Don’t miss the last Club of this academic year on 5 June 6-9 pm, followed by sound performances and wine!!

JUNE 5 with ALEX MCLEAN & DAVE GRIFFITHS: Live Coding:
Live coders program in conversation with their machine, dynamically adding instructions and functions to running programs. Here there is no distinction between creating and running a piece of software - its execution is controlled through edits to its source code. Live coding has recently become popular in performance, where software is written before an audience in order to generate music and video for them to enjoy. McLean and Griffiths have played around Europe together with Adrian Ward as the live coding band “slub”. They will talk about the history and practice of live coding, and give some demos of their own live coding environments.

ALEX MCLEAN has been triggering distorted kick drum samples with Perl scripts for far too long. He is a PhD student at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

DAVE GRIFFITHS writes programs to make noises, pictures and animations. He makes film effectis software and computer games.

Dave & Alex are both members of the Openlan free software artists collective and the TOPLAP organisation for live algorithm promotion. slub.org ; toplap.org ; pawfal.org/openlab ; pawfal.org/dave ; yaxu.org

*With Sound Performances from: CLAUDEl HEILAND-ALLEN

Claude Heiland-Allen (aka ClaudiusMaximus) is a digital artist from London. He has been using computers to make art for longer than the time he didn’t. As part of GOTO10, working with and creating Free/Libre

Open Source Software gives him freedoms he never had before, and he hopes to become a better workman by building his own tools. http://claudiusmaximus.goto10.org | http://goto10.org

EDWARD KELLY
Edward Kelly is a London-based artist working with bespoke live performance software. His work has spanned formal electroacoustic composition, classical score-writing and live electronics. Currently, Dr Kelly is working on a live audiovisual performance system in Pure Data, and the continual redevelopment of this system means that every performance is a premiere as well as an improvisation. Releases of his software reside at sharktracks.co.uk, and as a sometime electro musician his music can be heard at pyramidtransmissions.com (asLone Shark). http://www.sharktracks.co.uk

RYAN JORDAN
Ryan Jordan comes form a noise/tekkno/experimental music background but works with all available medias through the computer. He has organised many events and performances in the UK and has performed nationally and internationally. Jordan’s exploration of sound and music performance with computers led to the development of his prototype MIDI controller, the M.G.I (Movement and
Gesture Interface) which was an attempt at bringing a more physical performance element to laptop and computer music. Now working in the intersection of the arts and sciences he explores and develops systems which merge all medias together through the physical augmentation of the body as a controlling device for computational applications. He is currently studying MFA Computational Arts at Goldmiths, London.

—

THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).

For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or
email Maria X at drp01mc@gold.ac.uk

or visit: http://transition.turbulence.org/networked_music_review/2007/12/04/toplap/#more-2442

To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us

How are contemporary artists dealing with issues of cultural complexity, multiple allegiances, and hybrid forms? How are they communicating these ideas and addressing their audience? Using the metaphor of “code-switching,” a linguistic term referring to the use of more than one language within a single conversation, this juried exhibition seeks submissions from artists investigating a variety of approaches to cultural and material bilingualisms, (mis)translations, appropriations, and the purposeful misuse of “proper” communication codes.

Proposals for new projects and collaborative works are welcome. This exhibition is open to all forms of work including visual art (video, installation, painting, sculpture, drawing, photo, etc), sound/audio, performance-based disciplines, social practice projects and hybrid forms.

Deadline for entries: received by 5PM, Thursday, July 30, 2008.
Notification of acceptance: mid-August 2008.
Exhibition runs: September 17 - October 11, 2008.
Entry fee: $10 current LAB members; $20 non-members (See information on how to become a LAB member for as little as $25 at http://www.thelab.org/members.htm

Work Samples:
–1 page artist statement, including contact information
–1 page CV
–1 page project statement for new work (if applicable)
–1 page image list with: artist name, title of work, size, medium, and year.
–up to five 35mm slides, five jpgs (under 2 MB) on a Mac-compatible CD-ROM, OR video segment(s) not to exceed five minutes long on a VHS or DVD per entry of actual work to be exhibited. All materials should be clearly marked with the artist’s name and title of work. Artists will be responsible for the transport and shipping of artworks to and from the gallery unless this is a significant hardship for the artist. In such cases, please indicate in your application what type of financial or other support would be needed to realize the proposed project. The LAB will make every attempt to safeguard submitted materials, but cannot be responsible for loss or damage. Never send master slides or tapes. Provide a SASE with sufficient postage for the return of materials (optional).

Please send submissions to:
Juried Exhibition
The LAB
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Steven Dye is a Sound Artist, Filmmaker and Musician whose work actively explores the formal and social qualities of the materials he is using. His work takes many forms including installation, animation, instrument building, sculpture, field recording, sound and music composition, expanded cinema, and performance. The common thread through all his works is an enthusiasm for the
phenomenon of sound, light and perception. Dye received a degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1990, is a frequent contributor to the Illuminated Corridor project, and works collaboratively with the performing arts groups Wet Gate, Santo Subito, and Epic[Abridged. He is currently the Exhibitions Technical Manager at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Stephanie Syjuco is a visual artist whose recent work uses the tactics of bootlegging, counterfeiting and re-appropriation to address issues of cultural biography and economic power structures. Born in the Philippines in 1974, she received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has shown nationally and internationally at PSI, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and was included in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. Syjuco’s residencies include The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, KALA Art Center, Skowhegan, and the Center for Metamedia, Czech Republic. In 2007 she exhibited a global counterfeiting project at art spaces in Beijing, Manila, and Istanbul. Syjuco has had visiting faculty appointments at Stanford University and The California College of the Arts and currently lives and works in San Francisco.

This two hour workshop provides an overview of open-source, third-party virtual-world server technology based on Second Life(TM), and the opportunities afforded to artists and experimenters who are now able to cheaply host tailored synthetic spaces.

The first hour will be devoted to a brief overview of Second Life and the “OpenMetaverse” initiatives (libsl, opensim, etc.) Bennett Goble of Ars Virtua will discuss features and show demos of the most popular alternatives (OpenSim, OpenLife & realXtend), their qualities, strengths etc.

We will consider the issues surrounding installation, maintenance and function of the OpenSim server and will be connecting participants through third-party clients and through modifications of the Linden Lab Second Life client.

During this session participants will have an opportunity to look at code, and to consider the space as a place for artistic experimentation and collaboration. Special consideration will be given to coding within the environment and control afforded by building and running servers.

We will also discuss the relative merits of running sims on cloud systems (such as Amazon’s EC2/S3) and instantiating a foothold sim for further experimentation.

For more information see Aldon Hyne’s ‘An idiot’s guide to OpenSim.’ (http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/2956)

“Typically, people running OpenSim set up a grid, similar to the Main Grid, the Teen Grid or the Beta Grids that Linden Lab runs.” - Aldon Hynes

The workshop will be held from noon - 2 p.m. Friday June 6 in room 237 of the art building on SJSU campus. This workshop is free and open to the public.

Bennett Goble is a synthetic world junkie, new media artist and info-addict that spends 12+ hours a day overviewing dual computer monitors with his independently operating eyes. He is heavily involved within the digital world Second Life, working on coding, design, and art projects.

Ars Virtua is a new media center and gallery located in the synthetic worlds. It leverages the tension between 3-D rendered game space and terrestrial reality, between simulated and simulation. AV has active initiatives in Second Life, World of Warcraft and in the open source simulator space. Ars Virtua is sponsored by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge is North America’s newest and largest festival of digital arts, and a great deal more. Festival organizers expect it to be a perspective-altering experience that entertains, enlightens, educates and involves attendees in a new understanding of our changing world.

The emphasis of the software is on the process of writing / typing. TBT is a tool for time-based recording and playback of the process of typing a message, with the accuracy of milliseconds. The basic interface for typing records all typing and plays it back exactly the way the text was typed the first time, including all hesitations and misspellings. It reveals additional information on digital poetry, because the speed of typing and reading it, are visualised. E-mail, blogs, all kinds of digital media can be given a “human touch” by TBT. The software has been kept as basic as possible, is free to use and users are encouraged to add functionalities. The special TBT website offers space for TBT-created messages, haiku’s and poetry, so that visitors can admire each other work.

TBT was made by Jaromil and conceived by Jaromil and JoDi. Following is a short interview with Jaromil about this new tool.

Annet Dekker: TBT was born as an idea formulated by you and JoDi. An interesting relation, a computer programmer/artist and an artist couple who like nothing more than to deconstruct soft -and hardwares. Could you describe your relation and your shared interest?

Jaromil: It is definitely a result and very much inspired by JoDi. What brought us together, besides the curiosity we nurtured about each other, was this commission for “Net art is dead” by Impakt. So we spent two weekends together. JoDi initially thought of taking the dyne:bolic operating system and subverting its functionalities, but the perspective of working further to subvert something I already invested a lot of effort on building was really discouraging for me.

So I opposed their intention and argued that, if we have something in common, surely it is a minimalist aesthetic and a passion for text and inner processes. At that point JoDi mentioned their interest in building a “key logger” that would record keys typed in any program running, in particular word processors. I insisted in focusing on the aspect of literary production, stripping down the approach to a reference implementation of a time-based text protocol for recording time-based literature - I was extremely excited about developing a software tool for literature. We all realized we like literary experiments in automatic writing and we would be interested in a tool to publish online time-based poetry as well to be used in email communication, where hesitations in writing can be a vehicle for sentiments?

AD: One of the important changes in the way of thinking about language, typography and poetry came from Italy, Marinetti said “my revolution is directed against the so-called typographical harmony of the page, instead I want to grasp words brutally and hurl them in the reader’s face.” is this something you can relate to? Does your own background, also coming from Italy has been of influence in your work?

J: Yes, I was born in Italy, but I’m part of a generation that starts, for necessity and virtue, to think about a common European heritage rather than a restricted (and in case of Italy over-celebrated) national identity. I guess this opens even more ways to play with language than Italians used to do in Italy anyway. My education was as classical as it can get in the south of Italy, mostly focusing on literature and philosophy, in particular ancient Latin and Greek; such traditions of written poetry respect metrical schemes and sometimes adopts a richer punctuation than the modern one we are used to. This is certainly a point of contact with the concept of Time Based Text, but by now I’d say my frequentation of digital haiku circles as the ‘five7five’ mailing list played a more important role in this project.

I find it very difficult to relate to Futurism, which I consider a decadent re-use of Symbolism. While it might be considered true that Marinetti’s furor has contributed to syntactical innovation and modern design, I do believe that was too functional to the mission of the industry to be considered art. Furthermore I fear the aggressive attitude of futurists, but that has more to do with personal taste I guess? My inspiration is coming from writers as James Joyce, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, to name just a few that challenged in various ways the performative act of what used to be called “automatic writing”.

AD: As the title indicates an important aspect of TBT is that it is time based, something that seems almost paradoxical when linked with a computer. How do you see this relation?

J: TBT is about the dimension of time in literature. The act of writing a flow of consciousness discards information. Such information is very abstract when compared to words and concepts, it can intimately describe the writer’s thoughts with all the hesitations occurring in the creative act. TBT offers also to preserve all the sentimental information that is related to the mediation of text in human communication. With TBT we preserve the emotional information produced when writing, at the same time opening the media art domain to the world of literature. The existence of a software as TBT draws complex relationships between code and language: it softly unveils the mutual influence between literary art and computer programming suggesting they can benefit from each other not just in terms of productivity.

AD: TBT reflects much the Japanese haiku’s or dada experiments. Most of these actions in poetry have a strong relation with the human, organic and emotions. Very little do they relate it seems with the ‘hard’ and ‘cold’ language and command lines of computers. How do you view this difference or better, change? Can we finally start to emotionally engage and understand our mechanics?

J: I guess the exploration of our mechanics (as opposed to the mechanics of machines) is always doomed to a sweet failure, the one that poetry celebrates with the best tears one can cry. The literary approach shifts the analysis to a produced fact, which reflects our inner sentiments: a production that is written out of our inner emotions but still sub-consciously shaped by them. Today the act of writing is arguably the most natural act of creation human kind engages on a regular basis, so there are chances to access a precedented undisclosed intimacy of thoughts there, in everyone who writes, between the lines.

AD: What do you think is more artistic the TBT software, as being software art, or the poetry that can be made by using it?

J: I think what is most artistic is the concept of TBT. The software itself and the poetry that can be made by using TBT are also a propagation of the artistic value of this exploration, but the artistic value is rather conceptual, probably definable media art. There is a formal approach in the realization that also can be argued as artistic: it is not by coincidence that both from a programmer’s and user’s point of view TBT will result minimalistic and, when adopted, extremely flexible. At least I refuse the usual rhetoric of presentation for “artistic software”, instead caring very much for functionality and a design that is faithful to text.

AD: In the past you have also talked about making the net more ‘organic’ by devising ‘new ways for information’, is TBT a step in the right direction?

J: Hopefully yes, at least it is an attempt. I hope that it can work in a natural and spontaneous way. That is why the work consists of a portable source code that works as a clean reference implementation and can be included in any other software (being open source and licensed GNU GPL), rather than building a TBT software that does it all for you, that would probably limit its usefulness on the long term. I also expect it to inspire people to think about less superficial ways of communication: right in a time in which our media-scape is getting polluted by opportunist automatas abusing our attention, the difference between us and them might be just…sentiments.

AD: How can you use TBT in your email program?

J: As an external editor: it can be called when the message needs to be written, once done will quit giving back the TBT message, which can be sent in an attachment. The reference implementation is working with the mail client Mutt, but hopefully some mail client will implement TBT natively in future.

AD: Could you tell me step-by-step what I should do to make TBT poetry?

J: once you have downloaded and compiled the source code (or you have booted a dyne:bolic liveCD or downloaded the OSX binary), just open a terminal and type ‘tbt -h’, you will get this help:

TBT - Time Based Text - v0.7 - tbt.dyne.org
Usage: tbt [options] [file]

-h print this help
-v version information
-D debug verbosity level - default 1
-c console interface mode (S-Lang)
-r record tbt - option alias: rectext
-p playback tbt - option alias: playtext -m mail composer - option alias: recmail -s save format in [ bin | ascii | html ] -x convert binary tbt to html or ascii

which suggests various possibilities to write your message, for example to simply write a message type:

tbt -c -r mymessage.tbt

and type your message, once done quit pressing ctrl+c

you can then play the message on the screen with:

tbt -c -p mymessage.tbt

in case you want to create a web TBT do

tbt -c -r -s html mymessage.html

then type and quit with ctrl+c

you can then upload mymessage.html to your website together with the tbt javascript code to be put in the same directory.

TBT currently also include a full website with “guestbook” functionality for others to upload their TBT, it is written in PHP and quite easy to setup on a normal web server.

Jaromil is a free software programmer, a media artist and activist. He has made significant contributions to the development of multimedia and streaming applications on the GNU/Linux platform (the free counterpart of commercial brands like Microsoft and Macintosh). He was born in Pescara, Italy, but now lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is author of the dyne:bolic GNU/Linux liveCD, and of various free software projects, including MuSE (a streaming server) and FreeJ (a free VJ software to live mix and adjust images and sounds). As an artist, he has created performances and netart works as the :(){ :|:& };: forkbomb (when typed in the command line of a Unix system the computer crashes). He also founded dyne.org in 2000 under the flag of Freedom of Creation, playing hybrid between the fields of politics, art and technology.

Annet Dekker is program manager at Virtueel Platform and freelance curator and researcher based in Amsterdam.

The advances in computer entertainment, multi-player /online gaming, technology-enabled art, culture and performance have created new forms of entertainment that attract, immerse and absorb their participants. The phenomenal success of such a “culture” to initiate a mass audience in patterns and practices of its own consumption has supported the evolution of an enormously powerful mass entertainment, digital art and performance industry extending deeply into every aspect of our lives, leading further to major societal and business contacting changes.

The International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA), in cooperation with ACM, is the premier forum for the presentation of societal, business and technological advances and research results in cross-disciplinary areas related with digital interactive media in entertainment, art and creative technologies. This conference is dedicated to build common ground between research, design and development, learning and collaboration in its myriad digital media forms: one of its many objectives is the exploration of ‘play & learn’, demonstrating new arenas and applications for digital gaming and incorporating leading edge technologies, designs and models in our changing views about what is involved in gaming.

DIMEA 2008 is jointly organized by Athens Information Technology (AIT), ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI, Singapore Chapter) and the Society for Excellence and Innovation in Interactive Experience Design (InExDe).

DIMEA 2008 will bring together academics, technologists, artists, designers, and industry representatives to address and advance the leading edge of new digital and interactive media.

Who should attend:

Academics, Animators, Artists, Designers, Developers, Educators, Engineers, Game Designers, Industry Professionals, Media Industry, Video Producers, Directors, Writers, Performers, Photographers, Videographers, Researchers, Students. Anyone who wants to be inspired to adopt advanced ways in industry, society, business, research and teaching, expand their knowledge on a wide variety of topics within the field of digital media, network with cross-disciplinary experts from digital media professionals to academic experts, and evolve with this ever-changing field!

DIMEA 2008 is one of the few conferences that combines full technical papers as well as artwork / game / demo submissions, to accommodate, after evaluation and selection, both technical oral sessions as well as artwork / game / demo exhibition sessions. For each one of the two tracks of the conference further information is separately provided below.

Technical Conference Track: The following, non exclusive, topics are called for:

Entertainment, Art and Technology - Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Commercial Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, Analysis of Games, e-Performance (e-Opera,e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art

Digital Visual and Auditory Media - Digital Photography, Digital Imaging as Art, Advances in 3D Modelling, Digital Printing, Non-Photorealistic Rendering, Digital Sound and Music, Digital Music Synthesis and Composition, Graphics and Animations, Digital Comics

Moving Media - Digital Video, Distance Collaboration/Performance, Computer Animation, Interactive Movies

Culture of New Media - Network Culture, Philosophy of New Media, Digital Identity

Interactive Stories - Digital Narrative, Digital Asset Management, Semantic Web Technologies, Interactive Television and Cinema, Game Design and Storytelling

Full Paper Submissions: Prospective authors are invited to submit full technical papers of not more than 8 pages, including tables, figures and references at the conference online paper submission system. Prospective authors should adhere to the conference full paper submission guidelines. Full Papers should present original research related to the above mentioned scientific areas, not published elsewhere. Please refer to the conference Web site for detailed submission guidelines. Full papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers from the International Technical Program Committee in a single-blind process, judging on their relevance, novelty and technical quality.

Art Work / Game / Demo Exhibition Conference Track: DIMEA 2008, with the participation of the MEDIATERRA FESTIVAL, aims to offer the opportunity to artists, independent creators, multimedia authors, programmers and theorists to exhibit their digital interactive rich-media works in art and entertainment, and at the same time to create a forum of communication, discussion and collaboration on advances in the already deployed practices.

We cordially invite artists, creators, designers, game developers, generally practitioners working with digital interactive media to submit their original contributions to the DIMEA2008 Artworks / Games / Demos exhibition track, in the context of the following five DIMEA 2008 subject art-related areas:

Entertainment, Education, Art and Technology: Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, e-Performance (e-Opera, e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI, Semantic Web Technologies, Digital Identity

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art, Artificial Entities

Digital Visual and Moving Media - Computer Animation, Interactive Movies, Advances in 3D Modeling, Semantic-based Approaches, Real-time 3D

Interactive Media - Digital Narrative, Interactive Television and Cinema, Interactive Drama, Interactive Storytelling

Match-Making Sessions: April 16, 9:00 am UK, 8:00 pm NZ - find your local time here + April 16/17, 10:00 pm (Wednesday) UK, 9:00 am (Thursday) NZ - find your local time here + April 23, 12 noon UK, 11:00 pm NZ - find your local time here. Come to the matchmaking session if you would like to find collaborators for an 080808 performance, or collaborate on someone else’s performance.

If you have an idea for a performance, please prepare a short pitch - no more than 5 minutes long. Don’t worry about visuals at the moment, but think how best to describe your idea in words, and think about what sort of collaborators you are looking for.

To join any of these sessions, email info [at] upstage.org.nz for a log-in (if you have previously used a guest log-in you must still email us, as many people use the guest log-ins and it will not work if more than one person tries to log in with the same username. We will be issuing personal log-ins once we have selected the 080808 performances).

The 080808 Upstage Festival aims to create a participatory space for collaboration, creation, and for the presentation of current cyberformance. The festival provides a platform (and shares the technical expertise) to enable artists to experiment with the new medium, and to have their work seen alongside performances by internationally renowned practitioners - in a celebration of the evolution and diversity of online performance practices.

Another reason Thayer released an online version is because of its “documentation.” The “about this work” link reveals the source-code for the work, which Thayer has open-sourced under a GPL license. He writes “The source-code is presented in a framework I’ve designed called CodeChat.”

Separated into three categories — (1) Visualizer client (what you see), (2) Image retrieval, image manipulation and network communication, and (3) Real-time seismic data retrieval — “it’s a web-based, threaded discussion forum that allows for separate discussion at each line of the code. What I do to start things off is put in a few comments, trying to focus mostly on the conceptual and aesthetic implications of the lines I choose to comment on as I want the discussion to be more at that level rather than a technical level. By doing this what I’m pointing out … is that everything you need to know about the work is in the code … (which) can easily be materialized … (W)hen galleries and museums are wondering how to preserve this type of art, they should be looking at preserving the source-code.“

Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited (2006-2008) is a live performance series, which utilizes Web code as choreography. In these performances Endlicher embodies the “character” of a Website - this time she has a cast of performers joining her! - and performs its html code, which is fed in from the Web “on the fly”. During each of the performances the source code of the website is immediately translated into ongoing movement instructions, representing different html tags. These instructions derive from the html-movement-library, an online database of user-submitted movement suggestions, and from other parts of the html language. The sound accompanying the performance is another translation of the code - it is interpreted as a musical score. The audience on location is invited to participate in the html dance.

Credits:
Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited #10, #7, and #1
Concept / Stage / Video Projection / Music / Web Programming: Ursula Endlicher
Choreography: html-movement-library / live HTML code
Performers: Nancy Agabian, Robert Appelton, Ursula Endlicher, Laura Meyers
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION ENCOURAGED!

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.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer considers her Commodore 64 computer and Fisher Price loom to be defining objects of her childhood. Using knitting and sweets she creates physical representations of digital information and computation and is currently researching the intersection of textiles, technology, and the body. Egenhoefer is supported by the Textile Futures Research Group at the University of the Arts as part of the Distributed South initiative. Her residency will showcase the development of software that provides motion tracking for knitting needles. Egenhoefer explains: “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.”

Dr Barbara Rauch, research fellow at the Chelsea College of Art, combines consciousness studies with digital art theories and practices. She explores evolutionary aspects of human and animal facial expression to reveal conscious and subconscious experience. Rauch is currently the co-investigator of a two-year AHRC project The Personalised Surface Within Fine Art Digital Printmaking. Much of her work uses data capture technologies, digital print technology, visualisation of digital 3D work, animation, sound, drawings and performance.

Nicola Naismith, lecturer at Norwich School of Art and Design, explores the ordinary qualities in everyday items, for example the white shirt and the sewing needle, using a combination of digital and analogue processes. Simple objects are subject to complex questions concerning production, labour, value and the human-machine. Naismith represents these ideas through works that unravel operations between hand, eye, brain, body and machine.

Following presentations, Dr Jane Harris, Director of TFRG, Helen Sloan, Director of SCAN and Jess Laccetti, Institute of Creative Technologies, will conduct a panel discussion with the artists.

Media Art: challenge or cheat?: Take part in our discussion & have your say on art that comes out of a computer. Is art art, whatever tools you use to make it? Or does the use of digital technology constitute a kind cheating? For three days in March, The ICA, responsible for one of the earliest exhibitions of computer-generated art, Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968, plays host to a series of discussions on the state of Media Art today.