[Image: Portrait of the Puppet, The Vitruvian World by Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker, David Steele] International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART) - Call For Papers :: Special Issue on Immersive Virtual, Mixed, or Augmented Reality Art :: Guest Editors: Maria Roussou and Maurice Benayoun :: Deadline: September 1, 2008.

For the past fifteen years, virtual reality (VR) and, more recently, mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR) environments that immerse their participants in imaginary space, have emerged to define an area that blurs the lines between the seemingly different worlds of research, creativity, and technological practice, while exploring the interdependencies between the virtual and the physical. Continue reading

Digital Chile_08 - Isabel Aranda, Klaudia Kemper, Alberto Lagos, Roberto Larraguibel, Félix Lazo and Claudio Rivera-Seguel :: Electronica Digital Chile Road-Show - Live Audio / Visual Performance :: March 1, 10 pm - 3 am :: Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], 1195 Saint-Laurent Boulevard, Montreal, Canada.

This travelling exhibition, which now visits Montreal for its Canadian première, is an exciting overview of avant-garde art in Chile. It shows the great wealth of themes and styles that currently inspire the imaginations of Chilean artists. The mixed-media digital artworks of this exhibition are installations that invite the audience to reflect on and experiment with the sometimes inscrutable, often complex behavior of human beings. Continue reading

Free Soil will present a bus tour, outdoor film / video festival and on-site exchange (June 5-7, 2008) in conjunction with the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose, California :: Call for Submissions - Onsite Learning Exchange / Post Tour Teach-In :: Deadline: March 30, 2008.

Building upon the energy of our first bus tour — A Journey through the techno-utopian beginnings and environmental currents of the Silicon Valley — Free Soil would like to use this year’s gathering of artists and practitioners to think about how we learn. How can we use our tools and practice to reflect and engage with the world around us? Continue reading

[Image from Winners versus Losers by Mart Kangro and Christina Ciupke] e wie estland [e for estonia] :: March 29 - April 6, 2008 :: Performance Art, Contemporary Dance, and New Media Festival in the ZKM_Cube and ZKM_Media Theater.

In 2008, the Republic of Estonia will celebrate its ninetieth anniversary. As part of the festivities, the government, together with the embassy in Berlin, is organizing an event series called e wie estland in Baden-Württemberg from January to June 2008. A dance and new media lab headed by the Estonian choreographer Taavet Jansen will be set up in cooperation with the ZKM | Karlsruhe and will enable a one-week studio collaboration. Public performances will offer a multifaceted insight into the state of the art of choreography and media art in Estonia. Festival program here.

[Image: Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett / Grafik Dynamo / 2004-2005] Kate Armstrong is a Vancouver-based artist and theorist with a panache for new media powered permutational storytelling. Her work questions the nature of narrative in light of computation, social media and contemporary urban space. She has exhibited widely and is currently en route to Turkey for the March 8th launch of PATH, a bookwork generated by “an anonymous individual living in the city of Montreal between 2005-2007″ at the Akbank Art Centre in Istanbul. Above and beyond her creative practice, she is the author of Crisis and Repetition: Essays on Art and Culture, sits on the board at The Western Front artist-run centre and is a lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts + Technology. Continue reading

[Image 3: ZeroG SkyDancers poster by DC Spensley] Fibreculture Journal: Issue 11 - Digital Arts and Culture Conference (Perth): “[...]The eleven papers presented here from the perthDAC (Digital Arts and Culture) 2007 conference offer a broad spectrum of perspectives on the future of digital media art and culture, speculating on recent trends and developments, presenting research outcomes, describing works in progress, or documenting histories and challenging existing paradigms of digital media use, creation and perception. Continue reading

Synapse: Collaboration between the arts and sciences has the potential to create new knowledge, ideas and processes beneficial to both fields. Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade, the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) has provided opportunities for artists and scientists to work together. Through Synapse, and in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, ANAT offers residencies, the Synapse Database and now ANAT is pleased to announce its latest initiative: a moderated elist discussion on contemporary art and science collaborations in fields including bioart, artificial intelligence, robotics, climate change and space, amongst others. You can subscribe here. Continue reading

Upstage Walk-Through :: March 5, 2008; 9 pm European time (find your local time here).

The next open walk-through will be held in French, kindly led by Suzon Fuks (Belgium/Australia). To participate, go here. If you want to log in and learn how to use the tools, you must email helen [at] upstage.org.nz for a log in prior to the session. The open walk-through is an opportunity for interested people to get an introduction into how UpStage works, and how you can use it to create live online performances.

Cao Fei: RMB City :: February 29 - April 5, 2008 :: Opening: February 29; 6-8 pm :: Lombard-Freid Projects, 531 West 26th Street, 2nd floor, New York NY

“Is this your city?” asked the young man. “It’s yours.” The angel answered.

RMB City has been created by Cao Fei’s avatar China Tracy as an experimental utopian world for the 3D online virtual community of Second Life. Institutions and investors have been invited to buy buildings in RMB City and program events and activities within them where other Second Life users can participate. Thousands of young people in Asia and around the world are embracing Second Life as a “parallel universe” on the Internet. Continue reading

Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love. Twitter is social software that asks a simple question: What are you doing?

Botanicalls is a system that was developed to allow plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics. Call 212.202.8348 to hear more about each of the plants. What you need >>.