During the panel discussion “25 years of transmediale / reSource Activism VIDEOMAKERS UNITE!,” Thiel was invited by a panelist to talk about Reign of Gold, her augmented reality artwork for the AR Occupy Wall Street project.

Gansing — who was not moderating but sat in the audience — literally shut her up, and demanded that her website be taken off the screen, saying he finds augmented reality art “offensive!”

Ironically Gansing themed his festival “in/compatible” and proclaimed that it would look at artistic movements that were not compatible with the existing order and systems.

Why does Transmediale celebrate yesterday’s interventionist art, but fear today’s interventionist art?

Videomakers Unite!: An open conversation about video art and net culture, media collectives and counter-publics … Videomakers Unite! takes a critical look back at the 1980s and 90s discourse around video and the net, and relates this to the production of present-day counter-cultures within the fields of political and artistic, individual and collective practices.

- Tamiko Thiel
http://www.mission-base.com/tamiko/

Performing Data exhibition (April-June 2011) is a review of Fleischmann and Strauss´ body of work from Virtual Reality (Home of the Brain) up to Mixed Reality (Murmuring Fields or Energie-Passagen), from Fluid (Liquid Views) to Rigid (Rigid Waves) up to Floating Interface (Media Flow).

Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss from the Fraunhofer IAIS Research Institute show an intersection of the body and immaterial digital data. From Body Space (Virtual Striptease) to Knowledge Space (Semantic Map): Interactivity as an extension of touch is a central strategy of their work – interactivity with its complex relationship to reality, re-presentation and presence.

The body as interface and intersections to the disembodied digital information. Immersion in data flow causes productive moments of disturbance and suspension, and consequently – a feeling of real physical presence.

The exhibition Performing Data includes works from the early 1990s, when the artists/scientists were co-founders of the ART+COM collective in 1987 in Berlin. Since 1992 they developed their work as research artists at KHM and GMD – the German National Research Center for Information Technology, since 1997 as directors of the Media Art & Research Studies (MARS) department and since 2001 at Fraunhofer Society, in the Institute for Media Communication (IMK) and the Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems in Sankt Augustin, Germany.

The catalog with DVD and essays by Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Derrick de Kerckhove, Luca Farulli
Released in September 2011
Editor: Krzysztof Miekus
Co-editor: Karolina Koriat
Publisher: National Centre for Culture, Warszawa 2011 in collaboration with Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk, 2011
ISBN 978-83-61587-55-2
114 pages

Albion College and the city of Albion, Michigan seek artists and designers to submit work for consideration for a virtual public art exhibit to launch the first annual Albion A.R. Art Walk. This Augmented Reality competition will feature sculptures digitally overlaid in Albion’s Reiger and Victory Parks from April 22 through May 17, 2012.

Up to 20 works of art will chosen from around the world for this inaugural year of the Albion A.R. Art Walk. Albion College and the Virtual Public Art Project (VPAP) will launch a series of site-specific virtual artworks throughout the city of Albion to be viewed via VPAP’s free Layar App for most iPhone and Android smartphone devices.

Artists and designers interested in submitting work for this project should refer to the guidelines listed below.

Preliminary Guidelines for submitting work:

1. Artist name
2. Artwork title
3. Artwork subtitles (for inside Layar, if applicable)
4. Artist statement or short description of work
#1-4 should be in a word doc or PDF
Artwork image or illustration (jpeg @ 200dpi for printed promotion)
5. Link to artist’s website (if available)
6. Artwork
Submitted 3D files should either be a .l3d (Layar) format or .OBJ with attached .mtl file
All textures must be PNG or JPEG and square (512×512 is ideal)
Animated textures are allowed and must be saved as a PNG with attached .mtl file
MTL files MUST link to the attached texture files
3D models must be sized when created to the same size they will appear in real world space
7. All work and supported material should be placed in a folder and named with the Artists’ name

Submissions should have “Albion AR” in the subject line contact [at] virtualpublicartproject.com

Affexity is a play on both ‘affect city’ and ‘a-fixity.’

Affexity is a choreographic exploration with Augmented Reality on mobile devices with 2 intended outcomes: a pilot choreography embedded in urban spaces using geospatial tagging and the groundwork for an initiative in open source choreographies. The innovation of this project is in concept, composition, modes of audience participation, and technological development.

Collaborators:

Susan Kozel Professor at MEDEA Institute of interactivity Malmö University (Malmö)

Jay David Bolter Professor of Media and Technology, Mixed Environments Lab at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, USA)

Maria Engberg (Lecturer at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, Visiting Professor at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech, and Visiting Affiliate Researcher at the Wesley Center for New Media)

Jeannette Ginslov, independent Screen Dance Artist and choreographer (Copenhagen)

Karolina Rosenquist (Medea Collaborative Media Initiative, Malmö)

Wubkje Kuindersma (free lance dancer and choreographer based in Copenhagen)

Timo Engelhardt (Masters Student Malmö University Computer Science Department: Software Design)

Two other students from Georgia Tech are also involved in the project: Nachiketas Ramanujam and Sanika Mokashi who will work on the AR programming in USA.

This video Camera & Editor - Jeannette Ginslov

Video produced by Walking Gusto Productions 2012

The art project Augmented Bombings is looking for courageous folks who want to live with a virtual 3D bomb. The bomb is totally harmless, it doesn’t hurt or limit the usage of your space in any way. There are no costs arising. Since the positioning is done from the outside, you don’t have to make an appointment with a technician.

Twin bombs of the first 40 bombs ordered will be part of a guerrilla art exhibition in March 2012. The venue could be: Devon Islands (Canada), Ōmiya Park Soccer Stadium (Japan) or the Guggenheim Museum in New York (USA). You, dear bomb hosts, decide which one or suggest other places.

On the website you can find some exhibition visualizations, see which venue is currently on the top and order your bomb. Each participant can order five bombs maximum. But only one of them can take part in the exhibition.

Augmented Bombings is an art project fighting virtual trash in the so called “Augmented Reality” by courageous 3D bombing. Responsible for the project is Susanne Berkenheger.

Why fight virtual trash? Well, have a look at our mini-comic “The Geo Coordinates You Live In”. www.augmented-bombings.de/why/

Exhibition Visualization: Adaptation of the photo ‘Crew 3 members Charles Frankel and Brent Bos climb Marine Rock on Devon Island on July 20, 2001′ by The Mars Society, available under CC-BY-SA-3.0 Copyright © 2001 The Mars Society.

Augmented Bombings
LAT52.5466380_LON13.4175490
Post Box Office 580554
D - 10414 Berlin

The computer is moving out into physical and urban reality. Since Mark Weiser’s call for a ‘computer for the 21st century’ in 1991 a migration from the screen and the desktop towards integrating computers and networks into our surroundings has been a part of contemporary computer science research; for example, in augmented reality, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and pervasive computing. A number of technological developments (such as big screens, new smart materials, GPS, RFID tags, and ever faster and cheaper wireless networks) have helped carry the research agendas out into ordinary reality.

This article will discuss how we experience the urban space of ubicomp. It will do so by introducing the concept of ‘scripted space’ in order to discuss how ubicomp is related to new developments in public urban space. Focusing on the experience of the urban we will argue that scripted space is a concept that highlights the written, coded quality of ubicomp. As opposed to that suggested by such titles as ‘The Disappearing Computer’ (Streitz, Kameas and Mavrommati, 2007), we believe that embedding the computer into the environment will not render it transparent or invisible.

Leonardo Electronic Almanac in collaboration with The Samek Art Gallery and with Kasa Gallery announces a special issue titled: Not Here Not There. This issue arises out of the territory between two cultural streams.

In the 1960’s, artist Robert Morris articulated the strategy of representation summarized by ‘site vs. non-site’ whereby certain artworks were simultaneously abstract and representational and could be site-specific without being sited. In the 1990’s net.art re-de-materialized the art object and found new ways to suspend the artwork online, between (web)site and non-site. In the 21st century, new technologies suggest a reconsideration of the relationship between the virtual and the real. With Augmented Reality technology (almost) any image in the real environment can become a trigger for the virtual, and any real site can be overlaid per GPS with a virtual environment, merging sites through sight. ‘Hardlinks’ such as QR codes attempt to bind a virtual link to our physical environment. Augmented Reality technology uses GPS to overlay virtual environments and real sites, merging sites through sight.

Throughout the 1970’s, institutional critique brought political awareness and social intervention to the site of the museum. In the 1980’s and 90’s, street artists such as Banksy went in the opposite direction, critiquing the museum by siting their art beyond its walls. Sited art and intervention art met in the art of the trespass. What is our current relationship to the sites we live in? What representational strategies are contemporary artists using to engage sites? How are sites politically activated? And how are new media framing our consideration of these questions?

Other questions that the call seeks to address are related to interventionist practices and appropriations of public and private spaces, which contemporary technology has rendered ‘virtually’ possibly everywhere.

Starting from the historical concepts of expanded cinema and future cinema, which refer to Valie Export and Peter Weibel who “anticipated many of the trends that were later to be described as conceptual art, context art, institutional criticism, and intervention,” [Early (conceptual) photographs, (expanded) films, (body) videos and (contextual) works, 1964-1975, “Peter Weibel, Rewriter,” Slought Foundation Online Content, January 31, 2009, http://slought.org/content/11415/ (accessed December 2, 2011.)] the call wishes to also address the concept of virtual artistic intervention.

“If air space is regulated and property rights include everything that is below and above the land, ‘cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos,’ what governs the virtual territory?” [Lanfranco Aceti, “The Virtual Places We Own: When Communities and Artists Occupy Your Place without Your Consent,” Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place, 15–18 October 2008.]

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) is inviting proposals for an issue on these themes with Senior Editors Lanfranco Aceti, Director of Kasa Gallery, Sabanci University and Richard Rinehart, Director of the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University. Artists that work with AR technology and curators and writers that work on issues related to AR, sited art in relation to new media, or site-specific interventions are particularly welcome to submit proposals for consideration.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) will produce an online and printed issue, as well as host curated images and videos online.

Proposals to: info [at] leoalmanac.org

a) Subject heading: Not Here Not There
b) 500 hundred word abstract for articles – submission of full articles preferred for this special issue by proposal deadline January 31, 2012
c) Deadline for proposal submission: January 31, 2012
d) Deadline for submission of full article: March 1, 2012
e) 2 images at 72 dpi resolution no larger than 700pixels width for artists
f) Links to previous work, videos or personal sites

Our publication formats allow for full-color throughout and we encourage rich pictorial content where relevant and possible. Note however that all material submitted must be copyright cleared (or due diligence must be evidenced). For online publication a wide variety of media content may be considered (animation, mp3, flash, java, etc…)

• For scholarly papers please submit the final paper ready for peer review. Your contribution will be reviewed by at least two members of the LEA board and revisions may be requested subject to review.
• For themed and pictorial essays please submit an abstract or outline for editorial consideration and further discussion.
• Please keep your news, announcements and hyperlinks brief and focused – include contact details and a link to an external site where relevant. We reserve the right to sub-edit your submissions in order to comply with LEA policies and formats. Where material is time-sensitive please include both embargo and expiry dates.
• In all cases specify special system considerations where these are necessary (platform, codecs, plug-ins, etc…)

Growing Panes (2012) is a performance art piece that tests the limits of perception, reality, and belief following the advent of Augmented Reality (AR). Spectacle, nature, art and technology are juxtaposed to query traditional utopian promises of technology. The artist raises the specter of Godot’s metaphysical tree by re-planting the tree of knowledge in a terrarium of pristine soil. The artist must shatter the membrane that separates man from that which bringing forth life, reflecting the trauma of progress. Feelings of anticipation, expectation, and disillusionment are parlayed into a deliberation of the hope of technological deliverance. The fulfillment of augmented memory, vision, safety, and reality via technological determinism are examined and literally magnified in the piece. Symbols of empowerment are gifted to the audience, but like Neitzche’s Übermensche the spectators must set their potential into action themselves.

The Buzzz (2011) an Augmented Reality (AR) installation piece explores the way technology alters point of view, the drama of progress, and questions the solidity of quotidian phenomenology, knowledge, and visual perception. The Buzzz employs advanced technology in combination with the most primitive mechanisms of visual distortion, the magnifying glass and references tromp l’oeil painting as spectacle embodied by AR flies. The dissemination of technology that projects virtual additions to the human gaze surfaces the fallacy of objective reality as captured by an apparatus that purports unadulterated representation.

The Art & Patronage Summit is an invitation-only event for patrons, collectors, arts institution directors, curators, academics, artists, diplomats and other influential players involved in culture of and for the greater Middle East, including Turkey, Iran and North Africa. The Summit will enable both individuals and institutions to collaborate in support of the emerging Middle Eastern art scene and to shore up the infrastructural development of the region’s art institutions. The Art & Patronage Report, a major three-part research project, the first attempt at cultural mapping of the greater Middle East, region by region, sector by sector, will build the first formal database of artistic production and organizational practices and infrastructures.

Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) Iranian-Canadian, New York-based media and performance artist, works in the field of Augmented Reality (AR). Speculative public experiences exploring the philosophical and social underpinnings of technology, authorship and identity are staged using AR technology and concepts. Under the rubric FutARism, AR is situated as a new installation and performance art medium. Experiential, conceptual and legal shifts are used to explore radical subjectivities, failed utopias, and mysticisms. Other AR installations include Venice Augmented (54th Venice Biennale, Italy), Frenchising Mona Lisa (Louvre Museum, Paris) and Takeoff ( MoMA, NY, NY), “Simple as Drinking Water,” winner of 2011 International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) video competition, Transient (2010), video installations placed in New York City taxis (approx. 1.5 million viewers), and The Other Artist Is Present (2010), a guerrilla performance at MoMa, NY, NY. Published in Art in America, Forbes, ARTNET, ARTINFO, BBC and NPR. BA (2004) McGill University, Montreal, Canada, MA (2008) Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

This project represents the newest development of FutARism under the auspices of Augmented Reality (AR). As a minimal still life installation, a faintly historical looking vase accompanied by an antique magnifying glass sit upon a pedestal covered with the artist’s signature markers. Upon closer inspection, one recognizes that the found objects are incomplete: the magnifying glass is missing its lens, and the vase is empty. What are these fragments doing, exalted atop a pedestal? Affront this pedestal stands a FutARist viewing mechanism, implying audience participation with technology. Once behind the helm of the cybrid (Peter Anders, 2008), a scenario unfolds: A flower peeks out of the bud vase, and the lens is now present in the magnifying glass. The participants are invited to buzzz to the fly, which makes the insect appear and interact with them. If the buzzing continues for over 10 sec, the fly then engages the viewer by returning a gaze and looking back through the magnifying glass. Upon close inspection of the fly, we discover that it does not like the viewer to get too close, too often, as it easily buzzes away.

Buzz to it briefly- make it appear
Buzz even longer- make a friend dear
Get too close- become a bore
Too much to bother- a friend no more

Artist Statement

Augmented Reality remains a very new addition to the realm of art, still in its adolescent phase of development. Despite dramatic development with technology and 3D modeling, the medium still hovers in-between worlds, strapped by a variety of technological restraints. This does not however seem to alter the awe and fascination that is afforded the audience. The audience observes the natural phenomena with a childlike determination and witnesses the virtual sculpture, alive, moving, and responsive to viewer voice and movement. It is precisely this fascination that drew me to the medium, and to develop the concept of FutARism as an exploration of the way that technology can influence our point of view, both literally and conceptually.

The scene recalls the experiments of early childhood when first discovering the properties of the magnifying glass: Perhaps roasting an insect, exploring a spider web, or examination of an anthill. I wish to inspire and create understanding about a pseudo shared state of curiosity with natural technology, the way things work, the mechanics of mother earth, and the delight in the micro cosmos. The vignette’s heightened 3D AR detail has replaced the missing variables with vibrancies that have brought the artwork to life.

The medium also seems to conjure a utopian fascination with technology and it’s ability to alter human perspective. This promise is nothing new, and critique of this relationship has developed in art for quite some times. Among these many works, Duchamp’s early mixed media works incorporating lenses and 3D renderings suggested new forms of audience engagement. A century later, in the case of The BuZZZ, Augmented Reality seems to toy with the conventions of rendering and viewing, making the audience question what they are actually experiencing, colliding together virtuality and reality.

So why the fly? From early religious symbols of sin and corruption, to stigmata of death, to associations of Beezelbub, the minute culprit has continually retained its presence, remaining an “emblem of its own obstructive phenomenality.” In this context, I feel as though the fly has assumed the role of spectacle, in the tradition of trompe l’oeil. Its presence is no mistake, but a conscious element that inspires meaning, value, and knowledge from which we can learn and absorb understanding. Also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, the fly is evoked in FutARism’s Manifesto (Amir Baradaran, 2011), in a story recalled from an ancient Sufi text describing a competition between two masters caught in the spectacle, one who tries to walk on water, and one who tries to fly…

The fly, again.

- AB November 2011

BIOGRAPHY

Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) is a New York-based media and performance artist. Born in Tehran and raised in Montreal, Amir Baradaran’s experience in academia and activism led him to pursue his artistic practice. Working in a variety of mediums, Baradaran engages in the realm of speculative, participatory public experiences through the exploration of notions of technology, authorship and identity. Recently, under the title FutARism , he employed Augmented Reality (AR) as a new installation medium. The experiential, conceptual and legal shifts presupposed by the advent of AR connect to Baradaran’s interest in radical subjectivities, failed utopias and mysticism. Iterations include the AR installations Venice Augmented (54th Biennale, Italy),Frenchising Mona Lisa (Louvre Museum, Paris, France) and Takeoff (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY). For his vision of the future, Baradaran’s short video, “Simple as Drinking Water,” was selected as the winner of 2011 International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) video competition. Past works include Transient (2010), a series of video installations in New York City taxis (approx. 1.5 million viewers), and The Other Artist Is Present (2010), a guerrilla performance in four acts at The Museum of Modern Art. Baradaran’s work has been featured in Art in America, Forbes, ARTNET, ARTINFO, BBC and National Public Radio.

The Real-Fake is an exhibition that presents the approaches employed by artists exploring artificial xyz space, the non-referenced synthetic image or object, and the specific qualities of the virtual camera that records it. Its purpose is to position 3D computer graphics in the discursive context of contemporary art. The artists in the exhibit all use 3D software to create a range of art forms, from the still image to animation, interactive works and installation. All of them self-consciously place 3D within an avant-garde lexicon. Like their predecessors, video artists who adapted TV technologies for artistic use, these artists have adopted the technology employed in 3D shooter games and feature-length Hollywood animation blockbusters, but reject entertainment industry aesthetics and content, instead applying the medium to the trajectory of art history.

Their common strategy is to isolate and define a formal language native to the virtual. These formulations are then integrated into a variety of contemporary practices emerging from the discourses of media and of representation as they have impacted on photography, experimental film, and installation-based contemporary art. Their languages arise out of the painting traditions of figuration and abstraction, and artistic movements as wide ranging as Surrealism, Constructivism and Pop Art, as well as avant-garde cinema, post-Modern image making and experimental animation.

It is rare even in the new-media art context to find artists involved in contemporary practice that are deeply invested in exploring 3D computer art. The particular burden of the artists in The Real-Fake is to break away from the constraints imposed by the domination of an extremely fast-paced military/entertainment complex, beyond the commonly adopted strategy of appropriation. The Real-Fake proposes the potential of 3D computer art as the post-photography medium currently emerging from the new technologies and Zeitgeist of the early 21st century.

Curated by Rachel Clarke, Claudia Hart and Michael Rees

Artists: Kari Altmann (Baltimore), Jose Carlos Casado (NY), Rachel Clarke (Sacramento), Claudia Hart (Chicago), Spencer Hutchinson (Chicago), Yael Kanarek (NY), Brian Khek (Chicago), Alex Lee (Seoul), Lenox-Lenox (Chicago), Alex McLeod (Tornonto), Jon Rafman (Montreal), Michael Rees (Montclair), Lou Regele (Chicago), Timur Si-Qin (Berlin), Yemenwed (NY), Katrina Zimmerman (Chicago), Zeitguised (Berlin)

In conjunction with The Real-Fake:

Really Fake is an exhibition of augmented reality site-specific installations throughout the William Paterson University campus. Curated by Chris Manzione and Michael Rees.