As part of MCAM’s current exhibition, Spaces of Life: The Art of Sonya Rapoport, Sonya Rapoport and Dr. Revathi Vikram, psychiatrist, come together to explore the artist’s memories of her past work and the life experiences that give her work context. Central to this discussion is Rapoport’s ongoing work Objects On My Dresser: Shared Dynamics, an interactive “netweb plot” from which connections between symbols, words and ideas are made. Over the course of the exhibition, gallery visitors have been invited to participate in this work by manipulating and customizing a new “netweb plot.” Dr. Revathi will analyze the recorded actions and motivations that have created this new plot in an effort to determine a collective Mills consciousness.

This performance with Dr. Revathi is an updating of Rapoport’s original collaboration with psychologist Winifred de Vos.

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.

UNCOVERED is a three-year research-based art and media project under the curatorship of Basak Senova and Pavlina Paraskevaidou. Three terms – “memory construction,” “commons,” and “control mechanisms” – form the conceptual springboard for the project. The development team consists of Argyro Toumazou, Özgül Ezgin, Vicky Pericleous and the curators. The partners of UNCOVERED are European-Mediterranean Art Association, The Pharos Arts Foundation, and Anadolu Kultur.

UNCOVERED. Nicosia International Airport. Book 1 documents the first phase of the project that culminated with an exhibition in September 2011, in Nicosia of the eight commissioned works by Andreas Savva Constantinos Taliotis, Demetris Taliotis, Görkem Müniroğlu, Gürgenç Korkmazel, Emre Yazgın, Erhan Öze, Socratis Socratous, Orestis Lambrou, Oya Silbery, Özge Ertanın, Vicky Pericleous, and Zehra Sonya.

The book includes a number of essays on the themes of “memory”, “commons”, and “control mechanisms” that were explored in the exhibition, as well as a section devoted to the eight projects. The publication also introduces the archive that has been initiated as part of the research and concludes with the contributions of the speakers made during the panel discussion following the opening of the exhibition.

Contributions: Alexander Galloway, Antonio Negri, Argyro Toumazou, Basak Senova, Bülent Diken, Dervis Zaim, Jack Persekian, Lamia Joreige, Marina Grzinic, Michael Hardt, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Niyazi Kizilyürek, Ozgul Ezgin, Pavlina Paraskevaidou, Pelin Tan, Socrates Stratis, Stavros Stavrides, and Jalal Toufic

Gökce Sekeroglu designed the book.
Copy Editing and Proof Reading: Barbara Iacovou

The printing of the book is kindly supported by Phileleftheros Group.
The book is in part supported by The Open Society Foundations.

To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth, this edition of Blowup will present the ‘Strategic Art Initiative 2.0′ exhibition of re-created early telematic artworks; the worldwide premiere of ‘Them F*ckin’ Robots’, a documentary on the work and influence of electronic art pioneer Norman White; a keynote lecture by Dutch thinker and author Arjen Mulder, examining the things we love and love to hate about McLuhan; and a closing party for the exhibition featuring a custom cocktail. 


November 3: 20:00 - 23:00: Opening of Strategic Arts Initiative (SAI) 2.0 exhibition, five telematic artworks connected live with InterAccess in Toronto, Canada. Featuring artworks by Doug Back, Laura Kikauka andCarl Hamfelt, David Rokeby, Graham Smith and Norman White.

Welcoming remarks and short talks by the artists at 20:30.


November 4

20:00: World premiere screening of Them F*ckin’ Robots, a documentary on the life and work of electronic art legend, and participant in the Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 exhibition, Norman White. Directed by Ine Poppe and Sam Nemeth.


21:00 - 23:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto.


November 5

20:00 - Keynote lecture by Arjen Mulder: Things We Love and Love To Hate About Marshall McLuhan (and cybernetics)
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21:00: Response to the lecture and commentary on the SAI 2.0 exhibition by Derrick de Kerckhove
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21:30 - 00:00: SAI 2.0 exhibition open and connected live to InterAccess, Toronto. 


Closing party with custom cocktail begins at 22:00.


Admission € 5,- pass for events on all three days.
 Free entrance for students (college card).

The event opening and Arjen Mulder’s keynote will be streamed live at live.v2.nl

After the event, the Blowup e-Book Reader for this event will be made available for download.

Blowup: We Are All Crew is a part of McLuhan in Europe 2011, a year-long celebration of Marshall McLuhan’s impact and legacy on European art and media culture during the centenary of his birth. mcluhan2011.eu

The Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0 exhibition is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (Routledge) offers an inside look into the process of successfully developing thoughtful, innovative digital media. In many practice-based art texts and classrooms, technology is divorced from the socio-political concerns of those using it. Although there are many resources for media theorists, practice-based students sometimes find it difficult to engage with a text that fails to relate theoretical concerns to the act of creating. Net Works strives to fill that gap.

Using websites as case studies, each chapter introduces a different style of web project –- from formalist play to social activism to data visualization -– and then includes the artists’ or entrepreneurs’ reflections on the particular challenges and outcomes of developing that web project. Scholarly introductions to each section apply a theoretical frame for the projects. Beyond project summaries, chapters also include an explanation of the websites’ technological components; historical, cultural, and ethical perspectives; a list of links; key words and short online exercises that relate technical skills to individual projects. Combining practical skills for web authoring with critical perspectives on the web, Net Works is ideal for courses in new media design, art, communication, critical studies, media and technology, or popular digital/internet culture.

Returning Fire: Interventions in Video Game Culture (Media Education Foundation, 2011, 45 min.), written and directed by Roger Stahl, examines the culture of war-themed video games through work of three pioneering artists and activists: Joseph Delappe, Anne-Marie Schleiner, and Wafaa Bilal.

Returning Fire documents how the three artists moved dissent from the streets to our screens, infiltrating war games in an attempt to break the hypnotic spell of “militainment,” and thereby forcing us to think critically about what it means when the clinical tools of real-world killing become forms of consumer play.

Film director Roger Stahl is associate professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Georgia. In 2010, he published a book Militainment, Inc and produced a documentary of the same title in 2007.

Joseph Delappe is a professor of art at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Game designer, writer and artist Anne-Marie Schleiner teaches game design in the Communication and New Media Program at the National University of Singapore.

Wafaa Bilal is assistant arts professor in the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Co-sponsored by The Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, in collaboration with the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film, TV and New Media and the NYU Game Center along with the Department of Art and Public Policy and NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge.

The Department of Photography & Imaging is an intensive four-year BFA program centered on the making and understanding of images. It is a diverse department embracing multiple perspectives. The students work in virtually all modes of analog, digital, and multimedia photo-based image making, exploring photo-based imagery as personal and cultural expression.

The show seeks to address issues of place in the environment, politics, the home, media and technology with work like Ben Bray’s periodic streaming video updates from his current expedition in the Arctic, John Craig Freeman and collaborators’ augmented reality installations famed for using their politically-minded virtual exhibitions to crash renowned venues such as the MoMA and the Venice Biennial, Ann Torke’s residual accumulation sculptures from the home, and much more.

With: Ben Bray, Miriam Dym, ecoarttech (Cary Peppermint and Leila Nadir), John Craig Freeman with Lily & Honglei, Mark Skwarek, Lalie S. Pascual, Caroline Bernard and 4Gentlemen, Jane Prophet, Ann Torke, and Dyllan Nguyen.

The artists hail from New York City; Berkeley, California; London, UK; China (exact whereabouts unknown); and our very own Boston, MA. They represent institutions as diverse as University of Rochester, University of California Berkeley, University of London, Emerson College, Mass Art, and MIT, and have work in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Chris Cuellar will be presenting on a series he recently organized for the Art21 blog where he transformed the guest column into a practical art-making resource as well as a vehicle for the un-distribution of existing works. He asked a small group of artists to give away their secrets in the form of online tutorials. Each how-to is meant to give the reader enough information to accurately reproduce the project presented. Furthermore, in order to reduce issues of artistic ownership, each artist’s contribution has been more or less ‘anonymized’ before posting, with as many overt references to the the individual artist or original project removed as possible. Cuellar asks why display a work when you can use a work? Why distribute copies when you can distribute a process? “Why buy a work, when you can just make it yourself?”

Read more about the series and view the tutorials on the art21 blog.

Chris Cuellar is a Los Angeles (previously Chicago) based new-media artist, writer and provocateur. His works occupy various media simultaneously including www, installation, social-media and printed texts. His pieces, occasionally brain-busting but often conceptually simple, deal with themes of digital identity, distribution of information, labor, spam, networks and telepresence in a way that never fails to incite a re-evaluation of these issues. He has worked and performed for the Austin New Music Co-op in Austin, TX; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hyde Park Art Center; the Red Rover Reading Series in Chicago; and Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn.

Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an 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. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters 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.

The Nightingale is a rough and ready microcinema dedicated to screening emerging work across film, video, and new media genres and aims to support Chicago vibrant cinema community.

On the occasion of the annual Sneak Peak event, a new augmented reality (AR) application for smartphones is being launched, allowing visitors to navigate and understand features of the site as well as its transformation from landfill to park. Freshkills Park+ is an experience built with the Layar Browser application and is available for iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia and Blackberry devices.

With the app, visitors can use their device to explore different projects under construction, nearby bodies of water, buildings, bird sanctuaries, activities and panoramic views of the park. Additional videos, photos, sounds and articles related to these sights can be accessed as they walk around the diverse areas of the site. Step-by-step directions to reach any of these locations by foot or bike can also be provided in real time, making it useful for those who want to find their way to the nearest facility or activity in the vast, 2,200-acre landscape.

The former landfill presents a unique challenge for visitors since the installation of foundation-supported signs is prohibited by the presence of vast underground landfill infrastructure. The solution that Freshkills Park+ proposes is a virtual wayfinding system that consists of descriptive icons and texts overlaying the camera view of a user’s mobile device. Visitors see only the relevant information based on where the device is pointing, acting like a smart compass that helps them virtually navigate the park.

Site visitors need to download the Layar Browser app and launch the Freshkills Park+ layer to experience a 21st century walk in the park. The free app will still be available for visitors after the event.

The app was developed by Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena from New York based media architecture studio Med44 in conjunction with Raj Kottamasu and the Freshkills Park outreach team at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Download Freshkills Park+

About Freshkills Park:

At 2,200 acres, Freshkills Park will be almost three times the size of Central Park and the largest park developed in New York City in over 100 years. The transformation of what was formerly the world’s largest landfill into a productive and beautiful cultural destination makes the park a symbol of renewal and an expression of how our society can restore balance to its landscape.

med44
200 E 7th St. Apt 1C | New York, NY 10009 | tel: +1 917 476 8144
web: med44.com | twitter: @med44