Localitzats [Located] aims to show how the emergence of technology in each of the different aspects of our daily life leads to the irreversible loss of privacy, which affects us all; a fact that we often do not seem to be sufficiently aware of.

In this case, the work focuses on the Priorat region, a territory that allows the development of the project because of its size and small number of villages and residents. Localitzats_PRIORAT displays the first and last names of more than three thousand residents of Priorat that have been located on the Network. This information was obtained through a simple search by locality carried out in one of the many telephone contact records on the Internet.

The Network and new technologies facilitate the indiscriminate emission of personal data by unsuspecting users, as well as the immediate collection of databases that report to various stakeholders.

Services as common as a simple search for phone numbers are able to locate a person on a map. A search of combined words can provide details ranging from personal identification numbers to a diverse background, which may contain a complete record of works, personal relationships, crimes and offenses…

A software as accessible as the popular Google Maps Street Viewer can allow us to gain access to the residence of a person we only know the name of.

Regardless of the nature of our relationship with the Network, it is easy to imagine that our data are there. The final use of these data depends only on the interests of those who manage them. This can range from market research to all kinds of scams and swindles, all under the watchful eye of many agencies t hat are there to ensure the ever-recurring national security.

Turbulence Commission: I’m Not Stalking You; I’m Socializing: Black & White by Liz Filardi

One of the original cases of criminal stalking in America is retold within the framework of a social network called Black & White, which consists of two mirrored profiles, those of Laura Black and Richard Farley. The website extrapolates on the tongue-and-cheek usage of the term “stalking” to describe the accepted social protocol, a far cry from the original behavior that, in this case, lead to a massacre at a booming Silicon Valley company in 1988. This project points to new and different levels of trust, privacy and social order in our networked society, tells the story behind the first Anti-Stalking Law passed in California in 1991 in the language and structure of networks, and tragically binds together two tormented Americans, once at opposite ends of an ineffective restraining order.

Liz Filardi received an MFA in Design and Technology from The New School, where she also worked as teaching assistant to Ken Wark and Orit Halpern. In 2008, she was nominated for the William Randolph Hearst Scholarship for Truth Recruit, a performance in which she visited a Bronx high school dressed as a military recruiter. Her performance video, Viral Conversations is currently on display with Iraqi Memorial at Sheppard Gallery in Reno, Nevada. Based in New York, Liz is a production manager and web designer at Kickstand Animation, Research and Design and has interned at Rhizome, Eyebeam and Rocketboom.

Merry-go-around by Lily & Honglei [Video of Second Life Performance/ Installation; 3'3" with sound; 2009]

Merry-go-around reflects 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China, particularly in memory of thousands of students died in the devastating disaster. The background with school rumbles is composed with Honglei’s oil paintings based on pictures of the earthquake ruins. The merry-go-around is covered by 2008 Beijing Olympic swimming pool “water cube.” Underneath is the flooded city mimicing the condition at Three Gorge Dams. Above all, the national celebration is launched …

Merry-go-around part of Java Museum - 10 years netart “Celebration”.

The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus — by the German artists Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus — is a drawing machine illustrating a never-ending story by the use of patent drawings. It was the winning entry for the Arco BEEP Award 2010.

The machine translates words of a text into patent drawings. Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents. They form a kind of subtext.

New visual connections and narrative layers emerge through the interweaving of the story with the depiction of technical developments.

We Are Stardust — by George LeGrady — is a two-screen projection installation that uses infrared sensors to connect the real-time location of the audience in the exhibition gallery with the total vastness of space. It is part of CODE Live at the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad Festival.

Based on data and observations of the sky collected by the sun-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope from 2003 to 2008, over 36,000 observations are represented and projected in a five-hour cycle. Simultaneously, a FLIR thermal sensing infrared surveillance camera repositions its gaze on the audience based on the positions of the Spitzer’s observations. As one screen represents this galaxy as it evolves, the other screen, using a similar sensing device, represents the changing space within the installation itself. The universe is projected and visualized, and the exhibition space records the spectator’s thermal presence and actions, creating a work of art that is truly universal and local at the same time. We are Stardust reminds us of how small we really are, yet how interconnected we can be beyond what we can normally see with the human eye.

Thursday Club: Igor Štromajer & Ballettikka Internettikka [Internet Ballet] :: February 18, 2010; 6:30 - 8:30 pm :: Seminar Rooms, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, South East London.

Ballettikka Internettikka (Igor Štromajer and Brane Zorman) is the umbrella name for a series of tactical art projects which began in 2001 with the exploration of Internet ballet. It explores wireless Internet ballet performances combined with guerrilla tactics and mobile live Internet broadcasting strategies. Igor will discuss some of these projects as outlined below.

“We shall fight them on the beaches. We shall fight them on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” (W. Churchill)

From 2001 to 2009 twenty different Ballettikka Internettikka actions have been performed:

• Net Ballet – Internet, 2001
• Ballet Net – The Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Russia, 2002
• M-III Robot Ballet – Bergen International Theatre, Bergen, Norway, 2003
• BRVI – Ballettikka RealVideo Internettikka – Television Slovenia - Cultural Program, U3, 2003
• Autto Mobillikka – Ljubljana Motorway Ring, Slovenia, 2003
• Illegallikka Robottikka – Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy, 2004
• BEO Guerrillikka – National Theatre, Belgrade, Serbia, 2005
• VolksNetBallet – Volksbühne, Berlin, Germany, 2006
• Commerciallikka – Internet / Heineken Draughtkeg, 2007/2008
• Portraits – Internet, 2007
• Aeronauttikka – Internet, 2007
• RenminNetBallet – Hong Kong City Hall, 2007
• Stattikka – CYNETart, Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau, Dresden, Germany, 2007
• Olymppikka – Internet, Fire Polygon, 2008
• Religgikka – Internet, 2008
• SubAquattikka – Internet, 2008
• Hydraullikka – Plaza del Rey, Madrid, Spain, 2008
• Intermenttikka – Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2008
• Norddikka – Svalbard, Norway, Arctic Ocean, 2008/2009
• Nipponnikka – Minami Torishima, Japan, Pacific Ocean, 2009

Ballettikka Internettikka uses impossible connections to develop the possible strategies of resistance and disobedience. The project participates in the already existing protocols of communication, yet without being servile to these protocols, it opens up links between emotionality and technology, production and ethics, desire and organization, imagination and institution. The distribution of politics and intimacy without any reason and purpose, with the use of limited, defined, and controlled protocols is a dystopia and an unsubmissive revolt to the world of capital, which can be disarmed only by the use of its own tactics.

Ballettikka Internettikka is a co-production of Intima Virtual Base and Cona 2001–2009 and Aksioma 2003.
Theoretical Adviser: Bojana Kunst
Spatial Adviser: Irena Pivka

In the years 2001–2009 the project was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Spain, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, Norsk Kulturfond, Arts Council Korea, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Hong Kong Cultural Service Department, the Municipality of Madrid, the Municipality of Dresden, the Municipality of Belgrade, the Municipality of Ljubljana, Epson.

The work of Ballettikka Internettikka is also featured in and essay by Bojana Kunst published in the volume Interfaces of Performance now available from Ashgate Publishing (edited by Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] (University of Hull), Janis Jefferies (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Rachel Zerihan (Queen Mary, University of London)).

If not you not me - Annie Abrahams :: February 12 - March 20, 2010 :: Opening: February 12; 6:30 - 9:00 pm :: HTTP Gallery, Unit A2, Arena Design Centre, 71 Ashfield Rd, London N4 1NY.

Annie Abrahams (b. NL 1954 , lives and works FR) is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. ‘If not you not me’ at HTTP Gallery in London is the first exhibition of her work in the UK. Where social networking sites make us think of communication as clean and transparent, Annie Abrahams creates an Internet of feeling– of agitation, collusion, ardour and apprehension. Working with simple interfaces, carefully crafted instructions and disruptions in data-flow, Abrahams sensitises participants and audiences to glitches in communication and invites them to experience and reflect on different ways of being together in a machine-mediated world. The exhibition asks how we deal with the tensions of collaboration and physical separation as we negotiate relationships through video imagery, computer software and digital networks.

Abrahams has created three new works for ‘If not you not me’ at HTTP Gallery, inviting collaboration from visitors to the gallery and others around the world. Shared Still Life / Nature Morte Partagée, a telematic still life for mixed media and LED message board, asks visitors to HTTP Gallery and Kawenga - territoires numériques in Montpellier, Franceto communicate with one another by arranging objects in the still life and sending messages to one another, with the results visible in a projection in both galleries.

The exhibition’s private view also includes two new collaborative performances to be documented and shown in the exhibition. On Collaboration Graffiti Wall, a collective text and speech performance, draws on reflections around the nature and problems of online collaboration collected via a website.
Huis Clos / No Exit - Jam involves four women artists sitting before webcams in different locations around the world. They will try to organise a unified sound performance, working with and around the inevitable delays that result from the international live feed. In addition to the new works, the exhibition presents documentation of recent networked performances created and curated by Abrahams.

If not you not me is co-produced by Furtherfield.org and HTTP Gallery, London, and bram.org and Kawenga - territoires numériques, Montpellier, France. Furtherfield.org supports experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. This exhibition was conceived in connection with Furtherfield.org’s Rich Networking project interrogating the transparency of communication, artistic collaboration and sociability through digital networks. This is the fourth event in Furtherfield.org’s three-year Media Art Ecologies programme which foregrounds practices sharing an ecological approach - an interest in the interrelation of technological and natural processes: beings and things, individuals and multitudes, matter and patterns.

Events

Private view and performances: Friday, 12 February 2010, 6:30-9pm, HTTP Gallery

7pm: On Collaboration Graffiti Wall - Collective text and speechperformance at gallery.
To contribute or view texts to be used during the performance visit http://bram.org/collaboration/index.php.

8pm: Shared Still Life / Nature Morte Partagée goes live - telematic still Life installation at HTTP Gallery and Kawenga - territoires numériques, Montpellier, France.

8:30pm: Huis Clos / No Exit - Jam - Telematic performance projected at HTTP Gallery, featuring Anteye Greie (Hailuoto, FI), Pascale Gustin (Paris, FR), Helen Varley Jamieson (Wellington, NZ), and Maja Kalogera (Madrid, ES).

Discussions on Networked Publics :: February 9, March 25, April 13, and May 4 beginning at 6:30 pm :: Studio-X, 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610 (1 train to Houston Street), New York City :: Free and open to the public — RSVP: gdb2106 [at] columbia.edu.

The Network Architecture Lab announces a series of evening panels entitled Discussions on Networked Publics at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Studio-X Soho Facility to investigate the changing conditions of the media, architecture, and urbanism today.

The mass audience and mass media analyzed by the Frankfurt School are long gone. As digital media and network technologies are increasingly integral with everyday life, the public is transforming. Today we inhabit multiple, overlapping and global networks such as user forums, Facebook, Flickr, blogs, and wikis. In lieu of watching TV, listening to the radio, or playing records, we text each other, upload images to social networking sites, remix videos, write on blogs and make snarky online comments. The media industry, which just a decade ago seemed well established, is in flux, facing its greatest challenge ever. If we can be certain of anything, it’s that as Karl Marx wrote, “all that is solid melts into air.”

In 2008, we published Networked Publics (MIT Press), a book produced in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication examining how the social and cultural shifts centering around new technologies have transformed our relationships to (and definitions of) place, culture, politics, and infrastructure.

Discussions on Networked Publics seeks to explore the ramifications of these changes, giving particular attention to architecture and cities. In a set of five panels — culture, place, politics, infrastructure, and network society — we will explore the consequences of networked publics in detail. Our goal will be to come to an understanding of the changes in culture and society and how architects, designers, historians, and critics might work through this milieu.

The first panel is on culture. Our panelists will address the question of how media, architecture, and architectural media are changing in the context of networked publics.

Panel 1. Culture: 9 February, 6.30 :: featuring: Michael Kubo, Michael Meredith, Will Prince, Enrique Ramirez, David Reinfurt, and Mimi Zeiger

Panel 2. Place: 25 March, 6.30

Panel 3. Politics: 13 April, 6.30 :: featuring special guest Stephen Graham

Panel 4. Infrastructure: 4 May, 6.30

[Studio-X is a downtown studio for experimental design and research run by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University.]

Turbulence Commission: FUJI spaces and other places by Nurit Bar-Shai:

Appropriating, processing, and interweaving several existing webcam feeds of Mount Fuji, FUJI is a durational piece for four seasons. FUJI examines the authenticity of networked, spatiotemporal experiences of distant nature, sacred sites, and sacred icons. The overwhelming immediacy and delirious variety of live broadcasts available via the Internet, as well as the current incitement to communicate with distant but real subjects alter our experience of space which is invariably mediated through images. In FUJI, the gap between the real place and its representation no longer exists. FUJI is a voyage across deep time, experienced minute by minute, day by day — a longing for a place that could never be, yet, evidently, always is.

BIOGRAPHY

Nurit Bar-Shai is an inter-media artist who composes video and live telematic installations. Her work has been exhibited at the OK-Center in Linz, The National Art Center in Tokyo, SESI Gallery in Sao Paulo, the Science Gallery at Trinity College, Dublin, The State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki and The Center for Digital Art in Israel, among others. Bar-Shai received a Prix Ars Electronica 2007 Honorary Mention, the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival Jury Award, ETC Finishing Funds award, funded by NYSCA, ARTIS - Contemporary Israeli Art Fund Grant, and was commissioned by Turbulence.org, with funds from The Greenwall Foundation (Nothing Happens, 2006), and with funds from The Jerome Foundation (2009). Bar-Shai has held residencies at the Experimental Television Center, the Makor Steinhardt Center, Harvestworks and the European Lab for Interactive Media Art: eMobiLArt.

NetSci 2010 Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks — A Leonardo Satellite Symposium :: May 10, 2010 :: BarabásiLab, Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University in Boston, MA :: Call For Papers — Deadline: January 22, 2010 (registration opens same day).

By means of keynotes, contributed talks and interdisciplinary discussion we will explore and identify important issues surrounding the convergence of arts, humanities and complex networks. On the one hand we will concentrate on network structure and dynamics in areas ranging from art history and archeology to music, film and image science. In the same time we are interested in the development and critique of network visualizations from medieval manuscripts to the latest tools, such as Cytoscape and Processing. Our dual focus is based on the opinion that the study of networks and the study of visualizations of these networks complement each other, much in the same way as archeology cannot live without self-reflective art history – studying the represented always presupposes the study of representation. Bringing together network scientists and specialists from the arts and humanities we strive for a better understanding of networks and their visualizations, resulting in better images of networks, and a better use of these images. Running parallel to the NetSci2010 conference, the workshop will also provide a unique opportunity to mingle with leading researchers and practitioners of complex network science, potentially sparking fruitful collaborations.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (IBM Visual Communication Lab, Boston): http://www.research.ibm.com/visual
Ward Shelley (New York artist): http://www.wardshelley.com

Contributions: In addition to the keynotes we are looking for ten 15 minute contributions in order to cover a large territory around arts, humanities and complex networks.

Abstracts should not exceed 200-300 words. Applications should include one relevant URL and your most awesome figure. Please send a one page PDF not exceeding 500kb to: artshumanities [at] netsci2010.net

Selected original papers will be published in the Leonardo Journal, MIT Press. Proceedings will be published online.

Important dates:
The deadline for applications is January 22, 2010.
Decisions for acceptance will be sent out by February 7.

Possible subjects include:
* Multi-modal networks of features and meta-data in art, film, music and literature;
* Citation and transmission of motifs (Mnemosyne);
* Emergence and Evolution of canon in art, music, literature and film;
* Evolution of communities of practice in art and science;
* History of network visualization (genealogies, trees, matrices);
* Art history of taxonomy and evolutionary models (like Darwin‘s corals vs. Wallace‘s trees);
* Networks in architecture (from the Ekistics movement to modern traffic planning);
* Cultural exchange and trade networks (from the Neolithic to modern supply chains);
* Contemporary art and network science;
* Network structure in cultural heritage, film and music databases;…

Attendance: Attending our symposium will be free of charge. As space is limited, we require registration. Registration will open here on January 22, 2010.

NetSci 2010 attendees can register directly now. For the NetSci 2010 registration fee and deadline please see http://www.netsci2010.net.

Organizers: ^
The symposium is organized by Maximilian Schich (Art Historian at BarabásiLab), and co-chaired by Roger Malina (Executive Editor at Leonardo journal) and Isabel Meirelles (Associate Professor at Dept. of Art + Design, Northeastern University).

The symposium is a satellite to NetSci 2010 and counts with the support of the BarabásiLab – CCNR and Dept. of Art + Design, both at Northeastern University in Boston, and Leonardo/ISAST.

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By Joe Wachs.

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090909 UpStage Festival Showreel from UpStage on Vimeo.

Open Call for 101010 UpStage Festival >>

TREEHOUSE: A Found e-mail Romance designed for the iPhone in four Appisodes™:

GET THE SCOOP (NY) - New media producers First Fifteen [F15] are releasing the provocative, true e-mails of a love affair carried out 14-years ago during the advent of the Internet (to be enjoyed in the privacy of your own phone). TREEHOUSE can be read as a linear or non-linear story with smart graphics and a recommended soundtrack, all wrapped up in an innovative and unique e-reader interface (while the stealth, 5th App has something intriguing to do with John Travolta, but we are not at liberty to say…).

First Fifteen [F15] is a specialty press and new media producer. Projects range from limited edition print to new dynamics in publishing using the iPhone and other compatible devices. Also see Joe Wachs’ Hybrid/.

DarkMatr :: December 17-19, 2009; 2:00 - 7:00 pm :: Opening: December 16; 6:00 -9:00 pm :: iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, 30 quai des Charbonnages, 1080 Brussels.

After 2 residencies at iMAL and one year of work, Tom Heene and his colleagues artists, developers and scientists show the results of the research project DarkMatr. DarkMatr investigates the way virtual and physical data can be merged and presented in a total user experience. The resulting installation uses meaningful representations of web data so that we can empathize with. Taking place within an immersive environment, the visualization is lived as an interactive sensory experience, combining body movements to elements from the internet. Through this, DarkMatr aims to create a sensorial and cinematic experience from the exploration of the Internet. These 4 days of public show is a unique opportunity to experience with your body the DarkMatr immersive web and talk with the artists and scientists of the project.

DarkMatr is a project initiated by Tom Heene with Dirk Bollen, Dries De Roeck, Pieter Heremans, Lionel Maes, Lievn Menschaert, Olivier Meunier (Olm-e), Kris Vanhecke, Tom Deryckere, Gert Aertsen & Tom Desmet. It is supported by the Art&D programme of Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT). Partners are the Center for User Experience Research - CUO (KUL), WICA (UGent), NODEBOX and LAHAAG.

ETP_body-spaces09 – Exploration of Nearness & Distance :: December 5, 2009; 8:00 - 9:00 pm :: CIANT | International Centre for Art and New Technologies, Kubelíkova 27, Prague, Czech Republic.

ETP_body-spaces09 – Exploration of Nearness & Distance is an experimental performance of four dancers with simultaneous actions in Prague, Dresden, Madrid and Norrköping. The interactive environment is web-linked and divided into four parts. Each part is bound to explore the relationship between proximity and distance in different ways within net-linked virtual environment :: Part I: body-instruments; Part II: body-visiting of Madrid; Part III: bodies & languages; Part IV: re-body-spaces — Dancer: Johana Matoušková.

MindTouch by Camille Baker, SMARTlab Digital Media Institute:

The intention of this project is to contribute to performance technology studies by investigating ‘liveness and presence’ within the context of a specific networked, mobile media performance research project, currently underway, in order to uncover any new understandings that may have emerged from the use of new wireless and mobile technologies.

This project explores ideas of non-verbal transference, telepathic collaboration, and the participant as performer, using biofeedback and mobile phone technology under meta-goals of studying “liveness” within mobile networked environments.

This project involves creating a mobile networked performance that utilizes a database of archived of streamed and/or archived video clips created by video enabled mobile phones, to then be retrieved, streamed and remixed during a live visuals performance(s). The event or events will form a performative, collaborative, non-linear narrative montage or remix, that will possibly be streamed back out to anyone’s phone and the internet, and then archived. These events will be starting in London, UK in July + October, Vancouver in Aug/Sept, and possibly Perth and Asia next year.

Participants are considered the performers / collaborators in creating clips for several live’mixed? events and a unique performances from the mobile video archive, to help type of collective consciousness. The participants invited to participate in the video blogs are asked to explore their own consciousness, non-verbal emotional / affective senses and dream states, embodiment, communication, using of mobile media tools to express themselves non-verbally.

This research explores mobile video/media on phones for their immediacy, low quality - imperfectness, but spontaneity, at the speed of thought - with its rewriting, superimposing, and remixing of ideas, flashes and clashes of images and emotion, layering of meaning and stream of consciousness and equivalent - or simulation of telepathy and collective, if chaotic intelligence.

This project explores concepts such as: live versus simulated/virtual, liveness, presence, internal / non-verbal expression, body-machine interfaces and sensors, media art and performance practices that investigate role of performer versus the experience of the viewer, the participation of the audience in networked mobile media performances, current explorations in mobile media performance practices, social aspects and site-specificity of networked performance events, networks, locative media and wireless devices in media performance practices, live / performance art history and practice, VJing or live cinema practice, media art reception and interactivity, social mobility practices and more. More >>

Streamflow Conditions: Charting a poetics of language, code, and networks with John Cayley (CA), Roderick Coover (US), Ian Hatcher (US), Mez Breeze (AU), José Carlos Silvestre (BR), Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo (US), Rui Torres (PT) :: December 5-6, 2009; 5:35 - 5:35 pm :: http://streamflowconditions.subitopress.org.

Timestamp: 24 hours of networked writing :: Online Launch: December 5-6; 4:35 - 435 pm (UTC-7/MST sunset in Denver, Colorado): artists of the online exhibition, Streamflow Conditions, will perform online for 24 hours through networked writing, live coding, streaming video, or other means. Each artist will occupy a 4-hour shift, and the schedule is designed to facilitate audiences outside of the artists’ individual timezones. Writing or links to activity will be posted to the shared twitter account, “timestampstream” and intercepted at Subito Press. You are invited to follow along and respond.

1. Dec. 5, 4:35pm MST: Mez Breeze
2. Dec. 5, 8:35pm MST: Ian Hatcher
3. Dec. 6, 12:35am MST: Rui Torres
4. Dec. 6, 4:35am MST: José Carlos Silvestre
5. Dec. 6, 8:35am MST: Roderick Coover
6. Dec 6, 12:35pm MST: John Cayley

Streamflow Conditions is an online exhibition of electronic literature and networked writing curated by Judd Morrissey at the invitation of Subito Press at the University of Colorado. Beginning with a site-specific consideration of the Colorado landscape and its engineered waterways, the selection of works examines discrete markers in the contemporary data-scape of writing within networked culture. The artists and works chosen each represent an innovative use of language in conjunction with code, data, or networked spaces. The exhibition as a whole engages the overflowing boundaries between process, presence and object at a time when currents of digital literary practice meet the culture and corpus of writing online (& the imminent google waves).

“The injunction everywhere to ‘be someone’ maintains the pathological state that makes this society necessary.“- The Invisible Committee

“This is the end. My only friend, the end.” - Jim Morrison

A Virus is haunting the busy communication highways of the social networking sphere: the virus of Seppukoo. The infection has been started off last month with a viral marketing campaign for the launch of the homonym notWorking platform Seppukoo.com. The alert has now reached the pandemic state. Nobody’s safe.

EARLY SYMPTOMS. YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR VIRTUAL IDENTITY.

«Virtual life» is an - often - abused term used to describe the whole of one person online activities. But as media communications let our second/online/offline identities overflowing into real life - and vice-versa - the distinctions between the real and the virtual are becoming, more and more confused. Which is virtual? And where’s the real? Beyond all those questions only a fact remains: that our privacy, our profiles, our identities, our relationships, they are all - fake and/or real - entirely exploited for a sole purpose: to be sold as a product. But are those lives really worth to be experienced?

DON’T RESIST SEPPUKOO. PASS AWAY AND LEAVE YOUR ID BEHIND

Free yourself from the identity constriction cutting it out! Similarly to the seppuku - the ancient ritual suicide used by japanese samurais to restore their honour back - Seppukoo.com deals with the liberation of the digital body from any identity constriction, in order to help people discover what happens after their virtual life and to rediscover the importance of being anyone, instead of pretending to be someone.

IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS. LIVE THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL EXPERIENCE.

Hacking and parasiting Facebook, the most popular social networking website, Seppukoo.com deactivates one’s user account, driving people into one of the most radical chic user-experience: the vir(tu)al suicide.

As viral marketing strategies have been exploited by corporate media to make profit connecting people all over the world, Seppukoo.com playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into an exciting “social” experience. Kill your virtual life and open your mind to a new meaning of popularity: with Seppukoo it’s not important how many friends you have, but how much you may influence them. Induce your friends to commit suicide and rise up the Seppukoo Rank!

RESURRECTIONS. BECAUSE THERE’S NO DEATH WHERE THERE’S NO LIFE.

Suicide is a free choice and a kind of self-assertiveness. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t give to its users this faculty at all, and your account will be only deactivated. This means that any information regarding you and your friends, will be strictly preserved by facebook authorities in order to keep your virtual life alive for the eternity. That’s why you won’t need any superpower to come back to your virtual life after death: just a simple login, and your life will be completely restore back. Still hesitating? Let yourself be conquered by Seppukoo.com as you have an honour to save yet! Don’t waste this opportunity. Play it @ http://www.seppukoo.com.

CONNECTIONS
Launch @ http://www.seppukoo.com
The Testimonials @ http://www.seppukoo.com/testimonials
The Suicidal Wall @ http://www.seppukoo.com/suicidal-wall
Top 100 Suicidal Rank @ http://www.seppukoo.com/top-100

CREDITS
Seppukoo.com is a work by
Les Liens Invisibles
@ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org

Graphic design & Communication
parcodiyellowstone
@ http://www.parcodiyellowstone.it

Seppuko’s preview released in November 2009 at Piemonte Share Festival
@ http://www.toshare.it

View the full list of credits
@ http://www.seppukoo.com/credits

Double Blind (Love) - Telepresence performance :: Annie Abrahams: Living Room, Montpellier, France; November 29, 2009; 6:00 pm until the end of the performance :: Curt Cloninger: Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, North Carolina, US :: November 29; 12:00 pm until the end of the performance :: Live webcast.

Annie Abrahams and Curt Cloninger will repeatedly sing “love, love, love” (a short excerpt from a pop song) as a kind of duet, in real time/space and online. In order to isolate them from their surroundings and make them more attentive to the other, they will both be blindfolded. While singing they hope to evolve, mutating the original song excerpt, collaborating and communicating in a space/time of alterity. The artists have never met each other in the flesh.

There is no set duration. They will sing until the first one of them decides to stop. In both places a space will be reserved for the live performance and another for the video and audio projection. A camera will be fixed on each of their faces singing to each other. This live video of both faces will be projected both in the Living Room space and in the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center space. The performance will also be visible on the web at selfworld.net.

Ballettikka Internettikka Nipponnikka by Igor Štromajer and Brane Zorman :: November 22; 6:00 am - November 23; 6:10 am (local time here) :: Live Internet Broadcast (high speed Iridium satellite data connection) from Minami Torishima Island, Japan, Pacific Ocean.

Robots often cry – why shouldn’t you? Štromajer and Zorman will conduct the complex intimate act of leaving, jilting the two robots in the Pacific Ocean. The act of jilting is one of the most intimate, personal and merciless deeds, a deed which is at the same time purifying, direct and even reconciliatory. Jilting activates many emotions, traumas and frustrations, both for the one who jilts and for the one who is jilted. Jilting is the act of liberation: if you love something, set it free! Štromajer and Zorman will therefore jilt two of their favourite Silverlit R/C Program-a-BOT robots (36€ in retail) in the loneliness of the Pacific Ocean, at the easternmost point of Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun – two suns, each for one robot!

Minami Torishima is an isolated island in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The hottest place in Japan, it is the easternmost Japanese territory, lying some 1,848 kilometres southeast of Tokyo. It takes about 45 minutes to walk around the triangular-shaped, low-lying island which has an area of 1.2 square kilometres. The island is unusual because the closer to the coast, the higher the elevation: the central area of the island is 1 metre below sea level whilst the coast is about 5 to 8 metres above. There is an airport and a radio station on the island. The island is presently used for weather observation, but little else.

Ballettikka Internettikka is a series of tactical art projects which began in 2001 with the exploration of Internet ballet. It explores wireless Internet ballet performances combined with guerrilla tactics and mobile live Internet broadcasting strategies. After invading the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (2002), La Scala in Milan (2004), the National Theatre in Belgrade (2005), Volksbühne in Berlin (2006), City Hall and Lippo Centre in Hong Kong (2007), a construction site in Seoul (2008) and other institutions and their concepts, Štromajer and Zorman are preparing a new Internet ballet – Ballettikka Internettikka Nipponnikka, broadcasting live from Minami Torishima island, Japan. Paciific Ocean.

Action to be performed: At the same time that two Suns simultaneously rise from the Pacific Ocean, two robots will walk/dive into the ocean, dancing an early morning Internet Ballet at the easternmost point of Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun.

+ informacija v slovenš?ini: (PDF, 284 kB)

See also:
Ballettikka Internettikka Norddikka – jilting the robot in the loneliness of the Arctic ice, Svalbard, Arctic Ocean, 2008/09
Ballettikka Internettikka Intermenttikka – jilting the robot at a construction site in Seoul, Korea, 2008

Ballettikka Internettikka Nipponnikka

Authors and performers: Igor Štromajer and Brane Zorman
Theoretical adviser: Bojana Kunst

Performed live on Minami Torishima Island, Japan, 23 November 2009
Start time / sunrise: 06:04 AM GMT/UTC+9
Live Internet broadcast

Music by Brane Zorman Vs BeitThron & Matjaž Drevenšek
Video edited live (on the spot) by Igor Štromajer

Co-produced by Intima Virtual Base and Cona, Slovenia

Additional informations:
Intima Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/intima
Intima Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/20Hhj1
Intima Twitter: http://twitter.com/intima

BI Nipponnikka Flickr Slideshow (check the photos of the first wet/seawater training; 25 September 2009; in Strunjan Bay, Slovenia).

Intima Virtual Base
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phone: +49 162 634 3285 (+386 41 703 291)

Cona

“We shall fight them on the beaches. We shall fight them on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” (W. Churchill)