Call for entries

EMARE - Grants for European Media Artists for UK, Germany and The Netherlands. The twelfth European Media Artists in Residence Exchange will take place in Summer 2006 to Spring 2007.

Europe based Media Artists working in the fields of digital media including internet and computer based art, filmmakers, sound and video artists are invited to apply for a two month residency at VIVID, Birmingham, England (www.vivid.org.uk); at IMPAKT, Utrecht, The Netherlands (www.impakt.nl) or at Werkleitz Gesellschaft in Halle, Germany (www.werkleitz.de/emare). Students are not permitted, but young artists encouraged. EMARE includes a grant of 2.000 Euro, 250 Euro travel expenses, free accomodation, access to the technical facilities and media labs and a professional presentation. Entries should include a CV, (audio)visual reference projects documentation (no originals) and a proposal sketch for the project which should be developed within EMARE. Continue reading

Electronic Improvisational Music Performance with DIY wiring

The Breadboard Band is a performing band that uses breadboards made of freely constructed electronic circuits to play music. We produce audio and visual expression through the most minimal, fundamental elements in the form of showing the electronic components of an instrument while directly touching and forming the electronic circuit by hand. The electric signals released from hand-made electronic circuits releases extremely rough and ferocious wave patterns. This performance is based on improvisational interplay, and we pull powerful music into shape through each member’s operation, while discovering new sounds by hand.

Keywords: Breadboard, Improvisation, Electronic Musical Instruments, On-the-fly Wiring, Bending, Techno-Noise, iPod, Discrete, Musical Performance, Programmable Device Continue reading

Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization

“George Landow’s widely acclaimed Hypertext was the first book to bring together the worlds of literary theory and computer technology. Landow was one of the first scholars to explore the implications of giving readers instant, easy access to a virtual library of sources as well as unprecedented control of what and how they read. In hypermedia, Landow saw a strikingly literal embodiment of many major points of contemporary literary theory, particularly Derrida’s idea of “de-centering” and Barthes’s conception of the “readerly” versus “writerly” text.

From Intermedia to Microcosm, Storyspace, and the World Wide Web, Landow offers specific information about the kinds of hypertext, different modes of linking, attitudes toward technology, and the proliferation of pornography and gambling on the Internet. For the third edition he includes new material on developing Internet-related technologies, considering in particular their increasingly global reach and the social and political implications of this trend as viewed from a postcolonial perspective. He also discusses blogs, interactive film, and the relation of hypermedia to games. Thoroughly expanded and updated, this pioneering work continues to be the “ur-text” of hypertext studies.” Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society) by George P. Landow. [Thanks Jeremy] Continue reading

6 Cali Colombia Performance Festival

The 6 Cali Colombia Performance Festival–25 – 29 April 2006–is a project of the independent artists collective Helena Producciones (Wilson Díaz, Ana Maria Millán, Claudia Patricia Sarria, Andrés Sandoval y Juan David Medina). This project is held in Cali-Colombia since 1998.

The Cali Performance Festival celebrates and encourages excellence, risk, creativity, participation and debate through partnership, knowledge, quality, access and education. The Festival promotes symbolic and material communication between the Colombian community, Colombian and international artists, curators, art administrators and artistic networks, generating cultural strategies around art which may have an impact upon our community.

The VI Festival will include 3 exhibition, 3 workshops, public interventions and a performance journey. These activities, free for the general comunity, will take place in several public, private and independent spaces around the city. Continue reading

Abstronics: Mary Ellen Bute

Mary Ellen Bute has cropped up at Dataisnature before whilst talking about methods for visually representing sound - but in that instant, only a mention. Although hardly know today, her pioneering, highly experimental films were watched by millions at the time, as they were played as ‘shorts’ preceding the main features film in theatres showing across the States.

After studying Lighting, she mixed with the likes of Leo Theremin and Thomas Wilfred, whose Colour Organ, the Clavilux, definitely left an impression on her.

Later on, impressed by the mathematical musical systems of Joseph Schillinger, which she incorporated into her methodologies, she began to make abstract-geometric animations that represented music. Undoubtedly she was influenced by the great musical animations of Oskar Fischinger. From 1939 she began to work in colour, employing the used of oscilloscopes; using this technique she made two fairly well know films, Abstronic and Mood Contrasts. Continue reading

An Australian digital artist is using his voice to design textiles. Pierre Proske has developed computer software that translates different frequencies in someone’s voice into spiral patterns, producing what he calls Voiceprints. Proske developed the software while doing his masters in art and technology at Sweden’s IT University of Goteborg.

He’s used the software to design a pattern inspired by elements of Japanese textiles, a design that appeals to him because of its simple repeated elements. “Computer code is very simple and minimalistic, you have these ones and zeros, so I thought it would be good to choose a very minimalistic textile as well.” Continue reading

Recursive video in Second Life

Had our first meeting inside of Second Life today to talk about the island. Thanks to everyone who showed up. Special thanks to Aimee Weber who donated an amphitheater! She showed me how to play videos inside of Second Life. So… I tried making a very recursive video of me watching a video of me watching a test video of myself. Watching a video together inside of Second Life actually works well. The audio and video quality is excellent and you can chat about the video and other things while you watch. It’s really neat sharing a space like this together…

I uploaded a video iPod format m4v and a AVI format of the movie. Too bad the audio doesn’t work… or for your sake, maybe it’s better that it didn’t. [via Joi's blog] Continue reading

Rhizomatic Sculpture

To be born, grow up and die. All in three weeks. This is the vital cycle of Nowhere, electronic landscape conceived by Ralf Baecker. It’s a net project, based on a search engine results (a concept originally developed here and later experimented also in Emailerosion). In Nowhere the user does his searches on the German Metager. For every accomplished search a mechanical arm is activated, eroding a block 75×75x10 cm made out of PU Foam, that can be seen in a window on the website. Depending on the time spent to index the data, the arm’s eroding movement will be slower or faster. Rivers, canyons, valleys… the created topography exists only for the research time period.

The simultaneity of the different connections and the alternation of day and night (that usually corresponds to a major or minor net access) influences the transformation rate. The opportunity to noticeably modify a sculpture that’s visible online only enhances the relationship between the contemporary artistic expressions evolutions and the virtual reality potential. In this case the space / object is transformed in a space / image. The interaction and man / work reaction can be tuned and manipulated without physical, temporal or representative limits. The work assumes a rhizomatic character, that is to say a network of polymorphic entities with different access points. This is the result of an interaction amongst heterogeneous elements, developing an internal non-hierarchical communication, or in other words the path mapped out with the connected users’ cognitive links. Francesca Tomassini, NEURAL Continue reading

WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO NOW?

Blind Ditch invite you to state your opinions and ask some questions in our performance installation WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO NOW? showing as part of the Exeter Text Festival, UK, April 24th-14th May 2006.

Send us a mobile phone short or digital camera mpeg to +44 (0)7890 801203 or contact[at]blindditch.org and it will be downloaded onto our website. Your work will be continually screening online from April 24th and shown in the Exeter Phoenix Gallery as part of the tEXt Festival. Tell us what action should we make to change the world for the better. Please pass this on to anyone across the world you would like to participate, translate and disseminate. Respond in your mother tongue or English Please note that the word hero is being used to speak about both men and women. Continue reading

NetJamming with Ominiscient Interpreter

Quoth is a dynamic interactive fiction system, in which authoring is done from a player’s perspective, from within the running work. Quoth draws upon the concepts of pervasive anthropomorphisation, executable natural language, and revisionist narrative. The major use of Quoth so far has been for musical livecoding.

In traditional interactive fiction, the player speaks to an ominiscient interpreter. There may be dialogue with “non-player characters”, but it is mediated by the interpreter. In Quoth the player is always speaking directly to some item in the universe. The traditional omniscient interpreter is represented by the universe itself. This allows for each item in the universe to have a different vocabulary, or even a different “interpreter” altogether. It also provides the player with more fluid interaction with each item… Continue reading