import re, subprocess, time

class GoogleSearchByImage :

GOOGLE_URL = “http://www.google.com”

GOOGLE_SBI_URL = “/searchbyimage?image_url=”

AGENT_ID = “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1″

MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS = 2

_myLastRequestTimestamp = 0

_myCurrentHtml = “”

def scrape(self, theReference) :
if time.time() - self._myLastRequestTimestamp < self.MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS :
time.sleep(self.MIN_SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS - (time.time() - self._myLastRequestTimestamp))
return self.scrape(theReference)
else :
self._myCurrentHtml = self.getHtml(self.GOOGLE_URL + self.GOOGLE_SBI_URL + theReference)
self._myLastRequestTimestamp = time.time()

def getHtml(self, theUrl) :
try :
myHtml = subprocess.check_output(["curl", "-L", "-A", self.AGENT_ID, theUrl], stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
return myHtml
except :
print "Curl error. Will sleep for 10 seconds"
time.sleep(10)
return self.getHtml(theUrl)

def getSimilarImages(self) :
myPattern = re.compile("\" href\=\"\/imgres\?imgurl\=(.*?)(\&amp|\%3F)")
myImages = myPattern.findall(self._myCurrentHtml)
myImagesUrls = []
for myImage in myImages :
myImagesUrls.append(myImage[0])
return myImagesUrls

def getLinkToSimilarImagesPage(self) :
myPattern = re.compile("\Visually similar images\<\/a\>“)
myPageUrl = myPattern.findall(self._myCurrentHtml)
myPageUrl = str(myPageUrl[0]).replace(”&”, “&”)
myPageUrl += “&biw=1600&bih=825″ # always keep this
return self.GOOGLE_URL + myPageUrl

Whip smart, blissfully dense and multipronged cinema and performance; conceptual poetics, direct address, participatory movie song. Jesse Malmed presents a fascinating and manifold mix of conceptually rich video L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetics, process-intensive bi-fidelity abstractedelia and participatory installations such as the multiple iterations of CONVERSATIONAL KARAOKE!! (in which audience members perform dizzying, strange and incisive texts of the artist’s design).

Jesse Malmed: artist, curator; video, film, installation, performance + text; Santa Fe, Bard College, San Francisco, Portland (, Chicago); Deep Leap Microcinema, Cinema Project, Creative Music Guild, Lasercave; Body Electronic, This Is What, Conversational Karaoke; galleries, microcinemas, bars, barns, universities, underground, skybound. The sonic, visual and (extra-)communicative potentials of language, a keen eye toward the history of experimental media art and an interest in the transcendent power of pure cinema… equal parts conceptual and instinctual, the work bears a zany levity that helps to buoy sometimes-incomprehensible​ blissmash visuals and dense textwork.” (This show also marks the release of several new publications on paper and cassette and the premieres of three new moving image works.)
www.jessemalmed.net

please stand back (excerpt) from stadtmusik on Vimeo.

zurückbleiben bitte!: “Above and below do not exist at first, and other indications of direction do not work either. The picture itself is an agglomeration of details that are constantly being created and disappearing, becoming and ceasing to exist, assembling and breaking up.” (Marc Ries)

Dust till Dawn from dietmar offenhuber on Vimeo.

dust till dawn: fun with lasers, noise and dirt by maex decker, dietmar offenhuber, ushi reiter: DTD kicks up a lot of dust – with atmosphere being its sole medium of interaction. The project is a sound installation for a room with dusty floor, on which a number of phonographs are placed, playing back silent vinyl records. As a result of the visitors movements, particles of dust accumulate in the grooves of empty records and define a musical score. A carpet of monochromatic light visualizes the turbulence in the atmosphere and detects its ephemeral structures, which are directly linked to the noise generated by the dusty records. Over time, the physical impact of the interaction irreversibly consumes the interface and destroys the needles of the phonographs.

mauerpark (excerpt) from stadtmusik on Vimeo.

mauerpark: The winter landscape of mauerpark in berlin turns into a theatrical stage, populated by pedestrians and cyclists following various, sometimes mysterious activities. What seems like a slice of daily life is in fact heavily digitally manipulated. The soundtrack creates a second space, sometimes contradicting the visual events in the picture. The travelling focus directs the visual attention and is controlled by subtle acoustic ambience. Its unnatural strength has a miniaturizing effect on the whole scenery.

Credits

sam auinger
dietmar offenhuber
hannes strobl
actors: katrin emler, daniel scheffler, martin offenhuber

loopcity from dietmar offenhuber on Vimeo.

loopcity: describing the city through repeated everyday actions

In his novel L’Innommable Beckett describes a strange world made up from a complex system of repetitive cyclical events. What is described as social architecture – the spatial / temporal organisation of everyday life- is often very similar to this: people do the same things at the same time. They follow the same routes in regular periods. Sometimes when riding the tram, visiting a cafe or going to the supermarket I recognize strangers who seem to live in the same “loops” like I do. The Project is a subjective description of the city as a set of repeating actions and events on different scales. A space composed of closed loops, intersecting each other. each loop is a thematic entity, a story: a stroll through the shelves of a local supermarket. Looking for a free place in a parking lot. A tourists guide round through a district. A hotel maid’s morning round.

besenbahn (excerpt) from stadtmusik on Vimeo.

“the freewaysystem in its totality is now a single comprehensible place, a coherent state of mind, a complete way of life” - Reyner Banham

“It’s subject is not “natural” perception, but perception put in motion by modern means of transportation, and therefore implicitly the history of an epochal transformation of the way in which time and space is experienced.

It has come to a preliminary end in suitable contexts – for example cities such as Los Angeles, which has been shaped by the history of motorization – where moving perception now seems to be regarded as integral to natural perception.

The thesis presented by besenbahn in this regard would therefore be that the specifically aesthetic quality of such animated perception is absent from the forms of audiovisual representation which are already considered natural (such as indicating movement by means of a tracking shot): In its fragmentation of the continuum of perception, the “subjective geometry which defines space through intervals of time” (Dietmar Offenhuber) illustrates a manner of experience which could remain submerged because it is already so familiar.” – Vrääth Öhner

2001, 10 min
music: tamtam (Sam Auinger, Hannes Strobl)
more information on www.stadtmusik.org
video: Dietmar Offenhuber

Audiences in Manchester and Barcelona will be joined together on screen for the first time to create their own interactive generative cinema experience complete with sets, costumes and props. Employing the scenographic techniques of Alfred Hitchcock the artists have created a miniature film set in which the audience can act and direct their own movie, transporting participants into animated environments and sets where they will create their own unique narrative. Participants in Manchester will be transported into this telepresent experience via a blue-box studio to join the ‘players’ in Barcelona within the dramaturgy of the model set.

This immersive interactive installation pushes the boundaries of telematic art and generative cinema, combining the possibilities of telepresent performance with miniature scale-models and animated scenes for the development of audience participation that explores the way narratives can be revealed through a subtle interplay between artist, audience and environment.

With key references to the telematic stage, user generated performances and the dramaturgy of networked communication this project references Shakespeare’s infamous line ‘All the world’s a stage’ with the seven rooms of a model film set relating to the seven ages of man presented in ‘As You Like It’, providing a metaphysical backdrop to steer the unfolding plot.

All the world’s a screen is an interactive telematic project created by Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon from the University of Salford, developed during their residency at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA Study Centre and their studio residency at Hangar.org, a visual arts production centre in Poblenou, Barcelona.

Discotrope Work-in-Progress Preview - May 2011 from Amy Alexander on Vimeo.

Discotrope is an audiovisual performance for public spaces by Amy Alexander and Annina Rüst. Dance party performances invoke both alternative energy and the curious history of dance in cinema – from backlots to backyards.

“Using early media like 19th century stereopticon slides, found footage and her own original 3D films, Zoe Beloff is a scavenger who makes quirky, multidimensional pieces of multimedia. She describes herself as a “medium” who speaks through artifacts of the past to create visual commentaries on the psychological implications of technology and civilization.

Devoted to reviving archaic and near-obsolete pre-cinematic spectacles, the Velaslavasay Panorama in an appropriate stage for “The Somnambulists,” Beloff’s staging of the unconscious via five small wooden dioramas in which scaled-down archival and original 3D film footage of mental patients provides continues loops of hysterical dramas. We spoke with the artist herself in order to gain insight into “The Somnambulists” and her own “theater of the mind.”" More >> Also see Philosophical Toy World on Turbulence.

Scripting Writing and Reading in Jim Andrews’s Digital Poems by Manuel Portela (University of Coimbra, Portugal) :: Moderator: Noel Jackson (MIT) :: July 14, 2010.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the theoretical relevance of kinetic poetry for studying the interaction between language, digital media, and signifying processes. Several writers have been using digital poetry to investigate meaning production as a function of formal operations upon linguistic, computational, and other cultural codes. Interactive kinaesthesia, the main algorithmic trope examined here, enacts the temporality of writing and the temporality of reading in medium-specific forms and genres that call attention to the way their machine and human processing happens. The cinematic enactment of time in the combined motions of computer-executed code and human-activated display will be seen in digital poems by Jim Andrews. His scripts are analysed as models for specific semiotic and interpretive processes. Computer performance and reader performance become co-dependent and intertwined as an entangled field.

In August 2010, the remix movie Star Wars Uncut was the first user-generated production to win an Emmy Award. Other online platforms such as wreckamovie.com enable online communities to form for independent and open source filmmaking, harnessing distributed forms of collaborative co-creation rather than relying on traditional organisational structures. Cloud-based editing suites have begun appearing: Stroome.com was launched in April 2010 by USC
Annenberg with the tag-line “mix it up. mash it out.” Digitalised photos, videos, and sound, easily accessible through popular websites, constitute a diverse online repository of content that is being used for artistic remix purposes. Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a court case giving exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions to amateur remix video artists sharing their works on e.g. YouTube. VJs and live cinema artists have permeated multiple cultural settings, ranging from mainstream contexts of entertainment to museums and other spaces devoted to the institutionalisation of art practices.

The examples outlined are just a few fitting under the umbrella term of “Remix Cinema”, and point to ways in which networked devices and resources are facilitating new artistic audiovisual practices and cultures. The concept of ‘remix’ describes a broad set of social and cultural practices centred around the fragmentation and re-ordering of already existing and new content, whether text, sound or images. This 2-day multi-disciplinary workshop focuses on these diverse creative practices, particularly in the context of the contemporary socio-technical media environment. It brings together people interested in understanding and shaping remix cinema: doctoral students, established scholars, practising artists, and anyone else interested in addressing themes related to questions including:

- How is the contemporary media-scape influencing artistic audio-visual creation?
- What can we learn from the changing practices in remix cinema?
- How are new models of economic support (e.g. crowdfunding) changing productions of cultural objects?
- What methodological and theoretical challenges arise in empirical studies on remix cinema, and how do we overcome these?

Call for Presentations & Papers

The workshop committee welcomes proposals on any social, critical, cultural, aesthetic, political, technical, economic or legal aspects of remix cinema practices, cultures and works. We particularly welcome contributions that report on empirical studies and adopt innovative methodological approaches. Each presentation should last for a maximum of 15 minutes. Participants may present finished studies or works-in-progress, as the workshop also serves as a forum for gaining valuable feedback and exchanging ideas. All proposals will be peer reviewed by at least two members of the workshop’s academic committee (Oxford Internet Institute faculty).

Presenters are invited to submit full papers which will be eligible for review and possible inclusion in a subsequent ISBN publication on remix cinema.

The Remix Cinema Workshop is organised by the Oxford Internet Institute, (University of Oxford, UK) in collaboration with UNIA Practicas y Culturas Digitales (Universidad Internacional de Andaluca, ES), and is funded by the UK’s Art and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Beyond Text programme.

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is a new festival, taking place across the Northwest until 2012 and beyond. A catalyst for production and experimentation, AND invites us to consider what are our normal devices and how might we abandon them?

From October 1-7, 2010 AND ventures into Manchester for a hybrid undertaking of cinema, performance and media art. We invite anarchists of the imagination to challenge the behaviours and systems that define who we are, through politically deconstructed networks, archives and reconfigured stereotypes. Our identities will be contested by an array of thinkers, cultural provocateurs, designers, filmmakers and artists. A week long feast for curious minds and disillusioned spirits – Welcome to Abandon Normal Devices!

Highlights October 2010

Shrink performances by Lawrence Malstaf - Friday, Monday, Tuesday at The Freemasons’ Hall. Shrink invites you to contemplate and analyse the human form as volunteers are shrink-wrapped in a PVC cocoon.

AND Salons Join us for the AND Salons, the festival’s popular midday debates that bring together a variety of leading voices to challenge our beliefs and stir our opinions. 12:00 – 14:00 - Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday

Protect Me From What I Want – film plus Q &A with internationally renowned musician and artist, Kalup Linzy - Saturday midday

Self Made, UK Premiere of Gillian Wearing’s first feature film with Q & A after 20:00 performance - Saturday Night

Midnight Mass AND proudly presents the UK debut of underground San Francisco phenomena, starring horror hostess Peaches Christ in this Rocky Horror-style celebration with UK premiere of All About Evil – Saturday & Sunday late night

Pepperminta, Dir Pipilotti Rist first feature film plus Q&A - Sunday Evening

#media2012 - social media conference, with expertise in new and social media from around the UK, discussions will focus on opportunities, strategy and vision, to create a new media legacy for the Games and engage UK networks to discuss prospects within the context of an increasingly Digital Britain - Monday all day

Radioactivism Workshop - Plan C How Did They Get Away with it? Thursday

Running throughout the festival

marxism today – Phill Collins - Cornerhouse

UnSpooling:artists and cinema – Cornerhouse, greenroom, Islington Mill, 52
Princess Street

Plan C activity is still a mystery, however it will be as imposing as it is inviting. “We wanted to share something special from Chernobyl with the rest of the world,” declared artist Eva Mattes, “Kids will love it” - Whitworth Park

Recorders - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – Manchester City Art Gallery

Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprises inc – Chinese Arts Centre

Designed Disorder - CUBE

Offering a high calibre and energetic programme, Abandon Normal Devices 2010 will sprawl across and out from Manchester’s cultural spaces. The festival is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and forms part of WE PLAY, the North West cultural legacy project led by new regional partnerships and managed by Arts Council England.

Full programme on www.andfestival.org.uk