulated urban rhythm without becoming incorporated in the city's branding?

Radio ballet - The Radio Ballet 'I Am(not)sterdam' challenges you to find an answer! The radio ballet consists of a radio broadcast, especially produced for the Leidsestraat. It will suggest 10 different exercises to get the city out of your body. As a dispersed collective of participants, we perform deviant gestures (according to the script of the radio ballet), which would normally be impossible to do on an individual basis. Can we subvert the logic of the corporate city, by not subjecting ourselves to it anymore?

Come and find out! Be part of the Radio Ballet in the Leidsestraat on Saturday, 2nd of September 2006! I Am(not)sterdam! Dispersed collectivity instead of common identity! Don?t subject to the corporate city - become alien by public radio listening!

About Radio Ballet LIGNA

The free radio group LIGNA exists since 1995. LIGNA consists of the media theorists and radio artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners, and Torsten Michaelsen, who since the early nineties have been working at the "Freies Sender Kombinat" (FSK), a public non-profit radio station in Hamburg. In several shows and performances they have been investigating the importance of dispersal in radio as well as of the radio. One of the main focuses is to refer to forgotten and remote possibilities of radio use in order to develop new forms of interactive practices. Another emphasis has been placed on the development of concepts and the production of performative audio plays in order to find out how radio can intervene in public and controlled spaces, so that its public nature reappears in the form of uncontrollable situations

The “Radio Ballet” is an excellent example of the latter: it is a radio play produced for the collective reception in certain public places. It gives the dispersed radio listeners the opportunity, to subvert the regulations of the space. Held for the first time in Hamburg’s Central Station in 2002, this focused on how radio can intervene in public and controlled spaces, so that its public nature reappears in the form of uncontrollable situations. Yet, Ligna's performances aim to confront the privatised, controlled production of capitalism with the dispersed, yet collective, uncanny and public production of the radio. The Radio Ballet brought back excluded gestures of deviant behavior were invited to enter the station, equipped with cheap, portable radios and earphones. By means of these devices they could listen to a radio program consisting of a choreography suggesting permitted and forbidden gestures (to beg, to sit or lie down on the floor etc.). These suggestions were interrupted by reflections on the public space and on the Radio ballet itself.

The Radio Ballet I Am[not]sterdam, especially developed for De Balie, consists of a radio broadcast, produced for the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam. The radio broadcast will suggest ten different exercises to get the city out of your body. The dispersed collective of radio listeners will be able to perform deviant gestures that no one would or could do alone.

Is it possible to subvert the logic of the corporate city, if people do not subject themselves to it anymore? Come and find out! Become part of the LIGNA Radio Ballet in the Leidsestraat on Saturday, 2nd of September 2006!

The Radio Ballet starts at 14:00. You can get radios at De Balie from 13:30 on. But better bring your own radios, or mobile phones with receiver! The Ballet will be broadcasted on the Frequency of Radio Patapoe 88,3 FM.

I Am[not]sterdam! Dispersed collectivity instead common identity! Don´t subject to the corporate city - become alien by public radio listening!

Posted by jo at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

transmediale.07 + club transmediale.07

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Call for Entries

transmediale.07 :: festival for art and digital culture berlin :: 31 January - 4 February 2007 and club transmediale.07 :: international festival for electronic music and related visual arts :: 26 January - 3 February 2007 :: Call for Entries :: Deadline: 8 September 2006 :: Award Ceremony: 3 February 2007 :: Find the complete call and submission form here

transmediale.07 festival for art and digital culture berlin, invites submissions for its Award Competition 2007. The competition highlights outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art. The international jury will award one main prize of EUR 4.000, and two second prizes of EUR 2.000 each.

The transmediale award is a major international award for art reflecting on the aesthetical and cultural impact of new technologies. Previous award winners have included renowned artists like Shilpa Gupta (in), Zhou Hongxiang (cn), Istvan Kantor (ca), Thomas Koener (de), Agnes Meyer-Brandis (de), Netochka Nezvanova (us), Adrian Ward (uk), schoenerwissen (de), Herwig Weiser (at), 242.pilots (no/pl/us), and others.

As a festival for art and digital culture, transmediale presents advanced artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience these technologies. transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques which need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape our contemporary society.

Digital media are increasingly used by artists of all disciplines to express their ideas and to explore new aesthetic territories and the relation between art and technology. What is important for transmediale, though, is that the artistic practices do not only make use of technologies, but that they imply a reflection about the aesthetic, cultural and social dimensions of such technological developments. transmediale and its competition promote an understanding of media art as a sounding board and catalyst for a critical and creative expansion of the potential of human agency through new technologies.

We invite the submission of works and projects that respond to this challenge. We are interested in works that expand our understanding of digital image and sound aesthetics, of narrative, of interactivity and, in particular, the cultural significance of software and computer programming as cultural techniques. However, we are also curious to see the submission of works outside of these areas, works that expand our notions of artistic practice, and works which can makea strong argument for the crucial role that new technologies play in our perception and projection of a contemporary global culture.

Together with the jury, we explicitly welcome submissions from artists who live and work outside of Western Europe and North America.

transmediale is hosted by Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH in cooperation with Akademie der Kuenste. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

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club transmediale (CTM) - festival for adventurous music and related visual arts - takes place in conjunction with the transmediale. CTM is an independent platform for new forms of electronic and experimental music and for the various artistic activity drawing infl uences from and refering to sound- and club culture. It presents outstanding productions in digital, electronic and experimental music, audio-visual performance and installation.

CTM reflects on the role of contemporary music culture as a changing agent for present society and - due to the massive dissemination of music - as one of the key elements to shape the transformation processes that characterise todays mediasphere. With a focus on the exploration of performative concepts, informal networks and the interaction between different media formats - especially of image and sound - CTM emphasises the situative potential of live music and performance. Thus it encourages the crossover of institutional, academic and subcultural contexts.

club transmediale invites the submission of works and projects in the fields of digital, electronic and experimental music, audiovisual performance, sound art, installation, video-performance/VJing, music video and of design concepts aimed to shape social situations and communication processes related to music culture.

Posted by jo at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

Liverpool Biennial Conference: City Breaks?

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Art and Culture in Times of Expediency

Liverpool Biennial Conference :: City Breaks? Art and Culture in Times of Expediency :: 19 – 22 October, 2006 :: Static, Liverpool

Today, the idea of culture as an expedient has gained legitimacy in West and underpins the enormous capital investment in a contemporary art infrastructure (of late in China). Increasingly, culture is supported as a purveyor of economic development and a tool to remediate social inequality. This trend has produced a contradiction for art whereby accountability and visibility jar with self-organisation and open-ended processes of valorisation.

Biennial exhibitions are habitually criticised for spectacularising the presentation of art. However, in recent years the proliferation of Biennials has yielded different models that distinguish themselves notably in their relation to place. Where on the one hand this multiplication follows the logic of globalised capital on the other a revaluation of our relation to the global has generated renewed attention to the local situations and translocal existencies. In addition new alliances between art, science and fe. ngo’s, cunning, trickery and ruses displace rugged nostalgia for oppositionality. Arguably some Biennials have contributed to the creation of new public spheres and a meaningful critique therefore needs to be precise about the ways in which the relation between the local and global is constituted. How does this new generation of Biennials fare?

Arguably some Biennials have contributed to the creation of new public spheres in their localities. Is it possible to square demands of city marketing and cultural tourism with an engagement with issues of citizenship, communities, dissensus and denizens? How can we constitute a bifocal perspective allowing us to examine the visual regime of capitalist consumption and the immanent meaning of art and social practices at the same time?

City Breaks? takes place over four days (the length of a ‘city break’), starting on the Thursday evening with an evening lecture, and followed by morning panels and afternoon workshops, in which thinking and doing enacts both local and international dimensions.

With: Ackbar Abbas, Cecilia Andersson/Work Ltd, Christian Nolde/ Biomapping, Claire Bishop, John Byrne, Nina Edge, Charles Esche, Flying City, Beatriz Garcia, Jonathan Harris+Felipe Hernandez/CAVA, Pablo Helguera/ The School Pan-American Unrest, Manray Hsu, Gerardo Mosquera, Amalia Pica, Jean Francois Prost, Sala-manca, Stealth Unlimited, Paul Sullivan/Static, Ti-Nan Chi, Stephen Wright, George Yudice, a.o.

Ticket information and booking:
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 7444
Fax: +44 (0)151 7097377
Email: claireraffo[at]biennial.com

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

August 25, 2006

State of Play

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Conference Heads East

Aaron Delwiche of San Antonio’s Trinity University and the Terra Nova blog posts the news that the next State of Play conference will be held January 7-9 in Singapore. “We are convening thought leaders from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas to engage in a lively discussion about the unique regulatory and cross-cultural challenges posed by the growth of transnational virtual worlds.” It’s an interesting choice of location for what’s probably the most forward-thinking conference on virtual worlds. Asia has more virtual world “residents” than any other region of the world, and has seen a number of legal decision handed down that treat virtual worlds more like real places — with real property laws — than any in the West. Singapore will be tough to get to for many Western-Hemisphere VW pundits, but it also opens the dialogue to people we haven’t heard that much from on te other side of the world.

As Aaron’s post (and the SoP splash page) puts it:

Throughout Asia, people of all ages are gathering in cybercafes to participate in “deep” virtual worlds such as Lineage II and World of Warcraft or to play casual titles such as PangYa. With the highest broadband penetration rate of any country on the planet, Korea is currently an epicenter of gaming innovation, pioneering a free-to-play business model that seriously threatens subscription-based titles. Meanwhile, analysts note that India is poised to become a huge player once it builds out the necessary technological infrastructure. India is already the region’s third largest market for on-line games, despite the fact that less than .02% of the population has broadband access.

When you take into account the fact that NGOs and many government development agencies hope to seed the Asia Pacific region with inexpensive wireless broadband notebooks, it is clear that we are witnessing something completely unprecedented. We are eager to tease out the implications of these developments, and are intentionally convening virtual world industry experts, game scholars and technological neophytes to deepen our shared understanding.

Interestingly, the splash page also flags a New York State of Play this October, but there doesn’t seem to be any information about it on the site. I spoke on a panel on virtual journalism (Reporting from the Front) at last year’s event, which was a fantastic gathering of thinkers in the space. Among the speakers flagged for Singapore are Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow and Julian Dibbell, who will be holding “an extemporaneous discussion about the future of virtual worlds,” Alice Taylor, Nick Yee, Ren Reynolds, Richard Bartle and a handful of other similarly impressive names.

I haven’t made travel arrangements yet, but hopefully I’ll be there. I have made travel arrangements to get myself to Austin next month, where I’ll be flapping my gums on a very cool panel at the Austin Game Conference, but more about that in an upcoming post. [blogged by Mark Wallace on 3pointD]

Posted by jo at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

Conference Report: On Zero One/ISEA 2006

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Where Art Thou Net.Art?

Conference Report: Where Art Thou Net.Art? On Zero One/ ISEA 2006 by Randall Packer :: Commissioned by Rhizome.org :: The long awaited Zero One/ ISEA 2006 took over San Jose, California, two weeks ago in a sprawling, city-wide, mega-festival celebrating art and technology in the heart of Silicon Valley. Much has already been written about it, from daily observations in the local papers to a feature in the New York Times, from the Blogosphere to the listservs. As one who has been immersed in the new media scene since the late 1980s, I would like to contribute a bit of historical context to the discussion: I offer my commentary from a pre-millennial perspective, when the dream emerged in the 1990s, during an era of optimism and promise, the dream of a new art form that would side-step a mainstream art world mired in curators, museums, galleries, objects, and old aesthetic issues. This was the dream of Net.Art, a revolutionary new international movement of artists, techies, and hackers, led in large part by the unassuming, unabashedly ambitious new media curator from the Walker Art Center, Steve Dietz, now director of Zero One.

These were heady times indeed. I met Steve in 1997 while I was in residence at the San Jose Museum of Art. His research had brought him to the holy Mecca of new media, Silicon Valley and the community of artists in the Bay Area who had been working with new technologies since the dawn of the personal computer. He wanted to meet Joel Slayton (who would later become director of the 2006 ISEA Symposium), so I escorted him over to San Jose State University where Joel is head of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Shortly thereafter, Steve launched two groundbreaking Net.Art exhibitions, Shock of the View, and Beyond Interface, both of which brought together leading Net artists exploding on the scene: Mark Amerika, Natalie Bookchin, Masaki Fujihata, Ken Goldberg, Eduardo Kac, Jodi, Mark Napier, Alexei Shulgin, to name just a few. It was a time of artistic transformation, new paradigms, hypernovels, distributed authorship, and globally extended, real-time, robotic, collective art. It seemed anything was possible. By 1999, David Ross was Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Intel was pouring millions into Artmuseum.net, and there seemed no end to the surging tide of experimental new media art. It was at that time that early discussion began of an international festival of art and technology in Silicon Valley. Beau Takahara founded the organization Ground Zero, which would later become Zero One.

But with the new millennium the tides would turn: Natalie Bookchin announced the death of Net.Art, the tech boom was a bust, and both David Ross and Steve Dietz were ousted from their museum jobs for harboring visionary aspirations in an economic downturn. So with the announcement that the Zero One Festival and the ISEA Symposium would launch in 2006 in San Jose, with Steve Dietz at the helm, it was something like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.

And it rose with a bang! "Seven Days of Art and Interconnectivity," with over 200 participating artists, an international symposium, city-wide public installations, exhibitions, concerts, performances, pubic spectacles, performative-live-distributed cinema, wi-fi interventions, container culture, skateboard orchestras, digital dance, sine wave surfing, datamatics, surveillance balloons, a pigeon blog, the squirrel-driven Karaoke Ice Battle on wheels, and to top it off a nostalgic, bombastic blast-from-the-past from Survival Research Laboratories. The 13th International Symposium on Electronic Art Exhibition took over the sprawling South Hall at the Convention Center. Its themes: Interactive City, Pacific Rim, Transvergence, Edgy Products, and on and on... spoke of enough technology to wire a third world nation.

And so, with all the buzz, and the sheer largesse of this ambitious festival of new media, I couldn't help ponder how it was connected to the original Net.Art dream, when a new art form arose from networking every computer on every desktop and engaging a global audience in new, pervasive ways that became possible as technology was increasingly ubiquitous and transparent. The Net.Art dream would call into question our relationship to the new media, as art has always aspired, to critique its impact on our lives, our culture, our communications systems, our relationships, our view of the world, our own changing humanity in a technological world. I couldn't help but to wonder, what exactly happened to that dream, once driven by a small fringe core of artists, writers, thinkers, and curators, and now practiced by literally thousands of techno-artists emerging from every university and art school across the planet, many of whom converged in San Jose for Zero One / ISEA.

The first thing that came to mind was that art and technology no longer exists on the fringe of the artworld, and in fact, the demarcation between art and engineering has blurred considerably. At Zero One you couldn't tell the artist from the engineer (Billy Kluver must be rolling in his grave). Joseph Beuys' notions of social sculpture, or Allan Kaprow's participatory Happenings now inform the new systems of art that have dissolved the distinction between artist and non-artist, between performer and audience. For example, the Interactive City theme, organized by Eric Paulos, sought "urban-scale projects for which the city is not merely a palimpsest of our desires but an active participant in their formation."

In the installations of Jennifer Steinkamp at the San Jose Museum of Art, I saw suburban moms taking snapshots of their kids in strollers bathed in layers of colored light. In the Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, also at SJMA, the artists orchestrated chat room discussion, in real-time, from around the globe. Etoy's mesmerizing Mission Eternity involved a trailer installation parked outside SJMA in the downtown Plaza, which investigated personal data storage for the afterlife (ashes to ashes, bits to bits).

There was good art and there was bad art, but everywhere you turned there was art or something like art permeating the physical spaces of downtown San Jose (including the mobile light rail cars and the dome of City Hall), as well as the invisible ether of the airwaves, from bluetooth networks to cellular tours (the latest rage). There was very little time to spend with any particular work. Everyone was engaged in high gear, moving from one venue to the next. In Bill Viola's keynote address, he made the prescient remark, "artists are jumping into a train for a high speed ride while they're still laying the tracks ahead."

The hyper-adrenalin flow resonated in the on-line commentary as well, where, if you read the considerable Blog chatter surrounding Zero One/ISEA, you would find that the experience became concentrated on sheer movement and the social networking that reigns supreme at all conferences and festivals.

And so what about the dream of Net.Art? Those of us who have spent countless hours, in the past decade, bemoaning the loss of the dream could now say that the dream had been realized (for better or for worse). I heard artist friends complain about the democratization of Net.Art, the selling out of Net.Art, the "mainstreamization" of Net.Art, and other remarks I won't mention here,
and yet, I think that we would all agree that the uber-dream of Net.Art -- to dismantle the precious nature of the object, an art that would defy the walls of the museum, that would, as expressed in Roy Ascott's Museum of A Third Kind, reject the notion of the physical museum space altogether, the dream of Net.Art as a force that would rewire the experience of art, a "fantasy beyond control" according to Lynn Hershman -- had become a living, breathing reality in San Jose for those compressed seven days.

And if you turned to the Blogosphere there were plenty of critics: Patrick Lichty wrote, "There are many topics, like locative media, data mapping, ecologies, and so on that are being explored. On a rhetorical level I have to ask whether these are the right ones and why these are the ones that are compelling to us." And on the CRUMB list, I found an insightful comment by Molly Hankwitz, who said, "I think the process of interaction must be done very carefully. The worst thing is the mainstreaming of situationism into a middle class playground."

Finally, I turn to Mark Amerika, one of the original dreamers, for a closing observation: "Net art is in many ways still the most alive and accessed art movement ever to NOT be absorbed into the commercial art world and that's fantastic!" Perhaps the success of Zero One / ISEA was in its commitment to concentrate on experimental media art, to emphasize media art's inclusive, democratic, and participatory nature, and lastly, that contemporary art must embrace the new technologies - shamelessly, fearlessly, defiantly. Net.Art may be dead, but Net Art 2.0 is alive and kicking.

Randall Packer is a widely-exhibited artist, composer, educator, and scholar. He is Assistant Professor of Multimedia at American University in Washington, DC, and the author of Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality.

Posted by jo at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

aMAZElab

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Urban Interventions + Cultural Exchanges

aMAZElab: Urban interventions, workshops, films, debates, cultural exchanges, publications :: aMAZElab is a non-profit cultural lab based in Milano, which works for the diffusion and knowledge of contemporary cultures. Founded and directed by Claudia Zanfi and Gianmaria Conti, promotes projects and events on social-territorial research, cultural interchanges and micro-geographies. At its 5° birthday, aMAZElab develops over 2006 summer/autumn a series of activities and appointments for reflection and research, such as:

20 September/10 October 2006 :: Nicosia, Cyprus :: Transcrossing memories (urban installations) :: "The Memory Box" is a mobile device to collect popular history from the common people. This bilateral intervention will serve as a travelling public space open to everyone, and will host various presentations, artistic projects, readings, video, debates, performances etc… The project is held in collaboration with Artos Foundation Nicosia, Ashik Mene Studio, Art schools, theoreticians, architects and artists in Cyprus, from both sides.

The “Memory Box” is a concept by Gianmaria Conti, designed in collaboration with Bauhaus University, Weimar (Germany).

aMAZElab, Via Cola Montano 8 20159 Milano, ph-fax 02 6071623 info[at]maze.it

Posted by jo at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2006

Recursive Instruments

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The Value of Translating the Virtual to the Real

Recursive Instruments is generously supported by Linden Lab through their Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts ... The value ascribed to objects, scripts, textures, and land in Second Life contrasts sharply with the value given to similar, material wants. Digital work cannot yet economically compete with comparable real world services. Our initial proposal to Linden Lab investigated these different markets of exchange. The ease of copy and paste undermines traditional economic practice. Without an original—a gold standard—the Linden faces an uphill battle to establish value in the minds of others. We believe that a body of images, objects and ideas exterior to Second Life is of paramount concern for a sustainable environment.

Just as [Simon Spartalian's] words and these slides communicate between you and I, so must Second Life use its content to communicate with culture. Tangible objects can carry a vivid experience outside the world that gave them birth. Our work began at this intersection. Using the Open GL Extractor (OGLE) from OpenLab and EyeBeam Research in NYC we can capture the 3D data behind Second Life. We have a Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) mill for the purpose of carving objects built from this data. Our first construction centered around the landscape of Sheep Island, a Sim which we printed, section by section (acre by acre), into the real world. Read more >> [Related post]

Posted by jo at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2006

DANUBE TELE LECTURES

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International Discussion - Innovative Image Direction

:: Inauguration of the DANUBE TELE LECTURES at Danube University Krems :: The Center for Image Science at Danube University Krems starts a new international lecture series in early September with prominent scientists of our time. The lectures will be presented by live online streaming technology. The series is realized in co-operation with the Österreichische Filmgalerie and the ORF Niederösterreich (Austrian Broadcast Corporation), and will be held in the Filmgalerie Cinema at Danube University Krems. For the inaugural Tele Lecture, internationally renowned scholars deal with key topics of Image Science and Media Art:

September 5, 2006 19:30-22:00 :: DOES THE WEST STILL EXIST? Are There Boundaries of West, East and Far-East in the World of Images Now? :: Lectures and debate with Sarat MAHARAJ and Machiko KUSAHARA: Hollywood, computer games, net and media art, micromovies, new devices* images are undergoing a new internationalization never known before, and are increasingly being charged as a vehicle of ideologies and worldview. Seemingly bygone clashes between image opponents and image believers are reanimated in contemporary media to include all areas of art, science, politics and economy - now on a global scale.

Can we still speak of images of the west today? Do we witness the arousal of a global visual language enriched universally by the various cultures, or are we at the brink of an ‘image war’, representing extremes between the old and new economic powers and their visual culture?

September 6, 2006 19:30-22:00 :: PYGMALION TENDENCIES: Bioart and Its Precursors :: Lectures and debate with Gunalan NADARAJAN and Jens HAUSER

Art and the natural sciences are forming a new interconnection that is closer than in past centuries. Recent developments in art such as Bioart, Techno-art, Genetic or Transgenic Art bring artists into the scientific laboratories and carry their visions to the general public. Not only do artists work cross-pollinated, they also create new creatures, frequently revealing spectacular spaces of reflection on new possibilities. International experts discuss these tensions oscillating between body and nature on one hand and artificial life and illusion on the other - none the least, in their historical contexts.

International Discussion over the Net - Innovative Image Direction

The DANUBE TELE LECTURES is a continuation and extension of the first international conference on MediaArtHistories Refresh!, which was held under the direction of Oliver Grau in Banff/Canada last fall und will see a remake called re:place in Berlin next year. Two cameras innovatively echo the studio character and seek a virtual intimacy with the lecturers and their audience. Internet viewers from all over the world have the possibility to pose email questions, broadening the international debate character of this event. Videos of the Danube Tele Lectures will be available in an online archive.

:: More at http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/cis ::

You can join us live in Krems or watch online and participate in the discussion via email.

The CENTER FOR IMAGE SCIENCE at Danube University Krems is an institution for inovative research and teaching on the complete range of image forms. The Center is situated in the beautiful Wachau, Austria - a UNESCO world heritage site - in the Goettweig Monastery and is housed in a fourteenth century castle. It is the base of the public documentation platforms www.virtualart.at and www.mediaarthistory.org. The Center's new low residency postgraduate master's programs in MEDIAARTHISTORIES, PHOTOGRAPHY, and IMAGE MANAGEMENT are internationally unique.

contact information: wendy.coones[at]donau-uni.ac.at :: +43 (0)2732 893-2543

Directions to Krems - 60km west of Vienna towards Linz - www.donau-uni.ac.at/route; Shuttle Krems-Vienna offered; reserve your seat at the Filmgalerie Cinema (entrance is free).

Posted by jo at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

Vida 9.o

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Eighth Art & Artificial Life International Competition

VIDA 9.o is the eighth edition of an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines. We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between "synthetic" and "organic" life. The international jury will grant awards to the most outstanding projects. Prizes: 1st Prize: 10,000 euros :: 2nd Prize: 7,000 euros :: 3rd Prize: 3,000 euros :: Incentive for Productions from Latinoamerica, Spain and Portugal: 20,000 euros.

Dates: Monday October 16, 2006 - Deadline for presenting the projects :: November 2-5, 2006 - Judging panel deliberates in Madrid :: November 6, 2006 - Winners are announced at round table.

Contact: Email: angeles.perezmuela[a]telefonica.es :: Tel: +34 91 584 23 05

Posted by jo at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2006

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF IRATIONAL.ORG

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Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF IRATIONAL.ORG: Tools, Techniques and Events 1996-2006 :: Daniel G. Andujar (Valencia/E), Rachel Baker (London/GB), Kayle Brandon (Bristol/GB), Heath Bunting (Bristol/GB), Minerva Cuevas (Mexico City/MEX), Marcus Valentine (Bristol/GB) ::

Have you ever taken part in International Tree Climbing Day? Did you know that there is a genetically modified "superweed" resistant to current herbicides such as Roundup? How would you react to the statement "Remember, language is not free?" Have you ever heard of "Public Sculpture Climbing" or the "Tour de Fence"? All of these are projects that have taken form around the server irational.org in recent years.

On August 27, 2006, the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund is opening a unique exhibition project called "The Wonderful World of irational.org. Techniques, Tools, and Events 1996 - 2006". The show will run from August 30 to October 29, 2006.

Irational is a loose grouping of six international net and media artists who came together around the server irational.org, founded by the British net artist Heath Bunting in 1996, going on to make decisive contribution to early net art from the mid-1990s onward. With dry humor and minimal aesthetics, irational commented the Internet hype of the mid-to-late 1990s, competing with the commercialization-euphoria of the new market by developing its own pseudo-ventures. Net art was immediate during this period, neither needing nor enjoying the safety of a mediating space or instance. This is why irational often hit upon humorless trademark attorneys, who wanted to keep irational from using brand names such as 7-11, American Express, Sainsbury's and Tesco. These encounters, which the exhibition documents extensively, were little more than a prelude to more recent developments in the field of copyright, intellectual property, and brand protection. Heath Bunting was the first net artist to retire in 1997, putting an end to his exclusive work on the net and turning back to more intensive work in public space, which the Internet has become such an important part of today. If the activities of irational during its "net phase" were dedicated to calling virtual boundaries into question, its members now experiment with interrogating and overcoming economic, political, and social boundaries in real space, producing a great deal of comic relief, among other things.

Never before have so many complex and relevant artworks from around irational.org been shown in such a comprehensive exhibition. The goal of the exhibition is to use the media of a large-scale showing, workshops, and a comprehensive documentation to make these artistic-activist pieces more accessible to a general public.

The Hartware MedienKunstVerein, which - like irational - is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, has received significant funding through the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany (Kulturstiftung des Bundes).

Inke Arns, Jacob Lillemose

A comprehensive accompanying program can be found at www.hmkv.de

Exhibition curated by Inke Arns, Jacob Lillemose
irational Action Weekend curated by Francis Hunger
Managing director: Susanne Ackers
Exhibition architecture and technical director: Uwe Gorski
Organisation, coordination: Francis Hunger, Darija Simunovic
PR: Roland Kentrup, Dortmund

A catalogue will be published at the end of October 2006: Susanne Ackers / Inke Arns / Francis Hunger / Jacob Lillemose (eds.) The Hartware Guide to irational.org Revolver - Archiv fuer aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt
am Main 2006, ISBN 3-86588-299-4

Funded by:
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Der Ministerpraesident des Landes NRW
Kulturbuero Stadt Dortmund
dortmund-project
PHOENIX
LEG

Media partner: Heinz

Venue: Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund Hochofenstrasse / corner Rombergstrasse Dortmund-Hörde (no postal address!)

Opening hours PHOENIX Halle
During the exhibitions of HMKV:
Wed 11:00 - 17:00, Thu until Sun 11:00 - 20:00
Tuesday, October 3, 2006, open 11:00 - 20:00

Admission: 4 Euro / reduced 2 Euro

Guided tours: Each Sunday at 16:00 ::Individual tours on request (Tel ++49 - 231 - 823 106)

How to get there by car: B 54 exit Rombergpark, Nortkirchenstraße
direction of Hörde, left into Entenpoth (speed 30 zone), then left into Hochofenstrasse

How to get there by subway: U41 direction Hörde until Dortmund-Hörde Bahnhof, 10 min. ride from Dortmund main railway station, then a 10 min. walk

Map: http://www.hmkv.de/dyn/e_contact_roaddescription/

HMKV Team: Dr. Inke Arns (Artistic director Hartware MedienKunstVerein) Susanne Ackers (Managing director Hartware MedienKunstVerein) Uwe Gorski (Technical director) Francis Hunger (Junior Curator) Darija Simunovic (Project coordinator and management)

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

p-tex performs GYOML

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DiY in a Field

p-tex will perform GYOML in a field on Heysham Barrows near St. Peters Church on Saturday August 19, 2006 at 7.30 p.m. For live streaming copy and paste this URL into your media player's url window.

p-tex will be exploring how computer musicians can perform and create music without the need for mains electric, and using low budget or recycled / salvaged equipment and free open source software. He will also be using various sensors that will be manipulated and triggered by the surrounding environment, as well as by visitors to the site. p-tex has created software patches specifically for the piece which enable the sensors to communicate with the computer equipment. To achieve this he has used free software puredata and processing. For directions to Heysham Barrows, go here.

Posted by jo at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York: We Passion Power and Control

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The Dark Desires of Art Under Surveillance

Upgrade! New York presents We Passion Power and Control : The Dark Desires of Art Under Surveillance :: Thursday, August 24th, 7:30pm :: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street, New York City :: This time we'll attempt to take on the dark desires beyond the basic art / privacy / surveillance discourse. Through three projects exercising different modes of surveillance we will discuss artists jealousy of authoritative powers and the desire to posses these powers themselves.

in(security) - 31Down's Online Surveillance Drama This is a live online theater piece that uses surveillance cameras as a playing space for actors and audience members as you become part of a security team policing the streets of New York. devised and developed by: Ryan Holsopple and Mirit Tal.

Little Feet - Little Feet Bureau International brings privatization to government surveillance. Four dot-matrix printers comb internet traffic. Upon finding words that threatens a client nation, the machines use the intercepted "evidence" to draft letters accusing and questioning the offenders. Obsessed with uncovering secrets, the final product of the system is a culture of paranoia. As such, the installation stands with one little foot planted in hysterical paranoia and conspiracy theory and the other in denial and the claim "it can't happen to me". Developed by: David Nolen, Toshiaki Ozawa and Mushon Zer-Aviv.

Generative Social Networking® - Taking advantage of Bluetooth security flaws in cellphones, Generative Social Networking® unlocks the hidden potential of mobile contact lists to automatically connect people. GSN® is an artistic experiment in urban hacking instigated by Christian Croft and Andrew Schneider, a critical media partnership currently researching at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

Biographies

Ryan Holsopple, founder and director of 31 Down radio theater, has worked as an actor with directors: Richard Foreman, Pavol Liska, Tea Agalic and DJ Mendel, among others. He co-created the website Buskerdu.com with John Schimmel, a website that allows you to record and post your favorite subway buskers to the Web. Ryan is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Mirit Tal is an Israeli media artist and a software engineer. Intrigued by the powers of technology on our life, her work deals with issues such as surveillance, paranoia, unconscious interaction and mind control. Soon after arriving to New York in 2004 she joined 31 Down and have since presented in venues such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Rhizome, Spark Festival 2006 and White Box/Performa 05.

David Nolen is an artist whose work incorporates both analog and digital processes and he enjoys playing at the blurry boundary between the intellectual rigor of code and the intuitive free play of the pencil. He now knows far too many programming languages for his own good though in a past life he studied film and curated an avant-garde music festival in Austin, Texas. Currently he’s writing his own software to analyze and animate his drawings. This project arose from his thesis work at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program where he just received his masters.

Toshiaki Ozawa was born in Tokyo and has spent a great majority of his time ever since playing with light, shadow, emulsion and liquid-solutions. His work, screen based and otherwise, reflects this compulsively tactile approach to subject matter. He has collaborated on the work of many artists including Isaac Julien, Laurie Anderson, Leandro Katz, and Matthew Barney. As a cinematographer, he has photographed many films. One of them won the cinematography and best film awards at Sundance 2002. Another was reviewed by Roger Ebert in 2004 as "the worst film in the history of the [Cannes Film] festival. "Current projects include, 'Quixotic Unmeanings,' a robotic wire sculpture broadcasting Cervantes in semaphores, 'Pikadon Seoul,' a multimedia performance opposing the worldwide atomic arsenal, and 'Scar,' a slasher horror movie filmed in 3D.

Mushon Zer Aviv is an Israeli designer, a media-activist and a net artist. He is the co-founder of ShiftSpace (.org) – a new Open Source platform seeking to extend the current borders of the web and to allow the creation of public spaces within it. For that Mushon has recently won the Swiss Projekt Sitemapping new-media grant. Mushon is a new-media lecturer in the Shenkar college in Tel-Aviv and is the co-founder of Shual (.com) design studio. He has curated the BD4D Tel-Aviv and the Upgrade! Tel-Aviv New-Media events series. Mushon currently lives with his wife and cat in New York, studying for his masters degree in ITP, NYU's new-media program.

Christian Croft is a new media artist and interactive designer from Athens, GA currently doing research at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He works both collaboratively and individually on projects that revolve around such themes as info glut, technological ritual, and recombinatory language. He has received grant funding from Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) at the Univ. of Georgia and was chosen to participate in The Kitchen 2003 Summer Institute. He has shown work at the Georgia Museum of Art, ICE, Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA), Rhizome Artbase, AskTheRobot Festival, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and the Bushwick Arts Project Festival. More of his work can be explored online at xncroft.com.

Andrew Schneider is a performer and video artist. As a founding member of the Chicago-based multimedia performance ensemble bigpicturegroup, he has just recently completed an artist-in-residence program at the University of Chicago where the group has been developing their latest work TRUE+FALSE. His work has also been seen at P.S.122 as well as part of the New York International Fringe festival.

All three projects have been developed at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art + tech + community.

About our partner: Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre.

Posted by jo at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

SEQUENCES

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Real Time Festival

SEQUENCES: Real Time Festival :: reykjavik 2006 :: October 13 - 28, 2006 :: SEQUENCES is an international cross-media festival in Reykjavik with a focus on time-based art phenomena. The festival links contemporary visual art with other media, especially sound and performative art. It will take place in different locations in the city center of Reykjav’k, accompanied by exhibitions and video / shortfilm nights. SEQUENCES will invade established spaces (museums and galleries) as well as public spaces in the city center of Iceland's capital. A fine selection of international and local artists will participate in this unique event.

The strong interrelation between visual arts, sound and performance arts is significant for Iceland's vibrant art scene. These nexuses account for specific dynamic creative processes which develop especially in time-based art projects.

Programmatic frame: //vp-nites :: A row of video- and performance nights with a rich program of international and local artists build the attractive frame of the festival, in cooperation with other institutions and festivals. The venue is an old theater by the city pond :: //shows :: Several museums, galleries and project spaces will host exhibitions that focus on time-based art phenomena.

To name a few: The National Gallery will focus on the first generation influenced by pop and punk - a show of Icelandic painting in the 1980s. The Reykjav’k Art Museum will host a group show with young Icelandic artists and the Living Art Museum will show a retrospective of Carolee Schneeman. Galleries like i8, Kling & Bang or Boreas will present single artist's statements. Off-spaces like banananas or the dwarf gallery will host installations or performances :: //public spaces :: A lot of the projects in the festival seek to invade public spaces. Not only public venues and buildings but also shops, bars and concert halls will host visual, sound or performance projects.

The detailed program will be released in middle September.

SEQUENCES
c/o CIA.IS - Center for Icelandic Art
Hafnarstr¾ti 16 * IS-101 Reykav’k
T:++354-562 72 62 * F:++354-562 66 56
www.sequences.is * info[at]sequences.is

Sponsored by: Baugur Group In cooperation with: CIA.IS - Center for Icelandic Art | Ministry of Education and Culture | The City of Reykjav’k | SêM | Goethe-Institut | Artcircolo Kunstprojekt GmbH | The Icelandic Embassy in Berlin |
Hotel Nordica

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

CopyCamp

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An Unconference about the Challenge to Copyright

CopyCamp: An unconference for artists about the Internet and the challenge to copyright :: CopyCamp is a place to meet people making art and making waves, an opportunity to discover how the Internet can work for artists and fans, and a chance to debate the value(s) of copyright with some of the key players. It is an event in which participants drive the programming, and debates are genuine round-tables. There are no observers: everyone has something to offer and is expected to contribute.

There will be an electronic salon showcasing successful projects. There will be internationally-acclaimed experts. There will be a carefully selected mix of artists, geeks, and bureaucrats, with conversation always focused squarely on the arts, and the interests of creators. The CopyCamp organizing team is passionate about convening an event like no other you have ever attended. Space at the event is limited. There will be a number of subsidized spots for artists.

Posted by jo at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

LOCUS SONUS

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DUPLEX PERFORMANCE

THE THING invites your face and body and voice to 11 Harrison Street, ground floor storefront gallery, RIVERFAWN, for the Manhattan interface of THE THING.residency: LOCUS SONUS DUPLEX PERFORMANCE. This is a special performance that will be live from the Roebling Bridge on the Delaware River and from the RIVERFAWN Gallery in New York City. You will be part of the performance! :: 6pm –10pm Thursday August 24th :: 11 Harrison Street, ground floor* :: New York City.

Locus Sonus has constructed for this performance 2 IP webcams/parabolic microphones with which they can hunt for sounds in and around the venue streaming them simultaneously to the remote location. In each location laptop performers capture and remix the audio from the mic and video projectors show what the mobile microphones are capturing. Both mixes are played in both locations, the musicians responding to their remote counterparts. The Roebling Bridge will be set up on both sides of the river (the audience will be on the bridge). The idea being that we can use the local distance to reflect the remote distance. On the Manhattan side, the performance will take place in the RIVERFAWN Gallery where they will also use the wire/stream interface as an instrument to mix and control during the presentation. Live sounds from around the world (from the locusonus open web mics project) will also be used as raw material for the concerts.

Locus Sonus will be in residence between the 15th and the 29th of August in the USA with two installations and a duplex performance between them. The two locations will be at the DIGIT Festival, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance & Roebling Bridge Environmental Arts and at the RIVERFAWN Gallery in New York City.

DATES: The Installation at the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance opens on Saturday, August 19th and runs until August 25th. The performance Duplex Roebling Bridge/Manhattan will take place Thursday, August 24th at RIVERFAWN Gallery, 11 Harrison Street in New York City. There will also be a physical installation/interface on view from August 22nd to the 27th, 12-6pm at RIVERFAWN Gallery.

For more information: http://nujus.net/~locusonus/site/index_e.html

Audio streams: http://nujus.net/~locusonus/site/documentation/allstreams/index_e.html

ABOUT LOCUS SONUS

Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art (École Supérieure d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence, École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Nice Villa Arson). Our objective is to experiment and evaluate the innovative and transdisciplinary nature of audio art forms in a lab-type context. We are are also concerned with the communal, collective or multi-user aspects inherent to many emerging audio practices and which necessitate working as a group. Two main thematics define this research - audio in it's relation to space and networked audio systems. The "Lab" proposes a process combining practical artistic experimentation and critical evaluation in a group context. The Locus Sonus Lab is currently focusing on a process which revolves around the use of multiple audio streams. The streams which are basically open-mic continually upload chosen soundscapes or sound environments, as playable material. The way in which we work with other people to set up and maintain the streams is part of the methodology, indeed the technology provides the basis to construct a human network.

*Directions: by subway take 1 train to Franklin Street. Walk one block west on Franklin to Hudson and cross the street. Walk 1 block south to Harrison and turn right. 11 Harrison street is in the middle of the block on the south side of the street, By car: From uptown Take West Street to Vestry. Make a left on Vestry. Go two blocks make a right on Greenwich Street. Go two traffic lights , make a left on Harrison street. From downtown take West Street to Harrison street. Make a right on Harrison and go 1 block.

Posted by jo at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

mur.at NetWorkArt Contest „net_sight“ 2006

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call for submissions

Idea: Since 1998 mur.at has been working on a virtual NetSculpture which is constantly growing and branching out. This widely ramified Net – the leased line net – offers a democratic and unbureaucratic access to new communication and information technologies to people engaged in the artistic and cultural sector in the area of Graz apart from e-business and e-commerce. The NetNodeSculpture includes an infrastructure which allows continuous work of art organisations and people engaged in the cultural sector.

In order to be able to experience the virtual space in real public space, mur.at initiates a contest for making this virtual sculpture - which is spread over Graz like a network - visible for all.

Target of the contest: For the promotion of NetArt and NetCulture mur.at offers the possibility to deal with the community in an artistic way and to implement the winning project. The virtual sculpture will be transferred to a tangible space in order to be visible also as real locality. Therewith the virtual sculpture becomes a sculpture that can be conceived with all senses in the public space of Graz. The sculpture shall be developed and implemented in various media.

Desired form of submitted projects: desired are...

..artistic projects, which refer and use the contents and infrastructure of mur.at, the nodes and/or the mur.at-community.

..artistic projects which excel at using unconventional ideas of „Visualization“.

..unrealised projects from the various areas of art; projects which deal with the subject of a NetSculpture. This can be projected in form of media- and space- installations, sound projects, memorial tablets, photo or video projects, as long as it appears meaningful with regard to the subject. The expression „Visualization“ shall be considered a metaphor and the type of realisation shall not be limited to a specific medium.

Prize money/Implementation

First prize: The project which is ranked first by the jury will be implemented from December 2006 to end of May 2007. The budget for the implementation (incl. remuneration) is € 10.000,-. The project will be showcased during a ceremony.

Appreciation prize: The most innovative, but not realizable project will be awarded with an appreciation prize amounting to € 300,-.

Exposition: During an exposition opening on December 1, 2006, the 10 best projects will be presented to the public. The budget for the presentation of the concepts is € 200,- each, whereas the form of presentation (choice of media, etc.) is up to the presenters.

There is no splitting of the prizes.

Jury: Members of the Jury:

1 representative of the mur.at team: Johannes Zmölnig: financial treasurer of the mur.at executive committee; artistic-scientific assistant at IEM (Institute for Electronic Music) (Graz, A).

1 representative of the nodes: Reni Hofmüller: media artist and artistic director of ESC im labor (Graz, A).

1 vote of the mur.at-community: every mur.at member has the right to vote. The resulting ranking counts as the community-vote.

Katharina Gsöllpointner: Culture- and mediatheorist (Vienna, A) (to be confirmed).

Inke Arns: Artistic director of hartware medien kunst verein Dortmund. Since 1993 free curator and author with focus on MediaArt, NetCultures, Eastern Europe (Dortmund, Ger) (to be confirmed).

The meeting of the jury is open to the public.

When: Friday, November 3, 2006 at 10:00 hrs
Where: mur.at, Leitnergasse 7, A-8010 Graz

Submission

The Call for submissions is open to the general public. The target group consists of people engaged in the artistic and cultural sector with the focus on the community of mur.at. There are no limits of age, education or nationality of the submitting persons.

Please note

Final date for submission is October 15, 2006. The submission may only be made online by filling out the submission form.

All informations for the submission at http://mur.at/verein/net_sight

In addition to the personal data (not visible for the jury), please upload (in pdf format) an abstract (max. 3000 characters) as well as a detailed project description incl. a rough estimate of cost and a time scedule (Attention: only one pdf-file can be uploaded). The submitted projects may not exceed a cost frame of € 10.000,-. Any maintenance activities of the projects must be included in the cost estimate.

Due to the fact that the submitted projects will be handled anonymously, please do not mention names nor logos in the project descriptions. We can only accept submissions which are complete and made anonymous.

We do not assume any liability for the submitted concepts. In case of a refusal of a project, its authors are not entitled to raise any claims upon mur.at or persons acting on behalf of mur.at. mur.at reserves the right to use the submitted material for the purpose of documentation.

Notification

The winners (first prize, appreciation prize, the 10 best projects) will be informed about the results by e-mail until November 10, 2006. In their own interest, the participants in the contest shall strive to be reachable at the e-mail address contained in the submission form during the whole period of notification.

Awards Ceremony/Presentation

When: December 1, 2006 at 19:00 hrs
Where: to be defined

The awards ceremony of the contest will be held on December 1, 2006 during the exposition of the 10 best project concepts. The artists are not obliged to present their concepts. The winners (first prize, appreciation prize) commit to personally receive the prizes and present their projects during the exposition. Groups and institutions are requested to nominate one or max. two representatives. Any travel expenses of the winners for the journey to the exposition / presentation will be compensated by mur.at (train: 2nd class; plane: economy class).

The implementation budget and the remuneration for the best project are dedicated to its implementation. mur.at assists in the whole period of implementation and reserves the right to ask for a proof of the adequate utilization of the prize money.

Documentation

It is the intention of mur.at to document the entire contest (incl. all submitted concepts and the finally implemented project) in an online archive.

Contact

For general questions please contact:
Andrea Schlemmer (Project Coordinator)
mur.at, Verein zur Förderung von Netzwerkkunst
Leitnergasse 7, A-8010 Graz
tel: ++43/316/82 14 51 ext. 26
cell: ++43/699/126 05 795
fax: ++43/316/82 14 51 ext. 26
e-mail: andrea_at_mur.at (Subject: „net_sight“)

For technical questions please contact the noc-team:
Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 16:00 hrs.
tel: ++43/316/82 14 51 ext. 55
e-mail: noc_at_mur.at (Subject: „net_sight“)

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

August 15, 2006

TROYANO

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Up Dating, Art and Technology

TROYANO: Up Dating, Art and Technology :: A series of conferences that will aboard the limits between art and technology from the last experiences made by artists. The event is divided in two phases ::

<---////////////// From 6 pm in the Centre Cultural of Spain of Santiago, Chile, during the days 17, 18 and 19 of August, will be broadcasted online to Espacio H located in the city of Cordoba, Argentine. These activities will be part of the 8th Digital Days Works from Cordoba, Argentine //////////////---> To the days 24th, 25th y 26th of August in the School of Arts in the city of Valparaiso, will be transimitted the 8th Digital Days Works from Cordoba, Argentine.

PROGRAM :: Cultural Centre of Spain of Santiago, Chile :: 17 of August / 18 - 21 hrs :: Igor Stromajer (sl) : Wpack :: Marina Zerbarini (ar) : Heat, Vapor Humidity :: Turner in the XXI cent :: Enrique Rivera (cl)

18 of August / 18 - 21 hrs :: Dmitry Bulatov (ru) : Third Modenization: Works of Techno- Biological Art Works :: José Miguel Tagle (cl) : The Brain of the Chaman :: Neurobiological Rersearch and Bioelectronic Installations :: Mirko Petrovich (cl) : Gesture Control in the Audiovisual Interactive Systems.

19 of August / 18 - 21 hrs :: Angellique Waller (us) : Ebay Longing :: Eduardo Navas (sa-us) : The Culture of Remix: The influence of the Break in DJ in the Ideology of the Repetition :: Marc Tuters (ca) : Beyond Locative Media.

more information www.t-r-o-y-a-n-o.cl

Posted by jo at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2006

Global Web Jam

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Call for Solidarity

Saturday, August 12, 2006, 15:00 - 19:00 PM CEST [--> 16:00 - 20:00 EEST] ::
http://beirut.streamtime.org :: http://streamtime.org :: Live audio/video streaming transmission from Waag Society in Amsterdam, in direct connection with Beirut and surrounding localities. The event was initiated by Streamtime, a web support campaign for Iraqi bloggers.

After one month of violence and carnage, this Global Web Jam brings together live interviews and conversations, video clips, cartoons and blog blurbs, soundscapes, DJs and VJs, a lively mix of information, art, protest, party and reflection. We feature the voices, images stories, reports and initiatives from Lebanon and beyond, with participation of activists, artists, bloggers, journalists, musicians and many others.

This is a call for an immediate end to the violence and destruction, in defiance of war, and in search for solidarity.

With contributions and participation of: Wahid el-Solh, Mounira el-Solh, Sonya Knox, Naeem Mohaiemen, Kanj Hamadi, Jim Quilty, Randa Mirza, Mazen Kerbaj, Raed Yassin, Charbel Haber, Nathalie Fallaha, Henri Gemayel, Fadi Tufayli, Tariq Shadid, Peter Speetjens, Chalaan Charif, Martin Siepermann, Arjan El Fassed, Ruud Huurman, Kadir van Lohuizen, Thomas Burkhalter and Anna Trechsel, Beirut DC, Tarek Atoui and many others.

This Global Web Jam is an initiative of Jo van der Spek, Geert Lovink and Cecile Landman (from Streamtime), Nat Muller, Paul Keller and Denis Jaromil Rojo in Amsterdam; and Tarek Atoui and Rawya el-Chab in Beirut.

info: http://beirut.streamtime.org | mail: beirut[at]dischosting.nl

This project is supported by Waag Society, Novib (Dutch Oxfam) and X-Y
Solidarity Fund.

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

August 10, 2006

Silverfish Stream

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Awkward Pas de Deux

FILE FESTIVAL 2006 :: Venue: Galeria de Arte do SESI - Av. Paulista, 1313 :: Date: August 15 - September 3.

Silverfish Stream--by Constanza Silva--is a sensual, poetic exploration of the potentials of human-machine interaction. Communicating robotic spheres move through the gallery space, adjusting their behaviours in relation to each other; the result is an awkward "pas de deux" that both absorbs and excludes the viewer. Within this field of metal and fleshy bodies that adjust and readjust to each other, a complex sound environment emerges. Sonic vibrations from the machines are transformed and modulated by the movements of bodies within the multi-centric system. Viewers become part of the system in ways they can sense but not fully understand. This invites experimentation and reflection on the ways we relate to seemingly "intelligent" systems.

Constanza Silva was born in Bogotá, Colombia; she was raised in Canada and currently lives and works in Montréal, Quebec. Silva creates complex sound and robotic environments by setting minimal forms into motion within networked interactive systems. Evoking natural, technological and political ecologies, her work challenges the viewer’s sense of human-centredness and, at the same time, can elicit the most human of responses. Silva holds an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal.

Posted by jo at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

Getting Under the Skin:

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Body and Media Theory

Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory by Bernadette Wegenstein :: The concept of disembodiment disseminated by computer networks has affected as a virus our perception of what is physical. The physicality is something different now, instinctively considered more precious, more related to the time lapse we experience it and in the end more deeply enjoyed in its own organic and synthetic forms. The ocean of body representations that surrounds us in the twenty-first century has definitevely altered the human body (as a category) perception. But this hasn't happened suddenly. This text is a deep research that investigates extensively the body as an entity that dramatically changed and influenced contemporary society and culture.

Its fragmentation, holism and mediation have defined a completely new concept of body that includes its current many different internal and external relationships, as the here analyzed architectural interactions and ratios. The senses, the skin, the body movements are incredibly enhanced in the media, as triggers of attention, contributing at the same time to the overwhelming multiplication of body immaterial pictures that easily enter our minds. So, coupling with the author's definition of the body as a medium, will the body itself end to be the place of an endless collective performance, played in the streets everyday as the new social code, or will it be the node of the individual networks eternally connected? Touch the first skin on a screen you'll see and you'd figure out your answer. [posted on Neural]

Posted by jo at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

Free Press

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Call for Participation

This summer and fall you are invited to contribute to the creation of an open-access publishing house, a Free Press, to be launched at Röda Sten contemporary art center in Göteborg, Sweden. A project of artist Sal Randolph, Free Press will accept all kinds of writing from the public; contributions in any language can be as short as a single word or as long as an encyclopedia and can include manifestos, statements, documentations, studies, stories, recipes, poems and whatever you can imagine.

"Even in the age of the internet, book publishing is a walled garden where editors and commercial interests filter out most of what is written," says Randolph. "To publish is to 'make public,' and the published materials of the world create their own kind of public space, a city of books where readers and writers are citizens. Free Press aims to open up access to that public space. Like any city, Free Press is bound to include both ugliness and beauty, though the definitions of each will certainly differ."

All participating manuscripts will be published as printed books in the Free Press series, available in the project's library and reading room at Röda Sten, where events and discussions will also take place. Additional copies will be placed on shelves in local bookstores and libraries. Readers will be able to download copies from the website and order them at cost from an internet book printer.

Free Press builds on several earlier projects by the artist -- in particular, Free Words, where 3000 copies of a free book were infiltrated onto the shelves of bookstores and libraries by a worldwide network of volunteers, Opsound, a gift economy of music, and Free Biennial / Free Manifesta, in which the form of an art biennale was appropriated and re-imagined to create large open-participation exhibitions of free art in the public spaces of New York and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In her work, Randolph explores the effects of gifts and gift-economies in the creation of social architectures.

The Free Press exhibition will take place from September 17 - October 20, 2006 at Röda Sten.

Free Press: Call for Participation :: Free Press is looking for writing of all kinds - any language, any style, genre or subject matter, experimental or traditional, unpublished or previously published.

Manifestos, artists statements and conceptual/experimental texts are especially welcomed, as well as writing about gifts and gift economies, open systems, freedom of expression, censorship, surveillance, intellectual property, the commons & the public domain, anarchy, cooperation, political philosophy, alternative economies, public space, urbanism, situationism & psychogeography, conceptual, performance, and participatory art, graffiti and street art, distributed creativity, social software, virtual worlds, open source, happenings, the 1960s, the future, utopian and postutopian visions.

All material included in the Free Press project will be released under Creative Commons licenses which will allow the texts to be printed and freely shared.

Deadlines: Texts will be accepted through the Free Press website starting August 1, 2006 continuing through the end of the exhibition on October 20. However, if you wish your text to appear in the gallery, please allow for publication time (2-4 weeks) and send it as soon as possible, certainly before the end of September. If you want your book to be there at the opening (September 17), send your text now!

For guidelines and more information please visit: http://freewords.org/freepress/you/info/help

About Röda Sten

Röda Sten is a cultural center in Göteborg, Sweden. Röda Sten is also a cultural landmark which lies on the sea entrance to the city and is a popular port of call for many who take a stroll on the banks of the harbour. Once housing the huge industrial boiler, Röda Sten today is an exeptional centre of the arts. It entices and fascinates with i's enormous dynamic space and opportunity to work large scale. The outside of the building is a zone for the graffiti artists of the city while within the building remnants of past graffiti is preserved. This unconventional exhibition space sets the scene for daring, ground breaking explorations.

Posted by jo at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

The Eclectic Tech Carnival 2006:

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The Learning Bazaar

The Eclectic Tech Carnival 2006: The Learning Bazaar :: Five days and nights of collaborative learning, sharing, installing and experimenting with computer technology - by women, for women :: DATES: Monday 4th - Friday 8th September :: MAIN PLACE: Galeria H.Arta, Strada Iuliu Maniu nr.3, et.2, Timisoara, Romania :: COST: sliding fee scale in ecorates - see the web site for details :: REGISTRATION :: LANGUAGE: English, with Romanian translations :: CONTACT: info[at]eclectictechcarnival.org

The Eclectic Tech Carnival (/etc) is an annual nomadic event organised by an international collective of women into free technology and free culture. It's about - women learning with women - using and understanding FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) - DIY culture and collaborative information sharing - gender and technology - creating and distributing our own content.

The /etc features a programme of computer workshops during the day and cultural activities in the evening. The full programme will be on the web site closer to the time of the festival and will include the following:

- computer hardware course: take it apart, name it, and put it back together again
- Linux: learn the basics, install or share and extend your skills
- FLOSS: what is it and how you can use it?
- HTML: hand-coding web pages
- other scripting languages: Perl, Python, CSS etc
- computers as creative tools for communication: UpStage, audio and video streaming
- lecture on Creative Commons
& other random analogue elements of creativity that sizzle during the event

Public Presentations - everyone invited: Tuesday 5th, 18.00 - 20.00: 'Open Discussion' :: Friday 8th, from 18.00: 'Closing Carnival'

Presented by the WAITS Foundation in collaboration with D Media and H.Arta.

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

APPARITION II

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Furthering the Aesthetics of Body Projection

APPARITION II (World Premiere) Klaus Obermaier X Ars Electronica Futurelab :: 16-17.9.2006 (Sat-Sun) 8pm :: Auditorium, Kwai Tsing Theatre :: Details.

The camera based motion tracking system developed for APPARITION uses complex computer vision algorithms to extract the performer's moving outline or shape from the background to provide constantly updating information for a body projection as well as qualitative calculations of certain motion dynamics, e.g. speed, direction, intensity and volume. The information derived from these calculations is assigned dynamically to the real-time generation of visuals that are projected either directly back onto the body and/or as large-scale background projection. The precise synchronization of projections on the background and the bodies result in the materialization of an overall immersive kinetic space or a virtual architecture that can be simultaneously fluid and rigid, that can expand and contract, ripple, bend and distort in response to or an influence upon the movement of the performers.

Klaus Obermaier began with the production of D.A.V.E. (2000) (Digital Amplified Video Engine), a solo dance theater work, using a unique approach to moving body projections that fused body and image into a consistent narrative. Following the success of D.A.V.E. (having performed over eighty shows in eighteen countries), Obermaier embarked on the creation of another media and dance performance work, VIVISECTOR (2002). Neither of these works used interactive technologies, but relied on a creative and precise combination of set choreography, staging and recorded video.

Obermaier decided to further develop the aesthetics of body projection by making a piece that would use interactive technologies to release the performer from the determination of set choreography and would use digital media performance software to generate the video and sound content in real-time. Discussions with engineers and designers at the Ars Electronica Futurelab about building the interactive and real time generation system, and involvement in the organisation of the DAMPF_lab (Dance and Media Performance Fusions - a European joint performing arts / technologies research project) stimulated the initiation of the APPARITION (2004) and APPARITION II (2006).

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2006

Fete Mobile

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The Movable Feast Project

The Fete Mobile is a mobile public art installation involving a robotic blimp carrying a file server and surveillance equipment with which participants can interact through wireless devices. The project addresses pressing social/technological issues through metaphor and public performance. The project seeks to ignite debate around the value of a digital public realm in an era of increasing corporate and governmental control by projecting current aspects of media activism into a future scenario where the Internet is down, surveillance cameras are everywhere and advertising invades the public mind.

Deployed as flying interactive sculpture for the media art festivals ISEA 2006, the Movable Feast project centers around a 6 meter surveillance blimp, the flight and optics of which participants can control through their wireless devices. An onboard wireless local-file server allows the public to exchange media files, remotely view their surroundings from above via a video camera, and display text message on an LED panel mounted on blimp.

Posted by jo at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

Receiver #16

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Social Networking the Mobile Way

Receiver #16 wants to spark off some ideas about social networking the mobile way: clubbing, seeing your favourite band, sharing memories of a night out or playfully exploring the city, getting to know and experiencing, even creating, music – can mobile add to all these? And how does it affect how we get our friends together for joint action? Does it trigger emergent behaviour? Or is it the ideal means to pull it all together? What do *you* think?

Lee Humphreys: Out with my mobile - exploring social coordination in urban environments :: Tim Cole: The mobile phone as the next electric guitar (or any other instrument you want) :: Rudy De Waele: Connecting cultures through music :: Charlie Schick: One night - a global story of one night in the mobile life :: Antony Bruno: Where the long tail ends :: Karenza Moore: Come together - the use and meanings of mobiles amongst UK clubbers :: Frank Lantz: Big Games and the porous border between the real and the mediated :: Mark Curtis: Mobilising our meat based selves - social planning while on the hoof.

Posted by jo at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

PLENUM: Security is an illusion:

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Encoding Fragility by Nancy Mauro-Flude

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION EXCEPT on the networked_performance blog.

PLENUM was a plenary meeting session in 12 hours, 5 acts , 2 interludes plus the optional epilogue. A + xxxxx collaboration in association with Open Congress and Boxing Club in conjunction with Node London, it took place on March 25 and 26, 2006 at Lime House Townhall, East London. What follows is a commentary by Nancy Mauro-Flude.

"01. Intro: PLENUM allows you to experience the significance of software and its ability to consciously design environments which shapes social patterns and relationships. An open invitation for people to ‘inhabit’ along side each other is pivotal to the experience. It addresses the cultural aspect of the Free Software debate over copyright, creativity and intellectual property in a live performance installation. You are a part of an emerging exchange not just about conceptions of net culture and media arts but the interaction via the software is reflected during the dialogue itself. It places priority on group agendas whilst the durational timeframe ruptures the rational coherency of a formal social-political debate. As you digest the sound, food and drink, raw dialogue is processed and pushed through this network. Agendas are compressed and rendered. Knowledge exchange is live algorithmic process where different propositions are brought forth." From PLENUM: Security is an illusion: encoding fragility by Nancy Mauro-Flude (continue reading or download PDF)

0.2. Main
In the frame of 12 hours, 5 acts, 2 interludes, a sensual realm of poetic politics unfolds. As you ascend the staircase and enter the Limehouse TownHall, you become an actor immersed within the mise en scene, a variable of the ensemble. While the event points to net culture and media arts, in the context of NodeL programme, PLENUM also addresses how these function within larger contemporary society. Specifically addressing NodeL as a successful porthole and clearing house for new media arts, a man in tweed hat asks: But what about my level of autonomy and sustaining my own freedom? On entering some people need direction and ask: What do “they“ expect from me? In due time they disolves into we because here anything goes. What one encounters is an evolving fluid and fragmented series of conversations around the statement initially posed by the MC MISTRIX:

Whither net culture/media arts today.

By Act Four a core of individual, autonomous actors emerge. A myriad of discussions take place, from reflections about the discrete art object, to engaging with the actual technical specificity of a wireless network, to a hope for a broader understanding and more nuanced language in order to engage with media art;

- How do we relate to experience rather than product?
- We need a many-festo!
- I came because of the sheer incomprehensibility of the publicity around PLENUM. It was a relief from catch phrases such as outreach, engagement, sustainability, reworking of conversations and bandied about terms. I'm so tired of all this middle management speak.
- Do we need media arts as a term?
- There was once a hierarchy within the media arts scene i.e. who is more tech than the others, it is becoming better now.
- It was always better off for me to stay on the periphery of media arts.

Participants position themselves in roles that are continually re-negotiated in a dynamic structure. In these following statements, we can get a tiny glimpse into the encoding processes being acted out in the event:

- Can we all just realize who of us here are dominating the discussion?
- Make sure that we all get a chance to speak our points: I noticed it because I tend to talk a lot.
- People are starting to act like the software; this process is the most remarkable thing.

This self-reflexive environment begins to expand and reflect the software used. Microphones are positioned throughout the space and feed through a central mixer. Pure Data [Pd] patchers process the conversations, and output them into the environment.

This is a dynamic site of information, exchange, discussion, contestation, organisation, ideas, thoughts and display of perseverance, around the emerging importance of new technologies within social spaces created by software. A manifold of perspectives are engendered by the questions raised by the body of the participants, who group and regroup in a collective decision making framework:

Wrapping up ‘ACT FOUR: The emperor's new clothes’. A man in a tweed hat, addresses the remaining collective of about 5 or 6 participants (I name these as Players):
Question: Who is going to sum it all up and take it further? Who will be our spokesperson?
Answer: Why do we need a spokesperson anyway? This is just representative democracy.

Knowledge is shared within a mix of contemplation and endurance, people operate at their limit whilst engaging in anchoring dialogue. What follows is a brief example where a dancer (fouth player) engages in a conversation with a programmer (third player):

FORTH PLAYER
We are fragile about our positions. We are inherently full of questions.
If we were all very confident we wouldn't be here.

THIRD PLAYER
Security is an illusion,
We have to encourage fragility,
In situations where we feel fragile, we question ourselves and learn.

FORTH PLAYER
We are scared of commitment, because we are not sure of our position.
We need to provide infrastructures for security.

Shall we all go to bed now?
PD PATCHERS’ SOUND BEGINS TO INTENSIFY, CONVERSATION BECOMES INCOMPREHENSIBLE

I attended the event as a note-taker in order to document the structure of the meeting, introduce other techniques of engagement, summarize the current state of the discussion and so on. The participatory model is reinserted and folded back into the event engineered by KOP and XXXXX, whose impetus is to continue a conversation about the state of new media practice in a public event, but also to see how a self-reflective, collaborative rule-making environment can be encoded. This performance installation seemed at times to me like a contemporary form of political cabaret. As expressions of the public are processed and worked back into the space via abstraction which distances the players and prevents identification in favor of awareness.

What exactally is performance in this context? How does it relate to software? The formality of the acts blend into loose informality which people responded to in the moment:

ACT FOUR:
FORTH PLAYER begins to teach a dance class to the other willing participants
She begins with how to do a classical ballet plie`
PD PATCHER floods the room with disco music
The woman stops the class and begins to dance freely.

I am struck by the juxtaposition and layering of action and thinking; a convergence of these nebulous shifts which mix reality and illusion, software, performance and agendas. As with most social events a wide variety of foreknowledge’s, agendas, abilities and prejudices were brought to PLENUM. Players cast aspersions across the room: That’s vanguard capitalism! The sound people are fascists!, then return to a shrugging functionality of need - real, blatant and irreverent.

We see how the sound rubs up against language, an antagonism that agitates the semiotic calm of logical progression;

ACT THREE: Trade for power.
Actors are taking turns on the microphones, working through the agendas vying their points of view. A player asks:

This might be a conservative thing to say but I have an aesthetic question, I wonder ‘what the Art is‘ in Node London, as when I look at the work I'm not feeling very poetic.

Another woman quickly walks in a strong sudden and direct manner to the microphone ring…
The PD PATCHERS’ SOUND LAYERS OVER THE CONVERSATION

This example shows how some people begin to explore the possibilities towards a genuine exchange, which is grounded in experience of the event. The sound is an information environment tracking a dictionary of atmospheres, tracing tangents and pursuing the pointers in the network. Similarly R.W. Fassbinder (1992), explains how in his films he specifically gestures to noise that constantly washes over us from people, television, radios, and the street;

Someone wrote about the film that you can't always make out what's being said because it's drowned out by the background noise, the loudspeakers, the radio and television announcements...But that's just want I wanted to point out, not really the thinking of the individual characters, who are completely secondary in comparison to the climate of noise and racket they live in. The terrorism doesn't consist in my reproducing all that; rather it's the media, which constantly hammer away at people, who in the meantime have become so hooked and helpless that by now they can't even manage to push a button to get some peace and quiet.

Similarly the programming of the sound in Pd software during PLENUM ruptures conversation and gives multiple levels of meaning relative to the determining elements of the communication. It breathes through the evening and maintains its fundamental position in the map of agendas and questions which manifest into a climax during Act four.

ACT FOUR:
FORTH PLAYER RUNS pulls the plug, disconnects the electricity to the computers processing the sound and exits
PD PATCHER re plugs in the machine, it switches back on. He turns it up to full volume
ACT Five: Walk the dog
The Pd patchers are invited to come into the centre to explain how they were manipulating the players.

The moment the machines are unplugged - it is as if then the evening would die. Does the action of unplugging the sound by player four reveal the status quo in the event? Either way it teases its features into high relief, for a moment silence floods the room. The act by its nature is a protest and simultaneously a reflection of the software. In its excessiveness to cut off an aspect of feedback the norm attempts to protect itself.

The participants that last untill ACT FIVE tap into their last reserves. True to the scripts’ command: The repository is symbolically drained. They collect what little is left of themselves, pull together in the spirit of effort mutualisation.

03. Conclusion
PLENUM generates a lot of communication and interaction in the setting it provides. This event is a transformative process, a mutual apprehension of a series of acts, patches, scripts, conditions and discussions as a means for speaking and thinking, between each other, and ultimately, perhaps the extent to which this may contribute to the nascent stutterings of the hoped for conversation with the larger public sphere. Here we experience an expandable software model for collaborative communication, a practice that is concerned with ontological, as well as, social and political issues. I would wish to argue that a profound re-coding of awareness and perception is what is required if we are to confront some outdated human legacies that are resistant to mobilisation. This structure brought forth new considerations that simultaneously shift the limits of individual articulation and critical embodiment. It allowed me to experience the significance of software as consciously designed landscapes that shape social patterns and relationships. PLENUM’s setting is intentionally autocratic, understood by some participants in semantic extremes: This is a Boot Camp! or even This reminds me of those Trance Parties in Goa in the early 90s. Perhaps it can be said that to fully understand the particular model of intensification introduced by KOP and XXXXX was as an event where you may begin to fully comprehend what the meaning of freedom is, nothwithstanding the whole debate around free software and how this actually relates to operating systems in daily life.

What kind of environment is best for cultivating freedom and human wellbeing? This question is becoming increasingly urgent. A question that can only be acknowledged in commitment and suspension of judgment. Making complex interconnections at a specific site overtime has a profound impact. On one hand not only did this event touch upon the degradation of a free society, it also revealed social injustice, ignorance, and hypocracy:

MISTRIX and NOTETAKERS encourage PLAYERS to make three final topics and groups:
MISTRIX
New Europe has arrived
NEW PLAYERS ARRIVE AND FORM A NEW CLUSTER. They begin to speak in their first language; many different languages are circulated and used in response to agenda items. NOTE TAKERS REPEAT THE AGENDAS ON THE BOARD AND ASK PEOPLE TO BEGIN TO CLUSTER INTO 3 TOPIC GROUPS IN ORDER TO CONTINUE THE DISCUSSION. PLAYERS PITCH THEIR TOPICS THE LOUDEST IS HEARD.
PLAYER:
I hate Ars Electronica its like a Mercedes Benz logo.
Just get out there and do it
It took us 10 years for people to start listening to us
You might be 30000 pounds in debit but we are working with all different types of cultural sectors, street kids etc.

PLAYERS AGENDA'S COMPRESSION OF TOPICS WHITE BOARD:
1#Relevance - presence
2#Lexicon - multi-lingual inclusion/exclusion
3#Real-play
4#Infrastructures- event driven models

If the practice of an event such as PLENUM opens our way of seeing, doing, understanding and being in together in a place, then it has important implications for us at this stage of history as we begin to learn to live with greed induced crisis. As the late visionary writer, Kathy Acker (1997) reminded us:

Primarily because my friends were artists. Musicians, painters, performance artists, filmmakers, dancers anything but writers. We hung our together, shared problems and misery. Usually poverty, though I’m not sure poverty’s shareable, fucked each other, and lived together. Later on I wrote some publications: all of these articles rose, first out of friendship. Friendship and an inclination for what I call joy.

The formalised excersise of PLENUM leads me to place a final emphasis upon expandable software and its role within the model of the event. I heard recently from Evelina Domnitch a Russian artist that the best ruler is the one who does her work without anyone knowing that she exists. Is it the software used in the event or the model that creates the portal of perception? Or both? Nowadays how often do people come together and dissolve in communal joy? What is freedom? Is this joy what we call true freedom and is it the responsibility of net culture and media artists to create environments that encode this?

References:
Acker, Kathy. 1997. Bodies of Work: Essays. London: Serpents Tail.

Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. 1992. The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes. The Johns Hopkins University Press

Posted by jo at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2006

Upstage

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Open Walk-Through

The open walk-through is a chance for you to learn about the UpStage environment and to play around in it with others. The next UpStage walk-thru will be held this coming Wednesday, 9 August, at the following times: California, USA: 2am; New York, USA: 5am; UK: 10am; Western Europe: 11am; Finland: 12am; Australia - NSW: 7pm; NZ: 9pm. Check here or here for your local time.

Audience members, point your browser at http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation. If you want to participate as a player, email Helen Varley Jamieson for a log in--helen[at]creative-catalyst.com

http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

From Dusk Till Dawn

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Visualizing Communication in Urban Space

From Dusk Till Dawn will begin at sundown on August 19, 2006 and run until early morning at the Kiosk "Akuna Matata" (subway station Eberswalder Strasse), Berlin. From Dusk Till Dawn is a visual, interactive installation of mobile communication technologies in urban space.

Mobile communication networks have become a prominent part of our daily lives stretching all around the globe, linking people from all continents and accompanying us in every move we make by laying their complex framework over our cities like virtual worlds. But how do people react to ubiquitous communication? How is it used and how is interaction accomplished? What consequences arise concerning the environment we live in? Today, every mobile user alters through mobile communication or data exchange actively but invisibly his surrounding space and his spatial relations.

From Dusk Till Dawn makes mobile communication visible and creates awareness for the openness, transparency and possible exploitation of users employing these technologies.

Posted by jo at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2006

ISEA2006 Papers

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Intelligent Agent Special Issue

"In collaboration with the ISEA2006 Festival and Symposium taking place from August7-13 in San Jose, intelligent agent is featuring the papers presented at the ISEA symposium in this special issue, which is published both online and can be ordered print-on-demand at the intelligent agent website. As the symposium is breaking with some of the conventions of a conference – encouraging a more dialogical format where papers are not formally presented but pre-published online and discussed in the symposium sessions – this special issue also slightly deviates from the traditional publication format of conference proceedings. Rather than serving only as a form of "documentation" after the festival, this issue also functions as an "on site" companion to the symposium, making the papers available to symposium visitors for easy reference. It is part of the nature of this process that the essays included here are in various stages of "development": some of them have been previously published and discussed on mailing lists and then revised; others are in a "beta" stage, proposing ideas for further discussion within the symposium..." -- Patrick Lichty and Christiane Paul, Intelligent Agent.

Absence in Common: An Operator for the Inoperative Community by Kevin Hamilton :: absence, community, networks, memorials, communication, space, place

Expanding on Jean-Luc Nancy's theory of the Inoperative Community, this paper will draw from recent memorial practices and communication theory to argue for the importance of absence in the construction of sound networks. Blindly celebrated by dystopian modernists, and blissfully ignored by utopian technophiles, the experience of absence is crucial to a nonviolent and just approach to communion.

Ars Memorativa in the Interactive City: Private Layers in Public by Tapio Mäkelä :: public space, mobile, city, interactive, art of memory, interface, city, critical practice, tactics, participatory, engaging

Location based media often present a claim for reconfiguring public spaces. Exclusive access, and difficulties in designing tactics for engagement within public spaces raise questions about the validity of that claim. Mobile authoring resembles ars memorativa, art of memory, in its ability to construct private layers and memory traces over representations of place. How these traces and practices are shared and made manifest, and how critical are they as practices to begin with, should be starting points for evaluating their transformative qualities.

Art as Antibody: A Redefinition of Art for the Internet Age by Jon Ippolito, Joline Blais :: art, immunology, research, genre, perversity, arrest, revelation, executability, recognition, perseverance

Art's recent infiltration of stock markets, courtrooms, and mobile phones marks a seismic shift in the role it plays in society. The once-academic question "what is art" has acquired new urgency now that society depends on this collective immune system to confront technology's increasing encroachment into daily life. Drawing on case studies from our 2006 book At the Edge of Art, this paper examines the special powers granted art of the Internet age, which--no longer content to sit on a pedestal or auction block--can respond aggressively to the ethical crises caused by technology's infection of society.

Chinese Archival Futures:Thinking Digitality Via Cornell's Wen and Goldsen Archives of New Media Art by Timothy Murray :: Chinese new media art, digitality, Archive Rose Goldsen, Archive of New Media Art Cornell University

Cornell University's Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and its specialized collection, The Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant Garde Art, include an extensive array of new media art from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In addition to artworks on CD-Rom, internet, and digital video, The Wen Pulin Archive includes 360 hours of digitized video documenting contemporary Chinese art events and installations since 1984. As the Founding Curator, I have been struck by how these collections and the socio-cultural conditions of their production have expanded my sense of the mission of the Goldsen Archive as well as the cultural conditions and promises of digitality itself.

Coming to Terms with the Digital Avant-Garde by Steve Anderson :: digital, avant-garde, design, music video, commercial art, new media, convergence

This paper maps two divergent trajectories within a narrowly defined sphere of short-form, time-based, digital media - specifically music videos, design-oriented short films and motion graphics - of the past ten years. I am particularly interested in considering this work's potential for understanding emergent relations to the perception and construction of space, time and bodies; the status of narrative; relations between technology and material culture; and shifting conceptions of the roles played by producers and consumers.

Community Networked Tales: Stories and Place of a Dublin by Valentina Nisi, Dr. Ian Oakley, Dr. Mads Haahr :: absence, community networks, memorials, communication, space, place

The paper Community Networked Tales: Stories and Place of a Dublin Neighborhood describes the content capture, design and implementation of the Media Portrait of the Liberties project. It focuses primarily on the results of a subjective user study conducted to gauge reactions to this novel media format. We close this paper by discussing the results of this study, and speculating on future directions for this work.

Device Art: A New Concept from Japan by Machiko Kusahara :: media art, technology, science, material, gadget, entertainment, toy, commercialism, product, movement, history, culture

In the international community of media art, Japanese media artists are often criticized for having positive attitude to technology rather than being critical. It is true that playfulness is often appreciated in Japanese media art, and there is no clear border between art and entertainment, or with popular culture. Why is that so? Is it wrong to appreciate technology? The paper discusses cultural and historical background of Japanese media art that leads to a proposal of "Device Art", a new concept in media art.

From Scenography to Planetary Network for Shanghai 2010 by Franck Ancel :: World-Expo City

Shanghai is in the process of becoming the Asian New York, at the heart of the continent. It is this urbanisation process, emerging in a city with no end and no limits, that is being discussed for 2010. Consequently, what is being prepared at Shanghai is not simply an immaterial bridge between a universal-type event and a planetary dimension. Similarly, the theme of the contemporary city is coming increasingly to the fore in exhibitions dedicated to the electronic arts, as at the forthcoming international ISEA gathering, to be held at San Jose in 2006. Some of these planned interactions between urban evolution and current techno-scientific developments constitute the linkage between today's artistic mutations.

Indigenous Domain: Beyond the Commons and Other Colonial Paradigms by Joline Blais :: indigenous, commons, internet, property, belonging, colonize, stories, networks, webs of trust, cyberspace

Indigenous Domain discusses the limitations of current colonial paradigms for cyberspace which try to rope off "commons" or "reservations" for the public good, but which still operate within a larger colonial framework. The paper proposes alternatives to the prevailing colonial paradigm of the "commons" and "copyleft" based on both indigenous models and new digital practices including "grounded stories," "indigenous networks," and "webs of trust." Finally, I look at a local Acess Grid art project in the Wabanaki community which combines all three of these indigenous/digital approaches.

Organised Networks, Distributive Education and New Institutional Forms by Ned Rossiter :: organised networks, distributive education, new institutional forms, collaborative transdisciplinary practices

Organised networks are emerging as the new institutional form best suited to address the uncertainties of labour and life in network societies and information economies.

Public Secrets: information and social knowledge by Sharon Daniel :: community, public domain, citizenship, information society, social justice, digital inclusion

Secrets are the opposite of information. There are secrets that are kept from the public and then there are "public secrets" - secrets that the public chooses to keep safe from itself - like, "don't ask, don't tell." Such shared secrets sustain social and political institutions. The injustices of the war on drugs, the criminal justice system, and the Prison Industrial Complex are "public secrets". This paper will discuss the phenomenon of the "public secret" in the context information culture and present strategies for using information technologies to unmask such secrets. The presentation will reference an online audio database of statements by incarcerated women and injection drug users, which reveal the secret injustices of the war on drugs, the Criminal Justice System and the Prison Industrial Complex.

Redefining The Basemap by Alison Sant :: mapping, basemap, collaborative mapping, locative media

Current collaborative mapping projects, using locative media technologies, have often overlooked the conventions of the basemap as a site for reinvention. Although these projects imagine alternative organizations of urban space through the way it is digitally mapped, they remain bounded by datasets that reinforce a Cartesian and static notion of urban space. This paper questions the methodology of the basemap, as it is utilized in these projects, and proposes alternative tactics for mapping the city.

The Participatory Challenge: Incentives for Online Collaboration by Trebor Scholz :: self-organized cultural projects, online collaboration, free cooperation, social software, mutual aid

Current debates focus too much on what social tools can do and not enough on the people who use them. Motivations of the multitudes who add content to online environments matter a great deal. What follows here are hands-on guidelines and an outline of preconditions for online participation. Terms like: involvement, turn taking, network, feedback, or distributed creativity1 are frequently applied to characterise this kind of social and cultural interaction.

The Urbane Potential of Public Screens for Interaction by Mirjam Struppek :: interactivity, digital displays, urban screens, public sphere, urban space, interactive facades, local culture, social sustainability, neighbourhood reactivation, urban communication

Urban Screens are digital displays in urban space being used in consideration of the wellbeing and sustainability of the urban society - Screens that support the idea of public space as space for creation and exchange of culture.

Towards New Class of Being - The Extended Body by Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr :: art and science, art and biology, new species, extended body, semi-living, partial life, tissue culture, tissue engineering

The biomass of disassociated living cells and tissues is in the thousands of tons. These fragments do not fall under current biological or cultural classifications. The notion of the extended body can be seen as a way to define this category of life, while at the same time attempting to destabilise some of the rooted perceptions of classification of living beings. The extend body can and is an amalgamation of the human extended phenotype with tissue life - a unfiled body for disembodied living fragments, an ontological device, set to draw attention to the need of re-examining current taxonomies and hierarchical perceptions of life.

Voice and Code: From Spoken Word and Song to Writing to Music to Code by Josephine Bosma :: language, voice, song, body, code, music, social, authorship, folk data

The relationship between code and language, cultures, and machine has started being analyzed quite profoundly the past few years, yet how does code relate to human voice? Code is an interesting mixture of human and machine languages, of social and mathematical communication. With the work of Florian Cramer as an inspiration and big influence I would like to speculate wildly about how code not only reflects a changing attitude in the transcription and creation of meaning (related to music, hypertext and computer screen based narratives), but also on how this in turn reverberates in the use of our human voice, specifically in the arts.

Media Referentiality: "Productive" Knowledge Networks in Experimental Arts by Mara Traumane :: Self-productive practices, interdisciplinary avant-garde, collaborative tools in new media, proximity, alternative history structures, content shortcuts, community effects, collective memory

The paper will examine the self-referentiality and tools for its development introduced by the avant-garde, experimental interdisciplinary arts movements and will follow these practices in new media. It will survey how theoretical and artistic self-referencing in variety of media have had been a constitutive part of historic collaborative movements. A chapter will be devoted to New Media and will see internet and tools like mailing lists, blogs, wikis and ad-hoc networks as multimedia platforms for self-referentiality. The paper will argue that self-referentiality differs from independent media as it is rather serving as a tool of the internal dialogue, creative collaborative co-production, and invention of new vocabulary.

Sources: intelligent agent Vol. 6 No. 2 and ISEA 2006

Posted by jo at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

August 02, 2006

function:feminism

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World Wide Waves of Cyberfeminism(s)

If it's true that the internet has experienced periods of transition and redefinition, moving from private to public, slow to fast, local to global, and so on, it can also be said that feminism has experienced similar shifts. Historians already refer to different 'waves' of feminism, and those undulations in audiences and attitudes have not been blind to advances in technology. The online archive entitled function:feminism outlines the many important art works, public events, and essays produced from 1991 to the present. A scrolling timeline provides an abundance of valuable links that create a context for considering thoughts about gender, race, identity, embodiment, networks, and technology, and the way in which the ebbs flows of these theories and experiences developed simultaneously or influenced each other over time and internationally. One could spend a long time 'surfing' the waves referenced here. - Angela Moreno, Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2006

ArtCamp: The Un-Conference

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NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS

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

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

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

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

Locus Sonus Audio Streaming Project

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OPEN CALL

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

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

To participate in this project, contact support[at]locusonus.org :: to listen to the streams already available click here :: to download a PD patch and start streaming click here :: to see video documentation of our previous presentations and to find out more about Locus Sonus in general, click here.

NEXT PUBLIC EVENTS

Presentations start from 15th to 30th of August in various performance and installation situations, starting with DIGIT Delaware Delaware Valley Arts Alliance & Roebling Bridge Environmental Arts and LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) in partnership with THE THING Inc. (New York) with the support of Étant Donnés, The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art.

Presentations continue in the fall with an installation during the Arborescence festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, and an installation performance at GMEM, Marseille France.

Festival DIGIT: http://www.artsalliancesite.org/programs/digit_06.html
LMCC: http://www.lmcc.net/
THE THING: http://bbs.thing.net/
Arborescence: http://www.arborescence.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=3
GMEM: http://www.gmem.org/

TECHNICAL DOC

To Start Streaming You will Need :

* a PC or Mac dedicated to the stream (an old 450 MHz machine should do).
* a sound card recognized by your operating system.
* a microphone ($3 radioshack mike is fine).
* streaming software (we propose that you download our PD patch and run it using PureData that way you can customize your stream (for OSX, Windows and Linux). We recommend that you use this Hans Christoph Steiner's extended version which includes the necessary ogg vorbis libraries.
* a high speed internet connection and a network router.

We obtained the good results using the Dyne:bolic Linux distribution. The advantage being thats it's a liveCD (so you don't have to install the system) and that PD and all the necessary externals are already installed. You might run into difficulties if the system doesn't recognize the PCs built in sound card in which case the easiest option is to find an old soundblaster card and disactivate the built-in card in the bios.

It's important for us to get a wide range of soundscapes and social situations, remember that urban sound is pretty similar around the western world so you might want to chose to place your microphone so as to capture interesting or unique aspects of your environment and also to listen to the other current streams to caracterize yours.

We are also finding that in most circumstances it is preferable to customize the patch, sometimes a little filtering is all thats needed (as for example: port.ogg) but we've also built a sampling patch which records and plays back recent sound events continually updating its database (as for example: cap15.ogg).

Listen to the current streams.

Posted by jo at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

Wald-Forest

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Responsive Architecture + Organism

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

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

Wald-Forest defines performative zones by light, shadow and sound. The performer / audience shapes and alters performative acoustic and light - zones by his own movement in realtime. In the live performance we will develop a duet for piano and dance. Real time notation instructions will be sent to the piano player according the dancer‘s movements patterns in space. Composed music parts will interact with algorithms of interactive sound.

concept, director: Chris Ziegler (D)
dance: Christine Bürkle (D)
music: Sandeep Bhagwati (D/IND)
prepared piano: Ernst Surberg (D)

Wald-Forest will be perfomed at Pas de Deux - Dance and New Media Performances, workshops, filmscreenings and interactive installation :: July 29-30 :: Edith Russ Site for Media Art :: Chris Ziegler will be on site for a talk.

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art, the Association for Youth Culture Engagement and the Kulturetage Oldenburg present a series of events which broach the issue of dance and new media. From 28 July until 6 August well known dancers, choreographers and dance companies as well as media artists will give a guest performance. The events will take place at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art and at the Kulturetage Oldenburg. Furthermore workshops will be offered in order to give an impression about dance and new media and to make first experience with "digital dance".

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

Raqs Media Collective:

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'There Has Been a Change of Plan'

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

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

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

Works exhibited include: 'Lost New Shoes', selections from 'A Measure of Anacoustic Reason', 'Location (n)', '28.28 N / 77.15 E :: 2001/02 (Co-Ordinates of Everyday Life, Delhi 2001-2002)', 'Erosion by Whispers', 'Preface to a Ghost Story' and 'There Has Been a Change of Plan'.

About Raqs Media Collective

(Excerpt from the Wikipedia Entry on Raqs Media Collective): Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 by independent media practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Based in Delhi, their work engages with urban spaces and global circuits, persistently welding a sharp, edgily contemporary sense of what it means to lay claim to the world from the streets of Delhi. At the same time, Raqs articulates an intimately lived relationship with myths and histories of diverse provenances. Raqs sees its work as opening out a series of investigations with image, sound, software, objects, performance, print, text and lately, curation, that straddle different (and changing) affective and aesthetic registers, expressing an imaginative unpacking of questions of identity and location, a deep ambivalence towards modernity and a quiet but consistent critique of the operations of power and property.

In 2001 Raqs co-founded Sarai at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi where they coordinate media productions, pursue and administer independent research and practice projects and also work as members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series. For Raqs, Sarai is a space where they have the freedom to pursue interdisciplinary and hybrid contexts for creative work and to develop a sustained engagement with urban space and with different forms of media.

Posted by jo at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2006

Cultural Control and Policy on Dance in Asia-Pacific Region

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Call for Participation and Partners

[posted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] Archive/Database: Publication and Material list for Cultural Control and Policy on Dance in Asia-Pacific Region :: Call for Participation and Partners :: Yaping Chen, PhD (Taiwan) :: Yukihiko YOSHIDA (Japan) :: The study in cultural control and policy would be an important field in dance research now, especially when we analyze the development of dance in Asia Pacific Region. Hence, a multi-lingual online archive serving as an exchange platform for research materials will greatly enhance cross-cultural research and understanding of this specific subject.

Now the first ever project in this regard is underway. As the first step, Yukihiko Yoshida and Dr. Yaping Chen are making publication and material lists for cultural policy related to dance under Japanese Colonialism before WW2. Even in Japan, this is still a hidden subject in both Japanese and Asian dance history researches. Yukihiko is currently compiling such a list within Japan. Related materials in difference languages are believed to exist in countries ranging from Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea to South-east Asian countries such as Malaysia. All the contributed lists will be credited with the contributors’ names and shared in the online archive.

Cultural policy under Japanese colonialism is just the beginning of the project, and compiling lists are but the first step. We hope to include publication and material lists from the more recent past in the archive as well. The ultimate goal of the project is to facilitate and promote researches in the relationship between cultural policy and dance throughout Asia-Pacific Region. In the future, cross-national research projects may be conducted through the international connections made possible by this online archive.

We look forward to welcoming new members and partners.

contact address: Yukihiko YOSHIDA, yukihiko9[at]s6.dion.ne.jp

Posted by jo at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

Transubstantiate: Disruptive Innovation

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Call for Submissions

Transubstantiate: a peer-reviewed, online journal for performance technologies praxis :: Call for submissions :: Deadline: November 1, 2006 :: Transubstantiate welcomes submissions for its inaugural issue on the theme of Disruptive Innovation. We seek examples of new thinking and practice that overturn and / or reassess existing performance technology praxis. Submissions may be presented as papers, reviews, audio, visuals (stills / video) and code. Authors may use multiple formats in a single submission.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Networked performance * Disruptive innovations & discourse * Pedagogy, ontologies and epistemologies * Choreography for iPod. Choreographies for iPod must be specifically devised works and may take the form of: * Video / stills * Audio description / instructions * Text description / instructions * Soundscore with text description / instructions.

Transubstantiate encourages submissions that take an alternative stance on established modes of mediated performance. Submissions should be equivalent to 3000 - 8000 words in .doc, mp3, .jpg or .mp4 (video) format.

The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2006. For more information or to submit please contact the editorial & curatorial board via curators [at] transubstantiate [dot] org.

The liminal is limited; transubstantiate.

Posted by jo at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

MOBILE/ IMMOBILIZED: Art, biotechnologies & (Dis)abilities

Call for Papers

MOBILE / IMMOBILIZED: Art, biotechnologies & (Dis)abilities :: Call for Papers for the colloquium :: Montréal, October 2007 :: Please submit, to the Centre Interuniversitaire en arts médiatiques :: gram[at]uqam.ca :: a short biography (15 lines) :: an abstract of 250 words maximum :: before September 1, 2006.

A human being would lack nothing, if one were to admit that there are a thousand ways to live. - Canguilhem :: Following the activities that took place within the framework of two colloquia, "Interfaces et Sensoralité" (2003) and "Arts & Biotechnologies" (2004), and based on the work with the handicapped conducted, over several years, by the group at Cyprès in Marseille, we believe it is opportune to provide a site for insightful reflections on questions relating to (dis)abilities. At the intersection of several contemporary art projects, bioscientific research and technological innovations, the notion of deficiency seems to be one of the most fertile and troubling forces. It certainly has a pronounced affect on the experimental art scene, where it generates a significant array of creative, phantasmagorical and symbolic artworks.

Redesigning the Human

Indeed, it seems important, at the present time, to evaluate how technologies and biotechnologies affect the condition of viability, of autonomy and disability of people, and to observe any signs of evolution that signal an increase in cognitive, mental, imaginary and symbolic capabilities. All disciplines involved in the redesigning of the human being are included within the framework of this colloquium. On the one hand, these disciplines occupy the central stage, determining and illuminating the orientation and objectives of the project Mobile / Immobilized, and on the other hand, they serve as a gauge, allowing one to evaluate the techno-anthropological and political impact of practices exerted by humans on humans.

The Augmented Body

Increasingly, technological developments give the impression that human beings are inadequately equipped. This section of the colloquium concentrates on artistic works whose orientation and experimental factors open up conceptual possibilities as well as practical applications for people with deficiencies or constraints (Virtual reality, biofeedback, motion captures, interactivity, synthetic voices, sound, technological extensions, implants, etc.) Artworks will also be presented by people with disabilities who have, because of their deficiencies and their differences, strengthened their sensorial capabilities, and so produce unique poetic and phantasmagorical worlds with technological tools (images, digital photographs, video…). Since such works are adapted to particular disabilities, in certain cases they may result in technical or technological solutions that offer potential uses for the broader
public.

Art as a Life Laboratory

The question here is the study of artistic approaches that propose an important slippage towards a centre of gravity different from the site of current art practices. It is a matter of considering new artworks and artistic processes as cognitive tools, charged at one and the same time with an emotion and with indissociable cognition, artworks that permit one to conceive of strategies for inventive learning and adaptation in order to try to find new symbolic and sensory forms. These approaches permit one to redefine artistic activity in terms of the laboratory of life by actively participating in the development of tools that work for, and in concert with, handicapped persons. This can be done by considering specific imaginaries, unique forms of creations and creativity, and modes of global communication.

Artists, theorists, (bio)scientists, and (bio)engineers) working in related fields are invited to present their artworks, ideas and research, as well as certain developments and applications in this domain.

Posted by jo at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

Emergences 2006 Festival

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New Artistic Forms and New Media

Emergences 2006 Festival: New Artistic Forms and New Media :: September 29th - October 1, 2006 :: Maison de la Villette :: Performances | Concerts | Installations | Shows | Conferences | Works in progress :: International festival dedicted to electronic cultures and emerging artistic forms, Emergence brings together, ever year in Paris, French and international actors in digital creation (cultural centers, art groups, research labs, multimedia production firms...) all gathered around a prolific and international artistic program at the crossroad between performing & visual arts, multimedia, design, architecture and electronic music.

Every couple of years, Emergences takes part in the biennal Villette Numérique event. This year, video game is the spearhead of Villette numerique which is to happen at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie (all to know about video games: history of, demonstrations, displays, meeting and debates), at la Géode (movies and musics with 180°) and at la Maison de la Villette (Emergences festival).

This fourth edition of the festival asks the question of artistic diversion of everyday objects by invinting artists to express their position vis-à-vis the market place of the information society (video game consoles, cell phoning, GPS, web services, videoconferencing...) and especialy the video game culture.

The program is revolves around evening events at la Maison de la Villette: shows, music lives, performances, animated films inspired by video games and twisting their codes and esthetics; around an artistic process dedicated to the "Game art" which will spread from la Maison de la Villette to the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie thus connecting the two spaces. At daytime, conferences and works in progress are going to supplement this artistic programming.

Lastly, somewhere between Paris and Strasbourg, Emergences is once again getting off its territorial borders to develop arty ties with its partner "Les Nuits Electroniques de l'Ososphère", a festival in Strasbourg which takes place over the same period: simultaneously program network creations and performances, numerical experiments, live retransmissions and ephemeral radio in the two events.

All in all, they are more than 30 artists who are to participate to this new edition of Emergences: Marcel.lì Antùnez Roca, Marnix de Nijs, Yan Duyvendak, //////////fur///, Habbo Hotel, MEC (Motards En Colère), the art group Exyzt,...

>> more

Posted by jo at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

Arte Digital Rosario 2006 - Muestra01

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Call for entries

Rattlesnake Productora Independiente invites you to Arte Digital Rosario 2006 muestra 01

This event will take place both on and offline. The online part will be held at:
http://www.rattlesnakeproductora.com. This will be online on 25 july and it will remain online.

The offline part will be shown at The Center of Contemporary Expressions in Rosario / Argentina. The categories available for submitting projects are the following:

1 . Digital Video
:On /off line
Category: Fiction, Experimental, Animation, 2d ,3d ,Comic.,Vj Reels
2 dvd , PAL the maximum of 30 minutes.

2- Digital Photo
On /Off line.
A-Digital Camera
2 cds, one copy paper 20x30cm for each work ..
b- Cell Phones
2 cds ,one copy paper best resolution

3. Modified Games
Online., Off line
2 cd or 2 dvd

4. Net Art
Online., Off line
link from your site without limits of weight

5. CD-ROM:
Online., Off line
Compatible Windows xp /pc compatible .Fla .Swf /Flash 8
2 CD or 2 dvd

6. Art Installation:
Send synopsis of the project, photos, photos of
scale models, videos and measures of ocupacion of the space.
for its preselection.

7 Performances:
Send synopsis of the project, photos, photos of
scale models, videos and measures of ocupacion of the space,
for its preselection.

8. E-Music:
Music demos from DJ/Musicians, Bands,etc. And everything related with e-music.No covers bands or works will be accepted.

Preselection.

A preliminary jury established by the organisers will select - according to artistic merit, expression, originality and creativity .

Submission: starts 25 july 2006
Deadline: for entries is 25 october 2006.

Works will only be accepted when the postage date does not exceed deadline. The organisation of the Festival cannot be held responsible for eventual damage done to works in transit.

These works will be advertised in the Press and may be included in all and any promotional pieces produced and broadcast by the Festival.

Copy of the selected works will be held as property of Rattlesnakes , as part of the historical collection of Art Digital Rosario muestra 1. These works can be accessed and viewed by the public, free of charge, as well as exhibited in other festivals, screenings, shows and cultural activities, always mentioning the piece's participation in the Festival.

The complete entry information and the submission form can be found on
http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=25


Posted by luis at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2006

Remote: a multimedia performance by Kraft and Purver

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Connection, Control and Safe Distance

Remote: a multimedia performance by Kraft and Purver :: When: Aug. 3-12, 2006 (Thurs, Fri, Sat @ 8pm) :: Where: CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St. (at 9th), San Francisco :: Reservations: (415) 435-7552 :: How Much: $12-15 weekend of 3rd, $15-20 weekend of 10th.

"The further you are, the closer I feel to you… please, stay away" – Remote :: In a time where traditional intelligence networks seem to have failed, and where "faith-based" decisions challenge scientific "objectivity", this new multimedia theatre project by award winners Kraft + Purver weaves live video manipulation with theater to blur the lines between reality and perception.

Both hilarious and revealing, Remote draws from factual research into bizarre experiments in psychic spying performed by the U.S. military and the CIA, and also from the impact of communications technology on the nature of relationships, and takes an unconventional look at our attempts to connect and control while still paradoxically maintaining a safe distance.

Through the re-enactment of military efforts to train psychic spies, and of a real-life long distance relationship conducted through the internet, Remote explores how distance can afford us both the grace of perspective and the capacity for violence. The performers interact live with onstage video effects that transform their physical gestures into 3D graphical landscapes, as they attempt to find their way through the maze of their own thoughts in order to find their targets.

Conceived and designed by Kraft + Purver, Remote is performed by Sara Kraft and Ed Purver, with Ernie Lafky and Rowena Richie. Sound and Music by Sheldon Smith.

"Transporting, shrewdly evocative, and often very funny, their creative process suggests two precocious, deeply mischievous children with advanced degrees and the keys to the laboratory" – San Francisco Bay Guardian

Posted by jo at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Ars Virtua

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The Second Life Landscape Initiative

"A landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions, and human elements..." -- wikipedia

The landscape is well understood in real-space as a driving force of the economy, an inspiration and a refuge. Ars Virtua is proud to present The Second Life Landscape Initiative. In this exhibit we are testing the boundaries of translation and connection. What happens to our relationship with the environment when we enter the synthetic world?

We examine four plots of land through data, analysis, visual imagery and prose. We then ask the viewer to engage the landscape and form their own memories and associations.

This exhibit looks at the land of Second Life through several lenses and tries to find a closer connection, this is not merely the distant gaze of the scientist but the the gaze of a lover or of a poet. We examine the data, forms, texture, images and stories that come from the land. Ars Virtua invites its viewers to come to the show and then to walk the surrounding lands of Butler and Dowden in search of their own narratives.

We will be highlighting the work of Lucid Vindaloo, LestatDe Lioncourt, Fiend Ludwig, Zero Philo. The SLLI (Second Life Landscape Initiative) opens Friday July 28th at 7pm SLT in Gallery 2 of Ars Virtua along the Butler/Dowden sims.

Located at the border of Butler and Dowden in Second Life's virtual environment, Ars Virtua's 3000 square meter two story building is divided into main and secondary galleries and a residency space. In order to visit Ars Virtua you will need to create a free account at Second Life (http://secondlife.com/join) and need to be running the current client. Once you have this properly installed you should be able to follow this link directly to Ars Virtua

secondlife://butler/228/15
Ars Virtua: Gallery 2, Butler (228, 15, 52)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Butler/228/15/32/

Posted by jo at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Performance Institute

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Open Call: Artist Residency Program

Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (GSRT)’s mission supports technological innovation in the performing arts. Following that focus, GSRT’s Digital Performance Institute (DPI) encourages arts experimentation & the thoughtful use of emerging technology & media tools. GSRT is performance oriented, but DPI exists as a think-tank for experimentation beyond discipline boundaries. To this end, we are pleased to announce an open call for applications to the DPI Artist Residency Program, which will provide artists with free access to rehearsal & meeting space, equipment, and media creation facilities. The residency also offers opportunities for pubic showings and consultation from other media artists.

Through our artist residency program, DPI aims to provide a context for working in experimental ways with new media. The residency program is not focused on the creation of full productions, but on experimentation. By providing artists with more time to develop the media component of their work, we hope to encourage a greater dialogue about the intersection of technology and performance. A key component of the residency program is that artists share their discoveries with their peers through public Open Labs and on DigitalPerformance.org.

Previously participating artists include Kate Brehm, Dustin O’Neill, Alyse Rothman, James Scruggs, Sarah Smirnoff, Marek Walzak, Karin Wiliams, and Michael Wilson. Current residents include Meghan Trainor, who works with a Learning Worlds programmer to build 16 HORESPOWER, a RFID & sculpture performance; and Margot Lovejoy, who is developing Confess-It, a documentary web site & sound environment. Continue reading guidelines. See application instructions.

Hal Eagar, Associate Artistic Director of the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre, leads DPI's artist residency program. For questions regarding the program or application, please contact hal[at]gertstein.org or (646) 442-4435.

Posted by jo at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

UPGRADE! BOSTON:

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New Media and the Poetics of Communication

UPGRADE! BOSTON: New Media and the Poetics of Communication :: WHEN: August 1, 7:30-9:30 p.m. :: 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.

Adam Brown (Oklahoma, US), Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel (Brazil) and Michael Takeo Magruder (UK) -- all exhibiting at SIGGRAPH2006, Boston (July 30 to August 3) -- will present their work and participate in an informal discussion; Bonnie Mitchell, SIGGRAPH2006 Art Gallery: Intersections Chair will moderate.

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES

Adam Brown is a digital artist and inventor. His creative activity is informed by an intermedia tradition that supports collaboration among various disciplines resulting in a practice that blends digital media with physical materials. Brown has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recent recipient of a Turbulence commission. He curates Upgrade! Oklahoma which is hosted by Untitled ArtSpace and The University of Oklahoma's School of Art. Brown is also a member of the New York Sculptors Guild.

Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel is an engineer, postgraduate in Marketing, and postgraduate in Graphics Design. Master's Degree in progress on Art & Technology at University of São Paulo. Web/MM artist, professor at the Business School and Digital Design Program of the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, director of technology at NMD - New Media Developers. Winner of 11 Internet Best Awards from 1998 to 2005. International awarded speaker. Gabriel has had two Turbulence Spotlights.

Michael Takeo Magruder is an American artist based in the UK who works within the fields of new and interactive media. He received his formal education at the University of Virginia, USA, graduating with distinction in Biological Sciences. His artistic production has been exhibited worldwide and encompasses an eclectic mix of forms, ranging from futuristic stained-glass windows, digital light screens and modular light-sculptures to architectural manipulations, ephemeral video projections and interactive network installations. His current explorations and research embrace 3D stereoscopic projection, immersive multi-sensory environments and interactive non-linear narratives for network/gallery settings. His work in these fields is presently supported by Turbulence.org, King's Visualisation Lab: King's College London and Arts Council England. Magruder is the recipient of two Turbulence commissions.

Bonnie Mitchell is an Associate Professor in Digital Arts at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA where she teaches time-based media with a focus on artistic expression and technical problem solving. With degrees in Art Education, Visual Design/Computer Art and Computer Science she focuses on curriculum that is artistic, technical and cross-disciplinary in nature. She typically teaches interactive media, experimental animation, particle systems and dynamics, and collaborative multimedia production classes. Mitchell’s artworks explore spatial and experiential relationships to our physical, social, cultural and psychological environment through interaction. She typically develops large-scale immersive installations that integrate electronics, animation and audio to create responsive art environments. Her electronic installation art and international collaborative web art projects have been exhibited at ISEA, Prix Ars Electronica, and Digital Salon among others.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with Art Interactive. It is one of 20 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 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

Game/Play presents

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Abiogenesis

The Game/Play team are pleased to present: An online performance by Tale of Tales - Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, in The Endless Forest :: Thursday July 27th 7.00pm – 8.00 pm (BST) :: Free, all are welcome :: To play: Download the Endless Forest 'social screensaver'.

Come and meet us online within the live, real-time world of 'The Endless Forest'. "The Endless Forest by Tale of Tales is a game about beauty, wonder, calm and peace. There are no stealth missions, no guns to swap, no armour or enemies. Taking on the role of a somewhat dreamy deer who wanders through an endless forest imbued with magical powers that seem as unpredictable as mesmerising, players of The Endless Forest are invited to hang out and roam amidst beautiful trees, old mysterious ruins, an idyllic pond and happy flower beds. Without a goal of any sorts, they soon find that there’s more to the forest than just mere eye candy." Maaike Lauwaert & Martijn Hendriks. Read full text.

"In keeping with Wirefire, an earlier project involving a series of intimate live, online performances on the theme of love, the artists intermittently appear as the ‘gods’ of the Endless Forest. Using a system they call Abiogenesis the virtual woodlands become a mutable stage for the artists’ performances." Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett. Read full text.

The touring Game/Play exhibition is currently showing at Q Arts, Derby and HTTP, London.

Posted by jo at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

UPLOAD 09

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Creative Collisions

UPLOAD 09: Creative Collisions :: Dates: Thursday 27 July and Thursday 3 August 2006 :: Time: 6.30 for 7-10pm :: Venue: CAPE Africa Platform, 71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town :: Cost: Free :: Liquid Fridge presents two workshops on mash-ups of art forms with each other and technology, with presenters Chris Csikszentmihályi from MIT (USA), Ralph Borland, Charles Lee-Thorp, Blaise Janichon and Martin Sims.

Presentations cover counter-cultural technologies, socially activating projects at the intersection of art and design, next-generation VJing, graffiti and street art culture, and re-purposing electronics for audiovisual performance. The workshops also feature exercises on making graffiti stencils and LED throwies (electronic graffiti).

Posted by jo at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show

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Wonderland - The Disappearing Dress

This project aims through the innovative marriage of art, science, fashion, technology and education to engage public consciousness through more positive currency, through humor, imagination and wonder, both on behalf of the next generation of consumers as well as existing ones. The Disappearing Dress is part of this wider project.

The garment is constructed of a water soluble polymer. When dissolved the fabric turns into a tiny amount of liquid gel which can be reconstituted into a solid once more or used to grow plants. The dress is a dramatic illustration of how the material behaves.

The Disappearing Dress will be at Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show on July 31, 2006. In future exhibitions, in London, Sheffield and Belfast in 2007, there will be a series of dresses which will dissolve over the course of 3 weeks and these will be the introduction to the other half of the project - ‘Ideas that can change the world’, practical and inspiring ideas for environmentally sound products and recycling methods.

The Disappearing Dress project is by Prof. Helen Storey of The Helen Storey Foundation; Prof. Tony Ryan of The Polymer Centre at Sheffield University; Patricia Belford and Aoife Ludlow, Interface at University of Ulster. It is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. More information about Wonderland and Ideas that can change the world is available at:
http://www.helenstoreyfoundation.org

Posted by jo at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show

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Garments as Secondary Skins

Unravel: the SIGGRAPH2006 Fashion Show presents a runway show of innovative and experimental works in computational and conceptual couture, fashion with a social agenda, science-inspired form, and new technologies of material fabrication. Unravel brings together the work of designers and artists from the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia who are seeking to redefine the notion of ‘wearable.’

In the increasingly mobile nature of contemporary life, it has become important to contemplate how the devices we carry and the garments we wear converge into a ‘secondary skin’ which function as an extension of ourselves, in both ability and perception. By using fashion, a medium which has always been associated with self-expression and personal identity, these designers seek to demonstrate how the use (or misuse) of technology and its modes of production have the power to stimulate, delight, and inspire in ways as yet untapped in the fashion world.

Gone are the stereotypical bulky cyborg devices; what emerged are garments of beauty, subtlety and elegance in form. Some bring to light important social issues — redefining our notions of personal space, networked environments, and issues of privacy and protection. Others relish in pure delight, reminding us how technology also has the power to enhance our personal relationships and celebrate fantasy and play as part of the human condition.

A few projects:

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Day For Night (Modular Extensible Reconfigurable) by Studio 5050 - Despina Papadopoulos & Jesse Lackey: Day-for-Night: a dress comprised of 436 white circuit boards that are linked together with metal rings. Each tile is addressable from a central control unit at the back of the dress. Solar cells are embedded on some of the tiles and charge the dress during the day. The dress is completely modular both in hardware, as new tile functionalities can be added and in terms of software. The control unit has an RF receiver module which can receive new programs from a programming USB board with an RF transmitter.

IPV – Clothing System by Adam Whiton (Industrial Designer and Artist) and Yolita Nugent (Apparel Designer): a wearable system designed to intervene in domestic violence situations.

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The smart clothing utilizes pressure sensitive fabric to measure impacts to the wearer’s body. The physical abuse data is transmitted to a remote server where it can be archived or distributed to a trusted community or proper authorities. The wearer can chat with their IPV clothing via an artificial intelligence agent that offers them feedback and suggestions based on the received data. This project explores the wearable as a self reflective safe space to assist the abused wearer in reconnecting with social networks. [Also see the No-Contact Jacket]

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Peau d’Âne by Valérie Lamontagne (Artist and Designer), Lynn Van Gastel (Fashion Design), and Patrice Coulombe (Technical Design): In the Charles Perrault fairy tale “Peau d’Âne” a young princess, whose stepfather’s riches are dependant on his gold excreting donkey, orders the impossible from her doting father in order to avoid having to marry him: three dresses made of immaterial materials: the sun, moon and sky. The aim of the project “Peau d’Âne” is to incarnate these “impossible” dresses in a material form. A weather antenna culls live weather data, which transforms the dresses, reflecting the changing barometric characteristics of sky, moon and sun in real-time. The “Sun” dress is based on changes in the sun. The dress will be constructed with a checkerboard of LEDs (light emitting diodes) set in motion based on UV, solar radiation and sun intensity readings.


Posted by jo at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Upcoming workshop: @ Mediamatic Amsterdam

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RFID and The Internet of Things

After a succesfull CrashCourse in May, Mediamatic now presents a second workshop on RFID and The Internet of Things :: 11, 12, 13 September 2006 :: Confirmed lecturers and trainers: Julian Bleecker (US), Timo Arnall (Norway) and Arie Altena (NL).

RFID allows for the unique identification of objects, and any kind of online data can be linked to these unique ID's. If RFID becomes an open web-based platform, and users can tag, share, and contribute content to the digital existence of their own places and objects, we can truly speak of an Internet of Things. This opens perpectives for new sustainability scenario's, for new relations between people and the stuff they have, and for other locative applications.

The participants of this workshop will develop critical, utopian or nightmarish concepts for an Internet of Things in a hands-on way. Ideas can range from scripts for small new rituals to outlines of societal changes of epic scale. Prototypes can be tested with the workshop tools The Symbolic Table or the Nokia3220 phone with RFID reader.

The workshop has room for 16 designers, artists, thinkers and makers. Participation fee is €350 per person, ex BTW. Lunches, technical equipment and assistance are included. If you want to participate in this workshop, please register at our online registration form.

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

Flüux:/terminal

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A Bipolar Performance

Flüux:/terminal is a bipolar performance that skoltz_kolgen have named diptyque rétinal . As in all Of their work, here their research has established a point of contact between sound and image. But Flüux:/terminal pushes the dialogue between these two elements one step further: their performance Creates a dramatic tra jectory, fuelled by the panoramic tensions (left/right) between hearing and seeing.

Flüux:/terminal projects images on two screens, in a parallel visual body of luminous particles_ photographed or filmed images and wire frame displays. As stereophonic visual representations, the two screens are the alter egos Of the audio, which is also divided in two. The sound sources (left/right) are desynchronized and propelled into separate channels: the left-hand channel excites the left-hand image; the right-hand channel excites the right-hand Image. The image is distorted, bearing the marks that the sound imprints upon it, and becomes the fossil of the sound.

A bipolar experience is therefore built by catalyzing the lines of tension between two Independent but related audio and visual worlds. Their dissociation in one instance and their synchrony or symmetry in another establish space–times that fairly float in weightlessness. These suspended moments are succeeded by fresh charges of energy that are massive and intense. A new generation of meaning escapes: attraction and repulsion, interdependence at times, followed by struggle and conflict at others.

Flüux:/terminal is a living performance that evolves each time it is presented. In the same evolutionary S p i r i t , The flüux:/terminal album transposes the performance in another environment. Skoltz_kolgen give the audio CD a life Of its own while reprising textures and sound microfragments from the performance and reconfiguring them, stripped of their visual aids. The result is more musical and minimalist, venturing beyond the raw, polarized qualities of the performance.

Flüux:/terminal will be performed at RECOMBINANT MEDIA LABS, San Francisco on Wednesday August 16th & Thursday August 17th at 8:30 pm. Cost: $15.

Posted by jo at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

Piksel06

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CALL for PARTICIPATION

Piksel[1] is an annual event for artists and developers working with free and open source audiovisual software. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK) [2] and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free and open source software.

This years event - Piksel06 – continues the exploration of audiovisual code and it's myriad of expressions, but also brings in open hardware as a new focus area. At Piksel06 we will expand the exhibition part and build upon the open hardware theme, which represents a potential for a new paradigm shift of vital importance for independent artistic expression in the digital domain.

Piksel06 is done in collaboration with HKS art centre[3] which will be the main location for this years events. Piksel is organised by BEK and a community of core participants including members of collectives dyne.org, goto10.org, sustainablesource.net, hackitectura.net, riereta.net, drone.ws, gephex.org and others.

Piksel06 - festival -- october 12-15 2006
Piksel06 - exhibition -- october 13-27 2006
Piksel06 - call for participation -- deadline august 1. 2006

open CALL for PARTICIPATION

The previous Piksel events has primarily focused on live art / audiovisual performance and interactive installations, but for Piksel06 we also introduce open hardware and hardware hacking as new themes. For the exhibition and other parts of the program we are interested in submissions in the following categories:

1. Installations

Projects related to the open hardware theme including but not restricted to: circuit bending, reverse engineering, repurposing, modding and DIY electronics preferably programmed by and running on free and open source software.

2. Audiovisual performance

Live art realised by the use of free and open source software. We specially encourage live coding and DIY hardware projects to apply.

3. Software/Hardware

Innovative DIY hardware and audiovisual software tools or software art released under an open licence.

Please send documentation material - preferably as a URL to online documentation with images/video to piksel06[at]bek.no. Deadline - august 1. 2006

Please use the online submit form at: http://www.piksel.no/piksel06/subform.html

Alternatively use this form for submitting

1. Project name.
2. Email adr.
3. Project URL
4. Name of artist(s).
5. Short bio/CV
6. Category
7. Short statement about the work(s)
8. List of software used in the creation/presentation of the work(s)

Or send by snailmail to:

BEK
att: Gisle Froysland
C. Sundtsgt. 55
5004 Bergen
Norway

More info: http://www.piksel.no/piksel06

piksel06 is produced in cooperation with Kunsthoegskolen in Bergen dep The Academy of Fine Arts, Hordaland Kunstsenter. Supported by Bergen Kommune,
Norsk Kulturfond, BergArt and Vestnorsk Filmfond.

links:

[1] http://www.piksel.no
[2] http://www.bek.no
[3] http://www.kunstsenter.no

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

July 25, 2006

BioHome: The Chromosome Knitting Project

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Blurring the Lines Between Home and Laboratory

BioHome: The Chromosome Knitting Project :: A performance/installation featuring live biotechnologies :: Performance by Catherine Fargher, with live sound mix by Terumi Narushima.

BioHome presents a new form of hybrid performance, incorporating live biotechnology in an interactive installation. It also features video, interactive sound using DNA sonification, live DNA knitting and live performance and text. The live 'wet biology' practices, namely knitting DNA and displaying live cell cultures on stage, will be used to explore reproductive futures and bio-technologies.

Opening: August 16, 2006 5.00 p.m. by Natasha Mitchell, ABC Radio National Science Unit. Performance: 5.30 p.m. August 17th, 2006: Performance 5.30 p.m. Installation hours: August 16 - 25, 9-5 p.m. The artist/performer will be in attendance to maintain live cells at select times during the duration the installation. 'we assume all products are hazardous'.

FCA Gallery, Room 112, Building 25, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, North Wollongong. Light refreshments available.

Credits:

:: Writer, performer, devisor - Catherine Fargher
:: Direction and corporeal dramaturgy: Nikki Heywood,
:: Textual dramaturgy, Noelle Janascewska, Nikki Haywood, Merlinda Bobis.
:: Visual dramaturgy: Brogan Bunt, Virginia Hilyard.
:: Knitted elements: Pamela Drysdale,
:: Plasma Screen performers: Terumi Narushima, Catherine Fargher, Denise Cepeda.
:: Interactive sound creation: Terumi Narushima.

Catherine Fargher
writer/editor/doctoral candidate University of Wollongong
PO Box 178
St Pauls NSW 2031
ph/fax: (02) 93145121
mob: 0415 442 209
email:iristorm[at]ozemail.com.au

Posted by jo at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Johannesburg: Catherine Henegan

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Dada Goes Digital: Media Art in a Theatrical Space

July 28, 2006 :: Upgrade! Johannesburg and the Wits Digital Soiree present: Catherine Henegan :: Dada Goes digital - Media Art in a Theatrical Space :: Amsterdam-based multi-disciplinary artist, Catherine Henegan, is the director of The Shooting Gallery, the controversial performance / media art work currently showing at The Market Theatre. Aided by a computer and a projection screen, Catherine is also a performer in the work, editing live content from the Internet into the performance by Aryan Kaganof and against the sound design by James Webb. In this way she tracks in real time the way media constructs and reconstructs news and fiction. She will talk about her approach to the design and direction of this challenging multimedia production. More images here.

Posted by jo at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2006

Régine Debatty's

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Interview of Yury Gitman

Yury Gitman is a designer, inventor, an award-winning artist (Noderunner received an Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Net Vision in 2003) and I owe him one of my first posts on the blog. It was a story about Magicbike, the bicycle turned mobile WiFi hotspot for up to 250 users in a radius of 30 meters indoors and 100 meters outdoors. A network of his Magicbikes allowed him to be one of the first people to use the Internet from inside the New York subway. Yury is also teaching at the Parsons Design + Technology Program and last year, he opened a product design company called Banana Design Lab [...]

Last week I just launched a net.art work commissioned by Turbulence, My Beating Blog. It's an experiment with the near future of blogging, in which I infuse increasingly commonplace biofeedback technology with blogging. It's a simple experiment where I'm anticipating the crafty convergence of a set of technologies before they actually fuse in the mainstream. I think we'll see blogs like that become more common place in the next couple of years. Doing work like this, with emerging mediums, often gestates into insights about the expressive capabilities of these mediums [...] [blogged by Régine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

The4thScreen: A Global Festival of Art & Innovation for Mobile Phones

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Deadline Extended

The4thScreen: Global Festival of Art & Innovation for Mobile Phones: The extended deadline for submissions to the The4thScreen festival is coming up in five days, on July 25.

The entries will be judged by our distinguished Jury: Laurie Anderson, Jacqueline Bosnjak, J.C. Herz, Warrington Hudlin, Surj Patel, Eric Paulos, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky, Christiane Paul, Holly Willis. (more information about the Jury)

There will be a presentation of selected entries on Sunday July 30 at 8pm at the 'Scanners': The 2006 New York Video Festival. A co-presentation of the Film Society and Lincoln Center Festival 2006.

The4thScreen Festival'06 is produced by Postmasters Productions in partnership with the Museum of the Moving Image and Polytechnic University, New York.

contact: Tamas Banovich, Festival Director
tamas[at]The4thScreen.net
The4thScreen
459 W19 Street New York, NY10011 USA
phone: 212 229 9736
mobile: 917 400 2381
http://The4thScreen.net

Posted by jo at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

Intimacy and In.yer.face

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Blurring Online and Physical Performative Space

Intimacy and In.yer.face (July 20th, 8 p.m. (NZ time)) is a live performance / installation event and remix project, featuring an interdisciplinary selection of local and international artists, operating in the nexus between art and technology. Our conception of site is fragmented when agents participate from spatially dispersed locations, and when the boundaries between online and physical performative space are blurred. Intimacy and In.yer.face explores this fragmentation, the endless and cyclical encoding and decoding of information that occurs in the interface between humans and machines.

Curated by Daniel Agnihotri-Clark, Intimacy and In.yer.face commences with a one-night event featuring simultaneous live performances and interactive installations, linked by real-time streaming of audio and video signals which will be broadcast over the internet. The event will feature new works by the globally dispersed cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision (New Zealand, London, Helsinki), the interdisciplinary artist Kartini Thomas (Wellington), aerialists / actors Pipi-Ayesha Evans and Rhys Latton (Wellington), and audio / video artists Emil McAvoy and Damian Stewart (Wellington).

The performance/installation event will take place on July 20th in the former Dominion Museum Building, Wellington (8 p.m. NZ time), at a mystery location in Paris (10 a.m. FR time), and everywhere else via http://www.intimacyandinyerface.net. Intimacy and In.yer.face is truly a simultaneously local and global event, pushing the understandings of site and indeterminate modes of performance practice in the interface with technology. Intimacy and In.Yer.Face follows last year's Indeterminacy and Interface - the first of performance event curated by Daniel. These projects form a significant component of his on-going doctoral research at the Massey University School of Fine Arts.

Following the performance / installation event, an open call for remix will expand the role of the audience, facilitating active participation and dialogue. Audio and video files will be available for download from the website. This remixed material will then be collated into a limited edition DVD release.

For full information about the project and the artists involved please see
http://www.intimacyandinyerface.net

Intimacy and In.yer.face
July 20th, 8 p.m. (NZ time)
Old Museum Building, Buckle St, Wellington, New Zealand
and Mystery Location, Paris
and http://www.intimacyandinyerface.net

Online Soiree
http://www.intimacyandinyerface.net
10 a.m. - 12 noon NZ time/ 10 p.m. - 12 a.m. FR time

Artist/Curator talk
School of Fine Arts seminar room, Block 2, Level C, via Gate C, Wallace St.
12.15 p.m.

For further information, images or to arrange an interview with the participants please contact: Louise Menzies, on tel: 04 801 2794 x6197, email: L.C.Menzies[at]massey.ac.nz. or Aaron Kreilser on tel: 04 8012794 x6341, email: A.P.Kreisler[at]massey.ac.nz.

Posted by jo at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2006

Game/Play

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Playful Interaction and Goal-Oriented Gaming

Game/Play: Playful Interaction and Goal-oriented Gaming Explored Through Media Arts Practice ::
The exhibition opens at two different venues, in the UK and then joins, to tour as a single touring show. Game/Play is a networked national touring exhibition in the UK, focusing on the rhetorical constructs game and play. This collaboration between Q Arts, Derby and HTTP Gallery, London provides a basis for exchange and interaction between audiences, artists, curators and writers through the exhibitions and networked activity.

Enjoy the Ermajello performance of Plankton at Q Arts :: test drive Mary Flanagan's [giantJoystick] at HTTP :: view the works and connect and collaborate with visitors in both :: galleries in the online :: multiuser spaces of Furtherfield's VisitorsStudio and Endless Forest by Tale of Tales.

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Projects fall under three main categories: installations, independent video games, and online (networked) artworks. Game/Play opens at two venues, HTTP Gallery and Q Arts. Curated by Giles Askham, Marc Garrett, Ruth Catlow, Corrado Morgana & Louise Clements.

Game/Play Artists: Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, Jetro Lauha, Julian Oliver, Kenta Cho, Mary Flanagan, Low Brow Trash, Paul Granjon, Simon Poulter, Giles Askham, Jakub Dvorsky, Long Journey Home, PRU, Q Club, Furtherfield, Tale of Tales.

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Game/Play Writers: Giles Askham / Jon Bird / Peter Bowcott / Javier Candeira / Rebecca Cannon / Ele Carpenter, Ruth Catlow, Louise Clements, Mary Flanagan, Marc Garrett, Keiron Gillen, Mark R Hancock, Martijn Hendriks, Pat Kane, Ana-Marija Koljanin, Maaike Lauwaert, Corrado Morgana, Patrick Lichty, Christiane Paul, Thomas Petersen, Andy Pollaine, Jonathan Willett.

HTTP Gallery
Saturday 22 July 7pm – 9pm.
Unit A2, Arena Business Centre,
71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY

Q Arts:
21 July 6.30pm – 8.30pm Q Arts – Gallery
35/36 Queen Street,
Derby, DE1 3DS

Posted by jo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2006

Mirjam Struppek

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The Social Potential of Urban Screens

"...The emergence of the internet culture has brought new ways of participation and exchange to challenge hierarchical authorship. The 'new forms of creation mediated by networks more and more remote, fast and wireless' (Beiguelman, 2006) derived from this culture, influence new productions of public space. Artists are exploring the potential of the growing interconnections between online and offline worlds, and between social experiences in virtual and physical space. Wallace (2003) sees the internet connected to screens 'as a delivery mechanism to inhabit and or change actual urban spaces'. We can find various community experiments in the growing field of social computing: friend-of-a-friend communities; participatory experiments in content creation in the mailing list culture; and more recently, the wiki websites (where users can add and edit content) and blogging systems that serve an increased need for self-expression. By connecting large outdoor screens with digital experiments in online worlds, the culture of collaborative content production and networking can be brought to a wider audience for inspiration and engagement..." From The Social Potential of Urban Screens by Mirjam Struppek, Visual Communication, Volume 5, No. 2, Sage Publications June 2006, p 173-188.

Posted by jo at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

Social Acoustics & Media Reverberation

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Acoustic Experiments, Radio Art, DiY, Urban Interventions

Social Acoustics & Media Reverberation, July 19-24, Cluj :: A week of audio workshops, sound performances and film screenings :: From July 19-24, Paul Fyvolent, a radio activist, artist and writer, and Daniel Gorman, an electronic music composer, will host an interactive workshop for artists, musicians, DJs, students and other participants from Cluj interested in acoustic experiments and radio art. The workshop is organized by D Media in collaboration with AltArt, La Gazette and Tranzit House. It is part of radio.territories, a year-long project of radio art and urban interventions in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Romania, Slovakia and the UK.

The workshop focuses on using do-it-yourself media for social change, using radio to build bridges from the media world to physical spaces, and using 'cultural jamming" to deconstruct existing media. Workshop participants will create site-specific acoustic portraits of Cluj - mixing the sounds of urban spaces with interviews, stories and fragments that capture (or distort) its culture and politics. The completed works will be played at clubs and public spaces in the city, broadcast on local radio and uploaded to radio.indymedia.org.

Program:

19 July, 16:00: Tranzit House, Str. G. Baritiu nr 16 :: Intro to radio.territories project & workshop. Presentation of do it yourself media practices, the history of cultural jamming, the experimental use of acoustics by artists and free radio projects in the US and Europe.

20 July – 23 July, 11:00 – 18:30: Binar Center for Digital Culture, Str. Universitatii nr 2. :: Workshop for registered participants.

21 July, 22:00: La Gazette, Str. Clinicilor nr 16 :: Screening of "Sonic Outlaws," a film by Craig Baldwin about cultural jamming. The term "jamming" comes from the practice of amateur radio pranksters who interfered with broadcasting signals. "Sonic Outlaws" documents examples of jamming from Duchamp and Warhol to Negativland - who gained underground notoriety when they were sued by copyright U2’s copyright lawyers for parodying their songs.

22 July, 22:00: La Gazette, Str. Clinicilor nr 16 :: DJs Podp (San Francisco / Berlin) and Dan Seizure (Edinburgh) mix up electronica, d+b & world beat with visuals.

23 July, Works produced during the workshop played in Cluj and broadcast on FM – times & places will be announced. Look for updates on http://www.dmedia.ro and http://romania.indymedia.org

About the invited artists:

Pod p, aka Paul Fyvolent, is a media activist, artist, writer, DJ and the host of Pan Optic Radio (a mix of audio composting and interviews with activist artists). He has worked primarily in San Francisco and Berlin, contributing audio, texts and films to Ars Electronica, Next 5 Minutes, Noborder.org, Borderland Film and Arts Festival, Resonance FM and Radio.Indymedia.org. Pod is also a writer for Faultlines and The Journal Of Aesthetics and Protest, a co-founder of the Soundlab at Cellspace in San Francisco (http://www.cellspace.org), and is active with Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org). His latest production site for media interventions and community organisms is http://www.xlterrestrials.org.

Danseizure, aka Daniel Gorman, works in Edinburgh as an experimental composer, creating hypnotic music by sampling and distorting sounds collected from everyday life (http://www.theforest.org.uk/music/Danseizure). In 2004 he was awarded a Grant from the Scottish Arts Council to work in a dome of an abandoned American military base in Berlin, where he reversed the dome’s original constructed purpose (to listen) to produce abstract sound compositions. The recordings were featured at Transmediale 2005 on the Soundscape Website (http://berlin.soundscape-fm.net). Dan performs at The Forest, a veggie cafe/self-organized art space in Edinburgh. For the past year he has worked in Bosnia Herzegovina as Director of Firefly International, organizing exchange projects and youth workshops.

Posted by jo at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

BNMI Co-production Lab:

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Almost Perfect

Almost Perfect is a rapid prototyping lab that explores the creation of pervasive mobile media in the Banff region. With the dedicated support of peer advisors, technicians, and production facilities, participants can develop basic to advanced level prototypes in the areas of locative media, site specific work, telematics, audio art, and responsive environments. This residency will also explore the political and social economic contexts of locative media and the wireless spectrum. Almost Perfect is a joint venture between BNMI and HP Bristol. Prototype development will be realized through the use of GPS enabled HP iPAQs and software developed by HP Research Labs Bristol.

Program Dates: November 05, 2006 - December 02, 2006 :: Application Deadline: July 15, 2006 :: Tuition: $1,850 (CAD) (scholarships may be available for accommodation and meals) :: Peer Advisors Include: Chantal Dumas (CND), Paula Levine (CND/US), Julian Priest (DK/UK):: Additional Program Details :: How To Apply.

Posted by jo at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2006

Europe Lost and Found

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Join The Lost Highway Expedition

A massive movement of individuals will pass through Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Priština, Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo. The expedition will generate projects, art works, networks, architecture and politics based on knowledge found along the highway. Projects developed from the expedition will lead to events in Europe and the US. LHE is a project by the School of Missing Studies and Centrala Foundation including: Azra Akšamija, Katherine Carl, Ana Dzokić, Ivan Kucina, Marc Neelen, Kyong Park, Marjetica Potrč and Srdjan Jovanović Weiss, together with partners in the cities of The Lost Highway Expedition.

The Lost Highway Expedition is a tour to explore the unknown future of Europe. It was initiated by the School of Missing Studies [SMS] as the first event of Europe Lost and Found (ELF), a multi annual and three-phased project. ELF is an interdisciplinary and multi-nationally based research project to articulate and imagine the current evolution of new and transforming borders and territories of Europe.

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The subject is the continent of immigration, and its depopulation and aging, and the need for redefinition of states, sovereignties and citizenships. Challenged is the established belief and practice of nation-state, including non-representative and technocratic construction of European Union yet to vision more open and alternative definitions for populous in movements. The rejection of constitutional referendum and the riots in France signal the contradiction between homogeneous and multiple identities, the fluidity of capital and containment of labor, the liberation of individuals and their restrictions under sovereignty. Clearly, Europe cannot subsist by itself, and is already being redefined by "the others" in its quest for a self-identity. In such contexts, ELF suggests the future of Europe is best seen in the Western Balkan.

Posted by jo at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2006

SoundWalk 2006

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Call for Proposals

Taking place within the Arts District of Downtown Long Beach, SoundWalk is an annual art event, produced by the Long Beach artist group, FLOOD. During this, our third year, in addition to the main sound installation-based event on Saturday, we will offer an extra evening of performances on Friday. The sound installations will encompass a wide range of work that will integrate visual and aural elements. Included will be sculptures, environments and installations, both interactive and passive. It is the variety of work that makes this event memorable for all who participate as well as for those who attend.

"The initial impetus for SoundWalk arose from a certain ennui with the physical environment in which we function on a daily basis. Thus a question was born out of the experience of sameness with a familiar environment spawning numerous more questions. How could we make this interesting? What would make this place different? How could a change be challenging to the residents and visitors to this area? What if it sounded differently than it does?..." From Notes on SoundWalk by Frauke von der Horst

Application Deadline: August 5th
Application Fee: None

Submission requirements:

:: Resume
:: Artist Statement
:: Up to two (2) proposals or examples of previous work with:
o Sound clips (.wav, mp3 or .aiff)
o Images (hi-rez)
o Accompanying text / description

(Please indicate which previous works are available for this year’s event.) *All submissions will be reviewed and accepted by an academic and artistic panel selected by FLOOD.

Please send all submission information in digital form to: submissions[at]soundwalk.org

Posted by jo at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

NEURAL N.25

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new media art. emusic. hacktivism.

NEURAL N.25: new media art .Siegfried Zielinski interview. .Olia Lialina interview. Christophe Bruno interview. .Identity in the age of digital technologies. news: Ten-sided, ten identities in a blog, Emotion's Defibrillator, consciousness short circuit, Camera Obscura 2005/1-Inf, memetic photographic virus, Confess.or, one to many confessions, Difference Engine, extracting the metaphysics from the net. reviews: ..books / dvd / cd-rom: Satellite of Love; M.Eraso, A.Ludovico, S.Krekovic - The Mag.net reader; A. Cerveira Pinto - META.morfosis; M.Jahrmann, M.Moswitzer - Ludic Society Magazine #1 + #2; T.Corby - Network Art; V. Baroni - Postcarts; J.Juul - Half-Real.

emusic .Andrea Polli interview. Snog interview. Derek Holzer interview. news: 4'04" Sound not found, Pianolina, the interactive piano, Dewanatron, cranking electronics, eShofar, folk tradition and technology, Amy e Klara, machinic male - dicta. reviews: books / dvd / cd+: A.Hugill - 'Pataphysics; Microscope Session DVD 2.0; Live Cinema 01; G.Kiers+L. van der Velden - Sonic Acts XI; AGF.3 & Sue.C - Mini Movies; V.Moorefield - The Producer as Composer; Y.Kawamura - Slide. .cd reviews: Aphex Twin, Francisco Lopez, Luc Ferrari, John Hegre & Maja Ratkje, Autechre / The Hafler Trio, Doddodo, Howard Stelzer / Giuseppe Ielasi, Jarrod Fowler, Warren Burt, Hyper, Rf, Pure, Alvars Orkester, Miller + Fiam, Rlw, Crawling With Tarts, Scatole Sonore/Impro Ensemble, Product, Incidental Amplifications, Refractions.

hacktivism .Raqs Media Collective interview. Fernando Llamos interview. Hacking Biometrics. news: Monolith, copyright hacking, Un_wiki, Wikipedia radical polemic, Movie Mapper, The Brand Hype Database, Pneumatic Parliament, instant democracy, Zone Interdite, mapping secret territories. reviews: books / dvd / cd+:F.Stalder - Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks, B.Marenko - DiY Survival, M.Gerritzen - Beautiful World, M.Vishmidt + M.A.Francis + J.Walsh + L. Sykes - Media Mutandis.

Posted by jo at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

Digital Arts and Culture: The Future of Digital Media Culture

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Call for Papers

Conference Dates: 15 - 18th September 2007: Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) is the leading cross-disciplinary scholarly/research conference series for the analysis of developments in the broad field of digital media, expression and communication. DAC will be hosted as the key international conference in the public program of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) in Perth, Australia. BEAP celebrates and critiques new and novel technologies (digital, bio, nano, other) by showcasing artworks made with, or are about, new technologies. perthDAC's conference program will be closely inter-woven with BEAP's exhibitions.

Theme: In the early 1990s, the very term digital was new and novel. However, it has taken only fifteen years for e-mail, the Internet, mobile phones, the power of searchable databases, games, film and TV special effects and workplace software tools to become a common and essential part of modern life. Research has not only described the arrival of these new forms, but is increasingly addressing the unexpected social and cultural uses of digital communications and virtual work/play environments.

In the same historically brief time, popular attention has turned to the potentials and problems of the newer new technologies, bio and nano. In addition, the global phenomenon of terrorism, super-epidemics and climate change have developed from distant concerns to everyday realities. Thus the context for digitally mediated processes is also very different.

perthDAC 2007 will explore the complex interaction of human behaviour and new technologies that will be The Future of Digital Media Culture.

Posted by jo at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

NEXT YASMIN HOT TOPIC:

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EDUCATIONAL ISSUES AROUND MEDITERRANEAN RIM

"One of the questions that comes to mind is the difference between teaching in a context where new media technologies are being invented and developed, as compared to teaching in a context where there are few local R and D or technology development companies or laboratories; i.e. how do you teach in a context that consumes inventions basically developed elsewhere?

Scientists and engineers like to say that science and technology are "neutral" but of course the use of science and technology are socially embedded. Not only is access to science and technology an issue in many places, but the agenda for new science and technology is often set in places very distant to address priorities that are different from local priorities.

For instance the way that the computer game and mobile phone industries are now setting the research agendas is not driven by local needs but by global market share, and only the open source and other movements are addressing other research agendas. An important idea for me is that the direction that science and technology is not some inevitable process; it is a process that is driven by a combination of the dreams of inventors and their access to funding to develop their ideas.

And here we have to ackowledge that a language is a not a neutral context;
if you choose to teach in a non english language, do you have access to the teaching materials you need? What language do you teach new media in and how does this contextualise what can and cannot be taught?" Roger Malina, YASMIN

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

LAb[au]

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LIQUID SPACE 04 Workshop

LAb[au] is pleased to announce LIQUID SPACE 04 a workshop on interactive spatial audiovisuals with the specific theme of co/ordinate space. The workshop will take place from August 31 to September 22, 2006 at the Center for Visual Arts TENT, Rotterdam, The Netherlands in the context of the exhibition Neo-beginners|open Rotterdam, initiated by Reinaart Vanhoe.

Liquid Space is a series of artistic workshops LAb[au] has realized in the past three years to design spatial audiovisuals with a specific focus on collaborative design processes. Each design cycle stands under a specific theme, theoretic approach, to frame the work on the interactive, immersive and performative qualities of digital design whereas its results lead to installations, exhibitions and performances. In the context of Liquid Space, LAb[au] also conceived a hypertextual catalogue transcribing these interactive 360 multiscreen and quadraphonic real-time constructs into a 2D concept. The dvd-book is a visual, theoretic and sonic collection of spatial audiovisuals created by LAb[au] in collaboration with over 30 artists from all over the world.

lqs01: deSIGNforms _ Nabi Art Center, Seoul 2003 ...>
lqs02: deSIGNing by numbers _ MediaRuimte, Brussels - 2004 ...>
lqs03: deSIGNing feedback loop systems _ Brakke Grond, Amsterdam - 2005 ...>

lqs 01/02 dvd book...> For the collaborative design workshop the space navigable music platform, a 3D engine developed by LAb[au], is proposed to the invited artists as starting-point for development and exchange. The engine is based on the principle of integrating different media in a structural, programmed manner (parameter design), inside and through electronic space / navigation. In this manner the design platform proposes rather space- than time-based logics of visual and sonic media, it is composing and editing inside 3d space to create visual and sonic architectures. An environment where the performer navigates his created 3D space to compose music in real time, displayed in a 360 projection space and quadra-phonic sound.

Liquid Space 04: [ general approach ]

The topic of the workshop is designing spatial audiovisual music, or in short: how to produce an artwork where music and visuals merge, through to the concept of space. Here movie making techniques, music composition and architectural structural practices merge.

Interdependency of sounds and visuals opens a new range of experiments, considering the digital nature of the work which permits both real-time and interactive manipulation, inscribing itself in a new artistic register of designing processes and systems, rather than closed results. Liquid space thus stands for the setting of interactive sonic and visual processes as a transdiciplinary approach, but also as an explorative work in merging codes and signs of different media. In this sense, the workshop focuses on the production of interactive 3D real time spatial and visual music projects, which take in account different performative settings, such as live concerts, user interaction, interfacing and exhibition installation.

Liquid Space 04: [ theme ]

The liquid space 04 cycle stands under the specific theme of co/ordinate space.
As the title already suggests the main concern of the workshop are the spatial logics involved in digital design, since working on visual and sonic architectures is not only the spatial structuring of information and communication processes, but also a concern of hardware interfacing and its scenography. In this sense, coordinates stands for the spatial logics of programming, its semantics and its visualisation logics proposed through the space navigable music platform, whereas coordination stands for the coherency in the interplay of different spatial concepts binding 3d real-time constructs to the design of specific hardware interfaces, its protocols and dataflows, as its spatial display, the scenography. In this manner the theme of Co/ordinate space focus on architectural concepts binding electronic and physical space as it questions the way we interact and perceive inside these constructs integrating any form of visual, sonic media. Further coordination outlines one of the main focuses of the liquid space workshop the setting up of collaborative design processes.

Liquid Space 04: [ practical ]

Submissions are being solicited from artists ( visual artists, musicians, graphic designers, programmers, architects, video and media artists ) who have a developed interest in the aims and theme of the workshop. A biography plus media can be send to lab-au@lab-au.com.

Deadline for submission: 10th of August

A selection of 10 participants will be made by LAb[au] and Reinaart Vanhoe (curator). Selected artists will be notified on the 11th of August.

The workshop will be held in English. Participants should bring their own labtop / desktop. Technological skills are not a condition for participation, though will be taken in account for the selection.

Accomodation for the participants isarranged on the expense of the organiser.

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2006

x.meda

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Experimental Media Arts

x.meda [PDF] (edited by) Maja Kuzmanovic, Nadine, Annemie Maes, Yves Bernard :: Paper is meant to last and this printed annual anthology of media art projects and experiences, originating in Belgium, is even more valuable because it's focused on the outcomes of a specific territory. Edited by four networked media art organizations of Brussels (nadine, okno, FoAM and iMAL), the content is a collection of knowledge and experience sharing, written by artists and pratictioneers explaining the tools they use and their own background philosophy production methods. Many workshops, in fact, disperse their content only to participants, losing the opportunity to distribute the (sometimes surprising) collective results to a more vast audience. This is the case, with some intriguing collaborations that more than often join design requirements with the open source liberating spirit and powerful tools. The presented experiments ranges from poetry composed with Pure Data to interfaces made with crochets, from audio responsive electroluminescent potatoes to speech synth for artificial singer, and as a whole they are a very peculiar and critical mass of locally conceived / globally enjoyable works. [posted on Neural]

Posted by jo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

C5 Landscape Database API 2.0

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An Open Source GIS API

C5, in association with Futuresonic 2006, is proud to release the C5 Landscape Database 2.0 API to the public, in celebration of ten years of Futuresonic!

New Features in version 2.0: * Virtual Hikers * Support for GPS data such as track logs and waypoints * Ability to image GPS data onto dem data * Java3d support * Ability to read land use data (CTG files) * New analytic capabilities for landscape searching.

Version 1.0.3 features: * DEM input packages * RDBMS packages for DEM data * Support for processing DEM data dynamically * Analytic table support for landscape searching * Simple GUI (demtool) for viewing DEMs * Support for data export and management

(c) C5 corporation 2002-2006, under the GNU Lesser Public License (pre-2.0 libraries) and C5/UCSD AESTHETIC USE LICENCE (2.0 libraries: see source code for details)

Posted by jo at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2006

Lovebytes Digital Space

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Commissions Available

COMMISSIONS FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE [e.g. artists, designers, musicians and interactive media developers] WORKING DIGITALLY [e.g. interactive environments, events, physical / site specific installation and performance]: DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 28 JULY 2006 :: Lovebytes Digital Space Commissions offer funding and exhibition opportunities for creative, digital and interactive artworks. The commissioned works will be exhibited as part of Lovebytes International Festival of Digital Art 2007, 19 - 24 March 2007, Sheffield, UK.

Funding is available for the creation of new work and the completion or exhibition of existing work. Up to £5,000 (GBP) is available for each project. The aim of the commissions is to create a unique showcase for creative digital work in South Yorkshire, with the Lovebytes Festivalproviding an annual exhibition platform. There are also a range of other exhibition opportunities throughout the year.

Applications are invited by email only dsp07[at]lovebytes.org.uk. Please use the application form. Supporting materials can be sent by post to: DSP 06, Lovebytes, Workstation, Sheffield, S1 2BX (We cannot return these materials, please do not send originals or valuable items).

Posted by jo at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2006

URBAN SCREENS 2007

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Seeking CURATOR

URBAN SCREENS 2007, a joint project of BBC Public Space Broadcasting, Cornerhouse Manchester, MDDA, and the Institute of Network Cultures, is seeking candidates for the CURATOR position for its 2007 conference. The post is available starting December 2006, and will be funded for one year on a freelance basis.

URBAN SCREENS are interactive, dynamic digital information displays in urban environments. Forms and appearances range from LED billboards, plasma or SED screens, information displays in public transportation systems and electronic city information terminals to dynamic, intelligent surfaces that may be fully integrated into architectural façade structures. Their introduction in the urban environment poses new, unparalleled challenges and opportunities.

URBAN SCREENS 2005 was the first international conference of its kind. Presentations covered a broad spectrum of topics and issues, ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of art, architecture, urban studies and digital culture.

URBAN SCREENS 2007 (Manchester, October 2007) will elaborate on this discussion, focusing on the potential of content: issues surrounding the production and display of media content for Urban Screens, as well as adaptive reuse of 'old' content for new media will be explored in detail. Topics will include the potential of public screens for interaction, Public Space Broadcasting (PSB), the politics of public space, mediated interaction and participation, and new participatory formats.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

To be responsible for the delivery of the conference programme through collaboration with a wide variety of artists, curators and organisations by:

- Selecting presentations and art works;
- Creating a coherent 2-day conference programme;
- Coordinating a range of parallel exhibitions;
- Liaison with venues, partners, artists and institutions;
- Contributing to the documentation of the conference;
- Contributing to the communication and marketing plans for the conference;
- Ensuring access issues and Health and Safety are considered as part of the programme planning process;
- Working within budgets agreed by the Board of Urban Screens Projects Ltd.

RESPONSIBLE TO The Board of Urban Screens Projects Ltd.

KEY COMPETENCES AND QUALIFICATIONS

- Extensive working experience as a curator and/or researcher;
- Excellent communication & writing skills;
- Extensive professional knowledge of (audio)visual arts;
- Extensive professional knowledge of the fields of new media & urban studies;
- Fluency in English & preferably one other language.

More information:
http://www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens/
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/special11_2/

TERMS: This is a freelance contract, the successful candidate will responsible for payment of his or her own taxes. Payment will be made in four instalments against pre-agreed milestones. Fee £10,000 plus reasonable expenses. The contract will be made under UK law.

APPLICATIONS: To apply, please send a letter of application outlining how you meet the key competencies and have the relevant experience together with a current CV to:

Cornerhouse
Attn. Dave Moutrey, Director
70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH
United Kingdom
Dave.Moutrey[at]cornerhouse.org

Deadline for applications is July 21, 2006.

Posted by jo at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

Art in the Age of Technological Seduction

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Art in the Age of Technological Seduction: Call For Papers; Fall 2006 issue of NMC media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus; Guest Editors: Legier Biederman and Joshua Callaghan: DEADLINE JULY 30, 2006.

The fall 2006 issue of Media-N, Art in the Age of Technological Seduction, is a collaborative platform, a diverse questioning, re-considering and re-imaging of what, when and how new media arts practice is viewed by artists, practitioners, theorists, critics and historians working in the field today. We seek a broad range of contributions discussing the scope, values, and definitions of diverse new media arts practices and hope that this issue of Media-N will be a departure as much as much as an arrival. Four general questions have been posed by the members of the new media caucus as points of entry for an engaging, vibrant discussion.

The issue will be divided into two sections: The first section invites brief personal accounts and anecdotal responses addressing and/or expanding one of the four questions, and we encourage everyone to respond to this section, as we’d like to include as many responses as possible. The second section invites papers that address these questions in a more lengthy and detailed form.

Four Questions:

1. Defining and Re-imagining

What are new media arts? Is it necessary that we define new media arts? How do we begin to discuss or teach new media arts? What sets new media arts apart from other disciplines or practices, or what connects them? What's (still) new about new media or what was, if anything ever was? What defines your work as new media art and why? How do you explain new media arts to your students and colleagues? What did or currently does attract you to new media arts practices?

2. Discourses on New Media Arts

What do the discourses do to the practice? How might one describe or define the discourse/s on new media arts? How does new media arts discourse relate to new media practices? In other words, what does the discourse/s do or attempt to do to new media arts? Are theory and practice being brought together in new media arts discourse, and if not, how might we begin to do so? What do you find interesting or problematic about new media arts discourses? Do you think there is a disjuncture between new media arts practice and the discourses on it? As a new media artist, do new media arts discourses affect your practice?

3. Authorship, Relationships & Relationality

Does your work maintain a traditional relationship between the artist/author/producer and the spectator/viewer? If not, how does it transgress these boundaries? Do you feel it necessary to challenge these boundaries? Do you consider relationality, the non-hierarchical intertwining of data, artwork, artists, and viewers etc., an important aspect of your work? In what context/s is your work shown and how does effect it. How do recombinatory practices commonly found in new media such as sampling, appropriation, and mash-ups, challenge traditional author/viewer conventions? While autonomy and relationality have long lineages in art history, how do they function within new media arts practices and discourses?

4. E-litism: Technospheres and the Everyday

How do notions of location, language, identity, and cultural understandings of communication inform or effect new media practices? Who is left out of, disproportionately under-represented, in the world of new media art practices? Is, as some have argued, the openness often associated with information technologies and new media practices, paradoxically, replacing the national politics of a past with the global connectivity of cosmopolitan tourism? How does your particular specificity (sexual, gender, ethnic, racial, class) affect your practice, your work or its reception?

Event reviews: The editorial board also invites proposals for reviews of exhibitions / events / festivals / conferences, etc.

For more information: http://www.newmediacaucus.org/media-n/call.htm.

[] Send manuscripts via email to: Legier Biederman (lbiederm[at]ucla.edu) by July 30, 2006
[] Paper format and media format are in the 'Submission Guidelines' link
[] Media-N author's agreement is available from the 'Copyright Statement' link
[] Questions: contact guest editors Legier Biederman (lbiederm[at]ucla.edu) and Joshua Callaghan(joshua[at]joshuacallaghan.com)

THANK YOU

Posted by jo at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2006

The Paradox of Temporary Centers and the Peripheries they Create

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ISEA2006 re:mote Open Call

ISEA2006 re:mote--August 10-12, 2006--is a symposium within ISEA2006 and is issuing a Call for Proposals. ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) 2006, an international conference held in conjunction with ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of art on the Edge, will be held in San Jose, CA, August 7-13 2006. Both events are "situated at the critical intersection of art and technology."

International new media art discourse is stimulated by festivals and events like ISEA2006 which form temporary cultural centers to represent, present and discuss networked and digital technologies. However by forming temporary centers we also tacitly create a notion of a periphery - with temporary centers also come temporary peripheries. In new media culture this is a paradox as much new media art, theory, and discourse reflects on the network itself and the elusiveness and redundancy of centers and peripheries.

ISEA2006 re:mote attempts to dissuade us from imposing these distinctions by providing a platform for artists, commentators, curators, performers and theorists to participate in ISEA 2006 via online and pre-recorded media.

ISEA2006 re:mote Open Call

ISEA2006 re:mote is inviting media spaces and individual artists, theorists, and curators from around the world to speak or perform via remote technologies to the audience at ISEA. Presentations to be directed at the four themes of ISEA 2006. Participants are invited to present or perform on topics included within the ISEA symposium, and onsite audience interaction with the presenters is also encouraged. ISEA re:mote will focus on presenting media spaces and people that would otherwise be excluded from presenting their work at ISEA due to financial, political, or logistical reasons.

The length of each presentation can be negotiated, however, for now we have set the maximum time limit of 20 minutes. Technologies used will be up to each presenter, the premise is that the technologies should be easy for you to use and access and ISEA2006 re:mote will manage the corresponding technology requirements as much as possible onsite at ISEA2006. Live and pre-recorded material can be included. Live presentations could use any available technlogies
including voice technologies such as Skype / OpenWengo / Gizmo / Linphone / Ekiga or other softphones, audio or video streams, video conferencing with softwares like ichatAV / Ekiga / Skype / OpenWengo, web cams, shared desktops using softwares like VNC / RemotePC or Remote Desktop, text chats such as irc or webchats, avatar environments, gaming environments, or even the telephone! In situations where your available bandwidth is limited or restricted, delivery of digital presentation material (audio/video) can be delivered electronically or posted by traditional mail. In all situations online presence of the presenters would be beneficial, this may take the form of IM, irc or other text based chat technologies if 'realtime' audio or video communications are not possible. Creative use of remote presentation technologies is encouraged!

Time slots have to be negotiated, but we are willing to bend as much as we can to include as many people as possible from various time zones. Unfortunately there are no honoraria available for this event.

ISEA2006 will feature four themes: Interactive City, Community Domain, Transvergence, and Pacific Rim. Please see the following links for further information on each on the themes:

Transvergence
Interactive City
Community Domain
Pacific Rim

All proposals need only be a short paragraph outlining what you would like to present, a short bio (one paragraph), and the software, technology, or other delivery process you would like to use for the presentation. Please email this information to Adam Hyde at: adam[at]xs4all.nl

ISEA2006 re:mote is a collaboration between ISEA2006 and Adam Hyde and is based on the re:mote series of events: re:mote auckland - organised by r a d i o q u a l i a and ((ethermap and re:mote regina - organised by r a d i o q u a l i a and soil media lab

Posted by jo at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

Vague Terrain 04: The Body Digital

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Call for Audio Artists/Musicians

Context: In his 1964 text "Understanding Media" media theorist & future-caster Marshall McLuhan stated that electricity was an extension of the nervous system. The next issue of Vague Terrain is dedicated to continuing this line of thought and exploring both the interface and friction between contemporary digital technology and the body. Vague Terrain 04: the body digital will serve as a catalog of new conceptions of the intersection between the physical and digital realms, one in which the body is read as a dataset, instrument, and host to new economies and discourses.

The Call: Vagueterrain.net's fourth issue will be entitled "the body digital" and we are currently seeking the work of audio artists and musicians whose work deals with the interface between the body and contemporary technology to showcase in this issue. Vague Terrain 04: the body digital will be published online in early September 2006 so work would need to be submitted by mid August. Vague Terrain audio submissions generally consist of 30-40 minutes of original sound/music which is distributed through our publication via an author sanctioned creative commons license.

If you are interested in contacting us regarding submitting audio work to this issue, or have any questions please contact us via submit[at]vagueterrain.net. Greg Smith & Neil Wiernik, editors/curators.

Posted by jo at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2006

Architecture and Situated Technologies

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Pre-Symposium Discussion

A three-month long discussion will prepare the Architecture and Situated Technologies symposium in October 2006. Contribute or follow the discussion. This symposium is a coproduction between the Center for Virtual Architecture at the University at Buffalo, The Institute for Distributed Creativity, and the Architectural League of New York.

Introduction: The Architecture and Situated Technologies symposium, organized around the notion of an "encounter," will articulate new research vectors, sites of practice, and working methods for the confluence of architecture, art, and situated technologies.

What opportunities and dilemmas does a world of networked objects and spaces pose for architecture, art, and computing? How might this evolving relation between people and "things" alter the way we occupy, navigate, and inhabit the built environment? What is the status of the material object and the embodied human relationships in a world privileging networked relations between "things"? How do distinctions between space and place change within networked media ecologies? What post-optimal design strategies and tactics might we propose for an age of responsive environments, smart materials, embodied interaction, and participatory networks?

While there is an explosive growth of mobile devices, the social uses of technologies are not sufficiently studied in terms of architecture. What distinguishes the emerging urban sociality enabled by the Wireless Internet? How do these dynamics, including (non-)affective giving destabilize rationalized 'use case scenarios'?

These are just a few urgent questions that the symposium will raise.

Through a combination of public and closed segments (workshops, presentations, and panel discussions), the symposium will stage a set of encounters between invited participants, an audience encouraged to participate, and the City of New York.

List facilitators:

July: Trebor Scholz
Topics: Networked Public Sphere, Autonomous Uses of Situated Sociable Media

August: Omar Khan
Topics: Performance Paradigms, Responsive Architecture and Artificial Ecologies

September: Mark Shepard
Topics: Locative Media, Tactical Urbanism, Situated Aesthetics

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2006

Music 4100 Computers

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Call for 100 Online Performers

Sean Kerr's first performance of M4100 is going to happen on July 9th, 12:00, NZ time at the Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. M4100 requires 100 online performers to create the event. Using a Flash multi-user server, all 100 online performers work together to creat an sonic and visual event that is live mixed by Sean Kerr, at the Govett Brewster Gallery auditorium.

If you are interested in participating in this event, please email your details to Sean Kerr [s.kerr at auckland.ac.nz] M4100 is coinciding with the exhibition 'what color does sound make?' and the sound performance event sound/bodies @ the Govett Brewster Gallery. M4100 is a 2005-2006 Rhizome.org commission.

Posted by jo at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Art Weeks 2006

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Symposium + Installations

Digital Art Weeks :: Symposium :: Artworks including:

The Waterbell Project--by Etsuko Maesaki--is a sound installation based on the Japanese 'Suikinkutsu'. Suikinkutsu ("Water Harp") is a unique feature of Japanese gardens. It consists of a large earthen jar with a hole in the bottom. This jar is buried upside down into the ground next to a water basin. When the waterdrops seep from above into the jar, they make a sound somewhat similar to what you would hear in an underground cave. The Waterbell Project consists of five vessels standing in a basin. A tube directs drops of water to the top of each of these vessels. When they drip into the water inside the vessels a sound can be heard. The frequency of the drops and the amount of water in the basin is controlled by a computer. At the same time this computer gathers realtime data from the internet: The price of oil in Japan and the temperature of the ocean. The frequency of the waterdrops dripping into the vessels corresponds with the temperature of the ocean, the water in the basin raises and drops with the price of oil, hence changing the quality of the sound made by the drops.

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CHINA GATES by Art Clay, Dennis Majoe, & The China Gates Workshop-Ensemble: The early experiments of Charles Ives's father with marching bands crossing at intersections and his son's adoption of it, proves that interest in exploring mobility has fascinated even before electronic devices. As with Ive's marching band polytonality, we also have the opportunity using modern technologies from the Walkman to the Wearable not only interact with local surroundings like Ives, but for the first time also on a world wide level. Global networking systems such as GPS amoungst others have created a ubiquitous environments in which we can now make art in. China Gates is a work for GPS Wrist conductors and tuned gongs for an ensemble. The work addresses the concept of audience in public space through the possibilities of the GPS Wrist Conductor and an acoustic concept of music making in public space. Anyone interested in joining the workshop is welcome. It is open free of charge to those interested. The performance will be held regardless of whether conditions at Platzspitz and will be performed by a group of artists and musicians who took part in the DAW06 Mobile Music Workshop.

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Motion Still Life 1--by Will Pappenheimer--extends the artistic tradition of the picturesque and spatial object arrangement into the domain of the Internet. A live Web camera frames a physical still life scene with vase, flowers and still life objects. Through its counterpart website, aesthetic controls allow internet viewers from anywhere to adjust the composition telematically in the distant space of the gallery. The Internet user is the surrogate artist. The time and space of the scene is ever-changing and accessible for the moment that becomes the still life. Exhibition visitors are able to see virtual participants configuring the still life through object movement, blinking LEDs connected with online activity, and multi-colored lighting for night time or alternative illumination. The mechanism is constructed from a self-contained network pan and tilt surveillance camera which has been disassembled and reconfigured for a more friendly gesture.

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

June 30, 2006

Suite Soil Digital Media

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Two New Commissioned Audio Works

Concert, June 30, 2006, 8:00 p.m.: A live stream of the June 30th concert is available at this link under SPIKED.

Guy van Belle (Bratislava): "slashtops": The concert program "slashtops" consists of real time manipulations with sound transforming light to sound and sound to light in three parts to investigate the relationship between sound and image, audio art and the visual, a persistent tension in the arts for generations. The first part of the program is a trilogy of arrangements between synthetic and real sounds the source material and inspiration based on recordings made in Quebec based on the movement of the artbots that comprise 'thoughts go by air'. A second source of audio content comes from Munich based on sounds from the city environment and a third from Bratislava, around Zlaty Piesky (an industrial - recreational - commercial area). The second component of the program is based on a translation of light into sound using the computer as an instrument. The third part of the program is a concert version of the installation TICS, which is a translation of light into sound and back to light, with a score based on the novel 'istanbul' by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (2006).

Biography: Guy Van Belle (working and living on the road and in Bratislava) has been prominently involved in the use and development of media for artistic purposes since 1990. Since 2000 xgz has been working under the name of the collective digital band mxHz.org (machine cent'red humanz), creating collaborative performances, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and unexpected experimental/abstract art projects. MxHz.org is co-organizer of the umbrella organisation okno, a non-profit technological art organisation situated in Brussels.

MxHz.org are currently developing 2 sets of autonomously communicating heliumbots. The title of the project is "thoughts go by air". Performances were set up in Brussels, Den Hague, and New York. The current new generation is being developed in Brussels (http://okno.be) and Berlin. A special focus for mxHz.org is on Balkan/Central/Eastern Europa to work towards a new sustainable kind of collaborative projects. A recent ongoing work - 2WR or two-way-radios - is a net-remake of John Cage's Imaginary Landscapes #4 (for 12 radios and 24 performers) based on some historical texts by innovative radio artists. The project started in Prague during the FM@dia conference 2004 and was recently set up as a networked installation at Skolska Prague. With Akihiro Kubota he started the Society of Algorithm in 2001, working on netbased music performances. They participate in festivals and connected concerts. Since 2005 open workshops were added and a residency exchange between Europe and Japan to expand the concept. Recently, they contributed to the Berlin Sonambiente Exhibition.

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June 30 - July 29, 2006 - Installation: Peter Courtemanche's (Vancouver): "Preying Insect Robots", Opening reception Friday, June 30. Work created for the commission series, "Living with artificial beings" for Soil Digital Media Suite. Preying Insect Robots c. 2006 by Absolute Value of Noise.

Preying Insect Robots is a set of autonomous creatures that move about and communicate using a wireless Internet connection. These robots are modeled after an imaginary jade-green preying mantis - a mechanical creature that is described in the "Martian Chronicles" (by Ray Bradbury). The robots are adaptable to both indoor and outdoor environments - galleries, sidewalks, parks, and performance spaces. They engage in solo and choreographed group activities. The sound of their motors, motion and engagement creates an eerie soundtrack. The piece has a number of manifestations including an installation, a public intervention (performance), a web-presence, and an audio CD based on the sounds of the robots. As the robots wander, they transmit poetry to the Internet - creating montages of found text from a number of science fiction stories, including Feersum Endjinn (1994) and Excession (1996) by Iain M. Banks; The Martian Chronicles (1946 - 1958) by Ray Bradbury; Autofac (1955), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), and The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick; Mortal Engines (1972 - 1976) by Stanislaw Lem; and For a Breath I Tarry (1966) by Roger Zelazny.

To hear the poetry created by the preying insect bots, go to this link;
http://www.soilmedia.org/preying/

Biography: Peter Courtemanche is a contemporary sound and installation artist from Vancouver. He is the Director and Curator of the Western Front's Media Arts Program - which supports the production and dissemination of experimental audio and electronic art. He has worked extensively in radio-art and electronic/interactive interventions. His art works often have a literary basis - inspired by narrative texts and the history of specific installation sites. As a curator, collaborator and producer he has worked with many established and emerging artists in the production and installation of video, audio, and computer/electronic based art.

Events take place at Neutral Ground
1856 Scarth Street, Regina, Saskatchewan
Curated by Brenda Cleniuk

For funding support, we thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Sask Lotteries Trust, the City of Regina and the Department of Canadian Heritage

Posted by jo at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2006

Mobile Troops - Urban Jungle/Mobile Media Art

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Call for Participation

Mobile Troops Workshop by Laura Beloff & Erich Berger: 12-15 September, 2006 at Atelier Nord Oslo/Norway :: The recent years have witnessed the emergence of mobile and wireless art works in the media arts. The somewhat blurry definition "mobile art" is commonly used as a reference to works, which are incorporating a mobile device (phone, pda, gps) as a part of the work or which are made to be viewed on a screen of a mobile device. Various mobile devices, wireless networks and the concept of technologically enabeld presence are conditions for this kind of art works.

The wide variety of works (locative media, wearables etc) under the category of "mobile art" share usually at least two similarities, they have a technological component as a vital part of them and they are related to a physical object.

Works, which use mobile media as a critical artistic medium are not necessarily always inventing new functions or features for the devices, but are transforming existing possibilities and by doing it they are exposing the characteristics of these devices, networks, and the society using them.

Mobile Troops ironically points to the fact that we tend to increasingly equip us with all kinds of necessary interfaces for surviving the urban jungle. The electronic car key is as important as mobile phone and credit card. Mobile troops is a workshop about media art which is mobile, (possibly) networked, and experimenting with new ideas and artistic concepts.

Utilizing everyday objects and interfaces, like the mobile phone, the workshop introduces strategies, concepts and technologies for artists, designers and practitioners who are interested in mobile art and or working with mobile and networked devices.

The workshop will consist of:

* Introduction into the theory and history of mobile art
* Introduction into the technology of mobile art
* Technological infrastructure
* Potential for mobile art
* Concept development and discussions
* Hands on experiments, research and presentations

There is no technological pre-knowledge necessary.

Tools employed:
Java and Symbian based mobile phones
Mobile Processing
Pure Data
Arduino physical computing platform

WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

Participation is free of charge. Artists, designers and practitioners interested in participating are asked to apply with a CV to sense[at]anart.no. Application deadline Friday 11th of August. Workshop directors and producer:

Laura Beloff(FI) http://www.saunalahti.fi/~off/off
Erich Berger(AT/FI) http://randomseed.org

Mobile Troops is part of the Interface and Society project at Atelier Nord.

Upcoming:

Interface and Society conference 10th,11th of November
and exhibition 10th - 19th of November -
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo / Norway.

ATELIER NORD
PHONE +47 23060880
FAX +47 23060884
E-MAIL office[at]anart.no
URL http://anart.no
MAIL Lakkegata 55 D, N-0187 Oslo, Norway

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

Régine Debatty Interviews Guilherme Kujawski

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art.ficial emotion 3.0

In its third edition, art.ficial emotion 3.0, the art and technology international biennial that will take place this Summer in Sao Paulo, associates the words "interface" and "cybernetics" to synthesize the idea of interactivity.

As the organisers write: "But, what does "interface" mean? And "cybernetics?" Basically, the former represents any surface which separates two systems, while the latter is a discipline that studies how the referred systems communicate and interact with each other.

If interactivity can be freely defined as a reciprocal relationship between two systems through an interface, just like it happens in the interaction between humans and machines or between machines and other machines, then the works selected for the exhibition perfectly fit within the theory of cybernetics."

(...)

The works selected "embody concepts which are important to cybernetics, such as feedback, communication, causality, information, observation, predictability and equilibrium.

The line-up of the event is simply amazing:

France Cadet's Dog[LAB]01, Eden by Jon McCormack, Life Writer by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Messa di Voce by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, Les Pissenlits by Edmond Couchot and Michel Bret, Marius Watz' Neon Organic 2, Text Rain by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv, La Funambule Virtuelle by Marie-Hélène Tramus and Michel Bret, David Rokeby's Cheap Imitation, Daniel Rozin's Software Mirrors, Evolving Sonic Environments by Usman Haque and Robert Davis, Talysis 2 by Paul Prudence, The Thoughtbody Environment Interface by Bill Seaman. [continue reading at we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2006

THE FUTURESONIC 2006 AND PLAN CONFERENCE

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SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT

MANCHESTER UK, 20-23 JULY 2006: The Social Technologies Summit is presented in association with PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network, and features a linked exhibition Off The Map. Opening event Thursday 20th July, 4.30pm; Conference Friday 21st & Saturday 22nd July, 10am-5pm.

SUMMIT PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE: Masaki Fujihata, last.fm, Regine Debatty, Steve Coast, Share NYC, Toshio Iwai (Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS), Matt Webb, Richard Peckham (Galileo/Astrium), Inke Arns, Stephen Kovats, Tom Carden, Atau Tanaka, Jose Luis de Vicente, Stanislav Roudavski, Steve Benford, Rob Van Kranenburg, James Wallbank, Ben Russell, Drew Hemment.

Plus talks and presentations by festival artists including Zachary Lieberman, Simon Pope, Michelle Teran, Jen Southern, Pete Gomes, Open Music Archive, Owl Project, Pete Hindle, Sven Koenig, Victor Gama, mimoSa, Bandung Center for New Media Arts, and many more.

SUMMIT STRANDS

An Audience With... Toshio Iwai

Toshio Iwai, one of Japan's leading artists and star game developer at Nintendo, explores the influence of a lifetime immersed in Japan's technology culture, and looks at how it is possible for individual artists to create the kind of projects that previously required a major studio.

Social Arts

Regine Debatty (We Make Money Not Art) and José Luis de Vicente (Art Futura) will look at the arts of social technologies, and also at embryonic philosophies and practices that offer an approach that differs from the European media art orthodoxy.

Collaborative, Creative and Commercial Digital Mapping

A cross section of digital mapping from Masaki Fujihata, who pioneered the use of GPS in stunning, multilayered artworks as far back as 1992, to Richard Peckham, Head of Business Development (Navigation) at Astrium, the leading industrial participant in the Galileo programme (Europe's alternative GPS system), to Steve Coast, whose OpenStreetMap project is challenging entrenched assumptions about how maps are made and who can own them through user-generated, open source digital maps.

Social Technologies Tool Sharing

A quick live sampling survey of what tools the alpha, beta and omega geeks are using, how they use them, and how they make all the pieces fit together. Social technologies wouldn't be much use without users. They are open, connected and intrinsically social. Shared, collaborative technologies once the preserve of hackers in darkened rooms are now a common part of everyday life: MySpace, Wikipedia, Flickr, the internet itself.

Iterative Architecture (Built On An Internet Of Things)

SMS and low grade media have swept all before them over recent years, with games consoles a lonely ghetto for high end visualisation, but there are now some signs of integration with a resurgence of interest in shared 3D virtual worlds such as Second life. Coming from this background Tom Carden and Stanislav Roudavski along with Matt Webb look at how models of behaviour derived from games, anthropology, sensors and mobile devices can feed back into the experience and iterative design of buildings, real and virtual.

Arphids & the Internet Of Things

RFID is an interesting technology with all kinds of potential uses but it is also a major social issue creating reactions as adverse as those generated by GM food. Germany has been used as a testing ground by the global 'arphid' industry, foreshadowing, it is said, what is in store for the rest of Europe and beyond. A session co-presented by HMKV (Dortmund) will explore industry perspectives as well as strange alliances between fundamentalist Christians and left leaning artist-activists.

Build Your Own City

James Wallbank from Access Space, UK will be joined by representatives from Bandung Center for New Media Arts, Indonesia, and mimoSa, Brazil to explore how urban cultures around the world are being reshaped by social technologies.

Social Music

Social change, it is said, can be seen first in music because it is the most fluid and rapidly changing medium. Atau Tanaka (Sony CSL) introduces new musical forms that have evolved in the mobile age. Join the social music revolution with Last.fm. Share NYC come over from New York to present open jam sessions, improvising on each others' signal. And leading figures from the music world reflect on how the industry is being reshaped.

WORKSHOPS: GET SKILLED UP!

Four free artist-led workshops introduce hands-on skills in physical computing, digital video microscopy, game modification, generative sound and live video performance. Developed for Futuresonic by Creative Labs at the University of Huddersfield.

Game modification, 17th-19th July
Physical computing, 18th-19th July
Blender and sound, 19th-21st July
Build your own 8bit synth, 20th-21st July

The Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester Workshops free but early booking required. Workshop bookings: creativelabs[at]futuresonic.com / 01484 472617

VENUE

1830 WarehouseThe Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester Liverpool Road, Castlefield, Manchester M3 4FP 0161 832 2244 http://www.msim.org.uk

The Futuresonic 2006 Conference will be staged in the room containing a functioning version of Babbage's Baby computer, within the world's first railway warehouse.

TICKETS

Delegate Pass: 45 GBP

Includes access to all conferences and workshops plus two major exhibitions featuring 35 artworks including world premiers and UK firsts. Also includes Weekender Wristband (normally 25 GBP) which gives free access to over 20 events, entry to the Futuresonic Opening Party and food & drink discounts.

Student Delegate Pass: 10 GBP

Includes access to all conferences and workshops plus two major exhibitions featuring 35 artworks including world premiers and UK firsts. Also includes Loyalty Wristband (normally 3 GBP) which gives discounts on over 20 events.

20 day passes will be available from 10am on each day of the conference on a Pay-What-You-Can basis.

ACCOMMODATION

If you're looking for a place to stay, some of us will be staying at the Britannia Hotel. Any hotels located within a half-mile of this location will put you right at the heart of the festival's night-time action.

The Britannia Hotel, Portland Street, Manchester M1 3LA. 0161 228 2288 / 0845 644 8444

http://10.futuresonic.com/accommodation.html

Supported by EPSRC, University of Nottingham, Liverpool John Moores University, University of Salford, and Manchester Digital Development Agency.

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

Aspect - the Chronicle of New Media Volume VII:

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Personas and Personalities

Now Available from Microcinema DVD: Aspect - the Chronicle of New Media Volume VII: Personas and Personalities

This volume of ASPECT features artists working with issues of identity and personality. For some, a constructed identity is an opportunity to explore personal or cultural issues of gender, accountability and culpability. Other artists make their own personality an integral part of their work and process. All the works in this issue examine the role of personal psychology in how we interact with others and our surroundings on an everyday basis. We are thrilled by the quality and diversity of work in this issue, and with the diverse ways in which the artists and commentators interpreted our open call. Enjoy.

Included in this issue: CARIANACARIANNE: Bequeaths, Oaths of Signature with audio commentary by Julie Rodrigues Widholm :: ANTHONY GOICOLEA: Tea Party with audio commentary by Terri Smith :: SACHIKO HAYASHI: Boop-opp-A-Doop with audio commentary by Nicholas Economos :: LYNN HERSHMAN: Becoming Roberta, DiNA with audio commentary by Claudia Hart :: CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI: The Day We Met with audio commentary by Bill Arning :: ERIK LEVINE: More Man with audio commentary by Elizabeth Smith ::

KRISTIN LUCAS: Involuntary Reception with audio commentary by Marcia Tanner :: JILL MAGID: Evidence Locker with audio commentary by Jelle Bouwhuis :: THE YES MEN: Dow with audio commentary by Marisa Olson :: ADRIANNE WORTZEL: The Veils of Transference with audio commentary by Christiane Paul.

Posted by jo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2006

Digital Fringe

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Open Call

Digital Fringe is seeking submissions of digital visual material to be a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival: September 27 to October 15.

Digital Fringe connects to Melbourne via numerous screens throughout the city. These range from the grand screen at Federation Square to screens hidden in venues and retail outlets, from screens in public spaces, taxis and mobile 3G handsets to bedrooms at home and projections on buildings. Digital Fringe artworks will be streamed live to all participating screens and made available for live streaming over the Internet from the Digital Fringe website.

We are calling for: a.. Proposals for interactive art pieces that will play at Federation Square. The Federation Square interact project is an opportunity to combine phone images, video and texting into an interactive public art piece. Works may involve people sms and mmsing content onto the screens to be incorporated into, or to shape or influence the artwork in some way. We are interested in works that provide innovative ways of getting mobile phones and public screens working together.

b.. Digital art works to display on all screens. These can be stills, animations, video art, short film, abstract pieces, whatever! They will be played without sound. This material will make up part of the general stream which will play on all screens throughout the festival.

c.. Guest programmers to curate and operate the MPU (mobile projection unit).

d.. There are also a number of curatorial, technical and administrative roles where we need people to generally help with the running of the festival.

Eligibility: Anyone is eligible to enter and entry is free. You can submit as many works for screening as you wish. Works can include digital formats including video, animations and still image sequences either graphic or photographic - to be broadcast to the Digital Fringe screens and around the world on the Internet.

Simeon Moran
e: simeon[at]horsebazaar.com.au
m: 0402 514 017

Horse Bazaar
397 Lt Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000
p: +61 3 9670 2329
f: +61 3 9670 7863
w: www.horsebazaar.com.au

Posted by jo at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

ACM SIGGRAPH Video Game Symposium

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Sandbox

ACM SIGGRAPH is hosting SANDBOX, a two-day video game symposium on 29 July and 30 July in 2006, co-located with SIGGRAPH 06 in Boston, MA, USA.

The symposium will consist of keynotes by Ian Shaw of Electronic Arts and Greg Costikyan of Man!festo Games, panels and peer reviewed papers focused on industry and scholarly perspectives on how video games are designed and developed; analysis of the experience and pleasures of game play; and critical articles on the value and significance of video games as cultural artifacts.

In addition, a "Hot Games" session will preview unreleased titles from major game companies and independent developers, and recently released and classic titles will be available to try. Save $100 on the symposium cost by registering on-line prior to the June 23rd early registration deadline and providing your SIGGRAPH member number.

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

The C5 Quest for Success

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Call for Participants

Enter to play the C5 Quest for Success during the ZeroOne San Jose / ISEA 2006 Symposium August 9-12, 2006. The C5 Quest for Success is an invited project for ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge; San Jose, California, August 7-13, 2006.

Quest for Success is curatorial selection as urban game, testing competitors' analysis, management, and cooperative decision making skills - traits needed for success in Silicon Valley. The grand prize is a six to twelve week residency at the Montalvo Arts Center co-sponsored with C5 and a Silicon Valley corporate partner - a great opportunity for the right player with the right project pitch. Contestants navigate the streets of San Jose exploring GPS controlled narratives in an attempt to locate the C5 Corporate Limo. Once there, you just might have the opportunity to pitch your proposal to a panel of distinguished experts. A single winner from each evening's competition then advances to the final round on Saturday, August 12th. Three finalists representing TALK, DEMO, PERFORM 'present' their pitch live on-stage to an audience of thousands during the ZeroOne San Jose culminating celebration.

Does the smell of gasoline and oil perk you up like caffeine? Do lat and long coordinates make your heart sing? Then apply for a chance to win the Montalvo Arts Center C5 artist residency. Six to twelve weeks in picturesque Saratoga, California, working on the project of your dreams with the assistance of one of Silicon Valley's corporate powerhouses. Does mapping make you giddy? Does your imagination swell listening to stories about entrepreneurial masterminds and nefarious misdeeds? The C5 Quest for Success is your opportunity to be the passionate competitor you know you are.

C5 Corporation specializes in cultural production informed by the blurred boundaries of research, art and business practice.

Posted by jo at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)

Installations at Eyebeam

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Modern Orthodox + EarthSpeaker

June 29 through July 15 Eyebeam is pleased to present three new installations developed in our studios exploring innovative uses of sound and light, both visible and undetectable, to fix and define spatial environments.

Elliott Malkin's Modern Orthodox is a working demonstration of a next-generation eruv installed on 21st Street in front of Eyebeam in New York City. An eruv (pronounced ey-roov [related]) is a symbolic boundary erected around religious Jewish communities throughout the world. While an eruv is typically constructed with poles and wires, Modern Orthodox employs a combination of low-power lasers, wifi surveillance cameras and graffiti, as a way of designating sacred volumes of space in urban areas.

The eruv is an ancient architectural construct that stems from the observation of the Sabbath, the sacred day of rest that includes a prohibition against certain kinds of work, including the carrying of objects outside of one's home, or private domain.

The presence of an eruv allows some carrying on the Sabbath by symbolically converting the shared public space within its boundaries into the shared private space of a community. In this way, observant Jews can carry objects such as keys or prayer books while acting in accordance with sacred Talmudic principles.

Because the physical integrity of an eruv is essential to its symbolic function, a breach in any portion of it renders it useless, which is why the entire circumference of an eruv, usually miles in length, is customarily inspected prior to every Sabbath. Malkin's laser eruv, however, which relies on a continuous stream of photons rather than cords and wires, is not as susceptible to permanent breakage. A branch of a tree, for example, may impede the flow of photons but will not permanently damage the eruv apparatus. In this way, the laser eruv is self-healing. Malkin also uses surveillance cameras to monitor the laser eruv connections from a remote location, allowing eruv managers to identify obstructions more efficiently. The content of these video transmissions are displayed at Eyebeam as part of the installation of this work.

Elliott Malkin is a new media artist whose work explores the use of everyday objects invested with the power to "sanctify" space. His most recent work, Modern Orthodox, focuses on the eruv, a symbolic boundary used as part of the observation of the Jewish Sabbath. Elliott's other work includes eRuv, a virtual reconstruction of an eruv that once existed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan – and Crucifix NG, a next-generation crucifix that broadcasts a radio frequency version of The Lord's Prayer. Elliott is also investigating the way religion and technology combine to inform the construction of memorial sites. Elliott is originally from Chicago and lives in New York City. He also works as an Information Architect.

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Jeff Feddersen's EarthSpeaker is series of large-scale autonomous, solar-powered sculptures. Drawing their inspiration from dusk-active creatures like crickets, bullfrogs and fireflies, they are designed to absorb and store solar energy during the day and retransmit the energy as acoustic sound for a brief period at dusk. As the sun sets, the system will create a short, distributed chorus of sound until the energy stored for the day is consumed. EarthSpeaker was commissioned as a permanent installation at free103point9's Wave Farm in Acra, NY where it will be transported to after exhibiting at Eyebeam. The challenge of creating a long-term installation, in a harsh environment, using available ambient energy pushed Fedderson's exploration of energy storage, alternative speaker functions and artistic design.

Jeff Feddersen is an artist, musician, and engineer interested in new musical instruments and sustainable energy. He has developed several new means of musical expression, including robotic sonic sculptures, real-time composition software, multi-modal digital input devices, and amplified acoustic instruments. He has exhibited and performed at the Chelsea Art Museum, the Apple Soho Store, and UC Irvine's Beall Media Arts Center, and the Lincoln Center. He has taught electronics, sustainable energy, and digital audio at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he was also a Resident Researcher, and has worked for the Technology Development group of Honeybee Robotics.

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

Writing From Live Art

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Critical Writing Initiative

Do you want to write about live art and contemporary performance for journals, magazines and newspapers? Would you value the opportunity to develop your writing in a supportive environment?

If you are interested in writing about a range of innovative performance practices that are not restricted by artform boundaries, then Writing From Live Art could be what you are looking for.

Live Art UK, a national network of venues, promoters and agencies, is running a year-long scheme to develop and nurture writing talent. Writing From Live Art aims to develop writing, which can discuss complex live art and performance work in accessible terms, and on finding suitable publishing points.

Writing From Live Art is open to new writers or writers who are new to live art.

The scheme offers the opportunity to write about a broad range of live practices that address spaces, places and audiences, and that are more about process than product. The focus on accessible yet informed writing means that the scheme is not suitable for writers wishing to solely focus on academic writing or news journalism.

The facilitator for Writing From Live Art is artist and writer Joshua Sofaer.

Writing From Live Art will take the form of two weekend residential retreats, the first on 26th and 27th August 2006 and the second on 17th and 18th of February 2007. The retreats will take place at the Bretton Hall Campus of the University of Leeds, adjacent to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Participants will have to commit to both retreats and will also have some ongoing mentor support over the course of the year. The retreats will include set exercises, peer review, and an invited panel of editors to outline what they are looking for. Travel, accommodation and meals during the retreats are all covered by the scheme. A small ‘go and see’ travel and expenses budget will also be available to participants during the course of the year.

There is a limit of five places and expressions of interest are by application only. No formal qualifications are necessary but a commitment and enthusiasm for live art and contemporary performance are vital.

For more information and an application pack, visit http://www.liveartuk.org/projects/writers.htm

Joshua Sofaer is an artist and writer, and a Research Fellow at ResCen, the Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts at Middlesex University in London.

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

4 WORKSHOPS @ FUTURESONIC

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Now Accepting Applications

DRU CreativeLab workshops at Futuresonic, Manchester, UK :: 17 - 21 July 2006, Monday - Friday, 11:00 - 17:00 pm :: Registration fee: FREE!

WORKSHOP #1 "Game modification - games as audiovisual tools" :: BY: Tom Betts & Alison Mealey :: WHEN: 17 - 18 - 19 July :: Through this workshop you'll learn about game modification and how to use game generated data as input for audio and/or visuals. We'll look at level design, game engines and game data, and how to use specific game generated data (i.e. coordinates) in a Digital Signal Processing application.

WORKSHOP #2 "Introduction to physical computing" :: WHEN: 18 - 19 July :: BY: Tuomo Tammenpää & Daniel Blackburn :: Interested in making a custom hardware interface for your software instrument or embedding electronics to your art project but don't know where to start? Two intensive days will give you an introduction to physical computing. We will push buttons, lit LED's, make sounds, detect movement and interface with computer.

WORKSHOP #3 "Controlling sound with the Blender game engine" :: WHEN: 19 - 20 - 21 July :: BY: Enrike Hurtado & Andy Gracie :: This workshop is all about the creation of simple game environments, and using them to generate sound. During the workshop, a whole system for game play and audio will be developed and, most important, played with! The game you'll develop will be playable individually and over the network.

WORKSHOP #4 "Go Forth! - real-time graphics and 8bit sound" :: WHEN: 20 - 21 July :: BY: Tom Schouten, Aymeric Mansoux & Marloes de Valk (GOTO10) :: Go Forth! is a 2 day workshop in which you will build your own mini 8bit synthesizer using a PIC chip. Because fresh tunes simply taste better with some eye candy, we'll also teach you how to make real-time graphics. Go Forth! is based on 100% FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software).

MORE INFO: http://goto10.org/-/futuresonic

FEE: free!

BOOKING: Please send an email to creativelabs[at]futuresonic.com stating your name, address, telephone number and the workshop of your choice. Questions by telephone can be directed to +44 (0)1484472617

VENUE: the Museum of Science and Industry, Liverpool Road, Manchester

HOW TO GET THERE:

Bus: bus No 33 from Piccadilly Gardens stops outside the Museum
Tram: nearest Metrolink (tram) station - G-Mex
Train: nearest railway station - Deansgate

///The museum is 98% wheelchair accessible. If you have specific access requirements, please contact us in advance.

///The project is supported by Yorkshire Forward and the Digital Research Unit, University of Huddersfield (http://www.coedd.co.uk)

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2006

UPGRADE! BOSTON + EXCHANGE 2006

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Two June Events

UPGRADE! BOSTON: NANCY NISBET AND AMBER FRID-JIMENEZ: WHEN: June 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m. WHERE: Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street, Cambridge. [Red Line to Central Square]

Nancy Nisbet is a Vancouver-based artist. From a disturbing paintball gun performance enacting the chaotic fluctuation in the cost of crude oil during the lead up to the US-led War in Iraq/War on Terror to the surgical implantation of 'identity' microchips into her hands, much of her work considers the political, the technological and the personal. Of specific consideration in her mixed-media work are issues of power, economics, and surveillance and their cultural influences on entertainment/leisure, identity and community. Exchange 2006 is a large scale project currently underway. Nisbet received her MFA in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts. Nancy Nisbet is Assistant Professor of Visual Art in the Department of Art History, Visual Arts & Theory at the University of British Columbia.

Amber Frid-Jimenez is an artist and researcher working towards a masters in Media Arts and Sciences with Professor John Maeda in Physical Language Workshop at the MIT Media Laboratory. Prior to beginning her degree, she spent a year as a research designer in the Cognitive Machines Group at MIT, where she designed software systems visualizing large bodies of literature. Frid-Jimenez was a visiting artist at the Banff New Media Institute in 2005 and artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2003. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in New York, Washington D.C., and Boston. She has received grants from MIT Council for the Arts for her collaborative work with Joe Dahmen, Ben Dalton, and Noah Fields. She has won awards from the Art Director's Club, the American Association of University Presses and the Smithsonian for her book and exhibit designs.

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EXCHANGE 2006 [.pdf] [.doc]

Upgrade! Boston and Turbulence.org, in partnership with Art Interactive, proudly present a performance of EXCHANGE 2006 by Nancy Nisbet. Trade your goods for Nancy’s! Two Events /1/ WHEN: June 30, 1-4 p.m. WHERE: mobile cart, Massachusetts Avenue, Central Square, Cambridge/2/ WHEN: July 1, 1-4 p.m. WHERE: in the parking lot opposite Art Interactive, corner of Bishop Allen Drive and Prospect Street.

EXCHANGE 2006 replaces the studio with roads, truck stops, border crossings and cities. For 6 to 9 months Nisbet’s Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagged and inventoried personal belongings are being hauled in a commercial shipping container to be freely traded throughout Canada, the United States and Mexico. The performance includes the day-to-day travel and activities associated with driving a commercial transport truck and the contact with people and communities along the way.

"At each scheduled stop on the route, the team parks the truck, lowers the ramps, unloads at least half of the crates and invites viewers to peruse the goods. If a person happens to find something that tickles their fancy, they take it to the "mini house," temporary tech centre that operates on wireless technology, where the customer checks out the item while checking in something of theirs to replace their "purchase." Each item is tracked using RFID technology and logged into a database. In addition to the object exchange, the customer also relays the story behind their giveaway object to the crew, which is saved as an audio file, and in exchange Nisbet tells them the story behind their newly acquired item, sort of like an anecdotal gift wrap." (National Post, canada.com)

The trip and exchanges are being extensively documented and published at http://exchangeproject.ca.

Posted by jo at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2006

The Body and the Screen:

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Theories of Internet Spectatorship

The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship by Michele White -- Internet and computer users are often represented onscreen as active and empowered--as in AOL's striding yellow figure and the interface hand that appears to manipulate software and hypertext links. In The Body and the Screen Michele White suggests that users can more properly be understood as spectators rendered and regulated by technologies and representations, for whom looking and the mediation of the screen are significant aspects of engagement. Drawing on apparatus and feminist psychoanalytic film theories, art history, gender studies, queer theory, critical race and postcolonial studies, and other theories of cultural production, White conceptualizes Internet and computer spectatorship and provides theoretical models that can be employed in other analyses. She offers case studies and close visual and textual analysis of the construction of spectatorship in different settings.

White shows that despite the onscreen promise of empowerment and coherence (through depictions of materiality that structure the experience), fragmentation and confusion are constant aspects of Internet spectatorship. She analyzes spectatorship in multi-user object-oriented settings (MOOs) by examining the textual process of looking and gazing, contrasts the experiences of the women's webcam spectator and operator, describes intentional technological failures in net art, and considers ways in which traditional conceptions of artistry, authorship, and production techniques persist in Internet and computer settings (as seen in the creation of virtual environment avatars and in digital imaging art). Finally, she analyzes the physical and psychic pain described by male programmers in Internet forums as another counternarrative to the common tale of the empowered user. Spectatorship, White argues, not only affects the way specific interfaces are understood but also helps shape larger conceptions of self and society.

Michele White is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University.

Table of Contents

1. Making Internet and Computer Spectators

Introduction

Rendering Liveness, Materiality, and Space

Notions of the Empowered User

Addressing the Spectator

Stabilizing Identity

Erasing the Interface

Conclusion: Active Users by Design

2. Visual Pleasure through Textual Passages: Gazing in Multi-user Object-oriented Settings (MOOs)

Introduction

MOOs

The Look and the Gaze

Character Creation and Attributes in MOOs

The Look and the Gaze in MOOs

Gendered Gazing in MOOs

Graphical MOOs

Conclusion: Between Multiple and Coherent Identity

3. Too Close to See, Too Intimate a Screen: Men, Women, and Webcams

Introduction

Feminism and Spectatorship

Critical and Journalistic Considerations of Webcams

Webcams

Women and Webcams

Regulating the Spectator

Women Webcam Operators and Authority

Visibility and Webcams

Making Texts Real

Some Problems with Webcam Viewing

Just a Guy

Conclusion: The Politics of Being Seen

4. The Aesthetic of Failure: Confusing Spectators with Net Art Gone Wrong

Introduction

Aesthetics and Net Art

Net Art

An Aesthetic of Failure

Jodi

Peter Luining

Michaël Samyn

Conclusion: The Limits of Failure and Repetition

5. Can You Read Me? Setting-specific Meaning in Virtual Places (VP)

Introduction

Virtual Places

Avatars

Painters and Avatar Galleries

Owning Texts

Criteria for Originality

Theories of Internet Authorship

Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Avatar

Making Differences in Virtual Places

Conclusion: Authorship in Other Internet Settings

6. This Is Not Photography, This Is Not a Cohesive View: Computer-facilitated Imaging and Fragmented Spectatorship

Introduction

Making the Digital Imaging Spectator

Photography

Digital or Post-photography

The Scanner as Camera

Carol Selter's Animalia and Punctum

Susan Silton's Self Portraits and Images of the Partial Self

Ken Gonzales-Day's Skin Series and the Cut

The New Media Grid

Conclusion: The Morphed Spectator

Afterword
The Flat and the Fold: A Consideration of Embodied Spectatorship

Introduction

Carol Selter, Susan Silton, Ken Gonzales-Day, and the Fold

The Body Folded and Evacuated

Hierarchy and Control

The Spectator in Pain

The Fat and the Fold

Men and the Weight Loss "Challenge"

Erotic Folding

Conclusion: A Technology of Waste

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Posted by jo at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2006

GPS EXPO 2006

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It is the salt flats :: It is America :: It is free

GPS EXPO 2006: Greetings geocachers, anthropologists, mappers, landscape photographers, GIS users, artists, backpackers, and others with a nominal interest in the Global Positioning System. The event will happen in UTAH and it might be interesting to you. It is real, really informal, free, non-sponsored, and on the salt flats of the GREAT SALT LAKE. Just people and the creative things they are doing with GPS putting together their interests at an amazing place at the same time. The location is on public land, is rugged although perfectly flat and normally drivable, and it requires no particular permission to assemble there. If you take proper safety precautions (H20, sunglasses) you might find it an interesting day of navigation and others navigating with GPS. Cheap to moderate hotel rooms are available in the nearby casinos in West Wendover, NEVADA.

Please join the group and document your project or experience at GPS Expo 2006.

Posted by jo at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2006

Networked Place Book

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Call for Comments

"As a culmination to the Networked Publics program, we are publishing a collaboratively written group book with the MIT Press. As part of this process, we are soliciting reader comments for inclusion in the book. Below is a draft of the essay on Networked Place (note that there is a word document attached too... it is likely easier to read). We intend to take the comments that we received and append them to the essay in a virtual symposium that will follow each chapter. In doing so, we hope to create a more dialogic forum within the book. Please leave your email addresses so that we can get in touch with you about your contribution.

Introduction: Contemporary life is dominated by the pervasiveness of the network. With the spread of the mobile phone worldwide (arguably history’s most successful gadget) and the growth of always-on broadband in the developed world, technological networks are becoming easier to access and more ubiquitous. The “always-on,” “always-accessible,” network—or at least the promise of that condition—has produced a broad set of changes to our concept of place, linking space to network to create networked place.

"The following essay addresses both the networking of space and the spatiality of the network. We identify a series of conditions symptomatic of the culture of network “space”: the everyday superimposition of simultaneous real and virtual spaces, the development of a mobile sense of place or “telecocoon,” the emergence of real virtual worlds, the rise of the network as a socio-spatial model, and the use of mapping technology as a means of understanding the world. At the same time, we recognize that these changes are not simply produced by technology. On the contrary, the development and practices of technology (and the conceptual shifts that these new technological practices produce) are thoroughly imbricated in culture, society, and politics.

Taken together, these changes are already radical, but they may not be radical enough. These could well be the first steps in restructuring our concept of spatiality. The changes we listed above—and describe below—may be mere evidence of the early days of sociocultural shifts of which we can only be partially aware, just as the first theorists of modernism and postmodernism could only partially understand the emerging condition of their day." Continue reading Networked Place by Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg, Networked Publics.

Posted by jo at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

Expo Manchester

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Free Sonic Exploration

Sonic Arts Network and University of Manchester bring the Expo festival to Manchester for a weekend packed with over twenty free events including concerts, installations, performances, exhibitions, happenings, workshops, gigs, conferences and DJ sets. Expo is the hub and playground of the UK’s experimental music and sound art scene, featuring very special guests from around the world. This year’s Expo festival is a sonic exploration of the inner, outer and public spaces of Manchester.

Festival Highlights: Expo kicks off at Cornerhouse on Friday 23rd June (18:00 – 20:00) with the launch event for three solo sound exhibitions, produced in partnership with Cornerhouse that run until 30th July. Staalplaat Soundsystem's extreme and immersive sound installation The Ultrasound of Therapy gives visitors the chance to experience a unique personal sensory experience. Strapped to a hospital bed, ‘patients’ are subjected to personalised sound therapies.

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Helmut Lemke invites you to create your own sound pieces in his new work KLANGELN VIII, which transforms fishing rods into intriguing instruments. Bob Levene will explore playful and humourous concepts in a jointly commissioned audiovisual installation - The Space Between: Experiments for Speakers.

On Saturday 24th June (20:00 – 20:45) at The University of Manchester Music Halls, a day of concerts culminates in an ultra-rare appearance of Fluxus maverick Joseph Byrd. The founder of legendary band The United States of America, where he presents White Elephant; his first graphic score for almost 40 years, performed by all-girl Norwegian electro-improv group SPUNK and sound art activists Dreams of Tall Buildings.

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No Petting, No Running, No Bombing on Sunday 25th June (12:00 – 17:30), when Sonic Arts Network takes over Manchester’s vast and historic Victoria Baths, winner of the first series of BBC’s Restoration, with a specially curated programme of sound installation, sonic intervention and performance. Headliners The Owl Project will blend the historic craft of wood turning with hectic glitch electronica. Drop-in and get involved in events taking place throughout the day. Artists will perform in the derelict and empty swimming pools, Turkish baths will be replaced with experimental noise and a man will drown his computer.

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On both Saturday and Sunday night, Expo moves to the Roadhouse (21:30 – Late) for mashed up club nights of hardcore sonic treats ranging from the beautiful to the bizarre. Featuring a showcase from broken electronica label Tripel presenting Ascoltare and Um, plus a rare performance from the reclusive sampler group Quartet Electronische - emerging from the tweed soaked academic sabbatical of their own imaginations to disrespectfully rip up the sounds of Manchester.

All Expo events are free and everyone is welcome to be part of this unique sonic exploration of Manchester’s public spaces.

Posted by jo at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York

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Participatory Performance and Interactivity

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg + Micah Silver + Judy Dunaway :: June 29, 2006 @ 7:30 PM, Eyebeam, 540-548 west 21st street (bet 10 & 11 Ave).

This month's Upgrade! New York examines participatory performance and interactivity in the context of contemporary sound art and new music. The evening brings together three artists working with sound and music: Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Micah Silver, and Judy Dunaway. Each of these artists draws their audience into the creation of their work.

Jesse will discuss Azariah: Whom Jehovah Helps, a new project weaving book arts, poetry, shape note singing, and storytelling into a participatory live event. Azariah turns its audience into an impromptu chorus and draws on Jesse's experience working with shape note singing, audience participation, and New York's religious history.

Micah will talk about his recent installations The Phoenix, *Asterisk, and Carousels. Each piece draws from the local audience's aural and physical experience of site as primary source material.

Judy will talk about her work with balloons and how she draws her audience into music-making, and will be presenting her Balloon Symphony #2. Judy Dunaway's BALLOON SYMPHONIES are audience-participation works. The Balloon Symphonies should not be performed by children under 8 years of age without adult supervision.

BIOS

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg is a sound artist and shape note singer whose work explores politics, religious practice, singing, and personal narrative. Jesse's work is interdisciplinary. While grounded in sound, his projects have mixed book arts, installation, poetry, singing, composition, audio tour, and theater. His current work investigates the history and practice of American shape note singing and the social and religious movements of nineteenth-century upstate New York. Jesse has presented work at the Tang Museum, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Jessica Murray Projects, CCCB (Barcelona), CAC (North Adams), Google Inc., Old Songs Building, Psy-Geo Provflux Festival, Wesleyan University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is a member of Festival Harmony, and of Tintinnabulate, an ensemble founded by Pauline Oliveros. His shape note music has been sung at singings throughout the Northeast, and his experimental music has been performed by Pauline Oliveros, Anne Rhodes, Angela Opell, Caterina De Re, and Tim Eastman, among others.

Micah Silver was born 1980 in Sylva, North Carolina, but grew up in rural Massachusetts. He studied music composition and art at Wesleyan University where his primary teachers were Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, and Ron Kuivila. He has also studied privately with composers Lewis Spratlan and
Earle Brown. Recent projects include *asterisk for 12 broken grand pianos, loudspeakers, and transduced glass, commissioned by The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art; Carousels, a commission by the James Joyce Centre, Dublin for the centennial of Bloomsday, and The Phoenix a six-month-long outdoor installation commissioned by the City of New Haven. Further information on Silver's work can be found online at nophones.org.

Judy Dunaway is an internationally known sound artist whose works for balloons have been presented throughout North American and Europe including the Roy and Edna Disney Center, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Seltsame Musik Festival, Podewil, ZKM, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Everson Art Museum, Bang On A Can Festival, Seance Ecoute, Diapason, Roulette, Galerie Rachael Haferkamp, Moltkerai Werkstatt, Guelph Jazz Festival, Gracie Mansion Gallery, P.S. 122, Alternative Museum, and the Swiss Institute. Awards / grants / residencies include the Aaron Copland Fund, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, ZKM, Harvestworks, and the NEA. Her new CD "Judy Dunaway: Mother of Balloon Music" was just released on Innova Recordings. Her discography also includes recordings on CRI and Outer Realm. Ms. Dunaway holds a M.A. in Music from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. (candidacy) in Music Composition from State University of New York (Stony Brook).

Upgrade! is an international network of gatherings concerning art + tech + community.

About our partner: Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre.

Posted by jo at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2006

BREAKING THE GAME :: THE PANEL

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Live in 45 Minutes

BREAKING THE GAME :: THE PANEL :: Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm at the Society for Art & Technology in Montreal - Free. The event will be streamed live to the SAT as well as to an online audience.

Workspace Unlimited in collaboration with the Society for Art and Technology will host a public panel looking back at phase one of Breaking the Game, a series of interdisciplinary workshops and online symposium that brought together competing theorists and practitioners to build, debate and reflect on virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience. The symposium was conducted exclusively through a variety of telematic technologies: iChat, Skype, virtual walkthroughs, an online forum, and email.

Taking place both online and offline, the workshops opened up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where virtual technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and dynamic ways.

Breaking the Game initiators Thomas Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke and curator Wayne Ashley together with symposium participants Sheldon Brown, Luc Courchesne, and Elizabeth Goodman discuss how, why, and under what conditions their artistic work and research have focused on gaming - as a category of cultural behavior; as allegory; as a series of specific audio/visual and interactive technologies; as an emerging form of machine/human poetics and action. They will consider how their interests in gaming overlap with the increasing computerization of the city and ongoing transformation of the built environment in concert with the proliferation of communication and surveillance technologies. During the event, Brown and Goodman will participate remotely through iChat.

The evening will be divided into two sessions. In the first session we will talk more generally about the format, goals, objectives, and challenges of producing Breaking the Game. In the second phase of the evening we will engage the three symposium participants.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Thomas Soetens
Workspace Unlimited - artist - Initiator Breaking the Game
Thomas Soetens, born in Belgium is a new media artist. In 2002 he co-founded the international artist collective Workspace Unlimited. Thomas Soetens explores the creative potential of multiplayer game technology in relation to digital art and architecture. In his artistic practice he focuses mainly on immersive environments, experience design, hybrid space, information architecture and networks. He is the leading art director of Virtual World of Art (VWA), a series of networked virtual environments connected to different new media centers in Europe and North America. Along the permanent visibility of VWA, Thomas Soetens participates in research projects and is frequently invited to lectures and exhibitions in Europe and Canada. In 2004 he was commissioned by the V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, in Rotterdam, to produce the central work for the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF04).

Kora Van den Bulcke
Workspace Unlimited - architect - Initiator Breaking the Game
Kora Van den Bulcke was born in Belgium and studied architecture at the University of Montreal in Canada. She received the Gold Medal of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada for The Invention factory. Prototypes of her concepts and ideas have been exhibited and published at the Architecture Foundation in London, The Lighthouse in Glasgow, the Zeppelin Museum in Germany and the V2_Institute in Rotterdam. In 2002 she co-founded Workspace Unlimited and is now exploring the possibilities of virtual architecture using computer game technology and other forms of new media focusing mainly on immersive responsive environments, experience design, hybrid space, information architecture and networks. She is currently working on the Implant project and is involved in a Belgian research project The Virtual Art Centre of the Future investigating the possibilities of hybrid architecture for cultural institutions.

Wayne Ashley
Independant Curator/Producer
Workspace Unlimited - Co-organizer/Moderator Breaking the Game
Wayne Ashley is an independent curator, producer, and consultant working at the intersection of media, technology, and performance. Presently, he is consulting for Rich Mix, a new cultural center opening in London in 2006. Previously he was the Programs Director and Curator at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council where he organized public programming and exhibitions around art and technology. From 1999 to 2001 Ashley was the first Manager of New Media at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), one of America's foremost presenters of contemporary music, opera, theater, dance and film from around the world. He was hired to establish BAM's New Media Department; and design, direct, and implement Arts in Multimedia (AIM), a research, art and technology project with Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs. He produced works for BAM's Next Wave Festival which included Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin's Listening Post, Paul Kaiser's Trace, and John Jesurun's Virtual Actor.

Sheldon Brown
Center of Research in Computing and the Arts, University of California
Sheldon Brown is Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) where he is a Professor of Visual Arts and the head of New Media Arts for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technologies (Cal-(IT)2). His work examines the relationships between mediated and physical experiences. This work often exists across a range of public realms.As an artist, he is concerned about overlapping and reconfiguring private and public spaces; how new forms of mediation are proliferating co-existing public realms whose geographies and social organizations become ever more diverse. Art that explores schismatic junctions of these zones - the edges of their coherency - allow glimpses into their formative structures and provide a view that suggests transformative modes of being, extending constrained boundaries. Currently, he is developing a series of sculptures, Istoria, which explore the intersection of the virtual and physical worlds, created with a variety of computer controlled processes, and several interactive environments that utilize a cross-fertilization of virtual reality and game technologies.

Luc Courchesne
Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) and University of Montreal
Born 1952 in Quebec. Luc Courchesne studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (Bachelor of Design, 1974) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA (Master of Science in Visual Studies, 1984). His design work covers a wide range of projects in graphic, product and exhibition design. His art installation work includes Encyclopedia Chiaroscuro (1987), Portrait One (1990), Family Portrait (1993), Hall of Shadows (1996), Landscape One (1997), Passages (1998), Rendez-vous (1999), The Visitor: Living by Numbers (2001), Untitled (2002) and Where are you? (2005). He exhibited extensively worldwide in venues such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; La Villette, Paris, the ZKM, Karlsruhe. He was awarded the Grand Prix of the ICC Biennale 1997 in Tokyo and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica 1999 in Linz, Austria. Courchesne is currently director of the School of Industrial Design, University of Montreal and boardmember of the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT).

Elizabeth Goodman
Confectious
Elizabeth Goodman's design, writing, and research focuses on critical thinking and creative exploration at the intersections of new digital technologies, social life and urban spaces. Her work has been shown at Paris' la Cite des sciences et de l'industrie, as well as at conferences and forums such as CHI, DIS and Ubicomp. She was a visiting lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004, and now lives and works in Portland, OR.

Workspace Unlimited website: www.workspace-unlimited.org

Thomas Soetens, Workspace Unlimited
Kora Van den Bulcke, Workspace Unlimited
Wayne Ashley, Independent Curator, New York

Posted by jo at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

Sound Visions exhibition

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Sound is image is sound is image

Contemporary experience's conversion to digital is undeniable, the nomadic aspect of (new) technologies has become complete ubiquity and today everything can be thought of as zeros and ones, as information in its most abstract and immaterial version. Having that in mind what happens to the apparently ontological difference between sound and image, audition and vision?

Sound Visions intends to show this crumbling down of the differences between these two distinct modes of acess to reality. André Gonçalves and André Sier work from that place where it is impossible to define where one strats and the other ends. They use each one of those modes to stimulate the other, causing a generalized undefinition, from which it is no longer possible to tell what is cause and what is effect, if it the sound generating the images or if it is the images that are causing the sounds. The spiral is endless, sound is generating images that generates sound that again generates new images. the system replicates itself, always in interaction with the audience, pulled into the vortex of events taking place.

Sound Visions is a project developed specifically by the Upgrade! Lisbon for the Village Festival.

Sound Visions
Andre Goncalves/Andre Sier
Sala do Risco
June 16 - July 15
Tuesdays to Sundays, 10h00-19h00
For more info please go to
http://www.lisboa20.pt/upgrade
http://www.undotw.org/ctrl/fotos/xtras/lr/LR.htm
http://www.s373.net/babel/struct_5_060616_3.mov

Posted by luis at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

Visual Complexity

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Upgrade! Lisbon meeting featuring Manuel Lima

Teatro S. Luiz welcomes next Thursday, June 22nd@20:00, The Upgrade! Lisbon monthly gathering featuring Manuel Lima, who will present his project Visual Complexity. The entrance is free and drinks will be served.

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

Not all projects shown here are genuine complex networks, in the sense that they aren’t necessarily at the edge of chaos, or show an irregular and systematic degree of connectivity. However, the projects that apparently skip this class were chosen for two important reasons. They either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject. Nevertheless, all projects have one trait in common: the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

Complexity is a challenge by itself. Complex Networks are everywhere. It is a structural and organizational principle that reaches almost every field we can think of, from genes to power systems, from food webs to market shares. Paraphrasing Albert Barabasi, one of the leading researchers in this area, “the mistery of life begins with the intricate web of interactions, integrating the millions of molecules within each organism”. Humans, since their birth, experience the effect of networks every day, from large complex systems like transportation routes and communication networks, to less conscious interactions, common in social networks.

Scale-Free networks, one of the most common topology in either natural or human systems, is curiously enough, a very recent breakthrough. Since its discovery, in 1999, dozens of researchers worldwide have been disentangling the networks around us at an amazing rate. This awareness is helping us understand not only the world around us but also the most intricate web of interactions that shape the human body. The global effort of constructing a general theory of complexity is tremendous and may lead us, not only to a structural understanding of networks, but to major improvements in stability, robustness and security of most complex systems around the globe. Like Barabasi refers in Linked, “Once we stumble across the right vision of complexity, it will take little to bring it to fruition. When that will happen is one of the mysteries that keeps many of us going”.

Manuel Lima was born in the Azores, Portugal, in May 1978. In 2002 he completed a 6 year degree in Industrial Design at the Faculty of Architecture - UTL Lisbon and finished a 7 month internship at the design firm Kontrapunkt, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Currently living in New York, Manuel is a recent MFA graduate from the Design+Technology program at Parsons School of Design. For this purpose he received scholarships from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Luso-American Foundation and a Dean's scholarship from Parsons School of Design.

During the course of the MFA program Manuel was part of a Collaboration Studio with Siemens Corporate Research Center, worked for the American Museum of Moving Image and Parsons Institute for Information Mapping in research projects for the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency. Manuel is currently working as an interaction designer at R/GA Interactive and teaches Information Design at Parsons Design+Management department.

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

June 16, 2006

transmediale 2007

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Call for Competition, Festival, Club

transmediale.07: festival for art and digital culture berlin :: 31 January - 4 February 2007 :: club transmediale.07: international festival for electronic music and related visual arts :: 26 January - 3 February 2007. Call for Entries: :: Deadline: 8 September 2006 :: Award Ceremony: 3 February 2007.

transmediale.07 Award Competition: transmediale - festival for art and digital culture berlin, invites submissions for its Award Competition 2007. The competition highlights outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art. The international jury will award one main prize of EUR 4.000, and two second prizes of EUR 2.000 each.

The transmediale award is a major international award for art reflecting on the aesthetical and cultural impact of new technologies. Previous award winners have included renowned artists like Shilpa Gupta (in), Zhou Hongxiang (cn), Istvan Kantor (ca), Thomas Koener (de), Agnes Meyer-Brandis (de), Netochka Nezvanova (us), Adrian Ward (uk), schoenerwissen (de), Herwig Weiser (at), 242.pilots (no/pl/us), and others.

As a festival for art and digital culture, transmediale presents advanced artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience these technologies. transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques which need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape our contemporary society.

Digital media are increasingly used by artists of all disciplines to express their ideas and to explore new aesthetic territories and the relation between art and technology. What is important for transmediale, though, is that the artistic practices do not only make use of technologies, but that they imply a reflection about the aesthetic, cultural and social dimensions of such technological developments. transmediale and its competition promote an understanding of media art as a sounding board and catalyst for a critical and creative expansion of the potential of human agency through new technologies.

We invite the submission of works and projects that respond to this challenge. We are interested in works that expand our understanding of digital image and sound aesthetics, of narrative, of interactivity and, in particular, the cultural significance of software and computer programming as cultural techniques. However, we are also curious to see the submission of works outside of these areas, works that expand our notions of artistic practice, and works which can makea strong argument for the crucial role that new technologies play in our perception and projection of a contemporary global culture.

Together with the jury, we explicitly welcome submissions from artists who live and work outside of Western Europe and North America.

transmediale is hosted by Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH in cooperation with Akademie der Kuenste. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

club transmediale

club transmediale (CTM) - festival for adventurous music and related visual arts - takes place in conjunction with the transmediale. CTM is an independent platform for new forms of electronic and experimental music and for the various artistic activity drawing infl uences from and refering to sound- and club culture. It presents outstanding productions in digital, electronic and experimental music, audio-visual performance and installation.

CTM reflects on the role of contemporary music culture as a changing agent for present society and - due to the massive dissemination of music - as one of the key elements to shape the transformation processes that characterise todays mediasphere. With a focus on the exploration of performative concepts, informal networks and the interaction between different media formats - especially of image and sound - CTM emphasises the situative potential of live music and performance. Thus it encourages the crossover of institutional, academic and subcultural contexts.

club transmediale invites the submission of works and projects in the fields of digital, electronic and experimental music, audiovisual performance, sound art, installation, video-performance/VJing, music video and of design concepts aimed to shape social situations and communication processes related to music culture.

Posted by jo at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

III INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ELECTRONIC ART 404

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2006 CALL :: Deadline: August 15th 2006

Astas Romas is organising the III International Festival of Electronic Art 404, to be held at Plaza Cívica and Centro Cultural Parque de España, in Rosario, Argentina from November 30 -- December 3, 2006. The event is dedicated to Mark Lawton.

"Astas Romas" is making a world-wide call to artists and theorists to participate in this third "Festival 404" in order to estimulate and divulge new productions around electronic art. Authors may participate in the following areas: Net-art, Still image, Animation, Video, Music, Audio-visual set, Theory, Performance, Installation. The program includes screening of videos and animations, conferences, performances and concerts.

Participation in this festival is free. There are no age or nationality limits.
The Festival's deadline to present works is on August 15th 2006. The date will be taken from the post office cancelling stamp. To submit your work, please follow the instructions published on www.404festival.com

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSION

To submit your work you may have to:
1) Read the Participation Terms published at www.404festival.com
2) Complete and print the Inscription Form.
3) Send and envelope including the things mentioned in the Form.
4) Send the envelope to the following address:

III INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ELECTRONIC ART 404 /ASTAS ROMAS
Universidad Nacional de Rosario / Centro de Estudios Canadienses
Maipú 1065, Of. 208
(2000) Rosario
Santa Fe
Argentina

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

Listening and Space

Disjunction: Visual | Aural

Bernard Tschumi, in writings between 1975 and 1991, articulated what he called a “disjunction” in the field of architecture between the form of buildings and the events that take place within them. This contradiction might be substituted by any from a set of related contradictions (theory/practice, ideal space/ real space, object/ subject), including one that in a certain sense suggests each of the others – between the visual and the aural.

Any essay that proposes to discuss sound usually begins by cataloguing the injustices done to listening, as a result of centuries of neglect by vision-inclined philosophers and art historians. Usually, this catalogue slips into a new set of oppositions, reversed so that listening becomes the mode of perception that brings us closer to the truth of existence. Reading this literature, I am reminded of the workers, in the film Brazil, who share a desk that penetrates the wall between their respective offices - they alternately nudge, hold, and yank the desk, such that the gain of one man is at the direct expense of the other. It sometimes seems as if perception is a kind of zero-sum game: territory claimed by the proponents of sound methodically excludes vision, as if hearing and sight exhausted the human sensorium. What follows are a series of oppositions between listening (on the left) and vision (on the right) that come out of these debates:

spherical--directional
immersive--perspectival
inward--outward
interiors--surfaces
contact--distance
subjectivity--objectivity
life--atrophy and death
affect--intellect
temporal--spatial
magic--neutral

(Jonathan Sterne, summarizing Walter Ong. in The Audible Past., 15)

The purpose of this essay is to move beyond such facile (and misleading) oppositions by applying three writings on vision or listening that explicitly or implicitly open one up onto the other: Don Ihde's Listening and Voice; “'The Element of Voluminousness': Depth and Place Re-examined” by Edward Casey; and Norman Bryson's “The Gaze in the Expanded Field.” My goal is not to reduce the particularities of seeing and hearing to an indistinguishable sameness, but rather, to use the spirit of the aforementioned writings to discuss several examples that bring the act of listening into focus. The necessary obverse of this inquiry is to also describe what happens to the act of seeing." From Listening and Space by Sean Dockray.

Sean Dockray is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work includes interactive installations, video, writing, architecture, radio broadcasts, data visualization, performative lectures, and computer programming. With a focus on social systems, time, and impermanence, Dockray’s practice often emphasizes an active, critical engagement with technology. He is a member of the research group the Institute for Advanced Architecture, one of the directors of Telic Arts Exchange, a media art gallery, and a partner of the newly formed design collaborative MARKET. Between a BSE in Civil Engineering and Architecture from Princeton University and an MFA from UCLA (Design|Media Arts), Dockray worked for Plumb Design in New York and consulted for a variety of cultural producers including Laura Kurgan Architecture, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Not a Cornfield public artwork, and the Milosevic trial video archive. Presently, he lectures at the Department of Design | Media Arts at the University of California in Los Angeles and writes for various publications on art, culture, and design.

Posted by jo at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2006

Cinema-Scope Hamptons

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Last Minute Call for Video and New Media

Cinema-Scope Hamptons: Deadline: Monday July 3, 2006 -- (FUTURE PERFECT) The future perfect is used to describe an event that has not yet happened but is expected or planned to happen.

"Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before -- that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment." BUCKMINSTER FULLER, Critical Path

This year in the Hamptons we will have an impressive video art complex featuring some really top notch international artists striving to be ahead of the curve. We will also be featuring the new and improved "Perpetual Art Machine" interactive video installation. (sign up its free)

We are looking for additional screen based videos (HD and SD) no longer than 10 minutes and computer based new media projects, websites, vblogs and anything else that you would consider to be art on a computer.

All projects must have been created after 2001.

Video Requirements: Quicktime (.mov) or NTSC video DVD

New Media Requirement: Internet URL or Stand alone MAC formatted applications (Special thanks to Tekserve NYC for sponsoring us with the Cinema-scope MAC New Media Gallery)

Deadline: All work must arrive by Monday July 3, 2006. Late entries will not be accepted

Please send your entry to:

Lee Wells / Cinema-scope
Scope Art Fair
521 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Please have disk and materials properly marked with artist name and artwork information.

Please include a self addressed stamped envelope if you would like your entry returned.

Please contact Lee Wells for further details by email lee[at]leewells.org or by phone at 917 723 2524.

Posted by jo at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

Haque Design + Research

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News

1. Configurable T-shirt (an experiment to make a low tech 'open' system...)

The Configurable T-shirt, on sale in Japan, enables the wearer to configure the design on the front of the shirt. A matrix of hexagonal pixels is provided that can be coloured in with a black permanent pen in order to turn them "off". Designed for the T-1 World Cup competition, which came about because I couldn't decide on a country to support in the World cup.... available for one month only here; a web interface for prototyping and sharing t-shirt designs is available here.

2. Talks in Tokyo, June 17 and 21

If you are near Tokyo in the next week, drop by and say hello... I will be at NTT ICC's "Open Creation" symposium on June 17 and the Device Art Symposium, Crossfield UDX on June 21.

3. Exhibition in São Paulo, Brazil

Evolving Sonic Environment (a spatialised neural net project with Rob Davis) will be part of Emoção Art.ficial 3.0 - Interface Cibernética, São Paulo, Brazil, July 19 to September 24, 2006. We will also have a panel discussion on Gordon Pask's immense contribution to the design of authentically interactive systems.

4. Wifi camera obscura

An experiment with Aether Architecture and Bengt Sjölén to reveal the electromagnetic "view" of 2.4GHz (that analogises the way that a traditional camera obscura works with visible light in order to reveal the ways that wifi may "illuminate" a space) will appear at Waves, RIXC, Latvia, August 24-September 17, 2006. Details to come later.

5. Open Burble

A new project to be launched for the opening of the Singapore Biennale in September 2006. Details to come, but for the moment imagine Sky Ear only BIGGER!

haque: design + research

Posted by jo at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

Waag Society: 10 Years

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Waag Bazaar

On the 21st of June it will be 10 years ago that Waag Society opened the doors of the Waag building that had been vacant for several years. A lot has happened since then. Waag Society evolved into an international acknowledged institution where technology is connected to social and cultural issues.

To celebrate our 10th anniversary there will be a Waag Bazaar on the 21st of June with music, performances, installations, debates, art, and a number of our projects. The program starts at 1.00 PM and ends with a debate at 6.00 PM.

The program in the restaurant contains the Storytelling table, a Lock-picker workshop by Toools, Robot Mobi, The Robot Vodka Bar, Neighborhood Cinema, The Animation Table, Simuze performances, the ScratchWorx console with VJ/DJ workshops and more.

On the first floor a real Waag museum will be open for that day with projects from the past and the present: storytelling activities, keyworx installation and connected experiments.

During the day several debates will take place in the Theatrum Anatomicum; topics range from the Nieuwmarkt neighborhood, Creative cities and the 'Ars Combinatoire'. All discussions will be in Dutch.

We invite you all..

where: Waag building, Nieuwmarkt 4, 1012CR Amsterdam
when: 21st of June, 1.00 PM - 7.00 PM
stream: http://connect.waag.org

Posted by jo at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

Month Of Sundays Live A/V Internet Mixing - 25th June

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Two Sites, Two Cities

FurtherNoise.org Presents: Month Of Sundays Live A/V Internet Mixing. Featuring John Kannenberg & Glenn Bach. Open Mix led by Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett (Furtherfield & HTTP). Post performance soundscapes by Alex Young (Furthernoise). Date & Time: 16.00 - 18.00 hrs BST; Where: E:vent - 96 Teesdale Street, London E2 6PU.

As part of the Month Of Sundays series of live A/V internet performances Furthernoise.org is hosting this unique event featuring a cross continent A/V performance by Chicago based John Kannenberg mixing in real time with Glenn Bach who will be performing from his home in Long Beach, California. The performance is based on their Two Cities project, which began in 2003 using sounds, photos, objects and data collected on Glenn and John's daily walking commutes to compare and contrast the environments of their respective hometowns.

It will take place in the online file mixing platform Visitors Studio
and projected, amplified into the gallery space from www.visitorsstudio.org

Come and join us at E:vent: Bring your laptops and media files and collaborate. Following the performance, Furtherfield artists Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett will lead an open mix where audiences both online and in the gallery can join in by uploading and mixing their own audio & visual files in an open collaborative mix. Files can be mp3, swf, flv and jpg and must be a maximum of 2OOK.

There will also be free refreshments and post performance Soundcapes by Alex Young who's album 'Helicoids' is the new net release on Furthernoise.org.

As well as being shown at E:vent, the afternoons performances will be also broadcast, in real-time, online:- at The Watershed Media Centre, Bristol. The Point CDC Theatre, New York.

Curated by Roger Mills. Furthernoise & Visitors Studio are Furtherfield.org projects, supported by Arts Council England.

BIOGRAPHIES

Chicago-based sonic and visual artist John Kannenberg works with a variety of themes including primal natural forces, spirituality and mindful contemplation, melancholy and nostalgia, abstracted narrative tales, and the confluence of sonic and visual art. His major appearances include the Spark Festival 2006 (Minneapolis), so.cal.sonic 2005 (Long Beach), ISEA 2004 (Tallinn), and the Placard Festival 2003 (New York). John is the creator and curator of Stasisfield.com, an experimental music label and digital art space presenting works by a diverse collection of artists from around the globe.

Based in Long Beach, California, Glenn Bach is an active multidisiciplinary artist influenced by the act of mindful walking and environmental sound, Bach has performed at Field Effects (San Francisco), the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, and the Schick Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY) and has curated a house concert series, Quiet (2003), the week-long so.cal.sonic festival (2005) and is the founder of the research group Pedestrian Culture. His current project is a poem sequence, Atlas Peripatetic, inspired by an extensive mapping of sounds on his morning walk.

Ruth Catlow is an artist and works as co director of Furtherfield, formed and run in partnership with artist, Marc Garrett since 1997. Ruth works with networked media in public physical spaces and on the Internet. exploring net art with new communities (of artists and audiences) with less reliance on existing, traditional art world hierarchies, developing independent grass-roots expression and representation. She is exploring the potential of current network technology for promoting distributed creativity which raises a whole series of issues by giving rise to a more permeable boundary between established arbiters of culture, artists and audiences radically changing the life of the artwork in the world, and the ways in which people come across it.

Marc Garrett is an Internet artist, writer, street artist, activist, curator, educationalist and musician. In a constant state of being renascent. He share's no allegiance to any one form of art or expression. 'For me, art, or rather creativity, is an intuitive strategy that involves learning, questioning, progressive thought and putting playful explorations into action'. Emerging in the late 80's from the streets exploring creativity via agit-art tactics, Marc declares his own and humanity's seemingly perpetual dysfunction. Consciously using unofficial platforms such as the streets, pirate radio, net broadcasts, BBS systems, performance, intervention, events, pamphlets, warehouses and gallery spaces. In the early nineties he was co-sysop with Heath Bunting for Cybercafe BBS.

Posted by jo at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2006

Urban Picture:

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The Moving Image in the Public Environment

Urban Picture: The Moving Image in the Public Environment; July 6th, 2006; Lewis Media Centre, Westminster, London SW1.

With moving image displays becoming a major aspect of the urban landscape The Moving Image in the Public Environment Conference will look at themes of - New Media, Urban Space, Public Sphere, Social Value and Civic Culture in the Urban Environment - and the evolution of new concepts for art in the public realm that demand the use of diverse forms of emergent media. It will focus on the development of digital art, external screens, video projections, media and light festivals in urban settings and will consider the potential for cultural programmes, expansion of audience, different use for city spaces, public art programmes and turning cinemas ‘inside-out’.

Speakers:

Dan Dubowitz, Artist and Director of Civic Works will talk on New media for city wide projects: The Peeps’ for Ancoats, Manchester and ‘Hobo’ for Sunderland. This will be the first time he will speak publicly about ‘the peeps’, a large scale permanent artwork for the public realm developing between 2003-2007 and comprising 15 discreet sites imured (walled in to) in the rebuilt fabric of the city and viewed through peepholes. ‘hobo’ for Sunderland is an itinerant public art work-akin to a festival programme.

Mike Gibbons, Chief Project Manager, Live Events, BBC, will highlight the rapid developments made in outdoor screening in the United Kingdom over recent years, considering emergent technology, new partnerships and the ground breaking Big Screens projects, that are bringing city squares to life.

Shane Walter, Director of leading agency onedotzero, who are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year with a series of international events, will talk about prominent digital artists and groups that are working in the public realm, as well as his own work, and the potential of what can be done.

Amsterdam based Mirijam Struppek, urbanist researcher, consultant and curator of Urban Screens 05 will talk on: The Potential of Outdoor Screens in Urban Society.

Steve Manthorp is coordinator of Digital North, the umbrella body for digital arts organisations across the Northern Way. He completed the installation of the city centre screens in Bradford this year and will discuss how to build culture into a big screen project.

David Gryn, Director, Artprojx, has been holding a number of successful film and video art screenings at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester square, and will consider the Potential of Contemporary Visual Art in the Context of the Cinema.

Gini Simpson, Head of Media Arts, SPACE, will focus on the vastly increased demand for new technology by artists and local communities. She will look at means of building audience and participant bases, while linking artists, arts organizations and local communities.

Gill Cooper, Head of Arts and Culture, City of York Council will consider the benefits of Using Digital Media and Light-Based Artists for Public Art Installations in Historic Settingshaving developed stunning public art instillations in the centre of York that used the latest in lighting technology.

Michael Pinsky, a leading contemporary visual artist, has completed an array of commissions in the public realm using video art and digital projections and will discuss his instillations in Doncaster and Darlington.

Lucy Bullivant, architectural curator, author and critic, her latest book Responsive Environments: Architecture, art and design is published by the V&A this year, looks at the use of Electronic Surfaces and Interactivity in Architecture.

Following the success of the sell-out First National Public Art Conference, this event will consider one of the most innovative and major growth areas in this field. Key professional practitioners will explore the potential use of the moving image in the visual arena of our public spaces and the creation of large scale permanent artwork for the public environment. Hear the latest thinking, keep up with recent developments, learn how emergent technologies can be used for diverse cultural programmes and contribute to the debate.

Organised by Art and Architecture Journal

Posted by jo at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

AIR :: AREA'S IMMEDIATE READING

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Test Run

AIR :: AREA'S IMMEDIATE READING is a public, social experiment in which people are invited to use Preemptive Media's portable air monitoring devices to explore their neighborhoods and urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots.

Participants or "carriers" are able to see pollutant levels in their current locations, as well as simultaneously view measurements from the other AIR devices in the network. An on-board GPS unit and digital compass, combined with a database of known pollution sources such as power plants and heavy industries, allow carriers to see their distance from polluters and other AIR devices. In addition, the devices regularly transmit data to a central database allowing for real time data visualization on the website.

Preemptive Media is getting ready to launch AIR in New York City this September. Come help us beta test the devices and data visualization application currently in development on Saturday, June 24, from 1-5pm at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York City. More information on the
workshop and to enroll.

Posted by jo at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

Landlines Workshop

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Urban Digital Peel

Artist/Researchers at the University of Huddersfield Centre for Excellence in Digital Design Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern are offering a series of workshops at the Media Centre in Huddersfield next week (June 19 – 23, 2006). The workshop introduces a new technology they call "Landlines".

Landlines uses GPS-enabled mobile phones to notate urban environments. The programmed phone sends images and spatial co-ordinates live to a website. Personal memories of a place, controversial regeneration, and historical are uploaded, and archived as line maps and 'tracked' photographs on a website.

For Hamilton and Southern, these maps can be used to discover what specific places mean to people, and how these places are used. The workshop investigates the correspondence between planning, urban regeneration and design, with the Landlines technology. Workshop is open to all.

Workshop Agenda:

- Introduce the Landlines application;
- Have participants use Landlines to make a map of the area, according to their own specifications and ideas;
- Return to the Media Centre and discuss the maps made by participants, and see individual map notation on-line
- Discuss Landlines potentials; outline and ‘brainstorm’ modifications

‘Landlines’ technology was developed in an artist/industry partnership between Hamilton and Southern and Onteca Ltd, Liverpool, and funded thru a NESTA ‘ITEM’ grant in 2004.

Sign-up Details: There are half-day workshops:

Monday 19 10 am – 1 pm 2 pm – 5 pm
Tuesday 20 10 am – 1 pm 2pm – 5 pm
Wednesday 21 10 am – 1 pm 2pm – 5 pm
Friday 23 10 am – 1 pm 2pm – 5 pm

and ONE full day workshop:

Thursday June 22 10 am – 12 pm 1 pm- 5 pm

All participants please REGISTER!

To do that send an email to: jen[at]24elements.net Include your name, contact phone number, chosen date, and whether you are attending a morning or afternoon session. Minimum group size is 5 people; contact phone number: Jen @ 01484 424862;

All participants will be contacted via email regarding their sign-up. There is no cost to participate in this workshop. For all day workshop (Thursday only) lunch will be provided. Workshop location: The Media Lounge, main floor (enquire at front desk to be directed to room) @The Media Centre 7 Northumberland Street Huddersfield, HD1 1RL Media Centre tel: 0870 990 5000

Posted by jo at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

Master Study Interface Cultures

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Call for Participants

Master Study Interface Cultures at University of Art and Design in Linz Austria; (4 semester)--The Interface Culture masters degree program, founded by media artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, is an artistic-scientific study to educated media artists and media researchers in creative and innovative interface and interaction design.

The study lasts two years and concentrates on project-oriented and theory-based training in interactive digital media, combining art with research, the development of projects and prototypes with scholarly publication.

Subjects thought include: interactive art, interaction design, game design, tangible interfaces, auditory interfaces, fashionable technologies, wearable devices, intelligent ambiences, sensor technologies, telecommunication and new experimental forms of human-machine, human-human and machine-machine interactions.

Artistic expressions include among others: interactive art, net art, software art, robotic art, sound art, noise art, games and story telling, mobile art as well as new hybrid areas like genetic art, bio art, space art and nano art.

A specialty of the program is its strong collaboration with the Ars Electronica in Linz, where students can show their projects on a yearly basis and thus get in contact with the top experts of the media art and design field. See previous projects of student works at Ars Electronica 2005.

Professors:

Prof. Dr. Christa Sommerer, media artists and researchers
Prof. Dr. Laurent Mignonneau, media artists and researchers

Lecturers:

Dipl.Ing. Martin Kaltenbrunner, Researcher / Ph.D. candidat Dipl. Ing. Christopher Lindinger, Computer Scientist / Media Artist, director of research and innovation of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. Mag. Sabine Seymour, Researcher/Designer in Fashionable Technologies TIMES UP, media art initiative Mag. Andreas Weixler, Composer / Media Artist in Audio-visual interaction
Dr. Sabine Payr, Researcher in multimodal interfaces and e-learning Mag. Gebhart Sengmüller, Artist / Media Archaeologist, VinylVideo Dipl. Ing. Robert Praxmarer, Researcher / Artist, Mag. Simon Bauer, media technician and developer

Entrance Examination: July 6th and 7th 2006

Deadline for Application for Entrance Examination: June 23rd 2006

Application forms can be downloaded at: http://www.ufg.ac.at/portal/DE/zum_studium/studienabteilung/238.html

Please send your filled in application form & required documents (curriculum vitae & passport copy) by June 23 2006 to the study department at:

Study Administration
University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz
Hauptplatz 8, first floor, room 1.24
4010 Linz, Austria
Telephone: 0043/732/7898 Internet: http://www.ufg.ac.at/studienabteilung
studien.office[at]ufg.ac.at

Required materials for the entrance examination on July 6th and 7th 2006

Candidates are asked to bring examples of their digital works and digital productions, for example from their previous studies as well as a copy of their bachelor thesis and any other examples of their practical works as well as an expose (can be in written, image, auditory or interactive form) of what type of work and research they want to conduct during the Interface Culture master study program.

More information about the Interface Culture study at: http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at institut-medien.office@ufg.ac.at

Interface Culture Brochure downloadable at: http://www.ufg.ac.at/files/17282/interface_brochure_6.pdf

Dr. Christa Sommerer
Professor for Interface Culture
Institut for Media
University of Art and Design Linz
Sonnensteinstrasse 11-13
4040, Linz, Austria
Tel: +43-732-7898324
christa.sommerer[at]ufg.ac.at
http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at
http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent

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

June 13, 2006

Régine Debatty at Sonar

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Google Earth & Google Maps Hacks

From UFO to George Clooney sightings, from the nearest Kosher restaurant to the nearest sex offender, from the location of avian flu outbreaks to a review of the greenest golf course, from fresh beers to a new partner to share them with… As part of its restless bid to rule the worlds – both the online and the offline ones - Google has made it easy for us to find anything we need. Google wasn’t the first to offer interactive online street maps and routing but its powerful and highly readable system makes us wonder why we used to be so thrilled with good old Yellow Pages.

When the search engine released Google Maps in February 2005, independent programmers seized the opportunity to customize the system. Four months later, Google released the API that took the mapping application to the next level, allowing hackers and amateurs to refashion maps that geographically illustrate any kind of vital or outlandish information. Diluted into this grassroots plethora of Google Map hacks (have a look at the Google Maps Mania blog and you’ll see what I mean), one can find here and there projects that explore the possibilities of Google Maps under an artistic perspective.

It doesn’t mean that artists are slow to jump on the bandwagon. They just didn’t wait for Google to engineer the tools that would allow them to renew our experience of topography. I’m not only referring to the locative media trend which emerged over the last half decade but also to works that anticipated, well ahead of their time, what Google Earth would one day be. In 1994 already, ART+COM came up with "Terravision", an installation that enabled users to navigate –topographically but also chronologically– in a 3D model of the globe by moving a tracking device in front of a projection of the Earth.

And in the ‘80s, Michael Naimark’s "Golden Gate Fly-over" moviemap allowed users to navigate around the San Francisco Bay Area at fast speeds using images filmed by a gyro-stabilized helicopter camera and satellite navigation. Hopefully, the pieces selected for the Digital Art a la Carte section demonstrate that if one of the roles of artists is to pioneer technologies and applications, another one is to offer a fresh perspective on those that have already fallen into the mainstream.

Anders Weberg & Robert Willim, "Surreal Scania"
http://recycled.se/surreal/img/stills/index.htm

Christine Hanson, "Delocator"
www.delocator.net

Jim Nachlin, "GarbageScout"
http://garbagescout.com

Michael Frumin, Eyebeam R&D "OGLE"
http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org

Rick Silva, "Satellite Jockey"
http://satellitejockey.net

Steve Coast, "Openstreetmap"
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org

Zack Denfield, Nika Smith, Brent Fogt, Kyle Mulka, "Blue Puddle"
www.bluepuddle.org

Sonar Festival--Digital à la carte: 15 June, 2006

Régine Debatty writes and makes research about the way artists are (mis)using emerging technologies. She is also a consultant for corporations, festivals and art commissions.

Posted by jo at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

"EJECT" VIDEOPERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS (VIDEO)

EJECT: FIRST INTERNATIONAL VIDEOPERFORMANCE FESTIVAL OF MEXICO CITY - All artists of any discipline will be able to participate with a piece of video-performance or performance registration (documentation) whose duration be not longer than 10 minutes.

Deadline: June 24, 2006. In order to encourage the use of video as a support to create performance pieces, the National Council for the Arts through the National Institute of Fine Arts, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, CENART's Multimedia Center and P3RFORM4NC3 call to artists and groups dedicated to performance and others disciplines to participate.

- The works should be delivered in an envelope closed and lettered as follows: EJECT FIRST INTERNATIONAL VIDEOPERFORMANCE FESTIVAL OF MEXICO CITY. Address: Ex Teresa Arte Actual. Lic. Verdad no. 8, Col. Centro, C.P. 06060, México D.F. The projects sending by express post-delivery should be lettered with the legend: “WITHOUT COMMERCIAL VALUE – FOR CULTURAL END ONLY”.

- Only pieces presented in VHS, VCD, DVD or MiniDV format will be accepted.

- An envelope with the following printed information should be enclosed: title, name of the artist or group, telephone, e-mail and post address, brief resume of the artist or group and brief video description. For the case of performance documentation the performance date is required too (date, place, festival, credits of camera, etc.)

- The reception deadline will be June 24th, 2006. The works sent by ail or express delivery only will be accepted according of postmark date.

- The members of the jury (3 Well-known Mexican artists) will select 25 videos having image quality and proposal originality as criteria. Their failure will be unappealable.

- Videos selected will integrate EJECT, First International Videoperformance Festival of Mexico City which will be celebrated from 2nd to 4th of August at ExTeresa Arte Actual and from 9th to 11th of August at CENART's Multimedia Center. All those whose pieces would had been selected will be inform by email and after the festival a videobrouchure would be delivered that will include all
selected pieces and a participation diploma too. Also, selected pieces will be exhibited in diverse electronic media.

- The selected pieces will not be returned. The Documentation Center of Ex Teresa Arte Actual will select pieces of its interest in order to integrate them in it. For protection, remainder works will be destroyed for which is recommended to register author’s rights in all cases.

- This festival is done without profit interests for which the organizers will not take charge of expenses that could be generated for artists and groups participation (transportation, lodging, honoraries neither postage and delivery expenses).

- Any case not established in this document, most be presented to the jury in order to get a resolution.

For more information please contact
Pancho Lopez
EJECT curator and organizer
Phones: + 52 55 5522 9093 / +52 55 5522 2721
Email: p3rform4nc3 at hotmail.com
Website: www.p3rform4nc3.com

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

June 12, 2006

Heath Bunting + UBERMORGEN.COM

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(former) net artists

OVERGADEN – Institute of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Artnode will open two solo exhibitions by Heath Bunting and UBERMORGEN.COM as well as a special exhibition that joins the work of the two artists. Heath Bunting and the duo UBERMORGEN.COM. Two pioneers, rebels and stars of net art. This is the first time they exhibit together. Almost without computers! Curated by Jacob Lillemose: June 15 – July 16, 2006; Private view: Wednesday June 14, 2006, 5 pm – 8 pm; Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 1 pm – 5 pm.

Cutting, Climbing, Crossing will present a number of Heath Bunting’s recent works which deal with issues of borders, identity and physical space. Central to the exhibition will be the world premiere of Bunting’s ongoing project "The Status Project," a mapping of the multi-layered logic of the mobility and legal routes of the social system. The work will be presented as wall-mounted diagrams, an interactive database and a 4,200-page manual!

[F]originals: Authenticity as Consensual Hallucination is the third and closing part of an international joint venture between OVERGADEN – Institute of Contemporary Art /Artnode, [plug.in] and Hartware MedienKunstVerein. The exhibition will be a classical painting show, consisting of 6 large square canvasses with digital prints of the official seals from UBERMORGEN.COM's projects from the last five years. The paintings are “[F]originals” – originals and forgeries – and refer to the ambiguous status of the 'documents' that UBERMORGEN.COM produce through their dealing with issues of our technology-based culture.

dayplandrugblog. two ways to live your life as a (former) net artist features another world premiere or actually many works that deal with diaries. Heath Bunting will show 365 of his daily what-to-do maps (one for each day of 2005) drawn by hand on paper, while UBERMORGEN.COM will show prints of one month of the online “drug blog” together with the video “PsychOS”.

In connection with the project a number of publications will be available. Heath Bunting will print his “Day Plan Guide” along with the “Project Status Manual” and for the UBERMORGEN.COM show a catalogue edited by Alessandro Ludovico (neural.it) will be published in late August.

The project is the result of an ongoing collaboration between OVERGADEN – Institute of Contemporary Art and Artnode with the ambition to bring international computer-based contemporary art to Denmark and to get computer-based contemporary art out of the new media ghetto.

The project is generously supported by Pro Helvetia – Schweizer Kulturstiftung, British Council in Denmark, the Austrian Embassy in Copenhagen and the Danish Arts Council.

UBERMORGEN.COM are currently exhibiting at Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.

OVERGADEN
Institute of Contemporary Art
Overgaden Neden Vandet 17
DK-1414 Copenhagen K
Phone +45 32 57 72 73
Mail info[at]overgaden.org
Web http://www.overgaden.org
Tuesday-Sunday 13-17

Posted by jo at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2006

SPECTROGRAPHY

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@ Waves 2006 and Bandits-Mages 2007

SPECTROGRAPHY by Ewen Chardronnet & Rasa Smite: In 2004, RIXC and Ellipse led, together with their partners from Slovenia, Finland, Norway and Iceland, the 2000 cultural programme called “Trans-Cultural Cartography”, on the occasion of the celebrations connected with the enlarging of the European Union.

A closing performance of “Etonnante Lettonie” (“Surprising Latvia”) will be made in the evening at the Bandits-Mages digital festival, in Bourges, following a workshop and a collective digital art and sound art exhibition at the Point Ephémère in Paris.

The theme proposed by RIXC and Ellipse for this trans-regional project is "spectography". A process of visualization and sonification of the data of the electromagnetic spectrum will, amongst other things, present some of the work done by the RT32 radiotelescope in Latvia and the technologies of the transmission and creative process of sound and image by means of live techniques on the net or via satellite.

The workshop and its set-up will build up and explore transmission channels live on the web and via satellite between RIXC in Riga and the Point Ephémère in Paris. Two simultaneous workshops in Paris and in Riga and interactions with bases situated in Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg as parts of the ECM network will explore the means to gather, process and transmit information. The “Studio RIXC” site will supply the project’s permanent information. The “Spectography” project is meant to link both workshops via the internet and satellite. Both workshops are the preparatory events to the 8th “Art+Communication: Waves” festival organised by the RIXC in Riga in 2006.

Posted by jo at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

Playmobiel

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Txt PLAYMOB ON to 3553 for Daily Art

The PLAYMOBIEL exhibition showcases artists whose work explores mobile phone technology in playful way. The casting is pretty impressive.

Scanner composed music using tapped phone conversations; Blast Theory is famous for their mixed reality games; Arno Coenen designed a floor mosaic based on the interface of a Nokia telephone; Gerald Van Der Kaap handed out a mobile phone plus free minutes to a girl from Amsterdam to film and photograph herself; Leonard van Munster made a few hardware projects using the cell phone as a remote control device (image on the right); Esther Polak uses GPS to visualise the tracks of people resulting in a drawing; together with twodotone, PIPS:lab developed a software for mobile phones that can scan drawings and transform them into beats; Aryn Kaganof shot a feature film on mobile phone cameras; Kate Pemberton designs logo's and designs as wallpapers for the cell phone as well as cross stitching patterns; etc.

Apart from the show at the Arti space, a parallel exhibition will be accessible all over the world by mobile phone. By sending a text message PLAYMOB ON to 3553, you will be sent a short audiovisual work of art to your mobile phone every day of the exhibition. You can also use the ShotCode of PLAYMOBIEL: this 2D barcode contains an encoded link to a website. By taking a picture using your camera phone, you get direct access to the website (see instructions).

Playmobiel, at Arti, in Amsterdam, from June 10 till July 8. [blogged by Régine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2006

Avatar Body Collision and the Aotearoa Digital Arts

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ADA Swaray

The second ADA Swaray takes place this Sunday, June 11, 9pm NZ time. Join members of Avatar Body Collision and the Aotearoa Digital Arts network for virtual cocktails, fine frocks, flowing conversation and a few surprises.

The ADA Swaray is a social meeting space for digital artists and other interested people, in the online performance environment UpStage. All you need to participate is a browser with the Flash Player plug-in. Check http://www.worldtimeserver.com for your local time.

Posted by jo at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

Furthernoise.org presents

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Month Of Sunday's Live A/V Net Performances

Furthernoise.org - Month Of Sunday's Live A/V Net Performances, Visitors Studio, 11th June 2006. Visitors Studio is an online place for real-time, multi-user mixing, collaborative creation, many to many dialogue and networked performance and play. Chat with other users while you upload and mix your sounds, images and movies in real-time.

16.00 -16.45 hrs Paul Wilson & James Smith: For this next Month of Sundays performance Paul Wilson and James Smith are mixing an audio / visual 'typography of place' where field recordings are combined with reprocessed images and sounds made in the extreme environment of former weapons testing lab at Orford Ness. They have collaborated on a range of projects which centre around techniques of sonic typography: using linguistic and alphabetic processes and systems to convert images, places and words into sound.

Recent projects have included a commission for The Wire magazine where the publication's covers of 2005 were reprocessed into a twelve-minute audio mix, and two installations for the upcoming 'Paintwork' exhibition at the Praxis Hagen gallery, Berlin where The Fall's '27 Points' album cover has been translated into both sound and (moving) image.

16.45 - 18.00 - Open Mix: Everyone is welcome to join this Open Mix which is one big A/V collaboration including contributions from online viewers in a host locations & time zones. For anyone who wants to contribute to this mix, media files must be a maximum of 200k and can be mp3, swf, flv & jpg formats. All mixes will be recorded to be featured in the next issue.

Log into file mixing studio - http://www.visitorsstudio.org

Links:

Paul Wilson - www.n-spaces.net
James Smith - www.3L-project.co.uk
Vistors Studio (VS) - http://www.visitorsstudio.org/about_vs.html
Credits - http://www.visitorsstudio.org/about_vs.html#credits

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

Coco Fusco

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OPERATION ATROPOS

OPERATION ATROPOS is a documentary about interrogation and POW resistance training. Director Coco Fusco worked with retired US Army interrogators who subjected her group of women student to immersive simulations of POW experiences in order to show them what hostile interrogations can be like and how members of the US military are taught to resist them. The group of interrogators is called Team Delta, and they regularly offer intensive courses that they call “Authentic Military Experiences” to civilians. The documentary includes interviews with the interrogators that shed light on how they read personalities, evaluate an interrogatee’s reliability, and use the imposition of physical and mental stress strategically. More fundamentally, however, the film shows how interrogators rationalize what they do and how they imagine both themselves and their enemies.

Operarion Atropos will open at Elastic Space on 13 June 6-9 pm. The exhibition runs from 17 June to 30 July open 1-6 Saturday and Sunday and by appointment; 22 Parfett St. London, E1 1JR.

Coco Fusco, born and based in New York is a interdisciplinary artist and writer and is one of the most significant and influential performance and video-artists (also an articulate and outspoken theoretician, as well as an active curator). She deals with issues such as globalisation, gender-specific conflicts, cultural colonisation and intercultural theory and practice. Her work is an ongoing reflection on the conditions of (women's) bodies in globalising and technologically imbued environments.

She has performed, lectured, exhibited and curated around the world since 1988. She is the author of English is Broken Here (The New Press,1995), The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings (Routledge/inIVA, 2001) and the editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (Routledge, 1999) and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (Abrams, 2003).

Fusco’s recent art projects combine electronic media and performance in a variety of formats, from staged multi-media performances incorporating large scale projections and closed circuit television to live performances streamed to the internet that invite audiences to chart the course of action through chat interaction. Her works have been included in such events as The Whitney Biennial, Sydney Biennale, The Johannesburg Biennial, The Kwangju Biennale, The Shanghai Biennale and VideoBrasil.

ELASTIC RESIDENCE is a non-profit gallery space for projects and durational performance. It is an artist-run space established in 2004, aimed at giving artists dealing with challenging contemporary material, direct access to exhibiting opportunities.

info[at]elastic.org.uk
0207 247 1375

Posted by jo at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)

Aula 2006

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Movement / Mobility 2.0

Aula 2006 is an event (Wednesday, June 14) about the direction society, culture and technology are heading in. The theme Movement points to mobile 2.0 (mobility meets web 2.0), the overlapping of the physical and the virtual, and the social movement-like nature of new technologies. On a personal level, movement is about not staying still but taking action to shape the big global issues we face in the future.

We'll hear about movement from Clay Shirky the New York University professor who coined the term social software, Alastair Curtis the new Head of Design at Nokia, Martin Varsavsky founder of the global Wi-Fi network FON, and venture capitalist Joichi Ito who has invested in several successful second-generation Web companies including, SixApart and Technorati.

Movement also means a section of a piece of music, and the gathering will include interventions in music and dance. This event will be less of a conference, more an intimate gathering of people to discuss, detail and experience critical topics.

The event will take place at Bio Rex theatre in Helsinki. Attendance is free and open to the public - no advance registration is required. It is also possible to attend the dinner following the event at restaurant Via. Table reservations must be made in advance. After dinner, the event will continue with movement on the dance floor at Ahjo club in Hotel Klaus K to beats by Jukka Perko and Samuli Kosminen.

For enquiries, please contact Andreea Chelaru at andreea[at]fjord.fi.

Posted by jo at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

V1B3: Video in the Built Environment

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Call for Participation

V1B3 is requesting submissions of short videos* that in the broadest terms possible, explore public space though human interaction, intervention and the mechanisms that influence and control the experience of the city.

V1B3 is an international curatorial project that aims to present video art that responds to the conditions of site specificity and a public viewer-ship. Urban planners and architects are used to shaping cities by means of infrastructure, zoning and buildings. However, other modes of intervention exist that are capable of influencing the development of a city. Communicative media interventions can transform public spaces.

V1B3 Summer06 will be presented in conjunction with the University Film and Video Association conference, sponsored by Chapman University in Orange, California. The US screening will occur during the UFVA conference [August 1ST-5th] in Orange, CA. The UK screening will be held at the London Study Center.

V1B3 Summer06 will have a companion DVD developed for publication and purchase.

July 7th DEADLINE: Application can be found at http://www.v1b3.com

US Contact:
Mat Rappaport
1511 North Astor St
Milwaukee, WI USA
info[at]v1b3.com

Sceenings Will be August 1st – 5th

* up to 2 minutes in duration. Works longer than 3 minutes will not be considered.

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

IntelligentDesigner@MonkeyTown

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Easily Create Rich Multilayered Living Music

I have been super busy getting IntelligentDesigner* (ID) ready for general consumption. Officially its due this Fall - but you can check out its most recent iteration at two upcoming events. If you are in Pittsburgh (PA, USA), it will be part of The Urban Garden Party at the Mattress Factory this Friday, June 9th. If you are in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY, USA) next Friday, June 15th, the show with the ChristianScienceMinotaur is sure to be a trip. (links with details follow).

The Mattress Factory event will incorporate dance, projection and sound, as performance artists move their bodies in relation to the living sounds manipulated in real time.

At Monkeytown ID will be aurally and visually woven into the improvisational musical act of ChristianScienceMinotaur. By way of a bongo-height touch screen kiosk, audience members can alter the music that Nat and Leo (XSM duo) play. The audience gets to DJ with live living musicians.

I am diligently working on getting my website in order to better communicate what this is all about. In the meantime, the best way to understand this new musical paradigm is to go check it out for yourself.

Mattress Factory:
http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm?event=ShowFeature&id=2

MonkeyTown:
http://www.monkeytownhq.com/littlefury.html

ChristianScienceMinotaur:
http://www.littlefurythings.net/

Jason Van Anden's website:
http://www.smileproject.com

* IntelligentDesigner is net software that enables pretty much anyone to control things in an uncontrollable way. ID was originally invented to enable improvisational behavior simulating human emotional mechanics between his life-size emotive robots Neil and Iona. In its current incarnation, ID can be used to easily create rich multilayered living music from samples, with many more esoteric applications coming down the pike. Details will be found on Jason Van Anden's website, smileproject.com, soon.

Jason Van Anden

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

IMAGES FESTIVAL 2007

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Call For Submissions

The Images Festival annually exhibits a selection of new media art and Live Images as part of the festival. Images works with several Toronto galleries, production centres and other alternative exhibition spaces to show artworks incorporating the moving image and interactive media, music and performance.

Among the artists whose live performances and new media works have been featured in past festivals: Tom Verlaine, Aki Onda, Daniel Barrow, Susie Ibarra + Lori Freedman, mpld, Willy Le Maitre, Hop-FU. The Shalabi Effect, Bruce McClure, Zoe Beloff, Semiconductor, Michael Brynntrup, Bob Ostertag + Pierre Hébert, the presstapes, Saint Dirt Elementary School, GUH, People Like Us, Instant Places, badpacket…

DATES: Deadline for receipt of entries: Early deadline: 30 June 2006; Late deadline: 30 August 2006. The 20th annual Images Festival runs April 5-14, 2007 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Submission results will be sent out by mail or email in late January, 2007.

Posted by jo at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2006

Metaverse meets mash-up:

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FREE CULTURE REMIX IN SECOND LIFE

Metaverse meets mash-up: come June 15, there's going to be another Free Culture/Creative Commons event in Second Life, this one springboarding off the recent CC Art Show 2006 at NYU and the Sharing is Daring event at Harvard. The object here is to take the art featured at those sites, and then remix it for an in-world showing on the 15th. You can do the remixing with Photoshop and other standard tools, of course, but for this event, the ideal medium is SL itself. Which is what I did with an Untitled photo by Joseph Gergel (above), uploading it as a texture, displaying it in-world, and using it as a backdrop for a dramatic screenshot, above.

No doubt Residents can come up with way better remixes, taking the appropriately-licensed art from here and here*, then converting them into screenshots, 3D sculptures, interactive sites, whatever. I'm looking forward to reporting on what comes out of this.

Deadline for submission is end of June 13. E-mail a screenshot of your entry to Jennifer Yip of Creative Commons (Genevieve Junot in SL), and be sure to include your RL and/or SL name for proper credit. Prizes will be virtual CC t-shirts and other tchotchkes, real and virtual. In any case, do come to the event to share your work, and hopefully meet some the original artists who may also be in attendance. (Full disclosure: I'm now honored to be a part-time consultant for CC's events and activites in SL.) ... [blogged by rubaiyat on New World Notes]

Posted by jo at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

The Museum of Television & Radio

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Beyond TV: New Media Art from Studio IMC

The Museum of Television & Radio Presents Beyond TV: New Media Art from Studio IMC An Interactive Gallery Exhibit in the Spielberg Gallery, 6/2 - 8/31, 2006. Visitors are offered the opportunity to experience technologies used in video games, the Internet, social software, and cell phones.

Comprised of five separate pieces--CINE 2.0, Swarm, freeSTYLE, Zig Zag Muzig Block, and LifeForce--this exhibit of interactive art offers visitors the opportunity to experience technologies used in video games, the Internet, social software, and cell phones—all of which will ultimately have an impact on television as we know it today.

CINE 2.0 (Collaborative Immersive Networked Environment, pronounced "sign") by Artists: James Tunick, Miro Kirov, and Houston Riley with Tony Rizzaro and Braden Weeks Earp: CINE 2.0 is a mixed-media environment inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Holodeck. Multiple users fly through an urban datascape in an immersive environment by using body gestures. Participants in the environment can also collaborate to compose music and, in addition, people out in the city itself can send photographs from their cell phones to be incorporated into the datascape environment.

CINE takes the computer screen out of the box and reconfigures it as a life-size environment. Control of visuals and sound takes place through full-body gestures rather than just mouse-clicks. As the traditional computer screen and mouse-keyboard interface transforms to fill the room, future entertainment platforms like CINE will enhance collaboration among multiple users, opening up whole new worlds of learning, art, creativity, and play. CINE is powered by a network of servers and computers that includes Studio IMC's BlackBox and IMCvote mobile technology.

Swarm by Daniel Shiffman: Swarm paints a digital portrait of the viewer. Stationary viewers will see their portrait, while moving ones will produce an image more like an abstract painting.

Swarm is an interactive video installation that implements the pattern of flocking birds (using Craig Reynold’s “Boids” model) as a constantly moving brush stroke. Taking inspiration from Jackson Pollack’s “drip and splash” technique of pouring a continuous stream of paint onto a canvas, Swarm smears colors captured from a live video input of the person looking at the screen, producing an organic painterly effect in real time. The person viewing the screen becomes part of the art.

freeSTYLE by Dana Karwas: freeSTYLE is a music video created entirely from cell phones. Video clips and text messages are sent in by cell phone, which are then sequenced at random and mixed with music to create a living, abstract music video. Participants can send a video or text message to 1[at]dk22.com.

Cell phones offer an extension of one's identity. Users can send messages to freeSTYLE and, in return, they will hear and see their messages free-styled back to them with an added beat. Guided by a hip-hop beat of choice, the user can hear and see their mobile presence in the form of a living music video.

Zig Zag Muzig Block (ZZMB) by Inhye Lee : Going beyond the tradition of the children's mix-and-match toy, ZZMB allows the viewer to create new characters from four existing singing characters by rotating or sliding each block. Playing with ZZMB's blocks also creates new musical compositions.

Each top, middle, and bottom block plays a different character's voice, harmony (chord), and rhythm (beat) of music, which are written as parts of complete scores. Users can make variations of the sound by applying different voices, chords, or rhythms from other blocks. When blocks are matched to compose one of the original, matching characters, users can hear the full original score. Slide the blocks to the side to make more musical variations.

LifeForce by James Tunick: LifeForce transforms the cell phone into a digital paint brush and musical instrument. The work comes alive only when the viewer participates, waving a cell phone to "paint" with light and sound. Multiple users can control the pulsing visuals as well as push sounds across the space.

Powered by Studio IMC's BlackBox media player and custom software, the installation invites viewers to collaborate utilizing a flatscreen, stereo sound, and cell phones. The work is a commentary on the need for more participatory art forms in contemporary museums, and strives to validate the mobile device as a tool for creative expression. LifeForce envisions a future in which such artistic tools are common to public spaces like city sidewalks and sides of buildings.

Studio IMC (Interactive Multimedia Culture)—a New York City-based new media agency comprised of an international team of artists and software engineers—envisions the future of group entertainment and collaboration and imagines what's waiting for us beyond the relatively passive, "hands-off" experience of watching TV. Studio IMC fuses old and new media concepts and technologies to create a brave new world of participatory—at times even immersive—media consumption. There are no "Do Not Touch" signs here—instead, you're encouraged to touch everything and actually become part of the artwork yourselves.

Posted by jo at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2006

Digital Maosim: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

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Collective Action or Collectivism?

"In "Digital Maosim", an original essay written for Edge, computer scientist and digital visionary Jaron Lanier finds fault with what he terms the new online collectivism. He cites as an example the Wikipedia, noting that "reading a Wikipedia entry is like reading the bible closely. There are faint traces of the voices of various anonymous authors and editors, though it is impossible to be sure".

His problem is not with the unfolding experiment of the Wikipedia itself, but "the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous"." From John Brockman's Introduction to Digital Maosim: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier, Edge. See Collective Action is not Collectivism by Howard Rheingold. Other responses, 2.

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

Recombinant Media Labs

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Thomas Brinkmann + Thomas Koner

Fresh from headlining at Montreal’s MUTEK festival and his hometown in Cologne, Germany, you are invited to attend a very special educational event where Thomas Brinkmann himself will pilot a series of provocative real time “sessions” on the science of sonic propagation hosted by Recombinant Media Lab's [RML] director of operations, Naut Humon. Come and meet Thomas as he demonstrates mixes and manipulations on the extraordinary SURROUND TRAFFIC CONTROL immersive sound system. This is pure beat banging, texture mapping techno that’s totally out of the ordinary and then the KLICK format utilizes his experimental vinyl cutting techniques. Don’t miss this chance to be up close and personal with the music.and its creator in a high resolution research environment.

Though he’s been famed for productions on his own Max Ernst and Suppose labels, Brinkmann gained a prominence in the experimental and electronic community for his full-length remixes (or as he terms them, “variations”) of material by Richie Hawtin and Mike Ink. The variations were made possible by playback of the original records on a turntable of Brinkmann’s own design, which included two tone arms with separate outputs for left and right channels…. With the two arms playing the track simultaneously from two different positions, previously nonexistent patterns are extracted from the music.

He is a former artist of the famous art school in Düsseldorf, but got kicked out because of his radical arguments and modern thinking in terms of art. He started doing scratch loops in the beginning of the 80s because he liked the idea of a step sequencer. Mathematically thought out, he developed a precise art of scratching the the grooves with a sharp knife-like instrument into the vinyl. Complex grooves were the result and he started to do variations with the Studio 1 records, by using his special designed record player with the two systems. He turned down the speed and came up with a dopplereffect which sounded like dub.... His sound can be described as machine music with just a little bit of organic bump enough to make you jump & move. Each bass drum, each hi hat is detectable. This goes from very abstract minimal music to a more Krautrock electronic approach. Accomplished artist and generous performer, Thomas Brinkmann likes to say that it’s all a question of turning knobs with precision and subtlety. If fate plays in his favor, no doubt that all spectators confronted by his savoir-faire will have little chance against being magically struck by the force of his devastating dynamics.

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THOMAS KONER: FROM THE OUTSKIRTS OF NOTHING TO THE SUBURBS OF THE VOID: absence and emptiness.in cinematic space at RECOMBINANT MEDIA LABS, SF. a LIVE AUDIO / VISUAL WORKSHOP PERFORMANCE IN TWO SESSIONS OVER TWO EVENINGS Thursday, June 22nd at 8:00 pm and Friday, June 23rd at 8:00 pm . $15 per session in advance on Paypal. Reservations are strongly suggested! Capacity is limited.

Thomas Koner is one of the most respected electronic composers in the genre, over the past 15 years, Koner's dedication to intensive sound research and collaborations with leading filmmakers has placed him at the epicenter of where sound and contemporary art collide. Beyond that, he is half of the legendary techno act Porter Ricks, their releases on Chain Reaction and Force Inc. have electrified and influenced a vast array of producers and admirers. His current works that combine and extend auditory image experiences has been awarded the top prizes at Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and numerous significant film festivals. A number of those international exhibition video works will be shown here in a performative context at RML's surround cinematic symposia.

Recombinant Media Labs seeks to foster the creative evolution and development of cutting edge techniques for real time spatial media synthesis; techniques which incorporate and push the formal aesthetic/technical boundaries of surround cinema, immersive audio/visual environments and live musical performance. [via Rhizome]

Posted by jo at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

Nathaniel Stern

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Between Text and Flesh

"Staged via various media, Nathaniel Stern’s work enacts the interstices of body, language and technology. It seeks to force us to look again at the relationships between the three, and invites us to experiment with their relation. His body of work can, perhaps, be described as an exploration of the interstitial itself–revisiting between technology and text the dangerous spaces of enfleshment, incipience, and process.

Stern’s revisitations plunge us into a confrontational world of performance where Stern, as actor, provocateur and artist, invites us to enter into the performance and engage in the seriousness of play. The work encourages the viewer to interrogate their perceptions of the everyday and the relations they have with themselves, to others and the world around them..." From Between Text and Flesh by Nicole Ridgway, NY Arts Magazine.

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

Remote

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From Installation to Itinerary

Remote--Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania; 3-23 June 2006: 'Remote' brings together artworks by five artists that connect the local and global through digital media – Susan Collins (UK), Pete Gomes (UK), Derek Hart (UK/Tas), Nancy Mauro-Flude (Tas/Netherlands) and Martin Walch (Tas).

These artists explore their relation to the real world and their works demonstrate how that transaction might be constituted today when any firm sense of presence (real space) and immediacy (real time) is exacerbated by technologies that problemmatize notions of nearness and remoteness, such as the televisual, tele-communications and global positioning systems. What is a common point of departure for all is a confounded sense of place and proximity. The resulting inventory includes screen and projection-based moving image work, webcast transmissions, site-specific interventions and locative media.

Curated by Vince Dziekan (Monash University, Melbourne), the exhibition’s distinctive scenography is characterised by its distribution across the Plimsoll Gallery and its surrounding environment. This incorporation of other locales in the immediate proximity of the Centre for the Arts into the overall sweep of the ‘expanded’ exhibition results in the transformation of the exhibition from being experienced as an installation into something more likened to an itinerary.

This is further supported by the addition of a locative media artwork by the artist/curator created specifically to direct and focus the exploration of this broader ‘ecology’ of spaces. The work promotes the mobility and agency of the viewer by linking distributed media contents to a series of locational markers that situate this narrative across the ‘in-between’ spaces of the exhibition.

The exhibition experience is supplemented and extended by an exhibition website, designed by Superbia. Extensive information about the artists and inventory is available, plus descriptions regarding the exhibition’s scenography and locative media aspects. Two essays have been commissioned for the online catalogue: a curator’s essay by Vince Dziekan and a contributor’s essay by Scot Cotterell (Tas).

For a press package or more information, contact: Vince Dziekan [vince.dziekan[at]artdes.monash.edu.au]

Posted by jo at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

Ursula Endlicher

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HTML Movement + Impersonations

Join Ursula Endlicher for this year's "studios on view". She'll be introducing a new work-in-progress, html_butoh, in which she will re-create the structure of original websites using a movement alphabet based on the "html-movement-library." She will explain how everyone can submit their versions of html-performances to this library.

Ursula will also perform an excerpt from her new series Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited which is again built upon the ideas of the html-movement-library, incorporating them here within the enactment of a popular website.

Other artists showing work are June Ahrens, Peggy Cyphers, and Suhee Wooh. Where: 315 Broadway, 5th Floor (between Duane/ Thomas Street); When: Saturday, June 10, 4-8 PM [Ursula's performance is scheduled for 7 PM.]

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

EXTENDING EXPERIENCES

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CALL FOR PAPERS

While players of video games have always been waiting for the next generation of technology, less fuss is made about next-generation experiences. If such experiences are already there, what are they like? What would be the 21st-century-equivalent to the experiences of Andy Capp's Tavern's customers who rushed into the bar to play Pong until the machine got jammed with coins? Ask a script writer, a political mod artist, a middleware developer, a computer game researcher, and someone who has traded off his social contacts in real life for a high-level character in a MMOG – and you will be overwhelmed by the diversity of what makes an experience worth striving for.

Department of Media at the Faculty of Art & Design of the University of Lapland and Mediapolis Innomedia project will publish a multidisciplinary book on player experiences in early 2007. The book will be a compilation of peer-reviewed articles. Respecting the department of Media's tradition of combining research with design, the book aims to piece together contemplations from researchers, designers, and those in-between, within or outside the academia.

On one hand, the extending might mean creating games that allow new kinds of experiences or are more emotional, maybe by implementing innovations regarding for example gameplay, graphics, sound or the interface. Also the players are creative. Their use of games in a way designers did not intend alters their experiences. On the other hand, the extending takes place concept-wise. In the wake of new forms of games and playing new types of players get introduced to digital games. Thus, the concept of player experience has to assimilate very different takes on how, where, when and why games are played and experienced. No matter from which viewpoint one looks at the player's experience, it seems that it poses challenges for those trying to observe or analyse it, not to mention those who are trying to understand it in order to be able to design something new.

Topics that the authors are invited to be address from the viewpoint of the players experience include, but are not limited to the following, and case-studies with an artistic or an industrial perspective are also welcomed.

Games

- Game genres and gameplay concepts, abstract games, story-based games
- Game design "trends", e.g. movie-like games with no HUDs
- Graphics and sound; audiovisual styles, cel-shading, photorealism, sound-based games
- Different player setups; one or many, local or online, one-vs-one, team-vs-team, etc.
- Avatars and other player representations
- Innovations; new gameplay concepts, platforms, input devices, interfaces, AI
- Different types of games; online multiplaying (both hc & casual), mobile and portable games, pervasive and VR games
- Content; games not only for entertaining, i.e. "seriousness" of games, in-game advertising

Players

- Different player groups and motivations; e.g. newbie, casual, hc, professional, senior, grrl, and mom gamers
- The role of "fun" in players' experiences
- Player identities
- Games as media for human relations
- Players' goals, emotions, motivations, expectations
- Consequences of playing
- Borderline activities; guild/clan webfora, mods, machinima, real-money trade of in-game assets

Methodological challenges for research and design

- Games as form of art, propaganda or education
- Design research from all viewpoints
- Philosophy of the experience
- Game-related experiences vs. other experiences
- Player's experience compared to user's/reader's/viewer's experience
- The applications of cognitive psychology, affective computing, HCI, Media Studies, etc. on understanding the players' experiences

IMPORTANT DATES

All papers will be reviewed by an independent review committee, which will provide written feedback on each paper. NB: Due to popular demand, the abstract submission deadline has been extended from the original.

June, 19. 2006 Abstract submission (was: June 5th)
June, 26. 2006 Notification of acceptance (was: June 12th)
Sept, 5. 2006 Submission of full papers
Jan, 10. 2006 Submission of final papers

SUBMISSION INFORMATION AND FORMATTING GUIDELINES

Abstract

The abstract will summarise the contents of the paper and should contain from 150 to 200 words.

Please submit the abstract along with the additional information in plain text format using the electronic submission form on the website.

For more details, please visit the book's web page.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE REVIEW BOARD

The line-up of the review board will be announced later on the book's web page.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE EDITORS

Please visit the book's web page to view the editors' bios.

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

June 05, 2006

Second Life Exhibition Opportunity

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'The New West: An Exhibition of Virtual Folk Art'

Artists are invited to submit work for a specially created area of the online community Second Life (SL).

Art must be created within SL, using easy-to-learn modeling tools. Textures can be made in paint programs and uploaded to the SL world for use. Ideas will be accepted approximately one-two months before the conference date. Artists will be instructed how to set up their own avatar in SL, and given parameters for the actual artwork creation. All work is due before the conference to allow the jurors time to adequately examine and interact with the works. Criteria will include orginality, skill, aesthetic qualities, and interaction. Example images will be posted in the near future. This competition is hosted by the game collective, Ludica, with support from Linden Labs, makers of Second Life.

The best of show will be on display at the San Jose Museum of Art throughout the ZeroOne / ISEA2006 Conference.

Posted by jo at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

Shilpa Gupta

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The Dwindling Power of Individual Reason

Bose Pacia presents recent work by Shilpa Gupta from May 17th through June 24th. Shilpa Gupta creates artwork using interactive websites, video, gallery environments and public performances to probe and examine subversively such themes as consumer culture, exploitation of labor, militarism and human rights abuse. In her debut solo exhibition in New York, Gupta presents an interactive video installation as well as other multimedia works and photography.

Her Untitled, 2004-2005 (interactive video) is an interactive new media installation in which the viewer is invited to manipulate a large wall projection. The projection features several figures in fashionable camouflage clothing engaged in various poses. The absurdity of their gestures and costumes recall both the mimicry games of childhood and the unforgiving rigor and conformity of military drills. In enabling the viewer as a participant, the work comments upon the dwindling power of individual reason in the face of 'mindless violence' borne out of fundamentalism and imperialism.

Her Untitled, 2005-2006 (touch screens) initially appears benign in content. One screen presents a bucolic landscape, another, the laughing faces of children, a third, a misty window. As the viewer touches each screen to initiate activity, darker truths emerge. The lush countryside of Kashmir is dotted with military guards and the smiling children are innocently posing alongside the remains of a bomb blast. From the misty window, a finger follows that of the viewer to spell out a militaristic alphabet: A for army, B for bomb, C for curfew. Gupta guides her audience to reveal the fear and uncertainty that pervade everyday life in this contested terrain and more broadly, demonstrates how truth is a fragile construction utterly dependant on the direction and intensity of one?s gaze.

Shilpa Gupta was born in Mumbai, India in 1976 and studied sculpture at the Sir J. J. School of Art there. She has exhibited widely and recent shows include the Havana Biennial (2006), ICC Tokyo (2005), Edge of Desire (New York, 2005) and Century City at the Tate Modern (2001, London). She was also commissioned to create Blessed Bandwidth.net, a net art project for Tate Online. In 2005 she was a runner-up for the Leonardo Global Crossings Award, Leonardo Magazine, MIT Press and in 2004, she was awarded the prestigious Transmediale Award in Berlin. Upcoming projects include the 2006 Sydney Biennial, the 2006 Liverpool Biennial and a two-person exhibition at Daimler Chrysler Contemporary in Berlin. Gupta currently lives and works in Mumbai.

Bose Pacia is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 pm and by appointment.

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

Designing the Not-Quite-Yet

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Call for Participation

Call for Participation in a workshop--Designing the Not-Quite-Yet: Ideas and Methods for engaging the Public in a Digital Future of their Choice--on 14th September, during HCI2006.

How do we broaden the constituency of design? How do we help people engage with social and political transformations engendered by technology? How do we enable the appropriation of an invasive, yet intangible, 'internet of things’? This workshop will explore the potential of innovative methods, such as performance, public art, games, etc, to: * deliver methods that help people do 'design thinking' * widen the design franchise * base the design of future technologies more closely on society's needs and desires.

The day is intended to open discussion on how to engage more people in design in the context of an increasingly digital world – one in which designed information spaces surround the ordinary spaces we occupy. Ambient intelligence, pervasive computing, augmented reality, smart buildings and clothes, identity tagging, … the digital future is promised as connectivity 'anytime, anywhere', as seamless flows of information between environments, objects and people. More than ever this will see social practices and institutions embedded in technology.

The social challenges arising from these developments have been noted, but Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) specialists have not fully engaged with the question of how to design for them. These challenges are particularly interesting because they require users to think like designers or submit to being run by the software surrounding them. This workshop asks how we can create the competent and empowered 'end-designer'.

We would expect methods drawn from the arts, education and science/social science to be relevant and we invite you to bring them and share them at this event running during HCI2006. So if you work to involve, engage or educate the public on the potential of digital technology – especially in innovative or experiential ways – or you'd like to know more about how to do it, sign up. The emphasis will be on sharing practical work, not formal presentations.

A particular feature of this workshop is the participation of a group of artists commissioned by Space (a London media arts and education charity) under the umbrella of looking at the potential of identity tagging technologies, such as RFID, and communicating this potential to the public. They will be demonstrating their work on public engagement to the wider conference during the afternoon. There will also be a chance for other participants to showcase their methods alongside these interactive exhibits. So, it is a chance to take HCI in a truly interdisciplinary direction and feed this into the conference as a whole.

Please note that attending this workshop is a little different from most conference workshops as it is running alongside the conference itself and parts of the day will see the two events merging. The approximate schedule is as follows:

Meet 9.30 for brief introductions, before heading on to:

Alan Newell of the University of Dundee and Maggie Morgan of Foxtrot Theatre HCI2006 keynote on using performance to elicit design requirements.

~11am – 1pm: Workshop participants share experience and practice.

~2pm – 3.30: A panel-type session will provide an opportunity for leading experiential learning tasters and exhibit artworks/demos – this will be open to the general conference to attend. Workshop participants will lead this (mostly by prior agreement) and it will be a chance to experience the methods talked of.

~4pm – 5.30 Participants regroup, review progress and look to the future.

Attending:

It is possible to sign up just for the workshop by paying the workshop registration fee (this will include entrance to the conference sessions mentioned above). If you are at the conference, you may sign up for the workshop without cost by sending an expression of interest as outlined below. (If you do sign up, you will be expected to attend all of it.)

Expression of interest:

In all cases, to participate please send Ann Light (annl[at]dcs.qmul.ac.uk) a description of your work/interest up to a maximum of 3 pages by 9th June. Please include any practical activities you would like to lead in the session and whether you are interested in demonstrating/describing these to a wider conference group. You will be notified of our decision by 16th June, in time for the end of early-bird registration (23rd June).

Workshop organisers:

Ann Light is a member of the Interaction, Media and Communication Group at Queen Mary University of London and co-runs a campaign called "Transform-Ed" (www.transform-ed.org) on bridging the divide in society's comprehension of the potential of digital networks. She is chair of trustees for a digital media charity (www.fiankoma.org) and edits UsabilityNews (www.usabilitynews.com) on a part-time basis. She was once a drama teacher and still uses this background in her interpretation of 'interaction design'.

Pat Healey leads the Interaction, Media and Communication Group and Augmented Human Interaction Laboratory at QMUL. He is interested in the potential of digital technologies to provide uniquely flexible media which transform human communication. Pat's research applies models of human communication - drawn mainly from psychology and sociology - to understanding these processes.

Gini Simpson is the head of SPACE Media Arts, based in Hackney, East London. SPACE Media Arts undertakes large scale electronic arts projects linking artists and communities and provides open access to new technology in East London. This has included working with award winning artists, street gangs from Bow and patients at a London psychiatric hospital. Previous to this, Gini worked for DDB Advertising and Magic Lantern productions iTV. She has produced art events nationally and internationally, including the production of the first New Media marquee and field at Glastonbury Festival.

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 02, 2006

Interface and Society

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Accessing the "Technosphere"

Interface and Society: Deadline call for works: July 1 - see call; Public Private Interface workshop: June 10-13; Mobile troops workshop: September 13-16; Conference: November 10-11 2006; Exhibition opening and performance: November 10, 2006.

In our everyday life we constantly have to cope more or less successfully with interfaces. We use the mobile phone, the mp3 player, and our laptop, in order to gain access to the digital part of our life. In recent years this situation has lead to the creation of new interdisciplinary subjects like “Interaction Design” or “Physical Computing”.

We live between two worlds, our physical environment and the digital space. Technology and its digital space are our second nature and the interfaces are our points of access to this technosphere.

Since artists started working with technology they have been developing interfaces and modes of interaction. The interface itself became an artistic thematic.

The project INTERFACE and SOCIETY investigates how artists deal with the transformation of our everyday life through technical interfaces. With the rapid technological development a thoroughly critique of the interface towards society is necessary.

The role of the artist is thereby crucial. S/he has the freedom to deal with technologies and interfaces beyond functionality and usability. The project INTERFACE and SOCIETY is looking at this development with a special focus on the artistic contribution.

INTERFACE and SOCIETY is an umbrella for a range of activities throughout 2006 at Ateleir Nord in Oslo.

Posted by jo at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)

Experimenta @ FACT

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Under the Radar

Kill your television! Get ready for a totally wicked exhibition. Experimenta Under the Radar invites UK audiences to experience and interact with the high voltage works of Australia’s best and most innovative media artists: 16 June - 28 August, 2006.

FACT, the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology is the UK’s leading organisation for commissioning and presentation of film, video and new media art forms. FACT exists to inspire and promote the artistic significance of film, video and new and emerging media.

Includes:

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ZiZi the Afffectionate Couch (2003) :: Stephen Barrass, Linda Davy & Kerry Richens: An invention inspired in equal parts by a shaved poodle, a fluffy Persian cat, and an exotic alien sea slug, ZiZi growls when sat on, purrs when touched, and emits soft groans of delight if you stroke her long fur. If left alone, ZiZi mews for attention. ZiZi is an affectionate ottoman couch that asks for emotional support while offering physical comfort. The responses are triggered by touch-sensitive cables, which are sewn into the fluffy upholstery of the couch. While Barrass claims that ZiZi’s personality is based on his pet Dalmatian Ziggy, we can safely assume that the artist does not sit on his dog.

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Op Shop (1999-2002) :: Stephen Barass: Cluttered from floor to ceiling with bric-a-brac, Op Shop is a virtual environment that is transformed by sound. Unlike most interactive interfaces where communication occurs by means of a stylus, mouse or other device, Op Shop encourages collaborative interaction. By singing into the microphone a visitor can disturb the virtual objects; a high-pitched wail can shatter glass. By singing and sustaining a low note, they can smash a table. An ever-changing choral score emerges as multiple participants explore the effects of their vocal range. This cacophony of hums, croons, shrieks, claps and whistles, punctuated by percussive shattering and laughter, propels the visitor towards an unexpected finale.

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Dislocation (2005) :: Alex Davies: What happens when we can’t trust what we see with our own eyes? As visitors peer into the portals of Dislocation, they become auto-voyeurs seeing and hearing unnerving scenarios play out behind them only to discover the room is empty when they turn around. Ingeniously programmed by Davies to overlay pre-recorded sequences with realtime footage, the simultaneous presence and absence of these phantoms defies rational thought and experience, and creates a haunting atmosphere. The work creates an environment of deception and uncertainty whose subtlety and cunning displaces our reliance upon, and trust of, our own distinct emotional responses to the presence of others.

Posted by jo at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

Next UpStage Walk-Through and Swaray

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Online Performance Environment

The next open walk-through in UpStage will be on Wednesday 7 June at the following times: California, USA: 2am; New York, USA: 5am; UK: 10am; Western Europe: 11am; Finland: 12am; Australia - NSW: 7pm; NZ: 9pm. Check http://www.worldtimeserver.com for your local time.

The open walk-through is a chance for you to learn about the UpStage environment and to play around in it with others. To participate, point your browser at http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation at the appointed time; if you'd like to log in & learn how to use UpStage, or if you already know how & want to come & have a play around, please email me for a log in: helen[at]creative-catalyst.com

Another date for your diary is Sunday 11 June, 9pm NZ time: the second ADA Swaray will take place, with more mischief, mayhem and maybe even a little morsel of discussion ... put on your best frock and join us at http://upstage.org.nz:8084/stages/swaray on sunday.

Posted by jo at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2006

UPGRADE! BOSTON:

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ERYK SALVAGGIO

UPGRADE! BOSTON: ERYK SALVAGGIO -- Join us for a presentation by net artist Eryk Salvaggio followed by a dialogue between Eryk and Brooke A. Knight. WHEN: June 1, 7:00-9:00 p.m. [details]

Called "The Harry Potter of the Digital Avant Garde" by the Dutch Press, Eryk Salvaggio has been creating internet art since he was 17 years old. His work has been compared to "a more human Andy Warhol," and strictly adheres to his own "6 Rules Toward a New Internet Art." This formula has led to articles in the New York Times* as well as mentions in ArtForum, alongside several international exhibitions and talks.

Turbulence commissioned Salvaggio's "American Internet" in 2002, and he curated "Duchamp's Ideal Children's Children: Net.Art's Brat Pack" for Turbulence's Guest Curator series in 2003. He's currently working on "MySpaces," a piece about the projection of self onto social networking sites such as friendster and myspace, and a degree in New Media and Journalism at the University of Maine.

Artist and educator BROOKE A. KNIGHT has been working with digital media for over a dozen years. His current interests include webcams, the landscape, and text in all forms. Knight is Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College, Boston. He received his MFA in photography from CalArts in 1995.

Links:

*September 11, 2001
American Internet
Duchamp's Ideal Children's Children: Net.Art's Brat Pack
MySpaces
Eryk Salvaggio
Brooke A. Knight

<< UPGRADE! BOSTON: NANCY NISBET AND AMBER FRID-JIMENEZ >>
WHEN: June 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Art Interactive

Upgrade! Boston's schedule is available here: http://www.turbulence.org/upgrade/archive.html

Posted by jo at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

Urban Typhoon Workshop in Shimokitazawa

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To Produce Alternatives

[Posted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] We invite creative spirits from Japan and abroad to brainstorm on the present and future of Shimokitazawa, at a time when the government is planning a 26 meter-wide road cutting through its culturally vibrant streets. The Urban Typhoon Workshop--Tokyo, June 26-29, 2006--is a global experiment in participatory design, and includes architecture & design studios, art installations, political cafe, oral history, graphic communication, video, etc.

The objective is to produce alternatives to the government's plan as well as a multimedia testimony to the unique spirit of Shimokitazawa. The workshop itself is a joyous and participatory takeover of the city. Registration deadline: May 31, 2006; Registration fee: 10,000 yen (payable upon arrival at workshop); info[at]urbantyphoon.com

* Urban Typhoon welcomes registration from students, architects, urbanists, artists, designers, media & communication specialists, social scientists, activists, creative people, dreamers, and idealists of all kinds. The number of registrants is limited. Each unit has a small number of participants.

* There are a limited number of homestays available to foreign students, free of charge.

* All workshops will be conducted in English and Japanese.

Workshop units:

* a|Um Studio / New York, Carla Leitao
* Koba. Arch. Lab. / Tokyo, Masami Kobayashi
* CAt /Tokyo, Kazuhiro Kojima & Kazuko Akamatsu
* Save the Shimokitazawa / Tokyo, Kazuho Kimura & Kenzo Kaneko
* Art Harbour / Tokyo, Lehan Ramsay & friends
* Yehuda Safran / Paris, New York
* Studio SUMO / New York, Yolande Daniels & Sunil Bald
* Supersudaca / Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Pablo Corvalan, Felix Madrazo, Manuel de Rivero
* Shimokita Oral History / Tokyo, Taro Taguchi
* Team Un-simultaneous / Tokyo, Hidenori Watanabe
* Alto Majo / Tokyo, Alejandro (Alex) Jaimes, Tomo Takeda, Matias Echanove, Joanne Jakovich

Partners: The University of Tokyo, Meiji University, Cultural Typhoon, Future University-Hakodate, Yoshimi Lab, Save the ShimoKitazawa, Shimokitazawa Forum, Archi-media, coelacanth and associates inc., sumo, a|Um Studio, supersudaca, Misatikoh, sakura mapping project, urbanology.

Posted by jo at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

ELIZABETH LEISTER

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EVERY BODY IS EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE

Every Body is Everywhere and Nowhere combines performance and technology in an immersive video installation. This new project continues Elizabeth Leister's themes of transformation and control in relation to the body. Leister's performative investigation is informed by a history of body-based performance art, including, Ana Mendieta's "Silhueta Series", "Push Ups", by Vito Acconci and "Up To and Including Her Limits" by Carolee Schneemann. Like the aforementioned, Leister uses video images of body imprints and line drawings, actual and animated, to study the physical and virtual body in space.

What occurs when the body is transformed through our use of technology? The amalgamation of video, performance and drawing in Leister's project links the traditional to the technological and emphasizes the physical impact of our bodies on the world we live in with one another. Our body language, sense of touch, corporeal presence and physical movement through space become invisible as we interact via machines. What is lost? What is gained?

Leister will perform a drawing to define her own physical borders within a specific moment in time and space. This drawing will be made each day for the duration of the exhibit in Leister's Los Angeles studio and transmitted through live-feed via web-cam, into The Morris Gallery in Philadelphia. The traditionally intimate space of performance will expand as the body of the artist is projected across space and time. Made up of shifting light and pixels traveling through cyberspace, the body becomes expansive and limitless.

A second video shows a collage of the imprints left behind by Leister's family and friends: a snow angel, footprints in the sand, a sweater tossed to the ground. A third projection of an animated drawing outlines, frame by frame, a body moving through space. Like the drawing created in the performance, lines are built up to define a path of movement, then reverse and erase.

A computerized voice expresses a desire to be everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no one while a second audio track, taken from Leister's writings, is an overlay of a human voice whispering as if she were light and breath in an unnamed space.

Finally, the video projections will be installed in relation to a set of mirrors to create a kaleidoscope of images that will reflect the body of the viewer. Through live-feed performance, drawing and video the project will juxtapose the physical body and the immateriality of the virtual body.

The exhibition in the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts opens on June 10th and runs through August 20th. The installation, which will open with a free reception June 9 from 6 to 8 p.m., is curated by Alex Baker, the Academy's Curator of Contemporary Art.

Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Academy is located at 118-128 N. Broad Street in Philadelphia, two blocks north of City Hall. Regular admission is $7 adults, $6 seniors and students with ID, $5 children / youth ages 5-18, free for members and children under age 5.

Elizabeth Leister received an M.F.A. in sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a B.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art. In Philadelphia, her work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Nexus Foundation for Today's Art. Her work has also been shown at the Delaware Museum of Art, the North Dakota Museum of Art, Art in General and P.S. 122 in New York, and the Kellogg Art Gallery at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, among others. She has received awards from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Leeway Foundation.

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

MOBILE ASIA COMPETITION 2006

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[CALL FOR PARTICIPATION]

MOBILE ASIA COMPETITION 2006: ORGANIZED BY ART CENTER NABI, SEOUL, KOREA :: The progress of mobile technology characterized by mobility, connectivity, and dispersion seems to resonate with the diasporic experiences of Asians who are mobile, dispersed yet connected with each other through socio-cultural dynamics and relations. With the mobile market and its culture expanding beyond Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan to the Southeast Asia, the need should be raised for reflecting upon the currency of culture and the urgency of new identities that are evolving with mobile technology in Asian region.

Mobile Asia Competition 2006 hosted by Art Center Nabi pays attention to the role of media makers and artists in articulating and expressing the Asian mobile cultures. Artists and media makers always appropriate and challenge the given technology through creative ideas and critical practices to broaden the space of possibilities. Especially, the recent emerging ubiquitous mobile environments requires both popular sentiment and critical thoughts. Mobile Asia competition 2006 investigates the new forms of Asian identities and cultures in the creative works of artists and designers who dare to experiment, play, and wrestle with the mobile technologies.

CATEGORY

1. Works made to be viewed and experienced on mobile devices
(1) Game, Interactive Art
(2) Screen-based arts : Animation, Motion Graphic, Documentary, Music Video, Narrative film, etc.

2. Works made by mobile phones such as camera phone, video phone.

3. Idea proposal for wireless art projects on the theme of ‘connectivity and social network’. Art project that expresses the theme of social network and connectivity while exploring new and artistic ways of using diverse personal media such as mobile phones, laptop, PDA and internet network.

PRIZE: The total award money is US $20.000 and the selected works will be exhibited in various on and offline venues.

Category 1 & 2 (Mobile content): US $10.000

- One winner from each category will be awarded with $5000.
- The works by winners and other selected works will be screened and exhibited at Art Center Nabi, ResFest Korea 2006 (digital film festival), and Korean mobile phone service including DMB channel.

Category 3 (Wireless art proposal): US $10.000

- One winner will be awarded with $5000.
- Additional $5000 and technical support will be offered for the realization of the proposal if the work is decided to be realized for the exhibition at Art Center Nabi.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

.Category 1 & 2 seek for completed works, and Category 3 for project proposal.
.Projects that are under development will also be considered for Category 3.
.Project proposal should relate to the theme and topics of the Award
.The works that are already presented or won in other competitions are not eligible for entry.

_HOW TO SUBMIT

.All submissions should be processed through the official online platform.
.Biography, project proposal, and other supporting materials (image, sound, movie files) should be uploaded in appropriate format indicated in each section.
.However, the works applying for Category 1 & 2 should be sent via registered mail in the format of CD-Rom, DVD, Mini DV tape with a copy of filled-out online registration form printed from the website.

Please go to http://www.nabi.or.kr/pages/submission.asp to complete your submission. (all submissions)

Mail address (Category 1 & 2 only):
Art Center Nabi [Att: Mobile Asia Competition 2006]
99 Seorin-dong, Jongro-ku, SK bldg. 4th fl.
Seoul, Korea
110-110

_IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for Submissions
.Category 1 & 2: August 31, 2006
.Category 3: July 31, 2006

Notification of winners September 15, 2006

CONTACT: For more information, please visit www.mobileasia.org.
Or contact at mobileasia[at]mobileasia.org

Art Center Nabi
99 Seorin-dong, Jongro-ku, SK bldg. 4th fl.
Seoul, Korea
110-110
www.nabi.or.kr

Posted by jo at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

Invisible Maze

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You Make It

Jeppe Hein's Invisible Maze installation is just what its title says: invisible. The promised maze is there but it only materialises as we move around in it. Visitors are equipped with digital headphones operated by infrared rays that cause them to vibrate every time they bump into one of the maze's virtual walls. Thus, the exhibition is perceived as a both minimalist and a spectacular playground. The maze structure spans six different variants, all of them referring to labyrinths from our common cultural history. From the medieval labyrinth in Chartres to Stanley Kubrick's fateful dead end from the film The Shining to Pac-Man. The maze changes from day to day, inviting visitors to make repeat visits.

Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen will present Jeppe Hein: Invisible Maze 10 June - 27 August 2006. The exhibition represents a further development of the exhibition Invisible Labyrinth which attracted 50,000 visitors during its two-month run at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris last year. Via Art Daily. Thanks Joshua. Other work by Jeppe Hein: Distance.

More sound-based spatial installations: audio space + audiotag + audio graffiti, Mapamp, Sonic city, sound mapping, Aura, Akitsugu Maebayashi's audio work, Audio Viscera, electrical walks, aetherspace, etc. [blogged by Régine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Amsterdam

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"Liveness" in Technologised Performance Art

Upgrade! Amsterdam 1.0: [Goes Live!] :: When: June 14 2006 || 20.30 hours || Where: De Melkweg, Theaterzaal, Lijnbaansgracht 234 A, Amsterdam | free admission | | absinthe martinis | | buttons | LIVE webcast: www.fabchannel.com

| Upgrade [Goes Live!] | At Upgrade! Amsterdam we leap into summer by pondering the notion of “live” in the context of technologised performance art. Has the advent of the laptop, and practices such as "live cinema" (realtime visual editing) and ‘live coding” (on-the-fly sound programming) created new performative paradigms? How do algorithms, the laptop and conventions of more traditional forms of improvisation sit together? An evening of sound, image and live ambience:

Artist and film curator Martijn van Boven will take us on a rollercoaster historical ride tracing the roots of live cinema back to avant-garde and abstract film. He is followed by Trace Reddell, Professor of Digital Media Studies, who will pick up where Martijn left, and perform his latest Live Cinema piece "Brink of Disaster”.

Upgrade Montreal colleague Tobias c. van Veen will muse on the various paradoxes of “live performance” in laptop sound art, while all you ever wanted to know about live coding but were afraid to ask, will be exemplified by Jan-Kees van Kampen’s performance"Why is it pt.17?". The latter takes the live coding Toplap Manifesto, and reinterprets it by using a tasty collection of algorithms, inspired by Tom Johnson's Self-Similar Melodies. Last but not least, under the enjoyment of a freshly mixed absinthe martini, Tobias DJs us into the night and gets the party started.

Guests:

| Tobias c. van Veen (CDN) | Is a renegade theorist & pirate, techno-turntablist & writer (Montréal). He is Concept Engineer at SAT and and Project Lead of Sonic Scene in the Mobile Digital Commons Network. He currently hosts The Upgrade! Montreal, and is is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication at McGill University.
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/blog
http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca

| Trace Reddell (US) | Is Assistant Professor of Digital Media Studies at the University of Denver, and the graduate director of the M.A. in Digital Media Studies. He has participated in global webcasting projects, and edits an ongoing thread at Electronic Book Review devoted to music / sound / noise and produce shows for Alt-X Audio.
http://www.du.edu/~treddell
http://dms.du.edu/
http://www.altx.com/audio/

| Martijn van Boven (NL) | Is an artist and works as a free-lance film and video curator, focusing on avant-garde film and abstract cinema. He teaches audio-visual Design at the Art Academy of Arnhem (NL). In 2003 he co-founded the new media art centre <>TAG (The Hague).
http://www.tag004.nl

| Jan-Kees van Kampen (NL) | Focuses on networked performances and live composition. He plays in Powerbooks Unplugged, a 4-headed laptop band, and is part of the goto10 collective. He works as a technician for De Waag Society in Amsterdam.
http://vacca.goto10.org
http://pbup.goto10.org
http://www.goto10.org

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

May 31, 2006

MUTEK Festival - Montreal

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Epicenter of the World Electronic Scene

From May 31 to June 4 this year, the MUTEK Festival grabs hold of Montreal and ushers in the summer festival season by shaking up the city for its 7th consecutive year. Gathering more than 70 local and international artists, the programming for MUTEK 2006—as always—boasts several headliners and overflows with new discoveries...

With approximately 40 performances divided over 10 programs, along with its peripheral program (including panels, workshops and other diverse activities), the Festival is shaping up to be genuine whirlwind of sound, music and audiovisual creation where every event will reveal its own brand of awe-inspiring creativity. Let yourself be transported by this maelstrom of digital culture, making Montreal the epicenter of the world electronic scene for 5 full days and nights.

Posted by jo at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Franziska Baumann + Matthew Ostrowski

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VOICE SPHERE

VOICE SPHERE / ARCHITECTURE & DESIRE (for voice, glove, and live electronics)" Featuring Franziska Baumann, Matthew Ostrowski; Slought Foundation | Friday, June 02, 2006; 8:00-10:00pm; $10.00 at Door (Reservation not required)

Please join us for a special concert with Swiss artist Franziska Baumann (voice and sensorglove live electronics) and Matthew Ostrowski (laptop and P5 glove). Baumann and Ostrowski will each play solo, then in duo. The interactive technologies pioneered by these artists enable them to control articulations of their voices and computers in real time via gesture and movement. A variety of sensors connect their music to the real world of physical phenomena.

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As a vocalist, Franziska Baumann explores the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument and has developed an extensive vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques such as multiphonics and glottal clicks, as well as a variety of unique microtonal, timbre-modifying, and percussive vocal techniques that have become her signature sounds. In her performances, Baumann often modulates and "electrifies" her voice through the use of a SensorLab based Cyberglove linked to her Mac. She sculpts her live voice in combination with pre-composed multitrack sound-map via gesture and movement.

Matthew Ostrowski has been using electronics since the early 1980s. In an attempt to bring a truly instrumental quality to live computer music practice, he has developed a system based around the P5 glove, a commercially available video game controller.

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This device is connected to a Max/MSP program of his own design, which uses principles of physical modeling to control musical parameters. By manipulating virtual objects in a multidimensional parameter space, his instrument brings some of the nonlinear behaviors of physical objects into the electronic domain.

Slought Foundation | New Futures for Contemporary Life: 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia | Ph: 215.222.9050 | Thur-Sat 1-6pm | Director: Aaron Levy, alevy[at]slought.org

Posted by jo at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

Summary of the Mobile Studio Web Conference, May 26, 2006

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The Challenges of Curating Net Art

Summary of the Mobile Studio The Challenges of Curating Net Art Web Conference, May 26, 2006: After several attempts to connect all four parties with the festoon video conferencing system, which seemed to run quite unstable as a beta version, we switched over to the skype audio conferencing module.

Helen Thorington from Turbulence.org in Boston opened the discussion with a quote by Steve Dietz: “Internet art projects are art projects for which the net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/ expressing/ participating.” This brought the talk immediately into the question of what net art actually is, versus new media versus contemporary art and what it means to all of us to work with this terminology.

Ela Kagel from Mobile Studios thereafter added another quote, stated by Kit Galloway in 1999: “Net art is dead! Net.art (the jodi-shulgin-bunting-vuk) style was a product of a particular technical constraint: low bandwidth, net art is low bandwidth through and through.”

Ursula Endlicher, initiator of the NY round table, questioned the definition of the term, in describing her art work, which in some cases exists only on the Internet, but other work of hers also extends into “physical” space while pulling in information from the Web. In as much as it may seem to be a contradiction, to bring the net outside the screen into space, it interests her to develop interfaces and performances that communicate between the net and the “physical” space.

Michele Thursz, independent curator, added her position: “I think of net art as a data-dynamic type of work which can be seen through and on the net, and on a specific platform. To create a multi-user performance would be another way to address the net versus being net art. Regarding limitations of bandwidth, I don’t think this is the case any longer.”

At this point, Petko Dourmana, director of InterSpace in Sofia, explained: “I do not believe that the term “net art” has a meaning any longer. My business card for example says: “New media artist.” I would rather like to call it new media art, as it seems to be a broader term to me.” He then suggested that the Internet is not just present on the computer, but is rather an overall phenomenon.

Ela Kagel gave examples of different art works, which have their starting point on the Internet and then get visible in the “outside”, in the city or in public space for example, such as the project “blinkenlights” at Berlin-Alexanderplatz, produced by Chaos Computer Club Hamburg. Susa Pop, initiator of the Mobile Studios, stressed her special interest in projects like these, which have an impact on the public space and could serve as model for other nomadic projects.

Ela Kagel added, that many of the projects produced within the framework of the Mobile Studios tour, use a similar approach with the city as a stage. For example, the project CT_BT_GRAFFITI|Mausoleum.2 by Petko Dourmana and Kyd Campbell. This project proposes to virtually recast the lost physical space of the Mausoleum to Georgi Dimitrov at its former site, where the Mobile Studios were temporarily located in Sofia. The Mausoleum to Georgi Dimitrov (Sofia, BG) used to be the most remarkable public symbol during the Communistic period in Bulgaria. Using Bluetooth technology embedded in many mobile communication devices, visitors to the exhibition who have this functionality on their mobile phones are invited to activate it and will receive a series of visual and audio fragments which recreate the space of the former Mausoleum.

Question-in-between by Ela: “Is the screen of a mobile phone an exhibition space? Can we still talk about exhibitions there?”

Petko Dourmana spoke about this project and stated, that net art works should not be presented in galleries or museums. From his point of view, net.art works best in its native environment, the Internet. He gave the example of the presentation of the Bluetooth graffiti project at Kunstverein in Stuttgart where they refused to provide a curatorial structure in terms of creating a space with devices for people to interact with, but they rather asked the audience to bring their own interfaces, so that they could access the works there.

The question was raised to what extend a curator is still needed when it comes to net art?

Ela then introduced Kyd Campell, who is the initiator of the Upgrade! Sofia Festival. Kyd brought up the issue of archiving net art and problems of inaccessibility of older net art works. Should net art undergo a continuous revision? Or do these artworks represent a certain state of art and technology at a certain time and should be left like that?

Helen Thorington responded that they are trying to keep turbulence.org alive as an archive of older work and a place where new work can be seen.

At this moment Liz Slagus, director of the Education Department at Eyebeam, and Yael Kanarek, the founder of Upgrade, joined the discussion.

Liz Slagus summarized that the Education Department at Eyebeam, provides access points for a variety of audiences, also youth audiences; it hosts workshops in different media, and has public programs for adults and for artists. They also support artistic practice through workshops, programs such as The Upgrade!, which is hosted by Eyebeam, and deals with communication and community issues.

Yael Kanarek stated that the original promise of “The Upgrade!” was to provide, share and exchange ideas about technology, and build an environment for discussion, where else the different Upgrades around the world run depending on their locations and communities.

They create a place where people can come to, engage and learn.

From Sofia came the question about mediating net art and what it means to communicate net art to different audiences, and what it means to develop new audiences.

Michele Thursz answered that on the net there is no public in the same sense as there is in a Gallery space. She mentioned a new piece by Marisa Olson, “The Gif Show”, which is up in a gallery as well as at MySpace; both address a certain public space, MySapce being a semi-public space. She added that it is important to create a link between the work and the space.

At this moment, Lauren Cornell, director of Rhizome and Marisa Olson, Curator at Large at Rhizome, joined the talk. Ela asked them about their specific approach towards net art curating, especially the question where to present net art and how to contextualize the art works in an exhibition space.

Marisa described the just mentioned “Gif show”, and pointed out that some of the show was offline and some was online, in MySpace, which received more visitors than the show in the San Francisco Gallery. Both Lauren and Marisa continued talking about their curatorial practice and described the MySpace-net art presence as a community tool for a broad audience, or as a way to reach a broader audience.

Stoycho from InterSpace Sofia took the microphone and asked Lauren and Marisa about the commercial aspect of “The Gif Show” since it is presented among quite a lot of advertisement on the MySpace site. Marisa answered to this, stating that those commercial aspects have to be taken into account, especially when presenting artworks in those kinds of “public spaces” on the Internet, as Petko puts it. “For me the internet is a public space” he says.

And he added that in his opinion the role of a net art curator is obsolete. People would access the artworks on their own interfaces and machines and they would not need extra mediation.

Lauren juxtaposed Petko’s opinion that it is indeed very important to bring the work out in the public and to show it in galleries, because the works need to be communicated on platforms other than the Internet.

Helen Thorington added that she really was interested in this show, because in 1996 gifs were what everyone had to work with. Helen suggested further that everyone could talk now about proposals to curate work on MySpace. She then further mentioned the explosion of “hybrid” work, produced for instance between artist and computer scientist; she sees this explosion of hybrid work as the forerunner of what was predicted as the era of ubiquitous computing.

Here Lauren Cornell talked about Rhizome and how the work that has evolved on Rhizome, and how it has changed in the last 10 years. It is a different work now that the Internet has extended into space, onto bodies, and onto devices and off just only the Web – a terrain of hybrid works has opened up.

Ela asked Marisa and Lauren from Rhizome about their special approach with community tools for curating net art exhibitions and Lauren explained that those are important tools, because it is a goal for rhizome to encourage curating around net art and media art, and let people explore it in different ways.

Ela came in with the question, what all this meant for the role of the traditional curator, who organizes objects in space and puts them into a particular context? Could this be applied to net art?

Lauren answered that their exhibitions are set up right now so that people can organize works by linking to them; it is more about coming up with a theme and a concept, and exploring it through a choice of works. She added that the Web opens up the possibility to link to all sorts of objects, art and non-art, similar to blogs. Right now their shows have themes, which speaks to the way exhibitions are organized offline, but they also explore unique ways for exhibition online, through guest-curators and blog-formats.

Ela mentioned that she and Ursula discussed different art-shows, which dealt with net art in all different ways. When Ela visited New York they visited exhibitions were net art works were offline or put on a CD-Rom. What is the role of the curator there?
Lauren commented with a remark, that it is a common question, “Why one cannot look at net art at home?” Seeing net art on a screen in a museum doesn’t seem to live up to the promise, but at the same time net art shown in a museum like this, is a valid way of showing it.

Helen asked about Anne Barlow from the New Museum in NY, who tried joining via audio skype from San Juan. Due to technical difficulties the conversation was limited to chat functionality in skype. Ursula reminded and invited everyone to continue the conversation later in the blog, so all participants could share their opinion.

Lauren added that galleries and museums could pose a danger to net art; specifically because galleries are market driven and therefore compel net artist to transform an ephemeral piece of work into an object.

Lauren added another thought, that she thinks it is a fantastic idea for a curator, trying to mediate the art to the audience. She in her own practice as a curator is constantly working on making the audience understand the work and give context.

Liz from Eyebeam joined in and spoke about the editorial program of Eyebeam. About their offers and approaches.

Yael and Kyd said hello to each other and Kyd came closer to the web cam, because they have never met before in person. Big hello. Then they talked about the Upgrade! and the question came up: “Does The Upgrade! have an educational task as well?“

Yes, Helen said, as for her it is an essential part of those gatherings to see other artist’s work and learn from it.

Kyd talked about the local Upgrade!-meeting in Sofia, where media art centers from the countryside of Bulgaria have been invited to present themselves and their artworks. She also talked about the daily Upgrade!-talks that have been hosted by the Mobile Studios.

Lauren also asked Ela what her major concerns in net art curating were. What does net art curation mean to you? Can you tell us something about it?”

Ela talked about her experiences as a net art curator and her approach to communicate net art on a personal level, of creating a context, not just with arranging the artworks in space, but also by communicating with people and providing extra information. She then speaks about the Mobile Studios as mobile communication platform where the production, the display, but also the communication and reflection about the works of local artists all happen at the same time, or at least are a part of the same spatial and structural setting. So it all opens a new context…

Lauren added that this conversation is opening a new context.

Michele brought up that net artists or artists that are using technologies, are making use of a social structure. She then mentioned several examples, such as the Web Biennial with hack.art, and another piece, “Velvet Strike” by Anne-Marie Schleiner, a collection of spray paints to use as graffiti on the walls, ceiling, and floor of the popular network shooter game “Counter-Strike.”

All of these were not necessarily “curatorial”, but apply a certain structure to the medium.

Ursula added that there were several net art projects out there that were dealing with including other artist’s work in the piece, so the artist becomes somewhat a curator.

Ela and Ursula started wrapping up the conversation. We reached the timeframe, and skype was running now over an hour without troubles.

Ela and Ursula were thanking everyone, and invited everyone to continue the conversation and to stay in touch. Everyone agreed.

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

The Exchange Project

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Toronto Free Trade

Nancy Nisbet :: The Exchange Project:: Innis Town Hall - University of Toronto, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto. On Sunday June 4th at 4:30PM, artist Nancy Nisbet's truck will pull up in front of Innis Townhall in Toronto where The Subtle Technologies Festival will host an Exchange event. Please bring items to trade!

Multidisciplinary artist Nancy Nisbet explores the boundaries of free trade, surveillance, and the politics of exchange from the back of a semi-transport truck. Over the next 6 months artist and professor Nancy Nisbet will drive a transport truck in excess of 30,000 km across Canada, the United States and Mexico as part of her Exchange project. The items available for trade will include all her worldly possessions, which have been catalogued and tagged with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology – a widely used, but invasive form of consumer tracking. Along the way she will stop in major cities and engage in “free trades” with people she encounters – exchanging a variety of goods based on the value and richness of their stories, rather than any sort of material currency.

Posted by jo at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

Music for Bodies

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Sonically Mapping the Body to Architecture

Music for Bodies: terrestrial and virtual research into new ways of making and listening to music; directed by Kaffe Matthews.

Music for Bodies is a research project linking the sonic mapping of human bodies to architecture, through a practical study of bioresonance and interface building. Its aim is to discover new methods of experimental music making, as well as make new music more accessible to the wider community. It is doing this concentrating on making music to feel rather than just listen to. Currently it is making Sonic Beds around the world; it recently won an Award of Distinction for Digital Music at Prix Ars Electronica:

"Kaffe Matthews’ Sonic Bed_London installation consists of a bed equipped with built-in loudspeakers; when installation visitors lie down on it, an endless loop of sounds washes over them. Due to their frequency and intensity, these sounds are perceived not only with the ears but also with the entire body in what is a very pleasant experience.

The installation has already been exhibited several times and has proven to be a popular attraction with young and old alike since it harmoniously appeals to several different dimensions of human life. The choice of what is actually a rather intimate object used in everyday life as well as the proximity of other installation visitors opens up a strong social component. On the other hand, the installation also makes it possible to experience sound in a new way and thereby provides access to a new auditory dimension."

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Sonic Bed_London's public launch is on Saturday June 17th, where the public are invited to come lie in it and contribute to an open forum at Annette Works studio, Hackney, London E8.

Following the launch, Matthews will run free workshops facilitating anyone wanting to make music for the Bed using this instrument over the summer after which research will continue developing and building new interfaces and new music for them.

Overall this work is intended to continue in 2 strands as follows: -

I.

To continue to develop new prototypes, interfaces/spaces, for music appreciation which interface via physical contact to the human body, carried out through collaboration with multidisciplinary professionals

II

:: To develop an understanding of the electromagnetic frequency maps of the human body and of the effect of different sonic vibrations on its different areas. To use what is learnt to build a new software instrument, a bio sonic mapping processor, (bsmp) to make music for these interfaces.

:: To use the developing bsmp to make music with members of the community for the prototype interfaces.

:: To install and test these interfaces in the community, eg. the laundrette, café, bank, chip shop.

:: To pull it back to studio, evaluate, ask questions and move the process on.

All aspects of the research will be documented here at www.musicforbodies.net

Other projects by Kaffe Matthews include Three Crosses of Queensbridge and Radio Cycle.

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2006

BIENNALE of ELECTRONIC ARTS PERTH

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CALL FOR PAPERS

perthDAC 2007: The Future of Digital Media Culture; 7th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference; 15 -18th September 2007, Perth, Australia.

KEYWORDS: computer games, hypertext theory and literature, new media narrative, streaming media, interactive and networked performance, digital aesthetics, interactive cinema, theory, art, bio-art, nano-art, augmented reality, cyberculture, electronic fiction, electronic music, electronic art, games culture, games system design, games theory, interactive architecture, cinema and video, MOOs, MUDs, RPG, virtual reality, virtual worlds.

ABOUT perthDAC: perthDAC is the seventh iteration of Digital Arts and Culture. DAC was the first conference to attract and present the work of researchers, practitioners and artists working across the field of digital arts, cultures, aesthetics and design. In September 2007, DAC will be hosted as the key international conference in the Public Program of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) in Perth, Australia. BEAP celebrates and critiques new and novel technologies (digital, bio, nano, other) by showcasing artworks made with, or that are about, new technologies. perthDAC's conference program will be closely inter-woven with BEAP's exhibitions.

perthDAC's academic program is being developed with the close co-operation and support of the fibreculture forum, who will also be active on the perthDAC conference steering committee.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers are sought for PerthDAC 2007 that will illuminate both the near and long term Future of Digital Media Culture. Papers which present research outcomes, track trends or developments, describe case studies or works in progress, are speculative projection, challenge existing paradigms or record a history, are all welcome. Submissions are encouraged from any professional, craft or scholarly field that relates to communications art/design, cultural expression, practice and aesthetics, and the technical means by which they are enabled.

perthDAC 2007 accepts submissions from fields such as the humanities, social sciences, human-computer interaction and computer science studies, as well as those working both practically and theoretically in specific areas such as: digital/interactive art, digital/electronic literature, game studies, online communities, new media studies, affective computing, experience design, virtual environment design, etc.

Topics of interests may include, but are not limited to, computer games, hypertext theory and literature, new media narrative, streaming media, interactive and networked performance, digital aesthetics, interactive cinema, theory, art, bio-art, nano-art, augmented reality, cyberculture, electronic fiction, electronic music, electronic art, games culture, games system design, games theory, interactive architecture, cinema and video, MOOs, MUDs, RPG, virtual reality, virtual worlds.

Artists, early career scholars and PhD students are particularly encouraged to submit.

All abstracts and then full papers will be double blind peer reviewed by an international panel, and will be published in the proceedings. Some papers will be published as a special themed journal edition.

Dates for the submission of 500 word abstracts and then full papers are:

Abstracts: 14th August 2006

Full papers: 4th December 2006

See the perthDAC website ³method² page for more details on the abstracts, papers and presentations process.

perthDAC website http://www.beap.org/dac

Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth
Innovation Centre
Suite 3, Enterprise Building 3
11 Brodie Hall Drive
Bentley WA 6102
AUSTRALIA
T: +61 8 6424 8203
E: admin[at]beap.org
W: http://www.beap.org

Posted by jo at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

Johannes Birringer

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DANCE AND NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

Johannes Birringer will direct an international workshop on DANCE AND NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES in Istanbul, Turkey, April 3 - 7, 16:00 - 21:00, each day at Çaty Dance Studio; There will be a final workshop demonstration / performance, Friday, April 7, 20:30. The Seminar: "Media Technologies" will be held on April 6, 11;00 - 13:00, Bilgi University, Dolapdere Kampüsü, Çizgi Atölje. This workshop is part of a larger series of events planned this year in Istanbul, involving practical laboratories, performances, and seminars with local artists and guest artists from the dance world and the dance and technology community.

Workshop and events organisation by: Vivian Saragosi, Dijan Albayrak, Ayse Orhon, Mekan Contemporary Dance Studio & (new) Contemporary Dance and Certificate Program (Bilgi University) in cooperation with Aylin Kalem, TECHNE Festival.

Posted by jo at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

Virtueel Platform

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MOBILE HABITS

MOBILE HABITS: How do you trace a cow in West-Africa? Antropologists and media artists take up the challenge--Date: 29 june 2006; Time: 9.30 - 17.30; Fee: 100 Euro, student discount fee 25 Euro; How to apply: send an email with your CV and short bio to: info[at]virtueelplatform.nl

Both the arts and sciences have carried out extensive research into the issues of mobility and space. Both fields use new media such as GPS and GIS to back up their research. As a result the more recent research into mobility and space has been given a big boost. Both art and science now need each other as never before. The ‘Mobile Habits’ workshop brings artists, designers and scientists together and challenges them to exchange concepts and new working methods in relation to space, place and mobility.

Locative media artists and designers are opening themselves up to theories about mobility and space from the worlds of anthropology and social and at the same time social scientists are discovering the different cartographic and visualisation techniques found in the world of art and media design.

Mobile Lifestyles: Esther Polak is an artist working in the field of ‘locative media’. She is currently researching the possibili! ties of setting up a project in Nigeria with the Fulani, West African nomadic cattle farmers. Her initial research came up with a variety of people and researchers, including vets, anthropologists and social geographers, with a shared interest in mobile lifestyles. These various fields have come up with a number of innovative practical and theoretical tools that could be used to set up a project proposal with a well thought out, interdisciplinary basis.

Talkshop: The setting will be a ‘talk-shop’ – a cross between a workshop and a talk show. The morning session will focus on concepts and methods using a series of project presentations/case studies. The afternoon will be more interactive, with participants critically analysing the case studies in terms of what kind of insight they aim to generate – artistic, historic or practical.

Participants: Taking part in the workshop will be an interdisciplinary mix of media artists, designers and social scientists (anthropologists, social geographers) working in the field of place, mobility, storytelling and visualisation. In order to get a balanced interdisciplinary mix we ask to send a CV and short bio when applying to participate. Deadline june 8th 2006.

Speakers/support team:

Esther Polak

Esther Polak is a visual artist working in the field of new media. She is best known for two ‘locative media’ projects, AmsterdamREALTIME and the MILKproject. Both projects use GPS to &lsq! uo;imagine’ the contemporary landscape. In both projects the par ticipants were given a GPS tool to carry as they went about their daily lives. Their movements were mapped and the participants were asked to reflect upon the routes they had made. The projects resulted in large public installations. Esther Polak in constantly in search of new ways of researching space and can as such be seen as part of a long European tradition of ‘imagining the landscape’.

www.milkproject.net
www.waag.org/realtime

Christian Nold

Christian Nold is an artist and cultural activist who has spent ! the past few years mapping human emotions in the urban landscape. His research project is called Biomapping. It looks at the various ways that we as individuals can obtain information about our own body. Security technology has brought about a situation in which we are losing ownership over our own body and health. This project aims to give people access to their own biodata, to interpret and share it.

www.softhook.com
http://biomapping.net

Hanne Kirstine Adriansen

Hanne Kirstine Adriansen is a senior research fellow at the Danis h Institute for International Studies. Her training is in human geography and she has fieldwork experience from West Africa and the Middle East. Her research interests include pastoralists and their use of mobility, dryland management, and community development. She takes special interest in understanding different people\'s perception of concepts such as space and place.

Ab Drent

Ab Drent is a Master of Science in Rural Development and Management of Natural Resources in the tropics. His disciplinary specialisation is anthropology and ecology. He has followed afoot over more than 500 km nomadic Fulani herders in the Extreme North of Cameroon during ten months. Drent has written an extensive case study about the transhumance cycle of a nomadic group and tested the suitability of traditional social theories to describe the relation between man and nature. He proposes two Actor Oriented approaches and Actor Network Theory as better suited to describe the complexity and unpredictability of nomadic mobility. In a related quantitative study Drent used GPS data to build a Correlated Random Walk model to investigate the relation between mobility and environmental factors. Currently he is preparing a project with Esther Polak to visualize nomadic mobility in alternative ways combining science and art.

www.virtueelplatform.nl/mobilehabits

Virtueel Platform
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV
Amsterdam
Nederland
Email: info[at]virtueelplatform.nl

Posted by jo at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

SonarMatica presents Always On

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Into the Streets

ALWAYS ON--curated by Drew Hemment, José Luis de Vicente, Óscar Abril Ascaso and Advanced Music--is a display dedicated to mobile culture and location projects. It is an initiative based on exhibition and participation, taking SonarMática out onto the streets for the first time. Advance tickets for Sónar by Night as well as general passes for the three days and two nights of Sónar 2006 are already on sale.

This year, Sonarmatica presents itself more participative than ever: a game involving relationships using mobile telephones for nine hundred players at the same time organised by Blast Theory; a walk through Barcelona's electromagnetic old quarter of Ciutat Vella with Michelle Teran; and a geocaching session are some of the ideas at the exhibition.

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:: Participation Projects :: Those wishing to register to take part in the participation projects should go to the information stand in the exhibition: Blast Theory (UK), Day of the Figurines; Michelle Teran (CA), Life: A User's Manual; Akitsugu Maebayashi (JP), Sonic Interface; Counts Media (US), Yellow Arrow; Geocaching

:: Exhibition Projects :: Antoni Abad (ES), Taxistas, gitanos y prostitutas transmiten desde móviles en www.zexe.net; Alejandro Duque (CO), TTSM, http://soup.znerol.ch, http://co.lab.cohete.net, www1.autistici.org/communa/platanal;

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Jeremy Wood (UK), Meridians; Jens Brand (DE), gPod / G-Player; Preemptive Media (UK), Zapped!; Proboscis (UK), Urban Tapestries / Social Tapestries; Christian Nold (UK), Bio Mapping; Mark Shepard (US), Tactical Sound Garden Toolkit; Socialfiction (NL), .walk; Jeff Knowlton / Naomi Spellman (US), The Interpretive Engine for Various Places on Earth; ExtraMàtica, raster-noton, Essential Room.

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Advance tickets for Sónar by Night as well as general passes for the three days and two nights of Sónar 2006 are already on sale. Advance Tickets On-line: www.ticktackticket.com. By phone: +34 93 445 06 60: from abroad, opening hours Mon-Fri from 10.00am to 10.00pm; 902 150 025: from Spain, opening hours Mon-Sun from 10.00am until 10.00pm, from abroad, opening hours Sat-Sun from 10.00am until 10.00pm.

At any www.ticktackticket.com Sales Centre in Spain. At FNAC in France, Switzerland and Belgium: (www.fnac.com). Distribution cost not included.

Note: Neither general passes nor accreditations give admission to the Thursday the 15th concert at the L'Auditori de Barcelona

All the information at:
www.sonar.es/sonarmatica

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

Art Interactive

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Urban Networks

Urban Networks--June 9-August 6, 2006--features five interactive art projects that examine social encounters and explorations in urban places. The works in this exhibition employ a range of technological devices that create urban community connections and offer insights into how emerging technologies might play an alternative role in our experience of everyday urban life.

Finishing School presents two projects Meet/Greet and Write/Send from the Public Interaction Objects (PIO) series. Engineered to create meaningful interaction with individuals in various public contexts, each object is informed by varying cultural customs, market economies, lifestyle, entertainment and commercial technologies.

Imaging Place by John (Craig) Freeman is a site-specific installation that consists of an interactive, location-based, virtual reality environment. The Imaging Place method uses a combination of panoramic photography, digital video, and three-dimensional technologies to investigate, document, and map locations.

Objects of Wonderment created by Urban Atmospheres is the first in a series of new public artifacts that are designed to expand our expectations of mobile phones as they transcend beyond personal connections and begin to interface directly with locations. Combining Bluetooth sensing technology with a newly fabricated public object, this work dynamically generates new urban sonic experiences.

Primarily operating outside of the gallery La rue c'est mise a nu par ses orielles, partout (the street is stripped bare by her ears, everywhere) by URBANtells, is comprised of numerous, micro am transmitters tuned to the same frequency and placed within the Central Square neighborhood.

Disembodied Voices by Jody Zellen is a multi-sensory interactive installation that explores the differences between public and private life and how the global phenomenon of public cell-phone conversations have become a ubiquitous irritant in contemporary society.

Artist Bios

Finishing School featuring Brian Boyer and Ed Giardina is a collective identity based in Southern California that enlists tactical media to investigate the intersections between educational models, critical theory, and both covert and common everyday activities.

John (Craig) Freeman is an artist and Associate Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. The Imaging Place project has been under development since 1997 and includes work from Sao Paulo Brazil, British Columbia, Canada, Warsaw Poland, the U.S./Mexico Border, Miami, Kaliningrad Russia, Niagara, New England, and Appalachia.

Urban Atmospheres featuring Eric Paulos and Tom Jenkins is a research group at Intel Berkeley lead by Eric Paulos. The project explores methods to explore the fabric of our emerging digital and wireless urban landscape. Eric received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

URBANtells featuring Steve Bradley, Joe Reinsel, and James Rouvelle is a collective of three media artists whose work focuses on the relationships between architecture, cityscape and the human and cultural geography found within any city. Their practice explores forms and modalities for enhancing connections among community residents using technology and research.

Jody Zellen is an artist living in Los Angeles, California. She works in multiple media including photography and net art, as well as artist books that explore the subject of the urban environment.

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

The Challenges of Curating Net Art

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TODAY! International Web Conference

The Challenges of Curating Net Art - An International Web Conference, LIVE online May 26, 2006: 10:00-12:00 p.m. at Mobile Studios, Sofia (3:00-5:00 p.m. EST online): presented within the framework of the local Upgrade! Sofia meeting, this web conference is hosted by the Mobile Studios project, Eyebeam, New York, and Turbulence.org in Boston. A panel of international artists and curators is meeting up virtually to discuss various aspects of the mediation, curation and funding of net art.

Hosts: Ela Kagel, digital media producer and co-initiator of Mobile Studios and Ursula Endlicher, NY-based media artist & initiator of the round table in New York.

Participants in Sofia, Bulgaria:

Susa Pop, initiator of Mobile Studios
Galia Dimtrova, curator at InterSpace Sofia
Petko Dourmana, director of InterSpace Sofia
Kyd Campbell, initiator of Upgrade! Sofia

Participants in NY/USA:

Yael Kanarek, media artist & initiator of Upgrade! New York
Liz Slagus, director of education at Eyebeam, NY
Michele Thursz, independent curator, NY
Lauren Cornell, director of Rhizome.org, NY
Anne Barlow, curator of The New Museum, NY

Participants in Boston/USA:

Jo-Anne Green, co-director of Turbulence.org and initiator of Upgrade! Boston
Helen Thorington, media artist, co-director and founder of Turbulence.org

A live stream of this event will be available at http://www.mobile-studios.org

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

CONFERENCE AND SITE-WIDE PERFORMANCES

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MOVEMENT AND THE VISUAL ARTS

MOVEMENT AND THE VISUAL ARTS (CONFERENCE AND SITE-WIDE PERFORMANCES): June 2, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; The Getty Center--This day of lectures, dialogues, screenings, and performances explores the increasingly blurred line between the visual arts, dance, and other forms of performance. Featured speakers are Elise Archias, Martin Kersels, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Babette Mangolte, Peggy Phelan, and Branislav Jakovljevic.

The L.A. Art Girls bring the conference outdoors and out-of-bounds with Fluxus-inspired artistic interventions across the Getty Center site throughout the day. Free; reservations required for the conference.

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AN EVENING OF SHORT PERFORMANCES: June 3, 8:00 p.m.; The Getty Center

In conjunction with the Movement and the Visual Arts conference, the Getty Research Institute presents a wide-ranging evening of dance and performance art. Featuring the West Coast premiere of Yvonne Rainer's "AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M.," this program also showcases dance works by John Jasperse Company and Sally Silvers, and performance pieces by Martin Kersels and the L.A. Art Girls. Tickets $28, students/seniors $22.

Posted by jo at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

Webvisions 2006 Keynote: The Naked Interface

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Liberating Brain, Body and Digital Interactions

Keynote: The Naked Interface - Liberating Brain, Body and Digital Interactions by Luke Williams: Friday, July 21, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm.; Webvisions 2006, Explore the Future of the WebJuly 20 to 21, 2006 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR.

Throughout the electronic age, people have become accustomed to interacting with digital media indirectly, mediated through screens and peripheral devices. But now, as digital technology becomes invisibly embedded in everyday things, the "feeling" of everyday things is also increasingly becoming embedded in digital technology.

In many senses, physical objects are becoming more important. In an immediate way, they can help us define new systems of relationships with digital information. This presentation will examine how perceptions and gestures formed through our experiences with physical products can effectively bring liberty to the relationship between brain, body and digital media interface.

What the audience will learn: :: How patterns and archetypes from product design now frame new ways for people to orientate themselves around information. :: The principle of stimulating one sense through another to create multi-sensory interactions. :: New developments at the collision point between "real world" objects and "digital interfaces" – the touch screen.

Posted by jo at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Poker Club, Scotland

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Haque + Bleecker

The Poker Club at the Beehive Inn in Edinburgh featured Usman Haque (artist / architect) and Julian Bleecker (technologist / artist / think tank leader) to discuss the "internet of things" and "open source architecture". Hosted by New Media Scotland.

Both presenters took us through a short run down of their work and then there was a lively exchange between everyone present. Hopefully there will be a podcast from New Media Scotland in the near future.

Haque's presentation was broken into three categories: Invisible Stuff, Collaborative Stuff (produced by non experts - or vernacular creativity) and Social Space. He talked about Architecture as an operating system for the collaborative production of space. He stressed the importance of the necessity of the system (whether an augmented object or space) to have the capacity to build 'its' own perceptual categories. Several examples of previous and current work were shown.

Bleecker started with the question 'Is life hackable?' He characterised the upsurge of activity as a renewed or second order humanism. The term 'change agents' was used and it was pointed out that these are no longer well positioned parties such as New York Times reporters. Several projects were shown which showed how digital networks can shape physical activities in a sort of network practice - social practice continuum. It was stressed that we're not just talking about data transactions.

Some interesting points that came up in the discussion:

:: We are surrounded by invisible information, how do we make this visible or legible?
:: Technology extends the zone of our perception/agency.
::Is the web of objects the end of subjectivity or a new beginning for subjectivity?
:: The role of human beings as filters.

The issues emerging for me are what do we mean by 'understanding' in relation to all the information we have access to and how do we have agency within it? One thing that came up over and over was the spatial or prepositional nature of our relationship to the digital networked public. As Bleeker points out in Why Things Matter are we 'on' or 'in' the network?

[posted by John Marshall on Designed Objects]

Posted by jo at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

HOW TO - Extract DNA from anything living

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Here's how to extract DNA from peas (or just about anything else) using meat tenderizer for enzymes, water, rubbing alcohol, salt and a blender - Link. [posted by Phillip Torrone on Make Blog]

Posted by jo at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

Régine Debatty's

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Interview with Blendid

I've met several talented interaction designers and new media artists who have to accept jobs they are not exactly thrilled about in order to be able to "work on their own stuff" in their leisure time. Fortunately I've also met creative practitioners who were brave enough to set up their own practice and do not look back. David Kousemaker, Thomas de Bruin and Tim Olden from the interaction design collective Blendid are three of them. They met at the HKU (Utrecht School of the Arts) and over the past few years they have cooperated on a number of projects about experimental interfaces.

Among the works of the Amsterdam-based studio is Demor, an immersive outdoor game experience for visually impaired children; Robotract, an augmented reality game; TouchMe, an interactive installation that allows the public to leave a personal imprint in the public space. Experimenting with the whole body of a dancer as an input device they also created the Mocap Performance. Continue reading >> [blogged by Régine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2006

UBERMORGEN.COM's ART FID [F]original

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Authenticity as Consensual Hallucination

UBERMORGEN.COM's ART FID [F]original - Authenticity as Consensual Hallucination: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle; in the framework of medien_kunst_netz dortmund; in cooperation with [plug.in], Basel, and overgaden, Copenhagen.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are small ’passive radio' tags equipped with silicon chips and antennas “to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver" (Wikipedia). In the very near future, they will replace the barcode and will play an enormous role in logistics, theft prevention and surveillance of individuals. In an installation consisting of a stylized conveyor belt, several large-format pixel paintings (ART FID, 2005) and a mass of RFID tags, UBERMORGEN.COM scrutinizes the promises of a “beautiful new world".

UBERMORGEN.COM has coined the term “[F]originals".“[F]originals" designate any “original" documents or legal papers that in the narrow sense of the word are not originals any more, i.e. such documents which have been created “by the machine" (in German: “maschinell erstellt") and which are “valid without signature". “[F]original" is a neologism from “to forge" and “original". In the end, according to UBERMORGEN.COM, such “[f]original" documents are nothing more than Pixels on a screen and ink on paper. [F]originals claim authenticity but at closer inspection turn out to be nothing more that a “consensual hallucination." (William Gibson).

The presentation at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund is the first solo show of the Swiss-Austrian artists' duo in Germany. In the mid-1990s, the members of UBERMORGEN.COM were co-founders of the radical Swiss net art group etoy which became famous in 1999/2000 for its spectacular action toywar.com.

PHOENIX Halle Dortmund: May 27 - July 16, 2006; Opening: Friday, May 26, 2006, 17:00. Welcome and introduction: Susanne Ackers, managing director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, and Jacob Lillemose, overgaden, Copenhagen.

More information. See here also the text by Domenico Quaranta, “Lilly controls my Foriginals"

In cooperation with Kulturbuero Stadt Dortmund, dortmund-project, LEG, PHOENIX

Generously supported by Pro Helvetia - Schweizer Kulturstiftung; Bundesamt fuer Kultur

Opening hours: Wed 11:00 - 17:00, Thu - Sun 11:00 - 20:00

Admission: 4 Euro, reduced 2 Euro (including admission to the exhibitions “Glamour and Globalization" and “Solar Radio Station")

Catalogue: A book will be published at the end of the year (English).

Guided tours: Free guided tours at PHOENIX Halle each Sunday at 16:00 (in German) (included in the admission)

How to get there relatively quickly >>

Contact: Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Guentherstrasse 65, 44143 Dortmund Telefon ++49 (0)231 823 106, info[at]hmkv.de

Posted by jo at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

IN[ ]EX

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Container Culture

Panel Discussion: RHYTHMS OF URBANITY: MAPPING THE PUBLIC SPHERE THROUGH SOCIO-POLITICAL FORCES--Thursday, May 25 at 7 pm; Room 403, Vancouver Art Gallery.

This public discussion among artists Kate Armstrong, Bobbi Kozinuk, M. Simon Levin, Laurie Long, Leonard Paul, Manuel Piña, Jean Routhier, and curator Alice Ming Wai Jim will speak to “container culture” and the idea that the public sphere is rapidly being privatized and now reflects more on the movement of goods and capital than on the expression of individual rights. in[ ]ex, their interactive, city-wide media art project, will first be exhibited in connection with Centre A and the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, Canada in June 2006, and then in San Jose, California in connection with the Container Culture exhibition at ISEA in August.

In[ ]ex is an audio sculpture which creates a mesh network by releasing thousands of embedded wooden blocks into the world. The mesh network collects and processes data to form a sound environment in the space of a shipping container. This project takes place in the context of shipping and distribution of goods and the movement of people in the two port cities of Vancouver, British Columbia, and San Jose, California. In[ ]ex engages both the subject of things and the mechanisms by which things are distributed in the global economy.


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

Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime

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More than the Sum of its Parts

Abstract: This paper looks at some critical and technical issues of relevance to generative art. In particular, it examines the concept of emergence, looking at its historical origins and salient issues surrounding its classification and meaning for developing generative art. These issues include the hierarchy of levels associated with emergence, recognition and ontology of patterns, prediction and determinism. Each of these are then related to attempts to create emergent phenomena with computers for artistic purposes. Several methodologies for developing emergent generative art are discussed including what is termed in the paper “the computational sublime”. This definition is considered in relation to historical and contemporary definitions of the sublime and is posited as a way for artists to suggest their work is more than the sum of its parts." Art, Emergence, and the Computational Sublime by Jon McCormack and Alan Dorin. [Related: Ekpurosis]

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

May 24, 2006

Discourse Is a Weapon:

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a Legacy Continues

"The history of most artistic disciplines is full of figures that fulfilled several roles at once, often out of necessity. When mediums or concepts are new and inaccessible to the writers, curators, and producers who can help solidify and critically frame a discipline, it’s often left to the artist to explain the new thing. Here, Paddy Johnson surveys various New Media artists who, faced with chronic lack of institutional recognition, have proactively shaped the discourse around their medium through writing and curatorial work." Discourse Is a Weapon: a Legacy Continues by Paddy Johnson, NYFA Current.

Posted by jo at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things

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Initiative for the Renaming of Names in Cambridge

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things is a highly original research organization based in Boston, whose mission is to invent and distribute new practices of political engagement in everyday life. This June, they are inviting members of the public to join them in a series of renaming expeditions in Cambridge, which will result in the publication of a new map of The City Formerly Known as Cambridge.

To rename a street, park, square or other part of Cambridge, MA, simply attend an expedition and fill out a form to justify your reasons for renaming. The first expedition takes place on June 1st at the public opening ceremony of the newly redesigned Porter Square plaza. As soon as it is officially named, it will be renamed! [blogged on GUERRILLA INNOVATION]

Posted by jo at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

[ctrl] [alt]: alternatives, encounters, movements

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Confronting Mechanisms of Control

[ctrl] [alt]: alternatives, encounters, movements: ; May 3-6, 2007, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Call for Contributions: Submission due date: September, 18 2006.

In the Fall of 2004, 90 activists, artists and academics from diverse disciplines gathered at McGill University in Montréal, Canada to explore the threat of a global society moving into networks of mechanisms of control. From RFID chips to the cult of beauty, from the Patriot Act to Canadian multicultural policy, from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, conference participants explored the pressing realities of social, political, economic and institutional modes of control and the urgent significance of constructing an actional politics to (en)counter them.

The challenge of theorizing and developing new forms of resistance will be taken up in [ctrl] [alt]: alternatives, encounters, movements. As the conference's subtitle indicates, [ctrl] [alt] will address potential strategies and tactics for confronting these mechanisms of control.

Working from the notion that control is often best (en)countered via practices that engage experimental methods, transdisciplinarity and creativity, we hope to foster an environment in which we can construct collective visions for social change.

Academia often regards itself as an end in itself, apart from concrete social struggles. Even when progressive academics engage the social world theoretically, they often do not acknowledge an indebtedness to, and impact upon, political struggles. At the same time, anti-intellectualism often circulates within activist groups. And art often becomes a fashionable and institutionalized product, failing to actualize its radical potential.

Given this mess, we seek imaginative works that cross borders between genres and disciplines including the highly political boundaries between art practice, academia and activism. We are particularly interested in papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, interventions, performances and artworks that incorporate critical, anti-oppressive perspectives. We invite contributions by artists, activists, scholars and writers as well as any others working in non-traditional spaces of knowledge production.

Possible themes to address include, but are not limited to:

Alternatives to [CTRL]

non-capitalist economic practices
critical pedagogies/pedagogies of the
oppressed
sub, post-sub and counter cultures
sex/gender radicalism
queering culture and cultural space
reclaiming/creating public and community
space
radical citizenship
Anti-copyright, Copyleft and Creative
Commons practices
alternative, radical, autonomous, tactical, and
citizens¹ medias
anticorporate cultural production

Encountering [CTRL]

art as activism/activism as art
writing resistance/resistant writing
mapping resistance/resistant mapping
cosmopolitics
decolonialization and postcoloniality
negotiating governmentality and bureaucracy

Movements against [CTRL]

immigrant, refugee and migrant worker
movements
affinity politics and coalition building
post/modern protests
transnational feminisms
radical queer movements
unions and organized labour
chaos, ontological anarchy and Temporary
Autonomous Zones
theatre in the street
the media democracy movement
net.criticism, hacktivism, hacker media
diasporic communities
global social justice movements
indigenous movements
anticapitalism and anti-imperialism
co-op movements
squatter movements
artisinal movements, D.I.Y. and crafting
culture
artist-run movements
dis/ability movements
anti-poverty movements
antiracist movements
anti-oppression training

Please send submissions by September, 18 2006.

_SUBMISSIONS_

For individual papers, workshops or roundtables send abstracts of 250 words
max. in .rtf format to : submissions[at]ctrlconference.org.

Workshops are interactive and instructive sessions led by individual or group (1-2 hours). Roundtables are facilitated group discussion around a specific theme or question (1-2 hours).

For panels, send abstracts of 600 words max. which includes both panel rationale and individual paper abstracts in .rtf format to: submissions[at]ctrlconference.org

Panels are collections of individual papers around the same theme or issue (1-2 hours).

For art projects & performances, send an artists statement (250 words max) and a description of the proposed project (250 words max) including materials needed in [.rtf] format to: horea[at]ctrlconference.org.

If images or documentation of the project are available, please contact Horea to make arrangements.

Interventions: Show up!

Please address general inquiries to: ctrlalt[at]ctrlconference.org

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May 22, 2006

Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health

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Book Release + Anti-War Event

Please join us for a book launch and an evening of conversation concerning contemporary warfare: an anti-war event--Wednesday May 24, 2006 - 6:00-8:30 p.m.

Critical Art Ensemble present their latest book, Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health published by Autonomedia and coinciding with the inclusion of their film “Marching Plague” in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. This event is open to the public free of charge and will take place at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street between 10th & 11th Aves.

The evening will include brief presentations by artists Gregg Bordowitz and Paul Chan and CAE Defense Fund representative Lucia Sommer. Films from Peggy Ahwesh, Lynn Hershman and the Yes Men, along with the Critcal Art Ensemble's film "Marching Plague", produced/commissioned by Arts Catalyst, will be screened on monitors throughout the evening.

Marching Plague examines the scientific evidence and the rhetoric surrounding biological warfare, particularly the development of anthrax and other bio-weapons, and makes a strong case against the likelihood of such weapons ever being used in a terrorist situation. Studying the history and science of such weapons, they conclude that for reasons of accuracy and potency, biological weapons lack the efficiency required to produce the widespread devastation typically associated with bioterrorism.

Why, then, the public urgency around biowarfare and why the channeling of enormous resources into research and development of tools to counter an imaginary threat? This is the real focus of Marching Plague: the deconstruction of an exceedingly complex political economy of fear, primarily supporting biowartech development and the militarization of the public sphere. The book addresses the following questions:

• Why is bioterrorism a failed military strategy?
• Why is it all but useless to terrorists?
• How have preparedness efforts been detrimental to public health policy?
• What institutions benefit from the cultivation of biofear?
• Why does the diplomatic community fail to confront this problem?

The book concludes with a brief examination of the actual crisis in global public health, arguing for the redirection of health research away from the military, and promoting a number of strategies for civilian-based preparedness and education.

Autonomedia books are distributed to the trade by SCB Distributors, AK Press Distribution, Small Press Distribution, Pluto Press in Europe and from Autonomedia directly.

Marching Plague and other Autonomedia titles will be available in the Eyebeam bookshop during the event.

EYEBEAM
Art & Technology Center
540 W. 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
T +1 212.937.6580 x222
F +1 212.937.6582

Location: 540 w 21st Street between 10th & 11th Avenues
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12:00 - 6:00pm
Bookstore: Tuesday - Saturday, 12:00 - 6:00pm
Admission: All events are free to the public with a suggested donation unless noted

From Rhizome News:

The Politics of Fear

On May 11, 2004, activist artist Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) awoke to find his wife Hope had died of cardiac arrest. He dialed 911, launching an Orwellian series of events in which the FBI arrested Kurtz and confiscated his artistic work and supplies, which they interpreted as bio-terrorist weapons and threatening propaganda. This included drafts of CAE's latest book, Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health, which has since been reconstructed and is now being published by Autonomedia. Concurrent with the screening of the Marching Plague video, at the Whitney Biennial, New York's Eyebeam is hosting a book launch on May 24th, at which the book will be discussed and other artists' films concerning the political and social fallout of bio-technological warfare will be screened. In the climate of scare tactics perpetuated by the Bush Administration since 9/11 and the anthrax scare in the 'War on Terror,' CAE's new book is a timely reference on the politics of fear and the rhetoric of the government's assertion that apocalypse awaits us all if we aren't prepared. - Randall Packer, Rhizome News.

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Web Biennial

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hack.art

Web Biennial's new gallery exclusive for "hack.art" is online. Please hack this folder to show your works. It is free, open for all, first come first serve, self service. Please keep the title tags of the index page as usual; "Web Biennial -Name of the Artist - Name of the Project".

Web Biennial aims to offer an alternative approach to exhibiting online art and it brings an alternative method for exhibiting art online. It is the first international bi-annual contemporary art exhibition created exclusively for the World Wide Web (W.W.W). It is an open non-curated, non-thematic exhibition and it does not have any sponsors.

Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, iS.CaM; Büyük Hendek Cad. No:37/2, Galata Kuledibi, Beyog˜lu, Istanbul Turkey istanbulmuseum.org | webbiennial.org

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Intermediality in Theatre and Performance

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in-between Bodies

Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, CHAPPLE, Freda and Chiel KATTENBELT (Eds.), Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2006, 266 pp.

Intermediality: the incorporation of digital technology into theatre practice, and the presence of film, television and digital media in contemporary theatre is a significant feature of twentieth-century performance. Presented here for the first time is a major collection of essays, written by the Theatre and Intermediality Research Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research, which assesses intermediality in theatre and performance. The book draws on the history of ideas to present a concept of intermediality as an integration of thoughts and medial processes, and it locates intermediality at the inter-sections situated in-between the performers, the observers and the confluence of media, medial spaces and art forms involved in performance at a particular moment in time.

Referencing examples from contemporary theatre, cinema, television, opera, dance and puppet theatre, the book puts forward a thesis that the intermedial is a space where the boundaries soften and we are in-between and within a mixing of space, media and realities, with theatre providing the staging space for intermediality. The book places theatre and performance at the heart of the ‘new media’ debate and will be of keen interest to students, with clear relevance to undergraduates and post-graduates in Theatre Studies and Film and Media Studies, as well as the theatre research community.

Contents

Freda CHAPPLE and Chiel KATTENBELT: Key Issues in Intermediality in theatre and performance

Section One: Performing intermediality

Chiel KATTENBELT: Theatre as the art of the performer and the stage of intermediality

Ralf REMSHARDT: The actor as intermedialist: remediation, appropriation, adaptation

Andy LAVENDER: Mise en scène, hypermediacy and the sensorium

Sigrid MERX: Swann’s way: video and theatre as an intermedial stage for the representation of time

Freda CHAPPLE: Digital opera: intermediality, remediation and education

Section Two: Intermedial perceptions

Peter M. BOENISCH: Aesthetic art to aisthetic act: theatre, media, intermedial performance

Christopher B. BALME: Audio theatre: the mediatization of theatrical space

Meike WAGNER: Of other bodies: the intermedial gaze in theatre

Robin NELSON: New small screen spaces: a performative phenomenon?

Peter M. BOENISCH: Mediation unfinished: choreographing intermediality in contemporary dance performance

Section Three: From adaptation to intermediality

Thomas KUCHENBUCH: Theoretical approaches to theatre and film adaptation: a history

Klemens GRUBER: The staging of writing: intermediality and the avant-garde

Johan CALLENS: Shadow of the Vampire: double takes on Nosferatu

Hadassa SHANI: Modularity as a guiding principle of theatrical intermediality

Me-Dea-Ex: an actual-virtual digital theatre project

Birgit WIENS: Hamlet and the virtual stage: Herbert Fritsch’s project hamlet_X

Freda Chapple trained at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama before working for the Welsh National ‘Opera For All’, English National Opera, Australian Opera and Scottish Opera as singer, stage manager and staff producer. She is now a Lecturer in Continuing Education (Arts) at the University of Sheffield, where she is the programme director of the English Studies and Performing Arts degree track at the Institute for Lifelong Learning. Freda was the stage manager in charge of the opening night of the Sydney Opera House and she continues to perform in and direct opera. Recent productions include: Cavalleria Rusticana and Trial by Jury, 2004; Façade, 2003; The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and La Traviata, 2000. Her current research is assessing the impact of digital technology on British Theatre practice and education, for which she holds a Society for Theatre Research award, and narrative structures in academic literacy.

Chiel Kattenbelt is associate professor in Media Comparison and Intermediality at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) where he teaches in the programmes of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Communication and Information Studies, and New Media and Digital Culture. He is also associate professor at the Theatre Academy Maastricht (The Netherlands), where he is head of an interdisciplinary research programme on new theatricality with respect to the public sphere, language and technology. He has published articles in several books and international journals on aesthetics, semiotics, theatre and media theory and intermediality.

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

reboot8

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A Community Event

reboot8 is a community event for the practical visionaries who are at the intersection of digital technology and change all around us... 2 days. 400 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas. Applied towards us as individuals, citizens, teachers, culture workers, entrepreneurs, creators and change makers.

reboot is the European meetup for the practical visionaries who are building tomorrow one little step at a time, using new models for creation and organization in a world where the only entry barrier is passion. reboot is two days in June filled with inspiration, perspective, good conversations and interesting people.

reboot is a place for people to come together once a year and reboot their minds with perspective, inspiration and relationships. Starting out in 1998 with a Danish focus the event has been turning more and more international throughout the years. In 2005 reboot turned truly european with 400 participants from more than 22 countries.

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SoniColumn

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Monumental Music Box

SoniColumn is a high column-like cylinder that can be played by touch. Grids of LEDs installed inside the column light themselves on by the users’ touch and emit unique sounds. When a user cranks the handle, the column slowly rotates itself and plays the light patterns of the user’s touch.

By Jin-Yo Mok who also designed the Light Bead Curtain and is working on a portable version of his Music Box.

SoniColumn is currently exhibited at the bitforms Gallery in Seoul, Korea. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2006

Call for Participation:

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Summer of MySpace

Call for Participation: The Summer of MySpace - an online exhibition; Curated by Patrick Lichty - The Curator of MySpace; myspace[at]voyd.com; Friend Request Dates - 5/21/06 - 8/31/06.

MySpace is a cultural phenomenon. Millions of people have poured their lives into this online community, making it the most successful to date, surpassing Friendster, Xuqa, and Facebook. Millions of hours of creative time by its users, aspiring bands, models, and magazines have been placed into this online agora. But is MySpace a creative space? "Summer of MySpace" asks a number of questions about this burgeoning hang-out haven:

Has MySpace become a new art medium or New Media/Net artform, or can it be used as one? Can the selection of 'friends' and their spaces be called a form of curation? In making profiles, do we make ourselves into art objects? What does it mean to ask to be a 'friend'? Is a form of curation?

Is MySpace merely a space for the colonization of youth culture by corporations and consumer culture? Is MySpace's success representative of a truly new form of community? What other questions about relationships, society, art, and culture does MySpace present? Is MySpace limited by the way it's made, or can we subvert the profile for our own desires?

"Summer of MySpace" fires a probe into this unknown territory, asking all these questions, and setting up a stage for the Internet Summer of Love of the 00's.

Come, be my friend. Let me show you as a shiny new piece of art. Let us curate and be curated, befriend and be befriended in this brave new land of joy and irony.

Let's see what happens. Get on the magic bus.

Submission Procedure:

All you need to do is to set up a profile, make it into an 'artwork', make yourself into an 'artwork', make a place for your 'artwork', and ask me to be your friend. That's what curation is all about, isn't it? The rest is up to us!

Peace, all!
-Patrick Lichty
(The Curator of MySpace)

Posted by jo at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

Piksel06

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Festival, Exhibition, Call

Piksel06 - festival: october 12-15 2006; Piksel06 - exhibition: october 13-27 2006; call for participation: deadline august 1. 2006.

Piksel [1] is an annual event for artists and developers working with free and open source audiovisual software. Part workshop, part festival, it is organised in Bergen, Norway, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK) [2] and involves participants from more than a dozen countries exchanging ideas, coding, presenting art and software projects, doing workshops, performances and discussions on the aesthetics and politics of free and open source software.

This years event - Piksel06 - continues the exploration of audiovisual code and it's myriad of expressions, but also brings in open hardware as a new focus area. At Piksel06 we will expand the exhibition part and build upon the open hardware theme, which represents a potential for a new paradigm shift of vital importance for independent artistic expression in the digital domain.

Piksel06 is done in collaboration with HKS art centre[3] which will be the main location for this years events. Piksel is organised by BEK and a community of core participants including members of collectives dyne.org, goto10.org, sustainablesource.net, hackitectura.net, riereta.net, drone.ws, gephex.organd others.

open CALL for PARTICIPATION

The previous Piksel events has primarily focused on live art / audiovisual performance and interactive installations, but for Piksel06 we also introduce open hardware and hardware hacking as new themes. For the exhibition and other parts of the program we are interested in submissions in the following categories:

1. Installations: Projects related to the open hardware theme including but not restricted to: circuit bending, reverse engineering, repurposing, modding and DIY electronics preferably programmed by and running on free and open source software.

2. Audiovisual performance: Live art realised by the use of free and open source software. We specially encourage live coding and DIY hardware projects to apply.

3. Software/Hardware: Innovative DIY hardware and audiovisual software tools or software art released under an open licence.

Please send documentation material - preferably as a URL to online documentation with images/video to piksel06[at]bek.no Deadline - august 1. 2006

Please use the online submit form at: http://www.piksel.no/piksel06/subform.html

Alternatively use this form for submitting:

1. Project name.
2. Email adr.
3. Project URL
4. Name of artist(s).
5. Short bio/CV
6. Category
7. Short statement about the work(s)
8. List of software used in the creation/presentation of the work(s)

Or send by snailmail to:

BEK
att: Gisle Froysland
C. Sundtsgt. 55
5004 Bergen
Norway

More info: http://www.piksel.no/piksel06

piksel06 is produced in cooperation with Kunsthoegskolen in Bergen dep The Academy of Fine Arts, Hordaland Kunstsenter. Supported by Bergen Kommune, Norsk Kulturfond, BergArt and Vestnorsk Filmfond.

links:

[1] http://www.piksel.no
[2] http://www.bek.no
[3] http://www.kunstsenter.no

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OKNO PUBLIC01 ONSITE

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Unruly Artefacts to Replace Crumbling Structures

okno is interested in the creative and unpredictable innovations that stem from unruly combinations of scientific, mediatic and technologic artefacts: seeds to grow new forms of expression where old structures are crumbling...

We offer a virtual and physical public forum for reflection on technologically-inspired media arts. We tend to be a physical and online meeting place for artists, and want to facilitate a dialogue on current forms of artistic practice with a creatively engaged audience. We want a form of media art that is digital, collaborative and networked, interactive and realtime, performative and shared, indivisible in its audio-data-visual output. The cultural and aesthetic influences of media technologies will be critically discussed in the context of an alternative festival setup. The processes and results of artistic research will be presented in a program of round table discussions, performances, experimental concerts, interactive installations and workshops.

OKNO PUBLIC01 ONSITE

/// round table discussions & presentations /// http://okno.be/?id=764 and http://okno.be/?id=763 and http://okno.be/?id=767

+++ wednesday may 24th +++ a focus on media art in Belgium: Beauty in the age of digital art. Transdisciplinary practices. moderated by Maja Kuzmanovic, Michaël Samyn, Elke Van Campenhout.

+++ thursday may 25th +++ a focus on media art in Eastern and Central Europe: History and specific complexities of media art in the region, recounted through the personal narratives of the presenters. moderated by Nina Czegledy.

+++ friday may 27th +++ a look into the future of networks: The working of cultural communities, onsite and online. moderated by Nat Muller.

/// performances, projects, installations and workshops /// http://okno.be/?id=765 and http://okno.be/?id=692

Quix (three monochromes RGB), FoAM (Inflatable Meeting Room), .x-med-a. magazine (launch), Das Netz / the Net (film by Lutz Dammbeck), Peter Beyls (virtual robotics), Andrey Smirnov (laser bugging & windowpane theremin installation), Code31 (SE30-live), GND machine.dream, society of algorithm (networked Bejing/Tokyo/Brussels), mxHz (TICS), transmutation (collaborative physical&virtual project), Résau Citoyen (citynetwork), M+M+ (nomadic multimedia platform), Dusan Barok & Magde Kobzova (save before it’s gone!)

OKNO PUBLIC01 ONLINE An important part of our activities are situated in an independent server structure and in networks of invisible relations between people and information. okno wants to share ideas and develop discourses through different but parallel platforms. We like to play with degrees of visibility, of both people and data. We want to fascilitate participation simultaneously onsite and online. Audiovisual streaming and IRC-chat moderation of the okno public week discussions and performances will encompass the mixtures found in our digitally connected existence. We would like to incorporate online participation of people working in distinct fields such as netart, social work, media art and activist practice.

okno public01 onsite 24 > 26 may 2006, daily from 3pm > 01am

@ matrix art project – koolmijnenkaai 30/34 – 1080 Brussels – Belgium metro Graaf van Vlaanderen / Comte de Flandres ::: tram 18

okno public01 online @ http://okno.be audiovisual streaming & IRC chats, daily from 3pm > 01pm check site for links and updates info[at].be

okno is supported by the Flemisch authorities, the VAF (Flemisch Audiovisual Fund) and the VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie)

Posted by jo at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

Computer Games Edition

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aminima #16

The 16th issue of aminima is out and is dedicated to computer games.

Laura Baigorri discusses Game as critic as art; Joan Leandre, Brody Condom and Anne-Marie Schleiner write about Velvet-Strike and France Cadet about SweetPad; Domenico Quaranta talks with Cory Arcangel; there are articles by Molleindustria, Arcangel Constantini, Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer, Jodi; Alex Galloway has a story about Warcraft and Utopia; the sexiest geek in the galaxy, aka Marta Peirano, writes about Political games; Jillian McDonald presents Stand by your guns and Ricardo Miranda Zuniga his Vagamundo project and there are many many others texts.

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333 of 1001 nights cast

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Call for Writers

1001 nights cast has just passed the one-third mark. Performance number 333 with a story by Victoria Spence was performed May 19, 2006.

...1001 nights cast travels back to the northern hemisphere on June 11. I'll be based in Madrid, Granada and London for three months, making a special effort to coax both old and new European writers into the pool. Be aware that writing deadlines and performance times will therefore change in relation to wherever you are and my new, later, sunset times. I will miss my Australian audiences who probably won't feel like getting out of their winter beds at 4am to tune in, but I fully expect them all to keep writing. We might have to say farewell to the west coast of north and south america for that period. Don't worry, they'll be back.

If you've been thinking of writing or know someone who might like to write me a story, please make contact with me at this email address...: barbara[at]1001.net.au" -- Barbara Campbell

Posted by jo at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

SOLAR RADIO STATION

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Sounds of the Universe

SOLAR RADIO STATION, a project by RIXC, Center for New Media Culture, Riga (LV) and r a d i o q u a l i a (NZ / AUS / GB / NL); PHOENIX Halle Dortmund; May 20 - July 16, 2006; Opening: Friday, May 20, 2006, 18:00.

In this (live) installation one can listen to the sounds of the universe originating from various sources. They have been collected by the artists' group r a d i o q u a l i a (Honor Harger, Adam Hyde) in cooperation with RIXC, Center for New Media Culture, Riga. The recordings are coming from various radio telescopes. Additionally, during two days, there will be live feeds from the VIRAC radio astronomy telescope in Irbene (Latvia) which will be acoustically re-worked and interpreted live by the experimental musicians Clausthome (Latvia). VIRAC is the largest radio telescope worldwide (with a dish diameter of 32 meters) accessible for civilian use - thanks to RIXC's continued efforts. During the cold war the KGB used the radio telescope for tapping into NATO's and other military networks.

The installation “Solar Radio Station" consists of three parts. r a d i o q u a l i a's computer and sound installation “solar listening_station" is the first part. It contains recordings and live streams of radio waves from space, especially from the sun. The second part “Spectrosphere" also contains signals originating from the VIRAC radio telescope, this time modulated via electronic instruments and interpreted visually. Here, Clausthome and VJ Ratniks present the results of their live performance from May 20 + 21 at PHOENIX Halle until July 16, 2006. The third part consists of a comprehensive video documentation of the VIRAC telescope by RIXC. Additionally, on a large scale poster the existing frequency spectrum is visualized and its current use is explained.

LIVE INSTALLATION: Sat + Sun, May 20 + 21, 2006, 19:00 - 21:00; The Riga based group Clausthome and VJ Martins Ratniks (F5/RIXC) will perform live in the Solar Radio Station. The live audio stream from the VIRAC radio telescope in Irbene, carrying data from the sun and from space, will be electronically enhanced by Clausthome and interpreted visually by VJ Martins Ratniks.

LINKS
www.museumamostwall.dortmund.de
www.hmkv.de
www.rixc.lv
www.radio-astronomy.net
www.virac.lv

A project by RIXC, Center for New Media Culture, Riga (LV) and r a d i o q u a l i a (NZ / AUS / GB / NL).

RIXC (LV) - Raitis Smits, Rasa Smite, Martins Ratniks, Davis Bojars r a d i o q u a l i a (NZ/AUS/NL/GB) - Adam Hyde, Honor Harger Clausthome (LV) - Lauris Vorslavs, Girts Radzins

In the framework of the exhibition "mit allem rechnen. Medienkunst aus Estland, Lettland und Litauen / face the unexpected. Media art from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania" - a cooperation between Hartware MedienKunstVerein and Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund/Germany.

SUPPORTED BY: Kulturbuero Stadt Dortmund, 38. internationale kulturtage der stadt dortmund / scene: estland lettland litauen in nrw, Kunststiftung NRW, Der Ministerpraesident des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kultusministerium der Republik Estland, Kultusministerium der Republik Lettland, Kultusministerium der Republik Litauen, Botschaft der Republik Litauen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Lietuvos Institutas, dortmund-project, LEG, PHOENIX, Medion, Coolibri (Medienpartner).

VENUE: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Rombergstr. / Ecke Hochofenstr. (no postal address!) Dortmund-Hoerde, Germany.

ADMISSION: PHOENIX Halle: 4 Euro, reduced 2 Euro (incl. admission to the exhibition "Glamour and Globalization") Kombiticket Museum am Ostwall and PHOENIX Halle: 6 Euro, reduced 3 Euro (incl. admission to the exhibition "Glamour and Globalization")

HOW TO GET THERE http://www.hmkv.de/dyn/e_contact_roaddescription/

CONTACT
Hartware MedienKunstVerein
Guentherstraße 65
D - 44143 Dortmund
Germany
Tel: ++49 - 231 - 823 106
www.hmkv.de

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

DANM.01:

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AN EXHIBITION OF NEW DIGITAL & NEW MEDIA ART WORKS

The first graduating class of UCSC's DANM M.F.A. program will show original works of digital and new media art at the Digital Media Factory from June 16-18. Twelve new artists will premiere cutting-edge video and animation, special projection presentations, participatory performance pieces, sound installations, web art and much more. Meet a new generation of media artists at the opening reception on Friday, June 16 at 7pm at the Digital Media Factory, 2807 Mission St., Santa Cruz. It's free and open to the public. For more information, contact Felicia Rice, DANM Program Manager, at fsrice[at]ucsc.edu or 831 459-1554 or visit http://danm.ucsc.edu

Please feel free to contact our graduating class for interviews or photos:

Jess Damsen:  831-818-5356 or jdamsen[at]ucsc.edu
Media Mural Project: Collaborative video and music for distribution on Internet and TV. (starts June 1st.)

Darryl Ferrucci: darryl[at]ferrucci.com
Gamelan Lumina: A system elucidating the inner structure of West Javanese gamelan music, by means of a live visual display.

Bob Giges: otom[at]ucsc.edu
Nightingale: An interactive hypertext work that explores a play’s script and its
theoretical underpinnings.

leaf: leaf[at]baymoon.com
Softly Spoken: A participatory ritual / now together gently / mundane shimmers at edges / i see.  here we are

Daniel Massey: aboxinsideout[at]hotmail.com
Untitled: A sound installation incorporating fragmented souvenirs and field recordings from the Mexico/U.S border region.

Michael Dale: dale[at]ucsc.edu
Aphid Stern: me@aphid.org
Metavid: Metavid seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time
collective [re]mediation of government proceedings.

Alana Perlin: aperlin[at]ucsc.edu
Interactive Interiors | Home Project: An environment where individuals fashion their living spaces through interactive, web-based navigation.

Christopher Angel Ramirez: meditationsonlife[at]hotmail.com
Untitled: Narrating Pieces from the Lives of Latino (Gay) Men.

Michella Rivera-Gravage: hifilores[at]yahoo.com
Train Tracks: A perpetually unfolding collection of downloadable audio programs. Train Tracks is a combination of interviews with riders, histories
about the SF BART system, and ambient/musical elements.

Tiffany Wong: tiffany.lynn.wong[at]gmail.com
My Orientalist Fantasy: A video-installation that circles around the notion of desire as diatribe.

Founded in 2004, the Digital Media Factory is a multi-business facility for the design, development, production, replication, management, and distribution of digital information products. Located in Santa Cruz, California, we provide an operational base for organizations that serve the digital communication needs of business, education, government, entertainment and local communities. Thanks to Ow Properties for co-sponsoring this event.

UCSC’s Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) program is at the forefront of a new discipline that merges the creative and academic potential of digital media and emerging artforms in exciting and unfamiliar ways. DANM was established in 2004 to address the increasingly central role of digital technology in the arts and to examine the impact of digital arts on culture. The program offers a two-year MFA program that brings together students and faculty from across the art and academic spectra to collaborate on artistic practice and scholarly research.

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Trebor Scholz

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Distributed Aesthetics

"Today, the field of distributed aesthetics is falsely associated with exaggerated rumors of net art's demise. The entire landscape is severely under-studied. In Berlin, last week, a small group of people met for an intensive workshop to respond to this situation. Just returned back to New York what follows is an academic/journalistic quick-response and a follow-up on some strings of the discussion that branched out like a tree.

Many of the exchanges were based on the growth of the Internet from nothing to everything, with the mobile telecommunication technologies and all their "swarming" or "rendezvous" devices. The terrain of the debate embraced issues concerning variously scaled social group formations, mapping and other visualization techniques including sonification, the revenge of the backend algorithm, the vengeance of geography, folkloristic participation in alternative sociable web media, and the re-thinking of affective media. This was quite a bit for a start but a more specific focus was hard to imagine in the early days of what may become a field in its own right.

First of all, the participants brainstormed about core terms of the debate. In the jungle of distributed aesthetics we looked up to a cloud of key terms: crowd, swarm, mob, mass, multitude, and others.

Participants co-formulated working definitions with the full awareness that they mean many things to many people. "Mass" has the connotation of the chaotic, Fordist, and uninformed. Both "multitude" and "mass" are associated with the latent possibility of violence. Multitude, of course, is a term coined by Spinoza that was taken up by the political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. In 2000 they formulated the concept of the multitude in opposition to the term "the people" in their book Empire. "Swarm" means informed but decentralized. "Crowds" are always pre-filtered, and related to niche culture. Some think that the difference between these relies merely on scale? Contributors pointed to the intriguing paradox inherent in Howard Rheingold's book title "Smart Mobs."

Rheingold's "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" argues for the distributed possibilities of evolving communication technologies. He proposes that peer-to-peer networks and pervasive computing are changing the ways in which people organize and share information. "Smart Mobs," for Rheingold are richly interlinked and thus not as dumb as the term "mob" suggests. Smart mobs can develop Collective Intelligence. Rheingold refers to street protests organized by the anti-globalization movement as example of smart mobs.

Collective Intelligence is a process that is able to overcome "groupthink" and compromise in order to solve problems according to Peter Atlee. An additional source is Collective Intelligence (CI) pioneer, George Pór, author of The Quest for Collective Intelligence (1995) whose blog addresses CI [1]. Wired magazine author Kevin Kelly in his book "Out of Control" contributes a chapter on collective intelligence [2]. Pierre Levy who dedicated his book “Collective Intelligence” to the topic has, more recently examined H.G. Wells’s concept of the “world brain.” CI, these authors argue, can restore the power of the citizenry over their society and can counter the centralization of wealth.

James Surowiecki's 2004 pro-free market book "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations." was also subject of discussion. Surowiecki argues for trust networks and their ability for decision making in a decentralized manner, for instance drawing on locally situated knowledge. James Surowiecki points to crowds that are not wise at all. He talks of irrational group behavior at times of stock market crashes and more. In an eerie, uncritical way Surowiecki proposes the adaptable, managerial personality of today who keeps her ties loose while exposing herself to as much information as possible.

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html

Brian Holmes, a “wild American academic living in Paris” (in his own words) took apart the concept of the flexible personality in the essay of the same title. He commented that institutions have the function to discipline crowds into citizenry with predictable norms. He argued that there is something pre-political, unruly about the crowd, the mob, and the multitude. The idea of the "masses" has been associated with citizen formation, he pointed out. In any crowd there are individuals who write its algorithm. The power is with those who are able to set the terms of the debate. The framing of discourse happens through language. Holmes described this carrot-and-stick society as exerting impulses to which citizens react. They are thus modulated and shaped into norms. He linked this to Brian Massumi's notion of resistance that calls for counter-modulation.

At this point the workshop briefly exited into a discussion about leadership in groups. There was a seeming consensus that leadership is important, possibly best implemented through rotating facilitators.

One term that the workshop did not have time to dissect is that of Web 2.0, which now seems accepted by a coalition of the willing. Coined by dot-com entrepreneur and "futureneer" Tim O'Reilly the term asserts that there is something completely new. Version 2.0 also has a strong sales connotation with the imaginary future being the promise. While the term Web 2.0 is short & sweet, it makes the recently popularized participatory architecture of the web sound like a completely novel phenomenon. Instead, I propose the term "sociable web media" as it circumvents such dilemma while still describing the phenomenon.

Online, super-special interest groups form. Here, nobody is off-topic and everybody is an expert at whatever bonding glue holds the group together. Racial tensions, and economical disparities are not an issue and conflict can be kept at a minimum. In cozy isolation issues can be discussed in a focused, yet exclusive way. These archipelagos of the Internet form what Harvard Professor for Economy Amartya Sen, in another context, calls "plural monocultures." The Internet hosts such strange multiculturalism. Often, no two opinions have to confront each other. In their own inner chamber people can forget about racial, ethnic or economical differences and just talk about the very narrow interest set that connects them. Such focus is appealing at times when every minute counts and already unbelievably many hours are spent web drifting. There is too little time to deal with all the information that is thrown at those inhabiting the web. These super-special interest groups are monocultures just like Denmark (Holmes added). Conversations take place next to each other, cross-overs are expelled as being "off-topic" (Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam describes this in detail in his book Bowling Alone) and in this expert culture other voices are assumed to be non-experts. In monocultures, each living in parallel to the other, people do not listen to each other. They just hear their own voices. Neatly labeled special interest groups, just like shelves in a Barnes & Nobles store, are ideal marketing devices into which one only needs to insert the advertisement needle. Corporations think hard about the most viral formatting of information for distribution and the most catching methods of recommendation.

A short discussion about blogs as social surveillance followed. Contemporary pen-pal-networks like FaceBook or Rupert Murdoch's MySpace are frequently used by parents to find out what their kids are really up to and by employers to check out potential laborers’ vices. Such networks are also testbeds for the notion of friendship. Are friends actually rather acquaintances whom we help to move (into our Facebook Top 8) or are they "real" German-style friends who pick us up from the airport.

Amsterdam-based theorist Richard Rogers was fascinated by the ways in which information travels like ships across the planet. He asked: "How does the web know and how does it come to know it?" Rogers introduced his IssueCrawler, a web-based "capture device" that is, for example, able to map the non-profit organization that is most relevant to a particular topic. It can then also locate the geographical focus of this work on a map. IssueCrawler shows where a topic is happening. Rogers works on a critique of Google that, despite its rapid success and pervasiveness is still not developed. He looked for instance, at ways in which Google's search results compare to the dominating news stories. Google results for a search on the term "terrorism" start with sources like the White House, followed by the CIA and FBI. A site by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting follows 10 pages later. The web loses its side-by-sideness. No longer will one find information by a local pirate next to that of a mainstream bully. The wisdom of Google is now based on the idea that “you have to be fresh to be true.” The more recent (fresh) your links are, the higher your ranking will turn out to be.

shmoo.jpg

Out of this discussion emerged a line of thought about Technorati.com as a practical critique of Google. Technorati is a blog search engine that defines its search results in part based on tags, types of metadata, that users define. The blogosphere becomes a competing search source. The large network of blogs is a recommendation economy. The more in-links a blog can offer the more "in" it is, the higher it ranks. The blogroll, a link list that is part of every decent blog, does not have to indicate that the blogger supports the linked sites. What about an-tag-onistic link lists? Recommendation does not necessarily have to be based on agreement. It is essential, for example, to read the books of the people with whom you do not agree. Why not link to one's foes? This discussion led to Lovink's preview of his thesis on the nihilist blogger (that will become a chapter in his upcoming book). Here he argued that blogs completely sucked dry online creativity, originality, and innovation with regard to design. (He does not think of bloggers as nihilistic media authors but he examines the formats as being highly limiting to distributed creativity.) This may be so. Increasingly, however, blogware is much more flexible, allowing for experimental interfaces that are barely recognizable as blogs.

Furthermore, Geert Lovink commented that on the website Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking web service for storing and sharing web bookmarks, people are in it for themselves. Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us does not work because of a sense of (perhaps romantic) collectivity. It is driven by individuals pursuing their self-interest. This does not have to be a problem. The future may be in such hybrid activities situated between self-interest and collectivity. Lovink pointed to a slightly more collective site called Listible that allows individuals to create recommendations under particular rubrics. Rogers pointed to Shmoogle, which reverses Google page ranking. He who ends up last in Google shall be first on Shmoogle.

http://pzwart2.wdka.hro.nl/~thassine/cgi-bin/shmoogle_form.cgi
http://www.listible.com/list/complete-list-of-web-2-0-products-and-services

odysseus.jpg

The Wikipedia entry for Del.icio.us tentatively states that the "Use of the Del.icio.us service is currently free." At a time when similar services are bought up by corporations the day they accumulate a good-sized community, the question of resistant strategies is crucial. Services like Del.icio.us will eventually turn commercial. How many alternative, open and free web spaces are left? The big Googles and Amazon.coms are able to offer many "gifts" that look as if they are free. Their upload features are as convenient as the purchase button on iTunes. Companies are successful in luring the online many into their web of content contribution. Like in Homer's Odyssey their sirens sing seductive songs that call up deep desires. But just like Odysseus, online drifters need to be tied to the mast in order not to succumb to the sirens. They need to fix their hands to their desks to avoid going into the trap of American-style convenience. Oxford University professor Nigel Thrift says that "capitalism is now in the business of harnessing unruly creative energies for its own sake." [3] But there are alternatives to soft control and "free labor." Websites like de.lirio.us, del.not.us and sa.bros.us, for example, are free, open source clones of del.icio.us that cannot be commercially exploited as easily.

Moscow-based theorist Olga Goriunova and many other workshop participants were interested in such sociality online: platforms of folkloristic participation. Tom Atlee refers to the current environment as "a deeply participatory universe." Most people are online for emotional reasons. To understand the motivations for their participation matters a great deal. Participation in sociable web media introduces its own political agenda. The question Where did you upload today? reflects on the scarcity of remaining alternative spaces online. Very related is the question of agendas of media critics who write about social networking. Today, the vast majority of theorists engaging with social networking are working in the service of ebay and the Google economy. I introduced the term "oak panel theory" to describe this kind of writing of theorists who are corporate Web 2.0 shareholder.

University of California Santa Cruz professor, artist, programmer, and media theorist Warren Sack outlined his notion of mapping of what he calls Very Large Conversations, communications in newsgroups of many thousand participants. He analyzed who references whom in newsgroups. Who inspires whom to respond, take part in an online conversation? Sack discussed his game-like project Agonistics based on Chantal Mouffe's idea of agonistic democracy. He looks at newsgroup conversations and renders the positionalities of participants visually. She who controls the conversation "wins." Mapping and visualization of network traffic are valuable. The problem with the rhetoric of mapping in arts and politics à la Bureau d'Etudes is the claim of direct change propelled by these maps. How often do these fantastically designed, super detailed revelations of relationships driven by all too justified paranoia, inspire discussions about the specific linkages that are revealed?

Brian Holmes pointed out that mapping practices in an activist context are merely one more tool in the repertoire of resistance. They may not change the concrete situation but they sometimes lead to further action. ("At least people are doing something.") Bureau d'Etudes, he emphasized, now only use their maps in the context of workshops. Holmes and Lovink offered an example of strategic reviewing of movements of people between the Maghreb (the region of Africa north of the Sahara Desert and west of the Nile) and the European Union.

http://estrecho.indymedia.org/newswire/display/7652/index.php
http://mcs.hackitectura.net/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=179

Maps are not the terrain. They outline the landscape while changing it at the same time. Zurich-based media theorist Nils Roehler contributed the suggestion to look for data-nonvisualization, and opted for auditory systems of mapping. Such “liquid maps” can render the social shapes that they are changing and can help if navigation is unreliable. Why would one need a map if one knows where to go, Roehler asked. He proposed the use of the term compass instead. Maps can reveal information that would otherwise not be available in a corporal and visceral way. They can reveal the conditioning of the backend of computing if applied to networks. The factors that determine computational environments are too often perceived as being merely oriented on the interface level.

There is massive social conditioning evident on the side of coding. A big problem of mapping is based on linguistic computing that does not and perhaps cannot account for affect. Quantitative methods are helpless when it comes to the emotions of participants. Maps and visualizations alike are not charged with any particular politics. The map will equally lead the pirate or the rightful owner to the hidden treasure trove. Revealing network maps can easily become tools of surveillance if they end up in the wrong hands. Once online it is impossible to control who uses them and for which purpose.

The real life politics that leads to decisions programmers make is often written out of history books. Network protocols are hardwired with politics. Coding decisions with regard to database structures, for example, are deeply socially conditioned. Sack, argued that the algorithm is a "third agency," apart from the mob and authority. Political representation of the mob that was formerly in the hands of political parties or unions is now taken over by the algorithm. Who sets the parameters of contribution and navigation? (Warren Sack: "There is a Larry behind every algorithm." Larry Page, co-founder of Google, wrote the page-ranking algorithm of Google.)

bou.jpg

The discussion later moved on to the concept of the "revenge of geography." Place matters once again and is mediated by the Internet and its mobile device tentacles. Some speculations about the death of cyberspace were briefly considered. Berlin media theorist Mercedes Bunz talked about mobile power, turning away from heads-down computing to distributed mobile devices and the new platforms that they facilitate. Sao Paolo-based artists and theorist Giselle Beiguelman demonstrated her cell phone-based electronic billboard projects. While several art projects were shown during the workshop there was not enough time to really talk in depth about art and distributed creativity. It remains unclear if the current situation overcame the anti-aesthetic of the 1980s that largely rejected beauty. Another concern was the coupling of the glitch or blip, the mistake that often rather leads to the creation of art much rather than the streamlined coding process. Perhaps only few of the sociable web media around are related to art not to mention online games like Second Life. The NYC art historian Judith Rodenbeck, linked this discussion to Fench curator Nicolas Bourriaud's much-circulated notion of relational aesthetics. Her critique of relational aesthetics questioned the quality of the relations that are established in the blue chip art world that serves as reference for Bourriaud. “What is the quality of the produced sociality?” Rodenbeck asked.

http://www.desvirtual.com/sometimes/index.htm

Sebastian Luetgert, activist, programmer, artist and co-founder of the Berlin media lab Bootlab, a big bit-torrent and pod-casting aficionado, pointed out that he sees more people watching movies download than people watching downloaded movies. (The aesthetics of data greed.) Luetgert passionately ended by shouting "Podcasts will free the world from TV."

The format of this Digital Aesthetics unconference/workshop had much in common with good improvised jazz. The atmosphere was relaxed and concentrated. There were no planned lectures, of course, and content was introduced through very brief initial statements. The most engaging presentations did not focus on a participant's work, which escaped the tragedy of the common ego-tripping presenter. Sitting in a circle, participants went around with a few minutes for each person to show a project other than their own. The spontaneous exchanges made the debate lively and intensive.

The workshop took place at the Center for Advanced Studies in Berlin [4]. Participants from Australia, Brazil, Russia, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and France were invited by the Sydney-based media theorist Anna Munster and University of Amsterdam media philosopher Geert Lovink (who is currently a resident at the Center). Both Munster and Lovink had framed the event with their essay “Theses on Distributed Aesthetics. Or, What a Network is Not,” which appeared in issue #7 of FibrecultureJournal [5]. The shared group memory of this workshop is accessible through meeting minutes on the wiki.

http://www.networkcultures.org/wiki/index.php?title=Dada:_Distributed_Aesthetics_Workshop

-Trebor Scholz

An-tag-onistic links:

http://www.creativeclass.org/
http://www.sap.com/usa/index.epx

People who attended this workshop also looked at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
http://www.blort.meepzorp.com/
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/conference/index.htm
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php
http://www.emotionmap.net/map.htm
http://the-phone-book.ltd.uk/
http://ringtonesociety.com/
http://www.verbosity.net/creative/read.asp?id=100
http://affect.media.mit.edu/
http://microsound.org/
http://www.upliftacademy.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ebay_Value_Model>
http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/thedumpster/
http://www.citizenlab.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Archive&file=index&req=listarticles&secid=2
http://freq1550.waag.org/preview.html
http://mapomatix.sourceforge.net/
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/pubsfolder/whymap/
http://zefrank.com/smallworld/
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/chaosradio_international.html
http://yeastradio.podshow.com/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4662694154560792485&q=pomme+and+kelly
http://interruptions.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_tie
http://berlin.ccc.de/index.php/Hauptseite
http://www.khm.de/~digitale/digitale95/guests/roeller.html
http://www.de-bug.de/cgi-bin/debug.pl?what=show∂=texte&ID=3484
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/02-goggin.php
http://www.micromusic.net/
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html

References:

[1] Collective Intelligence Blog
http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/

[2] Kelly, K. (1994) The Collective Intelligence of a Mob, In: Out of
Control
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html

[3] Thrift, N. (2005) Knowing Capitalism. Sage: London. pp16.

[4] Center for Advanced Studies in Berlin
http://www.wiko-berlin.de/

[5] Lovink, L., Munster, (2006) A. Theses on Distributed Aesthetics. Or,
What a Network is Not, In: Fibreculture 7,
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue7/issue7_munster_lovink.html

[posted by Trebor on Journalisms]

Posted by jo at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

PIPS:lab

pips_lab.jpg

Luma2solator

PIPS:lab, Luma2solator, Interactive Performance; Sunday, 21 May, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst -- PiPS:lab is a collective of young Dutch artists specialised in different disciplines. With the computer as a mixer and music, theatre, film, text, photography and a significant dose of humour as ingredients, a PiPS:lab production never fits the expectations. From absurd media theatre to interactive installations, PiPS:lab produces every single element itself: the software, a great deal of the hardware, the music, the stories, the performance and visuals.

Create a piece or place your tag, write or paint with light. The Luma2solator has its own visual language. The technique designed by PiPS:lab enables every user to become the artist. The light tracks will directly become visible on the large screen. After 30 seconds the result gets stored and if the installation is connected to the Internet will be published under a unique number as well. This enables the artist to look up his or her works at home as well.

Posted by jo at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

Madrid Abierto 2007

Document Capture.JPG

Call for Projects

After the wide reception of its three previous editions, the program of public art MADRID ABIERTO opens its call for proposals for 2007. The program will produce a series of interventions of ephemeral or temporary character in the center of Madrid that will be selected among the submissions received from these international opened call. For the first time, a specific call for sound works and audio-visual works is included.

BASES OF PARTICIPATION FOR THE SUMMONS:

1. The aim of this summon is to select for realization a maximum of ten artistic projects of temporary or short-term/ephemeral character, including two specific projects for the buildings of the Casa de América and the Círculo de Bellas Artes (images of both façades in http://www.madridabierto.com ), which will join Madrid Abierto together with other invited projects and with sonorous and audio-visual works selected for its emission for Radio 3 and for the circuit of the underground channel, Canal Metro

2. The interventions will develop in Madrid, coinciding with ARCO, in February 2007 inside the axes of the Paseo de La Castellana – Paseo del Prado boulevard and Puerta de Alcalá – Gran Vía street.

3. You may submit individual or group projects (for group projects you must name a representative). This call is open to artists of any nationality.

4. A) Each project must include:
•Curriculum Vitae of no more than 2.000 characters and a photocopy of passport or an equivalent document of the author or authors of the project.

•Description of the project with an extension not superior to 4.000 characters.

•A maximum of six outlines or images of the project in jpg format with a maximum resolution of 72 ppp.

•Description of the assembly system and technical requirements.

•Approximate and itemized budget, including details of the concepts which may be able to be self-financed.

•Each file have to be compatible with PC. The files that are sent from a MACINTOSH have to have the corresponding extension (doc, xls, pdf, jpg, tif...).

•In case of not receiving all the information previously detailed the project will be dismissed.

•Maximum funding for each selected project is 12.000 euros, including the travel expenses, housing, production, transport and assembly, author or authors fees (maximum of 2.000 Euros) and all applicable taxes.

B) The sonorous and audio-visual works must include:
•Curriculum Vitae of no more than 2.000 characters and a photocopy of passport or an equivalent document of the author or authors’ of the project.

•Description of the project with an extension not superior to 4.000 characters.

•The audio-visual works for the circuit of the underground channel (Canal Metro) will have a maximum of 2 minutes duration, and can be sent in any digital format (AVI, MOV, WMW, SWF) for the selection process. The works selected by the jury should be sent on format DVD, miniDV, Betacam SP or VCPRO. The sonorous works will be broadcasted in Radio 3, will have a maximum of 10 minutes duration and should be send in CD format.

•The selected works will receive 600 Euros and a copy of the master will be part of Madrid Abierto´s public file, with a web location in http://www.madridabierto.com, previous agreement with the authors.

5. Projects should be sent by e-mail to: abierto[at]madridabierto.com, before the 31st of May, 2006 (or by standard post to: Fundación Altadis-Madrid Abierto, calle Barquillo, nº 7, 28004 Madrid, Spain).

6. The commission of selection, presided by the programme director Jorge Díez, it will be integrated by: Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes (Madrid Abierto 2007 curator), Cecilia Andersson, Guillaume Desanges and Ramon Parramon. Casa de América and Círculo de Bellas Artes will designate a representative for the selection of the project that will shelter every institution.

The commission will choose a maximum of ten projects, evaluating the quality and viability of the proposals, as well as the total reversibility of the projects. As we are dealing with projects that will occupy public areas, it will be essential to obtain the corresponding authorisation from the municipal authorities for their installation, that will be managed by Madrid Abierto.

If the selected projects make any use of third party images, the artists must provide the express authorisation of the owners of these images for their use in the project.

7. Madrid Abierto reserves the right of publication and reproduction of the selected projects for all case relating to the promotion of the programme, and shall incorporate all generated documentation into its documentary resources and public archives. The projects and works selected shall be the property of the authors and the promoting institutions shall have a preferential right to their possible purchase.

8. Participation in this call implies total acceptance of the rules.

Posted by luis at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

Eyebeam and Wooster Collective

scienceofgraffiti.jpg

A Night of Technology Based Graffiti

Eyebeam and the Wooster Collective present a night of technology based graffiti projects. Mark Jenkins, the Graffiti Research Lab, and students from the Parsons Geek Graffiti course show a range of experimental work in new materials and techniques for urban communication. Monday, May 22nd, 5:30 – 8pm; Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street, New York, NY. [blogged by Joel on reblog]

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

Alan Sondheim with Leslie Thornton

t16_sondheim_invite.jpg

em/bedded

Track 16 Gallery presents em/bedded: A multi-media installation by Alan Sondheim with Leslie Thornton; Guest curated by Tyler Stallings; May 27-June 24, 2006; Reception: Saturday, May 27, 6:00-9:00 p.m.; Performance: 8:00 p.m. Free.

About the performance at 8:00 p.m.: Alan Sondheim will present em/bedded (assembled performance) (45 mins. approximately). It consists of a laptop performance that deals with political, sexual, and cyber issues. He runs video/audio/text segments from a laptop in combinatory fashion, typing a real-time commentary at screen bottom. The result is an extended body, the digital problematized by analog, purity by error, language by language-stumbling. He uses various avatars who “live” in a world that has collapsed into pixel- annihilation.

About the installation: In his first solo exhibition in California, Alan Sondheim, along with filmmaker Leslie Thornton, will transform Track 16 Gallery’s cavernous main gallery into the multi-media installation, em/bedded. Sondheim brings together video projections of cyborgian, mutating, sexual bodies and the artifacts of battlefields soaked in banal horror. Together, they offer a distorted beauty of the disasters of war and the pleasures of love. Guest curated by Tyler Stallings.

Scattered amongst the video projections of furiously moving dancers, of sexual confrontations, of computer generated “avatars,” there will be antennae, battlefield telephones, off-kilter combat tents, photographs of battleships, trenches, and bodies, souvenirs taken from Japanese soldiers, old microscope slides, and antique book editions of du Maurier's Trilby, Confessions of a Magnetiseur, a Japanese pre-Meiji book of black and white block prints of Westerners, Volney's Ruins of Empire, and Albert Dreyfuss' Five Years of My Life. Together they all suggest attempts at communication amidst fortifications created around language and confinement.

Integral to the installation will be a large tent that contains Leslie Thornton’s recent video work, Let Me Count the Ways: Minus 10, Minus 9, Minus 8, Minus 7, Minus 6…. In this work, Thornton explores the social effects of new technologies and media, but here she pushes even further into autobiographical territory to suggest the ways in which we are all implicated in these changes. Juxtaposing aerial footage of pre-9/11 New York City; scientific data on genetic mutation; audio testimony about the bombing of Hiroshima, and a home movie of her father, an engineer on the Manhattan Project, as he is dispatched to that city, Thornton creates a dense and compelling meditation on violence.

Like nomads, Sondheim and Thornton create an ensemble of videos and the physical remains of history that traverse the landscape of memory and time. The work occurs in the far future - mutations, extinctions, broken spaces of information. The work occurs in the past - organisms huddled as if protected against the fury of the world, primitive electrical machines tuned into atmosphere and universe. In em/bedded, the distorted bodies are our own of course, in the present, of course. em/bedded offers no solution - there isn't any - but presents a distorted beauty of its own within an image storm that is a continuous splay, spew, emission, of violence, sexuality, and cloned
grotesques.

Track 16 Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave., C1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310.264.4678

About the artists and the curator

Alan Sondheim's
work is trans-media; his emphasis is on writing, theory, and digital performance.

His books include the anthology Being on Line: Net Subjectivity (Lusitania, 1996), Disorders of the Real (Station Hill, 1988), echo (alt-X digital arts, 2001), Vel (Blazevox 2004-5), Sophia (Writers Forum, 2004), Orders of the Real (Writers Forum, 2005), and The Wayward (Salt, 2004) as well as numerous other chapbooks, ebooks, and articles. His video and film have been widely exhibited. Sondheim co-moderates several pioneering email lists, including Cybermind, Cyberculture and Wryting. Since 1994, he has been working on an Internet Text, a continuous meditation on philosophy, psychology, language, body, and virtuality. In 1999, Sondheim was the 2nd Virtual Writer in Residence for the Trace online writing community (Nottingham-Trent University, England). In 2004, he was a resident of the Center for Literary Computing and the Virtual Environments Laboratory at West Virginia University, and in 2005 he was resident artist/writer at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. He produced two CDs at the latter (his older records have been reissued by ESP-Disk and Fire Museum). In 2001, Sondheim assembled a special issue of the America Book Review on Codework, which was seminal in its genre. He is currently working with the Swiss dancer/ choreographer Foofwa d'Imobilite on new work to be premiered in Switzerland and Italy in summer 2006. Sondheim lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Text and image of his work can be found a the following URLS:
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/
http://nikuko.blogspot.com
• Recent related to WVU http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim
• Trace writing projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/

Leslie Thornton is an internationally acclaimed media artist working in film, video, photography and installation. Her conceptually rigorous and lush work explores the outer parameters of ethnographic and narrative form, and consistently breaks new ground. She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. She studied with filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Stan Brakhage and Richard Leacock. Her numerous awards include the Maya Deren Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media and grants and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, and The Jerome Foundation. Thornton's film and media works have been exhibited worldwide, in such venues as The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, Centre George Pompidou, capcMusée Bordeaux, and at the Pacific Film Archives. Festivals include The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival and the film festivals of Oberhausen, Graz, Mannheim, Berlin, Austin, Toronto, Tokyo and Seoul. Thornton is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She lives and works in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.

Tyler Stallings, the guest curator for em/bedded, is an artist, curator, and writer. He has been the chief curator at Laguna Art Museum since 1999. His curatorial projects focus on contemporary art and popular culture. Past exhibitions that he has organized include: The Juxtapoz School: An Art Movement (upcoming); Whiteness, A Wayward Construction (2003); Surf Culture—The Art History of Surfing (2002);Cyborg Manifesto, or the Joy of Artifice (2001); Sandow Birk's 'In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of California' (2000); Rubén Ortiz Torres: Desmothernismo (1998); Kara Walker: African't (1997); Robert Williams: New Work (1997); among others. He is also the co-editor of the anthology, Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1994). Stallings is also an artist who has shown in Los Angeles, New York, and Europe. Concurrent with em/bedded, Stallings has a solo exhibition of his new paintings at Newspace Gallery in Los Angeles, May 9-June 17, 2006.

em/bedded has also been made possible by additional collaborations with Azure Carter, Foofwa d'Imobilite, and Thomas Zummer.

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

Upgrade! Lisbon #05

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May meeting featuring Sofia Oliveira

Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea welcomes next Wednesday, May 24th @19:30, The Upgrade! Lisbon monthly gathering featuring Sofia Oliveira, executive coordinator of Atmosferas - Digital Arts Center. The entrance is free and drinks will be served.

Sofia Oliveira will present Atmosferas as well as the winners of the 2005 edition of the Atmosferas Ideas Contest: Skechter by Gonçalo Tavares, an extension to the Firefox browser; Re-cordis by Tiago Pedroso, a project about memory, based on text and image; and See-Music by Maria da Gandra, a project exploring the relations between sound and image, through the creation of several systems for sound visualizing.

Sofia Oliveira's work within Atmosferas has been one of developing a platform for creation and reflection about the experimental aspect of new technologies, by directly supporting artists, producing workshops, starting an Ideas contest and putting up a tv show about the digital arts in Portugal.

She has also curated the online projects Gas and Memória and is developing a work and reflection platform dedicated to Processing, both a community and language for generative visual programming.

Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art and technology. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that each Upgrade! node (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. While individual nodes present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists, Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year. Upgrade! Lisbon is curated by Luís Silva

For more information or project submission, please go to http://www.lisboa20.pt/upgrade or http://www.theupgrade.net/

Posted by luis at 07:42 AM | Comments (0)

JavaMuseum Interview Project

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3 more interviews

JavaMuseum Interview Project is featuring this week 3 interviews with Jody Zellen (USA), Reiner Strasser (Germany) and Caterina Davinio (Italy).

Jody Zellen is an artist living in Los Angeles, California. She works in many media simultaneously making photographs, installations, net art, public art, as well as artists' books that explore the subject of the urban environment. She employs media-generated representations of contemporary and historic cities as raw material for aesthetic and social investigations She had numerous solo shows in USA and abroad and is represented on all relevant media art festivals around the globe.

Reiner Strasser is living and working in Wiesbaden, Germany, was born 1954 in Antwerpen, Belgium. He studied art, art history and philosophy at the University of Mainz, Germany in the 1970's. His Web works, international collaborations, and Web art projects date from 1996. Strasser's Web work has appeared in several exhibitions/publications all over the world since 1997.

Caterina Davinio is multitalented and active as Italian techno-artist, writer and poet, experiments in computer art, net-art, video, digital visual poetry, Internet-performance, video-performance. She realized also computer, printings exhibitions, painting, and artist books, using together writing, traditional and digital techniques. Pioneer of Italian digital art, she has done curatorial and consultant activity in international festivals. Her work has been featured in more than 100 exhibitions world wide Caterina Davinio has published articles, poems, and digital works, in international magazines and journals of the avant-garde.

JIP - JavaMuseum Interview Project will be released on an ongoing basis, whereby the selection of the most interesting answers can be found a) online on the new project site - http://jip.javamuseum.org , but b) immediately also in form of one interview per week on the new weblog - JIP - JavaMuseum Interview Project and c) to be published in a printed form at a later stage.

Until now interviews /answers by

Babel (Canada), Andrea Polli (USA), Jorn Ebner (UK), Roberto Echen (Argentina), Jeremy Hight (USA), Ian Page-Echols (USA), Humberto Ramirez (Chile/USA), Enrico Tomaselli (Italy), Carlos Katastrofsky (Austria), Paivi Hintsanen (Finland), Shankar Barua (India), Luke Duncalfe (New Zealand), FilH (France), Nadja Kutz (Germany), Yvonne Martinsson (Sweden), Avi Rosen (Israel), Letizia Jaccheri (Norway), Tamara Lai (Belgium), tobias c. van Veen (Canada), DLSAN (Italy), Irene Coremberg (Argentina), Carla Della Beffa (Italy), Peter Lind (Denmark), Philippe Langlois (France), Salvatore Iaconesi (Italy), Pat Badani (USA), Calin Man (Romania), Myron Turner (Canada), Domenica Quaranta (Italy), Juan Manuel Patino (Argentina), Alison Williams (South Africa), Rahima Begum (India), Anahi Caceres (Argentina), Raivo Kelomees (Estonia), santo_file (Spain), Sachiko Hayashi (Sweden).

Posted by luis at 04:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2006

Performance Paradigm, Number 2

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Japan After the 1960s: The Ends of the Avant-Garde

"It is widely acknowledged that dramatic changes wrought in 1960s Japan were such that art and cultural practice were transformed into an emergent avant-gardism. Hybridity, physical and intellectual intensity, formal innovations and transgressive acts are all characteristics of 1960s theatre, dance, cinema, literature and performance art in Japan and elsewhere.

The 1960s era was significant not least for the emergence of new aesthetics connected to a rapid evolution of political sensibilities. In Japan, as in Europe and America, artists were rethinking materials and forms often in terms of bodies juxtaposed with mediated spaces and objects. Art works began rejecting academic and formal qualities of art and instead related to the everyday experience of the world, foregrounding experiences of time and immediate sensory perception in a language which was conceptual and dynamic. This emerging performative discourse challenged ideas of representation and politics in art as performance began re-connecting with the social sphere.

As Marvin Carlson suggests, it is a language and a set of practices which became paradigmatic of the post 60s world: 'With performance as a kind of critical wedge, the metaphor of theatricality has moved out of the arts into almost every aspect of modern attempts to understand our condition' (Carlson, 1996: 6). This issue of Performance Paradigm looks at some of the places this metaphor migrated to and investigates how, in the process, ideas of culture and experiences of the world became actively performative. In a similar vein, this issue examines how perception and experience in the arts in the post 60s era came to stand for the embodiment of a new politics..."

ARTICLES

- Peter Eckersall and Edward Scheer 'Introduction'

- Satô Makoto, translated by Yuji Sone 'On Vernacular Theatre'

- Yasuko Ikeuchi 'Performances of Masculinity in Angura Theatre: Suzuki Tadashi on the Actress and Satô Makoto's Abe Sada's Dogs'

- Michael Hornblow 'Bursting Bodies of Thought: Artaud and Hijikata'

- Shannon C. Moore 'Ghosts of Premodernity: Butoh and the Avant-Garde'

- Jonathan Marshall 'Dancing the Elemental Body: Butoh and Body Weather: Interviews with Tanaka Min and Yumi Umiumare'

- Lisa Kuly 'Translation, Hybridity, and 'The Real Thing': Don Kenny's English Kyôgen'

- Vera Mackie 'The Spectacle of Woman in Japanese Underground Theatre Posters'

- Midori Yoshimoto 'Off Museum! Performance Art That Turned the Street into 'Theatre,' Circa 1964 Tokyo'

- Gunhild Borggreen 'Ruins of the Future: Yanobe Kenji Revisits Expo '70'

- Uchino, Tadashi 'Mapping/Zapping 'J' Theatre At The Moment'

BOOK REVIEWS

M.Cody Poulton, 'Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shûji and Postwar Japan' Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei

Mika Eglinton, 'Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York' Midori Yoshimoto (New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2005).

Yuji Sone, 'Alternatives: Debating Theatre Culture in the Age of Con-Fusion,' Peter Eckersall, Uchino Tadashi and Moriyama Naoto (eds.), No. 11 in the series Dramaturgies: Texts, Cultures and Performances (Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang 2004).

EVENT REVIEW

Zack Fuller, Tradition and Innovation: Dance Hakushu 2005. August twelfth through twenty-first, Body Weather Farm, Yamanashi, Japan.

From Japan After the 1960s: The Ends of the Avant-Garde, Performance Paradigm, Number 2, Edited by Peter Eckersall, March 2006 [ISSN 1832-5580]

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

Circuit #2 @ Eyebeam

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polymorphic [d(eoxyribo)n(ucleic) a(cid)]: a love story

polymorphic [d(eoxyribo)n(ucleic) a(cid)]: a love story--by Marta Lwin--is a networked performance installation of a DNA driven conversation between two people in love. Featuring actual personal DNA sequences mapped to generative language revealing the inner secrets of genetic compatibility. At Circuit #2, Eyebeam; Friday and Saturday, May 19-20 from 12-6pm. The artists will give public presentations and/or performances on May 20 at 4:00pm, followed by a reception at 5:30pm. These events are free and open to the public.

The DNA sequenced are derived from an collaboration between Lwin and scientists at NYU Medical Center, Study of Human Genomics, and the American Museum of Natural History, Center for Comparative Genomics. The are visualized by using two video monitors (with audio), and computers running custom software written in Java. A synergistic interaction exists between the DNA sequence and the custom software to trigger video. The video depicts lips speaking the DNA sequence a mapped to the Roman alphabet. The disembodied lips take turns speaking the code to one another, at times interrupting at other times remaining silent.

The DNA, while invisible is encased in visible plates which are laser etched with contemporary scientific iconography, creating a decorative surface polymorphic [d(eoxyribo)n(ucleic) a(cid)]: a love story looks at the contemporary methodology for encoding DNA, and it's application and ethical ambiguities. The web based documented process of creating the installation comprises the theoretical investigation of turning material DNA into binary information, with special attention to lab process.

Lwin is looking at the current scientific lab practice of extracting DNA, and treatment of human materiality as it moves into binary representation. With special attention to Norbert Wiener's cybernetic theory, Lily Kay's analysis of the inherent informatic bias in DNA science, and theoretical writings by Marx, Deleuze + Guattari, and contemporary thinkers such as Thacker, Massumi, and Agamben.

Posted by jo at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

ISEA2006 Symposium Registration Launches

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The Early Bird Gets the Discount!

Coming to San Jose, California, August 7-13, Seven Days of Art and Interconnectivity: ISEA2006 Symposium Registration Launches 33% discount for Early Bird Registration through June 15th. Registration: Hotels: Press Release.

Early Bird registrants also receive 20% discount on ticketed events including blockbusters like Peter Greenaway, Tulse Luper Live VJ version, Survival Research Laboratories, Builders Association/dbox, Super Vision, and Ryoji Ikeda's North American premiere of data.matrix.

The most progressive artists, cultural producers, media theorists and curators from around the world will be gathering in the birthplace of computing innovation - Silicon Valley - to share and discuss the latest ideas and practices about art and digital culture.

The ISEA2006 Symposium is taking place in conjunction with the inaugural ZeroOne San Jose: Global Festival of Art on the Edge and offers attendees an immersive, interactive, exposure to the art, ideas, theories, and new developments in the field of interactive media and digital art as it relates to the symposium themes of Community Domain, Interactive City, Transvergence, and the Pacific Rim.

Online pre-symposium paper abstracts and a pre-publishing model for Symposium presentations and participation, allows the public to join the discussions online both before and during the Symposium. This innovative structure is designed to enable lively, free conversations across disciplines, ideologies, and philosophical frame-works.

For One Week Only ISEA Registrants will have the first opportunity to purchase event tickets - tickets that are sure to sell out - in advance of General Public ticket launch. May 12 - May 19th, ISEA2006 Registration

Click Here to Sign Up.

About the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts: The Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. The ISEA Symposium is an international conference on electronic art that is held every two years in different locations around the world and attracts attendees from over 50 countries. The Thirteenth International Symposium on Electronic Arts is being held in San Jose, California, August 7-13, 2006, in conjunction with the inaugural biennial ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.

About: ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge is an innovative, ground-breaking biennial art festival in the Silicon Valley designed to show exhibits, performances, workshops, and events that have been created using the newest developments in contemporary art practice. The festival's themed projects examine and reflect issues and experiences of everyday life. Artistic and revolutionary digital culture elements are woven throughout. A serious art event, ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival of Art on the Edge provides academics, artists, and technology enthusiasts an inside look at new territories in creative imagination and inventiveness. However, the event is also designed with facets of learning, play, and virtual technology that make it an enjoyable experience for families, students, teens, underground culture enthusiasts, and explorers of new millennium digital culture alike.

Many thanks to our sponsors: Adobe Systems, City of San Jose, San Jose State University, Comerica Bank, IDEO, Montgomery Hotel-Paragon Restaurant, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Knight-Ridder, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Sun Microsystems Inc., Flora Family Foundation, Arts Council Silicon Valley, IBM, Intel Corporation, DIVCO, Inc., and all the individual contributors and volunteers that make ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006 possible.

Steve Dietz
Director, ZeroOne: The Network
Director, ISEA2006 Symposium +
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge: August 7-13, 2006

Posted by jo at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2006

How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design

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Physical Bodies

The body is the ultimate instrument of all our external knowledge, whether intellectual or practical… experience [is] always in terms of the world to which we are attending from our body. — Michael Polanyi

"ABSTRACT: Our physical bodies play a central role in shaping human experience in the world, understanding of the world, and interactions in the world. This paper draws on theories of embodiment — from psychology, sociology, and philosophy — synthesizing five themes we believe are particularly salient for interaction design: thinking through doing, performance, visibility, risk, and thick practice. We introduce aspects of human embodied engagement in the world with the goal of inspiring new interaction design ap-proaches and evaluations that better integrate the physical and computational worlds.

Author Keywords: Embodiment, bodies, embodied interaction, ubiquitous computing, phenomenology, interaction design." How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design by Scott R. Klemmer, Björn Hartmann and Leila Takayama [via pasta and vinegar]

Posted by jo at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

Wilderness Information Network

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Nature Sonically Streamed + Transmitted

WILDERNESS INFORMATION NETWORK is an environmental installation featuring the work of over thirty international sound artists selected to create a sonic field of information produced with renewable energy, digital technologies, and ecological imagination. Hikers to the back woods location will use bluetooth-enabled devices or transistor radios to receive sonic information through digital downloads and radio transmissions.

The project was initiated and curated by Cary Peppermint and The Department of Ecology Art and Technology, a performative collaborative of artists seeking to create works that explore issues that lie at the intersection between digital media technologies and the environment.

If we encountered a pod-cast, or a streaming radio server in the woods, in the “natural” environment, what kind of information would be distributed? If there was an entity, a life-form, or a “natural” other that disseminated sonic information, wild-information, how would this information sound? This project encouraged artists to create audio sound works that imagine the “voice” of the ecological other and explore its translation into the language of digital art technologies.

If “nature” encountered a pod-cast, or a streaming radio server in the woods, in the “natural” environment, what kind of information would be distributed? This project could take on unpredictable, interactive, and experimental dimensions as it also encourages artists to consider themselves as human animals, beings within “nature” producing sound works for unknowable others, e.g. ferns, salamanders, flowers, mosquito, beetles, flowers, deer, coyotes, bear, water, etc.

Featuring the sound works of: Dirk Adams - Tamara Albaitis - Sheinagh Anderson - Tanguy Arnaud - Steven Matthew Brown - Hillary Charnas - Catherine Clover - Richard Curtis - Jan de Weille - The Dry Heeves - Ivan Elezovic - Jeff Gburek - Josh Goldman - David Hahn - Scott F. Hall - Francis Heery - Fabrice Janssens - Mike Johnson - David Kasdorf - François Martig - Eric Morrill - Andrea Polli - Joao Ricardo - Tara Rodgers - Leif Sandberg - Laura Solari – Charles Stankievech - Michael Trommer - The UN in Unnatural - Juha Valkeapää - Thomans Parker Williams

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, May 27th, 2006, at 4:00pm (Rain date: June 10). At the Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College, 940 acres of woods in the upper Catskills of New York State, USA. Visitors to the opening are encouraged to spend the night onsite experiencing the audio transmissions and to bring along their camping gear and a Bluetooth enabled device or a transistor radio. Directions and additional information available on the website. Installation will be active May 27th through June 27th, 2006.

This project is made possible by support from Hartwick College, The Upper Catskills Community Council for the Arts, the NYSCA, and The Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College.

Posted by jo at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

WAVES: Electromagnetic Waves as Material and Medium of Art

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Everything Flows

ART + COMMUNICATION 2006: WAVES--The 8th International New Media Art festival; August 24 - 26, 2006 in Riga, Latvia. The opening of the festival and exhibition - August 24, 2006. The exhibition will be open till September 17, 2006.

WAVES brings together about 40 international works of (media) art, in which electromagnetic waves are seen not just as carriers of information, but as the material and/or theme of the artwork. The artists are challenging conventional knowledge about and perception of waves. Electronic media such as radio, TV and the internet are of defining influence on today's societies. Subsequently the information sphere is tightly controlled and subject to various artificially imposed political limitations. Yet artists with their electronic and digital DIY kits are exploring numerous ways of thinking outside the box, making their own waves, creating alternative networks and engaging with strange scientific phenomena -- which points at actually existing utopian potential.

The artworks on display at the Waves exhibition cover a wide range of topics. Some of the works engage with interesting scientific phenomena to provide unusual aesthetic experiences such as listening to the background noise of the universe (Franz Xaver) or engaging with the visual and aural qualities of light bulbs (Artificiel). As the human sensory perception system gives us only limited access to electromagnetic waves, sonification and visualisation of scientific data are a major component of the exhibition. Other works explore social and political implications of wave regulation (Julian Priest, Bureau d'Etudes) and offer viable alternative communication systems (Marko Peljhan).

Those are just a few examples out of a large scale exhibition which interrogates the conventions of media art exhibitions. Whereas some works are based on screens and audio-visualisations of waves, many works rely on physical objects (Joyce Hinterding, David Haines), obscure or forgotten communication technologies (Paul De Marinis) and the antenna as an art object. Bringing together experienced and well known artists with young experimentators between art and science, Waves makes a statement by being the first large scale international exhibition to focus uniquely on waves as the material and medium of art.

The exhibition features about 40 works by 70 artists from 18 different countries, including: Anthony McCall (US), Derek Holzer (NL), Bas van Koolwijk (NL), Jean-Pierre Aubé (CA), Luke Jerram (UK), Bureau d'Études (FR), Franz Xaver (AT), Scanner (UK), Erich Berger (NO), Jacob Kirkegaard (DK), Joyce Hinterding (AU), David Haines (AU), Mr.Snow (AU), Marko Peljhan (SL), Steve Heimbecker (CA), Catherine Richards (CA), Farmersmanuel (AT), Yunchul Kim (KO/DE), Robert Adrian X (AT), Norbert Math (AT), Martins Ratniks (LV) Clausthome (LV), Antanas Dombrovskij (LT), Artificiel (CA), Bulat Galejev (RU), TAKE2030 (UK), Paul De Marinis (US), Judith Fegerl (AT), Julian Priest (UK), Roland Jankowski (AT), Aaron Kaplan (AT), Barry Hale (UK), Disinformation (UK), Janis Garancs (LV), Adam Hyde (NL), Lotte Meijer (NL), Aleksandar Erkalovic (HR), Adam Somlai-Fischer (HU/SE), Danil Lundbäck (SE), Bengt Sjölén (SE), Mark Fischer (US), Jay Needham (US), Atau Tanaka (FR), Cecile Babiole (FR), Laurent Dailleau (FR), Gints Gabrans (LV), Oskars Poikans (LV), Martins Vizbulis (LV), Voldemars Johansons (LV), and others.

The WAVES exhibition is complemented by a festival programme consisting of a conference a performanceprogramme, a community day and film screenings of classic and contemporary experimental movies.

Publication: CALL FOR PAPERS (Acoustic Space. Issue #6): The Acoustic Space journal is a forum for net.radio, sound art and creative explorations in the networked electro-acoustic environments. Now in its 6th edition, Acoustic Space Issue will be devoted to WAVES related thematic. read more... >

Locations: The exhibition takes place at the Exhibition Hall ARSENALS of the Latvian National Museum of Art (Torna iela 1, Old Town in Riga). Conference, performances and film programmes ? at the RIXC Media Space (11. Novembra Krastmala 35, entrance from Minsterejas iela).

Organisers: the RIXC Center for New Media Culture
Idea: Armin Medosch
Curatorial team: Raitis Smits, Rasa Smite, Armin Medosch (UK/AT)Curator assistants and managers: Daina Silina, Signe Pucena
Film programme curator: Erwin van?t Hart (NL)
Streaming programme co-ordinator: Adam Hyde
Technical director: Davis Bojars
Exhibition architect: Rudolf Bekic (AT/LV)
Designer: Martins Ratniks

Press coordinator: Agnese Rucina , +371-7228478, +371-9635167 (mob.)

Address: The RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture:
Address: 11. Novembra Krastmala 35 - 201, Riga, LV 1050, Latvia. Tel. +371-7228478, +371-6546776 (mob.), Fax: +371-7228477; URL: http://rixc.lv

Support: State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga City Council, Nordic Council of Ministers' Office in Latvia, Centre Culturel Francais de Riga, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Riga, Nordic Culture Fund.

Posted by jo at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

Public Private Interface - Art and Technology in Public Space

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Workshop at Atelier Nord

Public Private Interface - Art and Technology in Public Space by Susanne Jaschko & Erich Berger: Wednesday 7th of June - Saturday 10th of June at Atelier Nord ,Oslo/Norway. Free participation. Application deadline Friday 19th of May. Send applications with CV to sense[at]anart.no

Urban public space operates as an interface between the individual and the public. It is a highly social, political and economic space. Nowadays digital technologies are omnipresent in this space, employed as systems for communication, control and organisation. The use and application of these technologies have strongly effected our understanding, perception and behaviour of public and private spaces.

The workshop will deal with the public space as field of artistic expression. We will analyse the properties and conditions of public space and the potential for art responding to this specific environment. Special attention will be laid on art and design using the existing technological infrastructure.

The workshop will consist of:

* Introduction into the theory and history of public space
* Analysis of public space and its typology
* Technological infrastructure of public spaces
* Potential for art in public space
* How to conceive art and design for public space
* Concept development and discussions
* Hands on experiments, research and presentations

WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

Participation is free of charge. Artists, designers and practitioners interested in participating are asked to apply with a CV to sense[at]anart.no

Application deadline Friday 19th of May

Workshop directors and producer:

Susanne Jaschko (DE) http://www.sujaschko.de
Erich Berger(AT/FI) http://randomseed.org

Private public interface is part of the Interface and Society Project at Atelier Nord.

Upcoming workshops at Atelier Nord:

September: Mobile media art with Laura Beloff (FI)

ATELIER NORD
PHONE +47 23060880
FAX +47 23060884
E-MAIL office[at]anart.no
URL http://anart.no
MAIL Lakkegata 55 D, N-0187 Oslo, Norway

Posted by jo at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2006

Aura - the stuff that forms around you

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Sonic workshop with Steve Symons

Manchester based artist Steve Symons will be in residence at E:vent for a period of three days when interested public, practitioners, sound artists, visual artists, computer programmers and engineers will be invited to engage with his new work around immersive sonic environments using binaural sound and surround sound. Following the success of Aura - the stuff around the stuff around you, an immersive sound experience made for a single user, Symons has been researching and developing a second phase of the work for use in a multi-user and collective environment. Through a custom-built backpack, participants are invited to enter an environment - either outdoor using GPS to provide pointers for the sound or indoors through the use of simulated 'cells' or hotspots - that alters, through sound, their perception of the project environment.

Two workshops will be held where participants will be asked for feedback to Steve's work and talk about their own experiences of making sonic or locative media art work. This will be followed by a discussion session on Tuesday evening. Steve is open to different possibilities for presenting new content on the aura system and the workshop will provide a platform for exploring ideas together.

SCHEDULE:
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MON 22nd |12-5PM| Open to public
MON 22nd |5-7PM| Workshop
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TUE 23rd |12-5PM| Open to public
TUE 23rd |5-7PM| Workshop
TUE 23rd |7-10PM| Discussion session and networking event
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WED 24th |12-4PM| Open to public
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This micro-residency at E:vent is the first of three, with others following at STEIM, Amsterdam in June 2006 and F.City, Lancaster in October 2006. 'Aura - the stuff that forms around you' is supported by ACE, SCAN and Folly with thanks to E:vent for collaborating on this part of the residency.

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

NEW ADVENTURES IN SOUND ART PRESENTS:

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RADIO WITHOUT BOUNDARIES CONFERENCE

The Deep Wireless "Radio Without Boundaries" conference explores the many potentials, boundaries and artist perspectives of radio and transmission art. Session topics include:

Whose Radio Art is it anyway? by Magz Hall (UK); free103point9 by Tianna Kennedy and Matt Mikas (US); Listening Sessions (limited spaces) with Darren Copeland and Steve Wadhams (CBC, Toronto); EarSpace Workshops: Exercises in Listening by Andra McCartney. Trevor Wishart (UK) speaks about his own radiophonic works; The Wire by Jowi Taylor, Paolo Pietropaolo and Chris Brookes (Toronto, Vancouver, Nfld); Radio, networks, Ether by Joe Milutis (US); The Deep Wireless panel with Debashis Sinha, Micheline Roi, Christian Nicolay & Damiano Pietropaolo; Wireless Imagination by Tetsuo Kogawa (Japan) & Kathy Kennedy (Montreal, QC); Radio of the Future panel chaired by Magz Hall and includes Charlotte Scott, Tetsuo Kogawa and Neil Sandell (CBC, Toronto).

Where: opens at the Drake Hotel May 26th (1150 Queen Street West) and continues at Ryerson University Student Campus Centre (55 Gould Street), Toronto, Canada; When: May 26-28, 2006 with workshop on May 29th; Conference Pass $150/130; $85/75 day pass. Deadline to register May 22, 2006!

Your 2-day conference pass also includes: performances each evening May 26th, 27th & 28th; FREE workshops on May 29th (Kogawa, Wadhams & Wishart); lunch each day May 27th & 28th; Opportunities to network during wine & cheese receptions.

Deep Wireless also includes:

Performances, installations and artist-residencies throughout the month of May
Radio broadcasts on CBC Radio's Outfront 99.1-FM May 3, 10, 17, and 24, 2006
Radio art interventions on CKLN 89.1-FM;
The launch of the Deep Wireless 3 radio art compilation CD

The Deep Wireless festival is partially funded by the government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the SOCAN foundation and the British Council. Thanks also to Third Coast Festival, Association for Independents in Radio, free103point9, CKLN-FM and electrocd.com for their on-going support of the Radio Without Boundaries conference.

New Adventures in Sound Art is a non-profit organization that produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. Included in its Toronto productions are: Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, Sign Waves and SOUNDplay.

Contact: Nadene Thériault-Copeland
Tel: 416-910-7231, naisa[at]naisa.ca

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

The Virtual Residency

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International call for a Virtual Mass Migration

Europe is expanding. Europe is becoming seclusive. Master-minded by the media artists Monika Bohr, Claudia Brieske, Leslie Huppert and Gertrud Riethmüller, the multimedia and exhibition project The Virtual Residency is inspired by the overwhelming transformation and migration processes that Europe has been experiencing for over fifteen years now. During a three-year period the project group will conduct an experiment involving an appeal calling on artists worldwide to embark upon a communal virtual migration. The resulting ideas, concepts and pictures will then be provided with a provisional abode.

The Virtual Residency: [...] the Internet is considered an amorphous crossroads for constant artistic migrational flux. The Virtual Residency Internet platform forms the heart of the project as a whole. Functioning like a transmitter it will use the World Wide Web as a medium to challenge all artists on earth to take part in a creative journey, a virtual mass migration. New data streams will emerge, take shape and be attracted. The Internet platform will offer this migration a virtual "refuge". The ideas of the individual migrants will occupy the Virtual Residency; their designs will become virtual residents. They are to reflect the desire for a place to stay and deal with themes such as homeland, foreign lands and the unknown, travel, roots, hope, departure, loss, emptiness, stimulus, etc. [...]

Posted by jo at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

Media, Minorities and Politics in Post-Communist Europe Conference

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Old Curtains, New Screens

Old Curtains, New Screens: Media, Minorities and Politics in Post-Communist Europe Conference and screenings June 16-17 2006 in De Balie, Amsterdam (NL).

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 formally removed the separation that had divided Europe for decades. The post-Wall landscape has been quickly transformed by new forms of mediation: changing infrastructures, techno-logies, and aesthetic forms that range from print to mobile phone to satellite television networks. This media boom has linked the post-communist region to the circulation of Europe and the globe at large in the last fifteen years. At the same time, new lines of separation, new curtains are also visible within policies and representations alike. We are particularly interested in how ethnic, gender, sexual, and religious minorities have been affected by the increased post-Wall attention that has been focused on them, and how they have been able to turn new media and social technologies into political and representational tools.

This symposium will bring together leading regional and national experts in the fields of broadcasting, visual art, new media activism, and film production to examine recent East and Central European media and political transformations. All panellists are involved in both the daily tasks of negotiating policy issues and in the theoretical work of understanding new identity formations that are no longer locked into national systems but are inevitably hybrid, sustained by and actively absorbing transnational affiliations. The event will be constructed as an interweaving series of engaging and informative short presentations, discussions, as well as film and video screenings.

Xenophobia and the Emergence of New Media Networks

17 june, 10:30 – 11:15

Tomász Kitlinski focuses on how new forms of xenophobia have accompanied the emergence of transnational gay, lesbian, and feminist media networks in Central and Eastern Europe. In the center of his presentation is the “sexual dissident,” whose coming out introduces a new voice into post-socialist literature, culture, and activism. The discourses of official media often dehumanize women and sexual minorities. Kitlinski addresses these forms of exclusion and the ways in which the groups involved try to challenge them through mobilizing new media networks.

Tomász Kitlinskiis lecturer in philosophy at the Marie Curie University, Lublin, Poland. He is the author of The Stranger Is Within Us (Aureus, 2001), co-author of Love and Democracy: Reflections on the Homosexual Question in Poland (Aureus, 2005) and contributed to Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (New York University Press, 2001). He contributed to‘New Europe, Old Monsters’ and other texts on international and Polish new media.

Virtual Space and Internet Media: Self-Representations of East European Women on the Web

17 june, 11:45 – 12:35

Arturas Tereskinas analyzes the visual strategies articulated by Eastern European women in their internet personals. What issues of self-representation, gender, body and sexuality do these images raise? What representational conventions do they employ? Examining the problems of fantasy, pornography and desire, Tereskinas argues that through these images women describe and specify not only their sexualities but also their longings, insecurities, yearnings and their movement towards new possibilities. Iconography and narrative of these personals offer imaginary forms of resolution for contradictions that exist in both Eastern European cultures and women’s lives.

Arturas Tereskinasis Associate Professor of Sociology at Vytauras Magnus University and Vilnius University, Lithuania. He is the author of Bodily Signs: Sexuality, Identity and Space in Lithuanian Culture (2001) and Imperfect Communities: Identity, Discourse and Nation in the Seventeenth-Century Grand Duchy of Lithuania (2005) and the editor of Public Lives, Intimate Places: Body, Publicity, and Fantasy in Contemporary Lithuania (2002) and Men and Fatherhood: New Forms of Masculinity in Europe (2005, with Jolanta Reingardiene).

The Role of European Institutions in Support of New Media: The Case of Roma Media

17 june, 12:30 – 13:15

Valeriu Nicolae will discuss the role that European institutions and NGOs play in supporting media-related projects. He will explicitly focus on the ways in which Roma media have emerged in post-1989 Europe, and how these media have started both to challenge mass media and to function as alternative sources of information.

Valeriu Nicolaeis secretary-general of ERGO, the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network, a network of Roma organizations from Slovakia, Serbia, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania, and an OSI fellow. From 2003 until March 2006, he was deputy director of ERIO, the European Roma Information Office in Brussels. He developed an educational project for Roma children in his hometown Craiova, Southern Romania.

Ghetto Entertainment: Mainstream media and Minority Representation

17 June, 14:15 – 15:45

Anikó Imre will address the ways in which films and television programs that explicitly deal with minority issues have become central to public debates on minorities. In a case study, Imre will present a ‘close-reading’ of the film Nyócker (Hungary, 2004, 90 min) by the Hungarian director Áron Gauder. Nyóckeris an animation movie on the conflicts between different Hungarian minorities and the municipality in the eight district of Budapest, commonly known as the ‘Roma ghetto’.

Anikó Imreis a postdoctoral fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. She has written extensively on East Central European film and media. She is the editor of East European Cinema (Routledge, 2005).

Governments versus Art? Art as Alternative Media Space

17 June, 16:15 – 17:00

Pawel Leszkowicz will look at the ways in which artistic representation functions as an alternative medium that counterbalances the one-dimensional gender structure of the official, often still state-supported media. The range of images of sexuality and gender projected by contemporary art might function as an opening into the hidden history of Polish subjectivity and society, supplementing and enriching the dominant media sphere.

Pawel Leszkowiczis is lecturer in Contemporary Art and curator at the Department of Art History, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan, Poland. He is the author of The Iconography of Subjectivity: Helen Chadwick (Aureus, 2001), co-author of Love and Democracy: Reflections on the Homosexual Question in Poland (Aureus, 2005) and contributed to Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (New York University Press, 2001). He contributed to Polish feminist and gay collections and magazines, and curated the art exhibitionLove and Democracy.
 
Special Evening Program: Timescapes by Angela Melitopoulos

17 June, 20:00 – 22:00

Timescapes is a collective video project based in South-Eastern Europe that explores collective memory in video imagery and new forms of filmic representation through the possibilities of non-linear editing via the Internet. Timescapes’ basis is a database built by five video artists/activists from Cologne (Angela Melitopoulos), Berlin (Hito Steyerl), Belgrade (Dragana Zarevac), Athens (Freddy Viannelis), and Ankara (Videa: media collective) who shaped different subject matters on the theme of mobility and migration—and memories thereof—in so-called “B-Zone territories” in South-Eastern Europe and Turkey. Angela Melitopoulos will discuss and screen her contribution to
Timescapes, the artistic road movie “Corridor X”.

Angela Melitopoulosis a video artist from Cologne, Germany. She studied fine arts at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf with Nam June Paik. She has worked with electronic media since 1986 and has experimented with single-channel-tapes, video installations, video essays and documentaries. Her video essay Passing Drama (1999) has won several prizes, among which the Prize of the Council of Europe (2000).Timescapes was exhibited as part of a larger exhibition on B-Zone: Becoming Europe and Beyond at Kunstwerke Berlin earlier this year.

Program Saturday 17 June

10:00     Ginette Verstraete, Anikó Imre, Huub van Baar, Welcome

10:30     Tomász Kitlinski, Xenophobia and the Emergence of New Media
Networks

11:15     Coffee Break

11:45     Arturas Tereskinas, Virtual Space and Internet Media:
Self-Representations of East European Women on the Web

12:30     Valeriu Nicolae, The Role of European Institutions in Support
of New Media: The Case of Roma Media

13:15     Lunch Break

14:15     Anikó Imre, Ghetto Entertainment: Mainstream Media and Minority Representation Abridged Screening of Nyóckerby Áron Gauder
(Animation Movie, Hungary, 2004)

15:45     Coffee Break

16:15     Pawel Leszkowicz, Governments versus Art? Art as Alternative
Media Space

17:00     Panel Discussion moderated by Huub van Baar

17:45     Dinner Break

 20:00     Ginette Verstraete, Introduction to Angela Melitopoulos’s
Timescapes

 20:15     Angela Melitopoulos, Timescapes (Video art, Germany, 2005)

Film Program De Balie Cinema– 16 and 17 June

Special event

On 16 and 17 June De Balie Cinemawill show the documentary The Danube Exodus by the Hungarian filmmaker Péter Forgács (A Dunai Exodus, Hungary, 1998, 60 min). Time: 20:15.

On 16 June the German film critic Jörg Taszmanwill interview Péter Forgács, and moderate a discussion with him and the audience.

Péter Forgácsis a leading practitioner of ‘found footage’ filmmaking. Home movies and amateur films in particular serve as the sources from which he composes his stories. The Danube Exodus is a travelogue documenting the Jewish exodus from Slovakia just before the beginning of the Second World War. In two ships, a group of 900 Slovak and Austrian Jews try to reach the Black Sea via the Danube, and from there to go to Palestine. Forgács based his film on the amateur films made by the captain of one of the ships, Nándor Andrásovits. He filmed his passengers while they prayed, slept, and even got married. At the end of this journey, it becomes clear that the boat will not return empty: in an historical paradox, a reverse exodus takes place, this time the repatriation of Bessarabian Germans, fleeing to the Third Reich because
of the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia. A fascinating personal and historical document.

Jörg Taszman grew up in East-Berlin and Paris, finished the Budapest Film School in 1991 and lives in Berlin. He works as a journalist and film critic specialized in East European cinema.

Old Curtains, New Screens is organized by the NWO Research group Globalization and the Transformation of Cultural Identities in Central and Eastern Europe(Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam), De Balie, The NetherlandsOrganization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Faculty of the Arts at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Architecturalia.

De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 (near Leidseplein), Amsterdam. Entrée fee Symposium, 17 June: 5 € (day progam); 5 € (evening program) 7,50 € (both). Language: English. Reservations: 020 – 5535100 Entrée fee Péter Forgács’s The Danube Exodus, 16 and 17 June: 7 € / 5 € with reduction. Reservations: 020 – 5535100 or: www.debalie.nl/cinema

Further Information

De Balie: www.debalie.nl
Huub van Baar Huub.van.Baar[at]uva.nl
Anikó Imre  A.Imre[at]uva.nl
Ginette Verstraete gee.verstraete[at]let.vu.nl
John Neubauer  J.Neubauer[at]uva.nl

Posted by jo at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

MEMEFEST 2006

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CREATION, SUBVERSION, AND RESISTENCE!

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication- born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide- is proud to announce its fifth annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging students, professionals, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges. This year, jury members will include Richard Barbrook, esteemed author, research pioneer, radio vigilante, and critic of neo-liberalism, along with radical designers and activists Sandy Kaltenborn, Kernow Craig, Paul Shoebridge and Jason Grant, Clinical Psychologist and "Bag news" blog author Dr. Michael Shaw and design critic Kenneth Fitzgerald.

Students who work with the written word can respond to Richard Barbrook's own article The High-Tech Gift Economy, which makes the ominous but relevant claim that, because of the realities of market capitalism, the utopia of an anarcho-communist gift economy on the internet is a deluding fiction. Artists and graphic designers can create static and interactive works in response to The Declaration Towards a Global Ethic, a call to "spiritual arms" and the creation of a collective consciousness.

Non-students, and those whose work doesn't fit in the box of conventional communications, can enter the visionary Beyond… category, where the name of the game is challenging mainstream practices and beliefs! Absolutely anything innovative, either written or visual, is acceptable, so long as it challenges mainstream modes of communication. Check out some examples and the winners from the 2005 and 2004 sites at http://beyond.memefest.org. Beyond… is open to non-students as well!

Memefest occurs almost completely online, and all entries will be available for full access and commentary in the site galleries. In 2005, Memefest received almost 500 entries from participants of every continent on the globe ('cept Antarctica). We hope to get bigger, and to spread more of those good infectious ideas, so keep thinking- and producing. Check out the beta version of our 2006 web site for more information: http://www.memefest.org Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2006.

Subvert, Create, Enjoy!
Patricia Laboca
Memefest
Contact us: memefest at memefest dot org

Posted by jo at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

[MediaRuimte]'s MR.xpo 12

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Stream Space by Peter Maschke

During his residency at MediaRuimte (MR.tmp06), Peter Maschke is developing in collaboration with LAb[au] (electronics+programming), Geert Feyton from Noise Maker's Fifes (analog sound) and Frederik de Wilde (digital sound) an interactive audiovisual installation under the title Stream Space. The result of his residency will be presented in the exhibition MR.xpo 12, taking place at MediaRuimte from 25.05 - 03.06.2006. For the opening, Thursday 25.05.2006 at 22:00, Stream Space will be performed live.

Stream Space is an audiovisual installation, which takes the properties of water as its starting point. Water has always had a strong and meditative force of attraction on mankind, be it the stillness of the sea or the sound of streaming water. The installation is an attempt to translate the ever being fascination for the element water into an audio-visual concept, that invites the auditor to create his personal visual sound score.

Four acrylic glass windows measuring 210 x 110 x 2 are suspended in a space, each filled with water, dyed in a different colour. A system of air tubes arrives at the bottom of the windows and is connected to a compressor. Air can be injected, that will rise as bubbles in the water.

The idea is to capture the sound of the burbling water, to modulate it and to emphasize its quality. This will result in a specific sound-colour for each window. The project foresees a combination of passive and active elements. The passive part of the interaction, consisting of sonar boxes (or web cams), will scan the surroundings of the installation within a specific range. When a movement is captured, it will be translated into an electrical signal that will operate the valves of the air supply. In the active part, a console with four joysticks on independent circuits can be operated. Through the console, the visitor can control the amount of air injected into each of the windows, thus manipulating sound and visual contents of the installation. By this means, an interaction takes place between the visitor, the visual object and the randomised modulated tone.

PETER MASCHKE

Born in Germany, Peter Maschke has been living in Brussels since 1991. He started his career as a dancer in 1984 when, after studying dance at the London School of Contemporary Dance (UK), the Folkwang School in Essen (De), and the CNDO in Arnhem (Nl), he joins the company Plan K in Brussels. He dances in Icare and later participates in the creation of Titanic. He then participates in a series of choreographic and theatrical creations through which his interests start to be more and more directed towards set-design.

Meanwhile, he has created the sets for various dance and theatre company’s, more in particular for Rideau de Bruxelles (Les Indifférents, Prometheus), Compagnie José Besprosvany (Lara, Dos y Dos), Théâtre Le Public (L’Invisible, Belle à mourir), Pé Vermeersch (The Story of Salomé and Yokanan), Avi Kaiser (Lieber R), Juliette Bougard (The Sorry Piece), Leporello (Onkel Vania) and Compagnie Thor (l'Âme au diable).

As scenographer and/or assistant director he has collaborated with the music theatre company Tirasila, creating sets for numerous creations: Roi Ubu, K-Bel, Het Laatste Verlangen, Krsk and Slachtwerk. In 2004, he participated as assistant director in the creation of Theater Stap’s theatre piece Frankenstein, directed by Vital Schraenen.

He regularly works with the choreographer Fernando Martin's company Fuepalbar, for whom he designed sets for the choreographies Mismorigen, Ten Sueño and Mordre à travers. For these last two creations he also participated as assistant choreographer.

Currently, he is working with the artist Alexandra Dementieva on an installation, which is foreseen for Spring 2006.

LAb[au]

LAb[au], laboratory for architecture and urbanism examines possible textual, graphical and spatial forms of transcription of inFORMation processes, transmission, computation and editing through theoretic works, research / writings and production /c onception. The core of Lab[au]'s theoretical research is the impact of new information technologies on the spatial and semantic mutations through projects implicating a reflection on the perception and conception of space. The contents of Labau's work is to find a definition of architecture as a set of codes or a language drawn from concepts of communication and information sciences, by opening up the fields considered by today's architectural concept with those considered in communication and new media. Here, 'Metadesign' can be understood as a technology determinism that constitutes the main vector/thought in the concerns of networked, information-based societies with the goal to build up connectivity and effectiveness.

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2006

NETTIME_NORTH_AMERICA_GATHERING

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CRITICAL PRACTICE RESUSCITATION (CPR)

UPGRADE MONTRÉAL PRÉSENTE: NETTIME_NORTH_AMERICA_GATHERING ::: CRITICAL PRACTICE RESUSCITATION (CPR) ::: NETTIME_AMERIQUE_DU_NORD

Links: [ http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca ] - Upgrade Montreal & Nettime_North_America web-site [ http://www.nettime.org ] - Nettime.org; partenaires / partners: Mutek.ca / Turbulence.org / Rhizome.org / SAT / CKUT 90.3 FM / esse / Parachute / V2 / Upgrade International / Nettime.org

---[ english ]---[french and spanish follow]: Nettime.org has long been the focal point of global indymedia, net-art, tactical media and the technology arts. Since 1994 its mailing lists, online and offline discussions, publications and gatherings have galvanized a flurry of global networks and their practitioners. __But what is the continuing role and impact of Nettime today_? In 2006, the Upgrade Montreal welcomes Nettime to Montreal for the first ever fleshmeeting in North America. The Gathering will also launch the 2006 edition of the Mutek festival of digital culture. As a node in the expanding, grassroots technology arts network Upgrade International, it poses a series of questions to the future of Nettime:

_who are the new practitioners & what are the new directions in tactical media_?

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On Tuesday, May 30th 2006 the Upgrade Montréal will bring together the first North American gathering of the global mailing list, nettime. Since 1995, Nettime has been a focal point for discussion and criticism of internet culture and art, technologies and politics, developing an expression of Net culture known as "net.criticism." In over seven languages, Nettime has served as the testing ground for numerous texts and artistic works of new media and contemporary theory. In 2006, Nettime celebrates its 11th birthday against the backdrop of over a decade of publications, interventions and debates.

Members of the public, artists, theorists, writers, codemonkeys and the curious are welcome to attend a series of talks, panels and workshops followed by an evening of music and performance devoted to Nettime, its members, it works, its pasts and its futures. International members of Nettime will be in attendance including list moderators. Nettime is an open list and this event is open to all of the public! nettime is not just a mailing list but an effort to formulate an international, networked discourse that neither promotes a dominant euphoria (to sell products) nor continues the cynical pessimism, spread by journalists and intellectuals in the 'old' media who generalize about 'new' media with no clear understanding of their communication aspects. We have produced, and will continue to produce books, readers, and web sites in various languages so an 'immanent' net critique will circulate both on- and offline.

The formation of the Nettime group goes back to spring 1995. A first meeting called nettime was organized in June 1995, at the Venice Bienale, as a part of the Club Berlin event. The list itself took off in the Fall. A first compilation on paper appeared in January 1996, at the second Next Five Minutes events (the so-called ZKP series). The list organized its own conference in Ljubljana in May 1997, called 'The Beauty and the East'. A 556 pages nettime anthology came out in 1999: Readme! Ascii Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge (Autonomedia: New York (ISBN: 1570270899)).

The Upgrade is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Upgrade Montreal is organised by tobias c. van Veen, Sophie Le-Phat Ho and Anik Fournier, and over the past two years has featured diverse events bridging digital culture and the technology arts, from new media and net-art to electronic music and performance, from an eclectic political benefit for Critical Art Ensemble to a subzero celebration of Art's Birthday. The Upgrade Montréal is produced by SAT and collaborates with various organisations including Studio XX, La Centrale, terminus1525.ca, OBORO and Hexagram among others. The Upgrade began in 1999 with a regular gathering of new media artists and curators in New York City organised by Yael Kanarek. Upgrade New York partnered with Eyebeam in 2000, and in 2004 the Upgrade went international with Vancouver and Montreal joining the network, followed by over a dozen worldwide locations in 2005 (and growing!). The first Upgrade International Gathering was held September 2005 in NYC at Eyebeam with representatives from each global node.

---[ français ]---

Nettime.org est depuis longtemps le point focal du indymedia mondial, du net-art, des médias tactiques et des arts technologiques. Depuis 1994, sa liste de diffusion, ses discussions enligne et hors ligne, ses publications et ses rencontres ont galvanisé une quantité de réseaux transnationaux de même que leurs praticiens. _Cela étant dit, quel est le rôle continu et l'impact de Nettime de nos jours_? En 2006, Upgrade Montréal accueille Nettime à Montréal pour une première rencontre en Amérique du Nord. La rencontre inaugura aussi l'édition 2006 du festival des arts numériques de Mutek. Étant un noeud d'Upgrade International, un réseau grassroots d'art technologique en expansion, une série de questions seront posées à l'égard du futur de Nettime:

quels en sont les nouveaux participants, et quelles sont les nouvelles directions prises par les médias tactiques?

Le mardi, 30 mai 2006, Upgrade Montréal sera l'hôte de la première rencontre nordaméricaine de la liste de diffusion internationale nettime. Depuis 1995, Nettime a servi de point de rencontre important pour la discussion et la critique de la culture du Net et de l'art, des technologies et de la politique, développant ainsi une expression de cette culture sous le nom de "net.criticism." En plus de sept langues différentes, Nettime a servi de banc d’essai pour de nombreux textes de théorie contemporaine et d'oeuvres artistiques des nouveaux médias. En 2006, Nettime célèbre son 11e anniversaire, fort d'une décennie de publications, d'interventions et de débats.

Membres du public, artistes, théoriciens, auteurs, codeurs, et curieux de tous genres sont les bienvenu(e)s à cette série de conférences, de panels et d'ateliers qui seront suivis d’une soirée de musique et de performance dédiées à Nettime, ses membres, ses oeuvres, ses passés et ses futurs. Des membres internationaux de Nettime seront de la partie, ainsi que des modérateurs de liste. Nettime est une liste ouverte et cet événement est ouvert au public nettime n'est pas seulement une liste de diffusion, mais un véritableeffort collectif à la formulation d'un discours international et en réseau qui ne fait pas la promotion d’une euphorie dominante (afin de vendre des produits) ni ne perpétue un pessimisme cynique répandu par des journalistes et des intellectuels des "vieux" médias qui ont tendance à généraliser les "nouveaux" médias avec une compréhension vague de leurs aspects communicatifs. Nous avons produit, et continuerons de produire, des livres, des manuels et des sites web en diverses langues pour qu'une critique "immanente" du Net circule à la fois enligne et hors-ligne.

La formation du groupe Nettime date du printemps 1995. Une première rencontre intitulée nettime s'est tenue en juin 1995, à la Biennale de Venise, faisant partie de l'événement du Club Berlin. La liste en tant que telle a débuté ses activités à l'automne cette année-là. Une première compilation sur papier est apparue en janvier 1996, à la deuxième édition de l'événement Next Five Minutes (la sois-disante série ZKP). La liste a organisé sa propre conférence en mai 1997 à Ljubljana et était intitulée "The Beauty and the East". Une anthologie de 556 pages est sortie en 1999 : /Readme! Ascii Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge/ (Autonomedia: New York (ISBN: 1570270899)).

The Upgrade est un réseau international et émergent de noeuds autonomes unis par l'art, la technologie et un engagement à faire le pont entre divisions culturelles. Upgrade Montréal est organisé par tobias c. van Veen, Sophie Le-Phat Ho et Anik Fournier, et a présenté au cours des deux dernières années divers événements liant culture numérique et arts technologiques, des nouveaux médias au net-art, de la musique électronique à la performance, d'un événement bénéfice, éclectique et politique, pour le Critical Art Ensemble à une célébration sous-zéro de la Fête de l'Art. Upgrade Montréal est produit par la SAT (Société des arts technologiques) et collabore avec une variété d'organismes dont Studio XX, La Centrale, terminus1525.ca, OBORO et Hexagram, entre autres. Upgrade est né en 1999, à New York City, avec des rencontres régulières de commissaires et d'artistes des nouveaux médias, organisées par Yael Kanarek. Upgrade New York est devenu partenaire de Eyebeam en 2000, et en 2004, Upgrade devient une entité internationale avec les villes de Vancouver et de Montréal se joignant au réseau, suivis par plus d'une douzaine de villes à travers le monde en 2005 (et ça continue!). La première Rencontre Internationale Upgrade a eu lieu en septembre 2005, au Eyebeam (NYC), avec la participation de représentants de chaque noeud.

--- [ espagnol ] ---

El martes 30 de Mayo del 2006, Upgrade Montreal será el hospedador del primer encuentro norte-americano de la lista de difusión internacional nettime. Desde 1995, Nettime ha sido un punto de encuentro importante para discutir y criticar la cultura del Net y el arte, las tecnologías y la política, desarrollando así una expresión de esta cultura llamada el “net.criticism.” Disponible en siete idiomas, Nettime también ha sido al inicio de la difusión de muchos textos de teoría contemporánea y de obras artísticas en nuevos medias. En 2006, Nettime celebra su 11e aniversario, fuerte de una decena de publicaciones, intervenciones y debates.

Que sean miembros del publico, artistas, teóricos, autores, codeurs o personas curiosas, todos están bienvenidos a asistir a esta serie de conferencias, paneles y talleres, que estarán seguidos por una noche de música y prestaciones artísticas dedicadas a Nettime, a sus miembros, a sus obras, a sus pasados y a sus futuros. Este evento contará con la presencia de unos miembros internacionales de Nettime así como de unos moderados de lista. Nettime es una lista abierta y este evento está abierto al publico.

nettime no es solamente una lista de difusión, también es un verdadero esfuerzo colectivo para la formulación de un discurso internacional. Tampoco se define como una red para la promoción de una euforia dominante (para vender productos) y tampoco quiere perpetuar un pesimismo cínico que es típico de los periodistas y intelectuales de los viejos medias con tendencia a generalizar los nuevos medios con una comprensión limitada de sus aspectos comunicativos. Hemos producido, y seguiremos produciendo libros, manuales y sitios web en diversos idiomas para que circule una crítica inmanente del Net en línea y fuera de línea. El grupo Nettime se creo en la primavera del 1995. Un primer encuentro llamado nettime se organizó en junio del 1995, en la Bienal de Venecia, y como parte del evento Club Berlín. La lista empezó a ser disponible en el otoño de este mismo año. Una primera compilación en formato papel fue creada en enero del 1996 en la segunda edición del evento Next Five Minutes (conocida por el nombre de serie ZKP). La lista también organizó su primera conferencia en mayo del 1997 en Ljubljana y era intitulada ‘The Beauty and the East’. (Belleza y Este). Una antología de 556 páginas salió en 1999 : Readme! Ascii Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge (Autonomedia: New York (ISBN: 1570270899)).

El Upgrade es una red internacional de nodos autónomos unidos por el arte, la tecnología y por el compromiso de ser un puente entre divisiones culturales. Upgrade Montreal está organizado por Tobias c. van Veen, Sophie Le-Phat Ho y Anik Fournier, y presentó durante los dos últimos años muchos eventos que juntan la cultura numérica a los artes tecnológicos, los nuevos medias al net-art, la música electrónica a la prestación artística, y la organización de un evento sin lucro, ecléctico y político para el Critical Art Ensemble a una celebración bajo-cero para la Fiesta del Arte. Upgrade Montreal está producido por la SAT (Sociedad de Artes Tecnológicos) y colabora con una variedad de otros organismos, entre ellos Studio XX, La Centrale, terminus1525.ca, OBORO y Hexagram. Upgrade nació en 1999 en Nueva York, en forma de encuentros entre conservadores y artistas de nuevos medias, y organizados por Yael Kanarek. En 2000, Upgrade New York se hizó socio de Eyebeam, y en 2004, Upgrade llegó a ser una entidad internacional, difundido en ciudades como Vancouver y Montreal, ganándose así a una red de mas de doce ciudades a través el mundo (y sigue!) El primer Encuentro Internacional Upgrade tuvó lugar en septiembre del 2005, en el Eyebeam (NYC), y contó con la participación de representantes de cada nodo.

L'Upgrade est une organisation autonome, internationale et rhizomatique de rendezvous mensuels pour la culture numérique et les arts technologiques. Upgrade Montréal bénéficie du soutien généreux de la Société des arts technologiques [SAT], ainsi que de ses réseaux formant Upgrade International, des divers partenaires avec lesquels il collabore, des artistes faisant don de leur temps, et de l'énergie bénévole de son triumvirate organisateur.

http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca | http://www.theupgrade.net

The Upgrade is an autonomous, international and grassroots organisation of monthly gatherings for digital culture and the technology arts. Upgrade Montreal is generously supported by The Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), through the networks of the Upgrade International, the various partners we work with, the artists who donate their time and the personal energies of its organiser triumvirate.

---- bisous from the triumvirate:
tobias c. van Veen
Sophie Le-Phat Ho
Anik Fournier

Posted by jo at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

SONARAMA 2006

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Year of Japan

As part of its "Year of Japan," Sonar presents Sonarama 2006, featuring two of the brightest stars in the firmament of Japanese electronic culture, Ryoji Ikeda and Toshio Iwai. “Datamatics”, the new audiovisual project by Ikeda, and TENORI-ON, a digital musical instrument created by Iwai for the XXIst century, constitute a unique opportunity to assess the future of the new media in relation to advanced music. Along with this event, increasingly popular participatory communities such as Freesound, FlxER or Digitalmusician.net, as well as open-source creative platforms such as Arduino, Supercollider or Blender will also play a prominent role. And all of this without sacrificing a selection of the most innovative proposals taking place within our borders, as represented by AÄB, Arbol + Obionlab, La Màquina de Turing, Raw and Earth, Wind and Firewire.

Sonarama focuses on the latest developments in new media. Among this year’s activities will be the usual concerts, installations, and technology demonstrations as well as medialabs and software presentations. For a few years now, Sonarama’s has been held at the Centre d´Art Santa Mónica, the setting for the programmed activities of Sonar by Day. Centre D'art Santa Mònica (Rambla de Santa Mònica, 7) >From 12:00 to 22:00. 15, 16 and 17 June. [Related]

Posted by jo at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT)

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Call for Public Wireless Proposals

The Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) has been commissioned by the Adelaide City Council to investigate creative ways to make use of wireless technology in public spaces. An opportunity exists to develop a project with an emphasis on interactive and engaging uses of wireless technology. ANAT is now seeking brief project proposals from artists of all disciplines as individuals or collaborations. ANAT is particularly interested in projects that provide opportunities for direct interaction with the audience, and encourage exploration and discovery of public space. Applications close Friday 26th May 2006.

Submissions will be assessed competitively with three short listed proposals to be awarded a fee of $200 each. In consultation with the artist(s), one proposal will form the basis of an application to fund the development and presentation of a project. Unsuccessful proposals will be returned to the artist(s).

Please email tamara[at]anat.org.au to receive an Artist’s Brief with more details. Proposals must be submitted by Friday 26th May.

For examples of recent wireless projects and general wireless information please see links at: http://anat-thinktank.blogspot.com/

ANAT Project Officer Tamara Baillie tel • (08) 8231 9037 • email: tamara at anat.org.au

Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT)
PO Box 8029
Station Arcade South Australia 5000
ph: 61 8 8113 3105; fax: 61 8 8231 9766
http://www.anat.org.au/
tamara[at]anat.org.au

ANAT is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council its arts funding and advisory body, by the South Australian Government through Arts SA and the Visual Arts Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Posted by jo at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

BIOS: The Poetics of Life in Digital Media

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Proposals are Welcome

BIOS: The Poetics of Life in Digital Media, hosted by the Center for Literary Computing at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. September 14-16, 2006.

BIOS: The Poetics of Life in Digital Media is an interdisciplinary symposium on the re-invention of life in digital media. The term BIOS captures capture boundary-crossing and hybridization of human and machine. For the ancient Greeks, BIOS referred to particular forms of life rather than life in general (zoe). BIOS therefore, was the form of life specific to the development of human society and political culture. Understanding BIOS means understanding how humans adapt nature into culture. In computer science, by contrast, BIOS means something quite different: the basic input output system, the lowest level of code that allows a computer to run. BIOS is burnt into computer hardware and enables the machine to boot and run software programs and media. The two meanings of BIOS resonate with each other as basic requirements for a social system, whether in civic space or in cyberspace.

BIOS will combine talks and creative work / performances. We already plan a rich and exciting schedule. Proposals are welcome on any area within the topic. Keywords/subtopics include but are not limited to: electronic literature; hypertext; embodiment; media specific analysis; net.art; digital performance; complexity and emergence; the limits of computability; posthumanism and cyborgs; virtual reality; artificial life; biotechnology; cyberfeminism; biopower; social software; ... Innovative formats and approaches are welcome. We will also consider remote/tele-presentations. Webcasts/podcasts of the event and an DVD archive will be available.

Send proposals of no longer than 200 words to clc[at]mail.wvu.edu by July 1, 2006.

BIOS is organized and hosted by the Center for Literary Computing, and co-organized by the Electronic Poetry Center / Digital Media Studies program at SUNY-Buffalo. The symposium is associated with the E-Poetry series of festivals and symposia.

Posted by jo at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

Sounds of the City

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Call for Radio Art

Sounds of the City: Call for Radio Art: Deadline 19 may 2006; organizer: Radio Cult and InterSpace Media Art Center in the frame of Radio Territories and Mobile Studios. Radio Cult is looking for soundart/radioart works that:

- will be of experimental character
- will include sound recording of the city
- will be shaped in sound art radio art form
- will answer to the following technical and thematic requests

Sounds of the city is an open call for participation to Radio Cult contest about radio art/sound art production that will include sound recording of the city Sofia. All artists, sound artists, radio artists, producers… are invited to create 15 to 30 min piece based on sounds of the city. All that should be produced in form of short radio art program. In the production must be included field recordings, sound scapes and various recordings of the sound of the city.

Theme: cityscapes or sound of the city
Based on the subjects: city and sound

Works should be related to topics about urbanity, city and ways of looking on the city. They should provoke question like:

how do you look at the city?
what’s the sound of the city?
how can we transmit a location through sound?
and at once give answer to questions like:
why did you chose that location?
why do we think it is represent of urbanity?
what are the perspectives that we can see the city from...

Sounds of the city contest is organized in the framework of radio Territories project. The selected radio pieces will be presented during Mobile Studios visit in Sofia 21.-28. 05. 2006 and will be part of the broadcast on the same occasion.

There will be 5 prizes for 5 best works. Works will be selected and judged by jury consisted of Radio Cult team.

Winners of the contest will also get chance to produce 30 min program for next round of trans European radio network RADIA.fm broadcasting as participant of radio cult and presentation of his work on more than 10 European radio stations interested in radio art.

In the framework of the Mobile Studios event, Radio Cult will broadcast produced pieces together with other pieces produced on Radio Masters workshops held by Radio Cult in May.

Prizes:

1st prize: 200 leva
2nd prize: 100 leva
3rd prize: 80 leva
4th prize: 60 leva
5th prize: 40 leva

The submission should be uploaded on server and link should be posted vie email for download. Submission format should be mp3 that will not exceed maximum size od 20MB. Exceptions possible on request. The authors/artists keep all rights on their submitted works. Deadline for sending 19 may 2006.

Submitting email should include following info:

1. name of artist, email address, URL
2. short biography/CV
3. link for download of the work in mp3 format
4. short description of the work and how it is related to the topic

Send the complete submission to: radio[at]i-space.org

related links:

http://radio.cult.bg
http://i-space.org
http://radia.fm
http://mobile-studios.org

Posted by jo at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

Media Art Friesland Festival 2006

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Call for Participation

The Media Art Friesland Festival 2006 is the 10th edition of the festival. This anniversary will be celebrated with a special and large programme with a lot of international guests. Recent work from all over the world will be shown in film and video screenings, presentations, exhibitions, conferences and performances.

Do you want to participate in the 10th edition of the festival? Media Art Friesland asks all artists and students to send in their work; video, film, cd-rom and internet projects, installations and performances.

The deadline is June the 1st, 2006. Check the entry form for terms and the procedure.

Posted by jo at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

New Media at the ICA

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Body, Space and Cinema

In London's ICA, Body, Space and Cinema, an exhibition featuring selected works by artist Scott Snibbe will open this weekend.

- Theatre and Bar - Scott Snibbe will be showing three interactive installations, including large-scale body-centric physical installations, Outward Mosaic, premiering at the ICA and Visceral Cinema: Chien, to the interactive sculpture, Blow Up, first shown at Ars Electronica in 2005. Known around the world for his beautiful, simple and yet brilliant pieces that engage with visitors of all ages. For inspiration or sheer enjoyment this is an exhibition that's not to be missed.

Sat 13 May - Sun 28 May 2006. 12noon - 7.30pm daily

- Digital Studio - Combining intelligent computer programming with a playful ideas and a philosophical approach to the world we live in his work is simple and yet very engaging. Scott's work includes, emergent behavioural patterns of ants in Myrmegraph, a means of drawing with stars in Gavilux and the simple physical but chaotic system of a pendulum swing in Tripolar. This sample from the breadth of his work, gives an insight into his practice and demonstrates his profound influence on other artists working in this medium.

Fri 12 May - Wed 31 May 2006. 12noon - 7.30pm

Artist's Talk on Saturday 13th May - 3pm As part of his first UK exhibition, Scott will present recent works that explore interaction between cinematic projections and viewers' bodies along with his most recent work, Blow Up, which amplifies human breath as a large field of wind. He will discuss the philosophical divide between language and visceral perception that motivates his creation of interactive media art. There will be time for questions after the talk.

Posted by luis at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

MASSIVE KNIT @ Washington Square Park

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Honoring Jane Jacobs

MASSIVE KNIT: A Knitting Mob Dedicated to the Memory of Jane Jacobs: Tuesday, May 23rd 5:30pm in Washington Square Park, NYC.

"To use parks and squares and public buildings as part of this street fabric; use them to intensify and knit together the fabric's complexity and multiple use." From "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs

EVENT We would like to provide a collective, connected, community of individuals to honor the late Jane Jacobs who passed away on April 25, 2006. Jane Jacobs was an activist, a community leader, a writer, an urban planner, and a hero to many people. One of her great feats was as the chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway. This expressway would have run through Washington Square Park. We plan to gather in this park on the 23rd of May to memorialize her and her ideas. We want to convene as a community in a loving and subtle way, honoring the park as well as her memory. We plan to do this by knitting the park together.

Knitting is a solitary art form, often resulting in gifts for others. A knitting circle allows one to be social with this solitary art. A city, likewise, is a solitary place to live. There is so much crowding and destination in daily life that one often gets lost in their own world. Parks allow people to come together and be alone peacefully in their solitary life and form temporary and permanent communities. Parks and knitting circles are both public and accessible: but private enough that one can have meaningful communication and a community within their confines.

Using individual sensibilities, we plan to create an open structure in the park. Connecting various elements of the park together such as trees, benches and other structures, we will connect a community and a memory. As people enter the park (the meeting spot is under the arch) they will be directed to a spot in the park to start knitting. People can arrive anytime starting at 5.30 p.m. and stay as long as they like. They should tie, knit, string together long thin pieces of material, and before leaving, tie the material off to a piece of the park, or another individual yarn. By the end of the evening we should have a string of material connecting the park together. We will have connected to the park and to the other individuals as a community.

Posted by jo at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Art and Electronic Music Festival

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Dissonanze in Rome

Dissonanze is the electronic music and digital art festival of Rome. Since the year 2000, Dissonanze experiments and entertains exploring the relationship between creativity and technology, researching the unusual connections between sight and sound, between lights, rythm, color, noise, silence and the architecture of its magnificent locations. As well as famous artists and successful art works, the festival presents emerging artists, previews, original collaborations and site specific productions commissioned by Dissonanze for the different and unusual spaces that host the event.

"This is our visual music!" is the claim for this edition. Musique concrete and dance music, ambient and noise, techno and electro, 16mm film and neon lights, video and laser… Dissonanze 6 game is to stimulate an encounter of differences, extremes and opposites and let them explode in a flow of "visual music" that warps the normal dimension of a club, a concert room or a gallery, changing the art itself and the architectural structure of its location with 'total' shows that distort the normal dimensions of perception: from the spectacular United Visual Artists lights design and the techno and electro icons sets, to the project curated by eclectic Edwin van der Heide dedicated to the more experimental artists, passing through the selection of hypnotic audio-visuals ideated in collaboration with Digicult. "This is our visual music!"

Dissonanze: 19 - 20 may 2006; Roma Palazzo dei Congressi.

LIVE AND DJ SET:
Sven Väth (Ger), Dave Clarke (UK), Mathew Jonson (Can), Audion aka Matthew Dear (USA), Joris Voorn (NL), Tony Rohr (USA), Pigna People (Ita), Lory D (Ita), Motor (Fra/USA), T.Raumschmiere (Ger), Dj Koze (Ger), Sleeparchive (Ger), Claudio De Tommasi (Ita), Raffaele Costantino (Ita)
light show United Visual Artists (UK)

Yasunao Tone (JP), Maryanne Amacher USA), Francisco Lopez (Spa), Zbigniew Karkowski (Pol), Daniel Menche (USA), Jens Brand (Ger), Carl Michael von Hausswolff (Sve), Olivia Block (USA), M16 (It), tinylittleElements (Aus), Richard Devine (USA), Cristian Vogel (UK) visuals Atsuko Nojiri (JP), Effekt (Dan), Philipp Geist (Ger)

LIVE SET
Otolab (Ita), Bruce Mc Clure (USA)…

AUDIOVIDEO EXHIBITION
Argos, Jeffers Egan, Karl Kliem, Meta, Montevideo, Purform, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Semiconductor, Steve Roden, Stefano Iraci, Stephen Vitello, Tez …

Posted by luis at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2006

ARTNODES

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NEW VIDEO-INTERVIEWS

Roger Malina, Michael Naimark, Gerfried Stocker, Amy Alexander, Lab_au y Christa Sommerer y Laurent Mignonneau--This month we have published a new series of video-interviews in Artnodes with various international experts revising the last digital art and electronic art period, analysing its development until now, where is it coming from and where is it focusing on.

This wide cross section of experts gives us the opportunity for a different points of view analyze. We count on the intervention of Roger Malina, Director of Leonardo, telling us about international networks in Internet, and also about the creation and development of Leonardo as part of them; Gerfried Stocker, Director of Ars Electronica and Digital Artist, who points up the importance on offering a digital art history revision in order to analyze its development; Michael Naimark, Digital Artist with more than 25 years of art experience, he has been a witness to very crucial moments in the development of new media; Christa Sommerer y Laurent Mignonneau, Digital Artists, with them we looked through the relation between art, new technologies and nature; Manuel Abendroth y Els Vermang, members of Lab_au, Laboratory of architecture and urbanism, with special interest in language and new terminologies in the new media; and Amy Alexander, one of the pioneer artist of net art, is telling us about the context within she made her first art works in internet and its development until now.

Posted by jo at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

Mobicapping: Mobile Image Capture in the New Century

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Call for Work

The curators Scott F. Hall and E. Brady Robinson of Mobicapping invite submissions for possible inclusion in their upcoming international juried online art exhibition,"Mobicapping: Mobile Image Capture in the New Century."

Definition: mobicapping is the new creative and technological practice borne of the instant capture and immediate international distribution potential of images, movies, and sounds via cell phones and other portable electronic devices.

Mobicappers may submit their mobicapps by May 15, 2006 to contact at mobicapping.com as email attachments. Submit either A) five still images (600 pixels longest side, max 250 kb per image) or B) two .MOV silent or sound movies (320 pixels longest side, max 500 kb per movie) or C) two MP3 sound files (max size 500 kb per file). Include artist name, email, location, and an artist statement / bio (max 150 words). No fees. Submission deadline: 05-15-2006. Exhibition opens: 08-15-2006.

MOBICAPPING: A PREMISE

Today, we record temporal moments with our cell phones and other small mobile devices which exist now and which are incessantly soon to be invented. The cell phone and its like, however do not elicit familial bonding as it has been in the past with the snapshot. There has been a marked cultural shift; our moments are more empty, more banal. Yet, paradoxically, we find ourselves and our experiences so much more interwoven--so much more widely shared--today than in any age prior. Such moments can now be found throughout the Internet. Instead of having a shell life in a shoebox stowed away in the family closet, our images and moments quickly move between emails, websites and even podcasts. But, where is all the art in this instantly local, regional, national, and international sharing? And, what do we call it?

We feel that this new form of image sharing in the 21st century is best described with a new term: mobicapping. Mobicapping means: mobile image capture (still, moving, and/or with sound). Those who participate in mobicapping--virtually all of us--are no longer photographers but are more accurately to be called mobicappers. Together, we are sending out a call for experimentation and exploration of the potential of the art of the mobicapper. The exhibition that we propose here will feature artists who are investigating this completely new creative and technological practice. "Mobicapping: Mobile Image Capture in the New Century" will open in August, 2006.

--E. Brady Robinson & Scott F. Hall

Posted by jo at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

sonambiente berlin 2006

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sound art festival in june

Making the city itself a work of sound art — sonambiente berlin 2006 - the festival for hearing and seeing is accompanying the events round the Football World Cup for six weeks, from June 1st to July 16th. For the second time since 1996, the Berlin sound art festival offers a platform to acoustic art of all colours and stripes — visual art, sound art, performance, video art, media art and music. Also the festival looks into the increasing significance of sound in visual art, staging the interplay between visual artists and sound artists at some dozen different locations.

Highlights of the sonambiente berlin 2006 opening weekend, June 1st to 5th, include a site-specific sound and light installation at the Potsdamer Platz metro station by the Austrian artists group [dy’na:mo] and the performance by the freq_out orchestra with the Swedish artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. Plus, the sonambiente_exhibition, which stands at the centre of the six-week festival, opens its doors to works by some 75 internationally known artists such as Candice Breitz, Janet Cardiff/Georg Bures Miller, Terry Fox, Christina Kubisch, Bernhard Leitner, Aernout Mik, Helen Mirra, Carsten Nicolai, Finnbogi Pétursson and Pipilotti Rist with Gudrun Gut.

Live performances, concerts, conversations with artists, and a film series round out the programme of the exhibition, which can be seen and heard at five central locations, for example both Akademie der Künste buildings, throughout the festival. First-time venues include the Pumpwerk in Holzmarktstraße (Radialsystem V) with its spectacular smokestack and the former Polish Embassy on Unter den Linden. Many works focus on the unusual spatial conditions at the different locations; they relate directly to Berlin and document the city's evolving structure. Alongside established artists, sonambiente berlin 2006 integrates a number of international art colleges and universities by introducing the works of their outstanding students and graduates at the sonambiente_laboratorium.

An additional focus of sonambiente berlin 2006 is the double pass between art and football. Several artists, Tilman Küntzel, Alfred Behrens and others, are setting up special projects round sound, art and football. Also the festival extends an open invitation to follow the World Cup live, inside the artistic framework of the sonambiente_public viewing sound art lounge designed by sound artist Kalle Laar, from June 9th to July 9th at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Projects developed specifically for radio and the Internet are also part of sonambiente berlin 2006. Nicaraguan-born New Yorker Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga intervenes in Berlin's public space. The artist, who received an award at Ars Electronica Linz 2004, is converting a shopping cart into a mobile radio station. Belgian artist and filmmaker Ana Torfs, who also took part in sonambiente 1996, contributes a net art project about Hanns Eisler's "Hollywood-Songbook“, created in collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation in New York, on the sonambiente website www.sonambiente.net, for example.

sonambiente berlin 2006 is presented by the Berliner Festspiele and the Akademie der Künste. The festival is initiated and curated by Georg Weckwerth (free-lance artist and curator) and Matthias Osterwold (Artistic Director of MaerzMusik – Festival of Contemporary Music in the Berlin Festivals). The festival is sponsored by the Capital Cultural Fund and supported by the Allianz Cultural Foundation.

June 1st to July 16th 2006

Opening: June 1st 2006, 6 p.m. at Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz (opening of the exhibition and bus shuttle for further festival-locations)

Posted by jo at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

ArtSFest 2006

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Evolutionary Patterns and the Lonely Owl (Mutation #2)

When: May 26-27 [Fri-Sat] 8:30-11:00pm [Ongoing]
Where: CELLspace, 2050 Bryant Street, San Francisco
Cost: $12 [$8 with ArtSFest Arts Action Pass] BUY TIX ONLINE NOW!

Intermedia performance group DOUBLE VISION will be presenting a large-scale event including simultaneous acts of dance, music, video, art and technology as part of the ArtSFest 2006. The event, entitled Evolutionary Patterns and the Lonely Owl, is part of a series during which the audience roams freely, exploring inflatable projections, mirrored matrices, pulsating pods, and radioactive sonic-works.

Throughout the night, curious onlookers may dine with a family of PAlien sculptures who transmit telepathic communications throughout the venue. The fearful may look above to spot a teleo-operated spy blimp or gaze at an inflatable orchestra of hypnotic video automata. The adventurous can get personal with dancers wielding magic lassos, human-hybrid mud totems, or Pierre's cries for help.

DOUBLE VISION, led by Sean Clute and Pauline Jennings, is group of performers, musicians, dancers and video-artists. By experimenting with different methods of collaboration through the adaptation of social systems, transvergence of scientific models, and mapping of algorithmic structures, DOUBLE VISION unifies multifaceted art forms and ideas.

DOUBLE VISION's artists strike a balance between unity, complexity, chaos and ritual. The collective ingenuity includes constructions by Steven Baudonnet, Matt Bell, Liz Bootz, Sean Clute, Amanda Crawford, Brian Enright, Simran Gleason, Jammin' Ammon, Ron Goldin, Jessica Gomula, Dave Holton, Pauline Jennings, Jason B. Jones, Elisabeth Kohnke, Chris Kruzic, Amy Leonards, Michelle K. Lynch, Wendy Marinacchio, Amy Nielson, Cecelia Peterson, Tim Thompson, Bill Wolter, Nicole Zvarik.

Posted by jo at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2006

[FRAY] Conference

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Connectivity and Collaboration

[FRAY] Conference: SATURDAY MAY 13 @ 2 PM; Film, Video & New Media Dept @ The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Room 1307 in the MacLean Building, 112 S. Michigan Ave., CHI IL .US; FREE.

Join [FRAY] for discussions and presentations on connective and collaborative New Media and Digital Arts with Annette Barbier (UNREAL-ESTATES and Interactive Arts and Media Department Columbia College), Ryan Griffis (The Temporary Travel Office and The School of Art & Design University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana), Mark Hansen (Professor in English Language & Literature, Cinema & Media Studies; University of Chicago), Lynn Marie Kirby (California College of the Arts), Rob Ray (DEADTECH and dorkbot Chicago), Lincoln Schatz (The Upgrade! Chicago) and Daniel Tucker (AREA Chicago).

The [FRAY] Conference consists of the following discussions:

2 PM - 4 PM
Multiplicities

Ryan Griffis (The Temporary Travel Office and The School of Art &
Design University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana)
Rob Ray (DEADTECH and dorkbot Chicago)
Lincoln Schatz (The Upgrade! Chicago)

The Multiplicities discussion focuses on connective + collaborative New Media + Digital Arts praxis in the context of internationalized efforts such as Ryan Griffis' The Temporary Travel Office, Rob Ray's initiation + running of dorkbot Chicago + Lincoln Schatz's development of The Upgrade! Chicago. The Temporary Travel Office, dorkbot Chicago + The Upgrade! Chicago are all effort to organize platforms or networks of New Media + Digital Arts praxis that foreground collaborations, sharing + international connectivities. As platforms, these systems act as connection points or hubs in an emerging + growing network of artistic activities.

4 PM - 6 PM
Connectivities

Annette Barbier (UNREAL-ESTATES and Interactive Arts and Media
Department Columbia College)
Mark Hansen (Professor in English Language & Literature, Cinema &
Media Studies; University of Chicago)
Lynn Marie Kirby (California College of the Arts)

The Connectivities discussion directs our attention to New Media + Digital Arts projects that traverse multiple histories, theories + practices such as Annette Barbier's UNREAL-ESTATES, Mark Hansen's New Philosophy for New Media + Lynn Marie Kirby's Latent Light Excavations. Annette Barbier's collaborative works such as Path of the Dragon are playable New Media experiences that tell poetic + alternative histories of specific places. Mark Hansen's theoretical
work on the multiple connections between + departures from philosophic traditions in New Media art emphasizes lived experiences + embodiment rather than mechanical metaphors for technology. Lynn Marie Kirby's Latent Light Excavations operate out of a poetics of space as well as an interest in digital processing + recording technologies to remember + reconnect to specific locations. Together these projects present varying takes on poetic + philosophic
connections between specific human experiences of New Media.

Then, after the [FRAY] Conference join us for the...

[FRAY] After (Party) Event ++ Performance Inside Out
SATURDAY MAY 13 @ 9 PM - ON
Chicago Art Department
1837 S. Halsted
CHI IL .US
FREE

The Chicago Art Department hosts the [FRAY] After (Party) Event. the [FRAY] After (Party) Event event is co-presented by the Film, Video & New Media and Performance Departments. Students of the Film, Video & New Media and Performance Departments are organizing and curating Performance Inside Out, a program of performance in the context of New Media that will take place @ the Chicago Art Department and online during the After (Party) Event.

// jonCates
# Assistant Professor - Film, Video & New Media
# The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
# http://www.fvnm.info

Posted by jo at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Virtual Realism

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A Review of Narrative as Virtual Reality

"...This brings us to the second crucial characteristic of hypertexts: the importance of the reader, who often becomes a player. In most cases, this importance is theorized by means of the concepts of immersion and interactivity. Precisely because of his active involvement, the reader/player loses himself in the computer game he is playing, or in the digital text he is writing with the help of all kinds of computer techniques. According to Marie-Laure Ryan in Narrative as Virtual Reality, this combination of immersion and interaction is not possible with literary texts. Literary texts that force the reader to participate actively - textes scriptibles or ‘writerly’ texts, to use Roland Barthes’ terms - inevitably shatter the effects of realism experienced by the reader; they introduce distance and lead readers to consider literary procedures more closely, which disrupts the immersion.

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Ryan relates immersion to the phenomenological approach to reading as a complete conflation of subject (reader) and object (text). She connects interaction with the structuralist approach of the text as a game, a system of rules that induces action. As a combination of immersion and interaction, hypertext would be an object of investigation in which the two traditionally opposed approaches could meet..." From Virtual Realism by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck; a review of Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

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

3rd Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium

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Code : Blue – Confluence of Currents

Code : Blue – Confluence of Currents 3rd Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium--June 30 – July 10 2006; New Media Art Center, China Millennium Art Museum; Beijing Cubic Art Center, Dashanzi Art District (Factory 798) Beijing, CHINA.

The new millennium has witnessed the growing vitality throughout the world of new media art, an art mediated via digital means, often with the internet as its platform. This emerging art, originating from an increasingly technologically dependent society, not only challenges traditional creative media, and ways of thinking, but also posits to artists and cultural workers new questions concerning all realms of contemporary life.

Under the auspices of Millennium Dialogue, the First and Second Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium successfully mounted two ground-breaking exhibitions and symposia in 2004 and 2005 respectively at the China Millennium Museum in Beijing. Enlisting a number of key players in the realm of media art throughout the world as partners, "Millennium Dialogue" aims at establishing a global, constructive platform for dialogue and exchange with the most current discourse in new media arts production and theorization to advance and promote digital arts and education in China.

At the helm of the project are three prominent institutions, with Tsinghua University as host, one of the most acclaimed research and educational institutions of China, joined by ZKM | Center for Art and Media of Karlsruhe, Germany, the World’s largest media arts center, and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media of Rotterdam, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival maker.

With the repercussion of Millennium Dialogue 2004 and 2005 still undulating, 2006 sees another stellar gathering of the international new media art community in Beijing. The Third Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium, marking the inauguration of the newly established, spectacular Beijing Creative Industries Zone, takes to the Chinese capital another highly charged, thought provoking new media art exhibition revolving on the central theme – Code:Blue, and a symposium which furthers the discourse of new media art practice and education with global perspective.

Theme exhibition and symposium Code:Blue - Confluence of Currents

In the early 1400s, 80 years before Columbus set foot on the Americas, Chinese fleets led by Zheng He, an eunuch admiral, traversed the Indian Ocean reaching the Cape of Good Hope numerous times, establishing peaceful relationships with principalities and kingdoms along their voyage routes, propelling cultural understandings, and precipitating trading activities among many nations. The rise of China in the 21st century as a major economic player in the Pacific region and beyond revives the lost legacy of China as an oceangoing nation, and unveils her creative merchandising spirit. China’s seclusion from the outside world that resulted in an isolated “earth” civilization was but a temporary historical interruption, contrary to the perception that it is the intrinsic nature of Chinese culture.

“Code:Blue” attempts to symbolically establish a relationship between China’s once ocean-minded past and her active engagement and rigorous interaction with current global influences both economically and culturally in an increasingly reciprocal construct, visible in areas such as trade / commerce, migration / mobility, identity / nationality, East / West, South / North and their dichotomies either as librating high tides or as potentially perilous waters. The exhibition and symposium also metaphorically seek the confluence of these multiple cultural and economic currents, and propose Blue as transparency and deepness, flow and volatility, expanse and transcendence. The symposium will examine the increasingly interconnected global flux of information manifested through social and technological networks, reflect on the remapping and reconfiguration of cultural landscapes under the new geopolitical and geo-economic constellation in the 21st century, explore novel ways of artistic intervention in the post-bubble era of the Web2 hype in which a world market consolidates the once discursive, de-centralized net space, and an attention economy replaces the production based economic model, creating new social classes and cultural strata. By re-contextualizing utopian visions and avant-garde propositions that have been the driving force of electronic art and discourse, the symposium proposes the potentials of media art as interventionist, constructing reflexive relationships with technological vehicles at the threshold of new paradigm shift, seeking alternatives at the crossroad of planetary civilization in which global economic redistribution and transcultural production both converge and collide.

“Code: Blue” is an international exhibition and symposium, which comprises works by established and emerging media artists, presenting artist and expert discussions, each giving his/her own insightful approach to the broad thematic structure, rendering a diversity of interpretations and raising issues imminent and critical to the fluctuating social, cultural and economic circumstances across the world. “Code:Blue” presents representative works of telematic art, virtual reality, net art, robotic art, interactive cinema, nano art, and other new forms facilitated through media technologies with critical reflections on the impact of pervasiveness of technology. A subset of the “Code: Blue” is programmed as “The Shipment From China” in which a body of projects by Chinese media artists using shipping containers as a metaphor as well as transporting vehicles for the creation of their works will participate in the ISEA 2006 / ZeroOne Festival in August 2006. The ISEA 2006 in conjunction with ZeroOne: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, is hosted by the city of San Jose, in the Silicon Valley in the United States. “Container Culture” is one of the exhibition themes of the ISEA2006 / ZeroOne Festival.

Works and Artists Presented in the Theme Exhibition “Code : Blue”

Death Before Disco by Herwig Weiser
Spatial Sound by Marnix De Nijus
Polyptic by George Legrady
Word Processor by Ingo Gunther
Sustainable by David Birchfield, David Lorig, Kelly Phillips
One Thousand Year Dawn by John Gerrard
We Interrupt Your Regularly
Scheduled Programs by Daniel Sauter & Osman Khan
The Well by Art Center Nabi
Field – Granular::Synthesis by Kurt Hentschlåger and Ulf Langheinrich
Poetry Machine by David Link
The Catalogue by Chris Oakley
Banlieue du Vide by Thomas Koener
Pipeline by Steven Silberg
The Tobacco Project by Xu Bing
disCONNECTION by Xing Danwen
Altitude Zero by Hu Jieming
Third Eye by Jin Jiangbo
Drift Bottle by Huang Shi
Water by Yaobin

Academic Exchange Exhibition

1. Teleboat 798 Parsons School of Design and Tsinghua Academy of Art and Desing (Collaboration)
2. Water Bowls UCLA (Victoria Vesna, collaborative)
3. Works from other Chinese art educational institutes including China Academy of Fine Art, Central Academy of Fine Art, Peking University)

Guest Exhibition - The Canadian Link

“Inside”curated by Sylvia Parent, guest curator, Groupe Molio
DATA by AE
Digitale by Alexandre Castonguay
habitgram by beewoo
Perversely Interactive System by Lynn Hughes and Simon Laroche Tact by Jean uboi wave_scan by Brad Todd

Special Screening Programs

1. Ars Electronica - 25 Years of Excellency in Electronic Arts 2. transmediale - estival for Art and Digital Culture

“Code:Blue” Symposium

Part 1:
A) World Art / Regional Culture-Reasoning Global Culture

Brian Holmes (Writer, media theorist)
Angelica Schimtt (Media theorist)
Wang Chunyan (Professor, director of Creative Commons, China Chapter) Soh Yeong Roh (Director, Art Center Nabi)

B) The Future of the Present- Art Institutions in the Age of Globalization

Fan Di’an (Director, China National Art Museum)
Hannah Redler (Media art director, National Science Museum London) Alex Adriaanens (Director, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media)

Part 2
The Vision of Blue
- Artistic Interventions, Strategies, and Prospects

Timothy Druckrey (Curator)
John Gerrad (Artist)
Ai Weiwei (Artist, architect)
Ingo Günther (Artist)
Julianne Piece (Curator)
Victoria Vesna (Professor, UCLA)
Sven Travis (Professor, Parsons School of Design)
David Link (Artist)
Andreas Broeckmann (Director, transmediale)
Thomas Munz (Curator, transmediale)

Artistic Directors:
Lu Xiaobo, Zhang Ga

Curators:
Zhang Ga, Timothy Druckrey

Curatorial Consultants:
Alex Adriaansens - Director, V2_, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Andreas Broeckmann - Director, transmediale, Berlin, Germany
Thomas Munz - Curator, transmediale, Berlin, Germany
Soh Yeong Roh - Director, Art Center NABI, Seoul, S. Korea
Gerfried Stocker - Director, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria
Peter Weibel - CEO, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

Presented by:
Tsinghua University China
Millennium Art Museum

In Collaboration with:
V2_Institute for the Unstable Media
ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Ars Electronica Center
transmediale
art center nabi
Groupe Molior

Posted by jo at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders

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boundaries of design, space and technology

Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders is an exhibition of design practice concerned with spatially oriented disciplines that use digital technologies at the convergence of sculpture, product design and architecture.

The Call for Entries seeks works that blur the conventional boundaries of arts and design practice through the use of technology such as environments, pervasive, locative. interactive, game and 3d net based.

Posted by michelle at 03:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2006

Come Out & Play Festival

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Rediscover the World through Play

The Come Out & Play Festival seeks to provide a forum for new types of public games and play. We want to bring together a public eager to rediscover the world around them through play with designers interested in producing innovative new games and experiences.

The Come Out & Play Festival is a street games fesitval dedicated to exploring new styles of games and play. The festival will feature games from the creators of I love bees, PacManhattan, Conqwest, Big Urban Game and more. From massive multi-player walk-in events to scavenger hunts to public play performances, the festival will give players and the public the chance to take part in a variety of different games.

The Come Out & Play Festival will run from September 22-24, 2006. Games will occur throughout the day in locations around the city. The full festival schedule will be made available in June. Interested in submitting a game to be played in the festival? Apply here to be part of the Come Out & Play Festival. Extended! Submissions due June 30.

Posted by jo at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

Aperture + Contemplace

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Spatial Experience

Aperture--by transmote.com-- focuses on the ways sound and light affect spatial perception. Spatial experience comprises several related elements. Some of these are ephemeral and difficult to isolate, such as time, context alongside adjacent spaces, and human presence or absence. However, some elements more directly affect spatial experience; in particular, sensory data such as visual changes, aural motion, and tactile input have profound impacts on the way we perceive space.

Multi-channel sonic textures, generated from recordings of existing spaces, encircle the space of the installation. A rear-projected ceiling is used as a display and light source, describing arcs of motion, intensity, and color. Transitions between audiovisual textures echo transitional places in architecture, places that deal with changes in scale, use, material, and motion. By contextualizing these changes of sound and light in physical space, Aperture enables visitors to gain a greater awareness of the composition of their individual perceptions of space.

Aperture is on display as part of Eyebeam's Circuit program from Tuesday, May 9th, through Saturday, May 20th. Eyebeam’s hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10am-6pm.

Eric will be on hand to discuss the piece during the following times:

Tuesday, May 9th, 4-6pm
Wednesday, May 10th, 6-8pm

Aperture was developed during a fellowship in Eyebeam's Production Studio and is an extension of Contemplace.

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Contemplace is a spatial personality that redesigns itself dynamically according to its conversations with its visitors. Sometimes welcoming, sometimes shy, and sometimes hostile, Contemplace's mood is apparent through a display of projected graphics, spatial sound, and physical motion. contemplace is an environment in which inhabitation becomes a two-way dialogue.

Contemplace is an exploration of possible interactions between people and the spaces they inhabit. Typically, built spaces are passive shells that rely on their inhabitants to provide them with character. What would our spaces be like if they could receive their visitors like a human host?

Contemplace's visual displays and overall structure are built with processing, a java-based programming platform. Contemplace's sounds are generated by max/msp, a graphical programming environment for manipulating sound. processing and max/msp communicate via flosc, a java server designed by Ben Chun to allow communication between OSC/XML-compatible programs over IP. Visitor presence and motion is detected by a webcam and pressure sensors. The same electronic circuit that monitors the pressure sensors also drives a motor that raises and lowers the ceiling with contemplace's mood swings.

Posted by jo at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

Amnesty International

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Firefly Commission

In an effort to support Amnesty International’s global advocacy and educational work and provide a forum for critically considering the intersection of the human rights framework and contemporary artistic practices, AI Firefly has announced a juried $3,000 commission for the creation of a new art work to be presented on or around International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2006.

Applicants must make a commitment to produce the project by December 2006 for public presentation on and after International Human Rights Day on December 10; the presentation could include full-scale production of a theatrical performance, launch of a new media or internet-based project, premiere screening of a film or video project, opening reception for a public art project, or similar presentation. Applicants are encouraged to propose innovative work that critically considers the relationship between contemporary artistic practices, including “activist” artistic practices, and human rights.

The concept of “human rights” refers to the minimum standard of legal, civil, and political freedoms guaranteed to all individuals regardless of nationality, ethnicity, and other localizing factors. The clear articulation of these rights in international political conventions and the ongoing discourse around their legislation and enforcement provide a global frame of reference and concrete starting point around which political action—artistic or otherwise—can be organized.

Download guidelines and an application: www.aifirefly.org/commission.

Application deadline: August 4, 2006

Information session: May 24, 2006, 6:30 PM at Alwan for the Arts, 16 Beaver Street. Please visit aifirefly.org/commission to RSVP.

Questions? E-mail commission[at]aifirefly.org.

Amnesty International Firefly Project (AI Firefly) is a New York City-based collective of artists and activists affiliated with Amnesty International USA as local group #704.

Posted by jo at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

16 Beaver's Monday Night

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Discussion on Rancière's Politics of Aesthetics

16 Beaver's Monday Night -- 05.08.06 -- Discussion on Rancière's Politics of Aesthetics; Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor; When: Monday Night 05.08.2006 @ 7:30 PM; Who: Open and Free To All

A translation of Jacques Rancière's "the politics of aesthetics" into English was completed in 2004. Since that time, these texts have been in wider circulation and discussion. We have posted below two talks he has given on the subject in the last years which elaborate the positions outlined in the book. In addition to that we have a link below to a text Brian Holmes wrote some years back connecting to Rancière's writings as they pertain to aesthetics and politics. We would like to take a moment to create a forum for discussing these ideas and to connect to some of the ongoing discussions we have been having at 16Beaver.

Check back online before Monday's event, because we hope to be updating the page with some additional texts or resources.

Aesthetics and Politics: rethinking the link: There are different ways of dealing with art and politics. For a long time the issue had been set up as a relationship between two separate terms. The question was raised as follows: must art serve politics or not? Or: how can we assess the political import of artworks? This led to endless controversies about art for art's sake opposed to engaged art. Another way of setting the issue was: how do artworks represent social issues and struggles or matters of identity and difference. This resulted in another kind of endless job. When you started scrutinizing how 19th century French painters or novelists had represented class-war matters, you already knew that they did it inadequately because of their own class position. And when you begin to ferret out hidden representations of social, sexual or racial difference, you never stop finding new biases, the more so significant and perverse as they are the more deeply concealed and indiscernible to everybody's eye. For a while, some concepts offered a mediation, such as culture or modernity. The strategies of the artists, the contents of their representations or of their dismissal of representation were referred to the modes of perception and consumption of the new industrial world of work and leisure that you could call, according to your own political commitment, either capitalism and commodification or modernity and modern life. A lot of cultural and social history of art has been written to show how for instance the impressionist technique of coloured blotches had been fostered by the perception of the new scenery of the modern town with its shops, lights and windows or the new pleasures of urban or suburban leisure, cafés-concerts, boating on rivers and so on. So the issue of the autonomy of art with respect to politics turned out to be the issue of its autonomy in relation to common culture: did the impressionist blotches testify to a 'truth-to-medium" strategy of autonomy or did they chart the new conditions of sensory experience in commodity culture?

"The politics of aesthetics": I shall start from a little fact borrowed from the actuality of art life. A Belgian foundation, the Evens Foundation, created a prize called Community art collaboration. The prize is aimed at supporting artistic projects encouraging " the invention of new social coherence based on diversity of identities ". Last year , the laureate project was presented by a French group of artists called Urban Campment. The project , called"I and us" proposed to create, in a poor and stigmatized suburb of Paris a special place, "extremely useless, fragile and non-productive", a place at remove available to all but than can be used only by one person at once. So a prize destined to art was given to the project of an empty place where nothing designates the specificity of any art. And a prize aimed at creating new forms of community was given to a one seater place. Some people would probably see there the derision of contemporary art and of its political pretensions. I shall take an opposite way. I think that this little example can lead us to the core of our problem. The first point that it reminds us is the following. Art is not political owing to the messages and feelings that it conveys on the state of social and political issues. Nor is it political owing to the way it represents social structures, conflicts or identities. It is political by virtue of the very distance that it takes with respect to those functions. It is political insofar as it frames not only works or monuments, but also a specific space-time sensorium, as this sensorium defines ways of being together or being apart, of being inside or outside, in front of or in the middle of, etc. It is political as its own practices shape forms of visibility that reframe the way in which practices, manners of being and modes of feeling and saying are interwoven in a commonsense, which means a "sense of the common" embodied in a common sensorium.

Hierglyphs of the Future: Jacques Rancière and the Aesthetics of Quality by Brian Holmes: We're not a surplus, we're a plus. The slogan appeared at the demonstrations of the French jobless movement in the mid-90s in journals, on banners, and on tracts printed by the political art group, Ne pas plier. It knitted the critical force and the subjective claims of the movement into a single phrase. To be "a surplus" (laid off, redundant) was to be reduced to silence in a society that subtracted the jobless from the public accounts, that made them into a kind of residue—invisible, inconceivable except as a statistic under a negative sign. Excluded, in short: cut out of a system based on the status of the salaried employee. Until they finally came together to turn the tables, reverse the signs, and claim a new name on a stage they had created, by occupying unemployment offices in a nation-wide protest during the winter of 1997-98. The people with nothing erupted onto the public scene. "We're a plus," they said, intruding through the TV cameras into the country's living rooms. Which also meant, "We'll drink champagne on Christmas eve."

A way to grasp the aesthetic language of the French social movements in the 90s—and of the transnational movements now emerging—is through the work of Jacques Rancière and his writings on the politics of equality. In Disagreement (published originally in 1995), he confronted the philosophy of government with the scandal of the political.1 Government fulfills an ideal of order when it administers, manages, and tries to totally account for a population; but its reality is the police. The police keeps everyone in their place, imposes the calculations of value, apportions out the shares in society.

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
phone: 212.480.2093

for directions/subscriptions/info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,M Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Man in|e|space.exe + ELEKTRA

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Object + Body in a Technological Perspective

The performance man in |e|space.exe is invited for the opening of the international festival of digital arts Elektra. The performance has been created last november at Carré de Jalles. It's a further step of the questioning about the relationship between the electronic/ physical space and human motion which had been started with the creation man in |e|space.mov. This extended (.exe) version takes place in a strolling immersive space where the public walks around 4 screens representing the digital representation of the dansers mouvement. The creation confronts and combine the representation of human motion in physical and digital 3D space.

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From May 9 to 14, ELEKTRA, the digital arts festival, will take over your senses, digitally. For this 7th edition, the event promises to astonish, both thanks to its bold digital arts works and gripping audiovisual performances. Over the course of six days, the festival proposes unusual, at times edgy experiences combining electronic music and visual creation. On the menu, laser and sound performances, interactive installations, dance and technology, electronic music and live performances. This counter-culture gathering blurs the frontiers of music, design, cinema, video, dance and architecture. Whereas ELEKTRA placed the term “audiovisual” on the map in 2005, this year will mark the exploration of the third dimension of audiovisual. The works selected place a common focus on the relationship between sound and image as it relates to the object and body in a technological perspective. Program; Events [PDF]

Posted by jo at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2006

Dak’Art Biennale 2006

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African Media Arts

UNESCO-Daniel Langlois Foundation Programme promoting African media arts at Dak’Art_Lab 2006 at the Dak’Art Biennale 2006 (5 May–5 June 2006, Senegal, Dakar).

Exhibition at Dak'Art_Lab 2006: The exhibition displaying a selected number of works of the following African media artists is a timely occasion to increase the visibility of existing digital artistic practises and to sensitize artists of different disciplines and the general public of the potential of digital creation in Africa.

Forum (8 to 12 May 2006): A series of panel discussions is to be held on the aesthetics and practises of media arts in Africa - Maison de la culture Douta Seck. On this occasion, the Lab will be transformed into a place of exchange of experience, of collaboration and of reflection bringing together different role players and their expertise in the contemporary scene of African digital art and furthermore creating a synergy, which could lead to interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial collaboration within the region.

2 Training workshops on creative digital tools and practises (6 to 14 May 2006): As one of the major activities of the UNESCO-Daniel Langlois Foundation Programme at Dak’Art_Lab 2006, two separate workshops are to take place at Ecole Nationale des Arts de Dakar with the participation of its students. One workshop dedicated to visual digital creation is to be held on 8-12 May 2006 with the fine arts students of the Ecole, where as a number of music academy students are to participate in another workshop on electro-acoustic sound practises on 6-7, 13-14 May 2006.

The training programme and resources of the workshops are based on the following two online learning applications of the UNESCO Young Digital Creators Programme of DigiArts.

UNESCO DigiArts Team
http://portal.unesco.org/digiarts
digiarts[at]unesco.org

Posted by jo at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

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TALKING MONUMENTS

The art group "Archeopterix" (Izhevsk, Russia) is pleased to invite artists working with different media to take part in the public art project Talking Monuments, which will be realized in the framework of the cultural marathon "Perm Cultural Capital 2006." The event will take place in September 2006 in Perm city, Russia. Please submit your project proposals before July 20, 2006. Further dissemination of the information will be highly appreciated.

Concept: The ten-days public art festival “Talking Monuments” aims to bring together artistic reflections upon the role of monuments in contemporary urban spaces. The idea is to question nowadays city environments from the position of monuments within them as living objects of city public life. How are they integrated into social activities around them? How does public relate to them? How do they participate in the public discourse? Can we make them sound and speak on their own? What kind of observations can be grasped thenWe are looking for new myths and stories about monuments. Within rapidly changing nowadays reality monuments are both cross-historical traces and witnesses of passing epochs and mythologies. They seem to be silent and immobile objects, but what about giving them an opportunity to speak out, to talk back to the public, to turn them into active subjects of communication?

GUIDELINE FOR PROPOSALS SUBMISSION

Please submit your project proposals according to the following four categories:

1. Talking Monument Art projects in formats of multimedia, kinetic installation; staged visual, musical, poetic performance. Your works are expected to be related to already existing monuments in the city and/or their context. Especially works aiming at bringing dynamics and new contextual experiences are welcomed. Works in this category will be selected in cooperation with the city administration. Please pay attention to special criteria for the projects in the category “Talking Monument”: Your project should not cause any damage or material loss to monuments. The project idea should correlate as much as possible with the festival theme “Talking Monuments ." References to the specific topics and aspects of cultural and social context of Perm are encouraged.

Authors of selected projects will be provided with the assistance for their realization, including materials, assistants, expenses. For more details please contact the organizers.

2. Monumental Video-Scape Video art works of the total length of 10 min maximum. The video art works are supposed to provide new environment or background for a monument, so it is going to be presented next to a monument which would be incorporated into the video-scape. The presentation of the project assumes that between the screen and spectators there will be a monument. For further information and assistance in choosing monuments and location please contact the organizers.

3. SMS Perm Novel Projects in the form of short text messages. One of the ideas of presentation of projects in this category assumes: on a pedestal of a monument the board with running line with text is mounted and transmitted. This category is open to your creative suggestion as well.

4. USB Stall or Art into the Masses! Any multimedia projects, which would suggest original ways of distribution of contemporary art content via portable and mobile devices widely used especially by youth: players, phones, PDAs, etc. For that a small mobile stall-poster with USB and flash ports is going to be established, where everybody could download the art, not only the detailed program and documentation of the festival, but also media art works as such. Visually the object will be similar to the flying device from planet Pluke from the cult Russian sci-fi movie "Kin-dza-dza" with mounted screens, speakers and video projector to broadcast the documentation and multimedia projects.

For more information on project, the list, photos and description of Perm monuments look at http://dacha.tyros.ru

DEADLINE for submission of project proposals is July 20, 2006.

Please use the electronic form in DOC format.

Put your last name in the name of your file, for example: (smith.RTF) and send it to anfimx[at]yandex.ru. Please send your files with brief description of the project and pictures illustrating the description in JPG or GIF format together with the electronic form to anfimx[at]yandex.ru

For any questions and suggestion contact: anfimx[at]yandex.ru

Further detailed information can be found at the web site.

The form for the application in categories “Talking Monument,” “USB Stall.” “Monumental Video-Scape” is below:

AUTHOR FULL NAME

ADDRESS

PHONE

TITLE

CONCEPT

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Posted by jo at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)

European Digital Culture Networking Event

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Culture Flows; Mind the Gap

We invite you to join us for Mind the Gap, a european digital culture networking event that will take place in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in 16-18 June 2006.

Culture flows. And it seems that Bernoulli’s principle laid out in the late 1700’s applies well to this kind of fluid too: you just connect two or more – cultural - recipients and transfer begins. But what is transferred and when? And what is the direction of transfer? In digital culture technology penetration lag or maturization cycles are just two of the parameters affecting all actors on the cultural scene. How do differences or similarities between connected cultures influence transfer? Either cultural producers or audiences, understanding the phenomena of cultural transfer is to our best interest. It helps us fit in the flow.

The meeting aims to contribute to the networking of artists and organisations working in the field of digital culture across Europe and to foster the debate on the trends and developments in media arts in different parts of the continent and the connections and transfers that occur among the producers of digital content. On the same occasion AltArt will officially launch the BINAR Centre for Digital Culture, the first initiative of its kind in the country.

Mind the Gap intends to continue the media picnic series initiated by kuda and V2 in 2004 (Trans-European Picnic, Novi Sad) and continued by SCCA/pro.ba (_Sarajevo Picnic_2005, Lost In Transition) in 2005 in Sarajevo.

We warmly invite you to join us. And also to contribute to the refining and the selection of the topics to be discussed. For more details about the event and to view and comment on the proposed topics please visit our forum.

Partner: Transmediale/Berlin; With financial support from: Romania National Cultural Fund, Goethe Institute, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Cultural Programme in Romania, SC Fornetti SRLFor more information please contact us at the details provided bellow.

Hoping to meet you soon,

Rarita Szakats

AltArt Foundation
Tel +40 723 263072
Fax +40 264 587467
office@altart.org
www.altart.org
www.altart.org/mindthegap

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

Aotearoa Digital Arts + UpStage

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ADA Swaray

You're invited to the first ADA Swaray, on Sunday 7 May at 9pm New Zealand time.

What is the ADA Swaray? Aotearoa Digital Arts, in conjunction with UpStage, is hosting a series of "swarays" - informal social gatherings for digital artists and other interested folk to meet, talk and play online. The idea was born following a demonstration of UpStage at last year's ADA symposium, _emerge_, partly as an opportunity to get to know artists coming to SCANZ but also as an informal networking opportunity for digital artists in New Zealand and overseas.

How do I attend? Put on your favourite frock and point your browser at http://www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/swaray; use the link to check your local time if you're not in NZ, and at the appointed time follow the link to the Swaray Stage. Type into the text chat window to join in the conversations and mingle with the assembled guests. Virtual champagne, cocktails and canapes will be served.

Posted by jo at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

MIT List Visual Arts Center

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Art + Technology

Currently at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966; Choreographic Turn: Daria Martin; Peter Welz in collaboration with William Forsythe; and Chris Doyle: Recent Video Works

9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966, Curator: Catherine Morris.

This exhibition, organized by independent curator Catherine Morris, takes a fresh look at 9 evenings: theatre and engineering, a series of performance events organized by Billy Klüver, a Bell Laboratories engineer, that took place at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York from October 13-23, 1966. 9 evenings featured ten artist/engineer collaborators who attempted to realize previously unattainable creative projects. 9 Evenings was a significant turning point for many artists who became aware, many for the first time, of the implications that advancements in technology had for the development of their own work. The exhibition 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966 includes works of art, ephemera, drawings, film, and photo documentation of the 1966 performances.

The artists involved in 9 evenings: theatre and engineering were John Cage (composer); Lucinda Childs (dancer and choreographer); Öyvind Fahlström (painter and author of theater pieces); Alex Hay (painter and choreographer); Deborah Hay (dancer and choreographer); Steve Paxton (dancer and choreographer); Yvonne Rainer (filmmaker, dancer and choreographer); Robert Rauschenberg (painter and choreographer); David Tudor (musician and composer); and Robert Whitman (film/video artist, author of theater pieces). Bell Laboratories’ Billy Klüver brought these artists together and paired each artist with an/a Bell Labs engineer to create new works. Engineers included: Per Biorn, Cecil Coker, Ralph Flynn, Larry Heilos, Peter Hirsch, Harold Hodges, Robert Keronski, Jim McGee, Robby Robinson, Herb Schneider (MIT Class of 1948), Fred Waldhauer, Witt Wittnebert, and Dick Wolff.

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Choreographic Turn: Daria Martin; Peter Welz in collaboration with William Forsythe, Curator: Bill Arning, MIT List Visual Arts Center.

This exhibition features a 16mm film entitled Soft Materials by Daria Martin, an American artist living and working in London, and a large five-screen video installation entitled whenever on on on nohow on / airdrawing by German artist Peter Welz in collaboration with celebrated dancer/choreographer William Forsythe. In bringing together the work of these artists, curator Bill Arning offers audiences the opportunity to consider the space between dance and moving image in contemporary art practice. There is a growing history and cultural practice of choreocinema, or dance on film/video, a hybrid art form that offers previously unavailable experiences of dance. Choreographic Turn celebrates this exciting shift in cultural practice by showing two recent extraordinary iterations of this new form-film/video installations offering new modes of experiencing the art of bodies in motion.

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Chris Doyle: Recent Video Works

Flight (2005) 31 seconds
Tower (2005) 4 minutes
Hotel Bernini I (excerpt) (2004) 2 minutes, 33 seconds
Watershed (2004) 3 minutes, 02 seconds
Extraordinary Perceptual Dilemmas and the Madness of Climbing (2003) 1 minute, 30 seconds

Chris Doyle's themes are drawn from the psychology of everyday life. By using only the most low-tech special effects, he transforms everyday images into short films that are magical and moving.

Doyle is perhaps best known for Leap , a public artwork sponsored by Creative Time in April, 2000, for New York City's 2 Columbus Circle. A celebration of hope, Leap , showed moving images projected onto a tall building of various New Yorkers from all five boroughs jumping skyward. Beginning at dusk, depictions of a continuous stream of New Yorkers appeared at the base of the building, and one by one, four hundred and twenty jumpers soared up the height of the facade, slipping into the night sky.

In recent years, Doyle has worked less in the public sphere, and more in the private fictional spaces he creates in his videos. This selection of videos shows a wide range of Doyle's interests, but each manifests a dreamlike vision in which the quotidian becomes extraordinary. Doyle likens his practice to a "Pathetic Magician, a sad sack trying to make magic out of what is at hand."1 Writing in Art News magazine Linda Yablonsky said "(Doyle) has cast hot dogs, red bricks, and lawn chairs as human surrogates in videos that constantly mix storytelling with abstraction." 2

Flight (2005) shows the artist doing aerial circuits in a Superman pose around his Brooklyn studio before heading out the window. Today, when even amateurs have access to Hollywood-quality special effects, the artist's goal is clearly not a seamless effect. The jerky motion is left as a clue to his methodology, in which the artist performed 230 individual leaps and then sequenced the still photographs to depict flight.

Tower (2005) uses an animation technique known as "claymation". Doyle has turned the descriptive form upside down; and we see the effects of unseen artist's hands on the tower, wounding and suturing the form. and twisting it like taffy.

Hotel Bernini I (2004) is among Doyle's most evocative works, in that how one perceives the turbulence of the white hotel sheets will invariably be affected by one's own psychology. Whether it is understood as the result of anxiety, insomnia, or passion, the sheets are now vacant, and the bodies that gave them life are now missing.

Watershed (2004) shows a partly deconstructed bank building that the artist found in upstate New York. Using only flashlights for special effects, Doyle uses the skeletal frame as a metaphor for the psychological structures that contain thought, with the flashes of light serving as the events or perceptions that define human relationships. The artist appears at the very end sweeping up after the emotional fireworks.

Extraordinary Perceptual Dilemmas and the Madness of Climbing (2003) was a site specific project done for an exhibition in East Hampton, Long Island, NY. Like many natural paradises that have become popular resorts, longtime residents describe the area's past in idyllic terms that are too dreamy to be true. The old movie feel and the slightly horrific over-profusion of images are meant to conjure the dark side of paradise.

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2006

Mobile Processing Workshop

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Call for Participants

Mobile Processing Workshop: INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS FOR MOBILE PHONES WITH FRANCIS LI--Lisbon, Portugal, 15 - 19 May 06, Espaço Atmosferas, Rua da Boavista, 67, Lisbon.

The mobile phone has reached a level of adoption that far exceeds that of the personal computer. As a result, they are an emerging platform for new services and applications that have the potential to change the way we live and communicate.

Mobile Processing is an open source project that aims to drive this innovation by increasing the audience of potential designers and developers through a free, open source prototyping tool based on Processing and the open sharing of ideas and information. This workshop will introduce the Mobile Processing project and prototyping tool and provide hands-on instruction and experience with programming custom applications for the mobile phone.

Contents:

- Introduction to Mobile Processing, phone hardware and development platforms.
- Survey of projects with the phone as both the platform and subject for new forms of interactive applications and electronic art.
- Basic programming and prototyping concepts with 2D graphics and animation.
- Phone input/output handling including keyboard, camera, sound and vibration.
- Internet networking. Parsing and generating XML-formatted data.
- Text messaging and Bluetooth networking.

The workshop will be practical and at the end every participant will develop a personal exercise.

Equipment

Windows highly recommended, but Mac OS X is acceptable, with built-in or USB Bluetooth adapters recommended. Mobile phones with support for Java and Bluetooth recommended.

Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops.

Schedule

20 hours: 5 sessions X 4 h
15 to 19 of May 06 - 18h-22h

Target

Basic programming skills, familiarity with Processing recommended but not required.

About Francis Li: San Francisco, USA, Author of Mobile Processing. He is an interaction designer and software engineer with a passion for working with emerging technologies. In both academia and industry, for both research and production, has participated in the design, development, and evaluation of interactive systems with a focus on user interface design and human-computer interaction. Has a Masters in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and a B.A. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Price and Inscriptions: 250 euros

Inscriptions: visit www.atmosferas.net/mobileprocessing/index_en.html

Sponsor: Movensis
Support: www.etic.pt

About Atmosferas, Digital Arts Center: Atmosferas is a digital arts center involved in the production of experimental new media projects. Atmosferas commissions experimental projects, organizes workshops and conferences about current themes on the front line of the creative uses of the new media, created a TV show about electronic arts and promotes an yearly ideas competition.

Atmosferas - Rua da Boavista 102 - 2º,1200-069 Lisbon, Portugal
tel. +351 213213040 info[at]atmosferas.net

Posted by jo at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

(re)ACTOR: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL LIVE ART

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Call for PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS AND PERFORMANCES

(re)ACTOR: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL LIVE ART September 11, 2006 The Octagon @ Queen Mary, University of London London, England, UK, Deadline for 2-page submissions 26 May 2006. In cooperation with HCI 2006: ENGAGE; The 20th British HCI Group conference in co-operation with ACM

DIGITAL LIVE ART is the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), live art and computing. This conference seeks to bring together practitioners and academics from the varying worlds of live art, computing and human-computer interaction for a lively debate and event which will explore this emerging field. Our specific context focuses on club cultures as a living context for digital live arts practices. Our expected outcomes are to create a community of digital live artists and to present strategies for designing, developing and evaluating Digital Live Art. Such an event provides an opportunity to open up conversations between digital art and live performance and will allow us to explore how it is used to increase our understanding of human-computer interaction in general.

The notion of Digital Live Art is that of a hybrid art form which focuses on presence and presupposes the digital as a way of making live engagements. Our particular interest is in exploring the relationship that develops between performers, participants and observers within playful contexts and how Digital Live Art may move people to performative interaction and communal engagement.

THE CONFERENCE

The conference will include both daytime presentations and an evening ambient after party. The daytime event will include a keynote panel with Charles Kriel, Philip Auslander, and Jon Dovey.

Kriel is broadly regarded as one of the world's leading VJs. He VJs regularly for the likes of Pete Tong, Fatboy Slim, DJ Tiesto, Darren Emerson and Sasha and was recently appointed a Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University. His pioneering work includes the world's first nationally telecast VJ mix to the UK.

Auslander has written on aesthetic and cultural performances as diverse as theatre, performance art, music, stand-up comedy, and courtroom procedures and is the author of four books and editor or co-editor of two collections, his most current Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music.

Dovey spent the first 15 years of his working life in video production, working through the early years of Channel Four as a researcher, editor and eventually as Producer. He worked principally in documentary and experimental video, co founding original scratch artists Gorilla Tapes in 1984. His video projects gained international distribution and recognition and have now taken their place in the documented histories of UK Video Art. His forthcoming book is titled Game Cultures.

The schedule includes peer-reviewed paper presentations, interactive installations and performances, a cross-disciplinary discussion forum and an ambient after-party. The conference and evening event will take place in the Octagon at Queen Mary, University London - the recently refurbished library which was originally built in 1888 and was modeled on the Reading Room of the British Library (now the British Museum) and was formerly contained within the famous East End People's Palace.

WHO SHOULD BE ATTENDING?

We are seeking to bring together both working practitioners and academics from the active world of live art and computing, particularly (but not limited to):

Performers: Live artists, digital artists, DJs, VJs, sonic artists, dancers, actors, magicians.
Participants: Computer scientists, technicians, club goers, designers, new media practitioners, decorators
Observers: Cultural theorists, ethnographers, street scientists,her/historians
Orchestrators: Curators, directors, writers, producers, events organisers, club & festival owners/managers and promoters.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We are seeking to create a dynamic, interactive experience for our delegates. We are soliciting two-page proposals for both the formal daytime conference and the interactive evening event. To this end your contribution can be made in the following ways:

15 minute paper presentation interactive demonstration/presentation of practice performance/installation DJ/VJ performance.

You should indicate on your proposal whether your contribution is best suited to the more formal daytime proceedings or to the after-party which will be taking place that evening.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Proposals are solicited in all areas of Digital Live Art, including but not limited to:

-Creative clubbing and the playful arena
-Space, body, machine
-Inputs and outputs - co-creation and the dialogic exchange within digital live arts practice
-Computing for the experiential and cerebral Performance and the design of interactive interfaces
-Experimental music technology Creative displays and projections
-Tools for performers, participants and observers
-Networking, open-source clubbing and the free party
-Models and formal methods of interaction
-Her-story and his-story of computing and clubbing.

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSAL

Your proposal should be submitted to Alice Bayliss a.bayliss[at]leeds.ac.uk and Jennifer G. Sheridan sheridaj[at]comp.lancs.ac.uk) and should include:

Your name, contact details, organization/institution
200-word biography
Two-page proposal with title (10 point font)
Technical requirements
Daytime and/or evening program suitability.

DEADLINES

Two-page Proposal for Review Due: 26 May 2006
Notification of Acceptance: 16 June 2006
Early Registration: 23 June 2006
Proceedings of this conference will be published and available at the conference. Authors may be invited to contribute an extended version of their paper for a future publication.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Venue: http://www.octagon-venue.com/
BCS-HCI 2006 - ENGAGE: http://www.hci2006.org/

CONFERENCE CHAIRS

Jennifer G. Sheridan
Computing Department
Lancaster University, UK

Alice Bayliss
School of Performance and Cultural Industries
University of Leeds, UK

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Philip Auslander, School of Lit., Communication, and Culture, Georgia Tech, USA
Mark Ball, Fierce Earth Festival, UK
Christopher Baugh, School of Drama, Film and Visual Arts, University of Kent, UK
Johannes Birringer, AlienNation Co. USA, Brunel University, UK, Schmelz, GER
Nick Bryan-Kinns, IMC Group, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Alan Dix, Computing Department, Lancaster University, UK
Jon Dovey, Drama - Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol, UK
Dan Fox, Welfare State International, UK Hannah Fox, Welfare State International, UK Bill Gaver, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Gabriella Giannachi, Centre for Intermedia, University of Exeter, UK
Deborah Kermode, Ikon Gallery UK
Charles Kriel, London Met University, UK
Tom Lloyd, Welfare State International, UK
Joe Paradiso, MIT Media Lab, USA Planet Angel, UK
Sadie Plant, Writer, UK
Sita Popat, School of Performance and Cultural Ind., University of Leeds, UK
Mick Wallis, School of Performance and Cultural Ind., University of Leeds, UK

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

CHArt TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Fast Forward - Art History, Curation and Practice After Media

CALL FOR PAPERS – DEADLINE 31 MAY: Fast Forward - Art history, curation and practice after media; CHArt TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Thursday 9 - Friday 10 November 2006, London venue to be confirmed.

Everything is changing. In particular our media are changing and developing in extraordinary and unprecedented ways and with great rapidity. This is particularly true of so-called 'new media', such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, mobile telephony, and digital video. All of these either enable us to do things we did before differently, or more often and more easily, or to do things we could previously barely imagine. This is transforming how we understand and use what we still call 'media', even as we enter a 'post-media' age. More dramatically, these developments are in the process of transforming not just our world, but our very selves, how we understand who we are. We are in the midst of dramatic shifts in terms of the paradigms by which we understand and act in the world.

This is being acknowledged increasingly by those working in visual culture, whether in cultural production or cultural heritage, in art practice or in the history of art, in museums, in galleries or in other kinds of arts organisations, in libraries and archives, or in broadcast and media production companies, all of which are facing up to the consequences of rapid technological and cultural change.

For the 2006 CHArt Conference we are looking for proposals for papers that deal with the possibilities, challenges and problems of these changes, as they affect visual culture, in areas including (but not limited to):

Art Practice; Art History; Museums; Galleries; Curation; Archives; Libraries; Education; Media and Broadcast Production; Cultural Assets Management and Access; Hardware; Software; Theory; Practice.

Please email submissions (a three hundred word synopsis of the proposed paper with CV of presenter/s and other key figures) by 31 May 2006 to Hazel Gardiner (hazel.gardiner[at]kcl.ac.uk).

Dr Charlie Gere
Chair, CHArt

CHArt
c/o Centre for Computing in the Humanities
Kings College, University of London
Kay House
7 Arundel Street
WC2R 3DX

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

ASiA, IIAS and Waag Society organise Cyberasia Part Three:

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Asian Cyberart - Technology, Memory and Place

ASiA, IIAS and Waag Society organise Cyberasia Part Three: Asian Cyberart - Technology, Memory and Place: Wednesday May 10, 20.00 – 22.00 hrs. Language: English. Location; Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Livestream.

New media are changing the contemporary art world profoundly. Under forces of intense globalization, the internet is being transformed into a worldwide spectacle of utopian fantasies and lost memories. In our highly networked society, however, the longing for a place, for a sense of identity - ‘virtual’ or ‘real’ - remains. At the same time, rapid urbanization and the related destruction of nature, old buildings, and neighbourhoods put places under constant threat. Particularly in Asia. art and technology provide a virtual resort, where the self can have it's own space.

This seminar explores the encounters of technology with contemporary Asian art, bringing together four pioneering artists whose works, often involving the use of new technologies, engage in old questions of memory, place and identity. They will present their works, and discuss the impact of new technologies on contemporary Asian art scenes.

*The speakers are:*

*Mu Yuming* (1971) is an artist from Lijiang, a remote village in Yunnan, China. Mu defines his existence in the art world as a temporary one, as one step toward his great goal in life, that is, to become Farmer Mu: an average farmer. To reach this utopian and perhaps nostalgic goal, Mu makes extensive use of new technologies. See http://www.farmermu.cn/ and http://www.lijiangstudio.org/web/home/index.jsp

*Sookoon Ang* (1977) was born and raised in Singapore where she trained at the Nanyang Academy of fine Arts and the LaSalle/Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. She is also a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her works, including drawing, videos and installations, have been featured in exhibitions worldwide. Her goal is to dive into the depths of ordinary existence and uncover the multi-faceted, multi-layered, multiple universes beyond the simplistic planes of realism and delusion. She explores in her multidisciplinary works feelings of loss, memory and nostalgia. See http://www.sookoonang.com/

*Onno Dirker (Nono), *a Dutch artist, is part of “Atelier Veldwerk,” together with Rudy Luijters. His works are driven by a desire to grasp the changes in urban landscapes, and to see how these changes affect our sense of identity and memory. In Shanghai, he has tried to capture the radical changes taking place in the city, often involving the massive destruction of buildings and neighborhoods, wondering how such changes will alter our sense of the past and of ourselves. See http://www.atelierveldwerk.nl and
http://www.artlog.nl/pages/left/l_tube.html

*Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar* studied literary theory and Scandinavian languages and cultures at Groningen University, where he is now a taff member of the department of Arts, Culture and Media. His research deals with the autonomy of literature, concerning the way in which literature, the literary field and the public debate relate to each other. He lives and works in Amsterdam and Groningen and writes poetry under the name of Munan. His poetry deals with issues from different mystical and romantic traditions and seeks its influences and themes in the poetry of a variety of national and international currents, such as medieval Scandinavian poetry, Sufi love poetry and the Dutch romantics of the 1880's.

*Cyberasia *is a* *series of three seminars that brings together Asian activists, academics and artists to reflect on contemporary political, religious and artistic uses of new technologies. Together, they showcase the current state of Internet affairs in Asia, opening up a unique meeting ground beyond the “Western” world. The previous seminars were held on March 29 on Asian Cyberpolitics and on April 18 on Asian Cyberfundamentalism.

For reservation: reserveren[at]waag.org
For more information: Dr. Jeroen de Kloet (moderator) b.j.dekloet[at]uva.nl

Posted by jo at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

Art, Time and Technology by Charlie Gere

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Book Release and Talk

Art, Time and Technology examines the role of art in an age of 'real time' information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early nineteenth century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Humankind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art - in particular of avant-garde art - keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialization to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art, and how much further it can travel from the human body.

This is the first book that critically situates the technologies of real-time computing within the broader discourses of visual and media history. From Jack Burnham to John Cage, Leroi-Gourhan to Marshall McLuhan, and Les immateriaux to Stanley Kubrick, Gere challenges us to consider the role of the entire apparatus of communication in the ongoing construction of art as information processing system. Barbara Maria Stafford, author of Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen.

Published by Berg in May 2006--Hardback, £50.00, ISBN 1845201345. Paperback, £16.99, ISBN 1845201353.

About the author: Charlie Gere is Reader in New Media Research at Lancaster University and is the author of Digital Culture.

Art at the Edge of Time: Talk and Discussion: Tue 30 May 2006, 19:00; Nash Room, Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH.

The average newscast these days is likely to report the outbreak of a new computer virus or a new technique for growing bodily organs. In an age when technology seems increasingly to have a mind of its own, art offers an important check on technology's relentless proliferation. This dialogue between new media artist-curator Jon Ippolito and scholar Charlie Gere probes the seismic shift in art's role during a time of accelerated change. The participants will draw on research from two books just published this spring. At the Edge of Art (Thames & Hudson), by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito and Art, Time and Technology, by Charlie Gere (Berg Press). Both books are available from the ICA bookshop with a 10% discount for ICA members.

Jon Ippolito is Assistant Curator of Digital Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and director of The Pool, an online arts group. Charlie Gere is eader in New Media Research at Lancaster University and is the author of Digital Culture. Art at the Edge of Time is part of the Man Machine Season

Full Price : £5. ICA Members : £4.

(In lieu of a more formal book launch for Art, Time and Technology please join me for a drink in the ICA bar after the talk on the 30th).

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2006

Call for Work

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Networked Realities & Prospective Locative Hacks

Networked Realities & Prospective Locative Hacks--Art Exhibition: Deadline May 12, 2006: Artist-engineer hybrids are invited to submit artworks for the ACM exhibition to take place in the California Nanosystems Institute at UC Santa Barbara. For this exhibition we seek artworks that raise issues related to human-human, human-machine, human-machine-world, machine-machine, human-world and machine-world interactions, placing a strong emphasis on the role of the notion of awareness, be it cultural, linguistic, network-centric, spatial or geospatial.

In particular, we seek works that focus on the roles that multimedia content and technologies play in exploring human and social aspects of technology and science, including how it may re-define relationships and understanding between cultures and already established disciplines. We welcome any interactive artworks that address the topics above, including multimodal interactive spaces, locative media artworks, networked systems, data visualizations and communications systems.

Please visit the website for up-to-date information including deadlines, procedures, list of exhibition and program review committee.

ACM Multimedia is the premier annual multimedia conference, covering all aspects of multimedia computing. The ACM Multimedia Interactive Art Program seeks to bring together the arts and multimedia communities to create the stage to explore, discuss, and push the limits for the advancement of both multimedia technology through the arts, and the arts through multimedia technology.

The Interactive Art Program consists of a conference track and an art exhibition. We invite artists working with digital media and researchers in technical areas to submit their original contributions.

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

Intro Out:

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Open Invitation

Intro Out: Open Invitation--Deadline: 12 May ’06: In few days’ time, the second festival of digital art opens up its gates and welcomes once again the artists of information community. Modern forms of expression use technology mechanisms for creating a work of art. Without doubt, the means of producing, reproducing and distributing an artistic experience alter the relationship of the artist with the subject matter and its viewer.

We invite modern artists to stand up to this change and propose new expression strategies by the use of new media.

How is artistic experience, which is promoted by new mass media, shaped today? How do new media assist artists in acquiring a different relationship with the viewer and how is this new relationship defined? Could we be talking about the generation of other aesthetic values?

The Festival will comprise the following subject categories:

o Animation
o Digital Installations
o Digital Music
o Experimental
o Interactive Works
o Performance
o Short-playing fiction movies
o Video art

Artists can participate with one work in each category. The length of each work should not exceed 15 minutes. The “Wood Factory” (the place where the festival will take place) provides all necessary space and equipment for exhibiting the works. Concerning installations and performances, all proposals will be carefully examined so that they are best realized.

Furthermore, an audience vote for the best work in each subject category will be held. Nominated works will have an honourable screening in the last day of the Festival.

How to participate: Download the fill-in form for taking part in Intro Out’06
Please print and fill in the form (.pdf or .doc).
Mail it together with all necessary proofs to the address:

INTRO OUT
20 Valaoritou (office 51)
54625 Thessaloniki
GREECE

For more information you can get in contact with us by emailing to:
intro_ïutfestival[at]yahoo.gr
by phone: ++30 6977 835 422
http://www.kazandb.com

Parallel Happenings

From this year, parallel to the festival, an artistic texts presentation will take place in the site of the festival regarding the new aesthetics reality in the art field. A chance to listen to the way new artists perceive aesthetics today. You can send your texts in the following mail: intro_ïutfestival[at]yahoo.gr The website, in future, aspires to be a dynamic domain for the exchange of ideas.

Action Place

Intro Out’06 Festival will be held at the “Wood Factory” (Ksylourgio), at Mylos

Posted by jo at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

Schwelle I: Bardo

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HDV Tryptic for Three Large Screens and Eight Channel Audio

At Elektra7, Thursday, May 11, 2006, 9:00 PM; Usine C, Montreal, Canada.

Schwelle I: Bardo--by Chris Salter--is a turbulent exploration of the experience undergone at the time of the dissolution of the body and consciousness. It is part I of a larger three part performance project currently under development that uses new sensing, electronic, material and computational technologies to tangibly explore the extreme physical and emotional states that might take place in the thresholds before and after death.

Part 1, Bardo, is an extended audio/visual composition/performance lasting approximately forty-five minutes. Partially shot in High Definition video, the work consists of three overlapped and synchronized 720 x 480 projections that form a 2160 x 480 widescreen resolution image with 8 channels of digital surround sound. Over the duration of forty minutes, the spectators undergo a powerful journey through a transforming landscape of abstract, Rothko-like image and dense, tsunami-like walls of sound that builds toward peak intensity, transporting the viewer through the threshold stages of dying and dissolution.

Posted by jo at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

Rx Gallery and Rhizome.org Present

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The GIFShow

The GIFShow opens (FREE) TONIGHT, 6-10pm, with live music & visuals by Eats Tapes & Nate Boyce; Rx Gallery - 132 Eddy Street @ Mason; 415-756-8825

The GIFShow takes the pulse of what some net surfers call 'GIF Luv,' a recent frenzy of file-sharing and creative muscle-flexing associated with GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format files). Curated by Marisa Olson in a West Coast Rhizome.org collaboration with Rx, the show presents GIFs and GIF-based videos, prints, readymades, and sculptures by GIF Stars Cory Arcangel, Peter Baldes, Michael Bell-Smith, Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Lovid, Tom Moody, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear (aka 893/umeancompetitor). GIFs have a rich cultural life on the internet and each bears specific stylistic markers. From Myspace graphics to advertising images to porn banners, and beyond, GIFs overcome resolution and bandwidth challenges in their pervasive population of the net. Animated GIFs, in particular, have evolved from a largely cinematic, cell-based form of art practice, and have more recently been incorporated in music videos and employed as stimulating narrative devices on blogs. From the flashy to the minimal, the sonic to the silent, the artists in The GIFShow demonstrate the diversity of forms to be found in GIFs, and many of them comment on the broader social life of these image files. The opening is sure to be just as lively, with music by Eats Tapes and visuals by Nate Boyce. Spread the luv!--Rhizome News.

Posted by jo at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2006

Electromagnetic Bodies:

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Aether, Desire and Resonance in Art and Technology

Opening Thursday May 4th, 2006, 20.30 at TENT.CBK and 22.30 at V2_Rotterdam--V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in collaboration with TENT. Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam present Electromagnetic Bodies: Aether, Desire and Resonance in Art and Technology. Referring to the pioneering work of Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943), the exhibition explores the notions of being and desire in a society determined by our bodily immersion within an ubiquitous and omnipresent electromagnetic realm. This is the zone where the physical boundaries between what may be called "organic", or bodily sensors, and technological constructs intermingle.

Considering the now lengthy history of the cyborg, the electron beam and the warp engine as a cultural concepts, one may wonder whether the distinctions between the natural world and globalised technologies are still valid. These issues were topics of Tesla's investigations a century ago as he sought to create a new utopian ‘World Society’ fueled by free energy created by the earth’s own natural electromagnetic sphere. The contemporary implications of these observations and predictions in today’s world of wireless detachment and unlimited mobility still present enigmatic research material to both scientists and artists alike.

Electromagnetic Bodies features electronic, interactive and acoustic artworks by Ælab, Jean-Pierre Aubé, Craig Baldwin, Matheusz Herczka, Simone Jones, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Carsten Nicolai, Paulette Phillips, Catherine Richards, Jocelyn Robert, Daan Roosegaarde David Tomas, Edwin van der Heideand Norman T. White, with commissioned works premiering by Michiel van Bakel with Bill Spinhoven,and Marnix de Nijs. Exhibition runs daily except Mondays May 4th - June 4th 11.00 - 18.00 at TENT.CBK and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media Guided tours are available through vera[at]v2.nl by advance reservation.

The Electromagnetic Bride Conference, accompanying the exhibition, hosted by the Goethe-Institut Rotterdam, will take place on Saturday May 6th from 10.00 to 17.00.

The project is supported financially by the Mondriaan Foundation, the Stichting CBK Rotterdam, The Canada Council for the Arts, The Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, TheFilmfonds Amsterdam, and the Canadian Dept. of Foreign Affaires. Electromagnetic Bodies: Aether, Desire and Resonance in Art and Technologyis based on the Resonance: Electromagnetic Bodies international touring exhibition initiated and curated by Nina Czegledy and Louise Provencher in Canada, and co-curated by Stephen Kovats and Willie Stehouwen in Rotterdam.

Venues:

TENT. Centrum Beeldende Kunst
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam
tel **31 (0)10 413 5498

V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media
Eendrachtsstraat 10
3012 XL Rotterdam
**31 (0)10 206 7272

Goethe-Institut Rotterdam
Westersingel 9
3014 GM Rotterdam
**31 (0)10 209 2090

Posted by jo at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2006

Interview with Anne-Marie Schleiner

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Disrupting Static Environments

An Interview with Anne-Marie Schleiner by Megan Lykins, Emily Hall Tremaine Curatorial Fellow for "All Digital" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, showing January to May 2006.

1. How did you come to gaming, or game modding, as a medium for artistic expression? Do you consider gaming an art form in and of itself? Is game modding recognized in the gaming culture, or is it more of an artistic movement?

I was playing games while I was in graduate school at CADRE(Computers in Art Design Research and Education) at San Jose State University in the late 90's with my friends. I recognized computer games as a cultural medium ripe for artistic exploration. I think game modding is both a phenomenom that occurs independently of traditional art contexts as well as a tactic employed by artists with an education in art and awareness of contemporary art contexts.

2. In PS2 Diaries you reference many of the games you played as a child and young adult; is this how you commonly arrive at your material, through your own experience with the games? Are there any games you specifically do not or will not use? If so, why not?

No, I am often interested in games that I dont like to personally play. I enjoy voyeuristically watching other people play games to learn about what kind of modes of play and environments there are. For instance I don't play often online role playing games but I think they are an interesting form of electronic community space and I like to talk to players and learn about their online lives...kind of like being an anthropologist of gaming culture a la Jullien Dibbel but less diligently. I also enjoyed a lot when I went to Seoul, Korea going to the electronics part of town where I found many romantic dating games for teenage girls...a demographic that is pretty much overlooked in the West. I played these games out of curiosity, without understanding the language.

3. In addition to the gaming culture, what are some of the art historical, philosophical, and political references or influences that affect your work?

I am influenced by contemporary art, net art and historical movements like Dada and 70 performance art and conceptual art. I'm also influenced by post-modern theorists, media theorists, culture studies, feminism and gender studies...from Roland Barthes to Judith Butler to Friedrich Kittler to Guy Debord and many others. I am also a science fiction addict--my latest discovery is Louise Marley.

4. Role-playing has become a major aspect of many gaming experiences. Viewers are able to adopt new persona and exist in virtual, or as you call it, "game reality". In what ways does your work explore notions of identity? Having dubbed yourself a "cyberfeminist," in what ways do you specifically explore, analyze, critique and modify the female identity in your work?

It depends which work and when I made it. In the online collection of game hacks Mutation.fem I specifically address early female avatars in shooter games and the dialogue that took place among their mostly male creators about what they should be like. In my thesis project way back in grad school, Madame Polly, I was interested in the Lara Croft Tombraider phenomenom and explored different player/avatar combos, like that of drag queen ... In later works my exploration of gender is less in the foreground but still a component ... its hard not to be when you are a woman working with material in a very male dominated cultural arena ... that of computer games ... also digital and net art can be like that. In OUT, (Operation Urban Terrain) a live wireless series of performances in the city and game interventions, I wanted the ground unit of 2 players in the city to be women as a kind of visual female affront on Americas Army, the game were were intervening in.

5. Though PS2 Diaries is derived from video games, it is not interactive. Are any of your previous works interactive or do you have plans for interactivity in the future? How do you think interactivity would or does change the conception of your work by the viewer?

Machinima is not interactive since it tells a story much like narrative cinema using game environments ... I have just completed another project with machinima components (a documentary about MOUT games and a performance called OUT) and have plans for yet another. I seem to be moving away from interaction and away from collaboration in my recent work whereas previously everything was highly interactive and also collaborative with the audience and other artists (like Velvet-Strike). Maybe it is just a phase. I feel like I have some things I want to say on my own with more control over the process.

6. What are some of the misconceptions about digital art and game modding that you've encountered from viewers, artists, or critics?

Many people in the art world, even younger generations, are turned off by computer games, viewing them as a low class popular pastime so they may have built in aversions to engaging with computer game related work. In the 90's it took a while for even the proponents of virtual reality art to recognize the potential of 3-D game environments, which were below their cultural radar. And of course digital art in general poses the problem of being very ephemeral and difficult to collect to the art world...(the lack of the aura of the singular object). Also the quickly changing formats make the work difficult to view even a few years after it has been created.

7. What projects are you currently working on and what direction do you see your work taking in the future?

I plan to do some work with machinima relating to police brutality that will probably be displayed on portable playstations (psps). Im also interested in developing some game work for cell phones in collaboration with my husband Luis Hernandez ... going to smaller portable formats ... and I plan to do some work that departs from the arena of games following subjects that I am interested in such as disruption of static environments and personal rebellion.

8. Who is Parangari Cutiri, from where does she come, what is she like and what does she do?

She was an alternate persona I created to make net art and visually more formal game and software and music pieces ... somebody who felt different from my usually more conceptually informed artworks who allowed me to explore other things (if I had another life sometimes I think I would be a software programmer) ... she came into existence when I was curating the game/net art show Cracking the Maze and felt like something was missing so I made a game mod to include in the show under her name. A CD of a VJ/Hip Hop Game that she made has been published recently called Heaven711. Check out my website opensorcery.net for more info. Since I so rarely have an "object" resulting from my work I was happy with how the folding cover of the Heaven711 CD came out, with an essay booklet included and music from collaborating artists.

http://www.opensorcery.net
http://www.mocacleveland.org/exhibi tions_details/ex_details_2006-ws.asp

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

Call for Participation

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Dear Nettime: WE NEED YOU

This 30th of May 2006, we have confirmed a space and time for a flesh gathering of Nettimers in Montreal, Canada. The Gathering will officially launch the seventh edition of Montreal's MUTEK festival as well as the second year of the Upgrade International. WE NEED YOU TO PARTICIPATE.

- - talk (we're good at that): speakers & presenters, panelists, ranters, poets, net.verbiage & word.age, writers ...
- - perform: sound, video, dance, code, djs, musicians .. we are technically prepared. We hope.
- - intervene ... ... ...

Moderator Ted Byfield will be there. We may supply pies for the occasion. Others will be confirmed shortly.

SEND US YOUR PROPOSALS by POSTING THEM TO THE LIST and cc:ing them to: tobias @ techno . ca .

We will try & accomodate as many of you as we can in the space of approximately 18 hours. We are not here to judge your proposals: there's been flurries of interest, so now we nominate Nettime to come through with bodies in attendance. Once we can confirm your particular presence, we can begin fitting everyone in.

IN THE WORKS : IDEAS ARE CIRCULATING FOR A NETTIME PRINT-ON-DEMAND PUBLICATION. BUT FIRST WE NEED THE EVENT TO COME TOGETHER.

ALSO, this is a great chance to :

a) see the sites & sounds of Mutek (we are inquiring about receiving limited festival passes for participants...)
b) see Montreal
c) get away
d) see Canada
e) see North America
f) learn French, drink on a terrasse, enjoy healthy smoke, etc.

yours,

tobias
sophie
anik

[ http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca ]

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Jason Van Anden @ Dorkbot

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IntelligentDesigner Preview

Jason Van Anden: IntelligentDesigner Preview at Dorkbot May 3rd, 7pm Location One Gallery in Soho, New York City--What do you get when you combine probablistic programming paradigms, computers with feelings and a room full of the gifted and talented? Artist / Technologist / Robot Maker Jason Van Anden will demonstrate the beta of his newest creation (code named IntelligentDesigner) - software that enables pretty much anyone to control things in an uncontrollable way. ID was originally invented to enable improvisational behavior simulating human emotional mechanics between his life-size emotive robots Neil and Iona. In its current incarnation, ID can be used to easily create rich multilayered living music from samples, with many more esoteric applications coming down the pike. Jason hopes to get feedback of ID beta from the Dorkbot ranks and recruit some early adopters to start making things with it before its official release this Fall.

Posted by jo at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

ambientTV.NET newsletter 05/2006

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Surveillance Practices

ambientTV.NET is a crucible for independent, interdisciplinary practice ranging from installation and performance, through documentary, dance, and gastronomy, to sound and video composition and real-time manipulation. Techniques and effects of live data broadcasting and transmission provide theme, medium, and performative space for many of the works.

Orchestra of Anxiety @ 12 Int. Festival of Computer Arts in Maribor: The first realized piece from ambientTV.NET's collection of musical instruments constructed using materials and technologies from the security and surveillance industries--a harp with strings of razor wire. After having sliced the fingers of the many courageous Slovakian guest harpists last month, it will be on show in Maribor, Slovenia, 10-12th of May, 2006

---> http://www.ambientTV.NET/5/ooa
---> http://www.kibla.org

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Who Watches the Watchers? @ Skolska28 and FAMU in Prague

Thu., May 18, 6pm - presentation (Skolska28)
Fri., May 19, 2pm - workshop and screening (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing arts in Prague, Lazansky palac, Room2)

Recent works of artists Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel reflect upon the omnipresence of surveillance technology in our daily environment by making use of it in humorous, unanticipated ways. The artists will show examples of their productions and discuss access to and artistic reinterpretation of these 'tools'...

--> http://www.ambienttv.net/content/?q=thespyschool
--> http://openstudios.info
--> http://www.skolska28.cz
--> http://www.famu.cz

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faceless @ GBK Gallery in Sydney

keep the date: opening 6-8pm, 2 June 2006 at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, 2 Danks Street, Waterloo, Sydney Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy will present new installations in their exhibition Custom Living and Austrian artist Manu Luksch will show her video installation faceless--a sci-fi CCTV thriller.

--> http://www.ambienttv.net/content/?q=faceless
--> http://www.gbk.com.au

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

April 28, 2006

Cinedans

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Workshop Interactive Dance Film @ Mediamatic

Workshop Interactive Dance Film - Cinedans 2006; June 25-29 @ Mediamatic; 1 July presentation of results.

THE WORKSHOP: Together with the Cinedans Festival, Mediamatic organizes a workshop on interactive dance film. In this workshop, 16 international dance filmers, editors and choreographers make interactive online dance films or dance film installations, using their own footage.

Interactive film offers interesting new forms of contact between the film and its viewer, but also requires other ways of shooting and editing the material. The participants research the relations between the paths of the camera, the movements of filmed bodies, the dramaturgy of the viewer and its movements on the screen or through space (in case of an installation), that together make up the form of the interactive dance film.

TRAJECTORY: The workshop is an intense 5-day process. Starting off with a close study of several intriguing interactive dance film projects on the first day, the participants create the content, form and interactive experience of their project, discuss it with experienced trainers and participants, and build a working prototype assisted by technical assistants.

Participants can bring up to 40 minutes of material, on dvd, or on FireWire harddisk, preferrably in Quicktime movie format. Participants use an easy-to-learn tool, that allows the projects to be published online, or on dvd-rom. All participants are assisted personally in realising their workshop projects. Specific technical knowledge of new media is not required.

HOW MUCH AND MORE INFO

The workshop fee is €300 (incl. VAT) for participants from new member states of the EU and €420 (incl. VAT) for participants from other EU member states.

Registration is possible online. Mail any questions you might have to workshops[at]mediamatic.nl or call Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: +31 20 6389901.

This workshop is made possible with the support of the MEDIA PLUS PROGRAMME of the European Community

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

Subtle Technologies 2006 Festival Toronto, Canada

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RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURES: REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

June 1-4, 2006: Subtle Technologies Symposium; May 30-June 1, 2006: CDRN Parametric Design Workshop. REGISTRATION NOW OPEN *Register by May 7, 2006 for discount*

How do responsive systems affect us? Interactive art, scientific research in complex systems and leading ideas in architecture and design come together in this 9th annual international forum. We invite artists, architects, designers, engineers, scientists, and the general public to join us in this dialogue. Research presentations and artist talks will be complemented by exhibitions and workshops.

Keynote lecture by Steven Vogel, author of the pioneering text 'Life in Moving Fluids.' The Symposium is preceded by the Canadian Design Research Network Parametric Design Workshop.

Subsidized registration is offered for students and the underemployed. Interested in volunteering? Contact us at ktrethewey[at]subtletechnologies.com

Partners: soundaXis, InterAccess Media Arts Centre, Canada Design Research Network, University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Supporters: Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, Ontario Arts Council Toronto Arts Council, Bentley Systems Inc.

Angella Mackey
Project Manager
Subtle Technologies

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

Call for Submissions

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Dislocate: Trampoline in Tokyo

Dislocate Exhibition in Ginza and Koiwa, Tokyo; 28th July- 18th August 2006; curated by Emma Lewis in association with Trampoline and Ginza Art Laboratory. Call for Submissions. Deadline: 31st May.

We constantly swim through an invisible sea of hidden reality – our environment is not formed only by our physical surroundings but of its multiplicity of insubstantial networks – constantly transmitting and receiving. Physical geography is being transcended, psycho-geography is extended. We are never located in just one space. Here is not just here but also there.

‘Dislocate’ is an exhibition examining the tensions between the local and the global – the elements and identity of one local space which are simultaneously intersected by countless global links and influences.

In its indefatigable attempt to promote new media art to the world Trampoline – platform for new media art - is going to Tokyo this summer and is seeking submissions of works which engage with notions of multiple spaces and presence, the ubiquity of new media and the challenge to our sense of place.

We are particularly encouraging the submission of video work some of which will be shown on a showreel, others on single monitors. But we also welcome submissions for web streaming, computer based works and sound works. Work should engage with the theme of the exhibition on some level and proposals should outline how this connection is made.

In addition to this there is one project as part of the exhibition which the curator invites you to consider submitting to:

Audio Tour: In joining one space with another and exaggerating a sense of dislocation, the curator is keen to merge other cities with Tokyo in the form of an audio tour, touring one city within another. It is imagined that this audio tour would be worn by visitors to the exhibition and would instruct them on a small walking tour around the city, but as they are walking through the streets of Tokyo they will be listening to a tour of another city. The curator is keen to work with artists interested in audio guides and would like to develop a bilingual audio guide of another city which could then be presented in the area surrounding the gallery in Ginza, Tokyo, referencing one space within another.

If you have any ideas which you would like to develop further in relation to this project and in dialogue with Trampoline we would very much like to hear from you.

Deadline to submit proposals is May 31st. Please submit to:

Emma Lewis
Trampoline
Broadway Cinema
14-18 Broad Street
Nottingham
NG1 3AL
UK
emma[at]trampoline.org.uk
0115 8409272

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

April 27, 2006

Eyebeam Exhibition and Event

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The Aphrodite Project: Platforms

The Aphrodite Project: Platforms is an integrated system of shoes and online services that combines the rich mythology of Aphrodite with the safety and advertising concerns of contemporary sex workers on the street. On view in Eyebeam's gallery May 2-13 will be a prototype of a silver-leather platform sandal with integrated LCD screen, speakers, internet connection and GPS tracking system. On May 13 visitors to the gallery will be able to track a model in real-time as she traverses the city wearing the platform prototype and join in a panel discussion between artists, technologists and sex work advocates. This event will conclude with a reading by Tracy Quan, performance by Ana Voog, Echo Transgression, and Melissa Gira, and live music by Natural Sphere. This event is open to the public free of charge with a suggested donation and will take place at Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street between 10th & 11th Aves.

Platforms--byNorene Leddy with Andrew Milmoe--is designed to question moral attitudes and value judgments, especially with this marginalized section of the population: Who gets new technology and when? What is the true value of sexual services? Using an archetypal model, is it possible to reclaim the profession for modern women? What are the ethics of surveillance and tracking? Is it possible to ensure that this information will empower and not endanger sex workers? Is it ever possible to guarantee that knowledge will stay within the hands of those who it is intended for?

The shoes address creativity and art making as well as practical issues of design and marketability. It is my hope that in addition to creating beautifully crafted objects; the project will contribute to the current international debate over the regulation, decriminalization, and legalization of prostitution.

Posted by jo at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

CTheory Live:

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Stelarc in Conversation with Arthur & Marilouise Kroker

Dear CTheory Readers,

We are very pleased to invite you to the first installation of CTheory Live, a continuing series of conversations with leading artists and theorists from around the world. We begin with an interview with Stelarc, an Australian-based performance artist, whose artistic imagination is on the cutting-edge of new ways of understanding issues related to body, technology and the question of the interface. The interview was conducted between Australia and CTheory's office at the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria, Canada.

The conversation with Stelarc can be found at:
http://www.pactac.net/pactacweb/web-content/video44.html

The next CTheory Live interview will be with Professor N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature and Media, UCLA. The interview will focus on her three most recent books: _How We Became Posthuman_, _Writing Machines_, and _My Mother Was a Computer_.

kind regards,

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
Editors, CTheory

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Lecture Series

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HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE RFID

How I Learned to Love RFID: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at the PHOENIX Halle, Dortmund Public lectures (in English), HMKV, Dortmund, in cooperation with RIXC, Riga Saturday, May 20, 2006, 10:00 - 18:00

The series of lectures brings together approaches and projects that artistically and critically deal with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology - a technology that is significantly being developed and advanced by companies and research institutes in Dortmund. This technology which at first glance seems to be a simple further development of the bar code (well known from the supermarket) is much more powerful that the good old bar code technology. RFID tags are passive radio transmitters, which upon receiving a minor wireless energy impulse are sending back the information stored on their memory. Today, this information can be read already at a distance of six meters - without the process getting noticed. In addition, with its unique identification numbering system, this technology will allow for a precise identification of every object worldwide. What will it be like to live in a world where all the objects constantly will be talking to each other?

PROGRAM

10:00 Begruessung und Einfuehrung / Welcome and Introduction Dr. Inke Arns (Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund) Rasa Smite (RIXC, Center for New Media Culture, Riga) Francis Hunger (Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund)

11.00 Keynote: Bruce Sterling (Autor, Belgrad / writer, Belgrade) Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer who has, among others, shaped the notion of “cyberspace" together with William Gibson (“Neuromancer"). In his blog he discusses future technological developments.

12:00 Rena Tangens, padeluun (FoeBuD e.V., Bielefeld) Rena Tangens and padeluun are the most articulate and outspoken critics of RFID technology in Germany. They will speak about their Stop-RFID campaign, the Metro scandal, the use of RFID in the context of the World Cup and sketch a future vision for the use of RFID compatible with privacy issues.

13:30 Break

14:30 Rob van Kranenburg (Virtual Platform, Amsterdam) Rob van Kranenburg will speak about RFID and Pervasive Computing, i.e. how computer technology increasingly permeates our everyday life. He sees RFID as an unavoidable logistics technology that poses the question of social control.

15:30 Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Lammers (Fraunhofer Institut Materialfluss und Logistik, Dortmund) The Dortmund Fraunhofer Institute is one of the most significant research centers for RFID technology in Germany. An overview of its working areas and current research projects will be given.

16:30 Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits (RIXC, Center for New Media Culture, Riga) und Honor Harger, Adam Hyde (radioqualia, NZ/AUS/GB/NL) Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits will introduce RIXC, the Center for New Media Culture in Riga and its activities in the field of Locative Media. Honor Harger and Adam Hyde (radioqualia) will speak a.o. about Solar Radio Station, an installation developed in cooperation with RIXC.

18:00 Pause

19:00 - 21:00 Solar Radio Station - Live Installation (also on Sunday May 21, 2006) The Riga based group Clausthome and VJ Martins Ratniks (F5/RIXC) will perform live in the Solar Radio Station. The live audio stream from the VIRAC radio telescope in Irbene, carrying data from the sun and from space, will be electronically enhanced by Clausthome and interpreted visually by VJ Martins Ratniks.

The lectures take place as a part of the workshop “How I learned to love RFID" in the framework of the exhibition "mit allem rechnen/face the unexpected: Media art from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania".

“How I learned to love RFID" is a cooperation between HMKV (Dortmund) and RIXC (Riga).

Venue: Hartware MedienKunstVerein at the PHOENIX Halle, Dortmund - Hochofenstr./ Rombergstr., Dortmund-Hoerde

Road description: http://www.hmkv.de/dyn/e_contact_roaddescription/

URL:
http://www.hmkv.de
http://www.rixc.lv

Supported by: Kulturbuero Stadt Dortmund, 38. internationale; kulturtage der stadt dortmund / scene: estland; lettland litauen in nrw, Kunststiftung NRW, Der Ministerpraesident des Landes; Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kultusministerium der Republik Lettland, Kultusministerium der Republik; Estland, Kultusministerium der Republik Litauen, 'Botschaft der Republik Litauen in der; Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Lietuvos Institutas, dortmund-project, LEG, PHOENIX, Coolibri (media partner).

Hartware MedienKunstVerein
Guentherstrasse 65 * D-44143 Dortmund
T ++49 (231) 823 106
F ++49 (231) 882 02 40
info@hmkv.de
http://www.hmkv.de

Posted by jo at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2006

Outrageous and Contagious

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Bore Me, why don't ya

Running for just a week from next Monday 1 May 2006 at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts is, they claim, the World's first exhibition of viral emails. Outrageous and Contagious will showcase the cream of what appears in your inbox, split into various, sometimes topical, categories like New Orleans and Kate Moss. This image of the supermodel and sometime boyfriend Pete Doherty, doctored to look like reviled British murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley is one of the more controversial examples. The show will also set-up the second viral Oscars, called Germ, which take place later in the year. If you would like a taste of what's on offer, viral site Bore Me is one of the co-sponsors, and features a selection of movies and pictures that will be exhibited. [blogged by SummerSeventySix on Cool Hunting]

Posted by jo at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

RIP Jane Jacobs

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The Death and Life of a Great American Woman

Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities," transformed the practice as well as theory of urban renewal in this country, helping to provide the rationale for Quincy Market and other urban restoration projects, died yesterday morning at Toronto Western Hospital, according to her publisher, Random House. She was 89.

Mrs. Jacobs had entered the hospital Saturday, after suffering an apparent stroke.

''She inspired a kind of quiet revolution," her longtime editor, Jacob Epstein, told the Associated Press. ''Every time you see people rise up and oppose a developer, you think of Jane Jacobs."

Mrs. Jacobs' vision of the livable city, with its emphasis on diversity, activity, and human scale, soon became commonplace. Yet at the time ''Death and Life" was published, it seemed both radical and anachronistic.

Where Mrs. Jacobs celebrated sidewalks and pedestrians, city planners in the first two decades after World War II focused on high-rises and expressways. Her love of varied urban textures and human density was anathema to a renewal process dedicated to tearing down old neighborhoods and replacing them with tower blocks uniformly sprouting out of depopulated greenery..." Jane Jacobs, 89; author's vision inspired 'livable city' movement by Mark Feeney, Boston Globe, April 26, 2006.

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

Anticipating the Past: Artists : Archive : Film

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Symposium Exploring Use of Archival and ‘Found’ Film and Video

Friday 12 May 2006, 18.30 - 20.00, Saturday 13 May 2006, 10.00 - 18.30; Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG; Book tickets online or call 020 7887 8888.

The experience of viewing projected archival or ‘found’ film and video can have a seductive, even spellbinding effect on the viewer. The moving image’s material and aesthetic qualities can act as a trigger to memories true or false, sharply evoke a sense of time and nostalgia, or conjure fantasies of history.

This international symposium draws together a collection of voices and perspectives to examine the work of artists and filmmakers who have purposefully manipulated these materials. In doing so, these practitioners have explored the archive and its inherent qualities, dislocated archival material from its original purpose and intention, and thereby revealed new readings, meanings and questions.

George Barber, Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska, Alex Farquharson, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Patrick Keiller, Elizabeth McAlpine, Mark Nash, Marcel Odenbach, Pat O’Neill, A L Rees, Heather Stewart, Benjamin Weil and Akram Zaatari.

On Friday 12 May, A L Rees introduces the imaginative re-cutting of found footage by film artists since the 1920s. Using short works and extracts, this talk reviews some of the ways in which 'films beget films' (Jay Leyda) in the
avant-garde.

On Saturday 13 May, further ideas on the uses of found footage and archival material will be explored in three different sessions:

Interrogating Archives asks what are archives other than passive repositories that catalogue the past following their own arcane criteria, and freeze it for posterity. Artists and curators will discuss their approaches to the ‘archive’, both as a concept and as an institution. In History and Politics discussion will focus on artists who interrogate newsreel and documentary images to reclaim some sense of humanity, or to pursue more fundamental truths, or to invent some missing pieces of a puzzle. Three generations of practitioners, interested in the humorous and disturbing subtexts beneath the polished surface of popular cinema, discuss their different methods and objectives towards moving-image collage in Remaking Hollywood. Screenings of individual work by Martin Arnold, Joseph Cornell and Malcolm Le Grice accompany extracts of work by the participants.

Posted by jo at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

The Kitchen's Eighth Annual Sidney Kahn Summer Institute

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Come Together

The Kitchen's Eighth Annual Sidney Kahn Summer Institute presents Come Together, Artistic Director Harrell Fletcher, July 17 - August 4, 2006. Come Together is a three-week, intensive program, fully accredited by Sarah Lawrence College (3 credits), focusing on expanded ideas of art-making and creativity in relation to collaboration, community involvement, and activism. Throughout the program, artists will explore a wide range of socially-responsive and community-based art practices as they go out into The Kitchen’s Chelsea neighborhood to research and develop site-related projects.

APPLICATION DEADLINE MAY 8, 2006 TUITION $2,600 (includes meal plan). A limited number of partial scholarships is available. Financial aid applicants are strongly urged to apply early. For application and complete program information, contact the Summer Institute Coordinator at rachael[at]thekitchen.org or (212) 255 5793 ext. 14. Click here to view the application.

Posted by jo at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

European Media Artists in Residence Exchange 06

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Call for entries

EMARE - Grants for European Media Artists for UK, Germany and The Netherlands. The twelfth European Media Artists in Residence Exchange will take place in Summer 2006 to Spring 2007.

Europe based Media Artists working in the fields of digital media including internet and computer based art, filmmakers, sound and video artists are invited to apply for a two month residency at VIVID, Birmingham, England (www.vivid.org.uk); at IMPAKT, Utrecht, The Netherlands (www.impakt.nl) or at Werkleitz Gesellschaft in Halle, Germany (www.werkleitz.de/emare). Students are not permitted, but young artists encouraged. EMARE includes a grant of 2.000 Euro, 250 Euro travel expenses, free accomodation, access to the technical facilities and media labs and a professional presentation. Entries should include a CV, (audio)visual reference projects documentation (no originals) and a proposal sketch for the project which should be developed within EMARE.

http://www.werkleitz.de/projekte/emare/index_e.html

Deadline: May, 15th, 2006 (post stamp)
Application form: http://www.werkleitz.de/emare

Please send your application to:
Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V.
EMARE
Schleifweg 6
D-06114 Halle (Saale)
Germany
fon: +49 345 68246-0
fax +49 345 68246-29
emare@werkleitz.de
www.werkleitz.de/emare

EMARE is supported by the Ministry of cultural affairs Saxony-Anhalt; Arts Council of England, City of Utrecht, British Council and the Goethe Institute.

Posted by luis at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

Hypertext 3.0:

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Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization

"George Landow's widely acclaimed Hypertext was the first book to bring together the worlds of literary theory and computer technology. Landow was one of the first scholars to explore the implications of giving readers instant, easy access to a virtual library of sources as well as unprecedented control of what and how they read. In hypermedia, Landow saw a strikingly literal embodiment of many major points of contemporary literary theory, particularly Derrida's idea of "de-centering" and Barthes's conception of the "readerly" versus "writerly" text.

From Intermedia to Microcosm, Storyspace, and the World Wide Web, Landow offers specific information about the kinds of hypertext, different modes of linking, attitudes toward technology, and the proliferation of pornography and gambling on the Internet. For the third edition he includes new material on developing Internet-related technologies, considering in particular their increasingly global reach and the social and political implications of this trend as viewed from a postcolonial perspective. He also discusses blogs, interactive film, and the relation of hypermedia to games. Thoroughly expanded and updated, this pioneering work continues to be the "ur-text" of hypertext studies." Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society) by George P. Landow. [Thanks Jeremy]

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

Helena Producciones'

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6 Cali Colombia Performance Festival

The 6 Cali Colombia Performance Festival--25 – 29 April 2006--is a project of the independent artists collective Helena Producciones (Wilson Díaz, Ana Maria Millán, Claudia Patricia Sarria, Andrés Sandoval y Juan David Medina). This project is held in Cali-Colombia since 1998.

The Cali Performance Festival celebrates and encourages excellence, risk, creativity, participation and debate through partnership, knowledge, quality, access and education. The Festival promotes symbolic and material communication between the Colombian community, Colombian and international artists, curators, art administrators and artistic networks, generating cultural strategies around art which may have an impact upon our community.

The VI Festival will include 3 exhibition, 3 workshops, public interventions and a performance journey. These activities, free for the general comunity, will take place in several public, private and independent spaces around the city.

The Festival will be held in Cali, a Colombian city with a very critical situation due to its current run down economy and the proximity of the Colombian Presidential elections which will take place on the 28th of May.

Cali is a tropical city located in the middle of sugar cane fields and refineries related to the influence of the Spanish Colony after the seventeenth century. This postcolonial situation gives the regional culture a special and interesting character.

The VI Performance Festival will be an exciting event for artists, activists, curators, theorists, art administrators, professional networks and the general public, as the local and national context brings together historic, political, geographic, economic and environmental issues that will provide a very interesting scenery for discussion and debate.

Guests:

Alessio Antoniolli, Fernando Arias, Tania Bruguera, Colectivo Cambalache, Teodora Diamantopoulos, Escuela de Esgrima con Machete de Puerto Tejada, Federico Guzmán, GRATIS, Las Malas Amistades, Les Gens d´ Uterpan (Franck Apertet y Annie Vigier), Live Art Development Agency, Caitlin Newton-Broad, Maria Inés Rodríguez, Armando Silva, Silverio y Miki, Virginia Torrente, Vincent + Feria

Selected Artists:

Wilfrand Anacona, Natalia Cajiao, Colectivo Estrato Cero, Colectivo Pornomiseria, Des-carrilados, Juan Carlos Dávila, Etienne Demange, El Vicio, Yury Hernando Forero, Carlos Franklin y Claudia Gómez, Boris Marlon Galvis, Pedro Gómez Egaña, Karime García, Beatriz López y Maria Isabel Rueda, Los Impedidos, Mucho Maché,Guillermo Marín, Luis Mondragón, Fabio Melesio Palacios, Agustín Parra, Juan Sebastián Peláez, Alfonso Pérez, Fernando Pertuz, Pope Noveau, Edinson Javier Quiñónez, Carmen Helena Rodríguez, Oskar Romo, Sangre de Palomo, Malcom Smith, Jorge Suzarte y Leandra Plaza, The Rimembers, Fernando Uhia, Rened Darío Varona, Gustavo Villa, Lorena Zúñiga y Martha Posso

Funders and Sponsors:

Prince Claus Fund, Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo de Cali, Feriva, Triangle Art Trust, Centro Cultural Comfandi, ParqueSoft, Embajada de España (Programa Miradas), Cámara de Comercio de Cali, British Council, Gobernación del Valle, Fondo Mixto, Centre dArt Contemporary Bretigny, adami, Casa de América, Triangle France, Doméstico, Lugar a Dudas, Hotel La Luna, Alianza Francesa de Cali.

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

Blind Ditch

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WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO NOW?

Blind Ditch invite you to state your opinions and ask some questions in our performance installation WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO NOW? showing as part of the Exeter Text Festival, UK, April 24th-14th May 2006.

Send us a mobile phone short or digital camera mpeg to +44 (0)7890 801203 or contact[at]blindditch.org and it will be downloaded onto our website. Your work will be continually screening online from April 24th and shown in the Exeter Phoenix Gallery as part of the tEXt Festival. Tell us what action should we make to change the world for the better. Please pass this on to anyone across the world you would like to participate, translate and disseminate. Respond in your mother tongue or English Please note that the word hero is being used to speak about both men and women.

Please be aware that by participating in this project you are agreeing for Blind Ditch to use your image and words in our work. Your statements will be curated with live performance work and available online and in the gallery throughout the duration of this project.

Posted by jo at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

Sharing Is Daring:

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CC Art show in Boston opens on April 27

Elizabeth Stark of Harvard Free Culture reports that Sharing Is Daring -- a terrific art show featuring works offered under Creative Commons licenses -- is ready to rock with an opening reception on April 27. Sharing is Daring showcases new & derivative artworks released under flexible licenses that allow for sharing & remixing. The exhibition will feature a range of graphic, photography, video, and multimedia works by:

~ Abram Stern ~ Matt Vance ~ Elton Lovelace ~ Brian Zbriger ~ Suburban Kids with Biblical Names ~ Shanying Cui ~ Ben Sisto ~ Tim Jacques ~ Rebecca Rojer ~ Greg Perkins ~ Ryan Sciaino ~ David Meme ~ Matt Boch & Claire Chanel ~ selections from the 100 Second Film Festival ~ [posted by Marisa on Rhizome]

Please join us for our opening event on Thurs., Apr. 27, 2006 at 8pm at the Adams ArtSpace, Harvard University, Plympton at Bow St., in Cambridge, MA. Food and drink will be served.

Posted by jo at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2006

ISEA2006

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Symposium Papers Online Forum

ISEA2006 Symposium Papers Online Forum, April 24th to May 29th: ISEA2006 is taking place in San Jose, California, August 7-13. More information about the Symposium and related ZeroOne San Jose Festival.

Beginning Monday, April 24th, ISEA2006 will host a month long series of discussions on the accepted paper abstracts for each of the Symposium Themes: Interactive City, Community Domain, Pacific Rim and Transvergence.

An important objective to ISEA2006 is enabling conversation and discourse between audience(s) and presenters. Toward that objective this years ISEA incorporates a single main track of presentations + artists presentations combined with a pre-publishing model. The reading of papers is not permitted. Instead authors will present their abstracts in the on-line Forum and then pre-publish full manuscripts weeks prior to the Symposium. The goal is to inform and influence both authors and audiences as well as create conversational relationships and provide for advanced consideration of topics to be presented at the Symposium.

At ISEA2006 each theme will have two extended conversational sessions in which several authors present summaries of their papers followed by a moderated conversation and audience interaction.

An important role in the Symposium and Forum is that of the Moderator. We have invited a group of prestigious Moderators who will facilitation of individual sessions of the Online Forum and Symposium.

Interactive City: Anthony Burke
Community Domain: Sara Diamond
Transvergence: TBA
Community Domain: Alice Ming Wai Jim
Transvergence: Wendy Chun
Pacific Rim: Amanda McDonald Crowley

The ISEA2006 Papers Forum, April 24nd to May 22nd begins with Interactive City. Beginning with Interactive City, abstracts for each of the Symposium themes will be presented in a series of open public discussions.

Interactive City paper titles and authors:

Mirjam Struppek, Urban Screens
Tapio Mäkelä, Ars Memorativa in the Interactive City
Alison Sant, Redefining the Basemap: From Scenography to Planetary Network for Shanghai 2010

Each week introduces a new theme and abstracts for consideration.

Forum Schedule and Moderators:

Transvergence 1: May 1-May 7
Moderator: TBA

Gheorghe Dan and Alisa Andrasek: Phylotic BodayScapes / Entheogenic Gardens Poly-Scalar Heterotopic Botany

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Towards a New Class of Being-The Extended
Body

Josephine Bosma, Voice and Code: From spoken word and song to writing music to code

Community Domain 1: May 8-14
Moderator: Sara Diamond

Trebor Scholz, The Participatory Challenge: Incentives for Online Collaboration

Valentina Nisa, Mads Haahr and Ian Oakley, Community Networked Tales: Stories and Place of a Dublin Neighborhood: The Media Portrait of Liberties

Kevin Hamilton, Absence in Common: An Operator for the inoperative Community

Community Domain 2: May 8-14
Moderator: Alice Ming Wai Jim

Joline Blais, Indigenous Domain: Beyond the Commons and Other Colonial Paradigms

Sharon Daniel, Public Secrets: Information and Social Knowledge

Mara Traumane, Media Referentiality: Productive Knowledge Networks in Experimental Arts

Transvergence 2: May 15-21
Moderator: Wendy Chun

Steve Anderson, Coming to Terms with the Digital Avant Garde

Jon Ippolito and Joline Blais, Art as Antibody: A redefinition of art for the Internet Age

Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks as New Institutional Forms

Pacific Rim : May 22-29
Moderator: Amanda McDonald Crowley

Timothy Murray, Chinese Archival Futures

*additional Pacific Rim participants to be announced.

Please join us for a lively and informative discussion.

For more information on Paper Authors and the Symposium: http://
01sj.org/content/blogcategory/135/144/.

Joel Slayton, Chair ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose
Steve Dietz, Director ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose

ISEA2006 Symposium

The 2006 edition of the internationally renowned ISEA Symposium will be held August 7-13, 2006, in San Jose, California in conjunction with the inauguration of ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, a milestone festival to be held biennially.

The 13th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2006) focuses on the critical, theoretical and pragmatic exploration of four important themes:
Transvergence, Interactive City, Community Domain and Pacific Rim

What tactics, issues and conceptual practices expose or inform the distinctions of these subject terrains relating to contemporary art practice? What analyses illuminate art practice engaged with new technical and conceptual forms, functions and disciplines; provide for innovative tactical implementations of cultural production involving urbanity, mobility, community and locality; examine the roles and responsibilities of corporations, civic and cultural organizations, discuss strategic and economic planning as it relates to creative community; serve to expose new portals of production and experience; provide for interpretive bridges between cultures and identities; and provide for provocative examination of contemporary political and economic conditions? How is new media art practice re-shaping the world?

The ISEA2006 Symposium is an international platform for artists, cultural producers, media theorists, curators and the general public to share the latest ideas and practices involving new media. Enabling discourse across disciplines, ideologies and philosophical frameworks is an important objective as is the facilitation of discussion and conversation. Audience participation is facilitated through expanded moderated sessions, an afternoon Poster Session/Reception and through an on-line forum featuring the pre-published abstracts and papers.

Posted by jo at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

SAVE THE INTERNET

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SPEAK OUT NOW

Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

Many members of Congress take campaign contributions from these companies, and they don't think the public are paying attention to this issue. Let's show them we care - please sign this petition today.

Posted by jo at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

Workshop: Social Park:

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Collaborative Networks in Public Spaces + The Politics of Play

Social Park: Collaborative Networks in Public Spaces + The Politics of Play Amy Franceschini (Futurefarmers) & Myriel Milicevic Curator : Isabelle Arvers Thursday, 27th april 2006 2-6pm – Mains d’œuvres – Mal au Pixel - Paris

Play can offer a common ground for people to meet and exchange. Almost everyone likes to play a game. The term "playing around" infers a sense of impermanence that can allow for letting down ones guard. Within this realm of play, games can provide a relational platform to play-out interpersonal frustrations, role-playing and risk taking. Often times this provides a sense of freedom that cannot be found in a sanctioned panel discussion, meeting or the classroom.

Social Park will be a collaborative workshop inviting artists, sociologists, designers, game designers, urban planners to come together in an expedition. The purpose of this journey will be to foster collaborative networks in the city through the medium of play. The workshop will take the form of an exchange and collective learning experience. The workshop will be divided into 3 parts; research, experimentation and implementation.

The first part of the workshop will involve exchange and playing games. Workshoppers will be asked to bring in games and examples of art projects/situations that foster collaboration. The games will be played and deconstructed in terms of rules and game play. One of the most exciting part of playing a game is breaking the rules or customizing the game. The second part of this workshop will involve observation, documentation and classification of the existing modes of collaboration in a city. The third part will involve the development of a game to play that fosters collaboration between people, places and objects.

Who: Anyone
What to bring:
Games; boardgames, physical games that foster sociability, social games, games that can be played with found objects.

Amy Franceschini, Founder, Futurefarmers: Cultivating Your Consciousness

499 Alabama Street, #114 San Francisco CA 94110
http://www.futurefarmers.com/
http://www.antiwargame.org
http://www.atlasmagazine.com/
http://www.theyrule.net
http://www.free-soil.org

Myriel Milicevic is an interaction designer and artist. She received her MA from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy. Myriel has collaborated with Amy Franceschini/Futurefarmers since 2004. She is interested in combining gaming, mobile networks and the urban environment.

Isabelle Arvers
www.isabelle-arvers.com

::: french version :::

Social Park : Réseaux collaboratifs dans les espaces publics + les politiques du jeu Amy Franceschini (Futurefarmers) et Myriel Milicevic; Curator: Isabelle Arvers; Jeudi 27 avril 2006 14H00 – 18H00 – Mains d’œuvres – Mal au Pixel www.malaupixel.org

Le jeu offre un terrain commun de rencontre et d’échange. Quasiment tout le monde aime jouer. Le terme « flirter» – playing around – en anglais, nous laisse dans un état éphémère qui autorise à baisser sa garde. Au royaume du jeu, jouer offre une plateforme relationnelle pour exhumer les frustrations interpersonnelles grâce aux jeux de rôles et la prise de risque. La plupart du temps, le jeu offre une sensation de liberté qui ne peut exister dans un symposium, une table ronde ou dans une salle de classe. Social Park est un atelier collaboratif, qui invite artistes, sociologues, designers, game designers, urbanistes et toutes les personnes intéressées à participer à une expédition. Le but de ce parcours est d’encourager et de stimuler des réseaux de collaboration dans la ville à travers le médium du jeu. L’atelier prendra la forme d’un échange et d’une expérience d’apprentissage collectif. L’atelier sera divisé en trois grandes parties : la recherche, l’expérimentation et l’application. La première partie de l’atelier fera intervenir les échanges à travers le jeu. Les participants seront invités à apporter leurs jeux et des exemples de projets ou de situations artistiques collaboratives. Les jeux seront joués et déconstruits en termes de règles et de jouabilité. Car le plus excitant dans un jeu, c’est d’en casser les règles afin de se les réapproprier. La seconde partie de l’atelier sera dédiée à l’observation, la documentation et la classification des modes existants de collaboration dans une ville. La troisième partie consistera à développer un jeu construit autour de l’idée de collaboration entre les êtres, les lieux et les objets. Qui : tout le monde? Quoi apporter : jeux, jeux de plateaux, jeux physiques qui invitent à la sociabilité, jeux sociaux, jeux qui peuvent être joués à partir d’objets trouvés. Rien ne doit être acheté, tout sera fait à partir d’objets trouvés. De petites valises seront fournies aux participants avec des crayons et de quoi dessiner. Les groupes auront une heure pour partir dans la ville et trouver des objets selon des thèmes tels que l’immigration, l’import-export, ou les politiques de proximité.

Amy Franceschini, Fondatrice, Futurefarmers: Cultiver votre conscience.

499 Alabama Street, #114 San Francisco CA 94110 http://www.futurefarmers.com/
http://www.antiwargame.org
http://www.atlasmagazine.com/
http://www.theyrule.net
http://www.free-soil.org

Myriel Milicevic is an interaction designer and artist. She received her MA from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy. Myriel has collaborated with Amy Franceschini/Futurefarmers since 2004. She is interested in combining gaming, mobile networks and the urban environment.

Isabelle Arvers
www.isabelle-arvers.com

Posted by jo at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

Mesh #19 Global/ Regional Perspectives

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CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Mesh #19 Global/ Regional Perspectives will be an online issue providing a global overview of contemporary media arts practice and the creative application of new technological developments through articles that focus on local practice in specific regions. This issue will focus on the critical, aesthetic and technological aspects related to screen culture and media arts practice, balancing the conceptual issues facing media arts culture with the social/cultural, economic and political contexts in which the practices exist.

Articles are sought from curators, artists, academics, media commentators and theorists about practices in the following regions: * West & East Europe * Africa * Middle East * Asia Pacific * The Americas. MESH #19 will be launched on the Experimenta website in September 2006. See past issues of MESH here.

Criteria:

* maximum word length: 2000 words;
* the article should use plain language as it is for a general readership;
* the article must cite at least 3 recent media artworks;
* images with copyright clearance are to be sourced by the author.
 
Deadline: Friday 5 May 2006 for the submission of 100 word abstracts
 
Payment: An honorarium is available. Academics are eligible to have their paper refereed.
 
For examples of previous online and printed issues of MESH, please visit: www.experimenta.org

Posted by jo at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

Neural n.24

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New Media Art, E-Music and Hacktivism

NEURAL n.24: new.media.art :: Shu Lea Cheang (interview) . Cory Arcangel (interview) . Barbara Lattanzi (interview) . Spam, the economy of desire . news: (Flickr Peep Show, PostSecret, Sequences, Mindbending, inc., Silver Cell). reviews: (Soviet-Unterzögersdorf, File Extinguisher, Miscalculator, Flying Spy Potatoes, Overheard in New York) . centerfold: Spin, liquid (tele)vision mediation

e.music :: People Like Us (interview) . Kaffe Matthews (interview) . Directional Audio sonic weapons and other stories . news: (TurntablistPC, Tenori-on, PDradio, Alvin, Speeds of Time) . reviews: (Christian Marclay, Essays on Radio, Sonic Fiction, 40 Canadian Propaganda Films, Buddha Machine, Visual Music, Sound Ideas; What Sound Does a Color Make?) . reviews cd: (Amon Tobin, Staalplaat Soundsystem, Kindermusik Taylor Deupree, Silicon Scally, Column One, Osymyso, Ssim-el, Port Doc 1- 5, Pierre Bastien, Dj Scotch Egg, Jason Kahn Bjorgulfsson / Ohlsson, DIY Canons, Maxence Cyrin, Leo...)

hacktivism :: Hack the Google self.referentialism . Natalie Jeremijenko interview . Igor Stromajer interview . The map is (not) the territory . news: (Shmoogle, Passfaces, Idiki, Netsukuku, Newsbreakers) . reviews: (Code, Engineering Culture, Making Things Public, Community Media, Everything is Under Control) . NEURAL

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

Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin

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Call for entries

11th and 12th festival Rencontres internationals Paris/Berlin: Call for entries - Deadline: April 30, 2006; Last deadline: May 15, 2006--The festival 'Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin' present each year in the two cities a high level international programming dedicated to cinema, contemporary video creation and multimedia, gathering works by artists and directors recognized on the international scene along with younger or/and less known artists and directors.

Each year the 'Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin', a non-profit event without competition, are the occasion to show these works to a large audience, to de-compartmentalize the different areas of creation and to make their viewers communicate, as well as to generate exchanges between artists, directors and participants of the artistic and cultural life.

The next 'Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin' will take place in Berlin on early September and in Paris on late November 2006.

All individuals or organizations can submit one or several proposals to the programming team of the festival. The call for entry is open to cinema, video and multimedia cycles, without any restriction of length or genre. All submissions are free, without any limitation of geographic origins.

Film and video cycles

* Video Art / Experimental video – All video formats
* Documentary – All film and video formats
* Fiction / Short, medium and full length – All film and video formats
* Experimental Film – All film formats
* Animation movie – All formats

Multimedia cycles:
* Installation art
* Net art, CD-rom, DVD-rom
* Performance art, multimedia concert

Video and film proposals are received on DVD or VHS. ALL proposals are sent by mail, enclosed with a filled entry form, until April 30, 2006 - LAST DEADLINE: May 15th, 2006. The entry form as well as the information regarding the festival is available on our website or on demand by email: info[at]art-action.org

Posted by jo at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

Melkweg

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Dancing the Net

An installation and two performances at Melkweg: One Word Movie - Beat Brogle, Philippe Zimmermann I I 29 april t/m 4 june; OPENING: fri 28 april 20.00; We only do - Georg Hobmeier, Dance Unlimited I I 27, 28, 29 april, 20.30; CHIMERA - Evelien van den Broek, Muziekwerkplaats de Trampoline / 12, 13 may 20.30 EN 21.30

One Word Movie is an on-line platform which organizes, based on user-supplied terms, the flood of images on the Internet into an animated film. A word turns into images, images turn into a movie. This project plays with the tension between on-line and cinematic approaches to images. What images are associated with what words? «One Word Movie» reveals a glimpse into the „collective psychology“ of online cultures by showing patterns of word-image associations, as created by millions of people around the world.

WE ONLY DO researches the generic development of movement and performance structures. It is a network of choreographic structures (performed by a dancer), instructions (given by a computer) connected by rules and wireless headphones.

“eyeconed woeshoeshine,
choreogenetics and stagedicing,
3Dancers on their way to form,
plus veni vidi audi.....”

Georg Hobmeier (Austria) has a theatre background and works since some years within the new media collective 'Senselabor'. He is interested in how organisational structures come to exist within a choreography using live interactive media technology.

Choreogenetica: Georg Hobmeier | pure data, Computer Programming: Leo Lass; Audio: Gregor Ladenhauf | Dance: Nina Fajdiga, Vlasta Veselko, Jadi Carboni. We Only Do is a graduation project of Dance Unlimited, Amsterdam Hogeschool vd Kunsten (AHK).

CHIMERA is a conversation between chant and dance. A singer communicates by her voice, a dancer by her body, influencing one another by their mutual actions. The dancer making the unvisible audible, thus forming a soundscape of both abstract and conventional language. Gentle sounds exagerated by the gestures of the dancer and sent through the space like floating airbubles. A videocapturing system will interpret movements into sound.

Composition & Singing: Evelien van den Broek; Choreografy & Dance: Eva Baumann; Software Programing & Sound: Boban Bajic; light: Minna Tiikkainen o.v.; Artistic Advise: Robert Steijn; Production: De Trampoline, Melkweg.

lucas evers
www.melkweg.nl
lijnbaansgracht 234 a
1017 ph amsterdam
+31 20 5318181

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

Receiver Magazine, #15

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Wish You Were Here

Receiver Magazine, #15: We always take the mobile with us because we want to be reachable. But who do we want to be reachable for? Take a closer look: primarily for those we love. Apart from using them for work-related purposes, mobile phones are a great source of strength for our inner circle - they connect us to those stored in the handset's contact list whom we want to reassure that we are with in spirit, and who know when we might need the emotional support of a quick text. This receiver issue is all about that yearning factor that comes with using the mobile phone, about the meta-message which is always present: 'wish you were here'.

Vodafone's receiver magazine is a neutral space where pioneer thinkers challenge you to discuss exciting, future-oriented aspects of communications technologies. Started over five years ago as a platform for exchange about how innovations in this sector affect societies worldwide, receiver is now established as one of the industry's key idea generators.

Articles:

Jane Vincent: I just can't live without my mobile!

Could it be that we are not only emotional about the ones we keep in touch with, but that we have come to assign an emotional quality to the handset itself? Jane Vincent, whose paper is the opener for our 'Wish you were here' issue, thinks so! She has worked in the mobile communications industry since 1982. A Research Fellow with the Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey, Vincent's main interest is in user behaviours associated with mobile communications. She has long pondered over the one and crucial question: 'How come we feel emotionally attached to our mobiles?' and presents some of her findings here in receiver.

Rich Ling: Nomos and the flexible coordination of the family

Rich Ling is a Senior Research Scientist at the research and development division of Telenor, Norway's largest research establishment within information and communication technology. Ling, who investigates the social impact of mobile telephony, is a most influential writer on mobile matters, serving on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals. He authored The mobile connection - the cell phone's impact on society, a book published by Morgan Kaufman in 2004. Read Ling's article for receiver to learn how mobile communication contributes to the maintenance of the family as an institution.

Ruth Rettie: How text messages create connectedness

Ruth Rettie is an ex-Unilever Brand Manager who is currently a senior lecturer at Kingston University in London. At the University's Business School she lectures on internet marketing, E- and M-commerce and has a strong research interest in communication theory. She is currently completing her PhD in sociology at the University of Surrey, which focuses on mobile phone communication. In her receiver contribution, Rettie explains how connectedness is a premier driver of mobile communication.

Tim Kindberg: We are cameras - image acts in personal interaction

Tim Kindberg, a senior researcher at HP Labs Bristol, UK, with a strong interest in nomadic and urban computing, has recently focused on the usage of camera phones. He and colleagues at HP Labs Palo Alto (Mirjana Spasojevic) and Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK (Abigail Sellen and Rowanne Fleck) carried out an in-depth study into camera phone use in the UK and US. Findings: people often have strong social or sharing intentions when capturing a picture, but typically use 'capture and show' rather than 'capture and send'. Read Kindberg's receiver contribution to find out more about the social uses of camera phones.

Jeff Axup: Blog the World

Jeff Axup is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. His research in Mobile Community Design focuses on the development and design of mobile devices used by groups and how device design might change group behaviour. Axup has chosen to look at one highly mobile group in detail and examines what technologies could be used to support backpackers. Read his receiver contribution to find out about the usage patterns and demands he came across with a group of people who to a large extent depend on forming social networks while on the move.

Joachim R Höflich: The duality of effects - the mobile phone and relationships

Joachim Höflich is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He has been looking at forms of media-driven interpersonal communication for many years. His particular focus is mobile communication, and he has written and edited a number of books including Mobile Kommunikation (2005) and Mobile Communication in Everyday Life, which will be published shortly. In his contribution to receiver, Höflich weighs up the positive and negative effects of mobile phones as a medium for relationships and takes a look at the particular way in which relationships are affected by them.

Pierre Proske: Bleating in the bank queue

Pierre Proske is a Melbourne-based programmer and digital artist with a background in music, engineering, literature and performing arts. Proske's artistic work focuses on people's relationships with technology, his most recent example being True Blue Love. This mobile phone based mating experiment was launched at last year's Mobile Journeys exhibition in Sydney, a venture that explores the creative potential of Australian mobile culture. In Bleating in the bank queue, Proske introduces us to his match-making project which plays with an inversion of the silent communications that mobile phones promote.

Mark Federman: Memories of now

Mark Federman is completing a PhD at the University of Toronto, researching the future form of corporations in a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world. Over the last five years, Federman has been Chief Strategist at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and is co-author, with Derrick de Kerckhove, of McLuhan for Managers. His receiver contribution tells us, in his own and in McLuhan's words, how we have focused on sharing the "here and now" since we learned to use tools that enable ubiquitous communication.

Nicola Döring: Just you and me - and your mobile

Nicola Döring is Professor of Media Design and Media Psychology at Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany, where she researches psychological and social dimensions of new communication technologies. She has published widely on online and mobile communication, focusing on communities, language, learning, identity, gender, sexuality, romance and interpersonal relationships. In her receiver contribution, Döring takes a closer look at mobile phone interruptions during romantic dates and meetings with friends based on an observational study.

Posted by jo at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2006

World of Awe

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Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell

After five years in the making, the first World of Awe Enhanced CD is released by Innova label. Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell will be in stores by May 23 and is already available at the Eyebeam bookstore.

"Remember the Atari and the dawning of computer game technology? Well, it's back, not with a vengeance but as an intense musical tool for an enigmatic Postmodern opera out of New York City known as Bit by Bit, Cell by Cell. The fantastical production is a team effort of media artist Yael Kanarek, composer Yoav Gal, and dance-filmmaker Evann Siebens, packaged as an enhanced CD collectible art-object designed by Mushon Zer-Aviv. Together, it is a World of Awe production, helped along by a residency at Harvestworks. And what a production it is. The plot (in itself an award-winning narrative) revolves around a lone traveler who searches for a lost treasure in a parallel world. Finding a portal in front of 419 East 6th Street and performing a dance right there in the street (see it when you place the CD in your computer), the hooded traveler escapes toward Sunset/Sunrise...The rest is unclear but beautiful, striking in its mystery: Excerpts from the traveler's journal are set to the processed voice of soprano Sarah Rivkin combined with the sounds of the lost world/old-school of the Atari 800XL to convey the traveler's different moods, and create the musical topography of World of Awe..."

Posted by jo at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

PORTA2030

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YOU ARE PORTA-PORTER!

April 24 - May 1, 2006 BROADWAY MARKET, London: PORTA2030 is a performative urgency-relay network exercises set within Broadway Market public wifi net-zone. Towards building a portable, sustainable and responsive social network by year 2030, PORTA2030 engages community members as porta-porters for an urgency scenario enactment.

PORTA2030 deploys porta-pack, a mobile network unit that builds on a wifi harddrive (WL-HDD2.5) for multi-faceted transmission. Installed with a 1GB flashcard and programmed in open source codes, the porta-pack functions as a portable data sensing-storage-tranmission unit. A webcam streams images live while an LCD mini-terminal with 4 click action push buttons serve as basic communicative device. The urgency signals triggered by the sensors set in public space further prompt porta-porters' collective action.

Broadway Market (E8, London), known as Market Porters' path for porting produce into the city, is currently under rapid development affected by Hackney Council's regeneration plan. For last two years, physical Porters' Path is implemented with wireless extension provided by the OFF Broadway gallery. PORTA2030 locates Broadway Market as its public performance site with setup of extra access nodes. PORTA2030 updates the porter's path with mobile network porting of communal audio/visual data.

Weeklong performance starts on April 24 with porta-pack dispatch workshop at SPACE media center. During the week, 10 porta-porters engage in networked ommunication. April 29, Broadway market, Porta2030 relay bingo play. May 1, May Day - public screening session with open-air projection: Porta-porters' week and Broadway market related documentaries. For further information please contact now[at]take2030.net

Posted by jo at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2006

Performance Studies international #12:

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Performing Rights

Performance Studies international (PSi), in collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London, East End Collaborations and the Live Art Development Agency announce the opening of registration for their major international conference and performance festival Performing Rights which takes place across the East End campus of Queen Mary, University of London, from June 14 – 18, 2006.

To register for the conference (and take advantage of early booking rates) go to: http://www.psi12.qmul.ac.uk

Performance Studies international (PSi) is an international powerhouse of innovation for academics, artists and activists, holding annual conferences across the globe. In London for the first time, PSi 12 will focus on questions of performance and human rights and will feature plenary addresses, numerous panels and commissioned performances, a diverse programme of challenging and innovative live art and theatre, practical workshops, a space for debate and presentations, and the making of an archive of performance activism in support of human rights.

Bringing together curators, policy makers and directors of some of London’s key cultural agencies and institutions, alongside artists, activists and thinkers from all over the world, this event will be a unique crossing between the arts, the academy, activism and public policy. Human rights are too important to leave to the politicians. How does performance practice and thinking open up new possibilities for the understanding, enactment and sustenance of human rights? Queen Mary, University of London will become an open, public platform where the making and unmaking of human rights can be debated and performed.

Participating artists, activists and writers include: Irene Khan (Secretary General of Amnesty International), Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Peggy Phelan, Luiz Eduardo Soares (former Brazilian Minister for Public Security) John Jordan, Karen Finley, Jon McKenzie, Lois Weaver, William Pope.L, Goat Island, Coco Fusco, Alan Read, Nao Bustamante, Amelia Jones, Zai Kuning, Bobby Baker, Baz Kershaw, Naeem Mohaiemen, Curious, Gustavo Ciriaco, Luiz De Abreu, Leibniz, Peggy Shaw, Chumpon Apisuk, Paul Heritage, Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun of the Otolith Group, Rebecca Schneider, Richard Dedomenici, Janelle Reinelt, Gavin Butt, Stacy Makishi, Monica Ross, Rabih Mroue, Adrian Heathfield, Diana Taylor, Franko B, Freddie Rokem, Carol Becker, Jose Esteban Munoz, Peta Tait, Mike Pearson, Jen Harvey, Yara El Sherbini, Adrien Sina, Oreet Ashery, Reem Fadda, Nick Ridout, Una Chaudhuri and Eduardo Bonito.

The conference will present the work of participants from over thirty different countries including: Brazil, USA, Egypt, Israel, Bangladesh, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, Austria, Turkey, Denmark, Croatia, Romania, Germany, France, UK, Ireland, Mexico, Lebanon, Morocco, Greece, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Argentina, Canada, Nigeria, Switzerland, Italy, and Zimbabwe.

Over four hundred participants are anticipated for this conference and hundreds more will come to the galleries, installations, performances and workshops that will be run throughout the four days.

Here you will also be able to access on-campus accommodation details and booking. Full details of the schedule of panels, presentations, installations and performances will be available closer to the time. Registration at the conference includes membership of PSi for 2006.

Posted by jo at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

SITELINES 06

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AUDIO BALLERINAS

AUDIO BALLERINAS by Benoît Maubrey and Die Audio Gruppe at SITELINES 06, May 8 through 13, 2:30 pm; Venue: Elevated Acre at 55 Water Street, New York City; Admission: free.

Benoît Maubrey is the founder and director of DIE AUDIO GRUPPE a Berlin-based performance group that build and perform with electroacoustic (“sounding“) clothes. Basically these are electro-acoustic clothes, costumes and uniforms (equipped with batteries, amplifiers and loudspeakers) that create sounds by interacting with their environment. The Audio Gruppe's work is essentially site-specific. Usually the electronics are adapted into entirely a new "audio uniform" or "sonic costume" that reflect a local theme (AUDIO HERD, AUDIO CYCLISTS, AUDIO STEELWORKER, VIDEO PEACOCKS, AUDIO VACUUM CLEANERS) or customs and traditions (AUDIO GEISHAS/Japan, AUDIO CYCLISTS/France, AUDIO HANBOK/Korea).

The AUDIO BALLERINAS, initially conceived in 1990 for the festival LES ARTS AU SOLEIL in France where they used solar cells to power their Audio Tutus, have since developed a variety of choreographies using electronic instruments (digital samplers, light sensors, contact microphones, music sticks, and radio receivers) that allow them to work with the sounds, surfaces, electro-magnetic waves and physical topography of the space around them. The AUDIO BALLERINAS will be presenting 3 site-specifically adapted choreographies: the LINE (contact microphones and music sticks), PEEPERS (light-to-frequency sensors), and YAMAHA (movement sensors that trigger digital sounds). Alternative: APPLE RADIOS (solar cells and white noise).

Benoît Maubrey was born of French parents in 1952 in Washington D.C. and graduated from Georgetown University in 1975. After working as a writer and painter and jobbing as hotel concierge in Bordeaux, Paris, New York and Washington DC, he moved to West Berlin in 1979 where he starting building Audio Clothes in 1982. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1992 he moved to the village of Baitz in former East Germany. His performance and sound art installations have been presented at many international festivals around the world.

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The SiteLines performances are choreographed by Mimi Messner (Berlin). Local dancers and assistants: Faith Pilger, Andrea Lieske, Samantha Speis, Eline Tan, Violette Olympia, Mira Mutka, Anna Whaley, Micah Killion, Herb Hernandez

Contacts: Benoît Maubrey, Bahnhofstr. 47, 14806 Baitz Germany tel
+49-33841-8265 fax: +49-33841-33121 cell phone in USA 202 374 4614

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council: Nolini Barretto tel: 212-219 9401 X119

This work was made possible, in part, by Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, supported by Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society.

Posted by jo at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2006

DATA Browser 03

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Curating Immateriality

The third book in the DATA Browser series of critical texts that explore issues at the intersection of culture and technology has just been published. The site of curatorial production has been expanded to include the space of the Internet and the focus of curatorial attention has been extended from the object to processes to dynamic network systems. As a result, curatorial work has become more widely distributed between multiple agents, including technological networks and software. This upgraded 'operating system' of art presents new possibilities of online curating that is collective and distributed - even to the extreme of a self-organising system that curates itself. The curator is part of this entire system but not central to it. This book reflects on these changes and examines the work of the curator in relation to a wider socio political context articulated through two key issues: immateriality and network systems. It considers how the practice of curating has been transformed by distributed networks beyond the rhetoric of free software and open systems.

Contributors:

0100101110101101.ORG & [epidemiC] | Josephine Berry Slater | Geoff Cox |
Alexander R. Galloway & Eugene Thacker | Olga Goriunova & Alexei Shulgin |
Beryl Graham | Eva Grubinger | Piotr Krajewski | Jacob Lillemose | low-fi |
Franziska Nori | Matteo Pasquinelli | Christiane Paul | Trebor Scholz |
Grzesiek Sedek | Tiziana Terranova | Marina Vishmidt

For more information see http://www.data-browser.net/03/


Title: CURATING IMMATERIALITY: THE WORK OF THE CURATOR IN THE AGE OF NETWORK SYSTEMS
Authors: Various contributors, edited by Joasia Krysa
Publisher: Autonomedia (DATA browser 03)
Copyright: 2006 (all texts released under a Creative Commons License)
ISBN: 1-57027-173-9
Pages: 288, Paper Perfectbound

The DATA browser series presents critical texts that explore issues at the intersection of culture and technology. The editorial group are Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa, Anya Lewin, Malcolm Miles, Mike Punt & Hugo de Rijke. This volume is produced in association with Arts Council England and University of Plymouth.

Posted by luis at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

UNESCO DigiArts International call for participation

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Scenes and Sounds of my City

International call for participation - Scenes and sounds of my city: Special Session 2006 - Deadline for submissions 3 May 2006

The UNESCO DigiArts Team invites young students and teachers to reflect on the theme of “scenes and sounds of my city” and to send to UNESCO a joint project proposal in group work that focuses on a specific topic or issue in relation to their urban environment or their experiences within urban surroundings.

This project will be realized through a running session of the Scenes and Sounds of My City web-based learning application, which is designed for young people (12-18 years old) to collaboratively use creative digital tools in expressing their visions on urban topics.

Through participation in this session, young people will have opportunities to:
i) express their ideas, reflections, viewpoints on their own urban environment through creative productions using digital media
ii) interact with their young peers from different regions, countries, cultures
iii) use ICT resources and creative tools and obtain skills of manipulating different digital and online applications.

At the end of the session, the best projects will be selected and presented at an international electronic arts festival. A number of young delegates among the participants will also be invited to this festival to transform their digital pieces into physical urban installations in public spaces.

How to participate?

The following materials should be submitted to digiarts@unesco.org by 3 May 2006, session from 10 -7 July 2006:
• Registration form
• One project proposal per group of participants
• Short introduction of participants including contact information and photo

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

April 19, 2006

April 1-15th on empyre

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Synaesthesia: Amit Pitaru, James Patterson, and Joel Swanson

Synaesthesia is, literally, the convergence of senses. From the Greek roots syn ("union") and aesthesis ("sensation"), synaesthesia describes a phenomena where sound corresponds to colors or tastes. Some people, known as synaesthetes, actually experience this involuntary convergence where touching something gives a taste, hearing something produces a color in the mind, and colors actually create sounds when seen. This is a condition for 1 in 2000 people, so it is not altogether uncommon. Though some have regarded the online experience as breathing new life into the mind/body problem, many artists are already working in a space that engages attention and sense in a convergence across a broader perceptual spectrum.

Three artists anchored the discussion of synaesthetic aspects of on-line experience: Amit Pitaru, James Patterson, their collaborative work at insertsilence.com, and Joel Swanson at hippocrit.com. [Related post]

James Patterson is a visual artist who also works as an illustrator, broadcast & web designer. James' synthesis of drawing, animation and programming has attracted the attention of a variety of galleries and clients worldwide. His work exists online at two primary sites: http://Presstube.com (his personal space) and http://InsertSilence.com (shared with Amit Pitaru). James was born in London, England in 1980 and currently lives in Montreal, Canada.

Amit Pitaru (b.1974) creates new tools to facilitate his work and work in audio-visual arts and interaction/usability design. Pitaru has exhibited and performed concerts worldwide. His personal and collaborative work with James Paterson has recently been shown at the London Design Museum, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Israel Museum, Paris Pompidou Center, Sundance Film festival, Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ICC Museum in Tokyo. As an educator, Pitaru develops curricula that focus on the coupling of computation-design and creative thought process. He regularly teaches at New York University's ITP and Cooper Union. Pitaru is a recipient of various prestigious awards, including two Ars Electronica Prix honorary awards and Tokyo Type Directors Club awards. Beyond his artwork, Pitaru is currently working on new gaming interfaces for children with special needs and the elderly. Born in Jerusalem, Pitaru currently resides in New York with his wife Makiko. http://pitaru.com http://insertsilence.com

Joel Swanson is an artist and writer who currently teaches courses on art, technology, and media theory at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His work consists of articulated reading environments, both real and virtual. Thematically his installations interrogate relationships of power as they relates to space, discourse, language, meaning and subjectivity. He is also interested in the implications of the material specificity of discourse and its effects on both reader and writer. Swanson's work has been shown in various national and international venues. Joel's work is viewable at http://www.hippocrit.com

Also joining us for the first half of April, will be guest moderator Jennifer Gunther [http://auspiciousmotion.org]. Jennifer is a student in the University of Colorado's Digital Media program, and writes for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

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

Call for Proposals

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Tagged: Electronic Tagging and RFID Commissions

Tagged: Electronic Tagging and RFID Commissions [PDF], SPACE Media Arts, London--Deadline for proposals: NEXT WEEK! Friday, April 28, 2005.

SPACE Media Arts invites proposals for a series of four artist commissions that explore creative use and context of electronic tagging technology, in particular RFID. Even if you don’t know what a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is, you’ve probably used one, whether it’s at your local grocery store checkout, using an Oyster Card, tracking a package you’re waiting to be delivered or in your passport at the airport.

RFID is the barcode of the future. It is a unique identification code that can be tracked through radio waves, sometimes without human contact or knowledge. RFID may help create a real-life internet, where objects can communicate with each other to create complex networks, exchange useful information, and do things for you in every day life. But it could also have a major impact on commercial industry, security and privacy.

In keeping with SPACE Media Arts core objective to engage diversify access to emergent technology, proposals that have a public art focus or that show an understanding of the communities in which they will be presented are particularly encouraged.

The production budget/ artist fee for each commission is £3,250. Production should be completed by October 2006, and projects are expected to be presented to the public. Commissioned artists will also be offered the opportunity to be involved in Who Designs the Future?, a one day workshop and presentation at the HCI 2006 ENGAGE conference at Queen Mary University London in September 2006.

When evaluating proposals, the panel will consider artistic merit, technical feasibility and audience/participant awareness. Although we will provide some project mentorship and technical advice, artists must show in their proposals that they can execute their own projects.

Artists will be notified of the status of their proposal by Friday, May 12.

***How to Submit a Proposal***

A proposal must include:

1. A project description of 1000 words maximum. This should describe what the project is, its main concepts and how it will be realized. 2. You are encouraged to include a production timeline and a project budget, which should include your artist’s fee. 3. Your individual or collective CV. If you plan to work with a technical assistant or collaborators, their information should be included. 4. A completed application form, available at http://www.spacemedia.org.uk

Questions can be directed to Heather Corcoran at heather[at]spacestudios.org.uk.

Posted by jo at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

The Empire's New Clothes

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Art, Fashion and Technology

The Empire's New Clothes - Art, Fashion and Technology workshop by Sabine Seymour & Erich Berger: Wednesday 10th of May - Saturday 13th of May at Atelier Nord Oslo/Norway. Free participation; Application deadline monday 24th of April; Send applications with CV to sense[at]anart.no

During the workshop the following topics will be adressed: * Introduction into fashion and wearables in art and design * Applicable fashion theory * Textiles, new materials and technology * Physical computing for fashion and wearables (sensors, wireless communication, etc.) * How to design * Concept development * Hands on experiments and presentations.

Clothing was among the first cultural and technological achievements of the human. Since its first intention as a second skin, communication technologies and smart materials dramatically changed its use. Clothing itself became an interface to the digital space which surrounds us. The workshop will show how textiles and technology appear in artistic practices and will introduce materials and techniques in use and in research. Participants will work and experiment on an expanded idea of fashion and technology.

Especially participants who already attended the previous workshops will be able to apply their ideas and skills on the very fabric of society.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPATION

Participation is free of charge.

Artists, designers and practitioners interested in participating are asked to apply with a CV to sense[at]anart.no

Application deadline monday April 24th.

Workshop directors and producer:

Sabine Seymour (AT/USA) http://moondial.com
Erich Berger(AT/FI) http://randomseed.org

The empires new clothes is part of the Interface and Society project at Atelier Nord, http://anart.no/projects/interface-and-society/. Upcoming workshops at Atelier Nord:

June : Media art and public space with Susanne Jaschko (DE)
September: Mobile media art with Laura Beloff (FI)

ATELIER NORD
PHONE +47 23060880
FAX +47 23060884
E-MAIL office@anart.no
URL http://anart.no
MAIL Lakkegata 55 D, N-0187 Oslo, Norway

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

April 18, 2006

UPGRADE! MONTREAL

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! .... TACTICAL MEDIA ........ !

It's spring, dammit, and Upgrade! Montreal is making no exception by bringing in some novelty this month. It is one of the first times that Upgrade will take place outside the SAT (Society for Arts and Technology), that is, at UQAM's Hexagram's lab (209 Ste-Catherine E) in order to diversify its audience and partners (note: Upgrade May will take place again at SAT). Moreover, the April format is slightly different, taking the form of a good ol¹ show-and-tell, in the view of demystifying the practices and the tools of tactical media.

April features tactical media and tactical art, where practitioners work in-between art and politics in order to momentarily occupy and infiltrate structures of mass media & culture. The evening aims to expose (and make accessible) diverse practices by posing the question of a tactical media culture in Montréal.

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For the occasion, Danny Perreault will remind us of fragments of certain ideas of Dutch theorist Geert Lovink, while also showing how to control appliances at distance. Dominic Gagnon will show some of the achievements of the transnational collective At Work, which aims to transform creatively the workspace into resistance to neoliberalism. As for Stéphanie Brodeur and Darsha Hewitt, they will give us a demonstration of Magnetic Identity Liberation Front (M.I.L.F.) and GridFlow, whereas Robin Millette will talk about practices of hackers linked to groups and organizations like Cogitateurs-Agitateurs and FACIL. The show-and-tell will be followed by a roundtable discussion moderated by tobias c. van Veen, a scholar of interventionist media as well as tactical media practitioner himself.

The March Upgrade is free, bilingual and open to all. Doors open at 6.30 pm ­ the show-and-tell promptly begins at 7pm ­ and it¹s all free kids!

- Sophie, Anik & tobias

---French version---

Avril 27 Upgrade:

! .... TACTICAL MEDIA ........ !

Une culture de médias tactiques à Montréal?
Un show-and-tell sur les médias et l¹art tactiques
--
Wot? Tactical media culture in Montreal?
A show-and-tell on tactical media & tactical art
====================

:: LOCATION ::
Hexagram - UQAM ­ 209 Ste-Catherine E.


=== HORAIRE ===
€ 18h30: doors open/ouverture des portes

€ 19h00: show and tell

Danny Perreault (Skerzo, etc.)
Dominic Gagnon (Au travail / At Work)
Stéphanie Brodeur & Darsha Hewitt (Magnetic Identity Liberation Front) Robin Millette (Cogitateurs-Agitateurs, FACIL, etc.)

€ 20h00: discussion table-ronde / roundtable
moderée par / moderated by tobias c. van Veen

€ 21h00: Fin

==||==

: : UPGRADE! : AVRIL: :

C'est le printemps asti, et Upgrade ne fait pas exception en amenant du nouveau ce mois-ci. C'est l'une des premières fois qu¹une soirée Upgrade aura lieu hors les murs de la SAT (Société des arts technologiques), soit au laboratoire d¹Hexagram de l'UQAM (209 Ste-Catherine E) pour ainsi diversifier son public et ses partenaires (note : nous serons de retour à la SAT en mai). De surplus, la formule d'avril est quelque peu modifiée avec au menu un bon vieux « show-and-tell », question de démystifier les pratiques et les outils utilisés ou déployés pour un public actif. Avril s¹intéresse à la question des médias et de l'art tactiques, cette pratique qui se situe entre art et politique pour occuper et infiltrer momentanément les structures des médias et de la culture de masse. La soirée vise à exposer (et rendre accessible) diverses pratiques en posant la question d'une culture de médias et d'art tactiques à Montréal. Pour l'occasion, Danny Perreault nous fera part de fragments d'idées du théoricien Geert Lovink, tout en nous montrant aussi comment contrôler des électroménagers à distance. Dominic Gagnon nous montrera les accomplissements du collectif transnational Au travail, qui vise à transformer de manière créative le lieu de travail en une résistance au néo-libéralisme. Quant à elles, Stéphanie Brodeur et Darsha Hewitt nous ferons une démonstration de Magnetic Identity Liberation Front (M.I.L.F.) et de GridFlow, alors que Robin Millette nous parlera des pratiques de hackers liées au groupe Cogitateurs-Agitateurs et à l'organisme FACIL (pour l'appropriation collective de l¹informatique libre). Le « show-and-tell » est suivi d¹une discussion table-ronde modérée par tobias c. van Veen, tacticien lui-même.

L¹événement est bilingue et ouvert à tous et toutes. Les portes ouvrent à 18h30 ­ le « show-and-tell » débute promptement à 19h00 ­ et c¹est gratuit les enfants!

Posted by jo at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Amsterdam

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going live tomorrow!

Upgrade! Amsterdam 0.0: THOU SHALT NOT UPGRADE! going live tomorrow:

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When: April 19 2006, 20.30 hours; Where: De Melkweg, Theaterzaal, Lijnbaansgracht 234 A, Amsterdam; | free admission | | cocktails | | T-shirts |

THOU SHALT NOT UPGRADE! | GIJ ZULT NIET UPGRADEN! | Met “upgrade” wordt meestal technologische verbetering, vooruitgang en ontwikkeling bedoeld: alles moet sneller, beter, kleiner. Maar de technologische geschiedenis is ook één van keuzes die bepaald worden door contextuele factoren. Wat laten we achterwege in onze huidige obsessie met upgraden en wat winnen we? Wat zijn de bredere culturele implicaties van het begrip “upgrade” in onze informatiesamenleving. Wat betekent het voor de kunsten, design en hoe we de wereld ervaren? Zijn er heilige huisjes waar we niet aan mogen komen: Gij zult niet upgraden?

Gasten:

| Max Bruinsma | Onafhankelijk design- en kunstcriticus, curator, editorial designer. http://www.maxbruinsma.nl/

| Taco Stolk | Conceptueel kunstenaar and hoofd van de ExtraFaculteit (xFac) van de Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag.
http://www.wlfr.nl/

Performance interventie door:
| Aart Muis | en zijn | BrainClone | http://www.aartcore.com

Posted by jo at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)

UPGRADE! SALVADOR

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:) *Smile, you are in bahia* :)

Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. While individual nodes present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists, Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year.

On the first brazilian version, Upgrade! Salvador creativity invested on movement's propositions. A city's perception and the artistic movements that uses it as a stage for their performances, presenting these movements to the classic medium, the common citizen. [and let the art presents it my -his/her- self spaces!], creating new possibilities of expansion of each localized action. Upgrade! re-cognize-knowledge to artistic re-existence.

MAY 01: WORKER'S DAY - Get you arse down there and work! WHEN, WHERE 9h00 @ the bus stop on largo da vitoria

Upgrade! Salvador: a GATHERing to celebrate the di ver see ty of the meeting -
artistic experiences of social intervention and the recognition of actions.

__________________________

:) *Sorria, voce esta na bahia!* :) http://www.midiatatica.org/upgrade

Upgrade! é uma rede emergente internacional de núcleos autônomos unidos pela arte, tecnologia e o compromisso com o multi-culturalismo. Sua estrutura não-hierárquica e descentralizada garante que o Upgrade! (1) funcione de acordo com interesses locais e seus recursos disponíveis; e (2) reflete o atual engajamento criativo com tecnologias e artistas de ponta.

Em sua primeira edicao nacional, Upgrade! criatividade investida na proposicao de movimentos. a percepcao da cidade e dos movimentos artisticos que a utilizam como palco de suas performances. apresentando esses movimentos ao meio classico, ao cidadao comum [e que a arte se apresente eu seus - dele - espacos!], criando novas possibilidades de expansao de cada acao localizada. Upgrade! re-conhecimento para re-existencia artistica.

01 DE MAIO: DIA DO TRABALHO - De as caras e venha trabalhar!

QUANDO e ONDE
9hs00 @ ponto de onibus do largo da vitoria

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
REUNA-SE para celebrar a
di ver cidade do encontro -
experiencias artisticas de
intervencao social
e reconhecimento das acoes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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

Digital Art and New Media

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EXPERIENCE ART AT ITS INTERSECTION WITH TECHNOLOGY

UCSC's Digital Art and New Media (DANM) MFA Program and Porter College in association with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History @ The McPherson Center, The Santa Cruz Film Festival and the Digital Media Factory present a series of exhibitions, performances, films and symposia:
 
• Renowned media artists Jim Campbell, Paul DeMarinis and Camille Utterback exhibit and speak downtown at the MAH

Cutting-edge algorithmic and new music demonstrations and recitals including performances from John Bischoff, Sue Costabile and Leatitia Sonami

Historical and contemporary film presentation of works by John Whitney, Woody and Steina Vasulka, Jennifer Montgomery and Harun Farocki

Stimulating symposia with top researchers in music and sound practice, performing arts and biotechnology

Works by faculty and graduating students of UCSC's Digital Arts and New Media MFA program presentation.

Choose from a large selection of events to experience the latest ideas buzzing through the world of digital and new media art. Art and technology will take over Santa Cruz when the new DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA FESTIVAL kicks off in early May, with some events continuing into June.

This presentation of exhibitions and symposia contributes to the art culture in Santa Cruz by showcasing and developing the latest work in digital art and new media.

Contact Elena Lledo at elledo[at]ucsc.edu for more information.

Felicia Rice, Program Manager, Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program
Porter D-121, UC Santa Cruz
Phone: (831) 459-1554
Fax: (831) 459-3535
Email: fsrice[at]ucsc.edu

Posted by jo at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

2006 Dance Research Society, Taiwan [DRST] ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Dancing under the Rising Sun: Call for Papers

[Submitted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] 2006 Dance Research Society, Taiwan [DRST] ANNUAL CONFERENCE: Dancing under the Rising Sun: The Influences of Japanese Colonialism on Dance in the Asia-Pacific Region; 8 - 10 December 2006, Taipei National University of the Arts.

What did the Japanese colonialism bring to the colonized countries in the Asia-Pacific region before the end of the Second World War? Political hegemony or modernization? Uprooted traditions or transplanted new cultures? How has this legacy of colonialism molded the dance scene in contemporary situations in various Asian countries?

As a result of the search for national identity in the postcolonial era, Taiwan's reflections on the Japanese colonial influences have continuously motivated the academic to examine the ideological and practical impacts that have intertwined with or even dominated peoples' daily lives in many aspects and on different levels. In the area of dance in particular, Japan once served as the channel for the 'new dance' formulated in Europe and America; moreover, the Japanese regime nurtured the first generation of contemporary choreographers and dance educators in Taiwan. In recent years, studies focused on this period have begun to accumulate and gained attention among the academics and dance practitioners alike.

Though many Asia-Pacific countries shared the common past of Japanese occupation before 1945, their colonial experiences were hardly a unified one. Different cultural schemes and historical courses contributed to the complexity of regional developments. This conference is the first attempt to gather, compare, exchange, and reflect on the experiences of different countries and geographic areas. Diverse and even contrasting interpretations of the influences of Japanese colonialism are expected, and will surely broaden our understanding of how human beings connect themselves to history, culture and society through dance. Dance practitioners, scholars and historians, as well as researchers in culture studies and other related social sciences, are welcome to participate in and contribute to this dialogue. The conference's themes include:

1. Colonial modernity: influences of Japanese colonialism on various dance practices and their relations to the social process blending colonization and modernization.

2. Cultural hegemony and aesthetics: the influence of Japanese hegemonic ideology on aesthetic conception which modified or formulated new genres, styles and categories of dance.

3. Gender, class and national identity: the strategic production of dances as the reflections of the newly-formed social stratification under colonialism

4. Other related topics.

The official languages of the conference are Chinese and English. Proposals
of the following forms are welcome:

1. research papers
2. theme panels
3. video/image presentations

Those who are interested in presenting should submit an abstract no more than 500 words in Chinese or English before 1 April 2006. The abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the conference committee, and the result will be announced by 15 May 2006. Please fill in the attached form of submission, and send it along with the abstract by E-mail to Ya-ping Chen, PhD at ypchen@[at]nce.tnua.edu.tw. An e-mail receipt will be sent to the applicant as the confirmation of submission.

Conference Committee:

Dance Research Society, Taiwan (DRST)
Graduate School of Dance Theory, Taipei National University of the Arts # 1,
Hsueh-yuan Rd., Peitou, Taipei 112, TAIWAN

Submission Form

Family Name: First Name:

Nationality:

Affiliation/Institution and Position:

Contact e-mail address:

Contact phone number:

Contact postal address:

Title of paper/theme panel/video or image production

Equipment needed:

Posted by jo at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

RFID & the Internet of Things

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Workshop 9 | 10 | 11 May @ Mediamatic

RFID & the Internet of Things Workshop 9 | 10 | 11 May @ Mediamatic: RFID will play a pivotal role in fusing the physical world with the digital. RFID allows for the unique identification of objects, and any kind of online data can be linked to these unique ID's. Here is where the real world and the Internet become two faces of the same reality. What are useful things to have online? How can the sharing of information between things yield us new meanings and experiences? What are important kinds of human agency that should be designed into an Internet of Things?

The participants of this workshop will develop critical, utopian or nightmarish scenarios for an Internet of things. Ideas can range from scripts for small new rituals to outlines of societal changes of epic scale.

The morning sessions are dedicated to lectures on current technology, theory and implementations of RFID. In the afternoons participants will develop their projects. Participants can use the workshop tool consisting of RFID tags, readers and an online database. Experienced staff will be present for technical assistance. The workshop ends with an informal presentation.

PRACTICAL

The workshop has room for 16 designers, artists, thinkers and makers who are interested in this technology and its possible effects. Participation fee is €350 per person, ex BTW. Lunches, technical equipment and assistance are included.
The workshop will take place in the seminar room of Mediamatic, at the 5th floor of the Post CS building, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

If you want to participate in this workshop, please register at our online registration form.

The reader for this workshop can be found here.

For questions or more information, surf to http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11183-en.html, mail to workshops@mediamatic.nl, or call Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: +31 20 6389901.

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

April 13, 2006

Mobilefest 2006 Symposium

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Call for papers and projects

MOBILEFEST is the First International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity, and will take place in September, in São Paulo, Brazil. In its first edition, it aims to discuss the sociological, cultural and esthetics implications that mobile phones and their technologies have been promoting globally. In fact, the global transformations the world has been gone through have modified the way we realize, interpret and represent reality.

Nowadays the great majority of people worldwide make use of numerous mobile devices, and artists, engineers, technologists and civil society propose new applications daily for the use of this recent technology. Therefore, within this context comes MOBILEFEST - International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity, a Brazilian project that consists of the realization of an international symposium, awarding of the best national works that involve mobile technology and educational workshops.

MOBILEFEST 2006 seeks paper and presentation proposals responding to the Symposium themes:

How can Mobile Technology contribute to democracy, culture, art, ecology, peace, education, health and third-sector?


SUBMISSION PROCEDURE FOR OPEN CALLS:

Submissions should be sent by February 28th 2006 via email to
papers@mobilefest.org , papers@mobilefest.com.br including the following information:

Complete name:
Age:
Country:
City:
Telephone number:
Mobile number:
University (optional):
University level (optional):
Proposed category (democracy, culture, art, ecology, peace, education, health and third-sector):

Papers submitted are limited to 30 minutes.
Paper presenters will be grouped thematically according to the proposed category.
Submissions should include a brief description of the proposed presentation (up to 200 words) inclusive work and participants along with appropriate documentation. (rtf, doc or pdf)

Send your submission to: papers@mobilefest.org or papers@mobilefest.com.br

All selected presentations will be Webcast live and also available as podcasts immediately following presentation.

DEADLINES - IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission of proposal abstracts: May 11th, 2006
Notification: June 1th, 2006

For help or questions: festival@mobilefest.org or festival@mobilefest.com.br

http://www.mobilefest.org

Posted by luis at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

Extrapolations

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Call for projects

Wigged Productions in collaboration with curator Humberto Ramirez is seeking Web-based artists working in video, animation and netart to contribute projects for an online exhibition addressing the concept of "EXTRAPOLATIONS" We are particularly interested in works situated outside of mainstream visual strategies, using anachronism, simulacra, radical denial, historical revision, nonlinear narratives, humor etc. The idea of critique as an oblique activity, tangential and tactical is central to this project.

In order to submit your work for consideration, please provide your name, title of project, short synopsis and URL address by email to extrapolations[at]hotmail.com, or alternatively send DVD with QuickTime movie or miniDV by May 25, 2006 with requested information to:

EXTRAPOLATIONS
P.O BOX 1637
BRATTLEBORO, VT 05302-1637

The online exhibition will run from July 1, 2006 through June 15, 2007 and the deadline for submissions is May 20, 2006.

Posted by luis at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2006

FILE Symposium

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Sonic, Ludic, Digital

FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 14 to September 3, 2006. Call for Proposals open from Febraury 10 to April 10, 2006.

FILE is a non-profit cultural organization whose purpose is to disseminate and to develop arts, technologies and scientific research, by means of exhibitions, debates, lectures, and courses. The festival promotes an yearly meeting in Brazil, in the city of São Paulo, of international arts and new-media professionals.

FILE's seventh edition happens at SESI's Art Gallery, with the exhibition of webart, netart, artificial life, hypertext, computer animation, real-time teleconference, virtual reality, software art works, besides games, interactive films, e-videos, digital panoramas, and electronic-art and robotic installations, in interactive and immersive rooms.

Posted by michelle at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

Roy Ascott's off spring

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Eighth Annual Conference - July 22 & 23, 2006

Consciousness Reframed is an international research conference presented by the Planetary Collegium at Plymouth University, concerned with advanced inquiry in the transdisciplinary space between the arts,technology, and the sciences, with consciousness research an integral component of its work.

Posted by michelle at 02:20 AM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2006

taxi_onomy at Dorkfest 2006

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Mobile Cartographic Research Endeavour

On Sunday 19th March from 2-5 pm taxi_onomy will host an informal session concurring with Dorkfest 2006 in which participants will be able to user test its prototype software and city editor. The taxi_onomy cab will be stationed outside limehouse town and available for tagging sessions in and around the local area. Interested parties may show up on the day, or email bea[at]taxionomy.net to book a 20 minute slot in advance.

About taxi_onomy: An art-architecture collaboration, taxi_onomy is a live art project and mobile cartographic research endeavour that re-appropriates the taxi cab as the ultimate vehicle for psycho-geography, based on its capacity for metro processing and spatial understanding. taxi_onomy utilizes the taxi for the purpose of enabling artists and the general public to create and utilise emotional, cognitive and networked maps. Inherently concerned with facilitating authorship, it functions as a live and cumulative archiving device that enables the public to log, classify and order their environment, creating their own mental maps and topographies and overlaying them onto physical space.

Part locative dictionary, part annotation tool, taxi_onomy offers a radical and high quality art tool for the general public to both engage and create with. Devised as a socially interventive navigation device for a networked society, the project engages with people directly in relation to reconsidering their use, appropriation of, and relationship to space.

taxi_onomy is Celine Condorelli and Beatrice Gibson. taxionomy has been supported by Arts Council England, the British Council and V2 Lab Rotterdam

Posted by jo at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

E-FEST 2006 at Brown

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A Celebration of New Literary Hypermedia

E-FEST 2006: A Celebration of New Literary Hypermedia--Brown University, March 22 - March 24, 2006. Participants: Aya Karpinska * Braxton Soderman * Brian Kim Stefans * Daniel Howe * Edrex Fontanilla * Gale Nelson * George Landow * Ilya Kreymer * Jim Carpenter * Judd Morrissey * Lutz Hamel * Michael Stewart * Mike Magee * Nick Montfort * Nick Musurca * Noah Wardrip-Fruin * Polly Hall * Robert Coover * Robert Kendall * Scott Rettberg * Stuart Moulthrop * Wendy Chun.

Schedule of Events: March 22, 8pm – 10:30 -- Circuit Breakers I: Premieres and Performances featuring Judd Morrissey (Chicago Art Institute) and other artists; McCormack Family Theater, 70 Brown Street.

March 23, 10:30am – 5:15pm -- Panels and Symposia; McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute for International Studies, 111 Thayer Street; 10:30am: Memory and Real Time; 2pm: Noulipo: Recombinant Poetics; 3:45: The Game of Fiction; 8pm – 10:30; Circuit Breakers II: Premieres and Performances featuring: Stuart Moulthrop (Baltimore University) and other artists; McCormack Family Theater, 70 Brown Street.

March 24, 11am – 1pm -- Cave Demo, 180 George Street.

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

Neterotopia

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Insertions into Heterotopias

Neterotopia traces the confines of a hybrid space, with a changeable and heterogeneous geography, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia. As opposed to the non-places of Utopia, Heterotopias (literally: places of difference), are defined by Foucalt as “other spaces” capable of accepting difference and possibility, while not detaching from the real world. Neterotopias are therefore inserted into the Network system of communication, observing its rules and limits, while giving a new value to these advertising spaces.

Christophe Bruno, Ghazel, Susan Hefuna, Nathalie Hunter, Yuji Oshima, on Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon, Adam Vackar, Stephen Vitiello, Luca V itone, Version (Gabriela Vanga, Ciprian Muresan and Mircea Cantor), 0100101110101101.ORG. These spaces are thus transformed into exhibition surfaces and points of access to a pathway branching through the public and virtual space of the Internet, the major node of which is the Neterotopia website.

The project, ideated and curated by Daniele Balit, is the result of works between the European organisations NICC (New International Cultural Center), Love Difference and the Pistoletto Foundation. Neterotopia is simultaneously hosted via web by three European exhibition spaces, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the NICC in Antwerp and the Careof in Milan. Through the stations installed in physical space, the public can see the artworks on-line, and experiment with digit@al, a special device by artist Pierre Mertens that puts a new slant on the rules of chatting.

contact: info[at]neterotopia.net
Curated by: Daniele Balit

March 17, Net Art News:

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Ad Space Becomes Art Space

Who says internet art has a small audience or a limited number of venues? Through the end of March, a group of artists culled by curator Daniele Balit will bring messages to the masses via the medium of banner ads on popular websites. The project, called Neterotopia, will also be presented in physical stations at Paris' Palais de Tokyo, Antwerp's NICC, and Milan's Careof. Some of the artists featured use the digital ad platform to continue existing projects, like Ghazel's search for a passport-enabling husband or Stephen Vitiello's translation of his originally book-based Sounds Found project (which collected newspaper descriptions of sound) into a net art piece via presentation of the text on the Village Voice's website. Still others have jumped on the opportunity to create new site-specific works, like Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon's The Weather Project in which they float common, if poetic ponderings about the atmosphere in cloud-like banners on a weather report page.! The Romanian collective, Version, meditates on the process of waiting for sites to load, in 'Loading_an_infinite_of_Kbytes.' They argue that there is 'a paradoxical relationship between the accelerated progress of technology which is set to move the limits and the ever still notion of waiting.' All of the artists involved in Neterotopia bring a self-reflexive jolt to this otherwise static waiting game. - Marisa Olson, Rhizome.org

Posted by jo at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2006

Takeaway Festival

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DiY: from Processing to Physical Computing

The Takeaway Festival at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre is examing the future of DIY culture and media through workshops and exhibitions. From their site: “More and more people are transforming themselves from media consumers to producers - using the new tools, software and technologies now at their disposal. From the expanding realm of free and open source software (FLOSS), to peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and ‘pervasive’ mobile and locative technologies, the possibilities exist as never before to create and disseminate our opinions and experiences through our own media.” Workshops range from Processing to Physical Computing - looks pretty cool indeed. [blogge by Jonah on Coin Operated]

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

DRHA Conference

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An Exceptional Invitation

CFP: Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts, September 3-6, 2006, Dartington: An international invitation and call for participation in a major conference for practitioners and scholars working with digital resources in the Humanities and Arts.

This year the renamed DRHA Conference - Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts - is choosing to bring a new dimension into its standard range of digital projects and interests across the major disciplines of the humanities (archaeology, history, literature, languages, linguistics...) by offering an exceptional invitation to practitioners and scholars working with digital media across the creative, visual, performing and media arts (music, performance, dance, visual arts, gaming, media...).

This development is intended to draw upon and give greater opportunity to consider changes that have occurred through the various applications of digital resources across multi-media platforms and practice-based and practice-led arts research. This development offers an opportunity to all participants involved in either the arts or the humanities to present, witness, experience and exchange knowledge and applications of accessible digital resources, and to appreciate how the collaborative practices of everyone involved with digital resources has a considerable potential to inform and influence other disciplines.

If you are working with digital processes and resources in any discipline in the arts or the humanities or allied subjects, you are warmly invited to consider making a presentation about your work or to articulate your perspective on the key themes of Conference 2006 which will be considering digital strategies, engagements and developments both as of now and in the future.

This significant and unique opportunity for an exchange of views, experience, approaches and knowledge across all the disciplines of both the humanities and the arts involved with digital resources, will be held at Dartington College of Arts (Totnes, Devon, UK) from Sunday September 3rd to Wednesday September 6th, 2006.

The history and environment of Dartington College of Arts make it the perfect location for this Arts and Humanities Conference 2006. Well known as a place of special beauty and seclusion, the performance studios and exhibition facilities are equally superlative and include the 14th Century Great Hall, The Barn Theatre, The Gallery, plus several 'black-box' and 'white-box' studios equipped with highly sophisticated computer installations appropriate for music, sound, theatre, dance, media, exhibition, installation, screenings, demonstrations and presentations of both completed digital works and work in progress; comfortable well-equipped seminar rooms complement these facilities for the presentation of academic papers, panels sessions and debates; outdoor events are possible in the extensive gardens and estate grounds. You can visit Dartington College of Arts online.

For this Conference two websites have been commissioned to give expanded up-to-date Conference details and to provide opportunities for making proposals and registering online. The Dartington venue website is here and the DRHA2006 website (providing further details and facilities for making online proposals and checking the overall Programme as it develops) is here.

On these websites and also duplicated below you will find more detailed information on:
* key themes for Conference 2006;
* how you can participate and make proposals for presentations;
* the variety of presentation formats available;
* additional notes for practitioners with particular technical requirements;
* key dates;
* points of contact for further information.

DRHA Conferences are never less than inspirational for those working with digital resources in the arts and humanities. The conference series has established itself firmly in the UK and international calendar as a major forum bringing together scholars, practitioners, artists, innovators, curators, archivists, librarians, postgraduates, information scientists and computing professionals in an unique and positive way, to share ideas and information about the creation, exploitation, use, management and preservation of digital resources in the arts and humanities and to analyse the all-important contemporary issues surrounding them.

With the advent of DRHA this conference series enters a new decade (the first DRH Conference was at Somerville College, University of Oxford in 1996) and begins an exploration of new horizons in digital resources. I hope you will feel a sense of anticipation and be inclined to join this significant and exceptional Conference 2006 in order to participate in its presentations and debates and to contribute to and further its fine traditions of scholarly, artistic and cultural endeavours and exchange. Further details on how to participate are available on the websites and duplicated below for convenience and easy reference.

I look forward to welcoming you to Dartington and DRHA2006.

Barry Smith
Programme Chair, DRHA Conference 2006
barry.smith[at]bristol.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

VisualComplexity

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A visual exploration on mapping complex networks

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

Not all projects shown are genuine complex networks, in the sense that they aren’t necessarily at the edge of chaos, or show an irregular and systematic degree of connectivity. However, the projects that apparently skip this class were chosen for two important reasons. They either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject. Nevertheless, all projects have one trait in common: the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

So far, VisualComplexity features 304 projects.

VisualComplexity
Manuel Lima
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm

Posted by luis at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2006

Floating Points 3: Ubiquitous Computing

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Panel Discussion TONIGHT!

Panelists: Adam Greenfield, Preemptive Media (Beatriz da Costa, Brooke Singer), and Michelle Teran; Moderator: Helen Thorington--DATE: March 15th, 7:00 p.m.; PLACE: Emerson College, Bill Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street, and LIVE ONLINE.

Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org announce the second panel discussion in their series, Floating Points 3 [FP3] that will address the subject of "Ubiquitous Computing" or "Ubicomp", where computing and wireless capabilities are so integrated into the fabric of everyday life (clothing, cars, homes, and offices) that the technologies recede into the background and become indistinguishable from everyday activities.

ADAM GREENFIELD is an information architect and user-experience consultant whose principal concern over the past half-decade has been “the restoration of human users and their needs to a place of rightful centrality in the design of technical systems.” He is the author of Everyware: the dawning age of ubiquitous computing, to be released this month, which he hopes will explain just what Ubicomp is, how it might effect us, and how we can effect its eventual development. Greenfield is principal of Studies and Observations, a New York City design consultancy. He was previously lead information architect for the Tokyo office of Razorfish.

PREEMPTIVE MEDIA (BEATRIZ DA COSTA, BROOKE SINGER) reengineers your thinking about mobile digital technologies imbedded in everyday environments. In live performances and real time actions the PM art, technology and activist collective disturbs, dislodges, and redesigns new media technologies that are often ignored, like the bar codes on driver's licenses or radio frequency information devices used for EZ pass on highways. At the forefront of what is called locative media, Preemptive Media repositions highly specialized technologies within the democratic discourse of low-tech amateurism. PM will focus on their latest project “Zapped” which addresses the mass implementation of RFID and its contribution to the ever growing field of technology-enhanced surveillance practices.

MICHELLE TERAN is a Canadian media artist who explores the performative potential of objects and space. Within her practice she examines the intertwining of social networks and everyday social spaces with their technological counterparts, and creates performances, installations and online works that are concerned with issues of communication, surveillance, psychogeography, presence, intimacy, social ritual, collaboration and public participation. Teran is co-founder of “LiveForm:TeleKinetics” (with Jeff Mann).

HELEN THORINGTON is co-director of Turbulence.org

Floating Points is co-presented by Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA), a not-for-profit media organization with offices in Boston and New York. It is funded by Emerson College's Office of Academic Affairs, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, School of the Arts, and Department of Visual and Media Arts.

For more information please visit http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/06/index.php

Posted by jo at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

Responding to Gesture and Bodies: Design for Physically Based Interactive Art with Camille Utterback

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Five Merit Scholarships Available

Responding to Gesture and Bodies: Design for Physically Based Interactive Art: Call for Applications: Five Merit Scholarships available for emerging artists to take a one-week course with award-winning interactive artist Camille Utterback. These awards are designed to help artists learn and understand the technologies behind creating Physical-Digital Interfaces and to create a critical context in which to make these works. Scholarships include: Full tuition, materials, lodging and three meals a day for the duration of the course. Winning applicants must provide for their own travel.

Concept: In this workshop students will explore digitally based interactive art that engages human gesture and bodies. The main goal of the workshop is to help students develop a critical context for their own interactive work, and to demystify the technologies behind this type of work - expanding each studentB9s vocabulary in the type of work he/she can do. Students will learn about video tracking technology, working with sensors, potentiometers, microcontrollers and other forms of input, processing, and output. Software used in demonstrations may include Flash, Jitter/Max MSP, Processing, and Basic (for microprocessor and sensor control). For more visit >>

To apply: Send resume, examples of work, and a brief statement that answers the following questions: What is your current work about? Why do you want to take this course and how do you see it effecting your development as an artist? You may apply by mail or e-mail. e-mail applications to kconnerly[at]andersonranch.org mail to:
Attn: Krista Connerly
Re: Program Excellence Scholarship
Anderson Ranch Art Center
5263 Owl Creek Road
Anderson Ranch Art Center
Snowmass Village, CO 81615

Responding to Gesture and Bodies:
Design for Physically Based Interactive Art
Dates: August 14 - 18
Location: Anderson Ranch Art Center, Aspen/Snowmass Colorado
Faculty: Camille Utterback

Faculty: Camille Utterback's ground-breaking work has been exhibited at museums, galleries and festivals across the globe. Utterback's honors and awards include a Transmediale award from the Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award, Berlin (2005), a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002), MIT Technology Review's TR100 - 'the top 100 innovators of the year under 35' (2002). More.

Anderson Ranch Arts Center, located 10 miles outside of Aspen Colorado, is an artistsB9 community offering workshops and residencies. AndersonB9 RanchB9s new expanded digital media program offers classes in animation, video, sound, digital imaging and interactive media. Summer workshop faculty are professionals in their field and include nationally and internationally renowned artists. Residencies are also available for emerging artists wishing to experiment and establish new directions of growth in their work. Please contact digital media program director Krista Connerly with any questions: kconnerly[at]andersonranch.org

Posted by jo at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

Sites and Para-Sites:

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Networking Art

Sites and Para-Sites: Networking Art--Venue: The ICA, Brandon Room, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH: Date: Monday, March 20, 7:30 pm: Tickets: £3/£2 ICA members; ICA box office 020 7930 3647.

The London Consortium, the ICA and NODE.London present a conversation on how networks make artworks. Why might (or might not) media artists and organisations choose to utilise networks to generate and distribute artworks? What does the prevalence of networks in media arts reflect about the increasingly networked character of contemporary culture and society? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the network model in comparison to other organisational structures? A panel of professionals with differing relationships to media arts and its networks will examine these questions and invite discussion from the audience.

Panel includes Ruth Catlow, artist, co-founder and co-director of Furtherfield.org and HTTP [House of Technologically Termed Practice] and a Voluntary Organiser for Node.London ; Kelli Dipple, integrated media and performance artist and Webcasting Curator at Tate; Shu Lea Cheang, digital artist working in the field of net-based installation, social interface and film production; Tom Corby, artist, writer, curator, academic at the University of Westminster, and editor "Network Art: Practices and Positions," recently published by Routledge; Helen Sloan, director of SCAN, the new media art agency in the South of England; and moderator, Professor Steven Connor, Academic Director of the London Consortium.

Posted by jo at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Second Person Preview

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Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

To celebrate the availability of the First Person paperback, I’m happy to share the table of contents for the sequel that Pat Harrigan and I have edited. The new book, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, is currently in the MIT Press production process (and will hopefully appear on shelves this fall). We’re very pleased with how the new book has come together. It includes leading game designers, innovative computer scientists, writers and artists engaging the playful potential of digital media, and scholars who take games and other “playable” media seriously along computational, representational, performance, and ludic dimensions. Plus three appendixes include alternative RPGs from John Tynes, Greg Costikyan, and James Wallis!

I: Tabletop Systems
1) Greg Costikyan: Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String
2) George R.R. Martin on the Wild Cards novels
3) Erik Mona: From the Basement to the Basic Set: The Early Years of Dungeons & Dragons
4) Kenneth Hite: Narrative Structure and Creative Tension in Call of Cthulhu
5) Keith Herber on “The Haunted House”
6) Jonathan Tweet on character creation in Everway
7) Will Hindmarch: Storytelling Games as a Creative Medium
8) Rebecca Borgstrom: Structure and Meaning in Role-Playing Game Design
9) Paul Czege: My Life with Master: The Architecture of Protagonism
10) James Wallis: Making Games That Make Stories
11) Eric Zimmerman: Creating a Meaning-Machine: The Deck of Stories Called Life in the Garden
12) Eric Lang (with Pat Harrigan): Design Decisions and Concepts in Licensed Collectible Card Games
13) Kevin Wilson: One Story, Many Media
14) Bruno Faidutti on Mystery of the Abbey
15) Kim Newman on Life’s Lottery

II: Computational Fictions
1) Jordan Mechner: The Sands of Time: Crafting a Videogame Story
2) Lee Sheldon on And Then There Were None
3) Helen Thorington on Solitaire
4) Jeremy Douglass: Enlightening Interactive Fiction: Andrew Plotkin’s Shade
5) Steve Meretzky: The Creation of Floyd the Robot in Planetfall
6) Nick Montfort: Fretting the Player Character
7) Emily Short on Savoir-Faire
8) Stuart Moulthrop: Pax, Writing, and Change
9) Talan Memmott: RE:Authoring Magritte: The Brotherhood of Bent Billiard
10) Lev Manovich on Mission to Earth
11) Marie-Laure Ryan on Juvenate
12) Mark C. Marino on 12 Easy Lessons to Better Time Travel
13) Chris Crawford: Deikto: A Language for Interactive Storytelling
14) D. Fox Harrell: GRIOT’s Tales of Haints and Seraphs: A Computational Narrative Generation System
15) Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern: Writing Façade: A Case Study in Procedural Authorship
16) Robert Zubek on The Breakup Conversation
17) Mark Keavney on The Archer’s Flight

Part Three: Real Worlds
1) John Tynes: Prismatic Play: Games as Windows on the Real World
2) Sean Thorne on John Tynes’s Puppetland
3) Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca: Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind The Howard Dean for Iowa Game
4) Kevin Whelan: Political Activism: Bending the Rules
5) Jane McGonigal: The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission-Based Gaming
6) Nick Fortugno on A Measure for Marriage
7) Robert Nideffer on unexceptional.net
8) Teri Rueb on Itinerant
9) Tim Uren: Finding the Game in Improvised Theater
10) Joseph Scrimshaw on Adventures in Mating
11) Adrienne Jenik: Santaman’s Harvest Yields Questions, or Does a Performance Happen if it Exists in a Virtual Forest?
12) Torill Elvira Mortensen: Me, the Other
13) Jill Walker: A Network of Quests in World of Warcraft
14) Celia Pearce and Artemesia: Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game Worlds
15) Adrianne Wortzel: Eliza Redux

Appendix I: Puppetland by John Tynes
Appendix II: Bestial Acts by Greg Costikyan
Appendix III: The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by James Wallis

[blogged by Noah on Grand Text Auto]

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

March 14, 2006

Come play Andrew Rivolski

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Testing the Cooperative Phenomenon

Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts, Zemeckis Media Lab (RM 201) on March 16, 2006; 11am-2pm.

ABOUT THE GAME: Andrew Revolski is a multiplayer network game played in an environment consisting of multiple displays. The players are placed in two different remote locations and by having mutual interactions, the game allows the players to experience a cooperative phenomenon.

CONCEPT: We believe that even if a group of people were to be placed in 2 different locations, as long as these people have the same goal and work towards this goal together by communicating and taking cooperative actions with each other, a cooperative phenomenon will occur and unite these group of people who are separated. Andrew Rivolski is a network game focused on this cooperative phenomenon.

GAME DESCRIPTION: The game will be played by 2 teams of players placed in 2 different locations. Each team will play in a room where 3 of the walls function as displays (2 in the front and 1 on each side). The players view the same interface, meteors flying from side to side of the displays towards a lonely satellite. The players of each location must cooperate with each other by using the 9 floor panels placed in each other's rooms to maneuver the satellite with out being hit by meteors.

Andrew Rivolski is a game in which the player must safely control the satellite away from attacking meteors. The average play time of the game is approximately 5 minutes. This is just about enough time for the players to understand the message of the game. There are several stages in the game and as the players get used to the controls, the game should last about 15 minutes until completion. [blogged by Marientina Gotsis on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

Prix Ars Electronica 2006

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Extended Deadline!

Due to numerous requests from artists and submitters, the deadline for submitting entries to this year's Prix Ars Electronica has been extended to March 24, 2006!

The Prix Ars Electronica 2006 is open for entries in the categories: Interactive Art, Net Vision, Computer Animation/Visual Effects, Digital Musics, Digital Communities and [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant. 'u19 - freestyle computing' is Austria's largest computer competition for young people. It has been showcasing the creative potential of emerging artists age 19 and under since 1998.

Details about entering are available online only at http://prixars.aec.at/
NEW Submission Deadline: March 24, 2006

If you have any question concerning the submission, please contact us any time at:

Prix Ars Electronica 2006
AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz
Museumsgesellschaft mbH
Hauptstrasse 2
A-4040 Linz
Code: Prix

Tel: 0732-7272-74
Fax: 0732-7272-674
Skype : prixars
Iris Mayr: info[at]prixars.aec.at

Posted by jo at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2006

M/C Journal

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Call for Papers: 'street'

M/C - Media and Culture is calling for contributors to the 'street' issue of M/C Journal, edited by Kate Oakley and Jinna Tay. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. To find out how and in what format to contribute your work

Street in its most conventional sense represents the link between physical places, but more than that, they are spaces where cultural negotiations are made. They are everyday spaces where the informal meets the formal, and the public meets the private. In other words, they are spaces where unanticipated, sudden encounters may take place, or where ordinary space may be made special. Their utilitarian purpose may be subverted and they become spaces for Formula 1 races, charity runs, street parties, revolutions, protests, and markets. They may be formal sites known for consumption, entertainment, and recreation or where drugs, sex and gambling are found behind closed doors.

Streets are not accidents, they are shaped by social and economic change and in popular media are often seen as shorthand for class and lifestyle differentiation - think Coronation Street, Sesame Street, 42nd Street, Wisteria Lane (Desperate Housewives), or Ramsey Street (Neighbours). They are sites of social inclusion and exclusion - loitering on the street, street kids, living on the street, wrong side of the street, and graffiti on the street all present conflicting notions surrounding shared city spaces.

Yet, knowing your back streets distinguishes one as a local from the outsider. Being street wise is integral to top selling computer games like Grand Theft Auto, Gangland or Sim City, where the strategy lies in competent negotiation of streets. Street credibility is the badge of acceptance for the privileged outsider.

The street is thus a transformative site, given to different cultural practices and a multiplicity of uses. This issue of M/C Journal invites articles relating to 'street' on any of the range of themes outlined above. Send 1000-1500 word articles to street[at]journal.media-culture.org.au.

Article deadline: 1 May 2006
Issue release date: 28 June 2006

M/C Journal was founded (as "M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture") in 1998 as a place of public intellectualism analysing and critiquing the meeting of media and culture. Contributors are directed to past issues of M/C Journal for examples of style and content, and to the submissions page for comprehensive article submission guidelines. M/C Journal articles are blind peer-reviewed.


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

Ars Virtua

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"The Real": On the Border of Butler and Dowden in Second Life

Ars Virtua Gallery and New Media Center is looking for works for our inaugural show. The theme of this show is "The Real" and will be exhibited on the grounds of Ars Virtua which is located on the border of Butler and Dowden in Second Life.

We are looking for 2D media, video and sculpture (including scripts) produced within the 3D engine. All representable media will be accepted for consideration but artists are cautioned to be economical with the number of prims used in sculpture.

For too long "the virtual" has been supplanted by "the real" in the realm of communication and entertainment. We recognize that there is no need for replacement, but for extension. We see that 3D game engines are creating new environments with new rules that are just as tangible as the old ones, but on new terms. Education and art have been waking up to value of simulation as it relates to and does not relate to campus and museum life. The value of simulation or perhaps the threat of it occurs when simulation begins to trump that which it is simulating. That is the purpose of this exhibit, and though it does not make every exhibit in space-time useless or passé it does attempt to offer a wholly electronic alternative, an "other" real.

"The Real" will be juried by a group of artists from the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Please submit files via email in the following formats:
jpeg - no larger than 400x300;
mp4 - no larger than 1mb;
descriptions- no more than 250 words

All submissions and requests for more information should be sent to gallery[at]ArsVirtua.com

Letter of interest due: March 14; Opening: April (TBA)

Posted by jo at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

Glowlab

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Call for Damage

Hello friends,

I'm writing to tell you about a new Glowlab project called DAMAGE, which includes an interactive website and a gallery installation with a large-scale wall drawing, audio and video works and a series of small drawings.

We've just launched the site* -- please check it out and add some damage. The first few hundred contributions will become part of the gallery installation so I hope you'll participate! If you like the project please post it/blog it/pass it on...

+ Drawing studies from the project are being shown this weekend at Pulse New York [details below] + Glowlab is publishing a DAMAGE project CD in a limited-edition of 500 [you can pre-order one from the website] + The DAMAGE project press release is on the website under "Exhibition Information."

+ Please mark April 7th on your calendar -- that's the date of the opening reception and I'd love to see you there.

cheers & happy spring,
Christina

--
Christina Ray . Director . Glowlab
http://www.glowlab.com
http://myspace.com/glowlab

* We're still tweaking and fixing some bugs on this new site so please bear with us, and feedback is appreciated!

DAMAGE at Pulse

I'll have new DAMAGE project drawings on view with DCKT Contemporary at the Pulse New York art fair from March 10-13:
http://www.pulse-art.com/ny/

Booth: #407

The fair takes place at the 69th Regiment Armory located on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street.

Hours:
Friday, March 10 – noon to 8 PM
Saturday, March 11 – noon to 8 PM
Sunday, March 12 – noon to 8 PM
Monday, March 13 – noon to 5 PM

Posted by jo at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

Computational Models of Creativity in the Arts

Call for Participation

DEADLINE APPROACHING: 19 March 2006. Computational Models of Creativity in the Arts, a two-day workshop--Tuesday 16 to Wednesday 17 May 2006. A partnership between Goldsmiths and Birkbeck Colleges and the University of Sussex. Hosted by Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Including a public evening performance/exhibition event on the 16 May curated by BLIP and the Computer Arts Society at the Science Museum's Dana Centre in Knightsbridge. The proceedings will be a special issue of Digital Creativity Journal (2007:1), Routledge.

Call for Participation: This workshop will bring together practitioners and researchers who are involved in the use of computational systems in the fine and performing arts, literature, design and animation as well as the associated fields of aesthetics, cognitive science, art history and cultural theory. It especially invites those involved in the computational analysis and modelling of creative behaviour to meet and share their experiences and explore the potential of co-operative future ventures. It is intended that this call should interest the widest possible constituency. However a very broad list of (non-exclusive) descriptors might include:

* the application of computational and generative methodologies
in the arts and related creative disciplines
* computational approaches to creativity, cognition and
aesthetics
* the application of artificial intelligence and artificial life
* the application of evolutionary and adaptive systems
* cultural applications of computing and digital electronics in
general

Categories of Submission

* Position papers, posters, abstracts, etc...
Places are limited! Please send in a one-page (maximum) outline
of why you (and your colleagues) would like to attend and what
you could contribute and/or how you might benefit. Include URLs
to relevant projects/experience where possible
* Artworks, performances, etc...
Please submit a one-page proposal including technical
requirements. Include URLs where possible

Deadline: The deadline for outlines and proposals is 19 March 2006. They should be sent to the conference chairs as PDF attachments to an email with the subject "CMCA Workshop Submission."

Co-Chairs

* Paul Brown, University of Sussex - paul[at]paul-brown.com
* Janis Jeffries, Goldsmiths - j.jefferies[at]gold.ac.uk
* Nick Lambert, Birkbeck - nick.lambert[at]gmail.com

Organising Committee

* Catherine Mason, Birkbeck
* Tim Blackwell, Goldsmiths
* Jon Bird, University of Sussex
* Miguel Andres-Clavera, Goldsmiths
* In-Yong Cho, Goldsmiths
* Maria x, Goldsmiths

Advisory Committee

* Margaret Boden, University of Sussex
* Phil Husbands, University of Sussex
* Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney
* Charlie Gere, University of Lancaster
* Mitchell Whitelaw, University of Sussex
* Sue Gollifer, University of Brighton
* Tony Longson, California State University, Los Angeles
* Adrian David Cheok, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
* Dustin Stokes, University of Sussex

Funded by the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise - LCACE - and the University of Sussex.

Posted by jo at 07:02 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2006

CHINA GATES: Mobile Music Performance

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Work for Tuned Gongs and Wrist Conductor

The Digital Art Weeks 2006, organized by members of the Computer Science Department of the ETH Zurich, is looking for up to twelve persons who are interested in contemporary music and art who would be interested in participating on a voluntary basis for the performance of a new Mobil-Music work under the direction of Sound Artist, Art Clay using GPS and mobile computer technologies.

Aesthetically, the work China Gates for tuned gongs and Wrist Conductor is rooted in works for open public space and belongs to a series of works, which celebrate the use of innovative mobile technologies to explore public space and audience. The work is technically based on possibilities of synchronizing a group of performers using the clock pulse emitted by satellites. The GPS Wrist Conductor signals each player when to hit the gong. An intense rippling effect results as the players gradually move around the park and the music of the gongs shift back and fourth from intense chords to exotic melodies.

The preparation for the event will take place in the form of a mini-workshop on mobile music and sound in open space.

Persons interested in participating are asked to apply by sending a message to the below stated email address. Please include a short biography (50 words) telling us about yourself and why you would you like to participate. Selected players will receive a festival pass for all Digital Art Weeks 06 events. Send to arthur.clay[at]inf.ethz.ch

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

Webmonkey's Interview with Shawn O'Keefe

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SXSW Interactive

The 2006 edition of SXSW Interactive takes place in Austin, Texas from March 10th to March 14th. The conference and festival, which focuses primarily on technology and the web, runs along side the SXSW Film festival. On the 15th, the day after the interactive conference ends, central Texas turns into the hottest music spot on earth as over 1300 bands from all over the world descend upon Austin for the SXSW Music festival.

Webmonkey's Bryan Zilar recently sat down with Shawn O'Keefe, Festival Coordinator of SXSW Interactive. They discussed the different ways that the emergence of new technologies such as online film distribution, digital communities, blogs and videoblogs are changing the face of SXSW. Shawn also told us about some of the Web 2.0 collaboration tools [Jambo] that the festival organizers have employed to help build a stronger sense of community among the conference participants. And finally, Shawn sheds some light on the mysterious gathering known as Nuclear Taco Night. This Webmonkey Q&A is also available as a podcast (8.1MB MP3).

Posted by jo at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

Beall Center for Art and Technology

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Call for Proposals

The Beall Center for Art and Technology supports artistic exploration and experimentation in new technologies through a competitive exhibition grant program. We are currently soliciting proposals for exhibition years 2007 and 2008. The proposals will be reviewed in April of 2006 by the Beall Center Curatorial Review Committee, and artists notified in Summer of 2006.

The Beall Center produces exhibitions and performances in the visual arts, theater, dance, and music, and particularly seeks works that successfully integrate new forms or uses of technology with artistic production or performance. In addition, as the Beall Center has an exceptionally well-
developed and flexible technological infrastructure, preference will be given to works that can not easily be displayed or performed elsewhere.

Artists, curators, or institutions are eligible to submit proposals. Priority is given to cross-disciplinary projects. Materials will only be accepted in electronic form -- cd or dvd preferred. (You can use PowerPoint to present your work.) Deadline: April 15 2006.

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

Media Mutandis: a NODE.London Reader

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Surveying Art, Technologies and Politics

Media Mutandis: a NODE.London Reader (edited by Marina Vishmidt, with Mary Anne Francis, Jo Walsh and Lewis Sykes) is now available.

NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] is committed to building the infrastructure and raising the visibility of media arts practice in London. Working on an open, collaborative basis, NODE.London culminates, in its first year, in a month long season of media arts projects across London in March 2006.

The NODE.London Reader (surveying art, technologies and politics) projects a critical context around the Season of Media Arts in London March 2006 and provides another discursive dimension to the events of October 2005's Open Season. It engages debates in FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software), media arts and activism, collaborative practices and the political economy of cultural production in the present day. It includes essays and artist projects from Sabeth Buchmann, Toni Prug, Armin Medosch, Simon Yuill, Chad McCail, Critical Art Ensemble, Jo Walsh, Richard Barbrook, Michael Corris, Harwood, Agnese Trocchi, Matthew Fuller, Rasmus Fleischer and Palle Torsson, Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, Matteo Pasquinelli and Francis McKee. It is available at a range of NODE.London public events throughout March, and as a POD (Print On Demand) through the website. Check the website for further outlets as they become available, as well as news and additional texts. Media Mutandis carries a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence.

Posted by jo at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

Public Lecture

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JODI's -A- Project

Wednesday 22 March | 18.00 - 19.30 hrs; Location: Collegezaal, Overblaak 85, Rotterdam; Free, all welcome. JODI, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans present work-in-progress on a new project for Rotterdam:

The Navigator(TM) writes a message on the map.(Walk-a-Letter) (Bike-a-Word) (Drive-a-Book) (Swim-a-Smiley :) The trajectories form sentences in time. (Blue follows Black) How long does it take for an anonymous scooter to drive a legible word? The map of Rotterdam can display a thousand storyboards. (This way#Red - Walk#Green) How to read/write this book while in motion. (Roadmovie-Between the Lines- Passagenwerk) A:"Drive slowly to your work-Turn Right". A long text to go on a mobile screen. (GPSaccounting-Time) Numbers in the White Pages® of public transport. (La Linea-Bookmark/ Landmark- Latitude:Longitude)

The irregular citygrid shapes a trembling %Local fontstyle. Through the urgent handwriting (follow my footsteps) a text appears. (Ink on wheels) WHOIS writing/driving the city and WHEREAMI in the story (Alphaville-Storyville-Dogville) Can Pattern recognition on these unreadable maps help me find directions? How to unscramble Haiku-maps? Am i on a journey in a message? An age long mess of roadworks, the Library of the street (Order-Dialect-Slang- Obscene- SMS) To read your line, call this website anytime. Find a secret trace in the shopping crowd. The irregular "structure" of streets (SOS), and its access resolution, determines how/where the writing layout takes place. (Map-layers vs alined page) Start-a-thread.

JODI (http://www.jodi.org/) are the current Research Fellow in Media Design Research. Once completed, -A- Project will be available for use online. The lecture is presented by Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam.

Posted by jo at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

ANAT's [MEDIA STATE]

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A Tapestry of Media Arts Interventions

[MEDIA STATE] examines the increasing role of media arts in the public realm - exploring technologically created spaces and how media art can be used as a tool for social, political and creative intervention.

Media States Forum: Media artists work in public through mobile phone artwork, guerilla style projections, bio-art performances, architecturally embedded sound bytes and video in transportation nodes. Supporting these practices is a tapestry of Media Arts residential projects and networking across the Asia Pacific region. Facilitated by MELINDA RACKHAM with the participation of ALISON CARROLL, DEBORAH KELLY, and STEVE KURTZ.

Hard Copy: Hard Copy is a professional, strategic workshop facilitated by ROGER MALINA on publishing the outcomes of, and criticism about, interdisciplinary creative art practices. Co-organised by ANAT and Creativity and Cognition Studios with the participation of Fibreculture Network, RealTime, Leonardo publications Australia Council for the Arts, Smart Internet Technology CRC, and the Australian Research Council.

Mobile Journeys: OPENING SUNDAY 12 MARCH - 3PM @ State Library Treasures Wall Mobile Journeys is an exhibition of art made for mobile phones, which will both inspire you and challenge the way you think about and use your phone. Videos, games and wallpapers will be available for free distribution to your mp3 players, PDAs, and mobile phones, via an Aura Hypertag Billboard.

Festival projects supported by [MEDIA STATE] are:

The Peoples' Portrait by artist ZHANG GA lights up Adelaide and other cities around the world with reciprocal large-scale portrait projections intertwining local and global audiences.

CARSTEN NICOLAI'S alva noto presents a compelling audiovisual performance of sound compositions morphed into electronic projections.

Project 3 delivers a rich program of electronic and computer music and film by local, national and international artists including ROBIN MINNARD.

Emerging Fields Forum provides a platform for four internationally renowned media artists to discuss their practice.

ARI workshops are two dynamic events, skilling up participants in the practical applications of setting up and managing Artist Run Initiatives and publishing Blogs and Zines.

We are happy to supply you with multiple copies of our [MEDIA STATE] edition of Filter magazine with critical texts covering the issues and events in this program, for you university, department or organisation. Please email Jen Brazier (jen[at]anat.org.au) to arrange collection or mailing.

ANAT is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, by the South Australian Government through Arts SA and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2006

Make TV

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Make Your 15 Minutes of Fame

Every Thursday during May, Make TV will host a programme of live webcasts curated by Sideshow and created, potentially, by you! Artists are invited to plug in their webcams and beam live to the net for their very own fifteen minutes of fame. An online audience will interact with performers and vote for their favorite broadcasts. Make TV programs will be available online, for 48 hours, to view and download. The project combines a web interface with plug-and-play web streaming technology, meaning no additional software or server costs for the broadcaster, and is designed for anyone with the desire to create live content. The concept was developed by Active Ingredient, a UK company which combines the digital arts with web design and development. The submission deadline for May's program is Monday, March 20th, and the clock is already ticking, so grab your 15 minutes now! - Helen Varley Jamieson, Rhizome.org

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

WHAT SURVIVES:

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SONIC RESIDUES IN BREATHING BUILDINGS

Consisting of three major gallery-based sound installations and a program of commissioned works for two sound stations in the building, WHAT SURVIVES explores the real and imagined remnants of human presence in architecture.

The structures we build bear silent witness to our human behaviour—what have the walls, beams and girders absorbed and what sonic secrets can be coaxed back out of them? Does this ephemeral material influence the energy of the spaces we inhabit? Taking inspiration from Rilke, WHAT SURVIVES conveys the indestructibility of energy and its subsequent transformations and manifestations.

GALLERY ARTISTS: Nigel Helyer, Jodi Rose, Alex Davies

SOUND STATION ARTISTS: Garry Bradbury, Joyce Hinterding, Aaron Hull, Somaya Langley, Sumugan Sivanesan, Amanda Stewart

CURATOR: Gail Priest

OPENING: 24 March 2006, 6-8pm
EXHIBITING: 25 March - 22 April 2006, Wed - Sat 12- 6pm

ARTIST'S TALK: Sat 25 March 2006 2-4pm
GUEST SPEAKER: Densil Cabrera, Co-ordinator of The Graduate Audio Design Program in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney

PERFORMANCE SPACE
199 Cleveland St Redfern, Sydney, Australia 2012
http://www.performancespace.com.au

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

March 07, 2006

Post PowerPoint - Into the Web

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Increasing Outreach via Flickr Slideshows

I've been studying PowerPoint; I've shared some of my notes here before. Now from Howard, links to a new kind of presentation:

Integrated Flickr slideshows, Creative Commons remixes of images found on Flickr, with a slideshow or outline that makes the topic accessible to the web audience. Considering that many people at most technology conferences attend lectures with laptops in their laps, if you're not making a big play for a show-stopping handwaver of a lecture, you might as well understand the audience will be attending the present and future of your published outline online.

Here's a good sample Online Outline, which was turned into a Flickr Slideshow. Increasing outreach - appropriate for their topic "Knowledge Sharing with Distributed Networking Tools..." [posted by jhall on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Interview with Christophe Bruno

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Diverting Global Symbolic Structures

"Sascha: Can you tell in a few sentences what most of your work is about?

Christophe Bruno: If you look at my work, I guess you will find that it mostly deals with the idea of diverting global symbolic structures like Google search engine, news portals or the blogosphere etc. I made quite a few pieces using language as a medium, but trying to grasp what I thought had been renewed by the rise of the Web: Semantic capitalism, Joycean epiphanies or formerly...

I also made some pieces about the question of the image, but always in relation to language or to some critical context, like fascinum or non-weddings.

Then I've been exploring wireless technologies, as in WiFi-SM. But I think that parody (well it's not a parody anymore since I built the device since then) also tells you something about my position concerning the relation I see between art and technology. I have strong attachments to the original net.art movement but I don't consider myself as a digital artist, term which doesn't mean anything to me." Full interview at we make money not art.

Posted by jo at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Cybersonica 06: International Festival of Music, Sound, Art and Technology

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Call for Submissions

As part of Cybersonica 06, there will be a two-week exhibition of sonic artworks. These works will explore new forms of interactivity, moving away from the keyboard and mouse and into the physical realm.

We are now accepting submissions of existing sonic art works from artists wishing to exhibit and present at this year’s festival. These works may be interactive installations, new electronic musical devices, physical audiovisualisers, tangible interfaces, modified game engines (for example).

Works should be playful, engaging and must use non-mouse/keyboard interaction. Deadline: Friday, 31st March 2006; Notification: Monday, 10th April 2006; Festival: 04th - 26th May 2006.

Posted by jo at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2006

Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies

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Call for Action-Oriented Work

The Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies (PIPS) is pleased to announce its third annual Provflux, a weekend-long event dedicated to artistic and social investigations in psychogeography. Part festival and part conference, it will bring together visual, performance, and new media artists, along with writers, urban adventurers and the general public. Events will take place throughout Providence to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city.

This year, we are asking for only action-oriented work. We have decided not to host a gallery show full of past events' documentation, but instead to host performances, interventions, games, discussions, and any other events that should be presented in the urban sphere. We're serious about getting out of the gallery and putting the show back in the streets where it belongs. flux 2006 will be held in conjunction with the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Posted by jo at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2006

PLENUM at NodeL.

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Poly-Independent Systems

PLENUM at NodeL is a plenary meeting session in 12 hours, 5 acts , 2 interludes; plus the optional epilogue. When: 7pm, March 25 to 7am, March 26, 2006 (door opens 6pm). Where: Lime House Townhall, East London. Admission by a piece of raw (meat, fish, veggie +++++++++++). PLENUM is a + xxxxx collaboration in association with Open Congress and Boxing Club. Call for participants and Pd-ers, please register and sign in.

PLENUM is a novel event format governed by a live-algorithm that can variably be adapted to a number of issues affecting communities, groups and initiatives within the independent, self- organising framework of net culture today.

PLENUM refers to the space of open public meetings and public speeches/debates as a commons. The project relates to the current discourse on open source software and open culture practice. It strives to probe consensual and participatory organisations, hold to account notions of transparency, shared commons and the underlying power structures.

PLENUM comes out of KOP's ongoing research project Commons/Tales and its "RULE OUT: Autonomy takes on Openness" workshop session at Open Congress, Tate Britain 2005. PLENUM at NodeL takes into account the media funding initiative and self-organizing efforts that produces this citywide London media season of March, 2006. On a larger scheme, PLENUM is concerned with the poly-independent system that we operate within.

In collaboration with , XXXXX orchestrates five expanded software acts with readily extendible Pd (pure data), SuperCollider patches or any networked OSC-enabled code. The software is concerned with an interface which operates in two directions - from the realm of speculative or expanded software (aka. the social) to the reduced yet equally effective realm of codified software and (as output, as interference, as noise) the entry of executed results back. A repetitive return trip. A two way street.

We invite media practitioners , cultural workers , Pders and all speculative coders in any chosen language, who are part or not part of NodeL as speakers, moderators, performers, and participants for PLENUM's 12 hour tour de force. With an aim at developing a working module for agenda setting and self-organization, PLENUM further explores the tension between the individual and the group voice, the human material and machine factor, the coming together and the falling apart, ultimately, the potential escalation of arguments leading to the (un)aviodable crash of self-made social units. Hopefully, a final walk out to River Thames at sunrise would revive the drained codes and souls.

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

For All Audiences

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Defying the Perverse Machinery of "Audience Dictatorship"

For All Audiences: 2 March to 7 May 2006; Opening: Thursday 2 March 2006 at 8.00 pm; sala rekalde, Alameda de Recalde, 30 Bilbao 48009 (Spain).

In this group exhibition, curated by Xabier Arakistain, 28 artists from the Basque Country, Spain and elsewhere in the world redefine the traditional concept of the public space. From the very beginning, publicity and the mass media have radically enlarged the idea of the public square, as the complex control mechanisms that regulate them have reached new levels of sophistication. A new panorama in which the intention to keep the invisible control nevertheless persists.

The exhibition informs of the new critical discourses that have been questioning in recent years the uses and abuses imposed on citizenship by marketing strategies, particularly delving into the revolutionary feminist theorisations of the division between the public and the private spheres. At the same time, the show proclaims sexist contents and other interests, both economic and ideological, that prevail in publicity messages today and shape these hegemonic spaces very often. brings together the work of 28 young artists which, being concerned about these issues, defy the perverse machinery of the so-called "audience dictatorship" that would want us to believe that critical contents are of no interest to a wider audience.

In the 60s of last century, the International Situationist - probably the most important artistic movement influenced by marxism - developed a series of artistic strategies in order to oppose to the traditions of the 19th century, that used to defend the "innocence" of art. Among those situationist strategies, the détournement prevails as a way to distort the meaning of different elements that have been gathered in order to reach a completely new meaning. The works of art showed in this exhibition can be considered as contemporary examples of détournement, as the world of publicity, urbanism, cinema, writing and the mass media are distorted through them.

Taking part in the exhibition are works of artists of the stature of Txomin Badiola, Cecilia Barriga, Anat Ben-David, Bene Bergado, Blami, Daniele Buetti, Minerva Cuevas, Kajsa Dahlberg, Tracey Emin, Chus García-Fraile, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, Guerrilla Girls, Immo Klink, Jakob Kolding, Chris Korda, Elke Krystufek, Matthieu Laurette, Cristina Lucas, Mateo Maté, Carmen Navarrete, Itziar Okariz, Pripublikarrak, PSJM, Jill Sharpe, Carly Stasko, Zhou Tiehai, Mark Titchner and Li Wei.

The show will be accompanied by a catalogue published in Basque, Spanish and English, and extensively illustrated with works from the exhibition and installation shots taken by Begoña Zubero. The publication will also include essays written by Xabier Arakistain, the exhibition curator; and by the art critics Eduardo García Nieto, José Luis Brea, Itxaso Mendiluze, Beatriz Herráez, Emma Dexter and Leire Vergara. The catalogue published by sala rekalde will be designed by Rosa Lladó and distributed at an international level by Revolver Verlag.

For All Audiences has received the support of Bilbao City Council’s Department for Women’s Affairs and Development Co-operation, Biscay Provincial Council’s Department of Gender Policies and the Institut Français of Bilbao.

For further information, please contact:
Constanza Erkoreka, Press and Communication
Tel. +34 94 406 87 07
Fax. +34 94 406 87 54
salarekalde[at]bizkaia.net

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2006

CONFLUX 2006

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Call for Submissions

CONFLUX 2006 - September 14 - 17. 2006--Conflux is the annual New York City festival where visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers, researchers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city. Say hello to Brooklyn! In 2006, Conflux will be held in Brooklyn for the first time. McCaig-Welles Gallery in Williamsburg will serve as our headquarters, with events taking place in and around the gallery.

Conflux 2006 is produced by Glowlab and curated by Glowlab and iKatun.

HOW TO APPLY: Please read the guidelines below, and enter your submission online at: http://conflux2006.glowlab.com

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 10 April, 2006, 11:59pm EST

CONFLUX SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Participants in Conflux share an interest in psychogeography. Projects presented range from interpretations of the classical approach developed by the Situationists to emerging artistic, conceptual and technology-based practices.

At Conflux, participants, along with attendees and the public, put these investigations into action on the city streets. The city becomes a playground, a laboratory and a space for the development of new networks and communities.

WHAT TO SUBMIT: Here are examples of the types of projects and events we're looking for:

- exploratory drifts/dérives
- walks with hacked maps or experimental navigation techniques
- alt.tours by foot, bike, subway, bus
- social/environmental research and fieldwork
- workshops
- temporary public-space installations/interventions
- performance projects
- street games
- mobile-tech/locative media projects
- social networking projects that focus on cities and urban life
- project presentations, panel discussions and lectures.
- film/video works for a film series event.
- audio projects and musical performances for night events

Projects may take place in the neighborhood surrounding the gallery, in
other public-space locations in NYC, in the gallery or in a different venue
you provide.

PLEASE NOTE: We are not doing an exhibition this year. You may provide
handouts, maps, flyers, etc. for your project but not artwork for the walls.
There will be wi-fi in the gallery.

ABOUT FUNDING: Conflux cannot provide individual project funding, but we may be able to assist in other ways, such as providing a letter of support, the help of our volunteers and discounts at local restaurants and other businesses.

PROJECT SELECTION: These are the criteria the curators use in selecting projects for Conflux:

1. Relevance: How does the project relate to psychogeography? Does it address issues central to classic psychogeography and/or propose new methods? Does the project take a unique approach to exploring/understanding/changing the city and/or local neighborhood?
2. Experience: How do people experience the project? Is the public experience of the project well-thought-through? Does it encourage dialogue between the diverse communities of New York City?
3. Feasibility: Is the project scope reasonable? Does the project have its own funding? Can the participants travel to Conflux with their own funds?

SCHEDULE
10 April 2006: Call for Proposals deadline
01 May: notifications sent
14 - 17 September: Conflux 2006

QUESTIONS? Contact conflux[at]glowlab.com

ABOUT GLOWLAB: Glowlab is an artist-run production and publishing lab engaging urban public space as the medium for contemporary art and technology projects. We track emerging approaches to psychogeography, the exploration of the physical and psychological landscape of cities. Our annual Conflux festival, exhibitions, events and our bi-monthly web-based magazine support a network of artists, researchers and technologists around the world.

ABOUT iKATUN: In South Slavic, "katun" means "temporary village" and is used to designate seasonal communities near pastures and bodies of water. iKatun's mission is to foster and develop temporary communities that experiment with art, geography and political engagement in everyday life. iKatun provides fiscal sponsorship to artists, produces experimental educational gatherings such as conferences, walks and reading groups, and conducts field research with the Institute for Infinitely Small Things.

Posted by jo at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

TRANSMEDIA :29:59: Grafik Dynamo and Mario Trilogy

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Media Art in Public Urban Space

March 1 - 31, 2006: 29th minute: Myfanwy Ashmore - Mario Trilogy; 59th minute: Kate Armstrong + Michael Tippett - Grafik Dynamo--Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto.

Year Zero One is pleased to present TRANSMEDIA :29:59, a year long exhibition on the pedestrian level video billboard at Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. Launched August 1st 2005, TRANSMEDIA :29:59 features one minute video works 24/7 every half hour on the 29th and 59th minutes. Featured for the month of March is Myfanwy Ashmore's Mario Trilogy and Kate Armstrong + Michael Tippett's Grafik Dynamo.

Kate Armstrong + Michael Tippett’s Grafik Dynamo is a net.art work that loads live images from blogs and news sources on the web into a live action comic strip. The work is currently using a feed from LiveJournal. The images are accompanied by narrative fragments that are dynamically loaded into speech and thought bubbles and randomly displayed. The work takes an experimental approach to open ended narrative, positing a new hybrid between the flow of data animating the work and the formal perameter that comprises its structure.

Myfanwy Ashmore's Mario Trilogy is three hacked versions of the original Super Mario Brothers video games dumped to single channel video output for Transmedia :29:59. 'Mario Trilogy' is part of the 'CONTROLLER: Artists Crack the Game Code' exhibition at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre from February 24 - March 25, 2006.

TRANSMEDIA :29:59 is curated by Michael Alstad + Michelle Kasprzak

Year Zero One gratefully acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council,Yonge-Dundas Square and Clearchannel for their support of Transmedia :29:59

YEAR ZERO ONE is an artist run site which operates as a network for the dissemination of digital culture and new media through web based exhibitions, site-specific public art projects, an extensive media arts directory and blog.

Posted by jo at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

Node London: b>b>d>s bodydataspace

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Body-Reactive Interfaces, Large Screen Displays and Public Interventions

b>d>s bodydataspace, visionary integration of the body, technologies and environments. Two evenings examining the growing crossover between body-reactive interfaces, large screen displays and public/performative interventions. 6th March: SWAP (Portugal); Andrew Chetty (The Public); Steve Dixon (Brunel University); Sophia Lycouris. 13th March: Sheron Wray/Fleeta Siegel (texterritory); Keith Watson (Martello Towers Jaywick); United Video Artists; David Cotterell. Plus inputs across both evenings on work by bodydataspace, kondition pluriel (Canada), Masaki Fujihata (Japan) and more.

*b>d>s* specialise in the participation of the public and performers in real-time environments where the content generated enhances human attributes such as identity, memory, touch and presence. This 'body at the centre' view is unique and necessary for effective, interactive environments for public involvement. The body of the public and the performer is now engaged in the creative generation of data in a variety of environments and interactive installations enabling exploration of the future potentials of the human body to control and influence data.

*b>d>s*will show examples from artists who are creating interactive environments immersing the body in reactive data. These events are aimed at creating exchange, debate and vision-sharing between movement and digital artists and practitioners. The focus will be on a deeper consideration of the attributes and creativity of the human body itself.

Click here for map link to b>d>s Studio

NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] is a month
long season of media arts projects across London in March 2006.

Leanne Bird
Project Producer
bodydataspace b>d>s

A: Axe & Bottle Court, 70 Newcomen Street, London Bridge, London SE1 1YT
T: +44 (0) 20 7357 0824
F: +44 (0) 20 7357 0825

Posted by jo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2006

Engendering Urban Public Space

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PUKAR Gender and Space Call for Papers

The PUKAR Gender and Space project has been researching the relationship between women and public space for the last two and a half years. We are currently at the writing stage of our research and would like to share our observations and analysis as well as receive inputs from the experiences of others who have been working on similar lines. To that end, we invite researchers, activists, advocates, journalists, architects, pedagogues and others working in the area of gender in relation to urban public space to a roundtable discussion of questions of engendering safety, infrastructure and citizenship.

We refer to public space as a part of the public sphere. Public spaces for the purposes of this roundtable refers to streets, market places (across class contexts – that is including bazaars and malls); recreational spaces such as parks, theatres, restaurants, coffee shops; infrastructure such as subways, foot-over-bridges and public toilets; and modes of public transport including railway stations and bus stops.

What we are looking for are presentations of research papers / studies / explorations that have engaged with questions of gender in relation to space, particularly urban public space. Each presentation is intended to be not longer than 15 minutes to leave more time for discussion. Presenters will receive an honorarium but the costs of travel and boarding will have to be covered by participants themselves. Date: 12 April 2006; Location: Mumbai. Please mail queries and abstracts of presentations to genderspace[at]pukar.org.in by March 10th, 2006.

Potential areas of focus could include:

Shrinking Public Spaces
Safety
Questions of Morality and Culture-policing
Sexuality and the City
Woman-friendly design
Legal concerns
Policy related matters
Infrastructure

For more information on the PUKAR Gender and Space project please see: www.pukar.org.in

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research)

Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001
Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152
Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561
Email:: pukar[at]pukar.org.in
Website:: www.pukar.org.in

Posted by jo at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Christian Nold

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Greenwich Emotion Map

Greenwich Emotion Map by Christian Nold, Oct 2005 - March 2006: 6 month artist commission hosted by Independent Photography as part of 'Peninsula', a series of artist commissions on the Greenwich Peninsula.

Artist Christian Nold has been invited to collaborate with local residents from the Greenwich Peninsula to explore the area afresh and build an emotion map of the area that explores people's relationship with their local environment.

The project is set up as a series of participatory workshops that invite people to borrow a Bio Mapping device and go for a walk. The device measures the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is an indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. The resulting maps encourage personal reflection on the complex relationship between us, our environment and our fellow citizens. By sharing this information we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.

As part of Node London, two separate public workshops will take place in March at Independent Photography, where people will be able to see the collective Greenwich Emotion Map as well as participate by going for their own walk in the local area.

A printed 'Greenwich Emotion Map' wall poster will be available from Independent Photography as well as a number of other local Node London venues.

"Will seeing other people's experiences, allow us to engage differently with our environment?"

Please contact us if you want to join in christian[at]emotionmap.net

Posted by jo at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

AsylumNYC

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Call for Non-US Artists to Exhibit/Live in NYC

Wooloo Productions and White Box present AsylumNYC: an opportunity for non-US artists to exhibit and live in New York City. AsylumNYC will provide a talented artist with both a solo show at a recognized New York institution and the legal aid necessary to obtain an artists visa in the United States of America.

Location: White Box, 525 West 26th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), New York, New York 10001. Date: April 24, 2006, 8PM – April 29, 2006. All interested artists are encouraged to apply before April 1, 2006.

CREATIVE ASYLUM IN NEW YORK CITY: Based on the concept under exploration by Wooloo Productions in AsylumHOME.net, which addresses the difficulties faced by asylum seekers in Europe, AsylumNYC targets the challenge faced by artists interested in working in the United States.

After an online application process, White Box’s gallery space will become a creative asylum where successful applicants will be invited to develop a work/project from April 24 to April 29, 2006. Projects must actively challenge a regime(s) of exclusion in New York by including otherwise excluded individuals from cultural, economic or physical structures in the City.

Once an artist’s project is selected, AsylumNYC will provide a free lawyer to try to obtain a O- artist visa. If successful, the artist will be awarded the opportunity to stay in New York for three years.

February 8, 2006 marks the launch of the www.AsylumNYC.com where interested artists may apply until the April 1 deadline. To apply for asylum, artists must be able to be present at White Box, 525 West 26th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), New York, New York 10001 on April 24th, 2006 at 8 PM and STAY until 6:00pm on April 29th, 2006. While staying at White Box, the artists will be provided with lodging and food, but cannot leave the premises for the duration of the week.

ABOUT: Wooloo Productions is a provider of public and experimental spaces. Acting on the level of facilitation, every Wooloo production aims to encourage new forms of interaction and agency among members of diverse communities.

AsylumNYC is produced and organized by Wooloo Productions in close collaboration with White Box and the Franklin Furnace Archive in New York.

For more information, please email Martin Rosengaard, Media Manager: Martin[at]wooloo.org or call: +49 (0) 30 6676 3097

Please visit http://www.AsylumNYC.com for all project details.

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2006

Armin Medosch

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Technological Determinism in Media Art

"Abstract: Technological determinism is the belief that science and technology are autonomous and the main force for change in society. It is neither new nor particularly original but has become an immensely powerful and largely orthodox view of the nature of social change in highly industrialised societies. In this paper I analyse the presence of technological determinism in general discourses about the relationship between social change and science and technology. I show that techno-determinist assumptions underlie developments in what is called technoscience, a term describing new practices in science and technology with particular relevancy for the related fields of genetic engineering and computer science. Those areas create a specific set of narratives, images and myths, which is called the techno-imaginary. The thesis of my paper is that the discourse on media art uncritically relies on many elements of the techno-imaginary. A specific type of media art, which is identifiable with people, institutions and a period in time, is particularly engaged with the tropes of the techno-imaginary. This strand, which I call high media art, successfully engaged in institution building by using techno-determinist language. It achieved its goals but was short lived, because it was built on false theoretical premises. It made wrong predictions about the future of a 'telematic society' and a 'telematic consciousness'; and it missed the chance to build the foundations of a theory of media art because it was and is contaminated by the false assumptions behind technological determinism.

Keywords: technological determinism, media art, techno-utopianism, artificial intelligence, artificial life, cybernetics, art, progress, critical theory." Technological Determinism in Media Art by Armin Medosch.

Posted by jo at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

UpStage

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Indigenous Maniacs

The next UpStage open walk-thru on Wednesday, 1 March, will include a short performance by participants of the recent UpStage workshop at the Computing Women's Congress in Hamilton, NZ.

The performance is called "Indigenous Maniacs" and was inspired by material presented at the congress, including Liz Bryce's MFA Master's project "Becoming Indigenous: an impossible necessity". Liz's work explores concepts inherited by Pakeha (white) New Zealanders through the desires of their colonial ancestors, and speculates on the paradox - to "become" indigenous. "Indigenous Maniacs" was created during 4 3-hour workshop sessions, and when it was presented at the conference we were all in the same room together - so it will be a new challenge to perform it with everyone in different locations, some on dial-up, and no physically present audience.

We'll meet in the Introduction Stage at the following times, then proceed to the Indigenous Maniacs stage: USA California: 12am; USA New York: 3am; UK: 8am; Western Europe: 9am; Finland: 10am; Australia NSW: 7pm; NZ: 9pm. For other local times, check http://www.worldtimeserver.com/.

Point your browser at http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation; there's no need to log in for the performance (in fact we'd prefer it if you didn't), but if you'd like to log in and play afterwards, please email me for a log-in.

UpStage is a web-based venue for live performance; in this creative online environment, multiple players in remote locations work together to compile avatars, images, text, speech and web cams for real-time digital story-telling.

Helen Varley Jamieson: creative catalyst helen[at]creative-catalyst.com http://www.creative-catalyst.com; http://www.avatarbodycollision.org; http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

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

DiverseWorks Open call for netArt

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Expanding Awareness of netArt

Open call for netArt for online exhibition and inaugural premiere on the DiverseWorks website and DiverseWorks Artspace1. Submission deadline on March 25, 2006, midnight CDT. Selected projects will receive an honorarium and will officially premiere at the DiverseWorks Visual Arts opening event on April 28, 2006.

About the open call: DiverseWorks is seeking to bring greater awareness for netArt through this open call. Projects should use the web to its inherent (decentralized) distribution advantages and/or address current artistic, technological and social concerns related to web-based activity or visual culture at large.

The DiverseWorks Visual Arts Director and New Media committee will review projects based upon their topicality and technical feasibility. Selected projects will receive a $100 honorarium and will officially premiere at the DiverseWorks Visual Arts opening event on April 28, 2006. After the inaugural debut, DiverseWorks will have non-exclusive rights to display winning projects indefinitely on the DiverseWorks website.

Posted by jo at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art

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OPEN CALL TO ALL ARTISTS

DEADLINE: April 1st, 2006 (postmark date)

Each year Franklin Furnace awards grants in two categories. (1) “The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art” supports emerging performance artists, allowing them to produce major works in New York; and (2) “The Future of the Present” funds the creation of "live art on the Internet," works which engage the Internet as an art medium and/or venue. Grants from either fund range between $2,000 and $5,000. Artists from all areas of the world are encouraged to apply.

Franklin Furnace has no curator; each year a new panel of artists reviews all proposals. We believe this peer panel system allows all kinds of artists from all over the world an equal shot at presenting their work. All applicants are automatically considered for both categories of awards. Every year the panel changes, as do the definitions of "emerging artist," "performance art" and "live art on the Internet." So if at first you don't succeed, please try again.

THE FRANKLIN FURNACE FUND FOR PERFORMANCE ART 2006: Supported by Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts, Franklin Furnace awards grants between $2,000 and $5,000 to emerging performance artists, allowing them to produce major works in New York. Artists from all areas of the world are encouraged to apply.

THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2006: Franklin Furnace awards artists an honorarium and offers its resources to facilitate the creation of "live art on the Internet," work which engages the Internet as an art medium and/or venue. Artists from all areas of the world are encouraged to apply.

HOW TO APPLY:

(THERE IS NO APPLICATION FORM)

1) You MUST submit a 100-word summary of your proposed work, as clearly written and complete as possible. You may also send more detailed description of your proposed work on additional pages.

2) All proposals to “The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art” or “The Future of the Present” MUST be accompanied by documentation of your past work and/or work in progress. We prefer ½ inch videotape (VHS - NTSC American format) but you may submit DVDs, slides, photos, CD-ROMS, or URLs (either MAC or PC format) cued or burned to show the panel two to five minutes of your strongest work or work that is relevant to your proposal. If you submit a URL, it is recommended that you supply a navigation guide to all the sections of the website you would like us to visit. If you do not specify which fund you are applying for, you will automatically be evaluated for both funds.

3) You MUST include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for return of materials, or indicate that you will pick up your packet at our office.

4) You MUST include your Contact Information: Name, Mailing Address, Phone number/Fax number, Email/WWW.

5) You MAY also include a budget (i.e. space rental, equipment, tech personnel). If you have other funding sources for your project please indicate this in your budget.

6) You MAY also submit your resume, reviews of previous work, and any other support materials.

7) Every object you submit MUST be labeled with your name. It is helpful to indicate if the sample work you submit is previous work or part of your proposed work.

8) You MUST send your complete packet to:

2006-7 Proposals
Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
80 Arts - The James E. Davis Arts Building
80 Hanson Place #301
Brooklyn, NY 11217-1506
USA

You may also email your proposal to: dolores[at]franklinfurnace.org (url proposals only, please don't send large attachments)

Questions? Contact us via email at info[at]franklinfurnace.org or call us at 718
398 7255, or fax us at 718 398 7256

Privacy Policy: Unless otherwise specified herein, Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. will not disseminate personal information obtained from donors, members, artists, visitors and others without their permission. Donors' names and donation levels will be publicized, although donors will be given the option to make their donations anonymous. As a condition of funding, recipients of funding from Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. must permit Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. to publicize their names and the amount of funding they received.

Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.
80 Arts - The James E. Davis Arts Building
80 Hanson Place, #301
Brooklyn, NY 11217-1506
T 718 398 7255
F 718 398 7256
http://www.franklinfurnace.org
mail[at]franklinfurnace.org
JOIN TODAY! http://www.franklinfurnace.org/about/memb2005/index.html

Martha Wilson, Founding Director
Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist
Harley Spiller, Administrator
Dolores Zorreguieta, Program Coordinator

Posted by jo at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)

Sonic Acts XI

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The Anthology of Computer Art

Sonic Acts XI: Anthology of Computer Art--23 ­- 26 februari 2006,­ Paradiso / De Balie, Amsterdam. Live Streaming: For those of you who won't be able to make it to the festival, the performances at the festival nights will be streamed live through FabChannel. The conference will be streamed through de Balie.

Day 2: Friday 24-02-2006, Conferences:

Stephen Wilson - Artists at the Frontiers of Research [US]; 13:00 - 13:45 / Balie big hall: Stephen Wilson is a San Francisco author, artist and professor who explores the cultural implications of new technologies. The presentation is based on material from his MIT Press book, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology.

Andreas Broeckmann - Image, Process, Performance, Machine. Aspects of an Aesthetics of the Machinic [DE]; 13:45 - 14:30 / Balie big hall--Andreas Broeckmann has been the Artistic Director of transmediale - international media art festival, Berlin since 2000. In texts and lectures he deals with post-medial practices and the possibilities for a machinic aesthetics of media art.

Matthias Weiß - Provides a micronanalysis of computer code fruitful insights on Computer arts? [DE]; 15:00 - 15:45 / Balie big hall--Matthias Weiß is specialized in computer art and net art, subjects on which he wrote various texts. The lecture provides an analysis within the realm of the micro-structure of each work will be presented, in order to discover the level of awareness of aesthetic problems, depicted via the means of programming language and programming itself as an artistic practice.

Ben Fry - Computational Information Design [US]; 15:45 - 16:30 / Paradiso small hall--The ability to collect, store, and manage data is increasing quickly, yet our ability to understand it remains constant. To gain better understanding Ben Fry proposes the solution that the individual fields be brought together as part of a single process which he calls Computational Information Design.

Rob Young - We are Dancing Mechanik: Computers, Pop and Embedded Chips [UK] 17:00 - 17:45 / Balie big hall--Rob Young is Editor at Large of the English music magazine The Wire. In his lecture he will speak about the role of the computer in pop music.

Discussion - moderated by Rutger Wolfson [NL]; 17:45 - 18:30 / Balie big hall--Rutger Wolfson is director of the museum for contemporary art De Vleeshal in Middelburg (NL). In 2003 he edited the book 'Kunst in Crisis', which gave rise to quite a bit of debate in the Dutch contemporary arts world.

Films: Concrete Cinema from the Groupe de Recherches des Images - part II [VAR] 19:30 - 20:30 / Balie small hall-- This compilation of short computer graphics films from the 1960's and early 70's is particularly interesting in that the filmmakers were heavily involved in designing both the hardware and the software that was used to create the images. Many of them were made in academic or scientific research facilities such as Bell laboratories, IBM or the National Research Council of Canada.

John Whitney in close-up [US]; 21:00 - 22:00 / Balie small hall--The computer pioneer, programmer and film-animator, John Whitney seamlessly combined these disparate disciplines for the journey of discovery which he called 'The Complementarity of Music and Visual Art

Live Performances

20:30 - 04:00 / Paradiso small hall and Paradiso big hall. The Friday programme is being compiled in collaboration with Jace Clayton (a.k.a. DJ/rupture), founder of Negrophonic and Soot Records. Jayce Clayton about the programme: I'm proud to say we've put together a Very Strong Lineup... a wildly international group of men & women responsible for some of the most exciting sounds in recent memory, from grime/dubstep to bellydance punk to mutant hiphop to ragga, breakcore, to accordeon+voice electronica.

grime / dubstep
Vex'D (UK - Rephlex)
Earz & Jammer (UK - Jah Mek the World)
DJ/rupture (US - Tigerbeat 6)
& No Lay + G-Kid (UK - Unorthodox)
Shadetek & Sheen (US - Warp)

dancehall / mutant hiphop
The Bug ft. Ras B (UK - Rephlex)
Beans (US - Warp)
Ghislain Poirier (CA - Chocolate Industries)
Filastine (US - Soot)

breakcore / jungle / freakstep / gabba
Hrvatski (US - Planet Mu)
Drop the Lime (US - Tigerbeat 6)
Aaron Spectre (US - Death$ucker)
Ove-Naxx & Doddodo (JP - Adaadat)
Scotch Egg (JP - Wrong Music)

bellydance punks / militant orientalists
Nettle (ES - theAgriculture)
2/5 BZ (TU - Gözel)

electronica / improv
Gustav (AU - Mosz)
PlanningtoRock (DE - Twisted Nerve)
Toktek & MNK (NL)
Andy Moor (NL - The Ex)

with additional visuals by
Daniel Perlin (US)
MNK (NL)

For more information visit: www.sonicacts.com

Posted by jo at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

POLYLOGUE session

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GAME ENGINES/SOCIAL ENGINES

29. March from 17:30 GMT (12:30 - New York, 18:30 - Prague): Details on HOW TO INSTALL AND USE THE ACCESS GRID

Game Engines/Social Engines: polylogue session about game engines, their social and political aspects. The interdisciplinary meeting should create an open space for deeper theoretical reflection on the recent development in the field of serious games. We are looking for various perspectives, examples and thoughts on social, political and artistic aspects of videogames. Researchers, theoreticians, game designers, programmers and artists are welcome to join the discussion. List of topics:

Videogames & Politics: - Political aspects of videogames - Representation and self-representation - Digital emancipation and creation of heroes (Middle East, China) - Persuasive games and games as means of propaganda.

Social Engines: - Social aspects of videogames - Activism and virus campaigns - Social networking in games - Educational videogames.

Abstracts of papers (15 to 20 min) should reach us before 20th March 2006 in order to facilitate moderation. Short presentations (10 min) are also possible, send us only the title. Please send us you telephone number, ICQ,
Skype etc..

Moderators: Vít Sisler, New Media Studies & Institute of Near Eastern and African Studies, Charles University of Prague. vsisler[at]gmail.com. Denisa Kera, New Media Studies Charles University of Prague, denisa.kera[at]ff.cuni.cz

This session is a part of a series entitled POLYLOGUES organized by the International center for art and new technologies (CIANT) in Prague & New media studies (Charles University) in cooperation with Georgia Institute of Technology & MARCEL network. It aims to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange of ideas via sessions moderated from Prague while having guest speakers from all over the world.

We hope to create a bridge between countries that will facilitate intercultural or rather intercontinental and interdisciplinary exchanges in the fields of art and new technologies. All sessions will be recorded and made available to general public in the archive.

Denisa Kera / New Media Studies, Charles University / kera[at]ff.cuni.cz/ +420
777 817 774
Pavel Sedlak / CIANT / sedlak[at]ciant.cz/ +420 737 731 347
CIANT & Charles University node http://www.ciant.cz/ag

Posted by jo at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

aMAZElab

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GOING PUBLIC '06

GOING PUBLIC is a mobile open platform, a network of production, reflection and cultural exchange, that establishes itself in peripherical areas. GOING PUBLIC invites artists to work on places of the city, such as railway stations, public libraries, schools, ect…. The project develops an attitude for intervention in social issues, together with local communities, in the fold of public policy, nomadism, of today’s precarious and temporary settlements. The researches are addressed to contemprary subjects such as: mobility, borders, new geographies, new EU, mediterranean and eastern cultures, micro-geographies, ect. At its 5° edition, the Going Public project will develop, over the year, a series of activities and appointments for reflection and research, such as:

"Cyprus Day. Rebuilding geographies" : 25th February 2006, at Fondazione Pistoletto/Cittadellarte, Biella--For the first time in Italy, there will be a “study day” dedicated to Cyprus, its culture and its human and territorial geography, the social issues, the green line”, the wall crossing the town of Nicosia, the co-operation activities between the communities in the North and South of the Island, as well as its artistic events and cultural exchanges.

A round table to bring creativity into the problems of one of the ‘hottest’ spots in the Mediterranean area. The subject will be discussed with contributions from:

- Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist and art director of Cittadellarte, a foundation working to inspire a responsible change in society through artistic ideas and creative projects.
- Claudia Zanfi, art director of aMAZelab, creator of the Going Public social and public art project.
- Socrates Stratis, architect and urban designer in Nicosia, offering his research experience in to subject of territories in transformation.
- Sophia Karamani, art critic, part of the cypriot Social Gym collective, protagonist of creative projects targeted toward responsible transformation of the social sphere.
- H. Meyric Hughes, Chairman of Manifesta, who will present the 6° edition of the contemporary art event in Nicosia.

The round table will be introduced by Chiara Bertola (co-founder Love Difference project); it begins at 4 pm, via Serralunga 27, Biella, and is open to the public. From 10 pm the evening will continue with a number of films and video on the subject of the Mediterranean area and its cultures.

The meeting is organised by aMAZElab , which has been working since 3 years on the theme of cultural interchange in Cyprus, together with Fondazione Pistoletto/ Cittadellarte and Love Difference, Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean Policy.

For info: aMAZElab, ph/fax +39.02 6071623, info[at].it,

Posted by jo at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

STRP Festival

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Art, Technology and Popular Culture

The STRP Festival will take place between the 24th and 26th of March 2006 in the former industrial area, Strijp S, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. STRP is a festival at the intersection of art, technology and popular culture in the full context of all art disciplines. A festival where the public is treated to a broad palette of works through in-depth presentations and large spectacles, which provide an image of how visual art, design, stage arts, film, architecture and popular culture develop themselves through the means or appliance of both new and existing technology.

ROBOTICS: Amorphic RobotWorks (USA) - Inflatable Bodies, Robotlab (GER) - Juke_bots, Bill Vorn (CAN) - Hysterical Machines, Pascal Glissmann, Martina Höfflin (GER) - Electronic Life Forms (ELF), Garnet Hertz (CAN) - Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3, Gijs van Bon - Arabesk #23, Time's up/HRL (AUT), Bar Bot - Dr. Christoph Bartneck (GER) - eMuu, Robbert Smit, Graham Smith, HKU - Telemoby, Björn Schülke (GER) - Nervous, Markus Lerner, Andre Stubbe (GER) - Outerspace, Michiel van Overbeek - Nazarenos, Lara Greene (UK) - You Move Me, Fred Abels & Mirjam Langemeijer - Dirk.

INTERACTIVE ART: Marnix de Nijs - RMR (runmotherfuckerrun), C6 (UK) - Want Need, //////////fur//// art entertainment interfaces (GER) - PainStation, Marnix de Nijs & Edwin van der Heide - Spatial Sounds, Mateusz Herczka - 44\13, Debbie does art - Cockroachlounge, Walter Langelaar - SUB-OBJECT_2.1, Raymond Deirkauf, Beyond Expression - Ray's, Aldje van Meer en Radboud Mens - Realsound, Kim Boekhout van Solinge - Ruissimulatie, David Kousemaker - TouchMe, Prohaska, Sägmüller, Demblin (AUT) - Unplugger v1.1/Plug In to Black Out, Prohaska (AUT) - KRFTWRK, Crew (BE) - Degenerator 2.0, Paul Klotz - 3D-Quoter.

MUSIC: Dj's--Jeff Mills (DVJ-set, USA) - Derrick May (USA) - Daniel Wang (USA) - DJ Krust (UK) - Addictive TV (DVJ Set, UK) - Dick El Demasiado - Lady Aida - Steffi - Martyn (DJ Pan) - Robob - Rick Angel - Ari Daily - Caz One Live: Karl Bartos (Ex-Kraftwerk, GER) - Mouse on Mars (GER) - DMX Krew (UK) - Atom Heart (GER / CHI) - Octave One (USA) - Joris Voorn - Secret Cinema - Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori (USA) - Beautyon (UK) - Daniel Wang (USA) - Kettel - Geigercounting - Dijf Sanders (BE) - Dexter - Like a Tim - Vert (GER/UK) - Drillem - Taeji Sawai (JPN) - Ella Bandita - Yutaka Makino (JPN) - RA-X and the Raiders of the Lost Cause - David Grubbs (USA) - Solid Decay - Hrvatski.

VISUALS: Live Cinema--Peter Greenaway (UK): Tulse Luper VJ performance - Skoltz Kolgen (CAN) - Telcosystems - Addictive TV (UK): The Eye of the Pilot - Boris en Brecht Debackere (BE): Rotor - Optical Machines - SXNDRX: Videoboxing; Video-art/art videoclips--Cinefeel: Music Videos - Addictive TV (UK): Mixmasters - Optronica (UK): Visual Music on the Screen - WORM: Live Cinema DVD 1 - NOTV: Visual Music 2 - Floris Kaayk: The Order Electrus; Vj's--VJ Oxygen others. Live visuals & presentations by Holland-Interactive. Special outdoor light installation by Har Hollands.

Films: Fritz Lang (GER) - Metropolis, Fred M. Wilcox (USA) - Forbidden Planet, Mamoru Oshii (JPN) - Ghost in the Shell 2, Het uur van de wolf - Op zoek naar een vergeten toepassing, Lesic, Lindgreen & Pancras, When I sold my soul to the machine, Len Lye (NZL) - Birth of a Robot, Lillian Schwartz (USA) - Pixilliation, Robert Seidel(GER) -Grau, Phillipp Hirsch (GER) - Inside, Alexander Rutterford (UK) - Gantz Graf, Alexander Rutterford (UK) - 3Space, Johnny Hardstaff (UK) - Future of Gaming, George Melies (FRA) - Le Voyage dans la Lune

OTHER: Theatre: Pipslab: The washing powder conspiracy, produced by Paradiso-Melkweg Productiehuis - Crew (BE): _U - Eboman: SampleMadnesS

Workshop: Ralf Schreiber, Tina Tonagel and Christian Faubel (GER) 'Chirping and Crawling' Robotworkshop

Lectures: Karl Bartos (Ex Kraftwerk, GER) - Bas Haring - Dirk van Weelde - Dr. Christoph Bartneck (GER) - Kees Tazelaar - Koert van Mensvoort Peter Verhelst (BE) - Hans Beekmans - Waag Society

STRP Foundation
P.O. Box 272 / 5600 AG Eindhoven / The Netherlands
Tel: +31 40 2367228 / Fax: +31 40 2377676

Posted by jo at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

11-12 March 2006 Utrecht:

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Interaction is the Crystalpunk Drug

A Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture event Oudenoord 275, Utrecht, NL: Essentially it was William Butler Yeats who defined soft architecture as early as 1888 when he wrote: "Behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hoards. The visible world is merely their skin.". Yeats was talking about magic, but we are thinking about technology (and pointing out their similarities is pointing out the obvious) that is promising to make this worldview into a reality: equipping mindless objects with in silico brains, turning rooms into artificially intelligent machines.

Gargoyle computational processes evolving the optimal design solution to a problem and printing it in 3D, in real size. Every time you wave your hand a pandemonium of software agents start to reason on what they could do for you. Objects can sense and act and acquire personalities of which the complexity rises as their ecosphere becomes richer and more connected. Architecture is at the forefront in applying these ideas, at the same time it will pose new challenges to the practise.

Between September and December 2005 the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture brought together a large international group of people to think about what all this means for spatial design and experience. Looking back at what we learned some underlying threads emerged. From the beginning we had only a peripheral interest in the technology itself; we proved it's donkey stuff of which the basics you can learn yourself for cheap and without teachers. But what had our real interest was what to do with it. A room that does things for you may sound like a good idea, at least to some, but what if locks you out of the control structure in your own room: the inability to switch off the lights, say. We are not interested in silly input-output control situations of the kind architects and product designers come up with, but in rich Yeatsian entities that have their own life independent of us.

For so long the marketing department can understand it we are not interested; we want technology to become BacterioPoetic.

In the weekend of 11 and 12 March the workshop will open for the last time to follow up on some leads left unexplored. Other niceties, activities and installations by Tao Sambolic and Thomas Laureyssens, we are like a tapas bar, will be presented on the side.

Saturday 11 March: 14.00- 18.00-- BOT / AIML workshop by Mario Campanella. From the early days of computer based interaction bots, interfaces through which you interact with software in normal language, have been one recurrent strategy. Recently a new wave of interest in them has taken place, this time to allow seamless communication with all sorts of devices. In this informal hands-on workshop, Mario Campanella, will first explain about the history of bots before getting into AIML. This "Artificial Intelligence Markup Language" provides a framework for Bot designers to capture knowledge. The aim of the workshop is to give you the knowledge on how to build the 'brain' of a Chatbot: using the general purpose AIML database, you will create new entries for an existing one, or create your own chatbot with a special purpose 'persona'.

It is advised to bring your own laptop and have one of the Alice programs installed: http://aitools.org/downloads. There are versions in most popular programming languages.

Here you can find some of the existing AIML sets: http://aitools.org/aiml-sets/

Presentations by:

Mirjam Struppek was trained as an urban planner. Right now she is organising the second URBAN SCREENS conference which is the crucial event in the ongoing formation of a new field of expertise: the (growing) infrastructure of large digital moving displays, that increasingly influence the visual sphere of our public spaces. The main question being whether these screens can become a tool to contribute to a lively urban society, involving its audience interactively?

Z-25 is Utrecht based group of artists who will present their recent "Indoor RFID" project. RFID chips allow object to be tagged and monitored. The expectations (fuelled by industrial rhetoric and citizens paranoia) is that these will become an explosively present part of society. Z-25 will show some of its power. Who needs Amsterdam when there is Z-25?

Adam Somlai-Fischer is part of Aether, one of the hottest design studios working in interactive architecture. His work is part research and part design, often beautiful always thought provoking. During a previous Crystalpunk workshop he has proven himself to be exceptionally skilled with the soldering-iron too.

Pablo Miranda Carranza runs Army Of Clerks, which explores generative and algorithmic approaches in architecture and design. Hoping to find utter bliss in the relentless accumulation of unintelligent calculations, mindless arithmetic performed by computational armies of clerks. Carranza's work on the electro-chemical devices by Gordon Pask unwittingly (and after a long process of confabulation) gave the crystalpunk movement its notion of crystals as entities encoding data in form from which it owes the name, for this alone he deserves his place in heaven.

Nocolas Nova is a key blogger in the world of locative media. Recently he has been taking up an interest in Blogjects: an example of the 'Internet of Things', i.e. a network of tangible, mobile, chatty things enabled by miniaturization. In its most basic form, a blogject is not dissimilar to people that blog - it is an artefact that can disseminate a record of its experiences to the web. He even organised a workshop on them.

Jelle Feringa of the Paris based design agency EZCT is crystalpunk's guru for Voronoi-crystals and genetic design. Always ready to discuss radical uses of new technology, instead of making them do old things different, EZCT is slowly claiming fame with their evolved chairs. Right now they are building a 3D printer.

All event are free. Check the website for further details, the same applies for technical details of the BOT workshop.

CPWfSA initiated by socialfiction.org, produced by IMPAKT

Posted by jo at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

Dynamics of Human Interaction Articulated by Technology

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CROWDS / CONVERSATIONS / CONFESSIONS

March 11–June 10--Max Dean and Kristan Horton, Atom Egoyan, Laiwan, George Bures Miller, Don Ritter and David Rosetzky.

Crowds/Conversations/Confessions brings together the work of seven international artists who explore the dynamics of human interaction, articulated by the use of technology. Their works play with modes of interpersonal communication, from the discursive structure of conversations to the one-sided delivery of confessions and public addresses. Each of the works promises a form of engagement, communication and personal contact, but each also suggests that this is a fiction, a promise of technology that can never be fulfilled.

In George Bures Miller’s installation Conversation/Interrogation an office chair faces a suspended television. As a viewer sits in the chair a shot of a man (the artist) appears on the screen and begins a conversation. The viewer quickly realizes that the interviewer is talking to them. The questions asked by the on-screen interviewer shift between the banal and the manipulative, so it is never quite obvious what the intent of the conversation is.

Vox Populi is a responsive installation by Don Ritter that provides the opportunity of leadership to anyone. Visitors are invited to speak from a lectern equipped with a microphone and teleprompter that displays the text of a number of speeches by historical figures such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and George W. Bush. When assuming the role of leader and depending on how well one delivers the scripted texts, the video-taped crowd responds with various degrees of support, ridicule or hostility.

Be Me by Max Dean and Kristan Horton is an interactive video installation that uses new animation software to investigate the idea of self-image and the inviolate nature of personal identity. The viewer takes a seat, and a projected image of the artist asks, “So, do you want to be me?” “Then say something”. The participant’s response, their voice, expression and movement animate the projected image. Dean’s face thus becomes a site onto which the words, sounds and gestures of another are projected.

In Australian artist David Rosetzky’s installation, Custom Made, a series of videotaped characters move in and out of focus, addressing the camera and then dissolving away. Each character seems to be confessing to us, offering a deeply personal description of an important relationship. In each case we try to imagine the unseen other and empathize with the speaker. Through their words we have a glimpse into another life, one that is very familiar and intimate, yet always separate from ours.

Canadian Filmmaker, Atom Egoyan’s installation, Hors d’usage: Le recit de Marie- France Marcil, was derived from a soundscape exhibition created for the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal based on old sound recording machines and private tapes contributed by Montréal residents. In this work, a woman is confronted with long forgotten memories, a time from her past that is only recalled through her interaction with the recording. Hors d’usage continues Egoyan’s exploration of the relationship between technology, memory and human relationships.

Using similar “low” technology, in this case 16m film, Vancouver artist Laiwan’s installation, Kiss, speaks of how true intimacy may not be possible when mediated by technology. In this work, a couple is endlessly denied the culmination of their affection, the two projections being structured to ensure that their images can never meet.

Opening Reception Friday, March 10, 7 pm

Posted by jo at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

DANUBE UNIVERSITY KREMS, AUSTRIA 2006/07 Program

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MediaArtHistories MA

Danube University's Department for Applied Cultural Studies, Center for Image Science is now accepting applications for the 2006/07 class of their MA Program in MediaArtHistories starting november. This two year low-residency degree provides students with deeper understanding of the most important developments of contemporary art through a network of renowned international theorists, artists and curators like Steve DIETZ, Erkki HUHTAMO, Lev MANOVICH, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Oliver GRAU, Gregor LECHNER, Jens HAUSER and many others.

Artists and programers give new insights into the latest and most controversal software, interface developments and their interdisciplinary and intercultural praxis. Keywords are: Strategies of Interaction & Interface Design, Social Software, Immersion & Emotion, Artistic Invention.

Using online databases and other modern aids, knowledge of computer animation, net art, interactive, telematic and genetic art as well as the most recent reflections on bio & nano art, CAVE installations, augmented reality and locative media are introduced.

Historical derivations that go far back into art and media history are tied in intriguing ways to digital art. Key approaches and methods from Image Science, Media Archaeology and the History of Science & Technology will be discussed. Media Art History offers a basis for understanding evolutionary history of audiovisual media, from the Laterna Magica to the Panorama, Phantasmagoria, Film, and the Virtual Art of recent decades.

The MA MediaArtHistories is located in the the Center for Image Science, housed in a 14th century Monastary, which holds also the historic G*ttweig collection, with more than 30.000 original graphics, etchings, prints etc., dating from the Renaissance and Baroque era until today. It contains works of various German, Italian, Dutch, French and British artists (from D*rer to Klimt…). This allowes contextualization of the latest media art in its art and image history and the courses to work directly with originals - from book illustration to photography to the most contemporary media art.

MediaArtHistories MA is also based on the international praxis and expertise in Curation, Collecting, Preserving and Archiving and Researching in the Media Arts. What are, for example, the conditions necessary for a wider consideration of media art works and of new media in these collectionsof the international contemporary art scene? And in which way can new Databases and other scientific tools of structuring and visualizing data provide new contexts and enhance our understanding of semantics?

DANUBE UNIVERSITY -- located in the UNESCO world heritage WACHAU
Danube University Krems is the first public university in Europe which specializes in advanced continuing education offering low-residency degree programs for working professionals and lifelong learners. The MA MediaArtHistories is located in the the Center for Image Science, housed in a 14th century Monastary, remodeled to fit the needs of modern research in singular surroundings. Krems is a traditional educational town - with 30 schools and high schools attended by more than 10,000 students. Therefore, Krems’ environment is richly furnished with restaurants, hotels, guest-houses and students’ hostels, as well as leisure-time and cultural facilities. The idyllic environment of the Wachau, which belongs to UNESCO world heritage, its exquisite wines and numerous sports facilities, contribute to the quality of life of students at the Danube University Krems. www.donau-uni.ac.at www.donau-uni.ac.at/en/studium/fachabteilungen/kultur/zentren/zbw/index.php

ADDITIONAL SPECIALITIES OF THE CENTER FOR IMAGE SCIENCE
The Center offers long term preservation and growth of the Database of Virtual Art. As pioneer in the field, the Database of Virtual Art has been documenting the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art since 1999, supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The research-oriented, complex overview of immersive, interactive, telematic and genetic art has been developed in cooperation with renowned media artists, researchers and institutions.

The Database of Virtual Art and Leonardo/ISAST and the Banff New Media Institute collaborated to produce the first international art history conference covering art and new media, art and technology, art-science interaction, and the history of media as pertinent to contemporary art. In late September, more than 200 new media practitioners from around the world gathered at Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) for Refresh! The complete conference is available as a Webcast at: http://www.mediaarthistory.org/navbar-links/refresh/origprogram.html

DIGITALIZATION

The DigitalizationCenter is equipped with an ultra-modern multifunctional digital reproduction system for digitizing works of art, graphics, maps and similar originals. The highest resolution combined with fast scan speeds and the possibility of serial image processing enable a cost effective workflow. The workstation is used for the digitalization of the G*ttweig collection of engravings and other collections, as well as for teaching purposes. New Digitalisation Center for Cultural Studies planed - further information available soon.

:: OTHER COURSES: Starting Autumn 06
--> Certified Expert „Visual Competencies“, 1 Semester
--> Certified Expert „Digital Asset Management“, 1 Semester
--> Certified Expert „Iconography“, 2 Semester
--> Certified Expert „Photography“, 2 Semester
--> Certified Expert “Exhibition Design and Management”, 1 Semester
--> Certified Expert „Scientific Visualization“, 2 Module
=> http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/zbw


The MediaArtHistories program in Krems is unique in that it actively seeks to assemble a diverse group of students and welcomes applications from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. Space is limited, so please apply as soon as possible. Additional information is available on the programs website.

If you would like an information pack, or if you have any questions, please contact in the first the office at the Center for Image Science, Danube University Krems, Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Str. 30, 3500 Krems. Email: petra.gratzl[at]donau-uni.ac.at

If you have further queries about specific contents of the program, please contact Mag. Jeanna Nikolov jeanna.nikolov@donau-uni.ac.at or program director Prof. Dr. Oliver Grau oliver.grau[at]donau-uni.ac.at (Head Department for Applied Cultural Studies and Center for Image Science).

Posted by jo at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

NET(WORKED) ART COMPETITION

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DEADLINE APPROACHING

Turbulence.org is pleased to announce its New England Initiative II, a juried, networked art competition. Three projects by New England artists will be commissioned and exhibited on Turbulence and in real space (venue to be announced). Each award will be $3,500. The jury consists of Julian Bleecker, Michele Thursz, and Helen Thorington. This project is made possible with funds from the LEF Foundation.

PROJECT CONCEPT: Net art projects are "art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating" (Steve Dietz). They live in the public world of the Internet. Recently, however, wireless telecommunications technologies have enabled computation to migrate out of the desktop PC into the physical world, creating the possibility of “hybrid” networked art, works that intermingle and fuse previously discrete identities, disciplines, and/or fields of activity such as the Internet and urban space. (See the networked_performance blog—specifically the categories Locative Media and Mobile Art and Culture.) Borders are disintegrating and new identities are emerging. We encourage applications by net artists and artists working on networked hybrid projects.

PROJECT TIMELINE:

Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2006
Selected Projects Announcement: March 15, 2006
Project Launch/Exhibition: October 1, 2006

SELECTION CRITERIA: (1) artistic merit of the proposed project; (2) originality; (3) degree of performativity and audience participation; (4) level of programming skill and degree of technological innovation; and (5) extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES:

(a) Your name, email address, and web site URL (if you have one).
(b) A description of the project's core concept and how it will make creative use of digital networks (500 words maximum).
(c) Details of how the project will be realized, including what software/programming will be used. Specs for the Turbulence server are available here. You may request additional software but we cannot guarantee it.
(d) Names of collaborators, their areas of expertise, and their specific roles in the project.
(e) A project budget, including other funding sources for this project, if any.
(f) Your résumé/CV and one for each of your collaborators.
(g) Up to five examples of prior work accessible on the web.

Email submissions (the web site URL) to turbulence[at]turbulence.org with NE 2 in the subject field.

JUROR BIOGRAPHIES:

Julian Bleecker has been involved in technology design for over 15 years, creating mobile, wireless, and networked-based applications across a diversity of project idioms including entertainment, art-technology, brand marketing, university research and development, interactive advertising and museum exhibition. His expertise is technology implementation, innovation and concept development. Bleecker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and Critical Theory departments, and is participating in a research group at the Annenberg Center's Institute for Media Literacy exploring the future of mobile technology applications. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Masters of Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Helen Thorington is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites. She is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-three years. Thorington has created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the net, and the distributed performance Adrift which was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival and at the New Museum in New York City, 2001, among other places. Thorington has also composed for dance and performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in 2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. She won two radio awards in 2003 for her 9_11_Scapes composition; and was recently commissioned by Deep Wireless, a Toronto radio festival, to create Calling to Mind. Thorington has lectured, presented on panels, and served as a juror on many occasions. Her recent articles on networked musical performances include “Breaking Out: The Trip Back” (Contemporary Music Review, Vol 24, No 6. December 2005, 445-458); and “Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog” for the Extensible Toy Piano Symposium at Clark University, Massachusetts, November 5, 2005.

Michele Thursz is an independent curator and consultant for art-makers and distributors. Her current project is Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and their effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. In 1999 she co-founded and directed the Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Moving Image Gallery was one of the first galleries to show electronic and computer-based mediums, exhibiting such artist as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel and Yael Kanerek. Thursz’ recent curatorial projects include “Copy it, Steal it, Share it”, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, and “Nown”, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh; “public.exe: Public Excution”, Exit Art, NYC, and “Democracy is Fun”, White Box, NYC. She has written essays about contemporary art for catalogues and has lectured on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Thursz’s actions and exhibits have been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Forbes Best of the Web, ArtByte, Wired News, Art Forum, and many international periodicals and web publications.

Posted by jo at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2006

Warren Sack

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Aesthetics of Information Visualization

"Beyond the technically challenging questions of how data can be mapped are the questions of why one should map the textual or numerical into the visual. By asking why, this chapter provides an art historical and philosophical context for understanding information visualization projects undertaken as artistic research. Specifically, the question to be addressed concerns the formulation of an aesthetics of information visualization: What is the critical, artistic value of works in information visualization? Aesthetics, as a field of inquiry, examines issues of sensation and perception and seeks to understand why something is – or why some group of people finds something to be -- emotionally, sensually moving. What is beautiful, ugly, awe-inspiring, emotionally overwhelming, scary or comforting? (For a contemporary overview of the field of aesthetics, see Michael Kelly (editor), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1998.) So, to inquire about the aesthetics of information visualization is to investigate the judgment used to decide what about the work is valuable, according to the senses or, in general, the body..." From Aesthetics of Information Visualization by Warren Sack. [via Rhizome]

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Emerson College

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New Media Showcase with the New Media Caucus of CAA

b>Date and time: Thursday, February 23rd 3 to 5 p.m. Featured artists: Roberto Bocci, Margot Lovejoy, Maurice Methot, Gwyan Rhabyt, Jack Toolin (C5); Co-presented by: The Department of Visual and Media Arts, School of the Arts, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies of Emerson College and New Media Caucus, College Art Association

Location: Little Building, Emerson Room, 2nd floor, 80 Boylston Street, Boston, MA. Directions from the Hynes Convention Center: Take the Green Line subway("T") from Hynes/ICA station to 3rd stop (past Copley and Arlington), the Boylston station. The Little Building is across the street.

Posted by jo at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Aspect Magazine:

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Thematics on Location, by Ignacio Nieto

If you’re looking for spaces where new media artists and curators can feature and promote their work in a proper format for this type of investigation, Aspect Magazine is a good alternative.

Produced in DVD format, each Aspect Magazine issue proposes thematics based on selections of projects made by curators and art critics. Its recent issue focuses on Location, checking different productive contemporary strategies, developed by collectives and artists. That’s how, for example, the work of Kenseth Amsted embraces the invisible space with a video made in Ghana, where cultural media of the west would never register. The C5 collective re-invents mountains by the measure of its geographic accidents, with a GPS system, and computer software. Richard Clar extends the space view with which we become acquainted, and works in the space around the earth and the garbage that surrounds it. Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser build virtual urban spaces where there is an undetermined number of people doing different things, and where the spectator owns an omnipresent view.

Pete Gomes makes diverse tracks with chalk over a bridge, fixing points and naming them according to their coordinates, revealing the new control systems. MTAA realizes a performance that simulates running on real time online, but actually they’re only clips accessed by a program. Finally, Douglas Whetersby works in the gallery space in an intervention which re-orders the space and the objects that determines it, asking for a cover-price.

For more information:
http://www.aspectmag.com

Assistant Editor:
Liz Nofziger
lnofziger[at]aspectmag.com

[posted on newmediaFIX]

Posted by jo at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2006

New Gothic + Rattus Norvegicus

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Magical Lock-down Dark Pegasus

Martin Sexton presents New Gothic which combines music and performance and features Truth Machine's 'Heraldic Unicorn Lion Grace System', described variously as 'the high-concept band to end all high-concept bands' and as a cult religious group by others. The varying members of this arts collective reportedly all work to a set of instructions cut from the text of books that vary from hermetic works, theological mediations to pulp fiction, erotica and maps. Steve Severin conducts and provides the sonic soundscape.

Ride up with the Magical Lock-down Dark Pegasus: a Harley-Davidson XL53 custom motorcycle resplendent with blue-black Scottish crow wings and 'pimped' with a DVD monitor as tail-plate, that echoes TE Lawrence's quote that ‘A motorcycle with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocations, to excess’.

Meanwhile, HMC create new visual experiences, as they unleash chthonic forces with their technological multimedia film noir Rattus Norvegicus as part of New Gothic at Tate Britain.

This fantastic, free, HMC MediaLab event will be: Friday, March 3, 2006 at 18.00 - 22.00pm; Tate Britain, Millbank, London, England SW1P 4RG.

Rattus Norvegicus is a dark digital artwork shown for the first time at "Late at Tate Britain" as part of the "Gothic Nightmares" exhibition.

HMC MediaLab is a cutting edge play-group for digital-art professionals.

HMC MediaLab exists to build a functional culture of innovation.

The HMC MediaLab encourages experimentation between the arts, science and technology disciplines. HMC MediaLab believes that interesting people do interesting things. The HMC MediaLab was formed in 2005 as a creative outlet for digital arts professionals. If you are a digital artist, or if you do something "interesting" and would like to get involved, please contact us at mail@hmcmedialab.org . We showcase, develop and build cutting edge projects that blur the lines between art and science.

To find out more about some of our projects click here.

If you are developing digital art, we want to know about it. Please get in touch with us.

To be invited to future events, simply sign up for our free e-mail newsletter here.

Posted by jo at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

CYBERSALON & THE DIGITAL RESEARCH UNIT @ THE DANA CENTRE

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CREATIVE SOFTWARE

Cybersalon & The Digital Research Unit @ The Dana Centre present CREATIVE SOFTWARE--Thursday, 23rd March 2006, 1-10pm at The Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5HE; Cost: Free. Email [booking[at]cybersalon.org] for details. Nearest tubes: South Kensington/Gloucester Road.

The signature and aesthetics of artists who write their own source code manifest themselves both in the code itself and in its visual results. Christiane Paul, Digital Art, (2003)

Creative Software is a one-day event featuring workshops, artist talks, an exhibition of selected works and an evening panel discussion involving leading practitioners, academics and curators in the field. The programme will investigate the relationship between art and technology and explore the history, context and approaches of artists who write their own software and/or author their own code to produce creative outputs.

Creative software is a rich, but hitherto marginalised area of art practice. Yet few areas of artistic endeavour better demonstrate the merging of art and technology and the blurring of the roles of artist and developer.

Panelists and presenters include: Ed Burton - Research & Development Director, Soda; Tom Corby - researcher/artist, reconnoitre.net; Charlie Gere - Director of Research, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, Tom Holley - Creative Director, The Media Centre, Huddersfield; Alex McClean - programmer/musician/artist, state51/Slub/toplap; Hannah Redler - Head of Arts Programme, Science Museum; Andrew Shoben - artist, Greyworld; Alexei Shulgin - artist/curator, runme.org; and Stanza - artist/curator, Soundtoys.net.

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Cybersalon and the Digital Research Unit (DRU), Hudderfield are collaborating to help realise the hidden potential of the area by proposing the founding a Creative Software Forum. We envisage that this network will: operate as a crucial research and advocacy group; work proactively to source and engage with creative software showcases, curators and commissioners, established and emerging creative software artists/artist groups and their work; assemble event programmes that are diverse, accessible, exciting and contemporary; and ensure the strategic development of these events are informed by expertise in the field.

The Creative Software event is part of a process of public dialogue as a precursor to submitting a funding proposal to found the Creative Software Forum. We hope to draw together a community of practitioners, artists, academics, students, theorists, other curators and an interested general public to discuss, scope and explore the potential and remit of a forum that could champion and advocate for this work in an ongoing way. It's an open call to all interested parties to express their interest and to contribute to the discussion.

Please contact Lewis Sykes, Cybersalon Coordinator [lewis[at]cybersalon.org] if you are interested in contributing to Creative Software.

A full outline of activities and contributors will be listed shortly.

Cybersalon gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Science Museum's Dana Centre.

Posted by jo at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

BREAKING THE GAME - ONLINE SYMPOSIUM

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Competing Theorists and Practitioners Debate and Reflect

From March 15 - 25, 2006 Workspace Unlimited presents Breaking the Game Symposium, a first-iteration online event that brings together competing theorists and practitioners to debate and reflect on virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience. The symposium will open up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where interactive technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and dynamic ways. The symposium themes are: Hybridity, Overclocking the City and The Virtual as Interface to Self and Society.

Participants will consider gaming and other virtual technologies in relationship to building and designing cities, navigating and experiencing urban life, constructing identities, and creating and maintaining social interaction. The symposium encourages debate and discussion through multiple formats including text, video interviews, phone blogging, images, animation, and virtual walkthroughs.

We want the symposium to function as a workspace for testing out ideas, developing new tools, sharing creative processes and works in progress. Breaking the Game is a prototype for how we'd like to initiate and develop real projects around a specific focus, connect our own working process to the ideas and practice of others, and create networks that facilitate and feed into further collaborative opportunities.

For detailed information about the symposium please visit the Breaking the game website.

Breaking the Game symposium has three themes:

Hybridity considers new forms of art being produced within the increasingly hybrid environment of digital and physical space, in response to the multiplication of delivery systems and formats, and to the changing roles of artists, scientists, and technologists. We will discuss whether or not, and under what conditions, these hybrid contexts are effecting how artists produce, with whom they collaborate, and with what results. How are we consuming art differently and integrating it into our lives in new ways? Finally we will explore a variety of hybrid experiments artists are undertaking within the now established field of video gaming and multiuser virtual environments.

Overclocking the City proposes that we look more critically at gaming technologies and culture as storehouses of tools for designing new perceptual experiences and social interaction within the built environment. Participants will debate what constitutes public space in an electronically networked virtual world, and what forms this space might take. We will consider how virtual worlds, which for the most part, have been designed as autonomous environments, might have a functioning relationship with actual places, buildings, and people in physical locations.

The Virtual as Interface to Self and Society explores how the technologies of sensing, computation, and display are increasingly becoming important to how we connect to society and simultaneously engage in acts of self-reflection and self-fashioning. Virtual worlds, and particularly networked pervasive 3D environments, are useful contexts for critically and imaginatively exploring how we project our so-called self into computerized space, reconstruct it in digital form, and set about interacting with other reconstructed selves. In combination with "computer software programs, rules, commands, and networked interactivity" we perform a sense of presence to others by effectively manipulating "graphical, textual, navigational, and audio modes that are coded to correspond with our bodily senses" (Bolter). How is this self-presence achieved, to what ends, and with what effects? Participants in this session will explore an online multiuser environment together that will inform the basis for debate and discussion.
Workspace Unlimited website: www.workspace-unlimited.org

Thomas Soetens, artist, Workspace Unlimited
Kora Van den Bulcke, architect, Workspace Unlimited
Wayne Ashley, Independent Curator, New York

Posted by jo at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

Perform.Media

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A Transdisciplinary Festival of Creativity, Research, Theory and Technoculture

Perform.Media is an international media arts festival and symposium creating an innovative venue for creative and intellectual work around the momentary process and performance in new media art and culture. We begin with the premise that newer media, along with modes of representation and narrative, embody momentary processes from roots in cybernetics and the biological, to the embodied performance of interface, improvised network exchanges and spontaneous social acts in multi-user synthetic worlds. Such mediated experiences and actions form meaning in sense experience and performance along with interpretive processes like depiction and reception. The dynamic, reciprocal process of the user(s) generating, configuring, interacting, choosing and authoring is an important component of new media and technologies, expressed in both the design of the media and in the momentary, improvised performance of the participant.

The festival and symposium seeks the accordance and collision of ideas through the lens of interdisciplinarity, exploring the performance of new media and the performative qualities of human-computer and technologically mediated social interaction. Perform.Media will examine sense experience and meaning at the threshold and in the performing action, along with the reflexive construction of narrative, where creative play, social practices, augmented embodiment and exploratory methods establish processes that spin out, overlapping locales of influence, in networked, "glocal", mobile, participatory, socially interactive, live processed, locative, responsive and multi-user realms.

Perform.Media aims to examine and melt the usual spatial and temporal prescriptions of author and spectator in art, creative work and intellectual practice. Perform.Media traverses transdisciplinary territories in collaborations and social feedbacks of live sound+image, interactive and game media, HCI, improvisations, performance processes, interactive gallery environments, mobile and locative work, live art works, net.art, research practices, theoretical discussion, paper presentations, workshops, intimacy and communication both online and off.

CALL FOR WORK AND PARTICIPATION

Art Work and Creative Practices * Papers Presentations, Panels, Workshops, Intellectual Environments and Practices

Perform.Media: A Transdisciplinary Festival of Creativity, Research, Theory and Technoculture; September 29th-October 14th, 2006, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

DEADLINE FOR PAPER PRESENTATIONS: Abstracts: April 30th, 2006; Acceptance Notification: May 15th, 2006

DEADLINE FOR PANELS, WORKSHOPS, INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AND PRACTICES: Proposals: April 30th, 2006; Acceptance Notification: May 15th, 2006

DEADLINE FOR ART WORK AND CREATIVE PRACTICES: May 15th, 2006; Acceptance Notification: June 15th, 2006

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Paper Presentations, Panels, Workshops, Intellectual Environments and Practices

The Perform.Media symposium welcomes submissions of papers, panel discussions, workshops and intellectual environments around the theme of the festival- performance process in new media, theory, research and technological practice. The Perform.Media symposium seeks to promote discussion and collaboration. The environment of the symposium will be conversation based. Proposals for panels, workshops and presentations that energize into new areas of intellectual exchange will be welcomed. All presentations will be moderated and encourage participation, questioning and debate. An online forum, discussion and net.art exhibition will precede the festival. Paper abstracts will be published on the Perforrm.Media website.

Art Work and Creative Practices

Work criteria-

Perform.Media seeks new media work and proposals for black box, white cube or network that engage in the practice of performing media or media performance. We are looking for work that asks the questions-
How does the ?doing,? the performing inform us in this new media?
How does this media perform, what does it do and how does it engage us?

Types of work-

Ambient/Ubiquitous Technologies and Creative Practices, Avatars, Dance/Embodied work, Environments and Space Based work, Games, HCI, Interactive/Participatory Installation, Interface Art, Live Art, Locative Media, Mapping, Mobile Screens, Mobile/Wireless Devices, Net.Art, New Media Performances, Simulations and Synthetic Worlds, Theatrical Pieces, Video Processing and VJ/DJ styles

Submission forms

For questions contact- abucksba[at]indiana.edu

Posted by jo at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

Sonogrammar.2

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Moments of Correspondence Determined by Chance

Sonogrammar.2--Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 8pm, The Tank, 279 Church Street, NYC (Between Franklin and White).

Sonogrammar began as an organizing concept, a way of gathering certain artists working with media and performance in what we came to think of as a compositional mode. With this series we are interested in exploring the common languages of abstraction, expression, modulation, and control that are shared by many contemporary electronic and electro-acoustic composers, sound artists, film and video performers and installation artists.

Program: Shimpei Takeda, video: Particle and Andy Graydon, sound: Focal Plane; Richard Garet, video: IP - Iota Expansion and Bruce Tovsky, sound: Induction; Adam Kendall, video: Ultradian and Brendan Murray, sound: Ocean Of Dirt, Mountain Of Steam.

Tonight's focus is more intimate, as we invite composers in sound to present new original works alongside new work by image composers. Pairings were made based on perceived affinities in approach, or for potential interesting aesthetic contrast. Although the works are presented as duos, each sound work and video composition could be thought of as whole and distinct; in some cases the interplay between elements is intentional and intricate, in other cases the works are essentially performed in parallel, with moments of correspondence determined largely by chance.

The first edition of Sonogrammar, performed at 2005's Bushwick Art Projects Festival, focused directly on scored compositions for mixed media ensembles. These included live video scored compositions, audio scores guiding the work of image performers, as well as rules-based and text-centered compositions for both sound and image performers.

Posted by jo at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2006

Leonardo

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Multimedia Performances

This month in LEA, guest editors Annette Barbier and Marla Schweppe look at multimedia performances through four refreshing and different essays that explore different aspects of the topic.

We begin with Joe Geigel's Virtual Theatre - One Step Beyond Machinima, which introduces a technical framework for defining and performing a theatrical work in a virtual space. As proof of concept for this framework, a real time, distributed improvisation is showcased.

In Cybernetic Performance Art; The Trouble with Blurring the Distinction Between Art and Life, Jason Van Anden and Lauri Goldkind look at developing technology to make artworks improvisationally simulate emotional behavior in real time and space, and discover how a boundary was crossed between the disciplines of static sculpture and live performance.

Following that, we embark on a Patchwork in motion: A practice-led project investigating the shifting relationships and processes associated with the performing body in interactive and non-interactive visual environments with Maria Adriana L. Verdaasdonk.

Finally, Paul Hertz deals with VR as a Performance for an Audience, which contemplates the possibility of creating VR performances in a traditional musical performance or theatrical situation, with an audience, as a hybrid or intermedia art form.

Amnon Wolman's desktop performance unfolds differently, in real time, each time it is played. It addresses not only our ever-varying sense of time, but also the intimate space of the desktop in creating a unique, individualized performance for every listener.

Accompanying the issue is a specially curated gallery. Jack Ox's networked performance proposes multiple points of entry as well as of reception. While creating a live, real-time event, she also incorporates static images, visualizations of musical sequences.

Benoit Maubrey incorporates sound and video "accompaniment" into the body of the moving performer. Christina Ray and Glowlab challenge our notion of performance by using cell phones to transmit the spectacle of everyday life observed. Bob Gluck invites viewers to enter into the use of ritual objects, which respond to and amplify their actions, making them participants in a dialog with the work.

Pedro Rebelo creates musical "prostheses" which extend the acoustic into the electronic realm. Bob Ostertag examines the relationships between our bodies, our society's detritus, and the machines that interpret our actions, our computers. The special issue is available at: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/archive.html and the gallery:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/GALLERY/mmperf

Posted by jo at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

Deptford.TV

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Annotate the Regeneration Processes in Deptford

During March, Deptford.TV will host 3 two-day long hands on database filmmaking workshops, in which we will establishe a public database of documentary film and video to help annotate the regeneration processes in Deptford and across SE London. Join us to remix Deptford comment and contention in a series of public screenings and talks at Deckspace, Goldsmiths and across boundless.coop network.

Review of material already in hand and the newly accumulated documentary evidence, interviews and accounts of experience. We invite you to take part in the three workshop weekends plus the walk and conference taking place at dek.spc.org, The Albany and Goldsmiths.

The workshops are free buth places are limited, to book, please send an email to info[at]deptford.tv and state workshop and/or event you want to attend.

Programme March 2006:

Workshop #1: TV hacking
at http://dek.spc.org, Borough Hall
Friday 3rd March, 11AM - 5PM
Saturday 4th March, 11AM - 5PM

Workshop #2: regeneration doc
at http://dek.spc.org, Borough Hall
Friday 10th March, 11AM - 5PM
Saturday 11th March, 11AM - 5PM

Workshop #3: database doc
at http://dek.spc.org, Borough Hall
Friday 17th March, 11AM - 5PM
Saturday 18th March, 11AM - 5PM

Deptford Walk
starting at the Albany Cafe
Friday 24th March, 11.30AM

Remix Conference
at Goldsmiths College, New Cross, small hall
Saturday 25th March, 10AM - 5PM

The events are free, but places are limited. to book please email info[at]deptford.tv

Further info: http://deptford.tv

Contact details:

adnan hadzi
phd media & communications

dept media and communications
goldsmiths college
university of london
new cross
london, se14 6nw
united kingdom
tel. +44 20 8816 8166
fax +44 20 7943 2772
(account# 7041207864438)

www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/media-communications
www.filmcode.org
www.deptford.tv
www.liquidculture.cc
www.copyleft.org.uk

Posted by jo at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)

UpStage

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Indigenous Maniacs

This week I'm teaching an UpStage workshop at the Computing Women's Congress at Waikato and have a small but highly talented group of students who have progressed so rapidly that we're going to give a little performance on Thursday, February 16 at 12.45pm New Zealand time entitled "Indigenous Maniacs". Check here or here for your local time.

To join the performance, simply go to http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/indidgenous">.

Helen Varley Jamieson: creative catalyst helen[at]creative-catalyst.com http://www.creative-catalyst.com http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

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

Art Spaces Archives Project

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Activist Arts Organizations of the 1970s and 1980s: Research Opportunities for Scholars

The Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] is pleased to announce a panel discussion entitled Activist Arts Organizations of the 1970s and 1980s: Research Opportunities for Scholars, to be held at the College Art Association's 94th Annual Conference on February 23, 2006, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, Plaza Level, Room 112.

The panel will feature Linda Frye Burnham, Dr. Margo Machida, and Steven Englander. Moderating the panel will be David Platzker, the Project Director of AS-AP, a non-profit initiative founded in 2003 to assess and survey the state of the archives of art spaces throughout the United States.

The presenters will investigate the history of three formative organizations: High Performance Magazine, Godzilla: The Asian American Art Network, and ABC No Rio, and discuss what each of these organizations prompted, how they interacted within a community, how they co-existed, melded into, or changed a broader constituency. Additionally, the panel will discuss the role their archival materials play in telegraphing, or revealing, underlying historic information about these organizations and the state of these archives.

The goal of the panel is two fold: first to encourage emerging scholars to engage with the avant-garde / alternative organizations of the period, and secondly to highlight three selected organizations and to pair an emerging scholar with each. Ultimately, each scholar will conduct research using an organization's physical archival materials; perform oral histories with founders of the organization, and publish, on AS-AP's website, the conclusion of the research and oral histories.

In Spring 2006, AS-AP will invite proposals from emerging scholars to conduct the research with High Performance, Godzilla, and ABC No Rio. The three chosen individuals will conduct on-site work in 2007 with the edited oral history to be published by the close of that year.

AS-AP is using the panel as a template for emerging scholars to engage with the rich history of the avant-garde / alternative arts movement. Central to this investigation is the utilization of archival materials; the identification and preservation of which is fundamental to AS-AP's mission.

Linda Frye Burnham will reflect on the history of High Performance magazine (1978-1998) and the changes it tracked in the alternative arts movement during those years. High Performance followed the cutting edge from performance art through feminism, multiculturalism, activism and community-based art. High Performance was also closely engaged in the so-called Culture Wars of the early 1990s. After the demise of High Performance, Burnham and her co-editor, Steven Durland, wrote about these changes in The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena (New York: Critical Press, 1998), and they have carried on their investigations at the Community Arts Network on the Web: http://www.communityarts.net. A traveling exhibition about the first five years of High Performance -- along with an award-winning essay in College Art Association's Art Journal -- were created by historian Jenni Sorkin in 2003 [Art Journal, vol. 62, no. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 36-51. High Performance's archive resides at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Margo Machida will discuss the formative years of Godzilla: The Asian American Art Network, from her perspective as a co-founder of this collectively-run group of New York City-based artists, writers, and curators. She will examine the period in which it arose, and what distinguishes Godzilla from groups that emerged in the context of 1970s Asian American arts activism. Founded in 1990 and active for over a decade, Godzilla was conceived as a pan-ethnic, cross-disciplinary, and multigenerational forum aimed at fomenting a wide-ranging dialogue in Asian American visual art. Over its "lifetime" it sponsored art exhibitions, public symposia, and open slide viewings for new artists; published a newsletter that featured emerging critical writing and news from artists across the country; and also served as a platform for arts advocacy. Godzilla's archive is housed at New York University's Fales Library, http://www.n yu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/.

Steven Englander will discuss the history of the Lower East Side arts center ABC No Rio founded on New Year's Day, 1980, in New York City. He'll address the changes the organization has undergone over the years, and how the spirit and values that animated its early days continue to inform No Rio as its facilities, projects and programs have expanded and evolved. Since its founding No Rio has been host to a wide range of artistic expression dealing with war, homelessness, drugs, punk rock, performance art, spoken word and poetry, sex, violence, and the politics of housing and real estate, among much else.

About Art Spaces Archives Project

Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] is a non-profit initiative founded by a consortium of alternative art organizations, including Bomb Magazine, College Art Association, Franklin Furnace Archive, New York State Council on the Arts [NYSCA], New York State Artist Workspace Consortium, and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, with a mandate to help preserve, present, and protect the archival heritage of living and defunct for- and not-for-profit spaces of the "alternative" or "avant-garde" movement of the 1950s to the present throughout the United States.

With funding provided by NYSCA, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, AS-AP has a mandate to begin the documenting process by rooting out both a national index of the avant-garde -- assessing the needs for archiving and preservation-and helping to establish universal standards for archiving the avant-garde.

AS-AP's belief is beyond simply identifying the whereabouts of centers of activity. There is an underlying need to assess, catalogue, and preserve important formative materials for study by historians with a critical distance from the creation of the material itself.

AS-AP's website is a virtual resource and finding aid for locating the places and spaces of alternative and avant-garde activity. A central location for information pertaining to reservoirs of archives, tools to assist in archiving, and other aids for scholars interested in the alternative or avant-garde movement in the United States as well as for the locations of activity themselves.

About the Panelists

Linda Frye Burnham is a writer who founded High Performance in 1978 in Los Angeles and served as its editor through 1985 and its co-editor 1995-1998. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of California at Irvine. Burnham also co-founded the 18th Street Arts Complex and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California; Art in the Public Interest in Saxapahaw, North Carolina; and the Community Arts Network on the World Wide Web. She has served as a staff writer for Artforum, contributing editor for The Drama Review and arts editor for the Independent Weekly of North Carolina. High Performance's website is: http://www.apionline.org/hp.html

Margo Machida is an educator, independent curator, researcher, and writer specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, and has a joint appointment in Art History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Most recently she co-edited a major anthology of new critical writing entitled Fresh Talk / Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art (University of California Press, 2003). Dr. Machida has recently completed a book for Duke University Press, Art, Asian America, and the Social Imaginary: A Poetics of Positionality.

Beginning in 1995 Steven Englander has led the campaign to resist New York City's effort to evict ABC No Rio. Using the courts, public and political support, and finally direct action, the eviction was prevented, and the City, surprisingly, then offered the building to ABC No Rio for acquisition and renovation. Englander was hired as Director in 1999, and has overseen No Rio's transformation from storefront gallery / performance space to arts center with four floors of resources and facilities for area artists and activists. No Rio anticipates taking title to the building this winter, and renovation construction is expected to begin towards the end of 2006. ABC No Rio's website is http://www.abcnorio.org.

David Platzker is the Project Director of Art Spaces Archives Project. From 1998 through 2004 he was the Executive Director of the non-profit institution Printed Matter, Inc. He is also the co-author, and co-curator -- with Elizabeth Wyckoff -- of Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process (New York: International Print Center New York & Hudson Hills Press, 2000); and -- with Richard H. Axsom -- the book and exhibition entitled Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg: A Catalogue Raisonné 1958-1996 (Madison, Wisconsin: Madison Art Center & New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1997), which was awarded the George Wittenborn Award for Best Art Publication of 1997 by the Art Libraries Society of North America. Platzker is also the president of Specific Object, an on-line arts bookstore [http://www.specificobject.com]

For additional information regarding the panel or AS-AP please contact David Platzker at david[at]as-ap.org or at (212) 330-7688.

For admission information and additional information regarding the College Art Association's 2006 Annual Conference please visit CAA's website: http://conference.collegeart.org/2006/.

Posted by jo at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)

EXPERIMENTA 06

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A New Movement in India Cinema

You are invited to attend Bombay's own radical film festival, and participate in the beginnings of a new movement in India cinema. EXPERIMENTA 2006 - the 4th festival of experimental cinema in India returns to Bombay with a compelling selection of films and videos crafted by Indian and international artists.

EXPERIMENTA 2006 has been designed and curated by Shai Heredia. This year's guest curators, Kamal Swaroop (Bombay, India), Amrit Gangar (Bombay, India), Marcel Schwierin (Oberhausen, Germany), Karen Mirza and Brad Butler (No.w.here, UK) will present a selection of 50 films, along with video and film installations.

Main screenings will be held at the auditorium of the Cultural Centre of Russia (formerly The House of Soviet Culture). From hosting the world's first woman cosmonaut to screening Tarkovsky classics, this venue has played an important role in Bombay's history. Film and video installations will be presented at The Fourth Floor, Kitab Mahal.

Registration for delegate passes will commence from February 6th onwards, between 2pm-5pm at the Cultural Centre of Russia. Delegate passes are required for entry to film screenings. No photographs required.

Dates:
15th - 19th February

Venues:
CULTURAL CENTRE OF RUSSIA
Opposite Films Division, 31-A, Peddar Road, Mumbai - 400 062 THE FOURTH FLOOR Kitab Mahal, 192 D N Road, Fort, Mumbai - 400 001

Registration:
Rs 300/- Delegate pass
Rs 200/- Student Delegate pass

For programme information, please visit www.filterindia.com

EXPERIMENTA is a Filter India project in collaboration with No.w.here (UK), Goethe Institute Max Muller Bhavan, the Cultural Centre of Russia and the National Film Archives of India.

EXPERIMENTA is supported by Kodak India, British Council, ITC Grand Central Sheraton and Sula Vineyards.

Posted by jo at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Reality 10.55 Odense

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Overview of Contemporary Relational Art

Reality 10.55 Odense showing at Kunsthallen Brandts from February 18 through May 28, 2006 presents an overview of contemporary relational art, a highly critical and democratic art form that often interfaces closely with everyday life realities and is frequently co-produced in close collaboration with the audience. While relational practices have at times been criticised for their close approximation of reality as an unmediated and unedited image, the projects in Reality 10.55 Odense, offer exciting, new and distinctly visible alternatives to art making and to our experience of art and reality.

This exhibition addresses relational practice on several levels, through performative and situational interactions and enactments. Every "spectator" becomes a potential live action participant/co-creator by actual corporeal interaction, expanding, changing, and transforming the pieces in the exhibition according to their own personal preferences and choices. In a slight strategical inflection, situational interactions, interface with specific situations, realities, communities and social activities most often outside the exhibition space. These practices cast an attentive eye onto issues and images that shape our lives and define our perceptions and do not simply replicate, but offer new visions of reality.

Enactments are a very specific category of relational art making that span many forms, including interventions, actions, performances and performative interactions, and propose a rereading through a re representation of the order of things. Accepted histories, common or standard realities, situations, as well as collective and personal identities are given the possibility of a reinterpretation, a re alignment, a re exploration or a re invention.

The participants in the exhibition represent a wide international spectrum, from Australia to Macedonia, from Denmark to the USA. The artists are: AVPD (DK), Ondrej Brody (CZ) and Kristofer Paetau (FIN), Yane Calovski (MAC), Martin Creed (UK), Alicia Framis (SP), FOS (DK), Jeanne van Heeswijk (NLD) and Marten Winters (NLD), Tine Kortermand (DK), PARFYME (DK), Ward Shelley (USA), Andrew Sunley Smith (AUS), Martin Walde (AUT) and Yvonne Droge Wendel (NLD) and Saliou Traore (NLD).

The Tunnel by the American artist Ward Shelley is a good example of a performative interaction. During the entire time of the show, the artist and a crew of workers, named "termites" build a tunnel through the exhibition hall. During this time, the artist lives in the tunnel (replete with a portable toilet). The tunnel is constructed of wood and steel, forming an overhead passage across the space, climbing the building exterior and re-entering through a window. The passage through the tunnel is only large enough to crawl through, ocassionally widening to accomodate for round-abouts. Visitors can join in the building and climb into the tunnel, and might experience a range of emotive sensations, quiet meditation, curiosity, estrangement, fun.

The situational interaction by Yvonne Droge Wendel and Saliou Traore from the Netherlands, involves a large black round ball that suddenly appears in the city. To begin with, this form has no particular meaning. It is simply big, black and soft, and takes up space. Nonetheless, in time as it moves around the streets, alleys, in and around buildings, and as people begin to interact with it, the ball starts to tell a story all on its own. The people of Odense and the black ball become the protagonists-antagonists of an open ended plot. The story develops on the spur of the moment, depending on the curiosity and bewilderment of the co-story teller. In the process "Black Spot" tests the imagination and spontaneity of the citizens of the town.

For this exhibtion we have a guest curator, Maia Damianovic from Great Britain/Vienna, who together with curator Lene Burkard from Kunsthallen Brandts collaborated with the artists on the development of the exhibition and the projects.

Opening : February 17th. 2006
Exhibition: February 18th - May 28th. 2006

Brandts Torv 1 DK-5000 Odense, Denmark
Telephone: +45 65207000 Fax: +45 65207094

For more information, please contact Lene Burkard at tel. +45 6520 7017 or Helle Thylkjaer, PR and marketing at tel. +45 65207021 or mail: helle.thylkjaer[at]brandts.dk. Press images for download: www.brandts.dk

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

Special Issue on Performance in Interaction Design

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Call for Papers

Special Issue on Performance in Interaction Design: The operation of computers has always been a performative activity, in the sense that a system’s state changes as a computer runs through a program acting out the tasks specified in the script of a program.

With interactive systems, human actors take their place on stage alongside computers performing activities with and through such systems. The recent emergence of ubiquitous and tangible computing moves the stage of the interaction from the virtuality of the screen to the physical environment. This provides opportunities to address performative interactions that include bodily movements to create novel multimodal approaches.

For interaction designers this requires thinking about interaction in a different way, for example considering the role of the body, beyond ergonomics, for its increased relevance as a presentational, representational and experiential medium. Recently there has been a growing interest in developing interaction design methods that more explicitly recognise and exploit the performative elements and potentials of design activity itself. Across all design disciplines the importance of effective communication has led to an awareness of the need to consider and improve our ability to represent ideas in ways that open up, rather than shut down, dialogue.

Performance, theatre and dramaturgy have begun to figure in the design of interactive systems. This issue of Interacting with Computers will provide a focus for this growing topic of interest.

BACKGROUND

Across the many design disciplines that concern themselves with interaction design there have been long standing debates about the nature, utility, form, timing and quality of communication within the design process. For example, scenarios have found widespread acceptance as a tool for communicating rich user experiences within requirements and design specifications. Whilst they are typically not performed as such, their roots in the forms of traditional narrative point to a performative potential that could be more fully explored.

Within object-oriented software design, the CRC Cards technique combines role-playing with scenario walkthroughs and use-cases to provide design teams with a software Object’s perspective on the systems they’ are developing.

Finally, within the emerging communities of ‘interaction design’ practitioners we have seen interest in the potential of a variety of improvisational theatre techniques such as role playing and bodystorming. All of this suggests that performance in interaction design ought to be a topic worthy of serious consideration.

This special issue of Interacting with Computers aims to map the research landscape of performance and interaction design, to uncover the many ways performance manifests itself in design, and to identify methods that will encourage a wider range of designers and design industries to exploit the potential of performance as a design tool. Themes relevant for submission include (but are not limited to):

- Studies of human-human interaction in interaction design projects (design as performance)
- Historical overviews of performative interaction design
- Critical reports on the use of theatre, performance and drama as tools for exploring interaction design problems, themes or ideas, or as tools in concept design, requirements generation, design and evaluation.
- Studies of the use of dramatic representations of interaction design ideas (e.g. through the use of scenarios, textual or filmic)
- Evaluations and case studies of new and existing methods and techniques to exploit performance in interaction design
- Reports on the use of performative techniques in the evaluation of designs
- Reflections on the impact of interactive technology on already exisiting performative systems

We should stress that we are interested in any and all kinds of performance, for example traditional or improvisational dramatic narrative, interactive theatre, filmed performance, dance, music, etc. We are interested in exploring the widest possible range of ways performance has been or could be utilised, explored or developed within interaction design contexts.

SUBMISSIONS

Deadline for submissions: February 24th 2006
Notification of Acceptance: 17th March 2006
Final version of accepted papers: 31st March 2006

Note this issue will be published in July 2006 - final versions must be in by the date stated.

Submission of manuscripts ( up to 10000 words) are invited. Please refer to
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525445/authorinstructions for layout guidelines. However please note that in the first instance manuscripts should be sent to the special issue editors AND NOT the journal itself. Nor should you use the online submission tool at this stage.

Please **email** your submission (in MS Word or Acrobat PDF format) to c.macaulay[at]dundee.ac.uk

REVIEW BOARD

David Benyon School of Computing, Napier University UK
Thomas Inns, School of Design, University of Dundee, UK
Giulio Jacucci, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Finland
Tomi Kankainen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Finland
Ann Light, Interaction, Media and Communication Group, Queen Mary University of London UK
Catriona Macaulay, Interaction Design Lab, University of Dundee UK
Bonnie Nardi, Department of Informatics, University California, Irvine US
Alan Newell, Division of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, UK
Sally Jane Norman, The Culture Lab, University of Newcastle UK
Shaleph O’Neill, Interaction Design Lab, University of Dundee UK

GUEST EDITORS
Catriona Macaulay, Interaction Design Lab, University of Dundee UK
Giulio Jacucci, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Finland
Shaleph O’Neill, Interaction Design Lab, University of Dundee UK
Tomi Kankainen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Finland

Posted by jo at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2006

Grad/Undergrad

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Fellowship in Second Life

Linden Lab is pleased to announce its first fellowship in visual and performing arts for creative innovation in Second Life.

This $4,000 fellowship will provide a young artist with a chance to be free for a semester or summer to explore the use of the digital world of Second Life as an artistic medium. In doing so, we hope that we will see Second Life used to even greater potential in the expressive arts to the benefit of both the Second Life culture and the broader world of art.

The application deadline is March 15, 2006. Applications will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished academics, and the fellowship recipient will be announced in mid-April. Applications can be downloaded at: http://secondlife.com/education

Posted by jo at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

man in|e|space.mov

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Three Views/Visions of the Body

"ABSTRACT: The article documents the theoretical and aesthetical basis of the interactive dance performance man in |e|space.mov. The text discusses the abstraction of the human body in this performance by an interactive costume of light whose motion is analyzed by a 3D motion-rendering programme, which assembles and recombines the captured frame in real time in electronic 3D space. Thus appears a juxtaposition of 3 visions on the body making up the representation: the eye of the spectator, the camera and the 3D camera view: 3 visions constituting the contemporary body. Furthermore, the text questions the dislocation of the sensual body in physical space to the reading of body as a data in the matrix of virtual space in performing arts. In order to investigate the meaning of the aesthetics of abstraction, and dislocation of human body in performance art and motion analysis, the article puts ‘man in |e|space.mov’ in perspective to historical references of the 20th century, in particular to the work of the physiologist and pioneer of cinema J. E. Marey and the Bauhaus artist O. Schlemmer." Man in |e|space.mov/Motion Analysis in 3D Space by Wolf Ka, ACM MM in Singapor.

Next performance: Where: Festival Hors Saison, Le rendez-vous danse d'Arcadi, Ferme du Buisson; When: 25+26/02/2006 16h/18h; Production: res publica & lab[au] >> danseuse: Marianne Descamps, Musique: Marc Wathieu.

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! Vancouver

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Tonight! Reva Stone

Upgrade! Vancouver: Join us February 13 at 8pm for a talk by Reva Stone. Stone will provide an overview of her practice, including documentation of her recent work, Imaginal Expression, on exhibit at the Surrey Art Gallery until April 2. This viewer activated, computer-generated, real-time animated, 3D environment uses 3D imagery based on protein molecules, wrapped with scanned imagery from the human body - flesh, hair, blood vessels, bruises and scars. As people are sensed in the Gallery, the molecular components begin to animate to form a molecule, to mutate, and follow the movement of the visitor. When the visitor leaves, the molecule begins to degenerate. She will also provide an introduction to the project she is currently developing while working as an Artist in Residence in the TechLab. Exchange combines voice and face recognition software, video capture and graphics to create a work that appears to have sentience.

Where: Western Front, 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver, Canada FREE! Everyone welcome. After the talk we'll adjourn to the Whip Gallery for refreshments that have nothing to do with Valentine's Day.

Reva Stone is a Canadian artist well known for her work with digital technologies. She has worked with video, net.art, interactive installations, robotics, responsive 3D environments, and currently is working with voice and face recognition technologies. For more than 10 years Reva Stone has been investigating western culture¹s drive to model, simulate, engineer and manipulate biological life. Living matter is being revealed as increasingly mutable. Reva Stone has exhibited her work internationally and is also active as a curator, a writer, an educator and a mentor to artists through MAWA, Mentoring Artists for Women¹s Art. Although she is based in Winnipeg, she has relocated to BC for three months during her tenure as an artist in residence at the Techlab at the Surrey Art Gallery.

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Posted by jo at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

Heara 10

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Comments on the Israeli Acropolis

...We are very glad to invite you to Heara 10 event at the Science Museum, where one of our March speaker at Upgrade! TLV-JLM, Tamar Schori, will present her new media installation "Wabbits", specially conceived for the event, in collaboration with Ronen Leibman (concept and video), Amir Markowitz (micro-controllers) and Yair Reshef (Jitter programming).

Between the 40 works that will be presented: Assaf Talmudi will perform his piano session performance (for Max/Msp and piano), Uri Katzenstein & Binya Reches will perform "Hope Machines", a performance for voice, sound live processing, video and a robot, Eran Sachs and Ynon Negev will present their new sound installation and two animation films will be shown: "Jerusalem of Methal" by Sigalit Lifshitz, and "Fallen Art" by Tomek Baginsky, winner of the Golden Nica at last Ars Electronica festival.

"Heara 10" will take place in all the spaces of the Science Museum of Jerusalem. The art works intervene with the spaces and also with the permanent exhibition of the museum. More than 40 works and performances will be presented, made by more than 60 artists, who have created new works in the fields of video, sound, music, new media, performance and installation.

For one day, the artists will turn the Science Museum into an art laboratory which examines the immediate surroundings where the museum is located: the government authorities’ quarters (Prime Minister offices, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, Bank Israel, etc), the Hebrew University at Givat Ram, The Israel Museum. The works will deal with the national institutions in an attempt to comment in a non-conventional way on the modes of action of the State, and the history of the "Nation Hill". For more info and complete artists and works list: www.no-org.net/heara10

Posted by jo at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

VIII SALON Y COLOQUIO INTERNACIONAL DE ARTE DIGITAL (Eighth International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium):

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International Call

The Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau, with the support of the Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana (the City Historian), HIVOS, ENET / ETECSA Cubasí Portal, and the collaboration of the Union of Cuban Artists and Writers (UNEAC), the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinema (ICAIC), CUBARTE Portal and the National Museum of Fine Arts (Museo Nacional de Bellas) Artes, announces the Eighth International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium (VIII Salón y Coloquio Internacional de Arte Digital) with the purpose of promoting artistic and cultural values created with new technologies.

The Digital Art Exhibit, which will open on June 19, 2006, will show once again the current work in this field and favor exchange and reflection among creators and specialists engaged in these new forms of expression.

The event covers two areas; the National Digital Art Exhibit, of a competitive nature, and a non-competitive International Digital Art Exhibit, where works by artists from other countries will be shown. The works of the International Exhibit will be shown online and in video programs several halls in Havana.

INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ART EXHIBIT

The Centro Pablo calls on artists from foreign countries to participate in the International Digital Art Exhibit. Various artistic views within this expressive modality will be brought together, thus facilitating debate and considerations on their languages and poetics.

This year the International Digital Art Exhibit will accept proposals for the categories of bidimensional, net art, interactive and audiovisual work. The art pieces will be shown at the website of the Eighth Exhibit, developed by Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau and the Portal Cubasí of ENET / ETECSA.

At the same time the event will include a video show that will be exhibited in halls of Centro Pablo, Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad, ICAIC and the National Museum of Fine Arts. The art pieces must arrive before April 1st., 2006. The artists selected by the admission jury will be notificated before April 15, 2006.

Bidimensional, net art and interactive works online

In each category participants can propose up to three works, that will be sent following the instructions contained in this web address: http://www.artedigitalcuba.cult.cu/inscripcion/index.php

The admission jury will work on the curatorship of the submitted art works that will be included in the Jury Selection Exhibit and the Participants Exhibit in the web site of the event.

Audiovisual works

This category includes videos and digital animation works. Each participant can propose up to three works in VCD, SVCD or DVD (Zone 1 or multizone), NTSC.

Artists can send their proposals from this address:
http://www.artedigitalcuba.cult.cu/inscripcion/index.php, uploading a still image or an animated gif of each proposed work. Besides, the complete work must be sent by fast or postal mail to the following address:

Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau
Calle de la Muralla No. 63 entre Oficios e Inquisidor, La Habana Vieja,
Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba

The admission jury will work on the curatorship of the submitted art works that will be included in the Jury Selection Exhibit and the Participants Exhibit to be shown through June and July in cultural centers of La Habana Vieja. Selected artists will be notificated before April 15, 2006.

Centro Pablo cannot return the works submitted and requests participating artists to donate them for non-commercial exhibition to promote future festivals.

INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM

The International Digital Art Colloquium will take place June 20-23. In addition to discussions focusing on the work included in the two exhibits, artists, scholars and critics will make presentations on the potentials and the development of these new forms of artist expression.

The request to participate in this International Colloqium should be sent to Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau by registering and filling the form at http://www.artedigitalcuba.cult.cu/inscripcion/index.php before May 15, 2005

A fee of 50 pesos cubanos convertibles (CUC) is required from all participants in the International Colloquium. Participants from abroad will pay their inscription fee to the Colloquium at the Centro Pablo before the beginning of the event.

The inscription will allow participants to receive all the printed information about the Eighth International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloqium, including the poster created by the Seventh Exhibit winners, and to attend the debate sessions and openings during the first week of this cultural event.

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

Artists, critics, professors, journalists, students and specialists from other countries interested in taking part on the Eighth International Digital Art Exhibit and Colloquium may make their arrangements through:

Agencia de Viajes HAVANATUR
Caridad Sago Rivera, especialista comercial
Tel.: (537) 203 9099
Fax: (537) 203 9130
e-mail: sago[at]cimex.com.cu

Or directly in:

Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau
Calle de la Muralla No. 63 entre Oficios e Inquisidor, la Habana Vieja
Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba
Tele-fax: (537) 866 6585
Teléfono: (537) 861 6251
Correo electrónico: centropablo[at]cubarte.cult.cu

We invite you to visit the web sites of Centro Pablo and our previous Digital Art Exhibits:
www.artedigitalcuba.cult.cu
www.artedigital6.cubasi.cu
www.artedigital7.cubasi.cu
www.centropablo.cult.cu
www.centropablonoticias.cubasi.cu
www.aguitarralimpia.cubasi.cu

Posted by jo at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

ECHOES FROM THE MOUNTAINS

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Sounds of XX Winter Games

Sound surrounds us all the time. John Cage pointed out that there is no such thing as silence; from practically the time we are conceived until the time we die, we live bathed in non-stop sound. Echoes From the Mountains – Suoni in Alta Quota, a sound project of the official Cultural Olympiad program, is about tuning into this force of nature and of art creating “sound environments” which will stimulate the public to pay more attention to the world of sounds, may these be natural or the elaboration of an artist or a composer.

All of the artists--with the exception of the ones showcased in the Morrow Sound Cube--were asked to produce specific sound works responding to the unique characteristics of the project such as its geographical location, the Winter Olympic Games framework, and the diverse and heterogeneous audience that is going to interact with their installations.

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Special event of the project will be Phil Kline’s performance Chinook, a sound sculpture of many individual parts, recorded on audio tapes or CD and played through multiple moving boom boxes. The participants to the performance are asked to meet at a certain time and in a given location and to bring along their own boom boxes (some will be provided by the organizers and available for those who may not have their own). Kline will then give out the cassettes and CDs to those provided with a stereo and at his go! they are asked to push the play button. The artist leads the crowd in a 30 minutes “musical stroll” throughout the streets of the town.

Sound installations:

JOE DIEBES, Emblem: Salice d’Ulzio, giardini pubblici di Via della Torre
ENRICO GLEREAN, Nipha: Cesana, Via Roma
MorrowSound™ Cube, with Charlie Morrow, Olivia Block, Steve McCaffery, Miya Masaoka, Scanner, Vlada Tomova: Sestriere, Piazzale Fraiteve
STEPHEN VITIELLO, Whoosh: Bardonecchia, Piazza Valle Stretta
ZIMMERFREI, Frozen: San Sicario, arrivo telecabina

Live performance: PHIL KLINE, Chinook: Salice d’Ulzio, via Assietta, p.tta ufficio postale February 14th, 6.00 pm; Bardonecchia, meeting point via Medail 61, February 19th, 5.30 pm.

Posted by jo at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2006

UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard)

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Lilly controls my Foriginals

Lilly controls my Foriginals by UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard); February 25-April 8, fabioparisartgallery via Alessandro Monti 13 - 25121 Brescia - tel. 030 3756139 - skype: fabioparisbs.

For his first Italian personal exhibition, the Austrian collective UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard) offers a synthesis of his recent work, that deals with the subtle membrane that connects the digital and the biological: a mix that UBERMORGEN.COM, an identity that lives and works on the Net, experienced on his own body. One of the best-known exponents of the net.art scene, UBERMORGEN.COM is the theorist of digital actionism, a radical practice of artistic action which experiments on the market of attention and takes place into the media scape. The most astonishing result of this kind of practice was Vote-Auction (2000), a web site that, during the American presidential elections 2000, helped people to sell their vote to the highest bidder. The legal prosecution against UBERMORGEN.COM, and the media hysteria it produced, are an important part of the whole project. During the performance, UBERMORGEN.COM were interviewed up to 30 times per day, and was broadcasted by CNN in a 30 minutes show, the legal format Burden of Proof; but he never said whether the project was a real threat to the integrity of the U.S. election or wheter it was a political satire.

In the mass media storm, the digital actionist works with his whole body, as well as part and victim of the network around him.“We are the children of the 1980s, We are the first Internet-pop-generation... Hans Bernhard is loaded with 10 years of Internet & tech [digital cocaine], mass media hacking, underground techno, hardcore [illegal] drugs, rock&roll lifestyle and net.art jet set...” His neuronal networks are connected to the global network, and his mental illness – the bipolar affective disorder that in March 2002 sends him in a mental hospital – is the network's illness. The video called Psych|OS (2005) sums up that experience, in which those two levels – digital and real, bio & tech, nervous system and operative system – merge.

This nervous system, infected by the hi-tech, needs a treatment, and the hi-tech society prescribes its remedies, “bio-chemical 'agents' which control the internal information flow”. Olanzapine, an antipsychotic drug produced by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly as Zyprexa®, is one of these agents. In the digital prints Zyprexa “Lilly 1112” and Zyprexa “Lilly 4117” (2005), UBERMORGEN.COM paints its molecular structure, but during this translation process the molecule discovers to be made by bits. “Just pixels on a screen, just ink on paper”, like the Foriginals (forged originals), the conceptual device UBERMORGEN.COM uses to change legal documents into legal art. The title of the show – a declaration of poetics that seems a declaration of love – comes from here. “Lilly controls my Foriginals” means “Lilly controls my artistic work”, where Lilly, that seems the name of a woman, is in fact the name of a pharmaceutical company. Lilly “controls”, inspires as well as oversees, supervises the contact between my brain and my hard drive.

Besides, UBERMORGEN.COM is not the first to say that “the pixel is the molecule” and that technology is the demon under the skin. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips are one of the leading technologies of the future: an identification system which can collect all the required informations about the products, or the people, they are attached to. From a formal point of view, RFID chips reveal an organic structure, surprisingly similar to a cellular structure. With the ART FID (2005) series, UBERMORGEN.COM tells us, with the visual impact of a suprematist painting, this mix between biotechnologies and digital technologies, this neverending overlapping of two contiguous levels that is shaping our identity – and that, by now, already shaped his own one." --Domenico Quaranta, NOEMA.

Posted by jo at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2006

>OVER

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[TELE]COMMUNICATION

"Are you ready?" the message went out. The first message to cross water, the first wireless communication. The exhibition >OVER is, in part, a homage to Marconi’s ground-breaking experiments that he undertook near Cardiff to develop the first ever wireless transmission in 1887, a breakthrough to which nearly all of today’s telecommunications are indebted.

The means we use to send and receive messages influence the language we use, from the considered etiquettes of letter writing to the rash disposability of email and the text message; from the formalities of a landline telephone conversation to the obliviousness or indifference of the mobile phone user giving a prefixed report on their location. >OVER explores this territory. The artists either engage in methods of communication to produce the work, or they examine the impact, the language and significance of those methods.

Stefhan Caddick explores the text phenomenon. An LED sign facing the street from the gallery will display text messages sent from members of the public to its receiver. He gives us the opportunity to address the city. The project’s intention is to encourage members of the public to evolve a new use for these signs, which usually carry important but mundane information. Instead the Variable Message Sign will carry text messages, which by their nature are often deeply personal.

Lizzie Hughes’ two sound pieces expand and compress time and space by way of a simple telephone inquiry. In Second Empire State Building Piece, she telephones each of the building’s eighty floors, asking each occupying company in turn which floor they are based on. Their responses create an image of the building, but not one we might recognise or expect. Similarly, in a second piece, Lizzie telephones various locations around the globe to request the local time, which differs from call to call. She phones the same regions again over the course of 24 hours: this time each recipient reports identical times. The piece draws attention to the geographical and temporal scale of the world, its diurnal movement and our place within it.

Jennie Savage’s work Note To Self compels us to reflect on what we consider important enough to communicate to our future selves. We are invited to write a personal log that takes on archival significance because it will not be sent until 2011. By reverting to letter writing, a method of communication that now seems archaic, Note To Self gives a simple but enduring voice to our everyday, which would ordinarily pass without record.

If Jennie Savage opens out the communications loop by expanding the gap between sending and receiving, Paul Cabuts short circuits it. For the series Transmissions he has photographed telecommunications masts across South Wales. The range of these masts stretches across Wales and the UK, yet their surroundings are specific to South Wales. Transmissions illuminates the didactic nature of these structures, which are at once fixed yet transient, anchor points in the ebb and flow of cultural expediency and information exchange.

You are invited to the preview of the show on the 10th February from 6.30 at g39 Wyndham Arcade, Cardiff CF10 1FH. >OVER runs from 11th February to 18th March 2006. g39 is open 11-5.30 Wednesdays to Saturdays.

Posted by jo at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)

Globalisation/Colonisation

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Constructing a practice in the space of Post Autonomy

1st – 30th March 06: Presented by the Bureau of research into Post Autonomy – David Goldenberg, Stefan Beck and the assistance of Giulia Bonali: A series of random, strategic, interventions around London in public and virtual spaces – With contributions from Basekamp, Stefan Beck, David Goldenberg, Interactingarts, Christian Nold, Wim Salki, Stateless Nation, Stevan Vukovic Anabela Zigova.

The project proposes to stage a thought experiment - that looks at the conclusion and by-passing of the tradition of a Euro-centric art practice so that we can then go onto construct an entirely new model – against the backdrop of Globalisation - under the umbrella term of Post Autonomy.

Our entry point’s into the construction of Post Autonomy is via addressing the processes and issues of “Globalisation” and “Colonisation” – in this case as present within London with its claim to be a Global City. In order to make visible the dynamics and mechanisms of Globalisation, Colonisation, and the role that art plays in this process, the contributors will come together through the exploration of a participatory methodology [which can be found on wiki page] to design a series of strategic interventions into both the visible and de-material fabric of London.

The project aims to confront complex and difficult issues which are neither easy to frame within the language and concepts currently at our disposal, nor for that matter, once they are brought to the surface easy to resolve. For instance –

“How much of the European tradition of art and Mind set is it possibleto jettison?”

“How is it possible to use the material generated by the interventions to map the dynamics of Globalisation and Colonisation throughout London along with arts involvement?”

“How do we then use this material to go onto construct a Post Autonomous Practice?”

In addition to the interventions there will also be an on-going series of on-line debates along with dinners and discussions at venues around London.

The programme of activities can be found from the end of February on: www.postautonomy.co.uk www.nodel.org www.interactingarts.org

For further information and documentation on any aspect of the project
please contact Giulia Bonali on giulia[at]postautonomy.co.uk

Information on the Bureau of research into Post Autonomy and the launch of the Post Autonomy website.

The beginning of 2006 sees the launch of the Bureau of research into Post Autonomy – dedicated to the research, archiving and promotion of all aspects of Post Autonomy.

This will be the principle vehicle for exploring new models and thinking into a contemporary cultural practice. The centre for all research, information, archiving, promotion and operating will be the new website. This year will also see a continuation of a series of projects whose purpose is to both open out and map the uncharted territory and domain of Post autonomy – Beginning with “Constructing a practice in the space of Post Autonomy” In March as part of Node London – information can be found on http;//www.nodel.org The project continues on from the “Space of Post Autonomy” which took place as part of the Open congress event at Tate Britain in October 05 Information on further projects will be posted at regular intervals throughout the year – while at the same time information – plus photographic documentation and texts on past projects - can be found on the Post Autonomy website.

Posted by jo at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

TANGENT_FEAR:

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INVITING HORROR

What is rejected and refused in the symbolic order, reappears in reality. Specters, ghosts and phantoms haunt the world. (Peter Weibel on Jacques Lacan)

TANGENT_FEAR presents Inviting Horror, an artistic research project by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat which investigates the experience of fear in public space. In a world in which daily activity is monitored through electronic technologies marked by networked surveillance systems, biometric scanning and profiling mechanisms, people are required to surrender access to their personal spheres of privacy and movement. Under the guise of community safety and anti-terror security a demand for ultimate transparency is made. Suspense is created and the urban space becomes a phobic zone, a horror-scape, in which an explosive mix of aggression and desire results in an irrational need to remove one’s self from the public sphere, a desire for the incognito.

To invite horror, and offer it a safe haven within our personal realms of well being and spheres of desire, implies both an obvious impossibility and a potential to counter the loss of control of our public domain. Using the movie related notion of horror, we search artistic strategies and scenarios in which the transition from desire and fear to a social phobia can be (re)constructed as a real-time and real-space action occurring live in the public sphere. Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat have invited a group of artists and researchers whose work centers on notions of fear, the body and perception to engage a broader public audience to discuss and explore these issues to bring horror ‘inside’ from within the public sphere.

V2_, Eendrachtstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam
Friday 3 March 2006, 19:00-22:00 hrs
Admission: 2,50 EUR
Live stream & IRC chat: http://www.v2.nl/live

Inviting Horror: KPN Media Facade 'City Mobile Monument'

In conjunction with TANGENT_FEAR Rotterdam citizens are invited to upload short statements on urban experience to the running text display of the KPN Communication Tower. The City Mobile Monument forms part of Inviting Horror’s experiential archive which travels through and connects numerous urban centres worldwide. To upload a statement, please send a mail with your short text to info[at]invitinghorror.org KPN Telecommunication Company / Erasmus Bridge Tower, Rotterdam from 25 February to 5 March 2006.

Participants

Jordan Crandall, media artist and theorist, UC San Diego, recently completed Homefront, a video installation exploring the psychological dimensions of the new security culture.

Dennis Del Favero is a Sydney based artist and researcher, presents his video piece Pentimento, and will discuss the aesthetics of trauma through Nachtraglichkeit, a work in which he introduces the work of Pierre Janet.

Jill Magid, both performer and director, she engages the systems of discipline in society, such as police, CCTV, and forensic artists by exploiting the dormant possibilities of their services. She employs the system, via its latent qualities, to establish an intimate and poetic experience.

Marc de Kesel, Lacanian philosopher and researcher, Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht, will talk about the violence which is inherent to people, and the incapacity to deal with violence lucidly. An impossibility that makes violence only more malicious.

Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat experiment with new art forms for social cohension using electronic communication devices. In their performances and installations Lancel and Maat use a combination of online and offline media in which they invite the audience to participate. They design projects for urban public space such as those found at train stations, airports, museum lobbies, theaters, universities, construction sites, and city squares. Much of their work is developed in collaboration with V2_Lab
(Rotterdam) and Montevideo / TBA Netherlands Institute for Media Art (Amsterdam).

Special thanks: EYEBEAM New York

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media
Eendrachtsstraat 10, NL-3012 XL Rotterdam
PO Box 19049, NL-3001 BA Rotterdam, NL
Tel + 31 10 206 72 72 | Fax + 31 10 206 72 71
E-mail info AT v2.nl | URL http://www.v2.nl

Posted by jo at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

Rhizome Commissions Program: 2006-2007

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Deadline for proposals: April 1, 2006: Rhizome is pleased to announce that with support from the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, between eight and eleven new Internet art projects will be commissioned in 2006.

The fee for each commission will range from $900 – $3,000.

Artists are invited to submit proposals for new works of Internet-based art. There is no required theme. The works can manifest offline, as long as the Internet is a primary vehicle in the creation of the work, and the final work is accessible online, whether through a web browser, software, or some other use of internet technologies.

When evaluating proposals, the jury will consider artistic merit, technical feasibility, and online accessibility. Although we will provide some technical assistance with final integration into the Rhizome web site, artists are expected to develop projects independently and without significant technical assistance from Rhizome.

+ How to Submit a Proposal +
The jury will only consider proposals from members of Rhizome.org. To sign up for Rhizome membership, please visit:
http://rhizome.org/preferences/register.rhiz

There are two parts to proposal submission:

You must create a proposal in the form of a web site that includes the following key elements:
+ Project description (500 words maximum) that discusses your project's core concept, how you will realize your project, and your project's feasibility. If you plan to work with assistants, consultants, or collaborators, their roles and (if possible) names should be included.

+ You are encouraged, but not required, to include a production timeline and a project budget, which should include your own fee. If you have other funding sources for your project, please indicate this in your budget.

+ Your resume or Curriculum Vitae. For collaborative groups, provide either a collective CV or the CV's of all participants.

+ Up to 5 work samples. Note: More is not necessarily better. You should include only work samples relevant to your proposal. If your proposal has nothing to do with photography, don't include images from your photography portfolio. Please provide contextualizing information (title, date, medium, perhaps a brief description) to help the jury understand what they are looking at. The work sample can take any form, as long as it is accessible via the web.

When designing your web-based proposal, please note that the jury will have limited time for evaluations, so try to make your site clear and concise.

When your web-based proposal is complete, you are ready for Part Two of the proposal process:

Submit your proposal for a Rhizome Commission via an online form at
http://rhizome.org/commissions/submit/.
We do not accept proposals via email, snail mail, or other means. Proposals will be accepted until 12:00AM EST (that's New York time) on Saturday, April 1, 2006. The form requires the following information:

+ Name of artist or collaborative group
+ Email address
+ Place of residence (city, state/province, country)
+ Title of the project (this can be tentative)
+ Brief description of project (50 words maximum)
+ URL of web-based proposal

+ Jury +
Proposals will be reviewed by a jury consisting of Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome; blogger Regine Debatty of we-make-money-not-art, net artist Olia Lialina, Professor at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart; artist and writer Eduardo Navas, also founder and contributing editor of Net Art Review and New Media Fix; and Marisa S. Olson, artist and Editor and Curator-at-Large at Rhizome.

Rhizome members will also participate in the evaluation and awarding process through secure web-based forms. In this phase of evaluation, Rhizome members will be directed to the submitted web-based proposals. While this more open jurying process does mean that proposals could possibly be discussed publicly, there have been no reported conflicts or abuses of information reported.

+ Winners +
Winners will be contacted on or after May 23rd, 2006. Each winner will be asked to sign an agreement with Rhizome.org governing the terms of the commission. Commissioned projects will be listed on the main Rhizome Commission page and included in the Rhizome ArtBase.

+ Questions +
If you have any questions about the Rhizome Commissions, send an email to commissions[at]rhizome.org.

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

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

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Digital Arts and New Media Festival

UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program is pleased to announce the Digital Arts and New Media Festival taking place at UCSC between May 4th and May 7th, 2006. The UCSC DANM MFA Program serves as a center for the development and study of digital media and the cultures they have helped create. The DANM Festival 2006 will showcase the expanding arena in which this new art practice is emerging and it will signal UCSC’s presence as a prominent center of activity in digital arts and new media. The DANM Festival 2006 introduces the campus and the public at large to cutting edge experimental work and serves as a bridge to the local community through collaborations with the The Museum of Art & History @ The McPherson Center and the Santa Cruz Film Festival.

Presenting work by national and international artists, expert speakers, and members of the DANM MFA Program, the DANM Festival 2006 features the following events:

EXHIBITIONS

PHYSICAL | DIGITAL
The Museum of Art & History @ The McPherson Center, Santa Cruz
May 4 to May 14: The works included in Physical | Digital reveal a remarkable match between subject and medium. Jim Campbell, Paul DeMarinis and Camille Utterback share an intense involvement with technology that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging.

BLINK
UCSC Porter Sesnon Gallery, May 5 to May 7: Blink presents the works of from UCSC DANM MFA students.

SYMPOSIA

May 5, UCSC, Studio C, Communication Building
May 6, UCSC, Media Theatre, Theater Arts M110, UCSC

The DANM Festival Symposia includes 5 panels about Digital Arts and New Media theory and practice. The specific subjects of the panels are:

I.THE ART OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, Chaired by Elliot Anderson (Assistant Professor of Electronic Media, UCSC, DANM Faculty).
II. DIGITAL CARTOGRAPHIES, Chaired by Ted Warburton (Assistant Professor of Theater Arts, UCSC, DANM Faculty).
III. ALGORITHMIC METHODS AND MODELS IN THE ARTS; Chaired by David Cope (Professor of Music, UCSC, DANM Faculty) and Paul Nauert (Associate Professor of Music, UCSC, DANM Faculty).
IV. AUDIBLE TERRAIN: SHIFTING GROUND IN CONTEMPORARY SOUND PRACTICE, Chaired by Ed Osborn (Assistant Professor of Art, UCSC, DANM Faculty).
V. THE ROLE OF VIRTUOSITY IN A TECHNOLOGY-ENHANCED PERFORMANCE, Chaired by David Merrill (MIT).

MUSIC PERFORMANCES

May 6
Media Theatre, Theater Arts M110, UC Santa Cruz

The DANM Festival will include the performances by three artists. Two of them, Laetitia Sonami and Sue Costabile, have been working together recently and their collaboration will be a live sound/film performance (with Costabile's work "I.C. You"). Sonami will also perform her solo piece "The Appearance of Silence (The Invention of Perspective)". John Bischoff, the third artist, has been creating electronic music for solo performer and in computer network bands for over 20 years.

FILM SCREENING

May 5, 8.30 to 10.30 pm
Media Theatre, Theater Arts M110, UC Santa Cruz

In collaboration with the Santa Cruz Film Festival, the DANM Festival will present some rare historical works that have been very influential in the development of digital art along with other films done by contemporary artists such as Harun Farocki.

Last but not least, the DANM Festival will also include a series of satellite events that will take place throughout April, May and June 2006.

The DANM Festival has been kindly supported by UCSC Porter College.

For further information please contact:
Elena Lledó
Festival Coordinator
Tel: 831 457 2027
Email: elledo[at]ucsc.edu

Posted by jo at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2006

Keith Armstrong, Charlotte Vincent, Guy Webster

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Shifting Intimacies

Shifting Intimacies is an interactive/media artwork by Keith Armstrong, Charlotte Vincent and Guy Webster that invites the participant to meditate upon and witness the human body disintegrating and transforming whilst in motion.

Each participant enters a large, dark space (20m x 8m) alone. They see two circles of projected film imagery, one on a floating disc of white sand and the other on a circle of white dust. Sounds sweep up and down the space through surround sound, whilst participants’ movements direct and affect the filmic image and audio experience. Throughout the work a layer of dust (an artificial life form) slowly eats away and infuses itself deep into the imagery. This immersive work invites differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play and moves through states of eternally shifting balance in ways that produces a heightened awareness of the body.

The work uses a range of technologies including interactive video (Very Nervous System), body heat sensors, custom built electronics, image databases, real time computational synthesis software (Opcode Max), networking software, real time audio digital signal processing (Max MSP) and real time show control protocols. Controllable actuators also move physical material through the air.

Historic Project Blog: http://www.embodiedmedia.com/SI/si.html

Event: Shifting Intimacies, Capture 4 Award, 2006
Venue: The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), The Mall, London
Times: 16 February (noon) until 21 February (7.30pm)
Contact: ICA Box Office
Phone: +44 20 7930 3647
Vincent Dance Theatre: http://www.vincentdt.com/curshifting.htm
C4 Home: http://www.portlandgreen.com/capture4/

Posted by jo at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

Internet Research 7.0: Call for Papers

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INTERNET CONVERGENCES

IR 7.0: INTERNET CONVERGENCES: International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, Brisbane, Australia--28-30 September 2006; Pre-Conference Workshops: 27 September 2006.

The Internet works as an arena of convergence. Physically dispersed and marginalized people (re)find themselves online for the sake of sustaining and extending community. International and interdisciplinary teams now collaborate in new ways. Diverse cultures engage one another via CMC. These technologies relocate and refocus capital, labor and immigration, and they open up new possibilities for political, potentially democratizing, forms of discourse. Moreover, these technologies themselves converge in multiple ways, e.g. in Internet-enabled mobile phones, in Internet-based telephony, and in computers themselves as "digital appliances" that conjoin communication and multiple media forms. These technologies also facilitate fragmentations with greater disparities between the information-haves and have-nots, between winners and losers in the shifting labor and capital markets, and between individuals and communities. Additionally these technologies facilitate information filtering that reinforces, rather than dialogically challenges, narrow and extreme views.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Our conference theme invites papers and presentations based on empirical research, theoretical analysis and everything in between that explore the multiple ways the Internet acts in both converging and fragmenting ways - physical, cultural, technological, political, social - on local, regional, and global scales.

Without limiting possible proposals, topics of interest include:

- Theoretical and practical models of the Internet
- Internet convergence, divergence and fragmentation
- Networked flows of information, capital, labor, etc.
- Migrations and diasporas online
- Identity, community and global communication
- Regulation and control (national and global)
- Internet-based development and other economic issues
- Digital art and aesthetics
- Games and gaming on the Internet
- The Net generation
- E-Sectors, e.g. e-health, e-education, e-business

We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community that address the theme of Internet Convergence. We particularly call for innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on and interrogations of the conference theme. However, we always welcome submissions on any topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet and related Internet technologies. We are equally interested in interdisciplinary proposals as well as proposals from within specific disciplines.

SUBMISSIONS

We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference papers, but we also encourage proposals for creative or aesthetic presentations that are distinct from a traditional written 'paper'. We welcome proposals for roundtable sessions that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, and we also welcome organized panel proposals that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme.

This year AoIR will also be using an alternative presentation format in which a dozen or so participants who wish to present a very short overview of their work to stimulate debate will gather together in a plenary session involving short presentations (no more than 5 minutes) and extended discussion. All papers and presentations in this session will be reviewed in the normal manner. Further information will be available via the conference submission website.

- PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 500-750 words

- SHORT PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-700 words

- CREATIVE OR AESTHETIC PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-750 words

- PANELS - submit a 250-500 word description of the panel theme (and abstracts of the distinct papers or presentations)

- ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - submit a 250-500 word statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction.

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each person is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. People may also propose a panel of papers or presentations, of which their personal paper or presentation must be a part. You may submit an additional paper/presentation of which you are the co-author as long as you are not presenting twice. You may submit a roundtable proposal as well.

Detailed information about submission and review is available at the conference submission website http://conferences.aoir.org. All proposals must be submitted electronically through this site.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS

All papers presented at the conference are eligible for publication in the Internet Research Annual, on the basis of competitive selection and review of full papers. Additionally, several publishing opportunities are expected to be available through journals, again based on peer-review of full papers. Details on the website.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Graduate students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Any student paper is eligible for consideration for the AoIR graduate student award. Students wishing to be a candidate for the Student Award must also send a final paper by 31 July 2006.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Prior to the conference, there will be a limited number of pre-conference workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose, methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as well as explaining its relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections. These proposals and all inquires regarding pre-conference proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to the Conference Chair and no later than 31 March 2006.

DEADLINES

Submission site available: 1 December 2005

Final date for proposal submission: 7 February 2006

Presenter notification: 21 March 2006

Final workshop submission deadline: 31 March 2006

Submission of paper for publication/student award: 31 July 2006

Submission of paper for conference archive: 30 September 2006

CONTACT INFORMATION

Program Chair: Dr Fay Sudweeks, Murdoch University, Australia,
sudweeks at murdoch.edu.au

Conference Chair: Dr Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology,
Australia, a.bruns at qut.edu.au

President of AoIR: Dr Matthew Allen, Curtin University of Technology,
Australia m.allen at curtin.edu.au

Association Website: http://www.aoir.org

Conference Website: http://conferences.aoir.org (from 1 December)

Dr Matthew Allen
Associate Professor Internet Studies
Associate Dean Teaching and Learning, Humanities
Curtin University of Technology, CRICOS 00301J Australia
m.allen at curtin.edu.au
http://smi.curtin.edu.au/netstudies/allen.htm
+61 8 92663511 (v) +61 8 9266 3166 (f)
President, Association of Internet Researchers http://www.aoir.org

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

February 07, 2006

I/O

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Inbox/Outbox Call for Participation

Inbox/Outbox is an e-mail institution operating and establishing connections between virtual and real public spheres as a means to propelling public access. Characterized by its temporary function as an agent, I/O avoids institutional incorporation of its subjects, thus removing itself from the final context, as well as allowing internal institutions and contexts to occur. I/O is based on a division into two binary functions, Inbox and Outbox, Inbox being the receiver of virtual data, which in turn is processed by Outbox and "forwarded" to public spaces.

Inbox/Outbox is currently channelling its activities through Centrifug, an exhibition space within Konsthall C in Stockholm, Sweden. The selection of exhibitions at Centrifug is based on a public booking list, released once every year. The Inbox/Outbox exhibition period is February 22nd - March 5th. I/O is for this occasion calling for participation. Admission will not be limited in any way, neither by amount of data, number of participants nor by any other criteria for selection, given the condition that submitted content doesn't infringe upon laws or regulations.

Submitted data must be suited for printing onto plain (A4) paper or for writing to audio-CD. Deadline is set for February 20th. Submit your data to inbox[at]inboxoutbox.org

Posted by jo at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2006

CFP - Mobile Communication Research Annual

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The Reconstruction of Space & Time through Mobile Communication Practices

Transaction books and their series on Mobile communication announces: The Mobile Communication Research Annual: Volume I, The Reconstruction of Space & Time through Mobile Communication Practices. Rich Ling and Scott Campbell (eds.) We seek the best and most interesting examples of relevant scholarship for our first volume of a projected series on the topic of mobile communication research.

The proliferation of wireless and mobile communication technologies gives rise to important changes in how people experience space and time. These changes may be seen in many realms of social life, such as the transformation of public into private space and vice versa, the blurring of lines demarcating work and personal life, and new patterns of coordination and social networks. Recent scholarship has tried to make sense of these changes in space and time. For example, Manuel Castells argues that advances in telecommunications have contributed to new spatio-temporal forms, which he describes as "the space of flows" and "timeless time." According to Castells, these new forms mark a shift in the importance of the meaning of a place to the patterns of the de-sequenced, networked interactions that occur in that place.

The purpose of this special issue is to continue and deepen the dialog on how space and time change as a result of the lower threshold for interaction due to mobile communication technologies.

Abstracts of 200 words describing the proposed papers are due by 17 March 2006 with those accepted due in final form by 1 September 2006. Submissions may be in the form of empirical research studies or theory-building papers and should be 5 - 7000 words (in English). Papers are preferably new work but if material from other venues is available it will also be considered for publication. Send your abstract to either Rich Ling or Scott Campbell.

About the editors:

Rich Ling (richard-seyler.ling[at]telenor.com) is a sociologist at Telenor's research institute located near Oslo, Norway and he has also been the Pohs visiting professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the recently published book on the social consequences of mobile telephony entitled The Mobile Connection: The cell phone's impact on society and along with Per E. Pederson the editor of the book Mobile Communications: Renegotiation of the Social Sphere. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder in his native US. Upon completion of his doctorate, he taught at the University of Wyoming before coming to Norway on a Marshall Foundation grant. For the past ten years, he has worked at Telenor R&D and has been active in researching issues associated with new information communication technology and society with a particular focus on mobile telephony. He has led projects in Norway and participated in projects at the European level.

Scott Campbell (swcamp[at]umich.edu) is Assistant Professor and Pohs Fellow of Telecommunications in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His research explores the social implications of new media, with an emphasis on mobile communication practices. His recent studies have investigated cross-cultural trends, mobile phone use in social networks, and use of the technology in public settings. Scott's research has appeared / is forthcoming in Communication Monographs, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication Education, New Media & Society, Communication Research Reports, Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, and other scholarly venues. Prior to joining the University of Michigan in 2005, he worked in the US wireless industry, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, and spent three years teaching and conducting research at Hawaii Pacific University on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

About the series editor:

James E. Katz is the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University and author of Magic in the Air (Transaction, 2006). His edited or co-edited books include Perpetual Contact (with Mark Aakhus), Machines that Become Us, and Mediating the Human Body (with Leopoldina Fortunati and Raimonda Riccini). His next edited book, tentatively titled Mainstreaming mobiles: Wireless Communication and Social Change in a Global Context, will be published by MIT Press.

About the publisher:

Transaction Publishers, a leading independent publisher of social scientific books, periodicals and serials, is undertaking a new series of books on mobile communication. Transaction's mission is scholarly and professional inquiry into the nature of society. Located on the campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, Transaction Publishers is dedicated to the expansion of the social sciences and is committed to the enhancement of public, professional and scholarly awareness by reaching the widest possible audience for work done by researchers.

Editorial board

Ken Anderson Intel corporation, US
Naomi Baron American University, US
Manual Castells Annenberg Center, University of Southern California, US/Spain
Akiba Cohen Tel Aviv University, Israel
Nicola Doering Ilmenau University of technology, Germany
Jonathan Donner Microsoft Research - Bangalore, India/US
Gerard Goggin University of Sydney, Australia
Nicola Green University of Surrey, UK
Leslie Haddon University of Essex, UK
Keith Hampton Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, US
Joachim Höflich Erfurt University, Germany
Mizuko Ito Annenberg Center, University of Southern California, US/Japan
Shin Dong Kim Hallym University, Republic of Korea
Ilpo Koskinen University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland
Patrick Law The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Christian Licoppe Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, France
Sonia Livingstone London School of Economics, UK
Steve Love Brunel University, UK
Kristóf Nyíri Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Leysia Palen University of Colorado, US
Raul Pertierra University of the Philippines, Philippines
Madanmohan Rao Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, India
Anxo Roibas University of Brighton, UK/Italy
Harmeet Sawhney Indiana University, US
Gitte Stald University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Hidenori Tomita Bukkyo University, Japan
Jane Vincent University of Surrey, UK
Barry Wellman University of Toronto, Canada
Peter B. White La Trobe University, Australia

[blogged by Ganaele Langlois on MDCN]

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

International Symposium on Curating New Media Art

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Art-Place-Technology

Art-Place-Technology, Liverpool: International Symposium on Curating New Media Art, 30 March - 1 April 2006.

Art-Place-Technology will look at historical and current projects by some of the world's leading curators of new media art, and discuss how curating new media art creates interfaces with the art world, museum culture, media, publishing and academia. New media art is a global phenomenon: a rapidly changing and dynamic field of creative practice which crosses conventional categories and disciplinary boundaries, challenging our assumptions about art.

How do curators engage with new media art? What makes a good curator of new media art? What can we learn from the pioneers of this field? What does the future hold for curating new media art? What common ground exists with other disciplines? These and other issues will be explored at Art-Place-Technology.

Speakers include figures who are shaping the practice and theory of curating new media art, including:

Inke Arns, Artistic Director, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.
Sarah Cook, Curator and Co-editor, CRUMB, University of Sunderland
Paul Domela, Deputy Chief Executive, Liverpool Biennial
Lina Dzuverovic, Director, Electra, London
Charlie Gere, Reader in New Media Research, Lancaster University
Beryl Graham, Curator and Co-editor, CRUMB, University of Sunderland
Ceri Hand, Director of Exhibitions, FACT, Liverpool
Drew Hemment, Director, Futuresonic, Manchester
Kathy Rae Huffman, Director of Visual Arts, Cornerhouse, Manchester
Stephen Kovats, International Programs Developer, V2, Rotterdam
Amanda McDonald Crowley, Director, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, New
York
Francis McKee, Head of Digital Arts & New Media, CCA, Glasgow
Alfred Rotert, Co-director, European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück
Trebor Scholz, Institute for Distributed Creativity, New York
Dimitrina Sevova & Alain Kessi, codeflow, Zurich
Paul Sullivan, Director, Static Gallery, Liverpool
Simon Worthington, Mute, London

Further programme details and registration:
http://www.art-place-technology.org
Tel +44 (0)151 2315190
E-mail APT[at]ljmu.ac.uk

Art-Place-Technology is hosted by the Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University in collaboration with FACT and Art Research Communication.

Supported by Arts Council England North West, Media Arts Network.

Art Research Communication
newsletter[at]a-r-c.org.uk
www.a-r-c.org.uk

Posted by jo at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

EXCESS

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Images and Bodies in Times of Excess

EXCESS: images and bodies in times of excess--February 12 to May 21, 2006, Z33, Zuivelmarkt 33, B-3500 Hasselt.

...We are inundated by [images], from the newspapers in the early morning to the late-night news on television. Or is that just how it feels? Are we being blinded by a surfeit of images or a lack of them? Do we see the same images too often and is there a need for greater diversity? Perhaps we have to conclude that there are never enough images for a correct representation of reality.

These questions and others link EXCESS to Jean-Luc Godard's ‘Histoire(s) du Cinéma'. This film history, which is also a history of the 20th century, pays as much attention to the films that were not made as to those that were. EXCESS intends to transpose this comprehensive project to the digital era. Which images do we see (or see too much) and which do we not (or too little)? And another important point: how do we react to these pictures? What feeling arises amongst all these pictures?

A search for the pictures behind the reality isinevitably also about the reality behind the pictures. It is a visual experience, but certainly a physical one too – a confrontation with the pictures and with the body with which we view them. This makes each image different for everybody. In agreement with Godard, we can already conclude that this exhibition will not present the right image, just an image: “pas une image juste, juste une image”.

Works by Sergei Bugaev Afrika, Saed Andoni, Herman Asselberghs, Heather & Patrick Burnett-Rose, Lieven De Boeck, Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujica, Kendell Geers, Jean-Luc Godard, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sagi Groner, Thomas Köner, Kuda.org, Teresa Margolles, Renzo Martens, Alice Miceli, Christof Migone, Rob Moonen & Olaf Arndt, Steve Mumford, Els Opsomer, OVNI, Dierk Schmidt, Alexander Sokurov, Terre Thaemlitz, Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, Geert Van Moorter exhibition design Ann Clicteur curator Pieter Van Bogaert.

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

Workshop on Generating Collaborative Research in the Ethical Design of Surveillance Infrastructures:

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OPEN CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Workshop on Generating Collaborative Research in the Ethical Design of Surveillance Infrastructures: June 8-11, 2006; Austin, Texas.

Surveillance may be understood as a set of processes of identification, tracking, analysis and response which organize social knowledge, social relations, and social power. Surveillance mediates everyday life. For example, internet "cookies," shopping loyalty cards, and mobile phone numbers all individuate and identify us. These identifiers are used to index databases recording our web surfing activities, our purchases, and our movements. The databases are subjected to statistical analysis in order to produce knowledge of demographic categories, typical patterns, or suspect behavior. This knowledge is then applied back to individuals in the population in order to assign each to a particular niche market or risk group, and to act toward them accordingly. Thus, through surveillance, knowledge is created, categories and types are produced, individuals are assigned social identities, and actions are taken that articulate those identities within a larger social order.

These surveillance practices are themselves shaped by overlapping and intertwined technical systems, laws, institutional configurations, and cultural understandings. This "infrastructure" of surveillance supports patterns of access to the resources of knowledge production, social visibility, and social position.

In June 2006 a three-day workshop will be held in Austin, Texas. The purpose of the meeting is to generate collaborative research projects exploring further

=the social implications of surveillance practice,
=the technological, legal, economic, and cultural infrastructures that shape surveillance practice, and
=possible technological, legal, economic, or cultural interventions to reshape those infrastructures to desired ends.

The workshop will address this issue in the context of the following themes:

=If surveillance mediates the production of categories and types of people, how can surveillance infrastructures be shaped to permit individuals, and groups of individuals, to coalesce around a particular identity?

=How can surveillance infrastructures mediate the ability of groups and individuals to “perform” certain identities within certain contexts?

=How can surveillance infrastructures mediate the ability of subcultures to generate and sustain knowledge of and for themselves?

=How can surveillance resources be appropriately allocated to ensure that groups of many scales (the family, the subculture, the nation) are able to defend, protect, and nurture their own (perhaps conflicting) interests?

We seek participants whose interests and expertise complement and expand upon each other’s work in social theory, information system design, business, and public policy, and who will be able to address issues such as:

=the application of legal paradigms other than privacy to practices of information collection. We are particularly interested explorations of legal theories of cultural rights and information commons.

=the application of novel information processing techniques, including, but not limited to, pseudonymity, digital rights management, and cluster analysis.

=the application of social theories of identity, including queer theory and performance studies.

=the intersection of market interests with ethical surveillance practice.

The workshop is intended to provide the initial venue for the production of fundable, collaborative, cross-disciplinary research proposals. Participants will be expected to prepare a position paper for distribution one month prior to the meeting. At the workshop itself, we will identify synergistic interactions of expertise, fruitful research directions, and possible sources of funding. After the workshop, participants will be eligible to apply for seed money grants to complete collaborative grant proposals to pursue those projects. Participants will also be invited to contribute to an edited volume.

The project will provide meals and accommodation for workshop participants, and will reimburse reasonable travel costs. Please include a quote of lowest available airfare in your application. Participants from outside the U.S. are especially encouraged to apply.

Potential participants should submit (to djp[at]mail.utexas.edu) proposals consisting of two parts:

(1) a 750-1000 word abstract, describing your area of research, its relevance to the conference topic, and a proposed presentation. The abstract should directly address a collaborative element – a cross-disciplinary or cross-professional alignment that would further the presenter’s research goal.

(2) a one-page biography or curriculum vitae, listing your relevant publications and experience.

The deadline for proposals is March 1, 2006. Participants will be selected by March 20, 2006.

For more information, please contact David Phillips (djp[at]mail.utexas.edu).
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant #0551532 and by the University of Texas College of Communication and Department of Radio-Television-Film.

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

Floating Points 3: Ubiquitous Computing

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Panel 1: Responsive Environments and Systems

DATE: February 8th, 7:00 p.m.
PLACE: Emerson College, Bill Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street, Boston, and LIVE ONLINE

Panelists: Mark Goulthorpe, Susan Kozel and Chris Salter
Moderator: Helen Thorington
Co-presented by Emerson College and Turbulence.org

Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org announce a new speaker series, Floating Points 3 [FP3] that will address the subject of "Ubiquitous Computing" or "Ubicomp", where computing and wireless capabilities are so integrated into the fabric of everyday life (clothing, cars, homes, and offices) that the technologies recede into the background and become indistinguishable from everyday activities.

Mark Goulthorpe: In 1991, architect Mark Goulthorpe established the dECOi atelier to undertake a series of largely theoretical architectural competitions. Today, dECOi is an established architectural/design practice that takes a fresh, exploratory approach to design. Goulthorpe will discuss his interactive Aegis Hyposurface which dynamically mediates events happening inside and outside of buildings. Goulthorpe currently divides his time between the School of Architecture and the Media Lab at MIT.

Susan Kozel is a dancer, choreographer, writer and Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Kozel has a PhD in Philosophy and is co-founder of Mesh Performance Practices. Her research combines a broad range of interactive and responsive systems with performative practices (telematics, motion capture, sensing, wearables). All of her work is about exploring and expanding our physical and creative interface with technology. She will discuss her current project "other stories" which utilizes the Vicon motion capture system. http://www.meshperformance.org/

Chris Salter is a media artist, director and composer based in Montreal, Canada and Berlin, Germany. He develops and produces large-scale, multi-media and interactive environments that merge space, vision and sound. These environments respond in complex and subtle ways to audience presence and activities. He is also a professor in the Design and Computation Department at Concordia University. He will discuss his large scale installation "Suspension/Threshold." http://www.sponge.org/

Helen Thorington is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. /Turbulence.org

Floating Points is co-presented by Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA), a not-for-profit media organization with offices in Boston and New York. It is funded by Emerson College's Office of Academic Affairs, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, School of the Arts, and Department of Visual and Media Arts.

[Related >>

Posted by jo at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

Exchange 2006

LOOKING FOR VENUES TO HOST AN EXCHANGE EVENT

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For More Information: PDF; Word.doc

Exchange 2006 (blogged here yesterday) is a cross-border art performance combining surveillance technology, a full-size transport truck, and all Nancy Nisbet's personal belongings. The project launches in Vancouver, Canada on May 1, 2006. "In this sustained performance, my belongings are inventoried, ID tagged and freely traded with individuals encountered during a six month road-trip circumnavigating Canada, the United States and Mexico. Using cultural resistance, this art project unsettles relationships between international politics, technological surveillance, and identity construction.

"Exchange Events" are fully contained, coordinated and collaborative events with galleries and other institutions/venues along the trip route. The performance takes place directly out of a full size 18-wheel transport truck. The event is intended to be like an "opening / swapmeet". I am looking for venues that can provide space to park the transport truck, local event announcements, and some assistance during the event. I am available to speak about the project and related issues if desired."

EXCHANGE Route Cities and Dates (some flexibility). NB. Route and dates are only scheduled until Mid-August (Miami) at this time. The Mexican and West US coast portions of the trip will be scheduled in March, 2006.

Vancouver, BC, May 1
Kamloops, BC, May 2
Edmonton, AB, May 5
Calgary, AB, May 8
Medicine Hat, AB, May 10
Swift Current, SK, May 11
Saskatoon, SK, May 12
Regina, SK, May 15
Brandon, MN, May 17
Winnipeg, May 18
Minneapolis, MN, May 23
Madison, WI, May 25
Chicago, IL, May 29
Cleveland, OH, June 1
Buffalo, NY, June 2
Toronto, ON, June 4
Ottawa, ON, June 6
Montreal, QC, June 9
Quebec City, QC, June 13
Fredricton, NB, June 17
Moncton, NB, June 18
Halifax, NS, June 19
St. John, NB, June 2
Portsmouth, NH, June 28
Boston, MA, June 29
Providence, RI, July 3
New Haven, CT, July 4
New York, NY, July 5
Philadelphia, July 8
Baltimore, MD, July 10
Washington DC, July 12
Wilmington, NC, July 18
Charleston, SC, July 19
Augusta, GA, July 21
Savannah, GA, July 24
Jacksonville, FL, July 26
Daytona Beach, FL, July 28
Orlando, FL, July 30
Miami, FL, August 5

Posted by jo at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

[iDC] The Social Machine of Events

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We Don't Need Event Divas!!

Event organizing. Over the past year many experiments with conferencing formats took place. They were aimed at escaping the same old predicaments. People are fed up with the orthodoxy of traditional, hierarchical proceedings of keynote speakers, panels, and unconcentrated topical orientation! There is the soporific style of delivering a 30-page paper to an audience that could have read this text online beforehand. Paperism! There is the work-shy re-inscription of yet the same players of the virtual intelligentsia over and over again! Peeps and masters! Why look at proposals of the "young nothings" if we can have trophy names to pull people into the touristy event spectacle? The big names are all that matters, never mind if it is just another check off on someone's resume.

Who cares if they have nothing to say. And let's just safely assume that people in the audience (stashed away in the deep dark of the auditorium) cannot possibly be experts at what the well-lid pundits on stage talk about. Who cares if that speaker is a good speaker as long as she comes from a long-established group of colleges? All that matters is splashy, energetic performativity of ideas. "Performances are judged in terms of their "felicity," that is, rather in terms of rules and styles than of meanings." (Ludwig Pfeiffer) Who cares about meaning?

Curators visualize their networks. Events become similar to an edited book or a mailing list. They are the spatialization of a social network. That is why it is important to have a small group of curators being in charge of an event rather than a single individual. After the event participants will mostly write glaring summaries not to mess up the chance of getting invited again. But to what extent does that help in the evolution of new media discourse and the development of event-based practice? Let's stop the sing-along choir! Have a walk on the dark side. (Who are the Darth Vaders of new media?) Let's call presentations spineless, lazy, and substandard if they were!

What we want is the right, fast-talking *style.* Just throw in the right new media speak du jour and you will be OK! We want to be wowed by charismatic, odd figures. "Wow! Did you see that! That presenter amazed me. I could not tell you what she said but she was a-m-a-z-i-n-g." It's the domination of affect over content! "Communication is envisaged less as an exchange of meanings, of ideas about..., and more as performance propelled into movement by variously materialized signifiers" (Pfeiffer).

Peeps and masters. The renowned masters never have to worry again. They can say whatever they want and the event flock will bow. Who cares if they feel too snazzy to actually stay after their presentation and pay attention to their fellow presenters? And, no sweat: Just a few PowerPoint slides will do. (Yes, the lecturer apologized for not using the politically correct open source program that is not stable enough to hold two hundred images). Or, maybe just pull up a website quickly- that will do! We don't need event divas!! We lack contributors who can improvise and are sensitive to the needs of an event...

Diversity. Who gets invited? The male whiteness that the Guerilla Girls railed against in the art world of the 80s is boldly represented at today¹s new media events. Ok, it's tough. We don't care about skin color or gender-- all we care about is expertise. I heard those argument endless times. Well, thatis just flat out ignorant! Expertise takes all kind of forms. But also don't fall int the trap of tokenism.

If you put your ear to the ground of new media events (and like John, I have been at very many) you hear the same problems over and over again. Organizers try to squeeze in as many insightful presenters as they can get. Attendees become deeply frustrated by such over-programming and surely miss something they came to see. This phenomenon can be called *audience tournament.* Even perceptive and sharp-witted presentations get few, if any 'patrons' because the event planners did not accentuate that 'slot.' You see a few people far away with their faces lid by the screens of their laptop spread all over the huge auditorium.

And in the end the logic of funding demands that the event was a stunning and total success! No experiments please! Failure (even partial) is not an option! It does not really matter if the participants walked away energized. How would they recognize each other anyway at the event? How would you know that the person next to you just drops a tea bag into a double espresso next to you to overcome her jet lag. You would not know it is her! Forget about nametags. They usually disappear under coats or hang down on bags. As Marc affirmed, the best thing about conferences, or so we are told, are the coffee breaks. Because what most people actually try to get out of these occasions, cut out of their daily routine, is inspiration, continuing education and perhaps exchange, and dialogue. There is not much room for that if lecturers go on for 50 minutes.

Crediting economies! Just like in the film industry the production of a project is enormously work intensive and always collaborative. Free Cooperation was a 24/7 nine-month job. And of course, nobody can pull that of alone (or in that case: 2 people can't pull that off on their own). Events are always group efforts. But all too often the invisible labor is just an addendum in the event notes. a comment at the last day of the conference. How do you differentiate contributions? Hollywood rattles down unending credits at the end of each film. They specify exactly what each person did. But the role models of the director and producer are not established yet in event organizing. A problematic example of that sort was the Utopia Station at the Venice Biennial. The names of the curators appeared in the height of a house while the artist names (printed on 8x11 handouts) disappeared in some corner.

Events can be precious moments of collectivity! There we are- forty or so of us, all in one location at a time. What a potential! This latent opportunity gets lost at most discursive events. That, of course, only matters if something is at stake! Otherwise, we should just go home! Getting together means that we can highlight a topic that is overlooked or ignored or silenced! We can mobilize discourse outside of corporate structures. You can absolutely organize discourse without company or university funding. There are plenty of examples in which consequential debates took place in backrooms of apartments or community centers. Resource scarcity is met with self-organized cultural activities. At such events there is an enormous chance to get something rolling! We can put a topic on the map! We can put our intellect, experience and feelings together! In the worst-case scenario, a given symposium was just initiated to add a line to the organizers and participants' curriculum vitae. It was instigated to artificially make them appear at the center of a debate. But a gathering of people can introduce a tremendous degree of expertise in a fairly focused debate, coming from different disciplines. There is an awe-inspiring potential that is hardly ever fully tapped into. How can events really become boiling pots of ideas that steam over with discourse and results in follow-up initiatives? Sure. Locking up two people in a barn can create a productive situation. Conferencing formats matter! Surprising models for discussion can be invigorating. Food helps to get tongues untied. Parties are great. In his book "Discourse Networks" the German media theorist Friedrich Kittler looks at the influence of the materiality of the machines of communication (typewriter etc) on the formation of discourses. Equally, event formats: the *social machine* of an event shapes the way we talk. Event formats sculpt their content.

The link to actual organizations dealing with a topic at hand is also useful. Example:

Right2Fight focused on police violence. Human rights organizations came to the Sarah Lawrence campus as much as parents whose children were shut by the NYPD. Students who were moved by the topics, the net art, the poetry, the Afro-Beat band Antiballas were able to make contact with organizations like the October 27 coalition right there. And they did. And money was generated for these organizations! (http://www.molodiez.org/right2fight/SLC_press_release.html)

How could the knowledge that scholars, activists, engineers, and technologists bring to an event actually be brought out? How could it be mapped effectively? Online knowledge repositories (like wikis or blogs) are one response. Audio blogs and video blogs are another. For "Share, Share Widely" (a conference on new media education, http://newmediaeducation.org) I used the latter participatory design formats to bring in presentations from people who were relevant to the topic but geographically too far away to fly them in on the available shoe string budget. That worked very well! The site is a useful resource now. Results of events matter a great deal. TATE Modern fully understands that. Their online resources are exceptional (http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/).

Likewise, pre-event discussion is critical! While the complete virtualization of conferences (term by Andreas Broeckman) seems to rarely work-- the link-up of virtual and embodied components works very well. What is the point of sitting behind a table with a few people whom you barely know talking about a topic that has little or nothing to do with your research? Such get-together is merely a going through preconceived academic motions. If you are a good listener you perhaps pick up on what the speaker before you talked about. But you may also think already about what you will contribute. So, there will be little or no connection. If you are lucky you remember the names of the co-presenters.

For such discussions *mailing lists* still seem best suited. I say this with full awareness of the wide variety of social software out there. Mailing lists push messages onto the screens of your daily life. In the face of massive information overload such self-assertion is necessary. Short biographical introductions, followed by brief, provocative comments seem to stir up participation on lists. But over the many months prior to events these lists can also serve to inform participants about research interests. And indeed: Spare us from reciting your lengthy paper at our event! Post it to the list! We will read on the plane! We promise.

My experience with instant messaging is strange. You may have three or four windows open at once. All kinds of different discussion strings co-exist. That at least is what I notice about the way this communication format is utilized. I recently contributed to such forum as part of the Istanbul (Web) Biennial (Steve, maybe you can comment as well). There were five or six of us. The tone of incoming super-short messages set a rhythm for the fast paced conversation. There surely was no time to think. It was a very spontaneous, gut-level response. I decided to speak to one engaging point that was brought up. But the stream of messages mercilessly continued. Once I was done typing two sentences that made some sense to me, the question to which I responded was old news. I was at least ten messages behind. I can see that such uninvolved rapid response systems can be good for organizational exchanges or life sharing. I have my doubts about their effectiveness for thoughtful debate.

An event is an event is an event. Each one is different. This is not a call for a new orthodoxy. There are no foolproof recipes for success! But we should demand thoughtful, concentrated, dialogical, and well-organized events that have urgency!

Trebor Scholz [via thing]

_thick.memoir.cableing.nost[||neur]algia.bloody_
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/netwurker/

Brian Holmes' response:

This thread raises real questions. The formats of what Kodwo Eshun calls "the rubber chicken guru circuit" are definitely impoverished. But I would say, in every direction. Why should those who are really interested in constructed discourse have to pretend to be spontaneous? Why should those who are really interested in direct expression pretend to construct discourse? Why should anyone have to be the same all the time?

The following, from my angle, is not enough:

> As speakers, we talk as if our audience were disembodied absent
> readers. We act as if we were alone, scribbling in a garrett or typing
> on a laptop, and not enacting ourselves in the living, sweaty, twitching
> presence of actual people in need of food, smoke, love, meaning – not
> abstractly but here, now, this very moment. Paperism is the literate
> condition that privileges knowledge products over knowledge processes,
> seeking to turn every event into an artifact, a disembodied,
> decontextualized book on a dusty shelf rather than a communal
> psycho-kinetic collision.

Honestly, that sounds rather foolish. One of the traps of the performance ethos has been just blah blah blah. Constructed discourse is not always dusty and decontextualized - it can also be vital, passionate and to the point.

> That we haven't quite figured out
> how to effectively replace antique top-down ideals at conferences and
> festivals with collaborative catalytic networks isn't surprising, for we
> remain stuck in our highly literate skins.

Actually I'm quite fond of my literate skin and prefer it to all kinds of other skins I could put on, or be cloaked in. The business about the problem being paper, and all the subsequent repetitions of that theme, sounds from my perspective like self-promotional digital BS, sorry. You might be surprised how much dialogic experience you can get through print, through literary forms, through philosophical argument, through the social sciences - hmm, these are often very interesting things, coming from very interesting people. I've often thought that Borges had to be an interesting guy. Despite the Library of Babel and the circular ruins. But the challenge of how to create situations for complex and also light, innovative interactions - it's a good thing to go after.

I was thinking, why not engage a process, using the pre-event list technique, and maybe other media, so that people could collectively invent some formats? For instance, I would propose some live discussions on the basis of shared readings of texts, or shared consideration of visual or sound or audio-visual work - open meetings that anyone could come to, but where the understanding would be that a certain number of people who had agreed to beforehand during the list process, were going to start from some deep and prolonged contact with an existing piece of work. In that way you could start from something a little more engaging than how's the weather or what's the latest fashion or watch my stage moves. Of course, I would propose this, and surely the proposal would change as people received it, and in the end, through affinity and metamorphosis, something different would come out. Which wouldn't necessarily prohibit other proposals, or prohibit the event hosts from being more voluntaristic about certain proposals, or anything, really. Obviously each person might succeed in getting through the beginnings of one proposal, but they would also definitely want to hook up with many other proposals to avoid being like, totally bored at the conference. Of course the results would be totally risky but also fully experimental. And why not? Once the "event" has been sold to its funders, it doesn't really matter what you do.

Just a thought.

all the best, Brian

[via Ryan Griffis on Rhizome]

Posted by jo at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

ARTECONTEXTO

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Issue 9: Dossier: Artistic Production and Collecting

ARTECONTEXTO, art culture and new media is a magazine about the art of today that is intended to stimulate discussion and theoretical analysis of artistic practices in the international context. It pays particular attention to new media and net.art. ARTECONTEXTO is a bridge connecting Europe and Latin America.

The profound changes that the world of art is undergoing call for new approaches. Artistic practices are now affected by formulas coming from other fields which call for greater complexity in their analysis and new and different tools of understanding. ARTECONTEXTO takes up and reflects this complexity and constitutes a new critical space in progress.

Issue 9: Dossier: Artistic Production and Collecting--+ Intervention in Space: Dan Perjovschi + Antoni Muntadas + John Baldessari + Ignasi Aballì + Austria in ARCO 06 + Entrevistas + Cybercontext + Info + Books + Reviews.

ARTECONTEXTO is a quarterly publication in Spanish and English. 156 pages in colour. Distributed around the world in specialised bookstores. Publisher and Managing Editor: Alicia Murría; Subscribe before 15th February at a 10% discount.

Posted by jo at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

The Museum of the Essential and Beyond

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The Museum at the End of Cyberspace

Since 2002, The Museum of the Essential and Beyond has amassed an enormous collection of online artworks. Housed in a labyrinthine virtual building, it's tended to with great devotion by the museum's creator, Regina Célia Pinto. As it's easy to get lost in this wondrous playground, Pinto has created a visual map of the museum: visitors can take a lift from the basement to the attic and browse the works on offer at each level. More than a hundred artists are represented, including Anna Maria Uribe, Stelarc, Jimpunk, Jess Loseby, Nicolas Clauss, Maya Kalogera, Millie Niss, Geert Deekers, and Annie Abrahams--to name but a few. The home page offers a number of ways into the collection besides the map. Once inside, visitors will be seduced by beautiful dances, sidetracked by interactive games, and mesmerised by virtual train trips. Thoughtfully, the museum has a restaurant and bathrooms, so all your needs can be met while you forget your deadlines and appointments and abandon yourself in the museum with no admission lines. - Helen Varley Jamieson, Net Art News, Rhizome.

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

February 02, 2006

February 2006 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

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Sedition

Australia's recently enacted Sedition Act undermines the right of free speech, which has "ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of any other right" --James Madison (Fourth President of the United States and an author of the US Constitution). This month on -empyre-, the discussion will focus on the legal term sedition, and its political impact on global media and culture. Our guests this month: Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) members Lucia Sommer and Claire Pentecost (US), Nicholas Ruiz (US), and Ben Saul (AU). Please join our guests for conversation on 'sedition' at http://www.subtle.net/empyre

On an international scale, the prosecution of Steve Kurtz from Critical Art Ensemble is a case in point. The ongoing court case with the US Justice Department has demonstrated the effect that the "war on terror "has had on limiting free speech, particularly in the arts.

In December 2005, the Anti-Terrorism Bill was pushed through the Australian Parliament. This legislation has met with much concern from the cultural sector and human rights and freedom of speech advocates. On 27 October 2005, Chris Connolly from the University of New South Wales, in a Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, outlined many issues that were raised in regard to Sedition. In his appendix regarding "Sedition in the Arts" he makes the comment that the best known use of sedition laws was during the period of McCarthyism in the USA in the 1950s.

Is this where we are headed? -empyre- in February asks the question. as artists and cultural producers are we losing our right to express ourselves and comment on the state of our society?

The discussion will also look at how sedition laws could affect online activist networks like Indymedia and Znet. As such network operate as open publishing systems, will there be limitations in the capacity to publish and disseminate content?

Guest Bios:

Lucia Sommer is an artist, writer, and activist whose work is concerned with pleasure in everyday life and the creation of critical ephemeral publics. Since 1994 she has taught art in various settings from public school to museum, and her work has been shown individually and as part of the cyberfeminist collective subRosa in Europe and North America. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, NY.

Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer, engaging a variety of media to interrogate the imaginative and institutional structures that organize divisions of knowledge. Having spent years tinkering in a conceptual laboratory for ideas about the natural and the artificial, her most recent projects concentrate on industrial and bioengineered agriculture, the alternatives and the trade regimes that force one over the other. She has been an active member of the Critical Art Ensemble defense fund (www.caedefensefund.org).

Nicholas Ruiz III was born in New York City. His work has appeared in Noema Tecnologie e Society, Rhizomes.net, Media/Culture.org.au, The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Reconstruction, Public Resistance and elsewhere. He is also the editor of Kritikos: http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/

Dr. Ben Saul is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, the Director of the Bill of Rights Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre for Public Law, and an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Centre.

empyre forum
empyre[at]lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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

The Snow Show 2006

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Bridging Art and Architecture

The Snow Show explores the issues related to Art and Architectural investigation by creating works from the ephemeral materials of snow and ice. An artist was partnered with an architect and invited to develop a work together—this conversation created a bridged between the art and architectural worlds. The teamed participants include Kiki Smith and Lebbeus Woods, Yoko Ono and Arata Isozaki, Carsten Höller and Williams & Tsien, Daniel Buren and Patrick Bouchain, Paola Pivi and Cliostraat, Jaume Plensa and Norman Foster.

Where are you by Jaume Plensa and Norman Foster: The white austerity of snow transforms the landscape profoundly. Like in a desert of sand, snow eliminates whatever narrative element there might be in the landscape, to give us the soul of the place in all its purity. GPS technology can give us our precise geographical position, a location in motion. This new form of portrait (of the landscape as much as the body) is, like snow, a metaphor of the ephemeral.

Conceived in 2000 by independent curator Lance Fung, The Snow Show has since constructed seventeen structures that furthered the discussion of interdisciplinary collaboration and set the tone for the current Snow Show. This year, the artists and architects have created interactive experiences inspired by the dramatic natural beauty of Sestriere and the athletic competitions of the Olympics.

03 February - 19 March 2006.
Sestriere, Turin

Posted by jo at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

Call for Submissions

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Definition 2006: Digital Media Festival

We’re looking for creative, innovative, and unique HD submissions for the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) Accelerator’s Digital Media Festival! The Definition 2006: Digital Media Festival will be held during the Accelerator’s Definition 2006: HD Summit from April 20 - 22, 2006 at The Banff Centre. The festival is a juried event bringing the best works in HD media from around the world to Banff, Alberta.

Entries can be of any duration in any genre including narrative, story, documentary, animated or experimental, and can be submitted by professional or amateur contributors. An international jury will choose works from those submitted for entry in the festival. Creators of works selected for the festival will receive free tuition and on campus accommodation in Banff during the HD Summit in April. All selected works will be screened at the Definition 2006: Digital Media Festival. Entry Deadline: March 15, 5 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.

For more information contact:
Amy Inkster, Banff New Media Institute Accelerator Program
Phone: 1.403.762.7500
Email: definition[at]banffcentre.ca

Posted by jo at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

BIP - BUILDING INTERACTIVE PLAYGROUNDS

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Do You Want to Play with Space, Time and People?

BIP - BUILDING INTERACTIVE PLAYGROUNDS--2nd edition – Elettrowave, July 14-16 2006 – Arezzo/Italy: We are currently accepting applications to participate in the second edition of BIP, an International Competition for interaction design projects for public events. BIP will happen during Elettrowave, a three day festival of electronic music. Elettrowave is part of Arezzowave, the biggest free music festival in Italy.

01 – WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR? If you want to play with space and time and people, if you like crossing barriers and probing around in extreme situations, if you fiddle around with the idea the space can be programmed, if you eat social patterns for your breakfast, if you are not scared by a drunk young audience, if you keep telling your friends that environments are not passive wrappings but active processes, if your perceptions keep shifting, if your projects are about interplay, exploration and humor, if tinkering with technology is your obsession...then... this call for works is your unique chance to experiment with interaction design within the context of an electronic music festival. Nightlife, extreme characters, clubbing freaks, a young, unrespectuful and challenging audience. You know what we are talking about, don’t you?

We are looking for projects. Not vague ideas. Real projects that can substantially and meaningfully enrich the Elettrowave event and strengthen involvement. Clubbing is the context, not the object, of BIP. We’re looking for something innovative, passionate and fresh that can make a difference.

Interactive installations, environments, sound and/or visual projects, etc.
If your project is at an early stage we will consider it only if you can prove you'll be able to produce it within the festival deadline. We may offer production assistance if we fall in love with your project proposal.

Please keep in mind that the projects should be able to stand 3 nights of extremely intense use, in a venue with thousands of people. Please consider production feasibility and all possible setup constraints.

02 – WHO IS ELIGIBLE?
Participation is open to applicants from every country in the world, to (interaction) designers, artists, researchers, architects, students. Participation is free.

03 – SUBMISSION DEADLINE
All project proposals must be postmarked by March 10th, 2006.
Late entries will not be accepted. By submitting a project, the applicant warrants that it is his/her original design.

04 – HOW AND WHEN ARE THE PROJECTS SELECTED?
In March 2006, a panel of jurors will select up to 3 projects.
Winners will be announced during a workshop/event in April. The event will be hosted by Università di Siena, Italy.

05 – AWARDS
Selected projects will be installed for the three nights of Elettrowave 2006. This is a precious opportunity to test your interactive projects in the context of an electronic music festival.

The projects will benefit from a total budget of 10.000 euros offered by BIP. The budget will be divided between the selected projects according to production, transportation and setup costs. BIP will consider supporting production costs of new projects that are being presented to the public for the first time.

Commonly used technology (videoprojectors, screens, audio systems, monitors, mixers, etc.) will be available to the selected projects if required.

06 – HOW MANY PROJECTS CAN I SUBMIT?
Only one project may be submitted per entrant. Teams register with one name only.

07 – SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
The submission form is available for download at http://www.todo.to.it/bip/bip_submission2006.pdf
Please fill out all the information required in the form. Send your submission to:
TODO - BIP 2006
c/o Mail Boxes Etc.
Box 294, Via Boucheron 16
10122 - Torino - Italy

Submissions which do not conform to the rules will be rejected without any notice. There is no legal recourse against this decision.

Submitted material will become part of the festival archives and will not be returned.

08 – ACCURACY AND COPYRIGHT
Any moral and paternity right regarding the project sent in for application is designer’s property.

By participating, you grant BIP the right to edit, publish, promote and otherwise use the entry without further permission, notice or compensation. Credit information may need to be condensed or edited for space.

BIP assumes that all entries are original and are the work and property of the entrant, with all rights granted there-in. BIP is not liable for violations of any third party rights, including, but not limited to, claims of copyright, trademark, patent infringment. BIP assumes that all images provided with entries are free of any third-party rights. BIP will include photographer credits if that information is provided along with the images.

09 – MORE QUESTIONS?
Send inquiries to bip[at]arezzowave.com with "BIP – Call for Works" as the subject line.

10 – ORGANIZATION
BIP is promoted by FAWI (Fondazione Arezzowave Italia) and ARSNOVA.
BIP is realized in partnership with the Università di Siena
The BIP project is managed by TODO interaction design studio.

Posted by jo at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2006

Women in Games International

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Games for and by Women

Games for Women, Games by Women: February 18, San Francisco--The half-day conference includes an opening keynote address, a post-conference networking reception and a recruiter Q&A with resume and portfolio reviews.

Program topics include: Keynote speaker Robin Harper, SVP of Community and Support for Linden Lab, will present "From the Virtual to the Real: How Second Life created an online world and community that strongly appeals to women, and how the virtual world has changed the real life of women participants."

Conference is 12 pm to 7 pm on Saturday, February 18; Fort Mason Conference Center, Landmark Building A. Attendance is $45 and space is limited. [blogged by Erin Dinehart on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

MOBILEFEST

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1st Brazilian Festival of Mobile Art

MOBILEFEST is the 1st Brazilian Festival of Mobile Art, based on the sociological implications that mobile phones and mobile technologies have been promoting in our culture. MOBILEFEST will happen in September, 2006 in São Paulo, Brazil, with an agenda composed by two days of cultural and technical activities. MOBILEFEST will include an international symposium, workshops and recognition awarding of the best works and mobile applications developed by Brazilians. Different from other national and international festivals, MOBILEFEST has been designed for the mobile era, that’s why it’s the first festival in the world that only takes submissions of texts, photographs and videos sent via SMS and MMS.

MOBILEFEST CONCEPT: MOBILEFEST was idealized in Brazil from the following reasons and objectives: (1) Popularize the mobile technology as a way to contribute to digital inclusion of those who find difficulties understanding and interacting with these new medium; (2) Promote cultural interchange between national and international researchers of this media; (3) Incentive the promotion of creativity exercise of the 90 million Brazilians that use the mobile technology to transmit much more than voice;

(4) Develop seminars and workshops to guide and stimulate the production of content in the mobile era in Brazil, bringing international experiences and examples; (5) Expand possible software and hardware functions of mobile technology, nourish and incentive scientific thought and production regarding new technologies; and (6) Offer the first awarding specialized in recognizing works that generate mobile technology.

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

MOBILEFEST 2006 seeks paper and presentation proposals responding to the
Symposium themes:

How can Mobile Technology contribute to art, culture, democracy, ecology and third sector? Paper presenters will be grouped thematically to encourage discourse that presents divergent perspectives and views that serve as a catalyst for discussion.

Papers submitted are limited to 30 minutes.

Deadline for abstracts: February 28th, 2006.

please send your material to: festival[at]mobilefest.com.br

Posted by jo at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Andy Deck

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Open Vice/Virtue: The Online Art Context

"The giantism of media corporations and the ongoing deregulation of media consolidation (Ahrens), underscore the critical need for independent media sources. If it were just a matter of which cola to drink, it would not be of much concern, but media corporations control content. In this hyper-mediated age, content -- whether produced by artists or journalists -- crucially affects what people think about and how they understand the world. Content is not impervious to the software, protocols, and chicanery that surround its delivery. It is about time that people interested in independent voices stop believing that laissez faire capitalism is building a better media infrastructure."--Andy Deck

HTTP Gallery is pleased to present Open Vice/Virtue: The Online Art Context a solo show by American artist Andy Deck, as part of NODE.London season. For this, his first exhibition in London UK, Deck uses the Internet, the gallery and public space to challenge corporate control over communication, tools and software, and by extension the social imagination. [Private View: HTTP Gallery 9th March 2006 7-9pm; Exhibition: HTTP Gallery 9th March – 22nd April 2006.]

Glyphiti is an online collaborative drawing project presented uniquely at HTTP. A large-scale projection forms an evolving graffiti wall and visitors to the space are invited to edit and add graphical units or 'glyphs', which compose the image, in real time. The marks made by each person, combine with others and are shown as a time-lapse image stream. Hanging fabrics being shown here for the first time provide a tactile document of recent years’ of Glyphiti. Unlike most image software available on the Internet, Glyphiti functions through most corporate firewalls by using standard Web server requests. For the artist, penetrating firewalls acts as a metaphor to graffiti making: both activities necessitate the appropriation of privatised space for visual play.

Imprimatur consists of an online 'groupware' for poster illustration and layout accessible through a computer workstation installed in the gallery space. Visitors can use the software to create their own poster in collaboration with their online counterparts. This piece provides a framework for visitors/participants to launch a personal poster campaign based on their own social and political concerns. This DIY approach revives the tradition of poster-making as a medium of mass communication and persuasion developed during the 20th century. The posters will by displayed as part of the exhibition and will circulate freely beyond the gallery walls, appearing in surrounding streets, schools, libraries, kitchens and bedrooms.

Panel Junction combines the graphic novel with forms of shared authorship that have been made possible by the Internet. Here the artist selects a few stories emailed to him by visitors from all around the world. Each of the stories is chosen as a sequel to the most recent one and is transformed into a graphic novel by the artist. Hard copies will be available at the HTTP space for visitors.

Andy Deck presents his works at the Science Museum's Dana Centre.

On Wednesday March 8 Andy Deck will be presenting his work at the Science Museum's Dana Centre. The evening will be split into two parts: 17.30 -18.30 Screenings of key interactive works that you can get involved with in real-time, and an informal opportunity to meet the artist with the HTTP Curators, Marc Garret and Ruth Catlow. 19.00 - 20.30 presentation by the artist of his work. Both events will be free and will be in the Dana Centre cafe-bar.

"Leading American artist Andy Deck and HTTP Gallery are important independent voices in the new cultural communication space we call 'the Internet'." - Hannah Redler, Head of Arts Programme, Science Museum.

About Andy Deck: Andy Deck makes public art for the Internet that resists generic categorisation: collaborative drawing spaces, game-like search engines, problematic interfaces, informative art. Deck has made art software since 1990, initially using it to produce short films. Since 1994, he has worked with the Web using the sites artcontext.com and andyland.net. His works have been exhibited at: Art on the Net (Machida City Museum, Tokyo), Net_Condition (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany), Ideogram II (Moving Image Gallery, NYC), War Bulletin Board and Mac Classics (Postmaster's Gallery, NYC), Art Entertainment Network (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis), 1998 Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). Andy studied for a Post-diplôme, at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; and received his MFA in Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), NYC. He has taught at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University, and now at SVA.

HTTP [House of Technologically Termed Praxis]
Unit A2 Arena Business Centre
71 Ashfield Rd London N4 1NY
Tel + 44 (0)20 8802 2827 E-mail info[at]http. uk. net
URL http://www.http.uk.net

Posted by jo at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

IMD Forum Speakers for 2/1/06: Mimi Ito & Daisuke Okabe

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Visual Communication and Co-Presence

Visual Communication and Co-Presence: Camera Phones in Japanese Life; Speakers: Mimi Ito & Daisuke Okabe; Time: Wednesday, February 1, 2006, 6-8pm; Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Camera phones now represent 3/4 of all mobile phones in use in Japan today. As these devices have merged with existing practices of visual archiving, sharing, and communication, new kinds of technosocial practices have become part of everyday life in urban Japan. We will discuss the current state of camera phone use in Japan based on our ethnographic research, and outline some of the emerging trends for how related technologies and practices seem to be evolving.

Daisuke Okabe, a cognitive psychologist, lecturer at Keio's Keitai Lab and at Yokohama University, has conducted extensive fieldwork on mobile phone and Wi-Fi use. Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist who is interested in how digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities; she researches new media and mobile phone use at Keio University and the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication. Both teamed up with Misa Matsuda to edit Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, the first English-language book dedicated to mobile communication use in Japan that was published by MIT Press last summer. [blogged by Scott Fisher on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

Version>06

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Parallel Cities

April 20- May 6, 2006 Chicago U$A; DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: FEB 28, 2005: Version is a hybrid festival focused on emerging discourses and practices evolving between art, technology and social and political activism. Version examines the activities of local configurations and external networks that use visual and conceptual art strategies, innovative social practices, creative uses of new technologies, organizing strategies, emerging activist/artist initiatives, campaigns, public interventions and DIY projects.

During this annual convergence we engage in a dialogue about the possible futures ahead that may interdict or provide alternatives to current social, cultural and political trajectories. Version>06 is our fifth convergence and is dedicated to the theme of Parallel Cities. We will investigate and share local strategies and models to inspire action within local and global counter cartographies.

We will convene in Chicago for a seventeen day open laboratory to explore a diversity of tactics and strategies to activate our communities and amplify our ideas and practices. Alternative spaces will be open for staging actions. Public spaces and corporate places will be terrains of intervention.

Version presents a very diverse program of activities featuring an experimental art exposition, artistic disturbances, exhibitions, networked urban events, screenings, interactive applications, performances, street art, presentations, talks, workshops, art rendez-vous, parties, and action.

By bringing together a convergence of allied cultural and social forces and practices we hope that Version can help establish new methodologies and networks of cooperation. Representatives from other cities are invited to present their local counter cartographies as we reveal our own. We want to share your everyday micro actions as well as conceptual and practical projects and activities that can help us to transform personal and shared environments. We want to examine and showcase projects that can be duplicated in our urban environments. We want to hear stories of victories, large and small in making a difference in the various communities that we inhabit. We want to wage the culture war with fresh tactics and renewed energy.

Please visit http://adoptanamerican.com/version06 to use the online submission form.

Alternatively you may mail your proposals to:
Version>06
960 W 31st St
Chicago Il 60608

Posted by jo at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

The Perpetual Art Machine

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Invitation to Participate

Cinema-scope and IFAC are seeking video art submissions for: PAM - The Perpetual Art Machine to be premiered as a featured project at the -Scope New York Art Fair March 10-13, 2006.

PAM is an interactive video display installation and network designed to aid in the curatorial process by allowing artists and the viewer to play a more active roll in its outcome. PAM is an international survey of cutting edge and progressive film, video and new media art. PAM is looking for looking for screen based works up to three minutes in length and created after 2001. Writers and Curators encouraged to take part as well. Deadline: February 20, 2006, sooner the better.

Step 1: Register at http://www.perpetualartmchine.com. Once you have received your confirmation you will be able to set up your profile (contact, bio, etc) and have access to other community tools in the site.

Step 2: Submit Your Video

NTSC video only (Quicktime .MOV or .MPEG or DVD)
Best case rendering:
Quicktime, 16-bit Integer (Big Endian), Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz, Photo - JPEG, 720 x 480, Color, Medium Quality, 15fps.

Include five keywords that describe your piece. Please have disk and materials properly marked with artist name and artwork information, Name, year, duration.

There are three ways to submit your video.

Mail your on CD or DVD to:
Lee Wells (IFAC) c/o NYCRS
462 Broadway Suite 540
New York, NY 10013
T 917 723 2524

OR

Email us a link to your high resolution video at perpetua[at]perpetualartmachine.com. Please include the five keywords describing your piece

OR

Login to post your video directly to the Perpetual Art Machine website.

Please include a self addressed stamped envelop if you would like your entry returned.

Please contact us if you have any question at perpetua[at]perpetualartmachine.com or by phone at 917 723 2524.

Lee Wells
Brooklyn, NY 11222
http://www.leewells.org
917 723 2524

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

January 27, 2006

ambientTV.NET News

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VBI [voluptuously blinking eye/vertical blanking interval]

VBI [voluptuously blinking eye/vertical blanking interval] is a project by ambientTV.NET for the Satellite of Love exhibition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

VBI includes: media installation works, Broadbandit Highway by Manu Luksch & Ilze Black; Hacked Nintendo by Lektrolab; Pirate Radio Scanner by Irational.org; The Moment of the Long Now by Juha Huuskonen; Unscheduled TV by Rachel Baker. talks: Juha Huuskonen and Rachel Baker at GATED_TV, which will deal with copy right issues vs. open archives, open source, open archives. Sunday 29 January, 15:00 hrs. live teletext broadcasting station: Microtel by Lektrolab. TV programme contributions: videos are shown on the Exploding Television Channel (digital TV and online)

ambient.lounge: hosted by Tina Hage, a place to meet and relax, to browse the ambient.publishing catalogue, to scrawl your manifesto on the ambient.anti-wall, to find out how to create your own teletext page, or to have a cup of coffee and day-dream...VBI artists: Ilze Black, Irational.org, Juha Huuskonen, Lektrolab, Manu Luksch, Mukul Patel, Rachel Baker, and Tina Hage.

Satellite of Love @ INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM / NL [JAN 26th - MAR 26th]--OPENING: 26th of January, Witte de With center for contemporary art, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam.

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TAMMS in BANGKOK

YOU ARE INVITED to the opening party of the exhibition [FEB 11th - 17th] Temporary Art Museum Soi Sabai (TAMSS) on Feb 10th, 2005 18:00 onwards at Baan Silpakorn, Bangkok.

Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel will premiere their video installation Aju J's New Year Feast. In the Year of the Fire Dog

TAMSS artists: Yoshitomo Nara + graf (featured artists), Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, ambientTV.NET, Anteeksi, Jonathan Barnbrook, Cornelius & Koichiro Tsujikawa, Paul Davis, Eley Kishimoto, Yasumi Hakoshima, Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Yoshinori Hosoki, Rie Ito, Sutee Kunavichayanont, Suwan Laimanee, Philippe Laleu, Nuts Society, Peng Hung-Chih, Wit Pimkanchanapong, Pod, Wisut Ponnimit, Porntaweesak Rimsakul, Lieko Shiga, Tomoaki Suzuki, Wil-kie Tan, Mette Tronvoll, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Kayo Ume, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Tomoko Yoneda.

ambientTV.NET is a crucible for independent, interdisciplinary practice ranging from installation and performance, through documentary, dance, and gastronomy, to sound and video composition and real-time manipulation. Techniques and effects of live data broadcasting and transmission provide theme, medium, and performative space for many of the works.

Posted by jo at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

CATaC

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All That is Solid Melts Into Air

Neither global village nor homogenizing commodification: Diverse cultural, ethnic, gender and economic environments

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION; CATaC, Tartu, Estonia, June 28-July 1, 2006: The biennial CATaC conference series continues to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of current research on how diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The conference series brings together scholars from around the globe who provide diverse perspectives, both in terms of the specific culture(s) they highlight in their presentations and discussions, and in terms of the discipline(s) through which they approach the conference theme. The first conference in the series was held in London, UK, in 1998; the second conference in Perth, Australia, in 2000; the third conference in Montreal, Canada, in 2002; and the fourth in Karlstad, Sweden, in 2004.

The 1990s’ hopes for an “electronic global village” have largely been shunted aside by the Internet’s explosive diffusion. This diffusion was well described by Marx - all that is solid melts into air – and was predicted by postmodernists,. The diffusion of CMC technologies quickly led to many and diverse internets. A single “Internet,” whose identity and characteristics might be examined as a single unity, has not materialised. With the dramatic rise of women “users” in what was originally an almost entirely male domain and a diffusion of technologies among diverse cultural and subcultural groups, – much of which was driven by rapid commercialization – an initially culturally and gender homogenous “Internet” came more and more to resemble an urban metropolis. This metropolis is characterised by major commercial districts and diverse ethnic and immigrant groups (Hjarvard, 2002; cf. M. Wilson, 2002, 2004). Along the way, as CATaC’04 keynote speaker Nina Wakeford noted, in the commercialization of the Internet and the Web, “cultural diversity” gets watered down to an “aesthetic sense of pseudo-shock” that exchanges strong diversity for a homogenous interchangeability. Such diversity thereby becomes commodified and serves a global capitalism that tends to foster cultural homogenization. According to Wakeford, “Globalization depends on the exportability of difference”– resulting in a global village whose unity depends on the repression of diversity.

By the same token, especially as explored in the framework of previous CATaC conferences, many of the basic assumptions, categories, methodologies, and theories used early on to analyse the intersections of CMC, culture, and communication have likewise lost their (apparent) initial definition. For example, while our understanding of ‘culture’ vis-à-vis human interactions in CMC environments may have gained some cogency – e.g., as the frameworks of Hofstede and Hall work with some success to explain observed differences in website design (Ess, 2004) – more recent research also demonstrates severe limitations in these frameworks (McSweeney, 2004). Similarly, while ‘culture’ remains a marginal concept in much of the literature of HCI (Kamppuri and Tukiainen 2004) – the concept of ‘culture’ itself seems to become more complex and problematic.

CATaC’06 continues our focus on the intersections of culture, technology, and communication, beginning with an emphasis on continued critique of the assumptions, categories, methodologies, and theories frequently used to analyse these. At the same time, CATaC’06 takes up our characteristic focus on ethics and justice in the design and deployment of CMC technologies. We particularly focus on developing countries facilitated by “on the ground” approaches in the work of NGOs, governmental agencies, etc., in ways that preserve and foster cultural identity and diversity. By simultaneously critiquing and perhaps complexifying our theories and assumptions, on the one hand, and featuring “best practices” approaches to CMC in development work, on the other hand, CATaC’06 aims towards a middle ground between a putative “global village” and homogenizing commodification. Such middle ground fosters cultural diversity, economic and social development, and more successful cross-cultural communication online.

Do our efforts to utilize some notion of ‘culture’ inevitably lead to essentialistic notions that are at best overly simple (a la Hofstede) and, at worst, misleading and false? Hence, ‘culture’ is becoming increasingly complex, issuing in the need to examine culture vis-à-vis the spectrum of media technologies - especially as youth culture increasingly focuses on “media of mobility” (SMS, mobile phones, etc.) We continue our focus on culture by inviting submissions that conjoin theoretical exploration of concepts of culture as currently understood and methodologically applied in a variety of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, ethnography, communication studies, philosophy, etc., vis-à-vis examples in praxis of how CMC and ICTs sustain and/or problematize these concepts.

THEMES

Culture isn't 'culture' anymore: It seems easier to say what culture is not, rather than to define what culture is. For example, ‘culture’ is not simply ethnicity or national identity. It seems clear that cultures, rather than remaining singular, unchanging “lumps” each hermetically sealed off from one another, instead involve dynamic and naturally interacting elements that constantly foster new hybridizations or fragmentations. Is ‘culture’ still a useful ‘research unit’ and/or explanatory concept? Do our efforts to utilize some notion of ‘culture’ inevitably lead to essentialistic notions that are at best overly simple (a la Hofstede) and, at worst, misleading and false? Hence, ‘culture’ is becoming increasingly complex, issuing in the need to examine culture vis-à-vis the spectrum of media technologies - especially as youth culture increasingly focuses on “media of mobility” (SMS, mobile phones, etc.) We continue our focus on culture by inviting submissions that conjoin theoretical exploration of concepts of culture as currently understood and methodologically applied in a variety of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, ethnography, communication studies, philosophy, etc., vis-à-vis examples in praxis of how CMC and ICTs sustain and/or problematize these concepts.

The Internet isn't the 'Internet' anymore: Just as our theories of culture need critiquing and “complexification” so do our theories of the Internet. As the Internet has fragmented into multiple and continuously fragmenting internets, so ICTs now blend into a spectrum of media technologies (e.g., SMS, web-enabled mobile phones, etc.). And as with ‘culture’, ‘communication’ is becoming increasingly complex with the mobile technologies. We invite critical examination of prevailing concepts of gender, equality and liberation, and their intersections with mobile technologies.

Gender, culture, empowerment and CMC: The liberal feminist project of achieving social and political equality among women and men remains unfulfilled - dramatically so in the domains of ICT. At the same time, of course, this project is criticized as reflecting only the culturally-relative values of Western white feminists, not necessarily the values, goals, and ambitions of all women everywhere. Also criticized (e.g. Wacjman) is the claim that ICTs have the ability to empower women in all cultures. This perspective reflects the primarily Western white male software developers and technology policy makers. As well, Simon (ref) observed that women’s ambiguity regarding new technologies is not necessarily a “contradiction” but a way of coping with the stresses and challenges of adapting to technological change. This observation is consistent with a larger theme of much of CATaC research that shows in various ways that rather than presuming “users” as “cultural dopes” (Pargman ref) – persons using CMC technologies are better understood as “savvy users” with considerable awareness of the cultural and gender-related dimensions of these technologies and the possible consequences of their use. Just as our concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘communication’ require critique nd ‘complexification’ – so we invite critical examination of prevailing concepts of gender, concepts of equality and liberation, and their intersections with CMC and ICTs.

CMC and cultural diversity: “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to blown off my feet by any.” – Gandhi. CATaC research has demonstrated in a great variety of ways and cultural contexts that CMC technologies embed and foster specific cultural values and communicative preferences – raising the danger of “steamrolling” diverse cultures (so Steve Jones) through “computer-mediated colonization.” By contrast, more recent CATaC conferences have highlighted “culturally-aware” CMC design (e.g. McIlroy, Hongladarom). Our general question: can ICTs function in a Gandhian fashion, facilitating “open windows” to all the cultures of the world, without making any one dominant and exclusive? What additional theoretical and practical considerations might help realize the Gandhian dream?

Internet research ethics: A number of ethical issues were raised at the last CATaC conference, including questions of research ethics, e.g. When do we use direct quotes from informants? How are we to protect the rights of children and other vulnerable groups? While some progress has been made in establishing international and interdisciplinary Guidelines for Internet Research, this work remains ongoing.

Ethics and justice: From copyright to the ethics of development: "Utopia would be groups determining their own uses." (Beardon) A number of theories and documents, from classical Western liberalism (Kant, Habermas) through to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), support basic notions of individual autonomy and rights to cultural identity. How are these rights to be established and protected, especially in using ICTs for the sake of development? Some established legal conventions, such as copyright, can help, for example, indigenous groups protect their cultural identity by protecting cultural artifacts (Radoll). What theoretical and practical approaches to development involving ICTs foster the utopia of individual and group self-determination?

Free software/Open-Source software: Cultural attitudes and the politics, ethics, political economy of Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS). FLOSS is a way of organizing production, of making things jointly, in parallel distributed settings of cooperative behavior, by an increasing number of individuals and groups whose communities and labor are facilitated particularly (but not confined to) the Internet. Exclusive property rights and the division of labor - crucial to the established economic order - are not the main incentives. Rather, the notion of property in FLOSS development concerns the right to distribute and not exclusion, a change that can have profound influences on inter-personal relations and institutions within contemporary "knowledge society". While it will soon be possible to effectively privatize all intellectual products, the advocates of FLOSS are strongly moving in the opposite direction, sketching a social order that is not built on exclusionary principles, price signals and the power of rich countries and corporations. How can free/open source make a difference (or not) when it comes to issues such as "cultural inclusion" (localisation, appropriation, customisation) and "gender inclusion"? Do the particular ways of production and sharing in free/open access/source form a better fit with some "cultures attitudes" and not with others?

Cultural diversity and e-learning - Localization or internationalization?: More and more learning is being delivered using technology. In many universities it has become mandatory to incorporate flexible learning strategies such as online coursework material, streamed audio and/or video lectures, and communication tools. Most elearning for multiple cultures adopt a "localize" strategy of translating content and customizing examples. Is this sufficient? What more can we do to address the needs of diverse cultures?

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

January 26, 2006

WILD INFORMATION NETWORK:

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Open Call for Sound Works

WILD INFORMATION NETWORK: The Department of Ecology, Art, and Technology--Open Call for Sound Works In Mp3 Format - Deadline April 1, 2006.

If we encountered a pod-cast, or a streaming radio server in the woods, in the “natural” environment, what kind of information would be distributed? If there was an entity, a life-form, or a “natural” other that disseminated sonic information, wild-information, how would this information sound? This project encourages artists to create audio sound works that imagine the “voice” of the ecological other and explore its translation into the language of digital art technologies.

If “nature” encountered a pod-cast, or a streaming radio server in the woods, in the “natural” environment, what kind of information would be distributed? This project could take on unpredictable, interactive, and experimental dimensions as it also encourages artists to consider themselves as human animals, beings within “nature” producing sound works for unknowable others, e.g. ferns, salamanders, flowers, mosquito, beetles, flowers, deer, coyotes, bear, water, etc.

WILD INFORMATION NETWORK is a project initiated by Cary Peppermint and The Department of Ecology Art and Technology, a performative collaborative of artists seeking to create works that explore issues that lie at the intersection between new media technologies and the environment.

The project will establish a sonic field of information produced with renewable energy, digital technologies, and ecological imagination. The information will be a continuous, solar-powered series of audio transmissions located relatively deep in the woods of 940 acres in the upper Catskills of New York State. Visitors and hikers to the back woods location will use 802.11 wireless devices, bluetooth-enabled devices, or transistor radios to receive sonic information through digital downloads, and radio transmissions.

This project is made possible by generous support from NYSFA's Decentralization Grant, The Upper Catskills Community Center for the Arts, and The Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College.

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

January 24, 2006

The High Performance Gameplay Inventory

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Gamers ♥ Performance

"ABSTRACT: All gameplay is performance, and all gamers are performers. But some gamers adopt unexpected strategies to make their gameplay more extroverted, more attention-generating, more compulsively watchable, more theatrical — in other words, more high performance. This worksheet presents six vectors for transforming ordinary digital gameplay into high performance gameplay, and proposes a high performance gameplay inventory system based on actual high performance gameplay strategies observable in contemporary digital games culture." The High Performance Gameplay Inventory by Jane McGonigal

Posted by jo at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

Profiles as Conversation:

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Networked Identity Performance on Friendster

"ABSTRACT: Profiles have become a common mechanism for presenting one’s identity online. With the popularity of online social networking services such as Friendster.com, Profiles have been extended to include explicitly social information such as articulated “Friend” relationships and Testimonials. With such Profiles, users do not just depict themselves, but help shape the representation of others on the system. In this paper, we will discuss how the performance of social identity and relationships shifted the Profile from being a static representation of self to a communicative body in conversation with the other represented bodies. We draw on data gathered through ethnography and reaffirmed through data collection and visualization to analyze the communicative aspects of Profiles within the Friendster service. We focus on the role of Profiles in context creation and interpretation, negotiating unknown audiences, and initiating conversations. Additionally, we explore the shift from conversation to static representation, as active Profiles fossilize into recorded traces." From Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster, Danah Boyd, Jeffrey Heer

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

Upgrade! New York

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Deep Performance

Upgrade! New York presents Pauline Oliveros performing with Tintinabulate Ensemble from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's and Meme Improvisation Group (MIG) from Brown University. A discussion will follow. January 26, 2006; 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM, Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St. This event is open to the public and free with a suggested donation.

Pauline Oliveros (1932) is one of America's most vital composers. Deep Listening, her lifetime practice, is fundamental to her composing, performing and teaching. Tintinnabulate is an ensemble of improvisational players whose voices and senses are tuned through the practice of Deep Listening. We achieve harmony through intuition, play, and sympathetic resonance. Founded by Pauline Oliveros, and based at RPI's iEAR (Integrated Electronic Arts) program in Troy, NY, Tintinnabulate has initiated a series of Distance Performances: live, co-located, Internet performances with improvisational ensembles across the United States.

MIG is an ensemble focused on technologically mediated improvisation that draws from the Free Jazz and Experimental Music Tradition. Members include both Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design students. MIG is an outgrowth of MEME, the multimedia and electronic music composition program at Brown University.

More About The Performers: During the 1960's John Rockwell named Pauline Oliveros' work as one of the most significant of that decade. In the 70's she represented the U.S. at the World's Fair in Osaka, Japan; during the 80's she was honored with a retrospective at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.; the 1990's began with a letter of distinction from the American Music Center presented at Lincoln Center in New York; In 2000 the 50th anniversary of her work was celebrated with the commissioning and performance of her Lunar Opera:Deep Listening For_tunes. She serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; Darius Milhaud Artist-in-residence at Mills College, Oakland, CA; and president of Deep Listening Institute in Kingston NY.

Tintinabulate Ensemble:
Alex Chechile
Bart Woodstrup
Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg
Yael Kanarek

Meme Improvisation Group (MIG):
Kevin Patton
Damon Baker
Joseph Butch Rovan
Carmen Montoya

Tintinnabulate and MIG first performed together in the Fall of 2005. The ensembles performed over the Internet, each from their respective location. This performance at Eyebeam, hosted by The Upgrade, brings the two ensembles together into the same physical space for the first time.

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The Upgrade! is a monthly meeting for professionals in the field, providing an open forum for the artists, designers, critics, curators, and educators that form New York's digital arts community. Eyebeam sponsors their activities, which include lectures and group discussions. New media artist, Yael Kanarek, initiated The Upgrade in April 1999, and currently coordinates the program in conjunction with Eyebeam. The monthly gatherings include artist presentations, lectures and group discussion.

Posted by jo at 07:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2006

Mirrors and Shadows:

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The Digital Aestheticisation of Oneself

"ABSTRACT: Digital cameras have made self-portraits increasingly common, and frequently we post our self-portraits online. This paper compares online photographic self-portraiture with self-representations in weblogs and the creation of visual avatars. Contemporary projects and quotidian practice is connected to the history of self-writing and self-portraiture, as well as to psychoanalytic theories of how we use our own mirror images to come to an understanding of our selves. The paper concludes that our contemporary fascination with reflections and shadows is an expression of our newfound subjectivity as individuals able to represent ourselves rather than simply succumb to the generalisations of mass media." From Mirrors and Shadows: The Digital Aestheticisation of Oneself by Jill Walker

Posted by jo at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

Rough Cuts

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Process(ing)

Rough Cuts is a new service from Safari Books Online that gives you early access to content on cutting-edge technologies -- before it's published. It lets you literally read the book as it is being written. The beta version of the Rough Cuts service is debuting in January 2006, with four works-in-progress from O'Reilly Media. We'll be adding features, titles, and publishers throughout the year.

When purchasing a book you gain access to an evolving PDF manuscript that you can read, download or print. Once you've purchased a Rough Cuts title, you will have a chance to shape the final product--you can send suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editors.

Posted by jo at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

DIGITAL ART WEEKS 2006 ETH Zurich

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[Kon.[Text]] Symposium

CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS, DEMONSTRATIONS & PERFORMANCES--Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday July 13th to Sunday July 16th, 2006

The Digital Art Weeks PROGRAM (DAW06) is concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of symposium, workshops and performances, the program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances during the Digital Art Weeks Festival each year, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of the application of technology in the arts.

[Kon.[Text]], this year?s Digital Art Weeks SYMPOSIUM concerns the use of the Performative Surround in the arts and the technology that drives it. The Performative Surround pertains to the immersive quality and quantity of the setting of a performative artwork that uses electronic media enhancement. Enhanced media art is any artwork that uses electronic media to communicate in part or in whole its message to the viewer. The viewer may be there with integrated into the performative arena through the use of the communicative powers of the applied media.

In a series of lectures, demonstrations, panels and performances, artists and researcher will examine the use of electronic media in articulating the performer?s presence through the possibilities of the multi-sensuality of electronic media. The possibilities of blurring the divide between public and performer to bond them through the powers of dissemination and inclusion inherent within the technology behind the performative surround will also be considered as well as how communication between both performer and public can be interactively networked in real time through various forms of computer enhanced dialoging.

To draw a parallel between the symposium?s title [Kon.[Text]] and the phrase in the body of the text? in terms how both performer and public are virtually networked by the expansion of the real into virtual, issues in media enhanced performance and its re-embodiment into the domains of hyper-reality will be tangibly demonstrated in a series of evening performances.

The organizers of the Digital Art Weeks ETH Zurich are seeking presentations, demonstrations and performances on all themes specific to performance using electronic media that explore a concept of the Performative Surround in terms of how computer-mediated communication and dialog takes place between performers and viewers and how it tends to aid in dissolving the divide between performer and viewer. Submissions of both theoretical and empirical studies are invited from the perspectives of the performing arts and computer science and as well as other topics relevant to the Performative Surround and it technology basis. Suggested submission topics for papers, demonstrations and performance include, but are not limited to the following themes:

1. Media Enhanced Artwork in the areas of Performance, Dance and Sound-Art
2. Laptop Music (including Live-Coding!) & Film Accompaniment (Live-Cinema, & Re-Scoring)
3. Mobile Art & Music Works that explore Performer Networking and Audience Participation
4. Net-poetry and literature & computer mediated communication (i.e. Hyper-Media Embedding)
5. Grammar- or Syntactically based Software Systems for Multimedia Systems

The organizers of the Digital Art Weeks ETH Zurich are seeking participants for a series of PANELS concerning the following themes in relationship to the Performative Surround:

1. Software Innovations relevant to all aspects of Computer Mediated Communication and its application in the performing arts.
2. Live Cinema, Expanded Video, Film Rescoring & Immersive Audio Space & Video Space
3. Media Enhanced Performance
4 Projects concerning the dissolve of the Performer-Audience & Private Space-Pubic Space Divide

DEADLINE FOR ALL PROPOSALS: Friday, March 17, 2006.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before Friday, April 7, 2006.

SPEAKERS / ARTISTS (CONFIRMED)

For an up-to-date list of this years participating speakers and artists please see: http://www.jg.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/DAW/Symposium2006

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

DIGITAL ART WEEKS 2006 (DAW06) is interested in artistic and theoretical work in the form of Papers, Panels and Presentations can include DVDs, audio CDs, videotapes, web-sites, etc. Papers and Presentations can be 25 or 45 minutes in length. DAW06 organizers will build panels based on reviews of materials submitted.

Proposed artwork to be included in the DAW06 Festival may take the form of performances with or without media enhancement or be in the form screenings live or fixed material.

Applications should not exceed 500 words. Applicants should indicate one of the festival categories in the subject of the message. Please include a 200 word max bio.

All proposals must be submitted in plaintext only format either as an attachment and/or within the body of the email message. In case of Audio and/or Video examples, please provide a valid URL to a web site containing them. If your presentation requires specific technologies, please describe your needs in detail.

All proposals should be submitted electronically to: Art Clay: arthur.clay[at]inf.ethz.ch

or should be sent per mail to:
Art Clay
Computer Systems Institute
ETH Zentrum, RZ H 18
Clausiusstrasse 59
CH-8092 Z=FCrich
Switzerland

Digital Art Weeks 2006 ETH Zurich
Parallel Event - Interactive Futures, 2006
Co-sponsor - Computer Systems Institute ETH Zurich:
Co-sponsor- sitemapping.ch, Swiss Federal Office of Culture
Research Partner: The Situated Body

FUNDING

THE DIGITAL ART WEEKS does not have funding for travel or accommodation. Presenters and artists are expected to apply for travel funding from their home institutions and/or granting bodies. All presenters and artists will be given a pass to all DIGITAL ART WEEKS events and will have access to food and drinks at the Conference Center. All presenters and artists will be eligible for reduced rates at participating hotels.

CONTACTS

DIGITAL ART WEEKS Curators:
General Requests daw-info[at]inf.ethz.ch

DIGITAL ART WEEKS Chairs:
Art Clay http://www.jg.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/DAW/Chairs
Stefan M=FCller Arisona http://www.jg.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/DAW/Chairs

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Curators: Steve Gibson sgibson[at]finearts.uvic.ca

DAW Workshops for 2006: http://www.jg.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/DAW/Workshops2006

DAW Mailing List: https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/daw-list

Mailing Address:
Digital Art Weeks
Computer Systems Institute
ETH Zentrum, RZ H 18
Clausiusstrasse 59
CH-8092 Z=FCrich
Switzerland

Voice +41 44 632 7233
Fax +41 44 632 1307

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

Thomson & Craighead

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Audio and Visual Machines

January 26 – March 3, 2006 at Mejan Labs: Akademigränd 3, SE-111 52 Stockholm, Tel: +46(0)8-796 60 30; info[at]mejanlabs.se Open: Tue-Fri 11-17, SAT-SUN 12-16, closed Mondays.

At Mejan Labs Thomson & Craighead present two installations; Decorative Newsfeeds and Unprepared Piano. Decorative Newsfeeds could be described as a digital automatic drawing -a sort of contemporary update of Jean Tinguely’s drawing machines perhaps, but in this case with readable authentic up to the minute news headlines gathered in real-time from the web. The headlines are updated continuously and projected in evolving trajectories that weave and intersect each other according to a simple set of rules.

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In Unprepared Piano, a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano is connected to a database of music MIDI files appropriated and compiled from all over the web. This library of found data is then “performed” automatically in the gallery with the full authority one associates with a concert grand piano. Each MIDI file contains an electronic score for a whole piece of music with different tracks for different instruments. When the piano plays one of these scores, it switches between the tracks randomly, which means it will sometimes play a piano part correctly but may also render drum parts, string sections and marimbas etc. in awkward configurations and combinations. On a monitor it is possible to see real-time information about what is being played.

The title Unprepared Piano specifically references the composer John Cage and his method of preparing a piano by fastening nails, coins and so on directly onto the strings inside the instrument, and in doing so to change the sound of it when played. But the title also refers to the piano being unprepared for the information it accesses and with no human performer and no way of knowing exactly what might be performed, Unprepared Piano becomes an endless generative mechanism for the performance of unique musical improvisations.

Thomson & Craighead: British artists Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead have been working together since the early 1990's. They are considered to be among the leading artists on the British new media art scene. Much of their work to date has paralleled the development of Internet technology by way of more traditional media such as video, sound and gallery installation, and they began working with electronic networks and communications systems when the world wide web first appeared in the mainstream around 1995. As this technology has improved and internet connections have become faster, they have begun to re-combine internet technology with their gallery work exploring the consequential possibilities of linking the internet to these kinds of physical spaces.

Thomson & Craighead often use the web as a gigantic database, procuring and reconfiguring existing material in real-time to offer new meanings and perspectives on the way in which we all might perceive the world around us. This kind of approach is in keeping with many methods used across the whole canon of contemporary art: real-time and generative processes, randomness, the recycling and misuse of information and technology and a process based flow that goes from one stadium to another.

Posted by jo at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2006

node.london

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Media Art Soapbox at Science Museum

WHAT: As part of its programming for node.london the Science Museum invites media artists, designers and artist-led organisations to present their work or activities for a five-minute slot during a two-hour evening of short presentations, show and tell, performances, participation and discussion.

Soapbox at the Dana Centre is the Science Museum's response to the grassroots approach of node:london. We want to create an opportunity for London based practitioners to present their work on a first-come first served basis, rather than going through a heavily curated selection process. Artists and designers at a briefing meeting proposed this could become a regular event after the node pilot. Depending on take-up and response we will consider running this quarterly.

WHEN: Tuesday March 2 2006, 18.30 - 20.30.

WHERE: Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queens Gate, London SW7. South Kensington tube. In the informal cafe-bar.

FORMAT FOR EVENT: Practitioners will be invited to present specific projects for 5-10 minutes each and will be grouped into themed strands. Selection of projects will be on a first-come first served basis (send expressions of interest to e-mail below) and themes will be drawn from the sort of projects suggested. Media art critics, commentators and curators, along with the audience will be invited to respond to the ideas discussed with the artists in small working groups, who will come together for a summary session at the end of the evening.

The precise format will depend upon numbers and will be confirmed with selected practitioners by February 10 2006.

FIXED TECHNICAL PRESENTATION FORMAT: for ease of changeover all presentations must be presented online. This will be broadcast onto large screens.

HOW TO GET SELECTED: send one page A4 with your name, e-mail address, contact telephone number, and paragraph summarising the project or idea you wish to present with web address where relevant to smap[at]nmsi.ac.uk. The maximum number of artists we will be able to invite to present on the evening will be 12. First-come first served!

DEADLINE: Register your interest by Feb 3 2006.

The Soapbox presentations will be supported by a series of 'invited experiments' - art works in progress, or art works that require audience participation for their realisation.

CONTACT: Hannah Redler, Head of Arts Programme, Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD

Messages may be left on ++44 (0) 20 7942 4802. Email to smap[at]nmsi.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2006

Trampoline

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Call for Submissions

Trampoline - 16th March 2006: Deadline: February 17th--Nottingham’s platform for new media art begins its Spring 2006 Programme this March - we are sending out our radar across the globe in the search for challenging new work. This is an opportunity to plug into the innovations of Nottingham/regional based artists and at the same time connect with international media art developments. Trampoline is always looking to expand and find innovative ways of connecting spaces in the global age, overcoming geographical distances via digital technologies. Trampoline is extending its antennae to both transmit and receive in its event of regional and international creative exchange.

Questioning geographic borders and communication barriers in the age of global connectivity, we will be asking, what is their state of existence and what is their relevance today? New barriers are continuously broken yet new divisions are formed. In today’s global network, all the world is invited, but some are still excluded.

Trampoline is searching for work which contributes to these debates, challenges our notions of these boundaries and creatively comments on our entangled yet fragmentary network.

From video, animation, installation, sculpture, performance, live music and web streaming Trampoline encourages all forms of new media expressions.

Trampoline is calling for submissions for this event The deadline is February 17th – but the sooner you express interest the better Please download a submission form and send with supporting material to

Trampoline Submissions
Broadway Cinema
14-18 Broad Street
Nottingham
NG1 3AL
UK

Please contact Emma Lewis, Trampoline Coordinator +44 (0)115 9559956 emma[at]trampoline.org.uk

Posted by jo at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

UCHRI Summer Seminar

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Experimental Critical Theory

The UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) invites applications from scholars – faculty of all ranks and students – wishing to participate in the third annual Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT), August 14-25, 2006; UC Irvine Campus.

SECT is an intensive two-week summer program for graduate students and faculty from the UC system and elsewhere, as well as other scholars, professionals and public intellectuals. The Seminar brings together distinguished instructors and a group of 50-60 students to study a pressing issue or theme in contemporary critical theory, in both its "pure" and "applied" modes. SECT is neither exclusively an introductory survey course nor an advanced research seminar. Rather, it is an academy or "laboratory" where students and faculty at all levels of previous experience can study with scholars involved in important and creative theoretical thought. Truly innovative work is of necessity both fundamental and advanced, hence needs to be presented in ways that are simultaneously accessible and challenging for the widest range of scholars. Participants are encouraged to think experimentally and critically, reflecting on prevailing structures of thought while dynamically engaging intellectual inheritances and pushing for theoretical innovations.

Deadline: Applications are due, along with a $20.00 application fee, by February 15, 2006.

Participants in the 2006 Seminar will explore new ways of thinking about and with technology. The two-week Seminar will include paired conversations between technological innovators and experimental humanists, around the many issues that engage the human and the technological. The two-week Seminar will also include demonstrations of new technological devices, classroom applications and scholarly practices. Participants will have opportunities to engage with new digital applications in the context of small-group workshops, large-group social networking exercises and art/technology installations. The objective for SECT III is to broaden the participation of humanists in the transformation of spheres of technological experience.

Conversations with: Julian Bleecker; John Seely Brown; Craig Calhoun; Lisa Cartwright; Cathy N. Davidson; Scott Fisher; Tracy Fullerton; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Katherine Hayles; Lynn Hershman; Norman Klein; Geert Lovink; Tara McPherson; Michael Naimark; Saskia Sassen; Larry Smarr

Workshop Topics: Wikis; Blogging; Google Jockeying; Creative Commons; New Genres of Digital Scholarship; History of Electronic Literature; Database Narrative; Multimedia Documentary; Distributed Collaboration in the Humanities; Creation of Digital Archives

Performances & Presentations: Beatriz da Costa; René Garcia, Jr.; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Lynn Hershman; Perry Hoberman; George Lewis; Michael Naimark; Simon Penny

Cost: Application fee: $20.00 (non-refundable) is due at the time of the online application submission. Applications will not be reviewed until the application fee is received.

Registration fee: $1,750 for the SECT series. The fee includes tuition for the two-week Seminar and daily refreshments. It does not include the cost of housing or meals.

Scholarships: The UCHRI will make available up to 10 scholarships for full-time registered students covering the full SECT fee. Scholarship awards will be announced by April 15, 2006. Applicants are encouraged to seek funding from their home institutions.

Requirements: One-page statement covering education, relevant publications (if any), background in an area of study relating to the current SECT topic, and reasons for requesting course of study; and abbreviated curriculum vitae (two pages maximum).

More information and registration instructions are available. [blogged by Julian Bleecker on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

LE GRAND CAFÉ, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Saint-Nazaire (F)

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MODERN©ITE # II

MODERN©ITE # II: Francis Alÿs, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Marcelo Cidade, Jordi Colomer, Anita Molinero. Curator: Sophie Legrandjacques--January 21st to March 13th 2006, Opening: Fri, 27th Jan 7 PM.

Modern©ité # II brings together five artists (Francis Alÿs, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Marcelo Cidade, Jordi Colomer and Anita Molinero) who share a vision of modernity which is closely tied to the character of cities, particularly those in Southern Europe or Central and Latin America. Whether their work takes form in the making of sculpture, public actions, videos or photographs, the city is the space in which their different artistic trajectories meet, marked as much by Samuel Beckett, Kasimir Malevich, Gordon Matta-Clark, Hélio Oiticica as by Luis Buñuel. Using and appropriating the material that cities offer - spaces and architectures, litter and rubbish, the habits of residents and also those of passing visitors - these artists construct their personal vision of the urban environment and propose anthropological, poetic or critical approaches to the contemporary city.

Francis Alÿs is Belgian and has lived since the 1980s in Mexico City, city in which he wanders and observes the social and political reality of the megalopolis. His discreet interventions in the urban space most often follow the meanders of his walks in the city. In this he is as much in the Situationist tradition as in that of the Fluxus artists. He lives not far from Zócalo, the old central square of Mexico City, and he often uses this as the theatre for his actions and observations. For Zócalo, May 22, 1999, presented in Modern©ité # II, the artist filmed for 12 hours the sightseers sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the pole at the centre of the square, from which flies the national flag. Throughout the day, they follow the movement of the shadow thrown on the ground, drawing a line more or less long and regular, like a sundial. In this way Francis Alÿs shows another rhythm and way of moving across the immense Mexican megalopolis.

The Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis builds his work with industrial building materials, both high-tech (aluminium, glass, neon) and basic (wood, brick, cardboard), using minimal means, so as to bring to light the full meaning of the act of construction. For him, architecture has replaced nature, which previously served as a reference point and as a measure. In his work, ‘house’ and ‘city’ are metaphors for thinking a contemporary world that shows itself to us as fragments. In the apparent chaos of the real, Pedro Cabrita Reis seeks out the order that presides over all constructions; the signs of humanity and of thought, telling us about our ways of living in cities and of inhabiting the world.

Marcelo Cidade lives and works in Sao Paolo, his native city, intervening by way of small, almost imperceptible, actions signalling special territories. In this way he reflects upon the way in which each person inhabits and appropriates the city. He is particularly drawn to anonymous creations and gestures in the public space: graffiti, marks left by the homeless... His minute interventions subtly modify everyday experience, only being seen by those that use the spaces. In the exhibition space, the opposite process is set in motion, the city comes in as fragments, most notably in the use of concrete in his sculptures and installations, where the material is considered not only as a symbol of modern architecture (Le Corbusier), but also in its grey colour with which he covers, for example, photos of the emblematic bunkers of Saint-Nazaire.

After having worked with objects associated with private spaces in the 1980s, Jordi Colomer investigates in many of his sculptures and videos the relationship between architecture and decor. Where is the dividing line between the two? At what moment does architecture become decor? Can decor be lived in? In Anarchitekton (a reference to Malevich’s Architeckton), a series of videos constructed as work in progress, he shows a character carrying cardboard scale models of notable or ordinary modern architecture in Barcelona, Bucharest, Brasilia or Osaka. In front of the original building, the individual holds up his derisory cardboard model like a demonstrator. He seems to simultaneously denounce the reality of these constructions and to celebrate the utopia that they once upheld. Travelling across the city in this way, the backdrop becomes something close to a fiction.

Anita Molinero’s works made from plastic, cardboard boxes, bin liners, concrete, etc. are specifically located in the field of sculpture. During the 1980s and 90s, she made sculpture from waste materials (boxes, polystyrene) using a simple range of gestures. These sculptures, often laid on the floor, recall particular street forms, such as the shelters of the homeless, without making laboured references. At present, this ‘street sculpture’ is more a sculpture of ‘urban threat’. The contemporary materials used by the artist (plastics, polystyrene, synthetic materials) have a strange quality, something invisible that questions the place of humanity in the present-day world of the megalopolis where reality and science fiction seem to co-exist.

Sophie Legrandjacques / AMAC - Traduction Richard Gray

Le Grand Café
Place des Quatre Z'Horloges,
44600 Saint-Nazaire – FRANCE
T +33 (0)2 40 22 37 66 / F +33 (0)2 40 22 43 86
grand_cafe[at]mairie-saintnazaire.fr

Hours: Daily (except Monday) 2 PM to 7 PM,
Sunday 3PM to 6PM

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EXPERIMENTAL TELEVISION CENTER

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FINISHING FUNDS 2006

FINISHING FUNDS provides individual artists with grants up to $2,000 to help with the completion of diverse and innovative moving-image and sonic art projects, and works for the Web and new technologies. Eligible forms include media as single or multiple channel presentations, computer based moving-imagery and sound works, installations and performances, interactive works and works for new technologies, CD ROM, multimedia and the Web. We also support new media, and interactive performance. Work must be surprising, creative and approach the various media as art forms; all genres are eligible, including experimental, narrative and documentary art works. Individual artists can apply directly to the program and do not need a sponsoring organization. Applicants must be residents of New York State; students are not eligible. The application requires a project description, resume and support materials, including a sample of the proposed project. Selection is made by a peer review panel. About $25,000 is awarded each year. Announcement is made in late May.

The program is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a public agency, and by mediaThe foundation. Postmark Deadline: March 15, 2006.Guidelines and applications are available on the web in the ETC News Section or by mail or email.

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January 19, 2006

Knifeandfork's

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5 'til 12

The Beall Center becomes the site of a nonlinear narrative with Knifeandfork's immersive installation, 5 'til 12. The visitor is invited to watch four characters, on four monitors, as they recount the tragic circumstances of the exhibition's opening night. The experience is unique for each visitor, as each story has most likely never been heard before... and won't ever be heard again. The installation uses RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) cards to identify individual visitors. When each new visitor swipes a card, a new story is selected, and the visitor is recognized as he or she explores the narrative space. [Quicktime video]

The premise is derived from Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, in which four eyewitness accounts of a murder are presented to the viewer, who serves the role of a magistrate. The contradicting stories reveal that objectivity is elusive, as each individual cannot help but infuse his story, consciously or not, with personal shame and ambition. It is unclear who is lying, or if it matters. Each story holds a valid reality of its own, a subjective truth that reinforces a desired identity. However, perhaps there could be another layer: in addition to stories that differ between tellers, might an individual's story change with each new telling? 5 'til 12 proposes that we evolve multiple narratives as we explore multiple identities.

The process is inspired by the Oulipo literary movement, in particular the canonical piece by Raymond Queneau, One Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, in which 'potential' literature emerges when lines of words are spliced and recombined. 5 'til 12 draws from the artists' own journals, fantasies, and parodies, all of which are algorithmically assembled to create an enormous number of potential personas for each character.

Stories are selected from the possibilities in rounds, using a programmatic variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma, a model from game theory where individuals choose to cooperate or not in order to maximize their own personal advantage. Seeking to portray themselves in the best possible light, the characters must choose to be complimentary, neutral, or vindictive toward each other. A character who appears confident and blameless while illustrating everyone else's faults will 'score' the highest. However, in the following round, he or she can expect revenge and must eventually make amends. The strategy of each character is adapted using an evolutionary algorithm according to its effectiveness in each round.

Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, CA, US

2006 January 18 - March 15
Opening reception January 17, 6-9 pm

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Make Art

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Centred on the Blurred Line Between Artists and Software Developers

Organised by Goto10, Make Art is a festival dedicated to the integration of "free and open source" software in electronic art. Starting the 24th of January 2006, artists and programmers will take the audience on a journey through this emerging culture via concerts, conferences, software presentations, exhibitions and a workshop.

Make Art is centred on the blurred line between artists and software developers. With the emergence of Internet and the democratisation of computers, the general public is more and more often confronted with hybrid software conceived by qualified artists with strange and varied titles: programmer artists, software artists, digital artists, (new)media artists... They conceive their own creative tools or work hand in hand with the software programmers, contrarily to those who commission technicians and other ghost programmers.

If the question of the artist technician isn't a new one, you can now count on the presence, in the midst of this chaotic and creative digital fauna, of certain individuals who take the step of electronic creation consciously accompanied by a political gesture, that of the use of open source software.

Open source software is computer programmes that can be used by all and for all use, and are distributed with their source code, allowing everyone to study, distribute, modify and improve them, without necessarily asking the author (several free licenses exist). On the contrary, the source code for proprietary software is inaccessible, and the proprietary licenses limit the software to a very precise use.

Beyond the purely technical aspect of the open source world, there are a counter culture's social and economical stakes. A culture born of the technological boom that better understands the ins and outs of electronic power struggles in the post-industrial societies.

At a time when intellectual property is fiercely debated, while some people cling on to their little bits of territory, others have chosen to share knowledge, art and collective work.

Make Art constitutes a tool for reflecting on the propagation of free software in artistic creation and we want it to be a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.

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

Computational Poetics at Upgrade Vancouver

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One River (running)

Join us Thursday, January 26th at 8pm for a discussion with Kenneth Newby, Martin Gotfrit, Aleksandra Dulic and Dinka Pignon, who will show us One River (running) and talk about their work with the Computational Poetics Research Group. As always, we will adjourn after the talk to the Whip Gallery [209 east 6th avenue] for a drink and some chatter.

One River (running) is an interactive, immersive audio environment designed to create both a visual and audio experience of rivers ­ using a complex system of moving sound, moving images, and a physical structure also designed to echo the river¹s undulating geographic form. The artwork¹s images originate from digital photographs of people¹s mouths whom the team interviewed. These still images were then algorithmically programmed. The mouths recognize the voices, and move as though they are speaking the words they hear. The artists created a voice recognition software program to do this synchronization. The video is listening and responding to the audio. The piece was recently exhibited at the Surrey Art Gallery.

Kenneth Newby, Martin Gotfrit and Aleksandra Dulic are part of the Computational Poetics Research Group, a research project that works at the intersections of art, culture and computation and aims to articulate some of the features of an emergent poetics of digital art performance while developing a tool-set to enable artists working in the computational medium to create, present and document their work. A key objective of their work is to share the compositional process and the issues that arise in the work of interdisciplinary computational media performance. Contemporary computational techniques enable creative and performing artists to enter into new collaborative relationships with encoded systems.

Upgrade! Vancouver
When: Thursday, January 26 at 8pm
Where: Western Front, 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver, Canada FREE! Everyone welcome.

Posted by jo at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

*HTTL:// Hacking the Timeline/EZTV:

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Digilantism and the LA Digital Arts Movement

18th STREET CENTER Presents: *HTTL:// Hacking the Timeline / EZTV, Digilantism and the LA Digital Arts Movement--Exhibition of Digital Art in Print, Video and Installation *Victor Acevedo, Rebecca Allen, Denis Brun, Dave Curlender, Michael Dare, Loren Denker David Em, Kit Galloway, Kate Johnson, Tony Longson, Robert Lowden, Michael Masucci, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Nina Rota, Carolyn Stockbridge, Anneliese Varaldiev,* *Michael Wright; February 4 - April 8, 2006: OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, February 4, 6-8:30pm.

"It has been said that the widespread adoption of personal computers is the most significant single cultural advancement since the invention of the printing press, allowing not only for the personalization of production, but also for the development of distribution channels which cross borders, cultures and time zones. At the present time podcasting, ‘blogs, text messaging, mobile devices and interactive websites introduce audiences to artists whom they would have never been offered through the traditional gallery or museum community.

Based on the accomplishments of the last half-century, the last quarter century has seen more widespread adoption of ideas, methods and possibilities, spearheaded by small clusters of artists around the world from Croatia to Germany to Japan to the U.K. Moreover, numerous major technical, design and production innovations were originated in California. Los Angeles has been a central hub in the history of the desktop digital art movement.

By time the 1980s and 90s came about, artist-run spaces such as EZTV and Electronic Cafe International (ECI) served as the meeting grounds for artists, engineers and intellectuals who dared to see the computer as a primary artmaking tool of the 21st century. These spaces combined experimentation and exhibition of a wide range of media work, from wall art to video projection to live performances utilizing media tools. Today, writers, architects, musicians, painters, photographers, filmmakers and even sculptors have all gravitated to this notion, one not so widely accepted or obvious 25 years ago yet now taken as a given. Today digital art is ubiquitous, but its roots are still, all too often, invisible.

This exhibition focuses on some of these key individuals involved in the creation, advocacy and exhibition of seminal digital art exhibitions over the last 25 years in Los Angeles. Many of these shows included artists who were among the very first to publicly articulate a unique digital and desktop aesthetic. They have served as activists who have spearheaded a dialogue between mainstream and experimental artmakers and who brought journalists and scholars alike into an awareness of the emergence of an international digital culture. From David Em's pioneering experimental artworks created at historical places such as Xerox PARC and JPL to EZTV's development of a desktop video and microcinema tradition to ECI's experiments in telecommunication arts to the work of the Digilantes, a term coined by artist/educator Michael Wright, who along with Victor Acevedo staged many guerilla style exhibitions and became a local force for Los Angeles digital art. Their concept of Digilantism, which they not only apply to themselves but also to the efforts of places such as EZTV and other artists/activists worldwide, best describes an art movement as genuine as Futurism, the Arts & Crafts Movement or Hip-Hop." Michael Masucci, 2006

*_Schedule of Events_:

*ArtNight Opening Event, Saturday, February 4th, 4-6pm--Artist Presentation with Denis Brun and Michael Masucci 6-8:30pm; Opening Reception 7:30pm Performance by Collage Ensemble Inc.

Panel Discussion: Thursday, February 9th, 7pm--Hacking the Timeline: The Digilante Movement; Michael Wright and Victor Acevedo

Panel Discussion: Saturday, February 11th, 2pm--Hacking the Timeline: The Untold Story of Digital Art; Moderated by David Plettner with David Em, Peter Frank, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Michael Masucci

Panel Discussion: Saturday, April 8th, 2pm-- John Dorr and the Legacy of EZTV; Moderated by Strawn Bovee with Nina Rota and S.A. Griffin

For extended artist bios, more images and full artists' and curator's statement see: Web sites, <_http://www.eztvmedia.com/httl.html_> or <_http://www.18thstreet.org_>

Hacking the Timeline is funded by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation.

18th Street Arts Center*
*1639 18th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404 Phone 310.453.3711 Email, <_mailto:office[at]18thstreet.org_> Web sites, <_http://www.eztvmedia.com/httl.html_>;
<_http://www.18thstreet.org_>
Hours: Monday -Friday, 10am - 5pm

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January 18, 2006

Mediamatic Workshop

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Mobtagging

Mediamatic presents a 2-day workshop on social tagging, or MOBTAGGING--15 & 16 February 2006 @ Mediamatic, Amsterdam--Mobtagging is what happens when users freely apply and exchange labels (metadata) to online information. This non-hierarchical method of structuring information is rapidly spreading over the web, with Flickr.com, Del.icio.us and Technorati as most famous examples. It gives users the possibility to specify, index and search information on their own terms.

During this workshop we will analyse the inner workings and the social effects of mobtagging. How is social tagging changing the structure of (online) information, and our relation to it? For which usergroups and what type of information is Mobtagging rewarding? What roles does Mobtagging play next to more traditional ways of indexing information?

This workshop is designed for bloggers, webmasters, artists and theorists; people with a practical as well as a theoretical interest in Mobtagging. Four cutting-edge speakers (see below) introduce various concepts and practises of social tagging, and assist the participants with the (re)design and evaluation of their own Mobtagging scenario's or applications.

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen (Finland): Ulla-Maaria currently studies the interface between industrial design and engineering at the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research in Helsinki. On her weblog Hobbyprincess.com she frequently writes about relationships between web resources and adding webstructures. She invented the idea (and software) of the ThingLink, a unique identifier that works as a link between things.

Jyri Engeström (Finland): As a PhD student at the Department of Organisation, Work & Technology at the Lancaster University Management School, Jyri is interested in the relationship between technical innovation and organizational transformation. He also is co-founder of Aula (www.aula.cc), a collective of creative minds who design and use mobile media to flock and blog, socialize and collaborate in geographic and virtual places simultaneously.

Duncan Speakman (UK): Duncan is a sound and video artist, and initiator of the first European videoblogging conference. He will zoom in on social tagging as the main structuring principle of video blogs.

The participation fee is EUR 300 (ex. VAT). For more information, questions or registration surf to www.mediamatic.net/mobtagging. You can also mail to workshops[at]mediamatic.nl, or call Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: +31 20 6389901.

Posted by jo at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

PONG.mythos

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An Exhibition About 1 Ball, 2 Bats and Our life in a Digital World

[The Project] From 11 February to 30 April 2006 the Wuerttemberg Art Association in Stuttgart hosts the premiere PONG.mythos exhibition, curated by Andreas Lange. PONG.mythos presents over 30 works that revolve around the computer game Pong. Pong, in the early 70s, turned the simple game of tennis into the signal for the emergence of the computer game industry. Since then, it has developed from its historical origin in game halls to an important social, scientific and cultural reference system.

For the first time the complex manifestations of one of the largest and most popular establishment myths of our digital information society are united in one place; the pong.mythos exhibition shows artistic, popular and scientific works that expose how influential this little game has become. Over 20 international artists take up the Pong game and its myth directly. The exhibition moves consciously between the terrains of computer history, the entertainment industry, science and art; research projects that use Pong as an experimental playing field for future human computer interfaces are presented along with historical game consoles and a Pong game for the blind.

[The Artists] //////////fur//// (D), Ascii Art Essemble (NL/SLO), Ralph Baer (USA), Blinkenlights(D), Jaygo Bloom (GB), Blunty (AU),James Clar (USA) (tbc), Dirk Eijsbouts (NL), VALIE EXPORT (A), Kiia Kallio (FI), Stephan ST Kambor(D), Andrew Milmoe (USA), Mathilde MµPe (NL), Josh Nimoy (USA), Noel Nissen, (USA), Oska Software (AU), Alan Outten (GB), Niklas Roy (D), Leif Rumbke (D), Antoine Schmitt (F), Jan-Peter ER Sonntag (D), Olaf Val (D), buro vormkrijgers (NL), Philip Worthington (UK).

[THE MYTH] In 1972, when Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, the first video game company, to manufacture the Pong game console, he was hardly conscious of the historical dimension of this act. The emerging digital games also marked the beginning of the digitization of daily life. Computer games were the first applications with which many humans learned computer engineering. In this sense, Pong, apart from its meaning for computer games history, has a significant social value. The success of Pong stands - in the sense of concrete and transferred history - in direct connection with the development of our digital information society.

Opening: Friday, 10 February 2006, 19:00
11 February - 30 April 2006
Württembergischen Kunstverein, Stuttgart

Pong.mythos is a cooperation between the Computer Games Museum in Berlin, the Württemberg Art Association, The Games Convention/Messe, Leipzig, Kornhausforum, Bern and other partners.

Pong.mythos is funded by the German Federal Culture Foundation and has received support from the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Messe Leipzig and Migros Kulturprozent. After the premiere in Stuttgart, the exhibition will travel to Leipzig and the Games Convention (23.8. - 27.8.2006 ) and to Bern and the Kornhausforum (17.8.2007 - 16.9.2007).

[The Computer Games Museum] opened in 1997 with the first constant exhibition of the digital interactive culture. Since then, the award winning venture has organized or participated in 26 national and international exhibition projects. http://www.computerspielemuseum.de

[ANDREAS LANGE] Is the Director of the Computer Games Museum since 1997 and the curator of Pong.Mythos. After he studied Religious Science and Theatre at the Free University Berlin, he wrote His Thesis "The Stories of Computer Games - Analysed as Myths" (Berlin 94). Since then, Lange has worked as an exhibition maker, author, and researcher on the theme of digital entertainment culture.

[HANS D. CHRIST & IRIS DRESSLER] Directors of the Württemberg Art Association, attach "pong.mythos" to the award winning project" Artist's Computer Games" which they realized 2003 in co-operation with the curator Tilmann Baumgaertel in Dortmund.

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Spokesperson: Andreas Lange
Email: lange@computerspielemuseum.de
Tel: +49 (0)30 29049215
www.pong-mythos.net

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Württembergischen Kunstverein
Schlossplatz 2, D-70173 Stuttgart
Tel: +49 (0)711 22 33 70,
Fax. +49 (0)711 29 36 17,
info[at]wkv-stuttgart.de,
http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de

Posted by jo at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2006

e-Creative Practitioners and Change-Agents

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CeC & CaC 2006

An unprecedented range and number of e-Creative Practitioners and change-agents from around India and the world are gathering at the India International Centre in Delhi over the last weekend of January 2006, for the first Carnival of e-Creativity & Change-agents Conclave (CeC & CaC 2006, pron. 'Sek & Sak'). The event, presented by the IIC in association with The Academy of Electronic Arts, will feature screenings, performances, installations and interactions spread across several venues of the IIC main-campus and annexe.

CeC & CaC will be largely open to the public, and visitors are encouraged to bring along their own laptops to launch breakout sessions with their own works. See: participant list and schedule.

Presented by: India International Center and The Academy of Electronic Arts. Digicult presentation sponsorship by: Italian Embassy Cultural Institute and supported by: Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa - Comune di Venezia

For more information:
IIC ~ Ms. Lalsawmliani Tochhawng (Teteii): ltochhawng[at]gmail.com
The AeA ~ Shankar Barua: shankarbaba[at]vsnl.net

Posted by jo at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

Harvestworks

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Technology for Dancers and Choreographers

This semester, Harvestworks concentrates on technology for dancers and choreographers. Real-time video playback, signal-processing for video, live camera tracking, audio-visual interaction does not have to be for the tech specialists only. Here's what's happening in the next few months:

1) This Thursday Alain Bauman from "Konic Thtr", a multimedia dance company in Barcelona, will do a free presentation of a few of their projects and discuss technical and aesthetical issues--see the details below; 2) Next week Wednesday, January 25th, Marlon Barrios-Solano, who will teach the class "Interactive Technology For Dancers", will present a few of his projects as well. This free presentation should give you a good overview of the issues discussed in his class; 3) The class "Interactive Technology For Dancers" will be three Mondays, March 27th, April 3rd and 10th.

Space is limited - please RSVP info[at]harvestworks.org

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19th, 6:30-9:30pm

ALAIN BAUMAN - INTERACTIVE DANCE TECHNOLOGY AT KONIC THTR, BARCELONA

HARVESTWORKS - 596 Broadway, #602, New York, NY 10012 Broadway/Houston, W/R Prince, F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleecker.

Alain Baumann is a musician, multimedia artist and researcher. He is in charge of the development of the interactive systems used by Konic thtr. Konic Thtr is a multimedia label based in Barcelona (Spain), run by Rosa Sanchez and him, that is specialised in the creation of artistic projects that incorporate real time systems. It develops exhibition pieces and live performances that rely upon interactive technology, audiovisual and multimedia languages, music, theatre and dance.

In this presentation at Harvestworks he will discuss and present various projects of Konic Thtr. They work specifically in the research and the relation between stage, dance and technology. Since the year 2000 they have developed a close collaboration with Nuria Font and her projects linked to Image, Dance and New Media. In 2001 they took part in directing the "Laboratory of Motion Capture". In 2002 they won financial support for the production of the video Blank e_motive from the 'Mostra de Videodansa' call for projects. In 2003 they were guest artists in the international seminar "Virtualities of digital body". they were also speakers in the seminar "Dance and Technology" at the CaixaForum Mediateca (Barcelona) in February 2004 and they took part in the international meetings "Movements and Digits" last Autumn at l'Animal a l'Esquena creation centre.

Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. Our programs are made possible with funds from mediaThe foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, The Experimental TV Center, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Aaron Copland Fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and the Rodney White Foundation.

HARVESTWORKS Digital Media Arts Center
596 Broadway, Suite 602 (at Houston St)
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-431-1130
http://www.harvestworks.org
info[at]harvestworks.org
Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleeker, W/R Prince


Posted by jo at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

Outpost for Contemporary Art

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CFP: Fair Trade

Calling All North American Artists: Outpost for Contemporary Art is pleased to invite artist proposals for a group series called "Fair Trade" that will take place in Los Angeles in Fall 2006 at sites appropriate to each accepted proposal. Deadline: February 13, 2006.

The goals for "Fair Trade" are: 1. To activate untraditional and/or underutilized space in Los Angeles to promote artistic experimentation to a broader public 2. To develop positive and productive collaborations with artists to produce projects that are speculative, intellectually challenging, and risk-taking 3. To consider how the three nations of the North American continent assert strong identities while simultaneously engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships.

As with Outpost's past collaborations with individual artists and artist groups, appropriate sites will be found for each accepted proposal we facilitate. Projects that are event-oriented and either participatory in nature or geared toward activating public space will be favored. All projects will be coordinated to occur over a set period of time in Fall 2006 and to take place in untraditional spaces and/or in collaboration with other organizations throughout Los Angeles. Download guidelines at http://www.outpost-art.org/calendar.php

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Generali Foundation, Vienna

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Cinema Like Never Before

Generali Foundation, Vienna: Cinema Like Never Before--20 January through 23 April 2006: With works by Hartmut Bitomsky, Gustav Deutsch, Isabell Heimerdinger, Astrid Küver, Constanze Ruhm, Krassimir Terziev, Nadim Vardag, Klaus Wyborny, Stephen Zepke as well as Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki. Curated by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki

Film pictures in exhibition spaces have longest been taken for granted. Reason enough to more closely examine the origin of these pictures. What is seen in cinema and in which way? How does the medium of film function and what rules does it follow? The author and filmmaker Harun Farocki and the film academic and artist Antje Ehmann have been invited by the Generali Foundation to use the exhibition space for cinema and film analysis.

Cinema like never before is to be perceived as a cinematographic laboratory. Film is brought into the exhibition space without simulating a situation of cinema. Similar to an editing room, takes are weighed and evaluated, cutting frequencies established, and principles of structure and composition analyzed. Archetypes and recurring patterns in film history are addressed and cinema’s technological determinants and conditions of perception are investigated. The exhibition brings together analytical and artistic practices that further contemplate cinema in the art space and contribute to a different understanding of film.

As opposed to other film exhibitions, it is not the predominant issue here to cele-brate the myth of cinema.

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Cinema like never before is a film exhibition that does not show complete films, but elucidates film language by means of photographic series, slide se-quences, and sequential montages. With photographs, stills and moving images, the exhibition intends to provide a chance to study films as it is otherwise done in cutting rooms and seminars, but always with a great deal of explanation. In contrast, the idea here is to detach analyses of images from a discursive framework, instead allowing them to unfold by virtue of conceptual sequences of images.

Numerous contributions of the artists, filmmakers and authors were specially developed for the exhibition. Among them an installation by Hartmut Bitomsky, one of Germany’s most prominent documentary filmmakers, which presents death as an axiom of cinema.

Accompanying Publication: Edited by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, published by Sabine Breitwieser for Generali Foundation, Vienna. Verlag Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, German/English.

Generali Foundation
Wiedner Hauptstrasse 15
1040 Vienna, Austria
http://foundation.generali.at
Generali Foundation Collection online!

Artistic and Managing Director: Sabine Breitwieser
Press Office: Carmen Buchacher +43 1 504 98 80-24 found.presse[at]generali.at

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

Collaboration Opportunity

Looking for Nine Fiction Writers

"I’m looking for nine fiction writers who want to collaborate with me on an artwork that has been commissioned by Turbulence.org. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can say that the work will involve writing collaborative, improvisational fiction online. I can’t honestly say how good the final product will be, but I think it’ll make a fascinating experiment—provided, of course, I’m lucky enough to have good writers to work with.

Each writer will receive a $200 stipend for participation. Participating in this artwork will require a light, but ongoing commitment: perhaps an hour a week, from March to June.

No particular experience, or publications, are necessary. However, you should be mildly comfortable with technology, enough to use a website like MySpace or a blog host like Blogspot. It would also be okay if you had a friend who could help you with the technical stuff. Basically, the project involves a little tech setup, and I don’t want to have to do a lot of tech support for other people.

If that doesn’t sound too maddeningly vague, please let me know if you’re interested by emailing me at sera[at]fhwang.net. I’d appreciate a few writing samples, and if you have any experience with improvisational anything (stand-up comedy, music, even live-action role-playing), it’d be useful to know about that, too. Also, please feel free to ask any other questions. Thanks!"--Francis Hwang

Posted by jo at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

MASTERS STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY

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NEW MEDIA IN AMSTERDAM

MASTERS STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY/NEW MEDIA IN AMSTERDAM: OVERVIEW Established in 2002, Dance Unlimited (DU) Amsterdam is a unique two-year masters program* supporting the study of the relationship between choreography, performance and new media technologies. The program takes the development of choreographic work as its starting point, and new media technologies and practices are approached from this perspective. Theoretical and critical reflection is used as a means to challenge and support the practical work; and collaboration is emphasized. The DU staff comprises internationally known artists and researchers: Scott deLahunta, Sher Doruff, Jeroen Fabius (coordinator), Thomas Lehmen and Susan Rethorst.

CURRICULUM FORMATS: The program makes use of a wide range of curriculum delivery formats including: lectures, symposia, seminar, workshops, tutorials, reading and writing, mentoring and networking, studio-based research, etc. Within this a very active independent attitude is demanded from the student in the organisation of his or her own line of investigation. This 'independent study' comprises the main ingredient of the program.

CURRICULUM CONTENT: At the core of the curriculum is exposure to a range of new media technologies and practices overlapping with intensive choreography workshops. The aim is to develop sensitivity toward forms arising from the interplay between technology and choreographic practice. From here, students develop their own approach to practice based research and the making of artwork in a variety of formats. Introduction to possible collaborators and contexts for the presentation of finished artwork form another key part of the curriculum. In addition, the continuation of professional opportunities for the tudent after graduation remains an important concern throughout the two years with advise in this area provided on an individual basis.

FACILITIES AND TRAINING: DU Amsterdam accepts only four new students every two years, and this means access to facilities and staff is optimal. The program has its own dedicated rehearsal and computer studios and access throughout the year to the largest performance spaces in the Theaterschool. Elsewhere in Amsterdam there are several venues with which the program has a special relation, in particular the Melkweg Theatre, and students are assisted in showing their work in this wider public context. The program does not provide sustained training in complex hardware and software. The student is expected to come with a certain level of experience with the media they wish to explore and/ or be prepared to pursue a self-teaching path. As mentioned, students will be advised and supported in establishing collaborative connections with a range of partner organizations specializing in aspects of new media technologies and practices (e.g. such as Waag Society for old and new media, STEIM studio for electro-instrumental music and various media arts education programs).

FOR 2006-2008: We are looking for artists with a solid educational and professional dance background who wish to engage in a study of the relationship between choreography, performance, and new media technologies. However, we recognize that in areas of arts practice involving new media technologies such as locative media, robotics, and other non-screen based work an interest in movement and choreography may have come into play. As we re engaged in such overlaps, applications can be considered from candidates with these backgrounds who can give strong reasons for wishing to participate in a program that takes the choreographic mind/ body as its starting point and would be prepared to immerse oneself in collaborations with the other students who will have choreography and dance as their primary artistic practice.

APPLICATION DATES/INFORMATION

The program is ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS NOW for the September 2006 start. The application Deadline has been extended to 20 February 2006. A selected group will be invited for the audition in April. More general information and Registration Forms are available on this website.

CONTACT: Questions please contact the secretary: Ellen van Haeringen email: e.vanhaeringen[at]ahk.nl / tel: +31 20 527 7648 / fax: +31 20 527 7642

* Currently the program is postgraduate, but will be validated as a Masters from 2007

DU Amsterdam is part of a collaboration providing advanced study in choreography in the Netherlands with the Dance Academies of Rotterdam, Codarts and Arnhem, Artez.

Posted by jo at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

REMINDER - Registration Deadline

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THIRD INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY

Registration Deadline-20 January 2006: Third International Workshop on Mobile Music Technology, 2-3 March 2006, Brighton, UK.

Combining mobile technology and music promises some exciting developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

Following two successful workshops that started to explore and establish the emerging field of mobile music technology, this third edition offers a unique opportunity to participate in the development of mobile music and hands-on experience of the latest cutting-edge technology. [more]

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

Call of Interest:

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Locative Media: Rautatieasema returns Workshop

Monday 27th March – Saturday 1st April 2006 as part of PixelACHE festival of electronic arts and subcultures 2006, Helsinki.

Acknowledging the recent contemporary past, the workshop aims to engage with the Central Railway Station site in Helsinki, and will begin with considerations upon what happened last time at the same site during PixelACHE 2004. On that occasion, approximately 20 international media and performance artists, activists, archaeologists and researchers spent 5 days exploring overlaps in ‘capture-gathering’ methods and site-documentations.

However, this time participants will be given a key to a locker in the railway station. What you find inside, will be something to begin with. Hence the reiteration of the Locative Media Workshop in the context of PixelACHE2006 focuses activity towards devised performance; to ethnographic, storytelling and interpretative approaches; to reiterations and representations.

Local, regional and Nordic/Baltic persons are encouraged to apply for participation: Please send an e-mail with the following information to locative[at]pixelache.ac by January 31st. Write about your interests and works in locative/site-specific arts (Max. A4).

Posted by jo at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2006

Call for Entries: Turbulence New England Initiative II

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Net Art :: Hybrid Networked Art

Turbulence.org is pleased to announce its New England Initiative II, a juried, networked art competition. Three projects by New England artists will be commissioned and exhibited on Turbulence and in real space (venue to be announced). Each award will be $3,500. The jury consists of Julian Bleecker, Michelle Thursz, and Helen Thorington. This project is made possible with funds from the LEF Foundation.

PROJECT CONCEPT: Net art projects are "art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/ expressing/ participating" (Steve Dietz). They live in the public world of the Internet. Recently, however, wireless telecommunications technologies have enabled computation to migrate out of the desktop PC into the physical world, creating the possibility of “hybrid” networked art, works that intermingle and fuse previously discrete identities, disciplines, and/or fields of activity such as the Internet and urban space. (See the networked_performance blog, specifically the categories "Locative Media" and "Mobile Art and Culture.") Borders are disintegrating and new identities are emerging. We encourage applications by net artists and artists working on networked hybrid projects.

PROJECT TIMELINE:

Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2006
Selected Projects Announcement: March 15, 2006
Project Launch/Exhibition: October 1, 2006

SELECTION CRITERIA: (1) artistic merit of the proposed project; (2) originality; (3) degree of performativity and audience participation; (4) level of programming skill and degree of technological innovation; and (5) extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES:

(a) Your name, email address, and web site URL (if you have one).
(b) A description of the project's core concept and how it will make creative use of digital networks (500 words maximum).
(c) Details of how the project will be realized, including what software/programming will be used. Specs for the Turbulence server are available at http://www.turbulence.org/comp_05/server.htm. You may request additional software but we cannot guarantee it.
(d) Names of collaborators, their areas of expertise, and their specific roles in the project.
(e) A project budget, including other funding sources for this project, if any.
(f) Your résumé/CV and one for each of your collaborators.
(g) Up to five examples of prior work accessible on the web.

Email submissions (the web site URL) to turbulence@turbulence.org with NE 2 in the subject field.

JUROR BIOGRAPHIES:

Julian Bleecker has been involved in technology design for over 15 years, creating mobile, wireless, and networked-based applications across a diversity of project idioms including entertainment, art-technology, brand marketing, university research and development, interactive advertising and museum exhibition. His expertise is technology implementation, innovation and concept development. Bleecker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and Critical Theory departments, and is participating in a research group at the Annenberg Center's Institute for Media Literacy exploring the future of mobile technology applications. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Masters of Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Helen Thorington is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites. She is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-three years. Thorington has created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the net, and the distributed performance Adrift which was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival and at the New Museum in New York City, 2001, among other places.

Thorington has also composed for dance and performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in 2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. She won two radio awards in 2003 for her 9_11_Scapes composition; and was recently commissioned by Deep Wireless, a Toronto radio festival, to create Calling to Mind. Thorington has lectured, presented on panels, and served as a juror on many occasions. Her recent articles on networked musical performances include “Breaking Out: The Trip Back” (Contemporary Music Review, Vol 24, No 6. December 2005, 445-458); and “Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog” for the Extensible Toy Piano Symposium at Clark University, Massachusetts, November 5, 2005.

Michele Thursz is an independent curator and consultant for art-makers and distributors. Her current project is Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and their effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. In 1999 she co-founded and directed the Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Moving Image Gallery was one of the first galleries to show electronic and computer-based mediums, exhibiting such artist as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel and Yael Kanerek. Thursz’ recent curatorial projects include “Copy it, Steal it, Share it”, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, and “Nown”, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh; “public.exe: Public Excution”, Exit Art, NYC, and “Democracy is Fun”, White Box, NYC. She has written essays about contemporary art for catalogues and has lectured on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Thursz’s actions and exhibits have been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Forbes Best of the Web, ArtByte, Wired News, Art Forum, and many international periodicals and web publications.

Posted by jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2006

T a g g e d

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A hands-on RFID workshop

T a g g e d : A hands-on RFID workshop: Friday, February 10, 17, 24 and March 3; 10.30 – 4.30pm; at SPACE Media Arts.

Do you know how an Oyster card works? Or security stickers in shops? Even if you don’t know what a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is, you’ve probably used one – at the grocers checkout, on the bus, tracking a package or in your passport at the airport.

RFID is the barcode of the future. It is a unique identification code that can be tracked through radio waves, sometimes without human contact or knowledge. RFID may help create a real-life internet, where objects can communicate with each other to create complex networks, exchange useful information, and do things for you in every day life. But it could also have a huge impact on commercial industry, security and privacy.

Learn about electronics, art, technology, computer programming and more in this four-day, hands-on workshop. Find out exactly how RFID works, who is using it and what it means for you and your community. Experiment with the technology and imagine what you can do with it in art, industry and play… then get a head start on making it happen.

I n s t r u c t o r s
Paula Roush and Peter Chauncy

B o o k i n g
To book a place please email training@spacestudios.org.uk or call 020
8525 4330

C o s t
Free for participants between the ages of 17 – 25. Participants outside
this group £100 for 4 sessions. Payment is required in advance. Places
are limited.

V e n u e
SPACE Media Arts
129-131 Mare Street
Hackney
London, E8 3RH
T: 020 8525 4339
F: 020 8525 4342
E: spacemedia[at]spacestudios.org.uk
W: http://www.spacemedia.org.uk

SPACE Triangle is wheel chair accessible. If you have specific access requirements, please contact us in advance and we will try to accommodate them.

In partnership with Camden Arts + Business Consortium, Arts Council England, City Fringe Partnership, London Development Agency and NODE.London

Posted by jo at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2006

ESBNs

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...and more thoughts on the End of Cyberspace

Anyone who's ever seen a book has seen ISBNs, or International Standard Book Numbers -- that string of ten digits, right above the bar code, that uniquely identifies a given title. Now come ESBNs, or Electronic Standard Book Numbers, which you'd expect would be just like ISBNs, only for electronic books. And you'd be right, but only partly. ESBNs, which just came into existence this year, uniquely identify not only an electronic title, but each individual copy, stream, or download of that title. Like little tracking devices that publishers can embed in their content. And not just books, but music, video or any other discrete media form -- ESBNs are media-agnostic.

"It's all part of the attempt to impose the restrictions of the physical on the digital, enforcing scarcity where there is none," David Weinberger rightly observes. On the net, it's not so much a matter of who has the book, but who is reading the book -- who is at the book. It's not a copy, it's more like a place. But cyberspace blurs that distinction. As Alex Pang explains, cyberspace is still a place to which we must travel. Going there has become much easier and much faster, but we are still visitors, not natives. We begin and end in the physical world, at a concrete terminal.

When I snap shut my laptop, I disconnect. I am back in the world. And it is that instantaneous moment of travel, that light-speed jump, that has unleashed the reams and decibels of anguished debate over intellectual property in the digital era. A sort of conceptual jetlag. Culture shock. The travel metaphors begin to falter, but the point is that we are talking about things confused during travel from one world to another. Discombobulation.

This jetlag creates a schism in how we treat and consume media. When we're connected to the net, we're not concerned with copies we may or may not own. What matters is access to the material. The copy is immaterial. It's here, there, and everywhere, as the poet said. But when you're offline, physical possession of copies, digital or otherwise, becomes important again. If you don't have it in your hand, or a local copy on your desktop then you cannot experience it. It's as simple as that. ESBNs are a byproduct of this jetlag. They seek to carry the guarantees of the physical world like luggage into the virtual world of cyberspace.

But when that distinction is erased, when connection to the network becomes ubiquitous and constant (as is generally predicted), a pervasive layer over all private and public space, keeping pace with all our movements, then the idea of digital "copies" will be effectively dead. As will the idea of cyberspace. The virtual world and the actual world will be one.

For publishers and IP lawyers, this will simplify matters greatly. Take, for example, webmail. For the past few years, I have relied exclusively on webmail with no local client on my machine. This means that when I'm offline, I have no mail (unless I go to the trouble of making copies of individual messages or printouts). As a consequence, I've stopped thinking of my correspondence in terms of copies. I think of it in terms of being there, of being "on my email" -- or not. Soon that will be the way I think of most, if not all, digital media -- in terms of access and services, not copies.

But in terms of perception, the end of cyberspace is not so simple. When the last actual-to-virtual transport service officially shuts down -- when the line between worlds is completely erased -- we will still be left, as human beings, with a desire to travel to places beyond our immediate perception. As Sol Gaitan describes it in a brilliant comment to yesterday's "end of cyberspace" post:

In the West, the desire to blur the line, the need to access the "other side," took artists to try opium, absinth, kef, and peyote. The symbolists crossed the line and brought back dada, surrealism, and other manifestations of worlds that until then had been held at bay but that were all there. The virtual is part of the actual, "we, or objects acting on our behalf are online all the time." Never though of that in such terms, but it's true, and very exciting. It potentially enriches my reality. As with a book, contents become alive through the reader/user, otherwise the book is a dead, or dormant, object. So, my e-mail, the blogs I read, the Web, are online all the time, but it's through me that they become concrete, a perceived reality. Yes, we read differently because texts grow, move, and evolve, while we are away and "the object" is closed. But, we still need to read them. Esse rerum est percipi.

Just the other night I saw a fantastic performance of Allen Ginsberg's Howl that took the poem -- which I'd always found alluring but ultimately remote on the page -- and, through the conjury of five actors, made it concrete, a perceived reality. I dug Ginsburg's words. I downloaded them, as if across time. I was in cyberspace, but with sweat and pheremones. The Beats, too, sought sublimity -- transport to a virtual world. So, too, did the cyberpunks in the net's early days. So, too, did early Christian monastics, an analogy that Pang draws:

...cyberspace expresses a desire to transcend the world; Web 2.0 is about engaging with it. The early inhabitants of cyberspace were like the early Church monastics, who sought to serve God by going into the desert and escaping the temptations and distractions of the world and the flesh. The vision of Web 2.0, in contrast, is more Franciscan: one of engagement with and improvement of the world, not escape from it.

The end of cyberspace may mean the fusion of real and virtual worlds, another layer of a massively mediated existence. And this raises many questions about what is real and how, or if, that matters. But the end of cyberspace, despite all the sweeping gospel of Web 2.0, continuous computing, urban computing etc., also signals the beginning of something terribly mundane. Networks of fiber and digits are still human networks, prone to corruption and virtue alike. A virtual environment is still a natural environment. The extraordinary, in time, becomes ordinary. And undoubtedly we will still search for lines to cross. [blogged by Ben Vershbow on The Future of the Book]

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

The Fashion of Architecture

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CONSTRUCTING the Architecture of Fashion

The Fashion of Architecture: CONSTRUCTING the Architecture of Fashion--
Galleries: Judith and Walter Hunt Gallery, Mezzanine Gallery, Kohn Pedersen Fox Gallery, HLW Gallery, South Gallery; January 11–March 11, 2006

Architecture is making its presence felt in fashion as the pliable metals, membrane structures, lightweight glasses and flexible plastics used in building construction are creeping on to the catwalks. At the same time, architects and interior designers are borrowing the techniques of pleating and draping from traditional tailoring to design buildings that are interactive, inflatable, and even portable. Works by practitioners such as Zaha Hadid, Winka Dubbeldam, Shigeru Ban, Kivi Sotamaa, David Adjaye, Block Architecture, 6a Architects, Lars Spuybroek, Stuart Veech and Meejin Yoon are showcased alongside architectonic apparel from fashion mavericks such as Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Yeohlee, Pia Myrvold, Yohji Yamamoto, Boudicca, Eley Kishimoto, Kei Kagami, Michiko Koshino, Stéphanie Coudert, Simon Thorogood, Nicola de Main, and Arkadius. The exhibition features a special installation from Paris-based artist Lucy Orta.

Curator: Bradley Quinn, FRSA, a British author and critic based in New York. [posted by Regine on 21f]

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

Prix Ars Electronica 2006

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International Competition for Cyberarts

The Prix Ars Electronica - International Competition for Cyberarts is being conducted for the 19th time in 2006. In addition to the classic categories-Interactive Art, Net Vision, Computer Animation / Visual Effects and Digital Musics-Digital Communities and [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant competition that debuted last year will be reprised.

Online Submission Deadline: March 17, 2006; Total Prize Money: 117,500 Euro; 6 Golden Nicas; 12 Awards of Distinction; Up to 12 Honorary Mentions in each category.

INTERACTIVE ART: The "Interactive Art" category is dedicated to interactive works in all forms and formats, from installations to performances. Here, particular consideration is given to the realization of a powerful artistic concept through the especially appropriate use of technologies, the innovativeness of the interaction design, and the work's inherent potential to expand the human radius of action.

COMPUTER ANIMATION/VISUAL EFFECTS

The "Computer Animation / Visual Effects" category has been part of the Prix Ars Electronica since its very inception. It recognizes excellence in independent work in the arts and sciences as well as in high-end commercial productions in the film, advertising and entertainment industries. In this category, artistic originality counts just as much as masterful technical achievement.

DIGITAL MUSICS

Contemporary digital sound productions from the broad spectrum of "electronica" come in for consideration in the "Digital Musics" category, as do works combining sound and media, computer compositions ranging from electro-acoustic to experimental music, or sound installations. This category's programmatic agenda is to expand horizons beyond the confines of individual genres and artistic currents.

NET VISION

The "Net Vision" category singles out for recognition artistic projects in the Internet that display brilliance in how they have been engineered, designed and-especially-conceived, works that are outstanding with respect to innovation, interface design and the originality of their content. The way in which a work of net-based art deals with the online medium is essential in this category.

DIGITAL COMMUNITIES

This category focuses attention on the wide-ranging social impact of the Internet as well as on the latest developments in the fields of social software, mobile communications and wireless networks. "Digital Communities" spotlights bold and inspired innovations impacting human coexistence, bridging the geographical as well as gender-based digital divide, or creating outstanding social software and enhancing accessibility of technological-social infrastructure. This category showcases the political potential of digital and networked systems and is thus designed as a forum for the consideration of a broad spectrum of projects, programs, initiatives and phenomena in which social innovation is taking place, as it were, in real time. A Golden Nica, two Awards of Distinction and up to 12 Honorary Mentions will be awarded in the Digital Communities category in 2006.

[the next idea] Art and Technology Grant

The aim of this grant focusing on the mutually enriching interplay of art and technology is to nurture concepts for the future that young thinkers are coming up with today. This category’s target group includes interested persons throughout the world between the ages of 19 and 27, who have developed a not-yet-realized concept in the fields of media art, media design or media technology. The winner will receive a 7,500-euro grant and an invitation to spend a semester as scientific assistant and artist-in-residence at the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

Iris Mayr
Prix Ars Electronica | Project Manager

Ars Electronica Center Linz
Hauptstraße 2
A-4040 Linz
Code: Prix

Tel. ++43.732.7272-74
Fax ++43.732.7272-676
info[at]prixars.aec.at

Posted by jo at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)

MobileActive

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A Global Resource for Using Cell Phones in Social Activism

Mobile phones have emerged as a civic and campaign organizing tool across traditional socio-economic and cultural boundaries. Cell phone campaigns have swung elections through innovative get-out-the-vote activities, have been used to ensure impartial elections through monitoring, have resulted in massive collective action to free political prisoners or stop illegal logging, and are being used in public health strategies.

MobileActive convened in Toronto in 2005 to bring together, for the first time ever, activists from around the world to explore the use of mobile phones in civic action campaigns. This wiki and MobileActive site is an aggregation of the learnings from this convergence, stories from participants and their projects, and resources for activists interested in using mobiles in their campaigns. (For write-ups about MobileActive 05 go to our press page).

The goal of MobileActive is to grow the network of mobile activists, to share knowledge and skills, and to provide a peer network, training and resources to those interested in exploring mobile phones in their civic engagagement, mobilization, and civic action campaigns.

We aim to better understand the strengths and limits of the medium, explore available technologies for campaigners, and share lessons learned, campaign examples, and tech tools to increase activists’ ability to organize our constituencies.

If you used mobiles in your campaign, please share your story! If you need or have resources, let us know! And if you want to join this growing network of activists from around the globe send us a note: info[at]mobileactive.org.

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

PERVASIVE 2006 WORKSHOP

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Privacy, Trust and Identity Issues for Ambient Intelligence

Call for Papers--PERVASIVE 2006 WORKSHOP: Privacy, Trust and Identity Issues for Ambient Intelligence--Submissions are invited to this workshop, which will take place in Dublin, Ireland at the 4th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, May 7th--10th 2006. Deadline for submissions - 6th February 2006.

Privacy, trust and identity issues for ambient intelligence: Ambient Intelligence (AmI) has been described as a 'paradigmatic shift in computing and society' and has become one of the key concepts in the FP6 IST programme 2002-2006. However most of the current work on AmI is driven by technological concerns, despite claims that it is fundamentally a human-centred development that will essentially set people free from the desktop, hence it has been argued that the societal and user implications of AmI should be made more explicit.

One of the particular challenges of AmI, which marks it out from other E-Society developments, is that the user will be involved in huge numbers of moment-to-moment exchanges of personal data without explicitly sanctioning each transaction. Agent technologies will be required to manage the flow of information, and a great deal of exciting technical work is ongoing in this field. But personal and social concerns remain unanswered, particularly concerning issues of privacy, trust and identity. The AmI challenge is particularly pressing, since in future there will be no obvious physical markers to tell us when we move from private to public cyberspaces (Beslay and Punie, 2002) and so individuals must be given a clearer vision of how and when to control personal data.

For further details see http://pst.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/pti-ai-workshop/

Organising Committee: * Pamela Briggs (Northumbria) * Linda Little Northumbria) * Steve Marsh (NRC Canada) * Steve Love (Brunel) * Ishbel Duncan (St Andrews) * Tim Storer (St Andrews)

Contact: Professor Pamela Briggs, PACT Lab, Cognition and Communication Research Centre, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST

Posted by jo at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2006

What’s Your Social Doing In My Mobile?

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Design Patterns for Mobile Social Software

This Friday I will be visiting UC Irvine's Department of Informatics and giving a talk on Mobile Social Software — some material I've been working on through the Netpublics Research Seminar at the Annenberg Center for Communication.

Abstract: Making “mobile software” into Mobile Social Software suggests that social beings assume an explicit role in the untethered, software-based experience. If we borrow from the idiom of Social Software, we can say that Mobile Social Software are techniques for articulating social practices that create, maintain and manage networks of relationships amongst people and encourage the circulation of culture in untethered, networked-based usage contexts. The design challenge for such techniques is to avoid prioritizing instrumental aspects of mobile terminal devices over the actual social practice that software attempts to facilitate. I suggest herein that this challenge can be addressed by moving to the foreground specific practice idioms as frameworks for design prototypes, avenues for research and development, and contexts for study and theory objects. This design approach is described as a point of view on Mobile Social Software, along with an explication of this perspective through a taxonomy of Mobile Social Software design idioms — Spatial Annotation, Proximity Interaction, and Presence Awareness.

The Informatics Seminar is held on Friday at 3pm at the The UCI Department of Informatics in ICS2 136, followed by a social hour at 4pm. [blogged by Julian Bleecker on Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2006

1000 DAYS OF THEORY

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Precision + Guided + Seeing

"Let's address this question of "precision" on two fronts: one, as a technologically-enabled drive toward efficiency and accuracy -- a drive to augment human capabilities by developing new human-machine composites, connecting and joining forces with multiple processing agencies, wherever or whatever they might be; and two, as a technologically-assisted drive to reduce mediation and offer a form of direct connection to our real objects of inquiry. We might call these the effective and the affective. Both aim for the goal of instantaneous vision: a real time perceptual agency in which multiple actors, both human and machinic, are networked and able to act in concert. A real time perceptual agency in which time and space intervals can be eliminated, reducing the gaps between detection, analysis, and engagement, or desire and its attainment. A real time perceptual agency that can somehow touch the real.

Yet the drive for the real, as Zizek suggests, always culminates in its opposite: theatrical spectacle. Why? Because the real is only able to be sustained if we fictionalize it.[2] To look for the real, then, is not to look for it directly: it is to look to our fictions, discerning how reality is "transfunctionalized" through them.

[3] Perhaps the real object of the precision-drive is not only arrived at through reduction, but through expansion. To look to the object of the precision-drive is not only to narrow the optic, honing in on the target of attention: it is to look to the cultural fictions in which the object becomes lodged. It is to open the optic; theatricalize it. To accommodate cultural fictions is to acknowledge the constitutive role of conflict. What aspects of the real are transfunctionalized through our conflict imaginaries?" From Precision + Guided + Seeing by Jordan Crandall, CTHEORY: 1000 DAYS OF THEORY, VOL 29, NOS 1-2, Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

Posted by jo at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

LMCC's Swing Space Program!

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Free space for artists!

Swing Space is a new initiative of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Working in partnership with area landlords, LMCC makes vacant space downtown available to artists, curators and arts organizations on a temporary basis at no cost.

The program is designed to address the short-term space needs for a range of projects, and to encourage creative, experimental and collaborative approaches to artistic practice in unconventional spaces. Project stipends ranging from $300 to $3000 are provided to support project costs! Recent Swing Space grantees include THE THING, National Theater of the United States of America, Jessica Irish, and Noah Fischer.

Applications are accepted and reviewed in the following project categories:
- Studio space
- Rehearsal space
- Installation for public presentation
- Curated exhibitions for public presentation
- Temporary office space

LMCC is also accepting applications for the 15 Nassau Program, which provides space for public programs and performances. Recent 15 Nassau grantees include Pablo Helguera/PERFORMA 05, Koosil-Ja Hwang, and Artists Alliance.

Deadline: February 21, 2006, 5:00 PM.
Apply online: http://www.lmcc.net/swingspace
Questions: swingspace[at]lmcc.net

Posted by jo at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

FM10 Openness:

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Code, Science and Content; Making Collaborative Creativity Sustainable

First Monday’s tenth anniversary conference, 15-17 May 2006 at the University of Illinois at Chicago: Recent years have seen a strong interest among academics, policy makers, activists, business and other practitioners on open collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. In some areas, such as free software / open source, sustainable business models have emerged that are holding their own against more traditional, proprietary software industries. In the sciences, the notions of open science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of openness in the academic community that, despite its past successes, is increasingly under threat. And open access journals and other open content provide inspiring examples of collaborative creativity and participatory access, such as Wikipedia, while still in search of models to ensure sustainability.

There are clear links between these areas of openness: open content often looks explicitly towards open source software for business models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of the potential of openness, how it can work, as well as a warning of the threats it may face. Finally, open collaboration is closely linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries.

Despite these clear links, there has been surprisingly little thoughtful analysis of this convergence, or of the real value of the common aspect of open collaboration. In particular, while open source software ˜ due to its strong impact on business and on bridging the digital divide ˜ has drawn much attention, it may provide false hopes for the sustainability of openness in other areas of content that need careful examination. The conference - FM10 Openness: Code, science and content: Making collaborative creativity sustainable - provides a platform for such analysis and discussion, resulting in concrete proposals for sustainable models for open collaboration in creative domains.

The conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the foremost online, peerˆreviewed academic journal covering these issues since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous papers by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration, open access, and open content in its various forms, it is itself an example of open collaboration in practice: for nearly a decade, the journal has been published on a purely voluntary basis, with no subscription fees, advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The success of First Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers around the world, downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each month. This conference celebrates First Monday‚s tenth anniversary. The first issue of First Monday appeared on the first Monday of May 1996 at the International World Wide Web Conference in Paris. Altogether, 658 papers have been published in 115 issues, written by 783 different authors from around the world.

The conference is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (http://www.macfound.org/), the Open Society Institute (http://www.soros.org/), and the University of Illinois at Chicago

Posted by jo at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

When Science Meets Art

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Seamless Fashion Show 2

Christine Liu and Nick Knouf put on the seamless fashion show last May at MIT (blogged here, the needy dress, fatJab, Nomad Pneumatics, aetherspace, etc.) In a few weeks they're doing a 2nd rendition of seamless (same idea, new stuff, same city, new venue) on February 1, 2006, in conjunction with the Boston Museum of Science in their When Science Meets Art series.

They will showcase new, experimental projects (mostly student designers) in the intersection of fashion, culture, the body, and technology. Picture shows the wonderful Red Hats that Bea Camacho presented at the first seamless show. I also found this video of Bea's Enclose eleven-hour performance. During the performance she crocheted herself into a cocoon with red yarn. The project is about concealment, self-preservation, isolation and duration. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

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

S O U T H E R N E X P O S U R E

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS: SoEx OFFSITE

An opportunity for emerging artists to develop and create new public works in San Francisco that investigate diverse strategies for exploring and mapping public space. Southern Exposure will commission a series of public art projects that investigate diverse strategies for exploring and mapping public space. Artists selected through this open call will be commissioned to produce new work.

SoEx: OFFSITE is informed by the legacy of the Situationists, an international artistic and political movement that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. The Situationists sought to radically redefine the role of art in society with a particular interest in everyday experiences in public space. They developed key concepts such as the dérive ­ the practice of drifting through urban space - and psychogeography ­the study of the effects of the geographic environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. In addition, a goal of these projects is to reconsider the Situationists¹ strategies in light of new technologies such as Global Positioning devices and wireless communication, which have fundamentally transformed our ability to navigate public space.

This series will feature a range of projects that utilize strategies such as simple acts of walking and note taking, to projects that employ high-tech and technological apparatuses as a means to fuse virtual and real experiences or to disseminate geographical and historical information, to performances, actions, or events. These projects may involve the audience¹s participation, enabling the public to engage in acts of urban mapping and reflect on their own experiences in public space.

Southern Exposure seeks proposals for artwork in various media including 1) artwork with a physical presence such as: installation, sculpture, or public intervention; 2) ephemeral and participatory artwork such as: performance, tour, walk, discussion, or lecture; 3) technology-based work such as new media or sound art; or 4) projects that combine the above categories. Projects will be presented between September 2006 and Spring 2007. The duration of the projects can range from a single performance to repeating events or a long-term installation. Selected artists will receive an honorarium and production budget ranging from $500 - $5,000 depending on the scope of the project. Southern Exposure will work with artists to provide support, promote their projects, and will create a publication that documents the program series after the projects have been presented. Southern Exposure will also provide a home base for artists to work, with space for information about the projects to be accessible to the public.

APPLICATION & REVIEW PROCESS:

The proposals will be reviewed by several members of Southern Exposure's Curatorial Committee. We are seeking proposals from artists who demonstrate a potential for creative growth working in the public realm, or artists who would like to extend their practice into the public realm but have yet to work this way.

Please mail or deliver your proposal package to Southern Exposure. Southern Exposure does not accept electronic submissions.

SoEx OFFSITE
Southern Exposure
401 Alabama Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Application Deadline: Materials must be received at Southern Exposure's office by 5 p.m. on Friday, February 28, 2006 (this is not a postmark date). Hand deliveries will be accepted.

Notification Deadline: Artists will be notified by later no later than March 31, 2006. Please do not call before this date.

INQUIRIES:

You can find all of this information and more at www.soex.org in the SoEx OFFSITE section. If you have questions regarding the application process, please contact us by email: programs@soex.org. Subject heading of the email should read: "SoEx OFFSITE."

About Southern Exposure: Southern Exposure is a 31 year old, non-profit, artist-run organization dedicated to presenting diverse, innovative, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs and events in an accessible environment. Southern Exposure reaches out to diverse audiences and serves as a forum and resource center to provide extraordinary support to the Bay Area's arts and educational communities. Activities range from exhibitions of local, regional, and international visual artists' work, education programs, and lectures, panel discussions, and performances. Southern Exposure is dedicated to giving artists--whether they are exhibiting, curating, teaching, or learning--an opportunity to realize ideas for projects that may not otherwise find support.

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE OFFSITE:

Southern Exposure's 2006-2007 Exhibition and Artists in Education programs will move beyond the gallery walls in order to present new forms of work in public space. Southern Exposure will temporarily relocate in the summer of 2006 so that the building that we have always called home at Project Artaud can undergo a seismic retrofit and upgrade. Southern Exposure is utilizing this unique opportunity to extend our programs into the public realm. Southern Exposure, founded in 1974, has a long history of presenting community-based projects. Through this new program, Southern Exposure has a goal of encouraging artists to work experimentally in public space, enabling artists to develop new works that could not otherwise be realized, and generating a critical dialog about emerging creative practices.

For more information go to www.soex.org or call 415-863-2141.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Submission Application: SOEX OFFSITE

ELIGIBILITY:
Open to local, national and international artists, with a focus on supporting San Francisco Bay Area artists.

WHAT TO SUBMIT:
Please complete the following form and submit it with your application:

NAME:

ADDRESS:

CITY/STATE/ZIP:

PHONE:

EMAIL/WEBSITE:

1. Submit up to TWO forms of visual support material: up to twelve digital images ­ saved as JPEG files. (May not exceed 800 x 600 pixels 72 dpi). Each image file should be labeled or saved with your name and a number that corresponded to an annotated image list (see below). We are not accepting slides. One DVD with up to three works or three excerpts of works. We will view up to five minutes of work. One VHS tape, cued. We will view up to five minutes of work.

2. Annotated image list of your support materials: indicate artist name, title, year, medium, brief description of each work (digital image or video).

3. Artist statement, no more than one page in length.

4. Current resume, including name, address, phone number and email address.

5. Proposal. In 300 words or less, describe the project that you would like to develop, include: the form your project will take (i.e. public sculpture, performance, action, event, etc); the motivations for the work and concepts behind it suggest possible locations, types of locations, or a specific location you intend to use. OPTIONAL: You may include a schematic or visual example of your project.

6. Preliminary budget in narrative form estimating material costs and required production time.

7. A self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) large enough to return submitted materials and containing the correct amount of postage. MATERIALS WITHOUT A SASE WILL NOT BE RETURNED AND WILL BE DISCARDED AFTER 2 MONTHS IF THE ARTIST HAS NOT CONTACTED SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

Please include 3 copies of items #'s 2- 6. Do not submit binders,
folders or original artwork.

S O U T H E R N E X P O S U R E
Dynamic, cutting edge art, education, and community programs since 1974.

401 Alabama Street @ 17th
San Francisco, CA 94110
t: 415.863.2141
f: 415.863.1841
e: soex[at]soex.org
w: www.soex.org

Posted by jo at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2006

Turbulence New England Initiative II

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Call for Entries

Turbulence.org is pleased to announce its New England Initiative II, a juried, networked art competition. Three projects by New England artists will be commissioned and exhibited on Turbulence and in real space (venue to be announced). Each award will be $3,500. The jury consists of Julian Bleecker, Michele Thursz, and Helen Thorington. This project is made possible with funds from the LEF Foundation.

PROJECT CONCEPT: Net art projects are "art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating" (Steve Dietz). They live in the public world of the Internet. Recently, however, wireless telecommunications technologies have enabled computation to migrate out of the desktop PC into the physical world, creating the possibility of “hybrid” networked art, works that intermingle and fuse previously discrete identities, disciplines, and/or fields of activity such as the Internet and urban space. (See the networked_performance blog—specifically the categories Locative Media and Mobile Art and Culture.) Borders are disintegrating and new identities are emerging. We encourage applications by net artists and artists working on networked hybrid projects.

PROJECT TIMELINE:

Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2006
Selected Projects Announcement: March 15, 2006
Project Launch/Exhibition: October 1, 2006

SELECTION CRITERIA: (1) artistic merit of the proposed project; (2) originality; (3) degree of performativity and audience participation; (4) level of programming skill and degree of technological innovation; and (5) extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES:

(a) Your name, email address, and web site URL (if you have one).
(b) A description of the project's core concept and how it will make creative use of digital networks (500 words maximum).
(c) Details of how the project will be realized, including what software/programming will be used. Specs for the Turbulence server are available here. You may request additional software but we cannot guarantee it.
(d) Names of collaborators, their areas of expertise, and their specific roles in the project.
(e) A project budget, including other funding sources for this project, if any.
(f) Your résumé/CV and one for each of your collaborators.
(g) Up to five examples of prior work accessible on the web.

Email submissions (the web site URL) to turbulence[at]turbulence.org with NE 2 in the subject field.

JUROR BIOGRAPHIES:

Julian Bleecker has been involved in technology design for over 15 years, creating mobile, wireless, and networked-based applications across a diversity of project idioms including entertainment, art-technology, brand marketing, university research and development, interactive advertising and museum exhibition. His expertise is technology implementation, innovation and concept development. Bleecker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and Critical Theory departments, and is participating in a research group at the Annenberg Center's Institute for Media Literacy exploring the future of mobile technology applications. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Masters of Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Helen Thorington is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites. She is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-three years. Thorington has created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the net, and the distributed performance Adrift which was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival and at the New Museum in New York City, 2001, among other places. Thorington has also composed for dance and performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in 2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. She won two radio awards in 2003 for her 9_11_Scapes composition; and was recently commissioned by Deep Wireless, a Toronto radio festival, to create Calling to Mind. Thorington has lectured, presented on panels, and served as a juror on many occasions. Her recent articles on networked musical performances include “Breaking Out: The Trip Back” (Contemporary Music Review, Vol 24, No 6. December 2005, 445-458); and “Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog” for the Extensible Toy Piano Symposium at Clark University, Massachusetts, November 5, 2005.

Michele Thursz is an independent curator and consultant for art-makers and distributors. Her current project is Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and their effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. In 1999 she co-founded and directed the Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Moving Image Gallery was one of the first galleries to show electronic and computer-based mediums, exhibiting such artist as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel and Yael Kanerek. Thursz’ recent curatorial projects include “Copy it, Steal it, Share it”, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, and “Nown”, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh; “public.exe: Public Excution”, Exit Art, NYC, and “Democracy is Fun”, White Box, NYC. She has written essays about contemporary art for catalogues and has lectured on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Thursz’s actions and exhibits have been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Forbes Best of the Web, ArtByte, Wired News, Art Forum, and many international periodicals and web publications.

Posted by jo at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

Digi-Presenter Manual

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A Presenter's Guide to Networked Performance

"In January 2004, NYSCA’s Presenting Program launched an initiative for New York State Presenters to learn about developments in digital technologies and the performing arts. Over the past two years, a core group of presenters have met in New York City and in Albany to attend performances and events, meet with artists, attend roundtables, visit digi-ready venues, present work, and share project notes...

The "Digi-Presenters" requested a guide to which they could refer when considering, negotiating and/or producing digi-based work. Therefore, the Presenting Program asked Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., to create The Digi-Presenter Manual. Ms. Green blogs on networked_performance, a rich resource of emerging technologies in the networked arts..." Bella Shalom, Director, Presenting Program; and Jeanette Vuocolo, Project Organizer, New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.

Posted by jo at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

SWITCH issue 21:

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Pacific Rim

Electronic Privacy in Asia: What is the effect of the Fantabulous Kawaii Gizmos, Wireless Privacy Daemons (Waveband: 2.4-GHz) & Orientalism by Adrien David Cheok and Roger Thomas Tan, Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore: "There has been a growing debate amongst artists and scientists about the effect of electronic privacy due to the rapid increase and use of mobile digital media devices, which can potentially transmit and receive personal information. We argue that in Asia the concern of attack on privacy due to these digital devices is generally lacking, and this stems froma deep thread of Orientalism in Asian societies even in the digital age...

...Intimacy as Asia’s fundamental cultural essence has reached such a level that it is not uncommon to bathe naked in a group in a bathhouse in Japan. Would knowing his physical whereabouts or stealing pictures of him sitting at his office desk typing away at the computer then bother the average Asian? On the contrary he would more likely to be puzzled than upset at one’s intentions for carrying out such deeds. In Singapore it has become completely common to purchase a “Singtel” camera to monitor ones children in the house while at work, and cameras are ubiquitous in normal office spaces. Thus from a baby to adult the concept of bothering about privacy is much lessened compared to European cultures.

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Other articles:

Here Be Dragons!: Bio-art beyond the edge of everything
By Anne Farren and Andrew Hutchison
Department of Design at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia

Karaoke Ice: A Night Out
By Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow, Katie Salen and the CADRE City as Interface Group
ISEA 2006 "City as Interface" Residency

Towards New Bodies and New Biologies: Life as Code, Body as Protocol
By Carlos Castellanos
SWITCH Editorial Member

Ladyboys: Human Art
By Skyler Thomas
SWITCH Editorial Member

Playing With Culture: Gaming Across the Pacific Rim
By Christopher Head
SWITCH Editorial Member

SWITCH is the new media art journal of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media of the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University. It has been published on the Web since 1995. We are interested in fostering a critical viewpoint on issues and developments in the multiple crossovers between art and technology. Our main focus in on questioning and analyzing as well as reporting and discussing these new art forms as they develop, in hopes of encouraging dialogue and possible collaboration with others who are working and considering similar issues. SWITCH aims to critically evaluate developments in art and technology in order to contribute to the formation of alternative viewpoints with the intention of expanding the arena in which new art and technology emerge.

Posted by jo at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

John Lansdown Award for Interactive Digital Art 2006

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Apply Now

All those working in interactive digital art are invited to submit for this international prize, awarded annually by the Eurographics Association. The first prize has a cash value of 750 Euros and there is 250 Euros for the runner-up. The closing date for submission is 28 April 2006. The submission process and full details of the prize and the submission process are available at the EG 2006 web site.

The criteria for the Award centre on the creative use of the digital medium for interactive art, in any form. The Eurographics 2006 conference also has animation and multimedia programmes; see full details of these categories.

Background

Eurographics presented the John Lansdown Prize for Multimedia for the first time at the Eurographics 2000 conference. This year the prize is renamed the Prize for Interactive Digital Art, to better describe the kind of entry that the judges are looking for.

The prize is dedicated to the memory of Professor John Lansdown, who died in February 1999. In his varied career, John Lansdown was involved in many creative activities, from his first discipline of architecture, through computer graphics to computer-mediated artwork of many forms, culminating in multimedia production. Creativity is an overworked word, but it can be justly applied to John Lansdown's approach to everything he explored, so the criteria for the award centre on the creative use of computers to generate interactive art.

The results of the competition will be announced at Eurographics 2006 in Vienna in September 2006. A certificate will accompany the cheque.

The judges look forward to receiving a stimulating set of submissions and wish all submitters good luck with their research and development work.

Judging Criteria

The submission awarded first prize will demonstrate innovation in the use of interaction with images, sound and animation. The judges will take into account whether the work looks and sounds 'good' and behaves 'well', the strength of the underlying ideas and the degree to which the system 'works' both conceptually and mechanically, in other words the fitness for purpose of the submission. A successful work will show a significant understanding of the needs, motivations, conceptions and actions of the user.

Fundamental characteristics that the judges will expect to find in a successful submission include:

* Innovation * Coherence * Selectivity or appropriateness * Usability * Usefulness * Fertility for development * Degree of finish * Meeting declared aims * Awareness of 'state of the art' * Technical ingenuity

The judges reserve the right to make no award or to award only a second prize if, in their opinion, the standard of work submitted does not reach the high standards of creativity associated with John Lansdown. The judges' decision is final. They may, at their discretion, give private advice or comments to submitters of work on future development, but will not openly discuss their decisions nor respond to direct questioning on the reasons for decisions after the award ceremony.

Posted by jo at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

Subtle Technologies

Call for Proposals: Responsive Architectures

Subtle Technologies would like to distribute the following information to the Turbulence community. Subtle Technologies is a four-day multidisciplinary event exploring complex and subtle relationships between art and science. This year's theme is Responsive Architectures. We are now accepting proposals. It would be much appreciated if you could distribute the following information to those whom would be of interest. The full thread is located here. [Previously blogged here]

Posted by jo at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2006

Perform Space

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Performance, Performative, Performitivity

The research project Perform Space 2002/03 explored performative spatial structural phenomena of artistic works. The main result is a model which is intended for further use as a tool in art production and research. Built upon a basic notion and approach of phenomenological philosophy known as lived space, the model and its terminology were created through collecting and interpreting descriptions of artistic works of two art in public space projects. These descriptions were then used as the foundation for discovering underlying commonalities that mark the essential core of the processes and effects of contemporary artistic works. The aim is to use the model to develop a more highly differentiated sensibility for the presence and meaning of artistic works in the concrete lives and experiences of human beings.

Performance is generally defined as an enactment or occurrence over time which is experienced and measured against some standard [system/pattern] and according to specific criteria [presentation/framing].

Performance Art was initially proclaimed as its own medium in the 1960s and 1970s. Generally it is used to specify art works conceived and enacted by an artist using his or her own body, but is also used to describe works involving the participation of the viewer.

Performative refers to the operative and systematical aspect of something as an occurrence: something is not performative in itself, but rather becomes performative by being enacted and experienced within a specified framework. For example, in language, performative utterances are speech acts which complete the action they proclaim, as in "I promise to be there," or "I now pronounce you husband and wife." The action is fulfilled through being said ö and experienced ö by particular persons in a particular social context. Thereby, to speak of a performative artistic work means to claim that the process of being realized and experienced make something art, rather than, e.g., its object qualities.

Performativity refers to the necessary performative aspect of a condition, an event or object. For example, the performativity of gender means that gender is not given, but rather results through acts based on cultural norms of femininity and masculinity. Broadly considered, the performativity of art refers to the way art is created and maintained as a special field through acts based on cultural norms. For example, since Modernism a common notion is that art be new, as in the avant-garde which disrupted previous cultural practices and beliefs about art.

Posted by jo at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

Microtel

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Send Your Teletext Now

Microtel is one of the projects curated by ambientTV.net as part of VBI [voluptuous blinking eye] - a submission for the exhibition Satellite of Love. This exhibition is presented by the 35th International Film Festival Rotterdam in association with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and the TENT Centre for Visual Arts. The exhibition runs from 26 January to 05 February 2006.

Until 04 February 2006, you will be able to create teletext and email it to Microtel for inclusion on its website, a DVD to be distributed by SCEEN magazine and most importantly broadcast on Netherlands TV station NOS. Check technical information for software downloads and FAQ's to contribute today! From 26 January to 05 February 2006, you will be able to visit the VBI Lounge and learn how to create teletext content. Check workshops for the schedule and see what other activities will be taking place in the VBI Lounge.

About Teletext: Teletext is a system which encodes extra information in analogue TV signals, where televisions with the right chip can decode and display special text and graphic pages. It uses the VBI part of the television broadcast signal. VBI stands for the Vertical Blanking Interval - the portion of the broadcast TV signal occupied by teletext and other data streams. The number of viewers to a page of teletext does not slow down the teletext system - unlike people visiting a webpage on the internet. Teletext originated in the UK in the 1970's. Today teletext services still offer a range of text-based information, usually including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules.

Dragan Espenscheid from Bodenstandig 2000 created a piece called Teletext Babez featuring a collection of racy teletext advertisements for lonely hearts phone lines. jodi.org used teletext for Teletext.

Posted by jo at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2006

Nicolas Bourriaud

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Relational Aesthetics Glossary

Academism: 1. An attitude that involves clinging to the defunct signs and forms of one's day and rendering these aesthetic; 2. synonum: pompous (pompier) -And why wouldn`t he do something pompous, if it pays off` (Samuel Beckett)

Aesthetics: An idea that sets humankind apart from other animal species. In the end of the day, burying the dead, laughter, and suicide are just the corollaries of a deep-seated hunch, that life is an aesthetic, ritualised, shaped form.

Art: 1. General term describing a set of objects presented as part of a narrative known as art history.This narrative draws up the critical genealogy and discusses the issues raised by these objects, by way of three sub-sets: painting,sculpture, architecture.

2. Nowadays, the word 'art' seems to be no more than a semantic leftover of this narrative, whose more accurate definition would read as follows: Art is an activity consisting in producing relationships with the world with the help of signs, forms, actions and objects.

Art (The end of): 'The end of art' only exists in an idealistic view of history. We can nevertheless, and not without irony, borrow Hegel`s formula whereby 'art, for us, is a thing of the past' and turn it into a figure of style: let us remain open to what is happening in the present, which invariably exceeds, a priori, our capacities of understanding.

Artist: When Benjamin Buchloh referred to the conceptual and minimal generation of the 1960`s, he defined the artist as a 'scholar-philosopher-craftsman' who hands society 'the objective results of his labour' . For Buchloh, this figure was heir to that of the artist as 'mediumic and transcendental subject' represented by Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana and Joseph Beuys. Recent developments in art merely modify Buchloh's hunch. Today's artist appears as an operator of signs, modelling production structures so as to provide significant doubles. An entrepeneur/politician/director. The most common denominator shared by all artists is that they show something. The act of showing suffices to define the artist, be it a representation or a designation.

Behaviour: 1. Beside those two established genres, the history of things and the history of forms, we still need to come up with a history of artistic behaviours. It would be naive to think that the history of art represents a whole capable of perennially replacing these three sub-groups. An artist's microbiography would point up the things he has achieved within his oeuvre.
2. Artist, producer of time. All totalitarian ideologies show a distinctive wish to control the time in which they exist. They replace the versatility of time invented by the individual by the fantasy of a central place where it might be possible to acquire the overall meaning of society. Totalitarianism systematically tries to set up a form of temporal motionlessness, and rendering the time in which it exits uniform and collective, a fantasy of eternity aimed first and foremost at standardising and monitoring patterns of behaviours. Foucault thus rightly stressed the fact that the art of living classed with 'all forms of fascism, be they already there or lurking '

Co-existence criterion: All works of art produce a model of sociability, which transposes reality or might be conveyed in it. So there is a question we are entitled to ask in front of any aesthetic production: 'Does this work permit me to enter into dialogue [ Could I exist, and how, in the space it defines?] A form is more or less democratic. May I simply remind you, for the record, that the forms produced by the art of totalitarian regimes are peremptory and closed in on themselves (particularly through their stress on symmetry). Otherwise put, they do not give the viewer a chance to complement them.
(see: Relational (aesthetics).

Context: In situ art is a form of artistic activity that encompasses the space in which it is on view. This consideration by the artist of the exhibition venue consisted, yesterday, in exploring its spatial and architectural configuration. A second possibility, prevalent in the art of the 1990s consists in an institutional structure, the socio-economic features encompassing it, and the people involved. This latter method calls for a great deal of subtlety : although such contextual studies have the merit of reminding us that the artistic doing does not drop out of the sky into a place unblemished by any ideology, it is nevertheless important to fit this investigation into a prospect that goes beyond the primary stage of sociology, It is not enough to extract, mechanically, the social characteristics of the place where you exhibit (the art centre, the city, the region, the country...) to ''reveal'' whatever it may be. For some artists who complicated thinking represents an architecture of meanings, no more nor less (Dan Asher, Daniel Buren, Jef Geys, Mark Dion) how many conceptual hacks are there who laboriously 'associate', for their show in Montelimar, nougat production and unemployment figures? The mistake lies in thinking that the sense of an aesthetic fact lies solely in the context.

2. Art after criticism: Once art 'overtook' philosophy (joseph Kosuth), it nowadays goes beyond critical philosophy, where conceptual art has helped to spread the viewpoint. Doubt can be cast over the stance of the 'critical' artist, when this position consists in judging the world as if he were excluded from it by divine grace, and played no part in it. This idealistic attitude can be contrasted with Lacanian intuition that the unconscious is its own analyst. And Marx's idea that explains that real criticism is the criticism of reality that exists through criticism itself. For there is no mental place where the artist might exclude himself from the world he represents.

Critical materialism: The world is made up of random encounters (Lucretius, Hobbes, Marx, Althusser). Art, too, is made of chaotic, chance meetings of signs and forms. Nowadays, it even creates spaces within which the encounter can occur. Present-day art does not present the outcome of a labour, it is the labour itself, or the labour-to-be.

Factitiousness: Art is not the world of suspended will (Schopenhauer), or of the disappearance of contingency (Sartre), but a space emptied of the factitious. It in no way clashes with authenticity (an absurd value where art is concerned) but replaces coherences, even phoney ones, with the illusory world of 'truth'. It is the bad lie that betrays the hack, who at best touching sincerity inevitably ends up as a forked tongue.

Form: Structural unity imitating a world. Artistic practice involves creating a form capable of "lasting", bringing heterogeneous units together on a coherent level, in order to create a relationship to the world.

Gesture: Movement of the body revealing a psychological state or designed to express an idea. Gesturality means the set of requisite operations introduced by the production of artworks, from their manufacture to the production of peripheral signs (actions, event, anecdotes)

Image: Making a work involves the invention of a process of presentation. In this kind of process, the image is an act.

Inhabiting: Having imagined architecture and art of the future, the artist is now proposing solutions for inhabiting them. The contemporary form of modernity is ecological,haunted by the occupancy of forms and the use of images.

Modern: The ideals of modernity have not vanished,they have been adapted. So "the total work of art" comes about today in its spectacular version, emptied of its teleological content. Our civilization makes up for the hyperspecialization of social functions by the progressive unity of leisure activities. It is thus possible to predict,without too much risk attaching thereto, that the aesthetic experience of the average late 20th century individual might roughly resemble what early 20th century avant-gardes imagined. Between the interactive video disk, the CD-Rom, ever more multi-media-oriented games consoles, and the extreme sophistication of mass recreational venues, discotheques and theme parks, we are heading towards the condensation of leisure in unifying forms. Towards a compact art. Once a CD-Rom and Cd-I drives are available. which have enough autonomy, books, exhibitions and films will be in competition with a form of expression that is at once more comprehensive and more thought-restricting, circulating writing, imagery and sound in new forms.

Operational realism: Presentation of the functional sphere in an aesthetic arrangement.The work proposes a functional model and not a maquette. In other words, the concept of dimension does not come into it, just as in the digital image whose proportions may vary dependng on the size of the screen, which unlike the frame, does not enclose works within a predetermined format, but rather renders virtuality material in x dimensions.

Ready-made: Artistic figure contemporary with the invention of film. The artist takes his camera-subjectivity into the real, defining himself as a cameraman: the museum plays the part of the film, he records. For the first time, with Duchamp, art no longer consists in translating the real with the help of signs, but in presenting this same real as it is (Duchamp, the Lumière brothers...

Relational Aesthetics: Aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt.(see co-existence criterion)

Relational (art): A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.

Semionaut: The contemporary artist is a semionaut, he invents trajectories between signs.

Society of extras: The society of the spectacle has been defined by Guy Debord as the historical moment when merchandise achieved 'the total occupation of social life ' , capital having reached 'such a degree of accumulation' that it was turned into imagery. Today , we are in the further stage of spectacular development: the individual has shifted from a passive and purely repetitive status to the minimum activity dictated to him by market forces. So television consumption is shrinking in favour of video games, thus the spectacular hierarchy encourages 'empty monads', i.e. programmeless models and politicians, thus everyone sees themselves summoned to be famous for fifteen minutes, using a TV game, street poll or new item as go-between. This is the reign of the 'Infamous Man' , whom Michel Foucault defined as the anonymous and 'ordinary' individual suddenly put in the glare of the media spotlights. Here we are summoned to turn into extras of the spectacle, having been regarded as its consumers. This switch can be historically explained: since the surrender of the Soviet bloc, there are no obstacles on capitalism's path to empire.It has a total hold of the social arena, so it can permit itself to stir individuals to frolic about in the free and open spaces that it has staked out. So, after the consumer society, we can see the dawning of the society of extras where the individual develops as a part-time stand-in for freedom, signer and sealer of the public place.

Style: The movement of a work, its trajectory 'The style of a thought is its movement' (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari).

Trailer: Having been an event per se (classical painting), then the graphic recording of an event (the work of Jackson Pollock with photographic documents describing a performance or an action), today's work of art often assumes the role of a trailer for a forthcoming event, or an event that is put off forever.

From "Relational Aesthetics" by NB, published by "les Presses du Reel", Dijon, France. 2002 english version, 1998 french version. [blogged by robbin murphy at thing] See also From Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud (1998).

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January 02, 2006

ICA £10,000 Commission

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Live Re-Enactment Sought

The ICA wishes to commission a live re-enactment by an artist or artist's group from either visual, live practice or media arts background. Over the past 8 years the ICA has commissioned a number of seminal re-enactment performances from historic pop moments, e.g. Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's "Rock n' Roll Suicide" (25th Anniversary of the Farewell Ziggy Stardust Shows) to Rod Dickinson's "Jonestown" re-enactment (Jim Jones Sermons on the road to Gyana).

Submissions on a one page proposal outlining your career to date, proposal for the re-enactment and any specific practical considerations. This is a commission of £10,000.

Deadline for proposal submission - Friday 24th February 2006. Please send them to: Vivienne Gaskin, Director of Performing Arts and Digital Media ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH.

Posted by jo at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

Dot.City

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Relational Urbanism and New Media

This publication of the Fourth International Bauhaus Kolleg, a year long thematic graduate session run by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, offers strategies for employing digital media to integrate the unpredictable and the unplanned into urban existence. Dot.City asks and seeks to answer many questions: Can the use of information and communication technology counteract the continuous processes of devaluation, the loss of urban identity and the lack of multifunctional networks? Can the activation and implementation of new social techniques of knowledge production compensate for missing economical impulses and functions? How do such processes generate new species of urban values? Is it possible to re-program local social resources using intelligent network technologies? What do urban action areas designed for this purpose look like? And how can urban information spheres and physical urban spaces penetrate each other? Dot.City is edited by Torsten Blume and Gregor Langenbrinck. [via neural]

Posted by jo at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2005

D>Art.06

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Condition of Emergence

D>Art.06 is the ninth edition of Australia's premier screen and digital media arts festival. This year's festival will feature new and experimental video and web art as well as works using mobile technologies presented in a month-long program of screenings, a forum and an exhibition at the Sydney Opera House Studio and Exhibition Hall in April 2006.

Under the theme Condition of Emergence, dLux media arts is now calling for works in the following categories of D>Art.06: D>Art.06 Screen: Experimental video works with a maximum duration of 15 minutes; D>Art.06 Web: Online works suitable for exhibition in a gallery environment; D>Art.06 Locative/Mobile: Artworks specifically made with or for mobile technologies. The nature of the artwork may range from video to games to locative and social networking applications.

All works submitted must have been completed in 2005 or 2006.

The call for entries closes on February 18th 2006. Any entries not received by this date will not be accepted.

For more information, detailed entry conditions and to submit your work to D>Art.06, please visit http://www.dlux.org.au/dart06

Posted by jo at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

NEURAL n.23

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new.media.art, e.music, hacktivism

The new printed Neural issue in English is available: Neural n.23:

new.media.art . interviews Tom Betts/Nullpointer . Socialfiction.org . //////////fur/// . Paper and Pixel . news (Flickr Peep Show, PostSecret, Sequences, Mindbending, inc., Silver Cell). reviews (Art meets Media, Aspect, Internet Art, Situated Contemporary Art Practices, read_me, Digital Homo Ludens, Feelings are always local) . centerfold: Movement of Movements.

e.music . interviews. Radioqualia. Janek Schaefer . Circuit Bending . news: (FontanaMixer, The Unauthorized iPod, MIDIbox SID, The Continuator, MPF) . reviews: (Hexstatic, Robin Fox, Akuvido, Steinbruchel, Thomas Brusa, The Dawn of DIMI) . reviews cd: (Christian Marclay, Musica Futurista, Phon.o, Si-cut.Db, Agents of Impurity, Koji Asano, Oh Astro, Transient Travels, PXP, Kiritchenko, JDS, Forbidden 80s, Electric Lounge Orchestra, Noise Tank, Pirandelo...)

hacktivism . interviews . Marko Peljhan . McKenzie Wark . Luca Bertini . news (Our Beer, Scream, TV Predator, Wordnews, The International Database of Corporate Commands). reviews: (Information Politcs on the Web, At a Distance, Make Magazine, Hackers and Painters, We the Media).

1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION!
3 issues + 1 electronic music cd
Europe 24,90 euro.
World 33,32 U.S: Dollars.
http://neural.it/subscribe/

NEURAL http://english.neural.it/

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December 14, 2005

Performing Presence:

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From the Live to the Simulated

Performing Presence: from the live to the simulated: A major AHRC-funded project managed by Nick Kaye (Exeter), Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter), Michael Shanks (Stanford), Mel Slater (UCL). Between February and June 2006, the Centre for Intermedia in the Department of Drama at Exeter University we will be hosting six public one-day practice-research workshops for a public audience conducted by leading theatre and performance artists. Performing Presence is a major, AHRC-funded international collaborative research project running for four years from 1st September 2005.

The project brings together leading researchers from Drama, Archaeology, and Computer Science, in collaboration with internationally known performers and artists, to advance an understanding of the performer's presence in live, electronically mediated and simulated performance. Integral to the Performing Presence project is the Presence Project Collaboratory, a state-of-the-art collaboratively authored web environment hosted by Stanford University. Our Exeter project website is here.

The workshop series will explore theatrical practices that engage with performer-presence and range across multi-media performance, storytelling, intercultural performer practice, performance art, site-specific theatre and psychophysical performance. All our workshops are free and open to a public audience.

Tim Etchells: 15 February 2006, 12.30-4.30: Tim Etchells is Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment, one of the UK's most influential companies working across performance, installation and media.

Phillip Zarrilli and Klaus Seewald: 1st March 2006, 12.30-4.30: Phillip Zarrilli is internationally recognised for training actors using a psychophysical process combining yoga, especially Hatha Yoga, and the Asian martial arts Kalarippayattu and Tai Chi Ch'uan. He is professor of Performance Practice at Exeter. Phillip Zarrilli will conduct this workshop in collaboration with Klaus Seewald of Theatre ASOU, Graz, Austria, whose work has been shown widely across Europe and South America.

Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes: 8 March 2006, 12.30-4.30: In a series of performances since 1999, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes have explored and studio-based practice as a mediation and transposition of specific sites and events.

Vayu Naidu: 22 March 2006, 12.30-4.30: With Vayu Naidu Company, Vayu Naidu's work explores and articulates the presence of the narrative storyteller, transposing RASA, 'the essence of performance,' toward the creation of performer presence

Details of how to reserve a place are available from http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence/events.php

Further workshop dates and details of individual workshops will be announced in the New Year.

Performing Presence also receives support from Exeter University, Stanford University and University College London.

Posted by jo at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

PARLIAMENTS OF ART

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SPRINTOSIUM 05

International symposium and Festival for self-organised cultural forms on the occasion of the start up of the new Viennese support model for net cultures.

SPRINTOSIUM PROGRAMME: 11-13. December 05 (11. 18:00 - 24:00; 12., 13., 10:00 - 24:00)--The central piece of the new Viennese support model for net cultures starting 2006 is the yearly grant of 250 000 ? - with the help of a software based assessment process.

The goal of the symposium Parliaments of Art is to work out the conceptual basis of this new democratic project. "Parliaments of Art" will deal with the material as well as the symbolic dimension of the "art of networking" and the production of new collaborative knwoledge - ideas, images, emotions and relationships.

The software based curator system Mana offers the collective and individual enviroment of action. How is the thinking and doing provided by such a matrix? What as defined as action, what is visible, what is affective? Who or what should be defined as being active? Is it possible to have such a "Parliament of Art"?

With: Richard Barbrook (UK), Sabeth Buchmann (A/D), Karel Dudesek (A/UK), Richard Fajnor (CZ/SK), Tom Fürstner (A), Johannes Gees (CH), Mike Hentz (US/CH), Margarete Jahrmann (A/CH), Vladimir Jeric (SCG), Marko Kosnik (D/SLO), Jacob Lillemose (DK), Christopher Müller (D), Jasia Reichardt (UK), Mirko T. Schäfer (NL/D), Harvey Stanic (D/NL), Nina Stuhldreher (A), Albena Yaneva (A)

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netznetz">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netznetz

OPENING SESSION: DECEMBER 11th, 7 PM, SEMPERDEPOT (DOORS: 6 PM)

19:30 Keynotes

Jasia Reichardt, London UK: Before and after Cybernetic Serendipity (ICA, London 1968)

Richard Barbrook, London UK: Imaginary Futures. From thinking machines to intergalactic networks

21:00 Discussion:

Parliaments of Art - Which Past should have our Future? Early Perspectives on a Public Experiment in Vienna: Richard Barbrook, Karel Dudesek, Margarete Jahrmann, Marko Kosnik, Jasia Reichardt
Moderation: Andreas Leo Findeisen, Stefan Lutschinger

Visual Ambient: HNS/Lichttapete & Stefano Satori: Pixcompressor via Textmachine Peter Koger: netznetz-list-on-the-wall (live generated visuals); supported by VMS Video Moving System; Audio Ambient--Sweet Susie; Art Haircuts--Marcel. Credits:

Organisation Symposium: Andreas Leo Findeisen, Stefan Lutschinger, Lorenz Seidler / Organisation Workshops: Simon Häfele, Thomas J. Jelinek, Martin Pichlmair, Lorenz Seidler, Nicole Szolga, Andreas Trawöger / Art Director: Jan Lauth / Graphics: Bibi, Wolfgang Schopf /
Production: Bernadette Stummer / Website: Andreas Rathmanner /
Network: Martin Slunsky, Andreas Trawöger / Docu: Gerhard Leixl

Special Thanks: Hans Bernhard, Günther Friesinger, Roland Gratzer, Johannes
Grenzfurthner, Doris Kaiserreiner, Hans Knöll, lizvix, Group Or-Om, Parasew,
Christoph Theiler, Thomas Thurner, Mic Wlodkowski, Julia Zdarsky and all the other participants of Summer Sprint 05, Update and netznetz[at]Künstlerhaus 04 and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Posted by jo at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2005

16 Beaver Presents Steve Kurtz

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Art & Discipline

What: Presentation / Discussion; Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor (directions below); When: Monday Night 12.12.05 @ 7:30 Pm; Who: Open To All.

Our short introductions to events sometimes aspire to a provocation for the evening. How is that we have come so far and seemingly done so little to stop it? How is that we are being disciplined to accept this state of endless war? How is it that so much is being done and yet the same tune plays on? War abroad and war at home. Civil Liberties, "human" rights, open debate, OUT! Torture, abduction, abuse, expulsion, unabashed lies and untold casualties - the stuff of everyday news. Case by case, step by step, it is difficult to tell whether this war without end is reaching its end or sinking into our guts. All be it the language is dramatic, the reality is far more outrageous and devastating.

We are in a state of emergency, a state of exception. What are the implications of this on our activities?

Since the beginning of the case that unfolded against CAE's Steve Kurtz, 16Beaver has attempted to give space to both the intellectual concerns in CAE's work (including the program we organized with CAVS at MIT) and formal and informal discussions we have held about the situation at our own space.

This Monday, we are happy to invite you to a discussion with Steve Kurtz of CAE. We will begin the evening with a presentation, 'Art and Discipline.' In this lecture Steve will discuss the many forms of disciplinary authority that Critical Art Ensemble has encountered over the years, as well as how and why these situations came about. We will follow up this talk with a discussion.

About Steve Kurtz

Steve Kurtz is a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). CAE is a collective of tactical media practitioners of various specializations, including computer graphics and web design, wetware, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. Formed in 1987, CAE’s focus has been on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism. The collective has performed and produced a wide variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues ranging from the street, to the museum, to the Internet. Critical Art Ensemble has also written five books, and is about to release its sixth work Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health. Kurtz is an Associate Professor of Art at SUNY, Buffalo.

Useful links:

http://www.critical-art.net
http://www.caedefensefund.org
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mt/mtadmin/mt-search.cgi?search=CAE
http://www.16beavergroup.org/MIT/

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
phone: 212.480.2093

for directions/subscriptions/info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,M Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

Posted by jo at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2005

La Box Bourges

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Project Room. A show without works

Sal Randolph's We Are Reading project will launch on December 15, 2005. Until July 2006, she will develop a continuous project on the Internet. In accordance with her interest for open source, copy left, and information sharing, she has conceived a "reading exchange project."

We Are Reading is part of the exhibition Les formes du délai/Project Room. A show without works. The exhibition will concentrate on the absence of the finished and exhibited work of art. Given that a work of art always goes beyond the spatial-temporal framework of the exhibition, the complex network of relations in which the work inscribes itself is worth considering. The work of art, in effect, participates in a series of practices and discourses which take place prior to and/or outside of the work of art. Exposing the forms from which a given work may take its cues or other forms in which it may be absorbed can ultimately shed light on how a work of art operates, from its conception to its reception.

Including exhibitions, screenings, performances, and online projects that will take place over the course of the year, the general programming of "Les formes du délai" will unfold like so many objects of speculation and experimentation, to encourage questioning on the working methods of artists as well as critical or institutional discourse and viewer practices. The various moments devised by the artists will put in balance the effect of the expectations created by the announcement of the work—before it actually takes shape— and the delayed reaction to it once it comes into being.

"Project Room. A show without works"--Preview: 15 December 2005 - 6 pm; Exhibition: 16 December 2005 - 22 January 2006.

la box bourges
école nationale supérieure d'art de Bourges
9 rue Édouard Branly - BP 297
18006 Bourges cedex
tel/fax: 02 48 24 78 70
la.box[at]ensa-bourges.fr

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

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival

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eco-poetics

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Deadline: January 3, 2006: The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival seeks seek finished projects of electronic art, ready to be mounted on-line, on the theme of eco-poetics.

eco-poetics: How might new media environments and technological flows intervene in eco-culture and eco-politics? What is the relationship between the techne of eco-poetics and the imperative of eco-politics? How do internet paradigms of speed, flow, and traffic impact notions of sustainability? Do mobile technologies and global positioning systems provide platforms for ecological activism? What about the military's utilization of ludic gaming systems for digital terror and ecological devastation? How might new media interventions offset the media blackouts of the global ecology of war and public health degradation? How can the artistic mixing of ecological and poetic materials-organic, inorganic, technological, aural, visual-create alternative and fertile environments in new media culture?

Selected artistic interventions on electronic interfaces between sustainability and environmental thought will be exhibited at The 9th Annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College, March 30-April 6, 2006, and subsequently maintained in off-line form in The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University Library.

Please send a description of your project, including conceptual abstract, technical format, and preview URL, to the Festival On-Line Curators, Timothy Murray, Patricia R. Zimmernann, and Tom Shevory: e-mail address: tcm1[at]cornell.edu.

Posted by jo at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2005

Mendi+Keith live audio stream, December 10

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Four Electric Ghosts

Please listen in as Mendi+Keith Obadike present songs and stories from their new work Four Electric Ghosts, created in collaboration with students in the Princeton Atelier. Inspired by Amos Tutuola’s 1954 novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Pac-Man (the videogame created by Toru Iwatani in 1980), Four Electric Ghosts considers the question, "What does it mean to be invaded by an innocent?" The performance will be streamed live from Princeton University on Saturday, December 10th at 7:30pm. You can catch the stream here.

Conceived and directed by Toni Morrison, the Princeton Atelier convenes guest artists to collaborate with students in creating new works performed or exhibited on campus.

Mendi+Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists whose music, live art, and conceptual Internet artworks have been exhibited internationally.Their album The Sour Thunder was released on Bridge Records. Their writing and art projects have been featured in the film Take These Chains, in periodicals (including Art Journal, Artthrob, Meridians, Black Arts Quarterly, and Tema Celeste), and in the anthology Sound Unbound:Sampling Digital Arts and Culture (MIT Press, edited by Paul D. Miller). Their work generated much discussion online and offline when they offered Keith's blackness for sale on eBay in 2001. In 2002 Mendi+Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder which was the first new media work commissioned by the Yale Cabaret and they launched The Interaction of Coloreds (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art). In 2003 Keith was sound designer and composer for Anna Deavere Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at the Lincoln Center Institute, and Mendi's poetry was featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem in response to an exhibition of visual artist Gary Simmons’ work. Also in 2003 they launched The Pink of Stealth, an Internet/ DVD surround sound work commissioned by the New York African Film Festival and Electronic Arts Intermix and The Sour Thunder was broadcast internationally from 104.1 fm in Berlin. Their upcoming projects include a new installation and album entitled TaRonda Who Wore White Gloves supported by a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship and an Internet opera entitled Four Electric Ghosts, for Toni Morrison’s Atelier at Princeton University in 2005. Most recently, Keith was awarded a Connecticut Critics’ Circle Award for his sound design work at the Yale Repertory Theater and Mendi's new book Armor and Flesh (Lotus Press) won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University.

Posted by jo at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

0100101110101101.ORG

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United We Stand

Postmasters Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition United We Stand, a new project by 0100101110101101.ORG (Eva and Franco Mattes) and their first solo show in New York. "United We Stand: Europe has a mission" is the title of the non-existent, fully EU-produced Hollywood-style blockbuster: "A brilliant mix of espionage and sci-fi political stereotypes in which Europe, not the US, saves the world from impending doom". The project that convincingly invents and promotes this movie is disseminated into public spaces and media realm all over the world through city-scale urban installations and viral communication tactics.

The streets of Berlin, Brussels, Barcelona and, now, New York have been plastered with thousands of posters perfectly mimicking the iconography and the rhetoric of Hollywood-style visual propaganda. This is the first stage of a long-term communication strategy that began in late 2005 and will gradually cover the whole media spectrum from blogs to magazines and TV. Full page United We Stand ads have been spotted all over Europe, in magazines devoted to art, youth culture and life styles. More are to come.

United We Stand touches on themes of subliminal art, cultural propaganda and European identity, clashing against expectations and exploding cultural stereotypes. Like Mattes' previous large-scale work Nike Ground, United We Stand provokes an unexpected wave of collective hallucination where over-identification, falsehood and consequent disclosure are key elements that foster critical thinking.

While the the advertising campaign exists publicly, it is simultaneously presented (revealed) as as an artwork of 0100101110101101.ORG. Postmasters Gallery will be the first art venue to host the disclosed side of the United We Stand project. The light boxes and a billboard with the movie poster, a comprehensive collection of photographs of the United We Stand campaign so far, including urban installations in key locations of Berlin, Brussels, Barcelona and New York, the website devoted to the film, and framed magazines with the ads, will all be on view. The gallery exhibition will also feature a site specific "bridge" installation with live images from a hidden webcam capturing the passerbys reactions to the poster. We are working simultaneously on this double track, the fictional and the real - explains Franco Mattes - in this sense, spectators in the gallery who are aware of the multiple layers are passive voyeurs, while the unaware public, is actually a part of the artwork.

The show will open December 10 and will be on view until January 21, 2006 (gallery will close for holidays December 24 - January 2). The opening reception will take place Saturday, December 10, 2005 between 6 and 8 pm.

The site specific installation is realized with assistance of the New York University, the poster campaign in New York is carried out within 0100101110101101.ORG's residency at The Thing.

Eva and Franco Mattes - internationally known as 0100101110101101.ORG - are a couple of restless European con-artists who use non-conventional communication tactics to obtain the largest visibility with the minimum effort. Born in 1976, they live and work in situ. In the last decade they have been devoted to what they define as "media actionism", where truth and falsehood become indistinguishable. They invented and promoted a nonexistent artist; spread a computer virus as a work of art; challenged and defeated Nike Corporation in a legal battle for a fake advertisement campaign. They have been called media scammers, myth-makers and extremists as well as Internet stars, info-dandies or, simply, geniuses.

Their works have been shown internationally including: Lentos Museum of Modern Art, Linz; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; ICC, Tokyo; Manifesta, Frankfurt; Venice Biennale, ZKM, Karlsruhe; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Muse d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Postmasters Gallery, located in Chelsea at 459 West 19th Street (corner of 10th Avenue), is open Tuesday through Saturday to 11 - 6 pm. Please contact Magdalena Sawon at 212-727-3323 with any questions or image requests. e-mail: postmasters[at]thing.net

Magdalena Sawon
Postmasters Gallery
459 W 19 Street
New York, NY 10011
phone 212 727 3323

Posted by jo at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

Opsound + Glowlab Open Lab

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Look, Listen, Interact, Play, Contribute

Opsound is pleased to announce an exciting line-up for the closing party of Opsound's Open Sound Exchange and Glowlab's Open Lab to take place Sunday, December 11 at Art Interactive Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 4-8pm.

Performances in the gallery will include a live video and audio stream by LoVid, an interactive audio piece for mobile phone handsets by RZ-1 Mobil Tek, plus experimental ambient live music by Eric Raz, Brad Bordine, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, additional sounds from Opsound's collaborative internet radio stream.

Directions and Information: Sunday, December 11, 4-8pm; Art Interactive
130 Bishop Allen Drive, Cambridge, MA; 617-498-0100, info[at]artinteractive.org; Subway: Central Square [Directions/map]

Performers:

LoVid--LoVid is Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. Using homemade electronic devices and DIY sculptural instruments, LoVid overwhelms the senses with new media in their performances, videos, objects, and installations. LoVid has toured the US and Europe extensively performing among many others at Eyebeam, Harvestworks, Boley, Max Protetch, Eyedrum, NY Underground Film Festival, Look and Listen Festival, Kraak(3) Festival, Lokaal01, Lumen, and Futuresonic Festival. LoVid has exhibited among others at COCA Seattle, Sotheby's, SOUTHFIRST, Happy Lion, Institute of Contemporary Art London, and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. LoVid is currently artist in residence at Eyebeam, has been selected as artist in residence at Harvestworks and iEAR, has been nominated free103point9 transmission artist, and has recently received a grant from NYSCA. A DVD of LoVid recordings made during a residency at Experimental TV Center has recently been released on CollectivEye.

RZ-1 MobileTek--Glad to be back in the Boston area. My roots. Searching for new methods to release sound into our environment. Currently developing audio software for the cell phone. Recently completed projects include New Conventions of Behavior - An experimental sound work that investigates how listeners create cognitive structures for understanding new sounds, and how composers organize sound structures into pieces. Auracle: a voice driven, interactive and colloborative instrument. The project was led by Max Neuhaus and realized with a team of fellows at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.

Eric Raz--Soundscapes (guitar & looping) Graduate of the School of the Museum of FIne Arts. Also a visual artist; batik, lighting, printmaking.

Brad Bordine--Free electronic sound environments drawn from a palette of synthesis and environmental recordings.

Weapons of Mass Destruction--Weapons of Mass Destruction is a Brooklyn-based guitar and laptop band, specializing in semi-ambient deconstructions and blasted-open pop covers. WMD are Sharilyn Neidhardt (guitar, keyboard, vocals, and sounds) and Sal Randolph (laptop, rhythms, vocals, field recordings, sounds). They have performed at The Bowery Poetry Club, Pianos, and Subtonic and Trash in New York, as well as in clubs, pubs and galleries the UK and Germany.

Opsound's Open Sound Exchange: Boston

Beginning October 14, Opsound's Open Sound Exchange: Boston will be part of Glowlab's "Open Lab", an exhibition and festival of psychogeographic explorations headquartered at Art Interactive. Opsound will be collecting and generating a sound portrait of Cambridge and Boston through recordings in the gallery, sound gathering walks through various neighborhoods, and via contributions from sound artists and musicians over the internet. All the collected material will be broadcast as a 24/7 internet radio stream -- a special edition of the 'opstream' -- that will grow throughout the exhibition.

About Opsound: Free Love, Free Music.

Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine. Opsound is a project of artist Sal Randolph.

Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their sounds to the project.

Opsound's Open Sound Exchange: Boston is gathering material for an open pool of sounds relating to the city. Boston real and Boston imaginary, Boston past and Boston now: yelling cabbies, Rat new wave, Fenway Park crowds, sunday afternoon string quartets, harbor noises, sidewalk folk singers, Composers in Red Sneakers new music, banker high heels, museum whispers, Media Lab algorithms, Big Dig construction, student arias. every city is a world of sound -- help discover Boston's by creating a kaleidoscopic sonic portrait. Contributions can include work from, about, or inspired by the idea of Boston. Boston sounds, including field recordings from various parts of the city, are already in the pool and available for remixing.

To contribute, simply add your sounds to opsound, and tag them with the word "boston."

Glowlab: Open Lab
Curated by Christina Ray
A nine-week-long psychogeography festival and exhibition

In Fall 2005, Art Interactive is conducting a nine-week-long experiment. We have invited artists affiliated with Glowlab, a network of psychogeographers, to use the Central Square neighborhood as the site of their research and fill the exhibition space with the results of their investigations. PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, a term coined by the Situationist International in the 1950s and appropriated by contemporary artists, is used to describe projects that produce affect in relation to the geographic environment. Rather than making maps in the traditional geographic sense, these artists utilize maps and geography to conduct located experiments with (among other things) people, trash, bikes, clothes, the sky and the gallery space itself. Often making use of mobile technologies and existing in the hybrid spaces of the Internet and the physical world, their projects produce new understandings of location and identity as shifting, fluid, singular and irreducible.

Central Square, Cambridge, MA, will never be the same again. Join us for nine weeks of public walks, talks, tours, workshops, concerts, group bike rides, and other ways of exploring the Central Square neighborhood. Each weekend of the festival, different Glowlab artists will be present to lead participatory public events inside and outside the Art Interactive space. Visit the online schedule at for more details about upcoming events or email info[at]artinteractive.org.

Glowlab: Open Lab
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14th, 2005, 6 - 9pm
October 14 through December 11

Gallery Hours & Location:
Art Interactive is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 - 6pm or by
appointment. The gallery is located at 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the
corner of Prospect Street in Cambridge, MA. For more information,
please contact info@artinteractive.org, call 617-498-0100 or fax 617-498-0019.

Press release with downloadable press kit.

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

Call for Proposals

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ParticipART Conference and Exhibition

Participatory Design Conference 06, Trento, Italy, July 31- August 5, 2006: The conference includes an "arts track" cosponsored by the local art museum where performers can present either completed works or works in progress that specifically incorporate participatory processes, whether that is in the creation of the work or during the event(s) itself (or some combination thereof!). You may also want to look at the guidelines for presenting workshops.

Please note that this is not a "cyberart" conference per se. Participatory processes, and critical reflection on those processes, are what is important. PDC is a lively conference and an unusual opportunity for artists to meet informally with socially aware computer and industrial design professionals who work at the "leading edge" of technological development.

PDC focuses on the design and development of computing and information technologies in diverse social contexts, with the active collaboration of people who use or are affected by these systems. Over the years, our design discussions have been enlivened and enriched by the efforts of musicians, architects, computer graphic designers and artists working across a wide range of disciplines. Artists presenting their work at PDC '06 will enjoy a rare opportunity to reach a technically expert and socially engaged community of practitioners. Contact: art[at]pdc2006.org

ParticipART will be an exhibition on participative and electronic art at the MART (Museum of Modern Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy) from the 2nd to the 4th of August 2006. ParticipART invites artists, musicians, game designers and performers to submit proposals of art works to be part of a public exhibition, performances, and discussions.

Topics: ParticipART is the Art Track of the Participatory Design Conference (PDC). The PD community is interested in taking inspiration from and collaborating with artists and designers engaged in creative practices that support new roles for visitors/viewers as active spect-actors and co-authors.

Invited Artists and Works: Artists/designers working in the field of visual, installation, and performative arts are invited to submit projects that allows participants’ interactions to become part of a piece of art or performance. Projects should address/explore the theme of ‘boundaries’.

Reviewing Process and Publication: Projects will be reviewed and curated by an interdisciplinary group of experts, including Giorgio Verzotti, chief curator of MART (Museo d’arte contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto: www.mart.trento.it). For accepted works, a two page description will be included in the proceedings of the PDC 2006 ACM published in the International Conference series. In addition to the hardcopy form, papers will also be published via the web in ACM's Digital Library.

Exhibition and Discussion: Selected projects will be displayed at MART as part of a special event with the opportunity for discussion and feedback from conference participants.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit a 2 page description of the art work (submission web site to be announced), with links to previous work (or a CD), in which the project is described, its relation to partecipation, and specific requirements for display.

Submit your proposal by the 16th of January 2006 to the email address:
art[at]pdc2006.org

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Cory Arcangel

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Friendster Suicide

Dear Internet,

I am writing this to announce that I am going to commit Friendster Suicide on Thursday, ---> aka. delete my Friendster account. Yep, I just can't take it anymore. To my Friendsters, I'm sorry, ... c u on the net.

I am gonna do this as part of the launch of the Dec/Jan issue of the magazine The Believer @ ps1 on Thursday. The event starts at 6pm and also will feature lectures and talking by other people like Eric Fischl, Matthew Ronay and Lori Barbara.....for more info click here.

So yeah, if you want to see this live, please come, and if you want to watch the performance at home (yes, ... this is an Internet performance, remember that concept???? LOL!), Friendster me sometime before then, and around 8:40 EST on Thursday(ish), I assume if you keep reloading your browser window on Friendster, I think I will simply disappear from your friend list. Got it? Awesome. C U there, ... kinda.

l88888888r, Cory

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

V2_Lab: Disembodiment in Virtual Environments

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Artist-in-Residence Call for Proposals

Deadline: 15 January 2006--V2_Lab, the artistic research & development (aRt&D) department of V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has a vacancy for an artist-in-residence funded by the Pauwhof Fonds in 2006.

V2_Lab is a workspace for artists, scientists and technicians emphasizing the encounter and exchange between different disciplines. Main areas of the V2_Lab's aRt&D are: Interactivity and Alternative Interfacing, Wearable Technology, Virtual Reality, Multi-user Environments.

Residence: Europe-based media artists in the fields of interdisciplinary digital media are invited to submit proposals for this unique artist-in-residence position at V2_Lab in the period 1 April - 31 May 2006. The artist-in-residence will take place in the context of collaboration with Erasmus MC, University Medical Centre Rotterdam. The aim of the residence is to integrate biomedical scientific topics with artistic research and development.

The accepted proposal will be realised in close collaboration with three other parties involved in a larger research framework of the national project MultimediaN; Waag Society, TU Delft, TNO.

Theme: The theme of the residency is Disembodiment in Virtual Environments. Proposals should concern artistic investigation of physical experiences on the border between virtuality and reality. The product of the residency should be an interactive artwork that can be exhibited in the Erasmus MC’s I-Space, a (CAVE™-like) cubicle Virtual Reality environment that enables interactive projection on all its walls.

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media
Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam, NL
PO Box 19049, 3001 BA Rotterdam, NL
Tel + 31 10 206 72 72 | Fax + 31 10 206 72 71
E-mail info AT v2.nl | URL http://www.v2.nl

Posted by jo at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2005

CALL FOR PAPERS: WAVES

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Electromagnetic Waves as Material and Medium of Art

w a v e s Electromagnetic Waves as Material and Medium of Art, (Acoustic Space. Issue #6): We are seeking manuscripts for the upcoming Acoustic Space journal, to be published for the 8th international Art+Communication festival that will celebrate its 10th anniversary in Riga Latvia, from August 24-27, 2006. For the first time the festival will be conceived as a large scale exhibition event that focuses on the phenomenon of "electromagnetic waves".

The print journal, Acoustic Space is a forum for net.radio, sound art and creative explorations in the networked electro-acoustic environments. Now in its 6th edition, Acoustic Space WAVES Issue will deal with properties of waves in imaginative ways, exploring, making visible or making us feel waves on a host of different bands of the spectrum.

The main thesis behind the WAVES idea is that when artists take waves seriously as the medium of their artwork, they start questioning the boundaries of what can be done with this medium. Electronic information is a tightly controlled sphere. Yet artists with their electronic DIY kits have found numerous ways of thinking outside the box, making their own waves, creating alternative networks and facilities or creatively abusing existing technology.

The publication seeks to offer a space of exchange for artists, scientists, media theorists, radio activists and new media practitioners who are exploring ideas and notions in relation to electromagnetic waves, spectrum space, and also waves as a universal principle.

* Themes and subthemes:

> scientific/artistic: - radio astronomy - radio cryptography - spectrum
mapping - radio oceanography - climate change research - visualisation and sonification - ...
> alternative communication systems: - ad-hoc networking - wireless - ...
> wave philosophy: - wave-particle duality - wave sculpture -
signal-to-noise ratio - determinism vs indeterminism - quantum spacetime bubbles - ...
> social movements: - social cycles - Kondratiev - ...
> psycho-esoteric-utopian: - ESP, Raudive, Jirgenson - psycho climate
research - Tesla - Schauberger - ...

We encourage you to submit abstracts first. Proposals and inquiries regarding submissions should be made to Rasa Smite rasa[at]rixc.lv

Deadline for submissions: February 1, 2006 (for abstracts)
(+ for finished texts: April 15, 2006)

* Conceptual background:

Pantha Rei - Everything Flows
By Armin Medosch

Radio waves occur naturally. Society puts the biggest emphasis on the ability of waves to carry signals. Radio, television and mobile telephony are some of the most widely used applications. The worlds fixation on content and its socio-political implications makes us forget the waves themselves. The proposed exhibition takes a look at the physical properties of waves. Waves are considered to be 'immaterial' from the point of view of visual art. However, light is just a specific band in the spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Some of the properties of waves change according to their frequency and wavelength. It is worthwhile looking at those properties and exploring their implications for art. Wave-like phenomena play an important role in various aspects of reality, from the physical consistency of the world (audio-, air-, water-waves) to Kondratiev-cycles and the carbon-cycle (the storage and release of CO2 by oceans and forests).

A materialistic analysis of waves reveals that there is a direct relation between the wavelength and the length of an antenna - the device necessary to receive and send waves. [lambda] = the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave is the result of the speed of light divided by the frequency. For instance, the frequency on which wireless lan operates, is 2.4 Gigahertz. 300 000 / 2400 000 = 0.125 km or 12.5 cm. The length of the antenna needs to be [lambda]/2 = 6.25 cm or multiples of it. Through this formula expresses itself a link between immaterial wave and physical object. The antenna as an object combines sculptural and functional aspects.

We cannot speak about waves without mentioning wave/particle duality. Light and electromagnetic radiation are actually not only waves but also exhibit properties of particles. Wave-particle duality also applies to matter. Thus, the 'building bricks' of matter need to be understood also as waves. The relationships between wavelength, mass, energy and speed offer exciting possibilities for an artistic exploration of the ontological status of affairs. Since 100 years we cannot take the physical status of the world for granted and must live with an understanding of spacetime which is counter-intuitive and hard to visualize. For art, this is an interesting opening, a chance to ask the big questions about fundamentals such as time, space, energy and substances.

It is a basic property of waves to create connections. Through the antenna we get access to Hertzian space. Artists using electromagnetic waves as their medium are creating wave-sculptures, real-time connections in time and space, which allow us to enter another space. Those connections can go both ways from formlessness to form and structure and back -- the materialisation of the inconcrete and its opposite.

Around planet earth a tight information sphere has been formed. Whereas some artists explore this thicket of global communication networks with various probing techniques, it becomes increasingly clear that it does not make much sense to add just another communication channel to this already babilonic mess. Increasingly artists focus on experimenting with their own signals and systems instead of relying on the commodified information infrastructures of the global media sphere. By creating mobile ad-hoc networks or by pointing antennas towards outer space or the depth of oceans artists literally open up the horizons towards the possibilities of a new way of seeing and interacting with the world.

About Acoustic Space: Acoustic.Space.Re-search.Lab aims to re-approach collaborative audio communication tools, to broaden the meaning of "net.radio"--beyond the confusion of streaming media standards and its technical limitations, and to set up new context for research on "data ecology" and co-experiments in the field of networked media, radio and satellite technologies.

* Editorial team: Concept: Armin Medosch armin[at]easynet.co.uk; Editors: Rasa Smite rasa[at]rixc.lv, Armin Medosch, Raitis Smits

* Contact: rixc[at]rixc.lv
The RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture
11. Novembra Krastmala 35 - 201, Riga, LV 1050, Latvia.
Tel. +371-7228478, +371-6546776 (mob.),
Fax: +371-7228477
URL: http://rixc.lv

Posted by jo at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

RADIO WAVES

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WORKSHOP, LECTURE AND LIVE NET.RADIO SESSION

Friday, December 9, 2005, 17.00 – 23.00; [location] RIXC Media Space, 11. Novembra Krastmala 35, in Riga/Latvia. Live transmission on the internet. [Free entrance] [For participation in DIY radio workshop, please contact: rixc [at] rixc.lv]

RADIO WAVES is a programme of the 8th international "Art+Communication2006: WAVES" festival (that will take place in Riga , August 2006) introductory event series. The RADIO WAVES event programme includes: DIY radio workshop and lecture by new media artist Adam Hyde (New Zealand), online introduction by radio activist Tetsuo Kogawa from his studio in Japan (live via the internet), discussions on inter-relation of local/global and net/fm [radio] and alternative explorations of radio spectrum; as well as djs, music and live net.radio performances.

Posted by jo at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

GAMING WORKSHOP

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Exploring Different Aspects of Game Culture

Friday/Saturday, 9 and 10 December, 2005--Facilitated by Josephine Starrs and Leon + Anand Vivek Taneja--In this two day workshop Josephine and Leon Cmielewski will demonstrate a range of works exploring different aspects of game culture, including digital game modification, game art, machinima, mixed reality games, locative based gaming and the concept of gameplay. Ideas of 'gameplay' include interactivity design which may take many forms. For example decision making, navigating space, the structure of game content, collaborative or competitive interaction with other players, and the physical aspects of play.

The workshop will consist of demonstrations, practical exercises, and experiments in the development of locative games. Participants will combine a walk through Delhi University, the site of the workshop, with Anand, and material they gather will form the basis for developing a gaming experience.

Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski are Australian media artists who have worked together on several projects which incorporate the language and structure of digital games. They use play in their work as a strategy for engaging with the social and political contradictions inherent in contemporary society.

Anand V. Taneja is a researcher with the Publics and Practices in the History of the Present project, Sarai-CSDS.

For more details and to register for the workshop, write to: aarti[at]sarai.net. Sarai.

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

transmediale.06

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REALITY ADDICTS

transmediale.06: REALITY ADDICTS, Berlin, February 3 - 7, 2006, Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, Hanseatenweg 10.

Nominations for the transmediale award 2006: 1. Competition 2. Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser 3. Eisbergsonde 4. Vexations 5. Burn Station 6. Point and Line to Plane 7. Google will eat itself 8. Honourable Mentions.

1. Competition: 1001 artists from 52 countries applied for the transmediale award 2006. An international jury, composed of Kazunao Abe (Japan), Marcos Boffa (Brasil), Honor Harger (England), Christian Huebler (Switzerland) and Nuria Enguita Mayo (Spain), announced a shortlist of six works. Five other works received an honourable mention. The prizes will be awarded in a ceremony on February 6th, 2006.

2. Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser: Markus Kison (de) - Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser: Webcams record inconceivable amounts of images and data. Markus Kison found four webcams in Kopenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin and Roermond and uses them for his 3D-installation. Through a special mirror construction the images are projected onto architectural models. The virtual existence of distant places becomes almost real - close enough to touch. http://www.digital.udk-berlin.de/de/people/students/kison.html

3. Eisbergsonde: Agnes Meyer-Brandis (de) - 'Eisberg-Sonde / SGM-Iceberg-Probe' Agnes Meyer-Brandis has made a surprising discovery: there are subterranian icebergs underneath Germany's Ice-Scating Halls! The artist explores this geological sensation with her SGM-Iceberg-Probe and a mobile drill hole. The probe simulates a dive into 120 meter's depth displaying, on an external monitor, a mixture of images from real antarctic holes and virtual ones generated in real time. http://www.researchraft.net

4. Vexations: Yuko Mohri, Soichiro Mihara (jp) - 'Vexations - Composition in Progress' Erik Satie's piece 'Vexations' is said to be the longest composition, and the origin of minimal music. Yuko Mohri and Soichiro Mihara use Satie's piece to create an installation room as a sound medium. Together with the first 'Vexations'-theme, every sound made in this room is recorded, transformed into data, and played back as piano notes. In the course of the exhibition's duration, Satie's theme is transformed into a totally new, ever-evolving piece of music. http://cip.io/about/

5. Burn Station: Platoniq (es) - 'Burn Station' is a mobile self-service for searching, listening to and copying music and audio files with no charge. Moreover it is completely legal, released under an open licence, and non-commercial. The social application of technology and the idea of the internet as commons are of major concern by platoniq's members, activists of the copyleft movement. http://www.platoniq.net/burnstation/

6. Point and Line to Plane: Andres Ramirez Gaviria (co/at) - '-/' Ramirez' six minute video uses Morse code to visualize and sonify a section of the index from the book 'Point and Line to Plane', written by Wassily Kandinsky in 1926. The project interpolates abstract aesthetic elements (e.g. line, plane, form) with the informational space constructed in the Morse code translation. For Ramirez Gaviria, this is a way to invert the commonly known method of narration in audio-visual media. http://www.andresramirezgaviria.com

7. Google will eat itself: Ubermorgen.com feat. Alessandro Ludovico vs. Paolo Cirio (at/it) - 'GWEI - Google will eat itself' Ubermorgen declared war on Google: They generate money by serving Google text advertisements on their websites, technically deconstructing the new global advertisement mechanism by rendering it into a surreal click-based economic model. In order to take over and gain control of Google in due time, Ubermorgen use Google's pay checks to buy the company's shares, whose value currently sums up to more than all Swiss Banks together... http://www.gwei.org/

8. Honourable Mentions

Yves Coussement (be) - 'Insert the Name of the City Here' http://www.transmediale.de/page/detail/detail.1.projects.389.3.html

Manuel Saiz (es/uk) - 'Specialized Technicians Required: Being Luis Porcar' http://www.unxposed.com/saiz/index_work.htm

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag (de) - '612.43WEISS'

Claudia X. Valdes (cl/us) - '192:291' http://www.claudiaxvaldes.com/video/192.html

Mai Yamashita, Naoto Kobayashi (jp) - 'When I wish upon a star' http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/okumokum/3005

transmediale.06: REALITY ADDICTS--festival for art and digital culture berlin inf[at]transmediale.de; Klosterstr.68-70 - 10179 Berlin; tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814.

Posted by jo at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

PodART

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Homage to iPod

Fine Art in Space is pleased to present, in collaboration with 31 GRAND, PodART, the first group exhibition of video art intended to be viewed and sold solely on the iPod. This curatorial exploration was inspired by the introduction of the latest iPod, which now plays video. In recent years, Video art has been growing rapidly in popularity. Their ongoing introduction of more technologically advanced products has resulted in the acceptance and accessibility of this media. Apple's latest achievements with the iPod have garnered this art form even more portability.

Artists featured in PodART will include the work of: Gogol Bordello, Jason Clay Lewis, Nelson Loskamp, MTAA, Marisa Olson, Eugenio Percossi, Jean Pigozzi, Adam Stennett, Lee Walton, and Jeff Wyckoff.

PodART: December 9, 2005 - January 17, 2005 at FINE ART IN SPACE
Opening Reception: December 9, 2005, 7 to 9pm

MTAA is an art duo working on and off-line and are known for their conceptual and often humorous art projects. Past exhibitions have been at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Getty Research Institute,and Postmasters gallery.

Based in San Francisco, Marisa Olson's work has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and she has most recently performed or exhibited at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Berkeley ArtMuseum/Pacific Film Archive, Side Cinema-Newcastle, New Langton Arts,Southern Exposure, Foxy Productions, Debs & Co, Galapagos, FluxFactory, 667 Shotwell, Pond, the international Futuresonic,Electrofringe, Cinemascope-London, Machinista, Scope, and VIPER festivals, and elsewhere. She has held residencies and fellowships at Goldsmiths, the New School, Northwestern University, the Technical University-Dresden, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She participated in an exhibition which Artforum highlighted among their "Best of 2004" and while Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her work "anything but stupid."

Jeff Wyckoff is an artist and scientist whose video work includes intravital imaging, cancer research and often music. Mr. Wyckoff hasa n upcoming lecture at MIT in February and exhibitions in Belgrade, Antwerp, and is currently working with the Art and Genome Center inAmsterdam.

Each video object is a limited edition and is sold in iPod format with the player.
Press contact: Heather Stephens at gallery31grand[at]earthlink.net 31GRAND, 31 Grand Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-388-2858 Gallery hours: F-M, 1pm – 7pm gallery31grand[at]earthlink.net

Posted by jo at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2005

UpStage

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Open Walk-Through

The next open walk-through in UpStage is taking place this Wednesday, December 7, at: California, USA: 12am; New York, USA: 3am; UK: 8am; Western Europe: 9am; Finland: 10am; Australia - NSW: 7pm; NZ: 9pm. Check here or here for your local time.

We'll be meeting on the Introduction stage, audience members can come directly to: http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation/. If you want to participate as a player, email me for a log in--helen[at]creative-catalyst.com

Posted by jo at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

The Lunatics

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Audience Animation

The Lunatics is an interactive experience that guides you through the Lunatics tribe’s transformative journey from being consumers to becoming creators. The Lunatics have always worshiped the moon, but during more precarious times, they ignored it in favour of a more consuming light. They wanted more, more, more; and their cherished moon slipped away. One day, a Lunatic realized that living without the moon was no way to be and set off, with you by his side, to bring it back.

This 6.5 minute animated fairytale is presented using a new form of participatory theater, which blends the role of audience and participant. While wearing masks, you are transported onto the screen and into the story where you see, hear and physically engage with the tale’s themes. Your outlines are projected onto a movie screen and your movements trigger animations that affect the world on the screen. Images and Video.

Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media Lab Alumni, Warren Brown, Louise Charlebois, Kirstin Hargie and composer Adam Goddard are set to install The Lunatics at the Emmersive Gallery in Toronto; exhibiting from December 1 to 11. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-artt]

Posted by jo at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

A Performance Lecture by Walid Raad

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My Neck is Thinner Than a Hair

On December 6, Walid Raad will present a one-hour performance lecture, "My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the 1975-1991 Lebanese Civil Wars, Volume 1: January 21, 1986." [Webcast] It is the result of his year-long collaboration with artists Tony Chakar and Bilal Khbeiz. This particular piece examines a single car bomb detonated January 21, 1986 in the Furn Ech Chubak area of Beirut. But their ongoing collective work considers the many vexed dimensions—social, psychological, political, economic—of war-torn Lebanon. Indeed, it investigates the complex responses to the 3,600 car bombs that exploded between 1975 and 1991. The project is co-produced by The Atlas Group (Beirut/New York), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels), House of World Cultures (Berlin), Spectacles Vivants, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. [Webcast]

Born in Lebanon but now residing in the United States, Walid Raad is one of the most significant new voices in visual arts and culture. His works include video, photography and literary essays. Focusing on specific incidents of car bombings in the contemporary history of Lebanon, Raad investigates traumatic events of huge proportion, and the ways film, video, and photography document trauma and violence. In our current climate of cultural and political polarization, his work resonates deeply. For it shows how the visual and performing arts contribute to our increased understanding of the Middle East.

His first solo exhibition in New York, “The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs,” will open January 7, 2006 at The Kitchen in Chelsea.

The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, First Floor. Tuesday, December 6, 8 p.m.; $8. Free for Students with Valid ID. Tickets can be purchased by phone with a credit card (212) 229-5488 or in person at The New School Box Office, 66 West 12th Street, main floor, Monday-Thursday 1-8 p.m., Friday 1-7 p.m. Reservations can be made by email: boxoffice[at]newschool.edu.

Founded in 1992, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics embodies The New School’s historic commitment to the arts. The center organizes and sponsors public events, online programs, and occasional publications. It engages cultural production that emerges inside and outside the traditional art world and seeks to intervene in contemporary political debates. A place where scholarship develops into general resource, policy, and civic engagement, the center reaches both national and international audiences.

CONTACT: Daniel Morris. 212.229.5485 x 3094. morrd109[at]newschool.edu
Deborah Kirschner. 212.229.5667 x4310. kirschnd[at]newschool.edu

Posted by jo at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

DIGITAL STREET CORNER

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Virtual Street Corner Happening

DIGITAL STREET CORNER by Fred Forest; Art Basel Miami Beach 2005: Is it possible to surf around in cyberspace and hang out on the street corner at same time (global + local = glocal)? French artist Fred Forest will show us how at a world premiere event that will take place November 30-December 4 in the prestigious context of Art Basel Miami Beach 2005. Forest invites the Internet users of the world to meet him down in the street outside the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach for a memorable cyber-happening. There's no need to reserve a plane ticket because the setting will actually be a "corner" of virtual reality, specially created with the help of a new open source peer-to-peer software program developed by Joachin Keller Gonzalez of France Télécom R&D. On the dates indicated, Forest aims to make art history by creating a unique real-time digital work of art with the help of online participants near and far. This work will consummate the official (esthetic and economic) recognition of a new model of art whose content and format bear no comparison to those of the past, an art for the wired societies of the information age.

Forest is no neophyte in the field of new media. He is widely recognized as a pioneer of video art in Europe and co-founded two major avant-garde movements with a focus on interactive media hybrids, Sociological Art and the Esthetics of Communication. In reference to his hacker-like tactics, Vilem Flusser called him "the artist who pokes holes in the media." Forest is also a Net Art pioneer. He won the City of Locarno Grand Prize at the Locarno Festival of Electronic Art in 1995 for his work "From Casablanca to Locarno." People are still talking about his virtual reality-enhanced "Cyber-marriage," which took place live online in 1999 (his best man was none other than the "father of the Internet," Vinton Cerf).


The DIGITAL STREET CORNER Web site, will open on November 20, 2005 in order to give members of the public a chance to upload their free "ticket" to Miami Beach and carve out their very own niche in cyberspace. Don't miss your chance to strut your stuff in Miami Beach in the company of your new digital friends. A wealthy art collector from the world of high finance has already paid a fortune to be the first in line!

On November 30, 2005, a special cyber-happening is scheduled to take place at "THE DIGITAL STREET CORNER" between 9 PM and 11 PM (local time). Forest himself will be the DJ, at the commands of his four computers, his console, and his turntable. To participate in the happening, visit http://www.fredforest.com

Everything that happens at "THE DIGITAL STREET CORNER" will be projected live onto the exterior walls of the Bass Museum in Miami Beach throughout the four-day duration of the event. And the festivities of the cyber-happening will be webcasted live for millions to see on the "DIGITAL STREET CORNER" Web site. Don't miss your chance to meet and party with people from around the world on this virtual street corner, located for a short time only in "real" space at 2121 Park Avenue in Miami Beach. Project Sponsors:France Télécom, Bass Museum, Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Cultural Service of the French Embassy in New York, French Consulate General in Miami, webnetmuseum.org

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

November 28, 2005

Hydrophonics + Radiator Symposium

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Exploring Different Approaches to the 'Live Event'

A live webcast of sound from the other side of the world to the surface of water. The innovative concept of Hydrophonics stems from Locke’s fascination with technology, waterflow, the idea of ‘seeing sound’, of visualising kinetic energy and exploring different approaches to the ‘live event’. Over the past four years she has experimented widely by sending a variety of sounds through water to see the different formations each sound makes on the water surface.

Locke has worked with musicians to compose music based on the sight of the composition, rather than the sound of it, and developed new designs for water tanks and speaker systems. The Sonic Arts Group at Monash University will be playing and developing music especially for the event. This will be sent across the world to the water tanks in the UK where the audience will experience the ripples and fountains on the surface of the water. Hydrophonics is part of the Radiator and Digital Cultures SYMPOSIUM.

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2 - 4 Dec 2005 Nottingham / Fri & Sat 10am - 6.30pm / Sun 10am - 4pm: This three day international symposium aims to bring into focus artistic practices of live performance that make use of digital technology in the form of lens-based, networked or locative media.

On a global stage, artists from different geographies can enter transcontinental collaborations raising the question of how the digitisation of the arts has transformed cultural traditions and practices. The symposium will bring together leading practitioners, developers, scientists and theorists from the disciplines that make up new media performance including live art, locative and pervasive media, telematics, performance and dance, wearable, sensor based and cybernetic technologies. CONTACT: Nina on Tel +44(0)115 840 9272 info[at]radiator-festival.org

Posted by jo at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

Dance Unlimited (DU) Amsterdam

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Choreography/New Media Program

Established in 2002, Dance Unlimited (DU) Amsterdam is a unique two-year masters program* supporting the study of the relationship between choreography, performance and new media technologies. The program takes the development of choreographic work as its starting point, and new media technologies and practices are approached from this perspective. We are looking for artists with a solid educational and professional dance background who wish to engage in a study of the relationship between choreography, performance, and new media technologies.

DEADLINE: 29 January 2006; CONTACT: Ellen van Haeringen: e.vanhaeringen[at]ahk.nl

Posted by jo at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

Kodak Lecture Series:

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DAVID ROKEBY

WEBCAST LIVE & ARCHIVED--The Kodak Lecture Series is pleased to announce that Toronto artist David Rokeby will present a talk about his work on Friday, December 2, at 7:30 pm at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

David Rokeby has won acclaim in both artistic and technical fields for his new media artworks. A pioneer in interactive art and an acknowledged innovator in interactive technologies, Rokeby has achieved international recognition as an artist and seen the technologies which he develops for his work given unique applications by a broad range of arts practitioners and medical scientists.

Born in Tillsonburg, Ontario in 1960, Rokeby studied at the Ontario College of Art where he began to use technology to make pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. His best known work, Very Nervous System (1986-90), premiered at the Venice Biennale in 1996, won the first Petro-Canada Award for Media Arts (1988) and is permanently installed in several museums around the world. Rokeby has twice been honored with Austria's Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (1991 and 1997). He has been an invited speaker at events around the world, and has published two papers that are required reading in the new media arts faculties of many universities. He received a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2002. [Related 1, 2]

Posted by jo at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

FLACK ATTACK ON AUTONOMY:

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

We invite you to contribute to Flack Attack, a new magazine coming out of The Port, a community-driven space initiated by Sim on Goldin & Jakob Senneby inside the online 3D world Second Life (http://secondlife.com/). The production process of Flack Attack will be continually featured on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet Art, as a gate page during the month of December 2005. Using The Port as a point of departure we are pursuing a series of investigations into the potential of networked public spheres and the organization of participatory production.

Production: The production model of Flack Attack magazine is based on the wiki concept and the workflow starts with the set-up of the wiki.

Theme: The theme of the first issue is "Flack Attack on Autonomy": Autonomy as a complex concept in any governed situation. What does it mean to be autonomous within predefined social codes? Does the notion of autonomy contradict a common language and shared references?

In the specific case of online worlds the challenge is readily illustrated by the fact that all interaction takes place inside someone else's programmed code. But the same basic dilemma can be applied to any institution we find ourselves in, be it a nation, a family or an economy.

Submissions: The wiki is open to all, and we encourage a wide range of contributions on the topic of autonomy: everything from the structural and analytical to the personal and anecdotal.

Contributions can take the form of:
+articles
+comments
+images
+alterations/remixes of other contributions

Please submit your contributions between now and December 19 at http://www.flackattack.org

Editorial Meetings: An editorial office is being set up at The Port (inside the online world Second Life). Open meetings for discussing and editing the wiki contributions will be held at the office three times a week during December. All final decisions about the magazine and what will be included in the printed version will be made at the editorial meetings. The more you engage, the more you will be able to influence the outcome.

The editorial office will also function as design studio, community center, and place for further reflection.

The editorial meetings will take place every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday in December, starting on Thursday, December 1 (editorial offices will be closed on Sunday December 25). Meeting times will be as follows (depending on your time zone):

Tuesdays (December 6, 13, 20, 27):=20
1 AM West Coast USA
4 AM East Coast USA
9 AM UK
10 AM Central Europe
6 PM Japan

Thursdays (December 1, 8, 15, 22, 2):
5 PM West Coast USA
8 PM East Coast USA
Friday 1 AM UK
Friday 2 AM Central Europe
Friday 10 AM Japan

Sundays (December 4, 11, 18)
1 PM West Coast USA
4 PM East Coast USA
9 PM UK
10 PM Central Europe
Monday 6 AM Japan

Directions: For those who will visit The Port and Second Life for the first time, please proceed as follows: Go to http://secondlife.com/ to get a free acount anda personal avatar (you need to give credit card details for security). Simply follow the instructions, download the customized software on your computer, and design your avatar. Allow yourself approx. 2 hours for this. Then click "Find" and search for "The Port" under "Places" (checking the "include mature areas" box). Click "Teleport" and you will arrive at The Port!

If you need help or have any questions when in Second Life, please send IM (Instant Message) to VoyeurOne Baron or Sorgaard Jacques.

The process of working with Flack Attack will be continually mediated through artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet Art between 1 and 31 December.

Publication: By the end of December the first issue of Flack Attack will be published. We are planning to distribute it as PDF and print-on-demand via artport. (In addition, free printed copies might be distributed through the bookstore of the Whitney Museum in New York).

Simon Goldin & Jakob Senneby, Initiators of The Port & Flack Attack

The Port: http://www.theport.tv/
Flack Attack: http://www.flackattack.org
Second Life: http://secondlife.com/
Artport: http://artport.whitney.org/

Posted by jo at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)

San Francisco Film Society

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Wireless Media Call for Entries

This is an invitation to submit work to the San Francisco Film Society for consideration to be included in the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival taking place April 20 ­ May 4, 2006. In specific, this call is for a program that will focus on a series of visual works made by and/or for wireless media devices and signals. Roughly this breaks down into three categories: 1. Works made by mobile devices 2. Works made to be specifically viewed on mobile devices. 3. Works that use wireless signals a new aesthetic medium.

SUBMISSIONS: Telephonic communication has always been a two-way street. You send messages, you receive messages. Now, a myriad of wireless communications devices also record and playback text messages, still images, sound and video. But the transmission principle is the same. These recordings are sent or received and cover distance. What's changed is the multi-use functions of telecommunications hardware. Mobile devices have become special tools for interacting with the mediated world. The question this program will explore is how do these mobile devices enable new methods of production, distribution and/or exhibition. We invite you to submit your work to help us form an answer.

Submissions due: January 3, 2006
Final Decisions: February 17, 2006

The San Francisco International Film Festival will present a multi-varied program of "mobiley" inspired work.

We especially encourage works that use mobile technologies, wireless signals, text or animation as new type of recording tool or medium, and/or articulate the difference and urgency of exhibiting on tiny, portable screens.

CALL: If you have questions or would like more information, please email: programming[at]sffs.org.

Sean Uyehara
Programming Associate
suyehara@sffs.org
Direct 415.561.5011

San Francisco Film Society
Presenter of the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 20 - May 4, 2006
Enter your film at http://www.sffs.org
Final film entry deadline, December 9, 2005
Final wireless media entry deadline, January 3, 2006

Interested in hearing about San Francisco Film Society screenings and events?
Sign up for our monthly enewsletter

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

SOUNDplay Festival & AGM06

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International Call for submissions

New Adventures in Sound Art and AGM 06 is currently accepting submissions for inclusion in both the 2006 SOUNDplay festival and AGM 06 (October 2006) that will feature video/sound art works that place equal artistic importance on image and sound and emphasizes non-narrative elements and abstraction. Both emerging and established artists will be featured in the festivals. We encourage artists to submit works that are less than 20 minutes in length.

SOUNDplay, produced by New Adventures in Sound Art, is a meeting point for experimentation in new media and sound art, encouraging new fusions of image, sound & text. New Adventures in Sound Art is a non-profit organization that produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. Included in its Toronto productions are: Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, Sign Waves and SOUNDplay.

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AGM, based in Copenhagen, builds annual artistic collaborations and develops new connections among participating artists and audiences around Europe and other parts of the world. AGM 06 will feature Canadian new media works and screenings among a selection of international works for the 2006 event in Berlin and Copenhagen.

Please submit the following for consideration:

- VHS or DVD copy of the work
- a description or program note of the work
- biographies of the principle creators of the work.

Deadline: Received by December 16, 2005 at 5pm EST.

Note: we will request permission from the artist before any works are screened and at that time will request a screening master of the work. Unless otherwise requested, NAISA would like to retain copies sent for consideration in future festivals.

Please send submissions to:

New Adventures in Sound Art
401 Richmond Street West #358
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M5V 3A8
phone: (416) 910-7231
e-mail: naisa[at]soundtravels.ca

ORF Kunstradio
Argentinierstrasse 30a
A-1040 Wien

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

What is code?

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A conversation with Deleuze, Guattari and code

What is code? A conversation with Deleuze, Guattari and code by David M. Berry & Jo Pawlik.

--Code--

The two of us wrote this article together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. We have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have been aided, inspired multiplied [1].

JP: Code is described as many things: it is a cultural logic, a machinic operation or a process that is unfolding. It is becoming, today's hegemonic metaphor; inspiring quasi-semiotic investigations within cultural and artistic practice (e.g. The Matrix). No-one leaves before it has set its mark on them...

DB: Yes, it has become a narrative, a genre, a structural feature of contemporary society, an architecture for our technologically controlled societies (e.g. Lessig) and a tool of technocracy and of capitalism and law (Ellul/Winner/Feenberg). It is both metaphor and reality, it serves as a translation between different discourses and spheres, DNA code, computer code, code as law, cultural code, aristocratic code, encrypted code (Latour).

JP: Like the code to nourish you? Have to feed it something too.

DB: Perhaps. I agree that code appears to be a defining discourse of our postmodernity. It offers both explanation and saviour, for example, the state as machine, that runs a faulty form of code that can be rewritten and re-executed. The constitution as a microcode, law as code. Humanity as objects at the mercy of an inhuman code.

JP: True and it gathers together a disturbing discourse of the elect. Code as intellectual heights, an aristocratic elect who can free information and have a wisdom to transform society without the politics, without nations and without politicians. Code becomes the lived and the desired. Both a black box and a glass box. Hard and unyielding and simultaneously soft and malleable.

DB: Code seems to follow information into a displaced subjectivity, perhaps a new and startling subject of history that is merely a reflection of the biases, norms and values of the coding elite. More concerning, perhaps, code as walls and doors of the prisons and workhouses of the 21st Century. Condemned to make the amende honorable before the church of capital.

JP: So, we ask what is code? Not expecting to find answers, but rather to raise questions. To survey and map realms that are yet to come (AO:5). The key for us lies in code's connectivity, it is a semiotic-chain, rhizomatic (rather like a non-hierarchical network of nodes) and hence our map must allow for it to be interconnected from anything to anything. In this investigation, which we know might sometimes be hard to follow, our method imitates that outlined by Deleuze & Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (2004). It will analyse by decentering it onto other dimensions, and other registers (AO:8). We hope that you will view this article as a 'little machine' (AO: 4), itself something to be read slowly, or fast, so that you can take from it whatever comes your way. It does not ask the question of where code stops and the society starts, rather it forms a tracing of the code-society or the society-code.

DB: Dystopian and utopian, both can cling like Pincher Martin to code. Code has its own apocalyptic fictions; crashes and bugs, Y2K and corruption. It is a fiction that is becoming a literary fiction (Kermode). We wish to stop it becoming a myth, by questioning code and asking it uncomfortable questions. But by our questioning we do not wish to be considered experts or legislators, rather we want to ask again who are the 'Gods' of the information age (Heidegger). By drawing code out and stretching it out, we hope to make code less mysterious, less an 'unconcealment that is concealed' (Heidegger).

JP: Perhaps to ask code and coders to think again about the way in which they see the world, to move from objects to things, and practice code as poetry (poeisis). Rather than code as ordering the world, fixing and overcoding. Code as a craft, 'bringing-forth' through a showing or revealing that is not about turning the world into resources to be assembled, and reassembled forever.

DB: And let us not forget the debt that code owes to war and government. It has a bloody history, formed from the special projects of the cold war, a technological race, that got mixed up with the counter-culture but still fights battles on our behalf. He laid aside his sabre. And with a smile he took my hand.

--Code as concept--

DB: A stab in the dark. To start neither at the beginning or the end, but in the middle: code is pure concept instantiated into the languages of machines. Coding is the art of forming, inventing and fabricating structures based on these languages. Structures that constrain use as well as free. The coder is the friend of the code, the potentiality of the code, not merely forming, inventing and fabricating code but also desiring. The electric hymn book that Happolati invented. With electric letters that shine in the dark.

JP: And what of those non-coders who use code, or rather are used by code instead of forming it? Code can enable but it can also repress. Deleuze believes that we live in a society of control and that code is part 'of the numerical language of control' requiring of us passwords, user names, and the completion of form fields to either grant or deny access to information, goods and services (1992).

DB: Yes, code becomes the unavoidable boundary around which no detour exists in order to participate fully in modern life. It is ubiquitous. Formatted by code, harmonised with the language of machines, our life history, tastes, preferences and personal details become profiles, mailing lists, data and ultimately markets. Societies of control regulate their population by ensuring their knowing and unknowing participation in the marketplace through enforced compatibility with code. Watch over this code!... Let me see some code!

JP: But there is no simple code. Code is production and as such is a machine. Every piece of code has components and is defined by them. It is a multiplicity although not every multiplicity is code. No code is a single component because even the first piece of code draws on others. Neither is there code possessing all components as this would be chaos. Every piece of code has a regular contour defined by the sum of its components. The code is whole because it totalises the components, but it remains a fragmentary whole.

DB: Code aborescent. Plato's building agile, object-oriented and postmodern codes under the spreading chestnut tree.

JP: But computers are not the only machines that use code. Deleuze believes that everything is a machine, or to be more precise every machine is a machine of a machine. By this he means that every machine is connected to another by a flow'whether this flow is air, information, water, desire etc'which it interrupts, uses, converts and then connects with another machine.

DB: I agree that human beings are nothing more than an assemblage of several machines linked to other machines, though century's worth of history have us duped into thinking otherwise.

JP: But, does every machine have a code built into it which determines the nature of its relations with other machines and their outputs? How else would we know whether to swallow air, suffocate on food or drink sound waves? There is even a social machine, who's task it is to code the flows that circulate within it. To apportion wealth, to organise production and to record the particular constellation of linked up flows that define its mode of being.

DB: Up to this point, code is verging towards the deterministic or the programmatic, dependent upon some form of Ur-coder who might be synonymous with God, with the Despot, with Nature, depending on to whom you attribute the first and last words.

JP: But Deleuze delimits a way of scrambling the codes, of flouting the key, which enables a different kind of de/en-coding to take place and frees us from a pre-determined input-output, a=b matrix. Enter Desire. Enter Creativity. Enter the Schizo. Enter capitalism? You show them you have something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability.

--Code as Schizo--

DB: Deleuze & Guattari warned us that the Schizo ethic was not a revolutionary one, but a way of surviving under capitalism by producing fresh desires within the structural limits of capitalism. Where will the revolution come from?

JP: It will be a decoded flow, a 'deterritorialised flow that runs too far and cuts too sharply'. D & G hold that art and science have a revolutionary potential. Code, like art and science, causes increasingly decoded and deterritorialised flows to circulate in the socius. To become more complicated, more saturated. A few steps away a policeman is observing me; he stands in the middle of the street and doesn't pay attention to anything else.

DB: But, code is bifurcated between a conceptual and a functional schema, an 'all encompassing wisdom [=code]'. Concepts and functions appear as two types of multiplicities or varieties whose natures are different. Using the Deluezean concept of Demon which indicates, in philosophy as well as science, not something that exceeds our possibilities but a common kind of these necessary intercessors as respective 'subjects' of enunciation: the philosophical friend, the rival, the idiot, the overman are no less demons that Maxwell's demon or than Einstein's or Heseinberg's observers. (WIP: 129). Our eyes meet as I lift my head; maybe he had been standing there for quite a while just watching me.

JP: Do you know what time it is?

HE: Time? Simple Time?... Great time, mad time, quite bedivelled time, in which the fun waxes fast and furious, with heaven-high leaping and springing'and again, of course, a bit miserable, very miserable indeed, I not only admit that, I even emphasise it, with pride, for it is sitting and fit, such is artist-way and artist-nature.

--Code and sense perception--

DB: In code the role of the partial coder is to perceive and to experience, although these perceptions and affections might not be those of the coder, in the currently accepted sense, but belong to the code. Does code interpolate the coder, or only the user? Ideal partial observers are the perceptions or sensory affections of code itself manifested in functions and 'functives', the code crystallised affect.

JP: Maybe the function in code determines a state of affairs, thing or body that actualises the virtual on a plane of reference and in a system of co-ordinates, a dimensional classification; the concept in code expresses an event that gives consistency to the virtual on a plane of immanence and in an ordered form.

DB: Well, in each case the respective fields of coding find themselves marked out by very different entities but that nonetheless exhibit a certain analogy in their task: a problem. Is this a world-directed perspective'code as an action facing the world?

JP: Does that not consisting in failing to answer a question? In adapting, in co-adapting, with a higher taste as problematic faculty, are corresponding elements in the process being determined? Do we not replicate the chains of equivalence, allowing the code, to code, so to speak, how we might understand it?

DB: Coders are writers, and every writer is a sellout. But an honest joy/Does itself destroy/For a harlot coy.

JP: We might ask ourselves the following question: is the software coder a scientist? A philosopher? Or an artist? Or a schizophrenic?

AL: For me the only code is that which places an explosive device in its package, fabricating a counterfeit currency. Which in part the knowing children sang to me.

Dr. K: This man is mad. There has been for a long time no doubt of it, and it is most regrettable that in our circle the profession of alienist is not represented. I, as a numismatist, feel myself entirely incompetent in this situation.

DB: For Deleuze, the ascription of these titles exceeds determining whether the tools of the trade in question are microscopes and test-tubes, cafes and cigarettes, or easels and oil-paints. Rather they identify the kind of thinking that each group practices. Latour claimed that if you gave him a laboratory he could move the world. Maybe prosopopoeia is part of the answer, he should ask code what it thinks.

JP: But not just the kind of thinking, but the kind of problems which this thought presupposes, and the nature of the solutions that it can provide. To ask under which category the coder clicks her mouse is to question whether she is creating concepts as opposed to dealing in functives like a scientist, or generating percepts and affects like an artist.

DB: If you're actually going to love technology, you have to give up sentimental slop, novels sprinkled with rose water. All these stories of efficient, profitable, optimal, functional technologies.

JP: Who said I wanted to love technology?

DB: The philosopher loves the concept. The artist, the affect. Do the coders love the code?

JP: If we say that code is a concept, summoning into being or releasing free software as an event, the coder is cast first and foremost as a philosopher. The coder, as philosopher, could neither love nor covet her code prior to its arrival. It must take her by surprise. For the philosopher, or more specifically the conceptual personae through whom concepts come to pass and are given voice, (Deleuze does not strictly believe in the creativity of an individual ego), Deleuze reserves a privileged role in the modern world which is so woefully lacking in creation and in resistance to the present. He writes: 'The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist' (1994, 108). Deleuze would hope this future form would be recognizable by virtue of its dislocation from the present.

DB: If the software coder really is a philosopher, what kind of a future is free software summoning and who are the new people who might later exist?

JP: Thanks to computers, we now know that there are only differences of degree between matter and texts. In fact, ever since a literary happy few started talking about 'textual machines' in connection with novels, it has been perfectly natural for machines to become texts written by novelists who are as brilliant as they are anonymous (Latour). But then is there no longer any difference between humans and nonhumans.

DB: No, but there is no difference between the spirit of machines and their matter, either; they are souls through and through (Latour).

JP: But don't the stories tell us that machines are purported to be pure, separated from the messy world of the real? Their internal world floating in a platonic sphere, eternal and perfect. Is the basis of their functioning deep within the casing numbers ticking over numbers, overflowing logic registers and memory addresses?

DB: I agree. Logic is often considered the base of code. Logic is reductionist not accidentally but essentially and necessarily; it wants to turn concepts into functions. In becoming propositional, the conceptual idea of code loses all the characteristics it possessed as a concept: its endoconsistency and its exoconsistency. This is because of a regime of independence that has replaced that of inseparability, the code has enframed the concept.

--Code as science--

DB: Do you think a real hatred inspires logic's rivalry with, or its will to supplant, the concept? Deleuze thought 'it kills the concept twice over'.

JP: The concept is reborn not because it is a scientific function and not because it is a logical proposition: it does not belong to a discursive system and it does not have a reference. The concept shows itself and does nothing but show itself. Concepts are really monsters that are reborn from their fragments.

DB: But how does this relate to the code, and more specifically to free software and free culture? Can we say that this is that summoning? Can the code save us?

JP: Free software knows only relations of movement and rest, of speed and slowness, between unformed, or relatively unformed, elements, molecules or particles borne away by fluxes. It knows nothing of subjects but rather singularities called events or hecceities. Free software is a machine but a machine that has no beginning and no end. It is always in the middle, between things. Free software is where things pick up speed, a transversal movement, that undermines its banks and accelerates in the middle. But that is not to say that capital does not attempt to recode it, reterritorialising its flows within the circuits of capital.

DB: A project or a person is here only definable by movements and rests, speeds and slowness (longitude) and by affects, intensities (latitude). There are no more forms, but cinematic relations between unformed elements; there are no more subjects but dynamic individuations without subjects, which constitute collective assemblages. Nothing develops, but things arrive late or in advance, and enter into some assemblage according to their compositions of speed. Nothing becomes subjective but haecceities take shape according to the compositions of non-subjective powers and effects. Maps of speeds and intensities (e.g. Sourceforge).

JP: We have all already encountered this business of speeds and slowness: their common quality is to grow from the middle, to be always in-between; they have a common imperceptible, like the vast slowness of massive Japanese wrestlers, and all of a sudden, a decisive gesture so swift that we didn't see it.

DB: Good code, Bad code. Deleuze asks: 'For what do private property, wealth, commodities, and classes signify'? and answers: 'The breakdown of codes' (AO, 218). Capitalism is a generalized decoding of flows. It has decoded the worker in favour of abstract labour, it has decoded the family, as a means of consumption, in favour of interchangeable, faceless consumers and has decoded wealth in favour of abstract, speculative, merchant capital. In the face of this, it is difficult to know if we have too much code or too little and what the criteria might be by which we could make qualitative distinctions between one type of code and another, such as code as concept and code as commodity.

JP: We could suggest that the schizophrenic code (i.e. the schizophrenic coding as a radical politics of desire) could seek to de-normalise and de-individualise through a multiplicity of new, radical collective arrangements against power. Perhaps a radical hermeneutics of code, code as locality and place, a dwelling.

DB: Not all code is a dwelling. Bank systems, facial recognition packages, military defence equipment and governmental monitoring software is code but not a dwelling. Even so, this code is in the domain of dwelling. That domain extends over this code and yet is not limited to the dwelling place. The bank clerk is at home on the bank network but does not have shelter there; the working woman is at home on the code but does not have a dwelling place there; the chief engineer is at home in the programming environment but does not dwell there. This code enframes her. She inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them.

--Code as art--

JP: You are right to distinguish between code as 'challenging-forth' (Heidegger) and code that is a 'bringing-forth'. The code that is reterritorialised is code that is proprietary and instrumental, has itself become a form of 'standing-reserve'.

DB: So how are we to know when code is a 'bringing-forth'? How will we know if it is a tool for conviviality. How will we distinguish between the paranoiac and the schizophrenic?

JP: We know, that the friend or lover of code, as claimant does not lack rivals. If each citizen lays claim to something then we need to judge the validity of claims. The coder lays claim to the code, and the corporation, and the lawyer, who all say, 'I am the friend of code'. First it was the computer scientists who exclaimed 'This is our concern, we are the scientists!'. Then it was the turn of the lawyers, the journalists and the state chanting 'Code must be domesticated and nationalised!' Finally the most shameful moment came when companies seized control of the code themselves 'We are the friends of code, we put it in our computers, and we sell it to anyone'. The only code is functional and the only concepts are products to be sold. But even now we see the lawyers agreeing with the corporations, we must control the code, we must regulate the code, the code must be paranoiac.

DB: This is perhaps the vision offered by William Gibson's Neuromancer, a dystopian realization of the unchecked power of multinational corporations which, despite the efforts of outlaw subcultures, monopolize code. Through their creation of AI entities code becomes autonomous, it exceeds human control. If indeed it makes sense to retain the term human, which Gibson pejoratively substitutes with 'meat'. The new human-machinic interfaces engendered by software and technological development demand the jettisoning of received categories of existence as they invent uncanny new ones.

JP: This is the possibility of code. The code as a war machine. Nomadic thought. The code as outsider art, the gay science, code as desiring-production, making connections, to ever new connections.

DB: Code can be formed into networks of singularities into machines of struggle. As Capital de-territorializes code there is the potential through machines to re-territorialize. Through transformative constitutive action and network sociality'in other words the multitude'code can be deterritorializing, it is multiplicity and becoming, it is an event. Code is becoming nomadic.

JP: This nomadic code upsets and exceeds the criteria of representational transparency. According to Jean Baudrillard, the omnipresence of code in the West'DNA, binary, digital'enables the production of copies for which there are no originals. Unsecured and cut adrift from the 'reality' which representation has for centuries prided itself on mirroring, we are now in the age of simulation. The depiction of code presents several difficulties for writers, who, in seeking to negotiate the new technological landscape, must somehow bend the representational medium of language and the linear process of reading to accommodate the proliferating ontological and spatio-temporal relations that code affords.

DB: This tension is as palpable in Gibson's efforts to render cyberspace in prose (he first coined the term in Neuromancer) as it is on the book cover, where the flat 2D picture struggles to convey the multi-dimensional possibilities of the matrix. The aesthetics of simulation, the poetics of cyberspace and of hyperreality are, we might say, still under construction.

JP: Perhaps code precludes artistic production as we know it. Until the artist creates code and dispenses with representational media altogether, is it possible that her work will contribute only impoverished, obsolete versions of the age of simulation?

DB: Artists have responded to 'code' as both form and content. As form, we might also think of code as 'genre', the parodying of which has become a staple in the postmodern canon. Films such as 'The Scream' series, 'The Simpsons', or 'Austin Powers'; flaunt and then subvert the generic codes upon which the production and interpretation of meaning depends. More drastically, Paul Auster sets his 'New York Trilogy' in an epistemological dystopia in which the world does not yield to rational comprehension as the genre of detective fiction traditionally demands. If clues are totally indistinguishable from (co)incidental detail, how can the detective guarantee a resolution, how can order be restored? As Auster emphasizes, generic codes and aesthetic form underwrite ideological assumptions and can be described as the products of specific social relations.

JP: And what of code as content? Like the 'Matrix'. Here is a film which has latched onto the concept of code and also its discussion in contemporary philosophy, almost smugly displaying its dexterity in handling both.

DB: Or 'I' Huckabees' with its unfolding of a kind of existential code that underlies human reality. Are our interpretations shifting to an almost instrumental understanding of code as a form of weak structuralism? Philosophy as mere code, to be written, edited and improved, turned into myth so that our societies can run smoothly.

JP: The hacker stands starkly here. If code can be hacked, then perhaps we should drop a monkey-wrench in the machine, or sugar in the petrol tank of code? Can the philosopher be a model for the hacker or the hacker for the philosopher? Or perhaps the hacker, with the concentrations on the smooth, efficient hacks, might not be the best model. Perhaps the cracker is a better model for the philosophy of the future. Submerged, unpredictable and radically decentred. Outlaw and outlawed.

DB: Perhaps. But then perhaps we must also be careful of the fictions that we both read and write. And keep the radical potentialities of code and philosophy free.

Wet with fever and fatigue we can now look toward the shore and say goodbye to where the windows shone so brightly.

- --Notes--

[1] We were, in fact, at least four, and we think you can guess who
the others were.

- --Bibliography--

Deleuze, G. (1990). Postscript on the Societies of Control. L'autre
Journal, Nr. 1.

Deleuze, G. (2004). Foucault. London: Continuum.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is Philosophy? London: Verso.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2004). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2003). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

--License--

(c) 2005 David M. Berry, Jo Pawlik
This article is made available under the "Attribution-Share-alike" Creative Commons License 2.0 available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.

--About the authors--

David Berry is a researcher at the University of Sussex, UK and a member of the research collective The Libre Society. He writes on issues surrounding intellectual property, immaterial labour, politics, free software and copyleft.

Jo Pawlik is a doctoral student at the University of Sussex researching the interaction between the American counterculture and French poststructuralism, focusing in particular on the deployment and political purchase of the concepts of madness and schizophrenia.

Originally published in Free Software Magazine. PDF

Posted by jo at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2005

European Media Art Festival

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Smart Art

The European Media Art Festival is one of the most important current media art forums world-wide. For the 19th time, the festival will present a comprehensive overview spanning the whole range of this young genre of art.

Under the motto Smart Art, we will present works that question social conventions, take familiar things out of their context and subtly track down the absurdities of individual and social everyday life. The approaches range from popular subjects to provocative statements that go down new paths of artistic debate in film, installation and expanded media, making playful and intelligent use of various media.

With their critical, cheeky and smart works, both young talented artists and recognised masters of their field present new positions in contemporary media art in Osnabrück.

// CINEMA Experimental shorts and feature films, music videos, new forms of narration and documentation, retrospectives and special programmes.

// EXHIBITION Current film and video installations, new nonlinear projects from 10 May to 18 June 2006 at the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche.

// LIVE ART Multimedia performances, veejaying and current concepts of expanded cinema.

// CONGRESS Expert speakers, curators and artists present their experiences and stances towards current media art in theoretical discourses, using practical examples. An international conference on art and image studies will take place in collaboration with the University of Osnabrück following the EMAF. www.medienkunst-konferenz.de

// INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FORUM New tendencies and developments from the labs of European media institutions of higher education, as well as training concepts and projects.

WE WARMLY INVITE YOU TO SUBMIT YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EMAF 2006 BY 15 DECEMBER 2005.

// CONCEPT AND FESTIVAL-BOARD Hermann Noering, Alfred Rotert, Ralf Sausmikat

// SPONSORS nordmedia - Die Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH Stadt Osnabrueck Auswaertiges Amt, Berlin Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Berlin EU Commission - MEDIA Programme as well as donations from further sponsors. The EMAF is a member of the European Coordination of Film Festivals E.C.F.F.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Hello World

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Travels in Virtuality

Hello World, travels in virtuality by Sue Thomas, Raw Nerve Books, ISBN 0953658562: The net is, by definition, a place of different connected realities, and it's also a singularities whole. These singularities are mostly consuming the data on the screen in solitude. This multitude of experiences has emerged as it is, only after the advent of blogs and their immediate writings characteristic. This text has been written as an ante-litteram blog, being an internet travelogue, taking advantage of abstract facts and similitudes, and diluted in a period of three years (from 2000 to 2002). The reflections cross the medium's peculiarities, juxtaposed as pieces of a puzzle with the pioneer's visions, and are expressed through a sociological reconstruction of the processes. The standpoint is not the one immersing into the complicated relationships of real time signs and meanings, but it's the result of take a break and ponder what happens into the screen being firmly behind the desktop. It seems that often Sue diverts the glance from the monitor and starts to reflect, inspired by some flashy emotional or logic connections. Her visions about the global working network and a personal everyday life that are mutually influenced and constitute an intimate perspective of the online/offline relationship. [via neural.it]

Posted by jo at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

rafael lozano-hemmer

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3 Expos

33 QUESTIONS PER MINUTE IN BERLIN: Installation at Postdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany; Presentation: 29 November 15:00 at Postdamer Platz 10; Show: 13 December 2005 to 8 January 2006.

33 QUESTIONS PER MINUTE consists of a computer program which uses grammatical rules to combine words from a dictionary and generate 55 billion unique, fortuitous questions. The automated questions are presented at a rate of 33 per minute --the threshold of legibility-- on 21 tiny LCD screens encrusted on the support columns of the exhibition hall or mounted on a wall. The system will take over 3,000 years to ask all possible questions. A keyboard allows participants to log on to the building and add their own questions to the automatic flow. With the assistance of Will Bauer, Conroy Badger, Ana Parga, María Velarde Torres, Luis Jiménez-Carlés, Luis Parga and Gabriela Raventós. English version with the assistance of Rebecca MacSween.

In the upcoming exhibition, a matrix of 1,800 fluorescent lamps will cover an eleven storey-high building in Berlin, a creation of architects realities:united. On this facade will be displayed 55 billion unique and grammatically correct questions; a new German version of the software "33 Questions per Minute". People will be able to input their own questions by typing them in at an outdoor kiosk.

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33 Questions per Minute is part of SPOTS LIGHT- AND MEDIA FACADE. For a period of eighteen months, the eleven-storey glazed main facade of Potsdamer Platz 10 in Berlin will host one of the world’s largest media facades. The installation comprises a computer controlled light matrix of 1,800 fluorescent lamps transforming the facade into a communicative membrane displaying works by internationally renowned artists in changing exhibitions. The first exhibition "The City Has Eyes" is being curated by Andreas Broeckmann and will feature art projects by Carsten Nicolai, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jim Campbell and John Dekron in collaboration with realities:united.

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UNDER SCAN: A large-scale public art commission for the East Midlands region in England; 25 November to 4 December 2005: Brayford Campus, Lincoln; niversity; 12 January to 22 January 2006: Humberstone Gate, Leicester; 3 February to 12 February 2006: Market Square, Northampton; 24 February to 5 March 2006: Market Place, Derby; 17 March to 26 March 2006: Canal Side at Castle Wharf, Nottingham--Under Scan is an interactive video installation for public space. In the piece, passers-by are detected by a computer tracking system that activates video-portraits projected within their shadow on the ground. Over one thousand uncensored portraits of local people are activated by the shadows.

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SUBSCULPTURES: Solo exhibition at Galerie Guy Bartschi, Geneva, Switzerland; 5 November 2005 to 14 January 2006--Exhibition featuring kinetic sculptures, video, photography and interactive environments. A catalog is available with texts in English and French. Includes the premiere of "Entanglement", an installation with two neon signs that write emails to each other so that they are both simultaneously on or off. NB: In early December, "Entanglement" will also be shown at Art Basel Miami at OMR Gallery and at the transitio_mx festival in Mexico City.

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Also: SUBTITLED PUBLIC--Subtitled Public consists of an empty exhibition space where visitors are tracked with a computerized infrared surveillance system. As people enter the installation, texts are projected onto their bodies: these “subtitles” consist of thousands of verbs conjugated in third person and they follow each individual everywhere they go. The only way to get rid of a subtitle is to touch someone else: the words then are exchanged between them. The piece invades the supposed neutrality of the space that museums and galleries set-up for contemplation, underlining the violent and asymmetric character of observation. Subtitled Public also highlights the danger of surveillance systems that typecast and try to detect different ethnic groups or suspicious individuals, as in the latest computer-vision devices that are being deployed in public spaces around the world. Finally, the installation is an ironic commentary on our era of technological personalization, literally branding all spectators and converting them into “thematic individuals”. With the assistance of Conroy Badger, Will Bauer, Ana Parga, Maria Parga, Tara DeSimone and Matthew Marino. Produced by the BBVA-Bancomer Foundation in Mexico City. [video]

Posted by jo at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM

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CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS

ISEA2006 seeks paper and presentation proposals responding to the Symposium themes of Transvergence, Interactive City, Community Domain or Pacific Rim. This is the only call for papers and presentations that there will be for ISEA2006.

What tactics, issues and conceptual practices expose or inform the distinctions of these subject terrains relating to contemporary art practice? What theoretical analyses illuminate art practice engaged with new technical and conceptual forms, functions and disciplines; provide for innovative strategies involving urbanity, mobility, community and locality; examine the role of corporations, civic cultural organizations and their relationship to strategic planning; serve to expose new portals of production and experience; and provide for provocative analysis of contemporary political and economic conditions?

The ISEA2006 Symposium is discussion and conversation based. This orientation is intended as a break from the tradition of reading academic papers and the formalities of panels and is the result of a month-long online discussion with 21 international participants (see list below). All sessions are moderated, include respondents and are designed to encourage audience participation. Session formats will emphasize questioning, debate and provocation. Papers, abstracts and poster texts will be pre-published on the web and in print. There will be a pre-symposium online public forum designed to encourage interaction between symposium presenters and the public to provide for discussion and debate.

We are seeking proposals for papers, artist and poster sessions.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE FOR OPEN CALLS

You must login and create a submission using the official ISEA2006 submission tool.

Open: November 15th, 2005
Closed: January 15th, 2006

Submissions will be evaluated by the ISEA International Program Committee.

On the Submissions Call Page be sure to:
Select "Symposium" from the CALL pull down menu
Select the theme your are responding to from THEME pull down menu

SYMPOSIUM THEMES

INTERACTIVE CITY:

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#interactive
http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006/

There is an invisible city growing among the growth of the megacity, and it is the electromagnetic, hertzian spectrum that flows ceaselessly with data about and from and between us, but which is always activated by the interfaces of commerce and government-cell phones, surveillance cameras, marketing databases, navigation systems that will alert us to a nearby sale. We imagine the city itself as an interface, which accesses the future, the past, the distant, the present, the communal, the individual in marvelous ways that allow us to enjoy the 'opaque and fictitious thickness' of an invisible city made visible.

PACIFIC RIM:

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#pacific
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/prnmscall2/

The political and economic space of the Pacific Rim represents a dynamic context for innovation and creativity framed by issues of economic globalization, isolationist nationalism, regional integrations and environmental change. The concept of a Pacific Rim is that of a complex geo-political-economic framework that necessarily includes a vast network of city-states, regions and their associative relationships that exist beyond the mere geographic location or assignment of populations. Artists, designers, theorists, cultural producers, researchers, urban planners and creative strategist responsive to the rapidly transforming cultural ecology of Pacific-Asia conditions are invited to submit proposals that serve as platforms for discussion and debate.

TRANSVERGENCE:

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#trans
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/transvergence/index.html

Transvergence goes beyond the disciplinary. Creative interplay of disciplines to catalyze artistic, scientific, and social innovation is evidenced by decades of multi-/ pluri-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary discourse and practice. The models of the think-tank, media lab and research centre have shown their limits since the 80s and 90s, as have tactical media activism tied to the logic of events, and NGOs facing the donor system's arduous accountability requirements; university
research is often encumbered by best-practice driven managerial culture, and 'creative industries' clusters are subject to economies of scale and uneven divisions of labour. ISEA seeks new visions of organizational and participatory models as structures of possibility for transvergent practice.

COMMUNITY DOMAIN:

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#community
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1

The Community Domain theme stands in relation to contemporary debate about 'Public Domain 2.0' (Kluitenberg, 2003), but emphasizes the idea of domain from a grass roots perspective and the idea of community starting with the individual rather than the demographic. In other words, the goal is not to train people to become artists but to use digital and networked technologies to allow people to participate in the creation of their own stories - to become producers rather than only consumers.

SYMPOSIUM STRUCTURES AND CALLS

There are three types of Calls for Participation:

Papers
Posters
Artist Presentations

There will be a limited number of Panel presentations shaped in relation to the Symposium themes. Panels may be proposed or the organizers may curate these based upon Paper, Poster and Artist Presentation proposals.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Papers submitted will be pre-published on-line with presentations limited to 10 minutes. Paper presenters will be grouped thematically to encourage discourse that presents divergent perspectives and views that serve as a catalyst for conversation.

Submission of proposal abstracts: January 15th, 2006
Notification: February 28th, 2006
Final manuscripts: June 10th 2006

Accepted abstracts will be posted online. Final manuscripts will be pre-published online beginning July 1st. A one month online pre-symposium public discussion forum will feature accepted Papers in one week sessions dedicated to each symposium theme. Authors must commit to having papers available for publication by June 10, 2006.

CALL FOR POSTERS:

Poster Sessions are scheduled throughout the Symposium to provide opportunity for the presentation of individual or group projects or research. Poster Sessions represent a significant opportunity for the presentation of creative, scholarly or community based initiatives. Sessions are moderated. Posters will be on display continuously with scheduled author attendance.

Submission for Posters: January 15th, 2006
Notification of acceptance: March 15th 2006

Posters submissions must be presented in a standardized format. Posters are 4 x 5 ft. and must be in a form that can be attached to presentation boards at the Symposium. A limited number of standard, networked computer stations will be available to complement the posters.

CALL FOR ARTISTS PRESENTATIONS:

Artists Open Mic sessions provide an opportunity for explication of artistic achievement responsive to the Symposium themes. Presentations are limited to 5 minutes and will be grouped together by the organizers as appropriate to subject matter. An assigned moderator will coordinate presentations and audience questions. We recognize, of course, that the Artist Presentations are inadequate to fully present one's work, and we encourage artists to present paper and poster proposals as well as work (see http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/calls.html). We especially encourage artists whose work has been accepted to the Symposium and Festival to submit a presentation proposal.

Artists submissions should include a brief description of the proposed work to be presented along with appropriate documentation.

Submission of proposals for artist presentations: January 15th, 2006 Notification: March 15th, 2006

All Panels and Artist Presentations will be Webcast live and also available as podcasts immediately following presentation.

OTHER CATEGORIES OF PARTICIPATION

There are five additional categories of Symposium presentations that contribute to the overall scope of Symposium proceedings: Keynotes, Emergent Topics, Summit Presentations, Organizational Meetings, Chat Rooms. These are described below. Presenters in these categories will be determined by the IPC. They may be selected from submissions for Papers, Artist Presentations, and Poster Sessions, but please it is not possible to submit directly in these categories:

Keynotes: Keynote presentations are invited featured speakers. Sessions include a respondent/moderator and have extended opportunities for audience interaction.

Emergent Topics: Dedicated sessions on day 3-4 of the Symposium that are a direct response to the discourses, topics and interactions stemming from days 1-2. Speakers and topics will be identified through a ballet system involving all Symposium participants and audiences.

Summit Presentations: There are four pre-symposium Summits focused on special topics: The Pacific Rim New Media Summit hosted by San Jose State University; Interactive City hosted by Intel Berkeley Lab; Creative Communities Forum hosted by the City of San Jose; Artists, Corporation and Policy hosted by Montalvo Arts Center; and Technology Ethics and Environment hosted by Santa Clara University. Each will have a dedicated session for presentation of research, projects and analysis outcomes.

Organizational Meetings: Provision for meeting times and spaces for international cultural organizations, institutes and programs to host meetings specific to their constituency.

Chat Rooms: Chat Rooms are for break out discussions and emergent conversations stemming from Symposium interactions. These are self-organizing sessions based on Symposium interactions and trajectories.

Other Calls: Please note that there are several calls for art projects still open. Also, there will be a separate call for workshops. See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/calls.html.


SYMPOSIUM DISCUSSION FORUM

Joel Slayton
Steve Dietz
Alex Adriaansens
Peter Anders
Andreas Broeckmann
Danny Butt
Steve Cisler
Nina Czegledy
Sara Diamond
Ken Goldberg
Honor Harger
Doug Kahn
Patrick Lichty
Kim Machan
Amanda McDonald Crowley
Gunalan Nadarajan
Marisa Olson
Christiane Paul
Julianne Pierce
Trebor Scholz
Ana Serano
Rejane Spitz
Carol Stekenas
Mark Tribe

SYMPOSIUM LOCAL HOST COMMITTEE

Joel Slayton
Steve Dietz
Jonathan Berger
Natalie Bookchin
Geoffrey C. Bowker
Danny Butt
Laura Esparza
Peter Lunen Feld
Ken Goldberg
John Kreideler
Margaret Morse
Gunalan Nadarajan
Sally Jane Norman
Marisa Olson
Narendra Pachkhede
Christiane Paul
Eric Paulos
Huan Sauss
Trebor Scholz
Carol Stakenas
Eddo Stern
Mark Tribe
Rob van Kranenburg
Victoria Vesna
Steve Wilson

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Symposium Committee and members to be added.

Co-Chairs: Steve Dietz and Joel Slayton

IMPORTANT DATES

Submissions Due January 15
Notification of Papers February 28
Notification of Posters + Artist Session March 15
Abstracts April 1
Online Forum April 15 - May 15, 2006
Papers due June 15
Papers published August 1
Summit August 7 - 8
Symposium August 9 - 13

For help or questions: iseahelp[at]cadre.sjsu.edu

Posted by jo at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

Beryl Graham

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A Study of Audience Relationships with Interactive Computer-Based Visual Artworks

"Thesis Abstract: Contemporary interactive computer-based artworks are examined, with particular reference to the problems and opportunities presented by their relationship to their audience in conventional gallery settings. From an anecdotal starting point, the research uses a series of observational case studies of exhibited works, the production of an interactive artwork, and the curation of an exhibition of interactive artworks, to explore pragmatic questions of the artwork/audience relationship in real-world situations.

A range of existing taxonomies for kinds and levels of interactivity within art are examined, and a 'common-language' taxonomy based on the metaphor of 'conversation' is developed and applied. The case studies reveal patterns of use of interactive artworks including the relation of use-time to gender, aspects of intimidation, and social interaction. In particular, a high frequency of collective use of artworks, even when the artworks are designed to be used by one person, is discovered.

This aspect of collective versus individual use, and interaction between audience members is further explored by several strands of research: The development of an interactive artwork specifically intended to be enhanced by collective usage and interaction between users; the application of a metaphor of 'conversation/host' to the making of the artwork; further, more specific, case studies of such artworks; and the further development of the taxonomy into a graphic form to illustrate differences in artwork-audience, and audience-audience relationships.

The strands of research work together to uncover data which would be of use to artists and curators working with computer-based interactive artworks, and explores and develops tools which may be useful for the analysis of a wide range of artworks and art production." From A Study of Audience Relationships with Interactive Computer-Based Visual Artworks in Gallery Settings, through Observation, Art Practice, and Curation by Beryl Graham. [via julianbleecker on eyebeam reblog]

Posted by jo at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

fibreculture #6

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Mobility, New Social Intensities, and the Coordinates of Digital Networks

From stirrups to satellites, the invention of new forms of technical mobility has always created new intensities within the social. Each invention has also required a new idea of what it might be to be human, along with new tensions as older cultural practices and social forms are challenged. The contemporary mobility of digital networks is no exception. This issue of the Fibreculture Journal--edited by Andrew Murphie, Larissa Hjorth, Gillian Fuller and Sandra Buckley--is concerned with documenting, and beginning to think through, the new mobile intensities allowed by digital networks. "Intensity" here refers not just to the ubiquitous nature of mobile networks, or to the frequency of use of mobile communications. New intensities are like new forces erupting within the old - taking the social somewhere it has not perhaps been before. At the least, these intensities give established orders new energies to either resist or attempt to fold into established social practices and modes of thinking.

All of the articles in this issue deal with these new intensities. Much of this issue develops key ideas and documents new social practices involving mobile telephony. Dong-Hoo Lee documents the experiments with self-image and expression now allowed young Korean women by camera phones. Angel Lin affirms the continuation of older social practices amongst Hong Kong college students using SMS (in the use of SMS to maintain social ties with friends and family, for example). However, she also notes the increased possibility of political participation, and some interesting shifts concerning biligual textual practices - perhaps even a specific emerging bilingual identity within the community of SMS users. Lin also finds that there are gender differences concerning the way that young people in Hong Kong use mobiles (males tend to use SMS to meet females and new friends, for example). Lin wonders if, however, this will lead males into more 'social grooming' via mobile communications. This seems to be the case in the study of Norwegian young people, provided by Lin Prøitz. She finds a surprising amount of gender mobility within the frame of SMSing, even when the rhetoric outside of this frame maintains reasonably strict concepts of gendered behaviours. Lee, Lin and Prøitz all outline the role of desire in promoting proficiency and subtleties within SMS use.

Judith Nicholson gives an extensive account of the brief but influential 'flash mob' phenomenon, at the same time describing the political potential of mobile networks in terms of new "mobs". Here Nicholson draws attention to the use of mobile phones to coordinate the political momentum in the Spanish election of 2004, echoing 1981's 'night of the transistors'. Larissa Hjorth argues for the enfolding of older forms of communication within SMS and MMS use. Specifically she contemplates the shifting fragile intensities of the border between public and private in both SMS/MMS and the postcard. If there are new intensities of intimacy to be found in mobile networks, they are often mutations of older intensities.

Several articles move beyond mobile telephony, to discuss broader issues regarding networked mobility. Scott Sharpe, Maria Hynes and Robert Fagan consider the Internet as a forum for coordinating resistance to globalisation. As they point out, the Internet is already compromised as such a forum, as it is itself the forum of globalisation par excellence. They suggest rethinking what is possible in such a context. They give a detailed analysis of an older-style approach, that of the IUF 'superunion' educational web site, and a newer approach, that of activists, the Yes Men. In a surprising challenge to much analysis of globalisation and its discontents, Sharpe, Hynes and Fagan turn to Gilles Deleuze's analysis of masochism to point out the limits of the IUF approach. Rather than buy into the hegemony of representations as outlines by global powers (and some of their opponents), they argue for a humorous creation of new possibilities via the Internet. The latter involves an active seeking after new, more creative modes of thought, via which to nudge the new network intensities away from the monolithic nature of global Capital.

Nearly all of the articles in this issue are as contemplative and they are descriptive. The final three articles are centrally concerned with a thinking through of mobile intensities. Ingrid Richardson poses the concept of the 'mobile technosoma' - a return to thinking through the new kinds of bodily intensity associated with new technical intensities, and both bodily and technical intensities together. In the process she argues for a new medium specificity. Far from a convergence of media, Richardson comments that new mobile media forms, and their specific embodied contexts, require more in the way of specific analyses of their divergences.

Notions of stability, identity and place keep recurring in the discussion of convergent mobile media. Mobility, in particular the tactility and telepresence of mobile telephony, brings about an intense focus on the specificity of place and bodies. 'Where are you, now?' seems to be a refrain for many authors in this issue. The expansive yet normalising architecture of networks produces paradoxically an ethography of innovation and intimacy as shown in the four qualitative case studies from Seoul (Lee), Hong Kong (Lin), Melbourne (Hjorth) and Norway (Prøitz). In a delicately argued article grappling with this new sense of place, Rowan Wilken discusses a sense of place profoundly transformed by mobile networks, but not completely dissolved into them. Wilken points out that we simply cannot do without place, that place has always been a complex experience, and that, although there is no doubt that mobile networks transform place, this only makes it the more urgent to consider a new concept of mobile place - what he calls 'mobilitis loci'.This new place - a shifting place, a more intense and uncertain place, requires a new and more subtle politics - a central theme in many articles in this issue. This new politics of place is one that will have to consider the mutually infolding of virtual and actual at every moment of mobility. Wilken turns to some architectural/media experiments emerging from the events of the 1960s, such as those of the group Ant Farm, in order to give such infolding some historical context.

Felicity Colman and Christian McCrea take all these questions - very old and very new technics, new intensities and new fragmentation, new relations, the infinite deferral of networks and the way this deferral ties everything into a web - in the direction of what they call the 'digital maypole'. For Colman and McCrea, 'the maypole expresses the network’s torsion balance chart of power. The maypole topology is order through rhythmic tension and torsion, and in this sense its continuous binding of power makes the concept the paradoxical apostate of the network’s labyrinthine structure. The instinctual and biological ties of the etymological maypole enable us to focus upon specific power combinations of the network’s prescience'. There could perhaps be no better description of the problems and possibilities given to us by new mobile intensities, whether for those who are trying to mediate the shifts in social practices and cultural cohensions occasioned by mobility, or those attempting merely to analyse them.

We hope that it will be noted that there is a mix of approaches in this issue. In particular, the articles here range from the purely speculative to the mainly empirical. We are very happy that things have turned out this way. We began with a commitment to sparking conversation between different modes of analysis and response to these important issues. Such diverse studies exemplify the kinds of methodological constellations gathering around mobile phone use - and perhaps as importantly, examine the new relations between new, more mobile social intensities (such as biligualism in Hong Kong, gender fluidity in Norway) and mobile technologies as engaged with these intensities.
Biographies.

Posted by jo at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2005

WJ-s Web Performances Tonight

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Agnès de Cayeux, Anne Laforet & KRN

Centre Pompidou, Paris, Les Plasticiens du Web, Thursday, November 17th 2005; Salle de cinema 2 / 7pm / 3 euros / Metro Rambuteau.

WJ-s is a software and a flexible, high speed connexion public device for web performances which allows actors of the Internet--sound and image artists, netartists, bloggers, graphic designers, flashers, programmers, curators, hacktivists, newmedia theorists, pioneers and web mutants--to play live with the full scope of contents available in the wideness of the Web.

Agnès de Cayeux, Anne Laforet & KRN endlessly explore and experiment with the changing and fluctuating territories of the Internet. They subjectively articulate its intimate contours and zones. With "WJs", the artists play with the erotic and heated atmosphere of video chat rooms, with the world of artistic algorithms and computer art, and with an exacting choice of plastic, sensitive, aesthetic and narrative works in the realm of webart.

Agnès de Cayeux, network artist, conception and programming of network interfaces and tools. Research on distance relations and network interactions.

Anne Laforet is a specialist of net art, particularly on preservation, researcher, co-organizer of conferences and public discussions, soundartist.

KRN, network artist, curator, moderator, artistic and cultural event organiser, researcher into the relations between interactivity and desire, art and technology. Technical expertise: development of web sites and interfaces.

WJ-s/ystem : the whole technical device
WJ-s/oftware : the software part of WJ-s/ystem
WJ-s/erver : the device server
WJ-s/tudio : the computer used as a webdeck to control the WJ-s/tations
WJ-s/pring : a network of laptops that controls the WJ-s/tations during the performance
WJ-s/tation : one of the WJ-s/pring laptops (polymedia capture and diffusion)
WJ-s/pace : the venue in which the device is hosted
WJ-s/et : a WJ-s performance
WJ-s/ession : a series of WJ-s/ets

WJs project author, production: Anne Roquigny
Software programming: Stephane Kyles
Technics: Olivier Bernon
Realisation: Marc Bellini
Thanks: Christophe Becker, Thierry Bernard, Nadine Bonnefoi, Ferdinand Corte, Stephane Degoutin, Emilie Fouilloux, Anne Gagnebien, iddem.com, Emmanuel Jamin, Christophe Leclerqc, Sandrine Maricot, Denis Santelli, Sigolene Valax. Partner: ars longa

CONTACT / INFOS anne roquigny ar (at) wj-s.org

Posted by jo at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

Urban Eyes at V2_

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Pigeons as Chaotic Agents and Messengers

On Thursday 24 November, Marcus Kirsch and Jussi Ängeslevä will present their award winning cross-media project Urban Eyes at V2_. Urban Eyes wants to provide an alternative view on the city by using pigeons as the messengers of camera and other imagery overlooking the main streets and back alleys.

Location: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam (tram 4 or 5 / metro Calandlijn, Eendrachtsplein station); Date: Thursday 24 November 2005, 19:30 hrs; Entrance: free; Participants: Marcus Kirsch (UK) and Jussi Ängeslevä (D). Urban Eyes is made possible with support of: Datamars S.A., Sokymat, Motz-Computer, Arts Council England and V2_Lab.

The urban rock dove (columba livia) is part of every cityscape. More hated than loved due to malnourishment based on fast food left-overs, the "flying rat" is very likely here to stay in our urban scenario. The urban pigeon population can be seen as an indicator of the city's atmosphere. Bottomline is, just as every other behaviour pattern and network in the city, we are connected to it as we share the same space.

In a mixture of revived shamanism and panoptic view that might challenge the artificial network of CCTV cameras, the pigeon population's unpredictable movement patterns offer a set of eyes that could offer a unique view onto unknown places. Based on the Bavarian Pigeon Corps from 1903, where homing pigeons were equipped with tiny cameras to take aerial shots from behind enemy lines, Urban Eyes uses RFID and wireless technology to turn the once able urban pigeon into a chaotic agent and messenger of visual impressions from the road you never took.

Perceived as a critical design concept and public art installation, Urban Eyes accesses the live network of pigeons to expand what you know about your own city and reclaim the exploring stage of citylife. In 2004 the project proposal of Urban Eyes won 3rd price at Fusedspace, an international competition for innovative applications for new technology in the public domain. [related post]

Posted by jo at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

The Elizabeths + Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction

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Participatory Performance

November 18 | 7 PM The Elizabeths: ELIZABETH SPEAKS--The Elizabeths are proud to present the pemiere performance of Elizabeth Speaks. In a provocative and revolutionary act of oration, translation and interpretation, the Elizabeths will present political speeches both past and present. In an engaging, audience participatory forum, the Elizabeths' new performance will underscore the correlations between historical political rhetoric and the governmental agendas that are often camouflaged with doublespeak. Amplifying the need for continued free speech, public debate, and individual contributions, the Elizabeths will also give voice to any audience member who wishes to participate in this public address. Let the Elizabeths be your megaphone! The Elizabeths consist of: Kristin Elizabeth Calabrese, Elizabeth Tremante, and Micol Elisabeth Hebron.

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Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction: COOKIES--Renown for its motivational seminars in Psychic Disobedience™, Evangelical Onanism™ and Ontological Diuretics™ as well as it's expertly-choreographed public demonstrations, the Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction is widely considered a leading force for research into the neoliberal sublime and its accompanying networks of Religio-Corporate-Renal Control. The Institute can fairly claim prescience and influence in the global renal arena, and a proven track record in disseminating Urologic™ to both influential and popular audiences. Representatives will be on hand to provide an intensive introduction to the Institute, its operatives, its aspirations and the arsenal of techniques it aims to employ in the ongoing struggle for Social Satisfaction. P.I.S.S. consists of Natalie Zimmerman, Michael Wilson, Jennifer Nelson, Melissa Longenecker, M.T. Karthik and others anonymous.

The Elizabeths, Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction are part of the Voiceovers program at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Voiceovers is a series of performances, readings and screenings exploring the voice as a physical utterance and carrier of meaning rather than a tool of language to be learned and controlled.

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

Robot Clothes:

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Automated Biography

At Eyebeam, Nov. 19: 12-2pm - Exhibition and presentation of work by Robot Clothes and panel participants; 2-3:30pm - Public critique/ design review of work; 4-6pm - Panel hosted by Robot Clothes. Panelists: David Hanson, David Kindlon, Harvey Pekar, Sal Resitov, Hosted by Robot Clothes.

During their residency at Eyebeam the artists collaborative Robot Clothes, comprised of James Powderly and Michelle Kempner, developed Inside Out Life Story, an artwork that combines robotics, art music, theatrical sets, animated toys and artificial intelligence to tell their personal story about a sick person and their partner, life in the hospital and the process of shifting back and forth between two disparate worlds. Elements of the robotics and sets will be on view and an ancillary panel – Automated Biography - bringing together the DIY super stars from all walks of life will take place Nov. 19, 12-6m. The panel is open to the public with a suggested donation of $5.

The concepts and tools of AI, human-computer interaction and situationally-aware machines continue to move further from the realm of science-fiction and into the hands of artists, musicians, writers, scientists and DIY enthusiasts. As this happens robots and new media are being used to redefine artistic mediums and create highly-personal expressions. Automated Biography is a creative technology symposium exploring the role of technology in the creation of autobiographical and biographical artworks. This panel and group discussion will introduce several examples of alternative uses of technology and media to explore illness, identity, politics and life in the margins of culture.

Biographies of participants:

Robot Clothes is an art and commercial research and development partnership, specializing in robotic systems, interaction design and product prototyping. This partnership, formed in 2002 by Michelle Kempner and James Powderly, utilizes a hybrid fine art and commercial design and engineering approach to support innovative science and technology development efforts for clients including fortune 100 companies, NASA and internationally renowned artists, such as Diller + Scofidio and Miranda July. In addition to contracted research and development efforts, Robot Clothes internally supports fine art projects ranging from a robotic public sculpture for Central Park to an animatronic story about Crohn’s Disease.

Since graduating from RISD, David Hanson has worked as a designer, sculptor, and robotics developer in the entertainment industry for clients including Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal Studios , and MTV. His robotics have won numerous awards and his technical papers have been published internationally. To see high resolution images of Hanson’s robots, please turn to Human-Robot.org.

Starting his career as a mechanical designer of puppets, David Kindlon has since moved onto animatronics. Working in the film industry Kindlon has worked on such major features as Predator, A.I, I, Robot, Godzilla and Day of the Dead. For the last two years he has been working with artist Paul McCarthy, building robust robotic mechanisms to animate McCarthy’s work. His diverse robotic skill set includes remote control animatronics to toy prototypes and industrial design.

Cleveland, Ohio native Harvey Pekar is best known for his autobiographical slice-of-life comic book series "American Splendor", a first-person account of Pekar’s downtrodden life. The series has been published on an approximately annual basis since 1976. Pekar self-published the series until the early 1990s, when Dark Horse took over publication. In 1987, Pekar was honored with the American Book Award for the series. Dark Horse celebrated the 25th anniversary of "American Splendor" in 2001 with a special issue. In addition Pekar has worked as a book and music critic and well as radio commentator.

Dr. Sal Restivo is Professor of Sociology and Science Studies in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Trained and educated in sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and _history, he is a "social theorist" and specializes in social studies of science, _mathematics, and mind. For the most part, his research has focused on problems _in the sociology of mathematics. He has done sociological studies of the history _of mathematics in various cultures, anthropological studies of laboratories, _science policy analysis, and research on science and engineering education. He _is currently constructing a sociological theory of mind and thinking. He has won numerous awards and fellowships for his research.

For more information on Robot Clothes, Inside Out Life Story or to view their lab blog or work on their DIY Humanoid Robot Kit, please visit: http://www.robotclothes.com/projects_insideout2.html

Posted by jo at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2005

ULTRASOUND Workshop/Creative Labs

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TileToy

ULTRASOUND Workshop/Creative Labs: TileToy--A Modular Electronic Game Prototype by Tuomo Tammenpää & Daniel Blackburn, Finland/UK. Dates: Mon 21 - Thur 24 November 2005. Venue: University of Huddersfield, Technology Building, Queensgate Campus, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH. Fee: £20

TileToy is a modular, electronic game prototype which brings the flexibility inherent in software to a physical tile that people can touch and interact with. By arranging multiple tiles, players engage in various kinds of game play, from fast paced arcade style games to puzzle or learning games. TileToy employs changing-state strategies, animation and play; individual tiles affect the state of adjoining tiles.

The re-programmable and constantly updated graphical information is displayed on an LED dot matrix system. The screen is an endlessly versatile surface for displaying visual data. Tiles are controlled individually and can be used to transmit information singly or in groups. The assembled tiles wirelessly transmit their individual position in relation to each other and, based on that changing information, a central computer, or a dedicated tile runs the different applications.

The source code and the hardware will be made available via open licenses. The aim of TileToy is to create a platform that anyone can use to create unique content. Making the software open will allow people to create their own
applications and games and feed these back into the community to spark further innovation. The open hardware schematics will allow people to
make their own TileToys cheaply without paying a third party.

The initial PicBasic code used to control the tiles will be released under the GPL or LGPL [see http://www.opensource.org for more details]. The first open hardware version will inlcude a list of components, initial circuit design schematics and instructions for building the tiles. Details of the release will be posted on the TileToy Blog by the end of November 2005.

Tuomo Tammenpää is an active media artist and designer. During the last ten years he has participated in several exhibitions in Scandinavia, Central Europe, Asia and North America presenting video and media installations.

Daniel Blackburn has ten years experience working in the games industry. He is a creative technologist and has worked on a number of new and innovative computer games.

TileToy is supported by the Digital Research Unit, Huddersfield.

www.tiletoy.blogspot.com
www.needweb.org
www.carbonbasedgames.com

Workshop Schedule

+ Visitors are asked to first report to
+ University Reception, Harold Wilson Building,
+ Queensgate.

DAY ONE: Registration and Introduction
Monday 21st November
14:15 - 17:00

DAY TWO: Construction
Tuesday 22nd November
09:15 - 18:00

DAY THREE: Testing and Software
Wednesday 23rd November
09:15 - 18:00

DAY FOUR: Game Development
Thursday 24th November
09:15 - 14:15

Directions

Car Parking: Limited car parking at the University's Wakefield Road car park on the Queensgate Campus is available to registered participants on request.

Directions: http://www.hud.ac.uk/uni/maps.html

For further information or to book please contact Clare Danek
Email: info[at]ultrasound.ws
Tel: +44 [0] 870 990 5007

Posted by jo at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

Aspect - the Chronicle of New Media Volume VI:

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On Location

Aspect - the Chronicle of New Media Volume VI: On Location--Synopsis: Without a fixed physical or temporal locus, Aspect Magazine maximizes the fluidity of its ephemeral site in Volume 6: On Location. Extending from the momentary to the monumental, terrestrial to celestial, micro to macro, and personal to cultural, this issue explores the vast concept of location. Where beyond the genre of new media art could so many different interpretations of location exist? Included in this issue:

KENSETH ARMSTEAD: in_authentic_b (an invisible cities excerpt) with audio commentary by Andrew Perchuk * C5: The C5 Landscape Initiative with audio commentary by Christiane Paul * RICHARD CLAR: COLLISION II with audio commentary by Jean-Luc Soret * SHELLEY ESHKAR AND PAUL KAISER: Pedestrian with audio commentary by George Fifield * PETE GOMES: Stedelijk Drawing with audio commentary by Jelle Bouwhuis * MTAA (M.RIVER & T.WHID ART ASSOCIATES): 1 Year Performance Video (aka samHsiehUpdate) with audio commentary by Marisa Olson * DOUGLAS WEATHERSBY: GSG Office Project with audio commentary by James Hull.

Catalog No. MC-490
2005, 110 minutes
DVD, Region: 0 (All Regions)
TV System: NTSC
ISBN: 0-9749657-3-1
UPC: 837101115414
SRP: $25.00 (includes PPR)
Street Date: December 6, 2005
Prebook Date: November 14, 2005

To order/more details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program_id=490
orders[at]microcinema.com
or fax: 509-351-1530 phone: 415-864-0660
or send PO to:
Microcinema International
1706 Church Street, #1222
San Francisco, CA 94131, USA

Posted by jo at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

Cultural Futures:

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Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts

Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts runs in Auckland from December 1-5 - the first significant event of its kind taking place in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The ground-breaking symposium aims to develop international awareness of locally produced work and link off-shore practices to conversations around New Zealand's shifting cultural and creative identities.

"New media" artists explore the new opportunities for artistic and cultural expression in the wake of the personal computer, mobile devices and digital networks. A key message from many of the artists is that the new media environment is not necessarily opposed to traditional artistic and cultural practices.

"The most interesting work in new media isn't always located in the US or Europe - it's right under our noses in the Asia Pacific rim," says co-ordinator Danny Butt.

"There is a huge pool of creativity and innovation in this region, especially in New Zealand, that is already creating waves internationally.

"Some of the questions that arise around biculturalism for example, aren't only happening within New Zealand. All countries are made up cultures with diverse histories and languages that have changed through colonisation and globalisation. How do we deal with that history? That is a key question in the arts right now. The vibrant international networks of indigenous artists show us that there's nothing about belonging to a particular place that stops you collaborating with other places and cultures.

"This event is really about bringing great artists and curators from overseas to engage with local artists and the local environment. The benefits go both ways," he adds. "It's also significant that we are holding this on Hoani Waititi marae - it's a great opportunity for people to engage with the Maori cultural context."

Cultural Futures draws together practitioners from as far afield as Delhi, India, home to the celebrated Raqs Media Collective, and from Australia, Canada and the Philippines. Aotearoa New Zealand is well-represented, too, with Albert Refiti, Charles Koroneho, Chaz Doherty, Lisa Reihana, Rachael Rakena, and members of Creative Combat.

Full venue, registration and programme available online at:
http://www.culturalfutures.place.net.nz

Cultural Futures receives sponsorship from Creative New Zealand, Asia New Zealand Foundation and AUT. Creative partners include the University of Auckland, Artspace, the Moving Image Centre and The Lumière Reader.

For more information:
Media enquiries: Alistair Kwun, ak698[at]free.net.nz , +64 27 233 8680
All other enquries, please email: info[at]culturalfutures.place.net.nz

Posted by jo at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

Postmedial Condition

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Interdisciplinary Processes

Postmedial Condition: Back in the 1920s, painters, sculptors, photographers and avant-garde filmmakers first opened up the field of media art and declared all materials to be equal. Since the 1960s, the first generation of Austrian media artists, represented by names such as Adrian, Bechtold, Export, Gappmayr, Kriesche, Petzold, Rühm, Weibel, etc., has been making a very specific contribution to international art. What makes it so specific is the fact that the analytical traditions of the past – from the language analysis of the Vienna Circle to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis – opened up discourses that made the critical analysis of the media possible and offered adequate reflection on the emergence of new medial forms, such as video, Expanded Cinema, or digital images.

Taking up themes and/or questions relating to socio-culture, social analysis and media analysis, Austrian media art forms an independent unit. Ever since the emergence of the Wiener Werkstätte, Austria has held on to its tradit ion of merging the borders between free and applied art, architecture and design, sculpture and stage design, and this, together with the country’s strong media tradition that reaches from avant-garde films to virtual reality, has led to a pronounced orientation towards the postmedial in Austria.

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The term “postmedial”, based on Rosalind Krauss’s “Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition”, the subheading of her famous essay “A Voyage on the North Sea” from 1999, strikes us as particularly apt for characterizing the artistic practice that forms the conceptual basis of this exhibition. Artists operate between different media, materials, and functions; they adapt new production processes, mix different media characteristics, and create new reference systems. This process is not dominated by one single medium – instead, the different media influence and shape, and at the same time, reflect one another.

Interdisciplinary processes that take place between the fields of drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, literature, architecture, design, Net Art and computer language are becoming the methodic principle. On the basis of 41 artistic positions, the exhibition wants to draw attention to a present development in Austrian art that will certainly constitute one more important contribution to the evolution of international art.

Curators: Elisabeth Fiedler, Christa Steinle
Scientific advisor: Peter Weibel

This exhibition, supported by the State Secretary of Arts and Media in Austria, is a co-operation with Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Medialab in Madrid, where it will be shown from 8 February – 26 April 2006 during the artfair ARCO 2006 with Austria as guest country.

Contact:
Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum
Sackstrasse 16, A-8010 Graz / Austria
T +43-316-82 91 55 / F +43-316-81 54 01
neuegalerie[at]museum-joanneum.at
Opening times: Tue–Sun 10am–6 pm, Thu 10am–8pm

Posted by jo at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2005

9th Annual Subtle Technologies Festival

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Responsive Architectures

9th Annual Subtle Technologies Festival: Responsive Architectures, June 1st - June 4th, 2006, University of Toronto, Toronto Canada.

Recognized internationally as a forum that encourages new insights and collaborations, Subtle Technologies invites artists and scientists to contemplate how art and science can work together and reshape perspectives. The gathering will include four days of presentations including illustrated talks, gallery installations, workshops and discussions. Subtle Technologies events encourage active discussion and draws upon the wide-ranging perspectives of participants and audience members. The extraordinary interest of highly specialized topics and often-unexpected threads woven between presentations make the festival a unique experience.

This year's theme for Subtle Technologies is Responsive Architecture. We are interested in investigating how environments and systems can interact and respond to their occupants. We hope for wide-ranging discussions and presentations that explore dynamic systems and environments at every scale, from molecules to continents. The conference will include a wide definition of architecture that encompasses buildings, mechanical and natural environments.

Examples of possible topics include:

Interactive systems
Smart materials
Buildings that can move and transform
Adaptive environments
Hybrid ecologies
Complex systems analysis
Expanded perception

Within this general theme, sound and acoustics will be a special focus. The 2006 festival is being held in partnership with SoundaXis, a Toronto-wide event inspired by the work of renowned architect-composer Iannis Xenakis.

Specialized topics include:

Resonance
Spatial acoustics
Physics of sound
Psychoacoustics
Sound Installations

We encourage demonstrations and can accommodate a wide variety of presentations. Technical support and honoraria for presenters is included.

Summaries of past presentations are archived on our website. We encourage those interested in submitting a proposal to acquaint themselves with our history of programming.

The festival is open to the public and presentations should be accessible to a non-specialized audience. Presentations typically last 40 minutes, followed by a ten minute question and answer period.

Deadline for Proposals: January 15, 2005.

How to Apply

Use our online submission form.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at programming[at]subtletechnologies.com

Posted by jo at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Impakt & HKU

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Local Truth

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Impakt & HKU; 7|8|9|10|11 december; final presentation 11 december--Mediamatic with the Impakt festival and the Utrecht Academy of Arts organizes a workshop on online databased film. In this 5-day workshop you and 15 other film-, tv-, radio, new media makers from all over Europe use your own footage to make an online interactive film, and explore how to integrate the viewer's choices in a meaningful way.

Thematically the participants are invited to explore their notion of local truth: market forces and political processes can less and less escape their global grids, and media are becoming more and more personal and intimate. Can we only look for truth and authenticity locally?

To make their interactive film, participants use the ever evolving Korsakow software. This workshop starts the 7th of December with speakers that present a selection of interesting interactive film projects. During the next four days you’ll work on your own project withpersonal technical and theoretical support from trainers and teachers. At the end of the workshop a selection of workshop projects will be presented to the audience.

Visit the Mediamatic website for more information and registration. You can also mail workshops[at]mediamatic.nl or call Mediamatic (+31)0206389901.

This workshop is made possible with the support of the MEDIA PLUS PROGRAMME of the European Community.

Posted by jo at 03:35 AM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2005

?Blog?

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Extended Deadline: November 15

The Blog, one of the most spread forms of expression on the web, varying from personal diaries to community weblogs, professional knowledge exchange resources, political campaigns and more. In their different manifestations, blogs (moblogs, videoblogs, photoblogs, etc.), became a phenomenon influencing in many cases upon social and cultural areas: journalism, politics, alternative knowledge sources, literature, art, etc.

The ?Blog? project takes blog as art and as a stage for net artworks investigating the language, the aesthetics, the impacts and the practices of blogs, blogging and the blogosphere.

In this context, it’s worth mentioning the blog.art project –one of the first projects dealing with the notion of blog as art — operating for about a year and publishing blog-defined art projects.

?Blog? project acts (is envisioned to act) as a platform for an open discussion on the topic and as a pool for submitting works. no-org.net invites submissions of art projects making use of blog as a tool, subject, or both as well as texts investigating the blog-art interplay in a broad sense.

Selected texts and artworks will be exhibited (separately) on the no-org.net website. The launch of the project will be accompanied by an opening event and the discussion, that will get documented on the no-org.net website.

sala-manca.net | [h]earat shulaym |
no-org.net
pob 24169 jerusalem (91240)

Posted by jo at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)

Manuel Castells in conversation with

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Not A Cornfield artist Lauren Bon

Date: Friday November 11th, 2005; Time: 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM; Location: The Not A Cornfield project site, 1201 North Spring St, Los Angeles, CA, Downtown Cost: Free.

Wallis Annenberg Chair of USC'sof Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, Sociologist Manuel Castells is internationally renowned for his theory of the Network Society, which describes the spatial form of our time as the 'metropolitan region' - a constellation of multiple nuclear centers, settlements, populations, and activities that are held together as a unit by transportation and communication networks.

Stretching from Ventura to Tijuana, Los Angeles is the 'ultimate region'. A huge urbanized sprawl with many centers in which already extreme social, ethic and economic segregation is increasing and the real estate engine drives the city ever deeper into the desert, causing widespread environmental degradation as it goes.

In this contemporary context the need to develop new forms of livable high density becomes urgent. In particular, if cities are to be saved on behalf of citizens, then innovation will come from urban planners, architects, professionals and concerned citizens forming alliances that take a holistic approach to creating multiple meaningful social spaces all around the metro landscape.

In conversation with artist Lauren Bon - whose Not A Cornfield project reclaims a brownfield site for public use and restores meaning to the historic birthplace of LA - Professor Castells will discuss his groundbreaking analyses and thoughts regarding the state and direction of human experience in the Network Society. [blogged by marc tuters on USC Interactive Media Division Weblog]

Posted by jo at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

BUSY SIGNALS: TELEPHONIC ART IN MOTION

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Bring Your Camera Phones!

Pacific Film Archive presents: BUSY SIGNALS: TELEPHONIC ART IN MOTION A two-part series: Wed Nov 16 & Wed Nov 30.

Though classified as a communications device, the telephone really is an instrument of culture. The phone has always shaped the way people relate by collapsing distance, reinventing conversation, even questioning the notion of privacy. But in recent years, especially with the advent of the cell phone, this device has been at the hub of a lively and inventive commerce in data delivery, fashion, recreation, intercourse, and even art. Now we have miniaturized movies dropped into waiting receivers; camera phones uploading stills to Web storage; ringtones merchandised as personal branding; text messaging coming on like a poetry slam. As usual, artists have answered the call, wringing minimalist melody from polyphonics, disrupting the everyday with creative pranks, or simply investigating the meaning of messages from nowhere. Join us for two evenings of Busy Signals: toney performance, cellular trickery, and films about phones. We promise, not a single wrong number.

Wed Nov 16, 7:30, Rotary: Live Performance by Marisa Olson.

Andy Warhol's riotous 1973 quasi-TV show Phoney stars his Factory luminaries, while Christian Marclay's Telephones stars just about everyone famous as he pillages Hollywood films for a montage about the anxiety of human intercourse. Also, works from the British Pocket Shorts, and a live telephonic performance by Marisa Olson. Plus many surprises!

On both evenings, Benjamin Hill and Carrie Burgener from UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems will involve us in a projected mosaic using your camera phone images as raw material.

Wed Nov 30, 7:30, Touchtone: Live Performance by Jon Brumit.

Some filmmakers are closet phonephreaks, and tonight's program brings them
out of the phone booth: works by Eric Saks, Chris Sollars, Golan Levin, Lee Walton, and others. Composer Jon Brumit will conduct live telephonic musical auditions. Once again, bring your camera phones for a projected mosaic using your images.

The Pacific Film Archive theater is located at 2575 Bancroft Way, one block east of Telegraph Avenue, in Berkeley. for more info: 510.642.1412.

Steve Seid
Video Curator
Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94720-2250
510/642-5253

Posted by jo at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

HTTP Gallery

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Stanza: Abuse of the Public Domain

HTTP presents Abuse of the Public Domain, the first solo show of networked media art by Stanza--Private View Thursday 8th December 7-9pm; 9th December 2005- 23rd January 2006.

This exhibition features two large video projections, which use live real-time data from CCTV cameras sited in two cities, London and New York. Security tracking data is Stanza's chosen medium for these process-led artworks.

You are my subject uses data from a single fixed camera in New York, focusing on subjects as they pass below it. Authenticity [Trying to imagine the world from everyone elses’ perspective, all at once] draws its imagery from cameras all over London. Other works can be viewed in a web browser via the Internet and turn us all into voyeurs of eerie 'parallel realities'.

“CCTV systems are everywhere in the public domain. Millions of hours worth of data are recorded every day by these cameras. We are all unwitting bit part actors, in the filming of our own lives. Usually we cannot watch. The results are not collected for broadcast back to the public. Rather they are monitored, filtered, distributed and archived without our knowledge or permission. The city has millions of CCTV cameras. One can take the sounds and images off live web streams to offer them back to the public for new interpretations of the city. In essence the city of London can be imagined as the biggest TV station in existence.”

About Stanza: Stanza is a London-based artist, who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic sounds. His award winning online projects have been invited for exhibition in digital festivals around the world, and Stanza also travels extensively to present his net art, lecturing and giving performances of his audiovisual interactions. His works explore artistic and technical opportunities to enable new aesthetic perspectives, experiences and perceptions within the context of architecture, data spaces and online environments.

Awards: Videoformes Multimedia First prize France 2005, Netsa Dreamtime 2004, Art In Motion V.First prize USA 2004, Vidalife 6.0 first prize 2003, Fififestival Grand Prize France 2003, New Forms Net Art Prize Canada 2003, Fluxus Online first prize Brasil 2002, SeNef Online Grand Prix Korea 2002, Links first prize Porto 2001, Videobrasil Sao Paulo 2001 first prize, Cynet art 2000 first prize, Dresden.

For more information and images, please contact Stéphanie Delcroix, stephanie[at]furtherfield.org or 0207 700 7859. Open Friday to Sunday 12noon-5pm.

HTTP [House of Technologically Termed Praxis] is one of London's foremost galleries dedicated to showing net art, new media and sound art. HTTP was opened on the initiative of Furtherfield (http://www.furtherfield.org) in the vibrant and culturally diverse Green Lanes area of North London. HTTP works with a wide range of artists and audiences to explore the potential of current network technology and to promote distributed creativity. HTTP is supported by Arts Council of England. Furtherfield is an online platform for the creation, promotion and criticism of net art, new media and sound art. http://www.http.uk.net/

Getting to HTTP
Tube: Manor House
Buses: 341, 141
Train: Haringey Green Lanes.

Past Exhibitions at HTTP

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

November 10, 2005

Re: a new definition

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Definitions and Neutrality

"This discussion is starting to get interesting. I too agree with Florian and disagree with Olia that Olia's text is not as good as the texts Olia replaced. I also do not think Olia is keeping to Wikipedia's goal of "neutrality." In fact, many Wikipedia entries fail to achieve "neutrality." Perhaps as interesting, as a scholar I find Olia's position argumentative and the previous entries not argumentative and not "bad." Much of Olia's defense is argumentative, which is out of keeping with Wikipedia's stated goals. If I refer to Wikipedia in a published work, I would have no reason to expect the Wikipedia entry to change, and certainly not so dramatically, and certainly not on the authority of one person. Despite all this, THIS IS WHAT I LOVE ABOUT WIKIPEDIA. There *are* more and less neutral definitions in the world, but they are unstable and unreliable and likely to be overtaken by more opinionated advocates. The Britannica illusion of stable definitions is false and always has been false..." Re: a new definition posted by David Golumbia from gmane.culture.internet.nettime

"an interesting discussion starting up on the nettime list. interesting both in terms of 'definitions' of 'new media' and in terms of the usefulness or otherwise of wikipedia collaborative practices for definining current terminologies... http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0511/threads.html"--amc [relogged by amc on eyebeam] Olia Lialina's rewrite is here >>; and her original post is here >>

Posted by jo at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

CYNETart_05fragile

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9th International Festival for Computer-Based Art

The 9th International Festival for Computer-Based Art CYNETart_05fragile takes place from November 24-27, 2005 in the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden. Interactive dance pieces, electronic music, audio-visual concerts and a forum are presented on the three festival nights. One of the main events is the multimedia concert "Boxberg Sinfonie" for projection, orchestra and computer: A completely revised version of Fritz Lang's film "Metropolis" is accompanied by a symphony orchestra playing Bach and by a real-time remix.

The national multimedia youth competition MB21 is the youngest guest of the festival organised by Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau and The City of Dresden. The prize winning works are on display in the gallery of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden on the four festival days. All in all, CYNETart_05fragile presents five performances and different interactive installations in the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, in the Interaktiver Pavillon near Dresden's Kreuzkirche, in the event gallery ÑLíHoupì and in the Zoo of Dresden. One of them is a group of most unusual ballons flying around in the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum. Equipped with on-board electronics they are linked with each other and they react to the visitors.

Posted by jo at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Transmute Collective

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Intimate Transactions Between London and Greece

The Transmute Collective (Keith Armstrong (Dir.), Lisa O'Neill and Guy Webster) and their collaborators announce that Intimate Transactions (a networked interactive artwork) will be next shown simultaneously between the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Mall, London & BIOS (New Synthesis of Urban Culture), Athens, Greece. Date: 12 Nov - Wed 23 Nov 2005; 12 - 8pm UK GMT.

Intimate Transactions is an exciting new form of interactive installation that allows two people in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using their bodies. Each participant uses a physical interface called a Bodyshelf. By gently moving their bodies on this smart furniture they instigate Intimate Transactions, which influence an evolving world created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback.

Intimate Transactions was awarded an Honourable Mention in this year's Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive Arts Category. Transmute pay tribute to all of the artists, staff and partners involved in making this project possible over the past four years.

Look out for the forthcoming ACID book/dvd, edited by jillian Hamilton: Intimate Transactions: Art, Interaction and Exhibition within Distributed Network Environments. For more details email ITBook[at]embodiedmedia.com

We particularly thank our major partners for this showing: The Australasian CRC For Interaction Design, Arts Queensland, The Institute For contemporary Art, BIOS and the Australia Council New Media Arts Board. Keith and Guy will attend this event courtesy of Arts Queensland, the ICA and BIOS.

This project has been assisted by the Australasian CRC For Interaction Design (ACID), the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body & the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. Intimate Transactions was developed with support from the Performance Space Headpsace Residency Program.

Posted by jo at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2005

OKNO brussels

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Ambient Intelligence Round-Table

OKNO brussels ::: art and technology ::: round-table on the human/machine interactive experience; Monday, November 14, 2005 -- 8pm; streamed live. Participants: Pattie Maes [MIT, usa] in discussion with Maja Kuzmanovic [FoAM, be]. Disrupting accents by Daniel Franco, urban philosopher [be].

Pattie Maes will present the research projects of the Ambient Intelligence research group [MIT]. The goal of the Ambient Intelligence group is to radically rethink the human-machine interactive experience. By designing interfaces that are more immersive, more intelligent, and more interactive they are changing the human-machine relationship and creating systems that are more responsive to people's needs and actions, and that become true "accessories" for expanding people's minds.

Pattie Maes' sparring partners around the table are Maja Kuzmanovic [FoAM], and Daniel Franco [philosopher]. Together they will moderate the Q & A by technological artists towards whom this round-table discussion is addressed.

FoAM: is a laboratory for the propagation of lived experience, whose members are looking for processes, moments and situations in which experience can be freed from cultural and historical biases. This allows the participants to absorb fresh stimuli. In order to locate these experiences in engaging cultural and ecological contexts, they often work in non-institutionalised public spaces: from roof gardens to intimate living rooms, clubs and overgrown fortresses. FoAM's collaborators dwell most of the time in the murky spaces between the physical and digital, scientific and artistic, natural and technological worlds. They inhabit these spaces to research and develop responsive environments, active materials, generative media, culinary performances and other entangled forms of contemporary creative expression.

Pattie Maes is an associate professor in MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She founded and directs the Media Lab's Ambient Intelligence research group. Previously, she founded and ran the Software Agents group. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds bachelor's and PhD degrees in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Her areas of expertise are human-computer interaction, artifical life, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, and intelligence augmentation.

Maja Kuzmanovic, has completed the BA in Design Forecasting (HKU, nl) in 1996 and MA in Interactive Multimedia (University of Portsmouth) in 1997. After graduation, she collaborated on a range of interdisciplinary projects in research institutes around Europe, as well as an independent artist-researcher. Her research spanned novel forms of performance and multi-sensory storytelling and responsive media design for virtual and mixed reality. She founded FoAM as a cultural research department in Starlab in 2000. In 2001 FoAM became an independent, distributed entity with cells in Brussels and Amsterdam.

the discussion will be live-streamed on radio OKNO [monday november 14th/from 8pm] more info.

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koolmijnenkaai 30/34 quai aux charbonnages | brussels 1080 | belgium20 tram 18 [walvis] | Metro Graaf van Vlaanderen / Comte de Flandres20 okno is supported by the Ministry of the Flemisch Community and the VGC.

Posted by jo at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

Harvestworks

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Sensor Building with Miditron

SENSOR BUILDING WITH THE MIDITRON - w/ Eric Singer: Learn to create sensor interfaces to extend and control your Max/MSP/Jitter performance environment, or any other software that accepts MIDI data as controllers. Instead of building everything from scratch, students will work with Eric Singer's Miditron to start with sensors right away.

Eric Singer's MidiTron is a MIDI to real-world interface designed to simplify the process of creating sensor and robotics based electronic art projects. It is easily user configurable and provides 20 terminals of digital and analog inputs and outputs in any combination.

SATURDAY & SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17th/18th, 12-6pm.
The materials fee for the class includes the Miditron plus additional materials (sensors, cables, etc.), that the student will keep. If you own a Miditron already, the materials fee will be $25. Max/MSP knowledge is helpful, but not necessary.

8 hrs of labtime included.

$375/members, $435/non-members, plus $150 lab fee ($125/Miditron, $25/materials). Membership is $75/yr

Call Hans Tammen 212-431-1130 ext 13 in case you have questions, or to sign up.

Harvestworks is a nonprofit Digital Media Arts Center that provides resources for artists to learn digital tools and exhibit experimental work created with digital technologies. Our programs are made possible with funds from mediaThe foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, The Experimental TV Center, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the Aaron Copland Fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and the Rodney White Foundation.

HARVESTWORKS Digital Media Arts Center
596 Broadway, Suite 602 (at Houston St)
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-431-1130
http://www.harvestworks.org
mailto:info[at]harvestworks.org
Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleeker, W/R Prince

Posted by jo at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

Vivisector

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INTERVENTION IN THE SWEATING BODY

With Vivisector dance enters a new dimension in the latest collaboration between choreographer Chris Haring and cross-media artist Klaus Obermaier. Vivisector explores the physical and metaphorical possibilities of the human body, using projections to dissolve, alter and mutate the dancers' forms. Vivisector breaks the linearity of movement and in doing so shows the absurdity of momentum...Based on the video-technological concept of the moving body-projection that made D.A.V.E. an international hit, Vivisector now goes one step further: the exclusive concentration on video light and video projection produces a new stage aesthetic in which light, body, video and acoustic space form an unprecedented unity.

Tuesday 22nd November 8pm
Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham Tickets: £10/£7 concessions Box Office: (0115) 846 7777 www.lakesidearts.org.uk

Friday 25th November 8pm
The Junction, Cambridge Tickets: £10/£7 concessions Box Office: (01223) 511511 www.junction.co.uk

Sunday 27th November 8pm
Tickets: £6/£3.50 concessions Box Office: (01206) 500 900 www.colchesterartscentre.com in association with Essexdance

Artist Talk: Klaus Obermaier discusses his cross-disciplinary work Saturday 26th November 2pm The Junction, Cambridge Admission is free but due to limited capacity please call (01223) 511511 to confirm your place.

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

INFRActures

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Transcending the Sensory Perceptible

INFRActures is an exhibition project transcending the sensory perceptible at the convergences of sound art and architecture. Artists Edwin van der Heide, Cevdet Erek, mxHz.org and STEALTH.[u]ltd have been commissioned to create four new works which make tangible what is not registered by our senses within an urban environment, such as ultra- and infra-sonics, and different perceptions of time and spatiality. Cities as Rotterdam and Istanbul make up the source material and points of departure for the installations, which are interactive in character and allow for a participative and layered audiovisual experience.

* Edwin van der Heide: Sound/Light/Street * STEALTH.[u]ltd: Street/Appropriation/Struggle * Cevdet Erek: Avluda | In The Courtyard * mxHz.org: TICS [THIS INAUDIBLE CITY SOUNDS: Reading through Pamuk's Istanbul]

Date: Friday 2 to Sunday 18 December 2005
Curator: Nat Muller in collaboration with Stephen Kovats

INFRActures has been made possible with the support of ThuisKopie Fonds, Stichting Cultuurfonds van de Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten, VSBfonds and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Rotterdam.

TANGENT_FRACTURE (INFRActures vernissage)

Date: Thursday 1 December 2005, 17:00-19:30 hrs
Location: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam
Admission: free

The exhibition is inaugurated by an opening intervention of artist and architect Kyong Park, and framed by two live sound performances of sound artist Cevdet Erek and media artist mxHz.org, taking you beyond the boundaries of the audible. The INFRActures vernissage is the first in V2_'s new series of monthly TANGENTS live and interactive streamed events.

laurie halsey brown: beingthere.v2.r'dam.05

Date: Sunday 18 December 2005, 15:00-17:00 hrs
Location: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam
Admission: 5 euro (seating limited!)

Many Rotterdam architects tend to leave the city due to a shortage of local projects. Rotterdam profiles itself as a city of architecture but how does this image chime with everyday reality? Artist laurie halsey brown organizes during the finissage weekend of INFRActures a bus tour through the city that includes an onboard experimental documentary of local architects discussing the validity of the city’s slogan “The City of Architecture”, with stops at several sites built by local architects and access to a public intervention project placed throughout the city. The tour begins and ends at V2_

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media
Eendrachtsstraat 10, NL-3012 XL Rotterdam
PO Box 19049, NL-3001 BA Rotterdam, NL
Tel + 31 10 206 72 72 | Fax + 31 10 206 72 71
E-mail info AT v2.nl

Posted by jo at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

ORTPLAY@ORT

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Can I order my eggplant?

ORTPLAY@ORT (330 Ellery St., 1st + 2nd Floors), as a part of BAP (Bushwick Art Projects)--Sat. Nov. 12, 2005, approximately 4 - 11 p.m.

music and sound, installed, performs. dance improvises. space gets invested. a climate occurs. text is produced and pronounced. projects on screen, an instigation, an animation, fashion. play. two floors, a rooftop, nesting spaces like Russian dolls unfold against and into each other. live. work. play.

o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi) premiers a new region-specific installation/live performance, 'Can I order my eggplant?' (berenjena). She will explore Chinese take-out restaurants on her bike in her Bushwick neighbourhood, desperately looking for her favorite 'eggplant'!

join our txtmob! if you have a mobile phone which can receive text messages, you can get instant updates & secrets from ORTPLAY throughout its performance/salon hours.

Posted by jo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

The Kitchen

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Transparent Processes + Listen up!

November 9, 8pm @ The Kitchen, NYC; Curated by Nick Hallett: This evening of live visual music, expanded cinema, and nouveau psychedelia features work in which sound and image stem from the same source. Performers include Ray Sweeten and the collaborative groups LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), I Love You (Seth Kirby and Ana Matronic) and the duo of Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder. Avoiding digital technology, these artists create synesthetic lightshow environments by means of antique equipment, consumer electronics, and home-made instruments in ways that make evident the relationship between process and result.

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Listen up! Lecture as Performance: Coco Fusco and Bernar Venet; November 18 (Fri) 7pm @ The Kitchen, NYC; Curated by PERFORMA. Presented as part of the PERFORMA 05 Biennial--Since the artist Filippo Tomaso Marinetti created his Futurist “serate” in 1909, in which he ‘declaimed’ the Futurist manifesto, many artists have used the lecture format as a staging device to communicate radical ideas about art and politics directly to audiences. In Listen up! Lecture as Performance, PERFORMA responds to the widespread contemporary interest in transforming the lecture form into performance.

In addition to recreating a live conceptual art performance by Bernar Venet from 1968, and presenting a new work by Coco Fusco from 2005, the evening presents documentation of art historical precedents to the use of the lecture as performance by artists including Joseph Beuys, FT Marinetti, and Kurt Schwitters.

Venet’s Neutron emission from muon capture in Ca40, which was first presented at The Judson Church Theater in New York in 1968, will be re-worked as Astrophysics with High Energy Light. Coco Fusco’s A Room of One’s Own (2005) is a remarkable window onto the process of special training sessions for women to learn interrogation techniques. Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ leads Fusco to a training camp where she and five women undergo a course in interrogation, conducted by former U.S. military officers.

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

DOUBLE VISION:

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Evolutionary Patterns & the Lonely Owl (Mutation #1)

DOUBLE VISION presents Evolutionary Patterns and the Lonely Owl (Mutation #1)--When: November 19 [Sat] 7:30PM (doors close at 8:15PM); Cost: 5-10$ suggested donation; Where: MadHorse Loft, 2200 Adeline St. (Ste. 125), Oakland, CA 94607; Info: 510-535-2504.

Bay Area intermedia performance group DOUBLE VISION is presenting an evening of mutating dance, music, video, and installation. Audience members transmit genetic codes, play cryptic games, and witness the 21st Century debacle of the wise and mysterious owl. Interactive technology and old school human bodies fill in the void between neuron and neurosis. Come play!

Cast of artists include: Claire Barratt / Cilla Vee, Sean Clute, Amanda Crawford, Nick Fox-Gieg, Simran Gleason, Jessica Gomula, Dave Holton, Pauline Jennings, Jason B. Jones, Chris Kruzic, Geoff Kuffner, Amy Leonards, Amy Lewis, Peter Matthews, miss gawker & the tweeker, Amy Nielson, Patricia Svilik, Tim Thompson, Nicole Zvarik.

DOUBLE VISION is an intermedia collective of performers, musicians, dancers, and video-artists. Together, our group creates immersive environments utilizing unconventional spaces and transforms conventional spaces through unconventional means. By experimenting with different methods of collaboration through the adaptation of social systems, transvergence of scientific models, and mapping of algorithmic structures, DOUBLE VISION unifies multifaceted art forms and ideas.

DOUBLE VISION was formed in December, 2003 by Sean Clute and Pauline Jennings as an means to work with others interested in questioning and altering the landscape of dance, music and video. Their first major collaboration came in the form of Involution 2, a cross-country, NY and CA event held at 23 Windowz, Brooklyn, NY. Their interactive dance and animation work Disembodied Head has been performed at the Mills College Signal Flow Festival, WORKS/San Jose, SPARK (KQED), and will be televised on Meaning in the 21st Century, a national PBS broadcast. DOUBLE VISION commonly collaborates with other performers in and outside of the Bay Area, including video artist, Nick Fox-Gieg (LA), Lux (Amoeba Technology, NY), and Zemi-17 (Bali).

During its brief existence, DOUBLE VISION has curated and performed pieces in New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and the WWW.

Posted by jo at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

HER NOISE

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Sounds Investigate, Inspire, Uncover

Her Noise is an exhibition featuring five newly commissioned works by international artists whose practice shares the use of sound as a medium to investigate social relations, inspire action or uncover hidden soundscapes. New works by Kim Gordon with Jutta Koether; Emma Hedditch; Christina Kubisch; Kaffe Matthews and Hayley Newman all involve high levels of participation and are set in motion only when used by visitors or performers forming a base for events, live music and performances. [review]

In Reverse Karaoke [AuToMaTiC mUsIc TeNt] Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether aim to demystify the process of music making by creating a space in which audience members can record a track along with the pre-recorded sample of Gordon’s voice. The installation doubles as a performance space for a series of performances including Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Heather Leigh Murray, Christina Carter, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats).

In her installation Mini Flux Hayley Newman reproduces, in miniature, over a thousand objects used in the Sixties Fluxus movement's musical scores. The installation becomes a score in itself through Newman's invitation to guest artists to devise performances using the objects. Guest artists include The Bowman Brothers, Gluzberg and Bruce Gilbert.

Christina Kubisch has for many years been developing electrical walks which make audible the otherwise undetectable sound waves generated by the electromagnetic signals that surround us. Visitors are invited to navigate Kubisch’s maze of wires at South London Gallery, containing sounds from city walks using the specially designed headphones. Across town, visitors can pick up the headphones from the Goethe Institute to discover the hidden soundscape of the area according to Kubisch’s map.

In We’re Alive, Let’s Meet Emma Hedditch sets up a series of get togethers that will take the form of weekly meetings, workshops and talks with guests including film maker Vivienne Dick, Tobi Vail and Alison Wolfe (of riot grrrl bands: Bikini Kill and Bratmobile).

Hedditch has also collaborated with the show’s curators on the Her Noise Archive which combines a research area, listening posts and a viewing space filled with documentation of both historical and contemporary luminaries working in the field of sound installation and performance. The space contains books, fanzines, records, catalogues as well as exclusive on camera interviews and concert footage with artists including Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, Diamanda Galas, Marina Rosenfeld, Thurston Moore, Kevin Blechdom, Kembra Pfahler, Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Peaches and many others filmed in the process of developing Her Noise and aimed at forming a research archive which will become publicly accessible in London after the end of the Her Noise tour.

While lying on Kaffe Matthews Sonic Bed Laboratory the visitor becomes physically affected by a spectrum of sound vibrations shifting underneath and around as they lie. The 12 channel sound system immersed in the bed plays a specially constructed sound work, vibrating through and moving around the visitor. Sonic Bed Laboratory plays music to feel rather than just listen to.

This exhibition is the largest component of a HER NOISE programme of installations, events, performances and screenings by a wide network of artists whose practice involves the use of sound as a medium.

Curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset, Electra

10 NOV – 18 DEC 2005
South London Gallery
65 Peckham Road
London SE5 8UH
Tel: 020 7703 6120

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Her Noise catalogue published by Forma,
Editors: Lina Dzuverovic & Anne Hilde Neset
Artists: Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch, Kaffe Matthews, Hayley Newman, Marina Rosenfeld
Contributors: Jan Avgikos, Christoph Cox, Drew Daniel, Anna Dezeuze, Louise Gray, Alan Licht, Thurston Moore, Rob Young
This catalogue forms an invaluable resource, highlighting the often overlooked contribution of women artists to the development of genres as disparate as Fluxus, performance art, punk and sound based installation. Through a wealth of images, essays and interviews the catalogue explores how the energy of independent music communities and open-access composing techniques can reinvigorate the exhibition environment.
All texts in English / 230mm °— 170mm, 68 pages, soft cover, illustrated colour throughout. ISBN: 0-9548288-1-X
Distributed by Cornerhouse Publications
Published by Forma forma.org.uk

South London Gallery
65 Peckham Road
London SE5 8UH
http://www.southlondongallery.org
Tel: 020 7703 6120

Her Noise is curated by Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset and produced by Electra (http://www.electra-productions.com) in association with Forma (http://www.forma.org.uk). The project is funded by Arts Council England, PRSF, The Henry Moore Foundation, The Elephant Trust, Women In Music, Feminist Review Trust with additional support from The Goethe Institute and Tate Modern. Media partner: The Wire Magazine.

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

Technologized Bodies/Embodied Technologies

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LEF + Art Interactive/CAA06

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: JANUARY 1, 2006 DEADLINE; BOSTON CAA CONFERENCE at ART INTERACTIVE GALLERY; co-curated by Legier Biederman and Dave Burns.

Works on video that convey and/or solicit embodied subjects and/or embodied responses, and thus potentially rupture and/or problematize the notion that acts of viewing cohere us as the discrete and transcendent origins of vision and knowledge.

As the speed and intensity of technologically mediated modes of being have accelerated in recent years, technology not only has transformed our ways of doing things, it has conditioned our experience of ourselves and our relationship with others profoundly. It has transformed the attitudes and practices of creative expression as well as the criteria we utilize to evaluate art and media. Questions that arise: What are the specific intersections among visuality, embodiment, and the technological in the history of Western Art? What place do artists' or art viewers' bodies have in the violently revised nexuses of power relations that arise with shifts in technological processes of imaging, communicating, creating, identifying, and knowing?

How do artists perform their embodiment as resolutely technologized--technologized in such a way that their flesh (or the flesh of the bodies of knowledge conveyed or solicited) takes its texture and materiality from that of the screen/projection? How might the performance of technologized embodiment take its depth from the profundity suggested by the puncture-wound opening of the screen/projection in the dark space of the gallery?

So, in contrast to theories of new media or interpretations of technologies that insist on the obsolescence of the body--its replacement with the pure information of digital screens or digital codes activated on these screens--how do experimental media works explore bodies for their capacity to activate rather than suppress the object or subject produced/reproduced? When considering "bodies" in this context, why is the physical human body always referred to as the ideal example? Cannot a body potentially refer to any vessel of knowledge or ideas and languages constrained by, often superficially, designed parameters? This exhibition will attempt to rethink bodies (human and inhuman bodies, bodies of knowledge, of thought, of discourse, or history, etc) and technology (the tools used to make or do or practice, but also recalling the Greek techne, the acts themselves) in the widest sense of the terms: "Technologized Bodies/Embodied Technology" is a direct call to bodies--somebody, any body.

LEF is a working group of artists, scientists, engineers, scholars, educators and students that belong to the Leonardo Network. LEF develops joint actions between Leonardo and other scholarly organizations, including CAA, and promotes the work of artists and art historians in the art-science and art-technology interdisciplinary fields.

Send to:
LEF Exhibition/CAA 2006
Legier Biederman
1021 York St
San Francisco, 94110

Any Questions? Contact:
Legier Biederman, bieder[at]humnet.ucla.edu
Dave Burns, pixelate[at]pacbell.net

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

digital rattles

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sound/image=binary algorithms

digital rattles covers works from south american artists -an argentinean, member of the brazilian group influenza and a colombian resident in spain and a spaniard who belongs to the london group ix software. they all coincide in one thing, developing what it is now called soundtoys, which are, plainly speaking, sound and visual based objects for navigators to play with. it could be said that they are sound games, but the suggestive word 'rattle' would describe it even
better.

the digital rattle is a tool that shows very clearly how pointless it is to differentiate between sounds or images that are codified. both are represented by binary algorithms, a single line of ones and zeros. this shared identity and its impossible separation, allows artists to work with images and/or sounds. in fact some modern sound editors (and here i mean the software) have a strong visual content which facilitates professional and amateur composers with little computer knowledge, edit music without problems. it is the undefined nature of the binary sequences that makes all this possible. their design may switch on sounds, static or moving images or even the introduction of this catalogue.

in this sense, the sound-games are very interesting digital objects. they show the hybrid nature of the internet's art -and in the same way code.art. they prove that its crossbred condition can result in anything. with the digital rattles, particularly, the player stops being a mere navigator to become a modest composer of small ephemeral sound pieces.

a sample of the developments in web.art or software.art can be found in this exhibition. digital rattles can be executed without actually being connected to the net as in the case of lore (transformation l) by enrike hurtado and pegajoso by santiago ortiz.

with map by rafael marchetti, produced for influenza, has been developed under the metaphorical idea of simulating the surfing of the net to a fly over a topographic plane with several stops. the user may choose to land on a station and move a rattle, or continue flying over the surface in a way that depending on whether it is touched or not, sounds or not. moved by the desire to reach port it may stop and in doing so, fill the journey with a background rattling. thus, one produces a double enjoyment, landing and flying.

pegajoso by santiago ortiz reproduces a small rattle that turns on itself automatically but allows user interaction by a simple movement of the mouse. just like baby rattles themselves, pegajoso doesn't require much talent, and it can be handled by anyone. in this case, a nucleus is moving around a cube blindly with no reference, generating sound by simply crashing against the frame.

enrike hurtado together with ixi software, shows a work without internet connection, lore (transformation l) easy to navigate. it maintains a constant background hum that the prosumer -the consumer who thinks of himself as a semi-professional- can modify easily by selecting other frequencies on the computer screen. far off from other works, much closer to the logical editing of sound and its results, lore avoids altogether the hurdle of recording the user's composition, sticks itself to the making of sounds. anyone with a certain air of permanence but with a ephemeral spirit will enjoy it.

an exhibition that hopes to incite the game of sound editing, through visual interfaces that can be tickled by anyone.

artworks by enrike hurtado, rafael marchetti and santiago ortiz; curated by nilo casares; technical assistance-fotonoviembre 2005; organizing-fotonoviembre 2005; catalog text-nilo casares.

opening::[20h00m/08.11.2005] schedule::[08.11.2005)(15.12.2005] monday till friday::[11h00m a 13h00m)(18h00m a 21h00m] saturday::[11h00m a 13h00m)(18h00m a 20h00m].

place::círculo de bellas artes, de santa cruz de tenerife, castillo::45.34 922246496

rafael marchetti studied fine arts in buenos aires and has been studying programming since 1989 and web design since 1996. he has gained the third prize in the digital art category for the sergio motta cultural award at sao paulo, brazil and first prize in the sculpture category at the 3rd salon in buenos aires, argentina. in 2001 raquel rennó and rafael marchetti started their art experimentation and research on the digital medium called 'influenza', whose works were exhibited in galleries and art festivals throughout south america and europe influenza's last work, non_sensor was developed in 2004/2005 with the help of unesco and the institute cyprès-pratiques artistiques and sciences cognitives, run by professor louis bec.

santiago ortiz is an artist, mathematician and researcher for arts, science and space representation. he explores the building of common spaces for the different areas of knowledge. he also handles communication techniques, creativity, expression and representation where it is combined narrative and literature, digital space, space in architecture and expository space. he runs seminars and workshops in spain, portugal and south america. co-founder of blank, an art and digital culture magazine. it is part of the research and development team of medialabmadrid. he lives and works in cabo verde and madrid.

enrike hurtado mendieta: since 2001, enrike hurtado mendieta and thor magnusson have worked on ixi, an independent research project that explores the new ways of interacting with experimental electronic music. ixi has focused his research mainly on the development of music software and physical interfaces. the project has received some awards and has been apart of international festivals and conferences. the project's results can be found in their software package which can be down loaded completely free from their web and also in their teaching and personal work.

Posted by jo at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

Ultrasound 2005

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UK | Finnish Partition

Mon 21 - Sat 26 Nov 2005, The Media Centre and Bates Mill, Huddersfield, England. Ultrasound 2005 presents a diverse programme of live performances, installations, workshop and talks by UK and international artists working in new interdisciplinary ways across the interrelated fields of new media, contemporary electronic music, software production, new technologies and audiovisual performance.

We are pleased to announce the 'Finnish Partition' of the festival, programmed in collaboration with Helsinki based artist, organiser and curator Juha Huuskonen. The 'Finnish Partition' represents a cross-section of the new and emerging creative talent practising media arts in Finland today, supported by established names such as Pan Sonic.

The festival takes place at The Media Centre and Bates Mill, two contrasting venues. The Media Centre is home to over 60 creative industries enterprises, while Bates Mill is a traditional Mill complex just outside Huddersfield town centre. The performances at Bates Mill are located in the old 'Blending Shed' a 5,000 sq ft industrial space.

Ultrasound Outline Programme:

Live Performances

Pan Sonic [Finland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/pan-sonic.html

Grey Zone [Finland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/greyzone.html

Memnon [Finland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/memnon.html

Sue Costabile [USA]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/costabile.html

AGF [Germany]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/agf.html

Aymeric Mansoux [France]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/mansoux.html

O Samuli A [Finland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/oa.html

Marloes de Valk [Holland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/de-valk.html

Owl Project [UK]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/owl-project.html

Jaap Blonk [Holland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/blonk.html

Golan Levin [USA]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/levin.html

Zachary Lieberman [USA]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/lieberman.html

The World of PIKU [Finland]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/piku.html

Pardon Kimura [Japan]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/kimura.html

The Sancho Plan [UK]
http://www.ultrasound.ws/sancho-plan.html

Installations

Scrollbars by Jan Robert Leegte and Edo Paulus [Holland]

Kick Ass Kung-Fu by Perttu Hämäläinen, Mikko Lindholm, Ari Nykänen [Finland]

Workshop

Tiletoy: A Modular Electronic Game Prototype by Tuomo Tammenpää & Daniel Blackburn [Finland/UK]

Open software/open hardware: TileToy is an open project. Both the source code and the hardware will be made available via open licenses. The aim of TileToy is not just to create something that we ourselves can use to create interesting games and demos for, but as a platform that anyone can use to create unique content. Making the software open will allow people to create their own applications and games and feed these back into the community to spark further innovation. The open hardware will also allow people to make their own TileToys cheaply without paying a third party potentially leading to new projects that branch off to make new versions of TileToy based on the original hardware.

Further additions to the programme will be announced soon. Please visit the website or sign up to the electronic mailing list.

Contact: Tel: +44 [0]870 990 5007
Email: info[at]ultrasound.ws

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

November 07, 2005

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

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Video-Perfomance Summer Residency at UCLA

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS! ASIA PACIFIC PERFORMANCE EXCHANGE PROGRAM [APPEX] 2006--UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance (CIP), Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC); July to August 2006 - Los Angeles; Deadline for submissions: November 10, 2005.

The Asia Pacific Performance Exchange (APPEX) is an international artists residency program that promotes cross-cultural dialogue and interdisciplinary exploration; develops rigorous strategies for art making that reflect the nuances of cultural differences; and fosters new ways to create, combine, and interpret artistic expressions. THE PROGRAM APPEX is a six-week intensive residency. For five days a week, artists will engage in all-day master classes, studio workshops, experimentation, and collaborative projects. On weekends and evenings, participants will be introduced to the vibrant arts and culture context of the host city through specially planned field trips and concerts. Each Fellow will be provided with travel expenses, shared accommodations, and meals for the duration of the residency.

WHO SHOULD APPLY Traditional and contemporary performing artists from Asia and the United States are invited to apply. Special care will be given in the selection process to ensure a balance across disciplines. Artists who are active in the community as educators, artistic directors, and cultural workers are encouraged to apply. APPEX 2006 is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Ford Foundation.

UCLA CENTER FOR INTERCULTURAL PERFORMANCE (CIP), Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC), Glorya Kaufman Hall 120 Westwood Plaza, Ste 188 Los Angeles, CA 90095 ph: 1-310-206-1335; fax: 1-310-825-5152 cip[at]arts.ucla.edu.

Posted by jo at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

DiY SURVIVAL HANDBOOK

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Do It Yourself Survival

Do it yourself survival is a collection of essays, tips and case studies collated from an online call for participation by C6. The eclectic mix presented within these pages shows the breadth and current diversity of art/activism practice today from around the world. Whether that is creating wireless networks, pissing on national monuments or building cardboard friends, it is certain that these submissions show that practitioners are taking their work to new spaces and audiences, redefining, through the engagement with the community, what we have considered to be ‘art’.

Have you ever wanted to stop annoying mobile phone conversations encroaching on your space? Or to learn how to turn discarded computers into a running network? Or to set up your own street television? Or even how to discover how to fund your art projects with unheard of strategies? Now you have the chance to learn how!

DiY SURVIVAL is a compilation of cutting edge strategies, methods and techniques of DIY art, delivering a wide range of practices, actions, events, enterprises and issues which all have to do with the art of DIY, with forms of media subversion and the intelligent sabotage of cultural markets.

DiY SURVIVAL HANDBOOK delivers a mix of Theory, Case Studies and "How To..." whose aim is to circulate radical knowledge, to disseminate practical know-hows and to promote collective awareness against the ego-trip of The Artist.

Among the topics: pissing on monument as form of urban intervention; how to create a wireless node; mobile art gallery; Strategies of audience engagement; techniques of mobile phones hijacking; the creation of subversion in the supermarket; brandalism and street art; Trashware; street Television; collaboration as art practice, plus essays on avant gardes, Media Pop Art, net art, the hyperconnected multitude, teaching cultural activism and much more.

DIY SURVIVAL, a snapshot of the DIY art slash activism field, an instant book which photographs individual and collective realities involved in redesigning the tactics of DIY art around the globe.

Contributors:

Anna Banana, bluloop, bravenewbrum, Gordon Brown, C6, Ruth Catlow, CCTV Nuts, Hernani Dimantas, Eric Doeringer, Ryan Griffis, The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, International Union of Free-Thinkers, HACKLAB_pg, Tsila Hassine, Amanda Janis, Loca, Luna Nera, Motherboard, Nonna Papera, Gabor Papp & Ricardo Contreras, Robert Praxmarer, Leonardo Ramos, slavina feat ctrl C+ ctrl V, Truck art, The vacuum cleaner, Marcus Verhagen, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga

Printed on Demand by www.lightningsource.com in the Uk and USA. [via netbehaviour]

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2005

The Air Around

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Invitation to Air Your Voice

Rajivan.Ayyappan invites you to contribute to his sound installation--The Air Around--from your geographical location.

"The Air Around is a radio/telephonic installation. It's made of an FM network that receives sounds through telephones—mobile, landline or internet phones—from around the world and integrates them into a soundscape. The installation has a central computer with a list of participants and their phone numbers. It would dial a number, remain open to engage the participant, hang up after a period of time, start another number and so on. These interactions would be transmitted to the The Air Around installation site.

The central theme of The Air Around is this: Access a whole lot of people who are in different locations and time zones through the internet and integrate them, live, into the new context of a synthesized soundscape installation. Our plan is to have a list where as many people are ready to take the call.

Therefore I want you to be in The Air Around's list to receive a call from the installation. What I would like to have from you is a 30 sec to 3 or 4 minutes of sound event that are voiced, played back or performed online by you. There are no rules for what you must do. Strictly no rules. You can just pick up the phone, identify your number or name and behave as if you have a microphone in hand. Your interaction with the call will be one of the sound events in the installation. It will be transmitted at The Air Around site.

The Air Around installation will be active for 3 days, 3:00pm to 6:00pm (India. Standard time zone: UTC/GMT +5:30 hours) starting 14th November and ending on 16th November 2005.

If you are keen tell us the dates & times when it would be possible to call you. The call will be made from the installation, to your land line or mobile. You will not be charged with any phone call rates. It will be paid by The Air Around project. Please mail me for clarifications and planning. I could send you more details regarding the procedure. Love to hear from you." Rajivan.Ayyappan rajivansa[at]hotmail.com

The installation is a part of World-Information City conference, organised by Waag Society (Amsterdam), Institute for New Culture Technologies (Vienna), Sarai CSDS (Delhi), Mahiti and Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore). [Related]

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

xxxxx

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Atomic Culture Within Radically Externalised Computation

xxxxx call for papers, texts and spoken word recordings expanding the thematics of xxxxx and extending towards the performative; xxxxx call for related demonstrations and screening material such as documentation or short film/video; xxxxx call for live audio performance; xxxxx call for actions, outdoor events, workshops.

xxxxx will exercise rigorous development of the concerns of the post_crash event [London 2005] centering on speech, screening and audio performance at the ICA London and with related subevents in East London during March 2006.

xxxxx exposes a radical new space for software/computation and examines links to theories of endodata, holographic programming and auto-destructive art by way of the absolute destruction embedded within the history of computation, and furthers the expansive address of computation to the current universe; atomic culture within radically externalised computation, outside the observed system.

Papers will broach performance issues with finegrained input from participants. Performances will advance the collision of theory with practice within a third delineated space, again with an emphasis on constructivist noise, audible systematics and process, destruction. Collaboration is the new order of the day with works produced by chunked interdisciplanarians.

In this instance xxxxx builds from multiple components and sources, varying modes of revelation. The format of parallel performances/presentations with screenings will disinter xxxxx's rich thematics across a range of spaces. Further exterior distributed xxxxx ad-hoc subevents [such as walks, talks, and workshops] will be programmed around the main event throughout March 2005.

xxxxx the sign of the double integral
xxxxx substance and software
xxxxx final revelations for a holographic binding OS [VALIS]
xxxxx melancholia, [auto] destruction and m
xxxxx supreme abstraction + machinic representation
xxxxx the computational revolution in art
xxxxx contemporary monadology
xxxxx the executable's song
crash the game of life and los alamos trinity site

All submissions for projects, proposals or papers should be indicated by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in standard protocol, emailed to xxxxx[at]1010.co.uk by 20th December 2005.

Posted by jo at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

CodeZebra: Sifting Time, Shifting Space

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An Exhibition from the CodeZebra Archive

Code Zebra: Sifting Time, Shifting Space is an exhibition, panel discussion and fashion/costume show taking place in Toronto, Canada from November 5-26, 2006.

CodeZebra is a collaborative project led by Sara Diamond. CodeZebra draws upon debates about the relationship between art and science, the behaviors and characteristics of the inhabitants of those disciplines to create a series of provocations. CodeZebra includes spoken word and dance performances, club nights, games, workshops, and software development. In 2003 Diamond locked up pairs of artists and scientists in Habituation Cages for 24-hour periods and asked to discover new inventions, art works and concepts while real time video streams, documentary footage and online chats captured their every move. Such events and processes are captured in DVD form and on the CodeZebra website and are the core of this exhibition. CodeZebra OS software uses data visualization to provide analysis of dialogue and conversation taking place on the Internet. Responsive garments and costumes of CodeZebra bring communication, display and social camouflage back to the body. [Related]

Exhibition: November 5-26, 2005; WARC Gallery Co-presented by the Goethe-Institut, 401 Richmond St.W. Suite 122 Toronto, Ontario 416 977-0097. Presentation of Code Zebra curated by Nina Czegledy. Opening--Saturday November 5th, 5:00 pm; Artist's Walk through followed by reception.

Panel Discussion:

Saturday November 26, 3-5 pm; Goethe-Institut, Knowelt Hall, 163 King St. W. Toronto, Ontario 416 593 5257: Sara Diamond, Ontario College of Art & Design; Dr. John Dubinski, University of Toronto, Dr. Markopoulo-Kalamara, Perimeter Institute; Andy Patton, Artist; Co-moderators Sara Diamond and Nina Czegledy.

This panel of artists, scientists and curators considers the ways that current questions of space/time have opened new parameters in scientific research, visualization, popular culture and art and curatorial practice. The panellists will discuss their discoveries and reflect on the ways that art and science provides new insights into the operations of space and time whether at the universal or human scale.

Sara Diamond is an artist and researcher. She will frame the panel discussion and discuss her own work. In 2003 CodeZebra included a series of twenty-four hour Habituation Cages in which artists and scientists were locked up together and asked to invent new processes or products. Over the twenty-four hours time became a malleable medium, raising questions about linear, parallel and simultaneous forms of time and space, although constrained, became limitless.

Dr. John Joseph Dubinski mixes an award-winning career in astronomy with his work as a visualization and simulation scientist, studying problems of galaxy interactions and cosmology. He teaches and researches in the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Physics in Toronto. He is currently developing a current project Gravitas, a synthesis of art and science.

Dr. Markopoulou-Kalamara is a broadly talented researcher who recently shared First Prize in the Young Researchers competition at the Ultimate Reality Symposium in Princeton, New Jersey and is currently at the Perimeter Institute. Her research interests include Pre Quantum gravity, quantum cosmology, and discrete structure of space, causality, string theory, topological quantum field theory, quantum computing, category theory and logic.

Andy Patton is an artist and curator who recently assembled the exhibition Dimensionality. It takes the assumption of perspective coming to an end, or mutating under new environmental pressures -video games, computer animation, 3-D computer models- as its generative trope. Artists in the show declare an involvement with information-a space that's only convincing if it streams rapidly by, before its too-generalized surfaces can be inspected. As Patton states, "Star Trek was wrong: space is the initial frontier."

Nina Czegledy, media artist, curator and writer, has collaborated on international projects, produced digital works and has lead and participated in workshops, forums and festivals world-wide. Resonance, Digitized Bodies and the Aurora projects reflect her art&science interest. She exhibited as part of ICOLS and the Girls and Guns Collective and curated over 35 media programs presented internationally. Her academic lectures lead to numerous publications. Czegledy is the president of Critical Media, Senior Fellow of KMDI, University of Toronto, member of LEA auhors and Leonardo SpaceArt Network. A key advisor to the UNESCO DigiArts Portal and the current Chair of the Inter Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA).

CodeZebra Fashion and Costume Show, the Closing Party:

CodeZebra Fashion and Costume Show, the Closing Party--Saturday November 26 6 pm, WARC Gallery, 401 Richmond St. W. Suite 122 Toronto, Ontario 416 977-0097.

Put on your spots and stripes and let the fur fly! Join us for a thematic closing cocktail party where models fluff and preen in samples of responsive garments and costumes from the CodeZebra collection.

Sara Diamond Biography: Sara Diamond is an artist, researcher and educator who was born in NYC. Her work as a video and installation artist began in the early 1980s and investigated problems of social history and memory. It resides in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Canada. She is currently a software and experience designer. She writes extensively on the history and practice of media art. Diamond led Media and Visual Arts and created the Banff New Media Institute at The Banff Centre. She has moved recently to Toronto, to become the President of the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Posted by jo at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2005

idades

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Virtual Ball Game

idades--by Antonio Urquijo de Simón, Carolina Padilla Villarraga, Daniel Desiderio Páez Castillo, Jordi Puig Vilà and Philip Morris--is a communication network of installations placed in transit spaces. In each of them, a spectator can recognize his or her simulated silhouette projected onto a screen and discover that his or her movements effect the trajectory of a virtual ball that bounces as it touches the edges of the silhouette. This triggers a game played by the body of the spectator, along with other passersby who enter the visual field of the camera.

The ball acts as an "interconnection device" which, as it collides virtually with the body of the players, promotes in them a corporal response to keep it in movement. The installation includes a camera used as a sensor, a computer connected to the camera that cuts the image of the people, a projector that displays the game, situated behind the interaction zone, and a screen, displayed in such a way as to ensure the normal circulation of people. Showing at the FILE Festival in São Paulo, through November 20, 2006. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not]

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

Electronic Literature Collection

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Call for Works

The Electronic Literature Organization seeks submissions for the first Electronic Literature Collection. We invite the submission of literary works that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the computer. Works will be accepted until January 31, 2006. Up to three works per author will be considered.

The Electronic Literature Collection will be an annual publication of current and older electronic literature in a form suitable for individual, public library, and classroom use. The publication will be made available both online, where it will be available for download for free, and as a packaged, cross-platform CD-ROM, in a case appropriate for library processing, marking, and distribution. The contents of the Collection will be offered under a Creative Commons license so that libraries and educational institutions will be allowed to duplicate and install works and individuals will be free to share the disc with others.

The editorial collective for this first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection, to be published in 2006, is:

N. Katherine Hayles
Nick Montfort
Scott Rettberg
Stephanie Strickland

This collective will review the submitted work and select pieces for the Collection.

The editorial collectives for each volume will be chosen by the Electronic Literature Organization’s board of directors. The tentative editorial collective for the second Collection, to be published in 2007, includes Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Marjorie C. Luesebrink, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Literary quality will be the chief criterion for selection of works. Other aspects considered will include innovative use of electronic techniques, quality and navigability of interface, and adequate representation of the diverse forms of electronic literature in the collection as a whole.

For the first Collection, the collective will consider works up to 50 MB in size, uncompressed. Works submitted should function on both Macintosh OS X (10.4) and Windows XP. Works should function without requiring users to purchase or install additional software. Submissions may require software that is typically pre-installed on contemporary computers, such as a web browser, and are allowed to use the current versions of the most common plugins.

To have a work considered, all the authors of the work must agree that if their work is published in the Collection, they will license it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License, which will permit others to copy and freely redistribute the work, provided the work is attributed to its authors, that it is redistributed non-commercially, and that it is not used in the creation of derivative works. No other limitation is made regarding the author’s use of any work submitted or accepted.

To submit a work:

1. Prepare a plain text file with the following information:
* The title of the work.
* The names and email addresses of all authors and contributors of the work.
* The URL where you are going to make your .zip file available for us to download. The editorial collective will not publish the address of this file.
* A short description of the work — less than 200 words in length.
* Any instructions required to operate the work.
* The date the work was first distributed or published, or “unpublished” if it has not yet been made available to the public.
2. Prepare a .zip archive including the work in its entirety. Include the text file from step (1) at the top level of this archive, and name it “submisson.txt”.
3. Upload the .zip file to a web server so that it is available at the specified location.
4. Place all of the text in the “submisson.txt” file in the body of an email and send it to collection[at]eliterature.org with the name of the piece being submitted included in the subject line.

The Electronic Literature Collection is supported by institutional partners including the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, ELINOR: Electronic Literature in the Nordic Countries, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, and The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.

Posted by jo at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Lynn Hershman

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Sci-Femme Retrospective

In the early-1980s, American artist Lynn Hershman developed the first interactive video art disk, which featured Lorna, an indecisive agoraphobe living a 'remote control life.' Viewers navigated the thirty-six chapters encapsulating Lorna's seventeen minutes on film to create personalized stories. Now this and other formative cyberfeminist works by Hershman are on view in a touring retrospective opening November 5, at Seattle's Henry Art Gallery. Hershmanlandia surveys thirty-five years of new media art, film, and video work. Besides working with digital avatars and surveillance technologies, Hershman has crossed over into the realm of feature filmmaking with two movies critics dubbed 'feminist science fiction.' Starring iconic actress Tilda Swinton, these experimental comedies revolve around themes of artificial intelligence, cloning, and virtual identity. Recently, Hershman has bridged the gap between her media art and film by translating a character from her 'Teknolust' into the web-based persona, Agent Ruby. This sensitive avatar verbally responds to users' typed queries, so come with questions prepared. - Matt Wolf, Net Art News, Rhizome.org

Posted by jo at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2005

VIDA 8.0

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Art & Artificial Life International Competition

FIRST PRIZE (10.000 euros): AP0201, Martin Howse, Jonathan Kemp; U.K.: The desert of Southern California is a surreal wasteland of military bombing ranges and toxic waste, beautiful vistas and endangered species, and now three peculiar artificial life entities. UK Artists Martin Howse and Jonathan Kemp built these stark, semi-official looking devices at a research station run by the Center for Land Use Interpretation. In this arid landscape, Howse and Kemp hacked out what might be confused for remote meteorological stations, but are actually far more ambiguous devices. They harvest and store solar power, communicate with each other through wireless, listen to military jets, birds, and the wind, and constantly modify their own code. Their small computer displays tells us nothing -- we have no way of entering their processing or conversation. They are functionally inscrutable, while nonetheless communicating a sort of technical authority. While their location is available as GPS coordinates it's hard to imagine what one would gain by visiting them, and knowing the American Southwest they would probably be peppered with bullet holes anyway. Quixotic as they appear, they nonetheless present a challenge to our self-importance, as oblivious to our curiosity as are the desert tortoises or cacti that share their space.

SECOND PRIZE (7.000 euros): LIVEFORM:TELEKINETICS (LF:TK)--Michelle Teran & Jeff Mann, Germany/Canada: Corkscrews whirl and spin, toasters with arms made from knives and forks wave rhythmically in the air, tea-strainers open and close their mouths in harmonic accompaniment. A joyful gathering of everyday kitchen equipment, appear to dance together to the beat of the music. But on the surface what looks like just 'too much' happiness and fun becomes sobering. It is disturbing to realise how easily a whole value system which promotes functionality, seamless productivity and efficiency, from the world of business communications machinery has been absorbed and accepted as the 'normal' tools, behaviours and etiquette for network communications within our personal and social lives. LiveForm:Telekinetics clearly shows us how our communications with the people we care for and love are being limited by the tools we have uncritically accepted. The enchanted objects celebrate through the social mediums of music and play, new communication languages, new networked social experiences, and the creative social processes in the production of the objects themselves, reminding us what it is we have been missing all this time.

More about the awards >>

Posted by jo at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2005

sisterO mauro-flude

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All Of Us (girls) Have Been Dead For So Long...

A girl pays homage to damned but beautiful women with bad habits & links these to myths having survived in sagas & fairy tales. She undertakes a journey into the land of the dead in order to become free. She loves the land of the dead. It has as a kind of opiate oblivion beauty, but she resists death. She refuses death on behalf of all the dead girls and also rages at the emptiness of life. Surviving in life despite its inadequacies and infuriating restrictions. She has returned with a powerful force, back into the land of the living. Survives as a fugitive, eluding the authorities that would attempt to transform her into death again.

Wednesday Nov. 16: premiere at 20h30; Thursday Nov. 17: performance ar 20h30; Melkweg Theatre, Lijnbaansgracht 234A, Amsterdam; Reservations: 020 531 8181. Price: 8/7euros. Related website; Images.

Concept/Performance/A/V: Nancy Mauro-Flude
Text: Kathy Acker - extracts from Novel 'Pussy King of the Pirates'
Sound: Lisa Gerrad, Golden Retriever, curseovdialect, The Gits
Dramaturgical Advice: Edit Kaldor
Choreographic Advice: Rose Akras
Technical & Artistic Support: Duro Toomato, Linda Dement, Kristina Anderson, Fiona Tan.
Production Manager: Alexander Godschalk
Thankyou: Theatre Platform Pick Up, DasArts, Pete Zwart Media

Posted by jo at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

DATA Browser

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The Truth About Networks

The Truth About Networks: Between the total hell of networked, salaried labor and the promises of the commons by Trebor Scholz

In short succession the first two in a series of publications called DATA Browser were just released. Both start out with historical texts to search for effective contemporary models of cultural production that merge socio-technological with artistic critique. 'DATA browser 01' takes Theodor Adorno's and Max Horkheimer's notion of the culture industry (1944) as a departing point. 'DATA browser 02' links to Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Author as Producer' (1934). Let's start with Brian Holmes' essay 'The Flexible Personality,' which contributes a rare meditation on today's network society and sketches out an intellectual history of anti-systemic movements that becomes the critical backdrop for both volumes of 'DATA browser.' Here, the Paris-based art critic, activist, and translator Holmes leads us into a social landscape of total network hell.Together with the social theorist Maurizio Lazzarato, Holmes is not on board when it comes to the techno-utopian celebration of the networked life style. Lazzarato thinks that new networked techniques are even more totalitarian than the assembly line.

Brian Holmes includes a reference to Adorno's notion of the authoritarian personality (1950), which is defined by its rigid conventionalism, submission to authority, opposition to everything subjective, stereotypy, an emphasis on power and toughness, destructiveness and cynicism, and an exaggerated concern with sexual scandal. Holmes criticism of networked labor is sharp - he argues that distributed, casualized labor is based on the ruthless pleasure of exploitation and soft coercion that the laptop as portable instrument of control affords. The Italian philosopher Paolo Virno places questions about idleness, leisure and the refusal to work at the center of the discussion about contemporary production.

Brian Holmes points to the 'de-localized' production of the 'networker' or 'connectivist' that helps today's firms to eradicate social programs. In 'flexible capitalism' networked, salaried labor can be easily monitored and leads to ever more surplus that can be extracted from the laborer to the rhythm of the mouse click. Holmes uses the term 'prosumer' for a consumer who becomes an amateur producer within the networked enterprise. According to Holmes the networker as satisfied individualist and hyperactive single is always ready to jump and take advantage of every opportunity and is left unmoved by all the data mining and acceleration of consumption. In his essay 'The Producer as Power User' Pit Schultz, who describes himself as 'social media architect' also talks about the marketing term of the prosumer and introduces the 'power user' (neither amateur nor professional). Dependent on the participation in the global communication apparatus everyone is a power user. According to Schultz, the workplace becomes a state of mind for the power user aiming for total productivity. The power user comes in different degrees of machine addiction and is an advanced user with administration and customization skills. Her unpaid labor mainly pays off through the social reputation economy created from social capital gained from contributions to the gift economy of the public domain. The power user follows the 'I post therefore I am' so that more links go to and from her name and URL. And when she publishes in books and journals, she references her ephemeral online materials. The power user produces ever more redundant work that inevitably Leads to radical mediocrity and 'panic publishing.' Power users love free content and are passionate about the growing open archives.

Other 'DATA browser' essays add a variety of examples that shed light on the hopeful potentials of network culture and open environments. The texts in these two volumes respond to the civic disengagement and decline of social Connectedness and look for ways to re-connect us with the anti-systemic oppositional culture of the sixties. How can new forms of solidarity emerge and help us to create a better society based on the desire for equality? How can collective projects, and communicative activism serve to foster distributed creativity, peer relations, openness and collaboration? Which case studies can be presented that dismount criticism of blind idealism when it comes to the commons? Today's culture-activists from Delhi and Pittsburgh to London operate through technology and networks that have the ability to reconfigure power relations through the creation of knowledge pools, free wireless networks, and sharing of information in open archives. Browsing through the texts in Db 01/02 theoretical threads lead from Paolo Virno's 'A Grammar of the Multitude,' and Manuel Castells' 'Rise of the Network Society,' to Michael Hardt, Richard Barbrook, Cornelius Castoriadis, Tiziana Terranova, and Naomi Klein. It is clear from these examples that theory here is not groomed in the academic observatory but conceived of as tool that is linked to practice. In fact, reading these texts I felt like going through a transcript of a round table discussion in the sense that the authors have much common theoretical ground.

In these two volumes theory, art and political action inform each other rather than being conflated with one another. While Holmes and Schultz demonstrate new typologies of the networked laborer, the Delhi-based group of media practioners 'Raqs Media Collective' points to an alternative reality. In their essay 'X Notes on Practice' the group points to Argentinean workers, who faced with a failed money economy, developed their own exchange system based on self-regulation and free interchange outside of the circuit desired by capital.

Within the cooperation commons people create and distribute content. This overwhelms traditional companies that cannot match the massive amount of free content created by a multitude of user communities. These cultural reservoirs and much of cooperation-enhancing technologies allow the like-minded to connect and share knowledge. This has the potential to undermine the content hegemonies of universities, museums, companies, and the military.

Knowledge pools put in place unorthodox knowledge economies. They are communal, exchange spaces that allow anyone to re-use/share and edit content. Users move away from systems of production and distribution that are based on market relations. The London-based writer, artist and curator Armin Medosch emphasizes that the most important property of the internet is its capacity to promote the creation of social communities. He reminds us of the slogan 'Under the cobblestones, the beach!' which was used during the imaginative student protests in 1968. As example for the formation of groups in the internet Medosch describes the ad hoc mode with which the democratic globalization movement approaches spontaneous organization and mobilization. Medosch makes us also aware of the opportunities afforded by ubiquitous, unwired networks such as the free wireless network groups Consume.net in London, Freifunk.net in Berlin and Funkfeuer.at in Vienna, that all follow a decentralized, self-organizing network model. In a similar search of new modes of cultural production The Institute for Applied Autonomy and The Bureau for Inverse Technology both infiltrate and critique the culture of engineering from the inside.

This series of "DATA browser" books is published by Autonomedia in New York. Its overall goal is to link emerging cultural practices to the socio-historical context out of which they evolved. Data that are sent through the physical networks of the internet are mostly interfaced through a screen and interpreted by a browser. Browsers such as Firefox display these data packages that they receive from hosting servers. In a similar manner, this series of publications frames and interprets cultural practices that bring together social, technological, and artistic critique. In a third volume that will come out early 2006, the editors will follow the conference 'Curating, Immateriality, Systems' at TATE Modern (London, June/July 2005). This event investigated a range of positions currently occupied by curators in the context of digital media and immaterial production. This upcoming volume 'Curating Immateriality' will examine ways in which new media artworks are curated taking into account their ephemeral and collaborative nature. Theory in all volumes of 'DATA browser' is not seen as a final word on the topics that it engages - with most essays adding to a collaborative flow of ideas about networking, and current modes of cultural production. http://www.data-browser.net

ECONOMISING CULTURE: ON THE (DIGITAL) CULTURE INDUSTRY
edited by Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa & Anya Lewin

contributors: Carbon Defense League & Conglomco Media Conglomeration | Adam Chmielewski | Jordan Crandall | Gameboyzz Orchestra | Marina Grzinic | Brian Holmes | Margarete Jahrmann | Esther Leslie | Marysia Lewandowska & Neil Cummings |Armin Medosch | Julian Priest & James Stevens | Raqs Media Collective | Mirko Tobias Sch…fer | Jeremy Valentine | The Yes Men Published by Autonomedia (DATA browser 01) 2004, ISBN 1-57027-168-2, 256pp.

ENGINEERING CULTURE: ON 'THE AUTHOR AS (DIGITAL) PRODUCER'
edited by Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa

contributors: The Institute for Applied Autonomy | Josephine Berry Slater | William Bowles | Bureau of Inverse Technology | Nick Dyer-Witheford | etoy | Matthew Fuller | George Grinsted | Harwood | Jaromil | Armin Medosch | Raqs Media Collective | Redundant Technology Initiative | Pit Schultz Published by Autonomedia (DATA browser 02) 2005, ISBN 1-57027-170-4, 240pp.

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

Res Publica

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netPublics

During 2005-2006, The Annenberg Center for Communication at The University of Southern California is sponsoring a research group on “Networked Publics."

netPublics explores the roles of audiences, activists, citizens, and producers in maturing networked media ecologies. These changes include but are not limited to the changing relationship between production and consumption, viral and peer-to-peer distribution, and networked lateral political mobilization. Although the Internet is clearly a central player, we consider media forms both old and new as part of a much broader media ecology undergoing profound social, technical, and cultural transformation.

Posted by michelle at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

Free Soil's F.R.U.I.T.

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Exploring your City and its Connection to the World via Fruit!

Join an online demonstration. Your words will be part of a two year traveling exhibition. Remember to fill out the survey and add your urban plan dreams!! F.R.U.I.T. takes up the challenge of elevating the ecological knowledge of consumers and encouraging a way of life that is friendly to the environment. We want consumers to be conscious of the entire life of a product, from production to utilization, and not just what they see in the stores. Consumers must be aware that every phase of a product's life influences the environment and ourselves.

Free Soil has produced a run of F.R.U.I.T wrappers, a website, and a traveling installation as part of an initiative to inform people about alternative food systems and local food movements. The wrappers are disseminated throughout the food chain by piggybacking on oranges. Information will be carried through the food system and into the hands of consumers. The wrapper holds information on a variety of aspects concerning food movements, transport and urban farming. Get your daily dose!

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Storytelling Festival

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Scape the Hood

Just wanted to let everyone know about the 8th annual Digital Storytelling Festival in San Francisco Oct 7-10 hosted by KQED, public broadcasting. There will be a large locative media presence. The opening night party is the launch of the 'Scape the Hood mediascape, Using GPS-enabled HP iPAQs and software developed by HP Labs, participants will walk the streets and listen to the neighborhood stories, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells from both the physical and virtual worlds.

Peel back the layers of the neighborhood and explore narrative archeology with us. Hear the stories of Project Artaud, once the American Can Company, now transformed into a dynamic live/work space for artists. Experience the Mission Village Market, a bustling flea market on Saturday, but just a ghost of itself on Sunday. Transport to the environs long since erased by the overlay of the city.

Join us for food, fun and the release of the Scape the Hood mediascape, an experiment that combines storytelling and emerging technology by overlaying a digital landscape on the physical world.

The Digital Storytelling festival also includes a session on Situated Storytelling with panelists Nick West, Hana Iverson, Jo Reid, as well as a gaming session discussing place-based tools and techniques.

For more information on the mediascape: lrule[at]kqed.org

Leslie Rule
Project Supervisor
Digital Storytelling Initiative
KQED, Public Broadcasting, San Francisco
(cel) 415-225-1925
New website is up: www.kqed.org/dsi

Posted by jo at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

NODE.London

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E:vent Collaborative Residency

NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed Events. London] is a season committed to building infrastructure and raising visibility of media arts practice in London. Working on an open, collaborative basis, NODE.London will culminate in a month long season of media arts projects across London in March 2006.

As part of the season, E:vent will host a month long collaborative residency for London-based electronic musicians, media artists and architects. Threshold will set a conceptual thread around ideas of threshold, topology, landscape and borders, with the objective of transforming E:vent's lower warehouse space into a dynamic and interactive environment.

To apply or for further information, please send statement of artistic practice, CV and URLs for existing & past projects and additional supporting information to residency[at]eventnetwork.org.uk. Closing Date for applications: 1st December 2005.

Posted by jo at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

Architecture of Interaction

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Standard Vocabulary, Generic Models >> Toolkit

Architecture of Interaction [AoI] is a project initiated by a group of artists and theorists who are collectively aiming to create a toolkit which can be used to describe the processes and effects of interactive work. This toolkit will consist of a standard vocabulary which can be used by individuals from different artistic backgrounds, as well as a set of generic models that describe six different critical dimensions of interactive working methods. The editors of this site want to connect vocabularies and ideas about art and interaction from various disciplines, namely theatre, visual arts, performance and new media.

Why?: The initiators--Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Yvonne Dröge-Wendel, Lino Hellings, Anna Best, Mina Kaylan, Nikolaus Gansterer--have several reasons to do this. The interest in interactive artistic work methods continues to grow among makers, curators and commissioners. Yet, each discipline (and often each individual artist) has an independent language for describing interactive works. These languages don't mingle well at all. There is therefore currently too little scope for communication between artists from different disciplines. This often means that the nuanced and vital elements of interactive art works are overlooked.

So?: The main goal of making this toolkit is to make interactive work methods more transparent for makers, commissioners, curators, critics and more general audiences. In doing so, we hope to contribute to both artistic development of interactive works, and to a more sophisticated criticism in the practice and discourse of interactive works.

What works do we (the editors...) call interactive? We see interactive work methods as a kind of meta-discipline, as a disclipline that informs other disciplines. Interactive work methods can be applied to any artistic discipline. Yet, at the same time, these methods have qualities and notions which are entirely their own. From the standpoint of the maker, an interactive work begins when a maker designs the form of the work, the context of the work, AND possible experiences or perceptions for the others that come in contact with his work. In other words, we begin to speak about interactive works when a maker considers the intelligent context as an intrinsic part of the work.

Posted by jo at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

SPECFLIC 1.0

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Sousveillance Grid + Community Built Display

The Community Built Display enables a group of people with wireless laptops to create a modular, flat-panel, dynamically reconfigurable large-format display. For SPECFLIC, The Outsider Jeremiad will serve as a ringleader of a group of audience members who want to send high-impact visual messages to those on the Inside. Developer: Robert Twomey, UCSD MFA Candidate, Visual Arts; Advisor: Natalie Jeremijenko, Visual Arts Dept., Xdesign Studio.

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The Sousveillance Grid is a net-based interactive display which processes user-submitted camera phone images and displays them in a grid in a random fashion. Projected to the public SPECFLIC audience, it encourages bystanders to assist in documenting their surroundings with the efficiency and depth that only a populace armed with many, many cameraphones can provide. The display was created with PHP and JavaScript and can be viewed on any web browser. A proliferation of digital recording devices are leading us to a place where privacy will evaporate without any parallel efforts from the State — a community armed with compact, wirelessly-connected recording devices will record and police itself far better than any government could have hoped to. Developer: Andrew Collins, UCSD alum, ICAM’05, Calit2 Undergrad Fellow; Advisor: Adriene Jenik [Related 1, 2]

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

October 27, 2005

2006 iDMAa + IMS Conference

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code: HumanSystems | DigitalBodies

Call for Papers: The International Digital Media and Arts Association and Miami University’s Center for Interactive Media Studies presents the 2006 iDMAa + IMS Conference. The conference’s theme is built around an examination of the many codes that drive the digital media and arts world. The Conference will bring academics, artists, and industry representatives together to help define, refine and advance the leading edge of new media. This is the third annual iDMAa Conference and fifth annual IMS Conference.

The conference will include refereed paper presentations, panels, discussion workshops, gallery talks, and performances. Pre-conference, hands-on tutorials (free for iDMAa members) will begin on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006. The conference will begin on April 6th and end on April 8th. The conference will also include a juried exhibition and a vendor fair. This conference is sponsored and hosted in Oxford, Ohio by Miami University’s Center for Interactive Media Studies.

The Conference seeks submissions of papers for presentation and discussion. All papers will be refereed for acceptance and selected papers will be published in the iDMAa Journal. There will be an on-line proceedings, including all accepted work, as well. Submissions will be accepted in two categories: papers and notes. Papers will follow traditional academic writing standards and should not exceed ten pages. Notes are at most two pages long. Online and interactive supplements can be included.

Please send all submissions by November 23rd, 2005 to:
Prof. Peg Faimon, Program Chair
231 Hiestand Hall
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
faimonma[at]muohio.edu

Papers may be submitted for review in Microsoft Word or PDF format. Please follow standard academic paper formatting conventions.

Supplementary materials may be submitted in formats displayable by standard web browsers with freely available plug-ins (e. g. Flash, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player 10 or Quicktime). Authors will be notified of acceptance by January 6, 2006.

Your submission should include a cover letter indicating which conference track is preferred (See list below). Participants are also encouraged to propose panels or complete ‘paper sessions’ on topics of specific interest. Special conference rates are available to individuals who organize and bring complete panels for sessions.

We encourage the submission of panels. Panel submissions should include a brief description of the panel topic and list of panelists. Note that any panel chair submitting a panel with a minimum of four panelists who are full paying registrants to the conference will receive a discounted registration.

Conference Tracks

“We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released”
– Jean Houston

The 2006 iDMAa + IMS conference is structured around the taxonomy outlined below. These categories are meant only to be broad groupings as an organizational tool. The suggestions included below each track are just that — suggestions. We encourage broad, creative, and radical interpretations of these tracks.

Track One: Art Code | Code Art: Sample Topics: Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Physic Computing, Sonic Art, Interactive Design and Development

Track Two: Academic Code: Sample Topics: Curriculum Development, Promotion & Tenure, Program Development, Pedagogy, Technical Support and Funding, Inter-Institutional Collaboration, Digital Film Schools, Classroom and Lab Exemplars, eTextbooks

Track Three: Image Code: Sample Topics: Digital Photography, Digital Imaging as Art, 3-D Modeling, Digital Printing, Medical Imaging, Commercial Design, Installation, Digital Painting

Track Four: Time-Based Code: Sample Topics: Digital Video, Flash, Processing, Distance Collaboration/Performance, Animation, Film, Interactive

Track Five: Cultural Code: Sample Topics: Network Culture and Complexity/Change, Philosophy, Digital Identity

Track Six: Legal Code: Sample Topics: Copyright, Legal Issues for Artists, P2P File Sharing, Open Source, Creative Commons

Track Seven: Semiotic Code & Storytelling Sample Topics: Digital Narrative, Digital Asset Management, Still Image as Narrative, Semantic Web

Track Eight: Commercial Code: Sample Topics: Mobile Media, Emerging Technologies, Business Applications

Track Nine: Game Code: Sample Topics: Serious games, artistic games, commercial games, games as pedagogy, analysis of games

Posted by jo at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

UpStage! This Week

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JeanRichard + Open Session

It's a busy week this week in UpStage: on Saturday 29 October we have a live public performance by JeanRichard; and on Wednesday 2 November we have the regular Open Session and walk-through.

LIFE2 performance by JeanRichard: This is the first public performance to be staged in UpStage by a group other than Avatar Body Collision (the creators of UpStage). JeanRichard is a Swiss family of artists who began using UpStage a few months ago, and they love it so much they've already reached the point where they are ready to give their first public performance. [Related]

To join the performance, you don't need to be logged in; just go to http://jeanrichard.ch/Life2/ where there will be a live link to the stage from one hour before the performance time. And the performance time is: 1am California; 4am New York; 9am UK; 10am Switzerland; 11am Finland; 6pm Australia (NSW/Queensland); 9pm New Zealand. See http://www.worldtimeserver.com/ for other local times.

UpStage Open Walk-Through: This session takes place on the first Wednesday of the month and is an opportunity for newcomers to learn about UpStage and for regulars to have an open jam session. To register for the session and request a log-in, email me (helen[at]creative-catalyst.com) - even if you're a regular, please let us know that you're coming.

As usual, we'll begin on the Introduction stage, http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation. Depending on numbers, some may go to another stage for improv while newbies learn the basics on the Introduction stage. Those of you who are logging in will do so from http://upstage.org.nz:8081

The times this month are: 1am California; 4am New York; 9am UK; 10am Netherlands; 11am Finland; 7pm Queensland Australia; 8pm NSW Australia; 10pm NZ

See http://www.worldtimeserver.com/ for other local times; please note that European clocks have changed between these two events - if you are in any doubt over the correct time, find your local corresponding time for the Swiss time of 10am for the JeanRichard performance on 29 October, and for the New Zealand time of 10pm for the open session on 2 November.

Posted by jo at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

Convergence 12.3:

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Open Call for Papers

Convergence 12.3: After eleven years as one of the foremost international journals in new media studies, Convergence is undergoing some exciting changes, including a move to Sage publications from 2006. This will significantly extend the distribution and indexing services available to the journal and its authors, and we expect a large increase in readers and citations.

We are currently seeking papers for Winter 2006 (12.3). This is an open call for any research that addresses Convergences in the broad field of new media studies. For this issue, papers would need to be submitted by 31st January 2006.

Papers on in areas including the following are welcome:

Video games
Cable and telecomms
Mobile media/content
Internet studies
Digital/new media art
Digital photography
VR
Control and censorship of the media
Copyright/intellectual property
New media policy
New media industries/institutions
New media history
New media in cross-cultural/international contexts
new media products
Digital TV
DVD
Digital music recording, production, distribution, file formats/
file sharing
Cinema
gender and technology

Submission details: Electronic submissions are preferred via email or on floppy disk (Macintosh Word98 compatible). These should be sent to the editors with the following information attached separately: name, institution and address for correspondence, telephone, fax and email address. Papers should be typed on one side of the sheet with endnotes in accordance with Sage referencing style (see our website). Refereed articles should be between 5000-8000 words, Debates pieces should be between 1000-3000 words and Feature Reports should be approximately 4000 words. Authors should also enclose a 50 word biography and an abstract.

Proposals for articles or completed papers should be sent to:
convergence[at]luton.ac.uk

Jason Wilson
School of Media, Art and Design
University of Luton
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
LU1 3JU
United Kingdom

T +44 (0)1582 489114
F +44 (0)1582 489212
M 07886508141
jason.wilson[at]luton.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

UNESCO Tutorial and Seminar

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Creating a Simple Electroacoustic Piece in Easy Stages

Steps for a simple electroacoustic creation--A practical seminar with free online access from UNESCO’s DigiArts portal. UNESCO’s DigiArts project currently offers beginners a step-by-step approach to creating a short electroacoustic piece. This musical creation can be accomplished with the help of detailed software tutorials on the DigiArts portal.

Free access: The practical seminar on electroacoustic music, Creating a simple electroacoustic piece in easy stages, compiled by Bruno Bossis.

Minimum equipment required: Only the simplest material possible is required to access the practical seminar. Whatever the available configuration is, an external microcomputer will be preferable to avoid a too poor sound quality and disturbing background noises. An additional soundcard is by no means a necessity. The practical seminar contains numerous references to documentation on the freeware and to the theoretical seminar already available online.

Reference tools available on the DigiArts portal:

1. Application tutorials: Tutorials for the free music and sound applications were chosen for Mac and PC platforms.

2. Theoretical seminar on electroacoustic music (in French): The theoretical seminar looks at electroacoustic music from a historical angle, and explains its diversity and aesthetical evolution.

Credits: The seminar was compiled by Bruno Bossis, professor at the Universities of Renne 2 and Paris IV-Sorbonne, musicologist in the IRCAM (Institute for music/acoustic research and coordination) Hypermedia Analysis Group, and Doctor in Musicology and researcher at MINT (Music, Computer Science and New Technologies) at Paris IV-Sorbonne.

Contact: digiarts[at]unesco.org

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

FAQ:

Postcoloniality, Transculture, and Dance Performance in Asia Pacific

[posted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] FAQ: Postcoloniality, Transculture, and Dance Performance in Asia Pacific has been released. This list is written and managed by contributors. If you add research material, such as URL, name of document, etc., you will be added to
the contributor list.

Contributors: Ya-Ping Chen (TNUA, Taiwan), Yatin Lin (TNUA, Taiwan), Hsin-Chun Tuan (PhD. UCLA, USA), Yukihiko YOSHIDA (PhD. Candidate, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio Univ, Japan), Yuji Sone (Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Media, Film and Theatre, The University of New South Wales, Australia-Japan), Mariana Verdaasdonk (66b/cell, Australia-Japan), Julie Dyson (Ausdance National, Australia), Teresa Pee (researcher/educator, Singapore), and Urmimala Sarkar Munsi (WDA Bengal, India).

Posted by jo at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2005

Balance and Power:

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Performance and Surveillance in Video Art

Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art: At a time when the nation is preoccupied with heightened security and surveillance, and the public is fascinated by Reality TV with its open and surreptitious video exposure of participants, the boundaries between performance, voluntary acting for the camera, and surveillance, involuntary recording on camera by power systems with an interest in the movement of citizens, become blurred. Since the earliest days of video art in the mid-1960s, artists have negotiated the question of when surveillance becomes performance (and vice versa) and these concepts continue to be central to many video artists working today. This exhibition, which examines both the early days of video art and current practices, is an attempt to understand the complex relationship between the issues of performance, surveillance, and power.

Included in the exhibition are works by some of the earliest practitioners, large-scale installations, newly commissioned pieces, and the premiere of Jordan Crandall's new film, Homefront. Balance and Power will be installed in two locations: in public areas at the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science and at Krannert Art Museum. The Siebel Center regularly features contemporary art installations employing state-of-the-art equipment integrated into the building. Installations at the Siebel Center periodically may be unavailable. Guest curator: Michael Rush.

"...In the earliest days of video art in the mid-1960s, artists engaged the question of when surveillance becomes performance and vice versa. This issue remains central to the work of many video artists today, said Rush, a writer, curator, critic and former director of the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Lake Worth, Fla.

The exhibition references and features work by a diverse group of artists, from early video pioneers such as Andy Warhol, Vito Acconci and Bruce Naumann to emerging practitioners such as Jill Magid and U. of I. art and design professor Kevin Hamilton.

Other participating artists are Antenna, Sophie Calle, Jim Campbell, Peter Campus, Jordan Crandall, Shelley Eshkar, Harun Farocki, Subodh Gupta, Tiffany Holmes, Tim Hyde, Paul Kaiser, Kristin Lucas, Steve Mann, Jenny Marketou, Jonas Mekas, Muntadas and Marshall Reese, Martha Rosler, Julia Scher, Kiki Seror and Gregory Shephard..." More >>

Posted by jo at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

Point, Line, Surface

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Digital Boogie Woogie

LAb[au]'s Point, Line, Surface computed in seconds will be presented in form of an outdoor urban and interactive installation in the center of Brussels. The installation is presented in the context of Cimatics 05 festival and Maiis # 3 _ ''ville en creation/creatie in de Stad" festival. From October 25 to November 5, 2005, everyday 17:00 - 24:00; opening reception: October 25, 17:00h.

Point, Line, Surface is an interactive installation by LAb[au] which immerses the user in an audiovisual space. The user creates on a touchscreen a sonic and visual composition spatialised through quadraphonic sound and (a 10x10m) floor projection which can be animated through finger-movement. Referencing Mondrian's Boogie Woogie which draws a relation between the rhythmic structure of a jazz-piece, the composition of graphic elements on canvas and the urban grid of New York, the project Point Line Surface extends these relationships to an interactive vocabulary inside the urban and electronic space.

Posted by jo at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2005

ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Awards

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Electronic Art Award Made In Spain

BEEP/Data Logic aims to create an electronic art collection, through awarding Acquisition Prizes. Therefore, it is organising the ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Awards.

The goal of these Awards is to advance the production and exhibition of electronic art, and art linked to new technologies. Its purpose is to promote new high-tech art, and to foster communication between the manufacturers/creators of this new technology and those who create art. A natural collaboration, which will benefit and enrich both sides.

There are two ACQUISITION PRIZES:

1) @ARCO Prize: worth 8,000 euros
2) Off-ARCO Prize: worth 6,000 euros

The Prizes will be awarded by an international Jury of prestigious specialists.

1. ARCO/BEEP Acquisition Prizes

Description

1) @ARCO Prize
To be eligible, an artwork must be shown at the 25th edition of ARCO, the International Contemporary Art Fair, in Madrid (9-13 February 2006), and must have a significant component involving new technology or electronic media.

Before ARCO’06, these eligible artworks must also be previously submitted for consideration by their galleries, through registration on a webpage that shall be created to this effect.

2) Off-ARCO Prize
Artworks presented by individual artists, or collectives.

The Prize-winning artworks shall become part of the BEEP/Data Logic corporate collection.

The @ARCO Prize shall be endowed with 8,000 euros, and the Off-ARCO Prize with 6,000 euros—a total of 14,000 euros for the acquisition of the two artworks.

- The Prizes shall be awarded according to the Jury’s decision.
- The Jury shall determine the winner in each of the two categories.
- Registration opens: 5 p.m. Madrid time (GMT+1 hour), 28th October 2005.
- Registration deadline: 5 p.m. Madrid time (GMT+1 hour), 16th January 2006.
- Prize money: 14,000 euros for the acquisition of the two artworks.
- Announcement of winning artworks: 11th February 2006.

Should any of the money earmarked for acquisition remain unspent, the Jury may decide whether to devote this amount to a future edition of the Awards or to acquiring a third artwork selected from amongst nominees for the present edition; in this case, the artwork would be considered to have been awarded an Honourable Mention.

2. Participation Rules

• Any artwork may participate—as long as it is presented by a gallery exhibiting at ARCO’06 (@ARCO Prize) or by individual artists, or collectives (Off-ARCO Prize)—that involves significant use of new technology, or electronic media.
• The artworks must have been previously registered on the webpage that shall be created to this effect.
• The eligible artworks must be exhibited with a price tag.
• Acceptance of artworks shall be the responsibility of the Jury, whose decision shall be final.
• Acceptance of a Prize involves ceding ownership of the prize-winning artwork to the company BEEP/Data Logic.
• The Jury’s decision shall be final.

3. Registration

3.1. Registration Dates

The 2006 awards shall first be announced in May 2005.

Registration opens: 5 p.m. Madrid time (GMT+1 hour), 28th October 2005.
Registration deadline: 5 p.m. Madrid time (GMT+1 hour), 16th January 2006.

3.2. Registration Form

- Registrations shall only be accepted through the Form to be made available on the ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Prize website, http://www.arco.beep.es
- The registration deadline shall be 5 p.m. Madrid time (GMT+1 hour), 16th January 2006.

The Registration Form must include the following information:

- Artwork title
- Information on the gallery and the artist or collective
- Brief description of the artwork (max. 50 words)
- Sales price, including taxes
- URL where further information is available
- No registrations shall be accepted via e-mail, surface mail, or other means
- Registrations shall be in Spanish or English. No artwork failing to meet this requisite shall be considered for the awards. We recommend submitting bilingual Spanish/English versions, and participants should double-check the translation

3.3. Expanded Proposals

- Participants may expand the information included on their Registration Forms by putting it on their own website, providing the URL on their Registration Forms. Recommendations for Internet presentation of this expanded information are as follows:
- Project Description (max. 500 words), explaining the central concepts and technological resources used.
- Images of the artwork.
- Résumé of the artist. In the case of collectives, a group résumé may be included, or individual résumés for each member.
- In preparing these webpages, please bear in mind that the Jury’s time is limited. Therefore, maximum clarity and concision in web design are strongly advised.
- Those contestants who put up a website for their project shall be responsible for its design and hosting costs.

4. Jury

- All candidacies shall be examined by an international Jury, including:

1. Fernando Castro Flórez, Professor and Art Critic, Madrid (Spain)
2. Karin Ohlenschläger, Artistic Director, MediaLabMadrid (Spain)
3. Christiane Paul, Associate Curator for New Media Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA)
4. Arnau Puig, Philosopher and Art Critic, Barcelona (Spain)
5. Jemima Rellie, Head of New Programmes, Tate, London (UK)
6. Yukiko Shikata, Independent Curator and Critic, Tokyo (Japan)
7. Mark Tribe, Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University, Providence (USA)
- The Jury’s Honorary Chairwoman shall be Marie-France Veyrat, representing BEEP/Data Logic.
- The Jury’s Secretary shall be Vicente Matallana, Director of LaAgencia, Madrid.
- The Jury shall meet during ARCO‘06.
- The Jury’s decision shall be final.

5. Decision
- The Prize-winners shall be announced at the ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair, on Saturday 11th February 2006.
- The Jury shall meet on 10th February 2006 at the ARCO-IFEMA offices.
- The winners shall be announced at 1 p.m. on 11th February 2006 at the central space of theblackbox@arco section.

6. Winners
• Winners shall be contacted by the Awards organisers before they are announced.
• Acceptance of a Prize involves ceding ownership of the Prize-winning artwork to the company BEEP/Data Logic.
• The company BEEP/Data Logic shall pay the Prize money within 30 days after the Jury’s decision is announced.
• The Prize shall be given to the winner, or to his or her appointed legal representative.

7. Information and Questions

For any additional information, or to ask any questions about the ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Awards, contact:

Jury’s Secretariat
Vicente Matallana / LaAgencia
Tel: (34) 91 366 8821
E-mail: premiobeep[at]laagencia.org

BEEP/Data Logic
Carmen Alcubilla
Tel: (34) 977 30 9100
E-mail: c-alcubilla[at]datalogic.com

ARCO
Ana Botella Diez del Corral
Tel: (34) 91 722 5350
E-mail: arcobeep[at]ifema.es

Registration for the ARCO/BEEP Electronic Art Awards implies acceptance of the present rules.

Posted by luis at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2005

Mzantsi:

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(Re)Locating Contemporary African Art Practice

Registration is now open for SESSIONS eKAPA 2005, an international art meeting held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, on 4-6 December 2005, and with the theme of Mzantsi: (Re) Locating Contemporary African Art Practice.

SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 features an intensive 3 day programme of dialogues and workshops, panel discussion and site specific minilaboratories devoted to contemporary art practice in Africa, exploring specifically the interface between local art practices and global art circuits.

Speakers range from leading art theorists, writers and curators to cultural provocateurs from diverse disciplines and African forums. Discussions explore new models of large scale curation and alternatives to the international exhibition, transgressions of the boundaries of contemporary art and activism, and cutting edge African forums for multidisciplinarity and networking.

Seats for SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 are limited. Details. Program. To register, contact the conference secretariat, Kashief Gamieldien, at kashief[at]tribalco.co.za or +27 (0) 21 697 0180. Early registration is discounted, but closes on 28 October.

Posted by jo at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Mzantsi:

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(Re)Locating Contemporary African Art Practice

Registration is now open for SESSIONS eKAPA 2005, an international art meeting held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, on 4-6 December 2005, and with the theme of Mzantsi: (Re) Locating Contemporary African Art Practice.

SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 features an intensive 3 day programme of dialogues and workshops, panel discussion and site specific minilaboratories devoted to contemporary art practice in Africa, exploring specifically the interface between local art practices and global art circuits.

Speakers range from leading art theorists, writers and curators to cultural provocateurs from diverse disciplines and African forums. Discussions explore new models of large scale curation and alternatives to the international exhibition, transgressions of the boundaries of contemporary art and activism, and cutting edge African forums for multidisciplinarity and networking.

Seats for SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 are limited. Details. Program. To register, contact the conference secretariat, Kashief Gamieldien, at kashief[at]tribalco.co.za or +27 (0) 21 697 0180. Early registration is discounted, but closes on 28 October.

Posted by jo at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Art Interactive and Non-Event Present:

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The Cacophony of Life

MUSICIANS AND NON-MUSICIANS WANTED! The Cacophony of Life--by David Mandl--will be a live performance during the Glowlab: Open Lab exhibition. "Cacophony" is a musical performance based on the early computer game The Game of Life, a simple example of a living colony, with cells being "born" or "dying" based on the pattern of cells surrounding them. In this performance, musicians (or non-musicians) either play their instruments or rest based on the same rules, creating a semi-random sound performance. (This is much easier than it sounds. See below for details of how it works.)

Musicians and non-musicians are invited to participate in this performance. Please consider coming down and being a part of it, and please help spread the word to others. RSVP not necessary, but greatly appreciated: Email Dave Mandl at davem[at]@wfmu.org. An audio recording of the performance will be made for airing later in the exhibition.

HOW IT WORKS:

The performers will be arranged in a grid (5x5, 6x6, etc., depending on how many there are). We will start with a random pattern of people playing their instruments, until the conductor signals everyone to move to the next cycle (after about ten seconds). When a new cycle starts, each musician decides whether to play or not based on how many people around him/her are playing. If more than three people adjacent to you are playing during one cycle, you rest when the next cycle starts. If two people adjacent to you are playing during one cycle, you play when the next cycle starts. This will create a shifting pattern of instruments. Each cycle will last about ten seconds. A whole piece of music will last a minute or two, and then we'll start a new piece with a new starting pattern.

For some visual examples of how the original Game of Life works, see this site: (Where a cell is "on" in the game, picture a musician playing a note.)

WHAT KIND OF INSTRUMENT TO BRING:

Just about any noisemaker is welcome: saxophone, kazoo, pots and pans, violin, electric guitar (with portable amp), small drum, hand bells, harmonica. Avoid instruments that are very quiet, because they may be drowned out. Your voice is an acceptable instrument.

"The Cacophony of Life" is produced and conducted by Dave Mandl; Saturday, October 22nd, 2005. 4:00-6:00 PM. Free. Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive, Central Square, Cambridge, MA, 617-498-0100.

Posted by jo at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2005

My Mother Was a Computer

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Digital Subjects and Literary Texts

"Mathematician Stephan Wolfram has recently proposed that many different kinds of complex systems, including human thought and action, can be modeled using cellular automata. These very simple computational systems have demonstrated that they are capable of generating complex patterns using simple rules. According to physicist Ed Fredkin, cellular automata underlie physical reality on a subatomic level; in his view, nature itself is software running on a Universal Computer. This presentation will look critically at these claims, asking whether we should consider them as physical models or as over-determined metaphors that would inevitably emerge in a historical period when computation is pervasive. This issue, and its proliferating implications, will be explored through Greg Egan's print novel Permutation City, which imagines a world in which it is possible to simulate a person's consciousness inside a computer, creating a Copy that has all the personality and memories of the original." My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts [RealAudio] by Katherine Hayles, University of California at Los Angeles. Presented at HUMlab, Sweden.

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

Franck Ancel

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From Scenography to Planetary Network

From Scenography to Planetary Network [SPN]: an entity of creations, publications, conferences, installations and performances presented by Franck Ancel, in question over contemporary time: the last creation of 2005, in real time via wireless web, via satellite, at an altitude of 30000 feet, more than 900 kilometers per hour, to Tokyo or Shanghai, in the year celebrating France in China and the exhibition of Aichi in Japan.

In the continuation of his triptych AIT in France "Architecture - Image - Technology", these communications prepare for further rendez-vous. Ancel now inhabits the planetary space of technology to fall into and under the reality of the imaginary; a World Fair or a World Tour... like the Solarimpulse plane or like the city of Shanghai between the now and 2010.

Running the planet!: Europa - Amsterdam 09.24.05; America - Banff 09.30.05; Africa - coming soon; Oceania - Sydney 12.02.05; Asia - to Tokyo or Shanghai - End of 2005.

Scenography to Planetary Network for Urban Screens

"If the modern extension of cities is being transformed into urban territory due to the impetus of science-technology, then the classic places of artistic performance remain essentially victims of these changes without really being able to incorporate them.

These new technologies are responsible for the emergence of a “City of Bits”. This “City of Bits” that was analysed as “Space, Place, and the Infobahn” only ten years ago by the researcher William J. Mitchell of MIT in his work of the same name. This was the period of the democratisation of the internet, followed by the appearance of VRML, a time in which some believed that this cyberspace was another world, a new continent, or even, for others, a utopia. Its rise was signalled by the use of a global language, the invention of HTML by a scientist from CERN in Switzerland, which allowed us to move from one computer screen to another without any knowledge of the Internet code.

Thus our project “Being = Network” makes its mark in a city by symbolically confronting the arrival of what the internet scholar Howard Rheingold calls the “smart mobs”. I will rapidly summarize this, like the arrival of the third-generation telephone in Europe. It is this journey between the present and the virtual that I am referring to here all too briefly, that determines the time and reasons for my project, at first glance a simple confrontation of art with architecture, at the moment of the emergence of digital screens in the city.

This “Being = Network” action is not an anticipatory step, but rather a phenomenon which closes without being an end in itself the installation of our AIT triptych in France during the past three years, focusing on Architecture, Image, and Technology. A multiple creation which is not linked to the types of city projection of a Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Krzysztof Wodiczko, or a Dan Graham.

Without being a designer, artist, or computer scientist, I do not wish to give a too highly specialized talk, in this city of Amsterdam, birthplace of Constant, founder of the Situationist Movement. However, I am convinced that the visual arts now come from places intended to show them in order to deal with life, and vice versa. This is what propels our search outside of art, architecture, and visual arts. The closest concept is a display to be found at the Scenography to Planetary Network.

Let us call to mind the definition of modern scenography given by its founder Jacques Polieri: “all the pictorial, plastic, technical, and theoretical elements that allow the creation of an image, of a bi- or tri-dimensional set piece, or the installation of an action that is spectacular.” Let us now present the context of this “Being = Network” project that is so decisive in our process. This project of the projection on a screen took place in the centre of Paris in a square, which is situated in a locality that has many cinemas, as well as a stream of people via the metro or the train punctuating the streets.

At the middle, the Montparnasse Tower, a hundred metres from the Gare Montparnasse, at the heart of the city, signals its luminous presence in Paris by night and day. Built at the beginning of the 1970s by the architect Roger Saubot, it imposes by its height of more than 200 metres. There are over fifty floors of offices, each of more than 2000 square metres, with a panoramic restaurant for tourists. This is a Montparnasse that has nothing more in common with the international artistic bohemian life of the 1930s, with its artists’ studios and bars.

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(1) Van Wagner, a world-leading communications company recently installed in France, was one of the first businesses to use large advertising spaces, with still projection, in New York during the 1970s. It now owns the screen at the bottom of the Montparnasse Tower, the only one of its kind in France. But it also has the other two screens in the world, one in London and the other in Los Angeles. This LED screen has a surface area of 38 square metres. Obviously, its location in the French capital, at the crossroads of many different types of networks, is what motivated us to spend more than six months negotiating a partnership with the Van Wagner company, with the aim of completing the project free of charge with their technical support.

Several contacts were naturally made with other businesses linked to the networks, such as RATP, the company that manages the Parisian metro system. This was in the hope of using live images from their CCTV cameras for our screen display. Also, with mobile phone companies, because I propose the appearance of cyber-traceability of mobile telephone chips thanks to software monitoring all movement within the city through cartographic superimposition.

This leads to the possibility for everyone to send live photographic and video captures from a mobile phone using MMS onto each window of the screen display. But none of this contact with these companies led to any results, either positive or negative, though the dialogue remains open for other projects. For the moment, I am not directly dealing with questions about the danger of the mobile phone waves for humans, nor about civil liberties’ with regard to CCTV.

Finally Van Wagner did not allow us to use the screen in real time. We did not therefore have access to the MP4 server broadcasting to the screen and potentially via the network to the two other screens, as I would have liked, to produce a live triptych between Paris-London-Los Angeles. In the end, the entire financing of the project came from a private source, as cultural institutions did not help this scheme.

Unlike the first two parts of the triptych, we were not consequently able to use the software in real time; we use MAX/MSP and JITTER. I came up with a global slogan which would be relevant for this specific context. A proposition of a highly prized poetic “hot spot” within the city which only contained the three words “Mobile Wireless Digital” invoked more than interactivity. The monumental projection at the bottom of the tower lasted for thirty seconds, inserted between other advertising clips, several times a minute for several weeks, until the end of December of last year.

Some video captures were selected from the first triptych projects, three for the Convent project built by Le Courbusier and Xenakis, and three from the Franco-Spanish border. These form windows whose size also has meaning. Each window of these short videos is similar to the typical holiday video captured by a mobile phone. The projection is thus made up of a video-wall corresponding to the windows of the front face of the tower. The video clips are thirty seconds in length, corresponding to the length of the advertising clips; but this is also the maximum time for sending this same video via a mobile phone file format, such as the 3GP, via MMS from one phone to another phone.

Here, whether it is appearing on my own mobile phone as a small image, or on the tower as a large one, there is a fictional connection. Without an audience, since no sign, other than newspapers and radio reporting this action, tells us that we are in front of a work and not of prospective products and/or services. If we were in Asia, the formats would be different but our comments would stay the same.

There are different technical supports depending on the continents. The history of media arts has a more universal history, founded on a re-reading and not only a French philosophical reading, with Deleuze, Virilio, or Baudrillard about the arrival of technology. Moreover, I will speak about these issues next week in Canada in a paper entitled “from Scenography to Planetary Network for refresh 01”, which is also the name of the gathering.

There is also a historical filiation for “Being = Network” with a scenography by Jacques Polieri. From the end of the Second World War, Polieri carried out research on historical avant-garde moments in the visual arts, namely those of exactly eighty years ago this year: the Bauhaus with Schlemmer, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Molnar, Weininger, the Paris international exhibition with Kiesler and Prampolini, etc. Polieri never stopped from going into and then beyond projects that were too limited by available resources.

Let us think, for example, of his synopsis using exterior screens at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Polieri tries to interconnect between them on a micro-scale: “Electronic images were installed from one end to the other of a “Leisure Street”, in the form of either colour VDUs (all along the street) of projections onto large screens permitting the public to dialogue or to participate in the various games. The five main screens were at the end of the street, together with the video control room situated inside a geodesic dome. Preparatory show.” The electronic gave it telepresence dimensions.

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(2) In the meetings that I propose such as “Being = Network”, there can not be an area and a centre which will gain the upper hand, and the same goes for a discipline over a technique. Nor does the image in action simply constitute a performance. It embodies data which can be sound, gestures, an archive, a camera, infinite sources, thanks to digitization: a visualization whose screen is momentarily a performing technical support.

Also, the very existence of this screen in the Parisian space can not be the only grounds for our use of it. It is the context which is virtually projected. It would have been much simpler in a more formal dimension to project somewhere else with total freedom. But I do not want to move the white cube from the gallery, to open a new programme to an audience of contemporary artists, like at the crossroads of Time Square in New York at the beginning of the 1990s.

I am thinking more of an incarnation which, from now on, must no longer just remain within the context reserved for a projection, for it’s not just a projection, but rather of digital data, of finding future areas, like space that is now temporal, for the live broadcasting and recording of our lives. In this way, architecture is no longer the interface for a surface image for our projects, but is valid within a context of watching over emerging issues.

Like the support screens, the urban economy is not the framework of our practice. I am simply looking to determine and be part of the changes that are happening. Using an art without artistic limits, I am not engaging in experimentation but rather in a new way forward, one of widespread interconnection in daily life. So, for each of my designs, a desire to exchange with the professional best is a necessity.

This starts with choosing the site according to the project’s needs as much the same way as its technological items, which is not directly linked to the design or programming. Similarly, the media are no longer mailboxes with images to be re-conceived and re-designed, but are prostheses that are now integrated into our activity and lives.

For example, in our “Global Poetic System” project, which was part of a marathon, we diverted the sporting use of technology towards a digital visual and sound dimension, reconstructable using physical data. I will bring up this necessary conception of new interfaces for these emerging practices in the beginning of December, in a lecture entitled “from Scenography to Network Planetary for e-performance and plug-ins” at the School of Media, Film & Theatre, University of New South Wales, Australia.

To close this “Being = Network”, I would like to share the following anecdote from Bruce Sterling and Richard Kadrey, which is taken from “Dead Media Manifesto”, and which may be found on the Amsterdam internet site “De Balie”. They report the words of Jacqueline Goddarda, a surrealist bohemian figure of 1930s Paris:

“After a day of work, the artists wanted to get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating. They all met in cafes to argue about this and that, to discuss their work, politics and philosophy… We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terribly nice chap… As there was no telephone in those days everybody used to leave him messages. At the Dome we also had a little place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse.”

Our project for third-generation telephones is not necessarily the rebirth of Montparnasse. “You are not the network!” if the projection on the urban screen is your only interrogation. “I am the network!” if you redefine everything with new technology - not only as an urban accessory, but also in the universality of human beings in their future mobile interconnection with the world. While I wait, I am seeking new sensitive places like the Montparnasse Tower in Paris in order to transcribe a new temporality which is now becoming a planetary one." Franck Ancel

(1) Illustration no. 1 “Being = Network”, Paris Montparnasse Tower, photo by Simon Procter, 2004.

(2) Illustration no. 2 “Leisure Street”, Munich Olympic Games, 1972, pp. 42/44/45 “Polieri creator of modern scenography”, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 2002.

"SPN for urbanscreens05" in Europa and "SPN for refresh!01" in America, these english presentations are now online pdf.

Biography: Born in 1970, France, Franck Ancel works in Paris. He has been probing technology for more than fifteen years. He has traced the development from the avant-gardes artists of the last century to the recent mutations of creation on a planetary scale.He has thus organized and coordinated symposiums, expositions, and performances in cooperation with associations and institutions. The last one was a retrospective on Jacques Polieri, the creator of ”modern scenography,” at the BnF. Since the attacks of 9/11, Franck Ancel has set up an interactive triptych probing “architecture – image – technology” on 20th century heritage sites. In 2002, he put it in the Le Corbusier/Xenakis convent; in 2003 in a classified theater in Catalogne; and in 2004 on the screen of Montparnasse Tower in Paris. Franck Ancel challenges the viewer outside traditional frontiers, by projecting a setting of a network of information on screens. At the same time, he analyzes this technique on a more theoretical level in texts and talk.

Posted by jo at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

Connessioni Leggendarie

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NET.ART History

20 October - 10 November 2005; Mediateca di Santa Teresa, Via della Moscova, 28 - 20121 Milano, MM2 Moscova or MM3 Turati.

Connessioni Leggendarie is the first exhibition devoted to NET.ART history. Referring to a wide audience it reviews the years from 1995 to 2005; during this decade, artists separated by geographical and socio-political barriers shared ideas and artworks, using them as creative weapons over a new and unique continent: the Internet.

Working with net languages, developing collective actions with a strong media impact, bringing irony, deconstruction and, why not, fun inside the formal severity of digital cultures, artists belonging to NET.ART gave life to a true legend.

Between complex theories and Dadaist euphoria, Connessioni Leggendarie will bring us between hopes and fears of our wildly digitized time. A decade of technical and cultural Far West, aiming to explore and to conquer new lands, languages, behaviours, contraddictions and limits of a world traumatically connected to the information highways.

Born with a taste of historical avant-garde and often blamed of computer and media piracy, NET.ART hit all the aesthetic and conceptual targets in a time of change with no precedent. Huge emulations, spoofs and pillages reveal the borders of obsolete conventions and legal parameters. Aesthetical viruses and media epidemics. Software hacked to blow the user's mind rather than the user's computer.

The exhibition tracks the topic moments of NET.ART history, which is however more similar to a Sergio Leone's "dirty plot" than to the clean museum rooms: to the historian's methods it surely prefers the great romancer mitopoietical ability. There's no other way to talk about FuckUFuckMe, the website selling fake technological apparels for cybersex, ordered by real customers as if they were real; Nike Ground, the mock Nike campaign organized by 0100101110101101.ORG that made Wien citizens go out of their mind; the identity correction of the Yes Men, that made G.W. Bush say: "some freedoms should be limited"; the challenge to the esoteric American electoral machine, realized with an auction website, where citizens were able to sell their vote directly to the best bidder ([V]ote-auction di Ubermorgen)...

The epic narration loves digressions: that's why Connessioni Leggendarie gathers the fast-paced narration of these adventures and long excursuses to the utilization of informatic languages as a poetic language [code poetry], and on the transformation of the software into an artwork, regretting functionalities in favour of aesthetical, conceptual or social needs [software art].

Connessioni Leggendarie isn't, and doesn't want to be, a final exhibition: it's only the first, perfectible version of the legend and an attempt to suggest to institutions, which are often insensible, ways and formulas to preserve a history risking to get completely lost as a document and to be at the mercy of the ungovernable limbo of oral history. In 1995, Jeff Rothemberg warned: "Digital information lasts forever - or for five years, whichever comes first".

Aware of this problem, Connessioni Leggendarie tries this new rigorous interface, using the instruments of documentation and emulation to refer to the spirit of the legend, rather than to quote. Therefore, video documents are displayed together with installations, dedicated PCs and panels, depending on the characteristics of every single project.

Invited artists

* Ubermorgen (Austria)
* The Yes Men (U.S.A.)
* Surveillance Camera Players (U.S.A.)
* Sebastian J. F. (Austria)
* RTMARK (U.S.A.)
* Joan Leandre \ retroYou (Spain)
* Mark Napier (U.S.A.)
* Natalie Bookchin (U.S.A.)
* Jodi (Holland)
* 0100101110101101.ORG (Italia)
* Jaromil (Italy/Austria)
* I/O/D (U.K.)
* Heath Bunting (U.K.)
* Florian Cramer (Germany)
* Electronic Disturbance Theater (U.S.A.)
* Cornelia Sollfrank (Germany)
* Alexei Shulgin (Russia)
* Alexander R. Galloway (U.S.A.)
* Adrian Ward (U.K.)
* [epidemiC] (Italy)
* Amy Alexander (U.S.A.)
* Mongrel Project (U.K.)
* Eldar Karhalev & Ivan Khimin (Russia)
* etoy (U.S.A./Holland/Germany/Austria)
* Vuk Cosic (Slovenia)

Posted by jo at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

Furthernoise.org + VisitorsStudio

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Live A/V Net Performances

Furthernoise.org presents the 2nd in it's series of live A/V net performances Featuring 2TOMS (France) & John Kannenberg (USA); Sunday 23rd October 2005 16.00-18.00 GMT [Time Zone Converter]: Where: Online; and broadcasting live into the Stills Gallery, where the VisitorsStudio is projected live for 2 months to visiting audiences--23 Cockburns St, Edinburgh, Scotland. Also broadcasting live at the theatre of The Point CDC 11.00 - 13.00 EST--940 Garrison Avenue, Bronx, New York.

Furthernoise.org is hosting a series of monthly live A/V net events and is interested to hear from all audio and visual artists who feel that they could create interesting A/V performances in VisitorsStudio. VisitorsStudio is a live multi-user playground, an audio-visual space for artists and musicians to experiment, jam and perform with a real time, online audience. Please contact roger[at]furthernoise.org for more information.

VISITORSSTUDIO AT STILLS GALLERY, EDINBURGH

VisitorsStudio is currently featured as part of Ricochet, an exhibition at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh 16th October - 18th December 2005. Also including work by Henna Nadeem, Leena Nammari, Chris Dooks, Pamela So.

VisitorsStudio Workshop: Ruth Catlow recently worked with artist Henna Nadeem and young girls (8-13) of Saheliya project at the Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. Marc Garrett joined the sessions working remotely, online from london playing & mixing the live sounds as they uploaded & mixed their own imagery as part of the Stills Ricochet exhibition.

Posted by jo at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

C-THEORY

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Stelarc's Prosthetic Head

"...Words like "intelligence", "awareness" and "agency" describe particular and peculiar behaviors performed effectively and appropriately in certain locations and situations. We do not need to imagine that they indicate anything other than that. What is important is not what happens within us, but rather what happens between us in the medium of language in which we communicate, in the social institutions within which we operate and in the culture within which we've been conditioned -- at this point in our history and so on, depending on our frame of reference. To talk of agency is to refer to an intentional act defined within a very small frame of reference. [...]

In the body performances, the skin has been stretched, the body has been probed and its limbs have been extended. The interest is to construct alternate interfaces that explore the absent, alien, involuntary and automated. What we experience is emptiness, ambiguity and uncertainty. We fear what we have always been and what we have already become -- a zombie with no mind -- a body that performs involuntarily..." From Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness and Agency by Stelarc, 1000 DAYS OF THEORY, C-THEORY, VOL 28, NO 3, Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. Also see Stelarc's Prosthetic Head by Julie Clarke.

Posted by jo at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2005

SimpleTEXT

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a cell phone enabled interactive performance by Family Filter

When: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 (8 pm); Where: New York University (NYU), Kimmel Center for University Life, 8th floor, 60 Washington Square south, Corner of 4th St and LaGuardia Place (on Washington Square Park). [Map] FREE TO ALL. Bring your Cell phone and Wireless Laptop! More info about the Handheld Event.

SimpleTEXT is a collaborative audio/visual public performance that relies on audience participation through input from mobile devices such as phones, PDAs or laptops. SimpleTEXT focuses on dynamic input from participants as essential to the overall output. The performance creates a dialogue between participants who submit messages which control the audiovisual output of the installation. These messages are first parsed according to a code that dictates how the music is created, and then rhythmically drive a speech synthesizer and a picture synthesizer in order to create a compelling, collaborative audiovisual performance.

SimpleTEXT focuses on mobile devices and the web as a bridge between networked interfaces and public space. As mobile devices become more prolific, they also become separated by increased emphasis on individual use. The SimpleTEXT project looks beyond the screen and isolated usage of mobile devices to encourage collaborative use of input devices to both drive the visuals and audio output, inform each participant of each other's interaction, and allows people to actively participate in the performance while it happens.Our purpose with the performance is to create the possibility of large-scale interaction through anonymous collaboration, with immediate audio and visual feedback. SimpleTEXT encourages users to respond to one another's ideas and build upon the unexpected chains of ideas that may develop from their input.

Support/Sponsors:

SimpleTEXT is created by Family Filter, a collaboration between Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Tim Redfern, and Duncan Murphy. It was originally funded by a commission from Low-Fi, an new media arts organization based in London, UK. This event is sponsored by NYU's Program Board and the "Handheld" show.

URLS:
SimpleTEXT
Low-Fi
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Tim Redfern

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Soundwave (III)' and 'The Teleaesthetic Finger'

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Audible Observation

Josef Albers once said that art is our visual response to the world, to the universe, and to life. Location One's upcoming shows, Slowscan Soundwave (III)' and The Teleaesthetic Finger add acoustics and some mystery to Albers's notion of visual response. In the main gallery, Douglas Repetto's interactive sculpture, 'Slowscan Soundwave (III),' creates 'a simple physical manifestation of complex physical, biological, and social phenomenon.' Awash in motors, electronics and reactive Mylar, the gallery breathes presence into one of the invisible elements that shape our lives: sound. Similarly, the group show in Location One's Project Room, 'The Teleaesthetic Finger,' seeks presence for the invisible; yet these phenomena are less scientific and more extrasensory in nature. Atsushi Nishijima, Kevin Centanni, and Heather Wagner trap sounds of places never visited. The recorded journey of a kite floating out of sight or the signals of inaccessible radio frequencies attempt to capture those invisible, mysterious, but still real parts of our auditory universe. Combined, Location One's shows suggest that our responses to the world, and to life, need observation by more than our eyes. - Alyssa Wright, Net Art News, Rhizome.org.

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

Blogging As An Art Project

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Ideasonair

Ideasonair.net is a web project serving artists. The site promotes artistic ideas in various fildes, especially digital art, therefore: “Dear artists, poets, architects, designers, critics, curators and ‘lovers of the trade’, if you are short of ideas, this is the site for you!”. Here, the ideas “from hyperuranium” have landed and found a place or better, a “virtual factory”. Ideasonair.net will give to you a lot of different ideas, ready to be developed.

Ideasonair, has a particular theory about ideas and how we perceive them. In fact, think of it like this: “ideas are ‘in the air’ and the earth is spinning around, connecting with these ideas at various places. So an identical idea could ‘land’ or be had in New York and Rome at the same time”. This site could be considered somewhat like entropy. It puts in order and takes down ideas for you. This “online factory” will be continually updated to give you always new ideas. Ideasonair, could also carry out specific consulting for your artwork .
Why ideasonair.net? Fell free to ask more info. at: ideasonair[at]hotmail.it

Originally posted by ideasonair at Ideasonair

Posted by luis at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Reviewing Humanness:

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Bodies, Technologies and Spaces

The biennial conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology will be held in Lausanne (Switzerland) from 23rd to 26th August, 2006. All members of the European science, technology and innovation studies community are invited to attend. Contributions are particularly encouraged which address the general conference theme: Reviewing Humanness: Bodies, Technologies and Spaces.

What is it to be human today ? Human “nature” is made and re-made by ideas and practices assembling bodies, technologies, and spaces. Three processes in particular seem to be transforming the very notion of humanness:

1. it is reconfigured by the life sciences, from genetics to neurobiology, with the invention of new forms of human corporeity. Within contemporary philosophy and STS literature, this is associated with conceptual changes, displacing traditional binaries such as human/animal, animal/machine, nature/technology, mind/body towards all kinds of hybrids.

2. it is reassigned to and redistributed throughout sociotechnical networks and artifacts. In other words, the notion of humanness is rethought; it is considered no longer to be enclosed within the human subject, but instead disseminated in and through human-made objects and technological systems.
3. it is rescaled by the increase in transnational connections and the development of a cosmopolitan imaginary. The increase of spatial mobility (international migration, tourism, professional travel, etc.) and information flows, ‘stretching’ social relations across space, have reterritorialized, and in the best cases broadened, our conceptions of humanness.

The conference organisers invite contributions that address both a general conceptualization of humanness and these three particular processes.

The further aim of this conference is to address the political (in the broad sense of the term) dimension of a reviewed humanness. The re-fabrication of humanness is not only an academic thought-experiment but a daily life experience, and sometimes an object of concern, for society as a whole. The organisers therefore also invite contributions specifically focusing on the politicisation of contemporary humanness. Such topics include:

a) issues related to participative forums created by state or supranational organisations to trigger public debate around the anthropological consequences of scientific and technological innovations;

b) initiatives of different segments of civil society (patient organisations, feminist movements, indigenous groups, consumer associations, etc.), including public action and mobilisations, regarding the definition of research agendas, the organisation of knowledge production and diffusion, or the political regulation of the three above-mentioned processes;

c) questions regarding participation in the global redefinition of humanness. Are not large sectors of humankind excluded from these changes? Do they mean the same thing regardless of social class, gender and ethnicity?

Threads:

1. Biomedical practices, politics and markets
2. Medicine, healthcare & patients
3. Information and communication technologies
4. Technological artifacts & users
5. Environments, landscapes and resources
6. Spatialities, transnationalism and governance
7. Expertise, governance & publics
8. Normative issues & the production of norms
9. Science, politics & markets
10. Knowledge objects, practices & cultures
11. Science, culture & arts
12. Practices and processes of innovation
13. STS in practice (methods, research networks, computer tools)

Contributions are welcome from the range of disciplines found within the broad field of science, technology, and society studies. For those whose work does not relate directly to the Conference’s theme, there are open paper sessions.

The draft programme will be posted on the website by the end of March. Please read the guidelines for preparing and presenting papers.

Abstract submissions should include all contact details, the text of the abstract (300 words), three keywords and the preferred Conference Threads. Please use this template file as the basis for your submission and send it by 16th December, 2005 , to easst2006[at]unil.ch

If you plan to propose a session, please send a message to the organisers as soon as possible, and put « session proposal » in the subject of your e-mail. In order to help the preparation of the programme, session proposals will be posted on a page of the Conference's website. Session proposals should include all contact details, the text of the proposed session (600 words max.). Use this template file as the basis for your submission and send it by 16th December, 2005 , to easst2006[at]unil.ch

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

PERFORMA Presents TWO-PART SYMPOSIUM

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NOT FOR SALE: Writing on Performance and New Media

Curators, Critics and Writers Discuss the Art of Writing about Performance and New Media: Saturday, November 12, 2005, 1:30–5:00 PM; Yalincak Family Foundation Lecture Hall; 19 West 4th Street at Mercer Street, NY.

PERFORMA is pleased to present the fourth installment of NOT FOR SALE: Writing on Performance and New Media, in conjunction with New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, Department of Art and Art Professions, and as part of PERFORMA05, the first biennial of new visual art performance in New York City. The event is free and open to the public, and will take place at New York University’s Yalincak Family Foundation Lecture Hall at 19 West 4th Street on the corner of Mercer on Saturday, November 12, 2005 from 1:30 to 5:00 pm. Reception to follow. For further information, please call PERFORMA at (212) 533-5720, or visit our website.

NOT FOR SALE: Writing on Performance and New Media is a dynamic continuation of the discussion on performance and its relationship to the museum, gallery, critic and collector. The two-part symposium comprised of a distinguished panel of critics and curators will offer an in-depth view of contemporary developments in writings on ephemeral works of art that encompass several creative disciplines.

1:30–3:00 PM

SESSION I: Curating (and Writing on) Performance in the 21st Century: More and more contemporary artists from around the world make live art and performance-related film and video, as well as installation art, with an ever-increasing presence in museums and galleries. How does the current generation of curators, critics, and writers tackle curating and writing about performance differently from the past? In what way has the relationship between the artist, curator, and museum changed over the past decade? A panel of critics and curators will discuss the art of curating performance today.

Catherine Wood, Curator, Tate Modern, London
Katy Siegel, Art historian, Curator and Critic
Phillippe Vergne, Chief Curator, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Moderated by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, Senior Editor, Parkett

3:30–5:00 PM

SESSION II: Writing (and Reviewing) Across Borders–Performance and New Media: Critics and writers on art today need to be well versed in many languages including film, dance, literature, music, architecture and new media. How does an author write across disciplines? How much background in each individual history does a writer need in order to illuminate this multidisciplinary work and to explain its relevance in a broader cultural context to ever-evolving audiences? A panel of critics and writers will explore these questions as they relate to the research, development, and presentation of visual art performance.

Margo Jefferson, Writer and Critic
John Rockwell, Dance Critic, The New York Times
Bennett Simpson, Associate Curator, ICA Boston
Linda Yablonsky, novelist and critic
Moderated by RoseLee Goldberg, Founder and Director of PERFORMA

About PERFORMA: PERFORMA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. PERFORMA will commission new performance projects in visual arts, establish a dedicated performance biennial, and provide year-round educational programming for this critical area of visual art and cultural history.

About the Department of Art and Art Professions, New York University, Steinhardt School of Education: The Department of Art and Art Professions is committed to the construction of new knowledge through the creation of art and innovative academic research. The Department brings students, practicing artists, educators, and art professionals together in a richly interactive, multidisciplinary community that fosters imaginative art-making and intellectual exchange.

MORE TO COME...

A full program of events is available online:
http://www.performa-arts.org/

For Schedule information:
http://05.performa-arts.org/schedule

For Ticket Information:
http://05.performa-arts.org/ticketinfo

PERFORMA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. PERFORMA will commission new performance projects in visual arts, establish a dedicated performance biennial, and provide year-round educational programming for this critical area of visual art and cultural history.

Posted by jo at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

International Cross-Disciplinary Conference

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International Cross-Disciplinary Conference: Architecture | Music | Acoustics--Toronto, Canada; June 8-10, 2006; Abstracts Due: October 31, 2005 (300 words); email: amaconf[at]ryerson.ca.

In conjunction with the SoundaXis festival of music, acoustics, and architecture, Ryerson University Department of Architectural Science is pleased to announce an international conference dedicated to a study of the same themes.

Among the critical fault-lines within architectural practice and discourse is that which privileges sight, conceiving of architecture as primarily a visual art form. Despite the multi-sensorial, embodied nature of our being in space, architectural discourse has been largely silent where senses other than the visual are impacted. This conference proposes to move outside the visual paradigm to investigate the relationships between architecture, music, and acoustics. These intermeshed relationships have tended to one extreme or the other: either sound is understood by architects instrumentally, as an element to be controlled if not eliminated, or music is understood by architects as a metaphorical structure needing to be translated to visual terms before becoming available to architecture. Indeed, one of the few works published in the last half-century on the relationship of architecture and music from within the architectural community is Pamphlet Architecture 16, edited by Elizabeth Martin, which takes as its title Architecture as a Translation of Music.

This conference sees itself as an updating of Martin's work, while starting from the premise that Architecture, Music, and Acoustics have real relationships not requiring translation between visual and sonic terms, and not limited by the instrumental. The conference will involve both historical and critical studies of these relationships, focusing on the strategies and techniques used by architects in dealing with sound and with ideas borrowed from music. The conference will encourage an active mode of engagement with sound in architectural design.

Abstract Requirements

Those wishing to present papers at this conference should submit a brief abstract, of no more than 300 words, by October 31, 2005. Abstracts are to be submitted under one of the following session themes:

I. Acoustic Ecology:how can understanding the acoustic ecology of structured environments foster an auditive culture?
II. Situated Sonic Practices: how does the practice of sound installation art foster new understandings of both sound and place, as well as of the relationships between the two?

III. Spaces for Performance: how have recent developments in the acoustics of performance spaces affected our understanding of the relationships between sound and space?

IV. Intersections of Music and Architecture: how can the interweaving of architecture and music through creative collaborations result in an enrichment of both disciplines?

V. The Poetics of Closure: how can a consideration of sound affect the design of spaces and buildings not specifically intended for performance? Presentations of built work are encouraged in this session.

VI. Sound in Architectural Education: how can a consideration of sound be used to enrich the education of tomorrow's architects?

VII. The Architectural Representation of Sound: how can the predominately visual domain of architectural representation deal with sound? Presenters may approach any of the above topics historically, theoretically, or through the presentation of project work.

Presentations involving current built work are particularly encouraged. Final papers will be expected to have a maximum length suitable for a twenty-minute presentation (approx. 3000 words). Proposals will also be accepted for those wishing to present installations at this conference. Proposals for installation work should be submitted under one of the above session themes, and include a written description of 300 words or less, along with appropriate graphic material. Please note that the organizing committee cannot provide financial assistance for the mounting of installations.

Further information about formatting of abstracts will be posted shortly on the conference website, or by contacting the conference organizers at amaconf[at]ryerson.ca.

Posted by jo at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

CIAC's Electronic Magazine

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art and bio(techno)logy

The CIAC's Electronic Magazine is an online and bilingual (French and English) publication, devoted to cyberculture and art in all its connections with new technologies. Every issue is organized around a particular theme. The Fall 2005 issue is about art and bio(techno)logy.

“Is our ecosphere being altered by Genetically Modified Organisms built for profit margins without authentic oversight or risk assessment? If the technology for genome sculpting of new style humans is a possibility, what, if any, effect will imagination play in our future kindred? What can we know about animal sentience and non-human awareness? How are artists taking these factors into account as they try to express themselves through living collage? As new biological comprehension sprouts new technological processes, what are the overt and covert roles of creativity on the decisions of which traits get embedded into whose new bodies? These are today's major issues emanating from the intersection of Art and Biology.” (Adam ZARETSKY, THE MUTAGENIC ARTS)

In this issue:

· FEATURE : THE MUTAGENIC ARTS, by American artist and researcher Adam ZARETSKY;

· INTERVIEW : BIOART IN QUESTION : Adam ZARETSKY talks with Shannon BELL, Sam BOWER, Dmitry BULATOV, George GESSERT, Kathy HIGH, Ellen K. LEVY, Oron CATTS & Ionat ZURR and Jennifer WILLET ;

· PERSPECTIVE : CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE : ARTISTIC RESISTANCE IN THE AGE OF TERROR, by Shawn BAILEY (Concordia University);

· FIVE REVIEWS : -BIOTEKNICA (Canada / Quebec, 2000-present), by Anne-Marie BOISVERT; NATURAL REALITY SUPERWEED KIT 1.0, by Heath BUNTING (United Kingdom, 1999), by Xavier MALBREIL; EMBRACING ANIMAL, by Kathy HIGH (USA, 2005), by Jennifer WILLET; GFP BUNNY, by Eduardo KAC (Brazil / USA, 2000), by Ernestine DAUBNER; DISEMBODIED CUISINE, by THE TISSUE CULTURE & ART PROJECT (Australia, 2003), by Jens HAUSER

Anne-Marie Boisvert, Editor in Chief
CIAC’s Electronic Magazine
magazine[at]ciac.ca
Centre international d'art contemporain de Montréal
contact / abonnement / subscribe : magazine[at]ciac.ca

Posted by jo at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

DIAL-A-DIVA

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Call For SINGERS and CONCERT GOERS

:: scroll down for info in French / German / Spanish / Portuguese::

Take Part in DIAL-A-DIVA an event spanning the globe for 24 hours,connecting singers and listeners live by telephone. The project is inspired by a period in history when the telephone was the first broadcasting medium for entertainment. From the 1880s to 1920s phone companies in many countries including France, Britain, Hungary and America set up subscription services connecting opera houses and theatres to a remote audience, listening via the telephone network. Dial-a-diva serves a similar function, but reflects today’s global telecommunications and social networks.

The event will start at 08:00 GMT on December 3rd in time for evening concerts in New Zealand and Australia. Then as time moves on, concerts will begin throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and ending with the Americas, 24 hours later. An installation at CCA Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland invites visitors to participate and view the hub of operations throughout the project.

To be part of Dial-a-Diva all you need to do is sing into a telephone, or use your phone as a microphone wherever singing happens. The Dial-a-Diva call centre will link as many different types of singing, from as many locations as possible to a wide international audience of telephone listeners. Whether at home, in a concert hall or bar, whether professionally or just for fun, whether accompanied or solo, whatever the singing Dial-a-Diva would love to have you taking part. Sign up, we call you back at the time of your concert wherever you are - world wide participation is free.

SIGN UP
online: www.dialadiva.net
email: dialadiva[at]gmail.com
phone: +44 (0) 141 227 1830 (UK landline)

This project is supported by a Creative Scotland Award and technically realised by Coveline, Intercall Europe, Commercial Decisions, Rook Technologies Inc. & CCA Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland.

----------------(Castellano)---------------

DIAL-A-DIVA :: Participar :: ¿Eres cantante o asistente a conciertos?

Dial-a-Diva es un evento que se extiende por todo el mundo durante 24 horas, conectando cantantes y oyentes por teléfono en directo. El proyecto de Zoe Irvine está inspirado en el periodo de la historia en el que el teléfono era el primer medio de radiodifusión para espectáculos. Desde la década de 1880 hasta la de 1920 las compañías telefónicas de muchos países, incluidos Francia, Gran Bretaña, Hungría y América, ofrecían servicios de abonado conectando teatros de ópera con una audiencia distante, que escuchaba el concierto por conexión telefónica. Dial-a-diva hace esta misma función, pero refleja las redes sociales y de telecomunicaciones globales de nuestros días.

El evento empezará a las 08:00 GMT del 3 de diciembre, a tiempo para los conciertos de la tarde en Nueva Zelanda y Australia. Después empezarán los conciertos en Asia, Oriente Medio, África y Europa, para acabar en América 24 horas más tarde.

Una instalación en Galeria CCA, Glasgow, Escocia, invita al espectador a participar y ver el centro de operaciones del proyecto.

Participar - Para ser parte de Dial-a-Diva lo único que tienes que hacer es cantar por teléfono o usar el teléfono como micrófono allá donde vayas a cantar. La línea de atención telefónica de Dial-a-Diva conectará todo tipo de cantantes, desde todas las localizaciones posibles, a un amplio público internacional de oyentes telefónicos. Ya sea en casa, en una sala de conciertos o en un bar, ya seas profesional o simplemente por divertirte, estés acompañado o sólo, ya sea una canción u otra, Dial-a-Diva está deseando que participes. Inscríbete, te llamaremos a la hora del concierto donde estés – está abierto a todo el mundo.

Inscripciones:
online: www.dialadiva.net
email: dialadiva[at]gmail.com
teléfono: +44 (0) 141 227 1830

Este proyecto esta subvencionado por Creative Scotland Award y cuenta con realización técnica de Coveline, Intercall Europe, Commercial Decisions, Rook Technologies Inc. & CCA Gallery, Glasgow, Escocia.

----------------(Deutsch)---------------

DIAL-A-DIVA :: TEILNEHMEN :: Sind Sie Sänger/in oder
Konzertbesucher/in?

Dial-a-Diva ist ein weltumspannendes Event, dass Sänger/innen und Zuhörer/innen für 24 Stunden live über Telefon verbindet. Das Projekt ist inspiriert von der historischen Periode in der das Telefon als erstes Übertragungsmedium für Unterhaltung verwendet wurde. Telefongesellschaften aus vielen Ländern, unter anderem aus Frankreich, Grossbritannien, Ungarn und Amerika haben zwischen 1880 und den 20iger Jahren des 19.Jahrhunderts ein Abonnementservice eingeführt, dass einer abgeschiedenen Zuhörerschaft ermöglichte, Aufführungen aus verschiedenen Opernhäuser und Theater live via Telefon zuzuhören. Dial-a-Diva hat eine ähnliche Funktion und reflektiert dabei die heutigen globalen telekommunikations und sozialen Netzwerke.

Das Event beginnt am 3.Dezember 2005 um 08:00h GMT – zeitgerecht für Abendkonzerte in Neuseeland und Australien. Den Zeitzonen veresetzt entsprechend, beginnen die Konzerte in Asien, im mittleren Osten, Afrika, Europa und enden 24 Stunden späeter in den Amerikas. Eine Installation in der CCA Gallerie Glasgow, Schottland, ladet Besucher zum Mitmachen und zum Beobachten der gesamten Operation ein.

TEILNEHMEN
Sind Sie Sänger/in oder Konzertbesucher/in?. Um dabei sein zu können benötigen Sie nur ein Telefon in das Sie selbst Singen oder einen Ort wo gesungen wird und Ihr Telefon dabei als Mikrofon benutzen. Dial-a-Diva verbindet möglichst viele unterschiedlichste Gesangsrichtungen von möglichst vielen unterschiedlichen Orten mit einer breiten internationalen Telefonzuhörerschaft. Ob zu Hause, in einer Konzerthalle oder in einer Bar, professionell oder zum Spass, ob eine Stimme oder viele, was auch immer der Gesang ist, Dial-a-Diva würde sich sehr über Ihre Teilnahme freuen.

Melden Sie sich online, via email oder Telefon an und Sie werden von uns zum Zeitpunkt des Konzerts kostenlos zurückgerufen – wo auch immer Sie sich befinden.

Anmeldung durch:
online: www.dialadiva.net
email: dialadiva[at]gmail.com
telefon: +44 (0) 141 227 1830 (UK landline)

Dieses Projekt ist von Creative Scotland Award gefördert und technisch umgesetzt von Coveline, Intercall Europe, Commercial Descisions, Rook Technologies Inc. & der CCA Gallerie Glasgow, Schottland.

----------------(Francais)---------------

DIAL-A-DIVA :: Vous estes un chanteur ? Un spectateur ? :: PARTICIPER

Dial-a-Diva est une action artistique qui traverse le globe pendant 24 heures, soit l'interconnexion de chanteurs et d'auditeurs en direct au téléphone. Ce projet se réfère à une période de l'histoire où le telephone était considéré comme un médium de diffusion de programme de musiques et d'entertainment. Des années 1880 à 1920, les compagnies de téléphones de nombreux pays comme la France, la Hongrie, le Royaume-Uni et les États-Unis, mirent au point un service de souscription qui proposait des écoutes en directs des Opéras et Théâtres à une audience connectée au réseau téléphonique. Dial-a-Diva rempli aujourd'hui une fonction identique, tout en reflétant l'esthétique et la philosophie des réseaux aujourd'hui.

L'action commence à 08:00 GMT le 3 décembre 2005, en synchronisation avec le débuts de concert lyriques en Australie et en Nouvelle Zélande. Puis d'un décalage horaire à l'autre, les concerts surgiront d'Asie, du Moyen Orient, d'Afrique, d'Europe et s'achèveront en Amérique 24 heures plus tard. Une installation au CCA de Glasgow en Écosse, invite les spectateurs-auditeurs à participer et à suivre le théâtre des opérations.

Pour participer à Dial-a-Diva tout ce qu'il vous suffit de faire c'est de chanter dans votre téléphone, ou utiliser votre téléphone portable comme microphone partout ou il y a de la chanson. Le centre d'appel Dial-a-Diva va diffuser toute sorte de chants, de partout dans le monde à un public international d'auditeurs téléphoniques. Si vous êtes chez vous, ou dans un bar ou une salle de concert, si vous êtes amateur ou professionel, de n'importe quel style de chanson, Dial-a-Diva sera heureux de votre participation. Inscrivez -vous, on vous appellera à l'heure de votre concert quelque soit l'endroit ou vous êtes. La participation est gratuite.

Inscrivez -vous
online: www.dialadiva.net
email: dialadiva[at]gmail.com
tel: +44 (0) 141 227 1830 (téléphone fix GB)

Ce projet est soutenu par une bourse de Creative Scotland.
Réalisation technique: Coveline, Intercall Europe, Commercial Decisions, Rook Technologies Inc. & galerie CCA, Glasgow, Ecosse.

----------------(Portugues)---------------

DIAL-A-DIVA (Disque-Diva) :: PARTICIPE :: Você é cantor/a ou freqüentador/a de concertos?

DIAL-A-DIVA é um evento abarcando o planeta durante 24 horas, conectando cantores/as e ouvintes ao vivo por telefone. A inspiração do projeto da artista escocesa Zoe Irvine foi um período na história quando o telefone foi o primeiro meio de transmissão usado para entretenimento. Da década de 1880 até a década de 1920 empresas telefônicas em muitos paises, entre os quais a França, o Reino Unido, a Hungria e os EUA., estabeleceram services por assinatura, conectando assim casas de ópera e teatros a um público remoto que ouvia pela rede telefônica. Disque-Diva preenche uma função semelhante, porém reflete as redes globais atuais, tanto sociais como as de telecomunicações.

O evento começará às 8 horas GMT no dia 3 de dezembro em tempo para pegar os concertos noturnos na Nova Zelândia e Austrália. Conforme a hora vai avançando, outros concertos começarão na Ásia, no Oriente Médio e na África, terminando 24 horas mais tarde nas Américas. Uma instalação no CCA (Centro para Artes Contemporâneas) em Glasgow, na Escócia convida visitantes a participarem e observar o centro de operações durante todo o projeto.

PARTICIPE - Você é cantor/a ou freqüentador/a de concertos ? Para participar no Disque-Diva a única coisa que você precisa fazer é cantar no telefone ou usar o seu telefone como microfone em qualquer lugar onde estiver alguém cantando. O centro de ligações de Disque-Diva vai
Conectar tantos quantos estilos diferentes de cantar e tantas quantas localidades possíveis a um grande público internacional de ouvintes por telefone. Seja em casa, numa sala de concertos ou num bar, seja profissionalmente ou somente por diversão, acompanhado ou solo, seja que for o cantar, Disque-Diva adoraria ter a sua participação. Assine já - nós ligaremos para você na hora do seu concerto onde você estiver – a participação em qualquer lugar do mundo é grátis.

online: www.dialadiva.net
email: dialadiva[at]gmail.com
Telefone: +44(0) 141 227 1830 (telefone fixo – Reino Unido)

Este projeto foi possível graças ao prêmio “Creative Scotland Award”, com realização técnica por Coveline, Intercall Europe, Commercial Decisions & Rook Technologies Inc. & CCA (Centro para Artes Contemporâneas) Glasgow, Escócia.
_______________________________________________
a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland
post: ambit[at]a-r-c.org.uk
archive: www.a-r-c.org.uk/ambit

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

Ether | Airspace

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Airspace: Radio, network art, ontology and ether

Airspace: Radio, network art, ontology and ether at Location One: 19 October, 2005--Joe Milutis will give a talk, perform a radiophonic chamber piece (bring your own radios), and introduce his forthcoming book Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything.

About the book: "Diagrams the interconnections among cosmic consciousness, hermetic avant-gardes, and technological progress.

Every culture has its own word for this nothing. Synonymous with the idea of absolute space and time, the ether is an ancient concept that has continually determined our definition of environment, our relations to each other, and our ideas about technology. It has also instigated our desire to know something irrepressibly beyond all that.

In Ether, the histories of mysticism and the unseen merge with discussions of the technology and science of electromagnetism. Joe Milutis explores how the ideas of Anton Mesmer and Isaac Newton have manifested themselves as the inspiration for occult theories and artistic practices from Edgar Allan Poe’s works to today. In doing so, he demonstrates that fading in and out of scientific favor has not prevented the ether, a uniquely immaterial concept, from being a powerful force for material progress.

Milutis deftly weaves the origins of electrical science with alchemical lore, nineteenth-century industrialism with yogic science, and network space with dreams of the absolute. Linking the ether to phenomena such as radio noise, space travel, avant-garde film, and the rise of the Internet, he lends it an almost physical presence and currency. From Federico Fellini to Gilles Deleuze, Japanese anime to Italian Futurism, Jean Cocteau to NASA, Shirley Temple to Wilhelm Reich, Ether traverses geographical boundaries, spiritual planes, and the divide between popular and high culture.

Navigating more than three hundred years of the ether’s cultural and artistic history, Milutis reveals its continuous reinvention and tangible impact without ever losing sight of its ephemeral, elusive nature. The true meaning of ether, Milutis suggests, may be that it can never be fully grasped.

Joe Milutis is assistant professor of art at the University of South Carolina. His writing has appeared in such publications as ArtByte, Wide Angle, Film Comment, and Cabinet."

Posted by jo at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

SPECFLIC 1.0

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dress for 2030

Public Launch October 28th, 2005; Pre-show 8pm, main event 9pm-midnight; Calit2 Courtyard, UCSD Campus.

Set in 2030, SPECFLIC's story is not just told, but experienced. Based on cutting edge science and engineering research, SPECFLIC 1.0 performs the social costs and benefits of accelerated progress. What type of future do you envision? Come be part of the public launch of this ongoing performative media project!
Bring wireless devices (laptops & cell phones). In honor of Halloween, dress for 2030.

Directed by Adriene Jenik; Additional text by author Kim Stanley Robinson. Featuring performances by Allison Janney, Ricardo Dominguez, Richard Jenik, Lisa Brenneis and Nao Bustamante. Innovative public interaction modules by Neil McCurdy, Andrew Collins, Robert Twomey, DoEat and Radioactive Radio. [Related post]

Posted by jo at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

Soft-wear: Active Materials

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Symposium :: Workshop :: Open Lab

Soft-wear: Active Materials is a part of the x-med-k. series of workshops, organised by Nadine, 0kn0 and FoAM.

Bite-size Symposium [25/26 October 2005]; Workshop [25-31 October 2005]; Open Lab [31 October 2005]: where: 0kn0, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Quai des Charbonnages, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium.

The era of garments, furniture and buildings designed as static and predefined objects [with short expiration dates] is drawing to an end. Fashion and architecture are on the verge of becoming dynamic, semi-permeable membranes open to the diverse surroundings enveloping the human body. The Soft-wear symposium, workshop and open lab will offer a glimpse into the world of active materials that form the foundation of these novel design paradigms. Soft-wear is a place where electronics meets the traditional crafts of weaving, dyeing and knitting fibres and threads, to produce materials that can respond to touch, temperature, light and other external stimuli. They are used as tangible interfaces and displays for fashion, architecture, design, performance and other forms of contemporary creative expression, where the edge between materials and media rapidly dissolves.

Posted by jo at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

Creative Lab

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Call for Submissions

CCA in Glasgow announces the next Creative lab opportunities to begin in April 2006. Artists working in the live art, contemporary performance, new theatre, time based media and interdisciplinary arts sectors are invited to submit proposals to be considered for a CCA Creative Lab. The creative lab opportunity offers space, technical support and facilities, administrative and development advice and support.

The amount of time offered would be between 3 to 7 weeks within April 06 - March 07. We would like to offer four Labs to Scottish based artists and two labs for artists outside Scotland. Deadline for proposals: Monday 14th November; 2005 Enquiries: grace[at]cca-glasgow.com.

Posted by jo at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

OPEN FADER @ Sonorities 2006

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Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music

Call for Works: The Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music in Belfast invites composers and artists working with sound to submit works to be presented during Sonorities 2006. This year’s festival is dedicated to music performance practice that challenges the traditional roles of composer, score, performer and audience. We welcome works by composers/performers, improvisers, new media artists, sound and installation artists.

We encourage two types of submission (maximum 1 work per category): 1. Live Performances involving technology: This includes laptop improv, VJ, audio-visual, live-electronics, sound poetry, hacktivism. Please submit the work in a documentary format that reflects the nature of the performance (e.g. video on DVD, audio on CD, software for Mac/PC, photographs). 2. Electroacoustic Music (Stereo or Multi-channel): This includes Stereo works for diffusion, multi-channel works and works with video. All submissions must be on DAT, CD or DA88. Works with video must be on DVD.

Selected works will be featured in four special concerts during the Festival. These events will take place in the Sonic Arts Research Centre Sonic Lab performance space. This unique environment for the performance of electroacoustic music includes facilities for sound projection in a full 3D environment through loudspeakers located above and below the audience area. The experimental nature of the space makes it essential that selected composers and artists attend the Festival to perform their pieces. Artists are expected to finance their participation. Sonorities will be able to provide letters of support, which can aid in seeking funding. Please include a title, program notes as well as a short biography with the submission. Contact information should include a phone number, address, and an email address. All materials will become part of SARC’s media library and may be considered for future events.

Post to works to:

OPEN FADER
Sonorities 2006
Sonic Arts Research Centre
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland

Important Dates:

Deadline for Submissions: 25th November 2005 (postmarked)
Festival Dates: 25 April – 1st May 2006

Contacts: Dr. Pedro Rebelo (Festival Chair) P.Rebelo[at]qub.ac.uk

Sonic Arts Research Centre
The Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) is a newly established centre of excellence, dedicated to the research of music technology. This unique interdisciplinary project has united internationally recognised experts in the areas of musical composition, signal processing, internet technology and digital hardware. The Centre was completed in October 2003 and was officially opened by Karlheinz Stockhausen in April 2004. Send an email to sarc@qub.ac.uk to add your name to the Festival mailing list.

Posted by jo at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

Functional Portraits:

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Picturing the Invisible Body

"There has been a trend in questioning whether science and art should be identified as two separate cultures. Arguments can easily be found in favour or against such statement. It is probably more productive to recognise that the important issue concerns the connections that can be, and have been, established between art and science. Since modernity, it is difficult to consider visual arts without realising direct and indirect links to science. The prominence of biology and biotechnology in the science of today has an equivalent high repercussion in visual arts practise. The appropriation of biology as an art medium can be seen as a natural development: appropriation of scientific imagery would not be sufficient, as in the art of today the process is as important as the outcome." From Functional Portraits: Picturing the Invisible Body by Marta de Menezes [via newmediaFIX]

Posted by jo at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

World-Information City

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Billboard Call Bangalore 2005

World-Information City "Billboard Call Bangalore 2005" artists campaigning projects with Marina Grzinic, Ljubliana; Elffriede, Vienna. And a panel discussion on IP and the City with Hanna Hacker, Vienna; Felix Stalder, Zurich; Veronika Weidinger, Vienna.

IP and the City: Restricted Lifescapes and the Wealth of the Commons: The booms, bubbles and busts of the digital networking revolution of the 90s have ebbed into normality. The new logic of information economies is interacting with the full range of social and political contexts, producing new systems of domination but also new domains of freedom. It is now that from deep societal transformations the new informational lifescapes start to emerge.

Thus it has become necessary to highlight the strong normalizing forces that shape this process. This is not just a question of abstract information policy. On the contrary, the building of immaterial landscapes has very material consequences for social, cultural and economic realities. With digital restriction technologies and expanded intellectual property regimes on the rise, it is an urgent task to develop new ways to protect and extend the wealth of our intellectual and cultural commons.

Human life is physical and informational at the same time, our physical and cultural dimensions are mutually constitutive. Their interrelations emerging from historical and local context are now more than ever influenced by global transformations in the info sphere. The term "globalization" describes a deep change in how physical and informational spaces are organized and how they intersect with one another to form landscapes, both physical and informational. "Zoning", the establishment of domains governed by special rules, is a key concept to understand these new landscapes.

Physical space is increasingly fragmented into "export zones", special "safety zones", VIP lounges at transportation hubs, gated communities, "no-go areas" and so forth. Just when for the first time in history a majority of humanity lives in cities, their form starts dissolving and is replaced by a patchwork of distinct sectors. Every city has places that are fully global alongside others which are intensely local, "first world" and "third world" are no longer regional identifiers, but signify various patches within a single geographic domain.

Informational landscapes are fragmented by similar processes. What used to be relatively open and accessible cultural spaces are increasingly caved up in special administrative zones, privatized claims of intellectual property, and policed through the ever increasing scope of patents and copyrights. What comes natural to people, to create, transform and share ideas, thoughts, and experiences - - as songs, as computer programs, as stories, as new processes how to make things better - is being prohibited by proprietary claims of "data lords" who enforce dominion over their own zones of the cultural landscape. This is accompanied by intense propaganda efforts extolling the "evils" of sharing culture. There is no trespassing, and while their culture is ubiquitous around the globe, we are more and more restricted from making our own.

Counter-movements that talk about the commons instead of proprietary zones have been gathering strength around the globe. The goal is to devise new ways in which information can flow freely from one place to another, from people to people. Instead of deepening fragmentation, information and cultures are held to be a resource produced and used collaboratively, rather than being controlled by particular owners. People should be free to appropriate information as they see fit, based on their own historical and personal needs and desire, rather than having to consume the standardized products of McWorld. More than ever informational commons, accessible under conditions of their own choosing, are needed to help reconnect people bypassed by the standard flows of information and capital.

In this paper, we bring together theoreticians and practitioners, artists and lawyers, programmers and musicians who offer a diverse critique of the new regime of physical and informational zoning. This collection of cultural intelligence looks into alternative models of how to reinvent cultural practices based on a collaborative plurality of commons and, perhaps, imbue fragmentation of space with a new positive sense of shared differences. As each and every one of us produces culture in the course of our daily lifes, we are forced to choose sides: do we, in the myriad of small acts that constitute life in the information society, enforce restrictions or enable access?

Konrad Becker, Netbase/t0, Institute for New Culture Technologies
Felix Stalder, lecturer in Media Economics at the Academy of Art and Design, Zurich, co-founder of openflows.org

http://world-information.org/wio/program/events/1128950005
http://world-information.org/wio/wsis
http://world-information.org/wio/program/bangalore2005

World-Information City is part of an ongoing project between Bangalore, Delhi, Amsterdam and Vienna (www.opencultures.net)

Posted by jo at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

fibreculture issues 4 + 5

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Diseases of Information and New Media Labour

fibreculture issue 4 - contagion and the diseases of information includes: Living Dead Networks by Eugene Thacker; Digital Monsters, Binary Aliens – Computer Viruses, Capitalism and the Flow of Information by Jussi Parikka; Marginal Networks: The Virus between Complexity and Suppression by Roberta Buiani; and Rhythmic Parasites: A Virological Analysis of Sound and Dance by Stamatia Portanova.

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fibreculture issue 5 - multitudes, creative organisation and the precarious condition of new media labour includes: From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labour, Life and Unstable Networks by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter; On the Life and Deeds of San Precario, Patron Saint of Precarious Workers and Lives by Ilaria Vanni and Marcello Tarì; A Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour by Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford; Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry by Julian Kücklich; Postcard from the Edge: Autobiographical Musings on the Dis/organisations of the Multimedia Industry by Linda Leung; Speculations on a Marxist theory of the Virtual Revolution by Bob Hodge and Gabriela Coronado; Learning and Insurgency in Creative Organisations by Paul Newfield and Timothy Rayner; and Dawn of the Organised Networks by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter.

Posted by jo at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2005

Performance Perimeters Symposium

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Experiments and Conversations

Performance Perimeters Symposium is a festival and conference for performance art, experimental dance and experimental theatre organized by Neutral Ground, New Dance Horizons, Curtain Razors, Sakewewak Artists Collective. November 2-6, 2005. Open to the public. Advance registration encouraged.

Performance Perimeters Symposium is organized in conjunction with a Performance Creation Canada conference to engage a conversation between artists, presenters and audiences on the convergence of forms and ideas that have come to characterize the forums of performance and multi-disciplinary art. The conference includes panel presentations on the subjects of arts and markets, intangible heritage, representation & self representation, cultural agency, audiences, economies, criticism and curation as well as a debate on the Status of the Artist.

This unique Regina event is being organized by four arts organizations who have joined in presenting live perspectives and practices from a wide range of contemporary artists and thinkers.

Organized by New Dance Horizons, Neutral Ground, Curtain Razors and Sakewewak Artists Collective, PPS is a meeting ground for artists and public to engage with performance work and join in the conversation with other artists, presenters, theorists and writers. Artists including Istvan Kantor, Edward Poitras, Jillian Mcdonald, David Yonge, Debra Dunn, Lori Blondeau, PHONO, Sarah Abbott, Davida Monk, Helen Walkley, John Noestheden, Rob Bos, The Skeleton Crew (Seema Goel, Steve Kirkland), Robin Brass, Lynn Acoose, Elwood Jimmy, Joey Tremblay, Carol Grey Eyes and others will perform in more than eight Regina locations. There will be a reading of the work of the late Emily Givner, a Web launch for a commissioned project at Soil Digital Media Suite and a Book Event, presenting recent performance art papers and publications with Johanna Householder.

Panelists David Garneau, Kathleen Irwin, Rachelle Viader Knowles, Daniel Anderson, MJ Thompson, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda, Adrienne Wong, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, Naomi Campbell, Glenn Alteen (Moderator) and Jack Udaskin (Moderator), will introduce new approaches to the economies of performance art and interdisciplinary work.

"Enjoy the restorative powers of symposia." A time and place to take in a moment, a breath, a critical "pause" as Brian Patterson suggests, "We might be doing by engaging & being engaged in the performative."

Performance program and events start with an introductory event Wednesday November 2 and commence Thursday November 3 through Sunday November 6, 2005. Performance Creation Canada meetings and events take place over the weekend with registration available on line and starting Friday, November 4 at 4:00 pm. The public are invited to attend all events.

Conference registration continues at 4:00 pm on Friday November 4 at Regina's Royal Canadian Legion, 1820 Cornwall Street, Regina, SK.

The organizers acknowledge funding support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Department of Canadian Heritage Arts Presentation Canada and the City of Regina.

Advance registration encouraged.

PPS/PCC Schedule: (please check this site for updates and further details).

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Introductory event at New Dance Horizons, 7:30 pm
(2207 Harvey Street)
New work by THE SKELETON CREW; Seema Goel, Steve Kirkland

Thursday, November 3, 2005

Processional Performance, Lori Blondeau, Neutral Ground to Mysteria, 3:30 pm
(1856 Scarth Street)

Reception and Book Event with Johanna Householder, Mysteria Gallery 5:00 pm
(2706 13th Avenue)

Also at Mysteria:
Reading-performance, the work of the late Emily Givner
Sarah Abbott, Photography
Robin Brass, Performance

(Thursday continued.../)
8 minute max performances, New Dance Horizons, 8:00 pm
(2207 Harvey Street)

Friday, November 4, 2005

Arts Projects Gallery performance, Rob Bos, 12:00 - 2:00 pm
(1217 15th Avenue)

Performance, Edward Poitras, Sakewewak 1:00 - 4:00
(2536 11th Avenue)

Performance and official launch of PCC Regina, Legion Hall
(1820 Cornwall Street)
Work by David Yonge, PHONO, John Noestheden 4:00 - 7:00 pm

Late show at New Dance Horizons, 9:00 - 11:00 pm
(2207 Harvey Street)
Artists Debra Dunn, Davida Monk, Helen Walkley

Saturday, November 5, 2005

Welcome and introductions, 9:30 - 10:15 am

Panel Presentations, RPL Theatre, 10:15 am - 4:30 pm
(2311 12th Avenue) downstairs

1) Curating and Criticism, Glenn Alteen, Moderator, 10:15 am - 12:00 noon
Panelists: David Garneau, Kathleen Irwin, Rachelle Viader Knowles, Daniel Anderson, MJ Thompson, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda

2) Audiences and Economies, Jack Udaskin, Moderator, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Panelists: Adrienne Wong, Jillian Mcdonald, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, Naomi Campbell, Marnie Badham

Status of the Artist DEBATE, RPL Theatre, 4:30 pm

Opening, Launch of Jillian Mcdonald's "Screen Kiss", Soil Digital Media Suite, 8:00 pm
(1856 Scarth Street)
Performance, Istvan Kantor, TRANSMISSION MACHINERY, Neutral Ground 9:00 pm
(1856 Scarth Street)
$3.00 tickets at the door

Outdoor event, Scarth Street Mall, Lynn Acoose and Elwood Jimmy, 10:00 pm

Sunday, November 6, 2005

PCC Steering Committee meeting, Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza, 9:30 am
Brunch, Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza, 11:00 am
Roundtable, Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza, 2:00 pm
(2125 Victoria Avenue)

Conference Registration is $15.00 and includes;
November 4 Legion Performance Event and Welcome
November 5 Conference Panels at Regina Public Library
November 6 Closing Roundtable and Closing Remarks

Any single conference event is $10.00.

All other festival performance events have tickets available at the door, where applicable. Some events are free. No advance purchase available. Everyone is welcome to come to the Sask Hotel Brunch, Sunday at 11:00 am.

Conference registration is limited.

To register, please email Michele Sereda at (306) 757-5391
or email, michelesereda[at]sasktel.net
or mail PCC Conference Registration
2060 Pasqua Street
Regina, SK
S4T 4L9

CONFERENCE HOTEL UPDATE:

Hotel Saskatchewan, Radisson Plaza
2125 Victoria Avenue
Regina, Saskatchewan
Canada, S4P 0S3
Tel: (306) 522-7691
Fax: (306) 757-5521

Toll Free
1-800-333-3333
http://www.hotelsask.com

The Holiday Inn Express
1907 11th Avenue
Regina, SK
S4P 0J2
Tel: (306) 569-4600

Posted by jo at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

Screen Play

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Video as Musical Score

Eyebeam and PERFORMA05 will co-present the premiere of Screen Play, a new work by visual artist and composer Christian Marclay, consisting of a video and three live musical ensembles. Marclay created the video to serve as a score to be interpreted live by a series of invited ensembles. The performances will take place on November 11th at 7pm at Eyebeam, 540 W 21st Street. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for Eyebeam members and students, and may be purchased online through the PERFORMA05 web site.

Marclay was the recipient of the 2005 Moving Image Commission, creating the video score Screen Play in Eyebeam’s Production Studios. The projected element of Screen Play is a combination of found film footage overlaid with computer animation. Marclay chose footage suggesting certain visual rhythms and emotions, which he then worked to accentuate or underscore elements with overlapping computer graphics. The resulting video- reminiscent at moments of a silent film and at others of a flight simulator- becomes the visual score for musicians to interpret live. Musicians leading ensembles during this premiere will include multi instrumentalist Elliot Sharp, the electronic trio TOT- (Tim Barnes, Toshio Kayiwara, and Okkyung Lee) and composer and electric harpist Zeena Perkins.

Christian Marclay: Marclay is a New York based visual artist and composer whose innovative work explores the juxtaposition between sound and vision. Since 1979, Marclay has been experimenting with sampling both visual and audio elements, experimenting with composing and performing to create his unique “theatre of found sound.” He has shown extensively nationally and internationally including solo shows at the Tate Modern, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Venice Biennial.

Performing Ensembles: Zeena Parkins , multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, sought after in European and North American 'other music' circles. She is not only one of the pioneers of the electric harp but a composer with a unique vision of how to meld acoustic and electric processes.

Composer/multi-instrumentalist/sound-artist Elliott Sharp pioneered the use of fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors in his algorithmic compositions as well as the use of computers in his improvisation and performance. Sharp has collaborated with influential artists and musicians of many genres as well as producing his own sound sculptures. In addition to creating soundtracks for feature films, Sharp has produced numerous CD’s including his most recent, "Radio Hyper-Yahoo" [zOaR], a collection of collaborations with writer/performers.

TOT Trio- Tim Barnes, Toshio Kayiwara, and Okkyung Lee: Tim Barnes’ drum and percussion work transverses a varied musical terrain. From the 90's as a member of the free folk outfit Tower Recordings to conceptual textural electronic music with Dean Roberts. In 2000 Barnes produced a cd of solo percussion music called All Acoustics. Since then he has traveled and performed extensively in Asia and Europe playing with a range of free players and rock musicians.

From central Tokyo, turntablist Toshio Kajiware, studied photography before beginning in the 90’s to perform improvised music. His obsession with obscure music led him to collaborate and perform extensively. Currently he is a producer for his own label and event series entitled "phonomena.”

A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee used her classical training in cello as a springboard from which to incorporate jazz, sounds, Korean traditional music and noise with extended techniques. In addition to participating in TOT Trio, solo performances, and leading her own ensembles, she collaborates with artists, dancers and choreographers. Her latest album is titled Nihm (TZA 7715) and was produced by John Zorn's Tzadik label.

PERFORMA: Established in April 2004 by performance art historian RoseLee Goldberg, PERFORMA is a nonprofit interdisciplinary arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. The organization is founded on a commitment to education, history, and active investigation, bringing diverse audiences, artists, curators, and educators together in new and innovative ways. PERFORMA will commission new performance projects in visual arts, establish a dedicated performance biennial, and provide year-round educational programming for expanding knowledge and understanding of this critical area of visual art and cultural history. Each biennial will include the premiere of a major commission, new visual art performance produced by PERFORMA, performance-related film and video programs, and related educational programming.

Screen Play is made possible with support from Eyebeam’s Moving Image Commission and Highbrow Entertainment.

Posted by jo at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Map to Sine

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Cartiographic Translation in Sound Experienced by Russian Hydrofoil

Map to Sine is a two-part project by South African artist James Beckett (1977) as part of the international exhibition of contemporary art ADAM, produced by SMART Project Space. Map to Sine is a series of translations from image (cartographic) to sound, based on much of the fascination and formal study of the German Serialist musicians. Exercise such as the rotation of musical pattern, the arbitrary expansion of spacing and the imposition of shape applied directly from nature all formed part of their practice.

With the generous support of the transport company Connexxion, Beckett will host passengers to a live translation of surrounding information of the North Sea Canal, aboard a Russian Hydrofoil - a water rocket of eighties design. The Bulgarian performance artist Zhana Invanova (1977) offers a live explanation of the system in both Russian an English for the benefit of an educational composition.

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Dates: Friday 14th, Saturday 15th, Sunday 16th October 2005; Times: Leaving Amsterdam 15:00hrs; 16:00hrs; 17:00hrs; Where do you catch the boat? Connexxion fast service between Amsterdam and Velsen-South (direction IJmuiden); Departing behind Amsterdam Central Station, just to the left of the ferry which crosses the North-Sea Canal; 25 minutes there, 25 minutes back. For more information: www.connexxion.nl

Posted by jo at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

CYHIST/Community Memory:

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Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace

The purpose of Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace is to create an oral history of cyberspace meaning the discussion of the history of computers, computer networks, and related technologies.

This archive contains unique first-person recollections from people who were active in building the Internet and its precursor networks, such as Arpanet, and myriad other networks and computers, dating back to the 1940s. The purpose of this archive is to serve future and present scholars and researchers interested in the history of cyberspace. For this reason, you are widely invited to store this archive of messages and make it publicly available via the Internet for people to search and retrieve the posts contained herein.

To ensure that this archive exists in perpetuity, please copy and duplicate and circulate to others, so that several copies may exist online. The wider it spreads, the more likely it will survive over time. Ideally, this entire archive would be placed online and made accessible through a searchable web-based interface, and indexed, in turn, by additional commercial search engines. Libraries are invited to add this archive to their digital collections.

The list is known as "CYHIST" and ran on two different listservers. The first listserver is cpsr-history[at]cpsr.org; that listserver handled messages from June 4, 1996 until August 15, 1996, when it was shut down. On August 13, 1996 all subscribers were shifted to a new listserver known as cyhist[at]maelstrom.stjohns.edu Searchable archives of the cpsr-history[at]cpsr.org messages are available at: http://www.memex.org/community-memory.html
Searchable archives of the cyhist@maelstrom.stjohns.edu messages can be found at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/cyhist.html. More.

CYHIST is a Center for Literary Computing project.

Posted by jo at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

Sold Out

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DiY Survival

For four days in Shoreditch c6 present SOLD OUT a series of lectures, art works and live events, in a shop-front showcase of challenging, innovative interactive art. Each day sees a different exhibit installed into the gallery accompanied by a presentation from the artists and an evening program of music and visuals.

C6 return to London bringing with them Want & Need, currently touring Europe, their latest software release Echo, as well as the launch of the “DiY Survival” Handbook. A program of daily events sees collaborations, exhibits and shows by friends C6 have made upon their travels. C6 create participatory art in multiple arenas, often linking the street (graffiti, stencils) with the web using mobile phones and portable devices, software art and innovative marketing strategies of media intervention to reach new audiences and communities.

Whether you drop in to use the wireless network, play with the sms art works, watch the bands, collect your free copy of “DiY survival”, listen to the web radio or do all of the above. SOLD OUT promises to be a show that no one should miss.

Posted by jo at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

Breaking the Game

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Gaming in Relationship to Designing, Building, Navigating and Experiencing Cities

Workspace Unlimited is currently organizing Breaking the Game, a series of interdisciplinary workshops and online symposium that bring together competing theorists and practitioners to build, debate and reflect on virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience. Taking place both online and offline, the workshops will open up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where virtual technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and dynamic ways.

Networked across multiple cities, the symposium will be organized around three core themes: "Hybridity", "Overclocking the City" and "The Virtual as Interface to Self and Society." Participants will consider gaming and other virtual technologies in relationship to building and designing cities, navigating and experiencing urban life, constructing identities, and creating and maintaining social interaction.

Architects, visual artists, filmmakers, choreographers, anthropologists and curators will consider how these technologies and associated audio/visual cultures impact the work and ideas of their disciplines. For example, how might anthropological fieldwork and ethnography change if its practitioners had to create a 3D virtual world rather than an essay or a book; if anthropology's disciplinary object was an updatable, media-rich, networked, and navigable space, rather than a text? How might online gaming and modification continue to challenge and expand the boundaries of filmmaking and public performance? How could the design and implementation of a "real" building have an ongoing relationship to its networked and virtual double? Can a public's social interactions, exchanges, and modifications inside a virtual building impact the meaning, form, and function of the same building in real space? Breaking the Game hopes to inform and newly challenge the efforts of a growing community of artists and designers who mine the resources, code, and aesthetics of video games.

Finally, Breaking the Game will ask: How might the symposium itself become re-mediated as a 3D networked virtual world? How can we play with, think about, and continue to debate the workshops' themes inside this space, using the language, tools, protocols, software, and interactive possibilities of gaming culture and technology? In order to accomplish this, select participants will be encouraged to explore their ideas in other media (a webpage, movie, animation, performance, a piece of software, or a series of digitally recorded interviews). Workspace Unlimited will integrate these digital artifacts into a new virtual world, created in collaboration with a core team of students and practitioners. As a final challenge, the team will lead the last workshop session inside a 3D world, networked across several cities with participants from Rotterdam, Belgium, New York, Seattle, and elsewhere.

About Workspace Unlimited

Workspace Unlimited, founded in 2002 by Thomas Soetens and Kora Van den Bulcke, explores the creative potential of multiplayer game technology in relation to digital art and architecture. The collective focuses mainly on immersive environments, experience design, hybrid space, information architecture and networks. Their main project, Virtual World of Art (VWA), is a series of networked virtual environments connected to different new media centers in Europe and North America: the Society for Art & Technology in Montreal, the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam and the Vooruit Kunstencentrum in Ghent.

Workspace Unlimited has invited New York curator Wayne Ashley to collaborate on and help organize Breaking the Game. Previously he was the Programs Director and Curator at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and from 1999 to 2001 was Brooklyn Academy of Music's (BAM) first Manager of New Media.

To find out more about the ongoing work of Workspace Unlimited please visit: http://www.workspace-unlimited.org

Posted by jo at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

KISSS Melbourne

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products, process and residues

KISSS [Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance and Suppression]: A touring exhibition of products, process and residues from the meta performance project KISSS; Conical Gallery Melbourne, Australia; 28 October – 13 November 2005.

Responding to political, social and personal issues around surveillance and suppression, KISSS incorporates the individual and collaborative practices of artists, writers and curators.

KISSS includes Anne Bean, Camilla Brueton, Season Butler, Joanna Callaghan, Daedelus, Dolores Sanchez Calvo, Alexandra Dementieva, Deej Fabyc, Coco Fusco, Maxine Hall, Melanie Jackson, Calum F.Kerr, Maria Kheirkhah, Paula Moss, Psychological Art Circus, Sara Raza, Suzana Rezende, Elvis Richardson, Eva Rudlinger, paula roush, Nina Sobell, Hannah Terry, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and Reinhard Krehl, Silke Steets and Jan Wenzel.

KISSS was launched in August 2005 at the Whitechapel Gallery London where KISSS strategies were presented to a full house in a live, intermedia combination of performance, video, interventions and working sessions. An audience member observed how she appreciated ‘the range of material and approaches that were presented, from the very intimate to the political body, without being didactic’. This was followed in September by a SUMMIT, at an isolated country retreat in Somerset. A new piece of work Thomas’ Head was developed in response to the site, the historical archive and ideas of surveillance and suppression developed and enacted in public space.

KISSS is brought to Conical Gallery by London based Australian artists Joanna Callaghan and Deej Fabyc and co-curated with paula roush and Camilla Brueton.

KISSS
28 October – 13 November 2005
Opening Friday 28 October 6-9pm
Forum Saturday 29 October 2-5pm

A forum will take place on Saturday 29 October with Joanna Callaghan & Deej Fabyc in collaboration with local artists.

Conical Gallery
Upstairs 3 Rochester St
Fitzroy, Victoria
Australia 3065
Hrs: Thur & Fri 12pm-5.30pm
Sat & Sun 12pm-5pm
T: 03 9415 6958
E: info[at]conical.org.au
W: www.conical.org.au
kisss[at]elastic.org.uk

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

October 11, 2005

Art Center Nabi + Seoul

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Urban Play and Locative Media

Emerging technologies such as wireless network, locative media, and pervasive computing have brought about new perceptions and social interactions in urban environment, transforming the ways we experience our cities. The concepts of space, time, and social relationship in urban environment are put in flux, while there are growing interests among communities of artists viewing city as social playground, public space, fluid canvas, and invisible layers of network.

Art Center Nabi is organizing an international workshop in partnership with the city of Seoul to initiate cultural and artistic projects exploring the theme of Urban Play and Locative Media.

On the cross platforms of art, design, technology, and social sciences, submissions are sought to deal with the issues of participation, play, process, and engagement in urban environment incorporating various locative and pervasive media technologies. We are looking for fresh and thought provoking insights and projects that are to reflect on but not limited to the critical issues as following:

-How new communication media opens up new ways to engage people in public domain?
-In what ways people participate and play in urban environment in dynamic formation of city?
-What kind of urban games are possible using emerging technologies? And what kinds of collective ‘vibes’ can be generated through these games?
-How can physical or virtual spaces in city be created, experienced and accessed by collaborative or competitive movement of people?
-How can diverse aspects of city whetollaborative or competitive movement of people?
-How can diverse aspects of city whether cultural, historical, social, or personal be reflected and shared through participatory gestures?
-How can disparate neighborhoods or different communities be linked, interact or confront in playful gestures?

* Area in focus: Myung Dong in Seoul

We are also initiating calls that manifest and explore diverse aspects of metropolis Seoul, specifically focusing on Myung Dong area. Myung Dong is one of the representative sites located in central Seoul with its historic background, highest land value and concentration of commerce and people. The city government is undertaking a major redevelopment plan that possibly includes new zoning and new IT infra, in order to make Myung Dong as the symbol of ‘New Seoul.’ For our purpose, Myung Dong can serve as a test bed in exploring the theme of ‘Urban Play and Locative Media’ with cultural and artistic approaches.Dong can serve as a test bed in exploring the theme of ‘Urban Play and Locative Media’ with cultural and artistic approaches.

More info on Myung Dong (in Korean):
http://www.myungdong.co.kr/md/main_down_1.html

Please contact us [urban2005[at]nabi.or.kr] to receive more information on Myung Dong in English.

Posted by jo at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2005

Ballettikka Internettikka:

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BEO Guerrillikka in Belgrade

Ballettikka Internettikka: BEO Guerrillikka [Bureau NetBallet] by Igor Stromajer & Brane Zorman (Belgrade, Serbia, 2005) (live internet broadcasting); Thursday, Oct 13th, 2005 at 9 PM GMT+1 (Berlin/Paris/Belgrade local time); Duration: 20 minutes (time tolerance: +/-4 minutes); Location X, Belgrade, Serbia; # Latitude: 44.79345 N, Longitude: 20.45340 E, Terrain Elevation: 110 m; Location will be made public on Oct 13th at 8:50 PM GMT+1 (10 minutes before the performance starts; due to security reasons).

Ballettikka Internettikka is an ongoing artistic study of the internet guerrilla performance. After invading the Bolsh.oi Theatre in Moscow (March 2002), and La S.cala in Milan (November 2004), Stromajer and Zorman will perform a new guerrilla net ballet, this time in another theatre house in Belgrade, Serbia.

Live internet broadcasting of the net ballet performance will start on October 13th 2005 at 9 PM GMT+1 and will last 20 minutes (+/- 4 minutes); the location will be made public on Oct 13th at 20:50 GMT+1 (10 minutes before the performance; due to security reasons).

They will enter the office (brain center) of the Artistic Director [location X], here the hardest artistic decisions to run the institution are taking place. The artists will use remote-controlled toy-robots with wireless web cameras.

Watch and listen live to internet guerrilla bureau ballet at http://www.intima.org/bi/beo
(Oct 13th 2005)

Artists will use low-tech mobile and wireless equipment for the invasion and live broadcasting (portable computers, mini digital camera, MP3 audio systems, mobile GPRS telephones etc). A laptop and MiniDV cam, together with Webcam32 (version 6.0) software will be used for broadcasting the video signal (running over Intima Virtual Base FTP server). Another laptop and MP3 player with online interface SHOUTcast (version 1.8.3/win32), will be used for live sound broadcasting (running over Beitthron FTP server). A local GSM mobile phone operator will be used for GPRS mobile internet connection.

Action Timetable / Belgrade, Oct 13th 2005 / GMT+1:

20:55 Equipment check on the parking place in front of [Location X]
20:57 Turning the computers on
20:59 Establishing wireless Internet connection (GSM 900/1800)
21:00 Start of live Internet broadcasting (-2) and final equipment check
21:01 Entering the building of [Location X]; climbing the stairs--3rd Floor (-1)
21:05 Entering the office of the Artistic Director [X] (3rd Floor / left): (0)
starting live bureau net ballet (10 min)
21:15 End of live bureau net ballet: exiting the office; descending the stairs (+1)
21:19 Exiting the building of [Location X]
21:20 Terminating wireless Internet connection at the parking place outside
[Location X] and turning off the computers (+2)
21:22 Taking the taxi to the O3ONE Gallery

Dancing a wireless bureau net-ballet in the office of the Artistic Director location X] represents a big conceptual and strategic challenge to the Intima Virtual Base, therefore the preparations have been taken serious, safety measures have been calculated, and the previous experience from the Bolsh.oi Theatre in Moscow and La S.cala in Milan has been very welcome.

Ballettikka Internettikka: BEO Guerrillikka is supported by Municipality of Belgrade, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, O3ONE Gallery in Belgrade.

Bureau NetBallet Operators: Igor Stromajer & Brane Zorman
Bureau NetBallet Composer: MC Brane vs. BeitThroN vs. Thronus Sound System
Theoretical Adviser: Bojana Kunst
Curator: Ana Vujanovic
Executive Producer: Jelena Knezevic
Computer Programming: SM NORT
Co-produced by Intima Virtual Base (Slovenia) and TkH Center for the Theory and Practice of Performing arts (Belgrade)

[] [] []

Ballettikka Internettikka was presented in noumerous galleries and museums of contemporary art worldwide (from 2002 to 2005) including Le Centre national d'art et de Culture Georges Pompidou - Musee national d'art moderne in Paris, 15. Stuttgarter Filmwinter in Stuttgart, Centro em Movimento in Lisbon, FILE 03 - electronic language international festival in Sao Paulo, Titanik Gallery in Turku (Finland), P-10 Gallery in Singapore, IMPAKT festival in Utrecht (The Netherlands), Thailand 3rd New Media Arts Festival in Bangkok, Cork Vision Centre - Cork Cultural Capital of Europe 2005 (Ireland) and CEC ArtsLink in New York.

[] [] []

About the authors:

Igor Stromajer
http://www.intima.org
is an mobile intimate communicator. He researches tactical emotional states and traumatic low-tech strategies. He has shown his work at more than a hundred exhibitions in forty-two countries and received a number of awards. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Slovenia; Computerfinearts Gallery, New York and others.

Brane Zorman
http://www.ljudmila.org/beitthron
is a composer and sound manipulator. Between 1982 and 1986 he was frontman for the Slovene punk group O!KULT. He is a pioneer of Slovene techno scene. Since 1987 he has been composing music for both Slovene and international theatre, dance and multimedia performances and projects. and has made guest appearances throughout Europe. Recently he works with Irena Pivka on a series of audio-visual installations ZONE.

Intima Virtual Base - Institute for Contemporary Arts
Belgrade: +381 64 4200614
Slovenia: +386 41 703291
igloo [at] intima.org

Posted by jo at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2005

MEDIA ART NET

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[Online Resources for Media Art]

A JOINT PUBLIC PROGRAM BY THE GOETHE INTITUT NEW YORK AND THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART: DIALOGUE OCT 12, 7:30 PM; GOETHE-INSTITUT; ADMISSION: $10/8

Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, will join Dieter Daniels, professor of art history and media theory at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, for a dialogue focusing on the groundbreaking project Media Art Net. The discussion will explore the project as a model for creating resources on media arts.

"Media Art Net" is an online "survey" with scholarly essays, accompanied by comprehensive audiovisual documentation on 940 artists and 1400 art works from the 1920s until today. The second part of the project is now available online and includes 8 key topics: Aesthetics of the Digital; Art and Cinematography; Cyborg Bodies; Generative Tools; Mapping and Text; Photo/Byte; Public Spheres; Sound and Image. A network of curators and writers explore seminal interfaces between media and art, presenting a variety of approaches and contexts. In addition artistic projects are commissioned for the online platform.

Selected essays are published in book form (Media Art Net Vol. 1 and 2) and the specific book design is linked with the online platform.

The project was commissioned by Goethe-Institut and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), in cooperation with the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. Financial support was granted by the German Ministry of Research and Education. Editors: Rudolf Frieling and Dieter Daniels.

Posted by jo at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2005

A Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture

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Paskian Environments

A Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture: Paskian Environments, with Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer; Tuesday, 18 October 2005; 20.00-23.00

Gordon Pask (1928-1996) was a cyberneticist and a crystalpunk long before the latter movement existed. Cybernetics, its founder Norbert Wiener defined it as "the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine", fascinates us for its broad general view on things. The willingness to take up almost any subject and to study it in earnest for what it is, bears witness to a curiosity that is hard to find in most of today's science and art.

Cybernetics was a theory of machines, but working from a notion of machines which constitutes every system which produces determinate behaviour: thermostats, humans, mathematical functions. Each machine was treated as W. Ross Alby puts it: "by asking not 'what individual act will it produce here and now?' but 'what are ALL the possible behaviours it can produce'".

Within such a science of possibilities, each machine is a generative system producing behaviour guided by a finite set of rules: a machine as a form of language, its syntax made up perhaps from transistors and wires or neurons and synapses. Cybernetics was asking "what if" questions to test the limits of the machine's eloquence very much like a poet searches for the outer boundary of what a natural language can express.

The ideas of Pask crossed various domains, finding links and patterns between them no one had seen before. He is most famous for his "conversation theory" that describes the act of communication as a dynamic system of agreements between interacting agents. He also built machines, a lot of them, to test some hypothesis or theory. Dual computers connected to each other developing a language between them, electro-chemical devices that could grow a sensor responding to some environmental input (his most crystalpunk of projects). Perhaps you remember the lines where the crystalpunk famously states that software is an aid for reflection? Pask had known this all along.

In architecture, soft or other, Pask has proven to be very influential. His work informs a lot of thinking about evolutionary development of form and the self-assembly of structures. When 2 physical objects meet in a room they have to find a way to communicate to find out what they must do. There you see how, for instance, a theory of communication enters responsive architecture.

Under the header of "Paskian Environments", Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer will discuss interactive architecture and responsive, communicative environments in the Paskian sense. Explaining why they think it hasn't been employed in the past but why it should be now, and also why it has become a lot easier since it's now easier to work with interactive systems (cue low tech sensors and actuators). The next step, dear to the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture, would be the development of conceptual frameworks for constructing these spaces.

Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer are both trained as architects. But as the long list of impressive work on their websites show, they have done extensive work on the softer part of the trade. Together they are currently working on DIY sensor technology.

LowTech Propositions
An Introduction to Cybernetics by W. Ross Ashby
Paper on Electro-Chemical computing
Evolutionary Architecture by John Fraser, foreword by Gordon Pask

The Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture: September - December 2005

The "Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture" will evolve an empty room from nothingness into unknown states of technological enhancement. The workshop is located in a room which is also its subject: it creates a space where those wanting to become active at the cutting-edge where art, new media, architecture, design and programming intersect, can meet and collaborate. Unlike the alphabet that always knows where it is going this workshop does not.

You can be a crystalpunk too!

We are open every Tuesday (19.00-23.00) and Saturday (14.00-18.00) at Oudenoord 275, Utrecht.

Visit www.impakt.nl/softarchitecture to find out more.

The CPWfSA is generated by socialfiction.org and produced by impakt.nl

Posted by jo at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE

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Image-Text-Sound

The Austrian Cultural Forum and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg present THE POWER OF LANGUAGE/DIE MACHT DER SPRACHE; Image-Text-Sound/Blld-Text-Ton; VALIE EXPORT, Elfriede Jelinek, and Olga Neuwirth; OCTOBER 8 - NOVEMBER 3, 2005; OPENING RECEPTION: OCTOBER 7, 2005 | 6 - 8 PM ARTIST TALK WITH VALIE EXPORT: OCTOBER 7, 2005 | 7:30 PM.

The exhibition examines the musical, literary, and visual language of three important protagonists of present-day art. Media artist VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940), writer and poet Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946), and composer Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968) are represented with sound, text, image, and light installations that exemplify the meeting of music, literature, film, and fine art.

The show, curated by Barbara Wally, introduces the three artists both as outstanding personalities in the contemporary Austrian cultural scene and through the common sensibilities and themes that unify their work. The three artists have known and appreciated each other for years and have also collaborated on a number of projects. They represent two generations of uncompromising and controversial women who use artistic means to analyze, expose, and critically comment on the human condition and who, in their respective media, work on the development of new, feminine forms of language.

The installations are accompanied by Chromotope portraits of the artists created by Victoria Coeln in her light studio. Carmen Kordas has contributed a video collage of extensive film and video material by and about the artists that conveys their creative processes from the beginnings of their careers to the present.

VENUE:

Austrian Cultural Forum
11 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
212 319 5300
http://www.acfny.org

OPENING HOURS: MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY | 10 AM - 6 PM
FREE ADMISSION

For information on the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, please visit http://www.summeracademy.at or write to office[at]summeracademy.at

Posted by jo at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

Great Dance Weblog

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Dance and Technology Resources

"Welcome to the first edition of our Dance and Technology Resource Guide. Please email Doug Fox to make additions and edits. In your email, include the resource name, link and description. Also, please include your contact information (name, email address and affiliation, if relevant).

Table of Contents: 1. Dance Companies, Performances, Installations and Practitioners 2. Dance on Camera and Movies 3. Conferences, Symposia and Courses 4. University/Academic Programs, Projects, Research Centers and Studios 5. Software and Technology 6. Games, TV Shows, Interactive Applications and Commercials 7. Dance Documentation and Preservation 8. Articles and Academic Papers 9. Online Discussions and Blogs."

Posted by jo at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

Open Call

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The Medium is the Material

Transmission art, much like new media, is deeply impacted by the evolution of technology. Taking airwaves as its source material, this ethereal medium has traveled a historical route that began with morse code at the turn of the past century and runs through text messaging at the start of this one, all the while encompassing a broad range of formal and conceptual strategies. For the exhibition Open Call, Rhizome has teamed up with free103point9, a nonprofit organization who've pioneered the study and practice of transmission art, to create a context for art works that explore transmission along the wireless spectrum. Open Call seeks projects that engage the idea of transmission art via the Internet or GPS systems or mobile phones, or any other wireless technology, and exist as art works online. The organizations have called out to artists in their respective communities to submit works for the exhibition which will take place from January through March 06, and be elaborated in a live, accompanying event. So, whip your nearest frequency into an ephemeral art frenzy, and contribute to the ongoing exploration of the waves that bind us. - Lauren Cornell, Net Art News, Rhizome.org

Posted by jo at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

CONTAINED

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Improvisatory in Nature

Contained--by MIX--is a collaborative and interactive, hybrid work performance/installation that utilizes technology to blur artistic boundaries and challenges notions of presentation/audience. The artists have created a generative, improvising, real-time multimedia environment using both commercial and custom designed software in conjunction with dedicated hardware sensors, motorized robotics and real time processing or text, video, images and sound. Contained is improvisatory in nature, principles of movement improvisation are employed in the creation of the imagery, sound, and movement generated by the system.

October 7, 8, 2005; 7:30pm; Doane Dance Performance Space; Denison University campus, Denison University, Granville, Ohio 43023 USA • 1-800-DENISON; Performance with Artists' Talk to follow.

MIX is:

Sandy Mathern-Smith, dance,
Alexander Mouton, Art,
Micaela de Vivero, Art,
Christian Faur, Art, Digital Technology
Aaron Fuleki, Music, Digital Technology
Marlon Barrios Solano, dance and interactive art
http://www.unstablelandscape.org/
Mary Sykes, Lighting Designer

Posted by jo at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

REFRESH!

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Judith Rodenbeck's Impressions

I’ve just come back from “REFRESH! The First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology” in Banff. Herewith some brief impressions of the conference. I am an art historian (and ex-performance/video artist, from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Mass Art) with a longstanding but hitherto relatively untapped interest in new media. My own field of expertise is performance of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Fluxus projects, but I also teach on the early part of the 20th century and am currently leading an advanced seminar on what I call “mechanical transcriptions of the real ”­that is, following Kittler, those analog copying technologies that have so defined 20th century experience and inflected much of its art. I attended the conference as an observer, trying to learn more about the subject. What follows is merely a report, but it comes filtered through that complex of interests & preoccupations.

The first thing to be said is that this was an enormously ambitious conference: its four days were packed from morning to evening with panels and events the overall distribution of which, in terms of topics and time, I thought was pretty good, given the mission. Sessions ranged from “media histories” to a session on “collaborative practice/networking” to “history of institutions”; there were 3 keynote addresses­Edmond Couchot, Sarat Maharaj, and Lucia Santaella; a poster session; an optional hike (Banff is in the stunning Canadian Rockies); a walk-through of the media labs; und so weiter. Meals were had communally in the Banff Centre’s dining room, and at least for me, since I knew not a soul at the conference AND felt like what one snooty panelist called a “clueless newbie,” these became interesting moments of social anxiety and unexpected social pleasure. While things did tend to split out into the old pros and the young nothings, they did get a bit more productively mixed up on occasion. Before I launch into the problems with the conference, the feeling I got from those I spoke with was that it was a mixed success but a success overall. I do think the conference provided a very good starting point for something, and this seemed especially true after the final session.

High points of the conference, in no particular order: * Mario Carpo’s paper on architecture in the age of digital reproducibility, which dealt with the shift from a simply additive to an algorithmic modularity in architecture. This was probably the most professionally delivered paper at the conference, as well as the most intelligently amusing, and what Carpo presented as a paradigmatic slide was fascinating, provocative. I learned something. Philip Thurtle and Claudia Valdes showing footage of Alvin Lucier doing solo for brainwaves. I’ve forgotten what the paper was about, but was thrilled to see the footage and to have the piece presented. Chris Salter on a history of performance with media, beginning with a fantastically forceful evocation of Russian Constructivis plays. I teach this material, but Salter’s presentation was vigorous and made a very strong case for its inclusion in a “new media” history. Christiane Paul on curatorial issues with new media. This was also a very professional (by which I mean good, clear, to the point) presentation and very usefully laid out the difficulties involved, from curators having to rebuild settings to house work to problems of bitrot to audience development. Impressive and useful. Machiko Kusahara on “device art” discussed Japanese aesthetics. This was an art historically thin paper­no discussion of Fluxus, very loose mention of Gutai and then Tanaka’s electric dress but not the “painting machines” of her husband­ but the presentation of a different value-system for Japanese “device art” (gizmos whose “art coefficient” is activated by their use) was pretty convincing as well as very thought-provoking tour of the labs AND, surprisingly, the poster session, which was cluttered and weird but also the one moment in the conference when people really talked to each other’s ideas Tim Druckrey’s screening of apocalyptic Virilio. He gave a very lazy but passionate paper, basically asking why on earth new media would want to be included in an old canon, and noting that a far bigger problem is present in Nicholas Bourriaud’s blythe “relational aesthetics” than in the October cabal’s control of high theory. Michael Naimark’s corporatist but useful analysis of the sustainability of new media institutions. Johannes Goebel’s passionate and pragmatic overview of two such institutions. The final, quasi-impromptu “crit, self-crit” session led by Sara Diamond. This was where most of the interesting meta-issues were put on the table, and it was done in such a way that those in the room I think felt it was really a high point and a great note on which to finish. Left the feeling that while there is work to be done it will be done.

I didn’t go to everything, needless to say, and doubtless there were good things on other panels. I heard that Claus Pias’s paper on cybernetics was excellent, for instance.

That said, the conference overall suffered greatly from what Trebor Scholz and Geert Lovink have dubbed “panelism”: a territorial structure in which moderators also delivered papers within the format of a way over-tight schedule and with virtually no time for questions; a few speakers went beyond their alotted minutes in the first sessions and then panels were policed to an almost draconian degree, making the entire assembly tense. Discussions were notably truncated. In fact, to this art historian it seemed weird that people would gather for a conference on something as shifting and relatively openly defined as “new media” (how many papers in fact began with loose attempts to list the salient features of new media) and then sit and hear something they could have read already for though the organizers had posted quite a number of papers on their official website beforehand, it was clear that most attendees hadn’t read those papers and then not discuss what they had heard.

What surfaced in the tension around (non) discussion was a big mess of anxieties. Topped by the anxiety over having “new media art” categorized as “art” or as “new media,” these inflected many of the panel presentations and discussions, and not in a productive way. Part of the problem, as Andreas Broeckman pointed out in the final crit session, was that the mission of the conference was probably too broadly and vaguely defined. But what I heard over and over again was “traditional art history” can’t deal with new media. The first thing I’d want to know is, what precisely is “traditional art history”? From Simon Penny’s castigation of art history as racist, imperialist, classist, etc., it sounded to me like what was meant was Berensonian connoisseurship; this seemed overwrought, but his excursus was only the most vigorous and politically thought-through of a frequent plaint. Yet while he was quite right to note that cultural studies wasn’t mentioned once at the conference his characterization of art history is way behind the times. Art history and new media share Walter Benjamin and, for better or worse, Rudolf Arnheim; new media people would do well to read Panofsky and Warburg, just as I and at least some of my colleagues read Weiner and Kittler. Art history may not yet be able to deal with new media, but perhaps it is also the case that new media doesn’t know how to deal with art history.

On this score a truly low moment was struck on the first day by Mark Hansen, whose hatchet job on Rosalind Krauss was so lame that even the new media theorists were bugged. Instead of new media bemoaning its lack of recognition by art history and then its savaging of same (“we want to be with you; we you” or “I love you; go away”) it might be more productive to stage a genuine encounter. Leaving aside Andreas Broeckman, who gave a very nice but grossly amputated (ran out of time) presentation on aesthetics and new media, and the truly awful presentation comparing the websites of the Louvre and the Hermitage, the art historians who were at the conference were either working with medieval Islamic art or with the visual culture of science. That is, there were no art historians dealing with contemporary art who were not already part of the inner circle of new media people; yet this is precisely the encounter that needs to be staged. Meanwhile Mark Tribe, not an art historian, gave an extremely art historically lame presentation on appropriation, and while the broader point was, well, okay, his presentation of the historical material was painful and for at least this listener undermined his credibility. (On the other hand, Cornelius Borck, a historian of medicine, gave a terrific presentation­historically nuanced, intelligently read, and carefully researched­ on the optophone of Raoul Hausman and Hausman’s complicated relationship to prosthesis.) From my perspective this suggests a serious problem of disciplinarity: surely just as new media artists/theorists expect a sophisticated treatment from art historians (Simon Penny again: art historians should learn engineering, cognitive science, neuroscience before they discuss new media) so new media artists and theorists should treat the work that comes before­both art and media­with the historical complexity (without going to Pennyian excess) art history at its best demonstrates.

Other issues that came up: * Problems of storage & retrieval of new media work. From an historical point of view this demonstrates a remarkable degree of self-consciousness on the part of new new media­something new, incidentally, in the longer history of media, and interesting as a phenomenon. Huge anxiety about the “art” status of new media, alongside a subthematic of the relation to science and to scientific s of research. Adulatory izing of cognitive science, engineering, and neuroscience (in marked contrast to the dissing of art history). Lack of a fixed definition of new media, with repeated nods to hybridization, bodily engagement, non-hierarchical structure, networking, and so on. Disconnect of the keynote speakers. Couchot had difficulty with English and seemed, while emphasizing hybridity, to be speaking from another time. Sarat Maharaj rambled for nearly 2 hours about Rudolf Arnheim and the Other; I found this talk excruciating, though I later spoke with someone (media artist, go figure) for whom it had been a high point. And Lucia Santaella’s beautifully delivered, rigorously near-hallucinatory and religious but to me quasi- apocalyptic vision of the “semiotic” and “post-human” present/future of the “exo-brain” was a chilling picture of species-death. Ongoing problem of gender and geographic distribution. While non-Western topics cropped up here and there at the conference, the one panel that dealt in any extended way with non-Western paradigms was also the one panel that was almost all female­and also the panel that got the most flak in its few minutes of discussion, in part because most of those dealing with non-Western paradigms were Western. This relegation of dealing with the Other to the women is typical. There was also some grumbling that many of the non-Western projects had been tucked into the poster session rather than elevated to panel status. It would have been good to have some representation from Africa, or even a panel on doing new media in less media-rich environments than Euro-Ameri-Nippon. Comical reliance on and then debate about Powerpoint. And then, as one member of the audience pointed out, nearly all of the people at the conference in their ppt-critical right-thinking wisdom had little glowing apples at their desks. No sign of Linux. That’s a sketch, replete with opinion. I’d encourage anyone interested in more specific information about the conference to check the website at www.mediaarthistory.org, which has some papers up as well as abstracts.

From: Judith Rodenbeck
Date: 5 October 2005 12:22:18 BST
To: idc@bbs.thing.net
Subject: [iDC] REFRESH! conference, some impressions

Posted by jo at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

REFRESH!

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Judith Rodenbeck's Impressions

I’ve just come back from “REFRESH! The First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology” in Banff. Herewith some brief impressions of the conference. I am an art historian (and ex-performance/video artist, from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Mass Art) with a longstanding but hitherto relatively untapped interest in new media. My own field of expertise is performance of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Fluxus projects, but I also teach on the early part of the 20th century and am currently leading an advanced seminar on what I call “mechanical transcriptions of the real ”­that is, following Kittler, those analog copying technologies that have so defined 20th century experience and inflected much of its art. I attended the conference as an observer, trying to learn more about the subject. What follows is merely a report, but it comes filtered through that complex of interests & preoccupations.

The first thing to be said is that this was an enormously ambitious conference: its four days were packed from morning to evening with panels and events the overall distribution of which, in terms of topics and time, I thought was pretty good, given the mission. Sessions ranged from “media histories” to a session on “collaborative practice/networking” to “history of institutions”; there were 3 keynote addresses­Edmond Couchot, Sarat Maharaj, and Lucia Santaella; a poster session; an optional hike (Banff is in the stunning Canadian Rockies); a walk-through of the media labs; und so weiter. Meals were had communally in the Banff Centre’s dining room, and at least for me, since I knew not a soul at the conference AND felt like what one snooty panelist called a “clueless newbie,” these became interesting moments of social anxiety and unexpected social pleasure. While things did tend to split out into the old pros and the young nothings, they did get a bit more productively mixed up on occasion. Before I launch into the problems with the conference, the feeling I got from those I spoke with was that it was a mixed success but a success overall. I do think the conference provided a very good starting point for something, and this seemed especially true after the final session.

High points of the conference, in no particular order: * Mario Carpo’s paper on architecture in the age of digital reproducibility, which dealt with the shift from a simply additive to an algorithmic modularity in architecture. This was probably the most professionally delivered paper at the conference, as well as the most intelligently amusing, and what Carpo presented as a paradigmatic slide was fascinating, provocative. I learned something. Philip Thurtle and Claudia Valdes showing footage of Alvin Lucier doing solo for brainwaves. I’ve forgotten what the paper was about, but was thrilled to see the footage and to have the piece presented. Chris Salter on a history of performance with media, beginning with a fantastically forceful evocation of Russian Constructivis plays. I teach this material, but Salter’s presentation was vigorous and made a very strong case for its inclusion in a “new media” history. Christiane Paul on curatorial issues with new media. This was also a very professional (by which I mean good, clear, to the point) presentation and very usefully laid out the difficulties involved, from curators having to rebuild settings to house work to problems of bitrot to audience development. Impressive and useful. Machiko Kusahara on “device art” discussed Japanese aesthetics. This was an art historically thin paper­no discussion of Fluxus, very loose mention of Gutai and then Tanaka’s electric dress but not the “painting machines” of her husband­ but the presentation of a different value-system for Japanese “device art” (gizmos whose “art coefficient” is activated by their use) was pretty convincing as well as very thought-provoking tour of the labs AND, surprisingly, the poster session, which was cluttered and weird but also the one moment in the conference when people really talked to each other’s ideas Tim Druckrey’s screening of apocalyptic Virilio. He gave a very lazy but passionate paper, basically asking why on earth new media would want to be included in an old canon, and noting that a far bigger problem is present in Nicholas Bourriaud’s blythe “relational aesthetics” than in the October cabal’s control of high theory. Michael Naimark’s corporatist but useful analysis of the sustainability of new media institutions. Johannes Goebel’s passionate and pragmatic overview of two such institutions. The final, quasi-impromptu “crit, self-crit” session led by Sara Diamond. This was where most of the interesting meta-issues were put on the table, and it was done in such a way that those in the room I think felt it was really a high point and a great note on which to finish. Left the feeling that while there is work to be done it will be done.

I didn’t go to everything, needless to say, and doubtless there were good things on other panels. I heard that Claus Pias’s paper on cybernetics was excellent, for instance.

That said, the conference overall suffered greatly from what Trebor Scholz and Geert Lovink have dubbed “panelism”: a territorial structure in which moderators also delivered papers within the format of a way over-tight schedule and with virtually no time for questions; a few speakers went beyond their alotted minutes in the first sessions and then panels were policed to an almost draconian degree, making the entire assembly tense. Discussions were notably truncated. In fact, to this art historian it seemed weird that people would gather for a conference on something as shifting and relatively openly defined as “new media” (how many papers in fact began with loose attempts to list the salient features of new media) and then sit and hear something they could have read already for though the organizers had posted quite a number of papers on their official website beforehand, it was clear that most attendees hadn’t read those papers and then not discuss what they had heard.

What surfaced in the tension around (non) discussion was a big mess of anxieties. Topped by the anxiety over having “new media art” categorized as “art” or as “new media,” these inflected many of the panel presentations and discussions, and not in a productive way. Part of the problem, as Andreas Broeckman pointed out in the final crit session, was that the mission of the conference was probably too broadly and vaguely defined. But what I heard over and over again was “traditional art history” can’t deal with new media. The first thing I’d want to know is, what precisely is “traditional art history”? From Simon Penny’s castigation of art history as racist, imperialist, classist, etc., it sounded to me like what was meant was Berensonian connoisseurship; this seemed overwrought, but his excursus was only the most vigorous and politically thought-through of a frequent plaint. Yet while he was quite right to note that cultural studies wasn’t mentioned once at the conference his characterization of art history is way behind the times. Art history and new media share Walter Benjamin and, for better or worse, Rudolf Arnheim; new media people would do well to read Panofsky and Warburg, just as I and at least some of my colleagues read Weiner and Kittler. Art history may not yet be able to deal with new media, but perhaps it is also the case that new media doesn’t know how to deal with art history.

On this score a truly low moment was struck on the first day by Mark Hansen, whose hatchet job on Rosalind Krauss was so lame that even the new media theorists were bugged. Instead of new media bemoaning its lack of recognition by art history and then its savaging of same (“we want to be with you; we you” or “I love you; go away”) it might be more productive to stage a genuine encounter. Leaving aside Andreas Broeckman, who gave a very nice but grossly amputated (ran out of time) presentation on aesthetics and new media, and the truly awful presentation comparing the websites of the Louvre and the Hermitage, the art historians who were at the conference were either working with medieval Islamic art or with the visual culture of science. That is, there were no art historians dealing with contemporary art who were not already part of the inner circle of new media people; yet this is precisely the encounter that needs to be staged. Meanwhile Mark Tribe, not an art historian, gave an extremely art historically lame presentation on appropriation, and while the broader point was, well, okay, his presentation of the historical material was painful and for at least this listener undermined his credibility. (On the other hand, Cornelius Borck, a historian of medicine, gave a terrific presentation­historically nuanced, intelligently read, and carefully researched­ on the optophone of Raoul Hausman and Hausman’s complicated relationship to prosthesis.) From my perspective this suggests a serious problem of disciplinarity: surely just as new media artists/theorists expect a sophisticated treatment from art historians (Simon Penny again: art historians should learn engineering, cognitive science, neuroscience before they discuss new media) so new media artists and theorists should treat the work that comes before­both art and media­with the historical complexity (without going to Pennyian excess) art history at its best demonstrates.

Other issues that came up: * Problems of storage & retrieval of new media work. From an historical point of view this demonstrates a remarkable degree of self-consciousness on the part of new new media­something new, incidentally, in the longer history of media, and interesting as a phenomenon. Huge anxiety about the “art” status of new media, alongside a subthematic of the relation to science and to scientific s of research. Adulatory izing of cognitive science, engineering, and neuroscience (in marked contrast to the dissing of art history). Lack of a fixed definition of new media, with repeated nods to hybridization, bodily engagement, non-hierarchical structure, networking, and so on. Disconnect of the keynote speakers. Couchot had difficulty with English and seemed, while emphasizing hybridity, to be speaking from another time. Sarat Maharaj rambled for nearly 2 hours about Rudolf Arnheim and the Other; I found this talk excruciating, though I later spoke with someone (media artist, go figure) for whom it had been a high point. And Lucia Santaella’s beautifully delivered, rigorously near-hallucinatory and religious but to me quasi- apocalyptic vision of the “semiotic” and “post-human” present/future of the “exo-brain” was a chilling picture of species-death. Ongoing problem of gender and geographic distribution. While non-Western topics cropped up here and there at the conference, the one panel that dealt in any extended way with non-Western paradigms was also the one panel that was almost all female­and also the panel that got the most flak in its few minutes of discussion, in part because most of those dealing with non-Western paradigms were Western. This relegation of dealing with the Other to the women is typical. There was also some grumbling that many of the non-Western projects had been tucked into the poster session rather than elevated to panel status. It would have been good to have some representation from Africa, or even a panel on doing new media in less media-rich environments than Euro-Ameri-Nippon. Comical reliance on and then debate about Powerpoint. And then, as one member of the audience pointed out, nearly all of the people at the conference in their ppt-critical right-thinking wisdom had little glowing apples at their desks. No sign of Linux. That’s a sketch, replete with opinion. I’d encourage anyone interested in more specific information about the conference to check the website at www.mediaarthistory.org, which has some papers up as well as abstracts.

From: Judith Rodenbeck
Date: 5 October 2005 12:22:18 BST
To: idc@bbs.thing.net
Subject: [iDC] REFRESH! conference, some impressions

Posted by jo at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

Remote

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Creativity, Technology and Remoteness

Remote - Creativity, Technology and Remoteness, Bloc Press; edited by Emma Posey--Remote is a collection of essays by a distinguished group of academics, artists, business consultants, sociologists, philosophers, arts organisers and curators.

The essays which span a broad range of subjects, explore the recently integrated field of creativity, technology and remoteness. The publication considers the new geographies that information proximity and material distance have produced. REMOTE will interest professionals and students engaged with culture, technical innovation and social theory. Authors include: JAMES COUPE, ALAN DUNN, CAMILLA JACKSON, BRITT JORGENSEN JAMES GOODMAN, LUCY KIMBELL, CELIA LURY, ROB PEPPERELL MICHAEL PUNT, and PAUL TAYLOR.

Outline on the Collection of Essays in Remote

The ideas presented in the publication’s collection of essays reflect a spectrum of approaches to creativity, technology and remoteness and are given in two parts: In Theory and In Practice.

In Theory, part 1 of the publication, Lucy Kimbell explores the use of mobile networks and the inherent contradiction between mobility and connectivity - users are offered `freedom of movement` but are restricted within delineated spaces specified by the mobile networks. With the use of mobile technologies, interconnectivity is a spatial concern. In fact, technological devices reinstate our reliance on the physical world rather than the popularly asserted outcome of technology - ‘freedom from place’. Kimbell points out, essentially being `part of a global network requires us to be local, to be placed.` Here remoteness is possible only through close proximity.

By way of the transmitter/receiver, our social boundaries are broadened but only by being kept within physical, and very localised, boundaries. Paul Taylor notes that by accessing distant events our notion of ‘reality’ is extended – reality comes from and becomes further afield. He notes a TV voyeur’s startling inability to distinguish between a spectrum of events, whether they be banal such as reality TV and significant, such as news events. The coupling of mediated reality and the spectacle that is TV emphasises a circulation of ‘image over substance’. The image’s emotiveness enables us to be consumed within these distant realities.

Exploring what they term the ‘science of consciousness’, Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt look at the performative and theatrical spaces as metaphor for the extension of our experience beyond our immediate environment. Through the antics of a conjuror, they demonstrate how something concrete can be conjured from nothing and, in describing a ‘virtual’ event, they explore how presence can be signified by absence or loss. In their example technology extends our sense of embodiment rather than substitutes the space around us. Through the power of analogy we can function in various states at one time.

In her study on ‘brands’, Celia Lury explores a broader understanding of technology as information. In an information society, brands signify a particular organisation of relations between products and the multiplication of points of access in a system of products. In this example, objectivity of a brand is not fixed but is about change, endurance, and process. One of the key aspects of Lury’s approach is how branding, production and circulation of products are part of an extended, albeit intangible, network of an information capitalism.

In Practice, part 2 of the publication, James Coupe usefully draws together the idea of mobile technologies and actual as a means of understanding a user’s involvement in spatial terms. He explores through his own artwork, the use of cellular networks and how through a direct engagement with his work, users become components of a larger system. Coupe offers the term ‘system aesthetic’ as a representational scenario that attempts to explain this new form of artwork. This analogy help to visualise the extensions of activity that cannot all be experienced.

Camilla Jackson offers an exploration of various artists’ depiction of nature, some of who also use mobile technologies. Technology, brought on by the industrial revolution, is claimed to create a distance between people and nature. There is an apparent contradiction when nature is depicted as untouched and remote even though its very depiction indicates some form of entry. Remoteness, Jackson claims, is as much a state of mind as a physical location.

In their study of home workers, Britt Jorgensen and James Goodman explore the archetypal vision of the home-based teleworker. They reject the assumption that teleworkers are based in remote regions in remote communities - most live in an urban environment. As such, technology does not create or reduce distance as is popularly asserted. Tacit understanding is best expanded through direct and informal interaction. Although not explicitly, this often takes place through close working environments. Hence, technology does not substitute usual practice but it can extend it.

Utilising technology is only possible within an existing context of communication and participation and this is stressed by the ‘tenantspin’ project presented by Alan Dunn. The project’s focus is to engage a community of housing tenants in generating unmediated content for streaming within and beyond their immediate community. Dunn outlines, the outcome of using technology reflects existing community contexts and networks.

Notes on Contributors

James Coupe is Lecturer in Digital Art at London College of Music & Media, a Faculty of Thames Valley University. He is an artist who works with installation, electronics and digital media. His installation Digital Warfare Network (Project Phase Two) was exhibited at New Contemporaries 2001, and in 2002 he was awarded an Artsadmin bursary to develop a new project titled I, Robot. Phase Two of the I, Robot project was commissioned for Metapod 2003 in Birmingham. He has recently received major funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) for a twelve-month research project to create a conscious artwork.

Alan Dunn is manager of the tenantspin Superchannel project by FACT, the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology. He initiated and curated The Bellgrove Billboard Project (Glasgow 1990-91) and Liverpool Billboard Project (1999), presenting new works by various artists with accompanying catalogues. Recent projects include honour (flyposted works, Rio de Janeiro) and not dead white man (jumpshiprat, Liverpool and Anthology of Art, Ars Electronica, Linz).

Camilla Jackson has been Programme Organiser at The Photographers’ Gallery, London since 2000 during which time she has curated the group show Re: mote (for more information see past programme on www.photonet.org.uk). Previously, she was Exhibitions Curator at Tate Liverpool. Publications include Willie Doherty: Somewhere Else (1998) and Up in the Air (2000).

Britt Jorgensen and James Goodman both work at Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity and think-tank. Their work concentrates on the social, economic and environmental role of new communication technologies within the sustainable development framework. Britt previously worked in one of Scandinavia`s leading think-tanks, House of Monday Morning. Published work includes the Danish National Index of Competency (1998, 1999) and a paper on telework and sustainable development (2002). Published work by James includes a paper on mobile telephony and social capital (2003) and a review of Information and Communication Technology and sustainable development (2002). Britt and James are both currently working on a new book from Forum for the Future, Making the Net Work: Sustainable Business in a Wired World.

Lucy Kimbell led design teams helping mobile operators develop multi-channel services in 1999-2001. Her art commissions include the book Audit (Book Works, 2002) and the LIX Index (Channel 4/Arts Council/Film and Video Umbrella 2002). A recent art commission for Arttones.net involved creating a series of downloadable operator logos. She has recently been awarded an AHRB Creative Fellowship at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University. www.lucykimbell.com.

Celia Lury is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has written widely on the sociology of culture, including Cultural Rights (Routledge, 1993), Consumer Culture (Polity, 1993), Prosthetic Culture (Routledge, 1998) and Global Nature, Global Culture (with S. Franklin and J. Stacey, Routledge, 2000). She is currently writing a book on brands, also to be published with Routledge.

Robert Pepperell is a member of Polar (The Posthuman Laboratory for Arts Research) and a lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at University of Wales College, Newport. He has published The Posthuman Condition (Intellect, 1995) and The Postdigital Membrane (Intellect, 2000) in collaboration with Michael Punt. A revised version of his first book, entitled The Posthhuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the brain, has also recently been published (Intellect, 2003). He has exhibited and lectured widely, and is currently working on a new book.

Emma Posey is an artist, writer and founding Director of Bloc, an art and new technology agency established in 1998. She has written widely on contemporary visual art and the effects of technology on place. Essay contributions to publications include Behind You in Between Us (2003) by artist Mariele Neudecker and Memory Maps in Distance Made Good (2002) by artists Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern. Her editorial work includes Further (2003), a catalogue to accompany Wales at the Venice Biennale, 2003.

Michael Punt is Reader at the University of Wales College, Newport, Deputy Director of the Centre for Advanced Inquiry into Interactive Art (CAiiA) and Editor in Chief of Leonardo Digital reviews. He has made over 15 films and published widely in the field of technology and its uses. His recent publications include a book-length study on early cinema Early Cinema and the Technological Imaginary, The Postdigital Membrane (Intellect, 2000) in collaboration with Robert Pepperell, Imagination, Technology and Pleasure: The Emergence of Cinema to be published by Intellect in 2003 and a CD Rom Radical Nostalgia.

Paul A. Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Communications Theory at the University of Leeds and formerly of the University of Salford. He is the author of Hackers: Crime in the Digital Sublime (Routledge 1999) and is currrently finishing Media Processes and Effects: Living in the New Plato`s Cave for Palgrave publishers.
To Book:

The publication cost £9.50 plus £1 for P&P. To order a copy email a request to remote@bloc.org.uk OR send a cheque for £10.50 payable to ‘b10c’ with your postal details.

ISBN: 0-9544935-0-8
Title: Remote: Creativity, Technology and Remoteness
Editor: Emma Posey
Publisher: Bloc Press
Price: £9.50
P&P: £1
Place of Publication: Bloc Press, The Cross, Gladestry, Powys HR5 3NX

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Vectors

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Issue #2: Mobility

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular is pleased to announce the launch of Issue #2: Mobility.

The Mobility issue of Vectors includes work ranging from a rhizomatic exploration of the historical representation of the Irish to a manifesto for creating academic superheroes. Featured scholars include David Lloyd, Jane McGonigal, the Labyrinth Project, Julian Bleecker, the Guantanamobile Project, Todd Presner, and Dietmar Offenhuber.

Vectors is an international peer-reviewed electronic journal dedicated to expanding the potentials of academic publication via emergent and transitional media. Vectors brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research, focusing on the ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural relations. Vectors is edited by Tara McPherson and Steve Anderson with creative direction by Erik Loyer and Raegan Kelly.

Posted by jo at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

Hexagram Mondays

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at [SAT]

MONDAY, 10th October 2005; 6pm - free: Éric Raymond--Lanternes/Lighthouses: Recent works and issues; Jason Lewis--Writing the Next Text; and Niklas Damiris--Valorization through art and technology: an opportunity to add value and rethink economic valuation?

The SAT and Hexagram cooperate in organizing a series of conferences which will feature Hexagram’s creators-researchers and students sponsored by the Centre interuniversitaire en arts médiatiques (CIAM). Open to everyone, this series aims at the dissemination of Hexagram’s works within the network of creators-researchers from the Institute and independant media and technological artists, but to the the general public as well. The conferences will take place every second Monday of each month from September 2005 until May 2006, from 6pm to 8pm.

Éric Raymond: Lanternes/Lighthouses: Recent works and issues

My work raises questions about the origin of images. Through unexpected associations of found objects in former installations or the evanescent shimmering of electronic images, it explores issues related to the sources of visual and mental representations. Since 1997, I have been working on a body of work called Lanternes/ Lighthouses, which includes the recent Interiors project. I use photography and video in electronic installations that often involve landscape as a way of questioning the way in which we inhabit the earth. I am interested in the idea we have of Nature, but more specifically in the way this idea is influenced by technology and industry.

Eric Raymond has been active in the field of electronic arts for more than ten years. He has exhibited his work on the national and international scene notably at the Absolut L.A. International Biennial Art Invitational (Los Angeles), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), L.A.Freewave (Los Angeles), InterAccess (Toronto), and Dazibao (Montreal).

Jason Lewis: Writing the Next Text

Jason Lewis (Concordia) will demonstrate and discuss work done as part of the Hexagram-sponsored Next Text project. Next Text is a conceptual and technical exploration of digital text, type and typography. We focus on asking how text can be written, displayed and read differently in the digital environment, and we develop software tools that support radical experiments in text-based creative expression.

Jason Lewis is a digital artist and technology researcher whose work revolves around experiments in visual language, text and typography. His other interests include computation as a creative material, emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. His creative work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Center, ISEA, and SIGGRAPH, among other venues, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the English Arts Council, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Arts Alliance and Heritage Canada. Lewis was trained in philosophy and computer science at Stanford University and in art & design at the Royal College of Art. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University where he founded and directs Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media. Please see www.obxlabs.net for more information.

Niklas Damiris: Valorization through art and technology: an opportunity to add value and rethink economic valuation?

In this talk, I want to place the issues concerning artistic research and valorization in a larger systemic context. As the affinities between artistic invention and technical innovation are increasingly noted, so are the hopes and problems associated with such rapprochment. Many of the hopes are pinned on the transdisciplinarity this portends. But some of the problems are its corollary and stem from tensions due to the different institutional character of academic disciplines, business labs, and government agencies which frame the context in which "Research and Creation" is to happen. HEXAGRAM was founded in order to address some of these concerns.

Instead of asking how artists may use technologies to make money, or how technology products could become more profitable through artistic inflection, I problematize what I shall call the ’Art&Technology Complex’, in light of the undisputed pressures of globalization and the environment. To me, as currently understood, Art remains the ’sacred’ and Technology the profane manifestation of a Will to power that inadvertedly contributes to economic destitution and ecological devastation. So I want to ask their practitioners some hard questions:

What is the relevance of artistic work in today’s world?
What does it mean to engender monetary value through artistic production?
What does research imply in the context of art and technology practices?

These tough questions have to be raised in order not only to figure out the political or business consequences of "Research and Creation", but more importantly, in order to levarage this problematic to revision our sense of economy and sociality itself.

Niklas Damiris, Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist turned intellectual entrepreneur. For many years he was affiliated with Xerox-Parc. More recently he has been a Senior Fellow at the Knowledge Society Center at UCSC. Currently, he is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, a Research Associate at the Swiss Banking Center, and a Consulting Advisor to IBM-Research. He is co-author with Stefano Franchi and Helga Wild of the monograph: "The Passion of Life" forthcoming by Lexington Books in 2006. He is also working on a book-trilogy focusing on money and its unique relation to work, to virtuality, and to ecology.

Posted by jo at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

Spychips:

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Track(ing) Your Every Move

"RFID, which stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, is a technology that uses computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items from a distance. And as this mind-blowing book explains, plans and efforts are being made now by global corporations and the U.S government to turn this advanced technology, these spychips, into a way to track our daily activities-and keep us all on Big Brother's short leash. Compiling massive amounts of research with firsthand knowledge, Spychips explains RFID technology and reveals the history and future of the master planners' strategies to imbed these trackers on everything-from postage stamps to shoes to people themselves-and spy on Americans without our knowledge or consent. It also urgently encourages consumers to take action now-to protect their privacy and civil liberties before it's too late." Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID by Katherine Albrecht, Liz McIntyre. Also see STOP RFID.

Posted by jo at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2005

Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts' Conference

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Emergent Systems, Cognitive Environments

A few of the many papers being presented at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts' Emergent Systems, Cognitive Environments conference--Chicago IL, November 10-13, 2005:

A6. Roundtable: Thresholds of Performance--Organizer: Sha Xin Wei, Fine Arts and Computer Science, Concordia University:

"The panelists (Toni Dove, Kevin Quennesson, Tirtza Even) explore to what extent and how performance needs to be noticed, and how performance needs to be intended and posed to be noticed. What makes a movement a gesture rather than a tic? What happens when we interpose and mix systems of deferred agency, whether it's chorography of rehearsed human perfomers or a network of software video and audio processes? What sorts of entanglement pull people and performance out of the background of unmarked occasions into marked events? The panelists' works reveal multiple thresholds between object and substrate, between scripted and emergent event. We ask of the artists: What new forms of performance can we witness in collective or public spaces? How do such events--organized activity by analogy with organized sound--reshape our notions of performance as well as public space? What are the significances of such coordinated public gestures? How do "things" of "common concern" emerge from such actions? How do meanings and subjects unfold under the interweaving, resonances, or costructuration of performances in public?"

Markus Hallensleben, Modern German Literature, University of British Columbia, The Emergence of Tissue Engineering as Textual Figuration: Stelarc's Cooperation with Tissue Culture and Art:

"In his most recent project, the Australian based performance artist Stelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) describes plans to implant a third ear onto his body. I will portray his project, which is developed with the assistance of the Australian research and performance group Tissue Culture & Art, as an example of how techniques of tissue engineering can be applied to artwork. Since Stelarc's third ear will demonstrate the extension of the human body to a highly artificial but living sculpture, it critically mirrors scientific performances, and it reveals an aesthetic paradox of mythical ritual and objective norm in medical sciences. In his project of a third ear, Stelarc reflects the socio-communicative act of a medical experiment and the act of surgery as an aesthetic act of art performance. My analysis will give an answer to the questionable production and reception of the experiment by interpreting the "mouse with three ears," as artwork, even as text, not only because the term tissue comes, like text, from the Latin word texere, but because here we also find the performance of the metaphor (cognitive figure of thought). I will argue that--with the extension of the science to life creations--their performances also have to be seen like other performances based on text or body."

Mark Pizzato, Theatre and Film, UNC/Charlotte, Neurotheatre: Evolving Ghosts in the Human Brain:

"Current discoveries in cognitive neuroscience are changing our understanding of theatrical performance, as an emergent system inside the brain (along with Self and Other consciousness), shared between humans in particular cultural environments. This presentation is taken from my forthcoming book "Ghost Theatres, Movies, and the Brain" (palgrave Macmillan 2006). I will investigate the evolution of episodic, mimetic, myth-making, and theoretic cultures, from hominid to human (according to psychologist Merlin Donald), regarding the ghostly characters of Self and Other within the brain and in performance. How did the interior theatre of the human brain develop over millions of years--towards various cultural modes of mimetic and narrative performance, involving a common neuroanatomy (and its "inner environment" in Dennett's terms), yet distinctive traditions of stage and screen drama today? How are we transforming our cognitive environments and emotional drives, through the current "ghost in the machine" of the brain, expressed by performance technologies?"

Kris Paulsen, Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, The Telecrowd:

"In Sidney Lumet's 1976 film "Network," newscaster Howard Beale stirs his viewers in to a media-resistant rage. He compels his audience to scream from their windows, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Suddenly, a crowd emerges. From windows of every apartment building, faces appear and call out to each other against the unidirectional television. A community of people existing in the same time but in separate spaces emerges. They are linked together by a medium that they all experience in the same time. Building from this image, I examine the telerobotic works of Ken Goldberg (Demonstrate, 2004) and Marie Sester (Access, 2003) in relation to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty's theories of the "presence of others." These philosophers will help us to conceptualize mediated environments that privilege real time over real space, specifically in relation to how we understand co-presence and the ethics of seeing and being seen."

John Bruni, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Towards an Ecology of Performance: Edith Wharton with Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan:

"While Margulis and Sagan's "What is Life?" describes life in the performative, as a becoming rather than a being, their work need not be limited to a debate about holistic naturalism. Their next book, "Acquiring Genomes," argues against the expressing of evolutionary theory through reductive language of economic competition. I wish to look at their work with ecosystems as laying the groundwork for redefining the importance of social environments. Their argument lends support to the shaping effects of environment on self-identity, a point that becomes even more pronounced when read through Judith Butler's theory of social performance. Using the novels of Edith Wharton as a stage upon which these themes become played out, my paper looks at how the reductive theory of evolution that Margulis and Sagan critique stems from an overemphasis on individualism in the twentieth century--the same critique which Butler politically and culturally employs. I hope to show how evolution, seen as a narrative which Wharton is deeply invested, can be seen in a new light; that read through Margulis, Sagan and Butler, a cultural application of evolution need not be read as a cariacature of "social Darwinist" thinking, but instead as a challenge to regard the social environments in which we live as modeled upon the dynamism of ecosystems."

Julia Kursell, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Molecular Musicology--Hearing with David Tudor:

"A Thousand Plateaus" begins with one page of music, entitled "piano piece for David Tudor." This music looks completely unfamiliar; the lines of the staves seem to be inextricably confused. Its composer, Sylvano Bussotti, insisted that the name in the title was not a dedication to the famous avant-garde pianist, but rather an indication of the instrument: Tudor was known to play what seemed unplayable. Whether composed for him or by him, what he played reconfigured instrument and player. It made the human disappear in a relation of instrumental parts that became indistinguishable. The sounds that would result from these configurations were unpredictable for the composer as well as for the listeners. Thereby interrupting the relation between notation and sound, the musical performance gave access to the "molecular content" of music: hearing could be heard. The role of this music in the philosophy of "A Thousand Plateaus," I will argue, was to contribute to a first formulation of a new science of hearing."

Talan Memmott, Dirty Code:

"10 lectures in 10 minutes: dirty code, that makes the harsh protocols, the reasoned syntax of code entirely unreasoned for the desiring machine, the immediate cyborg at the terminal...the extermintaion of terms, the execution as termination...move toward a taxonomadic circuit of, or "tweening," of identity--moving through, across, between various protocols; mostly hidden. It is the surface, though, that "matters"...the point, or place at which the contact is made, where one finds the meaningful product, the product that matters for oneself. This here, at the terminal, on the screen is still severe sublimation of what matters to the product, how it is made material--the relays that form the [spaceless] space between. What matters is the suspect materiality of what matters to the "I" that is the user--here and there. The ten lectures that make up this performance, will not be performed in order. The sequence of the lectures, the performance as a whole will be recombined on the fly, in the moment. The themes for the lectures will include such cryptic (or fantastical/phenomenological) subjects as technontology, [sur]faciality, narcisystems...Improvised diagrams, recursion, emergence, and the use of the neologisms all play a part in making the code of the performance dirty."

Alan Sondheim, Dirty Code:

"Code/program/operators on two levels--that of the performative or symbolic, and that of the referent. In "Dirty Code," as in life, the two are interwoven, 'messy'. It's this messiness that constitutes culture, art, as well as the problematic ideology of purity that underlies everything from Mecca through the Torah to Shinto. My performance exists in the space among codes, cultures, languages, bodies, problematizing these, attempting to rein in the symbolic veering out of control."

Ed Chang, University of Maryland, A Friendster Story: Social Network as Narrative:

"The proliferation of so-called social network applications, like Six Degrees, in the past and Friendster or Tribe.net, in the present, raises the immediate questions: Why is it suddenly important to identify, quantify, and digitize one's friendships, acquaintances, and connections? More importantly, why is it important to be able to see the network? It can be argued that the aggregation of these connections tells a story about cyberculture, about cyberidentity; it is a narrative that critiques and radicalizes cyberspace as a space, place, and temporality of inclusion and exclusion. How do these applications themselves succeed or fail at figuring, graphically and metaphorically, social connections? Finally, how do social networks map and configure self, geography, and conceptions of cyberspace as community?"

Dene Grigar, English, Texas Women's University, 'When Ghosts Will Die': Narrative Performance Through the Use of Emergent Technology:

"This presentation discusses "When Ghosts Will Die," a performance-installation that utilizes multi-sensory elemets such as sound, images, light, and text produced by motion-tracking technology and computers to tell the story about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Inspired by Michael Frayn's play, "Copenhagen," it explores the use of non-linguistic elements in the service of telling stories. While motion-tracking systems have been used in surveillance and training, as well as in the development of virtual reality experiences, smart rooms, human computer interfaces, media arts performances and installations, health and therapy, and for enriching the ambience in computer and video game environments, spaces enhanced by motion-tracking technology have not yet been fully explored as potential for storytelling. The focus of this presentation, then, is to detail ways this emergent technology innovates narrative, particularly those entailing live performance."

See full program [PDF] [via ELO]

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

October 03, 2005

aRt&D:

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Research and Development in Art

aRt&D: Research and Development in Art lays open a new investigative field of art that emerged in the last few decades as a result of media and technology influences. aRt&D introduces the diversity of this new art domain to a broader audience. It is the first book that is entirely dedicated to artistic research and development.

In the past decades a new international trend has emerged within the arts, usually referred to as 'electronic', 'digital', or 'interactive' art. In the 1980s, artists mainly worked with radio and video, where in the last fifteen years digital media and network technologies have emerged as their instruments of choice. This new art domain is characterized by collaboration between artists, designers, engineers and scientists, who join forces in researching and experimenting with new opportunities for using technology for artistic ends.

aRt&D: Research and Development in Art not only provides a unique insight in the art practice through essays in which artists write about their personal experiences, it also develops a theoretical framework for these projects. The book contains contributions by the award-winning performance group Blast Theory, media artist Thecla Schiphorst, art critics Josephine Bosma and Rudolf Frieling, media theorist Andy Cameron, curators Mark Hansen and Inke Arns, philosopher Andrew Benjamin, and many others. Timothy Druckrey, expert in this field, evaluates the importance of artistic research and development so far. aRt&D positions itself as a pioneering work: it is the first book ever published that focuses in depth on interdisciplinary research and development from an artistic perspective.

Contributor: Matt Adams, Q.S. Serafijn, Andy Cameron, Aske Hopman, Zoltan Szegedy-Maszak, Marton Fernezelyi, Sara Diamond, Edwin van der Heide, Anne Nigten, Sher Doruff, Piet Vollaard, Josephine Bosma, Knowbotic Research, Mark B.N. Hansen, Thecla Schiphorst, Time's Up, Rudolf Frieling, David Link, Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Andrew Benjamin, Pascal Maresch, Inke Arns, Timothy Druckrey.

Published by: V2_Publishing, NAi Publishers [via]

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

PLAN & Mixed Reality Laboratory

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Discussion at Trampoline

The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network and Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham University will be holding a presentation as part of TRAMPOLINE on Thursday 6th October at 8.30pm, Broadway Mezz Bar, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham. Representatives of PLAN and MRL Drew Hemment, Ben Russell and Steven Benford will be discussing their recent activities in encouraging discourse between artists, scientists and engineers in the field of pervasive and locative media. Come along to this discussion and find out more about the innovative research, development and artistic production which is being pursued in this area.

PLAN: A new international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media has been funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme. The network will bring together practicing artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects. It will be of relevance to people working in the arts, games, education, tourism, heritage, science and engineering.

The network will stage three major gatherings. Each gathering will have a distinct form and focus: an initial workshop to launch the network and assess the state of the art; a technology summer camp for artists and technologists, including hands-on prototyping sessions using the facilities at Nottingham's Mixed reality Laboratory; and a major public conference and participatory exhibition as a central component of the Futuresonic 2006 festival in Manchester; as well as a supporting web site and other resources.

Mixed Reality Lab: The Mixed Reality Laboratory (MRL) is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Nottingham. The MRL brings together leading researchers from the Schools of Computer Science, Engineering and Psychology to research mixed reality - new technologies that merge the physical and digital worlds. The MRL is focused on the development and application of mixed reality to visualisation, learning, knowledge management, control systems, ethnomethodological studies, leisure and co-operative work.

Posted by jo at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

Videobrasil on-line

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the most complete database on new media art in the 'Southern Cone'

English: The Videobrasil Cultural Association has put together, in over twenty years, one of the most important collections of electronic art in the Southern Hemisphere, which is now available in this open database to all interested people. Here, you will find information on works, artists, institutions, and collaborators, as well as details on its festivals and exhibitions. With Videobrasil on-line we carry out our diffusion project, and specially focus on the production of the southern circuit. Supported by Prince Claus Fund and SESC SP.

Portugues: Em mais de vinte anos, a Associação Cultural Videobrasil reuniu um dos mais importantes acervos de arte eletrônica do Hemisfério Sul, disponível agora neste banco de dados aberto a todos os interessados. Aqui, você encontrará informações sobre obras, artistas, instituições e colaboradores, além de dados sobre sus festivais e mostras. Com o Videobrasil on-line, levamos à frente nosso trabalho de difusão, com foco voltado principalmente para a produção do circuito sul. Apoio do Prince Claus Fund e SESC SP.

Español: En más de veinte años la Asociación Cultural Videobrasil reunió uno de los más importantes archivos de arte electrónico del Hemisferio Sur, disponible ahora mediante una base de datos online para todo el público interesado. Aquí se puede encontrar información de trabajos, artistas, instituciones y colaboradores, así como detalles de sus festivales y muestras. Mediante Videobrasil online se lleva a cabo un importante trabajo de difusión con foco principal en la producción del circuito sur. Apoyo de Prince Claus Fund y SESC.

Posted by jo at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

Spinning the Web

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the eBay Connection

What exactly is “Schweinfurt Green,” and what does it have to do with Napoleon’s hair and 25 grams of “Vienna Black” pigment by Andreas Slominski? Or the two small red Sony batteries – what is the relation between them and the two dozen black-&-white amateur photographs of twins or the “Vasen Extasen” by artist couple Anna and Bernhard Blume? – These is the kind of question that arise when the world's online market-place eBay encounters a museum of modern art: The exhibition Spinning the Web – the eBay Connection presents objects that were bought by auction on eBay over a period of several months and juxtaposes them to artworks in the MMK’s collection.

eBay is not only a place where goods change hands, but also an Internet portal, a communications system, a search engine and a global network. Once you’re logged in, you can move by entering key words from one article to the next, just as if you were looking things up in an encyclopedia. This was the path taken

for selecting the objects for the exhibition, too: Depending on the variation and combination of key words, items relating to individual artworks were found as were artworks to fit the respective objects on offer in eBay. Some are clearly connected to each other, while for others the link is more a matter of association, but in all instances the new configurations bring added meaning to both the objects and the artworks. In other words, a track is laid that the viewers can but must not necessarily follow – and as you move down it, repeatedly new individual forms of signification can arise.

How does a museum change things that are placed within its walls? This has been one of the fundamental questions tackled by modern art ever since Marcel Duchamp submitted an urinal – placed flat on its back, signed R. Mutt and entitled ›Fountain‹ - for a non-juried exhibition in New York in 1917. And it is this issue that is being rejuvenated for this joint presentation of art and non-art here; and we are foregrounding the imaginative potential concealed behind the transformative powers of the museum as an institution. In this sense, Spinning the Web – the eBay Connection is a journey to things and through the worlds of the imagination, history and present. It is an exhibition about exhibiting itself: What is already innate in the combined presentation of MMK artworks is intensified and radicalized by the expansion to include non-artworks.

Sept. 24, 2005 - Jan. 29, 2006
Museum für Moderne Kunst
Domstrasse 10, 60311
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Tues.-Sun. 10 am to 5 pm
Wed. 10 am to 8 pm, Mon. closed

Tel. +49 (0) 69 212 30447
Fax: +49 (0) 69 212 37882
Email: mmk@stadt-frankfurt.de
[via]

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

Spinning the Web

1128306028mmk.jpg

the eBay Connection

What exactly is “Schweinfurt Green,” and what does it have to do with Napoleon’s hair and 25 grams of “Vienna Black” pigment by Andreas Slominski? Or the two small red Sony batteries – what is the relation between them and the two dozen black-&-white amateur photographs of twins or the “Vasen Extasen” by artist couple Anna and Bernhard Blume? – These is the kind of question that arise when the world's online market-place eBay encounters a museum of modern art: The exhibition Spinning the Web – the eBay Connection presents objects that were bought by auction on eBay over a period of several months and juxtaposes them to artworks in the MMK’s collection.

eBay is not only a place where goods change hands, but also an Internet portal, a communications system, a search engine and a global network. Once you’re logged in, you can move by entering key words from one article to the next, just as if you were looking things up in an encyclopedia. This was the path taken

for selecting the objects for the exhibition, too: Depending on the variation and combination of key words, items relating to individual artworks were found as were artworks to fit the respective objects on offer in eBay. Some are clearly connected to each other, while for others the link is more a matter of association, but in all instances the new configurations bring added meaning to both the objects and the artworks. In other words, a track is laid that the viewers can but must not necessarily follow – and as you move down it, repeatedly new individual forms of signification can arise.

How does a museum change things that are placed within its walls? This has been one of the fundamental questions tackled by modern art ever since Marcel Duchamp submitted an urinal – placed flat on its back, signed R. Mutt and entitled ›Fountain‹ - for a non-juried exhibition in New York in 1917. And it is this issue that is being rejuvenated for this joint presentation of art and non-art here; and we are foregrounding the imaginative potential concealed behind the transformative powers of the museum as an institution. In this sense, Spinning the Web – the eBay Connection is a journey to things and through the worlds of the imagination, history and present. It is an exhibition about exhibiting itself: What is already innate in the combined presentation of MMK artworks is intensified and radicalized by the expansion to include non-artworks.

Sept. 24, 2005 - Jan. 29, 2006
Museum für Moderne Kunst
Domstrasse 10, 60311
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Tues.-Sun. 10 am to 5 pm
Wed. 10 am to 8 pm, Mon. closed

Tel. +49 (0) 69 212 30447
Fax: +49 (0) 69 212 37882
Email: mmk@stadt-frankfurt.de
[via]

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

HOW DOES YOUR CITY AFFECT YOU?

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Glowlab: Open Lab at Art Interactive

HOW DOES YOUR CITY AFFECT YOU? Glowlab: Open Lab--Cambridge, MA, is your playground during an eight-week psychogeography festival and exhibition at Art Interactive; October 14, 2005 – December 11, 2005.

Glowlab, a Brooklyn-based psychogeography network presents Open Lab at Art Interactive. During this festival and exhibition curated by Christina Ray, more than twenty artists will research the effects of the urban environment on emotion and behavior by leading a series of public events. Each weekend of this unique festival and exhibition, several Glowlab artists will be “in-residence” at Art Interactive to lead interactive public events in the neighborhood. These include a wearable trash workshop, a laughing bike tour, a lesson in text-messaging the sky, and an informal conversation with a suitcase. While artists lead projects in the neighborhood’s public spaces, the is transformed into a working lab complete with video and web-based works and project documentation in the form of maps, photos and other materials.

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

HOW DOES YOUR CITY AFFECT YOU?

glowlab1.jpg

Glowlab: Open Lab at Art Interactive

HOW DOES YOUR CITY AFFECT YOU? Glowlab: Open Lab--Cambridge, MA, is your playground during an eight-week psychogeography festival and exhibition at Art Interactive; October 14, 2005 – December 11, 2005.

Glowlab, a Brooklyn-based psychogeography network presents Open Lab at Art Interactive. During this festival and exhibition curated by Christina Ray, more than twenty artists will research the effects of the urban environment on emotion and behavior by leading a series of public events. Each weekend of this unique festival and exhibition, several Glowlab artists will be “in-residence” at Art Interactive to lead interactive public events in the neighborhood. These include a wearable trash workshop, a laughing bike tour, a lesson in text-messaging the sky, and an informal conversation with a suitcase. While artists lead projects in the neighborhood’s public spaces, the is transformed into a working lab complete with video and web-based works and project documentation in the form of maps, photos and other materials.

Posted by jo at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

free103point9 and Rhizome

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Open Call for Transmission Art Web Projects

free103point9 and Rhizome are pleased to announce a collaborative call for web-based works that explore transmission as a medium for creative expression. Projects should practically and/or conceptually incorporate transmission themes and tools. Applicants are encouraged to visit free103point9's online Study Center resource for historical, technical, and cultural reference materials on Transmission Art.

Projects should have been completed within the last year of the opening of the exhibition: January 7, 2006. Projects that are in-development at the time of submission will be considered as long as their completion date seems to fit realistically with the exhibition timeline. A modest artist fee will be provided in support of selected projects. We welcome a wide range of interpretations and ideas.

Selected projects will be included in an online exhibition featured by both free 103point9 and Rhizome websites January-March 2006. A live performance and/or presentation event will also take place during the duration of the exhibition.

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2005
Notification: November 14, 2005
Online Exhibition: January-March 2006
Presentation/Performance: March 2006

APPLICATION

Please include the following items in your application materials. Proposals should be emailed to opencall[at]rhizome.org no later than midnight October 31, 2005.

Questions regarding your proposal should be directed to:
Lauren Cornell (laurencornell @ rhizome.org) and
Galen Joseph-Hunter (gjh @ free103point9.org)

Name of Artist/Collective

Contact e-mail

Contact phone

CV/Resume

Artist Statement: Without exceeding 500 words, please describe your current artistic practice.

Proposed Project Narrative:Without exceeding 1000 words, please describe your project.

Project Timeline: Please outline your development strategy in order to meet a launch date of January 1st.

Work Samples: Please provide a list of URL references to previous work.

Panelists:

Lauren Cornell, Rhizome Executive Director
Francis Hwang, Rhizome Director of Technology
Galen Joseph-Hunter, free103point9 Executive Director
Tianna Kennedy, free103point9 NYC Project Coordinator
Tom Roe, free103point9 Program Director

About free103point9

free103point9 is a nonprofit media arts organization focused on establishing and cultivating the genre Transmiss ion Arts by promoting artists who explore ideas around transmission as a medium for creative expression. These investigations include practices in AM and FM radio, Citizen's Band, walkie-talkie, generative sound, and other broad and microcasting technologies utilizing the transmission spectrum. free103point9 programs include a performance / exhibition / transmission series, an online radio station, a distribution label, an education initiative, and most recently an artist-in-residency program, and forthcoming study center and archive at free103point9 Wave Farm, located on 30 idyllic acres in upstate New York, 120 miles north of New York City.

Founded in 1997 as a microcasting artist collective, free103point9's goals during the formative years were focused on the microradio movement fight for the public's access to its own airwaves. free103's mobile operations made airtime available to community voices, local bands, and most significantly to a group of under-served artists shaping conceptual works specifically for radio transmission.

About Rhizome

Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Rhizome was founded in 1996 as a mailing list for some of the first artists experimenting with making art online. Since that time, Rhizome has established itself as a central hub for the new media art field and come to offer a variety of resources and services including archives of art and critical writing, new media arts-related publications, an annual Commissions program and a youth outreach initiative. Rhizome became a n onprofit in 1998, and formed an affiliation with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003.

Posted by jo at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

New Media Art: Embodied Praxis

We are seeking submissions for the first edition of the journal New Media Art: Embodied Praxis. This journal will build dialogue about work that explores the intersections between emerging technologies and body, place, space & culture.

We are seeking art works, articles (research oriented or reflection on artistic process), interviews or art reviews that can be displayed in a online context for this debut edition. Work from researchers, academics and artists working with the body, space and new technologies are welcome.

We will consider all article abstracts of not more than one page and original art works received by October 24th 2005 for selection. Completed articles will need to be received by Nov 30th 2005. For consideration, please submit your work with a short (one paragraph) biography in electronic form by e-mail to this address: journal[at]liu.edu

Please also note, that if your work is accepted, the journal requires either a hard copy of your work or high-resolution files uploaded to the internet. For hard copy submissions, please send a CD or DVD to the address below:

New Media : Embodied Praxis Journal
Sita Frederick
Comm/Perf/Theater
Long Island University
1 University Plaza
Brooklyn
NY 11201 5372

Posted by jo at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

Second International Conference

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Digital Technologies and Performance Arts

School of Intermedia and Performance Arts Second International Conference for Digital Technologies and Performance Arts, Doncaster, UK, June 26, 27, 28, 2006; Call for Papers, Workshops, Performances
www.don.ac.uk/ipa/frameset/index2.html.

Following the success of the 1st International Conference for Digital Technologies and Performance Arts, the School of Intermedia and Performance Arts at Doncaster College announces DTPA 2006. This interdisciplinary conference provides a forum for those in the field of theatre, dance, music and performance (researchers, practitioners, educators, systems developers) for a dynamic and exciting exchange of approaches surrounding the use of new media technologies in live performance.

Proposals are invited for papers, performances, presentations/workshops, and poster presentations on the following topics:
• Live performance and interactive systems
• Motion capture/motion-sensing technologies
• Performance pedagogy, education and new media
• HCI and live performance
• Web based performance and virtual performance spaces
• Realtime music control
• Gesture and interactive multimedia
• Interdisciplinarity and new media
• Performance software/hardware development

Apart from papers in conventional format (30 minutes) there will be the opportunity for practitioner-researchers to offer
i) performances with corresponding documentation for post-production peer discussion,
ii) performance workshops
iii) digital technologies workshops
iv) performative installations with related paper (all 60 minutes).

Presenters may also wish to submit written papers for publication prior to, or following the conference, in the new International Journal of Digital Media and Performance Arts.

Proposals for research papers should be about 200-300 words.

Proposals for performances and installations should be submitted with an outline of about 200-300 words and either audio CD or DVD, as well as full details of technical and spatial requirements.

Workshop proposals should also be about 200-300 words with additional full details of technical and spatial requirements.

Notification of acceptance of papers will be sent out by the end of March 2006.

Performing arts companies and independent artists may have conference fees waived, but will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation fees.

Contact: School of Intermedia & Performance Arts, Doncaster College
Dr Dave Collins, Reader
High Melton
DN5 7SZ Doncaster, UK
david.collins[at]don.ac.uk
www.don.ac.uk/ipa

Posted by jo at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2005

[UpStage]

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Next UpStage Walk-thru, October 7

Kia ora koutou: this is a reminder about the monthly UpStage walkthru's [the next one is next week!]--Wed 5 October: California, USA: 2pm; New York, USA: 5pm; UK: 10pm; Western Europe: 11pm; Finland: 12 midnight; Australia (NSW/QLD): 7am [thurs]; NZ: 10am [thurs]; or check -http://www.timeanddate.com [for your local time].

The format will be newbies in the introduction stage [over view of the tools and tricks in the UpStage performative space]. While other crew will be devising with members of Avatar body Collision [please come to the introduction stage first for directions :)]; To take your place as a player please email colliders[at]avatarbodycollision.org for a login and password. Audience members please proceed to http://upstage.org.nz:8081/stages/presentation.

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

Interface [s] Montréal

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[Immersion and Virtual Reality]

[Immersion and Virtual Reality] Beyond reality and interactive reality experience--From aerospace to surgery, and in all things game related, the simulators and immersion environments developed to serve humankind are indispensable tools that significantly improve human knowledge and enhance our reality experience.

Speakers: Yves Gonthier - Canadian Space Agency; Jean-Claude Artonne - Immervision; Jocelyn Faubert - Université de Montréal, École d’optométrie; Carl-Éric Aubin - École Polytechnique de Montréal, Dép. génie mécanique & CHU Sainte-Justine; Luc Courchesne - Université de Montréal et Ideaction.

TUESDAY, 4th October 2005 Interface [s] Montréal :: [Immersion and Virtual Reality]; 5:30pm - $30 at the door - package deals available.

[Yves Gonthier] Canadian Space Agency: A Real-Time Simulator for 3D Mental Image Reconstruction On-Board the International Space Station--The operations of manned and unmanned space vehicles and their associated supporting docking and robotics systems require significant crew training both on ground and on orbit. A number of psychological and physiological factors are known to affect the crew on-board performance. Therefore, skills degrade over time and the frequency, depth of proficiency and refresher training need to be studied. Currently a new experiment is designed in order to study the 3D mental image reconstruction for tasks involving the operation of all robotic components of the Mobile Servicing System of the International Space Station. The long-term goal of this research project is to gather data to study skill degradation and recovery of psychomotor and cognitive skills. This data will be analyzed to help define metrics that could be used to assess the level of readiness of an operator to perform complex tasks.

To study performance degradation and skill recovery, a highly efficient simulator is required in order to ensure on-orbit real time simulation and fast feedback to the operator. In this project, the challenge is the real-time simulation of Canadarm2 and Dextre while performing graphics rendering of the worksite environment using just a single computer, in particular a P4 1.8Ghz IBM ThinkPad. The simulator relies on the modeling technology from SGDL to generate highly realistic images. For the graphics rendering of the models, the SGDL models are transformed into an approximate polygonal representation. This minimizes the computational load on the CPU and optimizes the rendering rate by using graphics card hardware acceleration. At the same time, a collision detection algorithm is applied to the exact SGDL model to monitor any collision event.

It is planned that the experiment will be launched on the space station in April 2006.

[Jean-Claude Artonne] Immervision: Panoramic technologies in everyday applications--During the last ten years computer and optical sciences have evolved to open possibilities and create opportunities for new applications. Thanks to these technological advances today we can experience a new “Immersive” dimension.

With today’s panoramic imaging technologies we can digitalise and visualise in real-time a whole 360 degrees environment. Hosting a panoramic videoconference from your mobile phone, keeping an eye on every room of your house, preventing transportation accidents thanks to 360 degrees dynamic analysis, caring for your loved ones from distance and virtually immerging yourself inside the human body will soon all be panoramic imaging technology’s applications as common as today’s ultrasound, radar, telephone and many other technologies developed during the past 50 years.

A new 360 degrees technology invented and patented by Jean-Claude Artonne and developed by ImmerVision meet the quality, flexibility and performance required by today’s rich multimedia applications and most rigorous security and aerospace applications. It is a combination of both hardware and software that run on today’s video camera and computer technology from the smallest pocket PC to the most powerful system. The hardware includes the new panomorph lenses with increasable resolution on specific areas combined with software based on advance imaging algorithms.

[Jocelyn Faubert] Université de Montréal, département optométrique, Chair NSERC-Essilor on presbytia and visual perception: Understanding human behavior with immersive virtual environments--Full-immersive displays such as the CAVE system have been originally developed for visualization and industrial uses. Using such an environment for the study of human performance involves a number of challenges, as it was not originally designed for such a purpose. For several years now our laboratory has adapted the CAVE technology to help us understand human behavior. We are interested in determining the effect of age-related changes on perception, posture and visual-motor control in ecological environments. In particular, we try to understand how prebyopes cope with visual deformations that are induced by corrective lenses. Presbyopia is an age-related change that affects our capacity to focus at near. The first signs usually appear in the 40s and almost 100% of individuals in the 50s are presbyopic. Our initial results are extremely promising and demonstrate that a full-immersive environment is a very powerful tool for assessing human performance but this is a technology that still requires enormous resources in both initial cost and maintenance and may not be generally accessible in the near future.

[Carl-Éric Aubin] École Polytechnique de Montréal, Dép. génie mécanique & CHU Sainte-Justine: Surgical Simulator for the Virtual Prototyping of the Surgical Instrumentation of the Scoliotic Spine--Prof. Carl-Eric Aubin Ph.D., ing.; Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, département génie mécanique & CHU Sainte-Justine; Collaborateurs : Profs. H. Labelle, B. Ozell, F. Cheriet.

[Luc Courchesne] Université de Montréal and Ideaction: Panoscope 360°--Enter the Panoscope 360° to be fully immersed in a 3D world. A 3-axis joystick placed at the center of the viewing platform will let you and your friends (up to 8) fly through the space as in dreams. This single channel immersive display uses a PC and a custom designed hemispheric projector above your head to project in real time a rendering of your entire horizon onto the hemispheric screen."

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

ResonanCity

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@ the Dutch Film Festival

Live performance ResonanCity by Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer, October 3, 20.00 uur; Dutch Film Festival/Re:visie, Centraal Museum [Post CM building], Utrecht NL.

Many sounds and images in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up. ResonanCity is an ongoing project to gather these microscopic sounds and images from various cities, and to amplify and transform them. The goal is to build a new city of sound and visuals inside the old one, and to inspire curiosity and exploration of one's own environment. Visually, Kolster's work deconstructs the analog/digital divide by presenting carefully prepared film positives in a software-manipulated environment. Similarly, Holzer's realtime digital sound treatments highlight and enhance rather than obscure and distort the field recordings and sound objects he collects. ResonanCity recently won the second prize at the WRO International Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, PL. See also http://www.umatic.nl [Related]

Dutch Film Festival / Re:Visie

During the Dutch Film Festival [28 sept - 7 oct] a second edition of the visual art program Re:Visie is presented. Curators Annet Dekker (Dutch Institute of Media Art, Montevideo/Time Based Arts] and Karel Doing [Film maker and co-founder of the Filmbank] put together a program in which interaction between different art disciplines is the central theme.

The performance ResonanCity is presented on the 3rd of October within the Re:visie program. Besides ResonanCity, two other performances - FACES (Joost van Veen & Huib Emmer) and OPTICAL MACHINES (Rikkert Brok & Maarten Halmans) will be presented on the evening of the 3rd.

Location: Post CS building

Re:Visie takes place in POST CM, Agnietenstraat in Utrecht. The entrance is opposite the main entrance of the Centraal Museum.

Posted by jo at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

YOKOHAMA 2005:

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International Triennale of Contemporary Art

YOKOHAMA 2005 - Yokohama's second International Triennale of Contemporary Art - builds on the success of YOKOHAMA 2001 and will feature the work of around 80 participating international and Japanese artists exhibiting in the main venue - two enormous warehouses located on Yamashita Pier. The Triennale offers an alternative to the conventional style of art exhibition in which the observer simply looks at the works, instead offering a dialogue-based exhibition in which the barrier between the observer and the exhibitor is transcended, with the observer present during the artist creative process and being able to actually experience the work.

There will be an emphasis on “involvement with the site” in YOKOHAMA2005. This will be a new type of venue for people to encounter art realized through initiatives such as home-stays by artists and also by featuring participation-based art. The public will have the opportunity to view or be involved in the artist's creative process while much of the work will undergo change as a result of interaction with the community (works-in-progress).

Triennale plans also include movie screenings, community workshops on theater and other art-related topics, and events such as symposiums and gallery lectures to encourage interaction between art and the community. September 28 - December 18, 2005.

Posted by jo at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

TRANSMISSIONS 05

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Hybridization of Practices

TRANSMISSIONS crystallizes the integration of creativity in the arts, science and technologies. Today research, experimentation and creation in new media are, by their volume, at least comparable to what could have been produced in the 1960's, with the development of mass media. The hybridization of the practices and the digital components between the scientific, technical and artistic fields invigorates inventive processes, experimentalism, interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity. The artists are unceasingly exploring the potential of technology for new relations with the world, new constructions of knowledge and new social spaces and means of expression. The researcher thus intersects with the artist or the mediator, in their common zest for experimentation.

TRANSMISSIONS will present, in their authors' presence, the works and the devices that are the results of research in progress, thereby encouraging exchange and dialogue between the public and the authors as a creative approach to technology.

Given the multiplicity of image formats and an increasing complexity of our relationships with them, TRANSMISSIONS traverses the non exclusive axes that deal with the common concerns of the artistic, scientific and heritage fields:

Screen/Surface: the willingness to leave the image on the computer standard screen, to invest other materials and supports (as in Electronic Shadows presentation, at ICHIM 04);
Sonic experiments: the wealth and diversity of experimentations with sound;
Body-as-Interface: supplanting technical interfaces in favor of a more intuitive interaction between the body and the device;
Hybrid reality (Global Positioning System and Augmented Reality): physical and digital space fusion, experiencing space;
Archiving and indexing: Constituting, locating and hijacking network content;
Time-space laboratory: New articulations in time and space.
Back to the future: Experiments in Art and Technology: rediscovering the pioneering role of E.A.T. in the domain of research at the intersections of art, science and technology.

Adrien de Melo, Christophe Leclercq, Xavier Perrot.

Horaires

The Exhibition opens on the afternoons of 22 & 23 September at the Maison internationale, RER Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (14e).

Thursday September 22, 2005
Exhibition opening: 4.30PM.
Official inauguration: 6.00PM.
Exhibition closing: 10.00PM.

Friday September 23, 2005
Exhibition opening: 2.00PM.
Exhibition closing: 8.30PM.

Free entrance upon invitation.
Contact and reservations : transmissions@ichim.org

Posted by jo at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Budapest

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Call for Applications

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Budapest 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | final presentation 8 October 2005: In this workshop 16 makers, producers editors and educators of film, radio, television and video use their own material to make an interactive film that can be published on or offline. The workshop is an intense process where you get to know the possibilities and applications of interactive film in a wider media context. You design your own project and discuss it with peers and experienced trainers and build a working prototype.

Application Deadline: September 30, 2005 | online registration >> | workshop schedule (pdf, 219K) and more info >>

Posted by jo at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

1001 nights cast

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Tune In

As of tomorrow, I'll be into the three digit figures of the 1001 nights cast and also crossing quite a few time zones on my way back to Sydney. Here's some information about the next few performances if you want to keep track of performance times:

# 99 from PARIS on Sept 27 at 19:38 local time
# 100 from Changi Airport, SINGAPORE on Sept 28 at 18:59 local time
# 101 from Changi Airport, SINGAPORE on Sept 29 at 18:58 local time
# 102 from SYDNEY on Sept 30 at 17:57 local time

From then on, sunsets in Sydney will get later and later and on October 30 SOME of Australia, including Sydney, switches to daylight saving. On that day sunset in Sydney will be at 19:21. This is also the date on which much of the northern hemisphere reverts from summer time to standard time.

Please use the time zone converter to calculate your local time in relation to mine on any given day.

Since performance # 50 some great new writers have contributed to the project. The current full list of writers is:
Oskar Backent (just turned 7)
Lionel Bawden
Anne Brennan
Lucy Broome
Barbara Campbell
Deb Cox
Mira Cuturilo
Domenico De Clario
Jai McHenry Derra
Craig Doolan
Nola Farman
David Hagger
David Hansen
Helen Idle
Seth Keen
Alex Keller
Boris Kelly
Declan Kelly
Caroline Lee
Eden Liddelow
Rivka Mayer
Deborah McBride
Robyn McKenzie
Sarah Miller
Ninna Millikin
Ross Murray
John O'Brien
Marian Pastor Roces
Dee Prichard
Greg Pryor
Joseph Rabie
Ian Reilly
Andrew Renton
Neil Roberts
Danielle Roddick
Jade Shum
Ann Stephen
Rob Stephenson
Miriam Taylor
Philip Terry
Paul Threlfall
Helen Townsend
Sophie Townsend
Margaret Trail
Cynthia Troup
Patsy Vizents
Van Waffle
Frazer Ward
Ingrid Wassenaar
Marion White
Diana Wood Conroy
Amelia Young
Ellen Zweig

I cannot thank them enough for the quality and generosity of their writing. Always a pleasure to perform.

Barbara Campbell
http://1001.net.au

Posted by jo at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE)

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Belief Systems and their Medial Marketing Strategies

For 2005 Europe based Media Artists in the fields of digital media including internet and computer based art, filmmakers, sound and video artists are invited to apply for a two month residence based stipend at Werkleitz Gesellschaft's Center for Media Arts Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. EMARE includes a grant of 2.000 Euro, free accomodation, 250 Euro travel expenses, access to the technical facilities and media labs and a professional presentation.

The formless application should include a CV, (audio)visual references, projects documentation (no originals, no return!) and a proposal sketch for the project referring to the theme: "Belief systems and their medial marketing strategies" which should be developed within EMARE. Artists with residence in EU or identity card for EU and associated countries are elligible to apply. Deadline: November, 1st, 2005

Please send your application to: Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V. € EMARE € z. H. Frau Monika Stösser
Schleifweg 6€ D-06114 Halle (Saale)
Tel: 0345-68246 - 0 € Fax 0345-68246 - 29
E-Mail: info@werkleitz.de
http://www.werkleitz.de/projekte/emare/index_e.html

EMARE 2006 will take place in partnership with VIVID, Birmingham, UK. The call for applications will follow in spring 2006.

EMARE is supported by the Ministry of cultural affairs Saxony-Anhalt and British Council.

Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V.
Schleifweg 6
D-06114 Halle / Saale
fon: 0345 68246-0 fax: 0345 68246-29
http://www.werkleitz.de

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

SEDIMENTAL JOURNEY!

10/3 - 7:30PM PDT (10:30PM EDT) Songlines Series, Mills College - Pauline Oliveros with Stuart Dempster perform a SEDIMENTAL JOURNEY! via iCHATav with Pauline in Troy in the iEAR Studio at RPI and Stuart in Seattle at the DX Center, U Washington and the duo appearing on screen in the concert hall on the Songlines Series at Mills College Oakland CA.

This concert is commemorating 50 years of musical friendship between Pauline & Stuart. Other collaborators include June Watanabe-choreography, Scot Gresham-Lancaster-video and networking design, Les Stuck-technical direction. Possibly the concert will be streamed onto the INTERNET as well. Otherwise attendance will be in three places: Oakland, Troy and Seattle. Contact: John Bischoff bischoff[at]mills.edu Songlines Series, "J. Pampin" pampin[at]u.washington.edu-Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), University of Washington, Seattle, Pauline Oliveros paulineo[at]deeplistening.org, Arts Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Scot Gresham-Lancaster: http://o-art.org/Scot
podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OrchestrateClangMass
blog: http://clangmass.blogspot.com/

Posted by jo at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

Pixilerations v.2

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FirstWorksProv Festival

Providence will be the site of Pixilerations v.2, the annual downcity exhibition of new media art, ranging from digital installations and experimental video to robotic sculpture and interactive music performances. This exhibition showcases an eclectic range of artists associated with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Brown University as well as Rhode Island’s thriving creative communities.

Pixilerations v.2 opens for art lovers, technocrats and families alike to enjoy on September 29, 5-8pm and runs through October 15, 2005 at both the Space at Alice on 186 Union St, and the Pixilerations Gallery on 191 Westminster St. This opening exhibition kicks off the FirstWorksProv Festival (September 29-November 4) featuring electronic arts, premiere performances, multimedia spectacles and world-class artists including Laurie Anderson, Rennie Harris Puremovement, Momix and Rhode Island’s innovative music ensemble Aurea.

OPENING NIGHT: September 29 – Cutting-edge digital installations and festivities with Timinandi West African Music and lighted costumes by Pink Inc. animated ­­­by Fusionworks Dance Company. 5-8 pm @ The Space at Alice and the Pixilerations Gallery. Free admission.

GALLERY PERFORMANCES: September 29 & October 8 – Interactive digital performances and music. 9/29 at 8 pm and 10/8 at 10pm @ the Pixilerations Gallery. Free admission.

ONGOING EXHIBITION: September 29 – October 15 – Digital installations, experimental video and sound. Gallery hours: Thursday through Saturday, 4-7 pm @ The Space at Alice and the Pixilerations Gallery. Free admission.

Pixilerations v.2 presents Betsy Connors’ holographic Light Garden; Mark Swarek’s Fall of the Damned with interactive projections across 18’ screens; Daniel Peltz’ Tonight I sleep in a strange bed, utilizing a live-feed video system; Brian Alves’ Manual for Clinical Mycology and Mark Domino’s Glas. There will also be digital installations by Paul Badger, Brenda Jean Grell, Michelle Higa, Naomi Kaly, Inmi Lee, Robin Mandel, Hye Yeon Nam, and Filip Olszewski. Single-channel video pieces will be featured in both locations by artists Luke Fischbeck, Edrex Fontanilla, Robert Kieronski, Roger Mayer, Dennis Miller, Ben Russell, Arvid Tomayko-Peters and Lisa Young. Evil.1 by Tony Cokes is a selective chronology describing 20 explosions of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while Epiphany by Bill Seaman is a poetic video integrating sound and text. Boston artist Dennis Miller brings Cross Contours, an investigation of nearly identifiable icons and images, from which numerous associations among them develop.

Two gallery performance evenings, September 29 at 8pm and October 8 at 10pm, at the Pixilerations Gallery, 151 Westminster Street will feature Envyloop’s bleak Texas thing, a collaboration between Butch Rovan, co-director of Brown’s Multimedia & Experimental Music Experiments (MEME) program, and renowned Berlin-based cellist, Ulrich Maiss; Laura Colella and Alec Redfearn’s video and live music performance; Rovan’s Collide, a gestural glove controller with video; and Jamie Jewett’s video/dance performance Snowblind. Performance programs also include works by Damon Baker, Mark Domino, Shawn Greenlee, Lori Hepner, Kevin Patton, Arvid Tomayko-Peters and Matthew Warne.

A listening environment for audio pieces has been created at the Pixilerations Gallery for audiences to experience radiophonic and acousmatic works by Jenny Arsonow, Damon Baker, Leah Beeferman, Jessy Casey, Luke Fischbeck, Brian Knoth, Christopher Smith, Bridget Stokes, Helen Thorington and Lisa Young.

Additionally, works from the Cave are being shown October 8 & 9, 11am-5pm. This exhibiton is located in Brown University’s virtual reality “Cave” at the Center for Computation and Visualization, 180 George St. The Cave is an 8-foot cube powered by a high performance parallel computer with high resolution stereo graphics projected to create an immersive virtual reality. Free admission. Advance reservations must be made by calling the David Winton Bell Gallery at (401) 863-2932.

Pixilerations v.2 is located in downcity Providence within a two-block area. The Space at Alice will feature video and installation works while the Pixilerations Gallery, a transformed 3,000 square foot raw space, will host performances, installations, sound and video works. Interactive performances are slated for Thursday, September 29, 8pm and Saturday, October 8, 10pm.

Posted by jo at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2005

Biotech Art Conference + Workshop

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BIOART AND PUBLIC SPHERE

Conference: Monday October 17; Biotech Art Workshop conducted by SymbioticA: October 10-14--This initiative aims to bring together artists, biologists, and science studies scholars, to address a broad range of questions about science in the public sphere. The list of possible research domains to be investigated includes, but is not limited to, genomics, tissue engineering, genetic engineering and stem cell research.

1. What types of models of interdisciplinary engagement might facilitate rich, well-informed public participation in scientific discourse? 2. How do we go beyond the "demo" model often used by science museums and approach the subject matter in an experiential hands-on way that allows for failure, redirection of research questions and the promotion of agency towards an area that is usually reserved for the expert community?

3. What types of epistemological questions emerge at the intersection of biology, art, and the public sphere? How would an exchange mutually benefit the research areas of each discipline? Under which umbrella could research collaborations of this kind be supported?

We are specifically interested in the relationship of these research areas to the social landscape of the pharmaceutical industry, the agricultural industry, global trade and corporate license agreements, the framing of biosecurity and biodefense, constructions of disease, and the global politics of the reproductive health industry.

Posted by jo at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of UC Berkeley's Center for New Media Presents:

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Ephemeral Gumboots: Dancing the Rhythm of Change

Ephemeral Gumboots: Dancing the Rhythm of Change by Cobi van Tonder, Artist and Musician, Johannesburg; *Wed*, 28 Sept, 7:30-9pm: UC Berkeley, 160 Kroeber Hall. All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.

The history of Gumboot dance illustrates the potential of culture for transforming social aggression. Cobi will present Ephemeral Gumboots, a hybrid media artwork/musical instrument that takes South African Gumboot dance and extends it as an interface into an electronic music-making system. How does the music of Ephemeral Gumboots reflect the media age in South Africa? How has the artist or facilitator, responded (or succumbed) to the politics and hegemony of technology?

For Deleuze and Guattari, music "both simulates space and creates it literally, on the dance floor, in headphones, on the Internet" (Andrew Murphy, 2000). The refrains of dance music provide territories for the body and mind to move and travel. Cobi will reflect on the contemporary impact of technology and her personal experience of it as she presents her project from a socio and political perspective. She will also invite composers and dancers to use her system for further creative exploration.

Cobi van Tonder, aka OTOPLASMA, is a South African composer, producer and performer who specialises in interactive electronic music and other digital media. She has worked with various dance choreographers, video artists and actors. She also produces commercially for cinema, television, radio and mobile media. Cobi van Tonder holds a degree in Music in History and Society ( University Of The Witwatersrand ) ; a National Diploma in Light Music (Technikon Pretoria) and a National Certificate in Musical Theatre (Technikon Pretoria). She was born in Pretoria and grew up in a small town in the North Western countryside of South Africa. During 2005, she is ZERO ONE/IDEO artist-in-residence in the Bay Area.

For more information see >>

ATC Primary Sponsors: UC Berkeley Center for New Media (CNM) and Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) .

Additional ATC Sponsors: Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, College of Engineering Interdisciplinary Studies Program, Consortium for the Arts, BAM/PFA, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

ATC Director: Ken Goldberg
ATC Associate Director: Greg Niemeyer
ATC Assistant: Irene Chien
Curated with ATC Advisory Board

For updated information, please see >>

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

URBAN SCREENS:

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FIRST MONDAY SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS

The Institute of Network Cultures and First Monday are happy to announce our first collaborative project: a special URBAN SCREENS issue of First Monday, scheduled for publication in early 2006. Papers from, or thematically related to, the conference are to be published in a special First Monday issue. Mirjam Struppek, Berlin, Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer and Pieter Boeder of the Institute of Network Cultures will work with Edward Valauskas, Chief Editor of First Monday, as special editors for this issue.

As a contributor to/participant of Urban Screens, you are invited to submit your text - or a draft/synopsis thereof - for review to Pieter Boeder of the INC, pieterboeder[at]yahoo.com, who will be happy to give you advice and editorial assistance if needed. line for submission is Friday, 14 October 2005. After that, contributors will still have 60 days to put their papers in order. See guidelines.

URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of art, architecture, urban studies and digital media. The focus is on understanding how the growing infrastructure of large digital displays influences the visual sphere of our public spaces. How can the commercial use of these screens be broadened and culturally curated? How can urban screens contribute to a lively urban society, and involve the audience interactively? Urban Screens 2005, 23 / 24 September 2005, TPG Building / Stedelijk Museum CS, 11th floor, Amsterdam.

FIRST MONDAY is one of the first openly accessible, peer reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, First Monday has published 631 papers in 111 issues; these papers were written by 748 different authors. First Monday is indexed in Communication Abstracts, Computer & Communications Security Abstracts, INSPEC, ISI‚s Web of Knowledge, LISA, PAIS, eGranary Digital Library, and other services. In the year 2004, users from 835,768 distinct hosts around the world downloaded 6,728,893 contributions published in First Monday. In August 2005, users from 89,498 distinct hosts around the world downloaded 485,746 contributions.

http://www.firstmonday.org/

Contact: Pieter Boeder
Institute of Network Cultures
HvA Interactive Media
Weesperzijde 190, NL-1097 DZ Amsterdam
t: +31 640 15 09 00
f: +31 (0)20 5951840
pieterboeder[at]yahoo.com

Posted by jo at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

StoryRooms: Interactive Networks, Media Art and Installations

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Unexpected Stories

The technical nature of the art works becomes invisible and instead they challenge the audience to take part in interactive scenarios, unexpected stories and impromptu visual dialogues. The projects examine our life in media culture and a digitised society: by linking the physical installation to the digital space and vice versa – within extraordinary models of art and networking that encourage the viewers’ very own creative input.

StoryRooms is curated by Andrea Zapp; born in Germany, and currently based in Manchester as a Senior Lecturer, media artist and theorist at Manchester Metropolitan University. Next to her art installation projects she has published several books, including publications with The British Film Institute, The German ZKM Centre for Art and Media and most recently with FACT/MMU - on media art, interactivity and networking.

Susan Collins, UK
Paul DeMarinis, USA
Ken Goldberg, USA
Paul Sermon, UK
Cornelia Sollfrank, Germany
Tan Teck Weng, Malaysia/Australia
Andrea Zapp, Germany/UK (installation soundtrack by Vini Reilly, UK)

When: October 11, 2005 - January 15, 2006; Where: Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. You are kindly invited to the opening reception on Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 6 - 9 pm with an interactive audience performance by ELECTROBOUTIQUE (Alexei Shulgin & Aristarkh Chernyshev, Moscow). The event is taking place in the unique and historical setting of the grade one listed 1830 Warehouse at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, UK.

For more information and contact please visit www.storyrooms.net or www.msim.org.uk

Funded by the Arts Council England/North West and supported by The Museum of Science and Industry, The Arts and Humanities Research Council, Manchester Metropolitan University, The Goethe Institute Manchester, Arts Western Australia and Western Australian Government.

Museum of Science and Industry
1830 Warehouse, Castlefield,
Liverpool Road, Manchester
10.00 am - 5.00 pm every day
admission free

Posted by jo at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2005

PLAN Exhibition @ Futuresonic 06

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Call for Proposals

The final exhibition and conference of PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network will take place in Manchester during July 2006 as a part of the Futuresonic 2006 festival. PLAN is currently developing the scope and format of the exhibition, and the PLAN Technology Workshop in October will feed into this planning.

Advance Expressions of Interest: If you have a proposal for a new project that you would like to develop with PLAN to be included in the exhibition then please send an initial outline to us immediately, to arrive no later than Friday 7th October.

Open Call: If you have an existing project, or a project that will be completed before July 2006 without support from PLAN, the submission deadline is Friday 16th December.

About PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network: The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) is an international and interdisciplinary research network funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture and Creativity programme. The network aims to bring together practising artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects.

Aims of the PLAN Exhibition: The PLAN Exhibition will showcase new concepts in pervasive and locative media, with a focus on large scale public experiences that communicate the possibilities and research challenges to a broad audience. The exhibition will form part of an art festival, but is anticipated to include social, political and scientific projects as well as projects where the aims are primarily aesthetic or about audience participation. Further details on the scope and focus of the exhibition will be available after the PLAN Technology Workshop during October.

How to Submit Expressions of Interest: Initial expressions of interest and proposals are invited for the PLAN exhibition that will take place in Manchester during July 2006 as a part of the Futuresonic 2006 festival.

Please send your proposal _by email_ to Hazel[at]cs.nott.ac.uk.

Supporting materials and a hard copy of the submission should also be
sent by post to:
Dr Hazel Glover
Equator Research Project Manager
School of Computer Science & IT
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road
Nottingham NG8 1BB
Tel: 0115 846 6780 Fax: 0115 846 6416

Advance Expressions of Interest: If you have a proposal for a new project that you would like to develop with PLAN to be included in the exhibition then please send an initial outline to us immediately, to arrive no later than Friday 7th October.

Open Call: If you have an existing project, or a project that will be completed before July 2006 without support from PLAN, the submission deadline is Friday 16th December.

PLAN EXHIBITION SUBMISSION FORM

About You

Your Name:
Address:
Telephone:
Mobile:
Email:
Website:
Short Biography or CV (150 Words):

About Your Project

Name of Project:
Brief Description of your Project (200 Words)

New or Existing Project

Is your project:
A An existing project
B A new project

If your project is new, please do you need support from PLAN to produce
the work?
A Yes
B No

Production Plan

Please provide a brief outline of how you plan to produce your new project. Please answer the following questions: How are you planning to do it? Who are the people involved and what will their responsibilities be? What is your production timeline?

Budget

Submit a short budget showing the costs associated with making your project. If you have funding sources for your project, please indicate this in your budget, stating if applied for or confirmed.

Examples of work

We would like to see examples of your past work. If you want to post examples of your work, please send them to:

Dr Hazel Glover
Equator Research Project Manager
School of Computer Science & IT
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road
Nottingham

Posted by jo at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)

i m P A C T 05:

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Tracing Translation

i m P A C T 05 - Tracing Translation is an interactive symposium in three episodes over three days, From October 30 to November 2, 2005, at PACT Zollverein, Choreographic Centre NRW, Essen, Germany. i m P A C T 05 will be led by four artists who each renegotiate through their work the scope and perimeters of the performing and visual arts. Taking decidedly individual approaches, Xavier le Roy (FR/D), Antoni Muntadas (ES/US) and Miranda Pennell/John Smith (GB) not only address subtle shifts in the relationship between public and private spheres but are also concerned with investigating artistic translation strategies between the fields of documentary and fiction.

The symposium opens on Sunday evening with a performance of Product of circumstances by Xavier Le Roy and a film programme of works by Antoni Muntadas, Miranda Pennell and John Smith. Thereafter, lectures, live and multimedia presentations as well as group discussions and actions held in spaces both in and around PACT Zollverein combine to generate a conducive atmosphere for experimenting and reflecting.

The working language is English.

i m P A C T 05 is aimed at artists/theoreticians, journalists and advanced students of theatre, dance and media arts.

i m P A C T 05 also offers participants an opportunity to present and discuss examples of their own work.

With the support of the Kunststiftung NRW, there are seven scholarships available for i m P A C T 0 5 covering the symposium fee and hotel costs.

Applicants should submit a CV, letter of motivation, and, where applicable, a summary of a current project they would like to present during the symposium. The closing date for applications is 15 October 2005

Fee: 100,- EUR0, which includes: The 3-day symposium, 1 performance and 6 meals.

Further information, programme details and application forms under:
http://www.pact-zollverein.de A printed leaflet/poster will be available from mid September.

PACT Zollverein
i m P A C T 05
Ulrike Boecking,
Bullmannaue 20
D-45327 Essen
Fon: +49 (0)201 289 47 26
Fax: +49 (0)201 289 47 01
ulrike.boecking[at]pact-zollverein.de

Posted by jo at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2005

ROBODOCK 2005 ON NDSM-WHARF

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AquaDock

The 8th edition of the Robodock Festival 21 - 24 September 2005 will take place on the NDSM-wharf in Amsterdam-Noord this year. Robodock is a unique international summer festival, that merges technology and art. Spectacular theatre acts, multi-media, visual arts, music, industrial installations, robots and experiments sweep the audience off their feet in an overwhelming flood of experiences. This year water will be the linking element, hence the subtitle AquaDock.

The programme of Robodock is surprising and new. It presents both acts and installations that have been succesful abroad (state of the art) and projects in the field of art and technology that are still in an experimental stage. Robodock is more and more an inspiration to many participating artists who make an exclusive contribution to the festival.

The audience is presented a four-day programme that has no like in Europe. The festival is also an important platform for international artists, scientists and theatre makers. This year, these professionals join in a conference on technology and art, in collaboration with science center Nemo, for the first time.

Posted by jo at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

Workshop on Tactical Media by Sarai Media Lab

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Writing On The Surface Of The City

Workshop on Tactical Media by Sarai Media Lab: Writing On The Surface Of The City: The Tactical Media Lab will focus on the interplay of form and content through the production of broadsheets. The workshop will move towards a conceptual understanding of tactical media - broadsheets in particular. A broadsheet as envisaged by us is a light, playful form that also allows engagement with serious concerns. The content for the broadsheets produced during the course of the workshop will be developed through interaction among the participants during the concept building phase. The issue that will be explored through various text and image forms will be ''information society''.

The workshop will be useful to individuals interested in tactical media, urban studies, journalism, writing and issues of information society. If you want to participate please email namita@altlawforum.org by 25th September. Applicants will be chosen on a first come, first serve basis.

Dates : 1st and 2nd October from 9 to 6
Venue: Mahiti, Domlur (Bangalore)
Free of cost , lunch included.
Only 20-25 participants.

Anyone interested in attending may contact namita[at]altlawforum.org

Posted by jo at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

Telepresence and Bio Art

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Transgressing the Interface

Telepresence and Bio Art: Transgressing the Interface, a seminar and workshop with and about EDUARDO KAC is arranged by The Aesthetics of Interface Culture: KaserneScenen, Store Sal. Institute for Aesthetic Studies, University of Aarhus, Langelandsgade 139. 6 October 2005. Workshop 7 October, 2005. PROGRAMME FOR THE SEMINAR: 9.30-9.35: Welcome and introduction; 9.35-11.00: Eduardo Kac, Chicago: "Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots":

After an introduction contextualizing his pioneering telepresence work, in progress since the mid-1980s, Kac will give examples and further discuss his current transgenic work. Eduardo Kac's art deals with issues that range from the mythopoetics of online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Genesis); from the changing condition of memory in the digital age (Time Capsule) to distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State); from the problematic notion of the "exotic" (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny).

Kac will conclude with a brief explanation of his most recent transgenic works -- "GFP Bunny", "The Eighth Day", and "Move 36". "GFP Bunny" is comprised of three elements: the birth of a rabbit that has a gene from a jellyfish (a gene that produces green fluorescent protein), the public dialogue that the project has generated, and the social integration of the rabbit in the context of the artist's family. "The Eighth Day" is a transgenic ecology that includes a biological robot, all linked interactively to the Internet. "Move 36" sheds light on the limits of the human mind and the increasing capabilities developed by computers and robots, and includes a new plant created by the artist. Following the lecture, the artist will autograph copies of his just released book, Telepresence and Bio Art -- Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots, published by The University of Michigan Press.

11.00-11.30: Coffee break
11.30-12.30: Jacob Wamberg, University of Aarhus: "Guided Evolution: Between aesthetic and teleological judgement"

Moving into telepresence and the manipulation of biological material, art seems to fulfill its oldest desire: engulfing that reality which before it could only dream about. With telepresence the viewer is transformed to an actor breaking through the representational screen, and with bio art sculptures are becoming more alive than Pygmalion’s mistress. What does this transgression of the medium mean for the concept of art? Especially the creation of organisms could reactuate Kant’s dictum of disinterestedness, as nothing seems less apt for being instrumentalized than life itself. On the other hand, legitimizing the evolution of new organisms purely on aesthetic terms seems just as irresponsible. This paper will opt for a ‘weak teleology’.

12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-14.30: Claus Emmeche, Niels Bohr Institute: "Attractive mysteries of the organism?"

What are the relations between true monsters and biological organisms? The question comes to mind when facing not only creatures created by biotech industries for the purpose of utility, but also seeing recent artistic uses of "real" organisms. Here, utility, aesthetics, and technoscience meet in a new form of monsters, raising questions of the ontology of other forms of hybrids than known from classical natural history. I will comment upon some of the open problems in the creation of artificial life and hybrids from the perspective of philosophy of biology and biosemiotics, the study of life processes as sign processes.

14.30-14.45: Coffee break
14.45-15.30: Discussion and concluding remarks

WORKSHOP:

Kac' work sparks discussions on the relations between semiotics, art, technology and life, which will be the subject of the open seminar described above. In addition to the public seminar interested researchers, Ph.D. students and art professionals will have the possibility to participate in a more intimate closed workshop 7 October with a limited number of participants. To participate a short (1-2 pages) position paper in English is required, where you present yourself, your research and how it relates to (elements of) Kac' work – see http://www.ekac.org/. Send paper to pold@multimedia.au.dk with the subject "Kac workshop" in MS Word format. Deadline: 19 september. Only a limited number of participants will be admitted, notification of acceptance necessary to enter.

The workshop will take place 7 October from 10-14 at Turing 130 in the IT-Park, Aabogade 34.

Posted by jo at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)

NODE.L

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[Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London]

Artists and artist groups are invited to register interest in producing a project within NODE.London. We hope to attract projects from a geographically dispersed and diverse range of practitioners who can play an active and dynamic role in the season in March 06.

NODE.L: [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] is an open, participatory season that aims to support and stimulate Media Arts in London during March 2006. From collaborative mapping projects on the street, to community radio and free wireless networks in the air, people across London are finding new and creative ways to produce, display and distribute art and media, and exciting new ways to work, connect and communicate. NODE.L is a showcase for work that in production and/or exhibition, performance and processes, employs electronic or digital technologies (whether audiovisual, computerised, or telematic).

While NODE.L will be International in terms of participation, we are really serious about the 'London' bit. NODE.L will be city-wide, seeking out every borough, bridge, and public walkway; towering views, glass and steel, crumbling brick, winding alleys and waterways ...help us locate media art in London, and put yourself on that map too.

For updates and announcements, join the node london announce list at:
http://lists.nodel.org

Posted by jo at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

In The Weather

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Self-Guided Walking Tours

A map of a walk records the memory of a singular experience. The map provides a route; when directions given by another are followed, the route becomes a path. Walking becomes an exploration of the city at once private and shared.Melinda Fries and Bonnie Fortune share an interest in exploratory walking and have collaborated as In The Weather since 2004. This year they published In the Weather self-guided walks/Chicago, which includes walking directions by 16 Chicagoans. The booklet is dispensed freely at 10 locations throughout Chicago.

In The Weather--included in in the current exhibition URBAN / RURAL / WILD--is seeking submissions to be included in an online database, intheweather.org, from which users may download Walking Directions. Walking Directions can be from/to any place and the walk can be of any length. Walking Directions can be given in writing, drawings, photographs, or other forms; maps are encouraged. To submit a set of Directions or to ask questions, please send email to: submit[at]intheweather.org. [via eyebeam reblog]

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

Five Streams

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Anarkali, Bhagavad-Gita, and Who Knoweth Himself

In a piece stunning to both the eyes and ears, this work-in-progress by Ibrahim Quraishi reinterprets ancient texts to examine Islam in the five nations of South Asia-India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Five Streams is a theater performance that integrates live and pre-recorded voice, dance, 3-D animation, and interactive sound installations to illuminate the three foundational texts in the cultures of the region: Anarkali, a tragic court romance of Mughal India; the Bhagavad-Gita, the deeply philosophical climax of the Indian epic Mahabharata; and Who Knoweth Himself, a mystical treatise by the Sufi philosopher Ibn al-Arabi. Paul Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky and choreographer Parul Shah are among a large group of collaborating artists, many of whom will participate in a 2-week residency at MASS MoCA. Presented in collaboration with The Asia Society. [via eyebeam reblog]

Posted by jo at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

Setpixel

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Blog Zine

Setpixel is a collection of articles written by a small group of like-minded individuals. The general focus of the articles contained in the site are on interactive installations, aesthetics through computation, reactive experiments, creative computer vision, et cetera.

The direction of the collection of writings will be affected by the independent opinions and directions of the selected artists. These authors were carefully selected because of their works, thoughts, and outlook on the topics above. If you would like to contribute and feel like you have something to contribute to the viewers, please email us.

Current Authors:

Charles Forman, Media Artist. Seoul, Korea.
Chris O'Shea, Digital Artist. Plymouth, UK.
Chris Sugrue, Artist, Designer, Programmer. New York, USA.
Christian Giordano, Interactive Designer/Developer. Milan, Italy / London, UK.
Cristobal Mendoza, Media Artist. Philadelphia, US.
Glen Murphy, Programmer Designer Artist. Melbourne, Australia.
Josh Nimoy, Undefined. Brooklyn, US.
Ubi De Feo, Creative Developer. Amsterdam, Nederlands.

This site's contents are simply: articles and authors with a category system. The articles are associated with multiple categories that apply to that article. Furthermore, there is a 1-5 rating given to each association to that article. For example, if you read an article and want more information, simply click a category and see all similar articles. If you would like to see a particular category added, or see a mistake, please email us!

Current Categories:

Audio
Business
Cameras
Computer Vision
Creative Process
Culture
Demo
Electronics
Event
Fabrication
Installations
Interaction Theory
Interview
MAX/MSP
Physical Concept
Processing
Projection
Psychology/Behavior
Review
Sensors

On every page, comments can be left for other people to read. Please feel free to leave a comment! The authors and other viewers are interested to hear what you have to say.

Tentatively, every 6 months to 1 year, a printed publication will be released containing selected articles. This will be available also as a PDF document. Depending on the interest, a DVD may also be produced with video works from the articles.

It should also be noted that all contents on this site are copyright Setpixel and thier respective authors.

The current article listings are available as news feeds:
ATOM, RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0.

Contact:

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Charles Forman
contact AT setpixel.com

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

September 20, 2005

Performance Research

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Magazine Seeks Proposals

Performance Research Issue 11.2 (June 2006) Indexes; Issue Editor: Ric Allsopp.

In the spring of 2006 Performance Research will begin its second decade of publication, and we are devoting the four-issues of Volume 11 to an exploration of the terms under which performance is debated, discussed, conducted, written about and constructed, in the form of lexicons and dictionaries, encyclopedias and key words. Volume 11, No.2 (June 2006) is an an issue on the nature of the index as a form. The issue will explore the use of indexes as a means of recording and generating through alphabetic, numerical, or color schemas ; restriction or censorship of particular readings or performances; measurement, linking, adjustment, tracking and navigation; or their use as something visible, evident or revelatory that gives grounds for believing in the existence or presence of something else; as an operation to be performed, an ordering relation; as repertoire or register, rubric or catalogue. In particular the issue will explore what indexes can tell us about the textual and performance forms that they relate to. We invite artists and writers to consider these in relation to the histories, philosophies and pragmatics of performance, art making and performance writing.

Deadlines for issue 11:1 are as follows:
Proposals: 17th October 2005
Finalised material: 31st December 2005
Publication Date: June 2006

ALL proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to:

Linden Elmhirst - Administrative Assistant
Performance Research
Dartington College of Arts, Totnes,
Devon TQ9 7RD UK
tel. 0044 1803 861683
fax. 0044 1803 861685
email: performance-research@dartington.ac.uk
web: http://www.performance-research.net

Content specific enquires should be directed to Ric Allsopp at: transomatic[at]orange.net, r.allsopp[at]dartington.ac.uk

Enquiries about the volume as a whole should be directed to: Ric Allsopp transomatic[at]orange.net OR Claire MacDonald clairemacdonald1[at]mac.com

Guidelines for Submissions

Performance Research is MAC based. Proposals will be accepted in hard copy, on CD or by e-mail (Apple Works, MS-Word or RTF). Please DO NOT send images without prior agreement. Please note that submission of a proposal will be taken to imply that it presents original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) agree that the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the article have been given to Performance Research

Linden Elmhirst
Administrator
Performance Research
Dartington College of Arts
Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EJ UK
Tel : +44 (0)1803 861683
Fax : +44 (0)1803 861685
e-mail : performance-research@dartington.ac.uk
http://www.performance-research.net

Posted by jo at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)

IASPIS Symposium

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Taking the Matter into Common Hands

IASPIS Symposium in two episodes with presentations, screenings, discussions and workshop; 23 - 25 September and 30 September - 2 October.

In recent years, a renewed interest in collective work and activity can be discerned more and more clearly. Collaborations of various sorts have begun to appear as alternatives to the predominant focus on the individual so often found in the art world. In a variety of projects, the form and basis of collective activities have been presented, examined, and called into question. Taking the Matter into Common Hands is a symposium in two parts which, against the background of this development, seeks to map these activities and to discuss the working relations and conditions of artists and other producers of culture. It also aims at exploring the future prospects for the kind of collective action in the art world that is geared towards long-term research and production of knowledge.

Participants 23 - 25 September:

Johanna Billing (artist, Stockholm), Alex Foti (activist fighting against precarity, Milan), IKK (organization working with issues concerning economic and social conditions for artists, curators and other professionals in the art field), Maria Lind (director IASPIS), Lars Nilsson (artist and writer, Gothenburg), Marion von Osten (artist and theorist, Berlin), Simon Sheikh (critic, curator and writer, Copenhagen, Berlin, Malmö), Katharina Schlieben (curator at Shedhalle, Zurich), Apolonija Sustersic (architect and visual artist, Stockholm), Tirdad Zolghadr (film-maker, critic and curator, Teheran/Zurich ) and Å.b.ä.k.e. (graphic design collective, London).

Participants 30 September - 2 October:

B+B (curatorial partnership, London), 16 Beaver Group (network of artists, curators, writers, thinkers and activists, New York), Copenhagen Free University (self-organised institution dedicated to the production of critical consciousness and poetic language), Brian Holmes (art and culture critic, Paris), Marysia Lewandowska (artist, London), Schleuser.net (lobby organization and art project), School of Missing Studies (international network for experimental study of cities), Judith Schwarzbart (curator and researcher, Edinburgh), Sharzhad (accomplish things others cannot), Anton Vidokle (artist and founding director of e-flux, New York), What, How & for Whom / WHW (independent curatorial collective, Zagreb).

Location: In the IASPIS Project Studio, where there is an installation by Michael Beutler (artist, Berlin), as well as the Archive on Collaborative Practices, an archive that documents different forms of collaboration in and around the art world.

Taking the Matter into Common Hands is put together by Johanna Billing, Maria Lind and Lars Nilsson.

For further information and reservation:
http://www.iaspis.com/commonhands
extra[at]iaspis.com

IASPIS
Box 1610, SE-111 86 Stockholm
Tel: +46 (0)8 402 35 77 / Fax: +46 (0)8 402 35 92

Posted by jo at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

LIVE STREAMING Refresh!

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Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology

"Recognizing the increasing significance of media art for our culture, this Conference on the Histories of Media Art will discuss for the first time the history of media art within the interdisciplinary and intercultural contexts of the histories of art. Banff New Media Institute, the Database for Virtual Art and Leonardo/ISAST are collaborating to produce the first international art history conference covering art and new media, art and technology, art-science interaction, and the history of media as pertinent to contemporary art."

Viewing: Since we have only a few places left to attend the conference in Banff we are web streaming live all keynotes, sessions and discussions from the site. Viewing the sessions in groups at Universities, Libraries, and Art Centers is encouraged, in order to facilitate local dialogue. Web streaming is available in Quick time and Windows Media. For optimal viewing on larger screens and for in-screen viewing of power point presentations, prior download of Windows Media is recommended.

Venue: September 29 - October 1, Banff New Media Institute, Canada CONFERENCE PROGRAM with streaming times.

Program:

29. September 05

GMT 15:30 h/CANADA 8:30 am: keynote Edmond Couchot: Towards the Autonomous Image.

16:30h/9:30 am - opening plenary - MediaArtHistories: Times & Landscapes 1 (Chairs: Oliver Grau and Gunalan Nadarajan)--After photography, film, video, and the little known media art history of the 1960s-80s, today media artists are active in a wide range of digital areas (including interactive, genetic, telematic and nanoart). Media Art History offers a basis for attempting an evolutionary history of the audiovisual media, from the Laterna Magica to the Panorama, Phantasmagoria, Film, and the Virtual Art of recent decades. This panel tries to clarify, if and how varieties of Media Art have been splitting up during the last decades. It examines also how far back Media Art reaches as a historical category within the history of Art, Science and Technology. This session will offer a first overview about the visible influence of media art on all fields of art. Speakers: Gunalan Nadarajan, Luise Poissant, Oliver Grau, Mario Carpo.

17:30h/11:30 am - plenary Methodologies, (Chair: Mark Hansen and Erkki Huhtamo)--Critical overview of which methods art history has been using during the past to approach media art. Speakers: Mark Hansen, Erkki Huhtamo, Irina Aristarkhova, Andreas Broeckmann.

21:10h/2:10 pm - plenary - Image Science and Representation: From a Cognitive Point of View (Chair: Barbara Stafford)--Although much recent scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences has been "body-minded" this research has yet to grapple with a major problem familiar to contemporary cognitive scientists and neuro scientists. How do we reconcile a top-down, functional view of cognition with a view of human beings as elements of a culturally shaped biological world? Historical as well as elusive electronic media from the vantage of an embodied and distributed brain. Speakers: Barbara Stafford, Kristin Veel, Christine Ross, Phillip Thurtle & Claudia X. Valdes, Christopher Salter, Tim Clark

12:25 h/4:25 pm - concurrent session 1 - Art as Research/Artists as Inventors (Chair: Dieter Daniels)--Do "innovations" and "inventions" in the field of art differ from those in the field of technology and science? Have artists contributed anything "new" to those fields of research? Speakers: Dieter Daniels, Chris Meigh-Andrews, Fred Turner, Simon Penny, Cornelius Borck.

Concurrent session 2 - MediaArtHistories: Times and Landscapes 2 (Chairs: Edward Shanken and Charlie Gere)--Although there has been important scholarship on intersections between art and technology, there is no comprehensive technological history of art (as there are feminist and Marxist histories of art, for example.) Canonical histories of art fail to sufficiently address the inter-relatedness of developments in science, technology, and art. Speakers: Edward Shanken, Charlie Gere, Grant Taylor, Darko Fritz & Margit Rosen, Sylvie Lacerte, Anne Collins Goodyear, Caroline Langill, Maria Fernandez

30. September 05

GMT 15:45 h/8:45 am - plenary Collecting, Preserving and Archiving the Media Arts (Chair: Jean Gagnon)--Collections grow because of different influences such as art dealers, the art market, curators and currents in the international contemporary art scene. What are the conditions necessary for a wider consideration of media art works and of new media in these collections? Speakers: Jean Gagnon, Christiane Paul, Peter Weibel, Jon Ippolito.

18:00 h/11:00 am - concurrent session 1 - Database/New Scientific Tools (Chairs: Rudolf Frieling and Oliver Grau)--Accessing and browsing the immense amount of data produced by individuals, institutions, and archives has become a key question to our information society. In which way can new scientific tools of structuring and visualizing data provide new contexts and enhance our understanding of semantics? Speakers: Oliver Grau, Rudolf Frieling, Sandra Fauconnier, Christian Berndt, Alain Depocas, Anne-Marie Duguet.

Concurrent session 2 - Pop/Mass/Society (Chairs: Machiko Kusahara and Andreas Lange)--The dividing lines between art products and consumer products have been disappearing more and more since the Pop Art of the 1960s. The distinction between artist and recipient has also become blurred. Most recently, the digitalization of our society has sped up this process enormously. In principle, more and more artworks are no longer bound to a specific place and can be further developed relatively freely. The panel examines concrete forms, e.g. computer games, determining the cultural context and what consequences they could have for the understanding of art in the 21st century. Speakers: Machiko Kusahara, Andreas Lange, Karen Keifer-Boyd, Tobey Crockett, Mark Tribe.

3:00 h /8:00 pm, Rudolf Arnheim Lecture: Sarat Maharaj: Xeno-Epistemics: Global Migrations and other Ways’ of Knowing.

1. October 05

GMT 15:30 pm/Canada 8:30 am - plenary - Cross-Culture - Global Art (Chair: Sara Diamond)--This panel provides an opportunity to put a special focus on cross-cultural influences, the global and the local. For example, how what are the impacts of narrative structures from Aboriginal and other oral cultures on the analysis and practice of new media? How do notions of identity shift across cultures historically, how are these embedded and transformed by new media practice? How does globalization and the construction of global contexts such as festivals and biennials effect local new media practices? Speakers: Sara Diamond, Sheila Petty, Mary Leigh Morbey, Thomas Riccio, Aparna Sharma, Laura Marks.

17:45 h/10:45 am - concurrent session 1; Cross Diciplinary Research Methods (Chairs: Ron Burnett and Frieder Nake)--The pressure to become interdisciplinary is very intense — coming from a variety of disciplines and institutions. Ironically, this pressure has been around for a very long time. So, why don’t we just strive for excellence irrespective of discipline? Don't the artistic practices within the field of New Media push us in that direction anyway? Speakers: Frieder Nake, Ron Burnett, Dot Tuer, Guy Sui Durand, Michael Century, David Tomas, Will Straw

Concurrent session 2 - Rejuvenate: Film, Sound and Music in Media Arts History (Chairs: Douglas Kahn and Sean Cubitt)--During an earlier period of new media arts discourse, time-based media were often considered to be “old media." While this conceit has been tempered, we still need to consider the sophistication and provocation of film, sound and music from the perspective of media arts history. Speakers: Douglas Kahn, Sean Cubitt, Keith Sanborn, Scott Bukatman.

20:45 h/1:45 pm; keynote Lucia Santaella: The Semiosis of Media Art, Science and Technology.

21:45 h/2:45 pm - Concurrent session 1 - Collaborative Practice/Networking History (Chairs: Ryszard Kluszczynski and Diana Domingues)--In a network people are working together, they share resources and knowledge with each other - and they compete with each other. This process has sped up enormously within a few decades and has reached a new quality/dimension. The dataflow created new economies and new forms of human communication. Speakers: Ryszard Kluszczynski, Diana Domingues, Nina Czegledy, Todd Davis, Douglas Jarvis, Jeremy Turner, Margaret Dolinsky.

Concurrent session 2 - What Can the History of New Media Learn from History of Science/Science Studies? (Chair: Linda Henderson)--Science and technology have been an important part of the cultural field in the 20th century, and the history of science and science studies - along with the field of literature and science - offer important lessons for art historians writing the history of new media art. Speakers: Timothy Lenoir, Linda Henderson, Timothy Druckrey, Simon Werrett, Yann Chateigné.

12:00 am/5:00 pm - Concurrent session 1 - High Art/Low Culture - the Future of Media Art Sciences? (Chair: Karin Bruns)--The panel aims to bring together the methodological fields of media studies and media art history. Rather than limiting their focus to canonical works of art new studies in media art production blend methods and issues from art history and media sciences as well as from communication studies, sociology, techno sciences, art history, cultural and postcolonial studies. Speakers: Karin Bruns, Yara Guasque, Andy Polaine, Claus Pias, Barbara Paul.

Concurrent session 2 - History of Institutions (Chairs: Itsuo Sakane and Jasia Reichardt)--There are inevitable parallels between the development of what we now call media art and life at large. Excess of information leads to insecurity — what to believe, what to select, what to keep and what to discard. Sustainability, conservation, education and access are topics relevant to today's media art, and as relevant to it as to our natural resources. Now that media art has a history, how do we keep track of it and preserve it? Speakers: Itsuo Sakane, Jasia Reichardt, Michael Naimark, Peter Richards, Johannes Göbel, Andreas Broeckmann (Discussant).

Posted by jo at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

Troika Ranch

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Live-I Workshop

New York City based dance theatre company Troika Ranch returns to FACT to present its live Interactive (Live-I) workshop, an intensive seminar for artists and advanced students who want to explore the use of interactive computer technology in the creation and performance of dance, theatre, and related live artworks.

Led by composer/programmer Mark Coniglio and choreographer Dawn Stoppiello, Artistic Co-Directors of Troika Ranch, the workshop gives the participants the opportunity to experiment with technological tools that allow their gestures and vocalizations to interactively control video, sound, light and other computer controllable media.

The three day workshop at FACT will serve as an intensive introduction to the software and hardware, with special emphasis on Isadora®, the real-time media manipulation software created by Coniglio. This work will be complemented by critical discussions regarding how the use of media and technology shapes the form and content of the artwork.

FACT, Liverpool; 31 October - 2 November 20053 days, 10.30 - 5pm, cost £105 + VAT.

Posted by jo at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Trampoline

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Final Call for Submissions

Trampoline is dedicated to the promotion of new technology art and artists and aims to present cutting edge art in an informal atmosphere; encouraging new artists to exhibit work to a real audience, whilst providing a platform for established artists working in new directions. Trampoline began life in 1997 as Nottingham's first ever platform event for new media art.

This one day/night event is based in Broadway Media Centre, the creative hub of Nottingham. The facilities/spaces which Broadway has to offer include: large lively bar/café space, a smaller bar space, foyer, cinema screens and projection onto the outside of the building.

In the two forthcoming events we hope to expand the reach of Trampoline, no longer restricting it to one venue but encouraging participating artists to explore the potential of public spaces around Nottingham too.

October Trampoline – in conjunction with PLAN. This Trampoline event will focus on locative and pervasive media. There will be an examination of how new media is entering the fabric of our everyday lives, installing itself into to every part of our environment, the new dimension of our reality, the dimension of data. Site will also be a particular concern, in order to investigate notions of locative and pervasive media more fully we would encourage artists not only to consider the space of Broadway cinema as the site for their proposed work but to also examine spaces beyond this, in particular public spaces around Nottingham. Extended Deadline for Submissions: September 23rd

1st December Trampoline – Opening event for Radiator Festival December’s Trampoline event will reflect the core concern of the Radiator Festival this year, the relationship between performance and new technology. How can the body and new media connect with each other? We are calling for work that not only investigates the relationship between the performer’s body and new technology but also the body of the viewer, the audience. Deadline for Submissions: November 7th

We encourage proposals of work in all formats, as long as they reflect upon elements of new media. Video, installation, performance, web art, computer programmes, music and more are all welcome. We would also like to encourage initiatives which give the Trampoline audience an insight into the workings of new media and an opportunity to develop their own small creative works, for example in the format of workshops/group activities.

If you have any queries please contact Emma Lewis, Trampoline Coordinator emma[at]trampoline.org.uk +44 (0)115 9559956

Download an application form, and send submission material to: Trampoline Submissions Broadway Cinema 14 - 18 Broad Street Nottingham NG1 3AL UK (include stamped addressed envelope if you wish your material to be returned).

Posted by jo at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

B!AS International Sound Art Exhibition

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My Substitute Life

The B!AS International Sound Art Exhibition focuses on 'the various changing states of sound in modern environments, with lifestyles directly replaced by sound wave frequencies being the natural composite of harshness, authority, vulgarity and ambiguity.' Okaaay, let’s unpack that! Curated around the theme, 'Life Substituted: Sound Wave Frequency,' the show's contributors use sound to isolate and intensify distinct aspects of society and our position within it. For example, Maywa Denki's 'Switched On Kappa 2005' is a live performance that the artist calls a 'product demonstration,' involving fish-motif nonsense machines, original musical instruments, and flower-motif objets d'art. Christina Kubisch's 'Bird Tree' brings nature and technology together in an interactive installation that allows the visitor to receive and mix sounds via a wireless headset. Incorporating emerging and established artists, the show offers new media approaches to art-making that should stimulate new questions: How does the privileging of sound create fresh discourse around traditional visual art? Does this project complexify or dumb down notions of identity, place, and dialogism? Is bricolage the new aesthetic? Opening on 24 September and running through 20 November, it’s definitely worth a look. Or a listen. - Peggy MacKinnon, Net Art News, Rhizome.

Posted by jo at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Karma Physics< Elvis

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Game Character Death

Karma Physics< Elvis, by Brody Condon, is a modification of the first person shooter computer game Unreal 2003. As the viewer camera floats through a pink afterlife, twitching multiples of Elvis are controlled by the original game's "Karma Physics" real-time physics system - generally used to simulate realistic game character death. Video.

Among Condon's work are also Waco Resurrection (blogged previously) and Suicide Solution, a DVD documentation collected over the last year of committing suicide in over 50 first and third person shooter games. Video. Some of his works will be part of Game Paused, a book, DVD, and exhibition to be held in London, Nov 3-13th. You can still submit your work. Participating artists include Roger Ibars, ////fur///, Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, etc.

Via Jonah Brucker-Cohen who's also made an interview of someone I like a lot on gizmodo. Roger is also showing works at My World, New Crafts, Experimenta Design 05, September 18th - October 30th 2005. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not]

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

September 18, 2005

Glowlab News

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GLOWLAB.04 :: FORGOTTEN and more

GLOWLAB.04 :: FORGOTTEN--Our latest issue is now online, and features some great new projects by Glowlab and guest artists, including:

:: kanarinka--12 Inches of Weather; Weather experiments on the body :: Sharilyn Neidhardt --Into the Groove; Interview with musician and audio archivist Steve Espinola :: Emily Conrad--Lost Phone: 18,900 Google Entries; Lost phone in the back of New York City taxi. Last Friday, around 1am. It must happen all the time :: Sal Randolph--whereyouare; Join in documenting the endangered, lost, or ephemeral beauties of your neighborhood. whereyouare is a participatory experiment, mixing collaborative multimedia, folksonomy tags, and rss feeds to build a portrait of places that matter to us :: Holly Tavel--Xanadu Revisited; Two years on, Xanadu gives up the ghost.

With special guests: Leah Dilworth :: Lost and Found at the City Reliquary; Tour the City Reliquary, Brooklyn's store-front museum dedicated to civic pride and all around good neighborliness; Tianna Kennedy :: On Forgotten, Neglected, and Discarded Objects and Subsequent Utopian Projects Or, the Meandering Story of EV, which recounts the amusing first sally of the ingenious crew as they dragged a thing that had been forgotten from the Bronx to the Lavender Lake; Michele Gambetta :: The Rider Project 2005; The RIDER Project has been created by artists who rent a Ryder Company truck, retrofit it with walls, gallery lights, a generator for electricity, and create a mobile gallery to display art throughout N.Y.C.; Petr Kazil :: Urban Spooklights; Who wouldn't get excited by the appearance of a mysterious light in the distance - in a place where no light is expected?

Glowlab: Open Lab, curated by Christina Ray: A nine-week-long psychogeography festival and exhibition; October 14 through December 11.

Please join us this fall as we head up to Boston for our show at Art Interactive, a non-profit arts space dedicated to contemporary, experimental and participatory artwork.

In Fall 2005, Art Interactive is conducting a nine-week-long experiment. We have invited artists affiliated with Glowlab, a network of psychogeographers, to use the Central Square neighborhood as the site of their research and fill the exhibition space with the results of their investigations. PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, a term coined by the Situationist International in the 1950s and appropriated by contemporary artists, is used to describe projects that produce affect in relation to the geographic environment. Rather than making maps in the traditional geographic sense, these artists utilize maps and geography to conduct located experiments with (among other things) people, trash, bikes, clothes, the sky and the gallery space itself. Often making use of mobile technologies and existing in the hybrid spaces of the Internet and the physical world, their projects produce new understandings of location and identity as shifting, fluid, singular and irreducible.

Central Square, Cambridge, MA, will never be the same again. Join us for nine weeks of public walks, talks, tours, workshops, concerts, group bike rides, and other ways of exploring the Central Square neighborhood. Each weekend of the festival, different Glowlab artists will be present to lead participatory public events inside and outside the Art Interactive space. Visit the online schedule at http://www.artinteractive.org/calendar for more details about upcoming events or email info[at]artinteractive.org.

Opening Reception: Friday, October 14th, 2005, 6 - 9pm

Gallery Hours & Location: Art Interactive is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 - 6pm or by appointment. The gallery is located at 130 Bishop Allen Drive, at the corner of Prospect Street in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please contact info@artinteractive.org, call 617-498-0100 or fax 617-498-0019. Press release with downloadable press kit:
http://www.artinteractive.org/shows/glowlab/glowlab_press.html

Posted by jo at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2005

The Upgrade! International

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SHOW::GATHER::SHARE

Thanks to all the artists and curators who contributed to this event. Please join us next week to meet the highly-motivated group of artists/curators who organize the gatherings in different locations around the world (soon in Toronto, Istanbul and Sofia). The gatherings are often associated with art & technology centers. By default this emerging network sustains open communication lines between these nodes. We're meeting to develop a vision as a global network to highlight the creative work done in the field.

Show: September 16-24, 2005--Documentation of works by 131 artists who participate at Upgrades! around the world. Representing: Boston, Chicago, Montreal, Munich, New York, Oklahoma City, Scotland, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Vancouver.

Gather: Friday, September 23: 7:30-9:00 pm--Sala-Manca Group performs Elephants on Metula's Nights and discusses their practice at our monthly gathering. The Sala-Manca Group is comprised of Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman, Argentine-Israeli artists who have been creating work in performance, video, installation and new media since 2000. Sala-manca's works deal with the poetics of translation, Yiddish culture, the tensions between low-tech and high-tech aesthetics, as well as social and political issues.

Share: Saturday, September 24: 12:00-7:00 pm--How does each Upgrade form its presence and community? What is the potential of the network? Join artists, curators and organizers for two panels, lecture and party.

12:00 pm: Introduction and welcome.

12:10 pm: The New York Upgrade! story with media artist Yael Kanarek and director of education at Eyebeam Liz Slagus.

12:45 pm: Artist-Run Upgrades! with Tiffany Holmes, Chicago; Tamiko Thiel, Munich; Adam Brown, Oklahoma City; Mushon Zer-Aviv and Sala-Manca Group, Tel Aviv; Kate Armstrong, Vancouver. Moderated by Yael Kanarek.

2:45-3:15 pm: Break

3:15 pm: Art + Tech Organizations Upgrades! with Jo-Anne Green and Catherine D'Ignazio, Boston; Cezanne Charles and Robb Mitchell, Scotland; Suhjung Hur, Seoul; Tobias C. Van Veen, Montreal. Moderated by Liz Slagus.

5:15 pm: "NETWORKS, AGENCY, PROPERTY and POLICY: Practical thoughts on the emergence of new global cultural formations" — closing talk by leading scholar of media arts Michael Century.

6:00 pm: After-party with music by artist/DJ Tobias C. Van Veen.

The Upgrade! is an international network of monthly meetings in the field of art and technology.

Eyebeam
540 w 21st Street between 10th & 11th Avenues
Hours: Tues–Sat, 12:00–6:00pm
Bookstore: Tues–Sat, 12:00–6:00pm
Admission: All events are free to the public unless otherwise noted
info[at]eyebeam.org

Eyebeam supports the creation, presentation and analysis of new forms of innovative cultural production. Founded in 1996, Eyebeam is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre.

Eyebeam's programs are made possible through the generous support of Atlantic Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Time Warner Youth Media and Arts Fund, Alienware, the Jerome Foundation, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the David S. Howe Foundation, the Lerer Family Charitable Foundation, the Sony Corporation, Alias Systems, Inc. and the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation.

Posted by jo at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

PLACE: Location and Belonging in New Media Contexts

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Call for Contributions

PLACE: Location and Belonging in New Media Contexts, by Danny Butt, Jon Bywater and Nova Paul (Editors): James Clifford notes that "land" (whenua, ples, country, la tribu, etc.) signifies the past in the future, a continuous, changing base of political and cultural operations - while a political theory "which sees everything as potentially realigned, cut, and mixed, has difficulty with this material nexus of community". Indigenous epistemologies have sophisticated structures for negotiating belonging among communities who may become widely dispersed from their homelands. New media, by contrast, demonstrates biases toward the dislocated: a cosmopolitanism implicitly located in the urban, where communities form and fragment in "virtual" environments.

However, questions of belonging and identification remain for those who use new media networks. Knowledge in the new media environment may circulate rapidly, but it is still located in human subjects who develop knowledge and identification within physical and social locations. The aim of this publication is to directly address silences within new media discourse on place, as well as understand how long-held attachments to place are transforming in the contemporary media context.

We currently have interest from international academic publishers in a book on these issues to be published in coordination with the Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts symposium in Auckland, December 2005. We are also interested in soliciting writing from those not attending the event, including work outside the regional focus of the symposium.

Themes that may be addressed in the publication include:

Place-based new media practices
Migration and movement
Indigeneity and colonisation
Home and belonging
New media and cultural transformation
Globalisation and cosmopolitanism
Local activism and social change

Abstracts of 500 words, along with a 200 word bio should be sent to info[at]culturalfutures.place.net.nz by October 14th 2005. We expect to notify authors by the end of November 2005, and require chapters to be completed by the end of February 2006, with the book to be published later that year. We also intend to issue a further call for images and pageworks in the future.

Please direct any enquiries to Danny Butt: danny[at]dannybutt.net

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

Grand Finale_Yellow Arrow:

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The Secret New York

Yellow Arrow: The Secret New York is a public art project that celebrates the extraordinary details of the city that often pass unnoticed. Upon encountering a Yellow Arrow, the public participates by calling 212.201.2005 from mobile phones to hear an audio message that tells a secret story about the location where the arrow points.

This Saturday marks the Grand Finale with 20 Yellow Arrow sculptures visible across Manhattan and Brooklyn from 12-8 pm, at places like: Union Square, Chinatown, The Lower East Side, East Village, Lower Manhattan, Williamsburg and DUMBO. This is is a fantastic opportunity for people to experience some of the most compelling content of the summer in one single day.

Over the summer the project has touched a lot of people in all 5 boroughs and there are some very fun stories about bringing it all together. Creators of the project will be leading two behind-the-scenes tours to share these anecdotes and insights. Tour 1_Lower Manhattan meets at Battery Park at 12 pm and will visit 5 nearby Yellow Arrows. Tour 2_East Village meets at corner of Ave. B and E. 7th St. at 6:00 pm and will visit 6 Yellow Arrows, grab dinner in the area and head to the after-party.

The day-long installation and tours will be followed by a celebration at the Lotus Lounge (35 Clinton St at Stanton), with drink specials, video projection and a sound installation on the street.

Grand Finale, Downtown Manhattan, Williamsburg and DUMBO; 12-8 pm; Full map available.

Tours:
Tour 1_Lower Manhattan 12 pm at Battery Park
Tour 2_East Village 6 pm at corner of Ave. B and E. 7th St

Grand Finale Party--Lotus Lounge, 35 Clinton Street at Stanton, Lower East Side, Manhattan.

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

7th International Conference on Word & Image Studies:

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Elective Affinities

...This international conference will explore the relations between word and image from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Our title has been borrowed from Goethe's 1809 novel Elective Affinities. In the novel, the chemical term “elective affinities” extends to human relationships, both intimate and political. Like the alkalis and acids of which Goethe's characters speak, words and images, though apparently opposed, may have a remarkable affinity for one another. At the same time, as one of the characters in the book objects, such affinities are problematic, and “are only really interesting when they bring about separations.”

How words and images represent and whether they enjoy a harmonious kinship, engage in border skirmishes, or seek to annihilate one another, are not merely formal matters. The history of iconoclasm tells us about the ideological stakes of the debate. Contemporary discussions of memorialisation seem to demand multi-media expression, and urban inscriptions such as graffiti and mural arts express political positions. New technologies for meshing words and images – such as medical imaging, virtual archives, the Internet – will also be discussed. Among the themes of the conference are: the arts of the book; early correspondences; political inscriptions; sacred words, sacred images; scientific imaging; spaces, places; photographic texts. [via]

Posted by jo at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

TECHSTYLE NEWS

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Issue #53 - September 15, 2005 [excerpts]

Techstyle News is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries and commentaries on stories related to the next generation of mobile technology and style, produced by Thinking Materials.

APPLE UNVEILS NEW WEARABLE MP3 PLAYER: Apple has introduced the iPod nano, a completely new iPod that’s thinner than a standard #2 pencil and weighs only 1.5 ounces. The iPod mini replacement is available in 2GB ($199) and 4GB ($249) capacities in either white or black designs. The ultra-compact device features a high-resolution color screen, Click Wheel, and offers up to 14 hours of battery life. Apple has announced several new accessories for the device, which the company calls the “most fashionable and wearable iPod ever.” The new gear includes lanyard headphones, which integrate the headphone cables into the lanyard; armbands in five colors, including gray, pink, blue, red and green; a set of silicone “Tubes” in five colors, including pink, purple, blue, green and clear; and dock.

PHILIPS SHOWS PHOTONIC TEXTILES: Philips Research has shown prototypes of its photonic textiles—fabrics that contain lighting systems and can therefore serve as displays. The researchers have managed to integrate flexible arrays of multicolored LEDs into fabrics without compromising the softness of the cloth. The LED substrates are also capable of displaying Windows Media Player-style visualisations and feature responsive sensors so that the patterns of diffused light displayed can change according to how they are handled.

SIRIUS ANNOUNCES NEW WEARABLE MUSIC PLAYER: Sirius Satellite Radio has unveiled its first wearable music player. The new device includes enough storage capacity for up to 50 hours of recorded Sirius content or audio files. Unlike XM's portable device, MyFi, Sirius's product will not be able to receive satellite signals on the go. Rather, it must be plugged into a docking station. The move comes as satellite radio players try to expand from the auto market. Both Sirius and XM have online streaming music services and "plug and play" devices that let users hook up to Sirius both in their cars and in their homes.

RESEARCHERS CREATE POWER BACKPACK: Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a backpack that can actually generate electricity as its wearer walks. The suspended-load backpack can generate about seven watts of power solely via the motion of the person carrying it, which is achieved by detaching the pack’s frame from the load it carries and harnessing the energy generated as the load moves up and down on vertical springs. The actual energy generated depends on the weight of the load and how fast the person walks, but is usually enough to charge several handheld devices at the same time. The pack is reportedly comfortable to wear, and doesn’t weigh significantly more than a conventional pack.

EVENTS

ISMAR 2005 IN VIENNA: Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality are highly interdisciplinary fields involving signal processing, computer vision, computer graphics, user interfaces, human factors, wearable computing, mobile computing, computer networks, distributed computing, information access, information visualization, and hardware design for new displays and sensors. MR/AR concepts are applicable to a wide range of applications. The International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR, is the premier forum in this field and will be held in Vienna on October 5-8.

WICON AMERICAS IN SANTA CLARA: Wireless Connectivity (WiCon) Americas, to be held in Santa Clara on October 5-6, is the one stop shop for wireless connectivity solutions in the US. It's a high-level conference and exhibition to address leading wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, NFC, UWB, Wi-Fi, WiMax and ZigBee and the huge potential of the wireless networking applications they enable. The conference will focus on the convergence and co-existence of these technologies and their integration into mobile and computing devices. In addition the show will highlight some of the real life applications of these technologies in key vertical markets.

SIGDOC 2005 IN COVENTRY: SIGDOC 2005, to be held in Coventry on September 21-23, will provide an opportunity for the exchange of information related to exciting new research and empirical results in areas such as documenting mobile, pervasive and component-based systems, information design for delivery in a pervasive-computing environment, design for new communication media, culture and communities communicating in a pervasive environment, gathering and presenting information from pervasive computing networks and usability of information in a pervasive environment.

MOBILE HCI 2005 IN SALZBURG: MobileHCI provides a forum for academics and practitioners to discuss the challenges, potential solutions and innovations towards effective interaction with mobile systems and services. It covers the analysis, design, evaluation and application of human-computer interaction techniques and approaches for all mobile computing devices and services. The conference will be held in Salzburg on September 19-22.

CEATEC JAPAN 2005 IN TOKYO: CEATEC JAPAN is the largest international exhibition in Asia for the technology and electronics sectors, including the fields of imaging, information, and communications. Experience all the recent trends in IT and electronics, from technologies that showcase futuristic lifestyles to products that will be on store shelves during the upcoming winter season, including several new wearable devices. The fair is held in Tokyo on October 4-8.

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY

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New Forms

THIRD INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY, 2-3 MARCH 2006, BRIGHTON, UK.

Combining mobile technology and music promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

Following two successful workshops that started to explore and establish the emerging field of mobile music technology, this third edition offers a unique opportunity to participate in the development of mobile music and hands-on experience of the latest cutting-edge technology. The programme will consist of presentations from invited speakers, in-depth discussions about the crucial issues of mobile music technology, hands-on group activities and break-out sessions where participants can get valuable feedback on their work-inprogress projects. The invited speakers include Michael Bull (University of Sussex, UK), often dubbed by the press as 'Professor iPod' for his iPod and car stereo user studies that reveal fascinating trends for mobile music.

The workshop will take place at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Brighton is situated on the British 'Sunshine Coast' and easily accessible: only 30 minutes from London/Gatwick airport and 60 minutes from central London.

Don't miss this chance to help shape the mobile music landscape of the future!

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

We invite practitioners, artists, designers and researchers from all areas, including music, technology development, new media, sound-art, music distribution, locative media and industry to register for this international mobile music workshop.

CALL FOR WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Are you working on a mobile music project and looking for feedback from like-minded people to help you to move on with your ideas? We invite submissions of work-in-progress projects exploring the topic of mobile music. Projects will be discussed, receive critical review as well as support with ongoing problems and issues. Your work should not be completed yet, but either be on-going or just about to get started. Potential projects could include but are not limited to mobile music systems or enabling technologies, interface design, on-going or planned user studies, ethnographic fieldwork, art pieces and other areas relevant to mobile music.

Submissions should include a presentation of the project, explain its relevance to the field of mobile music and describe issues and problems that could be discussed during the workshop. Please include a short biography with the submission. Accepted project authors will be given time to present and discuss their work and will receive feedback by smaller groups of workshop participants including specialists in the field. Authors are encouraged to bring material and prototypes to the workshop.

CALL FOR MOBILE PLATFORMS AND SYSTEMS

In addition to the presentations, discussions and project feedback sessions the workshop will also offer handson group activities to explore technological platforms. We are looking for mobile platforms, systems, installations, applications or devices that include music features or can be used for musical projects. The workshop participants will get hands-on experience with these platforms, so they should be suitable for groups of at least 8 people. This provides you with the opportunity to introduce your platform to experts and practitioners in the field of mobile music and to gain valuable feedback. We invite you to submit a platform description, explain how it can be used for mobile music and how larger groups can use it during the workshop.

Details are here.

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

Continental Drift Seminar - Webcast Details

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Quick Notes About Webcast of Brian Holmes

We will stream live 4 sections of the Continental Drift Seminar. We will also subsequently post the webcasts online. Below you will find the url for the live stream. Please visit the website for checking the archived webcasts.

Live Stream: we will be webcasting [Quicktime 7.0+] the following sections of the seminar with in NYC time (EST): Thursday September 15 -- Session 1 -- 6:30 PM; Friday September 16 -- Session 2 -- 6:30 PM (w/David Harvey); Saturday September 17 -- Session 3 -- 1:00PM -5:00PM; Sunday September 18 -- Session 4 -- 1:00PM -5:00PM.

Participation via? For the people who will be participating from other locations. We ask you to formulate and send questions to us via email at
seminars@16beavergroup.org. We will attemt to create a space within the
context of the streamed times to actual answer some submitted questions.

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

ctrl_alt_del

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Sonic Encounters

Sound-art festival ctrl_alt_del, will take place in the “positionings” section of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. The project will launch on September 16th, 2005 with an opening night performance in the city at Balans Music hall, then will continue on the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, Istanbul Technical University’s MIAM studios, laboratories, library and concert hall until September 22nd. The festival’s three-folded conceptual frame - “the city”, “noise” and “open source”- will be worked into performances, a boat tour, sonic mapping, workshops, and presentations.

The boat tour will start at 11am on 17th of September. The boarding location is behind Türkpetrol gas station, Kabatas and the name of the boat is Nis. The landing location is Besiktas. Please check the web-site for the map. Reservations recommended via info[at]nomad-tv.net as the space is limited.

Posted by jo at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

0kn0

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Looking Glass

0kn0.org is a new interdisciplinary media center for art and technology in Brussels. 0kn0 supports the research, development, creation and presentation of new forms of innovative cultural production, and is dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts through a programme of concerts, interactive installations, performances, workshops and lectures.

OKNO presents BO-KU-SHI-N-GU BA-GU [Electronic Boxing Bag Melody Making Machine], an interactive installation by SWUMMOQ.NET [Heerko van der Kooij/nl and Niels Wolf/de in collaboration with Travis Robertson/ca]. Punching the Bokushingu Bagu the visitor generates and composes melodies from a selection of various sounds depending on the power and area of the punch. The visitor applies great effort only to be hindered by the outcome of his intensity.

Opening performance by swummoq.net: friday 16 september 8pm-10pm or try it yourself on: Saturday 17 September 2pm-6pm; Sunday 18 September 2pm-6pm; Entrance free.

radio_okno is online now! click: http://qt.okno.be:8000/mix.m3u to open the livestream in your mediaplayer.

Masterclass on Synthetic Speech and Machinic Sound Poetry. Participants can still apply. The masterclass is scheduled from October 17-21 and is part of the x-med-k-2005/series, commissioned by the VAF [Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds].

OKNO: koolmijnenkaai 30/34 quai aux charbonnages | brussels 1080 | belgium
tram 18 [walvis] | Metro Graaf van Vlaanderen - Comte de Flandres
okno is supported by the Ministry of the Flemisch Community and the VGC.

Posted by jo at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

TOUCH ME Festival

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ABUSE OF INTELLIGENCE

The international festival Touch Me presents contemporary art production at the intersection of science and technology. Including an exhibition, performances and a symposium, it will tackle the topic of Abuse of Intelligence. This thematic framework arises from the need for artistic and cultural analysis of contemporary forms of violence and systems of control. Starting from the twofold meaning of "intelligence" (implying both information and intellection), the project explores the abuse of information and intelligence, but also the forms of structural abuse brought about by the technological organization of contemporary social processes - abuses relating to information, telecommunications, media, technology, science, the entertainment industry, etc.

Alongside the ethical and political problems of the info-sphere, the festival
explores the abuse and manipulation of techno-scientific discoveries that disrupt, transform or create the living world and environment. The festival takes places within Operation:City.

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

Artivistic ::

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art.information.activism/e

Artivistic is a transdisciplinary event on the interPlay between art, information and activism. The bilingual event will bring together diverse practitioners and theorists of activist art and communication through performances, art exhibitions, interventions, workshops and roundtables.

The event includes a *benefit* for Steve Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble) and Robert Ferrell on the evening of the 22nd September, towards the CAE Legal Defense Fund. The artistic and free-form conference asks three overlapping questions in order to consider new + different possibilities: * Why is Activism Associated with the Street? A question here on the notion of space and the politics that underlies it; * Who Owns your Body_Mind? A question for analysing the authority of scientific knowledge in relation to society; * Who is Allowed to Communicate? A question on communications and media, information as a right and vector of freedom.

The event is an independent and interuniversity initiative. It aims to promote open transdisciplinary + intercultural dialogue and research on activist art, to create and facilitate a human network of diverse peoples, and to inspire, proliferate, activate.

For the complete program and for conference registration, please visit: http://artivistic.omweb.org

Inquiries/registration : artivisters[at]graffiti.net

Conference location: 2013 St.Laurent, 2nd floor, t. 514 849 8246

3 days of conference, including workshops, meals/coffee and conference package (excluding special events):

$18 student/unwaged
$40 faculty/waged

Registration form.

--= special events =--

CABARET for CAE
(The Upgrade! Montreal / [ctrl] collective) benefit with djs, performance & a silent art auction with Canadian & international artists:

$5-$15 (door, suggested donation)
@ SAT (Society for Arts and Technologies)
1195 St.Laurent, t.514 844 2033
http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca

Urban Happening with public-active installations, performance, music and live painting:

Free
Location TBA
http://artivistic.omweb.org
http://www.popandpolitics.net

'Volatile Shorts' + closing event with djs, vjs, performance & tactical media screenings (Volatile Works et al.):

$5 suggested donation
@ Café Toc Toc
6091 ave. du Parc
http://www.volatileworks.org

Posted by jo at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

Ars Electronica

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Blog From Ars

Hana Iverson and Sabine Seymour have just wrapped up their extensive report on Ars Electronica. This year's Ars, called "Hybrid: Living in Paradox," was curated by Derrick de Kerckhove, head of the Marshall McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto. A bit about Hana and Sabine is below and their report is after the jump.

New media artist Hana Iverson is currently the Director of the New Media Interdisciplinary Concentration at Temple University. Her work spans digital, video and sound media and has received support from such institutions as the Covenant Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

Sabine Seymour, Adjunct Faculty at University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz/Austria and founder of the course ‘Fashionable Technology’ at Parsons School of Design, concentrates on on wearable/wireless technologies in sports, healthcare, design, and branding. She co-curated the "Wearable Experience" section at ISEA 2004, recently published Intelligent Wearables, presents at places like Viper and Cooper-Hewitt Summer Design Institute, runs her commercial entity, Moondial and website, Fashionable Technology. Sabine floats between New York and Vienna and is intrigued by the tension the dual continent living is offering. Continue reading at Cool Hunting [blogged by Josh Rubin]

Posted by jo at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

International Conference

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Technologies of Memory

May 19-20, 2006, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). The conference Technologies of Memory in the Arts focuses on art as a cultural and technological practice to process and construct the past in the present. Central questions to this conference are: How do art and artistic practices function as technologies of memory? How are cultural artefacts implicated in complex processes of remembering and forgetting, of recollecting and disremembering, of amnesia and anamnesia?

As a shared artistic and social practice, cultural memory links the present to the past. In doing so, cultural memory has strong ethical and political aspects. The arts are continuously engaged in non-linear processes of remembering and forgetting, characterised by repetition, rearrangement, revision, and rejection. In artistic representations new memories are thus constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed by narrative strategies, visual and aural styles, intertextuality and intermediality, representations of time and space, and rituals of remembrance. These complex processes of representation are what we understand by the term 'technologies of memory'.

The contemporary fascination with history and memory is accompanied by developments in media technology that have simultaneously a petrifying and a virtualising effect. Both individual and cultural memory are increasingly mediated by modern technologies, which means that memories are not only recorded and recollected by media, but are also shaped and produced by them. The digital media, in particular, allow for new ways of storing, retrieving and archiving personal and collective memories, as well as cultural artefacts.

The conference Technologies of Memory in the Arts specifically addresses the material construction of cultural memory. It aims to explore procedures of memory in both traditional and new media as well as to investigate the role of digitalisation of art and culture in relation to memory. Generally, its focus is on the materiality of representation and on the relation between the medium and the construction of cultural memory.

Keynote speakers (confirmed):
- Marita Sturken (University of Southern California)
- Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)

We are especially interested in panel and paper proposals on the following topics:

- Mediated memories
- Narrative strategies
- Intertextuality / intermediality
- Music as memory work
- Urban space and spatial dimensions
- Tourism and heritage
- Musical subcultures as memory space
- Representations of memory in the arts
- Amnesia and anamnesia
- Icons of the recent past
- Rituals of remembrance
- Rituals, music and the shape of memory
- Nostalgia and pastiche
- Retro styles as forms of cultural memory
- Rewritings of the classics
- Digitalisation of archives
- Music/sound recordings and the technology of memory

Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2005.

More information and submission:
http://www.ru.nl/comparativearts/research/technologies_of/

Posted by jo at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

Performance Writing #5

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LAURA ELRICK and SUZANNE STEIN

New Langton Arts' award-winning Performance Writing series continues this fall with performances by literary artists Laura Elrick and Suzanne Stein. Laura Elrick’s work explores novelty in language, and the relationships between spoken language and written texts. Her Langton performance consists of multiple voices reading her text Fantasies in Permeable Structures (2004), tackling contemporary ideas of nation, race, rationalism, and resistance. Suzanne Stein discusses and demonstrates poetry’s religious and psychological implications in an exploration of the relationships between the self and the group.

The Performance Writing series brings multi-disciplinary literary artists to Langton to present works that explore language in the context of live performance. The series, curated by Jocelyn Saidenberg and Brandon Brown, earned a 2005 “Best of the Bay” award in the San Francisco Bay Guardian for “Best New Reading Series to Catapult Language Off the Page.”

Thursday September 29, 8 pm
New Langton Arts
1246 Folsom Street (between 8th and 9th streets)
San Francisco, CA 94103-3817
415 626 5416

Artist Biographies

Laura Elrick’s book Fantasies in Permeable Structures is forthcoming this fall from The Factory School Press, as part of the “Heretical Texts” series. She is also the author of sKincerity (Krupskaya, 2003) and is one of the featured writers on Women in the Avant Garde, an audio CD produced by Narrow House Recordings (2004). Recent poetry and essays have appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter, The Brooklyn Rail, Tripwire, Crayon, and War and Peace. Elrick lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Suzanne Stein’s works have appeared in the publications Mirage #4/Period[ical], Commonweal, Small Town, The Bay Area Poetry Anthology, and at the venues Refusalon Gallery, the San Francisco Exploratorium, the Berkeley Art Center, Outpost for Contemporary Art, and elsewhere. She is the former co-director and film curator of four walls gallery, San Francisco. Stein lives in San Francisco.

Posted by jo at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

VENUS RISING:

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Mobile Technology in the 21st Century

Where is mobile technology taking us in the 21st century?...And do we want to go there?

Cybersalon continues its Venus Rising series of panels in collaboration with the SMARTlab Centre to discuss where mobile technology is taking us this century. With over 75% of the UK population owning a mobile phone, women are a crucial sector of the mobile market. However, most technology is developed by men, so is the feminine perspective being taken into account? Are we considering how mobile technology could help shape the future in positive ways, not just for play and leisure but for social and economic growth, particularly in the developing world?

Tuesday, 20th September 2005, 7-10pm
The Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5HE
Cost: This event is free but places must be booked in advance by emailing
Nearest tubes: South Kensington/Gloucester Road

Venus Rising is a forum that launched at the Science Museum's Dana Centre in April and held a panel on techno-semantics at the Institute of Contemporary Art in July. With this series of panels we pose the question, can we shift the cultural image and language of technology towards the feminine?

Dr Lizbeth Goodman, Director of the SMARTLab Centre at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design will chair the event featuring Lev Manovich and Emma Westecott.

Lev Manovich is recognized as one of the leading figures in the field of new media culture worldwide and is a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego. Emma Westecott achieved international recognition for working closely with Douglas Adams as producer for the best-selling CD-ROM Starship Titanic (1998, Simon & Schuster) and is currently based at the IFSW, University of Wales, Newport. We are asking the speakers to look through the lens of the feminine to where mobile technologies are taking society in the future.

This public debate is held at the Science Museum's Dana Centre - the UK's only venue for s to discuss contemporary science.

Venus Rising gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Arts Council of England and the Science Museum.

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

FUTURE WIRELESS:

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practical.discourse.creative

Cybersalon and Open Spectrum UK scan the horizon of wireless communications to explore its emerging landscape and ecology and present an investigation into Future Wireless.

Through three parallel strands of programming - practical, discourse and creative - Future Wireless features presentations, demonstrations, practical workshops, artistic interventions and debate to demonstrate and probe the nature, impact and potential of the wireless Internet, mobile telecommunications and other radio-based technologies.

Complemented by the Dana Centre's state of the art technological resources the organisers assemble an international group of cultural commentators, researchers, artists, free wireless network activists and developers to share their insights and speculate on the nature of a 'wireless future'.

Tuesday, 4th October 2005, 12-10pm
The Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5HE
Cost: £5. Email for details.
Members of the press interested in attending or for further information, please contact Lauren Gildersleve at the Science Museum
Nearest tubes: South Kensington/Gloucester Road

Contributors include: Dooeun Choi, curator Art Center Nabi, Seoul, Korea; Peter Cochrane, co-founder Concept Labs (formerly CTO of BT); Bob Horwitz, co-ordinator Open Spectrum International, Prague; Adam Hyde, new media artist from New Zealand, with a special interest in streaming media, in both visual and audio contexts; Francis McKee, research fellow at Glasgow School of Art and part-time Head of Digital Arts and New Media at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow; and Marc Tuters, researcher in new media, University of Southern California's Annenberg Centre. The programme also features artistic interventions from SOMETH;NG supporting work from MA students at Ravensbourne College, Taxi_onomy and Troika.

Complete with a wired café-bar connecting it to people all around the world, the Dana Centre brings exciting, informative and lively discussion to people who want to talk about challenging and cutting edge topics in science, the arts and culture. Cybersalon aim to web cast elements of the programme live from the Dana Centre, enabling a worldwide audience to engage and interact with the event.

Posted by jo at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

Celebrating Quixote through new media

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Ingenio 400

You can now visit http://www.ingenio400.com/ to learn the names of the Finalist Pieces in Ingenio 400, the Video Art, Short Film and Net Art Awards organised by the Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales (SECC).

600 artists were invited to reinterpret D. Quixote through new media, 400 years after being created by Spanish writer Cervantes. A total of 35 works –12 shorts, 13 video creations and 10 net-art pieces- have been chosen as candidates for the Jury and Audience Prizes, which total € 90,000.

Furthermore, until October 3rd, you can vote to elect the winners of the Ingenio 400 Audience Prizes. There are three awards: one for each category –shorts, video art and net art– and they are endowed with € 5,000 each. Enter Ingenio 400 and vote for your favourite pieces among the Finalists. The winners will depend on your votes.

Posted by luis at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Capturing the Moving Minds

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The Connection Between the War Against Terrorism, Economics and Media-Art

Researchers, activists and media-artists meet on the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Beijing September 11th - 20th 2005. The conference Capturing the Moving Minds gathers a pack of people--artists, economists, researchers, philosophers, activists--who are interested in the new logic of the economy, the new form of war against terrorism and in the new cooperative modes of creation and resistance, together in a space moving in time. Spatially moving bodies and bodies moving in time (through the different time zones) creates an event, a meeting that not really 'is' but 'is going on'.

Is this project about economics, is it political activity or a work of art? This "boundlessness" or "indeterminacy", which always characterizes the creation of new, is where the energy of the project is coming: The enterprise expresses and exposes itself the "knowledge economy" in which it exists. It is something the orthodox conceptions about work, action, economy and art are unable to grasp. In this organizational experiment everybody is "alone together" like a pack of wolves around a fire having neighbours to the left and to the right but nobody behind their backs exposed to the desert.

There are 50 participants on the train involving well known media-artists, frontline contemporary thinkers and political activists. The project has been invited to participate in the International ARS2006 biennial at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and to arrange an exhibition at the Villa Croce Museo d"arte contemporanea di Genova during summer 2006.

Press Conference and Opening Seminar Wed 7.9., 15:00-19:00, Hemeentie 33 A, 2nd Floor, Helsinki
15:00-15:20 Intro to the project, its themes and methods (Tuula Karjalainen, Jussi Vhmki, KlausHarju)
15:20-15:40 Launching of the mobile documentation (Minna Tarkka, Adam Hyde et al.)
15:40-16:00 Trans-sib as a work of art (Akseli Virtanen, Anna Daneri, Genova)
16:00-17:00 Questions, interviews, refreshments
17:00-19:00 "Aesthetics of Resistance" seminar with Bracha L. Ettinger (Tel Aviv), Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (Stockholm), Jordan Crandall (Los Angeles), Steffen Boehm (London).

Mobicasting brings the event directly for all: The Trans-siberian conference is documented and broadcasted through an audiovisual mobicasting platform to the internet. The documentarists, photographers, artists and researchers produce discussions, ideas, interviews, texts and films along the route. The documentation will be projected in Kiasma during the journey and it will also be available on several international www-channels. The webpages http://www.kiasma.fi/transsiberia will be opened on September 7th. See also http://trans-siberianradio.org

Further info on the conference and the participants: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/conference

Further info on the mobicasting platform: m-cult, Netta Norro +358 40-561-8004

Further info on the opening seminar: Akseli Virtanen +358 400-302010 akseli.virtanen[at]hkkk.fi

The event is organised by Ephemera, Tutkijaliitto, Kiasma, Frame, m-cult, Helsinki School of Economics and the Chydenius Institute.

Posted by jo at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

HIVE Networks Workshop + Launch

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DIY Kit for Ubiquituous Computing and Free Networking

Alexei Blinov of Raylab and a group of collaborators have set out to create an exciting project, HIVE Networks, which promises to change the perception of ubiquituous or pervasive computing. HIVE combines the virtues of free software, free networks and open hardware to generate a framework for virtually any type of networked media application.

The group of independent programmers, artists and electronics specialists imagine swarms of intelligent network devices which all collaborate, facilitate media applications such as audio and video streaming and create clouds of free bandwidth using ad-hoc networking protocols.

The hardware basis currently is a customized Asus wireless hard drive. The firmware has been replaced with Linux and a cross-compilation tool kit has been developed. What this means is that any sort of application can be made to run on the cheap hardware which costs about 50 Euros a piece. For instance, a responsive environment could be built, using sensors, light, audio and video; or points of information exchange using wlan and bluetooth can be installed spread out in urban areas, because the individual units are cheap and replacable.

Blinov is keen to point out that the Asus boxes currently used are only the first step towards creating a framework for HIVE applications. The development is based on a set of key principles. The hardware has to be as cheap as possible and function according to widely used generic standards. The software has to be completely free and open source. Everything else is left to the creative imagination.

Raylab invites media practitioners to participate in application development for HIVE networks. Now that the basic toolkit has reached a phase of stability with increasing maturity, media practitioners - media activists, community groups, artists - are invited to come up with ideas for applications which Raylab will try to facilitate.

Ideally, in the next phase, this should all be done via a web based interface. The media practitioners do not have to get involved in deep technological development. All they need to do is click a few radio buttons to customize their own application which then will be compiled and installed on the device.

With HIVE Networks the traditional role, the artist who has an idea and gets a technician to develop the technical part, gets reversed. Here, creative technicians point out the future developments and offer a unique platform for artists. With HIVE ubiquituous computing takes on a new meaning. As the black box of technology is cracked open and made accessible, virtually anything is possible.

WORKSHOP: HIVE Networks - Swarms of information generating and processing devices

Friday, 09.09., 14.00 - 18.00

chip shop: application customization

Media practitioners, artists and developers are invited to share their visions of future applications for HIVE networks.

Both presentation and workshop are free. Please register if you want to participate in the workshop via email to: hive[at]kunstlabor.at

Posted by jo at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

Ars Electronica

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Regine Blogs Ars

TEMPEST is based on the surveillance technology known as Van Eck Phreaking - computer screen content can be reconstructed remotely by picking up the emitted EM-field of the screen. TEMPEST utilizes this technique to transform purely generative graphic into a composition of noise which again is fed back into the image generating process. Several AM receivers are tuned into different frequencies of a screen and plugged into an audio mixer for further sound processing. The graphics on the screen become a means of producing sound and it is only the graphics which determine the different timbres and rhythms. By Erich Berger.

Interface Culture at the Linz University of Art was founded last year by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. The programme deals with human-machine interaction to develop innovative interfaces. Went to see their works yesterday.

SoundToy, by Christina Heidecker, Harald Moser and Timm Oliver Wilks, is a 3D environment you navigate as if you were a racing car driver. During the ride you use the steering wheel to create and compose 3D sounds. You place in the space sound objects assigned to electronic beats. The speed, pitch and volume can be individually adjusted using the steering wheel and the accelerating pedal. The composition is generated by the movement and position of the sound objects with respect to one another but also by the route you select.

Recipe Table, by Istvan Lorincz, Hanna Perner-Wilson, Thomas Wagner and Andreas Zingerle, is an interactive workplace built into a kitchen countertop that enable users to intuitively search for recipes. You place the tins and bottle, vegetable and other ingredients and in return the system makes you recipe suggestions. These culinary suggestions are also depicted graphically as finished dishes on the workplace.

Blow, by Taife Smetschka, is a breath-controlled video installation. There's a microphone and a projection of a clip from Billy Wilder’s film *The Seven Year Itch*, the scene in which Marilyn Monroe stands on the grate above the subway ventilation shaft. At first she is stationary, smiling at viewers from the screen. She doesn’t begin moving until she feels a cool breeze. In *blow!* the breeze has to be provided by the installation visitors who must blow as hard as they can into the microphone. Marilyn’s skirt flutters in the breeze as long as the visitor blows into the microphone.

Mika Satomi's Gutsie is a cyber android filled with “guts.” Peeping into its interior through its eye-like hole, you can observe its intestines in motion. It will show you the places you want to see by tracking your eye gaze, but at the same time, your gaze may infect it. The interior of our body is something very private, often disgusting, and thus prohibited to be seen or to be shown. In media, visual images of our insides are often used to induce feelings of violence or disgust. Ironically, this is something that is stuffed inside everyone’s body without exception.

The G-Player (Global player), by German artist Jens Brand, works like a CD-player. But instead of playing CDs, it plays the globe. The device knows the postion of more than a thousand satellites and enables you, by the use if a virtual 3D planetary model, to listen to an imaginary trace of a selected flying object. Like a needle on a record, the satellite follows the Earth's surface. The G-Player transforms the different elevations units course directly into sound. The simple display shows the selected satellite's name, type, altitude and position over the planet (thus the latitude and longitude). Topographic data are interpreted as audio data. "Noise sounds" result from the high density of the data. Pictures.

[via we-make-money-not]

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

Unusual Encounters

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Chance Encounters

Unusual Encounters is a three-part, web-based art project in which Jean Paul Gaultier has had the pleasure of participating and which is a mixture of creative sophistication and the latest technology, unique in the world, viewable at this address. Designed by the film director David Mileikowsky, under the artistic direction of Jean Paul Gaultier, the Unusual Encounters site proposes 3 original modules, offering 3 unique meeting experiences:

On September 9th, an on-line artistic improvisation will be organised for 500 trendsetters around the world and we have the pleasure of inviting you to take part in this exclusive venue. On that day, "Zhang will meet Veng" and for the first time ever, the unusual encounter between two unrivalled virtuosos, Maxim Vengerov and Zhan Yimou, the Russian and the Chinese, the violinist and the film director: two meteors of the Modern Arts will be brought together online in a live artistic performance, somewhere between China and Germany. Some 9000 km apart, the amazing duo will perform on-line, in unison. The first showing is scheduled for September 9th, at 12:00 exactly (Paris time).

You might also like to try Tango Painting, available as of today! For the first time ever, this multi-user graphic application allows user pairs to simultaneously draw up, from a distance and in an entertaining way, multimedia forms, regardless of their skill level. Their work can then be complemented by creations from artists such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Jean-Baptise Mondino, then shared with others on the web.

Finally, on September 10th, The Perfume Alchemist will be presented in an on-line world premiere. This visionary manga by Alain Escalle (director) tells a story of a child, a little prince of the streets, in a high-rise megalopolis, who decides to create the perfume of his dreams. Thanks to "Manga Maker", an on-line video editing platform, every user can participate in the adaptation of the course of the story and then pass the modified story on to his/her soul mate. An extract of this manga is available here.

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

UNESCO Online Seminar

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Art, Design and Technology Master Classes in the Arab States

Creative Thinking, Writing and Design UNESCO Online Seminar, CALL FOR APPLICATIONS [in cooperation with Lebanese partner universities ALBA, AUB and LAU and Finnish Media Lab, UIAH]. The course will focus on the intellectual linkage of art, design and technology. Students will also be presented with a range of criteria to analyse the context of creative practises in new media. 50 students will be selected to participate in the first online phase of the course.

Course Content, Part 1: Introduction to Art and New Media in the Arab States, with a case-study of Lebanon; Arabic typography and design culture; Typographic Landscape in the Arab world.

Dates of the Course

- Applications/pre-registration: 01 September 2005
- Application close: 14 October 2005
- Programme starts 31 October 2005
- Programme finishes 28 February 2006

Online application open to students :

- From the Arab States with Bachelor's degree in design (graphic, industrial, furniture, fashion, etc.), architecture, arts (fine arts, music, etc.), computer sciences, media (journalism, video/film, etc.), humanities (history, political sciences, social sciences, history, languages, psychology, education)
- With good computer skills and have creative interest
- With an online portfolio
More information and registration online at:
http://moodle.uiah.fi/unesco

Posted by jo at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2005

Plug

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Global Headphone Festival

[Though it looks to be quite dysfunctional, this sucker sends the streaming Plug signal around the globe [Photo: Keith Axline].] "...In some ways Plug, held here Saturday, is just what you'd expect from a music fest: rotating performances in front of a live audience, socializing and plenty of beer. But the headphones (bring your own) replace a traditional concert's amplified speakers, and much of the socializing happens over a computer terminal linked to an IRC chat room, populated by members of the global audience listening to the performances over the internet...

The 13 hours of performances represented San Francisco's turn at the global le placard headphone festival, which hits cities all over the world, including London, Montreal, Paris, Brussels and Nagoya, Japan. Each city hosts a headphone party for a given period, in this case one day, before handing off the feed to the next location. Theoretically, this continues for 97 days in the hopes of providing one nonstop experience, though there are gaps in the schedule." From Fest Rocks With BYO Headphones by Keith Axline, Wired.

Posted by jo at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)

Pink Noise

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Urban Noise Pollution Displayed on Street Advertising Boards

Pink Noise by arts collective HeHe.org will be installed in Witte de Withstraat, Rotterdam on Sept. 10th, during the live event Hands On Hands Off organised by V2. Bruit rose (Pink noise in English): The interaction of this work is based on visualising the ambient sounds in the environment aswel as the passerby. The light emmitting panels, usually used to divulge numerically formatted information, are instead détourné from this didatic function and serve as an animated visual, disengaged from all the gloss that usually occupies this urban advertising space. [via URBAN SCREENS 05]

Posted by jo at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

MINDPLAY:

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Extended deadline for submissions

MINDPLAY is a one day conference on the social, intellectual and experiential dimensions of play and interaction in digital media environments. The conference focuses on mindful and playful relationships with digital media environments including mobile and ubiquitous media, new cinema, gameplay, wired performance spaces and networked communities. We encourage submissions of papers, practice-led research, poster presentations, demonstrations and installations. Selected papers may be published in a special issue of the journal Digital Creativity. Conference date: Friday January 20th 2006; Extended deadline for abstracts: Friday 30th September.

Posted by jo at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Budapest

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6-day Workshop

The Intermedia Institute of the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts is going to host a Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab. Intermedia has promoted the contacts of art and technology in the past years, building up an extensive network in Hungary and Europe. As part of its diverse interest in non-linear modes of narration, the Intermedia Institute invites participants to share experiences and create prototypes for online interactive film projects.

The workshop is designed for up to 16 film-, tv-. radio-, or new media makers from all over Europe. You can use your own footage (up to 40 min) to make an interactive film and publish it on- or offline. The approach is interdisciplinary and introduces new media and cross media content production to people with a background in filmmaking.

The workshop focuses on the cinematic aspects of online interactive film and on issues of combining narratives with interactive possibilities. Participants use the ever-evolving Korsakow software to build their new media projects. Developed by the UdK Berlin and Mediamatic, Korsakow is a powerful, elegant, and easy to learn editing tool.

This 6-day workshop takes place from October 3 - 8. It starts with a symposium and ends with a public presentation of workshop projects.

The price of the workshop is 200 EUR for EU citizens of the new memberstates, and 300 EUR for EU citizens of older member states. Mediamatic provides fully equipped Apple Computers for this workshop.

For more information go to www.korsakow.org or call Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: +31 20 6389901.

You can register online.

To prepare for the workshop we provide an online reader with related articles on interactivity and narration.

Posted by jo at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

Readers for "Mobtagging DisCourse" and "Triggered by RFID" at Mediamatic

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Theory, Projects, Criticism, Resources

Reader for Mobtagging DisCourse: Mobtagging is the practice of a large group of users who freely apply and exchange tags (metadata) to a set of unstructured online information. The aim is to describe content more adequately, personally or pinpoint interesting information faster than a search engine or online directories. Mob – or Social tagging can provide more precise search results for specialized interests and as such is a form of Commons Based Peer Production (CBPP).

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Reader for Triggered by RFID: Radio frequency identification is a technology that is now situated in the elevator of technical development. A growing number of logistical companies see the advantages and possibilities of RFID for managing large bodies of objects. But what uses can this technology be applied to that are not in the logistical realm? How can it serve and/or change society and human interaction? How does it change the concept of information and information networks as we know them today? This reader compiles a number of resources on the technical and philosophical aspects of RFID.

Posted by jo at 07:17 AM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2005

Surface Tension

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Mobile Art Projection Program: Call for Proposals

ANAT is now calling for proposals from South Australian artists or artists groups, for dynamic temporary public projection artwork. Four artists or artist groups will be commissioned to produce projection works that are experimental, conceptual, and respond to Surface Tension's guerrilla-style approach of presentation and use of mobility to take art to the audience. Selected artists will present their Projection Artworks consecutively in the period November 2005 - March 2006. To download a Surface Tension program outline and proposal guidelines, please go to the ANAT website, 'Surface Tension: ANAT's mobile projection project call for proposals' News Item.

Deadline for proposals is: September 2, 2005
Notification date is: September 12, 2005
Successful artists will be required to complete their artwork by late October.

For further information, please contact
Jen Brazier
projection[at]anat.org.au
tel: (08) 8231 9037
m: 0413 564 474

Gus Clutterbuck
m: 0407 721 532

Surface Tension has been made possible through Adelaide City Councils Public Art program, and will be delivered in negotiation with Council by the Australian Network for Art Technology (ANAT).

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

August 28, 2005

Improbable Orchestra + Burning Man

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Tribal Knob Twiddling in the Desert

The Improbable Orchestra (IO) is an interactive audio installation designed to make digital music accessible to anyone. It consists of a central control unit surrounded by four speakers designed for up to four users to each control a sound sample using manual controls (knobs and buttons).

This sound installation was designed by our team to accomplish the following goals: 1. to create a tool to allow any user to experiment with working and designing music; 2. to create a visually appealing structure that creates a musical space; and 3. to create a musical tool that allows interaction between different players while they experiment with music.

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Burning Man: Laser Harps, Improbable Orchestra Knob Boxes

For some of the most bizarre and unusual music-sound installation art, look no further than Burning Man [Related 1, 2, 3]. Burning, indeed: this desert-based event has in the past featured Eric Singer's Max/MSP-controlled pyrophone, a propane-powered flaming sound organ. (And, incidentally, that installation is making a repeat appearance this year.)

And what better activity when in the middle of the desert than tweaking knobs and producing strange electronic grooves? That's the idea behind improbable orchestra, an interactive table full o' knobs for collaborative soundmaking. Build one yourself: check out the copious design notes. Basic specs: the free Pure Data graphical multimedia development environment is running sounds, gutted Pentium PC with custom power supply, custom circuit board connecting the knobs and fiddly bits thorough a Parallax basic stamp board. (Lots more specs on their site, missing only details of the Pd patch.)

"But," says you, "I hate knobs. Give me lasers, man." Sure! You obviously want the interactive Aeolian laser harp, which suspends a series of laser beams through which you can walk to trigger sound. It's the creation of former NYU ITP faculty member Jen Lewin, now based in Colorado and doing interactive sculpture full-time. She has other fantastic projects like interactive butterflies. [blogged by Peter Kirn on Related.

Posted by jo at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2005

Fibreculture Journal

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New Media, Networks and New Pedagogies: Call for papers

It is easy to argue that much of the rhetoric attached to "new media" and the internet in relation to pedagogy has mistaken quantity for quality. It has been a conversation that has confused the qualitative changes that our new conceptions of media, knowledge, and networks afford with the quantitative changes beloved of those who confuse teaching and learning with instruction and consumption. These new qualities are the differences between the vector and commodity, blogs and books.

However, imagine if our universities had been invented now. What would pedagogy be? What form would teaching and learning take? What would count as knowledge? Expertise? What forms would this knowledge take?

Taking this as a departure this issue of the Fibreculture Journal invites those working in new media, internet studies, education, and cognate disciplines to discuss the strengths and celebrate the possibilities that new media and its networks affords teaching and learning. The emphasis in this issue is not on the criticism or description of existing models and paradigms but to invite the exploration and celebration of new possibilities, real or imagined. What new knowledge formations should there be? How would they be taught? How could they assessed (if at all)? What critical academic work, and in what forms, would our students be producing?

Papers are invited for the "New media, networks and new pedagogies" issue of the Fibreculture Journal, to be published in early 2006. This issue will be guest edited by Adrian Miles. There are guidelines for the format and submission of contributions at http://journal.fibreculture.org

Submissions are welcomed in any relevant format, including essay, hypertext, interactive time based media, projects, or imaginary annotated curricula.

Please send abstracts or enquiries to Guest Editor Adrian Miles adrian.miles[at]rmit.edu.au with "fibreEducation" as the subject header. Alternative material (eg interviews, curricula, interactive work, podcasts) are all able to be considered for publication and are welcomed.

Abstracts and proposals should no be no longer than 500 words and must outline the relevance of the key ideas, methodology and format.

Abstracts due: October 14, 2005
Responses to authors: November 14th 2005
Final work due: February 6, 2005

Fibreculture Journal has established itself as Australasia's leading forum for discussion of internet theory, culture, and research. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that explores the issues and ideas of concern and interest to both the Fibreculture network and wider social formations.

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

Artlink magazine

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Ecology: Everyone's Business: Invitation to Submit Ideas

Artlink Magazine: Art and environment, waste and obsolescence, climate change, global warming/wildfires, water/drought, air/pollution and earth/toxicity, now form a subject area for a distinct subgroup of artists around the world. Galleries, websites and many exhibitions are focusing on this work in various ways.

Attitudes are slowly shifting at government level and in the general populace towards a less mechanistic, more humanistic view of the world. Artists, traditionally identified as they are with alternative approaches to living, are now able to collaborate more credibly and successfully with many different sectors to make art on environmental themes.

These sectors include science, technology, farming, water resources, recycling industries, health etc. A little of this work is appearing in the mainstream culture of international biennales and triennials, often in moving image works. Other contexts include recurrent 'artists in nature' events where artists work with communities and in various habitats around the world.

Artists whose work is addressing problems of or solutions for the state of the world's ecology are invited to email us as soon as possible with details of their work. This work is not limited by any particular category or mode. We are looking for inventive, rigorous and richly layered ideas of all kinds. Work which reflects a sense of urgency about helping the world to shift gear towards human beings living in a more sustainable way are of great interest.

Other areas to be canvassed in this issue include the ecological footprint of an artist, and/or of the arts sector as a whole, and the state of eco-building and architecture today.

Authors who are interested in publishing are invited to put forward proposals for essays by 25 August but the sooner the better! (The text deadline for selected articles will be 30 September 2005.)

Author fees are AUD$250 per 1000 words.

Ecology: Everyone's Business will be launched in early December 2005.

Stephanie Britton
Executive Editor
artlinkmag[at]webmedia.com.au
www.artlink.com.au
tel (08) 8356 8511
363 Esplanade
Henley Beach
South Australia 5022
Artlink: the quarterly that links art & society

Posted by jo at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2005

Haque Design + Research:

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Haunt: Call For Participation

Haque Design + Research is collaborating with Professor Chris French, Goldsmiths College on Haunt. We are about to enter the testing phase of a project to synthesise the experience of a "haunted" space. We are now looking for people interested in participating in the experiment at a venue in North London. By appointment only: Dates: Weekdays, August 29 to mid-September (may be extended); Place: 1 minute walk from Finsbury Park tube station, London N4; Time: Any time between 10am and 6pm.

As a participant you would be asked individually to spend up to one hour in the specially constructed chamber. Participation may involve periods of exposure to infrasound and/or magnetic fields. You may experience mildly unusual sensations and will be asked to keep a record of these.

"Infrasound" is sound at frequencies below approx. 20Hz, which is generally too low for humans to perceive as sound. The magnetic fields will be generated by electromagnetic coils and will be similar to those generated naturally by the Earth. The levels used in the experiment will be at or below levels detected in the natural environment. These too will generally not be perceptible on a
conscious level and are well under ICNIRP guidelines for health and safety.

In some cases, participants will be exposed to neither phenomena, though these participants will not be informed of this until the end of the experiment. In these cases, participants will be given an opportunity to experience the space with all phenomena active, though the results will not be included in the dataset.

If you are interested in participating please let me know by emailing me at (event[at]haque.co.uk) with:

Your name:
Your availability: Day / Date / Time
Any family history of epilepsy?:

I will respond to confirm or suggest an alternative date/time and will include full address and directions for the experiment site.

If you choose to participate, please be aware that you may withdraw from the study at any time and for any reason without being required to provide an explanation. Data will be held securely and in the strictest of confidence. In the final report the results will be presented in such a way that the individual identity of all participants will remain strictly anonymous.

Thank you!

Usman Haque

Posted by jo at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)

Radio_Copernicus@Warsaw_Autumn 2005

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World Premiere + Open Studio

Radio_Copernicus@Warsaw_Autumn 2005: After the prelude in Stralsund Radio_Copernicus - the German-Polish Artist Radio- is broadcasting for another month in co-operation with Warsaw Autumn 2005, the 48th International Festival of Contemporary Music: September 01-30, 2005 live-stream; September 16-30, 2005 on air: Warsaw FM 92.4.

With its ambitious programme Radio_Copernicus creates a broad discourse and context regarding Warsaw Autumn 2005 - to focus on innovative media concepts and art and culture of the electronic age. Besides regular reports and discussions on Warsaw Autumn the broadcast of Radio_Copernicus-commissioned works is a highlight of the programme: six up-and-coming artists are invited for the world premiere of their productions - Duo Merzouga, Anne Koenig, Michal Jacaszek, Emiter/Aszyn, Group Two, Underwater Agents. Almost daily from 10 pm to midnight Radio_Copernicus - broadcast-studio in Warsaw will be committed completely - as an "Open Studio" - to the artists and their visions of radio.

Further on-air stations of Radio_Copernicus:

Dis_Positionen, Academy of the Arts, Berlin - November 2005
International Radio Art Symposium, Wroclaw - December 2005
Radio_Copernicus is broadcasting permanently and world-wide as an
Internet-live-steam until 31 December 2005 on www.radio copernicus.org.
Further information can be found in Polish, German and English here:

Studio Radio_Copernicus
University of the Arts Berlin
Postfach 120544
D-10595 Berlin
Tel. +49 30 3185-2482
Fax +49 30 3185-2530
Email info@radio-copernicus.org
http://www.radio-copernicus.org

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

August 23, 2005

Trans Siberian Radio

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Mobile Lab for On-Air Experimentation

Trans-Siberian Radio is a low-power FM station that will operate on the train from Moscow to Beijing via Novosibirsk, during the conference Capturing the Moving Mind: Management and Movement in the Age of Temporary War, September 11–20.

The station will be a mobile lab for on-air experimentation, featuring music and ideas created collaboratively by passengers on the train and accessible to everyone along the Trans-Siberian route. As curator Natilee Harren writes, the ever-moving symbol of the train fits the conference's theme: "The spirit of the conference is to cross fixed boundaries and to create an environment that is open to the 'contaminating influences' of the communities through which the train will pass. In fact, the point of having the conference on a train is to escape any restrictions relating to a particular time or place." Visit the project's site when the train is rolling to contribute with audio works or hear—and manipulate—audio clips from the ride. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not]

Related: "Last year, artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla used micro-radio transmitters to create a re-volt. That is, by helping community members build nearly 500 micro-radio transmitters, they initiated a process by which power was redirected from the corporations who most profit from the publicly owned airwaves to individuals who can express a diversity of commercial-free viewpoints. Their project Radio Re-volt , created during a residency at the Walker Art Center, culminated in October with a narrowcast the length of University Avenue in Minneapolis. More than 50 micro-radio stations aired from homes and businesses along the route for the benefit of their neighbors or anyone driving the avenue with their radio on." ...More on Radio Re-volt at WiredNews. Click here to read an interview I did with Allora and Calzadilla last spring. [posted by Paul Schmelzer on Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas]

Posted by jo at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2005

KISSS

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KISSS Project launch and Press Conference

August 25, 2005, 6-8pm
The Auditorium
Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street
London, E1 7QX
+44 (0)20 7522 7888
Admission Free

This KISSS: Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance and Suppression event will feature a series of performances, video screenings and presentations from Coco Fusco, Anne Bean, Deej Fabyc, Joanna Callaghan, Paula Roush, Raresonick, Camilla Brueton, Season Butler and Maxine Hall. Due to high demand bookings are advisable: kisss[at]elastic.org.uk. Related.

Posted by jo at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)

Asterisk*: Artists Residencies

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The Centre for the Study and Development of Narrative

Asterisk*, (the centre for the study and development of narrative) is based at Shandy Hall in North Yorkshire where Laurence Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is a concept developed by The Laurence Sterne Trust that aims to use the spirit and intellectual resources of Shandy Hall to inspire artists and the public to explore and experiment with nonlinearity, and to examine and develop the convergences between art forms within our contemporary culture. It aims also to illustrate how new technology can, in the hands of artists, be used to deliver entirely new artistic opportunities. In the autumn and winter of 2005, Asterisk* will offer two residencies of three weeks duration each. These will provide exceptional opportunities for artists keen to experiment with current practice in diverse media, specifically exercises in non-linearity, with an emphasis on interactivity and audience participation. Intersections with technology are encouraged and technology specialists will be available for collaboration. Deadline Friday 26 August.

Posted by jo at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2005

FIVE HOLES:

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A Matter of Taste

FIVE HOLES--curated by Paul Couillard--is an ongoing series examining the significance of the body and the senses. Fado invites artists to submit proposals for a matter of taste, the final installment in the FIVE HOLES series. We seek performance art works, including conceptual, site-responsive and installation-based performances, that deal with the sense of taste. Approximately seven proposals will be chosen to create a simultaneous ensemble of events to be held in the summer of 2006 in Toronto. The focus will be on Canadian artists (i.e. at least four of the projects will feature Canadian artists).

Taste is perhaps the most 'personal' of all the senses. It is both primal -- providing the impulses that drive consumption -- and individualized: one person's desire is another's poison. While the word 'taste' is often associated with the concept of aesthetic discernment, a matter of taste places its emphasis on a specific, visceral definition of taste: the perception of flavour (and perhaps texture) that takes place inside our mouths. This series will focus on projects that explore the implications of a sense that operates through the placement of foreign material inside one's body.

A matter of taste is not concerned with the familiar social terrain of banquets and dinner parties so much as the links between physical sensation, unconscious/conscious drives, and our mouths as a point of contact with the external world. How does one orchestrate a performance for another's mouth? What are the dynamics that seduce, persuade or convince others to put things in their mouths? What intentions are bound up in the impulse to stimulate one's taste buds? What does our sense of taste reveal about our internal desires and external projections?

TORONTO.... Fado Performance Inc. announces two calls for proposals for performance art projects.Fado is a non-profit artist-run centre for performance art based in Toronto, Canada. Fado present an ongoing international programme of conceptual and site-specific performance art, and pays professional fees to the artists it presents.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Deadline for submissions: August 26, 2005
Please include:
*1-page proposal
*c.v.
*documentation of previous work
[NTSC video in VHS, mini-DV or DVD format; Mac-readable CDs; URLs; and/or slides]
*e-mail submissions will not be accepted except with prior approval (no large digital files!)
*press material optional
*only submissions with self-addressed stamped envelope or funds to cover shipping and packaging costs will be returned

Send proposals to:
Fado
"FIVE HOLES proposal"
273B Carlton St.
Toronto, ON
Canada M5A 2L4

info: http://www.performanceart.ca or email info@performanceart.ca

Posted by jo at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

What Comes After: Cities, Art & Recovery

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Remembering and Rebuilding after Tragedy

What Comes After: Cities, Art and Recovery: An International Summit September 8-11, 2005. Registration begins August 22. Thirty cultural leaders from 19 countries will come together for three days of roundtable discussions, performances, films, and art installations in all media. Cities, Art and Recovery will consider how people remember and rebuild after tragedy and how the arts have been crucial to such recovery.

Including: The New York Premiere of Diamanda Galás: Defixiones, Orders from the Dead and Political Cabaret with Danny Hoch, Rennie Harris, Carl Hancock Rux and Suheir Hammad.

Exhibitions:

After Effects After the World Trade Center residency, LMCC artists look at what comes next.A Knock at the Door... Is it art or is it dangerous? Homeland Security Garden transforms the Winter Garden into a participatory sculpture that reveals our notions of safety and freedom. book A sketchbook travels between Brooklyn and Belfast.Greetings Without Flowers Large scale photo-portraits taken in Iraq.Chat the Planet Young people in NYC and around the world connect by video chat in real time conversation.

Panelists:

Ammiel Alcalay, USA
Sultan Barakat, UK
Elazar Barkan, USA
Gillian Caldwell, USA
Clifford Chanin, USA
Craig Dykers, Norway/USA
Horst Hoheisel, Germany
Vannak Huy, Cambodia
Suada Kapic, Bosnia
Avila Kilmurray, UK
Robert Kluyver, Afghanistan
Duma Kumalo, South Africa
Gerald McMaster, Canada
Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Bosnia/USA
Ana Miljanic, Serbia & Montenegro
Dijana Milosevic, Serbia & Montenegro
Vasuki Nesiah, Sri Lanka/USA
Brigitte Oleschinski, Germany
Maysoon Pachachi, Iraq/UK
Leo Rubinfien, USA
Biljana Srbljanovic, Serbia & Montenegro
Jad Tabet, France/Lebanon
Lyonel Trouillot, Haiti
Patricia Tappata de Valdez, Argentina
Clive van den Berg, South Africa
Camilo Jose Vergara, Chile/USA
Eyal Weizman, Tel Aviv/London
Lebbeus Woods, USA
James Young, USA

Posted by jo at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2005

TECHSTYLE NEWS: Issue #52 - August 15, 2005

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Next Generation Mobile Technology

Techstyle News is a free monthly newsletter providing summaries and commentaries on stories related to the next generation of mobile technology and style, produced by Thinking Materials.

In this issue: (1) Hardwear News: Motorola and Oakley announce cellphone sunglasses; Texas Instruments launches mobile single-chip solution; MP3 sunglasses from Global American Technologies; Digital locket from Beatsounds; Digital picture pendant from Spectare; (2) Softwear News: IBM software lets you carry your PC around your neck; and (3) Events: Mobicom 2005 in Cologne; Ubicomp 2005 in Tokyo; Wearable Futures in Newport.

HARDWEAR NEWS

MOTOROLA AND OAKLEY ANNOUNCE CELLPHONE SUNGLASSES

Motorola and Oakley has announced the expected availability of RAZRWIRE Bluetooth eyewear in early August. The Bluetooth module is designed to complement the overall look of the sunglasses, creating truly wearable technology. The controls include two volume buttons and a single button used to handle incoming and outgoing calls. RAZRWIRE allows you to carry on phone conversations while up to 30 feet away from your compatible Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Bluetooth Sniff Mode technology increases the battery life of RAZRWIRE, offering continuous talk time of more than five hours and standby time of up to approximately 100 hours.

http://oakley.com/about/razrwire/

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS LAUNCHES MOBILE SINGLE-CHIP SOLUTION

TEXAS Instruments has announced the launch of its single-chip mobile solution. Manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson are expected to launch handsets based on the solution in nine months. Mr Tom Engibous, Chairman, said: "The single-chip solution will bring down power and space consumption by 50 per cent and cut costs by 30 per cent". With this, he said, there is the possibility of $20 cell phones on the horizon. The small chips can be easily integrated, bringing phone technology to all kinds of products.

http://news.com.com/Is+a+20+cell+phone+on+the+horizon/2100-1039_3-5823239.html

MP3 SUNGLASSES FROM GLOBAL AMERICAN TECHNOLOGIES

Global American Technologies have launched the Fio MP3 sunglasses. The retail prices are $200 to $400 at storage capacities of 128MB up to 1GB, include 3D stereo sound earbuds in each arm, support MP3/WMA/ADCPM and have a reported battery life of 8.5 hours. Transfer is via USB 2.0 to either a Mac or a PC, with an integrated microphone providing digital voice recording capabilities.

http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=5284&cat_id=505

DIGITAL LOCKET FROM BEATSOUNDS

The Digital Locket EMP-Z II Plus from BeatSounds tries to be more than just a wearable MP3 player. This tiny music player has a small, oval color screen that can display a photo. The Digital Locket measures 2 inches by 1.8 inches, weighs 0.9 ounce and has a battery that lasts up to 16 hours before it needs recharging. It can play digital audio files in the MP3 or Windows Media audio formats and comes with its own software for transferring photos and music from a computer over a USB connection. An FM radio tuner and a voice recorder are also tucked inside. Prices start at $80 for the 256-megabyte version and go up to $150 for the model with a full gigabyte of memory.

http://beatsounds.com/Pb/index.asp?CurrentCatID=C1035889862578133

DIGITAL PICTURE PENDANT FROM SPECTARE

The Pixi Digital Picture Pendant is a necklace with a 1-inch, 96 x 64 pixel LCD screen and enough memory (512 KB) for storing up to 54 extremely low-res digital photos. For viewing up to 2 hours in slideshow mode, or longer in manual mode. The pendant is USB 1.1 compatible and compatible with photos in JPEG format.

http://chipchick.blogs.com/chip_chick/2005/08/pixi_digital_pi.html

SOFTWEAR NEWS

IBM SOFTWARE LETS YOU CARRY YOUR PC AROUND YOUR NECK

Researchers at IBM are testing software that would let you tote your home or office desktop around on an iPod or similar portable/wearable device so that you could run it on any PC. The virtual computer user environment setup is called SoulPad, and consumers install it from a x86-based home or office PC. SoulPad uses a USB or FireWire connection to access the network cards for connecting to the Internet, the computer's display, the keyboard, the main processor and the memory, but not the hard disk. After the person disconnects the system, SoulPad saves all work to the device, including browser cookies or other digital signatures that a PC keeps in its short-term memory.

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/SoulPad/soulpad.html

EVENTS

MOBICOM 2005 IN COLOGNE

ACM MobiCom 2005 is dedicated to addressing the challenges in the areas of mobile computing and networking. This single-track conference serves as an international forum addressing networks, systems, algorithms, and applications that support the symbiosis of mobile computers and wireless networks. It will be held August 28 through September 2 in Cologne. Speakers include representatives from Bell Labs, Daimler Chrysler, NTT DoCoMo and MIT. Particularly interesting could be the panel on Wearable computing with, among others, Steve Mann.

http://www.sigmobile.org/mobicom/2005/

UBICOMP 2005 IN TOKYO

UbiComp 2005, the Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, will be held September 11-14, 2005 in Tokyo. The conference provides a forum in which to present research results in all areas relating to the design, implementation, application and evaluation of ubiquitous computing technologies. Papers include submissions from Intel, NTT, Nokia, Microsoft and IBM. There are also thirteen workshops to participate in.

http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2005/

WEARABLE FUTURES IN NEWPORT

Wearable Futures is an interdisciplinary conference, to be held in Newport on 14-16 September, which aims to bring together practitioners, inventors, and theorists in the field of soft technology and wearables including those concerned with fashion, textiles, sportswear, interaction design, media and live arts, medical textiles, wellness, perception and psychology, IPR, polymer science, nanotechnology, military, and other relevant research strands. We will be examining how some broad generic questions will be explored in relation to wearable technology including but not restricted to: aesthetics and design, function and durability versus market forces; the desires, needs and realities of wearable technologies; technology and culture; simplicity and sustainability; design for wearability.

http://artschool.newport.ac.uk/smartclothes/wearablefutures.html

Posted by jo at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES

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Exploring Digital Technologies in the Context of Public/Shared Spheres

MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES is Cardiff’s inaugural festival of creative technology - a three-day programme of events being held across the capital. The festival is being developed between Chapter and Bloc (Creative Technology Wales) and includes a two-day conference, new commissions, residencies, screenings, and artists’ projects in public sites across the city.

Artists are increasingly engaged with or inspired by digital technology - exploring consumer and communication technologies such as the worldwide web, mobile networks, file sharing, and computer gaming. Because digital technology is a participatory medium with global reach, artists tend to explore digital technology in the context of public and shared spheres. Often digital art is situated somewhere between public art and street culture where the technology itself is used as a ‘site’ for the production and presentation of art works. Although digital technology is often claimed to go beyond physical limitations, engagement with technology is always embedded in real spaces, whether this is explored from a user or network perspective.

Artists include: Blast Theory, Anri Sala, Grennan & Sperandio, TJ Wilcox, Jen Southern & Jen Hamilton, Scanner, Sarah Morris, Michelle Teran, Eddo Stern, Stefhan Caddick, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, Tim Davies, Rosalind Nashashibi, Tenant Spin, Andy Fung, Paddy Jolley, Mircea Cantor, STAR Radio, Valérie Jouve, Chris Evans, Mike Mills, Artstation, and many more.

Conference day 1: 28 October - Locative media and emplacement Speakers include: Prof Michael Corris, Head of Art & Photography, University of Newport; Claire Doherty, Director, Situations; Nina Pope, artist; Heath Bunting, artist; Giles Lane, Proboscis; Steve Benford, Professor in Collaborative Computing, University of Nottingham; Dr Sarah Green, Social Anthropologist, University of Manchester; Jen Southern & Jen Hamilton, artists.

Conference day 2: 29 October - Gaming Speakers include: Ju Row Farr, artist, Blast Theory; Stuart Nolan, researcher; Christopher Sperandio, artist; Eddo Stern, artist; David Surman, Lecturer in Computer Games Design, University of Newport; Alex Mayhew & Emma Westecott, Games Producers & Directors.

Conference Prices: £50 per day / £90 weekend ticket – organisations; £30 / £50 – early bird booking before 7 October £20 per day / £30 weekend ticket – individuals /concs; £15 / £25 – early bird booking before 7 Oct Party, The Point, Cardiff, 29 Oct, 8pm: Special Guests Scanner, Michelle Teran, Proober Glombat, Cymbient, Christopher Rees DJs.

The site will feature live streaming, artists’ projects, downloads, full biographies and images, conference booking and travel details, press section and the chance to receive regular updates on festival activity.

For further information about the programme and conference please contact: Gordon Dalton, Festival Coordinator: gordon@mayyouliveininterestingtimes.org 44 (0) 29 2031 1059 / 0779 234 1654

The festival is a Cardiff 2005 event and is presented with the support of: Cardiff County Council, Millennium Commission, the Arts Council of Wales, WDA, Cywaith Cymru . Artworks Wales, BBCi, Creative Mwldan, Millennium Stadium, Mute, G39, The Big Sleep, Elfen, Zenith Media, UWN, National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Sequence, Coolpants, Ping Wales, Oriel Mostyn and @Wales. http://www.bloc.org.uk/cgi-bin/showbig.cgi?id=55

Posted by jo at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

Do we have an Image Problem?

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Performance and Media Art caught between Art History and Visual Culture Studies

The first Media Art Conference in Osnabrück will take place from the 15th to the 17th of May 2006 as a three-day specialist symposium at the University of Osnabrück and is sponsored by Department of Kultur- und Geowissenschaften. It will be held immediately following the 19th European Media Art Festival (EMAF, 10th to 14th May 2006), one of the largest media art events in Europe. This conference in will direct attention to timely questions confronting art history, in particular the multimedia aspects concerning the production, critical appraisal and dissemination of performance and media art. Thus the following aspects will be addressed:

1. art history’s repositioning itself in relation to Visual Culture Studies, Media Studies and Cultural history; 2. the development of a modus operandi which takes into consideration a wide range of methodologies and the interpenetration of different genres; 3. the description and analysis of media art in the face of the instable status of the work concept in Media Art, and art in general.

The key issues to be addressed by the first Media Art Conference in Osnabrück can be summarised by the following question:

Given the increasingly complex demands which the wide range of visual, media, critical, performance, cultural and gender studies exert on the teaching and research environment, how can the history of art maintain its ability to deal aptly with representations, new media and art and simultaneously incorporate interdisciplinary strategies?

By focussing on time- and action-oriented art forms, the traditional discourse will be broadened to include the following questions: Can an (inter)active beholder play an integral role in the making of a work of art without jeopardising its intrinsic artistic value or reducing the “autonomy of the work of art” to a mere attribute? Where exactly do performance and media art fit into the already inflated body of terminology for denoting images?

A glance at the large number of university graduates dealing with art and visual culture (Berlin, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Basel) documents the current popularity of the image-discourse. Similarly, the flood of specialist literature in recent years as well as related conferences (e.g. Art Historians Day, Bonn 2005) confirm this trend.

If we take a look at the origins of performance and media art in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent development of the iconic/pictorial turns, the suspicion arises that recent efforts to expand the boundaries of art history to absorb current visual culture occurred in part to circumvent the challenges posed by these new art forms.

By investigating art forms which defy traditional definition while exploring the definitions themselves, this conference will attempt to graft these two ambivalent discourses. At the same time it will lay the foundations for a reinterpretation of the relevant academic fields. An impressive series of arguments presented by artists, art historians and experts in media studies address the need to conjoin these conflicting fields of study.

Call for Papers

The conference will focus on the growing affinity between art forms produced, experienced and distributed by the media on the one hand and the highly debated iconic or pictorial turn on the other. One of the central issues will be to question whether the recently developed aesthetic terminology can sufficiently deal with the time- and action-oriented art forms of performance and media art.

In addition to a number of distinguished experts invited to present papers, the speakers will include young scholars as well as contributors selected on the basis of the abstracts they submitted to this call for papers.

Enclosed you will find further information concerning the background and objectives of the conference. Please do not hesitate to ask us questions at any time.

We would be very pleased to include you among the speakers or authors for our planned publication.

Topics for Talks and Articles

1. Performance and media art in the context of the contemporary debate between art history and Visual Culture Studies and where art history is positioning itself in relation to Visual Culture Studies, Media Studies and Cultural History.

2. Media art, art history’s cultural orientation and the scientific modus operandi given the wide range of methodologies and the overlap of genres.

3. Examples of art historical and media studies descriptions and analysis of performance and media art.

In addition to a description of content, the abstracts for papers (c. 400 words) should clearly demonstrate both their relevance to the theme of the conference and their originality.

A publication of the conference findings is planned. All contributions will be considered.

Please submit your abstracts by 30 October 2005 to the EMAC office:
Media Art Conference Osnabrück
http://www.media-art-conference.com
Universität Osnabrück
Fachbereich Kultur- und Geowissenschaften
Kunstgeschichte
Katharinenstraße 5
49069 Osnabrück
Germany

Junior professor Dr. Slavko Kacunko (Organisation)
skacunko@uni-osnabrueck.de
Priv. Doz. Dr. Habil. Dawn Leach (Organisation)
dr.leach@kunstakademie-duesseldorf.de
Björn Brüggemann (Büro)
bjbruegg@uni-osnabrueck.de
Phone: +49 (0)541 969-6041
Fax: +49 (0)541 969-4103

Posted by jo at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

From database and place to bio-tech and bots:

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Relationality vs Autonomy in Media Art

Two predominant theories have emerged in the discourse surrounding new media: autonomy and relationality. On the outset, these notions seem to contradict each other. The theory of autonomy focuses attention on the discrete elements involved: individual pieces of information, individual artists or viewers, and separate components/artworks. Relationality puts the emphasis on interconnectedness: data, artwork, artists, and viewers are inextricably intertwined, without a single predominant object or viewpoint and no fixed, absolute form.

While these theories may seem to be contradictory, contemporary media art relies on a notion of autonomy and, yet, suggests that no information is autonomous—while discrete variables exist, nothing can be separate and complete in itself. The same is true of the relationships between viewers, artists, and their work constructed in the context of media art. While the topics of autonomy and relationality have long lineages in art history, this panel will discuss their contemporary status from the perspective of media art practice and theory.

Papers can address a range of topics including but not limited to: hacktivism and parasitic media, appropriation/sampling/remixing, open source theory and culture, locational media, biotechnology, video games, narrative, net art, software art, networked performance, video, sound art, and VJ/DJ practice. Consideration will be given to more "traditional" academic papers as well as artist talks that introduce artistic work and practices that contribute to the discussion of autonomy and relationality in media art.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The New Media Caucus panel at the College Art Association's 93rd annual conference.
DATES: February 22-25, 2006, Boston, Massachusetts
DEADLINE: Proposals must be e-mailed to
marisaso(at)gmail(dot)com by Friday, September 16, 2005.

NOTE: Panelists are NOT REQUIRED to be members of CAA.

Panel Chair: Marisa S. Olson, Artist; Editor and Curator at Large, Rhizome.org; UC Berkeley, Rhetoric/Film Studies.

PROPOSAL FORMAT:
* Proposed paper title
* An abstract of 300-500 words
* A note on presentational format: will you present a "traditional" paper, will you emphasize visual materials, and what—if any—audio/visual equipment will you need? (Please minimize.)
* Confirmation of ability to attend the CAA conference, Feb 22-25, 2006, in Boston
* A current CV with full contact information

Posted by jo at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

The Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture

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Evolved from Nothingness

September - December 2005, Utrecht, generated by socialfiction.org, hosted by impakt.nl: Hidden in the former utility area of a vacant 13 floor office in Utrecht, the Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture will evolve an empty room from nothingness into unknown states of technological enhancement. Unlike the alphabet that always knows where it is going, this workshop does not.

A Room of a Crystalpunk's Own: The Headmap manifesto, the Coleridgian masterpiece of independent software development for spaces and places, observed: "Every room has an accessible history, every place has emotional attachments you can open and save". New technologies can associate places with layers of free and editable content from which the past can be re-enacted, like a murder at the scene of the crime is re-enacted, to re-experience and stir vanished memories.

Little minds living in software can eat any piece of data, extract meaning from it and email it to you when the right criteria has been met. Our Crystalpunk Manifesto famously drew connections between disconnected fields of knowledge and explained to the world our intention to program minds and matter simultaneously. This workshop marshals these manifestos of inspiration into real practises with scars of happy absurdi(r)ty engraved on their souls.

Lexicon

Crystal: The inorganic strategies of the crystalpunk are both chemically and metaphorically informed by the lessons learned from the transformation from moleculline mayhem into crystalline order. Crystal growth is adaptive, particle-noise disrupts tessellation but the crystal works its way around it softly. Roomology as crystallography? The analogy with crystals finding form permeates every aspect of this workshop: the room is filled with latent possibility, the workshop seeds these powers laying dormant, what remains after 4 months is outward form pushed and moulded and beaten into shape by events and persons working inside the room with the material produced by their own every moves inside the room.

Punk: Despite appearances this workshop is not technology-driven but propelled forward by social interaction and a healthy disrespect for specialists of all kinds. Punk is not a style or a genre but a principle of self-education: taking up a technology (an electric guitar, a sensor, a programming language) ignoring all good practise, refusing to draw a line between student and teacher. Punks don't spend years practising: they immediately start a band with the intention to change the world.

Workshop: Knowledge is generated collectively, collectives generate their own special flavours of knowledge. This workshop creates a social situation by providing resources to those persons unknown curious enough to come round and actively encourage those people whose past work we like. Different interests, backgrounds, talents, skills will mix, seek alliances and run amok; rapidly the room enhanced starts to generate data, ad-hoc collaborations find challenging ways for this data to be interpreted. Within the workshop countless micro-workshops will focus on specific topics, introducing high-level ideas and technologies to the uninitiated or to keep everybody up to date on the workshop's output, helping each other to make sense of the magic properties of technology. This workshop is a sustained stream of consciousness you can wash your mind/sharpen your capabilities/empower your potential with.

Soft + Architecture: Buildings learn, rooms have memories, design does not need its designers, the language of time (piecemeal extensions, reinventions, rephrasings, accidents, entropy) rewrites their script. A room, by implication, refuses to be belittled into the function of a radio, it wants to be a broadcaster too. Continuous sending information to the world, a room can have a virtual identity and under this guise live a secret life. For instance: a crystalpunk moves his leg for comfort, a crystalpunk shakes her head in disagreement, sensors pick up on it, triggering a wide range of reactions known and unknown, local and faraway. To paraphrase Ezra Pound: in soft architecture each gesture creates content that has form as water poured into a vase has form. Content is recyclable, routed multiple times, finally ending up back where it initiated: causing a sound closing a door illuminating a cryxal on-screen. A crystalpunk walks through the room and, like in a crappy disco, the floor lights up underneath her feet, too bad he is not feeling very much like a dancing queen tonight. Soft Architecture is a home grown architectonic freak show: what the Elephant Man is to the Athletic Body, the Crystalpunk Room will be to the Smart House.

Now that we have found data, what are we going to do with it?!

Technologists have for decades been playing with the idea of the supposedly smart home: the entire house adaptive and responsive and proactive, providing conveniences like that resurfacing dystopian killer-app: the refrigerator that makes sure the milk never runs out. No matter how device-centric and profit-inspired these efforts are, and as such divided by a royal mile from the super-serendipity of Crystalpunk roomology, this workshop is moving in the same problem-space of obvious possibilities and unresolved puzzles of making sense from the surplus of automated data production. Everybody can generate a source of water by opening the tap, few are given to come up with conceptually stimulating ways to process the output.

On Being Soft

Knowledge, so it is said, is the agitator of economic growth, a good education the only insurance against unemployment. Self-education in this respect is a scrapyard challenge: without any experience you can master the use of a jet engine, but when announcing yourself at the job centre it will be back to washing plates or carrying big things if you know what I mean. But self-education is part not of the world of schools and jobs and financial solvency and mortgage opportunities, but an involuntary by-product of the personal creative urge of the kind that start with one innocent question: "what if....?".

What if I make a lot of noise?

From the small but liberating gesture of doing so, its miracle usually diminishing quickly, you may be inspired to find a way forward in a process easily labelled crystalline. Learning to control the machine that makes the noise proposes new questions that need further understanding to be answered. In a different context Sherry Turkle suggested that self-education is rooted in the curiosity in finding out if, by playing around with it, you can make things work for the sake of it. This way to deal with problems, she says, is at odds with the goal oriented alphabetic way of making things as taught at schools. This 'soft mastery' over problems relies in a very real sense on the fact that answers will come to you. A 'lazy' and very unprofessional approach, as you can never explain what you will do beforehand. The Crystalpunk Workshop for Soft Architecture is really entirely very splendidly softly unprofessional indeed.

On Participating

The Crystalpunk Workshop of Soft Architecture workshop lives in 2 distinct spheres: in the corner of a gigantic building in a tiny Dutch city and online where as much realtime roomness is broadcasted as possible. Participation is local, you are invited to bring your laptop and start making noise, to join a workshop or to come listen to a presentation. To those faraway we must mention that, apart from this workshop, there are very few reasons for visiting Utrecht and the more we admire you for doing so. From the deepest Africa you are encouraged to turn yourself into a soft architectonic bootlegger: to render on-line data into representations formal and fluid, in monotones or RGB, spatially exact or rolling like a wave. Or perhaps you are more philosophically inclined and prone to profound reflections, or perhaps breaking things only to rebuild them is the tea you drink: the social infrastructure will be in place to work and think along wherever you are.

We do not care if participants don't know anything useful, and likewise we will welcome you with as much enthusiasm if you do know something useful. We are not like an alphabet but we are neither a cheap bar: we do ask from our participants the desire to unwind their own what-if soft scenarios. If you only want free internet access Beelzebub will bite your head off and create content that has form as a main artery needing urgent medial attention has form.

For a workshop that wants to shake the language and experience of roomness, 4 months is little time, but like with every education, it is never finished A fact learned can reveal itself useful only years after. Come as you are: you can be crystalpunk too.

crystalpunk |at| socialfiction |dot| org

Posted by jo at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2005

KISSS

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The Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance and Suppression

Are you seeing what we're thinking? The Kinship International Strategy on Surveillance and Suppression | KISSS is a series of performance events and interventions addressing surveillance and suppression.

KISSS is happening at an important moment. In the current political and social climate, surveillance has become an accepted and unquestionable part of everyday public life. Suppression of behaviour, information and desire occurs both privately and publicly. What is the relationship between surveillance and suppression? Consequence or reason for? How do issues of surveillance and suppression affect the work we make as artists and the way in which we work? How can we as artists, living in different countries, engaging in multi-platform possibilities and utlising varied perspectives, respond to these issues in a cohesive and powerful way?

A KISSS Policy Briefing will be held on August 19, 2005 at Elastic residence from 1500 to 1800.

This is an opportunity to meet the team, see work in progress and find out more about KISSS and how you can contribute and be involved. If you are interested in proposing a performance or contributing work, please come prepared to discuss it with a member of the team.

For further information on some of the strategies identified for KISSS visit:
http://www.elastic.org.uk/KISSS/strategies

KISSS Policy Briefing will take place at: Elastic residence, 22 Parfett St, Whitechapel / Aldgate East t: 0207 247 1375 e: kisss[at]elastic.org.uk

KISSS is supported by the University of Wales, Resonance 104.4FM and Concial Gallery, Australia.

Posted by jo at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ISEA2006

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TRANSVERGENCE

This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 TRANSVERGENCE Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for exhibition of interactive art work and projects reflecting on the thematic of the transvergence.

Creative interplay of disciplines to catalyze artistic, scientific, and social innovation is evidenced by decades of multi-/ pluri-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary discourse and practice. Emphasis on the dynamics subtending this interplay has led to the notion of transvergence, a term coined by Marcos Novak which overrides discipline-bound issues and demands, and serves as the focus of the present call. Proposals are sought that address but are not limited to themes outlined below, challenging the boundaries of disciplines and conventional (art) institutional discourse, and indicating creative strategies for overriding them. Proposals may consist of art projects, residencies, workshops, standalone conference papers, or group conference sessions.

"While convergence and divergence are allied to epistemologies of continuity, transvergence is epistemologically closer to logics of incompleteness, to complexity, chaos, and catastrophe theories, dynamical systems, emergence, and artificial life. While convergence and divergence contain the hidden assumption that the true, in either a cultural or an objective sense, is a continuous land-mass, transvergence recognizes true statements to be islands in an alien archipelago, sometimes only accessible by leaps, flights, and voyages on vessels of artifice.

"Central to transvergence is speciation. We want to draw proposals that constitute new species of effort and expression and that both enact and reflect on our construction of new species of cultural reality -- not by being merely novel mutations within known areas, but by boldly challenging known areas and yet being potentially viable to the point of becoming autonomous entities -- not dancing about architecture or architecture about dancing, for instance, but dancing architecture... or, better still, something else, as yet alien and unnamable, but alive and growing."--Marcos Novak

ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS OFFERINGSETTINGS FOR TRANSVERGENCE

Transvergence is conditioned by exodus and invention. New idioms of expression do not happen in isolation. Although creativity is a resource that works best when shared, there is no clear form of revenue or infrastructure for the practices of collaboration that characterize transvergence. Collaboration in this context does not arise from democratically disseminated, proportionally allocated property, but from the permanent re-appropriation of shared resources, and resultant re-territorialization of production, creation and artefacts. The models of the think-tank, media lab and research centre have shown their limits since the 80s and 90s, as have tactical media activism tied to the logic of events, and NGOs facing the donor system's arduous accountability requirements; university research is often encumbered by best-practice driven managerial culture, and "creative industries" clusters are subject to economies of scale and uneven divisions of labour. As a technics of expression immanent to media of communication, transvergence requires settings that instantiate structures of possibility. Such settings might derive from models offered by ecologies, fields and membranes, and from the emergent institutional forms of organized networks, whose constant configuring of relations between actors, information, practices, interests and socio-technical systems corresponds to the logic of transvergence.

ISEA seeks new visions of organizational and participatory models as structures of possibility for transvergent practice.

TRANSVERGENT ETHICS AND REDEFINTIONS OF ART

Institutions which purportedly back new art practices are not always the bravest when it comes to work which challenges basic assumptions about what art is, what the artist is, what the relationship between artwork and audience might be, and what the outcome of an artwork might be. Counter intuitively, business corporations can be much quicker to support radically new ways for artist, artwork and audience to speak to each other: every time a viewer/player engages with an interactive creation, a kind of commerce occurs - a series of transactions, a litany of offers and purchases. Similarly, organizations devoted to healthcare, social well-being and political activism may more readily recognize exchanges that privilege the contingent yet compelling "we", and the urgency of the encounter. Art and cultural institutions remain reluctant to take on these new forms because they destabilize old views of the artist as a person making a proposition about the world and of the audience as consumer/ interpreter of this proposition, whereas transvergent work instates audiences as key f/actors in communication processes. This implies a shift in – but not necessary the demise of - the artist's role, and a change in the nature of artworks, formulated as public experiments raising questions as much to do with ethics, as with aesthetics and poetics.

ISEA encourages proposals querying the role and relevance of art in public arenas that are being redefined by interactive, inclusive ambitions and tools.

BIO-TECH-BIOINFO-BIOART-ECOART

Over the past 20 years, biotechnology has revolutionized the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, and the fields of animal and human medicine. Biotechnology implementations direct areas such as food production and consumption, global trade agreements, human and animal reproduction, environmental concerns as well as biosecurity and biodefense. The Human Genome Project and stem cell research have stimulated the merging of computational research with areas of the life sciences. Disciplines such as bioinformatics and ecoinformatics currently enjoy broad public attention and funding. Although artists have long been engaged with depictions of "nature", BioArt, which includes the use of biological matters as part of artistic production and context creation, and EcoArt, where artists attempt to influence the ecologies in which we live, are relatively young areas demanding new exploratory and creative strategies.

ISEA is interested in projects engaging with the materials and broader ecology of life sciences, rather than simply their symbolic representation.

TECHNOZOOSEMIOTICS AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PLATFORM & PLAYGROUND

Technozoosemiotics is the study of signs elaborated by all natural or artificial living species to communicate in intra- or extra-specific ways (zoe = life). Humans and their more-or-less intelligent artefacts ignore the quality and singularity of information elaborated and emitted through the myriad channels and networks which traverse terrestrial, celestial, marine and intergalactic spaces. As art forms migrate from institutional sanctuaries to other areas of experience – the everyday, public, intimate/private, the biosphere, the universe – they must tune to the diverse communications that animate the technozoosphere. This means inventing interfaces that favour interactions of like and unlike kinds of intelligence, and emergence of new species of conversational agents. It means creating epistemological platforms and playgrounds for the transduction and translation of codes that open up novel ways of thinking and domains of knowledge.

ISEA is soliciting art that extends beyond human-centred design, to questions of living systems and new species of cultural reality.

TRANSVERGENCE CALL COMMITTEE:

Chair, Sally Jane Norman, Louis Bec, Andy Cameron, Beatriz da Costa, Bojana Kunst, Maja Kuzmanovic, Anne Nigten, Marcos Novak, Ned Rossiter.

Timeframe:
Announcement August 1, 2005
Submissions due October 3, 2005
Jurying due December 1, 2005
Accepted proposals announced December 15, 2005

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/transvergence/index.html
If you have questions contact transvergence[at]yproductions.com
Sign up for the ISEA2006 mailing list: http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006

Steve Dietz
Director, ZeroOne: The Network
Director, ISEA2006 Symposium +
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu : August 5-13, 2006
stevedietz[at]yproductions[dot]com
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

HARVESTWORKS

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM: New Works

The Harvestworks Artist In Residence Program offers commissions of up to $4000 to make a new work in our state of the art digital media facility. Each artist receives a $700 fee with the balance of the award posted in a' "facilities account" which is used to manage and produce the work. The artist works with a team comprised of a project manager, engineer and programmer (if required). Work produced in the program is premiered in the Harvestworks' 5.1 Presentation Lab. Residents are also included in Creative Contact, an Internet compilation of digital art work on the Harvestworks website. Deadline: Tuesday, November 1, 2005.

New works may include the creation of a new video work with a surround sound audio mix, audio recording and mastering of a surround sound piece, the creation of a new web art work and the development of a live interactive music/video/installation system using Max/MSP/Jitter.

Up to 12 residencies will be selected (depending on project size and funding) along with two alternates in the event any resident artist cannot participate. Priority will be given to the creative use of the Harvestworks' production facility and the innovative use of sound and/or picture. Emerging artists and artists of color are encouraged to apply.

How to apply: Instructions on how to apply and application forms can be found online. Application seminars may be held in late September to assist artists in the development of their projects. Check our website for dates and times.

Questions: Questions can be directed to Hans Tammen at 212.431.1130 ext. 13 or by email at hanst[at]harvestworks.org.

Harvestworks Inc. is a non-profit arts center in Lower Manhattan. Funding for our programs has been provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, LMCC/ADNY, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the James E. Robison Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund, the Greenwall Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial, the Rockefeller Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the Experimental TV Center and mediaThe foundation inc. Additional support by Tekserve, Digidesign, Inc., NHT Pro, Waves, Propellerhead, Ableton, MOTU, Universal Audio, Antares.

Carol Parkinson
Director
Harvestworks, Digital Media Arts Center
596 Broadway Suite 602 NYC 10012
212-431-1130 x 12

Posted by jo at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2005

If I Can’t Dance – I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

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Performative Thinking and Practice as Understood Today

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution--curated by Frederique Bergholtz, Annie Fletcher and Tanja Elstgeestis--is a visual art project which travels throughout 2005 in different forms from Utrecht (Festival a/d Werf), to ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Theaterfestival Boulevard) and Leiden (de VeenFabriek).

"If I Can’t Dance – I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution" takes as its point of departure this famous quote of Emma Goldman (b. Lithuania 1869). By using Goldman’s exclamation as a title for our programme, we contend that art has the power to position it self politically, determinedly and critically in the world, but also to be celebratory. Performativity contests the notion that the self is stable or separable from the context within which we operate. Identifying this heightened awareness is perhaps a way of analysing or even contesting the conditions in which we live. If I Can’t Dance… asks artists to engage with both the legacy and continuing importance of performative thinking and practice as understood today.

The Structure: We intend to use the vitality and event-based context of these festival platforms to explore the legacy and on-going developments of performativity as a rich philosophical trajectory through which to produce contemporary art practice. This is perhaps particularly appropriate within a theatre festival, where the whole dynamic of performance as a conscious act can be directly contrasted to the more subtle and critical sense of the performative, which also occurs in non- prescriptive and unconscious ways.

The Programme: At Theatrefestival Bouelvard we launch the second phase of If I Can’t Dance... This August we will present the latest developments in the performances and on-going projects of these five international artists namely; Johanna Billing - You Don’t Love Me Yet, Matti Braun - The Alien, Gerard Byrne, 1984 and Beyond, Yael Davids - End On Mouth, Ligna -Invasion of the Radio Listeners. By working with people and places in ’s-Hertogenbosch, we directly relate ourselves via the arts with the existing (artistic) structures of the city. With the piece of Johanna Billing the local music scene is presented. The group Ligna examine the functioning of the social and public space in the city through the medium of radio. Both Yael Davids and Gerard Byrne generate live performances, which explore the apparatus of theatre and notions of acting in very specific locations in and around the city. The project of Matti Braun exists of a series of staged present ations that together form part of his new project. The context of the festival gives us the opportunity to programme in a concentrated way for five intensive days, each day is defined by the work of one artist. Further, a documentation centre will be installed at the artists’ initiative space Artis dealing with the developments, ideas and the research during the development of these project from when we began in Utrecht last May until now.

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution - the publication documenting the ideas and work developed during this three-stage project is forthcoming in March 2006.

For further information see:
http://www.ificantdance.org / http://www.festivalboulevard.nl
Or call 00 31 73 613 7671 for reservations and information
Phone lines open daily from 15.00

The project is generously supported by Mondriaan Foundation and the Netherlands Foundation for Visual arts Design and Architecture. Theatrefestival Boulevard is structurally subsided by the Ministry the Province of Noord Brabant and the municipality of S-Hertogenbosch

Posted by jo at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2005

PERFORMA05

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First Biennial of New Visual Art Performance in NYC

PERFORMA, the nonprofit organization committed to new visual art performance, is pleased to announce PERFORMA05, the first biennial of new visual art performance in New York City. More than 20 venues throughout New York will present a multidisciplinary program of live visual art performances, exhibitions, film screenings, and lectures from November 3 through 21, 2005. Ten major new works will be premiered and more than 60 artists will participate in the three-week program. PERFORMA05 is organized under the artistic direction of its founder RoseLee Goldberg.

Programming Highlights

To launch PERFORMA05, Danish artist Jesper Just will premiere his first multimedia live performance at Stephan Weiss Studio, with The Finnish Screaming Men’s Choir and 3-D set design by VISION4. Visual artist and composer Christian Marclay will present a moving image musical score interpreted by live musicians at Eyebeam. The Music of Regret, a movie by Laurie Simmons, will incorporate puppetry, and elements of musical theater in three tales of regret at Salon 94. “24-hour Incidental,” a performance program at the Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art will feature works by ten artists, including Peter Coffin, Jason Dodge, and Karl Holmquist. Anthology Film Archives will present live performances by Ei Arakawa, Jutta Koether, Emily Sundblad/ Reena Spauldings, and the world-premiere of a film retrospective on Bas Jan Ader. Art in General will exhibit a three-channel video installation by Sharon Hayes documenting five imaginary protests throughout New York City. Art P roduction Fund will present Free Play—a public jukebox interactive artwork by Christian Holstad. Other participating artists include Tamy Ben-Tor, Coco Fusco, Pablo Helguera, Paul D. Miller, Michael Smith, Sislej Xhafa, among many others.

WPS1.org is the Internet radio sponsor of the biennial and will feature live recordings and interviews, while PERFORMA RADIO will expand the field of performance into radio space with new projects by artists in the Biennial broadcast on FM radio. LISTEN UP! Lectures as Performances at The Kitchen, is a series highlighting artists who use the formal lecture as an art form. PERFORMA05 will also introduce the next segment of NOT FOR SALE: Writing about Performance and New Media at New York University, a symposia on the art of writing about multimedia and performance art, which will include Katy Siegel, John Rockwell, and Philippe Vergne, among other leading artists, curators and critics.

PERFORMA05 is organized in collaboration with some of New York City’s leading museums, arts organizations, galleries, and independent curators, including Anthology Film Archives, apexart, Art In General, Artists Space, Eyebeam, The Kitchen, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York University, Participant, Inc., Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art, and White Box. Participating galleries include Leo Koenig Inc., Paula Cooper Gallery, Salon 94, and Yvon Lambert.

Concurrently with PERFORMA05, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Marina Abramovic: Seven Easy Pieces, seven consecutive nights of performances in the museum’s rotunda from November 9 through 15. The works include a new piece by Abramovic created specifically for this project, as well as her renditions of seminal performances by Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, VALIE EXPORT, Bruce Nauman, and Gina Pane.

About PERFORMA

Established in April 2004 by art historian, critic, and curator RoseLee Goldberg, PERFORMA is a nonprofit interdisciplinary arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. PERFORMA will commission new performance projects in visual arts, establish a dedicated performance biennial, and provide year-round educational programming for this critical area of visual art and cultural history.

A full program of events will be available online at http://www.performa-arts.org in September 2005.

Media Contact
Blue Medium, Inc.
T: (212) 675-1800
F: (212) 675-1855
E: info@bluemedium.com

Posted by jo at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2005

16Beaver

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Continental Drift Seminar with Brian Holmes

We are pleased to invite you to participate in a Seminar with Brian Holmes this September and October online and at 16Beaver. There are two possible ways of joining: 1. to physically attend in NYC and 2. to participate via webcast. We will give more information about the online version, as we have details, so for this email, we focus on the physical participation.

Continental Drift is a modular and experimental seminar that will attempt to embark upon the "impossible" task of articulating the immense geopolitical and economic shifts which took place between 1989-2001, the effects of those changes on the emerging bodies of governance (i.e., the formation of economic blocs like EU or NAFTA) and in turn the effects on subjectivity. Having witnessed the incredible vibrancy of social movements which took hold in that same period, the seminar acknowledges that new modes of control and channeling of various flows have merited a shift in tactics and strategies. The question of "what now?" is precisely at the core of our study.

"The goal, then, is to map out the majority models of self and group within each of the emerging continental systems, to see how they function within the megamachines of production and conquest – and at the same time, to cross the normative borders they put into effect, in order to trace microcartographies of difference, dissent, deviance and refusal."

We hope you will be able to join us in what should be an open and critical discussion.

1. Dates

Part 1 of the seminar will be September, (12) and (15-18): We have spent the last year coordinating and developing the format and context for this event. The seminar is open to all who are interested, however, for practical reasons we want to limit enrollment. Please see directions for enrollment below.

Part 2 will take place in October (20-24). (details forthcoming), if you already know that you are interested in part II please let us know.

2. About Seminar Format and Schedule

It has been 6 years now since we have been initiating various events, activities and discussions. We have over this time sought opportunities to find partners in organizing small colloquia, workshops, and seminars which take on a subject in a more focused manner. This collaboration with Brian is further development of this desire for a more concentrated involvement and discussion around a specific set of questions.

The schedule will be the following:

Monday September 12 -- Introduction / Conversation with Brian -- 7:30 PM
Thursday September 15 -- Lunch -- 12:00 PM -- Participant Introductions
Thursday September 15 -- Session 1 -- 6:30 PM
Friday September 16 -- Lunch -- 12:00 PM -- Participant Introductions II
Friday September 16 -- Session 2 -- 6:30 PM
Friday September 16 -- Dinner Event -- 9:30 PM
Saturday September 17 -- Session 3 -- 1:00PM -5:00PM
Saturday September 17 -- Social TBA -- 6:00PM
Sunday September 18 -- Session 4 -- 1:00PM -5:00PM
Sunday September 18 -- Social TBA -- 6:00PM

Participants who are traveling to NYC can of course attend from Thursday to Sunday.

We should also note that we are making arrangements to stream the seminar online, so those who are not able to attend can follow and hopefully still participate.

3. How to Enroll? + Funding

To enroll in this seminar please send an email to: seminars[at]16beavergroup.org

The participation fee is 25-50$ (sliding scale). We will waive the fee for those who have great difficulty in paying but have a strong desire to participate.

Last year, we were given $700 by RepoHISTORY as they officially closed their bank account. We will be applying all of that money towards Brian's airfare. We would like to extend a thanks to their assistance in realizing this event.

4. Continental Drift - An Overview by Brian Holmes

Continental integration refers to the constitution of enormous production blocs – and particularly, to NAFTA and the EU (while awaiting the emergence of a full-fledged Asian bloc around Japan and China).

But continental drift means you find Morocco in Finland, Caracas in Washington, "the West" in "the East" – and so on in every direction. That's the metamorphic paradox of contemporary power.

The continental blocs are functioning governmental units one scale up from the nation-state. They represent specific attempts to articulate and manage the vast constructive and destructive energies that have been unleashed by the last four decades of technological development, from the introduction of the worldwide container transport system in the sixties, all the way to the emergence of widespread satellite transmission in the eighties and the Internet in our time. Military strategies, the competitive rush for markets, but also the uncertainty and turbulence of the neoliberal globalization process itself has led capitalistic elites to seek forms of territorial stabilization – however violent this "stabilization" may be. This means re-organizing, not just spaces and flows, but also hearts and minds, whether in the centers of accumulation or on the peripheries. We are all affected, wherever we are living.

The main hypothesis I want to put out here is that the two really-existing blocs – NAFTA and the EU – are both developing not only a functioning set of institutions, but also a dominant form of subjectivity, adapted to the new scale. This form of subjectivity is offered to or imposed upon all those who still live only at the national level, or on the multiple edges or internal peripheries of the bloc, so as to integrate them. At the same time it serves to rationalize – or to mask – the concomitant processes of exploitation, alienation, exclusion and ecological devastation. In what different ways does this integration of individual and cultural desire take place? How is it resisted or opposed? How to imagine an excess over the normative figures of continentalization? Where are the escape hatches, the lines of flight, the alternatives to bloc subjectivity? And what types of effects could these exert on the constituted systems?

To answer such questions in any meaningful way requires several different levels of investigation. First, the driving forces of the globalization process – including neoliberal doctrine, the globalized financial system, the transnational institutions and Imperial infrastructures such as the Internet or the GPS satellite mapping system – have to be identified and observed in operation. Second, the evolving forms of territorial governance and the constantly shifting territorial limits of the major continental blocs have to be described and differentiated from each other. Third, the dominant forms of subjectivity in each bloc - the models of success and jouisssance - have to be characterized, using the tools of social psychology. But the most interesting and probably the most urgent thing is to conduct singular and transversal investigations on the margins of these majority formations, to see how people are reacting, innovating, resisting and fleeing.

The goal, then, is to map out the majority models of self and group within each of the emerging continental systems, to see how they function within the megamachines of production and conquest – and at the same time, to cross the normative borders they put into effect, in order to trace microcartographies of difference, dissent, deviance and refusal. For that, it's necessary to travel and to collaborate, to invent concepts and also set-ups, ways of working. One tactic is to juxtapose sociological arguments with activist inventions and artistic experiments. Another is to crisscross the languages, and even better, the families of languages, and to reside in the gaps between their truth claims and sensoriums. But still another is just to drift and see what happens. The ideas of Felix Guattari, particularly in Chaosmosis and the untranslated study, Cartographies schizoanalytiques, can provide a kind of crazy compass for these attempts to articulate something subjectively and collectively, outside the existing frames.

Obviously, this kind of project is scientifically "impossible." No conceivable group of researchers, and certainly not an ad-hoc operation, could possibly synthesize the varieties of knowledge needed at these scales. This is where a de facto censorship begins to operate, with all kinds of consequences. To accept the impossibility is to condemn oneself to ignorance, not only of the contemporary macrocosm (the world-space), but also of the dynamics of your own microcosm (what happens in your head, what pulses in your veins). So we're gonna try the project nonetheless.

Modularity and experimentalism will be the strategies for eluding any tacit censorship of this irrational desire to know. Modularity, because it refuses the totalizing construction and always leaves room for an extra module to be inserted in a line of questioning, completing it, problematizing it, or opening up a new bifurcation. Experimentalism, because the existing rationalities and protocols of truth are simply not enough to make a world, and only the undiscovered form or order holds a chance of breaking the deadlocks that confront everyone, at the micro and macro scales of disaster in the twenty-first century.

This project stems from the geophilosophical desire of an individual, but demands only to multiply. The research will be done through the opportunities of various collaborative projects, on location and over the net. The seminars in which the major hypotheses will be formulated and explored, and certain case studies presented, will be carried out with a series of mostly non-institutional partners, beginning with the 16 Beaver group in New York, for a seminar extending from September 12 to 18. Certain research modules will be published with cooperating institutions, and/or presented at conferences. Results of the research and contributions by participants will be posted on here on www.u-tangente.org, and perhaps on a specific project website.

5. About Brian Holmes

Brian Holmes is an art and cultural critic, activist and translator, living in Paris. He has a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from UC Berkeley, but prefers to develop research outside the academy. He was the English editor of publications for Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, 1997, worked with the French graphic arts group Ne pas plier around the turn of the c entury, and has collaborated with the critical mapmakers Bureau d'Etudes, most recently on the website Tangent University. His essays appear on the mailinglist Nettime, in the art magazines "Springerin" and "Brumaria" and in the philosophy and sociology journal "Multitudes," among others. He is the author of a book of essays, "Hieroglyphs of the Future: Art and politics in a networked era" (Zagreb:
Arkzin/WHW, 2002). That book, a forthcoming volume called "Unleashing the Collective Phantoms," and a range of other work in various languages can be found in the archive at www.u-tangente.org, along with all the material for the current project "Continental Drift."

6. Specifics

As Brian is updating the program daily, we will for the interim rely on the following website:

http://www.u-tangente.org (click continental drift) or http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=14&Itemid=125

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
phone: 212.480.2093

for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street
J,M Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry

Posted by jo at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

In Memory of Franz Feigl

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The Myth of Bolshevik

Network activists and friends of the medien.KUNSTLABOR want to travel by boat from Amsterdam to the Black Sea. Final destination of the journey is the island St. Anastasia, formerly known as Bolshevik (1945 - 1990). The boat is named after Franz Feigl, an Austrian artist and network activist who lived in Amsterdam and died in 2001 at a young age.

The boat will record on its journey all open wireless lan access points. This activity, if conducted by car, is called war-driving. The peaceful goals of the Motorship Franz Feigl aim at highlighting the possibility of opening up networks and creating a free infrastructure (see Funkfeuer, Freifunk,
Consume).

The boat will also communicate via packet radio and pictures will regularly be sent by GPRS to http://stroem.ung.at. MS Franz Feigl has already travelled from Amsterdam via Linz to Vienna. In Linz at the wharf of the Times Up collective repair work on the boat was done. It has travelled safely from Linz to Vienna under captainship of Franz Xaver.

Tomorrow, Wednesday August 9, the MS Franz Feigl is due to leave for Bratislava, where it will arrive om Thursday or Friday. On Monday, August 15, it will arrive in Budapest.

The project is carried out in collaboration with 05-trov and mobil.KUNSTLABOR.at

SMS Kontakt: 00436764902223
Chat: irc.kunstlabor.at#kunstlabor
E-mail:boot[at]kunstlabor.at

[via netbehaviour]

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

CONNECTIVITY:

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THE TENTH BIENNIAL SYMPOSIUM ON ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY

The Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College is pleased to announce Connectivity: The Tenth Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology, March 30 – April 1, 2006. The mission of the symposium is to present new works, research and performances in the areas of technology and the arts. The symposium will consist of commissioned works, paper sessions, panel discussions, art exhibitions, interactive environments, music concerts, screenings and multi-media performances. In an effort to demystify the artistic process and create a forum for dialogue, we are encouraging all presenters and artists to speak about their work at the symposium.

The Center seeks submissions in the general areas of Interactivity, Cognition, Compositional and Artistic Process, Social and Ethical Issues in Arts and Technology, Art, Music, Video, Film, Animation, Theater, Dance, Innovative Use of Technology in Education, Scientific Visualization, Virtual Reality, and other pertinent topics relating to arts and technology.

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES

COMMISSIONED WORKS: Proposals for new, original, interdisciplinary works will be accepted for a “Commissioned” category. Works must be created by a team consisting of two or more members, and must combine two or more areas of creative expression and contain a major technology component. Proposals will be accepted for performances, concerts, showings or installations; completed works will be presented during the symposium. Proposals must include detailed technical and production requirements, and a proposed budget. Limit of one proposal per team. The piece must not have been previously published, performed or exhibited. Awards will be granted at the discretion of the Center. Submissions not accepted for the commissioned category will also be reviewed for the general submissions category. Accepted commissions will be awarded a stipend of $3000 and a residency at Connecticut College between March 27 and April 1 that includes:

- performance or installation of the accepted work
- workshops with students
- attendance at the symposium
- presentation at the symposium


PAPERS: A two-page extended abstract or complete paper, including technical requirements, must be submitted by email or mail. Upon acceptance, revised papers must be submitted electronically by January 31, 2006 as a PDF. Complete technical requirements for presentation must be included. Papers will be published by the Center in the symposium proceedings. All rights will remain with the author. Papers will be selected for twenty-minute presentations as part of the daily schedule of speakers. Papers may be grouped by the Center in a panel discussion format.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS: Proposals for panel discussions are encouraged. Proposals should include names of prospective panelists and topic, which should address the general areas of the symposium. Papers may be grouped by the Center in a panel discussion format.

CREATIVE WORKS: In addition to academic and theoretical papers, submissions of technology-based or technology-oriented creative works are encouraged. Maximum one proposal per person or team, and we reserve the right not to review multiple pieces in a single submission. All submissions must be accompanied by a one-page description/abstract for presentation at the symposium about the work, a list of complete technical needs, biography and contact information. See specific categories for additional requirements. All presenters and artists are encouraged to speak about their work at the symposium. Symposium registration will be required for all symposium attendees.

MUSIC COMPOSITIONS: Music submissions (composition, performance, theory, interactivity, signal processing and music understanding) are encouraged. Works for instruments, digital media, CD or interactive compositions are also being solicited for “tape only” concerts or live performance. Works should not exceed 15 minutes in length and should be submitted with accompanying score, where appropriate. Music must be submitted on CD for review, with accompanying scores as required. Musicians, dancers and actors may be available for live performance pieces. All submissions must be accompanied by a one page description/abstract for presentation at the symposium about the work. Complete technical and performance requirements must be included.

ART: Submissions of digital art, web art and other technology-based or technology-oriented art forms are encouraged. Submissions of desktop interactive works, self-contained web works, time based work, performance and installations will be considered. Acceptance may be constrained by technical needs, security and financial considerations. Artworks will be reviewed on the basis of documentation of the work presented in the form of a website, CD, DVD, VHS or slides. Submissions must include a one-page description/abstract for presentation at the symposium about the work, portfolio (maximum 4 jpegs, no larger than 2 Mb each), brief biography, contact details, and complete technical needs and spatial requirements

VIDEO AND FILM: Submissions of short video or film works that include a significant 'technology' component in their creation, aesthetic or theme are encouraged. The 'tech' involved may be 'high' or 'low', ranging from digital animations and motion capture work on the 'high-tech' end to various methods of creating film without photography, or novel uses of the projector beam on the low tech side. Works that display worthy reflections on the nexus of art, society and technology, even if created by primarily 'conventional' means, are encouraged. Submissions in the category of 'expanded cinema' and projection performance will be accepted, but resources are limited and artists presenting such work should expect to bring all or much of their own essential gear. Submissions must include a one-page description/abstract of the work and VHS, DV or DVCAM tape, DVD (tape preferred). For works involving anything other than standard video or 16mm projection, a complete description of technical and space needs is required. Exhibition format will be DV, DVCAM, or 16mm film (no home-burned DVDs).Selection for screening may be made in part on the maker's willingness/ability to attend the symposium.

DANCE AND THEATER: Computer-generated or computer-aided dance compositions and theater works are being solicited for live demonstrations or for videotaped presentations. Specially produced dance or theater videos are of particular interest as opposed to concert tapes or other archival uses of video. Also of interest are proposals for workshops, demonstrations of software for dance or theater notation, choreographic analysis, interactive studies and/or multi-media studies of performance in dance and theater. Performances may be accepted, but will be limited by technical needs and financial considerations. All submissions should be accompanied by a web site, CD, DVD or VHS, and one page description/abstract for presentation at the symposium about the work, biography, contact details, and complete technical needs and spatial requirements.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR ALL SUBMISSIONS:

DEADLINES (must be postmarked or emailed by date)
November 1, 2005: Commissioned Works Deadline
December 1, 2005: Commissioned Works Notification
December 1, 2005: General Submission Deadline
December 22, 2005: General Acceptance Notification
January 31, 2006: Final papers must be received as a PDF
March 27 – April 1, 2006: Residencies for Commissioned Works
March 30 – April 1, 2006: Symposium

RETURN: Submissions, art works, slides, CDs, DVDs, VHS, tapes or scores will only be returned if a self-addressed stamped envelope or packaging is provided.

SEND SUBMISSIONS TO:
Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology
Connecticut College
270 Mohegan Avenue – BOX 5365
New London, CT USA 06320-4196
phone: [860] 439-2001
email: cat@conncoll.edu
http://cat.conncoll.edu

The 10th Biennial Symposium is sponsored by Citizens Bank, USA.

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

TRANSITIO_MX 2005 (MÉXICO)

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FIRST VIDEO AND ELECTRONIC ARTS CONTEST

Transitio_mx 2005 International Video and Electronic Arts Festival is a place for the expression of contemporary artistic creative practices through electronic media. The main focus of this festival is showing the current production and research in the field, in function of the constant mobility of its epistemological, technological, cultural, aesthetic and social boundaries. These dissolutions invite us to explore the nature, scopes and conflicts between, art, technology, sciences and humanities making the Festival a permanent site for the expression and reflection of the above mentioned relationships.

This first edition of the Festival has chosen the "Imaginaries in transit: poetics and technology" as its main theme. The thematic proposes to go deep into the paradigm that provides of contents and expands technology right from the poetics or sign's site, rather that emphasizing the research concerning technological support itself. "Imaginaries in transit: poetics and technology" seeks to explore the aesthetic and cultural re-signification modes that accompany electronic art production and research, inviting the participants of the contest to reflect about production within this context.

Transitio_mx will count with the presence of well known personalities such as Marina Grzinik, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Arlindo Machado, Jorge Laferla, Príamo Lozada, José Luis Barrios, among others. The jury for the First Video and Electronic Arts Contest will also be made up of important artists and theoretitians in the electronic arts field. Three prizes will be awarded: first prize consisting in N$120,000.00, second prize consisting in N$90,000.00 and third prize of N$75,000.00. The previous amounts are in Mexican pesos.

The National Culture and Arts Council, through the Center for Multimedia of the National Center for the Arts, invites all artists of this field to participate in the First Video and Electronic Arts Contest that will take place within the framework of this Festival from December 6 to 11, 2005.

The deadline for the contest is September 30, 2005. For information on the required documents, and in order to complete the entry form visit: http://transitiomx.cenart.gob.mx or write an email to Ana Villa: concursoae[at]correo.cnart.mx

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

August 08, 2005

Futuresonic 2006

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Independence: 10 Years of Futuresonic

Celebrating collaborative cultures and independence movements - from independent labels to peer-to-peer culture, from free parties to free networks, from locative media to local food.

The Futuresonic 2006 festival will explore the theme of Independence, looking at collaborative cultures and independence movements in art, technology and culture. Futuresonic was formed 10 years ago at a time when there was a emergent musical and digital culture that was outside the mainstream, collaborative and peer-to-peer. Today a centre of gravity has shifted towards the world of hackers, bloggers, free networks, open source, social software and civic technologies. What has remained constant has been the emphasis on social autonomy and independence of creative practice. Futuresonic 2006 will explore the state of independence today, and showcase independent music, arts and technologies that are open, emergent, collaborative and ad-hoc.

Futuresonic 2006 will also host the final exhibition and conference of PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network.

Posted by jo at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

VIDA 8.0

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ART & ARTIFICIAL LIFE

VIDA 8.0 is the seventh edition of this international competition, created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the field of artificial life. In previous editions, prizes have been awarded to autonomous entities able to bring us pleasure (Tickle 2.0, Tickle Salon 5.0), engage us in irrational conversations (Head 3.0) or invade our social space (Cour des Miracles 2.0); virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation (Autopoiesis 3.0, Electric Sheep and Remain in Light 4.0), autonomous systems that use the feedback obtained as a mechanism and metaphor for transformation (Appearance machine 3.0, Levántate 5.0) and works highlighting the social side of artificial life (Novus Extinctus 4.0, The Relative Velocity Inscription Device 5.0, The Central City 6.0 and Spore 7.0).

Other themes are addressed in works that have been given honourable mentions: avatars and players in their unique worlds (Iconica 2.0, Life Spacies II and Unconscious Flow 3.0), new interpretations of the roots of artificial life, such as cellular automatons (Sandlines 3.0, Dadatron 5.0) and system feedback or autonomy translated into simple familiar media (Breathe and Autistic-Artistic Machine 4.0, The Responsive Field of Lattice Archipelogics 5.0).

We are looking for art that reflects the panorama of the possible interaction between 'synthetic' and organic life, e.g. - Autonomous agents that shape and perhaps interpret the data-saturated environment we have in common. - Portraits of inter-subjectivity or empathy shared between artificial entities and ourselves. - Intelligent anthropomorphisation of the datasphere and its inhabitants. - User-defined exploration and interaction designed to reduce fear and stimulate interest in the emerging phenomena which, by definition, are beyond our control.

An international jury will award prizes to the most outstanding projects in electronic art which use techniques such as digital genetics, autonomous robotics, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, computer viruses, virtual ecosystems and avatars.

There is a total of EUR 20,000 in prizes for the three projects selected by the jury:

First prize: EUR 10,000
Second prize: EUR 7,000
Third prize: EUR 3,000

There will also be special mentions for a further seven projects chosen by the jury. Each project must be submitted as a 5-10-minute video with voice-over narration describing the artistic concept and the technological realization of the project presented. The project must be post-September 2003. The jury's decision will be based essentially on the video.

Participants must provide a VHS tape (PAL, NTSC or SECAM format) or DVD for the jury. If your work is awarded a prize or a special mention, you will be asked to provide a video on professional-quality format (Dvcam, Betacam, U-Matic, MiniDV) for inclusion in The Best of VIDA 8.0 .

The competition is open to participants from all over the world; however, each participant may present only one project. To register, read the competition rules, complete and sign the application form and submit it together with the tape to Fundación Telefónica before 30 September 2005.

Posted by jo at 07:08 AM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2005

Science and Art Conference

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A Collision of Politics, Ethics and imagination

This international Science and Art Conference challenges the serene vision of art and science as a warm, fuzzy continuum and asks instead what really happens when different perspectives, expectations, interests and languages converge. Presented by Arts Council England, Yorkshire in partnership with CNAP, a bioscience research centre at the University of York, it will take place September 5-7, 2005 at University of York.

Art and science each hold the allure of a powerful cultural 'other'. Artists wish to appropriate science, scientists to harness art, for the benefit of their own practices. To what extent can this desire be collaborative or mutually beneficial? [see also Artists on Science: Scientists on Art, Nature, Vol. 434, No. 7031 pp293-324.]

When artists are natural transgressors and scientists trained to be cautious, are there risks as well as benefits? What happens when science is taken out of the lab, away from its safety procedures and cultural assumptions? Do artists have any responsibility towards scientific data, how it is manipulated and presented? In its interplay with science, is art contributing to knowledge, creating meaning or on a quest to change the world?

In this collision of politics, ethics and imagination--spanning ecology, bioscience and deep space--what are the Rules of Engagement?

Speakers and participants include: Andrew Stones; Lloyd Anderson (British Council); Oron Catts (SymbioticA); Nicola Triscott (The Arts Catalyst); David Buckland (Cape Farewell); Lise Autogena; Josh Portway; Brandon Ballengée; Adam Zaretsky; Lucy Kimbell; Simon Gould; Ian Hunter (Littoral); Jo Joelson (London Fieldworks); Darren Wright (Radio and Space Plasma Physics Group); Comma Press; Dianna Bowles (CNAP); Ruth Ben-Tovim; Lizzie Coombes; Andrew Cleaton; Lucy Cullingford; Lizz Tuckerman; Andy Gracie (Hostprods); Andrew Webster (SATSU)

Delegate fees: £165 full, £75 concessions (including refreshments, meals, accommodation and events). Prompt booking is advised.

For further information, please contact Arts Council England, Yorkshire:

Rachel Chapman, Science and Art Coordinator Email: yorkshire.science[at]artscouncil.org.uk

or Chloe Smith, Assistant Officer Tel: +44 (0)1924 486215

Posted by jo at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2005

INTERACTIVE FUTURES 06:

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Audio Visions

CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS, PERFORMANCES, & INSTALLATIONS

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is a forum for showing recent tendencies in new media art as well as a conference for exploring issues related to technology. The theme of this year's event is Audio Visions. IF06 will explore new forms of audio-based media art from a diverse body of artists, theorists, and sound practitioners. Sound poetry, web-based audio and multimedia, mobile audio performance, new forms of music theatre, synaesthetic performance, hybrid forms, sound-based installation, video and sound, and environmental sound are all of interest to Audio Visions.

The proliferation of audio technologies, audio-visual collaboration, and hybrid forms of live performance in the new millennium is striking. Audio artists are exploring the areas of mobility, virtuality, performance, and audience interaction from an experimental point-of-view. Audio Visions invites scholars, sound-artists, and performers of all stripes to submit paper, panel, performance or installation proposals in one of the three following categories.

1. "Sound and Vision" lecture and panel series - Scholars, artists, and practitioners working in audio or audio-visual-based new media are encouraged to submit proposals for IF06. We are interested in a broad range of audio including: computational, interactive or generative audio; the creation of digital audio tools; synchronization between sound and visuals; performative art that explores language, voice and body; streaming radio and mobile sound works. Presentations should be, in part, demonstrative. We recognize that sound art is evolving and that categories have become increasingly irrelevant - we encourage proposals that push the boundaries of the traditional conference paper.

2. "Earshot" performance series: "Earshot" is seeking experimental audio-based performances that challenge assumptions about audio forms and performance conventions. Avant-garde, post-avant-garde, techno, electro-acoustic, synaesthetic production, liminal art and hybrid performance are all within our desired range. "Earshot" is primarily interested in new types of electronic audio-visual performance as well as models for audience participation in sound works. "Earshot" will run performances at Open Space for each night of IF06.

3. "Tangible Frequencies" installations. We are interested in audio installation works that consider site, space, vision, volume and perception and how physical location 'matters' to the reception of audio frequencies. IF06 has identified areas within Open Space Gallery to function as controlled locations for sound installations.* We welcome proposals that respond to the particular characteristics of these locations through their acknowledgement of private and/or public space and use. Installations may provide audio continuity to the existing locations, or respond as intervention and critique.

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is part of the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival and applicants are encouraged to check the Festival website for more information on the broader program.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS / ARTISTS

Greg Hermanovic of Derivative software is a visionary software-engineer involved in the creation of real-time visual tools. In 2003 he received an Academy Award for the pioneering of modeling in the film industry with PRISMS and Houdini. Greg coordinated the realtime animation at SIGGRAPH 98's Interactive Dance Club, and directed special effects for Michael Snow's Corpus Callosum. Derivatives Touch software, a range of tactile interfaces, brings advanced realtime animation tools to a diverse cross-section of artists, including Richie Hawtin and Rush. Greg will perform live visuals with Toronto-based DJ Tom Kuo.

Tom Kuo uses a grounding in techno to pursue a varied range of precise electronic strains. Tom was recently named one of Toronto's Top Ten DJs by NOW magazine.

Atau Tanaka is known for his work in interactive music, including performances with biosignal gesture systems. He has conducted research at IRCAM in Paris and was Artistic Ambassador of Apple Computer Europe. His work with sensor-based musical instruments and network audio installations have received prizes and support from Ars Electronica, the Fraunhofer Institute, the Japan Foundation, and the Daniel Langlois Foundation. His current research at Sony CSL Paris focuses on harnessing collective musical creativity on mobile devices.

J=FCrg Gutknecht is a computer scientist with a passion for new hybrid art forms. He has actively participated in culturally-oriented "wearable computing" projects, including "Instant Gain in Grace" (motion tracking of a Butoh dancer), "Going Publik" (distributed orchestra based on mobile electronic scoring), and "On the Sixth Day" (multi-channel video system for interactive storytelling). Together with Sound Artist, Art Clay, he organizes the Digital Art Weeks which offers performances and provides courses in the areas of computer-aided art and music.

Art Clay is a specialist in the performance of self-created works with the use of inter-media, and has appeared at international festivals. Recently, his work has focused on large-scale performative music-theater works and public art spectacles using mobile devices.

Jim Andrews publishes vispo.com. It is the centre of his work as a visual poet, audio artist, programmer, and critic. His work in interactive audio and word-based web media has been published and shown widely in such venues as turbulence.org, rhizome.org, and the trAce Online Writing Centre.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is interested in artistic and theoretical work that relates to audio performance, production and hybrid forms.

Papers, Panels, and Presentations can include DVDs, audio CDs, video tapes, games, web-sites, etc. and should be 45-minutes in length. Proposed artwork for exhibition may take the form of performances ("Earshot"), installations ("Tangible Frequencies"), or audio-related screenings ("Earshot" or "Tangible Frequencies"). Applications should not exceed 500 words. Applicants should indicate one of the three festival categories in the subject of the message. Please include a 200 word max bio. All proposals must be submitted in text only format either as an attachment or within the body of the email message. Please present examples of your work as a URL to a web-site. If your presentation requires specific technologies please describe your needs in detail.

Proposals should be submitted electronically to ONE of the following persons:

"Sound and Vision" lecture and panel series - Randy Adams runran@runran.net
"Earshot" performance series - Steve Gibson sgibson@finearts.uvic.ca
"Tangible Frequencies" installations - Julie Andreyev lic@telus.net

* SPECIAL NOTE FOR INSTALLATION ARTISTS APPLYING TO TANGIBLE FREQUENCIES:

Open Space has the following areas available to install sound installations:

Parallel gallery (opens onto the street)
Bathrooms (2)
Back Stairs (opens onto the back alley)
Main gallery (low volume or headphones only)

A floor plan for Open Space can be downloaded at
http://www.openspace.ca/img/floorplan.pdf

Please indicate a preference for one of the above areas in your proposal. Artists should keep in mind that Open Space is a shared space and therefore low volume will be required. Other venues may be organized by special arrangement if louder volume is required.

FUNDING

INTERACTIVE FUTURES does not have funding for travel or accommodation. Presenters and artists are expected to apply for travel funding from their home institutions and/or granting bodies. INTERACTIVE FUTURES is applying for funding for performance and installation artists exhibiting at Open Space. If this funding is obtained, performance and installation artists will receive a modest fee according to CARFAC (http://www.carfac.ca/) regulations.

All presenters and artists will be given a pass to all INTERACTIVE FUTURES events and will have access to the Hospitality Suite at the Festival hotel (food and drinks). All presenters and artists will be eligible for the conference rate at Festival Hotels (between $40-110 per night).

DEADLINE FOR ALL PROPOSALS: Friday, September 23, 2005.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before October 7, 2005.

EQUIPMENT ACCESS

Laurel Point Inn--Presentations

The following equipment will be made available for all presenters:

Mac computer with Monitor, keyboard, DVD/CD-ROM drive.
Data/Video Projector.
VHS Player.
Sound system with amp and two speakers.
Wireless high-speed internet access.

Open Space--Performances and Installations

The following equipment is available for artists at Open Space. Artists should be aware that equipment will have to be shared and therefore should not propose to use all of the below devices simultaneously. Installations and performances should be easy to set-up and take down. Wherever possible artists should apply their own technology.

2 Data/Video Projectors.
VHS Player.
DVD Player.
3-4 Macintosh computers.
Sound system with amp, 16-channel mixing board, mics, and four speakers.
Cable modem internet connection.

For a full list of resources available at Open Space go to: http://www.openspace.ca/space/resources.htm

CONTACTS:

Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival Director: Kathy Kay director@vifvf.com

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Co-Curators: Steve Gibson sgibson@finearts.uvic.ca; Julie Andreyev lic@telus.net

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Paper Editor: Randy Adams runran@runran.net

OPEN SPACE New Music: Tina Pearson newmusic@openspace.ca

Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival
Co-sponsored by Open Space Artist-Run Centre
Parallel event Digital Art Weeks, Summer 2006, Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology

Conference hotel - Laurel Point Inn

Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival:
Mailing Address - PO Box 8419, Victoria, BC, V8W3S1, Canada.
Office Address - 808 View Street, Victoria, BC, V8W1K2, Canada.
Tel: (250)389.0444. Fax: (250)389.0406. E mail: festival@vifvf.com

Posted by jo at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2005

The Upgrade! Montreal:

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The In & Out of the Sound Studio Conference

Thursday, July 28 - 7pm - free: The Upgrade! Montreal presents the In & Out of the Sound Studio conference on gender and sound technology, in collaboration with Concordia University. Featuring performances by artists Sylvie Chénard, Ellen Waterman, Airi Yoshioka, Shona Dietz & Éveline Boudreau. With hosts Liselyn Adams & tobias c. van veen.

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

Audio Signal Processing Workshop

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Audio Data, Synthesis, Patching & Streaming

Audio Signal Processing/Digital Sound Workshop: Rotterdam, 1 - 4 September 2005; Applications Deadline August 19, 2005--In a four-day workshop hosted by V2_, sound artists Frank Barknecht and Aymeric Mansoux will introduce the basics of Audio Signal Processing (ASP) in the fields of real-time music production. This workshop specifically targets people who want to develop their work in the digital sound field or those people curious about the processes involved behind the audio software they already use.

The program starts with a theoretical introduction to the basics of digital sound, after which participants will work with the open source software Pure Data (PD) to turn theory into practice. The workshop also teaches and demonstrates which free technologies are available for audio streaming, such as icecast, ogg and vorbis. A Rotterdam Headphone Lounge will wrap up this four-day workshop on Sunday 4 September.

SCHEDULE AUDIO SIGNAL PROCESSING WORKSHOP

Registration fee: euro60 (food & drinks included)
Reservations via v2@v2.nl
Location: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam
URL: www.v2.nl
www.goto10.org

DAY 1 11:00-18:00 hrs // ASP and Audio Synthesis
A day with the blackboard: the physics of sound, the digital representation of sound, basic audio signal processing, synthesis, samples and soundfiles

DAY 2 11:00-18:00 hrs // Pure Data
Applied theory: messages versus audio signals, audio building blocks and operators, delay & filters, building an FM patch, a sample playing patch and an effect patch

DAY 3 11:00-18:00 hrs // Pure Data next level + streaming audio
how to do basic physical modelling, waveshaping and additive synthesis, introduction to audio streaming, presentation of: icecast, ogg, and vorbis, and building an audio streaming system

DAY 4 11:00-15:00 hrs // Patching and streaming
putting things together: working on a patch
20:00-23:00 hrs // Le Placard: Rotterdam Headphone Lounge

APPLICATION

WORKSHOP DATE: Thursday 1 - Sunday 4 September 2005, 11:00-18:00 hrs
HOST: V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media
LANGUAGE: English
FEE: 60 euros
LOCATION: V2_, Eendrachtsstsraat 10, Rotterdam
FOOD & DRINKS: free tea+coffee, lunch included
HOUSING: not included
HARDWARE: computers are provided
BOOKING: v2@v2.nl
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: Friday 19 August 2005

V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media
Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam, NL
PO Box 19049, 3001 BA Rotterdam, NL
Tel + 31 10 206 72 72 | Fax + 31 10 206 72 71
E-mail info AT v2.nl | URL http://www.v2.nl

Posted by jo at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2005

INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR PERFORMANCE:

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FINAL DAYS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SELECTION!

These are the final days to submit an application for the first International Prize for Performance, a unique and innovative initiative, launched by the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento (Italy), in collaboration with drodesera>centrale fies and with the support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto.

Artists of all nationalities, thirty-five years or younger, can participate by completing the electronic application located on the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporea of Trento’s website by August 1, 2005 (For more information, consult the official announcement at http://www.workartonline.net or send inquiries to performance[at]galleriacivica.it).

Award: 5,000 Euro and other minor prizes

Contact: Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento
Via Belenzani 46, 38100 Trento - Italy
http://www.workartonline.net
Phone +39 0461 985511
performance[at]galleriacivica.it

The internationally renowned jury includes the “Mother of all Performances” Marina Abramovic, Renato Barilli (art critic and performance expert), Mathias Lilienthal (Director of the Hebbel Theater, Berlin), Andrea Lissoni (Associazione Xing), Virgilio Sieni (Dance company Virgilio Sieni), Barbara Boninsegna (drodesera>centrale fies) and Fabio Cavallucci (Director of the Galleria Civica, Trento).

On September 9th and 10th, 2005, twelve (12) finalists will conduct live, unedited performances for the international jury at the Centrale di Fies (Dro, Trento). First place winner will chosen and awarded a prize of five-thousand (5,000) euro by the jury, who will also grant various minor prizes.

Submission Requirements and Deadline: All artists, of all nationalities and origins, from all backgrounds (visual arts, dance, theatre, music, poetry, etc.) thirty five years or younger, are invited to participate by completing the electronic application located on the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea’s, website (http://www.workartonline.net directly send to performance@galleriacivica.it).

Participants are required to send: - a never-before-seen performance project (descriptive, no longer than 3,000 characters, spaces included) - an artistic resume; - a scan of a current identification document; - two to four excerpts from previous performances (in mpeg format, more or less one minute each).

Participants may also send descriptions of previous performances (no more than three of narrative character, no longer than 1500 characters each one), and images (no more than 10 total). Additionally, they may also send up to two reviews appearing in catalogues, magazines or newspapers.

The paper material must be written in either Italian or English languages.

The video material may be sent in diverse languages whenever the comprehension of discourses is not considered a necessary element in order to understand the sense of the performance.

Together all of the sent material must not exceed 4 megabites.
The expiration date for the application and materials is fixed at 5 PM on August 1st, 2005 (Italian time).

Note: The following people can not participate in the Prize: members of IPG (International Performance Group) and those that have a familiar relationship or are in strict collaboration with the members of the jury.

Finale and Awards
12 (twelve) finalists will be selected to present a performance on the evenings of September 9th and 10th, 2005 in the Centrale di Fies (Dro, Trento).

The participants in the final selection are guaranteed travel expenses and hospitality for the time needed to realize the performance in Trento. Production costs will be sustained directly by the organization. It will be an assessable element on the part of the jury in the selection phases, as well as the relationship between the final effect and the economic commitment required for the production of the performance. The specific request for actors or other possible personnel involved in the performance will be organized by the artist or group.

The first prize is fixed at 5,000 (five-thousand) euros (net) and can not be divided. There will also be minor prizes awarded.

For more information and registration, +39.0461.985511; performance@galleriacivica.it

Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea
Via Belenzani 46
38100 Trento, Italy
T: +39 0461 985511/986138
F: +39 0461 237033
E: galleria_civica@comune.trento.it
W: http://www.workartonline.net

Posted by jo at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2005

History of Networked Art:

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People, Places, Events, Technologies and Theories

History of Networked Art: People, Places, Events, Technologies and Theories--a conference curated by Tommaso Tozzi and Alessandro Ludovico; Friday, July 29, 2005; 9.30am - 1.30pm / 3pm - 7pm; Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) Via Roma 1 - Carrara (Tuscany, Italy) tel. +39 0585 71658.

In the networked art the artwork's boundaries dissolve in the intertwined relationships between subjects, objects, strategies and theories. This process not only modifies artistic, political and commercial models, but it transforms the culture, the languages and the logic behind the theories of the interconnected society. Inter-disciplinarity, indetermination, transformation, decentralization and interaction, are among the key concepts of the sixties. But they are also the background of the artists that have used the telematic networks to plan new worlds or to critique the existing ones. The conference 'History of the Net Arts' has the purpose to gather some important experiences about some of the most active subjects, their actions and external collaboration with institutions, groups and movements, the technologies they used and, even more importantly, their theorical, social and cultural goals.

with (in alphabetical order):

Robert Adrian (Wien, AU)
Hans Bernhard (Wien, AU)
Arturo Di Corinto (Roma, IT)
Steven Kovats (Rotterdam, NL)
Enrico Pedrini (Genova, IT)
Cornelia Sollfrank (Hamburg, DE)
Luca Toschi (Firenze, IT)

installation:
Giuseppe Chiari (Firenze - IT)
"Audio and Video recording from the seventies and eighties"

program:

9.30am - 1:30 pm

- Tommaso Tozzi - coordinator of Multimedia Art
Department, Academy of Fine Arts Carrara,
Florence, IT

- Enrico Pedrini - critic, Genova, IT

- Luca Toschi - director of the Communication
Strategies laboratory and head of the
Communication Theory master's degreee, Florence,
IT

- Robert Adrian - artist - Wien, AT

- Arturo Di Corinto - teacher of Online Communication Psichology - Rome - IT

- discussion


3.00pm - 7:00pm

- Alessandro Ludovico - new media critic, Neural.it - Bari, IT

- Hans Bernhard - artist, Ubermorgen, Etoyholding - Wien, AT

- Steven Kovats - international programs
developer, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media -
Rotterdam, NL

- Cornelia Sollfrank - artist, Old Boys Network - Hamburg, DE

- discussion

Biographies.

Robert Adrian X (CA/AT) Celebrated contemporary artist, produces installations, radio art and sound art works from 1957, and he's one of the recognized pioneer of telecomunication art. He started to work and experiment in this field already in 1979. He lives in Vienna.

Hans Bernhard (CH/AU) One of the Etoy founders and creator of practices like the 'digital hijack'. He founded the Ubermorgen group with Lizvlx, and realized famous net.art works like 'Vote-Auction', 'Injunction Generator' and 'Google Will Eat Itself'. He won many awards like the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica's 'golden nica'. He lives and works in St.Moritz and Vienna.

Giuseppe Chiari (IT) Musician and artist. He's a composer from 1950 and he's the most important Italian representative of the Fluxus movement, and one of the most important italian artists of the 20th century. He wrote books, essays and writings that have changed the music system, and his works are exhibited in museums all around the world. He's author of happenings and music experiments and he wrote music for different media.

Arturo Di Corinto (IT) Cognitive psychologist and new media expert. Researcher at the University of Stanford (1997-1998), teacher at the Carrara Academy of Arts and University of Rome. He's author of essays on the technological innovation and social behaviours relationship. He's a founding member of the Avvisi Ai Naviganti BBS, Isole nella Rete and Cittadigitali. He also writes for the national newspapers Il Manifesto, La Repubblica and for the magazine Aprile.

Stephen Kovats (CA/NL) Canadian born architect and media researcher Stephen Kovats spent a decade upon German unification designing and establishing media art and culture related programs at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. His "Studio Electronic Media Interpretation" hosted numerous international projects, symposia and exhibitions. Kovats founded several media culture oriented exchange and network programs including Archi-Tonomy, EMARE, ECX and the Bauhauskolleg. Editor of the book "Media Revolution. Electronic Media in the Transformation Process of Eastern and Central Europe". Currently Kovats is international programs developer at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam.

Alessandro Ludovico (IT) Media critic and editor in chief of Neural magazine from 1993. He has written media culture books and essays. He's one of the founding contributor of the Nettime community and one of the founders of the 'Mag.Net (European Cultural Publishers)' organization. He writes for various international magazines and he's also an expert in the Runme.org board and a collaborator of the Digitalkraft exhibitions.

Enrico Pedrini (IT) He curated international exhibitions and he was one of the curators of the Taiwan Pavillion in the 1995 Venice Biennale. He has written many essays on contemporary art. Actually he's studying the interactions amongst the Dissipative Systems, the Theory of Chaos and the Possible Worlds that bring to the art universe the cathegories of the dissipation and possibilism.

Cornelia Sollfrank (DE) Studied Fine Arts in Munich and Hamburg, taught at the Hochschule f�r Bildende K�nste, Hamburg, founder member of the female artists' group �Frauen und Technik� and '-Innen'. She's a founder-member of �Old Boys Network� and facilitator of the conference series 'Next Cyberfeminist International'. She works in the field of Internet art. She lives in Hamburg and Berlin.

Luca Toschi (IT) Director of the 'Laboratory of the communication strategies' and head of the master's degree in Communication Theory, University of Florence. Author of the book 'Il linguaggio dei nuovi media', he has written essays on the relationship between education and the language of new media. Ha has started his career as researcher in 1970 at the UCLA, during the establishment of the first Arpanet nodes. He's a consultant for private and public firms.

Tommaso Tozzi (IT) Teacher at the University of Florence and at the Carrara Academy of Arts, where he coordinates the Multimedia Arts Department. Director of uCAN - Center for Research and Documentation on Networked Arts and Digital Cultures. He has been the head of the cultural association Strano Network. Editor of Hacker Art BBS (1990) and creator of the first worldwide netstrike (1995). Founding member of the italian newsgroup Cyberpunk (1991) and of the net Cybernet (1993).
--

Alessandro Ludovico
Neural.it - http://neural.it/ daily updated news + reviews
English.Neural.it - http://english.neural.it/
Neural printed magazine - http://neural.it/n/nultimoe.htm

Posted by jo at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

@ SIGGRAPH 2005

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ART & THE NETWORK SPACE over Access Grid

There will be a presentation on ART & THE NETWORK SPACE over Access Grid organized for Siggraph on August 4 at 17:30 London time. The panel will consist of Woody Vasulka at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Jon Ippolito at the University of Maine, Mathias Fuchs and Don Foresta at the Wimbledon School of Art and Pavel Smetana, director of CIANT, present at Siggraph.

The discussion will center on issues of the network as an art space, specifically, questions of archiving and accessibility of work and integrating it into a larger academic context. The discussion will last for one and a half hours. The projects discussed will be:

1. MARCEL
2. ALTERNE
3. Variable Media
4. OASIS
5. Global Threads

If you are interested in the discussion, please let me know and I will put you in contact with the appropriate people. There are a limited number of online slots available at Siggraph and you would have to be registered before to receive it.

Best, Don

Don Foresta
27, rue du Rhin
75019 Paris, Fr.
Tel. 33 (0)1 4245 3186
don[at]donforesta.net
www.mmmarcel.org

Posted by jo at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2005

Zapped! Workshop

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RFID Keychain Detector

Zapped! Workshop by Preemptive Media (Beatriz da Costa, Heidi Kumao, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer): July 15, 2005 - 6:30 - 9:00pm at Eyebeam, NYC.

You may have heard the term RFID and possibly even brought one home unknowingly. But what exactly is a Radio Frequency Identification tag? Why are Wal-Mart, the Department of Defense and the Food & Drug Administration sinking big bucks into these little chips and paving the way for mass implementation? After a brief overview of the technology and its potential impact on our lives, each participant will receive a Zapped! RFID Kit complete with a colorful workbook and materials for the hands-on portion of the workshop. Preemptive Media will guide the group through building an RFID keychain detector that plays a jingle when a reader is within range and scanning the airwaves for data. Participants can program tags that "talk back" to a RFID reader uncovered by a Zapped! keychain. Registration fee is $25 general public, $20 for Eyebeam members. Sign up here.

Posted by jo at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

Creative VR Futures

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Creative Arts & Sciences in Virtual Environments

Creative VR Futures: Creative Arts & Sciences in Virtual Environments, 22-23 July 2005--A two day symposium for professional artists, designers and creative practitioners offering a range of artistic presentations, demonstrations and hands-on experience of current immersive and augmented virtual environment research. The event will take an in depth look into current artistic applications and developments of virtual/mixed reality, ranging from telepresent networking, tele-immersion and collaborative VR interaction to both painted and virtual urban landscape panoramas.

Following the symposium participants will be invited to apply for one of two artist-in-residence opportunities at The University of Salford Centre for Virtual Environments for a period of six months to develop and showcase their work.

This two day event is free. For further information and symposium booking details please contact Nathalie Edwards on 0161 295 2801 or email n.j.edwards[at]salford.ac.uk

Friday 22 July, 9.30am to 5.00pm

Centenary Building Lecture Theatre, School of Art & Design, The University of Salford, Centenary Building, Peru Street, Salford, Greater Manchester, M3 6EQ

Presentation by:

Maurice Benayoun - Interactive Media Artist, Paris
Steve Benford - Mixed Realities Lab, University of Nottingham
Monica Fleischmann - Fraunhofer/MARS, Bonn/Bremen
Horst Hoertner - Ars Electronica Futurelab
Ben Johnson - Commissioned Artist for Liverpool Biannual
David Roberts - The Centre for Virtual Environemnts, Salford
Paul Sermon - School of Arts & Design, Salford
Anthony Steed - University College London
Wolfgang Strauss - Fraunhofer/MARS, Bonn/Bremen

Saturday 23 July, 9.30am to 5.00pm

The Centre for Virtual Environments, The University of Salford, Business House, University Road, Salford, Greater Manchester, M5 4WT

Presentations and Demonstrations of:

Fraunhofer/MARS, Bonn/Bremen - Introduced by Monica Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss
Ars Electronica Futurelab - Introduced by Horst Hoertner
World Skin - Introduced by Maurice Benayoun
UCL EQUATOR - Introduced by Anthony Steed
The Centre for Virtual Environments - Introduced by David Roberts

Support by The Arts Council England and The University of Salford

Presented in association with Futuresonic 05 http://www.futuresonic.com

Posted by jo at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

URBAN SCREENS 05 PROGRAM

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Discovering the Potential of Outdoor Screens for Urban Society

The final URBAN SCREENS 05 PROGRAM is now available.

Time: September 23-24, 2005; Location: Club 11, TPG Building, Oosterdokskade, Amsterdam; Organisation: Institute of Network Cultures, HvA/UvA, Amsterdam, Department of Art and Public Space, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, UvA, Amsterdam Urban||Research, Berlin.

URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Media. The focus is on understanding how the growing infrastructure of large digital displays influences the visual sphere of our public spaces. How can the commercial use of these screens be broadened and culturally curated to contribute to a lively urban society involving the audience interactively?

In the context of the rapidly evolving commercial information sphere of our cities, developers are bringing new digital display technology into the urban landscape like large daylight compatible LED screens or high-tech plasma screens. Meanwhile there is a growing interest in exploring their potential of a non-commercial use, asking for new strategies and cooperations in content production and management. Besides infiltrating some "artcoockies", lets look at them more in terms of open "screening platforms" and how that can have a social or cultural impact on our urban society!

Public space has always been a place for human interaction, a unique arena for exchange of rituals and communication in a constant process of renewal, challenging the development of society. Its architectural dimension, being a storytelling medium itself, has played a changing role of importance in providing a stage for this interaction. The way the space is inhabited can be read as a participatory process of its audience. The (vanishing) role as space for social and symbolic discourse has been often discussed in urban sociology. Modernization, the growing independence from place and time and the individualization seem to destroy the city rhythm and its social systems. Besides experiments with social networks and new media tools emerged. Starting with the development of virtual cities with its chat rooms and spaces for production of identity, we now face community experiments like collaborative wikis, blogs or mobile phone networks in the growing field of social computing.

Parallel to this development an "event culture" has evolved in the real urban space among the internationally competing cities, focusing on tourism and consumption. Considering the social sustainability of our cities it is necessary to look closer at the livability and openness of public spaces and start to address the urban users as citizens not as passive consumers. The experience, made in the new digital communication spheres, might serve as an inspiration for this social enhancement. Could large outdoor displays function as experimental "visualization zone" of the fusing of the virtual public spaces and our real world? Can screens function as a new mirror reflecting the public sphere?

URBAN SCREENS 05 wants to launch a discussion about how digital culture can make use of the existing and future screening infrastructure, in terms of art and social or political practices, generating a higher value for its operators and "users". We want to address the existing commercial predetermination and explore the nuance between art, interventions and entertainment to stimulate a lively culture. Other key issues are: mediated interaction, content management, participation of the local community, public private cooperation, restrictions due to technical limits, and the incorporation of the screens in the architecture of our urban landscape.

The conference aims at an interdisciplinary audience with the intention to exchange experiences and start a network to initiate future collaborations. Preparation of the event will include the launch of an online discussion on the urban screens mailinglist.

PROGRAM:

DAY 1 (23.09.05)
**************************************************************

09:30 - 10:00 Doors open

_____________________________________________________________
10:00 - 11:40 Introductory Keynote Lectures
_____________________________________________________________

Introduction by Jeroen Boomgaard and Mirjam Struppek
Moderator: Geert Lovink

Scott McQuire (Melbourne)
The Politics of Public Space in the Media City

Lev Manovich (San Diego)
Urban Media Surface: First Steps

11:40 - 11:50 10 min Break
_____________________________________________________________
11:50 - 13:00 Session 1 - Shaping the Urban Media-Scapes
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Bastiaan Gribling

Infoscape for the International Center of Design, St Etienne, France
Giulia Andi in collaboration (Berlin/Paris)

Integration of Screens in Architectural and Urban Design
Peter Lavery (Australia)

Intelligent Skin. Houses that Oikoborg
Vera Bühlmann in collaboration (Basel)

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
_____________________________________________________________
14:00 - 15:30 Session 2 - Addressing the Social Value and Civic Culture
through Participation
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Scott McQuire

Soft Urbanism: Public Urban Media
Elizabeth Sikiaridi in collaboration (Amsterdam)

Urban Video Displays as the New Voice of Public Communications
Louis M. Brill (San Francisco)

The Shape of Content on the Urban Screen
Perry Bard (New York)

Beaming and Streaming: Developing Infrastructure for an Urban Screen
through the Creative Collaborations Project
Frank Abbott in collaboration (Nottingham)

15:30 - 16:00 Tea Break
_____________________________________________________________
16:00 - 16:30 Three Project Sketches
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Mirjam Struppek

'netropolis' - Information Space for Izmir Metropolitan City
Koray Tokdemir in collaboration (Ankara)

The Art of Interaction, Love Connection and Global Culture Broadcast
Valentin Tomic in collaboration (Yugoslavia)

Knowledge Spaces for Urban Screens
Studiometis (Saint Germain les Corbeil)

_____________________________________________________________
16:30 - 18:00 Session 3 - Opening the Commercial Use of Outdoor Screens
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Rob van Kranenburg

Art vs. Advertising - Comparative Use of Corporate Screens for Video Art
Raina Kumra (Cambridge, MA)

Commercial versus Public Service Applications
Johan Muijderman, (Eindhoven)

Social and Cultural Aspects of Outdoor Video Technology
Vladimir Krylov (Moscow)

Token Screens or Opportunity for Difference? Art Screens and the
Branding of the City
Julia Nevárez (New York)


**************************************************************
DAY 2 (24.09.05)
**************************************************************

10:00 - 10:30 Doors open
_____________________________________________________________
10:30 - 11:50 Session 4 - Future Technology of Outdoor Screens
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Geert Lovink

Media-Facades: Use, Mutation and Technologies
Jürgen Meier (Leipzig)

Future Urban Screens - New Concepts for Urban Screens
Florian Resatsch in collaboration (Berlin)

Cityspeak : From Private Expression to Public Performance
Jason Lewis (Montreal)


11:50 - 12:00 10 min Break
_____________________________________________________________
12:00 - 13:45 Artists Presentations
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Jeroen Boomgaard

Architectural Media Space
Linda Wallace (Amsterdam)

(Tele)interventions in Cybrid Public Spaces
Giselle Beiguelman (Sao Paulo)

Stalk Show
Karen Lancel (Amsterdam)

Etre = Réseau: From scenography to planetary network
Franck Ancel (Paris)

Energie_Passagen [Energy_Passages] - Reading and (De)Scribing the City
Wolfgang Strauss in collaboration (Germany)


13:45 - 14:30 Lunch
_____________________________________________________________
14:30 - 16:15 Session 5 - Experiences with New Content Creation and
Curation
_____________________________________________________________
Moderator: Bill Morris

Curating the Zuidas Urban Screen
Jan Schuijren (Amsterdam)

Audiences on the Move - The Bigger Picture
Kate Taylor (Manchester)

Video as Urban Condition
Anthony Auerbach (London)

Outvideo - International Videoart Festival in Public Spaces
Arseny Sergeev, a.o. (Ekaterinburg)

Near Documentary - the Public Screens of the Schaulager
Sabine Gebhardt Fink (Zurich)

16:15 - 17:00 Final Keynote Speech
_____________________________________________________________

Two Years Public Space Broadcasting in the United Kingdom
Mike Gibbons (London)


**************************************************************

For more information on the sessions, lectures and speakers see the Urban
Screens website:

Contact: Mirjam Struppek
urbanscreens[at] networkcultures.org

Institute of Network Cultures
Urban||Research

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

June 15, 2005

Machinima:

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Digital Performance and Emergent Authorship

"Abstract: This workshop investigates the emergent online dramatic form of "machinima", the co-option of video game engines or off-the-shelf software for dramatic production in a rapidly developing digital performance form. Workshop participants will engage with short examples of popular machinima productions. There will be discussion and demonstration of the machinima production process. The nexus between dramatic conventions, gameplay and traditional video production techniques will be explored. Participants will work with a short piece of a machinima, in the form of a scene created using the Sims 2 game. Participants will improvise, script and perform dialogue to provide meaning for the action. This workshop applies the insights of process drama, a field well developed in educational settings, to the development of machinima. It includes demonstration and participation in dramatic role, focusing on how the conventions of Role Distance and Role Protection apply to this developing field of digital game-based performance." From Machinima: Digital Performance and Emergent Authorship (.doc) by John Carroll and David Cameron, DiGRA Conference proceedings.

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

Social Tapestries

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Public Forum, 1st July 2005

Proboscis will be holding a half-day public forum on the Social Tapestries research programme hosted at the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research on Friday July 1st 2005 1-6pm. The event will bring together practitioners from the arts, industry, government, civil society organisations and academia to review the work underway for Social Tapestries and stimulate public debate on the issues.

This event is a pre-competitive forum for the free exchange and flow of ideas intended to generate opportunities for dynamic partnerships that find common ground between artists, culture organisations, civil society organisations, academia, government and public agencies, business and industry. To book a place please complete the online form. Places are limited to maximum of 70. [blogged by on giles on urban tapestries]

Posted by jo at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2005

Allan Kaprow: FLUIDS, 1967/2005

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Happening Again

Allan Kaprow: FLUIDS, 1967/2005: International workshop of the Applied Arts Universities at Art Unlimited Basel; June 13, 2005, from 2 pm--To mark the opening of Art Unlimited in Basle, Allan Kaprow's Happening FLUIDS will be reinvented for the first time since 1967 by an international workshop, in co-operation with the Department of Art and Design at Basle's University of Applied Sciences and the University Basle.

'Father of Happenings' Allan Kaprow was born in 1927. Nearly 40 years later, the art form he created continues to provoke questions about time, community and collective structures. His Happening FLUIDS involved constructing enclosures with ice blocks at various locations in Pasadena and Los Angeles. Kaprow recruited participants using billboards that displayed the FLUIDS score: "During three days, about twenty rectangular enclosures of ice blocks (measuring about 30 feet long, 10 wide and 8 high) are built throughout the city. Their walls are unbroken. They are left to melt".

Groups of young people made his work a reality. They stacked blocks of ice, delivered by the Union Ice Company, into rectangular structures. Over the ensuing days, the ice structures melted. Photographs, film, the billboard score, the artist's notes and drawings, letters and press clippings document the ephemeral event. Now FLUIDS will occur for the second time. Ice structures will be built at three different sites across Basle, including Art Basel's headquarters building and the roof of the adjacent parking structure. Co-operating in the Happening are the Department of Art and Design at Basle University of Applied Science (Creative Art - Media Art Department), the art history seminars of Basle University, Basle and Lucerne University Departments of Art and Design, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the University of Weimar and Vienna. At the artist's request, students will spend two days in a workshop, devising strategies to realize the work. They will determine such particulars as how to co-ordinate delivery of the ice blocks, secure the necessary equipment and design of the structures. Thus they will create a Basle-specific, contemporary variant of the Happening, this time without the artist's direct involvement.

For further information, please contact Laura Bechter at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich.

HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICH
Limmatstrasse 270
CH - 8005 Zurich
Switzerland
Phone +41 (0)44 446 80 50
http://www.hauserwirth.com

Posted by jo at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2005

ACM MM Interactive Art Program

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Singapore, November 2005

ACM Multimedia 2005 is the premier annual multimedia conference, covering all aspects of multimedia computing. The ACM MM Interactive Art Program seeks to bring together the arts and multimedia communities to create the stage to explore, discuss, and push the limits for the advancement of both multimedia technology through the arts, and the arts through multimedia technology.

The Interactive Art Program will consist of a conference track and an art exhibition. We invite artists working with digital media and researchers in technical areas to submit their original contributions to the following tracks:

Conference track: we solicit papers describing interactive multimedia art works, tools, applications, and technical approaches for creative uses of multimedia content and technology. Emphasis will be given to novel works that use a rich variety of media and those that are interactive, particularly works that exploit non-conventional human-computer interfaces or sensors in new and emerging areas. We strongly encourage papers with a strong technical content written by artists.

Multimedia art exhibition: "Presence/Absence." We seek art works that use multimedia to explore issues of location, relocation and dislocation, particularly where multimedia technology overcomes or reinforces physical presence or separation. The emphasis for the exhibition is on interactive art works that realize powerful artistic concepts using multimedia content and technologies. See the exhibition statement.

Important Dates:
June 20, 2005 Long papers and art exhibition submission deadline.
June 20, 2005 Short papers submission deadline.
July 29, 2005 Notification of Acceptance of Full and Short papers.
August 22, 2005 Notification of Acceptance of Interactive Arts Exhibition.
August 29, 2005 Camera-ready papers due.

Posted by jo at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

June 02, 2005

Open Nature

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Panel Discussion Live on the Internet

Open Nature: Kingdom of Piracy--KOP--presents ideas and examples from their Commons R&D project. KOP were asking: how do communities self-organize to define the rules of usage of the commons? and could this process of rule making and self-organisation be modelled as a game? The work of two guest speakers gives some possible answers to these questions. Simon Yuill presents spring alpha, a networked gaming platform which 'serves as a "sketch pad" for testing out ideas for alternative forms of social practice'. Ken Suzuki presents the new electronic currency PICSY which dynamically evolves in accordance with the users' value. After the presentations, KOP moderators and the audience will join the discussion about rule making in the commons.

Date: June 4, 2005 2:00pm-(JST) + 8 hours(GST); Venue: ICC 5F Lobby; Admission: free. With: Shu Lea Cheang, Armin Medosch, Simon Yuill, Ken Suzuki, and Yukiko Shikata

Posted by jo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 31, 2005

Videotage FLOSS in Media Workshop

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FLOSS Away Technical Constraints

Videotage FLOSS in Media Workshop--Speakers: Kam Wong (Assistant Professor of School of Creative Media, City University) and Annie Wan (Instructor of FLOSS in Media Work Shop); Date: 5 June 2005 (Sunday), 2pm; Venue: Videotage, Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon.

The limits of media art should not be the software license or functionalities created by software designers. Pure Data, free libre and open source software allow you to tailor your own software to match the requirements of your own art piece. FLOSS stands for free libre and open source software. Pure data, an excellent example of the FLOSS idea, is a programming language that can be used in a wide variety of multimedia creation. Annie Wan will touch on interactive installation, VJ performance, audio synthesis & analysis, motion detection and tangible media. You will be working on your own creative project, and you will have a chance to present your work at the party on 27 August.

Annie Wan is a young international artist specializes in audiovisual art and interactive art development, Her recent works have been shown in Sweden, Latvia, Germany, France, Norway, Singapore and Iceland. She will be a PhD candidate with scholarship and Top Scholar Award in DXARTS, University of Washington, Seattle. Check out www.slimboyfatboyslim.org for more information about Annie.

fuse_banner_bubble.jpgVideotage (literally merging the two concepts of "Video" and "Montage") is a non-profit interdisciplinary artist collective, which focuses on the development of video and new media art in Hong Kong. Founded in 1985, Videotage began as a facilitator for collaborative time-based projects. In a small shared office with two chairs and table, Videotage's support to artists came in the form of labour and equipment for production and post-production, and the exchange of ideas. Videotage has since expanded to include publications, education, exhibitions and screenings.

Posted by jo at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2005

re:mote

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How remote am I?

"What does it mean to be remote in an electronic art world? This was one of the questions posed by re:mote, a gathering of digital artists and theorists in Auckland, Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) on 19 March 2005. Held in a geographically remote country, the event was an opportunity for local wired artists to meet face-to-face as well as an invitation to ponder the meaning of "remote" in the 21st century.

Re:mote was an event by and for artists, organised by r a d i o q u a l i a and ((ethermap. The first in a series of one-day experimental festivals, it was run "on the smell of an oily rag" (as we say here) and made possible in part by Adam Hyde's residency at the University of Waikato. Questions posed by the organisers included: are there 'centres' and 'peripheries' within a world increasingly bridged, criss-crossed and mapped by digital technologies? Can technologically mediated communication ever be a substitute for face-to-face dialogue? Is geographical isolation a factor in contemporary art production? Is remote a relative concept?

Fourteen presentations from new media art practitioners and theorists in Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand were squeezed into eight hours and ranged from a cosy midnight feast in Finland to a glimpse of the expansive Antarctic wilderness, and from musings on information from outer space to the virtual escape of a row prisoner. Various methods were employed to connect remote (as opposed to re:mote) participants with those at the Auckland venue - the Elam School of Fine Arts lecture theatre. A live MP3 audio stream enabled the off-site audience to hear everything from the venue, and they could communicate through a text chat which was also used to convey an impression of what they couldn't see. QuickTime, Skype, IRC, iChatAV, iVisit and the Palace were among the applications used in different presentations.

The international speakers were scheduled first to accommodate their time zones, with Steve Kovats and Graham Smith from Rotterdam kicking things off. Visible via web cam, their presentation nicely illustrated their discussion on how telecommunication transforms the concept of distance from space to time. They were in the dark of Friday night, while we in Auckland were well into a sunny Saturday. Also still in Friday night and dressed in her best pyjamas, Sophea Lerner (an Australian new media theorist and artist currently studying in Helsinki) tucked into a midnight feast while elaborating on the promises and assumptions of remote communication. She proposed that the most interesting thing about a remote location is not the remoteness, but the location. This contrasted with the previous presentation's focus on time as the distancing element rather than space or location. Any location, whether it's the heart of a teeming metropolis or an empty beach in southern Aotearoa, can be remote when you're outside it, rendering it exotic, intriguing and desirable. It's the differences, rather than distances, that make a "remote" location interesting - and the unexpected similarities.

Lerner also addressed the concept of peripherality and how one can experience being peripheral in many different places, depending on one's perspective of the "centre". Finland may appear peripheral to Europe, but from the New Zealand perspective it's almost in the middle of that centre. Contemporary politics place Europe and North America in the centre, but as the power balance shifts that centre may relocate to Asia or even cyberspace. Today's technologies release us from the geographical definition of centre, creating globally dispersed "peripheral centres" and "central peripheries". Technology has penetrated even the periphery of Antarctica, as shown by Phil Dadson's presentation about his recent artist's residency there. A looping video of his shadow crunching across the endless white landscape, broken only by the bones of some unfortunate beast, removed not only all sense of place but also time. The simple act of filming his shadow on the ice placed Dadson at the centre of a peripheral environment.

Japanese radio pioneer and artist Tetsuo Kogawa spoke about technology and the body and gave a history of Mini FM, a project which aimed to tactically deregulate the Japanese airwaves by teaching people how to create and broadcast from their own free radio stations. During the 1970s and 80s, Kogawa held radio parties in Tokyo apartments where he taught people to build transmitters, broadcasting from the domestic periphery to the centre of the airwaves. Footage from these events reveal the political act of taking ones own space on the airwaves as also entertaining and community-building. His goal was to use radio technology not as a substitute for face-to-face communication but as a means to bring people together and to propose political and social alternatives. During re:mote, Kogawa also gave an audio performance and the following day led a mini FM transmitter building workshop.

Pre-recorded appearances were made by New Zealander Sally Jane Norman, who has lived in Europe since the 1970s, and Zina Kaye from Australia, who discussed her project "The Line Ahead", which gathers data from airports to create LED signs in a . Sally Jane Norman began with pre-internet architectures of performance, asking how physical gesture can invest digital space, and described the remote manipulation of space probes as "advanced puppeteering". Achieving physicality within digital spaces alters the concept of remoteness; how remote am I if, from Aotearoa/New Zealand, I can physically move an object on the moon? Both air and space travel create bridges between centres and peripheries, destroying the relative remoteness of New Zealand in the space of a few hours and offering instead the greater remoteness of outer space.

The trials and tribulations of remote collaboration were addressed by a number of presenters including myself, Zina Kaye and Trudy Lane. Zina had encountered some difficulties in working with technicians located elsewhere, while Trudy's ongoing collaboration with mi2 in Zagreb (on the online magazine ART-e-FACT) works smoothly. Physically meeting your remote collaborators may make some things easier, but it's also possible to work successfully without meeting, as demonstrated by Avatar Body Collision. This work was presented by Leena Saarinen (in Finland), Vicki Smith (in NZ's South Island) and myself at the venue. Our greatest difficulty is in finding times when the four of us can be online together for rehearsals, but the advantages are many. We taste each others' geographical and social locations and are telematically transported from our peripheral homes to the centres of arts festivals and conferences. Returning to one of the questions posed by re:mote - Can technologically mediated communication ever be a substitute for face-to-face dialogue? - during four years of artistic collaboration, Leena Saarinen and I have never met, so technologically mediated communication is an excellent and necessary substitute for face-to-face. Our "remote" relationship is as real and valuable as if we had met, so how remote are we?

The variety of local presentations given during the afternoon illustrated the diversity of concepts of "remote": a web site about a fictional nation state; universal nomadism and the generic city; "glocalisation"; and a multi-locational artistic picnic were among the projects discussed (for more information on all presentations see www.remote.org.nz). While these presenters were all New Zealanders living in New Zealand, their presentations had connections all over the globe - Lithuania, Croatia, Amsterdam, the USA. As an artist in the electronic world, living in an isolated location doesn't mean that your work must be of that location. There will always be some degree of local perspective, but sources and context are often global; this combination of local and global is "glocalisation".

Live improvised audio performances were given by Tennis (London) in the morning, and at the end of the day by Tetsuo Kogawa, Adam Hyde and Adam Willetts. Tennis (Ben Edwards and Doug Benford) performed with a web cam showing them seated at their computers. As our off-site audience could only hear the audio stream, I provided them with a commentary of what we could see on the screen in the IRC chat. This created another level to the performance, and an extrapolation of remoteness: I was interpreting and relaying my visual observation of an audio performance back to a twice-removed audience, some of whom were in the same country as the performers and on the other side of the world from me. For the Auckland audience in the same room as me, I and my commentary became a part of the performance as well - yet the performers themselves were not aware of this. Thus at least three different performances were taking place: the audio performance given by Tennis; the sound, text and images experienced in the venue in Auckland; and the online version, consisting of sound and text. Reading the chat log several weeks after the event, the remoteness doubles again - comments on now unheard sounds and descriptions of vanished images are like shadows cast by an invisible body. This fascinating unplanned metamorphosis was a result of the event and our various layers of remotenesses. A briefer but related "performance" had occurred earlier in the day when Adam Hyde and James Stevens were speaking over Skype, but James had left his computer speakers on, generating an echo loop that took on an unstoppable life of its own.

My personal experience of re:mote was bound up with the technologies, both in my presentation (using the Palace and iVisit) and in my role at the keyboard as a "chat wrangler", delivering commentary to the off-site audience. The off-site audience's responses to my descriptions of the visuals and the audio stream they were hearing are preserved in the chat log and offer a surreal perspective on the day. Once again, re:mote was answering its own questions, as the chat substituted face-to-face communication reasonably effectively and rolled our individual peripheries into the centre.

As someone who communicates and collaborates remotely on a daily basis, I always value the opportunity to work and collaborate in the same physical space with others. Creating such gatherings in far off places like Aotearoa/New Zealand is especially important, as sometimes we're so busy worrying about what's going on in the rest of the world that we overlook the wealth of activity happening locally. How remote are we when we know what our colleagues in New York, Amsterdam or Belgrade are doing but we don't know what's going on in Dunedin or Wanganui? Our perceived remoteness is embedded in the identity of the people of this small, distant and relatively insignificant country, and fuels a need to be a part of the wider world to counter this feeling of isolation. Yet one of the ideas that came through strongly during re:mote was the possibility to feel peripheral in any situation, and the individual relativity of a myriad of centres and peripheries which are now becoming bridged, mapped and interconnected by digital technologies.

Congratulations and thanks to Adam Hyde, Honor Harger, Adam Willetts and Zita Joyce for making re:mote happen; it was an intense, enjoyable and thought-provoking day. The second re:mote has just taken place, in Regina, Canada - unfortunately I was "remote" in the sense of being offline while on holiday so I was unable to attend, but I'm told it went well. Documentation of both events should soon be online at www.remote.org.nz, and I'm looking forward to re:mote 3."

--Helen Varley Jamieson for Rhizome

http://www.remote.org.nz
http://www.soilmedia.org/remote/
http://www.radioqualia.va.com.au/
http://www.ethermap.org/

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
helen[at]creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm

Posted by jo at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Next OPEN PLAN event:

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PLAN TECHNOLOGY CAMP

OPEN PLAN: Venue: Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham; Date: October 2-8, 2005; Deadline for Expressions of Interest: July 4, 2005

Cross-disciplinary teams will be formed to work on seed project ideas and develop methodologies, encouraging cross disciplinaryexperimentation. Proposals may develop into real projects or may be entirely hypothetical. There will be opportunities to take the projects further, in particular as part of the PLAN final exhibition at Futuresonic 2006 in Manchester UK during July 2006.

Please send a 2-page expression of interest, including details of your areas of interest, experience and expertise to the address below by Monday 4 July 2005. Suggestions for seed ideas in the area of locative-based media are also welcomed. Places at the workshop are limited and the steering committee reserves the right to seed ideas and put together diverse teams from the best submissions, based on the expressions of interest together with views generated at the ICA Event.

Posted by jo at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

SPACE AND PERCEPTION

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LIVE STREAM OF MIXED REALITY SYMPOSIUM

MAY 20th - 21st, RIXC MEDIA SPACE
LIVE stream: http://ozone.re-lab.net/live.pls or http://ozone.re-lab.net/live.ram

SPACE AND PERCEPTION will focus on new phenomenon of Mixed Reality --the environment generated by new technologies that contain significant interaction possibilities in both virtual and physical spaces. Identifying the common in these different views on realities and perception of space, the aim of the symposium discussions is to contextualise and to set up the conceptual background for the development of emerging field of Mixed Reality. It also intends to activate the collaborative potential of the sciences, art, technology and other creative fields of contemporary society.

Posted by jo at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

UbiComp 2005 Workshops

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Call for Papers

UbiComp 2005 Workshops: September 11, 2005, Tokyo, Japan--workshops to be held in conjunction with the Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2005, Tokyo, September 11-14) are now accepting submissions. All workshops will be held on Sunday, 11th September at the conference hotel. Unless otherwise noted, submissions will be accepted until June 17, and notifications of accepted submissions will be sent by July 25. The deadline for early advance registration will be July 28 (more information on the conference hotel and conference registration will be posted on the web site soon).

Please note that prospective workshop attendees require an invitation from the workshop organisers based on acceptance of submitted position papers or explicit request. Upon acceptance, attendees will need to explicitly register for the workshop, which will include a separate workshop fee, in addition to registering for the main conference.

Workshop titles are listed below.

W1: Ubiquitous Computing in Next Generation Conference Rooms: Interweaving Rich Media, Mobile Devices and Smart Environments
W2: Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing: New Social Practices and Implications for Technology
W3: Smart Object Systems
W4: Privacy in Context
W5: Ubiquitous Computing, Entertainment, and Games
W6: The Spaces in-between: Seamful vs. Seamless Interactions
W7: Situating Ubiquitous Computing in Everyday Life: Bridging the Social and Technical Divide
W8: UbiPhysics: Designing for Physically Integrated Interaction
W9: Smart Environments and Their Applications to Cultural Heritage
W10: Monitoring, Measuring, and Motivating Exercise: Ubiquitous Computing to Support Physical Fitness
W11: Metapolis and Urban Life
W12: ubiPCMM: Personalized Context Modeling and Management for Ubicomp Applications
W13: Ubiquitous Wireless Communications

Prospective authors are encouraged to visit the updated Workshop Call for Participation at the UbiComp 2005 web site (www.ubicomp.org), and/or visit individual workshop homepages (listed at http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2005/calls/callworkshops.shtml).

General questions about the workshops can be addressed to the Workshop Co-Chairs (Yoshito Tobe and Khai N. Truong, workshops-2005[at]ubicomp.org); specific questions about any individual workshop should be directed to the organizer(s) of the workshop.

Posted by jo at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Performance Studies International #12

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Call for Proposals and Ideas

PSi #12: Performing Rights--June 15-18, 2006--will be a gathering of artists, activists and academics who are making and researching performance that declares its interest and intent within the field of Human Rights. PSi #12 is being approached as a festival of creative dialogues investigating the boundaries and relationships between Human Rights and performance and will present an integrated schedule of conference and contextualising events.

Queen Mary, University of London, East End Collaborations and the Live Art Development Agency are seeking proposals for all aspects of PSi #12: Performing Rights.

Contextualising Events

PSi #12: Performing Rights will attempt to create a context for exploring the role of performance and the responsibilities of artists in effecting political, social and cultural change through a series of contextualising events including performances, interventions, new media presentations, installations, screenings, displays, artists led laboratories, spontaneous interactions and a library of research and resource materials.

PSi #12 Performing Rights are inviting proposals and recommendations from artists, activists, curators and commentators about performances, new media projects, publications, videos, websites, events, networks, organisations that are concerned with issues of Human Rights for all aspects of the contextualising programme. Proposals are welcome at any time from May 2005.

For more detailed information about the Call for Proposals for PSi #12: Performing Rights Contextualising Events:
email psi12[at]qmul.ac.uk or info[at]thisisLiveArt.co.uk
or visit www.psi12.qmul.ac.uk or www.thisisLiveArt.co.uk

The Conference

The PSi #12 conference will comprise plenary sessions, curated panels, papers and presentations, in which contributors will engage with the political, aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of the relationship between performance and human rights, on topics ranging from public and collective acts of insurrection to the intimacies and fragility of individual freedom and subjectivity.

PSi #12: Performing Rights are seeking paper, presentation and panel proposals for the conference. All submissions are due by 12 September 2005.

For more detailed information about the Call for Proposals for PSi #12: Performing Rights Conference:
email psi12[at]qmul.ac.uk
or visit www.psi12.qmul.ac.uk

PSi #12: Performing Rights Organisations:

Queen Mary, University of London, is a campus university in London's East End, only twenty minutes by tube from the city centre. Arts and Humanities research at Queen Mary is regarded as some of the very best in the UK. Drama at Queen Mary has a particular emphasis on live art, contemporary performance and theatre for social change.

The Live Art Development Agency is the leading development organisation for Live Art in the UK and works in partnership with practitioners, venues and institutions on artist and programme initiatives; develops strategies for increasing popular and critical awareness; provides practical information and advice; and offers opportunities for dialogue, debate, research and training.

East End Collaborations (EEC) responds to the professional development needs of graduates and emerging artists working with Live Art and based in London by offering information, advice and expertise and the opportunity to showcase work in an annual open submissions platform. East End Collaborations is collaboration between Queen between Queen Mary, University of London and the Live Art Development Agency.

Performance Studies International (PSi) is an international organisation founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange among scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance.
Live Art Development Agency
Rochelle School
Arnold Circus
London E2 7ES
United Kingdom
t: +44 (0)20 7033 0275
f: +44 (0)20 7033 0276
lois[at]thisisLiveArt.co.uk
daniel[at]thisisLiveArt.co.uk
hannah[at]thisisLiveArt.co.uk
info[at]thisisLiveArt.co.uk
http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk

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

May 16, 2005

Sonic Interventions Conference Report

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The Sounds/Noise of Silence

Conference Report: Sonic Interventions: Pushing the Boundaries of Cultural Analysis, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Universiteit von Amsterdam, by Marisa S. Olson

The Sonic Interventions Conference was described by its organizers, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, as an interdisciplinary conference "dedicated to exploring the cultural practices, aesthetics, technologies, and ways of conceptualizing sound, noise, and silence." One might imagine that this is an enormous topic, just as enormous as attempting to categorize something as pervasive as light, with which sound is frequently lumped. Taking the example of a panel discussionon the radio, consider the differences between discussing the radio in domestic life in the 1920s and the entire cultural history of the police radio. Interesting connections emerged and, yet, there was not enough time to address them in a single panel. And, of course, theseare just fractional aspects of radio history, and of sound, writ large.

The conference was driven by a large number of such concurrent panel sessions, which tended to foreclose the possibility of any two conference-goers having a "common experience," or of a consistent discourse emerging. The organizers also asked speakers to limit their presentations to ten minutes, rather than the standard twenty, in order to be more conducive to conversation among the thinly-spread audience.

Despite the structural obstacles and the broad topic, Sonic Interventions managed to play host to a number of interestingpresentations. Though a wide net was cast in the call for proposals, inviting artists and engineers to contribute, in addition to thetypical range of academic papers, the program ultimately skewed in thedirection of the academy. Sonic Interventions, then, became an opportunity to survey some of the more interesting contemporary humanities research related to sound.

Keynote speaker Douglas Kahn was among the better-known sound theorists present and his opening talk provided an art historical backdrop for the next four days of discussion. In lieu of discussing sound art, proper, Kahn actually discussed artistic research into states of soundlessness. In a reprise of his catalogue essay for theSon et Lumiere show at the Pompidou, Kahn discussed John Cage's and James Turrell's notions of "silence," and perception in general. Discussing the former's visit to an anechoic chamber and the latter's emulation of such a space, Kahn began to outline a phenomenology of corporeal sound; one concerned with the difference between perceiving the sounds of the body (of the blood flow, or even of thought) as interior or exterior events that is, whether the sounds of the body's systems or the retinal changes experienced in a transition to darkness, would be read as coming from the self or as environmentally specific to the anechoic chamber.

Kahn's arguments find extension into the realms of site-specificity and composition, of course, but also 1960s military research and counter-cultural resistance, or the ever-slippery relationship between light and sound, as manifest through shades of withdrawal and hallucination. This approach echoed the ethos of the overall conference, made evident in ASCA's CFP, which stated, "Sound is a mental impression, a penetrating sensation, a transmitted disturbance that may be structured or chaotic, narrative or non-narrative, organic or technologically produced, communicative, and even politicallycharged."

Despite the vagaries of the call (which were, admittedly, posited in a gesture towards inclusion and diversity), Kahn's specific approach became an apt backdrop for the ensuing days of Sonic Interventions. The overall intent of the conference was to not only define what constitutes sound or silence, but what historic discourses and ideological models of value have been associated with thosedefinitions.

A glance at the conference program reveals that all of the following stood as specimens in the study of sound: music (of many genres, eras, and areas), the spoken word (also of many genres, eras, and areas), radio, noise (political, mental, static, dynamic), the sound of writing, silence (as in "the silent arts," anechoism, "queer silence,"and beyond), orality, the voice, what the dead would say if they could, what the subaltern would say if they could, the soundscape, instruments, recording and playback technology, the broadcast and its political economy, field recordings, sound memories, sound trauma, and the ecology of sonic waste, among others.

Punctuated by performances by Mary Flanagan and Jay Needham were presentations under the heading of four continuous themes: Sound and the Moving Image & Sound Technologies and Cultural Change; The Sonic in the 'Silent' Arts and Bring in the Noise; Silences/Orality; and Soundscapes: Sound, Space, and the Body & Sound Practices and Events. In the interest of time and space, I will present the best or most interesting panels from each heading.

Under the first category, which considered sound in relationship to the moving image, technology, and cultural change, there was an interesting meeting of Cageian theory and pop aestheticism, brought about by Seda Ergul, Jal Kraut, and Luke Stickels. Kraut's approach to reading Cage's notion of silence, and the means of "defeating" it, sounded almost staid in comparison with Ergul's paper on "Cageian Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or Stickels's, on "Violence versus Silence: exploding binaries in Hana Bi." The three bounced nicely off each other, while proving that a seemingly-flimsy definition of silence could be profitable in its potential for widespread application.

The second category, "The Sonic in the 'Silent' Arts and Bring in the Noise" seemed to yield some of the most interesting, if diverse presentations. The title of the category sounds like a collision between ancient philosophy and a contemporary Broadway musical. Nonetheless, conference attendees with an openness to such "accidents"could find themselves presently surprised, as I was in attending a panel of a literary bent. Hannah Bosma, Alix Mazuet, and John M.Picker did an excellent job in excavating the polyvalent "sounds" with which literature is infused, ranging from rattling in one's head space to the scratchy scrawling of ecriture, to the narrative representation of aurality. Where Bosma opened with an elucidation on "Different Noises," Mazuet and Picker looked at Victorian-era instanciations of them. Picker compared the latter to contemporary urban noise problems.

Pulling at a similarly literary thread, under the heading of "Silences/Orality," Greg Esplin, Maria Boletsi, David Copenhafer, and Zachary Sifuentes plunged into canonical texts by Melville, Conrad, Kafka, and Eliot. Each presented studies of characters and contexts in which the cacophony of an encroaching modernity is "heard." The panel was interesting in that each presenter took a very specifically-angled approach to looking at issues with which many media theorists are currently concerned. These include the notions of private/public, orprivacy/publicity; the relationship of the part to the whole (be it a character in a book, an individual in a society, or a cog in a wheel); and modes of distribution and broadcast. Discourses of power, be it individual agency or the apprehensively aligned electrical power, were understatedly present, and the entire conversation was "enlightening."

Finally, under the fourth broad category, "Soundscapes: Sound, Space, and the Body & Sound Practices and Events," Ros Bandt, Ching Fang Chiang, and Pieter Verstraete comprised the panel most oriented toward contemporary art. This very international group looked at variations on installation art ranging from large museum works to smaller-scale immersive works, to Janet Cardiff's "audio walks." The panelists performed close-readings of sonic aspects of the works, which could also have been inspected under the lens of the previous topics. In particular, the thread of modernity (surprisingly more so than postmodernity) permeated the majority of the conference presentations and the aforementioned tenets of this discourse particularly the distinction between the personal and the public were uniquely embodied by the art works discussed here.

Elsewhere under the "Soundscape" category, Julian Henriques presented a paper, entitled "The Reggae Sound System: Music, Culture and Technology," which in a certain sense represented the best synthesis of all of the conference themes: comparing sensorial and political notions of sound and silence, tracing diasporic and ideological roots and metaphorically equating them with root objects in an evolving musicology, and tracing the simultaneous evolution of recording technology and its relationships to the sound it plays and the people who hear it.

In the end, were one to draw any one conclusion about the Sonic Interventions conference, it might be that "sound theory" is currently finding room to "intervene" in other humanistic studies. For better or for worse, this all-encompassing conference worked less to establish sound as a category in its own right (as one will recall was once done for film studies and new media, in the conferences of yore) than to posit is as a useful, if intricate, gloss upon other areas of enquiry. [via Rhizome]

Posted by jo at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2005

Locative Media in the Wild

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Human Interaction with Space

An invitation to researchers, faculty, staff, and graduate and PhD students to submit a letter of interest for a 4-day interdisciplinary workshop--Locative Media in the Wild--to be held July 20th- July 23rd*, 2005 at the Crooked Creek Research Facility in the White Mountains of Inyo County, California. Convened by Brett Stalbaum and Naomi Spellman, Interdisciplinary Computing Arts, University of California San Diego. Funded by the UCSD Center for the Humanities and the UC Humanities Research Institute the goal of this workshop is to share knowledge, methods, and tools between various research disciplines that have a focus on human interaction with space. Our hope is to identify common interests as well as blind spots among a range of disciplines, in order to enrich the various practices represented, and to inspire new areas of research. Four individuals will be chosen to participate. Each will be provided with overnight accommodations, all meals, travel expenses ($300 cap), and $500 compensation.

BACKGROUND The fields of cognitive science, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, psychology, dance, art, computer science, the earth sciences, and geography are concerned with the negotiation of space. Recent advances in wireless telecommunications, sensor technology, and Geographic Information System tools have inspired a tide of experimental creative projects. These tools are being used to address how communication, navigation, and big data are played out in space. As the landscape and urban streets become the canvas for ubiquitous computing applications, what kinds of possibilities emerge? How can research across multiple disciplines enrich the various practices?

WORKSHOP GOALS AND ACTIVITY While the workshop is intended to yield useful tools and problem-solving methods for all workshop participants, we are most concerned with fostering an interaction among disciplines, and examining and expanding upon how researchers approach spatial problems. Discussion and facilitated activity will set up a framework for activity over the 3-day workshop. Participants will be asked to present and demonstrate their own approach to spatial problems, and to collaboratively address problems outside their discipline.

The problem(s) addressed will be culled from workshop participants. Possible approaches include but are not limited to: Geographic Information System software, GPS-enabled mobile phones, narrative strategies, social navigation, performance (performative engagement of surrounding), data visualization, and data mining. Mediated or unmediated, digital or analogue a variety of means to communicate with and through space will be explored. A people-centered approachwill be emphasized in a supportive and flexible environment. Results of the workshop will be made publicly available online. Results will serve as a basis for ongoing multi-disciplinary research in this area.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS Participants may be at any stage in their career, and do not need tobe affiliated with an institution, academic or otherwise.

WORKSHOP LOCATION The physical location should inspire activities with a range of possible scales, problems, methods, and outcomes. By placing the research group outside of a familiar context, participants will be encouraged to rely on each other to address problems that engage the surrounding. The Crooked Creek facility is located at 10,000 feet in the White Mountains in Central California. Facilities and labs include dormitory-style rooms, a weather station, a Geographic Information System lab, and high-speed telecommunications.

TO SUBMIT A LETTER OF INTEREST Please email a short letter of interest to naomi.spellman@gmail.com with "Locative Workshop" in the subject line. Attach your CV. Explain how your research activity or practice relates to this general theme. Include any specific information you deem relevant. Letters of Interest should be received by June 10, 2005. Questions should be directed to naomi.spellman[at]gmail.com or stalbaum[at]ucsd.edu.

*Date of workshop to be confirmed

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION An online discussion and bibliography hosted by Brett Stalbaum and Naomi Spellman, November 2004: Exploring and defining the social and cultural implications of Geographic Information System tools and computerized mapping in a multidisciplinary setting: http://34n118w.net/UCHRI/

Posted by jo at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

prog:ME (programa de mída eletronica)

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Programa de Mída Eletronica

prog:ME (programa de mída eletronica) is the 1st Festival of Electronic Media of Rio de Janeiro which will be an annual event in the city. Organized by Carlo Sansolo and Érika Fraenkel, the festival will take place on the 19th July until the 18th September 2005 in the Centro Cultural Telemar, in Rio de Janeiro-RJ, with 30.000 reais in prizes (approximately $11,000 US). The deadline for application is 15th of June of 2005. To apply please go to www.progme.org.

The event hopes to contribute to the stimulation of national production by highlighting new and established artists who develop works of art and technology, domestically and internationally. Running parallel to this is a program of invited foreign curators who will introduce artists of video-art from around the globe.

In this festival we’ll be inviting submissions for net-art, interactive cd-roms and dvds, and video-art works; we’ll also exhibit performance and urban intervention pieces using electronic media. There will be talks with theorists in electronic arts; workshops; electronic music shows with DJs/VJs and talks with selected artists who will be presenting their works.

There will be 10 prizes of 3000 reais each, five destined for national artists and five for international artists, distributed in the categories of net-art, interactive cd-rom/dvd and video-art.

All the participants will receive a catalogue, the catalogue will register all the activities developed on the event, all this information will be also at this web site, and it will feature more Data regarding every work and every artist. All the net art works will be also available from the web site through links and we intend to keep all this info and the works as an on-line catalogue.

All the activities, and the programme will be published on this site so you can have follow what is going on.

Any queries about the event please send an email to info[at]progme.org

Posted by jo at 07:11 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005

MDCN Symposium

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Art on the Move in Montreal

The MDCN Symposium featured presentations on the following MDCN projects:

Global Heart Rate: Project Lead/Chef de projet : Sara Diamond; Project Participants/Participants au projet : Tom Donaldson, David Gauthier, Anita Johnston, Geoff Lillemon--Global Heart Rate is a large-scale game experience for players and learners in specific urban and natural outdoor environments. It will eventually be networked over distance and amongst time zones. The current version takes place in Banff National Park. These participant-driven mobile experiences are both fun and informative, utilizing the structure of a game todisseminate interactive knowledge about a particular topic, such as Banff's wealth of natural history. Technically, these experiences include real-time synchronous and asynchronous processes, allowing immediate and/or thoughtful response.

Players use mobile telephones and a wearabletechnology component that enters information from sensor data. A rich, information-sharing experience for participants is enhanced by Global Heart Rate's use of micro movies, blue tooth networking, GPS mapping and data caching. Other research outcomes include a mobile gaming authoring system and iterative engineering/content methodology. Mimichi and the Flower Throw games are developed using participatory design methods.

Digital Cities: Project Lead/Chef de projet : Michael Longford & Kajin Goh; Project Participants/Participants au projet : Amitava Biswas, Daniel Lemay, Bita Mahdaviani, Antoine Morris, Rongxin Zhang

Digital Cities presents a locative media project designed for Parc Émilie-Gamelin using sound, image and GPS (Global Positioning System) sensors. An exploration of the urban environment as a wireless ecology, the project looks at the ways in which memory is inscribed in space, drawing on field recordings, oral history, and archival material to form a deeply-layered spatio-temporal mediascape. The viewer's orientation in space shapes the nature of their audio-visual experience. As they move through the site, different media events attached to GPS coordinates are triggered, ranging from sound (heard through headsets) to images and micro-movies (displayed on a handheld PDA). This project repositions our relationship within space and information flows somewhere between the public and the private, the material and the immaterial, and the virtual and the real.

CitySpeak: Project Lead/Chef de projet : Jason Lewis; Project Participants/Participants au projet : David Bouchard, Zehuan Liu, Bruno Nadeau, Alexander Taler, Frank Tsonis

CitySpeak is an investigation of how data acquired from an urban environment’s virtual networks can be used to investigate the same urban space’s physical environment. Using the Île sans fil hotspots in Montréal, CitySpeak selects several locations in the city that are rich nodes of both virtual and real-world traffic, and samples the geo-encoded data related to these particular locations. The dynamic qualities of the data are processed using a database called Next Text to construct ‘texts’ that interpret the data and determine how the texts will be represented visually. The resulting stream of text is layered back onto the locations using both very intimate (PDAs) and very public (large-scale projections) technology.

Mobile Cartographic Command Centre (MC3): Project Lead/Chef de projet : Marc Tuters & Karlis Otto Kalnins; Project Participants/Participants au projet : Jesse Cizauskas, Luke Moloney, Jaanis Garancs, Adrian Sinclair, Gabe Sawhney

Advances in peer-to-peer technology are changing how we connect to the internet as well as to each other, bringing about the idea of a niche-driven Commons. This installation presents the research of the MC3 mobile media lab, an art-led technology development project that explores concepts around unlicensed wireless communication, and civic engagement in the Canadian context. Housed within a modular field-research unit, the installation functions as a forward command post for map interpretation, digital piracy, and civic surveillance via an airborne remote visualization system.

Policy Report: Project Lead/Chef de projet: Barbara Crow; Project Participants/Participants au projet : Candice D'Souza, Ganaele Langlois, Samantha Moonsammy

The policy component of the MDCN project is reviewing and assessing the current status of national and international, industry, and social movement regulations of wireless communications in several countries. [blogged by tobias van veen on MDCN]

Posted by jo at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Liquid Space

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3D Navigable Platform Exhibition and Workshops

LAb[au] is happy to invite you to Liquid Space 01+02 exhibition + lqs03 workshop taking place at Brakke Grond, Amsterdam_ the Netherlands. Liquid Space is a series of artistic workshops LAb[au] is setting up with different cultural institutions to design spatial audiovisuals with a specific focus on collaborative and shared processes resulting in installations, exhibitions and performances.

Here, the space navigable music platform--a 3D engine developed by LAb[au]--is proposed as the starting-point for development and exchange to the invited artists. The engine is based on the principle of integrating different media in a structural, programmed manner, inside and through electronic space navigation. An environment where the performer navigates his created 3D space to compose music in real time, displayed in a 360° projection space and a quadra-phonic sound system.

..lqs01: deSIGNforms _ Nabi Art Center,Seoul
..lqs02: deSIGNing by numbers MediaRuimte, Brussels
..lqs03: deSIGNing feedback loop systems _ Brakke Grond, Amsterdam

..04.05 - 14.05.05: liquid space 03 - workshop
..10.05 _ 20.00 h: liquid space 01+02 exhibition opening + presentation
..11.05 - 14.05 _ 10.00 - 24.00 h: exhibition *
..14.05 _ 20.00 h: liquid space 03 closing event, performance

LAb[au] + Eavesdropper, Els Viaene, Petersonic invited by Brakke Grond to perform Exploring the Room in the context of the Liquid Space 03 deSIGNing feedback.loop systems workshop theme and as an opening-event of the Liquid Space 01+02 - exhibition.

Exploring the Room is a performance where music, best defined by the practice of soundscaping, and real time generated computer graphics stand on the same level. Establishing a constant dialog through its particular stage-design, sound and visuals are building the room, a 3.00 x 3.00 x 2.25 meters "cube" made out of projection screens and quadraphonic speaker setting, giving the minimal footprint able to host 3 musicians during 1.00 hour.

Performers and the audience are projecting shadows on the screen-walls, the system is capturing this image and reintroduce it as an overlaid projected image, closing the loop. All acting then is a matter of balance in between black and white, light and shadow, sound and silence, one and zero.

Posted by jo at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2005

FIELDWORKS

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Art-Geography

FIELDWORKS: Art-Geography Symposium at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, May 5-6, 2005--The 'field' is a shared and privileged space for both art and science. While geographical information gathered in the field is conventionally recorded and translated into graphic form, artists often engage landscape or the city for raw materials. New technologies and critical frameworks are currently transforming the nature and meaning of the field, the practices that take place there, and the ways both artists and geographers identify, secure and circulate field-founded knowledge. This symposium includes an evening of performance and a day of discussion to bring together practitioners from art, architecture, and geography to present original (field)works and address emerging relations between geographical science and artistic production.

Of Note: Thursday May 5, 2005 8:00 pm
Performance and open discussion (45 min): Ultra-red: In the world of modern electronic music and sound art, Ultra-red distinguish themselves for their intrepid blend of political commitment and innovative sound. This event, an original piece commissioned for Fieldworks, is a rare opportunity to see Ultra-red perform live in Los Angeles.

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

May 03, 2005

SPACE AND PERCEPTION

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International Symposium on Mixed Reality

SPACE AND PERCEPTION: International Symposium on Mixed Reality May 20-21, 2005, Riga, Latvia. The symposium will focus on new phenomenon of Mixed Reality--the environment generated by new technologies that contain significant interaction possibilities in both virtual and physical spaces.

As we still have a limited number (of 3-5 spots) for artists and researchers (working in field related to Mixed Reality issues) to participate in symposium - we ask for an informal application -- please enclose short statement describing your field of research or project you would like to present. Deadline: May 9, 2005. Please send your submissions to rixc[at]rixc.lv (applications from Nordic-Baltic region, West-Russia/Belarus are particularly welcome).

The symposium will focus on the following themes:

MR + digital physics (computable space)
MR + navigation (transformation between real and virtual space maps)
MR + social interaction (public space in physical and virtual environments)
MR + sonification (sound architecture in interactive environments)
MR + game studies (industry vs. gamers)
MR + mobile media (role of users in future applications)

* Background

Throughout the existence of the humankind the understanding of space, its frontiers and dimensions has changed a number of times. During the last century the newest scientific theories and the researches in the structures of micro (atom and quantum) and macro (the universe) seek to expand the boundaries of the visible space. As the result of the development of information and communication technologies the new frontier-free space is opened up -- the virtual space of the electronic media.

At the beginning of the 21st century, when mobile media and wireless networks come into dominance - after surfing in the virtual world the navigation in physical space acquired importance. However nowadays in present reality we unavoidably interfere with pervasive media, daily dividing the attention between the events in virtual (media) and physical (real) space. The merger of the digital and physical space alters not only our perception of space but also the sense of the reality...

Artists, scientists, media researchers and technology experts will present their creative discoveries, newest ideas, theories and researches that have taken place in the fields related to space and perception.

Identifying the common in these different views on realities and perception of space, the aim of the symposium discussions is to contextualise and to set up the conceptual background for the development of emerging field of Mixed Reality. It also intends to activate the collaborative potential of the sciences, art, technology and other creative fields of contemporary society.

* Preliminary list of participants:

Maja Kuzmanovic / TRG project / FoAM/Belgium // Robert van Kranenburg / Amsterdam / Virtual Platform // Yon Visell / Croatia - (physicist) / Zero-Th Studio // Karmen Franinovic / Croatia - (architect/designer) / Zero-Th Studio // Alkan Chipperfield / Australia (anthropologist) // Geska Helena Andersson - The Trans-Reality Game Lab (studio director) / Interactive Institute / Gotland University // Sha Xin Wei / Canada - (media researcher and techno-scientist) // Juris Zhagars / Latvia - (scientist, radioastronomer) / VIRAC institute - tbc. // Nicholas Gaffney / FoAM/Belgium // Steven Pickles / FoAM/Belgium // Evelina Kusaite / FoAM/Belgium // Tim Boykett (artist) (Austria) / Time's Up // Andreas Mayrhof (artist) (Austria), Time's Up // Brigitta Zics (artist) / Germany // Perttu Hämäläinen (research scientist) / Finland / Telecommunications software and multimedia laboratory / Helsinki University of Technology // Normunds Kozlovs (sociologist) / Latvia and others...

* Context:

The conceptual background for the symposium is developed in collaboration with EU Culture 2000 supported project "TRG - Trans Reality Generator" project team: FOAM (Belgium), TIMES UP (Austria), and KIBLA (Slovenia).

Developing the framework for this event are also previous RIXC research projects and networked activities on exploring fields of media architecture, acoustic space and locative media.

* Organisers and support:

The symposium is organised by the RIXC Center for New Media Culture (Latvia). Supported by the Latvian Ministry of Culture, Nordic Cultural Fund and Latvian Cultural Capital Foundation.

* Contact: rixc[at]rixc.lv or rasa[at]rixc.lv (Rasa Smite)

Posted by jo at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2005

Provflux 2005

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Implementation to be Featured

"Nick and I recently got word that Implementation has been accepted by Provflux 2005, both as an Intervention (live event) as an exhibition. Implementation’s second gallery exhibition will take the form of mounted photos from the project, a DVD of distance shots, and take-home sticker sheets on display at CUBE2 Gallery in downtown Providence, Rhode Island from May 19th until the end of the month, and we’ll be in Providence May 27th-29th for the event itself, with a goal of distributing, placing, and documenting the entire novel in one weekend in one location. Bring your digital camera and camping gear if you want to join us. Implementation joins about 50 other public interventions, games, urban exploration, lost space recovery, and tech mapping projects for this fluxist/situationist/public art happening." [blogged by Scott on grandtextauto]

Posted by jo at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2005

ISEA2006/ZeroOne

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Call for Proposals for The C4F3

Deadline: June 1, 2005: This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for an installation of augmented furniture, audio/video/software installations and interactive artwork for The C4F3 (The Cafe) during the ISEA2006/ZeroOne from August 5-13, 2006.

The goal of The C4F3 is to create an active ambient space of augmented everyday objects that is not just an art gallery, a restaurant, or a chill space, but a new kind of project space where the whole environment has been rethought in terms of the capabilities of current technology. This Call for Proposals is an invitation to artists, designers and technologists to propose existing work for exhibition and/or use within the café and new projects that support this goal.

The Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. ZeroOne San Jose is a milestone festival to be held biennially that makes accessible the work of the most innovative contemporary artists in the world. In 2006 it will be held in conjunction with the ISEA2006 Symposium.

Posted by jo at 07:22 AM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2005

Ancient Technologies, Dramaturgy, and Game

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Deadline: EXTENDED to April 25

How can traditional performance strategies blend with cutting-edge new media to create artistic forms reflecting today’s dynamic global culture? Join The Kitchen and the Summer Institute’s first invited international Artistic Director, Ong Keng Sen, for a multidisciplinary program exploring the relationships between ancient technologies, dramaturgy and game. Fully accredited by Sarah Lawrence College, this intensive three-week laboratory offers emerging artists the unique opportunity to develop work integrating video, theatre, performance, dance, sound, and text.

Through daily interaction with a select group of professional artists from Asia and the U.S., participants explore ritualistic techniques from ancient cultures within the rich landscape of interactive systems, game design and rules of play. Artist talks and mentoring sessions with industry professionals as well as access to The Kitchen’s extraordinary video archive of performance documentation enrich the curriculum.

Ancient Technologies, Dramaturgy, and Game

July 11 - 29, 2005
Application Deadline: EXTENDED to April 25

Artistic Director: Ong Keng Sen, THEATREWORKS AND
THE FLYING CIRCUS PROJECT, SINGAPORE

Fully accredited by Sarah Lawrence College.

Tuition: $2,800 (includes meal plan and laptop computer)
Partial scholarships available.
For more information please visit our website: www.thekitchen.org

Posted by jo at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

d>Art.O5

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Distributed Art

d>Art.O5 is the eighth edition of dLux media arts acclaimed annual showcase of recent Australian and International single channel, short experimental digital film and video, web and sound art. Under the sub-title "Distributed Art" d>Art.O5 will both focus on art forms that have an inherently distributed nature (web art, mobile phone art) and investigate new methods for distribution of digital art. (podcasting, BitTorrent, Bluetooth etc.).

d>Art.O5 will consist of an exhibition of sound, web, and mobile phone art and a screening program of experimental film and video art. The exhibition will take place at the Sydney Opera House Exhibition Hall in August/September 2005. The screening program will be presented during this same period.

dLux media arts is now calling for works for the following categories of d>Art.O5:

- d>Art.O5 Screen: Open to Australian citizens or permanent residents only
- d>Art.O5 Sound: Open to Australian and International artists
- d>Art.O5 Web: Open to Australian and International artists

During the exhibition the sound and mobile phone art will be available for distribution to the private devices (mp3 players, mobile phones) of the visitors. After the exhibition period, the sound and screen works will be distributed online through podcasting and BitTorrent, respectively. The web works will be presented in an online gallery on the dLux media arts website. All distribution will be under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.

The call for entries closes on June 15th. Any entries not completed by this date will not be accepted. Entrants will be notified of the selection results by July 1st.

For more information and to make a submission to d>Art.O5, please visit http://www.dlux.org.au/dart05

Posted by jo at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2005

Emergences

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

A festival dedicated to new artistic forms and new media, Emergences--organzed by Dedale.info--gathers French and international artists of the digital creation scene around a deeply transdisciplinary and original programming. For this third edition, we are looking for projects in all disciplines, especially, performances, circus, street theatre, puppetry, visual arts, architecture, game art, biotech art, artistic intervention in public space, networked performances (in the framework of collaborations with festivals in France and abroad). Main artistic themes:

Mobility, network and ubiquity | Intimacy, oddness and strangeness | Urbanity and nature | Art in urban space. A special attention will be carried to projects using the following technologies: * wireless and mobile technologies (cellphones, vocal servers, MMS, SMS, videophony, GPS, WiFi...), * sensors and remote interaction systems, * robotics and artificial intelligence, * biotechnologies.

Projects bringing in the audience or/and taking into account the venue will be welcomed as well.

These projects can, if necessary, be the object of an accompaniement in the realization within the framework of D-lab (production department of Dedale).

Deadline for submissions : 06/01/05

Information:

contact @ dedale.info | www.dedale.info

Posted by jo at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005

Mobile Digital Commons Network Symposium

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Sampling the Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Technologies

Hosted by the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), this symposium--May 5th-8th, 2005, Montréal, Canada--examines the impact of mobile culture and the evolving idea of a wireless commons. Over the course of four days, we will investigate how wireless technologies enrich and modify public life in Canada, challenge our notions of space and place, and shape our day-to-day experiences.

Leading researchers, scholars and artists from around the world have been invited to present their cutting edge work in these fields and contribute to an ongoing discussion on these subjects. This event will also serve as a public unveiling of the projects that constitute the launch of the MDCN.

The MDCN connects those members of the academy, the arts and industry whose work revolves around mobile, wireless, and digital technologies in Canada. Funded by Canadian Heritage, our goals are threefold: to facilitate interdisciplinary research; to foster cultural production and public participation; and to develop forward-thinking policy on wireless technologies.

Posted by jo at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES

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OPEN TO ALL ARTISTS WORLDWIDE

MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES is Cardiff’s inaugural festival of creative technology - a three-day programme of events being held across the capital. The festival is being developed between bloc and Chapter. The residency programme for the festival is supported and managed by Cywaith Cymru/Artworks Wales), the national organisation for public art in Wales. The festival residencies are supported through the National Lottery celebration of Cardiff 2005.

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITIES: The BBC Wales New Media’s mobile studio is a touring bus which has onboard a broadcast production studio with wireless broadband internet access, a network of six PCs, a large TV/plasma screen, a Sony HDV broadcast TV camera, digital cameras and scanners. Travelling with the bus is a driver, a producer, a community researcher, and a Lifelong Learning advisor. All the staff are bilingual (Welsh/English). The bus is a partnership between BBC Wales, The Welsh Language Board and University of Wales, Bangor.

Through this residency the artist/s will address the festival’s theme of investigating the ‘places’ where digital technologies become grounded in a geographical and social context. Through the project the artist/s will realise a work that encourages and extends the public’s initial or early contact with digital technology. The project will focus on community participation and exchange and will need to be structured to manage both Welsh and English language content.

It is anticipated that the artist will fully utilise the technology available in the mobile studio, the expertise of the crew, and the studio’s portability. It is anticipated that the work will have a strong visual/audio presence in Cardiff during the festival. The work will also have dual visibility at Oriel Mostyn gallery, Llandudno, North Wales during the three-days of the Cardiff-based festival (www.mostyn.org).

During the residency the artist will be based in North Wales at the BBC’s mobile studio. The bus has a schedule which takes it throughout North Wales and the appointed artist/s will work with the bus team to schedule stops.

The artist will also have access to support from the BBC’s main office in Cardiff. BBC Wales New Media is the cross-media, online, interactive and mobile department within BBC Wales. For further information on the host visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales.

Festival Theme: Artists are increasingly engaged with or inspired by digital technology - exploring consumer and communication technologies such as the worldwide web, mobile networks, file sharing, and computer gaming. Because digital technology is a participatory medium with global reach, artists tend to explore digital technology in the context of public and shared spheres. Often digital art is situated somewhere between public art - albeit in a dematerialised form - and street culture where the technology itself is used as a ‘site’ for the production and presentation of art works. Although digital technology is often claimed to go beyond physical limitations, engagement with technology is always embedded in, or grounded in, real spaces and places whether this is explored from a user or network perspective.

The Residencies: The residencies form part of the festival’s core programme where artists are being invited to investigate the ‘places’ where digital technologies become grounded in a geographical and social context. It is anticipated that the work from the residencies will have a strong presence in Cardiff during the festival period - 28th to 30th October 2005. All commissioned works shown at the festival will negotiate with the specifics of the location at various ‘sites’ in order to bring about activity and exchange beyond the gallery.

The residencies are open to an artist or group of artists and cover a period spent with the residency host between June and November this year (the timing of the residencies is negotiable although the work must be made evident during the festival period).

Fee: There is a fee of £3,600 (30 days), material budget of £750, and outreach travel of £250.

Deadline: Posted applications should be received by FRIDAY 29th APRIL 2005. Shortlisted artists will be notified on 6th May, interviews are to be held in Welshpool, Mid-Wales on the 1st June.

Selection Panel: Hannah Firth (Curator, Chapter/ Festival Director), Emma Posey (Director, Bloc/Festival Director), Iain Tweedale (Editor, BBC Wales New Media), and Walt Warrilow (Project Manager, Cywaith Cymru/Artworks Wales).

If you have any questions or would like to have an informal discussion about this residency please email Walt Warrilow: walt @ cywaithcymru.org.

Applicants should post their CV, a proposal of no more than 1 side of A4 stating ref: May you participate in a digital world, and supporting visual material in slide or CD format to:
May you participate in a digital world
Cywaith Cymru . Artworks Wales
Crichton House
11-12 Mount Stuart Square
Cardiff
CF10 5EE
UK

T: +44 (0)29 2048 9543
F: +44 (0)29 2046 5458
www.cywaithcymru.org
e: walt @ cywaithcymru.org

Posted by jo at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)

Pervasive Connections

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Lets Do Lunch

PERVASIVE CONNECTIONS/LETS DO LUNCH A one day event and exhibition focusing on opportunities for artists and local communities to work with new social technologies.

TAKE2030 takes its richair wireless lunchboxes out to lunch in Hackney and brings the conversations back to Space. Let's Do Lunch tracks Hackney's public access wireless connection points along bus route 26. Lunch dates will be set up with community members to exchange practical skills and visions for a wireless Hackney. The exhibition at SPACE will include a map of Hackney's wireless outposts along bus route 26, documentation of 7 lunch dates and auto transmitting wireless lunch boxes. Pump the signals, realise a wireless Hackney.

Pervasive Connections/Lets Do Lunch
Wireless Networks - Mobile Technologies – Locative Media Event
Saturday 16th April 10.30 – 5pm
Exhibition 6th – 16th April (Weds – Sat 1 TO 6pm)
SPACE, The Triangle, 129–131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH
£5 (includes lunch) booking required

Talks:
Introduction to Wifi - Saul Albert from Wireless London
Artist talk by TAKE 2030 linking to the exhibition Lets Do Lunch.

Workshops:
Network self provision– James Stevens Making flowers with palm top devices – Peter Chauncy Film for mobile phones – Melissa Bliss and Jes Benstock Public authoring and sharing local knowledge – Giles Lane

Panel discussion:
Featuring artists, activists and media practitioners, including James Stevens, Peter Chauncy, Graham Harwood, Matsuko Yokokoji, Rokeby, TAKE 2030, Indri Tulusun. Chaired by Pete Gomes – Wireless London

Let’s Do Lunch - 6 April – 16 April 2005. (Wed – Sat, 1-6pm)

Pervasive Connections/Lets Do Lunch is organised by Space and inIVA as part of Discover Hackney.

Booking To book a place on the one day event ‘Pervasive Connections’, please contact SPACE Media Arts on 020 8525 4344 or spacemedia@spacestudios.org.uk

Further information
http://www.spacemedia.org.uk
http://www.spacestudios.org.uk
http://www.iniva.org /

Directions
Bus: 26 & 48 from Liverpool Street, 106 & 254 from Bethnal Green, 55 from Old Street.
Tube: Bethnal Green.
Train: Hackney Central Silverlink.

Posted by jo at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2005

Walking as Knowing as Making

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A PERIPATETIC INVESTIGATION OF PLACE

Based in Urbana-Champaign at the University of Illinois, Walking as Knowing as Making is a multifaceted effort that seeks to nurture both a theoretical and applied approach to knowing and interpreting place as we experience and construct it through walking. Using the walk as a guiding metaphor the format of this symposium has been designed to encourage a sustained, rigorous, and layered yet experimental, diffuse, and meandering consideration of walking and its associated activities, systems, and values. Between February and May 2005 we will bring to campus a diverse group of scholars, activists, and pedestrians to present ideas, engage in conversation, generate questions, tell stories, and, of course, walk.

Supplementing and also weaving together this series of convergences will be a new interdisciplinary course about walking, an informal film series about place, a reading group, a series of informational and experimental walks and tours, production of a monthly sound collage for broadcast on local community radio stations, a museum exhibition, and a digital and print archive of all the events and activities.

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

April 03, 2005

Games and Education

Technology and Games at the AERA Conference


The American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference will take place in Montréal from April 11-15. Three symposiums will be dealing directly with issues on Games and Education:
- Games and Learning: Theory, New Technology, and Assessment
- Video Games and Digital Literacies
- Advanced Technology for Learning in School, Games, and Informal Settings.
Professors and scholars such as Kurt Squire, Katie Salen, and James Paul Gee will be presenting. For the symposium online program, go to the AERA website..

Here's the abstract of Games and Learning:"The shift toward situating learning and assessment in real-life situations has prompted the investigation of the potential of games in education. By bringing together scholars and game developers from backgrounds as distinct as education, design, and communication, this symposium will promote an interdisciplinary discussion on how games and simulations might be used to improve learning and assessment. In this symposium, presenters address games in the context of three interrelated issues: the role of games within the educational movement to provide more relevant experiences for students, the ways games can be used to promote learning and to assess knowledge, and finally, the implications of understanding the social aspects of games on game design."

Posted by at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2005

URBAN SCREENS 2005

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Discovering the Potential of Outdoor Screens for Urban Society

URBAN SCREENS 2005 is an international conference ranging from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture. The focus is on understanding how the growing infrastructure of large digital displays influences the visual sphere of our public spaces. How can the commercial use of these screens be broadened and culturally curated to contribute to a lively urban society?

The conference will feature three main topics: 1) Shaping the urban media-scapes; 2) Addressing the social value and civic culture; and 3) Experiences from practical case studies. SUMISSION DEADLINE: 1 May 2005

Public space has always been a place for human interaction, a unique arena for exchange of rituals and communication in a constant process of renewal, challenging the development of society. Its architectural dimension, being a storytelling medium itself, has played a changing role of importance in providing a stage for this interaction. The way the space is inhabited can be read as a participatory process of its audience. The (vanishing) role as space for social and symbolic discourse has been often discussed in urban sociology. Modernization, the growing independence from place and time and the individualization seem to destroy the city rhythm and its social systems. New virtual spaces have been populated instead. Starting with the development of virtual cities within chat rooms and spaces for production of identity, we now face community experiments like collaborative wikis, blogs or mobile phone networks in the growing field of social computing. Parallel to this development an "event culture" has evolved in the real urban space of internationally competing cities, focusing on tourism and consumption. In the context of this rapidly evolving commercial information sphere, developers are bringing new digital display technology into the urban landscape.

Considering the social sustainability of our cities it is necessary to look closer at the liveability and openness of public spaces. The experience, made in the new digital communication spheres, might serve as an inspiration for the social enhancement of our urban surroundings. Instead of just showing commercials, could the large outdoor displays function as experimental "visualization zone" of the fusing of the virtual public spaces and our real world? Can screens function as a new mirror reflecting the public sphere, a medium of communication of the city with itself?

The conference wants to launch a discussion about how digital culture can make use of the existing and future screening infrastructure, in terms of art and social or political practices, generating a higher value for its operators and "users". We want to address the existing commercial predetermination and explore the nuance between art, interventions and entertainment to stimulate a lively culture. Other key issues are: mediated interaction, content, participation of the local community, restrictions due to technical limits, and the incorporation of the screens in the architecture of our urban landscape. We are happy to announce our special guest speakers Lev Manovich, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego and Mike Gibbons, Chief Project Manager, Live Events, BBC.

CONFERENCE:

TIME: Friday, 23 Sept. 2005 (extended to 24th according to feedback)
LOCATION: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
ORGANIZATION:
- Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer, Institute of Network Cultures, Interactive Media, Hoogeschool van Amsterdam
- Jeroen Boomgaard, Department of Art and Public Space, Gerrit Rietveld Academy / University of Amsterdam
- Mirjam Struppek, Urban//ReseARTch, Berlin
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
SUMISSION DEADLINE: 1 May 2005

Researchers and practitioners in the field of Art, Architecture, Urban Studies and Digital Culture are invited to submit proposals for papers and presentations on key issues and implemented cutting-edge projects.

The following aspects might serve as guideline for content, addressed in submissions:

Topic 1 "Shaping the urban media-scapes"

- The historical overview of the development an urban media-sphere.
- Future technologies and visions shaping the media-scape
- Critical review of visual and sonic noise versus liveability
- Peoples predetermined media perception in public space
- Melting layers of technology and the cityscape creating a new dimension
- Investigating the aesthetics of design in the context of the urban landscape

Topic 2 "Addressing the social value and civic culture"

- From consumer entertainment to participation of a wide range users
- Limits and challenges of new responsible public-private partnerships
- Mediated interactions as new forms of civic culture and use of public space
- Issues of censorship in content management
- Possible social applications for the community addressing local events, social integration, education
- Long-term value of local identity and cultural diversity through open access?
- Urban branding changing the perception of locations

Topic 3 "Experiences from practical case studies"

- Experiences with production of new and old cultural content for screens
- Technological limits and challenges in content creation and enhancement
- Evaluation studies, responses from participants and interactions
- Case studies of cultural screenings
- The role of government involvement, policy, planning and management
- Experiences with public and private cooperation
- Cooperation with other art forms and creative industries

______________________________________________________________
APPLICATION FORMAT

1. Name of the project/paper
2. Author(s)
3. Contact person (e-mail/phone/fax/postal address)
4. Short 350-word abstract of the paper/presentation
5. Short biography of the author(s)
6. Related web-links
7. Description of the type of media needed for the presentation

______________________________________________________________
ADDITIONAL CALL FOR SUBMISSION OF DIGITAL IMAGES

For a visual screening we are collecting various pictures of urban screens. Please submit high-resolution images in digitalized format, together with the date, the name of the location and photographer.

For your inspiration look at the Russian Internet Journal about large
electronic LED screens: http://www.screens.ru/
______________________________________________________________
FURTHER INFORMATION - MAILINGLIST

Preparations of the event will include an online discussion via a special mailinglist. During and after the conference live web-casting and other online documentations will present the content to a wider audience.

To subscribe and participate in the urbanscreens-l mailinglist register at:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/urbanscreens-l_listcultures.org

If you would like to know more, have a look at the background text:
http://culturebase.org/home/struppek/Homepage/urbanscreens_background.html

_____________________________________________________________
CONTACT FOR SUBMISSIONS:

Mirjam Struppek
urbanscreens (at) networkcultures.org

Institute of Network Cultures
t: +31 (0)20 5951866
f: +31 (0)20 5951840
www.networkcultures.org

Posted by jo at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2005

Wearable Futures:

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Hybrid Culture in the Design and Development of Soft Technology

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS: Deadline for Abstracts: 14th March 2005

An event organised by Smart Clothes Wearable Technology Research Group, University of Wales, Newport and PDR, University of Wales Institute Cardiff in association with SCAN (Southern Collaborative Arts Network); 14 - 16 September 2005, University of Wales, Newport, WALES, UK.

Keynotes: Suzanne Lee, Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins, Fashion, Consultant and author of Fashioning the Future pub Thames and Hudson Sept 2005; Joanna Berzowska, Artist and Assistant Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal; Sarah E. Braddock Clarke, Lecturer, Curator and Writer. Co Author of Techno Textiles, SportsTech and Techno Textiles2 pub 2005; Chris Baber University of Birmingham, Reader in Interactive Systems.

This two day International conference will aim to contextualise the future potential of Wearable Technologies in a variety of fields ranging from military application to fine art.

Wearable Futures is an interdisciplinary conference, which aims to bring together practitioners, inventors, and theorists in the field of soft technology and wearables including those concerned with fashion, textiles, sportswear, interaction design, media and live arts, medical textiles, wellness, perception and psychology, IPR, polymer science, nanotechnology, military, and other relevant research strands.

We will be examining how some broad generic questions will be explored in relation to wearable technology including but not restricted to: aesthetics and design, function and durability versus market forces; the desires, needs and realities of wearable technologies; technology and culture; simplicity and sustainability; design for wearability; wearables as theatre and wearables as emotional 'tools'.

Key fundamental questions across the conference in relation to wearables are:

What is out there?
Who wants it?
What do they want?
How is it achieved?

Please submit an abstract of no more than 400 words in a Word document format by: 14th March 2005 to: hannah.topping @ newport.ac.uk

For further information please refer to the conference website.

Abstracts and full papers will be peer reviewed and if accepted published in the Conference Proceedings. A selection from the full papers will also be considered for publication in a themed addition of the international journal 'A.I. & Society' (SPRINGER).

Abstracts may be offered as long papers (30 minutes includes questions), short papers (20 minutes includes questions) or for poster presentations. Poster presentations are particularly welcomed from postgraduate students.

NB: Please note final submission for full papers has been changed to 6th June 2005.

Committee currently includes:

Chris Baber, Reader, University of Birmingham
Joanna Berzowska, Assistant Professor, University in Montreal
Sarah E. Braddock Clarke, Author & Lecturer
Julia Cassim, Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, Royal College of Art
Andrew Chetty, Arts Consultant
Carole Collet, Director Textile Futures, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Joan Farrer, Reader, Royal college of Art
Frances Geesin, Research Fellow, London College of Fashion
Rory Hamilton, Interactive Design, Royal college of Art
Jane Harris, Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Ros Hibbert, Textile Consultant
Suzanne Lee, Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Alan Lewis, Director of Research, University of Wales Institute Cardiff
Jane McCann, Researcher, University of Wales, Newport
Stephen Scrivener, Research Professor, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Mick Siddons, Consultant, CR8ive Solutions Ltd
Helen Sloan, Director, SCAN
David Smith, Reader, University of Wales, Newport

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

DIGITAL CULTURES

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International Dance Technology-Lab 2005

The International Dance Technology-Lab 2005 will take place from 28 November - 4 December; it will be hosted by Nottingham Trent University's Future Factory in cooperation with Radiator Festival for New Technology Art, essexdance and other UK partners. The weekend conference and exhibition events are open to all.

Digital technologies challenge our techniques of dance and performance, customary perceptions of culturally embodied knowledge and sensory processing, and assumptions about choreography, composition, and the relations between maker, performer, and audience.

The central aim of this international lab meeting in November-December 2005 is to take stock of the evolution of contemporary dance (technology), and develop a new understanding of interaction design and physical computing in the dance and performance field through critical engagement with the consequences of interactivity on contemporary digital cultures.

We shall ask: whether interactive performance has become an instance of collaborative culture, beyond aesthetic conventions of concert dance, and how interactive media blur distinctions between performer and audience/user, between performance, play, ritual, game and utility.

Western knowledge of digital interactivity is examined through non-Western concepts of interaction. Non-western articulations of the digital provide a framework for fresh interpretations of participatory design. The cultural questions in this research lab derive from observations of multi-level collaborations between artistic, theatrical, technological, and research partners from different cultural backgrounds and locations, as well as from lab experiments with divergent perceptions of the sensory processing of the digital.

The theoretical scope of the project encompasses an analysis of "digital cultures" in interactive dance based on the findings of an international and cross-cultural lab with the participation of 20 or 25 distinguished choreographers, composers, performance and media artists, programmers, and designers. The lab workshop takes place at Nottingham Trent University over a period of one week and is closed to the general public.

The weekend conference and exhibition events are open to all.

Cross-cultural perspectives and digital art are the focus of the concluding Public Roundtables and Colloquium to be held at this confernece (Friday through Sunday, December 2-4, 2005).

Commissions for new work will be announced, and these will be on display throughout the week. The colloquium is organized in collaboration with the Radiator Festival for New Technology Art. If you wish to make a presentation on the subject of the Lab during the conference, please send us a proposal.

johannes.birringer @ ntu.ac.uk
Live Art - Digital Research
Nottingham Trent University
Victoria Studios - Shakespeare Street
Nottingham NG1 4FQ UK
http://art.ntu.ac.uk/performance_research/birringer/idat.htm

Posted by jo at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2005

Version>05>Invincible Desire

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS AND WORK

Version is an international festival about art, media, technology and politics. Our fourth annual convergence, Version>05> Invincible Desire, will examine the activities of local configurations and external networks that use visual art, innovative social practices, artist initiatives, creative uses of new technologies, organizing strategies and public interventions in order to engage in cultural reclamation. Through a diverse program featuring an experimental art expo, artistic disturbances, networked urban events, screenings, interactive applications, performances, workshops, art rendez-vous, parties, and action, Version>05 will investigate the urgency for interventions in everyday life, the organization of our shared interests, and the distribution of our ideas.

We will convene in Chicago for a ten day open laboratory to explore a diversity of tactics and strategies to activate our communities and amplify our ideas. The city of Chicago will be used as a map to examine microactions. Blueprints will be unveiled to strengthen emerging alliances and counter institutions. Alternative spaces will be open for staging actions. Public spaces and corporate places will be terrains of intervention.

We seek to explore methods to enjoin the public in a dialogue about pressing issues and ideas of our age. We want to share your actions as well as projects and activities that can help us to transform personal and shared environments. It is our hope that the issue will offer ways to engage in meme warfare, practice social engagement and produce instruments of transformation during these dark ages.

Posted by jo at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

Interactive Panoramic Cinema

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Embodied Spectatorship

Paper abstract: For most of the past 100 years, cinema has been the premier medium for defining and expressing relations to the visible world. However, cinematic spectacles delivered in darkened theaters are predicated on a denial of both the body and the physical surroundings of the spectators who are watching it. To overcome these deficiencies, filmmakers have historically turned to narrative, seducing audiences with compelling stories and providing realistic characters with whom to identify. This paper describes several research projects in interactive panoramic cinema that attempt to sidestep the narrative preoccupations of conventional cinema and instead are based on notions of space, movement and embodied spectatorship rather than just storytelling. Example projects include interactive works developed with the use of a unique 360 degree camera and editing system, and also development of panoramic imagery for a large projection environment with 14 screens on 3 adjacent walls in a 5-4-5 configuration with observations and findings from an experiment projecting panoramic video on 12 of the 14, in a 4-4-4 270 degree configuration. [via USC Interactive Media Division]

Title: "Experiments in Interactive Panoramic Cinema"
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 1/19/2005

Steve Anderson, Susana Ruiz, and Scott Fisher will give a summary of the work done over the past year with Sony's Fourth View panoramic video camera system. This will be a runthrough of a paper to be given by Steve tomorrow in the annual SPIE conference in San Jose on "The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 2005" chaired by Mark Bolas.

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

January 15, 2005

PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network

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Two Day Workshop

The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) is a new international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media funded as part of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme. The network will bring together practising artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects. It will be of relevance to people working in the arts, games, education, tourism, heritage, science and engineering.

You are invited to attend an initial two day workshop that will launch the network, review the state of the art, bring key players together, and make initial contacts. The event will also aim to identify a range of specific interests that can lead to the formation of sub-groups within the network.

Speakers include: Duncan Campbell, Anne Galloway, Matthew Chalmers, Matt Adams, Bill Gaver, Eyal Weizman, Katherine Moriwaki, Sally Jane Norman, Giles Lane, Usman Haque, Franz Wunschel and the Exyzt collective, Richard Hull, Jo Walsh, Schuyler Erle, Teri Rueb, Minna Tarkka, Tapio Makela, RIXC, Pete Gomes, Saul Albert, Susan Kennard, Michael Longford, Steve Benford, Drew Hemment, Ben Russell. [Full list of speakers below]

ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) London UK; Tues 1st and Wed 2nd February 2005, 10am-6pm (music 8pm-1am Tuesday).

Music in the bar from Xela (City Centre Offices, Type Records), XFM Flo-Motion DJ Nick Luscombe and Apachi61.

PLAN is supported by EPSRC and led by Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab, with partners including Futuresonic (UK), Banff (Canada) and M-cult (Finland).

The event is open to the public. Event tickets are priced at £1.50 per day or £3 for two days to cover the ICA daily membership. Please book early to avoid disappointment. [See below for registration process.]

EVENT PROGRAMME - SPEAKERS

DAY ONE: February 1st 2005; ICA London; 9:30am registration 10am start

Matthew Chalmers - Glasgow University
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~matthew/

Bill Gaver - RCA
http://www.rca.ac.uk/pages/research/dr_william_gaver_609.html

Eyal Weizman - Architect
www.cabinetmagazine.org/events/weizman.php

Sally Jane Norman - Culture Lab, University of Newcastle
http://kvc.minbuza.nl/uk/archive/commentary/norman.html

Cliff Randell - Computer Science Department, University of Bristol
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~cliff

Wilfried Hou Je Bek - Socialfiction
http://socialfiction.org

Giles Lane - Proboscis
http://proboscis.org.uk

Matt Adams - Blast Theory
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/

Usman Haque - Bartlett School of architecture
http://www.haque.co.uk

Franz Wunschel - Exyzt Collective
http://www.exyzt.org

Richard Hull - Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
http://www.mobilebristol.com

Constance Fleuriot - Bristol University
http://mobilebristol.com

Jon Dovey - Bristol University
http://www.republicof.net

Debbi Lander - Futurephysical
http://futurephysical.org

Giulio Jacucci - Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT)
Advanced Research Unit (ARU)
http://www.hiit.fi

Annika Waern - Swedish Institute of Computer Science
http://www.sics.se/~annika/

RIXC
http://rixc.lv/

Pete Gomes - Architectural Association
http://www.mutantfilm.com

Saul Albert - Twenteenthcentury, Limehouse Townhall
http://twenteenthcentury.com/cv.php?mem_id=1

Susan Kennard - Banff
http://www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi/

Michael Longford - Mobile Digital Commons Network

Tobias C. Van Veen - Mobile Digital Commons Network

Naomi Spellman - UC San Diego
http://34n118w.net/

Brett Stalbaum - UC San Diego
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/faculty/bstalbau.htm

Minna Tarkka - M-cult
http://www.m-cult.org/

Tapio Makela - M-cult
http://www.m-cult.org/

MUSIC PROGRAMME: February 1st 2005; ICA London; 8pm-1am

Xela (City Centre Offices, Type Records)

XFM Flo-Motion DJ Nick Luscombe

Apachi61

In association with Baked Goods and Futuresonic
http://www.baked-goods.com
http://www.futuresonic.com


DAY TWO: February 2nd 2005; ICA London; 9:30am registration 10am start

Duncan Campbell - IPTV, The Guardian
http://duncan.gn.apc.org

Anne Galloway - Carleton University
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org

Katherine Moriwaki - Trinity College Dublin
http://www.kakirine.com

Jo Walsh - Co-author 'Mapping Hacks'
http://space.frot.org/

Schuyler Erle - Nocat, Co-author 'Mapping Hacks'
http://nocat.net/

Teri Rueb - RISD
http://www.terirueb.net

Erich Charles Harris - Interact Lab, Informatics, University of Sussex
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/interact/

Lalya Gaye - Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute
http://www.viktoria.se/lalya

Martin Rieser - Bath, BFI
http://mobileaudience.blogspot.com

Ewen Chardonnet - Ellipse
http://e-ngo.org

Sarah Kettley - Napier University
http://www.eca.ac.uk/tacitus/SarahKettley.htm

Andrew Wilson - Blink Media
http://fisharepeopletoo.blogs.com/1/2004/09/city_chromosome.html

Karl-Petter Akesson - SICS
http://www.sics.se

Jen Southern - University of Huddersfield
http://www.theportable.tv

Russell Beale - Advanced Interaction Group, School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rxb/

Steve Benford - MRL Mixed Reality Lab
http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk

Drew Hemment - Futuresonic, University of Salford
http://www.futuresonic.com/

Ben Russell - Headmap / Locative
http://headmap.org

Full details of the PLAN ICA workshop, and updates to the programme can be found on the PLAN website.

REGISTRATION

Registration is a two-step process:

1]. Book tickets via ICA
Tickets, priced at 1.50 (GBP) per day, are available from:
the ICA Box Office: 12 Midday - 9:30 pm
Email: tickets@ica.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0)207 930 3647
ICA Address - ICA. The Mall. London SW1Y 5AH
ICA Website - http://www.ica.org.uk

2]. Provide contact details to lra@cs.nott.ac.uk as below
If you would like to be included in the PLAN networking activities
and delegate list, please send the following contact details to
Linda Andrews, lra@cs.nott.ac.uk
Name:
Organisation:
URL:
Address:
Email Address:
Tel No:
Areas of Interest:

Posted by jo at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2004

Towards Tomorrow?

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Fundamental(ist)s of Performance

Towards Tomorrow?; 7-10 April 2005; Centre for Performance Research University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK; theatre X performance.

As The Centre for Performance Research (CPR) celebrates thirty years of work, this conference will build upon and extend the dialogues and debates that CPR has forged over its long journey from research laboratory to research centre.' Towards Tomorrow?' will examine the complex relation between performance and theatre: the past, present and future of 'performance' and 'theatre' and their aesthetic practices.

CPR's anniversary publication Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past will be launched at this gathering and a complementary publication is planned to emerge from Towards Tomorrow? with a range of international contributions that seek to reorient the discipline of performance and to demonstrate its increasing relevance in many areas of cultural studies, philosophy and the arts.

Call for x,y and z: (where z = Discussions, Provocations, Polemics, Experiments, Manifestos, Papers, Confessions, Screenings and Demonstrations)

As part of the programme of this event there will be panels addressing aspects of performance and theatre that relate to broad themes of risk and failure, the future and generations, events and institutions and practice as research.

There will be a 'platform, soapbox, and propaganda' station 'In Extremis: Fundamental(ist)s of Performance', for the promulgation and dissemination of extreme enthusiasms, radical obsessions, pristine lies and rotten truth. It will be a space to present ideas contemporary, anachronistic, contentious and conformist.

A programme of 'talk back' sessions are planned where artists and performers address scholars who have explored their work; reversing the direction of enquiry and facilitating dialogue between practice and criticism.

We encourage proposals to lead enquiries relating to the concerns of this event, either following the themes suggested below, or generating different areas of enquiry. Also proposals for individual presentations or papers within these panels are invited, each should include a 300 word abstract for a presentation of 20 minutes duration.

Possible themes may include:

'Before the age of Performance'
'Transformation/Transmission/Transmutation'
'The Weave of Performance'
'Staging Play: The Future of the Field'
'And where were you on the evening of...?: Artists and Practitioners
interrogate Theorists'
'The Dangers of Failure: risking performance'
'Disturbing Performance'
'The Doing, Re-Doing and Undoing of Performance'

Please send proposals and/or abstracts, or register interest in 'talk back' or 'fundamental(ist)s' sessions by 10th January 2005, (we will respond by 24th January) to Dr Daniel Watt ,The Centre for Performance Research, Unit 6, Science Park, Aberystwyth, SY23 3AH, Tel: + 44 (0)1970 622133, Fax: +44 (0)1970 622132 dpw@aber.ac.uk

At this major gathering of key practitioners and scholars from around the world the conference programme will comprise:

Performances - from Wales, Europe and beyond
Expositions - understanding the state of play
Workshops - drawing from the crucible of cutting-edge practice
Panels and Debates - to challenge and cultivate new directions
Interrogations and Enthusiasms - Strategic 'open' sessions
Feasts - where food becomes event
Excursions - taking advantage of our local landscape

Towards Tomorrow?
Temporalities: Then, Now, To Come

Then: Theoretical discourse has structured and transformed the environments of theatre and performance. Towards Tomorrow? provides a FORUM for both a critical reflection on performance and the nature of cultural theory and to assess its future both beyond and within the academy.

Now: The event of performance, its practice and presence will be explored. There will be OPPORTUNITIES for practitioners to interrogate theorists and for the statement of radical agendas and manifestos.

To Come: The development of the future of the field belongs to another GENERATION. This gathering will not determine such a future, but it will be determined to keep open all possible transformations, evolutions and revolutions that may be on their way.

Trajectory
Towards Tomorrow? will explore the relation between theatre and performance, risk and failure, events and institutions to understand how the possibilities of performance, and the history of organisations such as CPR, might be considered?

Is there a fractal structure (a finite area bounded by an infinite distance) to the discipline, its manifestation as practice and its future, as yet unknown, transformations? What are the issues of survival: of a discipline and its practice, its organisations, and the relationship with the academy?

How does the spiritual aspect of performance - space, body, time and imagination - integrate and challenge both the formal and the theoretical articulations of work? Does such a consideration generate its own eschatology; if so, what is the apocalypse of performance?

Some Operations.....
Towards Tomorrow? includes In Extremis: Fundamental(ist)s of Performance a 'platform, soapbox, and propaganda' station, for the promulgation and dissemination of extreme enthusiasms, radical obsessions, pristine lies and rotten truth. A space to present ideas: contemporary, anachronistic, contentious and conformist.

Towards Tomorrow? will offer a programme of performances and workshops alongside numerous presentations of archive photographic and video material from theatre companies and performers from across the world.

The schedule for each day will include KEYNOTES (confirmed contributors include: Philip Auslander, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jane Goodall, Dragan Klaic, Michal Kobialka, Jon McKenzie, Susan Melrose, Marion Pastor Roces, Freddie Rokem, Rebecca Schneider and Stelarc), PANEL SESSIONS, a PRACTICAL or RESEARCH ENQUIRY element and the opportunity for artists and performers, from key phases of experiment over the past 40 years, to 'talk back' to theorists and commentators who have addressed their work.

Questions of tomorrow must also be concerned with generations, the potential of youth and the energy and vitality it will provide performance in the future. Towards Tomorrow? will include Generation24. Our panel of young practitioners of the future, from schools and colleges in Wales and internationally, who will observe and intervene in the proceedings with the interruptive urgency of the future's call.

Continuing the CPR tradition for high quality events staged in an individual way

Throughout the event care is taken to forge links between people and ideas and to create formal and informal opportunities for people to exchange information about current and future projects. CPR's long history of bringing together international performance practitioners and scholars in a potent spirit of debate/friendship, argument/opposition also serves as the occasion to highlight and focus work at the forefront of future developments in the field.

30 + 10: Throughout 2004/5 CPR will be celebrating 30 years of work and 10 years in Aberystwyth.

Antony Pickthall
Marketing & Development Director
Centre for Performance Research (CPR)
6, Science Park, Aberystwyth, SY23 3AH
Tel: +44 (0) 1970 621571
Fax: +44 (0) 1970 622132
E-mail: aop@aber.ac.uk
www.thecpr.org.uk

For the curious...opening up worlds of performance

Posted by jo at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2004

netzwissenschaft

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Emerging Infrastructures of All (Inter)net Research

Dr. Reinhold Grether's network research | netzwissenschaft site maps the "emerging infrastructures of all (inter)net research endeavours. net.science as an anthropology of connectivity is trying to overcome the constraints of specialist method transfers on net matters. the protuberance of technical networks necessitates a professionalization of human net knowledge. neither the isolation of concepts as in basic research nor the encapsulation of processes as in applied sciences will ever be able to adequately describe the complex autopoiesis of networks. net.science is undoubtedly developing into a scienza nuova of its own right."

Check out his Mobile Art and Virtual Performance research areas.

Posted by jo at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Performing Art Performing Science:

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Transdisciplinary Approaches to Performance

The Performing Art Performing Science: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Performance conference will take place at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June 16-18, 2005; DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: March 1, 2005.

The conference seeks to redefine performance according to some of its earlier disciplinary roots in the arts and sciences. In the arts, performance has traditionally implied a staged activity or presentation using a specific disciplinary form like dance, music, and theatre. In the sciences, it has often meant the efficient operation of mechanical and/or technological systems and prototypes in specific goal-oriented tasks. How can a transdisciplinary perspective communicate new knowledges emerging at the intersection between disciplines and how can this alter our approaches to performance as a unique phenomenon?

We are seeking proposals that formulate key questions about transdisciplinarity and performance. Some possible topics might include: contemporary trends in dance, new media and performance; new visualization technologies; competing and complementary notions of performance; emergence and artificial life science; performance of self-organizing systems; genetic engineering; embodied knowledge; computing machines and the evolution of culture; new epistemologies emerging at the intersection of the sciences, arts, and humanities; disciplinary encroachment; new transdisciplinary curricula; the impact of infrastructure and resources on research directions; the survival of performance disciplines in contemporary hypermedia and mass media contexts.

Contributions may take a variety of forms: academic papers, artistic performances, scientific demonstrations, short workshops, installations, combinations and transformations of traditional conference formats, or new models for transdisciplinary dialogue.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: March 1, 2005. Early applications are encouraged.

Proposals should include the title of your contribution, the type of contribution (paper, performance, etc.),a 200-300 word abstract describing the project, estimated running time, and a list of any specific space or technical needs. For contributions involving more than one presenter, please include a list of collaborators and their affiliations. Please note that conference funds are limited, at best, so let us know what you need to bring your work to the conference.

Proposals can be submitted online through the TransNet website or sent to:

christine stoddard
Research Assistant, TransNet
School for the Contemporary Arts
Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Canada
tel: 604.291.3896
fax: 604.291.5907
email: cpstodda@sfu.ca
Transnet website: www.sfu.ca/transnet

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

December 14, 2004

Digital Communities 2005

Urban Conference: Digital Communities 2005

Papers due Feb 2005

Digital Communities is an international network of scholars, policy makers, and urban analysts who share an interest in the relationship between information technologies and urban life.

The Digital Communities conference in 2005 is in Benevento and Napoli, Italy.  The conference will explore a wide range of themes associated with information technology, the knowledge economy, technology policy, and the significance of place in cyberspace.  Of special interest is the experience of locations within the Mediterranean region.  If you would like to participate by presenting a paper or organizing a session, please read the conference details listed in the call for papers. 

Digital Communities 2005 is led by Maria Paradiso (Università degli Studi del Sannio) and organized in collaboration with Michigan State University   (Mark Wilson, Kenneth E Corey), the IGU Commission on the Geography of Information Society (Aharon Kellerman, University of Haifa ; Henry Bakis, University of Montpellier III ) and the Journal of Urban Technology (Richard Hanley).  

Digital Communities 2005 is supported by RCOST-Research Centre on Software Technology, Centro di Competenza ICT, MARS-Mediterranean Agency for Remote Sensing and Università degli Studi del Sannio. (Posted by Michelle Kasprzak)

Posted by at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2004

e-Performance and Plug-ins

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A Mediatised Performance Conference

e-Performance and Plug-ins: A Mediatised Performance Conference; December 1 and 2, 2005; The School of Media, Film & Theatre, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Introduction: The hybrid phenomena created by new media performance-makers traverse a range of academic disciplines and approaches from philosophical enquiry into the ontology of liveness to the very technical and logistical questions of performance in a mediatised environment under diverse conditions of actualisation.

Some performance theorists have questioned the notion of liveness by asking 'How is the liveness of the performance changed when it occurs within the spaces of technology?' Others have discussed the phenomenon of Internet use as 'performance on-line' and have used terms commonly found in new media discourses, such as 'posthuman', 'virtual bodies', 'embodiment' and 'telepresence'. Yet others draw upon Lacanian film theory in their analysis.

This symposium will address the range of these extant approaches and seek new discourses with which to talk about this emergent area of study. It is intended as a forum for cross- and multi-disciplinary investigations of issues around media/technology-based performance. Paralleling the diversity and range of artistic and theoretical approaches to media-based performance, conference contributors will present multi-modally, including live video interventions by speakers outside Australia, live performances, as well as presentations of scholarly papers and practice-led research.

Areas of enquiry: In developing their submissions, delegates are asked to address one or more of the following areas of enquiry:

» What terminology is appropriate to the discussion of mediatised performance? Is the traditional language of performance studies, terms such as 'dramaturgy' or 'ritual', helpful in discussing media/technology-based performance? Or are information-technology terms such as 'interface' and 'interactivity' more useful?
» What are the key challenges arising in collaborations between theorists from different disciplines when discussing live performance in a mediated matrix?
» What issues, for both critic and practitioner, lie at the nexus of theory and practice in digital performance?
» What are the epistemological differences between a virtual performance in a virtual venue (on the Internet and/or computer) and a new media 'live' performance in a theatre?
» Where exactly would a history of mediatised performance begin? What would that history cover, and what would it privilege? What is the future for mediatised performance?

Abstracts and proposals are invited in the following forms:
1. Scholarly Paper: A paper of 20 minutes duration, with time then allocated for questions and discussions (10 minutes). Papers should address an aspect of the conference's areas of enquiry as described above. Abstracts to be sent by 01 June 2005. (Response by 15 July 2005)
2. Presentation of Practice-Led Research: Artist/scholars are invited to submit proposals for a 20-minute theoretical discussion of their own art/performance works through documentation in relation to any of the conference's areas of enquiry. Abstracts to be sent by 01 June 2005. (Response by 15 July 2005)
3. Panel: Design, curate, and organise a panel which addresses any of the conference's areas of enquiry. Panel sessions will be two hours in duration and should include no more than four speakers in order to set a framework for discussion. Proposals including brief details of panel framework and speakers' contributions to be sent by 01 April 2005. (Response by 01 May 2005)
4. 'Live' performance: Proposals for a short 'live' media-based/intermedia performance (max. 20 minutes duration) may be submitted. Artists will be responsible for providing for the particular technical needs of their performances, while the conference organisers will provide a theatre venue with basic audio and visual equipment and Mac computers. The selected works will be showcased as an evening performance event. Proposals including technical requirements to be sent by 01 May 2005. (Response by 01 June 2005)

Please submit the following:

» An abstract (approx. 300 words) for Categories 1 and 2
» A proposal (approx. 800 words) for Categories 3 and 4 ß Your name, title, and professional affiliation
» A one-paragraph biography (no more than 100 words) for publication in the conference program
» An email contact address
» Technical requirements for your presentation (software/hardware)

Conference organisers:
Executive committee: George Kouvaros, Andrew Murphie, Ed Scheer
Advisory committee: John Golder, Su Goldfish, Clare Grant, Ross Harley, Moe Meyer

Enquires: Yuji Sone (Conference Coordinator) at y.sone @ unsw.edu.au

Dr Yuji Sone
Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Media, Film and Theatre
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052 Australia
Ph: +61 2 9385 4862
Fax: +61 2 9662 2335

Posted by jo at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2004

navigating the narrative in space

Mary Flanagan will give the keynote at "Playing the Past: Nostalgia in Video Games and Electronic Literature" conference, to be held on March 18-19, 2005 at the University of Florida.

Flanagan's navigating the narrative in space: gender and spatiality in virtual worlds" is an important complement to Turkle's, Bruckman's, and Donath's writings on gender and technology...Flanagan is co-editing--with Austin Booth--the much expected "reskin" (Cambridge: MIT Press), which is forthcoming in 2005. Reskin follows the 2002 piece by the same editors "reload: rethinking women + cyberculture" (also MIT Press). The 2005 book focuses on how technology is being used to alter the physical body."

Posted by ana boa-ventura on net art review

Posted by jo at 03:45 PM

November 09, 2004

performing art performing science

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Call to Performance

TRANSNET Conference [Transdisciplinary Network for Performance and Technology] asks:

"How can a transdisciplinary perspective communicate new knowledge emerging at the intersection between disciplines?"

"How can this alter approaches to performance?"

Call for Proposals to the conference, June 16-18, 2005 at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

Posted by michelle at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

INTERACTIVE FUTURES

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Technology in the Life World

CALL FOR PAPERS, PERFORMANCES, & INSTALLATIONS

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is a forum for showing recent tendencies in new media art as well as a conference for exploring issues related to technology. The theme of this year's event is Technology in the Life World. With digital media becoming more mobile, many artists and theorists are exploring ideas of nomadism and telepresence. Nomadic computing, mobile devices used to augment reality, and more publicly distributed technologies, are being considered by artists and theorists for their ethical and social impact.

Technology in the Life World will be presented in two streams: Digital Nomadism and Technology and Ethics. Artists working in new media are encouraged to submit proposals for installations, performances, and screenings. In their proposals, artists should relate their work to one of the above themes. All art work will be presented at Open Space artist-run centre. Installations should be compact and self-contained. Please see the list of technologies available toward the end of this document before applying.

Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival
Co-sponsored by Open Space Artist-Run Centre
Conference hotel - Laurel Point Inn
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
February 4-6, 2005.

Scholars and artists working in new media arts, theory, and criticism are encouraged to submit proposals for presentations at the conference. Presentations should be, in part, demonstrative, incorporating digital technologies, interactive or digital video, sound, or network-based elements. In their proposals, presenters should relate their work to one of the above themes. We encourage proposals that push the boundaries of the traditional conference paper. Most presentations will take place at the Laurel Point Inn.

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is part of the Independent Film and Video Festival and applicants are encouraged to check the Festival website for more information on the broader program.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS / ARTISTS

• Arthur and Marilouise Kroker are internationally known writers and lecturers on the future of technology. Arthur Kroker, Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria, is the author of numerous book on technology and postmodernism as well as Director of UVic's Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture. Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the University of Victoria as well as co-editor of a trilogy of books on feminism and technology. Together, the Krokers edit the electronic journal, CTheory (www.ctheory.net) and co-curate CTheory Multimedia.

• Char Davies has achieved international recognition for her work in virtual reality. Integrating real-time stereoscopic 3-D computer graphics, 3-D localized sound and user interaction based on breath & balance, the immersive environments Osmose (1995) and Ephémère (1998) are world-renowned for their artistic sensibility, technical innovation, and powerful effect on participants. Davies has dealt with the themes of nature, psyche, and perception in her work for more than 25 years. Davies was a founding director of Softimage, building it into the world's leading developer of 3-D animation software, used for special effects in many Hollywood films including Jurassic Park and The Matrix. She left Softimage at the end of 1997 to found her own art & technology research company, Immersence Inc.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

INTERACTIVE FUTURES is interested in artistic and theoretical work that relates to role of new media technologies in the life world.

• Areas of exploration include: nomadism, mobility, augmented reality, telepresence, bio-technology, ecology, and ethics.

• Presentations can be in the form of DVDs, video tapes, games, web-sites, etc.. and should be 45-minutes in length.

• Proposed artwork for exhibition may take the form of installations, performances, or screenings.

• Applications should not exceed 500 words and should indicate whether a presentation or an art piece is being proposed. Please include a 200 max. word bio.

• If your presentation requires specific technologies please describe your needs in detail.

Proposals should be submitted electronically to:

Digital Nomadism
Julie Andreyev

Technology and Ethics
Steve Gibson

All proposals *must* be submitted in text only format either as an attachment or within the body of the email message. Please present examples of your work as a URL to a web-site.

FUNDING

INTERACTIVE FUTURES does not have funding for travel or accommodation. Presenters and artists are expected to apply for travel funding from their home institutions and/or granting bodies. Presenters and artists will be given a pass to all INTERACTIVE FUTURES events and will have access to the “Hospitality Suite” at the Festival hotel (food and drinks). All presenters and artists will be eligible for the conference rate at Festival Hotels (between $40-90 Canadian per night).

DEADLINE FOR ALL PROPOSALS: Friday, December 3, 2004.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out by December 17, 2004.

EQUIPMENT ACCESS

Laurel Point Inn – Presentations

The following equipment will be made available for all presenters:

• Mac computer with Monitor, keyboard, DVD/CD-ROM drive.
• Data/Video Projector.
• VHS Player.
• Sound system with amp and two speakers.
• Wireless high-speed internet access with DHCP.

Open Space – Art pieces

The following equipment is available for artists at Open Space. Artists should be aware that equipment will have to shared and therefore should not propose to use all of the below devices simultaneously. Art pieces should be easy to set-up and take down. Wherever possible artists should apply their own technology.

• 2 Data/Video Projectors.
• VHS Player.
• DVD Player.
• 3-4 Macintosh computers.
• Sound system with amp, 16-channel mixing board, mics, and four speakers. Eight speakers may be possible by special arrangement.
• Internet connection (shaw.ca).

INTERACTIVE FUTURES Co-Curators:
Steve Gibson sgibson @ finearts.uvic.ca
Julie Andreyev lic @ telus.net

festival @ vifvf.com

Posted by jo at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2004

DTPA 2005

Digital Technologies and Performance Arts (DTPA 2005)

Second International Conference for Digital Technologies and Performance Arts (DTPA 2005); SCHOOL OF INTERMEDIA AND PERFORMANCE ARTS, Doncaster College, Doncaster, England; July 5-6, 2005. CALL FOR PROPOSALS; Deadline: January 5, 2005.

This interdisciplinary conference provides a forum for those in the fields of theatre, dance, music and performance (researchers, practitioners, educators, systems developers) for a dynamic and exciting exchange of approaches surrounding the use of new media technologies in live performance. Proposals are invited for papers, performances, presentations, workshops and poster presentations on the following topics:

• Live performance and interactive systems
• Motion capture/motion-sensing technologies
• Performance pedagogy, education and new media
• HCI and live performance
• Web-based performance and virtual performance spaces
• Realtime music control
• Gesture and interactive multimedia
• Interdisciplinarity and new media
• Performance software/hardware development

All proposals should be approximately 200-300 words. Proposals for performances and installations should be submitted with an outline, CD or DVD support, as well as full details of technical and spatial requirements. Workshop proposals should also include information on technical and spatial requirements.

All expressions of interest should be forwarded by January 5, 2005 to:

Dr. Dave Collins
Reader
School of Intermedia and Performance Arts
Doncaster College
High Melton
Doncaster
DN5 7SZ
Email: david.collins @ don.ac.uk

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the end of March 2005.

Performing arts companies and independent artists may have conference fees waived but will be responsible for travel and accommodation fees.

Presenters may also wish to submit written papers for publication prior to or following the conference to the new International Journal of Digital Media and Performance Arts. http://www.intellectbooks.com/journals/padm.htm

Full registration information will be available shortly on the School for Intermedia and Performance Arts web-site.

david.collins @ don.ac.uk

Posted by jo at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2004

Mobile Technologies and Wireless Networks

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WORKSHOPS at SPACE

Workshops will be run by SPACE's Media Technologies Specialist Peter Chauncy in partnership with practitioners working in related areas. Workshops will cover the following:

Thursday 18th November: Wireless Free Networks - desktop 2 rooftop Omni Directional Antenna Building; with James Stevens from Consume.net
Tuesday 23rd November: An Introduction to Wireless Networking-A Wireless Rig; with Psand
Thursday 25th November: Portable Devices - iPAQs, mobile phones and GPRS; with Giles Lane from Proboscis
Monday 29th November: Locative Media - Global Position System (GPS) devices; with Ambient TV

Each workshop will include:
*An introduction to the technology
*Examples of practice
*Discussion around related concepts and critiques
*Instruction in using equipment and an opportunity to test it

All workshops cost 25UKP and places are limited.

To apply please contact Marina or Paul on 020 8986 5998 or email
spaceplace @ pacestudios.org.uk
Places will be allocated on a first come first serve basis

All workshops will be held at SPACE Triangle, 129 - 131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH Workshops will all run from 10:30 - 17:00. Please advise us where possible, if you're going to be late. SPACE Triangle is fully wheelchair accessible.
Please let us know if you have any other access requirements.

For more info check out:
Bow Wireless http://www.bowfestival.org.uk/Bow_wireless.htm
The State of Wireless London by Julian Priest
http://www.ambienttv.net
http://www.proboscis.org.uk
http://psand.net/
http://www.consume.net

Marina Vishmidt/Paul Gardiner
Media Arts Administrators
Space Place
43-45 Dace Road
Fish Island
London E3 2NG
Tel: 020 8986 5998
Fax: 020 8986 6887
email:spaceplace @ spacestudios.org.uk
http://www.spacestudios.org.uk

Posted by jo at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Public Displays of Affection

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Affect and its Exhibition in Public

Public Displays of Affection
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Visual and Cultural Studies Program
University of Rochester
Friday, April 8 & Saturday, April 9, 2005
CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Civility can be viewed as a series of performances that generate a range of emotions, including the patriotism of war, the joys of shopping, and the fear of urban crime. The public display of affection constitutes a contest of meaning in which various appeals are made to organize the emotional life of the individual and the rules of decorum. To be convinced of this idea one only has to turn on the television. From the not-so carefully scripted emotions of the recent Presidential debates, to the ongoing pageantry of heteronormative romance, to the proscribed images of mourning for war casualties, it appears that the politics of putting your heart into the public sphere are by no means certain, but certainly meaningful.

PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION aims to explore the value of affect and its exhibition in public. Disturbed by formations of the public sphere as a wholly rational space for the exchange of collective ideas and actions, we turn instead towards the multiple meanings or uses of public feelings. We are interested in the specificity or uniqueness of emotions and how they shape historical moments and geographic sites.

We invite proposals from across disciplines, research interests and theoretical persuasions that engage with P.D.A. through specific forms of display: museums, galleries, mass media, film, theatres, festivals, etc. Possible areas of inquiry might include, but are not limited to:

Nationalism and/or spectacular nations
Political protest
Public/private space
Public sex
Marriage
Family
Feminism
Queer history and theory
Empathy, sentiment, depression, rage and other kinds of affect

***DEADLINE for submissions: December 15, 2004***

Submissions for 20-minute papers should be in abstract form (250-500 words). A self-addressed stamped envelope must accompany all submissions requiring return. Please include e-mail addresses with all submissions whenever possible.
Abstracts and inquiries may be sent via e-mail to: vcsconf @ mail.rochester.edu

Printed submissions should be sent to:

Organizing Committee for "Public Displays of Affection"
c/o Program in Visual and Cultural Studies
424 Morey Hall
University of Rochester
Box 270456
Rochester, NY 14627-0456

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

The Program in Visual and Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary graduate program at the University of Rochester. Its focus is visual culture and critical theory; the Departments and Programs of Art and Art History, English, Film Studies, Anthropology, History, and Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women and Gender Studies, constitute its academic base. Web site: http://www.rochester.edu/college/AAH/

Posted by jo at 02:39 PM

October 04, 2004

Distributed Form: Network Practice

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Dominant Spatial Paradigm

Distributed Form: Network Practice, University of California, Berkeley, October 22-24, 2004

"Recent developments in information technology have resulted in the entrenchment of networks and distributed systems as the dominant spatial paradigm, effectively challenging fundamental design issues of autonomy, originality, place, practice and form, which reconfigure disciplines through the implementation of distributed logics and collaborative 'open' practices. As a benchmark, this conference will analyze how the disciplines of art, science and architecture are responding to rapidly changing mobile, wireless, and information-embedded environments.

The conference will be organized around a multidisciplinary framework operating at three different scalar levels: At the Meta level, the conference will first address Form and the Network, raising issues of architectural morphology of and within networked society, by building a provisional history of networked design processes and production.

The second session, Form and Technology, will consider current research on the relationship between experimental digital technologies and emergent form.

The third panel, Micro: Form and Operation, will address theories of operative design strategies, social relationships and bodiless form.

The fourth panel, Mega: Form and Presence, will investigate how larger scale networks and their reconfiguration of time and space are altering professional design practices, while critically considering a logic of connection as the primary site of design."

Posted by jo at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2004

PERVASIVE AND LOCATIVE ARTS NETWORK (PLAN)

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THIS IS THE (PLAN)

A new international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media has been funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme. The network will bring together practicing artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects.

The network will stage three major gatherings. Each gathering will have a distinct form and focus: an initial workshop to launch the network and assess the state of the art; a technology summer camp for artists and technologists, including hands-on prototyping sessions using the facilities at Nottingham's Mixed Reality Laboratory; and a major public conference and participatory exhibition as a central component of the Futuresonic 2006 festival in Manchester; as well as a supporting web site and other resources.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS - PLAN Workshop

Submissions are invited to the first of these events, a two day public workshop with papers, demos and discussion sessions. The aim of the event is to launch the network, review the state of the art, bring key players in the field together, and make initial contacts. The event will also aim to identify a range of specific interests that can lead to the formation of sub-groups within the network. Position papers and a summary report will subsequently be published on the network web site.

The workshop will take place in London over two days in the week beginning 24th January 2005. Venue and final dates announced soon.

Please send submissions to ben@open-plan.org by Monday 8th November.

We request that participants seek support for travel and subsistence from their institutions. For participants without institutional affiliation the network shall support applications to funding councils and foundations, please contact us for further details.

THE NETWORK

Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) - Enhancing Mobile and Wireless Technologies for Culture and Creativity

This network will draw together computer scientists and engineers who are leading the field in developing pervasive and locative technologies; artists who are using these technologies to create and publicly deploy innovative and provocative experiences; social scientists with a proven track record of studying interactive installations and performances; industrial partners from the creative industries, spanning the arts, television, games, education, heritage, mobile computing and telecommunications sectors; and international partners who are coordinating parallel networks around the world.

NETWORK OBJECTIVES

The network aims to support the formation of a new interdisciplinary research community to investigate how the convergent fields of pervasive media and locative media need to evolve in order to support future cultural and creative activities. Specific network objectives are:

-To review the scope of the research that is currently being carried out in
these fields through a focused workshop, leading to an integrated state-of-the art survey paper.
-To identify the key research issues that need to be addressed in order to further develop pervasive and locative media to support culture and creativity, leading to a series of discussion white papers.
-To seed future projects by bringing artists, scientists and industry together in a creative environment so that they can generate and practically explore new ideas, and also to provide a forum for publicly demonstrating some of these.
-To produce online and offline resources to support researchers, artists, industry and to promote public understanding of this emerging field, including a public website, an online document repository for members and a newsletter and DVD.

NETWORK ACTIVITIES

The network will organise and support a range of activities aimed at growing a research community and generating new collaborative projects between artists and technologists. These will include staging three major research gatherings, producing online and offline resources for fellow researchers and PhD students, and outreach activities targeted at industry.

Gatherings

We will stage three major gatherings. Each gathering will have a distinct form and focus: an initial workshop to launch the network and assess the state of the art; a technology summer camp for artists and technologist, especially PhD students, including hands-on prototyping sessions using the facilities at Nottingham's Mixed Reality Laboratory; and a major public conference and participatory exhibition as a central component of the Futuresonic 2006 festival in Manchester. These major gatherings will be interspersed with more ad-hoc steering and reflection meetings as required by the network participants.

Producing resources

We will produce resources to publicise the network, encourage the exchange of perspectives and discussion, and to provide tutorial support for PhD students, artists and other researchers who wish to break into this area. These will include:

-Online resources: a public website providing access to network information including project deliverables as well as news of forthcoming calls for proposals and conferences, supported by a online document repository where members can upload documents and take part in discussion. The latter will be realised using BSCW or Project Place software.
-Offline resources: a six monthly printed newsletter and a DVD of video

Outreach

The network will reach out to other researchers beyond the initial partners and also to the creative industries. This will include distribution of the newsletter and also staging a series of industry seminars, for example as part of the TI/EPSRC Outreach programme. The network research associate will also carry out a series of site visits to different partners and potential partners in order to learn more about and report on ongoing activities.

BACKGROUND IN SCIENCE AND CULTURE

A new generation of pervasive technologies is enabling people to break away from traditional desktop PCs and games consoles and experience interactive media that are directly embedded into the world around them. And locative media, the combination of mobile devices with locative technologies, supports experiences and social interaction that respond to a participant's physical location and context. Together these convergent fields raise possibilities for new cultural experiences in areas as diverse as performance, installations, games, tourism, heritage, marketing and education.

A community of researchers working in pervasive media, also known as ubiquitous computing, are exploring location awareness as a requirement for the delivery of accurate contextual information. Another community, primarily consisting of informal networks of technical innovators and cultural producers, which identifies its field as Locative Media, is exploring developments in and applications of locative technologies within social and creative contexts. One of the aims of this network is to bring these two communities together, linking academic research initiatives and agendas to key figures and ground breaking developments that are currently taking place outside mainstream academia.

The creative industries are also beginning to take up these opportunities, led by artists who are actively charting out the potentials and boundaries of the new pervasive and locative media. Other cultural sectors have also been exploring the potential of pervasive and locative media including the games industry through commercial examples of locative games played on mobile phones such as Bot Fighters and Battle Machine and also research projects such as ARQuake, Mindwarping, Pirates! and Border Guards. Researchers have also demonstrated applications in heritage and tourism, for example personal tourist guides and outdoors augmented reality displays and as well as in mobile learning experiences and participatory local history mapping projects.

A key characteristic of this research is its interdisciplinary nature, with many of these projects combining practicing artists, technology developers and also ethnographers, whose studies of early experiences that are actually delivered as public artworks have yielded new insights into the ways in which participants experience pervasive media, for example how they (and performers and technical crew) deal with uncertainty of location and connection, and, conversely, new metaphors for engaging in locative media.

However, realising the full potential of pervasive and locative media requires several further developments. First, it is necessary to expand the research community, drawing in new academic partners and also a greater range of partners from the creative industries. Second, it is important to deepen the interdisciplinary relationships between artists, technology developers and social scientists working within and between these two convergent fields. This is not only a matter of reflecting on this relationship, it is also necessary to pursue it in practice, which means forming new collaborations leading to practical projects. Third, we need to clarify and deepen the research agenda for this area, by opening up a variety of research questions, including:

-To what extent does the convergence of pervasive media and locative media signify a commonality of views, definitions and issues in each field?
-What new kinds of cultural applications will become possible through pervasive and locative media? Can we envisage new installations, performances, games and other public experiences?
-Can common design frameworks and tactics help create powerful user experiences? Can we identify and share design guidelines and generate useful abstractions, for example building on recent proposals for deliberately exploiting uncertainty and ambiguity
-What tools are required by creative users, for example that enable them to easily (re)configure an experience to work in different locations or to orchestrate it from behind the scenes. What new research challenges do these embody, for example, how do we visualise the state of the technical infrastructure-networks and sensors-96 or intervene in participants' experiences?
-What methods do researchers use to design and evaluate their experiences? We already see the use of ethnographic studies, audience discussions and even analysis of system logs; how should these be extended and can we share approaches, tools and even datasets to enhance our understanding of experience and design?

These questions, combined with the need to build a broader inter-disciplinary research community, provide the underlying motivations for this network.

INITIAL NETWORK

Project investigators:
Steve Benford, Nottingham (Principle Investigator)
Drew Hemment, Salford
Henk Muller, Bristol
Matthew Chalmers, Glasgow
Michael Sharples, Birmingham
Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Sussex
Christian Heath, Kings College
Jon Hindmarsh, Kings College

Network co-ordinator:
Ben Russell, Headmap/Locative Media Lab

Initial partners:
Marc Tuters, Locative Media Lab
Dennis Del Favero, NSW iCinema
Steve Sayers, NESTA
Toby Barnes, EM Media
Richard Hull, HP Labs
Denny Plowman, City of Nottingham Council
Sara Diamond, Banff Centre
Andrew Caleya Chetty, Metapod
Amanda Oldroyd, BT Exact
Matt Adams, Blast Theory
Nick Southgate, Ricochet TV
Annika Waern, iPerG
Giles Lane, Proboscis
Minna Tarkka, m-cult
Carsten Sorensen, LSE
Angharad Thomas, Salford
Chris Byrne, New Media Scotland
Paul Sermon, Salford
Nina Wakeford, INCITE, Surrey

Posted by jo at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2004

Global Interface

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Interface at Critical

Mark Marino (of the Barthian and bachelor bots) sends word of Global Interface, a yearlong, interdisciplinary workshop on cyberculture that is just starting up with a talk from Kate Hayles on Monday, Oct 4. Meatspace meetings will happen monthly at UC Riverside, as is explained in the proposal. The diverse set of participants includes faculty from music, dance, and computer science. “The interface serves as the nexus between artist, viewer, programmer, technology, and industry,” the blog for the workshop declares. Mark and the other organizers hope that this blog will foster intersections and conversation online, too, and there’s a plan to post extensive notes on all the talks.

posted by nick on grand text auto, 09.29.04

Posted by jo at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2004

ubiquitous computing and the production of space

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Call for WiFi.ArtCache Participants

This is a call for contributions to art-technologists interested in contributing to the WiFi.ArtCache during its exhibition at Spectropolis October 1-4, 2004. Deadline for submissions is September 26th.

By simply coding to a provided ActionScript 2.0 API, Flash artists are able to create an interactive experience that changes based on how many people have downloaded their art object, how many people are currently interacting with their art object, or whether their art object is currently in range of the WiFi.ArtCache. Here are earlier posts about WiFi.ArtCache and Spectropolis.

The WiFi.ArtCache is a physical object server containing a standard WiFi 802.11 access point. When exhibited at the Spectropolis event at New York's City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, the WiFi.ArtCache will contain a storehouse of art objects. Visitors to the event can download these art objects onto their 802.11 equipped laptops and experience the artists' interpretation of location and proximity effects.

Developer documentation and downloads can be found at:
http://wifiartcache.techkwondo.com/overview.jsp
http://artcache.techkwondo.com/overview.jsp

Please send submissions, questions and inquiries to wifiartcache at
techkwondo dot com.

General information about the WiFi.ArtCache concept can be found at:
http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/artcache/

Additionally, the WiFi.ArtCache will contain a generic storehouse of digital ephemera that visitors can upload and download to the server. Scratchy audio, yellowed digital documents, discolored image files and spoiled emails can all be found and dropped off at the WiFi.ArtCache.

WiFi.ArtCache was developed by Julian Bleecker with support from Eyebeam Atelier. This exhibition is sponsored by the Downtown Alliance, NYCWireless, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Spectropolis. Spectropolis is curated by Wayne Ashley, Yury Gitman and Brooke Singer.

http://spectropolis.info
http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/artcache
http://www.eyebeam.org
http://www.nycwireless.org
http://www.lmcc.net

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

August 05, 2004

Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City

New Urban Experience

Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City is a three-day event that highlights the diverse ways artists, technical innovators and activists are using communication technologies to generate new urban experience and public voice. The event explores what is possible when wireless communications (both new and old), mobile devices and media converge in public space. The increasing presence of mobile communication technologies is transforming the ways we live, construct and move through our built environment. The participants of the Spectropolis exhibition make obvious or play with this shift, creating new urban perceptions and social interactions with cell phones, laptops, wireless internet, PDAs and radio. In addition to the projects presented in the park, there will be several hands-on workshops and two panels free to the public. Find out more

Posted by jo at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)