[Image: Operation Urban Terrain (OUT): 2004-6 by Anne Marie Schleiner] “Due to its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the Situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord (Contribution to Situationist Definition of Play, Internationale Situationniste #1, June 1958)

In recent years, commentators on game culture and ludology have undertaken the task of analyzing and structuring play. Such work has been strongly influenced by the Dutch researcher Johan Huizinga’s 1938 study of play, Homo Ludens and Roger Callois’s later structuralist elaborations of Huizinga’s research. Continue reading

MapaboutMaps by Sha Sha Feng: Maps convey a certain perspective and it functions as a 2-D representation of the 3-D world. What does the cartographer want you to see? This project is a series of interviews on an interactive map. It is built on open source software and Google Earth. The idea of of the interactive map allows one to layer and juxtapose information to make connections with our knowledge of the world. It explores what people think the concept of maps and its functions means to them from artistic to functional – a map about maps. This interactive system can bring people together, virtually sharing their knowledge, thoughts and opinions. Continue reading

Hacker Space Festival :: June 16 - 22, 2008 :: 6Bis & /tmp/lab, Vitry-sur-Seine, France :: :: Call for Participation - Submission Deadline: May 15, 2008

What would the Internet look like without hackers? What would computing look like without free and open source software? What would the culture look like with DRM and closed media channels everywhere? Where do art and technology merge? Would Gilbert Simondon be happy if he were alive today? Many questions will be debated during the first Hacker Space Fest from the 16th to the 22nd June 2008 near Paris, at the /tmp/lab in the industrial outskirts of Vitry-sur-Seine. Continue reading

HACK.Fem.EAST: Women and Technology in Networks - Exhibition, workshops, conference :: curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli and Gaia Novati :: May 9 - June 22, 2008 :: Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien Berlin.

The exhibition project in Berlin, HACK.Fem.EAST, seeks to present experimental and artistic practices of artists and activists working in digital networks in Eastern Europe. The focus of the exhibition is on presenting a use of media located somewhere between hacking, art and activism which is driven forward by an international counterculture and avant-garde: the main protagonists are women or projects in which women play an important role. Continue reading

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani present: The Influencers - Festival of Media Action and Radical Entertainment with Alan Abel, Alterazioni Video, Santi Cirugeda, Brody Condon, Laibach, Monochrom, Trevor Paglen :: February 28 - March 1, 2008 :: Center of Contemporary Culture Barcelona.

The Influencers explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism. The key to The Influencers is found in its guests and stories: impostors, pseudo-totalitarian musicians, conceptual hackers, deviant geographers, anarchitects and actors from invisible theatre. Continue reading

The Digg button is a very simple beginner electronics that teaches how to solder and program microcontroller. Once made, this basic electronic project mimics the popular Digg.com website: each time you push the button, the button flashes “Dug” and increments the counter up to 999 “diggs”. The project is completely open source, and documented here including parts list, schematics and code. For those who don’t want to try to chase down the electronic components, we have a full kit ready to go in the Adafruit webshop.

Digg.com is a site that allows people all over the globe to discuss and vote on (”digg”) stories. The most popular and talked about stories rise to the top of the page where millions of viewers will see them. Continue reading

Upgrade! Boston: Limor Fried :: January 24, 2008; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: North 181 - entrance on Evans Way [map], Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston. [Follow the signs posted on the outside of the Tower Building (black glass) [Green Line “E”].

Limor Fried is a recent graduate of the MIT Media Lab where she earned a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. For her thesis, Limor developed and built subversive electronic devices, including a pair of glasses that darken whenever television is in view and a jamming device that disables people’s annoying cell phone conversations at the press of a button. She releases much of her work in the form of DIY kits or instruction sets, including persistence of vision displays for bikes, a home brew synthesizer, and a minty iPod charger.

Jussi Parikka is author of the book Digital Contagions, a media archaeology of computer viruses, published by Peter Lang earlier this year. The book is a speculative meditation on the nature of viruses and their part in contemporary technocultures. This interview was carried out (by Matthew Fuller) by email in November and December 2007.

Matthew Fuller: How do you figure ‘the body’ or the biopolitical in your discussion of viruses? Clearly it would be possible to simply fall into the trap of equating computer viruses with biological ones, to mistake the metaphor for the thing named. On the other hand it is possible to trace the ways in which the term has been used to mark a cross-over between categories that is about a kind of understanding of kinds of behaviours not delimited by material instantiation, for instance a certain kind of dynamic of proliferation, that makes the term meaningful. What are the stakes in following this through? Continue reading

Neural Issue 28, winter 2007:: Subscribe now (and get a free dvd “Mediaterrae vol.1 - Irpinia Electronic Landscape“) or buy it from the closest store. A back issues pack is available. Free: centerfold ‘Muon’ by Chris O’Shea.

new media art: interviews: Florian Cramer interviews Jodi, “For us it’s not an error”; Casey Reas; Glitch explained by Olga Goriounova and Alexei Shulgin; Ant Scott/Beflix; ICC Open Space 2007; news: Morpho Towers, Spamland, The Word’s slowest Instant Messenger, Spy Box, Bloomsday On Twitter; reviews: books/dvd/cd-rom: Gost Storeys, New Media Art, Materializing New Media, Lebensfrische, Monkey_Party. Continue reading

HARDcoded :: Digital Punk Magicians :: w/ Workshops, Screenings, and Performances by: Alex Ignlizian, Mark Beasley, Sandra Rosas Ridolfi, Jake Elliot, Marisa Plumb, Temporary Services, criticalartware, Paul Hertz, Valerie Brewer, Professor Pangaea, CHHO, Morgan Higby Flowers, I <3 Presets and more… :: December 8, 2007; 1 - 9 pm :: EN3MY, 1550 N. Milwaukee Ave 3rd Fl. Chicago, IL + simultaneously streaming @ CentroMultiMedia + BORDER, Mexico City DF, Mexico.

HARDcoded is an ongoing collaboration between newMedia artists in Chicago + Mexico City, that explore the cross-over between digital noise, punk, + magic. Continue reading