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

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…)

AntiTesi in collaboration with the Superintendence for Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Trapani, is announcing a Call for Proposals for Sound installations to present at Ex Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare di Favignana e Formica in Favignana Island. This call is connected to the Eighth edition of the Live!IXem festivals of music, sound and electronic arts.

The aim is to highlight the works of those artists who, involved in an experimental and creative exploration, use sound, integrating it with electronic audio-visual and digital design for Art installations in specific sites. Another aim is to witness the new aesthetic in contemporary art through a new way to conceive and carry out works within (or outside) of architectural spaces.

In this regard, the spaces that will host this could not be more appropriate: the former Florio Tuna factory on the island of Favignana in Sicily, the largest of the Mediterranean, which takes its name from a family of entrepreneurs that at the beginning of the twentieth century was the great protagonist in Sicily, the Belle Epoque. The ancient structure located in the largest of the Egadi islands, were obtained after the recent restoration of museum space, a conference room with 400 seats and a guest room.

To make this call even stronger there will be a collaboration between Live!iXem and OpenSound a platform that brings together seven European partners to create a project for cooperation and exchange that puts the sound in the middle of a series of outreach and artistic initiatives.

Open Sound is in fact a Grundtvig project for mobility and partnership in the training supported by the EU through through the agency LLP - Life Long Learning Programme. Thanks to this partnership, Sicily will be the first venue where the festival will converge with some of the major representatives linked to the European art scene and musical sound research. During the festival, workshops will be conducted by some of the guest artists (the access to workshops is free of charge): this will contribute to become familiar with the locations of the former Florio Tuna factory on the island of Favignana.

SUBMISSIONS

We encourage proposals for site specific Sound Installations that will have to be set up in one of the locations of the Ex Stabilimento Florio della Tonnare di Favignana e Formica in Favignana Island Italy.

Subscription and participation to the call are free of charge.

It will be necessary to explore the locations through specific preparatory visits during Live!iXem Festival 2011, from 8 to 11 december 2011.

Suggested topics for presentations include, but are not limited to:

• Best practices in Sound and architecture
• Techniques used for Sound/Art Installation
• Sound and environment/Sound ecology
• Site specific
• Software & network management
• History & aesthetic theory of Sound Art/Installation
• Teaching & pedagogical strategies
• Hardware (audio, interface, computers, loudspeakers)
• Software environments & frameworks
• Artists/Composers‚ perspectives on their own works

The deadline for submission is February 26, 2012, but preliminary and preparatory visits will take place btw 8-11 dec 2011.

Urban innovation can mean or refer to many things and there’s no shortage of ideas about how to make cities better. As the theory and more deterministic ‘forecasting’ goes, cities must get better if they are to foster and sustain the types of globalised knowledge and creative economies that will underwrite the future. However, there can be both disagreement and diversity in how to understand what better and development actually mean in and for the urban environments.

Two recent Australian publications reveal some of that diversity by presenting a series of case studies in community engagement, site specificity and place. Edited by Elaine Lally, Ien Ang and Kay Anderson, The Art of Engagement: Culture, Collaboration and Innovation presents results and reflections on C3West, a project that formulated unique arts-business-community collaborations in Western Sydney. Place Making for People: Case studies in delivering community expectations, compiled by the Place Leaders Association, presents major urban developments in Australia and overseas that have sought to recast planning and community engagement paradigms.

Mapping the Local presents an overview of the major phenomena, trends and issues of contemporary art based on various subjects in each semester; a special emphasis will be placed on the East European region, in the form of seminars, presentations held by invited lecturers, field trips to museums, institutions and artist studios. The course is primarily directed towards Erasmus students as well as local students of the Intermedia and Fine Art Theory and Curatorial Studies departments.

While offering an insight into the Hungarian contemporary art scene, one of the course’s main intentions is to develop personal contacts and cultural interactions between local and foreign students fostering an emerging intercultural dialogue. It combines both theoretical and practical methods and is led by Zoltán Kékesi and Szabolcs KissPál, a scholar and an artist.

Site Specific Interventions in Public Space is a survey of the evolution of the different art practices relating to site specific and other public art projects or interventions which take place outside of the traditional museum environment, including sculpture, installations, graffiti and performances specifically conceived of as forms of artistic discourse situated in public spaces and/or within the routines of everyday life.

The class is taught by artist and author Allan Siegel and includes a discussion of selected theoretical works well as an analysis of significant specific projects and art work. Additionally, drawing upon the discussions and readings, students will apply their ideas to situations and locations throughout the city.

Invited speakers for the classes include:

Andreas Fogarasi - Golden Lion Award 52nd Venice Biennial; solo shows among others at Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Grazer Kunstverein; Georg Kargl - Fine Arts, Vienna; Lombard Freid Projects, New York; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Ernst Museum, Budapest. Tamás Kaszás - Recipient of Smohay Prize 2010 and Studio of Young Artists Association; exhibitions at W139, Amsterdam; NBK, Berlin; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; Istambul Biennial 2011. Eszter Lázár - art historian and curator of many international group exhibitions with a focus on Contemporary Central and Eastern European Art, lecturer on the Dept. for Art Theory and Curatorial Studies, former curator of kArton Contemporary Art Gallery. Little Warsaw - Collective name for artists András Gálik and Bálint Havas. The duo exhibited at the Venice Biennial; the Berlin Biennial; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; GfZK, Leipzig; ApexArt Gallery, New York; and the 7th Manifesta. Their work is featured in Art After Conceptual Art published by MIT Press. Ilona Németh - Munkácsy-prize beholder, exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford; Kunsthalle Budapest; 49th Venice Biennial; Expo Hannover 2000; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; etc. Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Intermedia Dpt. Bratislava. János Sugár - Exhibitions among others at Annely Juda Fine Arts, London; Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Exit Art, New York; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Anthology Film Archive, New York; Documenta IX, Kassel; etc. professor at the Intermedia Dept. of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. János Szoboszlai - art historian and curator, adjunct lecturer and head of the Dept. for Art Theory and Curatorial Studies, chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros (ICA-D), former director of acb Contemporary Art Gallery. Tibor Szemző - graduate of the Hungarian Music Academy, musician, composer and filmmaker, founder of the acclaimed Hungarian ensemble Group 180 and The Gordian Knot Company.

The Hungarian University of Fine Arts joined the Erasmus Program in 1998. Over the past thirteen years the number of our partner institutions has grown to 48. Each year 40 students are selected to travel abroad on scholarship and nearly as many international Erasmus students arrive to study at the HUFA. Students studying at the HUFA, besides course work in areas such as sculpture, painting, Intermedia or photography, participate in, and organize, projects and exhibitions on an off campus.

Contact information for the International Office of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts: Zsófia Rudnay / International Coordinator / Hungarian University of Fine Arts / email: foreign [at] mke.hu / tel: +36 1 478 0980 / web: www.mke.hu

Mountain Ghosts is a site-specific sound art installation that infuses the entire University of Colorado / Colorado Springs campus with a location-based layer of audio created collectively by the artist and participants. Building on Burgund’s interest in systems, collected voices, and participation, Mountain Ghosts explores sound as fundamental to our experiences of space, place and history. Participants use a custom smartphone app to make audio recordings that the Mountain Ghosts system then codes by location and immediately assimilates into a collective databank for other visitors to access.

As participants walk through the UCCS campus listening to location-based music and participant commentary, they can respond to prompts on the Mountain Ghosts interface that invite them to reflect on their surroundings and contribute recordings of their thoughts and experiences. Participants are, in effect, creating “ghosts” from the past that are permanently attached to specific locations. For the duration of the project from September 8th to mid-November, 2011, Mountain Ghosts folds individual voices into a collective archive that creatively documents a unique sonic record of actions within the landscape.

Architectures of Memory is a site-specific, multi-channel video projection event situated within the ocean inlet at West Cliff Drive and Sunset Avenue in Santa Cruz, California. Through personal recollections and the dynamic cohesion of video projection design, this public artwork will explore the many complexities and poetics of the construction of memory and its erosion within the human brain. Content has been created from interviews with individuals about personal memory, its emotional correlations, and sensory characteristics. The ultimate goal of this piece is to create a public artwork that is dynamic and sensory, and that provides the viewer with a space for individual contemplation and collective experience. This particular outdoor site offers a wealth of exciting opportunities for this work, with its combination of man-made structures and the natural erosion of the cliffs and surrounding area that has occurred over time. These very elements join to create a natural theater of sorts, a space beckoning for activation, exploration, and experience. At night, the site takes on a heightened sense of mystery and magic, with the sounds of the ocean amplified through the darkness, and the outlines of the ocean tide and outlying cliffs just visible to the eye.

Please join us at sunset on October 21st at Mitchell’s Cove for the Performative Technologies Project Group event.

Helen Hyunkyung Park and Natalie McKeever are second year MFA students in the Digital Arts and New Media program at UCSC.

Many thanks to Lyle Troxell and our supervising professors, Jim Bierman, David Cuthbert, and Kate Edmunds.

*This event is subject to cancellation if the weather does not permit us to use the projectors outside! A rain date will be added if this occurs.

The objective of this competition is to uncover new public realm art, architectural and environmental approaches to riverscapes at two scales: regional and intimate. Each designer/artist/team will produce an overall strategy for connecting and relating the four defined sites (and those between) while paying attention to the unique and individual characteristics of each community through site specific work. At its core, the competition asks three main questions of its designers/artists/teams:

• What models from Hamburg could be applied to our region to assist us in envisioning inventive and progressive solutions to ongoing issues common to post-industrial cities?
• How can we utilize the river as the catalyst for awareness, change and growth within a region considering the following areas: economy, politics, environment, community, agriculture, transportation, public space, art, recreation, mapping, graphics?
• How can small-scale, local river art/environmental installations have a lasting effect on a community and its collective visions of the future?

We have identified four primary issues that face both of our regions:

• Environment
• Diversity and Connection
• Creative Economies
• Collective History and Education

Each submission must identify and utilize at least one of these frames for their entry.

Entrants will design and present an approach to addressing this (above selected) issue using art, science, planning or other inventive means first at a regional scale. Then, focusing on one site (of your choice), designers/artists/teams will design a small-scale artistic/architectural/scientific installation to be placed along the river addressing the topic of choice and site specific issues.

Site committees have been formed for each location to provide a specific site criteria, provide additional information and Question/Answer period and to represent their community as judges on the competition. These committees are made up of a cross-section of members of the community from citizens to planners to organizers.

Deadline: December 10, 2011

Eligibility:

Experimental Honors Planning Design Award: This $2,000 competition is open to designers/artists/teams internationally.

Design-Build Awards: open to designers/artists/teams from the northeast region of the USA: CT, MA, NH, VT, ME, NY, NJ, RI. Four $7,500 awards.

Contact: Thom Long
tlong [at] hampshire.edu
Phone: 001 413 559 5376

Five Colleges Inc.
893 West Street
Amherst MA 01002
USA

Within the long-term program covering the avant-garde, Marres presents Specters of the Nineties, an exhibition that looks at the last decade of the 20th century through a selection of art works made in the period between 1989 and 2000.

The most prominent characteristics of the 1990s, commonly known as the beginning of ‘The Information Age’, are without doubt the revolutionary development of digital technology the emergence of a global capitalism. The claim being made in the exhibition is that the artistic practices of the 1990s not only reflect these developments, but also testify of the way the digital revolution has altered the artistic practice itself — art of the 1990s being, in other words, both informed and formed by these changes.

The artistic practices of the 1990s often have been referred to as ’social art’ and subsequently their value has been measured in social terms rather than artistic ones. Instead, Specters of the Nineties unfolds how the technological developments of the time have marked the production and dispersion of art, the notion of access and audience, the issue of authorship, and ultimately, the nature of artistic work and the aesthetics of the artefact itself. The artistic practices of the 1990s persistently seek to redefine the utilitarian relations of art in a new economic reality, which is why it could be argued that they truly are a part of a ‘classic’ avant-garde project.

Specters of the Nineties presents a selection of art works and practices that could be considered as anticipating on the social and political constellations of today and the position of art therein. What is the legacy of the artistic practices of the 1990s? Are they still haunting today’s art practices? Or have they, as a ’social project’, dissolved in our social reality altogether?

The exhibition consists of an anthology of artistic practices and works, including sculpture, installation, painting, photography and video, made between 1989 and 2000. The exhibition also includes reconstructions, documents and archival material that, in a documentary style, represent the site specific, system specific, process based, one-time, or otherwise ephemeral character of the artistic practices of the 1990s.

Curators: Lisette Smits in cooperation with Matthieu Laurette.

Works by: Art Club 2000, Sadie Benning, Bernadette Corporation, Plamen Dejanov & Swetlana Heger, Jeremy Deller, Stephan Dillemuth and Hans-Christian Dany, Maria Eichhorn, Annika Eriksson, Andrea Fraser, Rainer Ganahl, Renée Green, Jens Haaning, Pierre Huyghe, Karen Kilimnik, Ben Kinmont, Job Koelewijn, Renée Kool, Aleksandra Mir, Regina Müller, N55, Marylène Negro-Klaus Scherübel, Laurie Parsons, Asier Pérez González, Dan Peterman, Hinrich Sachs, Joe Scanlan, Tilo Schulz, Superflex, Apolonija Sustersic, Barbara Visser, Carey Young.