Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance by Chris Salter (with a Foreword by Peter Sellars), MIT Press:

This ambitious and comprehensive book explores technology’s influence on artistic performance practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Entangled, Chris Salter shows that technologies, from the mechanical to the computational — from a “ballet of objects and lights” staged by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917 to contemporary technologically enabled “responsive environments” — have been entangled with performance across a wide range of disciplines. Salter examines the rich and extensive history of performance experimentation in theater, music, dance, the visual and media arts, architecture, and other fields; explores the political, social, and economic context for the adoption of technological practices in art; and shows that these practices have a set of common histories despite their disciplinary borders.

Each chapter in Entangled focuses on a different form: theater scenography, architecture, video and image making, music and sound composition, body-based arts, mechanical and robotic art, and interactive environments constructed for research, festivals, and participatory urban spaces. Salter’s exhaustive survey and analysis shows that performance traditions have much to teach other emerging practices — in particular in the burgeoning fields of new media. Students of digital art need to master not only electronics and code but also dramaturgy, lighting, sound, and scenography. Entangled will serve as an invaluable reference for students, researchers, and artists as well as a handbook for future praxis.

Chris Salter is an artist and Assistant Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. His works, large-scale multimedia environments, have been exhibited worldwide.

The Urban Spectator: American Concept-Cities from Kodak to Google by Eric Gordon:

The Urban Spectator is a lively and utterly fascinating exploration of the ways in which technologies have influenced our collective conception of the American city, as well as our relationship with urban space and architecture. Eric Gordon argues that the city, developing late and in conjunction with a range of modern media, produced a particular way of seeing — what he labels “possessive spectatorship.”

Lacking the historical rootedness of European cities, the American city was open to individual interpretation, definition, and ownership. Beginning with the White City of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the efforts to commodify the concept city through photography, Gordon shows how the American city has always been a product of the collision between the dominant conceptualization, shaped by contemporary media, and the spectator. From the viewfinder of the Kodak camera, to the public display of early cinema, to the speculative desire of network radio, all the way to machine-age utopianism, nostalgia, and America’s “rerun” culture, the city is an amalgam of practice and concept. All of this comes to a head in the “database city” where urban spectatorship takes on the characteristics of a Google search. In new urban developments, the spectator searches, retrieves, and combines urban references to construct each experience of the city.

“This imaginative revisionist history of American urbanism starts from early traces of a city-dweller’s ‘possessive spectatorship,’ made possible by the hand-held camera, to the ‘digital possessive’ of our information age. Gordon’s quicksilver account moves easily though multi-city examples of architecture, film, advertising, world fairs, radio, and urban planning, eventually arriving at the Database City — a city with no content but which grants access to content. This may sound uninviting, but you can trust Gordon to take theorists and practitioners where they need to go.” — Michael Dear, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley.

Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda — Experience how new media technologies direct, divert, distract and manipulate your gaze on the world :: March 11, 2010; 8:00 -11:00 pm :: V_2, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam + and streamed live.

Featuring: Maurice Benayoun (FR) | Marc Lee (CH) | Damian Stewart (NZ/AT) | Opening: Alessandro Ludovico (IT) | Screening: uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki | www.subvertr.com | streetwithaview.com.

The increased accessibility and affordability of contemporary media technologies has greatly expanded possibilities for the dissemination of independent and grassroots information. At the same time, these developments have also greatly increased the opportunities for (mis)use of media technologies as powerful and effective tools for political and commercial propaganda. Although many theorists, artists, and activists have addressed the latter perspective on contemporary media technologies, critical debates have rarely relied on concrete demonstrations to prove their point. This edition of Test_Lab will therefore investigate the face of propaganda in the digital age by means of live artistic demonstrations, and will allow the audience to test hands-on how new media technologies can be applied as effective tools for propaganda.

How does Google determine which website shows up first and which one on page 2.480.133 of a search? Does a photograph only represent its own reality? How does social tagging affect the meaning of an online image? Why is spam persuasive and profitable? Is Uncyclopedia perhaps the true Wikipedia? What would the world look like if all advertisements were covered with artworks? And can Google’s Street View be a stage for artistic intervention?

Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda allows you to experience and test for yourself how new media technologies can be (mis)used to direct, divert, distract and manipulate your gaze on the world.

Subvertr.com and streetwithaview.com are screened with kind permission of the artists, Les Liens Invisibles, and Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, respectively.

Upgrade! Boston: Joseph DeLappe + Pete Froslie :: March 11, 2010; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute for Technology N51-390, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA (Entrance to the right of the MIT Museum).

Joseph DeLappe is an Associate Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad - including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Peru, China and the Netherlands. He was a 2008 Commissioned Resident Artist at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York City. In his 2006 dead-in-iraq project, he began typing, consecutively, all of the names of America’s military casualties from the war in Iraq into the “America’s Army” first person shooter online recruiting game. More here.

Pete Froslie received his MFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art in 2008. He moved to Boston in 2005 from Reno, Nevada, where he earned his BFA in Digital Media. He returns to Reno periodically to teach courses at the University of Nevada, Reno, and to remain an active part of the community. In 2008 he was recognized as one of the top five graduating visual artists by the Boston Globe. His work has been discussed and highlighted online and in print, including MAKE, Gizmodo, the Boston Globe, RN&R, and the Reno Gazette. Froslie explores diverse tangents ranging from alternative historical fiction and documentary, to electro-mechanical sculpture and prostheses. More here.

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org. Founded in Januray 2005, is one of 32 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo at turbulence dot org.

Cinema is dead; long live cinema (Peter Greenaway). How has the explosion of new media changed the ways we think about cinema, about questions of film aesthetics and film history? How can cinema studies contribute to the theory, analysis, and creative practice of new media? This two-day symposium seeks to stimulate a crossdisciplinary conversation on moving image culture that avoids both cinephile nostalgia and uncritical celebrations of media convergence.

The Material and the Code is a two-day symposium at the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center. It features a screening on February 26, and a full day of presentations on February 27.

The Material and the Code is dedicated to the memory of Anne Friedberg (1952-2009).

The DOCAM (Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage) Research Alliance presents the 2010 DOCAM Summit (March 3-5), which will mark the end of five years of research. DOCAM is an international research alliance initiated by the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. Its main objective is to develop new methodologies and tools to address the issues of preserving and documenting digital, technological, and electronic works of art.

The interdisciplinary event aims to bring together artists, researchers, students and museum practitioners (conservators, curators, technicians, etc.) in order to expose and explore the issues raised by current research. At this occasion, DOCAM will launch its new website, featuring the following main research results:

• A Cataloguing Guide for New Media Collections;
• A Preservation Guide for Technology-Based Artworks;
• The DOCAM Glossaurus;
• The DOCAM Documentary Model;
• A Technological Timeline.

- March 3: Professional workshops regarding Conservation/Preservation and Cataloguing (space is limited / registration required)
- March 4 & 5: International conference open to the public (Agora Hydro-Québec, Coeur des sciences, 175 avenue du Président-Kennedy)
- March 4 (evening event): Public Launch of the new DOCAM website (Chaufferie, Coeur des sciences, 175 avenue du Président-Kennedy)

Supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as part of its Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) program, DOCAM includes several partners such as the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, as well as university departments such as that of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Université de Montréal and McGill. DOCAM would also like to thank Hexagram UQAM, main collaborator of this event.

The Summit is free admission. However we invite you to register by adding your email address to the DOCAM mailing list.

For questions, please email: info [at] docam.ca

The 2010 Comparative Literature Symposium: Longing in the Age of New Media :: February 19, 2010; 10:00 am - 4:00 pm :: University of Southern California, Social Sciences Building, B40, Los Angeles, CA.

In the current age of new media, various fields of study are experiencing a literal vanishing of the very materials that have traditionally defined them. With this disappearance of the physical material, how has our perception and interaction with the new medium altered? Does the end of the age of mechanical reproduction lead to a resurgence of the aura in older media? Is this the result of nostalgia for the tactile or other sensory experiences that no longer act together in the same way? How does the designation of spectral / material change across different media?

Join us for the 2010 Comparative Literature Symposium, a dynamic discussion of these and other questions related to the theme of longing in the age of new media. In the morning keynote speaker Timothy Murray, Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Cornell University and author of Digital Baroque: New Media and Art and Cinematic Folds, will lead a roundtable discussion of papers by graduate students Fiorella Cotrina, (Wo(man) Writing Self and Corporeal Other in Clarice Lispector’s A hora da estrela), Phillip Lobo (Play It Again: Variance and Repetition in Interactive Media), Zach Blas (Queer Technologies? Topology and Viral Aesthetics) and Feng-Mei Heberer (Bodies in digital context). These papers can be accessed on the USC Comparative Literature website. In the afternoon Professor Murray will give a lecture related to the themes of the symposium, followed by a question and answer session. Lunch will be provided.

Please spread the word to students, faculty, and colleagues. We look forward to seeing you at the symposium.

Arrested Time by Nathaniel Stern with Jessica Meuninck-Ganger — An exhibition of works combining contemporary technologies with traditional drawing and printmaking methods curated by Jo-Anne Green :: February 26 - April 3, 2010 :: Opening Reception: February 26; 5:30 - 8:30 pm :: Greylock Arts, 93 Summer Street, Adams MA.

Nathaniel Stern’s Given Time simultaneously activates and performs two permanently logged-in Second Life avatars, each forever and only seen by and through the other. They hover in mid-air, almost completely still, gazing into one another’s interface. Viewers encounter this networked partnership as a diptych of large-scale (8 feet tall) and facing video projections in a real world gallery, both exhibiting a live view of one avatar, as perceived by the other. To create a visceral aesthetic, these custom-designed and life-sized “bodies” are hand-drawn in subtly animated graphite and charcoal. The audience is invited to physically walk between them; they’re able to hear and see them breathing, witness their hair blowing in the wind, pick up faint sounds such as rushing water or birds crying out from the surrounding simulated environment. Here, an intimate exchange between dual, virtual bodies is transformed into a public meditation on human relationships, bodily mortality, and time’s inevitable flow.

In Distill Life, Stern and Meuninck-Ganger approach both old and new media as form. They permanently mount translucent prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking - including woodblock, silk screen, etching, lithography, photogravure etc - with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images as multidimensional. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic and disparate methods, materials and content - print and video, paper and electronics, real and virtual - enables novel approaches to understanding each. The artists work with subject matter ranging from historical portraiture to current events, from artificial landscapes to socially awkward moments.

With Arrested Time, Green curates an exhibition of Stern’s solo and collaborative work that explores the juxtaposition of old and new media, and illuminates the possibilities and limitations of both. The works hover between stasis and motion, texture and light, line and pixel, past and present, paper and screen, surface and depth, one artist and another.

http://nathanielstern.com
http://jessicameuninck.com

On Gaps and Silent Documents :: February 9-14, 2010 :: STUK arts centre, Naamsestraat 96, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.

In On Gaps and Silent Documents international artists question the absence of documents and data in archives, data banks and memory. What is missing? Has it never been there or has it been removed? Does available information exist that is not looked at, read or used? Archives and data banks are primarily determined by these gaps and silent documents. As Sven Spieker notes, ‘Archives are less concerned with memory than with the necessity to discard, erase, eliminate.’ Creating archives is continual selection. As such, it reveals the priorities and blind spots of the keeper of the archives, his world and his time.

Since the beginning of time, ‘forgetting’ was always the norm. ‘Remembering’ was the exception. In this age of continuously transforming technology and worldwide networks, this balance seems to be shifting. Is it true that in our time, with its excessive storage capacity, everything is obsessively being saved? More and more, we face the question of whether we have the right to create our own gaps, to silence documents and erase our own traces. Privacy, intellectual property and censorship in our digital networked society require different and complex solutions.

On Gaps and Silent Documents uses ‘new’ and ‘old’ media and technologies, such as the Internet, websites, Google, newspapers, texts, books, film and video, photography, music scores, sound, telephones, Twitter, online newsgroups, printers, microfilm, light, computers, etc., to approach this theme from different (sometimes paradoxical) perspectives and question it in spatial installations, presentations and performances.

Artefact is initiated by provincie Vlaams-Brabant and STUK arts centre.

Special thanks to the participating artists, Wolfgang Ernst, Sven Spieker, Charles Merewether, Viktor Mayer-Sch?nberger and Rony Vissers for their inspiring texts and ideas.

Center for Contemporary & Digital Performance Research Seminar Series presents Surfing Disciplines: From Antonin Artaud to neuroplastic arts? by Gordana Novakovic :: February 10, 2010; 2:00 pm (GMT) :: Drama Studio Gaskell Bld. 048, School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge/West London, Cleveland Road + webcast at dance tech net TV.

The digital revolution is changing the nature of our perceptual processes, and this in turn is changing our conscious experience of the physical world, inducing changes in cognition on a scale that is still unknown. As inhabitants of the modern city we are in constant interaction, both active and passive, with digital technology. These facts concern all of us in different ways, but from my own perspective I want to ask: how does all this affect the artist? By looking at the evolution of ideas and research elements in my artistic practice, that now almost reads as a brief history of practices under the broad, quite unfortunate title of ‘New Media’ (mixed media, multimedia, computer art, computer animation, net.art, interactive art etc) I will talk about my quest to understanding the phenomena arising from the interaction with digital technologies. I will also tackle the theatrical and ritualistic elements of interactive art against the background of Artaud’s concept for the Theatre of Cruelty.

Gordana Novakovic belongs to the generation of artists who pioneered electronic art. Originally a painter, with 12 solo exhibitions to her credit, she now has more than 20 years of experience of developing and exhibiting large-scale time-based media projects. A constant characteristic of her work with new technologies has been her distinctive method of creating an effective cross-disciplinary framework for the emergence of synergy through collaboration. She has presented her work at major international festivals and venues, including ISEA, Ars Electronica, ICC (Inter Communication Center - Tokyo), and Tate Modern. Her most recent conference appearances were at Subtle Technologies ‘09, and as a keynote speaker at EVA London 2009. Her latest piece, Fugue, has been widely presented and exhibited, most recently at the ‘Infectious’ group show in the Science Gallery, Dublin, after which it was featured in the October issue of Nature Immunology. Since 2004, Gordana has been artist-in-residence at the Computer Science department, University College London, where in 2005 she founded the Tesla Art and Science Group with colleagues in the department. Tesla is an informal art and science discussion forum dealing with visionary ideas beyond the existing remits of art and science; it aims to form and nurture cross-disciplinary teams, projects, and networks. Gordana’s current work on neuroplastic art explores the possibilities lying at the intersection of art and brain science.

For further information on the Series, contact coordinator Gretchen Schiller or see our website.

The Center broadcast selected Performance Research Seminars live from our Drama Studio - making them available to anyone in the world interested in the subject. The one hour talks and 30 minute discussions are webcast live on dance tech net TV (then archived).

This co-production is part of a partnership between our Center and dance-techTV, and an experiment in collaborative live -streaming (the channel is dedicated to interdisciplinary explorations of the performance of movement. The channel allows worldwide 24/7 linear broadcasting of selected programs, LIVE streaming and Video On-demand.

Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity and Interactive Media :: February 8 - April 2, 2010 :: Reception: February 11; 6:00 - 9:00 pm :: The Arcade, Columbia College, 618 S Michigan Avenue, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL.

Whether through motion capture, live processing, animation or other means of data visualization, the body is the referent and inspiration for many digital media artists working with interactive technologies. Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media is an investigation into this confluence, gazing through multiple lenses to explore the body and identity as they are transformed and represented through technological evolution. As the body is digitally reflected and reborn, are we looking towards technology to experience ourselves in a redeemed form outside of human societal constructs? When technology captures kinetic energy, is our essence embodied in the pixilation, or is our “self” lost in the process?

Through dynamic works by Luftwerk, OpenEnded Group, and Troika Ranch, as well as the Synchronous Objects web kiosk created by William Forsythe, Maria Palazzi, and Norah Zuniga Shaw, we hope to bring forward exploratory ideas that push and pull our perceptions of the body and impulses to move beyond it into uncharted cyber territory. This exhibition is co-curated by Alycia Scott and Sara Slawnik.

Digital Incarnate is presented by Columbia College Chicago’s Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces, The Dance Center, the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media and the Interactive Arts and Media Department.

RELATED PROGRAMMING: Gallery Talks with Exhibition Artists :: The Arcade, 618 S. Michigan, 2nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60605 :: Free and open to the public.

•    OpenEnded Group, February 12, 12:15 pm
•    Synchronous Objects, March 2, 12:15 pm
•    Troika Ranch, March 4, 12:15 pm
•    Luftwerk, March 25, 12:15 pm

Panel Discussion: “Corporeality and the Digital Gaze” :: Monday, March 1, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. ::
Stage 2, 618 S Michigan Ave, 2nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60605 :: Free and open to the public

This panel discussion will investigate “the body” when explored through collaborative possibilities of performance and technology. It will feature a conversation among pioneering artists whose work engages the body and digital media, specifically interrogating the ever-increasing digitized gaze, the transcription of the body through data visualization, and the impact it has on the body’s cultural contexts. Panelists will include:

•    Grisha Coleman: composer, performer and choreographer; Assistant Professor in Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University.
•    Marianne Kim: artist and educator working in dance, theatre and video art; Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies Department.
•    Maria Palazzi: co-creative director of Synchronous Objects; Director of the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, and Associate Professor of Design at The Ohio State University.
•    Dawn Stoppiello: choreographer and dancer; Executive Director and Artistic Co-Director of Troika Ranch.
•    Moderated by Raquel Monroe: Assistant Professor at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
http://www.colum.edu/deps&lt
http://www.colum.edu/engage
http://www.colum.edu/institutewomengender

CONTACT:
Alycia Scott, Co-Curator, 312-369-8341, ascott [at] colum.edu
Sara Slawnik, Co-Curator, 312-369-8845, sslawnik [at] colum.edu

City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community :: June 11–13 & 19, 2010 :: Invitation to Submit Proposals — Deadline: March 1, 2010 [Application Form]

Recent exhibitions, festivals and conferences across the US and in Europe have taken wireless networks, public space, locative media and urban environments as sites of intervention, creativity, and critique. Formulated within the emerging context of networked urbanism and mobile media, City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community will focus upon dynamics of the shifting, locative, cartographic and social space of the city. It is organized by educational, arts, community-based and civic organizations and asks how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression.

From within San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, this festival will celebrate the rich possibilities that art and technology offer for urban communication of place and place-based media. City Centered focuses on the use of locative media and wireless technologies for site-specific and neighborhood-based interventions. Artists, designers, architects, community and cultural workers — people, places, and devices — will meet for four days of street-side celebration, public exhibitions, a symposium, and workshops. The festival seeks new work aligned with the themes of creative mapping, urban storytelling, sentient space, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming.

The festival’s main goals are:

• to promote creative public use of free wi fi and open networks in the city of San Francisco
• to encourage meaningful collaboration between artists and local organizations in connection with wireless networks
• to introduce site-specific locative media art to urban places

Logistics and creative goals

Proposals are invited around projects involving creative mapping, urban storytelling, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming. We seek projects of the greatest interest and highest quality. That said, proposals should be created for or be highly relevant to urban communities such as those found in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Neighborhood, mapping or community-based projects adaptable to the district are desirable. All proposed projects should address the theme of ‘urban community’ and utilize wireless technologies in some relation to ‘location’ and ‘place.’ Imaginative responses to the district and critical interpretations of place are strongly desired. Proposals which include or seek to include collaboration with Tenderloin/Civic Center organizations will receive greater consideration than projects which do not.

Projects using locative media to explore unique histories in the Tenderloin and/or address the festival’s aims of fostering creative civic engagement are also sought. Members of local community-based organizations will review all submissions and identify proposals that they wish to support.

In addition, creative work is encouraged to engage with the following questions:

• What does neighborhood mean?
• How might urban communities speak effectively about their cities through use of wireless networks?
• Where do wireless creative practices intersect with and/or enhance citizen roles in civic engagement?

Themes

Creative mapping

Location based media has so far involved much discussion of the role of maps, both their local and geopolitical importance, their history within political structures and the potentials of self-made or self-informed maps in terms of the production of and shaping of urban space. GPS and other applications enable the making of highly personal and information laden online spaces. What is cartography? What is mapped identity? How can groups and populations better see themselves, their history and their futures in the realm of maps?

Urban storytelling

Stories of the distant past or recent memory help hold groups together. Community groups and cultural critiques often address whose stories are told, and how. In San Francisco, the mural is a traditional form of commemorative media, making communities’ histories and concerns visible on the walls of their buildings. What remains invisible? Can wireless technologies enable understandings of the past — both accepted and controversial?

Sentient space

Surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and electronic forms of payment have moved substantially into public space. Computational means of tracking and responding to human actions increasingly pervade the urban infrastructure. San Francisco has recently deployed a test run of networked, sensor-based parking meters. Other cities have introduced wireless, networked monitoring of water systems, electrical grids and so forth. Is this the emergence of new ’sentient cities’ or an extension of automated modernity started a century ago? How might we imagine and make debatable the ways in which networked information processing animates, invades, enables or undermines urban places?

Body awareness

Often seen as places of strangers and strangeness, modern cities are places where, unlike villages, one can find both welcome anonymity and undesirable alienation. Ambivalence about relations between self and others experience has been a feature of urban life since the 19th century: we want to fade into the crowd, but also feel connected. What kinds of awareness of other humans — or non-humans such as animals, plants and trees — remind us of liminal and subliminal arenas of urban growth and transformation?  How do embodied experiences — of crowds and solitude, of comfort and anxiety — relate to awareness of self and others?

Local history

Locative media can be used to express specific attributes of place through local history, connecting us to and with histories of architecture, urban space, the changing city and the combinations of news, folklore, and data flows which allow us to interpret and understand where we live. How can local history be mapped? Is it collaborative or authorial? What kinds of stories constitute the history of a place? What kinds of data are place-based?

Contested spaces

Art projects are never neutral. Even in evading explicit discussion of politics or controversies they take a stand with respect to a community of makers and audience of participants, listeners, or seers. In particular, projects of civic engagement rely upon (often unstated) aspirations about urban life. This is so especially when situated within specific communities and drawing upon their hopes, desires and dreams. We invite projects framed as interventions in contested spaces; that work with intervention as an art practice and that introduce new forms or contestation or expand upon the already established path of community-based art in San Francisco.

Gaming

Gaming takes on many unusual forms in today’s media-saturated culture. Moreover, young people constitute one of the most prolific and literate groups of wireless users—and many enjoy gaming. Implementing simple urban games can sometimes tell participants much about themselves and their awareness of and connection to fictional and emotional aspects of place. What kinds of narratives are appropriate in challenging neighborhoods? How can games be used to deal with social ills or help inhabitants navigate through periods of urban change?

Technical forms

Locative media involves an emerging cluster of technologies that include mobile phones, Global positioning satellite systems (GPS), geospatial databases and wireless networks. These technologies enable inter-connectivity between locations, determine locations and mapping and enable participation in storytelling and games. They have become increasingly ubiquitous in our daily lives and public spaces, and are radically changing how people work and live. In addition, these technologies raise complex questions about public/private rights, laws and responsibilities. The festival encourages submissions in four areas of creative technical practice:

Data visualizations

What data is relevant to Tenderloin inhabitants? How can visualization expose previously unrecognized patterns of exchange and which change the experience of familiar locations?

Mapping and cartography

Maps produce and represent information about the meaning of place. Locative practices often engage the location-aware/context aware aspects of tools/networks, pinpointing and demarcating places according to creative interpretation.

Participatory media

How can projects weave diverse groups and foster conditions for increased civic engagement, learning, and questioning? What barriers to civic engagement and participation are there and how might they be overcome?

Location tracking

Tracking the movement of people and objects can also record and augment experiences often unrecognized or culturally invisible. What kinds of movements of people and goods combine to form the economies and exchanges of a neighborhood? What kinds of human movement alters the way we might think or conceive of a place and its changing milieus?

Games and playful interventions Introducing ideas of competition, speed, and fantasy into city streets may help engage local inhabitants, young people, kids and onlookers in experiences they see as new, surprising or special.

Project criteria

Proposed art must have some place-based and/or locative aspect such as utilizing GPS or GPS and the web; utilizing cellphones or other mobile media and address site specifics or place-making. Projects which address sites or cultures of the Tenderloin and/or collaborate with Tenderloin based constituents, populations or organizations are encouraged. The festival seeks project proposals which specifically contend with and/or engage with the multiple languages, communities, and interests of the Tenderloin, and which utilize the variety of public urban sites available in some meaningful and site specific form. Playgrounds, schools, public lobbies, gallery space, community centers, sidewalk areas, the street, parking lots, rooftops, and open plazas all provide excellent inspiration for wireless public projects and locative media works.

Other criteria and creative/artistic priorities:

Projects must be designed for or adapted to locations in or in close proximity to the Tenderloin. Existing projects that can be adapted to the Tenderloin are welcomed. Priority will be given to submissions by those who have community art experience or have worked with populations in urban neighborhoods.

About the Tenderloin and Civic Center

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district is a densely populated, rapidly changing, loosely defined district with apartment buildings, single- room occupancy hotels, nightclubs, bars, galleries and restaurants. Located near San Francisco’s cable car tourist attractions, downtown convention center hotel district and Union Square, it is a flourishing, multilingual and multiethnic neighborhood home to many artists and galleries. Yet the Tenderloin is also notorious as a concentrated site of misery, known for violent crime, prostitution, drug addiction, and homelessness. Recently, the city has devoted considerable attention and resources to redevelopment in the Tenderloin, making engagement with locally led organizations a priority. There are numerous multilingual, multicultural organizations with substantial art programs –Glide Memorial Church, Hospitality House, the YMCA and The Boys and Girls Club. It is also site of the Main Library, the center of San Francisco’s public library system. The festival’s close proximity to San Francisco’s administrative buildings and historic Market Street make it an especially intriguing arena for urban artmaking and location based creative practice.

Free wi fi exists in the library system and wireless is found throughout the Tenderloin. More specific technical questions can be addressed once proposals are selected.

The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts at 55 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin and will operate as base for the festival and will assist artists to work with the neighborhood in the installation of their projects. In addition Gray Area has a window installation venue Tendorama to which proposals can be specifically made, and will offer information about organizations with which to partner. The Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (http://www.gaffta.org/) is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture. Guided by the principles of openness, collaboration, and resource sharing, our programs promote creativity at the intersection of art, design, sound, and technology. Its goal is to make digital culture accessible, substantive and inspiring from the physical neighborhood of the Tenderloin to extended digital communities. GAFFTA is committed to outreach both online and in the city.

Selection process

Proposals will be reviewed and selected by a panel of artists, curators, arts and community organizations.

Timeline
Proposals due: March 1, 2010
Participants notified: on or before April 1, 2010
June 11–12: Opening and art exhibition
June 13: Symposium
Community Workshops: June 19
Friday, June 11: Art opening and introduction to the symposium at GAFFTA
Saturday, June 12: All-day art festival of interactive, locative works in the Tenderloin sponsored by Gray Area.

Sunday, June 13: City-Centered Symposium at KQED, hosted by KQED and SFSU.

Saturday, June 20: Community education workshops at KQED in the Mission District

Please direct questions and other correspondence to citycentered [at] gaffta.org

Invitation to submit proposals : APPLICATION PDF
Submission deadline: March 1, 2010

Participating Organizations
KQED: http://www.kqed.org/
Gray Area Foundation for the Arts: http://www.gaffta.org/
Center for Locative Media: http://www.locative-media.org/
Conceptual Information Arts/Art Department/SFSU: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/
The Berkeley Center for New Media: http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/

[Image: Handheld Histories as Hyper-Monuments by Carmin Karasic, Rolf van Gelder and Rob Coshow] The Next Wave of AR: Exploring Social Augmented Experiences with Tish Shute, whurley, Jeremy Hight, Joe Lamantia, Thomas Wrobel :: April 1, 2010; 3:15 pm :: Where 2.0 Conference, San Jose, California.

This panel will discuss shared augmented realities, considering some of the essential possibilities and challenges inherent in this new class of social augmented experiences. The format is presentation of a small set of scenarios (defined in advance, with audience input) describing likely future forms of shared augmented realities at differing scales of social engagement for discussion by a panel of leading practitioners in technology, experience design, networked urbanism, interface design, game design, and augmented reality.

Current augmented reality experiences put who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and what is around you at center stage. But we can already look beyond the first stage of interactions assuming a single user seeing simple arrows and tags indicating POIs, and begin to explore shared (multiuser/multisource) augmented realities.

These social augmented experiences will allow not only mashups, & multisource data flows, but dynamic overlays (not limited to 3d), created by distributed groups of users, linked to location/place/time, and syndicated to people who wish to engage with the experience by viewing and co-creating elements for their own goals and benefit.

Some examples of scenarios could include:

- historical and environmental overlays showing how a city used to be/and how this vision may be constructed differently by different communities

- proposed buildings in communities showing future changes to a structure/neighborhood, and the negotiations of this future

- sensors, both mobile and static can contribute environmental data into city overlays making this kind of data “not back story but fore story,” right where we are, right where it happens, as well as having it available for analysis.

- skinning the world with interactive fantasies

- real time augmentation building

- geo-spatial real time news dissemination from points in a city with time demarcation for information and emergency services

Having invisible aspects of the world made visible will create ways to improve sustainability, social equity, urban management, energy efficiency, public health, and allow communities to understand and become active participants in the ecosystems and infrastructure of their neighborhoods.

A distributed, open framework for AR can enable these layers, datasets, and open interchanges via shared augmented realities to create an interconnected experience of AR that fuses augmentation, data overlays, and varied media with immediate geo-spatial access and, perhaps most importantly, social & collaborative capabilities. Looking ahead, an open framework would allow end users to extend the reach and increase the value of augmented social channels over time.

The challenge of shared augmented realities is not just a matter of shipping bits around, but also of how it we will understand and use these new channels and layers to create and negotiate different perspectives, understand a shared core, or express dissent, in order to build eventual consensus.

There are endless possibilities for distributed, open AR, and the connection of place into an active field of information with end user control…and open options for new layers will have impact across all social scales, from direct conversations, to small-scale collaboration (a product design & build team or a neighborhood fixing potholes), to global a community mobilizing for a cause.

While shared augmented realities in immersive 3D may still be a ways off, new webs of protocol for real time communication like Wave are demonstrating that we can use existing infrastructure and protocols for distributed augmented realities that can allow people to collaborate together on the same world overlay in real time – creating dynamic overlays, animated by time, conditions (see AR Wave ).

The integration of augmented reality with sensor networks, the internet, and the world wide web will create a new opportunities to for us to engage collectively with the complex and often invisible ecosystems that make up our world.

eg.

- interacting/responding/enhancing environmental data - new connections/understandings between humans that share our world – fish, plants, waterways - “reading” of places and their data otherwise unseen with shared data allowing greater analysis and awareness in real time and in data analysis

Perhaps one of the most interesting features in Wave is (and will be in AR Wave) the ability to playback overlay data from a previous time in context (for example, environmental data from a year ago) – see writing as real time performance

We will set up a participatory web site to accompany the panel called, “What would you add to the world?” Conference attendees will be asked to augment some real world photos and other media. People would have to send ideas as png images? with transparent backgrounds and the ?website will be set up so everyone’s layer-submissions can be toggled on/off. ? We will also set up “How would you edit layers?” for people to participate collaboratively live in Google Wave.

Panel Members:

Jeremy Hight – modulated mapping – locative narratives-channels of augmentation-end user adjustable interface controls-communal AR development and social networking tools fused to AR and geo spatial augmentation- AI as interface and geo spatial news, user channels and back end AI

Joe Lamantia – UX: the experience of creating and interacting with social augmented experiences – concepts and models for understanding and contributing to shared augmented experiences, such as the social scales for interaction

Tish Shute – AR and networked urbanism, connecting people to environments through games and social interaction, making the invisible visible – AR and new public infrastrucures, AR & ubicomp – citi-sensing and citizen sensing

Thomas Wrobel – creating distributed multiuser AR using current infrastructures and protocols (Wave enabled AR)

Upgrade International 2010: Soft Borders :: October 18-21, 2010 :: Sao Paulo, Brazil :: Call for Participation — Deadline: April 30, 2010.

We invite proposals of papers, posters and workshops for Soft Borders - the 4th Upgrade! International Conference & Festival on New Media Art, that will take place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, from Oct 18th to 21st.

All the information about submitting proposals and the event can be also found online at the conference official website.

A brief summary only is required for the selection process. This should be submitted electronically via the online submission system, by 30/April/2010. You will be asked to create an account with the system before uploading your summary.

We require a summary proposal of 500 words maximum. The title, authors’ name, affiliation and contact details including email address must be provided as well. You don’t need to upload the full paper now. The selected works must upload the full paper file after the notification of acceptance.

In case of problems, please email program-chair [at] softborders.art.br.

Subject coverage

Soft Borders embraces a wide variety of topics, cross-disciplinary approaches and presentations of cutting edge technologies. Within the overall theme of soft borders, the subject areas may include but are not limited to the concepts and practice of:

• Authorship
• Body / Machine
• Reality / Thought
• Collaborative Actions
• Displacements: global & local transactions
• Nomadic spaces
• Ways of interaction and Interfaces
• Digital Narratives
• Art & Code
• Visualising ideas and concepts
• Digital performance
• Immersive environments
• Web 2.0 technologies in art and culture
• Sound, music, film and animation
• Technologies of digitisation, 2D and 3D imaging
• Virtual and augmented worlds
• Case studies may be accepted, provided that they include discussions of wider principles or applications using the case study as an example.

Publication

Papers / posters / workshops are peer refereed and may be edited. Publication is in hard copy as conference preprints and also online. Full papers are up 2.000 words in length and may include images. Publication is not essential: if you do not wish to submit a paper for publication we can publish an abstract.

Acceptance and deadlines

• The deadline for submitting abstract is 30 April 2010.
• We aim to send notifications of acceptance of proposals by 19 July 2010.
• The deadline for uploading full papers of the accepted proposals will be 19 August 2010.

Registration

There is no registration fee for the accepted speakers. However, each presenter must cover his/her costs for participating of the conference.

Sponsorship and demonstrations

There are also attractive opportunities for organisations to support an aspect of the conference such as the publication or a reception or coffee breaks, or conference materials.

Please contact sponsorship [at] softborders.art.br if you are interested in sponsor the event in some way.

Authoring Software and Platforms for Electronic Literature and New Media hosted by Judy Malloy:

A resource for teachers and students of new media writing, who are exploring what authoring tools to use, for new media writers and poets, who are interested in how their colleagues approach their work, and for readers, who want to understand how new media writers and poets create their work, Authoring Software is an ongoing collection of statements about authoring tools and software. It also looks at the relationship between interface and content in new media writing and at how the innovative use of authoring tools and the creation of new authoring tools have expanded digital writing/hypertext writing/net narrative practice in this vibrant contemporary creative writing field.

Begun in conjunction with the 2008 Electronic Literature Conference, this resource continues to solicit documentation from new media poets and writers and in February 2009 is a part of Computers and Writing 2009 Online Sessions.

Includes Mark Amerika, Stefan Muller Arisona, M. D. Coverley, Chris Joseph, Rob Kendall, Antoinette LaFarge, Deena Larson, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, Kate Pullinger, Jim Rosenberg, Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Sue Thomas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Joel Weishaus, and Nanette Wylde among many others.

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.

Neural Issue #34: Fake’ology, winter 2009 (ISSN: 2037-108X): Subscribe now supporting us directly, or buy the magazine from the closest of the more than 200 stores (Neural is from now on distributed by Central Books in Europe and Asia, by Ubiquity in USA and by Selectair in Australia and New Zealand). A back issues pack is also available.

interviews: .Yes Men .Janez Jansa .Lieutenant Murnau .Les Liens Invisibles :: articles: .False Files .Too Good to Be True .The Onion News Network :: reports: .Abandon Normal Devices .Energija :: news: Tardigotchi, Pa++ern, Amatagana, Sk8monkey, Tim Tate’s Reliquaries, Heavy Metal Moshpit, Pitch Control, scoreLight, STiMULiNE, SoleNoid beta, Pirate Kiosk, Netless, Can’t You See I’m busy, 21st Century Home, Embroidered Text Messages.

books/dvds: Lund/Audio.Visual, Minilogue/Animals The Movie, Mulder, Brouwer/Dick Raaymakers, Rainer, Rolling, Daniels, Ammer/See This Sound, Gilfillan/Pieces of Sound, Doctorow/©ontent, Castells/Communication Power, Sollfrank/Expanded Original, Turkle/Simulation and Its Discontents, Wasik/And Then There’s This, Shanken/Art and Electronic Media, Hauser/SK-INTERFACES, Leopoldserer, Schopf, Stocker/The Network for Art Technology and Society, Arns, Ruyter, HKMV/Awake Are Only The Spirits, Harrison/Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector. .

cd reviews: An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, Autistici, Stephan Moore, Daphne Oram, Anne Laplantine, Tom Hamilton, Herbert Friedl, Gregg Kowalsky, Marcus Maeder, Denis Tricot, Eric Cordier, Mudboy, Gintas K, Audrey Chen + Robert Van Heumen, Robert Hampson, Jorge Haro, Yutaka Makino, EVOL, Gesellschaft Zur Emanzipation Des Sample, Noise Vs. Subversive Computing, Feeding the Transmitter.

Blast Theory Intern and Residency Programmes :: Call for Applications — Deadline: January 31, 2010.

20 Wellington Road Residency Programme 2010 – 2011. Expressions of interest are invited from individuals working in the following fields: Pervasive & location based gaming & interactive media; Mobile & portable devices in cultural & artistic practice; Games design and theory; Interdisciplinary and live art .

Residency applications are welcome from UK and international practitioners and should be for a minimum period of 3 weeks to maximum of 3 months. The Residency Programme is a new model of residency initiated and run by artists. It aims to provide a space for residents to research and develop new work in a supportive and collaborative environment. It provides an opportunity for Blast Theory artists and residents to work alongside each other exchanging information, experience, knowledge and working methodologies in an open and dynamic dialogue.

INTERN PROGRAMME for 2010. The placements are for a minimum of one month and a maximum of three months.

Blast Theory usually work with interns on specific projects in development and give clear areas of responsibility and focus. Like everyone else Blast Theory expect all interns to get their hands dirty and do all the boring day to day work from time to time. Interns become a part of the team in Blast Theory and we like working with people who are good at both working in a team and working independently, people who work hard and who have a keen eye for detail.

A small daily stipend is paid to interns to cover travel and other expenses.

Upgrade! Zagreb: Maja Petri? Pajama Party :: December 22, 2009; 7:00 - 10:00 pm :: Nano Gallery, Gajeva 26, Zagreb, Croatia.

Maja Petri? is an artist and predoctoral associate at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS). She holds a Masters degree in new media art from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program and Masters degree in journalism from University of Zagreb, Croatian Studies.

Her work explores methods of manipulating spatial experience in function of art. Through transformative spatial experiences, she aims to create new opportunities for accessing the sublime – transcendent qualities, whether physical, emotional, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. By means of experimentation with both technology and traditional materials, she creates spatial installations for facilitating new interpretations and incarnations of the sublime.

Her approach to invention and exploration of new forms in digital and experimental art combines principles of architecture, lighting design, audiovisual systems, multisensory devices, electrical, mechanical and software engineering.

Plazaplus Festival: Explorations in Media Art and Live Performance :: January 14-16, 2010; 6:30 pm :: Plaza Futura, Leenderweg 65, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Live cinema, music, audiovisual performance, screenings, installations, artist talks, dance performances, lectures and more. Plazaplus is an international art festival that focuses on emerging and established artists, musicians and filmmakers. Presenting new collaborations, special projects and performances of all kinds, Plazaplus is an event that you will have to experience live!

Haushka’s unique “Ghost Piano show”, is a commisioned project by Plazaplus in collaboration with Jeff Desom. This years Artist in Focus is Sophie Clements, who will show her mesmerising awarded piece ‘Evensong’, and will also perform with her band. Quayala presents STRATA 2, a cinematic and surreal installation work. Natures is an audiovisual performance by Quayola with Mira Calix and Oliver Coates. Recoil performs an interactive dance piece with motion-detection technology and stunning organic movements. Other curiosities such as Francien van Everdingen, Ilan Katin, Raquel Meyers& Goto80 and Culture TV are not to be missed either. Hans Beekmans will be sharing his thoughts about the history of Live Cinema, and a special screening-programme. The best of Optofonica’s live cinema is to be experienced every day in a one hour screening. Last but not least, there will be live music in the cafe every night, and the Sjansmachine will be able to let you make new friends for life, if you’re up for some serious fun!

This event is curated by Gieske Bienert & Wiepko Oosterhuis & guest-curator Olga Mink.

THURSDAY 14 JANUARI

19.30 - 20.30 Artist in focus: Sophie Clements (UK) talk
20.00 - 21.00 Optofonica | screening
20.45 - 21.30 Hauschka (D) & Jeff Desom (L) special show
21.30 - 23.00 Hans Beekmans | lecture
22.30 - 23.00 Recoil (DK) | media dance performance
23.00 - end Ilan Katin | AV performance

FRIDAY 15 JANUARI

19.30 - 21.15 Francien van Everdingen
20.00 - 20.45 Hauschka (D) & Jeff Desom (L)
21.00 - 22.00 Optofonica | screening
21.45 - 22.15 Recoil (DK) |
21.45 - 22.15 Raquel Meyers (ES) & Goto80 (S) |
22.30 - 23.15 Jeff Desom (L) | presentation
23.00 - einde Live muziek & dj |

SATURDAY 16 JANUARI

19.30 - 20.15 CultureTV | screening
19.30 - 20.30 Quayola (IT) |screening & talk
20.30 - 21.30 Sophie Clements & J. Peter Schwalm
21.45 - 22.20 Quayola (IT) | Mira Calix & Oliver Coates (UK)|
22.30 - 23.00 Recoil (DK) |
22.30 - 23.30 Optofonica | ‘best of’ live cinema
23.00 - einde Live music and dj

INSTALLATIONS: (doorlopend/ongoing)

Quayola (IT) | ‘Strata 2’ |
Sophie Clements (UK) | ‘Evensong’
Olga Mink, Rolf van Gelder en Carmin Karasic (NL) | ‘Sjansmachine’