Interconnections: Chaos theory, Complexity, Cybernetics, Post-structuralism + Pasifika, Aboriginal, Indigenous, Indian, Asian, Polynesian and Maori Knowledge and Belief systems.

We are seeking papers and artist presentations which interrogate, examine, tease, put forward, discuss, postulate, propose, analyse, synthesise, combine, hybridise, expound and tickle ideas around the above subjects.

Papers will be considered for peer reviewed publication in the SCANZ book to follow the residency and symposium. Paper presentations at the symposium are expected to be 20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion. The symposium is ‘all in’ — everyone will experience all sessions. Proposals for artist presentations are open in terms of format - we expect but do not limit proposals to documentation in the form of video, DVD, CD, animation, website, speech, text, image, software, code and Open Source projects.

Schedule:

October 15 2008: Abstracts for papers or artist presentation abstracts due
January 19, 2009: Full papers due for peer review
January 26: SCANZ starts
January 30: start of writers focus week
February 4: pre-symposium writers arrive
February 7 - 8: Symposium - papers and presentations given
February 2010: Publication launch

Contact: Ian M Clothier i.clothier [at] witt.ac.nz

Susan Elizabeth Ryan, What is Wearable Technology Art? Susan Ryan proposes that wearable technology projects contribute to a history of projects that might not seem to be linked together or thought of as part of a cohesive practice.

Patrick Lichty, Building a Culture of Ubiquity - Patrick Lichty’s presentation, originally given at the Emotional Architectures summit at the Banff New Media Institute in 2000, illustrates changes in the culture of ubiquity that is based on the proliferation of (mobile information devices) and discusses the impact of wearable computing on the relationships between body and space.

Susan Elizabeth Ryan, Dress For Stress: Wearable Technology and the Social Body - Susan Ryan considers the work of artists, designers, and activists who, since the 1990s, have worked with clothing as survival mechanism and social tool — a “body of records” of technological, biological, and performable wearables that are vehicles for ideas and collective experience.

Susan Elizabeth Ryan, A Virtual Interview with Geert Lovink - Susan Ryan discusses communication- oriented wearable technology with media theorist, critic, and activist Geert Lovink who teaches at the Institute for Networked Cultures, University of Amsterdam.

Laura Beloff, The Curious Apparel: Wearables and The Hybronaut - Laura Beloff investigates wearable artistic experiments that explore concepts related to ubiquitous computing and to the merger of virtual and physical space in a hybrid space. In her research, she introduces the figure of the Hybronaut, a person coupled with a wearable device, who exists in hybrid space.

Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson, Negotiations - Negotiations by Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson, an interactive performance system consisting of two connected costumes, explores issues of cross-cultural communication using readily available digital effects and surveillance technologies.

Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen, The Body-as-Interface: A possibility to merge mind spaces with hybrids of physical and virtual worlds The essay proposes a set of ideas behind physical interfaces that provide us with the ability to express abstract concepts in the hybrid of virtual and physical worlds. It considers the types of communication that may arise as a result from the linking of body and mind, and it debates the use of stimulus in the communication with other people and our surroundings.

Sarah Kettley, Crafting the Wearable Computer - Sarah Kettley outlines a novel methodology for the development of computational wearable artefacts as everyday sites for authentic engagement. This methodology comprises a set of preliminary protocols for craft in design, a novel approach to the identification of distributed user groups, and a new method for the evaluation of wearable artefacts.

intelligent agent is a service organization and information provider dedicated to interpreting and promoting art that uses digital technologies for production and presentation.

Editor-in-Chief: Patrick Lichty
Director: Christiane Paul

A fantastic class of new materials is blurring the boundaries between computation and physical form, and as a result bringing computer science into the realms of a host of other disciplines, among them architecture, biology, chemistry, fashion design, and mechanical engineering. Responsive and computationally controllable materials — shape-changing polymers, e-textiles, and nano-scale electronics, just to name a few — are positioned to provide the underpinnings of truly ubiquitous interactivity that extends invisibly across body, architectural and urban scales.

This special issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing will focus on the use of such materials as the physical and computational bridge between form and function, body and environment, structures and membranes. Rather than focusing on approaches that employ sensors and actuators as discrete add-on components, this issue will emphasize technologies that blur the gap between computation and materiality, and between traditionally distinct disciplines.

We hope to spark a conversation between researchers and practitioners from a variety of scientific, engineering, and design disciplines (e.g. ubiquitous computing, materials science, architecture, biology, fashion, and HCI) in order to shed light on the possibilities and limitations of new material technologies, and to illustrate how we will build, interact and live with computers well into the future.

TOPICS

In addition to the issues already noted, topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Relevant developments in materials science, mechanical engineering, chemistry, biological engineering, nanotechnology, electrical engineering, textile engineering, and other fields, coupled with thoughtful speculation about applications
* Systems that integrate computation with new or unusual materials and composites
* Relationship between materials, form, and function in interaction design
* Needs served and possibilities exposed by responsive materials
* Long-term scenarios for ubiquitous applications built on responsive materials
* Relationship between membrane and structure in design
* Craft, collaborative development, and community knowledge
* Applications that span multiple fields and act as seeds for collaboration
* Relationship between new materials, manufacturing technologies, and computer aided design
* Sustainability issues exposed by the use of responsive material composites
* Biologically inspired design (e.g. biomimetics, self-assembly, morpho-functional design)
* Material driven multi-functionality, adaptability, and personalization
* Materials that function as the binding matter in the design of objects, garments, and spaces.
* Responsive Materials applied in an artistic or performative context
* Tangible interfaces
* Robotics
* Programmable matter
* Smart materials
* Electronic textiles, computational textiles, smart textiles
* Parametric design

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

All submissions should be sent to the guest editors at materialcomputing@media.mit.edu. Authors must submit abstracts and titles to the guest editors by October 1, 2008, and full papers by November 14, 2008.

Information about the format and style required for papers can be found here, and templates can be downloaded from here. More information about the Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing can be found here. However, all submissions and questions for the special issue should be sent to the guest editors, not the journal’s editor in chief.

All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by at least three reviewers and the selection for publication will be made on the basis of these reviews.

IMPORTANT DATES

Intention to submit (Abstract and Title): October 1, 2008
Submission deadline for full papers: November 14, 2008
Notification and reviews to authors: January 16, 2009
Camera ready submission deadline: February 6, 2009

GUEST EDITORS

Please direct all inquiries and submissions to the guest editors: materialcomputing [at] media.mit.edu

Leah Buechley
University of Colorado at Boulder
Department of Computer Science
UCB 430
Boulder, CO 80309
Leah.Buechley [at] colorado.edu

Marcelo Coelho
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Media Lab | Ambient Intelligence Group
20 Ames St., E15-322
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
marcelo [at] media.mit.edu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeuMlGq3X-M

Lumens — by Matthew Belanger, Sean Riley, and Ven Voisey — is an installation of lamps networked across three spaces: Greylock Arts (Adams, MA), MCLA Gallery51 Annex (North Adams, MA), and Turbulence.org. Scores of lamps have been borrowed from the residents of Adams and North Adams to fill the two gallery spaces. Their images and stories are represented on Turbulence.org, which also serves to connect the two locations telematically. The lamps — which have been outfitted with proximity sensors and arduino microcontrollers — light up 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, the lamp will light in the physical gallery space. Lumens re-connects North Adams and Adams — originally a single community. Lumens is a project of Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses.

Room for Thought pairs two computer-generated video installations by Swiss artists Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer that reveal a fascination with internal landscapes of the mind. Hahn’s single-channel, interactive video projection Luminous Point (2006) allows the viewer to take a self-guided tour of a virtual simulation of the artist’s Manhattan apartment, using a remote control to navigate a gamelike labyrinth of spaces derived from digital manipulations of photographic and filmic records. Where Hahn’s hybrid space incorporates images of the real world, Netzhammer presents a poetic world of pure invention. Premiering at SFMOMA, his new three-channel, site-specific installation Furniture of Proportions (2008) incorporates highly stylized wall drawings, animation, and sculptural objects to create an intricate spatial narrative.

Organized by Rudolf Frieling, SFMOMA’s curator of media arts, the exhibition occupies adjacent galleries and represents two generations of artists who have consciously worked with the computer as a formal artistic tool and means of expression. Both Hahn and Netzhammer combine a variety of traditional media with computer techniques in order to articulate a deep concern with the histories of philosophy and art. The artists also share an interest in human thought processes and the interplay between external images in the world and internal images in the mind. Undertaken as an open-ended investigation, their art is concerned with transience and states of change, and deals in surrealistic effects, associative thinking, and temporal multiplicity.

Alexander Hahn: Hahn (born 1954) is widely regarded as a pioneer of new media. His experiments with digitally reworked animations combine documentary film and video, photography, and computer-generated imagery, conflating reality and fantasy. Filled with associative, often cyclical image-streams, his work generally revolves around problems of representation—specifically rules governing individual and collective memory—and raises questions about what it means to perceive, store, and recollect visual knowledge in both time and space.

Yves Netzhammer: Zurich-based artist Netzhammer (born 1970) has become known for his graphically dynamic drawings, animations, and sculptural installations that explore the interconnectedness of things. Dealing in extremely reduced forms, his mainly figurative imagery intentionally blurs the hierarchy among humans, animals, plants, and iconic objects. This abstract pictorial lexicon—or, “thought-imagery” to use the artist’s term—functions more akin to a system of encoded signs that, uprooted from reason and familiar context, stand in opposition to the world of everyday images.

Room for Thought: Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Support for this exhibition is provided by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

You are invited to share ideas, discuss and develop future working around art work that investigates the relationship between new technology, traditional making techniques and transformative political actions. Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Anna Dumitriu, Ele Carpenter, and Nicola Naismith will present their work using diverse approaches to the making of work using new technology alongside textiles, followed by a “Long Table Discussion”.

The “Long Table Discussion” is an experimental public forum developed by performance artist Lois Weaver. It is a hybrid performance, installation and round table discussion designed to facilitate informal conversations on serious topics encouraging everyone to contribute. Previous “Long Table Discussions” include conversations on Women and Prisons, Human Rights and Performance and Manufacturing Bodies.

The event will be followed by a party 6 - 9 pm (all welcome) to celebrate the close of Rachel Beth Egenhoefer’s residency at Furtherfield/HTTP Gallery and providing an opportunity to discuss her work and experiences during the residency.

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer’s residency and Configurations is part of Distributed South an initiative co-curated by SCAN and Space Media. The residency and event is funded by the Arts Council England, University of Wales, University of Brighton, Lighthouse Brighton with support from Furtherfield.org, Textile Futures Research Group (TFRG) and University of the Arts London.

Distributed South www.distributedsouth.org.uk

Speakers
www.rachelbeth.net
www.elecarpenter.org.uk
www.nicolanaismith.co.uk
www.annadumitriu.co.uk

The Huarte Art Centre is pleased to announce the first net.art solo exhibition by Spanish artist Roberto Aguirrezabala. His works are focused in his two fetishes subjects: the concept of identity and the interpersonal relations in the age of Internet. His projects avoid the stereotype of the website, do not exhibit banners or navigational menu and manage to address the user towards unforeseen thematics developments. The show displays three net.art works:

what:you:get (1999) is a project that spies the user and configure a profile of his/her personality, analyzing the identity signs that he/she generates while browsing the website. Badplayer (2002) is a project developed in a context of artificial intelligence in Internet, that uses chat to reveal the new problematics related to the communication. Easyfriend (2006) investigates hybrid formats of expanded cinema on the web, throughout the interactive story of an artist in crisis. With the help of conversational robots, mails, chats, passwords and virtual alter ego, Aguirrezabala obliges the users to interact with many characters without knowing if they are real persons or just bots.

Roberto Aguirrezabala has been exhibited in numerous international festivals, exhibitions like net_condition (ZKM, Karlsruhe) and awarded, with acknowledgements such as the first prize for best work for net.art “X Canariasmediafest” (2002), the “Mobius Barcelona” award (2006), among others. He is currently investigating the development of fictional narrative systems of expanded cinema, using mediums between cinema, the installation, photography and Internet.

The Huarte Contemporary Art Centre: Located in Huarte (Navarra), 5 km from Pamplona, this new cultural space inaugurated in October 2007, is located barely an hour and a half from some of the most important contemporary art centres and museums such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Artium in Vitoria, the future Krea Contemporary Expression Centre in the same city or what will be the future International Contemporary Culture Centre of San Sebastian. The Huarte Centre is the first cultural facility in Navarra, specifically conceived to house exhibitions and activities related to contemporary art, with special attention to the emerging international scene.

There are a few things to say about manufacturing, design and digital arts. First, we’re not talking about manufacturing. Manufacturing is about making things on a large scale using machinery. Manufacturing evokes cavernous, cold, awesomely huge assembly lines with scales all out of proportion to the experiences of mere mortals. Factory floors throwing sparks, littered with metal shavings, huge overhead cranes moving impossibly large masses of steel - this is what manufacturing means. Half million ton crude oil-carrying super tankers are manufactured. The Airbus 380 is manufactured. Millions of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs are manufactured. Billions of cellular phones are manufactured. These things have meaning in the idiom of manufacturing. Manufacturing is the engine of growth and despair of the 20th century.

If anything, we’re talking about a kind of materialization of ideas. Slick connections between an your imagination, a circuit board and a 3D printer. It’s artful for its scale and personalization. Small-scale, passionate, individual ideas made material. Why is this different from manufacturing? Because manufacturing deals in enormous scales - scales of time, material, logistics, operational fortitude, finances, consumption of natural resources. Ultimately, manufacturing endeavors are impossible imbroglios of spin-doctors and reassurances, speculation, trust and hope as much as they are supply-train logistics and CAD systems. Just ask the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” team. Is it advanced avionics and carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic skins or spin-control and renegotiated contracts that’ll make that perpetually delayed endeavor a success?

The sad consequences of manufacturing’s scale is that it defaults to the least common denominator. Manufacturing on a mass scale can only be an effective business enterprise when you make one thing that millions and millions of people are convinced they need to buy. Customization as a manufacturing process has not moved much beyond Henry Ford’s Model T color option - you can have any color, so long as it’s black. An iPod is an iPod is an iPod, hand-painting and laser etching not withstanding. True customization means materializing one’s own designs, one’s own imagination. This is where we begin.

What we are talking about are emerging “materialization” - not manufacturing - processes. What makes it worth talking about is that it is the power of creation that manufacturing is able to achieve, but done at an entirely different scale - quicker, cheaper, individually, with fewer intermediaries and fewer incumberances. This is the crucial element - there are fewer and less awkward hurdles, deals, negotiations and alliances to be formed in the process of materializing an idea. The power of the idea and its “moment” is not lost through the trials of enrolling people, machines, enterprises, financiers into your cause. It’s as if a sketch in a notebook can materialize immediately. No more fumbling around with awkward descriptions of your weird idea - let the material object speak for you.

What else can be said about this different kind of idea-manufacturing? How does it integreate with design and digital arts? It relies on “toolkits” consisting of digital software and hardware, fab machines, CNC “Robodrills” and 3D modeling. As importantly, the toolkits are also the far-flung networked communities of craftspeople and designers, artists and technologists sharing ideas and insights. The practical tradecraft starts from the bottom and works its way up. We’re familiar with the elements of this process, and the activities taking place in various corners of the digital arts and art-technology communities. This is an emerging practice informally taken up by thoughtful designer-tinkerers. It is a practice that will find greater adoption within more formal and conservative design, engineering and art communities as its significance is refined.

The “tooling” for this practice includes open-source firmware for inexpensive microcontroller-based kits like the Arduino; hacked Nintendo Wii controllers; low-cost, rapid-turnaround printed circuit board production houses; free development environments like Processing; online knowledge sharing communities; parts suppliers with no minimum orders, and so forth.

The “manufacturing process” is a kind of extended sketching activity. Ideas are first expressed informally, perhaps with a simple “wouldn’t it be cool if..?” question at a moment of inspiration. But the question should be answered - and it can be, often enough, with a quick pen drawing, some poking around the net for practical answers or to source some parts or other material - perhaps even finding other people who have asked the same question and thereby entering into conversations with all the other similarly inspired folks out there on the networks. In short order a refined, functional technology engine is created using small-scale surface mount printed circuit board techniques so as to fit within the refined contours of a fab’d surface model. Now you have a fully functioning materialization of your idea - much easier to answer that initial question with the real-deal. You can share it, put it in other people’s hands and work through the nuances of your idea.

What does this all mean for an emerging design-art-technology practice? At present, the evidence of something compelling centered around new interactions is indicated by a richly stocked cabinet of curios - expressive artifacts and objects that, like early Net Art, stitch together inputs and create expressive outputs. Only — and this is important - they do so off the computer screen, and with no keyboard and mouse. Rather, these expressive objects form their interactivity around physical actions that may include the Nabaztag’s articulating rabbit-like ears, or Clocky the coy alarm clocks that roll away when you try to hit the snooze button, or Maywa Denki’s punch-drunk dancing BitMan character. These are distinct kinds of digital objects that mix physical space, digital technology and design.

We know that the art of digital media continues to emphasize the screen, the keyboard, the mouse and the network. The weak signals suggest kinds of design-art-technology that are growing tired of the screen. Digital art is ready to move beyond the confines that Douglas Englebart and his contemporaries created in 1968 with their patent line drawing depicting the now canonical assembly of keyboard, screen and mouse. If there is a “new materiality” to digital arts, it will emphasize material interactions in physical space, embodied experiences and contexts beyond the typically sedentary confines of the screen/keyboard/mouse/network assemblage.

For this new process to do something new, it must become a ployglot practice steered by undisciplinary craftspeople who believe in the possibility of creating fictional, unbelieveable, even preposterous objects that say as much about what they’re moving away from - the uninspired, least-common denominator landfill-destined plastic device - as they say about what sort of near future world we could have. What is emerging is an ability to make your own stuff - not just “skinning” your mobile or modding an MP3 player. Materializing ideas is about making your own - “whatever” - unanticipated, unknown, visionary, expressive things. It is not a manufacturing process. This is a process that requires multiple perspectives and multiple skills thoroughly mixing engineering-design-art into a hybrid sensibility. It is a process that’s strictly for trouble-makers and boundary crossers. Nothing expected and everything unexpected will come from this. [blogged by Julian Bleecker on Near Future Laboratory]

Our feeling of space and place changes and refreshes constantly through the interaction and communication possibilities of new media. Locations and environments may be altered from public to a private and from concrete to virtual through mobile technologies. These hybrid spaces create emotional and aesthetic possibilities for artists to experiment with. How do artists work with hybrid space and how do they make us aware of the social and cultural implications?

This workshop will be moderated by John Hopkins. Speakers & guests: Armin Medosh, Anne Nigten, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Eric Kluitenberg, Kurt Vanhoutte, Peter Westenberg, Maja Kuzmanovic and Pieter van Bogaert.

During two workshop days we will think, talk and work around four thematic issues:

LOCAL-GLOBAL: The media has brought the global world closer to us. They focus our attention on our local environment as it exists in a globalised world. The concept of place can no longer be naively fenced off from homogenous global networks. Globalisation processes have a number of negative effects, but this is no reason to suffer them. In that sense, artist s strategies to reveal the richness of diversity in a global society are very valuable. Via their acts in spaces, they can show us that there are still opportunities to claim our own space in a world that we do not always seem to have a grip on.

PRIVATE-PUBLIC: Technology enables us to be constantly in contact with places from a distance. This gives us enormous freedom. The shadow side is that the same technology allows us to control more. Artists try to draw attention to controlling networks that are not always visible to us, such as databases, RFID (radiofrequency identification) of surveillance cameras. This enables us to interact with them more consciously and maybe even break the connection now and again.

VISIBLE-INVISIBLE: The phenomenon of ubiquitous computing is about the fact that technology is being integrated into our surroundings ever more seamlessly . In many cases we no longer know where technology is concealed, let alone how to manipulate it ourselves. Our air is full of (polluting) radiation. Artists can reveal these invisible networks in interesting ways using maps, visualisations or photos.

NARRATING-CREATING: Immersive environments, interactive story telling or mapping tell us stories about our place in space. Artists often use low-tech technologies in their work, as a reaction against the glorification of technological intelligence. As a rule, these works function more transparently or are easy to work with. They bring the possibility of shaping your own space within reach, hereby stimulating a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture.

Sharing and mapping experiences, thoughts and visions around creative expressions of hybrid space are the central goal. Every thematic issue will be introduced by an international speaker who explains and highlights the issue from his or her own experience, and a national reporter who reflects upon the situation and possibilities for Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium).The exhibition Place@Space at Z33 functions as material for study during this workshop.

In general, traditional conferences, workshops, symposia, tend to a bit of a bore: keynote speakers are the central element and more often than not little time is spent on an interesting discussion / conversation with all participants on the topics dealt with. Most interesting talks are held during the coffee break, the lunch or in the bar afterwards. Besides this, these meetings are generally limited to only text and minimal forms of visual expressions.

The Cowboy Methodology asks for an active engagement of each participant in his/her own language/medium (text, still or moving image). In this way the group of individuals are equally important as the keynote speakers in front of the audience.

Keywords for this methodology are:
* openness
* the individual is empowered, but finds its value in connection to the group
* passion
* transdisciplinary approach
* ad hoc connections generate long lasting relations
* meetings in real life are as equal as meetings in the virtual
*

The Cowboy Methodology heavily relies on the Open Space Technology which proved its value in user generated conferences as BarCamps or Unconferences. And, of course, this methodology could not have existed without the prototypical image of a cowboy: energetic, engaged, in solitude, but aware & depending of the others in his community, Yihaa!

The findings, conclusions, new questions and other output of this workshop will be brought together on the website and in a printed publication.