VolaVola is a film about human beings, about emotions becoming inevitably dull, even while we resist surrendering to habit, even as we continue striving for more. At its core the film is about the human desire to keep love alive and preserved from natural decay.

The plot specifically aims to disorient the viewer. As the story unravels it becomes increasingly difficult to understand what is actually real and what is not. Throughout the picture real avatars and real people interpret themselves while fictional
characters, both computer generated and flesh and blood, all play different roles.

VolaVola also deals in a sociological and sometimes even surreal way with themes such as hacker ethics and the values shared in a virtual society. These topics are far too often left out by science-fiction in general. The main message of the film is to defend those shared values, as they play an important part in our cultural heritage, past, present and future, and are helping us to build a better place to live for everyone.

The entire film will be set in Rome - both as the actual city and as a virtual one – in a world where it is now possible to meet characters coming from different virtual universes. Carboni has put together an incredible team of people to work with him in the SL Metaverse - including Machinimatographer Evo Szuyuan, Production Manager Fau Ferdinand, Builder Stella Costello and Costume Mistress Honey Fairweather. Expect cameos and special appearances from many Second Life personalities.

Volavola is an open project if you want to read the script and/or try to take part in its realization please contact Fly Me/Volavola via the facebook group or on myspace page. Fly Me/VolaVola is scheduled for release on 12/12/08.

Press Contacts:
In North America
Liz Solo
whoisliz [at] hotmail.com
709.754.6662

In Europe:
Nello Bologna
nbologna [at] email.it

Worldwide
Arnaldo Guido - Producer
arnaldoguido [at] hotmail.com

David Steinberg: mobile music machines - Lots of interesting musical software have been developed more or less recently for portable videogames consoles (Gameboy, PSP, etc.), PDAs or other similar platforms. I’ll present many of these applications (for Nintendo Gameboy, Palm OS, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Gamepark consoles, etc.), explain what’s needed to use them, who created them, what are the advantages and disadvantages of developing musical software for each platform and of course show some examples of what can be done with these new instruments.

Christina McPhee: Shake Stations - California-based filmmaker and artist Christina McPhee is ‘outback’ in earthquake country this summer, shooting HD video at Parkfield, California with new media installation artist DV Rogers (New Zealand / Sydney). DV is building and activating a major land art work- a hydraulically activated, remote -sensor activated seismic intervention table. DV’s PIEQF installation reacts to mini-tremors and shakes in realtime.

Following DV and crew as they install the project this summer and fall, Christina’s documentary takes on the gradual installation of the table as an elaborate time-based performance, with ironic and playful resonances to land art and the highly saturated dramatic space of sixties nouvelle vague (new wave) film. Via abstract drawing, experimental video and photomontage, Christina makes performative recordings at generative ‘moment-tensors’ where biological systems clash and meet with technological, and often security-challenged, sublime landscapes at the urban edge.

At places of emergence, at folds or ‘tesserae’ in landscapes of latent energy, her methods involve meditative engagement in remote sites like Parkfield, and also this year at live geothermal plants over the San Andreas Fault, next to the declining aquifer of Salton Sea, near the Mexico / California border. Her work slips past the indexical to trace dynamic loops between biological and technologically emergent states, making connections between human traumatic memory, disturbed terrains, and bare life.

Sam Pluta: data structures/monoliths ii (for chion) - Video samplers. Software as musical scores. Data structures as musical materials. Copyright laws. Data loops. Why Chewbacca is not in the OS X spell checker. Blocks of sounds. Laptop improvisation. And Michel Chion. All this and more will be discussed as Sam Pluta presents his work, data structures/monoliths ii (for chion).

Gary Hill, recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation, has been working with sculpture and electronic media since the early 1970’s. His video piece Blind Spot is a short encounter between the artist and a North African man on a street in Marseilles that is slowed down, forcing the viewer into an intimate relationship with the subject and the shifting emotion seen in his face. The piece was originally commissioned for Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image, produced by Bick Productions and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2003.

Manu Luksch is co-founder of ambientTV.NET, a UK-based art collective with a history of conceiving works that integrate curatorial and collaborative aspects, research, community involvement, and hybrid media installations. Her film project Faceless is a science fiction fairy tale compiled from surveillance video footage recovered under the UK’s Data Protection Act.

James Coupe is an artist and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media (DXARTS). His 4-channel video piece (re)collector is an adaptation of his project in Cambridge, England in April 2007, involving a city-wide network of surveillance cameras programmed to extract cinematic moments from everyday life matching the Antonioni film Blow Up, and a computer algorithm that recombines the footage into a narrative. Each channel shows a unique ‘possible’ film generated from a specific day: over time the story mutates, becoming retold each day, and altering the context of people’s actions.

For over 20 years, 911 Seattle Media Arts Center has been the region’s premiere resource and venue for alternative media. Emerging from Seattle’s seminal artists space and/or gallery in 1984, 911’s mission of supporting independent digital media artists in the creation and exhibition of their work is now more essential than ever. To accomplish its mission, 911 Seattle Media Arts Center provides: education and training; affordable access to tools and facilities for media production; connection to a supportive peer community of media makers; and direct support to individual digital media artists through residencies and exhibitions.

Like previous years we are looking for new video art works and short films, media installations, live audiovisual performances, network based projects… In addition, we are very glad to receive proposals from curators and producers / distributors for the non-competitive special screenings. Entry forms are online and it is not necessary to create user account in order to submit entries but we suggest to do so and log in prior submitting. This way you will be able to edit your own submissions and get partly prefilled entries with values from your user account.

Awards: Sphinx award - for the best video :: Bogdanka Poznanovic award - for the best media installation, network or live project.

POP Video - What is a popular video today?: The title is so abundant in associations that it can direct ones thoughts to at least two directions at the same time: one is the music video production, video clips of famous performers; the other is the artistic direction whose most prominent representative is certainly Andy Warhol. However, the cruel non-artistic reality responds to the technological revolution differently from the way the artists such as Nam June Paik or Warhol would. Dominant aspects of popular video today are still the long lasting phenomena categorized as kitsch and pulp. Yet, over time a new hypertrophied tide wave of human transgression has emerged, imposing the urge that it need be recorded at any cost. We have seen numerous sensations, wars, death, and bizarre events, causing in audience unquenchable thirst, which by an extension has led to the continuation of the search for new sources. In order to obtain them, it is no longer sufficient to wait patiently for thy neighbor to fall, but the event needs to be provoked and made real, as opposed to its being accidental or performed. If the concept of recorded bizarreness was realized as a simulacrum, we would be dealing with amateur video, which unfortunately is not the case. Criminal subjects - independent video makers - are not alienated strangers whose deviations come as a result of their not having been loved or having been abused in childhood. Quite the opposite, in accord with general circumstances (and by this I mean primarily the responsibility of the sensationalism-hungry media), a common passer-by with a camera in his cell phone, regardless of the resolution, turns into an urban headhunter or a hunter for the trophies alike… read more here.

videomedeja festival is strictly dedicated to art, completely independent and non-profit annual event. The first festival was held in 1996. So far, 11 festivals have been realized, more than 3000 works made by artists all over the world were submitted for the programme. Renowned artists, prominent critics, theoreticians, producers, distributors and journalists from all over the world took part in the festival programme.

Festival focuses on narrative or abstract art projects which combine image and sound, communications and networks, from video art works, documentaries and short films, digital animations, media installations, url and network projects, objects, interactive and robotized objects, open source applications, audiovisual performances, mobile technologies, electronic music, advanced technologies in art practice…

Permanently obeying copyrights and being strictly determined for professional approach, videomedeja is well known festival on the international scene.

Rencontres Internationales will take place at the Centre Pompidou, at the Jeu de Paume national museum and in other key locations in Paris in November 2008. The same program will be presented in Madrid in April 2009 and in Berlin in June 2009.

Those three events will propose an international programming focusing on film, video and multimedia, gathering works of artists and filmmakers acknowledged on the international scene along with young artists and filmmakers.

ANY INDIVIDUAL OR ORGANISATION CAN SUBMIT ONE OR SEVERAL PROPOSALS. THE CALL FOR ENTRIES IS OPEN TO FILM, VIDEO AND MULTIMEDIA CYCLES, without any restriction of length or genre. All submissions are free, without any limitation of geographic origin.

CINEMA AND VIDEO CYCLES (all film and video formats)
* Video / Experimental video / Video art
* Fiction - short, medium and feature length
* Documentary, experimental documentary
* Experimental Film
* Animation movie

MULTIMEDIA CYCLES
* Installation * Net art * Multimedia performance and concert

Video and film submissions are received on DVD. ALL submissions are sent by postal mail, enclosed with a filled-in ONLINE ENTRY FORM, UNTIL THE 25th of AUGUST, 2008. Entry forms and information regarding the ‘Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid’ are available on our website http://art-action.org/en_info_appel.htm

The ‘Rencontres Internationales’ offer more than a simple presentation of the works. They introduce an intercultural forum gathering various guests from all over the world - artists and filmmakers, institutions and emerging organizations - to testify of the vivacity of creation and its distribution, but also of the artistic and cultural contexts that often are experiencing deep changes.

The event reflects specificities and crossings of art practices between new cinema and contemporary art, explores media art practices and their critical purposes, and work out this necessary time when points of view meet and are exchanged.

The event aims at presenting those works to a broad audience, at creating circulations between different art practices and between different audiences, as well as creating new exchanges between artists, filmmakers and professionals. Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, is an event without competition supported by French, German, Spanish and international cultural institutions.

New-media art installations that caution visitors about a future when books are relics of the past, and nanoparticles represent a pervasive threat to human health, will be on display starting August 4 at the gallery@calit2 on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The joint exhibition will present SPECFLIC 2.6 by UC San Diego Visual Arts professor Adriene Jenik, and Particles of Interest by particle group, an art collective composed of independent and UCSD-based artists and writers.

The art installations ask the viewer to consider a not-so-distant future in which individuals will be intimately connected to networks not only through our computers, but via nanoparticles in or on our own bodies.

The gallery is part of the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

SPECFLIC 2.6: Today accessibility to information is a combination of video, image and text, informed in large part by the language of film and the literary novel. Adriene Jenik, in her ongoing project SPECFLIC, currently in version 2.6, explores the evolution of film language as “Distributed Social Cinema.” Using multiple screens, from cell phone interfaces to large image projections, Jenik layers media and technology forms. SPECFLIC 1.0 premiered at the dedication of Atkinson Hall as Calit2’s headquarters on the UCSD campus in 2005; SPECFLIC 2.0, hosted by the San Jose Public Library, was a featured event at ISEA06/ZeroOne San Jose in 2006.

For the gallery@calit2, Jenik offers the public a speculative, futuristic reality taking place in the year 2030, in which people access the “InfoSphere” to learn about books that are only available to the public in electronic form. In SPECFLIC 2.6, books exist as rare objects that can only be described by the InfoSpherian, who is a rough equivalent to today’s reference-desk librarian. Gallery visitors will be able use their cell phones to share their reflections on the future of the book and the library.

“Granted the opportunity for networked interaction within the gallery, for SPECFLIC 2.6 I have rethought the installation to integrate audience contributions,” said Jenik. “So the project is very much evolving in response to what I learn from each previous iteration, as well as the opportunities afforded by the space, encounter with the audience, and technological framework.”

SPECFLIC 2.6 offers a plausible future that is in large part dependent on a network with defined boundaries that are modeled after, or part of, the Internet.

In juxtaposition, Particles of Interest reflects on nanotechnology, which has no clear boundaries because it links humans to machines in ways that are beyond binary networks. Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field at the crux of scientific research and corporate investment. Research on nanoparticles has led to the commercial development of products such as improved rubber tires, coating in glass that makes it easier to clean, improved water filtration systems, sunscreen lotions and much more. At the same time, there has been little consideration of the health implications of nano-products.

The particle group installation allows visitors to learn about growing concern with nanoparticles in public health. Videos comment on the production of nanotechnology, and visitors can discover whether they have nanoparticles on their skin or clothing by interacting with sculptural devices.

Each iteration of the Particles of Interest project has been, as much as possible, site-specific. “This version of the piece functions as an access route to Calit2’s gallery, so we became interested in the pedestal and the host of scripts it serves in the gallery or museum,” said the artists.

“Pedestals are used to elevate that which the institution has designated to be of value… and here in the Nano3 labs at Calit2, we find the laboratory cousin of the pedestal — the clean white (or aluminum) counter, whose contents may only be intimately accessed by professionals. Visitors to Calit2’s nanolabs are positioned to watch skilled nanolab professionals perform a range of interactions with nanoparticles. In our piece, we wanted our ‘unskilled’ visitors to perform this meeting with the untouchable in a different way. We wanted to bring the clean room and the gallery pedestal together, to see what they might have to say to each other.”

Elements of “Particles of Interest” and SPECFLIC were on view recently at the San Diego Museum of Art as part of its “Inside the Wave” exhibition, which featured new-media works from Southern California- and Tijuana-based artists.

Artist Bios

Adriene Jenik is a telecommunications media artist who lives in Southern California. Her works combine “high” technology and human desire to propose new forms of literature, cinema and performance. Career highlights include works in live television, including EL NAFTAZTECA (w/Guillermo Gomez-Pena), interactive cinema in MAUVE DESERT: A CD-ROM Translation, and the Internet street theater of DESKTOP THEATER (w/Lisa Brenneis and the Desktop Theater troupe). Her current research continues her interest in wireless community media and new storytelling forms. Jenik is currently developing SOCIAL SPHERE, a spatialized cinema program, and (with collaborator Charley Ten) the performance platform “Open Dancefloor.” An associate professor of Computer & Media Arts in UCSD’s Visual Arts department, Jenik is an affiliated researcher with Calit2 and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at UCSD.

particle group has exhibited at ISEA (San Jose) 2006, World Culture (Berlin) 2007, “Inside the Wave” at the San Diego Museum of Art 2008, and FILE (Brazil) 2008. It is a collective consisting of Principal Investigators Ricardo Dominguez (an assistant professor of Visual Arts at UCSD, affiliated with Calit2) and Diane Ludin, as well as Principal Researchers Nina Waisman (Interactive Soundscape) and Amy Sara Carroll, with a number of others flowing in and out.

Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. He was co-Director of The Thing (www.thing.net) an ISP for artists and activists from 2000 to 2004, as well as Senior Editor from 1996 to 1999. He is a former member of Critical Art Ensemble. Ricardo’s performances have been presented in museums, galleries, theater festivals, hacker meetings, tactical media events and as direct actions on the streets and around the world.

Diane Ludin is a writer, media artist and educator. Born in New York, she studied Drawing and Installation at the State University of New York at Purchase (1989-1993) and Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts in (1998-2000). As an artist, she has participated in exhibitions and events such as New York Digital Salon 2001, Ars Electronica 2002, DEAF 2003, ISEA 2004 and 2006, Whitney ArtPort 2004, Medialabmadrid 2005 and Nomadic New York in Berlin, 2006. Ludin has completed online commissions for The Walker Art Center, New Radio and Performing Arts, Franklin Furnace, and The Alternative Museum. She has held Artist Residencies for the World Views program in 2000 and Harvestworks in 2004. She is currently a lecturer in the MFA Computer Art Department of New York’s School of Visual Arts.

Nina Waisman’s work considers sonic and gestural forms of control and communication, provoked by technology’s disruption of the body’s space and time. She has exhibited in Los Angeles, Berlin, New York, Dallas, San Francisco, Long Beach, San Diego and online, and is currently finishing an MFA degree in Visual Arts at UCSD.

Amy Sara Carroll is assistant professor of Latina/o Studies in the English Department and the Program of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; she received a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University (2004), an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University (1995), an MA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2003), and an A.B. in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Princeton University (1990). In 2005-2006, Carroll held a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in Latino/a Studies and English at Northwestern University. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Talisman, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, among many others. She has served as either an artist- or writer-in-residence at the Saltonstall Arts Colony in Ithaca, New York, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain. Additionally, Carroll translated and created subtitles and visual poems for Claudio Valdes Kuri’s theatrical production El automovil gris (The Grey Automobile), which was performed at several venues, including the Anglo Mexico Foundation, the Ebert Film Festival, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Related Links

SPECFLIC http://specflic.net/
Particles of Interest http://www.pitmm.net/

Often only fully realised in their installed state, time-based media works are complex systems that pose new challenges for their custodians. Effective approaches to their stewardship rely on the blending of traditional museum practice with new modes of operating that derive from and respond to the complex nature of these installations. In many cases artists are very specific about the way in which the work should be installed and the technology used to show it. The installation of these works requires new skills and new areas of collaboration within museums. Whereas internationally agreed standards exist for the handling, installation and care of traditional works of art, there are no such standards at present for time-based media works. This project aims to raise awareness of the requirements of these works and to provide a practical response to the need for international agreement among museums.

The challenge of preserving time-based media is best met collaboratively, and it is the consortium’s hope that others will not only benefit from this information but will also contribute over time to the further refinement of the methods of care for these works of art. We hope this material will be an aid to artists, collectors, dealers and museums, the primary custodians of time-based media.

The Story of Batya M. is the last (and unique) chapter of a fictional Argentinean “telenovela” (soap opera) projected on the screen and experienced as live performance. In a live performance the two leading actors from the film dub the scenes (from Spanish into English). The language they use changes, the translation becomes dubious, the design of the subtitles and the conventions of the genre are also transformed and subverted. The outcome is a unique piece that exists on the border between mass television culture and avant-garde performance.

The Story of Batya M. uses the classic story structure of the telenovela but subverts it through the subtitles which have a central role in this work or through the use of poetic elements from cinema language or the appearance of a melodrama researcher who comments about the work. The Story of Batya M. is a work full of humor, drama, poetics and blinks. The work addresses different audiences because allows different levels of reading: it dialogues with cinema, art and telenovela culture. The work deals with the concepts of migration, culture, social issues, and of course….love and revenge

FIGMENT is a celebration of creative culture from June 27-29, 2008 on Governors Island in New York Harbor. It provides an open forum for artists, helps build a creative community, and fosters participatory and public art. A broad spectrum of arts are represented, including sculpture, performance, music, installation, dance, costuming and activities. It is free and open to the public.
Among the projects planned for this event are:
Starlight on the Island—A series of solar panel powered, spherical steel sculptures that will absorb sunlight to light the island at night.

The Rose Petal Pool—The creators of this multi-media, interactive sound installation encourage children of all ages to enjoy the rich sensory experience.

Arbor Animus (Spirited, Courageous Tree)—The artist collective will bring their 16-foot tall, multi-media (metal, wood, LED lights) American Willow Tree to Governors Island as part of the sculpture’s 2008 national tour of major art festivals.

FIGMENT 2008 will also offer a range of offerings by video and film artists sharing both their personal and collective expressions—often influenced by Governors Island— including the documentation of the construction of an elaborate reclaimed wood sculpture and one NY native’s 1979 marriage in the island’s Trinity Church.

Other FIGMENT art installations will incorporate such innovative materials and resources as telescopes, a teepee, 2,000 silver colored flags, and a pair of five-foot tall wooden lips! The majority of sculptures and art pieces are touchable and climbable—resulting in much art that is interactive and child-friendly.

The work of both emerging and established choreographers will be featured as part of the many dance performances taking place throughout the 3-day event. Similarly, FIGMENT 2008 will have a range of performance art offerings, including such original and unusual unions as the merging of creative writing with art and improvisational drama exercises with therapeutic movement, sound, and role-play. In addition, visitors to the island can participate in the creation of pop-trash poetry done karaoke style, Ukrainian body painting, private readings at the “Poetry Brothel,” and the “intrepid” use of cameras to record various urban explorations.

The musical offerings of FIGMENT 2008 are extensive, as well as exceptional in their variety and innovation. They range from boogie and classic rock to futuristic Brooklyn hip-hop to the “healing” sounds of electric keyboards to traditional bawdy German songs about murder, madness and mayhem—to the accompaniment of an organ grinder! Many of the performances are also representative of the collaborative spirit of multiple disciplines working together: a sound installation incorporating restaurant kitchen recordings, live electric flute accompanied by modern dancers, a mix of acoustic and electronic dance music resulting from remixes of Rwandan mass and folktronica.

Finally, humor permeates many of the offerings, as probably best represented by the Celtic vocalist who will be singing her heartfelt songs about love, loss and indigestion.

FIGMENT will include City of Dreams Mini Golf, a nine-hole mini golf course that will be installed on Governors Island from June 27 to October 5. It will be free and open to the public throughout the season. Each hole will be conceived, constructed and installed by a different artist or group of artists, all variations on the theme “City of Dreams.”

The following principles guide the development, production and experience of FIGMENT:

PARTICIPATION
FIGMENT is committed to the spirit of participation. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play.

DECOMMODIFICATION
We seek to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

INCLUSION
Anyone may be a part of FIGMENT. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

SELF-EXPRESSION
Self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

SELF-RELIANCE
FIGMENT encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

GIVING
FIGMENT is devoted to acts of gift giving and volunteering. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

COMMUNAL EFFORT
We value creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
We value civil society. Each participant in FIGMENT is responsible for helping to create a civil environment for all other participants. We will endeavor to produce this event in a way that fosters a civil society and that is socially responsible.

LEAVE NO TRACE
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves to leave each place in a better state than we found it.

IMMEDIACY
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

The proliferation of screens represents a signature feature of modern and contemporary life. Screens located on computer, cinema, television or mobile platforms offer possibilities for entertainment, communication, art, manipulation and monitoring, creating new forms of identity, community, expression and social control. These developments in turn have created a rich and rapidly changing set of research initiatives within and across academic fields. In late 2007 the University of Sydney held the Screenscapes: Past Present Future conference to consider these issues and changes. Participants came from China, Germany, the United States, England, New Zealand and Australia, and the keynote speakers were Professors Lev Manovich (University of California at San Diego), Sean Cubitt (University of Melbourne) and David Trotter (University of Cambridge). The conference offered a space for examining the creation of screen communities and identities, the remediation of screen technology into other cultural forms, the history and future of screen technology, aesthetics, audiences, developments in mobile platforms, and the use of screens in visual and data surveillance. Most of the articles in this issue were presented as Screenscape papers before being expanded and refined for publication.