Contemporary art has seen a marked increase in practices that defy traditional descriptions of media. Categories like painting, drawing, sculpture and photography no longer suffice to describe the full range of processes and forms that artists engage. Even relatively newer media categories like conceptual art, video art and performance art cannot encompass what many artists today do in their studios and in the streets. Many artists approach subject matter conceptually or thematically, choosing materials, processes and forms that resonate with a particular theme, while others complicate formal concerns directly by working through and across many media at once, or sequentially, arriving at products that resist easy categorization. Contemporary music has also seen a rise in the combining of musical practices and genre; even of individual pre-existing songs. Akin to the post-modern visual art strategy of combines today’s pop mash-ups take elements from two or more forms and slam them together, creating a new synthesis of musical sounds. Theorists often simply create new categories to deal with this phenomenon, although another solution is the acknowledgement that the slippery liminal ground between definitions is a place unto itself: Intermedia.

The upcoming exhibition Mash-ups seeks to display a group of creative work that defies categorization by medium. We invite proposal submissions from artists in any field, including but not limited to variations of traditional visual arts practices, music and sound, film and video, performance and relational forms, and new media.

The exhibition will take place from February 24-April 1 in the Sonnenschein and Albright Galleries in the Durand Art Institute Building on the campus of Lake Forest College.

There will be an opening reception on Thursday, February 24 from 7:30-9:00 in the evening.

Creative individuals and groups are encouraged to submit images in jpeg format, videos in quicktime or DVD format, sound files, links to materials archived online, written materials, or whatever documentation is necessary to best convey your existing work. Work must be submitted by email or received by mail by January 6, 2011.

Send attached electronic files and/or links to exhibition curator Eli Robb at robb@lakeforest.edu. Send any CD/DVDs or other packaged materials by mail to Eli Robb, Box P15, Department of Art, Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Rd. Lake Forest, IL 60045. /USA

Information about the Sonnenschein Gallery at Lake Forest College can be found at http://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/programs/art/galleries.php Please do not hesitate to contact exhibition curator Eli Robb (robb@lakeforest.edu ) or Sonnenschein Gallery Director Rebecca Goldberg ( Goldberg@lakeforest.edu ) if you have any questions about the exhibition or the application process.

Exhibiting artists will be notified by email by January 13, 2011, and will be asked to submit additional information about themselves and their work at that time. All artwork to be exhibited must be received by February 17, 2011. Exhibiting artists are responsible for any shipping and insurance costs for the transport of their work to and from the gallery. All artwork will be insured by the gallery during the exhibition.

The motto of the EMAF 2010 is MASH UP! Productions by internationally renowned media artists and the innovative works of new masters from the academies will be presented at the 23nd European Media Art Festival. The EMAF is one of the most influential forums of international Media Art. As a meeting point for artists, curators, distributors, gallery owners and an audience of specialists, the festival has a great impact on the topic and aesthetics of Media Art. Each year the festival offers its visitors a current overview of new experimental films, performances, lectures, an exhibition and the Media Campus.

The frame of content of the festival is ranging from personal and political subjects or formal experiments to provocative statements.

The motto of the 2010 festival is MASH UP, reflected in film programmes, lectures and specials.

Today, the reinterpretation and re-coding of media content, works of art and music take place in popular culture and art alike. In the process, mashing up citations and references evolves into the aesthetic, satirical and subversive stylistic device, where it also infringes on the rights of third parties.

The EMAF 2010:

CINEMA
Experimental shorts and feature films, music videos, new forms of narration and documentation as well as specials.

EXHIBITION
The latest installations from 21 April to 24 May 2010 in the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche.

EXPANDED MEDIA
Artistic projects of digital media, performances, music and sound projects, as well as the latest concepts from expanded media.

MEDIA
The contact and project exchange for new projects, tendencies and training concepts from the media universities, academies of art and design colleges of Europe.

CONGRESS
Discussions and issues covering the various elements of the festival in talks, workshops, artist presentations and panel discussions.

AWARDS
At the festival an international jury will present the >EMAF Award< for a trend-setting work in Media Art and the >Dialogpreis< of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the promotion of intercultural exchange. Furthermore, the jury of the German Federal Association of Film Journalists will award the prize for the best German experimental film.

In RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride. A participatory media experiment, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oar9glUCL0

“Recently, I’ve been interested in the the connections created through the MySpace Music social network. By navigating the “Friends Space” link section on each member’s page, reminiscent of web 1.0 webrings, the user can access an interconnected network of that artists influences, friends and label mates, allowing them to discover new artists and different genres of music. Most of the pages feature a jukebox with samples of the musicians work which automatically begin to play once the page has finished loading.

The SOCIAL [net.work music] project and performance begins on my own MySpace Music page. I select at random an artist from my “Friends Space” list and allow the page to load. Once the music begins to play, I select a friend link from that artist’s list and open the page in a new tab. This permits the music to layer over top of the previous track. The process continues until, eventually from the inability to handle the incoming data load, the browser crashes. bringing the composition to an end.

Each performance yields a spontaneous and unique, layered composition without the use of sample preparation, sophisticated hardware or software. All of the resulting audio produced in each performance is unedited and live in the moment. These works can be created and performed anywhere at anytime with simply a web browser and internet connection. I sculpt the layered audio on my end with a hacked kaoss pad, to add my own color to the sonic college.”

Click below to hear the improv sound sample. Clip includes works by: ATAK, Pixel, Ryoji Ikeda, Alva Noto, Richard Chartier & Joy Division.

Be sure to check back the day before the performance for any last minute information.

After disclosing ThruYou to just twenty friends, Kutiman’s project spread virally across the web, racking up more than one million views in less than a week. After viewing ThruYOU, open source advocate Lawrence Lessig praised the project as a pioneer of a new, less regulated form of media, saying “If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas.” — Wikipedia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i88CKr6Shn4

They called for professionals and amateur musicians of all ages, locations and instruments to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra by submitting a video performance of a new piece written for the occasion by the renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun.

Finalists were selected by a judging panel comprised of the world’s most renowned orchestras. Winners were announced on March 2nd and were invited to travel to New York in April 2009, to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra summit, and play at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009 under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas.

All the Tan Dun submissions have been compiled into a mashup video. You can also hear Michael Tilson Thomas talk about the orchestra here

This project explores the relationship between sound, space and identity as experienced through a cree worldview. By creating a “performative audio map”, L’Hirondelle will negotiate a journey through new territory, developing a nomadic relationship with the land. Her actions/singing will be in direct response to her encounters within the territory - the physical environment she finds herself in and its inhabitants.

During the month of December, the artist will make daily journeys throughout Vancouver and “sing” the landscape she encounters. These encounters will be captured by mobile phone by the artist and whatever other technologies are made available by participating viewers/audience (video, photo, audio).

During the live performances, she will sing, record, upload and tag these audio clips to an online database. Each audio clip will be tagged to one or more of the 16 cree values. The clips will automatically be available to online audiences interactively through a rich online media experience available here.

This interactive experience intends to illuminate the relationship between the spirit or inspiration for the singing (the song, the audio) and the value it corresponds to within a cree worldview while engaging online audiences to interact with the content via a mashup/audio remix style interface.

Unscheduled live performances will begin November 24th and take place daily until December 31st with the interactive website premiering December 7, 2008. Additionally, selected scheduled performance locations during December will be listed on the grunt gallery website

Subscribe to project feed at Twitter.com to learn more about following/participating or tracking daily performances or visit the blog.

Participants are also invited to take part in the daily performances by submitting text, photos, videos or audio material to vancouversonglines@gmail.com for inclusion in the project blog. In addition to this, audiences may contribute sound clips to the remix interface by uploading audio to the website and can additionally link videos to the project’s youtube site.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle is a currently Vancouver-based multi and interdisciplinary mixed blood artist and musician originally from northern Alberta. Her artistic practice is an investigation of the junction of a cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time and space.

Artists that took part in ADJ were: Thomas Mulcaire, Adam Hyde, 1st Born aka Ntsikelelo Ntshingila, Rebecca Mattos, Amanda Rodrigues Alves, Aymeric Mansoux, Harwood, Tony Shaper, Derek Shaw, Stuart Bowditch, Rob Gretton, David Valentine, Mike Lowther and Johnathon Gilmurray.

Antarctic Data Jams are events where we invite you to make songs, images, videos or just plain noise from raw weather data from the Antarctic. During the day there is a workshop and in the evening a performance. If you prefer to work at home, just find any kind of Antarctic data (we have supplied some, see left) and if you create something with it, bring it along to the event.

SoSLUG in conjunction with MediaShed and I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation), has sent Weather Monitoring equipment to the Antarctic to capture environmental data to be transformed into sensational music that programmers and artists can Jam to. The first two Antarctic Data Jams were run at The MediaShed in Southend on Sea and The Junction in Cambridge (see ADJ Events).

You do not need to be a programmer or a Geek to join in, it’s all about having some fun at the expense of raw dull scientific data. You don’t even need to use the software that we provide. For instance you can, if you want collect your own Antarctic sounds, manipulate them as you wish, make some audio tracks from them and play them at our event sessions. Their are no restrictions on the equipment to use our only stipulation is that it should have some or all Antarctica sound or data content.