Telesharing

“Stay in Place reveals the resurgence of small complicities between two friends in a chat session while the screen acts as a mirror of oneself and the other, and makes us reflect about personal relationships in the presence of new technologies.” — Arlan Londoño, curator

STAY IN PLACE is a reflection of connection moment between two friends through a Chat by Internet. In this way, a teleshared space arises among them when both maintain a telematic talk by this channel. This scene is captured by the creator of this video, Sara Malinarich, with the intention to trap this spontaneous action in which both achieve to articulate a narration in the context of an unique and unrepeatable situation.

According to this video, the woman that is in the upper window is Maren Pimstein, who was located in Santiago of Chile at 14:32 hrs. of June 12 of the 2006; the another is Sara Malinarich, was in Cuenca, Spain at 19:32hrs of that same day. Continue reading

Gallery as Radio Station

The Burning Question, by Abinadi Meza, is a participatory installation and internet radio broadcast. This project consists of customized computers, large color posters, and pamphlets examining Intellectual Property and copyright. Multiple computers are loaded with hundreds of works contributed by composers, musicians, and sound artists from around the world. Visitors are offered blank CD’s and invited to freely burn copyleft music; as they make playlists, they collectively generate an Internet radio broadcast that streams 24 hours a day from the gallery for the duration of the exhibit. The gallery becomes an impromptu radio station and visitors become DJ’s. [via Rhizome] Continue reading

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Season 2

Open Video Projects (OVP) is a video archive currently based in Rome, Italy which facilitates screenings throughout the city in conjunction with a weekly appointment at the Blueroom evening at Rialto Santambrogio, a contemporary cultural center in Rome’s historic district; Blueroom features a dynamic mix of live experimental electronic music, a rotating DJ line-up, live video-mixing, site-specific video installations and 3500 cm² (a weekly exhibition of poster art specially designed by a contemporary artist for free distribution at the event). There has been overwhelming public response with over 1000 guests in attendance each week. OVPÂ’s participation in large scale cultural events exposes the public to work it would normally not see, as well as provides a unique form of visibility for the participating artists and filmmakers. Continue reading

The Negotiatior and the Knife

[Tiffany Holmes asked] “Would anyone wish to volunteer a story about an influential teacher or mentor who impacted their development as an artist or scholar?

There are two contrasts which taught me more about education than listing syllabi — that between the negotiatior and the knife.

First, the knife. In the third year of my undergraduate education in English Honours (an underground mafia of critical theorists, marxists, feminists, and continental philosophers) I ended up in a two term seminar simply titled “Theory.” A somewhat notorious seminar for its drop-out rate: this seminar went from a healthy bunch of 25 to about 8 within 30 days. Many students received failing grades on their first paper. They were not encouraged to return. Those of us who were doing well were pushed even harder: the comments on our papers were brief and penetrated beyond the paper itself, a kind of samurai incision to the work that reduced it to nothingness. The professor was like a zen master: the comments were koans, the lectures parables of emptiness. The professor in question was highly trained in deconstruction and psychoanalysis, a feminist and lesbian, expert in law, computer technology, James Joyce and senior faculty. She was a product of the critical ’60s left. Continue reading

InterAccess is pleased to present ZOO, an exhibition of three works by three artists that artfully integrate natural and artificial life, colliding the realm of living things with the genre of creative electronics. Artists Ingrid Bachmann, Garnet Hertz and Amy Youngs explore the complex relationship between technology, culture and nature.

Opening Reception Friday February 2, 8:00 pm :: Artist talks Friday February 2, 7:00 pm :: Exhibition runs February 2 - March 17, 2007 :: InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto. Continue reading

Review by Tindara Sidoti

REVIEW: 5+5=5 by Tindara Sidoti: 5 short movies by 5 film makers about 5 networked art projects exploring critical approaches to social engagement.

Some of my earliest memories involve flashes of evocative cinematic imagery, Gene Kelly dancing athletically across a small screen or Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers squabbling. While studying art, this fascination with film coexisted, but the two arts were never really connected for me until I became more familiar with video and media art, later doing research on the influence of cinema on artistsÂ’ film.

5+5=5 is an experiment on the boundary of media, art and film; a cross-pollination that uses a variety of cultural influences from cinema and the Internet, to provide an access point to networked art and the artists groupsÂ’ selected projects. Furtherfield have commissioned these five short movies that feature conversations between artists, audiences and film-makers. 5+5=5 manages to tap into the current fluidity of the boundaries that exist, between genre and media; a space between art, film and technology that has resulted in artists like Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno releasing Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) in cinemas. Though interpretive, these films are more contextually assertive than Turner Prize nominee style documentaries and betray a more inter-disciplinary function. The movies are an example of how the relationship between art and film can work effectively; not only do they hook you, making you curious about the projects themselves but each one is an engaging film. Continue reading at New Media Fix. Continue reading

Luis Camnitzer

Seeing that in this discussion (Kanarinka, etc.) many are just entering the academic tunnel, I would like to contribute a little from the vantage point of the exit. I retired 7 years ago after slowly dying during 32 years in an institution that started well. We were to take off were we thought Antioch had stopped, “break the lockstep of traditional education” as our mission stated in 1968. The three decades plus spent on observing changes of mission, corruption, brown nosing and decay, only served to teach me that there is no way to build a truly progressive institution in the U.S. The rhetoric may be progressive, but the core won’t ever get there, and it is not only due to corporations, government, bad administration and self-serving colleagues.

Education in this country is only a relatively true right for the people until high-school level. After that it is a commodity in a profit making business. University profit comes of course from the tuition students have to pay for the honor of getting a job to help corporations make more profit. It comes from corporations themselves, that sponsor projects that benefit them (government and army being part of that), and it comes from non educational things like sports events. It is into this picture we enter trying to educate people, without realizing that we can’t really balance a greed-based structure with our idealism. Continue reading

Presentation @ Transmediale

Presentation of the book: Networking | The Net as an Artwork @ Transmediale :: Sunday 4/2, 16:00 :: Salon, Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin, D :: With Tatiana Bazzichelli [it/de], Jaromil [it/nl], Gaia Novati [it/de]; moderated by Diana McCarty [de].

Networking | The Net as an Artwork :: Written by Tatiana Bazzichelli, with the preface of Derrick De Kerckhove and the epilogue of the Italian videoartist Simonetta Fadda. The book represents a first tentative to write a comprehensive history of both analog and digital subcultural networked art in Italy, through an analysis of the realities which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies - such as Mail Art, Neoism, the Luther Blissett project, BBS culture, Telestreets, and many other subcultural movements and networks. Continue reading

Interview with Mushon Zer-Aviv

[...] Has the shiftspace project evolved since I first heard the presentation you made at Ars Electronica in September 2006?

Definitely! First of all, we had four more releases since then (with v0.08 is coming soon too) and have just launched the new ShiftSpace.org which is wider and more comprehensive than the previous site. The new site also allows users to watch and subscribe to RSS feeds of shifts created by the vast user community. We have been giving more presentations to spread the word and have been throwing ‘installation parties’ where participants were invited to install a public spaces on their laptops. We are currently working with Turbulence to start a unique commission program to support artists creating new parasitic net art and using ShiftSpace as a platform. This can become the moment we’ve been working towards, where ShiftSpace becomes an open-ended creative platform, shared and developed by a wide community.We are looking for more people to join us in working on it. It can be as simple as using the system, being creative with it, and also reporting bugs from time to time when they appear (and bare with us while they will most certainly appear…). You can also join by developing new spaces for ShiftSpace, or best - for the web gurus out there, we are looking for developers to help us work on the core system itself. We are pretty serious about the open source model and are inspired by the Wikipedia foundation. We hope to achieve a stage when we could hold elections for the lead of the project. We will then hopefully compete with peers who are as enthusiastic and committed as we are to the future of the (meta)web…” From Interview with Mushon Zer-Aviv by Regine Debatty, we-make-money-not-art. Continue reading

Contest of Ideas

XIV RADIO CREATION WORKS CONTEST | CDMC-RADIO CLÁSICA 2007 :: The CDMC and Radio Clásica (RNE) are undertaking a collaboration to encourage the production of radio creations in order to promote this type of works. Within this line, a contest of ideas is called subject to the following RULES:

1 The works will necessarily be pieces of radiophonic creation, that is to say, whose most suitable means of production and diffusion is the radio. The works will not have been previously awarded nor emitted. 2 Words, noises, music, electronic or radiophonic editings and other similar elements may be the base of the work. 3 The project may be in Spanish only or in several languages but in this case Spanish should be the main language. The use of language or voice may also be omitted. 4 To enter the contest it will not be possible to send accomplished works, but mere projects: a written description of the work and of the elements that it will require, some excerpts as a model in cassette, CD or DAT, scores or fragments of these, acoustical materials, etc. Any form or presentation will be admitted, provided that it makes possible to the Jury to appreciate the interest of the projected idea. Continue reading