With more than 73 million participants in online games and social networking sites such as EverQuest, Legend of Zelda, Second Life and World of Warcraft (to name but a few), and the recent introduction of motion-sensitive controllers such as the Wiimote, an opportunity exists to develop an innovative artwork engaging embodied users in a highly networked environment.

Applications will only be accepted from teams who fulfill all the grant requirements, including having the necessary artform experience. Artists who have professional experience in more than one artform can include this as part of their submission.

Luisa’s present research reflects about mobile technologies and several objects / gadgets, particularly the wearable systems, that explore other orders / configurations of the body in the space, as they introduce a digital context that overlaps / creates the physical domain and that bring not only social consequences but also other spatial and temporal dynamics of perception and action. In order to contextualize this research, it will presented project of several artists and personal experiences that discuss the understanding of body-space as a process cultural and technologically elaborated.

Luisa is PhD in Multimedia and MA from the Arts Institute of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Professor at the UNISC (University of Sorocaba) in the postgraduate program of Communication and Culture and also in the graduation courses. Reviewer of Leonardo Digital Review. Invited researcher at CAiiA-STAR, Plymouth, England, where she researched wearable computers. Artist and researcher in the field of art and technology, participating of several international exhibitions and conferences.

MINDTouch explores ideas of non-verbal transference, telepathic collaboration, and the participant as performer, using biofeedback and mobile phone technology under meta-goals of studying “liveness” within mobile networked environments. MINDTouch involves creating a mobile networked performance that utilizes a database of streamed and/or archived video-clips created by video-enabled mobile phones, to then be retrieved, streamed and remixed during (a) live visuals performance(s). The participants invited to contribute to the video blogs are asked to explore their own consciousness, non-verbal emotional /affective senses and dream states, embodiment and communication.

CAMILLE BAKER is a Ph.D. Candidate at SMARTlan, University of East London, conducting research on Networked Performance Media, funded by BBC R+D.

Making DICOM Dance: Marilene Oliver’s practice-based research looks at medical and laser imaging technologies that scan bodies and break them down to bytes. Oliver examines from an artist’s perspective, the processes needed to convert flesh to pixel (digital photography), flesh to voxel (MRI, CT and PET) and flesh to xyz co-ordinates (3D laser scanning). Oliver will present a selection of artworks made using MRI data (where the subject of the scans is bespoke) and CT data (where the subject of the scans are either infamous or anonymous). The presentation will be both technical and theoretical, concentrating on the performative puppeteering activity that emerges when working with MRI and CT data.

MARILENE OLIVER is currently a research student in the Fine Art Print department at the Royal College of Art. Oliver has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Academy, Royal Institution, Science Museum (UK). Oliver was awarded the Royal Academy print prize in 2006 and the Printmaking Today prize in 2001.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer will be presenting work in progress from her residency that explores the motion of knitting and the motion of code. Some of the work includes a knit zoetrope, interactive virtual knitting, knitting with the Nintendo Wii and others. She describes the interactive virtual knitting as demonstrating the motion from the knitting actions are tracked and translated into a visualization of knit code displayed on screen (and eventually on the web). The action of engaging or knitting with the piece naturally produces a physical cloth, while it also shows that code is constructed from the same types of patterns to create a type of virtual cloth (or software). Visually the piece will reflect our bodily interaction with machines, tracing the circular motion of the needles to our body’s give and take of working at a machine. Cloth is often seen as an element of comfort and protection. Machines are perceived to assist us with advancing technology and communication while they are also harming our bodies with carpel tunnel syndrome, back pain, sore eyes, and other strain as we interact with them. This piece explores that delicate space in-between.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer considers her Commodore 64 Computer and Fischer Price Loom to be defining objects of her childhood. She creates tactile representations of cyclical data structures in candy and knitting and is currently exploring the intersection of textiles, technology, and the body in contemporary art practice. Rachel Beth is currently working as an Artist in Residence at the University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton, and Furtherfield London as part of the Arts Council England Initiative, commissioned by Distributed South and curated by SCAN and Space Media.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer received her BFA from the Fiber department with a concentration in Digital Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and was an MFA fellow at the University of California, San Diego where she also was a graduate researcher at UCSD’s Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA). Her work has been exhibited internationally in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) London, the Banff Centre for the Arts, ISEA 2004 and others. She formerly worked on the editorial staff of Artbyte Magazine in New York City, and continues freelance writing on art, modern society, and media culture.

Moving a mouse with your hand can be one of the most powerful actions a man can do in the beginning 21 century. Its one of the most common actions of modern everyday life work. The proletarian of the 21 century has not to deal with big machines, he transfers billions of dollars over the world - with one mouseclick. Huge amounts of data are generated, saved, copied and moved with this pretty unimpressive action. I can sit still for hours although moving me and the world. - Florian Kuhlmann (03/2008)

[1] space merged out of our thinking and virtual reality.

The idea of a separate set of needs for ones Second Life is both absurd and fundamental. Abraham Maslow provides an interesting hierarchy for us that other than a few differences lays over the synthetic world very nicely, however avatars are not the people they represent and as such do not have the same needs. The Virtual Environments class at UCSD takes a look at the difference and similarity in this space, this borderland between avatar and human and reflects on different aspects of need for both.

The exhibit runs the gamut from a reflection on need in classic video games to views on identity and a left handed look at our surveillance society. Projects also tackle loftier more abstract subjects such as the positioning of governance and faith in the synthetic realm.

There will be a scheduled “end of life” performance at 7:30, and musical accompaniment throughout the night. We have a limited amount of “Free Parking” available on a first come first served basis and the unusual snackbar included.

Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

CUTTING THE EDGE. Alan Sondheim, Azure Carter, Sandy Baldwin and Gary Manes have been working for the past several months at the Virtual Environments Laboratory, West Virginia University, Morgantown. Sondheim will be presenting the results of that research, which involves avatars, human modeling, phenomenology of virtual lives, choreography, motion capture, and a host of other issues.

Some of the work has been completed with renowned dancer / choreographer Foofwa d’Imobilite, based in New York and Geneva, Switzerland. The modeling includes distorted and misconfigured mappings, crystal and other radio mappings of the environment, and other material which literally cut the edge, live on the edge of software, hardware, and real-life environments, including Second Life, Brooklyn, West Virginia, and spaces internal to 3D modeling programs. This work is supported by National Science Foundation (WVU) and New York State Council On The Arts grants.

The prolific Alan Sondheim has been a regular part of the Personal Cinema Series for many years and this program contains his usual collection of surprises, sexual meditations and formal adventures. He has been constructing audio and video, performing, and inscribing within cyberspace since 1994. Since that time he has been working on an “internet text,” a continuous meditation on philosophy, psychology, language, body and virtuality.

Artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern have each been exploring performance and performativity in their archival prints. Kildall restages then remediates iconic performance artworks in Second Life, and Stern straps on a scanner appendage and battery pack, and performs images into existence; both processes produce art objects in the real world.

For Crossing the Void II - Haydn Shaughnessy’s new virtual space designed by New York architect Benn Dunkley - they were asked to produce unique virtual art works for sale in Second Life, which mirror their real life prints. In response, they created a series of “Simulate Editions”, where every ‘print’ is individually signed and numbered by hand, making each work ‘technically unique.’ The works are copy and modification protected, but also come with a resize script, so that the new collector/owner - and only them - can grow or shrink their purchase so as to fit into their SL space.

Limited virtual and real world editions of the works on display will be available for purchase at the show.

For North American guests, press previews and private viewings are encouraged between 9:00 am PST and 4:00 pm PST or you are welcome to attend the open public viewing and launch party from at 4:00 pm PST. If these time frames are not convenient for you, please contact us to arrange a viewing at your convenience.

Friday the schedule is set to accommodate our European guests with press previews and private viewings are encouraged from Noon until 3:00 pm GMT, or you are welcome to attend the public viewing and launch party at 3:00pm GMT. If these time frames are not convenient for you, please contact us to arrange a viewing at your convenience.

Please RSVP via email: tencubed [at] depoconsulting.com to arrange a private viewing or let us know that you will be attending during one of the press previews or public viewing schedules. If you do not have a Second Life account, please contact us prior to January 29, 2008 and we will help you set up a free account and prepare an avatar so you can enjoy the inaugural show.

Visit our blog for more exciting news on the opening of Ten Cubed.

Chris Ashley is based in Oakland, California. He is in the IT department at Berkeley, University of California and is one of the few, if not the only artist, who focuses on the use of the html scripting language in the creation of art. Chris blogs a new html image everyday and has done so for five years. His work is exhibited in chronologies - months and years principally - and makes sense only as sequences of time.

Scott Kildall is a member of the Second Life performance group Second Chance. We are exhibiting a series of his work called Paradise Ahead. In it he has re-enacted in Second Life iconic moments from the history of contemporary art and then transposed those works into art on paper - so what you see in the gallery began in Second Life, took on a real life presence and is now back in Second Life.

Nathaniel Stern is originally from New York but now based in Dublin after establishing his reputation in Johannesburg as one of the leading emerging artists in South Africa. Originally an interactive media artist, lately Nathaniel has become the leading practitioner globally of scanner art. All the works you see were created through the use of a standard desktop scanner and Nathaniel’s movement in and around objects. He has exhibited in J.Burg, New York, Dublin and elsewhere and is in important collections - the Irish Contemporary Art Society, Hewlett Packard, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Jon Coffelt works with unusual media such as duct tape and vellum to create visual narratives around technology such as his descriptions of computer circuit boards. To achieve this he has worked with 3M to develop new color possibilities for tape and now uses that to create color poems that reflect his interest in technology and science.

Claire Keating is an Irish photographer who works with make-up artists to transform people into works of art, which she then photographs. She was trained in London but now lives in Kinsale. We exhibit her because he work treads an intriguing line between real and the suggestive.

With room for spectators beneath the fabric, Party Dress flirts with traditional concepts of public and private space while adding sparkling wit to the conversation between fashion and architecture. Party Dress works across multiple scales and environments, unraveling conventional notions of space, materiality, and temporality.

Party Dress is part of seamless v.3 fashion show at the Boston Museum of Science on January 30, 2008 at 8pm.