Upgrade! Berlin presents: Mader | Stublic | Wiermann :: April 25, 2008; 8 pm :: Redesign Deutschland, aka System Lüftung, Torstrasse 94 in Berlin-Mitte (U Rosenthaler Platz oder Rosa Luxemburg Platz).

Heike Wiermann, Holger Mader and Alexander Stublic focus on video art installations, media facades and art in the public sphere. Their latest projects cover for example the spectacular media facade design (”twists and turns”) of the Uniqua tower in Vienna, where they have managed to transform the structure of the architecture into an ever-changing, fluid state of transition. Furthermore, they co-initiated OSRAM’s new light platform Seven Screens, which they launched with their LED-piece Reprojected. This installation focuses on the shadows of computer-simulated people. Continue reading

World Skin, a Safari Photo in the Land of War by Maurice Benayoun and Jean-Baptiste Barrière :: Opening: April 15, 2008; 6:00 pm :: Nemo Festival, La Bellevilloise, Paris.

Armed with cameras, we are making our way through a three-dimensional space. The landscape before our eyes is scarred by war-demolished buildings, armed men, tanks and artillery, piles of rubble, the wounded and the maimed. This arrangement of photographs and news pictures from different zones and theaters of war depicts a universe filled with mute violence. Continue reading

We can define “fake culture” as one of the most updated “detournement” embodiment, a concept periodically (re)discovered by artists. Facilitated by both the infinite possibilities of coding and the ocean of data on the net, a fake plays with the economy of attention struggling to be legitimated by enough online spectators. Fake is a fake by the Italian group Les Liens Invisibles is the ultimate tactical tool to fight against the online corporate media colonization of such attention. Using the very popular Wordpress blog standard the project is aimed to build and, even more, to share templates that very closely resembles famous online media. 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

Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation; The ICA 2007 San Francisco Conference Theme Book; edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen - In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume’s authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products.

In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. Continue reading

State of the Union by Brad Borevitz - Within an hour after the text of the speech is released, President George W. Bush’s final State of the Union address will be analyzed and presented. The address is scheduled to be delivered to Congress and the American people by the President on January 28th.

State of the Union provides searchable access to the corpus of all the State of the Union addresses from 1790 to the present. Using visualization software, the site allows a user to explore how specific words gain and lose prominence over time, and to link to information on the historical context. Continue reading

STREAM: A Unique Multimedia Exhibition of Artists from Portugal, curated by João Silvério ::  until January 5, 2008  :: White Box, 525 West 26th Street, New York, NY.

STREAM is an exhibition that will surprise New York audiences, making us reconsider, rethink and re-contextualize global art making and information technology. The selected group of Portuguese artists stretch and stream their particular lenses into outposts of innovative art, be it where their work is made, in New York or elsewhere. STREAM’s media-based works require a public art space where the art is available in a one-to-one temporal engagement, a viewing that takes place in the context of continual coming and goings, with traffic and a constant flow of visitors – different from a cinema or a concert hall. Continue reading

Upgrade! Brussels/Ghent: Etoiles Polaires 07 - Festival of Finnish Music and Media Arts :: December 12 - 15, 2007 :: Vooruit, Ghent - Belgium.

For this edition of Etoiles Polaires, we are very happy to invite Juha Huuskonen as guest curator. Juha Huuskonen is the founder of Pixelache, a festival for electronic art and subcultures which originated in Helsinki in 2002. Today, Pixelache organises events in different parts of the world: Mal Au Pixel in France and Pixelazo in Colombia. Pixelache gives a platform to creative minds from the most diverse disciplines (artists, engineers, designers, researchers, architects, etc.) but they all have a shared interest in technology and media. Continue reading

Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence :: Opening: November 24, 2007; 8:00 pm :: until January 13, 2008 :: Portikus, Alte Brücke 2 Maininsel, 60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence is a combined art and architectural exhibition wherein the different parts in the exhibition are synthesised into a complete whole. The exhibition stages a theatre or space of communication: communication between the visitors and the exhibited works, between the virtual and the real. Throughout its period, the architectural installation will serve as a hub for various events including lectures, art performances, hosted talks with invited guests, and DJ-sessions. Continue reading

Video creators, scholars, activists, policy makers, technologists, and entrepreneurs will gather this February at the USC School of Cinematic Arts for 24/7: A DIY Video Summit, the first-of-its-kind international event focused on the fate and future of visual media in the 21st century.

The summit, which takes place from February 8 - 10, at the USC University Park Campus in Los Angeles, will explore the incredible dynamic at play as millions of people flock to online video sharing sites like YouTube, Revver, imeem, Stage6 and Eyespot where they watch and contribute video content around the clock, 24/7. Webcast [Quicktime]; SLURL. More >> Continue reading