The Evolution of a Wikipedia page

“Heavy metal umlaut: the making of the movie: When Wikipedia’s page on the heavy metal umlaut made the rounds of the blogosphere recently, I decided to make a documentary screencast that would illustrate and narrate Wikipedia’s editorial process. The screencast was well received, and a number of people wrote wondering how I made it. In this column I’ll explain the process, then conclude with some general thoughts about the value of the screencast medium. [Full story at O'Reilly Network]”

“Making movies of software: In the same way that blogging has radically democratized basic web publishing, I expect that Windows Media Encoder — along with counterparts that I hope become broadly accessible on other platforms — will democratize the use of screen videos. The medium needn’t be available to professionals only. Lots of folks need to describe, demonstrate, or document the behavior of software, and this is a powerful way to do it. [Full story at O'Reilly Network] Continue reading

A Celebration of New Literary Hypermedia

E-FEST 2006: A Celebration of New Literary Hypermedia–Brown University, March 22 - March 24, 2006. Participants: Aya Karpinska * Braxton Soderman * Brian Kim Stefans * Daniel Howe * Edrex Fontanilla * Gale Nelson * George Landow * Ilya Kreymer * Jim Carpenter * Judd Morrissey * Lutz Hamel * Michael Stewart * Mike Magee * Nick Montfort * Nick Musurca * Noah Wardrip-Fruin * Polly Hall * Robert Coover * Robert Kendall * Scott Rettberg * Stuart Moulthrop * Wendy Chun.

Schedule of Events: March 22, 8pm – 10:30 — Circuit Breakers I: Premieres and Performances featuring Judd Morrissey (Chicago Art Institute) and other artists; McCormack Family Theater, 70 Brown Street.

March 23, 10:30am – 5:15pm — Panels and Symposia; McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute for International Studies, 111 Thayer Street; 10:30am: Memory and Real Time; 2pm: Noulipo: Recombinant Poetics; 3:45: The Game of Fiction; 8pm – 10:30; Circuit Breakers II: Premieres and Performances featuring: Stuart Moulthrop (Baltimore University) and other artists; McCormack Family Theater, 70 Brown Street.

March 24, 11am – 1pm — Cave Demo, 180 George Street. Continue reading

CALL FOR COMMISSIONS

enter – explorations in new technology art is pleased to announce that it will be commissioning three media art projects in 2006/07. enter is a festival that forms a key part of Arts Council England East’s overall strategy for arts and new technologies. Comprising of individual events and culminating with an international festival in April 2007 in Cambridge, enter is also designed to be a banner under which communities, arts organisations and practitioners in the field of new technology art can interact; sharing ideas, opinions and knowledge.
enter will work in partnership with a number of regional and national arts organisations and the higher education and business sector.

Unknown territories: Adventures in Space is the title of the festivalÂ’s showcase programme. The festival will take place between 25-29 April 2007 and consist of a showcase of events and a conference programme, focusing on two main thematic strands: artistÂ’s interaction with audiences and space (public / private / virtual / augmented); and bridging gaps and linking innovative ideas between new technology art, science and business. Continue reading

A Time-Stealing Agency

We harness interruptive technology to expose the secret possibilities of the workday. As a time-stealing agency, the Bureau of Workplace Interruptions works directly with employees to invisibly insert intimate exchange into the flow of the workday. Our promise is to create interruptions that challenge the needs of our users and the social and economic conditions of the modern workplace.

You know how receiving flowers at work can put a buzz on the rest of the day? So do we. That’s why we create surprise, the kind that slices through the banal and opens up new places for your mind to wander. The ruptures we create are temporary spaces for open dialogue, invisible resistance, and general amusement. In short, we hope to invigorate some of the time you spend at work in order to create new experiences and possibilities outside the flow of capital. Continue reading

Insertions into Heterotopias

Neterotopia traces the confines of a hybrid space, with a changeable and heterogeneous geography, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of Heterotopia. As opposed to the non-places of Utopia, Heterotopias (literally: places of difference), are defined by Foucalt as “other spaces” capable of accepting difference and possibility, while not detaching from the real world. Neterotopias are therefore inserted into the Network system of communication, observing its rules and limits, while giving a new value to these advertising spaces.

Christophe Bruno, Ghazel, Susan Hefuna, Nathalie Hunter, Yuji Oshima, on Peter Lemmens and Eva Cardon, Adam Vackar, Stephen Vitiello, Luca V itone, Version (Gabriela Vanga, Ciprian Muresan and Mircea Cantor), 0100101110101101.ORG. These spaces are thus transformed into exhibition surfaces and points of access to a pathway branching through the public and virtual space of the Internet, the major node of which is the Neterotopia website. Continue reading

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg is a sound artist whose work engages the intersections of personal narrative, communication networks, and history as embedded in place. His work encompasses installation, music for live performance, tunebooks, web design, audio tours, works for radio, and participatory singings. His areas of interest include the sounds of war and conflict, American shape note music in the northeastern United States and northeastern Alabama, social and religious movements in nineteenth-century upstate New York, and finding sand dollars.

Jesse’s masters thesis, a narrative set in western New York’s Burnt-over district about a young man who starts experiencing visions in the aftermath of the Great Disappointment, will be realized as a participatory shape note singing in the Spring of 2006 at the Old Songs Community Art Center in Voorheesville, NY. His music has been performed by Pauline Oliveros, Anne Rhodes, Micah Silver, Angela Opell, and Tim Eastman. He has recently presented work at the Tang Museum, Eyebeam, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Jessica Murray Projects, the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Psy-Geo Provflux Festival, Wesleyan University, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Jesse blogs about politics, art making, and shape note music at blog.silversand.org. More information about his work is online at jpk.silversand.org. Continue reading

Early American Computer Animation # 2 – Review

“…Stan VanDerBeeks Poemfield #2 explored the representation of lines of text from a poem with geometric alignment, transformation and composition. The style of copy is pixellated and there is interplay between the background patterns and the foreground text. While not overly breathtaking seen in todayÂ’s climate of hypermedia and rich graphical environments, for its time it must have caused quite a stir.

VanDerBeek studied art and mixed with the likes of Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. Later he built his Movie-Drome theatre at Stony Point, New York, and produced shows with multiple projectors. Interestingly his shows utilised large number of random image sequences resulting in performances that were never the same. Continue reading

USED Clothing

Clothes are an expression of an individual’s identity. The way a person dresses is almost always directly connected to his/her lifestyle, worldview and self-image. “OK, then why not use clothing even more intensely as a medium?” mused Martin Mairinger. And the Linz native proceeded to create USED Clothing, a concept for furnishing clothes with additional information.

A radio frequency identification (RFID) chip to which the wearer can save information about himself/herself is sewn into each garment. When the item of clothing—for instance, a jacket, pair of pants or T-shirt—is sold at a special second-hand shop, the buyer can access this information online and find out about the garment’s past. Continue reading

DiY: from Processing to Physical Computing

The Takeaway Festival at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre is examing the future of DIY culture and media through workshops and exhibitions. From their site: “More and more people are transforming themselves from media consumers to producers - using the new tools, software and technologies now at their disposal. From the expanding realm of free and open source software (FLOSS), to peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and ‘pervasive’ mobile and locative technologies, the possibilities exist as never before to create and disseminate our opinions and experiences through our own media.” Workshops range from Processing to Physical Computing - looks pretty cool indeed. [blogge by Jonah on Coin Operated] Continue reading

Continuous Motion Propels Game

The game Wanderer was developed during the CARGO WORKSHOPS 2005 in Oostende, Belgium. The theme of the workshop was to create an innovating game that uses Global Positioning System (GPS). The game Wanderer is played outside. The object of the game is that the player has to be in a continuous motion and has to respond to auditive signals provided through a headphone that is connected to the game system. Because the game is not mapped onto the coordinates of the physical space, it can be played in any location. The player is continuously confronted with the objects in public space functioning as game obstacles. In this way the game transforms the meaning of the physical object in public space. More about it here (English). [blogged by nicolas on pasta and vinegar] Continue reading