BLOWBACK

not yet it’s difficult has a unique presence in Australia’s contemporary performing arts culture as a research unit, a producer of industry development programs and a contemporary events maker.

Established in 1995, not yet it’s difficult is an ideas-based group of artists who collaborate on the production of public performance events and cross-media projects under the artistic direction of david pledger. not yet it’s difficult has produced original theatrical works through its Performance Series, public space projects, play productions, video-installation, new media, television, and, in association with other performance companies, workshop, forum, research and development programs. not yet it’s difficult’s philosophy is to make work cumulatively and collaboratively. Development practice links research and performance to presentation and analysis. not yet it’s difficult’s mission is to make critically engaged artworks of high artistic and discursive quality.
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Seamlessly Connecting Between Real + Virtual Worlds

CNN reports on a Human Pacman game, developed by Singapore based researchers, that can be played out in the streets or any real environment. The system was designed by the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore. It includes Bluetooth, GPS, head-mounted displays and inertia sensors. Pacman can pick up power pills (in the form of Bluetooth enabled boxes in the environment used in the game) in his attempt to avoid pursuers. Read more at the New Scientist. (via)

Human Pacman has several novel aspects: Firstly, the players immerse in role-playing of the characters, physically moving around in a wide-area setting and performing tasks to reach their goals. Utilizing the computing power of wearable computers and the underlying network support, Human Pacman players experience seamless connections between real and virtual worlds as immersive first-person augmented reality view and full virtual reality view of the fantasy version of the game, Pacworld.
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Perpetual Emotions

Documentation of the Sea.nce performances on board the ISEA2004 ferry is now available.

Séa.nce is a networked performance which is a ‘pataphysical’ experiment to investigate networked emotions. It is part of The Perpetual Emotions Project. [Related] Continue reading

Present and Future Selves

Digital Quilt [silent], by Daniel Peltz, explores possibilities of intimacy within a large group. This installation is made of 414 digitally composed, abstract “self-portraits” projected onto a floor dusted with white chalk. A small camera functions as a sensor, tracking changes in the projected image. When someone steps on the quilt, s/he becomes a part of the image; the camera detects this “change” in the image and sends the information to the program. This data triggers the program to begin a transition from one layer of the quilt to the next.

The portraits are those of students who were asked to create two “self-portraits”: one representing how they saw themselves in the present and the other how they saw themselves evolving in the future. Videos of the installation.

Digital Quilt is part of the Intimachine exhibition which presents artworks exploring intimacy, behavior and expectations through machine-mediated interactive experiences (among the work is Haptic Opposition that Max enjoyed so much at Transmediale). At Art Interactive, Cambridge, Mass. from Nov 20, 2004 through Jan 30, 2005.

Originally blogged by Regine at near near future.

Hello, Hello Again

Recently added to “Showcase”–November 26, 2004 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.–at the ULTRASOUND festival, Johannes Gees will present and discuss his past and current projects. Gees became known internationally when he presented his interactive text projection, hellomrpresident, during the World Economic Forum in Davos. The piece was also nominated for the Transmediale Award in 2001. It was followed in 2003 by Helloworld, four giant laser text projections connected by internet and mobile phones in Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and New York. Communimage–begun in 1999 in an attempt to entertain a visual global dialogue–is an ongoing collaborative art project in which thousands of people have contributed to a growing sea of images.

Gees’ work has been shown in galleries and international art shows in Mexico, Brazil, Austria and Switzerland. He lives is Zurich, Switzerland, and is currently working on “Work School Birth Death,” a series of text projections in different locations in Switzerland, and a new interactive laser project, “The Fuji San Project” in Japan.

VENUE: The Media Centre, 07 Northumberland St., Huddersfield, HD1 1RL, England; +44 [0]870 990 5007; info @ ultrasound.ws

Augmented Empathy

During the Tekke Torture Tournament performance (by Eddo Stern, Mark Allen), 32 willing participants received bracing but non-lethal electrical shocks in correspondence to the injuries sustained by their onscreen avatars. Players wore shocking arm straps wired through a hardware/software hack of the world?s most popular fighting Playstation game TEKKEN 3. LINKS: Official c-level Tekken Tourture Tournament Page; TTT release form

Edo Stern was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His working interests are in structures of narrative and documentary, fantasies of history and technology, cross-cultural representation, and the phenomenological and cultural expanse of computer games. He works discriminately with a wide variety of media?computer games, electronic devices, software, video, sculpture and performance. His work has been shown internationally at new media and film festivals, museums, galleries, and game conventions. In 2000 he started ?C-level,? a cooperative artist-run new media lab and art space in LA’s Chinatown; currently lives near Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/stern/biography/, Florian Zeyfang, Interview with Eddo Stern, Tages Anzeiger, February 2002 and web at http://www.c-level.cc and http://waco.c-level.cc (via)

Blazing a Trail in New York City

Downtown Digital Futures: New Technologies, Art, and the Urban Environment presents Blast Theory–Monday, November 22; 7 PM. Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, 3 Spruce Street, New York.

Blast Theory is one of the most adventurous artists’ groups working at the intersection of performance, media, and computer gaming. Lead by London-based artists Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, the six member-team uses video, computers, performance, installation, mobile and online technologies to confront a media saturated world in which popular culture rules. Blast Theory will discuss their recent work, an interactive performance/gaming event that fuses the worlds of on-line and off-line players.

In Summer- Fall, 2005, Blast Theory will participate in a two-month residency in New York City, in which they will create a new interactive multi-player game based in Lower Manhattan. The residency will culminate in a site-specific performance ? local participants team up with on-line players in an evolving game that blurs the lines between physical and virtual.

[Related (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)]

Downtown Digital Futures is curated by Wayne Ashley for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. See the web site for information about 2005 events.

The SMS Guerilla Projector is a high powered, home made projection device that can be used to project SMS messages on to buildings, signs or any other surface. Made by Troika, the London based collective of designers and artists, it consists of a mobile phone, camera lens and slide projector.

“Our Automated Quirky Naturalist”

Mobile SCOUT A Mobile Phone and Web Public Art Project by Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson and Marina Zurkow: are you in a concrete jungle or swamped by tourists? Who’s around you, what do you see? A deer, a dump or a daydream? Saintly acts or sinful facts? Mobile SCOUT is a public art project that collects audio narratives of your local surroundings, personal rituals and public sightings. Using your mobile phone, you leave a voice message of your observations with the Mobile SCOUT Ranger, our automated quirky naturalist.

Turn your observations into a brief message about the flora (landscapes), fauna (characters) or behaviors (events) that populate your surroundings. Call the Mobile SCOUT Ranger - 1 (877) 564-3060 - he will guide you through the experience. [via]
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Capacity for Charged Performances

Capacitor* is a group of interdisciplinary movement artists that accumulate energy from our technologically impacted culture and release it through innovative, multi-sensory performances. One of their pieces, Avatars (2002), takes the characters and themes of computer games and incorporates them into their performances. (Video clips are available of this performance).

From the movement of the human diaphragm to the story of evolution; from the behavior of electricity to genetic manipulation; from the birth of the moon to the cycles of digestion - science and technology form the basis for Capacitor’s study of performance. Obsessed with the mechanics of the human body as well as machines that propel the body through space, Capacitor artists have become masters of rigging systems and large-scale props designed to stretch the limits of physical poetry. [via]

*ca?pac?i?tor (k? pas?i t?r) n. a device for accumulating and holding a charge of electricity.
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