East of Borneo: A Collaborative Art Journal and Multimedia Archive edited by Thomas Lawson:

The launch of East of Borneo marks the convergence of two very distinct lines of thought. What is the nature, and the future, of art magazines? And how might we give form to the sprawling history of art in Los Angeles, a form that can be generative and productive, not merely descriptive or fancifully speculative?

Launched in October 2010, East of Borneo is a collaborative online art journal and multimedia archive that offers a new way to research and present the various histories of contemporary art. Its hybrid form — which publishes newly commissioned art writing within a larger context of user generated material — reflects an editorial process of thinking through the delights and constraints of printed magazines, and fully considering the transcendent possibilities of online publishing today. Continue reading

Interactive Swarm Space (ISS) explores the application of swarm simulations for the creation of interactive and immersive spaces. It aims to develop tools and strategies for establishing meaningful relationships between swarm behavior, interaction, perception, as well as musical and artistic expression. The project focuses on issues of multi-modal feedback and audio-visual spatialization which we deem central for a creative engagement with autonomous, self-organized and spatially distributed systems. This project is part of a research direction that explores the possibilities and challenges that artificial autonomous systems pose for artistic practice and performance.

We believe that in order to exploit the artistic potential of such systems, novel forms of interactivity, creativity, and aesthetics need to be found. Continue reading

Simulation is not the Opposite of the Real – Jean Baudrillard on Simulation and Illusion by Gerry Coulter, NOEMA.

The whole world is merely an illusion of the senses and the sensory trace of that disappearance (Baudrillard, 1997b:116)

I. Simulation as an Integral Part of Life: In his article for Noema (Volume 57, 2010) Pier Luigi Capucci draws attention to many of the complexities of simulation. He points to the very intimate nature of simulation for humans because even our oral and written languages are simulations with which we attempt to give the world meaning. Language, as Barthes acknowledged, is the very site of the institutionalization of subjectivity (1972:150). Continue reading

2nd International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC-11) :: April 27-29, 2011 :: Mexico City, Mexico :: Call for Papers — Deadline: December 13, 2010.

Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to Computational Creativity, including but not limited to:

1. computational paradigms for understanding creativity, including heuristic search, analogical and meta-level reasoning, and re-representation;
2. metrics, frameworks and formalizations for the evaluation of creativity in computational systems, note: quasi-formal approaches that, for example, argue for recognition without definition or that define the absence of creativity may have interesting implications for computational creativity);
3. perspectives on computational creativity, including philosophy, models of cognition and human behavior, and intelligent systems; Continue reading

[Image: Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments by Carmin Karasic, Rolf van Gelder and Rob Coshow, 2007] Situated Simulations: Designing a Mobile Augmented Reality Genre :: Project Leader: Gunnar Liestøl, The INVENTIO-project, Department of Media & Communication, University of Oslo.

A situated simulation requires a broadband (3G) smartphone with substantial graphics capabilities, GPS-positioning features, accelerometer and electronic compass. In a situated simulation there is approximate identity between the users visual perception of the real physical environment and the users visual perspective into a 3D graphics environment as it is represented on the screen. The relative congruity between the real and the virtual is obtained by letting the camera position and movement in the 3D environment be determined by the positioning and orientation hardware. As the user moves in real space the perspective inside the virtual space changes accordingly. Continue reading

ilinx. Berliner Beitrage zur Kulturwissenschaft: Mimesen :: Call for Artists — Deadline: March 1, 2010.

ilinx. Berliner Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft tests the potential and limits of cultural science. Its title (ilinx, gr. = vortex) is programmatic, since vortices emerge where different approaches, theories, and data collide, where calm continuous flow is disturbed and turbulently transformed by the reconfiguration of knowledge and things.

The second volume focuses on the techniques, agents, and methods that come into play at sites where similarities are being produced – whether in artistic, cultic, technological or scientific processes. Following Walter Benjamin all these kinds of mimesis can be understood as expressions of a ‘mimetic capacity’ that encompasses the recognition as well as the production of similarities and thus combines cognitive, practical, and aesthetical dimensions. Continue reading

Simulation as a Global Resource by Pier Luigi Capucci, NOEMA [This paper was originally presented at the International Conference “Consciousness Reframed 10 – experiencing [design] – behaving [media]”, Munich, MHMK, University of Applied Sciences, November 19 – 21, 2009]

The idea of “simulation” is a very intriguing, multifaceted and complex issue. Words like “verisimilitude”, “emulation”, “imitation”, “copy”, “reproduction”, “clone”, “replica”… are commonly used. In our everyday life we imagine situations, events, projects and decline them to the future: we simulate possible worlds and test them in a sort of permanent “what if” which is continuously reworked and modified. This process has been methodologically formalized in the sciences, where we build models, simulations, which try to describe facts, events and phenomena. Models and simulations have a very important cognitive role in knowing and understanding the world we live in. Continue reading

TEH Plot by Phillip Andrew Lewis, Adam Trowbridge, and Jessica Westbrook :: until January 22, 2010 :: FPAC Gallery, 300 Summer Street M1, Boston, MA.

TEH is a common typographical error and refers to a collaborative art and technology group with interests in research, displaced communication, simulation, nature/culture, and geography. TEH is currently examining weather as a shared experience/vocabulary, and presents this research through installation and technologically mediated experience.

TEH plot is a Summer Scene in Boston and includes: generated cicadas, liquid fresh cut grass, Meatballs glitch, and responsive cluster lighting… amongst other Summery components.

I. From the Dematerialized Object to Immaterial Labor

Anglo-American Conceptual art, which emerged in the mid to late 1960s, displayed a new interest in linguistics and information theory that clearly distinguished it from the industrially coded production aesthetics of Pop art and Minimalism. The thesis that went along with this was that replacing author-centered object production with linguistic or information-based propositions represented a challenge not only to any traditional “material-object paradigm” (Art & Language) but also to those aspects of craftsmanship within “production values” that are crucial to any claims to authorship and the “work,” and this perhaps helps to explain how and why the history of Conceptual art has mistakenly been written as a history of “dematerialization of the object.”(1) Continue reading

New Frontiers of Science, Art and Thought Meeting: Simulated Certainty :: September 30 – October 2, 2009 :: Barcelona, Spain.

The conference Simulated Certainty explores the threshold between reality and imagination. Where does the scientific hypothesis start? Where does the confirmation of the theory begin? How does the contemplation of an art piece become an intimate experience? What mechanisms enable us to generate this awareness of a hidden reality? The advent of new technologies and of the web has heightened more and more the tension between fiction and reality. Artistic creation and scientific research both impose an interdisciplinary point of view. Continue reading