“A new installation inside Second Life is bringing alive one of the world’s largest collections of antique maps. Called the David Rumsey Maps Island (registration required), the Second Life site is San Francisco map collector David Rumsey’s latest high-technology plan to share his collection with as large an audience as possible. (See “From Lewis and Clark to Landsat.“)

Rumsey started collecting maps about 20 years ago. In 1997, he began digitizing his maps, many of which now appear on his website. Launched in 1999 with 2,000 maps, the website now features more than 17,500 maps. Continue reading

Call for Contributions: free103point9 Transmission Art Archive - A participatory online initiative toward defining the genre :: Deadline: March 15, 2008 :: free103point9 defines Transmission Arts as a conceptual umbrella that unites a community of artists and audiences interested in transmission ideas and tools. This genre encompasses a diversity of practices and media working with the idea of transmission or the physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum. Transmission art is generally a participatory live-art or time-based art, and often manifests as radio art, video art, light sculpture, installation, and performance. Continue reading

Slought Foundation Conversations in Theory Series: From Word to Action to Architecture - Lecture by Vito Acconci :: February 29, 2008; 5:00-6:30 pm :: Meyerson Hall B1, University of Pennsylvania (210 South 34th Street) Philadelphia. Also see Vito Acconci: Public Nuisance Symposium, March 1, 2008; 10:30-4:30 pm.

Vito Acconci will address the role of process, drafts, and the question of the archive in his studio practice. This event has been organized in conjunction with the opening of Power Fields: Explorations in the Work of Vito Acconci (February 15-March 31, 2008); the opening reception will take place at 6:30-8:30 pm, immediately after the lecture. Continue reading

Year Zero One is pleased to present Pixelgrain: Mapping Transition in the Canadian Prairies, a web project by artists Michael Alstad + Leah Lazariuk. Pixelgrain is an online repository of documents and ideas linked to the fading symbol of the Canadian prairie grain elevator. By systematically documenting and mapping these disappearing structures - and interviewing people associated with them - the artists portray a parallel rural community in the midst of transition. Pixelgrain also functions as a web portal that utilises Geographic Information Systems and thematic online networks to create a participatory collaborative document that will evolve and grow over time. Continue reading

This quote is taken from Douglas Davis’ essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” which argues (in part) that unlike analogue signals, which are like waves crashing upon a beach and losing clarity with every ebb of the tide, digital bits “can be endlessly reproduced, without degradation, always the same, always perfect.” Continue reading

The United States Library of Congress is archiving 300 electronic literature web sites in collaboration with the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and archive-it.org. The sites selected will be crawled and archived to the extent that the Archive-It technology allows. The result will be full-text searchable collections of the spidered HTML files in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The ELO will enter metadata including a short description and keywords for each URL entered into the database. To participate in this project, please see the wiki (and note there is a FAQ linked on that page). Categories: Continue reading

[Image: Mirage by Annette Weintraub, 2001] Hello, everyone, Trebor has kindly asked me to start a topic on the list. I am interested in asking some questions about the longevity or ’shelf life’ of new media art, as it affects individual studio practice, curation and archiving- particularly from the pov of the practitioner. The question of shelf life as it applies to the currency of ideas or movements or the historical record is tangential, but could play some role in the discussion. Continue reading

Performing Presence: From the Live to the Simulated - The Presence Project :: A research project managed by Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter UK) | Nick Kaye (Exeter UK) | Mel Slater (University College London) | Michael Shanks (Stanford USA) :: The Presence Project will be running from October 2005 to June 2009.

What creates a sense of presence? - the presence of a live performer … the presence of the past … in a memory … in ruined remains … the sense of ‘being there’ in an online community … in a VR or mixed reality environment … The Presence Project is exploring such questions with Lynn Hershman Leeson | Gary Hill | Tony Oursler | Blast Theory | The Builders Association | Ken Goldberg | Paul Sermon. Continue reading

November 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space: Memory Errors in the Technosphere: Art, Accident, Archive :: Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray (US) with Ingrid Bachmann (Canada), Madeleine CasadOut-of-Sync (US), (Australia), Grace Quintanilla (Mexico), Monica Ross (England).

Confident reliance on the expanse of virtual memory, data bases, and archives can be easily compromised by the uncertainties of art, the surprise of accident, and the shifts of archival assumptions, if not also by those irritating computer messages announcing “memory error.” The interruption of digital memory error accentuates what Thomas Hobbes lamented in a much earlier age of technological revolution as the fragility or “decaying sense” of memory. Continue reading

Open Archives: Media Art Presentation and Digital Archives :: October 29 - November 4, 2007 :: Live on-line stream :: Intermedia Institute, Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical, University in Prague (CVUT), room H24/2, Technicka 2, 16627, Prague 6 :: Opening hours: 12 - 7 pm.

The Open Archives project is focused on exhibiting and archiving initiatives mapping, re-storing and interpreting contemporary and modern art, experimental film and video, media art and industrial heritage. It is addressed to art, humanities and technical schools* students as well as to the wide public. The project hopes to trigger discussion concerning technical and methodological issues related to the archiving and distribution and aims to stimulate additional research in this field in the Czech Republic. Continue reading