Wednesday, November 24, 2010

media art and sustainable energy

Energetics and Informatics: the 7th ADA Symposium, Whanganui, December 10-12 2010

The 7th ADA Network Symposium examines the relationship between energy and information in media arts. We ask how sustainable is the technology that supports media art? What new forms of practice are developing at the intersection of energy conservation and production, technology, and art? And how can we balance a global arts practice with the ethical complexities of global air travel, and the social complexities of remote participation?

These issues will be explored through keynote presentations, discussions, artist presentations, workshops, a screening programme and two exhibitions.

The symposium features keynote presentations by internationally renowned sound and media arts theorist Douglas Kahn, and Australian artists Joyce Hinterding and David Haines, and a remote conversation with London-based media artist Graham Harwood, creator of the Coal Fired Computer.

http://symposium10.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

taxonomedia project

A Taxonomedia (Consuelo Rozo and Vanina Hofman) interview by Raquel Herrera posted at the new media fix website can be found here.

We, in Taxonomedia, regard documentation as a privileged tool to explain an important artistic production which hardly could be conserved through other kinds of strategies. On the one hand, because of the essentially economic questions we have previously mentioned. The conservation projects that suggest solutions such as emulators and migrations are beyond the scope of most museums and media spaces, and probably their efforts in that direction are not sustainable in the medium or long run. On the other hand, there are expressions within art based on technologies that don’t “allow for their conservation”, and if presented with this situation, the artist’s intention must be respected. Finally, also, through their documentation and subsequent availability, the work might be able to survive as a concept and be recreated in other works. Projects like Variable Media delve into the conservation of the integrity of the work regardless of its medium, clearly considering media art within the field of conceptual art, emphasizing a perspective which many would find inadmissible, but is interesting to us.
(...)

To be able to access this material as it was in this day represents a huge time investment, a specific budget, provided also that the artist wants to work on that again. In some cases this might mean counting on programmers and developers to generate platforms that allow the piece to work seamlessly in current environments. We have translated a paradigmatic case undertaken for the exhibition Seeing Double (Guggenheim Museum) about the work The Erl King by Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren. Examples like these are feasible if there’s an institution like a museum, a specialized archive or a project that might take charge. It is also possible, if the artist was willing to undertake it herself, as could be in the example you mentioned. She might add some ideas to the piece she didn’t include in the past and the technology she might have to use might also alter the particularities of the work. So we can imagine The Intruder might be different if manipulated, although we leave this aspect at the hands of the artist.

Reinterpretation and documentation are ways of contact with many of the previous works, but unfortunately the experience is hardly repeatable.


Saturday, November 13, 2010

Artists Re:Thinking Games

re-posted from neural.it:

Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana - 
Artists Re: Thinking Games


Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana, 
Artists Re: Thinking Games, FACT/Liverpool University Press, 
87 pages, 
2010, 
English, 
ISBN-13: 978-1846312472, 
artists_rethinking_games.jpg FACT/Liverpool University Press, 
87 pages
, 2010, 
English
, ISBN-13: 978-1846312472
Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, the two founders of Furtherfield (a collaborative artist-led community and organization dealing with art, technology and social change since 1996) are joined by artist and curator Corrado Morgana in editing this nice compendium of texts about game art. In the Furtherfield tradition the book is centered on artistic practice and is engaged with re-thinking games and their set of expected rules and stereotypes. So a few unedited interviews and texts by a valuable roster of contributors (Mary Flanagan, Mathias Fuchs, Anne-Marie Schleiner, Heather Corcoran, Daphne Dragona, Emma Westecott and David Surman) share quite a few remarkable concepts and topics: from "slow gaming" defined by Corcoran to the "interpassivity" formulated by Fuchs and the freedom of movement in game space discussed by Schleiner. Morgana, in the introduction, tries to frame many of these practices within Situationism and its strategies, including the preeminent and famous détournement. And strategies are undoubtedly essential for game art, so Morgana also points to the hacker approach as the other reference for artists who recombine games technically and conceptually. Published in conjunction with the exhibition "Space Invaders: Art and the Computer Game Environment" at FACT Liverpool (which travelled to the Netherlands Media Art Institute), this book talks about artists who construct non-normative games, and collects a representative selection of the significant game art scene.

Friday, November 12, 2010

ISEA2011 ISTANBUL Call for Papers, Artworks, Panels and Workshops



CALL FOR 90 MINUTE PANEL PROPOSALS FOR ISEA2011 ISTANBUL CONFERENCE

ISEA2011 ISTANBUL dates are September 14 to 21 and the event will coincide with the Istanbul Biennial.
Please note that multiple proposals are acceptable.

Proposals should be submitted by panel chairs or co-chairs who will organize the session including its call for submissions or invitations.


PROPOSALS SHOULD PROVIDE AND ADDRESS THE FOLLOWING:

* A catchy title - you really need to stand out in the sea of information

* Concept for the panel and areas of investigation in the form of an abstract no longer than 350 words

* Keywords (maximum 10)

* Questions the panel will raise

* Specific topic areas presenters could address

* What types of presentation formats will be considered

* If your panel will be invitational, indicate the possible panelists (this is an hypothetical list the reviewers would like to see a sampling of your potential panelists)

* If your panel will have a call for submissions, provide a timetable for the process

* Include Email and Phone Contacts for Chair &/or Co-Chair together with address and affiliation



Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) will provide the best panels proposal with an online platform for discussions (with ISSN: 10714391) leading up to the conference and moderated by the Chair &/or Co-Chair. Please state if you are interested in your proposal to be considered for a LEA Discussion (LEAD).


http://doc.gold.ac.uk/isea2011/ocs/index.php/isea2011/Istanbul

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

INCITE! Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics

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INCITE! Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics
Issue #2: Counter-Archive

Contributors: Simon Aeppli, Jo SiMayala Alcampo, Cory Arcangel, Dave Barber, Jessica Bardsley and Penny Lane, Nicola Bergstrom and Valdemar Lindekrantz, Michael Betancourt, Aleesa Cohene, Bruce Conner, Amelia Does, Walter Forsberg, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Noam Gonick, I LOVE PRESETS, Brett Kashmere, Bryan Konefsky, Evan Meaney, Jason Orman, Julie Perini, Jenny Perlin, Tasman Richardson, Michael Robinson, Ben Russell, Brittany Shoot, Ryan Tebo, Bart Testa, Cat Tyc, William C. Wees, and Philip Widmann.

Edition of 300.
Designed by Eliza Koch.
120 pages with DVD, $12 USD plus shipping.


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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
INCITE #3: New Ages
http://www.incite-online.net/callforsubmissions_issue3.html

Submission Deadline: December 15, 2010

RE:WIRE Call For Papers

Media Art History 2011 - Rewire
Fourth International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology
Liverpool, 28th September - 1st October 2011
Call For Papers now open - Deadline Monday, January 31st 2011


Host: FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool
In collaboration with academic partners: Liverpool John Moores University, CRUMB at the University of Sunderland, the Universities of the West of Scotland and Lancaster, and the Database of Virtual Art at the Dept. for Image Science.

http://www.mediaarthistory.org/

Following the success of Media Art History 05 Re:fresh in Banff, Media Art History 07 Re:place in Berlin and Media Art History 09 Re:live in Melbourne, Media Art History 11 Rewire will host three days of keynotes, panels and poster sessions.


Media Art History 2011 - Rewire will increase the voltage and ignite key debates within the internationally distributed network of histories, which takes account of the questions surrounding documentation and methodologies, materiality, and agency. Rewire aims to up the current to illuminate the British contribution to media art, and by looking at our industrial heritage and contribution to the history of computing technologies themselves, we will open the discussion to how these contributions are manifested internationally. Considering the International scope of the histories of media art, science and technology, Rewire is also listed as part of the "McLuhan in Europe" programme, and will take place concurrently with The Asia Triennial in Manchester and Abandon Normal Devices, the North West's festival of new cinema and digital culture which returns to Liverpool in September 2011.The reviewers especially welcome proposals for presentations that
resonate thematically with these events.

We are looking for original research on:
* The relations between art, science, technology and industry, both historically and now
* New paradigms and alternative discourses for media art and media art history, such as, for example, craft, design, social media, or cybernetics
* Local histories and practices of media art, including (but not limited to) Britain
* Colonial experiences and non-Western histories of media art, science and technology
* Media art history in relation to the biological, biomedical and ecological sciences
* Relations between the histories of media art and those of computing and new technologies
* Writing art history in a technologised and scientific culture, including the documentation of media art and how it is changed in a technologised and scientific culture
* How the field of science and technology studies (STS) can offer useful models for new paradigms for art history


General papers will be accepted. The conference will be delivered in a range of formats, from panel discussions to Pecha Kucha sessions and video poster presentations, as well as a small number of invited speakers. The programme will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed individual papers, panel presentations, and poster sessions, as well as a small number of invited speakers. Keynote Lectures, by internationally renowned, outstanding theoreticians and artists, will deliberate on the central themes of the conference and will include the Roy Stringer Memorial Lecture, held annually by FACT in memory of Roy Stringer, an early pioneer of digital media, champion of multimedia industries in the North West and Liverpool, and former Chair of the Board at FACT. The conference will also include dedicated forum sessions for participants to engage in more open-ended discussion and debate on relevant issues and questions.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short cv by Monday 31 January 2011, either in Text, RTF, Word
or PDF formats, and clearly identify three keywords for your paper via the Call for Papers.

Chaired by Professor Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT, the panels at Rewire will be led by co-chairs - Paul Brown (Sussex, Deakin), Dr. Sarah Cook (CRUMB), Colin Davies (LJMU), Dr. Charlie Gere (Lancaster), Prof.
Andy Miah (UWS), Prof. Ed Shanken (UvA) - on areas of their own expertise, and submissions will be juried by the co-chairs together with Rewire's International Advisory Committee of leading academics, artists and industry professionals.


International Advisory Committee:
Steven BALL, Tatiana BAZZICHELLI, Stuart COMER, Sean CUBITT, Dieter DANIELS, Sara DIAMOND, Vince DZIEKAN, Charles ESCHE, Sarah FISHER, Jean GAGNON, Graham HARWOOD, Erkki HUHTAMO, Nick LAMBERT, Debbi LANDER, Tapio MAKELA, Chris MEIGH-ANDREWS, Frieder NAKE, Taylor NUTTALL, Steve PARTRIDGE, Christiane PAUL, Ned ROSSITER, Paul SERMON, Jinsuk SUH, Brett STALBAUM, Julian STALLABRASS, Atau TANAKA, Andrea ZAPP

Saturday, November 6, 2010

exhibition: "Roboterträume" (robot dreams) @ kunsthaus graz

exhibition:
09.10.2010-20.02.2011, 10:00 - 18:00 Uhr
kunsthaus graz, austria

http://www.museum-joanneum.at/de/kunsthaus/ausstellungen_3/robotertraeume

catalogue available here
contributing authors:
Isaac Asimov, Wenzel Mracek, Jutta Weber, Lilian Pfaff, Joachim Schätz, Manuela Kraft und den Kuratoren Katrin Bucher Trantow, Peter Pakesch, Andres Pardey und Roland Wetzel

Kehrer Verlag
Deutsch/Englisch
160 Seiten
Preis: 36 €

Thursday, November 4, 2010

“Coding Patterns: The Algorithmic Mechanisms of John Whitney, Larry Cuba and Early Digital Animation”

Andrew Johnston (PhD candidate, U. of Chicago)
“Coding Patterns: The Algorithmic Mechanisms of John Whitney, Larry Cuba and Early Digital Animation”
Respondent: jonCates (SAIC)
Thursday, Nov. 4 @ 6:30pm
The School of the Art Institute, 112 S. Michigan Ave, Room 1307

This paper examines the development of digital filmmaking and animation technologies in the 1960s and 1970s through an analysis of John Whitney and Larry Cuba’s films. Whitney made some of the first digital animations while an artist in residence at IBM from 1966-1969 and later worked with a variety of programmers through the 1970s, including Larry Cuba on "Arabesque" (1975). Through an analysis of the materials employed in the construction of Whitney and Cuba’s films, my paper attempts to make an intervention into contemporary discourses that highlight the ephemeral nature of digital film or that neglect the importance of how specific platforms and programming languages affect both visual aesthetics and notions of digital technology. I show how these filmmakers were each deeply invested in working through a negotiation with digital technology that attempts to reveal both the mechanism’s expressive logic and its limitations while simultaneously exploring the nature of animation.

jonCates, Associate Professor of Film, Video, New Media & Animation at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will respond.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010