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

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…)

Artspace and National Institute of Experimental Arts, CoFA present two lectures by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, leading philosophers and practitioners of movement, affect and relationality. Together their lectures Animality and Abstraction (Massumi) and The Dance of Attention (Manning) explore the virtual, abstract and powerful dimensions of diagrams.

Everywhere maps and visualisations of space are multiplying around us as new applications of cartography gain prominence. In a quieter manner, the diagram has also re-emerged as an abstract device for thinking about, generating and re-imagining relations themselves. Unlike maps and the rapidly expanding domain of information visualization, diagrams often seem more obscure modes of picturing and inscribing relations. They hint at something imperceptible, something that lies in wait that we need to make more explicit through further explanation or interpretation.

Pictorial and conceptual diagramming is increasingly deployed in collaborative and collective design, architecture, dance and new media practices as a means for facilitating complex cross-modal research and creation. The diagram’s very abstraction allows it to be open, elastic and resonant across practices and modalities. As the philosophers of diagrammatic thought Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari suggest, diagrams exist in the dimension of the virtual and help to construct, “a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality”. Thinking about the diagram, then, is to think generatively about what can and could be created; by whom — humans and nonhumans; and under what circumstances — via collaborative and singular relationships.

BodyControlled is a new exhibition and performance series at Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance - LEAP presenting artists who are dedicated to performance art and have explored in their work the medium of sound in electronic as well as other expressive art forms.

The first event of the BodyControlled series focuses on the theme of other spaces. The works on display will both intertwine with LEAP’s existing architecture and generate other virtual spaces. These areas are either completely synthetically generated, reflecting directly the current environment to a new sonic framework or condense an existing space into specific digital imagery. The opening will be concluded with a 12-hour performance by Robert Henke.

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.

Join us for an ethnographic report from deep inside the virtual public sphere. Gabriella Coleman (NYU, McGill) researches transnational digital social movements from Anonymous to the Debian Project. Her scholarship has focused on the formation of ethical and aesthetic identity within these movements, and how they are transforming the wider cultural understanding of law, property, and freedom. She has published widely, and has interpreted digital activism for the popular media, including Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, the New York Times, and many other venues. Her book, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, is forthcoming on Princeton University Press. Hosted by Building Better Speech & Globe.

About Art, Media, and Technology (AMT): In our dynamic world, art reflects conditional reality, and design contributes to further development of global societies. At Parsons The New School for Design, rigorous practice and critical scholarship prepares students to become leading agents of commentary and change.

For me the Internet has always been a physical space. Working as a sculptor, the first moment I started experimenting with HTML code and viewed the results in the browser, I witnessed a physical installation. - Jan Robert Leegte talking to cont3xt.net

Notes on a New Nature is a physical manifestation of an ongoing research project conducted by artist, writer, and curator Nicholas O’Brien. The research critically examines and compares the relationships that contemporary artists working with digital media have to practices started in Modernist Painting – specifically the pursuit of capturing the virtual qualities of what constitutes a landscape. How does an artist depict a space faithfully enough to show its affect on a subject? Can art capture the space between the viewer and the horizon, and where does that horizon reside now that we can digitally circumnavigate the globe? Can the digital reconcile the physical?

One way that we know how to understand the natural is through the domestic spaces of our daily lives. The interior shelter allows for reflection on what is “outside,” and as a result positions civilization away from the natural. However, as various digital and virtual landscape permeate the domestic space, our notion of what constitutes the natural has become more complicated than a simple inside/outside dichotomy. We use all forms of digital and analog technologies to simulate the natural world daily, and artists in this show point to how these tools affect the ways in which the “realness” of the natural is no longer as simple as locating it outside your window.

This newfound complication highlights the central argument of Notes on a New Nature: our varied notion of what constitutes the natural is shaped by technology, which is a narrative that can be traced all the way back to the advent of agriculture and the dawn of civilization. Through employment of various digital approaches, artists in this exhibition reference this long-standing problem we face when attempting to represent landscape and acknowledge the ways in which digital technology has forever changed our understanding of nature.

Participating artists include: Duncan Alexander, Mark Beasley, Chris Collins, Petra Cortright, Theo Darst, Marjolijn Dijkman, Paul Flannery, Joe Hamilton (aka Hypergeography), Jan Robert Leegte, Sara Ludy, Garrett Lynch, Michael Ray-Vaughn, Sherwin Rivera Tibayan, Nicolas Sassoon, Rick Silva, Pascual Sisto, Krist Wood, Kate Steciw, and Wes W Wilson.

People use large amounts of water for drinking, cooking and washing, and even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, and almost every other physical product. Usually, the amount of freshwater that goes into making a product – its virtual water content – far exceeds the amount contained in it at the end of the process. The water footprint of a person, company or nation is not unlike their ecological footprint. It is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the commodities, goods and services that they consume. Based on data gathered by Hoeckstra et al. on the water footprints of nations, designer Timm Kekeritz created a set of infographics to make the issue of virtual water and the water footprint perceivable. In collaboration with his colleague Frank Rausch, the Virtual Water iOS app was created in 2010. Its design is minimalistic, using only silhouettes and elegant typography, and featuring the elegant typefaces, TheSans and TheSerif by Luc(as) de Groot. The design has became popular worldwide, published in newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs around the globe.