MTAA shoot and simultaneously screen two films’ starring you. Are you great at off-the-cuff repartee? Look good taking a nap? Able to read bad sci-fi scripts out loud without laughing? Or are you just perfect at hanging out and being you? MTAA needs you to star in our low budget and barely (if at all) scripted film. Think Chelsea Girls meets Plan 9 from Outer Space while watching Empire. If Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind” at Deitch Projects is about the positive power of DIY, MTAA’s Self-Selected Super St*rs is about the malaise of knowing that all future ‘it’ girls will never really be Edie. It’s about the ever present fear of running out of beer before the night ends.

Here’s how it works: Two directors/camera operators will set up at Light Industry deep in the heart of Brooklyn. The space will have some cheap/random props and costumes. If you want some acting direction, we’ll have scripts and improv notes ready. If acting isn’t your thing, just come in and be your fabulous self. The shooting will be continuous and casual with both films projected live for your viewing pleasure. Join us for the entire shoot or just walk in for your close-up.

Arcade machine, 2 joysticks, 2 tvs, coin dispenser, 5 diy arduino based network, 26 led score display, 2 motors, 2 fans, 4 optocoupled h-bridges, 2 printer head mechanics, hair dryer, 2 infra-red sensors, 4 switches, 2 potenciometers, button, 220v 5v relay system, 2 fluorescent lamps, 8 power supplies, wood structure, tripod, video camera.

Pong is an analog recreation of the 70’s Atari arcade video game, relating the new technologies available for developing artwork and an investigation on physical interaction and natural processes. The recreation of a lengendary game reflecting today’s new media, post-digital and diy art creation.

Made by Atari and released in 1972 the Pong game was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity in both arcade and home console. Since then and more lately history has been giving it full credit for having launched the initial boom in the video game industry. This game can be seen as the first world known digital interactive experience, the artist’s idea was to re-build it using a different approach and excluding some of the stiff reaction that the programming algorithms had, replacing them for physical ones, more precisely the use of wind to control a light ball, for example, a ping pong ball. For its operation method Andre Gonçalves is using mechanical hardware instead of being solely a digital piece.

In some of his latest projects Gonçalves has been using a policy of recycling old obsolete hardware, using “dead-media” as the basic hardware for developing his projects. For Pong the most important parts in the operation method are old A3 printers, taking advantage of their mechanical sliding axis system, and replacing the printer head with a 12cm computer fan which is being used as the raquet that pushes the ball forth.The motors and most of the sensors and switches used were also taken from old printers. The arcade machine was bought cheap from an arcade games dealer.

Pong is a two-piece installation. The main piece is a self-made wooden structure where all the physical action of the game occurs, the game area seen on the arcade main monitor through a video camera. This structure also hosts all of the electronics behind its working method. The other piece is the traditional arcade wooden box with attached analog joysticks, buttons, coin dispenser and 2 tv screens, one showing the graphics and another with the game view. Both pieces are connected through a cable. The two joysticks will be attached for controlling the movement, up and down for the left and right motion of the fans, left and right for the amount of the wind power blown by the fans.

The game starts after inserting one coin and pressing one button, both the score numbers will flash on zero, the ball is released in the game and both joysticks activated to let users play the game, the scoring is increased as the ball falls off one of the ends of the table, replaced on game and carrying on until one player reaches nine points.

Pong was supported by the Ernesto de Sousa Fellowship.

Disclosures is a multi-faceted project that looks at the manifestations of Open Source methodologies in fields of cultural production outside of the Internet. Openness – or its technological underpinning, Open Source – here refers to situations in which the viewer, reader, listener or Internet user becomes emancipated through egalitarian participation, collaborative authorship and/or the breaking down of hierarchical and social boundaries.

If openness is found in varied cultural practices, it matches certain systems and economies (internet-based or media practices) better than others (the artworld or the film and music industries). Issues around Intellectual Property and copyright – and the question of whether or not diffuse authorship and unrestrictive distribution are financially viable – come immediately to mind. Meanwhile, assessing the socio-economic, political and cultural conditions for openness is a necessary step.

A second reading of openness revolves around the idea of transparency and of availability of information. Of relevance here are practices which are committed to releasing public information and resources that have been out of civic reach for political, economic, historic or bureaucratic reasons. Disclosures will address histories and genealogies that inscribe themselves outside of the rigid bonds of ‘monopolistic’ versus ‘alternative’ social and cultural activity.

A range of practitioners, from tactical media practitioners, to cultural theorists, music producers and artists, will help identify and discuss references and strategies that have been common to two interrelated areas of practice: critical media practice and socially-collaborative work in the expanded visual art field. The various facets of the project will attempt to find a common language and to set up the basis for improved understanding and greater collaboration between the two fields.

LAUNCH

Date: Thursday 27 March 2008, 20.00–01.00
Location: Mother/333
Participants: Oliver Ressler | Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive)

SEMINAR

Dates: Saturday 29 - Sunday 30 March 2008, 10.30–19.30
Location: Toynbee Hall (Saturday 29th) and Middlesex Street Estate (Sunday 30th)
Participants: Electronest | Critical Practice | Ilze Black | Tim Jones | Saul Albert | Marina Vishmidt | The MicroPolitics Research Group | Nenad Romic | Simon Sheikh | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Neil Kenlock | Marysia Lewandowska | Toni Prug | Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran | Adnan Hadzi | Harold Offeh | The People Speak | Emily Druiff | Tony Nwachukwu and Gavin Alexander | Matthew Fuller | Usman Haque | Tsila Hassine | Goldin+ Senneby | agency | Mai Abu ElDahab | Francis McKee | Rodrigo Nunes

FILM AND READING LIBRARY

Dates: Preview on Thursday 10 April, runs till Sunday 18 May. Open Wed-Sun, 12.00–18.00
Location: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London SE11 5RH
Films by: Shaina Anand | Amy Balkin | Neil Cummings, Marysia Lewandowska, Eileen Simpson, Ben White | Carles Guerra | Nicoline von Harskamp | Tsila Hassine | Abhishek Hazra | Kurator | The League of Noble Peers | Oliver Ressler | Ashok Sukumaran

FLOATING EVENTS

Date: Thursday 10 April, 18.30-19.30
Location: Gasworks
Event: Deleted Swedish stories. A performative lecture by artist Petra Bauer to launch the library.

Date: Friday 11 April, 19.00-21.00
Location: Gasworks
Screening: Lavorare con Lentezza - Radio Alice 100.6 Mhz (2004) dir. Guido Chiesa, scriptwriters: Guido Chiesa and Wu Ming (duration 111 min); followed by a discussion with artist Petra Bauer and philosopher Rodrigo Nunes.

Date: Monday 21 April, 11.00-16.00
Location: Ben Pimlott Building, Seminar Room, Digital Studios, Goldsmiths University of London, New Cross SE14 6NW
Workshop: Taxi to Praxi (and back again): the next layer research day, a collaboration between Armin Medosch and Adnan Hadzi to address and discuss some of the generic, rather than discipline-specific, challenges of undertaking practice-based research within academia.

Date: Sunday 18 May, 12.00-20.00
Location: Gasworks
Screening: La Commune (1999) dir. Peter Watkins (duration 345 min). Includes breaks with refreshments, food and discussions. This event will mark the closing of the library.

Disclosures is supported by Arts Council England, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation and the Austrian Cultural Forum, London. Disclosures is part of NODE.London Spring ‘08.

About Gasworks: Founded in 1994, Gasworks is an art organisation based in South London, housing twelve artists’ studios and proposing a programme of exhibitions and events, artists’ residencies, international fellowships and educational projects. Gasworks focuses on visual arts practice in its broadest sense, working discursively with UK-based and international artists to facilitate the development of their work. Gasworks’ programme is committed to providing a responsive context for the work of emerging and mid-career artists, and to disseminating critical practices to a wider audience. Gasworks is part of Triangle Arts Trust, an international network of artists and organisations.

What does it mean to think “green”? Eyebeam’s expansive new exhibition, FEEDBACK, surveys artists, designers, architects and engineers on the topic of sustainability, and presents their responses—19 projects varying from public art projects and industrial design to DIY energy solutions and software tools—to inspire discussion and action on this pervasive (and increasingly commodified) subject.

As the culmination of Eyebeam’s Beyond Light Bulbs programming series, the show highlights the concerns, interests and work of Eyebeam’s Sustainability Research Group, with work by individuals, collectives, students, local community groups and the Eco-Vis Challenge winners. Free, artist-run workshops are integral to the exhibition’s design and are scheduled Saturdays throughout the show’s duration.

The exhibition’s title, FEEDBACK, refers to the self-correcting mechanisms by which systems—in this case, ecological—respond to the influence they exert on their environments. The works on display echo this recursive dynamic, from Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley’s DrinkPeeDrinkDrinkPee sewage processing organ, to Natalie Jeremijenko’s tadpole-dispensing prescription from the walk-in Environmental Health Clinic for the ecologically unwell. In direct response to the world’s loss of crop biodiversity—as much as 70 percent in the 20th century—Leah Gauthier’s Sow-In will engage the public, in partnership with local community gardening groups, to sow the seeds of those food plants most in danger of extinction.

Numerous projects in the exhibition address energy consumption, production and harvesting: A visitor enters the exhibition through Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door, a modified revolving door that harnesses and redistributes human energy. Mouna Andraos’ The Power Cart is a mobile unit that delivers alternative power to people on the street, and Jeff Feddersen’s installation The Off-Grid Outlet is a solar-powered AC outlet and 12V DC power port destined for the Brooklyn restaurant Cafe Habana. Building on existing urban infrastructure, Andrea Polli’s Queensbridge Wind Power Project investigates how clean, renewable wind power might be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge.

A need to track, understand and communicate environmental change is at the heart of Preemptive Media’s Area’s Immediate Reading project, a portable, air quality monitoring device for urban individuals and groups to self-identify pollution sources, and a platform to discuss energy politics. The Living’s Living City is a design for an ecology of facades in which individual buildings collect data, share it with others in their social network via wireless transmission, and respond to the collective body of knowledge. Michael Mandiberg’s The Real Costs, a Firefox plug-in that inserts emissions data into travel related e-commerce websites, presents yet another means of using environmental data—on the level of individual consumption.

Recognizing that poorly communicated messages often fall on deaf ears, FEEDBACK artists Eve Mosher and Brooke Singer translate existing information into immediate and digestible forms. Mosher’s HighWaterLine is a public artwork on NYC’s waterfront that demonstrates the impact of climate on NYC residents. Over a period of six months, Mosher drew a blue chalk line marking the 10- feet above sea level line, demarcating the areas most at risk for flooding. Brooke Singer’s Superfund365, A Site-A-Day, is an online data visualization application with an accompanying RSS- feed and email alert system. Each day for a year, beginning September 1, 2007, Superfund365 profiles one toxic site currently active within the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Eyebeam’s 2007 Eco-Vis Challenge competition asked artists and designers to persuasively package eco-data, within two categories: icons and visualizations. Six winning and finalist projects are showcased in FEEDBACK. The winning entry in the Eco-Visualization category was The Studio for Urban Projects’ Strange Weather, a project that considers the semiotics of global environmental change. Relying on Internet news sources, Strange Weather graphs the usage patterns of the buzzwords that characterize the dialog around climate change, on the premise that language is critical to how we perceive and address our role within the environment.

The Green Map® System’s Green Map® Icons is a suite of icons designed collaboratively, and spread to more than 50 countries around the globe, for assessing environmental resources currently available to local communities. Version 3 of this iconography received an Honorable Mention in the data visualization category.

Timm Kekeritz’s VirtualWater and WaterFootprint posters, which received an Honorable Mention within the Eco-Vis category, function as illustrated summaries of the virtual water issue, mapping freshwater use against consumption patterns, and across nations. Annina Rüst’s Eco-Vis submission, which also received an Honorable Mention, addresses consumption and excess quite literally. Her eRiceCooker tracks Internet news about genetically modified rice; at each report published online, the cooker dispenses a quarter cup of rice into the pot; at four quarters full, water is added, the rice is cooked, and participants are notified their meal is ready via email.

The art group Forays received an Honorable Mention for their Edible Excess icon-stickers designating edible waste, and Oz Etzioni’s Unrecyclable was named the winner within the Eco-Icon category, for his icon designating unrecylable material. Both demonstrate the power of effective imagery in raising environmental awareness.

A series of short video-documentaries by Brooklyn artists’ collective Not An Alternative, commissioned especially for FEEDBACK, documents the making of each of the displayed projects, providing insight into the creative process. These videos will be screened in the main gallery, and will be available for download from Eyebeam’s website (for portable .mpeg playing devices), or for viewing on personal PlayStations available for loan during the exhibition.

The exhibition design is by Fluxxlab, and the series of paneled displays enclosing an expanse of vibrant green artificial turf in FEEDBACK references an aesthetic of trade shows and science fairs. The suggestive use of donated, recycled and blatantly artificial grass designates a central commons, posing questions without easy answers: Is artificial turf truly eco-unfriendly?

All 19 projects on display in FEEDBACK are designed to enlighten and entertain, challenge and inspire, and ultimately compel viewers to move beyond passive spectatorship. Toward this end, Fred Beneson’s Committeecaller.com, a website application that enables one person to target an entire congressional committee over the phone, will be featured in the exhibition. Three telephones for use with CommitteeCaller will be available to exhibition visitors and three local community groups, including SolarOne and Sustainable South Bronx, will offer agendas and talking points for their use.

Artist-led workshops will offer a unique opportunity to brainstorm with FEEDBACK artists and experiment with the methods, tools and strategies on display. The following public programs will take place in conjunction with FEEDBACK; all are free and open to the public.

Projects + Links

• Andrea Polli, The Queensbridge Wind Power Project: http://www.andreapolli.com/queensbridge
• Annina Rüst, eRiceCooker: http://web.media.mit.edu/~rusti/eRiceCooker
• Brooke Singer, Superfund365, http://www.superfund365.org
• Eve Mosher, HighWaterLine, http://www.highwaterline.org
• Fluxxlab (Jennifer Broutin and Carmen Trudell), Revolution Door, http://www.fluxxlab.com
• Forays (Geraldine Juárez and Adam Bobbette), Edible Excess, http://www.forays.org
• Green Map® System, Green Map® Icons, http://www.greenmap.org
• Leah Gauthier, Sow-In, http://www.leahgauthier.com
• Michael Mandiberg, The Real Costs, http://therealcosts.com
• Mouna Andraos, The Power Cart, http://missmoun.com
• Preemptive Media, Area’s Immediate Reading (AIR), http://www.pm-air.net
• Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, DrinkPeeDrinkPeeDrinkPee, http://www.submersibledesign.com/drinkpee/
• Roger Marvel Architects, http://www.rogersmarvel.com/GovsIsland.html
• The Living (David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang), Living City, http://www.thelivingnewyork.com/
• The Studio for Urban Projects, Strange Weather, http://www.strangeweatherproject.net
• Timm Kekeritz, VirtualWater and WaterFootprint, http://www.traumkrieger.de/virtualwater/
• Fred Beneson, CommitteeCaller, http://www.committeecaller.com/
• Natalie Jeremijenko, The Environmental Health Clinic, http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/index_projects.html
• Sustainable South Bronx, http://www.ssbx.org/
• SolarOne, http://solar1.org/
• Not an Alternative, http://thechangeyouwanttosee.org

Credits: Curators: Amanda McDonald Crowley (Executive Director), Liz Slagus (Director of Education and Public Programs), Paul Amitai (Exhibitions and Programming Coordinator), in collaboration with Eyebeam’s Sustainabilty Research Group. Exhibition designers: 2007 Eyebeam Residents and active participants in the Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group, Jenny Broutin and Carmen Trudell of Fluxxlab. Videographer: Commissioned artist and friend of Eyebeam, Jason Jones of Not An Alternative. Artificial Turf donated by Forever Green.

Biology plays an increasingly pervasive role in international society and our lives—a role that artists are responding to with a diverse array of practices. Some have started to collaborate with research labs to engage with organic materials; others buy DIY biology sets reminiscent of the early computer kits of the late ´70s. All are getting their hands into the material of life itself to reflect upon some of the most complex issues society has to deal with: the integration of biotechnology in quotidian life, and the ethical, cultural, and even political consequences of scientific discovery.

The UrbanSpaceStation (USS) is a device designed to sequester the carbon dioxide emissions from buildings (which account for 80% carbon dioxide emissions in Manhattan and 35% of the national average) and return oxygen-enriched air to the building. It provides an intensive urban agriculture facility, coupling and reusing building waste streams locally, and potentially providing significant food. Called the USS because it appropriates materials, power generation and closed system engineering of space stations to significantly increase the environmental performance of urban buildings, it creates new urban space that can service a 10x building volume. The Trusset Space-frame and ETFE system is designed to be built and deployed as a barn raising, rather than through the traditional construction industry and pre-engineered to require no substantial structural modification of support building, circumvent permitting and perform in 100-year storm events; the USS nonetheless operates at a scale of small collectives (of students for instance) and in a DIY tradition. Maximizing participation in the deployment is an investment in the distributed capacity to improve, maintain and redesign these systems. The designs details are presented and discussed.

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko’s projects—which explore socio-technical change—have been exhibited by several museums and galleries, including the MASSMoCA, the Whitney, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt. A 1999 Rockefeller Fellow, she was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine. Jeremijenko is the director of the environmental health clinic at NYU, assistant professor in Art, and affiliated with the Computer Science Dept.

We have no fixed idea of what qualifies as robotic art; if you think it’s a robot and you think it’s art, we encourage you to submit your work. Regardless of whether it’s hi-tech, low-tech, or neg-tech, we’re interested in the ideas you’re working with, not just the gear. Proposals for workshops, performances, and other kinds of participation are also welcome.

Each ArtBots is a bit different; the location changes and we invite new humans to co-curate the show with us. We hope that by changing the specifics of the show each year we can keep it accessible to a diverse range of people, works, and ideas.

This year’s co-curators are: Warren Ellis: author of novels, comics, video games, and screenplays; blogger and creator of numerous online forums; Marie Redmond: computer science professor; director of the MSc Multimedia Systems Course, Trinity College; entrepreneur; Douglas Repetto: artist and teacher; Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center, director and founder of ArtBots, dorkbot, organism, and music-dsp.

ArtBots is a hands-on, community-oriented show, run by and for artists. Participating artists install their own work and are present during the show to meet one another, maintain their pieces, and talk with visitors. Each participant is given a 1000 Euro artist fee to help cover the cost of attending. All costs, including shipping, travel, lodging, meals, etc., are the responsibility of the artist. While we cannot provide additional monetary resources, we are happy to provide invitation letters or other documents that might help artists with local grant applications, sponsorships, etc.

Important Dates:

Deadline for entries: 1 May
Acceptance notifications sent: 2 June
Artists confirm participation by: 16 June
Show load-in and installation: 16-18 September
Show open: 19-21 September
Breakdown and load-out: 22 September

The Science Gallery is a new public science centre located in the heart of Dublin city. A place where ideas meet, the Gallery will bring together people with diverse interests and backgrounds including creative thinkers and young innovators, to connect, explore, create, debate and share ideas on science, technology and the arts, opening up these fields to new audiences. The Science Gallery ’space’ consists of a 144-seater multimedia theatre, studios, café and stunning open gallery space, providing an ideal location for new emerging creative talent to be discovered through a programme of changing exhibitions, events and workshops. With a target audience of 15 year olds up and an emphasis on creating a collaborative community, the Science Gallery, which launched in February 2008 with LIGHTWAVE, a nine-day festival exploring the art and science of controlling light already has over 2000 members.

Lunchbox Laboratory is a prototype for a potentially distributed research tool that would be sent to schools such that young scientists could do primary screening of a collection of algae strains. This would serve as a preliminary screening such that non productive strains would be ruled out and only productive strains would reach labs. This project enables students to participate in big science as well as network with other students nationwide to compare notes. [via]