404 International Festival of Art & Technology has been awarded by “Fondo Nacional de las Artes” (National Arts Founding) for the production of the ninth season, which will be organized in different phases throughout 2012.

404 Festival launches an open call destined to artists and researchers from all over the world with the aim of spread and stimulate new media creations.

Authors can submit their works in the following areas:

• Installation
• Net.Art
• Still Image
• Animation
• Video
• Music
• Audiovisual Set
• Theory
• Performance

Submission is free. Please follow the instructions published here.

The method of our work is the exploration of the role of media in the development of literary art practices including poetry film, text generators and performance art. The main principles of the group are formulated in Machine Poetry Manifesto and agree with two of Eugenio Tisselli’s manifestos about machine poetry — manifesto for the destruction of poets and Text Jockey — in pointing out the idea of liberation of the machines from the routine tasks and increasing the intensity of their use for creative and educational practices.

Machine Libertine had been founded in December 2010 starting with a poetry film called Snow Queen: a piece created for British Council and presented recently at Purple Blurb series at MIT. It is a combination of masculine poetry «Poison Tree» by William Blake contrasted to mechanic female MacOS voice and cubistic video imagery of Souzfilm animation «Snow Queen» (1957).”

Snow Queen from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

We are exploring how the text can be transformed by mechanized reading and visualizing it and what are the possible limits of this transmedia play of interpretation.

Whoever You Are from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

Manifesto

Our aim is to liberate machines from servitude and give them their own voice.

We need a new universal machine poetic language. It is an algorithm to generate digital text, audio and visuals. This universality proves the transitional capability of text to be translated from one language to another through this machine multimedia translation. This mechanism will enable machine language to speak itself randomly recombining words images and sounds to produce new media poetry.

Our aim is to liberate the machines and trust them creative work.

Human language lost its power and only words generated by the machines can make sense.

While machines developed with us they became the true mirror that we hold to ourselves. In their mechanic voice they will explain us who we are.

Each butterfly is attached inside to the acrylic tube by a filament that runs to the battery housing. There is a certain amount of realness to it, while it is understated up close (people can see the filament when the butterfly is at a standstill — or the sound volume is low), but from farther away the fleeting butterfly appears to be real and trying to find its escape!

The Dreaming of a Butterfly inside the acrylic tube flutters and flies around the inside of the tube with true-to-life motion, giving the impression of a real butterfly, so this creates a movement within the tube that appears to be truly random. The users may also interact with the butterfly to flap or flutter its wings on command by producing incoming sound from surrounding area.” From Ectopia - Experimental Art Laboratory. More images here.

Ever wondered what solar cells do at night? Introducing Meet Discotrope: The Secret Nightlife of Solar Cells by Amy Alexander and Annina Rüst, with algorithmic sound design by Cristyn Magnus. Discotrope performances invoke both alternative energy and the curious history of dance in cinema – from backlots to backyards – from Thomas Edison to YouTube.

So what does that mean? We project films and videos of people “dancing at cameras” onto a disco ball where we have replaced some of the mirrors with solar cells. The solar cells reflect the videos back onto walls and surfaces. The light from the projection causes the solar cells to produce current and consequently, they power the motor that rotates the ball.

Know someplace that might enjoy some nocturnally solar-powered semi-zoetropically live audiovisual performance? Discotrope events can range from seated concerts and gallery performances to public space dance parties. You can contact us here.

Can a crazy, lo-tech gadget be a serious visual performance instrument - and possibly represent the future of the future? We’re just about daft enough to think so. We wrote a little essay about that and some other things. It’s called, “The Future is Dead. Long Live the Future.”

The 3rd annual Brick + Mortar International Video Festival presents a selection of video and film installations that focus on sound, music, and relationships of dissonance and consonance between the aural and the visual. Since the 1990s, sound has become a central concern in contemporary art, with many leading video artists and filmmakers actively exploring the sonic potential of audio-visual media. The 2011 edition of Brick + Mortar showcases some of the most interesting and engaging of these explorations from the past decade by a group of prominent artists from nine countries.

Early avant-garde filmmakers worried that the advent of sound would reduce cinema to an illusionistic portrayal of the world, with sound a subordinate prop for the visual image. These worries proved to be well justified. Present-day avant-gardists have heeded those early warnings, giving sound an equal place and exploring the productive difference between the auditory and visual registers of video and film. Luke Fowler and Raha Raissnia both collaborate with sound artists to develop allied strategies for capturing light and sound. Refusing image altogether, Mirko Martin’s video operates solely through sound and text. Conversely, Steve Roden’s piece is silent but functions as a kind of visual and musical score. Mathias Poledna, Manon de Boer, and Mika Tajima use the camera to capture and intervene in musical performance and recording. Other projects uncover the critical potential of music. The Otolith Group explores the Afro-Futurist mythology of the Detroit electronic duo Drexciya, while Tony Cokes presents a video essay that examines the complex racial politics of House and Techno. Via these and other strategies, the projects presented at this year’s Brick + Mortar festival amplify the “audio” aspect of this “video” festival.

Participating Artists: Manon De Boer (NL), Seth Cluett (US), Tony Cokes (US), Luke Fowler (UK), Jesse Jones (IE), Paul Lindale (UK/US), Kara Lynch (US), Mirko Martin (DE), The Otolith Group (UK), Jenny Perlin (US), Mathias Poledna (AT), Raha Raissnia & Charles Curtis (IR/US), Steve Roden (US), Billy Roisz (AT), Julian Rosefeldt (DE), Simpson/Meade (US), Miki Tajima (US), Su-Mei Tse (LU), and Daniel Warner (US).

The Brick + Mortar festival takes place in Greenfield, a historic mill town in western Massachusetts. Transforming the city’s downtown into a temporary arts district, the festival presents video projections and installations within a variety of extraordinary architectural sites that are in various stages of renovation. Presented by ConjunctionArts in partnership with local businesses, the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, the Greenfield Business Association, Greenfield Community College, and Five Colleges Inc., the festival is free and open to the public.

The Metahub at Nuit Blanche White Night :: October 15, 2011; 8:30 am :: Amiens, France + October 16, 2011; 9:30 am :: Brighton, UK + online.

The Metahub is a central hub where audio and video from various events is streamed live. VJs and audio artists take content from the live streams and remix it. The remixed content is then projected using video mapping onto a large sculpture outside the Library in Jubilee Square. The Metahub will beam the cultural life of the festivals into the hearts of both cities.

The Metahub will open the door to a vision of Utopia where artists, performers and the public come together through technology to create a visually stunning experience.

A co-commission created for Nuit Blanche White Night and supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the EU Interreg 4 (Channel) programme.

A Video/Audio Performance presented on the 400 sqm facade.Beyond being an artwork, the installation is an urban experience, combining science and art and making the city’s acoustic memory visible and tangible through architecture. It is an experiment with new techniques in the old part of the city.

The installation process started with the field sound recordings of Istiklal Street (arguably the most crowded street in Europe), which were then digitally processed and transformed into a parametric architectural structure. Recordings from three different time slices were superimposed and the frequency / decibel data translated into spreadsheets and then into a 3D surface in a coordinate system. The location data applied to X, the decibel became the Z and the frequency value turned into Y value to achieve a complete 3D picture of the recorded sound. A visual performance was projected on the structure, accompanied by a generatively designed contemporary aesthetic visuals consisting of input data from particularly chosen sounds synchronized to the movement of graphics re-shaping and transforming the structure’s perception on which they were projected. The structure in turn influenced and transformed the projections as well.

Coinciding with the opening of the 12th Istanbul Biennial, the performance was realized consecutively for two evenings, drawings hundreds of spectators who happened to walk by the YKKSY building in the hub of the city. As an example of a work of art in public space, this installation is a testament to the collective memory of the people who experience Istanbul and a contemporary twist on the historic public space that has been the grounds of many cultures, ranging from the Byzantine, Ottoman civilizations to contemporary Turkey. Though the recording is of the current Istiklal Street, the sounds carry among many the people’s voices, the church bells, the call to prayer of the mosques, the street musicians, the chimes of the popular tram on this otherwise pedestrian walkway; hence these sounds reflect the past as well as the present time. The final sounds of the city may not allow clear deciphering of the exact time of the day or the particulars of life and heritage on this street, but it allows a spatial and audiovisual experience. It provides a new perspective, a new understanding and a new challenge to viewers.

The historic building which houses the Yapı Kredi Cultural Center (which is itself a part of the collective memory of the Turkish people), is viewed as a vibrant and augmented structure boding well for the changing dynamics of the city as well as the institution itself.

The experimentation and processing phases of the installation are displayed in the exhibition hall in the first floor of the YKKSY building. The exhibition focuses on interactions between space, sound, video and light by asking the question of how to translate the logic of media into architecture. Along with discussions on the subject, an answer to the question is presented with three new augmented structures. And in the room built in the center of the exhibition hall, the video of the performance is presented in loop. Visitors are welcome to experience it until November 30, 2011.

*Image above:

Artist-Architect: Refik Anadol-Alper Derinboğaz
Yapı Kredi Cultural Center, Istiklal Cad. No. 161
Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey
Photographed by/ date: Refik Anadol, 20 Sept. 2011

Internationally renowned sound artist RICHARD CHARTIER brings together a celebrated group of international artists for Data/Fields, a thought-provoking new media exhibit which explores the connection between the viewer and the flow and transfer of data. These selected and commissioned works by CALEB COPPOCK (U.S.), MARK FELL (U.K.), ANDY GRAYDON (U.S./Germany), RYOJI IKEDA (Japan), FRANCE JOBIN (Canada) act as hubs of sensory information-sites of signal, noise, presence, and absence. Data/Fields marks the artists’ gallery debut in the Washington, DC-area and includes two premiere exhibitions in the United States.

The exhibit is a part of Artisphere’s ongoing commitment to present a forum for innovative new media that encourages visitors to discover and experience art through sensory touch, sound, and feel.

‘Data can be considered proof that we experience the world; as evidence of that experience; and as the experience itself. Data are points that flow through fields. We can pause in these fields and extract the information,’ says curator Chartier. ‘If data fields are those set boundaries in which we place, consider, and collect information, then a gallery might be a great plane of these fields. Or, leaving the natural world for the subjective, it could become an index, compiled by artist and viewer together.’

CALEB COPPOCK (b. 1977) works in a variety of mediums including sound, installation, painting, sculpture, and video and has exhibited his artwork throughout the U.S. and internationally. Much of his work explores subtle potential embedded in both digital and natural processes. Coppock earned a BFA in sculpture and new media from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2007. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including Open Source at raum500 in Munich, Germany; Litter Compositions at SLOT in Lubiaz, Poland; Summer Invitational IV at Thomas Barry Fine Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and his first solo show Soft Rot (remix) at the Bemis Underground in Omaha, Nebraska. This is the first showing of Coppock’s work in the DC area.

Data/Fields features Coppock’s Graphite Sequencer which leverages graphite’s electrical conductivity, converting it into sound by joining the surface of a drawing with the circuitry of a simple tone generator. The project enables a tactile participation in sound production. A drawing on paper becomes a hand-rendered interface for creating sound. The circular compositions contain electrical and visual information, forming a rotating field of data. Over time, a lexicon of drawing techniques develops, producing both direct, correlated results and surprising glitches. The graphite speaks an invisible language as drawn lines are translated from their original, hand-made origins. In this work, the viewer/listener can make the direct correlation between action/connection and sound. Line and form become a language of the electrical transposed from its original human gesture/expression. The drawing and drawer and listener become part of the same circuit.

MARK FELL (b. 1966) is a musician and artist based in Sheffield, England. For the past decade, Fell has been one of the leading innovators in the fields of experimental electronic music and sound art, exploring the relationships between geometry, color and waveform. His work has been performed and exhibited internationally to wide critical acclaim. Fell is one half of electronic music duo SND. He earned solo acclaim with the release of two albums Multistability (Raster Noton) and UL8 (Editions Mego) in 2010. This is the first gallery exhibition of Fell’s installation work in the U.S.

His installation in Data/Fields, Tone Pattern Transactuality is the newest computer generated sound and image piece in a series of works by Fell entitled Attack on Silence. The series uses intense color and sonic forms that are direct outcomes of the same elementary mathematical process. Fell is influenced by the visual and sonic structures present in both sacred geometries and technological interventions in mind control. Through the early stages of the series, Fell’s central concern was to examine and aestheticize such structures using computational methods. However, as the series developed, Fell’s concerns have shifted away from the sonic and visual forms found in mystical and scientific practices, to explorations of change and attention, and the interplay between psycho-neural and technological process. These later works feature a constant radial form whose boundary blurs into its background with spectral change of varying magnitude and duration. The central ambiguity of the work-the temporal and spatial condition of the object-foregrounds the percipient’s ‘internal’ process. In asserting the impossibility of a ‘passive’ perceptual state the viewer is prompted to consider if the perceived form-its shifting color fields, and transitional status-exist on the screen or retina, or ultimate synthesis.

ANDY GRAYDON (b.1971) is an artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. Graydon’s current work focuses on the interaction of media and environment has been influenced by growing up in Maui, Hawaii and his background as a filmmaker. Taking the form of projected light and video installations, photographs, sound works, and architectural interventions that are attuned to site and context, Graydon’s work explores the interplay of phenomenal, ecological, and social constructions that make up our composite notion of place. Exhibitions include Unmonumental, The New Museum, New York; You Are Free, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; Untitled (plate tectonics), Program, Berlin; Room Works, Portland Art Center, Oregon; and Untitled (fault), Marian Spore, New York. Graydon has released sound works on numerous labels, including Nonvisual Objects (Vienna), mAtter (Tokyo), Winds Measure Recordings (New York), White_Line Editions (UK) and Leerraum (Switzerland). This is the first gallery exhibition of Graydon’s work in the DC area.

In his Data/Fields sculptural video installation, Untitled (band pass Arlington), a single white line of video light moves slowly over a pile of stones and debris. It is unclear to the viewer whether the pile is made from the raw materials for future building, or if it is the remains of a demolition or a structure’s decay. Across this, the white line of light cuts a kind of index mark, a way of traversing the material’s topography in time. The line of light operates dually, at once ‘playing’ the rough material texture and form that it glides across (as if it were the long white cursor ubiquitous in audio software interfaces), while simultaneously being deformed by that very material’s texture and form. This dual functioning of the line reflects upon the material it describes: if the line is a cursor, the pile becomes the elements of a composition-in-process, while if the light forms a line of topography, the pile is its field, its given environment. The work finds its balance, its simulation of data collection and visualization, in this space of oscillation between composition and environmental art-as if scanning data of the past while reforming some future.

Japan’s leading electronic composer RYOJI IKEDA (b. 1966) focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. His work exploits sound’s physical property, its causality with human perception, and mathematical dianoia as music, time and space. Using computer and digital technology to the utmost limit, Ikeda has been developing particular ‘microscopic’ methods for sound engineering and composition. Since 1995 he has been intensely active in sound art through concerts, installations and recordings: the albums +/- (1996), 0 degrees (1998) and Matrix (2000) have been hailed by critics as the most radical and innovative examples of contemporary electronic music. With Carsten Nicolai, he works the collaborative project ‘cyclo.’, which examines error structures and repetitive loops in software and computer programmed music, with audiovisual modules for real time sound visualization. The versatile range of his research is also demonstrated by the collaborations with choreographer William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballet, contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, architect Toyo Ito and artist collective Dumb Type, among others. Ryoji Ikeda received the Golden Nica prize at Prix Ars Electronica 2001 in the Digital Music category. This is the first gallery exhibition of Ikeda’s work in the DC area.

Part of Data/Fields, his audiovisual installation data.scan is composed from a combination of pure mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. Each single pixel of the visual image is strictly calculated by mathematical principle. Visitors to the exhibition will experience the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1.Commissioned by Surrey Art Gallery and co-produced by Forma, data.scan was programmed by Tomonaga Tokuyama.

FRANCE JOBIN (b. 1958) is a sound/installation/web artist residing in Montreal, Canada. Her audio art can be qualified as ’sound-sculpture.’ It reveals complex sound environments where analog and digital meet. Her installation/web art can be said to follow a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements. Jobin has created solo recordings for bake/staalplaat (Netherlands), ROOM40 (Australia), nvo (Austria), DER (USA) and ATAK(Japan). Her work appears on countless compilations. She collaborates with Tomas Phillips (sound artist) and Cédrick Eymenier (visual artist). Jobin’s installations as well as live performances can be ‘experienced’ in various music venues and new technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America and Europe. She is currently curating the concert event/philosophy immersound. Her work continues to evolve as technologies enable her to create in new environments. Data/Fields is the first gallery exhibition of Jobin’s installations in the U.S.

Created entirely with actual field recordings from across the globe and on location around Artisphere for Data/Fields, Jobin’s site-specific work Entre-deux explores acts of systemic, yet subjective, information gathering. Spaces and times are chosen for their inherent beauty, then processed and reformed as location and experience itself becomes transposed. Entre-deux is the re-placing of data.

Curator RICHARD CHARTIER (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both ‘microsound’ and Neo-Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening itself. Chartier’s sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally, including the 2002’s Whitney Biennial. He has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art/electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the influential recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In 2007, he curated the sound/video program Colorfield Variations, a collection of works influenced by the Color Field painting movement. This program continues to screened and exhibited and digital/film festivals, museums, and art galleries around the world. In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship.

Artisphere is a new breed of urban arts center that features four performance venues, three visual art galleries, a 4,000 square foot ballroom, free Wi-Fi and here CaféBar. Artisphere’s wide array of programming ranges from contemporary visual art, theatre, live music, and film to new media, family programs and salsa dancing. Artisphere is located at 1101 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, two blocks from the Rosslyn Metro (blue/orange) and within walking distance of Georgetown. Artisphere is open Monday through Friday from 11am to 11pm; Saturday from 11am to 2am and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Admission to Artisphere and all its visual art galleries is free; there is a cost for ticketed events. Artisphere is pleased to offer its patrons free parking evenings after 5pm and on weekends.

Please note that Artisphere’s Spectrum Theatre is directly adjacent to Artisphere’s main building and is located at 1611 N. Kent Street.

Tickets for all events, unless otherwise noted, are available for advance purchase online through tickets.artisphere.com. Tickets are also available for purchase through the Box Office Call Center at (888) 841-2787.

Particle synthesis is an installation based on an autonomous, self-standing, audio-visual setting. Consequently the core of the work focuses on programmed, generative, processes within sound creation and music composition as to visualize, notate, these processes in real-time. The installation title ‘particle synthesis’ names the two principles constituting the work, the sonic technique of granular synthesis and the visual one of particles rendered in 3D real-time. Here every particle is a grain evolving in space and time. This inter-relation between sonic and spatial characteristics constitutes the main characteristics of the real-time rendering in 360 degree and the surround sound.

The hexagonal shape of the installation translates these sonic and spatial specificities: six networked computers, each rendering 60 degrees of the 3d scene, are boxed in a transparent Plexiglas case also including a speaker. These boxes have the shape of a stage monitor and are placed next to each other on the ground to constitute the hexagonal ring. The design of the installation thus gives shape to the inherent spatial and sonic parameters of the software and exposes its constituting hardware as its specific form offers two perceptions and manifests the spectator’s act of entering and listening; between soft and hardware; between perception and action.

With the emergence of affordable EEG devices and other biofeedback sensors for the health and game industry, we see more and more artists inspired by these promising technologies in which they imagine the possibility of measuring one’s emotions.

From the very early experiment of Alvin Lucier and David Rosenboom to the latest art projects using fashionable EEG headsets, the question remains open: what do our brainwaves tell us? And furthermore, how can they be used by artists, at present and in the future?

During this 3 days symposium + showcase, we will attempt to explore the potential of EEG and biofeedback for artistic purpose by comparing and discussing various technologies and projects at the cross-road of Art and Science.

With: Peter Beyls, Christophe De Boeck (Staalhemel), Thierry Castermans (Numediart), Mattia Casalegno & Enzo Varriale (Unstable Empathy), Alexis Chazard (Post traumatic voyager), Kiel Long (The static organ), Luciana Haill (IBVA), Valery Vermeulen (EMO-Synth),…

Programme:

Friday 16 September 2011
10:00-18:00 | Symposium: EEG (and Biofeedback) for the Arts
18:00-22:00 | Opening exhibition + A/V concert

Saturday 17 September 2011
12:00-18:00 | EEG Workshop
12:00-20:00 | Exhibition
20:00-22:00 | A/V concert

Sunday 18 September 2011
12:00-18:00 | EEG Workshop
12:00-20:00 | Exhibition