Prior to this trip, I had spent several years working in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate information through sound (a process called sonification). I created a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; a series of sonifications of actual and projected climate in New York City’s Central Park, and one of the world’s first locations for climate monitoring; and a real-time multichannel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. I used data in my projects that I had collected from remote weather stations, but had never visited them. In going to Antarctica, I hoped to find a way to engage more directly with the issue of global climate change…” Continue reading Andrea Polli on Ground Truth, NYFA Current.

A project of Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses, Lumens is an installation of lamps networked across three spaces: Greylock Arts, MCLA Gallery 51, and Turbulence.org. Scores of personal lamps that usually inhabit and illuminate the interiors of homes and shops have been borrowed from the residents of Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts, filling two gallery spaces: Greylock Arts in Adams and MCLA Gallery 51 Annex in North Adams. In addition, their images and stories are represented on turbulence.org, which also serves to connect the two locations telematically.

Clusters of lamps have been outfitted with proximity sensors and arduino microcontrollers. Lamps illuminate in response to a visitor’s presence and simultaneously illuminate lamps in the counterpart spaces. Thus, an individual in Adams can communicate his/her presence to an individual in North Adams, and vice versa. Additionally, as visitors investigate the history of a particular lamp online it will also illuminate in the physical gallery space.

Lumens (re)connects North Adams and Adams — originally a single community — through an exploration of location, influence, history, and the present.

Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses is a collaboration of Greylock Arts, MCLA Gallery 51, and Turbulence. Lumens has been made possible through the generous support of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the LEF Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Physical interaction consultant Tom Igoe.
Special thanks to: Larry Alice, Michael Chapman, Abbi Hermosa.

FIGMENT is a celebration of creative culture from June 27-29, 2008 on Governors Island in New York Harbor. It provides an open forum for artists, helps build a creative community, and fosters participatory and public art. A broad spectrum of arts are represented, including sculpture, performance, music, installation, dance, costuming and activities. It is free and open to the public.
Among the projects planned for this event are:
Starlight on the Island—A series of solar panel powered, spherical steel sculptures that will absorb sunlight to light the island at night.

The Rose Petal Pool—The creators of this multi-media, interactive sound installation encourage children of all ages to enjoy the rich sensory experience.

Arbor Animus (Spirited, Courageous Tree)—The artist collective will bring their 16-foot tall, multi-media (metal, wood, LED lights) American Willow Tree to Governors Island as part of the sculpture’s 2008 national tour of major art festivals.

FIGMENT 2008 will also offer a range of offerings by video and film artists sharing both their personal and collective expressions—often influenced by Governors Island— including the documentation of the construction of an elaborate reclaimed wood sculpture and one NY native’s 1979 marriage in the island’s Trinity Church.

Other FIGMENT art installations will incorporate such innovative materials and resources as telescopes, a teepee, 2,000 silver colored flags, and a pair of five-foot tall wooden lips! The majority of sculptures and art pieces are touchable and climbable—resulting in much art that is interactive and child-friendly.

The work of both emerging and established choreographers will be featured as part of the many dance performances taking place throughout the 3-day event. Similarly, FIGMENT 2008 will have a range of performance art offerings, including such original and unusual unions as the merging of creative writing with art and improvisational drama exercises with therapeutic movement, sound, and role-play. In addition, visitors to the island can participate in the creation of pop-trash poetry done karaoke style, Ukrainian body painting, private readings at the “Poetry Brothel,” and the “intrepid” use of cameras to record various urban explorations.

The musical offerings of FIGMENT 2008 are extensive, as well as exceptional in their variety and innovation. They range from boogie and classic rock to futuristic Brooklyn hip-hop to the “healing” sounds of electric keyboards to traditional bawdy German songs about murder, madness and mayhem—to the accompaniment of an organ grinder! Many of the performances are also representative of the collaborative spirit of multiple disciplines working together: a sound installation incorporating restaurant kitchen recordings, live electric flute accompanied by modern dancers, a mix of acoustic and electronic dance music resulting from remixes of Rwandan mass and folktronica.

Finally, humor permeates many of the offerings, as probably best represented by the Celtic vocalist who will be singing her heartfelt songs about love, loss and indigestion.

FIGMENT will include City of Dreams Mini Golf, a nine-hole mini golf course that will be installed on Governors Island from June 27 to October 5. It will be free and open to the public throughout the season. Each hole will be conceived, constructed and installed by a different artist or group of artists, all variations on the theme “City of Dreams.”

The following principles guide the development, production and experience of FIGMENT:

PARTICIPATION
FIGMENT is committed to the spirit of participation. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play.

DECOMMODIFICATION
We seek to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

INCLUSION
Anyone may be a part of FIGMENT. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

SELF-EXPRESSION
Self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

SELF-RELIANCE
FIGMENT encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

GIVING
FIGMENT is devoted to acts of gift giving and volunteering. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

COMMUNAL EFFORT
We value creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
We value civil society. Each participant in FIGMENT is responsible for helping to create a civil environment for all other participants. We will endeavor to produce this event in a way that fosters a civil society and that is socially responsible.

LEAVE NO TRACE
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves to leave each place in a better state than we found it.

IMMEDIACY
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

The articles section features new essays from a number of established and emerging scholars in the field. The topic of new forms and paradigms in performance emerges in essays such as Kate Rossmanith’s account of Bio Art, Jeffrey Morris’s discussion of digital music performance and Diana Smith’s account of Sydney based visual artists ‘The Kingpins’. We are especially excited to be publishing Meiling Cheng’s recent exploration of recent performance work in China.

Some of the essays:

Mapping Native Flora in NYC: The Choreography of Collaboration
Lise Brenner, Ulrich Lorimer & Katrina Simon

‘Mobility is our goal!’: challenging perceptions towards citizenship, migration and asylum seeking through performative interventions
Anja Kanngieser

The Augmented Theatre in Virtualised Society: See You in Walhalla
Eirini Nedelkopoulou

We Are Cells: BioArt, Semi-Livings, and Visceral Threat
Kate Rossmanith

‘Dragging’ Liveness in the Video Art of The Kingpins
Diana Smith

Featuring reviews of recent books by Rustom Bharucha, Mike Pearson, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris and the enormous Performance Cosmology from CPR in Wales. We also have Meg Mumford’s detailed analysis of recent publications on contemporary theatre in Europe by and Maggie Philiips’ discussion of new work by Ramsay Burt.

Embracing a Mediat[is]ed Modernity: An Approach to Exploring Humanity in Posthuman Music

in absentia is presented by DARE-DARE Centre de diffusion dart multidisciplinaire de Montral, located in Montreal in a park with no name between Saint-Laurent and Clark, between Arcade and the Rosemont/Van Horne overpass. The launch party will take place on June 24, 5-11 pm in the park with no name. This event is free and open to the public. There will be DJs and a cash bar and a possibly a laser light show if we find the time.

in absentia is a web-based writing project that addresses issues of gentrification and its erasures in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. In recent years many long-time low-income neighbours being forced out of Mile End by gentrification. So far fiction is the best way I’ve found to give voice these disappeared neighbours, and the web is the best place I’ve found to situate their stories. Our stories. My building is for sale; my family may be next. Faced with imminent eviction I’ve begun to write as if I’m no longer here, about a Mile End that is no longer here. By manipulating the Google Maps API, I am able to populate “real” satellite images of my neighbourhood with “fictional” characters and events. in absentia is a web “site” haunted by the stories of former residents of Mile End, a slightly fantastical world, a shared memory of the neighbourhood as it never really was but as it could have been.

The project will launch in Montreal in the Mile End’s parc sans nom on June 24, 2008 from 5-11PM. New stories will continue to be added until November 30, 2008.

The launch of in absentia marks the end of DARE-DARE’s Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine. On July 1st, DARE-DARE’s blue trailer will leave the vacant lot that was its home for two years and move towards Montreal’s downtown, in Cabot Square, corner Sainte-Catherine and Atwater. The launch of in absentia will be the last event held in the Mile End’s parc sans nom, so come on out and help make it a great one.

“When I first began writing this review I thought that I’d just be writing a couple of quick paragraphs in response to Glorious Ninth’s latest artwork Invisibility_Phial. However this work has not only uncovered for me aspects of the nature of their artistic collaboration, but also how bringing everyday life into art adds essential value to art and culture. Through their recent work, Glorious Ninth (Kate Southworth & Patrick Simons) have created an intriguing interface introducing a more personal and emotional context. Their own lives become part of the works, that serve to introduce us to their world via their intuitive, creative practice.” Read on >>

EAI presents a special evening with Michael Smith and Joshua White. Smith and White will screen works that they have produced together and speak about their long collaboration.

Over the last 11 years, Michael Smith and  Joshua White have collaborated on numerous videos and installations that incorporate Smith’s deadpan and wide-eyed alter-ego, “Mike.” Gullible and ever-hopeful, Smith’s eponymous character is an Everyman living in a media-saturated world that he does not really understand.

The retrospective Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators) opened at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas in 2007, and is currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia until August 3, 2008.

Mike has been central to Smith’s unique art practice since the 1970’s. Brought to life in a series of tragicomic videos and performances, Mike is a sweet but bland character who moves through sitcom-influenced sets and situations, while avoiding the traditional narrative arc. Mike goes nowhere. He embodies the mediocrity and stasis of a mass-produced American life.

Smith and White’s collaborative works incorporate White’s experience directing commercial television (including episodes of Seinfeld and The Max Headroom Show). White occupies a unique place in pop culture, being one of the main artists behind the influential and groundbreaking psychedelic light shows of the 1960’s. As the creator of the legendary Joshua Light Show, he designed shows for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, among others.

Since their collaboration began in 1997, Smith and White have worked together on a series of increasingly elaborate and sophisticated installations and videos. They have created scenarios featuring Mike as an artist, struggling businessman, or entrepreneur. Often the videos are incorporated into the installations and function as artifacts from Mike’s world, or as videos produced by Mike, which sometimes take the forms of infomercials. In their immersive installations, the viewer is transported into Mike’s hyper-ordinary world. 

BIOS:
Michael Smith received a B.A. from Colorado College in 1973, and studied in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He has received numerous awards and grants, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Smith’s video works, performances and installations have been exhibited internationally at a range of venues, including Christine Burgin Gallery, New York; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Caroline’s Comedy Club; Henson International Puppet Festival; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Hales Gallery, London; Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan and EDB Projects in Amsterdam. Smith is currently an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and lives in Austin, Texas and New York. 

Joshua White is an artist, director and producer based in New York City. He made his mark as the creator and director of the legendary Joshua Light Show at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in the late 1960s. White went on to design psychedelic light shows for Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Yayoi Kusama, among others. Later, he directed episodes of television programs such as Seinfeld, The Max Headroom Show, and Inside the Actors’ Studio. White’s film, Liquid Loops was recently included in the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era at Tate Liverpool and the Whitney Museum of American Art. White studied Theater at Carnegie Tech (Now Carnegie Mellon University) and Film at the University of Southern California

]]> http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2008/06/10/live-stage-michael-smith-and-joshua-white-at-eai-new-york/feed/ http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2008/04/22/softwhere-software-studies-workshop-la-jolla/ http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2008/04/22/softwhere-software-studies-workshop-la-jolla/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:44:09 +0000 jo http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2008/04/22/softwhere-software-studies-workshop-la-jolla/ SoftWhere: Software Studies Workshop :: May 21-22, 2008 :: Atkinson Hall, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA.

Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006), the Software Studies Workshop @ UCSD is a foundational event bringing together key U.S. scholars in this emerging area. The workshop will discuss what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. Our goal is for the workshop to result in publishing a founding statement on the field, as well as initiate a set of interdisciplinary project collaborations.

The workshop will take place in Atkinson Hall, home of Calit2, a pre-eminant research center for future computing and telecommunication, where the Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating with researchers on several exciting projects. The workshop has has also been timed to precede (and co-ordinate with) the HASTAC II conference which will begin in nearby UC Irvine on the evening of Thursday May 22.

Participants:

Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Geoff Bowker (Santa Clara University)
Benjamin Bratton (UCLA)
Matt Fuller (Goldsmiths)
Kate Hayles (UCLA)
Matt Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland)
Peter Lunefeld (ArtCenter)
Mark Marino (USC)
Michael (Mateas (UCSC)
Nick Montfort (MIT)
Rita Raley (UCSB)
Casey Reas (UCLA)
Warren Sack (UCSC)
Doug Sery (MIT Press)
Chandler McWilliams (UCLA)

Campus Participants:

Lev Manovich (UCSD)
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD)
Jeremy Douglass (UCSD)
Jordan Crandall (UCSD)
Brian Goldfarb (UCSD)
Jim Hollan (UCSD)
Stefan Tanaka (UCSD)
Geoff Voelker (UCSD)

More participants to be confirmed.

The DRHA (Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts) conference is held annually at various academic venues throughout the UK. The conference theme this year is to promote discussion around new collaborative environments, collective knowledge and redefining disciplinary boundaries.

The aim of the conference is to: * Establish a site for mutually creative exchanges of knowledge * Promote discussion around new collaborative environments and collective knowledge * Encourage and celebrate the connections and tensions within the liminal spaces that exist between the Arts and Humanities * Redefine disciplinary boundaries * Create a forum for debate around notions of the ’solitary’ and the collaborative across the Arts and Humanities * Explore the impact of the Arts and Humanities on ICT: design and narrative structures and visa versa.

There will be a variety of sessions concerned with the above but also with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and theorising around practice. There will also be various installations and performances focussing on the same theme. Keynote talks will be given by our plenary speakers who we are pleased to announce are Sher Doruff, Research Fellow (Art, Research and Theory Lectoraat) and Mentor at the Amsterdam School for the Arts, Alan Liu, Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara and Sally Jane Norman, Director of the Culture Lab, Newcastle University.

In addition to this, there will be various round table discussions together with a panel relating to ‘Second Life’ and a special forum ‘Engaging research and performance through pervasive and locative arts projects’ led by Steve Benford, Professor of Collaborative Computing, University of Nottingham. Also planned is the opportunity for a more immediate and informal presentation of work in our ‘Quickfire’ style events. Whether papers, performance or other, all proposals should reflect the critical engagement at the heart of DRHA.

The Deadline for submissions will be 30 April 2008 and abstracts should be approximately 1000 words.

Cambridge’s venues range from the traditional to the contemporary all situated within walking distance of central departments, museums and galleries. The conference will be based around Cambridge University’s Sedgwick Site, particularly the West Road concert hall, where delegates will have use of a wide range of facilities including a recital room and a ‘black box’ performance space, to cater for this year’s parallel programming and performances.

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.