As leading international festivals for art and digital culture as well as adventurous music and related visual arts, respectively, transmediale and club transmediale are calling for submissions to the transmediale Award competition and the Vilem Flusser Theory Award.

transmediale presents and pursues the advancement of artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural, political and economic impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience the technologies which impact virtually all aspects of our daily lives. As such, transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques that need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape global societies.

club transmediale (CTM) is a prominent international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound and club culture. CTM presents projects that experiment with new aesthetic parameters and new forms of cooperation, develop possibilities for informational and economic self-determination, and reflect on the role of contemporary music against the backdrop of technological and social transformations.

For the 2009 edition, the festivals have each set a specific thematic focus.

transmediale.09 - *DEEP NORTH* peers beyond the evolving alarmist scenarios of catastrophe prevalent in the often contradictory global warming debate. transmediale.09 shifts this focus to the global artistic, cultural, societal and philosophical consequences that the presumed imminent collapse of the polar ice barrier may trigger. Are we about to reach another historically succinct moment of unavoidable and cataclysmic change - a point of no return leaving in its wake uncontrollable global transformations? Does climate change elicit cultural change, a shifting of extremes or a collapse in established, systemic and network norms? *DEEP NORTH* becomes not a fixed location, but a paradigm transforming loss, scarcity, inertia and rivalry into urgent and revealing states of being and expression.

With *STRUCTURES* - Backing-Up Independent Audio-Visual Cultures, club transmediale.09 presents projects that spring from the critical, interdisciplinary and experimental practice at the intersections of sound and other art forms. In recent years, a new breed of hybrid projects and initiatives that merges experimental audio and media cultures has developed in the convergence-zone between pop culture, science, arts and media technologies.

This still remains primarily the domain of committed individuals and small, self-organised groups or networks that, often in the most precarious of circumstances, provide the supporting platform for these new artistic articulations and experiments. In its 10th year, CTM looks into the current state and potential development opportunities of these independent structures.

Together, transmediale and club transmediale invite the submission of works and projects that respond to these challenges and embody contemporary notions of art that embrace, question and enrich digital culture. Submissions of art works for both festivals participate in the *transmediale Award* 2009 while theoretical abstracts, papers and critical artistic positions are invited for the *Vilem Flusser Theory Award* with prizes totaling ca. 10.000 EURO.

transmediale is a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt :: club transmediale (CTM) is a project of DISK - Sound & Image Initiative e.V. :: transmediale is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation :: CTM is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

With the historic Santa Monica Pier and adjacent world-famous Santa Monica Beach as their space, a number of unique and inviting works by artists will illuminate the area for twelve celebratory hours.

Inspired by the wildly successful Nuit Blanche in Paris, Glow takes its spirit from the fabled grunion that live in locl waters and come ashore several times a year to spawn in the same creating a momentary sensation or iridescence.

Participating artists include Shih Chieh Huang and Usman Haque.

For more information: http://www.smgov.net/smarts/glow/index.html

UM will take place across central Lisbon - Bairro Alto, Chiado and Santos - in new spaces, artist lead independent venues, cultural meeting places and outside in public squares and on the street. Um includes one exhibition, concerts and performances, workshops, seminars.

Exhibition: June 19 - July 3, 2008 :: Conscious Space, Sonia Cillari, NL - Tape Loop, Andre Goncalves, PT; Crackle Canvas, Tom Verbruggen, NL; Patchery, Laetitia Morais, PT; Come and See the View, Kathy Hinde, UK; Delicate Boundaries, Chris Sugrue, US.

Concerts and Performances - June 20 - 21 :: Andy Moor, NL; A Cable Plays, Chris Surgue, US and Damian Stewart, NZ/PT; N.I.P. collective, UK/NL/PT; BOP, UK; Goodiepal, FO/UK; Rudolfo Quintas, PT
Turntable Reconstructions, DJ Sniff, US/NL; TokTek, NL.

Seminars - June 20 - 21

Panel 1: Gesture and Movement Based Interfaces - Speakers: Ivan Franco, Creative Director of Y-Dreams and artist, PT; Frank Balde, STEIM, designer, NL; Adriana Sa, artist and musician, PT; Chair: Takuro Lippit, musician and Artistic Advisor/STEIM, NL.

Panel 2: Landscape, Environment and Movement - Speakers: Pedro Appleton, PT - architect, Promontorio Architecture; Goncalo Velho, PT - researcher and anthropologist, Instituto Politecnico de Tomar & The Oporto Faculty of Arts; John Klima, US/PT - artist and game designer (tbc); Chair: Rui Trindade, CADA, PT.

Panel 3: People, Place and Distributed Communities - Speakers: Teresa Dillon, IRE/UK - artist - researcher-director, Polar Produce/N.I.P./UM; Luis Silva, PT - curator, Upgrade! Lisboa and Rhizome; Takuro Lippit, NL - musician and Artistic Advisor, STEIM; Paulo Raposo, PT - musician and director of Sirr records; Chair: Luisa Ribas, FBAUL, PT.

Panel 4: Extended Bodies within Mixed Reality Spaces and Places: Speakers - Paul Sermon, UK and Sonia Cillari, NL.

Workshops

- Wearin’ it - DIY wearable workshop, Andre Goncalves, PT
- Wii Undressed, Frank Balde/STEIM, NL
- Build your own electronic noise machine, Tom Bugs, UK
- Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra, Goodiepal, (FO/UK)

Initiation/Direction: Polar Produce :: Co-Production: CADA + NIP :: Funders: DGARtes, MInisterio Cultura, PRS Foundation.

SonarCinema, electronic music and the image
The programme has 14 menus, offering the opportunity to take a look at a constant creative effervescence scene. Projects like the documentary Part of the Weekend Never Dies about the Soulwax world tour, the videos from the Osaka, animations by E*Rock for the Audiodregs label, the fascinating portrait of the British company EMS in What the Future Sounded Like or the rise of dub in the early seventies as a result of a mix-up in a studio in Jamaica in the documentary Dub Echoes are some of the alternatives being projected in the CCCB Auditorium.

Sónar À La Carte:
- Digital Art À La Carte is part of the main theme of Cinema beyond Cinema
- Video À La Carte: the SonarCinema schedule at any time.
- Music À La Carte: the Sónar media library. A selection of the most outstanding and the latest in the audiovisual universe and current digital art, by a number of experts in the field.

SonarExtra:
- Red Bull Music Academy Lounge: The academy is ten years old, and it has hosted musicians who have succeeded in creating an exceptional mosaic of styles.
-Doropaedia – Producciones Doradas: An encyclopaedia of multimedia content that covers various concepts in different artistic disciplines.
- Museu del Cinema de Girona (Girona Film Museum): A journey through the attempts of humanity to capture images in movement.
- Hangar – Creating Space: The visual arts production and dissemination centre of with the highest profile in the city.
- Magnum. 10 sequences: An exhibition and workshop on the influence of film images on the collective imagination.

Talks and Debates:
- “Live Cinema, YouTube, short films and video games”: the curators of Digital Art À La Carte will analyse these new frameworks of audiovisual formalisation.
- Controleando featuring DJ Loomy. The new generation of MIDI controllers for DJs.
- 15 years of Sónar: characters like Mary Anne Hobbs and Heiko Hoffman will be analysing electronic music in the 21st century; Tara de Long will talk about her vision of ‘The female factor’ and artists like Jeff Mills, Arbol and Ewan Pearson will talk about the 15 years of Sónar.

Check out the range of performances for 080808 (http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=159), see if there is an RL access node near you [or offer one!] (http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=138) or from the comfort of your own computer join us for 080808 -

The timetable will be online soon (it’s quite a job to schedule 15 performances, 40 artists, 10 countries and a dozen time zones …) and everything happens on 8 August so put it in your diary now.

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
helen@creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.upstage.org.nz
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm
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Hubert Dreyfus, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy will deliver the keynote talk on the same day in which he analyzes Second Life from a philosophical perspective, exploring how thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger would respond to the virtual embodiment enabled by such systems.

On June 1, the Big Bang festival will showcase early cinematic work by media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, who will visit the theater live from Second Life throughout the event.

The opportunity to hear Philip Rosedale and Hubert Dreyfus, along with a host of thought-provoking artists and scholars, in the same room on the same day will provide the public an unparalleled opportunity to be hear diverse perspectives and participate in the discourse about how new media impact our lives. Seating is limited, register online soon (for a low $3.00)!

Recent Press: Daily Californian http://www.dailycal.org/article/101784/art_and_film_festival_seeks_to_displa y_and_reflect

Contra Costa Times http://www.contracostatimes.com/arts/ci_9404488?nclick_check=1

Featuring a site-specific installation by Nathan Peter from the WOOLOO.ORG community, the opening night will mark the beginning of two exciting weeks in Berlin. Taking place all around the city, NEW LIFE BERLIN will from June 1st to 15th take up the challenge of connecting the transnational resources of WOOLOO.ORG with the physical geography of Berlin to directly address the mechanisms of globalization.

Marissa Olson writes the following about her participation in this festival: “June 1-15: Every day at 6pm I’ll be performing as a parody of Martha Stewart, in a futuristic TV show entitled Assisted Living, which is focused on coping with the health & environmental challenges of living a life prolonged by technology. I’ll devise craft-projects and recipes for 130-year-olds, taping the show on-site before a “live studio audience.”

See the published program. In addition the curators invite members of the online community to participate throughout the festival itself.

By building participation into the program (while still retaining curatorial control), NEW LIFE BERLIN investigates the much discussed ‘online community’. How effective is this community? What binds this community together? What does ‘community’ mean today? Presenting projects from both artistic and sociological starting points, NEW LIFE BERLIN uses group participation to explore real-life cultural mobility.

NEW LIFE BERLIN is an entirely artist-run festival. WOOLOO.ORG has chosen Berlin as the festival location because of its growing position as the preferred meeting place for cultural practitioners from around the world. Constantly exchanging experiences, ideas, and knowledge with other like-minded individuals within (and far from) the urban confines of the city, the artists of Berlin are forming and fortifying new human collectives that transcend the boundaries of citizenship or nationality. In this way, the city’s artistic communities are building important models for understanding how new kinds of mobile, global networks are being established today.

NEW LIFE BERLIN directly engages the effects of our unprecedented 21st century mobility and treats the exhibition venue itself as a network of past and future sites. Utilizing public spaces and soon-to-be-developed real estate for festival presentations, NEW LIFE BERLIN has taken up the challenge of connecting the transnational resources of WOOLOO.ORG with the physical geography of Berlin to address the mechanisms of globalization. In contrast to traditional art festivals and biennials, their aim is not to represent a set of cultural conclusions, but to create a model for a fluid cultural landscape.

They invite you to join them in this challenge, and to participate in the projects that make up NEW LIFE BERLIN.

UTOPIA: The term utopia, ‘the non-place’, derived from old Greek ‘u-‘, non, and ‘tópos’, place, denotes a ‘nowhere’ which is untraceable and therefore projecting all longing into an unreachable beyond. Utopia is therefore an imagination which is thinkable as an idea, yet is not directly realisable. It is the great dream, concept, and vision of a world or a time with a new social, religious or technical order.

UTOPIA can be traced back to the book ‘De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque nova insula Utopia Libellus vere aureaus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus (Of the best state law and of the new island Utopia, truly a golden booklet, as pleasant as it is cheerful)’ by Thomas Morus which was first published in 1516. The text alludes to positive scenarios of technical, spatial and social constructs which have not been realised. Usually, technology plays a major role in utopian phantasms. More often than not their realistic implementation is a matter of availability of technology and very often it is – especially in digital art – the starting point of a work of art.

In 2008, Paraflows 08 UTOPIA will try to develop the perspective, the linguistic roots of which corresponds with last year’s exhibitions. In the context of the topic UTOPIA, we want to gather concepts of a possible future, draw perspectives, dreams and prognoses, dare take a prognostic look at the future. Directly tying in with last year’s festival topic UN_SPACE – which dealt with non-space and impossible spaces – this year we will again strive to provide a multi-layered examination involving the overwhelming architectonic and historical reality of the venue – the MAK Gegenwartskunstdepot Gefechtsturm Arenbergpark.

Further information on PARAFLOWS 08 UTOPIA can be found on www.paraflows.at Please submit proposals featuring contemporary artworks dealing with the topics mentioned above. Pleases send PDF-files via e-mail to utopia@paraflows.at or post mail to: paraflows c/o monochrom quartier 21, MQ
Museumsplatz, 1 A-1070 Vienna, AUSTRIA

Mandatory information for submissions:

1) name, institution (if existing), address, e-mail, phone number, website/s
2) submitted work: title, medium, author/artist, year of production
3) work description: 1 DIN A4-page maximum
4) technical explanation, room/space requirements (hardware, operating system, additional software)
5) biographies
7) documentation of earlier projects, e.g. a link to your website

Language: all submissions have to be in English or in German or need to have subtitles in one of the two languages. Works in any other language
have to include a text list in either German or English. We especially encourage international submissions.

DEADLINE: June 2nd, 2008

paraflows 08 / CONTACT
office@paraflows.at
Festival management: Judith Fegerl, Guenther Friesinger
Office: paraflows headoffice, c/o monochrom, quartier 21, MQ
A-1070 Vienna, Museumsplatz 1, Austria

Paraflows08 is supported by the City of Vienna, MA7, digital arts and cultures.

HACKfemEAST is an exhibition about women, technology and networks in Eastern Europe. The exhibition project HACK.Fem.EAST seeks to present experimental and artistic practices of artists and activists working in digital networks in Eastern Europe. Main topics are media, art and hacking. Main protagonists are women or projects in which women play an important role. Aim of the project is to provide and to develop a network platform. This is achieved through five elements: the exhibition, the opening event, two days of conferences, a publication in newspaper format and a website. Central idea is to involve women artists to develop independently their concept in each of the 14 rooms of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien and be part of the network formed by the all groups and artists/activists participating. Existing networks from 11 Eastern countries are at the heart of the project and form the basis of the exhibition. A total of 11 networks are invited to the various rooms of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien to introduce their work, their strategies and their aims in the form of video and computer installations, documentations and presentations. The result is a “network of networks”.

A two day long conference on 10 and 11 May, held at the outset of the project, intends to bring the lines and networks together and discuss on women perspective in the Eastern cultural scenario. Its aim is to provide a forum for a form of politics based on radical invention - media and Internet art projects, performances, network platforms, software development, artistic coding, organization of media festivals, etc.

On SUNDAY MAY 11th at 16h Kyd Campbell will give a talk about the development of tiny noise and some other projects she was a part of in Eastern Europe. This will be in the framework of the Activism and Accessibility of Technology panel. Kyd will talk alongside Andreea Carnu (RO) and Ana Filip (RO/SK), moderated by Jasmina Tesanovic (RS/USA).

The Saturday and Sunday conference program can be found here: http://hackfemeast.org/web/?page_id=8

tiny noise is a nomadic open concept audio art platform conceived by Toni Dimitrov [skopje] and Kyd Campbell [montreal] in february 2005. It started spontaneously as a d.i.y. experiment in forming an independent network by using global communication tools, personal contacts and experiences. The idea of tiny noise is to spread and connect experimental, provocative and adventurous music and sound projects at irregular times and in diverse places. tiny noise remains open to many sound/music forms, especially those enriched by other medias and looks to collaborate with other open projects.

info: tinynoise [at] gmail [dot] com
Kyd Campbell
Toni Dimitrov

Join us for Berkeley Big Bang 08, three days of new media and art hosted by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and the Berkeley Center for New Media, timed to link with 01SJ: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, a new media art biennial taking place June 4-8 in San Jose. Occurring together for the first time, these two events combine to create one of the nation’s largest gatherings of new media art, a week-long “big bang” of innovation and creativity. The Berkeley Big Bang program will include a two-day symposium on new media, art, science, and the body in partnership with Berkeley Center for New Media and Leonardo: The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology; campus media lab demonstrations; and an alternate reality game. Berkeley Big Bang is presented in tandem with BAM/PFA exhibitions of work by media artists Trevor Paglen, Jim Campbell, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Scott Snibbe.

For gallery exhibitions, see: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/events/education/bigbang/EN0169

– Richard Rinehart
Digital Media Director & Adjunct Curator
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
bampfa.berkeley.edu
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University of California, Berkeley
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2625 Durant Ave.
Berkeley, CA, 94720-2250
ph.510.642.5240
fx.510.642.5269